daughter drove with him to see a picture which was at

that time attracting public attention.

he was confined to his bed.

Soon afterwards

On the first of April 1854,

His

he was seized with a stroke of paralysis, and on the next day about midnight, he died in his sixty-ninth year. friend Lockhart died about seven months later.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.-1785-1859.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY, one of the most powerful prose writers of the present century, was the son of a wealthy merchant, and was born at "The Farm," a country house near Manchester. At an early age, however, he was removed with his family to Greenhays, a villa near the same town. He was the fifth child and the second son in a family of eight, and his father died when he was in his seventh year. The death of the father brought home the eldest son, then about twelve years of age, who had been educated at Louth Grammar School. This brother, who died at the age of sixteen, seems to have been a remarkable boy. "He read lectures on physics to the rest of the nursery. He endeavoured to construct an apparatus for walking on the ceiling like a fly, first on the principle of skates, and subsequently upon that of a humming-top. He was profound on the subject of necromancy, and frequently terrified his young admirers by speculating on the possibility of a general confederacy of the ghosts of all time against a single generation of men. He made a balloon; and wrote, and in conjunction with his brothers and sisters performed, two acts of a tragedy, in which all the personages were beheaded at the end of each act, leaving none to carry on the play, a perplexity which ultimately caused 'Sultan Amurath' to be abandoned to the housemaids."-Quarterly Review.

When De Quincey was about eight years of age his mother removed to Bath, taking her family with her, and he was sent to the grammar school of that city,

where the superiority of his Latin verses gained him many enemies among his schoolfellows. He was afterwards sent to a private school at Winkfield in Wiltshire, where he also distinguished himself by his classical attainments. He tells us himself that at ten years of age he wrote Greek with ease, and at fifteen could converse in it fluently. In the spring of the year 1800 he paid a visit to Ireland in the company of a young friend of his own age, Lord Westport, and his tutor. Arriving at

Dublin in June he saw the last act of the old Irish Parliament, namely, its sitting to hear the royal assent to the bills of the past session, among which the bill for the Union was included. After spending three months at the seat of Lord Westport's father in Mayo, he returned to England and spent some time at Laxton in Northamptonshire at the seat of Lord Carbery. On leaving Laxton he was sent to the Manchester Grammar School in order to prepare for the university. The head-master, according to De Quincey's account, was not a man of great attainments, and De Quincey begged his guardians to allow him at once to proceed either to Oxford or Cambridge. This they declined to do, and he resolved not to stay at the school after he had completed his seventeenth year.

At length his birthday arrived, and he rose early and left the school without bidding good-bye to any one. It was a bright summer morning when he started off afoot, carrying under his arm a small parcel containing some articles of dress, a favourite English poet in one pocket, and an odd volume of Euripides in the other. His first intention had been to proceed to the Lake District, but he changed his mind and set out for St. John's Priory, near Chester, where his mother then lived. Here he was but coldly received; but through the intervention of an uncle who had just returned from India, he was permitted to carry out his long-cherished purpose of a pedes trian tour in Wales, and a guinea a-week was allowed him for expenses. After residing in the principality for some time he suddenly made up his mind to visit Lon

don; and in order to be perfectly free in his movements, he concealed his intention from his relatives, and when he arrived at the metropolis tried to raise money on the strength of his pecuniary expectations. While negotiating with the money-lenders his scanty supply of ready cash was soon all spent, and he was reduced to the greatest distress.

