feelings; and he compares the transformation worked by a lady upon her husband to the achievements of "some mighty caliph or lamp-bearing Aladdin.”

(5.) From music he draws some very favourite metaphors. Thus: He knows "human despondencies through all their infinite gamut." Christopher North at Oxford "enjoyed an unlimited favour with an infinite gamut of friends and associates, running through every key, the diapason closing full in groom, cobbler, and stable-boy." Ceylon is "a panorganon for modulating through the whole diatonic scale of climates."

(6.) He takes many metaphors from the technical language of law and trade. The question as to the comparative value of ancient and modern learning is "the great pending suit between antiquity and ourselves." "Such as these were the habits and the reversionary consolations of Pompey." "The other historic person on whom I shall probably be charged with assault and battery is Josephus." "The Jew did not receive the bribe first and then perpetrate the treason, but trusted to Roman good faith at three months after date." Writing of Pope's composing satire at the instigation of Warburton, he says:—

"To enter a house of hatred as a junior partner, and to take the stock of malice at a valuation (we copy from advertisements), that is an ignoble act." These metaphors are very often humorous. Thus

"A Canadian winter for my money; or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind, in the fee-simple of his own

ears."

(7.) Sometimes he takes a fancy to draw upon mathematics, medicine, or physical science. Thus

"As to Symmons, he was a Whig; and his covert purpose was to secure Milton for his own party, before that party was fully secreted by the new tendencies beginning to move amongst the partisanships of the age. Until Dr Sacheverel came, in Queen Anne's reign, the crystallisations of Whig and Tory were rudimental and incomplete. Symmons, therefore, was under a bias, and a morbid kind of deflection."

How far he observes the conditions of effective comparison.— De Quincey is a model of exact comparison. To point out with deliberate some would say with tedious-scrupulosity the resembling circumstances in the things compared, peculiarly suits his subtilising turn of mind. He never seems to be in a hurry, and does not aspire to hit off a similitude in a few pregnant words; his characteristic is punctilious accuracy, regardless of expense in the matter of words.

Out of numerous available examples may be quoted his comparison of the distribution of men in Ceylon to the distribution of material in a peach :—

"But strange indeed, where everything seems strange, is the arrange ment of the Ceylonese territory and people. Take a peach: what you call the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly round a central stone-often as large as a pretty large strawberry. Now, in Ceylon the central district, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a 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."

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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 acknowledgement; 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 any

thing 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.

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 archæologic theologians. In his "Cæsars," his purpose is not so much a condensed narrative as an elucidation of doubtful points. His "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.

(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 as ist 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,