eless fond of society, and his
wide knowledge and vivid imagination made his conversations almost as
prized as those of his friend Coleridge.

WORKS. De Quincey's works may be divided into two general classes. The
first includes his numerous critical articles, and the second his
autobiographical sketches. All his works, it must be remembered, were
contributed to various magazines, and were hastily collected just before
his death. Hence the general impression of chaos which we get from reading
them.

From a literary view point the most illuminating of De Quincey's critical
works is his. _Literary Reminiscences_. This contains brilliant
appreciations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, and
Landor, as well as some interesting studies of the literary figures of the
age preceding. Among the best of his brilliant critical essays are _On the
Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth_ (1823), which is admirably suited to show
the man's critical genius, and _Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts_
(1827), which reveals his grotesque humor Other suggestive critical works,
if one must choose among such a multitude, are his _Letters to a Young Man_
(1823), _Joan of Arc_ (1847), _The Revolt of the Tartars_ (1840), and _The
English Mail-Coach_ (1849). In the last-named essay the "Dream Fugue" is
one of the most imaginative of all his curious works.

Of De Quincey's autobiographical sketches the best known is his
_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ (1821). This is only partly a
record of opium dreams, and its chief interest lies in glimpses it gives us
of De Quincey's own life and wanderings. This should be followed by
_Suspiria de Profundis_ (1845), which is chiefly a record of gloomy and
terrible dreams produced by opiates. The most interesting parts of his
_Suspiria_, showing De Quincey's marvelous insight into dreams, are those
in which we are brought face to face with the strange feminine creations
"Levana," "Madonna," "Our Lady of Sighs," and "Our Lady of Darkness." A
series of nearly thirty articles which he collected in 1853, called
_Autobiographic Sketches_, completes the revelation of the author's own
life. Among his miscellaneous works may be mentioned, in order to show his
wide range of subjects, _Klosterheim_, a novel, _Logic of Political
Economy_, the _Essays on Style and Rhetoric, Philosophy of Herodotus_, and
his articles on Goethe, Pope, Schiller, and Shakespeare which he
contributed to the _Encycl