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BELLES LETTRES
THE CONFESSIONS OF
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SIR GEORGE DOUGLAS




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iiiP
U)                0 0f= i~.L'%.. A -




TH E-CON
FESSIONS9!
AN ENGUSH
OPIUM-EATER
BY THOMAS
DEWQLINCEY
LON DON: PUBLI SHED
byJ'M'DENT S.SONS-IZs
AND IN NEW YORK
BY EI P DUTTONNCO




First issue of this Edition, I907
Reprinted 910o, I913




INTRODUCTION
IT may be said without hesitation that there is no form of
literature more certain to pique the curiosity of a reader than
the form known as Confessions. As the world grows older,
it seems that amateurs of the belles-lettres grow ever more
inclined to give in their adherence to Pope's dictum that the
proper study of mankind, is man. And hence volumes of
Memoirs, of Reminiscences, ever more and more abound.
But if Autobiography be a more intimate or sustained form of
reminiscence, then, in their turn, Confessions are the quintessence of autobiography. For the term implies nothing
less than the receiving of a reader into the writer's closest
confidence, than an unveiling of that writer's inner self. In
a word, Confessions come as near to the bald 'human document' as considerations of the literary art allow. A volume of
letters may, of course, reveal much of its writer's personality.
But correspondence, after all, is conditioned, not only by
the special occasion which calls it forth, but also by the
character of the person to whom it is addressed. Of these
conditions the writer of Confessions is independent. He
writes not for the moment, but for the ages; and addresses
himself to no single limited human creature, but to that
ideal reader who enjoys a subjective existence in the mind
of every wielder of the goose-quill.  Self-revelation, selfvindication, this is the sole animating purpose of the genuine
writer of Confessions. For every volume of Confessions is,
in truth, an Apologia.
There are two principal ways of writing Confessions,
either of them consecrated by the example of a great modern
master; and, given the necessary conditions, by either of
these methods a fascinating volume may be produced. The
first is that employed by Rousseau-who, beginning with a
solemn adjuration addressed to the Deity, pledges himself
to truth and to the whole truth.1 This method, to judge it
1 ' Que la trompette du jugement dernier sonle quand elle voudra;
je viendrai, ce livre i la main, me presenter devant le souverain
juge. Je dirai hautement: voila ce que j'ai fait, ce que j'ai pensd,
ce que je fus. J'ai dit le bien et le mal avec la meme franchise. Je
n'ai rien tu de mauvais, rien ajoute de bon...'
vii




viii             Introduction
on the lowest ground, namely, that of opportunism, has the
advantage of daring reclame; it makes a brilliant bid for
instant attention. It likewise ensures sincerity; but, on the
other hand, it labours under this disadvantage, that it is too
apt to make us lose sight of an important factor in the situation-to wit, the personal equation. We may grant that the
writer tells the truth to the best of his ability. We can ask
no more than this. Still even this is not truth absolute; but,
even as we speak of the Gospel according to St. John, so is
this the truth according to Jean-Jacques. For who but an
angel is so clear-sighted as to see truth whole and uncoloured,
when much of that truth must, by the necessity of the case,
refer to contemporaries, and to the beloved and detested
among them? Who is so steady of hand as to hold the
balance evenly, and so that, throughout the retrospect of a
long and stormy career, the tongue shall not once deflect
from rectitude? Still we may bear this in mind in reading
Rousseau's self-justification, yet our interest therein moult
no feather.
Our remaining exemplar of the art of confession-writing
is Goethe, whose method in the Dichtung und Wahrheit is
less rigorous than that of Rousseau, and who, in his task of
self-revelation, frankly calls to his aid the poetic faculty.
Realising that the view of character which may be obtained
from a mere record of fact is at best an imperfect and maybe
a distorted one, he applies to the correction of his story of
what was, that which might or ought to have been. Yielding
to a congenital bias which might almost be called the reverse
of Rousseau's, he avoids what is painful and unsightly;
whilst, beneath the genial glow of his imagination, buds
are unfolded and germs developed, which, in the bleaker
climate of the actual world, had come perchance to nought.
And yet an obligation to truth —to the truth of art, though
not that of fact-still guides him on his way; for these buds
and germs, if unexpanded, are at no time the mere creation of a self-complacent fancy. In other words, the autobiographer never for a moment degenerates into the mere
romancer, such, for example, as was Casanova habitually,
or as was Cellini when the whim possessed him.
Such, then, are the two principal methods in confessionwriting-of which either has been the means of high literary




Introduction


ix


achievement, of which neither can be pronounced distinctly
the superior. For if the one be generally the more direct
and poignant, the other undoubtedly presents the more complete and rounded result, and has the power of rising to
greater heights of abstract art. Approximations to either
method may be found in sufficient number; but, amongst
these, it is perhaps enough to mention the instance of
Chateaubriand's Reni, which may be said to represent the
method employed by Goethe when carried one degree
further-carried, that is, to the point where, in a given tale,
the elements of fiction have ceased merely to illustrate and
have begun to overshadow the elements of fact. When this
point is reached, the narrative has ceased, of course, to rank
as a confession.
The two methods, then, being admitted as of equal or indifferent excellence, what it mainly imports a reader to know
is which of the two the author he is reading has employed.
In a word, is the said author telling him plain truth, or is
he not? As applied to the 'Confessions of an English OpiumEater,' this is a question which is full of interest. Nor is the
task of answering it by any means wholly free from difficulties. Let us, nevertheless, state at once that we believe
the true answer to be an affirmative-in other words, that,
in the narrative which follows, De Quincey has, so far at
least, taken Rousseau for his model. The statement requires,
it may be, somewhat of explanation or of reservation.
In the literature of Confessions, those of De Quincey,
so far as they go, are entitled to as high a place as any.
For impassioned earnestness, imaginative richness and rare
literary talent, as well as for the singularity of the experiences
unfolded, they remain indeed unsurpassed. And yet, in any
attempt at a comparative estimate of their value, due weight
must certainly be allowed to the fact that, in so far as affects
detailed and consecutive narration, these Confessions extend
no further than to the author's seventeenth year. Certain
crucial experiences of his adolescence they relate with a concentrated power and intensity which it would be hard to
match in any department of literature whatsoever; and this
in spite of the fact that again and again the relation is impeded in its course by the wealth of detail with which it is
loaded. Thus is it up to the year 18o2 —at which point the
a 2




x


Introduction


story divides itself into halves which are equal neither in
interest nor in extent. And between these two unequal portions, De Quincey supplies a connecting link by assuring us
that it was the sufferings of the earlier portion which drove
him into the excesses of the later-that, in fact, the earlier
incidents play the part of Balwov or &dyayK7, or compelling
cause, in the monodrama. But of this we are unable to
refrain from professing ourselves, with the utmost respect,
unconvinced. The immediate occasion of these excesses
these miseries may perhaps have been; but that, but for
these particular miseries, no excesses would have been committed, seems to us, to say the least of it, problematical.
There was never yet a mortal whose patience was put to
severe strain when all he sought was an opportunity to test
the power of some specific consolation. In the default of
one occasion, he may confidently trust that another will
soon arise. And so we are inclined to look deeper than De
Quincey looked himself for the cause of his opium excesses,
and to find them, not in any external occurrences whatever,
but in his own self-acknowledged 'eudamonistic' temperament, associated, as this was, with the circumstance that Coleridge's great influence had early turned his thoughts in the
direction of opium-eating.  'Shall I speak ingenuously?'
he writes, 'I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that
I am too much of an Eudaemonist; I hanker too much after
a state of happiness, both for myself and others; I cannot
face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient
firmness; and am little capable of encountering present pain
for the sake of any reversionary benefit.'
Now, whilst clearly discriminating between the aesthetic
and the ethical issues, whilst disclaiming likewise the qualifications and the temper of a preacher, it can scarcely fail to
strike the reader that the eudaemonism here defined is but a
euphemistic name for moral cowardice. And, in the same
parenthetic way, it may be observed that, throughout his
book, De Quincey exhibits a blindness, which if not deliberate is at least highly curious, to the moral aspect of
indulgence in opium.  With that side of the matter he
simply does not concern himself at all-seeking as little to
1 Page 218, fourth edition of the Complete Works, in which the
Confessions form the first volume.




Introduction


xi


apologise for his indiscretions as he does to understate their
extent. In this, no doubt, he shows both tact and sense.
But just as the old romance-writers were fond of laying the
blame incurred. by their Tristrams and Iseults upon a lovepotion, so does he pretend to regard his aberrations as the
inevitable result of a rash act of his boyhood. This may be
regarded either as an artistic fiction or convention, or as an
instance of self-deception-in neither of which cases would
one visit it on him severely. And as regards that pitfall of
the confession-writer, self-deception, generally, it must be acknowledged that, as a rule, De Quincey avoids it with success.
Here, probably, is a single instance of departure from
literal truth, due it may be to mistake, but in any case
misleading. On the other hand, there are other points at
which the author's veracity requires defence through being
likely at first sight to be undervalued. Let us endeavour to
indicate how this has come about.
De Quincey, it is generally allowed, was a man of singular,
it might almost be said of unexampled, physical constitution.
This is proved by the magnitude of his laudanum-debauches
-extending, as they did at times, to eight and even twelve
thousand' drops a-day-and by the at least comparative
impunity with which he indulged in them. But, if his
physical constitution was peculiar, not less so surely was
that of his mind. And it is to what was highly unusual in
the constitution of the latter that we must refer the apparent
puzzles and anomalies of his confession.
Of fragile build and praternatural sensitiveness, his temperament included an admixture of the morbid or neurotic,
which marked him off from normal manhood. Years before
he had tasted opium, namely, in I802, his sleep, under stress of
circumstance, was already troubled by 'tumultuous dreams.'
In his waking hours, what was grandiose or terrific in his
surroundings exercised powerful fascination over him-as
is noticeable, for instance, in the episodes of the Whispering
Gallery, and the day of Indian Summer, and in the scene
in the deserted ball-room, during the storm, at Shrewsbury.
1 In the footnote to page 234 he says, 'My daily ration was eight
thousand drops.', On page 240 he speaks of his daily ration 'having
fallen spontaneously from a varying quantity of eight, ten, or twelve
thousand drops of laudanum to about three hundred.'




xii               Introduction
Then, his abnormal sensitiveness to impressions caused him
to exaggerate the strength of the agents by which those
impressions were produced: for example, the speed of the
Mail Coach, in the essay devoted to that subject. And it
is no doubt to this source that may be traced much of his
apparent tendency to excess in statement. Hence we may
see in him, already in the pre-opium period, the germs of
all that opium was to develop; and may lay stress upon
what is perhaps after all but a truism —the fact that opium
put nothing of fancy or of imagination into the OpiumEater, but only brought out what was already there.
Considered in themselves, the main incidents of these
Confessions are in no wise specially remarkable. A lad
takes the law into his own hands and runs away from
school. But it is only for a day or two in the first instance
that he keeps up the r6le of truant. Then, after a sort of
patched-up reconciliation with authority, he embarks upon
a walking-tour in Wales, which enables him to study mankind in various conditions, and which for the first time
brings him acquainted with some forms of 'roughing it.'
The season breaks, and, on a day of signs and portents, in a
mood dominated by presentiment, he betakes himself to
London. There he again seeks to be independent, and,
as was inevitable, goes to the wall. As was inevitable by
reason of his inexperience, his fragility of constitution, his
refinement, his total lack of practical ability and of knowledge of the world-in a word, by reason of his general
unsuitability to face the conditions of life in a matter-offact world, where too often goodness, genius, gentleness
rank but as so many disqualifications. The story of his
sufferings is piteous, and ought to teach us a lesson in the
treatment of learning or gentle nurture in distress. Indeed
it is only less piteous than the story of Savage or of Otway
because we are aware that De Quincey's sufferings are
practically self-inflicted and are at any moment terminable.
He has but to stretch forth his hand in order to exchange
the squalor and starvation of the house in Greek Street for
comfortable home or college quarters. But, for what seems
a long time, he refrains from doing so. No doubt he had
a reason which to himself seemed sufficient for this. But
he has failed to make the practically-minded reader aware
of its cogency.




Introduction                   xiii
Such, then, is a brief abstract of the narrative which
follows. Baldly stated, as here, it seems scarce worthy to
arrest attention. But when its incidents are read in relation
to De Quincey's temperament, or are viewed through that
transforming medium, they become of absorbing and
abiding interest.  So true is the apophthegm   of Lord
Beaconsfield that 'adventures are to the adventurous,'
that it is less to the thing experienced than to the person
who experiences it that interest is due.  And this, we
take it, is the key to the difficulties of belief which De
Quincey's narrative presents. For there are probably few
critical readers who will fail to encounter some difficulties
of this kind. We may cite, as examples of different kinds,
the insufficiently motived endurance of dire misery recently
referred to, and the conversation of the senior scholars of
the Grammar School on the night of the new pupil's induction there. To the ordinary reader the erudition displayed
in the latter instance appears a caricature. But, indeed,
to the ordinary reader there is much besides which may
appear to resemble less the retrospect of a life than a
fantastic phantasmagoria, or, in De Quincey's own phrase,
'arras-work' embroidered for his benefit.  It is just on
these occasions that it behoves us to remember that we
are dealing with no ordinary mortal, that De Quincey
painted as De Quincey saw or recalled, and that, in
judging of the accuracy of his pictures, our own private
sense of probability is no absolutely infallible guide.
Against this it may be urged that, though he plumed
himself upon accuracy of statement,l his memory was certainly not in all cases absolutely faithful. For example,
on page 7 he quotes inaccurately from Coleridge and misapplies the quotation; whilst on page 169 he misquotes
Terence, speaking of the quotation as an 'ancient Latin
proverb,' which perhaps it may have been.    It is true,
of course, that accuracy in literary quotation and accuracy
in personal reminiscence are not quite the same thing; yet
1 ' It would vitiate the interest which any reader might otherwise
take in this narrative, if for one moment it were supposed that any
feature of the case were varnished or distorted. From the very first,
I have been faithful to the most rigorous law of accuracy-even in
absolute trifles.' Footnote to page 88,




xiv


Introduction


it is permissible to believe that, during the twenty years
or so which elapsed between the occurrence of the facts
related and their committal to writing, the constitutional
tendencies of De Quincey's mind may have somewhat
distorted those facts.  Any suspicion of a Goethe-like
mingling of disciplined fantasy with fact, still more of
wilful bad faith, must, however, be at once dismissed.
And it should be remembered that the incidents related
were experienced by the writer at a time when life was
at its freshest, and his mind therefore most open to receiving deep and lasting impressions. There is another
remarkable writer to whom, not only De Quincey's experiences but his mental constitution also, present some
features of resemblance. Like De Quincey, the author of
'Lavengro' (George Borrow) suffered much misery in
London; like him he travelled on foot through rural
England and hobnobbed with chance acquaintances.
They were alike masters of much out-of-the-way lore.
Between the fragile scholar and the successful antagonist
of the Flaming Tinker there was, indeed, a mighty physical
contrast; yet the narrative of Lavengro and the narrative
of the Opium-Eater present this feature in commona quality of strangeness, which baffles even whilst it
fascinates, and of which the labours of the Knapps and
Japps are as unable to destroy the charm as they are
to elucidate the mystery.
The second half of the Opium-Eater's Confessions are
less interesting than the first. It is true that they deal
with a subject of curious interest. But their effect is injured
by the intrusion of De Quinceian facetiousness, or by the
author's ingenuous habit of bringing the light of nature to
bear upon subjects which are uninteresting save when
handled by the specialist. We do not by preference turn
for medical advice to a man of letters, no matter how
brilliant his style.  Passion and intensity have gone out
of the narrative, and, in a word, the comparison of the two
parts is at best that of an etching with a crayon drawing.
Not on that account, however, are the richly-massed shadows
and keenly-bitten lines of the earlier part to any reader the
less memorable.
19o7.                         GEORGE DOUGLAS.




BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
DE QUINCEY'S literary life may be broadly divided into
two periods, associated with the two capitals, London and
Edinburgh, to the first of which this, his master-book,
belongs. He was already in his thirty-seventh year when
the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater' began
to appear in the London Magazine in I821. They were
written in London, in a little room which used to be
pointed out at the back of Bohn the publisher's premises, No. 4 York Street, Covent Garden.  The London
Magazine, known to us through its publication of the
Essays of Elia, and through other brilliant occasional
contributors-Keats, Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, and Carlyle
among them-was easily the first of its kind at that time.
Tom Hood was acting as a junior assistant editor, and
had often to go and dun De Quincey for copy; and
afterwards kept as a reminder of their intercourse the
MS. of one of the opium-eater's papers, showing the
stain of a 'purplish ring' where his tumbler of laudanum
had stood.
The editors of the magazine, Taylor and Hessey, although
their new contributor was an almost unknown one, showed
from the first number of these 'Confessions' a marked
sense of their importance. An editor's note drew special
attention to them; and in the second number this was
repeated with emphasis, and with a special tribute to
'the deep, eloquent, and masterly paper which stands
first in our present number.' But the public curiosity
having been aroused, had then to rest.  'Leaves' from
the Opium-Eater's Note-Book appeared from time to time,
and the first edition of the 'Confessions '-a small duodecimo
-was published by Taylor and Hessey in 1822. Thereafter,
although De Quincey's own name was still unknown to the
reading public, the ' Opium-Eater' was a recognised figure.
Soon after the publication of the 'Confessions' his first
period ends, and his second or Edinburgh period begins.
In 1826, we know, he was writing for Blackwood's MagaXV




xvi            Editorial     Note
zine, under the editorship of his friend 'Christopher
North'; and thereafter London, the city and the 'nation,'
to which he had given so much of his years of probation,
counted for little in his history.
We are obliged, in relating the narrative of the 'Confessions' to his real life, to make some allowance for his
dream-life too. This done, there is no need to doubt, as
Professor Saintsbury has doubted, the essential truth of
his autobiography. Born at Manchester on August 5,
1785, the son of a merchant, Thomas Quincey (who had
written an English itinerary of the years 1772 and 1774),
he was left fatherless in his seventh year. His mother,
stately and religious, stern and well-to-do, was not perhaps
the best of mothers for such a boy. To her were owing
some at least of his boyish vicissitudes and troubles, to
which his lively and pugnacious elder brother, William
(who died of typhus at sixteen), contributed. He went to
schools at Bath, Winkfield (Wiltshire), and Manchester.
But these only form the more ordinary part of that extraordinary education which made him what he was, and
which we must not wish otherwise. How he ran away
from the Manchester school (in I802) and wandered in
North Wales, and lived the life of a pariah in Soho, may
best be learned from his own 'Confessions.' He was still an
Oxford undergraduate when he was first led to try opiumeating. The popular idea that to this practice and its
effect upon his mind we owe whatever is unique and
singularly impressive in his imaginative magnificence of
prose-writing, is not borne out by his intellectual history.
If he had not found opium, he would have found another
oriental herb to be his soul's elixir; tea, for example.
Witness the inimitable passage describing the eternal teapot in the ' Confessions.'
For the story of his life in the English Lake District,
the reader must turn to the accompanying volume of his
'Lake Reminiscences' in this series.  He married there
in I816, kept up his household there till I830, when it was
finally transported to Edinburgh; and after a life which
reads like the natural continuation of that of the ' Confessions' in its domestic unconventionality and hermit eccentricity, he died at Edinburgh on December 8, 1859.




The following is the list of his published works:Westmoreland Gazette (edited by), 1819; 'Confessions of
an Opium-Eater' (from  the London Magazine), 1822;
Edition revised and enlarged by Author, 1856; 'Klosterheim, or the Masque,' I839; 'Logic of Political Economy,'
1844; contributions to the London Magazine from I82I to
I824; 'Confessions of an Opium-Eater,' 'Letters to a
Young Man whose Education has been Neglected,' 'Notes
from the Pocket-Book of an Opium-Eater,' Moral Effects
of Revolutions,' 'Dialogue of Three Templars'; 'Walladmor: Analysis of a German Novel' (pretended to be by Sir
W. Scott); articles on the Rosicrucians and Freemasons,
on Jean Paul Richter, on certain of Kant's writings, on
Herder, Malthus, Ricardo, Kant, etc., contributions to
Blackwood, I827-I849; Lessing's 'Laocoon,' 'Murder as
one of the Fine Arts,' 'Traits and Tendencies of German
Literature,' 'Alleged Plagiarism of Coleridge,' 'Coleridge
and Opium-Eating,' 'English Mail Coach'; 'Suspiria de
Profundis,' a sequel to the 'Confessions'; and articles on
Kant, Berkeley, Ricardo, Sir W. Hamilton, the Caesars,
Charlemagne, Cicero, the Essenes, etc., and some tales;
contributions to Taits Magazine, 1834-I851; 'Sketches of
Life and Manners, and Lake Reminiscences, from 1807
to 1831'; 'Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge,' 'Recollections of Grasmere,' 'Society of the Lakes,' articles on
'Wordsworth's Poetry,' on S. T. Coleridge, on Southey,
Charles Lamb, W. Savage Landor, on Oxford, the German
language, etc.; in I857 articles contributed to the Titan
were republished under the title of 'China.' Other contributions were to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, Edinburgh
Literary Gazette, Hogg's Instructor. His Autobiographical
Sketches, scattered through several journals, are given,
with intercalations, alterations, and additions, by the author
in the first two volumes of the 1853 Edition of Works.
Collected works:-Boston, 20 volumes, 1852-1855; First
English Collection, 14 volumes, C Selections Grave and
Gay,' I853-1860; in I5 volumes, I862. Posthumous works:
-A. H. Japp, I891-I893; Uncollected Writings, edited by
J. Hogg, 1890; Life, by H. A. Page, x88I; by David
Masson, English Men of Letters, x88I.
xvii








ORIGINAL PREFACE IN THE YEAR
182I
I HERE present you, courteous reader, with the record of
a remarkable period of my life; and according to my
application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an
interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, instructive.  In that hope it is that I have drawn it up; and
that must be my apology for breaking through those
restraints of delicate reserve, which, for the most part,
intercept the public exposure of our own errors and
infirmities.
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from
public notice: they court privacy and solitude; and,
even in the choice of a grave, will sometimes voluntarily
sequester themselves from the general population of the
churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the
great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language
of Wordsworth)
' Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all,
that it should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own
person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings.
But, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not
amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is
possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others,
from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy
a price of suffering and of self-conquest, might compensate, by a vast overbalance, 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 that
dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and
prospects of the offender, and to the palliations, known or
seciet, of the offence; in proportion as the temptations




2        An English Opium-Eater
to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to
it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my
own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may
affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a
philosopher: from my birth, I was made an intellectual
creature; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits
and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days.
If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound
to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet
recorded of any other man, it is no less true that I have
struggled against this fascination with a fervent zeal, and
have at length accomplished what I never yet heard
attributed to any other man, have untwisted, almost to
its final links, the chain which fettered me. Such a selfconquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to
any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist
that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable,
but the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry,
according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming
at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as
aim at the excitement of superfluous pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if I did,
it is possible that I might still resolve on the present
act of confession, in consideration of the service which
I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters.
But who are they? Reader, I am bound to say, a very
numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced,
some years ago, by computing at that time the number
of those in one small class of English society (the class
of men distinguished for talent and notoriety) 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, Dr.
Isaac Milner; the first Lord Erskine; Mr. --,2 the
1 * Isaac Milner':-He was nominally known to the public as Dean
of Carlisle, being colloquially always called Dean Milner; but virtually
he was best known in his own circle as the head of Queens' College,
Cambridge, where he usually resided. In common with his brother,
Joseph of Hull, he was substantially a Wesleyan Methodist; and in that
2 See note, pages 3 and 4.




Original Preface                         3
philosopher; a late under-secretary of State (viz., Mr.
Addington, brother to the first Lord       Sidmouth, who
described to me the sensation which first drove him to
character, as regarded principles and the general direction of his sympathies, he pursued his deceased brother's History of the Christian Church
down to the era of Luther. In these days, he would perhaps not be styled
a Methodist, but simply a Low-Churchman. By whatever title described,
it is meantime remarkable that a man confessedly so conscientious as
Dean Milner could have reconciled to his moral views the holding of
Church preferment so important as this deanery in combination with the
headship of an important college. One or other must have been consciously neglected. Such a record, meantime, powerfully illustrates the
advances made by the Church during the last generation in practical
homage to self-denying religious scruples. A very lax man would not
in these days allow himself to do that which thirty years ago a severe
Church-Methodist (regarded by many even as a fanatic) persisted in
doing, without feeling himself called on for apology. If I have not
misapprehended its tenor, this case serves most vividly to illustrate the
higher standard of moral responsibility which prevails in this current
generation. We do injustice daily to our own age; which, by many a
sign, palpable and secret, I feel to be more emphatically than any since
the period of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I., an intellectual, a moving,
and a self-conflicting age: and inevitably, where the intellect has been
preternaturally awakened, the moral sensibility must soon be commensurately stirred. The very distinctions, psychologic or metaphysical,
by which, as its hinges and articulations, our modern thinking moves,
proclaim the subtler character of the questions which now occupy our
thoughts. Not as pedantic only, but as suspiciously unintelligible such
distinctions would, one hundred and thirty years ago, have been viewed
as indictable; and perhaps (in company with Mandeville's 'Political
Economy') would have been seriously presented as a nuisance to the
Middlesex Quarter-Sessions. Recurring, however, to Dean Milner, and
the recollections of his distinguished talents amongst the contemporary
circles of the first generation in this nineteenth century, I wish to mention
that these talents are most feebly measured by any of his occasional
writings, all drawn from him apparently by mere pressure of casual
convenience. In conversation it was that he asserted adequately his
pre-eminent place. Wordsworth, who met him often at the late Lord
Lonsdale's table, spoke of him uniformly as the chief potentate colloquially of his own generation, and as the man beyond all others
(Burke being departed) who did not live upon his recollections, but met
the demands of every question that engaged his sympathy by spontaneous and elastic movements of novel and original thought. As an
opium-eater, Dean Milner was understood to be a strenuous wrestler
with the physical necessity that coerced him into this habit. From
several quarters I have heard that his daily ration was 34 grains (or
about 850 drops of laudanum), divided into four portions, and administered to him at regular intervals of six hours by a confidential
valet.
2 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 were struck out




4        An English Opium-Eater
the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of
Carlisle,-viz., 'that he felt as though rats were gnawing
at the coats of his stomach'); Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and many others, hardly less celebrated. Now, if one
class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many
scores of cases (and those within the instant reach of one
sudden and brief inquiry), it was a natural inference that
the entire population of England would furnish a number
that, on first starting in such an inquiry, would have
seemed incredible. 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. First, three respectable London druggists,
in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I
happened to be purchasing small quantities of opium,
assured me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as
I may term them) was at this time immense; and that
the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, to whom
habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were
purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them
daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected
London only. But, secondly (which will possibly surprise the reader more), some years ago, on passing
through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton
manufacturers, that their work-people were rapidly getting
into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on
a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were
strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The
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
months afterwards, when I was taunted with them very reasonably by
a caustic reviewer. Nothing could have a more ludicrous effect than
this appeal to shadows-to my Lord Dash, to Dean Dash, and to Mr.
Secretary Dash. Very naturally it thus happened to Mr. Philosopher
Dash that his burning light, alas! was extinguished irrecoverably in
the general nmeZe. Meantime, there was no excuse whatever 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 Mr. John Taylor, the accomplished publisher
of the work, that I should acquit him of any share in this absurdity,




Original Preface                  5
immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of
wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge
in ale or spirits; and, wages rising, it may be thought
that this practice would cease: but, as I do not readily
believe that any man, having once tasted the divine
luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross
and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted
'That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate, now eat the more.'
Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted
even by those medical writers who are its greatest
enemies: thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to
Greenwich Hospital, in his Essay on the Effects of Opium
(published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain
why Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the
properties, counter-agents, etc., of this drug, expresses
himself in the following mysterious terms (perfectly
intelligible, however, to those who are in the secret):
-'Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a
nature to be made common; and, as many people
might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from
that necessary fear and caution which should prevent
their experiencing the extensive power of this drug; for
there are many properties in it, if universally known, that
would habituate the use, and make it more in request with
us than the Turks themselves; the result of which knowledge,' he adds, 'must prove a general misfortune.' In
the necessity of this conclusion I do not at all concur;
but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak more
freely in the body of the work itself. And at this point
I shall say no more than that opium, as the'one sole
catholic anodyne which hitherto has been revealed to
man; secondly, as the one sole anodyne which in a vast
majority of cases is irresistible; thirdly, as by many
degrees the most potent of all known counter-agents
to nervous irritation, and to the formidable curse of
tedium vita; fourthly, as by possibility, under an argument undeniably plausible, alleged by myself, the sole
known agent - not for curing when formed, but for




6       An English Opium-Eater
intercepting whilst likely to be formed —the great
English scourge of pulmonary consumption;-I say
that opium, as wearing these, or any of these, four
beneficent characteristics-I say that any agent whatever
making good such pretensions, no matter what its name,
is entitled haughtily to refuse the ordinary classification
and treatment which opium receives in books. I say
that opium, or any agent of equal power, is entitled to
assume that it was revealed to man for some higher
object than that it should furnish a target for moral
denunciations, ignorant where they are not hypocritical,
childish where not dishonest; that it should be set up
as a theatrical scarecrow for superstitious terrors, of
which the result is oftentimes to defraud human suffering
of its readiest alleviation, and of which the purpose is,
'Ut pueris placeant et declamatio fiant.' 1
In one sense, and remotely, all medicines and modes
of medical treatment offer themselves as anodynes-that
is, so far as they promise ultimately to relieve the
suffering connected with physical maladies or infirmities.
But we do not, in the special and ordinary sense,
designate as 'anodynes' those remedies which obtain
the relief from pain only as a secondary and distant
effect following out from the cure of the ailment; but
those only we call anodynes which obtain this relief and
pursue it as the primary and immediate object. If, by
giving tonics to a child suffering periodic pains in the
stomach, we were ultimately to banish those pains, this
would not warrant us in calling such tonics by the name
of anodynes; for the neutralisation of the pains would
be a circuitous process of nature, and might probably
require weeks for its evolution. But a true anodyne
(as, for instance, half-a-dozen drops of laudanum, or a
dessert-spoonful of some warm carminative mixed with
brandy) will often banish the misery suffered by a child
in five or six minutes.  Amongst the most potent of
anodynes, we may rank hemlock, henbane, chloroform,


1 That they may win the applause of schoolboys, and furnish matter
for a prize essay.




Original Preface                        7
and opium.     But unquestionably the three first have a
most narrow field of action, by comparison with opium.
This, beyond all other agents made known to man, is
the mightiest for its command, and for the extent of its
command, over pain; and so much mightier than any
other, that I should think, in a Pagan land, supposing
it to have been adequately made known 1 through
experimental acquaintance with its revolutionary magic,
opium would have had altars and priests consecrated to
its benign and tutelary powers. But this is not my own
object in the present little work. Very many people
have thoroughly misconstrued this object; and therefore
I beg to say here, in closing my Original Preface, a little
remodelled, that what I contemplated in these Confessions was to emblazon the power of opium-not over
bodily disease and pain, but over the grander and more
shadowy world of dreams.
1 ' Adequately made known':- Precisely this, however, was impossible. No feature of ancient Pagan life has more entirely escaped
notice than the extreme rarity, costliness, and circuitous accessibility
of the more powerful drugs, especially of mineral drugs; and of drugs
requiring elaborate preparation, or requiring much manufacturing
skill. When the process of obtaining any manufactured drug was
slow and intricate it could most rarely be called for. And rarely called
for, why should it be produced? By looking into the history and times
of Herod the Great, as reported by Josephus, the reader will gain some
notion of the mystery and the suspicion surrounding all attempts at
importing such drugs as could be applied to murderous purposes,
consequently of the delay, the difficulty, and the peril in forming any
familiar acquaintance with opium.


B








PREFATORY NOTICE
WHEN it had been settled that, in the general series
of these republications, the Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater should occupy the Fifth Volume, I resolved to avail myself most carefully of the opening thus
made for a revision of the entire work. By accident,
a considerable part of the Confessions (all, in short,
except the Dreams) had originally been written hastily;
and, from various causes, had never received any strict
revision, or, virtually, so much as an ordinary verbal
correction. But a great deal more was wanted than this.
The main narrative should naturally have moved through
a succession of secondary incidents; and with leisure
for recalling these, it might have been greatly inspirited.
Wanting all opportunity for such advantages, this narrative had been needlessly impoverished. And thus it
had happened, that not so properly correction and
retrenchment were called for, as integration of what
had been left imperfect, or amplification of what, from
the first, had been insufficiently expanded.
With these views, it would not have been difficult
(though toilsome) to re-cast the little work in a better
mould; and the result might, in all reason, count upon
the approbation at least of its own former readers.
Compared with its own former self, the book must
certainly tend, by its very principle of change, whatever
should be the execution of that change, to become
better: and in my own opinion, after all drawbacks
and allowances for the faulty exemplification of a good
principle, it is better. This should be a matter of mere
logical or inferential necessity; since, in pure addition
to everything previously approved, there would now be
a clear surplus of extra matter-all that might be good
in the old work, and a great deal beside that was new.
Meantime this improvement has been won at a price of
labour and suffering that, if they could be truly stated,
9




Io     An English Opium-Eater
would seem incredible. A nervous malady, of very
peculiar character, which has attacked me intermittingly
for the last eleven years, came on in May last, almost
concurrently with the commencement of this revision;
and so obstinately has this malady pursued its noiseless,
and what I may call subterraneous, siege, since none of
the symptoms are externally manifested, that, although
pretty nearly dedicating myself to this one solitary
labour, and not intermitting or relaxing it for a single
day, I have yet spent, within a very few days, six
calendar months upon the re-cast of this one small
volume.
The consequences have been distressing to all concerned.  The press has groaned under the chronic
visitation; the compositors shudder at the sight of my
handwriting, though not objectionable on the score of
legibility; and I have much reason to fear that, on days
when the pressure of my complaint has been heaviest,
I may have so far given way to it, as to have suffered
greatly in clearness of critical vision. Sometimes I may
have overlooked blunders, mis-statements, or repetitions,
implicit or even express. But more often I may have
failed to appreciate the true effects from faulty management of style and its colourings.  Sometimes, for
instance, a heavy or too intricate arrangement of
sentences may have defeated the tendency of what,
under its natural presentation, would have been affecting; or it is possible enough that, by unseasonable
levity at other times, I may have repelled the sympathy
of my readers-all or some. Endless are the openings
for such kinds of mistake-that is, of mistakes not fully
seen as such.  But even in a case of unequivocal
mistake, seen and acknowledged, yet when it is open to
remedy only through a sudden and energetic act, then
or never, the press being for twenty minutes, suppose,
free to receive an alteration, but beyond that time
closed and sealed inexorably: such being supposed the
circumstances, the humane reader will allow for the
infirmity which even wilfully and consciously surrenders
itself to the error, acquiescing in it deliberately, rather




Prefatory Notice


I I


than face the cruel exertion of correcting it most
elaborately at a moment of sickening misery, and with
the prevision that the main correction must draw after
it half-a-dozen others for the sake of decent consistency.
I am not speaking under any present consciousness of
such a case existing against myself: I believe there is
none such. But I choose to suppose an extreme case
of even conscious error, in order that venial cases of
oversight may, under shelter of such an outside license,
find toleration from a liberal critic. To fight up against
the wearying siege of an abiding sickness, imposes a
fiery combat. I attempt no description of this combat,
knowing the unintelligibility and the repulsiveness of all
attempts to communicate the Incommunicable. But
the generous reader will not, for that forbearance on my
part, the less readily show his indulgence, if a case
should (unexpectedly to myself) arise for claiming it.
I have thus made the reader acquainted with one out
of two cross currents that tended to thwart my efforts
for improving this little work. There was, meantime,
another, less open to remedy from my own uttermost
efforts. All along I had relied upon a crowning grace,
which I had reserved for the final pages of this volume,
in a succession of some twenty or twenty-five dreams
and noon-day visions, which had arisen under the latter
stages of opium influence. These have disappeared:
some under circumstances which allow me a reasonable
prospect of recovering them; some unaccountably; and
some dishonourably.  Five or six, I believe, were
burned in a sudden conflagration which arose from the
spark of a candle falling unobserved amongst a very
large pile of papers in a bedroom, when I was alone and
reading. Falling not on, but amongst and within the
papers, the fire would soon have been ahead of conflict;
and, by communicating with the slight woodwork and
draperies of a bed, it would have immediately enveloped
the laths of a ceiling overhead, and thus the house, far
from fire-engines, would have been burned down in
half-an-hour. My attention was first drawn by a sudden
light upon my book: and the whole difference between




12     An    English    Opium-Eater
a total destruction of the premises and a trivial loss
(from books charred) of five guineas, was due to a large
Spanish cloak. This, thrown over, and then drawn
down tightly, by the aid of one sole person, somewhat
agitated, but retaining her presence of mind, effectually
extinguished the fire.  Amongst the papers burned
partially, but not so burned as to be absolutely irretrievable, was the 'Daughter of Lebanon '; and this
I have printed, and have intentionally placed it at the
end, as appropriately closing a record in which the case
of poor Ann the Outcast formed not only the most
memorable and the most suggestively pathetic incident,
but also that which, more than any other, colouredor (more truly I should say) shaped, moulded and remoulded, composed and decomposed-the great body
of opium dreams. The search after the lost features of
Ann, which I spoke of as pursued in the crowds of
London, was in a more proper sense pursued through
many a year in dreams. The general idea of a search
and a chase reproduced itself in many shapes. The
person, the rank, the age, the scenical position, all varied
themselves for ever; but the same leading traits more
or less faintly remained of a lost Pariah woman, and of
some shadowy malice which withdrew her, or attempted
to withdraw her, from restoration and from hope. Such is
the explanation which I offer why that particular addition,
which some of my friends had been authorised to look
for, has not in the main been given, nor for the present
could be given; and, secondly, why that part which is
given has been placed in the conspicuous situation (as a
closing passage) which it now occupies.


November, x856.




CONFESSIONS OF
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER
I HAVE often been asked-how it was, and through what
series of steps, that I became an opium-eater. Was it
gradually, tentatively, mistrustingly, as one goes down a
shelving beach into a deepening sea, and with a knowledge from the first of the dangers lying on that path;
half-courting those dangers, in fact, whilst seeming to
defy them? Or was it, secondly, in pure ignorance
of such dangers, under the misleadings of mercenary
fraud? since oftentimes lozenges, for the relief of pulmonary affections, found their efficacy upon the opium
which they contain, upon this, and this only, though
clamorously disavowing so suspicious an alliance: and
under such treacherous disguises multitudes are seduced
into a dependency which they had not foreseen upon
a drug which they had not known; not known even by
name or by sight: and thus the case is not rare-that
the chain of abject slavery is first detected when it has
inextricably wound itself about the constitutional system.
Thirdly, and lastly, was it (Yes, by passionate anticipation, I answer, before the question is finished)-was
it on a sudden, overmastering impulse derived from
bodily anguish? Loudly I repeat, Yes; loudly and
indignantly-as in answer to a wilful calumny. Simply
as an anodyne it was, under the mere coercion of pain
the severest, that I first resorted to opium; and precisely
that same torment it is, or some variety of that torment,
which drives most people to make acquaintance with
that same insidious remedy. Such was the fact; such
13




14


Confessions of


by accident. Meantime, without blame it might have
been otherwise. If in early days I had fully understood
the subtle powers lodged in this mighty drug (when
judiciously regulated), (I) to tranquillise all irritations
of the nervous system; (2) to stimulate the capacities
of enjoyment; and (3) under any call for extraordinary
exertion (such as all men meet at times), to sustain
through twenty-four consecutive hours the else drooping
animal energies-most certainly, knowing or suspecting
all this, I should have inaugurated my opium career
in the character of one seeking extra power and enjoyment, rather than of one shrinking from extra torment.
And why not?   If that argued any fault, is it not a
fault that most of us commit every day with regard to
alcohol?  Are we entitled to use that only as a medicine? Is wine unlawful, except as an anodyne? I
hope not: else I shall be obliged to counterfeit and to
plead some anomalous tic in my little finger; and thus
gradually, as in any Ovidian metamorphosis, I, that am
at present a truth-loving man, shall change by daily
inches into a dissembler. No: the whole race of man
proclaim it lawful to drink wine without pleading a
medical certificate as a qualification. That same license
extends itself therefore to the use of opium; what a man
may lawfully seek in wine surely he may lawfully find in
opium; and much more so in those many cases (of which
mine happens to be one) where opium deranges the
animal economy less by a great deal than an equivalent
quantity of alcohol. Coleridge, therefore, was doubly
in error when he allowed himself to aim most unfriendly
blows at my supposed voluptuousness in the use of
opium; in error as to a principle, and in error as to
a fact. A letter of his, which I will hope that he did
not design to have published, but which, however, has
been published, points the attention of his correspondent to a broad distinction separating my case as an
opium-eater from his own: he, it seems, had fallen
excusably (because unavoidably) into this habit of
eating opium-as the one sole therapeutic resource
available against his particular lmalady; but I, wretch




an English Opium-Eater


15


that I am, being so notoriously charmed by fairies
against pain, must have resorted to opium in the abominable character of an adventurous voluptuary, angling in
all streams for variety of pleasures. Coleridge is wrong
to the whole extent of what was possible; wrong in his
fact, wrong in his doctrine; in his little fact, and his
big doctrine. I did not do the thing which he charges
upon me; and if I had done it, this would not convict
me as a citizen of Sybaris or Daphne. There never was
a distinction more groundless and visionary than that
which it has pleased him to draw between my motives
and his own; nor could Coleridge have possibly owed
this mis-statement to any false information; since no
man surely, on a question of my own private experience,
could have pretended to be better informed than myself.
Or, if there really is such a person, perhaps he will not
think it too much trouble to re-write these Confessions
from first to last, correcting their innumerable faults;
and, as it happens that some parts of the unpublished
sections for the present are missing, would he kindly
restore them-brightening the colours that may have
faded, rekindling the inspiration that may have drooped;
filling up all those chasms which else are likely to remain
as permanent disfigurations of my little work?  Meantime the reader, who takes any interest in such a question, will find that I myself (upon such a theme not
simply the best, but surely the sole authority) have,
without a shadow of variation, always given a different
account of the matter. Most truly I have told the
reader, that not any search after pleasure, but mere
extremity of pain from rheumatic toothache-this and
nothing else it was that first drove me into the use of
opium. Coleridge's bodily affliction was simple rheumatism. Mine, which intermittingly raged for ten years,
was rheumatism in the face combined with toothache.
This I had inherited from my father; or inherited (I
should rather say) from my own desperate ignorance;
since a trifling dose of colocynth, or of any similar
medicine, taken three times a week, would more certainly than opium have delivered me from that terrific




Id                Confessions of
curse.1 In this ignorance, however, which misled me
into making war upon toothache when ripened and
manifesting itself in effects of pain, rather than upon
its germs and gathering causes, I did but follow the
rest of the world. To intercept the evil whilst yet in
elementary stages of formation, was the true policy;
whereas I in my blindness sought only for some mitigation to the evil when already formed, and past all reach
of interception. In this stage of the suffering, formed
and perfect, I was thrown passively upon chance advice,
and therefore, by a natural consequence, upon opiumthat being the one sole anodyne that is almost notoriously
such, and which in that great function is universally
appreciated.
Coleridge, therefore, and myself, as regards our baptismal initiation into the use of that mighty drug, occupy
the very same position. We are embarked in the selfsame boat; nor is it within the compass even of angelic
hair-splitting, to show that the dark shadow thrown by
our several trespasses in this field, mine and his, had
by so much as a pin's point any assignable difference.
Trespass against trespass (if any trespass there were)shadow against shadow (if any shadow were really thrown
1 ' That terrific curse':-Two things blunt the general sense of
horror, which would else connect itself with toothache-viz., first, its
enormous diffusion; hardly a household in Europe being clear of it,
each in turn having some one chamber intermittingly echoing the
groans extorted by this cruel torture. There-viz., in its ubiquitylies one cause of its slight valuation. A second cause is found in its
immunity from danger.  This latter ground of undervaluation is
noticed in a saying ascribed (but on what authority I know not) to
Sir Philip Sidney-viz., that supposing toothache liable in ever so small
a proportion of its cases to a fatal issue, it would be generally ranked
as the most dreadful amongst human maladies; whereas the certainty
that it will in no extremity lead to death, and the knowledge that in
the very midst of its storms sudden changes may be looked for, bringing long halcyon calms, have an unfair effect in lowering the appreciation of this malady considered as a trial of fortitude and patience. No
stronger expression of its intensity and scorching fierceness can be
imagined than this fact-that, within my private knowledge, two
persons, who had suffered alike under toothache and cancer, have
pronounced the former to be, on the scale of torture, by many degrees
the worse. In both, there are at times what surgeons call ' lancinating' pangs-keen, glancing, arrowy radiations of anguish; and upon
these the basis of comparison was rested-paroxysm against paroxysm
-with the result that I have stated.




an English Opium-Eater


I7


by this trespass over the snowy disk of pure ascetic
morality), in any case, that act in either of us would
read into the same meaning, would count up as a debt
into the same value, would measure as a delinquency
into the same burden of responsibility. And vainly,
indeed, does Coleridge attempt to differentiate two cases
which ran into absolute identity, differing only as rheumatism differs from toothache. Amongst the admirers
of Coleridge, I at all times stood in the foremost rank;
and the more was my astonishment at being summoned
so often to witness his carelessness in the management
of controversial questions, and his demoniac inaccuracy
in the statement of facts. The more also was my sense
of Coleridge's wanton injustice in relation to myself
individually. Coleridge's gross mis-statement of facts,
in regard to our several opium experiences, had its
origin, sometimes in flighty reading, sometimes in partial
and incoherent reading, sometimes in subsequent forgetfulness; and any one of these lax habits (it will occur
to the reader) is a venial infirmity. Certainly it is; but
surely not venial, when it is allowed to operate disadvantageously upon the character for self-control of a
brother, who had never spoken of him but in the spirit
of enthusiastic admiration; of that admiration which his
exquisite works so amply challenge. Imagine the case
that I really had done something wrong, still it would
have been ungenerous-me it would have saddened,
I confess, to see Coleridge rushing forward with a public
denunciation of my fault:-'Know        all men by these
presents, that I, S. T. C., a noticeable man with large
grey eyes,l am a licensed opium-eater, whereas this other
man is a buccaneer, a pirate, a flibustier,2 and can have
1 See Wordsworth's exquisite picture of S. T. C. and himself as
occasional denizens in the Castle of Indolence.
2 This word-in common use, and so spelled as I spell it, amongst
the grand old French and English buccaneers contemporary with our
own admirable Dampier, at the close of the seventeenth century-has
recently been revived in the journals of the United States, with a view
to the special case of Cuba, but (for what reason I know not) is now
written always as filibusters. Meantime, written in whatsoever way,
it is understood to be a Franco-Spanish corruption of the English word
freebooter.




i8


Confessions of


none but a forged licence in his disreputable pocket.
In the name of Virtue, arrest him I' But the truth is,
that inaccuracy as to facts and citations from books was
in Coleridge a mere necessity of nature.  Not three
days ago, in reading a short comment of the late Archdeacon Hare (Guesses at Truth) upon a bold speculation
of Coleridge's (utterly baseless) with respect to the
machinery of Etonian Latin verses, I found my old
feelings upon this subject refreshed by an instance that
is irresistibly comic, since everything that Coleridge
had relied upon as a citation from a book in support
of his own hypothesis, turns out to be a pure fabrication
of his own dreams; though, doubtless (which indeed it
is that constitutes the characteristic interest of the case),
without a suspicion on his part of his own furious
romancing. The archdeacon's good-natured smile upon
that Etonian case naturally reminded me of the case
now before us, with regard to the history of our separate
careers as opium-eaters. Upon which case I need say
no more, as by this time the reader is aware that
Coleridge's entire statement upon that subject is perfect
moonshine, and, like the sculptured imagery of the
pendulous lamp in Christabel,
'All carved from the carver's brain.'
This case, therefore, might now be counted on as disposed of; and what sport it could yield might reasonably
be thought exhausted.  Meantime, on consideration,
another and much deeper oversight of Coleridge's becomes apparent; and as this connects itself with an
aspect of the case that furnishes the foundation to the
whole of these ensuing Confessions, it cannot altogether
be neglected. Any attentive reader, after a few moments'
reflection, will perceive that, whatever may have been the
casual occasion of mine or Coleridge's opium-eating, this
could not have been the permanent ground of opiumeating; because neither rheumatism nor toothache is
any abiding affection of the system.  Both are intermitting maladies, and not at all capable of accounting




an English Opium-Eater


I9


for a permanent habit of opium-eating. Some months
are requisite to found that. Making allowance for constitutional differences, I should say that in less than 120
days no habit of opium-eating could be formed strong
enough to call for any extraordinary self-conquest in
renouncing it, and even suddenly renouncing it. On
Saturday you are an opium-eater, on Sunday no longer
such. What then was it, after all, that made Coleridge
a slave to opium, and a slave that could not break his
chain? He fancies, in his headlong carelessness, that
he has accounted for this habit and this slavery; and in
the meantime he has accounted for nothing at all about
which any question has arisen. Rheumatism, he says,
drove him to opium. Very well; but with proper
medical treatment the rheumatism would soon have
ceased; or even, without medical treatment, under the
ordinary oscillations of natural causes. And when the
pain ceased, then the opium should have ceased. Why
did it not? Because Coleridge had come to taste the
genial pleasure of opium; and thus the very impeachment, which he fancied himself in some mysterious way
to have evaded, recoils upon him in undiminished force.
The rheumatic attack would have retired before the
habit could have had time to form itself. Or suppose
that I underrate the strength of the possible habit-this
tells equally in my favour; and Coleridge was not entitled to forget in my case a plea remembered in his own.
It is really memorable in the annals of human self-deceptions, that Coleridge could have held such language
in the face of such facts. I, boasting not at all of my
self-conquests, and owning no moral argument against
the free use of opium, nevertheless on mere prudential
motives break through the vassalage more than once,
and by efforts which I have recorded as modes of transcendent suffering. Coleridge, professing to believe (without reason assigned) that opium-eating is criminal, and in
some mysterious sense more criminal than wine-drinking
or porter-drinking, having, therefore, the strongest moral
motive for abstaining from it, yet suffers himself to fall
into a captivity to this same wicked opium, deadlier




20


Confessions of


than was ever heard of, and under no coercion whatever
that he has anywhere explained to us. A slave he was
to this potent drug not less abject than Caliban to Prospero-his detested and yet despotic master. Like Caliban, he frets his very heart-strings against the rivets of
his chain. Still, at intervals through the gloomy vigils
of his prison, you hear muttered growls of impotent
mutineering swelling upon the breeze:
'Irasque leonum
Vincla recusantum'recusantum, it is true, still refusing yet still accepting,
protesting for ever against the fierce, overmastering
curb-chain, yet for ever submitting to receive it into the
mouth. It is notorious that in Bristol (to that I can
speak myself, but probably in many other places) he
went so far as to hire men-porters, hackney-coachmen,
and others-to oppose by force his entrance into any
druggist's shop. But, as the authority for stopping him
was derived simply from himself, naturally these poor
men found themselves in a metaphysical fix, not provided for even by Thomas Aquinas or by the prince of
Jesuitical casuists. And in this excruciating dilemma
would occur such scenes as the following:'Oh, sir,' would plead the suppliant porter-suppliant,
yet semi-imperative (for equally if he did, and if he did
not, show fight, the poor man's daily 5s. seemed endangered)-'really you must not; consider, sir, your
wife and '
Transcendental Philosopher.-'Wife! what wife? I
have no wife.' 1
Porter.-' But, really now, you must not, sir. Didn't
you say no longer ago than yesterday-'
Transcend. Philos.-' Pooh, pooh! yesterday is a long
time ago. Are you aware, my man, that people are
known to have dropped down dead for timely want of
opium?'
Porter.-' Ay, but you tell't me not to hearken -'
Transcend. Philos.-' Oh, nonsense. An emergency,
1 Vide Othelo.




an English Opium-Eater


21


a shocking emergency, has arisen-quite unlooked for.
No matter what I told you in times long past. That
which I now tell you, is-that, if you don't remove that
arm of yours from the doorway of this most respectable
druggist, I shall have a good ground of action against
you for assault and battery.'
Am I the man to reproach Coleridge with this vassalage to opium? Heaven forbid! Having groaned myself under that yoke, I pity, and blame him not. But
undeniably, such a vassalage must have been created
wilfully and consciously by his own craving after genial
stimulation; a thing which I do not blame, but Coleridge
did. For my own part, duly as the torment relaxed in
relief of which I had resorted to opium, I laid aside the
opium, not under any meritorious effort of self-conquest;
nothing of that sort do I pretend to; but simply on a
prudential instinct warning me not to trifle with an
engine so awful of consolation and support, nor to waste
upon a momentary uneasiness what might eventually
prove, in the midst of all-shattering hurricanes, the great
elixir of resurrection. What was it that did in reality
make me an opium-eater? That affection which finally
drove me into the habitual use of opium, what was it?
Pain was it? No, but misery. Casual overcasting of
sunshine was it?  No, but blank desolation. Gloom
was it that might have departed? No, but settled and
abiding darkness.
' Total eclipse,
Without all hope of day '1
Yet whence derived? Caused by what? Caused, as I
might truly plead, by youthful distresses in London;
were it not that these distresses were due, in their
ultimate origin, to my own unpardonable folly; and to
that folly I trace many ruins. Oh, spirit of merciful interpretation, angel of forgiveness to youth and its aberrations, that hearkenest for ever as if to some sweet
choir of far-off female intercessions! will ye, choir that
intercede-wilt thou, angel that forgivest-join together,
I Samson Agonistes.




