Miscellaneous Essays

Miscellaneous Essays

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Title: Miscellaneous Essays
Author: Thomas de Quincey
Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10708]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ***

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DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.
It is the intention of the publishers to issue, at intervals, a complete
collection of Mr. De Quincey's Writings, uniform with this volume.
The first four volumes of the series will contain,--
I. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis.
II. Biographical Essays.
III. Miscellaneous Essays.
IV. The Cæsars.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

CONTENTS.
ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE, IN MACBETH
MURDER, CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS
SECOND PAPER ON MURDER
JOAN OF ARC
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH
DINNER, REAL AND REPUTED

ON
THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE,
IN MACBETH.
From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point
in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, 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 a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I
endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years
I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any
attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other
faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and
indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most
to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing
else; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes.
Of this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite
one. Ask of 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 laws of that
science; as for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at
right angles to 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
unable to make the smallest approximation to it. Yet why? For he has
actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is--that he
allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which
includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him
with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a
horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line; a line that made
any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle, would seem to
him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together.
Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails
of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one instance out
of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the
eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the
eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe the evidence of his
understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but, (what is monstrous!)
the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does
not know that he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has
not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life. But to return
from this digression, my understanding could furnish no reason why
the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or
reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not
produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and
clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve
it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his _début_ on the stage of
Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which
have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On
which murders, by the