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4543
may be at peace, if it depends on us (to begin with this), I say
we ought to maintain peace; and I call upon the affirmant to
move a resolution, to take some measure, and not to palter with
us. But if another, having arms in his hand and a large force
around him, amuses you with the name of peace while he car-
ries on the operations of war, what is left but to defend your-
selves? You may profess to be at peace if you like, as he does;
I quarrel not with that. But if any man supposes this to be a
peace, which will enable Philip to master all else and attack
you last, he is a madman, or he talks of a peace observed
towards him by you, not towards you by him. This it is that
Philip purchases by all his expenditure-the privilege of assail-
ing you without being assailed in turn.
If we really wait until he avows that he is at war with us,
we are the simplest of mortals: for he would not declare that,
though he marched even against Attica and Piræus; at least if
we may judge from his conduct to others. For example, to the
Olynthians he declared when he was forty furlongs from their
city, that there was no alternative, but either they must quit
Olynthus or he Macedonia; though before that time, whenever
he was accused of such an intent, he took it ill and sent ambas-
sadors to justify himself. Again, he marched toward the Pho-
cians as if they were allies, and there were Phocian envoys who
accompanied his march, and many among you contended that his
advance would not benefit the Thebans. And he came into Thes-
saly of late as a friend and ally, yet he has taken possession of
Pheræ; and lastly he told these wretched people of Oreus that
he had sent his soldiers out of good-will to visit them, as he
heard they were in trouble and dissension, and it was the part
of allies and true friends to lend assistance on such occasions.
People who would never have harmed him, though they might
have adopted measures of defense, he chose to deceive rather
than warn them of his attack; and think ye he would declare
war against you before he began it, and that while you are will-
ing to be deceived? Impossible. He would be the silliest of
mankind, if whilst you the injured parties make no complaint
against him, but are accusing your own countrymen, he should
terminate your intestine strife and jealousies, warn you to turn
against him, and remove the pretexts of his hirelings for assert-
ing, to amuse you, that he makes no war upon Athens. O
heavens! would any rational being judge by words rather than


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4544
DEMOSTHENES
by actions, who is at peace with him and who at war? Surely
none. Well then, tell me now: when he sends mercenaries into
Chersonesus, which the king and all the Greeks have acknowl-
edged to be yours, when he avows himself an auxiliary and
writes us word so, what are such proceedings? He says he is
not at war; I cannot however admit such conduct to be an
observance of the peace; far otherwise: I say, by his attempt on
Megara, by his setting up despotism in Euboea, by his present
advance into Thrace, by his intrigues in Peloponnesus, by the
whole course of operations with his army, he has been breaking
the peace and making war upon you; unless indeed you will say
that those who establish batteries are not at war until they
apply them to the walls. But that you will not say: for whoever
contrives and prepares the means for my conquest, is at war
with me before he darts or draws the bow. What, if anything
should happen, is the risk you run? The alienation of the Hel-
lespont, the subjection of Megara and Eubœa to your enemy, the
siding of the Peloponnesians with him. Then can I allow that
one who sets such an engine at work against Athens is at peace
with her? Quite the contrary. From the day that he destroyed
the Phocians I date his commencement of hostilities. Defend
yourselves instantly, and I say you will be wise: delay it, and
you may wish in vain to do so hereafter. So much do I dissent
from your other counselors, men of Athens, that I deem any
discussion about Chersonesus or Byzantium out of place. Succor
them, I advise that, watch that no harm befalls them, send all
necessary supplies to your troops in that quarter; but let your
deliberations be for the safety of all Greece, as being in the
utmost peril. I must tell you why I am so alarmed at the state
of our affairs, that if my reasonings are correct, you may share
them, and make some provision at least for yourselves, however
disinclined to do so for others; but if in your judgment I talk
nonsense and absurdity, you may treat me as crazed, and not
listen to me either now or in future.
-
That Philip from a mean and humble origin has grown
mighty, that the Greeks are jealous and quarreling among them-
selves, that it was far more wonderful for him to rise from that
insignificance than it would now be, after so many acquisitions,
to conquer what is left: these, and similar matters which I might
dwell upon, I pass over. But I observe that all people, begin-
ning with you, have conceded to him a right which in former


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DEMOSTHENES
4545
times has been the subject of contest in every Grecian war.
And what is this? The right of doing what he pleases, openly
fleecing and pillaging the Greeks, one after another, attacking
and enslaving their cities. You were at the head of the Greeks
for seventy-three years, the Lacedæmonians for twenty-nine; and
the Thebans had some power in these latter times after the
battle of Leuctra. Yet neither you my countrymen, nor The-
bans, nor Lacedæmonians, were ever licensed by the Greeks to
act as you pleased; far otherwise. When you, or rather the
Athenians of that time, appeared to be dealing harshly with cer-
tain people, all the rest, even such as had no complaint against
Athens, thought proper to side with the injured parties in a war
against her. So, when the Lacedæmonians became masters and
succeeded to your empire, on their attempting to encroach and
make oppressive innovations a general war was declared against
them, even by such as had no cause of complaint. But where-
fore mention other people? We ourselves and the Lacedæmo-
nians, although at the outset we could not allege any mutual
injuries, thought proper to make war for the injustice that we
saw done to our neighbors. Yet all the faults committed by the
Spartans in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in the
seventy, are less, men of Athens, than the wrongs which in
thirteen incomplete years that Philip has been uppermost he has
inflicted on the Greeks: nay, they are scarcely a fraction of these,
as may easily be shown in a few words. Olynthus and Methone
and Apollonia, and thirty-two cities on the borders of Thrace, I
pass over; all which he has so cruelly destroyed, that a visitor
could hardly tell if they were ever inhabited; and of the Pho-
cians, so considerable a people exterminated, I say nothing. But
what is the condition of Thessaly? Has he not taken away her
constitutions and her cities, and established tetrarchies, to parcel
her out, not only by cities, but also by provinces, for subjection ?
Are not the Euboean States governed now by despots, and that
in an island near to Thebes and Athens? Does he not expressly
write in his epistles, "I am at peace with those who are willing
to obey me? " Nor does he write so and not act accordingly.
He is gone to the Hellespont; he marched formerly against
Ambracia; Elis, such an important city in Peloponnesus, he
possesses; he plotted lately to get Megara: neither Hellenic nor
barbaric land contains the man's ambition.
VIII-285


