instead of forthwith rushing off to do it, or stubbornly refusing obedience, like an active English child, he first made sure that he exactly understood the mandate, bothering his superior to express himself with scrupulous precision of language.

He took little interest in the practical "questions" of the day. He is said to have written, about 1821, a criticism of Lord Brougham under the title of "Close Comments on a Straggling Speech;" but this, one may guess, was more humorous than practical. On one occasion he professed to "descend from his long habits of philosophical speculation to a casual intercourse with fugitive and personal politics"-namely, in 1835, when he wrote his "Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism" for 'Tait's Magazine.' Here, however, quite as much as elsewhere, he is still the abstract philosopher, not the man of practice: he expressly refuses to discuss the policy of the rival parties on any particular question, and confines himself to an original exposition of their abstract creeds, their mutual relations to the British Constitution. So little practical interest did he take in the current business of the nation, that at one time he acknowledges that he had not read a newspaper for three years. One must almost suppose that he informed himself of the proceedings of existing parties with no livelier interest than he took in the proceedings of parties in ancient Greece or Rome.

His habits seem to have been very irregular. He did not want steadiness of application to special studies; he did not roam restlessly from field to field, but set himself down to a subject, and mastered it, not content till he had read everything that he could find upon the particular subject. But he hated the labour of producing, at times with an absolute loathing. He wrote nothing till forced by pecuniary embarrassment. In the course of some remarks on Coleridge, he says that it is characteristic of an opiumeater to finish nothing that he begins; and his own works to some extent bear out this humorous principle.

Mr Hill Burton gives an interesting picture of his indifference to the ordinary ways of human business. Only immediate craving necessities could ever extract from him an acknowledgment of the common vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised society." "Those who knew him a little might call him a loose man in money matters; those who knew him closer, laughed at the idea of coupling any notion of pecuniary or other like responsibility with his nature.'

As regards his OPINIONS. He professed himself a Tory in politics, and spoke with sternness, and even ferocity, concerning Whigs, Radicals, Republicans, Revolutionists, and "the faction of Jacobinism through its entire gamut." He objected to the Reform

Bill of 1832 that it had "ruffianised" Parliament-" introduced a Kentucky element" into an assembly conducted with more than Roman dignity. Theoretically, he held that both Whigs and Tories were necessary to the British Constitution, as guiding the two opposed forces of the nation, the one the democratic, the other the aristocratic; that, properly understood, they were as two hemispheres, the one incomplete without the other. In their views of current questions, one party must be right and the other wrong, at least so far; but as regarded their reasons for existing, it was absurd to ask which was right and which was wrong-both must exist. He belonged himself by birth to the aristocratic party, and probably in his philosophic way he considered it his duty to criticise Radicals from the aristocratic point of view, using strong language without any corresponding strength of feeling.

As a literary critic, his catholicity of spirit and breadth of view were unique among the men of his time. Rarely indeed, if ever, has a mind so calm, unprejudiced, and comprehensive, been applied to the work of criticism. In his own day he was usually numbered among the "Lakers," or partisans of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. He was so only in the sense of treating these remarkable men with justice. He, better than Jeffrey himself, knew the shortcomings of Wordsworth, condemned his theory of poetic diction, and made fun of absurdities in "The Excursion;" but he felt the shortcomings with calm discrimination, and was not misled by them into undervaluing the striking originality of Wordsworth's genius. He was one of the most devout of the admirers of Shakspeare, and, as we have seen, entered with passionate rapture into the majestic harmonies of Milton; but he had no part in the common bond of the Lakers-their wholesale contempt for Pope. He says, in one of his "uncollected" papers :

"In the literature of every nation, we are naturally disposed to place in the highest rank those who have produced some great and colossal work-a 'Paradise Lost,' a 'Hamlet,' a Novum Organum '-which presupposes an effort of intellect, a comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that effort, different in kind, which must preside in its execution. But, after this highest class, in which the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which brilliant powers of execution, applied to conceptions of a very inferior range, are allowed to establish a classical rank. Every literature possesses, besides its great national gallery, a cabinet of minor pieces, not less perfect in their polish, possibly more so. In reality, the characteristic of this class is elaborate perfection-the point of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and power of the original creation, which (however exquisite in its class) moves within a smaller sphere. To this class belong, for example, The Rape of the Lock,' that finished jewel of English literature; The Dunciad' (a still more exquisite gem); The Vicar of Wakefield' (in its earlier part): in German, &c."

