[In the following essay, Dingwaney and Needham examine the "rhetorical strategies" of Thomas de Quincey's preface to his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.]

We shall endeavour to bring up our reader to the fence, and persuade him, if possible, to take a leap which still remains to be taken in this field of style. But, as we have reason to fear that he will "refuse" it, we shall wheel him round and bring him up to it from another quarter. A gentle touch of the spur may then perhaps carry him over. Let not the reader take it to heart that we here represent him under the figure of a horse, and ourselves in a nobler character as riding him, and that we even take the liberty of proposing to spur him. Anything may be borne in metaphor. . . . But no matter who takes the leap, or how; a leap there is which must be taken in the course of these speculations on style before the ground will be open for absolute advance.

De Quincey, "Style."

As a master prose stylist, Thomas De Quincey is most celebrated for the dream sequences of his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis which provide instances of what he called "impassioned prose," or that "record of human passions."¹ As a theorist of style, De Quincey is best remembered for popularizing, if not introducing, the idea of organic style. For Travis Merritt and others, De Quincey's creative prose and critical commentary signal the advent of "organicist and expressivist principles" of composition which influenced the direction of English prose style during the nineteenth century.² These ideas hold that the language of prose or poetry embodies and expresses the original ideas, insights, sentiments, and passions of an author, or, in the words of De Quincey, manner is confluent with the author's matter, or, again, echoing his mentor William Wordsworth, style is "the incarnation of the thoughts."³

For the Romantic author exploring subjective experience, then, style was the outward phase of some inner process, the material expression of some mental phenomenon. In its extreme formulation, this expressive theory of discourse held that language records the flux and reflux of the mind at the moment of perception. Style is neither premeditated nor mechanically applied to subject matter out there, but is the spontaneous expression of some inner condition. As the writer's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings move to the center of his preoccupations, fidelity to subjective experience, not an audience's response, becomes the end of style which ultimately is judged as to how authentically, genuinely, or sincerely it reflects the author's state of mind, M. H. Abrams, whose The Mirror and the Lamp perhaps best documents the shift from pragmatic to expressive theories of art, sums up this important change in the following fashion: "The purpose of producing effects upon other men, which for centuries had been the defining character of the art of poetry, now serves precisely the opposite function: it disqualifies a poem by proving it to be rhetoric instead."⁴ At best, the writer soliloquizes, and "the poet's audience is reduced to a single member."⁵

While De Quincey undeniably espoused organic and expressivist principles of style, we must not forget that he also maintained that style is sometimes "ministerial" to thought. In its "ministerial" capacity, style is not the embodiment of thought or the spontaneous expression of an author's perceptions, thoughts, or feelings; rather, style is the disposition of an author's materials to produce intended effects in an audience. Thus, in his essay, "Language," De Quincey devoted considerable attention to the characteristics of "ministerial" style, or that style which is "contemplated as a thing separable from the thoughts" ("Language," p. 262). The "ministerial" style has two functions: first, "to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is obscure to the understanding" either through "previous mistreatment" or by nature of its complexity; second, "to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities" ("Language," p. 260). Although De Quincey admitted initially that this view of style constitutes a "narrow valuation of style" compared to style considered as the "incarnation of the thoughts," he quickly recanted arguing that "these offices of style are not essentially below the level of those other offices attached to the original discovery of truth" ("Language," pp. 260-61). Style, "in its ministeriality," provides "light to see the road" and "power to advance along it" and is a "great organ of the advancing intellect—an organ which is equally important considered as a tool for the culture and popularization of truth" ("Language," p. 261).

For De Quincey, then, style had two important offices: first, to express an original thought; second, to popularize or illuminate an original truth for an ignorant or misinformed audience. Recalling De Quincey's status as a professional writer for the important periodicals of his day, one might expect that he gave some thought to the second of these offices, the popularization of truth, and several observations in his essay, "Style," confirm this expectation. "A man," said De Quincey,

who should content himself with a single condensed enunciation of a perplexed doctrine would be a madman and a felo-de-se as respected his reliance upon that doctrine. Like boys who are throwing the sun's rays into the eyes of a mob by means of a mirror, you must shift your lights and vibrate your reflections at every possible angle, if you would agitate the popular mind extensively.⁶

Displaying a subject from every station at every possible angle would certainly illuminate any subject "previously mistreated" through ignorance or narrow valuation and render that subject in its full complexity, thus fulfilling the first function of the "ministerial" style, "to brighten the intelligibility of a subject." It would lend a subject power and impressiveness as well. As an example, in his essay, "Rhetoric," De Quincey described how Jeremy Taylor transformed "unaffecting and trite" subject matter by surveying it "from novel stations and under various angles." Taylor's treatment provided "new infusions of thought and feeling," and a "field absolutely exhausted throws up eternally fresh verdure."⁷

