writers. Some hints of his ability are seen in the opening and closing
passages of this essay, but to find him at his best one must turn to
the _Confessions_ and to the other papers which describe his life,
particularly those which recount his marvellous dreams. In these
papers we find the passages where De Quincey's passion rises to the
heights which few other writers have ever reached in prose, a
loftiness and grandeur which is technically denominated as "sublime."
In his _Essay on Style_, published in _Blackwood's_, 1840, he
deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English
writers, "the tendency of the national mind to value the matter of a
book not only as paramount to the manner, but even as distinct from it
and as capable of a separate insulation." As one of the great masters
of prose style in this century, De Quincey has so served the interests
of art in this regard, that in his own case the charge is sometimes
reversed: his own works are read rather to observe his manner than to
absorb his thought. Yet when this is said, it is not to imply that the
material is unworthy or the ideas unsound; on the contrary, his
sentiment is true and his ideas are wholesome; but many of the topics
treated lie outside the deeper interests of ordinary life, and fail to
appeal to us so practically as do the writings of some lesser men. Of
the "one hundred and fifty magazine articles" which comprise his
works, there are many that will not claim the general interest, yet
his writings as a whole will always be recognized by students of
rhetoric as containing excellences which place their author among the
English classics. Nor can De Quincey be accused of subordinating
matter to manner; in spite of his taste for the theatrical and a
tendency to extravagance, his expression is in keeping with his
thought, and the material of those passages which contain his most
splendid flights is appropriate to the treatment it receives. One
effective reason, certainly, why we take pleasure in the mere style of