De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars by Thomas De Quincey
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Thomas De Quincey >> De Quincey\'s Revolt of the Tartars
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9 DE QUINCEY'S REVOLT OF THE TARTARS
Edited with Introduction and Notes
by
WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS, PH.D.
Professor of the English Language and Literature in Knox College
Boston, U.S.A.
Ginn & Company, Publishers
The Athenaeum Press
1899
[Illustration: Thomas de Quincey.
(After a drawing by ARCHER.)]
"In addition to the general impression of his
diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the
peculiar beauty of his head and forehead, rising
disproportionately high over his small wrinkly visage
and gentle deep-set eyes."
DAVID MASSON.
PREFACE.
In editing an English classic for use in the secondary schools, there
is always opportunity for the expression of personal convictions and
personal taste; nevertheless, where one has predecessors in the task
of preparing such a text, it is difficult always, occasionally
impossible, to avoid treading on their heels. The present editor,
therefore, hastens to acknowledge his indebtedness to the various
school editions of the _Revolt of the Tartars_, already in existence.
The notes by Masson are so authoritative and so essential that their
quotation needs no comment. De Quincey's footnotes are retained in
their original form and appear embodied in the text. The other
annotations suggest the method which the editor would follow in
class-room work upon this essay.
The student's attention is called frequently to the _form_ of
expression; the discriminating use of epithets, the employment of
foreign phrases, the allusions to Milton and the Bible, the structure
of paragraphs, the treatment of incident, the development of feeling,
the impressiveness of a present personality; all this, however, is
with the purpose, not of mechanic exercise, nor merely to illustrate
"rhetoric," but to illuminate _De Quincey_. It is with this intention,
presumably, that the text is prescribed. There is little
attractiveness, after all, in the idea of a style so colorless and so
impersonal that the individuality of its victim is lost in its own
perfection; this was certainly not the Opium-Eater's mind concerning
literary form, nor does it appear to have been the aim of any of our
masters. Indeed, it may be well in passing to point out to pupils how
fatal to success in writing is the attempt to imitate the style of any
man, De Quincey included; it is always in order to emphasize the
naturalness and spontaneity of the "grand style" wherever it is found.
The teacher should not inculcate a blind admiration of all that De
Quincey has said or done; there is opportunity, even in this brief
essay, to exercise the pupil in applying the commonplace tests of
criticism, although it should be seen to as well that a true
appreciation is awakened for the real excellences of this little
masterpiece.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION:
CRITICAL APPRECIATION vii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH x
AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES xxii
THE REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 1
APPENDED NOTES BY MASSON 67
NOTES, EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL 74
INTRODUCTION.
Thomas De Quincey is one of the eccentric figures in English
literature. Popularly he is known as the English Opium-Eater and as
the subject of numerous anecdotes which emphasize the oddities of his
temperament and the unconventionality of his habits. That this man of
distinguished genius was the victim--pitifully the victim--of opium is
the lamentable fact; that he was morbidly shy and shunned intercourse
with all except a few intimate, congenial friends; that he was
comically indifferent to the fashion of his dress; that he was the
most unpractical and childlike of men; that he was often betrayed,
because of these peculiarities, into many ridiculous embarrassments,
such as are described by Mr. Findlay, Mr. Hogg, and Mr. Burton,--of
all this there can be no doubt; but these idiosyncrasies are, after
all, of minor importance, the accidents, not the essentials in the
life and personality of this remarkable man. The points that should
attract our notice, the qualities that really give distinction to De
Quincey, are the broad sweep of his knowledge, almost unlimited in its
scope and singularly accurate in its details, a facility of phrasing
and a word supply that transformed the mere power of discriminating
expression into a fine art, and a style that, while it lapsed
occasionally from the standard of its own excellence, was generally
self-corrective and frequently forsook the levels of commonplace
excellence for the highest reaches of impassioned prose. Nor is this
all. His pages do not lack in humor--humor of the truest and most
delicate type; and if De Quincey is at times impelled beyond the
bounds of taste, even these excursions demonstrate his power, at least
in handling the grotesque. His sympathies, however, are always
genuine, and often are profound. The pages of his autobiographic
essays reveal the strength of his affections, while in the
interpretation of such a character as that of Joan of Arc, or in
allusions like those to the pariahs,--defenceless outcasts from
society, by whose wretched lot his heart was often wrung,--he writes
in truest pathos.
