A passing whim, a transient resentment, will be the occasion of some finely discursive essay on abstract virtues and vices. And, after all, there is at bottom such noble enthusiasm in the man, and where his subjects were not living people, and his judgment is not blinded by some small prejudices, how fair, how just, how large and admirable his view. His faults and failings were of such a character as to bring upon the owner their own retribution. He paid heavily for his mistakes. His splenetic moods and his violent dislikes arose not from a want of sensibility, but from an excess of sensibility. So I do not think they need seriously disturb us. After all, the dagger he uses as a critic is uncommonly like a stage weapon, and does no serious damage. Better even than his brilliant, suggestive, if capricious, criticisms are his discursive essays on men and things. These abound in a tonic wisdom, a breadth of imagination as welcome as they are rare. II THOMAS DE QUINCEY “In thoughts from the visions of the night when deep sleep falleth on men.”—JOB. I Although a passion for the Earth is a prevalent note in the character of the literary Vagabond, yet while harking to the call of the country, he is by no means deaf to the call of the town. With the exception of Thoreau, who seemed to have been insensible to any magic save that of the road and woodland, our literary Vagabonds have all felt and confessed to the spell of the city. It was not, as in the case of Lamb and Dickens, the one compelling influence, but it was an influence of no small potency.