operation, of distinctions that naturally belonged to him, he was driven unconsciously to attempt some restoration of the balance by claiming for a moment distinctions to which he had no real pretensions. The whole was a trick of sorrow, and of sorrowing perplexity; he felt that no justice had been done to him, and that he himself had made an opening for the wrong; the result he saw, but the process he could not disentangle; and, in the confusion of his distress, natural irritation threw him upon blind efforts to recover his ground by unfounded claims, when claims so well founded had been maliciously disallowed.

But a day of accounting comes at last a day of rehearing for the cause, and of revision for the judgment. The longer this review has been delayed, the more impressive it becomes in the changes which it works. Welcome is the spectacle when, after three-fourths of a century have passed away, a writer like Mr. Forster-qualified for such a task by ample knowledge of things and persons, by great powers for a comprehensive estimate of the case and for a splendid exposition of its results, with deep sensibility to the merits of the man chiefly concerned in the issue, enthusiastic, but without partisanship-comes forward to unsettle false verdicts, to recombine misarranged circumstances, and to explain anew misinterpreted facts. Such a man wields the authority of heraldic marshals. Like the Otho of the Roman theatre, he has power to raise or to degrade-to give or to take away precedency; but, like this Otho, he has so much power because he exercises it on known principles, and without caprice. To the man of true genius, like Goldsmith, when seating himself in humility on the lowest bench, he says, "Go thou up to a higher place. Seat thyself above those proud men, that once trampled thee in the dust. Be thy memorial upon earth, not (as of some who scorned thee) 'the whistling of a name':-be thou remembered amongst men by tears of tenderness, by happy laughter untainted with malice, and by the benedictions of those that, reverencing man's nature, see gladly its frailties brought within the gracious smile of human charity, and its nobilities levelled to the apprehension of simplicity and innocence."

Over every grave, even though tenanted by guilt and

shame, the human heart, when circumstantially made acquainted with its silent records of suffering or temptation, yearns in love or in forgiveness to breathe a solemn Requiescat! How much more, then, over the grave of a benefactor to the human race! But it is a natural feeling, with respect to such a prayer, that, however fervent and sincere, it has no perfect faith in its own validity, so long as any unsettled feud from ancient calumny hangs over the buried person. The unredressed wrong seems to haunt the sepulchre in the shape of a perpetual disturbance to its rest. First of all, when this wrong has been adjudicated and expiated, is the Requiescat uttered with a perfect faith in itself. By a natural confusion we then transfer our own feelings to the occupant of the grave. The tranquillization to our own wounded sense of justice seems like an atonement to his the peace for us transforms itself under a fiction of tenderness into a peace for him: the reconciliation between the world that did the wrong and the grave that seemed to suffer it is accomplished; the reconciler, in such a case, whoever he may be, seems a double benefactor-to him that endured the injury—to us that resented it; and in the particular case now before the public we shall all be ready to agree that this reconciling friend, who might have entitled his work Vindicia Oliverianæ, has, by the piety of his service to a man of exquisite genius, so long and so foully misrepresented, earned a right to interweave forever his own cipher and cognisance in filial union with those of OLIVER GOLD

SMITH.

POSTSCRIPT1

THE article on Goldsmith was one which on any spontaneous impulse I should not have written, as I could not write on that theme with sincere cordiality or with perfect charity; consequently not with perfect freedom of thought.

Do I then question the true and unaffected merit of Goldsmith in that natural field upon which his happy genius gave him a right to succeed? Not at all. Within a humble province the genius of Goldsmith seems to me exquisite. Especially his Vicar of Wakefield in its earlier part,-i.e. in its delineation of the vicar's simple household when contemplated through the eyes of the vicar himself, unconscious of the effect from his own peculiar mode of delightful egotism, -has always struck me as inimitable; not so, I confess, in the coarser scenes of the latter half. But, for my own part, I had always borne a grudge to Goldsmith on behalf of Shakspere, whom so deeply and so deliberately he had presumed to insult, once in a travelling scene in the Vicar, but once also in a mode less casual and direct. None of us would make it a reproach to a slight and graceful champion that he had not the powers for facing a Jupiter; but, if he himself insisted on affronting this Olympian antagonist, he must not complain that the consequences were defeat to himself, and disgust spreading widely through the circles of those that otherwise would have been his friends. My little paper took the shape of a critique upon Mr. Forster's elaborate

1 What is here printed as a "postscript" appeared as a portion of De Quincey's "Preface" to Vol. V of his Collected Writings,-in which Vol. V the reprint of the Goldsmith paper was included.-M.

VOL. IV

Y

and splendid review of Goldsmith's life and literary career. To Mr. Forster I owe a large apology for having so inadequately reported the character and qualities of his Vindicia Oliveriana. This failure was due to a deep-seated nervous derangement, under which at that time, and for years previously, I had been suffering. But neither ill health, nor resentment in the interest of insulted Shakspere, was suffered for a moment to colour the expression of my respectful gratitude to Goldsmith. Yet some readers will say, Would it not have been better frankly to explain the ground of my secret irritation? No: because the express purpose of Mr. Forster's book had been to offer a homage of retribution to the injured memory of Goldsmith; and I, sympathising on deep grounds of justice and rightful indignation with that honourable purpose, assumed, as it were, on behalf of our common sentiments, the character of a judicial advocate, or even for the moment of a eulogist. I, adopting in the main, as a junior counsel, the views and feelings of my leader, was not at liberty in that situation to break the continuity of the potent reaction on behalf of Goldsmith which Mr. Forster's earnest researches were fitted to evoke. I was not at liberty to disturb by any murmur of dissent the reader's paternal sympathy with the general

movement.

THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT1

I TAKE it for granted that all people of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant, however little their taste or their opportunities may have brought them acquainted with the history of Kant's philosophical opinions. A great man, though in an unpopular path, must always be an object of liberal curiosity. To suppose a reader thoroughly indifferent to Kant is to suppose him thoroughly unintellectual; and, therefore, though in reality he should happen not to regard Kant with interest, it would still be amongst the fictions of courtesy to presume that he did. On this principle I make no apology to any reader, philosophic or not, Goth or Vandal, Hun or Saracen, for detaining him upon a short sketch of Kant's life and domestic habits, drawn from the authentic records of his friends and pupils. It is true that, without any illiberality on the part of the public, the works of Kant are not, in this country, regarded with the same interest which has gathered about his name; and this may be attributed to three causes :

1 This paper appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine for February 1827, as part of a series which De Quincey had begun under the general title "Gallery of the German Prose Classics, by the English Opium-Eater." The preceding figure in the gallery had been Lessing, represented critically; and Kant followed in this more biographical guise. Considerable changes were made in the paper when De Quincey reprinted it in 1854 in the third volume of the collective edition of his writings.-M.