[‘This State of Indetermination’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 29 December 1827, p. 268. Never reprinted. This article is separated from the leader by a short, half-inch horizontal line (the usual sign, in the Post, that two succeeding articles were from the same pen). Its first paragraph continues De Quincey’s joke from a few weeks before, about Goderich’s Cabinet in London being ‘provisionally provisional’. In the second paragraph, the phrase ‘Thus far all stories agree’ echoes many of De Quincey’s leaders, with their scepticism of press reports. Other evidence includes the italics, dashes, ‘viz.’, and colloquial expressions like ‘put his foot’, ‘a dead set’, ‘And really’, and ‘take an ell if you give them an inch’. ‘[T]urned to the right-about’ echoes similar parade-ground orders, used in a similar ironic way, such as ‘prepare to sneak; sneak!’ (see above, p. 53). In general, this piece is continuous with De Quincey’s close analysis of the London papers and London affairs.