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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by Thomas De Quincey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
+
+Author: Thomas De Quincey
+
+Release Date: January, 2000 [eBook #2040]
+[Most recently updated: November 12, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER ***
+
+
+
+
+CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER:
+
+BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE
+LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.
+
+by Thomas De Quincey
+
+
+_From the “London Magazine” for September_ 1821.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READER
+
+
+I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable
+period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it
+will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable
+degree useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have drawn
+it up; and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through that delicate
+and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the
+public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is
+more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being
+obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away
+that “decent drapery” which time or indulgence to human frailty may
+have drawn over them; accordingly, the greater part of _our_
+confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions)
+proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts
+of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in
+sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must
+look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is
+tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All
+this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of
+this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the
+propriety of allowing this or any part of my narrative to come before
+the public eye until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole
+will be published); and it is not without an anxious review of the
+reasons for and against this step that I have at last concluded on
+taking it.
+
+Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice:
+they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave
+will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the
+churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family
+of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
+
+“—Humbly to express
+A penitential loneliness.”
+
+
+It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it
+should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a
+disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to
+weaken them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not
+amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that,
+if it _did_, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an
+experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast
+overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and
+justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of
+necessity imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark
+alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the
+offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in
+proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the
+resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my
+own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life
+has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was
+made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my
+pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If
+opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I
+have indulged in it to an excess not yet _recorded_ {1} of any other
+man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating
+enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what
+I never yet heard attributed to any other man—have untwisted, almost to
+its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a
+self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind
+or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist that in my case the
+self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of
+casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at
+the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the
+excitement of positive pleasure.
+
+Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible
+that I might still resolve on the present act of confession in
+consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole
+class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a
+very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago
+by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of
+English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of
+eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as
+opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ——,
+the late Dean of ——, Lord ——, Mr. —— the philosopher, a late
+Under-Secretary of State (who described to me the sensation which first
+drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of ——,
+viz., “that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats
+of his stomach”), Mr. ——, and many others hardly less known, whom it
+would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so
+limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and _that_ within the
+knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference that the
+entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The
+soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts
+became known to me which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will
+mention two. (1) Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote
+quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small
+quantities of opium, assured me that the number of _amateur_
+opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time immense; and that
+the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom habit had
+rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a view to
+suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence
+respected London only. But (2)—which will possibly surprise the reader
+more—some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by
+several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly getting
+into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday
+afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one,
+two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the
+evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of
+wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or
+spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would
+cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted
+the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and
+mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted
+
+That those eat now who never ate before;
+And those who always ate, now eat the more.
+
+
+Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical
+writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
+apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his “Essay on the Effects of
+Opium” (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why
+Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties,
+counteragents, &c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following
+mysterious terms (φωναντα συνετοισι): “Perhaps he thought the subject
+of too delicate a nature to be made common; and as many people might
+then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear
+and caution which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power
+of this drug, _for there are many properties in it, if universally
+known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with
+us than with Turks themselves_; the result of which knowledge,” he
+adds, “must prove a general misfortune.” In the necessity of this
+conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that point I shall have
+occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions, where I shall present
+the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative.
+
+
+
+
+PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS
+
+
+These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the
+youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer’s habit of
+opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
+three several reasons:
+
+1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
+which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
+Confessions—“How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a
+yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and
+knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?”—a question
+which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the
+indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton
+folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in
+any case to an author’s purposes.
+
+2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which
+afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.
+
+3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the
+confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which
+cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a
+man “whose talk is of oxen” should become an opium-eater, the
+probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will
+dream about oxen; whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find
+that the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and
+accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or
+sleeping, day-dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that
+character
+
+Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
+
+
+For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the
+sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the
+possession of a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which
+part of the pretensions, however, England can for some generations show
+but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for
+this honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the
+exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of
+thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_)
+but also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give
+him an inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the
+mysteries of our human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in
+short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the
+beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this
+planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest degree, and
+Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.
+
+I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater,
+and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance
+from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which
+I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice
+purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable
+excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it
+is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake
+of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with
+this view I was effectually protected from all material bad
+consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the
+several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable
+sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of
+mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium
+as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most
+painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about
+ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had
+originally been caused by extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish
+days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded
+(that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered; for the three
+following years it had revived at intervals; and now, under
+unfavourable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me
+with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful
+sufferings which first produced this derangement of the stomach were
+interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances that attended them,
+I shall here briefly retrace them.
+
+My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the
+care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small;
+and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments,
+especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with
+ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great that I
+not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in
+Greek fluently and without embarrassment—an accomplishment which I have
+not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was
+owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best
+Greek I could furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my
+memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic
+expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of
+things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been
+called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. “That boy,” said
+one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, “that
+boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you and I could address
+an English one.” He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar,
+“and a ripe and a good one,” and of all my tutors was the only one whom
+I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards
+learned, to this worthy man’s great indignation), I was transferred to
+the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I
+should expose his ignorance; and finally to that of a respectable
+scholar at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This
+man had been appointed to his situation by —— College, Oxford, and was
+a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from
+that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he
+presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite
+master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the
+poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a
+boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether in
+knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded
+knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly
+with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the
+head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more
+accustomed to sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember
+that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us,
+the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our “Archididascalus”
+(as he loved to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and
+laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and
+blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst
+_we_ never condescended to open our books until the moment of going up,
+and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some
+such important matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent
+for their future prospects at the university on the recommendation of
+the head-master; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the
+income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be
+sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the subject
+to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable
+and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance;
+two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of
+the fourth; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy
+man in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all
+opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal
+interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a
+compromise of the matter, from my guardian. Unconditional submission
+was what he demanded, and I prepared myself, therefore, for other
+measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth
+birthday was fast approaching, after which day I had sworn within
+myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst schoolboys. Money
+being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who,
+though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly
+treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would “lend” me
+five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was beginning
+to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double letter
+with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The fair
+writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen; she
+enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that if
+I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now,
+then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two
+which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for
+an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_
+boundary can be assigned to one’s power, the spirit of hope and
+pleasure makes it virtually infinite.
+
+It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson’s (and, what cannot often be said of
+his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything
+consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long
+been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt
+deeply when I came to leave ——, a place which I did not love, and where
+I had not been happy. On the evening before I left —— for ever, I
+grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the
+evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at
+night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as
+usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the
+head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly
+in his face, thinking to myself, “He is old and infirm, and in this
+world I shall not see him again.” I was right; I never _did_ see him
+again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled
+good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and
+we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him
+intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed
+me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the mortification
+I should inflict upon him.
+
+The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which
+my whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its
+colouring. I lodged in the head-master’s house, and had been allowed
+from my first entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used
+both as a sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and
+gazed with deep emotion at the ancient towers of ——, “drest in earliest
+light,” and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless
+July morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated
+by anticipation of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have
+foreseen the hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon
+fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the
+deep peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some
+degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight;
+and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all
+other silence, because, the light being broad and strong as that of
+noonday at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect
+day chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature
+and of the innocent creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only
+so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are
+not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and
+gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half
+this room had been my “pensive citadel”: here I had read and studied
+through all the hours of night, and though true it was that for the
+latter part of this time I, who was framed for love and gentle
+affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness during the strife and
+fever of contention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy
+so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits,
+I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of
+general dejection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth,
+writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I
+looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this it is eighteen
+years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly, as if it were
+yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on which I fixed
+my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ——, which hung over the
+mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the
+whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity,
+that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to gather
+consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was
+yet gazing upon it the deep tones of —— clock proclaimed that it was
+four o’clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently
+walked out and closed the door for ever!
+
+
+So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and
+of tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which
+occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate
+execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my
+clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get
+this removed to a carrier’s: my room was at an aërial elevation in the
+house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this
+angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed
+the head-master’s chamber door. I was a favourite with all the
+servants, and knowing that any of them would screen me and act
+confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the
+head-master’s. The groom swore he would do anything I wished, and when
+the time arrived went upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared
+was beyond the strength of any one man; however, the groom was a man
+
+Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
+The weight of mightiest monarchies;
+
+
+and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted
+in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of
+the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him
+descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his
+trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps
+of the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from
+his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the
+descent, that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped,
+right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom
+door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost,
+and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my
+baggage. However, on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The
+groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine,
+but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous
+in this unhappy _contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he
+sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have
+wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment,
+within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear
+joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy _étourderie_
+of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected,
+as a matter of course, that Dr. —— would sally, out of his room, for in
+general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his
+kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of
+laughter had ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the
+bedroom. Dr. —— had a painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him
+awake, made his sleep perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering
+courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and
+accomplished the remainder of his descent without accident. I waited
+until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the
+carrier’s; then, “with Providence my guide,” I set off on foot,
+carrying a small parcel with some articles of dress under my arm; a
+favourite English poet in one pocket, and a small 12mo volume,
+containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other.
+
+It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both
+from the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts.
+Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I
+bent my steps towards North Wales.
+
+After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire,
+and Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B——. Here
+I might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions
+were cheap at B——, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus
+produce of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which
+perhaps no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know
+not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked,
+that the proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class
+whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and
+their children carry about with them, in their very titles, a
+sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this
+applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the
+English ear, adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville,
+Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their
+own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their
+claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the
+world by virtue of their own obscurity: “Not to know _them_, argues
+one’s self unknown.” Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring,
+and for once they find it necessary to impress a sense of their
+consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for
+moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension.
+With the families of bishops it is otherwise: with them, it is all
+uphill work to make known their pretensions; for the proportion of the
+episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time very
+large, and the succession to these dignities is so rapid that the
+public ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where
+they are connected with some literary reputation. Hence it is that the
+children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air,
+indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of _noli me
+tangere_ manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and
+shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all contact with
+the οι πολλοι. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness
+of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness, but in general the
+truth of my representation will be acknowledged; pride, if not of
+deeper root in such families, appears at least more upon the surface of
+their manners. This spirit of manners naturally communicates itself to
+their domestics and other dependants. Now, my landlady had been a
+lady’s maid or a nurse in the family of the Bishop of ——, and had but
+lately married away and “settled” (as such people express it) for life.
+In a little town like B——, merely to have lived in the bishop’s family
+conferred some distinction; and my good landlady had rather more than
+her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. What “my lord”
+said and what “my lord” did, how useful he was in Parliament and how
+indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily burden of her talk. All this
+I bore very well, for I was too good-natured to laugh in anybody’s
+face, and I could make an ample allowance for the garrulity of an old
+servant. Of necessity, however, I must have appeared in her eyes very
+inadequately impressed with the bishop’s importance, and, perhaps to
+punish me for my indifference, or possibly by accident, she one day
+repeated to me a conversation in which I was indirectly a party
+concerned. She had been to the palace to pay her respects to the
+family, and, dinner being over, was summoned into the dining-room. In
+giving an account of her household economy she happened to mention that
+she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had
+taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of inmates, “for,”
+said he, “you must recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high
+road to the Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers running away
+from their debts into England, and of English swindlers running away
+from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in
+their route.” This advice certainly was not without reasonable grounds,
+but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty’s private meditations
+than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat
+worse. “Oh, my lord,” answered my landlady (according to her own
+representation of the matter), “I really don’t think this young
+gentleman is a swindler, because ——” “You don’t _think_ me a swindler?”
+said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation: “for the future I
+shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it.” And without delay I
+prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed
+disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear
+that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation
+in turn, and reconciliation then became impossible. I was indeed
+greatly irritated at the bishop’s having suggested any grounds of
+suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen;
+and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same
+time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler,
+would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language;
+in which case I doubted not to make it appear that if I was not so rich
+as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however,
+drove this boyish design out of my mind; for I considered that the
+bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant; that he could not
+have designed that his advice should be reported to me; and that the
+same coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice
+at all, might have coloured it in a way more agreeable to her own style
+of thinking than to the actual expressions of the worthy bishop.
+
+I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very
+unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I
+was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to
+short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day.
