PREFACE

To the literature of inquiry, culture, aspiration, and endeavour, the conductors of this Serial add now another-their thirty-second-contribution. Upwards of twenty years ago they commenced their labours, animated by the desire of stirring up and encouraging free thought and free speech, duly controlled by intelligence and reflectiveness; and, under the belief that the acquisition of habits of investigative thought would increase the usefulness and happiness of those who could be induced to discipline their minds, to seek, with single-hearted purpose, the way of truth, they have continued to fulfil the duties to which such aims and beliefs bound them. It is almost superfluous to say that they have no desire to propagate any pet opinions on morals, social life, politics, or religion, or to act as missionaries of any set creed except the supreme and all-pervading one,-seek the Truth on all matters and at all risks. They have but one faith in common, a faith in the inevitable victory of truth and goodness; one aim-to stimulate their readers to become thinkers, and one paramount desire-to excite and accustom men to the patient, impartial, and intelligent discussion of all questions of interest, difficulty, and importance.

Controversy appeared to them an educative agent, which had been allowed to run to waste, and they resolved to attempt to utilize it. It had been little more than a name for the strategy and finesse employed in the perpetual manoeuvrings of parties and sects. They became the advocates of unreserved discussion, and the initiators of educative controversy, and it has now acquired a fixed place in the logic of investigative thought, as a test to which all those opinions which excite the rivalry of parties ought to be honestly submitted. In this magazine the right to apply controversy to all matters upon which human thought can be employed has been systematically asserted and exerted; and in the present volume, by the aid of various contributors, moving in different ranks in society, they have been able to present some good specimens of suggestive and effective controveral writing in the department devoted to Debates; and in the Topic a few subjects of interest have been briefly but thoughtfully considered.

In another branch of their scheme the conductors have been successful in acquiring not only the reputation but the reality of success, in their endeavour to impart the results of academic culture and ennobling thought to all who aim at intellectual progress, improvement, and enjoyment; and in their attempt to induce to the persistent education of the mental faculties, as a duty incumbent upon each, independent altogether of the material advantages which such a culture may bring.

There are probably few writers in this country more capable of speaking ith authority on the subjects on which they have chosen to address our raders than those who have aided us in the leading articles in this volume. Dr. Ingleby, himself a "many-sided" man,-mathematician and metaphy

sician, lawyer and critic, scholar and essayist, biographer and poet, has sympathies alive to many forms of thought, and has probably a more accurate and systematic knowledge of the writings of De Quincey than any other student of his multifarious productions. Dr. Stirling is a thinker of complete culture, who has no living rival as an expositor of the fecund metaphysic of Germany; and few compeers in the might of controversial skill in matters pertaining to science, morals, criticism, and religious philosophy. We rejoice in their friendliness to our designs for the culture of thought, and congratulate our readers on the possession of the able papers which these gentlemen have contributed to these pages. Of the other contributions of the same class we may safely say they exhibit that rare exposi tory skill and fertility of suggestiveness which have made their author a welcome guest-friend to many an eager student and toiling thinker. In this department, then, we may regard it as indisputable that we have not now to acknowledge any falling off-but quite the contrary-notwithstanding the waymarks of time, which speak of the "years which bring the philosophic mind."

In the other departments of their labours the conductors may note the freshness, originality, and excellence of the contributions to the Essayist, the vigour and interest of Toiling Upward, and the variousness as well as instructiveness of the Reviewer and the Inquirer. On a careful perusal of the volume now put into the reader's hands, the conductors believe that it will be found to be at once instructive, pleasant, and profitable; and such as to warrant the favourable opinion, not of friends only, but of critics in general.

The path of the truth-seeker is usually an unpopular one, beset with difficulties, and not often rewarded with high encouragement or load congratulations; but it offers the consolations which are never denied to a noble spirit and an earnest endeavour. The conductors have not found it necessary to have strong cravings for popularity, and have preferred dutifulness to enrichment.

They aimed at influence, and disregarded affluence; they have exercised self-denial as well as advised self-devotedness. They have laboured to gain high ends, but not with the greed of high gains as their end; and the constantly recurring sacrifices of ease, pleasure, capital, and mental effort which the sacred servitude in which they had involved themselves demanded, they have given with patient grudgelessness, though the unseen harvest of their efforts could neither be estimated nor enjoyed by them. They have themselves exercised the earnest persistency they have sought to excite in others, and they have endured their own share of the contradiction of fate and time and circumstance, against which they have essayed to embolden others.