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4546
DEMOSTHENES
And we the Greek community, seeing and hearing this, instead
of sending embassies to one another about it and expressing
indignation, are in such a miserable state, so intrenched in our
separate towns, that to this day we can attempt nothing that
interest or necessity requires; we cannot combine, or form any
association for succor and alliance; we look unconcernedly on
the man's growing power, each resolving, methinks, to enjoy the
interval that another is destroyed in, not caring or striving for
the salvation of Greece: for none can be ignorant that Philip,
like some course or attack of fever or other disease, is coming
even on those that yet seem very far removed. And you must
be sensible that whatever wrong the Greeks sustained from
Lacedæmonians or from us was at least inflicted by genuine
people of Greece; and it might be felt in the same manner as if
a lawful son, born to a large fortune, committed some fault or
error in the management of it; on that ground one would con-
sider him open to censure and reproach, yet it could not be said
that he was an alien, and not heir to the property which he so
dealt with. But if a slave or a spurious child wasted and spoiled
what he had no interest in - Heavens! how much more heinous
and hateful would all have pronounced it! And yet in regard to
Philip and his conduct they feel not this, although he is not
only no Greek and no way akin to Greeks, but not even a bar-
barian of a place honorable to mention; in fact, a vile fellow of
Macedon, from which a respectable slave could not be purchased
formerly.
What is wanting to make his insolence complete? Besides
his destruction of Grecian cities, does he not hold the Pythian
games, the common festival of Greece, and if he comes not
himself, send his vassals to preside? Is he not master of Ther-
mopyla and the passes into Greece, and holds he not those
places by garrisons and mercenaries? Has he not thrust aside
Thessalians, ourselves, Dorians, the whole Amphictyonic body,
and got pre-audience of the oracle, to which even the Greeks
do not all pretend? Yet the Greeks endure to see all this;
methinks they view it as they would a hailstorm, each praying
that it may not fall on himself, none trying to prevent it. And
not only are the outrages which he does to Greece submitted to,
but even the private wrongs of every people: nothing can go
beyond this! Still under these indignities we are all slack and


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DEMOSTHENES
4547
disheartened, and look towards our neighbors, distrusting one
another instead of the common enemy. And how think
ye a
man who behaves so insolently to all, how will he act when he
gets each separately under his control?
But what has caused the mischief? There must be some
cause, some good reason why the Greeks were so eager for
liberty then, and now are eager for servitude. There was some-
thing, men of Athens, something in the hearts of the multitude.
then which there is not now, which overcame the wealth of
Persia and maintained the freedom of Greece, and quailed not
under any battle by land or sea; the loss whereof has ruined all,
and thrown the affairs of Greece into confusion. What was this?
Nothing subtle or clever: simply that whoever took money from
the aspirants for power or the corrupters of Greece were uni-
versally detested; it was dreadful to be convicted of bribery;
the severest punishment was inflicted on the guilty, and there
was no intercession or pardon. The favorable moments for
enterprise which fortune frequently offers to the careless against
the vigilant, to them that will do nothing against those that
discharge all their duty, could not be bought from orators or
generals; no more could mutual concord, nor distrust of tyrants.
and barbarians, nor anything of the kind. But now all such
principles have been sold as in open market, and those imported
in exchange, by which Greece is ruined and diseased. What are
they? Envy where a man gets a bribe; laughter if he confesses
it; mercy to the convicted; hatred of those that denounce the
crime; all the usual attendants upon corruption. For as to
ships and men and revenues and abundance of other materials,
all that may be reckoned as constituting national strength-
assuredly the Greeks of our day are more fully and perfectly
supplied with such advantages than Greeks of the olden time.
But they are all rendered useless, unavailable, unprofitable, by
the agency of these traffickers.
That such is the present state of things, you must see with-
out requiring my testimony; that it was different in former
times I will demonstrate, not by speaking my own words, but
by showing an inscription of your ancestors, which they graved
on a brazen column and deposited in the citadel, not for their
own benefit (they were right-minded enough without such records),
but for a memorial and example to instruct you how seriously
such conduct should be taken up. What says the inscription


