Autobiographical Sketches by De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859

Meantime, by what accident, so foreign to my nature, do I find myself laying foundations towards a higher valuation of my own workmanship? O reader, I have been talking idly. I care not for any valuation that depends upon comparison with others. Place me where you will on the scale of comparison: only suffer me, though standing lowest in your catalogue, to rejoice in the recollection of letters expressing the most fervid interest in particular passages or scenes of the _Confessions_, and, by rebound from _them_, an interest in their author: suffer me also to anticipate that, on the publication of some parts yet in arrear of the _Suspiria_, you yourself may possibly write a letter to me, protesting that your disapprobation is just where it was, but nevertheless that you are disposed to shake hands with me--by way of proof that you like me better than I deserve.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Next to the bible in currency_."--That is, next in the fifteenth century to the Bible of the nineteenth century. The diffusion of the "De Imitatione Christi" over Christendom (the idea of Christendom, it must be remembered, not then including any part of America) anticipated, in 1453, the diffusion of the Bible in 1853. But why? Through what causes? Elsewhere I have attempted to show that this enormous (and seemingly incredible) popularity of the "De Imitatione Christi" is virtually to be interpreted as a vicarious popularity of the Bible. At that time the Bible itself was a fountain of inspired truth every where sealed up; but a whisper ran through the western nations of Europe that the work of Thomas a Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth silently stealing away into light from that interdicted fountain. This belief (so at least I read the case) led to the prodigious multiplication of the book, of which not merely the reimpressions, but the separate translations, are past all counting; though bibliographers _have_ undertaken to count them. The book came forward as an answer to the sighing of Christian Europe for light from heaven. I speak of Thomas a Kempis as the author; but his claim was disputed. Gerson was adopted by France as the author; and other local saints by other nations.

[2] At the same time it must not be denied, that, if you lose by a journal in the way here described, you also gain by it. The journal gives you the benefit of its own separate audience, that might else never have heard your name. On the other hand, in such a case, the journal secures to you the special enmity of its own peculiar antagonists. These papers, for instance, of mine, not being political, were read possibly in a friendly temper by the regular supporters of the journal that published them. But some of my own political friends regarded me with displeasure for connecting myself at all with a reforming journal. And far more, who would have been liberal enough to disregard that objection, naturally lost sight of me when under occultation to _them_ in a journal which they never saw.