one of his daughters; and she adds a touch which is inimitable in its fidelity and tenderness.  ‘He was not,’ she says, ’a reassuring man for nervous people to live with, as those nights were exceptional on which he did not set something on fire, the commonest incident being for some one to look up from book or work, to say casually, Papa, your hair is on fire; of which a calm Is it, my love? and a hand rubbing out the blaze was all the notice taken.’"[4]

Of his personal appearance Professor Minto says: 

“He was a slender little man, with small, clearly chiselled features, a large head, and a remarkably high, square forehead.  There was a peculiarly high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow, which was also slightly contracted.  The lines of his countenance fell naturally into an expression of mild suffering, of endurance sweetened by benevolence, or, according to the fancy of the interpreter, of gentle, melancholy sweetness.  All that met him seem to have been struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat hollow and unearthly tones of his voice, the more impressive that the flow of his talk was unhesitating and unbroken.”

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The literary labors were continuous.  In 1845 the beautiful Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths) appeared in Blackwood’s; The English Mail Coach and The Vision of Sudden Death, in 1849.  Among other papers contributed to Tait’s Magazine, the Joan of Arc appeared in 1847.  During the last ten years of his life, De Quincey was occupied chiefly in preparing for the publishers a complete edition of his works.  Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, the most distinguished of our American publishing firms, had put forth, 1851-55, the first edition of De Quincey’s collected writings, in twenty volumes.  The first British edition was undertaken by Mr. James Hogg, of Edinburgh, in 1853, with the co-operation of the author, and under his direction; the final volume of this edition was not issued until the year following De Quincey’s death.

In the autumn of 1859 the frail physique of the now famous Opium-Eater grew gradually feeble, although suffering from no definite disease.  It became evident that his life was drawing to its end.  On December 8, his two daughters standing by his side, he fell into a doze.  His mind had been wandering amid the scenes of his childhood, and his last utterance was the cry, “Sister, sister, sister!” as if in recognition of one awaiting him, one who had been often in his dreams, the beloved Elizabeth, whose death had made so profound and lasting an impression on his imagination as a child.

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