Mr. Black's Lecture.

Mr. E. Charlton Black delivered a very interesting lecture in Sever Hall last evening on Thomas De Quincey. Mr. Black's remarks in substance were as follows: From 1830 to 1839, Edinburgh was the headquarters of this distinguished Englishman, who was seldom visible to the naked eye but was heard from on many occasions. He was scarcely five feet high, but aristocratic and attractive in appearance, although he was quite careless in regard to his dress.

As a writer of memoirs, magazine articles and an essayist, De Quincey was one of the princes of English literature. He was of an intellectual turn of mind and resolved to see the world with his own and not with other's eyes. To earn his daily bread, he was compelled to write what would bring him immediate returns. Thus his literary activity was determined by his financial condition and his first writings were fugitive magazine articles which won for him the greater part of his fame.

De Quincey was the fifth of a family of six children. His father was a Manchester merchant and died at the age of thirty-nine, leaving an estate valued at thirty thousand pounds. At the age of six, De Quincey was sorely grieved by the death of an elder sister, who had read to him the story of the Arabian Nights, which aroused in him such a great spirit of imagination. He stole into the death chamber of his sister and received those impressions, which make up his charming and vivid narrative published many years later.

The young writer moved to Bath where he was educated. At the age of fifteen, he could write Greek and Latin, and two years afterwards spoke the ancient, languages fluently. Soon he borrowed five pounds and plunged into the unknown world. He wandered to Wales and there lived as a literary vagabond. In a short time, he was discovered and removed by friends. In October 1803, he went to Worcester College, Oxford, and sought neither friends nor university honors. The exposure and privations which he had previously experienced drove him to the demoralizing habit of eating opium, the source of so many pains and pleasures. The deadly habit soon became a daily practice and was accompanied with the taken of laudanum.

The shattered condition of the household finances caused De Quincey to awake from his opium habit in which he languished from 1817 to 1821. He was a constant contributer to the different English magazines and amid hopeless confusion, he carried on his literary work. The publication of his book on the Confessions of an English Opium Eater was a startling revelation to the literary people of the world. He lived by his pen for fifty years and when his magazine articles were collected they filled fifty volumes. All these articles are characterized by individuality, humor, imagination and the evident results of a thorough study of the classics. He had an exact and penetrating intellect and peered into the most hidden things. There is a vein through all his writings which gives evidence of an extensive reading knowledge and high culture. His humor, pathos and marvelous power of description made him a popular writer and secured for him the fame which returns from an extensive and wide-spread circulation of his works.