Qass 
 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
3 X. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 
 
 Bn'ns an l£.rtract from i\}t ilife of a <Sdjolar 
 
 ^^ 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 M 
 
 (Reprinted froui The London Magazine for September and October, 
 1821, and December, 182'2) 
 
 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUK BEATTY, Ph.D. 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
 
 Choice iooi'(l and measured phrase, above the reach 
 Of ordinary men ; a. stcttely speech. 
 
 ' "^ t 
 
 THE. ^^ACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 1900 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
TWO COPIES REtJSlVfiO, 
 
 Offios of thi 
 
 APR 12 1900 
 
 fiegletir ef eopyrlghtft 
 
 56710 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 By the M ACM ill an COMPANY. 
 
 I 
 
 ;'t'/ 
 
 SECOND COPY, 
 
 Nortoool) ^ress 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 to maintain himself during a tramp in the Welsh 
 mountains. He wandered about Wales from July to 
 November, 1802, keeping up a correspondence with 
 his friends at first ; but later he cut himself off from 
 them completely, thus depriving himself of his allow- 
 ance from home, which had been granted on condition 
 of his keeping his friends informed of his whereabouts. 
 His vagrancy began in Wales, and in November, 1802, 
 he " took that wonderful plunge into London " (to 
 use Masson's w^ords) ; and now began that all-impor- 
 tant period of his vagrancy — his life in London. 
 He himself calls this episode an ^' impassioned paren- 
 thesis " in his life ; and such, indeed, it is, for the 
 sufferings he now endured, united with those endured 
 in Wales, caused the disorders which led to the taking 
 of opium, with all the amazing consequences. The 
 events of this period are all told in the Confessions 
 with such delicacy and candor that nothing more can 
 be added. 
 
 By some means a way was opened for a return to 
 his friends, and in the autumn of 1803 we find him 
 duly entered as a student at Worcester College, Ox- 
 ford. Here he remained for four years, practically 
 unknown, but busily engaged in reading all manner 
 of books, especially those of English literature. It 
 was during this period that he learned the use of 
 opium, on one of his frequent visits to Loudon, in 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 1804. Just before graduation he suddenly left the 
 University, because his great shyness led him to fear 
 the oral examinations, despite the fact that he had 
 passed most brilliant written ones. 
 
 Next year, 1808, we find him in London, ostensibly 
 studying law, but in reality carrying on his reading 
 over still greater ranges of literature and science, and 
 making the acquaintance of many of the leading 
 literary men of the day. Such was his faith in Cole- 
 ridge, that, soon after he made his acquaintance, he 
 gave him £300, through Cottle, Coleridge's publisher. 
 At this time began his acquaintance with Charles 
 Lamb, which later ripened into intimacy. Through 
 Coleridge he also met Wordsworth, with whom he had 
 been carrying on a correspondence from the earliest 
 years of his university course. 
 
 In 1809, as a result of this meeting, De Quincey 
 went to live at Grasmere, in order that he might be 
 near Wordsworth. Here he lived his bachelor life 
 until 1816, when he married Margaret Simpson, the 
 daughter of a " statesman," or hereditary farmer, of 
 Westmoreland. He remained in Grasmere until 1821, 
 engaged in his extensive reading, in writing for the 
 Westmoreland Gazette, BlackivoocVs Edinhtirgh Maga- 
 zine, the Quarterly Bevieto, and in editing the West- 
 moreland Gazette for a year. In spite of the fact that 
 his writing brought him in considerable income, his 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 extravagant habits consumed this, together with the 
 somewhat large inheritance from his father ; and he 
 began to feel the pinch of want. So, in the year 1820, 
 he went down to London to seek for literary opportu- 
 nities, and was fortunate enough to secure an intro- 
 duction to Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the 
 London Magazine, the most important London peri- 
 odical at that time. As a result of this introduction 
 there appeared, in the September and October num- 
 bers for 1821, a long, anonymous article in two parts, 
 entitled The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater : 
 Being an Extract from the Life- of a Scholar. The 
 greatest interest was aroused ; De Quincey's career was 
 determined ; and from this time forward his energies 
 expressed themselves almost exclusively in contribu- 
 tions to the magazines. 
 
 He soon returned to his wife and family in Gras- 
 mere, and continued to live there until 1828, when he 
 went to Edinburgh in search of a wider literary field 
 than was afforded him by the Lake district. Edin- 
 burgh was well known to him, as were many of the 
 leading literary lights of the northern capital, since 
 he had visited that city in the winter of 1814-1815, for 
 the purpose of visiting John Wilson, better known in 
 literature as Christopher North, with whom De Quincey 
 had been made acquainted by Wordsworth. Relying 
 on his acquaintance with the literary men of Edin- 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 burgh, he went in hopes of relieving his increasing 
 financial difficulties by means of profitable literary 
 work ; nor was he disappointed, for he began almost 
 at once to write for BlackwoocVs Magazine^ and for 
 Tait's Magazine. In a couple of years he began to 
 feel somewhat established in Edinburgh, and in 1830 
 Mrs. De Quincey and the children came to live with 
 him. They lived here and there in the city, never 
 remaining long in one place. In 1837 Mrs. De Quincey 
 died, and in 1840 De Quincey and his children settled 
 in Lasswade, near Edinburgh, where he made his 
 home for the rest of his life, though he spent most of 
 his time in lodgings in the city. 
 
 There is little more to tell about him. From 1851 
 to 1859 his time was largely taken up with gathering 
 his writings from the various magazines to which he 
 had contributed, into a collected edition. So great 
 was his popularity in Am.erica that, in 1851, Mr. Fields 
 began the issue of a collective edition; and in 1853 
 Hogg, the publisher of Hogg^s Instructor, to which 
 De Quincey was at this time a regular contributor, took 
 the hint from the American publisher, and urged 
 De Quincey 's consent to a similar enterprise. The first 
 volume appeared in 1853, and the last one in 1860, the 
 year after his death, which occurred on the 8th of 
 December, 1859. 
 
INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 HISTORY OF THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 When De Quincey came to London in 1821, his 
 acquaintance with Taylor and Hessey, the pro^orietors 
 of the London Magazine, led to the publication of the 
 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the columns 
 of that periodical. The Confessions appeared in the 
 September and October numbers for 1821, occupying 
 pages 293 to 312 (in double columns), and 353 to 379 
 of Volume IV. These portions consist of Parts I. and 
 II. in their short, original form. 
 
 The interest aroused by these papers was very great ; 
 and in connection with a note sent by De Quincey, cor- 
 recting a slight chronological error in the first part, the 
 editor speaks, in the October number, of the articles in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 " We are not often in the habit of eulogising our own work ; 
 but we cannot neglect the opportunity which the following 
 explanatory note gives us of calling the attention of our readers 
 to the deep, eloquent, and masterly paper which stands first in 
 our present number. Such Confessions, so powerfully uttered, 
 cannot fail to do more than interest the reader." 
 
 The public clamored for still more Confessions; and 
 in a letter printed in the December number of the 
 London Magazine for 1821 De Quincey promised to 
 supply this demand by a Third Part which would 
 
XX INTR OD UCTION 
 
 " record the particular effects of Opium between 1804- 
 12," and which he hoped to draw up with such as- 
 sistance from fuller memoranda as he should be able 
 to command on his return to the north. The editors 
 definitely announced this promised Third Part in the 
 same number of their magazine; but months passed 
 on, and no Third Part appeared. Finally, in the De- 
 cember number of 1822, or one year after the prom- 
 ise of the Third Part, there appeared an Appendix to 
 the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, on pages 
 512-517 of Volume VI. This Appendix had been pre- 
 pared for the Confessions, on their publication in book 
 form in 1822, and serves as an apology by both author 
 and publisher for the non-appearance of the long- 
 promised Third Part. This Ai^pendix, so well char- 
 acterized by Masson as '' whimsical," has little or no 
 connection with the rest of the book, and destroys its 
 symmetry. It must not be thought of as being a part 
 of the work in any artistic sense, as it does nothing 
 toward making us better understand or appreciate 
 the earlier parts. It is reprinted in this edition only 
 because it was the conclusion written by De Quincey, 
 and because of its bibliographical interest. 
 
 This closes the history of the work for the first 
 thirty-odd years of its existence, except that as many 
 as six editions appeared between 1821 and 1856. In 
 the latter year the Collective Edition had reached the 
 
INTBODUCTION xxi 
 
 fifth volume, and De Quincey himself explains the sit- 
 uation, in a letter to his daughter, October, 1855, as 
 follows : — 
 
 "A doubt had arisen whether, with my own horrible recoil 
 from the labour of converging and unpacking all hoards of 
 MSS., I could count on bringing together enough of the ' Sus- 
 pira ' (yet unpublished) materially to enlarge the volume. If 
 not, this volume (standing amongst sister volumes of 320-360 
 pp.) would present only a beggarly amount of 120 pp. Upon 
 which arose this dilemma — Either the volume must be strength- 
 ened by the addition of papers altogether alien, which to me was 
 eminently disagreeable, as breaking up the unity of the volume 
 — or else, if left in the slenderness of figure, would really to my 
 feeling involve us in an act that looked very like swindling. How 
 could 7s. M. be reasonably charged to the public for what obvi- 
 ously was but a third part in bulk of the other volumes ? But 
 could not the price for this anomalous volume have been com- 
 mensurately lessened? No. Mr. H[ogg], the publisher, who 
 knows, of course, so much more than I do about such cases, as- 
 sures me that nothing so much annoys the trade as any interrup- 
 tion of the price scale upon a series of volumes. Such being the 
 case, no remedy remained but that I should doctor the book, 
 and expand it into a portliness that might countenance its price, 
 I should, however, be misleading you if any impression were 
 left upon your mind that I had eked out the volume by any 
 wire-drawing process : on the contrary, nothing has been added 
 which did not originally belong to my outline of the work, hav- 
 ing been left out chiefly through hurry at the period of first, i.e. 
 original, publication in the autumn of 1821." i 
 
 1 A. H. Japp, Thomas De Quincey : His Life and Writings, 
 pp. 387-388. 
 
XXll INTRODUCTION 
 
 Accordingly, the book was published in 1856 in a 
 greatly enlarged form ; and in this same letter we have 
 the author's own judgment on the new form of the 
 work : — 
 
 "It is almost rewritten ; and there cannot be much doubt 
 that here and there it is enlivened, and so far improved. To 
 justify the enormous labour it has cost me, most certainly it 
 ought to be improved. And yet, reviewing the volume as a tvJiole, 
 }M)yv that I can look back from nearly the end to the beginning, 
 greatly I doubt whether many readers will not prefer it in its 
 original fragmentary state to its present full-blown develop- 
 ment." 1 
 
 We thus see tliat De Quincey was very little satisfied 
 with the "improved" version, and that as an artistic 
 whole he favored the earlier version. This judgment 
 later critics have amply upheld ; and the words of Gar- 
 nett admirably sum up the state of critical opinion on 
 the subject : — 
 
 I "The additions to the Opium-Eater are for the most part 
 brilliant superfluities. They are not indeed mere excrescences, 
 and may rather be compared to those excursions and variations 
 into which a musician may be betrayed by consciousness of mas- 
 tery and pleasure in execution until he has lost sight of his origi- 
 nal theme. They convert the brief, pregnant narrative of one 
 episode in a life into a diffuse autobiography." ^ 
 
 1 A. H. Japp, Thomas De Quincey : His Life and Writings, 
 pp. 387-388. 
 
 2 Richard Garnett, Confessions, p. viii. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 There can be no doubt that this is perfectly true ; for 
 in the enlarged edition the First Part is intolerably- 
 long and involved, to the extent of positive obscurity. 
 
 But even if the two versions were more equally mer- 
 itorious, the fact that the work in its original form had 
 been before the public for over thirty years as the only 
 version, and the fact that it had been recognized as 
 one of the minor English classics long before the re- 
 vised edition made its appearance, abundantly justifies 
 us in preferring the earlier version, even though it is 
 not the authoritative form. 
 
 The work as it appeared in the magazine is chosen 
 as the text of the present edition, rather than the re- 
 print of 1822, because it is probably nearer to what 
 De Quincey actually wrote than that volume. At any 
 rate, it is probable that it received somewhat more 
 attention in proof. (See p. 162.) 
 
 STYLE OF THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 In the biographical sketch of De Quincey we have 
 tried to point out the truth of the various incidents 
 recorded in the work, and thus to show that the book 
 is a very real "human document," a veritable tran- 
 script from the author's life. But, while this is true, 
 and while this faithfulness and truth to his unique 
 experiences does give to the book an enduring interest, 
 
XXIV INTR OD UCTION 
 
 it remains true that the permanence and lasting qual- 
 ity of the book does not arise from this cause, but from 
 something far different. Many books live for no reason 
 other than that the things they contain are of last- 
 ing value. They contain the thoughts, the ideas, or 
 the principles, that mankind most needs for its best 
 life ; and so their content alone guarantees their last- 
 ing vitality, in spite of the lapse of time and indepen- 
 dently of the faults or excellences of the manner in 
 which the contents are expressed. Other books, again, 
 live, not because the thoughts or principles that they 
 contain are important, but often because their very 
 mediocre thought, which has very little worth in its 
 naked form, acquires a new value through perfection 
 of expression. Such books live, as we say, by their 
 style; and it is to this latter class that the Confessions 
 belongs ; for, w^hile the matter contained in the book 
 is not by any means trivial or mediocre, it remains true 
 that the book is not the expression of any great thought 
 or principle. Of course, the book derives a great part 
 of its interest from the unique experience which it re- 
 cords, and from the intimate view it gives us of the 
 author's personality, his sensations, his ideas, and his 
 feelings ; but, on the other hand, none of the things 
 recorded in the book have any very great value, in the 
 intellectual or moral sense of the word. Indeed, we 
 may say that, in common with the whole class of con- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 fessions, the book labors under the disadvantage of 
 approaching to morbidity, because it records things and 
 experiences that are usually regarded as too personal 
 and intimate for public view. Moreover, the book is 
 a revelation of the rise and progress of a vice, with all 
 its frightful and demoralizing consequences. From 
 this charge of morbidity the book is delivered only 
 by the childlike purity and delicacy of the author's 
 treatment. 
 
 Nor does the book reveal any excuse for its being 
 written because of some great moral or ethical impulse 
 which drove the author to expression. Indeed, there 
 is little or no interest in questions of conduct or mo- 
 rality shown in the book, nor does the author seem to 
 have considered in any serious way the possible serious 
 consequences of his revelations. He does defend him- 
 self from the charge of sensuality in his indulgence in 
 opium-eating and of a lack of moral sense, but he does 
 not enter very heartily into the defence, nor is it woven 
 into the texture of the narrative. It is not meant by 
 this that De Quincey was immoral : all that is meant 
 is that his very purity and childlike simplicity did 
 not permit him to see the possible moral question 
 involved, from the grosser standpoint of the average 
 mortal. 
 
 Since the Confessions contains no great intellectual 
 or moral matter, how are we then to account for the 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 undoubted vitality of the book ? There is only one 
 answer, and that is that the book is great and impor- 
 tant as literature because of its style. When we con- 
 sider its style, we see why almost from its first 
 publication it was regarded as a minor classic ; for 
 it has those qualities that are characteristic of all 
 great literature — distinction of treatment, choiceness 
 of word and phrase, adequacy of expression — by means 
 of which the thought and emotion of the book stand 
 out in all the clearness of their original conception. 
 
 But while the book is distinguished by its style, the 
 style possesses a peculiar quality. It is not a style of 
 rounded fulness, such as is the expression of a man, 
 who, full of thought and burning with emotion, can 
 yet fuse both and give utterance to what is in him in 
 calm and balanced phrase. The style, as is the case 
 with most writers, is more or less one-sided ; and the 
 quality lacking in De Quincey is the intellectual one, 
 wdiile the emotional and imaginative qualities stand 
 out with distinctive excellence. By this is not meant 
 that the style is not clear : clear it certainly is, in that 
 the thought is adequately expressed, but the clearness 
 is not so much the clearness of the logical faculty as 
 the clearness of the feelings. In nearly every case 
 the clearness is not clearness of thought solely and 
 simply, but it is that clearness which loses itself in 
 vividness of feeling and emotion. To be sure, De 
 
INTRODUCTION- xxvii 
 
 Quincey himself lias laid claim to being an analytical 
 and logical thinker, and others have supported it ; but 
 his work, as a body, contains comparatively little ana- 
 lytical thought. At any rate, the ]3arts that display 
 his analytic faculty are not the memorable or char- 
 acteristic parts by which he lives in literature. His 
 best and most distinctive work is the outcome of the 
 opposite mode of thought, that is, the imaginative.^ 
 The words and phrases are chosen, not to dissect the 
 idea or thing, so to speak, but to paint it as it is in 
 real life, palpitating Avith vitality, and surrounded 
 with all the associated ideas and emotions with which 
 we surround the persons and things in daily life. He 
 says in the Confessions that he was "made an intel- 
 lectual creature" from his birth, and that "intellec- 
 tual in the highest sense " his pursuits and interests 
 were. But while De Quincey undoubtedly Avas inter- 
 ested profoundly in the things of the mind, over all 
 the book there is an atmosphere, not of intellectuality, 
 but of sentiment and feeling. Macaulay and Matthew 
 Arnold are intellectual ; and we have only to mention 
 these names to bring out the difference between their 
 pages and those of the Confessions. The characteristic 
 passages of the Confessions — the flight from school, 
 the trunk, the outcast Ann, the incident of the Malay, 
 and lastly the magnificent opium-drearas — would all 
 become either trivial or vulgar or ridiculous, were it 
 
xxvill INTRODUCTION 
 
 not for the ennobling touch of the sweet and pensive 
 melancholy with which the whole book is suffused. 
 'In such creations the intellect plays only a very sub- 
 ordinate part : feeling and imagination are their very 
 life and substance. Indeed, so dominant are De 
 Quincey's sensations and emotions that they seem 
 to get the better of his judgment at times. Hence 
 the somewhat irreverent jesting in the midst of 
 serious passages, the facetious digressions, and the 
 hundred other irritating peculiarities with which his 
 readers are familiar. Such blemishes are very few 
 in the Confessions; but they appear with sufficient 
 plainness to show that De Quincey retained the irre- 
 sponsible gayety of the child, which constantly broke 
 through the dignity and reserve of manhood. 
 
