The Posthumous Works Of Thomas De Quincey - free ebook by Thomas De Quincey

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

Alexander H. Japp....

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PREFACE.

It only needs to be said, by way of Preface, that the articles in the present volume have been selected more with a view to variety and contrast than will be the case with those to follow. And it is right that I should thank Mr. J. R. McIlraith for friendly help in the reading of the proofs. A. H. J....

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

These articles recovered from the MSS. of De Quincey will, the Editor believes, be found of substantive value. In some cases they throw fresh light on his opinions and ways of thinking; in other cases they deal with topics which are not touched at all in his collected works: and certainly, when read alongside the writings with which the public is already familiar, will give altogether a new idea of his range both of interests and activities. The 'Brevia,' especially, will probably be regarded as

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I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS.

The finale to the first part of the 'Suspiria,' as we find from a note of the author's own, was to include 'The Dark Interpreter,' 'The Spectre of the Brocken,' and 'Savannah-la-Mar.' The references to 'The Dark Interpreter' in the latter would thus become intelligible, as the reader is not there in any full sense informed who the 'Dark Interpreter' was; and the piece, recovered from his MSS. and now printed, may thus be regarded as having a special value for De Quincey students, and, indeed, fo

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II. THE LOVELIEST SIGHT FOR WOMAN'S EYES.

Top The loveliest sight that a woman's eye opens upon in this world is her first-born child; and the holiest sight upon which the eyes of God settle in Almighty sanction and perfect blessing is the love which soon kindles between the mother and her infant: mute and speechless on the one side, with no language but tears and kisses and looks. Beautiful is the philosophy ... which arises out of that reflection or passion connected with the transition that has produced it. First comes the whole migh

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III. WHY THE PAGANS COULD NOT INVEST THEIR GODS WITH ANY IOTA OF GRANDEUR.

Top It is not for so idle a purpose as that of showing the Pagan backsliding—that is too evident—but for a far subtler purpose, and one which no man has touched, viz., the incapacity of creating grandeur for the Pagans, even with carte blanche in their favour, that I write this paper. Nothing is more incomprehensible than the following fact—nothing than this when mastered and understood is more thoroughly instructive—the fact that having a wide, a limitless field open before them, free to give a

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IV. ON PAGAN SACRIFICES.

Top Ask any well-informed man at random what he supposes to have been done with the sacrifices, he will answer that really he never thought about it, but that naturally he supposes the flesh was burnt upon the altars. Not at all, reader; a sacrifice to the Gods meant universally a banquet to man. He who gave a splendid public dinner announced in other words that he designed to celebrate a sacrificial rite. This was of course. He, on the other hand, who announced a sacrificial pomp did in other w

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V. ON THE MYTHUS.

Top That which the tradition of the people is to the truth of facts—that is a mythus to the reasonable origin of things. ...° These objects to an eye at ° might all melt into one another, as stars are confluent which modern astronomy has prismatically split. Says Rennell, as a reason for a Mahometan origin of a canal through Cairo, such is the tradition of the people. But we see amongst ourselves how great works are ascribed to the devil or to the Romans by antiquarians. In Rennell we see the ef

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VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE—THE POLITICS OF THE SITUATION.

Top You read in the Hebrew Scriptures of a man who had thirty sons, all of whom 'rode on white asses'; the riding on white asses is a circumstance that expresses their high rank or distinction—that all were princes. In Syria, as in Greece and almost everywhere, white was the regal symbolic colour. [7] And any mode of equitation, from the far inferior wealth of ancient times, implied wealth. Mules or asses, besides that they were so far superior a race in Syria no less than in Persia, to furnish

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VII. THE JEWS AS A SEPARATE PEOPLE.

Top The argument for the separation and distinct current of the Jews, flowing as they pretend of the river Rhone through the Lake of Geneva—never mixing its waters with those which surround it—has been by some infidel writers defeated and evaded by one word; and here, as everywhere else, an unwise teacher will seek to hide the answer. Yet how infinitely better to state it fully, and then show that the evasion has no form at all; but, on the contrary, powerfully argues the inconsistency and incap

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VIII. 'WHAT IS TRUTH?' THE JESTING PILATE SAID—A FALSE GLOSS.

