When we throw this out of the elaborately periodic form, we, as it were, relax the tension of the mind, and destroy the stately effect. Thus

"My understanding expanded more during this visit to Laxton than during any three months of my life."

Again

"Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my metaphysics; in short, upon all lines of advance that interested my ambition, I was going rapidly ahead."

The statement has a very different effect when the periodic arrangement is reversed.

Criticism of single sentences cannot easily be made convincing, and the critic is apt to forget the paramount principle that regard must be had to the context, to the nature of the subject, to the effect intended by the writer. When a single sentence is put upon its trial, there are many casuistical considerations that may legitimately be pleaded by the counsel for the defence. Still, if we try De Quincey by his own rule against "unwieldy comprehensivness," we must convict him of many violations. In almost every page we find periods that cannot be easily comprehended except by a mind of more than ordinary grasp; and in many cases where, viewed with reference to the average capacity, he cannot be said to overcrowd, he is yet upon the verge of overcrowding. The following sentence may be quoted as one that stands upon the verge. It calls for a considerable effort of attention, and a long succession of such sentences would be exasperating. He is speaking of his youthful habit of scrupulously making sure of the meaning of an order :

"So far from seeking to 'pettifogulise '-i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction-exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost everybody's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations."

In this case the familiarity and the close connection of the ideas makes the effort of comprehension considerably less. When the subject-matter is so easy, the interspersion of such periods here and there cannot be called a fault. It is, on the contrary, to most ears an agreeable relief to the monotony of ordinary forms of sentence. But for the general reader, for the average capacity of easy understanding, such sentence-forms are multiplied to an intolerable degree in De Quincey's writing. And he does not always escape the besetting fault of long and crowded sentences-intricacy.

As regards the length and elaboration of De Quincey's sentences,

it is interesting to compare the first edition of the Opium Confessions with the final revision. Many alterations consist in filling out the sentences; and, in a good many cases, two sentences are amalgamated into one. Take the following example, the first few sentences of the section entitled, "The Pleasures of Opium." In the original edition this stands

"It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in water at least once a-day," &c.

In the revised edition we read

"It is very long since I first took opium; so long, that if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it, I remember that this inauguration into the use of opium must be referred to the spring or to the autumn of 1804, during which seasons I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at Oxford. this event arose in the following way: From an early age I had been accustomed," &c.

And

The four sentences of the original are amalgamated into two, without any condensation of the original bulk. On the contrary, additions are made, one for the sake of emphasis, another for the sake of a more formal connection.

Unity of Sentence.-A casuist would find no difficulty in arguing that De Quincey's sentences are not over-crowded. None of the qualifications or parenthetic allusions could be said to be altogether irrelevant; and the difficulty of grasping the meaning being set on one side, it might be pleaded that, as regards the main purpose of the sentence, and its place among the other sentences of the composition, they are all of them indispensable.

De Quincey, however, often offends beyond the possibility of justification, overloading his sentences in a gossiping kind of way with particulars that have no relevance whatsoever to the main statement. Of this habit I quote two examples, italicising the irrelevant clauses, and placing one of them in small capitals as being an offence of double magnitude, a second irrelevance foisted in upon the back of the first. The first sentence relates to the exposure of infants in ancient Greece; the second explains itself.

"And because the ancients had a scruple (no scruple of mercy or of relenting conscience, but of selfish superstition) as to taking life by violence from any creature not condemned under some law, the mode of death must be by exposure on the open hills, where either the night air, or the fangs of a wolf, oftentimes of the great dogs-still preserved in most parts

of Greece (and traced back to the days of Homer as the public nuisances of travellers)-usually put an end to the unoffending creature's life."

"It is asserted, as a general affection of human nature, that it is impossible to read a book with satisfaction until one has ascertained whether the author of it be tall or short, corpulent or thin; and, as to complexion, whether he be a 'black' man (which, in the 'Spectator's' time, was the absurd expression for a swarthy man), or a fair man, or a sallow man, or perhaps a green man, which Southey affirmed to be the proper description of many stout artificers in Birmingham too much given to work in metallic fumes; ON WHICH ACCOUNT THE NAME OF SOUTHEY IS AN ABOMINATION TO THIS DAY IN CERTAIN FURNACES OF WARWICKSHIRE.'

The excrescences on the last sentence might be justified on the ground that they are humorous, although in severe exposition the humour would probably be ill-timed; but the parenthetic information in the first is pedantic, and insufferably out of harmony with the rest of the sentence.

Paragraphs.

We have seen in our Introduction that De Quincey studied "the philosophy of transition and connection." He is scrupulously elaborate, almost too elaborate, in explaining the point of his statements.

No quotation can be made from De Quincey that does not exemplify this. Still the analysis of a short passage may help to put the student upon the proper track for seeing how large a part of his composition is taken up with phrases of connection:

"So it will always be. Those who (like Madame Dacier) possess no accomplishment but Greek, will of necessity set a superhuman value upon that literature in all its parts, to which their own narrow skill becomes an available key."

