In asserting for De Quincey the leading position among the writers of
this century, we are clothing him with no ordinary honors--honors which
no man can rightfully enjoy without mental endowments at once multiform
and transcendent. Our age thus far has been prolific in genius,
inferior, indeed, to no other, except, perhaps, the Elizabethan; and,
even here, inferior only at two points, tragedy and that section of
poetry in which alone is found the incarnation of the sublime--the
divine strains of John Milton. But in range of achievement our epoch has
scarcely a rival. Mighty champions have arisen in almost every
department of letters, and it is plain that, amid merits so divergent
and wide removed, we can justly ascribe absolute precedence to no man
without establishing, at the outset, a standard of ideal excellence,
and by that adjusting the claims of all competitors.

We may remark, then, in general, that few first-class writers have
appeared who did not require as a condition of success varied and
profound learning. Kant, indeed, won immortality by the efforts of blank
power. It is said that he never read a book; so wonderful was his
synthetical and logical power, that if he could once discover the
starting point, the initial principles of a writer, there was no
occasion for his toiling through the intermediate argumentation to reach
the conclusions--he grasped them almost intuitively, provided, of
course, the deductions were logical. But even Kant, had his acquaintance
with the literature of metaphysics been more extensive, would have
avoided many errors, as well as the trouble of discovering many truths
in which he had been long anticipated. Herder thought that too much
reading had hurt the spring and elasticity of his mind. Doubtless we may
carry our efforts to excess in this direction as well as any other, by
calling into unduly vigorous and persistent action the merely receptive
energies of the mind. Perhaps this was the case with Herder, as the
range of his reading was truly immense; but if so, it argues with fatal
effect against his claims to the highest order of intellect; if the
weight of his body was too great for his wings, there lurked somewhere a
sad defect. In the vast plurality of cases success lies in, and is
graduated by, the intensity of mental reaction upon that which has been
acquired from others. The achievements of the past are stepping stones
to the conquests of the present. New truths, new disco