Top It is true that Pilate could not be expected fully to comprehend an idea which was yet new to man; Christ's words were beyond his depth. But, still, his natural light would guide him thus far—that, although he had never heard of any truth which rose to that distinction, still, if any one class of truth should in future come to eclipse all other classes of truth immeasurably, as regarded its practical results, as regarded some dark dependency of human interests, in that case it would certainl

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IX. WHAT SCALIGER SAYS ABOUT THE EPISTLE TO JUDE.

Before any canon was settled, many works had become current in Christian circles whose origin was dubious. The traditions about them varied locally. Some, it is alleged, that would really have been entitled to a canonical place, had been lost by accident; to some, which still survived, this place had been refused upon grounds that might not have satisfied us of this day, if we had the books and the grounds of rejection before us; and, finally, others, it is urged, have obtained this sacred disti

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X. MURDER AS A FINE ART.

Top A new paper on Murder as a Fine Art might open thus: that on the model of those Gentlemen Radicals who had voted a monument to Palmer, etc., it was proposed to erect statues to such murderers as should by their next-of-kin, or other person interested in their glory, make out a claim either of superior atrocity, or, in equal atrocity, of superior neatness, continuity of execution, perfect preparation or felicitous originality, smoothness or curiosa felicitas (elaborate felicity). The men who

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XI. ANECDOTES—JUVENAL.

Top All anecdotes, as I have often remarked in print, are lies. It is painful to use harsh words, and, knowing by my own feelings how much the reader is shocked by this rude word lies , I should really be much gratified if it were possible to supplant it by some gentler or more courteous word, such as falsehoods , or even fibs , which dilutes the atrocity of untruth into something of an amiable weakness, wrong, but still venial, and natural (and so far, therefore, reasonable). Anything for peace

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XII. ANNA LOUISA.

Top Dr. North , Doctor , I say, for I hear that the six Universities of England and Scotland have sent you a doctor's degree, or, if they have not, all the world knows they ought to have done; and the more shame for them if they keep no 'Remembrancer' to put them in mind of what they must allow to be amongst their most sacred duties. But that's all one. I once read in my childhood a pretty book, called 'Wilson's Account of the Pelew Islands,' at which islands, you know, H.M.S. Antelope was wreck

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XIII. SOME THOUGHTS ON BIOGRAPHY.

Top We have heard from a man who witnessed the failure of Miss Baillie's 'De Montford,' notwithstanding the scenic advantages of a vast London theatre, fine dresses, fine music at intervals, and, above all, the superb acting of John Kemble, supported on that occasion by his incomparable sister, that this unexpected disappointment began with the gallery, who could not comprehend or enter into a hatred so fiendish growing out of causes so slight as any by possibility supposable in the trivial Reze

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XIV. GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON AND WALPOLE, AND 'JUNIUS.'

Top I have ever been disposed to regard as the most venial of deceptions such impositions as Chatterton had practised on the public credulity. Whom did he deceive? Nobody but those who well deserved to be deceived, viz., shallow antiquaries, who pretended to a sort of knowledge which they had not so much as tasted. And it always struck me as a judicial infatuation in Horace Walpole, that he, who had so brutally pronounced the death of this marvellous boy to be a matter of little consequence, sin

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XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL.

Top With a single view to the intellectual pretensions of Mr. O'Connell, let us turn to his latest General Epistle, dated from 'Conciliation Hall,' on the last day of October. This is no random, or (to use a pedantic term) perfunctory document; not a document is this to which indulgence is due. By its subject, not less than by its address, it stands forth audaciously as a deliberate, as a solemn, as a national state paper; for its subject is the future political condition of Ireland under the as

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XVI. FRANCE PAST AND FRANCE PRESENT.

Top To speak in the simplicity of truth, caring not for party or partisan, is not the France of this day, the France which has issued from that great furnace of the Revolution, a better, happier, more hopeful France than the France of 1788? Allowing for any evil, present or reversionary, in the political aspects of France, that may yet give cause for anxiety, can a wise man deny that from the France of 1840, under Louis Philippe of Orleans, ascends to heaven a report of far happier days from the

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XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS.

Top Two facts on which a sound estimate of the Roman corn-trade depends are these: first, the very important one, that it was not Rome in the sense of the Italian peninsula which relied upon foreign corn, but in the narrowest sense Rome the city; as respected what we now call Lombardy, Florence, Genoa, etc., Rome did not disturb the ancient agriculture. The other fact offers, perhaps, a still more important consideration. Rome was latterly a most populous city—we are disposed to agree with Lipsi

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XVIII. NATIONAL MANNERS AND FALSE JUDGMENT OF THEM.