 De Quincey's style has been called poetic; and it is 
 certain that no prose has more nearly approached the 
 realm of poetry, in that it exhibits a freer play of the 
 imagination than does that of almost any other writer. 
 This is especially seen in those passages of the Con- 
 fessions which contain his impassioned addresses, and 
 in those which describe his opium-dreams. It is to 
 be noticed that in these dreams the scenery and objects 
 are for the most part vague and undefined. Objects 
 do not stand out clearly through the gorgeous imagery 
 and diction : we are given the idea of vast extents of 
 time and space, of centuries on centuries, of infinite 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 cloud, of mighty mountain : all is magnificence and 
 grandeur; but one object melts into another, not re- 
 taining its clearness and distinctness of outline, as, for 
 instance, in Dante, in whom the organizing intellectual 
 activity was sufficiently strong to retain distinctness of 
 outline in the object without destroying its grandeur. 
 These are the most striking pages in the book, and 
 they show most clearly the characteristics of its style. 
 When w^e take into account this dominance of the 
 emotional over the intellectual, we are not surprised 
 to find that one of the chief sources of the peculiar 
 quality of the style is the excellence of the dioice of 
 ivords. The word is the primary element out of which 
 a composition in prose or verse is built up; and the poet 
 and the imaginative prose writer attach much more 
 importance to the single word than does the intellec- 
 tual, or logical, writer. With the poet and the imagina- 
 tive prose writer, the words have an individuality, they 
 stand for something individually, and hence it is in 
 the poet and the imaginative writer that we see the 
 most careful choice of words. In the choice of words, 
 in this imaginative sense, the Confessions stands su- 
 preme among prose compositions. Examples abound 
 throughout the book, of De Quincey's almost unerring 
 sense for words. Indeed, carefully to study the book 
 is in itself an education in this exquisite and all- 
 important branch of composition. 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION- 
 
 Not only in the choice of single words, but in the 
 grouping of them into sentences and paragraphs, does 
 De Quincey occupy a very high place, and in some 
 respects a unique one. His ear is of remarkable sensi- 
 tiveness to sound effects, and his knowledge of the 
 English vocabulary is so extensive that his sentences 
 and paragraphs are things of beauty in themselves ; 
 and are so remarkable for stately rhythm, or for 
 sweetness of sound, or for smoothness of flow, that we 
 do not notice the extreme slightness of the thought 
 that often underlies them. As Leslie Stephen says : — 
 
 " Language, according to the common phrase, is the dress of 
 thought ; and that dress is the best, according to modern canons 
 of taste, which attracts least attention from its wearer. De 
 Quincey scorns this sneaking maxim of prudence, and boldly 
 challenges our admiration by appearing in the richest colouring 
 that can be got out of the dictionary. His language deserves a 
 commendation sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich gar- 
 ments, that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form 
 is so admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must con- 
 sider it as something apart from the substance, f The most ex- 
 quisite passages in De Quincey's writings are all more or less 
 attempts to carry out the idea expressed in the title of the 
 dream fugue. They are intended to be musiccil compositions, 
 in which words have to play the part of notes. They are im- 
 passioned, not in the sense of expressing any definite sentiment, 
 but because, from the structure and combination of the sen- 
 tences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion." i 
 
 1 Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library^ First Series, pp. 356-357. 
 
IN TROD UCTION xxxi 
 
 De Quincey has divided literature into two classes : 
 the literature of knoivledge and the literature of power. 
 It is to this latter class that his own writings belong ; 
 and they belong to it, not because they show a high 
 order of constructive imagination, but almost solely 
 because they show a marvellous power of expressing 
 emotion in the inevitable word or phrase, which stands 
 out as a thing of perfect beauty in itself. They live 
 because they are the expression of a man who is 
 keenly alive to a few of the primary feelings and 
 emotions of himself and of humanity, and who ex- 
 presses them in language which is so perfect a mirror 
 that we feel and experience these feelings and emo- 
 tions almost as vividly as in life. Perhaps the words 
 of Wordsworth that are quoted on the title-page do not 
 fall far short of a definitive summary of De Quincey's 
 distinctive significance in English prose : — 
 
 ' ' Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach 
 Of ordinary men; a stately speech." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 (1) Works : De Quincey's Collected Writings, edited by David 
 
 Masson, 14 vols., veitli good index. London. 
 De Quincey's Works, 14 vols. Boston. 
 
 (2) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater : 
 
 The London Magazine, September and October, 
 
 1821 ; December, 1822. 
 First edition (in book form), English edition, 
 1822. 
 American edition, eilited by Fields, 
 
 1851. 
 Edited by Garnett, 1885. 
 Edited by Sharp, 1886. 
 Second edition, 1850. 
 
 Edited by Hunter, 1896. 
 Partly first and partly second edition, edited by 
 Wauchope, 1898. 
 
 (3) Life of De Quincey : 
 
 Autobiography, Vols. • I. and II, of Collected 
 Writings. 
 
 H. A. Page (i.e. A. IT. Japp), Thomas De Quin- 
 cey : His Life and Writings. 
 
 David Masson, De Quincey (in English Men of 
 Letters Series). 
 
 xxxii 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY XXXIU 
 
 H. A. Page {i.e. A. H. Japp), De Quincey 3Ie- 
 morials. 
 
 James Hogg, De Quincey and his Friends. 
 (Contains very interesting and valuable rem- 
 iniscences and recollections by Woodliouse, 
 Eae-Brown, Findlay, Hogg, Jacox, Payn ; 
 essays by Burton and Hodgson ; and a Life by 
 Page (Japp). 
 (4) Criticism : 
 
 Leslie Stephen, Life of De Quiticey (in Dictionary 
 of National Biography). 
 
 Peter Bayne, Essays on Biography and Criticism. 
 
 J. Scott Cla,rk, A Study of English Prose Writers. 
 
 G. Gilfillan, Literary Portraits. 
 
 Shadwortli Hodgson, The Genius of De Quincey 
 (in Outcast Essays, or in Hogg's De Quincey 
 and his Friends). 
 
 T. W. Hunt, Bepresentative English Prose. 
 
 David Masson, Essays Biographical and Critical. 
 
 W. Minto, English Prose Literature. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant, Victorian Age of English Litera- 
 ture. 
 
 George Saintsbury, Essays on English Literature, 
 {1780-1860). 
 
 Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library, I. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, XII., 345-308. 
 
 Quarterly Review, CCX., 1-35. 
 
 Bevue des deux mondes, CXXXVIIL, 116-146, 
 and 343-376. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATER 
 
 PART T 
 
 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 
 
 B 1 
 
2 CONFESSION'S OF AN 
 
 human frailty, may have drawn over them : accord- 
 ingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, 
 spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed 
 from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers : and for any 
 5 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 sensi- 
 
 10 bility 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 pro- 
 priety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, 
 to come before the public eye, until after my death 
 
 15 (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published) : 
 and it is uot 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 
 
 20 public notice : they court privacy and solitude : and, 
 even in their choice of a grave^ will sometimes seques- 
 ter 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 
 
 25 language of Mr. AVordsworth) 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 3 
 
 °liumbly 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 5 
 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 10 
 at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over- 
 balance, 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, the shades of 15 
 that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable 
 motives and prospects of the offender, and the j^allia- 
 tions, 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 20 
 to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth 
 or modesty, I may aftirm, that my life has been, on the 
 whole, the life of a ])hilosopher : from my birth I was 
 made an intellectual creature : and intellectual in the 
 highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, 25 
 
4 COyFUSSlOJVS OF AN 
 
 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 of 
 any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled 
 
 5 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 fet- 
 tered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be 
 
 10 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 
 
 1 5 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 ser- 
 
 20 vice which I may thereby render to the whole class 
 of opium-eaters. But who are they ? Keader, 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 
 
 25 English society (the class of men distinguished for 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 5 
 
 talents, or of eminent station), who were known to 
 me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such for 
 instance, as the eloquent and benevolent [° William 
 Wilberforce] ; the late °Dean of [Carlisle] ; °Lord [Ers- 
 
 kine] ; °Mr. , the philosopher ; a late °Under-Sec- 5 
 
 retary of State (who described to me the sensation 
 which first drove him to the use of opiuii, in the very 
 same words as the Dean of [Carlisle], viz. "that he 
 felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the 
 coats of his stomach"); °Mr. [Coleridge]; and many 10 
 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 inqiurer), it 
 was a natural inference, that the entire population of 15 
 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 20 
 of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchas- 
 ing small quantities of opium, assured me, that the num- 
 ber of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, 
 at this time, immense ; and that the difficulty of dis- 
 tinguishing those persons, to whom habit had rendered 25 
 
6 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 after- 
 noon 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 ad- 
 mitted, even by medical writers, who are its greatest 
 enemies: thus, for instance, °Awsiter, apothecary to 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 7 
 
 Greenwich-hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of 
 Opium " (published in the year 1763), when attempt- 
 ing to explain, why °Mead had not been sufficiently 
 explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c. of this 
 drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious 
 terms {° (juavavra crvveTOKTi) : " 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 hdhituate the use, and 
 make it more in request with 2ts than the Turks them- 
 selves: the result of which knowledge," he adds, 
 "must prove a general misfortune." In the neces- 
 sity 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 narra- 
 tive of the youthful adventures which laid the founda- 
 tion of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after-life. 
 
8 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 it has been judged proper to premise, for three several 
 reasons : 
 
 1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a sat- 
 isfactory answer, which else Avould painfully obtrude 
 5 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 some- 
 
 lo where plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the in- 
 dignation 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. 
 
 15 2, As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremen- 
 dous 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 
 
 20 the confessions, which cannot fail to render the confes- 
 sions 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 
 
 25 case before him, the reader will lind that the Opium- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 9 
 
 eater boasteth himself to be a jjliilosopher ; and accord- 
 ingly, 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 aHeniim putat. 
 
 Eor amongst the conditions which he deems indis- 
 pensable 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 pretention, however, England can for some gen- 
 erations 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 nar- 
 rower department of thought, with the recent illustri- 
 ous exception of ° David Eicardo) — 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 consti- 
 tution 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 in the lowest. 
 
10 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 I have often been asked how I first came to be a 
 regular opium-eater; and have suffered, very unjustly, 
 in the oi:>inion 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, how- 
 ever, is a misrepresentation of iny 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 conse- 
 quences 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, suf- 
 fered 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 11 
 
 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 youth- 
 ful 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 j^ears 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, espe- 
 cially 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 com- 
 posed 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 Avhich, in my case, was 
 owing to the practice of daily reading off the news- 
 papers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore : 
 for the necessity of ransacking my memory and inven- 
 tion, for all sorts and combinations of x^eriphrastic 
 expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, 
 relations of things, &c. gave me a compass of diction 
 
12 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 which woukl 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. Un- 
 fortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to 
 this worthy man's great indignation), I was trans- 
 ferred to the care, first of a "blockhead, who was in 
 a x)erpetual 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 
 [Brasenose] 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 be- 
 sides, 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEJR 13 
 
 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 learjied 
 triumvirate of the first form, to see our °'Archididas- 
 calus ' (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 °epigranis upon his wig, or some such im- 
 portant matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and 
 dependant 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 rep- 
 resentations 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 
 
14 CONFESSIOJVS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 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 com- 
 
 lo ing on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth- 
 day was fast approaching; after which day I had 
 sworn within myself, that I would no longer be num- 
 bered amongst schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly 
 wanted, I wrote to a °woman of high rank, who, 
 
 5 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 
 
 :o 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 re- 
 
 15 pay her, it would not absolutely rtdn her. Now then. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 15 
 
 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 boun- 
 dary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope 5 
 and pleasure makes it virtuall}'' infinite. 
 
 It is a °just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and what 
 cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feel- 
 ing one), that we never do anything consciously for 
 the last time (of things, that is, which we have long 10 
 been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. 
 This truth I felt deeply, when I came to leave [Man- 
 chester], a place which I did not love, and where I 
 had not been happy. On the evening before I left 
 [Manchester] for ever, I grieved when the ancient 15 
 and lofty schoolroom resounded with the evening ser- 
 vice, 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 stand- 20 
 ing 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 goodnaturedly, returned 25 
 
16 COIiFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 uni- 
 formly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul- 
 5 gencies : and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica- 
 tion 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 
 10 lodged in the head-master's house, and had been al- 
 lowed, 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 [the col- 
 15 legiate church], °' 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 hurri- 
 20 cane, 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 mid- 
 25 night : and to me the silence of a summer morning 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 17 
 
 is more toucliing than all other silence, because, the 
 light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at 
 other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per- 
 fect day, chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and 
 thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures 5 
 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 ic 
 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 15 
 contention with my guardian; yet, on the other hand, 
 as a boy, so passionately fond of books, and °dedicated 
 to intellectual ]3ursuits, 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, writ- 2c 
 ing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too cer- 
 tainly, 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 25 
 
18 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 di- 
 5 vine 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 [Manchester] 
 clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I went up 
 10 to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out 
 and closed the door for ever ! 
 
 °So blended and intertwisted in this life are occa- 
 sions of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recal, 
 without smiling, an incident which occurred at that 
 
 15 time, and which had nearly put a stop to the im- 
 mediate 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 re- 
 moved to a carrier's : my room was at an aerial eleva- 
 
 20 tion 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 19 
 
 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 uj) stairs to bring the 
 trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength 5 
 of any one man : however, the groom was a man — 
 
 °0f Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies ; 
 
 and had a back as spacious as "Salisbury plain. Ac- 
 cordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk 10 
 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 15 
 gallery, his foot slipped ; and the inighty 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 bed- 20 
 room 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. How- 
 ever, on reflection, I determined to abide the issue. 
 
20 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own 
 account and on mine : but, in spite of this, so irre- 
 sistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this un- 
 happy °contretems, taken possession of his fancy, that 
 5 he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laugh- 
 ter, 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 
 
 10 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. [Law son] would sally out 
 of his room: for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, 
 he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. 
 
 15 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. [Lawson] 
 had a painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping 
 him awake, made his sleep, perhaps, when it did 
 
 20 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 wheel- 
 barrow, and on its road to the carrier's : then, °' with 
 
 25 Providence my guide/ I set off on foot, — carrying a 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 21 
 
 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 coun- 
 try, and on other "personal accounts. "Accident, how- 
 ever, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and 
 I bent my steps towards North Wales. 
 
 After wandering about for some time in Denbigh- 
 shire, Merionethshire, and Carnarvonshire, I took 
 lodgings in a small neat house in B[angor]. Here I 
 might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks ; 
 for, provisions were cheap at B[angor], from the scar- 
 city 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 / have often remarked, that the 
 proudest class of people in England (or at any rate, 
 the class whose pride is most apparent) are the fami- 
 lies of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry 
 about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient noti- 
 fication of their rank. Nay, their very names (and 
 this applies also to the children of many untitled 
 
22 coNFi!:ssi(jNS of an 
 
 houses) are often, to the English ear, adequate expo- 
 nents of high birth, or descent. Sackville, Manners, 
 Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell 
 their own tale. Such persons, therefore, find every- 
 
 5 where 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 that they 
 
 10 find it necessary to impress a sense of their conse- 
 quence upon others, they meet with a thousand occa- 
 sions for moderating and tempering this sense by acts 
 of courteous condescension. With the families of 
 bishops it is otherwise: with them it is all up-hill 
 
 15 work, to make known their pretensions: for the pro- 
 portion of the episcopal bench, taken from noble fami- 
 lies, is not at any time very large ; and the succession 
 to these dignities is so rapid, that the public ear sel- 
 dom has time to become familiar with them, unless 
 
 20 where they are connected with some literary reputa- 
 tion. Hence it is, that the children of bishops carry 
 about with them an austere and repulsive air, indica- 
 tive of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of 
 °noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of too 
 
 25 familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitive- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 23 
 
 ness of a gouty man, from all contact with the °ol iroX- 
 \oL. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual 
 goodness of nature, will preserve a man from such 
 weakness : but, in general, the truth of my representa- 
 tion will be acknowledged: pride, if not of deeper 5 
 root in such families, appears, at least, more upon the 
 surface of their manners. This spirit of manners 
 naturally cominunicates 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 10 
 of [Bangor] ; and had but lately married away and 
 'settled' (as such people express it) for life. In a 
 little town like B[angor], merely to have lived in the 
 bishop's family, conferred some distinction : and my 
 good landlady had rather more than her share of the 15 
 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 20 
 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, per- 
 haps, to punish me for my indifference, or possibly by 25 
 
24 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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- 
 
 5 room. In giving an account of her household econ- 
 omy, 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, 
 
 lo 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, run- 
 ning away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are 
 likely to take this place in their route.' This advice 
 
 15 was certainly 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 
 
 20 representation of the matter), ^I really don't think 
 
 this young gentleman is a swiudler ; 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 tliinking about it.' And with- 
 
 35 out delay I prepared for my departure. Some conces- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 25 
 
 sions 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 5 
 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 10 
 (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same lan- 
 guage ; 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 15 
 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 20 
 to her own style of thinking, than to the actual expres- 
 sions 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 25 
 
26 CONFIJSSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 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 
 
 lo blackberries, hips, haws, &c. or on the casual hospi- 
 ** talities which I now and then received, in return for 
 such little services as I had an opportunity of render- 
 ing. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cot- 
 tagers, who happened to have relatives in Liverpool, 
 
 15 or in London : more often I wrote love-letters to their 
 sweethearts for young women who had lived as ser- 
 vants at Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English 
 border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfac- 
 tion to my humble friends, and was generally treated 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 an impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 27 
 
 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, 5 
 except once or twice in "Westmoreland and Devon- 
 shire. 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 10 
 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, 15 
 whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instruc- 
 tions, it did not require any great penetration to dis- 
 cover 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 ex- 20 
 pressions, 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 25 
 
28 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 with from the women pf a family, generally deter- 
 mines the tenor of one's whole entertainment. In 
 this case, I had discharged my confidential duties as 
 secretary, so much to the general satisfaction, per- 
 5 haps 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 
 
 10 treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses 
 as light as mine; as if my scholarship were suffi- 
 cient 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 
 
 15 they continued to show me, I believe! might have 
 staid with them up to this time, if their power had 
 corresponded with their wishes. On the last morn- 
 ing, however, I perceived upon their countenances, 
 as they sate at breakfast, the expression of some un- 
 
 20 pleasant 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 
 
 25 not be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 29 
 
 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 5 
 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, that it was " only 
 their way," yet I easily understood that my talent 
 for writing love-letters would do as little to recom- 10 
 mend me with - two grave sexagenarian Welsh Metho- 
 dists, 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 15 
 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 cor- 
 rupter and blighter to the genial charities of the 
 human heart. 20 
 
 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 25 
 
30 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 suffered, for upwards of sixteen Aveeks, the physical 
 anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity ; 
 but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can 
 have suffered who has survived it. I v/ould not need- 
 5 lessly 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, can- 
 not be contemplated, even in description, without a 
 rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness 
 
 lo 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 
 
 15 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 
 exjjosure to the open air I ascribe it mainly, that I 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 31 
 
 sleep in a large unoccupied house, of which he was 
 tenant. Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no house- 
 hold 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 5 
 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 10 
 alone, for some time before T 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 pro- 15 
 digious echoing on the spacious stair-case 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 20 
 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 : after- 
 wards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old 25 
 
32 coNFI:ssIO^'s of an 
 
 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 
 5 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 day-time, 
 and was apt to fall into transient dozings at all hours. 
 
