THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

409. Noteworthy Characteristics.- De Quincey was, like Pope, of insignificant stature, but of a singularly intelligent face. A noble brow rose over his thin, finely chiselled features, and his blue eyes glowed with an unfathomable depth. He was nervously shy, and, like Hawthorne, almost morbidly averse to every sort of publicity. His mental activity was prodigious, and at his best he deserves to rank as one of the most delightful English talkers. Both as a talker and writer he used "an awfu' sicht o' words," as a shrewd Scotch servant said of him; but they were so fastidiously chosen and so musically uttered as to be little less than charming. He was a unique personality; and beyond almost all other writers he has infused his character idiosyncrasies and all-into his writings.

410. Parentage.- Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester, the fifth of eight children, Aug. 15, 1785. His father was "a plain English merchant" of large means, esteemed for his great integrity and strongly attached to literary pursuits. "My mother," De Quincey says, "I may mention with honor, as still more highly gifted; for though unpretending to the name and honors of a literary woman, I shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an intellectual woman." Her letters are characterized by strong sense and idiomatic grace.

411. At School.-In 1796 De Quincey was placed in the public school of Bath, a town to which his mother had recently removed. He brought to his new surroundings an unusual amount of information gathered from miscellaneous reading. In Latin he was recognized as little short of a prodigy and was weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school." The result may easily be foreseen. Some of his jealous comrades inaugurated what he described

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as a state of "warfare at a public school." He was threatened with immediate "annihilation;" but fortunately for English literature, the threat was never carried out.

412. Entry into the World. The year 1800 De Quincey designates as the period of his entry into the world. He was invited by Lord Westfort, a young friend of his own age, to accompany him on a visit to Ireland. The various experiences of the next few months lifted him to what he calls " premature manhood," for he was yet but fifteen years of age. He was invited to court entertainments; he passed a short time in the nation of London." More than all, he met on a boat a young lady of great beauty and culture, who inspired him with a new and uplifting reverence for woman. This incident fixed, as he thought, a great era of change in his life. "Ever after, throughout the period of youth," he said, "I was jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in the presence of woman; reverencing often not so much them as my own ideal of woman latent in them. For I carried about with me the idea, to which I often seemed to see an approximation, of A perfect woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command.''

413. At the University.— In December, 1803, De Quincey entered Worcester College, Oxford. He was connected with the university for five years, but finally left it without a degree. He led a life of great retirement. He calculates that for the first two years he spoke less than a hundred words. But his morbid seclusion and silence were not spent in idleness. He had an insatiable thirst for reading and books; and to increase his library he sorely stinted his wardrobe. He lamented the excessive devotion to Latin and Greek, and the utter neglect of English literature at the university. He stoutly maintained the superiority of modern over ancient literature. We engage," he said, "to produce many scores of passages from Chaucer, not exceeding fifty to eighty lines, which contain more of picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, more truth of character than can be matched in all the Iliad' or the 'Odyssey.'

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414. A Victim of Opium. În 1808 he left Oxford, to which he professed to owe nothing. Of its vast riches he took nothing away. Once seeking relief from neuralgic pain, he resorted to laudanum; and, like Coleridge, he became henceforth an opium fiend. It never gained quite so complete a mastery over him as over his illustrious contemporary; but for more than fifty years, sometimes in enormous quantities, it remained a necessity with him. He became, in some measure, the apologist of opium, to which he addresses more than one eloquent but unpleasing apostrophe.

415. At Grasmere.- In November, 1809, De Quincey took up his residence at Grasmere, occupying the pretty cottage that Wordsworth had just left for Allan Bank. Here, first as a bachelor and afterward as a married man, he lived till his removal to Edinburgh in 1830. He devoted himself to study, particularly to German metaphysics, with great assiduity. He associated on terms of intimacy with all the other celebrities of the Lake District, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Wilson. For a time he was almost utterly prostrated from the use of opium. A quart of ruby-colored laudanum in a decanter and a book of German metaphysics by its side these he mentions as sure indications of his being in the neighborhood.

416. Life in the Lake District.—In his “Literary Reminiscences," one of the most interesting volumes of his collected works, De Quincey dwells principally on this period of his life. Nowhere else do we find life in the Lake District so finely portrayed. The sketches of Coleridge and Wordsworth are extended and exquisite studies, though at times there is a suggestion of venom in his treatment of these great writers. His early reverence for Wordsworth, whose hospitality he frequently enjoyed, was little short of idolatry; but in later years, owing apparently to the poet's self-complacent unresponsiveness, De Quincey became estranged almost to the point of bitterness.

417. Confessions of an Opium Eater."— The inherited means, which De Quincey had hitherto lived upon, were now exhausted. Under the stress of domestic necessities, he roused