[A Note on ‘Professor Wilson’]

This stained fragment is in the National Library of Scotland: NLS MS 21239, f. 64 v. A single sheet measuring 115 by 185 mm, written on both sides in black ink, it probably dates from the early 1850s (the text on the recto concerns the size of European armies). De Quincey evidently wanted to refer to the passage about ‘gentlemen-commoners’ in ‘Professor Wilson’ (above, pp. 33–42), perhaps while he was preparing another essay. The incomplete sentence beginning ‘Psychologically’ is written at right-angles to this note, on the left of the sheet.