[Footnote A: But afterwards he discovered his mistake, and that it was
only by the lack on his part of that frankness which the kindness of his
guardians deserved that he had brought so much misery upon himself in
after-life. His younger brother, Richard,--the Pink of the
"Autobiographic Sketches,"--made the same mistake, a mistake which in
his case was never rectified, but led to a life of perilous wanderings
and adventures.]
The time _did_ come at length when the full epos of a remarkable
prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the
unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy
lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad.
Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his
mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the
sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of
luxurious opulence and ease.
I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's
earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice
merely as an accident,) because, although not a _potential_ element,
capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential
character of genius, it is yet a negative condition--a _sine qua
non_--to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain
aspects.
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