+From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air,
+acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this
+slender regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was
+coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and
+afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on
+blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on the casual hospitalities which I
+now and then received in return for such little services as I had an
+opportunity of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for
+cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liverpool or in London;
+more often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women
+who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury or other towns on the English
+border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction to my humble
+friends, and was generally treated with hospitality; and once in
+particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a
+sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of
+three days by a family of young people with an affectionate and
+fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet
+impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and three
+brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and delicacy of
+manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding and
+refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any
+cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They
+spoke English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members
+of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I
+wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of
+the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more
+privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both
+interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst
+of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me
+general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to
+discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind
+as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper
+my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and
+they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their
+thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so
+readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of
+a family generally determines the tenor of one’s whole entertainment.
+In this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so
+much to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my
+conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had
+little inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only
+unoccupied bed standing in the apartment of the young women; but in all
+other points they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses
+as light as mine—as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I
+was of “gentle blood.” Thus I lived with them for three days and great
+part of a fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they
+continued to show me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to
+this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. On the
+last morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as they
+sate at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communication
+which was at hand; and soon after, one of the brothers explained to me
+that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual
+meeting of Methodists, held at Carnarvon, and were that day expected to
+return; “and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be,” he
+begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it
+amiss. The parents returned with churlish faces, and “_Dym Sassenach_”
+(_no English_) in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood;
+and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young
+hosts, I went my way; for, though they spoke warmly to their parents in
+my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people by saying it
+was “only their way,” yet I easily understood that my talent for
+writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with two grave
+sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek sapphics or alcaics; and what
+had been hospitality when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of
+my young friends, would become charity when connected with the harsh
+demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his
+notions about old age: unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of
+opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to the
+genial charities of the human heart.
+
+Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of
+room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and
+fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate
+expression I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of
+sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of
+intensity; but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have
+suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my reader’s
+feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as
+these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot
+be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is
+painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at
+least on this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the
+breakfast-table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did
+not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals,
+constituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings
+(that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in
+London) I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this
+constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not
+sink under my torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more
+inclement weather came on, and when, from the length of my sufferings,
+I had begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was no doubt
+fortunate for me that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had
+access, allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house of which he was
+tenant. Unoccupied I call it, for there was no household or
+establishment in it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a
+few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that
+the house already contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child,
+apparently ten years old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings
+of that sort often make children look older than they are. From this
+forlorn child I learned that she had slept and lived there alone for
+some time before I came; and great joy the poor creature expressed when
+she found that I was in future to be her companion through the hours of
+darkness. The house was large, and, from the want of furniture, the
+noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase
+and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I fear, hunger,
+the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared)
+from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against
+all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no other assistance.
+We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow,
+but with no other covering than a sort of large horseman’s cloak;
+afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and
+for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than
+usually ill I took her into my arms, so that in general she was
+tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not, for during the last
+two months of my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to
+fall into transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me
+more than my watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams
+(which were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe
+hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is
+called _dog-sleep_; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often,
+as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice; and about this
+time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a
+slumber, which has since returned upon me at different periods of my
+life—viz., a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about
+the region of the stomach) which compelled me violently to throw out my
+feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as
+I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me,
+at length I slept only from exhaustion; and from increasing weakness
+(as I said before) I was constantly falling asleep and constantly
+awaking. Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us
+suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till ten o’clock, sometimes not
+at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of
+Cromwell, every night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I
+observed that he never failed to examine through a private window the
+appearance of those who knocked at the door before he would allow it to
+be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly
+have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any
+more than the quantity of esculent _matériel_, which for the most part
+was little more than a roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on
+his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he _had_ asked a
+party—as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to him—the several
+members of it must have _stood_ in the relation to each other (not
+_sate_ in any relation whatever) of succession, as the metaphysicians
+have it, and not of a coexistence; in the relation of the parts of
+time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast I generally
+contrived a reason for lounging in, and, with an air of as much
+indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left;
+sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this I committed no
+robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe)
+now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the
+poor child, _she_ was never admitted into his study (if I may give that
+name to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c.); that
+room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked
+on his departure to dinner, about six o’clock, which usually was his
+final departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate
+daughter of Mr. ——, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did
+not herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial
+servant. No sooner did Mr. —— make his appearance than she went below
+stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c.; and, except when she was summoned
+to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the
+kitchen, &c., to the upper air until my welcome knock at night called
+up her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during
+the daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own
+account at night, for as soon as the hours of business commenced I saw
+that my absence would be acceptable, and in general, therefore, I went
+off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until nightfall.
+
+But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself?
+Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower
+departments of the law who—what shall I say?—who on prudential reasons,
+or from necessity, deny themselves all indulgence in the luxury of too
+delicate a conscience, (a periphrasis which might be abridged
+considerably, but _that_ I leave to the reader’s taste): in many walks
+of life a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a
+carriage; and just as people talk of “laying down” their carriages, so
+I suppose my friend Mr. —— had “laid down” his conscience for a time,
+meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The
+inner economy of such a man’s daily life would present a most strange
+picture, if I could allow myself to amuse the reader at his expense.
+Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw
+many scenes of London intrigues and complex chicanery, “cycle and
+epicycle, orb in orb,” at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at
+which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. My situation, however, at
+that time gave me little experience in my own person of any qualities
+in Mr. ——’s character but such as did him honour; and of his whole
+strange composition I must forget everything but that towards me he was
+obliging, and to the extent of his power, generous.
+
+That power was not, indeed, very extensive; however, in common with the
+rats, I sate rent free; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never
+but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me
+be grateful that on that single occasion I had as large a choice of
+apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the
+Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all
+others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service; “the world
+was all before us,” and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot
+we chose. This house I have already described as a large one; it stands
+in a conspicuous situation and in a well-known part of London. Many of
+my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of
+reading this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws
+me to London; about ten o’clock this very night, August 15, 1821—being
+my birthday—I turned aside from my evening walk down Oxford Street,
+purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied by a respectable
+family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I observed a
+domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and
+gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence,
+and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly
+occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her,
+by-the-bye, in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child;
+she was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably
+pleasing in manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed not
+the embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections:
+plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough
+for me, and I loved the child because she was my partner in
+wretchedness. If she is now living she is probably a mother, with
+children of her own; but, as I have said, I could never trace her.
+
+This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have
+since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper
+sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that
+unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no
+shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on
+familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate
+condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal nor frown;
+for, not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb,
+“_Sine cerere_,” &c., it may well be supposed that in the existing
+state of my purse my connection with such women could not have been an
+impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a
+person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature
+that wore a human shape; on the contrary, from my very earliest youth
+it has been my pride to converse familiarly, _more Socratio_, with all
+human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way;
+a practice which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good
+feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes a man who
+would be thought a philosopher. For a philosopher should not see with
+the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the
+world, and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth
+and education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and
+as standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and
+uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself at that time
+of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally
+fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who are
+technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had occasionally
+taken my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of
+houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, the one on whose
+account I have at all introduced this subject—yet no! let me not class
+the, oh! noble-minded Ann—with that order of women. Let me find, if it
+be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to
+whose bounty and compassion, ministering to my necessities when all the
+world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive. For many
+weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up and down
+Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of
+porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me, indeed, that
+she had not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my
+interest about her prompted I had gradually drawn forth her simple
+history. Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had
+reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better
+adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might oftener
+be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of London
+charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet
+noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily accessible to poor
+houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the outside air and
+framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any
+case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been
+redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint
+before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she
+would meet with immediate attention, and that English justice, which
+was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the
+brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised me
+often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out
+from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which
+showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps
+she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous
+tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something,
+however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between
+us at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was
+ever to see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a
+magistrate, and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service
+it was destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that
+which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have
+repaid her, was this:—One night, when we were pacing slowly along
+Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt more than usually ill
+and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho Square.
+Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house, which to this
+hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act of homage to
+the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble action which
+she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had
+been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from her
+arms and fell backwards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I
+felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that without some
+powerful and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the spot,
+or should at least have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all
+reäscent under my friendless circumstances would soon have become
+hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan
+companion, who had herself met with little but injuries in this world,
+stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but
+without a moment’s delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less
+time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine
+and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would
+have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of
+restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid
+out of her humble purse at a time—be it remembered!—when she had
+scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when
+she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to
+reimburse her.
+
+Oh, youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in
+solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect
+love—how often have I wished that, as in ancient times, the curse of a
+father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its
+object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment; even so the
+benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like
+prerogative, might have power given to it from above to chase, to
+haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness
+of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the
+grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and
+forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!
+
+I do not often weep: for not only do my thoughts on subjects connected
+with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand
+fathoms “too deep for tears;” not only does the sternness of my habits
+of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt
+tears—wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by
+their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same
+levity be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such
+feelings; but also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated
+such objects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection
+from utter despondency, have early encouraged and cherished some
+tranquillising belief as to the future balances and the hieroglyphic
+meanings of human sufferings. On these accounts I am cheerful to this
+hour, and, as I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings,
+though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others; and
+often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight,
+and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me
+and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and
+muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and
+so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will
+understand from what remains of this introductory narration.
+
+Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded I met in
+Albemarle Street a gentleman of his late Majesty’s household. This
+gentleman had received hospitalities on different occasions from my
+family, and he challenged me upon the strength of my family likeness. I
+did not attempt any disguise; I answered his questions ingenuously,
+and, on his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me to
+my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend the attorney’s. The
+next day I received from him a £10 bank-note. The letter enclosing it
+was delivered with other letters of business to the attorney, but
+though his look and manner informed me that he suspected its contents,
+he gave it up to me honourably and without demur.
+
+This present, from the particular service to which it was applied,
+leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to
+London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from
+the first day of my arrival in London to that of my final departure.
+
+In so mighty a world as London it will surprise my readers that I
+should not have found some means of starving off the last extremities
+of penury; and it will strike them that two resources at least must
+have been open to me—viz., either to seek assistance from the friends
+of my family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some
+channel of pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe
+generally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of
+being reclaimed by my guardians; not doubting that whatever power the
+law gave them would have been enforced against me to the utmost—that
+is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I had
+quitted, a restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a
+dishonour, even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when
+extorted from me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts,
+to have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would
+indeed have terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying
+for assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it,
+at the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me.
+But as to London in particular, though doubtless my father had in his
+lifetime had many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since his
+death) I remembered few of them even by name; and never having seen
+London before, except once for a few hours, I knew not the address of
+even those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the
+difficulty, but much more the paramount fear which I have mentioned,
+habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I now feel half
+inclined to join my reader in wondering that I should have overlooked
+it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way) I might
+doubtless have gained enough for my slender wants. Such an office as
+this I could have discharged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy
+that would soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. But it
+must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it was
+necessary that I should first of all have an introduction to some
+respectable publisher, and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the
+truth, however, it had never once occurred to me to think of literary
+labours as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining
+money had ever occurred to me but that of borrowing it on the strength
+of my future claims and expectations. This mode I sought by every
+avenue to compass; and amongst other persons I applied to a Jew named
+D—— {4}
+
+To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom were,
+I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself with an account of my
+expectations; which account, on examining my father’s will at Doctors’
+Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person there mentioned
+as the second son of —— was found to have all the claims (or more than
+all) that I had stated; but one question still remained, which the
+faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested—was _I_ that person?
+This doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one; I had rather
+feared, whenever my Jewish friends scrutinised me keenly, that I might
+be too well known to be that person, and that some scheme might be
+passing in their minds for entrapping me and selling me to my
+guardians. It was strange to me to find my own self _materialiter_
+considered (so I expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of
+distinctions), accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own
+self _formaliter_ considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I
+took the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales I had received
+various letters from young friends; these I produced, for I carried
+them constantly in my pocket, being, indeed, by this time almost the
+only relics of my personal encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore)
+which I had not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these letters
+were from the Earl of ——, who was at that time my chief (or rather
+only) confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. I had
+also some from the Marquis of ——, his father, who, though absorbed in
+agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as good
+a scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still retained an affection for
+classical studies and for youthful scholars. He had accordingly, from
+the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me; sometimes upon the
+great improvements which he had made or was meditating in the counties
+of M—— and Sl—— since I had been there, sometimes upon the merits of a
+Latin poet, and at other times suggesting subjects to me on which he
+wished me to write verses.