Given De Quincey's extensive statements on the subject, it is surprising that critics have not addressed themselves to the "ministerial" style⁸—surprising especially because De Quincey's observations on the "ministerial" style explain and justify a characteristic style of his which has been variously judged to be "prodigal," "digressive," or "discontinuous."⁹ Of course, these judgments reflect an expressivist/organicist perspective which views style as a verbal reflex of thought and feeling. Thus, in De Quincey's case, a "digressive" or "discontinuous" style is symptomatic of his disorientation; according to one critic, he is "unwittingly beguiled into wandering."¹⁰ We think, however, that the "excrescences" of De Quincey's style, those "adjuncts," "digressions," and "discontinuities" that so often show up in his work, are, in fact, instances where De Quincey eddied about a complex topic and viewed it from every possible angle to orient and familiarize the popular mind with a difficult, perplexed doctrine. Admittedly, eddying about a complex topic may suggest intellectual profligacy and an unrestrained style, but De Quincey argued that such movement "ought no longer to be viewed as a licentious mode of style, but as the just style in respect to those licentious circumstances," that is, those circumstances related to writing about a novelty for a popular audience. This style, he contended, constitutes "the true art of popular display" ("Style," p. 140).

In the analysis which follows, we show how De Quincey practiced what he theorized about the "ministerial" style in his essays. We have chosen the preface to De Quincey's most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, to demonstrate how he employed the "ministerial" style to familiarize the mind with a complex and novel subject. In selecting the preface, we are, of course, taking heed of De Quincey's own remarks on the necessity to "minister" to a reader's needs when the subject is particularly complex or novel: "There is," observed De Quincey, "a sort of previous lubrication, such as a boa-constrictor applies to any subject of digestion, which is requisite to familiarize a mind with a startling or complex novelty. And this is obtained for the intellect by varying the modes of presenting it,—now putting it directly before the eye, now obliquely, now in abstract shape, now in the concrete . . ." ("Style," p. 140). If any work demanded "previous lubrication," De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater certainly was it. First published in two installments in London Magazine (1821), then in book form (1822), and finally in a revised edition (1856), the Confessions consternated some contemporary reviewers who expressed concern over the author's startling treatment and disconcerting presentation of what they considered to be a dangerous subject, opium. First, they charged De Quincey with "general moral laxity,"¹¹ and, more importantly, took him to task for exploiting a subject like opium-eating without taking, as one review put it, "sufficient care to render his communications salutary, or even harmless. While treating of a vice never before depicted in such glowing colours, he has neither been earnest enough in denouncing its moral turpitude, nor sufficiently positive in warning men against its dangers."¹²

Couched within the moral objection was a formalist objection against the work's ostensible discontinuities and inconsistencies. While highlighting the dangers of opiumeating, for example, the British Review made an explicit causal connection between excessive opium-eating and an unconnected or discontinuous text: "A brain morbidly affected by long excess of indulgence in opium cannot be reasonably expected to display a very consistent or connected series of thoughts and impressions. The work before us is accordingly a performance without any intelligible drift or design."¹³

We believe that De Quincey was aware that his reader would misapprehend his work and so designed the preface to serve as the "sort of previous lubrication" he thought so necessary "to familiarize the mind with a startling or a complex novelty." We argue that the selfintricating prose of the preface constitutes a fine example of style in its "ministerial" capacity, and that De Quincey achieved the ends of "ministerial" style, in Confessions, in two ways: First, he adopted a strategy of accommodation and challenge—whereby he accepted the reader's viewpoint only to undermine and replace it with another—to move his reader from a narrow, prejudicial valuation of opium to an enlarged view of its paradoxical power. Second, the preface's "licentious" style rehearsed the reader in the activity requisite to understanding the difficult, involved text which followed. In this case, style is "ministerial" in another sense: in addition to illuminating the intelligibility and power of the subject, style serves to guide the reader through the experience of reading, thus providing not only "light to see the road" but also "power to advance along it."

De Quincey's aim in the Confessions, stated in the concluding sentence of its preface and reiterated in his "Introductory Notice" to Suspiria,¹⁴ was to "emblazon the power of opium": "What I contemplated in these Confessions was to emblazon the power of opium . . . over the grander and more shadowy world of dreams" (p. 93).¹⁵ Yet, in the "Pains of Opium," he observed that given the "ignorant horror which everywhere invested opium, I saw too clearly that any avowed use of it would expose me to rabid persecution" (p. 304). If an admission of opium use was likely to produce such disastrous consequences, then writing about it for the express purpose of "emblazoning" its power was an enterprise fraught with considerable difficulty. How was De Quincey to overcome his readers' hostility and prejudice? We argue that he devised a complex rhetorical strategy of accommodation and challenge through which he sought to make the reader view opium in a different light. Once this was achieved the reader would approach the work with more comprehension, and, perhaps, with more sympathy. Specifically, De Quincey elicited his audience's approval by first inhabiting their preconceptions, occupying what M. H. Abrams has, in another context, designated "the terrain selected by the opposition," before overturning their expectations and enlarging their sympathies.¹⁶

