ABSTRACT
First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 3 November 1827, p. 201. Reprinted Tave, pp. 181–3 (with attribution, p. 184). De Quincey ceased to be the editor of the Post on this date. A note on whaling, signed ‘P.’, indicated the return of the original editor, Peterkin. Although De Quincey was never again the sole editor of the Post, he seems to have continued to perform certain editorial tasks, – such as, primarily, the writing of the weekly leader. (His ambivalent position would be clarified in 1828, when he became the paper’s co-editor, with Andrew Crichton (see Vol. 6, pp. 193–4).) Signs of De Quincey here include ‘&c. &c.’, colloquial terms like ‘threadbare’, and (most of all) the friendly allusion to Henry Cary, who had been one of De Quincey’s fellow-contributors to the London Magazine. When William Hay (mentioned here as ‘W. H.’) read this article, he clipped it from his copy of the Post, and sent it to William Blackwood, with a note citing the ‘praise … of Mr de Quincy – which you will find in the enclosed slip of paper’ (letter, NLS MS 4024, folio 285).
