ng in the weaning; began to enjoy the vital
happiness of temperance and health, and then fell back again. The
influence upon the moral energies of his nature was, as might be
supposed, fatal. Such energy he once had, as his earlier efforts at
endurance amply testify. But as years passed on, he had not only become
a more helpless victim to his prominent vice, but manifested an
increasing insensibility to the most ordinary requisitions of honor and
courtesy, to say nothing of gratitude and sincerity. In his hungry days,
in London, he would not beg nor borrow. Five years later he wrote to
Wordsworth, in admiration and sympathy; received an invitation to his
Westmoreland Valley; went, more than once, within a few miles, and
withdrew and returned to Oxford, unable to conquer his painful shyness;
returned at last to live there, in the very cottage which had been
Wordsworth's; received for himself, his wife, and a growing family of
children, an unintermitting series of friendly and neighborly offices;
was necessarily admitted to much household confidence, and favored with
substantial aid, which was certainly not given through any strong liking
for his manners, conversation, or character. How did he recompense all
this exertion and endurance oh his behalf? In after years, when living
(we believe) at Edinburgh, and pressed by debt, he did for once exert
himself to write, and what he wrote was an exposure of every thing about
the Wordsworths which he knew merely by their kindness. He wrote papers,
which were eagerly read, and, of course, duly paid for, in which
Wordsworth's personal foibles were malignantly exhibited with ingenious
aggravations. The infirmities of one member of the family, the personal
blemish of another, and the human weaknesses of all, were displayed, and
all for the purpose of deepening the dislike against Wordsworth himself,
which the receiver of his money, the eater of his dinners, and the
dreary provoker of his patience strove to excite. Moreover, he
perpetrated an act of treachery scarcely paralleled, we hope, in the
history of literature. In the confidence of their most familiar days,
Wordsworth had communicated portions of his posthumous poem to his
guest, who was perfectly well aware that the work was to rest in
darkness and silence till after the poet's death. In these magazine
articles DeQuincey, using for this atrocious purpose his fine gift of
memory, published a passage, which he informed us was of f