Our recognition of this strategy of accommodation and challenge in the preface makes sense of what would otherwise be seen simply as a confusion of purposes in Confessions. Initially, for example, De Quincey identified "instruction" as the end of Confessions in his preface: "I trust," he said, that [Confessions] will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, instructive" (p. 93). The instructiveness of his record, at first resided in "the benefit resulting to others, from an experience [of opium addiction] purchased at so high a price" (p. 93). The record would, De Quincey implied, warn its readers against the dangers of opiumeating. Later, a more specific benefit was suggested. By demonstrating how he "untwisted, almost to its final links, the chain which fettered" him (p. 94), De Quincey suggested that an account of his struggle and progress provided a model for and encouraged other opium-eaters' efforts in the same direction, and, moreover, proved that the "chain" could, in fact, be broken. But the reader who took these implied claims seriously was likely to be disappointed. For Confessions was ultimately not intent on warning persons against opium's dangers (although these dangers were, indeed, an important part of the record), nor was it intent on providing a model others might emulate. Both these misconceptions, encouraged by the preface's opening argument, De Quincey "corrected" elsewhere (and, we will argue, in the preface as well). For example, in his retrospective account of Confessions in the "Introductory Notice" to Suspiria, he remarked: "I have elsewhere explained that it was no particular purpose of mine, and why it was no particular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters" (p. 451).

As for providing a model other opium-eaters might emulate, De Quincey did not really provide one. First, his record testified to extreme suffering which would deter, not encourage, others to launch on a similar effort at withdrawing from opium. "I triumphed," he concluded his "annal of suffering," "But infer not, reader, from this word 'triumphed,' a condition of joy and exultation. Think of me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered" (p. 326). Next, as De Quincey pointed out, each individual case is different: "I would not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. Heartily I wish him more resolution; heartily I wish him equal success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may unfortunately want" (p. 326). Finally, he undercut his assertion of triumph over opium addiction altogether. In the "Appendix" to Confessions when it first appeared as a book in 1822, De Quincey remarked: "Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the impression that I had wholly renounced the use of Opium. This impression I meant to convey . . . because I, who had descended from so large a quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 106 drops, might well suppose that victory was in effect achieved" (p. 435). However, "the fact is," his "Introductory Notice" to Suspiria made clear, "I overlooked, in those days, the sine qua non for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third time I sank . . ." (p. 449).

If the aim of Confessions was not to "instruct" by warning against the dangers of opium or indeed, by providing a model for others to emulate, why did De Quincey mislead his readers about his work in the preface's opening argument? A passage in the "Introductory Narration" of Confessions indirectly provides the answer. Here, De Quincey pointed approvingly at G__'s insight into Grotius' s method of argument. Grotius, G__ suggested, initially accommodated hostile views, even though it entailed abstaining from "certain advantages of his argument," because his audience which "would have been repelled on the very threshold from such testimonies as being in a spirit of hostility to themselves, will listen thoughtfully to suggestions offered in a spirit of conciliation, much more so if offered by people occupying the same ground at starting as themselves" (pp. 143-144). We can see the opening argument of the preface as De Quincey's Grotian gambit. Confronted with a hostile and uncomprehending audience, De Quincey did exactly what Grotius did: he inhabited the "same ground at starting" as his audience to deflect their immediate hostility and secure their thoughtful attention before overturning their preconceptions about opium and testifying to its powers.

Certainly De Quincey seemed to conciliate his readers and seemed to inhabit their stance admirably. The preface's opening exemplified this strategy of audience accommodation. His tag, "courteous Reader," and his "apology" for "breaking through those restraints of delicate reserve, which for the most part, intercept the public exposure of our errors and infirmities" (p. 93) were the more obvious attempts at accommodation. Less obvious, though no less effective, was De Quincey's attempt to place the Confessions within the framework of his readers' expectations. He trotted out the palliative most literature traditionally employs: Confessions is "instructive,"¹⁷ and suggested a subject bound to elicit his readers' instant approval: Confessions will warn against the dangers of opium. But the reader who expected, therefore, the argument to proceed along the lines of a "moral denunciation" was mistaken. "Guilt [read moral culpability]," asserted De Quincey next, "I do not acknowledge" (p. 94). Guilt, moreover, was for De Quincey relative to the "probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offense" (p. 93). Immediately thereafter, De Quincey implied that "intellectual . . . pursuits and pleasures" were his palliations for eating opium: "My life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days" (p. 94). Realizing, however, that he may have gone too far, and have startled the reader who viewed opium-eating as a gross indulgence, De Quincey conceded that opium-eating may be a "sensual pleasure." But, we should note that "may be" is the operative term, for De Quincey prefaced his statement with the hypothetical construction: "If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure . . ." (p. 94).¹⁸ Furthermore, he argued that his offense, if any, would be mitigated by circumstances peculiar to his own case.