 10 But my sleep distressed me more than my watching : 
 for, besides 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 
 
 T5 I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it 
 seemed to me, wakened 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 
 
 2o 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 
 
 25 it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER S3 
 
 exhaustion; and from increasing weakness (as I said 
 before) I was constantly falling asleep, and constantly 
 awaking. Meantime, the master of the house some- 
 times came in upon us suddenly, and very early, some- 
 times not till ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He 5 
 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 10 
 he would allow it to be opened. . He breakfasted 
 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 15 
 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 face- 
 tiously observed to him — the several members of it 
 must have stood in the relation to each other (not sate 20 
 in any relation whatever) of succession, as the meta- 
 physicians have it, and not of a co-existence; 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 25 
 
 D 
 
34 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 indilference as I could assume, took up such fragmeuts 
 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) 
 5 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 deposi- 
 tory of parchments, law writings, &c.); that room 
 was to her the °Blue-beard room of the house, being 
 
 xo 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. [Brunellj, or only a servant, I could 
 not ascertain; she did not herself know; but cer- 
 
 15 tainly she was treated altogether as a menial servant. 
 No sooner did Mr. [Brunell] 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 
 
 20 of the kitchens, &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 
 
 25 business commenced, I saw that my absence would 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 35 
 
 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 anoma- 
 lous 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 car- 
 riage ; and just as people talk of °" laying down " their 
 carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. [Brunell] had 
 " laid down " his conscience for a time ; meaning, doubt- 
 less, 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 oppor- 
 tunities 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. [BrunellJ's character but such as did him hon- 
 
36 CONFESSIONS OF AK 
 
 our; 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 ; how- 
 5 ever, 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 
 
 10 as I could possibly desire. Except the Blue-beard 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 
 
 15 already described as a large one; it stands in a con- 
 spicuous situation, and in a well-known part of Lon- 
 don. 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 Lon- 
 
 20 don ; about ten o'clock, this very night, August 15, 1821, 
 being my birth-day — 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 
 
 25 domestic party, assembled perhaps at tea, and appar- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 37 
 
 ently cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast in my 
 eyes to the darkness — cold — silence — and desola- 
 tion 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 5 
 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 10 
 of novel-accessaries 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, 15 
 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 20 
 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 25 
 
38 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 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 famil- 
 
 10 iarly, °more Socratico, with all human beings, man, 
 woman, and child, that chance might fling in my 
 way : a i:>ractice 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 
 
 15 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 stand- 
 
 20 ing in equal relation to high and low — to educated 
 and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Be- 
 ing myself at that time of necessity a peripatetic, or 
 a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more fre- 
 quently with those female peripatetics who are tech- 
 
 25 nically called Street-walkers. Many of these women 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 39 
 
 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 thee, Oh noble-minded Ann , 5 
 
 with that order of women ; let me find, if it be pos- 
 sible, 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 10 
 weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friend- 
 less girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested 
 with her on steps and under the shelter of porticos. 
 She could not be so old as myself: she told me, 
 indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. 15 
 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 Lon- 
 don beneficence had better adapted its arrangements 20 
 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 25 
 
40 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 her young heart; and perhaps she thought justly that 
 the most upright judge, and the most righteous tribu- 
 nals, 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 which she rendered to me, and which was greater than 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 41 
 
 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 sate down on the 5 
 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 10 
 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 15 
 spot — or should at least have sunk to a point of 
 exhaustion from which all reascent under my friend- 
 less 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 20 
 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 25 
 
42 CONFESSIOiYS OF AN 
 
 empty stomach (which at that time woiikl 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 
 w^ith a fatal necessity of self-fulhlment, — even so the 
 benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might 
 have a like prerogative; might have power given to 
 it from above to °chace — to haunt — to way -lay — 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 43 
 
 deep for tears ; " not only does the sternness of my 
 habits of thought present an antagonism to the feel- 
 ings which prompt tears — wanting of necessity to 
 those who, being protected usually by their levity 
 from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that 5 
 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 protec- 
 tion from utter despondency, have early encouraged 10 
 and cherished some tranquilizing belief as to the fu- 
 ture 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, 15 
 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 20 
 myself at the mysterious dispensation which so sud- 
 denly 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 25 
 
44 COJ^FESSIOXS OF AN 
 
 recorded, I met, in Albemarle Street, a gentleman of 
 his °late Majesty's liousehold. This gentleman had 
 received hospitalities, on different occasions, from my 
 family : and he challenged me upon the strength of 
 5 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 
 
 10 him a 101. Bank-note. The letter inclosing it was 
 delivered with other letters of business to the attor- 
 ney : but, though his look and manner informed me 
 that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me 
 honourably and without demur. 
 
 15 This present, from the particular service to which 
 it was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the pur- 
 pose which had allured me up to London, and which 
 I had been (to use a forensic word) °soUdtwg from the 
 first day of my arrival in London, to that of my final 
 
 20 departure. 
 
 In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my 
 readers that I should not have found some means of 
 staving off the last extremities of penury : and it will 
 strike them that two resources at least must have been 
 
 25 open to me, — viz. eii:her to seek assistance from the 
 
EKGLISH OPIUM-EATER 45 
 
 friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents 
 and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolu- 
 ment. 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 doubt- 5 
 ing 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 10 
 to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me 
 in contempt and defiance of my known 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 15 
 assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of 
 receiving it — at the risk of furnishing my guardians 
 with any clue for recovering me. But, as to London 
 in particular, though, doubtless, my father had in his 
 life-time had many friends there, yet (as ten years had 20 
 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 25 
 
46 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 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 ave- 
 nue to compass: and amongst other persons I applied 
 
 20 to a Jew named D[ell]. 
 
 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 expecta- 
 tions ; which account, on examining my father's will 
 
 25 at "Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to be cor- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER ' 47 
 
 rect. The person there mentioned as the second son 
 of [°Thonias Quincey], 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 / that person ? This 
 doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one : I 
 had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends scruti- 
 nised me keenly, that I might be too well known to 
 be that person — and that some scheme might be pass- 
 ing in their minds for entrapping me and selling me 
 to my guardians. It was strange to me to find my 
 own self, °materiaUter 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 [Altanu)nt], who was at that time 
 my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These 
 letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from 
 
48 C0NFI:SSI0KS OF AN' 
 
 the Marquis of [Sligo], 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, 
 
 5 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[ayo] 
 and Sl[igo] since I had been there; sometimes upon 
 
 10 the merits ot" a Latin poet ; and at other times, sug- 
 gesting subjects to me on which he wished me to 
 write verses. 
 
 On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends 
 agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 the prospect of establishing a connection with my noble 
 friend, whose immense expeptations were well known 
 to him. In pursuance of this prof)osal on the part of 
 the Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received 
 the 101. , I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly 3^. 
 
 25 of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 49 
 
 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 5 
 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 10 
 way) my dress. Of the remainder 1 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 even- 
 ing, I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Picca- 15 
 dilly ; for it was my intention to go down as far as 
 Salt-hill on the Bath or Bristol Mail. Our course lay 
 through a part of the town which has now all dis- 
 appeared, so that I can no longer retrace its ancient 
 boundaries : Swallow-street, I think it was called. 20 
 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 Picca- 
 dilly. I had told her of my plans some time before : 25 
 
50 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 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 seven-fold ten- 
 derness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. 
 
 10 I had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because 
 I was leaving the saviour of my life : yet I, consider- 
 ing 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, 
 she should wait for me at six' o'clock, near the bottom 
 of Great Titchfield-street, which had been our cus- 
 tomary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent 
 our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of 
 
 25 Oxford-street. This, and other measures of precaution. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 51 
 
 I took : one only I forgot. She had either never told 
 me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had for- 
 gotten, 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 5 
 style themselves — Miss Douglas, Miss Montague, &g. 
 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 10 
 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 15 
 being spent in comforting her with hopes, and in 
 pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medi- 
 cines for a violent cough and hoarseness with which 
 she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too 
 late to recal her. 20 
 
 It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Glou- 
 cester Coffee-house : and, the Bristol Mail being on 
 the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The 
 °fine fluent motion of this Mail soon laid me asleep : 
 it is somewhat remarkable, that the first easy or 25 
 
52 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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. Con- 
 nected with this sleep was a little incident, which 
 5 served, as hundreds of others did at that time, to con- 
 vince 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 multitudinous compass of their several harmonies 
 reduced to the meagre outline of differences expressed 
 in the gamut or ali)habet of elementary sounds. .The 
 case was this : for the first four or five miles from 
 London, I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof 
 
 20 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 Aveakness. Of this annoyance he com- 
 plained heavily, as perhaps, in the same circumstances 
 
 25 'most people would; he expressed his complaint, how- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 53 
 
 ever, more morosely than the occasion seemed to war- 
 rant ; 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 5 
 I had given him some cause for complaint : and, there- 
 fore, 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 10 
 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 15 
 efforts I had fallen asleep again within two minutes 
 from the time I had sfjoken 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 20 
 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 refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after 25 
 
54 . CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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, a-head of 
 
 5 Salt-hill. 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 down the lane from Slough to Eton. The air and the 
 sleep had both refreshed me ; but I was weary never- 
 theless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and 
 which has been °prettily expressed by a Koman poet) 
 which gave me some consolation at that moment under 
 
 20 my poverty. There had been some time before a mur- 
 der 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 
 
 25 step of my progress was bringing me nearer to the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 55 
 
 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 [Altamont], heir by gen- 
 eral repute to 70,000?. per ann., what a panic should 
 I be under at this moment about my throat ! — indeed, 
 it was not likely that Lord [Altamont] should ever be 
 in my situation. But nevertheless, the spirit of the 
 remark remains true — that vast power and posses- 
 sions make a man shamefully afraid of dying : and I 
 am convinced that many of the most intrepid adven- 
 turers, who, by fortunately being poor, enjoy the full 
 use of their natural courage, would, if at the very 
 instant of going into action news were brought to 
 them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an 
 estate in England of 50,000/. a-year, feel their dislike 
 to bullets considerably sharpened — and their efforts 
 at perfect equanimity and self-possession proportion- 
 ably difficult. So true it is, in the language of a 
 wise man whose own experience had made him 
 
5G CONFESSIOyS OF AN 
 
 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. 
 
 Farad. Begained. 
 
 5 I dally with niy subject because, to myself, the re- 
 membrance 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, 
 
 o 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 
 
 5 person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth 
 robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it re- 
 garded 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 
 
 o 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 morn- 
 ing it had changed to a slight frost : and the ground 
 and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 57 
 
 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 5 
 gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, 
 they answered me civilly. My friend. Lord [Alta- 
 mont], was gone to the University of [Cambridge]. 
 °' Ibi omnis effusus labor ! ' I had, however, other 
 friends at Eton : but it is not to all who wear that 10 
 name in prosperity that a man is willing to present 
 himself in distress. On recollecting myself, however, 
 I asked for the Earl of D[esart], to whom, (though my 
 acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with 
 some others) I should not have shrunk from pre- 15 
 senting myself under any circumstances. He was 
 still at Eton, though I believe on the wing for Cam- 
 bridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to 
 breakfast. 
 
 Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader 20 
 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 pretention to rank or high blood. I thank God 
 that I have not : — I am the son of a plain English 25 
 
58 CONFJESSIONS OF AN 
 
 merchant, esteemed during his life for his great in 
 tegrity, 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 30,000Z. 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 inteUectual 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[esart] 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, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 59 
 
 the first °" good man's table, '^ that I had sate down to 
 for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce 
 eat anything. On the day when I first received my 
 10/. Bank-note, I had gone to a baker's shop and 
 bought a couple of rolls : this very shop I had two 5 
 months or six weeks before surveyed with an eager- 
 ness 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 10 
 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 15 
 acidity, sometimes immediately, and without any 
 acidity. On the present occasion, at Lord D[esart]'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 20 
 wine: I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord 
 D[esart], and gave him a short account of my late 
 sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, 
 and called for Avine. This gave me a momentary 
 relief and pleasure ; and on all occasions when I had 25 
 
60 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk ; and 
 by a better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps ef- 
 fectually, have been revived. I hope that it was not 
 from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbour- 
 hood of my Eton friends : I persuaded myself tJien 
 
 lo that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D[esart], 
 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[esart], whose good 
 
 15 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, 
 
 20 faultered, nevertheless, at this request. He acknow- 
 ledged 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 
 
 25 were so much more bounded than those of [his cou- 
 
E^^GLISH OPIUM-EATER 61 
 
 sin], would avail with my unchristian friends. How- 
 ever, 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[esart] 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 sur- 
 veying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as 
 those of a °Saracen's head. 
 
 Kecomforted 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 Wind- 
 sor 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[esart]'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 
 
62 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 5 opening was made, almost by accident, for reconcili- 
 ation with my friends. I quitted London, in haste, 
 for a remote part of England: after some time, I pro- 
 ceeded to the university ; and it was not until many 
 months had passed away, that I had it in my power 
 
 10 again to re-visit the ground which had become so inter- 
 esting to me, and to this day remains so, as the chief 
 scene of my youthful sufferings. 
 
 Meantime, what had become of poor Anne? For 
 her I have reserved my concluding words : according 
 
 15 to our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for 
 her every night, so long as I staid 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 activ- 
 
 20 ity 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 
 
 25 from her landlord, which made it probable that she 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 63 
 
 had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She 
 had few acquaintance ; most people, besides, thought 
 that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from mo- 
 tives which moved their laughter, or their slight re- 
 gard; and others, thinking I was in chase of a girl 5 
 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 des- 
 pairing resource, on the day I left London I put into 
 the hands of the only person who (I was sure) must ic 
 know Anne by sight, from having, been in company 
 with us once or twice, an address to [the Priory] in 
 [Chester]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 i- 
 with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. — If 
 she lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes 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 2c 
 in 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, 2= 
 
64 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 many myriads of female faces, in the liope 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 conso- 
 lation. 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.° 
 
KNGLtsn OPtUM-EATER 65 
 
 PART II 
 
 So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted step-mother ! 
 thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drink- 
 est 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; 5 
 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 foot- 
 steps — inheritors of our calamities : other orphans 
 than Ann have sighed : tears have been shed by other 10 
 children : and thou, Oxford-street, hast since, doubt- 
 less, 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 15 
 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 contem- 
 plative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the 
 most part in serenity and peace of mind. And, 20 
 
66 CON-FESSIONS OF AN 
 
 although it is true that the calamities of my novici- 
 ate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily 
 constitution that afterwards they shot up and flour- 
 ished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that 
 5 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 sympa- 
 thising affection — how deep and tender ! 
 
 lo 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, 
 
 15 during my first mournful abode in London, my conso- 
 lation 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 
 
 20 eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and 
 part in shade, " that is °the road to the North, and 
 therefore to [Grasmere], 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 
 
 25 very northern region it was, even in that very valley. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 67 
 
 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 5 
 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 balm for his wounded heart and his haunted 
 brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind 10 
 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 consola- 
 tions which had not been hoped. I, therefore, who 15 
 participated, as it were, in the troubles of Orestes 
 (excepting only in his agitated conscience), partici- 
 pated 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 defraud- 20 
 ing herself of sleep to bear me company through the 
 heavy watches of the night, sate my Electra : for 
 thou, beloved °M[argaret], dear companion of my later 
 years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in nobility 
 of mind nor in long-suffering affection, wouldst per- 25 
 
68 CONFESSION'S OF AN 
 
 mit that a Grecian sister should excel an English 
 wife. For thou thoughtst not much to stoop to 
 humble offices of kindness, and to °servile ministrations 
 of tenderest affection; — to wipe away for years the 
 
 5 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 
 
 10 that oftentimes bade me °" sleep no more ! " — not 
 even then, didst thou utter a complaint or any mur- 
 mur, 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 
 
 15 the daughter of the °king of men, yet wept sometimes, 
 and °hid her face in her robe. 
 
 But these troubles are past: and thou wilt read 
 these records of a period so dolorous to us both as 
 the legend of some hideous dream that can return no 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 separated from thee by three hundred miles, and the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 69 
 
 length of three dreary months, — I look up the streets 
 that run northwards from Oxford-street, upon moon- 
 light nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation 
 of anguish ; — and remembering that thou art sitting 
 alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very 5 
 house to which my heart turned in its blindness nine- 
 teen 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 : — 10 
 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 15 
 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 for- 
 gotten its date : but cardinal events are not to be 20 
 forgotten ; and from circumstances connected with it, 
 I remember that it must be referred to the autumn 
 
70 CONFJ^SSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 accus- 
 tomed to wash my head in cold water at least once a 
 day : being suddenly seized with tooth-ache I attrib- 
 uted it to some relaxation caused by an accidental 
 intermission of that practice; jumped put of bed; 
 plunged my head into a bason of cold water ; and with 
 hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, 
 as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheu- 
 matic 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 remem- 
 brances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a 
 mystic importance attached to the minutest circum- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 71 
 
 stances 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 after- 
 noon, 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 drug- 
 gist'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 Pan- 
 theon, 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 re- 
 
72 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 moved 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, 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 mys- 
 tery 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 the inner spirit! what an 
 apocalypse of the world within me ! That my pains 
 had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes : — this neg- 
 ative effect was s\Vallowed 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 ^cfyapfxaKov vrj-n-evOc^i for all hu- 
 man 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 73 
 
 bottle : and peace of mind could be sent down in gal- 
 lons 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 5 
 complexion ; and in his happiest state, the opium-eater 
 cannot present himself in the character of °V Allegro : 
 even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes °Il Pense- 
 roso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way 
 of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery : 10 
 and, unless when I am checked by some more power- 
 ful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this in- 
 decent 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 indul- 15 
 gences of that sort, I shall endeavour to be as grave, 
 if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mer- 
 curial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely 
 reputed. 
 
 And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects : 20 
 for upon all that has been hitherto written on the sub- 
 ject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who 
 may plead their privilege of lying as an old imme- 
 morial right), or by professors of medicine, writing 
 °ex cathedra, — I have but one emphatic criticism to 25 
 
74 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 be- 
 came convinced that the London newspapers spoke 
 5 truth at least twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Sat- 
 urday, 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 af- 
 
 10 firmed by the learned, that opium is a dusky brown 
 in colour; and this, take notice, 1 grant: secondly, that 
 it is rather dear, which also I grant : for in my time 
 East-India opium has been three guineas a pound, and 
 Turkey eight : and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal 
 
 15 of it, most probably you must — do what is particu- 
 larly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. 
 °die. 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, 
 
 20 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. 
 
 25 First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 75 
 
 granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or 
 incidentally, that it does, or can, produce intoxication. 
 Now, reader, assure yourself, °meo periculo, 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 resem- 
 bling 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, of 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 
 
76 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives 
 a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation to 
 the contempts and the admirations, the loves and the ha- 
 treds, of the drinker : opium, on the contrary, commun- 
 5 icates 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 
 
 lo 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 remark- 
 able difference, that in the sudden development of kind- 
 heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is 
 
 15 always more or less of a maudlin character, which ex- 
 poses it to the contempt of the by-stander. 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, 
 
 20 incident to opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy 
 restoration to that state which, the mind would natu- 
 rally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irri- 
 tation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with 
 the impulses of a heart originally just and good. True 
 
 25 it is, that even wine, up to a certain point, and with 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 77 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of 
 any man, that he is disguised in liquor : for, on the con- 
 trary, most men are disguised by sobriety ; and it is 
 when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says 
 in °Athen8enus), that men eavTov<i e^^avt'^ovo-ti/ oiVti/e? daCv 
 — display themselves in their true complexion of char- 
 acter ; which surely is not disguising themselves. But 
 still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurd- 
 ity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it 
 is sure to volatilize and to disperse the intellectual 
 energies : whereas opium always seems to compose 
 what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had 
 been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, 
 a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, 
 and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into 
 supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, 
 part of his nature : but the opium-eater (I speak of 
 him who is not suffering from any disease, or other 
 remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of 
 
78 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 sub- 
 5 ject of opium : of which church I acknowledge my- 
 self 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 : 
 Avhereas most of the ^unscientific authors who have 
 
 10 at all treated of opium, and even of those who have 
 written expressly on the materia medica, make it evi- 
 dent, 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 
 
 15 met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxi- 
 cating 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 
 
 20 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 °primd facie, and of necessity, an absurd one : 
 but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he in- 
 
 25 sisted that both his enemies and his friends were in 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 79 
 
 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 Avith 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 ]ne 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 pur- 
 sue an argument which must have presumed a man 
 mistaken in a point belonging to his own profession, 
 that I did not press hiin even when his course of argu- 
 ment 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 respon- 
 dent. 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 7000 drops a day ; and, though it was not 
 
80 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 main- 
 tained 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 re- 
 covering 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 pro- 
 portionate depression, and that the natural and even 
 immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagna- 
 tion, 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. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 81 
 
 °Witli 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 5 
 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 10 
 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, 15 
 on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that 
 the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is 
 likely to stupify the faculties of an Englishman, I 
 shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, 
 rather than argumentatively) describe the way in 20 
 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 25 
 
82 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pro- 
 nounced 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 [Norfolk] 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 ivithout 
 sugar.'' No: as I have said, I seldom drank lauda- 
 num, 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 °Gras- 
 sini 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 even- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 83 
 
 ing. 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 5 
 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 °Androm- 10 
 ache, 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 15 
 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 20 
 than one thing said adequately on the subject of 
 music in all literature : it is a ^passage in the Relkjio 
 Medici of Sir T. Brown ; and, though chiefly remark- 
 able for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, 
 inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical 25 
 
84 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 re-action of 
 5 the mind upon the notices of the ear, (the matter com- 
 ing by the senses, the fonn from the mind) that the 
 pleasure is constructed : and therefore it is that peo- 
 ple of equally good ear differ so much in this point 
 from one another. Now opium, by greatly increasing 
 
 10 the activity of the mind generally, increases, of neces- 
 sity, 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 
 
 15 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 avail- 
 able in such a case, has a language of representative 
 feelings. °But this is a subject foreign to my present 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 upon : but the detail of its incidents removed, or 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 85 
 
 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 5 
 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 under- lo 
 stand 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 15 
 heard spoken. 
 
