It would be too much to say that the talent that attracts the young to him must needs be the Opium-Eater's grand talent, though the notion is defensible, seeing that only salient qualities in good writing appeal to inexperienced readers. I believe, however, that this skill in narration is De Quincey's most persistent quality,--the golden thread that unites all his most distinguished and most enduring work. And it is with him a part of his genius for style. Creative power of the kind that goes to the making of plots De Quincey had not; he has proved that forever by the mediocrity of _Klosterheim_. Give him Bergmann's account of the Tartar Migration, or the story of the Fighting Nun,--give him the matter,--and a brilliant narrative will result. Indeed, De Quincey loved a story for its own sake; he rejoiced to see it extend its winding course before him; he delighted to follow it, touch it, color it, see it grow into body and being under his hand. That this enthusiasm should now and then tend to endanger the integrity of the facts need not surprise us; as I have said elsewhere, accuracy in these matters is hardly to be expected of De Quincey. And we can take our pleasure in the skillful unfolding of the dramatic narrative of the Tartar Flight--we can feel the author's joy in the scenic possibilities of his theme--even if we know that here and there an incident appears that is quite in its proper place--but is unknown to history. In his _Confessions_ the same constructive power bears its part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,--an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is done not merely by the correction of some widespread fallacies as to the effects of the drug; far more it is the result of narrative skill. As we follow with ever-increasing sympathy the lonely and sensitive child, the wandering youth, the neuralgic patient, into the terrible grasp of opium, who realizes, amid the gorgeous delights and the awful horrors of the tale, that the writer is after all the victim of the worst of bad habits? We can hardly praise too highly the art which even as we look beneath it throws its glamour over us still.