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TITLE: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
AUTHOR: THOMAS DE QUINCY
EBOOK: E06284 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.

BY

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

SELECTIONS, GRAVE AND GAY,
FROM WRITINGS PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED,

BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER
WRITTEN BY MR. DE QUINCEY TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF THIS WORKS.

Lasswade, _January 8_, 1853

MY DEAR SIR:

I am on the point of revising and considerably altering, for
republication in England, an edition of such amongst my writings as
it may seem proper deliberately to avow. Not that I have any intention,
or consciously any reason, expressly to disown any one thing that I
have ever published; but some things have sufficiently accomplished
their purpose when they have met the call of that particular transient
occasion in which they arose; and others, it may be thought on review,
might as well have been suppressed from the very first. Things immoral
would of course fall within that category; of these, however, I cannot
reproach myself with ever having published so much as one. But even
pure levities, simply _as_ such, and without liability to any worse
objection, may happen to have no justifying principle of life within
them; and if, any where, I find such a reproach to lie against a paper
of mine, that paper I should wish to cancel. So that, upon the whole,
my new and revised edition is likely to differ by very considerable
changes from the original papers; and, consequently, to that extent
is likely to differ from your existing Boston reprint.

These changes, as sure to be more or less advantageous to the collection,
it is my wish to place at your disposal as soon as possible, in order
that you may make what use of them you see fit, be it little or much. It
may so happen that the public demand will give you no opportunity for
using them at all. I go on therefore to mention, that over and above
these changes, which may possibly strike you as sometimes mere caprices,
pulling down in order to rebuild, or turning squares into rotundas,
(_diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis_,) it is my purpose to
enlarge this edition by as many new papers as I find available for such a
station. These I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so
far as regards the U.S., of _your_ house exclusively; not with any view
to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you
have already rendered me; viz., first, in having brought together so
widely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by too
painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be
absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in
the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation or
the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I
could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and merely
upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, I hope, will
not be without their value in the eyes of those who have taken an
interest in the original series. But at all events, good or bad, they are
now tendered to the appropriation of your individual house, the Messrs.
TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, according to the amplest extent of any power to
make such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law or custom in
America.

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest
trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my
sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by your
honorable house.

Ever believe me my dear sir,
Your faithful and obliged,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The miscellaneous writings which I propose to lay before the public in
this body of selections are in part to be regarded as a republication of
papers scattered through several British journals twenty or thirty years
ago, which papers have been reprinted in a collective form by an American
house of high character in Boston; but in part they are to be viewed as
entirely new, large sections having been intercalated in the present
edition, and other changes made, which, even to the old parts, by giving
very great expansion, give sometimes a character of absolute novelty.
Once, therefore, at home, with the allowance for the changes here
indicated, and once in America, it may be said that these writings have
been in some sense published. But _publication_ is a great idea never
even approximated by the utmost anxieties of man. Not the Bible, not the
little book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in European
diffusion and currency, [1] viz., the treatise "De Imitatione Christi,"
has yet in any generation been really published. Where is the _printed_
book of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be said that, after all
efforts to publish itself, still it remains, for the world of possible
readers, "as good as manuscript"? Not to insist, however, upon any
romantic rigor in constructing this idea, and abiding by the ordinary
standard of what is understood by _publication_, it is probable that, in
many cases, my own papers must have failed in reaching even this. For
they were printed as contributions to journals.  Now, that mode of
publication is unavoidably disadvantageous to a writer, except under
unusual conditions. By its harsh peremptory punctuality, it drives a man
into hurried writing, possibly into saying the thing that is not. They
won't wait an hour for you in a magazine or a review; they won't wait for
truth; you may as well reason with the sea, or a railway train, as in
such a case with an editor; and, as it makes no difference whether that
sea which you desire to argue with is the Mediterranean or the Baltic,
so, with that editor and his deafness, it matters not a straw whether he
belong to a northern or a southern journal. Here is one evil of journal
writing--viz., its overmastering precipitation. A second is, its effect
at times in narrowing your publicity. Every journal, or pretty nearly so,
is understood to hold (perhaps in its very title it makes proclamation of
holding) certain fixed principles in politics, or possibly religion.
These distinguishing features, which become badges of enmity and
intolerance, all the more intense as they descend upon narrower and
narrower grounds of separation, must, at the very threshold, by warning
off those who dissent from them, so far operate to limit your audience.
To take my own case as an illustration: these present sketches were
published in a journal dedicated to purposes of political change such as
many people thought revolutionary. I thought so myself, and did not go
along with its politics. Inevitably that accident shut them out from the
knowledge of a very large reading class. Undoubtedly this journal, being
ably and conscientiously conducted, had some circulation amongst a
neutral class of readers; and amongst its own class it was popular. But
its own class did not ordinarily occupy that position in regard to social
influence which could enable them rapidly to diffuse the knowledge of a
writer. A reader whose social standing is moderate may communicate his
views upon a book or a writer to his own circle; but his own circle is a
narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having more leisure and
wealth, the intercourse is inconceivably more rapid; so that the
publication of any book which interests _them_ is secured at once; and
this publishing influence passes downwards; but rare, indeed, is the
inverse process of publication through an influence spreading upwards.

According to the way here described, the papers now presented to the
public, like many another set of papers nominally published, were _not_
so in any substantial sense. Here, at home, they may be regarded as
still unpublished. [2] But, in such a case, why were not the papers at
once detached from the journal, and reprinted? In the neglect to do this,
some there are who will read a blamable carelessness in the author; but,
in that carelessness, others will read a secret consciousness that the
papers were of doubtful value. I have heard, indeed, that some persons,
hearing of this republication, had interpreted the case thus: Within the
last four or five years, a practice has arisen amongst authors of
gathering together into volumes their own scattered contributions to
periodical literature. Upon that suggestion, they suppose me suddenly to
have remembered that I also had made such contributions; that mine might
be entitled to their chance as well as those of others; and, accordingly,
that on such a slight invitation _ab extra_, I had called back into life
what otherwise I had long since regarded as having already fulfilled its
mission, and must doubtless have dismissed to oblivion.

I do not certainly know, or entirely believe, that any such thing was
really said. But, however that may be, no representation can be more
opposed to the facts. Never for an instant did I falter in my purpose
of republishing most of the papers which I had written. Neither, if
I myself had been inclined to forget them, should I have been allowed
to do so by strangers. For it happens that, during the fourteen last
years, I have received from many quarters in England, in Ireland, in
the British colonies, and in the United States, a series of letters
expressing a far profounder interest in papers written by myself than
any which I could ever think myself  entitled to look for. Had I,
therefore, otherwise cherished no purposes of republication, it now
became a duty of gratitude and respect to these numerous correspondents,
that I should either republish the papers in question, or explain why
I did not. The obstacle in fact had been in part the shifting state
of the law which regulated literary property, and especially the
property in periodical literature. But a far greater difficulty lay
in the labor (absolutely insurmountable to myself) of bringing together
from so many quarters the scattered materials of the collection. This
labor, most fortunately, was suddenly taken off my hands by the eminent
house of Messrs TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, Boston, U. S. To them I owe
my acknowledgments, first of all, for that service: they have brought
together a great majority of my fugitive papers in a series of volumes
now amounting to twelve. And, secondly, I am bound to mention that
they have made me a sharer in the profits of the publication, called
upon to do so by no law whatever, and assuredly by no expectation of
that sort upon my part.

Taking as the basis of my remarks this collective American edition,
I will here attempt a rude general classification of all the articles
which compose it. I distribute them grossly into three classes: _First_,
into that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader; but
which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a
higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned
interest. Some papers are merely playful; but others have a mixed
character. These present _Autobiographic  Sketches_ illustrate what
I mean. Generally, they pretend to little beyond that sort of amusement
which attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related,
moving through a succession of scenes sufficiently varied, that are
not suffered to remain too long upon the eye, and that connect
themselves at every stage with intellectual objects. But, even here,
I do not scruple to claim from the reader, occasionally, a higher
consideration. At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key.
Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life where, of
necessity, a severe abstraction takes place from all that could invest
him with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader,
nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to the
future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on the

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