fierce little Lilliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly distinct by the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is called Kandy, and the people Kandyans.'

Seeing that he possessed an extraordinary power of "elevating" by means of similitudes, it is natural to ask whether he is ever guilty of undue exaggeration. When this question is put concerning De Quincey, attention turns at once to his Opium Confessions and his 'Autobiographic Sketches.' In these works he describes his own feelings in metaphors taken from the language of the great operations of Nature, and draws elaborate comparisons between momentous epochs in his own life, and such imposing phenomena as the uncontrollable migrations of the buffalo herds. Are these similitudes extravagantly hyperbolical? Do they offend the reader as rising extravagantly above the dignity of the subject? Much depends upon our point of view. If we view the autobiographer unsympathetically, from the stand-point of our own personality-if we regard him simply as a unit among the millions of mankind, a speck upon "the great globe itself," we shall undoubtedly be shocked at his venturing to compare revolutions within his own insignificant being to revolutions affecting vast regions of the earth. But if we view him as he means that we should view him, sympathetically, from the stand-point of his personality, we shall not be shocked at the audacity of his similitudes-we shall not consider them extravagant, or out of keeping with the feelings proper to the occasion. Epochs and incidents in our own life are more important to us, bulk more largely in our eyes, than epochs and incidents in the history of a nation. The violent death of a near and dear relative or friend touches us more profoundly than an earthquake at Lisbon, a massacre at Cawnpore, or a revolution in Paris. De Quincey says nothing that has not been felt more or less dimly by all human beings when he says, that on his entering Oxford the profound public interest concerning the movements of Napoleon a little divided with me the else monopolising awe attached to the solemn act of launching myself upon the world."

Concerning the novelty or originality of his similitudes. He has never been accused of plagiarising. When he borrows a figure of speech, he gives a formal acknowledgment; at least he does so in some cases, and I have never seen any clandestine appropriations charged against him. "As I have never allowed myself," he says, "to covet any man's ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his, still less would it become a philosopher to covet other people's images or metaphors." And if he had, we might say, as he said of Coleridge's plagiarisms, that such robbery would have been an honour to the person robbed. We may be sure,

from the unique finish of his similitudes, that the stolen property would have improved in value under his hands.

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity.

De Quincey cannot be ranked among simple writers. His style has certain elements of simplicity, but, at the same time, it has, in a considerable degree, every element of abstruseness specified in a manual of composition.

(1.) He makes an excessive use of Latinised, scholarly, and technical terms. Thus

"I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties, brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being 'ponderibus librata suis.'

Concerning his Logic of Political Economy,' Mr M'Culloch says "It would have been more popular and successful had it been less scholastic. It is right to be logical, but not to be perpetually obtruding logical forms and technicalities on the reader's attention."

(2.) In his choice of subjects he prefers the recondite offering, in this respect, a great contrast to Macaulay.

His

In his Essays "addressed to the understanding as an insulated faculty," he runs after the most abstruse problems. Take the examples quoted in his preface to the first volume of his 'Collected Works. In the "Essenes," he defends a new speculation on a puzzling subject with considerations familiar only to archæologie theologians. In his "Cæsars," his purpose is not so much a condensed narrative as an elucidation of doubtful points. "Essay on Cicero" deals with problems of the same nature. And so with many others of his articles. The volume on 'Leaders in Literature,' wherever it keeps faithful to its title, is taken up mainly with the "traditional errors affecting them." Even his Autobiographic Sketches' turn aside upon various incidents to the pursuit of subtle speculations, such as disquisitions on the possible issues of an action, recondite analysis and conjecture of motives, consideration of delicate points of taste, nice investigation of the sources of the influence of a poem or a picture. His 'Logic of Political Economy' deals with the most puzzling and abstruse principles of the science.

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(3.) So far from shirking-as is the manner of simple writers -every call to modify a bare assertion, he revels in nice distinctions and scrupulous qualifications. This is a part of his

exactness.

(4) We have already noticed his excessive use of abstract terms and forms of expression. What we exemplified as his favourite figure is not good for rapid perusal. When a transaction is represented as taking place, not between living agents, but between abstract qualities of those agents, a mode of statement so unfamiliar is not to be comprehended without a considerable effort of thought.

(5.) His general structure is not simple. Long periods, each embodying a flock of clauses, are abstruse reading. Even his explicitness of connection has not its full natural effect of making the effort of comprehension easy. He connects his statements with such exactness that the explicitness becomes a burden. Certain things may be said in extenuation of this neglect of the ordinary means of simplicity.

I. With all his abstruseness he does observe certain points of a simple style.

(1.) He often repeats in simpler language what he has said with characteristic abstractness of phrase. Thus, in the case of his cardinal distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power—

"In that great social organ which, collectively, we call literature, there may be distinguished two separate offices that may blend, and often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge; and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move. The first is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail."

(2.) In dealing with dates and statistics, he has a commendable habit of devising helps to the reader's memory by means of familiar comparisons. Thus

"This was in 1644, the year of Marston Moor, and the penultimate year of the Parliamentary war.

Again

"Glasgow has as many thousands of inhabitants as there are days in the year. (I so state the population in order to assist the reader's memory.)"

In like manner he helps us to remember the territorial extent and the population of Ceylon by a comparison with Ireland and Scotland.

(3.) A characteristic figure with him is a figure taken from simple movements:—

"This growth of intellect, outrunning the capacities of the physical structure;"" by night he succeeded in reaching the farther end of his duties; "he walked conscientiously through the services of the day." "Extraordinary erudition, even though travelling into obscure and sterile fields, has its own peculiar interest. And about Dr Parr, moreover, there

circled another and far different interest."

It must, however, be admitted that such forms of expression, though intrinsically simple, are abstruse to the majority from not being familiar.

II. His technical terms can often justify their existence on the plea that they give greater precision.

Thus

"There was a prodigious ferment in the first half of the seventeenth century. In the earlier bisection of the second half there was a general settling or deposition from this ferment."

So in giving the dimensions of the famous Ceylon pillar—

"The pillar measures six feet by six-i.e., thirty-six square feet on the flat quadrangular tablet of its upper horizontal surface." .

Once more, writing of the impossibility of translating certain words by any single word, he says

"To take an image from the language of eclipses, the correspondence between the disk of the original word and its translated representative is, in thousands of instances, not annular; the centres do not coincide; the words overlap."

In all these cases there is no denying that the expression is superlatively precise, although perhaps all the precision required under the circumstances might have been given in more familiar language.

Such are some of the circumstances that compensate his abstruseness. Imitators should see that they make equal compensation. The assertion may be hazarded that writers aiming at wide popularity are not safe to use so much abstruse language as De Quincey, whatever may be their powers of compensating.

Clearness.

Perspicuity. To readers that find no difficulty in the abstruseness of his diction, De Quincey is tolerably perspicuous. His virtues in this respect are summed up in the capital excellence of his paragraphs, explicitness of connection. If we find his diction. easy, he is so scrupulous in keeping before us the general arrangement of his composition, as well as the bearing of particular statements, and even, as we have seen, of his numerous digressions, -that we are seldom in danger of confusion.

Exactness, however, rather than perspicuity, is his peculiar merit. On this he openly prides himself. In an article on Ceylon, having said that a young officer, marching with a small body of men through the island, took Kandy in his route, he appends a footnote to the word "took" :—

"This phrase is equivocal; it bears two senses-the traveller's sense and the soldier's. But we rarely make such errors in the use of words; the error is original in the government documents themselves."

None of our writers in

He certainly had reason to glory. general literature have shown themselves so scrupulously precise. His works are still the crowning delicacy for lovers of formal, punctilious exactness.1

Of this exactness we have already given several illustrations. We have illustrated the exactness of his comparisons, and the fact that he often purchases exactness at the price of simplicity. Reference may also be made to the account of his opinions and the passage there quoted.

His minuteness in modifying vague general expressions is par- ticularly worthy of notice, and, when not pushed to a pedantic extreme, worthy of imitation. He seldom says that a thing is remarkable without adding in what respects. A man's life is "notable in two points;" has "two separate. claims upon our notice: "

"A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, lays open, to readers prepared for such revelations, two separate theatres of interest; one in his personal career, the other in his works and his intellectual development."

In like manner, "that sanctity which settles on the memory of a great man, ought, upon a double motive, to be vigilantly sustained by his countrymen." When he predicates a superlative, he is exemplarily scrupulous to let us know what particulars it applies to.. Aristotle's Rhetoric is "the best, as regards the primary purpose of the teacher; though otherwise, for elegance," &c. Jeremy Taylor and Sir T. Browne are "undoubtedly the richest, the most dazzling, and, with reference to their matter, the most captivating of all rhetoricians." When he puts the question, "Was Cæsar, upon the whole, the greatest of men?" he does not at once pronounce roundly "Yes or "No." He first explains in what sense he

means great :

"Was Caesar, upon the whole, the greatest of men? We restrict the question, of course, to the classes of men great in action; great by the extent of their influence over their social contemporaries; great by throwing open avenues to extended powers that previously had been closed; great by making obstacles once vast to become trivial; or prizes that once were trivial to be glorified by expansion."

As an example of this "pettifogulising" on the larger scale, we may quote his footnote on the maxim "De mortuis nil nisi bonum:"

1 With a legitimate feeling of his own innocence, he often censures the lax practice of other writers. He is angry with Dr Johnson for not further explaining what he meant by calling Pope the most correct of poets." "Correctness," he exclaims, "in what? Think of the admirable qualifications for settling the scale of such critical distinctions which that man must have had who turned out upon this vast world the single oracular word correctness' to shift for itself, and explain its own meaning to all generations!"