Works; Including All His Contributions To Periodical Literature - Vol VII

PROTESTANTISM AND OTHER ESSAYS RY THOMAS DE QUINCEY - CONTENTS - PREFACE - THESE Papers, which Erst of all took their btation in t e periodic journals of this country, which were secondly trimsplanted into the literature of the American United . are now, for the third time, published at hoUmnei t i e n d aS tnaetwes, f oarnmd with many emendations, may be supposed to have suffered by errors of hurry and inadvertence, from their original adaptation to a service very nearly extemporaneous. It was natural that they should do so. But my own experience, in common with that of many other writers, has taught me that the disadvantages of hurry are not without their compensations. Performers on the organ, so far from finding tbeir own im promptu displays to fall below their more careful and premeditated efforts, on the contrary, have oftentimes deep reason to nou urn over the escape of inspirations born from the momentary fervours of improvisation, but fugitive and irrevocable as the pulses in their own flying fingers. Something analogous there is in the effects of that inexorable summons which forces a man to write against time, when racing along to in tercept the final closing of a meekly or monthly journal. It is certain, howsoever it may be explained psychologically, that the fierce compression of mental activities which takes place in such a struggle, though painful and exhausting, has the effect of suddenly unlocking cells in the brain, and revealing evanescent gleams of original feeling or startling suggestions of lovetlr uth. that mould not have obeyed a less fervent mag netism. Pain, and conflicts with suffering, are ministrations of development to the human intellect even in the yomgcst infants, much more frequent than is commonly observed. I believe that there is no great call for preliminary explanations as to any difliculties in the following papers, except, perhaps, as to these six cases-I. The suggesting-grcund of the paper - entitled Protestantism was really a pamphlet, or rather book, judging by its careful and erudite composition and this work, if now forgotten naturally after s lapse of a dozen years, was really ascribed to two separate bishops of distinguished literary pretension I know not who it really was that I commented upon, but certainly he was no ghostly creation of mine he was incarnate at that time, and I hope still continues to be so. 11. In speaking of the equation between the expenditure of a family in two remote times, or two remote places as France and England, on the suggestion of the Chronicon Preciosum, I omitted to fix the readers attention as properly I shouldhave done upon a common oversight affecting such equations--viz., that very often a large share of the Werence forms no exponent of the mere price scale ruling in the two countries compared since much of the difference should be often charged upon varying usages of life. For instance, about twenty five years ago I saw a letter from a poor baronet, who had fixed his residence in Southern France, vaunting the prodigious cheapness of his own neighbourhood by comparison with any part of Great Britain. He had a large family of daughters, and an income of very little more than S500 per annum and yet he described himself as keeping and ordinarily using for the benefit of his five daughters a coach-and-four. But, on further explanation, it came out, that the usage of that provinceallowed him a large social intercourse without the cost of dinner-parties...