account which this opposition may have produced in you.

It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than mine concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living poet, but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings of every rank and situation must be enveloped with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and images on which the life of my poems depends. The things which I have taken, whether from within or without-what have they to do with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from street to street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdette; the Westminster election or the borough of Honiton?

In a word-for I cannot stop to make my way through the hurry of images that present themselves to me-what have they to do with endless talking about things nobody cares any thing for, except as far as their own vanity is concerned, and this with persons they care nothing

for, but as their vanity or selfishness is concerned? What have they to do (to say all at once) with a life without love? In such a life there can be no thought; for we have no thought (save thoughts of pain) but as far as we have love and admiration.

It is an awful truth that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world-among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God.

Upon this I shall insist elsewhere; at present let me confine myself to my object, which is to make you, my dear friend, as easy-hearted as myself with respect to these poems. Trouble not yourself upon their present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny-to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel;

and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves. .

My letter (as this second sheet which I am obliged to take admonishes me) is growing to an enormous length; and yet, saving that I have expressed my calm confidence that these poems will live, I have said nothing which has a particular application to the object of it, which was to remove all disquiet from your mind on account of the condemnation they may at present incur from that portion of my contemporaries who are called the public. I am sure, my dear Lady Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it can only be from an apprehension that it may affect me, upon which I have already set you at ease; or from a fear that this present blame is ominous of their future or final destiny. If this be the case, your tenderness for me betrays you. Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in the senseless hurry of their lives, do not read books;

they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about them. And even if this were not so, never forget what I believe was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. He must teach the art by which he is to be seen; this, in a certain degree, even to all persons, however wise and pure may be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But for those who dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or talk about them to take up an opinion-for this multitude of unhappy, and misguided, and misguiding beings, an entire regeneration must be produced; and if this be possible, it must be a work of time. To conclude, my ears are stonedead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings; and after what I have said I am sure yours will be the same. I doubt not that you will share with me an invincible confidence that my writings (and among them these little poems) will coöperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, wherever found; and that they will in their degree be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier. Farewell. . .

THOMAS DE QUINCEY TO HIS DAUGHTER, MRS. MARGARET CRAIG.

Thursday, June 10, 1847.

I am rather disturbed that neither M. nor F. nor E. has found a moment for writing to me. Yet perhaps it was not easy. For I know very seriously, and have often remarked, how difficult it is to find a spare moment for some things in the very longest day, which lasts, you know, twenty-four hours, though by the way it strikes one as odd that the shortest lasts quite as many. I have been suffering greatly myself for ten days, the cause being, in part, some outrageous heat that the fussy atmosphere put itself into about the beginning of this monthbut what for nobody can understand. Heat always untunes the harp of my nervous system, and, O heavens! how electric it is! But, after all, what makes me so susceptible of such undulations in this capricious air, and compels me to sympathize with all the uproars and miffs, towering passions, or gloomy sulks of the atmosphere, is the old eternal ground, viz., that I am famished. O what ages it is since I dined! On what great day of jubilee is it that Fate hides, under the thickest of table-cloths, a din