22


Confessions of


and charm away that mighty phantom, born amidst the
gathering mists of remorse, which strides after me in
pursuit from forgotten days-towering for ever into proportions more and more colossal, overhanging and overshadowing my head as if close behind, yet dating its
nativity from hours that are fled by more than half-acentury? Oh heavens! that it should be possible for
a child not seventeen years old, by a momentary blindness, by listening to a false, false whisper from his own
bewildered heart, by one erring step, by a motion this
way or that, to change the currents of his destiny, to
poison the fountains of his peace, and in the twinkling
of an eye to lay the foundations of a life-long repentance!
Yet, alas! I must abide by the realities of the case. And
one thing is clear, that amidst such bitter self-reproaches
as are now extorted from me by the anguish of my recollections, it cannot be with any purpose of weaving
plausible excuses, or of evading blame, that I trace the
origin of my confirmed opium-eating to a necessity
growing out of my early sufferings in the streets of
London. Because, though true it is that the re-agency
of these London sufferings did in after years enforce the
use of opium, equally it is true that the sufferings themselves grew out of my own folly. What really calls for
excuse, is not the recourse to opium, when opium had
become the one sole remedy available for the malady,
but those follies which had themselves produced that
malady.
I, for my part, after I had become a regular opiumeater, and from mismanagement had fallen into miserable excesses in the use of opium, did nevertheless, four
several times, contend successfully against the dominion
of this drug; did four several times renounce it; renounced it for long intervals; and finally resumed it
upon the warrant of my enlightened and deliberate
judgment, as being of two evils by very much the least.
In this I acknowledge nothing that calls for excuse. I
repeat again and again, that not the application of opium,
with its deep tranquillising powers to the mitigation of
evils, bequeathed by my London hardships, is what




an English Opium-Eater                 23
reasonably calls for sorrow, but that extravagance of
childish folly which precipitated me into scenes naturally
producing such hardships.
These scenes I am now called upon to retrace.
Possibly they are sufficiently interesting to merit, even
on their own account, some short record; but at present,
and at this point, they have become indispensable as a
key to the proper understanding of all which follows.
For in these incidents of my early life is found the
entire substratum, together with the secret and underlying motiveI of those pompous dreams and dreamsceneries which were in reality the true objects-first
and last-contemplated in these Confessions.
My father died when I was in my seventh year, leaving
six children, including myself (viz., four sons and two
daughters), to the care of four guardians and of our
mother, who was invested with the legal authority of a
guardian. This word 'guardian' kindles a fiery thrilling in my nerves; so much was that special power of
guardianship, as wielded by one of the four, concerned
in the sole capital error of my boyhood. To this error
my own folly would hardly have been equal, unless by
concurrence with the obstinacy of others. From the
bitter remembrance of this error in myself- of this
obstinacy in my hostile guardian, suffer me to draw the
privilege of making a moment's pause upon this subject
of legal guardianship.
There is not (I believe) in human socievty unc'Fer
whatever form of civilisation, any trust or delegate 1
duty which has more often been negligently or even
perfidiously administered.  In the days of classical
Greece and Rome, my own private impression, founded
on the collation of many incidental notices, is-that
this, beyond all other forms of domestic authority, furnished to wholesale rapine and peculation their very
amplest arena. The relation of father and son, as was
that of patron and client, was generally, in the practice
1 Motive:-The word motive is here used in the sense attached by
artists and connoisseurs to the technical word motivo, applied to
pictures, or to the separate movements in a musical theme.
C




24


Confessions of


of life, cherished with religious fidelity: whereas the
solemn duties of the tutor (i.e. the guardian) to his ward,
which had their very root and origin in the tenderest
adjurations of a dying friend, though subsequently refreshed by the hourly spectacle of helpless orphanage
playing round the margins of pitfalls hidden by flowers,
spoke but seldom to the sensibilities of a Roman
through any language of oracular power. Few indeed,
if any, were the obligations, in a proper sense moral,
which pressed upon the Roman. The main fountains
of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or by custom,
been thoroughly poisoned.  Marriage had corrupted
itself through the facility of divorce, and through the
consequences of that facility (viz., levity in choosing,
and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so
exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not yield
so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation
of husband and wife had, for all moral impressions,
perished amongst the Romans. The relation of father
and child had all its capacities of holy tenderness
crushed out of it under the fierce pressure of penal
and vindictive enforcements. The duties of the client
to his patron stood upon no basis of simple gratitude or
simple fidelity (corresponding to the feudal fealty), but
upon a basis of prudential terror; terror from positive
law, or from  social opinion.  From  the first interme idling of law with the movement of the higher
m )ral affections, there is an end to freedom in the act
— to purity in the motive-to dignity in the personal
relation. Accordingly, in the France of the pre-revolutionary period, and in the China of all periods, it has
been with baleful effects to the national morals that
positive law has come in aid of the paternal rights.
And in the Rome of ancient history it may be said
that this one original and rudimental wrong done to
the holy freedom of human affections, had the effect of
extinguishing thenceforward all conscientious movement
in whatever direction.  And thus, amongst a people
naturally more highly principled than the Greeks, if you
except ebullitions of public spirit and patriotism (too




an English Opium-Eater


25


often of mere ignoble nationality), no class of actions
stood upon any higher basis of motive than (i) legal
ordinance; (2) superstitious fear; or (3) servile compliance with the insolent exactions of popular usage.
Strange, therefore, it would have been if the tutor of
obscure orphans, with extra temptations and extra
facilities for indulging them, should have shown himself more faithful to his trust than the governor of
provinces-praetorian or proconsular.  Yet who more
treacherous and rapacious than he? Rarest of men was
the upright governor that accepted no bribes from the
criminal, and extorted no ransoms from the timid. He
nevertheless, as a public trustee, was watched by the
jealousy of political competitors, and had by possibility
a solemn audit to face in the senate or in the forum;
perhaps in both. But the tutor, who administered a
private trust on behalf of orphans, might count on the
certainty that no public attention could ever be attracted
to concerns so obscure, and politically so uninteresting.
Reasonably, therefore, and by all analogy, a Roman
must have regarded the ordinary domestic tutor as
almost inevitably a secret delinquent using the opportunities and privileges of his office as mere instruments
for working spoliation and ruin upon the inheritance
confided to his care. This deadly and besetting evil of
Pagan days must have deepened a hundredfold the
glooms overhanging the death-beds of parents.  Too
often the dying father could not fail to read in his own
lifelong experience, that, whilst seeking special protection for his children, he might himself be introducing
amongst them a separate and imminent danger. Leaving behind him a little household of infants, a little
fleet (as it might be represented) of fairy pinnaces, just
raising their anchors in preparation for crossing the
mighty deeps of life, he made signals for 'convoy.'
Some one or two (at best imperfectly known to him),
amongst those who traversed the same seas, he accepted
in that character; but doubtfully, sorrowfully, fearfully;
and at the very moment when the faces of his children
were disappearing amongst the vapours of death, the




26


Confessions of


miserable thought would cross his prophetic soulthat too probably this pretended 'convoy,' under the
strong temptations of the case, might eventually become
pirates; robbers, at the least; and by possibility wilful
misleaders to the inexperience of his children.
From this dreadful aggravation of the anguish at any
rate besetting the death-beds of parents summoned
away from a group of infant children, there has been a
mighty deliverance wrought in a course of centuries by
the vast diffusion of Christianity. In these days, wheresoever an atmosphere is breathed that has been purified
by Christian charities and Christian principles, this
household pestilence has been continually dwindling:
and in the England of this generation there is no class
of peculation which we so seldom hear of: one proof of
which is found in the indifference with which most of us
regard the absolute security offered to children by the
Court of Chancery. My father, therefore, as regarded
the quiet of his dying hours, benefited by the felicity of
his times and his country. He made the best selection
for the future guardianship of his six children that
his opportunities allowed; from his circle of intimate
friends, he selected the four who stood highest in his
estimation for honour and practical wisdom: which
done, and relying for the redressing of any harsh
tendencies in male guardians upon the discretional
power lodged in my mother, thenceforth he rested from
his anxieties. Not one of these guardians but justified
his choice so far as honour and integrity were concerned.
Yet, after all, there is a limit (and sooner reached
perhaps in England than in other divisions of Christendom) to the good that can be achieved in such cases
by prospective wisdom.   For we, in England, more
absolutely than can be asserted of any other nation, are
not fainkans: rich and poor, all of us have something to
do. To Italy it is that we must look for a peasantry
idle through two-thirds of their time. To Spain it is
that we must look for an aristocracy physically' degraded
1 It is asserted by travellers-English, French, and German alikethat the ducal order in Spain (as that order of the Spanish peerage




an English Opium-Eater                   27
under the ignoble training of women and priests; and
for princes (such as Ferdinand vII.) that make it the
glory of their lives to have embroidered a petticoat.
Amongst ourselves of this current generation, whilst
those functions of guardianship may be surely counted
on which presume conscientious loyalty to the interests
of their wards; on the other hand, all which presume
continued vigilance and provision from afar are, in
simple truth, hardly compatible with our English state
of society.  The guardians chosen by my father, had
they been the wisest and also the most energetic of
men, could not in many conceivable emergencies have
fulfilled his secret wishes. Of the four men, one was a
merchant (not in the narrow sense of Scotland, derived
originally from France, where no class of merchant
princes has ever existed, but in the large noble sense of
England-of Florence-of Venice): consequently, his
extensive relations with sea-ports and distant colonies
continually drawing off his attention, and even his personal presence, from domestic affairs, made it hopeless
that he should even attempt more on behalf of his
wards than slightly to watch the administration of their
pecuniary interests. A second of our guardians was a
rural magistrate, but in a populous district close upon
Manchester, which even at that time was belted with
a growing body of turbulent aliens-Welsh and Irish.
He therefore, overwhelmed by the distractions of his
official station, rightly perhaps conceived himself to
have fulfilled his engagements as a guardian, if he stood
ready to come forward upon any difficulty arising, but
else in ordinary cases devolved his functions upon those
who enjoyed more leisure.    In that category stood,
beyond a doubt, a third of our guardians, the Rev.
Samuel H., who was at the time of my father's death
a curate at some church (I believe) in Manchester or in
most carefully withdrawn from what Kentucky would call the roughand-tumble discipline of a popular education) exhibit in their very
persons and bodily development undisguised evidences of effeminate
habits operating through many generations. It would be satisfactory
to know the unexaggerated truth on this point; the truth unbiassed
alike by national and by democratic prejudices.




28


Confessions of


Salford.l This gentleman represented a class-large
enough at all times by necessity of human nature, but
in those days far larger than at present-that class, I
mean, who sympathise with no spiritual sense or spiritual
capacities in man; who understand by religion simply a
respectable code of ethics-leaning for support upon
some great mysteries dimly traced in the background,
and commemorated in certain great church festivals by
the elder churches of Christendom; as, e.g., by the
English, which does not stand as to age on the Reformation epoch, by the Romish, and by the Greek. He
had composed a body of about 330 sermons, which
thus, at the rate of two every Sunday, revolved through
a cycle of three years; that period being modestly
assumed as sufficient for insuring to their eloquence
total oblivion. Possibly to a cynic, some shorter cycle
might have seemed equal to that effect, since their
topics rose but rarely above the level of prudential
ethics; and the style, though scholarly, was not impressive. As a preacher, Mr. H. was sincere, but not
earnest. He was a good and conscientious man; and
he made a high valuation of the pulpit as an organ of
civilisation for co-operating with books; but it was
impossible for any man, starting from the low ground
of themes so unimpassioned and so desultory as the
benefits of industry, the danger from bad companions,
the importance of setting a good example, or the value
of perseverance-to pump up any persistent stream of
earnestness either in himself or in his auditors. These
auditors, again, were not of a class to desire much
earnestness.   There were no naughty people among
1 Salford is a large town legally distinguished from Manchester for
parliamentary purposes, and divided from it physically by a river, but
else virtually, as regards intercourse and reciprocal influence, is a
quarter of Manchester; in fact, holding the same relation to Manchester that Southwark does to London; or, if the reader insists upon
having a classical illustration of the case, the same relation that in
ancient days Argos did to Mycenae. An invitation to dinner given by
the public herald of Argos could be heard to the centre of Mycenae,
and by a gourmand, if the dinner promised to be specially good, in
the remoter suburb,




an English Opium-Eater


29


them: most of them were rich, and came to church
in carriages: and, as a natural result of their esteem for
my reverend guardian, a number of them combined to
build a church for him-viz., St. Peter's, at the point of
confluence between Moseley Street and the newly projected Oxford Street-then existing only as a sketch in
the portfolio of a surveyor. But what connected myself
individually with Mr. H. was, that two or three years
previously I, together with one of my brothers (five years
my senior), had been placed under his care for classical
instruction. This was done, I believe, in obedience to
a dying injunction of my father, who had a just esteem
for Mr. S. H. as an upright man, but apparently too
exalted an opinion of his scholarship: for he was but an
indifferent Grecian. In whatever way the appointment
arose, so it was that this gentleman, previously ottor in
the Roman sense to all of us, now became to my
brother and myself tutor also in the common English
sense. From the age of eight, up to eleven and a-half,
the character and intellectual attainments of Mr. H.
were therefore influentially important to myself in the
development of my powers, such as they were. Even
his 330 sermons, which rolled overhead with such
slender effect upon his general congregation, to me
became a real instrument of improvement. One-half
of these, indeed, were all that I heard; for, as my
father's house (Greenhay) stood at this time in the
country, Manchester not having yet overtaken it, the
distance obliged us to go in a carriage, and only to the
morning service; but every sermon in this morning
course was propounded to me as a textual basis upon
which I was to raise a mimic duplicate-sometimes a
pure miniature abstract-sometimes a rhetorical expansion-but preserving as much as possible of the original
language, and also (which puzzled me painfully) preserving the exact succession of the thoughts; which might be
easy where they stood in some dependency upon each
other, as, for instance, in the development of an argument, but in arbitrary or chance arrangements was often
as trying to my powers as any feat of rope-dancing.




30


Confessions of


I, therefore, amongst that whole congregation,' was the
one sole careworn auditor-agitated about that which,
over all other heads, flowed away like water over marble
slabs-viz., the somewhat torpid sermon of my somewhat torpid guardian.      But this annoyance was not
wholly lost: and those same      s0- sermons, which (lasting only through sixteen minutes each) were approved
and forgotten by everybody else, for me became a
perfect palestra of intellectual gymnastics far better
suited to my childish weakness than could have been
the sermons of Isaac Barrow      or Jeremy Taylor.      In
these last, the gorgeous imagery would have dazzled
my feeble vision, and in both the gigantic thinking
would have crushed      my efforts at apprehension.       I
drew, in fact, the deepest benefits from       this weekly
exercise. Perhaps, also, in the end it ripened into a
great advantage for me, though long and bitterly I complained of it, that I was not allowed to use a pencil in
taking notes: all was to be charged upon the memory.
But it is notorious that the memory strengthens as you
lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you
trust it. So that, in my third year of practice, I found
1 ' That whole congregation':-Originally at churches which I do
not remember, where, however, in consideration of my tender age, the
demands levied upon my memory were much lighter. Two or three
years later, when I must have been nearing my tenth year, and when
St. Peter's had been finished, occurred the opening, and consequently
(as an indispensable pre-condition) the consecration of that edifice by
the bishop of the diocese (viz., Chester). I, as a ward of the incumbent, was naturally amongst those specially invited to the festival; and
I remember a little incident which exposed broadly the conflict of
feelings inherited by the Church of England from the Puritans of the
seventeenth century. The architecture of the church was Grecian; and
certainly the enrichments, inside or outside, were few enough, neither
florid nor obtrusive. But in the centre of the ceiling, for the sake of
breaking the monotony of so large a blank white surface, there was
moulded, in plaster-of-Paris, a large tablet or shield, charged with a
cornucopia of fruits and flowers. And yet, when we were all assembled
in the vestry waiting-rector, churchwardens, architect, and trains of
dependants-there arose a deep buzz of anxiety, which soon ripened
into an articulatemexpression of fear, that the bishop would think himself bound, like the horrid eikonoclasts of 1645, to issue his decree of
utter averruncation to the simple decoration overhead. Fearfully did
we all tread the little aisles in the procession of the prelate. Earnestly
my lord looked upwards; but finally-were it courtesy, or doubtfulness
as to his ground, or approbation —he passed on.




an English Opium-Eater               31
my abstracting and condensing powers sensibly enlarged.
My guardian was gradually better satisfied; for unfortunately (and in the beginning it was unfortunate)
always one witness could be summoned against me
upon any impeachment of my fidelity-viz., the sermon
itself; since, though lurking amongst the 330, the
wretch was easily forked out. But these appeals grew
fewer; and my guardian, as I have said, was continually
better satisfied. Meantime, might not I be continually
less satisfied with him and his 330 sermons? Not at
all: loving and trusting, without doubt or, reserve, and
with the deepest principles of veneration rooted in my
nature, I never, upon meeting something more impressive than the average complexion of my guardian's
discourses, for one moment thought of him as worse
or feebler than others, but simply as different; and no
more quarrelled with him for his characteristic languor,
than with a green riband for not being blue. By mere
accident, I one day heard quoted a couplet which
seemed to me sublime. It described a preacher such
as sometimes arises in difficult times, or in fermenting
times, a son of thunder, that looks all enemies in the
face, and volunteers a defiance even when it would have
been easy to evade it.  The lines were written by
Richard Baxter-who baffled often with self-created
storms from the first dawn of the Parliamentary War
in 1642, through the period of Cromwell (to whom he
was personally odious), and, finally, through the trying
reigns of the second Charles and of the second James.
As a pulpit orator, he was perhaps the Whitfield of the
seventeenth century-the Zeuconomos of Cowper. And
thus it is that he describes the impassioned character of
his own preaching' I preach'd, as never sure to preach again;
[Even that was telling; but then followed this thunderpeaZ]
And as a dying man to dying men.'
This couplet, which seemed to me equally for weight
and for splendour like molten gold, laid bare another




32


Confessions of


aspect of the Catholic church; revealed it as a Church
militant and crusading.
Not even thus, however, did I descry any positive
imperfection in my guardian. He and Baxter had fallen
upon different generations. Baxter's century, from first
to last, was revolutionary. Along the entire course of
that seventeenth century, the great principles of representative government and the rights of conscience 1 were
passing through the anguish of conflict and fiery trial.
Now again in mylown day, at the close of the eighteenth
century, it is true that all the elements of social life were
thrown into the crucible-but on behalf of our neighbours, no longer of ourselves. No longer, therefore, was
invoked the heroic pleader, ready for martyrdom, preaching, therefore, 'as never sure to preach again'; and I
no more made it a defect in my guardian that he wanted
energies for combating evils now forgotten, than that
he had not in patriotic fervour leaped into a gulf, like
the fabulous Roman martyr Curtius, or in zeal for
liberty had not mounted a scaffold, like the real English
martyr Algernon Sidney. Every Sunday, duly as it
revolved, brought with it this cruel anxiety. On Saturday night under sad anticipation, on Sunday night under
sadder experimental knowledge, of my trying task, I
slept ill: my pillow was stuffed with thorns; and until
Monday morning's inspection     and armilustrium   had
dismissed me from parade to 'stand at ease,' verily I
felt like a false steward summoned to some killing audit.
Then suppose Monday to be invaded by some horrible
intruder, visitor perhaps from a band of my guardian's
poor relations, that in   some undiscovered    nook of
Lancashire seemed in fancy to blacken all the fields,
and suddenly at a single note of 'caw, caw,' rose in
one vast cloud like crows, and settled down for weeks
1 I The tights of conscience':-With which it is painful to know
that Baxter did not sympathise. Religious toleration he called ' Soulmurder.' And, if you reminded him that the want of this toleration
had been his own capital grievance, he replied, 'Ah, but the cases
were very different: I was in the right; whereas the vast majority of
those who will benefit by this newfangled toleration are shockingly in
the wrong.'




an English Opium-Eater


33


at the table of my guardian and his wife, whose noble
hospitality would never allow the humblest among them
to be saddened by a faint welcome. In such cases,
very possibly the whole week did not see the end of
my troubles.
On these terms, for upwards of three-and-a-half
years-that is, from my eighth to beyond my eleventh
birth-day-my guardian and I went on cordially: he
never once angry, as indeed he never had any reason
for anger; I never once treating my task either as odious
(which in the most abominable excess it was), or, on
the other hand, as costing but a trivial effort, which
practice might have taught me to hurry through with
contemptuous ease. To the very last I found no ease
at all in this weekly task, which never ceased to be
'a thorn in the flesh': and I believe that my guardian,
like many of the grim Pagan divinities, inhaled a flavour
of fragrant incense, from the fretting and stinging of
anxiety which, as it were some holy vestal fire, he kept
alive by this periodic exaction. It gave him pleasure
that he could reach me in the very recesses of my
dreams, where even a Pariah might look for rest; so
that the Sunday, which to man, and even to the brutes
within his gates, offered an interval of rest, for me was
signalised as a day of martyrdom. Yet in this, after all,
it is possible that he did me a service: for my constitutional infirmity of mind ran but too determinately
towards the sleep of endless reverie, and of dreamy
abstraction from life and its realities.
Whether serviceable or not, however, the connexion
between my guardian and myself was now drawing to
its close. Some months after my eleventh birth-day,
Greenhay1 was sold, and my mother's establishmentboth children and servants-was translated to Bath:
only that for a few months I and one brother were still
1 Greenhay:-A country-house built by my father; and at the
time of its foundation (say in X791 or 1792) separated from the last
outskirts of Manchester by an entire mile; but now, and for many
a year, overtaken by the hasty strides of this great city, and long since
{I presume) absorbed into its mighty uproar.




34


Confessions of


left under the care of Mr. Samuel H.; so far, that is, as
regarded our education. Else, as regarded the luxurious
comforts of a thoroughly English hore, we became
the guests, by special invitation, of a young married
couple in Manchester-viz., Mr. and Mrs. K ----.
This incident, though otherwise without results, I look
back upon with feelings inexpressibly profound, as
a jewelly parenthesis of pathetic happiness-such as
emerges but once in any man's life. Mr. K. was a
young and rising American merchant; by which I
mean, that he was an Englishman who exported to the
United States.  He had married about three years
previously a pretty and amiable young woman-well
educated, and endowed with singular compass of intellect. But the distinguishing feature in this household was the spirit of love which, under the benign
superintendence of the mistress, diffused itself through
all its members.
The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, amongst many novel
ideas, which found no welcome even with his friends,
insisted earnestly and often upon this-viz., that a great
danger was threatening our social system in Great Britain,
from the austere separation existing between our educated and our working classes, and that a more conciliatory style of intercourse between these two bisections
of our social body must be established, or else-a
tremendous revolution. This is not the place to discuss
so large a question; and I shall content myself with
making two remarks. The first is this-that, although
a change of the sort contemplated by Dr. Arnold might,
if considered as an operative cause, point forward to
some advantages, on the other hand, if considered as
an efect, it points backward to a less noble constitution
of society by much than we already enjoy. Those
nations whose upper classes speak paternally and caressingly to the working classes, and to servants in particular, do so because they speak from the lofty stations
of persons having civil rights to those who have none.
Two centuries back, when a military chieftain addressed
his soldiers as 'my children,' he did so because he was




an English Opium-Eater


35


an irresponsible despot exercising uncontrolled powers
of life and death. From the moment when legal rights
have been won for the poorest classes, inevitable respect
on the part of the higher classes extinguishes for ever
the affectionate style which belongs naturally to the
state of pupilage or infantine bondage.
That is my first remark: my second is this-that the
change advocated by Dr. Arnold, whether promising or
not, is practically impossible; or possible, I should say,
through one sole channel-viz., that of domestic servitude. There only do the two classes concerned come
hourly into contact. On that stage only they meet
without intrusion upon each other. There only is an
opening for change. And a wise mistress, who possesses
tact enough to combine a gracious affability with a selfrespect that never slumbers nor permits her to descend
into gossip, will secure the attachment of all young and
impressible women. Such a mistress was Mrs. K-.
She had won the gratitude of her servants from the first,
by making the amplest provision for their comfort; their
confidence, by listening with patience, and counselling
with prudence; and their respect, by refusing to intermeddle with gossiping personalities always tending to
slander. To this extent, perhaps, most mistresses might
follow her example. But the happiness which reigned
in Mrs. K- 's house at this time depended very much
upon special causes. All the eight persons had the
advantage of youth; and the three young female servants were under the spell of fascination, such as could
rarely be counted om, from a spectacle held up hourly
before their eyes, that spectacle which of all others is
the most touching to womanly sensibilities, and which
any one of these servants might hope, without presumption, to realise for herself-the spectacle, I mean,
of a happy marriage union between two persons, who
lived in harmony so absolute with each other, as to
be independent of the world outside. How tender and
self-sufficing such an union might be, they saw with
their own eyes. The season was then midwinter, which
of itself draws closer all household ties. Their own




36


Confessions of


labours, as generally in respectable English services,
were finished for the most part by two o'clock; and as
the hours of evening drew nearer, when the master's
return might be looked for without fail, beautiful was
the smile of anticipation upon the gentle features of the
mistress: even more beautiful the reflex of that smile,
half-unconscious, and half-repressed, upon the features
of the sympathising hand-maidens. One child, a little
girl of two years old, had then crowned the happiness
of the K    s. She naturally lent her person at all
times, and apparently in all places at once, to the improvement of the family groups. My brother and myself, who had been trained from infancy to the courteous
treatment of servants, filled up a vacancy in the graduated
scale of ascending ages, and felt in varying degrees the
depths of a peace which we could not adequately understand or appreciate. Bad tempers there were none
amongst us; nor any opening for personal jealousies;
nor, through the privilege of our common youth, either
angry recollections breathing from the past, or fretting
anxieties gathering from the future. The spirit of hope
and the spirit of peace (so it seemed to me, when looking back upon this profound calm) had, for their own
enjoyment, united in a sisterly league to blow a solitary
bubble of visionary happiness-and to sequester from
the unresting hurricanes of life one solitary household
of eight persons within a four months' lull, as if within
some Arabian tent on some untrodden wilderness, withdrawn from human intrusion, or even from knowledge,
by worlds of mist and vapour.
How deep was that lull! and yet, as in a human
atmosphere, how frail! Did the visionary bubble burst
at once? Not so: but silently and by measured steps,
like a dissolving palace of snow, it collapsed. In the
superb expression of Shakspere, minted by himself, and
drawn from his own aerial fancy, like a cloud it' dislimned'; lost its lineaments by stealthy steps. Already
the word 'parting' (for myself and my brother were
under summons for Bath) hoisted the first signal for
breaking up. Next, and not very long afterwards, came




an English Opium-Eater


37


a mixed signal: alternate words of joy and griefmarriage and death severed the sisterly union amongst
the young female servants. Then, thirdly, but many
years later, vanished from earth, and from peace the
deepest that can support itself on earth, summoned to
a far deeper peace, the mistress of the household herself, together with her first-born child. Some years
later, perhaps twenty from this time, as I stood sheltering myself from rain in a shop within the most public
street of Manchester, the master of the establishment
drew my attention to a gentleman on the opposite side
of the street-roaming along in a reckless style of
movement, and apparently insensible to the notice
which he attracted. 'That,' said the master of the
shop, 'was once a leading merchant in our town; but
he met with great commercial embarrassments. There
was;no impeachment of his integrity, or (as I believe)
of his discretion. But what with these commercial
calamities, and deaths in his family, he lost all hope;
and you see what sort of consolation it is that he
seeks '-meaning to say that his style of walking argued
intoxication. I did not think so. There was a settled
misery in his eye, but complicated with that an expression of nervous distraction, that, if it should increase,
would make life an intolerable burden. I never saw
him again, and thought with horror of his being called
in old age to face the fierce tragedies of life. For many
reasons, I recoiled from forcing myself upon his notice:
but I had ascertained, some time previously to this
casual rencontre, that he and myself were, at that date,
all that remained of the once joyous household. At
present, and for many a year, I am myself the sole
relic from that household sanctuary-sweet, solemn,
profound-that concealed, as in some ark floating on
solitary seas, eight persons, since called away, all except
myself, one after one, to that rest which only could be
deeper than ours was then.
When I left the K-    s, I left Manchester; and
during the next three years I was sent to two very
different schools; first, to a public one-viz., the Bath




38


Confessions of


Grammar School, then and since famous for its excellence-secondly, to a private school in Wiltshire. At
the end of the three years, I found myself once again in
Manchester. I was then fifteen years old, and a trifle
more; and as it had come to the knowledge of Mr. G.,
a banker in Lincolnshire (whom hitherto I have omitted
to notice amongst my guardians, as the one too generally prevented from interfering by his remoteness
from the spot, but whom otherwise I should have recorded with honour, as by much the ablest amongst
them) that some pecuniary advantages were attached
to a residence at the Manchester Grammar School,
whilst in other respects that school seemed as eligible
as any other, he had counselled my mother to send me
thither. In fact, a three years' residence at this school
obtained an annual allowance for seven years of nearly
(if not quite).50; which sum, added to my own patrimonial income of 150o, would have made up the annual
~200 ordinarily considered the proper allowance for an
Oxford under-graduate. No objection arising from any
quarter, this plan was adopted, and soon afterwards
carried into effect.
On a day, therefore, it was in the closing autumn
(or rather in the. opening winter) of i8oo that my first
introduction took place to the Manchester Grammar
School. The school-room showed already in its ample
proportions some hint of its pretensions as an endowed
school, or school of that class which I believe peculiar
to England. To this limited extent had the architectural sense of power been timidly and parsimoniously
invoked. Beyond that, nothing had been attempted;
and the dreary expanse of whitewashed walls, that at
so small a cost might have been embellished by plasterof-Paris friezes and large medallions, illustrating to the
eye of the youthful student the most memorable glorifications of literature-these were bare as the walls of
a poor-house or a lazaretto; buildings whose functions,
as thoroughly sad and gloomy, the mind recoils from
drawing into relief by sculpture or painting. But this
building was dedicated to purposes that were noble.




an English Opium-Eater


39


The naked walls clamoured for decoration: and how
easily might tablets have been moulded-exhibiting (as
a first homage to literature) Athens, with the wisdom of
Athens, in the person of Pisistratus, concentrating the
general energies upon the revisal and recasting of the
Iliad. Or (second) the Athenian captives in Sicily,
within the fifth century B.C., as winning noble mercy
for themselves by some
' Repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet.'
Such, and so sudden, had been the oblivion of earthly
passions wrought by the contemporary poet of Athens
that in a moment the wrath of Sicily, with all its billows,
ran down into a heavenly calm; and he that could plead
for his redemption no closer relation to Euripides than
the accident of recalling some scatterings from his divine
verses, suddenly found his chains dropping to the ground;
and himself, that in the morning had risen a despairing
slave in a stone-quarry, translated at once as a favoured
brother into a palace of Syracuse. Or, again, how easy
to represent (third) 'the great Emathian conqueror,'
that in the very opening of his career, whilst visiting
Thebes with vengeance, nevertheless relented at the
thought of literature, and
' Bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when Temple and tower
Went to the ground.'
Alexander might have been represented amongst the
colonnades of some Persian capital-Ecbatana or Babylon, Susa or Persepolis-in the act of receiving from
Greece, as a nuzzur more awful than anything within
the gift of the ' barbaric East,' a jewelled casket containing the Iliad and the Odyssey; creations that already
have lived almost as long as the Pyramids.
Puritanically bald and odious therefore, in my eyes,
was the hall up which my guardian and myself paced
solemnly-though not Miltonically 'riding up to the
Soldan's chair,' yet in fact, within a more limited kingdom, advancing to the chair of a more absolute despot.
D




40             Confessions of
This potentate was the head-master, or archididascalus, of
the Manchester Grammar School; and that school was
variously distinguished.  It was (i) ancient, having in
fact been founded by a bishop of Exeter in an early
part of the sixteenth century, so as to be now, in I856,
more than 330 years old; (2) it was rich, and was
annually growing richer; and (3) it was dignified by
a beneficial relation to the magnificent University of
Oxford.
The head-master at that time was Mr. Charles
Lawson.   In former editions of this work, I created
him a doctor; my object being to evade too close an
approach to the realities of the case, and consequently
to personalities, which (though indifferent to myself)
would have been in some cases displeasing to others.
A doctor, however, Mr. Lawson was not; nor in the
account of law a clergyman. Yet most people, governed
unconsciously by the associations surrounding their
composite idea of a dignified schoolmaster, invested
him with the clerical character. And in reality he had
taken deacon's orders in the Church of England. But
not the less he held himself to be a layman, and was
addressed as such by all his correspondents of rank,
who might be supposed best to understand the technical
rules of English etiquette.  Etiquette in such cases
cannot entirely detach itself from law. Now, in English law, as was shown in Home Tooke's case, the rule
is, once a clergyman, and always a clergyman. The sacred
character with which ordination clothes a man is indelible. But, on the other hand, who is a clergyman?
Not he that has taken simply the initial orders of a
deacon, so at least I have heard, but he that has taken
the second and full orders of a priest. If otherwise,
then there was a great mistake current amongst Mr.
Lawson's friends in addressing him as an esquire.
Squire or not a squire, however, parson or not a
parson-whether sacred or profane-Mr. Lawson was
in some degree interesting by his position and his
recluse habits. Life was over with him, for its hopes
and for its trials. Or at most one trial yet awaited




an English Opium-Eater


4I


him, which was-to fight with a painful malady, and
fighting to die. He still had his dying to do: he was
in arrear as to that: else all was finished.  It struck me
(but, with such limited means for judging, I might easily
be wrong) that his understanding was of a narrow order.
But that did not disturb the interest which surrounded
him now in his old age (probably seventy-five, or more),
nor make any drawback from the desire I had to spell
backwards and re-compose the text of his life. What
had been his fortunes in this world? Had they travelled
upwards or downwards? What triumphs had he enjoyed
in the sweet and solemn cloisters of Oxford?         What
mortifications in the harsh world outside? Two only
had survived in the malicious traditions of 'his friends.'
He was a Jacobite (as were so many amongst my dear
Lancastrian compatriots); had drunk the Pretender's
health, and had drunk it in company with that Dr.
Byrom who had graced the symposium by the famous
equivocating impromptu1 to the health of that prince.
Mr. Lawson had therefore been obliged to witness the
final prostration of his political party. That was his
earliest mortification. His second, about seven years
later, was, that he had been jilted; and with circumstances (at least so I heard) of cruel scorn. Was it that
he had interpreted in a sense too flattering for himself
ambiguous expressions of favour in the lady? or that
1 'Equivocating impromptu': -The party had gathered in a
tumultuary way; so that some Capulets had mingled with the Montagues, one of whom called upon Dr. Byrom to drink The King, God
bless him I and Confusion to the Pretender  Upon which the doctor
sang out'God bless the king, of church and state defender;
God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender 1
But who Pretender is, and who the KingGod bless us all I that's quite another thing.'
Dr. Byrom was otherwise famous than as a Jacobite-viz., as the
author of a very elaborate shorthand, which (according to some who
have examined it) rises even to a philosophic dignity. David Hartley
in particular said of it that,' if ever a philosophic language (as projected by Bishop Wilkins, by Leibnitz, etc.) should be brought to
bear, in that case Dr. Byrom's work would furnish the proper character
for its notation.'




42


Confessions of


she in cruel caprice had disowned the hopes which she
had authorised. However this might be, half-a-century
of soothing and reconciling years had cicatrised the
wounds of Mr. Lawson's heart. The lady of 1752, if
living in i8oo, must be furiously wrinkled. And a
strange metaphysical question arises: Whether, when
the object of an impassioned love has herself faded
into a shadow, the fiery passion itself can still survive
as an abstraction, still mourn over its wrongs, still
clamour for redress. I have heard of such cases. In
Wordsworth's poem of Ruth (which was founded, as I
happen to know, upon facts), it is recorded as an affecting incident, that, some months after the first frenzy of
her disturbed mind had given way to medical treatment,
and had lapsed into a gentler form of lunacy, she was
dismissed from confinement; and upon finding herself
uncontrolled among the pastoral scenes where she played
away her childhood, she gradually fell back to the original
habits of her life whilst yet undisturbed by sorrow. Something similar had happened to Mr. Lawson; and some
time after his first shock, amongst other means for effacing that deep-grooved impression, he had laboured to
replace himself, as much as was possible, in the situation of a college student. In this effort he was assisted
considerably by the singular arrangement of the house
attached to his official station. For an English house
it was altogether an oddity, being, in fact, built upon
a Roman plan. All the rooms on both storeys had
their windows looking down upon a little central court.
This court was quadrangular, but so limited in its
dimensions, that by a Roman it would have been regarded as the impluvium: for Mr. Lawson, however,
with a little exertion of fancy, it transmuted itself into
a college quadrangle. Here, therefore, were held the
daily 'callings-over,' at which every student was obliged
to answer upon being named. And thus the unhappy
man, renewing continually the fancy that he was still
standing in an Oxford quadrangle, perhaps cheated himself into the belief that all had been a dream which concerned the caprices of the lady, and the lady herself a




an  English     Opium-Eater          43
phantom. College usages also, which served to strengthen
this fanciful alibi-such, for instance, as the having two
plates arranged before him at dinner (one for the animal,
the other for the vegetable, food)-were reproduced in
Millgate. One sole luxury also, somewhat costly, which,
like most young men of easy income, he had allowed
himself at Oxford, was now retained long after it had
become practically useless. This was a hunter for himself, and another for his groom, which he continued to
keep, in spite of the increasing war-taxes, many a year
after he had almost ceased to ride. Once in three or
four months he would have the horses saddled and
brought out. Then, with considerable effort, he swung
himself into the saddle, moved off at a quiet amble, and,
in about fifteen or twenty minutes, might be seen returning from an excursion of two miles, under the imagination that he had laid in a stock of exercise sufficient
for another period of a hundred days. Meantime Mr.
Lawson had sought his main consolation in the great
classics of elder days. His senior alumni were always
working their way through some great scenic poet that
had shaken the stage of Athens; and more than one
of his classes, never-ending, still beginning, were daily
solacing him with the gaieties of Horace, in his Epistles
or in his Satires. The Horatian jests indeed to him
never grew old. On coming to the plagosus Orbilius, or
any other sally of pleasantry, he still threw himself back
in his arm-chair, as he had done through fifty years, with
what seemed heart-shaking bursts of sympathetic merriment. Mr. Lawson, indeed, could afford to be sincerely
mirthful over the word plagosus.  There are gloomy
tyrants, exulting in the discipline of fear, to whom and
to whose pupils this word must call up remembrances
too degrading for any but affected mirth.  Allusions
that are too fearfully personal cease to be subjects of
playfulness.  Sycophancy only it is that laughs; and
the artificial merriment is but the language of shrinking
and grovelling deprecation. Different, indeed, was the
condition of the Manchester Grammar School.    It
was honourable both to the masters and the upper




44             Confessions of
boys, through whom only such a result was possible,
that in that school, during my knowledge of it (viz.,
during the closing year of the eighteenth century, and
the two opening years of the nineteenth), all punishments, that appealed to the sense of bodily pain, had
fallen into disuse; and this at a period long before
any public agitation had begun to stir in that direction. How then was discipline maintained? It was
maintained through the self-discipline of the senior
boys, and through the efficacy of their example, combined with their system of rules. Noble are the impulses of opening manhood, where they are not utterly
ignoble: at that period, I mean, when the poetic sense
begins to blossom, and when boys are first made sensible
of the paradise that lurks in female smiles. Had the
school been entirely a day-school, too probable it is that
the vulgar brawling tendencie-s of boys left to themselves
would have prevailed. But it happened that the elder
section of the school-those on the brink of manhood,
and by incalculable degrees the more scholar-like section,
all who read, meditated, or began to kindle into the love
of literature-were boarders in Mr. Lawson's house. The
students, therefore, of the house carried an overwhelming
influence into the school. They were bound together
by links of brotherhood; whereas the day-scholars were
disconnected. Over and above this, it happened luckily
that there was no playground, not the smallest, attached
to the school; that is, none was attached to the upper
or grammar school. But there was also, and resting on
the same liberal endowment, a lower school, where the
whole machinery of teaching was applied to the lowest
mechanical accomplishments of reading and writing.
The hall in which this servile business was conducted
ran under the upper school; it was, therefore, I presume, a subterraneous duplicate of the upper hall.
And, since the upper rose only by two or three feet
above the level of the neighbouring streets, the lower
school should naturally have been at a great depth below
these streets. In that case it would be a dark crypt, such
as we see under some cathedrals; and it would have




an English Opiun-Eater


45


argued a singular want of thoughtfulness in the founder
to have laid one part of his establishment under an
original curse of darkness.  As the access to this
plebeian school lay downwards through long flights of
steps, I never found surplus energy enough for investigating the problem. But, as the ground broke away
precipitously at that point into lower levels, I presume,
upon consideration, that the subterranean crypt will be
found open on one side to visitations from sun and
moon. So that, for this base mechanic school there
may, after all, have been a playground. But for ours
in the upper air, I repeat, there was none; not so much
as would have bleached a lady's pocket-handkerchief;
and this one defect carried along with it unforeseen
advantages.
Lord Bacon it is who notices the subtle policy which
may lurk in the mere external figure of a table. A
square table, having an undeniable head and foot, two
polar extremities of what is highest and lowest, a perihelion and an aphelion, together with equatorial sides,
opens at a glance a large career to ambition; whilst a
circular table sternly represses all such aspiring dreams,
and so does a triangular table.  Yet, if the triangle
should be right-angled, then the Lucifer seated at the
right-angle might argue that he subtended all the tenants
of the hypothenuse; being, therefore, as much nobler
than they as Atlas was nobler than the globe which
he carried. It was, by the way, some arrangement of
this nature which constituted the original feature of
distinction in John o' Groat's house, and not at all (as
most people suppose) the high northern latitude of this
house. John, it seems, finished the feuds for precedency,
not by legislating this way or that, but by cutting away
the possibility of such feuds through the assistance of
a round table. The same principle must have guided
King Arthur amongst his knights, Charlemagne amongst
his paladins, and sailors in their effectual distribution of
the peril attached to a mutinous remonstrance by the
admirable device of a 'round-robin.' Even two little
girls, as Harrington remarks in his Oceana, have often



46


Confessions of


times hit upon an expedient, through pure mother-wit,
more effectual than all the schools of philosophy could
have suggested, for insuring the impartial division of an
orange; which expedient is that either of the two shall
divide, but then that the other shall have the right of
choice. You divide and I choose. Such is the formula;
and an angel could not devise a more absolute guarantee
for the equity of the division than by thus forcing the
divider to become the inheritor of any possible disadvantages that he may have succeeded in creating by his
own act of division. In all these cases one seemingly
trivial precaution opens, in the next stage, into a world
of irresistible consequences. And, in our case, an effect
not less disproportionate followed out of that one accident, apparently so slight, that we had no playground.
We of the seniority, who, by thoughtfulness, and the
conscious dignity of dealing largely with literature, were
already indisposed to boyish sports, found through the
defect of a playground, that our choice and our pride
were also our necessity.  Even the proudest of us
benefited by that coercion; for many would else have
sold their privilege of pride for an hour's amusement,
and have become, at least, occasional conformists. A
day more than usually fine, a trial of skill more than
usually irritating to the sense of special superiority,
would have seduced most of us in the end into the surrender of our exclusiveness. Indiscriminate familiarity
would have followed as an uncontrollable result; since
to mingle with others in common acts of business may
leave the sense of reserve undisturbed: but all reserve
gives way before a common intercourse in pleasure. As
it was, what with our confederation through housemembership, what with our reciprocal sympathies in the
problems suggested by books, we had become a club of
boys (amongst whom might be four or five that were
even young men, counting eighteen or nineteen years)
altogether as thoughtful and as self-respecting as can
often exist even amongst adults. Even the subterraneous
school contributed something to our self-esteem.  It
formed a subordinate section of our own establishment,




an English Opium-Eater               47
that kept before our eyes, by force of contrast, the dignity inherent in our own constitution. Its object was
to master humble accomplishments that were within the
reach of mechanic efforts: everything mechanic is limited;
whereas we felt that our object, even if our name of
grammar school presented that object in what seemed
too limited a shape, was substantially noble, and tended
towards the infinite. But in no long time I came to see
that, as to the name, we were all of us under a mistake.
Being asked what a grammar school indicates, what it
professes to teach, there is scarcely any man who would
not reply, 'Teach? why, it teaches grammar, what else? '
But this is a mistake: as I have elsewhere explained,
grammatica in this combination does not mean grammar
(though grammar also obeys the movements of a most
subtle philosophy), but literature. Look into Suetonius.
Those 'grammatici' whom he memorialises as an order
of men flocking to Rome in the days of the Flavian
family, were not grammarians at all, but what the
French by a comprehensive name style litterateursthat is, they were men who (I) studied literatnre, (2)
who taught literature, (3) who practically produced
literature. And, upon the whole,grammatica is perhaps
the least objectionable Latin equivalent for our word
literature.
Having thus sketched the characteristic points distinguishing the school and the presiding master (for of
masters, senior and junior, there were four in this upper
school), I return to my own inaugural examination. On
this day, memorable to myself, as furnishing the startingpoint for so long a series of days, saddened by haughty
obstinacy on one side, made effective by folly on the
other, no sooner had my guardian retired than Mr. Lawson produced from his desk a volume of the Spectator,
and instructed me to throw into as good Latin as I
could some paper of Steele's-not the whole, but perhaps a third part. No better exercise could have been
devised for testing the extent of my skill as a Latinist.
And here I ought to make an explanation. In the
previous edition of these Confessions, writing sometimes




48             Confessions of
too rapidly, and with little precision in cases of little
importance, I conveyed an impression which I had not
designed with regard to the true nature of my pretensions
as a Grecian; and something of the same correction will
apply to that narrower accomplishment which was the subject of my present examination. Neither in Greek nor in
Latin was my knowledge very extensive; my age made that
impossible; and especially because in those days there
were no decent guides through the thorny jungles of the
Latin language, far less of the Greek. When I mention
that the Port Royal Greek Grammar translated by Dr.
Nugent was about the best key extant in English to
the innumerable perplexities of Greek diction, and that,
for the res metrica, Morell's valuable Thesaurus, having
then never been reprinted, was rarely to be seen, the
reader will conclude that a schoolboy's knowledge of
Greek could not be other than slender. Slender indeed
was mine. Yet stop? what was slender? Simply my
knowledge of Greek; for that knowledge stretches by
tendency to the infinite; but not therefore my command
of Greek. The knowledge of Greek must always hold
some gross proportion to the time spent upon it,-probably, therefore, to the age of the student; but the
command over a language, the power of adapting it
plastically to the expression of your own thoughts, is
almost exclusively a gift of nature, and has very little
connection with time.  Take the supreme trinity of
Greek scholars that flourished between the English
Revolution of i688 and the beginning of the nineteenth
century-which trinity I suppose to be, confessedly,
Bentley, Valckenaer, and Porson: such are the men, it
will be generally fancied, whose aid should be invoked,
in the event of our needing some eloquent Greek inscription on a public monument. I am of a different
opinion. The greatest scholars have usually proved to be
the poorest composers in either of the classic languages.
Sixty years ago, we had, from four separate doctors, four
separate Greek versions of Gray's Elegy, all unworthy of
the national scholarship. Yet one of these doctors was
actually Porson's predecessor in the Greek chair at Cam



an English Opium-Eater                     49
bridge. But, as he (Dr. Cooke) was an obscure man,
take an undeniable Grecian, of punctilious precision
-viz., Richard Dawes, the well-known author of the
Miscellanea Critica.  This man, a very martinet in the
delicacies of Greek composition-and who should have
been a Greek scholar of some mark, since often enough
he flew at the throat of Richard Bentley-wrote and
published a specimen of a Greek Paradise Lost, and
also two most sycophantic idyls addressed to George 1i.
on the death of his 'august' papa. It is difficult to
imagine anything meaner in conception or more childish
in expression than these attempts. Now, against them I
will stake in competition a copy of iambic verses by a
boy, who died, I believe, at sixteen-viz., a son of Mr.
Pitt's tutor, Tomline, Bishop of Winchester.1 UniversaMy I contend that the faculty of clothing the thoughts
in a Greek dress is a function of natural sensibility, in
a great degree disconnected from the extent or the
accuracy of the writer's grammatical skill in Greek.
These explanations are too long. The reader will
understand, as their sum, that what I needed in such
a case was, not so much a critical familiarity with the
syntax of the language, or a copia verborum, as great
agility in reviewing the relations of one idea to another,
so as to present modern and unclassical objects under
such aspects as might suggest periphrases in substitution
for direct names, where names could not be had, and
everywhere to colour my translation with as rich a display of idiomatic forms as the circumstances of the case
would allow. I succeeded, and beyond my expectation.
1 A copy of iambic verses':-They will be found in the work on the
Greek article by Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, who was the boy's
tutor.  On this occasion I would wish to observe that verses like
Dawes's, meant to mimic Homer or Theocritus, or more generally
dactylic hexameters, are perfectly useless as tests of power to think
freely in Greek. If such verses are examined, it will be found that the
orchestral magnificence of the metre, and the sonorous cadence of each
separate line, absolutely force upon the thoughts a mere necessity of
being discontinuous. From this signal defect only iambic senarii are
free; this metre possessing a power of plastic interfusion similar in
kind, though inferior in degree, to the English blank verse when
Miltonically written.




50


Confessions of


For once-being the first time that he had been known
to do such a thing, but also the very last-Mr. Lawson
did absolutely pay me a compliment. And with another
compliment more than verbal he crowned his gracious
condescensions-viz., with my provisional instalment in
his highest class; not the highest at that moment, since
there was one other class above us; but this other was
on the wing for Oxford within some few weeks; which
change being accomplished, we (viz., I and two others)
immediately moved up into the supreme place.
Two or three days after this examination-viz., on the
Sunday following-I transferred myself to head-quarters
at Mr. Lawson's house.  About nine o'clock in the
evening, I was conducted by a servant up a short flight
of stairs, through a series of gloomy and unfurnished
little rooms, having small windows but no doors, to the
common room (as in Oxford it would technically be
called) of the senior boys. Everything had combined
to depress me. To leave the society of accomplished
women — that was already a signal privation.  The
season besides was rainy, which in itself is a sure
source of depression; and the forlorn aspect of the
rooms completed my dejection. But the scene changed
as the door was thrown open: faces kindling with animation became visible; and from a company of boys,
numbering sixteen or eighteen, scattered about the
room, two or three, whose age entitled them to the rank
of leaders, came forward to receive me with a courtesy
which I had not looked for. The grave kindness and
the absolute sincerity of their manner impressed me
most favourably.  I had lived familiarly with boys
gathered from all quarters of the island. at the Bath
Grammar School: and for some time (when visiting
Lord Altamont at Eton) with boys of the highest aristocratic pretensions. At Bath and at Eton, though not
equally, there prevailed a tone of higher polish; and in
the air, speech, deportment of the majority could be
traced at once a premature knowledge of the world.
They had indeed the advantage over my new friends
in graceful self-possession; but, on the other hand, the




an English Opium-Eater


5I


best of them suffered by comparison with these Manchester boys in the qualities of visible self-restraint and of
self-respect. At Eton high rank was distributed pretty
liberally; but in the Manchester school the parents of
many boys were artisans, or of that rank; some even
had sisters that were menial servants; and those who
stood higher by pretensions of birth and gentle blood
were, at the most, the sons of rural gentry or of clergymen. And I believe that, with the exception of three
or four brothers, belonging to a clergyman's family at
York, all were, like myself, natives of Lancashire. At
that time my experience was too limited to warrant me
in expressing any opinion, one way or the other, upon
the relative pretensions-moral and intellectual-of the
several provinces in our island. But since then I have
seen reason to agree with the late Dr. Cooke Taylor in
awarding the pre-eminence, as regards energy, power
to face suffering, and other high qualities, to the natives
of Lancashire.  Even a century back, they were distinguished for the culture of refined tastes. In musical
skill and sensibility, no part of Europe, with the exception of a few places in Germany, could pretend to rival
them: and, accordingly, even in Handel's days, but for
the chorus-singers from Lancashire, his oratorios must
have remained a treasure, if not absolutely sealed, at
any rate most imperfectly revealed.
One of the young men, noticing my state of dejection,
brought out some brandy-a form of alcohol which I,
for my part, tasted now for the first time, having previously taken only wine, and never once in quantities to
affect my spirits. So much the greater was my astonishment at the rapid change worked in my state of feeling
-a change which at once reinstalled me in my natural
advantages for conversation. Towards this nothing was
wanting but a question of sufficient interest. And a
question arose naturally out of a remark addressed by
one of the boys to myself, implying that perhaps I had
intentionally timed my arrival so as to escape the
Sunday evening exercise.  No, I replied; not at all;
what was that exercise? Simply an off-hand translation




52


Confessions of


from the little work of Grotius on the Evidences of
Christianity. Did I know the book? No, I did not;
all the direct knowledge which I had of Grotius was
built upon his metrical translations into Latin of various
fragments surviving from the Greek scenical poets, and
these translations had struck me as exceedingly beautiful. On the other hand, his work of highest pretension,
De Jure Belli et Pacis, so signally praised by Lord
Bacon, I had not read at all; but I had heard such an
account of it from a very thoughtful person as made it
probable that Grotius was stronger, and felt himself
stronger, on literary than on philosophic ground. Then,
with regard to his little work on the Mosaic and Christian
revelations, I had heard very disparaging opinions about
it; two especially.  One amounted to no more than
this-that the question was argued with a logic far inferior, in point of cogency, to that of Lardner and Paley.
Here several boys interposed their loud assent, as regarded Paley in particular. Paley's Evidences, at that time
just seven years old, had already become a subject of
study amongst them. But the other objection impeached
not so much the dialectic acuteness as the learning of
Grotius-at least, the appropriate learning. According
to the anecdote current upon this subject, Dr. Edward
Pococke, the great oriental scholar of England in the
seventeenth century, when called upon to translate the
little work of Grotius into Arabic or Turkish, had replied by pointing to the idle legend of Mahomet's
pigeon or dove, as a reciprocal messenger between the
prophet and heaven-which legend had been accredited
and adopted by Grotius in the blindest spirit of credulity.  Such a baseless fable, Pococke alleged, would
work a double mischief: not only it would ruin the
authority of that particular book in the East, but would
damage Christianity for generations, by making known
to the followers of the Prophet that their master was
undervalued amongst the Franks on the authority of
nursery tales, and that these tales were accredited by
the leading Frankish scholars.
1 Entitled De Veritate Christiana Religionis.




an English Opium-Eater


53


A twofold result of evil would follow: not only would
our Christian erudition and our Christian scholars be
scandalously disparaged; a consequence that in some
cases might not be incompatible with a sense amongst
Mahometans that the strength of Christianity itself was
left unaffected by the errors and blunders of its champions; but, secondly, there would be in this case a
strong reaction against Christianity itself.  Plausibly
enough it would be inferred that a vast religious philosophy could have no powerful battery of arguments
in reserve, when it placed its main anti-Mahometan
reliance upon so childish a fable: since, allowing even
for a blameless assent to this fable amongst nations
having no direct intercourse with Mussulmans, still it
would argue a shocking frailty in Christianity that its
main pleadings rested, not upon any strength of its own,
but simply upon a weakness in its antagonist.
At this point, when the cause of Grotius seemed
utterly desperate, G-  (a boy whom subsequently I
had reason to admire as equally courageous, truthful,
and far-seeing) suddenly changed the whole field of
view. He offered no defence for the ridiculous fable
of the pigeon; which pigeon, on the contrary, he represented as drawing in harness with that Christian goose
which at one time was universally believed by Mahometans to lead the vanguard of the earliest Crusaders,
and which, in a limited extent, really had been a true
historical personage.  So far he gave up Grotius as
indefensible. But on the main question, and the very
extensive question, of his apparent imbecility when
collated with Paley, etc., suddenly and in one sentence
he revolutionised the whole logic of that comparison.
Paley and Lardner, he said, what was it that they
sought I Their object was avowedly to benefit by any
argument, evidence, or presumption whatsoever, no
matter whence drawn, so long as it was true or probable, and fitted to sustain the credibility of any element
in the Christian creed.  Well, was not that object
common to them and to Grotius? Not at all. Too
often had he (the boy G —   ) secretly noticed the




54


Confessions of


abstinence of Grotius (apparently unaccountable) from
certain obvious advantages of argument, not to suspect
that, in narrowing his own field of disputation, he had
a deliberate purpose, and was moving upon the line
of some very different policy. Clear it was to him that
Grotius, for some reason, declined to receive evidence
except from one special and limited class of witnesses.
Upon this, some of us laughed at such a self-limitation
as a wild bravado, recalling that rope-dancing feat of
some verse-writers who, through each several stanza in
its turn, had gloried in dispensing with some one separate consonant, some vowel, or some diphthong, and
thus achieving a triumph such as crowns with laurel
that pedestrian athlete who wins a race by hopping on
one leg, or wins it under the inhuman condition of
confining both legs within a sack.  'No, no,' impatiently interrupted G-. 'All such fantastic conflicts with self-created difficulties terminate in pure
ostentation, and profit nobody.  But the self-imposed
limitations of Grotius had a special purpose, and realised a value not otherwise attainable.'  If Grotius
accepts no arguments or presumptions except from
Mussulmans, from Infidels, or from those who rank
as Neutrals, then has he adapted his book to a separate
and peculiar audience. The Neutral man will hearken
to authorities notoriously Neutral; Mussulmans will
show deference to the statements of Mussulmans; the
Sceptic will bow to the reasonings of Scepticism. All
these persons, that would have been repelled on the
very threshold from such testimonies as begin in a
spirit of hostility to themselves, will listen thoughtfully
to suggestions offered in a spirit of conciliation; much
more so if offered by people occupying the same ground
at starting as themselves.
At the cost of some disproportion, I have ventured to
rehearse this inaugural conversation amongst the leaders
of the school. Whether G-   were entirely correct in
this application of a secret key to the little work of
Grotius, I do not know. I take blame to myself that
I do not; for I also must have been called upon for




an English Opium-Eater                      55
my quota to the Sunday evening studies on the De Vcreitate, and must therefore have held in my hands the
ready means for solving the question.'
Meantime, as a solitary act of silent observation in a
boy not fifteen, this deciphering idea of G   's, in direct
resistance to the received idea, extorted my admiration;
and equally, whether true or false as regarded the immediate fact.    That any person, in the very middle
storm of chase, when a headlong movement carries all
impulses into one current, should in the twinkling of
an eye recall himself to the unexpected 'doubles' of
the game, wheel as that wheels, and sternly resist the
instincts of the one preoccupying assumption, argues a
sagacity not often heard of in boyhood.     Was G —
right? In that case he picked a lock which others
had failed to pick. Was he wrong? In that case he
sketched the idea and outline of a better work (better,
as more original and more special in its service) than
any which Grotius has himself accomplished.
Not, however, the particular boy, but the particular
school, it was my purpose, in this place, to signalise for
praise and gratitude. In after years, when an undergraduate at Oxford, I had an opportunity of reading as
it were in a mirror the characteristic pretensions and the
average success of many celebrated schools. Such a
mirror I found in the ordinary conversation and in the
favourite reading of young gownsmen belonging to the
many different colleges of Oxford. Generally speaking,
each college had a filial connection (strict 2 or not strict)
with some one or more of our great public schools.
These, fortunately for England, are diffused through all
1 Some excuse, however, for my own want of energy is suggested by
the fact that very soon after my matriculation Mr. Lawson substituted
for Grotius, as the Sunday evening lecture-book, Dr. Clarke's Commentary on the New Testament. ' Out of sight, out of mind'; and in
that way only can I account for my own neglect to clear up the
question. Or perhaps, after all, I did clear it up, and in a long lifemarch subsequently may have dropped it by the wayside.
2 ' Strict or not strict':-In some colleges the claims of alumni from
certain schools were absolute; in some, I believe, conditional; in others,
again, concurrent with rival claims from favoured schools or favoured
counties.
E




56


Confessions of


her counties: and, as the main appointments to the
capital offices in such public schools are often vested by
law in Oxford or Cambridge, this arrangement guarantees a sound system of teaching; so that any failures in
the result must presumably be due to the individual
student. Failures, on the whole, I do not suppose that
there were. Classical attainments that might be styled
even splendid were not then, nor are now, uncommon.
And yet in one great feature many of those schools, even
the very best, when thus tried by their fruits, left a painful memento of failure; or rather not of failure as in relation to any purpose that they steadily recognised, but
of wilful and intentional disregard, as towards a purpose
alien from any duty of theirs, or any task which they had
ever undertaken-a failure, namely, in relation to modern
literature-a neglect to unroll its mighty charts: and
amongst this modern literature a special neglect (such
as seems almost brutal) of our own English literature,
though pleading its patent of precedency in a voice so
trumpet-tongued. To myself, whose homage ascended
night and day towards the great altars of English Poetry
or Eloquence, it was shocking and revolting to find in
high-minded young countrymen, burning with sensibility
that sought vainly for a corresponding object, deep unconsciousness of an all-sufficient object-namely, in that
great inheritance of our literature which sometimes
kindled enthusiasm in our public enemies. How painful to see or to know that vast revelations of grandeur
and beauty are wasting themselves for ever-forests
teeming with gorgeous life, floral wildernesses hidden
inaccessibly; whilst, at the same time, in contraposition
to that evil, behold a corresponding evil-viz., that with
equal prodigality the great capacitiesof enjoyment are running also to waste, and are everywhere burning out unexercised-waste, in short, in the world of things enjoyable, balanced by an equal waste in the organs and
the machineries of enjoyment! This picture-would it
not fret the heart of an Englishman? Some years (say
twenty) after the era of my own entrance at that Oxford
which then furnished me with records so painful of slight




an English Opium-Eater


57


regard to our national literature, behold at the court of
London a French ambassador, a man of genius blazing
(as some people thought) with nationality, but, in fact,
with something inexpressibly nobler and deeper-viz.,
patriotism. For true and unaffected patriotism will show
its love in a noble form by sincerity and truth. But
nationality, as I have always found, is mean; is dishonest; is ungenerous; is incapable of candour; and,
being continually besieged with temptations to falsehood,
too often ends by becoming habitually mendacious.
This Frenchman above all things valued literature: his
own trophies of distinction were all won upon that field:
and yet, when called upon to review the literature of
Europe, he found himself conscientiously coerced into
making his work a mere monument to the glory of one
man, and that man the son of a hostile land. The
name of Milton, in his estimate, swallowed up all others.
This Frenchman was Chateaubriand.   The personal
splendour which surrounded him gave a corresponding
splendour to his act. And, because he, as an ambassador, was a representative man, this act might be interpreted as a representative act. The tutelary genius of
France in this instance might be regarded as bending
before that of England. But homage so free, homage
so noble, must be interpreted and received in a corresponding spirit of generosity. It was not, like the
testimony of Balaam on behalf of Israel, an unwilling
submission to a hateful truth: it was a concession, in
the spirit of saintly magnanimity, to an interest of human
nature that as such, transcended by many degrees all
considerations merely national.
Now, then, with this unlimited devotion to one great
luminary of our literary system emblazoned so conspicuously in the testimony of a Frenchman-that is, of one
trained, and privileged to be a public enemy-contrast
the humiliating spectacle of young Englishmen suffered
(so far as their training is concerned) to ignore the very
existence of this mighty poet. Do I mean, then, that it
would have been advisable to place the Paradise Lost,
and the Paradise Regained, and the Samson, in the




58


Confessions of


library of schoolboys? By no means. That mode of
sensibility which deals with the Miltonic sublimity is
rarely developed in boyhood. And these divine works
should in prudence be reserved to the period of mature
manhood. But then it should be made known that they
are so reserved, and upon what principle of reverential
regard for the poet himself. In the meantime, selections
from Milton, from Dryden, from Pope, and many other
writers, though not everywhere appreciable by those who
have but small experience of life, would not generally
transcend the intellect or sensibility of a boy sixteen or
seventeen years old. And, beyond all other sections of
literature, the two which I am going to mention are
fitted (or might be fitted by skilful management) to
engage the interest of those who are no longer boys, but
have reached the age which is presumable in English
university matriculation-viz., the close of the eighteenth
year. Search through all languages, from Benares the
mystical, and the banks of the Ganges, travelling
westwards to the fountains of the Hudson, I deny
that any two such bibliothece for engaging youthful
interest could be brought together as these two which
follow:First, In contradiction to M. Cousin's recent audacious
assertion (redeemed from the suspicion of mendacity
simply by the extremity of ignorance on which it reposes) that we English have no tolerable writer of prose
subsequent to Lord Bacon, it so happens that the seventeenth century, and specially that part of it concerned in
this case-viz., the latter seventy years (A.D. I628-1700)
-produced the highest efforts of eloquence (philosophic,
but at the same time rhetorical and impassioned, in a
degree unknown to the prose literature of France) which
our literature possesses, and not a line of it but is posterior
to the death of Lord Bacon. Donne, Chillingworth, Sir
Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, South, Barrow,
form a pleiad, a constellation of seven golden stars, such
as no literature can match in their own class. From
these seven writers, taken apart from all their contemporaries, I would undertake to build up an entire body




an English Opium-Eater


59


of philosophy 1 upon the supreme interests of humanity.
One error of M. Cousin's doubtless lay in overlooking
the fact that all conceivable problems of philosophy can
reproduce themselves under a theological mask: and
thus he had absolved himself from reading many English
books, as presumably mere professional pleadings of Protestant polemics, which are in fact mines inexhaustible
of eloquence and philosophic speculation.
Secondly, A full abstract of the English Drama from
about the year I580 to the period (say 1635) at which
it was killed by the frost of the Puritanical spirit seasoning all flesh for the Parliamentary War. No literature,
not excepting even that of Athens, has ever presented
such a multiform theatre, such a carnival display, mask
and anti-mask, of impassioned life-breathing, moving,
acting, suffering, laughing.
'Quicquid agunt homines-votum, timor, ira, voluptas,
Gaudia, discursus';2
-all this, but far more truly and adequately than was
or could be effected in that field of composition which
the gloomy satirist contemplated,-whatsoever in fact
our mediaeval ancestors exhibited in their 'Dance of
Death,' drunk with tears and laughter,-may here be
reviewed, scenically grouped, draped, and gorgeously
coloured. What other national drama can pretend to
any competition with this?      The Athenian has in a
great proportion perished; the Roman was killed prematurely by the bloody realities of the amphitheatre, as
candle-light by day-light; the Spanish, even in the
1 'PhilosopIhy':-At this point it is that the main misconception
would arise. Theology, and not philosophy, most people will fancy,
is likely to form the staple of these writers. But I have elsewhere
maintained that the main bulk of English philosophy has always
hidden itself in the English divinity. In Jeremy Taylor, for instance,
are exhibited all the practical aspects of philosophy; of philosophy as
it bears upon Life, upon Ethics, and upon Transcendent Prudencei.e. briefly upon the Greek summum bonum.
2 ' All that is done by men-movement of prayer, panic, wrath, revels
of the voluptuous, festivals of triumph, or gladiatorship of the intellect.'
-Juvenal, in the prefatory lines which rehearse the prevailing themes
of his own Satires gathered in the great harvests of Rome.




