INTRODUCTION. T is not often that the work of a great writer IT is offered to posterity in another form than that which he finally imparted to it. The departure from this rule in the case of the most celebrated book of so illustrious an author as De Quincey may well be deemed to require apology. Our plea must be, that while the additions in the second recension of the Opium-Eater are biographically interesting, and distinguished by great felicity of diction in particular passages, they are as a whole detrimental to the finish and unity which the original version possesses, and without which it would not be entitled to a place in the series of which the present edition forms a part. Almost the first condition of such classic completeness is that no portion of the work should be superfluous. The additions to the OpiumEater are for the most part brilliant superfluities. They are not indeed mere excrescences, and may rather be compared to those excursions and variations into which a musician may be betrayed by consciousness of mastery and pleasure in execution until he has lost sight of his original theme. They convert the brief, pregnant narrative of one episode in a life into a diffuse autobiography. Of all our great writers De Quincey is the most deficient in concentration. He stands at one end of the scale of which the other is occupied by Landor. If either of these masters of style had indulged the peculiar defect of his quality much further, he would have risked falling into an inferior rank. Even as it is, Landor sometimes repels and De Quincey sometimes fatigues; but the former's aridity is more compatible with the dignity of a classic than De Quincey's exuberance. If even so perilous a failing as prolixity has not proved fatal to De Quincey, he owes his escape to three things. First, to the stately elaboration of his style, depending for its effect upon an intricacy of composition implying great pomp, and justifying great copiousness of diction. Secondly, to the check imposed upon his redundance by his pre |