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4548
DEMOSTHENES
then? It says:-"Let Arthmius, son of Pythonax the Zelite, be
declared an outlaw and an enemy of the Athenian people and
their allies, him and his family. " Then the cause is written
why this was done: because he brought the Median gold into
Peloponnesus. That is the inscription. By the gods! only con-
sider and reflect among yourselves what must have been the
spirit, what the dignity of those Athenians who acted so. One
Arthmius a Zelite, subject of the king (for Zelea is in Asia),
because in his master's service he brought gold into Peloponne-
sus, not to Athens,-they proclaimed an enemy of the Athenians
and their allies, him and his family, and outlawed. That is not
by the outlawry commonly spoken of; for what would a Zelite
care, to be excluded from Athenian franchises? It means not
that; but in the statutes of homicide it is written, in cases where
a prosecution for murder is not allowed, but killing is sanctioned,
"and let him die an outlaw," says the legislator; by which he
means that whoever kills such a person shall be unpolluted.
Therefore they considered that the preservation of all Greece
was their own concern (but for such opinion, they would not
have cared whether people in Peloponnesus were bought and cor-
rupted); and whomsoever they discovered taking bribes, they
chastised and punished so severely as to record their names in
brass. The natural result was, that Greece was formidable to
the barbarian, not the barbarian to Greece. 'Tis not so now:
since neither in this nor in other respects are your sentiments
the same. But what are they? You know yourselves; why
am I to upbraid you with everything? The Greeks in general
are alike, and no better than you. Therefore I say, our present
affairs demand earnest attention and wholesome counsel.
---
There is a foolish saying of persons who wish to make us
easy, that Philip is not yet as powerful as the Lacedæmonians
were formerly, who ruled everywhere by land and sea, and had
the king for their ally, and nothing withstood them; yet Athens
resisted even that nation, and was not destroyed. I myself believe
that while everything has received great improvement, and the
present bears no resemblance to the past, nothing has been so
changed and improved as the practice of war. For anciently, as
I am informed, the Lacedæmonians and all Grecian people would
for four or five months during the season, only, invade and ravage
the land of their enemies with heavy-armed and national troops,
and return home again; and their ideas were so old-fashioned,


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DEMOSTHENES
4549
or rather national, that they never purchased an advantage from
any; theirs was a legitimate and open warfare.
But now you
doubtless perceive that the majority of disasters have been
effected by treason; nothing is done in fair field or combat.
You hear of Philip marching where he pleases, not because he
commands troops of the line, but because he has attached to him.
a host of skirmishers, cavalry, archers, mercenaries, and the like.
When with these he falls upon a people in civil dissension, and
none (through mistrust) will march out to defend the country, he
applies engines and besieges them. I need not mention that he
makes no difference between winter and summer, that he has
no stated season of repose. You, knowing these things, reflect-
ing on them, must not let the war approach your territories, nor
get your necks broken, relying on the simplicity of the old war
with the Lacedæmonians; but take the longest time beforehand
for defensive measures and preparations, see that he stirs not
from home, avoid any decisive engagement. For a war, if we
choose, men of Athens, to pursue a right course, we have many
natural advantages; such as the position of his kingdom, which
we may extensively plunder and ravage, and a thousand more;
but for a battle he is better trained than we are.
Nor is it enough to adopt these resolutions and oppose him
by warlike measures: you must on calculation and on principle
abhor his advocates here, remembering that it is impossible to
overcome your enemies abroad until you have chastised those
who are his ministers within the city. Which, by Jupiter and
all the gods, you cannot and will not do! You have arrived at
such a pitch of folly or madness or―I know not what to call it:
I am tempted often to think that some evil genius is driving
you to ruin that for the sake of scandal or envy or jest or
any other cause, you command hirelings to speak (some of whom
would not deny themselves to be hirelings), and laugh when they
abuse people. And this, bad as it is, is not the worst; you have
allowed these persons more liberty for their political conduct than
your faithful counselors; and see what evils are caused by listen-
ing to such men with indulgence. I will mention facts that you
will all remember.
In Olynthus some of the statesmen were in Philip's interest,
doing everything for him; some were on the honest side, aiming
to preserve their fellow-citizens from slavery. Which party, now,
destroyed their country? or which betrayed the cavalry, by whose


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DEMOSTHENES
4550
betrayal Olynthus fell? The creatures of Philip; they that, while
the city stood, slandered and calumniated the honest counselors
so effectually that the Olynthian people were induced to banish
Apollonides.
Nor is it there only, and nowhere else, that such practice has
been ruinous.
What can be the reason perhaps you wonder-why the Olyn-
thians were more indulgent to Philip's advocates than to their
own? The same which operates with you. They who advise
for the best cannot always gratify their audience, though they
would; for the safety of the State must be attended to; their
opponents by the very counsel which is agreeable advance Phil-
ip's interest. One party required contribution, the other said.
there was no necessity; one were for war and mistrust, the other
for peace, until they were ensnared. And so on for everything
else (not to dwell on particulars); the one made speeches to
please for the moment, and gave no annoyance; the other offered
salutary counsel that was offensive. Many rights did the people
surrender at last, not from any such motive, of indulgence or
ignorance, but submitting in the belief that all was lost. Which,
by Jupiter and Apollo, I fear will be your case, when on calcu-
lation you see that nothing can be done. I pray, men of Athens,
it may never come to this! Better die a thousand deaths than
render homage to Philip, or sacrifice any of your faithful coun-
selors. A fine recompense have the people of Oreus got, for
trusting themselves to Philip's friends and spurning Euphræus!
Finely are the Eretrian commons rewarded, for having driven
away your ambassadors and yielded to Clitarchus! Yes; they are
slaves, exposed to the lash and the torture. Finely he spared
the Olynthians! It is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes,
and while you take evil counsel and shirk every duty, and even
listen to those who plead for your enemies, to think you inhabit
a city of such magnitude that you cannot suffer any serious mis-
fortune. Yea, and it is disgraceful to exclaim on any occurrence,
when it is too late, "Who would have expected it? However-
this or that should have been done, the other left undone. "
Many things could the Olynthians mention now, which if fore-
seen at the time would have prevented their destruction. Many
could the Orites mention, many the Phocians, and each of the
ruined States. But what would it avail them? As long as the
vessel is safe, whether it be great or small, the mariner, the
--


