A Flame in Sunlight. The Life and Work of Thomas
de
"Legendary Monster
.Quincey. By.Edward Sackville 'West, (Cassell. 15s.) .
Jr 'anyone is in doubt about the difficulty of writing a bioz graphy of De Quinces, let him go to the British Museum and consult the series of letters, mostly without date, which the Opium Eater wrote to his publishers, Taylor and Hessey. They are letters of considerable length. They are im- passioned, eloquent, subtle. But they contain no matter— except some mystery of a landlady, £10, and some promised articles. Their bitter protests against the cruelty of T. and H. might move us much—but we remember that elsewhere De Quincey has eulogised the liberality of those publishers, and we note that they have really done nothing worse than pay him money for unwritten pieces.
This is only one of the countless twists and knots which Mr. Sackville West has had to consider in his narrative inter- pretation—and some of them are of far greater complication and importance. It is one of his obvious merits that, inter- preter as he is, and attracted by a personality which tempts the mind into a visionary region, De Quincey's new biographer has been at pains " to keep as close as possible to the available evidence." So easy it would have been to treat a business like the Taylor and Hessey fusillade as irrelevant to " a flame in sunlight." But Mr. Sackville West is not prepared to impose an epigram on a life-story. He conceives that we should know the facts. To this it must be added that he has not lost sight of the quality which makes lasting biographies—the essayist's touch which draws from all these details and references a recurrent music.
He points out in his preface that our general knowledge of De Quincey is indifferent. " He ate opium and described the effects in a book of Confessions. . . . Didn't he write an essay on Murder, or something ? ' " The common reader may be pardoned if he brings to Mr. Sackville West's book little more notion of De Quincey than that. De Quincey was a writer in the magazines. His one real book, even, was a contribution to Taylor and Hessey's magazine—and it arrived early in his literary career. It was intense and original. For thirty-five years more he was writing on things less near his emotions and less likely to keep him distinct and distinguished. He was welcome among the contributors to this or that monthly Miscellany with his erudite or reminiscent or critical papersbut he covered the ground lightly and casually for the most part. The paper headed "John Keats" is perhaps a fair specimen. De Quincey begins by rebuking another writer for discursiveness in a similar paper, proceeds to refute various statenients in that writer's digression, and after a dozen pages surprises us by mentioning Keats again. Of the remaining seven pages, three almost are devoted to the word " Folly "- and " Endymion " he very astutely, but belatedly, asserts to be a Folly. He contrasts " Hyperion " as " a Grecian temple," and concludes with the celebrated passage on Keats's " trampling as with the hoofs of a buffalo" on his native language. From such writings only those who have special cariosity or leisure will dredge_ what is vital in substance or expression.
To remedy the wrong done to De Quincey's work by too Much reliance on such an example, Mr. Sackville West per- forms a particular service in his closing chapter—a "Critical Retrospect," which will be a valuable guide through the many volumes of the varying editions of De Quincey. Here he has another (gently wielded) rod for the back of the common reader who thinks that at least he knew the " Confessions." " The modern reader, unless he can manage to get hold of a copy of the first edition, or of one of the reprints, knows the book exclusively from the second version," and Mr. Sackville West defines those additions which in his old age, warmed with a little hero-worship, De Quineey made to a finely patterned original. " In making them, De Quincey spoilt the book." Yet on this basis Mr. Sackville West constructs no theory that De Quinces?, aged 70, was a danger to his own fame.- He directs attention to " the 1854 Postscript to Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" as one of the author's masterly feats of fantasy. In exploring De Quincey's prose Mr: Sackville West combines informative notice with per- ceptive criticism—and he has the faculty of quoting.
Of the man De Quineey, apart from the encyclopaedic writer, we all carry some legend' in our Minds : we see the
decanter of laudanum on the table, the lodgings littered with what his biographer sums up as " literary snow-drifts," the fiitting,s from landlady to landlady, the " spark of a candle falling unobserved amongst " the '' very large piles of paper '' where De Quinces, was reading. Or we recall the dreamer's money troubles, and his queer way with cash : to gook- Mr. Saekville West, "After his death, • quite a sum was found straying among his books, the notes slipped between the pages to smooth them out, the coins washed and put up in twists of paper." Whatever else was lacking in the formerly reeeived biography of De Quincey—A. H. Japp's, in the edition of 1890 - such external details abounded ; Mr. Saekville West's advance is rather in sketching his subject beyond their picturesque oddity, as his title promises.
The undertaking was valiant, and the result is attractive ; even where opinions will differ, Mr. Saekville West pleases us with his earnest search for the truth. Confronting it task of so many problems and contacts, he is occasionally uneven in points of fact or authority. John Scott of the " London '' died in 1821, not 1825 ; and the responsibility of P. G. Pat more in the duel which stopped his career is best found not in Mr. Page's essay on Coventry Pat more, but in Basil Champney's monumental work. Again, the value of Joseph Cottle's memoirs of Coleridge and of the transaction between Coleridge and De Quincey is small ; but perhaps there is no other source of infOrmation about the loan. In any case Mr. Sackville West has not shunned what as an artist of ideas he might have disrelished, the underlying labours of good biography.
EnmuNn Bi.uNnEs-.
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