De Quincey’s magnificence, the apparent boundlessness of his information, the liberties he takes, relying upon his mastery of language, his sportiveness and freakish fancies, make him the idol of all hobbledehoys of a literary turn. By them his sixteen volumes are greedily devoured. Happy the country, one is tempted to exclaim, that has such reading to offer its young men and maidens!
The discovery that De Quincey wrote something else besides the ‘Opium Eater’ marks a red-letter day in many a young life. The papers on ‘The Twelve Cæsars’; on the ‘Essenes and Secret Societies’; on ‘Judas Iscariot,’ ‘Cicero,’ and ‘Richard Bentley’; ‘The Spanish Nun,’ the ‘Female Infidel,’ the ‘Tartars,’ seemed the very climax of literary well-doing, and to unite the learning of the schools with all the fancy of the poets and the wit of the world.
As one grows older, one grows sterner—with others.
‘Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o’er thee swell and throng;
They will condense within thy soul,
And change to purpose strong.’
The lines have a literary as well as a moral value.
But though paradox may cease to charm, and a tutored intellect seem to sober age a better guide than a lawless fancy, and a chastened style a more comfortable thing than impassioned prose and pages of bravura, still, after all, ‘the days of our youth are the days of our glory,’ and for a reader who is both young and eager the Selections Grave and Gay of Thomas de Quincey will always be above criticism, and belong to the realm of rapture.