By this point, then, "Instruction" in the narrow sense (of warning against opium) was no longer at issue. Contemporary readers who expected a "moral denunciation" were now placed in the position of having to weigh De Quincey's justification for opium-eating, and this was halfway to acknowledging the legitimate uses of opium. But, typically, what De Quincey gives with one hand he takes away with the other. In keeping with his characteristic procedure, then, De Quincey somewhat undermined his own justification for opium-eating by suggesting that it may be "open to doubts of casuistry" (p. 94). Again, however, the recalcitrant reader who was all too willing to agree with De Quincey's hesitant proposition was in for a surprise. Immediately, De Quincey confronted the reader with a long list of opium-eaters. While the reader might dismiss De Quincey's justification for opium-eating as special pleading, he or she could not as easily dismiss the list De Quincey provided. An argument by numbers, the list included, first, "the class of men distinguished for their talents" and well-known figures of that time (p. 94). Talent and eminence, linked here with opium-eating, were brought into the service of making opium-eating almost respectable. More specifically, opium's ability to relieve excrutiating pain was the palliation offered in this segment of the argument: "a later undersecretary of state (viz., Mr. Addington, brother of the first Lord Sidmouth, who described to me the sensation which first drove him to opium in the very same words as the Dean of Carlisle—viz., that he felt as though rats were gnawing at the coats of his stomach)" (p. 95).

If the reader did not accept this argument, De Quincey had another to offer: working class people also eat opium. Why? Because "The lowness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits" (p. 96). Lest the moralist complain that this was no justification (why, after all, must they "indulge in" anything at all?), De Quincey had yet another argument. Moving from what readers might see as a trivial justification to what he conceived of as the genuine justification for eating opium, De Quincey remarked:

Wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease: but, as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted [and here opium is made a universal pleasure] that

Those who eat now who never ate before, And those who always ate, now eat more

(p. 96).

The shift from working people to a universal class of opium-eaters is a little facile and would be disturbing if De Quincey had not stacked up considerable evidence as he proceeded from the individual case to the universal, gathering more and more opium-eaters along the way: first himself, then talented and eminent men, then the common man, and, finally, everyman, since De Quincey asserted that opium-eating would be even more prevalent if it were not for the "medical writers, who are [opium's] greatest enemies," and, thus, induce "fear and caution" to prevent people from "experiencing the extensive power of this drug" (p, 97).

The shift accomplished, De Quincey could now muster and present all the evidence in support of his more accurate statement of intent: that he will "emblazon the power of opium." A catholic anodyne, opium encompasses medicinal, physiological, and psychological benefits. It could, for instance, intercept "the great English scourge of pulmonary consumption," relieve unbearable physical pain, and counter "the formidable curse of taedium vitae" (p. 97), which is certainly a universal malady, cutting across class and income.

De Quincey neatly turned the tables on the moralists who denounced opium by denouncing them himself in the penultimate paragraph of the preface. The doctors of the soul (the moralists), like the doctors of the body (the "medical writers" De Quincey rebuked earlier) were "ignorant, where they are not hypocritical, childish where not dishonest" when they targeted opium for their "moral denunciations," because "opium, or any agent of equal power, is entitled to assume that it was revealed to man for some higher purpose than that it should serve as a target for moral denunciations" (p. 97). The reader, too, stood rebuked. Schooled by the moralists, the reader who expected (encouraged, certainly by the preface's opening) the preface (and the work it precedes) to proceed along the lines of a "moral denunciation" was jolted out of his preconceptions and forced to re-examine and, perhaps, revise them. Finally, most of the preface's opening argument was rendered suspect by the concluding threefourths of the preface. Suggesting primarily that Confessions will warn against the dangers of opium, it was contradicted by the concluding sections which justify opiumeating and assert opium's powers.

