De Quincey's work is because that work is so thoroughly inspired with
the Opium-Eater's own genial personality, because it so unmistakably
suggests that inevitable "smack of individuality" which gives to the
productions of all great authors their truest distinction if not their
greatest worth.

Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. His father
was a well-to-do merchant of literary taste, but of him the children
of the household scarcely knew; he was an invalid, a prey to
consumption, and during their childhood made his residence mostly in
the milder climate of Lisbon or the West Indies. Thomas was seven
years old when his father was brought home to die, and the lad, though
sensitively impressed by the event, felt little of the significance of
relationship between them. Mrs. De Quincey was a somewhat stately
lady, rather strict in discipline and rigid in her views. There does
not seem to have been the most complete sympathy between mother and
son, yet De Quincey was always reverent in his attitude, and certainly
entertained a genuine respect for her intelligence and character.
There were eight children in the home, four sons and four daughters;
Thomas was the fifth in age, and his relations to the other members of
this little community are set forth most interestingly in the opening
chapters of his _Autobiographic Sketches_.

De Quincey's child life was spent in the country; first at a pretty
rustic dwelling known as "The Farm," and after 1792 at a larger
country house near Manchester, built by his father, and given by his
mother the pleasantly suggestive name of "Greenhay," _hay_ meaning
hedge, or hedgerow. The early boyhood of Thomas De Quincey is of more
than ordinary interest, because of the clear light it throws upon the
peculiar temperament and endowments of the man. Moreover, we have the