6o


Confessions of


hands of Calderon, offers only undeveloped sketchings;
and the French, besides other and profounder objections,
to which no justice had yet been done, lies under the
signal disadvantage of not having reached its meridian
until sixty years (or two generations) after the English.
In reality, the great period of the English Drama was
exactly closing as the French opened:1 consequently
the French lost the prodigious advantage for scenical
effects of a romantic and picturesque age. This had
vanished when the French theatre culminated; and the
natural result was that the fastidiousness of French taste,
by this time too powerfully developed, stifled or distorted
the free movements of French genius.
I beg the reader's pardon for this disproportioned
digression, into which I was hurried by my love for our
great national literature, my anxiety to see it amongst
educational resources invested with a ministerial agency
of far ampler character, but at all events to lodge a
protest against that wholesale neglect of our supreme
authors which leaves us open to the stinging reproach
of 'treading daily with our clouted shoon' (to borrow
the words of Comus) upon that which high-minded
foreigners regard as the one paramount jewel in our
national diadem.
1 It is remarkable that in the period immediately anterior to that of
Corneille, a stronger and more living nature was struggling for utterance
in French tragedy.  Guizot has cited from an early drama (I forget
whether of Rotrou or of Hardy) one scene most thoroughly impassioned.
The situation is that of a prince who has fixed his love upon a girl of
low birth. She is faithful and constant: but the courtiers about the
prince, for malicious purposes of their own, calumniate her: the prince
is deluded by the plausible air of the slanders which they disperse:
he believes them; but not with the result (anticipated by the courtiers)
of dismissing the girl from his thoughts.  On the contrary, he is
haunted all the more morbidly by her image; and, in a scene which
brings before us one of the vilest amongst these slanderers exerting himself to the uttermost in drawing off the prince's thoughts to alien objects,
we find the prince vainly attempting any self-control, vainly striving to
attend, till he is overruled by the tenderness of his sorrowing love into
finding new occasions for awakening thoughts of the lost girl in the
very words chiefly relied on for calling off his feelings from her image.
The scene (as Guizot himself remarks) is thoroughly Shaksperian; and
I venture to think that this judgment would have been countersigned
by Charles Lamb.




an English Opium-Eater                  6I
That reproach fell heavily, as my own limited experience inclined me to fear, upon most of our great
public schools, otherwise so admirably conducted.1 But
from the Manchester Grammar School any such reproach altogether rebounded. My very first conversation with the boys had arisen naturally upon a casual
topic, and had shown them to be tolerably familiar with
the outline of the Christian polemics in the warfare with
Jew, Mahometan, Infidel, and Sceptic. But this was an
exceptional case; and naturally it happened that most
of us sought for the ordinary subjects of our conversational discussions in literature-viz., in our own native
literature. Here it was that I learned to feel a deep
respect for my new school-fellows: deep it was, then;
and a larger experience has made it deeper. I have
since known many literary men; men whose profession
was literature; who were understood to have dedicated
themselves to literature; and who sometimes had with
some one special section or little nook of literature an
acquaintance critically minute. But amongst such men
I have found but three or four who had a knowledge
which came as near to what I should consider a comprehensive knowledge as really existed amongst those
boys collectively. What one boy had not, another had;
and thus, by continual intercourse, the fragmentary contribution of one being integrated by the fragmentary
contributions of others, gradually the attainments of
each separate individual became, in some degree, the
collective attainments of the whole senior common room.
It is true, undoubtedly, that some parts of literature
were inaccessible, simply because the books were inaccessible to boys at school-for instance, Froissart in
the old translation by Lord Berners, now more than
three centuries old; and some parts were, to the young,
essentially repulsive. But, measuring the general quali1 It will strike everybody that such works as the Microcosm, conducted notoriously by Eton boys, and therefore, in part, by Canning
as one of their leaders at that period, must have an admirable effect,
since not only it must have made it the interest of each contributor,
but must even have made it his necessity, to cultivate some acquaintance with his native literature,




62


Confessions of


fications by that standard which I have since found to
prevail amongst professional littrateurs, I felt more
respectfully towards the majority of my senior schoolfellows than ever I had fancied it possible that I should
find occasion to feel towards any boys whatever. My
intercourse with those amongst them who had any conversational talents greatly stimulated my intellect.
This intercourse, however, fell within narrower limits
soon after the time of my entrance. I acknowledge,
with deep self-reproach, that every possible indulgence
was allowed to me which the circumstances of the establishment made possible. I had, for example, a private
room allowed, in which I not only studied, but also slept
at night. The room being airy and cheerful, I found
nothing disagreeable in this double use of it. Naturally,
however, this means of retirement tended to sequester
me from my companions: for, whilst liking the society
of some amongst them, I also had a deadly liking
(perhaps a morbid liking) for solitude. To make my
present solitude the more fascinating, my mother sent
me five guineas extra, for the purchase of an admission
to the Manchester Library; a library which I should
not at present think very extensive, but which, however,
benefited in its composition, as also in its administration,
by the good sense and intelligence of some amongst its
original committees. These two luxuries were truly and
indeed such: but a third, from which I had anticipated
even greater pleasure, turned out a total failure; and for
a reason which it may be useful to mention, by way of
caution to others. This was a pianoforte, together with
the sum required for regular lessons from a musicmaster. But the first discovery I made was that practice
through eight or even ten hours a day was indispensable towards any great proficiency on this instrument.
Another discovery finished my disenchantment: it was
this. For the particular purpose which I had in view, it
became clear that no mastery of the instrument, not
even that of Thalberg, would be available. Too soon I
became aware that to the deep voluptuous enjoyment of
music absolute passiveness in the hearer is indispensable.




an  English    Opium-Eater          63
Gain what skill you please, nevertheless activity, vigilance, anxiety must always accompany an elaborate effort
of musical execution: and so far is that from being
reconcilable with the entrancement and lull essential
to the true fruition of music, that, even if you should
suppose a vast piece of mechanism capable of executing a whole oratorio, but requiring, at intervals, a cooperating impulse from the foot of the auditor, even
that, even so much as an occasional touch of the foot,
would utterly undermine all your pleasure. A single
psychological discovery, therefore, caused my musical
anticipations to evanesce. Consequently, one of my
luxuries burst like a bubble at an early stage. In this
state of things, when the instrument had turned out
a bubble, it followed naturally that the music-master
should find himself to be a bubble. But he was so
thoroughly good-natured and agreeable that I could not
reconcile myself to such a catastrophe. Meantime,
though accommodating within certain limits, this musicmaster was yet a conscientious man, and a man of
honourable pride. On finding, therefore, that I was not
seriously making any effort to improve, he shook hands
with me one fine day, and took his leave for ever. Unless it were to point a moral and adorn a tale, the piano
had then become useless. It was too big to hang upon
willows, and willows there were none in that neighbourhood. But it remained for months as a lumbering
monument of labour misapplied, of bubbles that had
burst, and of musical visions that, under psychological
tests, had foundered for ever.
Yes, certainly, this particular luxury-one out of three
-had proved a bubble; too surely this had foundered;
but not, therefore, the other two. The quiet study,
lifted by two storeys above the vapours of earth, and
liable to no unseasonable intrusion; the Manchester
Library, so judiciously and symmetrically mounted in
all its most attractive departments-no class disproportioned to the rest: these were no bubbles; these had
not foundered. Oh, wherefore, then, was it-through
what inexplicable growth of evil in myself or in others



64


Confessions of


that now in the summer of 1802, when peace was brooding over all the land, peace succeeding to a bloody seven
years' war, but peace which already gave signs of breaking into a far bloodier war, some dark sympathising
movement within my own heart, as if echoing and repeating in mimicry the political menaces of the earth,
swept with storm-clouds across that otherwise serene
and radiant dawn which should have heralded my
approaching entrance into life?  Inexplicablc I have
allowed myself to call this fatal error in my life, because
such it must appear to others; since, even to myself, so
often as I fail to realise the case by reproducing a reflex
impression in kind, and in degree, of the suffering before
which my better angel gave way-yes, even to myself
this collapse of my resisting energies seems inexplicable.
Yet again, in simple truth, now that it becomes possible,
through changes worked by time, to tell the whole truth
(and not, as in former editions, only a part of it), there
really was no absolute mystery at all. But this case, in
common with many others, exemplifies to my mind the
mere impossibility of making full and frank 'Confessions, whilst many of the persons concerned in the
incidents are themselves surviving, or (which is worse
still) if themselves dead and buried, are yet vicariously
surviving in the persons of near and loving kinsmen.
Rather than inflict mortifications upon people so circumstanced, any kind-hearted man will choose to mutilate
his narrative; will suppress facts, and will mystify explanations. For instance, at this point in my record, it
has become my right, perhaps I might say my duty, to
call a particular medical man of the penultimate generation a blockhead; nay, doubtfully, to call him a criminal
blockhead. But could I do this without deep compunction, so long as sons and daughters of his were still living,
from whom I, when a boy, had received most hospitable
attentions? Often, on the very same day which brought
home to my suffering convictions the atrocious ignorance of papa, I was benefiting by the courtesies of the
daughters, and by the scientific accomplishments of the
son. Not the less this man, at that particular moment




an English Opium-Eater


65


when a crisis of gloom was gathering over my path,
became effectually my evil genius.  Not that singly
perhaps he could have worked any durable amount of
mischief: but he, as a co-operator unconsciously with
others, sealed and ratified that sentence of stormy sorrow
then hanging over my head. Three separate persons,
in fact, made themselves unintentional accomplices in
that ruin (a ruin reaching me even at this day by its
shadows) which threw me out a homeless vagrant upon
the earth before I had accomplished my seventeenth
year. Of these three persons, foremost came myself,
through my wilful despair and resolute adjuration of all
secondary hope: since, after all, some mitigation was
possible, supposing that perfect relief might not be
possible. Secondly, came that medical ruffian through
whose brutal ignorance it happened that my malady had
not been arrested before reaching an advanced stage.
Thirdly, came Mr. Lawson, through whose growing infirmities it had arisen that this malady ever reached its
very earliest stage. Strange it was, but not the less a
fact, that Mr. Lawson was gradually becoming a curse
to all who fell under his influence, through pure zealotry
of conscientiousness. Being a worse man, he would
have carried far deeper blessings into his circle. If he
could have reconciled himself to an imperfect discharge
of his duties, he would not have betrayed his insufficiency for those duties. But this he would not hear of.
He persisted in travelling over the appointed course to
the last inch: and the consequences told most painfully
upon the comfort of all around him. By the old traditionary usages of the school, going in at seven A.M., we
ought to have been dismissed for breakfast and a full
hour's repose at nine. This hour of rest was in strict
justice a debt to the students-liable to no discount
either through the caprice or the tardiness of the supreme
master. Yet such were the gradual encroachments upon
this hour that at length the bells of the collegiate church,
-which, by an ancient usage, rang every morning from
half-past nine to ten, and through varying modifications
of musical key and rhythmus that marked the advancing




66             Confessions of
stages of the half-hour,-regularly announced to us, on
issuing from the school-room, that the bread and milk
which composed our simple breakfast must be despatched at a pace fitter for the fowls of the air than
students of Grecian philosophy. But was no compensatory encroachment for our benefit allowed upon the
next hour from ten to eleven? Not for so much as the
fraction of a second. Inexorably as the bells, by stopping, announced the hour of ten, was Mr. Lawson to be
seen ascending the steps of the school; and he that
suffered most by this rigorous exaction of duties could
not allege that Mr. Lawson suffered less. If he required
others to pay, he also paid up to the last farthing. The
same derangement took place, with the same refusal to
benefit by any indemnification, at what should have been
the two-hours' pause for dinner. Only for some mysterious reason, resting possibly upon the family arrangements
of the day-scholars,-which, if once violated, might have
provoked a rebellion of fathers and mothers,-he still
adhered faithfully to five o'clock P.M. as the closing hour
of the day's labours.
Here then stood arrayed the whole machinery of
mischief in good working order; and through six
months or more, allowing for one short respite of four
weeks, this machinery had been operating with effect.
Mr. Lawson, to begin, had (without meaning it, or so
much as perceiving it) barred up all avenues from
morning to night through which any bodily exercise
could be obtained. Two or three chance intervals of
five minutes each, and even these not consecutively
arranged, composed the whole available fund of leisure
out of which any stroll into the country could have been
attempted. But in a great city like Manchester the
very suburbs had hardly been reached before that little
fraction of time was exhausted. Very soon after Mr.
Lawson's increasing infirmities had begun to tell severely
in the contraction of our spare time, the change showed
itself powerfully in my drooping health. Gradually the
liver became affected: and connected with that affection
arose, what often accompanies such ailments, profound




an English Opium-Eater


67


melancholy. In such circumstances, indeed under any
the slightest disturbance of my health, I had authority
from my guardians to call for medical advice: but I
was not left to my own discretion in selecting the
adviser. This person was not a physician, who would
of course have expected the ordinary fee of a guinea for
every visit; nor a surgeon; but simply an apothecary.
In any case of serious illness a physician would have
been called in. But a less costly style of advice was
reasonably held to be sufficient in any illness which left
the patient strength sufficient to walk about. Certainly
it ought to have been sufficient here: for no case could
possibly be simpler. Three doses of calomel or blue
pill, which unhappily I did not then know, would no
doubt have re-established me in a week. But far better,
as acting always upon me with a magical celerity and a
magical certainty, would have been the authoritative
prescription (privately notified to Mr. Lawson) of
seventy miles' walking in each week. Unhappily my
professional adviser was a comatose old gentleman,
rich beyond all his needs, careless of his own practice,
and standing under that painful necessity (according to
the custom then regulating medical practice, which
prohibited fees to apothecaries) of seeking his remuneration in excessive deluges of medicine. Me,
however, out of pure idleness, he forbore to plague
with any variety of medicines. With sublime simplicity
he confined himself to one horrid mixture, that must
have suggested itself to him when prescribing for a
tiger. In ordinary circumstances, and with plenty of
exercise, no creature could be healthier than myself.
But my organisation was perilously frail. And to fight
simultaneously with such a malady and such a medicine
seemed really too much. The proverb tells us that three
'flittings' are as bad as a fire. Very possibly. And I
should think that, in the same spirit of reasonable
equation, three such tiger-drenches must be equal to
one apoplectic fit, or even to the tiger himself. Having
taken two of them, which struck me as quite enough for
one life, I declined to comply with the injunction of the




68             Confessions of
label pasted upon each several phial-viz., Repetaftr
haustus;1 and, instead of doing any such dangerous
thing, called upon Mr. -    (the apothecary), begging
to know if his art had not amongst its reputed infinity
of resources any less abominable, and less shattering to
a delicate system than this. ' None whatever,' he replied.
Exceedingly kind he was; insisted on my drinking tea
with his really amiable daughters; but continued at
intervals to repeat 'None whatever-none whatever';
then, as if rousing himself to an effort, he sang out
loudly ' None whatever,' which in this final utterance he
toned down syllabically into 'whatever-ever-ver-er.'
The whole wit of man, it seems, had exhausted itself
upon the preparation of that one infernal mixture.
Now then we three-Mr. Lawson, the somnolent
apothecary, and myself-had amongst us accomplished
a climax of perplexity. Mr. Lawson, by mere dint of
conscientiousness, had made health for me impossible.
The apothecary had subscribed his little contribution,
by ratifying and trebling the ruinous effects of this
sedentariness. And for myself, as last in the series,
it now remained to clench the operation by my own
little contribution, all that I really had to offer-viz.,
absolute despair. Those who have ever suffered from
a profound derangement of the liver may happen to
know that of human despondencies through all their
infinite gamut none is more deadly. Hope died within
me. I could not look for medical relief, so deep being
my own ignorance, so equally deep being that of my
official counsellor. I could not expect that Mr. Lawson
would modify his system-his instincts of duty being so
strong, his incapacity to face that duty so steadily
increasing. ' It comes then to this,' thought I, ' that in
myself only there lurks any arrear of help': as always
for every man the ultimate reliance should be on himself. But this se/f of mine seemed absolutely bankrupt;
bankrupt of counsel or device-of effort in the way of
action, or of suggestion in the way of plan. I had for
two months been pursuing with one of my guardians
1' Let the draught be repeated.'




an English Opium-Eater


69


what I meant for a negotiation upon this subject; the
main object being to obtain some considerable abbreviation of my school residence. But negotiation was a selfflattering name for such a correspondence, since there
never had been from the beginning any the slightest
leaning on my guardian's part towards the shadow or
pretence of a compromise. What compromise, indeed,
was possible where neither party could concede a part,
however small: the whole must be conceded, or nothing:
since no mezzo termine was conceivable. In reality,
when my eyes first glanced upon that disagreeable truth
-that no opening offered for reciprocal concession, that
the concession must all be on one side-naturally it
struck me that no guardian could be expected to do
that. At the same moment it also struck me that my
guardian had all along never for a moment been arguing
with a view to any practical result, but simply in the
hope that he might win over my assent to the reasonableness of what, reasonable or not, was settled
immovably. These sudden discoveries, flashing upon
me simultaneously, were quite sufficient to put a
summary close to the correspondence.  And I saw
also, which strangely had escaped me till this general
revelation of disappointments, that any individual
guardian-even if he had been disposed to concession
-was but one after all amongst five.  Well: this
amongst the general blackness really brought a gleam
of comfort. If the whole object on which I had spent
so much excellent paper and midnight tallow (I am
ashamed to use so vile a word, and yet truth forbids me
to say oil), if this would have been so nearly worthless
when gained, then it became a kind of pleasure to have
lost it. All considerations united now in urging me to
waste no more of either rhetoric, tallow, or logic, upon
my impassive granite block of a guardian. Indeed, I
suspected, on reviewing his last communication, that he
had just reached the last inch of his patience, or (in
nautical diction) had 'paid out' the entire cable by
which he swung; so that, if I, acting on the apothecary's
precedent of 'reetatur haustus,' had endeavoured to




70


Confessions of


administer another bolus or draught of expostulation,
he would have followed my course as to the tiger-drench,
in applying his potential No to any such audacious
attempt. To my guardian, meantime, I owe this
justice-that, over and above the absence on my side
of any arguments wearing even a colourable strength
(for to him the suffering from biliousness must have
been a mere word), he had the following weighty consideration to offer, 'which even this foolish boy' (to
himself he would say) ' will think material some three
years ahead.' My patrimonial income, at the moment
of my father's death, like that of all my brothers (then
three), was exactly;1I50 per annum.1 Now, according
to the current belief, or boldly, one might say, according
to the avowed traditional maxim throughout England,
such an income was too little for an undergraduate,
keeping his four terms annually at Oxford or Cambridge.
Too little-by how much?      By /950: the adequate
income being set down at just /200. Consequently
the precise sum by which my income was supposed
(falsely supposed, as subsequently my own experience
convinced me) to fall short of the income needed for
Oxford, was that very sum which the funds of the
Manchester Grammar School allocated to every student
resident for a period of three years; and allocated not
merely through a corresponding period of three years,
but of seven years.   Strong should have been the
reasons that could neutralise such overwhelming pleadings of just and honourable prudence for submitting to
the further residence required. O reader, urge not the
crying arguments that spoke so tumultuously against me.
Too sorrowfully I feel them. Out of thirty-six months'
residence required, I had actually completed nineteeni.e. the better half. Still, on the other hand, it is true
that my sufferings were almost insupportable; and, but
1 ' 150 per annum ':-Why in a long minority of more than
fourteen years this was not improved, I never could learn. Nobody
was open to any suspicion of positive embezzlement: and yet this case
must be added to the other cases of passive neglects and negative
injuries which so extensively disfigure the representative picture of
guardianship all over Christendom.




an English Opium-Eater


71


for the blind unconscious conspiracy of two persons,
these sufferings would either (i) never have existed,
or (2) would have been instantly relieved. In a great
city like Manchester lay, probably, a ship-load of that
same mercury which, by one fragment, not so large as
an acorn, would have changed the colour of a human
life, or would have intercepted the heavy funeral knell
-heavy, though it may be partially muffled-of his own
fierce self-reproaches.
But now, at last, came over me, from the mere excess
of bodily suffering and mental disappointments, a frantic
and rapturous re-agency. In the United States the case
is well known, and many times has been described by
travellers, of that furious instinct which, under a secret
call for saline variations of diet, drives all the tribes of
buffaloes for thousands of miles to the common centre
of the ' Salt-licks.' Under such a compulsion does the
locust, under such a compulsion does the leeming,
traverse its mysterious path. They are deaf to danger,
deaf to the cry of battle, deaf to the trumpets of death.
Let the sea cross their path, let armies with artillery bar
the road, even these terrific powers can arrest only by
destroying; and the most frightful abysses, up to the
very last menace of engulfment, up to the very instant
of absorption, have no power to alter or retard the line
of their inexorable advance.
Such an instinct it was, such a rapturous commandeven so potent, and alas! even so blind-that, under
the whirl of tumultuous indignation and of new-born
hope, suddenly transfigured my whole being. In the
twinkling of an eye, I came to an adamantine resolution
-not as if issuing from any act or any choice of my own,
but as if passively received from some dark oracular
legislation external to myself. That I would elope from
Manchester-this was the resolution. Abscond would
have been the word, if I had meditated anything
criminal. But whence came the indignation, and the
hope? The indignation arose naturally against my
three tormentors (guardian, Archididascalus, and the
professor of tigrology) for those who do substantially




72


Confessions of


co-operate to one result, however little designing it,
unavoidably the mind unifies as a hostile confederacy.
But the hope-how shall I explain that I Was it the
first-born of the resolution, or was the resolution the
first-born of the hope? Indivisibly they went together,
like thunder and lightning; or each interchangeably ran
before and after the other. Under that transcendent
rapture which the prospect of sudden liberation let
loose, all that natural anxiety which should otherwise
have interlinked itself with my anticipations was actually
drowned in the blaze of joy, as the light of the planet
Mercury is lost and confounded on sinking too far
within the blaze of the solar beams. Practically I felt
no care at all stretching beyond two or three weeks.
Not as being heedless and improvident; my tendencies
lay generally in the other direction. No; the cause
lurked in what Wordsworth, when describing the festal
state of France during the happy morning-tide of her
First Revolution (r788-I790), calls 'the senselessness
of joy': this it was, joy-headlong-frantic-irreflective-and (as Wordsworth truly calls it), for that very
reason, sublime 1 —which swallowed up all capacities of
rankling care or heart-corroding doubt. I was, I had
been long, a captive: I was in a house of bondage: one
fulminating word-Let there be freedom-spoken from
some hidden recess in my own will, had as by an
earthquake rent asunder my prison gates.    At any
minute I could walk out.   Already I trod by anticipation the sweet pastoral hills, already I breathed
gales of the everlasting mountains, that to my feelings
blew from the garden of Paradise; and in that vestibule
of an earthly heaven it was no more possible for me to
see vividly or in any lingering detail the thorny cares
which might hereafter multiply around me than amongst
the roses of June, and on the loveliest of June mornings,
I could gather depression from the glooms of the last
December.
1 The senselessness of joy was then sublime.'-Wordsworth at Calais
in x802 (see his sonnets), looking back through thirteen years to the
great era of social resurrection, in I788-89, from a sleep of ten
centuries.




an English Opium-Eater


73


To go was settled. But when and whither  When
could have but one answer; for on more reasons than
one I needed summer weather, and as much of it as
possible.  Besides that, when August came, it would
bring along with it my own birth-day: now, one codicil
in my general vow of freedom had been that my seventeenth birth-day should not find me at school. Still I
needed some trifle of preparation. Especially I needed
a little money. I wrote, therefore, to the only confidential
friend that I had-viz., Lady Carbery. Originally, as
early friends of my mother's, both she and Lord Carbery
had distinguished me at Bath and elsewhere, for some
years, by flattering attentions; and, 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 her benevolence, had maintained a correspondence
with me upon questions of literature. She thought too
highly of my powers and attainments, and everywhere
spoke of me with an enthusiasm that, if I had been five
or six years older, and had possessed any personal
advantages, might have raised smiles at her expense.
To her I now wrote, requesting the loan of five guineas.
A whole week passed without any answer. This perplexed and made me uneasy: for her ladyship was rich
by a vast fortune removed entirely from her husband's
control; and, as I felt assured, would have cheerfully sent
me twenty times the sum asked, unless her sagacity had
suggested some suspicion (which seemed impossible) of
the real purposes which I contemplated in the employment of the five guineas. Could I incautiously have
said anything in my own letter tending that way?
Certainly not; then why-    But at that moment my
speculations were cut short by a letter bearing a coroneted
seal. It was from Lady Carbery, of course, and enclosed
ten guineas instead of five.  Slow in those days were
the mails; besides which, Lady Carbery happened to be
down at the seaside, whither my letter had been sent
after her. Now, then, including my own pocket-money,
I possessed a dozen guineas; which seemed sufficient foz




74


Confessions of


my immediate purpose; and all ulterior emergencies, as
the reader understands, I trampled under foot. This
sum, however, spent at inns on the most economic
footing, could not have held out for much above a
calendar month; and, as to the plan of selecting secondary inns, these are not always cheaper; but the main
objection is that in the solitary stations amongst the
mountains (Cambrian no less than Cumbrian) there is
often no choice to be found: the high-priced inn is
the only one. Even this dozen of guineas it became
necessary to diminish by three. The age of' vails' and
perquisites to three or four servants at any gentleman's
house where you dined-this age, it is true, had passed
away by thirty years perhaps. But that flagrant abuse
had no connexion at all with the English custom of
distributing money amongst that part of the domestics
whose daily labours may have been increased by a visitor's
residence in the family for some considerable space of
time. This custom (almost peculiar, I believe, to the
English gentry) is honourable and just. I personally
had been trained by my mother, who detested sordid
habits, to look upon it as ignominious in a gentleman to
leave a household without acknowledging the obliging
services of those who cannot openly remind him of their
claims. On this occasion, mere necessity compelled me
to overlook the housekeeper: for to her I could not have
offered less than two or three guineas; and, as she was
a fixture, I reflected that I might send it at some future
period. To three inferior servants I found that I ought
not to give less than one guinea each: so much, therefore,
I left in the hands of G —, the most honourable and
upright of boys; since to have given it myself would
have been prematurely to publish my purpose. These
three guineas deducted, I still had nine, or thereabouts.
And now all things were settled, except one: the when
was settled, and the how; but not the whither. That
was still subjudice.
My plan originally had been to travel northwardsviz., to the region of the English Lakes. That little
mountainous district, lying stretched like a pavilion




an English Opium-Eater


75


between four well-known points-viz., the small towns
of Ulverstone and Penrith as its two poles, south and
north; between Kendal, again, on the east, and Egremont on the west-measuring on the one diameter about
forty miles, and on the other perhaps thirty-five-had
for me a secret fascination, subtle, sweet, fantastic, and
even from my seventh or eighth year spiritually strong.
The southern section of that district, about eighteen or
twenty miles long, which bears the name of Furness,
figures in the eccentric geography of English law as a
section of Lancashire, though separated from that county
by the estuary of Morecambe Bay: and therefore, as
Lancashire happened to be my own native county, I had
from childhood, on the strength of this mere legal fiction,
cherished as a mystic privilege, slender as a filament of
air, some fraction of denizenship in the fairy little domain
of the English Lakes. The major part of these lakes
lies in Westmoreland and Cumberland: but the sweet
reposing little water of Esthwaite, with its few emerald
fields, and the grander one of Coniston, with the sublime
cluster of mountain groups, and the little network of
quiet dells lurking about its head    all the way back to
Grasmere, lie in or near the upper chamber of Furness;
and all these, together with the ruins of the once glorious
1 'Its head':-That end of a lake which receives the rivulets and
brooks feeding its waters is locally called its head; and, in continuation
of the same constructive image, the counter terminus, which discharges
its surplus water, is called its foot. By the way, as a suggestion from
this obvious distinction, I may remark that in all cases the very existence
of a head and a foot to any sheet of water defeats the malice of Lord
Byron's sneer against the lake poets, in calling them by the contemptuous designation of 'pond poets'; a variation which some part of the
public readily caught up as a natural reverberation of that spitefulness,
so petty and apparently so groundless, which notoriously Lord Byron
cherished against Wordsworth steadily, and more fitfully against
Southey. The effect of transforming a living image-an image of
restless motion-into an image of foul stagnation was tangibly apprehensible. But was it that contradistinguished the' vivi lacus' of Virgil
from rotting ponds mantled with verdant slime? To have, or not
to have, a head and a foot (i.e. a principle of perpetual change) is
at the very heart of this distinction; and to substitute for lake a term
which ignores and negatives the very differential principle that constitutes a lake-viz., its current and its eternal mobility-is to offer an
insult in which the insulted party has no interest or concern.




76             Confessions of
abbey, had been brought out not many years before into
sunny splendour by the great enchantress of that generation-Anne Radcliffe. But more even than Anne
Radcliffe had the landscape painters, so many and so
various, contributed to the glorification of the English
lake district; drawing out and impressing upon the heart
the sanctity of repose in its shy recesses-its alpine
grandeurs in such passes as those of Wastdale-head,
Langdale-head, Borrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsdale, etc.,
together with the monastic peace which seems to brood
over its peculiar form of pastoral life, so much nobler
(as Wordsworth notices) in its stern simplicity and continual conflict with danger hidden in the vast draperies
of mist overshadowing the hills, and amongst the armies
of snow and hail arrayed by fierce northern winters, than
the effeminate shepherd's life in the classical Arcadia,
or in the flowery pastures of Sicily.
Amongst these 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.
Inevitably this close connexion of the poetry which most
of all had moved me with the particular region and
scenery that most of all had fastened upon my affections,
and led captive my imagination, was calculated, under
ordinary circumstances, to impress upon my fluctuating
deliberations a summary and decisive bias. But the
very depth of the impressions which had been made
upon me, either as regarded the poetry or the scenery,
was too solemn and (unaffectedly I may say it) too
spiritual, to clothe itself in any hasty or chance movement as at all adequately expressing its strength, or
reflecting its hallowed character. If you, reader, were a
devout Mahometan, throwing gazes of mystical awe daily
towards Mecca, or were a Christian devotee looking
with the same rapt adoration to St. Peter's at Rome, or
to El Kodah, the Holy City of Jerusalem (so called even
amongst the Arabs, who hate both Christian and Jew)how painfully would it jar upon your sensibilities if some
friend, sweeping past you upon a high road, with a train




an  English     Opium-Eater          77
(according to the circumstances) of dromedaries or of
wheel carriages, should suddenly pull up, and say,
'Come, old fellow, jump up alongside of me; I'm off
for the Red Sea, and here's a spare dromedary,' or
' Off for Rome, and here's a well-cushioned barouche.'
Seasonable and convenient it might happen that the
invitation were; but still it would shock you that a
journey which, with or without your consent, could not
but assume the character eventually of a saintly pilgrimage, should arise and take its initial movement upon a
casual summons, or upon a vulgar opening of momentary
convenience. In the present case, under no circumstances should I have dreamed of presenting myself to
Wordsworth. The principle of 'veneration' (to speak
phrenologically) was by many degrees too strong in me
for any such overture on my part. Hardly could I have
found the courage to meet and to answer such an
overture coming from him. I could not even tolerate
the prospect (as a bare possibility) of Wordsworth's
hearing my name first of all associated with some case of
pecuniary embarrassment. And, apart from all that, it
vulgarised the whole 'interest' (no other term can I find
to express the case collectively)-the whole 'interest' of
poetry and the enchanted land-equally it vulgarised
person and thing, the vineyard and the vintage, the
gardens and the ladies, of the Hesperides, together with
all their golden fruitage, if I should rush upon them in
a hurried and thoughtless state of excitement.  I remembered the fine caution of this subject involved in a
tradition preserved by Pausanias. Those (he tells us)
who visited by night the great field of Marathon (where
at certain times phantom cavalry careered, flying and
pursuing) in a temper of vulgar sight-seeking, and under
no higher impulse than the degrading one of curiosity,
were met and punished severely in the dark, by the same
sort of people, I presume, as those who handled Falstaff
so roughly in the venerable shades of Windsor: whilst
loyal visitors, who came bringing a true and filial sympathy with the grand deeds of their Athenian ancestors,
who came as children of the same hearth, met with the




78


Confessions of


most gracious acceptance, and fulfilled all the purposes
of a pilgrimage or sacred mission. Under my present
circumstances, I saw that the very motives of love and
honour, which would have inclined the scale so powerfully in favour of the northern lakes, were exactly those
which drew most heavily in the other direction-the
circumstances being what they were as to hurry and
perplexity. And just at that moment suddenly unveiled
itself another powerful motive against taking the northern
direction-viz., consideration for my mother-which
made my heart recoil from giving her too great a shock;
and in what other way could it be mitigated than by my
personal presence in a case of emergency? For such a
purpose North Wales would be the best haven to make
for, since the road thither from my present home lay
through Chester-where at that time my mother had
fixed her residence.
If I had hesitated (and hesitate I did very sincerely)
about such a mode of expressing the consideration due
to my mother, it was not from any want of decision in
my feeling, but really because I feared to be taunted with
this act of tenderness, as arguing an exaggerated estimate
of my own importance in my mother's eyes. To be
capable of causing any alarming shock, must I not
suppose myself an object of special interest? No: I
did not agree to that inference. But no matter. Better
to stand ten thousand sneers than one abiding pang,
such as time could not abolish, of bitter self-reproach.
So I resolved to face this taunt without flinching, and
to steer a course for St. John's Priory,-my mother's
residence near Chester. At the very instant of coming
to this resolution, a singular accident occurred to confirm
it. On the very day before my rash journey commenced,
I received through the post-office a letter bearing this
address in a foreign handwriting-A Monsieur Monsieur
de Quincy, Chester. This iteration of the Monsieur, as
a courteous French fashion   for effecting something
1 ' As a courteous French fashion':-And not at all a moder fashion.
That famous Countess of Derby (Charlotte de Tremouille) who presided
in the defence of Lathom House (which, and not Knowsley, was then




an English Opium-Eater


79


equivalent to our own Esquire, was to me at that time an
unintelligible novelty. The best way to explain it was
to read the letter; which, to the extent of mon possible,
I did, but vainly attempted to decipher.      So much,
however, I spelled out as satisfied me that the letter
could not have been meant for myself. The post-mark
was, I think, Hamburgh: but the date within was'from
some place in Normandy; and eventually it came out
that the person addressed was a poor emigrant, some
relative of Quatremere de Quincy,1 who had come to
Chester, probably as a teacher of French, and now in
I802 found his return to France made easy by the brief
and hollow peace of Amiens. Such an obscure person
was naturally unknown to any English post-office; and
the letter had been forwarded to myself, as the oldest
male member of a family at that time necessarily well
known in Chester.
I was astonished to find myself translated by a touch
of the pen not only into a Monsieur, but even into a
self-multiplied Monsieur; or, speaking algebraically, into
the square of Monsieur; having a chance at some future
day of being perhaps cubed into Monsieur. From the
letter, as I had hastily torn it open, out dropped a draft
upon Smith, Payne & Smith for somewhere about forty
guineas. At this stage of the revelations opening upon
me, it might be fancied that the interest of the case
thickened: since undoubtedly, if this windfall could be
seriously meant for myself, and no mistake, never descended upon the head of man, in the outset of a
the capital domicile of the Stanleys), when addressing Prince Rupert,
sometimes superscribes her envelope A Monseigneur le Prince Rupert,
but sometimes A Monsieur Monsieur le Prince Rupert. This was in
1644, the year of Marston Moor, and the penultimate year of the Parliamentary War.
1' De Quincy':-The family of De Quincey, or Quincy, or Quincie
(spelt of course, like all proper names, under the anarchy prevailing as
to orthography until the last one hundred and fifty years, in every
possible form open to human caprice), was originally Norwegian.
Early in the eleventh century this family emigrated from Norway to the
South; and since then it has thrown off three separate swarms-French,
English, and Anglo-American-each of which writes the name with its
own slight variations. A brief outline of their migrations will be found
in the Appendix.




80             Confessions of
perilous adventure, aid more seasonable, nay, more
melodramatically critical. But alas! my eye is quick to
value the logic of evil chances. Prophet of evil I ever
am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful auguries
that I have no power to hide from my own heart, no,
not through one night's solitary dreams. In a moment
I saw too plainly that I was not Monsieur. I might be
Monsieur, but not Monsieur to the second power. Who
indeed could be my debtor to the amount of forty
guineas? If there really was such a person, why had
he been so many years in liquidating his debt? How
shameful to suffer me to enter upon my seventeenth
year before he made known his debt, or even his amiable
existence!  Doubtless, in strict morals, this dreadful
procrastination could not be justified. Still, as the man
was apparently testifying his penitence, and in the most
practical form (viz., payment), I felt perfectly willing to
grant him absolution for past sins, and a general release
from all arrears, if any should remain, through all coming
generations. But alas! the mere seasonableness of the
remittance floored my hopes.  A five-guinea debtor
might have been a conceivable being: such a debtor
might exist in the flesh: him I could believe in; but
further my faith would not go; and, if the money were,
after all, bona fide meant for myself, clearly it must come
from the Fiend: in which case it became an open question whether I ought to take it. At this stage the case
had become a Sphinx's riddle; and the solution, if any,
must be sought in the letter. But, as to the letter, O
heaven and earth I if the Sphinx of old conducted her
intercourse with Oedipus by way of letter, and propounded her wicked questions through the post-office of
Thebes, it strikes me that she needed only to have used
French penmanship in order to baffle that fatal decipherer
of riddles for ever and ever. At Bath, where the French
emigrants mustered in great strength (six thousand, I
have heard) during the three dlosing years of the last
century, I, through my mother's acquaintance with
several leading families amongst them, had gained a
large experience of French caligraphy. From this ex



an English Opium-Eater                8i
perience I had learned that the French aristocracy still
persisted (did persist at that period, 1797-I800) in a
traditional contempt for all accomplishments of that
class as clerkly and plebeian, fitted only (as Shakspere
says, when recording similar prejudices amongst his own
countrymen) to do 'yeoman's service.'  One and all,
they delegated the care of their spelling to valets and
femmes-de-chambre; sometimes even those persons who
scoured their blankets and counterpanes scoured their
spelling-that is to say, their week-day spelling; but, as
to their Sunday spelling, that superfine spelling which
they reserved for their efforts in literature, this was consigned to the care of compositors. Letters written by
the royal family of France in I792-93 still survive, in
the memoirs of Clhry and others amongst their most
faithful servants, which display the utmost excess of
ignorance as to grammar and orthography. Then, as
to the penmanship, all seemed to write the same hand,
and with the same piece of most ancient wood, or
venerable skewer; all alike scratching out stiff perpendicular letters, as if executed (I should say) with a pair
of snuffers. I do not speak thus in any spirit of derision.
Such accomplishments were wilfully neglected, and even
ambitiously, as if in open proclamation of scorn for the
arts by which humbler people oftentimes got their bread.
And a man of rank would no more conceive himself
dishonoured by any deficiencies in the snobbish accomplishments of penmanship, grammar, or correct
orthography, than a gentleman amongst ourselves by
inexpertness in the mystery of cleaning shoes, or of
polishing furniture.  The result, however, from  this
systematic and ostentatious neglect of caligraphy is
oftentimes most perplexing to all who are called upon
to decipher their MSS. It happens, indeed, that the
product of this carelessness thus far differs: always it
is coarse and inelegant, but sometimes (say in i-20th
of the cases) it becomes specially legible. Far otherwise
was the case before me. Being greatly hurried on this
my farewell day, I could not make out two consecutive sentences. Unfortunately, one-half of a sentence




82             Confessions of
sufficed to show that the enclosure belonged to some
needy Frenchman living in a country not his own, and
struggling probably with the ordinary evils of such a
condition-friendlessness and exile.  Before the letter
came into my hands, it had already suffered some days'
delay. When I noticed this, I found my sympathy with
the poor stranger naturally quickened. Already, and
unavoidably, he had been suffering from the vexation of
a letter delayed; but henceforth, and continually more
so, he must be suffering from the anxieties of a letter
gone astray. Throughout this farewell day I was unable
to carve out any opportunity for going up to the Manchester Post-office; and, without a distinct explanation
in my own person, exonerating myself, on the written
acknowledgment of the post - office, from all further
responsibility, I was most reluctant to give up the letter.
It is true that the necessity of committing a forgery
(which crime in those days was punished inexorably
with death) before the money could have been fraudulently appropriated would, if made known to the public,
have acquitted any casual holder of the letter from all
suspicion of dishonest intentions. But the danger was
that, during the suspense and progress of the case
whilst awaiting its final settlement, ugly rumours should
arise and cling to one's name amongst the many that
would hear only a fragmentary version of the whole
affair.
At length all was ready. Midsummer, like an army
with banners, was moving through the heavens; already
the longest day had passed; those arrangements, few
and imperfect, through which I attempted some partial
evasion of disagreeable contingencies likely to arise, had
been finished: what more remained for me to do of
things that I was able to do? None; and yet, though
now at last free to move off, I lingered; lingered as
under some sense of dim perplexity, or even of relenting
love for the very captivity itself which I was making so
violent an effort to abjure, but more intelligibly for all
the external objects, living or inanimate, by which that
captivity had been surrounded and gladdened. What I




an English Opium-Eater               83
was hastening to desert, nevertheless I grieved to desert;
and, but for the foreign letter, I might have long continued to loiter and procrastinate.  That, however,
through various and urgent motives which it suggested,
quickened my movements; and the same hour which
brought this letter into my hands witnessed my resolution (uttered audibly to myself in my study) that early
on the next day I would take my departure.     A
day, therefore, had at length arrived, had somewhat
suddenly arrived, which would be the last, the very
last, on which I should make my appearance in the
school.
It is a just and a feeling remark of Dr. Johnson's
that we never do anything consciously for the last time
(of things, that is to say, which we have been long in
the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. The secret
sense of a farewell or testamentary act I carried along
with me into every word or deed of this memorable day.
Agent or patient, singly or one of a crowd, I heard for
ever some sullen echo of valediction in every change,
casual or periodic, that varied the revolving hours from
morning to night. Most of all, I felt this valedictory
sound as a pathetic appeal when the closing hour of five
P.M. brought with it the solemn evening service of the
English Church-read by Mr. Lawson; read now, as
always, under a reverential stillness of the entire school.
Already in itself, without the solemnity of prayers, the
decaying light of the dying day suggests a mood of
pensive and sympathetic sadness. And, if the changes
in the light are less impressively made known so early as
five o'clock in the depth of summer-tide, not the less we
are sensible of being as near to the hours of repose, and
to the secret dangers of the night, as if the season were
mid-winter.  Even thus far there was something that
oftentimes had profoundly impressed me in this evening
liturgy, and its special prayer against the perils of darkness.  But greatly was that effect deepened by the
symbolic treatment which this liturgy gives to this darkness and to these perils. Naturally, when contemplating
that treatment, I had been led vividly to feel the memor



84                 Confessions of
able rhabdomancy     or magical power of evocation which
Christianity has put forth here and in parallel cases.
The ordinary physical rhabdomantist, who undertakes
to evoke from the dark chambers of our earth wells of
water lying far below its surface, and more rarely to
evoke minerals, or hidden deposits of jewels and gold,
by some magnetic sympathy between his rod and the
occult object of his divination, is able to indicate the
spot at which this object can be hopefully sought for.
Not otherwise has the marvellous magnetism of Christianity called up from darkness sentiments the most
august, previously inconceivable, formless, and without
life; for previously there had been no religious philosophy equal to the task of ripening such sentiments;
but also, at the same time, by incarnating these sentiments in images of corresponding grandeur, it has so
1 ' Rhabdomancy': —The Greek word manteia (^avrTia), represented
by the English form mancy, constitutes the stationary element in a
large family of compounds: it means divination, or the art of magically deducing some weighty inference (generally prophetic) from any
one of the many dark sources sanctioned by Pagan superstition. And
universally the particular source relied on is expressed in the prior half
of the compound. For instance, oneiros is the Greek word for a dream;
and therefore oneiromancy indicates that mode of prophecy which is
founded upon the interpretation of dreams. Ornis, again (in the genitive case ornithos), is the common Greek word for a bird; accordingly,
ornithomancy means prophecy founded on the particular mode of flight
noticed amongst any casual gathering of birds. Cheir (xeip) is Greek
for the hand; whence cheiromancy expresses the art of predicting
a man's fortune by the lines in his hand, or (under its Latin form from
palma) palmistry: Nekros, a dead man, and consequently necromancy,
prophecy founded on the answer extorted either from phantoms, as by
the Witch of Endor, or from the corpse itself, as by Lucan's witch
Erichtho. I have allowed myself to wander into this ample illustration
of the case, having for many years been taxed by ingenious readers
(confessing their own classical ignorance) with too scanty explanations
of my meaning. I go on to say that the Greek word rhabdos (paSov), a
rod-not that sort of rod which the Roman lictors carried, viz., a bundle
of twigs, but a wand about as thick as a common cedar pencil, or at most,
as the ordinary brass rod of stair-carpets-this, when made from a
willow-tree, furnished of old, and furnishes to this day in a southern
county of England, a potent instrument of divination. But let it be
understood that divination expresses an idea ampler by much than the
word prophecy: whilst even this word prophecy, already more limited
than divination, is most injuriously narrowed in our received translation
of the Bible. To unveil or decipher what is hidden-that is, in effect,
the meaning of divination. And, accordingly, in the writings of St.




an English Opium-Eater                         85
exalted their character as to lodge them eternally in
human hearts.
Flowers, for example, that are so pathetic in their
beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as
gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of
years been the heritage of children-honoured as the
jewellery of God only by them-when suddenly the
voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the
Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and
pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed
like one of these. Winds again, hurricanes, the eternal
breathings, soft or loud, of iEolian power, wherefore had
they, raving or sleeping, escaped all moral arrest and
detention? Simply because vain it were to offer a nest
for the reception of some new moral birth whilst no
religion is yet moving amongst men that can furnish
Paul the phrase gifts of prophecy never once indicates what the English
reader supposes, but exegetic gifts, gifts of interpretation applied to
what is dark, of analysis applied to what is logically perplexed, of expansion applied to what is condensed, of practical improvement applied
to what might else be overlooked as purely speculative. In Somersetshire, which is a county the most ill-watered of all in England, upon
building a house, there arises uniformly a difficulty in selecting a proper
spot for sinking a well. The remedy is to call in a set of local rhabdomantists. These men traverse the adjacent ground, holding the willow
rod horizontally: wherever that dips, or inclines itself spontaneously
to the ground, there will be found water. I have myself not only seen
the process tried with success, but have witnessed the enormous trouble,
delay, and expense, accruing to those of the opposite faction who
refused to benefit by this art. To pursue the tentative plan (i.e. the
plan of trying for water by boring at haphazard) ended, so far as I was
aware, in multiplied vexation. In reality, these poor men are, after all,
more philosophic than those who scornfully reject their services. For
the artists obey unconsciously the logic of Lord Bacon: they build upon
a long chain of induction, upon the uniform results of their life-long
experience. But the counter faction do not deny this experience: all
they have to allege is that agreeably to any laws known to themselves a
priori, there ought not to be any such experience. Now, a sufficient
Course of facts overthrows all antecedent plausibilities.  Whatever
science or scepticism may say, most of the tea-kettles in the vale of
Wrington are filled by rhabdomancy. And, after all, the supposed a
priori scruples against this rhabdomancy are only such scruples as
would, antecedently to a trial, have pronounced the mariner's compass
impossible. There is in both cases alike a blind sympathy of some
unknown force, which no man can explain, with a passive index that
practically guides you aright-even if Mephistopheles should be at the
bottom of the affair.




86


Confessions of


such a birth.  Vain is the image that should illustrate
a heavenly sentiment, if the sentiment is yet unborn.
Then, first, when it had become necessary to the purposes of a spiritual religion that the spirit of man, as the
fountain of all religion, should in some commensurate
reflex image have its grandeur and its mysteriousness
emblazoned, suddenly the pomp and mysterious path of
winds and tempests, blowing whither they list, and from
what fountains no man knows, are cited from darkness
and neglect, to give and to receive reciprocally an impassioned glorification, where the lower mystery enshrines
and illustrates the higher. Call for the grandest of all
earthly spectacles, what is that I It is the sun going to
his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments,
what is that?  It is that man should forget his anger
before he lies down to sleep. And these two grandeurs,
the mighty sentiment and the mighty spectacle, are by
Christianity married together.
Here again, in his prayer 'Lighten our darkness,
we beseech thee, 0 Lord!' were the darkness and the
great shadows of night made symbolically significant:
these great powers, Night and Darkness, that belong to
aboriginal Chaos, were made representative of the perils
that continually menace poor afflicted human nature.
With deepest sympathy I accompanied the prayer against
the perils of darkness-perils that I seemed to see, in
the ambush of midnight solitude, brooding around the
beds of sleeping nations; perils from even worse forms
of darkness shrouded within the recesses of blind human
hearts; perils from temptations weaving unseen snares
for our footing; perils from the limitations of our own
misleading knowledge.
Prayers had finished. The school had dissolved itself.
Six o'clock came, seven, eight. By three hours nearer
stood the dying day to its departure. By three hours
nearer, therefore, stood we to that darkness which our
English liturgy calls into such symbolic grandeur, as
hiding beneath its shadowy mantle all perils that besiege
our human infirmity. But in summer, in the immediate
suburbs of midsummer, the vast scale of the heavenly




an English Opium-Eater                         87
movements is read in their slowness. Time becomes
the expounder of Space. And now, though eight o'clock
has struck, the sun was still lingering above the horizon:
the light, broad and gaudy, having still two hours of
travel to face before it would assume that tender fading
hue prelusive to the twilight.' Now came the last official
ceremony of the day: the students were all mustered;
and the names of all were challenged according to the
order of precedency. My name, as usual, came first.2
Stepping forward, I passed Mr. Lawson, and bowed to
him, looking earnestly in his face, and saying 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
placidly; returned my salutation (not knowing it to be
1 ' To the twilight':-i.e. to the second twilight: for I remember to
have read in some German work upon Hebrew antiquities, and also in
a great English divine of I630 (namely, Isaac Ambrose), that the Jews
in elder times made two twilights, first and second; the first they
called the dove's twilight, or crepusculum of the day; the second they
called the raven's twilight, or crepusculum of the night.
2 'First':-Within the school I should not have been first: for in
the trinity which composed the head class there was no absolute or
meritorious precedency, but simply a precedency of chance. Our dignity,
as leaders of the school, raised us above all petty competitions; yet, as
it was unavoidable to stand in some order, this was regulated by seniority. I, therefore, as junior amongst the three, was tertius inter
pares. But my two seniors happened to be day-scholars: so that, in
Mr. Lawson's house, I rose into the supreme place. There, I was
princeps senates. Such trivial circumstantialities I notice, as checks
upon all openings to inaccuracy, great or small. It would vitiate the
interest which any reader might otherwise take in this narrative, if for
one moment it were supposed that any feature of the case were varnished or distorted. From the very first, I had been faithful to the
most rigorous law of accuracy-even in absolute trifles. But I became
even more jealous over myself, after an Irish critic, specially brilliant
as a wit and as a scholar, but also specially malicious, had attempted
to impeach the accuracy of my narrative, in its London section, upon
alleged internal grounds.
I wish it could have been said with truth, that we of the leading
form were, not a triad, but a duad. The facts, however, of the case
will not allow me to say this. Facts, as people generally remark, are
stubborn things. Yes, and too often very spiteful things; as in this
case, where, if it were not for them, I might describe myself as having
one sole assessor in the class, and in that case he and I might have
been likened to Castor and Pollux, who went up and down like alternate buckets-one rising with the dawn (or Phosphorus), and the other
(viz., myself) rising with Hesperus, and reigning all night long.
G




88             Confessions of
my valediction); and we parted for ever. Intellectually, I might not have seen cause to reverence him in
any emphatic sense. But very sincerely I respected
him as a conscientious man, faithful to his duties, and
as, even in his latter ineffectual struggle with these duties,
inflicting more suffering upon himself than upon others;
finally, I respected him as a sound and accurate (though
not brilliant) scholar. Personally I owed him much
gratitude; for he had been uniformly kind to me, and
had allowed me such indulgences as lay in his power;
and I grieved at the thought of the mortification I should
inflict upon him.
The morning came which was to launch me into the
world; that morning from which, and from its consequences, my whole succeeding life has, in many important points, taken its colouring. At half after three
I rose, and gazed with deep emotion at the ancient
collegiate church, 'dressed in earliest light,' and beginning to crimson with the deep lustre of a cloudless July
morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose,
but yet agitated by anticipation of uncertain danger and
troubles. To this agitation the deep peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree
a medicine. The silence was more profound than that
of midnight: and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the
light being broad and strong as that of noonday at other
seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day
chiefly because man is not yet abroad, and thus the
peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God,
seems to be secure and deep only so long as the presence
of man, and his 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 nearly a year
and a half this room had been my 'pensive citadel':
here I had read and studied through all the hours of
night; and, though true it was that, for the latter part
of this time, I had lost my gaiety and peace of mind
during the strife and fever of contention with my
guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy passionately




an English Opium-Eater                 89
fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I
could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the
midst of general dejection.
Happy hours?    Yes; and was it certain that ever
again I should enjoy hours as happy? At this point it
is not impossible that, left to my own final impressions,
I might have receded from my plan. But it seemed to
me, as too often happens in such cases, that no retreat
was now open. The confidence which unavoidably I
had reposed in a groom of Mr. Lawson's made it dangerous. The effect of this distracted view was, not to
alter my plan, but to throw despondency for one sad
half hour over the whole prospect before me. In that
condition, with my eyes open, I dreamed. Suddenly a
sort of trance, a frost as of some deathlike revelation,
wrapped round me; and I found renewed within me a
hateful remembrance derived from a moment that I had
long left behind. Two years before, when I wanted
about as much of my fifteenth birthday as now of my
seventeenth, I happened to be in London for part of
a single day, with a friend of my own age. Naturally,
amongst some eight or ten great spectacles which challenged our earnest attention, St. Paul's Cathedral had
been one. This we had visited, and consequently the
Whispering Gallery.1 More than by all beside I had
been impressed by this: and some half-hour later, as we
were standing beneath the dome, and I should imagine
pretty nearly on the very spot where rather more than
five years subsequently Lord Nelson was buried,-a
spot from which we saw, pompously floating to and fro
in the upper spaces of a great aisle running westwards
from ourselves, many flags captured from France, Spain,
and Holland,-I, having my previous impressions of
awe deepened by these solemn trophies of chance and
change amongst mighty nations, had suddenly been
1 To those who have never visited the Whispering Gallery, nor
have read any account of it amongst other acoustic phenomena described in scientific treatises, it may be proper to mention, as the
distinguishing feature of the case, that a word or a question, uttered
at one end of the gallery in the gentlest of whispers, is reverberated at
the other end in peals of thunder.




