and
communicative mood, when he has donned his dressing-gown and
slippers, and is inclined to unbosom himself, and that freely, on
matters which usually, and in general society, he would have been
inclined to shun, or at all events to pass over lightly. Here we have
him at one moment presenting the results of speculations the loftiest
that can engage the mind of man; at another making note of whimsical
or surprising points in the man or woman he has met with, or in the
books he has read; at another, amusing himself with the most recent
anecdote, or _bon-mot_, or reflecting on the latest accident or
murder, or good-naturedly noting odd lapses in style in magazine or
newspaper.

It must not be supposed that the author himself was inclined to lay such
weight on these stray notes, as might be presumed from the form in which
they are here presented. That might give the impression of a most
methodic worker and thinker, who had before him a carefully-indexed
commonplace book, into which he posted at the proper place his rough
notes and suggestions. That was not De Quincey's way. If he was not one
of the wealthy men who care not how they give, he was one who made the
most careless record even of what was likely to be valuable--at all
events to himself. His habit was to make notes just as they occurred to
him, and on the sheet that he chanced to have at the moment before him.
It might be the 'copy' for an article indeed, and in a little square
patch at the corner--separated from the main text by an insulating line
of ink drawn round the foreign matter--through this, not seldom, when
finished he would lightly draw his pen; meaning probably to return to it
when his MS. came back to him from the printer, which accounts, it may
be, in some measure for his reluctance to get rid of, or to destroy,
'copy' already printed from. Sometimes we have found on a sheet a dozen
or so of lines of a well-known article; and the rest filled up with
notes, some written one way of the paper, some another, and now and then
entangled in the most surprising fashion. In these cases, where the
notes, of course, were meant for his own eye, he wrote in a small
spidery handwriting with many contractions--a kind of shorthand of his
own, and very different indeed from his ordinary clean, clear, neat
penmanship. In many cases these notes demanded no little care and
closeness in deciphering--the more that the MSS. had been tumbled about,
and were often deeply s