The preface, then, disoriented the reader, initially inhabiting assumptions that it subsequently overturned to dispose the reader to assume an open-minded attitude toward opium. Yet it is worth noting that, while warning against the moral dangers of opium was not the preface's (or the text's) concern, the preface still wished to record (as did the text) the "infirmity and misery" which result from opium addiction. Thus, De Quincey's reiteration of the word "misery" in the opening argument qualified his insistent claims about opium's pleasures and benefits. Though De Quincey was intent on celebrating the powers of opium, opium was for him a paradoxical power, "a kind of oxymoron," says Roger Porter, '"a dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain,' while its very name awakens 'vibrations of sad and happy remembrances,' . . . opium brings 'revulsion' and 'resurrection,' the lowest depths of hell and an 'apocalypse' of divine enjoyment."¹⁹ (It is no accident, therefore, that in the segment in the preface where he justified opium-eating, De Quincey also pointed to the polarities of fascination and enthrallment, "divine luxuries" and "sensual pleasure" that opium engendered). Having corrected a narrow prejudicial valuation, he did not want to err in the opposite direction.

To accurately reflect this paradox, De Quincey attempted a difficult balancing act that some might argue failed. If opium does contain self-contradictory powers, why did De Quincey dwell more on the justification for opiumeating and on its pleasures in the preface? The response to such readers is simple: because the reader was already convinced about the dangers of opium, they needed to be merely suggested; whereas, because the reader needed to be convinced about opium's pleasures, they were stated explicitly and at great length. In this, the preface clearly anticipated the text, where the section on "Pleasures of Opium" is virtually unqualified, but the "Pains of Opium" are prefaced by a protracted argument about opium's beneficent agency. De Quincey was insistent that the pleasures of opium are as real as the pains. He accurately reflected this paradox in the preface which anticipates in both structure and emphasis De Quincey's subtle and more substantial delineation of opium's paradoxical agency in his text.²⁰

The preface compelled the reader to re-examine his or her prior conceptions of opium and encouraged a rich and comprehensive understanding of its powers. But this is not all the preface tried to accomplish. The preface sought also to reform the reader's reading habits by rehearsing him or her in the art of careful reading. "Most contemporary readers," De Quincey complained in his essay on "Style," "are repelled from the habit of careful reading." Brought up primarily on newspapers, and, therefore, "shrinking from the plethoric form of cumulation and 'periodic' writing in which the journalist supports or explains his views," these readers had learned the "trick of short-hand reading" whereby they knew the "art of catching at leading words and the cardinal and hinge joints of succession which proclaim the general course of a writer's speculation" ("Style," p. 162). Contemporary readers must have been consternated and perplexed when confronted with Confessions. To capture the "self-contradictory powers" of opium in words, De Quincey often yoked together contraries and made acute qualifications and discriminations which undermined his assertions. Oftentimes, too, De Quincey illuminated his point by rambling away from it to another point which seemed to have little apparent connection with what was at issue. To follow the back-and-forth movement of De Quincey's Confessions, where he mentioned or conceded a point only to overturn it or qualify it subsequently, moreover, to see the contradictions as an index of his complex treatment of his subject and not as uncertainty about it, the reader had to read attentively and carefully.²¹

As an exemplary instance of De Quincey's characteristic procedure, we can consider what Malcolm Elwin has characterized as the "circumlocution of [Confessions'] hesitant opening" (p. xviii). De Quincey opened his work with the question: "1 have often been asked—how it was, and through what series of steps, that I became an opiumeater" (p. 104), to which he provided a brief answer; "simply an anodyne it was, under the mere coercion of pain the severest, that I first resorted to opium" (p. 104). But the reader who expected next a record of the steps which led to De Quincey's opium-eating had a long wait. Instead, the reader was treated to "a long disquisition on the differences between [De Quincey] and Coleridge as opium-eaters," which Elwin finds "interesting and relevant but disconcerting to the reader who has learned nothing of De Quincey's case" (p. xviii). This "disquisition" is more than "interesting and relevant"; it was crucial to De Quincey's effort to "emblazon the power of opium," an effort not fully accomplished by his explanation of his reason for launching on his own opium career. At the heart of this "disquisition" lay De Quincey's defense of opium as more than an anodyne: "Any attentive reader, after a few moment's reflection, will perceive that whatever may have been the casual occasion of mine or Coleridge's opium-eating, this could not have been the permanent ground of opium-eating; because neither rheumatism nor toothache is any abiding affection of the system . . . And once the pain ceased, then the opium should have ceased. Why did it not? Because [we] had come to taste the genial pleasure of opium" (pp. 109-110). If we grant, moreover, De Quincey's insistent claim about Confessions in its 1822 version—"Not the opium-eater, but the opium is the true hero of the tale" (p. 431)—then the defense of opium's power this "disquisition" contained becomes more significant than the narrative it interrupts.

