r intercourse.

Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there
should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two
interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author.
Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a
faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called
him,--the prince of hierophants,--having reference to the matter of his
revelations; but in his _manner_, in his style of composition, he is
something more than this: here he stands the _monarch_ amongst
rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of
his life and genius.

But, besides these, there is a large section of his works, the aim of
which is purely intellectual, where feeling is not at all involved; and
surely there is not, in either ancient or modern literature, a section
which, in the same amount of space, exhibits the same degree of intense
activity on the part of the analytic understanding, applied to the
illustration of truth or to the solution of vexed problems. This latter
class is the more remarkable from its polar antithesis to the former;
just as, in his life, it is a most remarkable characteristic of the man,
that, rising above all other men through the rhapsodies of dreams, he
should yet be able truly to say of himself that he had devoted a greater
number of hours to intellectual pursuits than any other man whom he had
seen, heard of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of
thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought,
than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in
rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey
does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of
legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he
is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual
gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with
every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the
demonstration,--between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from
which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the
earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested
serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light
with warmth in all degrees,--in pathos, in humor,[A] in genial
illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau