[pg 349]
"Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sickOf all the falseness, all the little aims,The weary vanities, the gasping joys,The slow procession of this satiate world!Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!Down through the old reverberating time,I see Thy knights in wonderful arrayGo out to victory, like the solemn starsFighting in courses, with their conquering swords,Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,Their living glory, their majestic death.Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,So high, that all the glittering, misty world,All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;So still, not any sound of silentnessExpressed the silence, nor the pallid sunBurned on his eyelids; all alone and still,Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.But always, down the hoary mountain-side,Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,Still from his never sated soul went up,"Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,And when its silvery anger smote the air,Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,And followed to the field. He followed, too,—All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,All the fierce instincts of a warring raceKindled like flame in every tingling limb,And raging in his soul on fire with war.He heard a thousand voices call him on:Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despairFrom swamps and forests and the still bayousThat hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:From fields and marshes where the tropic sunScorches a million laborers scourged to work;From homes that are not homes; from mother-heartsTorn from the infants lingering at their breasts;From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;[pg 350]From all a country groaning in its chains.Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,And armed, and sped to battle. Now no moreHe cried or prayed,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"So in the front of deadly strife he stood;The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,The restless hurricane of screaming shells,The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,The sudden clash of sabres, and the beatOf rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,The dreadful music of a grappling world,That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,But fell upon its turning. Over himFluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,His hot life running scarlet from its source,And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,As still as on the silent mountain-top;So still that from his quick-remembering heartBurst that old cry,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"Then a bright mist descended over him,And in its central glory stood a shape,Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding handsStretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divineLike a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:—"The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;No more in golden chalices I dwell,No longer in a vision, angel-borne:Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,So have I broken thee and poured thy life,So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,And over all its anguish stole a smile;The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breathSighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,Sobbing, but sweet,—"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"
"Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sickOf all the falseness, all the little aims,The weary vanities, the gasping joys,The slow procession of this satiate world!Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!Down through the old reverberating time,I see Thy knights in wonderful arrayGo out to victory, like the solemn starsFighting in courses, with their conquering swords,Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,Their living glory, their majestic death.Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
"Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!
Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!
Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sick
Of all the falseness, all the little aims,
The weary vanities, the gasping joys,
The slow procession of this satiate world!
Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!
Down through the old reverberating time,
I see Thy knights in wonderful array
Go out to victory, like the solemn stars
Fighting in courses, with their conquering swords,
Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,
Their living glory, their majestic death.
Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,So high, that all the glittering, misty world,All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;So still, not any sound of silentnessExpressed the silence, nor the pallid sunBurned on his eyelids; all alone and still,Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.But always, down the hoary mountain-side,Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,Still from his never sated soul went up,"Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,
So high, that all the glittering, misty world,
All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,
And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;
So still, not any sound of silentness
Expressed the silence, nor the pallid sun
Burned on his eyelids; all alone and still,
Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,
Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.
But always, down the hoary mountain-side,
Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,
In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,
Still from his never sated soul went up,
"Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,And when its silvery anger smote the air,Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,And followed to the field. He followed, too,—All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,All the fierce instincts of a warring raceKindled like flame in every tingling limb,And raging in his soul on fire with war.He heard a thousand voices call him on:Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despairFrom swamps and forests and the still bayousThat hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:From fields and marshes where the tropic sunScorches a million laborers scourged to work;From homes that are not homes; from mother-heartsTorn from the infants lingering at their breasts;From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;[pg 350]From all a country groaning in its chains.Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,And armed, and sped to battle. Now no moreHe cried or prayed,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,
And when its silvery anger smote the air,
Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,
And followed to the field. He followed, too,—
All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,
All the fierce instincts of a warring race
Kindled like flame in every tingling limb,
And raging in his soul on fire with war.
He heard a thousand voices call him on:
Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despair
From swamps and forests and the still bayous
That hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:
From fields and marshes where the tropic sun
Scorches a million laborers scourged to work;
From homes that are not homes; from mother-hearts
Torn from the infants lingering at their breasts;
From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;
From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;
From all a country groaning in its chains.
Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;
He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,
And armed, and sped to battle. Now no more
He cried or prayed,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
So in the front of deadly strife he stood;The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,The restless hurricane of screaming shells,The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,The sudden clash of sabres, and the beatOf rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,The dreadful music of a grappling world,That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,But fell upon its turning. Over himFluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,His hot life running scarlet from its source,And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,As still as on the silent mountain-top;So still that from his quick-remembering heartBurst that old cry,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
So in the front of deadly strife he stood;
The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,
The restless hurricane of screaming shells,
The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,
The sudden clash of sabres, and the beat
Of rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,
Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,
The dreadful music of a grappling world,
That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,
But fell upon its turning. Over him
Fluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,
While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,
His hot life running scarlet from its source,
And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,
As still as on the silent mountain-top;
So still that from his quick-remembering heart
Burst that old cry,—"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
Then a bright mist descended over him,And in its central glory stood a shape,Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding handsStretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divineLike a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:—"The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;No more in golden chalices I dwell,No longer in a vision, angel-borne:Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,So have I broken thee and poured thy life,So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,And over all its anguish stole a smile;The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breathSighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,Sobbing, but sweet,—"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"
Then a bright mist descended over him,
And in its central glory stood a shape,
Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding hands
Stretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divine
Like a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:—
"The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;
The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;
No more in golden chalices I dwell,
No longer in a vision, angel-borne:
Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.
Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:
Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.
As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,
So have I broken thee and poured thy life,
So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,
So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."
Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,
And over all its anguish stole a smile;
The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breath
Sighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,
Sobbing, but sweet,—"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"
[pg 351]
In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means it were meant simply to justify the undertaking. In regard to any of the great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest, which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking mind.5By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. Yet there are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely demand the inaugural flourish of arms,—which, like the rosy flood of dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. And there are lives which proceed as by the movements of music,—which, must therefore be heralded by overtures: majestic steppings, heard in the background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of procession, to sound the note of preparation.
Else I should plungein medias resupon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in all such courtesies,—
"Neu desint epulis rosæ";
"Neu desint epulis rosæ";
particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar incantations,—only the heralding of certain precise claims will this monarch listen to as the justinferiæ, the fitting sacrifice or hecatomb of our homage.
The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once disclosed, which[pg 352]are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these revelations, no Romanpontifex maximus, were it even Cæsar himself, could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.
The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated. It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he—this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy—resolve into orderly constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his life, two of which are especially to be noticed. First, a ruling disposition towards meditation, constituting him, in the highest sense of the word, a poet. Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental constitution derived from his use of opium,—qualities which, although they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power, at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and creatively, as to its constructive faculty. These two conditions, each concurrent with the other in its ruling influence, impart to his life a degree of psychological interest which belongs to no other on record. Nor is this all. The reader knows how often a secondary interest will attach to the mightiest of conquerors or to the wisest of sovereigns, who is not merely in himself, and through his own deeds, magnificent, but whose glory is many times repeated and piled up by numerous reverberations of itself from a contemporary race of Titans. Thus, doubtless, Charles V., although himself King of Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and a portion of Italy, gloried in the sublime empery of the Turkish Solyman, as by some subtile connection of fate sympathetic with his own. A secondary interest of this nature belongs to the life of De Quincey,—a life which inclosed, as an island, a whole period of English literature, one, too, which in activity and originality is unsurpassed by any other, including the names of Scott and Dickens, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, of Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. His connection with very many of these was not simply that of coëxistence, but also of familiar intercourse.
Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author. Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called him,—the prince of hierophants,—having reference to the matter of his revelations; but in hismanner, in his style of composition, he is something more than this: here he stands themonarchamongst rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of his life and genius.
