choose to
command." He wrote a translation of _The Love-Charm_ of TIECK, with a
notice of the Author. This is not reprinted in his Collected Works,
though perhaps it is the most interesting of his translations from the
German. In this spring and summer DE QUINCEY and I were in intimate
companionship. It was a pleasant time of intellectual intercourse for
me.'

There is no doubt _The Love-Charm_ would have been reprinted had the
Author lived to carry the _Selections_ farther.

* * * * *

The curious little Essay _On Novels_,--written in a Lady's Album, had
passed out of MR. DAVEY'S hands before I became aware of its
existence. The _facsimile_, however, taken for _The Archivist_, by an
expert like MR. NETHERCLIFT, shows that it is, unquestionably, in the
handwriting of DE QUINCEY. I have been unable to trace the 'FAIR
INCOGNITA' to whom it was addressed.

* * * * *

The compositions which were written for me when I edited _Titan_, and
which I now place before the public in volume form, after the lapse of
a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'),
demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to the
_Selections Grave and Gay_.

_Titan_ was a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an
enlarged form of _The Instructor_. I had become the acting Editor of
its predecessor, _the New Series_ of _The Instructor_, working in
concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this _New Series_ there
appeared from DE QUINCEY'S pen _The Sphinx's Riddle_, _Judas
Iscariot_, the Series of _Sketches from Childhood_, and other notable
papers.

At that time I was but a young editor--young and, perhaps, a little
'curly,' as LORD BEACONSFIELD put it. DE QUINCEY, with a truly
paternal solicitude, gave me much good advice and valuable help, both
in the selection of subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of
handling them. The notes on _The Lake Dialect_, _Shakspere's Text and
Suetonius Unravelled_, were written to me in the form of Letters, and
published in _Titan_.

_Storms in English History_ was a consideration of part of MR.
FROUDE'S well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir
in the literary world, and profoundly impressed DE QUINCEY.

_How to write English_ was the first of a series projected for _The
Instructor_. It never got beyond this 'Introduction,' but the fragment
contains some matter well worthy of preser