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DEMOSTHENES
4551
pilot, every man in turn should exert himself, and prevent its
being overturned either by accident or design: but when the sea
hath rolled over it, their efforts are vain. And we likewise, O
Athenians, whilst we are safe, with a magnificent city, plentiful
resources, lofty reputation-what must we do? Many of you, I
dare say, have been longing to ask. Well then, I will tell you;
I will move a resolution; pass it, if you please.
First, let us prepare for our own defense; provide ourselves,
I mean, with ships, money, and troops-for surely, though all
other people consented to be slaves, we at least ought to struggle
for freedom. When we have completed our own preparations
and made them apparent to the Greeks, then let us invite the
rest, and send our ambassadors everywhere with the intelligence,
to Peloponnesus, to Rhodes, to Chios, to the king, I say (for it
concerns his interests not to let Philip make universal conquest);
that, if you prevail, you may have partners of your dangers and
expenses in case of necessity, or at all events that you may
delay the operations. For since the war is against an indi-
vidual, not against the collected power of a State, even this may
be useful; as were the embassies last year to Peloponnesus, and
the remonstrances with which I and the other envoys went round
and arrested Philip's progress, so that he neither attacked Am-
bracia nor started for Peloponnesus. I say not, however, that
you should invite the rest without adopting measures to protect
yourselves; it would be folly, while you sacrifice your own inter-
est, to profess a regard for that of strangers, or to alarm others
about the future, whilst for the present you are unconcerned. I
advise not this; I bid you send supplies to the troops in Cher-
sonesus, and do what else they require; prepare yourselves and
make every effort first, then summon, gather, instruct the rest of
the Greeks. That is the duty of a State possessing a dignity
such as yours. If you imagine that Chalcidians or Megarians
will save Greece, while you run away from the contest, you
imagine wrong. Well for any of those people if they are safe
themselves! This work belongs to you; this privilege your ances-
tors bequeathed to you, the prize of many perilous exertions.
But if every one will sit seeking his pleasure, and studying to
be idle himself, never will he find others to do his work; and
more than this, I fear we shall be under the necessity of doing
all that we like not at one time. Were proxies to be had, our
inactivity would have found them long ago; but they are not.


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4552
DEMOSTHENES
Such are the measures which I advise, which I propose; adopt
them, and even yet, I believe, our prosperity may be re-estab-
lished. If any man has better advice to offer, let him communi-
cate it openly. Whatever you determine, I pray to all the gods
for a happy result.
Translation of Charles R. Kennedy.
INVECTIVE AGAINST LICENSE OF SPEECH
T
HIS, you must be convinced, is a struggle for existence.
You cannot overcome your enemies abroad till you have
punished your enemies, his ministers, at home. They will
be the stumbling-blocks which prevent you reaching the others.
Why, do you suppose, Philip now insults you? To other people
he at least renders services though he deceives them, while he
is already threatening you. Look for instance at the Thes-
salians. It was by many benefits conferred on them that he
seduced them into their present bondage. And then the Olyn-
thians, again,- how he cheated them, first giving them Potidæa
and several other places, is really beyond description. Now he
is enticing the Thebans by giving up to them Boeotia, and deliv-
ering them from a toilsome and vexatious war. Each of these
people did get a certain advantage; but some of them have suf-
fered what all the world knows; others will suffer whatever may
hereafter befall them. As for you, I recount not all that has
been taken from you, but how shamefully have you been treated
and despoiled! Why is it that Philip deals so differently with
you and with others? Because yours is the only State in Greece
in which the privilege is allowed of speaking for the enemy, and
a citizen taking a bribe may safely address the Assembly, though
you have been robbed of your dominions. It was not safe at
Olynthus to be Philip's advocate, unless the Olynthian common-
alty had shared the advantage by possession of Potidæa. It was
not safe in Thessaly to be Philip's advocate, unless the people of
Thessaly had secured the advantage by Philip's expelling their
tyrants and restoring the Synod at Pylæ. It was not safe in
Thebes, until he gave up Bootia to them and destroyed the
Phocians. Yet at Athens, though Philip has deprived you of
Amphipolis and the territory round Cardia— nay, is making
Eubœa a fortress as a check upon us, and is advancing to attack
Byzantium-it is safe to speak in Philip's behalf.


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DEMOSTHENES
4553
JUSTIFICATION OF HIS PATRIOTIC POLICY
D
O NOT go about repeating that Greece owes all her misfor-
tunes to one man. No, not to one man, but to many
abandoned men distributed throughout the different States,
of whom, by earth and heaven, schines is one. If the truth
were to be spoken without reserve, I should not hesitate to call
him the common scourge of all the men, the districts, and the
cities which have perished; for the sower of the seed is answer-
able for the crop.
I affirm that if the future had been apparent to us all,—if
you, Æschines, had foretold it and proclaimed it at the top of
your voice instead of preserving total silence,- nevertheless the
State ought not to have deviated from her course, if she had
regard to her own honor, the traditions of the past, or the judg-
ment of posterity. As it is, she is looked upon as having failed
in her policy,- the common lot of all mankind when such is
the will of heaven; but if, claiming to be the foremost State of
Greece, she had deserted her post, she would have incurred the
reproach of betraying Greece to Philip. If we had abandoned
without a struggle all which our forefathers braved every dan-
ger to win, who would not have spurned you, Æschines? How
could we have looked in the face the strangers who flock to our
city, if things had reached their present pass,- Philip the chosen
leader and lord of all,—while others without our assistance had
borne the struggle to avert this consummation? We! who have
never in times past preferred inglorious safety to peril in the path
of honor. Is there a Greek or a barbarian who does not know
that Thebes at the height of her power, and Sparta before her
ay, and even the King of Persia himself—would have been only
glad to compromise with us, and that we might have had what
we chose, and possessed our own in peace, had we been willing
to obey orders and to suffer another to put himself at the head
of Greece? But it was not possible,—it was not a thing which
the Athenians of those days could do. It was against their
nature, their genius, and their traditions; and no human persua-
sion could induce them to side with a wrong-doer because he
was powerful, and to embrace subjection because it was safe.
No; to the last our country has fought and jeopardized herself
for honor and glory and pre-eminence. A noble choice, in har-
mony with your national character, as you testify by your respect