+
+On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to furnish me
+with two or three hundred pounds on my personal security, provided I
+could persuade the young Earl —— who was, by the way, not older than
+myself—to guarantee the payment on our coming of age; the Jew’s final
+object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect
+to make by me, but the prospect of establishing a connection with my
+noble friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. In
+pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, about eight or nine
+days after I had received the £10, I prepared to go down to Eton.
+Nearly £3 of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, on his
+alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order that the writings
+might be preparing whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart
+that he was lying; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for
+charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my friend
+the attorney (who was connected with the money-lenders as their
+lawyer), to which, indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished
+lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing
+(though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the remainder I gave one
+quarter to Ann, meaning on my return to have divided with her whatever
+might remain. These arrangements made, soon after six o’clock on a dark
+winter evening I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Piccadilly; for
+it was my intention to go down as far as Salthill on the Bath or
+Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the town which has now
+all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its ancient
+boundaries—Swallow Street, I think it was called. Having time enough
+before us, however, we bore away to the left until we came into Golden
+Square; there, near the corner of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not
+wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her
+of my plans some time before, and I now assured her again that she
+should share in my good fortune, if I met with any, and that I would
+never forsake her as soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully
+intended, as much from inclination as from a sense of duty; for setting
+aside gratitude, which in any case must have made me her debtor for
+life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been my sister; and
+at this moment with sevenfold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her
+extreme dejection. I had apparently most reason for dejection, because
+I was leaving the saviour of my life; yet I, considering the shock my
+health had received, was cheerful and full of hope. She, on the
+contrary, who was parting with one who had had little means of serving
+her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by
+sorrow; so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put her
+arms about my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hoped to return
+in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night
+from that, and every night afterwards, she would wait for me at six
+o’clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, which had been our
+customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each
+other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This and other
+measures of precaution I took; one only I forgot. She had either never
+told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten her
+surname. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in
+her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women of higher
+pretensions) to style themselves _Miss Douglas_, _Miss Montague_, &c.,
+but simply by their Christian names—_Mary_, _Jane_, _Frances_, &c. Her
+surname, as the surest means of tracing her hereafter, I ought now to
+have inquired; but the truth is, having no reason to think that our
+meeting could, in consequence of a short interruption, be more
+difficult or uncertain than it had been for so many weeks, I had
+scarcely for a moment adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst
+my memoranda against this parting interview; and my final anxieties
+being spent in comforting her with hopes, and in pressing upon her the
+necessity of getting some medicines for a violent cough and hoarseness
+with which she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late
+to recall her.
+
+It was past eight o’clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-house,
+and the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the
+outside. The fine fluent motion {5} of this mail soon laid me asleep:
+it is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which
+I had enjoyed for some months, was on the outside of a mail-coach—a bed
+which at this day I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this
+sleep was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others did at
+that time, to convince me how easily a man who has never been in any
+great distress may pass through life without knowing, in his own person
+at least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart—or, as I
+must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of
+_manners_ is drawn over the features and expression of men’s _natures_,
+that to the ordinary observer the two extremities, and the infinite
+field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded; the vast
+and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to the
+meagre outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of
+elementary sounds. The case was this: for the first four or five miles
+from London I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally
+falling against him when the coach gave a lurch to his side: and
+indeed, if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I should
+have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily,
+as perhaps, in the same circumstances, most people would; he expressed
+his complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion seemed to
+warrant, and if I had parted with him at that moment I should have
+thought of him (if I had considered it worth while to think of him at
+all) as a surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that
+I had given him some cause for complaint, and therefore I apologized to
+him, and assured him I would do what I could to avoid falling asleep
+for the future; and at the same time, in as few words as possible, I
+explained to him that I was ill and in a weak state from long
+suffering, and that I could not afford at that time to take an inside
+place. This man’s manner changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an
+instant; and when I next woke for a minute from the noise and lights of
+Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I had fallen asleep
+again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to him) I found
+that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling off, and
+for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with the gentleness of a
+woman, so that at length I almost lay in his arms; and this was the
+more kind, as he could not have known that I was not going the whole
+way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I _did_ go rather
+farther than I intended, for so genial and so refreshing was my sleep,
+that the next time after leaving Hounslow that I fully awoke was upon
+the sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and on
+inquiry I found that we had reached Maidenhead—six or seven miles, I
+think, ahead of Salthill. Here I alighted, and for the half-minute that
+the mail stopped I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from
+the transient glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to
+be a gentleman’s butler, or person of that rank) to go to bed without
+delay. This I promised, though with no intention of doing so; and in
+fact I immediately set forward, or rather backward, on foot. It must
+then have been nearly midnight, but so slowly did I creep along that I
+heard a clock in a cottage strike four before I turned down the lane
+from Slough to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me; but I
+was weary nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and which
+has been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me some
+consolation at that moment under my poverty. There had been some time
+before a murder committed on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot
+be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person was
+_Steele_, and that he was the owner of a lavender plantation in that
+neighbourhood. Every step of my progress was bringing me nearer to the
+Heath, and it naturally occurred to me that I and the accused murderer,
+if he were that night abroad, might at every instant be unconsciously
+approaching each other through the darkness; in which case, said
+I—supposing I, instead of being (as indeed I am) little better than an
+outcast—
+
+Lord of my learning, and no land beside—
+
+
+were, like my friend Lord ——, heir by general repute to £70,000 per
+annum, what a panic should I be under at this moment about my throat!
+Indeed, it was not likely that Lord —— should ever be in my situation.
+But nevertheless, the spirit of the remark remains true—that vast power
+and possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying; and I am
+convinced that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by
+fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural courage,
+would, if at the very instant of going into action news were brought to
+them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of
+£50,000 a-year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharpened,
+{6} and their efforts at perfect equanimity and self-possession
+proportionably difficult. So true it is, in the language of a wise man
+whose own experience had made him acquainted with both fortunes, that
+riches are better fitted
+
+To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
+Than tempt her to do ought may merit praise.
+
+
+_Paradise Regained_.
+
+
+I dally with my subject because, to myself, the remembrance of these
+times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any
+further cause to complain, for I now hasten to its close. In the road
+between Slough and Eton I fell asleep, and just as the morning began to
+dawn I was awakened by the voice of a man standing over me and
+surveying me. I know not what he was: he was an ill-looking fellow, but
+not therefore of necessity an ill-meaning fellow; or, if he were, I
+suppose he thought that no person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could
+be worth robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself,
+I beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, that he was
+mistaken. After a slight remark he passed on; and I was not sorry at
+his disturbance, as it enabled me to pass through Eton before people
+were generally up. The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards
+the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the ground and the
+trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through Eton unobserved;
+washed myself, and as far as possible adjusted my dress, at a little
+public-house in Windsor; and about eight o’clock went down towards
+Pote’s. On my road I met some junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An
+Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments,
+they answered me civilly. My friend Lord —— was gone to the University
+of ——. “Ibi omnis effusus labor!” I had, however, other friends at
+Eton; but it is not to all that wear that name in prosperity that a man
+is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself,
+however, I asked for the Earl of D——, to whom (though my acquaintance
+with him was not so intimate as with some others) I should not have
+shrunk from presenting myself under any circumstances. He was still at
+Eton, though I believe on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was
+received kindly, and asked to breakfast.
+
+Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from any erroneous
+conclusions. Because I have had occasion incidentally to speak of
+various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself
+any pretension to rank and high blood. I thank God that I have not. I
+am the son of a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for
+his great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits
+(indeed, he was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived it
+was expected that he would have been very rich; but dying prematurely,
+he left no more than about £30,000 amongst seven different claimants.
+My mother I may mention with honour, as still more highly gifted; for
+though unpretending to the name and honours of a _literary_ woman, I
+shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an
+_intellectual_ woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be
+collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as
+much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure “mother English,”
+racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our language—hardly
+excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of
+descent, I have no other; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have
+not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too
+eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the most
+favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities.
+
+Lord D—— placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really
+so; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent, from being the first
+regular meal, the first “good man’s table,” that I had sate down to for
+months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce eat anything. On the
+day when I first received my £10 bank-note I had gone to a baker’s shop
+and bought a couple of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six
+weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost
+humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Otway, and
+feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no
+need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I
+had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what
+approached to a meal I continued to feel for weeks; or, when I did not
+experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with
+acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present
+occasion, at Lord D-’s table, I found myself not at all better than
+usual, and in the midst of luxuries I had no appetite. I had, however,
+unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine; I explained my
+situation, therefore, to Lord D——, and gave him a short account of my
+late sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and called for
+wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure; and on all
+occasions when I had an opportunity I never failed to drink wine, which
+I worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced,
+however, that this indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my
+malady, for the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a
+better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been
+revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered
+in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends; I persuaded myself then that
+it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D——, on whom I was conscious I
+had not sufficient claims, the particular service in quest of which I
+had come down to Eton. I was, however unwilling to lose my journey,
+and—I asked it. Lord D——, whose good nature was unbounded, and which,
+in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his compassion perhaps
+for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his
+relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own
+direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He acknowledged
+that he did not like to have any dealings with money-lenders, and
+feared lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his
+connexions. Moreover, he doubted whether _his_ signature, whose
+expectations were so much more bounded than those of ——, would avail
+with my unchristian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to
+mortify me by an absolute refusal; for after a little consideration he
+promised, under certain conditions which he pointed out, to give his
+security. Lord D—— was at this time not eighteen years of age; but I
+have often doubted, on recollecting since the good sense and prudence
+which on this occasion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an
+urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether
+any statesman—the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy—could
+have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most
+people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without
+surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a
+Saracen’s head.
+
+Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best but
+far above the worst that I had pictured to myself as possible, I
+returned in a Windsor coach to London three days after I had quitted
+it. And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of
+Lord D——’s terms; whether they would in the end have acceded to them,
+and were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; but
+many delays were made, time passed on, the small fragment of my
+bank-note had just melted away, and before any conclusion could have
+been put to the business I must have relapsed into my former state of
+wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an opening was made,
+almost by accident, for reconciliation with my friends; I quitted
+London in haste for a remote part of England; after some time I
+proceeded to the university, and it was not until many months had
+passed away that I had it in my power again to revisit the ground which
+had become so interesting to me, and to this day remains so, as the
+chief scene of my youthful sufferings.
+
+Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her I have reserved my
+concluding words. According to our agreement, I sought her daily, and
+waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the
+corner of Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of every one who was
+likely to know her, and during the last hours of my stay in London I
+put into activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of
+London suggested and the limited extent of my power made possible. The
+street where she had lodged I knew, but not the house; and I remembered
+at last some account which she had given me of ill-treatment from her
+landlord, which made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings
+before we parted. She had few acquaintances; most people, besides,
+thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which
+moved their laughter or their slight regard; and others, thinking I was
+in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally
+and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if indeed they had
+any to give. Finally as my despairing resource, on the day I left
+London I put into the hands of the only person who (I was sure) must
+know Ann by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice,
+an address to ——, in ——shire, at that time the residence of my family.
+But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst
+such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest
+affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been some time in
+search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty
+labyrinths of London; perhaps even within a few feet of each other—a
+barrier no wider than a London street often amounting in the end to a
+separation for eternity! During some years I hoped that she _did_ live;
+and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word
+_myriad_, I may say that on my different visits to London I have looked
+into many, many myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I
+should know her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a moment;
+for though not handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance and
+a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have
+said, in hope. So it was for years; but now I should fear to see her;
+and her cough, which grieved me when I parted with her, is now my
+consolation. I now wish to see her no longer; but think of her, more
+gladly, as one long since laid in the grave—in the grave, I would hope,
+of a Magdalen; taken away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted out
+and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians
+had completed the ruin they had begun.
+
+[The remainder of this very interesting article will be given in the
+next number.—ED.]
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+From the London Magazine for October 1821.
