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De Quincey divides his writings into three groups: first, that class which "proposes primarily to amuse the reader, but which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest." To this class would belong the Autobiographic Sketches and the Literary Reminiscences.
Among his papers were found several fragments written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. Some bear the stamp of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic, at least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise, for instance, the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled Novembre. Flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame.
The careful reader of his "Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least material hint which bordered on the shadowy was sufficient to lift him up into aërial structures, and to lead his infant footsteps amongst the clouds.
Each is more or less autobiographic or else historical in outline: 'many of its shepherds and shepherdesses are such in dress alone, Cervantes confesses of his romance, while Lope announces that 'the Arcadia is a true history. Lastly may be mentioned the Portuguese Primavera of Francisco Rodrígues de Lobo, which appeared in three long parts between 1601 and 1614, and is pronounced by Ticknor to be 'among the best full-length pastoral romances extant.
Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author well, as he who hath formed his Stile upon that very Author" a sentence which, taken in connection with the references to Lucian in Tom Thumb, the Champion and elsewhere, must be accepted as distinctly autobiographic.
These three books of travel are like all other books of travel in that they relate in the first person what the author went forth to see. Autobiographic also are 'Roughing It' and 'Life on the Mississippi, and they have always seemed to me better books than the more widely circulated travels. They are better because they are the result of a more intimate knowledge of the material dealt with.
Yet Captain Cuttle, his friend Bunsby, Miss Nipper, and the inestimable Toots put in ample bail for this also. This was to some extent obviously autobiographic; but, setting some questions of taste aside, not unduly so.
The letters are of unequal value, and have been variously estimated. They show indeed that, like almost all poets, he might, if choice and fate had united, have become a very considerable prose-writer, and they have immense autobiographic value.
By all means let us have Harry's account if we must have somebody's, but perhaps there is no such need. There seems to be none; it is surely time to take the next step in the process I am trying to track. And the next step is to lay aside the autobiographic device which the novelist was seen to adopt, a few pages ago, in the interest of drama.
"These introductory chapters," he observes in a note on the fifth of them, "have been a good deal censured as tedious and unnecessary; yet there are circumstances recorded in them which the Author has not been able to persuade himself to retract or cancel." These "circumstances" are probably the studies of Waverley, his romantic readings, which are really autobiographic.
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