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Confessions of


surprised by a dream, as profound as- at present, in
which a thought that often had persecuted me figured
triumphantly. This thought turned upon the fatality
that must often attend an evil choice. As an oracle of
fear I remembered that great Roman warning, Nescit
vox missa reverti (that a word once uttered is irrevocable), a freezing arrest upon the motions of hope too
sanguine that haunted me in many shapes. Long before
that fifteenth year of mine, I had noticed, as a worm
lying at the heart of life and fretting its security, the
fact that innumerable acts of choice change countenance
and are variously appraised at varying stages of lifeshift with the shifting hours. Already, at fifteen, I had
become deeply ashamed of judgments which I had once
pronounced, of idle hopes that I had once encouraged,
false admirations or contempts with which once I had
sympathised. And, as to the acts which I surveyed with
any doubts at all, I never felt sure that after some succession of years I might not feel withering doubts about
them, both as to principle and as to inevitable results.
This sentiment of nervous recoil from any word or
deed that could not be recalled had been suddenly
re-awakened on that London morning by the impressive
experience of the Whispering Gallery. At the earlier
end of the gallery had stood my friend, breathing in
the softest of whispers a solemn but not acceptable
truth. At the further end, after running along the walls
of the gallery, that solemn truth reached me as a deafening menace in tempestuous uproars. And now in these
last lingering moments, when I dreamed ominously with
open eyes in my Manchester study, once again that
London menace broke angrily upon me as out of a
thick cloud with redoubled strength; a voice, too late
for warning, seemed audibly to say, 'Once leave this
house, and a Rubicon is placed between thee and all
possibility of return. Thou wilt not say that what thou
doest is altogether approved in thy secret heart. Even
now thy conscience speaks against it in sullen whispers;
but at the other end of thy long life-gallery that same
conscience will speak to thee in volleying thunders.'




an English Opium-Eater


9I


A sudden step upon the stairs broke up my dream,
and recalled   me to myself.     Dangerous hours were
now drawing near, and I prepared for a hasty farewell.
I shed tears as I looked round on the chair, hearth,
writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too
certainly that I looked upon them for the last time.
Whilst I write this, it is nineteen 1 years ago; and yet,
at this moment, I see, as if it were but yesterday, the
lineaments and expressions of the object on which I
fixed my parting gaze.    It was the picture of a lovely
lady, which hung over the mantelpiece; the eyes and
mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with divine tranquillity, that I had
a thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to
gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron
saint.2 Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones
of the old church clock proclaimed that it was six
o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, then gently
walked out, and closed the door for ever.
So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions
of laughter and of tears that I cannot yet recall without
smiling an incident which occurred at that time, and
which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution
of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight; for,
besides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library.
The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's, my
1 Written in the August of x82I.
2 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 college at Oxford
with which Mr. Lawson personally was connected, or else, fourthly, to
Mr. Lawson himself as a private individual, the unknown lady has
been a special benefactress. She was also a special benefactress to
me, through eighteen months, by means of her sweet Madonna
countenance. And in some degree it serves to spiritualise and to hallow
this service that of her who unconsciously rendered it I know 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 centuries; I from
her by the gulf of eternity.




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Confessions of


room being at an aerial elevation in the house; and
(what was worse) the staircase which communicated
with this angle of the building was accessible only by a
gallery, which passed the head-master's chamber-door.
I was a favourite with all the servants; and, knowing
that any of them would screen me, and act confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom
of the head-master's. The groom declared his readiness
to do anything I wished; and, when the time arrived,
went upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared
was beyond the strength of any one man: however, the
groom was a man 'of Atlantean shoulders,' and had a
back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he
persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I
stood waiting at the foot of the last flight, in great
anxiety for the event.  For some time I heard him
descending with steps slow and steady; but, unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, his
foot slipped; and the mighty burden, falling from his
shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step
of the descent, that on reaching the bottom, it trundled,
or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty
devils, against the very bedroom-door of Archididascalus.
My first thought suggested that all was lost, and that
my sole chance for effecting a retreat was to sacrifice
my baggage. However, on reflection, I determined to
abide the issue. The groom, meantime, was in the
utmost alarm, both on his own account and mine: but,
in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contretemps, taken possession of
his fancy that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous
peal of laughter, that might have wakened the 'Seven
Sleepers.' At the sound of this resonant merriment,
within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not
forbear joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by
the comic wilfulness of the trunk, trundling down from
step to step with accelerated pace and multiplying uproar, like the Xaas dvaLSrj 1 (the contumacious stone)
A '(A rs L TreTA ~Ce56ve KVXly8erTo X &as 4vaaiS.'-Hom. Odyss.




an English Opium-Eater


93


of Sisyphus, as by the effect it had upon the groom.
We both expected, as a matter of course, that Mr.
Lawson would sally out of his room; for, in general, if
but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from
his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion,
when the noise of laughter had subsided, no sound, or
rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Mr.
Lawson had a painful complaint, which, oftentimes
keeping him awake, made him sleep, when it did come,
peculiarly deep. 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 Providence
my guide,' or more truly it might be said, with my
own headstrong folly for law and impulse, I set off on
foot; carrying a small parcel with some articles of dress
under my arm, a favourite English poet in one pocket,
and an odd volume, containing about one-half of Canter's
Euripides, in the other.
On leaving Manchester, by a south-western route,
towards Chester and Wales, the first town that I reached
(to the best of my remembrance) was Altrincham-colloquially called Awfrigem. When a child of three years old,
and suffering from the hooping-cough, I had been carried
for a change of air to different places on the Lancashire
coast; and in order to benefit by as large a compass as
possible of varying atmospheres, I and my nurse had been
made to rest for the first night of our tour at this cheerful
little town of Altrincham. On the next morning, which
ushered in a most dazzling day of July, I rose earlier
than my nurse fully approved: but in no long time she
found it advisable to follow my example; and after
putting me through my morning's drill of ablutions and
the Lord's prayer, no sooner had she fully arranged my
petticoats than she lifted me up in her arms, threw open
the window, and let me suddenly look down upon the
gayest scene I had ever beheld-viz., the little marketplace of Altrincham at eight o'clock in the morning.
It happened to be the market-day; and I, who till then




94


Confessions of


had never consciously been in any town whatever, was
equally astonished and delighted with the novel gaiety
of the scene. Fruits, such as can be had in July, and
flowers were scattered about in profusion: even the
stalls of the butchers, from their brilliant cleanliness,
appeared attractive: and the bonny young women of
Altrincham were all tripping about in caps and aprons
coquettishly disposed. The general hilarity of the scene
at this early hour, with the low murmurings of pleasurable conversation and laughter, that rose up like a
fountain to the open window, left so profound an impression upon me that I never lost it. All this occurred,
as I have said, about eight o'clock on a superb July
morning. Exactly at that time of the morning, on
exactly such another heavenly day of July, did I, leaving
Manchester at six A.M., naturally enough find myself in
the centre of Altrincham market-place. Nothing had
altered. There were the very same fruits and flowers;
the same bonny young women tripping up and down in
the same (no, not the same) coquettish bonnets; everything was apparently the same: perhaps the window
of my bedroom was still open, only my nurse and I
were not looking out; for alas! on recollection, fourteen years precisely had passed since then. Breakfasttime, however, is always a cheerful stage of the day; if
a man can forget his cares at any season, it is then;
and after a walk of seven miles it is doubly so. I felt
it at the time, and have stopped, therefore, to notice it,
as a singular coincidence, that twice, and by the merest
accident, I should find myself, precisely as the clocks
on a July morning were all striking eight, drawing inspiration of pleasurable feelings from the genial sights
and sounds in the little market-place of Altrincham.
There I breakfasted; and already by the two hours'
exercise I felt myself half restored to health. After an
hour's rest, I started again upon my journey: all my
gloom and despondency were already retiring to the'
rear; and, as I left Altrincham, I said to myself, 'All
places, it seems, are not Whispering Galleries.'
The distance between Manchester and Chester was




an English Opium-Eater


95


about forty miles. What it is under railway changes I
know not. This I planned to walk in two days: for,
though the whole might have been performed in one,
I saw no use in exhausting myself; and my walking
powers were rusty from long disuse. I wished to bisect
the journey; and, as nearly as I could expect-i.e.
within two or three miles-such a bisection was attained
in a clean roadside inn, of the class so commonly found
in England. A kind, motherly landlady, easy in circumstances, having no motive for rapacity, and looking
for her livelihood much less to her inn than to her
Yarm, guaranteed to me a safe and profound night's
rest. On the following morning there remained not
quite eighteen miles between myself and venerable
Chester. Before I reached it, so mighty now (as ever
before and since) had become the benefit from the air
and the exercise that oftentimes I felt inebriated and
crazy with ebullient spirits. But for the accursed letter,
which sometimes
'Came over me,
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
I should have too much forgot my gravity under this
new-born health.    For two hours before reaching
Chester, from the accident of the south-west course
which the road itself pursued, I saw held up aloft before
my eyes that matchless spectacle,
' New, and yet as old
As the foundations of the heavens and earth,'
an elaborate and pompous sunset hanging over the
mountains of North Wales. The clouds passed slowly
through several arrangements, and in the last of these
I read the very scene which six months before I had
read in a most exquisite poem of Wordsworth's, extracted entire into a London newspaper (I think the St.
James's Chronicle). It was a Canadian lake,
'With all its fairy crowds
Of islands that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Amongst the evening clouds.




96


Confessions of


The scene in the poem (' Ruth'), that had been originally
mimicked by the poet from the sky, was here re-mimicked
and rehearsed to the life, as it seemed, by the sky from
the poet. Was I then, in July 1802, really quoting from
Wordsworth? Yes, reader; and I only in all Europe.
In 1799 I had become acquainted with 'We are Seven'
at Bath. In the winter of I801-2 I had read the whole
of ' Ruth'; early in 1803 I had written to Wordsworth.
In May I803 I had received a very long answer from
Wordsworth.
The next morning after reaching Chester, my first
thought on rising was directed to the vexatious letter in
my custody. The odious responsibility, thrust upon me
in connexion with this letter, was now becoming every
hour more irritating, because every hour more embarrassing to the freedom of my own movements, since
it must by this time have drawn the post-office into the
ranks of my pursuers. Indignant I was that this letter
should have the power of making myself an accomplice
in causing anxiety, perhaps even calamity, to the poor
emigrant-a man doubly liable to unjust suspicion;
first, as by his profession presumably poor, and, secondly,
as an alien. Indignant I was that this most filthy of
letters should also have the power of forcing me into all
sorts of indirect and cowardly movements at inns; for
beyond all things it seemed to me important that I
should not be arrested, or even for a moment challenged,
as the wrongful holder of an important letter, before I
had testified, by my own spontaneous transfer of it, that
I had not dallied with any idea of converting it to my
own benefit. In some way I must contrive to restore
the letter.  But was it not then the simplest of all
courses to take my hat before sitting down to breakfast,
present myself at the post-office, tender my explanation,
and then (like Christian in Bunyan's allegory) to lay
down my soul-wearying burden at the feet of those who
could sign my certificate of absolution? Was not that
simple? Was not that easy? Oh yes, beyond a doubt.
And, if a favourite fawn should be carried off by a lion,
would it not be a very simple and easy course to walk




an English Opium-Eater               97
after the robber, follow him into his den, and reason
with the wretch on the indelicacy of his conduct? In
my particular circumstances, the post-office was in relation to myself simply a lion's den. Two separate parties,
I felt satisfied, must by this time be in chase of me;
and the two chasers would be confluent at the postoffice. Beyond all other objects which I had to keep
in view, paramount was that of fencing against my own
re-capture.  Anxious I was on behalf of the poor
foreigner; but it did not strike me that to this anxiety
I was bound to sacrifice myself. Now, if I went to the
post-office, I felt sure that nothing else would be the
result; and afterwards it turned out that in this anticipation I had been right. For it struck me that the
nature of the enclosure in the French letter-viz., the
fact that without a forgery it was not negotiable-could
not be known certainly to anybody but myself. Doubts
upon that point must have quickened the anxieties of
all connected with myself, or connected with the case.
More urgent consequently would have been the applications of 'Monsieur Monsieur' to the post-office; and
consequently of the post-office to the Priory; and consequently more easily suggested and concerted between
the post-office and the Priory would be all the arrangements for stopping me, in the event of my taking the
route of Chester-in which case it was natural to suppose
that I might personally return the letter to the official
authorities.  Of course, none of these measures was
certainly known to myself; but I guessed at them as
reasonable probabilities; and it was evident that the
fifty and odd hours since my elopement from Manchester
had allowed ample time for concerting all the requisite
preparations. As a last resource, in default of any better
occurring, it is likely enough that my anxiety would have
tempted me into this mode of surrendering my abominable trust, which by this time I regarded with such eyes
of burning malice as Sinbad must have directed at intervals towards the venerable ruffian that sat astride upon
his shoulders. But things had not yet come to Sinbad's
state of desperation; so, immediately after breakfast, I took




98                Confessions of
my hat, determining to review the case and adopt some
final decision in the open air. For I have always found
it easier to think over a matter of perplexity whilst walking in wide open spaces, under the broad eye of the
natural heavens, than whilst shut up in a room. But at
the very door of the inn I was suddenly brought to a
pause by the recollection that some of the servants from
the Priory were sure on every forenoon to be at times
in the streets. The streets, however, could be evaded
by shaping a course along the city walls; which I did,
and descended into some obscure lane that brought me
gradually to the banks of the river Dee. In the infancy
of its course amongst the Denbighshire mountains, this
river (famous in our pre-Norman history for the earliest
paradel of English monarchy) is wild and picturesque;
and even below my mother's Priory it wears a character
of interest.   But, a mile or so nearer to its mouth,
when leaving Chester for Parkgate, it becomes miserably
tame; and the several reaches of the river take the
appearance of formal canals. On the right bank2 of
the river runs an artificial mound, called the Cop. It
was, I believe, originally a Danish work;. and certainly
its name is Danish (i.e. Icelandic, or old Danish), and
the same from which is derived our architectural word
coping. Upon this bank I was walking, and throwing
my gaze along the formal vista presented by the river.
Some trifle of anxiety might mingle with this gaze at the
1 ' Earliest parade':-It was a very scenical parade, for somewhere
along this reach of the Dee-viz. immediately below St. John's Priory
-Edgar, the first sovereign of all England, was rowed by nine vassal
reguli.
2 Right bank':-But which bank is right, and which left, under
circumstances of position varying by possibility without end? This is a
reasonable demur; but yet it argues an inexperienced reader.  For
always the position of the spectator is conventionally fixed. In military
tactics, in philosophic geography, in history, etc. the uniform assumption is that you are standing with your back to the source of the river,
and your eyes travelling along with its current. That bank of the river
which under these circumstances lies upon your right is the right bank
absolutely, and not relatively only (as would be the case if a room, and
not a river, were concerned). Hence it follows that the Middlesex side
of the Thames is always the left bank, and the Surrey side always the
right bank, no matter whether you are moving from London to Oxford,
or reversely from Oxford to London.




an English Opium-Eater


99


first, lest perhaps Philistines might be abroad; for it was
just possible that I had been watched.  But I have
generally found that, if you are in quest of some certain
escape from  Philistines of whatsoever class-sheriffofficers, bores, no matter what-the surest refuge is to be
found amongst hedgerows and fields, amongst cows and
sheep: in fact, cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to
their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I
am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet
creatures.  On the present occasion there were many
cows grazing in the fields below the Cop: but all along
the Cop itself I could descry no person whatever
answering to the idea of a Philistine: in fact, there was
nobody at all, except one woman, apparently middleaged (meaning by that from thirty-five to forty-five),
neatly dressed, though perhaps in rustic fashion, and
by no possibility belonging to any class of my enemies;
for already I was near enough to see so much. This
woman might be a quarter of a mile distant, and was
steadily advancing towards me-face to face.  Soon,
therefore, I was beginning to read the character of her
features pretty distinctly; and her countenance naturally
served as a mirror to echo and reverberate my own
feelings, consequently my own horror (horror without
exaggeration it was), at a sudden uproar of tumultuous
sounds rising clamorously ahead.  Ahead I mean in
relation to myself, but to her the sound was from the
rear. Our situation was briefly this. Nearly half-a-mile
behind the station of the woman, that reach of the river
along which we two were moving came to an abrupt
close; so that the next reach, making nearly a rightangled turn, lay entirely out of view. From this unseen reach it was that the angry clamour, so passionate
and so mysterious, arose: and I, for my part, having
never heard such a fierce battling outcry, nor even heard
of such a cry, either in books or on the stage, in prose
or verse, could not so much as whisper a guess to
myself upon its probable cause. Only this I felt, that
blind, unorganised nature it must be-and nothing in




I00


Confessions of


human or in brutal wrath-that could utter itself by
such an anarchy of sea-like roars.  What was it?
Where was it?  Whence was it?  Earthquake was it?
convulsion of the steadfast earth? or was it the breaking
loose from ancient chains of some deep morass like that
of Solway?   More probable it seemed that the avw
7roTadiwv of Euripides (the flowing backwards of rivers
to their fountains) now, at last, after ages of expectation,
had been suddenly realised.  Not long I needed to
speculate; for within half a minute, perhaps, from the
first arrest of our attention, the proximate cause of this
mystery declared itself to our eyes, although the remote
cause (the hidden cause of that visible cause) was still as
dark as before. Round that right-angled turn which I
have mentioned as wheeling into the next succeeding
reach of the river, suddenly as with the trampling of
cavalry-but all dressing accurately-and the water at
the outer angle sweeping so much faster than that at the
inner angle, as to keep the front of advance rigorously
in line, violently careered round into our own placid
watery vista a huge charging block of waters, filling the
whole channel of the river, and coming down upon us
at the rate of forty miles an hour.  Well was it for
us, myself and that respectable rustic woman, us the
Deucalion and Pyrrha of this perilous moment, sole
survivors apparently of the deluge (since by accident
there was at that particular moment on that particular
Cop nothing else to survive), that by means of this Cop,
and of ancient Danish hands (possibly not yet paid for
their work), we could survive.  In fact, this watery
breastwork, a perpendicular wall of water carrying itself
as true as if controlled by a mason's plumb-line, rode
forward at such a pace, that obviously the fleetest horse
or dromedary would have had no chance of escape.
Many a decent railway even, among railways since born
its rivals, would not have had above the third of a
chance. Naturally, I had too short a time for observing
much or accurately; and universally I am a poor hand
at observing; else I should say, that this riding block of
crystal waters did not gallop, but went at a long trot;




an   English    Opium-Eater         IoI
yes, long trot-that most frightful of paces in a tiger, in
a buffalo, or in a rebellion of waters. Even a ghost, I
feel convinced, would appal me more if coming up at a
long diabolical trot, than at a canter or gallop. The
first impulse to both of us was derived from cowardice;
cowardice the most abject and selfish. Such is man,
though a Deucalion elect; such is woman, though a
decent Pyrrha. Both of us ran like hares; neither did
I, Deucalion, think of poor Pyrrha at all for the first
sixty seconds. Yet, on the other hand, why should I?
It struck me seriously that St. George's Channel (and,
if so, beyond a doubt, the Atlantic Ocean) had broke
loose, and was, doubtless, playing the same insufferable
gambols upon all rivers along a seaboard of six to seven
thousand miles; in which case, as all the race of woman
must be doomed, how romantic a speculation it was for
me, sole relic of literature, to think specially of one poor
Pyrrha, probably very illiterate, whom I had never yet
spoken to. That idea pulled me up. Not spoken to
her   Then I would speak to her; and the more so,
because the sound of the pursuing river told me that
flight was useless. And, besides, if any reporter or subeditor of some Chester chronicle should, at this moment,
with his glass be sweeping the Cop, and discover me
flying under these unchivalrous circumstances, he might
gibbet me to all eternity. Halting, therefore (and really
I had not run above eighty or a hundred steps), I waited
for my solitary co-tenant of the Cop. She was a little
blown by running, and could not easily speak; besides
which, at the very moment of her coming up, the preternatural column of waters, running in the very opposite
direction to the natural current of the river, came up
with us, ran by with the ferocious uproar of a hurricane,
sent up the sides of the Cop a salute of waters, as if
hypocritically pretending to kiss our feet, but secretly
understood by all parties as a vain treachery for pulling
us down into the flying deluge; whilst all along both
banks the mighty refluent wash was heard as it rode
along, leaving memorials, by sight and by sound, of
its victorious power. But my female associate in this




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Confessions of


terrific drama, what said she, on coming up with me?
Or what said I? For, by accident, I it was that spoke
first; notwithstanding the fact, notorious and undeniable, that I had never been introduced to her. Here,
however, be it understood, as a case now solemnly
adjudicated and set at rest, that, in the midst of any
great natural convulsion-earthquake, suppose, waterspout, tornado, or eruption of Vesuvius-it shall and
may be lawful in all time coming (any usage or tradition
to the contrary notwithstanding), for two English people
to communicate with each other, although, by affidavit
made before two justices of the peace, it shall have been
proved that no previous introduction had been possible;
in all other cases the old statute of non-intercourse holds
good. Meantime, the present case, in default of more
circumstantial evidence, might be regarded, if not as
an earthquake, yet as ranking amongst the first-fruits
or blossoms of an earthquake. So I spoke without
scruple.  All my freezing English reserve gave way
under this boiling sense of having been so recently
running for life: and then, again, suppose the water
column should come back - riding along with the
current, and no longer riding against it-in that case,
we and all the County Palatine might soon have to
run for our lives. Under such threatenings of common
peril, surely the 7rappai-cra, or unlimited license of speech,
ought spontaneously to proclaim itself without waiting
for sanction.
So I asked her the meaning of this horrible tumult in
the waters: how did she read the mystery? Her answer
was, that though she had never before seen such a thing,
yet from her grandmother she had often heard of it;
and, if she had run before it, that was because I ran;
and a little, perhaps, because the noise frightened her.
What was it, then? I asked. 'It was,' she said, 'the
Bore; and it was an affection to which only some few
rivers here and there were liable; and the Dee was one
of these.' So ignorant was I, that, until that moment, I
had never heard of such a nervous affection in rivers.
Subsequently I found that, amongst English rivers, the




an English Opium-Eater 1o3
neighbouring river Severn, a far more important stream,
suffered at spring-tides the same kind of hysterics, and,
perhaps, some few other rivers in this British Island;
but amongst Indian rivers, only the Ganges.
At last, when the Bore had been discussed to the full
extent of our united ignorance, I went off to the subject
of that other curse, far more afflicting than any conceivable bore-viz., the foreign letter in my pocket. The
Bore had certainly alarmed us for ninety or a hundred
seconds, but the letter would poison my very existence,
like the bottle-imp, until I could transfer it to some
person truly qualified to receive it. Might not my fair
friend on the Cop be marked out by Fate as 'the
coming woman' born to deliver me from this pocket
curse? It is true that she displayed a rustic simplicity
somewhat resembling that of Audrey in As you like it.
Her, in fact, not at all more than Audrey, had the gods
been pleased to make 'poetical.' But, for my particular
mission, that might be amongst her best qualifications.
At any rate, I was wearied in spirit under my load of
responsibility: personally to liberate myself by visiting
the post-office, too surely I felt as the ruin of my enterprise in its very outset. Some agent must be employed;
and where could one be found promising by looks,
words, manners, more trustworthiness than this agent,
sent by accident? The case almost explained itself.
She readily understood how the resemblance of a name
had thrown the letter into my possession; and that the
simple remedy was-to restore it to the right owner
through the right channel, which channel was the neverenough-to-be-esteemed General Post-office, at that time
pitching its tents and bivouacking nightly in Lombard
Street, but for this special case legally represented by
the Chester head-office: a service of no risk to her, for
which, on the contrary, all parties would thank her. I,
to begin, begged to put my thanks into the shape of
half-a-crown: but, as some natural doubts arose with
respect to her precise station in life (for she might be a
farmer's wife, and not a servant), I thought it advisable
to postulate the existence of some youthful daughter: to
IR




104


Confessions of


which mythological person I begged to address my
offering, when incarnated in the shape of a doll.
I therefore, Deucalion that was or had been provisionally through a brief interval of panic, took leave of my
Pyrrha, sole partner in the perils and anxieties of that
astounding Bore, dismissing her-Thessalian Pyrrhanot to any Thessalian vales of Tempe, but-0 ye powers
of moral anachronism!-to the Chester Post-office; and
warning her on no account to be prematurely wheedled
out of her secret. Her position, diplomatically speaking,
was better (as I made her understand) than that of the
Post-office: she having something in her gift-viz., an
appointment to forty guineas; whereas in the countergift of the proud post-office was nothing; neither for
instant fruition nor in far-off reversion. Her, in fact,
one might regard as a Pandora, carrying a box with
something better than hope at the bottom; for hope too
often betrays; but a draft upon Smith, Payne, & Smith,
which never betrays, and for a sum which, on the
authority of Goldsmith, makes an English clergyman
'passing rich' through a whole twelvemonth, entitled
her to look scornfully upon every second person that
she met.
In about two hours the partner of my solitary kingdom
upon the Cop re-appeared, with the welcome assurance
that Chester had survived the Bore, that all was right,
and that anything which ever had been looking crooked
was now made straight as the path of an arrow. She
had given 'my love' (so she said) to the post-office;
had been thanked by more than either one or two
amongst the men of letters who figured in the equipage
of that establishment; and had been assured that, long
before daylight departed, one large cornucopia of justice
and felicity would be emptied out upon the heads of all
parties in the drama. I myself, not the least afflicted
person on the roll, was already released-suddenly
released, and fully-from the iniquitous load of responsibility thrust upon me; the poor emigrant was
released from his conflict with fears that were uncertain,
and creditors too certain; the post-office was released




an English Opium-Eater                   105
from the scandal and embarrassment of a gross irregularity, that might eventually have brought the postmaster-general down upon their haunches; and the
household at the Priory were released from all anxieties,
great and small, sound and visionary, on the question of
my fancied felony.
In those anxieties, one person there was that never
had condescended to participate. This was my eldest
sister Mary-just eleven months senior to myself. She
was among the gentlest of girls, and yet from the very
first she had testified the most incredulous disdain of all
who fancied her brother capable of any thought so base
as that of meditating a wrong to a needy exile.     At
present, after exchanging a few parting words, and a few
final or farewell farewells with my faithful female 1 agent,
further business I had none to detain me in Chester,
except what concerned this particular sister. My business with her was not to thank her for the resolute
justice which she had done me, since as yet I could
not know of that service, but simply to see her, to learn
the domestic news of the Priory, and, according to the
possibilities of the case, to concert with her some plan
of regular correspondence. Meantime it happened that
a maternal uncle, a military man on the Bengal establishment, who had come to England on a three-years'
leave of absence (according to the custom in those days),
was at this time a visitor at the Priory. My mother's
establishment of servants was usually limited to five
persons-all, except one, elderly and torpid. But my
uncle, who had brought to England some beautiful
Arab and Persian horses, found it necessary to gather
about his stables an extra body of men and boys.
These were all alert and active; so that, when I
reconnoitred the windows of the Priory in the dusk,
1 Some people are irritated, or even fancy themselves insulted, by
overt acts of alliteration, as many people are by puns. On their
account, let me say, that, although there are here eight separate fs
in less than half a sentence, this is to be held as pure accident. In fact,
at one time there were nine f's in the original cast of the sentence, until
I, in pity of the affronted people, substituted female agent for female
friend.




io6


Confessions of


hoping in some way to attract my sister's attention, I
not only failed in that object, seeing no lights in any
room which could naturally have been occupied by her,
but I also found myself growing into an object of special
attention to certain unknown servants, who, having no
doubt received instructions to look out for me, easily
inferred from my anxious movements that I must be the
person 'wanted.' Uneasy at all the novel appearances
of things, I went away, and returned, after an hour's
interval, armed with a note to my sister, requesting her
to watch for an opportunity of coming out for a few
minutes under the shadows of the little ruins in the
Priory garden,1 where I meantime would be waiting.
This note I gave to a stranger, whose costume showed
him to be a groom, begging him to give it to the young
lady whose address it bore. He answered, in a respectful tone, that he would do so; but he could not
sincerely have meant it, since (as I soon learned) it was
impossible. In fact, not one minute had I waited,
when in glided amongst the ruins-not my fair sister,
but my bronzed Bengal uncle! A Bengal tiger would
not more have startled me. Now, to a dead certainty,
I said, here comes a fatal barrier to the prosecution of
my scheme. I was mistaken. Between my mother and
1 ' The little ruins in the Priory garden':-St. John's Priory had
been part of the monastic foundation attached to the very ancient
church of St. John, standing beyond the walls of Chester. Early in
the seventeenth century, this Priory, or so much of it as remained, was
occupied as a dwelling-house by Sir Robert Cotton the antiquary.
And there, according to tradition, he had been visited by Ben Jonson.
All that remained of the Priory when used as a domestic residence by
Cotton was upon a miniature scale, except only the kitchen-a noble
room, with a groined roof of stone, exactly as it had been fitted to the
uses of the monastic establishment. The little hall of entrance, the
dining-room, and principal bedroom, were in a modest style of
elegance, fitted by the scale of accommodation for the abode of a
literary bachelor, and pretty nearly as Cotton had left them two
centuries before. But the miniature character of the Priory, which
had dwindled by successive abridgments from a royal quarto into a
pretty duodecimo, was seen chiefly in the beautiful ruins which adorned
the little lawn, across which access was gained to the house through
the hall These ruins amounted at the most to three arches-which,
because round and not pointed, were then usually called Saxon, as
contradistinguished from Gothic. What might be the exact classifica.
tion of thb architecture I do not }koew. Certainly the very ancient




an English Opium-Eater                      107
my uncle there existed the very deepest affection; for
they regarded each other as sole reliques of a household
once living together in memorable harmony. But in
many features of character no human beings could
stand off from each other in more lively repulsion.
And this was seen on the present occasion. My dear
excellent mother, from the eternal quiet of her decorous
household, looked upon every violent or irregular movement, and therefore upon mine at present, much as she
would have done upon the opening of the seventh seal
in the Revelations. But my uncle was thoroughly a
man of the world, and what told even more powerfully
on my behalf in this instance, he was a man of even
morbid activity. It was so exquisitely natural in his
eyes that any rational person should prefer moving
about amongst the breezy mountains of Wales, to a
slavish routine of study amongst books grim with dust
and masters too probably still more dusty, that he
seemed disposed to regard my conduct as an extraordinary act of virtue. On his advice, it was decided
that there could be no hope in any contest with my
main wishes, and that I should be left to pursue my
original purpose of walking amongst the Welsh mountains; provided I chose to do so upon the slender
allowance of a guinea a-week. My uncle, whose Indian
church of St. John, to which at one time the Priory must have been
an appendage, wore a character of harsh and naked simplicity that
was repulsive. But the little ruins were really beautiful, and drew
continual visits from artists and sketchers through every successive
summer. Whether they had any architectural enrichments, I do not
remember. But they interested all people-first by their miniature
scale, which would have qualified them (if portable) for a direct
introduction amongst the 'properties' and dramatis personea on our
London opera boards; and, secondly, by the exquisite beauty of the
shrubs, wild-flowers, and ferns, that surmounted the arches with
natural coronets of the richest composition.  In this condition of
attractiveness my mother saw this little Priory, which was then on
sale. As a residence, it had the great advantage of standing somewhat aloof from the city of Chester, which however (like all cathedral
cities), was quiet and respectable in the composition of its population.
My mother bought it, added a drawing-room, eight or nine bedrooms,
dressing-rooms, etc., all on the miniature scale corresponding to the
original plan; and thus formed a very pretty residence, with the grace
of monastic antiquity hanging over the whole little retreat.




io8


Confessions of


munificence ran riot upon all occasions, would gladly
have had a far larger allowance made to me, and would
himself have clandestinely given me anything I asked.
But I myself, from general ignorance (in which accomplishment I excelled), judged this to be sufficient; and
at this point my mother, hitherto passively acquiescent
in my uncle's proposals, interfered with a decisive rigour
that in my own heart I could not disapprove. Any
larger allowance, most reasonably she urged, what was it
but to ' make proclamation to my two younger brothers
that rebellion bore a premium, and that mutiny was the
ready road to ease and comfort'?  My conscience
smote me at these words: I felt something like an
electric shock on this sudden reference, so utterly unexpected, to my brothers; for, to say the truth, I never
once admitted them to my thoughts in forecasting the
eventual consequences that might possibly unroll themselves from my own headstrong act. Here now, within
three days, rang like a solemn knell, reverberating from
the sounding-board within my awakened conscience, one
of those many self-reproaches so dimly masked, but not
circumstantially prefigured, by the secret thought under
the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral about its dread
Whispering Gallery.  In this particular instance, I
know that thee evil consequences from my own example
never did take effect.  But at the moment of my
mother's sorrowful suggestion, the fear that they might
take effect thrilled me with remorse. My next brother,
a boy of generous and heroic temper, was at a school
governed by a brutal and savage master. This brother,
I well know, had justifying reasons, ten times weightier
than any which I could plead, for copying my precedent.
Most probable it was that he would do so; but I learned
many years subsequently from himself that in fact he did
not. The man's diabolical malice at last made further
toleration impossible. Without thinking of my example,
under very different circumstances my brother won his
own emancipation in ways suggested by his own views
and limited by his own resources: he got afloat upon
the wide, wide world of ocean; ran along a perilous




an  English     Opiumi-Eater        10
seven-years' career of nautical romance; had his name
almost blotted out from all memories in England;
became of necessity a pirate amongst pirates; was
liable to the death of a pirate wherever taken; then
suddenly, on a morning of battle, having effected his
escape from the bloody flag, he joined the English
storming party at Monte Video, fought under the eye
of Sir Home Popham, the commodore, and within
twenty-four hours after the victory was rated as a
midshipman on board the Diadem (a 64-gun ship),
which bore Sir Home's flag.  All this I have more
circumstantially narrated elsewhere. I repeat the sum
of it here, as showing that his elopement from a brutal
tyrant was not due to any misleading of mine. I happen
to know this now-but then I could not know it. And
if I had so entirely overlooked one such possible result,
full of calamity to my youthful brothers, why might I not
have overlooked many hundreds beside, equally probable
-equally full of peril? That consideration saddened
me, and deepened more and more the ominous suggestion-the oracle full of woe-that spoke from those
Belshazzar thunderings upon the wall of the Whispering
Gallery. In fact, every intricate and untried path in life,
where,it was from the first a matter of arbitrary choice
to enter upon it or avoid it, is effectually a path through
a vast Hercynian forest, unexplored and unmapped,
where each several turn in your advance leaves you open
to new anticipations of what is next to be expected, and
consequently open to altered valuations of all that has
been already traversed.  Even the character of your
own absolute experience, past and gone, which (if anything in this world) you might surely answer for as
sealed and settled for ever-even this you must submit
to hold in suspense, as a thing conditional and contingent upon what is yet to come-liable to have its
provisional character affirmed or reversed, according
to the new combinations into which it may enter with
elements only yet perhaps in the earliest stages of
development.
Saddened by these reflections, I was still more




I IO


Confessions of


saddened by the chilling manner of my mother. If I
could presume to descry a fault in my mother, it wasthat she turned the chilling aspects of her high-toned
character too exclusively upon those whom, in any
degree, she knew or supposed to be promoters of evil.
Sometimes her austerity might seem even unjust. But
at present the whole artillery of her displeasure seemed
to be unmasked, and justly unmasked, against a moral
aberration, that offered for itself no excuse that was
obvious in one moment, that was legible at one glance,
that could utter itself in one word. My mother was
predisposed to think ill of all causes that required many
words: I, predisposed to subtleties of all sorts and
degrees, had naturally become acquainted with cases
that could not unrobe their apparellings down to that
degree of simplicity. If in this world there is one misery
having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the
Incommunicable. And if another Sphinx should arise to
propose another enigma to man-saying, What burden
is that which only is insupportable by human fortitude?
I should answer at once-It is the burden of the Incommunicable. At this moment, sitting in the same room
of the Priory with my mother, knowing how reasonable
she was-how patient of explanations-how candidhow open to pity-not the less I sank away in a hopelessness that was immeasurable from all effort at explanation. She and I were contemplating the very same
act; but she from one centre, I from another. Certain
I was, that if through one half minute she could realise
in one deadly experience the suffering with which I had
fought through more than three months, the amount
of physical anguish, the desolation of all genial life,
she would have uttered a rapturous absolution of that
which else must always seem to her a mere explosion of
wilful insubordination. 'In this brief experience,' she
would exclaim, ' I read the record of your acquittal; in
this fiery torment I acknowledge the gladiatorial resistance.' Such in the case supposed would have been her
revised verdict. But this case was exquisitely impossible.
Nothing which offered itself to my rhetoric gave any but




an English Opium-Eater              II
the feeblest and most childish reflection of my past
sufferings. Just so helpless did I feel, disarmed into
just the same languishing impotence to face (or make
an effort at facing) the difficulty before me, as most of
us have felt in the dreams of our childhood when lying
down without a struggle before some all-conquering
lion. I felt that the situation was one without hope;
a solitary word, which I attempted to mould upon my
lips, died away into a sigh; and passively I acquiesced
in the apparent confession spread through all the appearances-that in reality I had no palliation to produce.
One alternative, in the offer made to me, was, that
I had permission to stay at the Priory. The Priory,
or the mountainous region of Wales, was offered freely
to my choice. Either of the two offered an attractive
abode.  The Priory, it may be fancied, was clogged
with the liability to fresh and intermitting reproaches.
But this was not so. I knew my mother sufficiently
to be assured that, once having expressed her sorrowful
condemnation of my act, having made it impossible for
me to misunderstand her views, she was ready to extend
her wonted hospitality to me, and (as regarded all practical matters) her wonted kindness; but not that sort of
kindness which could make me forget that I stood under
the deepest shadows of her displeasure, or could leave
me for a moment free to converse at my ease upon any
and every subject. A man that is talking on simple
toleration, and, as it were, under permanent protest,
cannot feel himself morally at his ease, unless very
obtuse and coarse in his sensibilities.
Mine, under any situation approaching to the present,
were so far from being obtuse that they were morbidly
and extravagantly acute. I had erred: that I knew,
and did not disguise from myself. Indeed, the rapture
of anguish with which I had recurred involuntarily to
my experience of the Whispering Gallery, and the symbolic meaning which I had given to that experience,
manifested indirectly my deep sense of error through
the dim misgiving which attended it-that in some
mysterious way the sense and the consequences of this




II2            Confessions of
error would magnify themselves at every stage of life,
in proportion as they were viewed retrospectively from
greater and greater distances. I had, besides, through
the casual allusion to my brothers, suddenly become
painfully aware of another and separate failure in the
filial obligations resting on myself. Any mother, who
is a widow, has especial claims on the co-operation
of her eldest son in all means of giving a beneficial
bias to the thoughts and purposes of the younger
children: and, if any mother, then by a title how
special could my own mother invoke such co-operation, who had on her part satisfied all the claims made
upon her maternal character, by self-sacrifices as varied,
as privately I knew them to be exemplary. Whilst yet
comparatively young, not more than thirty-six, she had
sternly refused all countenance, on at least two separate
occasions, to distinguished proposals of marriage, out
of pure regard to the memory of my father, and to the
interests of his children. Could I fail to read, in such
unostentatious exemplifications of maternal goodness,
a summons to a corresponding earnestness on my part
in lightening, as much as possible, the burden of her
responsibilities? Alas! too certainly, as regarded that
duty, I felt my own failure: one opportunity had been
signally lost, and yet, on the other hand, I also felt that
more might be pleaded on my behalf than could by possibility be apparent to a neutral bystander. But this, to
be pleaded effectually, needed to be said-not by myself,
but by a disinterested advocate: and no such advocate
was at hand. In blind distress of mind, consciencestricken and heart-stricken, I stretched out my arms,
seeking for my one sole auxiliary; that was my eldest
sister Mary; for my younger sister Jane was a mere
infant. Blindly and mechanically, I stretched out my
arms as if to arrest her attention; and giving utterance
to my labouring thoughts, I was beginning to speak,
when all at once I became sensible that Mary was not
there. I had heard a step behind me, and supposed it
hers: since the groom's ready acceptance of my letter
to her had preoccupied me with the belief that I should




an   English    Opium-Eater         113
see her in a few moments. But she was far away, on a
mission of anxious, sisterly love. Immediately after my
elopement, an express had been sent off to the Priory
from Manchester; this express, well mounted, had not
spent more than four hours on the road. He must have
passed me on my first day's walk; and, within an hour
after his arrival, came a communication from the pos'toffice, explaining the nature and value of the letter that
had been so vexatiously thrust into my hands. Alarm
spread through the Priory: for it must be confessed
that the coincidence of my elopement with this certified
delivery of the letter to myself, gave but too reasonable
grounds for connecting the two incidents. I was grateful to dear Mary for resisting such strong plausibilities
against me; and yet I could not feel entitled to complain of those who had not resisted. The probability
seemed that I must have violated the laws to some
extent, either by forgery or by fraudulent appropriation.
In either case, the most eligible course seemed to be
my instant expatriation.  France (this being the year
of peace) or Holland would offer the best asylum until
the affair should be settled; and, as there could be no
anxieties in any quarter as to the main thing concerned
in the issue-viz., the money-in any case there was no
reason to fear a vindictive pursuit, even on the worst
assumption as regarded the offence. An elderly gentleman, long connected with the family, and in many cases
an agent for the guardians, at this moment offered his
services as counsellor and protector to my sister Mary.
Two hours therefore from the arrival of the Manchester
express (who, starting about rI A.M., had reached
Chester at 3 P.M.), all the requisite steps having been
concerted with one of the Chester banks for getting
letters of credit, etc., a carriage-and-four was at the
Priory gate, into which stepped my sister Mary, with
one female attendant and her friendly escort.  And
thus, the same day, on which I had made my exit from
Mr. Lawson's, saw the chase after me commencing.
Sunset saw the pursuers crossing the Mersey, and trotting into Liverpool.  Thence to Ormskirk, thirteen




I 14


Confessions of


miles, and thence to proud Preston, about twenty more.
Within a trifle, these three stages make fifty miles; and
so much did my chasers, that pursued when no man
fled, accomplish before sleeping. On the next day,
long and long before the time when I, in my humble
pedestrian character, reached Chester, my sister's
party had reached Ambleside-distant about ninety-two
miles from Liverpool, consequently somewhere about
a hundred and seven miles from the Priory. This
chasing party, with good reason, supposed themselves
to be on my traces ever after reaching 'proud Preston,'
which is the point of confluence for the Liverpool and
Manchester roads northwards. For I myself, having
originally planned my route for the English Lakes, purposely suffered some indications of that plan to remain
behind me, in the hope of thus giving a false direction
to any pursuit that might be attempted.
The further course of this chase was disagreeably
made known to me about four years later, on attaining
my majority, by a 'little account' of about  I 50 against
my little patrimonial fortune. Of all the letters from
the Priory (which, however, from natural oversight were
not thought of until the day after my own arrival at the
Priory-i.e., the third day after my sister's departure),
not one caught them: which was unfortunate. For the
journey to and from the Lakes, together with a circuit
of more than one hundred and fifty miles amongst the
Lakes, would at any rate have run up to nearly four
hundred miles. But it happened that my pursuers, not
having time to sift such intelligence as they received,
were misled into an excursus of full two hundred miles
more, by chasing an imaginary ' me' to the caves, thence
to Bolton Abbey, thence nearly to York. Altogether,
the journey amounted to above six hundred miles, all
performed with four horses. Now at that time the cost
of four horses-which in, the cheapest hay and corn
seasons was three shillings a-mile, and in dear seasons
four-was three-and-sixpence a mile; to which it was
usual to compute an average addition of one shilling
a-mile for gates, postilions, ostlers; so that the total




an English Opium-Eater 115
amount, with the natural expenses of the three travellers
at the inns, ran up to five shillings a-mile. Consequently,
five shillings being the quarter of a pound, six hundred
miles cost the quarter of ~'6oo. The only item in this
long account which consoled me to the amount of a
solitary smile for all this money thrown away, was an
item in a bill at Patterdale (head of Ulleswater)To an echo, first quality.......  IO
To do., second quality..... o 5 o
It seems the price of echoes varied, reasonably enough,
with the amount of gunpowder consumed. But at Lowwood, on Windermere, half-crown echoes might be had
by those base snobs who would put up with a vile Brummagem substitute for 'the genuine article.'
Trivial, meantime, as regarded any permanent consequences, would have been this casual inroad upon my
patrimony. Had I waited until my sister returned home,
which I might have been sure could only have been
delayed through the imperfectly concerted system of
correspondence, all would have prospered. From her I
should have received the cordiality and the genial sympathy which I needed; I could have quietly pursued
my studies; and my Oxford matriculation would have
followed as a matter of course. But, unhappily, having
for so long a time been seriously shaken in health, any
interruption of my wild open-air system of life instantly
threw me back into nervous derangements. Past all
doubt it had now become that the alfresco life, to which
I had looked with so much hopefulness for a sure and
rapid restoration to health, was even more potent than I
had supposed it. Literally irresistible it seemed in reorganising the system of my languishing powers. Impatient, therefore, under the absence of my sister, and
agitated every hour so long as my home wanted its
central charm in some household countenance, some
crvvTpoov ij/ma, beaming with perfect sympathy, I resolved to avail myself of those wild mountainous and
sylvan attractions which at present lay nearest to me.
Those parts, indeed, of Flintshire, or even of Denbigh



ix6


Confessions of


shire, which lay near to Chester, were not in any very
eminent sense attractive.   The vale of Gressford, for
instance, within the Flintshire border, and yet not more
than seven miles distant, offered a lovely little seclusion;
and to this I had a privileged access; and at first I tried
it; but it was a dressed and ornamented pleasure-ground:
and two ladies of some distinction, nearly related to each
other, and old friends of my mother, were in a manner
the ladies paramount within the ring fence of this
Arcadian vale. But this did not offer what I wanted.
Everything was elegant, polished, quiet, throughout the
lawns and groves of this verdant retreat: no rudeness
was allowed here; even the little brooks were trained to
'behave themselves'; and the two villas of the reigning
ladies (Mrs. Warrington and Mrs. Parry) showed the
perfection of good taste. For both ladies had cultivated
a taste for painting, and [had] I believe some executive
power. Here my introductions were rather too favourable; since they forced me into society. From Gressford, however, the character of the scene, considered
as a daily residence, very soon repelled me, however
otherwise fascinating by the accomplishments of its two
possessors. Just two-and-twenty miles from Chester,
meantime, lay a far grander scene, the fine vale of
Llangollen in the centre of Denbighshire. Here, also,
the presiding residents were two ladies, whose romantic
retirement from the world at an early age had attracted
for many years a general interest to their persons, habits,
and opinions. These ladies were Irish-Miss Ponsonby,
and Lady Eleanor Butler, a sister of Lord Ormond. I
had twice been formally presented to them by persons
of a rank to stamp a value upon this introduction. But,
naturally, though high-bred courtesy concealed any such
open expressions of feeling, they must have felt a very
slight interest in myself or my opinions.l I grieve to
1 It is worthy of notice that, when I, in this year 1802, and again in
after years, endeavoured to impress them favourably with regard to
Wordsworth as a poet (that subject having not been introduced by
myself, but by one of the ladies, who happened to have a Cambridge
friend intimate with the man, and perhaps with his works), neither of
them was disposed to look with any interest or hopefulness upon his




an English Opium-Eater I I7
say that my own feelings were not more ardent towards
them. Nevertheless, I presented myself at their cottage
as often as I passed through Llangollen; and was always
courteously received when they happened to be in the
country. However, as it was not ladies that I was seeking in Wales, I now pushed on to Carnarvonshire; and
for some weeks took a very miniature suite of roomsviz., one room and a closet-at Bangor.
My landlady had been a lady's-maid, or a nurse, or
something of that sort, in the Bishop of Bangor's family;
and had but lately married away from that family, or (to
use her own expression) had ' settled.' In a little town
like Bangor, barely to have lived in the bishop's family
conferred some distinction; and my good landlady had
rather more than her share of the pride natural to that
glorious advantage.  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 it cost no
great effort to make allowance for the garrulity of an old
servant; and luckily nothing in our daily routine of life
brought us often into each other's company. Sometimes, however, we met; and of necessity, on such
occasions, I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with the bishop's importance, and
with the grandeur of having lived in a palace; and,
perhaps, to punish me for my indifference, or it might,
after all, be mere accident, she one day repeated to me
a conversation in which I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the palace; and, dinner being
over, she had been summoned into the dining-room.
In giving an account of her household economy, she
happened to mention that she had let what she styled
pretensions. But, at a period long subsequent to this, when the House
of Commons had rung with applause on Sergeant Talfourd's mention
of his name, and when all American tourists of any distinction flocked
annually to Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's own poems bear witness that
a great revolution had been worked at Llangollen. I mention this
anecdote, because I have good reason to think that a large proportion
of the 'conversions' in the case of Wordsworth took place under the
same influence.




ii8


Confessions of


somewhat magnificently her 'apartments.' The good
bishop (it seemed) had thence taken occasion to caution
her as to her selection of inmates; 'for,' said he, 'you
must recollect, Betty, that Bangor is in the high road to
the Head' (the Head was the common colloquial expression for Holyhead); 'so that multitudes of Irish
swindlers, running away from their debts into England,
and of English swindlers, running away from their debts
to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their
route.' Such advice 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 was worse:-'O my lord,' answered my. landlady (according to her own representation of the matter),
'I really don't think that this young gentleman is a
swindler; because —'-' You don't think me a swindler?' said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation;
'for the future I shall spare you the trouble of thinking
about it.' And without delay I prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed
disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous
expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned
dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn; and
reconciliation then became impossible. I was, indeed,
greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any
grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person
whom he had never seen; and I thought of letting him
know my mind in Greek; which, at the same time that
it would furnish some presumption in behalf of my
respectability, might also (I hoped) compel the bishop
to answer in the same language; and in that case I
doubted not to make good my superiority as a versatile
wielder of arms, rarely managed with effect, against all
the terrors of his lordship's wig.
I was wrong if I said anything in my anger that was
disparaging or sceptical as to the bishop's intellectual
pretensions; which were not only very sound, but very
appropriate to the particular stations which he filled.
For the Bishop of Bangor (at that time Dr. Cleaver)
was also the head of Brasenose, Oxford-which college




an English Opium-Eater I19
was indebted to him for its leadership1 at that era in
scholarship and discipline. In this academic character
I learned afterwards that he might be called almost a
reformer: a wise, temperate, and successful reformer;
and, as a scholar, I saw many years later that he had
received the laudatory notice of Porson. But, on the
other hand, the bishop was not altogether without blame
in unchaining his local influence, were it only by hint
or insinuation, against a defenceless stranger. For so
great a man, in so small a town as Bangor, was really as
much of an autocrat as a post-captain on the quarterdeck of his own vessel.    A 'sea-lawyer' in such a case
1 The rank to which Brasenose had suddenly risen in the estimation
of the world was put to the test in the following year. The leading
family in the house (the gens) of Grenville was, at this time, that of the
Marquis of Buckingham, not long after elevated to the ducal rank.
The second son of this nobleman-viz., Lord George Grenville (subsequently succeeding to the peerage of Nugent, and known in his
literary character only as Lord Nugent)-happened, in this or the
following year, to be ripe for college; which means, in England, that
he was a young man, and not a boy; generally, at the very least,
eighteen years old. According to all known precedent, he should have
gone to Christ Church. But, on such a question arising, naturally his
uncle, Lord Grenville, under whose patronage the Grenville Homer had
been published, and who was reputed an accomplished scholar, assisted
at the family council; and by his advice, to the astonishment of Oxford,
Brasenose was selected in preference to Christ Church; and, I believe,
on the one sole ground of deference for the administrative talents (combined with singular erudition) of Dr. Cleaver. This casual precedency,
however, of Brasenose, resting (as it did) on a mere personal basis, ran
down as suddenly as it had run up, and has long since been forgotten.
The fact is, that rustic families, at a distance from Oxford, naturally
presume some superior dignity in any college that should happen to
have a bishop for its ruler; not knowing that, in Oxford and Cambridge, all heads of considerable colleges hold themselves (and are
held) equals in rank and dignity to the bench of bishops. In Oxford
more especially, this doctrine receives a standing illustration; for there
the dean of the diocese is necessarily and ex officio the head of Christ
Church, which (by the number and the rank of its population) is beyond
all competition the supreme college in the whole university. In that
character, therefore (of college head), Mr. Dean is a very much greater
man than my lord the Bishop. This virtual inferiority in the face of
an ostensible superiority was, until the new regulations for somewhat
equalising the bishoprics, further reinforced by the poverty of Oxford
as an episcopal see. It ought to be added, that to hold the headship
of a college in combination with a bishopric, considering the burdensomeness of irreconcilable functions attached to each of the offices, is a
scandalous violation of public duty, such as ought never to have won an
hour's toleration.




