Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 096.djvu/158

146 of surpassing pomp and orchestral tumult; he glorifies it into intricate harmonies; he transfigures its original messiness into bewildering bravura and interminable fantasia. Thus De Quincey amuses himself with scholarly investiture of ephemeral trifles, and entwines an absurdity with gorgeous convolutions of rhetoric. One of his critics styles his humour "elephantine;" and the epithet is applicable enough, if it refers to the size and structure and slow emphasis of his fun; but not if it insinuates a certain ludicrous awkwardness and gawky stolidity, such as commonly we attribute to the elephant in his gay moments. With this proviso, the description is not infelicitous; and were we disposed to follow, out the comparison, we might find suggestive types in the majestic bulk and heavy tread, and sagacious glance, and pointed tusk, and syncretic all-comprehending trunk, and deliberate "action," of the excellent quadruped in question.

Another characteristic of De Quincey, in his riant mood, is the affectation of intense arrogance and complacent superiority—as utter a contrast as can be imagined to his personal bearing in private life. This contemptuous ridicule of standard celebrities is not of the offensive kind adopted by criticasters, who in puling accents beg to differ from this or that authority, and are only (to use Charles Lamb's phrase) modest for modest men; that is to say, conceited and self-sufficient to the very last degree, De Quincey does not apologise, does not equivocate, does not mince matters with his adversary; but simply calls himself a pretty man, defies this "universal airth" to turn up a prettier, and assumes forthwith an attitude expressive of defiant readiness for all comers. It is partly the reality, and partly the raillery of his challenge, which give an idiosyncratic or differential piquancy to this exhibition of his humour, In fluent exaggeration of all kinds he is pre-eminently au fait, Even we—who are accused of blindness to his defects—are disposed to complain of his too lavish and inconsiderate use of superlatives and violent expletives; so profusely are they heaped on men and things of the merest insignificance, that they seem to "lack gall," and to fall flat and harmless when wed on more befitting occasions. Almost we are reminded of the man described by Solomon as casting "firebrands, arrows, and death," and saying, "Am I not in sport?" Not that anything like mischievous intent, or simulated wrath, is imputable to our author, but there is a sense of disproportion.

Not a few will aver that strictures are also due to his unrestrained indulgence in slang. But slang is exclusively vulgar only to one-sided censors; and recently, in the grave pages of the Quarterly Review, it has found a philosophic apologist. Slang is frequently highly instructive to any one with a turn for philology; and hence, in part, its attractions to so close an investigator of language, and so accurate a dissector of syllables, as the Opium-ester. As a master of style, he has amply earned the Horatian eulogy,and the practice and skill attained in weighing and analysing the elements of diction, involve a certain quickness to catch at any curiosa felicitas in the vocabulary of slang. And then he. is too thoroughly an