the intellectual might necessary to vanquish opium in the three fearful assaults of which De Quincey informs us, and then decide concerning the powers of him whose works, wondrous as they are, were all accomplished in the breathing spaces between paroxysms of convulsive warfare. It may, of course, be alleged, that without the opium we never should have had those writings which are most closely associated with the name of De Quincey. But it is our decided opinion that the dreams produced by opium were but the occasion of the visions wherewith the opium eater has amazed the world. These are strictly works of imagination, and may be tried by the same tests as the dreams of Richter and Novalis. We concede that much of their terrific coloring is traceable to opium; but De Quincey's imagination, we are assured, would have worked under any conditions.

We have done little more than glance at the extraordinary man and the extraordinary works of which we have been treating. We have left ourselves no space to speak of his taste, which yet so well deserves notice. We merely remind our readers of his account of the little heroine of Easedale and her infant brothers and sisters, and bid them think of the perfect simplicity of the narrative, of the absence of all rhetoric, of the tender delicacy of the feeling. We merely ask them to consider the grace and ease, the softened glow without glitter, the chastely arranged flower wreaths from which every gaudy weed is instinctively bidden away, in one word, the peace and moderation, which everywhere meet us in the writings of De Quincey. Nor can we speak of him further as a humorist, although this is perhaps his most important and prevailing aspect. Often his humor is merely an exquisite flavor of drollery, a half hidden smile, a something

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which fills you with a certain quiet comfort, but does not make you laugh outright; sometimes it is broad farce, when you do laugh, and cannot but laugh, were it only at the imperturbable gravity of the comic actor; sometimes it is downright horse play, as when old "Toad in the hole" is kicked out, by universal consent of the company and of readers, "despite his silvery hairs and his angelic smile." Sometimes, although very rarely, De Quincey's humor intrudes into places where its presence is utterly indefensible. We shall instance one; by far the most striking. We think it were difficult to match in our late literature, if indeed in our whole literature, the pathetic effect realized in his paper on the Maid of Orleans. De Quincey has there enabled us to define, clearly and conclusively, the function which such as she have, even in their death, performed for mankind. We have so much to harden us in this world, so stern is the struggle of existence, so sadly do the morning dew drops and the early flowers vanish or wither in life's hot day, that you actually confer a precious boon and benefit on a man, when you make him shed a noble tear. No man ever wept with Cordelia by the bed of her stricken father, no man ever saddened at the tale of Margaret's sorrows in the "Excursion,” no man ever hung over the dying bed of a true friend, without being a better and a gentler man. And who does not see that, besides all else of instruction and of consolation which arises from the pyres of the martyrs of Christianity, besides the deathless lessons of courage, of devotion, of purest holiness, which they convey, there is this also in the legacy of the fathers to the human race, that, by sympathizing sorrow over their woes, each generation is elevated, and humanized, and ennobled. This great lesson De Quincey has embodied, with an almost

unexampled felicity, in his paper on Joan of Arc. But what must we say to the fact that even here humor is permitted to intrude, that even here there is the sacrilegious play of wit and fun? We must not approach that awful and beautiful spectacle, round which angels were weeping, through a porch painted with satyrs and bacchanals; no “insulting light" must "glimmer on our tears;' we must approach through an avenue of cypress, under whose shade we may weep alone. We can pardon the gambolings of an irrepressible humor when the matter is argumentative, but the heavens must be hung with sackcloth around the pyre of Joan of Arc.

The time has probably not yet arrived to attempt a final portraiture of De Quincey, to estimate the value of his works, and to ascertain their rightful place among English classics. The public mind has yet, in great measure, to be introduced to these works, and a few introductory remarks, a few almost colloquial hints, are all we have here offered. It will, indeed, whensoever attempted, be a task of no common difficulty to portray, in its complete and united proportions, the extraordinary mind of which these multiform and many-tinted writings are the production and manifestation. We must not attempt it here. To speak of separate characteristics is, indeed, easy, whether they be those of the author or his compositions. One may mark the indications of a gigantic receptive faculty, seizing, hundred-handed, and gathering into one storehouse, from all lands and centuries, what intellectual treasures it chooses to make its own; proof may be adduced of that power of original thought, which penetrates into untrodden regions, but dimly pointed towards before, and of that creative, imaginative glance which gives form and life to what therefore was airy

nothing; special attention may be called to a sympathy resembling a musical instrument of unmeasured range, which can distil a melody more tender than the tear of childhood, but has yet chords to voice the roar of ocean or the thunders of war; and you may enlarge indefinitely on the style, on that astonishing mastery over the English language, by which, in swiftly changing variation, you are startled, animated, melted, terrified, amused, and which at times attains a softness, a beauty, an aërial glow, to be claimed as peculiarly De Quincey's, and which compel the describer, sensible of his weakness, to borrow the colors of the master himself, and liken them to the timid tremblings of the dawn, or the blending of moon-light, dawnlight, dream-light. But these are at best scattered traits, -individual instances; it is their union which is the wonder and the peculiarity, and of this union we present no theory at present.

FIRST SERIES. 5

II.

TENNYSON AND HIS TEACHERS.

MEN seem by universal consent to have associated the genius of Scott with something of magic and enchantment; not enchantment of a stern or gloomy character, but of a gay, glittering, Arabian sort. A peculiar and natural fitness appears to have been recognized in that household phrase, The Wizard of Waverley. And I cannot but believe that the general sense has in this instance been specially felicitous. How can we better represent Scott in our imagination, than as a kindly magician, surrounded by groups of eager and delighted children, before whose eyes he evokes group after group, in endless procession, in that broad, clear, wondrous mirror of his; himself smiling the while, as he half reclines on his well-padded seat, less in complacency at the power of his enchantments, than in pleasure, mingled with mild surprise, at the ecstacies of wonder and joy into which, by every waving of his wand, he throws the children around him? Swiftly, gracefully, beautifully, that long procession moves, the scene ever changing into new forms of loveliness, while an airy music, now rapid and shrill as the sound of clanging arms, now faintly, slowly sinking into mournful cadence, now swelling and glowing into the richer har mony of love, is breathed around. The scene is now