mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard for ever." As an example of a pathetic apostrophe, in a less touching but still impressive key, take his reminiscence of Edward Irving, from one of his unreprinted papers :— "He was the only man of our times who realised one's idea of Paul preaching at Athens, or defending himself before King Agrippa. Terrific meteor! unhappy son of fervid genius, which mastered thyself even more than the rapt audiences which at one time hung upon thy lips! were the cup of life once again presented to thy lips, wouldst thou drink again? or wouldst thou not rather turn away from it with shuddering abomination? Sleep, Boanerges, and let the memory of man settle only upon thy colossal powers, without a thought of those intellectual aberrations which were more powerful for thy own ruin than for the misleading of others!" Humour. Our author's "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," belongs to a vein of irony peculiarly his own--the humour of bringing the ideas of Fine Art and ordinary business into ludicrous collision with solemn or horrible transactions. An extract or two from the beginning of this paper will give an idea of its character. It is preceded by an "Advertisement of a man morbidly virtuous," which begins thus "Most of us who read books, have probably heard of a society for the promotion of vice, of the Hell-Fire Club, founded in the last century by Sir Francis Dashwood, &c. At Brighton, I think it was, that a society was formed for the suppression of virtue. That society was itself suppressed ; but I am sorry to say that another exists in London, of a character still more atrocious. In tendency, it may be denominated a society for the encouragement of murder; but, according to their own delicate evpnuouòs, it is styled, The Society of Connoisseurs in Murder. They profess to be curious in homicide; amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage; and, in short, murder-fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criticise as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art. But I need not trouble myself with any attempt to describe the spirit of their proceedings, as the reader will collect that much better from one of the monthly lectures read before the society last year. This has fallen into my hands accidentally, in spite of all the vigilance exercised to keep their transactions from the public eye." The "morbidly virtuous" advertiser concludes by saying that he has not yet heard of the society offering prizes for a wellexecuted murder, but that "undoubtedly their proceedings tend to that." The atrocious lecture thus exposed to the eye of the public begins as follows: "GENTLEMEN,—I have had the honour to be appointed by your committee to the trying task of reading the Williams' Lecture on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts, -a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a corresponding improvement. Practice and theory must advance pari passu. People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed-a knife-a purse-and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr Williams has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us; and to me, therefore, in particular, has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like Eschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried his art to a point of colossal sublimity; and, as Mr Wordsworth observes, has in a manner created the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.' To sketch the history of the art and to examine his principles critically, now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, and for judges of quite another stamp from his Majesty's Judges of Assize.” The humour is kept up through fifty-seven pages.1 The "Williams' Lecture" is the crowning achievement of his humour. His works contain many occasional touches in the same vein. He is frequently jocular on the subject of death. Thus "In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium: thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a tawny brown in colour-and this, take notice, I grant; secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant-for in my time East India opium has been three guineas a-pound, and Turkey eight; and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must do what is disagreeable to any man of regular habits-viz., die. Again, alluding to Savage Landor's contumacy at school : "Roberte the Deville:' see the old metrical romance of that name: it belongs to the fourteenth century, and was printed some thirty years ago, with wood engravings of the illuminations. Roberte, however, took the liberty of murdering his schoolmaster. But could he well do less? Being a reigning Duke's son, and after the rebellious schoolmaster had said 'Sir, ye bee too bolde: And therewith took a rodde hym for to chaste.' Upon which the meek Robin, without using any bad language as the schoolmaster had done, simply took out a long dagger hym for to chaste,' which he did effectually. The schoolmaster gave no bad language after that." It must not be supposed that De Quincey's humour consists solely in this playing with dread ideas. His works, as we noticed in sketching his character, overflow with good-natured humour of every description. It is often of that strongly individual kind which only intimate sympathisers can tolerate; strangers call it impertinent, flippant, affected. Take, for example, one of his playful apostrophes to historical names : "Sam Parr! I love you. I said so once before. But perstringing, which was a favoured word of your own, was a no less favoured act. You also in 1 The paper occurs in vol. iv. of the Collected Edition. This volume, containing also the "Revolt of the Tartars," the "Templar's Dialogues," and the "Vision of Sudden Death," affords good examples of all the qualities of his style. your lifetime perstringed many people, some of whom perstringed you, Sam, smartly in return." "I (said Augustus Cæsar) found Rome built of brick; but I left it built of marble. Well, my man, we reply, for a wondrously little chap, you did what in Westmoreland they call a good darroch (day's work); and if navvies had been wanted in those days, you should have had our vote to a certainty. But Caius Julius, even under such a limitation of the comparison, did a thing as much transcending this," &c. We must also give a specimen of his humorous "slangy" outrages on the dignity of criticism. The following occurs in his "Brief Appraisal of Greek Literature," which has not been reprinted: "But all this extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer serves less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the one great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the Iliad" [Achilles], "you descend to individual passages of poetic effect; and if amongst these a fancy should seize you of asking for a specimen of the sublime in particular, what is it that you are offered by the critics? Nothing that we remember beyond one single passage, in which the God Neptune is described in a steeplechase, and making play' at a terrific pace. And certainly enough is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and their spanking qualities, to warrant our backing him against a railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in which, like the conceited snipe upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and whilst affecting to admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very agony of his frosty raptures, is quite at leisure to look out for a little private traffic of rapture on his own account. But it won't do; this old critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelius hanged, surely he knew what he was about) may as well put up his rapture pipes, and (as Lear says) 'not squiny' at us; for let us ask Master Longinus, in what earthly respect do these great strides of Neptune exceed Jack with his seven-league boots? