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The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc By: Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) |
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BY
THOMAS DE QUINCEY EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
MILTON HAIGHT TURK, PH.D.
TO CHARLES DEACON CREE
THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
Glencairn, Kilmacolm, Scotland June 27, 1905
PREFACE
Some portions of this Introduction have been taken from the Athenæum
Press Selections from De Quincey ; many of the notes have also
been transferred from that volume. A number of the new notes I owe to a
review of the Selections by Dr. Lane Cooper, of Cornell University. I
wish also to thank for many favors the Committee and officers of the
Glasgow University Library. If a word by way of suggestion to teachers be pertinent, I would
venture to remark that the object of the teacher of literature is, of
course, only to fulfill the desire of the author to make clear his
facts and to bring home his ideas in all their power and beauty.
Introductions and notes are only means to this end. Teachers, I think,
sometimes lose sight of this fact; I know it is fatally easy for
students to forget it. That teacher will have rendered a great service
who has kept his pupils alive to the real aim of their studies, to
know the author, not to know of him. M.H.T
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. LIFE
II. CRITICAL REMARKS
III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE SELECTIONS
THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH
JOAN OF ARC NOTES
INTRODUCTION I. LIFE
Thomas de Quincey was born in Manchester on the 15th of August, 1785.
His father was a man of high character and great taste for literature
as well as a successful man of business; he died, most unfortunately,
when Thomas was quite young. Very soon after our author's birth the
family removed to The Farm, and later to Greenhay, a larger country
place near Manchester. In 1796 De Quincey's mother, now for some years
a widow, removed to Bath and placed him in the grammar school there. Thomas, the future opium eater, was a weak and sickly child. His first
years were spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, William, a
real boy, came home, the young author followed in humility mingled with
terror the diversions of that ingenious and pugnacious "son of eternal
racket." De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and
emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively formal,
and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection in her children,
to whom she was for all that deeply devoted. Her notions of conduct in
general and of child rearing in particular were very strict. She took
Thomas out of Bath School, after three years' excellent work there,
because he was too much praised, and kept him for a year at an inferior
school at Winkfield in Wiltshire. In 1800, at the age of fifteen, De Quincey was ready for Oxford; he had
not been praised without reason, for his scholarship was far in advance
of that of ordinary pupils of his years. "That boy," his master at Bath
School had said, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than
you or I could address an English one." He was sent to Manchester
Grammar School, however, in order that after three years' stay he might
secure a scholarship at Brasenose College, Oxford. He remained there
strongly protesting against a situation which deprived him "of
health , of society , of amusement , of liberty , of congeniality
of pursuits " for nineteen months, and then ran away. His first plan had been to reach Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads
(1798) had solaced him in fits of melancholy and had awakened in him a
deep reverence for the neglected poet. His timidity preventing this, he
made his way to Chester, where his mother then lived, in the hope of
seeing a sister; was apprehended by the older members of the family;
and through the intercession of his uncle, Colonel Penson, received the
promise of a guinea a week to carry out his later project of a solitary
tramp through Wales. From July to November, 1802, De Quincey then led a
wayfarer's life. [Footnote: For a most interesting account of this
period see the Confessions of an English Opium Eater , Athenæum Press
Selections from De Quincey , pp... Continue reading book >>
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