In no memorial is it so absolutely requisite that a marked prominence should be given to its first section as in De Quincey's. This is a striking peculiarity in his life. If it were not so, I should have seriously transgressed in keeping the reader's attention so long upon a point which, aside from such peculiarity, would yield no sufficient, at least no proportionate value. But, in the treatment of any life, that cannot seem disproportionate which enters into it as an element only and just in that ratio of prominence with which it enters into the life itself, No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which lacks a prominent interest as to its beginnings, can ever, in its entire course, develop any distinguishing features of interest. This is true of any life; but it is true of De Quincey's above all others on record, that, through all its successive arches, ascending and descending, it repeats the original arch of childhood. Repeats,--but with what marvellous transformations! For hardly is its earliest section passed, when, for all its future course, it is masked by a mighty trouble. No longer does it flow along its natural path, and beneath the open sky, but, like the sacred Alpheus, runs "Through caverns measureless to man, Down to the sunless sea." Yet, amid the "briny tides" of that sea, amid turmoil and perplexity and the saddest of mysteries, it preserves its earliest gentleness, and its inward, noiseless peace, till once more it gushes up toward the sweet heaven through the Arethusan font of death. Easily, then, is it to be seen why De Quincey himself continually reverted, both in his conscious reminiscences and through the subconscious relapses of dreams, from a life clouded and disguised in its maturer years, to the unmasked purity of its earliest heaven. And what from the vast desert, what from the fatal wreck of life, was he to look back upon, for even an imaginary solace, if not upon the rich argosies that spread their happier sails above a calmer sea? We are forcibly reminded of the dream which Milton[A] gives to his Christ in the desert, hungry and tired:-- "There he slept, And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream, Of meats and drinks, Nature's refreshment sweet. Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood, And saw the ravens with their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing even and morn, Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought: He saw the prophet also, how he fled Into the desert, and how there he slept Under a juniper, then how, awaked, He found his supper on the coals prepared, And by the angel was bid rise and eat, And eat the second time after repose, The strength whereof sufficed him forty days; Sometimes that with Elijah he partook, Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." [Footnote A: _Paradise Regained_, Book II.]