Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/411

Rh every syllable with reality—a passionate memorial of harrowing experiences—than which we remember no passage more painfully characteristic, more idiosyncratically pathetic, more wildly wailing, in all the writings of Thomas de Quincey. He has been speaking of the impression produced by the love of woman—there recurs to him, in thus speaking, an echo of "young, melodious laughter"—he recals "years through which," he piteously says, "a shadow as of sad eclipse sate and rested upon my faculties; years through which I was careless of all but those who lived within my inner circle, within 'my heart of hearts;' years—ah! heavenly years!—through which I lived, beloved! with thee, to thee, for thee, by thee! Ah! happy, happy years! in which I was a mere football of reproach, but in which every wind and sounding hurricane of wrath or contempt flew by like chasing enemies past some defying gates of adamant, and left me too blessed in thy smiles—angel of life!—to heed the curses or the mocking which sometimes I heard raving outside of our impregnable Eden; … as much abstracted from all which concerned the world outside … as though I had lived with the darlings of my heart in the centre of Canadian forests, and all men else in the centre of Hindostan" ….. "O heart, why art thou disquieted? Tempestuous, rebellions heart! ah, wherefore art thou still dreaming of things so long gone by? of expectations that could not be fulfilled, that, being mortal, must, in some point, have a mortal taint! Empty, empty thoughts! vanity of vanities! Yet no, not always; for sometimes, after days of intellectual toil, when half the whole world is dreaming—I wrap my head in the bed-clothes, …. and then through blinding tears I see again that golden gate; again I stand waiting at the entrance; until dreams come that carry me once more to the Paradise beyond."

Shall we comment on this outburst, in our puny right of criticaster? Pshaw, criticaster! add not thereto, lest thou diminish from it. Or indite a peroration to this paper? Pshaw, criticaster! forget thy puling self; and if thy hands are not to thine eyes, lay thy hands upon thy mouth.