Top Anecdotes illustrative of manners, above all of national manners, will be found on examination, in a far larger proportion than might be supposed, rank falsehoods. Malice is the secret foundation of all anecdotes in that class. The ordinary course of such falsehoods is, that first of all some stranger and alien to those feelings which have prompted a particular usage—incapable, therefore, of entering fully into its spirit or meaning—tries to exhibit its absurdity more forcibly by pushing it

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XIX. INCREASED POSSIBILITIES OF SYMPATHY IN THE PRESENT AGE.

Some years ago I had occasion to remark that a new era was coming on by hasty strides for national politics, a new organ was maturing itself for public effects. Sympathy—how great a power is that! Conscious sympathy—how immeasurable! Now, for the total development of this power, time is the most critical of elements. Thirty years ago, when the Edinburgh mail took ninety-six hours in its transit from London, how slow was the reaction of the Scottish capital upon the English! Eight days for the di

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XX. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIL.

Top We are not to suppose the rebel, or, more properly, corrupted angels—the rebellion being in the result, not in the intention (which is as little conceivable in an exalted spirit as that man should prepare to make war on gravitation)—were essentially evil. Whether a principle of evil—essential evil—anywhere exists can only be guessed. So gloomy an idea is shut up from man. Yet, if so, possibly the angels and man were nearing it continually. Possibly after a certain approach to that Maelstrom

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XXI. ON MIRACLES.

Top What else is the laying of such a stress on miracles but the case of 'a wicked and adulterous generation asking a sign'? But what are these miracles for? To prove a legislation from God. But, first, this could not be proved, even if miracle-working were the test of Divine mission, by doing miracles until we knew whether the power were genuine; i.e. , not, like the magicians of Pharaoh or the witch of Endor, from below. Secondly, you are a poor, pitiful creature, that think the power to do mi

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XXII. 'LET HIM COME DOWN FROM THE CROSS.'

Top Now, this is exceedingly well worth consideration. I know not at all whether what I am going to say has been said already—life would not suffice in every field or section of a field to search every nook and section of a nook for the possibilities of chance utterance given to any stray opinion. But this I know without any doubt at all, that it cannot have been said effectually, cannot have been so said as to publish and disperse itself; else it is impossible that the crazy logic current upon

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XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?

As to individual nations, it is matter of notoriety that they are often improgressive. As a whole, it may be true that the human race is under a necessity of slowly advancing; and it may be a necessity, also, that the current of the moving waters should finally absorb into its motion that part of the waters which, left to itself, would stagnate. All this may be true—and yet it will not follow that the human race must be moving constantly upon an ascending line, as thus: nor even upon such a line

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XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER.)

Top The Pagan God could have perfect peace with his votary, and yet could have no tendency to draw that votary to himself. Not so with the God of Christianity, who cannot give His peace without drawing like a vortex to Himself, who cannot draw into His own vortex without finding His peace fulfilled. 'An age when lustre too intense.'—I am much mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth is not deeply wrong here. Wrong he is beyond a doubt as to the fact ; for there could have been no virtual intensity of lustre (

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XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS.

Top...

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PREFACE.

All that is needful for me to say by way of Preface is that, as in the case of the first volume, I have received much aid from Mrs. Baird Smith and Miss De Quincey, and that Mr. J. R. McIlraith has repeated his friendly service of reading the proofs. ALEXANDER H. JAPP. London , March 1st, 1893....

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INTRODUCTION.

All that needs to be said in the way of introduction to this volume will best take the form of notes on the articles which it contains. I. ' Conversation and S. T. Coleridge. ' This article, which was found in a tolerably complete condition, may be regarded as an attempt to deal with the subject in a more critical and searching, and at the same time more sympathetic and inclusive spirit, than is apparent in any former essay. It keeps clear entirely of the field of personal reminiscence; and if i

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I. CONVERSATION AND S. T. COLERIDGE.

Oh name of Coleridge, that hast mixed so much with the trepidations of our own agitated life, mixed with the beatings of our love, our gratitude, our trembling hope; name destined to move so much of reverential sympathy and so much of ennobling strife in the generations yet to come, of our England at home, of our other Englands on the St. Lawrence, on the Mississippi, on the Indus and Ganges, and on the pastoral solitudes of Austral climes! What are the great leading vices of conversation as gen

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II. MR. FINLAY'S HISTORY OF GREECE.

