which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth; Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

24. What, then, is to insure this pile which now towers above me from sharing the fate of mightier mausoleums? The time 370 must come when its gilded vaults, which now spring so loftily, shall lie in rubbish beneath the feet; when, instead of the sound of melody and praise, the wind shall whistle through the broken arches, and the owl hoot from the shattered tower-when the garish sunbeam shall break into these gloomy mansions of death, 375 and the ivy twine round the fallen column, and the foxglove hang its blossoms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin!

367. Camby'ses, son of Darius, and 368. Mizraim (the native name of Egypt) King of Persia (reigned B.C. 529-522). He conquered Egypt; hence the force of "spared,"

etc.

any King of Egypt-a signification intended also by Pharaoh (a general name, like "Cæsar ").

66

380

CHARACTERIZATION BY LESLIE STEPHEN.'

1. One may fancy that if De Quincey's language were emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the words would move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia moved Whitefield's hearers.

The sentences are so delicately balanced, and so skilfully constructed, that his finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the aid of metre. Humbler writers are content if they can get through a single phrase without producing a decided jar. They aim at keeping up a steady jog-trot, which shall not give actual pain to the jaws of the readers. Even our great writers generally settle down to a stately but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or Gibbon, or are content with adopting a style as transparent and inconspicuous as possible. Language, according to the common phrase, is the dress of thought; and that dress is the best, according to modern canons of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer.

2. De Quincey scorns this sneaking maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges our admiration by appearing in the richest coloring that can be got out of the dictionary. His language deserves a commendation sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich garments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is so admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must consider it as something apart from the substance. The most exquisite passages in De Quincey's writings are all more or less attempts to carry out the idea expressed in the title of the dream fugue. They are intended to be musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes. They are impassioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite sentiment, but because, from the structure and combination of the sentences, they harmonize with certain phases of emotion. It is in the success with which he produces such effects as these that De Quincey may fairly claim to be almost, if not quite, unrivalled in our language.

3. It would be difficult or impossible, and certainly it would be superfluous, to define with any precision the peculiar flavor of De Quincey's style. The chemistry of critics has not yet succeeded in resolving any such product into its constituent elements; nor, if it could, should we be much nearer to understanding their effect in combination.

4. A few specimens would do more than any description; and De Quincey is too well known to justify quotation. It may be enough to notice that most of his brilliant performances are variations on the same theme. He appeals to our terror of the infinite, to the shrinking of the human mind before astronomical

distances and geological periods of time. He paints vast perspectives, opening in long succession, till we grow dizzy in the contemplation. The cadences of his style suggest sounds echoing each other, and growing gradually fainter, till they die away into infinite distance. Two great characteristics, as he tells us, of his opium dreams were a deep-seated melancholy and an exaggeration of the things of space and time. Nightly he descended into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that he could ever reascend. He saw buildings and landscapes in "proportion so vast as the human eye is not fitted to receive." He seemed to live ninety or a hundred years in a night, and even to pass through periods far beyond the limits of human existence. Melancholy and an awestricken sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast. We tremble at his audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is justified by the result. I know of no other modern writer who has soared into the same regions with so uniform and easy a flight.

I. ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH. [INTRODUCTION.-The following paper, which is given entire, is from De Quincey's Miscellaneous Essays. It well illustrates some of the most notable characteristics of his literary art-his subtlety, sometimes attenuated to superfineness, his minute explicitness of statement, his digressions and "returns," irrelevant but always interesting, and his admirable skill in the niceties of sentential structure. The higher qualities of his impassioned prose are exemplified in the second extract.]

1. From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—1-8. The first paragraph exemplifies De Quincey's tendency to "minute explicitness of statement." (See Introduction.) He had felt great perplexity "on one point." "It was this." 'Produced an effect." "The effect was," etc.

2. the knocking. See Macbeth, act ii., scene 3.

which succeeds to the murder of Duncan produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and 5 a depth of solemnity; yet, however I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I could never see why it should produce such an effect.

2. Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in oppo-10 sition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust nothing else; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this, out of ten thousand instances 15 that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the law of that science; as, for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to 20 each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now, in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly incapable to make the smallest approximation to 25 it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is—that he allows his understanding to

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-5. it. What noun does "it" represent?

5, 6. awfulness... solemnity. Discriminate between these synonyms. 6, 7. understanding. The term is here used in a specific sense as contrasted with reason. For this technical use of the word "understanding," see Webster's Unabridged.

9-44. The whole of paragraph 2 is a digression, as will be seen by the nat ure of the connective introducing paragraph 3. State in a general way the substance of this digression.—What is the author's aim in inducing the reader not to trust to the mere "understanding?"

12. meanest. Force of the epithet as here used?

15, 16. Of this... one. What kind of sentence rhetorically?-What figure of speech is exemplified in the expression "ten thousand?" (See Def. 34.) 25. to make. Remark on this form of expression.

26. Yet why? For. Supply the ellipsis after “why” and before “for.” 27. reason is. The dash is De Quincey's own: what effect do you suppose he wishes to produce by its use?