120


Confessions of


must contrive to pocket his wrongs, until he finds himself and the captain on shore. Yet, after all, my scheme
was not altogether so absurd; and the anger, in which
perhaps it might begin, all melted away in the fun which
would have accompanied its execution. It will strike
the reader that my plan of retaliation must have failed
by arming against me the official pride of the bishop.
Any man, it will be thought, occupying so dignified a
place in public life-a lord of Parliament, holder of a
prize in the episcopal lottery (for Bangor was worth six
thousand a-year), a leading Don at Oxford-in short,
a splendid pluralist, armed with diocesan thunder and
lightning-would never stoop from his Jovian altitude
to notice any communication whatever from a boy. But
it would make all the difference in the world that this
communication by the supposition was to be in Greek.
Mere curiosity in such a case would compel the Bishop
to read it. And then, shockingly irregular as such a
course would be, a fatal temptation would arise to the
hazardous experiment of answering it in Greek. It
would not be pleasant to shrink from the sort of silent
challenge thrown out by such an eccentric form of
epistle, when worded in the tone of respect due to the
bishop's age and spiritual office. And certainly the
degradation would be conspicuously less in replying
even to a boy, if armed with that sort of accomplishment.
But was not the bishop a learned man, well qualified to
answer, whose reading must naturally be greater by a
score of times than mine? I had heard so; and I was
told also, but long after, that he had written well and
learnedly (but not in Greek) on the Arundel marbles;
even to attempt which, in our days, when the forestalling
labours of two centuries have so much narrowed the
field open to original sagacity, argues an erudition far
from common. But I have already given it as my
opinion, that there is no proportion held between a
man's general knowledge of Greek, and the special art
of writing Greek; that is, using it as a vehicle for
ordinary and familiar intercourse. This advantage, not
necessarily or usually belonging to the most exquisite




an  English    Opium-Eater          I2I
Greek scholarship, I myself wielded with a preternatural
address for varying the forms of expression, and for
bringing the most refractory ideas within the harness of
Grecian phraseology. Had the bishop yielded to the
temptation of replying, then I figured to myself the
inevitable result-the episcopal hulk lying motionless
on the water like a huge three-decker, not able to return
a gun, whilst I, as a light agile frigate, should have
sailed round and round him, and raked him at pleasure,
as opportunity offered. He could have had no opening
for his erudition (as, for instance, upon the Arundel
marbles), without too flagrantly recalling the cosmogony
man in the Vicar of Wakefield, with his avapXov apa Kaa
adeTXEvTa&ov rob 7rav. Once falling into the snare of replying at all, his lordship would not be at liberty either
to break off the correspondence abruptly, or to continue
it without damage to his episcopal pomp. My anger,
meantime, sudden and fiery, as under a sense of real
injury, had not been malicious; and it was already propitiated beforehand by the mere fun and comic effect of
the picture which I thus prefigured as arising between
us. In no case could I have found pleasure in causing
any mortifications to the bishop-mortifications which
the Methodists (by this time swarming in Carnarvonshire) would exultingly have diffused. In the end I
should probably have confined myself to a grave and
temperate remonstrance, simply stating the distressing
consequences which were likely to result to me from the
too unguarded insinuations of his lordship.
But these consequences travelled fast upon the traces
of those insinuations; and already upon the very day
when my foolish landlady (more, perhaps, in thoughtlessness than with any purpose of mischief) had repeated
the bishop's words in what seemed to me so insulting a
tone, and so entirely without provocation (since there
never had been the smallest irregularity in our little
weekly settlements), one of those consequences was,
that I became houseless. For I disdained to profit by
the shelter of a house from which truth and courtesy
seemed alike banished. And from that one consequence




122


Confessions of


naturally enough flowed others; for, having, at any rate,
to seek a new home, I left Bangorl at once, and rambled
away to Carnarvon-distant about two-and-a-half hours'
smart walking. At Carnarvon I found no lodging that
altogether suited my purposes; hired lodgings being then
thinly sown in North Wales; and for some time, therefore, having a small reserve of guineas, I lived very much
at inns.
This change of abode naturally drew my thoughts
away from the bishop. And thus gradually all my
thoughts of expostulation faded away. This I am disposed to regard as an unfortunate solution of the affair,
which otherwise would probably have taken the following course. The bishop, as I afterwards heard when
resident myself at Oxford and personally acquainted
with men of Brasenose (to which college, indeed, subsequently, my own youngest brother belonged), was a
reasonable  and   even   amiable man.     On receiving,
therefore, my Greek remonstrance, he was sure as a
scholar to have taken some interest in the writer; and
he was too equitable to have neglected any statement,
Greek or not Greek, which reflected, with some apparent
justice, upon his own conduct as not sufficiently considerate. He would, therefore, almost certainly have
replied to me in courteous terms; regretting the accident which had made me houseless; but reminding me
that all communications made to a dependant within
a man's own gates, and never meant as grounds of
action, but simply as cautions-general and not special
1 In this, except for what concerned the cheapness and the brilliant
cleanliness of the lodgings, under the management of an English housemaid approved by an English bishop's housekeeper, there was little to
regret. Bangor, indeed, had few attractions, fewer than any other
spot in Carnarvonshire. And yet, was there not the cathedral? Certainly there was; and that might have been a great resource to me,
had there been the regular choir services, but there were none. Indeed,
there could be none; for, so far as I ever heard, there was no choir.
The cathedral cemetery was at that time famous as the most beautiful
in the whole kingdom. But the beauty was scarcely appropriate: it
was the beauty of a well-kept shrubbery, and not of a cemetery. It
contrived to look smiling and attractive by the entire dissembling of its
real purposes.




an  English    Opium-Eater         123
-are in law and usage held to be privileged communications, and equally whether written or spoken. The
insulting use made of this caution, he would have
treated as due simply to the woman's coarseness, but
in part, perhaps, as due to a cause which has much
to do with the harsh and uncivil expressions of uneducated people-viz., their very limited command of
language.  They use phrases much stronger than
naturally belong to their thoughts and meaning, simply
because the narrowness of their vocabulary oftentimes
suggests to their embarrassed choice no variation of
expression wearing a character less offensive. To such
a letter I should have made a suitable reply; and,
thenceforward, it is probable that, until the Michaelmas
term drew the bishop's family away to Oxford, I should
have found my abode in Bangor, or its neighbourhood,
much improved as regards the command of books.
That advantage would have been fugitive. But other
and remoter advantages might have been more serious.
It happened that the college to which the Manchester
Grammar Schoolwould have consigned me as a privileged
alumnus, was that very college over which the bishop
presided. I have no reason to think that the bishop
would have had power to retrieve for me any part of the
privileges which by my elopement I had wilfully forfeited:
but he would have had it abundantly in his power to
place the ordinary college advantages of Fellowships,
etc., within my reach: whereas afterwards, going under
erroneous counsel to a college disconnected from my
own country and my own schools, I never enjoyed those
ordinary opportunities of advancement, and consequently of literary leisure, which the English universities
open to almost every man who qualifies himself duly to
obtain them. All this, however, was thrown into the
world of dreams and fable by my hasty movement to
Carnarvon, and that region which Pennant first distinguished by the name of Snowdonia.
There were already, even in those days of 1802,
numerous inns, erected at reasonable distances from
each other, for the accommodation of tourists: and




124


Confessions of


no sort of disgrace attached in Wales, as too generally
upon the great roads of England, to the pedestrian style
of travelling. Indeed, the majority of those whom I
met as fellow-tourists in the quiet little cottage-parlours
of the Welsh posting-houses were pedestrian travellers.
All the way from Shrewsbury through Llangollen,
Llanrwst,l Conway, Bangor, then turning to the left
at right angles through Carnarvon, and so on to Dolgelly (the chief town of Merionethshire), Tan-y-Bwlch,
Harlech, Barmouth, and through the sweet solitudes
of Cardiganshire, or turning back sharply towards the
English border through the gorgeous wood scenery of
Montgomeryshire-everywhere at intermitting distances
of twelve to sixteen miles, I found the most comfortable
inns. One feature indeed of repose in all this chain of
solitary resting-houses-viz., the fact that none of them
rose above two storeys in height-was due to the modest
scale on which the travelling system of the Principality
had moulded itself in correspondence to the calls of
England, which then (but be it remembered this then
was in I802, a year of peace) threw a very small proportion of her vast migratory population annually into
this sequestered channel. No huge Babylonian centres
of commerce towered into the clouds on these sweet
sylvan routes: no hurricanes of haste, or fever-stricken
armies of horses and flying chariots, tormented the
echoes in these mountain recesses. And it has often
struck me that a world-wearied man, who sought for
the peace of monasteries separated from their gloomy
captivity-peace and silence such as theirs combined
with the large liberty of nature-could not do better
than revolve amongst these modest inns in the five
northern Welsh counties of Denbigh, Montgomery,
Carnarvon, Merioneth, and Cardigan. Sleeping, for
instance, and breakfasting at Carnarvon; then, by an
easy nine-mile walk, going forwards to dinner at Bangor,
thence to Aber-nine miles; or to Llanberris; and so on
1 Llanrwst':-This is an alarming word for the eye; one vowel
to what the English eye counts as seven consonants: but it is easily
pronounced as 7Tanroost.




an   English    Opium-Eater          tI s
for ever, accomplishing seventy to ninety or one hundred
miles in a week. This, upon actual experiment, and for
week after week, I found the most delightful of lives.
Here was the eternal motion of winds and rivers, or of
the Wandering Jew liberated from the persecution which
compelled him to move, and turned his breezy freedom
into a killing captivity. Happier life I cannot imagine
than this vagrancy, if the weather were but tolerable,
through endless successions of changing beauty, and
towards evening a courteous welcome in a pretty rustic
home-that having all the luxuries of a fine hotel (in
particular some luxuries 1 that are almost sacred to
Alpine regions), was at the same time liberated from the
inevitable accompaniments of such hotels in great cities
or at great travelling stations-viz., the tumult and uproar.
Life on this model was but too delightful; and to
myself especially, that am never thoroughly in health
unless when having pedestrian exercise to the extent
of fifteen miles at the most, and eight to ten miles at the
least. Living thus, a man earned his daily enjoyment.
But what did it cost? About half a guinea a day:
whilst my boyish allowance was not a third of this.
The flagrant health, health boiling over in fiery rapture,
which ran along, side by side, with exercise on this
scale, whilst all the while from morning to night I
was inhaling mountain air, soon passed into a hateful
scourge. Perquisites to servants and a bed would have
absorbed the whole of my weekly guinea. My policy
therefore was, if the autumnal air was warm enough, to
save this expense of a bed and the chambermaid by
sleeping amongst ferns or furze upon a hillside; and
perhaps with a cloak of sufficient weight as well as
compass, or an Arab's burnoose, this would have been
no great hardship. But then in the daytime what an
oppressive burden to carry! So perhaps it was as well
that I had no cloak at all. I did, however, for some
weeks try the plan of carrying a canvas tent manufac1 But a luxury of another class, and quite peculiar to Wales, was in
those days (I hope in these) the Welsh harp, in attendance at every
inn.




126


Confessions of


tured by myself, and not larger than an ordinary
umbrella: but to pitch this securely I found difficult;
and on windy nights it became a troublesome companion. As winter drew near, this bivouacking system
became too dangerous to attempt.      Still one may
bivouack decently, barring rain and wind, up to the
end of October. And I counted, on the whole, that in
a fortnight I spent nine nights abroad. There are, as
perhaps the reader knows by experience, no jaguars in
Wales -nor pumas -nor anacondas - nor (generally
speaking) any Thugs. What I feared most, but perhaps
only through ignorance of zoology, was, lest, whilst my
sleeping face was upturned to the stars, some one of the
many little Brahminical-looking cows on the Cambrian
hills, one or other, might poach her foot into the centre
of my face. I do not suppose any fixed hostility of that
nature to English faces in Welsh cows: but everywhere
I observe in the feminine mind something of beautiful
caprice, a floral exuberance of that charming wilfulness
which characterises our dear human sisters I fear
through all worlds.  Against Thugs I had Juvenal's
license to be careless in the emptiness of my pockets
(cantabit vacuus 1 coram latrone viator). But I fear that
Juvenal's license will not always hold water. There are
people bent upon cudgelling one who will persist in
excusing one's having nothing but a bad shilling in one's
purse, without reading in that Juvenalian vacuitas any
privilege or license of exemption from the general fate
of travellers that intrude upon the solitude of robbers.
Dr. Johnson, upon some occasion, which I have
forgotten, is represented by his biographers as accounting for an undeserving person's success in these terms:
'Why, I suppose that his nonsense suited their nonsense.' Can that be the humiliating solution of my
own colloquial success at this time in Carnarvonshire
1 ' Vacuus':-I am afraid, though many a year has passed since
I read Juvenal, that the true classical sense of vacuus is, careless, clear
from all burden of anxiety, so that vacuitas will be the result of immunity from robbery. But suffer me to understand it in the sense of free
from the burden offproperty, in which sense vacuitas would be the cause
of such an immunity.




an English Opium-Eater 127
inns? Do not suggest such a thought, most courteous
reader. No matter: won in whatsoever way, success is
success; and even nonsense, if it is to be victorious
nonsense-victorious over the fatal habit of yawning in
those who listen, and in some cases over the habit of
disputing-must involve a deeper art or more effective
secret of power than is easily attained. Nonsense, in
fact, is a very difficult thing. Not every seventh son
of a seventh son (to use Milton's words) is equal to the
task of keeping and maintaining a company of decent
men in orthodox nonsense for a matter of two hours.
Come from what fountain it may, all talk that succeeds
to the extent of raising a wish to meet the talker again,
must contain salt; must be seasoned with some flavouring element pungent enough to neutralise the natural
tendencies of all mixed conversation, not vigilantly
tended, to lose itself in insipidities and platitudes.
Above all things, I shunned, as I would shun a pestilence, Coleridge's capital error, which through life he
practised, of keeping the audience in a state of passiveness. Unjust this was to others, but most of all to
himself. This eternal stream of talk which never for
one instant intermitted, and allowed no momentary
opportunity of reaction to the persecuted and bated
auditor, was absolute ruin to the interests of the talker
himself.  Always passive-always acted upon, never
allowed to react, into what state did the poor afflicted
listener-he that played the rdle of listener-collapse?
He returned home in the exhausted condition of one
that has been drawn up just before death from the
bottom of a well occupied by foul gases; and, of course,
hours before he had reached that perilous point of
depression, he had lost all power of distinguishing,
understanding, or connecting, I, for my part, without
needing to think of the unamiable arrogance involved
in such a habit, simply on principles of deadliest selfishness, should have avoided thus incapacitating my hearer
from doing any justice to the rhetoric or the argument
with which I might address him.
Some great advantages I had for colloquial purposes,




128


Confessions of


and for engaging the attention of people wiser than myself. Ignorant I was in a degree past all imagination of
daily life-even as it exists in England. But, on the
other hand, having the advantage of a prodigious memory,
and the far greater advantage of a logical instinct for feeling in a moment the secret analogies or parallelisms that
connected things else apparently remote, I enjoyed these
two peculiar gifts for conversation: first, an inexhaustible
fertility of topics, and therefore of resources for illustrating or for varying any subject that chance or purpose
suggested; secondly, a prematurely awakened sense of
art applied to conversation. I had learned the use of
vigilance in evading with civility the approach of wearisome discussions, and in impressing, quietly and oftentimes imperceptibly, a new movement upon dialogues
that loitered painfully, or see-sawed unprofitably. That
it was one function of art to hide and mask itself (artis
est artem celare), this I well knew. Neither was there
much art required. The chief demand was for new
facts, or new views, or for views newly-coloured impressing novelty upon old facts. To throw in a little of the
mysterious every now and then was useful, even with
those that by temperament were averse to the mysterious;
pointed epigrammatic sayings and jests-even somewhat
worn-were useful; a seasonable quotation in verse was
always effective; and illustrative anecdotes diffused a
grace over the whole movement of the dialogue.  It
would have been coxcombry to practise any elaborate
or any conspicuous art: few and simple were any artifices
that I ever employed; but, being hidden and seasonable,
they were often effective.  And the whole result was,
that I became exceedingly popular within my narrow
circle of friends. This circle was necessarily a fluctuating one, since it was mainly composed of tourists that
happened to linger for a few weeks in or near Snowdonia,
making their headquarters at Bethgellert or Carnarvon,
or at the utmost roaming no farther than the foot of
Cader Idris. Amongst these fugitive members of our
society, I recollect with especial pleasure Mr. De Haren,
an accomplished young German, who held, or had held,




an   English    Opium-Eater         129
the commission of lieutenant in our British navy, but
now, in an interval of peace, was seeking to extend his
knowledge of England, and also of the English language;
though in that, as regarded the fullest command of it
colloquially, he had little, indeed, to learn. From him
it was that I obtained my first lessons in German, and
my first acquaintance with German literature.  Paul
Richter I then first heard of, together with Hippel, a
humorist admired by Kant, and Hamann, also classed
as a humorist, but a nondescript writer, singularly
obscure, whom I have never since seen in the hands
of any Englishman, except once of Sir William Hamilton.
With all these writers Mr. De Haren had the means of
making me usefully acquainted in the small portable
library which filled one of his trunks. But the most
stationary members of this semi-literary circle were
Welshmen; two of them lawyers, one a clergyman.
This last had been regularly educated at Oxford-as
a member of Jesus (the Welsh college)-and was a man
of extensive information. The lawyers had not enjoyed
the same advantages, but they had read diligently, and
were interesting companions. Wales, as is pretty well
known, breeds a population somewhat litigious. I do
not think the worse of them for that. The martial
Butlers and the heroic Talbots of the fifteenth century,
having no regular opening for their warlike fury in the
seventeenth century, took to quarrelling with each other;
and no letters are more bitter than those which to this
day survive from the hostile correspondence of the
brother Talbots contemporary with the last days of
Shakspere.1  One channel being closed against their
martial propensities, naturally they opened such others
as circumstances made available. This temper, widely
spread amongst the lower classes of the Welsh, made it
a necessity that the lawyers should itinerate on marketdays through all the principal towns in their districts.
In those towns continually I met them; and continually
we renewed our literary friendship.
1 See especially a book written by Sir Egerton Brydges (I forget the
title) on the Peerage in the reign of James I.




130


Confessions of


Meantime alternately I sailed upon the high-priced
and the low-priced tack. So exceedingly cheap were
provisions at that period, when the war taxation of Mr.
Pitt was partially intermitting, that it was easy beyond
measure upon any three weeks' expenditure, by living
with cottagers, to save two guineas out of the three.
Mr. De Haren assured me that even in an inn, and not
in a poor man's cottage (but an unpretending rustic inn,
where the mistress of the house took upon herself the
functions of every possible servant in turn-cook, waiter,
chambermaid, boots, ostler), he had passed a day or
two; and for what he considered a really elegant dinner,
as regarded everything except the table equipage (that
being rude and coarse), he had paid only sixpence.
This very inn, about ten or twelve miles south of
Dolgelly, I myself visited some time later; and I found
Mr. De Haren's account in all points confirmed: the
sole drawback upon the comfort of the visitor being that
the fuel was chiefly of green wood, and with a chimney
that smoked. I suffered so much under this kind of
smoke, which irritates and inflames the eyes more than
any other, that on the following day reluctantly I took
leave of that obliging pluralist the landlady, and really
felt myself blushing on settling the bill, until I bethought
me of the green wood, which, upon the whole, seemed to
balance the account. I could not then, nor can I now,
account for these preposterously low prices; which same
prices, strange to say, ruled (as Wordsworth and his sister
often assured me) among the same kind of scenery-i.e.,
amongst the English lakes-at the very same time. To
account for it, as people often do, by alleging the want
of markets for agricultural produce, is crazy political
economy; since the remedy for paucity of markets, and
consequent failure of competition, is, certainly not to
sell at losing rates, but to forbear producing, and consequently not to sell at all.'
1 Thirteen years later-viz., in the year of Waterloo-happening to
walk through the whole Principality from south to north, beginning at
Cardiff, and ending at Bangor, I turned aside about twenty-five miles
to inquire after the health of my excellent hostess, that determined




an English Opium-Eater                        131
So cheap in fact were all provisions, which one had
any chance of meeting with in a labouring man's house,
that I found it difficult under such a roof to spend sixpence a-day. Tea or coffee there was none: and I did
not at that period very.much care for either. Milk, with
bread (coarse, but more agreeable by much than the
insipid  whity-grey   bread  of towns), potatoes if one
wished, and also a little goat's, or kid's, flesh-these
composed the cottager's choice of viands; not luxurious,
but palatable enough to a person who took much
exercise.   And, if one wished, fresh-water fish could
be had cheap enough; especially trout of the very finest
quality. In these circumstances, I never found it easy
to spend even five shillings (no, not three shillings,
unless whortleberries or fish had been bought) in one
week. And thus it was easy enough to create funds for
pluralist and intense antipole of all possible sinecurists. I found her
cleaning a pair of boots and spurs, and purposing (I rather think) to
enter next upon the elegant office of greasing a horse's heels. In that
design, however, she was thwarted for the present by myself and
another tourist, who claimed her services in three or four other
characters previously.  I inquired after the chimney-was it still
smoking? She seemed surprised that it had ever been suspected of
anything criminal; so, as it was not a season for fires, I said no more.
But I saw plenty of green wood, and but a small proportion of peats.
I fear, therefore, that this, the state-room of the whole concern, still
poisons the peace of the unhappy tourists. One personal indemnification, meantime, I must mention which this little guilty room made to
me on that same night for all the tears it had caused me to shed. It
happened that there was a public dance held at this inn on this very
night. I therefore retired early to my bedroom, having had so long a
walk, and not wishing to annoy the company, or the excellent landlady, who had, I dare say, to play the fiddle to the dancers. The noise
and uproar were almost insupportable; so that I could not sleep at all.
At three o'clock all became silent, the company having departed in a
body. Suddenly from the little parlour, separated from my bedroom
overhead by the slightest and most pervious of ceilings, arose with the
rising dawn the very sweetest of female voices perhaps that ever I had
heard, although for many years an habitue of the opera. She was a
stranger; a visitor from some distance; and (I was told in the morning) a Methodist. What she sang, or at least sang last, were the
beautiful verses of Shirley, ending'Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'
This incident caused me to forget and forgive the wicked little
chimney.




132


Confessions of


my periodical transmigrations back into the character of
gentleman-tourist. Even the half of five shillings I could
not always find means to spend: for in some families,
raised above dependence upon daily wages, when I performed any services in the way of letter-writing, I found
it impossible at times to force any money at all upon
them.   Once, in particular, near the small lake of
Talyllyn (so written, I believe, but pronounced Taltlyn),
in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained
for upwards of three days by a family of young people,
with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an
impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The family
consisted, at that time, of four sisters and three brothers,
all grown-up, and remarkable for elegance and delicacy
of manners. So much beauty, or so much native good
breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have
seen before or since in any cottage, except once or twice
in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke English;
an accomplishment not often met with in so many
members of one Welsh family, especially in villages
remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first
introduction, a letter about prize-money for one of the
brothers, who had served on board an English man-ofwar; and, more privately, two letters to sweethearts for
two of the sisters. They were both interesting in appearance; and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst
of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather
giving me general instructions, it did not require any
great penetration to discover that they wished their
letters to be as kind as was consistent with proper
maidenly reserve. I contrived so to temper my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings;
and they were as much pleased with the way in which
I had given expression to their thoughts, as (in their
simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily
discovered them. The reception one meets with from
the women of a family generally determines the tenor of
one's whole entertainment.  In this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so much
to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them




an English Opium-Eater                  I33
with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay; and
pressed with a cordiality which I had little inclination
to resist.  I slept unavoidably with the brothers, the
only unoccupied bed standing in the chamber of the
young women: but in all other points they treated me
with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as
mine; making it evident that my scholarship and
courteous demeanour were considered sufficient arguments of gentle blood. Thus I lived with them for
three days, and great part of a fourth; and, from the
undiminished kindness which they continued to show
me, I believe that I might have stayed with them up to
this time, if their power had corresponded with their
wishes.  On the last morning, however, I perceived
upon their countenances, as they sat at breakfast, the
approach of some unpleasant communication; and soon
after, one of the brothers explained to me that, on the
day before my arrival, their parents had gone to an
annual meeting of Methodists, held at Carnarvon,1 and
in the course of that day were expected to return; 'and
if they should not be so civil as they ought to be,' he
begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would
not take it amiss. The parents returned with churlish
faces, and 'Dym   Sassenach' (no English) in answer to
all my addresses. I saw how matters stood; and so,
taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting
young hosts, I went my way. For, though they spoke
warmly to their parents on 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 recommend me
with two sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek
Sapphics or Alcaics; and what had been hospitality,
1 'At Carnarvon':-It was on this occasion that I learned how
vague are the ideas of number in unpractised minds. ' What number
of people do you think,' said I to an elderly person, ' will be assembled
this day at Carnarvon?'-' What number?' rejoined the person addressed-' what number? Well, really now, I should reckon-perhaps
a matter of four millions.' Four millions of extra people in little Carnarvon, that could barely find accommodation (I should calculate) for
an extra four hundred.




I34           Confessions of
when offered with the gracious courtesy of my young
friends, would become charity, when connected with the
harsh demeanour of their parents.
About this time-just when it was becoming daily
more difficult to eke out the weekly funds for highpriced inns by the bivouacking system-as if some overmastering fiend, some instinct of migration, sorrowful
but irresistible, were driving me forth to wander like
the unhappy Io of the Grecian mythus, some oestrum of
hidden persecution that bade me fly when no man pursued; not in false hope-for my hopes whispered but a
doubtful chance, not in reasonable fear-for all was
sweet pastoral quiet and autumnal beauty around me,
suddenly I took a fierce resolution to sacrifice my weekly
allowance, to slip my anchor, and to throw myself in
desperation upon London. Not to make the case more
frantic than it really was, let the reader remember what
it was that I found grievous in my present position, and
upon what possibilities it was that I relied for bettering
it. With a more extended knowledge of life than I at
that time had, it would not have been so hopeless a
speculation for a boy, having my accomplishments, to
launch himself on the boundless ocean of London. I
possessed attainments that bore a money value. For instance, as a ' Reader' to the Press in the field of Greek
re-publications, I might perhaps have earned a livelihood.
But these chances, which I really had, never occurred to
me in the light of useful resources; or, to speak the truth,
they were unknown to me: and those, which I chiefly
relied on, were most unlikely to prove available. But
what, meantime, was it that I complained of in the life
that I was at present living? It was this: the dilemma
proposed to my choice was-that if I would-positively
would-have society, I must live at inns. But if I reconciled myself to a quiet stationary abode in some
village or hamlet, in that case for me, so transcendently
careless about diet, my weekly guinea would have procured all that I wanted: and in some houses the advantage, quite indispensable to my comfort, of a private
sitting-room. Yet even here the expense was most




an English Opium-Eater 135
needlessly enhanced by the aristocratic luxuriousness of
our English system, which presumes it impossible for
a gentleman to sleep in his sitting-room. On this footing, however, I might perhaps have commanded clean
and comfortable accommodations in some respectable
families, to whom my noiseless habits, and my respectful courtesy to women, would have recommended me
as a desirable inmate. But, the deadly drawback on
this scheme was-the utter want of access to books,
or (generally speaking) to any intellectual intercourse.
I languished all the day through, and all the week
through-with nothing whatever, not so much as the
county newspaper once in seven days to relieve my
mortal ennui.
I have told the reader how inexplicably cheap was the
life in poor men's cottages. But this did not affect the
prices at the first-class hotels, where only I had any
chance of meeting society. Those, and chiefly on the
plea that the season was so brief, charged London
prices. To meet such prices, it would no longer be
possible, as winter came on, to raise one-half the funds
by passing half the time in a less costly mode. There
was an end of any feasible plan for interleaving days
of hardship with days of ease and intellectual luxury.
Meantime, whilst this perplexity was resounding in one
ear, in the other were continually echoing the kind offers
of my Welsh friends, especially the two lawyers, to furnish me with any money which I might think necessary
for my visit to London. Twelve guineas, at length, I mentioned as probably enough. This they lent me on the
spot. And now, all at once, I was-ready for London.
My farewell to the Principality was in the same unassuming character of pedestrian tourist as that in which
I had entered it. Impedimenta of any kin d-that is, the
encumbrances of horse or baggage-I had none even
to the last. Where I pleased, and when I pleased, I
could call a halt. My last halt of any duration was at
Oswestry; mere accident carried me thither, and accident very naturally in so small a town threw me across the
path of the very warmest amongst my Welsh friends, who,
K




136            Confessions of
as it turned out, resided there. He, by mere coercion
of kindness, detained me for several days; for denial
he would not take. Being as yet unmarried, he could
not vivify the other attractions of his most hospitable
abode by the reinforcement of female society.  His
own, however, coming recommended as it did by the
graces of a youthful frankness and a kindling intellect,
was all-sufficient for the beguiling of the longest day.
This Welsh friend was one of many whom I have
crossed in life, chained by early accident or by domestic necessity to the calls of a professional service,
whilst all the while his whole nature, wild and refractory,
ran headlong into intellectual channels that could not
be trained into reconciliation with his hourly duties.
His library was already large, and as select as under the
ordinary chances of provincial book-collection could be
reasonably expected. For generally one-half, at the least,
of a young man's library in a provincial town may be
characterised as a mere dropping or deposition from
local accidents, a casual windfall of fruits stripped and
strewed by the rough storms of bankruptcy. In many
cases, again, such a provincial library will represent
simply that part of the heavy baggage which many
a family, on removing to some distant quarter, has
shrunk from the cost of transporting, books being
amongst the heaviest of household goods. Sometimes
also, though more rarely, it happens that an ancient
family dying out, having unavoidably left to executors
the duty of selling every chattel attached to its ancient
habits of life, suddenly with meteoric glare there emerges
from its hiding-place of centuries some great jewel of
literature, a First Folio of the I623 Shakspere, an uncastrated Decamerone, or other dazzling KEqLjXLov. And
thus it is that a large provincial library, though naturally
and peacefully accumulated, yet sometimes shows mute
evidence of convulsions and household tragedies; speaks
as if by records of storms, and through dim mementoes of
half-forgotten shipwrecks. Real shipwrecks present often
such incoherent libraries on the floors of the hungry
sea. Magnificent is the library that sleeps unvexed by




an English Opium-Eater 137
criticism at the bottom of the ocean, Indian or Atlantic,
from the mere annual contributions and keepsakes, the
never-ending Forget-me-nots, of mighty English Indiamen. The Halsewell, with its sad parting between the
captain and his daughters, the Grosvenor, the Winterton,
the Abergavenny, and scores of vessels on the same scale,
with populations varying by births, deaths, and marriages, populations large as cities, and rich as gold mines,
capable of factions and rebellions, all and each have
liberally patronised, by the gift of many Large-Paper
copies, that vast submarine Bodleian, which stands in
far less risk from fire than the insolent Bodleian of the
upper world. This private Oswestry library wore something of the same wild tumultuary aspect, fantastic and
disordinate, but was not for that reason the less attractive;
everything was there that you never expected to meet
anywhere, but certainly not to meet in company; so that,
what between the library and the mercurial conversation
of its proprietor, elated by the rare advantage of fraternal
sympathy, I was in danger of finding attractions strong
enough to lay me asleep over the proprieties of the case,
or even to set me a-dreaming over imaginary cases. In
fact, I had some excuse for doing so; since I knew very
imperfectly the common routine of my friend's life; and
from his lofty Castilian sense of the obligations imposed
by the great goddess Hospitality, I never should have
been suffered to guess at the extent in which I was now
gradually and unconsciously coming daily into collision
with the regular calls upon his time. To ride off, under
mask of 'business,' upon a circuit of a week, would, in his
eyes, have been virtually, as regards the result, meanly
and evasively, as regards the mode, to turn me out of his
house. He would sooner have died. But in the meantime an accident, which revealed to me the true state of
things, or at least revealed a suspicion of it, all at once
armed my sense of delicacy against any further lingering.
Suddenly and peremptorily I announced my departurethat and the mode of it. For a long time he fought
with unaffected zeal against my purpose, as nowise
essential to his own free action. But at last, seeing that




138


Confessions of


I was in earnest, he forbore to oppose my plan, contenting himself with guiding and improving its details.
My plan had been, to walk over the border into England, as far as Shrewsbury (distant from Oswestry, I
think, about eighteen miles), and there to ascend any of
the heavy stages which would convey me cheaply to
Birmingham-the grand focus to which all the routes
of England in its main central area converge. Any such
plan moved on the assumption that rain would be falling steadily and heavily-a reasonable assumption at
the close of November. But, in the possible event of
fair weather lasting over four or five days, what should
prevent me from traversing the whole distance on foot?
It is true, that the aristocratic scowl of the landlord
might be looked for as a customary salutation at the
close of each day's journey; but, unless at solitary posting-houses, this criminal fact of having advanced by
base pedestrian methods, known only to patriarchs of
older days and to modern ' tramps' (so they are called
in solemn acts of Parliament), is easily expiated and
cleansed, by distributing your dust, should you fortunately have any to show, amongst the streets that you
have invaded as a stranger.  Happily the scandal of
pedestrianism is in one respect more hopefully situated
than that of scrofula or leprosy; it is not in any case
written in your face. The man who is guilty of pedestrianism, on entering any town whatever, by the simple
artifice of diving into the crowds of those untainted by
that guilt, will emerge, for all practical purposes, washed
and re-baptized. The landlord, indeed, of any one inn
knows that you did not reach him on horseback, or in a
carriage; but you may have been visiting for weeks at
the house of some distinguished citizen, whom it might
be dangerous to offend; and you may even be favourably known at some other inn.  Else, as a general
imputation, undoubtedly pedestrianism, in the estimate
of English landlords, carries with it the most awful
shadow and shibboleth of the pariah. My Welsh friend
knew this, and strongly urged me to take advantage of
the public carriages, both on that motive and others.




an English Opium-Eater 139
A journey of a hundred and eighty miles, as a pedestrian, would cost me nine or ten days; for which extent
the mere amount of expenses at inns would more than
defray the fare of the dearest carriage. To this there
was no sound reply, except that corresponding expenses
would arise, at any rate, on these nine or ten days, wherever I might be-in London, or on the road. However,
as it seemed ungracious to offer too obstinate a resistance to suggestions prompted so entirely by consideration for my own comfort, I submitted to my friend's
plan in all its details; one being that I should go by the
Holyhead Mail, and not by any of the heavy coaches.
This stipulation pointed to a novel feature in the
machinery of travelling just then emerging. The light
coaches charged almost mail prices.  But the heavy
coaches were at that time beginning to assume a new
and dreadful form. Locomotion was so prodigiously
on the increase, that, in order to meet its demands, the
old form of coach (carrying at most six insides) was exchanging itself, on all great roads, for a long, boatlike
vehicle, very much resembling our modern detestable
omnibus, but without our modern improvements. This
carriage was called a 'Zongcoach,' and the passengers,
twelve or fourteen insides, sat along the sides; and, as
ventilation was little regarded in those days-the very
existence of an atmosphere being usually ignored-it
followed that the horrors of Governor Holwell's black
cage at Calcutta were every night repeated, in smaller
proportions, upon every great English road.  It was
finally agreed that I should leave Oswestry on foot,
simply with a view to the best enjoyment of the lovely
weather; but that, as the mail passed through Oswestry,
my friend should secure a place for me the whole way
to London, so as to shut out competitors.
The day on which I left Oswestry (convoyed for nearly
five miles by my warm-hearted friend) was a day of golden
sunshine amongst the closing days of November. As
truly as Jessica's moonlight (Merchant of Venice), this
golden sunshine might be said to sleep upon the woods
and the fields; so awful was the universal silence, so




140


Confessions 'of


profound the death-like stillness. It was a day belonging
to a brief and pathetic season of farewell summer resurrection, which, under one name or other, is known almost
everywhere. In North America it is called the ' Indian
Summer.' In North Germany and Midland Germany
it is called the 'Old Wives' Summer,' and more rarely
the ' Girls' Summer.' It is that last brief resurrection of
summer in its most brilliant memorials, a resurrection
that has no root in the past, nor steady hold in the
future, like the lambent and fitful gleams from an expiring lamp, mimicking what is called the 'lightning
before death' in sick patients, when close upon their
end. There is the feeling of a conflict that has been
going on between the lingering powers of summer and
the strengthening powers of winter, not unlike that
which moves by antagonist forces in some deadly inflammation hurrying forwards through fierce struggles
into the final repose of mortification. For a time the
equilibrium has been maintained between the hostile
forces; but at last the antagonism is overthrown; the
victory is accomplished for the powers that fight on the
side of death; simultaneously with the conflict, the pain
of conflict has departed: and thenceforward the gentle
process of collapsing life, no longer fretted by countermovements, slips away with holy peace into the noiseless
deeps of the Infinite. So sweet, so ghostly, in its soft,
golden smiles, silent as a dream, and quiet as the dying
trance of a saint, faded through all its stages this departing day, along the whole length of which I bade farewell
for many a year to Wales, and farewell to summer.
In the very aspect and the sepulchral stillness of the
motionless day, as solemnly it wore away through
morning, noontide, afternoon, to meet the darkness
that was hurrying to swallow up its beauty, I had a
fantastic feeling as though I read the very language
of resignation when bending before some irresistible
agency. And at intervals I heard-in how different a
key!-the raving, the everlasting uproar of that dreadful
metropolis, which at every step was coming nearer, and
beckoning (as it seemed) to myself for purposes as dim,




an   English    Opium-Eater          I4I
for issues as incalculable, as the path of cannon-shots
fired at random and in darkness.
It was not late, but it was at least two hours after
nightfall, when I reached Shrewsbury. Was I not liable
to the suspicion of pedestrianism?  Certainly I was:
but, even if my criminality had been more unequivocally
attested than it could be under the circumstances, still
there is a Zocus Jenitentice in such a case. Surely a man
may repent of any crime; and therefore of pedestrianism.
I might have erred; and a court of fiil toudre (dusty
foot) might have found the evidences of my crime on
my shoes. Yet secretly I might be forming good resolutions to do so no more. Certainly it looked like this,
when I announced myself as a passenger ' booked' for
that night's mail. This character at once installed me as
rightfully a guest of the inn, however profligate a life I
might have previously led as a pedestrian. Accordingly
I was received with special courtesy; and it so happened
that I was received with something even like pomp.
Four wax-lights carried before me by obedient mutes,
these were but ordinary honours, meant (as old experience
had instructed me) for the first engineering step towards
effecting a lodgment upon the stranger's purse. In fact
the wax-lights are used by innkeepers, both abroad and
at home, to 'try the range of their guns.' If the stranger
submits quietly, as a good anti-pedestrian ought surely to
do, and fires no counter gun by way of protest, then he is
recognised at once as passively within range, and amenable to orders. I have always looked upon this fine of
five or seven shillings (for wax that you do not absolutely
need) as a sort of inaugural honorarium entrance-money,
what in jails used to be known as smart money, proclaiming me to be a man come ilfaut; and no toll
in this world of tolls do I pay so cheerfully.  This,
meantime, as I have said, was too customary a form to
confer much distinction.  The wax-lights, to use the
magnificent Grecian phrase 47rolk7reve, moved pompously
before me, as the holy-holy fire, the inextinguishable
fire and its golden hearth, moved before Caesar semper
Augustus, when he made his official or ceremonial avatars.




142


Confessions of


Yet still this moved along the ordinary channels of
glorification: it rolled along ancient grooves: I might
say, indeed, like one of the twelve Casars when dying,
Ut puto, Deus fio (It's my private opinion that at this
very moment I am turning into a god), but still the
metamorphosis was not complete.    That was accomplished when I stepped into the sumptuous room allotted
to me. It was a ball-room 1 of noble proportions-lighted,
if I chose to issue orders, by three gorgeous chandeliers,
not basely wrapped up in paper, but sparkling through
all their thickets of crystal branches, and flashing back
the soft rays of my tall waxen lights.  There were,
moreover, two orchestras, which money would have
filled within thirty minutes. And, upon the whole, one
thing only was wanting-viz., a throne-for the completion of my apotheosis.
It might be seven P.M. when first I entered upon my
kingdom. About three hours later I rose from my chair,
and with considerable interest looked out into the night.
For nearly two hours I had heard fierce winds arising;
and the whole atmosphere had, by this time, become
one vast laboratory of hostile movements in all directions.
Such a chaos, such a distracting wilderness of dim sights,
and of those awful 'sounds that live in darkness' (Wordsworth's Excursion), never had I consciously witnessed.
Rightly, and by a true instinct, had I made my farewell
adieus to summer. All through the day, Wales and
her grand mountain ranges-Penmaenmawr, Snowdon,
Cader Idris-had divided my thoughts with London.
But now rose London-sole, dark, infinite-brooding
over the whole capacities of my heart. Other objectother thought-I could not admit. Long before midnight, the whole household (with the exception of a
solitary waiter) had retired to rest. Two hours, at least,
were left to me, after twelve o'clock had struck, for heart1 It was a ball-room':-The explanation of the case was simply,
that the hotel was under some extensive process of purification, adornment, and, I believe, extension: and, under the accident of being myself
on that particular night the sole visitor of the house, I slipped unavoidably into the honours of a semi-regal reception.




an  English     Opium-Eater         I43
shaking reflections. More than ever I stood upon the
brink of a precipice; and the local circumstances around
me deepened and intensified these reflections, impressed
upon them solemnity and terror, sometimes even horror.
It is all but inconceivable to men of unyielding and
callous sensibilities, how profoundly others find their
reveries modified and overruled by the external characters of the immediate scene around them. Many a
suicide that hung dubiously in the balances has been
ratified, and carried into summary effect, through the
forlorn, soul-revolting aspect of a crazy, dilapidated home.
Oftentimes, without extravagance, the whole difference
between a mind that spurns life and the same mind
reconciled to life, turns upon the outside features of that
particular domestic scenery which hourly.besieges the
eyes.  I, in this Shrewsbury hotel, naturally contemplated a group of objects tending to far different results.
And yet in some respects they agreed.
The unusual dimensions of the rooms, especially their
towering height, brought up continually and obstinately,
through natural links of associated feelings or images,
the mighty vision of London waiting for me afar off.
An altitude of nineteen or twenty feet showed itself
unavoidably upon an exaggerated scale in some of the
smaller side-rooms-meant probably for cards or for
refreshments. This single feature of the rooms-their
unusual altitude, and the echoing hollowness which had
become the exponent of that altitude-this one terrific
feature (for terrific it was in the effect), together with
crowding and evanescent images of the flying feet that
so often had spread gladness through these halls on the
wings of youth and hope at seasons when every room
rang with music-all this, rising in tumultuous vision,
whilst the dead hours of night were stealing along, all
around me-household and town-sleeping, and whilst
against the windows more and more the storm outside
was raving, and to all appearance endlessly growing,
threw me into the deadliest condition of nervous emotion
under contradictory forces, high over which predominated horror recoiling from that unfathomed abyss in




I44


Confessions of


London into which I was now so wilfully precipitating
myself. Often I looked out and examined the night.
Wild it was beyond all description, and dark as 'the
inside of a wolf's throat' But at intervals, when the
wind, shifting continually, swept in such a direction as
to clear away the vast curtain of vapour, the stars shone
out, though with a light unusually dim and distant.
Still, as I turned inwards to the echoing chambers, or
outwards to the wild, wild night, I saw London expanding
her visionary gates to receive me, like some dreadful
mouth of Acheron (Acherontis avari). Thou also, Whispering Gallery I once again in those moments of conscious and wilful desolation didst to my ear utter
monitorial sighs. For once again I was preparing to
utter an irrevocable word, to enter upon one of those
fatally tortuous paths of which the windings can never
be unlinked.
Such thoughts, and visions without number corresponding to them, were moving across the camera obscura
of my fermenting fancy, when suddenly I heard a sound
of wheels; which, however, soon died off into some
remote quarter. I guessed at the truth-viz., that it was
the Holyhead Mail wheeling off on its primary duty of
delivering its bags at the post-office. In a few minutes
it was announced as having changed horses; and off I
was to London.
All the mails in the kingdom, with one solitary exception (that of Liverpool), in those days, were so arranged
as to reach London early in the morning. Between the
1 The Holyhead Mail, depending in its earliest stages upon winds
and waters (though not upon tides), could not realise the same exquisite
accuracy as mails that moved exclusively upon land. Sixty miles of
watery transit between Dublin and Holyhead were performed with
miraculous precision. The packets were intrusted by the General Postoffice to none but post-captains, who had commanded frigates. And
the salaries were so high as to make these commands confessedly prizes
in nautical life, and objects of keen competition. No evil, therefore,
which care, foresight, and professional skill could remedy, was suffered
to exist. Yet, after all, baffling winds would now and then (especially
in three or four weeks after the equinox) make it impossible for the very
ablest man, under the total defect of steam resources, to keep his time.
Six hours, I believe, were allowed by the Post-office for the sixty miles;
but at times this must have proved a very inadequate allowance.




an English Opium-Eater 145
hours of four and six A.M., one after the other, according
to their station upon the roll, all the mails from the
N[orth]-the E[ast]-the W[est]-the S[outh]-whence,
according to some curious etymologists, comes the
magical word NEWS-drove up successively to the
post-office, and rendered up their heart-shaking budgets;
none earlier than four o'clock, none later than six. I
am speaking of days when all things moved slowly.
The condition of the roads was then such, that, in order
to face it, a corresponding build of coaches hyperbolically
massive was rendered necessary: the mails were upon
principle made so strong as to be the heaviest of all
carriages known to the wit or the experience of man;
and from these joint evils of ponderous coaches and
roads that were quagmires, it was impossible for even
the picked breed of English-coach-horses, all bone and
blood, to carry forward their huge tonnage at a greater
rate than six-and-a-half miles an hour. Consequently,
it cost eight-and-twenty massy hours for us, leaving
Shrewsbury at two o'clock in the dead of night, to reach
the General Post-office, and faithfully to deposit upon
the threshing-floors of Lombard Street, all that weight
of love and hatred which Ireland had found herself able
to muster through twenty-four hours in the great dep6t
of Dublin, by way of donation to England.
On reflection, I have done myself some injustice.
Not altogether without a plan had I been from the
first; and in coming along I had matured it. My
success in such a plan would turn upon my chance of
borrowing on personal security. ~200, without counting any interest upon it, would subdivide into four
sums of ~50. Now, what interval was it that divided
me from my majority?    Simply an interval of four
years. London, I knew or believed, was the dearest of
all cities for three items of expenditure: (i) servants'
wages; (2) lodgings; 1 (3) dairy produce. In other
1 Not universally. Glasgow, if you travel from Hammerfest southwards (that is, from the northernmost point of Norway, or Swedish
Lapland, traversing all latitudes of Europe to Gibraltar on the west,
or Naples on the east), is the one dearest place for lodgings known to




146


Confessions of


things, London was often cheaper than most towns.
Now, in a London street, having no pretensions beyond
those of decent respectability, it has always been possible
for the last half century to obtain two furnished rooms
at a weekly cost of half a guinea. This sum (or say.J25) deducted would leave me annually about the
same sum for my other expenses. Too certainly I
knew that this would suffice.  If, therefore, I could
obtain the ~20oo0, my plan was to withdraw from the
knowledge of all my connections until I should become
mci juris by course of law. In such a case, it is true
that I must have waived all the advantages, fancied or
real,[small or great, from residence at a university. But,
as in fact I never drew the slightest advantage or emolument from any university, my scheme when realised
would have landed me in the same point which finally
I attained by its failure. The plan was simple enough,
but it rested on the assumption that I could melt the
obduracy of money-lenders. On this point I had both
hopes and fears. But more irritating than either was
the delay, which eventually I came to recognise as an
essential element in the policy of all money-lenders:
in that way only can they raise up such claims on
behalf of their law agents as may be fitted for sustaining their zeal.
I lost no time in opening the business which had
brought me to London. By ten A.M., an hour when all
men of business are presumed to be at their posts, personally or by proxy, I presented myself at the moneylender's office. My name was already known there:
for I had, by letters from Wales, containing very plain
and very accurate statements of my position in life and
my pecuniary expectations (some of which statements it
afterwards appeared that he had personally investigated
and verified), endeavoured to win his favourable attention.
man. A decent lodging for a single person, in Edinburgh, which
could be had readily for half-a-guinea a-week, will in Glasgow cost
a guinea. Glasgow, except as to servants, is a dearer abode than
London.




an English Opium-Eater


I47


The money-lender, as it turned out, had one fixed rule
of action.  He never granted a personal interview to
any man; no, not to the most beloved of his clients.
One and all-myself, therefore, among the crowd-he
referred for information, and for the means of prosecuting any kind of negotiation, to an attorney, who called
himself, on most days of the week, by the name of
Brunell, but occasionally (might it perhaps be on redletter days?) by the more common name of Brown.
Mr. Brunell-Brown, or Brown-Brunel, had located his
hearth (if ever he had possessed one), and his household gods (when they were not in the custody of the
sheriff), in Greek Street, Soho. The house was not in
itself, supposing that its face had been washed now and
then, at all disrespectable. But it wore an unhappy
countenance of gloom and unsocial fretfulness, due in
reality to the long neglect of painting, cleansing, and
in some instances of repairing. There were, however,
no fractured panes of glass in the windows; and the
deep silence which invested the house, not only from
the absence of all visitors, but also of those common
household functionaries, bakers, butchers, beer-carriers,
sufficiently accounted for the desolation, by suggesting
an excuse not strictly true-viz., that it might be tenantless. The house already had tenants through the day,
though of a noiseless order, and was destined soon to
increase them. Mr. Brown-Brunell, after reconnoitring
me through a narrow side-window (such as is often
attached to front-doors in London), admitted me cheerfully, and conducted me, as an honoured guest, to his
private offcina diplomaturn at the back of the house.
From the expression of his face, but much more from
the contradictory and self-counteracting play of his
features, you gathered in a moment that he was a man
who had much to conceal, and much, perhaps, that he
would gladly forget. His eye expressed wariness against
surprise, and passed in a moment into irrepressible
glances of suspicion and alarm. No smile that ever his
face naturally assumed, but was pulled short up by some
freezing counteraction, or was chased by some close



148


Confessions of


following expression of sadness. One feature there was
of relenting goodness and nobleness in Mr. Brunell's
character, to which it was that subsequently I myself
was most profoundly indebted for an asylum that saved
my life. He had the deepest, the most liberal, and
unaffected love of knowledge, but, above all, of that
specific knowledge which we call literature. His own
stormy (and no doubt oftentimes disgraceful) career in
life, that had entangled him in perpetual feuds with
his fellow-men, he ascribed, with bitter imprecations, to
the sudden interruption of his studies consequent upon
his father's violent death, and to the necessity which
threw him, at a boyish age, upon a professional life in
the lower branches of law-threw him, therefore, upon
daily temptations, by surrounding him with opportunities
for taking advantages not strictly honourable, before he
had formed any fixed principles at all. From the very
first, Mr. Brunell had entered zealously into such conversations with myself as either gave openings for reviving his own delightful remembrances of classic
authors, or brought up sometimes doubts for solution,
sometimes perplexities and cases of intricate construction for illustration and disentanglement.  Hungerbitten as the house and the household genius seemed,
wearing the legend of Famine upon every mantelpiece
or 'coigne of vantage,' and vehemently protesting, as
it must have done through all its echoes, against the
introduction of supernumerary mouths, nevertheless
there was (and, I suppose, of necessity) a clerk, who
bore the name of Pyment, or Pyemont, then first of all,
then last of all, made known to me as a possible surname. Mr. Pyment had no alias-or not to my knowledge-except, indeed, in the vituperative vocabulary
of Mr. Brunell, in which most variegated nomenclature
he bore many scores of opprobrious names, having no
reference whatever to any real habits of the man, good
or bad. At two rooms' distance, Mr. Brunel always
assumed a minute and circumstantial knowledge of
what Pyment was doing then, and what he was going
to do next.  All which Pyment gave himself little




an English Opium-Eater I49
trouble to answer, unless it happened (as now and
then it did) that he could do so with ludicrous effect.
What made the necessity for Pyment was the continual
call for 'an appearance' to be put in at some of the
subordinate courts in Westminster-courts of conscience,
sheriff courts, &c. But it happens often that he who
is most indispensable, and gets through most work at
one hour, becomes a useless burden at another; as the
hardest-working reaper seems, in the eyes of an ignoramus, on a wet, wintry day, to be a luxurious idler.
Of these ups and downs in Pyment's working life, Mr.
Brunell made a most cynical use; making out that
Pyment not only did nothing, but also that he created
much work for the afflicted Brunell. However, it happened occasionally that the truth vindicated itself, by
making a call upon Pyment's physics-aggressive or
defensive-that needed an instant attention. 'Pyment,
I say; this way, Pyment-you're wanted, Pyment.' In
fact, both were big, hulking men, and had need to be
so; for sometimes, whether with good reason or none,
clients at the end of a losing suit, or of a suit nominally
gained, but unexpectedly laden with heavy expenses, became refractory, showed fight, and gave Pyment reason
for saying that at least on this day he had earned his
salary by serving an ejectment on a client whom on
any other plan it might have been hard to settle with.
But I am anticipating. I go back, therefore, for a few
explanatory words, to the day of my arrival in London.
How beneficial to me would a little candour have been
at that early period! If (which was the simple truth,
known to all parties but myself) I had been told that
nothing would be brought to a close in less than six
months, even assuming the ultimate adoption of my
proposals, I should from the first have dismissed all
hopes of this nature, as being unsuited to the practicabilities of my situation. It will be seen further on,
that there was a real and sincere intention of advancing
the money wanted. But it was then too late. And
universally I believe myself entitled to say, that even
honourable lawyers will not in a case of this nature




150            Confessions of
move at a faster pace: they will all alike loiter upon
varied allegations through six months; and for this
reason, that any shorter period, they fancy, will hardly
seem to justify, in the eyes of their client, the sum
which they find themselves entitled to charge for their
trouble and their preliminary correspondence. How
much better for both sides, and more honourable, as
more frank and free from  disguises, that the client
should sat, 'Raise this sum' (of, suppose, 6400o) 'in
three weeks, which can be done, if it can be done in
three years, and here is a bonus of Ioo. Delay for
two months, and I decline the whole transaction.'
Treated with that sort of openness, how much bodily
suffering of an extreme order, and how much of the
sickness from hope deferred, should I have escaped!
Whereas, under the system (pursued with me as with
all clients) of continually refreshing my hopes with new
delusions, whiling me on with pretended preparation of
deeds, and extorting from me, out of every little remittance I received from old family friends casually met in
London, as much as possible for the purchase of imaginary stamps, the result was, that I myself was brought
to the brink of destruction through pure inanition;
whilst, on the other hand, those concerned in these
deceptions gained nothing that might not have been
gained honourably and rightfully under a system of
plain dealing. As it was, subject to these eternal deceptions, I continued for seven or eight weeks to live most
parsimoniously in lodgings. These lodgings, though
barely decent in my eyes, ran away with at the least
two-thirds of my remaining guineas. At length, whilst
it was yet possible to reserve a solitary half-guinea towards the more urgent interest of finding daily food,
I gave up my rooms; and, stating exactly the circumstances in which I stood, requested permission of Mr.
Brunell to make use of his large house as a nightly
asylum from the open air. Parliament had not then
made it a crime, next door to a felony, for a man to sleep
out-of-doors (as some twenty years later was done by
our benign legislators); as yet that was no crime. By




an   English    Opium-Eater          151
the law I came to know sin; and looking back to the
Cambrian hills from distant years, discovered to my
surprise what a parliamentary wretch I had been in
elder days, when I slept amongst cows on the open hillsides. Lawful as yet this was; but not, therefore, less
full of misery. Naturally, then, I was delighted when
Mr. Brunell not only most readily assented to my
request, but begged of me to come that very night, and
turn the house to account as fully as I possibly could.
The cheerfulness of such a concession brought with it
one drawback. I now regretted that I had not, at a
much earlier period, applied for this liberty; since I
might thus have saved a considerable fund of guineas,
applicable, of course, to all urgent necessities, but at
this particular moment to one of clamorous urgency
-viz., the purchase of blankets. O ancient women,
daughters of toil and suffering, amongst all the hardships and bitter inheritances of flesh that ye are called
upon to face, not one-not even hunger-seems in my
eyes comparable to that of nightly cold.  To seek a
refuge from cold in bed, and then, from the thin, gauzy
texture of the miserable, worn-out blankets, 'not to
sleep a wink,' as Wordsworth records of poor old women
in Dorsetshire, where coals, from local causes, were at
the very dearest-what a terrific enemy was that for
poor old grandmothers to face in fight! How feelingly
I learned at this time, as heretofore I had learned on the
wild hillsides in Wales, what an unspeakable blessing
is that of warmth! A more killing curse there does
not exist for man or woman, than that bitter combat
between the weariness that prompts sleep, and the keen,
searching cold that forces you from the first access of
sleep to start up horror-stricken, and to seek warmth
vainly in renewed exercise, though long since fainting
under fatigue. However, even without blankets, it was
a fine thing to have an asylum from the open air; and
to be assured of this asylum as long as I was likely to
want it.
Towards nightfall I went down to Greek Street; and
found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the
L




152


Confessions of


house already contained one single inmate, a poor,
friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she
seemed hunger-bitten; and sufferings of that sort often
make children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learnt that she had slept and lived there
alone for some time before I came; and great joy the
poor creature expressed, when she found that I was in
future to be her companion through the hours of darkness. The house could hardly be called large-that is,
it was not large on each separate storey; but, having
four storeys in all, it was large enough to impress vividly
the sense of its echoing loneliness; and, from the want
of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious
uproar on the staircase and hall; so that, amidst the real
fleshly ills of cold and hunger, the forsaken child had
found leisure to suffer still more from the self-created
one of ghosts. Against these enemies I could promise
her protection; human companionship was in itself
protection; but of other and more needful aid I had,
alas! little to offer.  We lay upon the floor, with a
bundle of law-papers for a pillow, but with no other
covering than a large horseman's cloak; afterwards,
however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover,
a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other
articles, which added a little to our comfort. The poor
child crept close to me for warmth, and for security
against her ghostly enemies.  When I was not more
than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in
general, she was tolerably warm, and often slept when
I could not; for, during the last two months of my
sufferings I slept much in the daytime, and was apt
to fall into transient dozings at all hours.  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 hereafter to describe
as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than
what is called dog-sleep; so that I could hear myself
moaning; and very often I was awakened suddenly by
my own voice. About this time, a hideous sensation
began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber,




an English Opium-Eater 153
which has since returned upon me at different periods
of my life-viz., a sort of twitching (I knew not where,
but apparently about the region of the stomach), which
compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the
sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon
as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly
awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion; and
through increasing weakness (as I said before), I was
constantly falling asleep, and constantly awaking. Too
generally the very attainment of any deep repose seemed
as if mechanically linked to some fatal necessity of selfinterruption.  It was as though a cup were gradually
filled by the sleepy overflow of some natural fountain,
the fulness of the cup expressing symbolically the completeness of the rest: but then, in the next stage of the
process, it seemed as though the rush and torrent-like
babbling of the redundant waters, when running over
from every part of the cup, interrupted the slumber
which in their earlier stage of silent gathering they had
so naturally produced. Such and so regular in its swell
and its collapse-in its tardy growth and its violent
dispersion-did this endless alternation of stealthy sleep
and stormy awaking travel through stages as natural as
the increments of twilight, or the kindlings of the dawn:
no rest that was not a prologue to terror; no sweet
tremulous pulses of restoration that did not suddenly
explode through rolling clamours of fiery disruption.
Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in
upon us suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till
ten o'clock; sometimes not at all. He was in constant
fear of arrest.  Improving on the plan of Cromwell,
every night he slept in a different quarter of London;
and I observed that he never failed to examine, through
a private window, the appearance of those who knocked
at the door, before he would allow it to be opened.
He 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
material which, for the most part, was little more than
a roll, or a few biscuits, purchased on his road from the




154            Confessions of
place where he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party,
as I once learnedly observed to him, the several members of it must have stood in the relation to each other
(not satin any relation whatever) of succession, and not
of co-existence; in the relation of parts of time, and not
of the parts of space. During his breakfast, I generally
contrived a reason for lounging in; and, with an air of
as much indifference as I could assume, took up such
fragments as might chance to remain; sometimes,
indeed, none at all remained. In doing this, I committed no robbery, except upon Mr. Brunell himself,
who was thus obliged, now and then, to send out at
noon for an extra biscuit; but he, through channels
subsequently explained, was repaid a thousandfold;
and, as to the poor child, she was never admitted into
his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository
of parchments, law-writings, etc.); that room was to hei
the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked
on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which
usually was his final departure for the day. Whether
this child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell,
or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did not
herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether
as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell make
his appearance than she went below-stairs, brushed his
shoes, coat, etc.; and, except when she was summoned
to run upon some errand, she never emerged from the
dismal Tartarus of the kitchens to the upper air, until my
welcome knock towards nightfall called up her little
trembling footsteps to the front-door. Of her life during
the daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered
from her own account at night; for, as soon as the
hours of business commenced, I saw that my absence
would be acceptable; and, in general, therefore, I went
off and sat in the parks or elsewhere until the approach
of twilight.
But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the
house himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous
practitioners in lower departments of the law who, on
prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves




an English Opium-Eater 155
all indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience.
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive
encumbrance than a wife or a carriage; and, as people
talk of 'laying down' their carriages, so I suppose my
friend Mr. Brunell had 'laid down' his conscience for
a time; meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he
could afford it. He was an advertising attorney, who
continually notified to the public, through the morning
papers, that he undertook to raise loans for approved
parties in what would generally be regarded as desperate
cases-viz., where there was nothing better than personal
security to offer. But, as he took good care to ascertain
that there were ample funds in reversion to be counted
on, or near connections that would not suffer the family
name to be dishonoured, and as he insured the borrower's life over a sufficient period, the risk was not
great; and even of this the whole rested upon the actual
money-lender, who stood aloof in the back-ground, and
never revealed himself to clients in his proper person,
transacting all affairs through his proxies learned in the
law-Mr. Brunell or others. The inner economy of
such a man's daily life would present a monstrous
picture. Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw scenes of intrigue and complex
chicanery, 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. Brunell's
character but such as did him honour; and of his whole
strange composition I ought to forget everything, but
that towards me he was obliging, and, to the extent of
his power, generous.
That power was not, indeed, very extensive. However, in common with the rats, I sat rent free; and as
Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his
life had as much wall-fruit as he wished, so let me be
grateful that, on that single occasion, I had as large a
choice of rooms, or even of apartments, in a London
mansion-viz., as I am now at liberty to add, at the
north-west corner of Greek Street, being the house on




