THE CANON OF DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS,
WITH REFERENCES TO SOME OF HIS
UNIDENTIFIED ARTICLES.

BY WILLIAM E. A. AXON, LL.D., F.R.S.L.

[Read November 27th, 1912.]

I.

THE COLLECTED EDITIONS OF DE QUINCEY.

THE writings of Thomas De Quincey present some bibliographical puzzles of a very tangled character. These arise from the circumstances of his life, and the consequence is that whilst there are separate collections intended to be all-embracing, there is no complete edition of De Quincey's writings. This is the starting-point of the present inquiry.

THE AMERICAN EDITION OF DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.

The Opium Eater was essentially a periodical essayist; with few exceptions his writings appeared at first in magazines, sometimes with, sometimes without, any marks of identification. Left to himself De Quincey would never have faced the troublesome task of hunting out these children of his fancy from the hiding-places in which they had taken refuge. It is not probable that amid the storm and stress of his perturbed career he had kept either copies or even records of these scattered fugitives, and notwithstanding his tenacious memory he could not always feel absolute certainty in claiming his own.

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To Mr. James T. Fields, the American publisher, is due the happy thought of collecting into book form essays lying hidden in the back volumes of Blackwood,' Tait,' and other periodicals. He put himself into communication with the Opium. Eater, who was deeply gratified by the enthusiasm and industry of Fields, and by the liberality with which he treated an English author, who, in the then absence of any international copyright, had no legal claim in the United States to the offspring of his brains. This feeling is expressed in a letter which appears in the edition, published by Ticknor and Fields, "From the Author to the American Editor of his Works," and is as follows:

"These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so far as regards the United States, of your house exclusively; not with any view to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you have already rendered me; namely, first, in having brought together so widely scattered a collection-a difficulty which in my own hands by too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the eyes of those whe have taken an interest in the original series. But at all events, good or bad, they are now tendered to the appropriation of your individual house, the Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, according to the amplest extent of any power to make such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law or custom in America.

"I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by your honorable house.

"Ever believe me, my dear sir,

"Your faithful and obliged,

"THOMAS DE QUINCEY."

In this edition there appears a paper on the "Traditions of the Rabbins," which gossip attributed to the Opium Eater. When consulted De Quincey at first demurred, but eventually gave way, and the article appeared. But it was in reality a contribution to "Blackwood" of Dr. George Croly, the author of that remarkable romance, 'Salathiel.'

The American edition extended to twenty-two volumes, and is the editio princeps. Without the preliminary labour of Mr. James T. Fields there would have been no general collection of De Quincey's writings. Lovers of literature will for those labours hold his memory blessed.

THE AUTHOR'S EDITION.

At the instigation of Mr. James Hogg, and helped and stimulated by the American edition, De Quincey prepared fourteen volumes of "Selections, Grave and Gay," the last appearing in the year 1860, after the death of the Opium Eater. This edition contained much fresh matter added by the author in the process of a revision, which in some cases amounted to re-writing. This retained Croly's article on the Rabbins. The Opium Eater found the work of revising and re-casting very tedious and laborious, and the chronic disorder in which he kept his papers must have contributed greatly to the

difficulty. There are some proof-sheets of De Quincey in the British Museum, which are very interesting. On the proof-sheet of page 351 of "Secret Societies" he writes, "This close of a note on Lobeck-I cannot find the beginning of, so it must be omitted. The rest is all right and correctly located by alphabet marks or otherwise." This quotation will illustrate the curious accidents of the text of De Quincey. The note was appended to his article on "Secret Societies" in Tait' for August, 1847, and was reprinted in the American edition in all its subsequent issues. But when the author was revising the paper for the first English edition he mislaid the opening lines, and therefore sacrificed the whole of it. Dr. Masson did not restore the note in his completer edition. Hence, it appears in all the American and in none of the English editions. The note refers to the " Aglaophamus of Christian August Lobeck, which appeared in 1829. Nearly a page of annotation is thus sacrificed, and this includes the characteristic passage in which the difference between doctrinal religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and the Pagan or ceremonial religions is pointed out-a distinction of great importance, but which was overlooked both by Legation" and by his

Warburton in his "Divine Legation opponents.

*

DR. MASSON'S EDITION.

In 1889 the late Professor David Masson undertook the preparation of an edition which extends to

* I have given a fuller account of these proof-sheets in the Scottish Review,' November 26th, 1908.