Constituents of Happiness [and two related manuscripts, 1806]

Prescriptive codifications of 'the principles of happiness' abound in the Enquiry, which early on proclaims that 'the true object of moral and political disquisition, is pleasure or happiness', and reflections of these are to be found in the 1806 manuscripts. Although of course De Quincey's pietistic idolisation of Wordsworth was considerably advanced in 1806, other intellectual concerns also served to structure the content of the manuscripts presented. Their rigorously introspective emphasis on personal behaviour and pious moral conviction are doubtlessly the product of De Quincey's Evangelical upbringing. William Godwin's influential Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, a book that bore powerfully on the early political views of Wordsworth. It is an unusual text to associate with De Quincey, and certainly a work the first edition of which he would later repudiate as a 'virus' full of 'raw anti-social Jacobinism'.