The English Mail-Coach Joan of Arc | Page 3

Masson's subdivision, (a) Biographies, such as Shakespeare or _Pope_--Joan of Arc falls here, yet has some claim to a place in the first class; (b) Historical essays, like The _C?sars_; (c) Speculative and Theological essays; (d) Essays in Political Economy and Politics; (e) Papers of Literary Theory and Criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of _Rhetoric, Style_, and Conversation, and the famous _On the Knocking at the Gate in 'Macbeth_.' As a third and "far higher" class the author ranks the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, and also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis. "On these," he says, "as modes of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature, it is much more difficult to speak justly, whether in a hostile or a friendly character."
Of De Quincey's essays in general it may be said that they bear witness alike to the diversity of his knowledge and the penetrative power of his intellect. The wide range of his subjects, however, deprives his papers when taken together of the weight which might attach to a series of related discussions. And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of the "saving common-sense" possessed by many far less gifted men. His erudition and insight are always a little in advance of his good judgment.
As to the works of the first class, the Reminiscences are defaced by the shrewish spirit shown in the accounts of Wordsworth and other friends; nor can we depend upon them as records of fact. But our author had had exceptional opportunities to observe these famous men and women, and he possessed no little insight into literature and personality. As to the Autobiographic Sketches, the handling of events is hopelessly arbitrary and fragmentary. In truth, De Quincey is drawing an idealized picture of childhood,--creating a type rather than re-creating a person; it is a study of a child of talent that we receive from him, and as such these sketches form one of the most satisfactory products of his pen.
The Confessions as a narrative is related to the Autobiography, while its poetical passages range it with the Suspiria and the _Mail-Coach_. De Quincey seems to have believed that he was creating in such writings a new literary type of prose poetry or prose phantasy; he had, with his splendid dreams as subject-matter, lifted prose to heights hitherto scaled only by the poet. In reality his style owed much to the seventeenth-century writers, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. He took part with Coleridge, Lamb, and others in the general revival of interest in earlier modern English prose, which is a feature of the Romantic Movement. Still none of his contemporaries wrote as he did; evidently De Quincey has a distinct quality of his own. Ruskin, in our own day, is like him, but never the same.
Yet De Quincey's prose poetry is a very small portion of his work, and it is not in this way only that he excels. Mr. Saintsbury has spoken of the strong appeal that De Quincey makes to boys. [Footnote: "Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love of literature proper by De Quincy than by any other writer whatever."-- _History of Nineteenth-Century Literature_, p.198.] It is not without significance that he mentions as especially attractive to the young only writings with a large narrative element. [Footnote: "To read the Essay on Murder, the _English Mail-Coach_, The Spanish Nun, _The C?sars_, and half a score other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."--Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860, p.307.] Few boys read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story. It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of youthful readers.
It would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the young to him must needs be the Opium-Eater's grand talent, though the notion is defensible, seeing that only salient qualities in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. I believe, however, that this skill in narration is De Quincey's most persistent quality,--the golden thread that unites all his most distinguished and most enduring work. And it is with him a part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind that goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has proved that forever by the mediocrity of Klosterheim. Give him Bergmann's account of the Tartar Migration, or the story of the Fighting Nun,-- give him the matter,--and a brilliant narrative will