INCEYS 
 
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 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
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 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 PRU53U 
 
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 1896 
 
 
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CELL’S 
 
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 :lassics. 
 
 ;ONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2020 with funding from 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 https://archive.org/details/dequinceysconfesOOdequ 
 
1 
 
 DE QUINCEY’S 
 
 ' . / 
 . CCd 
 I 87-Y 
 
 lONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATER 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 
 
 BY 
 
 MARK HUNTER, B.A., OxoN., 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF THE COIMBATORE COLLEGE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS 
 AND BOMBAY 
 1896 
 
CO^^TEOTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Introduction— 
 
 I. Thomas de Quincey, . . . . vii 
 
 II. De Quincey’s Writings, . . • 
 
 III. The Confessions, . . . • xxxi 
 
 IV. The Daughter of Lebanon, . . . xlvii 
 
 V. De Quincey and Opium, . . . li 
 
 Preface to Edition of 1822, .... Lxvii 
 
 Preface to Edition of 1856, .... lx:xii 
 
 The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, . 1 
 
 The Daughter of Lebanon, . . . • 
 
 Appendices to Text, . . ■ ■ • 
 
 Notes, 
 
 Appendix to Notes, ..... '^^2 ^ 
 
 Index, . . . • • • 
 
ERRA TUM. 
 
 On page 114, place as note : 
 
 Vacuus : I am afraid, though many a year has passed since 
 I last read Juvenal, that the true classical sense of vacuiis is careless^ 
 clear from^ all harden 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 of iiroperty ; in which sense vacuitas 
 would be the cause of such an immunity. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 The story of the earlier, and, in some respects, far more 
 important part of De Quincey’s life has been told by him¬ 
 self, partly in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 
 and partly in a series of autobiographical sketches con¬ 
 tributed to an Edinburgh periodical.^ There are, besides, 
 scattered throughout De Quincey’s other writings, many 
 passages of an autobiographical character. 
 
 De Quincey lived to the age of seventy-four, busily work¬ 
 ing to the close ; and yet a full three-quarters of his life 
 furnishes the biographer with little beyond a catalogue of 
 more or less fugitive writings, frequent notices of change 
 ■of residence, two or three domestic occurrences, and a 
 miscellany of anecdotes characteristic of the personality 
 and eccentricities of the man. 
 
 De Quincey’s autobiographical writings cover the first 
 twenty-three years of his life (1785-1808). During that 
 period, and for some time afterwards, he produced no original 
 literary work. The work comes later, but the whole nature 
 of the work was determined by the circumstances of the 
 earlier life. Something like this is, of course, true with all 
 
 ^ The autobiographical writings of De Quincey make up the first 
 three volunres of Masson’s Collected Edition. 
 
DE QUINCEY. 
 
 viii 
 
 men. In all cases the child is, in a sense, “ the father of 
 the man,” hut with De Quincey it is true in a quite peculiar 
 sense, and for the following reasons :— 
 
 (1) The most prominent features in De Quincey’s genius 
 were shaped by the unique circumstances of his childhood 
 and youth. He came into the world with certain inherited 
 physical ailments, which were aggravated by particular 
 episodes in his boyhood; more especially did the period 
 that intervened between the close of his school education 
 and his matriculation at Oxford—a period spent in lonely 
 wanderings on the Welsh hillsides, and afterwards in a sort 
 of vagabond existence in the streets of London — bring 
 about a species of extreme bodily suffering, from which 
 refuge was afterwards found in opium-eating. Add to this 
 a peculiar precociousness in the boy from earliest childhood; 
 a capacity, far above the common, for receiving and retain¬ 
 ing impressions ; add to this an almost painful craving for 
 love and sympathy ; the death of a dearly-loved sister; an 
 elder brother, selfish, exacting and tyrannical; a father lost 
 before he could be said to have been known; a mother who, 
 in spite of many admirable qualities, seems never to have 
 understood her son; guardians who, blind or indifferent, 
 persisted in doing exactly the wrong thing by their ward. 
 
 (2) Until the age of thirty-five De Quincey published 
 nothing. With the exception of a metrical translation of 
 an ode of Horace, written when he was fifteen, we have in 
 Do Quincey’s writings nothing of the nature of “Juvenilia,” 
 When De Quincey appeared before the i^ublic as a man of 
 letters, he had reached the turning point of the allotted 
 three-score years and ten : his knowledge was multifarious 
 and extensive ; his opinions and tastes, the whole bent of his 
 mind and feelings, were thoroughly formed ; and his literary 
 powers were also practically developed to the full. Thus, 
 in a review of his actual work, extending as it does over 
 nearly forty years, we have no development to trace, either 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IX 
 
 in the external qualities of style or in the more important 
 internal qualities of thought or predominant feeling. That 
 is to say, whether regarded as thinker or artist, De Quincey 
 advances little or not at all beyond the standard of his 
 earliest works. The subject varies infinitely ; the method 
 and treatment remain much the same. 
 
 (3) Another reason lies in the peculiar nature of the 
 work itself. With nothing to record as to development of 
 thought or artistic skill, there might still have remained 
 some history as to the form in which the early period of 
 receptiveness reproduced itself, and periods might have been 
 marked off in which such and such works were prepared 
 and executed. We can do this with regard to most great 
 authors; but De Quincey is again peculiar. A chrono¬ 
 logical list of his writings can be, and indeed has been, 
 drawn up; but it remains a catalogue, and nothing more, 
 De Quincey produced no single great Avork. Only two of 
 his Avritings appeared at first in book form, one a novel of 
 no great value, and the other a short treatise on Political 
 Economy. “ He may be said, ” remarks his editor and 
 biographer, Professor Masson, “ to have taken his place in 
 our literature as the author of a hundred and fifty magazine 
 articles.” These articles vary to an extraordinary degree, 
 both as regards subject and character. But, seemingly, 
 subject and character are controlled not at all by the date of 
 composition, or, if at all, only through circumstances Avhich 
 are purely accidental, and which are, for the most part, un¬ 
 known. Almost every year betAA^een 1821 and 1859 has 
 its article or articles assigned to it, but there is nothing in 
 the date Avhich appears to have determined the nature of 
 the article, and nothing in the nature of the article Avhich 
 would enable us to determine the date. 
 
 The life of De Quincey has been related by Dr A. H. 
 Japp, and again by Professor Masson. To their volumes 
 the student must be referred for anything approaching a 
 
X DE QUINCEY. 
 
 ■detailed narrative. Only the merest sketch can be at¬ 
 tempted here. 
 
 The family of De Quincey was originally noble. An 
 ancestor of the opium-eater “ came over with the Con¬ 
 queror : ” afterwards certain De Quinceys are found Earls 
 of Winchester, and made some small or great noise in the 
 Barons’ War and the Crusades. But these Earls of Win¬ 
 chester, as De Quincey tells us, “ suddenly came to grief; ” 
 in fact, the family sank considerably in the world’s 
 estimation. The aristocratic prefix “De” appears to have 
 been dropped, and the author’s father signed his name and 
 was known amongst his acquaintances as plain Thomas 
 Quincey.^ 
 
 This Thomas Quincey married a Miss Elizabeth Benson, 
 a lady of very good family connections. There were eight 
 children by this marriage, of whom Thomas, the fifth child 
 and the second son, was born on the 15th of August 1785, 
 at Manchester. At the age of six, De Quincey lost that 
 elder sister Elizabeth, to whom he was so devotedly attached, 
 and whose death made so strange an impression on the 
 child’s mind. Shortly afterwards the family removed to 
 Greenhay, a place at that time some miles distant from 
 Manchester, but long since swallowed up in the great 
 manufacturing city. Not long after, the elder Thomas 
 Quincey died. 
 
 The education of De Quincey, after the elementary stage 
 of home instruction, was entrusted to a private tutor. In 
 the child’s twelfth year the De Quinceys removed to Bath, 
 and De Quincey entered the Bath Grammar School. Other 
 changes followed. In 1798 he was sent to a private school 
 at Winkfield in Wiltshire, and, at the end of 1800, to the 
 Manchester Grammar School, where he remained till July 
 1802. 
 
 ^ In his boyish letters De Quincey always signs himself “ Thomas 
 Quincey ”; the “ De ” appears to have been re-assumed by his mother. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XI 
 
 De Quincey easily excelled in the various branches of 
 knowledge imparted at school. He obtained a singular 
 mastery over the Greek and Latin languages. He showed 
 a remarkable facility in the composition of Latin verse, and 
 he tells us that he acquired the power of writing and 
 epeaking Greek with fluency—a very rare accomplishment 
 in a schoolboy, or, for the matter of that, in any one. But 
 he was not content with the knowledge and acquirements 
 demanded by the standard of a public school education ; 
 he struck out a line for himself, and early became ac¬ 
 quainted, amongst other things, with the literature of his 
 own country, even in its byways. He was throughout his 
 life a voracious and omnivorous reader. Southey, a com¬ 
 petent judge on such matters, once declared him to be the 
 best informed man for his years he had ever met. 
 
 Manchester Grammar School, for more than one reason, 
 proved unendurable to De Quincey. He earnestly en¬ 
 treated his mother and guardians to remove him. His 
 prayers were unheard; and so, unable to bear the torment 
 any more (his health was breaking down), he took the bold 
 course of running away. One evening he appeared at 
 Chester, where his family had now taken up their quarters. 
 On the advice of his uncle. Captain, afterwards Colonel, 
 Penson, at that time staying with his sister, Mrs De 
 Quincey, the truant was, as he himself desired, suffered to 
 go on a walking tour in Wales, and a guinea a week was 
 allowed him to support existence as best he might. 
 
 Accordingly, from July to November, De Quincey 
 wandered about Wales. The guinea a week proved miser¬ 
 ably insufficient; the boy was obliged to undergo the 
 severest privations, and the result was a permanent injury 
 to his constitution. 
 
 Worse still; in an evil hour he formed the resolution to 
 cut himself adrift from his family and plunge into London. 
 Then followed greater suffering : hunger, wanderings by 
 
xii DE QUINCEY. 
 
 night and day about the London streets, intense bodily 
 pain and sickness. 
 
 This is the period of his life (Manchester Grammar 
 School, the Welsh wanderings, and the vagabondism in 
 London) which is recounted in The Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater, for it was then that the disease, 
 apparently hereditary, was aggravated to such an extent 
 that the only possible refuge waS found in the consumption 
 —sometimes in enormous quantities—of opium. 
 
 Bitter as these experiences were to the boy himself, 
 painful as were the consequences in after years, they have 
 served to enrich English literature with some of its most 
 magnificent “ impassioned prose.” Without the sufferings, 
 without the oj)ium, De Quincey’s contribution to literature 
 might have been as great as it is, might have been even 
 greater; but it could not have been exactly the same. 
 The boy of seventeen assuredly “ went down into hell ” in 
 those terrible London days, and he carried with him through 
 life an ever present remembrance of that vision of darkness 
 visible.^ 
 
 At last an accident, the exact nature of which we do not 
 know, restored him for a while to his family, and, in 1803, 
 he was sent to Oxford and matriculated at Worcester 
 College. 
 
 At Oxford he remained —apparently— till 1807, when, 
 in the midst of his final examination, and with the 
 certainty of a triumphant success before him, he suddenly 
 and unaccountably left. 
 
 While at Oxford, in addition to the prescribed course of 
 Latin and Greek, De Quincey had further pursued his 
 studies in English literature, had mastered German, and 
 
 ^ Compare Carlyle’s recollection of him:—“Blue-eyed, blonde¬ 
 haired, sparkling face,—^had there not been a something too, which 
 said, ‘ Eccovi, this child has been in hell.’ ”— Carlyle's lieminiscences, 
 ed. Norton, ii. 153. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xin 
 
 had plunged into German metaphysics. It was also during 
 the Oxford period that De Quincey first learnt to take 
 opium. 
 
 At the age of twenty-one he had entered upon a moderate 
 fortune, and was under no necessity of working for his 
 living. Accordingly, for two years, he seems to move 
 hither and thither as his fancy bade him. Sometimes he 
 is to he found in London, •sometimes in the Lake Country, 
 sometimes in Bath and the West of England, He had 
 made the acquaintance of various men of letters, amongst 
 whom the most conspicuous were Charles Lamb, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Southey, and John Wilson. 
 
 In 1809 he took up his abode at Grasmere in Westmore¬ 
 land, in a cottage recently vacated by Wordsworth. This 
 cottage remained his home for twenty-one years. 
 
 About four years afterwards a pecuniary calamity, the 
 nature of which is nowhere definitely stated, fell upon 
 De Quincey. He appears to have been partially relieved 
 by the liberality of the Colonel Penson already mentioned. 
 Simultaneously, his constitutional malady induced him to 
 resort to excessive opium-eating. It was at this time, he 
 tells us, that he became a “ regular and confirmed opium- 
 •“eater.” His worst experience, however, of the “ pains of 
 opium ” was to follow some years later. 
 
 Meantime the metaphysical studies went on ; and a great 
 work on ethics shadowed itself in his mind—never to be 
 realised. In these years he seems to have visited London 
 occasionally, and was once in Edinburgh, where the last 
 years of his life were to be spent. Still, De Quincey is 
 merely a scholar ; a student known to some eminent persons 
 as a man of extensive information and wide reading, and as 
 a verv brilliant talker : to the outside world not known at 
 all. 
 
 In 1816 De Quincey married. His wife was a Miss 
 Margaret Simpson, daughter of a Westmoreland farmer, or 
 
XIV 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 “ statesman.” She bore him eight children, five of whom^ 
 survived him. She herself died in 1837. The marriage 
 appears to have been in every respect a happy one—save 
 for the opium spell; for, soon afterwards, there followed an 
 outburst of opium-eating. De Quincey was utterly incapaci¬ 
 tated from all work, “ wound round,” as he describes it, “ by 
 some Circean spell.” He was visited nightly by the most 
 fearful dreams. He dreaded the night, for night brought 
 sleep, and sleep brought the dreams. These dreams play 
 a great part in De Quincey’s impassioned imaginative 
 writings. Especially he has described them in the Confes¬ 
 sions, and in the “ prose phantasies ” entitled The Glory of 
 Motion and the Dream Fugue. 
 
 From this “ Circean spell ” De Quincey was liberated in 
 a somewhat curious fashion. He chanced upon the writ¬ 
 ings of the economist David Eicardo, and conceived an 
 extraordinary enthusiasm for Eicardo and his gospel: he 
 even projected a great work himself upon the same subject. 
 This work was destined never to see the light. Instead 
 of it we have, at intervals, various essays on Political 
 Economy, being chiefly elucidations and expositions of 
 Eicardo’s theories, particularly of his theory of Value. 
 These essays, however, were still in the future. 
 
 Meantime, necessity drove De Quincey to write. In 
 1819 he obtained the editorship of the Westmoreland 
 Gazette, a newly established paper. He held the editor¬ 
 ship for one year only. Next year he was in Edinburgh, 
 looking for work in connection with the Magazines. 
 
 But it was London, not Edinburgh, in which De 
 Quincey was to make his first appearance as a literary 
 power of unquestioned importance. In 1821, in The 
 London Magazine, there appeared The Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater. The London Magazine at this time 
 numbered amongst its contributors several who have since 
 taken their places amongst the immortals. Month by 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xv 
 
 month were appearing the Elia Essays of Charles Lamb. 
 Keats had sent verses; Hood was a sort of sub-editor; and 
 Carlyle was publishing in separate parts his first consider¬ 
 able work, The Life of Friedrich Schiller. 
 
 The Confessions achieved an immediate success. Had 
 the popularity obtained by writings of the kind equalled 
 in extent the popularity of a successful novel to-day, De 
 Quincey’s fortune would have been made. As it was, he 
 could henceforth rely upon steady work from the editors 
 of magazines. Accordingly from this date, almost to his 
 death, each year bears with it its quota of periodical 
 literature from De Quincey’s pen. He wrote, as has been 
 said, on almost every conceivable subject. Little, there¬ 
 fore, is gained by cataloguing his essays, nor is it easy to 
 single out a few for special mention, since, although some 
 certainly are either slight in aim or not very successful in 
 result, the large majority, both as regards matter and 
 manner, possess great importance. A glance at the contents 
 of the fourteen volumes, forming Masson’s new and admir¬ 
 able edition of his works, will impress us sufficiently with 
 the wide range of De Quincey’s contribution to literature. 
 
 At first The London Magazine received most of his work. 
 Then, in 1826, he began to contribute to the Edinburgh 
 periodical, Blackioood’s Magazine. From that time Edin¬ 
 burgh, and, occasionally, Glasgow, gave his writings to the 
 world ; and De Quincey, without a particle of Scotch blood 
 in his composition, or of Scotch feeling in his heart, takes 
 his place amongst the Scotch literati. 
 
 In 1830 De Quincey finally severed his connection with 
 the Lakes, and took up his abode permanently in, or in the 
 vicinity of Edinburgh. Besides his work for Blackwcod, 
 De Quincey wrote a number of articles for Tails Magazine, 
 and afterwards for Hogg's Instructor, and contributed 
 several biographies to the Encyclopeedia Britannica. 
 
 About 1851, De Quincey being between sixty and seventy 
 
XVI 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 years of age, Mr Hogg, the proprietor of The Instructor, 
 conceived the idea of publishing an edition of De Quincey’s 
 collected works. An American publisher had anticipated 
 him. De Quincey was induced to fall in with the scheme, 
 and, from this time to his death, he was mainly occupied 
 in collecting, revising, and enlarging his widely-scattered 
 writings. Thirteen volumes appeared during his life, and 
 the fourteenth, prepared by himself, in the year following 
 his death.i 
 
 Meanwhile, De Quincey’s family was breaking up. His 
 w’ife had died in 1837 ; of his five sons three were dead and 
 the other two abroad; two of his three daughters were 
 married; the youngest, Emily, lived generally either with 
 her married sister in Ireland or in De Quincey’s cottage at 
 Lasswade, near Edinburgh. De Quincey himself, in order 
 to he within convenient reach of the press, had found it 
 necessary to take rooms in Edinburgh itself ] and he passed 
 his time between the Lasswade cottage and the Edinburgh 
 rooms. Latterly, however, he was compelled to live almost 
 entirely in Edinburgh, and there, in his lodgings at 42 
 Lothian Street, on the 8th of January 1859, he died. Two 
 of his daughters were with him to the end, and one of them 
 has told the story of her father’s last hours.^ 
 
 11. DE QUINCEY’S WRITINGS. 
 
 In considering the contribution of De Quincey to litera¬ 
 ture, the first thing that strikes us is the extraordinary 
 
 ^ The first collected edition contained fourteen volumes. In 1861 
 the copyright passed to Messrs A. & C. Black, who issued a fifteenth 
 volume, and a sixteenth in 1871. In 1889-1890 Masson’s fourteen 
 volume edition appeared. This contains all that the sixteen volume 
 edition contained, and some other pieces, together with highly 
 useful notes and introductory essays. A few later De Quincey 
 papers have been published by Mr T. Hogg in his “Uncollected 
 Writings of Thomas De Quincey,” and a few more are still un¬ 
 collected. 
 
 2 See Japp, Dc Quincey's Life and Writings, pp. 450-451. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xvii 
 
 range and extent of liis writings. A “ Polyhistor,” Masson 
 calls him ;—one who knew and wrote about everything. 
 No eminent man of letters, perhaps, has ever come to his 
 task armed with so large an amount of information ; with 
 such wide-spread and minute knowledge of so many 
 subjects ; with such familiarity with so many branches 
 of literature. De Quincey gives us the impression of 
 having been a specialist in everything, and in everything 
 at the same time. In history he is equally at home in 
 ancient, mediaeval, and modern ages ; and he writes, and 
 writes learnedly, as one thoroughly acquainted with 
 original authorities and the latest modern theories. He 
 travels not only over the highways of history, but also in 
 the byways. He can discourse, not only on Herodotus 
 and Tacitus and Michelet, on Cicero and Caesar and Joan 
 of Arc, but on such out of the way subjects as the Essenes 
 and the Rosicrucians, and such minute archaeological topics 
 as Roman dinners and breakfasts, and the toilette of a 
 Hebrew lady. In the literatures of Greece and Rome he 
 w'as a finished scholar, as his essays on Homer, on Hero¬ 
 dotus, on Greek tragedy, on Style and Rhetoric, abundantly 
 show. In modern European literature he shows the same 
 amazing omniscience ; he writes of German poets, philo¬ 
 sophers and literati ,—he has not even neglected obscure 
 German novelists ; he is familiar with the classics of France 
 and Spain ; he has mastered Danish, and can prove the 
 Danish origin of the lake-country dialect. His knowledge 
 of English literature is minute and profound, and there is 
 hardly a great or even second-rate English writer with 
 whose Avorks he does not show himself thoroughly familiar. 
 He knows the literature of the past, and he keeps pace 
 with the literature of the present. He was one of the 
 first who made English readers acquainted with German 
 thought and German literature; he translated pieces of 
 varying importance from Kant, Richter, Tieck, as well as 
 
 h 
 
DE QUINCEY. 
 
 xvlii 
 
 from others whose names are less familiar. He has 
 wandered far into the deep forests of philosophy : he ex¬ 
 pounds Kant and criticises Plato. Science, too, is not 
 neglected. Political economy was for a while a specially 
 cultivated held ; he has papers on the theory of states- 
 craft, as well as on contemporary and practical politics. 
 He was a gladiator in the arena of theological controversy. 
 He writes biographies of eminent persons of the past, and 
 reminiscences of eminent contemporaries. He wrote one 
 novel and several shorter tales—one of especial excellence—; 
 and there remaini^ besides, his “impassioned prose”—of 
 which branch of literature he declares himself the solitary 
 exponent—his Confessions, his English Mail Coach, and 
 his Suspiria de Profundis. Moreover, his works teem 
 with allusions and references to every branch of knowledge, 
 and his footnotes often bear evidence of much exact 
 scholarship and much curious research. 
 
 Such then, roughly, are the contents of De Quincey’s 
 “ hundred and fifty magazine articles ; ” and, if there is 
 variety in the subject, so also, in the same degree, is there 
 variety in the treatment. De Quincey more than once 
 insists upon a distinction between what he calls the 
 Literature of Power and the Literahire of Knotoledge. The 
 last seeks merely to instruct —(he instances a cookery 
 book); the first seeks to move —(he instances Milton’s 
 Paradise Lost). The cookery book aims at teaching us 
 something new in every paragraph : Paradise Lost teaches 
 us nothing ; its greatness consists in its power to 
 move. The literature of knowledge appeals simply to 
 the intellectual faculties; the literature of power to the 
 emotions. 
 
 Upon some such distinction, De Quincey attempted a 
 classification of his own works. He added, however, a 
 third class, a class which, seeking in the first place merely 
 to amuse or interest the reader, rises, nevertheless, at times 
 
I Nr ROD UCTION. 
 
 XIX 
 
 into the character of “impassioned prose,” that is, into the 
 literature of power. 
 
 De Quincey’s distinction is a useful one for several pur¬ 
 poses, but it fails as a basis on which to classify his own 
 writings, or, indeed, the writings of any other master of 
 prose. The literature of power, pure and simple—that 
 literature from which the idea of instruction is entirely 
 absent, is limited almost entirely to poetry, and, perhaps, 
 prose fiction: the literature of knowledge, pure and simple 
 —literature which entirely abstains from all attempts to 
 move, is limited perhaps altogether to dictionaries and 
 technical manuals. Wherever a work has resort to 
 eloquence, pathos, figurativeness, style, in short, there we 
 have the literature of power, though the primary object 
 may have been to instruct. 
 
 Accordingly, Professor Masson, in his recent edition of 
 Du Quincey’s Works, for the most part discards classifica¬ 
 tion according to treatmeirt, and proceeds merely upon the 
 commoner basis of subject. iSTevertheless, it is well to 
 bear in mind De Quincey’s distinction, for, though it is 
 impossible to rank all his writings under one or the other 
 head, the distinction illustrates certain very marked 
 qualities of De Quincey’s temperament. These qualities, 
 as Dr Japp has pointed out, are :—(1) the logical, analytic 
 faculty; and (2) the dreamy or purely imaginative faculty. 
 Wide apart as these mental characteristics appear to be, 
 they exist side by side in De Quincey: in both he excels. 
 He is amongst the acutest of reasoners; he is amongst the 
 most sublimely passionate of rhapsodists. 
 
 Either faculty, it is true, has a dangerous tendency. 
 The dreamy, imaginative propensity comes at times 
 perilously near to morbid introspection; to an effeminacy 
 of over-refined sensibility: the logical, argumentative 
 propensity leads not seldom to “ hair-splitting,”—to what 
 Carlyle called “ wire-drawn ingenuity.” 
 
XX 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Let us now very briefly glance at De Quincey’s contri¬ 
 bution to literature under the following heads:-—(1) literary 
 criticism ; (2) speculative writings ; (3) history; (4) auto¬ 
 biography; (5) biography; (6) political papers; (7) purely 
 imaginative prose; (8) novels and tales; (9) humorous 
 writings. 
 
 (1) De Quincey’s Literary Criticism is very valuable. 
 His immense knowledge of literature, ancient and modern, 
 his amazing memory, his keen analytic power and minute 
 observation, give especial weight to his critical utterances. 
 He is admirably free from all conventional and insincere 
 enthusiasm. He refuses to accept on faith the superiority 
 of Greek and Roman over modern literature, merely 
 because few critics before him had ventured to deny it: 
 he examines both on their own merits, and often decides 
 in favour of the moderns, even when pitted against such 
 claims as those of Homer and Demosthenes. Again, he is 
 quick to detect and expose any fallacy of traditional 
 criticism, criticism which has acquired through age a 
 certain venerableness. His masterly examination of Pope’s 
 claims to “ correctness,” and of Homer’s claim (in any 
 transcendent degree) to sublimity, may serve as examples. 
 
 Lastly, his taste is, on the whole, decidedly catholic. 
 It was amongst the characteristics of those of De Quincey’s 
 contemporaries whom he most admired—Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge (the so-called Lakists)—to denounce the poets of 
 the Annian Era and all their works. De Quincey, on the 
 other hand, is remarkably just to these writers, and has 
 done much to draw attention to those qualities in which 
 they really excelled. Nevertheless, De Quincey has his 
 own prejudices, and few competent judges have followed 
 liim in his depreciation of Plato and of Goethe. 
 
 (2) De Quincey’s Speculative Writings are often subtle 
 and immensely “ clever,” but are, perhaps, not marked by 
 any special depth. He seldom cares to go to the root of a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXI 
 
 matter, to dive down to great underlying principles. In 
 fact, he appears to have no great strength of opinion on 
 matters of vital importance. He expresses his adherence 
 to certain great causes and systems of belief, often with 
 considerable vehemence j but it is not4ihese that he is at 
 pains to reason upon. A brilliant controversialist, he has 
 small claim to he regarded as a great thinker. 
 
 (3) In his Historical Essays he is hardly at his best, if 
 we except the Revolt of the Tartars, which is, however, 
 rather to be regarded as a “ study in historical narrative ” 
 than a contribution to historical scholarship. De Quincey 
 himself divides historical literature into three classes :—(1) 
 pure narrative, i.e., a bare record of facts; (2) scenical 
 history; (3) philosophical history.^ Of the first class De 
 Quincey naturally has no example; the second is brilliantly 
 exemplified in the Revolt of the Tartars, and in passages of 
 Joan of Arc. To the third class belong most of his histori¬ 
 cal papers, and here, as Professor Masson points out, he 
 has a tendency to “ run to points; ” to concentrate ail 
 interest upon some disputed matter, often of comparatively 
 trifling importance. Again, as a “philosophical” historian, 
 his prejudices frequently mar the value of his rvork. In 
 his enthusiasm for the purity of the Christian religion, in 
 his belief in Christianity as a civilising agency, he will 
 allow nothing good to pre-Christian or non-Christian 
 civilisations. He does scant justice to Mahomet. Greek 
 and Roman religions and systems of thought he is inclined 
 to unite in one sweeping condemnation. Of the contribu¬ 
 tion of old Horse paganism to modern European civilisation, 
 of that northern character stamped upon Northern Europe, 
 before the advent of Christianity, he seems never to have 
 heard. Nevertheless, where these prejudices do not inter¬ 
 vene, as in the paper on Herodotus, the estimate of Julius 
 
 1 Works, ed. Masson, vol. v. p. 354. 
 
xxii 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Ceesar, and in several other essays, De Qnincey’s historical 
 writings are really valuable, and are, of course, always 
 ingenious and interesting, 
 
 (4) The AutohiogmpMcal Sketches of De Quincey contain 
 some of his noblesLimaginative work,—imaginative, not in 
 the sense of being fictitious, but in its power to invest the 
 external facts of life with a certain spiritual or transcen¬ 
 dental significance. Amongst such writings, most notable 
 are The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and the 
 piece which now forms the second chapter of the Auto¬ 
 biography, and which is entitled The Affliction of Childhood. 
 
 (5) The Biographical Essays are of two sorts:—First, 
 sketches and reminiscences of interesting and important 
 people whom the writer had known personally, s\ich as 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lamb, Professor 
 Wilson, and others; secondly, biographies which may be 
 called historical, such as those of Charlemagne, Joan of 
 Arc, Shakespeare, Milton, Bentley, Kant, &c. These last 
 are of varying value and have varying claims to rank as 
 complete accounts of the subjects they deal with. The 
 paper on Kichard Bentley, however, is of very considerable 
 importance. For the rest, what has been said of the 
 characteristics of De Quincey’s historical writings applies 
 equally to his historical biography. 
 
 The portraits of his own contemporaries are marked by 
 a keen and shrewd penetration, and are apparently very 
 just. These papers are at times very amusing, and abound 
 in delightful anecdotage, but at times they descend almost 
 to the level of gossip ; and prattle about dull, insignificant 
 people whom there was no necessity to remember at all. 
 It is, again, in the biographies, that De Quincey’s sin of 
 digression is most apparent. But on this point we shall 
 afterwards have more to say. 
 
 (6) The few papers on current politics which De Quincey 
 has left, such as his essay on China and the opium trade. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xxiii 
 
 are marked by a masculine vigour of reasoning and clear 
 common sense, which we should hardly expect from a 
 dreamer of dreams and a visionary. 
 
 (7) Of the purely imaginative work, other than appears 
 
 in the autobiographical writings, parts of Going doion with 
 Victory, The Vision of Sudden Death, and the entire 
 Dream Fugue, furnish good examples; but, without doubt, 
 Professor Masson is right when he says of the fragment 
 entitled Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, that it is as 
 
 noble as anything De Quincey ever wrote, “ It is prose 
 
 poetry,” he adds; “ but it is more; it is a permanent 
 
 addition to the mythology of the human race.” It is 
 
 indeed one of the most flawless pieces of writing in the 
 whole field of English literature. 
 
 (8) Amongst De Quincey’s tales Klosterheim is the 
 longest, but the admirable Spanish Military Nun will, 
 perhaps, best reward the reader. The interest is sustained 
 throughout, and there is an ever-present vein of kindly 
 half-tender humour, which is not generally characteristic 
 of De Quincey. The other tales, not counting translations, 
 tend very much to the horrible.^ 
 
 It remains to speak of De Quincey’s humour. Tliere are 
 several papers of his which are entirely humorous, which 
 have been written with the sole intention of amusing. Of 
 these the finest specimen is undoubtedly Murder considered 
 as One of the Fine Arts, in which a gruesome subject is made 
 the occasion of the wildest and most reckless merriment. 
 But humour of a peculiar kind is scattered throughout a 
 very large part of De Quincey’s works. Of this humour two 
 features call for especial attention:—(1) It is eminently a 
 
 ^ The Spanish Military Nun is a translation from the French “De 
 Quinceyfied ” ; that is to say, the best and most prominent features 
 in it are the gift of the “translator.” One might, we imagine, 
 venture an assertion that the same is true of the ridiculous tale, 
 “ Mr Shackenberger,” said to be “ from the German. ” The humour 
 is all De Quincey’s own, or there is a German De Quincey. 
 
XXIV 
 
 DR QUINCE Y. 
 
 scholar’s humour; scholarly, not in treatment but in 
 subject. It delights De Quincey to draw upon his vast 
 erudition for the purpose of making boisterous fun of it. 
 He loves, as it were, to cut ridiculous capers in the groves 
 of Academus. Several instances of this occur in The 
 English Mail Coach. Galileo, Lord Macartney’s embassy 
 to China, the French Revolution, ancient ethical systems, 
 Von Troil’s Iceland, Virgil’s ^neid, Marengo, the Treason 
 Laws, Ulysses’ bow, Jus Dominii, the Cyclops—these in 
 the course of a few pages afford food for various mirth. 
 In the Confessions, there is not much scope for merriment, 
 yet De Quincey contrives to drag in not a few learned 
 jests. The “transcendental philosopher” (Coleridge) is 
 made to quote Shakespeare in a ridiculous fashion; nothing 
 less majestic than a Miltonic phrase is judged sufficient to 
 describe the physique of Mr Lawson’s groom, and nothing 
 less scholarly than the rolling stone of Sisyphus (the Aaas 
 avaihrjf) to be compared with the schoolboy’s trunk trund¬ 
 ling down the stairs. The “ bore ” at Chester calls up, first 
 the avw TroTagwv of Euripides, and then the flood of Deuc¬ 
 alion, in which the unsophisticated Chester woman, soon to 
 figure as Pandora, does duty for “Thessalian Pyrrha.” In 
 other parts of the narrative, Homer, Juvenal, Lucan and 
 Suetonius are quoted, all more or less humorously, and 
 there is a good deal of learned trifling introduced in un¬ 
 expected places. Elsewhere we have much playing with 
 the transcendental philosophy in connection with an absurd 
 eulogy of Westmoreland sheep: the most erudite illustra¬ 
 tions are employed in the lecture on Murder as a Fine Art ; — 
 the Jewish Sicarii, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza. Classical 
 poetry, ancient and modern, comes in useful at other times, 
 and we have quotations burlesqued and introduced with 
 the happiest incongruity. 
 
 (2) De Quiucey’s humour is utterly extravagant ; it 
 delights in whimsical exaggeration and huge caricature: often 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXV 
 
 as not, it is mere rollicking fun—a sort of schoolboy horse¬ 
 play. He is reviewing, for instance, a literary history by a 
 grave German Professor, and he hails his author aff'er this 
 fashion:—“How, Mr Schlosser, I have mended your 
 harness: ail right ahead; so drive on once more. But, 
 oh ! Castor and Pollux, whither—in what direction is it 
 that the man is driving us? Positively, Schlosser, you 
 must stop and let me get out. Pll go no further with such 
 a drunken coachman.” He salutes Josephus as “Mr Jo,” 
 or plain “Jo.” A bishop who writes on a theological 
 subject under the nom de plume, “ Phileleutherus Angli- 
 canus,” he calls “ Phil ” through a whole paper, and dubs 
 himself “ Philo-phil ” or “ Phil-phil.” He frequently hses 
 slang—“ O crimini,” “ fash,” “ the old boy’s hoofs,” 
 “spanking,” &c., &c. Again, he is sometimes utterly 
 irreverent, especially with regard to themes usually referred 
 to with veneration, or, at least, becoming seriousness. 
 Here is a passing allusion to the death of Socrates :—“ Two 
 centuries before the Christian Era, a favourable opinion 
 upon a man or a family from the Oracle of Delphi was 
 almost equal to a friendly review at present in the London 
 Quarterly. Perhaps the Delphic concern never rose exactly 
 to the level of the London Times. Spenser notices that, 
 after all, 
 
 ‘ Not to have been dipped in Lethe’s flood 
 Could save the son of Thetis from to die.’ 
 
 OTTO Tov 6vr]o-i<€Lv. And so neither could a first-class esti¬ 
 mate of Socrates by the venerable, but palsy-stricken Oracle 
 of Delphi, save that cunning and libidinous old fellow 
 from to die by hemlock. Lauda,tur et alget: the wicked 
 old man finds his vanity tickled, but his feet getting rigid 
 and cold.” 
 
 Nevertheless, his humour is often delightfully playful. 
 The writer is not seldom his own butt, and plays with his 
 own shortcomings and eccentricities in a very charming 
 
xxvi 
 
 DE QUINCE V, 
 
 fashion. The papers on Sortilege and Astrology and The 
 Antigone of Sophocles afford very pleasing specimens of 
 this. 
 
 It is not the highest form of humour, this of De Quincey 
 —far from it. Not the humour of Shakespeare, the humour 
 which Carlyle says “ has justly been regarded as the finest 
 perfection of the poetic genius ; ” the humour which “ sees 
 common life, even mean life, under the new light of sport¬ 
 fulness and love : ” not the humour of Charles Lamb at his 
 best, the humour which, in the fine phrase of a critic, is 
 near akin to “an acute and painful sympathy:” not the 
 humour of Carlyle himself, a humour which serves but as 
 a cloak for a passionate earnestness which, in its nakedness, 
 would be almost unendurable. It is the humour, on the 
 whole, of pure nonsense, the nonsense which De Quincey 
 somewhere tells us was so “ congenial to himself,” to John 
 Wilson and to Charles Lamb (we see it in Lamb’s letters); 
 and it is a very acceptable kind of humour after all, more 
 especially as it is entirely innocent. It would indeed 
 require a “ morbidly virtuous person ” to be really 
 shocked even at the astounding “William’s lecture” on 
 “ Murder.” 
 
 Sometimes, however, it is a little forced and heavy, and 
 —which is a more serious fault—it sins against the law of 
 harmony, and somewhat jars upon the reader as intruding 
 in incongruous places, 
 
 It is a common charge against De Quincey that he, more 
 than any other writer of eminence, digresses on the slightest 
 provocation from the subject in hand. And this charge it 
 would not be easy to refute successfully, But De Quincey’s 
 discursiveness differs from that of Mrs Nickleby. De 
 Quincey is quite aware of it, points it out often enough, 
 and, to the readers of those magazine articles of his who 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXVli 
 
 still objected, he would probably have answered after the 
 manner of Chaucer:— 
 
 “And therefore who so list it nat to heere, 
 
 Turn over the leef, and cheese another tale.” 
 
 We must take De Quincey as we find him; for, though 
 abnormally discursive, he is seldom tedious. Nevertheless, 
 these digressions are at times, it mmst be confessed, annoy¬ 
 ing. If the subject in itself, for its own sake, has for the 
 reader a peculiar interest, apart from his appreciation of De 
 Quincey’s treatment of any subject, he may be inclined to 
 resent De Quincey’s flying off on the slightest occasion to 
 another topic, only indirectly, or perhaps scarcely at all, 
 connected with the matter in hand. Dor example, if the 
 subject be Charles Lamb, most readers will feel that Charles 
 Lamb is far too interesting a personality to be made a mere 
 peg on which to hang De Quincey’s views of things in 
 general; and yet the two papers on Lamb are each of them 
 marred by extremely long digressions upon subjects as little 
 related to “ Elia ” as anything well could be. 
 
 De Quincey’s tendency to digress does not confine itself 
 to discursiveness on a large scale. He is also apt to admit 
 extraneous matter into the body of his paragraphs and even 
 sentences. The causes of this habit of overloading his 
 writings with matter hardly bearing upon the principal 
 theme, are mainly, no doubt:—(1) the astonishing amount 
 of multifarious information which De Quincey always 
 carried with him; (2) his passion, already mentioned, for 
 “making points,”drawing subtle distinctions, and confuting 
 current errors. The opportunity occurs, and De Quincey 
 cannot refrain from seizing it. 
 
 Often the extraneous matter is relegated to a footnote, 
 Footnotes are a prominent feature in De Quincey’s writings. 
 They are frequently inordinately long; they are generally 
 but remotely connected with the text; they are generally 
 highly instrrffcting or extremely amusing. But it must be 
 
xxviii 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 admitted that they sometimes seriously interfere with a 
 proper enjoyment of the text. To be pulled up suddenly 
 in the middle of a sentence — a sentence perhaps of singular 
 pathos and dignity — and to find a long excursus on some 
 point of etymology, or an exposition of the correct meaning 
 of some word popularly misapplied, is a little exasperating; 
 but the reader has an easy remedy. Let him ignore all 
 reference numbers, let him finish the text, and afterwards 
 go back to the footnotes. 
 
 De Quincey once quotes with approval a saying of 
 Wordsworth’s to the effect that “style is the incarnation of 
 thought.” Carlyle, in his own peculiar fashion, said much 
 the same when, in defence of those mannerisms which at 
 one time gave so much offence, he declared that a style 
 was not to be put off and put on like a coat; it was rather 
 a skin—“ a skin, really a product and close kinsfellow of all 
 that lies under it; exact type of the nature of the beast, not 
 to be plucked off without flaying and death.” The character 
 of any man’s literary style is solely determined by the 
 character of his mental and emotional qualities: as he 
 thinks and feels, so, inevitably, he will write. Hence, in 
 speaking of De Quincey’s range of subject and mode of 
 thought and opinion, we have already seen some of the 
 chief features of his style. 
 
 As variety is one of the most striking characteristics of 
 De Quincey’s literary work, so is it of his style. There 
 are some styles —excellent in their way— which move 
 always in the same narrow channel, which seem able to 
 express but one dominant vein of thought and emotion. De 
 Quincey’s style is not of these. It has, of course, its own 
 striking qualities, but it has little or nothing of mannerism. 
 It is an instrument of many varying tones, capable of 
 expressing many varying shades of emotion ; an instrument, 
 moreover, under the most perfect control, sis an organ 
 
i ^ 
 
 A 
 
 1 NT ROD UC TION. xxix 
 
 beneath the touch of a master musician. Eor, as De Quincey 
 began his career as man of letters with a full equipment of 
 knowledge and definitely formed opinions and ways of 
 thinking, so also, from the first, he was a finished master of 
 literary expression. He is never hesitating or weak. He 
 knows exactly what he Avishes to say ; he knows how to 
 say it as well as it can be said. 
 
 Again, Ave have seen that one of the predominant qualities 
 of De Quincey’s mind is his keen intellectuality. Of 
 necessity his style bears the exact impress of his mind, 
 “ The style of De Quincey,” says Professor Masson, in a 
 passage of masterly criticism, “is prevailingly intellectual. 
 
 .It is a beautiful style,” he goes on, “ uniquely 
 
 De Quincey’s, the characteristic of which, in its more level 
 and easy specimens, is intellectual nimbleness, a light pre¬ 
 cision and softness of spring ; while, in the higher specimens, 
 Avhere the movement becomes more involved and intricately 
 rhythmical, there is still the same sense of a leisurely intel¬ 
 lectual instinct rather than glow and rapture, as regulating 
 the feat.” Intellect, keen understanding, exact discrimina¬ 
 tion, these are the characteristics of De Quincey’s style, 
 whatever be the theme, whether the language employed be 
 studiously simple or studiously ornate. 
 
 De Quincey’s style, again, is an instrument of great 
 poAver; but his power comes not from the strength of a 
 fierce moral conviction or earnestness of belief. Impassioned 
 he is at times, keenly sensible to all impressions that are 
 sublime, or beautiful, or terrible, or awful; his pathos, too, is 
 genuinely sincere; but he is never the preacher or prophet. 
 His language is the language of the scholar, the critic, 
 or the master-artist; never that of the “ teacher.” Perhaps, 
 in his more ambitious Avritings, the art-quality is sometimes 
 too apparent; but that, necessarily, is not a fault in the style, 
 but of the underlying nature of which the style is but the 
 outer embodiment. 
 
XXX 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 According to Professor Miuto, De Quincey’s vocabulary 
 is particularly large. He uses a much larger proportion of 
 Komance than of Teutonic words, not from any preference, 
 but because the fuller sounding Latin words generally suit 
 his purpose best. He is peculiarly careful in his use of words; 
 solicitous that the word should always carry its exact 
 scholarly sense. He is careful of euphony too, with the 
 anxiety of a keenly sensitive ear. He shuns religiously all 
 vestige of what he calls “ cacophony,”—awkward repetition 
 of the same sounds, and so on. 
 
 Melody is a special feature in all his writings. He is 
 amongst the most musical of prose-writers. He prefers, in 
 his higher flights, the periodic structure of sentence; long, 
 swelling harmonies, intricate “ evolution,” and magnificent 
 cadences. He has many passages of noble and sustained 
 eloquence. In this respect he has been compared to Milton. 
 Ruskin, among modern authors, when writing at a white 
 heat, excels in the same qualities of eloquence. De Quincey, 
 however, is simple and direct when it suits his purpose. He 
 uses periods, as he uses Latin words, when the theme seems 
 to demand a stately elaborate diction; not otherwise. 
 
 That De Quincey took great pains to polish his writings 
 is evident, not only from explicit utterances of his own, but 
 from a comparison of his essays as they originally appeared 
 in the magazines, with the same after having undergone 
 revision at the author’s hands. Alterations—many of them 
 the minutest—frequently occur, with a view to improving 
 a phrase in exactness of meaning or in sound. He was, as 
 has been said, a thorough artist, and ho worked in the spirit 
 of an artist. 
 
 De Quincey is, as might be expected, one of the most 
 correct of writers, scrupulously exact in limiting, with 
 necessary qualifications, every statement he makes or opinion 
 he commits himself to. Neither can it be said of him that 
 he takes any liberties with grammar. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 III. THE CONFESSIONS. 
 
 The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, whatever 
 its other qualities, is by far the most famous of all De 
 Quincey’s writings. From the very first it secured for 
 itself a wide-spread popularity, and, judging from the many 
 editions which of recent years have been issued, its popu¬ 
 larity shows no sign of waning. Perhaps the strange title 
 of the book lent it, for many, a morbid charm which its 
 real subject could not bestow. If it were so, those readers 
 who opened the Confessions thinking to find therein some 
 startling chronicle of vicious self-indulgence, some history 
 of the road to ruin, must have been grievously disappointed. 
 Even in the form in which the Confessions first aj^peared, 
 a large part of the book has no direct bearing upon the 
 mysterious drug, the qualities of which were, in the 
 England of 1822, so little understood. It is only the story 
 of the childhood of a man of genius, curious indeed, full of 
 strangely pathetic incidents, but, from the ordinary stand¬ 
 point, morally blameless. In the second version of the 
 book—the enlarged edition of 1856 (which is reprinted 
 in the present volume)—this is still more the case. The 
 Confessions, as we have them here, are mainly a chapter in 
 De Quincey’s autobiography, the greater part of which is 
 not at all, or at best only remotely, connected with opium. 
 
 There are, it must be remembered, two distinct versions 
 of the Confessions. The first version Avas written in 1821 : 
 it appeared in two parts in the London Magazine, and 
 was published in book form in 1822. This is the version 
 which is commonly met with—for the simple reason that 
 the copyright has long since expired, and any publisher is 
 at full liberty to reprint it. The second version was written 
 much later in life (in 1855—6), and is still copyright. It 
 is about three times as long as the original edition, and is, 
 
XXXll 
 
 DE QUINCE V. 
 
 as could not help being the case with De Quincey, very 
 prolix and discursive. It contains practically the whole 
 of the earlier work, with minute alterations indeed, and 
 comparatively trifling omissions, the hulk of the new 
 matter being purely autobiographical, save for the usual 
 digressions, and for some twenty pages or so (at the 
 beginning and towards the end), which set forth De 
 Quincey’s matured views on the subject of opium, its real 
 nature, its immediate and remote effects, and other kindred 
 matters. 
 
 The history of The Gonfesdons of an English Opium- 
 Eater is as follows : — -In 1821, De Quincey was in London, 
 his wife and children having been left behind in Westmore¬ 
 land. He was still suffering from the effects of a terrible 
 period of prostration beneath the spell of opium. He had 
 come seeking for work, for his financial circumstances were 
 embarrassed, and ..there were others who depended entirely 
 upon his exertions. He had influential friends amongst 
 the London literati; and one of them. Sergeant Talfourd, 
 the friend and biographer of Lamb, introduced him to the 
 proprietors of the London Magazine, Messrs Taylor and 
 Hessey. The result was that in the September number of 
 this journal there appeared the first part of the Confessions 
 of an English Opium-Eater, being an Extract from the Life 
 of a Scholar, signed “X. Y. Z.” Part I. comprised the 
 “Introductory narration,” that is to say, it covered the 
 ground occupied by the first 160 pages of the present 
 edition, but, as then written, would have extended to no 
 more than about thirty or forty pages of the same size. 
 Curiously enough, in the same number of the London 
 Magazine there is to be found an autobiographical chapter 
 from the childhood of another man of genius — the Elia 
 essay of Charles Lamb, entitled Witches and other Night 
 Fears. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXXlll 
 
 To the first part of the Gonfessions was appended an 
 editorial note—“ The remainder of this very interesting 
 article will be given in the next number.” Accordingly, in 
 October appeared those concluding sections of the Gonfessions 
 called The Pleasures of Opium and The Pains of Opium, to 
 which again an editorial note, probably from the pen of 
 Thomas Hood, was added :—“ We are not often in the 
 habit of eulogizing our own work, but we cannot neglect 
 the opportunity .... of calling the attention of our 
 readers to the deep, eloquent, and masterly paper which 
 stands first in our present number.” 
 
 These Gonfessions, as we have seen, received an immedi¬ 
 ate recognition, and more on the same subject was de¬ 
 manded. In fact De Quincey, in a letter which appeared 
 in the December number of the London Magazine, actually 
 promised the public that they should have more ; but, save 
 for the curious “Appendix” which the reader will find at 
 the end of the present volume, the promise was not fulfilled 
 until thirty-five years afterwards. This “ Appendix ” was 
 added to the Gonfessions when they were issued in book 
 form in 1822, and was also printed separately in the 
 London Magazine of December of the same year. 
 
 Of the circumstances under which the Gonfessions were 
 actually written we know the following interesting par¬ 
 ticulars. Mr H. G. Bohn writes in Lowndes^ Bibliog¬ 
 rapher’s Manual, “ These ‘ Confessions ’ were written in a 
 little room at the back of Mr H. G. Bohn’s premises, Ho. 4 
 York Street, Covent Garden, where Mr De Quincey re¬ 
 sided, in comparative seclusion, for several years. He had 
 previously lived in the neighbourhood of Soho Square, and 
 for some years was a constant visitor to the shop of Mr 
 Bohn’s father, then the principal dealer in German books. 
 The writer remembers that he always seemed to speak in a 
 kind of whisper.” 
 
 From De Quincey himself we gather that he wrote the 
 
 c 
 
XXXIV 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 greater part of the opium Confessions in the autumn of 
 1821. “ The introductory part \i.e., the narrative part], 
 
 written for the double purpose of creating an interest in 
 what followed and of making it intelligible, since without 
 this narrative the dreams (which were the real object of 
 the whole work) would have had no meaning, hut would 
 have been mere incoherences—this narrative part was 
 written with singular rapidity. The rest might be said to 
 have occupied an unusual length of time ; since, though 
 the mere penmanship might have been performed within 
 moderate limits (and, in fact, under some pressure from the 
 printer), the dreams had been composed slowly, and by 
 separate efforts of thought, at wide intervals of time, accord¬ 
 ing to the accidental prevalence, at any particular time, of 
 the separate elements of such dreams in my own real dream 
 experience.” ^ 
 
 As has been said, the Confessions were republished in 
 book form in 1822. Five other editions of the original 
 version were published between that date and 1853. Since 
 the copyright expired there have been many editions, by 
 far the best being that of Dr Richard Garnett (London : 
 Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.), which, besides the text, con¬ 
 tains much matter of special interest to students of De 
 Quincey. Two eminent French poets have undertaken to 
 translate the Confessions into their own language—Alfred 
 De Musset and Charles Bj^audelaire. De Musset’s trans¬ 
 lation was written as early as 1823. 
 
 When De Quincey was engaged in gathering together 
 his writings for Hogg’s collective edition of his Works, he 
 determined that the Confessions should not appear in their 
 original form, but should be expanded so as to form a 
 volume by themselves. With infinite labour and trouble, 
 as De Quincey himself assures us, the task was performed, 
 and an entirely new version of the Confessions appeared in 
 ^ Recollections of Charles Lamb (Works, iii. 75, 76). 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 1856. It formed the fifth volume of the collected 
 edition! Dr Japp, in his Life of De Qnineey, has pub¬ 
 lished several extremely interesting letters relating to the 
 enlarged Confessions. To parts of these it vpill become 
 necessary to refer when comparing the earlier and later 
 versions of the Confessions —they are too long to be repro¬ 
 duced in full. At present it will be enough to remark 
 that we gather from De Quincey’s letters to one of his 
 daughters that he did not regard the revision of 1856 as 
 in any way final, hut contemplated issuing another and 
 still further revised edition, which was, moreover, to he 
 published at a lower price. This project he either aban¬ 
 doned or did not live to fulfil. 
 
 At this point it may be helpful to give a brief sketch of 
 the general scheme (in so far as the book may be said to 
 have a scheme) and subject of the enlarged Confessions. 
 
 The book opens with an interrogation—“ How, and 
 through what series of steps, was it that the writer first 
 became an opium-eater 1 ” and the question is answered “ in 
 passionate anticipation,” that it was “ on a sudden, over¬ 
 mastering impulse derived from bodily anguish,” and not, 
 as Coleridge had stated, in a spirit of purely voluptuous 
 indulgence. Then De Quincey proceeds to a somewhat 
 forcible and entertaining refutation of Coleridge’s position 
 —which refutation occupies about eight pages, and con¬ 
 cludes with the assertion that he (De Quincey) deliberately 
 took opium to mitigate certain evils which had their origin 
 in hardships endured in boyhood ; these hardships, again, 
 wel e occasioned by an “ extravagance of childish folly, 
 which precipitated me into scenes naturally producing such 
 
 ^ When the copyright of the Works passed to Messrs A. & 0. Black, 
 that firm issued in 1862 a new and cheaper edition, of which the 
 Confessions form the first volume. In Mr Masson’s edition the Con¬ 
 fessions fill the latter half of volume iii. 
 
XXXVl 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 hardships.” These scenes, he goes on, he is now “ called 
 upon to retrace,” since they furnish “ a key to the proper 
 understanding of all which follows.” “ For in these inci¬ 
 dents ... is found the entire substratum, together with 
 the secret and underlying motive, of those pompous dreams 
 and dream-sceneries which were in reality the true objects 
 —first and last—contemplated in these Confessions.” After 
 this exordium the autobiographical part of the Confessions 
 begins, but has hardly begun when the writer is swept 
 away into a long discussion on the dangers inevitably 
 associated with the guardianship of children, not only 
 amongst the Pagan Eomans, but also amongst the Christian 
 English. After this follows an account of the boy De 
 Quincey’s life in Manchester, under the guardianship of 
 the Rev. Samuel Hall and Mr Kelsall. Then, his life at 
 Bath Grammar School and Winkfield having been just 
 touched upon, De Quincey launches into the Manchester 
 Grammar School episode, which occupies nearly fifty pages, 
 and contains very much besides straightforward narrative. 
 There is a full-length portrait of the head-master, Mr 
 Lawson, another of an incompetent apothecary, and various 
 digressions, as little connected with the professed aim of 
 the book—opium and the pompous dream-pageantry—as 
 the value of English literature in any scheme of education, 
 the merits of Grotius “ on the evidences of Christianity,” 
 and the imperfect orthography of the French nobility. 
 The upshot of all, however, is, that owing to certain 
 deficiencies in the school life at Mr Lawson’s establishment, 
 for which the head-master himself was largely to blame, 
 combined with the gross stupidity of an apothecary, whose 
 prescriptions were as unpalatable as they were useless, and 
 the harsh obstinacy of Mr Hall, who refused to listen to 
 De Quincey’s entreaties to be removed from Manchester, 
 things became so bad that the only possible remedy seemed 
 to resolve itself into running away. The escape was 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 
 
 effected; and here what may be called the first chapter of 
 the Confessions (though the work, rather unfortunately, is 
 not so divided) closes. 
 
 The second chapter, not counting its digressions, which 
 are as numerous and diverse as usual, relates the story of 
 the flight, the arrival at Chester, the unexpected capture of 
 the truant by his uncle Captain Penson, Mrs De Quincey’s 
 profound displeasure, the pain it caused her son, and the 
 final decision that De Quincey should be permitted to go 
 on a walking tour through the mountainous districts of 
 Wales, on an allowance of a guinea a week. 
 
 The third chapter deals with the Welsh wanderings, the 
 hardships to which the hoy was subjected from want of 
 money, and, of course, much, both grave and gaj', that is 
 delightfully beside the point. It ends with the sudden 
 resolution to fly from relatives and friends and plunge into 
 the unknown world of London, a resolution the maddest 
 and most disastrous of all. 
 
 The London experiences, together with a fruitless journey 
 to Windsor, occupy two chapters, which contain some of 
 the noblest and most pathetic pieces of writing that ever 
 came from De Quincey’s pen. There is the picture, half- 
 humorous, half-tragic, of the scandalous attorney who 
 cheated De Quincey, and at the same time gave him shelter; 
 the pathetic account of the homeless, friendless child, who 
 sle^ amid the rats and the law-papers in the solitary 
 mansion in Greek Street; and lastly, most beautiful and 
 most deeply affecting of all, the story of the strange friend¬ 
 ship between the precociously learned boy and the poor 
 London prostitute—the story oh Ann of Oxford Street. 
 Aft ^: relating the disappearance of Ann, her friend’s fruit¬ 
 less search for her, and the restoration of the truant to his 
 family, the first part of the Confessions ends in a splendid 
 and generous eulogy of the writer’s wife. 
 
 The second part, entitled The Pleasures of Opium, relates 
 
xxxvin 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 the circumstances under which De Quincey was first led to 
 take opium. Then follows the declaration “ of the true 
 Church ” concerning opium, and an account of the immedi¬ 
 ate eflects of opium-eating in general, and on De Quincey in 
 particular, together with a description of the “ pleasures ” 
 which in Loiidon De Quincey used to associate with 
 indulgence in opium, his delight in the Italian Opera, and 
 in frequenting the London markets on Saturday nights. 
 For the latter form of amusement, he tells us, he had to 
 suffer in subsequent years. Afterwards, skipping over a 
 period of eight years (which, however, can be more or less 
 filled up from the autobiographical sketches), De Quincey 
 gives some account of himself as an inmate of Grasmere 
 Cottage, of his opium-eating there, of his metaj^hysical 
 studies, of the happiest year in his life, of a somewhat 
 startling visit from a Malay, of the opium-eater’s “ exterior,” 
 of his books, of his wife, and so on, up to the year 1817. 
 
 Of the third part {The Pains of Opium), considerably 
 more than half is practically a defence of opium-eating in 
 certain cases, and contains De Quincey’s final views on the 
 subject. The later pages narrate De Quincey’s terrible 
 prostration under opium in the years l'^17-18, and the 
 temporary and partial deliverance effected by Political 
 Economy and David Ricardo; and finally, some seventeen 
 pages (out of 236) are devoted to a description of those 
 opium-dreams which we are bidden believe formed the sole 
 object, “ first and last,” of the Confessions. This completes 
 the enlarged version of 1856, save for the short romance, or 
 dream, or allegory, entitled The Daughter of Lebanon, which 
 is to be taken in connection with the actual history of Ann 
 of Oxford Street; and two Appendices, the first of which is 
 a sort of humorous history of the De Quincey family from 
 the Conquest downwards, while the second deals with the 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul, with Bishop War- 
 burton and “ our own Dr Dodwell,” with Job and Josephus, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XX, XIX 
 
 with Plato and Mr Wordswortli, with Barbara Lewthwaite 
 and little Margaret De Quincey, and other congruous 
 subjects. 
 
 There is one question which cannot fail to present itself to 
 the student of De Quincey: — Are the enlarged Confessions 
 an improvement upon the earlier work ? Most critics 
 appear to answer in the negative, and De Quincey himself 
 seemed to be in doubt as to the wisdom of what he had 
 done. To completely recast a book which, on its first 
 appearance, had been generally acknowledged as a master¬ 
 piece, and which thirty-five years had converted into a 
 classic, was, to say the least of it, a dangerous experiment, 
 hardly to be justified by the precedent of Pope’s Rape of 
 the Loch, which De Quincey cites by way of apology. It 
 seems certain that De Quincey himself was not satisfied : 
 he contemplated, as we have seen, another and better 
 edition; he was anxious to convince himself that the recast 
 was an improvement upon the original work, but we can 
 see that he did not quite succeed in doing so. “Volume 
 V. is on the point of closing, viz.. The Confessions,^’ he 
 writes to his daughter Emily, in the later part of 1855. 
 “ It is almost rewritten ; and there cannot be much doubt 
 that here and there it is enlivened, and so far improved. 
 To justify the enormous labour it has cost me, most certainly 
 it ’ought to be improved. And yet, reviewing the volume 
 as a whole, now that I can look back from nearly the end 
 to the beginning, greatly I doubt whether many readers 
 will not prefer it in its original fragmentary state to its 
 present full-blown development.” Then he goes on to say 
 that .le could not help himself. A volume of some 360 
 pages had to be completed. The original CoTphssfo/zs would 
 “present only a beggarly amount of 120 pp.” If he did 
 not enlarge the Confessions, he must either throw in alien 
 matter — a course which was to him “ eminently disagree- 
 
xl 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 able”—or else bring together a number of unpublished 
 “Suspiria,” and thus complete the volume. With regard 
 to the latter course, he tells his daughter that “a doubt 
 had arisen whether, with my own horrible recoil from the 
 labour of converging and unpacking all hoards of MSS., I 
 could count upon bringing together enough of the ‘ Suspiria ’ 
 materially to enlarge the volume . . . Nothing re¬ 
 mained but that he should doctor the book, and expand it 
 into a portliness that might countenance its price.” And 
 then, obviously feeling that he had “ given himself away,” 
 and stood convicted of having merely added so much 
 “ padding,” he hastens to assure his daughter that he “ had 
 not eked out the volume by any wiredrawing process; on 
 the contrary, nothing had been added which did not 
 originally belong to his outline of the work, having been 
 left out chiefly through hurry at the period of first, i.e. 
 original, publication in the autumn of 1821.” ^ Again, at the 
 end of the next year (1856), he writes to another daughter, 
 Margaret (Mrs Craig):—“A copy of the ‘Confessions’ was 
 sent to you on Tuesday; it was the earliest that could be 
 made ready. Criticise furiously and without mercy. The 
 next will be the final edition, far different and far better. 
 I am weary to death of my six months’ exertion. Surely, 
 whatever blots I may have left, in some things I must have 
 improved the book.”^ 
 
 Whatever the final verdict may he—and it is probable 
 that the critic must decide that, as a finished work of 
 art, the earlier is to be preferred to the later version—it is 
 certain that the student of De Quincey could not afford to 
 lose the additional matter inserted in the enlarged work. 
 The Confessions may not have been improved; the Works 
 of De Quincey have assuredly been enriched. It seems 
 almost a pity that Professor Masson did not in his edition 
 
 ^ Japp’s Life and Writings of De Quincey, in one volume, 387-389. 
 
 2 Ibid., 402. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xli 
 
 of the Works reprint tlie original Confessions in one of the 
 later volumes. The earlier version should not he allowed 
 to pass into oblivion; and it is to he trusted that, even 
 when the copyright of the enlarged Confessions h''.s expired, 
 the smaller Confessions will still he an easily attainable 
 book. For purposes of comparison the edition of 1822 is 
 essential to the student, whilst to the general reader it 
 offers definite attractions to which the edition of 1856 
 cannot lay claim. Even the original Confessions cannot he 
 styled a complete, rounded whole, governed by one 
 motive, inspired throughout by one leading idea, moving 
 straightforward to one clearly marked goal. Little or 
 nothing that De Quincey has left is of this character; but 
 in discursiveness, confusion of motive, absence of guid¬ 
 ing plan, the Confessions of 1856 sin three times more 
 grievously than did the earlier work. 
 
 The additions of 1856 are, save for the discussions on 
 opium at the beginning and towards the end, partly 
 autobiographical, partly digressions in De Quincey’s usual 
 style ; that is to say, digressions which are not even in them¬ 
 selves consistent wholes—digressions within digressions. 
 Thus, the very first digression we meet with—that on the 
 subject of “ guardianship ”—contains a short discussion on 
 the effects of positive law on national morals, another on 
 the shocking idleness of Spaniards and Italians when con¬ 
 trasted with Englishmen, another on the corruption of 
 Roman governors of provinces, and a fourth on the 
 difference of meaning attached to the word “ merchant ” in 
 England and Scotland respectively. In themselves these 
 digressions are excellent reading: some of them are in¬ 
 genious and suggestive, characterised by dexterous arguing, 
 beautiful intellectual fencing j others are full of genial, sunny 
 humour; a few again are pathetic or sublime in language 
 and thought. But there can be no doubt that they mar 
 the unity of the work, they check the steady sweep of the 
 
xlii 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 narrative, and they tend at times to arouse in the mind of 
 the reader a sense of tediousness or impatient resentment. 
 If the reader of the early Confessions was left, when he 
 closed the hook, in a state of uncertainty as to what De 
 Quincey’s real meaning was,—whether he meant to praise 
 opium or condemn it, whether there was a moral to be 
 drawn or merely a piece of interesting and highly imagi¬ 
 native literature to be enjoyed,—the reader of the later 
 Confessions, unless he watches very carefully, is likely to 
 be still more confused. In the course of another thirty- 
 five years’ experience, De Quincey’s views on the effects 
 of opium generally, and of the service it had rendered 
 him, had been very considerably modified ; and yet he 
 reproduces, with merely verbal alterations, whole passages 
 from the earlier work which are inconsistent with the 
 opinions expressed in the additional matter. Thus, in places 
 De Quincey seems to condemn himself remorselessly, in 
 others he sets up an unqualified justification ; in one 
 place he speaks of himself as an “ eudsemonist,” eating 
 opium for the sake of the pleasurable sensations it afforded ; 
 in another he tells us he was from the first in possession of 
 therapeutic secrets unknown to the professional physician of 
 the day, and that he persevered in opium-eating because he 
 knew that therein lay the only road of safety. It is not to be 
 supposed that these discrepant statements are any of them 
 consciously false. De Quincey’s reputation for absolute 
 veracity, even in unimportant matters, is by this time 
 thoroughly established ; but it is very likely that, uncon¬ 
 sciously, in 1856, he imagined that in his earlier years he 
 was aware of the mysterious properties of opium as resisting 
 pulmonary consumption, whereas that knowledge had in 
 reality been arrived at much later. 
 
 It must be admitted that the revised Confessions are very 
 largely patchwork,—curious patchwork, indeed, seeing that 
 the new pieces are in size much greater than the old garment; 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xliii 
 
 —neither has the patching been very skilfully executed. The 
 reader must he constantly on the look-out if he is to avoid 
 being misled. Unless he be very familiar with the earlier 
 version, it will not always he easy for him to determine at 
 once whether he is reading De Quincey’s final opinions, or 
 the views he held in 1821, and w'hich in 1856 he had 
 retracted. The chronology, too, is terribly complicated by 
 the reproduction of the old matter with the tenses unaltered. 
 “ My studies have now been long interrupted ” are the 
 opening words of one paragraph, and the reader requires an 
 editorial note to enable him to understand that the “ now ” 
 refers to 1816, forty years previous to the period indicated 
 by the present tense in the concluding lines of the paragraph 
 immediately preceding. 
 
 But from the introduction of the new matter, another, 
 and from an artistic point of view, more serious result 
 follows. The tone and colour of the hook have been changed. 
 The earlier Confessions might, on the whole, rank with that 
 class of prose which De Quincey styled the “literature of 
 power.” The book was generally an example of his “ pas¬ 
 sionate prose ”; it appealed to the higher and deeper 
 emotions rather than to the intellect; and comparatively 
 few passages are couched in the lighter or merely humorous 
 vein. But the additions of 1856 are mainly, as De 
 Quincey himself admits, calculated to enliven a work which 
 in its original form seemed, from its very subject and treat¬ 
 ment, to exclude merriment. The new matter is almost 
 altogether intellectual or amusing—a low'er forur of litera¬ 
 ture, according to De Quincey—the “ literature of know¬ 
 ledge,” or the literature which seeks merely to amuse; and 
 the new, by its bulk, almost swallows up the old. We lay 
 the hook down with impressions confused and indistinct. 
 The strings seem false ; the original harmony is lost; the 
 De Quincey of 1856 could no longer feel as did the De 
 Quincey of 1821 j and the matter he adds in 1856 is in a 
 
xliv 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 different key from that which fell from him in 1821, when 
 the strife with the opium-spell was still unfinished, when 
 the memory of the horrors he had endured, of the scenes of 
 hardship and suffering and sorrow he had passed through, 
 were fresher and livelier in his mind. And the result is 
 that the old matter, so often sublime or terrible or tragically 
 pathetic, rising into the highest region of intense eloquence, 
 confronts the reader of the later Confessions as so many 
 purpurei panni, brilliant gems starting up here and there 
 amid a setting which, though excellent in itself, is com¬ 
 posed of a far less precious material. 
 
