It is curious to contrast the stateliness of De Quincey’s literary style, the elaborate full-dress manner, with the extreme simplicity of the man. One might be tempted to add, surely here the style is not the man. His friends have testified that he was a gentle, timid, shrinking little man, and abnormally sensitive to giving offence; and to those whom he cared for—his family, for instance—he was the incarnation of affection and tenderness.
Yet in the writings we see another side, a considerable sprinkle of sturdy prejudices, no little self-assertion and pugnacity. But there is no real disparity. The style is the man here as ever. When roused by opposition he could even in converse show the claws beneath the velvet. Only the militant, the more aggressive side of the man is expressed more readily in his writings. And the gentle and amiable side more readily in personal intimacy. Both the life and the writings are wanted to supply a complete picture.
In one respect the records of his life efface a suspicion that haunts the reader of his works. More than once the reader is apt to speculate as to how far the arrogance that marks certain of his essays is a superficial quality, a literary trick; how far a moral trait. The record of his conversations tends to show that much of this was merely surface. Unlike Coleridge, unlike Carlyle, he was as willing to listen as to talk; and he said many of his best things with a delightful unconsciousness that
they were especially good. He never seemed to have the least wish to impress people by his cleverness or aptness of speech.
But when all has been said as to the personality of the man as expressed in his writings—especially his Confessions, and to his personality as interpreted by friends and acquaintances—there remains a measure of mystery about De Quincey. This is part of his fascination, just as it is part of the fascination attaching to Coleridge. The frank confidences of his Confessions hide from view the inner ring of reserve, which gave a strange impenetrability to his character, even to those who knew and loved him best. A simple nature and a complex temperament.
Well, after all, such personalities are the most interesting of all, for each time we greet them it is with a note of interrogation.
III
GEORGE BORROW
“The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise.”Gray.
“He had an English look; that is was square
In make, of a complexion white and ruddy.”Byron.
I
Why is it that almost as soon as we can toddle we eagerly demand a story of our elders? Why is it that the most excitable little girl, the most incorrigible little boy can be quieted by a teaspoonful of the jam of fiction? Why is it that “once upon a time” can achieve what moral strictures are powerless to effect?