Mr. James Hogg tells us that his design in publishing the present volume was that he might “place a stone upon the cairn of the man” who had treated him “with an almost paternal tenderness.” We sincerely sympathize with Mr. Hogg’s pious intention, but we submit that the truest kindness which he, or any other admirer of De Quincey could do him, would be not to augment but to lighten the cairn which indiscreet admirers are so industriously piling over him. To change the figure, the best service which could be rendered to De Quincey would be to relieve him of his superfluous baggage, not to add to it. His fame would stand much higher, if his sixteen volumes were vigorously weeded; if the sweepings and refuse of his study, so injudiciously given to the world by Dr. Japp and Mr. Hogg, were given instead to the flames; and if reminiscents and biographers would only leave him to tell, in his own fashion, his own story, especially as it is one of those stories the interest of which depends purely on the telling. We have already expressed our sympathy with Mr. Hogg’s pious intention. It only remains for us to express our regret that Mr. Hogg’s piety should have taken the form of the most barefaced piece of book-making which we ever remember to have met with. Addison, if we are not mistaken, somewhere describes a man to whom a single volume afforded all the amusement and variety of a whole library, for, by the time he had arrived at the middle, he had completely forgotten the beginning, and when he arrived at the end, he had completely forgotten the whole. Mr. Hogg appears to proceed on the assumption that it is pretty much the same with the public and its memory, that its capacity for amusement is permanent, but that its recollection of what has amused it is so treacherous, that repetition will be sure to have all the attraction of novelty. This is, no doubt, unhappily true. But it is a truth which no critic has a right to concede. All that is of interest in this volume is little more than the literal reproduction, in another shape, of material embodied in a Life of De Quincey, published by Dr. Alexander Japp, under the pseudonym of H. A. Page, in 1877. Its exact composition is as follows. Eliminating the preface and the index, the book consists of 359 pages. Of these, seventy consist of a dreary _réchauffé_ by Dr. Japp himself of his own Life of De Quincey, and of the additional information contained in his edition of the Posthumous Works. Next comes a series of reminiscences, extracted from Dr. Japp’s Life, from Dr. Garnett’s edition of the _Confessions_, from the _Quarterly Review_, and from other sources all equally accessible. Then Mr. Hogg himself opens fire with _Days and Nights with De Quincey_. An essay--“On the supposed Scriptural Expression for Eternity”--excellently illustrating De Quincey in his senility, is reprinted, with awe-struck admiration, from the American edition of his works.