Autobiographical Sketches

Autobiographical Sketches

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Title: Autobiographical Sketches
Author: Thomas de Quincy
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7306] [Yes, we are more than
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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES ***

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AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.
BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY

SELECTIONS, GRAVE AND GAY, FROM WRITINGS
PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED,
BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. DE QUINCEY
TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF THIS WORKS.
Lasswade, _January 8_, 1853
MY DEAR SIR:
I am on the point of revising and considerably altering, for
republication in England, an edition of such amongst my writings as it
may seem proper deliberately to avow. Not that I have any intention, or
consciously any reason, expressly to disown any one thing that I have
ever published; but some things have sufficiently accomplished their
purpose when they have met the call of that particular transient
occasion in which they arose; and others, it may be thought on review,
might as well have been suppressed from the very first. Things immoral
would of course fall within that category; of these, however, I cannot
reproach myself with ever having published so much as one. But even
pure levities, simply as such, and without liability to any worse
objection, may happen to have no justifying principle of life within
them; and if, any where, I find such a reproach to lie against a paper of
mine, that paper I should wish to cancel. So that, upon the whole, my
new and revised edition is likely to differ by very considerable changes

from the original papers; and, consequently, to that extent is likely to
differ from your existing Boston reprint.
These changes, as sure to be more or less advantageous to the
collection, it is my wish to place at your disposal as soon as possible, in
order that you may make what use of them you see fit, be it little or
much. It may so happen that the public demand will give you no
opportunity for using them at all. I go on therefore to mention, that over
and above these changes, which may possibly strike you as sometimes
mere caprices, pulling down in order to rebuild, or turning squares into
rotundas, (_diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis_,) it is my purpose
to enlarge this edition by as many new papers as I find available for
such a station. These I am anxious to put into the hands of your house,
and, so far as regards the U.S., of your house exclusively; not with any
view to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services
which you have already rendered me; viz., 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 who 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, REED,
& 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