+
+So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted step-mother! thou that listenest
+to the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, at length I
+was dismissed from thee; the time was come at last that I no more
+should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces, no more should dream
+and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors too many, to
+myself and Ann, have doubtless since then trodden in our footsteps,
+inheritors of our calamities; other orphans than Ann have sighed; tears
+have been shed by other children; and thou, Oxford Street, hast since
+doubtless echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself,
+however, the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge
+of a long fair-weather—the premature sufferings which I had paid down
+to have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of
+long immunity from sorrow; and if again I walked in London a solitary
+and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part
+in serenity and peace of mind. And although it is true that the
+calamities of my noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my
+bodily constitution, that afterwards they shot up and flourished
+afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and
+darkened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were
+met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer
+intellect, and with alleviations from sympathising affection—how deep
+and tender!
+
+Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far
+asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a
+common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness
+of human desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, during my first
+mournful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be
+thought) to gaze from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which
+pierces through the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods;
+for _that_, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which
+lay part in light and part in shade, “_that_ is the road to the North,
+and therefore to, and if I had the wings of a dove, _that_ way I would
+fly for comfort.” Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blindness. Yet
+even in that very northern region it was, even in that very valley,
+nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this
+second birth of my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to
+besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was
+persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted
+the couch of an Orestes; and in this unhappier than he, that sleep,
+which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and to him
+especially as a blessed {7} balm for his wounded heart and his haunted
+brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my
+desires; yet if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man
+and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their
+alleviations, and a grief which had not been feared is met by
+consolations which had not been hoped. I therefore, who participated,
+as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated
+conscience), participated no less in all his supports. My Eumenides,
+like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the
+curtains; but watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to
+bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sate my
+Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou
+wast my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering
+affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English
+wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of
+kindness and to servile {8} ministrations of tenderest affection—to
+wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to
+refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy
+own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the
+spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that
+oftentimes bade me “sleep no more!”—not even then didst thou utter a
+complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink
+from thy service of love, more than Electra did of old. For she too,
+though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king {9} of
+men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face {10} in her robe.
+
+But these troubles are past; and thou wilt read records of a period so
+dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return
+no more. Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces
+of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by
+anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence
+to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three
+hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the
+streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights,
+and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remembering that
+thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very
+house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I
+think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late,
+the promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter
+time, and may be justified if read in another meaning; and if I could
+allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I
+should again say to myself, as I look to the North, “Oh, that I had the
+wings of a dove—” and with how just a confidence in thy good and
+gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejaculation—“And
+_that_ way I would fly for comfort!”
+
+
+
+
+THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM
+
+
+It is so long since I first took opium that if it had been a trifling
+incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal
+events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with
+it I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During
+that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time
+since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the
+following way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head
+in cold water at least once a day: being suddenly seized with
+toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental
+intermission of that practice, jumped out of bed, plunged my head into
+a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The
+next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic
+pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for
+about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a
+Sunday, that I went out into the streets, rather to run away, if
+possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident
+I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent
+of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna
+or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that
+time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what
+heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! Reverting for a
+moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest
+circumstances connected with the place and the time and the man (if man
+he was) that first laid open to me the Paradise of Opium-eaters. It was
+a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this
+earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road
+homewards lay through Oxford Street; and near “the stately Pantheon”
+(as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I saw a druggist’s shop.
+The druggist—unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!—as if in
+sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any
+mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday; and when I asked
+for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do,
+and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real
+copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in
+spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my
+mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth
+on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of
+considering him, that when I next came up to London I sought him near
+the stately Pantheon, and found him not; and thus to me, who knew not
+his name (if indeed he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from
+Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The reader
+may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a sublunary
+druggist; it may be so, but my faith is better—I believe him to have
+evanesced, {11} or evaporated. So unwillingly would I connect any
+mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first
+brought me acquainted with the celestial drug.
+
+Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
+taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole
+art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every
+disadvantage. But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a
+revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit!
+what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished
+was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in
+the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in
+the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a
+panacea, a φαρμακον for all human woes; here was the secret of
+happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at
+once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried
+in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a
+pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the
+mail-coach. But if I talk in this way the reader will think I am
+laughing, and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals
+much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn
+complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present
+himself in the character of _L’Allegro_: even then he speaks and thinks
+as becomes _Il Penseroso_. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible
+way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless when
+I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be
+guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or
+enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this
+respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort I shall endeavour to
+be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so
+anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.
+
+And first, one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all
+that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by
+travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old
+immemorial right), or by professors of medicine, writing _ex cathedra_,
+I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce—Lies! lies! lies! I
+remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from
+a page of some satiric author: “By this time I became convinced that
+the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz., on
+Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for—the list of
+bankrupts.” In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have
+been delivered to the world in regard to opium. Thus it has been
+repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in
+colour; and this, take notice, I grant. Secondly, that it is rather
+dear, which also I grant, for in my time East Indian opium has been
+three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight. And thirdly, that if you eat a
+good deal of it, most probably you must do what is particularly
+disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz., die. {12} These
+weighty propositions are, all and singular, true: I cannot gainsay
+them, and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. But in these three
+theorems I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet
+accumulated by men on the subject of opium.
+
+And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further
+discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on
+this matter.
+
+First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all
+who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can
+produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo perieulo_,
+that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the
+tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) _that_ might certainly
+intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because
+it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much
+opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of
+producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by
+alcohol, and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_: it is
+not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it
+differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and
+tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when
+once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to
+borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute—the
+second, the chronic pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a steady
+and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas
+wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken
+in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order,
+legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium
+greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and
+gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the
+contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the
+drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to
+all the faculties, active or passive, and with respect to the temper
+and moral feelings in general it gives simply that sort of vital warmth
+which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always
+accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health.
+Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart
+and the benevolent affections; but then, with this remarkable
+difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which
+accompanies inebriation there is always more or less of a maudlin
+character, which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men shake
+hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears, no mortal knows why;
+and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the
+benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, but a healthy
+restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon
+the removal of any deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed
+and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and good.
+True it is that even wine, up to a certain point and with certain men,
+rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect; I myself, who have
+never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses
+of wine advantageously affected the faculties—brightened and
+intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being
+“ponderibus librata suis;” and certainly it is most absurdly said, in
+popular language, of any man that he is _disguised_ in liquor; for, on
+the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and it is when they
+are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenæus), that men εαυτους
+εμφανιζουσιν οιτινες εισιν—display themselves in their true complexion
+of character, which surely is not disguising themselves. But still,
+wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance,
+and beyond a certain point it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the
+intellectual energies: whereas opium always seems to compose what had
+been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short,
+to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to
+inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up
+into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal part of his
+nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from
+any disease or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner
+part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a
+state of cloudless serenity, and over all is the great light of the
+majestic intellect.
+
+This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of
+which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member—the alpha and
+the omega: but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the
+ground of a large and profound personal experience: whereas most of the
+unscientific {13} authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of
+those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it
+evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental
+knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly
+acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its
+intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a
+surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him
+that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on
+politics, and that his friends apologized for him by suggesting that he
+was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the
+accusation, said I, is not _prima facie_ and of necessity an absurd
+one; but the defence _is_. To my surprise, however, he insisted that
+both his enemies and his friends were in the right. “I will maintain,”
+said he, “that I _do_ talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain that
+I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but
+solely and simply, said he, solely and simply—solely and simply
+(repeating it three times over), because I am drunk with opium, and
+_that_ daily.” I replied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as
+it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing
+that the three parties concerned all agree in it, it did not become me
+to question it; but the defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to
+discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons; but it seemed to me so
+impolite to pursue an argument which must have presumed a man mistaken
+in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press him
+even when his course of argument seemed open to objection; not to
+mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though “with no view to
+profit,” is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute,
+whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that the
+authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a
+weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my experience,
+which was greater than his greatest by 7,000 drops a-day; and though it
+was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the
+characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet struck me that
+he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with
+too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of
+nervous excitement, instead of restricting it as the expression for a
+specific sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some
+people have maintained in my hearing that they had been drunk upon
+green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his
+profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me the other
+day that a patient in recovering from an illness had got drunk on a
+beef-steak.
+
+Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to
+opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third, which are,
+that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed
+by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate
+consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The
+first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying;
+assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at
+intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this
+luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.
+
+With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to
+credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the
+practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly opium is classed
+under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the
+end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest
+degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its
+action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, for upwards of eight
+hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he
+does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as
+that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his
+sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like
+so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves.
+But that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to
+stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the
+question illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way
+in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London during the
+period between 1804-1812. It will be seen that at least opium did not
+move me to seek solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the
+torpid state of self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this
+account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or
+visionary; but I regard _that_ little. I must desire my reader to bear
+in mind that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the
+rest of my time; and certainly I had a right occasionally to
+relaxations as well as other people. These, however, I allowed myself
+but seldom.
+
+The late Duke of —— used to say, “Next Friday, by the blessing of
+heaven, I purpose to be drunk;” and in like manner I used to fix
+beforehand how often within a given time, and when, I would commit a
+debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks, for at
+that time I could not have ventured to call every day, as I did
+afterwards, for “_a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar_.”
+No, as I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, more than
+once in three weeks: This was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night;
+my reason for which was this. In those days Grassini sang at the Opera,
+and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I
+know not what may be the state of the Opera-house now, having never
+been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that time it was
+by much the most pleasant place of public resort in London for passing
+an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which was
+subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the theatres; the
+orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and melodious grandeur from
+all English orchestras, the composition of which, I confess, is not
+acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the clamorous
+instruments and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were
+divine to hear, and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she
+often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the
+tomb of Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that ever
+entered the Paradise of Opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I
+had. But, indeed, I honour the barbarians too much by supposing them
+capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an
+Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure
+according to the temperament of him who hears it. And, by-the-bye, with
+the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in “Twelfth
+Night,” I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the
+subject of music in all literature; it is a passage in the _Religio
+Medici_ {14} of Sir T. Brown, and though chiefly remarkable for its
+sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the
+true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is to
+suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and
+therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not
+so; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear (the
+_matter_ coming by the senses, the _form_ from the mind) that the
+pleasure is constructed, and therefore it is that people of equally
+good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now, opium, by
+greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of
+necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to
+construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate
+intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession of musical
+sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters; I can attach no
+ideas to them. Ideas! my good sir? There is no occasion for them; all
+that class of ideas which can be available in such a case has a
+language of representative feelings. But this is a subject foreign to
+my present purposes; it is sufficient to say that a chorus, &c., of
+elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the
+whole of my past life—not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if
+present and incarnated in the music; no longer painful to dwell upon;
+but the detail of its incidents removed or blended in some hazy
+abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All
+this was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the music of
+the stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, in the intervals of
+the performance, the music of the Italian language talked by Italian
+women—for the gallery was usually crowded with Italians—and I listened
+with a pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and
+listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women; for the
+less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the
+melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it
+was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it
+but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a tenth part
+of what I heard spoken.
+
+These were my opera pleasures; but another pleasure I had which, as it
+could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my
+love of the Opera; for at that time Tuesday and Saturday were the
+regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather
+obscure, but I can assure the reader not at all more so than Marinus in
+his Life of Proclus, or many other biographers and autobiographers of
+fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a
+Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night to me more than any
+other night? I had no labours that I rested from, no wages to receive;
+what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons
+to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader; what you say is
+unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that whereas different men
+throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show
+their interest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy,
+expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses and sorrows, I
+at that time was disposed to express my interest by sympathising with
+their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of,
+more than I wished to remember; but the pleasures of the poor, their
+consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never
+become oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night is the season for
+the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest of the poor; in this
+point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of
+brotherhood; almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a
+rest introductory to another rest, and divided by a whole day and two
+nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, on a
+Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of
+labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy.