 But we must take De Quincey as we find him. “ Of all 
 our great writers,” says Dr Garnett, in his admirable intro¬ 
 duction to his edition of the Confessions, “ De Quincey is 
 the most deficient in concentration.” To keep one aim 
 steadily in view, to keep the whole under the influence of 
 one dominant motive, was an end which he neither sought 
 nor attained, save in such brief passages of prose-poetry as 
 The Daughter of Lebanon, the Dream Fugue, and Levana 
 and our Ladies of Sorrow. The comparative directness of 
 the early Confessions was, as Dr Garnett points out, rather 
 due to adventitious circumstances than to the author’s 
 deliberate judgment and artistic instinct. To begin with, 
 the early Confessions had to be confined within the limits 
 of two magazine articles ; secondly, any protracted effort 
 in literary composition was at that time, owing to opium, 
 impossible to De Quincey; and finally, a great deal which 
 the later version contains could not, out of consideration to 
 persons then living (his mother for one), have been made 
 public; neither had De Quincey as yet won the public ear 
 so thoroughly as to lead him to suppose that the public 
 would take any interest in the narration of so many things 
 of so purely personal or domestic a nature. 
 
 By 1856 all this had changed. The English reading 
 public had abundantly testified its willingness to receive 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xlv 
 
 anything that De Quincey thought fit to give it, and to 
 listen to him attentively, no matter what subject bethought 
 fit to talk about. He had already published many chapters 
 of an autobiographical nature. One gap remained to be 
 filled, and that directly connected with his opium ex¬ 
 periences. He had also long since recovered his power of 
 sustained literary effort; and, at the same time, those con¬ 
 siderations which at the period of the early Confessions 
 enforced reticence, now no longer existed. Mrs De Quincey 
 was dead; so were Colonel Penson and Mr Hall. He had 
 told nothing but the truth in the original version; he could 
 now, without hesitation, tell the whole truthd And so the 
 “ extract from the life of a scholar ” became a long chapter 
 in De Quincey’s autobiography, characteristic of the writer 
 in every way. It is written as it was natural in De 
 Quincey to write, as he loved to write. It is largely talk, 
 eloquent talk indeed, but still talk ; the talk of a wonderful 
 old man, taking the listener into his confidence, recalling 
 all manner of little details in his past life, turning aside 
 every now and then in pursuit of some intellectual problem 
 which by chance presents itself to his mind, and spending 
 unstintingly in the chase the wealth of a mind richly 
 stored with knowledge, with intellectual subtlety and 
 imaginativeness. Such are the enlarged Confessions, 
 various, many-coloured, grave and gay, intellectual and 
 imaginative, humorous and sublime, garrulous and eloquent; 
 a strange medley, but eminently De Quinceyish, and, to the 
 reader who has learnt to pardon in De Quincey his 
 discursiveness and his “wiredrawn ingenuity,” affording a 
 plentiful fund of intellectual enjoyment. 
 
 Whether the enlarged Confessions, taken as a whole, be 
 inferior as a work of art to the original edition, no critic 
 
 1 See De Quincey’s letter to the London Magazine of December 
 1822. (Appendix to the Notes.) 
 
xlvi 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 doubts that in separate passages the early work has been 
 immensely improved. It was characteristic of De Quincey 
 never to rest satisfied with anything he had written, never 
 to neglect an opportunity to improve if improvement were 
 at all possible. In some respects he lacked true artistic 
 perception, but in his passion for minute finish of execu¬ 
 tion he was an artist in the highest sense. Accordingly, a 
 comparison of the later with the earlier Confessions will 
 furnish numerous examples of the most minute touching-up. 
 He has added a little here, and omitted a little there. 
 Here and there a simple inversion has given still further 
 force and dignity to a sentence by no means lacking these 
 qualities in its original form. Some of the most eloquent 
 passages, such as the magnificent apostrophe to opium— 
 “ Oh ! just, subtle, and mighty opium ”—have been entirely 
 recast. Words or phrases which, for one reason and 
 another, seemed to strike a discordant note, have been 
 altered : a “ barrel-organ ” has become a “ street-organ ” ; a 
 sense of tenderness and almost ethereal delicacy in speaking 
 of the unhappy Ann of Oxford Street has changed the 
 phrase which describes her as belonging to that class 
 which subsists on the wages of prostitution, into a phrase 
 which invests the same idea with something of pathos and 
 sympathy :—she was “ one of that unhappy class who 
 belong to the outcasts and pariahs of our female popu¬ 
 lation.” Again, the conventionally compassionate epithet 
 “ poor ” has been omitted as weak and inadequate in the 
 passage which describes the loss of, and fruitless search for, 
 the friend he loved so much—“ Meantime, what has 
 become of poor Ann 1 ” These are but a few examples. 
 The student may discover many more for himself. 
 
 At the time of the early Confessions, grave doubts were 
 expressed in various quarters as to the genuineness of the 
 events narrated as actually falling within the writer’s 
 personal experience. Was the story true, it was asked, or 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 xlvii 
 
 were the Confessions a mere romance ? De Quincey himself, 
 in the letter he wrote to the London Magazine in 1822,^ 
 assured his readers that they might trust implicitly every 
 word he had written. In spite of this assertion, the 
 sceptical have continued to doubt. Dr Japp, however, in 
 his De Quincey Memorials, has proved incontestably the 
 strict accuracy, even in unimportant details, of the Confes¬ 
 sions, and the reader of his volumes may peruse the actual 
 letters from the Marquis of Sligo which De Quincey showed 
 to the Jews in London. Errors of memory there may be ; 
 but, with such trifling exceptions, the Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater is a record of actual fact, as Do 
 Quincey intended it to be. 
 
 IV. THE DAUGHTEE OE LEBANON. 
 
 De Quincey, in his preface to the enlarged edition of the 
 Confessions, has explained the meaning of this little idyll 
 or allegory, and the reason of its being placed as the closing 
 passage of the Confessions. Originally one of the “Sus- 
 piria,” it connects itself with the story of Ann of Oxford 
 Street—“ Ann the outcast ’’—which “ formed not only the 
 most memorable and the most suggestively pathetic inci¬ 
 dent ” in the Confessions, but also “ shaped, moulded and 
 remoulded, composed and decomposed the great body of 
 opium dreams.” The sinning and repentant Daughter of 
 Lebanon is Ann, idealised and glorified, and her end is the 
 endDe Quincey hoped, and perhaps believed, had overtaken 
 the poor friend who had saved his life when he was a 
 starving boy in the streets of London. He had hoped that 
 Ann had “ found the grave of a Magdalen ”—repentance 
 and reconciliation, not with man in the world of respecta¬ 
 bility, but with Him who judges not as man judges or can 
 
 1 See Appendix to the Notes. 
 
xlviii 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 j udge ; restoration, not to her earthly father’s house and 
 her early innocence,—for that was impossible,—but to her 
 Heavenly Father’s house, from which she had been absent 
 too long. 
 
 De Quincey seems to have felt that the episode of Ann, 
 as it stood, was unfinished; that something was required 
 to remove the sense of incompleteness, occasioned by the 
 abrupt disappearance of the “ heroic girl ” from the opium- 
 eater’s life and story. De Musset also felt this, and pro¬ 
 ceeded to remedy the deficiency after a style which seemed 
 agreeable to French taste. De Musset, in his translation of 
 the Confessions, has added a chapter of his own, in which 
 the opium-eater discovers Ann in the flesh under circum¬ 
 stances extremely proper to sensational romance, but ludi¬ 
 crously unlike anything that could possibly have happened 
 to De Quincey. The opium-eater is taken by a friend of 
 his—a military officer—to a demi-monde ball. There, 
 dressed in black, and leaning against a column, with his 
 arms gloomily folded, he once more has sight of Ann, blaz¬ 
 ing with diamonds, on the arm of the Marquis of C-. 
 
 Next day, by secret appointment, he visits her in the house, 
 where, it transpires, she is held close prisoner by the wicked 
 nobleman. The Marquis unexpectedly arrives ; the opium- 
 eater strikes him on the cheek ; a duel ensues, in which the 
 Marquis is discomfited, and the triumphant opium-eater 
 takes Ann in his arms, and in two hours he is flying with 
 her in a post-chaise to some spot where, no doubt, they 
 “ lived happily ever afterwards.” 
 
 Such was the French poet’s conception of the proper 
 consummation of De Quincey’s simple and pathetic episode; 
 and, to use Dr Garnett’s words, it “ definitively brings poor 
 Ann down from the stars to the streets.” De Quincey’s 
 Daughter of Lebanon, on the other hand, raises her above 
 the stars, to the “ infinite revelation that can be made 
 visible only to dying eyes.” 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xlix 
 
 The Daughter oi Lebanon is an example of De Qiiincey’s 
 “passionate prose.” It can scarcely rank in pathos or 
 awful sublimity with the unrivalled Levana, or in spec¬ 
 tacular magnificence with The Dream Fugue, but it is 
 nevertheless a noble piece of imaginative narrative, 
 exquisitely restrained and finished, and pervaded throughout 
 by a spirit of pure and exalted religious emotion. 
 
 Professor Masson has suggested that the connection 
 between The Daughter of Lebanon and The Con¬ 
 fessions is rather forced; and many, no doubt, will feel 
 that there is something of unreality in transforming the 
 poor London outcast and pariah into a lady of transcendent 
 beauty and the daughter of a prince; in taking her from 
 the unlovely London pavements and placing her amid the 
 garden of the world. In such criticism there is perhaps 
 much justice. The pathos of the real story is not heightened 
 by idealising the circumstances; but De Quincey had the 
 authority of his dreams for the change, and to his dreams 
 he always attached an extraordinary and even extravagant 
 importance. Perhaps, too, he wished to enforce this lesson— 
 that sympathy and love, helpfulness and heroism, are the 
 only royal insignia of the soul, and that the joy in heaven 
 over one sinner that repenteth is one and the same, whether 
 the sinner be a poor London prostitute or the daughter of 
 a line of kings. 
 
 The following will show clearly the difference between 
 the two versions of the Confessions in point of length, and 
 will help the student to distinguish between the original 
 and later work. 
 
 Enlarged Edition of “ The Confessions.” 
 
 Pp. 1-11: entirely new, substituted for about two pages 
 in the original. 
 
 Pp. 11-26 : entirely new, save for one line. 
 
 d 
 
I 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Pp. 26-70: replaces about two and a half pages in the 
 original, in which De Quincey (1) briefly mentions his own 
 attainments in Greek; (2) speaks rather contemptuously of 
 the head-master of Manchester Grammar School; (3) tells us 
 of his own desire to be removed, the opposition on the part 
 of his guardians, his own determination to run away, and 
 the £10 received from a lady friend;—nothing, it is to be 
 noticed, about his bad health. 
 
 Pp. 70-75 (“It is a just and feeling remark” to “I 
 should inflict upon him ”): an expansion of a single paragraph 
 in the original. 
 
 Pp. 75-7 9: expansion of a single paragraph; the 
 “ whispering gallery ” incident being added. 
 
 Pp. 79-80: practically reproduced from the edition of 
 1822. 
 
 Pp. 80-104 : entirely new. 
 
 Pp. 104-109 : reproduced from the original edition, but 
 considerably altered. 
 
 Pp. 109-119 : entirely new, replacing some twenty lines 
 in the edition of 1822. 
 
 Pp. 119-121 : reproduced, with slight change, from the 
 original. 
 
 Pp. 121-139 : entirely new. 
 
 Pp. 139-164 : practically reproduced from the edition 
 of 1822. 
 
 Pp. 164-182 : practically reproduced from the edition of 
 1822. 
 
 Pp. 182-198 : the same in both editions. 
 
 Pp. 199-217 : save for a few sentences, quite new; the 
 corre.sponding passage in the original occupying about two 
 pages. 
 
 Pp. 217-237 : the same in both editions, except that two 
 paragraphs near the end have been completely altered. 
 
 Finally, an Appendix written for the edition of 1822 was 
 omitted in the edition of 1856, and two other Appendices 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 li 
 
 and The Daughter of Lebanon added. The original 
 preface was reprinted (considerably altered), and a new 
 prefatory note supplied. 
 
 V. DE QUl^^CEY ANT) OPIUM. 
 
 The reader of the enlarged edition of De Quincey’s 
 Confessions will, from that work alone, find it extremely 
 difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any definite con¬ 
 clusions as to the actual history of De Quincey’s career as 
 an opium-eater, and as to the writer’s mature opinion on 
 opium generallyj/l)oes De Quincey seek to justify the 
 habit of opium-eating on ethical grounds, or does he not ? 
 On the lower platform of prudence and expediency, is the 
 reader warned against opium, or encouraged to look to it 
 as a means of safety and support ? What were the effects of 
 opium on De Quincey himself,—baneful or the reverse ? 
 All these questions receive in the course of the Confessions 
 various and not always mutually consistent answers. The 
 narrative, moreover, is rendered still more intricate and 
 confused by the multitudinous digressions with which it is 
 sprinkled, and by the minute treatment which the writer 
 bestows upon incidents which have only an indirect bearing 
 upon the subject in hand. Lastly, although De Quincey’s 
 attitude of mind had undergone considerable modifications 
 between the years 1821 and 1856, that is to say, between 
 the date of the original and that of the enlarged Confessions, 
 he, notwithstanding, reproduces in the latter, with few 
 alterations, long passages from the former, which very 
 largely contradict statements and expressions of opinion 
 standing side by side with them. This last point, which 
 has already been dwelt upon, is one which the student 
 must bear carefully in mind. If he finds contradictions in 
 the Confessions, he must ascertain which of the mutually 
 inconsistent passages appeared for the first time in the 
 
Hi 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 
 edition of 1856; and, so far as De Quincey’s matured con¬ 
 victions are concerned, lie must ignore the passage which is 
 reproduced from the edition of 1822. 
 
 The following pages will, it is hoped, make clear much 
 that De Quincey in the Confessions leaves dark, or at 
 any rate somewhat obscure. And first as to actual facts : 
 
 De Quincey’s first introduction to opium was in the spring 
 or autumn of 1804 (165, 1661). He was then an Oxford 
 undergraduate of nineteen years of age, and had come up 
 to London to spend his vacation. A college friend, 
 accidentally encountered in the street, recommended opium 
 as a remedy for rheumatic toothache, from which De 
 Quincey had been suffering “ excruciating pains ” for about 
 twenty days. The drug was procured at a chemist’s “ near 
 the stately Pantheon,” and De Quincey discovered that it not 
 only performed the negative office of immediately banishing 
 the bodily pain, but also the positive office of revealing an 
 “ abyss of divine enjoyment” (167). 
 
 From this date (1804) to 1812 De Quincey became an 
 intermitting opium-eater. “ He used to fix beforehand how 
 often within a given time, when and with what accessory 
 circumstances of festal joy, he would commit a debauch 
 of opium ” ; and this debauch used to occur about once in 
 every three weeks (175). The effects of opium are, during 
 tliis period, nothing but pleasant; he takes an enhanced 
 delight in the Italian Opera, in the ^perraveXo) of the 
 divine Grassini; he finds an additional pleasure in wander¬ 
 ing in the poorer districts of London on Saturday nights, 
 and mingling and conversing with the humbler section of 
 .>^the population (175-182). 
 
 In the spring of 1812 De Quincey is in the Lake 
 Country, is ** pretty well,” and is taking a great quantity of 
 opium. Still he is only a “ dilletante ” opium-eater ; he 
 
 1 The references are to the pages of the present edition of 1 he 
 Confessions, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 liii 
 
 allows sufficient intervals between every indulgence, and 
 consequently opium has not become necessary as “ an 
 article of daily diet” (185). 
 
 But in 1813 comes a “different era.” Do Quincey had M 
 in the summer of 1812 “ suffered much in bodily health from 
 distress of mind connected with a melancholy event ” (the 
 death of little Kate Wordsworth). This may have brought 
 on the terrible disorder which attacked him in 1813, a 
 “ most appalling irritation of the stomach,” identical with 
 the pains he had suffered in the old days when he slept 
 beneath the roof of Mr Brunnel, or wandered along the 
 London pavements with Ann of Oxford Street. The old 
 dreams, too, are revived. From this year De Quincey became 
 “ a regular and confirmed (no longer an intermitting) opium- 
 eater” (185). Misery drove him to opium, and in opium he 
 found the only available relief. There are no longer 
 “ intervals between every indulgence.” He eats opium 
 every day ; daily he calls for “a glass of laudanum-negus, 
 warm, and without sugar ” (175). 
 
 For three years this sort of thing continued. In 1816, 
 however—the year of De Quincey’s marriage—there was a 
 change for the better. The daily allowance of opium 
 suddenly dropped from 320 grains (or 8000 drops of 
 laudanum) to 40 grains (or 1000 drops), and this year is 
 described as the happiest in De Quincey’s life (188). But 
 the happiness was of brief duration. The very next year 
 (1817) De Quincey was utterly prostrated. “For nearly 
 two years,” he says, “I believe that I read nothing and 
 studied nothing.” A great work on metaphysics wa^ 
 abandoned. For a time De Quincey was aroused from his 
 mental lethargy by Ricardo’s Prmcijples of Political 
 Economy (1818-1819?), and he was able to draw up a 
 “ Prolegomena to all future systems of Political Economy,”— 
 never destined to see the light; for the period of activity 
 was but “ a momentary flash ” (220). De Quincey was 
 
liv 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 again under the “ Circean spell.” The years 1819 to 1820 
 are those in which De Quincey’s sufl'erings appear to have 
 been greatest. This is the period of those terrible dreams— 
 
 With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms, 
 
 described in the closing pages of the Confessions. De 
 Quincey was afraid to sleep. Sometimes he kept aloof 
 from sleep “by sitting up the whole night and following 
 day.” Then, apparently in 1820, a crisis arrived, and De 
 Quincey saw that he must die if he continued the opium.^ 
 
 ^ The present editor cannot be certain as to these dates. Dr Japp, 
 in a note contributed to Dr Garnett’s edition of the early Confessions 
 (p. 266), si)eaks of the second period of De Quincey’s prostration 
 under opium lasting only during the years 1817-1818. Professor 
 Masson says that De Quincey freed himself from the opium bondage 
 in 1819, or perhaps later. In the original Confessions De Quincey 
 gives the year 1819, not 1818, as the date on which he received 
 Ricardo’s book ; and he expressly tells us that the emancipation 
 brought about by Ricardo was only a very temporary business. 
 Again, De Quincey, in the original Confessions, says that he was 
 under the ‘ ‘ Circean spell of opium for four years. ” The word ‘ ‘ four ” 
 is omitted in the enlarged edition ; and in the paper entitled 
 Recollections of Charles Lamb (Works, iii. 71-73), written in 1838, he 
 ^ , seems to say expressly that it was in 1821, and in London, that he 
 “descended the mighty ladder” and freed himself from opium. 
 At the same time, the supposed opium-dreams belong to the years 
 1817-1820. The last dream is, in the original Confessions, dated 
 1820 ; and the original Confessions, which are much more consistent 
 as to facts than the enlarged edition, lead one to understand that 
 the “ unwinding of the cursed chain ” took place after the period to 
 which the dreams that are described belong. On the other hand, 
 in the year 1819 De Quincey could not have been irtterly prostrated 
 by opium, for he was then busily engaged in editing the Westmore¬ 
 land Gazette, and was perhaps—though this is doubtful-writing for 
 Blackwood’s and The Quarterly. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong 
 if we conclude that the worst years were 1817 and 1818 ; that after 
 the temporary awakening effected by Ricardo (perhaps in 1819), De 
 Quincey again gave way, but not so completely, and that it was not 
 till the spring of 1821 that the “triumph” spoken of in the 
 Confessions was realised. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Iv 
 
 Accordingly, he reduced his allowance to forty, thirty, and 
 even twelve grains a day. This is the triumph ” which 
 he records in the Confessions. 
 
 In 1822, we learn from De Quincey’s appendix to the 
 earlier Confessions, he made a violent effort to abstain from 
 opium altogether, hut the experiment was only successful 
 for half a week, and had to be abandoned. 
 
 De Quincey’s third “ fall,” the biographers tell us, was in 
 1823-24. But as this was a period of great intellectual 
 activity on De Quincey’s part, a period in which a great 
 deal of literary work was produced, his prostration could 
 not have been so severe as on the former occasions. 
 
 For the next twenty years we are to regard De Quincey 
 as a regular but not an excessive opium-eater, but in 1844 
 the old complaint brought on another plunge into the opium 
 abyss, and De Quincey took as much as 5000 drops a day. 
 A severe struggle again liberated him from thraldom. Once, 
 in 1848, he gave up opium entirely for two months, but 
 with this exception he continued to take opium in small 
 quantities until his death in 1859. Towards the end he 
 ceased to suffer from the agonies of the disease which had 
 made opium a necessity. 
 
 Such is the history of De Quincey’s career as an opium 
 eater. To recapitulate. From 1804 to 1812 De Quincey 
 was an “ intermitting,” but not confirmed opium-eater. 
 From 1813 to his death he may be termed an inveterate, 
 and practically incurable, opium-eater, but, save for four 
 periods, not indulging to excess. The periods of prostration 
 were 1813-14, 1817-20, 1823-24, 1843-44. On four 
 occasions—the dates of which are difficult to fix precisely— 
 opium was abandoned altogether. 
 
 The next question is of a more difficult and at the same 
 time more important nature. What are De Quincey’s final 
 convictions on the practice of opium-eating, and how far is 
 
Ivi 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 he to be blamed or exonerated for making public those 
 views ? The answer to the latter part of the question will 
 of course depend upon the answer to the former part, that 
 is to say, upon the judgment pronounced on the soundness 
 or unsoundness of De Quincey’s position. De Quincey was 
 entirely conscious that, at the time he wrote, any com¬ 
 mendation of opium whatsoever was sure to meet with a 
 storm of popular prejudice,—a prejudice which even to-day 
 has not died out, as may be seen from the late agitation in 
 connection with the opium question in India. 
 
 In the Confessions, the practice of opium-eating in 
 moderation is defended on two grounds, which are perfectly 
 distinct,—first as a luxury, secondly as a medicine. The 
 second is a matter which can only be decided by the final 
 verdict of medical science, the first lies within the province 
 of the moralist. 
 
 May opium-eating be justified when the drug is resorted 
 to merely on account of the pleasurable sensations it is 
 capable of calling forth 1 On this point De Quincey dwells 
 but lightly. It cannot be said that he anywhere advises the 
 consumption of opium for such a purpose; he only argues 
 that it is unfair to condemn the opium-eater as such, while 
 the moderate consumer of alcoholic liquors, or the moderate 
 smoker of tobacco, is allowed to rank as a respectable 
 member of society. If we demur, De Quincey poses us 
 with a problem in ethics: “Is pleasure, if harmless, ever 
 to be sought for its own sake, and not merely as a means to 
 some definite end ? ” If it is, then, provided that it can be 
 shown that the consumption of opium in small quantities 
 is not harmful, there can be no vice in occasionally, and 
 with due precautions, indulging in it. If, on the other 
 hand, it is always vicious to seek gratification, save when 
 the means of gratification is also a means towards increased 
 bodily health, or increased bodily or mental activity, then 
 the practice of opium-eating is exactly on the same moral 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ivii 
 
 platform as the practice of wiiie-drinking or tobacco¬ 
 smoking. 
 
 Such, then, seems to be De Quincey’s attitude on the 
 ethical side of the question, and it is mainly a negative 
 one. If it be urged that the use of opium is to be con¬ 
 demned even when taken in moderation, since moderate 
 opium-eating has a tendency to develop into excessive eating, 
 of which the effects are ruinously harmful, De Quincey 
 answers that all these arguments are equally powerful when 
 urged against alcohol, and even more so, since in ordinary 
 circumstances the habit of wine-drinking can less easily be 
 thrown off than the habit of opium-eating, and the immedi¬ 
 ate effects of a bout of drunkenness are far more pernicious 
 and morally lowering than the effects of a “ debauch ” of 
 opium. 
 
 Here, then, we may leave the ethical question. That the 
 opium-eater is not necessarily a depraved person is all that 
 De Quincey contends for. He recommends no one, hitherto 
 unacquainted with the seductive drug, to cultivate a taste 
 for it. He strongly and even passionately urges those who 
 have unfortunately become excessive opium-eaters to strive 
 as far as possible to free themselves from the overmastering 
 tyranny; and he increases the value of his exhortation by 
 showing the steps by which such a deliverance may be 
 most safely and most surely accomplished. 
 
 Coleridge, as we know, accused De Quincey of con¬ 
 sciously playing the diabolical part of tempter. The 
 Confessions had been, he wrote, “ the occasion of seducing 
 others into the withering vice through wantonness.” Such 
 an accusation was manifestly unjust, and De Quincey may 
 be more than pardoned for resenting it bitterly. It is 
 difficult to believe that any sane and intelligent reader 
 could be allured into indulging in opium-eating from a 
 study of De Quincey ’s C'o^i'/em'ows— could be tempted, with 
 De Quincey’s example before him, into a habit so hard to 
 
Iviii 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 shake off, of which the consequences were at times so 
 terribly painful. Some may have been so seduced, but for 
 them De Quincey cannot be held responsible. Such persons, 
 if they ever existed, must have read into the book a moral 
 which the author never put there, which no impartial reader 
 ever found there. 
 
 We have now to consider De Quincey’s personal use and 
 recommendation of opium on grounds perfectly distinct 
 from its pleasure-giving capacities. Dr Eatwell, in his 
 medical view of De Quincey’s case—a paper to which we 
 shall have to make many references—declares that in the 
 Confessions De Quincey “entirely removes his case from 
 the region of ethics into that of therapeutics. De Quincey’s 
 was not a case of opium-eating in the ordinary and 
 objectionable sense of the word.” This statement, perhaps, 
 requires some modification. It is perfectly true that De 
 Quincey first took opium as an anodyne, and for no other 
 reason; it is also true that from the year 1813 to his death, 
 opium in moderate quantities was a physical necessity, and 
 was latterly consciously taken as such; but we have De 
 Quincey’s own statement, repeated more than once, that 
 between the year 1804 and 1812 he took opium on account 
 of the pleasure it afforded him. It is very probable, nay, 
 almost certain, that during that period opium was actually 
 playing a useful part in counteracting the effects of a painful 
 disease contracted long before, as well as resisting a still 
 more fatal malady which he had inherited, but he appears 
 to have been unconscious ^ of this at the time, and con- 
 
 1 A passage added in the enlarged edition seems inconsistent with 
 this. There (pp. 212-218) De Quincey asserts that even in the period 
 between 1804 and 1812 he took opium for its medicinal properties, 
 and by its aid effected an ‘ ‘ absolute conquest over all pulmonary 
 symptoms.” Now, this is a question not of opinion, but of fact ; and 
 in matter of fact the earlier Confessions —if an equal desire for truth 
 
INTRO D UCTION 
 
 lix 
 
 sequently must be judged after a consideration of the 
 motives he consciously placed before his eyes. These 
 motives, on his own confession, were purely hedonistic. 
 But it must be remembered, in mitigation of any harsh 
 sentence which might be pronounced against De Quincey, 
 that exactly during the period in which he indulged in 
 opium for its own sake, he was not in any sense a slave to 
 opium. He was then able to regulate his opium doses so 
 carefully that no evil effects, bodily or mental, accrued from 
 them. De Quincey’s various prostrations under the influence 
 of opium were due to physical causes which had their origin 
 in agencies quite other than opium. 
 
 That origin must be traced to a painful disease, brought 
 on in part, and in part intensified by the sufferings which 
 De Quincey underwent in his youth. The whole subject 
 has been thoroughly examined by Dr Eatwell in the paper 
 already alluded to. A careful study of Dr Eatwell’s paper 
 will show that the account given by De Quincey of the 
 beneficial effects wrought on his own constitution by opium 
 is, in all its main points, amply borne out by specialists who 
 have given particular attention to opium, and who have 
 had the most favourable opportunities of studying the 
 matter in countries where indulgence in opium is most 
 common. It will be remembered that De Quincey in the 
 enlarged Confessions (p. 203) solemnly declares that, but for 
 opium, he would have been in his grave thirty-five years 
 before the date at which he wrote (1856). Opium pro¬ 
 longed his life, and that against two separate enemies : 
 first, pulmonary consumption, which he had inherited 
 from his father (p. 212); and second, that painful 
 
 on the part of the author in both cases be admitted—are to be pre¬ 
 ferred to the later. If De Quincey had been in those years actually 
 aware of the service opium was rendering him in resisting inherited 
 consumption, it seems impossible to believe that he would not have 
 mentioned the fact in the Confessions of 1821. 
 
lx 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 internal disease, wliicli first manifested itself when De 
 Quincey was a schoolboy at Manchester, and which, 
 intensified by the Welsh wanderings and the vagabond life 
 in London, brought on the most excruciating physical 
 agonies, first in London, secondly in Westmoreland in 
 1813, and at intervals in later periods of De Quincey’s life. 
 For both these afflictions De Quincey believed opium to 
 be the sole remedy. As regards consumption he is sup¬ 
 ported by a medical authority. Dr Brinton, quoted by Dr 
 Eatwell; and in the case of the other malady, which Dr 
 Eatwell describes as “gastrodynia . . . combined probably 
 with ulceration (chronic gastric ulcer) of the mucous 
 membranes of the stomach,” both by Dr Brinton and, 
 most emphatically, by Dr Eatwell himself. The latter goes 
 very carefully into all the symptoms described or hinted at 
 by De Quincey himself in the Confessions and in the 
 autobiographical sketches, and quotes also from information 
 gathered from Mrs Baird Smith, De Quincey’s daughter, 
 and Mr Hogg, his publisher and friend. All this he com¬ 
 pares with cases of the same disease which have come 
 within his own and other physicians’ experience in India, 
 —cases in which the causes were the same as with De 
 Quincey (for instance, insufficient diet^), in which the 
 symptoms were also the same, namely, “ gnawing pains ” in 
 the stomach, torment so ghastly that “ the unfortunate 
 sufferer was frequently driven to the commission of 
 suicide,” inability to retain solid food, &c., &c., and for 
 which opium is acknowledged as “pre-eminently the 
 remedy.” In conclusion. Dr Eatwell does not hesitate to 
 
 ^ Dr Eatwell especially quotes a passage omitted by De Quincey in 
 the later Confessions, in which he tells us that during the latter 
 part of his Welsh wanderings he “subsisted either on blackberries, 
 hips, haws, &c., or on the casual hospitality which I now and then 
 received in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of 
 rendering. ” 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ixi 
 
 say that, in his opinion, “ whatever might have been the 
 degree of abuse of opium, the drug had in reality been the 
 means of preserving and prolonging his life ”; and again, 
 “as far as human aid went, it was to opium that De 
 Quincey was indebted for relief from grievous bodily anguish, 
 and for the prolongation of his life to a ripe old age.” 
 
 In other respects it would not be difficult to show that 
 several of De Quincey’s “ ex cathedra ” utterances on the 
 question of opium receive the support of recent pro¬ 
 fessional investigations. The report of the recent Opium 
 Commission will afford abundant proof of this, and the 
 present editor has before him a copy of the Transactions of 
 the South Indian Branch of the British Medical Association, 
 1894, which contains a very interesting paper by Surgeon- 
 Major W. B. Browning on the subject of opium, as well as 
 testimony borne by a number of others who took part in 
 the discussion which followed, and who were thoroughly 
 qualified, from scientific knowledge and professional ex¬ 
 perience, to speak with certainty on the matter. This dis¬ 
 cussion in some respects serves as a very curious com¬ 
 mentary to De Quincey’s Confessions. 
 
 De Quincey maintains that opium, “judiciously regu¬ 
 lated,” “ tranquillises all irritations of the nervous sys¬ 
 tem” (p. 2) ; and again, it is “ an anodyne against nervous 
 irritation,” which is “the secret desolator of human life.” 
 Dr Browning says, “ According to Wilks, by its action on 
 the nervous system it diminishes the functional activity, 
 thus lessening wear and tear of tissue, and so tends to sus¬ 
 tain or prolong life.” “ My own impression is,” he adds, 
 “we don’t use it enough.” Again, De Quincey claims for 
 opium a power of “ stimulating the capacities of enjoyment ” 
 (p. 2), and, further on, denies that the consumption of a 
 dose of ojiium is necessarily followed by a period of drowsi¬ 
 ness or torpor (p. 174). Dr J. JSffiild Cook, recording his 
 observations of opium-eating amongst the feudal retainers 
 
Ixii 
 
 DE QUINCE Y 
 
 of a Eajpoot chief in Kathiawar, says : “Asa matter of fact, 
 I noticed no effect at all, except that they all got very 
 jolly ; none of them showed any symptoms of drowsiness, I 
 believe they were all accustomed to take it twice a day. . . 
 After about an hour, all the opium having been finished, 
 they got up and went away.” Thirdly, De Quincey de¬ 
 clares that opium, “ under any call for extraordinary exertion, 
 sustains . , . the else drooping animal energies.” This 
 contention is supported by Colonel Baird Smith (quoted by 
 Dr Eatwell), and also very emphatically by Dr Browning in 
 the address already referred to. “ One of the shrewdest 
 natives I have ever met,” he says, “ regularly consumed 
 opium during his business hours ; and when he had any 
 specially important business to transact, he invariably 
 took a preliminary dose of opium.” Again, agricultural 
 labourers take opium because “ it helps them to stand ex¬ 
 posure and fatigue ” ; and a “ Munshi ” declared that “by 
 the help of opium he had compiled a three volume book, of 
 1200 pages a volume.” Testimonies to the same purport 
 might be easily multiplied. 
 
 In the latter part of the Confessions, De Quincey inveighs 
 against the injustice caused by insurance companies refusing 
 policies to applicants merely on the ground of their being 
 confessed opium-eaters. This appears to have been the 
 general practice at the time he wrote (1856), although he 
 looks for a change in the rule at no very distant date. It 
 would, no doubt, have gratified the venerable “ opium- 
 eater,” who had battled so vehemently against what he 
 considered a pernicious popular prejudice, to have heard an 
 influential physician declare, as Dr Browning declares, that 
 “ as an examiner for life insurance, he had rejected many 
 in connection with alcohol, none for the opium habit.” ^ 
 
 ^ Mr Duncan M^^Laughlan Slater, Manager and Actuary of the 
 Oriental Government Security Life Assurance Company, in his 
 evidence before the Royal Commission on Opium, at Bombay, 13th- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Ixiii 
 
 Enough has been said to show that De Quincey in his 
 views on the uses and effects of opium was far in front of 
 his generation; and this, allowing for every advantage 
 arising from a personal experience extending over half a 
 century, was a very remarkable thing in a writer who Avas 
 only a man of letters, and whose medical knowledge must 
 have been derived merely from desultory reading. 
 
 In two points De Quincey undoubtedly overvalued the 
 virtues of opium, first in its power to clear the intellect and 
 elevate the emotions, secondly in its power to summon up 
 majestic dreams and pompous or awful visions. De 
 Quincey declares that opium introduces amongst the mental 
 faculties the most exquisite order, regulation, and harmony ; 
 “ that in the opium-eater ” the diviner part of hi? 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. On this point we cannot do better than 
 quote Dr Eatwell. “ It is requisite,” he says , “ not to be 
 carried away by these eloquent utterances. Opium cannot 
 communicate to the brain any power or faculty of which it 
 is not already possessed; although (as in De Quincey’s 
 case), by subduing an enemy which had by its painful 
 assaults on a remote part of the nervous system, temporarily 
 jiaralysed the central power of the intellect, it might again 
 restore harm ony of actiqD --ta J'.hese powe rs. It could in no 
 w^ ■ create moraTlS^tions, though it might resuscitate 
 them by removing from them an overwhelming load of 
 physical suffering. It could add no iota to the great 
 light of the majestic intellect, although, when this might be 
 suffering a temporary eclipse—as was too frequently the 
 
 17th February 1894, declared that no extra premium was charged 
 in the case of moderate opium-eaters, and that all the medical 
 referees of the Company had, without exception, advocated that 
 eaters of opium in modei’ate quantities should be taken without any 
 extra premium. 
 
DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Ixiv 
 
 case with this great writer, when his gnawing malady 
 pervaded his entire consciousness with torments which 
 dominated the power of thought—it might, under such 
 circumstances, restore that great light hy dissipating the 
 shadow that obscured it.” 
 
 With regard to the dreams which De Quincey has depicted 
 so gorgeously, the fallacy is no less apparent. The 
 dreams were born of De Quincey’s own nature, not of 
 opium. He was a dreamer of dreams, a seer of visions, 
 from his earliest childhood ; as, indeed, we learn from the 
 autobiographical sketches. Endowed with a temperament 
 the most imaginative, he was wont, even in the daytime, 
 under the influence of strong emotions, to conjure up 
 involuntarily all manner of unsubstantial visions, beautiful, 
 deeply pathetic, or at times awful and sublime. If his 
 “ opium dreams ” were terrible and soul-afflicting, so also 
 were the dreams that visited him when he lay asleep with 
 the little friendless waif in the attorney’s desolate house in 
 Greek Street. These dreams, too, were “tumultuous,” and 
 “ were only not so awful as those which I shall have here¬ 
 after to describe as produced (as he believed) by opium.” 
 During the first period of opium-eating we hear of no 
 terrific dreaming : only when once more attacked by the 
 fierce internal disorder were his nightly visions oppressive 
 and awe-inspiring. 
 
 In conclusion, the student should perhaps be warned 
 against being misled by the chapter entitled -The Pleasures 
 of Opium. The “delights” De Quincey describes are not 
 those lower and sensual pleasures which opium and alcohol 
 provide to savage and scholar alike, but pleasures of the 
 mind and higher senses,—philosophic or poetical reverie, 
 keen delight in exquisite music, acute sympathy with the 
 joys and sorrows of one’s fellow-creatures. These joys, as 
 we have seen, opium cannot bestow, save in a negative, 
 indirect way, by removing temporarily agencies which 
 
I NT ROD UC TION. 
 
 Ixv 
 
 militate against them ; and even thus can only bestow to 
 those favoured individuals who are by nature and training, 
 morally and intellectually, capable of receiving them. The 
 “happiest year in De Quincey’s life,” described in The 
 Pleasures of Oipium, owed to the drug none of its blessed¬ 
 ness. Indeed, it was only when the quantity of opium 
 doses was diminished that the happiness began. De 
 Quincey, it is easy to see, was happy in that year because 
 he was once more restored to health and cheerfulness of 
 spirit; because, once again, he could turn with pleasure and 
 enthusiasm to the intellectual pursuits which had been his 
 food for so long; because, above all, he then found in his 
 newly-wedded wife a comrade and an helpmate, to whom 
 more than any other he could “ fly for comfort.” If the 
 world owes anything to opium, in that it preserved De 
 Quincey’s life and enabled him to enrich English literature 
 with so much superb prose, it owes more to Margaret 
 Simpson, in that she guided the great writer through his 
 blackest hours, and saved him from sinking irretrievably 
 beneath the spell of that drug which, at first and at last 
 a legitimate support, had all but become a ruinous destroyer. 
 
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PEEFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF 
 
 1822. 
 
 TO THE READER 
 
 I HERE present you, courteous reader, with the record of a 
 remarkable period of my life : according to my application of 
 it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, 
 but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In 
 that hope it is that I have drawn it up; and that must be 
 my apology for breaking through that delicate and honour¬ 
 able reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the 
 public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, 
 indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spec¬ 
 tacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral 
 ulcers, or scars, and tearing away that decent drapery ” 
 which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn 
 over them : accordingly, the greater part of our confessions 
 (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed 
 from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers; and, for any such 
 acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be 
 supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting- 
 part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that 
 part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and 
 defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, 
 and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, 
 that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety 
 of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before 
 the public eye until after my death (when, for many reasons, 
 the whole will be published): and it is not without an 
 
Ixviii 
 
 ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 anxious review of the reasons for and against this step that 
 I have, at last, concluded on taking it. 
 
 Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public 
 notice : they court privacy and solitude; and, even in their 
 choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from 
 the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to 
 claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing 
 (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth) 
 
 -‘ ‘ humbly to express 
 
 A penitential loneliness.” 
 
 It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that 
 it should he so ; nor would I willingly, in my own person, 
 manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings; nor in act or 
 word do anything to weaken them. But, on the one hand, 
 as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, 
 so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit re¬ 
 sulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased 
 at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast overbalance, 
 for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and 
 justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery 
 do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede 
 from, the shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the 
 probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the 
 palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as 
 the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the 
 resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. 
 For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I 
 may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of 
 a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual 
 creature; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits 
 and pleasures have been, even from” my school-boy 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 
 
 ^ “ Not yot recorded,” I say ; for there is one celebrated man of the 
 present day who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly 
 exceeded me in quantity. 
 
ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 Ixix 
 
 struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a reli¬ 
 gious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never 
 yet heard attributed to any other man—have untwisted, 
 almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. 
 Such a self-conquest may reasonably he set off in counter¬ 
 balance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to 
 insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, 
 the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as 
 that name shall he extended to acts aiming at the hare 
 relief of pain, or shall he restricted to such as aim at the 
 excitement of positive pleasure. 
 
 Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if I did, it 
 is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of 
 confession, in consideration of the service which I may 
 thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who 
 are they 1 Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous 
 class indeed. Of this I became convinced, some years ago, 
 by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small 
 class of English society (the class of men distinguished for 
 talents, or of eminent station) who were known to me, 
 directly, or indirectly, as opium-eaters : such, for instance, 
 
 as the eloquent and benevolent-; the late Dean of 
 
 - ; Lord-; Mr-, the philosopher; a late under¬ 
 secretary of state (who described to me the sensation which 
 first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words 
 
 as the Dean of-, viz. “ that he felt as though rats were 
 
 gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach ”) ; Mr-; 
 
 and many others, hardly less known, whom it would be 
 tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so 
 limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that 
 within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a 
 natural inference that the entire population of England 
 would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of 
 this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became 
 known to me, which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. 
 I will mention two. 1. Three respectable London druggists, 
 in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened 
 lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured 
 
Ixx 
 
 ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 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 thpm daily trouble and disputes. 
 This evidence respected London only. But, 2 (which will 
 possibly surprise the reader more), some years ago, on passing 
 through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manu¬ 
 facturers that their Avork-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 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 : hut, as I 
 do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the 
 divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the 
 gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for 
 granted 
 
 “ That those eat now who never ate before. 
 
 And those who always ate now eat the more.” 
 
 Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted 
 even by medical writers, who are its greatest enemies : thus, 
 for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, 
 in his “ Essay on the Effects of Opium ” (published in the 
 year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not 
 been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counter-agents, &c,, 
 of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious 
 terms (^wmvTa o-weToia-t) : “ Perhaps he thought the sub¬ 
 ject of too delicate a nature to he made common ; and, as 
 many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would 
 take from that necessary fear and caution which should pre¬ 
 vent their experiencmg the extensive power of this drug; 
 for there are many properties in it^ if universally knoum, that 
 would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us 
 than the Turks themselves; the result of which knowledge,” 
 
ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 Ixxi 
 
 he adds, “must prove a general misfortune.” In the 
 necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; 
 hut upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at the 
 close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader 
 with the moral of my narrative. 
 
Ixxii 
 
 P RE FA TOR V NO TICE 
 
 PREFATOEY NOTICE TO THE NEW AND 
 ENLARGED EDITION OF 1856. 
 
 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 hook must certainly tend, by 
 its very principle of change, whatever should he 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 
 he a matter of mere logical or inferential necessity; since, 
 
TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 
 
 Ixxiii 
 
 in pure addition to everything previously approved, there 
 would now he a clear surplus of extra matter—all that 
 might he 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, 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 con¬ 
 currently 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 
 
Ixxiv 
 
 P RE FA TOR y NO TICE 
 
 and sealed inexorably ; sncli being supposed the circum¬ 
 stances, the humane reader will allow for the infirmity 
 which even wilfully and consciously surrenders itself to the 
 error, acquiescing in it deliberately rather than face the 
 eruel exertion of correcting it most elaborately at a moment 
 of siekening 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 wearing siege of an abiding sickness imposes a 
 fiery combat. I attempt no descrqDtion 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 indulgenee, 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 im¬ 
 proving 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 eandle 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 the bed, it would have immediately enveloped 
 
TO THE ENLARGED EDITION. 
 
 Ixxv 
 
 tlie 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 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 doAvn 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, Avas 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, coloured—or (more truly I should 
 say) shaped, moulded and remoulded, composed and de¬ 
 composed—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, Avas 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 AAmman, and of some 
 shadoAvy malice which withdrew her, or attempted to Avith- 
 draAv her, from restoration and from hope. Such is the 
 explanation Avhich I offer Avhy 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, Avhy that part Avhich is given has 
 been placed in the conspicuous situation (as a closing 
 passage) which it noAV occupies. 
 
 November 1856. 
 
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATEE. 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NARRATION, 
 
 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 10 
 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 inextri¬ 
 cably wound itself about the constitutional system. Thirdly, 
 and lastly, was it (Fes, by passionate anticipation, I answer, 
 before the question is finished)—was it on a sudden, over¬ 
 mastering impulse derived from bodily anguish ? Loudly 1 20 
 repeat. Yes; loudly and indignantly—as in answer to a 
 wilful calumny. Simply as an anodyne it was, under the 
 
2 
 
 CONFESSION'S OF 
 
 mere coercion of pain tlie 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 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), (1) to tranquillise all irritations 
 of the nervous system ; (2) to stimulate the capacities of 
 10 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 
 20 as an anodyne ? I hope not : else I shall he 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 
 30 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 mifriendly blows at my supposed 
 voluptuousness in the us’e 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 3 
 
 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 malady; but I, Avretch 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 Avrong to the Avhole extent of 
 what was possible ; Avrong in his fact, wrong in his doctrine ; 
 in his little fact, and his big doctrine. I did not do the lo 
 thing which he charges upon me; and, if I had done it, 
 this Avould 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 draAV between my 
 motives and his OAvn; nor could Coleridge have possibly 
 OAved 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 20 
 from first to last, correcting their innumerable faults; and, 
 as it hajapens that some parts of the impublished sections 
 for the present are missing, Avould 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 dis¬ 
 figurations of my little Avork 1 Meantime the reader Avho 
 takes any interest in such a question will find that I my¬ 
 self (upon such a theme not simply the best, but surely the 
 sole authority) have, Avith.out a shadoAV of variation, ahvays 30 
 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 Avas simple rheumatism. Mine, 
 Avhich intermittingly raged for ten years, Avas rheumatism in 
 the face combined Avith toothache. This I had inherited 
 from my father; or inherited (I should rather say) from my 
 
4 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 cursed In this ignorance, however, which misled me 
 into making war upon toothache when ripened and manifest¬ 
 ing itself in elfects 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 
 10 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 opium 
 — that being the one sole anodyne that is almost notoriously 
 such, and which in that great function is universally ap¬ 
 preciated. 
 
 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 self-same boat; nor 
 20 is it within the compass even of angelic hair-splitting to show 
 
 ^ 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 ubiquity—lies 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 pro¬ 
 portion 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 pro¬ 
 nounced the former to be, on the scale of torture, by many degrees the 
 worse. In both, there are at tivies what surgeons call “lancinating’ 
 pangs —keen, glancing, arrowy radiations of anguish ; and upon these 
 the basis of comparison v'as rested — paroxysm against paroxysm— 
 with the result that I have stated. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 5 
 
 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 tres¬ 
 pass there were)—shadow against shadow (if any shadow 
 were really thrown 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 10 
 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 20 
 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 disadvantage- 
 ously iqDon 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 30 
 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^ am a licensed opium-eater, whereas this 
 other man is a buccaneer, a pirate, a flibustier,^ and can have 
 
 ^ See Wordsworth’s exquisite picture of S. T. C. and himself as 
 occasional denizens in the “Castle of Indolence.” 
 
 ^ This word—in common use, and so spelled as I spell it, amongst 
 the grand old French and English buccaneers contemporary with our 
 
6 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 none but a forged licence in his disreputable pocket. In the 
 name of Virtue, arrest him ! ” But the truth is, that in¬ 
 accuracy as to facts and citations from books was in Coleridge 
 a mere necessity of nature. Hot three days ago, in reading 
 a short comment of the late Archdeacon Hare (“ Guesses at 
 Truth ”) upon a bold speculation of Coleridge’s (utterly base¬ 
 less) 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 
 10 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 state- 
 20 ment upon that subject is perfect moonshine, and, like the 
 sculptured imagery of the pendulous lamp in “ Christabel,” 
 
 “All carvM 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, 
 30 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 
 
 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/Wibusters. Meantime, written in whatsoever way, 
 it is undei’stood to be a Franco-Spanish corruption of the English word 
 freehooter. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 7 
 
 ground of opium-eatiug; because neither rheumatism nor 
 toothache is any abiding affection of the system. Both are 
 intermitting maladies^ and not at all capable of accounting 
 for a permanent habit of opium-eating. Some months are 
 requisite to found that Making alloAvance 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 10 
 all, that made Coleridge a slave to opium, and a slave that 
 could not break his chain 1 He fancies, in his headlong care¬ 
 lessness, 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. Kheumatism, 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 1 Because 20 
 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 30 
 the face of such facts. I, boasting not at all of my self¬ 
 conquests, and OAvning 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. Cole¬ 
 ridge, 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. 
 
8 
 
 CONFESSIONS . OF 
 
 therefore, the strongest moral motive for abstaining from it,— 
 yet suffers himself to fall into a captivity to this same wicked 
 opium, deadlier 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 desjDotic 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 
 10 mutineering swelling upon the breeze : 
 
 ‘ ‘ Irasque leonum 
 Vincla recujautum-” 
 
 recusantum it is true, still refusing yet still accepting, pro¬ 
 testing 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 
 20 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 en¬ 
 dangered)—“ really you must not; consider, sir, your wife 
 and-” 
 
 30 Transcendental Philosopher. —“ Wife ! what wife 'I I have 
 no wife.”^ 
 
 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 ? ” 
 
 1 rae “Othello.” 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 9 
 
 Porter .—“ Ay, but you tell’t me not to hearken-” 
 
 Transcend. Philos .—“ Oh, nonsense ! An emergency, 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 'I Heaven forbid ! Having groaned myself under 10 
 that yoke, I pity, and blame him not. But, undeniably, 
 such a vassalage must have been created wilfully and con¬ 
 sciously 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, and 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 Avhat might eventually 20 
 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 h That affection which finally drove me 
 into the habitual use of opium, what was it 1 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 hoi)e of day ! ” i 
 
 Yet whence derived? Caused l)y what? Caused, as 1 30 
 might truly plead, by youthful distress in London, were it 
 not that these distresses were due, in their ultim^e 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 mtercessions ! 
 
 ^ “ Samson Agouistes. ” 
 
lo 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 will ye, choir that intercede—wilt thou, angel that forgivest 
 —^,join together, 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 over¬ 
 shadowing my head as if close behind, yet dating its nativity 
 from hours that are fled by more than half-a-century 1 Oh 
 heavens ! that it should be possible for a child not seventeen 
 years old, by a momentary blindness, by listening to a false, 
 10 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 weav¬ 
 ing plausible excuses, or of evading blame, that I trace the 
 origin of my confirmed opium-eating to a necessity growing 
 20 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 opium-eater, 
 and from mismanagement had fallen into miserable excesses 
 30 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 in¬ 
 tervals j ‘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, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 11 
 
 is what 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 indisjiensable 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 motive,^ of those 10 
 pompous dreams and dream-sceneries 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, inclucMng 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 guardian¬ 
 ship, as wielded by one of the four, concerned in the sole 20 
 capital error of my boyhood. To this error my own folly 
 would hardly have been equal, unless by concurrence with 
 the obstinacy of others. Prom 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 society, under what¬ 
 ever form of civilisation, any trust or delegated duty which 
 has more often been negligently or even perfidiously admin¬ 
 istered. In the days of classical Greece and Rome, my own 30 
 private impression, founded on the collation of many in¬ 
 cidental notices, is—that this, beyond all other forms of 
 domestic authority, furnished to wholesale rapine and pecu¬ 
 lation their very amplest arena. The relation of father and 
 
 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. 
 
12 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 son, as was that oi' patron and client, was generally, in the 
 practice of life, cherished with religious fidelity ; whereas 
 the solemn duties of the tutor {i.e., the guardian) to his 
 ward, which ha’d 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 hut seldom 
 to the sensibilities of a Roman through any language of 
 oracular power. Few indeed, if any, were the obligations 
 10 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 cor¬ 
 rupted 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 
 20 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 intermeddling of law 
 with the movement of the higher moral 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 
 30 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 extin¬ 
 guishing thenceforward all conscientious movement in what¬ 
 ever direction. And thus, amongst a people naturally more 
 highly principled than the Greeks, if you except ebullitions 
 of public spirit and patriotism (too often of mere ignoble 
 
13 
 
 AjV ENGLISH OPIUM^EA TER. 
 
 nationality), no class of actions stood upon any higher basis 
 of motive than (1) legal ordinance, (2) superstitious fear, 
 or (3) servile compliance with the insolent exactions of 
 popular usage. Strange, therefore, it woulddiave 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 gover¬ 
 nor that accepted no bribes from the criminal, and extorted 10 
 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 ad¬ 
 ministered 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 uninterest¬ 
 ing. 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 20 
 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 life-long experience that, whilst seeking 
 special protection for his children, he might himself be in¬ 
 troducing amongst them a separate and imminent danger. 
 Leaving behind him a little household of infants, a little 
 fleet (as it might be presented) of fairy pinnaces, just rais- 30 
 ing 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 miserable thought would cross his 
 prophetic sold that too probably this pretended “ convoy,” 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 14 
 
 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 
 10 Christian principles, this household pestilence has been con¬ 
 tinually 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 
 20 four who stood highest in his estimation for honour and 
 practical wisdom : which done, and relying for the redress¬ 
 ing of any harsh tendencies in male guardians upon the dis¬ 
 cretional 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 
 30 be asserted of any other nation, are not faineans: rich and 
 poor, all of us have something to do. To Italy it is 
 that we must look for a peasantry idle through two- 
 tbirds of their time. To Spain it is tliat we must 
 look for an aristocracy physically^ degraded under the 
 ignoble training of women and priests, and for princes 
 
 ^ It is asserted by travellers—English, French, and German alike— 
 that the ducal order in Spain (as that order of the Spanish peerage 
 most carefully withdrawn from what Kentucky would call the rou^- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 15 
 
 (such as Ferdinand VII.) that make it the glory of 
 their lives to have embroidered a petticoat. Amongst our¬ 
 selves of this current generation, whilst those functions of 
 guardianship may be surely counted on which presume con¬ 
 scientious loyalty to the interests of their wards, on the 
 other hand all which presume continued vigilance and pro¬ 
 vision 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 10 
 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 administra¬ 
 tion of their pecuniary interests. A second of our guardians 20 
 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 30 
 my father’s death a curate at some church (I believe) in 
 Manchester or in Salford.^ This gentleman represented a 
 
 and-tU 7 )ible 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. 
 
 1 Salford is a large town legally distinguished from Manchester for 
 parliamentary purposes, and divided from it physically by a river, but 
 
i6 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 Romish, and by the Greek. He had composed a body of 
 about 330 sermons, which thus, at the rate of two every. 
 Suirday, 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 
 20 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 earnest¬ 
 ness 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 them ; most of them were 
 rich, and came to church in carriages : and, as a natural 
 30 result of their esteem for my reverend guardian, a numbei 
 of them combined to build a church for him—viz., St 
 
 else virtually, as regards intercourse and reciprocal influence, is a 
 quarter of Manchester ; in fact, holding the same relation to Man¬ 
 chester 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 Mycense. An invitation to dinner given by 
 the public herald of Argos could he heard to the centre of Mycense, 
 and by a gourmand, if the dinner promised to be specially good, in the 
 remoter suburb. 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 17 
 
 Peter’s—at the point of confluence between Mosely Street 
 and the newly projected Oxford Street, then existing only 
 as a sketch in the portfolio of a surveyor. But what con- ^ 
 nected 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 10 
 Grecian. In whatever way the appointment arose, so it was 
 that this gentleman, previously tutor 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 attain¬ 
 ments 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, 20 
 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 30 
 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. I, therefore, amongst that whole 
 congregation,^ was the one sole careworn auditor—agitated 
 
 ^ That whole congregation" •.—Oh^nally a.t chmdh&s 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 
 
 B 
 
i8 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 sermons, which (lasting 
 oidy through sixteen minutes each) were approved and 
 forgotten by everybody else, for me became a perfect palaestra 
 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 
 10 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 
 ])ractice, I found my abstracting and condensing powers 
 20 sensibly enlarged. My guardian was gradually better 
 satisfied : for unfortunately (and in the beginning it loas 
 unfortunate) always one witness could be summoned against 
 
 years later, when I must have been nearing my tenth year, and when 
 St. Peter’s had been finished, occurred the opening, and conserpiently 
 (as an indispensable pre-condition) the consecration of that edifice by 
 the bishop of the diocese (viz., Chester). I, as a ward of the incum¬ 
 bent, was naturall}'- 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 5 
 and certainly the enrichments, inside or outside, were few enough, 
 neither florid nor obtrusive, I3ut 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 Ave were all assembled 
 in the vestry waiting—rector, churchwardens, architect, and trains of 
 dependants—there arose a deep buzz of anxiety, Avhich soon ripened 
 into an articulate expression 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 doubtful¬ 
 ness as to his ground, or approbation—he passed on. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 19 
 
 me upon any impeachment of my fidelity—viz., the sermon 
 itself ; since, though lurking amongst the 330, the wretch 
 was easily forked out. Eut 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 ? ISlot at all. Loving and trusting, 
 without doubt or reserve, and with the deepest principles of 
 veneration rooted in my nature, I never, upon meeting some¬ 
 thing more impressive than the average complexion of my 
 guardian’s discourses, for one moment thought of him as 10 
 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 battled often with self-created 
 storms from the first dawn of the Parliamentary War in 1642, 20 
 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 Wdiitfield of the seventeenth century—the 
 Leuconomos of Cowper. And thus it is that he describes the 
 impassioned character of his own preaching— 
 
 “ I x)reaclied, as never sure to preach again,” 
 
 (Even that was telling ; but then followed this thunder-y^eai) 
 
 “And as a dying man to dying men.” 
 
 This couplet, which seemed to me equally for weight and for 30 
 splendour like molten gold, laid bare another aspect of 
 the Catholic Church; revealed it as a Church militant and 
 crusading. 
 
 Rot even thus, however, did I descry any positive imper¬ 
 fection in my guardian. He and Baxter had fallen upon 
 different generations. Baxter’s century, from first to last, 
 
20 
 
 CONFESSION'S OF 
 
 was revolutionary. Along the entire course of that seven¬ 
 teenth century the great principles of representative govern¬ 
 ment and the rights of conscience ^ were passing through the 
 anguish of conflict and flery trial. Now again in my own 
 day, at the close of the eighteenth century, it is true that all 
 the elements of social life were thrown into the crucible— 
 hut 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 
 10 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 
 20 inspection and armilustrium had dismissed me from parade 
 to “ stand at ease,” verily I felt like a false steward sum¬ 
 moned 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 undis¬ 
 covered 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 at 
 the table of my guardian and his wife, whose noble hospitality 
 would never allow the humblest among them to he saddened 
 30 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— 
 
 ^ The rights of conscience" :—With which it is painful to know 
 that Baxter did not S3rmpathise. Religious toleration he called ‘ ‘ soul- 
 murder.” 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-EA TER. 
 
 21 
 
 that is, from my eighth to beyond my eleventh birth-day— 
 niy 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 abomin¬ 
 able 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 10 
 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 abstrac- 20 
 tion 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 birthday, Greenhay^ 
 was sold, and my mother’s establishment—both children and 
 servants—was translated to Bath: only that for a few 
 months I and one brother were still 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 home, we became the guests, by special invitation, 30 
 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 pro¬ 
 found, as a jewelly parenthesis of pathetic happiness—such 
 
 1 " Greenhay" A country-house built by my father ; and at the 
 time of its foundation (say in 1791 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. 
 
22 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 as emerges but once in any man’s life. Mr. K. was a young 
 and rising American mercliant; 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. 
 
 10 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 inter¬ 
 course 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 
 
 20 —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 effect, 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,” 
 
 30 he did so because he was an irresponsible despot exercising 
 uncontrolled powers of life and death. From the moment 
 when legal rights have been Avon for the poorest classes, 
 inevitable respect on the part of the higher classes extin¬ 
 guishes 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 23 
 
 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 self-respect 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; 10 
 their confidence, by listening with patience, and counselling 
 with prudence; and their respect, by refusing to inter¬ 
 meddle with gossiping personalities always tending to 
 slander. To this extent, perhaps, most mistresses might 
 follow her example. But the happiness Avhich 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 on, from 
 a spectacle held up hourly before their eyes,—that spectacle 20 
 which of all others is the most touching to womanly sensi¬ 
 bilities, 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 a union might be, they saw with their own 
 eyes. The season was then mid-winter, which of itself 
 draws closer all household ties. Their own labours, as 
 generally in respectable English services, were finished for 30 
 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 
 cliild, a little girl of two years old, had then crowned the 
 happiness of the E-s. She natui’ally lent her person 
 
24 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 treat¬ 
 ment 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 privi¬ 
 lege of our common youth, either angry recollections 
 10 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. 
 
 20 How deep was that lull! and yet, as in a human atmos¬ 
 phere, 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 “ didimned ” ; 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 after¬ 
 wards, came a mixed signal: alternate words of joy and 
 30 grief—marriage 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 25 
 
 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 im¬ 
 peachment 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 consola¬ 
 tion it is that he seeks ”—meaning to say that his style of 
 walking argued intoxication. I did not think so. There 10 
 was a settled misery in his eye, but complicated with ilmt 
 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 encounter, that he and myself were, at that date, 
 all that remained of the once joyous household. At pre¬ 
 sent, and for many a year, I am myself the sole relic from 20 
 that household sanctuary—sweet, solemn, profound—that 
 concealed, as in some ark floating on solitary seas, eight per¬ 
 sons, 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 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 30 
 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 
 
26 
 
 CONFESSION'S OF 
 
 that school seemed as eligible as any other, he had coun¬ 
 selled 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 £150, would have made 
 up the annual £200 ordinarily considered the proper allow¬ 
 ance for an Oxford under-graduate, No objection arising 
 from any quarter, this plan was adopted, and soon afterwards 
 carried into effect. 
 
 10 On a day, therefore, it was in the closing autumn (or 
 rather in the opening winter) of 1800 that my first intro¬ 
 duction 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 
 
 20 by plaster-of-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. 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 jDerson of Pisis- 
 
 30 tratus, concentrating the general energies upon the revisal 
 and the re-casting 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, lan 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 27 
 
 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 10 
 
 “ Bade spare 
 
 The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
 
 Went to the ground.” 
 
 Alexander might have been represented amongst the colon¬ 
 nades of some Persian capital—Ecbatana or Babylon, Susa 
 or Persepolis—in the act of receiving from Greece, as a 
 nuzzur more awful than anything with in the gift of the 
 “ barbaric East,” a jewelled casket containing tbe “ Iliad ” 
 and the “ Odyssey ”; creations that already have lived 
 almost as long as the Pyramids. 20 
 
 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. This f)otentate was 
 the head-master, or arcJddidascalus, of the Manchester Gram¬ 
 mar School; and that school was variously distinguished. 
 
 It was (1) 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 1856, more than 330 years old; (2) 30 
 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 tbe realities 
 of the case, and consequently to personalities, which (though 
 indifterent to myself) would have been in some cases dis- 
 
28 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 pleasing 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 surround¬ 
 ing their composite idea of a dignified schoolma.ster, in¬ 
 vested 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 ad¬ 
 dressed as such by all his correspondents of rank, who miglit 
 be supposed best to understand the technical rules of English 
 TO etiquette. Etiquette in such cases cannot entirely detach 
 itself from law. Now, in English law, as was shown in 
 Horne 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 other¬ 
 wise, then there was a great mistake current amongst Mr. 
 Lawson’s friends in addressing him as an esquire. 
 
 20 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 him ; whicii was—to fight with a pain¬ 
 ful 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 sur- 
 30 rounded 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 1 Had they travelled up¬ 
 wards or downwards? What triumphs had he enjoyed in 
 the sweet and solemn cloisters of Oxford ? What mortifi¬ 
 cations 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 29 
 
 compatriots) ; liad drunk the Pretender’s health, and had 
 drunk it in company with that Dr. Byrom who had graced 
 the symposium by the famous equivocating impfomptu ^ 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 circum¬ 
 stances (at least so I heard) of cruel scorn. Was it that he 
 had interpreted in a sense too flattering for himself ambig¬ 
 uous expressions of favour in the lady ? or that she in 10 
 cruel caprice had disowned the hopes which she had author¬ 
 ised ? 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 1800, 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 Words¬ 
 worth’s poem of “ Ruth ” (which Avas founded, as I happen to 20 
 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; 
 
 ^^‘Equivocating impromptu”'. — The party had gathered in a 
 tumultuary way ; so that some Capulets had mingled with the Mon¬ 
 tagues, one of whom called uj)on Dr. Byrom to drink The King, God 
 bless him ! 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 ! 
 
 But who Pretender is, and rvho the King— 
 
 God bless us all! 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, &c.) should be brought to 
 bear, in that case Dr. Byrom’s work would furnish the proper 
 character for its notation.” 
 
30 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 and, upon finding herself uncontrolled among the pastoral 
 scenes where she played away her childhood, she gradually 
 fell hack to the original habits of her life whilst yet undis¬ 
 turbed by sorrow. Something similar had happened to Mr. 
 Lawson ; and sometime 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 
 10 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 
 Avas obliged to answer upon being named. And thus the 
 20 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 con¬ 
 cerned the caprices of the lady, and the lady herself a 
 phantom. College usages also which served to strengthen 
 this fanciful alibi —such, for instance, as the having tAvo 
 plates arranged before him at dinner (one for the animal, the 
 other for the vegetable, food)—were reproduced in Millgate. 
 One sole luxury also, someAvhat costly, which, like most 
 young men of easy income, he had allowed himself at 
 30 Oxford, was now retained long after it had become practi¬ 
 cally useless. This Avas a hunter for himself, and another 
 for his groom, AAdiich 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 SAvung 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 31 
 
 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 /wm never grew old. On coming to 
 the jAagosus Orhilius, or any other sally of pleasantry, he still 10 
 threw himself back in his arm-chair, as he had done through 
 fifty years, with what seemed heart-shaking bursts of sympa¬ 
 thetic 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 merri¬ 
 ment is but tbe language of shrinking and grovelling de- 20 
 precation. Different, indeed, was the condition of the 
 Manchester Grammar Scliool. It was honourable both 
 to the masters and the upper 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 nine¬ 
 teenth), all punishments that appealed to the sense of bodily 
 pain bad fallen into disuse; and this at a period long before 
 any public agitation bad begun to stir in that direction. 
 How then was discipline maintained? It was maintained 30 
 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 rffterly ignoble; at that period, I mean, when 
 the poetic sense begins to blossom, and when boys are first 
 inade sensible of the paradise that lurks in female smiles. 
 
 1 lad the school been entirely a day-school, too probable it is 
 that the vulgar brawling tendencies of boys left to themselves 
 
32 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 would have prevailed. But it happened that the elder 
 section of the school—those on the brink of manhood, and 
 hy incalculable degrees the more scholar-like section, all who 
 read, meditated, or began to kindle into the love of litera¬ 
 ture—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 Avas no 
 10 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 
 loioer school, where the whole machinery of teaching was 
 applied to the lowest mechanical accomplishments of read¬ 
 ing 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 
 20 naturally have been at a great depth helow these streets. In 
 that case it would he a dark crypt, such' as we see under 
 some cathedrals ; and it would have argued a singular Avant 
 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 aAvay 
 precipitously at that point into lower levels, I presume, upon 
 consideration, that the subterranean crypt will he found open 
 30 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 
 Avas none ; riot so much as would have bleached a lady’s 
 pocket-handkerchief j and this one defect carried along Avith 
 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 liead and foot, two polar extremities 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 33 
 
 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 liypothenuse ; 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 10 
 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, hut 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 muti¬ 
 nous remonstrance by the admirable device of a “round- 
 robin.” Even two little girls, as Harrington remarks in his 20 
 “ Oceana,” have oftentimes 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, hut 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. 30 
 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 playgrorind, that our choice and our pride were 
 
 0 
 
34 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 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 house-membership, 
 what with our reciprocal sympathies in the problems sug¬ 
 gested 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 
 20 establishment, 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, 
 30 there is scarcely any man who would not reply, “ Teach 1 
 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 35 
 
 litterateurs —that is, they were men who (1) studied litera¬ 
 ture, (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 distin¬ 
 guishing 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 starting-point for so 10 
 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. Ho 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 some¬ 
 times too rapidly, and with little precision in cases of 20 
 little importance, I conveyed an impression which I had 
 not designed with regard to the true nature of my preten¬ 
 sions as a Grecian; and something of the same correction 
 will apply to that narrower accomplishment which was the 
 subject of my present examination. Heither 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. Hugent was 30 
 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 1 Simply my knowledge of Greek ; for that know¬ 
 ledge stretches by tendency to the infinite ; but not therefore 
 
36 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 my command of Greek. The knotoledge 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 connexion with time. 
 Take the supreme trinity of Greek scholars that flourished 
 between the English Eevolution of 1688 and the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century—which trinity I suppose to be, 
 10 confessedly, Bentley, Valckenaer, and Person : 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 Person’s predecessor in the Greek chair at 
 20 Cambridge. 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 II. on the death of his “ august ” 
 papa. It is difficult to imagine anything meaner in concep- 
 30 tion 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.^ 
 
 ^ “ 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 
 
A A' ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 37 
 
 Universally I contend that the faculty of clothing the 
 thoughts in a Greek dress is a function of natural sensi¬ 
 bility, 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 under¬ 
 stand, 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 co^ia verhorum, as great agility in reviewing 
 the relations of one idea to another, so as to present modern 10 
 and unclassical objects under such aspects as might suggest 
 periphrases in substitution for direct names, where names 
 could not he 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. 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 20 
 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 nr 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 30 
 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 accom- 
 
 the orchestral maguiticence of the metre, and the sonorous cadence 
 of each separate line, absolutely force upon^ the thoughts 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 Miltouically written. 
 
