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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by
+Thomas De Quincey
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
+
+
+Author: Thomas De Quincey
+
+Release Date: April 20, 2005  [eBook #2040]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1886 George Routledge and Sons edition--first
+edition (London Magazine) text, by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER:
+BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE
+LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.
+
+
+_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 ([Greek text]):
+"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 aerial 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 _etourderie_ 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 [Greek text].  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.  I various degrees of
+intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have
+suffered who has survived it 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 _materiel_, 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 reascent 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 pound 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 pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton.
+Nearly 3 pounds 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 pounds
+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 pounds 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 pounds 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 pound 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
+[Greek text] 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
+Athenaeus), that men [Greek text]--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 divines 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
+_terrae incognitae_, 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 Hekatompylos, 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 _postulale_ 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 _a 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 Eudaemonist; 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
+([Greek text]); 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 _a parte ante_ and _a 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 _acme_, 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 hyaena, 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 _a 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 OEdipus 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 aerial 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 (_caeteris 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 Caesars, 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 pounds 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}  [Greek text].
+
+{8}  [Greek text].  EURIP.  Orest.
+
+{9}  [Greek text].
+
+{10}  [Greek text].  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.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH
+OPIUM-EATER***
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