cal matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling money,
and would give away bank-notes to get them out of his way. He was very
generous when young, and gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one
time, insisting upon making it five hundred, which was not allowed. He
never had a friend who was not welcome to his purse. While he had no
care whatever about his dress, and would frequently enter the
drawing-room, even when company was there, with but one stocking on, or
minus some other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was very dainty and
neat about many things. The greasy, crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes
annoyed him. He did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting
with them, and he washed and polished shillings up to their pristine
brightness before giving them away. He used to complain of Wordsworth,
because of a lack of neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at
seeing the old poet cut the leaves of a new book with a knife taken
from the supper-table, where buttered toast had been eaten. Coleridge
was also distressed over Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that
one would as soon trust a bear in a tulip-garden as Wordsworth in a
library.

De Quincey was a very charming companion and a most brilliant talker. He
says of himself and Lamb, that they both had a childish love of
nonsense,--headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat
shy, he had a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which
made his society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted
with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the
simplest. His whole manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred
courtesy, though he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary
conventionalities of life. He could never be depended upon for keeping
any sort of engagement, and if a friend wanted him to dinner, he must go
for him with his carriage, and take him away. His manner to his
daughters was the perfection of chivalrous respect, as well as
affection.

What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium
eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was
thought to be one who might do anything,--all things. What he really did
do, of permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of
his friends.

Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this
weakness seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the sa