or wrong he was terribly in earnest.” Like De Quincey, he never supposed anything, he always knew.
The peculiar character of his intellect seemed without a prototype in literature. He had more than De Quincey’s power of analysis, with a constructive unity and completeness of which the great English essayist has given no indication. His pre-eminence in constructive and analytical skill was beginning to be universally admitted, and the fame and prestige of his genius were rapidly increasing. But the dangerous censorship he soon after assumed, as the author of a series of sketches, some of which have been since published as the “Literati,” exposed him to frequent indignant criticism, while, by his personal errors and indiscretions, he drew upon himself much social censure and espionage, and became the victim of dishonoring accusations from which honor itself had forbidden him to exculpate himself.
It has been said, in allusion to the severity of his literary strictures, that a most fitting escutcheon for
