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Page 2
Now sympathy is own child of the imagination, whether expressed in the
language of laughter or in the vernacular of tears; and the most
distinctive quality in the mental make-up of De Quincey was, after
all, this dominant imagination which was characteristic of the man
from childhood to old age. The Opium-Eater once defined the _great
scholar_ as "not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but
also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing
together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what
else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing
life." Such was De Quincey himself. He was a scholar born, gifted with
a mind apt for the subtleties of metaphysics, a memory well-nigh
inexhaustible in the recovery of facts; in one respect, at least, he
was a _great_ scholar, for his mind was dominated by an imagination as
vigorous as that which created Macaulay's _England_, almost as
sensitive to dramatic effect as that which painted Carlyle's _French
Revolution_. Therefore when he wrote narrative, historical narrative,
or reminiscence, he lived in the experiences he pictured, as great
historians do; perhaps living over again the scenes of the past, or
for the first time making real the details of occurrences with which
he was only recently familiar.
The _Revolt of the Tartars_ is a good illustration of his power.
Attracted by the chance reading of an obscure French missionary and
traveller to the dramatic possibilities of an episode in Russian
history, De Quincey built from the bare notes thus discovered,
supplemented by others drawn from a matter-of-fact German
arch�ologist, a narrative which for vividness of detail and
truthfulness of local color belongs among the best of those classics
in which fancy helps to illuminate fact, and where the imagination is
invoked to recreate what one feels intuitively must have been real.
The _Revolt of the Tartars_, while not exhibiting the highest
achievement of the author's power, nevertheless belongs in the group
of writings wherein his peculiar excellences are fairly manifested.
The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the
masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest
will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of
that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into
superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De
Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and
in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of
their beauties is found in the melodiousness of their tone and the
rhythmic sweetness of their motion.
It is as a master of rhetoric that De Quincey is distinguished among
writers. Some hints of his ability are seen in the opening and closing
passages of this essay, but to find him at his best one must turn to
the _Confessions_ and to the other papers which describe his life,
particularly those which recount his marvellous dreams. In these
papers we find the passages where De Quincey's passion rises to the
heights which few other writers have ever reached in prose, a
loftiness and grandeur which is technically denominated as "sublime."
In his _Essay on Style_, published in _Blackwood's_, 1840, he
deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English
writers, "the tendency of the national mind to value the matter of a
book not only as paramount to the manner, but even as distinct from it
and as capable of a separate insulation." As one of the great masters
of prose style in this century, De Quincey has so served the interests
of art in this regard, that in his own case the charge is sometimes
reversed: his own works are read rather to observe his manner than to
absorb his thought. Yet when this is said, it is not to imply that the
material is unworthy or the ideas unsound; on the contrary, his
sentiment is true and his ideas are wholesome; but many of the topics
treated lie outside the deeper interests of ordinary life, and fail to
appeal to us so practically as do the writings of some lesser men. Of
the "one hundred and fifty magazine articles" which comprise his
works, there are many that will not claim the general interest, yet
his writings as a whole will always be recognized by students of
rhetoric as containing excellences which place their author among the
English classics. Nor can De Quincey be accused of subordinating
matter to manner; in spite of his taste for the theatrical and a
tendency to extravagance, his expression is in keeping with his
thought, and the material of those passages which contain his most
splendid flights is appropriate to the treatment it receives. One
effective reason, certainly, why we take pleasure in the mere style of
De Quincey's work is because that work is so thoroughly inspired with
the Opium-Eater's own genial personality, because it so unmistakably
suggests that inevitable "smack of individuality" which gives to the
productions of all great authors their truest distinction if not their
greatest worth.
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