Autobiographic Sketches

Thomas De Quincey

Autobiographic Sketches

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 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 the case thus: Within the last four or five years, a practice has arisen amongst authors of gathering together into volumes their own scattered contributions to periodical literature. Upon that suggestion, they suppose me suddenly to have remembered that I also had made such contributions; that mine might be entitled to their chance as well as those of others; and, accordingly, that on such a slight invitation ab extra, I had called back into life what otherwise I had long since regarded as having already fulfilled its mission, and must doubtless have dismissed to oblivion.

I do not certainly know, or entirely believe, that any such thing was really said. But, however that may be, no representation can be more opposed to the facts. Never for an instant did I falter in my purpose of republishing most of the papers which I had written. Neither, if I myself had been inclined to forget them, should I have been allowed to do so by strangers. For it happens that, during the fourteen last years, I have received from many quarters in England, in Ireland, in the British colonies, and in the United States, a series of letters expressing a far profounder interest in papers written by myself than any which I could ever think myself entitled to look for. Had I, therefore, otherwise cherished no purposes of republication, it now became a duty of gratitude and respect to these numerous correspondents, that I should either republish the papers in question, or explain why I did not. The obstacle in fact had been in part the shifting state of the law which regulated literary property, and especially the property in periodical literature. But a far greater difficulty lay in the labor (absolutely insurmountable to myself) of bringing together from so many quarters the scattered materials of the collection. This labor, most fortunately, was suddenly taken off my hands by the eminent house of Messrs TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, Boston, U. S. To them I owe my acknowledgments, first of all, for that service: they have brought together a great majority of my fugitive papers in a series of volumes now amounting to twelve. And, secondly, I am bound to mention that they have made me a sharer in the profits of the publication, called upon to do so by no law whatever, and assuredly by no expectation of that sort upon my part.

Taking as the basis of my remarks this collective American edition, I will here attempt a rude general classification of all the articles which compose it. I distribute them grossly into three classes: First, into that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader; but which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest. Some papers are merely playful; but others have a mixed character. These present Autobiographic Sketches illustrate what I mean. Generally, they pretend to little beyond that sort of amusement which attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related, moving through a succession of scenes sufficiently varied, that are not suffered to remain too long upon the eye, and that connect themselves at every stage with intellectual objects. But, even here, I do not scruple to claim from the reader, occasionally, a higher consideration. At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key. Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life where, of necessity, a severe abstraction takes place from all that could invest him with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader, nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to the future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on the stage but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief—a mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of the same interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a maturer age, when the characteristic features of the individual mind have been unfolded. And I contend that much more than amusement ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is really confidential. It is singular—but many of my readers will know it for a truth—that vast numbers of people, though liberated from all reasonable motives to self-restraint, cannot be confidential—have it not in their power to lay aside reserve; and many, again, cannot be so with particular people. I have witnessed more than once the case, that a young female dancer, at a certain turn of a peculiar dance, could not—though she had died for it—sustain a free, fluent motion. Aerial chains fell upon her at one point; some invisible spell (who could say what?) froze her elasticity. Even as a horse, at noonday on an open heath, starts aside from something his rider cannot see; or as the flame within a Davy lamp feeds upon the poisonous gas up to the meshes that surround it, but there suddenly is arrested by barriers that no Aladdin will ever dislodge. It is because a man cannot see and measure these mystical forces which palsy him, that he cannot deal with them effectually. If he were able really to pierce the haze which so often envelops, even to himself, his own secret springs of action and reserve, there cannot be a life moving at all under intellectual impulses that would not, through that single force of absolute frankness, fall within the reach of a deep, solemn, and sometimes even of a thrilling interest. Without pretending to an interest of this quality, I have done what was possible on my part towards the readiest access to such an interest by perfect sincerity—saying every where nothing but the truth; and in any case forbearing to say the whole truth only through consideration for others.

Into the second class I throw those papers which address themselves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty; or do so primarily. Let me call them by the general name of ESSAYS. These, as in other cases of the same kind, must have their value measured by two separate questions. A. What is the problem, and of what rank in dignity or in use, which the essay undertakes? And next, that point being settled, B. What is the success obtained? and (as a separate question) what is the executive ability displayed in the solution of the problem? This latter question is naturally no question for myself, as the answer would involve a verdict upon my own merit. But, generally, there will be quite enough in the answer to question A for establishing the value of any essay on its soundest basis. Prudens interrogatio est dimidium scientiae. Skilfully to frame your question, is half way towards insuring the true answer. Two or three of the problems treated in these essays I will here rehearse.

1. ESSENISM—The essay on this, where mentioned at all in print, has been mentioned as dealing with a question of pure speculative curiosity: so little suspicion is abroad of that real question which lies below. Essenism means simply this—Christianity before Christ, and consequently without Christ. If, therefore, Essenism could make good its pretensions, there at one blow would be an end of Christianity, which in that case is not only superseded as an idle repetition of a religious system already published, but also as a criminal plagiarism. Nor can the wit of man evade that conclusion. But even that is not the worst. When we contemplate the total orb of Christianity, we see it divide into two hemispheres: first, an ethical system, differing centrally from any previously made known to man; secondly, a mysterious and divine machinery for reconciling man to God; a teaching to be taught, but also a work to be worked. Now, the first we find again in the ethics of the counterfeit Essenes—which ought not to surprise us at all; since it is surely an easy thing for him who pillages my thoughts ad libitum to reproduce a perfect resemblance in his own: 3 but what has become of the second, viz., not the teaching, but the operative working of Christianity? The ethical system is replaced by a stolen system; but what replaces the mysterious agencies of the Christian faith? In Essenism we find again a saintly scheme of ethics; but where is the scheme of mediation?