He has been charged with an open depreciation of Keats and Shelley. But this we cannot reconcile with his papers on these poets. Without even giving him the benefit of his plea, that the papers were "slight impromptus, peremptorily excluding a comprehensive view of the subject," and disregarding his statement when they were reprinted that "in the case of Keats there is something which (after a lapse of several years) I could wish unsaid, or said more gently," we may take them as they stand. He charges Keats with "trampling upon his mother-tongue as with the hoofs of a buffalo," and says of "Endymion" that it exhibits "the very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapoury sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy." But this judgment of the earlier poem did not prevent him from calling the "Hyperion "imperishable," and ascribing to it "the majesty, the austere beauty, and the simplicity of a Grecian temple enriched with Grecian sculpture." As for any depreciation of Shelley, that I have been unable to find. He makes fun, in a kindly spirit, of Shelley's youthful confidence in waging war against the ruling powers, but at the same time he praises the youth's sincerity, pronounces him "the least false of human creatures," and speaks of "the profound respect due to his exalted powers. The truth

is, that the charges made against De Quincey's criticisms are due to his unusual comprehensiveness of view and his sensibility to diversities of gifts. He was, to borrow his own words, a large estimator of things as they are-of natural gifts, and their infinite distribution through an infinite scale of degrees, and the compensating accomplishments which take place in so vast a variety of forms. Hence came numerous misapprehensions. Too many critics, in his day no less than now, credited their idols with every excellence of composition, every excellence of head and heart, every propriety of conduct in their several relations as superiors, inferiors, and equals. When De Quincey, who was never blind to a man's genuine claims to superiority, drew these claims into stronger relief by recording attendant defects, outcries arose on every hand that he was stealthily undermining established reputations. People refused to understand that a writer "hopelessly inferior in one talent" could yet be "vastly superior in another."

A word on his estimates of foreign writers. His exposure of weak points in such universally established names as Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Goethe, is set down to no higher motive than a love of paradox, a passion for inspiring wonder. Of this every reader must judge for himself. Only when we criticise the criticisms of De Quincey, we must bear in mind the unparalleled extent of his reading. This unique preparation for valuing literary powers entitles him to be criticised with reverence and modesty.

In his "Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature in its foremost

pretensions" (which has not been reprinted), he is an unqualified assertor of the superiority of modern to ancient literature. "It is," he said, "a pitiable spectacle to any man of sense and feeling, who happens to be really familiar with the golden treasures of his own ancestral literature, and a spectacle which moves alternately scorn and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time and painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the shoes' latchets of many amongst their own compatriots; making painful and remote voyages after the drossy refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet." "We engage to produce many scores of passages from Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to 80 lines, which contain more of picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, more felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more truth of character, than can be matched in all the Iliad or the Odyssey." Again,-"To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas Browne, there is no approach made in the Greek eloquence. The inaugural chapter of the Holy Dying,' to say nothing of many another golden passage; or the famous passage in the Urn Buriall,' beginning, 'Now, since these bones have rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests,'-have no parallel in literature." Finally, "For the intellectual qualities of eloquence, in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass of thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern."

In another paper, also excluded from his collected works, he exposes the "dire affectation" of many enthusiastic admirers of Greek and Latin writers :

"Raised almost to divine honours, never mentioned but with affected rapture, the classics of Greece and Rome are seldom read-most of them never; are they indeed the closet-companions of any man? Surely it is time that these follies were at an end; that our practice were made to square a little better with our professions; and that our pleasures were sincerely drawn from those sources in which we pretend that they lie."

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary.

De Quincey ranges with great freedom over the accumulated wealth of the language, his capacious memory giving him a prodigious command of words. His range is perhaps wider than either Macaulay's or Carlyle's, as he is more versatile in the "pitch" of his style, and does not disdain to use the "slang" of all classes, from Cockney to Oxonian.

In his diction, taken as a whole, there is a great preponderance of words derived from the Latin. Lord Brougham's opinion that "the Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favoured at the expense of that part which has so happily coalesced from the Latin

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or Greek," he puts aside as "resembling that restraint which some metrical writers have imposed upon themselves of writing a long copy of verses from which some particular letter, or from each line of which some different letter, should be carefully excluded." From various causes, he himself makes an excessive use of Latinised phraseology. First, his ear was deeply enamoured of a dignified rhythm; none but long words of Latin origin were equal to the lofty march of his periods. Secondly, by the use of Latinised and quasi technical terms, he gained greater precision than by the use of homely words of looser signification. And thirdly, it was part of his peculiar humour to write concerning common objects in unfamiliar language.

The strong point in his diction is his acquaintance with the language of the thoughts and feelings, with the subjective side of the English vocabulary. A writer naturally accumulates words in the line of his strongest interest; and De Quincey had a paramount interest in the characters, thoughts, and affections of man-human nature may be said to have been his constant study.

A systematic student in none of the sciences, except perhaps metaphysics and political economy, he nevertheless had gleaned technical terms from every science. He was indeed ever on the watch for a good word; sciences, arts, and even trades, all alike he laid under greater or less occasional contributions.

Sentences.

Although De Quincey complained of the "weariness and repulsion" of the periodic style, he carried it to excess in his own composition. His sentences are stately, elaborate, crowded with qualifying clauses and parenthetical allusions, to a degree unparalleled among modern writers.

In reviewing Whately's Rhetoric, he naturally objected to the dogma that "elaborate stateliness is always to be regarded as a worse fault than the slovenliness and languor which accompany a very loose style." He maintained, and justly, that "stateliness the most elaborate, in an absolute sense, is no fault at all, though it may be so in relation to a given subject, or to any subject under given circumstances." Whether in his own practice he always conforms to circumstances, is a question that must be left to individual taste. There is a certain stateliness in his sentences under almost all circumstances - a stateliness arising from his habitual use of periodic suspensions. To take two examples from his Sketches:

"Never in any equal number of months had my understanding so much expanded as during this visit to Laxton."