38 
 
 CONFESSIONS OP 
 
 plished 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, calne forward to receive 
 me with a courtesy which I had not looked for. The grave 
 10 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 Gram¬ 
 mar School: and for some time (when visiting Lord Alta- 
 mont at Eton) with boys of the highest aristocratic preten¬ 
 sions. 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 pre¬ 
 mature knowledge of the world. They had indeed the 
 advantage over my new friends in graceful self-possession ; 
 20 but, on the other hand, the best of them suffered by com¬ 
 parison 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 Man¬ 
 chester 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 
 30 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 39 
 
 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 Lanca¬ 
 shire, 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 10 
 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 sufiicient 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. Ho, I 
 replied , not at all; what was that exercise % Simply an 20 
 off-hand translation from the little work of Grotius ^ on the 
 Evidences of Christianity. Did I know the book % Ho, I 
 did not ; aU 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 30 
 stronger, and felt himself stronger, on literary than on philoso¬ 
 phic ground. Then, with regard to his little work on the 
 Mosaic and Christian revelations, I had heard very disparag¬ 
 ing 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 
 ^ Entitled “ De Veritate Cliristiaiioa Religionis.” 
 
40 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 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 par¬ 
 ticular 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 
 20 scholars. 
 
 A twofold result of evil would follow : not only would our 
 Christian erudition and our Christian scholars be scandal¬ 
 ously 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 he in this case a strong reaction against Christianity 
 itself. Plausibly enough it would he inferred that a vast 
 religious philosophy could have no powerful battery of 
 30 arguments in reserve, when it placed its main anti-Maho¬ 
 metan 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 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 4i 
 
 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 rrp Grotius as 
 indefensible. But on the main question, and the very ex¬ 
 tensive question, of his apparent imbecility when collated ]0 
 with Paley, &c., suddenly and in one sentence he revolu¬ 
 tionised the whole logic of that comparison. Paley and 
 Lardner, he said, what was it that they sought ? 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 1 Hot at all. Too 
 
 often had he (the boy G-) secretly noticed the abstinence 
 
 of Grotius (apparently unaccountable) from certain obvious 20 
 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 con¬ 
 sonant, some vowel, or some diphthong, and thus achieving a 30 
 triumph such as crowns with laurel that pedestrian athlete 
 who wins a race by hopjjing on one leg, or wins it under 
 the inhuman condition of confining both legs within a sack. 
 
 “iVb, no," impatiently interrupted G-. “All such fantastic 
 
 conflicts with self-created difficulties terminate in pure 
 ostentation, and profit nobody. But the self-imposed limita¬ 
 tions of Grotius had a special purpose, and realised a value 
 not otherwise attainable.” If Grotius accepts no arguments 
 
CONPESSIONS OP 
 
 A± 
 
 or presumptions except from Mussulmans, from Infidels, or 
 from those who rank as Neutrals, then has he adapted his 
 hook to a separate and peculiar audience. The Neutral man 
 will hearken to authorities notoriously Neutral; Mussulmans 
 will show deference to the statements of Mussulmans j 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 
 10 in a spirit of conciliation ; much more so if offered by 
 people occupying the same ground at starting as them¬ 
 selves. 
 
 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 my quota to the Sunday 
 evening studies on the “De Veritate,” and must therefore 
 20 have held in my hands the ready means for solving the 
 question.^ 
 
 Meantime, as a solitary act of silent observation in a hoy 
 not fifteen, this deciphering idea of G-’s, in direct resist¬ 
 
 ance 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, 
 30 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 
 
 ^ Some excuse, however, for my own want of energy is suggested 
 by the fact that very soon after my matriculation Mr. Lawson substi¬ 
 tuted 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 
 life-march subsequently may have dropped it by the wayside. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPiUM-EA TEP. 
 
 43 
 
 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. 
 
 Hot, 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 under-graduate 
 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 10 
 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 
 connexion (strict ^ or not strict) with some one or more of 
 our great public schools. These, fortunately for England, 
 are diffused through all 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 arrange¬ 
 ment guarantees a sound system of teaching; so that any 
 failures in the result must presumably be due to the in- 20 
 dividual 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 ae 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 relaticm to modern literature—a 30 
 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 pre¬ 
 cedency in a voice so trumpet-tongued. To myself, whose 
 
 ^ “Strict or not strict" ;—In some colleges the clainis 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. 
 
44 
 
 COIVFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 with gorgeous life, floral wildernesses hidden inaccessibly; 
 whilst, at the same time, in contraposition to that evil, be¬ 
 hold a corresponding evil—viz., that with equal prodigality 
 the great capacities of enjoyment are running also to waste, 
 and are everywhere burning out unexercised—waste, in short, 
 ill 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 
 ‘20 painful of slight 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 nation¬ 
 ality, 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 
 30 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 conscien¬ 
 tiously 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 Ms 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 repre- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-RA TER. 
 
 45 
 
 sentative man, this act might he interpreted as a representative 
 act. The tutelary genius of Trance 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 sub¬ 
 mission 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. 10 
 
 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 train¬ 
 ing 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 Eegained,” 
 and the “ Samson,” in the library of schoolboys 1 By no 
 means. That mode of sensibility which deals with the 20 
 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 aU 
 languages, from Benares the mystical, and the bardvs of the 
 Ganges, travelling westwards to the fountains of the Hudson, 
 
 I deny that any two such hibliothecm for engaging youthful 
 
46 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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. 1628—1700)—produced the highest 
 10 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 contem¬ 
 poraries, I would undertake to build up an entire body of 
 philosophy ^ upon the supreme interests of humanity. One 
 20 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 pre¬ 
 sumably 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 1580 to the period (say 1635) at which it 
 was killed by the frost of the Puritanical spirit seasoning all 
 30 flesh for the Parliamentary War. No literature, not ex¬ 
 cepting even that of Athens, has ever presented such a 
 
 ^ “Philosophy” ;—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 Prudence— 
 i,e,, briefly upon the Greek summum ionirni. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 47 
 
 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 ” ; ^ 
 
 —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 medi¬ 
 aeval ancestors exhibited in their “Dance of Death,” drunk 
 with tears and laughter,—may here be reviewed, scenically 10 
 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; tire Spanish, 
 even in the 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 20 
 English. In reality, the great period of the English Drama 
 was exactly closing as the French opened : ^ consequently 
 
 ^ “All that is done by men—movements of prayer, panic, wrath, 
 revels of the voluptuous, festivals of triumph, or gladiatorship of the 
 intellect.”— Juvenal, in the prefatory lines whieh rehearse the prevail¬ 
 ing themes of his own Satires gathered in the great harvests of Rome. 
 
 ° 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 over¬ 
 ruled by the tenderness of his sorrowing love into finding new occa- 
 
48 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 move¬ 
 ments of French genius. 
 
 I beg the reader’s pardon for this disproportioned digres¬ 
 sion, into which I was hurried by my love for our great 
 national literature, my anxiety to see it amongst educational 
 10 resources invested with a ministerial agency of far ampler 
 character, hut 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. 
 
 That reproach fell heavily, as my own limited experience 
 inclined me to fear, upon most of our great public schools, 
 otherwise so admirably conducted.^ But from the Man- 
 20 Chester Grammar School any such reproach altogether re¬ 
 bounded. 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 ; 
 
 sions 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. 
 
 ^ 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 eveu have made it his necessity, to cultivate some acquaint¬ 
 ance with his native literature. 
 
AN ENGLISH OP/UM^EA TER. 
 
 49 
 
 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 them¬ 
 selves to literature and who sometimes had with some 
 one special section or little nook of literature an acquaint¬ 
 ance critically minute. But amongst such men I have 
 found hut 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 inter- 10 
 course, 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, essen¬ 
 tially repulsive. But, measuring the general qualifications 20 
 by that standard which I have since found to prevail 
 amongst professional litterateurs, I felt more respectfully 
 towards the majority of my senior school-fellows 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 30 
 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. ISTaturally, 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. 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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, hut which, how¬ 
 ever, benefited in its composition, as also in its administra¬ 
 tion, by the good sense and intelligence of some amongst 
 its original committees. These two luxuries were truly and 
 indeed such ; hut a third, from which I had anticipated 
 even greater pleasure, turned out a total failure; and for a 
 10 reason which it may he useful to mention, by way of 
 caution to others. This was a pianoforte, together with the 
 sum required for regular lessons from a music-master. 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 particu¬ 
 lar purpose which I had in view, it became clear that no 
 mastery of the instrument, not even that of Thalherg, 
 would be available. Too soon I became aware that to the 
 20 deep voluptuous enjoyment of music absolute passiveness in 
 the hearer is indispensable. 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 
 co-operating impulse from the foot of the auditor, even that, 
 even so much as an occasional touch of the foot, would 
 30 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. Mean¬ 
 time, though accommodating within certain limits, this music- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 51 
 
 master 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. 10 
 
 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 Librarj', so judi¬ 
 ciously and symmetrically mounted in all its most attractive 
 departments—no class disproportioned to the rest: these 
 were no bubbles; these had not foundered. Oh, where¬ 
 fore, then, was it—through what inexplicable growth of 
 evil in myself or in others—that now in the summer of -20 
 1802, when peace was brooding over all the land, peace 
 succeeding to a bloody seven years’ Avar, hut peace AA'hich 
 already gave signs of breaking into a far bloodier war, some 
 dark sympathising movement within my OAvn 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 1 Inexylicahle 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 30 
 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, noAv that it becomes possible, through changes Avorked 
 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 Avith many 
 
52 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 kindhearted man will choose to mutilate 
 his narrative; will suppress facts, and will mystify explana¬ 
 tions. For instance, at this point in my record, it has 
 10 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 block¬ 
 head. 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 
 20 the less this man, at that particular moment 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 them¬ 
 selves 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 
 30 had accomplished my seventeenth year. Of these three 
 persons, foremost came myself, through my wilful despair 
 and resolute abjuration of all secondary hope; since, after 
 all, some mitigation ivas possible, supposing that perfect 
 relief might not he 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 53 
 
 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 conscien¬ 
 tiousness. 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 IQ 
 the old traditionar;^ 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—Hable 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 
 rliythmus that marked the advancing stages of the half-hour, 20 
 —regularly announced to us, on issuing from the school¬ 
 room, that the bread and milk, which composed our simple 
 breakfast, must be dispatched 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 30 
 Mr. Lawson suffered less. If he required others to pay, 
 he also paid up to the last farthing. The same derange¬ 
 ment took place, with the same refusal to benefit by 
 any indemnification, at what shoidd 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 pro¬ 
 voked a rebellion of fathers and mothers,—he still adhered 
 
54 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 ft 
 
 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 he obtained. Two or three chance intervals 
 10 of five minutes each, and even these not consecutively ar¬ 
 ranged, composed the whole available fund of leisure out of 
 which any stroll into the country could have been at¬ 
 tempted. 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, 
 20 what often accompanies such ailments, profound melancholy. 
 In such circumstances, indeed under any the slightest dis¬ 
 turbance 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 
 30 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 
 
A/V ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 55 
 
 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 10 
 creature could be healthier than myself. But my organisa¬ 
 tion 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 label pasted upon each several phial—viz., 20 
 Repetatur hatistus ; ^ and, instead of doing any such danger¬ 
 ous thing, called upon Mr. - (the apothecary) beg¬ 
 
 ging to know if his art had not amongst its reputed in¬ 
 finity of resources any less abominable, and less shattering 
 to a delicate system than this. “ Hone whatever,” 
 he replied. Exceedingly kind he was; insisted on my 
 drinking tea with his really amiable daughters; but 
 continued at intervals to repeat “ Hone whatever—none 
 whatever ”; then, as if rousing himself to an eflbrt, he sang 
 out loudly “ Hone Avhatever,” which in this final utterance 30 
 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. 
 
 How then we three—Mr. Lawson, the somnolent apothe¬ 
 cary, and myself—had amongst us accomplished a climax of 
 j)erplexity. Mr. Lawson, by mere dint of conscientiousne^ 
 had made health for me impossible. The apotheca||^^H 
 1 “ Let tlie draught be repeated.” 
 
56 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 operas- 
 tion 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 
 10 ignorance, so equally deep being that of my official coun¬ 
 sellor. I could not expect that Mr. Lawson would modify 
 his system—his instincts of duty being so strong, his inca^ 
 pacity 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 reli¬ 
 ance should be on himself. But this self 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 
 20 guardians what I meant for a negotiation upon this subject j 
 the main object being to obtain some considerable abbrevia¬ 
 tion of my school residence. But negotiation was a self- 
 flattering 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 tvhole must be conceded, or nothing : since no mezzo 
 termine was conceivable. In reality, when my eyes first 
 30 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. 4t 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, 
 ^iWsimply in the hope that he might win over my assent 
 reasonableness of what, reasonable or not, was 
 |mioveably. These sudden discoveries, flashing 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 57 
 
 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 black¬ 
 ness 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 JO 
 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 com¬ 
 munication, 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 repetatur haustus,” had 
 endeavoured to administer another bolus or draught of 20 
 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 patri¬ 
 monial income, at the moment of my father’s death, like 30 
 that of all my brothers (then three), was exactly £150 
 per annum,^ Now, according to the current belief, or 
 boldly, one might say, according to the avowed traditional 
 
 1 “ £150 per annum Why in a long minority of more than four¬ 
 teen 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 nega¬ 
 tive injuries which so extensively disfigure the representative picture 
 of guardianship all over Christendom. 
 
58 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 maxim throughout England, such an income Avas too little 
 for an under-graduate, keeping his four terms annually at 
 Oxford or Cambridge. Too little—by how much 1 By 
 £50 : 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 experi¬ 
 ence convinced me) to fall short of the income needed for 
 Oxford, was that very sum which the fun^s of the 
 Manchester Grammar School allocated to every student 
 10 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 resid¬ 
 ence required. 0 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 nineteen— i.e., the better half. 
 Still, on the other hand, it is true that my sufferings 
 20 were almost insupportable ; and, but for the blind uncon¬ 
 scious conspiracy of two persons, these sufferings would 
 either (1) never have existed, or (2) Avould 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 
 30 of bodily suffering and mental disappointments, a frantic 
 and rapturous re-qgency. In the United States the case 
 is well knoAvn, and many times has been described by 
 travellers, of that fuilous instinct AA^hich, 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 lemming, traverse 
 its mysterious path. They are deaf to danger, deaf to the 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 59 
 
 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 command— 
 even 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 io 
 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 pas¬ 
 sively 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 co-operate to one result, 20 
 however little designing it, unavoidably the mind unifies as 
 a hostile confederacy. But the hope—how shall I explain 
 that? 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 interchange¬ 
 ably ran before and after the other. Under that tran¬ 
 scendent rapture which the prospect of sudden liberation let 
 loose, all that natural anxiety which should other¬ 
 wise have interlinked itself with my anticipations was 
 actually drowned in the blaze of joy, as the light of the 30 
 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 tfendencies lay 
 generally in the other direction. ISTo ; the cause lurked 
 in what Wordsworth, when describing the festal state of 
 France during the happy morning-tide of her First Revolu¬ 
 tion (1788-1790), calls “ the senselessness of joy ” : this it 
 
6o 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 was, joy—headlong-—frantic—irreflective—and (as Words^ 
 worth truly calls it), for that very reason, sublime ^—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 
 he 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 
 JO 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. 
 
 To go was settled. But when and irhither ? When 
 could have but one answer; for on more reasons than 
 one I needed summer weather, and as much of it as pos- 
 20 sible. 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 
 30 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 
 
 ^ “The senselessness of joy was then sublime.” — Wordsworth at 
 Calais in 1802 (see his sonnets) looking back through thirteen years 
 to the great era of social resurrection, in 1788-89, from a sleep of 
 ten centuries, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-UATUR, 
 
 6i 
 
 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 IG 
 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, Avhither 
 my letter had been sent after her. Now, then, including 
 my own pocket-money, I possessed a dozen guineas; 
 which seemed sufficient for my immediate purpose ; and all 20 
 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 30 
 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 
 
62 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 had been trained by niy 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 j 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 
 ■lO guinea each : so much, therefore, I left in the hands of 
 
 Gr-, 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 lohen was settled, and the how; but not 
 the lohither. That was still suh judice. 
 
 My plan originally had been to travel northwards—viz., 
 to the region of the English Lakes. That little mountainous 
 district, lying stretched like a pavilion between four well- 
 20 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 geogTaphy of English laAv 
 as a section of Lancashire, though separated from that 
 30 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 West¬ 
 moreland and Cumberland : but the sweet reposing little 
 water of Esthwaite, with its few emerald fields, and the 
 grander one of Collision, with the sublime cluster of 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA PER. 
 
 63 
 
 mountain groups, and the little network of quiet dells lurk¬ 
 ing about its head ^ all the way hack to Grasmere, lie in or 
 near the upper chamber of Furness; and all these, together 
 with the ruins of the once glorious abbey, had been brought 
 out not many years before into sunny splendour by the great 
 enchantress of that generation—Anne Eadcliffe. But more 
 even than Anne Eadcliffe 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 10 
 grandeurs in such passes as those of Wastdale-head, Lang- 
 dale-head, Borrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsdale, &c., together 
 with the monastic peace which seems to brood over its 
 peculiar form of pastoral life, so much nobler (as Words¬ 
 worth notices) in its stern simplicity and continual conflict 
 with danger hidden in the vast draperies of mist over¬ 
 shadowing 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, 20 
 
 Amongst these attractions that drew me so strongly to the 
 Lakes, there had also by that time arisen in this lovely region 
 
 ^ “ Its head” :—That end of a lake which receives the rivulets and 
 brooks feeding its waters is locally called its head ; and, in continua¬ 
 tion 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 ground¬ 
 less, 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 what was it that contra¬ 
 distinguished the vivilacus” 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, 
 
64 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 the deep deep magnet (as to me only in all this world it then 
 was) of William Wordsworth. Inevitably this close con¬ 
 nexion 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 
 10 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, throw¬ 
 ing 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 
 20 high road, with a train (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.” Season¬ 
 able 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 hut assume the 
 character eventually of a saintly pilgrimage, should arise and 
 take its initial movement upon a casual summons, or upon a 
 30 vulgar opening of momentary convenience. In the present 
 case, under no circumstances should I have dreamed of pre¬ 
 senting myself to Wordsworth. The principle of “ venera¬ 
 tion ” (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 Mm. 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 65 
 
 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 on this subject 
 involved in a tradition preserved by Pausanias. Those (he 
 tells us) who visited by night the great field of Marathon 10 
 (Avhere at certain times phantom cavalry careered, flying and 
 pursuing) in a temper of vulgar sight-seeing, 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 most gracious acceptance, and 
 fulfilled all the purposes of a pilgrimage or sacred mission. 20 
 Under my present circumstances, I saAV that the very motives 
 of love and honour, Avhich 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 per¬ 
 plexity. 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 30 
 a case of emergency? Por 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 Avant of decision in my feeling, 
 but really because I feared to be taunted with this act of 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 tenderness, as arguing an exaggerated estimate of my OAvn 
 importance in my mother’s eyes. To he 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 
 10 coming to this resolution, a singular accident occurred to 
 confirm it. On the very day before my rash journey com¬ 
 menced, 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 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 
 20 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 event¬ 
 ually it came out that the person addressed was a poor 
 emigrant, some relative of Quatrem^re de Quincy,^ who had 
 
 ^ “As a courteous French fashion”-. —And not at all a modern, 
 fashion. That famous Countess of Derby (Charlotte de Tremouille) 
 who presided in the defence of Lathom House (which, and not Knows- 
 ley, was then the capital domicile of tlie Stanleys), when addressing 
 Prince Eupert, 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. 
 
 ^ “ 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 wliich writes the name 
 with its own slight variations. A brief outline of their migrations will 
 be found in the Appendix. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 67 
 
 come to Chester, probably as a teacher of French, and now 
 in 1802 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-multi¬ 
 plied Monsieur; or, speaking algebraically, into the square 
 of Monsieur; having a chance at some future day of being 10 
 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 un¬ 
 doubtedly, if this windfall could be seriously meant for 
 myself, and no mistalce, never descended upon the head of 
 man, in the outset of a perilous adventure, aid more season¬ 
 able, nay, more melodramatically critical. But alas! my 
 eye is quick to value the logic of evil chances. Prophet of 20 
 evil I ever am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful 
 auguries that 1 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 niy debtor to the amount of forty guineas ? 
 
 If there really teas such a person, why had he been so many 
 years in liquidating his debt 1 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 30 
 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 
 
68 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 exist in the flesh : Mm I could believe in; but further my 
 faith would not go ; and, if the money were, after all, hond 
 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, 0 heaven and earth! if the Sphinx of 
 old conducted her intercourse with Oedipus by way of letter, 
 and propounded her wicked questions through the post- 
 10 offlce 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 closing 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 experience I 
 had learned that the French aristocracy still persisted {did 
 persist at that period, 1797—1800) in a traditional contempt 
 20 for all accomplishments of that class as clerkly and plebeian, 
 fitted only (as Shakspere says, when recording similar pre¬ 
 judices amongst his own countrymen) to do yeoman’s 
 service.” One and all, they delegated the care of their 
 spelling to valets and femmes-de-chamhre; sometimes even 
 those persons who scoured their blankets and counterpanes 
 scoured their spelling—that is to say, their week-day spell¬ 
 ing ; 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 
 30 royal family of France in 1792-93 still survive, in the 
 memoirs of C14ry 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, 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 69 
 
 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 accomplish¬ 
 ments 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, ho-wever, 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, 10 
 that the product of this carelessness thus far differs : al-ways 
 it is coarse and inelegant, but sometimes (say in 1-2 0 th of 
 the cases) it becomes specially legible. Far other-wise -was 
 the case before me. Being greatly hurried on this my fare¬ 
 well day, I could not make out two consecutive sentences. 
 Unfortunately, one-half of a sentence 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 20 
 seme 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. Tliroughout 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 farther responsibility, I was most 30 
 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 Itnoion 
 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 
 
70 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 imper¬ 
 fect, 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 1 None ; and yet, though now at last free to move off, 
 10 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 intel¬ 
 ligibly for all the external objects, living or inanimate, by 
 which that captivity had been surrounded and gladdened. 
 What I 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 
 20 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 fare- 
 30 well 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 71 
 
 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 pro¬ 
 foundly impressed me in this evening liturgy, and its special 
 prayer against the perils of darkness. But greatly was that 10 
 effect deepened by the symbolic treatment which this liturgy 
 gives to this darkness and to these perils. E^aturally, when 
 contemplating that treatment, I had been led vividly to feel 
 the memorable rhahdomancy ^ or magical power of evocation 
 
 ^ Rhabdomancy”: —The Greek word manteia (yaurela), repre¬ 
 sented 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 di’eam; and therefore oneiromancy indicates that mode of pro¬ 
 phecy which is founded upon the interpretation of dreams. Ornis, 
 again (in the genitive case ovnithos), is the common Greek word for a 
 bird; accordingly, ornithomancy means prophecy founded on the par¬ 
 ticular mode of flight noticed amongst any casual gathering of birds. 
 Gheir (x^^p) 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 conse¬ 
 quently necromancy, prophecy founded on the answer extorted eitlaer 
 from phantoms, as by the Witch of Endor, or from the corpse itself, 
 as by Lucan’s witch Erictho. I have allowed myself to wander into 
 this ample illustration of the case, having for many years been taxed 
 by ingenuous readers (confessing their own classical ignorance) with 
 too scanty explanations of my meaning. I go on to say that the 
 Greek word rhahdos (pd^Bos), 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 instru¬ 
 ment of divination. But let it be understood that divination expresses 
 an idea ampler by much than the word prophecy: whilst even this 
 woxdiprophecy, already more limited than divination, is most injuriously 
 narrowed in our received translation of the Bible. To unveil or de¬ 
 cipher what is hidden — that is, in effect, the meaning of divination. 
 
72 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 \ 
 
 which Christianity has put forth here and in parallel cases. 
 The ordinary physical rhahdomantist, 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 dark- 
 10 ness 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 
 
 And, accordingly, in the writings of St. Paul the phrase gifts of pro¬ 
 phecy never once indicates what the English reader supposes, hut 
 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 ex¬ 
 pense 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 multi¬ 
 plied vexation. In reality, these poor men are, after all, more philoso¬ 
 phic 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 he 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 rhahdomancy. And, after all, the supposed a priori 
 scruples against this rhahdomancy are only such scruples as would, 
 antecedently to a trial, have pronounced the mariner’s compass im¬ 
 possible. There is in both cases alike a’blind sympathy of some 
 unknown foree, 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. 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 n 
 
 sentiments in images of corresponding grandeur, it has so 
 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 jeAvellery 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 10 
 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 Hlolian 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 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 20 
 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 mysteri¬ 
 ous 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 en¬ 
 shrines and illustrates the higher. Call for the grandest of 
 all earthly spectacles, what is that ? It is the sun going to 
 his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, 30 
 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 Christi¬ 
 anity married together. 
 
 Here again, in this 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, 
 
74 
 
 CONFMSSIONS OF 
 
 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 movements is 
 read in their slowness. Time becomes the expounder of 
 Space. And now, though eight o’clock had 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.^ Stepping forward, I passed Mr. Lawson, and 
 
 ^ “ To the twilight" :— i.e., to the second twilight: for I rememher 
 to have read in some German work upon Hebrew antiquities, and also 
 in a great English divine of 1630 (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. 
 
 ® •' 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 senatils. Such trivial circumstantialities I notice, as checks 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 
 
 75 
 
 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 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 10 
 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 20 
 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 im¬ 
 moveable in my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of 
 
 upon all openings to inaccuracy, great or small. It would vitiate the 
 interest which any reader might othermse take in this narrative, if for 
 one moment it were supposed that any feature of the case were var¬ 
 nished 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, 1 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. 
 
76 
 
 CONFESSIONS 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 
 10 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 fond 
 of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not 
 20 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 im¬ 
 possible 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 
 30 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 death-like 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 birth-day as noAV 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 77 
 
 spectacles which challenged our earnest attention, St. Paul’s 
 Cathedral had been one. This we had visited, and conse¬ 
 quently the Whispering Gallery.’- 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 Prance, Spain, and Holland,— I, lo 
 having my previous impressions of awe deepened by these 
 solemn trophies of chance and change amongst mighty 
 nations, had suddenly been 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 Eoman 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 20 
 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 life—shift with the shifting hours. Al¬ 
 ready, 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 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 30 
 as to iwinci^Dle 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 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
78 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 on that London morning by the impressive experience of 
 the '\^^lispering 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 
 10 a thick cloud with redoubled strength; a voice, too late for 
 warning, seemed audibly to say, “ Once leave this house, and 
 a Kubicon 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.” 
 
 A sudden step upon the stairs broke up my dream, and 
 recalled me to myself. Dangerous hours were now drawing 
 20 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 cer¬ 
 tainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst 
 I write this, it is nineteen ^ 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 
 30 tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen, 
 or my book, to gather consolation from it, as a devotee 
 from his patron saint. ^ Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, 
 the deep tones of the old church clock proclaimed that it 
 
 ^ Written in the August of 1821. 
 
 ^ The housekeeper was in the habit of telling me that the lady had 
 lived (meaning, perhaps, had been horn) 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 79 
 
 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 room being at an 10 
 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 up-stairs to bring the trunk down. This I 
 feared was beyond the strength of any one man: however, 20 
 the groom was a man of Atlantean shoulders,” and had a 
 back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he per¬ 
 sisted 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 trepida¬ 
 tion, 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 30 
 
 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 had been a special benefactress. She was also a special bene¬ 
 factress 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 cen¬ 
 turies ; I from her by the gulf of eternity. 
 
8o 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 bottom, it triTiidled, or rather leaped, right across, with the 
 noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the 
 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 
 10 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 author¬ 
 ity, 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 multiply¬ 
 ing uproar, like the Xaa 9 amtdry? ^ (the contumacious stone) 
 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 
 20 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 com¬ 
 plaint, which, oftentimes keeping him awake, made his 
 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 acci¬ 
 dent. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheel¬ 
 barrow, and on its road to the carrier’s: then, “with 
 30 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, to- 
 ^ “ AStis iireira weStiySe KvXlySfTo Aaas ayaiST/s,” — Horn. Odyss, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 8i 
 
 wards Chester and Wales, the first town that I reached (to 
 the best of my remembrance) was Altrincham—colloquially 
 called Aiotrigem. When a child of three years old, and 
 suffering from the hooping-cough, I had been carried for 
 change of air to different places on the Lancashire coast j 
 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 10 
 approved : but in no long time she found it advisable to 
 follow my example j 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 market-place of Altrincham at eight o’clock in the 
 morning. It happened to be the market-day ; and I, who 
 till then had never consciously been in any town whatever, 
 was equally astonished and delighted with the novel gaiety 20 
 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 at¬ 
 tractive : 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 pro¬ 
 found an impression upon me that I never lost it. All this 
 occurred, as I have said, about eight o’clock on a superb 30 
 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 the Altrincham market-place, hTothing 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 windovr of my bedroom was still 
 
 p 
 
82 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 open, only my nurse and 1 were not looking out; for alas ! 
 on recollection, fourteen years precisely had passed since 
 then. Breakfast time, 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 
 10 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 about 
 forty miles. What it is under railway changes I know not. 
 20 This I planned to walk in two days : for, though the whole 
 might have been performed in one, I saw no use in exhaust¬ 
 ing myself j 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 bisec¬ 
 tion was attained in a clean roadside inn, of the class so 
 commonly found in England. A kind, motherly landlady, 
 easy in her circumstances, having no motive for rapacity, 
 and looking for her livelihood much less to her inn than to 
 her farm, guaranteed to me a safe and profound night’s rest. 
 30 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 be¬ 
 come the benefit from the air and the exercise that often¬ 
 times 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- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 83 
 
 bom 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 moun¬ 
 tains 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 10 
 exquisite poem of Wordsworth’s, extracted entire into a 
 London newspaper (I think the “ St. James’s Chronicle ”). 
 
 It was a Canadian lake, 
 
 ‘ ‘ W ith all its fairy crowds 
 Of islands that together lie 
 As quietly as spots of sky 
 
 Amongst the evening clouds.” 
 
 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 20 
 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 1801—2 I had read the whole of 
 “Ruth”; early in 1803 I had written to Wordsworth. 
 
 In May of 1803 I had received a very long answer from 
 W ords worth. 
 
 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 30 
 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 pur¬ 
 suers. 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 
 
84 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 liable to unjust suspicion j first, as by his profession pre¬ 
 sumably 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 move¬ 
 ments 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 trans¬ 
 fer of it, that I had not daUied with any idea of converting 
 10 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 after the robber, 
 20 follow him into his den, and reason with the wretch on the 
 indelicacy of his conduct I 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 post-office. 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. How, if I went to the post- 
 yo 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 en¬ 
 closure 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 85 
 
 post-office; and consequently of the post-office to the 
 Priory; and consequently more easily suggested and con¬ 
 certed between the post-office and the Priory would he 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 10 
 allowed ample time for concerting all the requisite prepara¬ 
 tions. 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 my hat, determining 
 to review the case and adopt some final decision in the 20 
 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 fore¬ 
 noon 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 30 
 infancy of its course amongst the Denbighshire mountains, 
 this river (famous in our pre-Hornian history for the earliest 
 parade ^ of English monarchy) is wild and picturesque ; and 
 even below my mother’s Priory it wears a character of 
 
 ^ “ 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. 
 
86 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 interest. But, a mile or so nearer to its mouth, when 
 leaving Chester for Parkgate, it becomes miserably tame j 
 and the several reaches of the river take the appearance of 
 formal canals. On the right bank^ of the river runs an 
 artificial mound, called the Cop. It was, I believe, origin¬ 
 ally 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 
 10 presented by the river. Some trifle of anxiety might mingle 
 with this gaze at the 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—sheriff- 
 officers, 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 pro- 
 20 fess 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 per¬ 
 son whatever answering to the idea of a Philistine : in fact, 
 there was nobody at all, except one woman, apparently 
 middle-aged (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 
 
 ^ ‘ ‘ Right hanJc ” : —But which bank is right, and which left, nnda’ 
 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, &c., the uniform 
 assumption is that you are standing with your back to the source of 
 tlie 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-EA TER. 
 
 87 
 
 I was near enough to see so much. This woman might he 
 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 10 
 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 right-angled 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 my¬ 
 self upon its probable cause. Oidy this I felt, that blind, un¬ 
 organised nature it must be—and nothing in human or in 20 
 brutal wrath—that could utter itself by such an anarchy of 
 sea-like uproars. What was it ? Where was if? Whence 
 was if? Earthquake was if? 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 Trordfxwv 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 30 
 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 sweep¬ 
 ing so much faster than that at the inner angle as to keep 
 the front of advance rigorously in line, violently careered 
 
83 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 round into our own placid watery vista a huge charging 
 block of waters, filling the whole channel of the river, ancl 
 coining down upon us at the rate of forty miles an hour. 
 Well was it for us, myself and that respectable rustic woman, 
 as 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), 
 10 we could survive. In fact, this watery breastwork, a per¬ 
 pendicular wall of water carrying itself as true as if con¬ 
 trolled 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 
 20 trot; 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 
 30 Channel (and, if so, beyond a doubt, the Atlantic Ocean) 
 had broke loose, and was, doubtless, playing the same in¬ 
 sufferable 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 spohen to her f' 
 Then I loould speak to her; and the more so because the 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 89 
 
 sound of the pursuing river told me that flight was useless. 
 And, besides, if any reporter or sub-editor of some Chestei’ 
 chronicle should, at this moment, with his glass he sweep¬ 
 ing 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 10 
 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 terrific drama, what said she, on 
 coming up with me? Or what said I? For, by accident, 20 
 I it was that spoke first; notwithstanding the fact, notorious 
 and undeniable, that / had never teen 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, tor¬ 
 nado, or eruption of Vesuvius—it shall and may he 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 30 
 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 
 
90 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 should come bad?;—riding along loith 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 -irapp-qa-La, or un¬ 
 limited 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 
 Avas, 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 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; hut 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 1 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 qualifica¬ 
 tions. At any rate, I was wearied in spirit under my load 
 of responsibility ; personally to liberate myself by visiting 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 91 
 
 the post-office too surely I felt as the ruin of my enterprise 
 in its very outset. Some agent must be employed; and 
 ^here could one be found promising by looks, words, manners, 
 more trustworthiness than this agent, sent by accident 1 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 never-enough-to-be-esteemed General Post-office, at 
 that time pitching its tents and bivouacking nightly in Lorn- 10 
 bard 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 which mythological person I 
 begged to address my offering, when incarnated in the shape 
 of a doll. 20 
 
 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 Pyrrha—not to any Thes¬ 
 salian vales of Tempo, but—0 ye powers of moral ana¬ 
 chronism !—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 some¬ 
 thing in her gift—viz., an appointment to forty guineas; 30 
 whereas in the counter-gift 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 j 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 
 
92 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 any tiling 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-ofiice ; had been thanked by 
 more than either one or two amongst the men of letters 
 10 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 responsi¬ 
 bility 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 from the scandal and 
 embarrassment of a gross irregularity, that might eventually 
 20 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 
 30 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 ^ agent, further business I had none to detain 
 
 ^ Some people are irritated, or even fancy themselves hisnltecl, by 
 overt acts of alliteration, as many people are by puns. On their 
 account let me say that, although there are here eight separate f s 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, snbstituted female agent for 
 female friertd. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 93 
 
 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, hut 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 10 
 establishment of servants was usually limited to five persons 
 —all, except one, elderly and torpid. But my uncle, Avho 
 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 Avere all alert and active; so 
 that, when I reconnoitred the windows of the Priory in the 
 dusk, 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 20 
 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 aAvay, 
 and returned, after an hour’s interval, armed with a note to 
 my sister, requesting her to Avatch for an opportunity of 
 coming out for a feAv minutes under the shadows of the little 
 ruins in the Priory garden,^ Avhere I meantime would be 
 
 1 “ The little ruins in the Priory garden” :—St. John’s Priory had 
 been part of the monastic foundation attached to the Aery 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 Avas 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 
 
94 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 waiting* This note I gave to a stranger, whose costume 
 showed him to he 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. How, 
 10 to a dead 'certainty, I said, here comes a fatal barrier to the 
 prosecution of my scheme. I was mistaken. Between my 
 mother and 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 
 
 literary bachelor, and pretty nearly as Cotton had left them two cen¬ 
 turies 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, be¬ 
 cause round and not pointed, were then usually called Saxon, as con¬ 
 tradistinguished from Gothic. What might be the exact classiflcation 
 of the architecture I do not know. Certainly the very ancient church 
 of St. John, to which at one time the Priory must have been an append¬ 
 age, wore a character of harsh and naked simplicity that was repul¬ 
 sive. 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 personce 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, &c., 
 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 95 
 
 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 10 
 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 ad¬ 
 vice, 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 
 munificence ran riot upon all occasions, would gladly have 
 had a far larger allowance made to me, and would himself 20 
 have clandestinely given me anything I asked. But I my¬ 
 self, 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 pro¬ 
 posals, 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 proclama¬ 
 tion to my two younger brotliers 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 30 
 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 them¬ 
 selves 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 cii- 
 
96 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 cumstantially 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 the 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 re¬ 
 morse. 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, 
 10 ten times weightier than any which I could plead, for copy¬ 
 ing my precedent. Most probable it was that he would do 
 so j 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 
 seven-years’ career of nautical romance; had his name 
 20 almost blotted out from all memories in England j 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 
 30 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 97 
 
 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 10 
 surely answer for as sealed and settled for ever—even 
 this you must submit to hold in suspense, as a thing condi¬ 
 tional and contingent upon what is yet to come—liable 
 to have its provisional character affirmed or reversed, ac¬ 
 cording 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 saddened 
 by the chilling manner of my mother. If I could presume 
 to descry a fault in my mother, it was that she turned the 20 
 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 dis¬ 
 pleasure 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 30 
 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 Incommuni¬ 
 cable. 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. 
 
 Q 
 
98 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 At this inoiiieiit, sitting in the same room of the Priory 
 with my mother, knowing how reasonable she was—how 
 patient of explanations—how candid—how open to pity— 
 not the less I sank away in a hopelessness that was im¬ 
 measurable 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 
 
 10 months, the amount of pliysical anguish, the desolation of 
 all genial life, she would have uttered a rapturous absolution 
 of that Avhich else must always seem to her a mere ex¬ 
 plosion of wilful insubordination. “ In this brief experi¬ 
 ence,” she would exclaim, “ I read the record of your 
 acquittal; in this fiery torment I acknowledge the gladia¬ 
 torial 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 the feeblest and most childish reflection of any 
 
 20 past sufferings. Just so helpless did I feel, disarmed iiato 
 just the same languishing impotence to face (or make an 
 effort at facing) the difficulty before me, as naost of us have 
 felt in the dreams of our childhood when lying down with¬ 
 out 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 j 
 and passively I acquiesced in the apparent confession spread 
 through all the appearances—that in reality I had no pallia¬ 
 tion to produce. 
 
 30 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 lia¬ 
 bility 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 
 
AA^ ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 99 
 
 views, she was ready to extend her wonted hospitality to 
 me, and (as regarded all practical matters) her wonted kind¬ 
 ness j but not that sort of kindness which could make me 
 forget that I stood under the deepest shadows of her dis¬ 
 pleasure, 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 per¬ 
 manent protest, cannot feel himself morally at his ease, 
 unless very obtuse and coarse in his sensibilities. 
 
 Mine, under any situation approaching to the present, lO 
 were so far from being obtuse that tliey 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 conse¬ 
 quences of this error would magnify themselves at every 
 stage of life, in proportion as they were viewed retrospec- 20 
 tivcly 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 pur- 
 [)Oses of the younger children : and, if any mother, then by a 
 title how special could my own mother invoke such co-opera¬ 
 tion, who had on her part satisfied all the claims made upon 
 her maternal character by self-sacrifices as varied as privately 30 
 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 distin¬ 
 guished 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 earnest¬ 
 ness on my part in lightening, as much as possible, the 
 
lOO 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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, conscience-stricken and 
 heart-stricken, I stretched out my arms, seeking for my one 
 10 sole auxiliary 3 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 pre-occupied me with the belief that I 
 should see her in a few moments. But she was far away, 
 on a mission of anxious, sisterly love. 
 
 20 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 Ms arrival, came a communication from the 
 post-office, 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 con- 
 30 necting 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 bo settled; and, as there could be no 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 loi 
 
 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 11 A.M., had reached Chester at 3 p.m.), all the 
 requisite steps having been concerted with one of the Chester 10 
 banks for getting letters of credit, &c., 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 miles, and thence to 'proud 
 Prestoti, about twenty more. Within a trifle, these three 
 stages made fifty miles; and so much did my chasers, that 
 pursued when no man fled, accomplish before sleeping. On 20 
 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. Por I myself, having originally plairned my 
 route for the English Lakes, purposely suffered some indi- 30 
 cations 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 ma¬ 
 jority, by a “little account” of about £150 against my 
 little patrimonial fortune. Of all the letters from the 
 Priory (which, however, from natural oversight were not 
 
102 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 ami 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 
 10 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 amount, with the natural 
 expenses of the three travellers at the inns, ran up to five 
 shillings a-mile. Consequently, five shillings being the 
 20 quarter of a pound, six hundred miles cost the quarter of 
 £600. 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.£0 10 0 
 
 To do., second quality. 0 6 0 
 
 It seems the price of echoes varied, reasonably enough, with 
 the amount of gunpowder consumed. But at Low-wood, on 
 Windermere, half-crown echoes might be had by those base 
 30 snobs who would put up with a vile Brummagem substitute 
 for “ the genuine article.” 
 
 Trivial, meantime, as regarded any permanent conse¬ 
 quences, would have been this casual inroad upon my patri¬ 
 mony. 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, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM^EA TER. 
 
 103 
 
 all Avoiild have prospered. From her I should have received ! 
 the cordiality and the genial sympathy which I needed; I j 
 could have quietly pursued my studies; and my Oxford 
 matriculation would have followed as a matter of course, j 
 But, iinhappily, having for so long a time been seriously 
 shaken in health, any interruption of my wild open-air 
 system of life instantly threAv me hack into nervous 
 derangements. Past all doubt it had now become that the al 
 fresco life, to Avhich I had looked with so much hopefulness 
 for a sure and rapid restoration to health, was even more 10 
 potent than I had supposed it. Literally irresistible it 
 seemed in re-organising 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 
 awrpo^ov o/Ap.a, beaming with perfect sympathy, I resolved 
 to avail myself of those wild mountainoirs and sylvan attrac¬ 
 tions which at present lay nearest to me. Those parts, 
 indeed, of Flintshire, or even of Denbighshire, which lay 
 near to Chester, were not in any very eminent sense attrac- 20 
 tive. The vale of Gressford, for instance, within the Flint¬ 
 shire border, and yet not more than seven miles distant, 
 offered a lovely little seclusion ; and to this I had a privi¬ 
 leged access ; and at first I tried it; hut 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 30 
 retreat : no rudeness was allowed here j 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 I believe 
 some executive poAver. Here my introductions were rather 
 too favourable ; since they forced me into society. From 
 Gressford, however, the character of the scene, considered 
 
104 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 as a daily residence, very soon repelled me, however other¬ 
 wise fascinating by the accomplishments of its two posses¬ 
 sors. 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 
 10 Butler, a sister of Lord Ormond. I had twice been for¬ 
 mally 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 feel¬ 
 ing, they must have felt a very slight interest in myself or 
 my opinions.^ I grieve to say that my own feelings were 
 not more ardent towards them. Nevertheless, I presented 
 myself at their cottage as often as I passed through Llan¬ 
 gollen ; and was always courteously received when they 
 happened to be in the country. However, as it was not 
 20 ladies that I was seeking in Wales, I now pushed on to 
 Carnarvonshire ; and for some weeks took a very miniature 
 suite of rooms—viz., one room and a closet—at Bangor. 
 
 My landlady had been a lady’s-maid, or a nurse, or some¬ 
 thing 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 con- 
 
 ^ 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 ])erhaps with his works), neither of 
 them was disposed to look with any interest or hopefulness upon his 
 pretensions. Rut, 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 distinc¬ 
 tion 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 105 
 
 ferred 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 indispen¬ 
 sable 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 10 
 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 con¬ 
 cerned. 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 somewhat 
 magnificently her “ apartments.” The good Bishop (it 20 
 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 IMan, 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 30 
 reported to me. What followed was worse :—“ 0 my lord,” 
 answered my landlady (according to her own representation 
 of the matter), “ I really don’t think that this young gen¬ 
 tleman is a swindler j 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 
 
io6 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 disposed to make ; but a harsh and contemptuous express 
 sion, 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 
 10 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 pre¬ 
 tensions •, which were not only very sound, but very appro¬ 
 priate 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 was indebted to 
 20 him for its leadership ’ at that era in scholarship and dis- 
 
 ^ 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 gms) 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 (subse¬ 
 quently 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, natur¬ 
 ally bis 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 Ms 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 ran 
 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 107 
 
 cipline. In this academic character I learned afterwards 
 that he might be called almost a reformer,—a wise, temper¬ 
 ate, 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 10 
 case 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 20 
 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 com¬ 
 munication by the supposition was to be in Greek, Mere 
 curiosity in such a case would compel the Bishop to read 
 
 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 combina¬ 
 tion 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. 
 
io8 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 it. And then, shockingly irregular as such a course would 
 be, a fatal temptation would arise to the hazardous experi¬ 
 ment 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, 
 10 well qualified to answer, whose reading must naturally he 
 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 {hut 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 know¬ 
 ledge of Greek and the special art of writing Greek ; that 
 20 is, using it as a vehicle for ordinary and familiar intercourse. 
 This advantage, not necessarily or usually belonging to the 
 most exquisite 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 
 30 round and round him, and raked him at pleasure as oppor¬ 
 tunity 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 avap^ov apa Kal areXevTaLov 
 TO TTctv. 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 109 
 
 fiery, as under a sense of real injury, had not been malici¬ 
 ous ; and it was already propitiated beforehand by the mere 
 fun and comic eifect 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—morti¬ 
 fications 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 10 
 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 20 
 which truth and courtesy seemed alike banished. And 
 from that one consequence naturally enough flowed others ; 
 for, having, at any rate, to seek a new home, I left Bangor ^ 
 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 ; 
 
 ^ 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 cathe¬ 
 dral ? 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. 
 
no 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 (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 j 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 
 Avhich had made me houseless; but reminding me that all 
 20 communications made to a dependent within a man’s own 
 gates, and never meant as grounds of action, but simply as 
 cautions—general and not special—are in law and usage 
 held to be privileged communications, and equally Avhether 
 written or spoken*. The insulting use made of this caution 
 he would have treated as due simply to the woman’s coarseness, 
 but ill 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 
 30 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 suit¬ 
 able 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 Ill 
 
 other and remoter advantages might have been more 
 serious. It happened that the college to which the 
 IManchester Grammar School would have consigned me as 
 a privileged alumnus was that very college over whicli the 
 Bishop presided. I have no reason to think that the 
 Bishop would have had i)Ower to retrieve for me any part 
 of the privileges Avhich by my elopement I had Avilfully 
 forfeited: but he would have had it abundantly in his 
 ]>ower to place the ordinary college advantages of Fellow¬ 
 ships, &c., Avithin my reach: whereas aftervAmrds, going lo 
 under erroneous counsel to a college disconnected from my 
 own county and my OAvn schools, I never enjoyed those 
 ordinary opportunities of advancement, and consequently of 
 literary leisure, which the English universities open to 
 almost every man Avho qualifies himself duly to obtain them. 
 
 All this, however, was throAvn into the world of dreams and 
 fable by my hasty movement to Carnarvon, and that region 
 Avhich Pennant first distinguished by the name of Snowdonia. 
 
 There were already, even in those days of 1802, numer¬ 
 ous inns, erected at reasonable distances from each other, 20 
 for the accommodation of tourists : and 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 Avhom I met as felloAv-tourists in the 
 quiet little cottage-parlours of the Welsh posting-houses 
 ■Vvere pedestrian travellers. All the Avay from Shrewsbury 
 through Llangollen, Llanrwst,^ CoiiAA^ay, 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 30 
 solitudes of Cardiganshire, or turning back sharply towards 
 the English border through the gorgeous Avood scenery of 
 Montgomeryshire—everywhere, at intermitting distances 
 of twelve to sixteen miles, I found the most comfort¬ 
 able inns. One feature, indeed, of repose in all this 
 
 1 Llanrwsf' :—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 Tlanroost. 
 
I 12 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 Princi¬ 
 pality had moulded itself in correspondence to the calls of 
 England, which then (but be it remembered this then was in 
 1802, a year of peace) threw a very small proportion of her 
 vast migratory population annually into this sequestered 
 channel, hlo huge Babylonian centres of commerce towered 
 into the clouds on these sweet sylvan routes ; no hurricanes 
 10 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 
 20 Bangor, thence to Aber,—nine miles; or to Llanberris; and 
 so on 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 com¬ 
 pelled 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 
 30 courteous welcome in a pretty rustic home—that, having all 
 the luxuries of a fine hotel (in particular some luxuries ^ 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. 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 113 
 
 Life on this model was bnt 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 Avhile from morning to night I was 
 inhaling mountain air, soon passed into a hateful scourge. 10 
 Perquisites to servants and a bed would have absorbed the 
 whole of my weekly guinea. My policy therefore was, if the 
 autumnal air were warm enough, to save this expense of a 
 bed and the chambermaid by sleeping amongst fems 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 manufactured by myself, 20 
 and not larger than an ordinary umbrella : but to pitch this 
 seciu'ely I found difficult; and on windy nights it became a 
 troublesome companion. As winter drew near, this bivouack¬ 
 ing 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, 30 
 was lest, whilst my sleeping face was upturned to the stars, 
 some one of the many little Brahminical-iooking 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 every¬ 
 where I observe in the feminine mind something of beauti¬ 
 ful caprice, a floral exuberance of that charming wilfulness 
 which characterises our dear human sisters, I fear, through 
 
 H 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 114 
 
 all worlds. Against Thugs I had Juvenal’s license, to be 
 careless in the emptiness of my pockets {cantahit vacuus 
 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 sliilling 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. 
 
 10 Dr. Johnson, upon some occasion which I have forgotten, 
 is represented by his biographers as accounting for an iin- 
 deserving person’s success in these terms ; “ Why, I sup¬ 
 pose that his nonsense suited tlieir nonsense.” Can that be 
 the humiliating solution of my own colloquial success at this 
 time in Carnarvonshire inns ? Do not suggest such a 
 thought, most courteous reader. No matter ; won in what¬ 
 soever 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 30 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 oppor¬ 
 tunity of reaction to the persecuted and baited auditor, 
 was absolute ruin to the interests of the talker himself. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 IIS 
 
 Always passive, always acted upon, never allowed to react, 
 into what state did the poor afflicted listener—he that 
 played the role of listener—collaj)se? 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 dis¬ 
 tinguishing, understanding, or connecting. I, for my part, 
 without needing to think of the unamiable arrogance in¬ 
 volved in such a habit, simply on principles of deadliest 10 
 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, 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 20 
 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 pre¬ 
 maturely 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, unpro- 
 fitably. That it was one function of art to hide and mask 30 
 itself (artis est artem cel are), this I well knew. Heither 
 was there much art required. The chief demand was for 
 new facts, or new views, or for views newly-coloured im¬ 
 pressing 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 116 
 
 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 com¬ 
 posed of tourists that happened to linger for a few weeks in 
 
 10 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, the commission of lieutenant 
 in our British navy, hut 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. 
 
 ‘20 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 
 humourist admired by Kant, and Hamann, also classed as a 
 humourist, but a nondescript writer, singularly obscure, 
 whom I have never since seen in the hands of any English¬ 
 man, 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. 
 
 30 But the most stationary members of this semi-literary 
 circle were Welshmen; two of them lawyers, one a clergy¬ 
 man. 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 htigious. I do not think the 
 worse of them for that. The martial Butlers and the heroic 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 117 
 
 Talbots of the fifteenth century, having no regular opening 
 for their warlike fury in the seventeenth century, took to 
 quarrelling with each other j and no letters are more bitter 
 than those which to this day survive from the hostile corre¬ 
 spondence of the brother Talbots contemporary with the last 
 days of Shakspered 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 market-days through all 10 
 the principal towns in their diskicts. In those towns con¬ 
 tinually I met them; and continually we renewed our liter¬ 
 ary friendship. 
 
 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 parti¬ 
 ally 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 un- 20 
 pretending rustic inn, where the mistress of the house took 
 apon 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 excejDt the table equipage 
 (that being rude and coarse), he had paid only sixpence. 
 This very inn, about ten or twelve miles south of DolgeUy, 
 
 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 30 
 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, 
 
 1 See especially a book written by Sir Egerton Brydges (I forget the 
 title) on the Peerage in the reign of James I. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 ii 8 
 
 which, upon the whole, seemed to balance the account. I 
 could not then, nor can I now, account for these preposter¬ 
 ously low prices; which same prices, strange to say, ruled 
 (as Wordsworth and his sister often assured me) among the 
 same kind of scenery—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 
 10 not to sell at losing rates, hut to forbear producing, and con¬ 
 sequently not to sell at all.^ 
 
 So cheap in fact were all provisions which one had any 
 
 ^ 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 
 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 char¬ 
 acters 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 indemnifica¬ 
 tion, 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 land¬ 
 lady, who had, I daresay, 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 bed¬ 
 room overhead by the slightest andimost pervious of ceiliugs, 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 morn¬ 
 ing) 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 119 
 
 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, hut 
 more agreeable by much than the insipid wMty-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, hut 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 10 
 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 my periodical 
 transmigrations hack 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 20 
 lake of Talyllyn (so written, I believe, hut 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 uj), 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 30 
 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 hoard an English man-of-war ; and, more 
 privately, two letters to sweethearts for two of the sisters. 
 They were both interesting in appearance; and one of 
 
120 
 
 CONFESSIONS 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 
 10 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 con¬ 
 fidential duties as secretary so much to the general satisfac¬ 
 tion, perhaps also amusing them 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 
 20 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 corre¬ 
 sponded 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 
 30 before my arrival, their parents had gone to an annual meet¬ 
 ing of Methodists, held at Carnarvon,^ and in the course of 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 121 
 
 that day were expected to«return ; “ and, if tliey should not 
 he 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 10 
 my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to recom¬ 
 mend me with two sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my 
 Greek Sapphics or Alcaics; and what had been hospitality, 
 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 high-priced inns by 
 the bivouacking system—as if some overmastering fiend, 
 some instinct of migration, sorrowful but irresistible, were 20 
 driving me forth to wander like the unhappy lo of the 
 Grecian mythus, some oestrus 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 reason¬ 
 able fear, for all was sweet pastoral quiet and autumnal 
 beauty around me,—suddeirly 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 fouird grievous in my present 30 
 position, and upon what possibilities it was that I relied for 
 bettering it. With a more extended knowledge of life than 
 T at that tiirre 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 hvelihood. But these 
 
122 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 chances, which I really had, nev-er 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 loould —positively would 
 —have society, I must live at inns. But, if I reconciled my¬ 
 self to a quiet stationary abode in some village or hamlet, in 
 10 that case for me, so transcendency careless about diet, my 
 weekly guinea would have procured all that I wanted, and 
 in some houses the advantage, quite indispensable to my com¬ 
 fort, of a private sitting-room. Yet even here the expense 
 was most needlessly enhanced by the aristocratic luxurious¬ 
 ness 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 com¬ 
 fortable accommodations in some respectable families, to 
 whom my noiseless habits, and my respectful courtesy to 
 20 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 intel¬ 
 lectual 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 
 30 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 intel¬ 
 lectual luxury. Meantime, whilst this perplexity was re¬ 
 sounding in one ear, in the other were continually echoing 
 the kind offers of my Welsh friends, especially the two 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 123 
 
 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 unassum¬ 
 ing character of pedestrian tourist as that in which I had 
 entered it. Impedimenta of any kind—that is, the encum¬ 
 brances of horse or baggage—I had none even to the last. 
 Where I pleased, and when I pleased, I could call a halt, 10 
 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, 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 20 
 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 -^0 
 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, 
 
124 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 it happens that,—an ancient family, dying out, having un¬ 
 avoidably 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 
 1623 Shakspere, an uncastrated Decamerone, or other dazzling 
 K€ifLri\iov. And thus it is that a large provincial library, 
 though naturally and peacefully accumulated, yet sometimes 
 shows mute evidence of convulsions and household tragedies; 
 10 speaks as if by records of storms, and through dim mementoes 
 of half-forgotten shipwrecks. Eeal shipwrecks present often 
 such incoherent libraries on the floors of the hungry sea. 
 Magnificent is the library that sleeps unvexed by 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 
 20 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 
 30 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 Ms 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 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 125 
 
 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 iDeen 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 mean¬ 
 time 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 departure— that, and the 10 
 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 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 20 
 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 h 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 “ trarri'ps ” (so they are called in solemn acts 30 
 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 pedes¬ 
 trianism, on entering any town whatever, by the simple 
 artifice of diving into the crowds of those untainted by that 
 
126 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 friend knew this, and strongly urged me to take advantage 
 of the public carriages, both on that motive and others. 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 considera- 
 20 tion 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, boat- 
 30 like vehicle, very much resembling our modern detestable 
 omnibus, but without our modern improvements. This 
 carriage was called a “ long coach ,and the passengers, 
 twelve or fourteen insides, sat along the sides; and, as 
 ventilation was little regarded in those day.s—the very 
 existence of an atmosphere being usually ignored—it fol¬ 
 lowed that the horrors of Governor Holwell’s black cage at 
 Calcutta were every night repeated, in smaller proportions, 
 upon every great English road. It Avas finally agreed that 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 127 
 
 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 warmhearted 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 10 
 fields; so awful was the universal silence, so 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 upon the future, like the lambent and fitful 20 
 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 30 
 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 counter-movements, 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 fare- 
 
128 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 well 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, 
 10 and beckoning (as it seemed) to myself for purposes as dim, 
 for issues as incalculable, as the path of cannon-shots fired at 
 random and in darkness. 
 
 It was not late, hut it was at least two hours after night¬ 
 fall, when I reached Shrewsbury. Was I not liable to the 
 suspicion of pedestrianism ? Certainly I was : hut, even if 
 my criminality had been more unequivocally attested than it 
 could he under the circumstances, still there is a locus peni- 
 tentice in such a case. Surely a man may repent of any 
 crime; and therefore of pedestrianism. I might have 
 20 erred; and a court of pie poudre (dusty foot) might have 
 found the evidences of my crime on my shoes. Yet secretly 
 I might he forming good resolutions to do so no more. 
 Certainly it looked like this, when I announced myself as a 
 passenger “ hooked ” 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 
 30 mutes, these were hut 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 129 
 
 of live 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,—proclaim¬ 
 ing me to be a man comme il faut ; 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 dis¬ 
 tinction. The wax-lights, to use the magnificent Grecian 
 phrase iTro/xTreve, moved pompously before me, as the holy 
 —holy fire, the inextinguishable fire and its golden hearth, 
 moved before Csesar semper Augustus, when he made his 10 
 official or ceremonial avatai'S, Yet still this moved along 
 the ordinary channels of glorification; it rolled along 
 ancient grooves: I might say, indeed, like one of the 
 twelve Csesars 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^ of noble propor¬ 
 tions—lighted, if I chose to issue orders, by three gorgeous 
 chandeliers, not basely wrapped up in paper, hut sparkling 20 
 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 30 
 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 
 
 1 '‘It was a hall-room” : —Tlie explanation of the case was simply 
 that the hotel was under some extensive ])rocess of purification, 
 adornment, and, I believe, extemsion ; and, under the accident of being 
 myself on that particular night the sole visitor of the liouse, I slipped 
 unavoidably into the honours of a semi-regal reception. 
 
 I 
 
CONFESSTOjVS of 
 
 130 
 
 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 moun¬ 
 tain 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 object, other thought, I could not 
 admit. Long before midnight the whole household (with 
 10 the exception of a solitary waiter) had retired to rest. 
 Two hours, at least, v’ere left to me, after twelve o’clock 
 had struck, for heart-shaking reflections. More than ever 
 I stood upon the brink of a precipice; and the local circum¬ 
 stances 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 
 20 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 
 Avhich 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 
 30 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 alti¬ 
 tude 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 echo¬ 
 ing holloAvness which had become the exponent of that 
 altitude—this one terrific feature (for terrific it was in the 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUILEATER. 
 
 effect), together with crowding and evanescent images of the 
 flying feet that so often had spread gladness throngli these 
 halls on the wings of yonth 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 
 
 j 
 
 raving, and to all appearance endlessly growing,—threw 
 me into the deadliest condition of nervous emotion xuider 
 contradictory forces, high over which predominated horror 
 recoiling from the unfathomed ahyss in 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, swe^xt 
 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 (^Aclierontis avari). 
 Thou also. Whispering Gallery! 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 he unlinked. 
 
 Such thoughts, and visions without number correspond¬ 
 ing to them, were moving across the camera ohscnra 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 ^ 
 
 10 
 
 ■20 
 
 .30 
 
 1 The Holyhead depending in its earliest stages upon winds 
 
 and waters (though not upon tides), could not realise the same ex¬ 
 quisite accuracy as mails that moved exclusively upon land. Sixty 
 miles of watery transit between Dublin and Holyhead were ])erroi’med 
 with miraculous precision. The packets were intrusted by the 
 General Post-office 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 conqietition. 
 No evil, therefore, which care, foresight, and professional skill could 
 
132 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 excep¬ 
 tion (that of Liverpool), in those days, were so arranged as 
 to reach London early in the morning. Between the hours 
 of four and six a.m., one after the other, according to their 
 station upon the roll, all the mails from the ^[orth], the 
 E[ast], the W[est], the S[outh]—whence, according to some 
 
 10 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 coaehes 
 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 
 
 20 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 depot of Dublin, by way of donation to England. 
 
 30 On reflection, I have done myself some injustice. Hot 
 altogether without a plan had I been from the first; and in 
 eoming along I had matured it. kly success in such a plan 
 
 remedy, was suffered to exist. Yet, after all, baffling winds would 
 now and then (especially in three or four weeks a/(e7- the equinox) 
 make it impossible for the very ablest man, under tlie total defect of 
 steam resources, to keep his time. Six hours, I believe, were allowed 
 by the Post-offlce for the sixty miles ; but at times this must have 
 proved a very inadequate allowance. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 133 
 
 would turn upon my cliance of borrowing on personal 
 security. £200, without counting any interest upon it, 
 would subdivide into four sums of £50. JN'ow, what inter¬ 
 val 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 : (1) 
 servants’ wages; (2) lodgings ; ^ (3) dairy produce. In 
 other 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 10 
 for the last half-century to obtain two furnished rooms at a 
 weekly cost of half-a-guinea. This sum (or say £25) de¬ 
 ducted 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 £200, my plan 
 was to withdraw from the knowledge of all my connexions 
 until I should become mei 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 uni¬ 
 versity. But, as in fact I never drew the slightest advan- -zQ 
 tage or emolument from any university, my scheme when 
 realised would have landed me in the same point which 
 tinally I attained by its failure. The plan was simple enough, 
 but it rested on the assumption that I could melt the 
 obdmacy 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. 30 
 
 ^ 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 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 
 Loudon. 
 
134 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 money-lender’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 mj'- pecuniary exjoectations (some 
 of which statements it afterwards apjDcared that he had per¬ 
 sonally investigated and verified), endeavoured to win his 
 10 favourable attention. 
 
 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 red-letter days'?) by the more 
 common name of Brown. Mr. Brunell-Brown, or Brown- 
 20 Brunell, 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 un¬ 
 happy 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 frac¬ 
 tured panes of glass in the windows; and the deep silence 
 which invested the house, not only from the absence of all 
 30 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 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 135 
 
 honoured guest, to his private officina diiAomatum at the back 
 of tlie 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. Ho smile that ever his face naturally assumed 
 but was pulled short up by some freezing counteraction, or 
 was chased by some close-following expression of sadness. 10 
 One feature there was of relenting goodness and nobleness in 
 Mr. BruneH’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 owui stormy (and 
 no doubt oftentimes disgraceful) career in life, that had en¬ 
 tangled 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 20 
 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 con¬ 
 versations Avith 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 disentangle- 30 
 ment. 
 
 Hunger-bitten as the house and the household genius 
 seemed, Avearing the legend of Famine upon every mantel¬ 
 piece and “ coigne of vantage,” and vehemently protesting, 
 as it must have done through all its echoes, against the 
 introduction of supernumerary mouths, nevertheless there Avas 
 (and, I suppose, of necessity) a clerk, Avho bore the name of 
 Pyment, or Pyemont, then first of all, then last of all, made 
 
136 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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. Brunell 
 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 trouble to 
 10 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 reajDer seems, in the eyes of an ignor¬ 
 amus, on a wet, wintry day, to be a luxurious idler. Of 
 these ups and downs in Pyment’s working life Mr. Brunell 
 20 made a most cynical use ; making out that Pyment not only 
 did nothing, but also that he created much work for the 
 afflicted Brunei!. However, it happened occasionally that 
 the truth vindicated itself, by making a call upon Pynient’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 
 30 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUI/-EA TEE. 
 
 137 
 
 to all parties but myself) I had been told that nothing 
 would be brought to a close in less than six montlis, 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 move at a faster pace : they will all alike loiter upon 1C 
 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 jore- 
 liniinary correspondence. How much better for both sides, 
 and more honourable, as more frank and free from disguises, 
 that the client should say, “ Eaise this sum ” (of, suppose, 
 £400) “ in three weeks,—which can be done, if it can be done 
 in three years ; and here is a bonus of £100. Delay for 
 two months, and I decline the whole transaction.” Treated 20 
 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 ; 30 
 whilst, on the other hand, those concerned in tliese 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 138 
 
 solitary half-guinea towards the more urgent interest of find¬ 
 ing 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 the law I came 
 to know sin, and, looking hack to the Cambrian hills from 
 10 distant years, discovered to my surprise what a parliamentary 
 wretch I had been in elder days, when I slept amongst 
 coAvs on the open hill-sides. Lawful as yet this was; but 
 not, therefore, less full of misery, l^aturally, then, I was 
 delighted when Mr. Brunell not only most readily assented 
 to my request, hut 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 
 •20 saved a considerable fund of guineas, applicable, of course, 
 to all urgent necessities, hut 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 hitter 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 
 30 coals, from local causes, were at the very dearest—what a 
 terrific enemy was that for poor old grandmothers to face in 
 fight! Hoav feelingly I learned at this time, as heretofore I 
 had learned on the wild hill-sides in Wales, what an unspeak¬ 
 able blessing is that of warmth ! A more killing curse there 
 does not exist for man or woman than that bitter combat 
 between the Aveariness 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 139 
 
 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 
 house already contained one single inmate,—a poor, friend¬ 
 less child, apparently ten years old; hut she seemed hunger- 
 bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children look 
 older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that 10 
 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 im¬ 
 press vividly the sense of its echoing loneliness; and, from 
 the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a pro¬ 
 digious uproar on the staircase and hall; so that, amidst 
 the real fleshly ills of cold and hunger, the forsaken child 20 
 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 horse¬ 
 man’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 30 
 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 1 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 
 
140 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 sud¬ 
 denly by my own voice. About this time, a hideous sensa¬ 
 tion began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, 
 which has since returned upon me, at different periods of 
 my life—viz., a sort of twitching (I knew not where, but 
 apparently about the region of the stomach), which com¬ 
 pelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of re- 
 10 lieving 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 increas¬ 
 ing weakness (as I said before), I was constantly falliiig 
 asleep and constantly awaking. Too generally the very 
 attainment of any deep repose seemed as if mechanically 
 linked to some fatal necessity of self-interruption. It was 
 as though a cup were gradually filled by the sleepy over¬ 
 flow of some natural fountain, the fulness of the cup 
 expressing symbolically the completeness of the rest: but 
 20 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 
 30 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. 
 
