[Reply to ‘Antehellenistes’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 15 March 1828, p. 356. Never reprinted. Now that De Quincey is known to have played an editorial role at the Post, it may be suspected that he wrote many of the short notices ‘to correspondents’, which normally appeared on the fourth page, immediately above the paper’s title and date (beneath which appeared the leading article). The present note is the only one in the Post of 15 March. At about this time, the Reverend Andrew Crichton was displacing Peterkin as the editor of the Post. Crichton (1790–1855) was a young man, with no experience as an editor, and his known works are much like Peterkin’s in their emphasis on national pride, as well as consistent use of ‘betwixt’ and ‘cotemporary’. A family source later recalled that Crichton began to edit the Post ‘in 1828’, ‘at first in conjunction with De Quincy’ (cited in Hardwicke’s Annual Biography for 1856, p. 198). In March and April 1828, De Quincey appears to have played a quasi-editorial role, as Crichton’s de facto assistant, although he did not officially become co-editor with Crichton until May, when the paper was re-organized and re-named the Edinburgh Evening Post (see Vol. 6, pp. 193–5). The present notice has a lightness, wit, and satirical acerbity, that are not found in any of Crichton’s (or Peterkin’s) known writings, and which seem to be unique to De Quincey, among all the Post’s editors and contributors. The confident tone (where Crichton, as a neophyte editor, would likely be more cautious), and the sentence starting with ‘But’, also suggest De Quincey. The advice to Hellenistes ‘to understand the statements which [he] undertake[s] to demolish’ echoes De Quincey’s statement, earlier in the Post, that ‘the first duty of a disputant is to make himself master of what it is that his antagonist says’ (above, p. 114). The sentence beginning ‘To this … we … appeal’ echoes many others in De Quincey’s writings, such as ‘To this the answer’ or ‘To … this we subscribe’ (see above, pp. 99 and 248). In the final sentence, the phrase ‘take the field’ sounds like De Quincey in its ironic use of combative language to deflate the arguments of intellectuals and academics.