But, besides these, there is a large section of his works, the aim of which is purely intellectual, where feeling is not at all involved; and surely there is not, in either ancient or modern literature, a section which, in the same amount of space, exhibits the same degree of intense activity on the part of the analytic understanding, applied to the illustration of truth or to the solution of vexed problems. This latter class is the more remarkable from its polar antithesis to the former; just as, in his life, it is a most remarkable characteristic of the man,[pg 353]that, rising above all other men through the rhapsodies of dreams, he should yet be able truly to say of himself that he had devoted a greater number of hours to intellectual pursuits than any other man whom he had seen, heard of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought, than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the demonstration,—between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light with warmth in all degrees,—in pathos, in humor,6in genial illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau to have written "Dinner, Real and Reputed," or the paper on "The Essenes," in both of which great erudition is necessary, but in which erudition is as nothing when compared to the faculty of recombining into novel forms what previously had been so grouped as to be misunderstood, or had lacked just the one element necessary for introducing order. To have written these would have entitled Rousseau to a separate sceptre. Or, moving into a realm of art totally distinct from this, suppose him to have been the author of "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts": that would mount a new plume in Rousseau's hat. But I happen just now to be reminded of another little paper, numbering about six pages, entitled, "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth": give himthat, too. Why, the[pg 354]little French king is beginning to assume an imperial consequence! We beg the reader's pardon for indulging in comparisons of this nature, which are always disagreeable; but we have this excuse, that the two writers are often mentioned as on the same level, and with no appreciation of that unlimited range of power which belongs to De Quincey, but not at all to Rousseau. All but one of the trophies which we have hypothetically transferred to the Frenchman adorn a single volume out of twenty-two, in the Boston edition. Nor is this one imperial column adorned by these alone: there are, besides,—alas for Rousseau!—two otherspolia opimaby which the French master is, in his own field, proved not the first, nor even the second,—proximus, sed non secundus,—so wide is the distance between De Quincey andanyother antagonist. These two are the essays respectively entitled, "Joan of Arc," and "The English Mail-Coach."
It is impossible to be exhaustive upon such a subject as that which I have undertaken. I shall select, therefore, two prominent centres, about which the thoughts which I wish to present naturally revolve: De Quincey's childhood, and his opium-experiences.
Thomas de Quincey—hierophant, rhapsodist, philosopher—was born at Greenhay, then a suburb of Manchester, in Lancashire County, England, on the 15th of August, 1785. According to his own account, the family of the De Quinceys was of Norwegian origin; and after its transfer to France, in connection with William the Norman, it received its territorial appellation from the village of Quincy, in Normandy. Thence, at the time of the Norman Invasion, it was transplanted to England, where, as afterwards in Scotland, it rose to the highest position, not merely in connection with a lordly title and princely estates, but chiefly on account of valuable services rendered to the State, and conferring preeminence in baronial privilege and consideration.
So sensitive was De Quincey, even at the early age of fifteen, on the point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having, in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted upon his purely Norman blood,—blood that in the baronial wars had helped to establish the earliest basis of English constitutional liberty, and that had flowed from knightly veins in the wars of the Crusades. Robert De Quincey came into England with William the Conqueror, uniting with whose fortunes, he fared after the Conquest as a feudal baron, founding the line of Winchester; and that he was a baron of the first water is evident from the statement of Gerard Leigh,—that his armorial device was inscribed (and how inscribed, if not memorially and as a mark of eminent distinction?) on the stained glass in the old church of St. Paul's.
And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocraticDebeing omitted,)—a branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,—as indicating how surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our fancied[pg 355]retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its accumulated violence,—as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread alternative,—it is interesting to note how this same family, separated by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for refuge,—a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.