 These were my Opera pleasures : but another pleas- 
 ure I had which, as it could be had only on a Satur- 
 day night, occasionally struggled with my love of the 
 Opera ; for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were 20 
 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 auto-biographers of fair 
 reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had 25 
 
86 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 as it was a summons to hear Grassini ? True, most 
 logical reader : what you say is unanswerable. And 
 yet so it Avas 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, 
 
 lo 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 : 
 
 15 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 to the poor : in this point the most hos- 
 
 20 tile 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 
 
 25 Saturday night, as though I also were released from 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 87 • 
 
 some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and 
 some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, there- 
 fore, 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 5 
 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 on a Satur- 
 day night, for laying out their wages. Many a family 
 party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes 10 
 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. Some- 15 
 times 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 far more philosophic than the rich 20 
 — that they show a more ready and cheerful submis- 
 sion 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 dis- 25 
 
88 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 cussion, 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 
 5 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 com- 
 
 lo pliance 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 seek- 
 
 15 ing 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 enigmati- 
 cal entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets 
 
 20 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 °terr(e ijicognitm, and doubted, whether they had 
 
 25 yet been laid down in the modern charts of London. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 89 
 
 For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant 
 years, when the human face tyrannized over my 
 dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London 
 came back and haunted my sleep, Avith the feeling of 
 perplexities vmoral or intellectual, that brought con- 5 
 fusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the 
 conscience. 
 
 Thus I have shown that opium does not, of neces- 
 sity, produce inactivity or torpor; but that, on the 
 contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres. 10 
 Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and thea- 
 tres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, 
 Avhen 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 15 
 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 wdio, upon my 20 
 first entrance at college, was nearly falling into a 
 deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the suf- 
 ferings which I had witnessed in London, was suffi- 
 ciently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts 
 to do all I could to counteract them. — I was, indeed, 25 
 
90 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 o 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[iverpool], at 
 
 5 about the same distance, that I have sate from sun-set 
 
 to sun-rise, 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 
 
 o 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[iverpool] represented the earth, with its 
 
 5 sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 91 
 
 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 uproas 5 
 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 10 
 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. 15 
 
 °0h ! 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 ]3ur- 20 
 poses 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 ob- 
 livion for 
 
 ° Wrongs uiiredress'd, and insults unavenged; 25 
 
92 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 buiklest upon the bosom 
 
 5 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 
 °Hekat6nipylos : and °" from the anarchy of dreaming 
 sleep," callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried 
 
 lo 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 ! 
 
 INTEODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM 
 
 Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all 
 15 my readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I 
 shall shock them too much to count on their cour- 
 tesy), 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 
 20 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 93 
 
 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 to say, in the same condition 
 with many thousand excellent books in the °Bodleian, 5 
 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 10 
 vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c. 
 which occasional resemblances in the present genera- 
 tion of tea-cups, &c. remind me of having once pos- 
 sessed, but of whose departure and final fate I, in 
 common with most gownsmen of either university, 15 
 could give, I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural 
 history. The persecutions of the chapel-bell, sound- 
 ing its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins, 
 interrupts my slumbers no longer: the porter who 
 rang it, upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid 20 
 with copper) I wrote, in retaliation, so many °Grreek 
 epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has 
 ceased to disturb anybody : and I, and many others, 
 who suffered much from his tintinnabulous propen- 
 sities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and 25 
 
94 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 Avorthy gentle- 
 men, and disturbs their peace of mind : but as to me, 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 amongst 
 the mountains ? Taking opium. Yes, but what else? 
 Why, reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, 
 
 15 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, 
 
 20 living in a cottage ; and with a single female servant 
 °(lioni soit qui mal y pense), -who, amongst my neigh- 
 bours, passes by the name of my "house-keeper." 
 And, as a scholar and a man of learned education, 
 and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume to 
 
 25 class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 95 
 
 body called gentlemen. Partly on the ground I have 
 assigned, perhaps ; jjartly 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 5 
 of modern England, I am usually addressed on letters, 
 «&c. esquire, though having, I fear, in the rigorous con- 
 struction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that 
 distinguished honour: yes, in popular estimation, I 
 am °X. Y. Z., esquire, but not Justice of the Peace, 10 
 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 15 
 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 20 
 of medical men, I ought to be ill, I never was better in 
 my life than in the spring of 1812 ; and I hope sin- 
 cerely, 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 25 
 
96 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 lo 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 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 had suffered much in 
 bodily health from °distress of mind connected with 
 
 25 a very melancholy event. This event, being no ways 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 97 
 
 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 5 
 most "appalling irritation of the stomach, in all re- 
 spects 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 ro 
 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 15 
 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 20 
 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). 25 
 
98 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 thought of. It remains, then, that I post-date so much 
 as is necessary for my purpose. And let me take as 
 full credit for what I postulate as if I had demon- 
 -strated it, good reader, at the expense of your patience 
 and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer 
 
 [0 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 pru- 
 dence : for, if not, then in the next edition of my 
 
 [5 Opium Confessions revised and enlarged, I will make 
 you believe and tremble : and °d fo7xe d^enmtyer, 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. 
 
 JO 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, 
 
 !5 and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 99 
 
 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 ]3alliation ; but, shall I speak 
 ingenuously ? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of 
 mine, that I am too much of an ^Eudsemonist : T han- 
 ker 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 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 mortifi- 
 
 L. oi o. 
 
100 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 cation upon any cruising voyage of moral improve- 
 ment, must make it clear to my understanding that 
 tlie concern is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six- 
 and-thirty years of age) it cannot be supposed that I 
 
 5 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. 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 surrender '-the little golden receptacle of the perni- 
 cious drug." No : I give notice to all, whether moral- 
 ists 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 
 
 25 think to begin by any savage proposition for a Lent 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 101 
 
 or 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 for- 5 
 ward about three years more. Now draw up the cur- 
 tain, 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 10 
 all cry out — Hear him ! Hear him ! — As to the hap- 
 piest day, that must be very difficult for any wise man 
 to name : because any event, that could occupy so dis- 
 tinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life, or 
 be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one 15 
 day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as 
 that (accidents ajjart) 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 20 
 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 25 
 
102 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 con- 
 
 5 siderable effort, from 320 grains of opium (i.e. eight 
 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 
 
 [o have seen roll away from the summits of mountains, 
 drew off in one day °(vvx07]fx€pov) ; passed off with its 
 murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has 
 been stranded, and is floated off by a spring tide — 
 
 °Tliat moveth altogether, if it move at all. 
 
 [5 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 under- 
 
 !o stood 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 unpretend- 
 ing cottage, I should have welcomed him with as 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 103 
 
 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, 5 
 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 fear- 
 fully than could be imagined. One day a Malay 
 knocked at my door. What business a Malay could 10 
 have to transact amongst English mountains, I cannot 
 conjecture : but possibly he was on his road to a sea- 
 port about forty miles distant. 
 
 The servant who opened the door to him was a 
 young girl born and bred amongst the mountains, who 15 
 had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort : his tur- 
 ban, therefore, confounded her not a little : and, as it 
 turned out, that his attainments in English were ex- 
 actly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there 
 seemed to be an °impassable gulph fixed between all 20 
 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), 25 
 
104 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 immedi- 
 ately go down : but, when I did, the group which 
 5 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 exhib- 
 ited in the ballets at the Opera House, though so 
 ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage 
 
 lo 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 him- 
 
 15 self nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish; 
 though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity con- 
 tended 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 
 
 20 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, 
 
 25 fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and ad- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 105 
 
 orations. 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 revert- 
 ing its head, and gazing upwards at the turban and 
 the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he 5 
 caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. 
 My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remark- 
 ably extensive, being indeed confined to two words — 
 the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium 
 (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius. 10 
 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 pos- 
 sessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came geographi- 15 
 cally nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me 
 in a most devout manner, and replied in what I sup- 
 pose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation 
 with my neighbours; for the Malay had no micans 
 of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor 20 
 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 con- 
 vinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with 21; 
 
106 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 some little coiisternation when I saw him suddenly 
 raise his hand to his month, and (in the school-boy 
 phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at 
 one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three 
 5 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 
 
 lo 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. 
 
 15 ^o: 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 to opium : and that I must 
 have done him the service I designed, by giving him 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 107 
 
 worse than himself, that ran ° " a-nuick '^ at me, and 
 led me into a world of troubles. — But to quit this 
 episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happi- 
 ness. 1 have said already, that on a subject so impor- 
 tant to us all as happiness, we should listen with 5 
 pleasure to any man's experience or experiments, even 
 though he were but a plough-boy, who cannot be sup- 
 posed to have ploughed very deep into such an intrac- 
 table soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to 
 have conducted his researches upon any very enlight- 10 
 ened principles. But I, who have taken happiness, 
 both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and 
 unboiled, both East India and Turkey — who have 
 conducted my experiments upon this interesting sub- 
 ject with a sort of galvanic battery — and have, for 15 
 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 20 
 not of wdiat nation, with hydrophobia), — / (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 didacti- 25 
 
108 CONFL'SSIOJVS OF AN 
 
 cally, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one 
 evening, as I spent every evening during the interca- 
 lary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to 
 me no more than the elixir of pleasure. This done, I 
 5 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, 18 
 miles from any town — no spacious valley, but about 
 two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average 
 
 10 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 and 
 
 15 4000 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 shape. This is a most important point in the science 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 109 
 
 of happiness. And I am surprised to see people over- 
 look 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 annu- 
 ally, 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 at- 
 tend a winter fire-side : candles at four o'clock, warm 
 hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, cur- 
 tains 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 every body 
 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. [Clarkson] 
 
110 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 says) "you may lean your back against it like a post,'' 
 1 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 Eussian 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 in- 
 fluence 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 %eUum 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 111 
 
 internecimmi against °Joiias Hanway, or any other 
 impious person, who shoukl 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, ex- 
 cept 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 grad- 
 ually 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. 
 
112 COJSrFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 if you know how to paint siicli a thing symboli- 
 cally, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — 
 eternal °ci parte ante, and °cl parte post ; for I usually 
 drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock 
 
 5 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 [argaret], not even in jest let me insinuate that 
 
 o 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 
 
 5 brought forward should naturally be myself — a i)ic- 
 ture of the Opium-eater, with his "little golden re- 
 ceptacle 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 
 
 JO original : you may paint it, if you choose ; but I 
 apprize 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 
 
 25 receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 113 
 
 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 neighbour- 
 hood; but, as to myself, — there I demur. I admit 5 
 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 10 
 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, 15 
 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, 20 
 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 happi- 25 
 
114 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 ness 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. 
 
 5 °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 
 
 to 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 Bevolt of Islam. 
 
 Eeader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must 
 [5 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 
 
 20 disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them 
 
 up from memory. Some of them point to their own 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 115 
 
 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 pres- 
 ent, sometimes in the x^ast tense. Few of the notes, 5 
 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 10 
 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 help- 
 less sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own 15 
 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 confiden- 
 tial and communicative of my own private history. It 20 
 may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think 
 aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to con- 
 sider 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 25 
 
116 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of 
 fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and sup- 
 pose myself writing to those who will be interested 
 about me hereafter ; and wishing to have some record 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 sup- 
 
 . posed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. 
 
 15 The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made at- 
 tempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, 
 that those who witnessed the agonies of those at- 
 tempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to 
 desist. But could not have I reduced it a drop a 
 
 20 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 experi- 
 
 25 mentally ; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 111 
 
 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 suffer- 
 ing. 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 antici- 
 pate, 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 can- 
 not 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 accom- 
 plishment of mine ; and, in the slang use of the word 
 
118 CONFi:SSIONS OF AN 
 
 accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain- 
 ment, almost the only one I possess : and formerly, if 
 I had any vanity at all connected with any endow- 
 ment or attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I 
 
 5 had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. 
 Players are the worst readers of all: °[John Kemble] 
 reads vilely: and °Mrs. [Siddons], who is so cele- 
 brated, can read nothing well but dramatic composi- 
 tions : Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in 
 
 lo 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 any- 
 thing in books, it has been by the °grand lamentations 
 of Samson Agonistes, or the °great harmonies of the 
 
 15 Satanic speeches in Paradise Kegained, when read 
 aloud by myself. A °young lady sometimes comes 
 and drinks tea with us: at her request and M[ar- 
 garet]'s, I now and then read W[ordsworth]'s poems 
 to them. (W[ords worth], by the bye, is the only poet 
 
 20 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. 
 
 25 The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 119 
 
 as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But 
 my proper vocation, as I well knew, 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. 5 
 ^lathematics, 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 10 
 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 15 
 title of an unfinished work of °Spinosa's ; viz. De 
 emendatione hamani 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 surviving 20 
 me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspira- 
 tions, 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, 25 
 
120 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 under- 
 standing, which formerly had been as active and rest- 
 less 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 re-acts 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[argaret] 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 121 
 
 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 5 
 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 10 
 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 pro- 
 found work been really written in England during the 15 
 nineteenth century ? Was it possible ? I supposed 
 "thinking 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 20 
 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. Eicardo had deduced, °d 
 priori, from the understanding itself, laws which 25 
 
122 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 under- 
 standing 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[argaret] 
 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 1 could express or illustrate them more 
 briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in 
 the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, 
 the whole w^ould not have filled a pocket-book; and 
 being so brief, with M[argaret] for my amanuensis, 
 even at this time, incapable as I was of all general 
 exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all future 
 /Si/stetns 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, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 123 
 
 about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An 
 additional compositor was retained, for some days, 
 on this account. The work was even twice adver- 
 tised : and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfil- 
 ment of my intention. But I had a preface to write ; 5 
 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 counter- 
 manded: the compositor dismissed: and my " Prolego- 
 mena" rested peacefully by the side of its elder and 10 
 more dignified brother. 
 
 I have thus described and illustrated my intel- 
 lectual 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 15 
 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 accom- 
 plish; and often that not until the letter had lain 20 
 weeks, or even months, on my writing table. With- 
 out the aid of M[argaret] all records of bills paid or 
 to he paid must have perished : and my whole domes- 
 tic economy, whatever became of Political Economy, 
 must have gone into irretrievable confusion. — I shall 25 
 
124 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 
 5 embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrasti- 
 nation of each day's approj)riate 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, 
 
 10 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 apprehen- 
 sion of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, 
 not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. 
 
 15 He lies under the weight of incubus and night-mare: 
 he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, 
 just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mor- 
 tal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to 
 witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his 
 
 20 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. 
 
 25 I now pass to what is the main subject of these 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 125 
 
 latter confessions, to the history and journal of what 
 took place in my dreams ; for these were the imme- 
 diate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. 
 
 The first notice I had of any important change 
 going on in this part of my ^Dhysical economy, was 5 
 from the re-awakening 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 10 
 some, that power is simply a mechanic affection of 
 the eye ; others have a voluntary, or a semi-voluntary 
 power to dismiss or to summon them ; or, as a child 
 once said to me when I questioned him on this mat- 
 ter, °" I can tell them to go, and they go ; but some- 15 
 times they come, when I don't tell them to come." 
 Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlim- 
 ited a command over apparitions, as a Koman centu- 
 rion over his soldiers. — In the middle of 1817, I 
 think it was, that this faculty became positively 20 
 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 °(li]dipus or °Priam — before °Tyre — 25 
 
126 aoxFESSiuNS of an 
 
 before "Memphis. And, at tlie same time a corre- 
 sponding change took place in my dreams ; a theatre 
 seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my 
 brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 human desires, so whataeever things capable of being 
 visually represented I did but think of in the dark- 
 ness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms 
 of the eye ; and, by a process apparently no less in- 
 evitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 127 
 
 words. I seemed every night to descend, not meta- 
 phorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and 
 sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it 
 seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor 
 did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended. This 5 
 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 despon- 
 dency, cannot be approached by words. 
 
 3. The sense of space, and in the end, the sense 1° 
 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 unutter- 
 able infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so 15 
 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 ex- 20 
 perience. 
 
 4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgot- 
 ten 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 25 
 
128 con'fessio:n's of an 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances and accompanying feelings, I recogyiised them 
 5 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, 
 
 lo arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; 
 and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for com- 
 prehending 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 possible to the mind ; a thousand accidents may, and 
 will interpose a veil between our present conscious- 
 ness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; acci- 
 dents of the same sort will also rend away this veil ; 
 but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription 
 
 25 remains for ever ; just as the stars seem to with- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 129 
 
 draw 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 with- 
 drawn. 5 
 
 Having noticed these four facts as memorably dis- 
 tinguishing 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 lo 
 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 15 
 most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphati- 
 cally representative of the majesty of the Eoman 
 people, the two words so often occurring in Livy — 
 Consul Eomanus ; especially when the consul is in- 
 troduced in his military character. I mean to say 20 
 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 min- 25 
 
130 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 utely and critically familipa' with one period of Eng- 
 lish 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 re- 
 hearsal 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- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 131 
 
 quaking sound of Consul Bomanus : and immediately 
 came °" sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, 
 °Paulus or Marius, girt round by a company of cen- 
 turions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, 
 and followed by the °aIalagmos of the Roman legions. 5 
 
 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 10 
 (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's ac- 
 count) 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. 15 
 Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceive a 
 staircase ; and upon it, groping his way upwards, w^as 
 Piranesi himself : follow the stairs a little further, and 
 you perceive it come to a sudden and abrupt termina- 
 tion, without any balustrade, and allowing no step 20 
 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 25 
 
132 CON-FESSIONS OF AN 
 
 which again Piranesi is perceived, but this time stand- 
 ing 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 aspir- 
 ing 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 splendor— 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 133 
 
 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 ludi- 
 crous 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 
 
134 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 I have suffered greatly in my head, — a part of my bod- 
 ily 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 head-ach 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 be- 
 came 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 answer- 
 able 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, wrath- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 135 
 
 ful, despairing, surged upward by thousands, by myr- 
 iads, 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 hnman 
 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 capri- 
 cious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes else- 
 where, affect him in the Avay 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 
 
1.3G confjlSsions of an 
 
 overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A 
 young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man re- 
 newed. 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 asso- 
 ciated 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 137 
 
 connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sun- 
 lights, 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 5 
 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 paroquets, 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 10 
 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 trem- 15 
 bled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone 
 coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow cham- 
 bers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, 
 with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; and laid, con- 
 founded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst 20 
 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. 25 
 
138 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 Sooner or later, came a reflux of feeling that swal- 
 lowed 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 to 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 com- 
 pelled to live with him ; and (as was always the case 
 
 15 almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped some- 
 times, and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane 
 tables, &c. All the feet of the tables, sophas, &c. 
 soon became instinct with life : the abominable head 
 of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at 
 
 20 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 every- 
 
 25 thing when I am sleeping) ; and instantly I awoke : 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 139 
 
 it was broad noon ; and my children were standing, 
 hand in hand, at my bed-side ; 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 5 
 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. 10 
 
 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 
 °{ccBteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in 
 any other season of the year. And the reasons are 15 
 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 20 
 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 
 
140 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 characters of the Infinite : and, thirdly, (which is tlie 
 main reason) the exuberant and riotous prodigality of 
 life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon 
 the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry 
 5 sterility of the grave. For it may be observed, gen- 
 erally, 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 
 
 lo 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 
 
 15 incident which I omit, might have been the imme- 
 diate 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, 
 
 20 which often suddenly re-united, 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 
 
 25 the door of my own cottage. Eight before me lay the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 141 
 
 very scene which could really be commanded from that 
 situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by 
 the power of dreams. There were the same mountains, 
 and the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the moun- 
 tains 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, except- 
 ing that in the green church-yard there were cattle 
 tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and par- 
 ticularly round about the grave of a °child whom I 
 had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, 
 a little before sun-rise 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 sun-rise ; and it is Easter Sunday ; and that 
 is the day on which they celebrate the °first fruits of 
 resurrection. °1 will walk abroad ; old griefs shall be 
 forgotten to-day ; for the air is cool and still, and the 
 hill are high, and stretch away to Heaven; and the 
 forest-glades are as quiet as the church-yard ; and 
 with the dew I can wash the fever from my fore- 
 head, and then I shall be unhappy no longer." And 
 I turned, as if to open my garden gate ; and immedi- 
 ately I saw upon the left a scene far different; but 
 
142 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into 
 harmony with the other. The scene was an Orien- 
 tal one ; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and 
 very early in the morning. And at a vast distance 
 5 were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes 
 and cupolas of a great city — an image or faint ab- 
 straction, 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamp- 
 light 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 
 
 20 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 counte- 
 nance grew dim, and, turning to the mountains, I 
 
 25 perceived vapours rolling between us ; in a moment, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-?: ATER 143 
 
 all had vanished ; thick darkness came on ; and, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, I was far away from monn- 
 tains, and by lamp-light in Oxford-street, walking 
 again with Ann — just as we walked seventeen years 
 before, when we were both children. 5 
 
 As a °final specimen, I cite one of a different char- 
 acter, 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 lo 
 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 15 
 some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread 
 extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where — some- 
 how, 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; 20 
 with which my sympathy was the more insupportable 
 from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its na- 
 ture, and its x^ossible issue. I, as is usual in dreams, 
 (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to 
 every movement), had the power, and yet had not 25 
 
144 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 
 nie, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ° '' Deeper 
 5 than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, 
 like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater in- 
 terest 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: trepi- 
 
 10 dations 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 al- 
 
 15 lowed, — and clasped hands, and heart-breaking part- 
 ings, and then — everlasting farewells ! °and with a 
 sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the in- 
 cestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, 
 the sound was reverberated — everlasting farewells ! 
 
