Thomas De Quincey: Miscellaneous Essays

Having read some of his "biggies" years ago, I decided to start here (besides, it was free on Kindle). If I get on a De Quincey "roll," perhaps I'll read more. Enjoyed the first essay re MacBeth (see quote below); eventually got a bit tired of Murder-as-Art in the next two; have started one on Joan of Arc.

*

From the end of "On the Knocking at the Gate, in MacBeth":

     O, mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, -- like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert -- but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!



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