To do justice to De Quincey's erratic, storm-tossed life; to record his precocious youth, his marvelous achievements in school or college, his wanderings amid lonely mountains or more lonely city streets, his drug habits with their gorgeous dreams and terrible depressions, his timidity, his courtesy, his soul-solitude, his uncanny genius,--all that is impossible in a brief summary. Let it suffice, then, to record: that he resembled his friend Coleridge, both in his character and in his vast learning; that he studied in profound seclusion for twenty years; then for forty years more, during which time his brain was more or less beclouded by opium, he poured out a flood of magazine articles, which he collected later in fourteen chaotic volumes. These deal with an astonishing variety of subjects, and cover almost every phase of mental activity from portraying a nightmare to building a philosophical system. If he had any dominating interest in his strange life, it was the study of literature. [Sidenote: TYPICAL WORKS] The historian can but name a few characteristic works of De Quincey, without recommending any of them to readers. To those interested in De Quincey's personality his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ will be illuminating. This book astonished Londoners in 1821, and may well astonish a Bushman in the year 2000. It records his wandering life, and the alternate transport or suffering which resulted from his drug habits. This may be followed by his _Suspiria de Profundis_ (Sighs from the Depths), which describes, as well as such a thing could be done, the phantoms born of opium dreams. There are too many of the latter, and the reader may well be satisfied with the wonderful "Dream Fugue" in _The English Mail Coach_. [Illustration: DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE Here both Wordsworth and De Quincey resided] As an illustration of De Quincey's review of history, one should try _Joan of Arc_ or _The Revolt of the Tartars_, which are not historical studies but romantic dreams inspired by reading history. In the critical field, "The Knocking at the Gate in _Macbeth_," "Wordsworth's Poetry" and the "Essay on Style" are immensely suggestive. As an example of ingenious humor "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" is often recommended; but it has this serious fault, that it is not humorous. For a concrete example of De Quincey's matter and manner there is nothing better than "Levana or Our Ladies of Sorrow" (from the _Suspiria_), with its _mater lachrymarum_ Our Lady of Tears, _mater suspiriorum_ Our Lady of Sighs, and that strange phantom, forbidding and terrible, _mater tenebrarum_ Our Lady of Darkness. [Sidenote: DE QUINCEY'S STYLE]