156           Confessions of
that side the street nearest to Soho Square-as I could
possibly desire. Except the Bluebeard room, which the
poor child believed to be permanently haunted, and
which, besides, was locked, 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 might fancy. This house I have described as
roomy and respectable.  It stands in a conspicuous
situation, and in a well-known part of London. Many
of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a
few hours of reading this. For myself, I never fail to
visit it when accident draws me to London. About ten
o'clock this very night (August I5, I821, being my birthday), I turned aside from my evening walk along Oxford
Street, in order to take a glance at it. It is now in the
occupation of some family, apparently respectable. The
windows are no longer coated by a paste, composed of
ancient soot and superannuated rain; and the whole
exterior no longer wears an aspect of gloom. By the
lights in the front drawing-room, I observed a domestic
party, assembled, perhaps, at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay-marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the
darkness, cold, silence, and desolation, of that same
house nineteen years ago, when its nightly occupants
were one famishing scholar and a poor, neglected child.
Her, by-the-bye, in after years, I vainly endeavoured to
trace. Apart from her situation, she was not what would
be called an interesting child. She was neither pretty,
nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing
in manners. But, thank God! even in those years I
needed not the embellishments of elegant accessories
to conciliate my affections. Plain human nature, in its
humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me;
and I loved the child because she was my partner in
wretchedness. If she is now living, she is probably a
mother, with children of her own; but, as I have said,
I could never trace her.
This I regret; but another person there was, at that
time, whom I have since sought to trace with far deeper
earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure.




an English Opium-Eater


I57


This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who belong to the outcasts and pariahs of
our female population. 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. Smile not, reader too carelessly facile!
Frown not, reader too unseasonably austere! Little
call was there here either for smiles or frowns. A
penniless schoolboy could not be supposed to stand
within the range of such temptations; besides that,
according to the ancient Latin proverb, 'sine Cerere
et Baccho,' &c. These unhappy women, to me, were
simply sisters in calamity; and sisters amongst whom,
in as large measure as amongst any other equal number
of persons, commanding more of the world's respect,
were to be found humanity, disinterested generosity,
courage that would not falter in defence of the helpless,
and fidelity that would have scorned to take bribes for
betraying. 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. I cannot suppose, I will not believe, that any
creatures wearing the form of man or woman are so
absolutely rejected and reprobate outcasts, that merely
to talk with them inflicts pollution. On the contrary,
from my very earliest youth, it has been my pride to
converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all human beings-man, woman, and child-that chance might fling
in my way; for a philosopher should not see with the
eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man
of the world, filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon
himself as a catholic creature, and as standing in an
equal relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself,
at that time, of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of
the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with those
peripatetics who are technically called street-walkers.
Some of these women had occasionally taken my part
against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps




158


Confessions of


of houses where I was sitting; others had protected me
against more serious aggressions. But one amongst them
-the one on whose account I have at all introduced
this subject-yet no! let me not class thee, O nobleminded Ann —, with that order of women; let me
find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate
the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion
-ministering to my necessities when all the world stood
aloof from me-I owe it that I am at this time alive.
For many weeks I had walked, at nights, with this poor
friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested
with her on steps and under the shelter of porticos.
She could not be so old as myself: she told me, indeed,
that she had not completed her sixteenth year. By
such questions as my interest about her prompted, I
had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers
was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had
reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it,
the power of the law might oftener be interposed to
protect and to avenge.  But the stream of London
charity flows in a channel which, though deep and
mighty, is yet noiseless and underground;-not obvious
or readily accessible to poor, houseless wanderers; and
it cannot be denied that the outside air and framework
of society in London, as in all vast capitals, is unavoidably harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however,
I saw that part of her injuries might have been redressed; and I urged her often and earnestly to lay
her complaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she
was, I assured her that she would meet with immediate
attention; and that English justice, which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge
her on the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little
property. She promised me often that she would; but
she delayed taking the steps I pointed out, from time
to time; for she was timid and dejected to a degree
which showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of
her young heart; and perhaps she thought justly that
the most upright judge and the most righteous tribunals




an  English     Opium-Eater        I59
could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps have been done; for it
had been settled between us at length (but, unhappily,
on the very last time but one that I was ever to see
her), that in a day or two I, accompanied by her,
should state her case to a magistrate.  This little
service it was destined, however, that I should never
realise. Meantime, that which she rendered to me,
and which was greater than I could ever have repaid
her, was this. One night, when we were pacing slowly
along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with
me into Soho Square. Thither we went; and we sat
down on the steps of a house, which to this hour
I never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner
act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in
memory of the noble act which she there performed.
Suddenly, as we sat, I grew much worse. I had been
leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once
I sank from her arms, and fell backwards on the steps.
From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that, without some powerful
and reviving stimulus, I should either have died on
the spot, or should, at least, have sunk to a point of
exhaustion from which all re-ascent, under my friendless circumstances, would soon have become hopeless.
Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor
orphan companion, who had herself met with little
but injuries in this world, stretched out a saving hand
to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's
delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and, in less time
than could be imagined, returned to me with a glass of
port-wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach
(which at that time would have rejected all solid food)
with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for this
glass the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out of
her own 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.




i6o


Confessions of


0 youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years,
standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with
grief of heart and perfect love-how often have I wished
that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was
believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue
its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment, even
so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude
might have a like prerogative; might have power given
it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to pursue
thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or
(if it were possible) even into the darkness of the grave,
there to awaken thee with an authentic message of
peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!
Some feelings, though not deeper or more passionate,
are more tender than others; and often when I walk, at
this time, in Oxford Street by dreamy lamp-light, and
hear those airs played on a common street-organ which
years ago solaced me and my dear youthful companion,
I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious
dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened, the reader will
understand from what remains of this introductory
narration.
Soon after the period of the last incident I have
recorded, I met in Albemarle Street a gentleman of his
late Majesty's household. This gentleman had received
hospitalities, on different occasions, from my family;
and he challenged me upon the strength of my family
likeness. I did not attempt any disguise, but answered
his questions ingenuously; and, on his pledging his
word of honour that he would not betray me to my
guardians, I gave him my real address in Greek Street.
The next day I received from him a ten-pound banknote. The letter enclosing it was delivered, with other
letters of business, to the attorney; but, though his look
and manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honourably, and without
demur.
This present, from the particular service to which
much of it was applied, leads me naturally to speak




an English Opium-Eater I6I
again of the original purpose which had allured me up
to London, and which I had been without intermission
prosecuting through Mr. Brunell from the first day of
my arrival in London.
In so mighty a world as London, it will suprise 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
open to me: viz., either to seek assistance from the
friends of my family, or to turn my youthful accomplishments, such as they were, into some channel of
pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may
observe, generally, that what I dreaded beyond all other
evils was the chance of being reclaimed by my guardians;
not doubting that whatever power the law gave them
would have been enforced against me to the utmost;
that is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the
school which I had quitted; a restoration which, as it
would, in my eyes, have been a dishonour, even if
submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted
from me in contempt and defiance of my own known
wishes and earnest resistance, to have proved a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would, indeed,
have terminated in death. I was, therefore, shy enough
of applying for assistance even in those quarters where I
was sure of receiving it, if at any risk of furnishing my
guardians with a clue for tracing me. My father's
friends, no doubt, had been many, and were scattered
all over the kingdom; but, as to London in particular,
though a large section of these friends would certainly
be found there, yet (as full ten years had passed since
his death) I knew very few of them even by name; and
never having seen London before-except once, in my
fifteenth year, 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 danger
which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In
regard to the other mode-that of turning any talents
or knowledge that I might possess to a lucrative use-I
now feel half inclined to join my reader in wondering




162


Confessions of


that I should have overlooked it. As a corrector of
Greek proofs (if in no other way), I might surely 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. And there was this great
preliminary advantage in giving such a direction to my
efforts, that the intellectual dignity and elegance associated with all ministerial services about the press would
have saved my pride and self-respect from mortification.
In an extreme case, such as mine had now become, I
should not have absolutely disdained the humble station
of' devil.' A subaltern situation in a service inherently
honourable is better than a much higher situation in a
service pointing to ultimate objects that are mean or
ignoble. I am, indeed, not sure that I could adequately
have discharged the functions of this office. To the perfection of the diabolic character I fear that patience is
one of the indispensable graces; more, perhaps, than I
should be found on trial to possess for dancing attendance upon crotchety authors, superstitiously fastidious
in matters of punctuation. But why talk of my qualifications?  Qualified or not, where could I obtain such
an office? For it must not be forgotten that even a
diabolic appointment requires interest.  Towards that,
I must first of all have an introduction to some respectable publisher; and this I had no means of obtaining.
To say the truth, however, it had never once occurred
to me to think of literary labours as a source of profit.
No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had
ever suggested itself, but that of borrowing it on the
strength of my future claims and expectations. This
mode I sought by every avenue to compass; and
amongst other persons I applied to a Jew named
D.1
1 At this period (autumn of 1856), when thirty-five years have elapsed
since the first publication of these memoirs, reasons of delicacy can no
longer claim respect for concealing the Jew's name, or at least the
name which he adopted in his dealings with the Gentiles. I say,
therefore, without scruple, that the name was Dell: and some years
later it was one of the names that came before the House of Commons




an English Opium-Eater                         i63
To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders,
I had introduced myself, with an account of my expectations; which account they had little difficulty in
ascertaining to be correct. The person there mentioned
as the second son of --, was found to have all the
claims (or more than all) that I had stated: but one
question still remained, which the faces of the Jews
pretty significantly suggested,-was I that person?      This
doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one; I
had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends scrutinised
me keenly, that I might be too well known to be that
person, and that some scheme might be passing in their
minds for entrapping me and selling me to my guardians.
in connection with something or other (I have long since forgotten
what) growing out of the parliamentary movement against the Duke
of York, in reference to Mrs. Clark, etc. Like all the other Jews with
whom I have had negotiations, he was frank and honourable in his
mode of conducting business. What he promised he performed; and,
if his terms were high, as naturally they could not but be, to cover his
risks, he avowed them from the first.
To this same Mr. Dell, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I applied again on the same business; and, dating at that
time from a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to win his
serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from
any extravagance or youthful levities (these my habits forbade), but
simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found
himself no longer able to prevent me from going to the university, had,
as a parting token of his regard, refused to sign an order for granting
me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school-viz., ZIoo
per annum. Upon this sum it was, in my time (i.e., in the first
decennium of this century), barely possible to have lived at college;
and not possible to a man who, though above the affectation of
ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes,
confided, nevertheless, rather too much in servants, and did not delight
in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became
embarrassed: in a movement of impatience, instead of candidly avowing my condition to my mother, or to some one of the guardians, more
than one of whom would have advanced me the /250 wanted (not in
his legal character of guardian, but as a private friend), I was so
foolish as to engage in a voluminous negotiation with the Jew, and
was put in possession of the sum I asked for, on the ' regular' terms of
paying seventeen and a-half per cent. by way of annuity on all the
money furnished; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more
than about ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney's bill (for what services, to whom rendered, and when-whether at
the siege of Jerusalem, or at the building of the Second Temple-I
have not yet discovered). How many perches this bill measured I
really forget; but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities.




164


Confessions of


It was strange to me to find my own self, materialiter
considered (so I expressed it, for I doted on logical
accuracy of distinctions), 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. Most of these letters
were from the Earl of Altamont, who was at that time,
and had been for some years back, amongst my confidential friends. These were dated from Eton. I had
also some from 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 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 Mayo and Sligo, since I had been there;
sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet; at other
times, suggesting subjects on which he fancied that I
could write verses myself, or breathe poetic inspiration
into the mind of my once familiar companion, his son.
On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends
agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my
personal security, provided I could persuade the young
earl-who was, by the way, not older than myself-to
guarantee the payment on our joint coming of age; the
Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the
trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the
prospect of establishing a connection with my noble
friend, whose gleat expectations were well known to
him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the
Jew, about eight oc nine days after I had received the
I0o, I prepared to visit Eton. Nearly three guineas
of the money I had given to my money-lending friend
in the background; or, more accurately, I had given
that sum to Mr. Brunell, alias Brown, as representing
Mr. Dell, the Jew; and a smaller sum I had given




an English Opium-Eater i65
directly to himself, on his own separate account.
What he alleged in excuse for thus draining my purse
at so critical a moment was, that stamps must be
bought, in order that the writings might be prepared
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.
About fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the
remainder, I gave one-quarter (something more than
a guinea) to Ann, meaning, on my return, to have
divided with  her whatever might remain.  These
arrangements made, soon after six o'clock, on a dark
winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards
Piccadilly; for it was my intention to go down as far
as the turn to Salt Hill and Slough on the Bath or
Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the
town which has now totally disappeared, so that I can
no longer retrace its ancient boundaries-having been
replaced by Regent Street and its adjacencies. Swallow
Street is all that I remember of the names superseded
by this large revolutionary usurpation. Having time
enough before us, however, we bore away to the left,
until we came into Golden Square. There, near the
corner of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing to
part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told
Ann of my plans some time before, and now I assured
her again that she should share in my good fortune,
if I met with any, and that I would never forsake her,
as soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully
intended, as much from inclination as from a sense
of duty; for, setting aside gratitude (which in any case
must have made me her debtor for life), I loved her
as affectionately as if she had been my sister; and at
this moment with sevenfold tenderness, from pity at
witnessing her extreme dejection. I had apparently
most reason for dejection, because I was leaving the
saviour of my life; yet I, considering the shock my
health had received, was cheerful and full of hope.
She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who




166            Confessions of
had had little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow,
so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put
her arms about my neck, and wept, without speaking
a word. I hoped to return in a week, at furthest, and I
agreed with her, that on 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 formerly been our customary haven of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great
Mediterranean of Oxford Street.   This, and other
measures of precaution, I took; one, only, I forgot.
She had either never told me, or (as a matter of no
great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It is a
general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in
her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women
of higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss Douglas,
Miss Montague, etc., but simply by their Christian
names, Mary, Jane, Frances, etc. Her surname, as
the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have
inquired; but the truth is, having no reason to think
that our meeting again could, in consequence of a
short interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than
it had been for so many weeks, I scarcely for a moment
adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my
memoranda against this parting interview; and my final
anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, and
in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some
medicine for a violent cough with which she was
troubled, I wholly forgot this precaution until it was
too late to recall her.
When I reached the Gloucester Coffee-house in
Piccadilly, at which, in those days, all the western
mails stopped for a few minutes in going out of
London, it was already a quarter of an hour past
eight o'clock; the Bristol Mail was on the point of
going off, and I mounted on the outside.  The fine
fluent motionl of this mail soon laid me asleep.  It
1 The Bristol Mail was at that time the best appointed in the
kingdom-owing that advantage, first of all, to an unusually good




an English Opium-Eater               I67
is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing
sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the
outside of a mail-coach-a bed which, at this day, I find
rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep was
a little incident which served, as hundreds of others did
at that time, to convince me how easily a man, who has
never been in any great distress, may pass through life
without knowing in his own person, and experimentally
testing, the possible goodness of the human heart, or, as
unwillingly I add, its possible churlishness. 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
under one neutral disguise. The case was this. For
the first four or five miles out of London, I annoyed
my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling
against him when the coach gave a lurch; and, indeed,
if the road had been less smooth and level than it was,
I should have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily; as, perhaps, in the same
circumstances, most people would. He expressed his
complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion
seemed to warrant; and if I had parted with him at
that moment, I should have thought of him as a surly
and almost brutal fellow. Still I was conscious that I
had given him some cause for complaint; and therefore
I apologised, assuring him that I would do what I could
to avoid falling asleep for the future; and, at the same
time, in as few words as possible, I explained to him
that I was ill, and in a weak state from long suffering,
and that I could not afford to take an inside place. The
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
efforts, I had again fallen asleep within two minutes), I
road,-and this advantage it shared with the Bath Mail (their route
being exactly the same for a hundred and five miles); but, secondly,
it had the separate advantage of an extra sum for expenses subscribed
by the Bristol merchants.
id




I68


Confessions of


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. 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 further than I intended;
for so genial and refreshing was my sleep, being in the
open air, that, upon the sudden pulling up of the mail
(possibly at a post-office), I found that we had reached
some place six or seven miles to the west of Salt Hill.
Here I alighted; and, during the half-minute that the
mail stopped, I was entreated by my friendly companion
(who, from the transient glimpse I had of him under the
glaring lights of Piccadilly, might be a respectable upper
servant) to go to bed without delay. This, under the
feeling that some consideration was due to one who had
done me so seasonable a service, I promised, though
with no intention of doing so; and, in fact, I immediately moved forward on foot. It must then have been
nearly eleven; but so slowly did I creep along that I
heard a clock in a cottage strike four as I was on the
point of turning down the road from Slough to Eton.
The air and the sleep had both refreshed me; but I was
weary, nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious
enough, and pointedly expressed by a Roman poet)
which gave me some consolation, at that moment, under
my poverty. There had been, some weeks before, a
murder committed on Hounslow Heath, which at that
time was really a heath, entirely unenclosed, and
exhibiting a sea-like expanse in all directions, except
one. 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.1
1 Two men, Holloway and Haggerty, were long afterwards convicted,
upon very questionable evidence, as the perpetrators of this murder.
The main testimony against them was that of a Newgate turnkey, who
had imperfectly overheard a conversation between the two men. The
current impression was that of great dissatisfaction with the evidence;
and this impression was strengthened by the pamphlet of an acute
lawyer, exposing the unsoundness and incoherency of the statements
relied upon by the court. They were executed, however, in the teeth
of all opposition. And as it happened that an unorrious wreck of life




an English Opium-Eater i69
Every step of my regress (for I now walked with my face
towards London) was bringing me nearer to the heath;
and it naturally occurred to me, that I and the accursed
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 myselfinstead of being little better than an outcast,
I Lord of my learning, and no land beside 'like my friend Lord Altamont, heir, by general repute,
to ~30,000 per annum, 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 possessions make a man
shamefully afraid of dying; and I am convinced that
many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, being poor,
enjoy the full use of their natural energies, 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,~o5,ooo a-year, feel their dislike to
bullets furiously sharpened,' and their efforts at self-possession proportionably difficult. So true it is, in the
language of a wise man, whose own experience had made
him acquainted equally with good and evil fortune, that
riches are better fitted
'To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise.'
Paradise Regained.
I dally with my subject, because, to myself, the
occurred at the execution (not fewer, I believe, than sixty persons
having been trampled under foot by the unusual pressure of some
brewers' draymen forcing their way with linked arms to the space
below the drop), this tragedy was regarded for many years by a section
of the London mob as a providential judgment upon the passive
metropolis.
1 It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth,
have, notwithstanding, in our own day, as well as throughout our
history, been amongst the foremost in courting danger on the field of
battle. True; but this is not the case supposed. Long familiarity
with power and with wealth has, to them, deadened their effect and
attractions.




170


Confessions of


remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting.
But my reader shall not have any further cause to
complain; for now I hasten to its close. In the road
between Slough and Eton I fell asleep; and, just as
the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the
voice of a man standing over me, and apparently
studying my physics, whilst to me-upon so sudden
an introduction to him in so suspicious a situationhis morals naturally suggested a more interesting subject
of inquiry. I know not what he was. He was an illlooking fellow, but not, therefore, of necessity, an illmeaning fellow; or, if he were, I suppose he thought
that no person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could
be worth robbing. In which conclusion, however, as
it regarded myself, I have the honour to assure him,
supposing him ever to find himself amongst my readers,
that he was entirely mistaken. I was not sorry at his
disturbance, as it roused me to pass through Eton before
people were generally astir. The night had been heavy
and misty, but towards the morning it had changed to a
slight frost, and the trees were now covered with rime.
I slipped through Eton unobserved; washed myself, and
as far as possible adjusted my dress, at a little publichouse in Windsor; and, about eight o'clock, went down
towards the precincts of the college, near which were
congregated the houses of the ' Dames.' On my road
I met some junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An
Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my
shabby habiliments, they answered me civilly. My
friend Lord Altamont was gone to Jesus College,
Cambridge.   ' Ibi omnis effusus labor!' I had, however, other friends at Eton; but it is not to all who
wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing to
present himself in distress.  On recollecting myself,
however, I asked for the Earl of Desert,1 to whom
1 I had known Lord Desert, the eldest son of a very large family,
some years earlier, when bearing the title of Lord Castlecuffe. Cuffe
was the family name; and I believe that they traced their descent from
a person of some historic interest-viz.,- that Cuffe who was secretary to
the unhappy Earl of Essex during his treasonable dmneue against the
government of Queen Elizabeth,




an English Opium-Eater


I7I


(though my acquaintance with him was not so intimate
as with some others) I should not have shrunk from
presenting myself under any circumstances. He was
still at Eton, though, I believe, on the wing for
Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked
to breakfast.
Lord Desert placed before me a magnificent breakfast.
It was really such; but in my eyes it seemed trebly
magnificent from being the first regular meal, the first
' good man's table,' that I had sat down to for months.
Strange to say, I could scarcely eat anything. On the
day when I first received my ten-pound bank-note, I had
gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of rolls;
this very shop I had some weeks before surveyed with
an eagerness of desire which it was humiliating to
recollect. I remembered the story (which, however,
I now believed to be a falsehood) about Otway; and
feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly.
But there was no cause for alarm; my appetite was
utterly gone, and I nauseated food of every kind. This
effect, from eating what approached to a meal, I continued to feel for weeks. On the present occasion, at
Lord Desert's table, I found myself not at all better than
usual; and, in the midst of luxuries, appetite I had
none. I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a
craving for wine: I explained my situation, therefore, to
Lord Desert, and gave him a short account of my late
sufferings; with which he expressed deep sympathy,
and called for wine. This gave me instantaneous relief
and immoderate pleasure; and on all occasions, when
I had an opportunity, I never failed to drink wine.
Obvious it is, however, that this indulgence in wine
would continue to strengthen my malady, for the tone
of my stomach was apparently quite sunk; but, by a
better regimen, it might sooner, and, perhaps, effectually,
have been restored. I hope that it was not from this
love of wine that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my
Eton friends; I persuaded myself then, that it was from
reluctance to ask Lord Desert, on whom I was conscious
of having no sufficient claims, the particular service in




172


Confessions of


quest of which I had come to Eton. I was, however,
unwilling to lose my journey, and-I asked it. Lord
Desert, whose good-nature was unbounded, and which,
in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his
compassion, perhaps, for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with several of his relatives, than
by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own
direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He
acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings
with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction
might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover,
he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations
were so much more bounded than those of his cousin,
would avail with my unchristian friends. Still he did
not wish, apparently, to mortify me by a refusal peremptory and absolute; for, after a little consideration,
he promised, under certain conditions, which he pointed
out, to give his security. Lord Desert was at this time
not above 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 (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.
Re-comforted by this promise, which was not quite
equal to the best, but far above the worst that I had
anticipated, I returned in a Windsor coach to London
three days after I had quitted it. And now I come to
the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of
Lord Desert's conditions, or so they said; whether they
would in the end have acceded to them, and were only
seeking time for making further inquiries, I know not;
but many delays were made-time passed on-the small
fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and
before any conclusion could have been put to the business, I must have relapsed into my former state of
wretchedness. Suddenly, at this crisis, an opening was
made, almost by accident, for reconciliation with my
guardians. I quitted London in haste, and returned to




an  English     Opium-Eater         173
the Priory; after some time, I proceeded to Oxford; and
it was not until many months had passed away that I
had it in my power again to revisit the ground which
had become so interesting to me, and to this day remains
so, as the chief scene of my youthful sufferings.
Meantime, what had become of Ann? Where was
she? Whither had she gone? According 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; and during the last days of my stay in London
I put into activity every means of tracing her that my
knowledge of London suggested, and the limited extent
of my power made possible. The street where she had
lodged I knew, but not the house; and I remembered,
at last, some account which she had given of ill-treatment from her landlord, which made it probable that
she had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She
had few acquaintance; most people, besides, thought
that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives
which moved their laughter or their slight regard; and
others, thinking that I was in chase of a girl who had
robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and excusably
indisposed to give me any clue to her, if indeed they had
any to give. Finally, as my despairing resource, on the
day I left London I put into the hands of the only person
who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having
been in company with us once or twice, an address to
the Priory. All was in vain. To this hour I have never
heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles
as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest
affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been
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, 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 must, on my
different visits to London, have looked into many
myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting Ann.




174           Confessions of
I should know her again amongst a thousand, and if
seen but for a moment. Handsome she was not; but
she had a sweet expression of countenance, and a
peculiarly graceful carriage of the head. I sought her,
I have said, in hope. So it was for years; but now I
should fear to see her; and her cough, which grieved
me when I parted with her, is now my consolation.
Now I 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.
So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother,
thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest
the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from
thee! The time was come that I no more should pace
in anguish thy never-ending terraces; no more should
wake and dream in captivity to the pangs of hunger.
Successors too many to myself and Ann have, doubtless,
since then trodden in our footsteps, inheritors of our
calamities.  Other orphans than Ann have sighed;
tears have been shed by other children; and thou,
Oxford Street, hast since those days echoed to the
groans of innumerable hearts.  For myself, however,
the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been
the pledge of a long fair weather; the premature sufferings which I had paid down, to have been accepted
as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long
immunity from sorrow; and if again I walked in London,
a solitary and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did),
I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of
mind. And, although it is true that the calamities of
my novitiate in London had struck root so deeply in
my bodily constitution, that afterwards they shot up and
flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that
has over-shadowed and darkened my latter years, yet
these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer




an   English    Opium-Eater         I75
intellect, and with alleviations, how deep! from sympathising affection.
Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years far
asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering
derived from a common root. And herein I notice the
short-sightedness of human desires-that oftentimes, on
moonlight nights, during my first mournful abode in
London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought)
to gaze from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces northwards through the heart of
Marylebone to the fields and the woods; for that, said
I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay
part in light and part in shade-' that is the road to the
north, and, therefore, to Grasmere' (upon which, though
as yet unknown to me, I had a presentiment that I
should fix my choice for a residence); 'and if I had the
wings of a dove, that way I would fly for rest.' Thus I
said, and thus I wished in my blindness; yet, even in
that very northern region it was, in that very valley 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 by phantoms as ghastly, as ever haunted the couch
of 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 was I in my desires. And yet, if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man and his future
calamities, the same veil hides from him their alleviations; and a grief which had not been feared, is met by
consolations which had not been hoped. I, therefore,
who participated, as it were, in the troubles of Orestes
(excepting only in his agitated conscience), participated
no less in all his supports; my Eumenides, like his, were
at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the curtains; but, watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself
of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches
of the night, sat my Electra; for thou, beloved MmI




176


Confessions of


dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra!
and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering
affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should
excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much
to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile
ministrations of tenderest affection; to wipe away for
years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to
refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever;
nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long
sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my
dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies,
that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more '-not even
then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor
withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service
of love, more than Electra did of old. For she, too,
though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of
the king of men,1 yet wept sometimes, and hid her face 2
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 more.
Meantime I am again in London; and again I pace
the terraces of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes
-when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my
philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support,
and yet remember that I am separated from thee by
three hundred miles and the length of three dreary
months-I look up the streets that run northward from
Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my
youthful ejaculation of anguish; but then, remembering
that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and
mistress of that very house to which my heart turned
1 Agamemnon —vaC &dvtpwv.
2 'O/,/Aca 6ese' els 7rdrXov. The scholarwill know that throughout
this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes-one of the most
beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas
of Euripides can furnish. To the unlearned reader, it may be necessary to say that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a
brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession
of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by
the Furies), under circumstances of immediate danger from enemies,
and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends.




an English Opium-Eater


I77


in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think that, though
blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the
promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to
a remoter time, and may be justified if read in another
meaning; and if I could allow myself to descend again
to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say
to myself, as I look to the north, ' Oh, that I had the
wings of a dove!' and with how just a confidence in thy
good and gracious nature might I add the other half of
my early ejaculation-'and that way I would fly for
comfort!'
THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM
It is very long since I first took opium; so long, that
if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have
forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to be
forgotten; and, from circumstances connected with it,
I remember that this inauguration into the use of opium
must be referred to the spring or to the autumn of
1804; during which seasons I was in London, having
come thither for the first time since my entrance at
Oxford. And this event arose in the following way:
from an early age I had been accustomed to wash my
head in cold water at least once a day; being suddenly
seized with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation
caused by a casual intermission of that practice; jumped
out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water,
and with hair thus wetted went to sleep.  The next
morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which
I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the
twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I
went out into the streets; rather to run away, if possible,
from my torments, than with any distinct purpose of
relief.  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 heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further.




i78


Confessions of


How unmeaning a sound was opium at that time! what
solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what
heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a
mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place, and the time, and
the man (if man he was), that first laid open to me the
paradise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon,
wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of
ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.
My road homewards lay through Oxford Street; and
near 'the stately Pantheon' (as Mr. Wordsworth has
obligingly called it ) I saw a druggist's shop.  The
druggist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!), as
if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and
stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to
look on a rainy London 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
to me what seemed to be real copper halfpence, taken
out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all such indications of humanity, he has
ever since figured in my mind as a beatific vision of
an immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special
mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of
considering him that, when I next came up to London,
I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him
not; and thus to me, who knew not his name (if,
indeed, he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished
from Oxford Street than to have flitted into any other
locality, or (which some abominable man suggested) to
have absconded from the rent. 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.2 So unwillingly would I con1 ' Stately':-It is but fair to say that Wordsworth meant to speak
of the inte.'or, which could very little be inferred from the mean, undistinguished outside, as seen presenting itself endways in Oxford Street.
2 ' Evanesced':-This way of going off from the stage of life appears
to have been well known in the seventeenth century, but at that time
to have been considered a peculiar privilege of royalty, and by no




an English Opium-Eater 179
nect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place,
and creature that first brought me acquainted with the
celestial drug.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I
lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I
was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of
opium-taking; and what I took I took under every disadvantage. But I took it; and in an hour, O heavens!
what a revulsion! what a resurrection, 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 negative effect was swallowed
up in the immensity of those positive effects which had
opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus
suddenly revealed.  Here was a panacea, a badpLaKov
vrlrevO4s, for all human woes; here was the secret of
happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for
so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now
be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoatpocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a
pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by
the mail.
And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects;
for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may
plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right),
or by professors of medicine writing ex cathedra, I have
but one emphatic criticism to pronounce-Nonsense
I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught
these words from a page of some satiric author-'By
this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week-viz., on
Tuesday and Saturday 1-and might safely be depended
means open to the use of druggists. For, about the year x686, a poet
of rather ominous name (and who, apparently, did 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 vulgar an act
as dying: because, says he,
Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear.'
1 ' Tuesday and Saturday':-viz., the two days on which the Gaxett
is (or used to be) published.




i8o


Confessions of


upon for-the list of bankrupts.'   In like manner, I do
by no means deny that some truths have been delivered
to the world in regard to opium: thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a tawny
brown in colour-and this, take notice, I 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 eighti; and, thirdly, that, if you eat a good
deal of it, most probably you must do what is disagreeable to any man of regular habits-viz., die.1 These
weighty propositions are, all and singular, true; I cannot
gainsay them; and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. But, in these three theorems, I believe we
have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And therefore,
worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further
discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward
and lecture on this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for
granted by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication.
Now, reader, assure yourself, meo 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 spirits of wine, and not because it contains so
much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily,
is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in
degree only incapable, but even in kind; it is not in the
1 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 caution his readers against taking
more than 'twenty-five ounces' of laudanum at one dose. The true
reading had doubtless been twenty-five drops or minims, which in a
gross equation is held equivalent to one grain of average opium; but
opium itself-crude opium-varies enormously in purity and strength;
consequently the tincture prepared from it. And most of the medical
connoisseurs whom I have known boiled their opium, so as to cleanse
it from gross impurities,




an English Opium-Eater I8I
quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it
differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always
rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which as
rapidly 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 flickering
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 sustains and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the judgment, and gives a
preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the
contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the
hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties,
active or passive; and, with respect to the temper and
moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of
vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and
which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for
instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the
heart and the benevolent affections; but, then, with this
remarkable difference, that, in the sudden development
of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation,
there is always more or less of a maudlin and a transitory character, which exposes it to the contempt of the
bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship,
and shed tears-no mortal knows why; and the animal
nature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the
benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access,
no fugitive paroxysm; it is a healthy restoration to that
state which the mind would naturally recover upon the
removal of any deep-seated irritation from pain that had
disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart
originally just and good. True it is, that even wine up
to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to
exalt and to steady the intellect. I myself, who have never




I82


Confessions of


been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen
glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties,
brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave
to the mind a feeling of being 'ponderibus librata suis';
and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on
the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and
exceedingly disguised; and it is when they are drinking
that men display themselves in their true complexion of
character; which surely is not disguising themselves.
But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of
absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain
point, it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what
had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word,
a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is,
and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into
supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part
of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him
simply as such, and assume that he is in a normal state
of health) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount-that is, the moral affections are in a state of
cloudless serenity; and high over all the great light of
the majestic intellect.
This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject
of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be
the Pope (consequently infallible), and self-appointed
legate d latere to all degrees of latitude and longitude.
But then it is to be recollected that I speak from the
ground of a large and profound personal experience,
whereas most of the unscientificl authors who have at
1 Amongst the great herd of travellers, etc., who show sufficiently by
their thoughtlessness that they never held any intercourse with opium,
I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of
Anastasius. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume
him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that
character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he has given of its
effects at pages 215-217 of Vol. i. Upon consideration, it must appear
such to the author himself; for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in
the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will
himself admit that an old gentleman, 'with a snow-white heard,' whet




an English Opium-Eater                        i83
all treated of opium, and even of those who have written
professionally on the materia medica, make it evident,
by the horror they express of it, that their experimental
knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however,
candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person
who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as
staggered my own incredulity; for he was a surgeon,
and had himself taken opium largely for a most miserable affection (past all hope of cure) seated in one
particular organ. This affection was a subtle inflammation, not acute, but chronic; and with this he fought for
more (I believe) than twenty years; fought victoriously,
if victory it were, to make life supportable for himself,
and during all that time to maintain in respectability a
wife and a family of children altogether dependent on
him.' I happened to say to him, that his enemies
eats ' ample doses of opium,' and is yet able to deliver what is meant
and received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice,
is but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely,
or sends them into a madhouse. But, for my part, I see into this old
gentleman and his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of 'the little
golden receptacle of the pernicious drug' which Anastasius carried
about him; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred
as that of frightening its owner out of his wits. This commentary
throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story;
for the old gentleman's speech, as a lecture on pharmacy, is absurd;
but, considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently.
1 This surgeon it was who first made me aware of the dangerous
variability in opium as to strength under the shifting proportions of its
combination with alien impurities. Naturally, as a man professionally
alive to the danger of creating any artificial need of opium beyond what
the anguish of his malady at any rate demanded, trembling every hour
on behalf of his poor children, lest, by any indiscretion of his own, he
should precipitate the crisis of his disorder, he saw the necessity of
reducing the daily dose to a minimum. But to do this he must first
obtain the means of measuring the quantities of opium; not the apparent quantities as determined by weighing, but the virtual quantities
after allowing for the alloy or varying amounts of impurity. This, however, was a visionary problem. To allow for it was simply impossible.
The problem, therefore, changed its character. Not to measure the
impurities was the object; for, whilst entangled with the operative and
efficient parts of the opium, they could not be measured. To separate
and eliminate the impure (or inert) parts, this was now the object.
And this was effected finally by a particular mode of boiling the opium.
That done, the residuum became equable in strength; and the daily
doses could be nicely adjusted. About i8 grains formed his daily ration
for many years. This, upon the common hospital equation, expresses
r8 times 25 drops of laudanum. But, since 25 is=X-o, therefore I8
N




i84


Confessions of


(as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on
politics, and that his friends apologised for him, by
suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now, the accusation, said I, is not
prima facie an absurd one; but the defence is. To my
surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and
his friends were in the right. 'I will maintain,' said he,
' that I do talk nonsense; and, secondly, I will maintain
that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any
view to profit, but solely and simply,' said he-' solely
and simply-solely and simply' (repeating it three times
over) 'because I am drunk with opium; and that daily.'
I replied, that as to the allegation of his enemies, as
it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agreed
so far, it did not become me to question it; but the
defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons; but it
seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which
must have presumed a man mistaken in a point belong.
ing to his own profession, that I did not press him, even
when his course of argument seemed open to objection;
not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even
though ' with no view to profit,' is not altogether the
most agreeable respondent in a dispute. 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 more than seven thousand drops a-day; and though it was not possible to
suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me
that he might proceed on a logical error of using the
times one quarter of a hundred is=one quarter of I8oo, and that, I
suppose, is 450. So much this surgeon averaged upon each day for
about twenty years. Then suddenly began a fiercer stage of the
anguish from his disease. But then, also, the fight was finished, and
the victory was won. All duties were fulfilled: his children prosperously launched in life; and death, which to himself was becoming daily
more necessary as a relief from torment, now fell injuriously upon
nobody.




an   English    Opium-Eater          I85
word intoxication with too careless a latitude, extending
it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead
of restricting it to one special quality of pleasurable
elevation, distinguished by well-known symptoms, and
connected with tendencies not to be evaded. Two of
these tendencies I will mention as diagnostic, or characteristic and inseparable marks of ordinary alcoholic intoxication, but which no excess in the use of opium ever
develops. One is the loss of self-command, in relation
to all one's acts and purposes, which steals gradually
(though with varying degrees of speed) over all persons
indiscriminately when indulging in wine or distilled
liquors beyond a certain limit. The tongue and other
organs become unmanageable: the intoxicated man
speaks inarticulately; and, with regard to certain words,
makes efforts ludicrously earnest, yet oftentimes unavailing, to utter them. The eyes are bewildered, and
see double; grasping too little, and too much. The
hand aims awry. The legs stumble, and lose their
power of concurrent action. To this result all people
tend, though by varying rates of acceleration. Secondly,
as another characteristic, it may be noticed that, in alcoholic intoxication, the movement is always along a
kind of arch; the drinker rises through continual ascents
to a summit or apex, from which he descends through
corresponding steps of declension. There is a crowning
point in the movement upwards, which once attained
cannot be renewed: and it is the blind, unconscious,
but always unsuccessful effort of the obstinate drinker to
restore this supreme altitude of enjoyment which tempts
him into excesses that become dangerous. After reaching this acme of genial pleasure, it is a mere necessity of
the case to sink through corresponding stages of collapse.
Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they
had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student
in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I
have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other
day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had
got drunk on a beef-steak. All turns, in fact, upon a
rigorous definition of intoxication.




I86


Confessions of


Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error
in respect to opium, I shall notice briefly a second and a
third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced
by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate
depression, and that the natural and even immediate
consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal
as well as 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 not regularly, but
intermittingly, the day succeeding to that on which I
allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually
good spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or
rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of
Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of
opium-eating, I deny that also.  Certainly, opium is
classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect
it may produce in the end; but the primary effects of
opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite
and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action
always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upwards
of eight hours; so that it must be the fault of the opiumeater himself, if he does not so time his exhibition of the
dose, as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence
may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it
seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian
statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But,
that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium
is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall
(by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than
argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself
often passed an opium evening in London during the
period between I804 and 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 selfinvolution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account
at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or
visionary; but I regard that little. I must desire my
reader to bear in mind that I was a hard student, and at
severe studies for all the rest of my time; and certainly




an English Opium-Eater                      i87
I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as other
people.
The late Duke of Norfolk 1 used to say, ' Next Monday, wind and weather permitting, I purpose to be
drunk'; and in like manner I used to fix beforehand
how often within a given time, when, and with what
accessory circumstances of festal joy, 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 afterwards I did), for 'a glass
of laudanum    negus, warm, and without sugar.'       No;
once in three weeks sufficed; and the time selected was
either a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for
which was this:-Tuesday and Saturday were for many
years the regular nights of performance at the King's
Theatre (or Opera House); and there it was in those
times that Grassini sang; and her voice (the richest of
contraltos) was delightful to me beyond all that I had
ever heard. Yes; or have since heard; or ever shall
hear. I know not what may be the state of the operahouse 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 resort in London for passing an evening.2 Half-a-guinea admitted you to the pit, under the
troublesome condition, however, of being en grande
tenue. But to the gallery five shillings admitted you;
and that gallery was subject to far less annoyance than
the pit of most theatres. The orchestra was distinguished
1 ' The late Duke of Norfolk':-My authority was the late Sir
George Beaumont, an old familiar acquaintance of the duke's. But
such expressions are always liable to grievous misapplication. By 'the
late' duke Sir George meant that duke once so well known to the
nation as the partisan friend of Fox, Burke, Sheridan, etc., at the era
of the great French Revolution in 1789-93. Since his time, I believe
there have been three generations of ducal Howards-who are always
interesting to the English nation, first, from the bloody historic traditions surrounding their great house: secondly, from the fact of their
being at the head of the British Peerage.
2 I trust that my reader has not been so inattentive to the windings
of my narrative as to fancy me speaking here of the Brown-Brunell and
Pyment period. Naturally I had no money disposable at that period
for the opera. I am speaking here of years stretching far beyond those
boyish scenes-interludes in my Oxford life, or long after Oxford.




i88               Confessions of
by its sweet and melodious grandeur from all English
orchestras; the composition of which, I confess, is not
acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the
clangorous instruments, and in some instances from the
tyranny of the violin. Thrilling was the pleasure with
which almost always I heard this angelic Grassini.
Shivering with expectation I sat, when the time drew
near for her golden epiphany; shivering I rose from my
seat, incapable of rest, when that heavenly and harp-like
voice sang its own victorious welcome in its prelusive
threttdnelo-threttdnelo (OpeTraveXw-OperTdveXw). The
choruses were divine to hear; and, when Grassini2
appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and
poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache at
the tomb of Hector, etc., I question whether any
Turk, of all that ever entered the paradise of opiumeaters, can have had half the pleasure I had.         But,
indeed, I honour the barbarians too much by supposing
them capable of any pleasures approaching to the
intellectual ones of an Englishman. For music is an
intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the
temperament of him     who hears it.    And, by-the-bye,
with the exception of the fine extravaganza on that
subject in   Twelfth Night, I do      not recollect more
than one thing said adequately on the subject of music
1 I Threttdnelo-threttdnelo':-The beautiful representative echo by
which Aristophanes expresses the sound of the Grecian phorminx, or
of some other instrument, which conjecturally has been shown most to
resemble our modern European harp. In the case of ancient Hebrew
instruments used in the temple service, random and idle must be allthe
guesses through the Greek Septuagint or the Latin Vulgate to identify
any one of them. But as to Grecian instruments the case is different;
always there is the remote chance of digging up some marble sculpture
of orchestral appurtenances and properties.
2 Yet all things change; this same Grassini, whom once I adored,
afterwards, when gorged with English gold, went off to Paris; and
when I heard on what terms she lived with a man so unmagnanimous
as Napoleon, I came to hate her. Did I complain of any man's hating
England, or teaching a woman to hate her benefactress? Not at all;
but simply of his adopting at second-hand the malice of a jealous
nation, with which originally he could have had no sincere sympathy.
Hate us, if you please; but not sycophantishly, by way of paying
court to others.




an English Opium-Eater                 i89
in all literature.  It is a passage in the Re14,vio Affedicil
of Sir T. Browne, and, though chiefly remarkable for its
sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it
points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is, to suppose that it is by the ear
they communicate with music, and therefore that they are
purely passive as to its effects.  But this is not so; it is
by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear
(the matter coming by the senses, the form from the
mind) that the pleasure is constructed; and therefore
it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in
this point from one another. Now opium, by greatly
increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases,
of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which
we are able to construct out of the raw material of
organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. But,
says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me
like a collection of Arabic characters: I can attach no
ideas to them.   Ideas! my dear friend! there is no
occasion for them; all that class of ideas which can be
available in such a case has a language of representative
feelings.  But this is a subject foreign to my present
purposes; it is sufficient to say that a chorus, etc., of
elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of
arras-work, the whole of my past life-not as if recalled
by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in
the music; no longer painful to dwell upon, but the
detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy
abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualised, and
sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillingsthat being the price of admission to the gallery; or, if a
man preferred the high-bred society of the pit, even this
might be had for half-a-guinea; or, in fact, for half-acrown less, by purchasing beforehand a ticket at the
music shops. And over and above the music of the
stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, in the
intervals of the performance, the music of the Italian
1 I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the
passage begins, ' And even that tavern music, which makes one man
merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion,' etc.




I90


Confessions of


language talked by Italian women-for the gallery was
usually crowded with Italians-and I listened with a
pleasure such as that which Weld, the traveller, lay and
listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian
women; for the less you understand of a language, the
more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of
its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an
advantage to me that in those days I was a poor Italian
scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all,
nor understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken.
These were my opera pleasures; but another pleasure
I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday
night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera;
for, in those years, Tuesday and Saturday were the
regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I
shall be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader,
not at all more so than Marinus in his Life of Procdus,
or many other biographers and autobiographers of fair
reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had
only on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday
night to me more than any other night? I had no
labours that I rested from; no wages to receive; what
needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it
was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical
reader; what thou sayest is, and ever will be, unanswerable. And yet so it was, that, whereas different men
throw their feelings into different channels, and most
men are apt to show their interest in the concerns of
the poor chiefly by sympathy with their distresses and
sorrows, I at that time was disposed to express mine by
sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty
I had lately seen too much of-more than I wished to
remember; but the pleasures of the poor, their hopes,
their consolations of spirit, and their restings from 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, and to all that live
by bodily labour; in this point the most hostile sects
unite, and acknowledge a common link of brotherhood:
almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a




an English Opium-Eater 191
rest introductory to another rest; and divided by a
whole day and two nights from the renewal of toil. On
this account I feel always, on a Saturday night, as though
I also were released from some yoke of bondage, had
some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to
enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as
large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my
sympathy was so entire, I used often, on Saturday
nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth,
without much regarding the direction or the distance,
to all the markets, and other parts of London, whither
the poor resort on a Saturday night, for laying out their
wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his
wife, and sometimes one or two of their children, have I
listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and
means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price
of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with
their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent; but
far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered
in words, of patience, of hope, and of reconciliation to
their lot. Generally speaking, the impression left upon
my mind was, that the poor are practically more philosophic than the rich; that they show a more ready and
cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable
evils or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion,
or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I
joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the
matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious,
was always received indulgently. If wages were a little
higher, or were expected to be so-if the quartern loaf
were a little lower, or it was reported that onions and
butter were falling, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were
true, I drew from opium some means of consolation.
For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials
indiscriminately from roses and from the soot1 of
1 ' Soot':-In the large capacious chimneys of the rustic cottages
throughout the Lake district, you can see up the entire cavity from
the seat which you occupy, as an honoured visitor, in the chimney
corner. There I used often to hear (though not to see) bees. Their




I92


Confessions of


chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance
with the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to
great distances; for an opium-eater is too happy to
observe the motion of time. And sometimes, in my
attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles,
by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and headlands I had doubled
in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such
knotty problems of alleys, alleys without soundings,
such enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's riddles of
streets without obvious outlets or thoroughfares, as must
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 terra incognita, and doubted whether they had
yet been laid down in the modern charts of London.
Positively, in one line of communication to the south
of Holborn, for foot passengers (known, I doubt not, to
many of my London readers), the road lay through a
man's kitchen; and, as it was a small kitchen, you
needed to steer cautiously, or else you might run foul of
the dripping-pan. For all this, however, I paid a heavy
price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised
over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in
London came back and haunted my sleep, with the
feeling of perplexities, moral or intellectual, that brought
confusion to the reason, that brought anguish and remorse to the conscience.
Thus I have shown, or tried to show, that opium does
not of necessity produce inactivity or torpor; but that,
on the contrary, it often led me into markets and
theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets
and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the
opium-eater, when in the divinest state incident to his
enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an oppression
murmuring was audible, though their bodily forms were too small to
be visible at that altitude. On inquiry, I found that soot (chiefly from
wood and peats) was useful in some stage of their wax or honey
manufacture.




an English Opium-Eater 193
to him; music, even, too sensual and gross.  He
naturally seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable
conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries,
which are the crown and consummation of what opium
can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to
meditate too much and to observe too little, and who,
upon my first entrance at college, was nearly falling into
a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the
sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was
sufficiently aware of these tendencies in my own
thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. I was,
indeed, like a person, who, according to the old Pagan
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
subtleties of philosophic speculation.  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. At that time
I often fell into such reveries after taking opium; and
many a time it has happened to me on a summer night
-when I have been seated at an open window, from
which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and
could at the same time command a view of some great
town standing on a different radius of my circular
prospect, but at nearly the same distance-that from
sunset to sunrise, all through the hours of night, I have
continued motionless, as if frozen, without consciousness of myself as of an object anywise distinct from the
multiform scene which I contemplated from above.
Such a scene in all its elements was not unfrequently
realised for me on the gentle eminence of Everton.
Obliquely to the left lay the many-languaged town of
Liverpool; obliquely to the right, the multitudinous sea.
The scene itself was somewhat typical of what took
place in such a reverie. The town of Liverpool represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left
behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The
ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded




194


Confessions of


over by 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 aloof
from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and
the strife, were suspended; a respite were granted from
the secret burdens of the heart; some sabbath of repose;
some resting from human labours. Here were the hopes
which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the
peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as
unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon
calm; tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but
as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.
O just, subtle, and all-conquering opium! that, to the
hearts of rich and poor alike, for the wounds that will
never heal, and for the pangs of grief that 'tempt the
spirit to rebel,' bringest an assuaging balm;-eloquent
opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the
purposes of wrath, pleadest effectually for relenting pity,
and through one night's heavenly sleep callest back to
the guilty man the visions of his infancy, and hands
washed pure from blood;-O just and righteous opium!
that to the chancery of dreams summonest, for the
triumphs of despairing innocence, false witnesses; and
confoundest perjury; and dost reverse the sentences of
unrighteous judges;-thou buildest upon the bosom of
darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities
and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxitelesbeyond the splendours of Babylon and Hekat6mpylos;
and,' from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,' callest into
sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the
blessed household countenances, cleansed from the
' dishonours of the grave.' Thou only givest these gifts
to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, 0 just,
subtle, and mighty opium!
1 i.e. the hundred-gated (from iKa-r6v, hekaton, a hundred, and
7r^6X, fyle, a gate). This epithet of hundred-gated was applied to the
Egyptian Thebes in contradistinction to the rT&rdirvXos (hepidpylos, or
seven-gated) which designated the Grecian Thebes, within one day's
journey of Athens,




an English Opium-Eater I95
Courteous, and I hope indulgent reader, 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 said that my acquaintance with opium
began) to 1812. The years of academic life are now
over and gone-almost forgotten; the student's cap no
longer presses my temples; if my cap exists 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 thousands of excellent books in the Bodleian,
-viz., diligently perused by certain studious moths and
worms; or departed, however (which is all that I know
of its fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which
all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, etc.,
have departed, which occasional resemblances in the
present generation of tea-cups, etc., remind me of having
once possessed, but of whose departure and final fate I,
in common with most gownsmen of either university,
could give but an obscure and conjectural history. The
persecutions of the chapel bell, sounding its unwelcome
summons to matins, interrupts my slumbers no longer;
the porter who rang it is dead, and has ceased to disturb
anybody; and I, with many others who suffered much
from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed
to overlook his errors, and have forgiven him. Even
with the bell I am now in charity; it rings, I suppose,
as formerly, thrice a-day, and cruelly annoys, I doubt
not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace
of mind; but as to me, in this year I812, I regard its
treacherous voice no longer (treacherous, I call it, for,
by some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and
silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party);
its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let
the wind sit as favourably as the malice of the bell itself
could wish; for I am two hundred and fifty 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 i8I2, the year we are now arrived at, as well as




i96


Confessions of


for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying
German metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, etc. 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 I812-living
in a cottage; and with a single female servant (honi soit
qui mad y pense), who, amongst my neighbours, passes
by the name of my 'housekeeper.' And, as a scholar
and a man of learned education, I may presume to class
myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body
called gentlemen. Partly on the ground I have assigned
-partly because, from having no visible calling or
business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on
my private fortune-I am so classed by my neighbours;
and, by the courtesy of modern England, I am usually
addressed on letters, etc., Esquire, though having, I fear,
in the rigorous construction of heralds, antique or antic,
dressed like the knaves of spades or diamonds, but
slender pretensions to that distinguished honour;-yes,
in popular estimation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not
Justice of the Peace, nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I
married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On
Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since 'the rainy Sunday,' and 'the stately
Pantheon,' and 'the beatific druggist' of I804? Even
so. And how do I find my health after all this opiumeating? in short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I
thank you, reader. In fact, if I dared to say the real
and simple truth (though, in order to satisfy the theories
of some medical men, I ought to be ill), I was never
better in my life than in the spring of I812; and I hope
sincerely, that in quantity of claret, port, or ' London
particular Madeira,' which, in all probability, you, good
reader, have taken, and design to take, for every term
of eight years during your natural life, may as little
disorder your health as mine was disordered by all the
opium I had taken (though in quantity such that I
might well have bathed and swum in it) for the eight
years between 1804 and I812.  Hence you may see
again the danger of taking any medical advice from




an English Opium-Eater


I97


Anastasius; in divinity, for anything I know, he may be a
safe counsellor, but not in medicine. No; it is far better
to consult Dr Buchan, as.I did; for I never forgot that
worthy man's excellent suggestion, and I was 'particularly careful not to take above five-and-twenty ounces of
laudanum.' To this moderation and temperate use of
the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet at
least (that is, in I8I2) I am ignorant and unsuspicious
of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for
those who abuse its long-suffering. At the same time,
as yet I had been only a dilettante eater of opium; even
eight years' practice, with the single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not
been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an
article of daily diet. But now comes a different era.
Move on, then, if you please, reader, to I8I3.   In the
summer of the year we have just quitted, I had suffered
much in bodily health from distress of mind connected
with a melancholy event.     This event, being nowise
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 8I 2
had any share in that of 1813, I know not; but so it
was, that, in the latter year, I was attacked by a most
appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the
same as that which had caused me so much suffering in
youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old
dreams.   Now, then, it was-viz., in the year I813 -that I became a regular and confirmed (no longer an
intermitting) opium-eater. 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, and of my struggles with it, as might suffice to
1 Anastasius':-The reader of this generation will marvel at these
repeated references to Anastasius: it is now an almost forgotten book,
so vast has been the deluge of novel-writing talent, really original and
powerful, which has overflowed our literature during the lapse of
thirty-five years from the publication of these Confessions. Anastasius
was written by the famous and opulent Mr. Hope, and was in 182i a
book both of high reputation and of great influence amongst the leading
circles of society.




I98


Confessions of


establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer
with irritation and constant suffering; or, on the other
hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my
story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression
left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open
to the misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and
gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to
the final stage of opium eating (a misconstruction to
which there will be lurking predisposition in most
readers, from my previous acknowledgments. This is
the dilemma, the first horn of which is not to be thought
of. It remains, then, that I postulate so much as is
necessary for my purpose.  And let me take as full
credit for this as if I had demonstrated it, good reader,
at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not
so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion
through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you-viz., that I
could resist no longer-believe it liberally, and as an
act of grace, or else in mere prudence; for, if not, then
in my next edition I will make you believe and tremble;
and a force dnennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation,
vulgarly called yawning, I will terrify all readers of mine
from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall
think fit to make.
This, then, let me repeat: I postulate that, at the
time I began to take opium daily, I could not have
done otherwise. Whether, indeed, afterwards I might
not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even
when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which
I did make might not have been carried much further,
and my gradual re-conquests of lost ground might not
have been followed up much more energetically-these
are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might
make out a case of palliation; but (shall I speak ingenuously?) I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine,
that I am too much of an Eudaemonist; I hanker too
much after a state of happiness, both for myself and
others; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not,




an English Opium-Eater


I99


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 of The Porch1 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 opiumeater; that are pleasant men and courteous, such as
Chaucer describes, to hear confession or to give absolution, and will show some conscience in the penances
they inflict, or the efforts of abstinence they exact from
poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I can
no more endure, in my nervous state, than opium that
has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me
to send out a large freight of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement,
must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful one.   At my time of life (six-andthirty years of age 2), it cannot be supposed that I have
much energy to spare; in fact, I find it all little enough
for the intellectual labours I have on my hands; and,
therefore, let no man expect to frighten me, by a
few hard words, into embarking any part of it upon
desperate adventures of morality.
Desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle
in I8I3 was what I have mentioned; and from this date
the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed
opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular
day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask
whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the
heart fulfilled its functions. Now, then, reader, you
understand what I am; and you are by this time aware,
that no old gentleman, 'with a snow-white beard,' will
1 A handsome news-room, of which I was very courteously made
free, in passing through Manchester, by several gentlemen of that
place, is called either The Porch or The Portico, which in Greek is the
Stoa; from which I, a stranger in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves Stoics, or followers of Zeno. But
I have been since assured. that this is a mistake.
2 This was written at the time of original publication.
0




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Confessions of


have any chance of persuading me (like Anastasius) to
surrender 'the little golden receptacle of the pernicious
drug.' No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or
surgeons, that, whatever be their pretensions and skill
in their respective lines of practice, they must not hope
for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by
any savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadan of ab
stinence from opium. This being fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind; now,
then, reader, from the year I813, where all this time we
have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you
please, walk forward about three years more; draw up
the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character.
If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would
tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and
the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all
cry out, Hear him! hear him! As to the happiest day,
that must be very difficult for any wise man to assign;
because any event that could occupy so distinguished a
place in a man's retrospect of life, or be entitled to have
shed a special, separate, and supreme felicity on any
one day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as
that (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed
the same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on very
many years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or even to the happiest year, a man may perhaps
allowably point without discountenance from wisdom.
This year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have
now reached; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis
between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of
brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers),
set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloomy umbrage of
opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before
this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three hundred and twenty grains
of opium (that is, eight1 thousand drops of laudanum)
1 I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one
grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However,
as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no




an English Opium-Eater 201
per day, to forty grains, or one-eighth part.  Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest
melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black
vapours that I have seen roll away from the summit of a
mountain, drew off in one week; passed away with its
murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been
stranded, and is floated off by a spring-tide,
' That moveth altogether, if it move at all.'
Now, then, I was again happy: I now took only one
thousand drops of laudanum per day-and what was
that? A latter spring had come to close up the season
of youth. My brain performed its functions as healthily
as ever before. I read Kant again; and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of
pleasure expanded themselves to all around me; and, if
any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither,
hadgbeen announced to me in my unpretending cottage,
I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else might
be wanting to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I
would have given him as much as he wished, and in a
silver-gilt, if not golden, cup. And, by the way, now
that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember about
this time a little incident, which I mention because,
trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again
in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than
could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my
door. What business a Malay could have to transact
amongst the recesses of English mountains, is not my
business to conjecture; but possibly he was on his road
to a seaport-viz., Whitehaven, Workington, etc.-about
forty miles distant.1
infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons
vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about
one hundred drops; so that eight thousand drops, which obviously
read into eighty hundred drops, fill a small tea-spoon eighty times.
But large modern tea-spoons hold very much more. Some even
approach in their capacity to dessert-spoons. The reader sees how
much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
1 Between the seafaring populations on the coast of Lancashire, and
the corresponding populations on the coast of Cumberland (such as




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Confessions of


The servant who opened the door to him was a young
girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who had
never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban,
therefore, confounded her not a little; and as it turned
out that his knowledge of English was exactly commensurate with hers of Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if
either party had happened to possess any.        In this
dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of
her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, perhaps,
a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she
clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the
house. The group which presented itself, arranged as it
was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of
my fancy and my eye more powerfully than any of the
statuesque attitudes or groups exhibited in the ballets at
the opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex. In
a cottage kitchen, but not looking so much like that as
a rustic hall of entrance, being pannelled on the wall
with dark wood, that from age and rubbing resembled
oak, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of
dingy white relieved upon the dark pannelling; he had
placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to
relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity
contended with the feeling of simple awe which her
countenance expressed, as she gazed upon the tiger-cat
before her. A more striking picture there could not be
Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, etc.), there was a
slender current of interchange constantly going on, land especially in
the days of pressgangs-in part by sea, but in part also by land. By the
way, I may mention, as an interesting fact which I discovered from an
almanack and itinerary, dated about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's
reign (say 1579), that the official route in her days for queen's
messengers to the north of Ireland, and of course for travellers generally, was not (as now) through Grasmere, and thence by St. John's
Vale, Threlkeld (for the short cut by Shoulthwaite Moss was then
unknown), Keswick, Cockermouth, and Whitehaven.  Up to St.
Oswald's Church, Gresmere (so it was then spelled, in deference to its
Danish original), the route lay as at present. Thence it turned round
the lake to the left, crossed Hammerscar, up Little Langdale, across
Wrynose to Egremont, and from Egremont to Whitehaven.




an English Opium-Eater 203
imagined, than the beautiful English face of the girl,1
and its exquisite bloom, together with her erect and
independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and
bilious skin of the Malay, veneered with mahogany tints
by climate and marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes,
thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half-hidden
by the ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child from
a neighbouring cottage, who had crept in after him, and
was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst
with one hand he caught at the dress of the lovely girl
for protection.
My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two wordsthe Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium
(madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius. And,
as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's
Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words,
I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad; considering that, of such languages as I possessed, the Greek, in
point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an
Oriental one. He worshipped me in a devout manner,
and replied in what I suppose to have been Malay.     In
this way I saved my reputation as a linguist with my
neighbours; for the Malay had no means of betraying
the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an
hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure,
1 This girl, Barbara Lewthwaite, was already at that time a person
of some poetic distinction, being (unconsciously to herself) the chief
speaker in a little pastoral poem of Wordsworth's. That she was
really beautiful, and not merely so described by me for the sake of
improving the picturesque effect, the reader will judge from this line in
the poem, written perhaps ten years earlier, when Barbara might be
six years old:''Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare I '
This, coming from William Wordsworth, both a fastidious judge and a
truth-speaker of the severest literality, argues some real pretensions
to beauty, or real at that time.  But if is notorious that, in the
anthologies of earth through all her zones, one flower beyond every
other is liable to change, which flower is the countenance of woman.
Whether in his fine stanzas upon 'Mutability,' where the most pathetic
instances of this earthly doom are solemnly arrayed, Spenser has dwelt
sufficiently upon this, the saddest of all, I do not remember.




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I presented him, inter alia, with a piece of opium. To
him, as a native of the East, I could have no doubt that
opium was not less familiar than his daily bread; and
the expression of his face convinced me that it was.
Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation
when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth,
and bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one
mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill some half
dozen dragoons, together with their horses, supposing
neither bipeds nor quadrupeds to be regularly trained
opium-eaters. I felt some alarm for the poor creature;
but what could be done? I had given him the opium
in pure compassion for his solitary life, since, if he had
travelled on foot from London, it must be nearly three
weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any
human being. Ought I to have violated the laws of
hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an
emetic, thus frightening him into a notion that we were
going to sacrifice him to some English idol? No: there
was clearly no help for it. The mischief, if any, was
done.   He took his leave, and for some days I felt
anxious; but, as I never heard of any Malay, or of any
man in a turban, being found dead in any part of the
very slenderly peopled road between Grasmere and
Whitehaven, I became satisfied that he was familiar
with opium,l and that I must doubtless have done
him the service I designed, by giving one night of
respite from the pains of wandering.
This incident I have digressed to mention, because
this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he
assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected
with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon
my fancy, and through that upon my dreams, bringing
with him other Malays worse than himself, that ran
1 This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect
produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London
magistrate (Hariott's Struggles through Life, vol. iii. p. 391, third
edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum
for the gout, he took FORTY drops; the next night SIXTY, and on the
fifth night EIGHTY, without any effect whatever; and this at an
advanced age.




an English Opium-Eater 205
'           a-muck 1 at me, and led me into a world of nocturnal
troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my
intercalary year of happiness. I have said already that,
on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we
should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or
experiments, even though he were but a ploughboy, who
cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep in such
an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures,
or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles. But I, who have taken happiness,
both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East Indian and Turkish-who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with
a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general
benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with
the poison of eight thousand drops of laudanum per day
(and for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated
himself lately with a cancer, an English one, twenty years
ago, with plague, and a third,2 who was also English,
with hydrophobia), I, it will be admitted, must surely
now know what happiness is, if anybody does. And
therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness;
and, as the most interesting mode of communicating it,
I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every
evening during the intercalary year, when laudanum,
though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir
of pleasure.
Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley,8 eighteen
1 See the common accounts, in any eastern traveller or voyager, of
the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or
are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling.
2 He was a surgeon at Brighton.
s The cottage and the valley concerned in this description were not
imaginary: the valley was the lovely one, in those days, of Grasmere;
and the cottage was occupied for more than twenty years by myself, as
immediate successor, in the year I809, to Wordsworth. Looking to
the limitation here laid down-viz., in those days-the reader will inquire in what way Time can have affected the beauty of Grasmere.
Do the Westmoreland valleys turn grey-headed? 0 reader! this is a
painful memento of some of us I Thirty years ago, a gang of Vandals
(nameless, I thank heaven, to me), for the sake of building a mailcoach road that never would be wanted, carried, at a cost of 30ooo to




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miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two
miles long by three-quarters-of-a-mile in average width,
-the benefit of which provision is, that all the families
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 three and four
thousand feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not
(as a witty author has it) 'a cottage with a double coachhouse'; let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual
scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs,
so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the
walls and clustering around 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 its sternest shape. This is a most important
point in the science of happiness. And I am surprised
to see people overlook it, as if it were actually matter
of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is
not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put
up a petition, annually, for as much snow, hail, frost, or
storm of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly
afford. Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside-candles at four
o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters
closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the
the defrauded parish, a horrid causeway of sheer granite masonry, for
three-quarters-of-a-mile, right through the loveliest succession of secret
forest dells and shy recesses of the lake, margined by unrivalled ferns,
amongst which was the Osmunda regalis. This sequestered angle of
Grasmere is described by Wordsworth, as it unveiled itself on a September morning, in the exquisite poems on the ' Naming of Places.
From this also-viz., this spot of ground, and this magnificent crest
(the Osmunda)-was suggested that unique line-the finest independent line through all the records of verse,
' Or lady of the lake,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.'
Rightly, therefore, did I introduce this limitation. The Grasmere
before and after this outrage were two different vales.




an English Opium-Eater 207
floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly
without,
'And at the doors and windows seem to call,
As heaven and earth they would together mell;
Yet the least entrance find they none at all;
Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.'
Castle of Indolence.
All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in
a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these
delicacies cannot be ripened, without weather stormy or
inclement in some way or other. I am not 'particular'
whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that
(as Mr. Anti-slavery Clarkson says) 'you may lean your
back against it like a post.' I can put up even with
rain, provided that it rains cats and dogs, or, as sailors
say, 'great guns and marlinespikes'; 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 in winter for coals, candles, etc., if I am not to
have the article good of its kind?  No: a Canadian
winter for my money, or a Russian one, where every
man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the
fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure
am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night
fully, if it be much past St. Thomas's Day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards vernal indications: in fact, it must be divided by a thick wall of
dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. Start,
therefore, at the first week of November: thence to the
end of January, Christmas Eve being the meridian line,
you may compute the period when happiness is in
season, which in my judgment, enters the room with the
tea-tray. For tea, though ridiculed by those who are
naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of
influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the
favourite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my part,
I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum
against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who




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Confessions of


should have presumed to disparage it. But here, to save
myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will
introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest
of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages,
unless a good deal weather-stained; but, as the reader
now understands that it is a winter night, his services
will not be required except for the inside of the house.
Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and
not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader,
is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the drawing-room; but, being contrived 'a double debt to pay,'
it is also, and more justly, termed the library; for it
happens that books are the only article of property in
which I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I
have about five thousand, collected gradually since my
eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as
you can into this room. Make it populous with books;
and, furthermore, paint me a good fire; and furniture
plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of
a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table; and
(as it is clear that no creature can come to see one on
such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers
on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such
a thing, symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal
tea-pot-eternal a parte ante, and a parte post; for I
usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four in
the morning. And, as it is very unpleasant to make
tea, or to pour it out for one's-self, paint me a lovely
young woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like
Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's; but no, dear
M-! not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power
to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty; or that the witchcraft of
angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil.
Pass, then, my good painter, to something more within
its power; and the next article brought forward should
naturally be myself-a picture of the Opium-eater, with
his 'little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug' lying
beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have no
objection to see a picture of that; you may paint it, if




an English Opium-Eater 209
you choose; but I apprise you that no 'little' receptacle
would, even in I8I6, answer my purpose, who was at a
distance from the 'stately Pantheon' and all druggists
(mortal or otherwise). No: you may as well paint the
real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and
as much like a sublunary wine-decanter as possible. In
fact, one day, by a series of happily-conceived experiments, I discovered that it was a decanter. Into this
you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum; that,
and a book of German metaphysics placed by its side,
will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood;
but, as to myself, there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture;
that, being the hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the
criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court.
This seems reasonable; but why should I confess on
this point to a painter? or why confess it at all? If
the public (into whose private ear I am confidentially
whispering my Confessions, and not into any painter's)
should chance to have framed some agreeable picture
for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior-should have
ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant person or a
handsome face-why should I barbarously tear from it
so pleasing a delusion?-pleasing both to the public
and to me. No: paint me, if at all, according to your
own fancy; and since a painter's fancy should teem with
beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a
gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all
the ten categories of my condition, as it stood about
I816-17, up to the middle of which latter year I judge
myself to have been a happy man; and the elements of
that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you,
in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library,
in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter
evening, rain driving vindictively and with malice aforethought against the windows, and darkness such that you
cannot see your own hand when held up against the sky.
But now farewell, a long farewell, to happiness, winter
or summer! farewell to smiles and laughter! farewell to
peace of mind, to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed




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consolations of sleep! For more than three years and
a-half I am summoned away from these. Here opens
upon me an Iliad of woes: for I now enter upon
THE PAINS OF OPIUM
'As when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
SHELLEY'S Revolt of Islam.
Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must
request your attention, before we go farther, to a few
explanatory notes.
i. You are already aware, I hope —else you must
have a low opinion of my logic-that the opium
miseries, which are now on the point of pressing forward to the front of this narrative, connect themselves
with my early hardships in London (and therefore more
remotely with those in Wales) by natural links of affiliation-that is, the early series of sufferings was the parent
of the later. Otherwise, these Confessions would break
up into two disconnected sections-first, a record of
boyish calamities; secondly, a record (totally independent) of sufferings consequent upon excesses in
opium. And the two sections would have no link whatever to connect them, except the slight one of having
both happened to the same person. But a little attention will show the strictness of the inter-connection.
The boyish sufferings, whether in Wales or London,
pressing upon an organ peculiarly weak in my bodily
system-viz., the stomach-caused that subsequent distress and irritability of the stomach which drove me to
the use of opium as the sole remedy potent enough to
control it. Here already there is exposed a sufficient
casual connection between the two several sections of
my experience. The opium would probably never have
been promoted into the dignity of a daily and a life-long
resource, had it not proved itself to be the one sole
agent equal to the task of tranquillising the miseries left
behind by the youthful privations. Thus far the nexus,




an English Opium-Eater 211
as between cause and effect, is sufficiently established
between the one experience and the other-between the
boyish records and the records of mature life. There
needed no other nexus to justify the unity of the entire
Confessions. But, though not wanted, nevertheless it
happens that there is another and a distinct link connecting the two separate records. The main phenomenon
by which opium expressed itself permanently, and the
sole phenomenon that was communicable, lay in the
dreams (and in the peculiar dream-scenery) which
followed the opium  excesses.  But naturally these
dreams, and this dream-scenery, drew their outlines and
materials-their great lights and shadows-from those
profound revelations which had been ploughed so
deeply into the heart, from those encaustic records which
in the mighty furnaces of London life had been burnt
into the undying memory by the fierce action of misery.
And thus in reality the early experiences of erring childhood not only led to the secondary experiences of
opium, but also determined the particular form and
pressure of the chief phenomena in those secondary
experiences. Here is the briefest possible abstract of
the total case:-The final object of the whole record
lay in the dreams. For the sake of those the entire
narrative arose. But what caused the dreams? Opium
used in unexampled excess. But what caused this excess in the use of opium? Simply the early sufferings;
these, and these only, through the derangements which
they left behind in the animal economy. On this mode
of viewing the case, moving regressively from the end
to the beginning, it will be seen that there is one uninterrupted bond of unity running through the entire
succession of experiences-first and last: the dreams
were an inheritance from the opium; the opium was an
inheritance from the boyish follies.
2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and communicative of my own private history. It
may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think
aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to
inquire who is listening to me; for, if once I stop to




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consider what is proper to be said, I shall soon come to
doubt whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I
imagine myself writing at a distance of twenty-thirty
-fifty years ahead of this present moment, either for
the satisfaction of the few who may then retain any
interest in myself, or of the many (a number that is
sure to be continually growing) who will take an inextinguishable interest in the mysterious powers of opium.
For opium is mysterious; mysterious to the extent, at
times, of apparent self-contradiction; and so mysterious,
that my own long experience in its use-sometimes even
in its abuse-did but mislead me into conclusions ever
more and more remote from what I now suppose to be
the truth. Fifty-and-two years' experience of opium, as
a magical resource under all modes of bodily suffering,
I may now claim to have had-allowing only for some
periods of four and six months, during which, by unexampled efforts of self-conquest, I had accomplished a
determined abstinence from opium.1 These parantheses
1 With what final result, I have much difficulty in saying. Invariably, after such victories, I returned, upon deliberate choice (after
weighing all the consequences on this side and on that), to the daily
use of opium.  But with silent changes, many and great (worked
apparently by these reiterated struggles), in the opium-eating habits.
Amongst other changes was this, that the quantity required gradually
fell by an enormous proportion.  According to the modern slang
phrase, I had in the meridian stage of my opium career used 'fabulous'
quantities.  Stating the quantities-not in solid opium, but in the
tincture (known to everybody as laudanum)-mytdaily ration was eight
thousand drops. If you write down that amount in the ordinary way
as 8000, you see at a glance that you may read it into eight quantities
of a thousand, or into eight hundred quantities of ten, or lastly, into
eighty quantities of one hundred.  Now, a single quantity of one
hundred will about fill a very old-fashioned obsolete tea-spoon, of that
order which you find still lingering amongst the respectable poor.
Eighty such quantities, therefore, would have filled eighty of such
antediluvian spoons-that is, it would have been the common hospital
dose for three hundred and twenty adult patients. But the ordinary
tea-spoon of this present nineteenth century is nearly as capacious as
the dessert-spoon of our ancestors. Which I have heard accounted for
thus:-Throughout the eighteenth century, when first tea became
known to the working population, the tea-drinkers were almost exclusively women; men, even in educated classes, very often persisting
(down to the French Revolution) in treating such a beverage as an idle
and effeminate indulgence. This obstinate twist in masculine habits it
was that secretly controlled the manufacture of tea-spoons. Up to
Waterloo, tea-spoons were adjusted chiefly to the calibre of female




an English Opium-Eater 213
being subtracted, as also, and secondly, some off-and-on
fits of tentative and intermitting dalliance with opium in
the opening of my career-these deductions allowed for,
I may describe myself as experimentally acquainted with
opium for something more than half-a-century. What,
then, is my final report upon its good and evil results?
In particular, upon these two capital tendencies of
habitual opium-eating under the popular misconceptions; viz., its supposed necessity of continually clamouring for increasing quantities; secondly, its supposed
corresponding declension in power and efficacy. Upon
these ugly scandals, what is my most deliberate award?
At the age of forty, the reader is aware that, under our
ancestral proverb, every man is a fool or a physician.
Apparently our excellent ancestors, aiming undeniably
at alliteration, spelled physician with an f  And why
not? A man's physic might be undeniable, although
his spelling should be open to some slight improvements. But I presume that the proverb meant to exact
from any man only so much medical skill as should
undertake the responsibility of his own individual health.
It is my duty, it seems, thus far to be a physician-to
guarantee, so far as human foresight can guarantee, my
own corporeal sanity.  And this, trying the case by
ordinary practical tests, I have accomplished.  And I
add solemnly, that without opium most certainly I could
not have accomplished such a result. Thirty-five years
ago, beyond all doubt, I should have been in my grave.
And as to the two popular dilemmas-that either you
must renounce opium, or else indefinitely augment the
daily ration; and, secondly, that, even submitting to
such a postulate, you must content yourself, under any
scale of doses, with an effect continually decaying, in
fact, that you must ultimately descend into the despairing condition of the martyr to dram-drinking-at this
mouths. Since then, greatly to the benefit of the national health, the
grosser and browner sex have universally fallen into the effeminate
habit of tea-drinking; and the capacity of tea-spoons has naturally
conformed to the new order of cormorant mouths that have alighted
by myriads upon the tea-trays of these later generations.




214


Confessions of


point, I make a resolute stand, in blank denial of the
whole doctrine.  Originally, when first entering upon
my opium career, I did so with great anxiety: and
before my eyes floated for ever the analogies-dim, or
not dim, according to my spirits at the moment-of
the poor, perishing brandy-drinker, often on the brink
of delirium tremens I Opium I pursued under a harsh
necessity, as an unknown, shadowy power, leading I
knew not whither, and a power that might suddenly
change countenance upon this unknown road. Habitually I lived under such an impression of awe as we have
all felt from stories of fawns, or seeming fawns, that
have run before some mounted hunter for many a
league, until they have tempted him far into the mazes
of a boundless forest, and at that point, where all regress had become lost and impossible, either suddenly
vanished, leaving the man utterly bewildered, or assumed
some more fearful shape. A part of the evil which I
feared actually unfolded itself; but all was due to my
own ignorance, to neglect of cautionary measures, or to
gross mismanagement of my health in points where I
well knew the risks, but grievously underrated their
urgency and pressure.  I was temperate: that solitary
advantage I had; but I sank under the lulling seductions of opium into total sedentariness, and that whilst
holding firmly the belief, that powerful exercise was
omnipotent against all modes of debility or obscure
nervous irritations.  The account of my depression,
and almost of my helplessness, in the next memorandum (No. 3), is faithful as a description to the real
case.  But, in ascribing that case to opium, as any
transcendent and overmastering agency, I was thoroughly
wrong. Twenty days of exercise, twenty times twenty
miles of walking, at the ordinary pace of three and a-half
miles an hour, or perhaps half that amount, would have
sent me up as buoyantly as a balloon into regions of
natural and healthy excitement, where dejection is an
impossible phenomenon. 0 heavens! how man abuses
or neglects his natural resources I Yes, the thoughtful
reader is disposed to say; but very possibly distinguishing




an English Opium-Eater 215
between such natural resources and opium as a resource that is not natural, but highly artificial, or even
absolutely unnatural. I think otherwise: upon the basis
of my really vast, perhaps unequalled, experience (let me
add of my tentative experience, varying its trials in every
conceivable mode, so as to meet the question at issue
under every angle), I advance these three following
propositions, all of them unsuspected by the popular
mind, and the last of them (as cannot much longer fail
to be discovered) bearing a national value-I mean, as
meeting our English hereditary complaint:I. With respect to the morbid growth upon the
opium-eater of his peculiar habit, when once rooted in
the system, and throwing out tentacula like a cancer, it
is out of my power to deliver any such oracular judgment upon the case-i.e., upon the apparent danger of
such a course, and by what stages it might be expected
to travel towards its final consummation-as naturally I
should wish to do. Being an oracle, it is my wish to
behave myself like an oracle, and not to evade any
decent man's questions in the way that Apollo too often
did at Delphi. But, in this particular instance before
me, the accident of my own individual seamanship in
presence of this storm interfered with the natural evolution of the problem in its extreme form of danger. I
had become too uneasy under the consciousness of that
intensely artificial condition into which I had imperceptibly lapsed through unprecedented quantities of
opium; the shadows of eclipse were too dark and lurid
not to rouse and alarm me into a spasmodic effort
for reconquering the ground which I had lost. Such an
effort I made: every step by which I had gone astray
did I patiently unthread. And thus I fought off the
natural and spontaneous catastrophe, whatever that
might be, which mighty Nature would else have let
loose for redressing the wrongs offered to herself. But
what followed? In six or eight months more, upon
fresh movements arising of insupportable nervous irritation, I fleeted back into the same opium lull. To and
fro, up and down, did I tilt upon those mountainous
P




216


Confessions of


seas, for year after year. 'See-saw,l like Margery Daw,
that sold her bed and lay on straw.' Even so did I, led
astray, perhaps, by the classical example of Miss Daw,
see-saw for year after year, out and in, of manceuvres
the most intricate, dances the most elaborate, receding
or approaching, round my great central sun of opium.
Sometimes I ran perilously close into my perihelion;
sometimes I became frightened, and wheeled off into a
vast cometary aphelion, where for six months 'opium'
was a word unknown. How nature stood all these seesawings is quite a mystery to me: I must have led her a
sad life in those days. Nervous irritation forced me, at
times, upon frightful excesses; but terror from anomalous
symptoms sooner or later forced me back. This terror
was strengthened by the vague hypotheses current at that
period about spontaneous combustion. Might I not
myself take leave of the literary world in that fashion?
According to the popular fancy, there were two modes
of this spontaneity; and really very little to choose
between them. Upon one variety of this explosion, a
man blew up in the dark, without match or candle near
him, leaving nothing behind him but some bones, of no
use to anybody, and which were supposed to be his only
because nobody else ever applied for them.   It was
fancied that some volcanic agency-an unknown deposition-accumulated from some vast redundancy of brandy,
furnished the self-exploding principle. But this startled
the faith of most people; and a more plausible scheme
suggested itself, which depended upon the concurrence
of a lucifer-match. Without an incendiary, a man could
not take fire. We sometimes see the hands of inveterate
dram-drinkers throw off an atmosphere of intoxicating
vapours, strong enough to lay flies into a state of sleep
or coma; and on the same principle, it was supposed
that the breath might be so loaded with spirituous
1 See-saw,' etc.:-O dear reader, surely you don't want an oracle
to tell you that this is a good old nursery lyric, which through four
centuries has stood the criticism —stood the anger against Daw's
enemies-stood the pity for Daw herself, so infamously reduced to
straw-of children through eighty generations, reckoning five years to
each nursery succession.




an English Opium-Eater 217
particles, as to catch fire from a match applied to a pipe
when held between the lips. If so, then what should
hinder the 'devouring element' (as newspapers call fire)
from spreading through the throat to the cavity of the
chest: in which case, not being insured, the man would
naturally become a total loss. Opium, however, it will
occur to the reader, is not alcohol. That is true. But
it might, for anything that was known experimentally, be
ultimately worse. Coleridge, the only person known to
the public as having dallied systematically and for many
years with opium, could not be looked to for any candid
report of its history and progress; besides that, Coleridge
was under a permanent craze of having nearly accomplished his own liberation from opium; and thus he had
come to have an extra reason for self-delusion. Finding
myself, therefore, walking on a solitary path of bad
repute, leading whither no man's experience could tell
me, I became proportionably cautious; and if nature
had any plot for making an example of me, I was
resolved to baulk her. Thus it was that I never followed out the seductions of opium to their final
extremity. But, nevertheless, in evading that extremity,
I stumbled upon as great a discovery as if I had not
evaded it. After the first or second self-conquest in
this conflict-although finding it impossible to persist
through more than a few months in the abstinence from
opium-I remarked, however, that the domineering
tyranny of its exactions was at length steadily declining.
Quantities noticeably less had now become sufficient:
and after the fourth of these victories, won with continually decreasing efforts, I found that not only had
the daily dose (upon relapsing) suffered a self-limitation
to an enormous extent, but also that, upon any attempt
obstinately to renew the old doses, there arose a new
symptom-viz., an irritation on the surface of the skinwhich soon became insupportable, and tended to distraction.  In about four years, without any further
efforts, my daily ration had fallen spontaneously from a
varying quantity of eight, ten, or twelve thousand drops
of laudanum to about three hundred. I describe the




218


Confessions of


drug as laudanum, because another change ran along
collaterally with this supreme change-viz., that the solid
opium began to require a length of time, continually increasing, to expand its effects sensibly, oftentimes not
less than four hours; whereas the tincture manifested its
presence instantaneously.
Thus, then, I had reached a position from which
authoritatively it might be pronounced, as a result of
long, anxious, and vigilant experience, that, on the
assumption of earnest (even though intermitting) efforts
towards recurrent abstinences on the part of the opiumeater, the practice of indulging to the very greatest excess
in this narcotic tends to a natural (almost an inevitable)
euthanasy. Many years ago, when briefly touching on
this subject, I announced (as a fact even then made
known to me) that no instance of abstinence, though
it were but of three days' continuance, ever perishes.
Ten grains, deducted from a daily ration of five hundred,
will tell through a series of many weeks, and will be
found again modifying the final result, even at the close
of the year's reckoning. At this day, after a half-century
of oscillating experience, and after no efforts or trying
acts of self-denial beyond those severe ones attached to
the several processes (five or six in all) of reconquering
my freedom from the yoke of opium, I find myself pretty
nearly at the same station which I occupied at that vast
distance of time. It is recorded of Lord Nelson that,
even after the Nile and Copenhagen, he still paid the
penalty, on the first days of resuming his naval life,
which is generally exacted by nature from the youngest
little middy or the rawest griffin -viz., sea-sickness.
And this happens to a considerable proportion of sailors:
they do not recover their sea-legs till some days after
getting afloat. The very same thing happens to veteran
opium-eaters, when first, after long intermissions, resuming too abruptly their ancient familiarities with opium.
It is a fact, which I mention as indicating the enormous
revolutions passed through, that, within these five years,
I have turned pale, and felt warnings, pointing towards
such an uneasiness, after taking not more than twenty




an English Opium-Eater 219
grains of opium. At present and for some years, I have
been habitually content with five or six grains daily,
instead of three hundred and twenty to four hundred
grains. Let me wind up this retrospect with saying,
that the powers of opium, as an anodyne, but still more
as a tranquilliser of nervous and anomalous sensations,
have not in the smallest degree decayed; and that, if it
has casually unveiled its early power of exacting slight
penalties from any trivial inattention to accurate proportions, it has more than commensurately renewed its
ancient privilege of lulling irritation and of supporting
preternatural calls for exertion.
My first proposition, therefore, amounts to this-that
the process of weaning one's-self from the deep bondage
of opium, by many people viewed with despairing eyes,
is not only a possible achievement, and one which grows
easier in every stage of its progress, but is favoured and
promoted by nature in secret ways that could not,
without some experience, have been suspected. This,
however, is but a sorry commendation of any resource
making great pretensions, that, by a process confessedly
trying to human firmness, it can ultimately be thrown
aside. Certainly little would be gained by the negative
service of cancelling a drawback upon any agency whatever, until it were shown that this drawback has availed
to disturb and neutralise great positive blessings lying
within the gift of that agency. What are the advantages
connected with opium that can merit any such name as
blessings?
II. Briefly let me say, in the second proposition, that
if the reader had, in any South American forest, seen
growing rankly some great febrifuge (such as the Jesuits'
bark), he would probably have noticed it with slight
regard. To understand its value, he must first have
suffered from intermittent fever. Bark might strike him
as an unnatural stimulant; but, when he came to see
that tertian or quartan fever was also an unnatural
pressure upon human energies, he would begin to guess
that two counter unnaturals may terminate in one most
natural and salubrious result. Nervous irritation is the




220


Confessions of


secret desolator of human life; and for this there is
probably no adequate controlling power but that of
opium, taken daily, under steady regulation.
III. But even more momentous is the burden of my
third proposition. Are you aware, reader, what it is
that constitutes the scourge (physically speaking) of
Great Britain and Ireland?  All readers, who direct
any part of their attention to medical subjects, must
know that it is pulmonary consumption. If you walk
through a forest at certain seasons, you will see what is
called a blaze of white paint upon a certain eZite of the
trees marked out by the forester as ripe for the axe.
Such a blaze, if the shadowy world could reveal its
futurities, would be seen everywhere distributing its
secret badges of cognisance amongst our youthful men
and women. Of those that, in the expression of Pericles,
constitute the vernal section of our population, what a
multitudinous crowd would be seen to wear upon their
foreheads the same sad ghastly blaze, or some equivalent
symbol of dedication to an early grave. How appalling
in its amount is this annual slaughter amongst those that
should by birthright be specially the children of hope,
and levied impartially from every rank of society! Is
the income-tax or the poor-rate, faithful as each is to its
regulating tide-tables, paid by any class with as much
punctuality as this premature forilegium, this gathering
and rendering up of blighted blossoms, by all classes?
Then comes the startling question-that pierces the
breaking hearts of so many thousand afflicted relatives
-Is there no remedy? Is there no palliation of the
evil? Waste not a thought upon the idle question
whether he that speaks is armed with this form or that
form  of authorisation and sanction!  Think within
yourself how infinite would be the scorn of any poor
sorrow-stricken mother, if she-standing over the coffin
of her daughter-could believe or could imagine that any
vestige of ceremonial scruples, or of fool-born superstitions, or the terror of a word, or old traditional prejudice,
had been allowed to neutralise one chance in a thousand
for her daughter-had by possibility (but, as I could tell




an English Opium-Eater 221
her, had sometimes to a certainty) stepped between
patients and deliverance from the grave, sure and perfect! ' What matter,' she would cry out, indignantly,
'who it is that says the thing, so long as the thing itself
is true?' It is the potent and faithful word that is
wanted, in perfect slight of the organ through which it is
uttered. Let me premise this notorious fact, that all
consumption, though latent in the constitution, and
indicated often to the eye in bodily conformation, does
not therefore manifest itself as a disease, until some form
of 'cold,' or bronchitis, some familiar affection of the
chest or of the lungs, arises to furnish a starting-point
for the   morbid development.1      Now    the  one fatal
blunder lies in suffering that development to occur;
and the one counter-working secret for pre-arrestment
of this evil lies in steadily, by whatever means, keeping
up and promoting the insensible perspiration. In that
one simple art of controlling a constant function of the
animal economy, lies a magician's talisman for defeating
the forces leagued against the great organs of respiration.
Pulmonary affections, if not previously suffered to develop
themselves, cannot live under the hourly counter-working
of this magical force. Consequently, the one question
in arrear is, what potent drug is that which possesses
this power, a power like that of 'Amram's son,' for
evoking salubrious streams, welling forth benignly from
systems else parched and arid as rocks in the wilderness?
There is none that I know of answering the need but
opium. The powers of that great agent I first learned
dimly to guess at from a remark made to me by a lady
1 Here is a parallel case, equally fatal where it occurs, but happily
moving within a far narrower circle. About fifty years ago, Sir
Everard Home, a surgeon of the highest class, mentioned as a dreadful
caution, that, within his own experience, many an indolent tumour in
the face, not unfrequently the most trifling pimple, which for thirty or
more years had caused no uneasiness whatever, suddenly might chance
to receive the slightest possible wound from a razor in the act of
shaving. What followed? Once disturbed, the trivial excrescence
became an open cancer. Is the parallel catastrophe in the pulmonary
system, when pushed forward into development, at all less likely to
hide its importance from uninstructed eyes? Yet, on the other hand,
it is a thousand times more likely to happen.




222


Confessions of


in London; then, and for some time previously, she
had been hospitably entertaining Coleridge, whom,
indeed, she tended with the anxiety of a daughter.
Consequently, she was familiarly acquainted with his
opium habits; and on my asking, in reply to some
remark of hers, how she could be so sure as her words
implied, that Coleridge was just then likely to be incapacitated for writing (or, indeed, for any literary
exertion), she said, 'Oh, I know it well by the glistening of his cheeks.' Coleridge's face, as is well known to
his acquaintances, exposed a large surface of cheek;
too large for the intellectual expression of his features
generally, had not the final effect been redeemed by
what Wordsworth styled his 'godlike forehead.' The
result was, that no possible face so broadly betrayed and
published any effects whatever, especially these lustrous
effects from excesses in opium. For some years I failed
to consider reflectively, or else, reflecting, I failed to
decipher, this resplendent acreage of cheek. But at last,
either prorio marte, or prompted by some medical hint,
I came to understand that the glistening face, glorious
from afar like the old Pagan face of the demigod
AEsculapius, simply reported the gathering accumulations of insensible perspiration. In the very hour, a
memorable hour, of making that discovery, I made
another. My own history, medically speaking, involved
a mystery. At the commencement of my opium career,
I had myself been pronounced repeatedly a martyr-elect
to pulmonary consumption.    And although, in the
common decencies of humanity, this opinion upon my
prospects had always been accompanied with some
formal words of encouragement-as, for instance, that
constitutions, after all, varied by endless differences;
that nobody could fix limits to the powers of medicine,
or, in default of medicine, to the healing resources of
nature herself; yet, without something like a miracle
in my favour, I was instructed to regard myself as a
condemned subject.   That was the upshot of these
agreeable communications; alarming enough; and they
were rendered more so by these three facts:-first, that




an English Opium-Eater 223
the opinions were pronounced by the highest authorities
in Christendom-viz., the physicians at Clifton and the
Bristol Hotwells, who saw more of pulmonary disorders
in one twelvemonth than the rest of the profession
through all Europe in a century; for the disease, it
must be remembered, was almost peculiar as a national
scourge to Britain, interlinked with the local accidents
of the climate and its restless changes; so that only in
England could it be studied; and even there only in
perfection at these Bristolian adjacencies-the reason
being this, all opulent patients resorted to the Devonshire watering-places, where the balmy temperature of
the air and prevailing winds allowed the myrtle and
other greenhouse shrubs to stand out-of-doors all winter
through; and naturally on the road to Devonshire all
patients alike touched at Clifton. There I was myself
continually resident. Many, therefore, and of supreme
authority, were the prophets of evil that announced to
me my doom. Secondly, they were countenanced by
the ugly fact that I out of eight children was the one
who most closely inherited the bodily conformation of
a father who had died of consumption at the early age
of thirty-nine. Thirdly, I offered at the first glance, to
a medical eye, every symptom of phthisis broadly and
conspicuously developed. The hectic colours on the
face, the nocturnal perspirations, the growing embarrassment of the respiration, and other expressions
of gathering feebleness under any attempts at taking
exercise-all these symptoms were steadily accumulating
between the age of twenty-two and twenty-four. What
was it that first arrested them? Simply the use, continually becoming more regular, of opium. Nobody
recommended this drug to me; on the contrary, under
that ignorant horror which everywhere invested opium,
I saw too clearly that any avowed use of it would expose
me to a rabid persecution.' Under the sincere and
1 ' Rabid tersecution':-I do not mean that, in the circumstances
of my individual position, any opening could have arisen to an opposition more than verbal; since it would have been easy for me at all
times to withdraw myself by hundreds of leagues from controversies




224


Confessions of


unaffected hope of saving me from destruction, I should
have been hunted into the grave within six months. I
kept my own counsel; said nothing; awakened no
suspicions; persevered more and more determinately
in the use of opium; and finally effected so absolute
a conquest over all pulmonary symptoms, as could not
have failed to fix upon me the astonishment of Clifton,
had not the sense of wonder been broken by the lingering time consumed in the several stages of the malady,
and still more effectually by my own personal withdrawal
from Clifton and its neighbourhoods.
Finally, arose what will inevitably turn out a more
decisive chapter in such a record. I had always fixed
my eyes and my expectations upon a revolution in the
social history of opium, which could not (as I assured
myself) by accident or by art be materially deferred.
The great social machinery of life-insurance, supposing
no other agency to be brought into play, how would
that affect the great medicinal interests of opium? I
knew that insurance offices, and the ablest actuaries of
such offices, were not less ignorant upon the real merits
of the opium question, and (which was worse) not less
profoundly prejudiced, or less fanatical in their prejudices,
than the rest of society. But, then, there were interests,
growing continually, which would very soon force them
into relaxing these prejudices. It would be alleged, at
first, that opium-eating increased the risk of a lifeinsurance. Waiving the question whether it really did
increase that risk, in any case that increase of risk,
like other risks, could be valued, and must be valued.
New habits were arising in society: that I well knew.
And the old machineries for insuring life interests,
under these or any other shifting conditions, would
be obliged to adapt themselves to changing circumupon the case. But the reasons for concealment were not the less
urgent. For it would have been painful to find myself reduced to the
dilemma of either practising habitual and complex dissimulation, or,
on the other hand, of throwing myself headlong into that fiery vortex
of hotheaded ignorance upon the very name of opium, which to this
hour (though with less of rancorous bigotry) makes it hazardous to
avow any daily use of so potent a drug.




an English Opium-Eater 225
stances.  If the old offices should be weak enough
to persist in their misdirected obstinacy, new ones would
arise. Meantime the history of this question moved
through the following aspects:-Sixteen and seventeen
years ago, the offices all looked with horror upon opiumeaters. Thus far, all men must have disapproved the
principles of their policy. Habitual brandy-drinkers met
with no repulse. And yet alcohol leads into daily
dangers-for instance, that of delirium tremens. But no
man ever heard of opium leading into delirium tremens.
In the one case, there are well-ascertained and notorious
dangers besetting the path; but, in the other, supposing
any corresponding dangers to exist, they have yet to be
discovered. However, the offices would not look at us
who came forward avowing ourselves to be opium-eaters.
Myself in particular they regarded, I believe, as the
abomination of desolation. And fourteen offices in succession, within a few months, repulsed me as a candidate
for insurance on that solitary ground of having owned
myself to be an opium-eater. The insurance was of
very little consequence to myself, though involving some
interest to others. And I contented myself with saying,
' Ten years hence, gentlemen, you will have come to
understand your own interests better.' In less than
seven years I received a letter from Mr. Tait, surgeon to
the Police Force in Edinburgh, reporting a direct investigation officially pursued by him under private instructions
received from two or more insurance offices. I knew, at
the beginning of these seven years, or had strong reasons
for believing, that the habit of opium-eating was spreading extensively, and through classes of society widely
disconnected. This diffusion would, beyond a doubt,
as one of its earliest consequences, coerce the insurance
offices into a strict revision of their old blind policy.
Accordingly it had already done so; and the earliest
fruits of this revolution were now before me in the proofsheets so obligingly transmitted by Mr. Tait. His object,
as I understood it, in sending these proofs to myself, was
simply to collect such additional notices, suggestions, or
sceptical queries, as might reasonably be anticipated




226


Confessions of


from any reflective opium experience so extensive as my
own. Most unhappily, this gentleman, during the course
of our brief correspondence, was suddenly attacked by
typhus fever; and, after a short illness, to my own exceeding regret, he died. On all accounts I had reason
for sorrow. Knowing him only through his very interesting correspondence with myself, I had learned to
form high expectations from Mr. Tait's philosophic spirit
and his determined hostility to traditional cant. He had
recorded, in the communications made to myself, with
great minuteness and anxiety for rigour of accuracy, the
cases of more than ninety patients. And he had shown
himself inexorably deaf to all attempts at confounding
evils specially belonging to opium as a stimulant, as a
narcotic, or as a poison, with those which belong to
opium merely as a cause of constipation or other ordinary
irregularities in the animal economy. Most people of
sedentary habits, but amongst such people notoriously
those who think much, need some slight means of stimulating the watchwork of the animal system into action.
Neglect of such means will of course derange the health.
But in such derangements there is no special impeachment of opium: many thousands of agents terminate
in the same or more obstinate derangements, unless
vigilantly counteracted. The paramount mission of
Mr. Tait, under his instructions from insurance offices,
as I interpreted his own account of this mission, was, to
report firmly and decisively upon the tendencies of opium
in relation to the lengthening or shortening of life. At
that point where his proof-sheets were interrupted by the
fatal attack of fever, he had not entirely finished his
record of cases; so that his final judgment or summing
up had not commenced. It was, however, evident to
me in what channel this final judgment would have
flowed. To a certainty, he would have authorised his
clients (the insurance offices) to dismiss all anxiety as to
the life-abridging tendencies of opium. But he would
have pointed their jealousy in another direction-viz.,
this, that in some proportion of cases there may always
be a reasonable ground for suspecting, not the opium as




an English Opium-Eater 227
separately in itself any cause of mischief, but the opium
as a conjectural indication of some secret distress or
irritation that had fastened upon the system, and had
in that way sought relief; cases, in short, which the use
of opium had not caused, but which, on the contrary,
had caused the use of opium;-opium having been
called in to redress or to relieve the affection. In all
such circumstances, the insurance office is entitled to
call for a frank disclosure of the ailment; but not, as
hitherto, entitled to assume the opium as itself an
ailment. It may very easily have happened, that simply
the genial restoration derived from opium, its power of
qualifying a man suddenly to face (that is, upon an
hour's warning to face) some twelve hours' unusual
exertion, qualifying him both as to spirits and as to
strength; or again, simply the general purpose of seeking relief from ennui, or taedium vita-any one of these
motives may satisfactorily account for the applicant's
having resorted to opium. He might reply to the office
in Professor Wilson's word,1 'Gentlemen, I am a
Hedonist; and, if you must know why I take opium,
that's the reason why.' But still, upon every admission
from a candidate that he took opium, it would be a
prudent question and a just question on the part of the
office, to ask 'why'; and in what circumstances the
practice had originated.  If in any local uneasiness,
then would arise a natural right on the part of the office
to press for a surgical examination. But, apart from
such special cases, it was evident that this acute and
experienced surgeon saw no reason whatever in the simple
practice of opium-eating for hesitating upon a life-insurance proposal, or for exacting a higher rate of premium.
Here I pause. The reader will infer, from what I
have now said, that all passages, written at an earlier
period under cloudy and uncorrected views of the evil
agencies presumable in opium, stand retracted; although,
shrinking from the labour of altering an error diffused so
1 From the Greek word for voluptuous pleasure-viz., Hedone
(H8EIovi)-Professor Wilson coined the English word Hedonist, which
he sometimes applied in playful reproach to myself and others,




228            Confessions of
widely under my own early misconceptions of the truth,
I have suffered them to remain as they were. My general
views upon the powers and natural tendencies of opium
were all supported and strengthened by this fortunate
advantage of a professional correspondence. My special
doctrine I now repeat at this point of valediction, and in
a rememberable form. Lord Bacon said once, too boldly
and hazardously, that he who discovers the secret of
making myrrh soluble by human blood has discovered
the secret of immortal life. I propose a more modest
form of magic-that he who discovers the secret of
stimulating and keeping up unintermittingly the insensible perspiration, has discovered the secret of
intercepting pulmonary consumption. In my medical
character, I here take leave of the reader, and fall back
into the current of my regular narrative.
3. My studies have now been long interrupted. I
cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a
moment's endurance. Yet I sometimes read aloud for
the pleasure of others; because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess; and formerly, if I
had any vanity at all connected with' any endowment or
attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had observed
that no accomplishment is more rare. Actors are the
worst readers of all. John Kemble is not effective as a
reader, though he has the great advantage of mature
scholarship; and his sister, the immortal Siddons, with
all her superiority to him in voice, reads even less
effectively. She reads nothing well but dramatic works.
In the Paradise Lost, which I heard her attempt at
Barley Wood, her failure was distressing; almost as
distressing as the sycophantic applause of the surrounding company-all lost, of course, in nearly speechless
admiration. Yet I am sensible that this contemptuous
feeling for the circle of admirers is scarcely justified.
What should the poor creatures have done? Already,
in the mere attempt to win their suffrages, in placing




an English Opium-Eater 229
herself once again upon trial, there was a condescension
on the part of Mrs. Siddons, after which free judgment
became impossible.  I felt a wish to address Mrs.
Siddons thus-You that have read to royalty at Windsor,
nay, have even been desired to sit down at Windsor
whilst reading, ever afterwards are a privileged person,
liable to no accent of truth. Our feelings, as not free to
take any natural expression, can be of no value. Suffer
us to be silent, if only for the dignity of human nature.
And do yourself be silent, if only for the dignity of that
once unequalled voice. Neither Coleridge nor Southey
is a good reader of verse. Southey is admirable almost
in all things, but not in this. Both he and Coleridge
read as if crying, or at least wailing lugubriously.
People in general either read poetry without any passion
at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature. Of late,
if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been
by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the
great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise
Regained, when read aloud by myself. We are far from
towns; but a young lady sometimes comes and drinks
tea with us; at her request and M   's, I now and
then read Wordsworth's poems to them. (Wordsworth,
by-the-bye, is the only poet I ever met who could read
his own verses; often, indeed, he reads admirably.)
For nearly two years I believe that I read nothing
and studied nothing. Analytic studies are continuous
studies, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or
fragmentary efforts. All these were become insupportable to me; I shrank from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish
the greater from remembering the time when I grappled
with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further
reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole
life, had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to
the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single
work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an
unfinished work of Spinosa's-viz., De Emendatione
Humani Intellectis. This was now lying locked up as
by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct begun




230


Confessions of


upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect;
and, instead of surviving me, as a monument of wishes
at least, and aspirations, and long labours, dedicated to
the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God
had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was
likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes
defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a
superstructure, of the grief and the ruin of the architect.
In this state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned
my attention to political economy; my understanding,
which formerly had been as active and restless as a
panther, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all),
sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers
this advantage to a person in my state, that, though it
is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say,
but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts on
and through each part), yet still 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 a great call made by political economy at this
crisis for a new law and a transcendent legislator.
Suddenly, in I8i8, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down
Mr. Ricardo's book; and, recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of some coming legislator for this
science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter,
'Thou art the man!' Wonder and curiosity were
emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I
wondered once more-wondered at myself that could
once again be stimulated to the effort of reading; and
much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work been really written during the tumultuous
hurry of the nineteenth century? Could it be that an
Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but
oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had
accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a
century of thought, had failed even to advance by one




an English Opium-Eater 231
hair's-breadth? Previous writers had been crushed and
overlaid by the enormous weights of facts, details, and
exceptions; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the
understanding itself, laws which first shot arrowy light
into the dark chaos of materials, and had thus constructed what hitherto was but a collection of tentative
discussions into a science of regular proportions, now
first standing upon an eternal basis.
Thus did one simple work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity
which I had not known for years; it roused me even
to write, or, at least, to dictate what M-  wrote for
me. It seemed to me that some important truths had
escaped even 'the inevitable eye' of Mr. Ricardo; and,
as these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I
could express or illustrate them briefly and elegantly by
algebraic symbols, the whole would hardly have reached
the bulk of a pamphlet. With M — for my amanuensis,
even at this time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up, therefore, my Prolegomena to all Future
Systems of Political Economy.
This exertion, however, was but a momentary flash,
as the sequel showed. Arrangements were made at a
provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some
days, on this account. The work was even twice advertised; and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment
of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a
dedication, which I wished to make impressive, to Mr.
Ricardo.  I found myself quite unable to accomplish
all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the
compositor dismissed, and my Prolegomena rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
In thus describing and illustrating my intellectual
torpor, I use terms that apply, more or less, to every
part of the years during which I was under the Circean
spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might,
indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I
seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an
answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the
o




232


Confessions of


utmost that I could accomplish; and often that not
until the letter had lain for weeks, or even months, on
my writing-table. Without the aid of M-, my whole
domestic economy, whatever became of political economy,
must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I shall not
afterwards allude to this part of the case; it is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, most
oppressive and tormenting, from the sense of incapacity
and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident
to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate
labours, and from the remorse which must often exasperate
the stings of these evils to a conscientious mind. The
opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or
aspirations; he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever
to realise what he believes possible, and feels to be
exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of
what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of
execution only, but even of proposing or willing. He
lies under a world's weight of incubus and nightmare;
he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as
a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor
of paralysis, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love:-he
would lay down his life if he might but rise and walk;
but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot so much as
make an effort to move.
But from this I now pass to what is the main subject
of these latter Confessions-to the history and journal
of what took place in my dreams; for these were the
immediate and proximate cause of shadowy terrors that
settled and brooded over my whole waking life.
The first notice I had of any important change going
on in this Fpart of my physical economy, was from the
re-awaking of a state of eye oftentimes incident to
childhood. I know not whether my reader is aware
that many children have a power of painting, as it were,
upon the darkness all sorts of phantoms; in some that
power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others
have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or
summon such phantoms; or, as a child once said to me,




an English Opium-Eater 233
when I questioned him on this matter, 'I can tell them
to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when
I don't tell them to come.' He had by one-half as
unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman
centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of I8I7 this
faculty became increasingly distressing to me: at night,
when I lay awake in bed, vast processions moved along
continually in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending
stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as
stories drawn from times before CEdipus or Priam,
before Tyre, before Memphis. And, concurrently with
this, a corresponding change took place in my dreams;
a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within
my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more
than earthly splendour. And the four following facts
may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time:i. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a
sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the
dreaming states of the brain in one point-that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary
act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to
my dreams; and at length I feared to exercise this
faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yet
baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so
whatsoever things capable of being visually represented
I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped
themselves into phantoms for the eye; and, by a process
apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in
faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic
ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my
dreams, into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. This and all other changes in my dreams were
accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and funereal melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I
seemed every night to descend-not metaphorically, but
literally to descend-into chasms and sunless abysses,
depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless
that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel
that I had re-ascended. Why should I dwell upon this?
For indeed the state of gloom which attended these




234              Confessions of
gorgeous spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness,
as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached
by words.
3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of
time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the
bodily eye is not fitted to receive.  Space swelled, and
was amplified to an extent of unutterable and selfrepeating infinity. This disturbed me very much less
than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed
to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one
night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a
duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.
4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten
scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be
said to recollect them; for, if I had been told of them
when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed
as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and
clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognised them  instantaneously.  I
was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in
her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very
verge of death but for the assistance which reached her
at the last critical moment, she saw in a moment her
whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents, arrayed
before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultaneously; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly
for comprehending the whole and every part.' This,
1 The heroine of this remarkable case was a girl of about nine years
old; and there can be little doubt that she looked down as far within
the crater of death-that awful volcano-as any human being ever can
have done that has lived to draw back and to report her experience.
Not less than ninety years did she survive this memorable escape; and
I may describe her as in all respects a woman of remarkable and
interesting qualities. She enjoyed throughout her long life, as the
reader will readily infer, serene and cloudless health; had a masculine
understanding; reverenced truth not less than did the Evangelists; and
led a life of saintly devotion, such as might have glorified ' Hilarion or
Paul.'-(The words in italic are Ariosto's.)-I mention these traits as
characterising her in a memorable extent, that the reader may not
suppose himself relying upon a dealer in exaggerations, upon a
credulous enthusiast, or upon a careless wielder of language. Forty



an English Opium-Eater 235
from some opium experiences, I can believe; I have,
indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern
books, and accompanied by a remark which probably 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 ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible; a thousand
accidents may and will interpose a veil between our
present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the
mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away
this veil.  But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the
inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to
withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in
fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over
them as a veil; and that they are waiting to be revealed,
five years had intervened between the first time and the last time of her
telling me this anecdote, and not one iota had shifted its ground
amongst the incidents, nor had any the most trivial of the circumstantiations suffered change. The scene of the accident was the least
of valleys, what the Greeks of old would have called an!dyKos, and we
English should properly call a dell. Human tenant it had none: even
at noonday it was a solitude; and would oftentimes have been a silent
solitude but for the brawling of a brook-not broad, but occasionally
deep-which ran along the base of the little hills. Into this brook,
probably into one of its dangerous pools, the child fell: and, according
to the ordinary chances she could have had but a slender prospect
indeed of any deliverance; for, although a dwelling-house was close
by, it was shut out from view by the undulations of the ground. How
long the child lay in the water was probably never inquired earnestly
until the answer had become irrecoverable; for a servant, to whose care
the child was then confided, had a natural interest in suppressing the
whole case. From the child's own account, it should seem that
asphyxia must have announced its commencement. A process of
struggle and deadly suffocation was passed through half consciously.
This process terminated by a sudden blow apparently on or in the
brain, after which there was no pain or conflict; but in an instant succeeded a dazzling rush of light; immediately after which came the
solemn apocalypse of the entire past life. Meantime, the child's disappearance in the water had happily been witnessed by a farmer who
rented some fields in this little solitude, and by a rare accident was
riding through them at the moment. Not being very well mounted, he
was retarded by the hedges and other fences in making his way down
to the water; some time was thus lost; but once at the spot, he
leaped in, booted and spurred, and succeeded in delivering one that
must have been as nearly counted amongst the populations of the
grave as perhaps the laws of the shadowy world can suffer to return.




236


Confessions of


whenever the obscuring daylight itself shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now
cite a few illustrative cases; and shall then cite such
others as I remember, in any order that may give them
most effect as pictures to the reader.
I had been in youth, and ever 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 solemn and
appalling sounds, emphatically representative of Roman
majesty, the two words so often occurring in Livy, Consul
Romanus; especially when the consul is introduced in
his military character. I mean to say, that the words
king, sultan, regent, etc., 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 critically familiar with one period of English
history-viz., the period of the Parliamentary Warhaving been attracted by the moral grandeur of some
who figured in that day, and by the interesting memoirs
which survive those unquiet times. Both these parts
of my lighter reading, having furnished me often with
matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for
my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon
the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a
crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And
I heard it said, or I said to myself, 'These are English
ladies from the unhappy times of Charles i. These are
the wives and daughters of those who met in peace, and
sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or
by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August I642,1
1 I think (but at the moment have no means of verifying my conjecture) that this day was the 24th of August. On or about that day
Charles raised the royal standard at Nottingham; which, ominously
enough (considering the strength of such superstitions in the seventeenth
century, and, amongst the generations of that century, more especially
in this particular generation of the Parliamentary War), was blown
down during the succeeding night. Let me remark, in passing, that




an English Opium-Eater 237
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 at the court of
George iv. Yet even in my dream I knew 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-shaking sound of Consul
Romanus; and immediately came 'sweeping by' in
gorgeous paludaments, Paullus or Marius, girt around
by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic
hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos2 of
the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's
Antiquities of Rome, Coleridge, then standing by, described to me a set of plates from that artist, called his
Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions
during the delirium of a fever. Some of these (I describe
only from memory of Coleridge's account) represented
vast Gothic halls; on the floor of which stood mighty
engines and machinery, wheels, cables, catapults, etc.,
expressive of enormous power put forth, or resistance
overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you
perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his way
upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little
farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step
onwards to him who should reach the extremity, except
into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor
Piranesi, at least you suppose that his labours must now
in some way terminate. But raise your eyes, and behold
a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again
Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very
no falsehood can virtually be greater or more malicious than that which
imputes to Archbishop Laud a special or exceptional faith in such mute
warnings.
1'The crimson tunic':-The signal which announced a day of
battle.
2 ' AIalagmos':-A word expressing collectively the gathering of
the Roman war-cries-Aldla, Aldla!




