s the person concerned in it. If the particular
experience selected is really interesting, in virtue of its own
circumstances, then it matters not to _whom_ it happened. Suppose that
a man should record a perilous journey, it will be no fair inference
that he records it as a journey performed by himself. Most sincerely
he may be able to say, that he records it not _for_ that relation to
himself, but _in spite of_ that relation. The incidents, being
absolutely independent, in their power to amuse, of all personal
reference, must be equally interesting [he will say] whether they
occurred to A or to B. That is _my_ case. Let the reader abstract from
_me_ as a person that by accident, or in some partial sense, may have
been previously known to himself. Let him read the sketch as
belonging to one who wishes to be profoundly anonymous. I offer it not
as owing anything to its connection with a particular individual, but
as likely to be amusing separately for itself; and if I make any
mistake in _that_, it is not a mistake of vanity exaggerating the
consequence of what relates to my own childhood, but a simple mistake
of the judgment as to the power of amusement that may attach to a
particular succession of reminiscences.

Excuse the imperfect development which in some places of the sketch
may have been given to my meaning. I suffer from a most afflicting
derangement of the nervous system, which at times makes it difficult
for me to write at all, and always makes me impatient, in a degree not
easily understood, of recasting what may seem insufficiently, or even
incoherently, expressed.--Believe me, ever yours,

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

This letter was a preface to 'A Sketch from Childhood,' of which the
first and second parts appeared in that Volume.

After this came a blank of six months--a whole Volume containing
nothing. In Volume VIII. (January, 1852), 'A Sketch from Childhood'
was resumed with the following whimsical apology. It then ran for five
months consecutively:--

(_January, 1852._)

I understand that several readers of my _Sketch from Childhood_ have
lodged complaints against me for not having pursued it to what they
can regard as a satisfactory close. Some may have done this in a
gentle tone, as against an irreclaimable procrastinator, amiably
inclined, perhaps, to penitence, though constitutionally incapable of
amendment; but others more clamorously, as against one faithless to
his engagements, and deliber