In his Confessions of an Opium Eater he has given a vivid account of his sufferings at this time. He took refuge in an old unfurnished house in Greek Street, Soho, which was occupied in the daytime by a bankrupt solici tor, who promised to assist him in getting a loan, and in the meantime allowed him to make what use he pleased of the upper rooms. For a period of sixteen weeks he suffered the anguish of hunger in almost every degree of intensity. Often would he enter the breakfast room of the solicitor on pretence of inquiring after business, but in reality to pick up a few crumbs from the scanty meal. At one time he fainted in the street through sheer exhaustion, and would probably have died had it not been for the kindness of a poor unfortunate girl, who, out of her own very slender, resources, bought him a glass of port wine. Why he should choose to endure all this misery when a letter to his friends would at once have brought him relief, we cannot tell. Probably he lived in the daily expectation of getting money from the Jews, and being thus enabled to live in London free from the control of his guardians; whereas any application on his part would necessitate his return. However this may be, he was at length obliged to submit. Through the intervention of some friends a reconciliation took place, and he returned to the Priory.

De Quincey entered Worcester College, Oxford, in Dec. 1803, and he resided at the university five years. It was shortly after this event that he first began to take opium. He tells us that while on a visit to London, for the first time after entering Oxford, he was seized with violent rheumatic pains in his head and face. A college acquaintance recommended opium, and this was the

commencement of a habit which afterwards entailed years of intense agony. At first, however, he only indulged in the drug occasionally and in small quantities, and then the evil effects were not so great; but it very soon became a necessity. Without it he could not undertake any work requiring steady application, and its effects were always followed by a reaction which left him feeble and dispirited. While at Oxford he had the character of being a quiet studious man. He spent much of his time in studying the philosophy of the ancients, and he made some progress in Hebrew and German. He was remarkable in these days for his great conversational powers, and for the extraordinary stock of information which he possessed on all subjects. In 1808 he went in for his degree; and his first day's examination, which was on paper, was of such remarkable merit that one of the examiners said to a gentleman then resident at Worcester College, "You have sent us to-day the cleverest man I ever met with." The viva voce examination which was to follow on the morrow was looked forward to with great interest; but that night De Quincey packed up his things and left the university; and though his name remained on the books of the college two years longer, he never returned. probable that, having taken a dose of opium on the morning of the examination, the reaction which followed in the evening led him to distrust his own powers, and deterred him from undergoing the next day's ordeal.

It is

Towards the close of his university career he became acquainted with several of his distinguished contemporaries. In 1807, he first saw Coleridge at Bristol; and in the course of the same year he visited Southey and Wordsworth at the lakes. In 1809, after leaving Oxford, he took a cottage in the vale of Grasmere, which had previously been occupied by Wordsworth, and there he remained for twenty years. He married in 1816. During the earlier portion of his residence at the lakes he devoted much time to the study of German literature, especially the writings of Kant, Fichte, Lessing, and

Richter. Afterwards, when suffering from the effects of the fatal drug, he had little relish for study; and the only work that could rouse him was Ricardo's treatise on political economy, which a friend sent him in 1819. In 1821 he published his Confessions of an Opium Eater, and at once took rank among the most remarkable prose writers of his day.

He

For several years after he first became acquainted with the nature of opium, he only indulged in it occasionally; but in the summer of 1812 he was attacked by an affection of the stomach similar to that which he had felt when wandering as an outcast in the streets of London, and which was owing doubtless, in the first instance, to his having gone for days and weeks with scarcely any food. To relieve the pain which he felt he increased the quantity of opium, and began to take it daily as regularly as his food. For about twelve months all went well; but then he began to experience its terrible effects. fell into a kind of lethargy, and felt utterly unfit for the least exertion either of mind or body. He was disturbed by visions in the daytime, and by dreadful dreams at night. He now felt the absolute necessity of breaking off the habit, or at least of diminishing the quantity, if he wished to preserve his life and reason. But his sufferings increased tenfold; he persevered, however, and at length in some degree triumphed. The fatal effects of the vicious habit were felt long after the habit had, to a great degree, been given up. "Think of me," he says in his "Confessions," 39 66 as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and much, perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked."

The "Confessions" originally appeared in the "London Magazine," and were afterwards printed in a separate form. The deep interest attached to the narrative, and the impassioned language in which a great portion of it is written, attracted general admiration. The following description of one of the terrible dreams which he experienced in 1820 has often been quoted as a speci

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