Thomas de Quincey—hierophant, rhapsodist, philosopher—was born at Greenhay, then a suburb of Manchester, in Lancashire County, England, on the 15th of August, 1785. According to his own account, the family of the De Quinceys was of Norwegian origin; and after its transfer to France, in connection with William the Norman, it received its territorial appellation from the village of Quincy, in Normandy. Thence, at the time of the Norman Invasion, it was transplanted to England, where, as afterwards in Scotland, it rose to the highest position, not merely in connection with a lordly title and princely estates, but chiefly on account of valuable services rendered to the State, and conferring preeminence in baronial privilege and consideration.
So sensitive was De Quincey, even at the early age of fifteen, on the point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having, in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted upon his purely Norman blood,—blood that in the baronial wars had helped to establish the earliest basis of English constitutional liberty, and that had flowed from knightly veins in the wars of the Crusades. Robert De Quincey came into England with William the Conqueror, uniting with whose fortunes, he fared after the Conquest as a feudal baron, founding the line of Winchester; and that he was a baron of the first water is evident from the statement of Gerard Leigh,—that his armorial device was inscribed (and how inscribed, if not memorially and as a mark of eminent distinction?) on the stained glass in the old church of St. Paul's.
And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocratic De being omitted,)—a branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,—as indicating how surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our fancied [pg 355] retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its accumulated violence,—as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread alternative,—it is interesting to note how this same family, separated by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for refuge,—a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.
But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however, remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family freshly grounded upon a second heritage,—one sublime in its order above that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever imperishable,—namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought under distinct illumination for all time to come. These are the vast acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,—acres that have been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire. And for De Quincey himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which they wrought in their lifetime, we find it impossible to cherish a single regret, that, possibly, by the treasonable slip of a predecessor, he may have been robbed of an earldom,—or even that, during a life which by some years overlapped the average allotment to humanity, and through which were daily accumulating the most splendid results in the very highest departments of philosophy and art, these accumulations nevertheless went on without any notable recognition from a court the most liberal in all Europe; no badge of outward knighthood coming to him through all these years, as formerly to Sir Thomas Browne for his subtile meditations, and to Sir William Hamilton for his philosophic speculations. The absence of such merely nominal titles excites in us no deep regret; there is in them little that is monumental, and the pretty tinsel, with which they gild monuments already based on substantial worth, is easily, and without a sigh, exchanged for that everlasting sunshine reflected from the loving remembrances of human hearts.
But at the same time that we so willingly dispense with these nominal conditions [pg 356] in the case of De Quincey,—though, assuredly, there was never a man upon earth whom these conditions, considered as aërial hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more consistently fit,—we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its earliest tendencies and impulses,—in that season of immature preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation, and while yet a marvellous uncertainty hangs and broods over the beginnings of life, as over the infant rivulet yet dandled and tended by its mountain-nurses. For, although there are certain elements which rigidly and by a foreseen certainty determine its course, as, for instance, an extraordinary vantage-height of source, securing for it the force and swiftness of a torrent,—yet how shifting are the mountain-winds, chilling into frosty silence or quickening with Favonian warmth, and how shifting the flying clouds, which, whether marshalled in mimic tournament above it, or in the shock of a real conflict, forever sway its tender fountains! Thus, even in inexperienced childhood, do the scales of the individual destiny begin, favorably or unfavorably, to determine their future preponderations, by reason of influences merely material, and before, indeed, any sovereignty save a corporeal one (in conjunction with heavenly powers) is at all recognized in life. For, in this period, with which above all others we associate influences the most divine, "with trailing clouds of glory," those influences which are purely material are the most efficiently operative. Against the former, adult man, in whom reason is developed, may battle, though ignobly, and, for himself, ruinously; and against the latter oftentimes he must struggle, to escape ignominious shipwreck. But the child, helpless alike for both these conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields him from all conscious guilt, bound over in the most impotent (though, because impotent and unconscious, the least humiliating) slavery to material circumstance,—a slavery which he cannot escape, and which, during the period of its absolutism, absorbs his very blood, bone, and nerve. To poverty, which the strong man resists, the child succumbs; on the other hand, that affluence of comfort, from which philosophy often weans the adult, wraps childhood about with a sheltering care; and fortunate indeed it is, if the mastery of Nature over us during our first years is thus a gentle dealing with us, fertilizing our powers with the rich juices of an earthly prosperity. And in this respect De Quincey was eminently fortunate. The powers of heaven and of earth and—if we side with Milton and other pagan mythologists in attributing the gift of wealth to some Plutonian dynasty—the dark powers under the earth seem to have conjointly arrayed themselves in his behalf. Whatever storms were in the book of Fate written against his name they postponed till a far-off future, in the mean time granting him the happiest of all childhoods. Really of gentle blood, and thus gaining whatever substantial benefits in constitutional temperament and susceptibilities could be thence derived, although lacking, as Pope also had lacked, the factitious circumstance and airy heralding of this distinction, he was, in addition to this, surrounded by elements of aristocratic refinement and luxury, and thus hedged in not merely against the assault, in any form, of pinching poverty, (as would be any one in tolerably comfortable circumstances,) but even against the most trivial hint of possible want,—against all necessity of limitation or retrenchment in any normal line of expenditure.
He was the son of a merchant, who, at the early age of thirty-nine, died, leaving to his family—a wife and six children—an estate yielding annually an income of sixteen hundred pounds. And as at his father's death De Quincey was seven years old, we may reasonably infer, that, during this previous period, while his father was still living, and adding to this [pg 357] fixed a fluctuating income from his yearly gains, (which to a wholesale merchant of his standing were considerable,) the family-fortunes were even more auspicious, amounting to the yearly realization of between two and three thousand pounds, and that at a time when Napoleon had not as yet meddled with the financial affairs of Europe, nor by his intimidations caused even pounds and shillings to shrink into less worth and significance than they formerly had,—in view of which fact, if we are to charge Alexander the Great (as in a famous anecdote he was charged) with the crime of highway-robbery, as the "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" in the way of crowns and a few dozen sceptres, what a heinous charge must be brought against this Corsican as universal pickpocket! This pecuniary depreciation De Quincey himself realized some years later, when, determining to quit school, he thought himself compelled[7] to cut off all communication with his guardians, and gave himself up to a Bohemian life among the Welsh mountains, wandering from one rustic valley to another with the most scanty means of support,—for just then the Allies were in full rig against France, and the shrinkage of guineas in our young wanderer's pocket became palpably evident in view of the increased price of his dinner.
The time did come at length when the full epos of a remarkable prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad. Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of luxurious opulence and ease.
I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice merely as an accident,) because, although not a potential element, capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential character of genius, it is yet a negative condition—a sine qua non—to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain aspects. By misfortune it is true that power may be intensified. So may it by the baptism of malice. But, given a certain degree of power, there still remains a question as to its kind. So deep is the sky: but of what hue, of what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol but what the mellowness? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa? Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the question is not, what increment or what momentum genius may receive from outward circumstances, but what coloring, what mood. Here it is that a Mozart differs from a Mendelssohn. The important difference which obtains, in this respect, between great powers in literature, otherwise coördinate, will receive illustration from a comparison between De Quincey and Byron. For both these writers were capable, in a degree rarely equalled in any literature, of reproducing, or rather, we should say, of reconstructing, the pomp of Nature and of human life. In this general office they stand together: both wear, in our eyes, the regal purple; both have caused to rise between earth and heaven miracles of grandeur, such as never Cheops [pg 358] wrought through his myriad slaves, or Solomon with his fabled ring. But in the final result, as in the whole modus operandi, of their architecture, they stand apart toto coelo. Byron builds a structure that repeats certain elements in Nature or humanity; but they are those elements only which are allied to gloom, for he builds in suspicion and distrust, and upon the basis of a cynicism that has been nurtured in his very flesh and blood from birth; he erects a Pisa-like tower which overhangs and threatens all human hopes and all that is beautiful in human love. Who else, save this archangelic intellect, shut out by a mighty shadow of eclipse from the bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in "Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. And how? Is it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems to sway the movements of destruction? No; it is only through the gloomy mystery of the ruin itself,—ruin revealed upon a scale so vast and under conditions of terror the most appalling,—ruin wrought under the semblance of an almighty passion for revenge directed against the human race. Thus, as an expression of the attitude which the sea maintains toward man, we have the following passage of Æschylian grandeur, but also of Æschylian gloom:—
"Thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields