The curious little Essay On Novels,—written in a Lady's Album, had passed out of Mr. Davey's hands before I became aware of its existence. The facsimile, however, taken for The Archivist, by an expert like Mr. Netherclift, shows that it is, unquestionably, in the handwriting of De Quincey. I have been unable to trace the 'Fair Incognita' to whom it was addressed.
The compositions which were written for me when I edited Titan, and which I now place before the public in volume form, after the lapse of a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'), demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to the Selections Grave and Gay.
Titan was a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an enlarged form of The Instructor. I had become the acting Editor of its predecessor, the New Series of The Instructor, working in concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this New Series there appeared from De Quincey's pen The Sphinx's Riddle, Judas Iscariot, the Series of Sketches from Childhood, and other notable papers.
At that time I was but a young editor—young and, perhaps, a little 'curly,' as Lord Beaconsfield put it. De Quincey, with a truly paternal solicitude, gave me much good advice and valuable help, both in the selection of subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of handling them. The notes on The Lake Dialect, Shakspere's Text and Suetonius Unravelled, were written to me in the form of Letters, and published in Titan.
Storms in English History was a consideration of part of Mr. Froude's well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir in the literary world, and profoundly impressed De Quincey.
How to write English was the first of a series projected for The Instructor. It never got beyond this 'Introduction,' but the fragment contains some matter well worthy of preservation.
The circumstances attending the composition of the four papers on The English in India and The English in China, I have explained at some length in the introductory notices attached to them.
And now for a confession! The 'gentle reader' may, perhaps, feel a momentary inclination to blame me when I reveal, that I rather stood in the way of some brilliant articles which were very seriously considered at this period.
De Quincey was eager to write them, and I should have been glad indeed to have had them for Titan, but for a fear of allowing the Author to wander too far from the ever-present and irksome Works. Any possible escape—even through other downright hard work, from this perplexing labour was joyfully hailed by him as a hopeful chance of obtaining a prosperous holiday.