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In the "But now, at last, came over me, from the mere excess of bodily suffering and mental disappointments, a frantic and rapturous reagency United States the case is well known, and many times has been described by travellers, of that furious instinct which, under a secret call for saline variations of diet, drives all the tribes of buffaloes for thousands of miles to the common centre of the 'Salt-licks.' Under such a compulsion does the locust, under such a compulsion does the leeming, traverse its mysterious path. They are deaf to danger, deaf to the cry of battle, deaf to the trumLet the sea cross their path, let armies with artillery bar the pets of death. road, even these terrific powers can arrest only by destroying; and the most frightful abysses, up to the very last menace of engulfinent, up to the very instant of absorption, have no power to alter or retard the line of their inexorable advance.

-even so potent, "Such an instinct it was, such a rapturous commandIn the and, alas! even so blind-that, under the whirl of tumultuous indignation and of new-born hope, suddenly transfigured my whole being. twinkling of an eye, I came to an adamantine resolution-not as if issuing from any act or any choice of my own, but as if positively received from some dark oracular legislation external to myself."

Pathos

From the prevailing majesty of his diction, De Quincey's pathos In some of his papers, as in the is rarely of a homely order. "Military Nun," there are touching little strokes of half-humorous tenderness. But his most characteristic pathos is impassioned regret for departed nobleness; in which case he blends with his expressions of sorrow a splendid glorification of the object, so that the mind is at once saddened and filled with ideas of sublimity.

The impassioned apostrophes of the Opium Confessions are tolerably well known. We may therefore choose an example from a composition less generally known-his paper on "Joan of Arc":

"What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that-like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea-rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more peril. Pure, innocent, nobleous station at the right hand of kings? hearted girl! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once-no, not for a moment of weakness-didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee! Oh no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleepCall her, king of France, but she will not hear ing the sleep of the dead. thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to die, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is

long. Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature -pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious-never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints,-these might not be apparent through the 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 encourage ment 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 vigilancs 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

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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 minner, 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 hymn 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."

1 The paper occurs in vol. iv. of the Collected Edition. This volume, contain. ing 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.

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. said so once before. But perstringing, which was a favoured word of your own, was a no less favoured act. You also in 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 Thunmim 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.

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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