worth's brook, he has been wandering pur- | into the night, and slight hints and suggestions posely and at his own sweet will, or rather are propagated about separation and homewhere his feet have taken him; and he has laid going. The topic starts new ideas on the prohim down to sleep wherever sleep may have gress of civilization, the effect of habit on men chanced to find him. The result we have here, in all ages, and the power of the domestic affecin this uncouth specimen of humanity, in the tions. Descending from generals to the specials, matted hair, the soiled garments, and the he could testify to the inconvenience of late straggling gait; and what gives the finishing hours: for was it not the other night, that, touch to this grotesque picture is his utter un- coming to what was, or what he believed to be, consciousness of the ludicrous features of his his own door, he knocked and knocked, but the situation, as they appear to other eyes. Soon, old woman within either could not or would not it is true, he will go through an Æson-like re- hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, juvenation; for, in a certain cottage, there are having taken his repose in a furrow, was able hearts that anxiously await his return, and to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such hands ready to fulfil their oft-repeated duties in a couch?" the way of refitting him out for another tramp. But, before this transformation is effected, let us suppose the case of his being set down in the streets of London, somewhere in the vicinity of Cheapside. What an eddying of stragglers about this new-found focus of attraction! what amazement, and curiosity to find him out, if, indeed, he be find-out-able, and not, as the unmistakable papaverian odour suggests, some Stygian bird, hailing from the farther side of Lethe. But, Stygian or not, neither Hermes nor Pan (nor Panic, his namesake) could muster such a rabble at his heels, supposing him to ap-body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem: pear on Cheapside! In his innermost sensibilities he would have shrunk from this vulgar notice as from pollution itself. It would be monstrous to conceive of him in such situations, except for the purpose of showing that he had very much in his outward habit that would readily attract such a notice. In the same light we are to regard some illustrations which J. Hill Barton has given in "The Book-Hunter” of similar features in his character, and which I take the liberty of introducing here; for, although they have appeared in "Blackwood," and more lately in a book-form, they are still unpublished to many of my readers. Thus, we have him pictured to us as he appeared at a dinner, "whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the Golden Ass' of Apuleius. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A street-boy of some sort ? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-coloured belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers-some one suggests that they are inner-lined garments blackened with writingink, but that Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them." De Quincey, led on by the current of his own thoughts (though he was always too courteous to absorb the entire conversation), talks on "till it is far "Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should get a penny and go home-a proposal which he subjected to some philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him. How that wearied, worn little soft food disagreed with him; the hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense! If the wine-glasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk-and so the weary is at rest for a time. "At early morn, a triumphant cry of 'Eureka! calls me to his place of rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims his attention (my best-bound quarto) is spread upon a piece of bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony." I cannot refrain from quoting from Mr. Burton one more example, illustrative of the fact that De Quincey, in money-matters, considered merely the immediate and pressing exigencies of the present. "He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission (a process in which he often endured impediments) he represents, with his usual silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his not less effectually than the dust which has gathered for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises from that childlike simplicity and sweetness which lurk in gentle undulations of the features-undulations as of happy wavelets set in motion ages since, and that cannot cease for ever; but chiefly it is born of a dream-like, brooding eternity of speculation, which we can trace neither to the eye alone, nor to the mouth, but rather to the effect which both together produce in the countenance. being then and there invested with a sum of air of remoteness, baffling the impertinent crowd money in the current coin of the realm-the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any difficulty in conuection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document which he is prepared to deposit with the lender -a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety which the most prudent person could experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable, possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spread it out-a fifty-pound banknote! All sums of money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use; and, with more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the bank-note, might he inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been entirely a stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to him at How much of that which glorified De the time when the exigency occurred to him, he Quincey was due to opium? Very little as to had just succeeded in negotiating a loan of two-quality, but very much as to the degree and the pence." These pictures, though true to certain phases of De Quincey's outward life, are yet far from personally representing him, even to the eye. They satisfy curiosity, and that is about all. As to the real character of the man, they are negative and unessential; they represent, indeed, his utter carelessness as to all that, like dress, may at pleasure be put on or off, but "the human child incarnate" is not thus