+For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as
+possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used
+often on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth,
+without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the
+markets and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a
+Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party,
+consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his
+children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways
+and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of
+household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes,
+their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard
+murmurs of discontent, but far oftener expressions on the countenance,
+or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And taken
+generally, I must say that, in this point at least, the poor are more
+philosophic than the rich—that they show a more ready and cheerful
+submission to what they consider as irremediable evils or irreparable
+losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be
+intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter
+in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received
+indulgently. If wages were a little higher or expected to be so, or the
+quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter
+were expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were true, I
+drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the
+bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from
+the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into compliance with
+the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an
+opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and sometimes
+in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing
+my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west
+passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had
+doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems
+of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx’s riddles of
+streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity
+of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could
+almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of
+some of these _terræ incognitæ_, and doubted whether they had yet been
+laid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid
+a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised over my
+dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and
+haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities, moral and
+intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and
+remorse to the conscience.
+
+Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity produce inactivity
+or torpor, but that, on the contrary, it often led me into markets and
+theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and theatres are
+not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater when in the divinest
+state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an
+oppression to him; music even, too sensual and gross. He naturally
+seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those
+trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation
+of what opium can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to
+meditate too much and to observe too little, and who upon my first
+entrance at college was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from
+brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in London,
+was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I
+could to counteract them. I was, indeed, like a person who, according
+to the old legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius; and the remedies
+I sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my
+understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for
+these remedies I should certainly have become hypochondriacally
+melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more
+fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a
+solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon
+taking opium; and more than once it has happened to me, on a summer
+night, when I have been at an open window, in a room from which I could
+overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the
+great town of L——, at about the same distance, that I have sate from
+sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to move.
+
+I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, &c., but _that_
+shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest
+men; and let my reader see if he, in his philosophical works, be half
+as unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often struck me that
+the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a
+reverie. The town of L—— represented the earth, with its sorrows and
+its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The
+ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a
+dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which
+then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a
+distance and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the
+fever, and the strife were suspended; a respite granted from the secret
+burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human
+labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life
+reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the
+intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon
+calm; a tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if
+resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities,
+infinite repose.
+
+Oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich
+alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for “the pangs that
+tempt the spirit to rebel,” bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium!
+that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and
+to the guilty man for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and
+hands washed pure from blood; and to the proud man a brief oblivion for
+“Wrongs undress’d and insults unavenged;” that summonest to the
+chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false
+witnesses; and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of
+unrighteous judges;—thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of
+the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art
+of Phidias and Praxiteles—beyond the splendour of Babylon and
+Hekatómpylos, and “from the anarchy of dreaming sleep” callest into
+sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties and the blessed household
+countenances cleansed from the “dishonours of the grave.” Thou only
+givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh,
+just, subtle, and mighty opium!
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM
+
+
+Courteous, and I hope indulgent, reader (for all _my_ readers must be
+indulgent ones, or else I fear I shall shock them too much to count on
+their courtesy), having accompanied me thus far, now let me request you
+to move onwards for about eight years; that is to say, from 1804 (when
+I have said that my acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. The
+years of academic life are now over and gone—almost forgotten; the
+student’s cap no longer presses my temples; if my cap exist at all, it
+presses those of some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as myself,
+and as passionate a lover of knowledge. My gown is by this time, I dare
+say, in the same condition with many thousand excellent books in the
+Bodleian, viz., diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms;
+or departed, however (which is all that I know of his fate), to that
+great reservoir of _somewhere_ to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies,
+tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c., have departed (not to speak of still
+frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.), which
+occasional resemblances in the present generation of tea-cups, &c.,
+remind me of having once possessed, but of whose departure and final
+fate I, in common with most gownsmen of either university, could give,
+I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of
+the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to six o’clock matins,
+interrupts my slumbers no longer, the porter who rang it, upon whose
+beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation so
+many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has ceased to
+disturb anybody; and I, and many others who suffered much from his
+tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors,
+and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity; it
+rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day, and cruelly annoys, I
+doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind; but
+as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous voice no longer
+(treacherous I call it, for, by some refinement of malice, it spoke in
+as sweet and silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party);
+its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit
+as favourable as the malice of the bell itself could wish, for I am 250
+miles away from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I
+doing among the mountains? Taking opium. Yes; but what else? Why
+reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for some
+years previous, I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics in the
+writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how and in what manner do
+I live?—in short, what class or description of men do I belong to? I am
+at this period—viz. in 1812—living in a cottage and with a single
+female servant (_honi soit qui mal y pense_), who amongst my neighbours
+passes by the name of my “housekeeper.” And as a scholar and a man of
+learned education, and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume to
+class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called
+_gentlemen_. Partly on the ground I have assigned perhaps, partly
+because from my having no visible calling or business, it is rightly
+judged that I must be living on my private fortune; I am so classed by
+my neighbours; and by the courtesy of modern England I am usually
+addressed on letters, &c., “Esquire,” though having, I fear, in the
+rigorous construction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that
+distinguished honour; yet in popular estimation I am X. Y. Z., Esquire,
+but not justice of the Peace nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I married? Not
+yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights. And perhaps have taken
+it unblushingly ever since “the rainy Sunday,” and “the stately
+Pantheon,” and “the beatific druggist” of 1804? Even so. And how do I
+find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why,
+pretty well, I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw,
+“as well as can be expected.” In fact, if I dared to say the real and
+simple truth, though, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I _ought_
+to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812;
+and I hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or “particular
+Madeira,” which in all probability you, good reader, have taken, and
+design to take for every term of eight years during your natural life,
+may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by the opium
+I had taken for eight years, between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see
+again the danger of taking any medical advice from _Anastasius_; in
+divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe counsellor; but
+not in medicine. No; it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan, as I did;
+for I never forgot that worthy man’s excellent suggestion, and I was
+“particularly careful not to take above five-and-twenty ounces of
+laudanum.” To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may
+ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least (_i.e_. in 1812), I am
+ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in
+store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, it must not be
+forgotten that hitherto I have been only a dilettante eater of opium;
+eight years’ practice even, with a single precaution of allowing
+sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient
+to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now
+comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the
+summer of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily
+health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event.
+This event being no ways related to the subject now before me, further
+than through the bodily illness which it produced, I need not more
+particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that
+of 1813 I know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was
+attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects
+the same as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and
+accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my
+narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of
+what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a
+perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the
+reader’s patience by such a detail of my malady, or of my struggles
+with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to
+wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering; or, on the
+other hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I
+must forego the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of
+the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having
+slipped, by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from
+the first to the final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to
+which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers, from my
+previous acknowledgements). This is the dilemma, the first horn of
+which would be sufficient to toss and gore any column of patient
+readers, though drawn up sixteen deep and constantly relieved by fresh
+men; consequently that is not to be thought of. It remains, then, that
+I _postulate_ so much as is necessary for my purpose. And let me take
+as full credit for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good
+reader, at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not so
+ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own
+forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of
+you—viz., that I could resist no longer; believe it liberally and as an
+act of grace, or else in mere prudence; for if not, then in the next
+edition of my Opium Confessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you
+believe and tremble; and _à force d’ennuyer_, by mere dint of
+pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again
+questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make.
+
+This, then, let me repeat, I postulate—that at the time I began to take
+opium daily I could not have done otherwise. Whether, indeed,
+afterwards I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even
+when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether
+many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been
+carried much further, and my gradual reconquests of ground lost might
+not have been followed up much more energetically—these are questions
+which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation;
+but shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity
+of mine, that I am too much of an Eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a
+state of happiness, both for myself and others; I cannot face misery,
+whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness, and am
+little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any
+reversionary benefit. On some other matters I can agree with the
+gentlemen in the cotton trade {15} at Manchester in affecting the Stoic
+philosophy, but not in this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic
+philosopher, and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect
+that will condescend more to the infirm condition of an opium-eater;
+that are “sweet men,” as Chaucer says, “to give absolution,” and will
+show some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of
+abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman
+moralist I can no more endure in my nervous state than opium that has
+not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to send out a large
+freight of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of
+moral improvement, must make it clear to my understanding that the
+concern is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six-and-thirty years of
+age) it cannot be supposed that I have much energy to spare; in fact, I
+find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I have on my
+hands, and therefore let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard
+words into embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of
+morality.
+
+Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813
+was what I have mentioned, and from this date the reader is to consider
+me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on
+any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask
+whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its
+functions. You understand now, reader, what I am, and you are by this
+time aware that no old gentleman “with a snow-white beard” will have
+any chance of persuading me to surrender “the little golden receptacle
+of the pernicious drug.” No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or
+surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in their
+respective lines of practice, they must not hope for any countenance
+from me, if they think to begin by any savage proposition for a Lent or
+a Ramadan of abstinence from opium. This, then, being all fully
+understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now
+then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down
+and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three
+years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new
+character.
+
+If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us what had
+been the happiest day in his life, and the why and the wherefore, I
+suppose that we should all cry out—Hear him! Hear him! As to the
+happiest _day_, that must be very difficult for any wise man to name,
+because any event that could occupy so distinguished a place in a man’s
+retrospect of his life, or be entitled to have shed a special felicity
+on any one day, ought to be of such an enduring character as that
+(accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the same felicity,
+or one not distinguishably less, on many years together. To the
+happiest _lustrum_, however, or even to the happiest _year_, it may be
+allowed to any man to point without discountenance from wisdom. This
+year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have now reached; though
+it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier
+character. It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner
+of jewellers), set as it were, and insulated, in the gloom and cloudy
+melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before
+this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from
+320 grains of opium (_i.e_. eight {16} thousand drops of laudanum) per
+day, to forty grains, or one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by
+magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain,
+like some black vapours that I have seen roll away from the summits of
+mountains, drew off in one day (νυχθημερον); passed off with its murky
+banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded, and is
+floated off by a spring tide—
+
+That moveth altogether, if it move at all.
+
+
+Now, then, I was again happy; I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum
+per day; and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up the
+season of youth; my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever
+before; I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that
+I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around
+me; and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been
+announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him
+with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever
+else was wanting to a wise man’s happiness, of laudanum I would have
+given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way,
+now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember about this time a
+little incident, which I mention because, trifling as it was, the
+reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more
+fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door.
+What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English mountains
+I cannot conjecture; but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about
+forty miles distant.
+
+The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and bred
+amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort;
+his turban therefore confounded her not a little; and as it turned out
+that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers
+in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all
+communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In
+this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master
+(and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of
+the earth besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to
+understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly
+imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not
+immediately go down, but when I did, the group which presented itself,
+arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of
+my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes
+exhibited in the ballets at the Opera-house, though so ostentatiously
+complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall
+with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking
+more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay—his
+turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark
+panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to
+relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with
+the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed
+upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could
+not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its
+exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude,
+contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or
+veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes,
+thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the
+ferocious-looking Malay was a little child from a neighbouring cottage
+who had crept in after him, and was now in the act of reverting its
+head and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it,
+whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for
+protection. My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably
+extensive, being indeed confined to two words—the Arabic word for
+barley and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from
+_Anastasius_; and as I had neither a Malay dictionary nor even
+Adelung’s _Mithridates_, which might have helped me to a few words, I
+addressed him in some lines from the Iliad, considering that, of such
+languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came
+geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a most
+devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I
+saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had no means of
+betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and
+then pursued his journey. On his departure I presented him with a piece
+of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be
+familiar; and the expression of his face convinced me that it was.
+Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw
+him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and, to use the schoolboy
+phrase, bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The
+quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt
+some alarm for the poor creature; but what could be done? I had given
+him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that
+if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks
+since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could
+not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and
+drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we
+were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No: there was clearly
+no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious,
+but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced
+that he was used {17} to opium; and that I must have done him the
+service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of
+wandering.
+
+This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly
+from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the
+anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards
+upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself,
+that ran “a-muck” {18} at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But
+to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of
+happiness. I have said already, that on a subject so important to us
+all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man’s
+experience or experiments, even though he were but a plough-boy, who
+cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep into such an intractable
+soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his
+researches upon any very enlightened principles. But I who have taken
+happiness both in a solid and liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled,
+both East India and Turkey—who have conducted my experiments upon this
+interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the
+general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the
+poison of 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason as a
+French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer, an English one
+twenty years ago with plague, and a third, I know not of what nation,
+with hydrophobia), I (it will be admitted) must surely know what
+happiness is, if anybody does. And therefore I will here lay down an
+analysis of happiness; and as the most interesting mode of
+communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and
+involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during
+the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no
+more than the elixir of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject
+of happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one—_the pains of
+opium_.
