ABSTRACT
Published in PW II, pp. 212–20. Mentioning ‘the two and a half pages prescribed as the maximum extent’ for articles in the journal for which he is writing, De Quincey implies that the article was written for Hogg’s Instructor, which, unlike Blackwood’s or Tait’s, is known to have imposed tight length limits: a fact upon which De Quincey sometimes comments, as in ‘Sir William Hamilton, with a Glance at His Logical Reforms’, where he remarks, ‘This will not do. I must alter the scale of this paper, or else – something will happen which would vex me.’ (Vol. 17, p. 161).