De Quincey's wish for an "attentive reader" was no empty signal. For De Quincey, here as elsewhere, followed what Vincent de Luca calls "the elusive path of revelation."²² The reader was, for instance, not confronted with the chief insight of the "disquisition" immediately: De Quincey's overt defense of opium extended beyond its properties as an anodyne. Instead, the reader arrived at it by way of De Quincey's condemnation of Coleridge's "gross misstatements of fact in regard to [their] several opium experiences" (p. 108). These misstatements De Quincey proceeded to locate in Coleridge's "flighty . . . partial and incoherent reading" (p. 108). De Quincey's aim here was to undermine Coleridge's credibility. With good reason too. Coleridge was more famous and, like De Quincey, known for his opium-eating. To some readers, he may even have appeared the authority on opium-eating. Thus, De Quincey who wished to invest himself with this authority, especially since then his defense of opium would be more credible, annihilated Coleridge's authority by showing his position on opium to be mistaken, and, ultimately, indefensible.

The significance of this "disquisition" was not yet exhausted. Like Coleridge, there were contemporary readers who were aware of and even comfortable granting opium's use as an anodyne. As an anodyne, however, the "disquisition" and the text made clear, the power of opium was not sufficiently accounted for, and, certainly not adequately celebrated. Thus, when De Quincey took Coleridge to task, he was also taking his readers to task for having, at best, a reductive and inadequate understanding of opium's powers.

Elwin is right when he states that this "disquisition" disconcerted the reader, Not only did it disrupt the discussion with which Confessions opens, it also took a long time to come to its point. There were, of course, other such disruptive (because discontinuous with what precedes or follows) passages in the text. The opening of "Pains of Opium" was a prime example. The "Pleasures of Opium" closed with: "Here opens upon me an Iliad of woes"; then we get the title "Pains of Opium," followed by an epigraph from Shelley's Revolt of Islam:

As when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse

(p. 291).

Naturally, the reader expected to read about De Quincey's "Iliad of woes," with "pictures" of opium's "pains" that approximated "the gloom of earthquakes and eclipse." Did the reader get these? No. What the reader got, instead, were a "few explanatory notes" on the beneficent agency of opium before De Quincey "[fell] back into the current of [his] regular narrative" (p. 308). ("Few," incidentally, is a misleading word because the "notes" comprise seventeen pages of an elaborate and dense argument.) Like the "disquisition," these "explanatory notes" were important because they constituted the crucial corrective to the misery and suffering of opium addition this section documents. Furthermore, these "notes" contained a defense of opium's power and a denial of opium's dangers. De Quincey insisted that the fault lay not with opium, but with him for his inertia and awful nightmares. And he exploded two common misconceptions about opium's destructive agency: "either you must renounce opium, or else infinitely augment the daily ration; and secondly . . . you must content yourself, under any scale of doses, with an effect continually decaying . . . At this point I make a resolute stand, in blank denial of the whole doctrine" (p. 294). Finally, like the "disquisition," these "explanatory notes" contained an assertion of his own authority on the subject of opium, which strengthened his claims on behalf of opium's benefits: "reflective experience so extensive as my own . . ."; "I had reached [this] position [of authority] . . . as a result of long, anxious, vigilant experience" (pp. 306, 298).

Both the "disquisition" and the "explanatory notes," although they contained explicit appeals for the reader's attention ("Any attentive reader, after a few moments of reflection . . ."; "Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention, before we go further, to a few explanatory notes"; pp. 109, 291), might have merited scant attention from the reader intent on pursuing the discussion/narrative they interrupted. (In fact, one reader, Elwin, unequivocally asserted that "De Quincey's popularity—if not his reputation—suffered from the tedium of the long preamble" of which the "long disquisition" is a substantial part; p. xviii). Yet because these passages, and others like them, were crucial to De Quincey's complex delineation of opium's power, they deserved careful attentive reading—a skill the preface taught the reader to develop.

If we recall that "leading words and the cardinal and hinge joints of transition" in popular, journalistic discourse allowed the contemporary reader to be inattentive, then De Quincey's leap without any overt transition from one statement of intent (Confessions was moral instruction on the dangers of opium-eating) to another statement of intent (not moral instruction, Confessions was, rather, an attempt to "emblazon" opium's power) could be legitimately seen as De Quincey's effort to counteract his reader's "habit of care[less] reading." Within the larger argument of the preface, moreover, the argument justifying opium-eating itself broke up into an array of discrete arguments which were bound together not by "the cardinal and hinge joints of transition," but rather by the incremental support they provided for De Quincey's assertion of opium's power in the preface's conclusion. Comprehending these discrete arguments and making out the relationship among them required the reader to be alert to each new move. The reader had to be even more attentive because De Quincey moved so swiftly from one argument to another in this segment justifying opium-eating. Indeed, the mental gymnastics evident in this segment of the preface's argument absolutely required close and steady attention from the reader because the reader must create its coherence and meaning. The preface thus warned its readers and taught them to be attentive.

