subsequent life is peculiar. Some other points,
such as his mentioning Wilson as his "only intimate male friend" are
textually cited from himself, and if I seem to have spoken harshly of
his early treatment by his family I may surely shelter myself behind the
touching incident, recorded in the biographies, of his crying on his
deathbed, "My dear mother! then I was greatly mistaken." If this does
not prove that he himself had entertained on the subject ideas which,
whether false or true, were unfavourable, then it is purely meaningless.

In conclusion, I have only to repeat my regret that I should, by a
perhaps thoughtless forgetfulness of the feelings of survivors, have
hurt those feelings. But I think I am entitled to say that the view of
De Quincey's character and cast of thought given in the text, while
imputing nothing discreditable in intention, is founded on the whole
published work and all the biographical evidence then accessible to me,
and will not be materially altered by anything since published or likely
to be so in future. The world, though often not quite right, is never
quite wrong about a man, and it would be almost impossible that it
should be wrong in face of such autobiographic details as are furnished,
not merely by the _Autobiography_ itself, but by a mass of notes spread
over seven years in composition and full of personal idiosyncrasy. I not
only acquit De Quincey of all serious moral delinquency,--I declare
distinctly that no imputation of it was ever intended. It is quite
possible that some of his biographers and of those who knew him may have
exaggerated his peculiarities, less possible I think that those
peculiarities should not have existed. But the matter, except for my own
regret at having offended De Quincey's daughter, will have been a happy
one if it results in a systematic publication of his letters, which,
from the specimens already printed, must be very characteristic and very
interesting. In almost all cases a considerable collection of letters is
the most effective, and especially the most truth-telling, of all
possible "lives." No letters indeed are likely to increase the literary
repute of the author of the _Confessions_ and of the _Caesars_; but they
may very well clear up and fill in the hitherto rather fragmentary and
conjectural notion of his character, and they may, on the other hand,
confirm that idea of both which, however false it may seem to his
children, and others who w