that they
were especially good. He never seemed to have the least wish to impress
people by his cleverness or aptness of speech.

But when all has been said as to the personality of the man as expressed
in his writings--especially his _Confessions_, and to his personality as
interpreted by friends and acquaintances--there remains a measure of
mystery about De Quincey. This is part of his fascination, just as it is
part of the fascination attaching to Coleridge. The frank confidences of
his _Confessions_ hide from view the inner ring of reserve, which gave a
strange impenetrability to his character, even to those who knew and
loved him best. A simple nature and a complex temperament.

Well, after all, such personalities are the most interesting of all, for
each time we greet them it is with a note of interrogation.

III
GEORGE BORROW

"The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise."

GRAY.

"He had an English look; that is was square
In make, of a complexion white and ruddy."

BYRON.

I

Why is it that almost as soon as we can toddle we eagerly demand a story
of our elders? Why is it that the most excitable little girl, the most
incorrigible little boy can be quieted by a teaspoonful of the jam of
fiction? Why is it that "once upon a time" can achieve what moral
strictures are powerless to effect?

It is because to most of us the world of imagination is the world that
matters. We live in the "might be's" and "peradventures." Fate may have
cast our lot in prosaic places; have predetermined our lives on humdrum
lines; but it cannot touch our dreams. There we are princes,
princesses--possessed of illimitable wealth, wielding immeasurable power.
Our bodies may traverse the same dismal streets day after day; but our
minds rove luxuriantly through all the kingdoms of the earth.

Those wonderful eastern stories of the "Flying Horse" and the "Magic
Carpet," symbolize for us the matter-of-fact world and the
matter-of-dream world. Nay, is there any sound distinction between facts
and dreams? After all--

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

But there are dreams and dreams--dreams by moonlight and dreams by
sunlight. Literature can boast of many fa