In his innermost sensibilities he would have shrunk from this vulgar notice as from pollution itself.  It would be monstrous to conceive of him in such situations, except for the purpose of showing that he had very much in his outward habit that would readily attract such a notice.  In the same light we are to regard some illustrations which J. Hill Burton has given in “The Book-Hunter” of similar features in his character, and which I take the liberty of introducing here; for, although they have appeared in “Blackwood,” and more lately in a book-form, they are still unpublished to many of my readers.

Thus, we have him pictured to us as he appeared at a dinner, “whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the ‘Golden Ass’ of Apuleius.  The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in.  The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger.  What can it be?  A street-boy of some sort?  His costume, in fact, is a boy’s duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers,—­some one suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them.”  De Quincey, led on by the current of his own thoughts,—­though he was always too courteous to absorb the entire conversation,—­talks on “till it is far into the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about separation and home-going.  The topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilization, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of the domestic affections.  Descending from generals to the specials, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours:  for was it not the other night, that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch?”

“Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should get a penny and go home,—­a proposal which he subjected to some philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor.  How far he had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him.  How that wearied, worn little body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem:  soft food