MR. KNIGHT, MR. RAMSAY (his first lieutenant, as he called him), and myself all met at Fleet Street, where we had the archives of the old _Quarterly Magazine_ turned up, and a list checked. I lately found this particular story also referred to circumstantially in the annexed paragraph contained in CHARLES KNIGHT'S _Passages of a Working Life_ (THORNE'S re-issue, vol. I. chap. x. p. 339). 'DE QUINCEY had written to me in December 1824, in the belief that, as he expressed it, "many of your friends will rally about you, and urge you to some new undertaking of the same kind. If that should happen, I beg to say, that you may count upon me, as one of your men, for any extent of labour, to the best of my power, which you may choose to command." He wrote a translation of _The Love-Charm_ of TIECK, with a notice of the Author. This is not reprinted in his Collected Works, though perhaps it is the most interesting of his translations from the German. In this spring and summer DE QUINCEY and I were in intimate companionship. It was a pleasant time of intellectual intercourse for me.' There is no doubt _The Love-Charm_ would have been reprinted had the Author lived to carry the _Selections_ farther. * * * * * The curious little Essay _On Novels_,--written in a Lady's Album, had passed out of MR. DAVEY'S hands before I became aware of its existence. The _facsimile_, however, taken for _The Archivist_, by an expert like MR. NETHERCLIFT, shows that it is, unquestionably, in the handwriting of DE QUINCEY. I have been unable to trace the 'FAIR INCOGNITA' to whom it was addressed. * * * * * The compositions which were written for me when I edited _Titan_, and which I now place before the public in volume form, after the lapse of a whole generation (thirty-three years, to speak 'by the card'), demand some special comment, particularly in their relation to the _Selections Grave and Gay_. _Titan_ was a half-crown monthly Magazine, a continuation in an enlarged form of _The Instructor_. I had become the acting Editor of its predecessor, _the New Series_ of _The Instructor_, working in concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this _New Series_ there appeared from DE QUINCEY'S pen _The Sphinx's Riddle_, _Judas Iscariot_, the Series of _Sketches from Childhood_, and other notable papers. At that time I was but a young editor--young and, perhaps, a little 'curly,' as LORD BEACONSFIELD put it. DE QUINCEY, with a truly paternal solicitude, gave me much good advice and valuable help, both in the selection of subjects for the Magazine and in the mode of handling them. The notes on _The Lake Dialect_, _Shakspere's Text and Suetonius Unravelled_, were written to me in the form of Letters, and published in _Titan_. _Storms in English History_ was a consideration of part of MR. FROUDE'S well-known book, which on its publication made a great stir in the literary world, and profoundly impressed DE QUINCEY.