The Project Gutenberg EBook of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1,
No. 2, July, 1850., by Various

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.

Author: Various

Release Date: February 5, 2010 [EBook #31187]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HARPER'S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. II.--JULY, 1850.--VOL. I.

[From the London Eclectic Review.]

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

When "Gilfillan's Gallery" first appeared, a copy of it was sent to an
eminent lay-divine, the first sentence of whose reply was, "You have
sent me a _list of shipwrecks_." It was but too true, for that "Gallery"
contains the name of a Godwin, shipwrecked on a false system, and a
Shelley, shipwrecked on an extravagant version of that false system--and
a Hazlitt, shipwrecked on no system at all--and a Hall, driven upon the
rugged reef of madness--and a Foster, cast high and dry upon the dark
shore of Misanthropy--and an Edward Irving, inflated into sublime idiocy
by the breath of popular favor, and in the subsidence of that breath,
left to roll at the mercy of the waves, a mere log--and lastly, a
Coleridge and a De Quincy, stranded on the same poppy-covered coast, the
land of the "Lotos-eaters," where it is never morning, nor midnight, nor
full day, but always afternoon.

Wrecks all these are, but all splendid and instructive withal. And we
propose now--repairing to the shore, where the last great argosy, Thomas
De Quincey, lies half bedded in mud--to pick up whatever of noble and
rare, of pure and permanent, we can find floating around. We would speak
of De Quincey's history, of his faults, of his genius, of his works, and
of his future place in the history of literature. And when we reflect on
what a _mare magnum_ we are about to show to many of our readers, we
feel for the moment as if it were new to us also, as if _we_ stood--

"Like stout Cortea, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific,
----and all his men
Gathered round him with a wild surmise,