ttempt the collection himself, his emphatic
reply was: 'Sir, the thing is absolutely, insuperably, and forever
impossible. Not the archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary,
durst attempt any such thing!' From that quarter, then, nothing could be
expected; but the intervention of other parties averted a catastrophe
melancholy to contemplate--restoring to us a vast body of literature,
unique in character and supreme in kind. We do not pretend that De
Quincey has yet been awarded by any very general suffrage the foremost
position among modern _litterateurs_; we expect that his popularity will
be of slow growth, and never universal. Universal popularity a writer of
the highest talent and genius can never secure, for his very loftiness
of thought and impassioned eccentricity cut him off from the sympathy,
and hence from the applause, of a vast section of humanity. But when
contemporary prejudice and indifference shall clear up, and the question
be summoned for final arbitration before the dispassionate tribunal of
the future, we suspect that the name of Thomas de Quincey will head the
list of English writers during the last seventy-five years. If we should
apply to our author the rule which he remorselessly enforces against Dr.
Parr, that the production of a complete, first-class work is the only
absolute test of first-class literary ability, our position would be
untenable, for it is notorious that De Quincey's writings are entirely
fragmentary. But it will never do to lay down a canon of that sort as
the basis of calculation in estimating the intellectual altitude of
literary men. The wider the field the greater the scope for grandeur of
design and the pomp of achievement; but it is seldom that a writer who
can produce an essay of the highest order cannot also meet successfully
the demands of a more protracted effort. Narrowness of bounds, want of
compass for complete elaboration, is often no slight obstacle. The more
minute the mechanism, the more arduous the approach to perfection. The
limits of the essay are at best cramped, and the compression, the
adjusting of the subject to those limits, so that its character and
bearings may be naturally and perspicuously exhibited, imply no ordinary
skill. Besides, the advisability, or rather the possibility of
undertaking a literary work of the first magnitude is dependent not less
upon circumstances beyond the range of individual control than upon
intellectual capacity.