"DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, one of the most remarkable English writers of the 19th century, was born in Manchester in or about the year 1786. Ile was the fifth child and second son of a family of eight, born to his father, a Manchester merchant in wealthy circumstances, who died while his children were yet young, leaving to his widow for their education a clear fortune of 1600/. a year. Although tho name Da Quincey looks as if it were of French extraction, the family is an old English one—as old as the Conquest. After receiving his first educa tion at his home near Manchester, De Qnincey was scut at the age of twelve to the Grammar school of Bath, the head master of which at that time was a Dr. Morgan. lIcre he remained till hie fifteenth year, laying the foundation of his extensive and miscellaneous learning In the studios of the school and in private readings of his own in English and other authors. From ISOO to 1803 the boy spent hie time partly at another school, partly in visits to friends in different parts of England and Ireland. From 1803 to 1803 he was at the University of Oxford; and it was during this time that he first contracted tho habit of opium. eating, of which, iu connection with the peculiarities of hie life anti genius, he has himself made such proclamation to the world. Of his eccentricities during this period he has given an account in his' Con fessions of an English Opium-Eater.' It was in the year 1807 that ho first made the acquaintance of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey; and on quitting college In 1808 he took up hie abode at the Lakes, and became one of the intellectual brotherhood there constituted by these men. Wilson was a resident at the Lakes about the same time. The difference between Do Quincey and the Lakista was, that his element was exclusively prose. Liko Coleridge, but with peculiarities sufficient — — — to distinguish him from that thinker, he philosophised and analysed, and speculated, in sympathy with the new literary movement, of which the Lake party was a manifestation. lie resided ten or eleven years at the Lakes; and during these ten or eleven years wo are to suppose him increasing his knowledge of Greek, of Ceram, and of universal history and literature. in point of time De Quincey preceded (11r lyle as a literary medium between Germany and this country ; and some of his earliest literary efforts were translations from Lessing, Richter, and other German authors. These literary effort., begun
while ho was still a student at the Lakes, were continued with grow ing abundance after he left them (1819). From first to last, to a degree hardly paralleled in any other instance where equal fame hits been attained, Mr. De Quincey's literary career has been that of a writer for periodicals. First at the Lakes, then in London, then in other parts of England, then again and again in London, and lastly iu Scotland, where he has resided with his family almost continually since 1343 (at Lasswado, a small village near Edinburgh), lie has sent forth a succession of papers, in various British periodicals, ranging over an immense variety of subjects, and all so original and subtle, that, being traced to him, they have made his name illustrious. Among the periodicals to which he has contributed may be mentioned the ' London Magazine,' so celebrated about 1822-4, under the editorship of John Scott; ' Blackwood's Magazine,' which began in 1S17, and it, whose famous Noctes firnbrosianre,' written by Wilson, De Quinoey is made occasionally one of the collocutors; the 'Eucyclopmdia Britannica:'Twit's Edinburgh Magazine ;' mud the 'North British Review.' With the exception of ' The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,' which, after having appeared iu parts in the " Loudon Magazine,' were published separately in the year 1322 ; and a work, entitled The Logic of Political Economy,' published at Ediuburgh in 1844, Dlr. De Quincey had until recently issued nothing openly in his own name. Ho was, in fact, buried and scattered in the British periodical literature of his generation; and though his admirers kept a register of his principal articles, they had to rummage for them in old numbers of reviews and magazines. As has happened in other cases, it was in America that the idea of a republication of Mr. De Qttiocey'n writings in a collected form, was first carried into effect. Between 1851 and 1855 a Boston house (co-operating we believe with the author) gathered together his papers from all sorts of periodicals, and gave them to the trans-Atlantic publio in their aggregate. This edition consists of no fewer than eighteen volumes ; and it is impossible for any one who has not glanced over the contents of these eighteen volumes to form an idea of Mr. De Quiucey's versatility, or of the total amount of matter that has proceeded from his pen.