had been little seen. The other
death was of a beloved kingfisher, by a doleful accident. When the boy
was five, he lost his playfellow and, as he says, intellectual guide,
his sister Elizabeth, eight years old, dying of hydrocephalus, after
manifesting an intellectual power which the forlorn brother recalled
with admiration and wonder for life. The impression was undoubtedly
genuine; but it is impossible to read the "Autobiographical Sketch" in
which the death and funeral of the child are described without
perceiving that the writer referred back to the period he was describing
with emotions and reflex sensations which arose in him and fell from the
pen at the moment. His father, meantime, was residing abroad, year after
year, as a condition of his living at all; and he died of pulmonary
consumption before Thomas was seven years old. The elder brother, then
twelve, was obviously too eccentric for home management, if not for all
control; and, looking no further than these constitutional cases, we are
warranted in concluding that the Opium-eater entered life under peculiar
and unfavorable conditions.

He passed through a succession of schools, and was distinguished by his
eminent knowledge of Greek. At fifteen he was pointed out by his master
(himself a ripe scholar) to a stranger in the remarkable words, "That
boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an
English one." And it was not only the Greek, we imagine, but the
eloquence, too, was included in this praise. In this, as in the subtlety
of the analytical power (so strangely mistaken for entire intellectual
supremacy in our day), De Quincey must have strongly resembled
Coleridge. Both were fine Grecians, charming discoursers, eminent
opium-takers, magnificent dreamers and seers; large in their promises,
and helpless in their failure of performance. De Quincey set his heart
upon going to college earlier than his guardians thought proper; and, on
his being disappointed in this matter, he ran away from his tutor's
house, and was lost for several months, first in Wales and afterward in
London. He was then sixteen. His whole life presents no more remarkable
evidence of his constant absorption in introspection than the fact that,
while tortured with hunger in the streets of London, for many weeks, and
sleeping (or rather lying awake with cold and hunger) on the floor of an
empty house, it never once occurred to him to earn money. As a classical
c