Strikingly similar to our interest in these heavenly bodies is that which we manifest in mortal men.  Here, too, it is the darkened orb or the eccentric comet that bespeaks especial notice.  Judged by this interest, considered in its vulgar aspects, De Quincey would suffer gross injustice.  Externally, and at one period of his life, I am certain that he had all the requisite qualifications for collecting a mob about him, and that, had he appeared in the streets of London after one of his long sojourns amongst the mountains, no unearthly wight of whatever description, no tattered lunatic or Botany-Bay convict, would have been able to vie with him in the picturesque deshabille of the whole “turnout.”  Picture to yourself the scene.  This “king of shreds and patches”—­for, to the outward sense, he seems that now—­has been “at large” for days, perhaps for two or three weeks; he has been unkennelled, and, among the lawless mountains, has felt no restraint upon his own lawlessness, however Cyclopean.  Doubtless he has met with panthers and wolves, each one of whom will to its dying day retain impressive recollections of the wee monster, from which they fled as a trifle too uncanny even for them.  As to his subsistence during these rambles, it would be very difficult to say how he managed that affair, at these, or indeed at any other times; and it may be that the prophetic limitation of a fast to forty days is now the urgent occasion of his return from vagabondism.  One thing we may be sure of,—­that he has made plentiful use of a certain magical drug hid away in his waistcoat-pocket.  Like Wordsworth’s brook, he has been wandering purposely and at his own sweet will, or rather where his feet have taken him; and he has laid him down to sleep wherever sleep may have chanced to find him.

The result we have here, in this uncouth specimen of humanity, in the matted hair, the soiled garments, and the straggling gait; and what gives the finishing touch to this grotesque picture is his utter unconsciousness of the ludicrous features of his situation, as they appear to other eyes.  Soon, it is true, he will go through an AEson-like rejuvenation; for, in a certain cottage, there are hearts that anxiously await his return, and hands ready to fulfil their oft-repeated duties in the way of refitting him out for another tramp.  But, before this transformation is effected, let us suppose the case of his being set down in the streets of London, somewhere in the vicinity of Cheapside.  What an eddying of stragglers about this new-found focus of attraction! what amazement, and curiosity to find him out, if, indeed, he be find-out-able, and not, as the unmistakable papaverian odor suggests, some Stygian bird, hailing from the farther side of Lethe.  But, Stygian or not, neither Hermes nor Pan (nor Panic, his namesake) could muster such a rabble at his heels, supposing him to appear on Cheapside!