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DE QUINCEY:

INVENTOR OF MODERN "IMPAS-
SIONED PROSE"

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.

As De Quincey through a somewhat long life gained his living by his pen, his collected works are extremely miscellaneous in character. He was an excellent critic, a sympathetic biographical writer, a successful producer of such amusing literary curiosities as his essay "On Murder Considered as a Fine Art." But his first success, and the work by which he is best known, is his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," in which, in his description of his opium dreams, he gives us the first examples of what he calls "impassioned prose." Possibly the words "highly imaginative prose" would describe it better. It was distinctly prose and not poetry, since the writer never cuts loose entirely from ground facts; but it exhibits capabilities of prose that had never before been suspected. This "impassioned prose "De Quincey seemed always to consider his most valuable contribution to literature, and later in life he continued the "Confessions" in a sort of sequel on which he expended his most loving care. The plan of this sequel was never fully carried out; but we have the "Suspiria de Profundis" and "The English Mail Coach"; the former of which contains the finest specimen of all his work, according to Professor Masson ("Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow "), the latter his most extreme example of lyrical prose, namely, the "Dream-Fugue" forming Part III. In this De Quincey attempts nothing less than the reproduction of the effect of solemn and lofty

music by mere imaginative description; and in that attempt many critics think that De Quincey was not wholly successful; but it is interesting to note how Richard Wagner, against prolonged critical hostility, carried to success in actual music the imaginative method De Quincey here uses in language description.

While the "Dream-Fugue" may be considered a pure opium dream, still we should lose the point and meaning of it if we failed to note how every lyrical image in this part of the composition corresponds to a prose fact in the first and second parts. The logical relationship is perfect, and is elaborated with the utmost thought and care. Success is attained by self-restraint; it is freedom through self-mastery and obedience to the everlasting laws of thought and emotion and universal truth. This is lyrical writing that attains its success in mature life, not in youth as lyrical poetry does, and not only genius but time is required for its perfection.

De Quincey's ordinary style, seen to admirable advantage in the first parts of "The English Mail Coach," is graceful and sinuous in the extreme, winding in and out through a complicated labyrinth, yet without ever losing the clue of the thought, or becoming for a moment obscure, or being betrayed into the slightest awkwardness; and when we come to the "Dream-Fugue" we think of the musician passionately devoted to his musical art who steals into the organ loft when he

knows that but one or two chance devotees are listening in the empty cathedral, and pours forth his most triumphant chords. "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" is in a more subdued and subtle key, more delicately artistic, more perfect; yet we could hardly understand it on a first reading were we not prepared for it by the more obvious" Mail Coach."

THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH

N the Preface to the volume of his collected works containing "The English Mail Coach," De Quincey gave a brief explanation of his design. After summarizing the facts given at length in the second section, entitled "The Vision of Sudden Death," he goes on as follows: "But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from the dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled 'Dream-Fugue on the Theme of Sudden Death.'

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The first section "The Glory of Motion"— was a general discursive essay on the English mail coach and the pleasures and observations incident. to riding upon the top of it. It formed nearly half of the whole work. Of this De Quincey says:

"What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, -the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence, this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared: all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which features at that time lay-first, in velocity unprecedented; secondly, in the power and beauty of the horses; thirdly, in the official connection with the government of a great nation; and, fourthly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circumstantially in the first or introductory section — 'The Glory of Motion.' The three first were distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. . . . So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of collision - namely, an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's

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