distances and geological periods of time. He paints vast perspectives, opening in long succession, till we grow dizzy in the contemplation. The cadences of his style suggest sounds echoing each other, and growing gradually fainter, till they die away into infinite distance. Two great characteristics, as he tells us, of his opium dreams were a deep-seated melancholy and an exaggeration of the things of space and time. Nightly he descended into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that he could ever reascend. He saw buildings and landscapes in "proportion so vast as the human eye is not fitted to receive." He seemed to live ninety or a hundred years in a night, and even to pass through periods far beyond the limits of human existence. Melancholy and an awestricken sense of the vast and vague are the emotions which he communicates with the greatest power; though the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the name of passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of the fineness of his taste, that he scarcely ever falls into bombast. We tremble at his audacity in accumulating gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is justified by the result. I know of no other modern writer who has soared into the same regions with so uniform and easy a flight.

I-ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH. [INTRODUCTION.-The following paper, which is given entire, is from De Quincey's Miscellaneous Essays. It well illustrates some of the most notable characteristics of his literary art―his subtlety, sometimes attenuated to superfineness, his minute explicitness of statement, his digressions and "returns," irrelevant but always interesting, and his admirable skill in the niceties of sentential structure. The higher qualities of his impassioned prose are exemplified in the second extract.]

1. From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-I-8. The first paragraph exemplifies De Quincey's tendency to "minute explicitness of statement." (See Introduction.) He had felt great perplexity "on one point." "It was this." "Produced an effect." "The effect was," etc.

2. the knocking. See Macbeth, act ii., scene 3.

which succeeds to the murder of Duncan produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and 5 a depth of solemnity; yet, however I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I could never see why it should produce such an effect.

2. Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in oppo- 10 sition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust nothing else; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this, out of ten thousand instances 15 that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the law of that science; as, for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to 20 each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now, in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly incapable to make the smallest approximation to 25 it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is- that he allows his understanding to

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-5. it.

What noun does "it" represent?

5, 6. awfulness... solemnity. Discriminate between these synonyms. 6, 7. understanding. The term is here used in a specific sense as contrasted with reason. For this technical use of the word "understanding," see Webster's Unabridged.

9-44. The whole of paragraph 2 is a digression, as will be seen by the nat ure of the connective introducing paragraph 3. State in a general way the substance of this digression.-What is the author's aim in inducing the reader not to trust to the mere "understanding?"

12. meanest. Force of the epithet as here used?

15, 16. Of this... one. What kind of sentence rhetorically?-What figure of speech is exemplified in the expression "ten thousand?" (See Def. 34.) 25. to make. Remark on this form of expression.

26. Yet why? For. Supply the ellipsis after "why" and before "for."

27. reason is-.

The dash is De Quincey's own: what effect do you sup

pose he wishes to produce by its use?

overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line, which is known and can be proved to be a 3o horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line. A line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly, he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to produce the effect de- 35 manded. Here, then, is one instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were; for not only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but (what is mon- 40 strous!) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen (and, therefore, quoad his consciousness has not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life.

3. But to return from this digression. My understanding could 45 furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better. I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. se At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his debut on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe that in

LITERARY ANALYSIS. — 28-36. His understanding. . . demanded. State in your own language the nature of the author's reasoning.

42, 43. quoad his consciousness, as regards his consciousness.

51. Mr. Williams made, etc. The reference is to several murders committed in London by a certain Williams-murders described with great power by De Quincey in a series of papers under the title of Murder Considered as a Fine Art.

51-54. made his debut... reputation. What is the figure of speech?-To appreciate fully the force of the grim humor in the epithets used by the author in speaking of these murders, the papers referred to in the preceding note should be read.

54–62. On which murders... Williams. Remark on the expressions “connoisseur in murder ;" "amateur (in murder); "great artists" (in murder). -Indicate how, in this passage, the strain of irony is kept up.

one respect they have had an ill effect by making the connois- 55 seur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me, in a querulous tone, "There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking 60 of." But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders (that of the Marrs) the same incident (of knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually 65 occur, which the genius of Shakespeare has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakespeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feelings in opposition to my understanding; and 70 I again set myself to study the problem. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and the solution is this: Murder, in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively 75 upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind (though different in degree) amongst all living creatures. This instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to s the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What, then, must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy of 85

LITERARY ANALYSIS. —67. good judges... dilettanti. Explain why these expressions are used.

71. At length, etc. ness of statement.

81. the poor... on.

rately made?

Point out here an illustration of De Quincey's explicit

The quotation is from Shakespeare: is it quite accu

85-88. sympathy... approbation. Give the nice distinction which the author makes as to the kind of "sympathy" he is referring to.

comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them-not a sympathy of pity or approbation). In the murdered person all strife of thought, all fiux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by an overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death strikes him "with its 90 petrific* mace." But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion-jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred-which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look.

4. In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous 95 and teeming faculty of creation, Shakespeare has introduced two murderers; and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably discriminated; but, though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feeling caught chiefly by contagion from her-yet, as both are 100 finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed; and on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, "the gracious Duncan," and adequately to expound "the 105 deep damnation of his taking off," this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the human nature-i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man-was gone, vanished, extinct; and that the fiendish nature 11 had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-91. petrific. Etymology of the word? 93, 94. will create a hell, etc. What is the figure of speech?

94. and into this hell we are to look. Remark on the order of words. What effect is gained?

95. In Macbeth, etc. Is the structure of the sentence periodic or loose?

95, 96. gratifying... creation. Observe the power of the expression.

97. two murderers: that is, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

99. the tiger spirit. What is the figure of speech in this epithet?

100. Point out a powerful phrase in this line.

103, 104. to make... antagonist. Express in other words.

110. gone, vanished, extinct. What is the effect of this employment of three synonymous verbs?-Notice that the combination is the more energetic from the absence of conjunctions (asyndeton).