Gents Mag 1857 part 2 p.113
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Gentleman's Magazine 1857 part 2 p.113
[reap]pearing sun and the racing sunbeams over the hills - yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France? Ah! these were spectacles indeed for those sympathetising people in distant worlds; and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength of love, and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes; could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of earth."The eloquence of the passage we have just quoted is not much above the ordinary tone of Mr. De Quincey's serious Essays. It is quite as sure that many passages - both of the papers which are included in these volumes and of the greater number which have yet to be collected - rise into a far higher strain than this, as that any sink very much below it. It is, in fact, one of Mr. De Quincey's conspicuous characteristics to be not at all chary of his ample intellectual wealth. He lavishes the treasures of his learning, and his humour, and his logic, and his eloquence, indiscriminately, on all occasions, not from any petty motive of display, or any craving after admiration, but in absolute unmixed prodigality of nature. He has never learned economy from limitation of his means. He talks as well as he writes, as freely and as fluently, and with just as unsparing an expenditure of his immense resources. We have even heard, on an authority that seemed not unworthy of credit, that the proofs of his Magazine contributions have been not seldom returned to the printer with their margins enriched with a profusion of notes of comment, caution, and complaint, so rich in fancy, fun, and knowledge, that they alone - had they been collected and arranged - would have composed an article quite as entertaining, and almost as instructive, as the text about which they were so sportively accumulated. There is one other circumstance concerning Mr. De Quincey and his works which the briefest notice of the man or his writings would be blameable in leaving unrecorded. In our speculative age it is almost a distinction for a scholarly and subtle thinker to have kept the simplicity of his childish faith and love unimpaired, and to have been able to sustain his piety on the grounds of adamantine evidence, without sacrificing any of its sweetness. Yet this has been our author's enviable good fortune. With learning and philosophy enough to be a meet antagonist for the ablest of the assailants of Christianity, he has never wavered in his own steadfast reverence for its divine truths. Over and above all their other signal merits, the great body of his writings are, on this account, imbued with the beauty of religious feeling. There is nothing sanctimonious or austere in them - no injudicious headlong introduction of religious topics at unseasonable times - no unbecoming assumption of the preacher's office - not often, even, any direct or recogniseable digression for a moment's space, in order to exhibit or enforce a sentiment or doctrine of the faith; but there is, nevertheless, an indefinable flavour in the stream that bears eloquent witness to the nature of the spring from which it flows. There is not a serious article - scarcely, perhaps, a humorous one - in the whole collection, that we can carefully read through without carrying from it, along with something to increase our knowledge, or improve our taste, or animate our reason or imagination, a persuasion that we have been enjoying the companionship of a loving and believing mind,- "Not for reproof, but high and warm delight, And grave encouragement." As far as this republication extends at present, it has been carefully and well done. The addition of double title-pages, so that the volumes might |
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