 20 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 Avind up a narrative 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 145 
 
 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 -5 
 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 pas- 
 sage near the beginning of the introduction to the first 
 part) that the opium-eater has, in some way or other, lo 
 "unwound, almost to its final links, the accursed chain 
 wdiich bound him." By what means ? To have nar- 
 rated this, according to the original intention, would 
 have far exceeded the space Avhich can now be allowed. 
 It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for 15 
 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 20 
 even f though a very inferior consideration) to injure 
 its effect as a composition. The interest of the judi- 
 cious 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 25 
 
146 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 of the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the 
 interest revolves. The object was to display the mar- 
 vellous 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 tor- 
 tures, 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. How- 
 ever, 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 147 
 
 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, Avrithing, 
 throbbing, palpitating, shattered ; and much, perhaps, 
 in the situation of him who has been racked, as I col- 
 lect the torments of that state from the affecting 
 account of them left by °a most innocent sufferer (of 
 the times of James I.). Meantime,,! derived no bene- 
 fit from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by 
 an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz. ammoni- 
 ated 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 mis- 
 lead. 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 
 
148 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 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 mo- 
 tives external to myself which he may unfortunately 
 want : and these supplied me with conscientious sup- 
 ports which mere personal interests might fail to sup- 
 ply to a mind debilitated by opium. 
 
 °Lord Bacon 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. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 149 
 
 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. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATER 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 °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 Keaders. That we are still 
 unable to fulfil our engagement in its original mean- 
 ing, 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 deter- 
 mined on reprinting it, some explanation seems called 15 
 for, to account for the non-appearance of a third part 
 
 151 
 
152 APPENDIX 
 
 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 
 
 5 to its non-fulhlment. This blame, in mere justice, 
 the author takes wholly upon himself. What may be 
 the exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropri- 
 ates, is a very dark question to his own judgment, 
 and not much illuminated by any of the masters in 
 
 lo casuistry whom he has consulted on the occasion. On 
 the one hand, it seems generally agreed that a prom- 
 ise 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 himself on the indidgent consideration of all who may 
 
APPENDIX 153 
 
 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 con- 
 tribute 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 experimentnm 
 in corpore vili is a just rule where there is any reason- 
 able 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 sea-worthy 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 
 
154 APPENDIX 
 
 must own that he should almost be ashamed to be- 
 queath his wretched structure to any respectable dog. 
 — But now to the case; which, for the sake of avoid- 
 ing the constant recurrence of a cumbersome periph- 
 rasis, 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 (compara- 
 tively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 
 and 160 drops, might well suppose that the victory 
 was in effect achieved. In suffering ray readers, 
 therefore, to think of me as of a reformed opium- 
 eater, I left no impression but what I shared my- 
 self; and, as may be seen, even this impression was 
 
APPENDIX 155 
 
 left to be collected from the general tone of the con- 
 chision, 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 5 
 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 increas- 
 ing callousness or defect of sensibility in the stomach ; 
 and this I imagined might imply a scirrhous state of lo 
 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 15 
 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 20 
 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 "punish- 
 ment." I must premise that about 170 or 180 drops 25 
 
156 APPENDIX 
 
 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 experi- 
 ment I had also gone as low as 100 drops; but had 
 5 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 
 
 lo 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. 
 
 15 I persevered in my abstinence for 90 hours; i.e. 
 upwards of half a week. Then I took — ask me not 
 how much : say, ye severest, wdiat would ye have 
 done ? Then I abstained again : then took about 25 
 drops : then abstained : and so on. 
 
 JO Meantime the symptoms which attended my case 
 for the first six weeks of the 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 
 
 23 pain : unceasing restlessness night and day : sleep — 
 
APPENDIX 157 
 
 I scarcely knew what it was : three hours out of the 
 twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agi- 
 tated and shallow that I heard every sound that was 
 near me : lower jaw constantly swelling: mouth ulcer- 
 ated : 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 sternu- 
 tation. 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 some- 
 where 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 inflam- 
 matory appearances about the nostrils of dram drink- 
 ers. 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 unfin- 
 ished fragment of a letter begun about this time to 
 1 find these words : " You ask me to write the 
 
158 APPENDIX 
 
 . Do you know °Beaiimont and Fletcher's 
 
 play of Thierry and Theodoret ? 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 
 5 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 decad of years by opium, had now, according to 
 the °old fable, been thawed at once — such a multitude 
 
 lo 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. 
 
 15 ° ' I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.'" 
 
 At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neigh- 
 bouring 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 : — 
 
 20 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 — 
 
 25 No: on the contrary he thought that the suffering 
 
APPENDIX 159 
 
 was caused by digestion itself — which should natu- 
 rally 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 percep- 
 tible. This opinion was plausible : and the uninter- 
 mitting 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 in- 
 termitted 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 circula- 
 tion 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 in- 
 stances, to counteract her purposes. — By the advice 
 of the surgeon I tried hitters : 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 remis- 
 sion, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss 
 them undescribed for two reasons : 1st, because the 
 mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any suf- 
 
160 APPENDIX 
 
 ferings 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 °"infan- 
 clum renovare dolorem,'^ and possibly without a suffi- 
 5 cient motive: for 2dly, I doubt whether this latter 
 state be anyway referable to opium — positively con- 
 sidered, 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 
 
 lo consequent upon a tvant of opium in a system long 
 deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symp- 
 toms 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 
 
 15 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 symptom, viz^ what in my ignorance I call internal 
 
APPENDIX 161 
 
 rlieiimatism (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 
 which I inhabit, which had about that time attained 5 
 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, 10 
 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 15 
 future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by 
 too vivid an ideal of possible human misery ! 
 
 So much for the sequel of my experiuient: as to 
 the former stage, in which properly lies the experi- 
 ment and its application to other cases, I must request 20 
 my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have 
 recorded it : these were two : 1st, 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 25 
 
162 APPENDIX 
 
 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 ac- 
 count, rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus 
 much of benefit may arise to the persons most inter- 
 ested 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 re- 
 nounced ; and without greater sufferings than an ordi- 
 nary resolution may support ; and by a °pretty rapid 
 course of descent. 
 
 To communicate this result of my experiment — 
 was my foremost purpose. 2dly, as a purpose collat- 
 eral 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 very 
 time of this experiment, the proof-sheets of this re- 
 print 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 troub- 
 ling my reader with any record, long or short, of 
 
APPENDIX 163 
 
 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 ras- 
 cally a subject for its own sake, or indeed for any less 5 
 object than that of general benefit to others. Such an 
 animal as the self-observing valetudinarian — I know 
 there is: T have met him myself occasionally : and I 
 know that he is the worst imaginable °lieautontimorou- 
 meiios; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into 10 
 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 self- 
 ish habit, that I could as little condescend to it as I 15 
 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 20 
 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 25 
 
1G4: APPENDIX 
 
 I say it. No man, I suppose, employs mucli 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 lo 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 
 
 15 hills, will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of 
 repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous °G-ol- 
 gothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of Surgeons' 
 Hall think that any benefit can redound to their sci- 
 ence from inspecting the appearances in the body of 
 
 20 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 : 
 
 25 I assure them they will do me too much honour by 
 
APPENDIX 165 
 
 ' 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 5 
 the death of the testator are indeed dangerous to an- 
 nounce in many cases : of this we have a remarkable 
 instance in the habits of a °Koman prince — who used, 
 upon any notification made to him by rich persons, 
 that they had left him a handsome estate in their ic 
 wills, to express his entire satisfaction at such arrange- 
 ments, and his gracious acceptance of those loyal leg- 
 acies : but then, if the testators neglected to give him 
 immediate possession of the property, if they traitor- 
 ously " persisted in living " {si vivere j^erseverarent, as 15 
 °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 sur- 
 geons at this day I need look for no expressions of 2c 
 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. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Page 1, line 13. decent drapery. " All the decent drapery 
 of life is to be rudely torn off." — Burke, Beflections on the 
 Eevolution in France. 
 
 Page 2, line 8. French literature. He here refers to Les 
 Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Les Con- 
 fessions was published posthumously, 1782. 
 
 1. 8. that part of the German. He refers to such books as 
 Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther, 1774. 
 
 Page 3, line 1. humbly to express. 
 
 " It was a solitary mound ; 
 Which two spears' length of level ground 
 Did from all other graves divide : 
 As if in some respect of pride ; 
 Or melancholy's sickly mood, 
 Still shy of human neighbourhood ; 
 Or guilt, that humbly would express 
 A penitential loneliness." 
 — Wordsworth, The White Doe of Rylstone, Canto I. 
 
 Page 4, line 3. not yet recorded. " ' Not yet recorded,^ I 
 say : for there is one celebrated man [Coleridge] of the present 
 day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly 
 exceeded me in quantity." — De Quincey''s Note. 
 
 167 
 
168 NOTES , [Page 5 
 
 Page 5, line 3. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) , the famous 
 philanthropist, advocate of Catholic Emancipation, and of the 
 abolition of the Slave Trade. The original text has a comma 
 after Wilberforce. 
 
 1. 4. the late Dean of Carlisle. Dr. Isaac Milner (1750- 
 1820). He v^^as an intimate friend of Wilberforce. Elected 
 president of Queen's College, Cambridge, 1788. Presented to 
 the deanery of Carlisle, 1791. 
 
 1. 4. Lord Erskine. Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) , the noted 
 orator and lavi^yer. 
 
 1. 5. Mr. , the philosopher. " Who is Mr. Dash, the 
 
 philosopher ? Really I have forgot. Not through any fault of 
 my own, but on the motion of some absurd coward having a 
 voice potential at. the press, all the names [in this sentence] 
 were struck out behind my back in the first edition of the book, 
 thirty -five years ago. I was not consulted, and did not discover 
 the absurd blanks until some months afterwards, when I was 
 taunted with them very reasonably by a caustic reviewer. Noth- 
 ing could have a more ludicrous effect than this appeal to 
 shadows — to my Lord Dash, to Dean Dash, and to Mr. Secre- 
 tary Dash. Very naturally it thus happened to Mr. Philosopher 
 Dash that his burning light, alas ! was extinguished irrecover- 
 ably in the general melee. Meantime, there was no excuse what- 
 ever for this absurd interference, such as might have been alleged 
 in any personality capable of causing pain to any one person 
 concerned. All the cases, except, perhaps, that of Wilberforce 
 (about which I have at this moment some slight lingering doubts) , 
 were matters of notoriety to large circles of friends. It Is due to 
 
Page 8] NOTES 169 
 
 Mr. John Taylor, the accomplished publisher of the work, that 
 I should acquit him ol any share in this absurdity." — De 
 Quincey''s Note (ed. 1856). 
 
 1. 5. a late Under-Secretary of State. Mr. Addington, 
 brother of Henry Addington first Lord Sidmouth (who suc- 
 ceeded Pitt as Prime Minister in 1800). 
 
 1.10. Mr. Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), 
 poet and critic ; best known by his Ancient 3Iariner and Kubla 
 Khan, poems closely related to the " visions " of the Confessions. 
 
 Page 6, line 20. That those eat now, etc. An adaptation of 
 the refrain in the Pervigilium Veneris, an anonymous Latin 
 poem of the second or third century a.d.; — 
 
 "Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit eras amet," 
 which Parnell (1679-1718) thus paraphrases : — 
 
 " Let those love now, who never lov'd before, 
 Let those who always lov'd, now love the more." 
 1. 24. Awsiter. John Awsiter, M.D. Died 1768. 
 
 Page 7, line 3. Mead. Richard Mead (1673-1754) , Physician 
 to George II. 
 
 1. 6. ^tavavra (twctoio-i. From Pindar (b.c. 522-443), 
 Olympian Odes, 2, 1. 152, meaning, "a word to the wise," or 
 " a word to those in the secret." This line is the legend of 
 Gray's TJie Progress of Poesy. 
 
 Page 8, line 21. whose talk is of oxen. " How can he get 
 wisdom that holdeth the plow, and that glorieth in the goad, that 
 driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk 
 is of bullocks? " — JEcclesiasticus xxxviii. 25. 
 
170 NOTES [Page 9 
 
 Page 9, line 5. Humani nihil a se alienum putat. An adap- 
 tation of the famous line in Terence's (about b.c. 195-159) play, 
 Heautontimorumenos : " Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum 
 puto." 
 
 1. 14. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. See note to p. 5, 1. 10. 
 
 1.16. David Ricardo (1772-1828). His most important book, 
 The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), laid 
 the foundations of the "classical" political economy more 
 securely than even Adam Smith. "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 w^riter w^hom I allude to, expressly addressed himself to philo- 
 sophical themes ; his riper povt^ers 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. Apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to 
 be considered an acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, 
 it 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)." — De Quincey''s Note. The 
 "third exception '' is probably William Hazlitt (1778-1830), 
 according to Garnett. 
 
 1. 18. inner eye. Compare Wordsworth, The Daffodils, 
 "inward eye." 
 
 1. 24. Scottish professors. " I disclaim any allusion to exist- 
 ing professors, of whom indeed 1 know only one." — De Quin- 
 
Page 13] NOTES 171 
 
 cey's Note. He refers to John Wilson, commonly known as 
 Christopher North (1785-1854), Professor of Moral Philosophy 
 in the University of Edinburgh, and author of Nodes Amhrosi- 
 ance^ a series of papers which appeared in BlackwoocVs Maga- 
 zine from 1822 to 1833. He was one of DeQuincey's most 
 intimate friends. 
 
 Page 10, line 19. a most painful affection of the stomach. 
 
 "I have, I believe, now fully established my proposition that 
 gastrodynia in its aggravated form is a terrible and distressing 
 disease ; and, in an aggravated form, I believe that Thomas De 
 Quincey suffered from it." — From Appendix I. of Japp, Thomas 
 De Quincey : His Life and Writings. {A Medical Vieiv of De 
 Quincey'' s Case, by Surgeon-Major W. C; B, Eatwell, M.D.) 
 
 Page 12, line 6. He who . . . scholar. Mr. Morgan, of Bath 
 Grammar School, where De Quincey was from 1796 to 1798. 
 
 1. 7. a ripe and a good one. 
 
 " He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one." 
 
 — Henry F///., IV., ii., 51. 
 Spoken of Cardinal Wolsey, by Griffith. 
 
 1. 11. blockhead. Eev. Edward Spencer, rector of Wink- 
 field, to whose private school De Quincey was transferred from 
 Bath School, in 1799, after a short trial of home tuition. 
 
 1. 13. respectable scholar. Mr. Lawson, head of the Man- 
 chester Grammar School, where De Quincey was sent, in 1800, 
 very much against his will, and from which he ran away (as he 
 tells us in the Confessions) in July, 1802. 
 
 Page 13, line 5. sacrifice to the graces. ' ' The Graces are the 
 
172 NOTES [Page 13 
 
 goddesses of grace, and of everything which lends charm and 
 beauty to nature and human life. Their names are Euphrosyn^ 
 (Joy), Thalia (Bloom), and Aglia (Brilliance)." — HarjMfs 
 Classical Dictionary. Hence the phrase means "to write 
 poetry." 
 
 1. 6. Sophocles. Born about b.c. 495, in the deme of 
 Colonus, near Athens. He brought Greek tragedy to its per- 
 fection. He died b.c. 405. 
 
 1. 8. Archididasculus. A humorous use of the Greek word 
 for " head-master." 
 
 1. 15. epigrams. The Greek epigram was simply a short 
 poem written in the elegiac couplet. The epigram with a point 
 was a Roman invention. It is probable that De Quincey uses it 
 in this latter sense, thus defined by Scaliger : — 
 
 *' The qualities rare in a bee that we meet, 
 In an epigram never should fail : 
 The body should always be little and sweet, 
 And a sting should be left in its tail." 
 
 Page 14, line 14. a woman of high rank. ' ' For the last three 
 years, in particular, Lady Carbery, a young woman some ten 
 years older than myself, and who was as remarkable for her 
 intellectual pretensions as she was for her beauty and benevo- 
 lence, had maintained a correspondence with me upon questions 
 of literature." — Confessions (ed. 1856), Works, III., p. 280. 
 Her maiden name was Watson, and she had taken a warm in- 
 terest in De Quincey from his childhood. 
 
 Page 15, line 7. a just remark of Dr. Johnson's. In his last 
 essay in The Idler (No. 103, Saturday, April 5, 1760) entitled 
 
Page 18] NOTES 173 
 
 The Horrour of the Last: "There are few things not purely- 
 evil, of whicli we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, 
 this is the last.''' Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), is perhaps the 
 greatest man of letters in English literature, and is the subject 
 of the greatest biography in English — Boswell's Life of John- 
 son. 
 
 Page 16, line 15. drest in earliest light. The editor has not 
 been able to find the source of this quotation. 
 
 Page 17, line 11, pensive citadel. 
 
 " Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; 
 And hermits are contented with their cells ; 
 And students with their pensive citadels. . . ." 
 
 — Wordsworth, Nuns Fret Not. 
 
