but profounder power,-cast a dimmer but more gorgeous radiance, attract fewer but more devoted admirers, and obtain an equal, and perhaps more enviable immortality. THOMAS DE QUINCEY. CONCEIVE a little, pale-faced, wo-begone, and attenuated man, with short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and neckcloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening the door of his room in street, advancing towards you with hurried movement, and half-recognising glance; saluting you in low and hesitating tones, asking you to be seated; and after he has taken a seat opposite you, but without looking you in the face, beginning to pour into your willing ear, a stream of learning and wisdom as long as you are content to listen, or to lend him the slightest cue. Who is it? 'Tis De Quincey, the celebrated Opium eater, the friend and interpreter of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the sounder of metaphysic depths, and the dreamer of imaginative dreams, the most learned and most singular man alive, the most gifted of scholars, the most scholar-like of men of genius. He has come from his desk, where he has been prosecuting his profound researches, or, peradventure, inditing a popular paper for Tait, or a more elaborate and recondite paper for Blackwood. Your first feeling as he enters, is, Can this be he? Is this the distinguished scholar? Is this the impassioned autobiographer? Is this the man who has recorded such gorgeous visions, seen by him while shut up in the Patmos of a laudanum phial? His head is small, how can it carry all he knows? His brow is singular in shape, but not particularly large or prominent where has nature expressed his majestic intellect? His eyes-they sparkle not, they shine not, they are lustreless can that be a squint which glances over from |