The conductors have earned, they believe, a moral right to the confidence and favour of those who have watched their efforts and found good in their toil, and they think they are warranted in asking them to use such endeavours as they can or may to add to the number of those who are brought under the influence of educative impulse, thoughtful effort, and a noble trust in the ultimate triumph of truth, by inducing to enrol themselves among the subscribers of and the contributors to the British Controversialist and magazine of literature, thought, and self-culture.

THE

BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST.

Many-sided Minds.

THE LATE THOMAS DE QUINCEY,

THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER

(Scholar, Philosopher, Theologian, Economist, Humorist,
Romancer, Historian, Biographer, and Critic).

BY C. M. INGLEBY, M.A., LL.D.

"O genius of good sense, keep any child of mine from ever sacrificing his intellectual health to such a life of showy emptiness, of pretence, of noise, and of words."-De Quincey.

THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, one of the wittiest and wisest of his cloth, addressing an assembly of students, gave them this advice:"There is a piece of foppery which is to be cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality-of knowing all sciences, and excelling in all arts, chemistry, algebra, mathematics, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, low Dutch, high Dutch, and natural philosophy! In short, the modern precept of education very often is, 'Take the Admirable Crichton for your model: I would have you ignorant of nothing. Now my advice, on the contrary, is, to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything."

Very similar to this is the counsel of Hegel (quoted by Dr. J. H. Stirling, at the end of an admirable article contributed by him to the Fortnightly Review, October 1, 1867 :

"He who wills something great must, as Goethe says, know how to restrict himself. He who, on the other hand, wills all, wills in effect nothing, and brings it to nothing. There is a number of interesting things in the world: Spanish, poetry, chemistry, politics, music; this is all very interesting, and we cannot take it ill of any one who occupies himself with these. In order, however, as an individual in a prescribed position, to bring 1870.

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something about, he must hold by what is definite, and not split up his strength in many directions."

Even Hegel was-perhaps not contentedly-ignorant of the phyNico-mathematics; and it is a remarkable instance of the large demand which philosophy makes upon human knowledge, that this ignorance was detrimental to his philosophy in its ultimate issues, and fatal to its reception in England.

Good as this advice is, it does not necessarily follow that its neglect is fatal to success in life. Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt (to which roll might well be added the living Helmholtz), and many other Germans, are proofs to the contrary all of whom not only achieved the most distinguished success in their several specialities, but rendered their names historical. With Englishmen and Frenchmen the case is somewhat different. The names of Frederick Sehlegel, Brougham, Whewell, and Michelet, occur to me as instances of the sort of success attainable by those who have made the Admirable Crichton their model. A few of those who dare to attempt to know everything may, notwithstanding such unwise temerity, attain to considerable eminence; but their names are never found in the first rank. With men of less mental and bodily strength the attempt is simply fatal. The physique of Brougham and Whewell was of extraordinary tenacity, and their natural abilities were excellent, insomuch that it is difficult to say to what perfection and power of intellect they might not have reached, had each devoted himself to the cultivation of a single set of faculties, or to the acquisition of a single branch of knowledge. Virgil's advice to the vine-grower (in which he reiterates the counsel of Hesiod) may be figuratively applied to the student:"Laudato ingentia rura,

Exiguum colito :"

i. e., admire large vineyards, but cultivate a small one. Equivalent to the counsel of Sydney Smith, Hegel, Buffier, Hesiod, and Virgil, 18 the old proverb,-"Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well," for few indeed have the mental endowments and physical endurance necessary to the attainment of great excellence in many distinct subjects of study. Since the establishment of the Classical Tripos at Cambridge, it has never once happened that the Senior Classic had been Senior Wrangler. The nearest approach to this occurred in the year 1835 (which was what is called a weak mathematical year), when Mr. Goulburn, the only and highly gifted son of the late exChancellor of the Exchequer, was Second Wrangler and Senior Classic; and he paid for this double honour with his life.

The application, however, of the above-quoted maxim varies with different orders of mental endowments. The subject of this

Compare with the above the Second Proposition in Père Buffer's "Examen des Préjugés Vulgaires," "Que la science ne consiste point savoir beaucoup" (That science does not consist in knowing much).