are of. They seek an
imaginary world where the harsh hindrances, which in the real one too
often fret and disturb the 'course of true love,' may be forced to
bend to the claims of justice and the pleadings of the heart. In
company with the agitations and the dread suspense--the anguish and
the tears, which so often wait upon the uncertainties of earthly love,
they demand at the hands of the Novelist a final event corresponding
to the natural award of celestial wisdom and benignity. What they are
striving after, in short, is--to realize an ideal; and to reproduce
the actual world under more harmonious arrangements. This is the
secret craving of the reader; and Novels are shaped to meet it. With
what success, is a separate and independent question: the execution
cannot prejudice the estimate of their aim and essential purpose.

Fair and unknown Owner of this Album, whom perhaps I have never
seen--whom perhaps I never _shall_ see, pardon me for wasting two
pages of your elegant manual upon this semi-metaphysical disquisition.
Let the subject plead my excuse. And believe that I am, Fair
Incognita!

Your faithful servant,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

_Professor Wilson's--Glocester Place, Edinburgh._

_Friday night, December 3, 1830._

DE QUINCEY'S PORTRAIT.

The only one which can be considered satisfactory is that of which a
copy is prefixed to these Volumes. It is from a steel engraving by
Frank Croll, taken at Edinburgh from a daguerreotype by Howie in 1850.

DE QUINCEY'S own opinion of it is expressed to me in the amusing
letter which was published in _The Instructor_ (New Series, vol. vi.
p. 145).

TO THE EDITOR OF _THE INSTRUCTOR_.

_September 21, 1850._

My Dear Sir,--I am much obliged to you for communicating to us (that
is, to my daughters and myself) the engraved portrait, enlarged from
the daguerreotype original. The engraver, at least, seems to have done
his part ably. As to one of the earlier artists concerned, viz. the
sun of July, I suppose it is not allowable to complain of _him_, else
my daughters are inclined to upbraid him with having made the mouth
too long. But, of old, it was held audacity to suspect the sun's
veracity:--'Solem quis dicere falsum audeat!' And I remember that,
half a century ago, the _Sun_ newspaper, in London, used to fight
under sanction of that motto. But it was at length discovered by the
learned, that Sun _junior_, viz. the newspaper, _did_ sometimes
indulge in f