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4554
DEMOSTHENES
for the memories of your ancestors who have so acted. And
you are in the right; for who can withhold admiration from the
heroism of the men who shrank not from leaving their city and
their fatherland, and embarking in their war-ships, rather than
submit to foreign dictation? Why, Themistocles, who counseled
this step, was elected general; and the man who counseled sub-
mission was stoned to death- and not he only, for his wife was
stoned by your wives, as he was by you. The Athenians of
those days went not in quest of an orator or a general who could
help them to prosperous slavery; but they scorned life itself, if it
were not the life of freedom. Each of them rega
Each of them regarded himself as
the child not only of his father and of his mother, but of his
country; and what is the difference? He who looks on himself
as merely the child of his parents, awaits death in the ordinary
course of nature; while he who looks on himself as the child
also of his country, will be ready to lay down his life rather
than see her enslaved.
·
Do I take credit to myself for having inspired you with
sentiments worthy of your ancestors? Such presumption would
expose me to the just rebuke of every man who hears me.
What I maintain is, that these very sentiments are your own;
that the spirit of Athens was the same before my time, though
I do claim to have had a share in the application of these prin-
ciples to each successive crisis. Æschines, therefore, when he
impeaches our whole policy, and seeks to exasperate you against
me as the author of all your alarms and perils, in his anxiety
to deprive me of present credit is really laboring to rob you of
your everlasting renown. If by your vote against Ctesiphon you
condemn my policy, you will pronounce yourselves to have been
in the wrong, instead of having suffered what has befallen you
through the cruel injustice of fortune.
But it cannot be; you
have not been in the wrong, men of Athens, in doing battle for
the freedom and salvation of all: I swear it by your forefathers,
who bore the battle's brunt at Marathon; by those who stood
in arms at Platæa; by those who fought the sea fight at Sala-
mis; by the heroes of Artemisium, and many more whose resting-
place in our national monuments attests that, that as our country
buried, so she honored, all alike-victors and vanquished. She
was right; for what brave men could do, all did, though a
higher power was master of their fate.
_____


## p. 4554 (#337) ###########################################



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## p. 4555 (#341) ###########################################

4555
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
(1785-1859)
BY GEORGE R. CARPENTER
D
SE QUINCEY'S popular reputation is largely due to his autobio-
graphical essays, to his 'Confessions. ' Whatever may be
the merits of his other writings, the general public, as in
the case of Rousseau, of Dante, of St. Augustine, and of many
another, has, with its instinctive and unquenchable desire for knowl-
edge of the inner life of men of great emotional and imaginative
power, singled out De Quincey's 'Confessions' as the most significant
of his works. There has arisen a popular legend of De Quincey,
making him (not unlike Dante, who had seen hell with his bodily
eyes) a man who had felt in his own person the infernal pangs and
pleasures consequent upon enormous and almost unique excesses in
the use of that Oriental drug which possesses for us all such a
romantic attraction. He became the "English Opium-Eater»; and
even the most recent and authoritative edition of his writings, that of
the late Professor Masson, did not hesitate in advertisements to avail
itself of a title so familiar and so sensational.
To a great degree, this feeling on the part of the public is natural
and proper. De Quincey's opium habit, begun in his youth under
circumstances that modern physicians have guessed to be justifiable,
and continued throughout the remainder of his life, at first without
self-restraint, at last in what was for him moderation,― has rendered
him a striking and isolated figure in Western lands.
We have a right eagerly to ask: On this strongly marked tem-
perament, so delicately imaginative and so keenly logical, so recep-
tive and so retentive, a type alike of the philosopher and the poet,
the scholar and the musician-on such a contemplative genius, what
were the effects of so great and so constant indulgence in a drug
noted for its power of heightening and extending, for a season, the
whole range of the imaginative faculties?
Justifiable as such feelings may be, however, they tend to wrong
De Quincey's memory and to limit our conceptions of his character
and genius. He was no vulgar opium drunkard; he was, to all
appearances, singularly free even from the petty vices to which
eaters of the drug are supposed to be peculiarly liable.
To be sure,
he was not without his eccentricities. He was absent-mindedly care-
less in his attire, unusual in his hours of waking and sleeping, odd
—


## p. 4556 (#342) ###########################################

4556
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
in his habits of work, ludicrously ignorant of the value of money,
solitary, prone to whims, by turns reticent and loquacious. But for
all his eccentricities, De Quincey - unlike Poe, for example —is not a
possible object for pity or patronage; they would be foolish who
could doubt his word or mistrust his motives.
He was "queer," as
most great Englishmen of letters of his time were; but the more his
at first enigmatic character comes to light, through his own letters
and through the recollections of his friends, the more clearly do we
see him to have been a pure-minded and well-bred man, kind,
honest, generous, and gentle. His life was almost wholly passed
among books, books in many languages, books of many kinds and
times. These he incessantly read and annotated. And the treasures
of this wide reading, stored in a retentive and imaginative mind,
form the basis of almost all his work that is not distinctly autobio-
graphical.
De Quincey's writings, as collected by himself (and more recently
by Professor Masson), fill fourteen good-sized volumes, and consist of
about two hundred and fifteen separate pieces, all of which were
contributed to various periodicals between 1813, when at the age of
thirty-eight he suddenly found himself and his family dependent for
support on his literary efforts, to his death in 1859. Books, sustained
efforts of construction, he did not except in a single instance, and
probably could not, produce; his mind held rich stores of information
on many subjects, but his habit of thought was essentially non-con-
secutive and his method merely that of the brilliant talker, who
illumines delightfully many a subject, treating none, however, with
reserved power and thorough care. His attitude toward his work, it
is worth while to notice, was an admirable one. His task was often
that of a hack writer; his spirit never. His life was frugal and
modest in the extreme; and though writing brought him bread and
fame, he seems never, in any recorded instance, to have concerned
himself with its commercial value. He wrote from a full mind and
with genuine inspiration, and lived and died a man of letters from
pure love of letters and not of worldly gain.
As we have noticed, it is the autobiographical part of De Quincey's
writing the 'Confessions' of one who could call every day for "a
glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar"—that has made
him famous, and which deserves first our critical attention. It con-
sists of four or five hundred pages of somewhat disconnected sketches,
including the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater' and 'Suspiria
de Profundis. ' De Quincey himself speaks of them as "a far higher
class of composition" than his philosophical or historical writings. -
declaring them to be, unlike the comparatively matter-of-fact memoirs
of Rousseau and St. Augustine, "modes of impassioned prose, ranging
―――