+
+Let there be a cottage standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any
+town—no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three-quarters of
+a mile in average width; the benefit of which provision is that all the
+family resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger
+household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less
+interesting to your affections. Let the mountains be real mountains,
+between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not
+(as a witty author has it) “a cottage with a double coach-house;” let
+it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage,
+embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of
+flowers upon the walls and clustering round the windows through all the
+months of spring, summer, and autumn—beginning, in fact, with May
+roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, _not_ be spring, nor
+summer, nor autumn, but winter in his sternest shape. This is a most
+important point in the science of happiness. And I am surprised to see
+people overlook it, and think it matter of congratulation that winter
+is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the
+contrary, I put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost,
+or storm, of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly afford us.
+Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter
+fireside, candles at four o’clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair
+tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the
+floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without,
+
+And at the doors and windows seem to call,
+As heav’n and earth they would together mell;
+Yet the least entrance find they none at all;
+Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.
+
+
+_Castle of Indolence_.
+
+
+All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must
+surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude. And it is
+evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very
+low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits
+which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way
+or other. I am not “_particular_,” as people say, whether it be snow,
+or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. —— says) “you may lean
+your back against it like a post.” I can put up even with rain,
+provided it rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort I must have,
+and if I have it not, I think myself in a manner ill-used; for why am I
+called on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals and candles, and
+various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to
+have the article good of its kind? No, a Canadian winter for my money,
+or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north
+wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am
+I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be
+much past St. Thomas’s day, and have degenerated into disgusting
+tendencies to vernal appearances. No, it must be divided by a thick
+wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the
+latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period
+during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the
+room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are
+naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and
+are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will
+always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my part,
+I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a _bellum internecinum_ against
+Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, who should presume to
+disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal
+description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for
+the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a
+good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now understands that it is
+a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside
+of the house.
+
+Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than
+seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously
+styled in my family the drawing-room; but being contrived “a double
+debt to pay,” it is also, and more justly, termed the library, for it
+happens that books are the only article of property in which I am
+richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand,
+collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put
+as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books, and,
+furthermore, paint me a good fire, and furniture plain and modest,
+befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire
+paint me a tea-table, and (as it is clear that no creature can come to
+see one such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the
+tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically or
+otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot—eternal _à parte ante_ and _à
+parte post_—for I usually drink tea from eight o’clock at night to four
+o’clock in the morning. And as it is very unpleasant to make tea or to
+pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the
+table. Paint her arms like Aurora’s and her smiles like Hebe’s. But no,
+dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate
+my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty,
+or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any
+earthly pencil. Pass then, my good painter, to something more within
+its power; and the next article brought forward should naturally be
+myself—a picture of the Opium-eater, with his “little golden receptacle
+of the pernicious drug” lying beside him on the table. As to the opium,
+I have no objection to see a picture of _that_, though I would rather
+see the original. You may paint it if you choose, but I apprise you
+that no “little” receptacle would, even in 1816, answer _my_ purpose,
+who was at a distance from the “stately Pantheon,” and all druggists
+(mortal or otherwise). No, you may as well paint the real receptacle,
+which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter
+as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum;
+that, and a book of German Metaphysics placed by its side, will
+sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood. But as to
+myself—there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the
+foreground of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or (if you
+choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. This
+seems reasonable; but why should I confess on this point to a painter?
+or why confess at all? If the public (into whose private ear I am
+confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter’s)
+should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the
+Opium-eater’s exterior, should have ascribed to him, romantically an
+elegant person or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from
+it so pleasing a delusion—pleasing both to the public and to me? No;
+paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy, and as a painter’s
+fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail in that way
+to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten
+categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle
+of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the
+elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in
+the above sketch of the interior of a scholar’s library, in a cottage
+among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening.
+
+But now, farewell—a long farewell—to happiness, winter or summer!
+Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to
+hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep.
+For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I
+am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record
+
+THE PAINS OF OPIUM
+
+—as when some great painter dips
+His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
+
+
+SHELLEY’S _Revolt of Islam_.
+
+
+Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention
+to a brief explanatory note on three points:
+
+1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for
+this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give
+the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from
+memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and
+some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant
+them from the natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do
+so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few
+of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to
+which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the
+impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has
+been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task
+of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the
+whole burthen of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly
+I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a
+helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without
+assistance; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform
+for me the offices of an amanuensis.
+
+2. You will think perhaps that I am too confidential and communicative
+of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of writing is
+rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider
+who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is proper to be
+said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any
+part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of
+fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing
+to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have
+some record of time, the entire history of which no one can know but
+myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable
+of making, because I know not whether I can ever find time to do it
+again.
+
+3. It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from
+the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this I
+must answer briefly: it might be supposed that I yielded to the
+fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man
+can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that
+I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those
+who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the
+first to beg me to desist. But could not have I reduced it a drop a
+day, or, by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand
+drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and
+that way would certainly not have answered. But this is a common
+mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to
+those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain
+point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after
+that point further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many
+thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will
+suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no;
+there is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal
+spirits are uncommonly raised: the pulse is improved: the health is
+better. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance
+to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of
+unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like
+dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as
+I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command.
+
+I shall now enter _in medias res_, and shall anticipate, from a time
+when my opium pains might be said to be at their _acmé_, an account of
+their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.
+
+
+My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with
+any pleasure, hardly with a moment’s endurance. Yet I read aloud
+sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an
+accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
+“accomplishment” as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the
+only one I possess; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected
+with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had
+observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst
+readers of all: —— reads vilely; and Mrs. ——, who is so celebrated, can
+read nothing well but dramatic compositions: Milton she cannot read
+sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at
+all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like
+scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything it has been by the
+grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the
+Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when read aloud by myself. A
+young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us: at her request and
+M.’s, I now and then read W-’s poems to them. (W., by-the-bye is the
+only poet I ever met who could read his own verses: often indeed he
+reads admirably.)
+
+For nearly two years I believe that I read no book, but one; and I owe
+it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention
+what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as
+I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my proper vocation, as
+I well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for
+the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by
+fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance,
+intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I
+shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness
+that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I
+grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further
+reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had
+dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate
+toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give
+the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa’s—viz., _De Emendatione
+Humani Intellectus_. This was now lying locked up, as by frost, like
+any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the
+resources of the architect; and instead of reviving me as a monument of
+wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labour dedicated to the
+exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me
+to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my
+children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly
+accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a
+super-structure—of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this
+state of imbecility I had, for amusement, turned my attention to
+political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active
+and restless as a hyæna, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at
+all) sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this
+advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an
+organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole as
+the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be
+detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration of my
+powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge; and my
+understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe
+thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be
+aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. I
+had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many
+branches of economy; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me
+chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I
+saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human
+intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding
+logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of
+modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his
+finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady’s
+fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr.
+Ricardo’s book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the
+advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had
+finished the first chapter, “Thou art the man!” Wonder and curiosity
+were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more:
+I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the
+effort of reading, and much more I wondered at the book. Had this
+profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth
+century? Was it possible? I supposed thinking {19} had been extinct in
+England. Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers,
+but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what
+all the universities of Europe and a century of thought had failed even
+to advance by one hair’s breadth? All other writers had been crushed
+and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents. Mr. Ricardo
+had deduced _à priori_ from the understanding itself laws which first
+gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had
+constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions
+into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal
+basis.
+
+Thus did one single work of a profound understanding avail to give me a
+pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years. It roused me
+even to write, or at least to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed
+to me that some important truths had escaped even “the inevitable eye”
+of Mr. Ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature
+that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by
+algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of
+economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so
+brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was
+of all general exertion, I drew up my _Prolegomena to all future
+Systems of Political Economy_. I hope it will not be found redolent of
+opium; though, indeed, to most people the subject is a sufficient
+opiate.
+
+This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel
+showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a
+provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An
+additional compositor was retained for some days on this account. The
+work was even twice advertised, and I was in a manner pledged to the
+fulfilment of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a
+dedication, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I
+found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements were
+countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my “Prolegomena” rested
+peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
+
+I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in terms
+that apply more or less to every part of the four years during which I
+was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I
+might indeed be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could
+prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words to any
+that I received was the utmost that I could accomplish, and often
+_that_ not until the letter had lain weeks or even months on my
+writing-table. Without the aid of M. all records of bills paid or _to
+be_ paid must have perished, and my whole domestic economy, whatever
+became of Political Economy, must have gone into irretrievable
+confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case. It
+is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as
+oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity
+and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect
+or procrastination of each day’s appropriate duties, and from the
+remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a
+reflective and conscientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his
+moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as
+ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by
+duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely
+outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.
+He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of
+all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his
+bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to
+witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love:
+he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay
+down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as
+an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
+
+I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to
+the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were
+the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
+
+The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of
+my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye
+generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I
+know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most,
+have a power of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of
+phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the
+eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to
+summon them; or, as a child once said to me when I questioned him on
+this matter, “I can tell them to go, and they go ——, but sometimes they
+come when I don’t tell them to come.” Whereupon I told him that he had
+almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion
+over his soldiers.—In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this
+faculty became positively distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake
+in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of
+never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if
+they were stories drawn from times before Œdipus or Priam, before Tyre,
+before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place
+in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my
+brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly
+splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable
+at this time:
+
+1. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed
+to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one
+point—that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary
+act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so
+that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things
+to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so
+whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think
+of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the
+eye; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once
+traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic
+ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into
+insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
+
+2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by
+deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly
+incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not
+metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless
+abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I
+could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I _had_
+reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which
+attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at last to utter
+darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by
+words.
+
+3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both
+powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in
+proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space
+swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This,
+however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I
+sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night—nay,
+sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that
+time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human
+experience.
+
+4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later
+years, were often revived: I could not be said to recollect them, for
+if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to
+acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they
+were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their
+evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognised_ them
+instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that
+having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very
+verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she
+saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed
+before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty
+developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This,
+from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have indeed seen
+the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a
+remark which I am convinced is true; viz., that the dread book of
+account which the Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of
+each individual. Of this at least I feel assured, that there is no such
+thing as _forgetting_ possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may
+and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the
+secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also
+rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the
+inscription remains for ever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before
+the common light of day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the
+light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to
+be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.
+
+Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams
+from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first
+fact, and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their
+chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as
+pictures to the reader.
+
+I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great
+reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and
+matter, to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt as
+most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative
+of the majesty of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in
+Livy—_Consul Romanus_, especially when the consul is introduced in his
+military character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent,
+&c., or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the
+collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my
+reverential feelings. I had also, though no great reader of history,
+made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of English
+history, viz., the period of the Parliamentary War, having been
+attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by
+the many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet times. Both
+these parts of my lighter reading, having furnished me often with
+matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. Often
+I used to see, after painting upon the blank darkness a sort of
+rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and
+dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, “These are English
+ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and the
+daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the same table, and
+were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in
+August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the
+field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut
+asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood
+the memory of ancient friendship.” The ladies danced, and looked as
+lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that
+they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would
+suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be heard the
+heart-quaking sound _of Consul Romanus_; and immediately came “sweeping
+by,” in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a company
+of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed
+by the _alalagmos_ of the Roman legions.
+
+Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome,
+Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by
+that artist, called his _Dreams_, and which record the scenery of his
+own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe
+only from memory of Mr. Coleridge’s account) represented vast Gothic
+halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery,
+wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c., expressive of
+enormous power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the
+sides of the walls you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his
+way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further
+and you perceive it come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any
+balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the
+extremity except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor
+Piranesi, you suppose at least that his labours must in some way
+terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of
+stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, but this
+time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye,
+and a still more aërial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor
+Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished
+stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With
+the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my
+architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady the
+splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural; and I beheld
+such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking
+eye unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite part of a
+passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the
+clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:
+
+The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
+Was of a mighty city—boldly say
+A wilderness of building, sinking far
+And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
+Far sinking into splendour—without end!
