h woods and pastures new."

A prolific writer for the magazines, it is inevitable that there should
be a measure that is ephemeral in De Quincey's voluminous writings. But
it is impossible not to be struck by the wide range of his intellectual
interests. A mind that is equally at home in the economics of Ricardo
and the transcendentalism of Wordsworth; that can turn with undiminished
zest from Malthus to Kant; that could deal lucidly with the "Logic of
Political Economy," despite the dream-world that finds expression in the
"impassioned prose"; that could delight in such broadly farcical
absurdities as "_Sortilege and Astrology_," and such delicately
suggestive studies as "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," a mind of
this adventurous and varied type is assuredly a very remarkable one.
That he should touch every subject with equal power was not to be
expected, but the analytic brilliance that characterizes even his
mystical writings enabled him to treat such subjects as political economy
with a sureness of touch and a logical grasp that has astonished those
who had regarded him as merely an inconsequential dreamer of dreams.

IV

I cannot agree with Dr. Japp {48} when, in the course of some laudatory
remarks on De Quincey's humour, he says: "It is precisely here that De
Quincey parts company, alike from Coleridge and from Wordsworth; neither
of them had humour."

In the first place De Quincey's humour never seems to me very genuine.
He could play with ideas occasionally in a queer fantastic way, as in his
elaborate gibe on Dr. Andrew Bell.

"First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden
spoon dull? Fishy were his eyes, torpedinous was his manner; and his
main idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon--from
which you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was
no craze, under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it
was an idea of mere hostility to the moon. . . . His wrath did not
pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; and uneasy fumbling
with the idea--like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to
worry, but cannot for want of teeth."

A clever piece of analytical satire, if you like, but not humorous so
much as witty. Incongruity, unexpectedness, belongs to the essence of
humour. Here there is that cunning display of congruity between the old
dog and the Doctor which the wit is so