## p. 4557 (#343) ###########################################

THOMAS DE QUINCEY
4557
under no precedents that I am aware of in any literature. " What
De Quincey attempted was to clothe in words scenes from the world
of dreams,- -a lyric fashion, as it were, wholly in keeping with con-
temporary taste and aspiration, which under the penetrating influence
of romanticism were maintaining the poetical value and interest of
isolated and excited personal feeling.
Like Dante, whose 'Vita Nuova' De Quincey's 'Confessions'
greatly resemble in their essential characteristics of method, he had
lived from childhood in a world of dreams. Both felt keenly the
pleasures and sorrows of the outer world, but in both contemplative
imagination was so strong that the actual fact-the real Beatrice, if
you will became as nothing to that same fact transmuted through
idealizing thought. De Quincey was early impressed by the remark-
able fashion in which dreams or reveries weave together the sepa-
rate strands of wakeful existence. Before he was two years old he
had, he says, "a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favor-
ite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason,—that it
demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional,
and not dependent on laudanum. " At the same age he "connected
a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early in the
spring, of some crocuses. " These two incidents are a key to the
working of De Quincey's mind. Waking or sleeping, his intellect had.
the rare power of using the facts of life as the composer might use
a song of the street, building on a wandering ballad a whole sym-
phony of transfigured sound, retaining skillfully, in the midst of the
new and majestic music, the winning qualities of the popular strain.
To such a boy, with an imaginative mind, an impassioned nature, and
a memory which retained and developed powerfully year by year
all associations involving the feelings of grandeur, magnificence, or
immensity, to such a boy, life and experience were but the storing
up of material which the creative mind might weave into literature
that had the form of prose and the nature of poetry.
De Quincey shared Dante's rare capacity for retaining strong vis-
ual images, his rare power of weaving them into a new and won-
derful fabric. But De Quincey, though as learned and as acute as
Dante, had not Dante's religious and philosophical convictions. A
blind faith and scholastic reason were the foundations of the great
vision of the 'Divine Comedy. ' De Quincey had not the strong but
limited conception of the world on which to base his imagination, he
had not the high religious vision to nerve him to higher contempla-
tion, and his work can never serve in any way as a guide and
message to mankind. De Quincey's visions, however, have the merit
of not being forced. He did not resolve to see what faith and
reason bade him.


## p. 4558 (#344) ###########################################

4558
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
While all controlled reasoning was suspended under the incantation
of opium, his quick mind, without conscious intent, without preju-
dice or purpose, assembled such mysterious and wonderful sights and
sounds as the naked soul might see and hear in the world of actual
experience. For De Quincey's range of action and association was
not as narrow as might seem. He had walked the streets of Lon-
don friendless and starving, saved from death by a dram given by
one even more wretched than he, only a few months after he had
talked with the king. De Quincey's latent images are therefore not
grotesque or mediæval, not conditioned by any philosophical theory,
not of any Inferno or Paradise. The elements of his visions are
the simple elements of all our striking experiences: the faces of the
dead, the grieving child, the tired woman, the strange foreign face,
the tramp of horses' feet. And opium merely magnified these simple
elements, rendered them grand and beautiful without giving them
any forced connection or relative meaning. We recognize the traces
of our own transfigured experience, but we are relieved from the
necessity of accepting it as having an inner meaning. De Quincey's
singular hold on our affection seems, therefore, to be his rare quality
of presenting the unusual but typical dream or reverie as a beautiful
object of interest, without endeavoring to give it the character of an
allegory or a fable.
The greater part of De Quincey's writings however are historical,
critical, and philosophical in character rather than autobiographical;
but these are now much neglected. We sometimes read a little of
'Joan of Arc,' and no one can read it without great admiration; the
'Flight of the Tartars' has even become a part of "prescribed" lit-
erature in our American schools; but of other essays than these we
have as a rule only a dim impression or a faint memory. There are
obvious reasons why De Quincey's historical and philosophical writ-
ings, in an age which devotes itself so largely to similar pursuits, no
longer recommend themselves to the popular taste. His method is
too discursive and leisurely; his subjects as a rule too remote from
current interest; his line of thought too intricate. These failings,
from our point of view, are the more to be regretted because there
has never been an English essayist more entertaining or suggesti ve
than De Quincey. His works cover a very wide range of subject-
matter, from the 'Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth' to the Cas-
uistry of Roman Meals' and the Toilet of a Hebrew Lady. ' His
topics are always piquant. Like Poe, De Quincey loved puzzling
questions, the cryptograms, the tangled under sides of things, where
there are many and conflicting facts to sift and correlate, the points
that are now usually settled in foot-notes and by references to Ger-
man authorities. In dealing with such subjects he showed not only
―