 1. 17. dedicated to intellectual pursuits. Compare Words- 
 worth's statement that he felt himself " a dedicated Spirit." — 
 The Prelude, Bk. IV. 
 
 Page 18, line 2. the lovely . " The housekeeper was in 
 
 the habit of telling me that the lady had lived (meaning, perhaps, 
 had been born) two centuries ago ; that date would better agree 
 with the tradition that the portrait was a copy from Vandyke. 
 All that she knew further about the lady was that either to the 
 Grammar school, or to that particular college at Oxford with 
 which the school was connected, or else to that particular col- 
 lege at Oxford with which Mr. Lawson personally was con- 
 nected, or else, fourthly, to Mr. Lawson himself as a private 
 individual, the unknown lady had been a special benefactress. 
 She was also a special benefactress to me through eighteen 
 months by means of her sweet Madonna countenance. And 
 
174 NOTES [Page 18 
 
 in some degree it serves to spiritualize and to hallow this ser- 
 vice that of her v^ho imconsciousl}^ rendered it I knew neither 
 the name, nor the exact rank or age, nor the place where she 
 lived and died. She was parted from me by perhaps two cen- 
 turies ; I from her by the gulf of eternity." — De Quincey's 
 Note (ed. 1856). 
 
 1. 12. So blended and intertwisted . . . tears. Compare 
 Shelley, To a Skylark, st. 18 : — 
 " Our siucerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 
 
 Page 19, lines 7-8. of Atlantean shoulders. Adapted from 
 Milton's description of Beelzebub : — 
 
 "... Sage he stood 
 With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies." 
 
 — Paradise Lost, I., 304-307. 
 1. 9. Salisbury plain. An undulating plateau, near Salis- 
 bury, in Wilts, in the midst of which Stonehenge is situated. 
 Formerly a sterile tract, it has been converted into a fertile 
 district by the advance of agriculture. 
 
 Page 20, line 4. contretems. The standard spelling is "con- 
 tretemps." French for "mishap." 
 
 1. 6. the Seven Sleepers. "Seven Christians of Ephesus 
 who, according to the story of Gregory of Tours fled to a cave 
 at the time of the persecution under the emperor Decius in the 
 third century, and there fell into a sleep that lasted for nearly 
 two hundred years. Returning to the city, they experienced 
 
Page 22] NOTES 175 
 
 the surprise that Rip Van Winkle felt on his famous return, 
 and at last discovered the truth regarding their sleep. Having 
 had an interviev^ with the emperor, and convinced him of the 
 life beyond the grave, they sank into a second sleep that is to 
 last until the Resurrection." — Harper'' s Classical Dictionary. 
 
 1. 10. §tourderie. French for "blunder." In the edition 
 of 1856 "comic wilfulness" is substituted. 
 
 1. 24. with Providence my guide. Adapted from Milton : — 
 
 " The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." 
 
 — Paradise Lost, XII., 646-647. 
 
 Page 21, line 2, a favourite English poet. Doubtless a 
 volume of Wordsworth's early poems. 
 
 1. 4. Euripides. Born b. c. 480, in Salamis. The last of 
 the three great Greek dramatists — ^schylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides. He died b.c. 406. He seems to have been a favor- 
 ite writer of De Quincey's. 
 
 1.7. other personal accounts. "Amongst the attractions 
 that drew me so strongly to the Lakes, there had also by that 
 time arisen in this lovely region the deep, deep magnet (as to 
 me only in all this world it then was) of William Wordsworth." 
 — Edition of 1856, Works, III., p. 283. 
 
 1. 7. Accident, however, gave a different direction. The 
 "accident" is explained at very great length in the edition of 
 1856. 
 
 Page 22, line 7. Not to know them, etc. Adapted from 
 Milton: "Not to know me argues yourselves unknown." — 
 Paradise Lost, IV., 830. 
 
176 NOTES [Page 22 
 
 1.24. noli me tangere. " Touch me not." 
 
 Page 23, line 1. ol iroXXoi, the common people, the com- 
 monalty. 
 
 Page 27, line 6. Westmoreland. In this case the spelling of 
 the original text is Westmorland. 
 
 Page 29, line 12. Greek Sapphics or Alcaics. Sappho and 
 Alcseus were contemporaries, toward the end of the seventh 
 century b.c. They lived in Lesbos, and were the two great 
 leaders of the ^oiian school of Greek lyric poetry. The fol- 
 lowing stanza from A. C. Swinburne's Sapphics., referring to 
 Sappho, is in the Sapphic metre : — 
 
 " Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion! 
 All the Loves wept, listening ; sick with angnish, 
 Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo; 
 Fear was upon them. ..." 
 
 Tennyson's Hilton is an imitation of the Alcaic metre :" — 
 
 " O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, 
 O skiird to sing of Time or Eternity, 
 God-gifted organ-voice of England, 
 Milton, a name to resound for ages. . . ." 
 1. 16. Mr. Shelley is right . . . old age. Revolt of Islam, 
 IV., V. — X., where he describes the "gentle Hermit," whose 
 "heart had grown old, but had corrupted not," because "all 
 the ways of man among mankind he read." 
 
 1. 21. means which I must omit for want of room. Given 
 fully in the edition of 1850, Works, III., pp. 339-848. 
 
 Page 33, line 6. the plan of Cromwell. " Cromwell . . . 
 rarely lodged two nights together in one chamber, but had 
 
Page 37] NOTES 177 
 
 many furnished and prepared." — Clarendon, History of the 
 Behellion^ Bk. XV. — Quoted by Hunter. 
 
 Page 34, line 9. Blue-beard room. The room in which 
 Bluebeard kept the bodies of his murdered wives, and into 
 which he forbade his wife to go ; hence, a forbidden room. See 
 the familiar tale of Bluebeard. 
 
 1. 12. Whether this child, etc. "Dickens must have had 
 the whole situation in his mind when he drew the Marchioness 
 and Sally Brass in his Old Curiosity Shop.'''' — Garnett. 
 
 1. 19. Tartarus. " In the Iliad, Tartarus is a place beneath 
 the earth, as far below Hades as Heaven is above the earth, and 
 closed by iron gates. Later poets use the name as synonymous 
 with Hades." — Harper's Classical Dictionary. 
 
 Page 35, line 12. laying down. That is, "finding them 
 too expensive," — De Quincey. 
 
 1. 20. cycle and epicycle. 
 
 "... how gird the Sphere 
 With Centric and Eccentric scribbled o'er, 
 Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb," 
 
 — Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII., 82-84. 
 
 Page 36, line 6. Dr. Johnson . . . wall-fruit. Recorded in 
 Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 1. 12. the world was all before us. See note to p. 20, 1. 24, 
 
 for the source of this. 
 
 Page 37, line 3. eighteen years ago. In a Notice to the 
 Header in the October, 1821, London Magazine., De Quincey has 
 
 N 
 
178 NOTES [Page 37 
 
 corrected this to nineteen^ explaining that the incidents re- 
 corded, in the Preliminary Confessions lie between the early 
 part of July, 1802, and the beginning of March, 1803. 
 
 Page 38, line 2. Sine Cerere, etc. " Sine Cerere et Libero 
 friget Venus." — Terence, Eunuchus, IV., v. 6. ''Without 
 bread and wine love grows cold." 
 
 1. 5. But the truth is, etc. In this and the following sen- 
 tence De Quincey anticipates a large part of Walt Whitman's 
 message. 
 
 1. 10. more Socratico. "After the manner of Socrates, 
 who never opened a school and never lectured publicly, nor 
 did he receive any money for teaching, but went about in the 
 most public parts of Athens, such as the market place, the 
 gymnasia, and the work shops, seeking opportunity for awak- 
 ing in the young and old alike moral consciousness and an 
 impulse toward self-knowledge with respect to the end and 
 value of human action." — Harper^ s Classical Dictionary. 
 
 1. 16. poor limitary creature. Compare Milton, "proud 
 limitary Cherub," Paradise Lost, IV., 971. 
 
 Page 42, line 17. to chace — to haunt — to waylay. Remi- 
 niscent of Wordsworth, She was a Phantom of Delight: "To 
 haunt, to startle, and waylay." , 
 
 1. 25. too deep for tears. From Wordsworth, Ode on the 
 Intimations of Immortality^ last line. 
 
 Page 43, line 14. Yet some feelings ... for ever. Com- 
 pare, for a more extended expression of a similar idea, in a 
 
Page 51] NOTES 179 
 
 similar rhythm, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dedication of David 
 Balfour: "You are still — as when first I saw, as when last 
 I addressed you — in the venerable city which I must always 
 think of as my home. And I have come so far ; and the 
 sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me ; and I see like 
 a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and 
 the whole stream of lives flowing down there, far in the 
 north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in 
 the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. 
 And I admire and bow my head before the strange romance of 
 destiny." 
 
 Page 44, line 2. his late Majesty's. George the Third's. 
 
 1.18. soliciting. That is, "advocating." 
 
 Page 46, line 25. Doctor's Commons. So called because the 
 Doctors of Civil Law dined here together four days in each 
 term. In De Quincey's time it also included a registry of 
 wills. See Dickens, David Copperfield^ for a description of 
 Doctors' Commons. 
 
 Page 47, line 2. Thomas Quincey. It was our author's 
 mother who added the de to the family name. 
 
 11. 12 and 15. materialiter . . . formaliter. That is, he humor- 
 ously explains that he found himself considered as a material 
 object, counterfeiting himself considered as an object of thought, 
 or idea. 
 
 Page 51, line 24. the fine fluent motion. "The Bristol 
 Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom, owing to the double 
 advantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra sum for 
 
180 NOTES [Page 51 
 
 the expences subscribed by the Bristol merchants.'' — De Quin- 
 cey^s note. For a description of the "fine fluent motion" of 
 the Mail Coach, and the dreams based on it, see De Quincey's 
 The English Mail Coach. 
 
 Page 52, line 13. infinite . . . varieties. Compare Shake- 
 speare's "her infinite variety," Antony and Cleopatra., II., ii., 
 250. 
 
 Page 54, line 18. prettily expressed by a Roman poet. 
 " Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator." — Juvenal, Satire 
 X., 22. "The traveller with emj)ty pockets vv^ill sing in the 
 face of the robber." Translated by Chaucer: — 
 
 '* The poure man, whan he goth by the weye, 
 Before the theves he may synge and playe." 
 
 — Wife of Bath's Tale, 337-338. 
 
 Page 55, line 7. Lord of my learning, etc. Adapted from 
 Shakespeare : — " Lord of thy presence and no land beside." — 
 King John, I., i., 137. 
 
 Page 56, lines 2-4. To slacken virtue, etc. Adapted from 
 Milton : — 
 
 " To slacken virtue and abate her edge 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise." 
 
 — Paradise Regained, II., 455-456. 
 
 Page 57, line 3. eight o'clook. The original text has. a 
 comma after eight., evidently a misprint. 
 
 1. 4. Pete's. Joseph Pote (I703P-I787) kept a boarding- 
 house for the Etonians, and was an editor and publisher as well. 
 The business was continued by his son. 
 
Page 58] NOTES 181 
 
 1. 9. Ibi omnis effusus labor ! 
 
 " Ibi omnis 
 effusus labor atque immitis rupta tyranni 
 foedera terque fragor staguis auditus Averni." 
 "There all his toil was spilt, and the treaty broken with that 
 merciless monarch ; and thrice a thunder pealed over the 
 pools of Avernus."— Virgil, Georgics, IV., 491-493 (Mackail's 
 Translation). From the affecting story of Orpheus and Euryd- 
 ice, as told by Virgil. 
 
 Page 58, line 3. himself, anonymously, an author. His 
 book is entitled A Short Tour in the Midland Counties of 
 England, performed in the Summer of 1772 : together unth an 
 Account of a Similar Excursion undert-aken September, 1772. 
 Published in 1775. "Though in the form of brief, business- 
 like notes, the performance is altogether very creditable." — 
 Masson. 
 
 1. 12. her letters. Compare his general statement with 
 regard to the purity of female English : " Would you desire at 
 this day to read our noble language in its native beauty, pic- 
 turesque from idiomatic propriety, racy in its phraseology, 
 delicate yet sinewy in its composition, steal the mail-bags, and 
 break open all the letters in female handwriting." — Essay on 
 Style, Works, X., p. 145. 
 
 1. 16. M. W. Montague. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
 (1689-1762). "It was her habit ... to write copiously to 
 friends at home, and when a selection from these letters was 
 published, in 1763, Lady Mary was recognized as having been 
 the wittiest of English letter-writers." — Gosse, History of 
 Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 205. 
 
182 NOTES [Page 59 
 
 Page 59, line 1. good man's table. Probably an adaptation 
 of '-If ever sat at any good man's feast." — Shakespeare, 
 As You Like It, II., vii., 115. 
 
 1. 8. The story about Otway. Thomas Otway (1625-1685). 
 Dramatist, author of The Orphan and Venice Preserved. The 
 incident referred to by De Quincey is mentioned by an early 
 biographer, who says that one day Otway sallied forth from 
 an obscure public-house, and begged a shilling from a gentle- 
 man in a coffee-house, saying, "I am the poet, Otway." This 
 person, surprised and distressed, gave him a guinea. With 
 it he bought a roll of bread, and began to devour it with 
 the rage of hunger; but, incapable of swallowing it from 
 long abstinence, he was choked with the first mouthful. — 
 RoDEN Noel. 
 
 Page 61, line 16. Saracen's head. De Quincey has in mind 
 the representations of bronzed and beturbaned Saracens' heads, 
 often painted as signs over inn doors. 
 
 Page 64, line 11. Magdalen. See St. Luke vii. 36-50. 
 
 1. 14. the ruin they had begun. At this point the portion 
 printed in the September number of the London Magazine 
 ends. An editorial note says, "The remainder of this very 
 interesting Article will be given in the next number." 
 
 Page QQ, line 21. the road . . . North . . . Grasmere. 
 Wordsworth was then living at Grasmere. De Quincey had 
 once actually gone to Westmoreland to call on Wordsworth, 
 but an overwhelming shyness and reverence caused him to turn 
 back when he was at the very door. 
 
Pagi. (i7] NOTES 183 
 
 1. 22. wings of a dove. " And I said, Oh that I had wings 
 
 like a dove ! for then would I fly aw^ay, and be at rest." 
 
 Ps. Iv. 6. 
 
 Page 67, line 1. that very house. In 1821 De Quincey was 
 living in Dove Cottage, in which Wordsworth lived in 1803. 
 
 1.9. blessed balm. "0tXoj' virvov 6e\yr)Tpov iiTLKOvpov voa-ov/^ 
 — De Quinceifs Note. In this paragraph there are many echoes 
 of Euripides' Orestes. This line opens a scene closely resembling 
 the one before us. (For the explanation of the situation, see 
 note to p. 68, 1. 16.) 
 
 *^ Orestes. O balmy sleep, the sick man's comforter, 
 Timely and sweet thy coming was, blest power, 
 That timely steeps pain in forgetfulness 
 And art misfortune's kindest deity, 
 How came I here ? What brought me to this place ? 
 My mind, distraught, remembers not the past. 
 
 Electra. How glad was I, dearest, to see thee sleep. 
 Shall I take hold of thee, and lift thee up? 
 
 Orestes. Yes, yes, and wipe from my unhappy mouth 
 And from my eyes the clotted gouts of foam. 
 
 Electra. Sweet is the labour. Never shall I tire 
 Of rendering thee a sister's offices. 
 
 {He is seized with another fit of madness. He recovers, 
 and speaks.] 
 Orestes. After the storm again behold a calm. 
 Listen, why dost thou veil thy head and weep? 
 I blush to make thee partner in my woes 
 And trouble with my sickness thy young soul." 
 
 — Translated by Goldivin Smith. 
 
184 NOTES [Page 67 
 
 1. 18. Eumenides. The name Eumenides signifies " the well- 
 meaning goddesses," and is a euphemism for the real name 
 "Furies," because the Greeks dreaded to call the fearful god- 
 desses by their real name. 
 
 1. 23. Margaret. Margaret Simpson, who became his wife 
 in 1816. 
 
 Page 68, line 3. servile ministrations. "^5u dovXevfia. — 
 EuRip. Orest.'" — De Quinceifs Note. Translated " sweet is the 
 labour" in the quotation from the Orestes in the note to p. 67, 
 1. 9. 
 
 1. 10. sleep no more ! 
 
 " Macbeth. Me thought I heard a voice cry, ' Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth doth murder sleep,' the innocent sleep, 
 Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast, — 
 
 Lady Macbeth. What do you mean ? 
 
 Macbeth. Still it cried, ' Sleep no more ! ' to all the house : 
 * Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more.' " 
 
 — Shakespeare, Macbeth, II., ii., 35-43. 
 
 1.15. kingofmen. '•'■ ava^avdpujv AyafieiJividv.'''' — De Quincey^s 
 Note. One of the many epithets Homer applies to Agamemnon. 
 
 1. 16. hid her face in her robe. '■'■ ofxixa deiahau} irewXojv. 
 The scholar will know that throughout this passage I refer to 
 the early scenes of the Orestes ; one of the most beautiful exhi- 
 bitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Eurip- 
 ides can furnish. To the English reader, it may be necessary 
 
Page 72] NOTES 185 
 
 to say, that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of 
 a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal pos- 
 session of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the 
 play, haunted by the Furies), and in circumstances of immedi- 
 ate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from 
 nominal friends." — De Quincei/s Note. This expression is 
 translated in a quotation in the note to p. 67, 1. 9 — " Why 
 dost thou veil thy head ? " 
 
 Page 71, line 7. the stately Pantheon. 
 
 "Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same 
 In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name." 
 — Wordsworth, Power of Music, 3-4. 
 
 " The Pantheon . . . has successively been a concert-room, a 
 theatre, and a bazaar, and is now the extensive wine warehouse 
 of the Messrs. Gibley." — Bcedekefs London (1885). 
 
 Page 72, line 4. evanesced. ' ' 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 drug- 
 gists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous name 
 (and who, by the by, 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."— De Quincey's Note. Thomas Flatman (1687-1688) 
 published in 1685 a Pindariqiie Ode on the Death of King 
 Charles II. — Huktek. 
 
186 NOTES [Page 72 
 
 1. 20. ({>apfxaKov vTrjircvGcs. 
 
 dvTLK dp eis oivov jSdXe (pdp/xaKov, evOev einvov 
 vTiirevd^s T dxo\6v re, KaKuiv iiriXridop dTrdvTiov. 
 
 — Homer, Odyssey, IV., 220-221. 
 " Presently she cast a drug into the wine whereof they drank, 
 a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every 
 sorrow." See Milton, Comus, 675, for Nepenthes. 
 
 Page 73, lines 7-8. I'Allegro ... II Penseroso. The com- 
 panion poems of Milton, representing the moods of light cheer- 
 fulness and thoughtful melancholy, respectively. 
 
 1. 25. ex cathedra. Literally, "from the chair," i.e. "with 
 authority." 
 
 Page 74, line 17. die. " 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." — De Quincey''s 
 Note. 
 
 Page 75, line 3. meo periculo. " At my risk." 
 
 Page 77, line G. ponderibus librata suis. "Poised by its 
 own weight." — Ovid, Metamorphoses, I., 13. 
 
 1. 11. Athenaeus. A Greek scholar who lived in the second 
 and third centuries a. d. He wrote AeLTrvoao(f)isT at (Banquet 
 of the Learned) in fifteen books. It ranges over numberless 
 
Pagk 78] NOTES 187 
 
 subjects connected with domestic and social life, manners and cus- 
 toms, trade, art, and science. — Harper'' s Classical Dictionary. 
 