AA^ ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 141 
 
 before he would allow it to be opened. He breakfasted 
 alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have ad¬ 
 mitted 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 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 sat in any relation whatever) of 
 succession, and not of co-existence; in the relation of jjarts 10 
 of time, and not of the parts of space. During his break¬ 
 fast, 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 subse¬ 
 quently explained, was repaid a thousand-fold j and, as to 
 the poor child, she was never admitted into his study (if I 20 
 may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, 
 law-writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard 
 room of the house, being regularly locked on his departure 
 to dinner, about six o’clock, which usually was his final 
 departure for the day. Whether this child was an illegiti¬ 
 mate 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, &c.; and, except when she 30 
 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 Avent 
 
142 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 off and sat in the parks or else\vhere until the approach of 
 twilight. 
 
 But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the 
 house himself 1 Reader, he was one of those anomalous 
 practitioners in lower departments of the law who, on 
 prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves all 
 indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience. In 
 many walks of life a conscience is a more expensive en¬ 
 cumbrance than a wife or a carriage; and, as people talk of 
 10 “ 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 gen¬ 
 erally 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 connexions 
 20 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 
 background, 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 worrld 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 some- 
 30 times 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 every¬ 
 thing, 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OLIUM-RA TER. 
 
 143 
 
 Johnson has recorded that he never hut once in his life 
 had as much wall-fruit as he wished, so let me he grateful 
 that, on that single occasion, I had as large a clioice 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 that side the street 
 nearest to Soho Square—as I could possibly desire. Except 
 the Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to he 
 permanently haunted, and which, besides, was locked, all 
 others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service. 10 
 “ 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. Eor 
 myself, I never fail to visit it when accident draws me to 
 London. Aboiit ten o’clock this very night (Aiigust 15, 
 1821, being my birthday), I turned aside from my evening- 
 walk along Oxford Street, in order to take a glance at it. 20 
 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 dome.stic 
 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 30 
 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 
 
f44 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 niy 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 earnest¬ 
 ness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This 
 person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class 
 who belong to the outcasts and pariahs of our female popula¬ 
 tion. I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in 
 10 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 un¬ 
 seasonably austere ! Little call was there here either for 
 smiles or frowns. A penniless schoolboy could not he 
 supposed to stand within the range of such temptations; 
 besides that, according to the ancient Latin proverb, “ sine 
 Gerere 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 
 20 persons commanding more of the world’s respect, were to he 
 found humanity, disinterested generosity, courage that 
 would not falter in defence of the heljFess, 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 con- 
 30 trary, 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 145 
 
 innocent. Being myself, at that time, of necessity a 
 peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more 
 frequently Avith those female peripatetics who are technically 
 called street-walkers. Some of these Avomen had occasion¬ 
 ally taken my part against Avatchmen who Avished to drive 
 me off the steps of houses Avhere I was sitting; others had 
 protected me against more serious aggressions. But one 
 amongst them—the one on Avhose account I have at all 
 introduced this subject—yet no ! let me not class thee, 0 
 
 noble-minded Ann - , Avith that order of women; let 10 
 
 me find, if it he possible, some gentler name to designate 
 the condition of her to Avhose bounty and compassion— 
 ministering to my necessities Avhen all the Avorld stood aloof 
 from me— I owe it that I am at this time alive. For 
 many weeks I had Avalked, at nights, with this poor friend¬ 
 less girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested Avith 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 20 
 gradually draAvn forth her simple history. Hers Avas a 
 case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason 
 to think), and one in Avhich, if London beneficence had 
 better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the poAver of the 
 hiAV might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. 
 But the stream of London charity floAVs in a channel Avhich, 
 though deej) and mighty, is yet noiseless and under¬ 
 ground ;—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 30 
 in all vast capitals, is unavoidably harsh, cruel, and 
 repulsive. In any case, hoAvever, I saAV 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 
 Avith immediate attention; and that English justice, Avhich 
 was no respecter of persons, Avould speedily and amply avenge 
 her on the brutal ruffian Avho had plundered her little pro- 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 perty. She promised me often that she would; hut sh,e> 
 delayed taking the steps I pointed out, from time to time; 
 for she was timid and dejected to a degree which showed 
 how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and 
 perhaps she thought justly that the most upright judge and 
 the most righteous tribunals could do nothing to repair her 
 heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps have 
 been done; for it had been settled between us at length 
 (but, unhappily, on the very last time but one that I was 
 10 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. Mean¬ 
 time, 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 jjass without a pang of grief, and an 
 20 inner act of homage to the sj^irit 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 backAvards on the steps. From the 
 sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the 
 liveliest kind that, Avithout some poAA'erful and reAuving 
 stimulus, I should either have died on the spot, or should, 
 at least, have sunk to a point of exhaustion from Avhich all 
 re-ascent, under my friendless circumstances, would soon 
 ■30 have becoine hopeless. Then it Avas, at this crisis of my 
 fate, that my poor orphan companion, vAdio had herself met 
 Avith little but injuries in this Avorld, stretched out a saving 
 hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but Avithout a 
 moment’s delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and, in less 
 time than could be imagined, returned to me Avith a glass 
 of port-Avine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach 
 (avIucIi at that time would have rejected all solid food) 
 with an instantaneous power of restoration ; and for this 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 147 
 
 glass the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out of her 
 OAvn humble purse, at a time, he 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. 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 super¬ 
 natural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity 10 
 of self-fidfilment, even so the benediction of a heart op¬ 
 pressed 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 gTave, 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 'h 
 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 whicli 
 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 30 
 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 bank-note. The letter enclosing it was delivered, 
 with other letters of business, to the attorney; but, though 
 
148 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 his look and manner informed me that he suspected its con¬ 
 tents, 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 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 surprise my 
 readers that I should not have found some means of staving 
 10 oft’ 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 
 20 to tire school which I had quitted,—a restoration which, as 
 it would, in my eyes, have been a dishonour even if sub¬ 
 mitted 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 assist¬ 
 ance 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, 
 30 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 149 
 
 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 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 dis¬ 
 charged 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 10 
 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 in¬ 
 herently 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 perfec¬ 
 tion of the diabolic character I fear that patience is one of 20 
 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 intro¬ 
 duction 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 30 
 of profit, hlo mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money 
 had ever suggested itself hut 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 At this period (autumn of 18.56), 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 
 
150 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders, I 
 luid introduced myself, with an account of my expectations; 
 which account they had little dilhculty in ascertaining to he 
 correct. The persozi 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 
 
 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 
 ill connexion with something or other (I have long since forgotten 
 lohat) growing out of the parliamentary movement against the Duke of 
 York, in reference to Mrs. Clark, &c. 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 hut be, to cover his risks, 
 
 ho 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., £100 izer 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 oue 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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 151 
 
 friends scrutinised me keenly, that I miglit be too well 
 known to he that person, and that some scheme might he 
 passing in their minds for entrapping me and selling me to 
 my guardians. It was strange to me to find my own self, 
 mateft'ialiter considered (so I expressed it, for I doated on 
 logical accuracy of distinctions), suspected of counterfeiting 
 my own self, formaUter 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 hack, amongst my confidential friends. These were 
 tlated from Eton. I had also some from the Marquis of 
 Sligo, his father; who, though absorbed in agricultural 
 ))ursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as good a 
 scholar as a nobleman needs to he, 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 20 
 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 
 oil wliich he fancied that I could write verses myself, or 
 lueathe poetic inspiration into the mind of my once familiar 
 companion, his son. 
 
 On reading the letters, one of my JeAvish friends agreed to 
 furnish two or three hundred pounds on my personal security, 
 provided I could persuade the young earl—Avho Avas, liy the 
 way, not older than myself—to guarantee the payment on 30 
 our joint coming of age; the Jew’s final object being, as I noAV 
 suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect to make by 
 me, but the prospect of establishing a connexion Avith my 
 noble friend, Avhose great expectations AvereAvell known to him. 
 
 In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the JeAV, about 
 (iight or nine days after I had received the £10, I prepared 
 to visit Eton. Nearly three guineas of the money I had 
 giA^en to my money-lending friend in the background ; or. 
 
152 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 directly to himself, on his own separate account. 
 AVhat he alleged in excuse for tlms draining my purse at so 
 critical a moment was that stamjDs must he 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 
 10 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 
 20 its ancient boundaries—having been replaced by Eegent 
 Street and its adjacencies. Sivalloio Street is all that I 
 remember of the names superseded by this large revolution¬ 
 ary 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 
 30 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 tender¬ 
 ness, 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, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 153 
 
 on the contrary, who was parting with one Avho had bad 
 little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly 
 treatment, was overcome by sorrow, so that, when I kissed 
 her at our hnal farewell, she put her arms abont 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 Titch- 
 field Street; which had formerly been our customary haven 
 of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great 10 
 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 them¬ 
 selves Miss Douglas, Miss Montague, t^c., but simply by 
 their Christian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, &c. Her sur¬ 
 name, as the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to 
 have inquired ; but the truth is, having no reason to think 20 
 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 Picca- 30 
 dilly, at which, in those days, all the western mails stopped 
 for a few minutes in going out of London, it was already a 
 (|uarter-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 motion ^ of this mail soon laid me asleep. 
 
 1 The Bristol Mail was at that time the best appointed in the king¬ 
 dom—owing that advantage, first of all, to an imnsually good road— 
 and this advantage it shared with the Bath Mail (their route being 
 
154 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing 
 sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the 
 outside of a mail-coach—a bed which, at this day, I find 
 rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep was a 
 little incident which served, as hundreds of others did at 
 that time, to convince me how easily a man who has never 
 been in any great distress may pass through life without 
 knowing in his own person, and experimentally testing, the 
 possible goodness of the human heart, or, as unwillingly 
 10 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 
 20 annoyance he complained heavily ; as, perhaps, in the same 
 circumstances, most people would. He expressed his com¬ 
 plaint, 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 Avas ill, and in a Aveak 
 30 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 
 Avoke for a minute, from the noise and lights of HounsloAV 
 (for, in spite of my efforts, I had again fallen asleep within 
 tAVo minutes), I found that he had put his arm round me 
 
 exactly the same for a hundred and five miles) ; hut, secondly, it had 
 the separate advantage of an extra sura for expenses subscribed by the 
 Bristol merchants. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 J 55 
 
 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. 
 Unfortunatcily, indeed, I did go further than I intended; 
 for so genial and refreshing was my sleep, being in the open 
 air, that, iijmn 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 10 
 entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the 
 transient glimpse I had of him under the glaring lights of 
 Piccadilly, might he a respectable upper servant) to go to 
 bed without delay. This, under the feeling that some con¬ 
 sideration was due to one who had done me so seasonable 
 a service, I promised, though with no intention of doing so; 
 and, ill fact. I immediately moved forward on foot. 
 
 It must then have been nearly eleven j 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 20 
 to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me j but 
 I was weary, nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious 
 enougb, and pointedly exjiressed by a Koman 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 30 
 in tliat neighbourhood. 1 Every step of my regress (for I 
 
 ^ Two men, Holloway and Haggerty, were long afterwards con¬ 
 victed, 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 iiicohei'ency of the 
 statements relied upon by the court. They were executed, however, in 
 
156 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 myself—instead of being little better than an outcast, 
 
 “ 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 
 10 moment about my throat! Indeed, it was not likely that 
 Lord Altamont should ever be in my situation; but, never¬ 
 theless, 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 unex¬ 
 pectedly succeeded to an estate in England of £50,000 
 a-year, feel their dislike to bullets furiously sharpened,^ and 
 20 their efforts at self-possession proportionably difficult. So 
 true it is, in the language of a wise man, whose own experi¬ 
 ence 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 remem- 
 
 the teeth of all oppo.sition. And, as it happened that an enormous 
 wreck of life 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. 
 
 ^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. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 157 
 
 brance 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 daAvn, 
 
 I was awakened by the voice of a man standing over me, 
 and apparently studying mj physics, whilst to me—upon so 
 sudden an introduction to him in so suspicious a situation 
 —his morals naturally suggested a more interesting subject 
 of inquiry. I knoAv not what he AA^as. He Avas an ill- 
 looking fellow, but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill-meaning 10 
 fellow; or, if he Avere, I suppose he thought that no person 
 sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing. In 
 Avhich 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 Avas 
 not sorry at his disturbance, as it roused me to pass through 
 Eton before people Avere generally astir. The night had 
 been heavy and misty; but toAvards the morning it had 
 changed to a slight frost, and the trees Avere now covered 
 with rime. 20 
 
 I slipped through Eton unobserved; washed myself, and 
 as far as possible adjusted my dress, at a little public-house 
 in Windsor; and, about eight o’clock, went down towards 
 the precincts of the college, near Avhich 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 habili¬ 
 ments, they ansAvered me civilly. IMy friend Lord Alta- 
 mont was gone to Jesus College, Cambridge. “ Ibi omnis 
 effusus labor! ” I had, hoAvever, other friends at Eton; 30 
 but it is not to all who wear that name hi prosperity that a 
 man is willing to present himself in distress. On recollect¬ 
 ing myself, hoAvever, I asked for the Earl of Desart,^ to 
 
 ^ I had known Lord Desart, the eldest son of a very large family, 
 some years earlier, when bearing the title of Lord Castlecutfe. 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 imeute 
 against the government of Queen Elizalieth. 
 
158 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so inti 
 mate 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 Desart placed before me a magnificent breakfast, 
 It was really such; hut in my eyes it seemed trebly magni¬ 
 ficent from being the first regular meal, the first “ good 
 man’s table,” that I had sat down to for months. Strange 
 10 to say, I could scarcely eat anything. On the day when I 
 finst 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 eageiaiess 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 j my 
 appetite was utterly gone, and I nauseated food of every 
 kind. This effect, from eating what approached to a meal, 
 20 I continued to feel for Aveeks. On the present occasion, at 
 Lord Desart’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 
 Avine : I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord Desart, 
 and gave him a short account of my late sufferings; Avith 
 AAdiich 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 Aviue. Obvious it is, however, that this in- 
 30 dulgence in wine Avould 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, effectu¬ 
 ally, have been restored. 
 
 I hope that it Avas not from this love of Avine that I 
 lingered in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends ; I per¬ 
 suaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask Lord 
 Desart, on Avhom I Avas conscious of having no sufiicient 
 claims, the particular service in quest of which I had come 
 
A A ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 159 
 
 to Eton. I was, Low ever, unwilling to lose my journey, and 
 •—I asked it. Lord Desart, whose good-nature was un¬ 
 bounded, 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 acknow¬ 
 ledged that he did not like to have any dealings with money¬ 
 lenders, and feared lest such a transaction might come to the 
 ears of his connexions. Moreover, he doubted whether Ms 10 
 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 perenq^tory and absolute; for, after a little con¬ 
 sideration, he promised, under certain conditions, which ho 
 pointed out, to give his security. Lord Desart v^as 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), 20 
 whether any statesman, the oldest and the most accom¬ 
 plished 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 Desart’s conditions, or so 
 they said. Whether they would in the end have acceded 
 to them, and were only seeking time for making further in- y-u 
 quiries, 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 oi)ening was made, 
 almost by accident, for reconciliation with my guardians. 
 quitted Loudon in haste, and returned to tlie Priory; after 
 some time, I proceeded to Oxford ; and it was not until 
 
i6o 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 
 10 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, hut 
 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 
 20 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 
 30 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 ! 
 Luring 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. 
 I should know her again amongst a thousand, and if seen 
 
JtN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 i6i 
 
 but for a moment. Handsome she was not; but she bad 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. How 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 10 
 
 the ruin they had begun. 
 
 * ^ * 
 
 ifc ^ * * 
 
 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, 20 
 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 
 imiumerable 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 30 
 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 con¬ 
 firmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with 
 alleviations, how deep ! from sympathising affection. 
 
 L 
 
CONFESSIOIVS OF 
 
 163 
 
 Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years far 
 asunder were hound together by subtle links of sufFerhig 
 derived froui 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 con¬ 
 solation was (if such it could he thought) to gaze from Oxford 
 Street up every avenue in succession which pierces north¬ 
 wards through the heart of Marylehone to the fields and the 
 woods; for that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long 
 10 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 suffer¬ 
 ings began, and that they again threatened to besiege the 
 citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was 
 20 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 
 30 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; hut, watching 
 by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to hear me com¬ 
 pany through the heavy watches of the night, satiny Electra; 
 
 for thou, beloved M-, dear companion of my later years, 
 
 thou wast my Electra, and neither in nobility of mind nor in 
 long-suffering affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 16.3 
 
 should excel an English wife. For thon thonghtest not much 
 to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile minis¬ 
 trations 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 sluml)ers 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 withdraAV thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy ser- 10 
 vice 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,^ yet wept sometimes, and hid her face^ in her 
 robe. 
 
 But these troubles are past, and thou wilt read these 
 records of a period so dolorous to us both as the legend of 
 some hideous dream that can return no 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 20 
 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 
 ray youthful ejaculation of anguish; but then, remember¬ 
 ing that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and 
 mistress of that very house to which my heart turned in its 
 blindness nineteen years ago, 1 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 30 
 
 ^ Agamemnon— avdpoov. 
 
 ^ ‘'Ofifia 6e7s' ets treiTKov. I’lie scholar will know that thi’onghout 
 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 neees- 
 sary 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. 
 
164 
 
 ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 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! ” 
 
PAET II. 
 
 THE PLEASUBBS OP OPIUM. 
 
 It is very long since I first took opium ; so long that, if 
 it had been a trifling incident in niy life, I might have 
 forgotten its date: hut cardinal events are not to he 
 forgotten; and, from circumstances connected with it, I 
 remember that this inauguration into the use of opium must 
 he 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 liad been 
 accustomed to wash my head in cold water at least once 10 
 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 20 
 relief. By accident, I met a college acquaintance, who 
 recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimagin¬ 
 able pleasure and pain ! I had lieard of it as I had heard 
 of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning 
 a sound was opium at that time ! what solemn chords does 
 it now strike upon my heart! wliat heartquaking vibrations 
 of sad and happy remembrances ! Keverting for a moment 
 
CONFESSION'S OF 
 
 166 
 
 to tliese, 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; ami near “ the 
 stately Pantheon ” (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly 
 called it I saw a druggist’s shop. The druggist (uncon- 
 10 scious minister of celestial pleasures !), as if in sympathy 
 with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any 
 mortal druggist might he 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 he real copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden 
 drawer. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all such indica¬ 
 tions of humanity, he has ever since figured in my mind as 
 a beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth 
 20 on a special mission to myself. And it confirms mo 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 
 30 him to have evanesced.^ So unwillingly would I connect 
 
 1 “Stately” : — It is but fair to say that Wordsworth meant to 
 speak of the interior, which could very little be inferred from the 
 mean, undistinguished outside, as seen presenting itself endways in 
 Oxford Street. 
 
 ‘^“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 means open to the use of druggists. For, about the year 1686, 
 a poet of rather ominous name (and who, apparently, did justice to his 
 name) — viz., Mr. Flai man— in speaking of the death of Charles II., 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 167 
 
 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 he 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, 0 heavens ! what a revul¬ 
 sion ! what a resurrection, from its lowest depths, of the 
 inner spirit ! Avhat an apocalypse of the world within me ! 10 
 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 (jxxpfxaKov vq7rev6i<s for all human woes; 
 here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers 
 had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered j happi¬ 
 ness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in 
 the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked 
 up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down 20 
 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—Honsense ! 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 30 
 at least twice a-week—viz., on Tuesday and Saturday ^— 
 and might safely be depended upon for—the list of l:)ank- 
 rupts.” In like manner, I do by no means deny that some 
 
 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.'’ 
 
 ^ Tuesday and Saturday"-. —viz., the two days on which the 
 “ Gazette” is (or used to be) published. 
 
i68 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 eight; and, thirdly, that, if you eat a 
 good deal of it, most probably you must do what is dis¬ 
 agreeable to any man of regular habits—viz., died These 
 weighty propositions are, all and singular, true ; I cannot 
 
 10 gainsay them; and truth ever was, and will be, commend¬ 
 able. 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, Avorthy 
 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. 
 
 20 Noav, 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 j but 
 why ? Because it contains so much proof spirits of Avine, 
 and not because it contains so much opium. But crude 
 opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any 
 state of body at all resembling that which is produced by 
 alcohol; and not in degree only incapable, but even in 
 kind; it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, 
 
 ^ Of this, however, tlie 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 Avas studying it for the 
 benefit of her health, the doctor Avas made to caution his readers 
 against taking more than “ tAventy-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. 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 169 
 
 but in the quality, that it diffeis altogether. The 
 pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, 
 and tending to a crisis, after which as rajudly it declines; 
 that from opium, when once generated, is stationary 
 for eight or ten hours ; the first, to borrow a technical dis¬ 
 tinction 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), intro- 10 
 duces 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 judg¬ 
 ment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exal¬ 
 tation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves 
 and the hatreds, of the drinker j 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 prob- 20 
 ably 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 kindheartedness 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 Avhy; and the animal 
 nature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the 30 
 benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, no 
 fugitive paroxysm ; it is a healthy restoration to that state 
 which the mind would natmally 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 been a great wine- 
 
170 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine 
 advantageously affected the faculties, brightened and inten- 
 sihed 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 dis¬ 
 guised 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 
 10 cliemselves. 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 mtellectual 
 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 inebri¬ 
 ated, 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 
 20 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 acknoAvledge myself to be the 
 Pope (consequently infallible), and self-api)ointed legate a 
 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 un- 
 ;50 scientific^ authors who have at all treated of opium, and 
 
 ^ Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show suliicieutB' 
 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, whoso wit would lead 
 one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to 
 consider him in that chai’acter, from the gri<‘vons misrepresentation 
 which he has given of its effects at pages 215-217 of Vol. I. Upon 
 consideration, it must appear such to the antlior himself; for, waiving 
 the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA 'PEP. 
 
 171 
 
 even of those wliu have written professionally on the materia 
 medica, make it evident, hy 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 liimself 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) 10 
 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 
 
 adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit that an old 
 gentleman, “with a snow-white beard,” who eats “ample doses of 
 opium,” and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very 
 weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an indifferent 
 evidence that opium either kills people prematurely, or sends them 
 into a madhouse. But, for my part, I see into this old gentleman and 
 his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of “the little golden 
 receptacle of the pernicious drug ” which Anastasius carried about 
 him ; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred as 
 that of frightening its owner out of his wits. 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, con¬ 
 sidered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently. 
 
 ^ This surgeon it was who first made me aware of the dangerous 
 variability in opium as to strength under the shifting pro[)ortions of 
 its combination with alien impurities. Naturally, as a man profes¬ 
 sionally alive to the danger of creating any artificial need of o])ium be¬ 
 yond 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 ]»recipitato 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 (juantities of opium ; 
 not the apparent quantities as determined by weighing, but the virtucd 
 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 e(piable in 
 
172 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 to him, that his enemies (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 2 ^•met facie an absurd one ; hut 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 
 10 to profit, hut 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 re¬ 
 plied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed 
 to be established u])on 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 
 ^0 a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press 
 him, even Avhen his course of argument seemed open to 
 objection; not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, 
 even though “ with no view to prolit,” is not altogether 
 the most agreeable respondent in a dispute. 1 confess, 
 however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was 
 reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my preju¬ 
 dice ; 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 
 
 strength ; and the daily doses could he nicely adjusted. About 18 
 grains formed his daily ration for many years. This, upon the 
 common hospital equation, expresses 18 times 25 drops of laudanum. 
 But, since 25 is=-i^, therefore 18 times one quarter of a hundred 
 is = one quarter of 1800, and that, I suppose, is 450. So much this 
 surgeon averaged upon each day for about twenty years. Then sud¬ 
 denly began a fiercer stage of the anguish from Ids 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. 
 
A AT ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 173 
 
 man unacquainted witli the characteristic symptoms of 
 vinous intoxication, yet it struck me that lie might proceed 
 on a logical error of using the 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, hut which no excess 10 
 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 dis¬ 
 tilled liquors beyond a certain limit. The tongue and other 
 organs become unmanagealde ; 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 20 
 stumble, and lose their power of concurrent action. To this 
 result all people tend, though by varying rates of accelera¬ 
 tion. Secondly, as another characteristic, it may he noticed 
 that in alcoholic intoxication the movement is always along 
 a kind of arch j 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 
 l)e renewed : and it is the blind, unconscious, hut always un¬ 
 successful effort of the obstinate drinker to restore this supreme 30 
 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 main¬ 
 tained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk upon green 
 tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in 
 his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, 
 the other day, that a patient, on recovering from an illness, 
 
174 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 had got drunk on a beef-steak. All turns, in fact, upon a 
 rigorous definition of intoxication. 
 
 Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in 
 respect to opium, T shall notice hrieliy a second and a third ; 
 which are, that the elevation of spirits produced hy opium is 
 necessarily followed hy 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; 
 10 assuring my reader that, for ten years during which I took 
 opium not regularly hut interinittingly, 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 ; 
 hut the primary effects of opium are always, and in the 
 20 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 he the 
 fault of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his 
 exhibition of the dose as that the whole weight of its nar¬ 
 cotic 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 jhidge of the degree in which opium 
 is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall 
 ;i0 (by Avay of treating the question illustratively, rather than 
 argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself ofte]i 
 passed an opium evening in London during the period 
 between 1804 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 self-involution ascribeb 
 to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pro¬ 
 nounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary ; but I regard that 
 little. I must desire my reader to bear in mind that I was 
 
AN ENd/JSH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 175 
 
 a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my 
 time; and certainly T had a right occasionally to relaxations 
 as well as other people. 
 
 The late Duke of Norfolk ^ used to say, “ Next Monday, 
 wind and weather permitting, I purpose to lie 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 woidd 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 10 
 did) for “a glass oflaudammi negus, ioarm,and toitlioid, 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 l)eyond 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 opera-house now, having never been within its 20 
 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.^ Half-a-guinea admitted you to the })it, under 
 the trouljlesome condition, however, of being en grand,e ienue. 
 
 Ihit to the gallery five shillings admitted you; and that 
 
 ' “ The late Duke of Norfolk” : —My authority \va.s 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, &c., at the 
 era of the great French Kevolution in 1789-93. Since his time, I be¬ 
 lieve 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. 
 
 ^ 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, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 176 
 
 gallery was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of most 
 theatres. The orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and 
 melodious grandeur from all English orchestras; the com¬ 
 position 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 
 10 from my seat, incapable of rest, when that heavenly and 
 harp-like voice sang its own victorious welcome in its pre¬ 
 lusive tlirettdnelo — tlirettdnelo ^ (OperTaveXu) — ^perTaveAw). 
 The choruses were divine to hear ; and, when Grassini - 
 appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured 
 forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of 
 Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that ever 
 entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had half the 
 pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour the barbarians too 
 much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approach- 
 20 ing to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. Eor music is 
 an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the tem¬ 
 perament of him who hears it. And, by the bye, with the 
 exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in 
 “Twelfth Hight,” I do not recollect more than one thing 
 
 ^ “ 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 all the 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 a remote chance of digging up some 
 marble sculpture of orchestral appurtenances and properties. 
 
 ^ Yet all things change : this same Grassini, whom once I adored, 
 afterwards, wdien gorged with English gold, went off to Paris ; and, 
 when I heard on what terms she lived with a man so unraagnanimous 
 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. 
 
A/V ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 177 
 
 said adequately on tlie subject of music in all literature. It 
 is a passage in the “ Religio Medici ” ^ of Sir T. Browne, and, 
 though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philo¬ 
 sophic 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 there- 10 
 fore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in 
 this point from one another. Now opium, by greatly in¬ 
 creasing 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 20 
 language of representative feelings. But this is a subject 
 foreign to my present purposes j it is sufficient to say that 
 a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as 
 in a piece of arras-work, the whole of my past life—not as if 
 recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated 
 in the music j iro longer painful to dwell upon, but the 
 detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy 
 abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualised, and sub¬ 
 limed. All this was to be had for five shillings—that being 
 the price of admission to the gallery; or, if a man preferred 30 
 the high-bred society of the pit, even this might be had for 
 half-a-guinea ; or, in fact, for half-a-crown 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 
 
 1 I have not the hook 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 lit of devotion,” &c. 
 
 M 
 
t 78 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 Italian language talked by Italian women—for the gallery 
 was usually crowded with Italians—and I listened with a 
 pleasure such as that with which Weld, the traveller, lay 
 and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian 
 women; for, the less you understand of a language, the 
 more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its 
 sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage 
 to me that in those days I was a poor Italian scholar, reading 
 it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a 
 10 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 3 for, in 
 those years, Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera 
 nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather ob¬ 
 scure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all more so than 
 Marinus in his Life of Proclus, or many other biographers 
 and autobiographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I 
 have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night. What, 
 20 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 
 30 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 contem¬ 
 plate. 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 3 in this point the most hostile 
 sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of brotherhood : 
 almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA'lER. 
 
 179 
 
 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 10 
 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 dis¬ 
 content ; 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 20 
 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 tlie 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 w'as glad j yet, if the con- 30 
 trary were true, I drew from opium some means of consola¬ 
 tion. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials 
 indiscriminately from roses and from the soot ^ of chimneys) 
 
 ^ 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 lionoured visitor, in the chimney 
 corner. There I used often to hoar (though not to see) bees. Their 
 murniuring was audible, though their bodily forms were too small to 
 
i8o 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 cir¬ 
 cumnavigating 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 
 10 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 terrce incognitce, 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 
 20 to steer cautiously, or else you might run foul of the drip¬ 
 ping-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 angiiish 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 
 30 candour, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the 
 ap23ropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when in the diviuest 
 state incident to his enjoyment. In that state crowds 
 become an oppression to him; music, even, too sensual and 
 gross. He naturally seeks solitude ami silence, as indis¬ 
 pensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, 
 
 be visible at that altitude. On inquiry, I found that soot (chiefly 
 from wood and peats) was useful in some sta^e of their wax or honey 
 manufacture. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 t8i 
 
 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 ten¬ 
 dencies 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 10 
 to keep my understanding in continual activity upon subtle¬ 
 ties 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 
 coidd at the same time command a view of some great town 20 
 standing on a different radius of my circular prospect, Imt 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 any¬ 
 wise distinct from the multiform scene which I contemplated 
 from above. Such a scene in all its elements was not un- 
 frequently realised for me on the gentle eminence of Everton. 
 Obliquely to the left lay the many-languaged town of Liver¬ 
 pool ; obliquely to the right, the multitudinous sea. The 
 scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such 30 
 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 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 
 
i82 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 un¬ 
 wearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; 
 tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, hut as if re¬ 
 sulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, 
 infinite repose. 
 
 0 just, subtle, and all-conquering opium ! that, to the 
 10 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 eifectually 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; 
 —0 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 
 20 the sentences of unrighteous judges ;—thou buildest upon the 
 bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, 
 cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, 
 beyond the splendours of Babylon and Hekatdmpylos ^; 
 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 “ dis¬ 
 honours of the grave.” Thou only givest these gifts to 
 man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, 0 just, subtle, and 
 mighty opium! 
 
 80 ••••••• 
 
 Courteous, and I hope indulgent, reader, having accom¬ 
 panied me thus far, now let me request you to move onwards 
 for about eight years; that is to say, from 1804 (when I 
 
 ^ i.e., the hundred-gated (from 4Kar6v, hekaton, a hundred, and 
 TTvXt), a gate). This epithet of hundred-gated was applied to the 
 Egyptian Thebes in contradistinction to the hnTtxirvKos {heptdpylos, or 
 seven-gated) which designated the Grecian Thebes, within one day’s 
 journey of Athens. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 183 
 
 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 liappy 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 hooks 
 in the Bodleian,—viz., diligently perused by certain studious 
 moths and worms j or departed, however (which is all that 
 I know of its fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to 10 
 which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c., 
 have departed, which occasional resemblances in the present 
 generation of tea-cups, &c., remind me of having once 
 possessed, hut of whose departure and final fate I, in common 
 with most gownsmen of either university, could give hut 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 T, with many 
 others who suffered much from his tintinnabulous pro- 20 
 pensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and have 
 forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity; it 
 rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day, and cruelly annoys, 
 
 I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their 
 peace of mind; but, as to me, in this year 1812, I regard 
 its treacherous voice no longer (treacherous I call it, for, by 
 some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery 
 tones as if it had been inviting one to a party); its tones 
 have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit 
 as favourably as the malice of the bell itself could wish ; for 30 
 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 j but what else ? Why, reader, in 1812, the 
 year we are now arrived at, as well as for some years 
 pre^'ious, I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, 
 in the writings of Kant, Eichte, Schelling, &c. And how, 
 and in what manner, do I live 1 in short, what class or 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 184 
 
 description of men do I belong to ? I am at this period— 
 viz., in 1812—living in a cottage ; and with a single female 
 servant {ho7ii soit qui mol y pense), who, amongst my neigh¬ 
 bours, passes by the name of my “ housekeeper.” And, as 
 a scholar and a man of learned education, T 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 
 10 fortune—I am so classed by my neighbours; and, by the 
 courtesy of modern England, I am usually addressed on 
 letters, &c., Esqiiire, 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 
 Gustos Rotulorum. Am I married 1 Xot yet. And I still 
 take opium 1 On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have 
 taken it unblushingly ever since “ the rainy Sunday,” and 
 20 “ the stately Pantheon,” and “ the beatific druggist ” of 
 1804 ? Even so. And how do I find my health after all 
 this opium-eating 1 in short, how do I do ? ^Yhy, 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 1812 ; and I hope 
 sincerely that the 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 
 30 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 bet^veen 1804 
 and 1812. Hence you may see again the danger of taking 
 any medical advice from “ Anastasius ” ^ ; in divinity, for 
 
 ^ “ Anastamts” :—The reader of this generation will marvel at 
 these repeated references to “Anastasius”: it is now an almost for¬ 
 gotten book, so vast has been the deluge of novel-writing talent, really 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-RA TER. 
 
 185 
 
 anything 1 know, he may he a safe counsellor, hut 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 1812) 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 l»een only a dilettanfp 10 
 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 1813. In the summer of the year Ave 
 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 Avhich it pro- 20 
 duced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this 
 illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, I know not; 
 but so it Avas that, in the latter year, I Avas attacked by a most 
 appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the 
 same as that Avhich had caused me so much suffering in 
 youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. 
 Noav, then, it Avas—viz., in the year 1813—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 30 
 patience by such a detail of my malady, and of my 
 struggles Avith it, as might suffice to establish the fact of 
 my inability to wrestle any longer Avith irritation and con- 
 
 original and powerful, which has overflowed onr literature during 
 the lapse of thiity-five years from the publication of these Confes¬ 
 sions, “ Anasta.sins” Avas written by the famous and opulent Mr. 
 Hope, and was in 1821 a book both of high reputation and of great 
 influence amongst the leading circles of society. 
 
CONFESSION'S OF 
 
 186 
 
 stant 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 Avhich there will be a lurking predisposi¬ 
 tion in most readers from my previous acknowledgments). 
 This is the dilemma, the first horn of which is not to be 
 10 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 ungener¬ 
 ous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my 
 own forbearance and regard for your comfort, Ho ; 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 cTennuyer, by mere 
 20 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 in¬ 
 numerable efforts which I did make might not have been 
 carried much further, and my gradual re-conquests of lost 
 30 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 T 
 speak ingenuously ?) I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of 
 mine, that I am too much of an Eudsemonist; I hanker too 
 much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others ; 
 T cannot face misery, whether my OAvn or not, with an eye 
 of sufficient firmness, and am little capable of encountering 
 present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On 
 
AJV ENGLISH QPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 187 
 
 some other matters, I can agree with the gentlemen of The 
 Porch ^ 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 con¬ 
 siderate sect that will condescend more to the infirm 
 condition of an opium-eater,—that are pleasant men and 
 courteous, such as Chaucer describes, to hear confession or to 
 give absolution, and will show some conscience in the pen¬ 
 ances they inflict, or the efforts of abstinence they exact 
 from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I 10 
 can no more endure, in my nervous state, than opium that 
 has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to 
 send out a large freight of self-denial and mortification upon 
 any cruising voyage of moral improvement must make it clear 
 to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful one. 
 
 At my time of life (six-and-thirty years of age ^), it cannot 
 be .supposed that I have much energy to spare; in fact, I 
 find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I have on 
 ray hands; and, therefore, let no man expect to frighten 
 me, by a few hard words, into embarking any part of it ‘20 
 upon desperate adventures of morality. 
 
 Desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 
 1813 was what I have mentioned; and from this date the 
 reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium- 
 eater, of whom to ask wliether 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. 
 jSTow, then, reader, you understand what I am ; and you are 
 by this time aware that no old gentleman, “with a snow- 
 white beard,” will have any chance of persuading me (like 30 
 Anastasius) to surrender “ the little golden receptacle of 
 the pernicious drug.” Ho ; I give notice to all, whether 
 
 ^ A liaudsome 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 1, 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. 
 
 ^ This was written at the time of original publication. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 188 
 
 moralists or siirgeons, tliat, 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 abstin¬ 
 ence from opium. This being fully understood between us, 
 we shall in future sail before the wind. Row, then, 
 reader, from the year 1813, 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, 
 10 and you shall see me in a new character. 
 
 If any man, poor or rich, Avere to say that he would tell 
 us Avhat had been the happiest day in his life, and the why 
 and the wlierefore, 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 jdace 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 
 20 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 Avisdom. This year, in my case, reader, Avas the one 
 which Ave have noAV reached ; though it stood, I confess, as 
 a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It 
 Avas a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of 
 jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloomy um¬ 
 brage of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little 
 30 before this time descended suddenly, and without any con¬ 
 siderable effort, from three hundred and twenty grains of 
 opium (that is, eight ^ thousand drops of laudanum) per 
 
 ’ I here reckon tAventy-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 vary¬ 
 ing much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no 
 infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons 
 A'ary as much in size as opinni in strength. Small ones hold about 
 one hundred drops ; so that eight thousand drops, Avhich obviously 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE. 
 
 189 
 
 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 : 1 now took only one 10 
 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 them¬ 
 selves to all around me ; and, if any man from Oxford or 
 Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in 
 my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him Avith 
 as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could otter. 
 Whatever else might be wanting to a Avise man’s happiness, 20 
 of laudanum I Avould have given him as much as he Avished, 
 and in a silver-gilt, if not golden, cup. And, by the Avay, 
 noAV that I speak of giving laudanum aAvay, I remember 
 about this time a little incident, Avhich I mention because, 
 trifling as it Avas, 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 re¬ 
 cesses of English mountains is not my business to conjecture; 
 but possibly he was on his road to a seaport—viz., White- §0 
 haven, W^orkington, &c.—about forty miles distant.^ 
 
 I'ead into eighty hundred drop.s, 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 AA'ithin Dr. Buchan’s indulgent alloAvance. 
 
 ^ Between the seafaring population on the coast of Lancashire and 
 the corresponding populations on the coast of Cumberland (such as 
 Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, &c.) there was a 
 slender current of interchange constantly going on, and especially in 
 
CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 190 
 
 The servant wlio opened the door to him was a yonng 
 girl, l:)orn 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 
 knoAvledge of English was exactly commensurate with hers 
 of Malay, there seemed to be an imi)assable gulf fixed 
 betAveen all communication of ideas, if either party had hap¬ 
 pened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting 
 the reputed learning of her master (and, doubtless, giAung 
 10 me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, 
 besides, perhaps, a feAv 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 Avhich presented itself, arranged as 
 it Avas by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of 
 my fancy and my eye more poAverfully 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 liot looking so much like that as a 
 20 rustic hall of entrance, being pannelled on the wall with 
 dark Avooil, that from age and rubbing resembled oak, stood 
 the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of dingy Avhite 
 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 Avith the 
 feeling of simple aAve which her countenance expressed as 
 she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. A more striking 
 picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful 
 
 the diiys of pressgaiigs — in part by sea, but in part also by land. By 
 the way, I may mention, as an interesting fact Avhicli I discovered 
 from an almanack and itinerary, dated about the middle of Queen 
 Elizabeth’s reign (say 1579), that the ofScial route in her days for 
 queen’s messengers to the north of Ireland, and of course for travellers 
 generally, Avas not (as now) through Grasmere, and thence by St. 
 John’s Vale, Threlkeld (for the short cut by Shoulthwaite JIoss was 
 then unknown), Keswick, Cockermouth, and Whitehaven. Up to St. 
 OsAvald’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 Laugdale, across 
 Wrynose to Egremout, and from Egremont to Whitehaven. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 191 
 
 English face of the girl/ 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 10 
 girl for protection. 
 
 kly knowledge of the oriental tongues is not remarkably 
 extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words—the Arabic 
 word for barley, and the Turkish for opium {madjoon'), 
 which I have learned from “ Anastasius.” And, as I had 
 neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung’s “ Mithri- 
 dates,” which might have helped me to a feAV 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. 20 
 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 
 
 ^ 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 cliild of beauty rare ! ” 
 
 This, coming from William Wordsworth, both a fastidious jirdge and 
 a truth-speaker of the severest literality, argues some real pretensions 
 to beauty, or real at that time. But it 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 
 liathetic instances of this earthly doom are solemnly arrayed, Spenser 
 lias dwelt sufficiently upon this, the saddest of all, I do not remember. 
 
192 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 tlie floor for about an hour, and then pursued his journey. 
 On his departure, 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. E’evertheless, I was struck with some little conster¬ 
 nation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his 
 mouth, and holt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one 
 mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill some half- 
 10 dozen dragoons, together with their horses, supposing neither 
 bipeds nor quadrupeds to he 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 lie had travelled on foot from 
 London, it must he 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 Enghsh 
 20 idol ? 11^0 : 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 on any part of the very 
 slenderly peopled road between Grasmere and Whitehaven, 
 I became satisfied that he was familiar with opium,^ and 
 that I must doubtless have done him the service I designed, 
 by giving him one night of respite from the pains of 
 wandering. 
 
 This incident I have digressed to mention, because this 
 30 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 
 
 ^ This, however, is not a necessary conclusion ; the vaneties of 
 effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A 
 London magistrate (Harriott’s “ Struggles through Life,” vol. iii, 
 p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his 
 trying laudanum for the gout, he took forty drops, the next night 
 SIXTY, and on the fifth night eighty, without any efl'ect whatever ; 
 and this at an advanced age. 
 
AM ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 193 
 
 through that upon my dreams, bringing with him other 
 Malays worse than himself, that ran “ a-muck ” ^ at me, and 
 led me into a world of nocturnal troubles. But, to rpiit this 
 episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. 
 
 I have already said 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 hut a 
 ploughhoy, 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 10 
 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—Avho 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,^ 
 who was also English, with hydrophobia), I, it will be ad- 20 
 mitted, 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 communi¬ 
 cating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and 
 involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every even¬ 
 ing during the intercalary year when laudanum, though 
 taken daily, Avas to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. 
 
 Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley,^ eighteen 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
 ^ He was a surgeon at Brighton. 
 
 * 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 1809, to AVordsworth, Looking 
 to the limitation here laid down—viz., in those days —the reader will 
 impure in what way Time can ha^m affected the beauty of Grasmere. 
 
 Do the AVestmoreland valleys turn grey dreaded ? 0 reader ! this is a 
 
 painful memento for some of us ! Thirty years ago, a gang of Vandals 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two 
 miles long by tliree-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 house¬ 
 hold, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less inter¬ 
 esting 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 coach-house ” ; let it be, in fact (for I 
 10 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 con¬ 
 gratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely 
 20 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 fire¬ 
 side—candles at four o’clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair 
 tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample 
 
 (nameless, I thank heaven, to me), for the sake of building a mail- 
 coach road that never would be wanted, carried, at a cost of £3000 to 
 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 Osummida regalis. This sequestered angle of 
 Grasmere is described by Wordsworth, as it unveiled itself on a Sep¬ 
 tember 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 independ¬ 
 ent 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-EA TER. 
 
 195 
 
 draperies on the 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 he familiar to everybody born in a high 
 latitude. And it is evident that most of these delicacies 10 
 cannot be rij^ened without weather stormy or inclement in 
 some way or other. I am not ’partimlar'" whetlier 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 for winter in coals, 
 candles, &c., if I am not to have the article good of its kind 1 20 
 bio : a Canadian winter for my money, or a Kussian 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 Avinter 
 night fully if it be much past St. Thomas’s Day, and have 
 degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards vernal indica¬ 
 tions : in fact, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark 
 nights from all return of light and sunshine. Start, there¬ 
 fore, at the first Aveek of blovember : thence to the end of 
 January, Christmas Eve being the meridian line, you may 30 
 compute the period Avhen happiness is in season,—Avhich, in 
 my judgment enters the room Avith the tea-tray. For tea, 
 though ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their 
 nervous sensibilities, or are become so from Avine-drinking, 
 and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a 
 stimulant, will ahvays be the favourite beverage of the 
 intellectual; and, for my part, I Avould have joined Dr. 
 Johnson in a helium internecinum against Jonas HanAvay, or 
 
196 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 any other impious person who 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; hut, 
 as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his 
 services will not he required except for the inside of the 
 house. 
 
 Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not 
 10 more than seven and a-half feet high. This, reader, is 
 somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the drawing¬ 
 room ; hut, being contrived “ a double debt to pay,” it is 
 also, and more justly, termed the library; for it happens 
 that hooks 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 hooks ; and, furthermore, paint me 
 a good fire ; and furniture plain and modest, befitting the 
 20 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 
 
 30 her smiles like Hebe’s ; hut 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 he myself—a 
 picture of the Opium-eater, with his " little golden recep¬ 
 tacle of the pernicious drug ” lying beside him on the table. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 197 
 
 As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of 
 that; you may paint it, if you choose ; hut I apprise you 
 that no “little” receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my 
 purpose, who was at a distance from the “ stately Pantheon ” 
 and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). Ko: 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 pos¬ 
 sible. In fact, one day, by a series of happily-conceived 
 experiments, I discovered that it ivas a decanter. Into this 
 you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum; that, and 10 
 a hook 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 1 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 agree- 20 
 able 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 cate¬ 
 gories of my condition, as it stood about 1816-17, up to the 
 middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a 30 
 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 vindic¬ 
 tively and with malice aforethought against the windows, 
 and darkness such that ymr cannot see your own hand when 
 held up against the sky. 
 
 But now farewell, a long farewell, to happiness, winter or 
 
198 
 
 ENGLISH OPIUM-EA PER. 
 
 summer ! farewell to smiles and laughter ! farewell to peace 
 of mind, to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations 
 of sleep! For more than three years and a-half I am sum¬ 
 moned away from these. Here opens upon me an Iliad of 
 woes : for I now enter upon 
 
PART III. 
 
 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 yon 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 tlierefore 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 10 
 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 th§ two sections would have no link what¬ 
 ever 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-connexion. 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 20 
 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 causal connexion between the two several 
 
200 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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, 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. 
 10 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 com¬ 
 municable, 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 
 20 mighty furnaces of London life had been burned 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 deter¬ 
 mined the particular form and pressure of the chief pheno¬ 
 mena 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 1 
 Opium used in unexampled excess. ■<lut what caused this 
 30 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 view¬ 
 ing the case, moving regressively from the end to the be¬ 
 ginning, it will be seen that there is one uninterrupted bond 
 of unity running through the entire succession of experi¬ 
 ences, first and last: the dreams were an inheritance from 
 the opium j the opium was an inheritance from the boyish 
 follies. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 201 
 
 II. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential 
 and communicative of my own private history. It may he 
 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 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 10 
 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 con¬ 
 clusions 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 20 
 some periods of four or six months, during which, by unex¬ 
 ampled efforts of self-conquest, I had accomplished a deter¬ 
 mined abstinence from opium.i These parentheses being 
 
 ^ With what final result I have much difficulty in saying. Invari¬ 
 ably, after such victories, I returned, upon deliberate choice (after 
 weighing all the consequences oir this side and on that), to the daily 
 use of oi)iuin, 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 requii’ed gradually 
 fell by an enormous proportion. According to the modern slang 
 phrase, I had in the meridian stage of my opium career used “fabu¬ 
 lous ” quantities. Stating the quantities—not in solid opium, but in 
 the tincture (known to everybody as laudanitm )—my daily 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 
 
202 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 subtracted, as also, and secondly, some oft-and-on fits of 
 tentative and intermitting dalliance with opium in the open¬ 
 ing 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 
 10 quantities ; secondly, its supposed corresponding declension 
 in power and efficacy. Upon these ugly scandals what is 
 my most deliberate aAvard 1 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 
 /. And why not ? A man’s physic might be undeniable, 
 although his spelling should be open to some slight im¬ 
 provements. But I presume that the proverb meant to 
 exact from any man only so much medical skill as should 
 20 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 accompli.shed. And I add solemnly 
 that witliout opium most certainly I could not have accom- 
 ]dished such a result. Thirty-five years ago, beyond all 
 
 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 e.vclusively women ; men, even in educated classes, very often 
 persisting (down to the French Eevolution) in treating such a beverage 
 as an idle and effeminate indulgence. This obstinate twist in mascu¬ 
 line habits it was that secretly controlled tlie manufacture of tea¬ 
 spoons. Up to Waterloo, tea-spoons were adjusted chiefly to the 
 calibre of female mouths. Since then, greatly to the benelit 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 iTpon the tea-trays of these later 
 generations. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 203 
 
 doubt, I should have been in my grave, i^nd, as to the 
 two j)opular 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, Avith an 
 effect continually decaying,—in fact, that you must ulti¬ 
 mately descend into the despairing condition of the martyr 
 to dram-drinking :—at this point I make a resolute stand, 
 in blank denial of the Avhole doctrine. Originally, Avhen 
 first entering irpon my opium career, I did so with great 10 
 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 ! Opium I pursued under a harsh neces¬ 
 sity, as an unknoAAm, shadoAvy poAver, leading I kneAV not 
 Avhither, and a poAver that might suddenly change counte¬ 
 nance upon this unknown road. Habitually I lived under 
 such an impression of aAve as we have all felt from stories 
 of faAvns, or seeming faAvns, that have run before some 
 mounted hunter for many a league, until they have tempted 20 
 him far into the mazes of a boundless forest, and at that 
 point, Avhere all regress had become lost and impossible, 
 either suddenly vanished, leaving the man utterly be- 
 Avilclered, or assumed some more fearful shape. A part of 
 the evil Avhich I feared actually unfolded itself ; but all 
 Avas due to my own ignorance, to neglect of cautionary 
 measures, or to gross mismanagement of my health in 
 points Avhere I well knew the risks, but grievously under¬ 
 rated their urgency and pressure. I Avas temperate : that 
 solitary advantage I had ; but I sank under the lulling 30 
 seductions of opium into total sedentariness, and that Avhilst 
 holding firmly the belief that poAverful exercise AA^as omni¬ 
 potent against all modes of debility or obscure nervous 
 irritations. The account of my depression, and almost of 
 my helplessness, in the next memorandum (No. III.), is 
 faithful as a description to the real case. But, in ascribing 
 that case to opium, as any transcendent and overmastering 
 agency, I Avas thoroughly Avrong. Twenty days of exercise, 
 
204 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 dejec¬ 
 tion is an impossible phenomenon. 0 heavens! how man 
 abuses or neglects his natural resources ! Yes, the thoughtful 
 reader is disposed to say ; but very possibly distinguishing 
 between such natural resources and opium as a resource 
 that is not natural, but highly artificial, or even absolutely 
 10 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 conceiv¬ 
 able 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 heredi¬ 
 tary complaint:— 
 
 1. With respect to tlie morbid growth upon the opium- 
 20 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 
 —^.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 parti¬ 
 cular instance before me, the accident of my own individual 
 30 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 tliat intensely artificial condition into which I had im¬ 
 perceptibly 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 reconquer¬ 
 ing the ground which I had lost. Such an effort I made : 
 every step by Avhich I had gone astray did I patiently un- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 205 
 
 thread. And thus I fought off the natural and spontaneous 
 catastrophe, whatever tiat might he, Avhich mighty JN'ature 
 Avould 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 hack into the same opium lull. 
 
 To and fro, up and down, did I tilt upon those mountainous 
 seas, for year after year. “ See-saw,^ 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- 10 
 saw for year after year, out and in, of manoeuvres the most 
 intricate, dances the most elaborate, receding or approach¬ 
 ing, 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 cbmetary aphelion, 
 where for six months “opium” was a word unknown. 
 How nature stood all these see-sawings 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 ex¬ 
 cesses ; but terror from anomalous symptoms sooner or later 20 
 forced me back. This terror was strengthened by the vague 
 hypotheses current at that period about spontaneous com- 
 bustiom 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 
 Ms only because nobody else ever applied for them. It was 30 
 fancied that some volcanic agency—an unknown deposition 
 —accumulated from some vast redundancy of brandy, fur¬ 
 nished the self-exploding principle. But this startled the 
 
 ^ “ See-saio,” &c. :—0 dear reader, surely you don’t want an oracle 
 to tell yon 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. 
 
2o6 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 faith of most people; and a more plausible scheme sug¬ 
 gested 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 particles as to catch fire from 
 a match applied to a pipe when held between the lips. 
 10 If so, then what should hinder the “ devouring element ” 
 (as newspapers call fire) from spreading through tlie 
 throat to the cavity of the chest 1 in which case, not 
 being insirred, the man would naturally become a total loss. 
 Opium, however, it will occur to the reader, is not alcohol. 
 That is true. Tut it might, for anything that was known 
 experimentally, be ultimately worse. Coleridge, the oidy 
 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, 
 20 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 loMther 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 Avas that I never folloAved 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 
 30 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 Avith continually decreasing 
 efforts, I found that not only had the daily dose (upon 
 relapsing) suffered a self-limitation to an enormous extent, 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 207 
 
 but also that, upon any attempt obstinately to renew tlie 
 old doses, there arose a new symptom—viz., an irritation 
 on the surface of the skin—which soon became insupport¬ 
 able, 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 
 drug as laudanum, because another change ran along colla¬ 
 terally with this supreme change-—viz., that the solid opium 
 began to require a length of time, continually increasing, 10 
 to expand its effects sensibly, oftentimes not less than four 
 hours; whereas the tincture manifested its presence instan¬ 
 taneously. 
 
 Thus, then, I had reached a position from which authori¬ 
 tatively 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 absti¬ 
 nences on the part of the opium-eater, the practice of indulg¬ 
 ing to the very greatest excess in this narcotic tends to a 
 natural (almost an inevitable) euthanasy. Many years ago, 20 
 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 birt of three days’ continuance, ever perishes. 
 Ten grains, deducted from a daily ration of five hirndred, 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 re-conquering my freedom from the 30 
 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 ISTelson that, even after the hlile 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 
 
2o8 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 live years, I have turned 
 pale, and felt warnings, pointing towards such an uneasiness, 
 after taking not more than twenty grains of opium. At pre¬ 
 sent, and for some years, I have been habitually content 
 with five or six grains daily, instead of three hundred and 
 10 twenty to four hundred grains. Let me wind up this re¬ 
 trospect 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 de¬ 
 cayed, 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 tlie 
 20 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 experi¬ 
 ence, 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 l)e 
 gained by the negative service of cancelling a drawback 
 30 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. Wliat are 
 the advantages connected with opium that can merit any 
 such name as blessings ? 
 
 2. 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 209 
 
 understand its value, he must first have suffered from inter¬ 
 mittent fever. Bark might strike him as an unnatural 
 stimulant; hut, 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 secret desolator of human life ; 
 and for this their is probably no adequate controlling- 
 power but that of opium, taken daily, under steady 
 regulation. 10 
 
 3. But even more momentous is the burden of my third 
 proposition. Are you aware, reader, what it is that consti¬ 
 tutes 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 con¬ 
 sumption. If you walk through a forest at certain seasons, 
 you will see what is called a hlaze of white paint upon a 
 certain elite 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 20 
 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 fore¬ 
 heads 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 l)e 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- 30 
 tables, paid l)y any class with as much punctuality as this 
 premature Jiorilegium, this gathering and rendering up of 
 blighted blossoms, by all classes 1 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 1 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 
 
 0 
 
2 lO 
 
 CONFESSIONS OE 
 
 within yourself how infinite would he 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 Avord, 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 her, had 
 sometimes to a certainty) stepped between patients and 
 deliverance from the grave, sure and perfect! “ What 
 
 10 matter,” she would cry out, indignantly, “ who is it 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 bron¬ 
 chitis, some familiar affection of the chest or of the 
 lungs, arises to furnish a starting-point for the morbid 
 20 development.^ Now the one fatal blunder lies in suffering 
 that development to occur; and the one counter-Avorking 
 secret for pre-arrestment of this evil lies in steadily, by 
 AAdiatever 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- 
 
 ^ Here is a parallel case, equallA' fatal Avliere it occurs, but liapi'ily 
 moving vutliiu a far narroAver circle. About fifty years ago. Sir Everard 
 Home, a surgeon of the bigliest class, mentioned as a dreadful caution 
 that Avithin his oavu experience, many an indolent tumour in the face, 
 not unfrecpiently the most trifling pimple, Avhich 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 excrRcence became an 
 02)en cancer. Is the parallel catastroiflie in the pulmonary system, 
 Avhen pushed forward into development, at all less likely to hide its 
 importance from uuinstructed eyes ? Yet, on the other hand, it is a 
 thousand times more likely to haj'pen. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 21 I 
 
 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 1 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 
 remajL’k made to me by a lady in London ; then, and for some 
 time previously, she had been hospitably entertaining Cole¬ 
 ridge, whom, indeed, she tended with the anxiety of a lO 
 daughter. Consequently, she was familiarly aquainted with 
 his opium habits; and, on my asking, in reply to some 
 remark of hers, how she could be so sure as her words im¬ 
 plied 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 aquaintances, 
 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 20 
 forehead.” The result was that no possible face so broadly 
 lietrayed and published any effects whatever, especially these 
 lustrous effects from excesses in opium. For some years T 
 failed to consider reflectively, or else, reflecting, I failed to 
 decipher, this resplendent acreage of cheek. But at last, 
 either proprio 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 30 
 that discovery, I made another. My own Instory, 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 
 }n'Ospects had always been accompanied with some formal 
 words of encouragement—as, for instance, that constitu¬ 
 tions, after all, varied by endless differences—that nobody 
 
212 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 in¬ 
 structed 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, the opinions were pronounced by the highest 
 authorities in Christendom~viz., the physicians at Clifton 
 and the Bristol Hotwells, who saw more of pulmonary dis- 
 10 orders 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 that 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 
 20 winter through, and naturally on the road to Devonshire all 
 patients alike touched at Clifton. There I was myself con¬ 
 tinually resident. Many, therefore, and of supreme author¬ 
 ity, 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 in¬ 
 herited 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 
 30 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 1 Simply the use, continually becoming more 
 regular, of opium. Nobody recommended this drug to me ; 
 on the contrary, under that ignorant horror which every¬ 
 where invested opium, I saw too clearly that any avowed 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 213 
 
 use of it would expose me to a rabid persecution^ Under 
 the sincere and unaffected hope of saving me from destruc¬ 
 tion, 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 10 
 my own personal withdrawal from Clifton and its neigh¬ 
 bourhoods. 
 
 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 20 
 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 life-insurance. 
 Waiving the question whether it really did increase that 
 risk, in any case tliat increase of risk, like other risks, 
 
 1 “ Rabid persecution” :—I do not mean that, in the circumstances 
 of my individual position, any opening could have arisen to an opposi¬ 
 tion more than verbal ; since it would have been easy for me at all 
 times to withdraw myself by hundreds of leagues from controversies 
 upon 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. 
 
214 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 them¬ 
 selves to changing circumstances. If the old offices should 
 be weak enough to persist in their misdirected obstinacy, 
 new ones would arise. Meantime the history of this ques¬ 
 tion moved through the following aspects :—Sixteen and 
 seventeen years ago, the offices all looked with horror upon 
 10 opium-eaters. 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 
 20 they regarded, I believe, as the abomination of desolation. 
 And fourteen offices in succession, within a few months, re¬ 
 pulsed 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 bence, 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 
 30 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 con¬ 
 sequences, 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 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 215 
 
 in the proof-sheets so obligingly transmitted by Mr. Tait. 
 
 His object, as I understood it, in sending these proofs to my¬ 
 self, was simply to collect such additional notices, sugges¬ 
 tions, or sceptical queries, as might reasonably he anticipated 
 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 10 
 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 con¬ 
 founding 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 irregu¬ 
 larities in the animal economy. Most people of sedentary 20 
 habits, hut 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 coirrse 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 derange¬ 
 ments, 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 30 
 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 author¬ 
 ised his clients (the insurance offices) to dismiss all anxiety 
 as to the life-abridging tendencies of opium. But he would 
 
2i6 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 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 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 
 10 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 tcedium vitce —any 
 one of these motives may satisfactorily account for the ap- 
 20 plicant’s having resorted to opium. He might reply to the 
 office in Professor Wilson’s word,^ “ 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 ques¬ 
 tion and a just question on the part of the office, to ask 
 “ ivhy" and in what circumstances the practice had origin¬ 
 ated. If in any local uneasiness, then would arise a natural 
 right on the part of the office to press for a surgical exam¬ 
 ination. But, apart from such special cases, it was evident 
 30 that this acute and experienced surgeon saw no reason what¬ 
 ever 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 
 
 ^ From the Greek word for voluptuous pleasure — viz., Hedoue 
 {‘USovii )—Professor Wilson coined the English word Hedemist, which 
 he sometimes applied in playful reproach to myself and others. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 217 
 
 under cioady and uncorrected views of the evil agencies 
 presumable in opium, stand retracted ; although, shrinking 
 from the labour of altering an error diffused so widely under 
 my own early misconceptions of the truth, I have suffered 
 tliem to remain as they were. My general views upon the 
 poAvers and natural tendencies of opium were all supported 
 and strengthened by this fortunate advantage of a profes¬ 
 sional correspondence. My special doctrine I now repeat at 
 this point of valediction, and in a reniemljerable form. Lord 
 Bacon said once, too boldly and hazardously, that he avIio 10 
 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 inter¬ 
 cepting pulmonary consumption. In my medical character, 
 
 I here take leave of the reader, and fall back into the 
 current of my regular narrative, 
 
 • • • • • • • 
 
 111. My studies have now been long interrupted. I 20 
 cannot read to myself Avith 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 Avord accomplishment as a 
 superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I 
 })ossess; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected 
 Avith any endoAvment or attaimnent of mine, it Avas Avith 
 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 30 
 of mature scholarship ; and his sister, the immortal Siddons, 
 Avith all her superiority to him in voice, reads even less 
 effectively. She reads nothing well but dramatic Avorks. 
 
 In the “ Paradise Lost,” Avhich I heard her attempt at 
 Barley AYood, her failure Avas distressing ; almost as distress¬ 
 ing as the sycophantic applause of the surrounding company 
 —all lost, of course, in nearly speechless admiration. (Yet 
 I am sensible that tins contemptuous feeling for the circle 
 
2i8 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 of admirers is scarcely justified. What should the poor 
 creatures have done ? Already, in the mere attempt to win 
 their suffrages, in placing 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 doion at 
 Windsor whilst reading, ever afterwards are a privileged 
 person, liable to no accent of truth, Our feelings, as not 
 10 free to take any natural expression, can he of no value. 
 Suffer us to he silent, if only for the dignity of human 
 nature. And do you yourself he silent, if only for the 
 dignity of that onee unequalled voice.) hleither Coleridge 
 nor Southey is a good reader of verse, Southey is admir¬ 
 able almost in all things, hut 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 
 20 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 Words¬ 
 
 worth’s poems to them. (Wordsworth, by the bye, is the 
 only poet 1 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, 
 30 and not to he 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 219 
 
 unfinished work of Spinosa’s—viz., “ De Emeiidatione Humani 
 Intellectus.'^ This was now lying locked up as by frost, like 
 any Spanish bridge or aqueduct begun upon too great a scale 
 for the resources of the architect; and, instead of 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 foundatioirs laid that were never to support a 10 
 superstructure, of the grief and the ruin of the architect. 
 
 In this state of imbecility, I had, for anrusement, turned my 
 attention to political economy. IVly understanding, which 
 formerly had been as active and restless as a pairther, 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. 20 
 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 1818, 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 30 
 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; andmucli more 
 1 Avondered at the book. Had this profound work been 
 really written during the tumultuoAis hurry of the nineteenth 
 century 1 Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in 
 academic boAvers, but oppressed by mercantile ami .senatmial 
 cares, had accomplished Avhat all the universities of Europe, 
 
220 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 and a century of thought, had failed even to advance by one 
 hair’s-breadth ? Previous writers had been crushed and 
 overlaid by the enormous weights of facts, details, and ex¬ 
 ceptions ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a prioi'i, from the under¬ 
 standing 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. 
 
 10 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 inevi¬ 
 table 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 
 
 20 all general exertion, I drew up, therefore, my “ Prolegomena 
 to all Puture 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 my- 
 
 30 self 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 tor¬ 
 por, 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 
 
AJV ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 221 
 
 prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few 
 words to any that I received, was tire 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 be¬ 
 
 came of political economy, must have gone into irretrievable 
 confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the 
 case ; it is one, hoAvever, which the opium-eater Avill find, in 
 the end^ most oppressive and tormenting, from the sense of 
 incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments 10 
 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 aspira¬ 
 tions ; 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 pro¬ 
 posing or willing. He lies under a world’s weight of incubus 
 and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he Avould fain ‘20 
 })erform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the 
 mortal languor of paralysis, Avho 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 hoaa" pass to what is the main subject of 
 these latter Confessions—to the history and journal of what 
 took place in my dreams j for these Avere the immediate and 
 proximate cause of shadowy terrors that settled and brooded 30 
 over my Avhole AA'aking life. 
 
 The first notice I had of any important change going on 
 in this part of my physical economy Avas from the re-awak- 
 ing of a state of eye oftentimes incident to childhood. I 
 knoAv not Avhether my reader is aAvare that man}' children 
 have a poAver of painting, as it were, upon the darkness all 
 sorts of phantoms : in some that poAver is simply a mechanic 
 uffection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary 
 
222 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 power to dismiss or summon such pliaiitoms •, or, as a child 
 once said to me, when I questioned him on this matter, “ I 
 can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come 
 when I don’t tell them to come.” He had by one-half as 
 unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion 
 over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817 this faculty be¬ 
 came increasingly distressing to me : at night, whan I lay 
 awake in bed, vast processions moved along continually in 
 mournful pomp ; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my 
 
 10 feeling's were as sad and solemn as stories drawn from times 
 before QHdipus 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 :— 
 
 1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a 
 sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the 
 
 20 dreaming states of the brain in one point—that whatsoever 
 I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act ujDon 
 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 de¬ 
 frauded 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 
 
 30 sympathetic ink, they Avere 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 Avere ac¬ 
 companied by deep-seated anxiety and funereal melancholy, 
 such as are Avholly incommunicable by Avords. 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- 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 223 
 
 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 gorgeous spectacles, amounting 
 at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, 
 cannot he approached by words. 
 
 3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, 
 were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., 
 were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not 
 fitted to' receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an 
 extent of unutterable and self-repeating infinity. This dis- 10 
 turbed 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 representa¬ 
 tive 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 tlieni 3 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 Avere 20 
 before me in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their 
 evanescent circumstances and accomjDanying feelings, I re¬ 
 cognised them instantaneously. I Avas 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 
 saAv 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 Avhole and every part.’ 30 
 
 ’ The heroine of this remarkable case was a girl 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 draAV back and to report her experience. 
 
 Not less than ninety years did she survive this meniorable escape ; 
 and I may describe her as in all respects a W’oman of remarkable and 
 interesting qualities. She eujoyeil 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 
 
224 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 This, 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 tiring as ulti¬ 
 mate forgettmg ; traces once impressed upoir the memory are 
 indestructible ; a thousand accidents may and will interpose 
 a veil between our present consciousness and the secret 
 10 inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will 
 
 “ 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-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 
 gi’ound 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 HyKos, 
 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 
 air 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 wbo 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 ! 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 225 
 
 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 he revealed 
 whenever the obscuring daylight itself shall have with¬ 
 drawn. 
 
 Having noticed these four facts as memorably distin¬ 
 guishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite 
 a few illustrative cases; and shall then cite such others as 10 
 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 Eoman 
 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, 20 
 
 regent, &c., or any other titles of those who embody in their 
 own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had 
 less power over my reverential feelings. I had also, 
 though no great reader of History, made myself critically 
 familiar with one period of English history—viz., the 
 period of the Parliamentary War—having been attracted 
 by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, 
 and by the interesting memoirs which survive those un¬ 
 quiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, 
 
 having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now 30 
 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 un¬ 
 happy 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 
 
 P 
 
226 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 a certain day in August 1642,^ never smiled upon each 
 other again, nor met hut 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 pageatit would suddenly dissolve ; and, 
 at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-shaking 
 10 sound of Consul Romanus ; and immediately came “ sweep¬ 
 ing 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 alalagmos^ of the 
 Eoman legions. 
 
 Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi’s 
 “Antiquities of Eome,” 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 
 20 memory of Coleridge’s account) represented vast Gothic 
 halls •, on the floor of which stood mighty engines and 
 machinery, wheels, cables, catapults, &C., expressive of enor¬ 
 mous 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. 
 FoUow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive them 
 reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and 
 
 1 I think (but at the moment have no means of verifying my con¬ 
 jecture) 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 seven¬ 
 teenth century, andj 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 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. 
 
