Autobiographical Sketches | Page 2

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.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
The miscellaneous writings which I propose to lay before the public in

this body of selections are in part to be regarded as a republication of
papers scattered through several British journals twenty or thirty years
ago, which papers have been reprinted in a collective form by an
American house of high character in Boston; but in part they are to be
viewed as entirely new, large sections having been intercalated in the
present edition, and other changes made, which, even to the old parts,
by giving very great expansion, give sometimes a character of absolute
novelty. Once, therefore, at home, with the allowance for the changes
here indicated, and once in America, it may be said that these writings
have been in some sense published. But publication is a great idea
never even approximated by the utmost anxieties of man. Not the Bible,
not the little book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in
European diffusion and currency, [1] viz., the treatise "De Imitatione
Christi," has yet in any generation been really published. Where is the
printed book of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be said that,
after all efforts to publish itself, still it remains, for the world of
possible readers, "as good as manuscript"? Not to insist, however, upon
any romantic rigor in constructing this idea, and abiding by the
ordinary standard of what is understood by publication, it is probable
that, in many cases, my own papers must have failed in reaching even
this. For they were printed as contributions to journals. Now, that mode
of publication is unavoidably disadvantageous to a writer, except under
unusual conditions. By its harsh peremptory punctuality, it drives a
man into hurried writing, possibly into saying the thing that is not.
They won't wait an hour for you in a magazine or a review; they won't
wait for truth; you may as well reason with the sea, or a railway train,
as in such a case with an editor; and, as it makes no difference whether
that sea which you desire to argue with is the Mediterranean or the
Baltic, so, with that editor and his deafness, it matters not a straw
whether he belong to a northern or a southern journal. Here is one evil
of journal writing--viz., its overmastering precipitation. A second is, its
effect at times in narrowing your publicity. Every journal, or pretty
nearly so, is understood to hold (perhaps in its very title it makes
proclamation of holding) certain fixed principles in politics, or possibly
religion. These distinguishing features, which become badges of enmity
and intolerance, all the more intense as they descend upon narrower
and narrower grounds of separation, must, at the very threshold, by

warning off those who dissent from them, so far operate to limit your
audience. To take my own case as an illustration: these present sketches
were published in a journal dedicated to purposes of political change
such as many people thought revolutionary. I thought so myself, and
did not go along with its politics. Inevitably that accident shut them out
from the knowledge of a very large reading class. Undoubtedly this
journal, being ably and conscientiously conducted, had some
circulation amongst a neutral class of readers; and amongst its own
class it was popular. But its own class did not ordinarily occupy that
position in regard to social influence which could enable them rapidly
to diffuse the knowledge of a writer. A reader whose social standing is
moderate may communicate his views upon a book or a writer to his
own circle; but his own circle is a narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic
classes, having more leisure and wealth, the intercourse is
inconceivably more rapid; so that the publication of any book which
interests them is secured at once; and this publishing influence passes
downwards; but rare, indeed, is the inverse process of publication
through an influence spreading upwards.
According to the way here described, the papers now presented to the
public, like many another set of papers nominally published, were not
so in any substantial sense. Here, at home, they may be regarded as still
unpublished. [2] But, in such a case, why were not the papers at once
detached from the journal, and reprinted? In the neglect to do this,
some there are who will read a blamable carelessness in the author; but,
in that carelessness, others will read a secret consciousness that the
papers were of doubtful value. I have heard, indeed, that some persons,
hearing of this republication, had interpreted