Selected Essays of De Quincey. Edited and Annotated by David
Masson. (Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh.)—We had occa- sion, when Professor Masson's monograph on De Quincey in the " English Men of Letters " series appeared, to speak very favourably of it. Carlylian though he is, Professor Masson loves. De Quincey, and has a fine tolerance for the weaknesses of that weird walking encyclopedia which it would have been foreign to. Carlyle's nature to have exhibited. He has now followed up this. monograph with two volumes of selections from the narrative and imaginative essays of De Quincey. The selection is in every. respect admirable. It contains " Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts "—which is in its way a masterpiece of humour, and to which we suspect the modern authors of " Suicide Clubs" and such-like ideas are more indebted than they would care to acknowledge, or are, perhaps, themselves aware of
Early Memorials of Grasmere," "The English Mail Coach," "The Spanish Military Nun," and "The Revolt of the Tartars," which last is quite as fine as anything, and quite as true as most things, in Gibbon. Of course, connoisseurs in De Quincey (and there are more of these than is generally known) will be sure to say that Professor Masson ought to have included in his selection other essays than appear in these volumes. Some
will say that he ought to have reproduced such a paper as " Walking Stewart;" others will say that he should have given the delightful essay on Charles Lamb, if only for the sake of the anecdotes in it, and of the description of sleep in Lamb's case as "rather a network of aerial gossamer than of earthly cob- web, more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens, than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh." We are of opinion, too, that Professor Masson might do worse than follow up this selection with another—although that would probably have to consist of abbreviations or extracts—from De Quincey's historical and critical essays, which are full of out-of-the-way information. Such a selection, with the " Confessions " and the volumes we are now dealing with, would give as much of De Quincey as any careful student of English literature needs, though he should not be content with less. But take these volumes as they stand, and they must be allowed to be models in the way of selections. Professor Masson's foot-notes and appendices, explain- ing what may seem obscure in the text, and showing how De Quincey modified his work on revision, are in every way admirable. De Quincey, it must be allowed even by his warmest admirers, had a turn for romancing ; probably, indeed, he romanced unconsciously. Professor Masson performs his task of rectification both carefully and in a kindly spirit. AltOgether, we have nothing but praise for as careful a piece of editing as we have come across for a very long time.
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