![]() Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he - this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy-resolve into orderly constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable amongst men. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey’s to reveal in open light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those meditations which most resemble dreams and as to the manner of these revelations, no Roman pontifex maximus, were it even Cæsar himself, could have rivalled their magisterial pomp. ![]() The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. Particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar incantations,-only the heralding of certain precise claims will this monarch listen to as the just inferiœ, the fitting sacrifice or hecatomb of our homage. The reader will assuredly unite with me in all such courtesies,. ![]() And there are lives which proceed as by the movements of music, - which must therefore be heralded by overtures : majestic steppings, heard in the background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of procession, to sound the note of preparation.Įlse I should plunge in medias res upon a sketch of De Quincey’s life were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. Yet there are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely demand the inaugural flourish of arms, - which, like the rosy flood of dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. 1 By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. In regard to any of the great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest, which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking mind. IN the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive flourish seems uncalled for and so indeed it would be, if by such means it were meant simply to justify the undertaking.
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