The expressions in italics are all connective. A rapid writer, such as Macaulay, would have omitted "like Madame Dacier," and in place of the connective periphrasis at the end, would have said briefly and pointedly "Greek literature," leaving the reader to pass on without the labour of formally comprehending the connection. To continue:

"Besides that, over and above this coarse and conscious motive for overrating that which reacts with an equal and answerable overrating upon their own little philological attainments, there is another agency at work, and quite unconsciously to the subjects of that agency, in disturbing the sanity of any estimate they may make of a foreign literature."

This sentence is wholly connective, joining together the two inducements to overrate the value of a foreign literature - the second being stated as follows:—

"It is the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to anything

created by our own skill, or which reflects our own skill, as if it lay causatively and objectively in the reflecting thing itself, that pleasurable power which in very truth belongs subjectively to the mind of him who surveys it, from conscious success in the exercise of his own energies. Hence it is that we see daily without surprise young ladies hanging enamoured over the pages of an Italian author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such as, clothed in plain mother English, would have been more repulsive to them than the distinctions of a theologian or the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake for a pleasure yielded by the author what is in fact the pleasure attending their own success in mastering what was lately an insuperable difficulty."

This explicitness of connection is the chief merit of De Quincey's paragraphs. He cannot be said to observe any other principle. He is carried into violations of all the other rules by his inveterate habit of digression. Often upon a mere casual suggestion he branches off into a digression of several pages, sometimes even digressing from the subject of his first digression. The enormity of these offences is a good deal palliated by his being conscious that he is digressing, and his taking care to let us know when he strikes off from the main subject and when he returns. Some of his papers are professedly "discursive," especially the 'Autobiographic Sketches.'

The following is an example of his way of apologising for a digression. It illustrates, at the same time, his capital excellence of explicit connection. In a paper professedly on Demosthenes, he comes across Lord Brougham's Rectorial Address at Glasgow, and at once, leaving Demosthenes, proceeds to discuss several things mentioned in the address. At the close of this excursus he says:

"I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step aside from Demosthenes to another subject, not otherwise connected with the Attic orator than, first, by the common reference of both subjects to rhetoric; but, secondly, by the accident of having been jointly discussed by Lord Brougham in a paper which (though now forgotten) obtained at the moment most undue celebrity."

The apology, however, becomes the occasion of another offence. Before returning to Demosthenes, he throws in a few sentences of comment on the fact that in England the utterances of eminent public men on subjects beyond their province and their acquirements are received with a deference not accorded to men "speaking under the known privilege of professional knowledge."

Should these digressions, obviously breaches of strict method, be imitated or avoided? The experienced writer will please himself, and consult the effect that he intends to produce. But if he digresses after the model of De Quincey, he may rest assured that he will be accused of affectation, and will offend all that read for direct information concerning the subject in hand.

Figures of Speech.

De Quincey may be described as a very "tropical" writer (see INTRODUCTION, p. 13). He uses comparatively few formal similitudes, but his pages are thickly strewn with "tropes," with metaphors, personifications, synecdoches, and metonymies.

His most characteristic and peculiar figure is personification. He makes a constant practice of applying predicates to names of inanimate things, and even to abstract nouns, as if they were names of living agents.

This mannerism pervades all De Quincey's writings, and is so characteristic that we at once think of him when we find it appearing strongly in another writer. A few examples give but a faint impression compared with what we receive when we read his volumes and meet with an example in every other sentence. It is peculiarly striking in the case of abstract nouns-above all, when one abstraction is represented as acting upon another; thus

"Here I had terminated this chapter as at a natural pause, which, while shutting out for ever my eldest brother from the reader's sight and from my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanent revolution in the character of my daily life. Two such changes, and both so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and the opening of another. The advantages, indeed, which my brother had over me in years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision of purpose, and in energy of will-all which advantages, besides, borrowed a ratification from an obscure sense, on my part, of duty as incident to what seemed an appointment of Providence -inevitably had controlled, and for years to come would have controlled, the free spontaneous movements of a dreamer like myself."

This treatment of abstractions as living agents may be studied also in the following passage, concerning the civilising influence of Athens through her theatre:

"But if it were a vain and arrogant assumption to illuminate, as regarded those primal truths which, like the stars, are hung aloft, and shine for all alike, neither vain nor arrogant was it to fly her falcons at game almost as high. If not life, yet light; if not absolute birth, yet moral regeneration and fructifying warmth-these were quickening forces which abundantly she was able to engraft upon truths else slumbering and inert. Not affecting to teach the new, she could yet vivify the old. Those moral echoes, so solemn and pathetic, that lingered in the ear from her stately tragedies, all spoke with the authority of voices from the grave. The great phantoms that crossed her stage, all pointed with shadowy fingers to shattered dynasties and the ruins of once regal houses, Pelopida or Labdacidæ, as monuments of sufferings in expiation of violated morals, or sometimes-which even more thrillingly spoke to human sensibilities—of guilt too awful to be expiated. And in the midst of these appalling records, what is their ultimate solution? From what key-note does Athenian Tragedy trace the expansion of its own dark impassioned music? "Tßpis (hybris)—the spirit of outrage coupled with the spirit of insult and arrogant self-assertion-in that temper lurks the original impulse towards wrong; and to that temper the