238               Confessions of
brink of the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, and a
still more aerial flight is descried; and there, again, is
the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours: and
so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless 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 the malady, the splendours of my dreams were indeed
chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities
and palaces as never yet was beheld by the waking eye,
unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet 1 I cite
the part of a passage which describes, as an appearance
actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city-boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour without end I
Fabric it seem'd of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars-illumination of all gems I
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.'
1 ' From a great modern poet':-Whatpoet? It was Wordsworth;
and why did I not formerly name him? This throws a light backwards
upon the strange history of Wordsworth's reputation.  The year in
which I wrote and published these Confessions was I821; and at that
time the name of Wordsworth, though beginning to emerge from the
dark cloud of scorn and contumely which had hitherto overshadowed
it, was yet most imperfectly established. Not until ten years later was
his greatness cheerfully and generally acknowledged. I, therefore, as
the very earliest (without one exception) of all who came forward, in
the beginning of his career, to honour and welcome him, shrank with
disgust from making any sentence of mine the occasion for an explosion
of vulgar malice against him. But the grandeur of the passage here
cited inevitably spoke for itself; and he that would have been most
scornful on hearing the name of the poet coupled with this epithet of
'great' could not but find his malice intercepted, and himself cheated
into cordial admiration, by the splendour of the verses.




an English Opium-Eater 239
The sublime circumstance-' that on their restless fronts
bore stars '-might have been copied from my own
architectural dreams, so often did it occur. We hear it
reported of Dryden, and in later times of Fuseli, that
they ate 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 as a 4adppxaKov
vrTevO0s-i.e., as an anodyne.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and
silvery expanses of water: these haunted me so much,
that I feared lest some dropsical state or tendency of
the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective;1 and that the sentient organ
might be projecting itself as its own object. For two
months I suffered greatly in my head-a part of my
bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from
all touch or taint of weakness (physically, I mean), that
I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his
stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my
person. Till now, I had never felt a headache even, or
any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by
my own folly.
The waters gradually changed their character-from
translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they became seas
and oceans. And now came a tremendous change,
which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many
months, promised an abiding torment; and, in fact, it
never left me, though recurring more or less intermittingly. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in
my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special
power of tormenting. But now that affection, which I
have called the tyranny of the human face, began to
unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life
1 'Objective':-This word, so nearly unintelligible in I82I, so intensely scholastic, and, consequently, when surrounded by familiar and
vernacular words, so apparently pedantic, yet, on the other hand, so
indispensable to accurate thinking, and to wide thinking, has since
12Sa become too comrmon to need any apology.




240


Confessions of


(the searching for Ann amongst fluctuating crowds)
might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it
was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the
human face began to reveal itself; the sea appeared
paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens;
faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing; faces that surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations: infinite
was my agitation; my mind tossed, as it seemed, upon
the billowy ocean, and weltered upon the weltering waves.
May i8I8.-The Malay has been a fearful enemy for
months. Every night, through his means, I have been
transported into Asiatic scenery. 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, among Chinese manners and modes
of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of
my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common
to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful
images and associations. As the cradle of the human
race, if on no other ground, it would have a dim, reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other
reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous,
and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage
tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is
affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate
religions of Hindostan. The mere antiquity of Asiatic
things, of their institutions, histories, above all, of their
mythologies, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast
age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth
in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an
antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though
not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot
but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have
flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be
awed by the sanctity of the Ganges, or by the very name
of the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings
that South-eastern 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




an English Opium-Eater 241
regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast give a
further sublimity to the feelings associated with all oriental
names or images. In China, over and above what it has
in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified
by the modes of life, by the manners, by the barrier of
utter abhorrence placed between myself and them, by
counter-sympathies deeper than I can analyse. I could
sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with crocodiles or
snakes. All this, and much more than I can say, the
reader must enter into before he can comprehend the
unimaginable horror which these dreams of oriental
imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me.
Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical
sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts,
reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances,
that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled
them together in China or Hindostan. From kindred
feelings, I soon brought Egypt and 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
priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed.  I fled
from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia;
Vishnu hated me; Seeva lay in wait for me. I came
suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they
said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at.
Thousands of years I lived and was buried in stone
coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers
at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with
cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded
with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic
mud.
Some slight abstraction I thus attempt of my oriental
dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at
the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for
a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a
reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and
left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomi



242


Confessions of


nation of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and
punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a
killing sense of eternity and infinity. Into these dreams
only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any
circumstances of physical horror entered. All before
had been moral and spiritual terrors.  But here the
main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles,
especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me
the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him; and (as was always the case in
my dreams) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and
found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the
tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life: the
abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes,
looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did
this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times
the very same dream was broken up in the very same
way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it
was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in
hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured
shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for
going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at
the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt translation from
the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of
highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of
miscreated gigantic vermin to the sight of infancy, and
innocent human natures.
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 (caterisparibus) more affecting in summer than in any
other season of the year. And the reasons are these
three, I think: first, that the visible heavens in summer
appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism
may be excused) more infinite; the clouds by which
chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion
stretched over our heads are in summer more voluminous, more massed, and are accumulated in far grander




all English Opium-Eater 243
and more towering piles; secondly, the light and the
appearances of the declining and the setting sun are
much more fitted to be types and characters of the infinite; and, thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the
mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought of
death, and the wintery sterility of the grave. For it may
be observed generally, that wherever two thoughts stand
related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist,
as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest
each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of death when I am
walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any
particular death, if not actually more affecting, at least
haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly, in
that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident
which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions
of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but, having
been once roused, it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic variations, which often suddenly re-combined; locked back into startling unity, and restored the
original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that
it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of
my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene
which could really be commanded from that situation,
but exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power
of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the
same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains were
raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far larger between them of savannahs and forest
lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no
living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the
green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing
upon the verdant graves, and particularly round about
the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved,
just as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise,
in the same summer when that child died. I gazed upon




244


Confessions of


the well-known scene, and I said to myself, ' It yet wants
much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday; and that is
the day on which they celebrate the first-fruits of Resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be forgotten
to-day: for the air is cool and still, and the hills are
high, and stretch away to heaven; and the churchyard
is as verdant as the forest lawns, and the forest lawns are
as quiet as the churchyard; and with the dew I can
wash the fever from my forehead; and then I shall be
unhappy no longer.' I turned, as if to open my garden
gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far
different; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene was an oriental one;
and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in
the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a
stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great
city-an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in
childhood from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a
bow-shot from me, upon a stone, shaded by Judean
palms, there sat a woman; and I looked, and it wasAnn! 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; the same, and
yet, again, how different! Seventeen years ago, when
the lamp-light of mighty London 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 no longer seen.  Sometimes she
seemed altered; yet again sometimes not altered; and
hardly older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual
solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with
some awe. Suddenly her countenance grew dim; and,
turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours rolling
between us; in a moment all had vanished; thick darkness came on; and in the twinkling of an eye I was far
away from mountains, and by lamp-light in London,
walking again with Ann-just as we had walked, when
both children, eighteen years before, along the endless
terraces of Oxford Street.




an English Opium-Eater 245
Then suddenly would come a dream of far different
character-a tumultuous dream-commencing with a
music such as now I often heard in sleep-music of preparation and of awakening suspense. The undulations
of fast-gathering tumults were like the opening of the
Coronation Anthem; and, like that, gave the feeling of
a multitudinous movement, 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 ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious
eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where-somehow, but I knew
not how-by some beings, but I knew not by whom-a
battle, a strife, an agony, was travelling through all its
stages-was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some
mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more
insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local
scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue.
I (as is usual in dreams where, of necessity, we make
ourselves central to every movement) had the power,
and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the
power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again
had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics
was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt.
'Deeper than ever plummet sounded,' I lay inactive.
Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened.  Some
greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than
ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and
fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not
whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and
lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the
sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features
that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment
allowed-and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh
such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous
mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound
was reverberated-everlasting farewells! and again, and
yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells I




246


Confessions of


And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will
sleep no more!'
Now, at last, I had become awestruck at the approach
of sleep, under the condition of visions so afflicting, and
so intensely life-like as those which persecuted my
phantom-haunted brain.  More and more also I felt
violent palpitations in some internal region, such as
are commonly, but erroneously, called palpitations of
the heart-being, as I suppose, referable exclusively to
derangements in the stomach. These were evidently
increasing rapidly in frequency and in strength. Naturally, therefore, on considering how important my life
had become to others besides myself, I became alarmed;
and I paused seasonably; but with a difficulty that is
past all description. Either way it seemed as though
death had, in military language, ' thrown himself astride
of my path.' Nothing short of mortal anguish, in a
physical sense, it seemed, to wean myself from opium;
yet, on the other hand, death through overwhelming
nervous terrors-death by brain fever or by lunacyseemed too certainly to besiege the alternative course.
Fortunately I had still so much of firmness left as to
face that choice, which, with most of instant suffering, showed in the far distance a possibility of final
escape.
This possibility was realised: I did accomplish my
escape. And the issue of that particular stage in my
opium experiences (for such it was-simply a provisional
stage, that paved the way subsequently for many milder
stages, to which gradually my constitutional system accommodated itself) was, pretty nearly in the following
words, communicated to my readers in the earliest
edition of these Confessions:I triumphed. But infer not, reader, from this word
'triumfphed,' a condition of joy or exultation. Think of
me as of one, even when four months had passed, still
agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and
much, perhaps, in the situation of him who has been
racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the
affecting account of them left by a most innocent




an English Opium-Eater 247
suffererl (in the time of James I.). Meantime, I derived no benefit from any medicine whatever, except
ammoniated tincture of valerian. The moral of the
narrative is addressed to the opium-eater; and therefore,
of necessity, limited in its application. If he is taught
to fear and tremble, enough has been effected. But he
may say that the issue of my case is at least a proof that
opium, after an eighteen 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, 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. Heartily I wish him more resolution;
heartily I wish him an equal success. Nevertheless, I
had motives external to myself which he may unfortunately want; and these supplied me with conscientious
supports, such as merely selfish interests might fail in
supplying to a mind debilitated by opium.
Lord Bacon conjectures that it may be as painful to
be born as to die.2 That seems 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, and liable to the mixed or the alternate
pains of birth and death. 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.
One memorial of my former condition nevertheless
remains: my dreams are not calm; the dread swell and
I William Lithgow. His book (Travels, etc.) is tedious and not well
written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga,
and subsequently, is overpoweringly affecting. Less circumstantial,
but the same in tendency, is the report of the results from torture publisfhed in x830 by Juan Van Halen.
2 In all former editions, I had ascribed this sentiment to Jeremy
Taylor. On a close search, however, wishing to verify the quotation,
it appeared that I had been mistaken. Something very like it occurs
more than once in the bishop's voluminous writings: but the exact
passage moving in my mind had evidently been this which follows,
from Lord Bacon's Essay on 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.'
R




248 Confessions of an Opium-Eater
agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the
legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not
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 thronged and fiery arms.'




THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON
DAMASCUS, first-born of cities, Om el Denia,l mother of
generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast before
the Pyramids! what sounds are those that, from a
postern gate, looking eastwards over secret paths that
wind away to the far distant desert, break the solemn
silence of an oriental night? Whose voice is that which
calls upon the spearmen, keeping watch for ever in the
turret surmounting the gate, to receive him back into his
Syrian home? Thou knowest him, Damascus, and hast
known him in seasons of trouble as one learned in the
afflictions of man; wise alike to take counsel for the
suffering spirit or for the suffering body. The voice that
breaks upon the night is the voice of a great evangelist
-one of the four; and he is also a great physician.
This do the watchmen at the gate thankfully acknowledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. His sandals
are white with dust; for he has been roaming for weeks
beyond the desert, under the guidance of Arabs, on
missions of hopeful benignity to Palmyra; 2 and in spirit
he is weary of all things, except faithfulness to God, and
burning love to man.
Eastern cities are asleep betimes; and sounds few or
none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the evangelist
paced onward to the market-place; but there another
scene awaited him. On the right hand, in an upper
chamber, with lattices widely expanded, sat a festal
1 ' m el Denia':-Mother of the World is the Arabic title of
Damascus. That it was before Abraham-i.e., already an old establishment much more than a thousand years before the siege of Troy,
and than two thousand years before our Christian era-may be inferred
from Gen. xv. 2; and by the general consent of all eastern races,
Damascus is accredited as taking precedency in age of all cities to the
west of the Indus.
2 Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendour of Grecian
development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian, but it was already
a noble city.
249




250 The Daughter of Lebanon
company of youths, revelling under a noonday blaze of
light, from cressets and from bright tripods that burned
fragrant woods-all joining in choral songs, all crowned
with odorous wreaths from Daphne and the banks of
the Orontes. Them the evangelist heeded not; but far
away upon the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted
up by a solitary vase of iron fretwork filled with cedar
boughs, and hoisted high upon a spear, behold there
sat a woman of loveliness so transcendent, that, when
suddenly revealed, as now, out of deepest darkness, she
appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was
she born of woman? Was it perhaps the angel-so the
evangelist argued with himself-that met him in the
desert after sunset, and strengthened him by secret talk?
The evangelist went up, and touched her forehead; and
when he found that she was indeed human, and guessed,
from the station which she had chosen, that she waited
for some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he groaned heavily in spirit, and said, half to
himself, but half to her, 'Wert thou, poor ruined flower,
adorned so divinely-at thy birth-glorified in such excess
that not Solomon in all his pomp-no, nor even the
lilies of the field-can approach thy gifts-only that
thou shouldest grieve the holy spirit of God?' The
woman trembled exceedingly, and said, 'Rabbi, what
should I do? For behold! all men forsake me.' The
evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to himself he
said, 'Now will I search this woman's heart-whether
in very truth it inclineth itself to God, and hath strayed
only before fiery compulsion.' Turning therefore to the
woman, the Prophet1 said, 'Listen: I am the messenger
1 ' The Prophet':-Though a Prophet was not therefore and in virtue.
of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist was necessarily
in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it be remembered that a
Prophet did not mean a Predicter, or Foreshower of events, except
derivatively and inferentially. What was a Prophet in the uniform
scriptural sense? He was a man, who drew aside the curtain from the
secret counsels of Heaven. He declared, or made public, the previously hidden truths of God: and because future events might chance
to involve divine truth, therefore a revealer of future events might
happen so far to be a Prophet. Yet still small was that part of a
Prophet's functions which concerned the foreshowing of events; and
not necessarily any part.




The Daughter of Lebanon 251
of Him whom thou hast not known; of Him that made
Lebanon and the cedars of Lebanon; that made the
sea, and the heavens, and the host of the stars; that
made the light; that made the darkness; that blew the
spirit of life into the nostrils of man. His messenger I
am: and from Him all power is given me to bind and
to loose, to build and to pull down. Ask, therefore,
whatsoever thou wilt-great or small-and through me
thou shalt receive it from God. But, my child, ask not
amiss. For God is able out of thy own evil asking to
weave snares for thy footing.  And oftentimes to the
lambs whom He loves, He gives by seeming to refuse;
gives in some better sense, or' (and his voice swelled
into the power of anthems) 'in some far happier world.
Now, therefore, my daughter, be wise on thy own behalf;
and say what it is that I shall ask for thee from God.'
But the Daughter of Lebanon needed not his caution;
for immediately dropping on one knee to God's ambassador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell
upon the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her
clasped hands in supplication, and said, in answer to
the evangelist asking for a second time what gift he
should call down upon her from Heaven, 'Lord, that
thou wouldest put me back into my father's house.'
And the evangelist, because he was human, dropped
a tear as he stooped to kiss her forehead, saying,
'Daughter, thy prayer is heard in heaven; and I tell
thee that the daylight shall not come and go for thirty
times, not for the thirtieth time shall the sun drop
behind Lebanon, before I will put thee back into thy
father's house.'
Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of
the evangelist. She sought not to varnish her history,
or to palliate her own transgressions. In so far as she
had offended at all, her case was that of millions in
every generation. Her father was a prince in Lebanon,
proud, unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done to his
daughter by her dishonourable lover, because done
under favour of opportunities created by her confidence in his integrity, her father persisted in resenting




252 The Daughter of Lebanon
as wrongs done by this injured daughter herself; and,
refusing to her all protection, drove her, whilst yet
confessedly innocent, into criminal compliances under
sudden necessities of seeking daily bread from her own
uninstructed efforts. Great was the wrong she suffered
both from father and lover; great was the retribution.
She lost a churlish father and a wicked lover; she
gained an apostolic guardian.  She lost a princely
station in Lebanon; she gained an early heritage in
heaven.  For this heritage is hers within thirty days,
if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst the stealthy
motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth day, behold! a burning fever desolated Damascus, which also
laid its arrest upon the Daughter of Lebanon, yet gently,
and so that hardly for an hour did it withdraw her from
the heavenly teachings of the evangelist.  And thus
daily the doubt was strengthened-would the holy
apostle suddenly touch her with his hand, and say,
'Woman, be thou whole!' or would he present her on
the thirtieth day as a pure bride to Christ? But perfect
freedom belongs to Christian service, and she only must
make the election.
Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his
pomp, but suddenly was darkened by driving storms.
Not until noon was the heavenly orb again revealed;
then the glorious light was again unmasked, and again
the Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour already
appointed for the baptism of the new Christian daughter.
Heaven and earth shed gratulation on the happy festival;
and, when all was finished, under an awning raised
above the level roof of her dwelling-house, the regenerate
daughter of Lebanon, looking over the rose-gardens of
Damascus, with amplest prospect of her native hills, lay
in blissful trance, making proclamation, by her white
baptismal robes, of recovered innocence and of reconciliation with God. And, when the sun was declining
to the west, the evangelist, who had sat from noon by
the bedside of his spiritual daughter, rose solemnly, and
said, 'Lady of Lebanon, the day is already come, and
the hour is coming, in which my covenant must be ful



The Daugnter of Lebanon ~53;
filled with thee. Wilt thou, therefore, being now wiser
in thy thoughts, suffer God, thy new Father, to give by
seeming to refuse; to give in some better sense, or in
some far happier world?' But the Daughter of Lebanon
sorrowed at these words; she yearned after her native
hills; not for themselves, but because there it was that
she had left that sweet twin-born sister with whom from
infant days hand-in-hand she had wandered amongst the
everlasting cedars. And again the evangelist sat down
by her bedside; whilst she by intervals communed with
him, and by intervals slept gently under the oppression
of her fever. But, as evening drew nearer, and it wanted
now but a brief space to the going down of the sun, once
again, and with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to
his feet, and said, 'O daughter! this is the thirtieth day,
and the sun is drawing near to his rest; brief, therefore,
is the time within which I must fulfil the word that God
spoke to thee by me.' Then, because light clouds of
delirium were playing about her brain, he raised his
pastoral staff, and pointing it to her temples, rebuked
the clouds, and bade that no more they should trouble
her vision, or stand between her and the forests of
Lebanon.   And the delirious clouds parted asunder,
breaking away to the right and to the left. But upon
the forests of Lebanon there hung a mighty mass of
overshadowing vapours, bequeathed by the morning's
storm.  And a second time the evangelist raised his
pastoral staff, and, pointing it to the gloomy vapours,
rebuked them, and bade that no more they should
stand between his daughter and her father's house, and
immediately the dark vapours broke away from Lebanon
to the right and to the left; and the farewell radiance of
the sun lighted up all the paths that ran between the
everlasting cedars and her father's palace. But vainly
the lady of Lebanon searched every path with her eyes
for memorials of her sister. And the evangelist, pitying
her sorrow, turned away her eyes to the clear blue sky,
which the departing vapours had exposed. And he
showed her the peace that was there. And then he
said, ' O daughter! this also is but a mask.' And




254 The Daughter of Lebanon
immediately for the third time he raised his pastoral
staff, and, pointing it to the fair blue sky, he rebuked
it, and bade that no more it should stand between her
and the vision of God. Immediately the blue sky
parted to the right and to the left, laying bare the
infinite revelations that can be made visible only to
dying eyes. And the Daughter of Lebanon said to
the evangelist, 'O father! what armies are these that
I see mustering within the infinite chasm?' And the
evangelist replied, 'These are the armies of Christ,
and they are mustering to receive some dear human
blossom, some first-fruits of Christian faith, that shall
rise this night to Christ from Damascus.' Suddenly,
as thus the child of Lebanon gazed upon the mighty
vision, she saw bending forward from the heavenly host,
as if in gratulation to herself, the one countenance for
which she hungered and thirsted. The twin sister, that
should have waited for her in Lebanon, had died of
grief, and was waiting for her in Paradise. Immediately
in rapture she soared upwards from her couch; immediately in weakness she fell back; and being caught by
the evangelist, she flung her arms around his neck;
whilst he breathed into her ear his final whisper, ' Wilt
thou now suffer that God should give by seeming to
refuse?'-' Oh yes-yes-yes,' was the fervent answer
from the Daughter of Lebanon. Immediately the evangelist gave the signal to the heavens, and the heavens
gave the signal to the sun; and in one minute after the
Daughter of Lebanon had fallen back a marble corpse
amongst her white baptismal robes; the solar orb
dropped behind Lebanon; and the evangelist, with
eyes glorified by mortal and immortal tears, rendered
thanks to God that had thus accomplished the word
which he spoke through himself to the Magdalen of
Lebanon-that not for the thirtieth time should the
sun go down behind her native hills, before he had
put her back into her Father's house.




APPENDIX
DE QUINCEY.-Page 79.
THIS family, which split (or, as a grammatical purist lately
said to me in a tone of expostulation, spiat) into three
national divisions - English, French, and American -
originally was Norwegian: and in the year of our Christian
era one thousand, spoke (I believe) the most undeniable
Norse. Throughout the eleventh century the heads of this
family (in common with all the ruffians and martial vagabonds of Europe that had Venetian sequins enough
disposable for such a trip) held themselves in readiness
to join any likely leader; and did join William the Norman.
Very few indeed, or probably none, of his brigands were
Frenchmen, or native Neustrians; Normans being notoriously a name not derived from any French province, but
imported into that province by trans-Baltic, and in a smaller
proportion by cis-Baltic, aliens. This Norwegian family,
having assumed a territorial denomination from the district
or village of Quincy, in the province now called Normandy,
transplanted themselves to England: where, and subsequently by marriage in Scotland, they ascended to the
highest rank in both kingdoms, and held the highest offices
open to a subject. A late distinguished writer, Mr. Moir of
Musselburgh, the 'Delta' of Blackwoods Magazine, took
the trouble (which must have been considerable) of tracing
their aspiring movements in Scotland, through a period
when Normans transferred themselves from England to
Scotland in considerable numbers, and with great advantages. This elaborate paper, published many years ago in
Blackwood's Magazine, first made known the leading facts
of their career in Scotland. Meantime in England they
continued to flourish through nine or ten generations; took
a distinguished part in one, at least, of the Crusades; and a
still more perilous share in the Barons Wars under Henry
III. No family drank more deeply or more frequently from
the cup of treason; which in those days was not always a
very grave offence in people who, having much territorial
influence, had also much money. But, happening to drink
once too often, or taking too long a ' pull' at the cup, the
Earls of Winchester suddenly came to grief. Amongst the
255




256


Appendix


romances of astronomy there is one, I believe, which has
endeavoured to account for the little asteroids of our system
by supposing them fragments of some great planet that had,
under internal convulsion or external collision, at some
period suddenly exploded. In our own planet Tellus such
a county as York, under a similar catastrophe, would make
a very pretty little asteroid. And with some miniature
resemblance to such a case, sometimes benefiting by the
indulgence of the crown, sometimes by legal devices,
sometimes by aid of matrimonial alliances, numerous
descendants, confessedly innocent, from the guilty earl
projected themselves by successive efforts, patiently watching their opportunities, from the smoking ruins of the great
feudal house: stealthily through two generations creeping
out of their lurking holes; timidly, when the great shadows
from the threatening throne had passed over, re-assuming
the family name. Concurrently with these personal fragments projected from the ancient house, flew off random
splinters and fragments from the great planetary disk of
the Winchester estates, little asteroids that formed ample
inheritances for the wants of this or that provincial squire,
of this or that tame villatic squireen.1
The kingly old oak, that had been the leader of the forest,
was thus suddenly (in the technical language of woodcraft),
cut down into a 'pollard.' This mutilation for ever prevented it from aspiring cloudwards by means of some
mighty stem, such as grows upon Norwegian hills, fit to
be the mast of 'some great ammiral.' Nevertheless, we
see daily amongst the realities of nature that a tree, after
passing through such a process of degradation, yet manifests
the great arrears of vindictive life lurking within it by
throwing out a huge radiation of slender boughs and
miniature shoots, small but many, so that we are forced
exactly to invert the fine words of Lucan, saying no longer
trunco, non frondibus, efficit umbram, but, on the contrary,
non trunco sed frondibus efficit umbram.   This great
cabbage-head of this ancient human tree threw a broad
massy umbrage over more villages than one; sometimes
yielding representatives moody and mutinous, sometimes
vivacious and inventive, sometimes dull and lethargic, until
1 This last variety of the rustic regulus is of Hibernian origin, and,
as regards the name, was unknown to us in England until Miss
Edgeworth had extended the horizon of our social experience. Yet,
without the name, I presume that the thing must have been known
occasionally even in England.




Appendix


257


at last, one fine morning, on rubbing their eyes, they found
themselves actually in the sixteenth century abreast of
Henry viII. and his fiery children. Ah, what a century
was that I Sculptured as only Froude can sculpture those
that fight across the chasms of eternity, grouped as only
Froude can group the mighty factions, acting or suffering,
arraigning before chanceries of man, or protesting before
chanceries of God-what vast arrays of marble gladiators
fighting for truth, real or imagined, throng the arenas in
each generation of that and the succeeding century. And
how ennobling a distinction of modern humanity, that in
Pagan antiquity no truth as yet existed, none had been
revealed, none emblazoned, on behalf of which man could
have fought! As Lord Bacon remarks-though strangely,
indeed, publishing in the very terms of this remark his own
blindness to the causes and consequences-religious wars
were unknown to antiquity. Personal interests, and those
only, did or could furnish a subject of conflict.  But
throughout the sixteenth century, whether in England, in
France, or in Germany, it was a spiritual interest, shadowy
and aerial, which embattled armies against armies. Simply
the nobility of this interest it was, simply the grandeur of a
cause moving by springs transcendent to all vulgar and
mercenary collisions of prince with prince, or family with
family, that arrayed man against man, not upon petty
combinations of personal intrigue, but upon questions of
everlasting concern-this majestic principle of the strife it
was that constituted for the noblest minds its secret magnetism. Early in the seventeenth century, when it seemed
likely that the interests of a particular family would be
entangled with the principles at issue, multitudes became
anxious to evade the strife by retiring to the asylum of
forests. Amongst these was one branch of the De
Quinceys. Enamoured of democracy, this family, laying
aside the aristocratic De attached to their name, settled
in New England, where they subsequently rose, through
long public services, to the highest moral rank-as measured
by all possible expressions of public esteem that are consistent with the simplicities of the great republic. Mr.
Josiah Quincy, as head of this distinguished family, is
appealed to as one who takes rank by age and large
political experience with the founders of the American
Union. Another branch of the same family had at a much
earlier period settled in France. Finally, the squires and
squireens-i.e. those who benefited in any degree by those




258                 Appendix
'asteroids' which I have explained as exploded from the
ruins of the Winchester estates-naturally remained in
England. The last of them who enjoyed any relics whatever of that ancient territorial domain was an elder kinsman
of my father. I never had the honour of seeing him; in fact,
it was impossible that I should have such an honour, since
he died during the American War, which war had closed,
although it had not paid its bills, some time before my birth.
He enacted the part of squireen, I have been told, creditably
enough in a village belonging either to the county of
Leicester, Nottingham, or Rutland.   Sir Andrew Aguecheek observes as one of his sentimental remembrances,
that he also at one period of his life had been 'adored':
'I was adored once,' says the knight, seeming to acknowledge that he was not adored then. But the squireen was
'adored' in a limited way to the last. This fading representative of a crusading house declined gradually into the
oracle of the bar at the Red Lion, and was adored by two
persons at the least (not counting himself)-viz., the landlord,
and occasionally the waiter. Mortgages had eaten up the
last vestiges of the old territorial wrecks; and with his death
a new era commenced for this historical family, which now
(as if expressly to irritate its ambition) finds itself distributed
amongst three mighty nations-France, America, and England-and precisely those three that are usually regarded as
the leaders of civilisation.1
BARBARA LEWTHWAITE.-Page 203.
Already Barbara Lewthwaite had contributed to the composition of two impressive pictures: first, in her infancy,
with her pet lamb, under the evening shadows of the mighty
Fairfield; secondly, in her girlhood, with the turbaned
Malay and the little cottage child. But subsequently, when
a young woman, she entered unconsciously into the composition of another picture, even more rememberable,
suggesting great names, connected with the greatest of
1 The omission of the De, as an addition looking better at a
tournament than as an indorsement on a bill of exchange, began, as
to many hundreds of English names, full three hundred years ago.
Many English families have disused this affix simply from indolence.
As to the terminal variations, cy, cie, cey, those belong, as natural
and inevitable exponents of a transitional condition, to the unsettled
spelling that characterises the early stages of literature in all countries
alike.




Appendix                    259
themes; the names being those of Plato, and, in this instance at least, of a mightier than Plato-viz., William
Wordsworth; and the theme concerned being that problem
which, measured by its interest to man, by its dependencies,
by the infinite jewel staked upon the verdict, we should all
confess to be the most solemn and heart-shaking that is
hung out by golden chains from the heaven of heavens to
human investigation-viz., Is the spirit of man numbered
amongst things naturally perishable? The doctrine of our
own Dodwell (a most orthodox man) was that naturally and
per se it was perishable, but that by supernatural endowment
it was made immortal. Apparently the ancient oracles of
the Hebrew literature had all and everywhere assumed the
soul's natural mortality. The single passage in Job that
seemed to look in the counter direction has long since received an interpretation painfully alien from such a meaning;
not to mention that the same objection would apply to this
passage, if read into a Christian sense, as applies to the
ridiculous interpolation in Josephus describing Christ's
personal appearance-viz., Once suppose it genuine, and
why were there not myriads of other passages in the same
key? Imagine, for a moment, the writer so penetrated with
premature Christian views, by what inexplicable rigour of
abstinence had he forborne to meet ten thousand calls, at
other turns of his work, for similar utterances of Christian
sentiment? It must not be supposed that the objections to
this Christian interpretation of Job rest solely with German
scholars. Coleridge, one of the most devout and evangelical
amongst modern theologians, took the same view, and has
expressed it with decision. But Job is of slight importance
in comparison with Moses. Now Warburton, in his wellknown argument, held not only that Moses did (as a fact)
assume the mortality of the soul, but that, as a necessity, he
did so, since upon this assumption rests the weightiest
argument for his own divine mission. That Moses could
dispense with a support which Warburton fancied all other
legislators had needed and postulated argued, in the bishop's
opinion, a vicarious support-a secret and divine support.
This extreme view will be rejected, perhaps, by most people.
But, in the meantime, the. very existence of such a sect as
the Sadducees proves sufficiently that no positive affirmation
of the soul's immortality could have been accredited amongst
the Hebrew nation as a Mosaic doctrine. The rise of a
counter sect, the Pharisees, occurred in later days, clearly
under a principle of' development' applied to old traditions




260


Appendix


current among the Jews. It was not alleged as a Mosaic
doctrine, but as something deducible from traditions countenanced by Moses. From Hebrew literature, therefore, no
help is to be looked for on this great question.  Pagan
literature first of all furnishes any response upon it favourable to human yearnings.    But, unhappily, the main
argument upon which the sophist in the Phbedo relies is
a pure scholastic conundrum, baseless and puerile. The
homogeneity of human consciousness, upon which is made
to rest its indestructibility, is not established or made
probable by any plausible logic. If we should figure to
ourselves some mighty angel mounting guard upon human
interests twenty-three centuries ago, this tutelary spirit
would have smiled derisively upon the advent and the
departure of Plato.  At length, once again, after many
centuries, was heard the clarion of immortality-not as of
any preternatural gift, but as a natural prerogative of the
human spirit. This time the angel would have paused and
hearkened. The auguries for immortality which Wordsworth
drew from indications running along the line of daily human
experience were two.
The first was involved in the exquisite little poem of We
are Seven. That authentic voice, said Wordsworth, which
affirmed life as a necessity inalienable from man's consciousness was a revelation through the lips of childhood. Life in
its torrent fulness-that is, life in its earliest stage-affirmed
itself; whereas the voice which whispered doubts was an
adventitious and secondary voice consequent upon an earthly
experience. The child in this little poem is unable to admit
the thought of death, though, in compliance with custom,
she uses the word:
The first that died was little Jane
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her from her pain;
And then she went away.' "
The graves of her brother and sister she is so far from
regarding as any argument of their having died that she
supposes the stranger simply to doubt her statement, and
she reiterates her assertion of their graves as lying in the
churchyard, in order to prove that they were living.'"Their graves are green, they may be seen,"
The little maid replied,
Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.




Appendix


26I


And often after sunset, sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem:
And there upon their graves I sitI sit, and sing to them." '
The other argument was developed in the sublime Ode
upon the Intimations of Immortality, etc.  Man in his
infancy stood nearest (so much was matter of fact) to the
unseen world of the Infinite. What voices he heard most
frequently, murmuring through the cells of his infantine
brain, were echoes of the great realities which, as a newborn infant, he had just quitted. Hanging upon his mother's
breast, he heard dim prolongations of a music which belonged
to a life ever more and more receding into a distance buried
in clouds and vapours. Man's orient, in which lie the
fountains of the dawn, must be sought for in that Eden
of infancy which first received him as a traveller emerging
from a world now daily becoming more distant. And it is
a great argument of the divine splendour investing man's
natural home that the heavenly lights which burned in his
morning grow fainter and fainter as he 'travels further from
the East.'
The little Carnarvonshire child in We are Seven, who is
represented as repelling the idea of death under an absolute
inability to receive it, had completed her eighth year. But
this might be an ambitious exaggeration, such as aspiring
female children are generally disposed to practise. It is
more probable that she might be in the currency of her
eighth year. Naturally we must not exact from Wordsworth any pedantic rigour of accuracy in such a case; but
assuredly we have a right to presume that his principle, if
tenable at all, must apply to all children below the age of
five. However I will say four. In that case the following
anecdote seems to impeach the philosophic truth of this
doctrine. I give the memorandum as it was drawn up by
myself at the time:My second child, but eldest daughter, little M —, is
between two and three weeks less than two years old; and
from the day of her birth she has been uniformly attended
by Barbara Lewthwaite. We are now in the first days of
June; but, about three weeks since, consequently in the
earlier half of May, some one of our neighbours gave to




262


Appendix


M-    a little bird. I am no great ornithologist.  Perhaps
only a tenth-rate one,' says some too flattering reader. Oh
dear, no, nothing near it: I fear, no more than a 5ioth
rater. Consequently, I cannot ornithologically describe or
classify the bird. But I believe that it belonged to the
family of finches-either a goldfinch, bullfinch, or at least
something ending in inch. The present was less splendid
than at first it seemed. For the bird was wounded, though
not in a way that made the wound apparent; and too
sensibly as the evening wore away it drooped. None of us
knew what medical treatment to suggest; and all that
occurred was to place it with free access to birdseed and
water. At length sunset arrived, which was the signal for
M-    s departure to bed. She came therefore as usual to
me, threw her arms round my neck, and went through her
ordinary routine of prayers: viz., first, the Lord's Prayer,
and finally the four following lines (a Roman Catholic
bequest to the children of Northern England):'Holy1 Jesus, meek and mild,
Look on me, a little child:
Pity my simplicity;
Grant that I may come to thee.'
M-, as she was moving off to bed, whispered to me that
I was to 'mend' the bird with 'yoddonum.' Having always
seen me taking laudanum, and for the purpose (as she was
told) of growing better in health, reasonably it struck her
that the little bird would improve under the same regimen.
For her satisfaction, I placed a little diluted laudanum near
to the bird; and she then departed to bed, though with
uneasy looks reverting to her sick little pet. Occupied with
some point of study, it happened that I sat up through the
whole night: and long before seven o'clock in the morning
she had summoned Barbara to dress her, and soon I heard
the impatient little foot descending the stairs to my study.
I had such a Jesuitical bulletin ready, by way of a report
upon the bird's health, as might not seem absolutely despairing, though not too dangerously sanguine. And, as the
morning was one of heavenly splendour, I proposed that we
should improve the bird's chances by taking it out-of-doors
1 ' Holy Jesus':-This was a very judicious correction introduced by
Wordsworth. Originally the traditional line had stood-' Gentle
Jesus, meek and mild.' But Wordsworth, offended by the idle
iteration of one idea in the words, gentle, meek, mild, corrected
the text into Holy.




Appendix


263


into the little orchard at the foot of Fairfield-our loftiest
Grasmere mountain.   Thither moved at once Barbara
Lewthwaite, little M-, myself, and the poor languishing
bird. By that time in May, in any far southern county,
perhaps the birds would be ceasing to sing; but not so with
us dilatory people in Westmoreland. Suddenly, as v e. all
stood around the little perch on which the bird rested, one
thrilling song, louder than the rest, arose from a neighbouiing hedge. Immediately the bird's eye, previously dull,
kindled into momentary fire; the bird rose on its perch,
struggled for an instant, seemed to be expanding its wings,
made one aspiring movement upwards, in doing so fell back,
and in another moment was dead. Too certainly and
apparently all these transitions symbolically interpreted
themselves, and to all of us alike: the proof of which was
that man, woman, and child spontaneously shed tears: a
weakness, perhaps, but more natural under the regular
processional evolution of the scenical stages than when
simply read as a narrative: for too evident it was, to one
and all of us, without needing to communicate by words,
what vision had revealed itself to all alike-to the child
under two years old, not less than to the adults: too
evident it was that, on this magnificent May morning,
there had been exhibited, as on the stage of a theatrethere had passed before the eyes of us all-passed, and
was finished-the everlasting mystery of death! It seemed
to me that little M  -, by her sudden burst of tears, must
have read this saddest of truths —must have felt that the
bird's fate was sealed-not less clearly than Barbara or
myself.








NOTES
The numbers at the beginning of paragraphs refer to the pages.
2 The eloquent and benevolent William Wilberforce.-William
Wilberforce (1759-1833), whose name is now chiefly associated
with the abolition of the slave-trade.
2 The late Dean of Carlisle.-Isaac Milner (1750-1820).
2 The first Lord Erskine.-Thomas Erskine (1750-f823).
3 A late under-secretary of State.-This brother of Lord Sidmouth was presumably John Hiley Addington.
7 My   Original Preface, a little remodelled.-The  original
preface is certainly more than a 'little' remodelled, lengthy passages
being omitted and others introduced, with numerous minor alterations.
9 Should occupy the Fifth Volume.-i.e. of the Collected Works
(I853-I860).
14 Coleridge therefore was doubly in error.-The ' letter' referred
to does not seem, as given in Gillman's life of the poet, to have been
such; it is given in the form of two dated notes. The passages in
which Coleridge referred to the Opium Eater, and to which De
Quincey takes exception, occur in Gillman's Life (1838) on pp.
247-251. Professor Masson in his edition of the Opium Eater
(189o) refers to Coleridge's 'letter' on the subject, and quotesand that not accurately-what he calls 'the passages principally
referred to,' and in doing so pieces together, as one expression,
bits of notes written by Coleridge in 1826 and 1830. The strongest
expressions from these notes are: ' And oh! with what unutterable
sorrow did I read the Confessions of an Opium Eater, in which
the writer, with morbid vanity, makes a boast of what was my misfortune; for he had been faithfully and with an agony of zeal
warned of the gulf, and yet artfully struck into the current! Heaven
be merciful to him!' (April 1826).  Oh, may the God to whom I
look for mercy through Christ, shew mercy to the author of the
Confessions of an Opium Eater, if, as I have too strong reason to
believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing others into this
withering vice through wantonness. From this aggravation I have,
I humbly trust, been free, as far as acts of my free will and intention are concerned: even to the author of that work I pleaded
with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly
denied it, but I fear that I had even then to deter perhaps, not to
forewarn' (Jan. 7, 1830).




266                      Notes
I5 As a citizen of $5)baris and DaCphne.-Sybaris, an ancient Greek
town, the inhabitants of which were famous for their love of luxury
and pleasure.  Daphne, a beautiful pleasure-garden a few miles
from Antioch in Syria.
17 A noticeable man, etc.-See Wordsworth's Stanzas written in
my Pocket Copy of Thomson's ' Castle of Idolence,' line 39.
I8 A short comment of the late Archdeacon Hare.-Julius Charles
Hare (I795-I855). Thle Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers was
published in 1827.
I8  All carved from the carver's brain.'-De Quincey evidently
quoted from memory, for the poet was not referring to the 'pendulous lamp,' but to the figures decorating the room:'The chamber carved so curiously,
Carved with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain,
For a lady's chamber meet.
The lamp with twofold silver chain
Is fastened to an angel's feet.'
COLERIDGE, Christobel, lines I78-183.
20 Than Caliban to Prospero.-See The Tempest, Act i. Sc. ii.
21 ' Total Eclipse,' etc.-Milton, Samson Agonistes, lines 8I, 82.
26  By the vast diffusion of Christianity.-At this point in his
I856 edition De Quincey has a footnote, 'See note A at the end of
the volume,' but gives no such note.
27 The Rev. Samuel H.-i.e. the Reverend Samuel Hall.
31 'Ipreached,' etc.-From Richard Baxter's (I6I5-I691) Love
Breathing Thanks and Praise, Part ii. lines 855, 856.
32 The fabulous Roman martyr Curtius.-Mettus Curtius,
according to legend, leaped into a gulf which suddenly yawned
in the Roman Forum, on learning that it would not close until
Rome's dearest possession was thrown in.    The city's most
valuable possession, said Curtius, was her citizens, and he leaped
armed and on horseback into the gulf, which immediately closed.
32 The real English   martyr, Algernon Sidney-Algernon
Sidney (X622-I683) was executed for alleged complicity in the
Rye House Plot.
34 Mr. and Mrs. K —.-i.e. Kelsall. Mr. Kelsall was a
business man in Manchester, and part of De Quincey's patrimony
was invested in his business.
34 The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby.-Thomas Arnold (I795-1842)
dealt briefly with the subject in the columns of the Englishman's
Register (June 1831).  The article in question is reprinted in
Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, published in I845 (see especially
pp. I45, I46 of that volume).




Notes


267


36 In the superb expression of Shakespeare, etc.-Antony uses the
word in speaking of the changes in cloud-forms:'That which was now a horse even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water.'
Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. xiv. 11. 9-II.
38 To a private school in Wiltshire.-At Winkfield.
39 'Repeated air,' etc.-Milton, When the Assault was intended
to the City, lines 12, I3.
39 No closer relation to Euripides, etc.-Robert Browning has
utilised this idea in his Balaustion's Adventure.
39 'Bade spare,' etc.-Milton, When the Assault, etc., lines
10-12
39 As a nuzzur, etc.-Nuzzur or nuzzer (i.e. nazr) is an Oriental
word for a present or offering made to a superior.
39 'Riding up to the Soldan's chair.'-The passage which De
Quincey had in mind was the close of the first book of Paradise
Lost:' Where champions bold
Wont ride in arm'd, and at the Soldan's chair
Defied the best of Paynim chivalry
To mortal combat.'
40 As was shown in Horne Tooke's case.-John Horne Tooke
(I736-I812) applied to be called to the Bar, but was refused on the
ground that his Orders in the Church were indelible.
41 Dr. Byrom, etc.-John Byrom (I69I-1753).
45 The original feature of distinction in John o' Groats House.
-According to tradition this was an octagonal building with eight
doors and windows, and an eight-sided table within, built by John
o' Groat to prevent dissensions as to precedence among the eight
different branches of his family.
45 Even two little girls, etc.-James Harrington (I6II-I677).
His happy illustration of distributive justice will be found in the
first part of Oceana, 'the preliminaries showing the principles of
government.'
48 The Port Royal Greek Grammar.-The Nouvelle Methode
pour apprendre la Langue Grecque (1655) was the work of Claude
Lancelot (I6I5-1695), one of the teaching staff of the Petites Ecoles
in connection with the Cistercian Abbey of Port Royal near Versailles.
48 Morell's valuable Thesaurus.-Thomas Morell (I703-I784)
was a classical scholar whose reputation mainly rests on his
Thesaurus Graca Poeseios; sive Lexicon Graeco Prosodiacum (1762).
S2




268                      Notes
48 Take the supreme trinity of Greek scholars.-Richard Bentley
(I662-1742); C. L. Valckenaer (d. 1785); Richard Porson (1759 -I8o8).
49 Take an undeniable Grecian, etc.-Richard Dawes (I708 -1766) prepared specimens of Milton in Greek hexameters and
proposed (in I734) publishing the first book of Paradise Lost in
that form. His scheme did not, however, get beyond the prospectus stage.
50 When visiting Lord Allamont at Eton.-De Quincey had
first made the acquaintance of Lord Altamont, son and heir of
Lord Westport, at Bath, and later visited his family in Ireland.
51 The late Dr. Cooke Taylor.-William Cooke Taylor (8oo00 -1849) was a miscellaneous writer who enjoyed some share of con.
temporary popularity, though his works are now unknown to the
generality of readers.
52 Lardner and Paley.-Nathaniel Lardner (I684-I768), author
of The Credibility of the GospelHistory. William Paley (1743-I805),
Archdeacon of Carlisle, and author of The View of the Evidences of
Christianity, first published in 1794.
52 Dr. Edward Pococke, etc.-Edward Pococke (I604-I691),
one of the most eminent of English Oriental and Biblical scholars.
53 At this point... G-, etc.-'The boy G-' was
Ashurst Turner   Gilbert (1786-i870), afterwards Bishop   of
Chichester.
55 Note.-Dr. Clark's Commentary, etc.-The Old and New
Testaments with Annotations and Parallel Scriptures by Samuel
Clarke-or Clark-(I626-I701) was published in I69o.
57 This Frenchman    was   Chateaubriand.-Franqois  Ren4,
Viscomte de Chateaubriand (I768-i848), a distinguished French
author, soldier, and diplomatist, was for a time, during the reign
of Louis xvIII., ambassador to England.
58 M. Cousin's recent audacious assertion.-Victor Cousin
(1792-I867), a distinguished French philosophical writer.
60 ' Treading daily,' etc.:' The dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon.'
MILTON, Comus, lines 635, 636.
61 Froissart in the old translation by Lord Berners.-Jean
Froissart (I337-I400?); his Chronicle, translated into English by
Bourchier, Lord Berners, was published in London in 1525. Anew
English translation, by Thomas Johnes, was published, shortly
after the time of which De Quincey is here writing, in 1802-5.
62 Thalberg, etc.-Sigismond Thalberg (I812-I871) was a celebrated pianist and composer; from I830 he had no rival but Liszt.




Notes


269


64 In the summer of I802, etc.-The Peace of Amiens had been
concluded on March 27, I802. War broke out again in May of the
following year.
7  The leeming, etc. -The lemming (to use the generally accepted
spelling) is a rodent of the family Muridae, which inhabits the
Scandinavian peninsula; 'they have always attracted a great
interest from the circumstance that at certain intervals countless
swarms descend from the mountains to the cultivated plains, and
thence make their way, apparently under the influence of some
blind impetus, to the sea, into the waters of which they boldly
plunge to meet instant death by drowning.'
72 ' The senselessness of joy,' etc.-See Wordsworth's sonnet
Calais, August 15, I802.
73 The only confidential friend I had, etc.-Lady Carbery
(originally a Miss Watson) had known De Quincey from his
childhood. She was ten years his senior, and looked upon him
as an Admirable Crichton.
76 The great enchantress of that generation-Anne Radcliff.Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), author of The Romance of the Forest,
The Mysteries of Udolpho, and other novels of romantic sensationalism.
77 As those who handled Falstaff so roughly, etc.-See Merry
Wives of Windsor, Act v. Sc. v.
79 The brief and hollow Peace of Amiens.-See note to p. 64.
8  To do 'yeoman's service':'But, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service.
Hamlet, Act v. Sc. ii.
8i In the memoirs of Clgry, etc.-See the Mdmoires de P. C.
Hanet-Clgry (I825)-Valet de Chambre de Madame Royale-and
the Journal de ClIry suivi des Denire Heures de Louis Seize (1825)
-Valet de Chambre to Louis xvI.
87 A great English divine of I630, etc.-Isaac Ambrose (16o3 -1664), a Puritan divine, whose popularity at one time rivalled that
of John Bunyan.
92 Tha mgt might have wakened the 'Seven Sleepers.'-The Seven
Sleepers were noble youths who fled during the Decian persecution
to a cave in Mount Celion, where they slept for 230 years.
95 s Came over me,' etc.:'O, it comes o'er my memory,
As doth the raven o'er th' infected house,
Boding to all.'
Othello, Act iv. Sc. L




270                      Notes
95 ' With all its fairy crowds,' etc.-The first word of the last
line of this quotation from Wordsworth's Ruth should be 'among.'
Ioo The Deucalion and Pyrrha of this perilous moment.Deucalion and Pyrrha were the only two persons saved when
Zeus destroyed the degenerate race of man by a flood.
102 ' It was,' she said, ' The Bore,' etc-The phenomenon of the
Bore is observed in several British rivers besides the Dee and the
Severn, notably in the Trent, the Wye, and Solway Firth. De
Quincey is wrong in saying that the Ganges is the only Indian
river so affected, for the Brahmapootra and the Indus each has
its bore.
104 An English clergyman 'passing rich,' etc..'A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year.'
GOLDSMITH, The Deserted Village.
105 My eldest sister, etc.-Mary De Quincey married, in 1819,
the Rev. Philip Serle, and died in childbed within eighteen
months afterwards.
105 A maternal uncle, etc.-i.e. Colonel Thomas Penson.
io8 My next brother, etc.-Richard De Quincey, immortalised
by his famous brother as 'my Brother Pink.'
o09 Under the eye of Sir Home Popham, etc.-Sir Home Riggs
Popham (1762-1820) took Monte Video in I806.
Io9 Through a vast Hercynian forest.-Hercynia Silva, a range
of mountains, described by Julius Caesar as being covered with
forest, and being nine days' journey in breadth and more than sixty
days' in length. The name is still preserved in that of the Harz
Mountains.
116 These ladies were Irish, etc.-Lady Eleanor Butler (? I745 -1829), and her friend Sarah Ponsonby (?  -1831), lived for over
half a century in a cottage at Plasnewydd, in the Vale of Llangollen.
In 1774 (or 1779) they resolved to live together in complete isolation
from society; and despite the efforts of their families, they did so,
and, with a single maid-servant, lived their simple retired lives.
123 That district which Pennant, etc.-Thomas Pennant published his Journey to Snowdon in I778.
126 Note.-Professor Masson Englishes Juvenal's line, in accordance with De Quincey's indications, as 'an empty-pocketed tramp
will sing in the face of a robber.'
129 Paul Richter I thenfirst heard of, etc.-Jean Paul Friedrich
Richter (1763-1825); Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (174I-1796).




Notes                        271
129 Note.-The book referred to is Memoirs of the Peers of
England during the reign of James the First (I802).
131 Note.-The beautiful verses of Shirley, etc.-These wellknown verses are from James Shirley's Contention of Ajax and
Ulysses. In the last line 'their dust' is commonly misquoted as
De Quincey gives it.
134 Like the unhappy loetc.-Io, the daughter of Inachus, King
of Argos, was beloved by Jupiter, who, fearing Juno's jealousy,
turned Io into a cow. Juno, by the aid of Argus, discovered her
rival and smote her with wandering madness. She wandered to
Egypt, was restored to human form, married Osiris, and was
afterwards worshipped as Isis.
I39 Governor Zolwell's black cage at Calcutta. —John Zephaniah
Holwell (1711-1798) was a high official in the East India Company's service at Calcutta. He led the fighting against Suraj na
Dowlah, which ended in the terrible tragedy of the Black Hole
(June I756), when the Nawab crammed I56 prisoners into a small
chamber, out of which only twenty-three emerged alive the following morning. Holwell was not made Governor until later.
139 As truly as Jessica's moonlight, etc.:~'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!'
Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. i.
151 My new quarters, etc.-' The house in which the opium-eater
lived, as mentioned in his Confessions, rent free, and which is in a
street leading out of Oxford Street, is in Greek Street, and the house
is the corner-house in that street, partly in the Square, on the right
hand as you go down from Oxford Street.' Richard Woodhouse's
'Notes of Conversations with Thomas De Quincey.'
I69 To slacken virtue, etc.-Paradise Regained, bk. ii. lines
455, 456. In the second line the second word should be 'prompt.'
I71 I remembered the story... about Otway, etc.-An early
biographer of Thomas Otway, the seventeenth century dramatist,
says that Otway, being in a starving state, was given a guinea
when he had begged for a shilling, and buying a loaf, began to
devour it with the rage of hunger, but was chocked by the first
mouthful.
175 For thou, beloved M.-i.e. his wife, Margaret Simpson, to
whom he was married in I8i6.
178 Stately Pantheon (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called
it), etc.-See the firstAstanza of Power of Music:'Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same,
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.'




272                      Notes
179 Note.-A poet of rather ominous name, etc.-Thomas Flatman (c. i635-I688), a poet and artist of some repute in his day.
182 Note.-The brilliant author of Anastasius, etc.-Thomas
Hope (1770-1831), merchant, traveller, and man of letters.
189 Note.-Z think the passage begins, etc.-The passage in
question will be found in Section ix. of the second part of the
Religio Medici, and is almost as De Quincey gives 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 profound
contemplation of the first composer.'
190 A pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller, etc.De Quincey refers to a passage in Isaac Weld's Travels through the
States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower
Canada 11795). 'They [the Indian women] have, without exception, the most delicate harmonious voices I 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, merely
for the pleasure of listening to their conversation, on account of its
wonderful softness and delicacy.'
193 According to the old Pagan legend, etc.-It was said of a
melancholy man among the Greeks that he had visited the cave of
Trophonios. The cave had so narrow an entrance that whoso went
to visit the oracle had to enter it lying down feet foremost. He was
dragged in, and then expelled in a similar fashion looking ghastly
pale and terrified: hence the proverb.
196 I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, etc.-It was over these initials that
the Confessions first appeared. See the beginning of these Notes.
197 A melancholy event.-The death of Wordsworth's daughter,
Catherine.
199 Such as Chaucer describes, etc.:'Ful swetely herde he confessiones,
And plesaunt was his absolutiones.'
Canterbury Tales, Prologue, lines 221, 222.
203 Note. -' Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite,' etc. —The 'little
pastoral poem' of Wordsworth's in which this line occurs is The Pet
Lamb.
206 Note.-' Or Lady of the Lake; etc.-This should read, 'or
Lady of the Mere.' The lines occur in the fourth of the Poems on
the Naming of Places, beginning 'A narrow girdle of rough stones
and crags.'
207 I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum
againstJonas Hanway, etc. -Joseph Hanway (I712-1786) was a
traveller and author, who wrote an Essay on Tea, in which he




Notes                        273
decried the popular use of the infusion; this was reviewed by
Johnson, a notorious tea-drinker, in the Literarj  Magazine. It was
of this Hanway that Johnson said, ' He acquired some reputation by
travelling abroad, but lost it all by travelling at home.'
224 I knew that insurance offices, etc.-In this long passage on
opium-eating and life insurance, De Quincey shows himself a
prejudiced critic, for he confesses that he 'offered at the first
glance, to a medical eye, every symptom of phthisis broadly and
conspicuously developed.' Any life-office, I am given to understand, would promptly refuse a candidate who confessed to opiumeating, but they would, nowadays, as promptly refuse any candidates
who were in any sense intemperate drinkers.
228 In the Paradise Lost, which I heard her attempt at Barley
Wood, etc.-In his Literary Reminiscences De Quincey says that he
heard Mrs. Siddons read Milton in I8I3 or 1814, at Hannah More's
residence, Barley Wood, Somerset.
230 Mr. Ricardo's book.-David Ricardo (1772-I823) published
his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817.
234 1 was once told, etc.-By his mother.
236 Note.-De Quincey's date is wrong by two days. It was on
August 22, I642, that the King began the Civil War by raising the
royal standard at Nottingham.
237 Piranesis Antiquities of Rome.-Giovanni Battista Piranesi
(I720-1778) was an eminent and imaginative Italian engraver of
ancient architectural subjects. His plates, to the number of about
two thousand, were published in Paris (1835-37) in twenty-nine
folio volumes.
238 The appearance instantaneously disclosed, etc. —This passage
occurs towards the close of Book II. of The Excursion.  In the
hird line, 'wondrous depth' is 'boundless depth' in the 1849-50
edition of Wordsworth's works.
239 And in later times of Fuseli.-Henry Fuseli (174I-1825), an
eminent artist.
239 Except the dramatist Shadwell, etc.-Thomas Shadwell
(I640-I692), English dramatic poet, superseded Dryden as PoetLaureate at the Revolution.
245 As the caves of hell sighed, etc.-The incestuous mother is
Sin. Vide Paradise Lost, Book ii.:'I fled, and cried out Death
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded Death!'
247 William  Lithgow, etc.-William   Lithgow  (1582-I645?)
published the record of his nineteen years' travels in I632,




274


Notes


248 ' With dreadful faces thronged,' et.-Paradise Lost, bk. xi.
line 644.
255 A  late distinguished writer, etc.-David Macbeth Moir
(1798-I851), a physician and miscellaneous writer, better known
under his pseudonym of ' Delta.'
257 Ah, what a century was that! Sculptured as only Froude
can sculpture, etc.-James Anthony Froude (I818-I894) published
the first two volumes of his History of England from the Fall of
Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada in i856.
258 First in her infancy, etc-See note to p. 203.
261 My second chitd etc -i.e. Margaret, who married Robert
Craig, and died in I871.


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