brought before us. For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then should we forget these inferior attributes; just as, looking upon the Memnonian statues, one forgets the horrid nicknames of Shandy" and " Andy" which they have received from casual travellers, observing merely their grotesque features. Features of this latter sort dislimn" and yield, as the writing on palimpsests, to the regal majesty of the divine countenance, which none can look upon and smile. Let me paint De Quincey's face as at this moment I seem to see it. It is wrinkled as with an Homeric antiquity; arid it is, and sallow as parchment. Through a certain Bedouin-like conformation (which, however, is idealized by the lofty, massive forehead, and by the prevailing subtlety of the general expression), it seems fitted to desert solitudes; and in this respect it is truly Memnonian. In another respect, also, is it Memnonian, that, whenever should rest upon its features the morning sunlight, we should surely await its responsive requiem or its trembling jubilate. By a sort of instinctive palmistry (applied, not to the hands, but to the face) we interpret symbols of ineffable sorrow and of ineffable peace. These, too, are Memnonian, as is also that infinite distance which seems to interpose between its subtle meanings and the very possibility of interpretation. This This is the face which for more than half a century opium veiled to mortal eyes, and which refuses to reveal itself save through hints the most fugitive and impalpable. Here are drape. ries and involutions of mystery from which mere curiosity stands aloof. This is the head which we have loved, and which in our eyes wears a triple wreath of glory: the laurel for his Apollolike art, the lotos-leaf for his impassioned dreams, and roses for his most gentle and loving nature. peculiar manner in which original qualities and dispositions are developed, for here it is that the only field of influence open to abnormal agencies lies. Coleridge, as an opium-eater, is the only individual worthy of notice in the same connection. Had he also confessed, it is uncertain what new revelations might have been made. It is certain that opium exercised a very potent effect upon him; for it was generally after his dose that his remarkable intellectual displays occurred. These displays were mostly confined to his conversations, which were usually longwinded metaphysical epics, evolving a continued series of abstractions and analyses, and, for their movement, depending upon a sort of poetic construction. A pity it is that we must content ourselves with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere, opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is metaphysically predis posed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of any sort in his waistcoat-pocket, be they opium or whatever else, and we can assure you that that man is an aërobat-that somehow, in one sense or another, he walks in the air above other men's heads. Whatever disturbs the healthful isolation of the nervous system is prosperous to metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances of men who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets, if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the super Coleridge was indolent from temperament, a disposition which was increased by opium. Hence De Quincey was of the opinion that it injured Coleridge's poetic faculties; which probably was the case, since in genuine poetry the mind is prominently realistic, its motions are all outward, and therefore excessive indolence must of necessity be fatal. De Quincey's physical system, on the contrary, seemed pre-conformed to opium: it demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing else. No temptation so strong could have been presented to Coleridge. De Quincey really craved the drug. His stomach was deranged, and was still suffering from the sad results of his youthful wanderings in London. It seems almost as if Fate had compelled the unfortunate course into which he finally drifted. The craving first appeared in the shape of a horrid gnawing at the stomach; afterwards this indefinite yearning gave place to a specific one, which was unmistakable in its demands. Daily, like the daughters of the horse-leech, it cried, "Give, give!" Toward the last, this craving became, in De Quincey's solemn belief, an animal incarnate, and the opium-eater reasoned after the following fashion: It is not I that eat, it is not I that am responsible either for the fact of eating or the amount; am I the keeper of this horrid monster's conscience? He even carried the conceit so far as to consider a portion of each meal as especially devoted to this insane stomachic reveller, just as a voracious Greek or Roman would have attributed no small part of his outrageous appetite to the gods, as eating by proxy through the mouths of mortals. Auous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.* activity so early awakened in him counteracted If Tacitus had fared in any sort like his brother the narcotic despotism of the drug, and made -if there had been anything like an equitable it a sort of ally. The reader sees from this division between them of muscle and brain, it how much depends upon predispositions as to is more than probable that we should have lost the effect of opium. De Quincey himself says the illustrious historian. that the man whose daily talk is of oxen will pursue his bovine speculations into dreams. Opium originates nothing; but, given activity of a certain type and moving in a certain direction, and there will be perhaps through opium a multiplication of energies and velocities. What was De Quincey without opium ? is, therefore the question preliminary to any proper estimate as to what in him was due to opium. This question has already been answered in the remarks made concerning his childhood. His meditative tendencies were especially noticed as most characteristic. There was besides this a natural leaning toward the mysteriousthe mysterious, I mean, as depending, not upon the terrible or ghostly, or upon anything which excites gloom or fear, but upon operations that are simply inscrutable as moving in darkness. Take for example, the idea of a grand combination of human energies mustered together in secret, and operating through invisible agencies for the downfall of Christianity-an