Now sympathy is own child of the imagination, whether expressed in the
language of laughter or in the vernacular of tears; and the most
distinctive quality in the mental make-up of De Quincey was, after
all, this dominant imagination which was characteristic of the man
from childhood to old age. The Opium-Eater once defined the _great
scholar_ as "not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but
also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing
together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what
else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing
life." Such was De Quincey himself. He was a scholar born, gifted with
a mind apt for the subtleties of metaphysics, a memory well-nigh
inexhaustible in the recovery of facts; in one respect, at least, he
was a _great_ scholar, for his mind was dominated by an imagination as
vigorous as that which created Macaulay's _England_, almost as
sensitive to dramatic effect as that which painted Carlyle's _French
Revolution_. Therefore when he wrote narrative, historical narrative,
or reminiscence, he lived in the experiences he pictured, as great
historians do; perhaps living over again the scenes of the past, or
for the first time making real the details of occurrences with which
he was only recently familiar.
The _Revolt of the Tartars_ is a good illustration of his power.
Attracted by the chance reading of an obscure French missionary and
traveller to the dramatic possibilities of an episode in Russian
history, De Quincey built from the bare notes thus discovered,
supplemented by others drawn from a matter-of-fact German
archaeologist, a narrative which for vividness of detail and
truthfulness of local color belongs among the best of those classics
in which fancy helps to illuminate fact, and where the imagination is
invoked to recreate what one feels intuitively must have been real.
The _Revolt of the Tartars_, while not exhibiting the highest
achievement of the author's power, nevertheless belongs in the group
of writings wherein his peculiar excellences are fairly manifested.
The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the
masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest
will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of
that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into
superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De
Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and
in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of
their beauties is found in the melodiousness of their tone and the
rhythmic sweetness of their motion.
It is as a master of rhetoric that De Quincey is distinguished among
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
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
best of authority in our study of this period, namely, the author
himself, who in the _Sketches_ already mentioned, and in his most
noted work, _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, has told the
story of these early years in considerable detail and with apparent
sincerity. De Quincey was not a sturdy boy. Shy and dreamy,
exquisitely sensitive to impressions of melancholy and mystery, he was
endowed with an imagination abnormally active even for a child. It is
customary to give prominence to De Quincey's pernicious habit of
opium-eating, in attempting to explain the grotesque fancies and weird
flights of his marvellous mind in later years; yet it is only fair to
emphasize the fact that the later achievements of that strange
creative faculty were clearly foreshadowed in youth. For example, the
earliest incident in his life that he could afterwards recall, he
describes as "a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite
nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason--that it
demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional, and
not dependent upon laudanum."[1] Again he tells us how, when six years
old, upon the death of a favorite sister three years older, he stole
unobserved upstairs to the death chamber; unlocking the door and
entering silently, he stood for a moment gazing through the open
window toward the bright sunlight of a cloudless day, then turned to
behold the angel face upon the pillow. Awed in the presence of death,
the meaning of which he began vaguely to understand, he stood
listening to a "solemn wind" that began to blow--"the saddest that ear
ever heard." What followed should appear in De Quincey's own words: "A
vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which
ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up
the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God;
but _that_ also ran on before us and fled away continually. The flight
and the pursuit seemed to go on forever and ever. Frost gathering
frost, some sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty
relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from
the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet
continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle
within me. I slept--for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my
self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing as before,
close to my sister's bed."[2] Somewhat similar in effect were the
fancies that came to this dreamy boy on Sunday mornings during service
in the fine old English church. Through the wide central field of
uncolored glass, set in a rich framework of gorgeous color,--for the
side panes of the great windows were pictured with the stories of
saints and martyrs,--the lad saw "white fleecy clouds sailing over the
azure depths of the sky." Straightway the picture changed in his
imagination, and visions of young children, lying on white beds of
sickness and of death, rose before his eyes, ascending slowly and
softly into heaven, God's arms descending from the heavens that He
might the sooner take them to Himself and grant release. Such are not
infrequently the dreams of children. De Quincey's experience is not
unique; but with him imagination, the imagination of childhood,
remained unimpaired through life. It was not wholly opium that made
him the great dreamer of our literature, any more than it was the
effect of a drug that brought from his dying lips the cry of "Sister,
sister, sister!"--an echo from this sacred chamber of death, where he
had stood awed and entranced nearly seventy years before.
