To do justice to De Quincey's erratic, storm-tossed life; to record his precocious youth, his marvelous achievements in school or college, his wanderings amid lonely mountains or more lonely city streets, his drug habits with their gorgeous dreams and terrible depressions, his timidity, his courtesy, his soul-solitude, his uncanny genius,—all that is impossible in a brief summary. Let it suffice, then, to record: that he resembled his friend Coleridge, both in his character and in his vast learning; that he studied in profound seclusion for twenty years; then for forty years more, during which time his brain was more or less beclouded by opium, he poured out a flood of magazine articles, which he collected later in fourteen chaotic volumes. These deal with an astonishing variety of subjects, and cover almost every phase of mental activity from portraying a nightmare to building a philosophical system. If he had any dominating interest in his strange life, it was the study of literature.
[Sidenote: TYPICAL WORKS]
The historian can but name a few characteristic works of De Quincey, without recommending any of them to readers. To those interested in De Quincey's personality his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater will be illuminating. This book astonished Londoners in 1821, and may well astonish a Bushman in the year 2000. It records his wandering life, and the alternate transport or suffering which resulted from his drug habits. This may be followed by his Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), which describes, as well as such a thing could be done, the phantoms born of opium dreams. There are too many of the latter, and the reader may well be satisfied with the wonderful "Dream Fugue" in The English Mail Coach.
[Illustration: DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE
Here both Wordsworth and De Quincey resided]
As an illustration of De Quincey's review of history, one should try Joan of Arc or The Revolt of the Tartars, which are not historical studies but romantic dreams inspired by reading history. In the critical field, "The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," "Wordsworth's Poetry" and the "Essay on Style" are immensely suggestive. As an example of ingenious humor "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" is often recommended; but it has this serious fault, that it is not humorous. For a concrete example of De Quincey's matter and manner there is nothing better than "Levana or Our Ladies of Sorrow" (from the Suspiria), with its mater lachrymarum Our Lady of Tears, mater suspiriorum Our Lady of Sighs, and that strange phantom, forbidding and terrible, mater tenebrarum Our Lady of Darkness.
[Sidenote: DE QUINCEY'S STYLE]
The style of all these works is indescribable. One may exhaust the whole list of adjectives—chanting, rhythmic, cadenced, harmonious, impassioned—that have been applied to it, and yet leave much to say. Therefore we note only these prosaic elements: that the style reflects De Quincey's powers of logical analysis and of brilliant imagination; that it is pervaded by a tremendous mental excitement, though one does not know what the stir is all about; and that the impression produced by this nervous, impassioned style is usually spoiled by digressions, by hairsplitting, and by something elusive, intangible, to which we can give no name, but which blurs the author's vision as a drifting fog obscures a familiar landscape.
Notwithstanding such strictures, De Quincey's style is still, as when it first appeared, a thing to marvel at, revealing as it does the grace, the harmony, the wide range and the minute precision of our English speech.
* * * * *
SUMMARY. The early nineteenth century is notable for the rapid progress of democracy in English government, and for the triumph of romanticism in English literature. The most influential factor of the age was the French Revolution, with its watchwords of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. English writers felt the stir of the times, and were inspired by the dream of a new human society ruled by justice and love. In their writing they revolted from the formal standards of the age of Pope, followed their own genius rather than set rules, and wrote with feeling and imagination of the two great subjects of nature and humanity. Such was the contrast in politics and literature with the preceding century that the whole period is sometimes called the age of revolution.