idea which was conveyed to De Quincey in his childhood through the Abbé Barnel's book, exposing such a general conspiracy as existing thoroughout Europe: this was the sort of mystery which arrested and engrossed his thoughts. Similar elements invested all secret societies with an awful grandeur in his conception. So, too, the complicated operations of great cities, such as London, which he calls the "Nation of London," where even Nature is mimicked, both in her strict regularity of results, and in the seeming unconsciousness of all her outward phases, hiding all meaning under enigmas that defy solution. In order to this effect it was absolutely necessary that there should be not simply one mystery standing alone by itself, and striking in its portentous significance; there must have been more than this-namely, a network of occult influences, a vast organization, wheeling in and out upon itself, gyrating in mystic cycles and epicycles, repeating over and again its dark omens, and displaying its insignia in a never-ending variety of shapes. To him intricacy the most perplexing was also the most inviting. It was this which lent an overwhelming interest to certain problems of history that presented the most labyrinthian mazes to be disenvolved: for the demon that was in him sought after hieroglyphics that by all others had been pronounced undecipherable; and not unfrequently it was to his eye that for the first time there seemed to be an unknown element that must be supplied. Such a problem was presented by the religious sect among the Hebrews entitled the Essenes. Admitting the character and functions of this sect to have been those generally ascribed to it, there would have been attached to it no special importance. But the idea once having occurred to De Quincey that the general assumption was the farthest re No less was De Quincey psychologically preconformed to opium. The prodigious mental * It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is manifested, towards the near ap proach of death, an almost insane brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtle mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary glimmerings of a maniac's mind have been adduced for precisely the same purpose, moved from the truth-that there was an unknown in the problem, which could be satisfied by no such meagre hypothesis-that, to meet the urgent demands of the case, there must be substituted for this Jewish sect an organization of no less importance than the Christian Church itself-that this organization, thus suddenly brought to light, was one, moreover, that, from the most imperative necessity, veiled itself from all eyes, uttering its sublime articles of faith, and even its very name, to itself only in secret recesses of silence: from the moment that all this was revealed to De Quincey, there was thenceforth no limit to his profound interest. Two separate essays he wrote on this subject, *of which he seemed never to tire. "Klosterheim" is, from beginning to end, only the development through regular stages, of an intricately involved mystery of this subtle nature. Oftentimes De Quincey deals with the horrid tragedy of murder; but the mere fact of a murder, however shocking, was not sufficient to arrest him. With the celebrated Williams murders, on the contrary, he was entirely taken up, since these proceeded in accordance with designs not traceable to the cursory glance, but which tasked the skill of a decipherer to interpret and reduce to harmony. Here were murders that revolved musically, that modulated themselves to master-principals, and that at every stage of progress sought alliance with the hidden mysteries of universal human nature. I know of no writer but De Quincey who invests mysteries of this tragic order with their appropriate drapery, so that they shall, to our imaginations, unfold the full measure of their capacities for striking awe into our hearts. nished by certain expressions of the Litany, by pictures in the stained windows of the church, and by the tumult of the organ. Nor were the dreams thus introduced mere fantasies, irregular and inconsistent. Throughout they were selfsustained and majestic. The natural effects of opium were concurrent with pre-existing tendencies of De Quincey's mind. If, instead of having his restless intellect, he had been indolent-if, instead of loving the mysterious, because it invited a Titanic energy to reduce its anarchy to order, he had loved it as simply dark or obscure-if his natural subtilty of reflection had been less, or if he had been endowed with inferior powers in the sublime architecture of impassioned expression then might he as well have smoked a meerschaum, taken snuff or any other stimulant, as to have gone out of his way for the more refined pleasures of opium. The reader will indulge us in a single philosophical distinction, at this point, by which we mean to classify the effects of opium under two heads: first, the external, and, secondly, the internal. Properly speaking, all the positive effects of opium must be internal; for all its movements are inward in their direction, being refluent upon the focal centres of life. Thus, one of the most noticeable phenomena connected with opium-eating is the burden of life resting back upon the heart, which deliberately pulsates the moments of existence, as if the most momentous issues depended upon each separate throb. But this very reflux of sensibility will produce great effects at the surface, which are purely negative. This latter class of effects Homer has indicated with considerable accuracy, in the ninth Odyssey (82-105), where he notices specifically an air of carelessness regarding external things-carelessness as to the mutual interchange of conversation by question and answer, and as to the ordinary pursuits of life as disturbing an inward peace. The same characteristics are more fully developed in Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters" : "Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, This sort of mystery is always connected with dreams. They owe their very existence to darkness, which withdraws them from the material limitations of every-day life; they are shifted to an ideal proscenium; their dramatis persona, however familiar nominally, and however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We should therefore expect beforehand in De Quincey