Now sympathy is own child of the imagination, whether expressed in the language of laughter or in the vernacular of tears; and the most distinctive quality in the mental make-up of De Quincey was, after all, this dominant imagination which was characteristic of the man from childhood to old age. The Opium-Eater once defined the _great scholar_ as "not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life." Such was De Quincey himself. He was a scholar born, gifted with a mind apt for the subtleties of metaphysics, a memory well-nigh inexhaustible in the recovery of facts; in one respect, at least, he was a _great_ scholar, for his mind was dominated by an imagination as vigorous as that which created Macaulay's _England_, almost as sensitive to dramatic effect as that which painted Carlyle's _French Revolution_. Therefore when he wrote narrative, historical narrative, or reminiscence, he lived in the experiences he pictured, as great historians do; perhaps living over again the scenes of the past, or for the first time making real the details of occurrences with which he was only recently familiar. The _Revolt of the Tartars_ is a good illustration of his power. Attracted by the chance reading of an obscure French missionary and traveller to the dramatic possibilities of an episode in Russian history, De Quincey built from the bare notes thus discovered, supplemented by others drawn from a matter-of-fact German archaeologist, a narrative which for vividness of detail and truthfulness of local color belongs among the best of those classics in which fancy helps to illuminate fact, and where the imagination is invoked to recreate what one feels intuitively must have been real. The _Revolt of the Tartars_, while not exhibiting the highest achievement of the author's power, nevertheless belongs in the group of writings wherein his peculiar excellences are fairly manifested. The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of their beauties is found in the melodiousness of their tone and the rhythmic sweetness of their motion.