In attempting to appraise Mr. Finlay's work comprehensively, there is this difficulty. It comes before us in two characters; first, as a philosophic speculation upon history, to be valued against others speculating on other histories; secondly, as a guide, practical altogether and not speculative, to students who are navigating that great trackless ocean the Eastern Roman history. Now under either shape, this work traverses so much ground, that by mere multiplicity of details it denies to us the

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III. THE ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR.

The assassination of Cæsar, we find characterized in one of his latter works ( Farbenlehre , Theil 2, p. 126) by Goethe, as ' die abgeschmackteste That die jemals begangen worden '— the most outrageously absurd act that ever was committed . Goethe is right, and more than right. For not only was it an atrocity so absolutely without a purpose as never to have been examined by one single conspirator with a view to its probable tendencies—in that sense therefore it was absurd as pointing to no resul

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IV. CICERO (SUPPLEMENTARY TO PUBLISHED ESSAY).

Some little official secrets we learn from the correspondence of Cicero as Proconsul of Cilicia. [19] And it surprises us greatly to find a man, so eminently wise in his own case, suddenly turning romantic on behalf of a friend. How came it—that he or any man of the world should fancy any substance or reality in the public enthusiasm for one whose character belonged to a past generation? Nine out of ten amongst the Campanians must have been children when Pompey's name was identified with nationa

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V. MEMORIAL CHRONOLOGY.

I. The Main Subject Opened. What is Chronology, and how am I to teach it? The what is poorly appreciated, and chiefly through the defects of the how . Because it is so ill-taught, therefore in part it is that Chronology is so unattractive and degraded. Chronology is represented to be the handmaid of history. But unless the machinery for exhibiting this is judicious, the functions, by being obscured, absolutely lose all their value, flexibility, and attraction. Chronology is not meant only to ena

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VI. CHRYSOMANIA; OR, THE GOLD-FRENZY IN ITS PRESENT STAGE.

Some time back I published in this journal a little paper on the Californian madness—for madness I presumed it to be, and upon two grounds. First, in so far as men were tempted into a lottery under the belief that it was not a lottery; or, if it really were such, that it was a lottery without blanks. Secondly, in so far as men were tempted into a transitory speculation under the delusion that it was not transitory, but rested on some principle of permanence. We have since seen the Californian ca

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VII. DEFENCE OF THE ENGLISH PEERAGE.

It is by a continued secretion (so to speak) of all which forces itself to the surface of national importance in the way of patriotic services that the English peerage keeps itself alive. Stop the laurelled trophies of the noble sailor or soldier pouring out his heart's blood for his country, stop the intellectual movement of the lawyer or the senatorial counsellor, and immediately the sources are suffocated through which our peerage is self-restorative. The simple truth is, how humiliating soev

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VIII. THE ANTI-PAPAL MOVEMENT.

The sincerity of an author sometimes borrows an advantageous illustration from the repulsiveness of his theme. That a subject is dull, however unfortunately it may operate for the impression which he seeks to produce, must at least acquit him of seeking any aid to that impression from alien and meretricious attractions. Is a subject hatefully associated with recollections of bigotry, of ignorance, of ferocious stupidity, of rancour, and of all uncharitableness? In that case, the reader ought to

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IX. THEORY AND PRACTICE:

What was the value of Kant's essay upon this popular saying? Did it do much to clear up the confusion? Did it exterminate the vice in the language by substituting a better formula ? Not at all. Immanuel Kant was, we admit, the most potent amongst all known intellects for functions of pure abstraction. But also, viewed in two separate relations: first, in relation to all practical interests (manners, legislation, government, spiritual religion); secondly, in relation to the arts of teaching, of e

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X. POPE AND DIDACTIC POETRY.

The 'Essay on Criticism' illustrates the same profound misconception of the principle working at the root of Didactic Poetry as operated originally to disturb the conduct of the 'Essay on Man' by its author, and to disturb the judgments upon it by its critics. This 'Essay on Criticism' no more aims at unfolding the grounds and theory of critical rules applied to poetic composition, than does the Epistola ad Pisones of Horace. But what if Horace and Pope both believed themselves the professional

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XI. SHAKSPEARE AND WORDSWORTH.

I take the opportunity of referring to the work of a very eloquent Frenchman, who has brought the names of Wordsworth and Shakspeare into connection, partly for the sake of pointing out an important error in the particular criticism on Wordsworth, but still more as an occasion for expressing the gratitude due to the French author for the able, anxious, and oftentimes generous justice which he has rendered to English literature. It is most gratifying to a thoughtful Englishman—that precisely from

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XII. CRITICISM ON SOME OF COLERIDGE'S CRITICISMS OF WORDSWORTH.