But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however, remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family freshly grounded upon a second heritage,—one sublime in its order above that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever imperishable,—namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought under distinct illumination for all time to come. These are the vast acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,—acres that have been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire. And for De Quincey himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which they wrought in their lifetime, we find it impossible to cherish a single regret, that, possibly, by the treasonable slip of a predecessor, he may have been robbed of an earldom,—or even that, during a life which by some years overlapped the average allotment to humanity, and through which were daily accumulating the most splendid results in the very highest departments of philosophy and art, these accumulations nevertheless went on without any notable recognition from a court the most liberal in all Europe; no badge of outward knighthood coming to him through all these years, as formerly to Sir Thomas Browne for his subtile meditations, and to Sir William Hamilton for his philosophic speculations. The absence of such merelynominaltitles excites in us no deep regret; there is in them little that is monumental, and the pretty tinsel, with which they gild monuments already based on substantial worth, is easily, and without a sigh, exchanged for that everlasting sunshine reflected from the loving remembrances of human hearts.
But at the same time that we so willingly dispense with these nominal conditions[pg 356]in the case of De Quincey,—though, assuredly, there was never a man upon earth whom these conditions, considered as aërial hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more consistently fit,—we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its earliest tendencies and impulses,—in that season of immature preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation, and while yet a marvellous uncertainty hangs and broods over the beginnings of life, as over the infant rivulet yet dandled and tended by its mountain-nurses. For, although there are certain elements which rigidly and by a foreseen certainty determine its course, as, for instance, an extraordinary vantage-height of source, securing for it the force and swiftness of a torrent,—yet how shifting are the mountain-winds, chilling into frosty silence or quickening with Favonian warmth, and how shifting the flying clouds, which, whether marshalled in mimic tournament above it, or in the shock of a real conflict, forever sway its tender fountains! Thus, even in inexperienced childhood, do the scales of the individual destiny begin, favorably or unfavorably, to determine their future preponderations, by reason of influences merely material, and before, indeed, any sovereignty save a corporeal one (in conjunction with heavenly powers) is at all recognized in life. For, in this period, with which above all others we associate influences the most divine, "with trailing clouds of glory," those influences which are purely material are the most efficiently operative. Against the former, adult man, in whom reason is developed,maybattle, though ignobly, and, for himself, ruinously; and against the latter oftentimes hemuststruggle, to escape ignominious shipwreck. But the child, helpless alike for both these conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields him from all conscious guilt, bound over in the most impotent (though, because impotent and unconscious, the least humiliating) slavery to material circumstance,—a slavery which he cannot escape, and which, during the period of its absolutism, absorbs his very blood, bone, and nerve. To poverty, which the strong man resists, the child succumbs; on the other hand, that affluence of comfort, from which philosophy often weans the adult, wraps childhood about with a sheltering care; and fortunate indeed it is, if the mastery of Nature over us during our first years is thus a gentle dealing with us, fertilizing our powers with the rich juices of an earthly prosperity. And in this respect De Quinceywaseminently fortunate. The powers of heaven and of earth and—if we side with Milton andotherpagan mythologists in attributing the gift of wealth to some Plutonian dynasty—the dark powersunderthe earth seem to have conjointly arrayed themselves in his behalf. Whatever storms were in the book of Fate written against his name they postponed till a far-off future, in the mean time granting him the happiest of all childhoods. Really of gentle blood, and thus gaining whatever substantial benefits in constitutional temperament and susceptibilitiescouldbe thence derived, although lacking, as Pope also had lacked, the factitious circumstance and airy heralding of this distinction, he was, in addition to this, surrounded by elements of aristocratic refinement and luxury, and thus hedged in not merely against the assault, in any form, of pinching poverty, (as would be any one in tolerably comfortable circumstances,) but even against the most trivial hint of possible want,—against all necessity of limitation or retrenchment in any normal line of expenditure.