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that Jack has the advantage." Melody and Harmony. The melody of De Quincey's prose is pre-eminently rich and stately. He takes rank with Milton as one of our greatest masters of stately cadence, as well as of sublime composition. If one may trust one's ear for a general impression, Milton's melody is sweeter and more varied; but for magnificent effects, at least in prose, the palm must probably be assigned to De Quincey. In some of De Quincey's grandest passages the language can be compared only to the swell and crash of an orchestra. It need hardly be added that the harmony between his rhythm and his subject-matter is most striking in the sublime flights. Taste. De Quincey has been accused of crossing the bounds of good taste in certain respects. His digressions and footnotes have been objected to. His punctilious precision in the use of terms has been called pedantic. He has been censured for carrying to excess what we have described as his favourite figure. But especially he has been visited with severe condemnation for his offences in the pursuit of comic effect-more particularly in the use of slang. A recent critic has gone the length of describing his "slangy "apostrophes as "exquisite foolery." KINDS OF COMPOSITION. Description. Though so many of De Quincey's papers are descriptive, and are properly designated sketches, he has really left us very little detailed description of external nature. The reason is to be found in his character. His interest was almost wholly engrossed by man. The description that he excelled in was description of the human form, feelings, and manners. Where he does attempt the description of still life, notwithstanding his natural clearness and order, he is much inferior to Carlyle. He has one or two good points. He gives right and left in his pictures, and brings in such touches of precision as-"standing on a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same distance: "which is very significant, if not too scholastic. But if we take even such a studied piece as his description of the valley of Easedale, at the beginning of his "Recollections of the Lakes," vol. ii., we miss the vividness of a master of the descriptive art. We receive no idea of such a fundamental fact as the size of the valley we are, indeed, presented rather with the feelings and reflections of a poetically-minded spectator, than with the material aspects of the scene. Generally speaking, he describes nature only in its direct or figurative relations to man. A scene is interesting as the very same spectacle, unaltered in a single feature, which once at the same hour was beheld by the legionary Roman from his embattled camp, or by the roving Briton in his wolf-skin vest.'' A hamlet of seven cottages clustering together round a lonely highland tarn, is interesting as suggesting seclusion from the endless tumults and angry passions of human society; the declining light of the afternoon, from its association with the perils and dangers of the night. Thus it happens that often, instead of describing he really expounds-expounds the thoughts that arise from the general features of a scene by force of association or of similitude. We see this in his description of the English Lake scenery : "But more even than Anne Radcliffe had the landscape-painters, so many and so various, contributed to the glorification of the English Lake district; drawing out and impressing upon the heart the sanctity of repose in its shy recesses - - its Alpine grandeur in such passes as those of Wastdalehead, Langdalehead, Borrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsdale, &c., together with the monastic peace which seems to brood over its peculiar form of pastoral life, so much nobler (as Wordsworth notices) in its stern simplicity and continual conflict with danger hidden in the vast draperies of mist overshadowing the hills, and amongst the armies of snow and hail arrayed by fierce northern winters, than the effeminate shepherd's life in the classical Arcadia, or in the flowery pastures of Sicily." An indifferent observer of nature, De Quincey was minute and precise in his observation of human beings. Every face that he met he seems to have watched with the vigilant attention of a Boswell. He has described the persons of many of his contemporaries. His most careful portraits are, perhaps, his Lake companions-Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Wilson. To these must be added his delineation of the notorious murderer Williams. The reader that desires to see how watchful an eye he had for the smallest particularities of shape, look, and bearing, will do well to read his prefatory note on Coleridge, vol. xi. It is in the description of the feelings that he particularly excels. Not only is he deeply learned in the proper vocabulary of the feelings; he had acquired by close study, and employs with exquisite skill, a profound knowledge of the outward manifestations of feeling in tone, feature, gesture, and conduct. In reading motives from what he would have called the dumb hieroglyphics of observed or recorded behaviour, and in tracing the succession of feelings that must have passed under given circumstances, he is one of our greatest masters. In this point more perhaps than in any other, he challenges the closest attention of the student. A good specimen of his power is the passage in the Marr murder where he pictures Mary's feelings on her returning to the door and finding it locked: "Mary rang, and at the same time very gently knocked. She had no fear of disturbing her master or mistress; them she made sure of finding still up. Her anxiety was for the baby, who, being disturbed, might again rob her mistress of a night's rest; and she well knew that with three people all anxiously awaiting her return, and by this time, perhaps, seriously uneasy at her delay, the least audible whisper from herself would in a moment bring one of them to the door. Yet how is this? To her astonishmentbut with the astonishment came creeping over her an icy horror- no stir nor murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At this moment came back upon her, with shuddering anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loose dark coat whom she had seen stealing along under the shadowy lamplight, and too certainly watching her master's motions. Keenly she now reproached herself that under whatever stress of hurry she had not acquainted Mr Marr with the suspicious appearances. Poor girl! she did not then know that, if this communication could have availed to put Marr |