It was a strange thing to look upon the
fragile form and features, which might be those of a dying man, and to
hear such utterances as his--now the strangest comments and
insignificant incidents; now pregnant remarks on great subjects, and
then malignant gossip, virulent and base, but delivered with an air and
a voice of philosophical calmness and intellectual commentary such as
caused the disgust of the listener to be largely qualified with
amusement and surprise. One good thing was, that nobody's name and fame
could be really injured by any thing DeQuincey could say. There was such
a grotesque air about the mode of his evil speaking, and it was so
gratuitous and excessive, that the hearer could not help regarding it as
a singular sort of intellectual exercise, or an effort in the speaker to
observe, for once, something outside of himself, rather than as any
token of actual feeling towards the ostensible object.
Let this strange commentator on individual character meet with more
mercy and a wiser interpretation than he was himself capable of. He was
not made like other men; and he did not live, think, or feel like them.
A singular organization was singularly and fatally deranged in its
action before it could show its best quality. Marvelous analytical
faculty he had; but it all oozed out in barren words. Charming eloquence
he had; but it degenerated into egotistical garrulity, rendered tempting
by the gilding of his genius.
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