+Fabric it seem’d of diamond, and of gold,
+With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
+And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
+Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
+In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
+With battlements that on their restless fronts
+Bore stars—illumination of all gems!
+By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
+Upon the dark materials of the storm
+Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
+And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
+The vapours had receded,—taking there
+Their station under a Cerulean sky. &c. &c.
+
+
+The sublime circumstance, “battlements that on their _restless_ fronts
+bore stars,” might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for
+it often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden and of Fuseli, in
+modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of
+obtaining splendid dreams: how much better for such a purpose to have
+eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to
+have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days Homer is
+I think rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
+
+To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of
+water: these haunted me so much that I feared (though possibly it will
+appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or
+tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a
+metaphysical word) _objective_; and the sentient organ _project_ itself
+as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part
+of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch
+or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as
+the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to
+survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache
+even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my
+own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must have been
+verging on something very dangerous.
+
+The waters now changed their character—from translucent lakes shining
+like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous
+change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many
+months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until
+the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in
+my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of
+tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human
+face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might
+be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the
+rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea
+appeared paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens—faces
+imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by
+myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite; my
+mind tossed and surged with the ocean.
+
+_May_, 1818
+
+
+The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night,
+through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether
+others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought
+that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and
+among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad.
+The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to
+others. Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and
+associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a
+dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other
+reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious
+superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in
+the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and
+elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic
+things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so
+impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the
+sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an
+antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any
+knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic
+sublimity of _castes_ that have flowed apart, and refused to mix,
+through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed
+by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much to
+these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of
+years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great
+_officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires
+also in which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast,
+give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental
+names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with
+the rest of southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the
+manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy
+placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner
+live with lunatics or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can
+say or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can
+comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental
+imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the
+connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought
+together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants,
+usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and
+assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I
+soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared
+at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by
+cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the
+summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was
+worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through
+all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I
+came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which
+the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand
+years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers
+at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses,
+by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things,
+amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
+
+I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams,
+which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery
+that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner
+or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment,
+and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what
+I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless
+incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me
+into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with
+one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror
+entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the
+main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the
+last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than
+almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was
+always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped
+sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, &c.
+All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life:
+the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out
+at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and
+fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that
+many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I
+heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am
+sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children
+were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside—come to show me their
+coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going
+out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the damned
+crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my
+dreams, to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and of infancy, that
+in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not
+forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
+
+June 1819
+
+
+I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the
+deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of death
+generally, is (_cæteris paribus_) more affecting in summer than in any
+other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think:
+first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more
+distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite; the
+clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue
+pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous,
+massed and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles.
+Secondly, the light and the appearances of the declining and the
+setting sun are much more fitted to be types and characters of the
+Infinite. And thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and
+riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully
+upon the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the
+grave. For it may be observed generally, that wherever two thoughts
+stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it
+were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these
+accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of death
+when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any
+particular death, if not more affecting, at least haunts my mind more
+obstinately and besiegingly in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a
+slight incident which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions
+of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always
+have existed in my mind; but having been once roused it never left me,
+and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often suddenly
+reunited, and composed again the original dream.
+
+I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter
+Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it
+seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the
+very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but
+exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There
+were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but
+the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was
+interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the
+hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be
+seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle
+tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round
+about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had
+really beheld them, a little before sunrise in the same summer, when
+that child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said aloud
+(as I thought) to myself, “It yet wants much of sunrise, and it is
+Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they celebrate the first
+fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be
+forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high
+and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as quiet as the
+churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and
+then I shall be unhappy no longer.” And I turned as if to open my
+garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different,
+but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the
+other. The scene was an Oriental one, and there also it was Easter
+Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were
+visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great
+city—an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from
+some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone and
+shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it
+was—Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at
+length: “So, then, I have found you at last.” I waited, but she
+answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last,
+and yet again how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight
+fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann,
+that to me were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the
+tears were now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at
+that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks
+were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now
+gazed upon her with some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim,
+and turning to the mountains I perceived vapours rolling between us. In
+a moment all had vanished, thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling
+of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford
+Street, walking again with Ann—just as we walked seventeen years
+before, when we were both children.
+
+As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820.
+
+The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams—a
+music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the
+opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the
+feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the
+tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day—a day
+of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some
+mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I
+knew not where—somehow, I knew not how—by some beings, I knew not
+whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a
+great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more
+insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature,
+and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we
+make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had
+not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself
+to will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
+Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. “Deeper
+than ever plummet sounded,” I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the
+passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier
+cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
+Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
+innumerable fugitives—I knew not whether from the good cause or the
+bad, darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with
+the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were
+worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands,
+and heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! And with a
+sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother
+uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was
+reverberated—everlasting farewells! And again and yet again
+reverberated—everlasting farewells!
+
+And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud—“I will sleep no more.”
+
+But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
+extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
+materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much
+which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps,
+however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say
+something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally
+brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near
+the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the
+Opium-eater has, in some way or other, “unwound almost to its final
+links the accursed chain which bound him.” By what means? To have
+narrated this according to the original intention would have far
+exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a
+cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view
+of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such
+unaffecting details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal
+to the prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed
+opium-eater—or even (though a very inferior consideration) to injure
+its effect as a composition. The interest of the judicious reader will
+not attach itself chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but
+to the fascinating power. Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the
+true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the interest
+revolves. The object was to display the marvellous agency of opium,
+whether for pleasure or for pain: if that is done, the action of the
+piece has closed.
+
+However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will
+persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state he
+now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
+ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the
+tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold.
+Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the
+non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and
+_that_ might as well have been adopted which, however terrific in
+itself, held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This
+appears true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon
+it. However, a crisis arrived for the author’s life, and a crisis for
+other objects still dearer to him—and which will always be far dearer
+to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that
+I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that
+should be required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that
+time taking I cannot say, for the opium which I used had been purchased
+for me by a friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I
+could not ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I
+apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied
+from about fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to
+reduce it to forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
+
+I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
+ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think
+of me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated,
+writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the
+situation of him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that
+state from the affecting account of them left by a most innocent
+sufferer {20} of the times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit
+from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon
+of great eminence, viz., ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical
+account, therefore, of my emancipation I have not much to give, and
+even that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of medicine as
+myself, would probably tend only to mislead. At all events, it would be
+misplaced in this situation. The moral of the narrative is addressed to
+the opium-eater, and therefore of necessity limited in its application.
+If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough has been effected. But he
+may say that the issue of my case is at least a proof that opium, after
+a seventeen years’ use and an eight years’ abuse of its powers, may
+still be renounced, and that _he_ may chance to bring to the task
+greater energy than I did, or that with a stronger constitution than
+mine he may obtain the same results with less. This may be true. I
+would not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. I
+heartily wish him more energy. I wish him the same success.
+Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may
+unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports
+which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind
+debilitated by opium.
+
+Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to
+die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing
+the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of
+existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical
+regeneration; and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a
+restoration of more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of
+difficulties which in a less happy state of mind I should have called
+misfortunes.
+
+One memorial of my former condition still remains—my dreams are not yet
+perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not
+wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but
+not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of
+Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still
+(in the tremendous line of Milton)
+
+With dreadful faces throng’d, and fiery arms.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+From the “London Magazine” for December 1822.
+
+The interest excited by the two papers bearing this title, in our
+numbers for September and October 1821, will have kept our promise of a
+Third Part fresh in the remembrance of our readers. That we are still
+unable to fulfil our engagement in its original meaning will, we, are
+sure, be matter of regret to them as to ourselves, especially when they
+have perused the following affecting narrative. It was composed for the
+purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a
+separate volume, which is already before the public, and we have
+reprinted it entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the
+whole of this extraordinary history.
+
+
+The proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it,
+some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance of
+a third part promised in the _London Magazine_ of December last; and
+the more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee that promise
+was issued, might otherwise be implicated in the blame—little or
+much—attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the
+author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the exact amount of the
+guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own
+judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry
+whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems
+generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the
+numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many
+persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation,
+who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches
+of promise towards the stronger party being committed at a man’s own
+peril; on the other hand, the only parties interested in the promises
+of an author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any
+author to believe as few as possible—or perhaps only one, in which case
+any promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking
+to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on
+the indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves
+aggrieved by his delay, in the following account of his own condition
+from the end of last year, when the engagement was made, up nearly to
+the present time. For any purpose of self-excuse it might be sufficient
+to say that intolerable bodily suffering had totally disabled him for
+almost any exertion of mind, more especially for such as demands and
+presupposes a pleasurable and genial state of feeling; but, as a case
+that may by possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of
+opium, in a further stage of its action than can often have been
+brought under the notice of professional men, he has judged that it
+might be acceptable to some readers to have it described more at
+length. _Fiat experimentum in corpore vili_ is a just rule where there
+is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise on a large scale.
+What the benefit may be will admit of a doubt, but there can be none as
+to the value of the body; for a more worthless body than his own the
+author is free to confess cannot be. It is his pride to believe that it
+is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, that
+hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under
+the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life; and indeed, if that were
+the creditable way of disposing of human bodies, he must own that he
+should almost be ashamed to bequeath his wretched structure to any
+respectable dog. But now to the case, which, for the sake of avoiding
+the constant recurrence of a cumbersome periphrasis, the author will
+take the liberty of giving in the first person.
+
+
+Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
+impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This
+impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because
+the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering
+necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case
+as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing
+it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking
+from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had
+descended from so large a quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one
+(comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 160
+drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In
+suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed
+opium-eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself; and, as may
+be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general
+tone of the conclusion, and not from any specific words, which are in
+no instance at variance with the literal truth. In no long time after
+that paper was written I became sensible that the effort which remained
+would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated, and the necessity
+for making it was more apparent every month. In particular I became
+aware of an increasing callousness or defect of sensibility in the
+stomach, and this I imagined might imply a scirrhous state of that
+organ, either formed or forming. An eminent physician, to whose
+kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed me that such a
+termination of my case was not impossible, though likely to be
+forestalled by a different termination in the event of my continuing
+the use of opium. Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure as soon
+as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and
+energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June
+last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
+arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled
+in my own mind that I would not flinch, but would “stand up to the
+scratch” under any possible “punishment.” I must premise that about 170
+or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months;
+occasionally I had run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in
+repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as 100
+drops; but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth
+day—which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over
+than any of the preceding three. I went off under easy sail—130 drops a
+day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to 80. The misery
+which I now suffered “took the conceit” out of me at once, and for
+about a month I continued off and on about this mark; then I sunk to
+60, and the next day to—none at all. This was the first day for nearly
+ten years that I had existed without opium. I persevered in my
+abstinence for ninety hours; i.e., upwards of half a week. Then I
+took—ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what would ye have done?
+Then I abstained again—then took about 25 drops then abstained; and so
+on.
+
+Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of
+my experiment were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the
+whole system; the stomach in particular restored to a full feeling of
+vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing
+restlessness night and day; sleep—I scarcely knew what it was; three
+hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated
+and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me. Lower jaw
+constantly swelling, mouth ulcerated, and many other distressing
+symptoms that would be tedious to repeat; amongst which, however, I
+must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany any attempt
+to renounce opium—viz., violent sternutation. This now became
+exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and
+recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not much surprised
+at this on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or read, that the
+membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines
+the stomach; whence, I believe, are explained the inflammatory
+appearances about the nostrils of dram drinkers. The sudden restoration
+of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose,
+in this way. It is remarkable also that during the whole period of
+years through which I had taken opium I had never once caught cold (as
+the phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. But now a violent cold
+attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a
+letter begun about this time to ——, I find these words: “You ask me to
+write the ——. Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of “Thierry and
+Theodore”? There you will see my case as to sleep; nor is it much of an
+exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I have a greater
+influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under
+the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been
+frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now, according to the old
+fable, been thawed at once—such a multitude stream in upon me from all
+quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability that for
+one which I detain and write down fifty escape me: in spite of my
+weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit
+for two minutes together. ‘I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.’”