He was the son of a merchant, who, at the early age of thirty-nine, died, leaving to his family—a wife and six children—an estate yielding annually an income of sixteen hundred pounds. And as at his father's death De Quincey was seven years old, we may reasonably infer, that, during this previous period, while his father was still living, and adding to this[pg 357]fixed a fluctuating income from his yearly gains, (which to a wholesale merchant of his standing were considerable,) the family-fortunes were even more auspicious, amounting to the yearly realization of between two and three thousand pounds, and that at a time when Napoleon had not as yet meddled with the financial affairs of Europe, nor by his intimidations caused even pounds and shillings to shrink into less worth and significance than they formerly had,—in view of which fact, if we are to charge Alexander the Great (as in a famous anecdote he was charged) with the crime of highway-robbery, as the "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" in the way of crowns and a few dozen sceptres, what a heinous charge must be brought against this Corsican as universal pickpocket! This pecuniary depreciation De Quincey himself realized some years later, when, determining to quit school, he thought himself compelled7to cut off all communication with his guardians, and gave himself up to a Bohemian life among the Welsh mountains, wandering from one rustic valley to another with the most scanty means of support,—for just then the Allies were in full rig against France, and the shrinkage of guineas in our young wanderer's pocket became palpably evident in view of the increased price of his dinner.
The timedidcome at length when the full epos of a remarkable prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad. Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of luxurious opulence and ease.
I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice merely as an accident,) because, although not apotentialelement, capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential character of genius, it is yet a negative condition—asine qua non—to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain aspects. By misfortune it is true that power may be intensified. So may it by the baptism of malice. But, given a certain degree of power, there still remains a question as to itskind. So deep is the sky: but of whathue, of what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol but what themellowness? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa? Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the question is not, what increment or what momentum genius may receive from outward circumstances, but what coloring, what mood. Here it is that a Mozart differs from a Mendelssohn. The important difference which obtains, in this respect, between great powers in literature, otherwise coördinate, will receive illustration from a comparison between De Quincey and Byron. For both these writers were capable, in a degree rarely equalled in any literature, of reproducing, or rather, we should say, of reconstructing, the pomp of Nature and of human life. In this general office they stand together: both wear, in our eyes, the regal purple; both have caused to rise between earth and heaven miracles of grandeur, such as never Cheops[pg 358]wrought through his myriad slaves, or Solomon with his fabled ring. But in the final result, as in the wholemodus operandi, of their architecture, they stand aparttoto coelo. Byron builds a structure that repeats certain elements in Nature or humanity; but they are those elements only which are allied to gloom, for he builds in suspicion and distrust, and upon the basis of a cynicism that has been nurtured in his very flesh and blood from birth; he erects a Pisa-like tower which overhangs and threatens all human hopes and all that is beautiful in human love. Who else, save this archangelic intellect, shut out by a mighty shadow of eclipse from the bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in "Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. Andhow? Is it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems to sway the movements of destruction? No; it is only through the gloomy mystery of the ruin itself,—ruin revealed upon a scale so vast and under conditions of terror the most appalling,—ruin wrought under the semblance of an almighty passion for revenge directed against the human race. Thus, as an expression of the attitude which the sea maintains toward man, we have the following passage of Æschylian grandeur, but also of Æschylian gloom:—
"Thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth's destruction thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send'st him, shivering in thyplayfulspray,And howling, to his gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay!"
"Thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thyplayfulspray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay!"
Who but this dark spirit, forever wooing the powers of darkness, and of darkness the most sullen, praying to Nemesis alone, could, with such lamentable lack of faith in the purity and soundness of human affections, have given utterance to a sentiment like this:—
"O love! no habitant of earth thou art,—Anunseenseraph we believe in thee"?
"O love! no habitant of earth thou art,—
Anunseenseraph we believe in thee"?
or the following:—
"Who loves, raves,—'tis youth's frenzy," etc.?
"Who loves, raves,—'tis youth's frenzy," etc.?
and again:—
"Few—none—find what they love or could have loved,Though accident, blind contact, and the strong>Necessity of loving having removedAntipathies"?
"Few—none—find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
>Necessity of loving having removed
Antipathies"?
This, then, is the nearest approach to human love,—the removal of all antipathies! But even these
"recur erelong,Envenomed with irrevocable wrong:And circumstance—that unspiritual godAnd miscreator—makes and helps alongOur coming evils with a crutch-like rod,Whose touch turns hope to dust,—the dust which all have trod."
