dau. of a farmer, took place in 1816.  Up to this time he had written nothing, but had been steeping his mind in German metaphysics, and out-of-the-way learning of various kinds; but in 1819 he sketched out Prolegomena of all future Systems of Political Economy, which, however, was never finished.  In the same year he acted as ed. of the Westmoreland Gazette.  His true literary career began in 1821 with the publication in the London Magazine of The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.  Thereafter he produced a long series of articles, some of them almost on the scale of books, in Blackwood’s and Tait’s magazines, the Edinburgh Literary Gazette, and Hogg’s Instructor.  These included Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts (1827), and in his later and more important period, Suspiria De Profundis (1845), The Spanish Military Nun (1847), The English Mail-Coach, and Vision of Sudden Death (1849).  In 1853 he began a coll. ed. of his works, which was the main occupation of his later years.  He had in 1830 brought his family to Edinburgh, which, except for two years, 1841-43, when he lived in Glasgow, was his home till his death in 1859, and in 1837, on his wife’s death, he placed them in the neighbouring village of Lasswade, while he lived in solitude, moving about from one dingy lodging to another.

De Q. stands among the great masters of style in the language.  In his greatest passages, as in the Vision of Sudden Death and the Dream Fugue, the cadence of his elaborately piled-up sentences falls like cathedral music, or gives an abiding expression to the fleeting pictures of his most gorgeous dreams.  His character unfortunately bore no correspondence to his intellectual endowments.  His moral system had in fact been shattered by indulgence in opium.  His appearance and manners have been thus described:  “A short and fragile, but well-proportioned frame; a shapely and compact head; a face beaming with intellectual light, with rare, almost feminine beauty of feature and complexion; a fascinating courtesy of manner, and a fulness, swiftness, and elegance of silvery speech.”  His own works give very detailed information regarding himself. See also Page’s Thomas De Quincey:  his Life and Writings (1879), Prof.  Masson’s De Quincey (English Men of Letters). Collected Writings (14 vols. 1889-90).

DERMODY, THOMAS (1775-1802).—­Poet, b. at Ennis, showed great capacity for learning, but fell into idle and dissipated habits, and threw away his opportunities.  He pub. two books of poems, which after his death were coll. as The Harp of Erin.