which the old gentleman was ever brought outand bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the thought that came over me: "Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting to rigor, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season uttered the following memorable application"Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time- but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write it -"Woman, you are superannuated!" John Billet did not survive. long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escritoir after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was a Poor Relation. DE QUINCEY: INVENTOR OF MODERN "IMPAS- P ICTURE to yourself a shy little man, with bright, roving eyes, thin features, and many of the physical characteristics of the scholar; give this man a luxuriant imagination, and a nervous organization that seems to require such a stimulant as opium in excessive quantities, make him a writer, and you have De Quincey. In every sense of the word he was a thorough scholar, as witness the Latin and Greek quotations scattered through his writings and seeming an inevitable and natural part of his thinking; a brilliant conversationist, as we may gather from the sparkling humor and sly wit that make their way into nearly all his work; and, strangely enough, at the same time a dreamer, though in De Quincey we find dreams associated with scholarly accuracy and a remarkable power of subtle analysis. Like Lewis Carroll, he had all the shyness of the scholar. He therefore takes refuge in the anonymity of essay-writing, where he may indulge his brilliant conversational power with the utmost freedom. De Quincey's essays are therefore delightfully conversational, though they are the product of the solitary imagination. |