ife. His younger brother, Richard,--the Pink of the
"Autobiographic Sketches,"--made the same mistake, a mistake which in
his case was never rectified, but led to a life of perilous wanderings
and adventures.]

The time _did_ come at length when the full epos of a remarkable
prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the
unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy
lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad.
Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his
mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the
sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of
luxurious opulence and ease.

I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's
earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice
merely as an accident,) because, although not a _potential_ element,
capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential
character of genius, it is yet a negative condition--a _sine qua
non_--to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain
aspects. By misfortune it is true that power may be intensified. So may
it by the baptism of malice. But, given a certain degree of power, there
still remains a question as to its _kind_. So deep is the sky: but of
what _hue_, of what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol
but what the _mellowness_? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite
force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister
to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa?
Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of
ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient
to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the
question is not, what increment or what momentum genius may receive from
outward circumstances, but what coloring, what mood. Here it is that a
Mozart differs from a Mendelssohn. The important difference which
obtains, in this respect, between great powers in literature, otherwise
cooerdinate, will receive illustration from a comparison between De
Quincey and Byron. For both these writers were capable, in a degree
rarely equalled in any literature, of reproducing, or rather, we should
say, of reconstructing, the pomp of Nature and of human life. In this
general office they stand together: