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EDITOR'S PREFACE

WHILE passages of literary theory and criticism are to be found plentifully enough in the preceding volumes, interspersed through their various kinds of matter, it is in the present volume and the next that the reader will find collected those particular Essays of De Quincey in which he either expounds more formally his views of the principles of literature in its different varieties, or applies these more expressly to individual cases.

The Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been neglected were written in 1823, when De Quincey was in the first celebrity of his Opium-Eating Confessions. Though in his wayward and corner-exploring fashion, they are really excellent, and may be read still with profit, not only for the interesting information which they contain on some matters of literary history, but also for edifying doctrine on some vexed questions in the business of self-education. In this last respect, they may be recommended, I think, for a certain real practicality, a quality of solid good sense, which we are not in the habit of always attributing to De Quincey. That they attracted a considerable amount of attention at the time of their original appearance in the London Magazine is curiously attested by a whimsical compliment which they received from the most popular, and now best remembered, of all De Quincey's fellow-contributors to that old periodical. The title of De Quincey's series of articles had amused Charles Lamb so much that he could not resist the opportunity of writing a little parody on them in the shape of one "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been VOL. X

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neglected.” This appeared in the London Magazine for January 1825; and it may be now read among Lamb's Eliana. Although a cleverish piece of good-humoured fun, it is not up to Lamb's usual mark in such things; and its chief interest now lies in Lamb's prefixed apology to De Quincey for the liberty he had taken. It was in the indirect form of this missive to the editor of the magazine :-"Dear "Sir, I send you a bantering 'Epistle to an Old Gentleman "whose education is supposed to have been neglected.' Of

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course, it was suggested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with most of your readers. You "will do me injustice by supposing that in the remotest degree "it was my intention to ridicule those papers. The fact is, "the most serious things may give rise to an innocent burlesque; and, the more serious they are, the fitter they "become for that purpose. It is not to be supposed that "Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied that poet. Yourself can testify the deep respect I have always held for the "profound learning and penetrating genius of our friend. Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than "to find that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and "instructive purpose.—I am, Dear Sir, yours and his sin"cerely,-ELIA." As Lamb's words indicate, De Quincey had not quite completed the series of the letters parodied, but had broken it off unexpectedly at the Fifth Letter. After July 1823 he had occupied himself with other things for the London Magazine, and at the close of 1824 his connexion with that periodical had ceased altogether.

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The paper entitled Rhetoric was one of De Quincey's earliest contributions to Blackwood's Magazine, having appeared there in December 1828, in the guise of a review of Whately's Elements of Rhetoric, then just published. As De Quincey himself explains, however, it is not so much a review of Whately's book as a discursive essay suggested by the appearance of Whately's book. Indeed, from the point of view of previous tradition respecting the business of Rhetoric, the title of the paper is to a considerable extent a misnomer. As this matter is of some importance, it is reserved

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