## p. 4559 (#345) ###########################################

THOMAS DE QUINCEY
4559
that he possessed the same keen logic which entertains us in Poe,
but that he was the master of great stores of learned information.
We are never wholly convinced, perhaps, of the eternal truth of his
conclusions, but we like to watch him arrive at them. They seem
fresh and strange, and we are dazzled by the constantly changing
material. Nothing can be more delightful than the constant influx of
new objects of thought, the unexpected incidents, the seemingly in-
expugnable logic that ends in paradox, the play of human interest in
a topic to which all living interest seems alien. There is scarcely a
page in all De Quincey's writings that taken by itself is actually dull.
In each, one receives a vivid impression of the same lithe and active
mind, examining with lively curiosity even a recondite subject; crack-
ing a joke here and dropping a tear there, and never intermitting
the smooth flow of acute but often irrelevant observation.
The gen-
eration that habitually neglects De Quincey has lost little important
historical and philosophical information, perhaps, but it has certainly
deprived itself of a constant source of entertainment.
As a stylist De Quincey marked a new ideal in English; that
of impassioned prose, as he himself expresses it,-prose which delib-
erately exalts its subject-matter, as the opera does its. And it was
really as an opera that De Quincey conceived of the essay. It was
to have its recitatives, its mediocre passages, the well and firmly
handled parts of ordinary discourse. All comparatively unornamented
matter was, however, but preparative to the lyric outburst,— the
strophe and antistrophe of modulated song. In this conception of
style others had preceded him,- Milton notably,- but only half con-
sciously and not with sustained success. There could be no great
English prose until the eighteenth century had trimmed the tangled
periods of the seventeenth, and the romantic movement of the nine-
teenth added fire and enthusiasm to the clear but conventional style
of the eighteenth. Ruskin and Carlyle have both the same element
of bravura, as will be seen if one tries to analyze their best passages
as music. But in De Quincey this lyric arrangement is at once more
delicate and more obvious, as the reader may assure himself if he re-
read his favorite passages, noticing how many of them are in essence
exclamatory, or actually vocative, as it were. In this ideal of impas-
sioned prose De Quincey gave to the prose of the latter part of the
century its keynote. Macaulay is everywhere equally impassioned or
unimpassioned; the smooth-flowing and useful canal, rather than the
picturesque river in which rapids follow the long reaches of even
water, and are in turn succeeded by them. To conceive of style as
music,-as symmetry, proportion, and measure, only secondarily de-
pendent on the clear exposition of the actual subject-matter,- that is
De Quincey's ideal, and there Pater and Stevenson have followed him.


## p. 4560 (#346) ###########################################

4560
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
De Quincey's fame has not gone far beyond the circle of those
who peak his native tongue. A recent French critic finds him
rough and rude, sinister even in his wit. In that circle however his
reputation has been high, though he has not been without stern
critics. Mr. Leslie Stephen insists that his logic is more apparent
than real; that his humor is spun out and trivial, his jests ill-timed
and ill-made. His claim that his Confessions' created a new genre
is futile; they confess nothing epoch-making,-no real crises of soul,
merely the adventures of a truant schoolboy, the recollections of
a drunkard. He was full of contemptuous and effeminate British
prejudices against agnosticism and Continental geniuses. "And so,"
Mr. Stephen continues, “in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey
read extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quan-
tity of opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities
in the language, and provided a good deal of respectable padding
for the magazines. "
Not a single one of the charges can be wholly denied; on analysis
De Quincey proves guilty of all these offenses against ideal culture.
Rough jocoseness, diffusiveness, local prejudice, a life spent on de-
tails, a lack of philosophy, - these are faults, but they are British
faults, Anglo-Saxon faults. They scarcely limit affection or greatly
diminish respect. De Quincey was a sophist, a rhetorician, a brilliant
talker. There are men of that sort in every club, in every com-
munity. We forgive their eccentricity, their lack of fine humor, the
most rigid logic, or the highest learning. We do not attempt to reply
to them. It is enough if the stream of discourse flows gently on from
their lips. A rich and well-modulated vocabulary, finely turned
phrases, amusing quips and conceits of fancy, acute observations, a
rich store of recondite learning,- these charm and hold us.
Such a
talker, such a writer, was De Quincey. Such was his task,- to amuse,
to interest, and at times to instruct us. One deeper note he struck
rarely, but always with the master's hand,—the vibrating note felt in
passages characteristic of immensity, solitude, grandeur; and it is to
that note that De Quincey owes the individuality of his style and his
fame.
There are few facts in De Quincey's long career that bear directly
on the criticism of his works. Like Ruskin, he was the son of a
well-to-do and cultivated merchant, but the elder De Quincey unfor-
tunately died too early to be of any help in life to his impulsive and
unpractical boy, who quarreled with his guardians, ran away from
school, and neglected his routine duties at Oxford. His admiration
for Wordsworth and Coleridge led him to the Lake country, where he
married and settled down. The necessity of providing for his family
at last aroused him from his life of meditation and indulgence in


