[‘The Pretensions of Phrenology’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 3 May 1828, p. [414]. Never reprinted. The editor’s footnote, protesting that ‘we are entirely neuter’ on the ‘subject of Phrenology’, is presumably by the new editor; Andrew Crichton; it reflects the respect accorded to phrenology, elsewhere in the Post. De Quincey, however, like the author of this scathing review, held a consistently low opinion of the so-called ‘science’ (see, for example, Vol. 6, p. 108, and Vol. 9). The review in question avoids Scottish, theological, or moral terms of reference, while using the Anglicism ‘chanceried’. Allusions to Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and to the London dramatist George Colman the Younger, and Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, establish a perspective that is English, literary, and worldly. Comic use of boxing slang is extremely suggestive of De Quincey, with several phrases that appropriately anticipate his long essay on ‘Sir William Hamilton’ of 1852; two terms, ‘punishment’ and ‘chanceried nobs’, anticipate “‘punish’” and ‘to get his cocoa-nut into “chancery”’, used in a similar metaphorical sense, with reference to Hamilton’s public debates, in that later essay (Vol. 17). Six of the pugilistic metaphors used in the Post review (i.e., ‘stand up fight’, ‘hard hitter’, ‘chanceried’, ‘punishment’, ‘administering’ and ‘champions’) re-appear in De Quincey’s ‘Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature’ (Vol. 10). Three of the boxing terms, ‘punishment’, ‘ugly customer’, and ‘blows’, appear in a similar context in the satirical parts of the essay on Andrew Thomson and the Bible Societies (see above, p. 189). In this review, wit, literature, and pleasure take priority over religion, morality, and even science; sarcastic phrases like ‘one of the best jokes in this correspondence’ and ‘we confess we are malicious enough’ confirm this reviewer’s mischievous delight at the spectacle of disagreement between Edinburgh intellectuals.