ZTbomas ZTob Stofcfcart 491 



be with flow of fancy, thought, and racy expression. 

 Only John Wilson himself, or his frequent visitor 

 De Quincey, was allowed at times to dominate the talk ; 

 and my father used to say that when these rare 

 monopolies took place, the rest sat entranced, hanging 

 on the lips of the speaker. De Quincey he often met, 

 an old-looking man more than sixty years ago. [Miss 

 Stoddart, I should state, was writing in 1886.] One 

 day when he was talking to the Professor in the library, 

 De Quincey came in dressed only in a nightshirt, with 

 his arms full of books. He took no notice of them, but 

 returned the books to the shelves, collected another 

 armful, and left the room. He would lie in bed for 

 days, till he had read all the new books his host 

 possessed, and then he would get up, dress, and behave 

 much as other people. The Wilsons were endlessly 

 kind and forbearing to him, supplying his wants, giving 

 him money, which as often as not he tossed to the first 

 beggar he met, keeping him in their house for weeks 

 and months in spite of every provoking habit, admiring 

 and delighting in him when he joined their meals, and 

 opened out into a flow of fascinating talk, made electri- 

 fying sometimes by his power of subtle argument. The 

 Professor had his times of abstraction from the talk 

 of the supper-table. When his article for Blackwood 

 was due, and the printer's devil sat cooling his heels 

 in the hall, he would appear in his accustomed place, 

 but without his accustomed mien, coatless, silent, 

 ominous, with vacant eye, withdrawn in spirit from the 

 bright talk and laughter, which were no whit intermitted, 

 and after eating what he wished, would rise and leave 