 Page 78, line 9. unscientific authors. " Amongst the great 
 herd of travellers, &c. who show sufficiently by their stupidity 
 that they never held any intercourse with opium , I must caution 
 ray readers specially against the brilliant author of '■Anasta- 
 sius.'' 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 p. 215-17, of vol, 1. — 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 pre- 
 maturely, 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 ob- 
 taining 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." 
 — De Qiiiucey''s Note. 
 
 Anastasius : or, Memoirs of a Greek, Written at the Close 
 
188 NOTES [Page 78 
 
 of the Eighteenth Century. (Published 1819.) By Thomas 
 Hope (1770 ?-1831). "A marvel of erudition, eloquence, and 
 profound insight into human character. . . . Lord Byron was 
 singled out as the only living writer equal to the performance, 
 which is said to have flattered the poet's pride. ... In lan- 
 guage notable for acute characterization and bold imagery the 
 author presents a faithful picture of Turkish history and civil- 
 ization, interweaving its weeds and flowers, its hates and loves, 
 its license and fanaticism," — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XL., pp. 
 97-99. 
 
 "It is sufficient to say of this novel . . . that some critics, 
 including Baron Bunsen, praise it as of deeper ethical import 
 than any of Scott's." — Daviu Masson, British Novelists and 
 their Styles (1859). 
 
 1. 23. prima facie. " At first view or appearance." 
 
 Page 81, line 1. With respect to the torpor, etc. But see 
 Rudyard Kipling's story, llie Gate of the Hundred Soitoios, 
 for a picture of the " torpor." 
 
 1. 12. exhibition. The act of administering a remedy. 
 
 Page 82, line 19. Grassini. Josephina Grassini (1773-1850), 
 a favorite contralto in London from 1803 to 1806. 
 
 Page 83, lines 10-11. Andromache . . . Hector. Probably 
 in Cimarosa's opera, Achilles at the Siege of Troy (1798). At 
 any rate she sang Cimarosa during her visits to London. 
 
 1. 19. the fine extravaganza . . . Twelfth Night. 
 
 " If music be the food of love, play on ; 
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting. 
 
Page 85] NOTES 189 
 
 The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
 That sti-ain again ! It had a dying fall : 
 O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing and giving odour." — I., i., 1-7. 
 
 1. 22. a passage in the Religio Medici. " Whosoever is 
 harmonically composed delights in harmony ; which makes me 
 much distrust the symmetry of those heads which disclaim 
 against all Church-Musick. For myself, not only from my 
 obedience, but my particular Genius, I do embrace it : for even 
 that vulgar and Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, 
 another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a pro- 
 found contemplation of the First Composer. There is some- 
 thing in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an 
 Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and 
 creatures of GOD ; such a melody to the ear, as the whole World, 
 well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it 
 is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in 
 the ears of God." — Part II., § 9. 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) published the Beligio 
 Medici in 1642. 
 
 For a similar interpretation of music see Plato, JRepublic, 
 401 ; Browning, A Toccata of GaluppVs and Abt Vogler ; and 
 Du Maurier, The Martian^ Part V. 
 
 Pages 84-85, lines 19-2. But this is a subject . . . sub- 
 limed. Compare D. G. Rossetti, The Monochord. 
 
 Page 85, line 9. Weld the traveller. Isaac Weld, Travels 
 through the United States . . . and Canada^ 1799. The passage 
 is as follows : "The women, on the contrary, speak with the 
 
190 NOTES [Page H5 
 
 utmost ease, and the language, as pronounced by them, appears 
 as soft as Italian. They have, without exception, the most 
 delicate harmonious voices I have ever heard, and the most 
 pleasing gentle laugh that it is possible to conceive. I have 
 oftentimes sat amongst a group of them for an hour or two 
 together, merely for the pleasure of listening to their conversa- 
 tion, on account of its wonderful softness and delicacy." — 
 Quoted by GarneU. 
 
 1. 23. Marinus . . . Proclus. Marinus was pupil and biog- 
 rapher of Proclus. Pjroclus was born a.d. 412, at Byzantium. 
 He became head of the Platonic school, and directed his efforts 
 towards opposing the Platonic philosophy to the encroachments 
 of Christianity. He died in 484. 
 
 Page 86, line 3. labours that I rested from. See Revelation 
 xiv. 13. 
 
 Page 88, line 9. soot. " On enquiry I found that soot (chiefly 
 from wood and peats) was useful in some stage of their wax or 
 honey manufacture." — De Qidnce^fs Note. 
 
 1.24. terrae incognitae. " Unknown lands." 
 
 Page 90, line 2. cave of Trophonius. Trophonius was a 
 famous Greek oracle. " Since those who descended into the 
 cave at Labdea to consult the oracle of Trophonius were noticed 
 to return dejected and melancholy, the proverb arose which was 
 applied to a low-spirited person : ' He has been consulting the 
 oracle of Trophonius.' " — Gayley, Classic Myths. 
 
 1. 17. mysticism. The doctrine that man may attain truth 
 
Page 91] NOTES 191 
 
 directly, by intuition. This doctrine has become familiarized 
 to readers of English literature by Coleridge and Carlyle. 
 
 1. 17. Behmenism. Jakob Boehme (Behmen is the usual 
 English variant form of the name), 1575-1624. A German 
 mystical writer. 
 
 1. 18. quietism. The doctrine that the soul attains perfect 
 spiritual exaltation by withdrawing from outward activities and 
 engaging in mystic contemplation. 
 
 1. 18, Sir H. Vane, the younger. Sir Henry Vane, born 
 1613; opposed Laud ; emigrated to Massachusetts, of which he 
 became governor in 1636 ; returned to England, and was exe- 
 cuted 1662. 
 
 Page 91, line 6. the tumult, the fever, and the strife. For 
 
 the rhythm compare ' ' The weariness, the fever, and the fret. ' ' 
 — Keats, Ode to a Nightingale^ st. 3. 
 
 1. 8. resting from human labours. "That they may rest 
 from their labours ; and their works do follow them." — Beve- 
 lation xiv. 13. 
 
 1. 16. Oh ! just . . . opium ! etc. Imitative of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh's famous apostrophe to Death : " eloquent, just, and 
 mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded ; 
 what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all the world 
 hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised ; 
 thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the 
 pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it over with 
 these two narrow words, — Hie jacet / " — History of the World. 
 
192 NOTES [Page 91 
 
 1. 18. pangs that tempt the spirit, etc. 
 
 ** And pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel." 
 — Wordsworth, White Doe of Rylstone (Dedication). 
 
 1. 25. Wrongs unredress'd, etc. Wordsworth, The Excur- 
 sion, Bk. III. 
 
 Page 92, line 6. Phidias. The greatest Greek sculptor (b.c. 
 490-432). His great works are the Parthenon at Athens and 
 the Olympian Zeus. 
 
 1. 7. Praxiteles. Another famous Greek sculptor, born 
 about B.C. 390. 
 
 1.8. Hekat6mpylos, "le. the hundred-gated (from iKardv, 
 hekaton, a hundred, and 7r6\rj, pyle, a gate). This epithet of 
 hundred-gated was applied to the Egyptian Thebes in contra- 
 distinction to the eTrrdirvXos (heptapylos, or seven-gated) which 
 designated the Grecian Thebes, within one day's journey of 
 Athens." — De Qiimcey^s Note. 
 
 1. 8. from the anarchy of dreaming sleep. From Words- 
 worth, The Excursion, Bk. IV. 
 
 1. 11. dishonours of the grave. 1 Corinthians xv. 43 : " It is 
 sown in dishonour ; it is raised in glory." — In the Lesson in the 
 Order for the Burial of the Dead of the Church of England. 
 
 Page 93, line 5, Bodleian. The famous library at Oxford, 
 founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1602. 
 
 1. 21. Greek epigrams. See note to p. 13, 1. 6. 
 
 Page 94, lines 16-17. Kant, Fichte, Schelling. Immanuel 
 Kant (1724-1804), founder of the critical philosophy. Johann 
 
Page 99] NOTES 193 
 
 Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedricli Wilhelm Joseph 
 von Schelling (1775-1854) were disciples of Kant, though they 
 developed his philosophy in directions little approved of by him. 
 
 1. 21. Honi soit, etc. "Shame to him v^^ho evil thinks." 
 The motto of Great Britain. 
 
 Page 95, line 10. X. Y. Z. De Quincey's pen-name in the 
 London Magazine. 
 
 1. 11. Gustos Rotulorum. The keeper of the records of the 
 sessions of a county. 
 
 Page 96, line 5. Anastasius. See note to p. 78, 1. 9. 
 
 1, 24. distress of mind . . . event. The death of little 
 Kate Wordsworth. See Works, II., 440-445. 
 
 Page 97, line 6. appalling irritation of the stomach. For a 
 
 medical view of this, see note to p. 10, 1. 19. 
 
 Page 98, line 16. ^ force d'ennuyer. "By dint of boring." 
 
 1. 17. pandiculation. Humorous use of pedantic terms. 
 
 Page 99, line 7. Eudaemonist. One who makes the pursuit 
 of enjoyment and the production of happiness his chief aim. 
 
 1. 14. Stoic philosophy. " A handsome news-room, of 
 which I was very politely made free in passing through Man- 
 chester by several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, 
 The Porch : whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, in- 
 ferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves fol- 
 lowers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a 
 mistake." — De Qiiincey''s Note, 
 o 
 
194 NOTES [Page 99 
 
 The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citiuin, a.d. 410. 
 The school was so called because Zeno held his school in the 
 Stoa, or Porch. The system was ascetic, teaching perfect in- 
 difference to everything external, for nothing external could be 
 good or evil. 
 
 1. 15. Eclectic. One who selects his philosophy from all 
 systems. 
 
 1. 18. sweet men, etc. 
 
 " Ful swetely herde he confessioun, 
 And plesaunt was his absolucioun." 
 — Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales, 221-222. 
 
 Page 100, line 18. snow-white beard. See note to p. 78, 
 1. 9. 
 
 Page 102, line 11. wx^^K-cpov. " A day and a night." 
 
 1. 14. That moveth altogether, etc. Wordsworth, Beso- 
 lution and Independence, st. 11. The proper reading is all 
 together. 
 
 Page 103, line 20. impassable gulph fixed. See Luke xvi, 26. 
 
 Page 105, line 12. Adelung's Mithridates. Johann Chris- 
 toph Adelung (1732-180G), a German philologist, and librarian 
 at Dresden, The book referred to is entitled 3IUhridates oder 
 allgemeines Sprachlmnde. 
 
 Page 107, Ihie 1. a-muck. "See the common accounts in 
 any Eastern traveller or voyager of the frantic excesses com- 
 mitted by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to 
 desperation by ill luck at gambling." — De Quincey''s Note. 
 
Page 112J NOTES 195 
 
 Page 108, line 16. a cottage with a double coach-house. 
 " He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, 
 A cottage of gentility ; 
 And he owned with a grin 
 That his favourite sin 
 Is pride that apes humility." 
 
 — SouTHEY, The Devil's Walk, st. 8. 
 
 An almost identical verse (dictated by Southey) occurs in Cole- 
 ridge's The DeviVs Thoughts. 
 
 Page 109, lines 12-15. And at the doors . . . hall. Adapted 
 from James Thomson (1700-1748), Castle of Indolence, st. 43, 
 5-9. 
 
 1. 24. Mr. Clarkson. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), a 
 prominent English antislavery agitator. 
 
 Page 110, line 13. St. Thomas's day. December 21. 
 
 1. 25. bellum internecinum. " War to the death." — Cicero 
 (B.C. 106-43), Philippic Orations, 14, 3, 7. 
 
 Page 111, line 1. Jonas Hanway (1712-1786), "tourist, 
 philanthropist, and author, and said to have been ' the first 
 man who ventured to walk the streets of London with an um- 
 brella over his head,' was a violent opponent of tea, and got 
 into conflict with Dr. Johnson on the subject." — Masson. 
 
 1. 13. a double debt to pay. 
 
 " The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 
 A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day."- 
 
 — Goldsmith, Deserted Village, 229-230. 
 
 Page 112, line 3. k parte ante, from the part (of dura- 
 
19() NOTES [Page 112 
 
 tion) before a given time ; a parte post, from the part (of 
 duration) after a given time. Hence the two expressions mean 
 eternal — vv^ithout beginning or end. 
 
 I. 8. Aurora, the goddess of morning — Homer's "rosy-fin- 
 gered Dawn." Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth. 
 
 Page 113, line 22. the ten categories. Aristotle's ten cate- 
 gories, or predicaments, viz. substance, quantity, quality, 
 relation, place, time, posture, habit (or dress), action, passion. 
 
 Page 114, line 5. But now farewell, etc. "Farewell! a 
 long farewell, to all my greatness!" — Henry VIII., III., 
 ii., 351. 
 
 II. 6-7. Farewell to smiles and laughter ! 
 
 Farewell to peace of mind ! 
 
 Swinburne's poems. Before Dawn and The Garden of Proser- 
 pine, as well as Keats's In a Drear-nighted December, are 
 composed of these two rhythms. 
 
 1. 11. Iliad of woes. Translation of a phrase in Cicero, 
 Epistulcz ad Atticum, 8, 11, 3. "Malorum . . . 'IXids." 
 
 1. 12. as when some great painter dips, etc. Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Revolt of Islam, Canto V., 
 St. 23. 
 
 Page 117, line 16. in medias res. " Into the middle of the 
 matter." From Horace (b.c. 65-8) Art of Poetry, 148. 
 
 Page 118, line 6. John Kemble (1757-1823), one of the 
 greatest Shakespearean actors. 
 
Page 121] NOTES 197 
 
 1. 7. Mrs. Siddons. Sarah Siddoiis (1755-1881), one of the 
 most celebrated of Shakespearean actresses. 
 
 1. 11. overstep the modesty of nature. Shakespeare, 
 Hamlet, III., ii. 
 
 1. 13. grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes. See, for 
 instance, the opening speech, 11. 1-114. 
 
 1. 14. great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise 
 Regained. See, for example, that speech beginning, " 'Tistrue, 
 lam that Spirit unfortunate," Bk. II., 358-405; and also Bk. 
 IV., 44-108, 195-284. 
 
 1. 16. a young lady. Doubtless, Dorothy Wordsworth. 
 
 Page 119, line 16. Spinosa. Baruch de Spinosa (16.32-1677), 
 cue of the greatest European philosophers. 
 
 1.18. Spanish bridge. Probably an adaptation of the famil- 
 iar "castles in Spain." 
 
 Page 121, line 7. Mr. Ricardo. See note to p. 9, 1. 16. 
 
 1. 10. Thou art the man ! "And Nathan said to David, 
 Thou art the man ! " — 2 Samuel xii. 7. 
 
 1. 17. thinking. "The reader must remember what I here 
 mean by thinJcing : because, else this would be a very presump- 
 tuous 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." — De Quinceifs Note. 
 
198 NOTES [Page 121 
 
 1. 19. mercantile and senatorial cares. Kicardo was a mem- 
 ber of the Stock Exchange and a member of Parliament. 
 
 1. 24. deduced a priori. That is, deduced from the laws of 
 the mind. 
 
 Page 122, line 11. the inevitable eye. Possibly a reminis- 
 cence of Gray's "inevitable hour" in The Elegy ^ 1. 35. 
 
 Page 123, line 15. Circean spells. Circe, according to 
 Homer (Iliad, X., 135 ff.), dwelt in the island of ^Etea, attended 
 by four nymphs, and all who approached her dwelling were 
 feasted, and then, by means of her magic cup, transformed into 
 beasts. 
 
 Page 125, line 15, I can tell them, etc. The reference is to 
 St. Luke vii. 8. Compare St. Matthew viii. 9. 
 
 1. 23. friezes of never-ending stories. It was the custom of 
 the Greeks to carve representations of stories on their temples. 
 The frieze of the Parthenon at Athens represented, not a 
 " story," but the Panathenaic procession. The stories were on 
 the pediments ; but other temples undoubtedly had stories on 
 the friezes, for instance, the temple of Pergamos. 
 
 1. 25. before (Edipus . . . Memphis. (Edipus was king of 
 Thebes ; Priam was king of Troy ; Tyre, one of the greatest and 
 most famous cities of the ancient world, was the metropolis of 
 Phoenicia ; Memphis was a great city of Egypt, and became its 
 capital after the fall of Thebes. 
 
 Page 128, line 5. near relative. Mrs. Baird Smith told Dr. 
 Garnett that this was De Quincey's mother, 
 
 1. 16. the dread book of account. Bevelation xx. 12. 
 
Page 13i>] NOTES 199 
 
 Page 129, line 1. common light of day. Wordsworth, 
 Ode on the Intimations of Immortal it y, V. ; also To the High- 
 land Girl, 16-17 — " light of common day." 
 
 1. 13. Livy. Titus Livius (b.o. 59-a.d. 17) wrote a history of" 
 Rome in one hundred and forty-two books, — the most famous 
 Roman history. 
 
 Page 130, line 16. * a certain day. August 22, the day on 
 which the royal standard was raised at Nottingham. 
 
 11, 18-19. Marston Moor, etc. 3Iarston Moor, July 12, 1644 ; 
 Newbury, October 16, 1644 ; Nasehy, June 14, 1645. 
 
 Page 131, line 2. sweeping by. "In sceptered pall come 
 sweeping by." — Milton, II Fenseroso,:9S. 
 
 1. 3. Paulus or Marius. Lucius Paulus, surnamed Mace- 
 donicus, born about b.c. 230. Conqueror of Macedonia. His 
 triumphal entry into Rome was the most splendid in Roman 
 history (b.c. 167). Gains Marius, born b.c. 157, and frequently 
 consul at Rom e. He waged a triumphant war against the German 
 hordes, and he was hailed as the saviour of his country. Both 
 are names associated with the pomp of war, hence the reference. 
 
 1. 5. alalagmos. "A word expressing collectively the 
 gathering of the Roman war cries — Alala, Alala ! " — Masson. 
 Greek, d\a\ay/x6s, a loud noise. 
 
 1. 6. Piranesi. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), an 
 Italian architect and engraver. Garnett says that he never pub- 
 lished any plates under the title Dreams. 
 
 Page 132, line 13. a great modern poet . . . passage. The 
 passage cited is from Wordsworth, The Excursion, Bk. II. 
 
200 NOTES [Page 133 
 
 Page 133, line 12. Dryden. John Dryclcn (1631-1700), the 
 famous eighteenth-century satirist, dramatist, and narrative 
 poet. 
 
 1. 13. Fuseli. Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), a Swiss painter 
 of historical subjects. He lived in England. 
 
 1. 18. Shadwell. Thomas Shadwell (1642P-1692), was the 
 author of several dramas, and was satirized by Dryden in 
 Macjlecknoe. 
 
 1. 18. Homer is reputed, etc. On the strength of the lines 
 quoted in the note to p. 72, 1. 20. 
 
 Page 134, line 4. the last Lord Orford. Better known as 
 Horace Walpole (1717-1797), author of The Castle of Otranto, 
 (1746) and Letters. ' 
 
 1. 9. though. The original text reads thought — a manifest 
 misprint. 
 
 Page 135, line 11. The causes of my horror, etc. Compare 
 R. L. Stevenson, Across the Plains (Besjnsed Baces). 
 
 Page 136, line 11. officina gentium. " Workshop of the 
 nations." 
 
 Page 137, lines 12-13. Brama . . . Vishnu . . . Seeva. The 
 
 creative energy, the preserving power, and the destructive power, 
 respectively, of the Brah manic religion. 
 
 1. 14. Isis and Osiris. In the Egyptian religion Isis is the 
 wife and feminine counterpart of Osiris, who is the good prin- 
 ciple^ identified with the vivifying power of the sun and of the 
 waters of the Nile. 
 
Page 141] NOTES 201 
 
 Page 139, line 14. caeteris paribus. "Other things being 
 equal." 
 
