[Mr. Canning’s Death]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 18 August 1827, p. 116. Reprinted Tave, pp. 75–83 (with attribution, pp. 83–4). The clearest sign of De Quincey is the veiled reference to Wordsworth, in the ‘friend’ who, ‘Eighteen months ago,… had an opportunity of observing Mr. Canning’s state of health pretty closely’. The interest in oratory anticipates later articles by De Quincey which discuss the oratory of classical Athens (see below, pp. 162–3, passim) and of Edmund Burke (see below, pp. 144–6). Other evidence includes knowledge of ‘the English press’, the use of italics for ‘that’ the word ‘between’ (where the editor and most of his other contributors would use ‘betwixt’), and allusions to Paradise Lost, Juvenal, Ovid, and a sonnet by Wordsworth.