Not all of De Quincey's boyhood, however, was passed under influences
so serious and mystical as these. He was early compelled to undergo
what he is pleased to call his "introduction to the world of strife."
His brother William, five years the senior of Thomas, appears to have
been endowed with an imagination as remarkable as his own. "His genius
for mischief," says Thomas, "amounted to inspiration." Very amusing
are the chronicles of the little autocracy thus despotized by William.
The assumption of the young tyrant was magnificent. Along with the
prerogatives and privileges of seniority, he took upon himself as well
certain responsibilities more galling to his half-dozen uneasy
subordinates, doubtless, than the undisputed hereditary rights of
age. William constituted himself the educational guide of the nursery,
proclaiming theories, delivering lectures, performing experiments,
asserting opinions upon subjects diverse and erudite. Indeed, a
vigorous spirit was housed in William's body, and but for his early
death, this lad also might have brought lustre to the family name.
A real introduction to the world of strife came with the development
of a lively feud between the two brothers on the one side, and on the
other a crowd of young belligerents employed in a cotton factory on
the road between Greenhay and Manchester, where the boys now attended
school. Active hostilities occurred daily when the two "aristocrats"
passed the factory on their way home at the hour when its inmates
emerged from their labor. The dread of this encounter hung like a
cloud over Thomas, yet he followed William loyally, and served with
all the spirit of a cadet of the house. Imagination played an
important part in this campaign, and it is for that reason primarily
that to this and the other incidents of De Quincey's childhood
prominence is here given; in no better way can we come to an
understanding of the real nature of this singular man.
In 1796 the home at Greenhay was broken up. The irrepressible William
was sent to London to study art; Mrs. De Quincey removed to Bath, and
Thomas was placed in the grammar school of that town; a younger
brother, Richard, in all respects a pleasing contrast to William, was
a sympathetic comrade and schoolmate. For two years De Quincey
remained in this school, achieving a great reputation in the study of
Latin, and living a congenial, comfortable life. This was followed by
a year in a private school at Winkfield, which was terminated by an
invitation to travel in Ireland with young Lord Westport, a lad of De
Quincey's own age, an intimacy having sprung up between them a year
earlier at Bath. It was in 1800 that the trip was made, and the
period of the visit extended over four or five months. After this
long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester,
his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school
would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment
proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his
shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who
was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to
run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he
slipped quietly off--in one pocket a copy of an English poet, a volume
of Euripides in the other. His first move was toward Chester, the
seventeen-year-old runaway deeming it proper that he should report at
once to his mother, who was now living in that town. So he trudged
overland forty miles and faced his astonished and indignant parent. At
the suggestion of a kind-hearted uncle, just home from India, Thomas
was let off easily; indeed, he was given an allowance of a guinea a
week, with permission to go on a tramp through North Wales, a
proposition which he hailed with delight. The next three months were
spent in a rather pleasant ramble, although the weekly allowance was
scarcely sufficient to supply all the comforts desired. The trip ended
strangely. Some sudden fancy seizing him, the boy broke off all
connection with his friends and went to London. Unknown, unprovided
for, he buried himself in the vast life of the metropolis. He lived a
precarious existence for several months, suffering from exposure,
reduced to the verge of starvation, his whereabouts a mystery to his
friends. The cloud of this experience hung darkly over his spirit,
even in later manhood; perceptions of a true world of strife were
vivid; impressions of these wretched months formed the material of his
most sombre dreams.
