[Professor Wilson and the London Sun and Standard]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 22 September 1827, p. 156. Never reprinted. This piece follows directly after the article on ‘The Standard Newspaper’ (see above, pp. 74–5), with only a half-inch horizontal line between them. It continues the close analysis of English papers in the Post, during De Quincey’s time. The knowledge of London and Westmorland newspapers would be especially unusual for anyone at the Post except De Quincey. Other signs of Englishness include ‘Inverleithing’ (an unfortunate mis-spelling of the Scottish village of Innerleithen or Inverleithen), the archaic Anglicism ‘orts’, and allusions to Shakespeare’s Timón of Athens and 1 Henry IV (both of which are cited by De Quincey elsewhere in the 1827 Post; for Timón, see below, p. 135 and note, and for 1 Henry IV see pp. 77, 140, 173, 272 and 326 (all below). For a later reference by De Quincey to the little-known Timón of Athens, see ‘Sir William Hamilton’ (Vol. 17). The wit and sarcasm, combined with editorial-sounding phrases like ‘for the entertainment of our readers’ and ‘we must notice’, point to De Quincey alone, among all the Posimen. The word ‘thundering’ recurs, in a similar sarcastic sense in the review of religious pamphlets (see below, p. 189), and ‘ex pede Herculem’ is in one of De Quincey’s later contributions (see below, p. 265n.). The Latin quotations (including the last four words) are applied in a light, witty manner that would be beyond most journalists, including most of those at the Post. Although the article delivers a heavy judgment against certain English journalists, it does so without appealing to nationalism, morality, or religious criteria. Stylistic evidence includes several short sentences of four or five words, and the sentence-fragment ‘But how to obtain it?’ The sentence ‘Hence, however, arise complexities’ anticipates ‘Hence arose a danger’ (see below, p. 135) and many other sentences starting with ‘Hence’, in De Quincey’s work for the Post.