The distance between these two opposites De Quincey
does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of
legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he
is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual
gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with
every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the
demonstration,--between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from
which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the
earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested
serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light
with warmth in all degrees,--in pathos, in humor,[A] in genial
illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau to have
written "Dinner, Real and Reputed," or the paper on "The Essenes," in
both of which great erudition is necessary, but in which erudition is as
nothing when compared to the faculty of recombining into novel forms
what previously had been so grouped as to be misunderstood, or had
lacked just the one element necessary for introducing order.
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