Ir is now some years since the all-powerful Sydney Smith was startled from complacent belief in his own infallibility by a young unknown American traveller: "We, on our side the Atlantic, often venture to revise your criticisms, and rejudge your judgments," was the astounding assertion of one who is now among the leaders of his country's Senate. No wonder the great reviewer looked down with scorn upon the Yankee youth!-no wonder his admiring circle of dilettanti Whigs stood aghast at the audacity of the speaker, and the strangeness of the remark! Times have changed since then; and now, even Sydney Smith would be fain to admit, 1. Autobiographic Sketches, Vols. I. and II. James Hogg, 1853-4. 2. Logic of Political Economy. W. Blackwood and Sons, 1844. 3. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and Suspiria de Profundis, with portrait; Biographical Essays; Miscellaneous Essays; The Casars; Life and Manners; Literary Reminiscences, 2 vols.; Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, 2 vols.; Essays on the Poets, &c., 1 vol.; Historical and Critical Essays, 2 vols.; Letters to a Young Man, &c.; Philosophical Writers, &c., 2 vols. 1852-4. Ticknor, Reed, and Fields: Boston, U. S. VOL. XXXII. NO. III. that among the many tests of the permanent merit of an English work, none, perhaps, is sounder than the judgment of an American public. In literature, as in every thing else, the value of the criticism varies directly with the impartiality of the critic; and therefore, of all criticisms, is the verdict of posterity most valuable and just. Hardly inferior then will be the opinion of a nation which, while speaking the same language as ourselves, is removed by space, as is posterity by time, from the jealousies and fashions of the English world of letters; which, like posterity, can have no interest to serve by an injudicious praise of one author, nor malice to gratify by an indiscriminate censure of another, and which, for the most part, judging fairly and dispassionately of the current literature of England, will in general but anticipate the sentence of future Of this ages. fact the English public is becoming gradually aware. It cannot but remember that Carlyle was recognized in America long before England had perceived his genius and his strength. It knows how the most graceful "vers de société" in the language lay for 19 gotten among musty periodicals and reviews, till America had collected the poems of Mackworth Praed. It was America who first collected and reprinted the admirable miscellanies of James Martineau; and it was America who first republished the vagrant articles of the "English Opium-Eater.' Opium - Eater," and the "Suspiria de Profundis," tell us of an existence almost, we would hope, unequalled in its horror: they show us a character endowed with many noble gifts, and an intellect at once powerful and acute, and they show us intellect and character distorted by one fatal influence. In the fourth volume, "Life and Manners," we have isolated passages in the author's life--scenes of which he has been the witness-narratives which have made deep impression upon his mind. these four as worthy of special commemoration: that I lived in a rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent Church." The name of Thomas De Quincey is doubtless well known to all our readers. His writings (except, indeed, his celebrated chef d'œuvre) are, we suspect, known to very few of them. Of course this chiefly arises from the fact that 66 Blackwood," and other magazines, have for many years monopolized his "Were I," says Mr. De Quincey, "to return literary talent, and that few, if any, of his thanks to Providence for all the separate blesslater productions were ever printed in a sepa-ings of my early situation, I would single out rate form. And yet we cannot but wonder that more curiosity has not been excited among the reading world about a man whose life presents so strange a psychological study; and whose writings are filled with passages of a power and beauty which have never been surpassed by any other prose writer of the age. Of the peculiar charm of Mr. De Quincey's style, we shall dwell at large hereafter. Our first duty must be to sketch the life and character of the man himself. That this is a task of no little delicacy, while Mr. De Quincey is still at Edinburgh, and still contributing to "Tait's Magazine,' or "Hogg's Instructor," we are well aware. But, on the other hand, in reviewing an autobiography, we must, perforce, criticise the autobiographer, especially when his life contains a lesson and a warning which are not less instructive than the narrative of that life is fascinating. Two things moreover we will readily promise. We will judge Mr. De Quincey by his own writings, deliberately given to the public, and not by vulgar gossip or doubtful anecdote; and we will spare him far more than he has ever spared him self or others. The mere outward events of Mr. De Quincey's life, though the least important part of it, are not without their interest-an interest increased by the graphic power of his descriptions, and his subtle analysis of the feelings which particular scenes called forth. Before the publication of the English series of "Autobiographic Sketches" is completed, we are still often obliged to refer to some four volumes of the American reprint. The "Literary Reminiscences" give