ers will undoubtedly have
before them a fuller and completer edition of De Quincey than even
Americans have yet had; and they will have it edited by an accomplished
scholar who has taken a great deal of pains to acquaint himself
thoroughly with the subject.

Will they form a different estimate from that which those of us who have
known the older editions for a quarter of a century have formed, and
will that estimate, if it is different, be higher or lower? To answer
such questions is always difficult; but it is especially difficult here,
for a certain reason which I had chiefly in mind when I said just now
that De Quincey's literary lot has been very peculiar. I believe that I
am not speaking for myself only; I am quite sure that I am speaking my
own deliberate opinion when I say that on scarcely any English writer is
it so hard to strike a critical balance--to get a clear definite opinion
that you can put on the shelf and need merely take down now and then to
be dusted and polished up by a fresh reading--as on De Quincey. This is
partly due to the fact that his merits are of the class that appeals to,
while his faults are of the class that is excused by, the average boy
who has some interest in literature. To read the _Essay on Murder_, the
_English Mail Coach_, _The Spanish Nun_, _The Caesars_, and half a score
other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be,
to fall in love with them. And there is nothing more unpleasant for _les
ames bien nees_, as the famous distich has it, than to find fault in
after life with that with which you have fallen in love at fifteen or
sixteen. Yet most unfortunately, just as De Quincey's merits, or some of
them, appeal specially to youth, and his defects specially escape the
notice of youth, so age with stealing steps especially claws those
merits into his clutch and leaves the defects exposed to derision. The
most gracious state of authors is that they shall charm at all ages
those whom they do charm. There are others--Dante, Cervantes, Goethe are
instances--as to whom you may even begin with a little aversion, and go
on to love them more and more. De Quincey, I fear, belongs to a third
class, with whom it is difficult to keep up the first love, or rather
whose defects begin before long to urge themselves upon the critical
lover (some would say there are no critical lovers, but that I deny)
with an even less happy result than is recorded in one of Catullus's
fin