In the Roman church, there have been some theologians who have also seen reason to suspect the romance of "Essenismus." And I am not sure that the knowledge of this fact may not have operated to blunt the suspicions of the Protestant churches. I do not mean that such a fact would have absolutely deafened Protestant ears to the grounds of suspicion when loudly proclaimed; but it is very likely to have indisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquainted with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between them and my own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulent purpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement—which builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such as could not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting incompatibility of such a sect with the absence of all attention to it in the New Testament, but (which is far more important) the incompatibility of such a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality and heavenly revelation of Christianity. Here is my first point of difference from the Romish objectors. The second is this: not content with exposing the imposture, I go on, and attempt to show in what real circumstances, fraudulently disguised, it might naturally have arisen. In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when struggling with Jewish persecution at some period of the generation between the crucifixion and the siege of Jerusalem, arose probably that secret defensive society of Christians which suggested to Josephus his knavish forgery. We must remember that Josephus did not write until after the great ruins effected by the siege; that he wrote at Rome, far removed from the criticism of those survivors who could have exposed, or had a motive for exposing, his malicious frauds; and, finally, that he wrote under the patronage of the Flavian family: by his sycophancy he had won their protection, which would have overawed any Christian whatever from coming forward to unmask him, in the very improbable case of a work so large, costly, and, by its title, merely archaeological, finding its way, at such a period, into the hands of any poor hunted Christian. 4

2. THE CAESARS.—This, though written hastily, and in a situation where I had no aid from books, is yet far from being what some people have supposed it—a simple recapitulation, or resumé, of the Roman imperatorial history. It moves rapidly over the ground, but still with an exploring eye, carried right and left into the deep shades that have gathered so thickly over the one solitary road 5 traversing that part of history. Glimpses of moral truth, or suggestions of what may lead to it; indications of neglected difficulties, and occasionally conjectural solutions of such difficulties,—these are what this essay offers. It was meant as a specimen of fruits, gathered hastily and without effort, by a vagrant but thoughtful mind: through the coercion of its theme, sometimes it became ambitious; but I did not give to it an ambitious title. Still I felt that the meanest of these suggestions merited a valuation: derelicts they were, not in the sense of things willfully abandoned by my predecessors on that road, but in the sense of things blindly overlooked. And, summing up in one word the pretensions of this particular essay, I will venture to claim for it so much, at least, of originality as ought not to have been left open to any body in the nineteenth century.

3. CICERO.—This is not, as might be imagined, any literary valuation of Cicero; it is a new reading of Roman history in the most dreadful and comprehensive of her convulsions, in that final stage of her transmutations to which Cicero was himself a party—and, as I maintain, a most selfish and unpatriotic party. He was governed in one half by his own private interest as a novus homo dependent upon a wicked oligarchy, and in the other half by his blind hatred of Caesar; the grandeur of whose nature he could not comprehend, and the real patriotism of whose policy could never be appreciated by one bribed to a selfish course. The great mob of historians have but one way of constructing the great events of this era—they succeed to it as to an inheritance, and chiefly under the misleading of that prestige which is attached to the name of Cicero; on which account it was that I gave this title to my essay. Seven years after it was published, this essay, slight and imperfectly developed as is the exposition of its parts, began to receive some public countenance.

I was going on to abstract the principle involved in some other essays. But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose of informing the reader that I do not write without a thoughtful consideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably upon any question has never been allowed by me as a sufficient ground for writing upon it, unless I believed myself able to offer some considerable novelty. Generally I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the merit of rectification applied to absolute errors or to injurious limitations of the truth.

Finally, as a third class, and, in virtue of their aim, as a far higher class of compositions included in the American collection, I rank The Confessions of an Opium Eater, and also (but more emphatically) the Suspiria de Profundis. On these, 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. As yet, neither of these two works has ever received the least degree of that correction and pruning which both require so extensively; and of the Suspiria, not more than perhaps one third has yet been printed. When both have been fully revised, I shall feel myself entitled to ask for a more determinate adjudication on their claims as works of art. At present, I feel authorized to make haughtier pretensions in right of their conception than I shall venture to do, under the peril of being supposed to characterize their execution. Two remarks only I shall address to the equity of my reader. First, I desire to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world of dreams, where a single false note, a single word in a wrong key, ruins the whole music; and, secondly, I desire him to consider the utter sterility of universal literature in this one department of impassioned prose; which certainly argues some singular difficulty suggesting a singular duty of indulgence in criticizing any attempt that even imperfectly succeeds. The sole Confessions, belonging to past times, that have at all succeeded in engaging the attention of men, are those of St. Augustine and of Rousseau. The very idea of breathing a record of human passion, not into the ear of the random crowd, but of the saintly confessional, argues an impassioned theme. Impassioned, therefore, should be the tenor of the composition. Now, in St. Augustine's Confessions is found one most impassioned passage, viz., the lamentation for the death of his youthful friend in the fourth book; one, and no more. Further there is nothing. In Rousseau there is not even so much. In the whole work there is nothing grandly affecting but the character and the inexplicable misery of the writer.

Meantime, by what accident, so foreign to my nature, do I find myself laying foundations towards a higher valuation of my own workmanship? O reader, I have been talking idly. I care not for any valuation that depends upon comparison with others. Place me where you will on the scale of comparison: only suffer me, though standing lowest in your catalogue, to rejoice in the recollection of letters expressing the most fervid interest in particular passages or scenes of the Confessions, and, by rebound from them, an interest in their author: suffer me also to anticipate that, on the publication of some parts yet in arrear of the Suspiria, you yourself may possibly write a letter to me, protesting that your disapprobation is just where it was, but nevertheless that you are disposed to shake hands with me—by way of proof that you like me better than I deserve.