Rescued at last, providentially, De Quincey spent the next period of
his life, covering the years 1803-7, in residence at Oxford. His
career as a student at the university is obscure. He was a member of
Worcester College, was known as a quiet, studious man, and lived an
isolated if not a solitary life. With a German student, who taught him
Hebrew, De Quincey seems to have had some intimacy, but his circle of
acquaintance was small, and no contemporary has thrown much light on
his stay. In 1807 he disappeared from Oxford, having taken the written
tests for his degree, but failing to present himself for the necessary
oral examination.
The year of his departure from Oxford brought to De Quincey a
long-coveted pleasure--acquaintance with two famous contemporaries
whom he greatly admired, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Characteristic of
De Quincey in many ways was his gift, anonymously made, of L300 to his
hero, Coleridge. This was in 1807, when De Quincey was twenty-two, and
was master of his inheritance. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy,
and in 1809 the young man, himself gifted with talents which were to
make him equally famous with these, took up his residence at Grasmere,
in the Lake country, occupying for many years the cottage which
Wordsworth had given up on his removal to ampler quarters at Rydal
Mount. Here he spent much of his time in the society of the men who
were then grouped in distinguished neighborhood; besides Wordsworth
and Coleridge, the poet Southey was accessible, and a frequent visitor
was John Wilson, later widely known as the "Christopher North" of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. Nor was De Quincey idle; his habits of study
were confirmed; indeed, he was already a philosopher at twenty-four.
These were years of hard reading and industrious thought, wherein he
accumulated much of that metaphysical wisdom which was afterward to
win admiring recognition.
In 1816 De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's daughter
living near. There is a pretty scene painted by the author
himself,[3] in which he gives us a glimpse of his domestic life at
this time. Therein he pictures the cottage, standing in a valley,
eighteen miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two miles
long by three-quarters of a mile in average width. The mountains are
real mountains, between 3000 and 4000 feet high, and the cottage a
real cottage, white, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to
unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around
the windows, through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn,
beginning, in fact, with May roses and ending with jasmine. It is in
the winter season, however, that De Quincey paints his picture, and so
he describes a room, seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven
and one-half feet high. This is the drawing-room, although it might
more justly be termed the library, for it happens that books are the
one form of property in which the owner is wealthy. Of these he has
about 5000, collected gradually since his eighteenth year. The room
is, therefore, populous with books. There is a good fire on the
hearth. The furniture is plain and modest, befitting the unpretending
cottage of a scholar. Near the fire stands a tea table; there are only
two cups and saucers on the tray. It is an "eternal" teapot that the
artist would like us to imagine, for he usually drinks tea from eight
o'clock at night to four in the morning. There is, of course, a
companion at the tea table, and very lovingly does the husband suggest
the pleasant personality of his young wife. One other important
feature is included in the scene; upon the table there rests also a
decanter, in which sparkles the ruby-colored laudanum.
De Quincey's experience with opium had begun while he was a student at
the university, in 1804. It was first taken to obtain relief from
neuralgia, and his use of the drug did not at once become habitual.
During the period of residence at Grasmere, however, De Quincey
became confirmed in the habit, and so thoroughly was he its victim
that for a season his intellectual powers were well-nigh paralyzed;
his mind sank under such a cloud of depression and gloom that his
condition was pitiful in the extreme. Just before his marriage, in
1816, De Quincey, by a vigorous effort, partially regained his
self-control and succeeded in materially reducing his daily allowance
of the drug; but in the following year he fell more deeply than ever
under its baneful power, until in 1818-19 his consumption of opium was
something almost incredible. Thus he became truly enough the great
English Opium-Eater, whose Confessions were later to fill a unique
place in English literature. It was finally the absolute need of
bettering his financial condition that compelled De Quincey to shake
off the shackles of his vice; this he practically accomplished,
although perhaps he was never entirely free from the habit. The event
is coincident with the beginning of his career as a public writer. In
1820 he became a man of letters.
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