Silent, upon a peak of Darien."

We can not construct a regular biography of this remarkable man; neither
the time for this has come, nor have the materials been, as yet, placed
within reach of us, or of any one else. But we may sketch the outlines
of what we know, which is indeed but little.

Thomas De Quincey is the son of a Liverpool merchant. He is one of
several children, the premature loss of one of whom he has, in his
"Suspiria de Profundis" (published in "Blackwood") most plaintively and
eloquently deplored. His father seems to have died early. Guardians were
appointed over him, with whom he contrived to quarrel, and from whose
wing (while studying at Oxford) he fled to London. There he underwent a
series of surprising adventures and severe sufferings, which he has
recounted in the first part of his "Opium Confessions." On one occasion,
while on the point of death by starvation, his life was saved by the
intervention of a poor street-stroller, of whom he afterward lost sight,
but whom, in the strong gratitude of his heart, he would pursue into the
central darkness of a London brothel, or into the deeper darkness of the
grave. Part of the same dark period of his life was spent in Wales,
where he subsisted now on the hospitality of the country people, and
now, poor fellow, on hips and haws. He was at last found out by some of
his friends, and remanded to Oxford. There he formed a friendship with
Christopher North, which has continued unimpaired to this hour.
Both--besides the band of kindred genius--had that of profound
admiration, then a rare feeling, for the poetry of Wordsworth. In the
course of this part of his life he visited Ireland, and was introduced
soon afterward to OPIUM--fatal friend, treacherous ally--root of that
tree called Wormwood, which has overshadowed all his after life. A blank
here occurs in his history. We find him next in a small white cottage in
Cumberland--married--studying Kant, drinking laudanum, and dreaming the
most wild and wondrous dreams which ever crossed the brain of mortal.
These dreams he recorded in the "London Magazine," then a powerful
periodical, conducted by John Scott, and supported by such men as
Hazlitt, Reynolds, and Allan Cunningham. The "Confessions," when
published separately, ran like wildfire, although from their anonymous
form they added nothing at the time to the author's fame. Not long after
their publication, Mr. De Quincey came down to Scotland, where he h