 ^ “ The crimson tunic’’' :—The signal which announced a day of 
 battle. 
 
 ® “ Alalagmos” :—A word expressing collectively the gathering of 
 the Roman war-cries— Aldla, Aldla ! 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 227 
 
 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 brink of the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, 
 and a still more aerial flight of stairs is descried j and there, 
 again, is the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours : 
 and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless 10 
 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 ^ 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 fre¬ 
 quently in sleep — 20 
 
 “The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
 
 Was of a mighty city—boldly say 
 A wilderness of building, sinking far 
 And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, 
 
 Far sinking into splendour without end ! 
 
 Fabric it seemed 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 30 
 
 With battlements that on their restless fronts 
 Bore stars—illumination of all gems ! 
 
 By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
 Upon the dark materials of the storm 
 Now' pacified ; on them, and on the coves, 
 
 And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
 The vapours had receded, taking th.ere 
 Their station under a cerulean sky.” 
 
 The sublime circumstance—“ that on their restless fronts bore 
 
 1 From a great modern •poet”: —What poet? It was Words¬ 
 worth ; and why did I not formally name him ? This throws a light 
 backwards upon the strange history of Wordsworth’s reputation. The 
 
228 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 stars ”—might have been copied from my own architectural 
 dreams, so often did it occur. We hear it reported of Dry den, 
 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 
 (fxxp/xaKov vrjTrevOe'i — i.e., as an anodyne. 
 
 10 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) ohjective} and 
 that the sentient organ might he 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 
 
 20 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 
 
 year in which I wrote and published these Confessions was 1821 ; and 
 at that time the name of Wordsworth, though beginning to emerge 
 from the dark cloud of scorn and contumely which had hitherto over¬ 
 shadowed 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 splen¬ 
 dour of the verses. 
 
 ^ “ Objective^’ :—This word, so nearly unintelligible in 1821, so in¬ 
 tensely scholastic, and, consequently, when surrounded by familial 
 and vernacular words, so apparently pedantic, yet, on the other hand, 
 so indispensable to accurate thinking, and to ^vide thinking, has since 
 1821 become too common to need any apology. 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 229 
 
 translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they became seas 
 and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, Avhich, 
 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, hut not des¬ 
 potically, 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 (the searching for A nn amongst fluctuating 10 
 crowds) might he 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 1818.—The Malay has been a fearful enemy for 
 months. Every night, through his means, I have been 20 
 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 con¬ 
 nected with it. But there are other reasons. Ho man can 30 
 ])retend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious supersti¬ 
 tions 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 
 
230 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even English¬ 
 men, 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 imme¬ 
 morial 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 
 10 great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those 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 
 20 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 im¬ 
 pressed 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 ap¬ 
 pearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and 
 assembled them together in China or Hindostan. Erom 
 kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and her gods under 
 the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, 
 30 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 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM EA TER. 
 
 231 
 
 and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal 
 pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by croco¬ 
 diles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions, 
 amongst reeds and J^ilotic 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 abomination of what I 10 
 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 20 
 myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas, 
 
 Ac., soon became instinct with life : the abominable head of 
 the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multi¬ 
 plied 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 
 aAvoke; it was broad noon, and my children were standing, 
 hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their 30 
 coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed 
 for going out. Ho 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 
 
232 
 
 COJVFESS/ONS OF 
 
 periods of ray life, that the deaths of those whom we love, 
 and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, is {cceteris 
 parihus) 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 he excused) more 
 infinite; the clouds hy 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 
 10 in far grander and more towering piles; secondly, the light 
 and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are 
 much more fitted to he types and characters of the infinite; 
 and, thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and 
 riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more 
 powerfully upon the antagonist thought of death, and the 
 wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be observed 
 generally that, wherever two thoughts stand related to each 
 other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by 
 mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On 
 20 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 pre¬ 
 disposition 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-com- 
 30 bined, 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 soleinnised by the power of dreams. There were 
 the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 233 
 
 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 
 Avhite roses ] and no living creature was to be seen, ex¬ 
 cepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle 
 tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particu¬ 
 larly 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 the well-known scene, and I said to myself, 10 
 “ It yet wants much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday; 
 and that is the day on which they celebrate the first-fruits 
 of Eesurrection. 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 dif- 20 
 ferent; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled 
 into harmony. The scene was an oriental one j 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 waS'—Ann ! She fixed her eyes iqjon 
 me earnestly; and I said to her at length, “ So, then, I have 30 
 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 Avere now no longer seen. Sometimes she seemed 
 altered ; yet again sometimes not altered; and hardly older. 
 
234 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of 
 expression, and I now gazed upon her with some awe. Sud¬ 
 denly her countenance grew dim ; and, turning to the moun¬ 
 tains, I perceived vapours rolling between us; in a moment 
 all had vanished ; thick darkness came on j 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. 
 
 10 Then suddenly would come a dream of far different 
 character’—a tumultuous dreani’—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 multi¬ 
 tudinous 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 
 20 labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I 
 ■ knew not where—somehow, but I knew not how-—by some 
 Ijoings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an 
 agony, was travelling through all its stages •— was evolv¬ 
 ing 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 
 30 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,” 
 T lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the pa-ssion deepened. 
 Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, 
 than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had pro¬ 
 claimed. Then came sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; 
 trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not Avhether 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TEE 
 
 235 
 
 from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tem¬ 
 pest 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 hut 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 ! 
 
 And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, “I will sleep 10 
 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 palpita¬ 
 tions 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 20 
 my life had become to others besides myself, I became 
 alarmed; and I paused seasonably j but with a difliculty 
 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 lunacy—seemed too certainly to 
 1)esiege the alternative course. Fortunately I had still so 
 much of firmness left as to face that choice, which, with most 30 
 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 experi¬ 
 ences (for such it was—simply a provisional stage, that 
 paved the way sul)sequently for many milder stages, to 
 which gradually my constitutional system accommodated 
 itself) was, pretty nearly in the following words, communi- 
 
236 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF 
 
 cated to my readers in the earliest edition of these Con¬ 
 fessions :— 
 
 I triumphed. But infer not, reader, from this word 
 “ triumphed,''’ 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 sufferer in the time 
 10 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 be 
 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 
 20 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.^ That seems probable ; and, during the 
 
 ^ William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c.) is tedions and not 
 well written ; but the account of bis own sufferings on the rack at 
 Malaga, and subsequently is overpoweringly affecting. Less circum¬ 
 stantial, but the same in tendency, is the report of the results from 
 torture published in 1830 by Juan Van Halen. 
 
 ^ 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 in fant perhaps the one is as painful as the other.” 
 
AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EA TER. 
 
 237 
 
 whole period of diminishing the opium, 1 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 re¬ 
 generation ; 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 re¬ 
 mains : my dreams are not calm; the dread swell and 
 agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided ; the legions 
 that encamped in them are drawing off, but not departed; 10 
 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 througed and fiery arms.” 
 
THE DAUGHTER OF LEBAHOH. 
 
 Damascus, first-Tboru of cities, Om el Denia,^ mother of 
 generations, that wast before Abraham, that Avast before 
 the Pyramids ! Avhat sounds are those that, from a postern 
 gate, looking eastwards over secret paths that AAond 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 homo 1 Thou 
 knoAvest him, Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of 
 10 trouble as one learned in the afflictions of man ; Avise 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 thank¬ 
 fully acknoAvledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. 
 His sandals are white with dust; for he has been roaming 
 for AAmeks beyond the desert, under the guidance of Arabs, 
 on missions of hopeful benignity to Palmyra ^; and in 
 spirit he is weary of all things, except faithfulness to God, 
 20 and burning love to man. 
 
 ^ el Benia" \—Mother of the World if the Arabic title of 
 Damascus. That it was before Abraham— i.e., already an old estab¬ 
 lishment 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. 
 
 ^ Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendom’ of Grecian 
 development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian ; but it was 
 already a noble city. 
 
THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 239 
 
 Eastoni 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; hut there another scene 
 awaited him. On the right hand, in an upper chamber, 
 with lattices widely expanded, sat a festal company of 
 youths, revelling under a noon-day 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 10 
 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 1 Was it 
 perhaps the angel—so the evangelist argued with himself 
 —that met him in the desert after sunset, and strengthened 
 liim liy secret talk ? The evangelist went up, and touched 
 her forehead; and, when he found that she was indeed 20 
 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 oven 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, “ Eabbi, what should 1 
 do ? For behold ! all men forsake me.” The evangelist 30 
 mused a little, and then secretly to himself he said, “ Now 
 will I search this woman’s heart—whether in very truth it 
 iiiclineth itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery 
 compulsion. Turning therefore to the woman, the Prophet ^ 
 
 1 “The Prophet” :—Though a Prophet was not therefore and in 
 virtue of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist was neces¬ 
 sarily in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it be remembered 
 
240 
 
 THE DA UGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 said, “ Listen : I am the messenger of Him whom thou 
 hast not known; of Him that made Lebanon and the 
 cedars of Lehanon ; 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 hind 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, 
 10 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 Avorld. How, 
 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 
 20 glory of a penitential eye, she raised her clasped hands in 
 supphcation, 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 evangehst, 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 day-light 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 
 30 house.” 
 
 that a Prophet did not mean a Predictor, or Poreshower of events, 
 except derivatively and inferentially. What was a Prophet in the 
 unifonn 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 he 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 DA UGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 241 
 
 Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of the 
 evangehst. 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 as wrongs done by this 
 injured daughter herself ; and, refusing to her all protection, 10 
 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 Avit hin thirty days, if she will not 
 defeat it herself. -And, whilst the stealthy motion of time 
 travelled towards this thirtieth day, behold ! a burning 20 
 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 teach¬ 
 ings of the evangehst. 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 1 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, 30 
 but suddenly was darkened by driving storms. Hot 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 
 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 THE DA UGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 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 
 10 covenant must he fulfilled 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 evangehst sat down 
 by her bedside ; whilst she by intervals communed with 
 20 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 evangehst rose to his 
 feet, and said, “ 0 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 
 30 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 
 
THE DA UGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 243 
 
 stand between liis 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 which was there. And then he said, “ 0 10 
 daughter ! this also is but a mask.” And 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. Im¬ 
 mediately 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 evangehst, “ 0 father ! what armies are these that I see 
 mustering within the infinite chasm 1 ” And the evangelist 
 replied, “ These are the armies of Christ, and they are 20 
 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 tliirsted. 
 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 30 
 by the evangelist, she firing 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 
 
244 
 
 THE DA UGHTER OF LEBANON. 
 
 Lebanon liad 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 i mm ortal 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 Lather’s house. 
 
APPENDICES TO THE TEXT. 
 
 De Qtjincet.— Page 66. 
 
 This family, winch split (or, as a grammatical purist lately said to me 
 in a tone of expostulation, splat) into three national divisions—English, 
 French, and American—originally was Norwegian : and in the year of 
 our Christian era one thoiosand 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 them¬ 
 selves 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 10 
 not derived from any French province, but imported into that pro¬ 
 vince 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 Nor¬ 
 mandy, 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 dis¬ 
 tinguished writer, Mr Moir of Musselburgh, the Delta of “ Blackwood’s 
 Magazine,” took the trouble (which must have been considerable) of 
 tracing their aspiring movements in Scotland, through a period when 20 
 Normans transferred themselves from England to Scotland in consider¬ 
 able numbers, and with great advantages. This elaborate paper, pub¬ 
 lished 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 
 
246 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 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 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 col¬ 
 lision, at some period suddenly exploded. In our own planet Tellus 
 such a county as York, under a similar catastrophe, would make a 
 10 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 pro¬ 
 jected themselves by successive efforts, patiently watching their oppor¬ 
 tunities, from the smoking ruins of the great feudal house : stealthily 
 through two generations creeping out of their lurking holes ; timidly, 
 Avhen 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 
 20 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 tly.s or that tame 
 villatic squireen.^ 
 
 The kingly old oak, that had been the leader of the forest, was 
 thus suddenly (in the technical language of wood-craft) cut down into 
 a “ pollard.” Thus mutilation for ever prevented it from aspiring 
 cloudwards by means of some mighty stem, such as grows upon Nor¬ 
 wegian hills, tit to be the mast of “some great ammiral.” Neverthe¬ 
 less, we see daily amongst the realities of nature that a tree, after 
 30 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 tnmco, non froiidihus, efficit •unihram, but, on the contrary, non 
 trunco sed frondihus efficit umbrarn. 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 
 at last, one fine morning, on rubbing their eyes, they found themselves 
 40 actually in the sixteenth century abreast of Henry VIII and his fiery 
 children. Ah, what a century was that! Sculptured as only Eroude can 
 sculpture those that fight across the chasms of eternity, grouped as only 
 Eroude can group the mighty factions, acting or suffering, arraigning be¬ 
 fore chanceries of man, or protesting before chanceries of God—what vast 
 
 1 This last variety of the rustic regulus is of Hibernian origin, and, as re¬ 
 gards the name, was unknown to us in England until Miss Edgeworth had 
 extended the horizon of our social experience. Yet, without the name, I pre¬ 
 sume that the thmg must have been known occasionally even in England. 
 
TO THE TEXT. 
 
 247 
 
 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 anti¬ 
 quity no truth as yet existed, none had been revealed, none em¬ 
 blazoned, on behalf of which man coidd 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—reli¬ 
 gious 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 Eng¬ 
 land, 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 
 “ 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 de¬ 
 clined 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 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 30 
 
 40 
 
248 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 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^ 
 
 Bakbara Lewthwaite—P age 191. 
 
 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 
 10 the composition of another picture even more rememberable, suggest¬ 
 ing great names, connected with the greatest of 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 de¬ 
 pendencies, 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 
 20 naturally and iper se it was perishable, but that by supernatural en¬ 
 dowment 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 pain¬ 
 fully 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, 
 SO 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 
 
 1 Tlie 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 Eng¬ 
 lish names, full three hundred years ago. Many Englisli 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. 
 
TO THE TEXT. 
 
 249 
 
 Closes. Now Warburton, in his well-known 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 10 
 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 current 
 among the Jews. It was not alleged as a Mosaic doctrine, but as 
 -something deducible from traditions couirtenanced 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 argu¬ 
 ment upon which the sophist in the Phcedo relies is a pure scholastic 
 conundrum, baseless and puerile. The homogeneity of human con- 20 
 sciousness, 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, hut as a natural prero¬ 
 gative of the human spirit. This time the angel would have paused and 
 hearkened. The auguries for immortality which Wordsworth drew frcm 
 indications running along the line of daily human experience were two. S(? 
 
 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 revela¬ 
 tion through the lips of childhood. Life in its torrent fulness—that 
 is, life in its earliest stage—affirmed itself; whereas the voice which 
 whispered dorrbts 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 :— 
 
250 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 “ ‘ Their graves are green, they may he seen,' 
 
 The little maid replied. 
 
 Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door. 
 
 And they are side by side. 
 
 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, 
 
 10 My kerchief there I hem ; 
 
 And there upon their graves I sit— 
 
 I sit, and sing to them. ” 
 
 The other argument was developed in the sublime “Ode upon 
 the Intimations of Immortality,” &c. 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 new-born infant, he had just quitted. Hanging upon 
 his mother’s breast, he heard dim prolongations of a music which 
 20 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 farther 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, 
 30 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 oifive. 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 :— 
 
 40 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, con¬ 
 sequently in the earlier half of May, some one of our neighbours gave 
 
 to 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 510th 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, 
 50 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 
 
TO THE TEXT. 
 
 251 
 
 way that made the wound apparent; and too sensibly as the evening 
 wore away it drooped. None of us knew wdiat medical treatment to 
 suggest; and all that occurred was to place it with free access to bird¬ 
 seed 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) :— 
 
 “Holyi 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 bettor 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 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 we all 
 stood around the little perch on which the bird rested, one thrilling 
 song, louder than the rest, arose from.a neighbouring 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 them¬ 
 selves, 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 tlie regular processional evolution of the 
 scenical stages than wdien simply read as a narrative : for too evident 
 it was, to one and all of us, without needing to communicate by 
 
 1 “ Z/o?)/ 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. 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 30 
 
 40 
 
252 
 
 APPENDICES TO THE TEXT. 
 
 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 theatre—there 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. 
 
ITOTES. 
 
 ON THE ‘PEEFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1822.’ 
 
 N.B.—References to De Quincefs Works, other than the Con¬ 
 fessions, are in all cases, save when expressly stated, to Masson’s 
 edition, in Fourteen Volumes. Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 1889, 
 1890. 
 
 The preface to the original edition, as given in the present 
 edition, and in Masson’s edition of De Qnincey’s works, volume 
 iii., is an exact reprint from the preface that actually appeared in 
 The Confessions of 1822. De Quincey himself, however, in pre¬ 
 paring the enlarged Confessions of 1856, prefixed a piece of writing, 
 purporting to be the original preface ‘ a little remodelled.’ As a 
 matter of fact, he omitted about a page of original matter, and 
 added a good three pages, including two or three long footnotes ; 
 and, in so doing, to use Professor Masson’s words, ‘strikingly illus¬ 
 trated his passion for revising his old writings,—his inability to 
 keep his hands off any of them that came again under his view.’ 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more revolting. The rest of the paragraph 
 from this point is omitted in the ‘ Original Preface ’ of 1856. 
 
 Demireps, contraction for ‘ demi-reputation,’ women of doubt¬ 
 ful character. 
 
 We must look to French Literature. De Quincey is probably 
 alluding to Rousseau’s Confessions. 
 
 Humbly to express, etc. . 
 
 ‘ It was a solitary mound ; 
 
 Which two spears’ length of level ground 
 Did from all other graves divide : 
 
 As if in some respect of pride ; 
 
 Or melancholy’s sickly mood, 
 
 Still shy of human neighbourhood ; 
 
 Or guilt, that humbly would express 
 A penitential loneliness. ’ 
 
 —The White Doe of Rylstone, Canto 1. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 This footnote is omitted in the edition of 1856. The 
 celebrated man is probably Coleridge. 
 
254 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Reader, I am sorry to say. In the altered ‘ Original Preface,’ 
 ‘ I am bound to say.’ The change is significant, De Quincey 
 having in the interim greatly modified his views as to the evil 
 effects of opium-eating. 
 
 Or of eminent station, ‘ and notoriety’ in the edition of 1856. 
 
 The eloquent and benevolent. In the edition of 1856 the 
 blanks are filled up as follows :—‘ The eloquent and benevolent 
 William Wilberforce ; the late Dean of Carlisle, Dr Isaac Milner ; 
 
 the first Lord Erskine ; Mr -, the philosopher; a late 
 
 Secretary of State (viz. Mr Addington, brother to the first Lord 
 Sidmouth .... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and many others, etc.’ 
 To the passage De Quincey adds the following footnotes :— 
 
 (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 
 Queen’s College, Cambridge, where he usually resided. In 
 common with his brother Joseph, of Hull, he was substantially 
 a Wesleyan Methodist ; and in that character, as regarded 
 princij)les 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 recon¬ 
 ciled 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 in¬ 
 tellectual, 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 
 
NOTES. 
 
 255 
 
 distinctions would, one hundred and thirty years ago, have been 
 viewed as indictable ; and perhaps (in company wdth Mandeville’s 
 Political Economy) would have been seriously presented as 
 a nuisance«(!b the Middlesex Quarter-Sessions. Kecurring, how¬ 
 ever, 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 con¬ 
 venience. 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 ad¬ 
 ministered to him at regular intervals of six hours by a con¬ 
 fidential 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 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 
 wdth them very reasonably by a caustic review^er. 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 mSlee. 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.’ 
 
 That those eat now, etc. This couplet is humorously adapted 
 from Parnell’s— 
 
 Let those love now who never lov’d before 
 
 And those who always loved now love the more— 
 
256 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 which, in its turn, is an adaptation from the Latin couplet ascribed 
 to Catullus— 
 
 Cras amat qui nunquam amavit, 
 
 Quique amavit, cras amet. 
 
 ‘ Let him love to-morrow who never has loved, 
 
 And he who has loved, let him love to-morrow,’ 
 
 Awsiter. John Awsiter, M.D., published in 1763 An Essay 
 on the Effects of Opium considered as a Poison, with the most 
 rational method of Cure deduced from Experience. Awsiter died in 
 1768. 
 
 Mead. Kichard Mead (1673-1764), Vice-President of the Eoyal 
 Society ; physician to George II., wrote Mechanical Account of 
 Poisons, etc. etc. 
 
 ^wvavTo. ffvveroliTi, a quotation from Pindar, equivalent to 
 the Latin verbum sapientibus, ‘ a word or hint to the intelligent.’ 
 
 In the necessity of this conclusion .... narrative. This, the 
 concluding sentence of the real ‘ Original Preface,’ has been 
 significantly altered in the pseudo-original preface, where it ran 
 as follows:—‘ In the necessity of this conclusion I do not 
 altogether concur, [note the change of ‘ altogether’ into ‘at all’] ; 
 but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak more freely 
 in the body of the work itself. Then follows a long passage 
 which is entirely new :—‘ 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 tcedium vitce ; fourthly, 
 as by possibility, under an argument undeniably plausible 
 alleged by mysplf, the sole known agent—not for curing when 
 formed, but for 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 
 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 often¬ 
 times to defraud human suffering of its readiest alleviation, and 
 of which the purpose is, “ Ut pueris placeant et declamatio fiant” 
 
NOTES. 
 
 257 
 
 (that they may win the applause of schoolboys, and furnish 
 matter for a prize essay). 
 
 ‘ 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, henbatie, 
 chloroform, and opium. But, unquestionably the three first have 
 a most narrow field of action by comparison wfith 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^ 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 pre¬ 
 paration, 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 tlie 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 he 
 applied to murderous purjioses,—consequently of the delay, the difficulty, 
 and the peril in forming any familiar aquaintance with opium.’ 
 
 K 
 
258 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 NOTES TO THE PREFACE OF 1856. 
 
 The fifth volume. The Confessions formed the fifth volume of 
 the fourteen volume edition published during De Quincey’s life¬ 
 time. In the edition of 1872, published by Messrs A. & C. Black, 
 it constituted th.Q first volume. 
 
 Not objectionable on the score of legibility. Specimens of De 
 Quincey’s handwriting, as given by Dr Japp and others, show that 
 his writing was singularly clear and neat. 
 
 To communicate the incommunicable. See The Confessions, page 
 97, on the ‘ burden of the incommunicable.’ 
 
 Some unaccountably and some dishonourably. We learn from 
 the biographers that De Quincey was a man of the most untidy 
 habits. His papers and books seem to have been always in a 
 state of the wildest confusion. In each of the various lodgings, 
 which at different times and in different places De Quincey 
 occupied, he left large legacies of books and manuscript. Some¬ 
 times these were lost outright (unaccountably), sometimes they 
 were retained by dishonest people in order to extort from De 
 Quincey sums of money alleged to be due, in the shape of 
 rent, etc. See the chapter (xxvi), Mr Hogg’s Reminiscences 
 in Japp’s Life of De Quincey. 
 
 Five or six were burned. No doubt, in consequence of De 
 Quincey’s absent-mindedness. ‘ He was not a reassuring man,’ 
 writes his daughter, Mrs Baird Smith, ‘ for nervous people to live 
 with, as those nights were exceptions in which he didn’t set 
 something on fire, the commonest incident being for some one to 
 look u]3 from work or book, to say casually, “ Papa, your hair is 
 on fire,” of which a calm “ Is it, my lovel” and a hand rubbing 
 out the blaze, was all the notice taken.’—(Japp’s Life ofDe Quincey, 
 p. 282). Elsewhere we have a note to a publisher, informing him 
 that some important proof ‘ had been burned or would have been 
 burned,’ etc., etc. 
 
 By the aid of one sole person. Probably one of his daughters. 
 
 The search after the lost .... in dreams. See The Con¬ 
 fessions, p. 160. 
 
 The scenical position. ‘ Scenical,’ a very favourite word with 
 De Quincey Here ‘ the surrounding circumstances which went 
 to form the dream-picture of which Ann was the centre-piece.’ 
 See The Confessions, p. 48, and note. 
 
 A lost Pariah woman. ‘ Pariah ’ is another word constantly to 
 be found in De Quincey’s writings, and used with a peculiar 
 significance ; a ‘ pariah ’ with him is anyone who is shunned or 
 despised or neglected by others,—some one not ‘ respectable,’— 
 above all, some one unfortunate. See note on p. 21. 
 
.VOTES. 
 
 259 
 
 NOTES TO THE ‘CONFESSIONS.’ 
 
 Title. ‘ Introductory Narration.’ The first, and much longer 
 part of the Confessions was without a sub-title in De Quincey’s 
 revised edition of 1856. The corresponding division in the 
 edition of 1822 bore the title Preliminary Confessions. Mr 
 Masson, in his excellent edition, prefixed the title ‘ Introductory 
 Narration’ which, indeed, is De Quiucey’s own term. See p. 
 147 of this edition. 
 
 1. 8. Oftentimes. De Quincey is peculiarly fond of this 
 pleonastic form. The student will meet with it many times in 
 the course of the Confessions. He very rarely indeed uses the 
 ordinary form, ‘ often.’ The word is also a favourite of 
 Wordsworth’s, from whom, perhaps, De Quincey borrowed it. It 
 may be, however, justified grammatically, as ‘ often ’ frequently 
 appears as an adjective in the old English writers. Gf. ‘ Thine 
 often infirmities,’ 1 Tim. v. 23. 
 
 16. The chain of abject slavery. De Quincey more than once 
 uses this figure of a ‘ chain ’ in describing his subjection to opium. 
 See the preface to the original edition, where he speaks of having 
 ‘ untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which 
 fettered me.’ 
 
 22. Anodyne. A drug which relieves pain. Der. Gk. ara, 
 not ; and oSvvt], pain. 
 
 Page 2. 
 
 1. 4. Such was the fact; such by accident. The ‘ Introductory 
 Narration’ relates the ‘ accidents’ which ended in De Quincey’s be¬ 
 coming a regular opium-eater. That De Quincey is substantially 
 right in the account he gives of the character of opium, and was 
 himself more than justified in resorting to it, is fully borne out 
 by Dr Eatwell’s paper, A Medical Vievj of Mr De Quincefs Case, 
 which is printed as an Appendix to Dr Japp’s work, De Quincefs 
 Life and TVritings. For a fuller discussion of this subject see the 
 Introduction. 
 
 5. Meantime without blame, etc. In the edition of 1822 there 
 is nothing of this secondary defence of ojfium-eating as justifiable, 
 even when taken merely for the sake of the pleasure or ‘ extra 
 power’ it affords. Neither, of course, is there any reference to 
 Coleridge, who was at the time still living. 
 
 21. Some anomalous tic. ‘Tic’ is a painful twitching of the 
 muscles. The word is directly derived from the French tique, 
 
26 o 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 but is originally of Teutonic extraction (see Skeat). De 
 Quincey means tliat if the use of opium is only to be justified 
 as a medicine, it would be a very easy matter to find an excuse 
 in some trifling pain which opium could allay. The argument 
 of the whole passage is, that there is nothing necessarily immoral 
 in pursuing certain 'pleasures for their own sake. Hence 
 further on, De Quincey declares himself an ‘Hedonist’ (see 
 page 216 and note). 
 
 22. Ovidian metamorphosis. Metamorphosis (Gk.), Transfor¬ 
 mation. Greek Mythology affords many instances of men and 
 women being miraculously changed into animals, plants, stars, 
 etc. Such stories formed the theme of Ovid’s elegiac poems 
 entitled The Metamorphoses. (Publius Ovidius Naso, Latin elegiac 
 poet, B.c. 14 to A.D. 18.) 
 
 32. Coleridge. De Quincey gave the world several papers of a 
 biographical nature on Coleridge. These are now to be found in 
 Masson’s collected edition, vols. ii. and v. 
 
 34, 35. In error as to principle, and in error as to fact. As to 
 principle, because Coleridge erroneously assumed that it is morally 
 wrong to resort to opium as a means of pleasure-production ; as" 
 to fact, because he assumed that such had been De Quincey’s sole 
 motive. 
 
 35. A letter of his. The letter referred to was printed in 
 Gilman’s Life of Coleridge, published in 1838. The following 
 is an extract from it :—Nor had I at any time taken the 
 flattering poison as a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasur¬ 
 able sensation. I needed none ; 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 mis¬ 
 fortune ; for he had been faithfully, and with an agony of zeal, 
 warned of the gulf, and yet willingly struck into the current 
 .... Oh, may He, the God to whom I look for mercy through 
 Christ, have mercy on the author of the Confessiom of an Opiimi- 
 Eater, if, as I have strong reason to believe, his book has been the 
 occasion of seducing others into the withering vice through 
 wantonness. From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been 
 
 free. 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 then even to deter, perhaps not 
 to forewarn.’ 
 
 The occasion on which Coleridge warned De Quincey against 
 opium was on the first meeting of the poet and the essayist in 
 1807. De Quincey mentions the fact in his first paper on 
 Coleridge, published in Tait^s Magazine in 1834. He there says, 
 
 ‘ The peculiar horror with which he warned me against forming a 
 habit of the same kind impressed upon my mind a feeling that 
 
NOTES. 
 
 261 
 
 he never hoped to liberate himself from the bondage ’ (see 
 Masson’s collected edition, ii. 160). But in this paper De Quincey 
 expressly says that he had informed Coleridge that he, De 
 Quincey, hacl resorted to opium in order to allay the pains of 
 toothache. It must be confessed that De Quincey is more than 
 justified in resenting the tone of Coleridge’s remarks about himself. 
 
 Page 3. 
 
 1. 1. He, it seems, etc. In the paper mentioned above, De 
 Quincey declares his belief that Coleridge resorted to opium 
 simply ‘as a source of luxurious sensations’ (Works, ed. Masson, 
 ii. 185). It would, however, appear from extracts from the 
 poet’s own letters given by his latest biographer, Mr T. Dykes 
 Campbell, that Coleridge’s original motive for resorting to opium 
 was in order to seek relief from physical pain. De Quincey, in 
 the enlarged Confessions, seems to retract his former judgment, 
 and declares, justly enough, that Coleridge and himself, as 
 regards opium-eating, were ‘ embarked in the same boat.’ 
 
 12. A citizen of Sybaris or Daphne. Syharis, a Greek colony in 
 the south of Italy, the citizens of which were notorious for their 
 luxury and self-indulgence. Hence the term Sybarite. Daphne 
 was a beautiful s]3ot near Antioch. It was a residence of the later 
 Roman emperors, and was noted for the immoderate nature of 
 the pleasures sought there. Hence the phrase Daphnici mores 
 (Daphnic morals) passed into a proverb. 
 
 31. Most truly I have told the reader. In the 1822 edition of 
 The Confessions, De Quincey expressly says, ‘ It was not for the 
 purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the 
 severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of 
 daily diet.’ 
 
 35. Coleridge’s bodily affliction was simple rheumatism. Cf. Mr 
 T. Dykes Campbell’s Life of Coleridge, page 123 :—‘ In 1804, 1814, 
 1820, and in 1826, Coleridge made various statements regarding 
 the immediate cause of his beginning to take opium. They all 
 agree, almost literally, in stating that the relief was sought from 
 rheumatic affection and knee-swelling, which had kept him 
 almost bedridden for six months.’ In a letter to his brother 
 George, written 1798, Coleridge says that he had been troubled 
 by toothache, and had found relief in laudanum. On the whole, 
 it would seem that both Coleridge and De Quincey originally 
 sought opium as a relief from various bodily and mental afflic¬ 
 tions, but continued it as a source of gratification. In De 
 Quincey’s case, however, opium in moderate quantities was 
 actually necessary for tlie preservation of life, and certainly 
 interfered less with the man’s work and the discharge of his 
 obligations than in Coleridge’s case. 
 
262 
 
 DE QUINCEV. 
 
 35. Mine.toothache. On this matter see Dr Eatwell’s 
 
 paper, above mentioned, and tlie Introduction. 
 
 Page 4. 
 
 1. 1. My own desperate ignorance. See page 54. Golocynth, 
 Gk. Ko\oKvvdls, called also bitter apple, bitter melon, etc. 
 
 12. I was thrown . . . chance advice. See page 165. 
 
 17. Our baptismal initiation. As a child is received into the 
 Christian church through the rite of baptism, so Coleridge and 
 De Quincey became opimn-eaters in the same manner. 
 
 19. We are embarked in the self-same boat. A common phrase; 
 
 ‘ to row in the same boat,’ to be in the same position. 
 
 20. Angelic hair-splitting, i.e., finding the most minute distinc¬ 
 tions. St Thomas Aquinas, the famous scholastic casuist, was 
 called the ‘Angelic Doctor.’ He appears to have devoted his 
 reasoning powers to the discussion of such problems as ‘how 
 many angels could dance on the point of a needle,’ and ‘ whether 
 an angel in passing I'rom one point to another passes over the 
 intervening space’: hence the adjective ‘angelic’ as applied to 
 ‘ hair-splitting.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Halcyon. Gk. aXKvoiv, kingfisher. There was a curious belief 
 that whilst the halcyon was hatching its young, the weather was 
 always calm. Hence the phrase halcyon days, halcyon calm, etc. 
 Gf. Shakespeare, Henry VI., I , ii. 131 : ‘Expect Saint Martin’s 
 summer, halcyon days.’ 
 
 Keen, glancing, arrowy radiation of anguish. This descrijjtion 
 of the significance of the term ‘lancinating’ is a good example of 
 De Quincey’s masterly command over epithets. The nature of 
 the special pangs referred to could not be more admii’ably or 
 more exactly expressed. 
 
 Page 5. 
 
 1. 12. Amongst the admirers of Coleridge .... ranks. This 
 is amply borne out by the paper De Quincey wrote on Coleridge, 
 as also in one of the^papers on Charles Lamb ( JForTcs, ed. Masson, 
 iii. 43) where De Quincey tells us of the horror with which he 
 resented Lamb’s making fun of a couplet in The Ancient Mariner. 
 De Quincey’s admiration was, however, rather for Coleridge’s 
 intellect than for his character. His biographical paper on 
 Coleridge gave great offence to the poet’s relatives'^and to such 
 intimate friends as Southey. Carlyle, however, who had read 
 the papers in question, seemed to think that the wrath of Southey 
 (seemingly very violent) was without sufficient grounds. He 
 
NO TES. 
 
 263 
 
 himself had traced in these papers ‘ of general reverence for 
 Coleridge and his gifts and deeds . . . not deficiency, but 
 glaring exaggeration.’ It is possible that this passage is a sort 
 of apology for the attitude which De Quincey had assumed 
 towards Coleridge, and which had given such offence to the 
 friends of the poet. 
 
 16. Demoniac inaccuracy. De Quincey is characteristically 
 fond of the words demoniac and maniacal, to express great 
 intensity or superlativeness of quality. 
 
 32. ‘A noticeable man with large grey eyes.’ From the fifth 
 stanza of Wordsworth’s poem entitled ‘ Stanzas written in my 
 pocket-copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence.' Of this poem 
 Hartley Coleridge said that ‘ his father’s character and habits are 
 here preserved in a livelier way, than in anything that has been 
 written about him.’ Mr Ernest Coleridge, in his edition of the 
 Letters of Coleridge, says that the picture of the ‘ Noticeable Man ’ 
 is made up of Coleridge and William Calvert, brothers of Words¬ 
 worth’s benefactor, Kaisley Calvert. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Flibustier. De Quincey elsewhere (lEor/cs, vol. ii. 304) has 
 a similar note on this word. The derivation he assigns to it 
 is supported by Skeat. Dampier— William Dainpier (1652 to 
 about 1712) was a famous English navigator. He wrote a work 
 in four volumes entitled Voyages Round the World. —The special 
 case of Cuba— The island of Cuba, the largest of the West Indian 
 islands, discovered by Columbus in 1492. A Spanish settlement 
 was founded in 1511. In 1850, 1851, bands of American ad¬ 
 venturers endeavoured to take possession of it. They were, 
 however, repulsed. This is the incident to which De Quincey 
 refers. 
 
 Page 6. 
 
 1. 5. The late Archdeacon Hare. Julius Charles Hare, born 
 1795, died 1855. Guesses at Truth by Two Brothers was first 
 published in 1827 ; the two brothers being Augustus William and 
 Julius Charles Hare. The passage to which De Quincey is 
 alluding will be found on page 367 of Macmillan’s edition of 
 1866. Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria contended that 
 ‘ our vicious poetic diction ’ was kept up by the method of writing 
 Latin verses in our public schools (not only at Eton). Boys 
 ‘ ransack Virgil and Horace and Ovid for pretty expressions, and 
 bind up as many as they can in a |)osy.’ ... ‘To exemj)lify 
 this poetical ferrumination, as he calls it, Coleridge cites a line 
 from a prize poem, — Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos 
 ithe milky wave sounds amongst the purple pebbles), which, he 
 
264 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 says, is taken from a line of Politian’s Pura coloratos interstrepit 
 unda lapillos (the clear wave sounds amid the coloured pebbles) ; 
 adding that if you look out pur us in the gradus, you find lacteus 
 as its first synonym ; and that purpureus is the first synonym for 
 coloratus. They who know how little Coleridge is to he relied on 
 for a mere matter of fact, will not he surprised to learn that 
 lacteus does not occur among the synonyms for 'purus in the 
 gradus, as indeed it scarcely could, nor purpureus among those 
 for coloratus.' 
 
 15, 20. Furious romancing, perfect moonshine. The use of 
 
 such slang expressions is characteristic of De Quincey’s style. 
 Furious romancing, utter invention; perfect moonshine, sheer 
 nonsense, having no foundation in fact. 
 
 22. All carved from the carver’s brain. Misquoted from the first 
 part of Christabel — 
 
 Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
 
 All made out of the carver’s brain ; 
 
 and it is not any ‘ pendulous lamp ’ that is so carved, hut the 
 chamber generally. The following lines, indeed, go on to describe 
 a lamp. 
 
 Page 7. 
 
 1. 33. On mere prudential motives .... than once. Motives 
 founded not on any standard of right and wrong, hut merely of 
 what is advantageous, what disadvantageous. De Quincey 
 further on (p. 10) tells us that he gave up opium four times. 
 
 Page 8. 
 
 I. 6. Caliban to Prospero. See Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 
 
 II, 12. Irasque leonum, etc. ‘ And the wrath of lions chafing 
 against their chains,’ Virgil, ^neid, vii. 15. 
 
 22. Thomas Aquinas. One of the greatest medieeval ecclesias¬ 
 tical writers ; horn 1224, died 1274, and canonised 1323. 
 
 23. The Prince of Jesuitical casuists. The Jesuits were notorious 
 for their casuistry. Casuistry is a part of practical ethics, and 
 professes to determine in what special cases (Latin casiis) a general 
 rule may he departed from. The peculiar use to which the Jesuits 
 turned the art or science of casuistry brought the term, as well as 
 the thing, into disrepute; and in common speech we now generally 
 understand l)y casuistry some cunning method of making wrong 
 appear right. For a full account of casuistry, see De Quincey’s 
 paper on the subject ( fForks, vii. 310). 
 
 25. The suppliant porter. De Quincey had already told this story 
 in his paper on Coleridge, contributed to Tuff’s (see Works, ii. 211, 
 212) ; and this was, no doubt, one of the revelations to which the 
 friends of Coleridge so much objected, 
 
NOTES. 
 
 265 
 
 30. Transcendental. The philosophy of the great German, 
 Immanuel Kant, was so called. Coleridge was the first exponent 
 of Kant’s philosophy in England. 
 
 ‘Wife! what wife ?’ ‘I have no wife,’ Othello, V., ii. 97. 
 
 ‘ My wife ! My wife ! What wife ?—I have no wife.’ 
 
 This quotation is scarcely in good taste, seeing that Coleridge had 
 not lived on good terms with his wife, and had latterly lived apart 
 from her. This fact also De Quincey, in his papers on Coleridge, 
 had made public property. 
 
 Page 9. 
 
 1. 1. Ay, but you tell’t me. The porter is made to speak bad 
 grammar. The whole dialogue is characteristic of De Quincey’s 
 whimsical humour. Whether it is in keeping with the subject 
 in hand is aiiother matter. Nothing of the kind occurs in the 
 original edition of 1822. 
 
 19. An engine. Engine is derived from Latin ingenium, skill, 
 capacity, etc. ; then, as a secondary meaning, ‘ anything by which 
 a purpose is effected,’ in which not very common sense it is used 
 here ; thirdly, it comes to mean the instrument by which anything 
 is effected. 
 
 28, 29. Total eclipse, without all hope of day. Milton, Samson 
 Agonistes, 81, 82. 
 
 33. My own unpardonable folly. (1) In leaving Manchester 
 Grammar School ; (2) in plunging into London. The following 
 passage is a fine example of De Quincey’s ‘ passionate prose,’— 
 prose that is almost poetical in its figurativeness and in its rhyth¬ 
 mical beauty. He imagines all the women of earth,—women, 
 who, in the tenderness of ,their love, can forgive the erring,— 
 pleading to some angel in heaven,—some angel of ‘merciful 
 interpretation,’ that is, who sees not only the faults but all the 
 temptations to the faults,—these are to plead for him to God 
 and so take away from liis soul the weight of overburdening 
 remorse. 
 
 Page 10. 
 
 1. 21. The re-agency. The effects of the London sufferings 
 were permanently harmful to his constitution, and in after years 
 (when De Quincey was at Oxford), brought on a painful affec¬ 
 tion, for which the sole remedy was opium. On this point see 
 the Introduction. 
 
 30. Four several times. In 1816, in 1821, in 1844 (see Dr 
 Japp’s Life of De Quincey). The fourth occasion I cannot find 
 anywhere referred to. 
 
266 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Page 11. 
 
 1. 4. Possibly they are, etc. There is no such apology in the 
 edition of 1822, there being little need for it, as in the original 
 work the autobiographical matter not directly connected with 
 opium was confined to a few pages. The length of the second 
 narrative, though doubtless justified on other grounds, can 
 scarcely he justified on the grounds assigned by De Quincey, 
 namely, that all the incidents are indispensable to a right under¬ 
 standing of the Confessions. Much (for instance, the following 
 discussion on ‘ guardians ’) is pure digression. 
 
 8-13. In the edition of 1822 De Quincey prefaces his Pre¬ 
 liminary Confessions by stating the reasons which induced him 
 to make puidic his own ‘ youthfid adventures.’ The second of 
 these is that the narrative furnishes a key to some parts of that 
 tremendous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of the 
 opium-eater. 
 
 14. My father died, etc. Here the revised edition joins the 
 original edition, but only for about one line. A single para¬ 
 graph in the former work covers the ground over which the latter 
 takes about fifty pages. 
 
 For a furtlier account of De Quincey’s father, see the ‘ Autobio¬ 
 graphy’ {Works, vol. i. 18, and following pages). 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Motive. The ‘ motive ’ of a piece of music is the theme, or 
 leading phrase that is reproduced again and again. The motive 
 of a picture is the ‘ guiding or controlling idea ’ in it. 
 
 Page 12. 
 
 1. 11. The main fountains poisoned. In a footnote to the essay 
 on ‘Casuistry’ (IFor/cs, viii.), De Quincey speaks of ‘the alarming 
 amount of the Eoman Law, under which the very power of social 
 movement threatened to break down.’ 
 
 37. If you except ebullitions, etc. Greek history affords several 
 instances of sudden acts of heroism on the part of particular 
 States ; e.g., Thebes in the days of EjDaminondas, and Athens 
 in the time of Themistocles. 
 
 Page 13. 
 
 1. 1. Nationality. De Quincey uses this word in the sense of 
 national prejudice, selfish hatred of other nations, and opposes it to 
 patriotism. In The Revolt of the Tartars he speaks of the Kalmuck 
 Tartars as a tribe ‘ whose native ferocity was exasperated . . . 
 by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their own 
 merit absolutely unparalleled.’ Thus Dr Johnson often speaks of 
 the ‘nationality’ of the Scotch. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 267 
 
 13. In the Senate or in the Forum. In the Senate or in the 
 law-courts. The most famous instance of the trial of an extor¬ 
 tionate provincial governor is the case of Verres, w'ho was im¬ 
 peached by Cicero. In this case Verres suffered, but the risk run 
 by unjust or rapacious governors under the Eoman Republic 
 was scarcely so great as De Quincey makes out. It was very 
 difficult to bring such an offence to justice ; many of the senators 
 were themselves guilty of similar crimes, and the law-courts were 
 notoriously corrupt. All this was reformed in the time of the 
 Emperors. 
 
 19. Tutor. The word ‘ tutor ’ is connected with the verb tueor, 
 to protect, watch. 
 
 38. Prophetic soul. A phrase borrowed from Hamlet, I., v. 40, 
 ‘ Oh, my prophetic soul, my uncle ! ’ 
 
 Page 14. 
 
 1, 15. The Court of Chancery. ‘Upon the abolition of the 
 Court of Wards, the care which the Crown was bound to take as 
 guardian of its infant tenants, was totally extinguished in every 
 feudal view, but resulted to the king in his Court of Chancery, 
 together wdth the general protection of all other infants in 
 the kingdom. When, therefore, a fatherless child has no other 
 guardian, the Court of Chancery has a right to appoint one ; and 
 from all proceedings relative thereto, an appeal lies to the House 
 of Lords ’ (Blackstone, Commentaries, iii. xxvii). 
 
 30. Faine'ans. French, ‘idlers; people who have no trade 
 or profession.’ Elsewhere {Works, i. 402), De Quincey dwells 
 upon this characteristic of the English, whom he contrasts 
 with Italians, Spaniards, and Germans. De Quincey never 
 loses an opportunity of contrasting his own countrymen and 
 his country’s institutions with foreign nations. The contrast is 
 almost always in England’s favour. De Quincey was patriotic, 
 perhaps even to the verge of ‘ nationality.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Kentucky. The American State, formerly part of Virginia, 
 added to the Union in 1792. Rough-and-tumhle, is an American 
 slang term. Cf. the phrase ‘ to rough it.’ 
 
 Page 15. 
 
 1. 1, Ferdinand VII. Son of Charles IV. and Maria Louisa 
 of Parma; born 1874. He succeeded to the throne on the 
 abdication of his father (1807), but Charles afterwards reclaimed 
 the throne, and Ferdinand Avas obliged to make a public resigna¬ 
 tion of it. Ferdinand was afterwards imprisoned by Napoleon, 
 
268 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 who claimed the throne for his brother Joseph. After the 
 Peninsular war, Ferdinand was restored, and reigned until his 
 death in 1834. 
 
 12. A merchant (not in the narrow sense of Scotland). Of. 
 
 Works, i. 30 {The Affliction of Childhood). ‘My father was a 
 merchant, not in the sense of Scotland, where it means a 
 retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar, 
 but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive ; that is, 
 he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other; 
 therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other.’ The French 
 word, marchand, means a retail dealer. According to De Quincey 
 the Scotch, from their long political connection with France, 
 adopted the French use of the word. It may be remarked 
 that, although retail-dealers in Scotland still call themselves 
 merchants, the word merchant is generally understood in the 
 English sense. 
 
 14, 15. In the large ... of Florence—of Venice. De Quincey is 
 alluding to the old Kepublics of Venice and Florence, of which the 
 aristocracy were literally merchant princes. The Italian mercante 
 paeans a wholesale merchant, tradesmen being distinguished by 
 the less dignified words, bottegajo, artigiano, artdfici. Elsewhere 
 (Works, i. 23), De Quincey compares the English merchants 
 with the Venetians, whom they resemble, he says, in all but 
 the external magnificence of the latter. 
 
 23. A growing body of turbulent aliens—Welsh and Irish. Most 
 of the large towns of England and Scotland have a large Irish 
 population. The poverty of Ireland drove many of the peasantry 
 to emigrate. The ‘turbulent aliens’ here referred to are that 
 class whom Carlyle called ‘ the sans-potato ’ (see Carlyle, Chartism, 
 ch. iv.). 
 
 30. The Rev. Samuel H. This gentleman’s name was Flail. 
 For a further account of Mr Hall, see Works, i. 137, where De 
 Quincey describes him as being, ‘ by the necessity of his nature, 
 incapable of being in deadly earnest ;’ and, in controversy with 
 a brilliant young lady who professed infidelity, as being ‘ dread¬ 
 fully commonplace—dull, dreadfully dull.’ There is a good 
 deal about Mr Hall in Dr Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, 
 vol. i. 
 
 Page 16. 
 
 1. 8. The elder churches of Christendom. The Church of 
 England, although ‘reformed’ in the sixteenth century, and 
 separated from any dependency on the See of Rome, does 
 not date from the Reformation period, for she maintained the 
 ‘ apostolic succession of bishops ’ intact; whereas the Lutheran 
 and other Protestant bodies can make no such claim. The 
 
NOTES. 
 
 269 
 
 Greek Church severed its connection with the Papacy at a 
 very much earlier date. It is to be observed that the Roman 
 Church will allow no distinction between the English Church 
 and other Protestant bodies on the ground of ‘ Catholicity.’ 
 
 16. Prudential ethics, i.e., ethics based upon a standard of 
 what is and is not advantageous. 
 
 18. Sincere, but not earnest. Notice the distinction. 
 
 28. No naughty people. The word ‘naughty,’ originally 
 equivalent to ‘wicked, worthless,’ is now practically confined 
 to the nursery, or used humorously, as here, to describe people 
 who are not quite respectable in the matter of morality. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Argos did to Mycense. The ancient town of Mycenae was 
 about 6 miles north-east of Argos. It was destroyed by the 
 Argives in b.c. 468, and never rebuilt. The latter part of the 
 footnote is characteristically whimsical. 
 
 Page 17. 
 
 1. 5. With one of my brothers. This was William Quincey. 
 For a full and very amusing account of him, see chap. iii. of 
 the ‘Autobiography’ (Works, i.), entitled ‘Introduction to the 
 World of Strife.’ He died of typhus fever before completing 
 his sixteenth year. 
 
 Page 18. 
 
 1. 6. A perfect palaestra. Gk., a Avrestling school. 
 
 8, 9. Isaac Barrow or Jeremy Taylor. Isaac Barrow (1630- 
 1677), one of the greatest of the old English divines. Jeremy 
 Taylor (1613-1667), was chaplain in ordinary to Charles I., 
 and, after the Restoration of the Stuarts, was created Bishop of 
 Down and Connor. He wrote numerous works of a theological 
 and religious nature, the best known of which is his treatise 
 on Holy Living and Dying. For De Quincey’s high estimate 
 of the English divines of the seventeenth century see below, 
 
 p. 288. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The architecture of the church was Grecian. Previous to tbe Re¬ 
 naissance the prevalent architecture throughout western Europe 
 was what is generally termed Gothic : after that time, the revival 
 of classical learning and the enthusiasm for everything connected 
 with the ancient Greeks and Romans, led men to regard the 
 Gothic mode as barbarous, and to attempt to imitate the ancient 
 styles. The present century, on the other hand, has witnessed 
 a great Gothic revival, especially in ecclesiastical architecture. 
 
270 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 The horrid eikono clasts of 1645. Eikonoclast, from Gk. 
 an image, and KXa.w, to break. The eikonoclasm De 
 Quincey refers to took place after the Westminster Assembly 
 (1644), when, in the words of Ranke (History of England^ ii. 409), 
 ‘ the pictures were burned in solemn procession—as at Florence 
 in Savonarola’s time—the organs were destroyed, and the Episco¬ 
 palian members of the colleges in the universities expelled.’ But 
 eikonoclasm had been going on before, wherever the Parlia¬ 
 mentary side had an opportunity. Thus, in 1643, according to 
 the Mercurius Aulicas, ‘ Cromwell did most miserably deface 
 the Cathedral of Peterborough.’ In London the Cross in Cheap- 
 side was thrown down and dragged through the streets, and 
 worse outrages took place in Canterbury Cathedral (see Perry’s 
 English Church History, ch. xxx.). The name of Iconoclast was 
 first given to a sect of Christians in the eighth and ninth centuries. 
 They were supported by six of the Eastern Emperors, the first 
 being Leo III., surnamed the Iconoclast. The Iconoclast ‘ pro¬ 
 scribed the existence as well as the use ’ of religious pictures, 
 images, etc. (see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xlix.). 
 
 Averruncation, total destruction. A very pedantic word, 
 seldom used by English writers. Here employed as a joke. 
 
 Page 19. 
 
 1. 3. Easily forked out. The slang expression is characteristic. 
 See the Introduction. 
 
 14. Which seemed to me sublime. De Quincey’s appreciation 
 of the sublime was very early developed. See the chapter in 
 the ‘Autobiography’ entitled ‘ Infant Literature ’ {Works, i.), 
 where amongst other things, he describes how much he was 
 impressed when a mere child by a couplet of Phredrus, ‘in 
 which that glory of the sublime, so stirring to my childish 
 sense, seemed to burn as in some mighty pharos :— 
 
 ‘ J5sopo statuam ingentem posuere Attici; 
 
 Servumque col]oc§.rant eterna in ba.si.’ 
 
 A colossal statue did the Athenians raise to HUsop; and a poor 
 Pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal ’ This 
 passion for the sublime is one of the most marked characteristics 
 of De Quincey’s mind. 
 
 19. Richard Baxter (1615-1691). A celebrated Nonconformist 
 divine. He was sentenced to fine and imprisonment by the 
 infamous Jeffreys in the reign of James II. 
 
 21. (To whom he was personally odious). Nevertheless he 
 was placed by Cromwell (1654) on a commission to inquire 
 into ‘ scandalous ignorance and insufficient ministers of the 
 Gospel.’ He sat but seldom, and ‘ testifies not in the willingest 
 
NOTES. 
 
 271 
 
 manner, being no friend to Oliver ’ (Carlyle, Life and Letters of 
 Oliver Cromwell). ■ It is possible that Cromwell was more 
 ‘ odious’ to Baxter than Baxter to Cromwell. Baxter was a 
 rigid Presbyterian, Cromwell an Independent. The Presby¬ 
 terians had no love for the Independents. The Presl)yterians 
 wished to establish an ecclesiastical despotism on Presbyterian 
 formulae. The Independents, with Cromwell and the army tc 
 back them, prevented this. 
 
 24. The Whitfield of the seventeenth century. Geoi’ge Whit¬ 
 field (1714-1770), the famous Eevivalist preacher. He founded 
 the sect of Calvinistic Methodists. 
 
 25. The Leuconomos of Cowper. See Cowper’s poem, Hope, in 
 which the poet nobly eulogises Whitfield in the passage begin¬ 
 ning,— 
 
 ‘Leucononuis (beneath well-sounding Greek 
 I slur a name a poet may not speak).’ 
 
 Leuconomus (Aeu/co's, uo/j.6s) is a translation of the English words 
 ‘ white field.’ 
 
 32. A Church militant. ‘ The Church militant here on earth ’ 
 is a phrase in the English ‘ Book of Common Prayer.’ 
 
 Page 20. 
 
 1. 2. Representative government. It would be nearer the 
 truth to substitute ^ parliamentary ’ for ‘ representative.’ There 
 was scarcely any attempt to make government representative of 
 the people until the agitation for Parliamentary reform at the 
 end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. 
 
 7. On behalf of our neighbours. English society was not 
 afl’ected by the wars succeeding the French Eevolution. 
 
 13. The fabulous Roman martyr, Curtius. The legend is as 
 follows : — A gulf opened mysteriously in the Eomau Forum, 
 and could not be filled up. The priests declared that it would 
 be closed only after Eome had cast into it her greatest treasure. 
 Thereupon Mettus Curtius, a noble Eoman youth, mounted his 
 horse in complete armour, and declaring that Eome’s greatest 
 treasure was a brave citizen, leapt into the gulf, which immedi¬ 
 ately closed up. 
 
 15. The real English martyr, Algernon Sidney. Algernon 
 Sidney was tried and executed in 1683 for a supposed share in 
 the Ptye-house Plot. He was convicted on the evidence of his 
 own unpublished writings, wherein Eepublican sentiments were 
 discovered. It is perhaps worth noticing that a real English 
 martyr is instanced along with a fabulous Eoman one. Eoman 
 history could certainly furnish more than one martyr for liberty, 
 at least as worthy the name as Algernon Sidney. 
 
272 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 20. Armilustrium. A Roman festival for the purification of 
 arras. It was celebrated every year on 19tli of October, when 
 the citizens assembled in arras, and offered sacrifices in the 
 place called Armilnstrum, or Vicus Armilustri ’ (Smith’s Diction 
 ary of Antiquities). 
 
 22. Some killing audit. Some very severe audit. The word 
 ‘ killing ’ in this sense is slang. 
 
 30. In such cases ... of my troubles. The examination could 
 not be held until after the departure of the visitors. Thus poor 
 De Quincey was kept in a state of suspense for the greater part 
 of the week. 
 
 Page 21. 
 
 1. 9. A thorn in the flesh. The expression is St Paul’s. See 
 ii. Corinthians, xii. 7 : ‘And lest I should be exalted above 
 measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was 
 given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan,’ etc. 
 What St Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ was is doubtful,but the term 
 now signifies, as here, some one trying affliction which is sufficient 
 to mar a man’s general happiness. 
 
 10. Like many of the grim Pagan divinities. Such as Moloch, 
 the cruel God of the Phoenicians, whose ‘ grim idol ’ was 
 
 ‘ besmeared with blood 
 
 Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears.’— [Milton.) 
 
 12. Some holy vestal fire. The fire in the temple of the 
 Roman goddess Vesta, which it was among the duties of the 
 Vestal Virgins to keep ever alight. 
 
 14. Even a Pariah. The word Pariah De Quincey constantly 
 uses. We have seen (note on p. 19, line 14) that he translated the 
 Latin servum by ‘ a poor Pariah slave.’ By the word he under¬ 
 stood all outcast men and women, despised classes or races, and 
 for these he always felt and expressed a profound sympathy. 
 See the ‘Autobiography’ (Works, i. 100): ‘You have heard, 
 reader, of Pariahs. The pathos of that great idea possibly never 
 reached you. Did it ever strike you how far that idea had 
 extended ? Do not fancy it peculiar to Hindostan. Before Delhi 
 was, before Agra, or Lahore, might the Pariah say, I was.’ He 
 then goes on to instance historical cases of ‘ Pariah ’ races. The 
 student should consult the whole passage ; a very powerful and 
 beautiful one. 
 
 16. Even to the brutes within his gates. Exodus xx. 10 : ‘ But 
 the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou 
 shaft not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy 
 man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates.’ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 273 
 
 18-21. Notice these lines ; they show that De Quincey was 
 quite aware of the peculiar characteristics of his mind (see the 
 Introduction, xix). 
 
 26. Translated. Not a common use of this word. When a 
 bishop is promoted from one see to another he is said to be 
 ‘ translated.’ 
 
 32. Mr and Mrs K-. The name of this family was Kelsall. 
 
 While he was at Manchester Grammar School, De Quincey had a 
 standing invitation to the Kelsall’s house ; for he writes to his 
 mother, ‘ Except Mr Kelsall’s, there is no house in the town where 
 I can go and come away at all hours ; and even there I sometimes 
 feel an intruder. Besides, Mr K. and I have not one idea in 
 common ; and Mrs K. is often out, and oftener engaged’ (Japp’s 
 Life of De Quincey, 53). 
 
 34. A jewelly parenthesis of pathetic happiness. Parenthesis, a 
 short space or interval; an uncommon use of the word. ‘ Pathetic 
 happiness,’ pathetic in being so short; or, perhaps, because in 
 domestic happiness, such as described, there is a pathos, and the 
 contemplation of it incites feelings akin to tears. 
 
 Page 22. 
 
 10. The late Dr Arnold of Rugby. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), 
 the famous headmaster of Ilugby Scliool, author of a History of 
 Home and other works, and father of the poet and critic, Matthew 
 Arnold. The following paragraphs compose a characteristic 
 digression. De Quincey’s point is, (1) that the social conditions 
 which Dr Arnold remarked are effects of a rise in the position 
 of the lower classes. As the individuals comprising the lower 
 orders became free and independent, the old familiarity betw^een 
 master and servant became impossible ; (2) the change advocated 
 by Dr Arnold is only possible through ‘ domestic servitude.’ It 
 was found operative in the household of Mrs K. This is the 
 sole connection between Mrs K. and Dr Arnold, and is, it must 
 be confessed, a slight one. 
 
 Page 23. 
 
 1. 1. Domestic servitude. The word servitude generally means 
 ‘ slavery,’ not the more honourable and independent status of a 
 hired servant. 
 
 Page 24. 
 
 11. 1, 2. The little child running hither and thither, so that she 
 seemed always to be present, added to the beauty of this picture 
 of domestic happiness. 
 
 S 
 
274 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 25. ‘ Dislimned.’ See Antony and Cleopatra, IV., xiv. 10. 
 
 ‘ That which is now a horse ’ 
 
 {i.e., a cloud which has taken the shape of a horse) 
 
 ‘ even with a thought 
 
 The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, 
 
 As water in water. ’ 
 
 ‘ Limn ’ is an old word meaning to paint; ‘ dislimn,’ to paint out. 
 
 27. Were under summons for Bath. This was in the year 
 1796. 
 
 Page 25. 
 
 11. 27, 28. For a fuller account of these schools, see the ‘ Autobio¬ 
 graphy,’ the chapter entitled ‘ Warfare of a Public School,’ and 
 J app’s Life, ch. ii. De Quincey entered the Bath Grammar School 
 hr 1796, and stayed there two years. He was taken away owing to 
 an injury he had received from one of the under-masters striking 
 him. He was most unwilling to go, for the head-master of the 
 grammar school. Dr Morgan, was an excellent scholar, and De 
 Quincey benefited considerably from bis teaching. Mrs De 
 Quincey then sent her son to a private school at Winkfield, 
 Wiltshire, this school being selected chiefly owing to the religious 
 character of the head-master. But De Quincey was too advanced 
 a scholar to be able to derive much benefit from such teaching 
 as Winkfield could afford, and he stayed there only a year. 
 
 Page 26. 
 
 1. 29. In the person of Pisistratus. Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens 
 (b.c. 560-527). The story that he caused the Homeric poem to be 
 revised and re-cast is now generally regarded as being without 
 foundation. See Abbott’s History of Greece, i. 465. 
 
 31. The Athenian captives in Sicily. This story, originally re¬ 
 lated by Plutarch and Diodorus, as showing the great popularity of 
 the tragic dramatist, Euripides, among all Greek-speaking peoples, 
 has been in recent years turned to account by Robert Browning 
 in his noble poem, Balaustion’s Adventures. In the Pelo¬ 
 ponnesian War, Athens declared war on Syracuse and sent an 
 expedition against that city. The expedition ended in disastrous 
 failure. Many of the captives were sold as slaves and sent to 
 work in the stone-cpiarries. Those who could repeat portions of 
 Euripides, won the affection of their masters; others, for possessing 
 the same accomplishment, were feted and entertained by the 
 Sicilians. Grote doubts the truth of the whole story (see Grote, 
 History of Greece, lx. Curtins, however, seems willing to credit 
 it. {History of Greece, English translation, iii. 383.) The 
 
NOTES. 
 
 275 
 
 quotation is from Milton, Sonnet, iii. : (‘ When the assault was 
 intended to the city’). Eurijjides wrote a play entitled Electra. 
 Electra was the daughter of Agamemnon, and sister of Orestes. 
 We shall have further references to Electra in the text. 
 
 Page 27. 
 
 1. 5. Slave in a stone-quarry. According to the laws of ancient 
 warfare captives were generally enslaved, though of the same 
 race as the conqueror. Syracusan captives were set to work in 
 the stone-quarries,—loathsome pits, wherein many died from 
 the foul stenches. 
 
 8. The great Emathian conqueror. Alexander the Great (see 
 Milton’s Sonnet already quoted). Emathia was a district of 
 Macedonia, but in the poets the name is often used for the whole 
 kingdom. Thebes rose against Alexander’s domination when 
 Alexander was absent making war in Thrace. On Alexander’s 
 return he utterly destroyed Thebes, but spared the house of the 
 poet Pindar. Pindar, great Greek lyric poet (b.c. 522-442). 
 
 17. Nuzzur, ‘ Hind, from Arab, nazr or nazar (prop, nadhr), 
 primarily “ a vow or votive offering ” ; but, in ordinary use, a 
 ceremonial present, properly an offering from an inferior to a 
 superior, the converse of iEdm. The root is the same as that of 
 Nazarite.' Yule and Burnell. 
 
 18. ‘ Barbaric East,’ 
 
 ‘ Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 
 Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.’ 
 
 —Milton {P.L., ii. 3, 4 
 
 23. ‘ Riding up to the Soldan’s chair,’ 
 
 ‘ Where champions bold 
 Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldaii’s chair 
 Defied the best of Panim chivalry, 
 
 To mortal combat or career with lance.’ 
 
 —Milton {F.L., i, 762.) 
 
 26. Archididascalus, a. Latinised form of a Greek word. In the 
 edition of 1822, De Quincey tells us that Mr Lawson ‘ loved to 
 be called ’ Archididascalus. 
 
 Page 28. 
 
 1. 12. Horne Tooke’s case. John Horne Tooke (1736 to 1812), 
 democratic j^olitician and philological writer. He had been 
 persuaded to take orders, but afterwards endeavoured to practise 
 at the bar. He was, however, by his clerical character prevented 
 from so doing. Later he attempted to enter Parliament, but 
 was again prevented for the same reason. The rule ‘ ozice a 
 clergyman, and always a clergyman’ has been reversed by an 
 
276 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Act of Parliament of 1870. It is now possible for any one who 
 has once taken orders to renounce his clerical character, and 
 thus forego the privileges peculiar to the clergy, and at the same 
 time free himself from the disabilities. 
 
 De Quincey is right in supposing that a deacon is not in the 
 full sense a clergyman, and that the old law did not apply to him. 
 
 35. The sweet and solemn cloisters of Oxford. ‘ Cloisters,’ 
 here not in the strict sense of arched and vaulted walks 
 surrounding a quadrangle, but in the more general sense of 
 collegiate buildings. De Quincey very frequently uses the 
 noun cloister or the adjective cloistered in speaking of Oxford. 
 
 Page 29. 
 
 1. 2. Dr Byrom. John Byrom (1691-1763). He was poet and 
 prose-writer, and was also a contributor to the Spectator. His 
 work. The Universal English Shorthand, was first printed in 
 Manchester, 1749. 
 
 3. Symposium, drinking party. Gk., avtiirScriov. 
 
 7. Jilted. Cast off by the lady to whom he had been engaged 
 to be married ; a common, but not very dignified word, derived 
 from ‘Gill,’ a woman’s name, and a corruption of Lat. Juliana. 
 A woman who capriciously deceived her lovers was called a 
 ‘ jill-flirt,’ then a ‘ jilt ’; hence the verb, to jilt. 
 
 15. A strange metaphysical question. De Quincey is fond of 
 introducing, sometimes seriously, sometimes, as here, playfully, 
 curious ‘metaphysical’ questions. The ‘metaphysical’ character 
 of this question appears to rest upon the abstract nature of the 
 love which perhaps exists as ‘a thing-in-itself ’ apart from the 
 object to which it is related. 
 
 19. In Wordsworth’s ‘Ruth’ . . . upon facts. Wordsworth’s 
 poem Ruth was written in 1779. It is prefaced by the note, 
 ‘ Suggested by an account I had of a wanderer in Somersetshire.’ 
 Wordsworth had, no doubt, communicated to De Quincey the 
 details of the actual story. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Capulets . . . Montagues. The hostile families in Shake¬ 
 speare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here the ‘ Capulets ’ denote the 
 supporters of the Hanoverian Succession, the Montagues the 
 Jacobites. 
 
 David Hartley, philosopher (1705-1757); wrote OhservaUons 
 on Man, in two volumes. Coleridge was for a while much 
 influenced by Hartley’s philosophy, and called his son after 
 him. 
 
 Bishop Wilkins. Dr John Wilkins (1614-1672), Bishop of 
 Chester, was for a time head of Wadham College, Oxford, after- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 277 
 
 wards of Trinity College, Cambridge. He married tlie sister 
 of Oliver Cromwell. He wrote a curious work called The Dis¬ 
 covery of a Netv World, in which he tried to show that there 
 was probably an habitable world in the moon, and that it was 
 possible for men to travel thither. The work here referred to is 
 his Essay towards a Beal Character and a Philosophical Language 
 (London, 1668), described as ‘a masterj^iece of invention which 
 has been laughed at together with his chimaeras.’ 
 
 Leibnitz. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), born at 
 Leipsic ; studied at Jena and Nuremberg, made President of 
 the Eoyal Academy of Science at Berlin. He was patronised 
 in various ways by several of the crowned personages in Europe. 
 His philosophical writings are numerous. 
 
 Page 30. 
 
 11. 10-17. For an English house . . . quadrangle. The scheme 
 of construction of a Roman house in the latter days of the 
 Republic was, roughly, a number of apartments built round 
 a large chamber, used as a reception room, called the atrium. 
 The atrium was probably a court-yard, for there was an ojDening 
 in the roof called compluvium, through which rain fell into a 
 basin in the centre of the chamber, called the impluvium {pluere, 
 to rain, pluvia, rain). De Quincey applies the term to the 
 whole atrium. In Oxford and Cambridge Colleges the first 
 and most striking feature is the quadrangle, a large square 
 court, inclosed on all sides by buildings, and sometimes by 
 cloisters. 
 
