aboration, intended not exactly for constant
use, but for use when required; and he achieved it. Certain well-known
passages, as well as others which have not become hackneyed, in the
_Confessions of an Opium Eater_, in the _Autobiography_, in _The English
Mail Coach_, in _Our Ladies of Sorrow_, and elsewhere, are unsurpassed
in English or out of it for imaginative splendour of imagery, suitably
reproduced in words. Nor was this De Quincey's only, though it was his
most precious gift. He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very
untrustworthy faculty of humour, both grim and quaint. He was possessed
of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little alloyed no doubt by a
tendency to wire-drawn and over subtle minuteness such as besets the
born logician who is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of
common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He could expound and
describe admirably; he had a thorough grasp of the most complicated
subjects when he did not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into
letting it go, and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action, such
as the struggles of Bentley with Trinity College, the journey of the
Tartars from the Ukraine to Siberia, and the fortunes of the Spanish
Nun, Catalina, with singular adaptability. In his biographical articles
on friends and contemporaries, which are rather numerous, he has been
charged both with ill-nature and with inaccuracy. The first charge may
be peremptorily dismissed, the second requires much argument and sifting
in particular cases. To some who have given not a little attention to
the matter it seems that De Quincey was never guilty of deliberate
fabrication, and that he was not even careless in statement. But he was
first of all a dreamer; and when it is true of a man that, in the words
of the exquisite passage where Calderon has come at one with
Shakespeare, his very dreams are a dream, it will often happen that his
facts are not exactly a fact.

Nevertheless, De Quincey is a great writer and a great figure in
literature, while it may plausibly be contended that journalism may make
all the more boast of him in that it is probable that without it he
would never have written at all. And he has one peculiarity not yet
mentioned. Although his chief excellences may not be fully perceptible
except to mature tastes, he is specially attractive to the young.
Probably more boys have in the last forty years been brought to a love
of literat