## p. 4561 (#347) ###########################################

THOMAS DE QUINCEY
4561
opium, and brought him into connection with the periodicals of the
day. After the death of his wife in 1840 he moved with his children
to the vicinity of Edinburgh, where in somewhat eccentric solitude
he spent the last twenty years of his uneventful life.
GRlabeled
CHARLES LAMB
From Biographical Essays'
T SOUNDS paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to say that
in every literature of large compass some authors will be
found to rest much of the interest which surrounds them on
their essential non-popularity. They are good for the very reason
that they are not in conformity to the current taste. They in-
terest because to the world they are not interesting. They attract
by means of their repulsion. Not as though it could separately
furnish a reason for loving a book, that the majority of men had
found it repulsive. Prima facie, it must suggest some presump-
tion against a book that it has failed to gain public attention.
To have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against
its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a good sign.
That argues power. Hatred may be promising. The deepest
revolutions of mind sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to
have left a reader unimpressed is in itself a neutral result, from
which the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even simple
failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result from posi-
tive powers in a writer, from special originalities such as rarely
reflect themselves in the mirror of the ordinary understanding.
It seems little to be perceived, how much the great Scriptural
idea of the worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in lit-
erature as well as in life. In reality, the very same combinations
of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh
physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of
life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library
divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd
of men divides into that same majority and minority. The
world has an instinct for recognizing its own, and recoils.
from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same
VIII-286


## p. 4562 (#348) ###########################################

4562
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real
life. From qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy
profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and
must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more deter-
mined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect;
and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than
it does in the realities of life.
Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class here
contemplated; he, if any ever has, ranks amongst writers whose
works are destined to be forever unpopular, and yet forever
interesting; interesting moreover by means of those very quali-
ties which guarantee their non-popularity. The same qualities
which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the thought-
less, which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust
and powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to
command a select audience in every generation.
The prose
essays, under the signature of "Elia," form the most delightful
section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a peculiar field of
observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are
composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the
ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But
this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams
of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights
of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects
casually described, whether men, or things, or usages; and in
the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollec-
tions and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring
before the tumult of new and revolutionary generations; these
traits in combination communicate to the papers a grace and
strength of originality which nothing in any literature approaches,
whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felici-
tous papers of Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley,
and some others in the same vein of composition. They resem-
ble Addison's papers also in the diction, which is natural and
idiomatic even to carelessness. They are equally faithful to the
truth of nature; and in this only they differ remarkably - that
the sketches of Elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's
own character, whereas in all those of Addison the personal
peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the reader from
the beginning through the account of the club) are nearly qui-
escent. Now and then they are recalled into a momentary


## p. 4563 (#349) ###########################################

THOMAS DE QUINCEY
4563
notice, but they do not act, or at all modify his pictures of Sir
Roger or Will Wimble. They are slightly and amiably eccentric;
but the Spectator himself, in describing them, takes the station
of an ordinary observer.
Everywhere, indeed, in the writings of Lamb, and not merely
in his Elia,' the character of the writer co-operates in an under-
current to make the effect of the thing written. To understand
in the fullest sense either the gayety or the tenderness of a par-
ticular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar
bias of the writer's mind, whether native and original, or im-
pressed gradually by the accidents of situation; whether simply
developed out of predispositions by the action of life, or violently
scorched into the constitution by some fierce fever of calamity.
There is in modern literature a whole class of writers, though
not a large one, standing within the same category; some marked
originality of character in the writer becomes a coefficient with
what he says to a common result; you must sympathize with this
personality in the author before you can appreciate the most sig-
nificant parts of his views. In most books the writer figures as
a mere abstraction, without sex or age or local station, whom the
reader banishes from his thoughts. What is written seems to
proceed from a blank intellect, not from a man clothed with
fleshly peculiarities and differences. These peculiarities and dif-
ferences neither do, nor (generally speaking) could. intermingle
with the texture of the thoughts so as to modify their force or
their direction. In such books-and they form the vast majority
- there is nothing to be found or to be looked for beyond the
direct objective. (Sit venia verbo! ) But in a small section of
books, the objective in the thought becomes confluent with the
subjective in the thinker-the two forces unite for a joint prod-
uct; and fully to enjoy the product, or fully to apprehend either
element, both must be known. It is singular and worth inquir-
ing into, for the reason that the Greek and Roman literature had
no such books. Timon of Athens, or Diogenes, one may con-
ceive qualified for this mode of authorship, had journalism existed
to rouse them in those days; their "articles" would no doubt
have been fearfully caustic. But as they failed to produce any-
thing, and Lucian in an after age is scarcely characteristic enough
for the purpose, perhaps we may pronounce Rabelais and Mon-
taigne the earliest of writers in the class described. In the cen-
tury following theirs came Sir Thomas Browne, and immediately


## p. 4564 (#350) ###########################################

4564
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
after him La Fontaine. Then came Swift, Sterne, with others
less distinguished; in Germany, Hippel the friend of Kant, Har-
mann the obscure, and the greatest of the whole body - John
Paul Friedrich Richter. In him, from the strength and determi-
nateness of his nature as well as from the great extent of his
writing, the philosophy of this interaction between the author as
a human agency and his theme as an intellectual reagency might
best be studied. From him might be derived the largest number
of cases, illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into
the concrete of the pure intellect into the human nature of the
author. But nowhere could illustrations be found more interest-
ing - shy, delicate, evanescent-shy as lightning, delicate and
evanescent as the colored pencilings on a frosty night from the
Northern Lights, than in the better parts of Lamb.
To appreciate Lamb, therefore, it is requisite that his charac-
ter and temperament should be understood in their coyest and
most wayward features. A capital defect it would be if these
could not be gathered silently from Lamb's works themselves.
It would be a fatal mode of dependency upon an alien and sep-
arable accident if they needed an external commentary. But they
do not. The syllables lurk up and down the writings of Lamb,
which decipher his eccentric nature. His character lies there dis-
persed in anagram; and to any attentive reader the re-gathering
and restoration of the total word from its scattered parts is
inevitable without an effort. Still it is always a satisfaction in
knowing a result, to know also its why and how; and in so far
as every character is likely to be modified by the particular
experience, sad or joyous, through which the life has traveled,
it is a good contribution towards the knowledge of that resulting
character as a whole to have a sketch of that particular experi
ence.