 26, 27 . The usage here alluded to is now no longer observed 
 in Oxford. For an interesting account of Oxford life and 
 customs in De Quincey’s time, see the autobiographical paper 
 entitled ‘ Oxford ’ ( Worlcs, ii.). 
 
 27 . Millgate. The part of Manchester in which the Grammar 
 School was situated. Mrs De Quincey addressed letters to her 
 son, ‘ Master T. De Quincey, at Mr Lawson’s, Millgate, Man¬ 
 chester.’ 
 
 33. Increasing war-taxes. Under William Pitt’s government, 
 England was overburdened with taxation, in order to defray 
 the enormous expenses incurred by the war with Napoleon. 
 
 Page 31. 
 
 1. 4. aliunni, lit. foster-children, the members of a school or 
 college. 
 
 5, 6. ‘ Some great scenic . . . Athens.’ The great Athenian 
 dramatists, .iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. 
 See the edition of 1822 : ‘ When I first entered, I remember that 
 we read Sophocles.’ 
 
278 
 
 DE QUIECEY. 
 
 Scenic. A word peculiarly affected by De Quincey. 
 
 Shaken the stage. 
 
 ‘ To hear thy bnsMn tread,. 
 
 And shake a stage.’ 
 
 —Ben Jonson, To the memory of ray beloved Master William Shakespeare. 
 
 6 , 7. Never ending, still beginning. A quotation from Dryden’s 
 poem, Alexander’s Feast. 
 
 8 . Horace . . . Satires. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Roman lyri¬ 
 cal and satirical poet. The Epistles and Satires are poems, as their 
 name implies, of a didactic or satiric nature. Horace’s jests are 
 not of a very laughable description. Plagosus Orbilius. Orbilius 
 who was fond of flogging. 
 
 ‘ Memini quce plagosum mihiparvo 
 Orbilium dictare ; 
 
 fverses) which, I remember, Orbilius, who was fond of flogging, 
 made me learn when I was a little boy’ {Epistles, ii., i. 70, 71). 
 Orbilius Pupillus, a native of Beneventum, was Horace’s school¬ 
 master. 
 
 27. Punishments that appealed to the . . . pain. De Quincey, 
 conservative, even vehemently conservative in most things, was 
 liberal even to sentimentality on the question of corporal punish¬ 
 ment. See the chapter of the ‘ Autobiography ’ entitled ‘ My 
 brother Pink’ {Works, i.), where he says that ‘all corporal piinish- 
 ments wliatsoever, and upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful, and 
 an indignity to our common nature, which (with or without our 
 consent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer. Degrading 
 Mm, they degrade us.’ The abominable treatment which De 
 Quincey’s brother Richard (Pink) received at the hands of a 
 brutal schoolmaster, and the painful results to which that treat¬ 
 ment led, no doubt confirmed De Quincey in the extreme view 
 he held on the subject of bodily chastisement. As a principle 
 his doctrine is not easy to justify ; as a rule of practice, as human 
 conditions exist, impossible. 
 
 30. How then was discipline maintained. From the letters De 
 Quincey wrote at the time to his mother, it would appear that 
 discipline was very ill maintained, if at all. ‘ At Mr Lawson’s,’ 
 he writes, ‘ it is true, there is a form of restraint kept up, and 
 only a form; for the restraint itself is what any person may 
 elude ! I could prove this to you from many instances of the 
 most unbridled licentiousness which have fallen under my 
 observation,’ etc., etc. He goes on to beg to be removed from the 
 school, in order to be preserved ‘ from profligacy ’ (see De Quincey 
 Memorials, edited by A. H. Japp, vol. i. 81). It is to be noticed 
 that De Quincey, in his revised Confessions, is disposed to take a 
 far more favourable view of Manchester Grammar School and of 
 
NOTES. 
 
 279 
 
 its head-master than he did, not only in these boyish letters, but 
 also in the edition of 1822. 
 
 35-36. When boys . . . female smiles. This passage should be 
 compared with the chapter of the autobiographical paper, ‘ Prema¬ 
 ture Manhood,’ in which De Quincey describes the circumstances 
 under which he first became conscious of having attained this 
 period of life. The occasion was an accidental meeting with a 
 beautiful and generous Irish girl, a Miss Blake. She suddenly 
 ‘ illuminated, to my own startled consciousness, never again to be 
 obscured, the pure and j^owerf ul ideal of womanhood and womanly 
 excellence. This was in a proper sense a revelation; it fixed a great 
 change in my life.’ The passage is a long one, l)ut well worth 
 reading, not only for its own sake, but as showing the noble purity 
 and lofty idealism which was an essential element in De Quincey’s 
 nature. 
 
 Page 32. 
 
 1.11. It happened luckily. Luckily perhaps, for this imaginary 
 discipline ; most unluckily, as it turned out, for De Quincey’s 
 own health, and indeed his whole future career. 
 
 21. A dark crypt. Crypt, from Gk. kpvtttw, 1 hide. A vault, 
 wholly or 2 :)artly under ground. Many cathedrals and churches 
 have crypts, which are used either for burial j)urposes or as 
 additional chapels. 
 
 31. Base mechanic school. This exaggerated, metaphorical way 
 of sjDeaking of the junior school is quite in De Quincey’s style. 
 
 36. Lord Bacon it is, etc. The reference seems to be to Bacon’s 
 essay (xx.) on Counsel: —‘ A long table and a square table, or seats 
 about the walls, seem things of form, but are things of substance : 
 for at a long table a few at the ujjper end, in effect, sway all the 
 business : but in the other form there is more use of the coun¬ 
 sellors’ ojiinions that sit lower.’ It will be noticed that Bacon 
 really says something very different from what De Quincey 
 imparts to him; indeed, Bacon is giving a piece of simjple, 
 practical advice without any thought of ‘ subtle jjolicy.’ I am 
 indebted to the Eev. P. W. Kellett, M.A., Professor of History 
 in the Madras Christian College, for jiointing out to me the 
 passage in Bacon which De Quincey evidently had in mind. 
 
 Page 33. 
 
 1. 1. A perihelion and an aphelion, terms in astronomy ; the 
 perihelion (Gk. Trepi, near ; the sun) is the I'C'ut in the orbit 
 
 of a jdanet which is nearest to the sun ; the a^^helion (Gk. airo 
 and fjXios) is the remotest j^oint. 
 
 5. Thus the Lucifer. Milton’s Lucifer, who strove 
 ‘ To set himself in glory above his peers.’ 
 
 —Paradise Lost, i. 39. 
 
28 o 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 6 , 7. He subtended. . . hypotbenuse. See Euclid, Bk. i. 47, 
 and see the Introduction (De Quincey’s Writings), on the peculi¬ 
 arities of De Quinceys humour. 
 
 8. Atlas. One of the Titans who ‘warred on Jove’; he was 
 condemned to bear the heavens (figured as a globe) on his 
 shoulders. The myths about Atlas are confused and incon¬ 
 sistent. 
 
 11. John O’Groat’s house. The most northerly point in Scot¬ 
 land. The story referred to by De Quincey is as follows : John 
 O’Groat and his cousins used to meet at this point annually to 
 celebrate the memory of some ancestor of theirs, De Groot. As 
 they fell out about a question of precedency, each desiring to 
 preside at table, John settled the difficulty by building a room 
 with as many sides as there were cousins, and making a table 
 with as many sides as there were sides to the room ; then all, or 
 none, presided. 
 
 16. King Arthur. King Arthur’s ‘ Table Bound ’ is well 
 known. Malory, however, says that Arthur made his table of 
 this shape because the world is round. The table was ‘ an image 
 of the mighty world.’ 
 
 17. Charlemagne. Charlemagne (742-814), greatest of mediaeval 
 monarchs in actual history, became the centre of a cycle of 
 romance as falDulous as those surrounding the British Arthur. 
 Paladin, deriv. Palatium', palace, a knight of the palace. The 
 Paladins were the immediate followers of Charlemagne. The 
 most famous of them are Oliver, Boland (Orlando) and Ogier the 
 Dane. 
 
 19. Round-robin. The name is a corruption of French rond 
 ruban, round ribbon. The names are signed in a circle, so that 
 no one heads the list. 
 
 20, 21. Harrington .... Oceana. James Harrington (1611- 
 1677). Oceana is a political allegory. It was published in 1656. 
 
 31, 32. In all these cases .... consequences. The foregoing 
 passage is a most unblushing digression, even for De Quincey 
 (see the Introduction). The generalisation is that very common 
 one, that ‘ great results often flow from small causes ’; and the 
 particular truth deduced is, ‘ So it happened from our want of a 
 playground.’ There is absolutely nothing in the various illustra¬ 
 tions quoted in the text similar to De Quincey’s jrersonal illus¬ 
 tration ; but there seemed an opportunity for much erudite 
 trifling, and De Quincey seized it, and hence the display of 
 philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, poetry, mythology, romance- 
 lore, and old English literature. 
 
 Page 34. 
 
 1. 4. Occasional conformists. Under the Clarendon Code and 
 
NOTES. 
 
 281 
 
 the Test Act (temp. Charles II.), office under the crown, of what¬ 
 soever kind, and all municipal office, was restricted to members of 
 the Church of England. Such membership was proved by 
 willingness to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the 
 Churcli of England. Many Dissenters, unwilling to be deprived 
 of their political privileges, made a practice of receiving the 
 sacrament occasionally, in order to qualify them for office. They 
 were called ‘ occasional conformists.’ Later legislation has done 
 away with this bad business. 
 
 27-35. But in no long time.literature. This is a point 
 
 on which De Quincey is very fond of insisting (see Works, i. 
 150, 151, footnote). It is characteristic of him that he should 
 think it worth while spending so much time and argument in 
 controverting a popular error, which to most people would appear 
 of the most trifling importance, and that such an elucidation 
 should appear as a digression in the body of a paragraph already 
 overloaded with digressions. 
 
 35. Suetonius. 0. Suetonius Tranquillus, born about the 
 beginning of the reign of Vespasian, contemporary and friend of 
 the younger Pliny. He was a voluminous historian, the greatest 
 of his works being his Lives of the Gsesars. The work here alluded 
 to is his De Illustribus Grammaticis. It is a little book, probably 
 a fragment, consisting of short biographical sketches of noted 
 ‘ grammatici.’ It may be mentioned that ‘ plagosus Orbilius ’ 
 flgures among them. Suetonius gives as the Latin equivalent of 
 the Greek ypa/i/xartKoi, the word literati, and quotes a defini¬ 
 tion of Cornelius Nepos, that literati are Cos qui aliquid dili- 
 genter et acute scienterque possint aut dicere, aut scribere ; ceterum 
 ■proprie sic appellandos ' poetarum interpretes, qui a Graecis 
 ypa/xfiariKot nominantur — those who can speak or write learnedly, 
 ingeniously, and philosophically ; but especially commentators 
 on the poets must be so called—who are called by the Greeks 
 grammatici.' It would thus appear that a ‘ grammaticus,’ accord¬ 
 ing to Suetonius’s conception, was not ecpiivalent to our ‘ man 
 of letters,’ or the French litterateur, but was rather something 
 between a literary critic and a lecturer on literature. 
 
 37. The Flavian family. The family of the Emperor 
 Vespasian. 
 
 Page 35. 
 
 11. 11, 12. Saddened by .... on the other. Obstinacy on the 
 part of the guardian, Mr Hall, and in a lesser degree of De 
 Quincey’s mother ; folly on his own part. 
 
 13. My guardian. Mr Hall. 
 
 14, 15. The Spectator . . . Steele. The famous periodical of 
 Addison, Steele, and others (see any Handbook to English 
 
282 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Literature). The Bpectator essays are often used for the purj)ose 
 here instanced. 
 
 18. And here I ought .... explanation. The passage referred 
 to is as follows;—‘ I was sent to various schools, great and small, 
 and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, 
 especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote 
 Greek with ease, and at fifteen my command of that language 
 was so great that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric 
 metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and without em¬ 
 barrassment—an accomplishment which I have not since met 
 with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was 
 owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into 
 
 the best Greek I could furnish extempore . “ That boy,” 
 
 said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to 
 me, “ that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you 
 and I could address an English one.” ’ 
 
 The explanation is, from one point of view, important. It 
 shows De Quincey’s anxiety, contrary to what was once believed, 
 to adhere to the strictest accuracy in the narration of his own 
 personal history (see the Introduction). 
 
 30. Port-Royal Greek Grammar. One of the grammars drawn 
 up by the Jansenists, a body of recluses, whose chief retreat was 
 the abbey of Port-Royal, 15 miles from Paris. The Jansenists 
 (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) founded many schools, and 
 produced educational works. Their grammars differed from 
 those of their rivals, the Jesuits, in being written in French, not 
 in English. Dr Nugent. Thomas Nugent, LL.D., F.F. A., author 
 of a French and English Dictionary, etc. Died 1772. 
 
 32. Res metrica. Versification in Greek and Latin. 
 
 33. Morell. Thomas Morell (1703-1784), a well-known 
 classical scholar and lexicographer. 
 
 Page 36. 
 
 1. 10. Bentley, Valckenaer, and Person. Richard Bentley (Pope’s 
 ‘slashing Bentley’), 1661-1742. See De Quincey’s long and 
 valuable paper on Bentley (Works, iv.): Louis Caspar Valckenaer 
 (1715-1820), born at Leeuwarden in Friesland ; became professor 
 of Greek and other subjects at Leyden. Richard Person (1759- 
 1808), professor of Greek at Cambridge. Edited Euripides and 
 jSiSchylus, etc. etc. 
 
 22. Richard Dawes (1708-1766), sometime head-master of the 
 Grammar School, Newcastle-on-Tyne. The Micellanea Gritica is 
 a collection of critical remarks on ancient authors. 
 
 23. A very martinet. The common meaning is a very strict 
 disciplinarian, from a M. Martinet, a French colonel in the reign 
 of Louis XIV. Here a most exact scholar. 
 
NO TES. 
 
 283 
 
 24. Greek composition. Not, as generally, tire art of turning 
 a passage of English or some other language into Greek, hut the 
 mechanism, etc., of actual Greek prose or poetry. 
 
 Footnote. Middleton. Thomas Fanshawe Middleton (1769-1822). 
 The work relerred to is The Doctrine of the Greek Article afiMed to 
 the Criticism ctnd the Illustration of the New Testament. London, 
 1808. 
 
 Pccge 37. 
 
 9. Copia verborum. Supply of words, vocabulary. 
 
 Page 38. 
 
 I. 1. The society of accomplished women. De Quincey is 
 especially thinking of Lady Carbery, of whom we shall hear 
 further on. For an account of Lady Carbery, her accomplish¬ 
 ments, and De Quincey’s joint studies with her, see the Autobio¬ 
 graphical paper entitled Laxton, Northamiotonshire (Works, vol. 
 i.). 
 
 13. When visiting Lord Altamont at Eton. Then Lord West- 
 jrort. De Quincey was for sometime the friend and companion 
 of Lord Westport, son of the Earl of Altamont, an Irish peer. 
 Lord Altamont was afterwards created Marquis of Sligo, when 
 Lord Westport took the title of Altamont. The Lord Altamont 
 here referred to sircceeded in his turn to the Marquisate of Sligo. 
 For an account of De Quincey’s visit to Etoir, of his friendship 
 with young Lord Westport, and with his father, see the latter 
 part of the first volume of Masson’s edition of The WorJts, and 
 Dr Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, vol. i. 
 
 35. To agree with the late Dr Cooke Taylor. William Cooke 
 Taylor (1800-1849). Amongst other works he wrote Memoirs of 
 the House of Orleans, A History of Mohammed,anism, etc. 
 
 In the Autobiography (Works, i. 384, 385) De Quincey writes 
 thus : ‘ Elsewhere I have expressed the inexhaustible admiration 
 which I cherish for the moral qualities, the imrivalled energy and 
 perseverance, of that native Lancashire population, as yet not 
 much alloyed with Celtic adulteration. My feelings towards 
 them are the same as were eloquently and impressively worded 
 by the late eminent Dr Cooke Taylor, after an offcial inquiry 
 into their situation.’ The work here referred to is probably 
 Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire 
 (London, 1842). 
 
 Page 39. 
 
 II. 1-6. The musical skill revealed. Lancashire and the neigh¬ 
 bouring county of Yorkshire still maintain this reputation. It 
 
284 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 is common, at Christmas times, for operatives to sing together, 
 and sing loell, while at their work in the mills, and one often in 
 railway trains hears a number of Lancashire or Yorkshire 
 artisans, men and women, returning from some holiday-making, 
 singing part-songs in perfect harmony. 
 
 4. Handel. George Frederic (1684-1769), one of the greatest 
 of the great German master-musicians. He came to England in 
 1710 , and remained there till his death. In England he composed 
 his great oratorio. The Messiah, and many other magnificent 
 works. The oratorios of Handel depend much on the adequate 
 rendering of the great choruses, which are very elaborate com¬ 
 positions. Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 9. Brought out some brandy. This little incident scarcely 
 speaks very highly for the discipline of the school. 
 
 21. Grotius. Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), a great Dutch 
 scholar and political philosopher. Besides this treatise On the 
 Truth of the Christian Religion, he wrote De Jure Pads et Belli 
 (On the Laws of Peace and War), Institutions of the Laws of Hol¬ 
 land, etc., etc. 
 
 28. So signally praised by Lord Bacon. Mr Kellett w'rites to me 
 ‘ As to Grotius’ De Jure Pads et Belli, I do not believe that Bacon 
 anywhere in his works refers to it. It was published in 1625 when 
 Bacon’s writing was practically over.’ Bacon died in 1626. In 
 the earlier Confessions De Quincey ascribed a saying of Bacon’s 
 to Jeremy Taylor. He appears to have made a similar blunder 
 here. Some one else must have ‘signally praised’ the De Jure. 
 
 36. Lardner and Paley. Dr Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), 
 wrote The Credibility of the Gospel History, The Testimonies of 
 the Ancient Jews and Pagans in Favour of Christianity., etc. etc. 
 William Paley (1743-1805) ; as a writer and thinker Paley was 
 greatly esteemed in his own day and since, but latterly his fame 
 has suffered an eclipse. The work alluded to here is A View of 
 the Evidences of Christianity, published in two volumes in 1794. 
 In addition to this he wrote Horae Paulinae, Natural Theology or 
 Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, etc., etc. 
 For De Quincey’s mature views of the merits of Paley, see the 
 paper entitled ‘Oxford’ (WorJcs, ii. 62). There he praises the 
 vigour of Paley’s literary style, but in a very unqualified manner 
 condemns him as a thinker,—‘ Paley, as a philosopher, is a jest, 
 the disgrace of the age.’ 
 
 Page 40. 
 
 6. Dr Edward Pococke (1604-1691), became Professor of 
 Hebrew at Oxford ; wrote Specimen Historiae Arabum, Com¬ 
 mentaries on the Minor Prophets, etc. etc. The legend alluded to 
 is a silly story of a pigeon which was taught to pick seeds from 
 
NOTES, 
 
 285 
 
 Mahomet’s ear, so that it should be thought that the pigeon was 
 whispering to the prophet divine messages from Heaven. The 
 tale thus imputes to Mahomet a gross piece of imposture. It 
 was common amongst Christians to regard Mahomet as an 
 impostor, a view which, largely owing to Carlyle’s great lecture 
 on The Hero as Prophet, has, even among the vulgar, practically 
 died out. De Quincey’s own notion of Mahomet, as indeed of all 
 non-Christian religious teachers or philosophers, is miserably 
 inadequate (see his Essay, ‘ Greece under the Romans,’ Wo7'ks, vii.). 
 For a further reference to Pococke’s criticism of Grotius, see 
 Works, iii. 87. 
 
 18. The Franks. From the time of the Crusades the Saracens 
 classed all European Christians under the common name of 
 Franks. The Franks, who have given their name to France, 
 were, of course, merely a German tribe, and the name simply 
 signifies ‘ free men ’ (franci). 
 
 38. G- (a boy whom, etc.). See Infra, p. 62. We learn 
 
 from Dr Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, vol. i. 57, that this G- 
 
 was Ashurst Turner Gilbert, afterwards Bishop of Chichester. 
 He was the son of Thomas Gilbert of Ratcliffe, Buckinghamshire, 
 a captain in the Royal Marines, was educated at Manchester 
 Grammar School from 1800 to 1805, proceeded to Brasenose 
 College, Oxford, where he obtaiired a first class in Classics, 
 became a Fellow, and in 1822 Principal of his College. 
 In 1842 he was nominated by the Duke of Wellington to 
 the Bishopric of Chester. Dr Japp publishes a very interest¬ 
 ing letter from Mrs Baird Smith, De Quincey’s daughter, in 
 which she refers to a saying of her father’s, which she believes 
 to be somewhere in his published works (it was probably in 
 some private letter), that of his two schoolmates in the first form 
 at Manchester, the one became a bishop, the other was hanged 
 for sheep-stealing. The sheep-stealer’s identity Mrs Baird 
 Smith never discovered, but with regard to the other, some few 
 years after her father’s death, she made the ‘greatly prized 
 friendship of the daughter of this very schoolfellow, the Bishop ’ ; 
 and at her house met ‘ the delightful and gracious old man 
 himself, who had remembered my father with life-long regard 
 and interest.’ 
 
 Page 41. 
 
 1. 4. As drawing in harness. As being one of a pair ; being 
 of equal worthlessness. 
 
 7, 8. Which . . . historical personage. The first Crusade, 1076, 
 was at first led by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless. They 
 were followed by a huge and disorderly mass of peasants. ‘ Their 
 genuine leaders,’ says Gibbon {Decline and Fall, Ivii.), ‘ (may we 
 
286 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 credit such folly ?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in 
 front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion 
 of the divine spirit.’ Gibbon quotes from Albertus Aquensis, 
 a canon of Aix-la-Chapelle in the twelfth century. This shows 
 that the story was believed by Christians, if also by Mahomedans. 
 De Quincey seems to think that the story of the goose arose from 
 the fact of some man, whose name was corrupted into ‘ goose,’ 
 being a leader of the rabble. Others suppose that the goose and 
 goat were symbols of the mysterious faith of the Gnostics and 
 Paulicians. See Cox, The Crusades, 39, 
 
 Page 42, Footnote. 
 
 Dr Clarke’s Commentary, Adam Clarke, LL.D, (1762-1832). 
 He was for twenty years a travelling Methodist preacher. He 
 published a number of works, theological, biographical, and 
 antiquarian, amongst them the Commentary on the Bible, which is 
 here referred to. 
 
 ‘ Out of sight, out of mind.’ ‘ And when he is out of sight, 
 quickly also is he out of mind.’ Imitatio Christi, i. 23. Possibly 
 the familiar saying is of much earlier origin. 
 
 Page 43. 
 
 1. 11. In the favourite reading .... of Oxford. On this 
 point compare the paper on ‘ Oxford ’ (Works, ii. 57, and following 
 pages), where De Quincey makes exactly the same comment on 
 the ignorance of youthful Oxonians respecting their own litera¬ 
 ture, and also of his own early familiarity with the great English 
 poets. (‘ Already, at fifteen, I had made myself familiar with 
 the great English poets.’) The reproach lias of recent years very 
 largely passed from the shoulders of Oxford and Cambridge 
 undergraduates, and complaints of a contrary kind are now 
 frequently heard, namely, that young men, who have passed 
 through one or other of the Universities with more than credit, 
 have but a scanty knowledge of the languages and literature of 
 Greece and Rome. It is probable that a real acquaintance with 
 both ancient and modern languages is possible to a very few, 
 such as De Quincey himself; and De Quincey, who over and 
 over again declares the superiority of modem, and especially of 
 English literature, over that of even the Greeks, would have con¬ 
 doned the more modern error. The neglect of, and even contempt 
 for, modern literature, is undoubtedly a legacy from the Renais¬ 
 sance. Milton, for instance, in his scheme of education, compre¬ 
 hensive as it is, has no place at all for the literature of his own 
 country. 
 
NOTES. 287 
 
 34. A voice so trumpet-tongued. Shakespeare, Macbeth, L, vii. 
 19. 
 
 ‘ His virtues 
 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-otf.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Strict or not strict. Until recent years the different Colleges 
 at Oxford and Cambridge had a number of scholarships for 
 which only alumni of particular schools mighCcompete. Latterly, 
 most of these scholarships have been thrown open, although , 
 some still exist. The connection between great public schools 
 and particular Colleges at either University is not nearly so 
 close now as it used to be. Still, however, there is a sort of con¬ 
 nection between Winchester School and New College, Oxford, 
 and between Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. 
 
 Page 44. 
 
 1. 2. English poetry or eloquence. See what is said further on, 
 on the Elizabethan drama and the great seventeenth century 
 theologians. 
 
 22. Nationality, i.e., national prejudice, an unusual use of 
 the word, but common with De Quincey. Nationality, a base 
 sentiment, he regards as a perversion of patriotism, a noble senti¬ 
 ment ; see above, page 13, 1, where he speaks of an ignoble 
 ‘ nationality ’ on the part of the Greeks ; and the Bevolt of the 
 Tartars, vii. See also note on page 13, line 1 . 
 
 36. Chateaubriand. Francois Auguste Eene, Viscount de 
 Chateaubriand (1758-1848). In 1793 he was obliged to fly his 
 country, came to England, and remained there for seven years. 
 His fortunes brightened. He became a peer and minister of state, 
 and from 1822 to 1825 was ambassador extraordinary to the 
 British Court. He produced a number of works on various 
 subjects. Chateaubriand’s work to which De Quincey alludes is 
 Sketches of English Literature, with considerations on the spirit, of 
 the times, men and Revolutions. The book was intended to 
 precede a French translation of Milton. Milton is dealt with at 
 great length in Part IV., and, in the epilogue with which the 
 work concludes, the author returns once more to take leave of his 
 favourite poet. 
 
 Page 45. 
 
 1. 6 . The Testimony of Balaam. See Numbers xxii.-xxiv. 
 Balaam, the prophet, being called upon by King Balak to curse 
 the Israelites, was unable to utter anything but blessings. 
 
 21. Miltonic sublimity. Sublimity, by the common consent of 
 competent critics, is the grand distinguishing feature of Milton’s 
 
288 
 
 DE QUINCE V. 
 
 mind and style. Compare Matthew Arnold’s verdict on him, 
 that he is the one English master in the ‘ great style.’ Essays in 
 Criticism, ii. 
 
 38. Bibliothecae, a Latinised form of the Greek 
 libraries, collections of hooks. 
 
 Page 46. 
 
 1. 3. M. Cousin, Victor Cousin (1792-1867), French philosopher. 
 He wrote largely, and amongst other things translated the 
 complete works of Plato. 
 
 13-15. Donne.Barrow. John Donne, poet and 
 
 preacher (1573-1631) ; Edward Chillingworth, scholar and 
 theologian, author of The Religion o/Profesictwfc (1602-1644) ; Sir 
 Thomas Browne (1609-1652), author of the Religio Medici, Urn 
 Burial, etc. ; Eobert South (1633-1716), the ‘ wittiest of English 
 divines.’ Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), mathematician and theo¬ 
 logian. His Sermons are well known. De Quincey shares 
 Charles Lamb’s enthusiasm for the seventeenth century writers. 
 For sometime before Lamb’s day they were scarcely known 
 and never read. 
 
 28. About the year 1580 to the period (say 1635), i.e. to seven 
 years before the outbreak of the Civil War. This period would 
 include all the great dramatists from Marlow to Shirley ; the 
 Kestoration playwrights being, of course, excluded. De Quincey’s 
 enthusiasm for the old dramatists he again owed probably to 
 Lamb, whose Specimens of English Dramatic Poets contemporary 
 with Shakespeare, published in 1808, was amongst the first 
 influences which effected a revival of interest in that great but 
 then neglected field of English literature. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Transcendent prudence, i.e. not prudence as vulgarly understood, 
 the prudence which seeks the thing materially profitable, or pro¬ 
 fitable from a ‘ hedonistic,’ pleasurable point of view ; but the 
 prudence which seeks the highest good (summum honum) ; the end 
 which man ought to set before him. This end De Quincey, in 
 spite of various whimsical utterances, which seem to read other¬ 
 wise, held, with Kant, was not pleasure. 
 
 Page 47. 
 
 1. 1. Carnival display. In the Roman Catholic cities of Europe, 
 Shrove Tuesday, the day before the long fast of Lent begin.s, is 
 held as a festival, the feast of Carnival (Lat. carni levamen, 
 solace to his flesh—usually, but wrongly, derived carni vale, 
 farewell to flesh meat). On this occasion people disguise them- 
 
NOTES. 289 
 
 selves in fantastic costxames and give themselves up to unrestrained 
 merriment. 
 
 Mask and anti-mask. Mask, an entertainment of a fantastic kind 
 of music and dancing, in which the faces of the performers were 
 disguised in masks. It was very common in Shakespeare’s time. 
 By ‘ mask and anti-mask ’ De Quincey probably means a two¬ 
 fold entertainment, in which two separate bodies of maskers re¬ 
 spond to one another alternately in dance or song, dressed so as 
 to serve as a mutual contrast, symbolising opposing emotions or 
 passions. 
 
 4. Quicquid agunt homines, etc. Juvenal, Satire I., 85, 86. 
 
 9. ‘ Dance of Death.’ Hans Holbein, the famous painter, 
 executed (1538) a series of woodcuts in which death was exhibited 
 as following all sorts and conditions of men ; but the idea appears 
 to have been an old mediaeval one ; and the motive is, in its 
 sombre spirit of pathetic and even awful contrast, not without a 
 sense of the grotesque, essentially mediseval. 
 
 13. The Athenian has in a great proportion perished. Of the 
 Athenian drama all that is left are 7 plays of ASschylus, 7 of 
 Sophocles, 18 of Euripides, 11 of Aristophanes, and a few 
 fragments ; whereas each of these dramatists is known to have 
 produced many more plays ; for instance, Euripides wrote 92, 
 and there were other dramatists who sometimes carried off the 
 prize for special plays from the four mentioned, whose work is 
 lost altogether. 
 
 14. The Roman was killed . . . amphitheatre. In the second 
 century B.C., the exhibition of horrible fights between beasts and 
 beasts, between beasts and men, and between men and men 
 (gladiators) became very popular in Borne. A people, says De 
 Quincey, who found their pleasure in such actual tragedy enacted 
 before their eyes, could take small interest in the mimic tragedy 
 of the stage. There were, however, other agencies at work in 
 Rome militating against the growth of a national drama. (See 
 Mommsen, History of Borne, vol. ii.). Roman comedy reached 
 some degree of importance under Plautus and Terence, but 
 Roman Tragedy has practically no history. At its best the 
 Roman Drama was an imitation, coming at times to mere 
 translation, of the Greek. 
 
 16. Calderon, Spanish Dramatist (1600-1687). 
 
 17-21. And the French.English. See, as a further 
 
 development of what is here said, the Essay entitled Lord Carlisle 
 on Pope (Works, xi. 142, 143), written in 1851. The other and 
 profounder objections, alluded to as disqualifying the French 
 Drama, lie in the fact that the French Drama, at least French 
 Tragedy, was a cold imitation of the ancient Classical Drama, 
 as opposed in its spirit to the Shakespearian Drama, as the 
 
 T 
 
290 
 
 DE QUINCE V. 
 
 pseudo-classic is to the Romantic. It insisted, for instance, on 
 the necessity of observing the ‘unities’ which the English 
 drama totally disregarded, and held as simply ‘ barbarous ’ much 
 that constitutes the special power and grandeur of Elizabethan 
 dramatic literature. On this point ‘full justice’ has been done 
 by more than one critic since De Quincey wrote. In the essay 
 above alluded to, De Quincey speaks of the French drama as 
 having ever been in murderous antagonism to every principle 
 and agency by which our own lives and moves. 
 
 Footnotes. Juvenal, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the greatest of 
 Roman satiric poets, flourished towards the close of the first 
 century, a.d. 
 
 Corneille, Pierre Corneille, French dramatist (1606-1684). 
 He was mainly a writer of tragedies. 
 
 Guizot. An eminent French historian, critic and man of 
 letters (1787-18V4.) 
 
 Rotrou or of Hardy. Jean de Rotrou (1609-1660), French 
 tragic writer. He was a friend of Corneille’s. 
 
 Alexandre Hardi, French dramatist (1560-1630). On Hardi, 
 De Quincey {JVorh, xl. 142) has the following note ; ‘Hardi it 
 is scarcely necessary to mention, as he never became a power 
 even in France, and out of France was quite unknown. He 
 coincided in point of time, I believe, most nearly with Francis 
 Beaumont.’ 
 
 Page 48. 
 
 1. 1. Scenical, a word constantly used by De Quincey. By 
 scenical he means something much more than ‘ dramatic, 
 theatrical.’ He uses the word perpetually, because the aspect 
 of things which it conveyed to him was so often before his mind. 
 It seems to represent the mysterious pageant of human Hfe, 
 magnificent in its great and conflicting emotions of horror, pity 
 and awe. Such emotions a ‘ romantic, picturesque age ’ naturally 
 felt, and could thus naturally represent; they were alien to the 
 artificial character of a pseudo-classic age. 
 
 4. The fastidiousness of French taste. See note on p. 47, 
 17-21. 
 
 13. Treading daily .... shoon. Milton, Comus, 634, 635. 
 
 ‘ And the dull swain 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon.’ 
 
 15. High-minded foreigners. Such as Chateaubriand, already 
 mentioned, and in later times M. Taine and M. Scherer, among 
 the French, and the whole body of German critics and poets, 
 who have spoken and written so much in glory of English 
 
NOTES. 
 
 291 
 
 Literature. As has been mentioned, English Literature is no 
 longer neglected in England ; and even when De Quincey wrote, 
 the reaction had set in so far as to make his somewhat strong 
 language on the subject scarcely justifiable. 
 
 Footnote. Charles Lamb. De Quincey refers to Charles Lamb 
 as tlie most exquisite critic of Shakespeare that England has 
 produced, and the one tlierefore most likely to recognise 
 Shakespearian characteristics manifesting themselves in other 
 writers. 
 
 The ‘Microcosm’ (lit. ‘the universe in a little.’ Gk. niKpos Koa-f^os). 
 An Eton school magazine to which Canning contributed largely. 
 Canning is, of course, George Canning (1770-1827), the celebrated 
 orator and statesman. At the present day every respectable 
 public school has its magazine, conducted more or less by the hoys 
 themselves. 
 
 Page 49. 
 
 11. 1, 2. I have since known many literary men. De Quincey’s 
 literary friends included most English writers of anything like 
 eminence who were his contemporaries, and included men of 
 such wide reading as Coleridge, Southey, and Carlyle, a fact 
 which makes what follows about the united knowledge of the 
 Manchester Grammar School boys somewhat startling. 
 
 17. Froissart .... Lord Berners. John Froissart (1337- 
 1401), French historian and poet. His history, one of the most 
 charming products of mediaeval literature, deals mainly with 
 the wars of Edward III. in France, and contemporary events in 
 France and Flanders. The translation of Lord Berners (1467 (?) 
 -1532) was until very recently scarcely accessible, the more 
 modern version by Johnes having taken its place. Specimens, 
 however, of Berners are given in Skeat’s Specimens of English 
 Literature, and Mr G. C. Macaulay has this year (1895) edited for 
 the Glole Edition a reduced version of Berner’s Froissart. Berner’s 
 translation was undertaken by order of King Henry VIIL, and 
 was published 1523-1525. 
 
 30. With deep self-reproach. It may be noticed that there is 
 nothing of this ‘ self-reproach ’ expressed in the edition of 
 1822. 
 
 Page 50. 
 
 1.18. Thalberg. Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871), pianist and 
 musical composer, born at Geneva, attained great success in 
 Vienna and London. 
 
 19-21. Too soon I became aware.indispensable. This 
 
 confession is characteristic of the writer, and may be true so far 
 as he himself is concerned. But it seems that De Quincey could 
 
292 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 be no fit judge on this matter, since be expressly tells us that he 
 never attained anything like proficiency as a pianist. To De 
 Quincey’s nature entire passiveness vras necessary in order that 
 his enjoyment should be complete, but a skilled musician would 
 probably maintain that the joy of actively evoking beautiful 
 music is at least as deep and even ‘voluptuous’ as the joy of 
 passively receiving such sounds when called forth by another. 
 The whole passage, however, is significant of De Quincey. 
 
 Page 51. 
 
 1. 6. It was too big to hang upon willows. ‘ We hanged our 
 harps upon the willows.’ Psalm cxxxvii. 2. 
 
 21. When peace was brooding over all the land. The treaty of 
 Amiens between England, France, and the other belligerents was 
 signed in March 1801. War, however, broke out again in 1804, and 
 did not end until after the Battle of Waterloo. The passage is 
 highly characteristic. De Quincey, as is exemplified many times 
 in his impassioned prose, had a tendency to compare and fuse 
 the ‘ subjective ’ with the ‘ objective,’—the passions and conflicts 
 of the great world without, with the passions and conflicts in the 
 human spirit. Compare how the two are blended in the ‘ Dream 
 Fugue’ (Works, xiii.). 
 
 80-34. Since, even to myself.inexplicable. De Quincey 
 
 cannot explain why he acted as he did (i.e. run away from 
 Manchester Grammar School), unless he calls up vividly to mind 
 the exact nature of his sufferings and their extent. Then the 
 thing becomes clear. 
 
 33. My better angel. His inclination towards right. The 
 old idea that every human soul has attending on him two angels, 
 an angel of light and an angel of darkness, the former inciting 
 to good, the latter tempting to ill. 
 
 35, 36. Now that it becomes possible .... whole truth. See a 
 letter by De Quincey to the editor of the London Magazine, dated 
 December 1821, which is printed as an appendix to the present 
 volume. Upon the first appearance of The Confessions some 
 critics, notably Mr Robert Montgomery, had questioned whether 
 the events related were founded upon actual fact or were fictitious. 
 De Quincey replied that he had told nothing hut the truth, but 
 from motives of delicacy, towards persons still living, he could 
 not tell the whole truth. As Professor Masson has pointed out, 
 the chief reason for the suppression of certain facts was Mrs De 
 Quincey, the writer’s mother, who lived for many years after the 
 publication of the earlier confessions. Much more recent critics 
 have thrown doubt upon De Quincey’s loyalty to truth in his 
 autobiographical writings, but Dr Japp, with the aid of MSS. 
 material supplied him by De Quincey’s family, has thoroughly 
 
NOTES. 293 
 
 cleared De Qirincey’s reputation in this matter, and established 
 for him a faithfulness to truth, even in unimportant detail. (See 
 Japp’s De Quincey Memorials). 
 
 Page 52. 
 
 11. 24, 25. Sealed and ratified, etc. Made it certain that the dis¬ 
 asters that were threatening him would actually take place. The 
 figurativeness of the passage is very characteristic of Ue Quincey. 
 
 32. All secondary hope. If De Quincey’s first hope, i.e. removal 
 from the school, could not be realised, still his suflering might 
 have been alleviated in several ways. His mother or guardian 
 might have expostulated with effect with Mr Lawson, or could 
 have procured him a better physician; but De Quincey never 
 attempted any of these things. His correspondence with his 
 mother at this time, recently published by Dr JapjD in his De 
 Quincey Memorials, shows very unmistakably tlie fatal misunder¬ 
 standing which existed between the two, and how little was 
 done by De Quincey himself to institute a better state of things. 
 But De Quincey was then, as always, thoroughly unpractical. 
 A boy of intellect infinitely inferior to his, but possessed with 
 a little more ordinary tact and common sense, would probably 
 never have fallen into the difficulties De Quincey fell into. See, 
 however, page 54. 
 
 Page 53, 8 . 
 
 11. 4-5. Being a worse man .... circle. De Quincey, for some 
 reason, seems anxious to find excuses for Mr Lawson. In the 
 earlier edition he had spoken very harshly of him. Nevertheless 
 it is doubtful whether this excuse will hold water. Had Mr 
 Lawson been a better man, he would have desisted from attempt¬ 
 ing to discharge duties for which he was obviously physically 
 unfit : he would have resigned. 
 
 17. The Collegiate Church. A church which resembles a 
 cathedral in its being governed by a chapter of canons and a 
 dean,—but which, not being the chief church in a diocese, has no 
 Cathedra or Bishop’s Throne. Since this was written Manchester 
 has become a diocese and the Collegiate Church a Cathedral, 
 
 Page 54. 
 
 11. 18-20. Gradually the liver.melancholy. Dr Eat well 
 
 in his Medical View of Mr De Quincey’s Case draws special 
 attention to this passage, and shows that those symptoms, together 
 with others elsewhere adduced, point to the fact that De Quincey 
 was suffering from ‘ gastrodynia,’ ‘ a terrible and distressing 
 disease, under the torment of which the unfortunate sufferer is 
 
294 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 frequently driven to the commission of suicide.’ This subject 
 is treated more fully in the Introduction. 
 
 34. But far better, as acting always. See p. 82. 
 
 Poige 55. 
 
 1. 1. A comatose old gentleman. A drowsy, indolent old 
 gentleman. 
 
 14. Three ‘ flittings ’ are as bad as a fire. The proverb must 
 be a Scotch one. ‘ Flitting ’ is a Scotticism meaning a removal 
 together with all goods and chattels from one house to another. 
 Hence the proverb means that three ‘ flittings ’ cause as much 
 inconvenience or pecuniary loss as the total destruction of one’s 
 house by fire would occasion. The latter part of this paragraph 
 is written with great art. The character of the incidents related 
 would have been undoubtedly tedious and dull but for the spirit 
 of humour so happily infused into them. 
 
 35. A climax of perplexity. A condition of things resulting in 
 a state of perplexity of the very highest degree. 
 
 Page 56. 
 
 1. 1. By ratifying. A word which He Quincey very frequently 
 uses ; confirming, making certain. 
 
 2. This sedentariness. The total lack of physical exercise 
 which Mr Lawson’s peculiar ways necessitated. 
 
 5. Absolute despair. Notice this passage. He Quincey explains 
 his inability to seek for any ‘secondary hope’ by the state of 
 mental despair under which he suffered. This despair was the 
 natural and inevitable consequence of his physical condition. 
 Dr Eatwell, it will be remembered, amply confirms this view. 
 
 10. My official counsellor. The apothecary. 
 
 19. With one of my guardians. This, we learn from the 
 letters published in Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, was Mr Hall. 
 The Memorials throw a good deal of light on this man’s character, 
 —not much to his advantage. He appears to have been un¬ 
 sympathetic, commonplace, and obstinate, and ended in displeas¬ 
 ing, not only De Quincey himself, but De Quincey’s mother and 
 the whole family. It was Mr Hall, as we shall see, who stood 
 in the way of De Quincey’s receiving a proper allowance whilst 
 at Oxford. In the earlier edition, De Quincey speaks of his 
 guardian as ‘ a worthy man in his way, but haughty, obstinate, 
 and intolerant of all opposition.’ He goes on : ‘ After a certain 
 number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had 
 nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter from 
 my guardian. Unconditional submission was what he demanded, 
 and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures.’ , 
 
 29. Mezzo termine. Middle course (Italian). 
 
NOTES. 
 
 295 
 
 Pa^e 57. 
 
 1. 15. On reviewing his last communication. The letter does 
 not appear to have been preserved ; but a later letter written by 
 Mr Hall, after the fatal step had been taken, is included amongst 
 the documents published in the Memorials. It shows Mr Hall to 
 have been an altogether hopeless person to deal with under the 
 circumstances, and leaves on us the impression that De Quincey 
 has been more than kind to the memory of his guardian. 
 
 19. Apothecary’s precedent. See above, p. 55. 
 
 22. In applying his potential No, i.e. he would have refused 
 to receive Ue Quincey’s letter, as De Quincey declined to take 
 the draught. 
 
 Page 58. 
 
 1. 6. Falsely supposed. See De Quincey’s paper on Oxford 
 (Works, ii.) where he makes an elaborate calculation as to the 
 necessary expenditure incidental to an University career, and 
 concludes that it is considerably less than is generally supposed. 
 
 20. The blind unconscious conspiracy of two persons, namely 
 Mr Lawson and the apothecary. 
 
 30, 31. A frantic 8.nd rapturous re-agency. Notice these 
 intensive epithets. Notice too the ‘evolution’ of the whole 
 paragraph, a splendid example of De Quincean prose. 
 
 36. Salt-licks. Places where salt is found on the surface of 
 the earth, generally situated near salt springs. 
 
 37. Leeming, generally spelt ‘lemming’ ; but De Quincey 
 prefers the present form. Compare with this passage the follow¬ 
 ing from the Revolt of the Tartars (Works, vol. vii.). ‘In the 
 unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the 
 blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something 
 which recalls to the mind those almighty instincts that propel the 
 migrations of the swallow and the leeming, or the life-withering 
 marches of the locust.’ It is worth noticing how often, not only 
 De Quincey, but other great writers, repeat in different parts of 
 their works, the same ideas, and the same figures. The leeming 
 is a migratory animal of the rat tribe. 
 
 37, 38. ‘The locust . . . traverse its mysterious path.’ Mr 
 Barrow quotes the following passage from Mr Olivier’s Voyage 
 dans VEmpire Othoman: ‘ With the burning south winds (of 
 Syria) there came from the interior of Arabia, and from the 
 most southern parts of Persia, clouds of locusts (Acridium 
 peregrinum), whose ravages to those countries are as grievous 
 and nearly as sudden as those of the heaviest hail in Europe. 
 We witnessed them twice. It is difficult to express the effect 
 produced on us by the sight of the whole atmosphere filled on 
 all sides, and to a great height, by an innumerable quantity of 
 
296 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 these insects, whose flight was slow and uniform, and whose 
 noise resembled that of rain ; the sky was darkened, and the 
 light of the sun considerably weakened. In a moment the 
 terraces of the houses, the streets, and all the fields were covered 
 by these insects, and in two days they had nearly devoured all 
 the leaves of the plants. Happily, they lived but a short time, 
 and seemed to have migrated only to reproduce themselves and 
 die ; in fact, nearly all these we saw the next day had paired, 
 and the day following the fields were covered with their dead 
 bodies.’ Selections from De Quincey, Barrow and Hunter. 
 
 Page 59. 
 
 1. 7. Such an instinct, etc. Notice how De Quincey dwells 
 upon this resolution of his, as upon the crisis of the whole 
 narrative, the choice upon which ail depended. Observe how 
 he analyses it, ‘Was it first hope, then resolution, or first 
 resolution and out of that hope 1 ’ etc. 
 
 30, 31. The light of the planet Mercury . . . beams. Mercury 
 is the planet nearest the sun, being distant from it about 
 36,470,000 miles. Mercury, from its proximity to the sun, is 
 seldom visible to the naked eye. During a transit of Mercury, 
 i.e. when Mercury passes between the earth and the sun, a black 
 spot may be observed in the sun. 
 
 38. The senselessness of joy. See Wordsworth’s sonnet, entitled 
 Calais, August 15, 1802. ‘The senselessness of joy was then 
 sublime.’ 
 
 Page 60. 
 
 1. 4-16. Again the student must be invited to linger with 
 particular attention over the exquisite diction of the concluding 
 portion of this paragraph. 
 
 9. The sweet pastoral hills. The hills of Cumberland and 
 Westmoreland. See p. 62. 
 
 21. My own birth-day. August 15. 
 
 25-26. The only confidential friend I had . . . Lady Carbery. 
 In the earlier edition De Quincey has, ‘ Money being what I 
 chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though 
 young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly 
 treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would 
 “ lend ” me five guineas.’ Lady Carbery, Susan Watson, only 
 daughter of Colonel Henry Watson, married in 1792 George 
 Evans, 4th Baron Carbery, Co. Cork. For a full account of this 
 Lady Carbery, see the papers. Premature Manhood, and Laxton, 
 Northam-pto'nshire {IVorlcs, i.) 
 
 34. She thought too highly, etc. See Works, vol. i. 378. 
 ‘ Lady Carbery insisted upon calling me her “ Admirable 
 
NOTES. 
 
 297 
 
 Crichton.” ’ De Quiucey taught Lady Carhery Greek, and 
 answered questions propounded to him by her on theological and 
 other difficulties, De Quiucey being then only 15. Lady 
 Carbery, while De Quincey was at the Manchester Grammar 
 School, came and resided in Manchester, and on one occasion 
 brought a party to witness an academic triumph of her friend’s. 
 See Works, i. 396. 
 
 Page 61. 
 
 11. 14—16. It was from Lady Carbery ... of five. In the early 
 edition De Quincey has, ‘ The letter was kind and obliging. 
 The fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay 
 had arisen ; she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good- 
 naturedly hinted that if I should never repay her, it would not 
 absolutely ruin her.’ 
 
 30. ‘ Vails,’ ‘ a Headless form of “ avail,” i.e. in the sense of 
 profit, help ’ (Skeat). 
 
 Page 62. 
 
 1. 1. had been trained by my mother. See Introduction. De 
 Quincey has sketched the character of his mother in the paper 
 entitled The Priory (Works, vol. i.). In Dr Japp’s De Quincey 
 Memorials a number of letters from Mrs De Quincey to her son 
 are preserved. 
 
 10, 11. I left in the hands of G-. See note on p. 40, line 38. 
 
 16. Sub judice, a legal term, under trial ; not yet decided. 
 
 Page 63. 
 
 1. 6. Anne Radcliffe. Mrs Anne Eadcliff'e, nee Ward (1764- 
 1823), a once celebrated novelist. She wrote The Sicilian 
 Romance, The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 
 etc., etc. Her fame has suffered an eclipse, her books being 
 seldom, if ever, now read. The titles of Mrs Radcliffe’s novels 
 reveal pretty well their character. But De Quincey seems 
 to have had a taste for such novels to the end. In most things 
 De Quincey kept pace with the times ; but we learn from his 
 daughter, Miss De Quincey, that he always retained a taste 
 for the style of novel which was fashionable in his youth ; 
 ‘ He simply lived in tlie romance of his youth. He cared 
 nothing for delineations of character, and I do not think he 
 cared much for pictures of modern life, or even for fun and 
 humour—at all events, of the later type, in novels. Dark 
 lanterns, and Spanish cloaks, and three knights riding through 
 a wood, and a mysterious villain with a dagger or stiletto, were 
 the sine qua nons in the novels of his youth; and he seemed 
 
298 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 to favour this kind of novel to the end.’ Japp’s Be Q^dncey’s 
 Life and Writings, 439. 
 
 14. (As Wordsworth notices). De Quincey seems to refer to 
 the following passage in The Excursion :— 
 
 ‘ Blow winds of autumn !—let your chilling breath 
 Take the live herbage from the mead, and strip 
 The shady forest of its green attire,— 
 
 And let the bursting clouds to fury rouse 
 The gentle brooks !—Your desolating sway, 
 
 Sheds,’ I exclaimed, ‘no sadness upon me, 
 
 And no disorder in your rage I find. 
 
 What dignity, what beauty, in this change 
 From mild to angry, and from sad to gay. 
 
 Alternate and revolving ! How benign. 
 
 How rich in animation and delight. 
 
 How bountiful these elements—compared 
 With aught, as more desirable and fair. 
 
 Devised by fancy for the golden age ; 
 
 Or the perpetual warbling that prevails 
 In Arcady, beneath unaltered skies. 
 
 Through the long year in constant quiet bound. 
 
 Night hushed as night, and day as day serene.’ 
 
 — The Eaxursion, Book iii. 
 
 In his ‘Guide to the Lakes’ {Prose Works, ed. Grosart, vol. ii.), 
 Wordsworth notices the monastic sternness, the simplicity, and 
 the sublimity of the scenery of the lakes. 
 
 18-20. The effeminate . . . Sicily, as described by the great 
 pastoral poet Theocritus. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Lord B 3 n:on’s sneer against the Lake Poets. Byron attacked 
 the ‘ lake poets ’ repeatedly in his verse, especially in his English 
 Bards and Scotch Bevieiuers, and in many passages of Don Juan. 
 The ridicule of The Visio7i of Judgment is directed against 
 Southey. 
 
 The ‘vivi lacus’ of Virgil, Georgic II. 469. ‘Speluncae, vivique 
 lacus ; at frigida Tempe,’ etc. ‘ Vivi,’ says Couington, are natural 
 lakes opposed to artificial reservoirs, of which there were many 
 at Rome. See also Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes {Prose 
 Works, ii. 248), where he says that the lakes of Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland ‘are truly living lakes, “vivi lacus”-, and 
 are thus discriminated from the stagnant and sullen pools 
 frequent among mountains that have been formed by volcanoes, 
 and from the shallow meres found in flat and fenny countries.’ 
 
 Page 64. 
 
 1. 1. The deep, deep magnet . . . Wordsworth. De Quincey’s 
 admiration for Wordsworth as a poet continued to the end. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 299 
 
 and was as great on ‘this side of idolatry’ as any admiration 
 could well be. He has written several papers on him (see 
 Works, vol. ii.), and throughout his works has many references 
 to him. De Quincey in his writings quotes much poetry, but 
 he probably quotes from Wordsworth oftener than from any 
 one else. His Biographical Sketch of Wordsworth, and the 
 paper entitled Gradual Estrangement from Wordsworth (Works, 
 vol. iii.), show that he was not blind to various limitations in 
 the poet’s character. 
 
 16. St Peter’s at Rome. The great Cathedral of that name, 
 in some respects the greatest temple in Christendom. The 
 present building was dedicated by Pope Urban VIII. in 1626 ; 
 but, as early as a.d. 90, an oratory was built on the same 
 site, it being, according to tradition, the spot where the Apostle 
 Peter was martyred. 
 
 34. Hardly could I have found courage, etc. See the account 
 of De Quincey’s first actual meeting with Wordsworth (Works, 
 ii. 235). There he tells us that, for the only time in bis life, 
 he ‘ trembled at the approaching presence ’ of a man, and goes 
 on to speak of ‘ that moment of intense expectation ’ and of 
 his ‘ eyes fascinated to what lay before me, or what might in 
 a moment appear.’ 
 
 Page 65. 
 
 1. 6. The Hesperides. Gk. mythology ; the three (or four) 
 daughters of Hesperus, who dwelt in an island in the far west, 
 and guarded the tree of golden apples. 
 
 9. Pausanias. Greek traveller and geographer, who lived in 
 the reign of the Emperors Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. 
 He wrote a work, entitled An Itinerary of Greece ('EXAdSos 
 nepiriyva-is), in which he relates many legends, not otherwise 
 known, connected with the various localities of Greece. For 
 the story related, see Pausanias, i. 15, 3 ; and i. 32, 4. 
 
 10. The field of Marathon. The battle of Marathon, in which 
 the Athenians under Miltiades utterly defeated the Persians, was 
 fought B.c. 490. 
 
 15, 16. Who handled Falstaff . . . Windsor. See Shakespeare, 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V., v. The ‘Fairies’ who mal¬ 
 treat Sir John, however, were merely mortals in disguise. 
 
 Page 66. 
 
 1. 8. St John’s Priory. For a further description of this house 
 see below, and the paper bearing the title ‘ The Priory ’ 
 (Works, i.). 
 
 18. "ro the extent of mon possible. French, ‘as far as 1 
 could.’ 
 
300 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Footnote 1. 
 
 De Quincey is slightly wrong. Latliom House was defended 
 by Lady Derby in 1643 ; 1644 may be called the ‘ penultimate 
 year of the Parliamentary War,’ because the Battle of Naseby 
 (1645) gave the death-blow to the King’s cause. 
 
 See p. 225, where De Quincey tells us that he had made 
 himself familiar with this period of history. 
 
 Page 67. 
 
 1. 17. And no mistake. A slang expression, and as such 
 particularly tempting to De Quincey (see the Introduction, p. xxv). 
 
 Page 68. 
 
 1. 3. From the Fiend. From the devil, A.8., feond, enemy ; 
 hence enemy of mankind. 
 
 5. A Sphinx’s riddle. The Sphinx (Gk. mythology) was a 
 sea-monster who proposed a riddle to the Thebans, and murdered 
 all who were unable to guess it. The riddle was at last solved 
 by Oedipus, whereupon the Sphinx slew herself. 
 
 21. As Shakespeare says, Hamlet, V., ii., 36. 
 
 ‘ I once did hold it, as our statists do, 
 
 A baseness to write fair, and laboured much 
 How to forget that learning, but sir, now 
 It did me yeoman’s service.’ 
 
 The phrase ‘ to do yeoman’s service ’ has now come to mean ‘ to 
 be of great assistance’—without any sense of menial assistance. 
 
 24. Femmes-de-chambre, waiting women (French). 
 
 27. Sunday spelling. As English people of the middle and 
 lower classes are accustomed to wear their best clothes on 
 Sunday, the adjective ‘ Sunday ’ is frecjuently used somewhat 
 vulgarly, or as a sort of jest, to describe anything superfine. 
 
 31. Clery. P. L. H. Clery was valet to Louis XVI. of France, 
 and wrote a Journal of what passed in the Temple Prison during 
 the Captivity of Louis XVI., King of France. Another work of 
 his is Memoirs of P. L. H. Clery, formerly Valet de Ghamhre to the 
 Duchesse d’Angouleme. 
 
 Page 69. 
 
 1. 2. Oftentimes, see note on p. 1. 
 
 4. Snobbish. De Quincey, here and elsewhere, uses this w'ord 
 in its old sense of ‘ common, vulgar, low-bred.’ In Thackeray’s 
 sense, now universal, it has a very different meaning. A snob, 
 according to Thackeray, is one who sets vulgar or unworthy 
 objects before his eyes, worships rank, wealth, etc., and despises 
 those who do not possess such qualifications. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 301 
 
 27. To carve out any opportunity. A figure of colloquial 
 speech. Cf. ‘ fork out ’ above. 
 
 32. Which crime in those days, etc. On this point, see Erskine 
 May’s Constitutional History of England, iii. 18. In the reign 
 of George II. and George III., he says, ‘ The lives of men were 
 sacrificed with a reckless barbarity, worthier of an Eastern 
 despot, or African chief, than of a Christian state. ... To hang 
 men was the ready expedient of thoughtless power.’ Moralists, 
 jurists, philosophers condemned. The wiser class of politicians 
 strove to mitigate the penal laws, hut for long in vain. At last 
 their efforts began to bear fruit. By successive enactments, 
 capital punishment was limited to special cases. Forgery for long 
 continued one of the offences punishable by death. By Sir 
 Robert Peel’s criminal law bills, forty kinds of forgery were 
 so punishable. In 1835, a Criminal Law Commission was 
 appointed, upon whose recommendations many reforms were 
 effected. It was not, however, until 1862 that capital punish¬ 
 ment was limited to the two offences of murder and treason.’ 
 
 Page 70. 
 
 1. 26. It is a just and feeling remark, etc. At this point we 
 rejoin the narrative of the edition of 1821, but the revised 
 edition is expanded by the introduction of two or three para¬ 
 graphs. 
 
 Page 71. 
 
 1. 8. Oftentimes. See note on p. 1. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The Witch of Endor. The witch whom Saul consulted, and 
 who called up the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel (I. Samuel, 
 xxviii.). 
 
 Lucan’s Witch, Erictho. M. Anneeus Lucanus (a.d. 39 to 65), 
 Roman poet, whose chief and only extant work is his Pharsalia, 
 an heroic poem in ten books. Erictho is the Thessalian witch 
 of whom Lucan, in his Pharsalia (Book VI.), gives a hideous and 
 disgusting picture. Being consulted by Sextus Pompeius, son 
 of Pompey the Great, she selects the corpse of a Roman soldier 
 recently slain, and by various spells restores it to life. The 
 ghost thus raised answers Pompey’s questions. 
 
 Page 72. 
 
 Lines 9 and following. It is characteristic of De Quincey to 
 be consistently unfair to all pre-Christian or non-Christian 
 religions. Seeing that, according to recent scholars, allegory lies 
 at the root of all mythologies, and that all religions, especially 
 
302 
 
 DE QU/NCEV. 
 
 the religions of the Aryan race, have invested natural and 
 physical phenomena with a transcendental, spiritual significance, 
 it can scarcely be maintained that all mankind were blind to 
 such interpretation previous to the Christian era. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Mephistopheles. According to old mediaeval legends, Mephis- 
 topheles was one of the fallen archangels. He is the familiar 
 spirit of Dr Faustus. See Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, and Goethe’s 
 Faust. 
 
 Page 73. 
 
 1. 4. Flowers, for example, etc. It is difficult to understand what 
 De Quincey means. Surely flowers have figured in all religions, 
 and have been invested with a sacred character. Greek mythology 
 has many flower stories ; that of the Hyacinth, for instance, 
 Milton’s ‘ sanguine flower inscribed with woe ’ ; the Eoman has a 
 special goddess of flowers. Flora ; and the Indian student needs 
 not to be reminded of the offerings of flowers, which may be seen 
 daily at wayside shrines. 
 
 9-12. Raised them . . . one of these. ‘ Consider the lilies of the 
 field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin : and 
 yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not 
 arrayed like one of these’ (Christ’s ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ 
 Matthew vi. 28-29). Compare Carlyle : ‘ The highest voice ever 
 heard on this earth said withal, “ Consider the lilies of the field ; 
 they toil not, neither do they spin : yet Solomon in all his glory 
 was not arrayed like one of these.” A glance that, into the 
 deepest deep of beauty. “ The lilies of the field,” dressed finer than 
 earthly princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow-field ; 
 a beautiful eye looking out on you from the great inner sea of 
 beauty ! How could the rude earth make these, if her essence, 
 rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly beauty.’ {The Hero 
 as Poet.) 
 
 13. .Slolian power. .lEolus, God of the winds in Greek 
 mythology. 
 
 24. Blowing whither they list. ‘ The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
 whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is everyone that is 
 born of the Spirit’ (Christ to Nicodemus who came to see him 
 by night, John iii. 8). 
 
 31, 32. It is that man . . . sleep. ‘ Be ye angry and sin not: 
 let not the sun go down upon your wrath,’ Ephesians iv. 26. 
 
 35. In this prayer ... 0 Lord. This is the third collect in the 
 Evening Service of the Church of England, and begins as follows : 
 —‘ Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord ! ’ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 303 
 
 38. Night and Darkness . . . Chaos. Chaos, i.e., confusion, 
 opposed to Cosmos, order. The word Chaos belongs to Greek 
 mythology, in which Chaos is the mother of Erebus (darkness) 
 and Nyx (Night). Milton identified the classical Chaos with the 
 condition of things before the creation, as related in the Book of 
 Genesis, ‘And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep.’ Hence Milton’s ‘ realm of Chaos 
 and old Night.’ 
 
 Page 74. 
 
 11. 18, 19. Time becomes , . . Space. The vastness of space is 
 made appreciable by the slowness of the movement of the Sun. 
 
 23. Now came the last, etc. This passage is connected in thought 
 with the quotation from Dr Johnson on p. 70. In the original 
 edition, the incident now related comes immediately after the 
 quotation ; the entire discussion about the English Liturgy, the 
 symbolising spirit of Christianity, etc., etc., appearing only in the 
 later edition. 
 
 Footnote 1. 
 
 Some German v/ork on Hebrew antiquities. Possibly Hart¬ 
 mann’s Die Hebrderin am Putztische und als Braut (‘ The Hebrew 
 woman at her toilette, and in her bridal chamber ’), from which 
 De Quincey compiled his ‘Toilette of the Hebrew Lady,’ 
 contributed to Blackwood in 1828, and now printed in Volume VI. 
 of Masson’s edition of his Works. 
 
 Isaac Ambrose. A Calvinistic divine (1591-1664). Became 
 a Presbyterian preacher : wrote Looking unto Jesus, etc., etc. He 
 was a Lancashire man. 
 
 Crepusculum. Latin, ‘ twilight.’ 
 
 Footnote 2. 
 
 Tertius inter pares. Latin, ‘ third amongst equals.’ 
 
 Princeps senatus. This was the title given to the leading 
 member of the Koman Senate. After the fall of the republic, the 
 title was assumed by the Emperor ; hence the modern and royal 
 word. Prince. 
 
 Notice De Quincey’s anxiety that it should be clearly under¬ 
 stood that every detail related in the Confessions is in strict 
 accordance with truth. 
 
 Page 75. 
 
 1. 4. Smiled placidly. In the original edition, ‘smiled good- 
 naturedly.’ The improvement is obvious. 
 
 5. Not knowing it to be my valediction . . . for ever. In the 
 original edition ‘ returned my salutation (or rather my valedic¬ 
 tion), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever.’ The 
 
304 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 sentence gains not a little by the omission of the second 
 parenthesis. 
 
 6-16. Intellectually . . . upon him. In the edition of 1822, 
 the passage stands thus: ‘I could not reverence him intellectually, 
 but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me 
 many indulgences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica¬ 
 tion I should inflict upon him.’ 
 
 At this point, parting from Mr Lawson, it may be as well to 
 compare the account of him which De Quincey gave in the early 
 Confessions, with the account before us. Speaking of his various 
 school experiences, he remembers, with expressions of admiration 
 and love, the master who had taught him at the Bath Grammar 
 School. Then he goes on, ‘Unfortunately for me (and, as I 
 afterwards learned, to this worthy man’s great indignation), I 
 was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a 
 perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance [this was 
 the head-master of the private school at Winkfield], and finally 
 to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school 
 on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to 
 
 his situation by - College, Oxford, and was a sound, well- 
 
 built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that 
 college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he 
 presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite 
 master ; and, beside, he could not disguise from my hourly notice 
 the paucity and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad 
 thing for a boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, 
 whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, 
 so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only, for 
 the two boys, who, jointly with myself, composed the first form, 
 were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more 
 elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the 
 graces. When I first entered I remember that we read Sophocles ; 
 and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned 
 triumvirate of the first form, to see our ‘ Archididasculus ’ (as he 
 loved to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and 
 laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up 
 aud blasting (as it were) any difiiculties he found in the choruses ; 
 whilst xoe never condescended to open our books until the 
 moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing 
 epigrams upon his wig, or some such important matter.’ 
 
 21. The ancient collegiate church. See note on page 21. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Facts .... stubborn things. Smollett, translation of Gil 
 Bias, book x., ch. 1 : but the saying is found elsewhere. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 305 
 
 Castor and Pollux. Greek mythology: the Dioscuri, twin 
 sons of Leda and Zeus. When Castor was dying, Pollux prayed 
 Zeus to be permitted to die with his brother. Zeus thereupon 
 gave him this choice : either to live for ever a god in Olympus, 
 or to share his brothers fate, to live alternately with him, one 
 day as a god in Olympus, or the next beneath the earth in 
 Hades. Of. the lines of Virgil (^Eneid vi. 121, 122). 
 
 Phosphorus, the morning star; Hesperus, the evening star, viz.^ 
 myself. Here De Quincey alludes to his own reading and writing 
 in the light of the ‘ midnight tallow.’ See ante, page 57. 
 
 Page 76. 
 
 1. 11. And his unquiet spirit. In the original edition, ‘and 
 his restless and unquiet spirit.’ 
 
 14. ‘ Pensive citadel.’ Wordsworth’s sonnet— 
 
 ‘ Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room, 
 
 And hermits are contented with their cells ; 
 
 And students with their pensive citadels, etc.’ 
 
 31. I dreamed. Notice that this dreaming or reverie occurred 
 long before De Quincey had become an opium-eater. He was a 
 dreamer of dreams by nature, the opium only intensified his 
 natural tendency. 
 
 36, 37. I happened to be in London, etc. His friend was 
 Lord Westport, afterwards Earl of Altamont and Marquis of 
 Sligo. See the account of this in the Autobiographical paper 
 ‘ The Nation of London ’ (Works, i.), where the visit to St Paul’s 
 is mentioned, but no word of the Whispering Gallery. 
 
 Page 77. 
 
 1. 3. The Whispering Gallery. This gallery, one of the ‘ sights ’ 
 of London, runs round the interior of the Dome of St Paul’s 
 Cathedral. 
 
 7. Lord Nelson was buried. Nelson was buried in St Paul’s 
 in 1805. St Paul’s is also the resting-place of the Duke of 
 Wellington. 
 
 17. That great Roman warning, etc. Nescit vox missa reverti. 
 ‘The word gone forth cannot be recalled,’ a quotation from 
 Horace, Ars Poetica, 390. 
 
 21. As a worm lying at the heart, etc. De Quincey had an 
 almost morbid tendency to dwell upon the weaker, darker, and 
 more awfully mysterious elements of human nature. Compare 
 ‘ The Vision of Sudden Death ’ (Works, xiii. 304). ‘ The situation 
 here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far down 
 in the depths of human nature ; ’ and the essay, ‘ The Theban 
 Sphinx’ (Works, vi. 141), where the writer speaks of the 
 
 U 
 
3o6 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 ‘ abysses of man’s higher relations,’ and ‘ the dark foundations 
 of our human nature.’ 
 
 Page 78. 
 
 1. 4. A solemn . . . truth. Apparently the words ‘ Nescit vox 
 missa reverti.’ 
 
