The English Mail-Coach Joan of Arc | Page 4

result. Indeed, De Quincey loved a story for its own sake; he rejoiced to see it extend its winding course before him; he delighted to follow it, touch it, color it, see it grow into body and being under his hand. That this enthusiasm should now and then tend to endanger the integrity of the facts need not surprise us; as I have said elsewhere, accuracy in these matters is hardly to be expected of De Quincey. And we can take our pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dramatic narrative of the Tartar Flight--we can feel the author's joy in the scenic possibilities of his theme--even if we know that here and there an incident appears that is quite in its proper place--but is unknown to history.
In his Confessions the same constructive power bears its part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,--an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is done not merely by the correction of some widespread fallacies as to the effects of the drug; far more it is the result of narrative skill. As we follow with ever-increasing sympathy the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering youth, the neuralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who realizes, amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale, that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits? We can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look beneath it throws its glamour over us still.
Nor is it only in this constructive power, in the selection and arrangement of details, that De Quincey excels as a narrator; a score of minor excellences of his style, such as the fine Latin words or the sweeping periodic sentences, contribute to the effective progress of his narrative prose. Mr. Lowell has said that "there are no such vistas and avenues of verse as Milton's." The comparison is somewhat hazardous, still I should like to venture the parallel claim that there are no such streams of prose as De Quincey's. The movement of his discourse is that of the broad river, not in its weight or force perhaps, but in its easy flowing progress, in its serene, unhurried certainty of its end. To be sure, only too often the waters overflow their banks and run far afield in alien channels. Yet, when great power over the instrument of language is joined to so much constructive skill, the result is narrative art of high quality,--an achievement that must be in no small measure the solid basis of De Quincey's fame.
III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I. WORKS
1. The Collected Writings of Thomas de Quincey. New and enlarged edition by David Masson. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1889-1890. [New York: The Macmillan Co. 14 vols., with footnotes, a preface to each volume, and index. Reissued in cheaper form. The standard edition.]
2. The Works of Thomas de Quincey. Riverside Edition. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877. [12 vols., with notes and index.]
3. _Selections from De Quincey._ Edited with an Introduction and Notes, by M. H. Turk. Athenaeum Press Series. Boston, U.S.A., and London: Ginn and Company, 1902. ["The largest body of selections from De Quincey recently published.... The selections are _The affliction of Childhood, Introduction to the World of Strife, A Meeting with Lamb, A Meeting with Coleridge, Recollections of Wordsworth, Confessions, A Portion of Suspiria, The English Mail-Coach, Murder as one of the Fine Arts, Second Paper, Joan of Arc,_ and _On the Knocking at the Gate in 'Macbeth.'_"]
II. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM
4. D. MASSON. _Thomas De Quincey._ English Men of Letters. London. [New York: Harper. An excellent brief biography. This book, with a good volume of selections, should go far toward supplying the ordinary student's needs.]
5. H. S. SALT. DE QUINCEY. Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers. London: George Bell and Sons. [A good short life.] 6. A. H. JAPP. _Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings._ London, 1890. [New York: Scribner. First edition by "H. A. Page," 1877. The standard life of De Quincey; it contains valuable communications from De Quincey's daughters, J. Hogg, Rev. F. Jacox, Professor Masson, and others.]
7. A. H. JAPP. _De Quincey Memorials. Being Letters and Other Records, here first published. With Communications from Coleridge, the Wordsworths, Hannah More, Professor Wilson, and others._ 2 vols. London: W. Heinemann, 1891.
8. J. HOGG. _De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollections, Souvenirs, and Anecdotes_ [including Woodhouse's Conversations, Findlay's