us an account of his intercourse with many of those great authors of twenty years ago, of whom he is now almost the only living representative. The "Confessions of an English Such were the circumstances of his early childhood. Educated with young sisters, and in a secluded suburb of Manchester; of a temperament already morbidly sensitive, and with faculties sadly too precocious, the boy of six years old received in the death of a favorite sister a shock from which, perhaps, he never entirely recovered. The rude nature of an elder brother, the hatred of an old family-servant, the companionship of two poor idiot-girls-all these, too, threw a shadow over him, and, destroying the fresh healthiness of boyhood, left him to feed upon his own wild fancies and sad thoughts. Much of his existence was "a dream within a dream." He had an island kingdom of "Gombroon," just as Hartley Coleridge held sway over "Ejuxria,"-unlike Hartley Coleridge, that his imaginings took the form of responsibilities and duties weighing heavily upon him,--not of a sovereignty and pomp that redeemed the dull realities of life. In his twelfth year he went to a public school at Bath; and here, again, the peaceloving and meditative boy finds that to contend with somebody was still his fate. The chief trouble of these school-days was, that he wrote his Latin verses too well, and the praises of his master could not compensate for the envious hatred of his schoolfellows. But after some three years spent here, and at a smaller school at Winkfield, Mr. De Quincey bade farewell for a time to the griefs of boyhood, and "stepped ankle-deep into the world." Among the friends of his own age to whom he was most attached was Lord Westport, the eldest son of Lord Altamont, (afterwards Marquis of Sligo.) Under the chaperonage of this sprig of Irish aristocracy he visited Ireland in the spring of 1800. Here he was fortunate enough to witness a ceremony of much splendor in itself, but of an import so deep and laden with such grave results that the outward show was the least part of its interest, alike for actor and spectator. It was the last meeting of the Irish House of Lords, when the "Union Bill" had received the royal assent, and when, for the last time, the old Parliament House at Dublin should be filled with the old legislative Council of the Nation. It was a striking sight, and the reflections to which it gave birth were years afterwards well described by the English boy who beheld it. We must pass hastily by the adventures and incidents that crowd these years (1800-2) of Mr. De Quincey's life. There are sketches of the great people whom he met; accounts of an interview with the King, and a ball at Frogmore; an episode of touching beauty about a younger brother; a visit to Lord Carbery's; and all this, perhaps of slight moment in itself, is interwoven with noble thought and gorgeous sentiment, till the tissue, that would at first sight appear so poor and threadbare, glows with the warmest and the richest hues. We now approach the most important event in our author's history-an event which, though at the time hardly marked, was the pivot whereon the remainder of his life should turn, which should steal away his happiness, but leave him fame instead. There is only one year, or thereabouts, from Mr. De Quincey's return from Ireland to the time when he first yielded to the fascination of opium: but this year was memorable. Mr. De Quincey had been placed under the charge of a tutor for whom he felt the profound contempt that a clever boy always feels for a pompous pedant. He insisted on being at once sent to the University his guardians refused; so, at last taking the matter into his own hands, he got out by night from his tutor's house, and, having resigned his trunk to the tender mercies of a carrier, "set off on foot, carrying a small parcel with some articles of dress under his arm; a small English poet in one pocket, and a small duodecimo volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other." He now commenced a solitary walking-tour through Wales; at one time lodging for weeks together at a farm-house; at another time subsisting "on blackberries, hips and haws, or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have relations in Liverpool or London; more often I wrote love letters to their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants in Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English border." From Wales he moves to London; and here for upwards of sixteen weeks he tells us that he suffered "the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity: but as bitter, perhaps, as any human being can have suffered who has survived it." Finally, indeed, chiefly by the assistance of Lord Westport, he gave up this nomad life, and soon afterwards gained his old wish for a University career: but the trials and horrors of these four months must have told fearfully upon his delicate constitution. In no other chapter of his life do we trace more clearly the noble character which the "English Opium-Eater" originally possessed. We see the independence of the proud and sensitive school-boy; 'the patience with which the voluntary outcast endured these self-inflicted torments rather than humble himself to a pedagogue, or tolerate the injustice of a guardian; above all, we see the sympathy which he showed towards those whose physical