ABSTRACT
First published Edinburgh Evening Post, probably in the missing issue of 11 October 1828. Reprinted Stirling Advertiser (‘From an article in the Edinburgh Evening Post’), 17 October 1828 (p. 2). Never subsequently reprinted. This article continues De Quincey’s intemperate diatribes on Irish subjects. It has ‘between’ instead of ‘betwixt’, and quotes from English poets including Pope and Shakespeare. The italicized ‘that’ occurs so often in De Quincey’s work for the Post, that it may have been his way of quietly indicating his presence to friends. Further evidence includes ‘ratting’, ‘viz.’, the rhetorical questions, the use of ‘1st’, ‘2dly’, and ‘3dly’, and sentences starting with ‘But’. The rhetorical tone of ‘Answer us that, apologist of Lord Anglesea’ sounds very De Quinceyan, recalling ‘Answer us this, Whig’, in an earlier leader (Vol. 5, p. 54). Another exclamation, ‘Ego et Rex meus!’ recurs in the Suspiria de Profundis (Vol. 15). Furthermore, this piece features two recollections of what ‘we have ourselves noticed’, or what ‘we remarked’, in previous articles by De Quincey. More generally, the interest in ‘England’ and ‘Englishmen’, the long discussion of Wellington’s and Peel’s ‘principles’, and the obvious familiarity with recent ‘journals on our side’, all point to De Quincey.