 12. A Rubicon. The great civil war which ended in the 
 downfall of the Roman Republic began when C^sar crossed the 
 small river Rubico which separated Italy from the Province of 
 Cis-Alpine Gaul. A number of stories were current about this 
 event, such as that which ascribed to Caesar the ominous words 
 ‘The die is cast.’ There is probably little truth in these, but 
 the phrase ‘to cross the Rubicon’ has become proverbial, and 
 denotes the taking of some momentous and entirely decisive 
 step, from which any drawing back is impossible. 
 
 18. A sudden step. Probably the step of the groom mentioned 
 below. 
 
 21. I shed tears, etc. At this point we again join the original 
 edition, in which the ensuing passage comes directly after the 
 words ‘general dejection’ (p. 76). 
 
 27. It was a picture of a lovely lady. In the original edition 
 we find, ‘ It was a picture of the lovely-, which,’ etc. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Vandyke. Sir Anthony Vandyke (1598-1641), the great 
 Dutch portrait painter. He came to England in Charles I.’s 
 reign, and was knighted by that monarch. 
 
 Page 79. 
 
 1. 1. It was six o’clock. In the edition of 1822, ‘ four o’clock.’ 
 
 17. The groom declared his readiness, etc. In the edition of 
 1822, ‘the groom swore he would do anything I wished.’ 
 
 21. A man ‘ of Atlantean shoulders.’ Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 ii. 300. 
 
 ‘ With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies.’ 
 
 In the edition of 1822, De Quincey quotes both lines. ‘Shoulders 
 such as Atlas.’ (See note on p. 33.) 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Sweet Madonna countenance. Sweet as the expression of the 
 Virgin Mary (Madonna, Italian ‘ My lady ’) as portrayed by 
 Raphael and other great painters. 
 
AZOTES. 
 
 307 
 
 Page 80. 
 
 I. 9. Contretemps. French, mishap; literally, ‘ against the time,’ 
 i.e., some time unseasonable, inopportune. 
 
 II. The ‘ Seven Sleepers.’ Alluding to an old Christian legend 
 of seven noble youths of Ephesus,-—Constantine, Dionysius, John, 
 Maximinian, Malchus, Martinian, and Serapion,—who fled from 
 the Decian persecution to a cave in Mount Celion, where they 
 fell asleep, and awoke—230 years afterwards. 
 
 17. Sisyphus. Son of Aeolus and Enarite. After his death 
 he was condemned for his wickedness, to roll a huge block of 
 marble up a hill in the nether-world. As soon as he got to the 
 top the Kaas &vai^s (the pitiless stone) rolled down to the bottom 
 again. 
 
 30. ‘With Providence my guide.’ Milton, Paradise Lost, 
 xii. 647. 
 
 ‘ The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’ 
 
 The words ‘or more truly,’ to ‘ law and impulse’ are not in the 
 edition of 1822. 
 
 34. Canter’s ‘ Euripides.’ In the original edition, ‘ and a small 
 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Avtis sTreiTa, etc., Hoiii., Odyssey, xi. 598. 
 
 ‘ And adown to the plain was it rolling as a thing 
 that all pity did lack.’ 
 
 —W. Morris’s Translation. 
 
 Page 81. 
 
 Nothing of the contents of the next twenty pages is to be 
 found in the edition of 1822. 
 
 1. 2. Altrincham. A market-town in Cheshire eight miles from 
 Manchester. It has now a population of about 10,000 
 inhabitants. 
 
 13. The Lord’s-prayer. The short prayer beginning, ‘Our 
 Father which art in Heaven,’ which Jesus taught to his 
 disciples as a model prayer: called also the ‘Pater Noster.’ 
 (See Matthew vi. 9-13, and Luke xi. 2-4.) 
 
 Page 82. 
 
 1. 27. Easy in her circumstances, i.e., fairly well off. 
 
 31. Venerable Chester. Venerable in two senses. First, in 
 the actual age of the city, which, as its name proves, dates from 
 Roman times; secondly, venerable in appearance, there being 
 more relics of the past {e.g., old-fashioned houses, remains of old 
 
3o8 DE quince Y. 
 
 walls, a castle, a cathedral, etc.), in Chester than in most English 
 cities. 
 
 36. Came over me, etc. The quotation is from Shakespeare, 
 Othello, IV. i. 21. 
 
 Page 83. 
 
 1. 5. New and yet as old, etc. I cannot verify this quotation. 
 It is possible that De Quincey had in his mind Wordsworth’s 
 lines— 
 
 ‘ A spectacle as old 
 
 As the beginning of the heaven and earth.’ 
 
 {Hail, Twilight, sovereign of the peaceful hour.) 
 
 7. Pompous. Not in its usual sense of ostentatious (with a 
 touch of the ridiculous), but in its original sense, ‘ magnificent,’ 
 ‘striking’ (Greek, -Koixiri], a solemn procession). 
 
 14. With all its fairy crowds, etc. ‘ Euth,’ written in 1799. 
 The lines will be found in the twelfth stanza of the poem. 
 
 23. ‘We are seven.’ The well-known ballad written in 1799, 
 beginning— 
 
 ‘ A simple child 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 
 What should it know of death ? ’ 
 
 25. Early in 1803. That is, while De Quincey was at Oxford. 
 See the paper called ‘Oxford’ {Works, ii. 59), in which the 
 following passage occurs : ‘ On coming to Oxford, I had taken 
 up one position in advance of my age by full thirty years : that 
 appreciation of Wordsworth, which it has taken fully thirty 
 years to establish amongst the public, I had already made, and 
 had made operative to my own intellectual culture, in the same 
 year when I clandestinely quitted school. Already, in 1802, I 
 had addressed a letter of fervent admiration to Mr Wordsworth. 
 I did not send it until the spring of 1803 ; and, from misdirec¬ 
 tion, it did not come into his hands for some months. But I 
 had an answer from Mr Wordsworth before I was eighteen ; and 
 that my letter was thought to express the homage of an 
 enlightened admirer may be inferred from the fact that his 
 answer was full and long.’ Extracts from Wordsworth’s letter 
 to De Quincey will be found in Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, i. 
 120-122 ; De Quincey’s own letter is lost. 
 
 Page 84. 
 
 1. 3. This most filthy of letters. The epithet appears far too 
 strong for the occasion. 
 
 14, Like Christian in Bunyan’s allegory. The Pilgrim’s Pro¬ 
 gress. Christian, the hero, journeying trom the city of death. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 309 
 
 labours under a great burden (tbe weight of his sins), which he 
 at length lays down at the foot of the cross in the celestial city. 
 
 Page 85. 
 
 1. 16. As Sinbad must have directed. The story in the Arabian 
 Nights of Sinbad the Sailor. Sinbad was induced to take the Old 
 Man of the Sea on his back, and afterwards found that he could 
 not dislodge him. The only remedy was to make the old man 
 drunk. In that state he fell off, and Sinbad smashed in his head 
 with a stone. De Quincey frequently refers to this story. See 
 ‘The English Mail Coach’ (Works, xiii. 288, footnote), where the 
 old man has other uncomplimentary adjectives thrown at him, e.g., 
 ‘ old scoundrel,’ ‘ old fraudulent jocky,’ etc. The Arabian Nights 
 was one of the earliest books De Quincey read. For his childish 
 impression of it, and of this identical story, see the paper, ‘ Infant 
 Literature’ (Works, i. 29). 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Edgar, born 943, succeeded 959, died 975. The Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle tells us that Edgar was, in 973, met at Chester by six 
 kings, who plighted their troth to him. Florence of Worcester 
 mentions eight kings (nine is a mistake), and he gives their names— 
 Kenneth of Scotland, Malcolm of Cumbria, Maccus of Man, Dun- 
 wallon of Strathclyde, Siferth, Jago and Howell of Wales, and 
 Inchill of Westmoreland. The story of the rowing is probably 
 mythical. 
 
 Page 86. 
 
 I. 6. Certainly its name is Danish. De Quincey had studied the 
 Danish language and had applied his knowledge to the elucidation 
 of the origin of various English Provincial words and names. 
 See his paper, ‘ Danish origin of the Lake-County Dialect’ (Works, 
 xiii.), and ‘ The Lake Dialect,’ printed in ‘ De Quincey’s Uncol¬ 
 lected Writings,’ vol. i., edited by James Hogg. The Icelandic 
 word is Kapa. 
 
 II. Philistines. The allusion is to Judges xvi., where Samson 
 is taken captive by the Philistines (‘The Philistines be upon 
 thee, Samson ’). 
 
 Page 87. 
 
 1. 5. As a mirror to echo and reverberate. A rather curious 
 instance of a mixed metaphor ; ‘ to reflect ’ would be more 
 appropriate, but ‘ echoing ’ and ‘ reverberating ’ are stronger, and 
 express better De Quincey’s meaning. 
 
 26. &v(a Trord/jkoov of Euripides, (y. Homer and the Homeridae 
 
310 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 (JYorJcs, vi. 22). ‘It would be the old miracle of the Greek 
 proverb, Ar« Troraucvi', etc.), which adopted the reflux of the rivers 
 towards their fountains as the liveliest type of the im¬ 
 possible.’ See Medea, 409, 410. 
 
 &V01 iTOTaixwv hpuv xoipoucrt nayai 
 Kai S'lKaKai irdvra naAiv crTpecperai. 
 
 ‘The streams of the sacred rivers flow backwards, and Justice 
 and all things have changed their course.’ The same figure is 
 found elsewhere in Euripides, as also in Demosthenes, and in the 
 Roman poets, Ovid and Propertius. 
 
 36. All dressing accurately. ‘ Dress,’ a technical military term, 
 to dress the ranks, i.e., to ‘arrange in exact continuity of line,’ 
 which meaning is more in accordance with the derivation of the 
 word (Latin, dirigere, to direct) than the more usual meaning. 
 
 Page 88. 
 
 I. 5. The Deucalion and Pyrrha. (Greek mythology.) Zeus 
 determined to destroy all mankind, and accordingly subjected 
 the earth to a nine days’ flood, but Deucalion, King of Phthia in 
 Thessaly, and his wife Pyrrha, were, on account of their piety, 
 spared. Acting on the advice of his father Prometheus, 
 Deucalion built a ship in which he and his wife floated in safety 
 while all other human creatures were destroyed. 
 
 14, 15. Many a decent railway ... its rivals. An obvious 
 parody of Milton’s well known lines, 
 
 ‘ Adam the goodliest man of men since bom 
 His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.’ 
 
 —Paradise Lost, iv. 323. 
 
 Page 89. 
 
 II. 23 -32. A parody of the peculiar phraseology of Acts of 
 Parliament, Royal declarations, etc. 
 
 Page 90. 
 
 11. 2, 3. The County Palatine. William the Conqueror 
 established, or retained, in England four Palatine Counties, e.g., 
 Chester, Slrropshire, Durham, and Kent. They were so called 
 because the lords of these counties had royal and independent 
 rights of judicature (Palatine, from Palatium, royal palace). 
 The object of the institution was to act as a defence against 
 foreign invaders,—Durham against the Scots, Kent against the 
 French, Chester and Shropshire against the Welsh (see Stubbs, 
 Constitutional History of England, i. 294, 295). 
 
 4. u.afi^ 7 }<rid, parrhesia. 
 
 13. ‘ The Bore.’ ‘ A tidal surge in a river (Scandinavian) ; Ice¬ 
 landic, hdra, a billow caused by wind ’ (Skeat). 
 
NOTES. 
 
 311 
 
 29. The bottle-imp. The oriental fancy of familiar spirits shut 
 up by magicians in leather bottles. There are several stories 
 dealing with this superstition in the Arabian Nights. 
 
 34.‘Audrey.’ SeeShakespeare’s III. iii. 16. Touch¬ 
 
 stone : ‘ Truly, I would the Gods had made thee poetical,’ etc. etc. 
 
 Page 91. 
 
 I. 18. To which mythological person, etc. i.e., De Quincey, not 
 to offend the woman, offered her half-a-crown to buy a doll for 
 her daughter. 
 
 24. Thessalian P 3 n:rha. See note on page 88, line 5. 
 
 25. Tempe. A valley in the north of Thessaly ; celebrated 
 by the Greek poets for its beauty'; described as one of the haunts 
 of Apollo. 
 
 32. Neither for instant fruition nor in far-off reversion. Legal 
 terms meaning ‘ to be possessed by a person at once, or to “ revert ” 
 to him on the death of certain others, or in the event of such and 
 such things happening.’ 
 
 33. Pandora, carrying a box. Pandora (Greek mythology) was 
 the first woman created. She was so called because the gods 
 severally endowed her with all good gifts (irar, all, Soopa, gifts). 
 From heaven she brought with her a box which contained all 
 human ills. When Pandora opened the box all these ills escaped 
 and spread over the earth, but Hope remained at the bottom. 
 
 36. For a sum which, etc. Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, in 
 which the country parson is described as 
 
 ‘ A man ... to all the country dear, 
 
 And passing rich on forty pounds a year.’ 
 
 Page 92. 
 
 II. 6, 7. Which ever had been . . . straight. Isaiah xl. 4. ‘ The 
 crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.’ 
 
 9. The man of letters. De Quincey elsewhere complains that 
 we have no English word corresponding to the French litterateur, 
 and hence have to use the cumbrous periphrasis, Man of Letters, 
 which would be more appropriate to a post-office official. 
 
 12. Cornucopia. The horn of plenty, called also Amaltheea’s 
 horn. Amalthaea was a nymph, and nurse of the infant Zeus. 
 She fed the god with goat’s milk, and when the goat by chance 
 broke off one of her horns, Amalthaea filled it with fresh herbs 
 and gave it to Zeus. 
 
 20. Brought the postmaster-general . . . haunches. A rather 
 vulgar or at least slang expression, meaning caused the postmaster- 
 general to punish them. 
 
 25. My eldest sister Mary. In Japp’s Life of De Quincey there 
 are several letters written by De Quincey to his sister Mary, and 
 
312 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 in the Be Quincey Memorials there are a number of Mary De 
 Quincey’s letters to her brother. These abundantly show the 
 affectionate relationship which existed between the brother and 
 sister. Mary De Quincey in 1819 married the Rev. Philip 
 Serle of Brislington, near Bristol, but died in childbed in 1820. 
 
 Page 93. 
 
 1.12. But my Uncle. Thomas Penson. For additional informa¬ 
 tion about this uncle of De Quincey’s, see below ; vol. ii. of the 
 Collected Works, p. 400 and following; the editoPs preface to vol. iv.; 
 and Dr Japp’s Life of De Quincey, and De Quincey Memorials. 
 Thomas Penson went out to Bengal in the East India Company’s 
 Service about 1780. He seems to have prospered considerably in 
 India. At this time (1802-3) he had attained the rank of Captain, 
 and was at home on furlough. He afterwards went back to India, 
 where he rose to the rank of Colonel. ‘ How long he remained 
 in India the information at hand does not enable us to say ; but 
 he did return, and spent his last days in his native land. He 
 died on the 27th of June 1835, and was buried, it is believed, in 
 Cheltenham.’ Colonel Penson’s character may be gathered from 
 De Quincey’s own reminiscences of him, both in the Confessions 
 and the autobiographic sketches. Letters published for the 
 first time by Dr Japp, in the work so often referred to, bear 
 sufficient evidence as to the kindly relations which existed 
 between uncle and nephew. To the whole family Colonel 
 Penson seems to have been most kind and generous, but especially 
 to the ‘ Opium-Eater.’ He showed sympathy, as we shall see, 
 and offered actual help, at the time of the Manchester Grammar 
 School escapade. He was the means of sending De Quincey to 
 Oxford ; and afterwards, when De Quincey found himself in 
 pecuniary difficulties, it was Colonel Penson who came un¬ 
 grudgingly to his assistance. Had this uncle been appointed sole 
 guardian of the orphan De Quincey, there is no doubt that the 
 history of Thomas De Quincey would have been very different. 
 ‘ He lived long enough,’ writes Professor Masson—and it is 
 pleasant to remember it,—‘ to know that his nephew, Bie trouble¬ 
 some boy of former days, had come to be recognised by the world 
 as a man of rare genius and a great English writer, of whom any 
 uncle might be proud.’ 
 
 23. ‘ Wanted.’ A person whom the police are in pursuit of is 
 generally described in police phraseology as being ‘ wanted.’ 
 
 Footnote, pages 93, 94. 
 
 For a rather fuller acount of the ‘ Priory,’ see the paper en¬ 
 titled ‘The Priory, Chester,’ written about 1853 {Works, i. 408, 
 
NOTES. 
 
 313 
 
 409), Sir Robert Cotton (1570-1651) wrote The Antiquity of 
 and Dignity of Parliaments. His library is now in the British 
 Museum. From a royal quarto to a pretty duodecimo, a metaphor 
 from book-binding. Were then usually called Saxon . . . Gothic, 
 There are very few examples of Saxon architecture, properly 
 so-called, in England. These ruins were probably Norman. 
 Both Saxon and Norman architecture are distinguished by the 
 use of the round arch, and both are developments of classical 
 Roman architecture, adapted to mediaeval, social, and religious 
 life. Saxon, however, is much ruder than Norman. The 
 various styles of Gothic, distinguished by the use of high pitched 
 roofs and pointed arches, are in turn developments of Norman. 
 (See Ruskin, Stones of Venice ; Rickman, Gothic Architecture, etc., 
 etc.) 
 
 Page 95. 
 
 11.4, 5. The opening of the seventh seal in the Revelations. See the 
 Book of the Revelation of St John, xvi. 17-21. ‘ And the seventh 
 
 angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great 
 voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “ It is 
 done ”—and there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings ; and 
 tliere was a great earthquake, ... for the plague thereof was 
 exceeding great.’ 
 
 7, 8. A man of even morbid activity. As an instance of this 
 ‘ morbid activity ’ see the account of the organisation of a volun¬ 
 teer force of cavalry in Chester, at the time of the Napoleonic 
 Wars (Works, i. 401, 402). Of the Cheshire gentlemen who took 
 part in this, ‘ being English, naturally the majority were energetic 
 . . . yet still the best of them seemed inert by comparison 
 with my uncle, and to regard his standard of action and 
 exertion as trespassing to a needless degree upon ordinary human 
 comfort,’ 
 
 18,19. Whose Indian magnificence ... all occasions. See note 
 above, on p. 93. 
 
 28. My two younger brothers. Richard and Henry De Quincey. 
 Richard it will be necessary to mention hereafter. Henry De 
 Quincey was a posthumous child. He was educated at Braze- 
 nose College, Oxford. He afterwards married, but died of phthisis 
 at Bristol at the early age of twenty-seven. For further details 
 about Henry De Quincey see Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, 
 II., XXV. 
 
 37 . Reverberating from the sounding-board. A sounding-board 
 is a thin piece of wood in a violin, piano, or other instrument, 
 which possesses acoustic properties. 
 
 Page 96. 
 
 1. 2. Dread Whispering Gallery. See note above on page 77. 
 
314 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 7. My next Brother. Kichard, known in the family by the 
 name of ‘ Pink.’ See the Autobiographic chapters, Introduction to 
 the Warid of Strife and My Brother Fink {Works, i.), also see Works, 
 hi. 57. ‘ Pink ’ was four years younger than his brother. He 
 
 was of remarkable personal beauty, and, as his history and his 
 letters published in Japp’s Memorials abundantly show, of a 
 very marked, and, in many ways, admirable character. Pink 
 died at the age of about twenty-six, somewhere in Jamaica. It 
 seems likely that he ‘ fell a victim to accident or to wild beasts ’ 
 (Japp’s De Quincey Memorials). 
 
 25. Sir Home Popham. Home Riggs Popham (1762-1820) 
 served as a lieutenant in the American War, rose to the rank 
 of post-captain in the French Wars. The action referred to took 
 place in’1806. In 1805 a small squadron of three 64-gun ships, 
 one 50-gun ship, and four frigates and sloops, under Commodore 
 Sir Home Popham, with a fleet of transports containing 5000 
 troops under Sir David Baird, sailed from England to reduce the 
 Cape of Good Hoq)e. One of the 64-gun ships was the Diadem. 
 The expedition succeeded, but while off the Coast of Soutli 
 Africa, Popham heard that the inhabitants of Monte Video and 
 Buenos Ayres were discontented with their governments, and that 
 there would be little difficulty in capturing these places. 
 Accordingly, on his own responsibility, he planned an expedition 
 against them, and sailed April 1806. Buenos Ayres was attacked 
 first (June), Monte Video afterwards. The attempt on the 
 whole turned out a failure, and Popham was reprimanded by the 
 Lords of the Admiralty for acting without orders (see The 
 Naval History of Great Britain, by William James, iv. 186-192, 
 279-292). 
 
 29. All this I have . . . narrated elsewhere. In the paper 
 entitled ‘ My Brother Pink,’ first published in Taifs Magazine, 
 March 1838, and afterwards included in the first volume of his 
 Collected Writings, 1853 (see Masson’s edition, vol. i.). 
 
 38. Those Belshazzar thunderings. See Daniel, chap. v. 
 Belshazzar, king of Babylon, made a great feast to a thousand 
 of his lords. In the midst of the feast a man’s hand appeared 
 and wrote upon the walls the mysterious words, Mene, Mene, 
 Telcel, Upharsin, which the prophet Daniel interpreted, ‘God 
 hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed 
 in the balance and found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided and 
 given to the Medes and Persians.’ It may be noted that the 
 story of Belshazzar’s feast always impressed De Quincey as an 
 incident of peculiar sublimity (see Works, v. 235). 
 
 Page 97. 
 
 1. 4. Hercynian forest. The name in Gcesar for all the densely 
 
NO TES. 
 
 315 
 
 wooded mountains in the south and centre of Germany. The 
 name still survives in the Harz Mountains. 
 
 The latter part of this paragraph is characteristic of De 
 Quinceys tendency to introspective, and almost morbid contem¬ 
 plativeness. Such reasoning as this must inevitably lead to a 
 state of total inactivity, since the choice between any two courses 
 of action at any time involves a choice between two endless series 
 of consequences, both equally unknown, and therefore in an 
 equal degree, potentially terrible ; all the more terrible, because 
 they may and do work with retrospective effect and teint the 
 past, vdiich otherwise might have been viewed with feelings of 
 thankfulness and satisfaction. 
 
 23. Her austerity. In the matter of the austerity, over-serious¬ 
 ness, and lack of motherly sympathy in the elder Mrs De 
 Quincey both Professor Masson and Dr Japp fully agree with 
 De Quincey himself, and there seems every reason to consider 
 their verdict just. Mrs Baird Smith (De Quincey’s daughter), 
 however, takes a different view. She thinks that the trait in the 
 mother’s character which came between her and her children 
 was ‘not a Roman firmness, but such a diffidence of her own 
 powers as led her too much to the bringing-in of outside authority 
 and advice, which the young men especially resented, and which 
 made most of the mischief, though I believe every one of them 
 would have been somewhat of a difficulty to an elderly anxious- 
 minded woman.’ (Japp, De Quincey Memorials, i. 13.) As Dr 
 Japp admits, Mrs De Quincey came too much under the influence 
 of Mrs Hannah More and other ‘ Clapham Saints,’ and religious 
 dogmatism, blended with a dash of self-righteous phariseeism, no 
 doubt played its usual office in undermining human sympathy 
 and embittering domestic peace and affection ; but Mrs De 
 Quincey’s own letters bear witness to little weakness of 
 character, or any undue dependence upon others, but rather 
 to a strength of determination and obstinacy of will that are 
 rare. 
 
 25. Unmasked. An ‘ unmasked ’ battery is, in military phrase¬ 
 ology, a battery that is concealed from the enemy until it opens 
 fire. 
 
 30. I, predisposed to subtleties of all sorts, etc. As De Quincey 
 was quite conscious of his tendency towards an excess of dream¬ 
 ing contemplativeness (see above, page 21), so also he shows 
 himself conscious of the other marked characteristic of his mind, 
 his over-subtlety of intellect (see Introduction). His essay on 
 Casuistry (Works, viii.) affords a special example of this power 
 of refining, qualifying, and conditioning at work on questions of 
 ethics. 
 
 35. Another Sphinx. See note above on page 68. 
 
3i6 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Page 98. 
 
 1, 23. As most of us have felt in the dreams, etc. Compare De 
 Quincey’s ‘ Prose Phantasy,’ The English Mail Goach, written 
 in 1849 {Works, xiii.), ‘That dream, so familiar to childhood, of 
 meeting a lion, and, through languishing prostration in hope and 
 the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying down before 
 the lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature—reveals its 
 deep-seated falsehood to itself—records its abysmal treachery.’ 
 
 Page 100. 
 
 1.11. My younger sister Jane. This sister came between Kichard 
 (Pink) and Henry. There was another sister, also called Jane, 
 but she died when De Quincey was two years of age. Dr Japp 
 publishes in his De Quincey Memorials, so often referred to in 
 these notes, a number of letters from J ane De Quincey to her 
 brother, which prove her to have been, like her sister Mary, a 
 woman of bright intellect, and of great tenderness of disposition. 
 
 ‘ Jane De Quincey,’ he writes, ‘ lived to a long old age, and was 
 never married. In her later years, she, like her mother, adopted 
 evangelical views ; and it was the business of more than one of 
 Mrs De Quincey’s daughters to cheer her lonely hours, after she 
 was aged and feeble, by reading to her favourite books, of which 
 she never tired, though not seldom the patience of the reader 
 was so ; for they were mostly of the old-fashioned style of trivial 
 dull story or treatise, with but little to meet the tastes or satisfy 
 the cravings of the younger generation. She had a great love of 
 gardening, and soon transferred (? transformed) the homely 
 gardens at the various places where she lived into tasteful and 
 beautifully laid out parterres ; and her careful economy and 
 admirable management of her investments were equally re¬ 
 markable—her solicitor declaring that in these matters she scarcely 
 ever made a mistake. She died on the 10th of Pebruary 1873.’ 
 —De Quincey Memorials, ii. 67, 68. 
 
 Page 101. 
 
 1.17. Ormskirk. A market-town in Lancashire, 13 miles north 
 of Liverpool. 
 
 18. Proud Preston. Elsewhere (‘The English Mail Coach,’ 
 Works, xiii. 308) De Quincey tells us that Preston is so called 
 to distinguish it from other towns of the same name ; which 
 is a doubtful explanation. 
 
 20. That pursued when no man fled. A parody of Proverbs, 
 xxviii. 1. ‘ The wicked flee when no man pursueth.’ 
 
 28. Which is the point of confluence. This piece of geographical 
 information De Quincey had already given the public in a 
 footnote to the ‘ English Mail Coach ’ ( Works, xiii. 308). 
 
NOTES. 
 
 317 
 
 Page 102. 
 
 1. 10. The caves. The caves of Harrowgate, about 20 miles W. 
 of York. In the caves are mineral springs possessing petrifying 
 qualities. Harrowgate is a fashionable watering-place. 
 
 10. Bolton Abbey. The ruins of Bolton Priory, celebrated by 
 Wordsworth in The White Doe of Eylstone, and The Force of 
 Prayer, is situated near Skipton-on-Aire, in a beautiful part of 
 Yorkshire. 
 
 30. Brummagem. A contemjrtuous name for Birmingham. 
 Any piece of imitation jewelry and such-like is called 
 Brummageu, because Birmingham was and is celebrated for the 
 manufacture of ‘ gilt toys, cheap jewelry, imitation gems, mosaic 
 gold and such small deer ’ {Gf. ‘ tawdry,’ a corruption of St 
 Audrey). De Quincey is fond of the slang word ‘Brummagem.’ 
 He calls the German poet Klopstock a Birmingham Milton 
 (Works, ii. 172). Elsewhere (Works, i. 263) he writes—‘Foryou 
 know, men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit—such is 
 your cleverness—all things in heaven and earth, from Jove’s 
 thunderbolts down to tailors’ bodkins.’ 
 
 Page 103. 
 
 1. 8. A1 fresco. Italian, ‘ in the open air.’ 
 
 16. 'SvvTpocpop Greek, ‘ friendly eye.’ Sophocles, Phi- 
 
 loctetes, 171, avprpocpop ofxjjL exccp, ‘ having no friendly eye.’ 
 
 28. The ring fence of this Arcadian vale. A ring fence is a 
 fence which encircles a large area in one enclosure. Arcadian, 
 i.e., pastoral, from Arcadia in Greece, the inhabitants of which 
 were a primitive, pastoral people. 
 
 Page 104. 
 
 1.9. Miss Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler. Elsewhere (‘ Lake 
 Reminiscences,’ Works, ii. 410) De Quincey refers to these ladies 
 whom he calls ‘ those sentimental anchorites.’ 
 
 24. At this point we again rejoin the original ‘ Confessions,’ 
 all the matter contained in the last twenty-four pages being com¬ 
 pressed into the following short paragraph :—‘ It had been my 
 intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from the 
 love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. 
 Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, 
 and I bent my steps towards North Wales.’ In the edition of 
 1822, the incidents connected with Bangor are prefaced by a 
 discursus on the pride of the children of Bishops, and the 
 dependants of Bishops, as compared with those of old noble 
 families, all of which De Quincey thought fit to omit in the 
 enlarged work. 
 
318 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Sergeant Talfourd. Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), 
 called to the bar in 1821. In 1849 he was appointed Justice in 
 the Courts of Common Pleas, having been twice returned to 
 Parliament as member for Reading. He died suddenly while 
 addressing the Grand Jury at the Stafford Assizes. He contri¬ 
 buted much to magazines, and he wrote several tragedies, the best 
 known of which is Ion (published in 1835). But his name is 
 now most familiar to English readers in connection with Charles 
 Lamb, whose life he wrote. De Quincey has a short notice of 
 Talfourd in his ‘London Reminiscences’ {Works, ii. 126). 
 Sergeant Talfourd has a peculiar interest in The Confessions, for 
 he it was who introduced De Quincey to Messrs Taylor & Hessey, 
 the proprietors and editors of The London Magazine, to which 
 The Confessions was De Quincey’s first contribution. 
 
 Wordsworth’s own poems bear witness, etc. An allusion to 
 Wordsworth’s verses To the Lady E. B., and the Hon. Miss P., 
 ‘composed in the grounds of Plass Newidd, near Llangollen, 
 1824.’ This poem Wordsworth prefaces with a note from which 
 the following is extracted—‘Their cottage lay directly in the 
 road between London and Dublin, and they were of course 
 visited by their Irish friends as well as by innumerable strangers 
 . Curious was the appearance of these ladies, so elabor¬ 
 ately sentimental about themselves and their Caro Albergo, as 
 they named it, in an inscription on a tree that stood opposite, 
 the endearing epithet being preceded by the word Ecco ! calling 
 upon the saunterer to look about him. So oddly was one of 
 these ladies attired, that we took her, at a little distance, for a 
 Roman Catholic priest, with a crucifix and relics hung at his 
 neck. They were without caps, their hair bushy and white as 
 snow, which contributed to the mistake.’ {Complete Poetical 
 Works of Wordsworth, ed. Morley.) 
 
 Page 105. 
 
 1. 6. All this I bore very well, etc. The language of this para¬ 
 graph De Quincey has considerably altered in the enlarged 
 edition ; for instance, in the early work tliere follows at this place 
 the words, ‘for I was too good-natured to laugh in anybody’s 
 face.’ 
 
 Page 106. 
 
 1. 11. In that case I doubted not. In the original version, 
 
 ‘ In which case I doubted not to make it appear that, if I was not 
 so rich as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian.’ 
 
 14. The following paragraph, together with the footnote, is not 
 
NOTES. 
 
 319 
 
 found in the early work, being added, no doubt, to explaui 
 exactly in wbat way De Quincey’s command of Greek was 
 superior to the Bishop’s. (See page 35.) 
 
 18. Dr Cleaver. Dr Cleaver edited the Homer mentioned in 
 the footnote, and wrote several theological works. He died in 
 1815. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Lord Nugent. George Nugent Grenville (1788-1850) politician 
 and man of letters. Ainongst other things he wrote Portugal, a 
 Poem, and Some Memorials of John Hampden, which last was re¬ 
 viewed by Macaulay in a well-known essay. 
 
 The Grenville ‘ Homer,’ also known as the Oxford Homer, pub¬ 
 lished in 4 volumes (1800). 
 
 The head of Christ Church. For further remarks on the im¬ 
 portance of the Dean of Christ Church, see De Quincey’s paper, 
 ‘Oxford’ {Worlis, ii.). 
 
 Page 107. 
 
 1. 5. Porson. (See note above on page 36.) 
 
 10. A ‘ sea-lawyer.’ A sailor much given to arguing, objecting, 
 etc., is so called. 
 
 21. A leading Don. The heads and fellows of Colleges at 
 Oxford are commonly known as Dons, the word bearing the 
 Spanish significance of man of mark, aristocrat, save that the 
 University don is an aristocrat of intellect. 
 
 Page 108. 
 
 1. 13. The Arundel Marbles. A collection of ancient Greek 
 statues and monuments brought to England in 1627 by the then 
 Earl of Arundel, and presented by his grandson to the University 
 of Oxford. 
 
 33. The cosmogony man in the ‘ Vicar of Wakefield.’ Ephraim 
 Jenkinson, a rascally swindler who sometimes posed as a grave 
 man of learning, on which occasions he always managed to quote, 
 though very far from the point, the Greek words ^vapxov, etc. 
 (anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan—all things are without 
 beginning and without end),—the only Greek he knew. (See 
 The Vicar of Wakefield, xiv. and xxv.) 
 
 Page 109. 
 
 1. 6. The Methodists. The Methodists are a sect which grew 
 out of a small club founded by Charles and John Wesley in 
 the eighteenth century. The name was given contemptuously 
 on account of the methodic strictness with which Wesley’s 
 
320 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 club observed all religious duties. The Methodists have since 
 ■become very numerous, and now comprise several sects, Wesleyan 
 Methodists, Primitive Methodists, etc. The Methodists are, of 
 coarse, hostile to the Established Church, and would thus have 
 gloried in the defeat of the Bishop. This, De Qaincey, as a 
 staunch Church of England man, woirld have taken no pleasure 
 in. Wales is still a stronghold of dissent. 
 
 Page 110. 
 
 1. 35. Until the Michaelmas term. It will be remembered 
 that the time of De Quincey’s Welsh experiences was midsummer, 
 the period of the Oxford ‘ Long Vacation.’ The ‘ Michaelmas 
 term,’ from October to December, takes its name from the feast 
 of St Michael and All Angels, which falls on September 29th. 
 
 Page 111. 
 
 1.11. A college disconnected, etc. Worcester College. (Seethe 
 paper ‘ Oxford,’ Works, ii.) 
 
 18. Pennant. Thomas Pennant (1726-1795), naturalist and 
 antiquary, was a native of Wales. He wrote a number of 
 ‘Tours’ and other works. His Tours in Wales, including his 
 Journey to Snowdon, was published in 1778. Pennant’s merits 
 as a writer are the subject of an amusing dispute between Dr 
 Johnson and Bishop Percy (see Boswell). Dr Johnson said of 
 him, ‘ He’s a Whig, sir ; a sad dog (smiling at his own violent 
 expressions, merely for political difference of opinion). But 
 he’s the best traveller I ever read ; he observes more things 
 than any one else does.’ 
 
 Page 112. 
 
 1. 3. The Principality. The dominions of Llewelyn were 
 called the Principality. Llewelyn was the last native ‘ Prince 
 of Wales.’ He was conquered by Edward I., who gave his 
 eldest son the title of Prince of Wales. 
 
 6. 1802, a year of peace. The Peace of Amiens between 
 England and Erance was signed in March 1802. 
 
 25. The Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus, a cobbler in Jerusalem. 
 When Jesus was going to Calvary weighed down with the 
 heavy cross, he was fain to rest on a stone near the door of 
 Ahasuerus ; but Ahasuerus pushed him away, saying, ‘ Hence 
 with you, here you shall not rest.’ And Jesus answered : ‘ I in¬ 
 deed go hence, and to rest, but thou siialt walk and rest not till I 
 come.’ Such is the mediaeval legend. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 321 
 
 Page 113. 
 
 1. 16. An Arab’s burnoose. A garment composed of a cloak 
 and hood in one. 
 
 29. Thugs. A caste in India who live by plunder and 
 murder. They have been suppressed by the British Govern¬ 
 ment. De Quincey is, of course, jesting, and by ‘ Thugs ’ he 
 means simply the unromantic English robber. 
 
 32. Little Brahminical-looking cows. Brahminical, probably, 
 on account of their contemplative appearance. Welsh and 
 Scotch Highland cattle are somewhat smaller than the ordinary 
 English breeds. 
 
 33. Poach her foot. ‘ Poach,’ thrust; the original meaning 
 of ‘ poach ’ ‘ poke ’ is to put into a pouch or bag (SJceat). 
 
 Page 114. 
 
 1. 1. Juvenal’s license. The quotation is from Satire x. 22. 
 Masson translates the line, understanding vacuus in De Quincey’s 
 sense, ‘An empty-pocketed tramp will sing in the face of a 
 robber.’ 
 
 4-9. There are people . . . robbers. In plain words, ‘there 
 are some people who will assault you, whether you have any¬ 
 thing to rob or not.’ 
 
 10. Dr Johnson upon some occasion. The occasion I have 
 been unable to discover, in spite of a careful search in Boswell 
 and Piozzi. 
 
 22. Not every seventh son, etc. There is a superstitious belief 
 that the seventh son of a seventh son is preternaturally wise. 
 
 De Quincey means that it is not every man, however wise he 
 may be, who can, etc. The passage in Milton I have not been 
 able to verify. 
 
 28. Must contain salt. A Latinism ; a secondary meaning of 
 the word sal, salt, is intellectual acuteness, wit, etc., hence ‘ sal 
 niger’ (black salt) in Horace, means sarcasm. De Quincey 
 explains more fully what he means in the next clause, a practice 
 very common with him. 
 
 32. Coleridge’s capital error. See, for an instance of Cole¬ 
 ridge’s talking for three hours together without interruption, 
 the chapter in the Autobiography entitled ‘Samuel Taylor Cole¬ 
 ridge’ {Works, ii. 138). A better account, however, will be 
 found in Carlyle’s Life of John Sterling, a passage which has 
 become classical. ‘ Nothing could be more copious than his talk,’ 
 he writes, ‘and furthermore it was always, virtually or literally, 
 of the nature of a monologue ; suffering no interruption, 
 however reverent; hastily putting aside all foreign additions, 
 
 X 
 
322 
 
 DE QUINCE V. 
 
 annotations, or most ingenuous desire for elucidation, as well- 
 
 meant superfluities wMcli would never do.To sit as a 
 
 passive talker and be pumped into, whether you consent or 
 not, can, in the long-run, be exhilarating to no creature ; how 
 eloquent soever the flood of utterance that is descending. 
 {Life of Sterling, Part I., viii.) 
 
 Page 115. 
 
 1. 13. Some great advantages I had, etc. De Quincey was to 
 the end a brilliant talker, although he tells us (Works, ii. 232) 
 that at first he found great difliculty in expressing his thoughts. 
 Recollections of the magical charm of his conversation will be 
 found in Japp’s Life, ch. xxix., and in the second volume of the 
 De Qtdncey Memorials, where the narrator, Mr James J. Fields, 
 says that in the course of a walk, De Quincey ‘ talked with an 
 eloquence 1 have never heard surpassed,’ and goes on to declare 
 that De Quincey’s conversation ‘ was quite equal to his printed 
 pages.’ Mr Fields, however, is an enthusiast in the matter of 
 De Quincey. Carlyle, himself a brilliant talker, and a critic 
 certainly not open to this reproach, bears much the same 
 witness. In a letter to his brother, John Carlyle, dated 1827, 
 he writes, ‘De Quincey was here last Wednesday and sat till 
 midnight. . . . He speaks with a slow, sad, and soft voice, in 
 the politest manner I have almost ever witnessed, and with 
 great gracefulness and sense, were it not that he seems decidedly 
 given to prosing’ (Fronde’s Early Life of Carlyle, I., xxi.) ; and 
 elsewhere he records De Quincey’s ‘ finest silver-toned low voice, 
 and most elaborately gentle-winding courtesies and ingenuities 
 in conversation. “ What wouldn’t we give to have him in a box 
 and take him out to talk ! ” That was her (Mrs Carlyle’s) criticism 
 of him, and it was right good. A bright, ready, and melodious 
 talker, but in the end an inconclusive and long-winded.’ 
 (Reminiscences, ed. Fronde, i. 256.) 
 
 31. Artis est artem celare. ‘ It is the province of art to 
 conceal art,’ a common Latin proverb. 
 
 Page 116. 
 
 1. 10. Snowdonia. See note above on page 111. 
 
 22. Paul Richter. John Paul Frederic Richter, commonly 
 .spoken of as Jean Paul (1765-1825), German novelist and 
 humourist, for whom De Quincey had the utmost admiration. 
 After the Confessions, De Quincey’s next contributions to the 
 London Magazine were an essay on Richter, and some translated 
 passages from his works. But the best account of Richter in the 
 English language is to be found in Carlyle’s celebrated essays 
 (Miscellanies i. and iii.). Carlyle, however, tells us that De 
 
NOTES. 
 
 323 
 
 Quincey first set him reading Jean Paul, so that this unknown Mr 
 De Haren is the indirect source of one of the greatest of Carlyle’s 
 shorter writings. 
 
 22. Hippel .... Hamann. Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741- 
 1796) wrote books partly narrative and partly didactic. He imi¬ 
 tated the English Sterne, but his thought was borrowed from Kant, 
 whose lectures he attended. 
 
 Johann Georg Hamann {1730-1188), an intuitional writer; he 
 was much opposed to the rationalistic spirit. In some respects 
 he appears to have been a German Carlyle, both in matter and 
 manner. He influenced some of the greatest German writers, in¬ 
 cluding Goethe and Richter. 
 
 26. Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856). A very eminent 
 philosopher, and remarkable for his enormous erudition. See a 
 curiously digressive paper on Hamilton by De Quincey {Works, 
 vi.). Hamilton was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the 
 University of Edinburgh, from 1836 until his death. 
 
 33. Jesus (the Welsh College). Founded by Queen Elizabeth 
 in 1571. The majority of the members of Jesus are Welshmen. 
 
 38. The martial Butlers .... Talbots. The Butlers, a 
 Norman family, who obtained grants of land in Ireland in the time 
 of Henry VI. From the Butlers sprang the two noble families 
 of Ormonde and Garrick. The Talbots are the Earls and Dukes 
 of Shrewsbury, the most famous of whom was John Talbot (1373- 
 1463),—Shakespeare’s Talbot. He fought witli such bravery 
 in the French wars that he was called ‘ the English Achilles.’ 
 
 Page 117. 
 
 1. 16. The war taxation of Mr Pitt. See note above, p. 277. 
 
 27. Dolgelly. A town in Merionethshire, at the foot of 
 Cader Idris. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 ‘The title of this book, published in 1802, is Memoirs of the 
 Peers of England during the Reign of James the First; and the 
 article in the book to which De Quincey refers is at pp. 14-21 on 
 the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury ’ {Masson). Sir Egerton 
 Brydges, novelist, poet, and critic (1762-1837), wrote and edited 
 numerous books. The Memoirs were published in 1802. 
 
 Page 118. 
 
 1. 3. Which same prices, strange to say. The ‘ Lakes,’ having 
 since become a favourite place for tourists and sight-seers, prices 
 have risen very greatly. 
 
 4. Wordsworth and his sister. Miss Dorothy Wordsworth, for 
 some time one of De Quincey’s best friends. (See De Quincey 
 Memorials, i.) 
 
324 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The beautiful verses of Shirley. James Shirley, dramatist and 
 poet (1594-1666). The poem referred to is the well-known lyric 
 beginning— 
 
 ‘ The glories of our birth and state 
 Are shadows, not substantial things.’ 
 
 Page 119. 
 
 1. 1. Here we rejoin the original Confessions which we left at 
 page 110. 
 
 21. Near the small lake of Talyllyn. ‘Near the village of 
 Llan-y-Styndw (or some such name).’ Edition of 1822. 
 
 35. Prize-money. Money realised from the proceeds of a 
 captured ship, which is shared amongst the captors. Probably 
 the young Welshman had not been paid what he considered his 
 lawful share of some such capture. 
 
 Page 120. 
 
 1. 31. Methodist. See above, page 109 and note. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 This footnote is not in the edition of 1822. It speaks volumes 
 for De Quincey’s memory that he could recall so trifling an 
 incident at a period of more than fifty years after it occurred. 
 
 Page 121. 
 
 1. 13. Greek Sapphics and Alcaics. Greek lyrical metres, called 
 after the poetess Sappho, and the poet Alcseus. 
 
 16. In the edition of 1822 De Quincey concluded this paragraph 
 with the following words :—‘ Certainly Mr Shelley is right in his 
 notion about old age; unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts 
 of opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to 
 the genial charities of the human heart.’ De Quincey, in his old 
 age, had probably seen reason to qualify this somewhat un- 
 amiable sentiment. The next twelve pages are added to the 
 original narrative. 
 
 21. The unhappy lo. lo, daughter of Inachus, king of Argos. 
 She was loved by Zeus, and consequently persecuted by the 
 jealousy of Hera, the wife of Zeus. Zeus, to save her, metamor¬ 
 phosed her into a heifer, and Hera sent a gad-fly which drove 
 her madly from land to land. 
 
 22. Oestrus. Gk. harpos, a gad-fly. 
 
 23. Bade me fly when no man pursued. ‘ The wicked flee when 
 no man pursueth ’ (Proverbs.! xxviii.). 
 
 37. A reader. A proof-corrector, one who corrects blunders 
 
NOTES. 325 
 
 made by the compositor, before the sheets are sent to the author 
 or editor for revision. 
 
 Page 123. 
 
 I. 8 . Impedimenta. Latin, that which hinders, or impedes ; by 
 a secondary meaning, baggage, especially the baggage of an 
 army. 
 
 II. Oswestry. One of the chief towns in Shropshire. 
 
 Page 124. 
 
 1. 5. A first folio of the 1623 Shakespeare. The first folio was the 
 first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays ever published. It 
 bears the title, ‘ Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, 
 and Tragedies. Published according to the true original copies. 
 London, printed by Isaac Taggard, and Ed. Blount, 1623.’ It 
 was edited by John Heming and Henry Condell, actors and friends 
 of Shakespeare’s, and dedicated ‘ To the most noble and incomparable 
 paire of brothers, William Earl of Pembroke, etc., etc., and Philip 
 Earl of Montgomery, etc., etc.’ On the title-page is a portrait of 
 the poet, and facing it, Ben Jonson’s well-known lines— 
 
 ‘ This figure, that thou here seest put, 
 
 It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,’ etc. 
 
 The first folio is, of course, very rare, and very valuable. 
 
 6. An uncastrated Decamerone. The Decamerone (a collection of 
 100 tales) of Boccaccio, Italian poet aud tale-writer. ('Giovanni 
 Boccaccio, 1313-1375). Uriexpurgated Translations of the De¬ 
 camerone are very rare ; editions of the entire work in the original 
 Italian are common enough. 
 
 7. KeifxrtXtor, keimelion, Greek, an heirloom. 
 
 13. Magnificent is the library. The following passage is, of 
 course, metaphorical. The treasures at the bottom of the sea are 
 compared to valuable books in a library. 
 
 16. Forget-me-nots, i.e., books given as ‘keep-sakes’ as some 
 remembrance of the givers. 
 
 17-19. The Halsewell, etc. The Grosvenor was wrecked oft’ the 
 coast of Africa 4th August 1782 ; the Halsewell went down 6 Lh 
 January 1786 ; a hundred souls perished. The Winterton was 
 lost 20 th August 1792. 
 
 The Abergavenny, an East-Indiaman, went down off the coast 
 of Dorsetshire in January 1805. It was commanded by Captain 
 John Wordsworth, younger brother of the poet. For a detailed 
 account see De Quincey’s paper on ‘ William Wordsworth,’ Worlcs, 
 ii. 257, 259 ; also a note prefixed to Wordsworth’s poem, ‘ The 
 Happy Warrior,’ and letters on the catastrophe publislied in the 
 ‘ Prose Works of Wordsworth,’ ed. Grosart, iii. 244, 252. 
 
 22. Large-Paper copies. It is a common practice on the 
 
326 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 publication of some works, especially volumes of poetry, to print 
 off a certain limited number of copies on superior paper, with 
 large margins. These copies, in the case of works which acquire 
 fame, become very valuable. 
 
 24. The insolent Bodleian. The great library at Oxford, founded, 
 or rather restored, by Sir Thomas Bodley towards the close of 
 the sixteenth century. Fearing destruction of the rare and 
 valuable books by fire, no light is permitted to be introduced 
 within the walls of the Bodleian. 
 
 36. His lofty Castilian sense, etc. The noblemen of Spain 
 (Castile) were famed for their stately courtesy. Cf. Tennyson’s 
 ballad. The Revenge. 
 
 ‘ And the stately Spanish men, to their flagship bore him then, 
 
 Wliere they laid him, by the mast,—old Sir Richard caught at last: 
 
 And they praised him to his face, with their stately foreign grace,’ etc. 
 
 Page 125. 
 
 1. 16. Distant .... miles. De Quincey is correct; Oswestry 
 is 18 miles N.W. of Shrewsbury. It is a municipal borough and 
 market-town. 
 
 30. ‘Tramps.’ Vagrants who roam about the country begging, 
 or seeking odd jobs of work ; similar to the ‘loafers’ of India ; 
 persons without visible means of subsistence. 
 
 Page 126. 
 
 1. 9. Shibboleth, ‘ distinguishing mark.’ (See Judges xii.) The 
 Ephraimites were at war with the Gileadites. The Gileadites 
 defeated them in battle, ‘ And the Gileadites took the passage of 
 Jordan before the Ephraimites ; and it was so, that when those 
 Ephraimites which were escaped said, “ Let me go over,” that the 
 men of Gilead said unto him, “ Art thou an Ephraimite? ” If he 
 said, “ Nay; ” then said they unto him, “ Say now Shibboleth ; ” 
 and he said “ Sibboleth; ” for he could not frame to pronounce 
 it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passage of 
 Jordan ; and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and 
 two thousand.’ 
 
 9. Of the Pariah. See note above on page 21. 
 
 10-30. For a masterly picture of travelling in the old Mail- 
 Coach days, see De Quincey’s prose phantasy. The English Mail- 
 Goach. Mail-coaches, he there tells us, had ‘a large share in 
 developing the anarchies’ of his dreams (Works, xiii. 271). 
 
 36. Governor Holwell’s black cage, referring to the well-known 
 incident of the Black Hole of Calcutta, a close prison in which 
 Surajah Dowlah imprisoned Mr Holwell and 146 English men 
 and women in 1766. The finest account of this tragedy in the 
 language is to be found in Macaulay’s Essay on Clive. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 327 
 
 Page 127. 
 
 1. 9. Jessica’s moonlight. 
 
 ‘ How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this hank.’ 
 
 —Merchant of Venice, V. i. 54. 
 
 The words, however, are spoken by Lorenzo, not Jessica. 
 
 13. Farewell summer resurrection. Called also St Martin’s 
 Summer, All Saints’ Summer, All Halloween Summer, and St 
 Luke’s Little Summer. The following passage to the end of the 
 paragraph is essentially De Quincean in evolution, as well as in 
 its wealth of figurativeness. 
 
 22 . ‘Lightning before death.’ Compare Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, The Spanish Curate, iv. 5. 
 
 ‘ Bartolus, —Methinks he looks well; 
 
 His colour fresh, and strong ; his eyes are cheerful. 
 
 Lopez. —A glimmering before death ; ’tis nothing else, sir.’ 
 
 Page 128. 
 
 1. 17. Locus penitentiae. ‘A place for repentance’ (Xaifw). 
 
 20. Court of pie poudrA A court held in fairs to do justice to 
 buyers and sellers. So called because fairs being usually held in 
 summer, the suitors are generally country people with dusty 
 feet. See Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, 11. i. ‘ Many are 
 the enormities of this fair, in whose courts of Pie poudres I have 
 had the honour ... to sit as judge.’ 
 
 34. ‘Try the range of their guns,’ i.e., test how far the new 
 arrival is a subject for extortionate charges. 
 
 Page 129. 
 
 1. 3. Smart money. Money paid by a person to obtain exemp¬ 
 tion from some disagreeable duty. It has several applications ; 
 the meaning here seems to be money which a rich convict used 
 to pay the jailor, who in consideration of it relaxed the prison 
 discipline in favour of the payer. Brewer explains it {Dictionary 
 of Phrase and Fable) to signify ‘money which makes the payer 
 smart or suffer without procuring for him money’s worth.’ 
 
 4. A man comme il faut, French : a man as he ought to be, a 
 man of position or fashion. 
 
 8 . inopm-ue, Gk. nopirt], a solemn procession. Compare a 
 passage in the majesty of the Roman Emperors, in De Quincey’s 
 Notes on Walter Savage Landor (Works, xi.). ‘Before him (the 
 Imperator semper Augustus), the sacred fire (that burned from 
 century to century) went pompously in advance, ’eTropnev^ ; before 
 him the children of Europe and Asia, of Africa and the islands, 
 rode as dorypberoi; his somatophulaixes, or bodyguards, were 
 princes,’ etc., etc. 
 
328 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 8. Pompously. See note above on page 83. 
 
 10-11. Moved before Caesar . . . avatars. Caesar was origin¬ 
 ally a family name of the Julian gens, and thus belonged to the 
 first six Emperors either by birth or adoption, but all the 
 succeeding Emperors assumed it as part of their title, and it 
 still remains in the German Kaisar. The name Augustus was 
 bestowed on Octavianus by the Senate and Roman people (b.c. 
 27). It is a word connected with religion, and means, ‘ sacred, 
 worthy of worship.’ Other Emperors retained tbe title, and 
 from Philippus the title became ‘ semper Augustus,’ always 
 ‘sacred.’ Avatars. The Sanskrit word, meaning descent of a deity 
 to earth, is here used in the secondary sense of ‘ manifestation as 
 an object of worship.’ 
 
 14. One of the twelve Csesars. The ‘ twelve Caesars ’ are tbe first 
 twelve Emperors of Rome, whose lives were written by Suetonius. 
 They are Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, 
 Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian. The Caesar 
 referred to is Vespasian. From the first, the Emperors on their 
 decease were deified, were worshipped as gods, and Vespasian, 
 one of the best of the Emperors, in these words showed his 
 contempt for this product of vulgar superstition and no less 
 vulgar flattery. The incident is related by Suetonius ;—‘ Ac ne 
 in metu quidem ac periculo mortis extremo abstinuit iocis . . . 
 Prima quoque morbi accessione, “ Vae,” inquit, “ puto, Deus fio.” 
 —He did not abstain from jests even in the fear and last peril of 
 death ... on the first attach of the sickness, “ Alas I ” he said, 
 “ methinhs I am becoming a god.” ’ 
 
 26. My apotheosis, ‘ my deification.’ 
 
 Page 130. 
 
 1. 1. ‘ Those awful sounds that live in darkness.’ 
 
 ‘ Far more fondly now 
 Than in the earlier season did he love 
 Tempestuous nights—the conflict and the sounds 
 That live in darkness.’ 
 
 — The Excursion, Book! 
 
 The following passage, to the end of the next paragraph, is 
 characteristic of De Quincey’s temperament, his tendency to give 
 to external objects and associations a subjective and tran¬ 
 scendental significance such as few men would find in them. 
 
 Page 131. 
 
 1. 14. Dark as ‘the inside of a wolf’s throat,’ ‘dark as a wolf’s 
 mouth ’ is a common similitude. Dr Brewer questions whether 
 it is not a corruj)tion of ‘ wolf’s month,’ i.e. January. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 329 
 
 21. Acheron (Acherontis avari). Acheron (of greedy Acheron). 
 Acheron was first the name of several rivers ; secondly it was a 
 river in the lower world ; then in later writers Acheron stands for 
 the whole lower world. The quotation is from Virgil, Georgies, ii. 
 492. 
 
 Compare EEneid VI., when A5neas, led by the Sybil, plunges 
 into the gloomy cave which leads down to hell. 
 
 22. Thou also. Whispering Gallery. (See above, pages 77, 96, 
 and note.) 
 
 25. An irrevocable word. (See page 77.) ‘ Nescit vox missa 
 revertV 
 
 28. Camera obscura, Lat., dark chamber. ‘ An apparatus in 
 which the images of external objects, formed by a convex lens or 
 a concave mirror, are shown on a paper or other white surface, 
 placed in the focus of the lens or mirror within a darkened 
 chamber, or box, so that the outlines may be traced.’ 
 
 Page 132. 
 
 1.10. Comes the . . . NEWS. The etymology is purely fanciful. 
 ‘News’ is simply a translation of the French word nouvelles, 
 new things, and is derived from the Latin novus, new. 
 
 For more De Quincean matter on the subject of the English 
 mail-coaches and the Post Office, see the section of The English 
 Mail-Goach entitled ‘ Going down with Victory.’ (Works, xiii.) 
 
 21. All bone and blood. Blood, i.e., breeding. 
 
 Page 133. 
 
 1. 17. Mei juris, i.e., my own master. 
 
 18-23. De Quincey obtained neither scholarship nor fellowship 
 at Oxford, nor did he take his degree. Compare Works, ii. 10. 
 ‘ Oxford, ancient mother ! hoary with ancestral honours, time- 
 honoured, and happy, it may be, time-shattered power—I owe 
 thee nothing ! of thy vast riches I took not a shilling, though 
 living amongst multitudes who owed to thee their daily bread.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 De Quincey had personal knowledge of Glasgow, which, as 
 Dr Japp says, ‘ he liked not.’ He went to Glasgow in 1841, and 
 resided there at intervals till 1843, having engaged lodgings at 
 79 Eenfield Street. (Japp’s Life of De Quincey, 236.) 
 
 Page 134. 
 
 1. 18. Red-letter days. In the Christian calendars the festivals 
 of the greater saints, and other great feasts, are printed in red 
 letters, and are therefore called red-letter days. 
 
330 
 
 DE QUINCEV. 
 
 22. Greek Street. In the early edition the name of the street 
 was naturally suppressed. 
 
 Page 135. 
 
 1. 1. Officina diplomatum. Latin officina, workshop, manu¬ 
 factory ; diplomatum, of documents. 
 
 34 ‘ Coigue of vantage.’ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, I. vi. 7.) 
 
 ‘No jutty, frieze, 
 
 Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.’ 
 
 Page 136. 
 
 1. 30. ‘ Showed fight.’ A colloquial expression (see above note 
 on p. 6, and Introduction, p. xxv.). 
 
 32. Serving an ejectment, humorously for ‘ forcibly kicking out.’ 
 
 Page 138. 
 
 1. 8. By the law I came to know sin. Gf. Eomans, iii. 20 : ‘For 
 by the law is the knowledge of sin.’ Gf, also Rom., vii. 7 : ‘ I 
 had not known sin but by the law.’ 
 
 29. As Wordsworth records. This seems to be an allusion to 
 Wordsworth’s poem. Goody Blake and Harry Gill — 
 
 ‘ Her evenings then were dull and dead ; 
 
 Sad case it was as you may think. 
 
 For very cold to go to bed ; 
 
 And then for cold not sleep a wink.’ 
 
 Page 139. 
 
 We have again joined the edition of 1822. There seems some 
 discrepancy in statement between the two editions. In the 
 present work we are told that De Quincey, after his arrival in 
 London, ‘^continued for seven or eight weeks to live most 
 parsimoniously in lodgings’; in the edition of 1822 he says, 
 ‘ During the former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in 
 Wales, and always for the first two months in London) I was 
 houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof.’ 
 
 1. 25. With a bundle of law papers. ‘ With a bundle of cursed 
 law papers ’ in the original edition. 
 
 29. To our comfort. ‘ To our warmth ’ in the earlier edition. 
 As the same word ‘warmth’ concludes the next sentence, De 
 Quincey’s reason for the change is apparent. 
 
 31. Her ghostly enemies. In the Church Catechism, ‘our 
 ghostly (i.e,, spiritual) enemy’ is the devil. 
 
 37. The tumultuousness of my dreams. It is to be observed 
 that De Quincey was a dreamer of ‘ tumultuous ’ dreams, even 
 
NOTES. 
 
 331 
 
 before his opium-eating period. Notice this word ‘ tumultuous.^ 
 It is frequently used by De Quincey in connection with his 
 dreams. The concluding section of The English Mail Gooch, 
 called Dream Fugue, opens with the musical direction ‘ Tumul- 
 tuosissimamente’ (most tumultuously). 
 
 Page 140. 
 
 I. 2. Dog-sleep. Like that of a dog dozing, half-asleep and 
 half-awake. 
 
 4-10. About this time . . . relieving it. Dr Eatwell, in his 
 examination of De Quincey’s case, draws especial notice to this 
 passage. (See the Introduction.) 
 
 16-31. It may be noticed that this passage, a very fine one, 
 though very involved and demanding close attention, does not 
 occur in the edition of 1822. 
 
 35. Improving on the plan of Cromwell. Clarendon relates 
 that after the dissolution of his last Parliament, Cromwell 
 ‘ became more apprehensive of danger to his own person ’ than 
 formerly ; that he wore armour under his clothes, preserved the 
 utmost secrecy with regard to his movements, was difficult of 
 access, and ‘ rarely lodged two nights together in one chamber, 
 but had many furnished and prepared ; to which his own key 
 conveyed him and those he would have with him, when he had 
 a mind to go to bed ’ (History of the Rebellion, etc.. Book xv.). Of 
 later historians of credit, Lingard, naturally no advocate for 
 Oliver, repeats these stories, and even Lingard remarks in a 
 footnote that Clarendon’s ‘ testimony can prove nothing more than 
 that such reports were current, and obtained credit among the 
 Royalists.’ From Carlyle’s Letters and Speeches of Oliver Crom¬ 
 well, vol. V., we gather, from trustworthy sources cited, that 
 Cromwell took necessary precautions against the Royalist 
 assassins and levelling fanatics who threatened his life, but that 
 his bearing during the time Clarendon refers to was very 
 different from that described on mere hearsay by the Royalist 
 historian. In fact, Cromwell throughout treated the various 
 plots—and they were many—against himself with considerable 
 indifference ; ‘ little fiddling things,’ he termed them. 
 
 Page 141. 
 
 II. 7-11. As I once learnedly . . . parts of space. See the 
 Introduction for some remarks on the ‘ scholarly ’ character of 
 De Quincey’s humour. He here draws upon the terminology of 
 metaphysics for the subject-matter of his jest. It is to be 
 observed that in the first edition there occur the words ‘ as the 
 metaphysicians have it,’ which were omitted in the revised 
 edition. The phraseology of German metaphysics had become 
 
332 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 generally familiar to the English reading public by 1850 ; it was 
 far from being so in 1822. 
 
 22. The Bluebeard room. In the old nursery story of Blue¬ 
 beard, Bluebeard permits his wife to enter any room in the 
 palace save one, for which, however, he gives her a golden key. 
 Her curiosity gets the better of her discretion, she enters the 
 room, and finds there the remains of former wives murdered by 
 Bluebeard for succumbing to a similar curiosity. 
 
 32. Tartarus, Greek mythology. Tartarus is in the lowest 
 depth of the nether-world, as far below Hades, the abode of the 
 death-king, as Hades is below the Earth. 
 
 Page 142. 
 
 1. 1. In the Parks. The public parks or pleasure grounds of 
 London, green oases of trees, and grass and walks, in the midst 
 of a wilderness of brick and mortar. The chief are Hyde Park, 
 St James’s Park, Eegent’s Park, etc. 
 
 10. ‘ La 3 dng down,’ i.e., giving up as too expensive. The 
 expression has now fallen out of use. 
 
 Page 143. 
 
 1. 1. As Dr Johnson has recorded ... as he wished. ‘ I have 
 heard him protest that he never had quite as much as he wished 
 of wall-fruit, except once in his life, and that was, when we were 
 all together at Ombersley, the seat of Lord Sandys ’.—Mrs Piozzi’s 
 Anec^tes of the late Dr Samuel Johnson. 
 
 5-7. As I am now . . . Soho Square. In the earlier edition 
 the locality of Mr Brunell’s house was of course concealed. See 
 on this point Appendix vi. to Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, 
 vol. ii., in which is reprinted a passage from the third instalment 
 of the Suspiria de Profundis, in Blackwood’s for July 1845. 
 Doubts as to the genuineness of the facts related in The 
 Confessions had been suggested by various critics. One of these 
 had argued that De Quincey had said that the attorney’s house 
 was in Oxford Street, and that no house answering to the 
 description was to be found in Oxford Street. To which De 
 Quincey’s answer is comj)lete. ‘ Meantime it happens that, 
 although the true house was most obscurely indicated, any house 
 whatever in Oxford Street was most luminously excluded. In 
 all the immensity of London there was but one single street 
 could be challenged by an attentive reader as peremptorily not 
 the street of the attorney’s house—and that one was Oxford 
 Street; for, in speaking of my own renewed acquaintance with 
 the outside of this hoirse, I used some expressions implying that, 
 in order to make such a visit of reconnaissance, I had turned 
 aside from Oxford Street. The matter is a perfect trifle in 
 
NOTES. 
 
 333 
 
 itself, but it is no trifle in a question affecting a writer’s 
 accuracy. ... I may now mention—the Herod being dead 
 whose persecution I had reason to fear — that the house in 
 question stands in Greek Street, on the west, and is the house on 
 that side nearest to Soho Square, but without looking into the 
 Square.’ Then follows much humorous trifling on the subject of 
 the attorney, of whom he concludes, ‘ I never succeeded in 
 tracing his steps through the wilderness of London until some 
 years back, when I ascertained that he was dead.’ 
 
 19. I turned aside. See previous note. 
 
 Page 144. 
 
 I. 4. But another person. Here follows the classic episode of 
 Ann of Oxford Street, one of the most pathetic and noblest in 
 all De Quincey’s writings. 
 
 8. Pariahs. See note above on p. 21. In the edition of 1822, 
 the passage ran thus, ‘ This person was a young woman, and one 
 of that unhappy class who subsist on the wages of prostitution.’ 
 The sentence gains greatly in pathos and suggestiveness by the 
 softening down of the phraseology. 
 
 17. ‘ Sine Cerere et Baccho.’ The full proverb is, ‘ Sine Cerere 
 et Baccho friget Venus.—Without corn and wine love grows 
 cold.’ Ceres (Demeter), goddess of agricnlture and the fruits of 
 the earth ; Bacchus (Dionysus), god of wine ; Venus (Aphrodite), 
 goddess of love and beauty. Compare the English proverb, 
 ‘ When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window. 
 The whole passage has been in the enlarged edition much 
 altered, and with great advantage. 
 
 31. More Socratico. After the fashion of Socrates, whose 
 method of searching for truth was to question all sorts and con¬ 
 ditions of men, and upon all occasions. 
 
 36. A Catholic creatiire. One without class or social pre¬ 
 judices, one who is, in the words of St Paul, ‘ all things to all 
 men.’ 
 
 Page 145. 
 
 II. 1, 2. Being myself . . . peripatetic. The peripatetics (Gk. 
 Trepj, about, Trareri/, to Walk) were the disciples of Aristotle, who 
 taught in the covered walk of the Lyceum at Athens. ‘ This 
 colonnade was called the peripatos, because it went all round the 
 place ’ {Brewer). 
 
 14. I owe it . . . alive. See p. 146. 
 
 Page 146. 
 
 1. 37. Which at that time . . . solid food. Dr Eatwell quotes 
 this as an ‘ important symptom in De Quincey’s case.’ 
 
334 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Page 147, 
 
 1. 9. The curse of a father . . . supernatural power. This belief 
 is illustrated in the story of Jacob fraudulently obtaining the 
 blessing from his father Isaac, which was intended for Esau. 
 He feared that the deceit might be detected, and that his father 
 might curse instead of bless him :—‘ And Jacob said to Eebekah 
 his mother . . . My father peradventure will feel me, and I 
 shall seem to him a deceiver ; and I shall bring a curse upon 
 me, and not a blessing’ {Genesis, xxvii. 11, 12). 
 
 18. De Quincey at this point has omitted a long passage 
 which appears in the first version, probably as interfering with 
 the progress of the narrative, and marring, by an intrusion 
 of intellectual subtleties, its simple pathos. The paragraph 
 originally ran thus, ‘ I do not often weep : for not only do 
 my thoughts on subjects connected with the chief interests of 
 man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand fathoms “ too deep 
 for tears ” ; not only does the sternness of my habits of thought 
 present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears— 
 wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by 
 their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would 
 by that same levity be made incapable of resisting it on any 
 casual access of such feelings ; but also, I believe, that all 
 minds which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I 
 have done, must, for their own protection from utter despon¬ 
 dency, have early encouraged and cherished some tranquillising 
 belief as to the future balances and hieroglyphic meaning of 
 human sufferings. On these accounts I am cheerful to this 
 hour, and, as I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some 
 feelings, though not deeper,’ etc. 
 
 21. On a common street-organ. In the original version, ‘ on 
 a barrel-organ’—an obvious improvement. 
 
 28, His late Majesty’s, i.e., George III. 
 
 Page 148. 
 
 1. 10. It will strike them, etc. This is a repetition. See p. 121. 
 The former passage, however, does not occur in the original 
 edition. 
 