an overruling tendency towards this remote architecture of dreams. The careful reader of his " Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least material hint which bordered on the shadowy was sufficient to lift him up into aerial structures, and to lead his infant footsteps amongst the clouds. Such hints, after his little sister's death, were fur-sciousness, and compels it to give testimony to * Yet, marvellous as it may seem, he wrote the second without being distinctly conscious of having written a previous one. It was no uncommon thing for him to forget his own writings. In one case it is known that for a long time he persisted in disowning his production, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave By causing the life to flow inward upon a more ideal centre, opium deepens the con processes and connections that in ordinary moments escape unrecorded. It is as if new materials were found for a history of the individual life-materials which, like freshly-discovered records, sound the deepest meanings of the present and measure the abysses of the past. Thus it is that the fugitive imagery of sense is interpreted as a scroll which hides infinite truths under the most fleeting of symbols-symbols | even on the most temporary summons, to diswhich are not sufficiently enduring to call them pense with his usual regularity of expression or words, or even syllables of words, since the with any logical nicety of method. The letter most trivial hint or whisper of them has hardly runs thus:reached us ere they have perished. Thus it is that even the still more intangible record of memory, where are preserved only images and echoes of that which undeniably has perished, is revivified and enlarged. There is, then, in the opium-eater, a most marked, a polar antithesis between his everyday life and the central manifestations of his genius. In the latter there is beautiful order, as in a symphony of Beethoven's; but in the former, looked upon from without, all seems confusion. There is the same antithesis in every meditative mind; but here opium has heightened each part of the contrast. The more we admire the encentric harmonies of inwrapt power, the more do we find to draw forth laughter in the eccentricities of outward habit. The very same agencies which undisguised and unveiled the deep, divine heaven, masked the earth with desert sands; and De Quincey's outward life was thus masked and rendered abnormal, that the blue heaven in which he revelled might be infinitely exalted. Thus is it possible for the seemingly ludicrous to harmonize with transcendent sublimity. We smile at De Quincey's giving in "copy" on the generous margins of a splendid "Somnium Scipionis"; but the precious words, that might, perhaps, have found some more fit vehicle to the composer's eye, could have found no deeper place in our hearts. We look at the hatless sleeper among the mountains: his face seems utterly blank and meaningless, and to all intents and purposes he seems as good as dead; but let us ascend with him in his dreams, and we shall soon forget that under God's heavens there exists mortality or the commonplace uses of mortality. As we ascend from grotesque features to such as are more intellectual, that peculiarity of his character which most strikes us is his inimitable courtesy. Mr. F., to whom I am indebted for the most novel and interesting portions of this memorial-from his own personal interviews with the man, among many other things, retains this chiefly in remembrancethat De Quincey was the perfectest gentleman he had ever seen. I take the liberty here of particularizing somewhat in regard to one visit which this friend of De Quincey's paid him, particularly as it introduces us to the man towards the last of his life (1851). Mr. F., curious as it may seem, found but one person in Edinburgh who could inform him definitely as to De Quincey's whereabouts. In return to a note, giving De Quincey information of his arrival, &c., the latter replies in a letter which is very characteristic, and which may well be highly prized, so rarely was it that any friend was able to obtain from him such a memento; the style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him, "Thursday evening, Aug. 26, 1851. "MY DEAR SIR,-The accompanying billet from my daughter, short at any rate under the pressure of instant engagements, has been cut shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore, who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing) so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded, I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be vaporing in a spirit of vainglory; and yet it is under the mere coercion of 'salva necessitas' that I am surprised into this unparalleled instance of activity. Do you walk? That is, do you like walking for hours on end (which is our archaic expression for continuously)? If I knew that, I would arrange accordingly for meeting you. The case as to distance is this: the Dalkeith railway, from the Waverly station brings you to Esk Bank. That is its nearest approach-its perihelion, in relation to ourselves; and it is precisely two-and-threequarter miles distant from Mavis Bush-the name of our cottage. Close to us, and the most noticeable object for guiding your inquiries, is Mr. Annandale's paper-mills. "Now, then, accordingly as you direct my motions, I will-rain being supposed absentjoin you at your hotel in Edinburgh any time after 11 A.M., and walk out the whole distance (seven miles from the Scott monument), or else I will meet you at Esk Bank; or, if you prefer coming out in a carriage, I will await your coming here in that state of motionless repose which best befits a philosopher. Excuse my levity, and believe that with sincere pleasure we shall receive your obliging visit.-Ever your faithful servant, "THOMAS DE QUINCEY." In order to appreciate the physical powers of him who proposed a walk of the distance indicated in the letter, we must remember he was then just sixty-six years plus ten days old. He was now living with his daughters, in the utmost simplicity. On his arrival, Mr. F. found De Quincey awaiting him at the door of his cottage-a short man, with small head, and eyes that were absolutely indescribable as human features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of Olympeian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a |