"The last word," said Hoyt Hudson in his article on De Quincey's prose, "the last word is, read De Quincey."²³ Hudson's own appreciative reading of De Quincey reveals a sensibility attentive to general rhetorical strategies which "attract and influence a more or less defined audience."²⁴ In this regard we have come full circle in our efforts to demonstrate that De Quincey was a skilled tactician who guided the responses of his readers; only we have read De Quincey as selected passages from his essays on rhetoric, style, and particularly, language suggest that he might best be read whenever he is inducting an audience into a complex subject.

De Quincey's stature as a skilled tactician or conscious prose artist cannot be emphasized enough. Critics attracted to his sometimes original comments on the nature of rhetoric and style understandably have deflected attention from his practice to his theory of discourse, often overlooking, however, the mutually illuminating relationship between practice and theory we hope to have demonstrated in our analysis.²⁵ Critics who have analyzed his prose craft almost exclusively have embraced expressivist assumptions about style, often with disastrous consequences for any estimation of De Quincey as a conscious prose stylist. Thus, De Quincey is often portrayed as being at the mercy of his materials; his writing is either a reflex response to his perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, or is symptomatic of problems below the level of consciousness.²⁶ Of course, the best critics have argued that the "plasticity" of his prose is well suited to follow "the subtlest contours of experience," and their argument is sanctioned by De Quincey's dictum that style incarnates thought or that manner is confluent with matter.²⁷ Yet we have tried to suggest in our reading of the preface to the Confessions that style is sometimes something else as well: style is "ministerial."

In its ministerial capacity, style in Confessions either serves "the absolute interest of the things expounded" or guides the reader through the activity of reading. We have argued that the two functions of the "ministerial" style are often interrelated. On the one hand, amplifying a subject or viewing it from various, novel stations challenges a reader's narrow, sometimes prejudicial estimation of the matter at hand and directs the reader to view it under more complex relations. On the other hand, rehearsing the reader in the activity of reading about a complex subject instills a method which prepares the reader to further investigate a complex truth. In De Quincey's words, style not only provides "light to see the road," but also "power to advance along it."

In this connection, we would suggest finally that the "ministerial" style ultimately provides the reader a way of apprehending a complex truth on the way to original thought. This observation squares with De Quincey's comments on the "path" or method of philosophical inquiry. The purpose of philosophical investigation, he noted, was "not so much to accumulate positive truths in the first place as to rectify the position of the human mind and to correct its mode of seeing." By "raising the station of the spectator," it brings "a region of new inquiry within his view."²⁸

The figures of the road, the viewing station, and the prospect are not casually chosen by De Quincey, but are meant to suggest the encompassing figure of the excursion to which he often compared reading his prose. Reading his Confessions, he explained in Suspiria de Profundis, was like embarking on an excursion to the Lake District. What should the true sojourner desire, he asked, the shortest or the most beautiful route (p. 454)? Having travelled the route himself, De Quincey casts himself as a guide who displays the beauties of the place and indicates the way to achieve yet more beautiful prospects. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose prose, like De Quincey's, has been characterized as rambling or vagrant, also employed the figure of the excursion to apologize for yet ultimately to justify his prose style. Noting his "imperfection of form," Coleridge nonetheless concluded that he would not "regret this defect if it should induce some future traveller engaged in a like journey to take the same station and to look through the same medium at the one main object. . . . "²⁹

What De Quincey and Coleridge seemed to be trying to express through their metaphorical vehicles is a view of style that falls outside traditional categories. At times, style is neither simply expressive, a tag usually describing the function of style for the nineteenth century, nor is it managerial, a broad tag describing a variety of functions of style for the eighteenth century. On the one hand, as we have argued, style need not simply express mental phenomena without regard for the audience. On the other hand, style need not simply dispose or manage material to best present a preconceived thought, nor need it manage the responses of an audience conceived as passive spectators before compelling phenomenal evidence. Style, to use De Quincey's tag, is sometimes "ministerial." If De Quincey is credited with popularizing, if not introducing, the notion of organic/expressive style, perhaps he should be credited as well for introducing a style which serves a ministerial function. We have attempted to define some of the characteristics and functions of that style. Of course, the compass of our analysis is limited and hardly does justice to the full range of rhetorical strategies that De Quincey employs in his prose. We can only say with Hoyt Hudson, read De Quincey, hoping that in some small measure we have given light to see the road and power to advance along it.

¹ The Collected Works of Thomas De Quincey, I, ed., David Masson (London: A. & C. Black, 1896), p. 14.

² Travis Merritt, "Taste, Opinion, and Theory in the Rise of Victorian Stylism," in The Art of Victorian Prose, ed., George Levine and William Madden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 4-5; Laurence Stapleton, The Elected Circle: Studies in the Art of Prose (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 127.