"recur erelong,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong:
And circumstance—that unspiritual god
And miscreator—makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
Whose touch turns hope to dust,—the dust which all have trod."
De Quincey, on the other hand, in whose heart there was laid no such hollow basis for infidelity toward the master-passions of humanity, repeated the pomps of joy or of sorrow, as evolved out of universal human nature, and as, through sunshine and tempest, typified in the outside world,—but never for one instant did he seek alliance, on the one side, with the shallow enthusiasm of the raving Bacchante, or, on the other, with the overshadowing despotism of gloom; nor can there be found on a single page of all his writings the slightest hint indicating even a latent sympathy with the power which builds only to crush, or with the intellect that denies, and that against the dearest objects of human faith fulminates its denials and shocking recantations solely for the purposes of scorn.
Whence this marked difference? To account for it, we must needs trace back to the first haunts of childhood the steps[pg 359]of these two fugitives, each of whom has passed thence, the one into a desertmirage, teeming with processions of the gloomiest falsities in life, and the other—also into the desert, but where he is yet refreshed and solaced by an unshaken faith in the genial verities of life, though separated from them by irrecoverable miles of trackless wastes, and where, however apparently abandoned and desolate, he is yet ministered unto by angels, and no mimic fantasies are suffered to exercise upon his heart their overmastering seductions to
"Allure, or terrify, or undermine."
"Allure, or terrify, or undermine."
Whether the days of childhood be our happiest days, is a question all by itself. But there can be no question as to the inevitable certainty with which the conditions of childhood, fortunate or unfortunate, determine the main temper and disposition of our lives. For it is underneath the multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason, and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point, seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice, branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although we rarely recognize its important functions, is in all cases the arbiter of our destiny. And in the very worddispositionis indicated the finality of its arbitraments as contrasted with allproposition.
Now, with respect to this disposition: Nature furnishes its basis; but it is the external structure of circumstance, built up or building about childhood,—to shelter or imprison,—which, more than all else, gives it its determinate character; and though this outward structure may in after-life be thoroughly obliterated, or replaced by its opposite,—porcelain by clay, or clay by porcelain,—yet will the tendencies originally developed remain and hold a sway almost uninterrupted over life. And, generally, the happy influences that preside over the child may be reduced under three heads: first, a genial temperament,—one that naturally, and of its own motion, inclines toward a centre of peace and rest rather than toward the opposite centre of strife; secondly, profound domestic affections; and, thirdly, affluence, which, although of all three it is the most negative, the most material condition, is yet practically the most important, because of the degree in which it is necessary to the full and unlimited prosperity of the other two. For how frequent are the cases in which the happiest of temperaments are perverted by the necessities of toil, so burdensome to tender years, or in which corroding anxieties, weighing upon parents' hearts, check the free play of domestic love!—and in all cases where such limitations are present, even in the gentlest form, there must be a cramping up of the human organization and individuality somewhere; and everywhere, and under all circumstances, there must be sensibly felt the absence of that leisure which crowns and glorifies the affections of home, making them seem the most like summer sunshine, or rather like a sunshine which knows no season, which is an eternal presence in the soul.
As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was prosperous; afterwards, vicissitudes came,—mighty changes capable of affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. On the other hand, Byron's childhood was, in all these elements, unfortunate. The sting left in his mother's heart by the faithless desertion of her husband, after the desolation of her fortunes, was forever inflicted upon him, and intensified by her fitful temper; and notwithstanding the change in his outward prospects which occurred afterwards, he was never able to lift himself out of the Trophonian cave into which his infancy had been thrust, any more than Vulcan could have cured that crooked gait of his, which dated from[pg 360]some vague infantile remembrances of having been rudely kicked out of heaven over its brazen battlements, one summer's day,—for that it was a summer's day we are certain from a line of "Paradise Lost," commemorating the tragic circumstance:—
"From morn till noon he fell, from noon till dewy eve—A summer's day."
"From morn till noon he fell, from noon till dewy eve—
A summer's day."
