E-text prepared by David Garcia, Hemantkumar N. Garach,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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(After a drawing by Archer.)
David Masson
.DE QUINCEY'S
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS, PH.D.
Professor Of The English Language And Literature In Knox College
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenæum Press
1899
PREFACE.
In editing an English classic for use in the secondary schools, thereis always opportunity for the expression of personal convictions andpersonal taste; nevertheless, where one has predecessors in the taskof preparing such a text, it is difficult always, occasionallyimpossible, to avoid treading on their heels. The present editor,therefore, hastens to acknowledge his indebtedness to the variousschool editions of the Revolt of the Tartars, already in existence.The notes by Masson are so authoritative and so essential that theirquotation needs no comment. De Quincey's footnotes are retained intheir original form and appear embodied in the text. The otherannotations suggest the method which the editor would follow inclass-room work upon this essay.
The student's attention is called frequently to the form ofexpression; the discriminating use of epithets, the employment offoreign phrases, the allusions to Milton and the Bible, the structureof paragraphs, the treatment of incident, the development of feeling,the impressiveness of a present personality; all this, however, iswith the purpose, not of mechanic exercise, nor merely to illustrate"rhetoric," but to illuminate De Quincey. It is with this intention,presumably, that the text is prescribed. There is littleattractiveness, after all, in the idea of a style so colorless and soimpersonal that the individuality of its victim is lost in its ownperfection; this was certainly not the Opium-Eater's mind concerningliterary form, nor does it appear to have been the Page vaim of any of ourmasters. Indeed, it may be well in passing to point out to pupils howfatal to success in writing is the attempt to imitate the style of anyman, De Quincey included; it is always in order to emphasize thenaturalness and spontaneity of the "grand style" wherever it is found.The teacher should not inculcate a