The Art of Prose

Abstract

In the ‘General Preface’ of 1853 to James Hogg’s Edinburgh edition of his collected works, De Quincey drew attention to the variety of his prose and to the originality of his prose-poems or impassioned prose. He made three divisions of what he had written; the largest section of his work was made up of what he called ‘essays’, which he defined as writings ‘which address themselves to the understanding as an insulated faculty’. Essays present a problem and try to solve it, and the only questions to be asked are ‘what is the success obtained?’ and (as a separate question) ‘What is the executive ability displayed in the solution of the problem?’ Even today nearly all these essays are entertaining, informative and lively; but there was nothing new in De Quincy’s way of treating such external subjects, and the only originality is to be found in De Quincey’s use of paradox for polemical purposes. The second division of his work consisted of what he called ‘Autobiographic Sketches’, and for these he claimed little ‘beyond that sort of amusement which attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related’.

‘To walk well, it is not enough that a man abstains from dancing.’