One fault in Wordsworth's 'Excursion' suggested by Coleridge, but luckily quite beyond all the resources of tinkering open to William Wordsworth, is—in the choice of a Pedlar as the presiding character who connects the shifting scenes and persons in the 'Excursion.' Why should not some man of more authentic station have been complimented with that place, seeing that the appointment lay altogether in Wordsworth's gift? But really now who could this have been? Garter King-at-Arms would have been a

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XIII. WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY: AFFINITIES AND DIFFERENCES.

Of late the two names of Wordsworth and Southey have been coupled chiefly in the frantic philippics of Jacobins, out of revenge for that sublime crusade which, among the intellectual powers of Europe, these two eminent men were foremost (and for a time alone) in awakening against the brutalizing tyranny of France and its chief agent, Napoleon Bonaparte: a crusade which they, to their immortal honour, unceasingly advocated—not (as others did) at a time when the Peninsular victories, the Russian c

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XIV. PRONUNCIATION.

To write his own language with propriety is the ambition of here and there an individual; to speak it with propriety is the ambition of multitudes. Amongst the qualifications for a public writer—the preliminary one of leisure is granted to about one man in three thousand; and, this being indispensable, there at once, for most men, mercifully dies in the very instant of birth the most uneasy and bewildering of temptations. But speak a man must. Leisure or no leisure, to talk he is obliged by the

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XV. THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN NO MODERN ERA.

Now, observe what I am going to prove. First A, and as a stepping-stone to something (B) which is to follow: It is, that the Jewish Scriptures could not have been composed in any modern æra. I am earnest in drawing your attention to the particular point which I have before me, because one of the enormous faults pervading all argumentative books, so that rarely indeed do you find an exception, is that, in all the dust and cloud of contest and of objects, the reader never knows what is the immedia

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XVI. DISPERSION OF THE JEWS, AND JOSEPHUS'S ENMITY TO CHRISTIANITY.

Look into the Acts of the Apostles, you see the wide dispersion of the Jews which had then been accomplished; a dispersion long antecedent to that penal dispersion which occurred subsequently to the Christian era. But search the pages of the wicked Jew, Josephus, [53] who notices expressly this universal dispersion of the Jews, and gives up and down his works the means of tracing them through every country in the southern belt of the Mediterranean, through every country of the northern belt, thr

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XVII. CHRISTIANITY AS THE RESULT OF PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY.

If you are one that upon meditative grounds have come sincerely to perceive the philosophic value of this faith; if you have become sensible that as yet Christianity is but in its infant stages—after eighteen centuries is but beginning to unfold its adaptations to the long series of human situations, slowly unfolding as time and change move onwards; and that these self-adapting relations of the religion to human necessities, this conformity to unforeseen developments, argues a Leibnitzian pre-es

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XVIII. THE MESSIANIC IDEA ROMANIZED.

The Romans, so far from looking with the Jews to the Tigris, looked to the Jews themselves. Or at least they looked to that whole Syria, of which the Jews were a section. Consequently, there is a solution of two points: 1. The wise men of the East were delegates from the trans-Tigridian people. 2. The great man who should arise from the East to govern the world was, in the sense of that prophecy, i.e. , in the terms of that prophecy interpreted according to the sense of all who circulated and pa

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XIX. CONTRAST OF GREEK AND PERSIAN FEELING IN CERTAIN ASPECTS.

Life, naturally the antagonism of Death, must have reacted upon Life according to its own development. Christianity having so awfully affected the το + of Death, this + must have reacted on Life. Hence, therefore, a phenomenon existing broadly to the human sensibility in these ages which for the Pagans had no existence whatever. If to a modern spectator a very splendid specimen of animal power, suppose a horse of three or four years old in the fulness of his energies, that saith ha to the trumpe

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XX. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIED READINGS.

In London and other great capitals it is well known that new diseases have manifested themselves of late years: and more would be known about them, were it not for the tremulous delicacy which waits on the afflictions of the rich. We do not say this invidiously. It is right that such forbearance should exist. Medical men, as a body, are as manly a race as any amongst us, and as little prone to servility. But obviously the case of exposure under circumstances of humiliating affliction is a very d

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