 Page 141, line 11. a child whom I had tenderly loved. 
 
 Little Kate Wordsworth. 
 
 1. 17. first fruits of resurrection. From 1 Corinthians xv. 
 20, a verse which occurs both in the Easter Anthem and in the 
 'Lesson in the Order for the Burial of the Dead of the Church 
 of England : " Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become 
 the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, 
 by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam 
 all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man 
 in his own order : Christ the first-fruits ; afterwards they that 
 are Christ's at his coming." 
 
 1. 18. I will walk abroad . . . unhappy no longer. Com- 
 pare Tennyson, In 3Iemoriam^ LXXXVI : — 
 
 ** Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 
 That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
 Of evening over break and bloom 
 And meadow, slowly breathing bare 
 
 The round of space, and wrapt below 
 Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, 
 And shadowing down the horned tiood 
 
 In ripples, fan my brows and blow 
 
 The fever from my cheek, and sigh 
 The full new life that feeds thy breath 
 Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, 
 
 111 brethren, let the fancy fly 
 
202 NOTES [Page 141 
 
 From belt to belt of crimson seas 
 On leagnes of odour streaming far, 
 To where in yonder orient star 
 
 A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace. ' " 
 
 Page 142, line 0. shaded by Judean palms. Suggested by a 
 figure seen on Roman coins. Works^ I., 64. 
 
 1. 18. the tears were now wiped away. " And God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes." — Bevelation vii. 17, 
 and xxi. 4. See also Isaiah xxv. 8. 
 
 Page 143, line 6. final specimen. With this "final speci- 
 men" compare Dream Fugue,, in The English Mail Coach, 
 Sees. iv. and v. 
 
 1. 11. Coronation Anthem. The Coronation Anthem was 
 written in 1727, by George Frederick Handel (1685-1759), for 
 performance at the coronation ceremony of George II., in West- 
 minster Abbey, October 11, 1727. 
 
 Page 144, line 4. Deeper than ever plummet sounded. "I'll 
 seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded." — Shakespeare, 
 Tempest, III., iii., 101. 
 
 1. 16. and with a sigh . . . death. The reference is to 
 the speech of Sin, an "incestuous mother," because she, the 
 daughter of Satan, bore to him Death, and because to Death 
 she also bore "yelling monsters." — Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 II., 648-814. 
 
 " I fled and cried out Death ! 
 Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 
 From all her caves, and back resounded Death ! " 
 
 — 11. 787-789. 
 
Page 158] NOTES 203 
 
 1. 22. I will sleep no more. See note to p. 68, 1. 10. 
 
 Page 147, line 15. a most innocent sufferer. " William 
 Lithgovv (1582-1645 ?) : His book (Travels, &c.) is ill and 
 pedantically writte]i : but the account of his own sufferings 
 on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting." — Be 
 Quincetfs Note. The title is The Totall Discourse of the Bare 
 Adueutures and painfull Peregrinations of long Nineteene 
 Yeares (1632). 
 
 Page 148, line 16. Lord Bacon conjectures. ' ' Essay o n Death : 
 ' It is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant 
 perhaps the one is as painful as the other.'" — De Quincey^s 
 Note (ed. 1856). The text of the London 3Iagazine reads 
 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Page 149, line 9. With dreadful faces, etc. Milton, Para- 
 dise Lost, XII., 644. 
 
 Page 151, lines 1-13. The interest . . . extraordinary his- 
 tory. These lines are an editorial note in the London 3Iagazine, 
 explaining the Appendix. See Editor's Introduction to the 
 present edition. 
 
 Page 153, line 14. fiat experimentum, etc. " Let the experi- 
 ment be made upon a worthless object." 
 
 Page 158, line 2. Beaumont and Fletcher. Francis Beau- 
 mont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) wrote dramas 
 in conjunction. Thierry and Theodoret was printed in 1621. 
 The passage referred to is as follows : — 
 
204 NOTES [Page 158 
 
 " (Thierry is brought in on a couch, with Doctors and 
 Attendants.) 
 
 "Thierry. Tell me, 
 Can ever these eyes more, shut up in slumbers, 
 Assure my soul there is sleep ? is there night 
 And rest for human labours? do not you 
 And all the world, as I do, out-stare Time, 
 And live, like funeral lami>s, never extinguished? 
 Is there a grave (and do not flatter me, 
 Nor fear to tell the truth) , and in that grave 
 Is there a hope I shall sleep ? can I die ? 
 Are not my miseries immortal ? Oh, 
 The happiness of him that drinks his water, 
 After his weary day, and sleeps forever ! 
 Why do you crucify me thus with faces, 
 And gaping strangely upon one another! 
 ****** 
 
 The eyes of Heaven 
 See but their certain motions, and then sleep: 
 The rages of the Ocean have their slumbers 
 And quiet silver calms ; each violence 
 Crowns in his end a peace ; but my fixed fires 
 Shall never, never set! " — V., ii. 
 
 1. 9. the old fable. The familiar fairy tale, The Sleeping 
 Beauty in the Wood., which Tennyson has beautifully treated 
 in his Day Dream. 
 
 1. 15. I nunc, et versus tecum, etc. "Go now, and medi- 
 tate harmonious verses." — Horace (b.c. 65-8), Epistles., II., ii , 
 76. The i nunc is an ironical imperative to do something 
 impossible or difficult. 
 
Page 163] NOTES 205 
 
 Page 160, line 3. infandum renovare dolorem. " Infandum, 
 regina, jubes renovare dolorem." "O (jueen, thou dost com- 
 mand me to revive an unutterable grief!" — Virgil (b.c. 
 70-19), uEneicl, II., 3. An excellent example of De Quincey's 
 many felicitous literary allusions. 
 
 Page 162, line 12. pretty rapid course of descent. " On 
 w^hich last notice I would remark, that mine was too rapid, and 
 the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated : or rather, per- 
 haps, it was not sufficiently coritinuous and equably graduated." 
 — De Quincey's Note (extract). 
 
 Page 163, line 4. so rascally a subject. Bascally is a Shake- 
 spearean word, meaning "base." 
 
 1. 9. heautontimoroumenos. " Self -tormentor," the name 
 of Terence's play quoted on p. 9, 1. 5. 
 
 Page 164, line 16. Golgothas. St. Matthew xxvii. 33. 
 
 Page 165, line 8. Roman prince. Caligula (a.d. 14-41). 
 
 1. 16. Suetonius. Gains Suetonius Tranquillus, a Roman 
 historian and scholar, born about a.d. 70. He wrote Vitoe 
 Duodecim Ccesarum (Lives of the First Twelve Roman Em- 
 perors). The reference is to his life of C. Csesar Caligula, 
 38, where the words " vivere perse verarent " occur. 
 
INDEX TO NOTES 
 
 Achilles at the Siege of Troy, 188. 
 
 Addington, Mr., 169. 
 
 Adelung, 194. 
 
 iEschylus, 175. 
 
 a force d'ennuyer, 193. 
 
 alcdagmos, 199. 
 
 Alcfeus, 176. 
 
 Alcaics, 176. 
 
 a-muck, 194. 
 
 Andromache, 188. 
 
 Anastasius, 187-188, 193. 
 
 li parte ante, 195-1^)6. 
 
 a parte post, 195-19(3. 
 
 a priori, 198. 
 
 Archididasculus, 172. 
 
 Athenaeus, 186. 
 
 Aurora, 196. 
 
 Awsiter, 169. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, quotation, 203. 
 
 Baird Smitli, Mrs., 198. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletclier, quota- 
 tion, 203-204. 
 
 Behmenism, 191. 
 
 bpllain internecinum, 195. 
 
 Bible quotation, 1 Corinthians 
 XV. 20 ff., 201. 
 
 1 Corinthians xv. 43, 192. 
 
 Psalm Iv. 6, 183. 
 
 Revelation vii. 17, 202. 
 
 Revelation xiv. 13, 190, 191. 
 
 Revelation xxi. 4, 202. 
 
 2 Samuel xii. 7, 197. 
 
 reference, Isaiah xxv. 8, 202. 
 
 Luke vii. 8, 198, 36-50, 182. 
 
 Luke xvi. 26, 194. 
 
 Matthew viii. 9, 198. 
 
 Mattheio xxvii. 33, 205. 
 
 Revelation xx. 12, 198. 
 
 Blue-beard, 177. 
 
 Bodleian, 192, 
 
 Brama, 200. 
 
 Browne, Sir T., 189. 
 
 Browning, R., 189. 
 
 Buchan's Domestic Medicine, 186. 
 
 Burke, quotation, 167. 
 
 cseieris paribus, 201. 
 
 Caligula, 205. 
 
 Carbery, Lady, 172. 
 
 Carlisle, Dean of. (See Miluer, 
 
 Isaac.) 
 categories, Aristotle's ten, 196. 
 Chaucer, quotation, 180, 194. 
 Cicero, quotation, 195, 196. 
 Cimarosa, 188. 
 
 207 
 
208 
 
 INDEX TO NOTES 
 
 Circe, 198. 
 
 Clarkson, Thomas, 195^. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 109, 170, 195. 
 
 and opium, 107. 
 
 his poems and The Confes- 
 sions, 169. 
 contretems, 174. 
 Coronation Anthem, 202. 
 Cromwell, 176. 
 Custos Rotulorum, 193. 
 
 "Dash, Mr., the philosopher," 
 
 168. 
 Death, Raleigh's apostrophe to, 
 
 191. 
 
 A6i7rvocro<|)t(rTai, 186-187. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, Medical 
 view of his case, 171, 193. 
 
 at Bath School, 171. 
 
 at Winkfield School, 171. 
 
 at Manchester School, 171. 
 
 Chronology of the Confes- 
 sions, 177-178. 
 
 his father's name, 179. 
 
 his father an author, 181. 
 
 his mother's letters, 181. 
 
 marries Margaret Simpson, 
 
 184. 
 
 Dickens, reference, 177, 179. 
 
 Doctor's Commons, 179. 
 
 Dryden, 200. 
 
 Du Maurier, 189. 
 
 Eatwell, Dr., 171. 
 Ecclesiastlcus, quotation, 169. 
 
 Eclectic philosopher, 194. 
 Electra, 18.3-185. 
 epigrams, Greek, 172, 192. 
 Erskine, Lord, and opium, 168. 
 ^tourderie, 175. 
 Eudfemonist, 193. 
 Eumenides, 184. 
 Euripides, 175. 
 
 quotation, 183, 184. 
 
 reference, 183, 184 bis, 184- 
 
 185. 
 evanesced, 185. 
 ex cathedra, 186. 
 exhibition, 188. 
 
 fiat experbnentum in corpore vili^ 
 
 203. 
 Fichte, 192-193. 
 Flatman, 185. 
 Fletcher (see Beaumont). 
 formaliter, 179. 
 friezes, 198. 
 Fuseli, 200. 
 
 Goethe, 167. 
 Goldsmith, 195. 
 Golgothas, 205. 
 Graces, 171-172. 
 Grassini, 188. 
 Gray, reference, 109, 198. 
 
 Handel, 202. 
 Han way, 195. 
 Hazlitt, 170. 
 Heautontlmoroumenos, 170, 205. 
 
INDEX TO NOTES 
 
 209 
 
 Hebe, 196. 
 
 Hector, 188. 
 
 Hekatonipylos, 192. 
 
 He7inj F77/., quotation, 171, 19G. 
 
 Homer, and opium, 200, 
 
 quotation, 186. 
 
 honi soil qui mal y pense, 193. 
 Hope, Thomas, 188. 
 Horace, quotation, 196, 204. 
 Hwnani nihil a se alienuin putat, 
 170. 
 
 76/ omnis effiisus labor, 181. 
 
 Iliad of woes, 196. 
 
 infandiitn renovare dolorem, 205. 
 
 in medias res, 196. 
 
 i nunc et versus tecum, etc., 
 
 204. 
 Isis, 200. 
 
 Jolmson, Dr., 177, 195. 
 
 quotation, 172-173. 
 
 Juvenal, quotation, 180. 
 
 Kant, 192-193. 
 Keats, quotation, 191. 
 
 reference, 196. 
 
 Kemble, 196. 
 
 Kipling, reference, 188. 
 
 Lawson, Mr., 171, 173. 
 laying down, 177. 
 Litligow, 203. 
 Livy, 199. 
 
 Magdalen, 182. 
 
 Mail Coach, The, reference, 180, 
 
 202. 
 Margaret (Simpson), 184. 
 Mariuus, 190. 
 Marius, Gains, 199. 
 materialiter, 179. 
 Mead, 169. 
 Memphis, 198. 
 meo pericvlo, 186. 
 Milner, Isaac, 168. 
 Milton, quotation, II Penseroso, 
 
 199. 
 Paradise Lost, 174, 175 his, 
 
 177, 178, 202, 203. 
 
 Pai'adise Regained, 180. 
 
 reference, Comus, 186. 
 
 II Penseroso, 186. 
 
 r Allegro, 186. 
 
 Paradise Lost, 202. 
 
 Paradise Regained, 197. 
 
 Samson Agonistes, 197. 
 
 Mithridates, 194. 
 Montague, M. W., 181. 
 more Socratico, 178. 
 Morgan, Mr., 171. 
 music, in praise of, 189. 
 mysticism, 190-191. 
 
 7ioli me tangere, 176. 
 
 I'Vx^Tj/aepoi', 194. 
 
 GEdipus, 198. 
 officina gentium, 200. 
 
 o i 77 o A A ot , 176. 
 
210 
 
 INDEX TO NOTES 
 
 Orforcl, Lord, 200. 
 Osiris, 200. 
 Otway, 182. 
 Ovid, quotation, 186. 
 
 pandiculation, 193. 
 Pantheon, 185. 
 Parnell, 169. 
 Paulus, Lucius, 199. 
 Fervlgiliuin Veneris, quotation, 
 169. 
 
 ^ap ixaKov vrinevOe^, 186. 
 
 Phidias, 192. 
 
 (jxavapTa avv ero lai, 169. 
 
 Pindar, 169. 
 
 Piozzi, Mrs., 177. 
 
 Piranesi, 199. 
 
 Plato, 189. 
 
 Pote's, 180. 
 
 ponderlhuH llbrata suis, 186. 
 
 Praxiteles, 192. 
 
 Priam, 198. 
 
 prima facie, 188. 
 
 Proclus, 190. 
 
 quietism, 191. 
 Quincey, Thomas, 179. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, quotation, 
 
 191. 
 rascally, 205. 
 Ricardo. 170,.198. 
 Rossetti, D. G., reference, 189. 
 Rousseau, 167. 
 
 St. Thomas' Day, 195. 
 
 Salisbury plain, 174. 
 
 Sapphics, 176. 
 
 Sappho, 176. 
 
 Saracen's head, 182. 
 
 Schelling, 192-193. 
 
 Seeva, 200. 
 
 Seven Sleepers, The, 174. 
 
 Shadwell, and opium, 200. 
 
 Shakespeare, quotation, Antony 
 and Cleopatra, 180. 
 
 .4.S You Like It, 182. 
 
 King John, 180. 
 
 Macbeth, 184. 
 
 Tempest, 202. 
 
 Twelfth Night, 188-189. 
 
 reference, Hamlet, 197. 
 
 Shelley, quotation, Revolt of Is- 
 lam, 196. 
 
 To a Skylark, 174. 
 
 reference. Revolt of Islam, 
 
 176. 
 
 Siddons, 197. 
 
 sine Cerere et Libero friget Ve- 
 nus, 178. 
 
 sleep, addresses to, Shakespeare, 
 184. 
 
 Euripides, 183. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 204. 
 
 Socrates, 178. 
 
 soliciting, 179. 
 
 soot, honey from, 190. 
 
 Sophocles, 172, 175. 
 
 Southey, quotation, 195. 
 
 Spanish bridge, 197. 
 
INDEX TO NOTES 
 
 211 
 
 Spencer, Edward, 171. 
 Spiiiosa, 197. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., quotation, 178- 
 179. 
 
 reference, 200. 
 
 stoic pliilosophy, 193-194. 
 Suetonius, 205. 
 Swinburne, quotation, 176. 
 reference, 196. 
 
 Tartarus, 177. 
 
 Tennyson, quotation, 176, 201. 
 
 reference, 201. 
 
 Terence, quotation, 170, 178. 
 
 reference, 205. 
 
 terrse incognitse, 190. 
 
 Thebes, 198. 
 
 Thierry and Theodoret, 203. 
 
 Thomson, James, quotation, 195. 
 
 Trophonius, Cave of, 190. 
 
 Tyre, 198. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 191. 
 
 Virgil, quotation, Georgics, 181. 
 
 yEneid, 205. 
 
 Vishnu, 200. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 200. 
 
 Weld, 189. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 178. 
 
 Wilberforce, and opium, 168. 
 
 Wilson, John, 171. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 197. 
 
 Wordsworth, Kate, 193, 201. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 175, 183. 
 
 quotation, Daffodils, 170. 
 
 Excursion, 192 bis, 199. 
 
 Highland Girl, 199. 
 
 Immortality (Ode on), 178, 
 
 199. 
 
 Power of Music, 185. 
 
 Resolution and Indepen- 
 dence, 194. 
 
 She icas a Phantom, 178. 
 
 Sonnet, " Nuns Fret Not," 
 
 173. 
 
 White Doe of Rijlstone, 167, 
 
 192. 
 
 reference, The Prelude, 173. 
 
 attracts De Quincey to the 
 
 north, 175, 182. 
 
 X. Y. Z., 193. 
 
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 An Introduction to the Study of Literature 
 
 For the use of Secondary and Graded Schools. 
 
 i2mo. Cloth. Price $1.00 
 
 This book is a collection of short masterpieces of modern literature 
 arranged in groups, each group interpreting some one phase of adolescent 
 
 interest, e.^., " The Athlete ; " " The Heroism of War ; Fhe Heroism of 
 
 Peace;" "The Adventurer;" "The Far Goal;" "The Morning Land- 
 scape;" "The Gentleman;" "The Hearth." A chronological table is 
 given at the end of the book, by centuries and half centuries, showing at 
 what age each author began to publish, and the name and date of his first 
 book. The selections together form an anthology of English prose and 
 verse, but it is more than an ordinary anthology ; it is constructed so as to 
 be of value not only to the scholar but also to the teacher and general 
 reader. Each section is opened with a critical introduction which will 
 serve as a guide both to teacher and student. 
 
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From Chaucer to Arnold 
 
 Types of Literary Art in Prose and Verse. An Introduction to 
 English Literature, with Preface and Notes. By Andrew J. 
 George, A.M., Department of English, High School, Newton, Mass. 
 
 Cloth. 8vo. Price $i.oo 
 
 Albert H. Smyth, Central High School, Philadelphia. 
 
 " In George's ' Chaucer to Arnold ' I recognize many favorites and 
 think the editing and the annotation remarkably well done; the notes 
 are sufficiently brief and clear, the bibUography judicious, and a fine 
 spirit of appreciation is shown." 
 
 Principles of English Grammar 
 
 For the use of Schools. By George R. Carpenter, Professor of 
 Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia University. 
 
 i2mo. HaIf=Leather. Price 75 cents 
 
 Professor Fred W. Reynolds, University of Utah. 
 
 " For a straightforward discussion of the principles of grammar, the 
 book is among the best I have ever seen." 
 
 American Prose Selections 
 
 With Critical Introductions by Various Writers and a General Intro- 
 duction edited by George Rice Carpenter, Columbia University. 
 
 i2mo. Cloth. Price $1.00 
 
 F. A. Voght, Principal Central High School, Buffalo. 
 
 " It is a pleasure to take up so handsome a volume. The selections 
 are most admirable and the character sketches of authors are bright, 
 chatty, clear, and concise." 
 
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