sufferings hardly less intolerable than his own-were aggravated a thousand-fold by the sense of shame and degradation. Among the many readers of Mr. De Quincey's "Confessions," there is probably none on whom the story of poor Ann has not left an indelible impression. Mrs. Gaskell, in her beautiful novel of "Ruth," has taught the cold and Puritanic world how much of good there may be even among the most despised and sinful ; but the fiction of "Ruth" grows pale by the side of the true story of that houseless wanderer of the London streets. How touching are these expressions from the English author to this poor girl-when time and chance had severed them, and he could never render service to her who, wretched as she was, had still been his benefactress and friend: "I sought her," he writes, "in hope: so it was for years: now I should fear to see her!— and her cough, which grieved me when I parted from her, is now my consolation. I now wish to see her no more, but think of her more gladly as one long since laid in the grave; in the grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen." It was in the autumn of 1804 that Mr. De Quincey was first inoculated with the taste for opium. He had been suffering from rheumatic pains in the face and head; a college acquaintance, whom he accidentally met, (on such accidents how often do consequences the most momentous hang!) recommended opium; he entered an unknown druggist's shop, and, like Thalaba in the witches' lair, wound about himself the first threads of a coil which it should tax his utmost efforts to shake off. From this time the outward events of his life are only interesting as they modify and control his internal experiences and suffering; and it is upon these last that the attention must now be concentrated. For many years the "Opium-Eater" lived in the Lake districts of Westmoreland, the friend of Wordsworth and Southey; and finally settled down among the "Blackwood" clique at Edinburgh, with Wilson, Alison, and Aytoun, as his colleagues and allies. Those of our readers who may desire to know something more of Mr. De Quincey's present mode of life, we would refer to Mr. Gilfillan's "Literary Portraits." They may there read how his neckcloth is fastened, and what is his style of conversation (with Mr. Gilfillan)! They may there, too, we may add, en passant, learn to acquire a happy flow of tumid eloquence, and a very desirable command of most incongruous im agery. * unjust to Wordsworth, and so forgetful of his unnumbered kindnesses, and his reverend old age, that his best friends cannot excuse his conduct. He first placed Wordsworth as an idol, on too high a pedestal, and then, prompted by some imagined slight to his most sensitive vanity, he turned Iconoclast, and filled page after page with sneer and inuendo. This same characteristic, which would, in the case of another, have made him so clear-sighted to any want of delicacy, has given him such a morbid thirst for sympathy, that he opens to the readers of a magazine the innermost recesses of his heart, and tells what they at least feel that no stranger should ever have been told. Again, it was this sensibility which first gave him the relish for the self-indulgent habit which was for many long years the bane of his existence. We have sometimes heard expressions of wonder that one of Mr. De Quincey's character should fall a prey to a merely sensual gratification. They know little, however, of human nature, who do not see that this sensitive temperament is itself the cause of greatest danger. Those nerves so finely strung-will they not vibrate to every touch alike impure and holy? Those senses, so exquisitely formed that a thousand trifles of sunset or of melody have for them a charm which coarser natures can never feel-will they not also The most marked peculiarity of Mr. De Quincey's character-a peculiarity which first induced, and was then exaggerated by, the constant use of opium-is his extreme sensi-throb as readily at the excitement of more bility. In itself perhaps a blessing, yet is this sensibility the most dangerous gift the gods can give to man. Piquing himself on his refinement, the man of sensibility will too often drink the deepest of the cup of dissipation. Shrinking from contact with the vulgar world, he is constantly craving for that world's admiration and sympathy, and will readily offer up to it the most sacred of his emotions, if the incense of praise do but rise around the sacrifice. He is earthly pleasure? That deep yearning for beauty or for joy-will it not hurry along, till bitter experience has taught that the pleasurable and the fair too often leave behind no richer fruit than disease that wears the body, and remorse that eats away the soul? Was it not so with Charles Lamb over his bottle and his pipe ?-with Keats in his London home?-with Hartley Coleridge in that quiet Grasmere valley? But still more fascinating than the influences which enthralled these, is the temptation which could subdue such men as the author of the "Ancient Mariner," and Mr. De Quincey. The use of opium is of great antiquity. It was probably known to Homer, and is, in all likelihood, the drug "Nepenthe" which (Odyssey, iv. 221) Helen of Troy passes round to her husband's guests.* The Romans were *This passage is so curious, that we subjoin it as translated by Pope: "Meantime, with genial joy to warm the soul, |