And this allusion to Vulcan reminds us that Byron, in addition to all his other early mishaps, had also the identical clubfoot of the Lemnian god. Among the guardians over Byron's childhood was a demon, that, receiving an ample place in his victim's heart, stood demoniacally his ground through life, transmuting love to hate, and what might have been benefits to fatal snares. Over De Quincey's childhood, on the contrary, a strong angel guarded to withstand and thwart all threatened ruin, teaching him the gentle whisperings of faith and love in the darkest hours of life: an angel that built happy palaces, the beautiful images of which, and their echoed festivals, far outlasted the splendor of their material substance.
"We,—the children of the house,—" says De Quincey, in his "Autobiographic Sketches," "stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur—'Give me neither poverty nor riches'—was realized for us. That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, withextrameans of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the consciousness of privations too sordid, nor tempted into restlessness by privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful, also, to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan, simplicity of diet,—that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the manner of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration: that I lived in a rural solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church."
Let the reader suppose a different case from that here presented. Let him suppose, for instance, that De Quincey, now arrived at the age of seven, and having now at least one "pugilistic brother" to torment his peace, could annul his own infancy, and in its place substitute that of one of the factory-boys of Manchester, of the same age, (and many such could be found,) among those with whom daily the military predispositions of this brother brought him into a disagreeable conflict. Instead of the pure air of outside Lancashire, let there be substituted the cotton-dust of the Lancashire mills. The contrast, even in thought, is painful. It is true that thus the irrepressible fires of human genius could not be quenched. Nay, through just these instrumentalities, oftentimes, is genius fostered. We need not the instance of Romulus and Remus, or of the Persian Cyrus, to prove that men have sometimes been nourished by bears or by she-wolves. Nevertheless, this is essentially a Roman nurture. The Greeks, on the contrary, laid their infant heroes on beds of violets,—if we may believe the Pindaric odes,—set over them a divine watch, and fed them with angels' food. And this Grecian nurture De Quincey had.
And not the least important element of this nurture is that of perfectleisure. Through this it is that we pass from the outward to the subjective relations of De Quincey's childhood; for only in connection with these has the element just introduced any value, since leisure, which[pg 361]is the atmosphere, the breathing-place of genius, is also cap and bells for the fool. In relation to power, it is, like solitude, the open heaven through which the grandeurs of eternity flow into the penetralian recesses of the human heart, after that once the faculties of thought, or the sensibilities, have been powerfully awakened. Sensibilityhadbeen thus awakened in De Quincey, through grief occasioned by the loss of a sister, his favorite and familiar playmate,—a grief so profound, that he, somewhere, in speaking of it, anticipates the certainty of its presence in the hour of death; and thought, also, had been prematurely awakened, both under the influence of this overmastering pathos of sorrow, and because of his strong predisposition to meditation. Both the pathos and the meditative tendencies were increased by the halcyon peace of his childhood. In a memorial of the poet Schiller, he speaks of that childhood as the happiest, "of which the happiness has survived and expressed itself, not in distinct records, but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the hauntings of meditative power." His, at least, was the felicity of this echoless peace.
In no memorial is it so absolutely requisite that a marked prominence should be given to its first section as in De Quincey's. This is a striking peculiarity in his life. If it were not so, I should have seriously transgressed in keeping the reader's attention so long upon a point which, aside from such peculiarity, would yield no sufficient, at least no proportionate value. But, in the treatment of any life, that cannot seem disproportionate which enters into it as an element only and just in that ratio of prominence with which it enters into the life itself, No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which lacks a prominent interest as to its beginnings, can ever, in its entire course, develop any distinguishing features of interest. This is true of any life; but it is true of De Quincey's above all others on record, that, through all its successive arches, ascending and descending, it repeats the original arch of childhood. Repeats,—but with what marvellous transformations! For hardly is its earliest section passed, when, for all its future course, it is masked by a mighty trouble. No longer does it flow along its natural path, and beneath the open sky, but, like the sacred Alpheus, runs