+
+At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon,
+requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came;
+and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question;
+Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus
+to the digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the
+stomach, which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep,
+might arise from indigestion? His answer was; No; on the contrary, he
+thought that the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should
+naturally go on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural
+state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become
+distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible; and the
+unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me to think that it was
+true, for if it had been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach,
+it should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly
+fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature, as manifested in the
+healthy state, obviously is to withdraw from our notice all the vital
+motions, such as the circulation of the blood, the expansion and
+contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, &c.,
+and opium, it seems, is able in this, as in other instances, to
+counteract her purposes. By the advice of the surgeon I tried
+_bitters_. For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings under
+which I laboured, but about the forty-second day of the experiment the
+symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new ones to arise of a
+different and far more tormenting class; under these, but with a few
+intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss
+them undescribed for two reasons: first, because the mind revolts from
+retracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is removed by
+too short or by no interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make
+the review of any use would be indeed _infandum renovare dolorem_, and
+possibly without a sufficient motive; for secondly, I doubt whether
+this latter state be anyway referable to opium—positively considered,
+or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst the
+last evils from the direct action of opium, or even amongst the
+earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a system long
+deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms might be
+accounted for from the time of year (August), for though the summer was
+not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat _funded_ (if one
+may say so) during the previous months, added to the existing heat of
+that month, naturally renders August in its better half the hottest
+part of the year; and it so happened that—the excessive perspiration
+which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the daily
+quantum of opium—and which in July was so violent as to oblige me to
+use a bath five or six times a day—had about the setting-in of the
+hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the
+heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom—viz., what in my
+ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the
+shoulders, &c., but more often appearing to be seated in the
+stomach)—seemed again less probably attributable to the opium, or the
+want of opium, than to the dampness of the house {21} which I inhabit,
+which had about this time attained its maximum, July having been, as
+usual, a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part of England.
+
+Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion with
+the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness—except, indeed, as an
+occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and
+thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever—I willingly spare my
+reader all description of it; let it perish to him, and would that I
+could as easily say let it perish to my own remembrances, that any
+future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal
+of possible human misery!
+
+So much for the sequel of my experiment. As to the former stage, in
+which probably lies the experiment and its application to other cases,
+I must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have
+recorded it. These were two: First, a belief that I might add some
+trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware
+that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of
+the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject
+which besieged me whilst writing that part of my paper; which part
+being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of
+latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from this account,
+rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may
+arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium, viz.,
+to opium-eaters in general, that it establishes, for their consolation
+and encouragement, the fact that opium may be renounced, and without
+greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a
+pretty rapid course {22} of descent.
+
+To communicate this result of my experiment was my foremost purpose.
+Secondly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it
+had become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to
+accompany this republication; for during the time of this experiment
+the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London, and such
+was my inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even
+bear to read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors
+or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for
+troubling my reader with any record, long or short, of experiments
+relating to so truly base a subject as my own body; and I am earnest
+with the reader that he will not forget them, or so far misapprehend me
+as to believe it possible that I would condescend to so rascally a
+subject for its own sake, or indeed for any less object than that of
+general benefit to others. Such an animal as the self-observing
+valetudinarian I know there is; I have met him myself occasionally, and
+I know that he is the worst imaginable _heautontimoroumenos_;
+aggravating and sustaining, by calling into distinct consciousness,
+every symptom that would else perhaps, under a different direction
+given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as to myself, so profound
+is my contempt for this undignified and selfish habit, that I could as
+little condescend to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor
+servant girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad or other making
+love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental Philosopher to
+feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth
+only eight and a half years’ purchase, be supposed to have leisure for
+such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall
+say one thing, which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it
+ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man,
+I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body
+without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from
+looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make
+it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be
+displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts
+upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it.
+And, in testification of my sincerity in saying this, I shall make the
+following offer. Like other men, I have particular fancies about the
+place of my burial; having lived chiefly in a mountainous region, I
+rather cleave to the conceit, that a grave in a green churchyard
+amongst the ancient and solitary hills will be a sublimer and more
+tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous
+Golgothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of Surgeons’ Hall think that
+any benefit can redound to their science from inspecting the
+appearances in the body of an opium-eater, let them speak but a word,
+and I will take care that mine shall be legally secured to them—i.e.,
+as soon as I have done with it myself. Let them not hesitate to express
+their wishes upon any scruples of false delicacy and consideration for
+my feelings; I assure them they will do me too much honour by
+“demonstrating” on such a crazy body as mine, and it will give me
+pleasure to anticipate this posthumous revenge and insult inflicted
+upon that which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such
+bequests are not common; reversionary benefits contingent upon the
+death of the testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases:
+of this we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince,
+who used, upon any notification made to him by rich persons that they
+had left him a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire
+satisfaction at such arrangements and his gracious acceptance of those
+loyal legacies; but then, if the testators neglected to give him
+immediate possession of the property, if they traitorously “persisted
+in living” (_si vivere perseverarent_, as Suetonius expresses it), he
+was highly provoked, and took his measures accordingly. In those times,
+and from one of the worst of the Cæsars, we might expect such conduct;
+but I am sure that from English surgeons at this day I need look for no
+expressions of impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are
+answerable to that pure love of science and all its interests which
+induces me to make such an offer.
+
+Sept 30, 1822
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{1} “Not yet _recorded_,” I say; for there is one celebrated man of the
+present day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly
+exceeded me in quantity.
+
+{2} A third exception might perhaps have been added; and my reason for
+not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his
+juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed
+hints to philosophical themes; his riper powers having been all
+dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligible grounds, under the
+present direction of the popular mind in England) to criticism and the
+Fine Arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather
+to be considered an acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a
+great drawback on his mastery over philosophical subjects that he has
+obviously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic education: he
+has not read Plato in his youth (which most likely was only his
+misfortune), but neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is his
+fault).
+
+{3} I disclaim any allusion to _existing_ professors, of whom indeed I
+know only one.
+
+{4} To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I
+applied again on the same business; and, dating at that time from a
+respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious
+attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any
+extravagance or youthful levities (these my habits and the nature of my
+pleasures raised me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice
+of my guardian, who, when he found himself no longer able to prevent me
+from going to the university, had, as a parting token of his good
+nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shilling beyond the
+allowance made to me at school—viz., £100 per annum. Upon this sum it
+was in my time barely possible to have lived in college, and not
+possible to a man who, though above the paltry affectation of
+ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes,
+confided nevertheless rather too much in servants, and did not delight
+in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became
+embarrassed, and at length, after a most voluminous negotiation with
+the Jew (some parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, would
+greatly amuse my readers), I was put in possession of the sum I asked
+for, on the “regular” terms of paying the Jew seventeen and a half per
+cent. by way of annuity on all the money furnished; Israel, on his
+part, graciously resuming no more than about ninety guineas of the said
+money, on account of an attorney’s bill (for what services, to whom
+rendered, and when, whether at the siege of Jerusalem, at the building
+of the second Temple, or on some earlier occasion, I have not yet been
+able to discover). How many perches this bill measured I really forget;
+but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities, and some time
+or other I believe I shall present it to the British Museum.
+
+{5} The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the Kingdom, owing to the
+double advantages of an unusually good road and of an extra sum for the
+expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants.
+
+{6} It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth,
+have in our own day, as well as throughout our history, been amongst
+the foremost in courting danger in battle. True; but this is not the
+case supposed; long familiarity with power has to them deadened its
+effect and its attractions.
+
+{7} Φιλον υπνη θελyητρον επικουρον νοσον.
+
+{8} ηδυ δουλευμα. EURIP. Orest.
+
+{9} αναξανδρων ’Αyαμεμνων.
+
+{10} ομμα θεισ’ ειτω πεπλων. The scholar will know that throughout this
+passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes; one of the most
+beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas
+of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to
+say that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother
+attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a
+suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the
+Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of
+desertion or cold regard from nominal friends.
+
+{11} _Evanesced_: this way of going off the stage of life appears to
+have been well known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been
+considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be
+allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous
+name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz., Mr.
+_Flat-man_, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his
+surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying,
+because, says he,
+
+“Kings should disdain to die, and only _disappear_.”
+
+
+They should _abscond_, that is, into the other world.
+
+{12} Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted; for
+in a pirated edition of Buchan’s _Domestic Medicine_, which I once saw
+in the hands of a farmer’s wife, who was studying it for the benefit of
+her health, the Doctor was made to say—“Be particularly careful never
+to take above five-and-twenty _ounces_ of laudanum at once;” the true
+reading being probably five-and-twenty _drops_, which are held equal to
+about one grain of crude opium.
+
+{13} Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently
+by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I
+must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of
+_Anastasius_. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him
+an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that
+character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he gives of its
+effects at pp. 215-17 of vol. i. Upon consideration it must appear such
+to the author himself, for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in
+the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will
+himself admit that an old gentleman “with a snow-white beard,” who eats
+“ample doses of opium,” and is yet able to deliver what is meant and
+received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice,
+is but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills people
+prematurely or sends them into a madhouse. But for my part, I see into
+this old gentleman and his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of
+“the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug” which Anastasius
+carried about him; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible
+occurred as that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by
+the bye, are none of the strongest). This commentary throws a new light
+upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story; for the old
+gentleman’s speech, considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly
+absurd; but considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently.
+
+{14} I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the
+passage begins—“And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry,
+another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion,” &c.
+
+{15} A handsome newsroom, of which I was very politely made free in
+passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is
+called, I think, _The Porch_; whence I, who am a stranger in
+Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves
+followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a
+mistake.
+
+{16} I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one
+grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as
+both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying
+much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no
+infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Teaspoons vary
+as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops;
+so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader
+sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan’s indulgent allowance.
+
+{17} This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of
+effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A
+London magistrate (Harriott’s _Struggles through Life_, vol. iii. p.
+391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his
+trying laudanum for the gout he took _forty_ drops, the next night
+_sixty_, and on the fifth night _eighty_, without any effect whatever;
+and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon,
+however, which sinks Mr. Harriott’s case into a trifle; and in my
+projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the
+College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted
+understandings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it is far too
+good a story to be published gratis.
+
+{18} See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the
+frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are
+reduced to desperation by ill-luck at gambling.
+
+{19} The reader must remember what I here mean by _thinking_, because
+else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late,
+has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of
+creative and combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine
+thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately
+told us that he is obliged to quit even mathematics for want of
+encouragement.
+
+{20} William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedantically
+written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is
+overpoweringly affecting.
+
+{21} In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as
+the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of
+one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been
+coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this
+mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of
+books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this
+country; but for any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state,
+and what is worse, in a retrograde state.
+
+{22} On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid, and
+the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it
+was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the
+reader may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who
+is preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of
+information before him, I subjoin my diary:—
+
+
+First Week                   Second Week
+       Drops of Laud.           Drops of Laud.
+Mond. June 24 ... 130    Mond. July  1 ...  80
+           25 ... 140                2 ...  80
+           26 ... 130                3 ...  90
+           27 ...  80                4 ... 100
+           28 ...  80                5 ...  80
+           29 ...  80                6 ...  80
+           30 ...  80                7 ...  80
+Third Week                   Fourth Week
+Mond. July  8 ... 300    Mond. July 15 ...  76
+            9 ...  50               16 ...  73.5
+           10 }                     17 ...  73.5
+           11 } Hiatus in           18 ...  70
+           12 } MS.                 19 ... 240
+           13 }                     20 ...  80
+           14 ...  76               21 ... 350
+Fifth Week
+Mond. July 22 ...  60
+           23 ... none.
+           24 ... none.
+           25 ... none.
+           26 ... 200
+           27 ... none.
+
+
+What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask perhaps, to such
+numbers as 300, 350, &c.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was mere
+infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended with this
+impulse, was either the principle, of “_reculer pour mieux sauter_;”
+(for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a
+less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awakening found itself
+partly accustomed to this new ration); or else it was this
+principle—that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best
+which meet with a mood of anger. Now, whenever I ascended to my large
+dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have
+borne anything.
+
+
+
+
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