The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1

Оглавление

Томас Де Квинси. The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1

PREFACE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

DE QUINCEY'S POSTHUMOUS WORKS

I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS

1.—The Dark Interpreter

2.—The Solitude of Childhood

3.—Who is this Woman that beckoneth and warneth me from the Place where she is, and in whose Eyes is Woeful Remembrance? I guess who she is

4.—THE PRINCESS WHO OVERLOOKED ONE SEED IN A POMEGRANATE

5.—NOTES FOR 'SUSPIRIA.'

II. THE LOVELIEST SIGHT FOR WOMAN'S EYES

III. WHY THE PAGANS COULD NOT INVEST THEIR GODS WITH ANY IOTA OF GRANDEUR

IV. ON PAGAN SACRIFICES

V. ON THE MYTHUS

VI. DAVID'S NUMBERING OF THE PEOPLE—THE POLITICS OF THE SITUATION

VII. THE JEWS AS A SEPARATE PEOPLE

VIII. 'WHAT IS TRUTH?' THE JESTING PILATE SAID—A FALSE GLOSS

IX. WHAT SCALIGER SAYS ABOUT THE EPISTLE TO JUDE

X. MURDER AS A FINE ART

XI. ANECDOTES—JUVENAL

XII. ANNA LOUISA

XIII. SOME THOUGHTS ON BIOGRAPHY

XIV. GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON AND WALPOLE, AND 'JUNIUS.'

XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL

XVI. FRANCE PAST AND FRANCE PRESENT

XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS

XVIII. NATIONAL MANNERS AND FALSE JUDGMENT OF THEM

XIX. INCREASED POSSIBILITIES OF SYMPATHY. IN THE PRESENT AGE

XX. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIL

XXI. ON MIRACLES

XXII. 'LET HIM COME DOWN FROM THE CROSS.'

XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?

XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION. WITH EACH OTHER.)

1.—Paganism and Christianity—the Ideas of Duty and Holiness

2.—MORAL AND PRACTICAL

3.—On Words And Style

4.—Theological and Religious

5.—Political, etc

6.—Personal Confessions, etc

7.—Pagan Literature

8.—Historical, etc

9.—Literary

XXV. OMITTED PASSAGES AND VARIATIONS

1.—The Rhapsodoi

2.—Mrs. Evans and the 'Gazette.'

3.—A Lawsuit Legacy

4.—The True Justifications of War

5.—Philosophy Defeated

6.—The Highwayman's Skeleton

7.—The Ransom for Waterloo

8.—Desiderium

Отрывок из книги

These articles recovered from the MSS. of De Quincey will, the Editor believes, be found of substantive value. In some cases they throw fresh light on his opinions and ways of thinking; in other cases they deal with topics which are not touched at all in his collected works: and certainly, when read alongside the writings with which the public is already familiar, will give altogether a new idea of his range both of interests and activities. The 'Brevia,' especially, will probably be regarded as throwing more light on his character and individuality—exhibiting more of the inner life, in fact—than any number of letters or reminiscences from the pens of others would be found to do. It is as though the ordinary reader were asked to sit down at ease with the author, when he is in his most social and communicative mood, when he has donned his dressing-gown and slippers, and is inclined to unbosom himself, and that freely, on matters which usually, and in general society, he would have been inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent anecdote, or bon-mot, or reflecting on the latest accident or murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in style in magazine or newspaper.

It must not be supposed that the author himself was inclined to lay such weight on these stray notes, as might be presumed from the form in which they are here presented. That might give the impression of a most methodic worker and thinker, who had before him a carefully-indexed commonplace book, into which he posted at the proper place his rough notes and suggestions. That was not De Quincey's way. If he was not one of the wealthy men who care not how they give, he was one who made the most careless record even of what was likely to be valuable—at all events to himself. His habit was to make notes just as they occurred to him, and on the sheet that he chanced to have at the moment before him. It might be the 'copy' for an article indeed, and in a little square patch at the corner—separated from the main text by an insulating line of ink drawn round the foreign matter—through this, not seldom, when finished he would lightly draw his pen; meaning probably to return to it when his MS. came back to him from the printer, which accounts, it may be, in some measure for his reluctance to get rid of, or to destroy, 'copy' already printed from. Sometimes we have found on a sheet a dozen or so of lines of a well-known article; and the rest filled up with notes, some written one way of the paper, some another, and now and then entangled in the most surprising fashion. In these cases, where the notes, of course, were meant for his own eye, he wrote in a small spidery handwriting with many contractions—a kind of shorthand of his own, and very different indeed from his ordinary clean, clear, neat penmanship. In many cases these notes demanded no little care and closeness in deciphering—the more that the MSS. had been tumbled about, and were often deeply stained by glasses other than inkstands having been placed upon them. 'Within that circle none dared walk but he,' said Tom Hood in his genially humorous way; and many of these thoughts were thus partially or wholly encircled. Pages of articles that had already been printed were intermixed with others that had not; and the first piece of work that I entered on was roughly to separate the printed from the unprinted—first having carefully copied out from the former any of the spidery-looking notes interjected there, to which I have already referred. The next process was to arrange the many separate pages and seeming fragments into heaps, by subjects; and finally to examine these carefully and, with a view to 'connections,' to place them together. In not a few cases where the theme was attractive and the prospect promising, utter failure to complete the article or sketch was the result, the opening or ending passages, or a page in the middle, having been unfortunately destroyed or lost.

.....

It is not for so idle a purpose as that of showing the Pagan backsliding—that is too evident—but for a far subtler purpose, and one which no man has touched, viz., the incapacity of creating grandeur for the Pagans, even with carte blanche in their favour, that I write this paper. Nothing is more incomprehensible than the following fact—nothing than this when mastered and understood is more thoroughly instructive—the fact that having a wide, a limitless field open before them, free to give and to take away at their own pleasure, the Pagans could not invest their Gods with any iota of grandeur. Diana, when you translate her into the Moon, then indeed partakes in all the natural grandeur of a planet associated with a dreamy light, with forests, forest lawns, etc., or the wild accidents of a huntress. But the Moon and the Huntress are surely not the creations of Pagans, nor indebted to them for anything but the murderous depluming which Pagan mythology has operated upon all that is in earth or in the waters that are under the earth. Now, why could not the ancients raise one little scintillating glory in behalf of their monstrous deities? So far are they from thus raising Jupiter, that he is sometimes made the ground of nature (not, observe, for any positive reason that they had for any relation that Jupiter had to Creation, but simply for the negative reason that they had nobody else)—never does Jupiter seem more disgusting than when as just now in a translation of the 'Batrachia' I read that Jupiter had given to frogs an amphibious nature, making the awful, ancient, first-born secrets of Chaos to be his, and thus forcing into contrast and remembrance his odious personality.

Why, why, why could not the Romans, etc., make a grandeur for their Gods? Not being able to make them grand, they daubed them with finery. All that people imagine in the Jupiter Olympus of Phidias—they themselves confer. But an apostle is beyond their reach.

.....