³ From "Language" in Selected Essays on Rhetoric by Thomas De Quincey, ed., Frederick Burwick (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), p. 262. Hereafter, all citations, including page numbers from "Language" will appear parenthetically within the text.

⁴ M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 25.

⁵ Abrams, p. 25.

⁶ From "Style," in Selected Essays in Rhetoric, p. 139. Emphasis added. Hereafter all citations, including page numbers, from "Style" will appear parenthentically within the text.

⁷ From "Rhetoric" in Selected Essays in Rhetoric, pp. 124-25.

⁸ Most critics mention De Quincey's essay, "Language," which explicitly refers to the "ministerial" functions of style; few actually apply the essay to their criticism. Sigmund K. Proctor is the only writer we are aware of who has considered style in its "ministerial" capacities. Suggestively, he terms "ministerial" style a mode of "ingratiation." See Thomas De Quincey's Theory of Literature (New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1966), pp. 194-201. See also Hoyt Hudson's "De Quincey on Rhetoric and Public Speaking," in Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians, ed., Raymond F. Howes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), pp. 198-214. Although Hudson does not refer to De Quincey's essay, "Language," he identifies some of the "rhetorical" aspects of his style.

⁹ J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963), p. 28; V. A. De Luca, Thomas De Quincey: The Prose of Vision (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 9-10, 13; Judson Lyon, Thomas De Quincey (New York: Twayne, 1969), p. 92.

¹⁰ Miller, p. 28.

¹¹ John 0. Hayden, "Confessions and the Reviewers," Wordsworth Circle, 6 (1975), 276.

¹² Cited by Hayden, 277.

¹³ Cited by Hayden, 278.

¹⁴ "The object of [Confessions] was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams . . . it is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost preternaturally . . . beyond all [other agencies] is opium, which seems to possess a specific power in that direction." Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in Both the Revised and the Original Texts With its Sequels, Suspiria De Profundis and the English Mail Coach, ed., Malcolm Elwin (London: MacDonald, 1956), pp. 447-48. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations from De Quincey's Confessions and Suspiria are from this edition; hereafter, we will provide page numbers parenthetically within the text.

¹⁵ We have used the "Original Preface to The Confessions (As revised in 1856)" and the 1856 revised version of the text. Although the contemporary reviews we cite in our introduction were responding to the 1822 version, John O. Hayden correctly points out that "much of this contemporary criticism, moreover, applies to the later edition as well" (278). We base our argument on the assumption that the two texts and their prefaces are alike in design and function. Though we can see with most critics that the 1856 version is longer and more discursive, we agree with De Quincey who observed, in a letter to his youngest daughter, "nothing has been added which did not originally belong to the outline of the work, having been left out chiefly through hurry at the period of the first [publication]."

¹⁶ Cited by Margaret W. Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 1. Ferguson's book is the best one we know of about defensive strategies writers exploit to justify their projects. Though she discusses only defenses proper, much of what she says illuminated De Quincey's curious preface to us.

¹⁷ Emphasis added.

¹⁸ Emphasis added.

¹⁹ Roger J. Porter, "The Demon Past: De Quincey and the Autobiographer's Dilemma," Studies in English Literature, 20 (1980), 592.

²⁰ Roger Ramsay correctly notes that the structure of Confessions embodies "the fundamental rhetorical gambit of paradox." He lists, too, the juxtaposition of opposites in the argument—"pain/pleasure, dreaming/waking, guilt/innocence, self-conquest/self-indulgent"—and in the imagery—"heaven/hell, stomach/mind, summer/winter, imprisonment/freedom." See "The Structure of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," Prose Studies, 5 (1978), 23, 27-8.

²¹ Ian Jack thinks De Quincey was uncertain about his purpose. See "De Quincey Revises his Confessions," PMLA, 72 (1959), 122-23.

²² Vincent De Luca, p. 14.

²³ Hudson, p. 214.

²⁴ Hudson, p. 199.

²⁵ See Weldon B. Durham, "The Elements of Thomas De Quincey's Rhetoric," Speech Monographs, 37 (1970), 240-48; Paul M. Talley, "De Quincey on Persuasion, Invention, and Style," Central States Speech Journal, 16 (1965), 243-54; and Wilbur S. Howell, "De Quincey on Science, Rhetoric, and Poetry," Speech Monographs, 13 (1946), 1-13.

²⁶ Miller, pp. 27-8; Lyon. p. 57; De Luca, p. 8.

²⁷ D. D. Devlin, De Quincey, Wordsworth, and the Art of Prose (London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1983), p. 110.

²⁸ In Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, X, ed., David Masson (London: A. & C. Black, 1897), pp. 78-9.

²⁹ Cited by Wayne C. Anderson, "The Dramatization of Thought in Coleridge's Prose," Prose Studies, 6 (1983), 268.