ABSTRACT
Published in PW II, pp. 225–7. This fragment, repeating some of De Quincey’s views on the Essenes and his strictures on Josephus, may well belong to the period when he was preparing SGG VII for the press and writing the Preface and ‘Supplementary Note on the Essenes’ for that volume. If so, it would have been written in 1857 or 1858. But since Josephus and the Essenes were among his lasting preoccupations, this cannot be regarded as a firm dating.