 27. Even in those quarters, etc, De Quincey is probably 
 referring to Lady Carbery. 
 
 Page 149. 
 
 1. 15. Station of ‘devil.’ A printer’s devil is the youngest 
 apprentice in a printing establishment. As to the meaning 
 of the term. Dr Ilrewer quotes Moxon, ‘ They do commonly so 
 black and bedaub themselves, that the workmen do jocosely 
 call them devils.’ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 335 
 
 18. I am, indeed, not sure. This appears directly to contradict 
 what has gone before (‘ such an office I could have discharged,’ 
 etc.). The humorous passage is an insertion in the enlarged 
 edition, there being no humour at all in the original. De 
 Quincey, in speaking of authors, ‘ fastidious in matters of 
 punctuation,’ is no doubt playfully glancing at himself and 
 the trouble he gave to the Edinburgh ‘ devils ’ during the 
 publication of the collected edition (see Japp’s Life of De 
 Quincey, ch. xxvii.). 
 
 Page 150. 
 
 I. 4. The second son of-, of Thomas De Quincey, of course. 
 
 The first-born son was William (see Introduction). The Con¬ 
 fessions originally appeared anonymously. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The parliamentary movement . . . Mrs Clark. Frederick 
 Augustus, Duke of Fork, second son of George III. He was 
 for a while Commander-in-chief of the forces, but was compelled 
 to resign owing to disclosures made in Parliament as to the 
 influence he allowed his mistress, Mrs Clark, to exercise in 
 the matter of army appointments. 
 
 A respectable college. Worcester College, Oxford. 
 
 The vindictive malice of my guardian. The Rev. Samuel 
 Hall (see above note on p. 56, and Japp’s De Quincey Memorials, 
 vol. i.). 
 
 The siege of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was besieged and taken 
 by the Romans under Titus, a.d. 70. 
 
 The building of the second temple. In B.c. 536, the Jewish 
 exiles in Babylon were allowed by Cyrus to return, and began 
 the rebuilding of the city and temple. 
 
 Page 151. 
 
 II. 4-7. It was strange . . . materialiter . . . formaliter con¬ 
 sidered. A joke at the expense of the Kantian logic, and 
 its distinction between the form and matter of judgment. ‘The 
 matter of general logic, as we have seen, consists in “ the ideas 
 which, in the judgment, are combined in a unity of conscious¬ 
 ness,” the form is “ the manner in which they are combined,” ’ 
 (A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant, by Edward Caird, 
 p. 298.) 
 
 11. Most of these letters. Some of these letters have been, 
 curiously enough, preserved, and are published in the first 
 volume of Japp’s De Quincey Memorials. See Appendix vii. to 
 vol. ii. of that work. The letters fully bear out all that is 
 
336 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 said here, and prove the very remarkable interest which a 
 public man like Lord Altamont could take in a schoolboy 
 such as De Quincey then was. 
 
 22. Since I had been there. De Quincey was in Ireland in 
 the year 1800. See ‘Autobiography’ {JVor%s, vol. i, ch. 17). 
 
 Page 153. 
 
 I. 11. The great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. Oxford Street, 
 a great and busy street running from east to Avest, into which 
 on either hand numberless smaller streets run. 
 
 Page 154. 
 
 II. 3, 4. A bed which at this day . . . uneasy one. ‘ This day ’ 
 is of course 1821, the time of the original Confessions. 
 
 10-14. So thick a curtain . . . disguise. De Quincey has here 
 omitted a short passage, probably on the ground of comparative 
 obscurity. The passage at first ran thus,—‘ So thick .... are 
 all confounded ; the vast and multitudinous compass of their 
 several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of differences 
 exjoressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds.’ 
 
 Page 155. 
 
 1. 20. Slough. A village in Buckinghamshire, 18 miles W. of 
 London. 
 
 23. And pointedly expressed by a Roman poet. Probably the 
 line already quoted from Juvenal, ‘ Gantabit vacuus coram latrone 
 viator^ (p. 114). This is another instance of a somewhat 
 inartistic repetition, to be accounted for by the enlargement of the 
 original Confessions. 
 
 25. There had been some weeks before a murder. There was 
 to De Quincey an almost morbid fascination for shocking crimes, 
 and he seldom fails to go into details about them ; see his long 
 account of the infamous William’s mrrrder, which forms a post¬ 
 script to Murder as one of the Fine Arts, and his letters to his 
 daughter on the Palmer and Madeline Smith poisoning cases 
 (see Japp’s Life, pp. 393-395, and De Quincey Memorials, ii. 195). 
 
 Footnote. Dr Garnett says that the execution of these 
 murderers took place in February 23, 1807. The ‘ acute 
 lawyer’ was Mr James Harmer. Nothing is said in his 
 pamphlet of any conversation between Holloway and Haggerty 
 having been overlieard by a turnkey. The chief evidence was 
 that of an accomplice—or a professed accomj)lice—named Han- 
 field. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 337 
 
 Page 156. 
 
 1. 7. Lord of my learning and no land beside. Adapted from 
 Shakespeare, King John., I. i. 137. 
 
 ‘ Lord of thy presence, and no land beside.’ 
 
 24, 25. To slacken virtue . . . praise. Paradise Regained, 
 ii. 455, 456. Milton, however, wrote ‘ prompt,'" not ‘ tempt.’ 
 
 Page 157. 
 
 1. 25. The houses of the ‘ Dames.’ Matrons, whose duty it is to 
 perform towards the boys some of those services which would be 
 rendered them by their female relatives at home. In the 
 original version, the words are, ‘ and about eight o’clock went 
 down towards Pote’s.’ 
 
 29. Jesus College, Cambridge. One of the oldest colleges in 
 Cambridge, founded 1496. 
 
 29, 30. ‘ Ibi omnis effusus labor.’ ‘ Then all my toil was spent 
 in vain’—quoted from Virgil, Georgia IV., 491, 492, the passage 
 which describes how Orpheus finally lost Eurydice, whom he had 
 spent so much toil to regain. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Cuffe. William Cuffe, a distinguished scholar, for sometime 
 lecturer in Greek at Merton College, Oxford. Cuffe was tried and 
 executed, being the adviser and abettor of Essex, in 1601. 
 
 The unhappy Earl of Essex. The famous Kobert Devereux, 
 favourite of Elizabeth, and friend of the poet Spenser (1567 to 
 1601). He was executed on account of this dmeute (insur¬ 
 rection). 
 
 Page 158. 
 
 1. 6. At this point He Quincey omits a whole paragraph which 
 had become unnecessary in the enlarged edition. In the para¬ 
 graph in question he warns his readers that, although he has had 
 occasion to speak of some of the nobility as personal friends of 
 his own, he must not be supposed to be himself of noble rank. 
 He then mentions that his father was a merchant, ‘ esteemed 
 during his life for his great integrity, and strongly attached to 
 literary pursuits ’ ; his mother ‘ still more highly gifted.’ All 
 this forms the autobiographical sketches already known to the 
 public. 
 
 8 . The first ‘ goodman’s table,’ ‘ goodman ’ in the sense of 
 ‘ master of the house.’ Of, ‘ If the goodman of the house had 
 known in what watch the thief would come,’ etc. (Matthexv, xxiv. 
 43.) 
 
 Y 
 
338 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 15. (Which, however, I now believed to be a falsehood). The 
 parenthesis is not to be found in the edition of 1821. Dr 
 Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. Thomas Otway (dramatist, 1651-1684) 
 is said to have died from the effects of a meal too rapidly con¬ 
 sumed after a long-enforced abstinence from food. Another 
 story, believed by Carlyle (Essay on Boswell’s Life of Johnson)^ 
 is that he died of starvation. Antony 5, Wood says, ‘ he made 
 his last exit in a house on Tower Hill called The Bull.’ John 
 Dennis relates that Otway languished in adversity, unpitied, and 
 died in an alehouse unlamented. The story De Quincey refers 
 to is first found in Cibber’s Lives of the Poets (1753), where we are 
 told that Otway, when hiding from his creditors, begged a shilling 
 from a gentleman who charitably gave him a guinea. With this 
 he bought a roll, but was choked by the first mouthful. This 
 was written six years after Otway’s death, and cannot, therefore, 
 be confidently trusted. See Mr Sidney Lee’s article on Otway in 
 the Dictionary of National Biography, xlii. 
 
 Page 159. 
 
 1. 23. The following sentence has been omitted in the enlarged 
 edition: ‘ Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed in such 
 a business without surveying you with looks as austere and un- 
 propitious as those of a Saracen’s head.’ 
 
 35. An opening was made, almost by accident.. The nature of 
 this accident is nowhere explained. Dr Japp has published some 
 letters (De Quincefs Memorials, i. vi.) which seem to show that 
 De Quincey communicated his London address to a friend, a 
 Mrs Best of Liverpool ; and through Mrs Best, in January 1804, 
 he addressed a letter of conciliation to his guardian, Mr Hall. 
 The result of this letter was not very satisfactory, and De 
 Quincey appears to have gone for a short time to the house of 
 the Bests at Liverpool before returning to his mother at the Priory. 
 
 37. I quitted London . . . the Priory. In the edition of 1822, 
 ‘ I quitted London in liaste for a remote part of England.’ 
 
 Page 160. 
 
 1. 5. What had become of Ann ? In the original, ‘ what had be¬ 
 come of poor Ann ’ ? The omission of the commonplace epithet 
 of sympathy is a distinct improvement. 
 
 26. All was in vain. Not in the edition of 1822. 
 
 Page 161. 
 
 I. 8. The grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen, i.e., of a penitent. 
 St Mary Magdalene, the repentant harlot out of whom Christ 
 ‘ cast seven devils.’ 
 
 II . At this point the first part of the Confessions as they 
 
NO TES. 
 
 339 
 
 appeared in the London Magazine closed, and the following 
 editorial note was added ; ‘ The remainder of this very interesting 
 article will be given in the next number.’ 
 
 38. Alleviations, how deep! from sympathising affection. De 
 Quincey has made a slight change here. In the original the 
 words ran, ‘ and with alleviations from sympathising affection— 
 how deep and tender !’ The alteration is characteristic, and 
 shows how sensitive De Quincey’s ear was to the most delicate 
 effects in literature. De Quincey is of course alluding to the 
 ministration of his wife during the years when he was prostrated 
 beneath the ‘ Circean spell ’ of opium. 
 
 Page 162. 
 
 I. 8. Marylebone (Mary on the bourn or river), a district in 
 the north of London. 
 
 II. To Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived at that time. See 
 above, page 64. 
 
 14. If I had the wings of a dove, etc. ‘ And I said, Oh that I 
 had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest.’ 
 Psalm Iv. 6. 
 
 21. As ever haunted the couch of an Orestes. Orestes was the son 
 of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra. On the return of Agamem¬ 
 non from Troy, Clytaemnestra and her paramour Aegistheus slew 
 him. Eight years afterwards Orestes avenged his father’s death 
 by slaying his own mother. It was for this deed that he was 
 persecuted by the Eumenides. 
 
 23. As a blessed balm. (pi\hv virv-r] 6sXy7}Tp6v iwiKovpov vocrov. 
 (De Quincey’s footnote to the original edition.) The quotation is 
 from Orestes’ opening speech, ‘Dear sleep, helpful charm in sickness.’ 
 
 24. Visited me as my bitterest scourge. Because of the opium 
 dreams. 
 
 32. My Eumenides. The ‘Furies’ or ‘Erinnyes’ of Greek 
 mythology, avengers of crime here and hereafter. The word 
 Eumenides means ‘ well-wisher.s,’ an euphemism, because people 
 feared to call these terrible goddesses by their real name. 
 
 35. Sat my Electra. The sister of Orestes, who in the play of 
 Euripides (Ihe Electra) ministered to her brother during his 
 affliction. See De Quincey’s footnote. 
 
 36. Beloved M-. His wife, Margaret, 
 
 Page 163. 
 
 1. 2. To servile ministrations. SovXevpia (De Quincey’s foot¬ 
 note to the edition of 1822). The words (sweet servitude) also 
 occur in the Orestes, 221. 
 
 Idhv rh S6v\evfi rjSv, kovk avaivop.(u 
 aSeAc/)’ aSe\(p'p x^‘P^ Oepaireveiv 
 
340 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 8. Bade me ‘ sleep no more.’ 
 
 ‘ Methouglit I heard a voice cry, “ Sleep no more ! ” 
 
 Macbeth does murder sleep. 
 
 Still it cried “ Sleep no more ! ” to all the house.’ 
 
 — Macbeth, II. ii. 35. 
 
 13. The king of men. Agamemnon is so called in the Iliad. 
 The latter part of this paragraph contains several echoes of 
 Euripides’s play. Compare the following :— 
 
 Orestes. 0 gentle Sleep, whose lenient pow’r thus soothes 
 Disease and pain, how sweet thy visit to me. 
 
 Who wanted thy soft aid ! Blessing divine. 
 
 That to the wretched givest wish’d repose. 
 
 Steeping their senses in forgetfulness !— 
 
 Where have I been ? Wliere am I! How brought thither ? 
 
 My late distraction blots remembrance out. 
 
 Electra. My most dear brother. Oh what heartfelt joy 
 To see thee lie composed in gentle sleep ! 
 
 Wilt thou I touch thee ? shall I raise thee up ? 
 
 Orestes. Assist me, then, assist me ; from my mouth 
 
 Wipe off this dotted foam ; wipe my moist eyes. 
 
 Electra. Delightful office, for a sister’s hand 
 To minister relief to a sick brother. 
 
 Soon the madness seizes again on Orestes. Again he seems to 
 see the Eumenides, with snake-entwined locks, glaring at him. 
 Once more quiet returns, and he sees his sister weeping— 
 
 ‘ Why dost thou weep, my sister ? why decline 
 Thy drooping head, and hide it in thy vest I ’ 
 
 —Euripides, Orestes (Potter’s Translation). 
 
 Pottei-’s translation is not very literal, but gives the general 
 sense, and much of the feeling. 
 
 17. Meantime I am again in London, i.e. in 1821. De Quincey 
 had left his wife and children at Grasmere, and had come up to 
 London to seek for literary emj)loyment, in order to support his 
 family. 
 
 27. Mistress of that very house. De Quincey in 1821 occupied 
 the cottage at Grasmere, which had been Wordsworth’s place of 
 residence in 1803. 
 
 29. Scattered to the winds of late. De Quincey had not found 
 Wordsworth the immaculate hero he had expected. See the 
 paper, Gradual Estrangement from Wordsworth (Works, vol. iii.). 
 
NOTES. 
 
 341 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE PLEASURES OP OPIUM. 
 
 Page 165. 
 
 1. 24. Manna or of ambrosia. Manna, ‘angels’ food’ (Psalm 
 Ixxviii. 25), the bread that fell from heaven as food for the 
 Israelites in the wilderness (see Exodus xvi.) : ambrosia, the meat 
 of the gods in Greek mythology. 
 
 Page 166. 
 
 1. 8. ‘The stately Pantheon.’ Wordsworth, The Power of 
 Music ,— 
 
 ‘ Near the stately Pantheon you’ll meet with the same, 
 
 In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name. ’ 
 
 The London Pantheon, called after the temple in Rome, built 
 by Marcus Agrippa, B.c. 27, was opened as a theatre in 1772. It 
 was burned in 1792, was twice rebuilt, and in 1834 turned into a 
 bazaar. 
 
 19. A beatific vision. A vision of the blessed in Heaven, such 
 as is described in St John’s Booh of Revelation, and Dante’s 
 Paradiso. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Who apparently did justice to his name, i.e. he was a flat, a 
 dunce. Flatman. Thomas Flatman (1633-1688) published in 
 1685 a ‘ Pindarique Ode on the Death of King Charles II.’ He 
 has the honour of being mentioned in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. 
 
 Page 167. 
 
 1. 2. Brought me acquainted. This somewhat unusual form was 
 a favourite with Charles Lamb, who got it from the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth century writers of whom he was so fond. 
 
 10 . Apocalypse. Gk. 'anoKaXv^is, revelation. 
 
 15. (papfiaKou vriirsv Homer, Odyssey, iv. 221 
 
 avTiK &y its Zluou jSciAe (p&p/j-aKov ’evdeu ’eirlyov 
 vriTvevdes r axo\6v re, KaKwy eTTLKrjdov aTrdvroop. 
 
 ‘ And she [Helen] cast a thing and a drug in the wine whence they 
 would drink, 
 
 The queller of grief and of anger, that putteth all evil to sleep. ’ 
 
 — W. Morris’s Translation. 
 
 Plutarch thought that this Homeric drug symbolised Helen’s 
 eloquence ; some modern critics think it was opium. 
 
342 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 26. Ex cathedra. Latin, from the chair or throne. Utterances of 
 the Pope speaking ex cathedra —from the throne of St Peter—are 
 believed by Roman Catholics to be infallible. 
 
 27. One emphatic criticism . . . Nonsense. In the edition of 
 1822, instead of the good-humonred ‘Nonsense,’ we have the 
 unnecessarily strong expression ‘ Lies ! Lies ! Lies ! ’ 
 
 21 . At this point a long passage is omitted. In the original 
 edition the paragraph concluded thus :—‘ But if I talk in this 
 way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him 
 that nobody will laugh long who deals much in opium; its 
 pleasures even are^of a grave and solemn complexion. And in 
 his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present himself in the 
 character of L’Allegro: even then he speaks and thinks as 
 becomes II Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way 
 of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless 
 when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid 
 I shall be guilty of this indecent practice, even in these annals 
 of suffering or enjoyment. The reader imist allow a little to my 
 infirm nature in this respect; and with a few indulgences of that 
 sort, I shall endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme 
 like opium, so antimercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it 
 is falsely reputed.’ 
 
 Page 168. 
 
 11. 6-8. And, thirdly. . . viz., die. This passage is cited by 
 Professor Minto {Manual of English Prose Literature, 70) as a 
 characteristic example of De Quincey’s humour ; his love of 
 making dread or awful subjects occasions for merriment. See the 
 Introduction to the present volume. 
 
 20. Meo periculo. Latin, ‘ at my peril.’ 
 
 Footnote.—BuchaEs Domestic Medicine. William Buchan 
 (1729-1805), for a time physician to a Foundling Hospital in 
 Yorkshire, finally'- practised in London. His Domestic Medicine 
 (1769) was very popular. Nineteen editions were published 
 during the author’s lifetime. The book was also translated into 
 most European languages. 
 
 Page 169. 
 
 1. 21. Primeval or antediluvian health. Health such as early 
 races may be supposed to have possessed before the human 
 constitution was undermined by the disorders caused by arti¬ 
 ficial modes of living, and transmitted by heredity through 
 many generations. 
 
 32. Fugitive. This word, in the sense of ‘transient,’ De 
 Quincey very frequently uses. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 343 
 
 Page 170. 
 
 I. 4. ‘ Ponderibus librata suis.’ ‘ Held in a state of equilibrium,’ 
 lit.) ‘ poised by its own weight.’ The quotation is from Ovid, 
 Metamorphoses, i. 8. 
 
 4-10. And certainly . . . not disguising themselves. The popular 
 language is perhaps not so absurd after all. De Quincey, a 
 few lines further on, tells us that intoxication ‘calls up into 
 supremacy the merely human, too oft the brutal part’ of 
 man’s nature. Does this part form a man’s true character, 
 and not the intellectual, moral part which, in a state of sobriety, 
 represses the brutal element ? 
 
 26, 27. Legate a latere, i.e., legate ‘from the side.’ A delegate 
 from the Pope sent to some country under Papal domination, 
 who, in virtue of his office as legate and Papal representative, 
 overrode all the ordinary ecclesiastical authorities in the land. 
 In England Bechet, Pandulf, and Wolsey were such legates. 
 
 In the edition of 1822, the passage runs, ‘of which church 
 I acknowledge myself to be the only member—the alpha and 
 the omega.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The brilliant author of ‘ Anastasius.’ Thomas Hope (1770- 
 1831). He wrote a number of works, but the best known— 
 though pretty well forgotten now—is Anastasius. Anastasius 
 appeared anonymously in 1819, and was by many thought 
 to be by Lord Byron. It is in three volumes, and is a story, 
 somewhat after the manner of Voltaire’s tales, of the adventures 
 of a very disreputable and unscrupulous Greek called Anastasius. 
 De Quincey’s reference seems to be wrong. The incident of 
 the old opium-eater is to be found at pp. 231, 233, of vol. i. 
 ch. xi. After the old man had finished his lecture, ‘ he fell 
 back into his apathy, but I was roused effectually. I resolved 
 to renounce the slow poison of whose havoc my neighbour 
 was so woeful a specimen ; and, in order not even to preserve 
 a memento of the sin I abjured, presented him, as a reward 
 for his advice, with the little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
 drug which I used to carry.’ 
 
 Page 171. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 This footnote does not appear in the edition of 1822. 
 
 Page 173. 
 
 II. 8-34. The whole of this passage is an addition to the original 
 version. It must be confessed it mars the unity of the paragraph. 
 
344 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 and the concluding sentence, as the passage now stands, scarcely 
 follows upon what immediately precedes. 
 
 Page 174. 
 
 1. 15. The numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters. Com¬ 
 pare the picture in Anastasius quoted above. 
 
 Page 175. 
 
 1. 16. Grassini. Madame Grassini, an Italian opera singer. 
 She was prima donna at Venice in 1797 ; she sang in London 
 between that date and 1806, when she finally quitted England. 
 Napoleon invited her to Paris in 1800 (see Hogarth's Memoirs of 
 the Opera, vol. ii.). 
 
 24. En grande tenue. French, ‘ in full dress.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827), in his day a well-known 
 amateur artist: now best known as the friend of Wordsworth. 
 Wordsworth dedicated several poems to him. 
 
 The bloody historic traditions, etc. For instance, John Howard, 
 first Duke of Norfolk, killed at Bosworth, 1485; Surrey, eldest 
 son of Thomas, second Duke, executed for treason in 1547 ; 
 Thomas, fourth Duke, executed for treason, 1572. 
 
 Page 176. 
 
 1. 5. The clangorous instruments. ‘ Clamorous ’ in the edition 
 of 1822 ; brass instruments of various kinds. 
 
 6. The tyrarmy of the violin. The principal instrument in 
 most theatrical orchestras is the violin, 
 
 6-12. Thrilling , . . OpiTrdveXw. This sentence is an inser¬ 
 tion. 
 
 9. Her golden epiphany. From the Gk. iirKpali^w, to shine forth 
 —her ‘ manifestation,’ appearance on the stage. The most 
 familiar use of the word in English is in the Christian festival 
 of the Epiphany, or Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. 
 
 14. In some interlude. The word interlude (Latin, inter, 
 between, Indus, play), is used in various senses, sometimes the 
 short merry drama played after one of the old moralities, or 
 allegorical plays of the Tudor era ; sometimes as a passage of 
 instrumental music played between the acts of a drama; here 
 it seems to mean a vocal solo between the choruses or concerted 
 pieces of an orchestra, the singer being alone on the stage. 
 
 15. As Andromache, i.e., in the character of Andromache, in 
 some opera of that name, the plot of which, doubtless, was 
 founded on the Homeric story of Hector, the bravest of the 
 
NOTES. 
 
 345 
 
 Trojans, who was slain by Achilles. Andromache was the 
 wife of Hector. 
 
 23, 24. The fine extravaganza . . . ‘Twelfth Night.’ The 
 
 opening speech of Shakespeare’s comedy— 
 
 ‘ If music be the food of love, play on ; 
 
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, 
 
 The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
 
 That strain again ; it had a dying fall: 
 
 O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets. 
 
 Stealing and giving odour. ’ 
 
 Footnote 1. 
 
 Which Aristophanes expresses. In the Plutus, 290. 
 
 The Grecian phorminx. De Quincey appears to be wrong 
 in saying that the phorminx resemblecl the European harp ; it 
 probably resembled the modern guitar, ie., the strings were not 
 open to the touch on both sides, but were placed over a sounding- 
 board, as in the violin and the Indian vina. 
 
 The Greek Septuagint or the Latin Vulgate. The Septuagint is 
 the Greek version of the Old Testament, so called either because it 
 was drawn up by seventy Jews (Latin, septuaginta, seventy) or was 
 authorised by the Jewish Sanhedrim or council of seventy. The 
 Vulgate is the Latin translation of the whole Bible, drawn up by 
 St Jerome in the fourth century a.d. Called Vulgate from Latin 
 vulgare, to make common, because it was in common or general 
 use. 
 
 Footnote 2. 
 
 The attack on Napoleon is quite in De Quincey’s style ; he 
 cherished an extreme hatred against Napoleon, whom over and over 
 again he goes out of his way to revile. For instance, the essay on 
 Charlemagne is practically devoted to belittling Napoleon. Here 
 De Quincey means that Bonaparte’s hatred of England was not 
 genuine, but was merely assumed in order to ingratiate himself 
 with the French. 
 
 Page 177. 
 
 1. 2. A passage in the ‘Religio Medici.’ The passage occurs in 
 Part ii., sect, ix., and is as follows : ‘ 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.’ 
 
 Page 178. 
 
 1. 3. Weld, the traveller. Isaac Weld, author of Travels in the 
 
346 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 United States and Canada^ published iu 1799. The passage re¬ 
 ferred to is as follows :—‘ The womea, on the contrary, speak 
 with the utmost ease, and the language, as pronounced by them, 
 appears as soft as the Italian. They have, without exception, 
 the most delicate harmonious voices I have ever heard, and the 
 most pleasing gentle laugh that it is possible to conceive. I have 
 oftentimes sat amongst a group of them for an hour or two 
 together, merely for the pleasure of listening to their conversa¬ 
 tion, on account of its wonderful softness and delicacy.’ Travels, 
 pp. 411, 412. 
 
 17. Marinus in his Life of Proclus. Marinus of Flavia Neapolis 
 in Palestine, a philosopher and rhetorician, was a disciple of the 
 philosopher Proclus (a.d. 412-485), the successor of Plato, and chief 
 of the Neo-platonists. The obscurity of Marinus is doubtless 
 connected with the obscurity of the Neo-platonic philosophy. It 
 is like De Quincey to instance a very rare and generally unread 
 book. 
 
 Page 180. 
 
 I. 10. Sphinx’s riddles. See page 68, and note. 
 
 14. Terrse incognitae. Latin, ‘ unknown lands.’ 
 
 22. When the human face t3nfannised over my dreams. See 
 below the incident of the Malay, who came so often into De 
 Quincey’s dreams ; also the incident related in ‘ The English 
 Mail Coach’ (Works, xiii.), which was ‘swept into my dreams 
 for ever.’ 
 
 Page 181. 
 
 II. 8, 9. Who . . . had entered the cave of Trophonius. ‘ He has 
 
 visited the cave of Trophonius’ was an old Greek saying, and 
 was apj)lied to any one who looked particularly dejected and 
 melancholy. The cave of Trophonius was a celebrated oracle in 
 Greece. The entrance to it was so narrow that the person con¬ 
 sulting the oracle was obliged to lie on his back with his feet 
 towards the cave ; then, it was believed, some mysterious force 
 dragged him violently inside, and after a while the same force as 
 violently expelled him. When he reappeared his looks were 
 ghastly pale. Trophonius in the myths was the son of Erginos, 
 king of Orchomenos, and brother of Agamedes. 
 
 24-26. Without consciousness . . . from above. These words 
 are not in the edition of 1822, where the passage is merely 
 ‘ motionless and without wishing to move,’ which words conclude 
 the paragraph. The next paragraph begins, ‘I shall be charged 
 with mysticism, Behmenism, Quixotism, etc., but that shall 
 not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest 
 men ; and let my reader see if he, in his philosophical works, be 
 
NOTES. 
 
 347 
 
 half as unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often struck 
 me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place 
 
 in such a reverie. The town of L-represented,’ etc. The 
 
 reason for the omission of the passage was probably that in 
 1856 there was no need to offer any apology for ‘ mysticism,’ or to 
 excuse oneself on that score by a reference to Sir Henry Vane. 
 English readers had become familiar with German mysticism 
 through the writings of Carlyle and others, and Carlyle himself, 
 a genuine mystic in his earlier works, had taken his place as a 
 foremost, and even popular, English man of letters. 
 
 27. Everton. A suburb of Liverpool. 
 
 29. The multitudinous sea. A Shakespearian echo :— 
 
 ‘No, this, my hand, will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine. 
 
 Making the green one red.’ 
 
 — Macbeth, II. ii. ,61-63. 
 
 Page 182. 
 
 I. 5. A halcyon calm. See above p. 4, and note. 
 
 6-8. As if resulting . . . repose. See page 232. 
 
 ‘ For it may be observed, generally, that whenever 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.’ 
 Here also the activities suggest the repose, and vice versa; nay, 
 by some mysterious and subtle process, merge in one another and 
 form a single impression. 
 
 9. 0 just, subtle, and all-conquering opium. An echo of Sir 
 Walter Ealeigh’s famous apostrophe, beginning,— 
 
 ‘0 just, eloquent, and mighty death,’ 
 
 9-30. This magnificent piece of prose-poetry De Quincey has 
 altered in a characteristically minute manner. In the original 
 edition the passage is as follows :—‘Oh, just, subtle and mighty 
 opium ! that to hearts of poor and rich alike for the wounds 
 that will never heal, and for “the pangs that tempt the spirit 
 to rebel,” bringest an assuaging balm ; eloquent opium ! that with 
 thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath ; and to 
 the guilty man for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, 
 and hands washed pure from blood ; and to the proud man a 
 brief oblivion for 
 
 ‘ Wrongs unredressed and insults unavenged ; ’ 
 
 that summonest to the chancery of dreams,’ etc. 
 
 It is to be noticed that of the three quotations introduced into 
 the passage, two are from Wordsworth. 
 
 II. ‘Tempt the spirit to rebel.’ I have not been able to verify 
 this quotation. 
 
348 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 22. Phidias and Praxiteles. Phidias (b.c. 490-432), the greatest 
 sculptor of Greece; his greatest work was the Olympian Zeus. 
 He was amongst the personal friends of the great Athenian 
 statesman, Pericles. Praxiteles flourished about 364 b.c. 
 Praxiteles was the greatest of the later Attic school of sculptors, 
 as Phidias was the greatest of the earlier. 
 
 24. ‘From the anarchy of dreaming sleep,’ Wordsworth, 
 Excursion, Book iv. 
 
 30. In the edition of 1822, the passage beginning ‘ Courteous, 
 and I hope,’ etc., to ‘for now I enter upon’ (page 198), has the 
 separate heading, ‘ Introduction to the Pains of Opium.’ 
 
 Page 183. 
 
 1. 3. The student’s cap. In Oxford and Cambridge, under¬ 
 graduates, as well as graduates, are obliged at certain times to 
 wear the academic dress, the ‘ cap and gown.’ 
 
 8. The Bodleian. See page 124, and note. 
 
 10-16. To that great reservoir . . . history. This passage 
 humorously hits at the practice universal amongst the Oxford 
 and Cambridge College servants (called ‘scouts ’ at Oxford, ‘ gyps ’ 
 at Cambridge) of securing, whether by gift or in less honourable 
 methods, the movable property of undergraduates, such as 
 crockery, glass, etc., on the undergraduates leaving the university. 
 These ‘perquisites’ the scouts sell to ‘freshmen,’ i.e., youths 
 who have just entered the university. 
 
 15. Gownsmen. Members of the universities are termed 
 ‘gownsmen’in contradistinction to the ‘townsmen,’permanent 
 inhabitants of the ‘ towns ’ of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 16, 17. ‘The persecution . . . matins.’ Undergraduates are 
 obliged by college rules to attend the college chapel a certain 
 number of times in the term, or, in their own phraseology, ‘to 
 keep ’ so many chapels. In De Quincey’s time this was compulsory 
 for all; now at most colleges a dispensation may be obtained for 
 those who are not members of the Church of England, on plead¬ 
 ing conscientious scruples. Matins, the morning service of the 
 Church of England, from the Latin adjective matutinus, belonging 
 to the morning. 
 
 18. ‘ The porter who rang it.’ In the edition of 1822, after 
 these words we find, ‘ upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid 
 with copper) I wrote, in retaliation, so many Greek epigrams 
 whilst I was dressing.’ 
 
 37. Kant, Fichte, Schelling. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) ; 
 John Theophilus Fichte (1762-1814); Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 
 von Schelling (1775-1854). Kant was the founder of the 
 ‘Transcendental’ Philosophy. Fichte and Schelling were also 
 Transcendentalists, and disciples of Kant. Afterwards they 
 
NOTES. 
 
 349 
 
 became opponents. De Quincey has several special papers 
 devoted to Kant (see Index to Masson’s edition of the TVorJcs), 
 and has repeated references to him elsewhere. It must he 
 remembered that at the period De Quincey is speaking of, the 
 Englishmen who had any knowledge of German philosophy 
 might be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
 
 Page 184. 
 
 1. 2. Living in a cottage. The cottage at Grasmere, formerly 
 occupied by Wordsworth. 
 
 3. Honi soit qui mal y pense. ‘ Evil to him who evil thinks,’ the 
 motto of the order of the Garter. The name of the servant, we 
 learn from the De Quincey Memorials, was Mary Dawson. Those 
 who desire further information about her, and how she was, in 
 part, the cause of a coldness between Wordsworth and De Quincey, 
 may refer to the paper, ‘Estrangement from Wordsworth’ (Works, 
 iii.). She had formerly been in the service of the Wordsworths. 
 
 12. Esquire. This title, given now to every one who has any 
 pretensions to the social position of a gentleman, was originally 
 restricted to the eldest sons of knights and their eldest sons in 
 perpetual succession ; to the eldest sons of younger sons of peers ; 
 to Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs, Bachelors of Law, and other 
 more or less distinguished persons. De Quincey, as the son of a 
 merchant, had no right to the title. The word is derived from 
 old French escurier, shield-bearer (Latin, scutum, a shield), and 
 points back to the days of chivalry. An esquire was the attend¬ 
 ant on a knight. 
 
 13, 14. Antique or antic . . . diamonds. These words were 
 
 added in the edition of 1856. ‘ Antique or antic ’ ; old fashioned 
 
 or ridiculous. The College of Heralds (a relic of medisevalism), 
 with its nearly obsolete science of heraldry, decides and adjudicates 
 all questions of genealogies, rank, armorial bearings, etc. The 
 mediaeval heralds wore dresses in some degree resembling those 
 of the ‘ knaves ’ in a pack of cards. 
 
 16. X.y. Z., Esquire. De Quincey’s Confessions as they appeared 
 In The London Magazine, and his other articles in that periodical, 
 were signed ‘ X. Y. Z.’ 
 
 16. Justice of the Peace. The history of Justices of the Peace 
 belongs to Constitutional History, and may be studied in Stubbs, 
 Gneist, etc. At present the office of Justice of the Peace in 
 England is an unpaid magistracy, with jurisdiction in petty 
 offences, given to leading gentlemen in each shire. A Justice 
 of the Peace has the right to put the letters J.P. after his 
 name. 
 
 17. Gustos Rotulorum, another office of great antiquity ; the 
 keeper of the records of the sessions of a county. He must be a 
 
350 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Justice of the Peace, and is usually the Lord-Lieutenant of a 
 County. 
 
 20. ‘ The stately Pantheon.’ See page 166, and note. 
 
 Page 185. 
 
 I. 2. Dr Buchan. See page 168, footnote. 
 
 9. Its long-suffering. ‘ Long-suffering ’ is generally used as 
 an adjective. However, we have ‘long-suffering’ as a noun in 
 Romans, ii. 4, ‘ Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and 
 forbearance and long-suffering 1 ’ The form ^ long-sufferance ’ 
 also exists. 
 
 18. Distress of mind . . . melancholy event. The death of 
 ‘ Little Kate Wordsworth,’ a child for whom De Quincey had 
 cherished the most extraordinary affection. (See Works, ii. 440- 
 445) ;—‘ In the spring of 1812, I went up to London ; and early 
 in June, by letter from Miss Wordsworth, her aunt, I learned the 
 terrific news (for such to me it was), that she had died suddenly. 
 She had gone to bed in good health about sunset on June 4th ; 
 and was found speechless a little before midnight, and died in 
 the early dawn. . . . Through part of June, July, and part 
 of August, in fact through summer, this frenzy of grief continued. 
 
 . . . All at once, on a day at the latter encl of August, in one 
 instant of time, I was seized with some nervous sensation that, 
 in a moment, caused sickness,’ etc. etc. 
 
 Page 186. 
 
 II. 9, 10. This is the dilemma . . . thought of. De Quincey has 
 advisedly omitted a rather heavy piece of pleasantry which is to 
 he found in the original Confessions. ‘ This is the dilemma, the 
 first hour of which would he sufficient to toss and gore any 
 column of patient readers, though drawn up sixteen deep and 
 constantly relieved by fresh men; consequently not to be 
 thought of.’ 
 
 19. A force d’ennuyer. French, ‘by dint of wearying’ (boring) 
 you. 
 
 20. Pandiculation. A ridiculously pedantic word, used pur¬ 
 posely ; from Lat. pandere, to stretch out. In the original edition 
 the explanatory words ‘ vulgarly called yawning,’ are not found. 
 
 34. I am too much of an Eudsemonist. (Gk. ev5al/uaiv, blessed 
 with a good genius.) One who holds, as the ancient Epicureans, 
 and the modern Utilitarians and Hedonists, a philosophic belief 
 that pleasure is the chief good, and is to be sought. De 
 Quincey is scarcely to be taken seriously. So far as he was 
 philosophic in any strict sense he was a Transcendentalist, a 
 follower, in a qualified manner, of Kant; and the Kantian system 
 of ethics was diametrically opposed to ‘ Eudsemonism.’ 
 
NO TES. 
 
 351 
 
 Page 187. 
 
 1], 1, 2. I agree . . . gentlemen of the Porch at Manchester. 
 In the edition of 1822, ‘ Gentlemen in the letter trade at 
 Manchester.’ The joke is explained in the footnote. Zeno of 
 Citium in Cyprus was the founder of the Stoic Philosophy, so 
 called from the fact that Zeno taught in the porch which was 
 adorned with paintings of Polygnotus at Athens (o-roa iroi/ctATj). 
 The Stoics held,un opposition to the Epicureans, that pleasure 
 was not to be sought after by the wise, but that the good man 
 should be indifferent to both joy and suffering. 
 
 3. An Eclectic philosopher. One who chooses his doctrines from 
 various schools, one who is not bound by the formulae of any 
 system. (Gk. iK\eyetv, to pick out, to choose.) 
 
 7. Such as Chaucer describes. ChaucePs ‘Frere’ (Friar) as 
 described in the prologue to the Ganterhxiry Tales. 
 
 ‘ Fill sweetly lierde he confessioun, 
 
 And pleasant was his absolution ; 
 
 He was an esy man to give penance, 
 
 There as he wiste to hav a good pitance.’ 
 
 In the edition of 1822—‘ That are “ sweet men,” as Chaucer 
 says, “ to give absolution.” ’ 
 
 De Quincey, no doubt, quoted Chaucer with especial jrleasure. 
 He had the greatest love and admiration for Chaucer (see ‘ A Brief 
 Appraisal of Greek Literature,’ Worhs, x. 309, 310). 
 
 15. The concern. ‘ Concern,’ a somewhat vulgar word used by 
 trading and mercantile peojrle. Compare Matthew Arnold’s 
 ironical story of the devout injunction of the mother of Sir 
 Daniel Gooch, ‘ Ever remember, my rlear Dan, that you should 
 look forward to being some day the manager of this concern 
 {Culture and Anarchy, chap. ii.). 
 
 30. Like Anastasius. See page 170, and note. 
 
 Page 188. 
 
 1. 4. A Lent or Ramadan. Lent, the great Christian fast of 
 forty days, in commemoration of Christ’s fasting and temptation 
 in the wilderness ; Ramadan, the Lent of Mussulmans, the ninth 
 month of the Mahomedan year. 
 
 6. Sail before the wind. Metaphor from navigation, ‘ Get on 
 pleasantly, without nnsmiderstanding.’ 
 
 14. Hear him ! Hear him ! The old exclamation of a2q)roval of 
 any sentiment expressed in an oration. We find it in reports of 
 parliamentary speeches of the 17th century. In modern times 
 it is shortened into ‘ Hear, hear ! ’ 
 
 22. Lustrum. A period of five years. The Eoman festival of 
 the Ijustrum was a purification performed by the Censor. As it 
 
352 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 occurred only once in five years, tlie period between the two 
 purifications came to be called a lustrum. (Lat. lu&re^ to cleanse.) 
 
 26. A parenthesis. See page 21, and note. 
 
 Page 189. 
 
 1. 9. ‘ That moveth altogether,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Resolution 
 and Independence. 
 
 ‘ Motionless as a cloud the old man stood, 
 
 That heareth not the loud winds when they call, 
 
 And moveth altogether, if it move at all. ’ 
 
 22. In a silver-gilt, if not golden cup. In the original the words 
 are simply in a golden cup. See the story in ‘ Anastasius ’ about 
 the ‘ little golden receptacle.’ 
 
 Page 191. 
 
 1. 15. I have learned from ‘Anastasius.’ Hope, at the end of 
 each volume of his novel, gives a glossary of Oriental words used 
 in the text. 
 
 16. Adelung’s ‘ Mithridates.’ John Christopher Adelung, 
 German philologer (1754-1805). His Mithridates is a sort of 
 universal dictionary, so called from the famous king of Pontus, 
 Mithridates VI., who gave the Romans so much trouble, and who 
 was fabled to have been able to converse in all the dialects spoken 
 by his subjects, that is about twenty-two. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 ‘ ’Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite,’ etc. From Wordsworth’s 
 well-known poem. The Pet Lamb. 
 
 In his fine stanzas upon Mutability. The stanzas alluded to 
 will be found at the end of The Faerie Queene, and are entitled 
 ‘ Two Cantos of Mutabilitie ; which, both for form and matter, 
 appear to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie 
 Queene, under the legend of Constancie.’ In these stanzas, 
 Spenser has not dwelt at all upon this, ‘ the saddest of all ’ 
 instances of change; neither are the stanzas, in any supreme 
 degree, pathetic. 
 
 Page 192. 
 
 1. 2. Inter alia. Latin, ‘ among other things.’ 
 
 8. Bolt the whole. In the edition of 1822—‘ and, to use the 
 school-boy phrase, bolt the whole.’ 
 
 9. Some half-dozen dragoons. In the original, ‘ three dragoons.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Harriott’s ‘ Struggles through Life.’ John Harriott (1746-1817), 
 
NOTES. 
 
 •3 r -» 
 
 a London magistrate. He wrote a number of works, the last 
 being Struggles through Life, published in 1815. It went through 
 several editions. See the National Dictionary of Biography. 
 
 In the original the footnote concludes thus: ‘ I have an 
 anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr 
 Harriott’s case into a trifle ; and in my projected medical treatise 
 on opium, which I will p»ublish—^^^ovided the College of Surgeons 
 will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings 
 upon this subject—I will relate it; but it is far too good a story 
 to be p)ublished gratis.’ 
 
 Page 193. 
 
 1. 4. My intercalary year of happiness. The word ‘ intercalary,’ 
 at first a chronological term denoting a year, month, or clay, 
 inserted in the calendar, is used medicinally for any period of 
 time in which no paroxysms of an intermittent disease occur. 
 
 22. In the original edition this paragraph closes with the 
 following sentence : ‘ This done, I shall c|uit the subject of 
 happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one—the Pains 
 of OpiunO 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 A gang of Vandals. Genseric, the Vandal, captured Kome in 
 A.D. 455, and mutilated and destroyed many monuments of art 
 and beauty. Hence the term ‘ Vandal ’ is used generally to 
 describe those persons who for objects utilitarian or for mere 
 wantonness destroy beautiful objects of nature or art. It is 
 significant that in the present day Euskin has raised his voice, 
 as Wordsworth did in the earlier part of the century, against a 
 proposal of a more seriously Vandal character, namely, to con¬ 
 struct a railway through the Lake country. 
 
 Page 194. 
 
 1. 8. As a witty author has it. Coleridge, in his verses entitled 
 The DeviVs Thoughts. 
 
 ‘ He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, 
 
 A cottage of gentility ? 
 
 —And the devil did grin, for his darling sin 
 Is pride that apes humility. ’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Osmunda regalis. We find in the De Quincey Memorials, vol. 
 ii. 79, that Wordsworth in 1811 sent some roots of this fern to 
 De Quincey’s sister Mary. 
 
 Z 
 
354 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Or lady of the Lake, etc. Wordsworth’s Poems on Naming 
 Places. 
 
 ‘ Many such there are 
 
 Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern 
 So stately, of the queen Osmunda named ; 
 Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode 
 On Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the side 
 Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere 
 Sole-sitting by the shores of old Romance. ’ 
 
 De Quincey repeats the opinion, that the. line ‘sole-sitting’ is the 
 loveliest in the whole range of poetry, in a long footnote to his 
 paper on Shelley. {TVorJcs, xi. 370.) Elsewhere he regrets that 
 Wordsworth, for reasons which appeared to De Quincey far 
 from sufficient, thought fit to change the original reading ‘ Lady 
 of the Lake,’ into ‘ Lady of the Mere.’ 
 
 Page 195. 
 
 1. 3. ‘ And at the doors,’ etc. From Thomson’s Gastle of 
 Indolence, I. xliii. 
 
 13. Mr Anti-slavery Clarkson. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), 
 who was one of the Presidents of the Anti-slavery Society, was, 
 with William Wilberforce, foremost in pressing forward the 
 agitation which resulted in the abolition of the slave-trade. 
 
 25. St Thomas’s Day. Dec. 21. 
 
 38. Bellum intemecinum. Latin, ‘War to the death.’ 
 
 38. Jonas Hanway. Merchant and p»hilanthropist (1712-1786). 
 Besides his philanthropical activities he wrote a number of 
 works, chiefly travels. His Essay on Tea is, however, most 
 famous, because it jrrovoked a re])ly in the Literary Magazine, 
 from the pen of Dr Johnson. In this reply Johnson declares 
 himself ‘ a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for 
 twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this 
 fascinating plant, Avhose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who 
 with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and 
 with tea welcomes the morning.’ Hanway retorted angrily, and 
 Johnson, according to Boswell, made to this retort the only 
 rejoinder he is ever knowm to have made to anything written 
 against him. There is a pleasant essay on Hanw^ay in Mr 
 Austin Dobson’s Eighteenth Century Vignettes, London, 1892. 
 
 Page 196. 
 
 1. 12. ‘A double debt to pay.’ Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, 
 229. 
 
 ‘ The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 
 
 A bed by night, a che.st of drawers by day.’ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 355 
 
 25. A parte ante, and a parte post. Latin ; Eternal both in 
 having no beginning and in having no end. 
 
 29. Aurora. The Greek Eos, daughter of Hyperion and Thia, 
 the goddess of the rosy dawn; the poSoSa/cruAos’Hcby (rosy- 
 tingered Dawn) of Homer. 
 
 30. Hebe. Daughter of Zeus and Hera, goddess of youth. 
 
 30. Dear M-. De Quincey’s wife, Margaret. (See Introduc¬ 
 
 tion.) 
 
 37. His little golden receptacle. See page 170, and note. 
 
 Page 197. 
 
 1. 4. ‘ Stately Pantheon.’ See above, page 166, and note. 
 
 21. The Opium-eater’s exterior. De Quincey’s outward apj)ear- 
 ance was not impressive. He was an abnormally small man. 
 
 I, that write this paper,’ he says of himself (‘ Dr Samuel Parr,’ 
 Works, V. 19), ‘ have myself a mean personal appearance.’ Carlyle 
 describes him as ‘ one of the smallest men you ever in your life 
 beheld ; but with a most gentle and sensible face, only the teeth 
 are destroyed by opium, and the little bit of an under lip projects 
 like a shelf.’ (Letter to John Carlyle, Nov. 1827, printed in 
 Fronde’s NarZ?/ Life of Thomas Carlyle, 1. 431.) Mr J. R. Findlay, 
 in his Personal Recollections of Thomas De Qaincey, speaks of him 
 as ‘ a very little man, about 5 feet 3 or 4 inches ; and Masson 
 (general preface to vol. i. of the Works, xxvi.) applies to him 
 Thomson’s lines— 
 
 ‘ He came, the bard, a little Druid wight 
 Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen, 
 
 With sweetness mixed. In russet brown bedight, 
 
 As is his sister of the copses green. 
 
 He crept along, unpromising of mien. 
 
 Gross he who judges so ! his soul was fair.’ 
 
 Page 198. 
 
 1. 4. An Iliad of woes. Alluding to the opening lines of the 
 Iliad ;— 
 
 Mrjviv iteiSe, 6ea, Uri\ri'id5ew ’AxfAijos 
 Ou\ofieur]v, ’Axato7s &\ye edrjKeu 
 
 Or in Pope’s version, 
 
 Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful .spring 
 Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing. 
 
356 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 The Pains of Opium. 
 
 Page 199. 
 
 Motto. As when some great painter. 
 
 ‘ With hue like that when some great painter dips 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.’ 
 
 The quotation is from Canto V. xxiii. of Shelley’s Laon and 
 Gythna, afterwards slightly modified and called The Revolt of 
 Islam. It was first published in 1818, consequently only three 
 years before De Quincey quoted from it, i.e., 1821. The next 
 year Shelley was drowned. We learn from Richard Woodhouse’s 
 ‘ Notes of Conversations with Thomas De Quincey,’ that Wilson 
 sent De Quincey a copy of Shelley’s Revolt of Islam, asking him 
 to review it. De Quincey read the poem, praised it highly, but 
 would not review it. Wilson, inspired by De Quincey, himself 
 reviewed it, as well as Alastor and Prometheus Unbound, in terms 
 of enthusiastic praise. For De Quincey’s estimate of Shelley— 
 on the whole a very noble and generous one—’See his paper on 
 Shelley {Works, xi.). 
 
 19. An organ peculiarly weak. On this point see the remarks 
 on Dr Eatwell’s pajier in the Introduction. 
 
 Line 4 to line 38 of 200. This paragraph is entirely 
 different from the corresponding one in the edition of 1822. 
 
 Page 200. 
 
 1. 5. The nexus. Latin ; chain, bond. 
 
 16. These dreams. According to Dr Eatwell, De Quincey’s 
 dreams ‘ did not originate with [they were probably intensified 
 by] the use of opium, as the history of his years of infancy and 
 youth clearly show.’ (Japp’s Life of De Quincey, 509.) 
 
 19. Those encaustic records. Encaustic (Gk. eyKaily, to burn 
 in), a term proper to the fine arts, denoting a process of fixing 
 colours by means of heat. Notice how' perfectly the metaphor is 
 sustained. 
 
 26, 27. The final object . . . dreams. In the same way the 
 ‘final object’ of the ‘prose phantasy,’ The English Mail Coach, 
 lay in the dream-picture which closes it, and is entitled Dream 
 Fugue. It must be confessed that a very large portion of the 
 revised and enlarged version of the Confessions, has nothing 
 whatsoever to do either with dreams or opium, e.g., the long 
 account of ‘ Manchester Grammar School,’ the disquisitions on 
 ‘ English Literature,’ the description of the ‘ Bore,’ and many other 
 passages. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 357 
 
 29. What caused this excess, etc. This statement is amply 
 borne out by Dr Eatwell’s paper. See remarks in the Intro¬ 
 duction. 
 
 Page 201. 
 
 1. 3. But my way of writing, etc. This is as true as it is 
 characteristic. De Quincey is perhaps the most inconsequent 
 and digressive of all English writers (see Introduction). 
 
 7, 8. The fact is . . . fifty years. In the edition of 1822 :— 
 ‘ The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty 
 years ahead of this time.’ 
 
 13. For opium is mysterious, etc. We here leave the version 
 of 1822, which, instead of the sixteen pages here devoted to the 
 second ‘ explanatory ’ note, has a single paragraph of about forty 
 lines. 
 
 23. These parentheses. See above, note on p. 21. 
 
 Page 202. 
 
 1. 12. At the age of forty, etc. Compare Young’s Eove 
 Sect. II. 282. 
 
 ‘ Be wise with speed, 
 A fool at fort}^ is a fool indeed.’ 
 
 Page 203. 
 
 1 1. I should have been in my grave. This is again confirmed 
 by Dr Eatwell. 
 
 36-38. But, in ascribing . . . wrong. De Quincey refers to 
 the statements made in the edition of 1822—where he spoke, 
 inter alia, of the ‘ loaralysing effects ’ of opium ‘ on the intellectual 
 faculties.’ 
 
 Page 204. 
 
 11. 27, 28. Not to evade . . . Delphi. There are many stories of 
 evasive answers,—answers which might be inteiq')reted either 
 way, given by the oracle of Delphi (see De Quincey’s Essay on 
 ‘ The Pagan Oracles,’ JForJcs, vii.), such as the answer given to 
 Pyrrhus before his Italian expedition, ‘ Aio te, A3acide, Romanos 
 vincere posse,’ which means either, ‘ I say that you, son of 
 Abacus, can conquer the Romans, or ‘ I say that the Romans can 
 conquer you, son of iEacus.’ Again, when the Athenians con¬ 
 sulted the oracle before the battle of Salamis, they received the 
 answer, ‘ Thou, divine Salamis, shall destroy those that are born 
 of women, when the seed-time comes or the harve.st,’—which 
 might mean Greeks or Persians indifferently. 
 
358 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Page 205. 
 
 1. 8. See-saw like Margery Daw. A common nursery-rlijmie 
 sung by English children when playing at ‘ see-saw.’ Seesaw 
 is a reduplicated form of saw, the process of ‘ see-sawing ’ re- 
 semlrling the back and forward motion of a saw. 
 
 13, 14. Sometimes . . . perihelion. See p. 33, and note. 
 
 26. Upon one variety, etc. What follows is another example 
 of De Quincey’s love of jesting on serious or even terrible subjects. 
 See above, note on p. 168, and Introduction (De Quincey’s 
 humour). 
 
 Page 206. 
 
 1. 6. Coma, Gk. Kch^a, lethargy. 
 
 20. Coleridge was under a permanent craze. See the opening 
 
 of the Confessions. 
 
 Page 207. 
 
 I. 20. Euthanasy. Gk. iv, well, Oavaros, death, an easy death. 
 The general meaning of this paragraph, as a whole, it must be 
 confessed, somewhat obscure, is that an excessive opium-eater 
 can very largely give iip the practice, or rather, that the practice 
 of excessive opium-eating of itself is likely to diminish,—tends to 
 an inevitable euthanasy, provided that there be efforts towards 
 abstinence now and then. 
 
 33. It is recorded of Lord Nelson. See Southey’s Life of 
 Nelson, chapter viii. In August 1801 Nelson wrote, ‘ Heavy 
 sea, sick to death ; this sea-sickness I shall never get over.’ 
 
 33, 34. After the Nile and Copenhagen. Battle of the Nile, 
 Aug. 1, 1798. Destimction of the Danish fleet off Copenhagen, 
 April 1801. 
 
 36. The rawest griffin, here one who has just gone on his 
 first voyage. ‘ Griffin ’ is an Anglo-Indian name for a person 
 just arrived in India from Europe. The origin of the term is 
 unknown to Yule and Burnell. See their glossary of Anglo- 
 Indian words. It apj)ears to have been used first in Madras. 
 
 Page 208. 
 
 II. 28-32. Certainly little . . . agency. This passage is certainly 
 far less clear than De Quincey usually j)ermits his language to 
 be. The ‘drawback’ is the popular prejudice and ignorance 
 on the subject of opium. The ‘ agency ’ is opium. De Quincey 
 says that there would be little use in disabusing the public mind 
 of its mistaken ideas with regard to opium unless it can be 
 shown that these mistaken ideas have led to positive evil and 
 hindered actual good. The whole argument is rather out of 
 
AOTES. 
 
 359 
 
 place in a section headed ‘ The Pains of Opium,’ and assuredly 
 mars its artistic unity, an error avoided in tlie edition of 
 1822. 
 
 37. The Jesuits’ bark. The bark of a species of cinchona, so 
 called because it was first made known to Europe by the Jesuit 
 missionaries to South America. 
 
 Fciffe 209. 
 
 1. 18. Elite. French, chosen, jncked out ; generally used to 
 signify aristocracy—the elite of society. 
 
 22. In the expression of Pericles. De Quincey mirst be mis¬ 
 taken. No such expression appears to be recorded of Pericles. 
 
 23. The vernal section, i.e., the youthful, from Latin, ver, 
 spring. 
 
 32. Floriiegium. Culling of fiowers. Latin, flos, a flower ; 
 legere, to choose. 
 
 36-38. Waste not . . . sanction, i.e., ‘ Do not stop to consider 
 that I, Thomas De Quincey, am no regular, authorised physician, 
 with medical degrees, etc., etc.’ It would appear that medical 
 men who have had opportunities of studying the subject are 
 now in practical agreement with De Quincey’s position in the 
 matter of opium (see Introduction). 
 
 Page 210. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Sir Everard Home (1756-1831). Practised for forty years in 
 London, was sergeant-surgeon to the King, Vice-President of the 
 Royal Society, President of the College of Surgeons ; published 
 Lectures on Gom.parative Anatomy, etc., etc. He was a brother-in- 
 law of the famous John Hunter. 
 
 Page 211. 
 
 1. 3. ‘ Amram’s son. Moses, See Exodus, xvii. 2-6. 
 
 ‘ A.s when the potent rod 
 Of Anirani’s .son in Egypt’.s evil day 
 Waved round the coast,’ etc. 
 
 —Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 338. 
 
 8. By a lady in London. Possibly IMrs Morgan, or her si,ster, 
 Miss Charlotte Brent. Coleridge lived in London in the house 
 of the Morgans from 1810 to i816 (See Mr J. Dyke Campbell’s 
 Life of Coleridge, London, 1894). 
 
 16. The glistening of his cheeks. For the question of Coleridge’s 
 opium-eating, his glistening cheeks, etc., see the very rambling 
 paper, ‘Coleridge and Opium-Eating’(IForics, v.). One of the 
 
360 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 correspondents who have furnished Dr Japp with personal 
 recollections of De Quincey, speaks of Ms face as having ‘ a kind 
 of shine on it.’ Japp’s Life and Writings of De Quincey, 429. 
 
 20. What Wordsworth styled his ‘ godlike forehead.’ A quota¬ 
 tion from the jooem entitled Extempore effusion upon the death of 
 James Hogg. 
 
 ‘ Nor has the rolling year twice measured, 
 
 From sign to sign, its stedfast course. 
 
 Since every mortal power of Coleridge 
 Was frozen at its marvellous source ; 
 
 The rapt one, of the godlike forehead, 
 
 The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth.’ 
 
 Mr Masson, in his edition of the ‘Confessions’ (Works, iii.), 
 wrongly refers the reader to Wordsworth’s Stanzas written in my 
 poetical copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, from which he 
 quotes certain lines in which, however, the words ‘ godlike 
 forehead ’ do not occur. 
 
 26. Proprio niarte. By my own efforts. Latin. 
 
 28. .ffisculapius. Son of Apollo, and god of the medical art. 
 In the temple of Aesculapius at Epiclamnus there was a statue 
 of the god wrought hy Thrasymedes, in gold and ivory. De 
 Quincey is probably tliinking of this. 
 
 Page 212. 
 
 1. 22. There I was myself constantly resident. This was about 
 the years 1806, 1807 (See Japp’s Life of De Quincey, 86-89). 
 De Quincey’s mother was at that time residing in Somersetshire. 
 
 26, 27. A father who died . . . thirty-nine. For an account 
 of De Quincey’s father, see vol. i. of the Works ; the chapter 
 entitled ‘ Parentage and the Parental Home.’ De Quincey 
 describes his father’s death in the paper, ‘ Introduction to the 
 World of Strife’ (Works, vol. i.). ‘He languished for weeks 
 Tipon a sofa ■,...! was also present at his bedside in the 
 closing hours of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches 
 of delirious conversation with some imaginary visitors.’ He 
 died July 18, 1795 ; his tombstone at Manchester says he was 
 ‘ aged 40 years,’ not 38. 
 
 37. Nobody recommended this drug to me. This seems to con¬ 
 tradict what has already been said of the college acquaintance 
 who recommended opium (page 165). De Quincey j)robably 
 meant that no one recommended the constant use of it. Tlie 
 college friend merely recommended opium to relieve a temporary 
 pain. 
 
 Ihuje 213. 
 
 1. 11. My own personal withdrawal, i.e. 1809, when De Quincey 
 settled at Grasmere. 
 
NO TES. 
 
 ^61 
 
 Page 216. 
 
 11. 21, 22. Professor Wilson’s . . . Hedonist. John Wilson 
 '(1788-1804), perhaps the most intimate of all De Quincey’s friends. 
 See De Quincey’s paper on him {Works, ii. and v.), and letters 
 between the two, published in Japp’s De Quincey Memorials. 
 He was educated at Oxford ; became professor of Moral Philo¬ 
 sophy at the University of Edinburgh in 1820. He wrote under 
 the pseudonym of Christopher North. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Hedonist. This word has now passed into the vocabulary of 
 technical philosophical terms, and denotes any system of ethics 
 which declares happiness the end of life. It is used consistently 
 in this sense by such writers as the late Professor T. H. Green 
 and Professor H. Sidgwick. 
 
 Page 217. 
 
 1. 10. Lord Bacon once said. This is another instance of De 
 Quincey’s making his authorities speak as he wishes them to 
 speak, not as they actually did speak. Mr Kellett, to whom I 
 applied for information on the point, writes, ‘ This is also, I 
 believe, an instance of De Quincey’s imagination carrying him a 
 little too far.’ In Bacon’s Historia Vitce et Mortis, iii. 7, he writes 
 somewhat as follows:—‘There remains a third precept which 
 relates not to the quality of the blood, but to its substance 
 (1 consistency), that it should be made firmer and less easily 
 dissipated, and less open to the action of the heat of the spirit.’ 
 He recommends the taking of gold, pearls, and coral, or, still 
 better, concoctions of such wood as sandal, and oak and vine. 
 In the Canons he adds to the treatise he gives ‘ the permeation 
 (perspersio) of the blood with a firmer substance,’ e.g., woods, 
 pearls, &c. Cf. De Augmentis, Ek. iv., or The Advancement of 
 Learning, ii. 8, 3, for the idea on which it is based, of the spirits 
 making depredations on the humours and blood, and the con¬ 
 sequent need of making them more substantial. 
 
 20. My studies have now been long interrupted. Again we 
 recur to the edition of 1822. De Quincey is referring to the 
 year 1816, onwards. Properly the present passage follows irpon 
 the close of Part ii., all the foregoing portion of Part iii. being 
 digression. 
 
 23. Reading is an accomplishment of mine. All De Quincey’s 
 friends did not take him at his own estimate with regard to this 
 accomplishment. See Eichard lYoodhoiise’s ‘Notes on conversa¬ 
 tions with De Quincey,’ printed in Dr Garnett’s edition of The 
 Confessions (198, 199) :—‘ It seems to me, from the manner in 
 which the opium-eater recited a few lines occasionally which he 
 
DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 362 
 
 had occasion to quote, that the reading upon which, in his Con¬ 
 fessions, he piques himself, would scarcely appear good to most 
 people. He reads with too inward a voice ; he dwells much upon 
 the long vowels (this he does in his conversation, which makes it 
 resemble more a speech delivered in a debating society than the 
 varitonous discourse usually held among friends) ; he ekes out 
 particular syllables, has generally much appearance of intensity, 
 and, in short, removes his tone and manner rather too much 
 from the mode of common language. Hence I could not catch 
 the words in his quotations.’ 
 
 29. John Kemble. John Philip Kemble, one of the greatest of 
 English actors (1737-1823). This passage has been considerably 
 
 modified. In the edition of 1822 it runs thus, ‘-reads vilely 
 
 and Mrs-, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but 
 
 dramatic compositions : Milton she cannot read sufferably.’ The- 
 rest of the paragraph is very much enlarged. 
 
 31. The immortal Siddons. Sarah Siddons (1775-1831), per¬ 
 haps the greatest, at least the most celebrated, of all English 
 actresses. De Qnincey, as he tells us (‘ Kambles from the Lakes : 
 Mrs Siddons and Hannah More,’ IVorks, ii.), met Mrs Siddons in 
 1813 or 1814 at Barley Wood, the house of Hannah More in 
 Somersetshire, De Quincey’s mother’s residence at that time 
 being only a mile distant. Similar religious convictions attracted 
 both Mrs De Qnincey and Mrs Siddons to Hannah More, the 
 arch-priestess of the ‘ Clapham saints.’ In the paper mentioned 
 above, De Qnincey has a good deal to say on Mrs Siddons’ read¬ 
 ing. The dramatic readings were ‘ delightful; in fact, they were 
 almost stage rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate gesticula¬ 
 tion.’ Mrs Siddons read scenes from Macbeth, King John, and 
 Henry VIII. ‘ All these, in different degrees and different ways, 
 were exquisite. But the readings from Milton were not to my 
 taste,’ etc,, etc. 
 
 Page 218. 
 
 1. 7. Have even been desired to sit down. See Works, ii. 450, 
 note. ‘ Mrs Siddons used to mention that, when she was invited 
 to Windsor Castle for the purpose of reading before the Queen 
 and her royal daughters, on her first visit she was ready to sink 
 from weariness under the effort of standing for so long a time ; 
 but on some subsequent visit I have understood that she was 
 allowed to sit, probably on the suggestion of one of the younger 
 ladies.’ It is a point of court etiquette that when the King or 
 Queen grants an audience to a subject, the subject should remain 
 standing during the audience. A dispensation similar to that 
 granted in the case of Mrs Siddons, by the Queen of George III., 
 was by her present Majesty granted to Carlyle, when, in his old 
 
A'O TEA. 363 
 
 age, the Queen at her own reriuest met him at the house of Dean 
 Stanley. 
 
 13, 14. Neither Coleridge . . . reader of verse. De Quincey 
 elsewhere criticises Coleridge’s reading equally severely (TForJcs, 
 ii. 190). It is to be noticed that although the passage in which 
 all these persons are mentioned was written in 1856, Avhen all of 
 them were dead, De Quincey none the less uses the present 
 tense. 
 
 23. A young lady. Probably Dorothy Wordsworth. 
 
 Page 219. 
 
 1. 1. An unfinished work of Spinosa’s. Baruch Spinosa (1633- 
 1677), one of the greatest of modern European philosophers, a 
 Portuguese Jew by blood, but was born and lived in Holland. ‘ Pe 
 Emendatione,’ etc., Latin. ‘ Concerning the amendment of the 
 human intellect.’ 
 
 3. Any Spanish bridge. ‘ To build castles in Spain ’ (or ‘ castle.s 
 in the air’) is a proverbial expression for planning great under¬ 
 takings which are destined never to be fulfilled. ‘These air- 
 castle's,’ says Brewer {Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), ‘ are called 
 by the French Ghdteaux d’Espcugne [castles of Spain] because 
 Spain has no chateaux.’ Spanish bridges and aqueducts do not 
 seem so ajjpropriate, but this seems to be De Quincey’s meaning. 
 
 27. Mr Ricardo’s book. David Ricardo, 1772-1823, a celebrated 
 economist, best known from his Principles of Political Economy 
 and, Taxation, published in 1817. De Quincey became an ardent 
 disciple of Ricardo. His ‘ Dialogue of Three Templars’ {Worlts, 
 ix.) is an exposition and defence of the Ricardian theory of value. 
 In spite of De Quincey’s vehement belief in Ricardo, his famous 
 doctrines have been in recent times subjected to severe criticism 
 by leading writers on economics. It may be noted in passing that 
 De Quincey’s economical writings received honourable mention 
 in John Stuart Mill’s well-known Principles of Political Economy. 
 
 30. ‘ Thou art the man.’ ‘ And Nathan said to David, “ Thou 
 art the man.” ’ II. Samuel, xii. 7. 
 
 37. But oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares. Ricardo 
 became a member of the Stock Exchange, where he made a large 
 fortune. He entered Parliament in 1819, and exercised a con¬ 
 siderable influence in all matters connected with commerce or 
 finance. 
 
 Page 220. 
 
 1. 4. Mr Ricardo had deduced, a priori, etc. This fact, which 
 constitutes Ricardo’s great merit in De Quincey’s eye, is the 
 main point in which modern economic criticism fiiids fault 
 with Ricardo and all other ‘ Orthodox ’ political economists. The 
 
364 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 tendency now in economics is not to lay down certain ‘ laws ’ 
 arrived at by tbe light of reason alone, but rather to study in the 
 light of history the actual economical conditions of joeoples at 
 different times. 
 
 5. First shot arrowy light, etc. In the edition of 1822, ‘ first 
 gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials.’ It may 
 be noticed how immensely the metaphor is improved by the 
 change. 
 
 21 . In the edition of 1822 tlie paragraph ends thus,—‘ I hope 
 it will not be found redolent of opium ; though, indeed, to most 
 people the subject is a sufficient opiate.’ 
 
 23. A provincial press, probably Kendal. 
 
 33. Its elder and more dignified brother. The Be Emendatione 
 Humani Intellectus, already mentioned. 
 
 36. The Circean spells. Circe, daughter of the Sun,—a goddess 
 who by her potent charms, transformed men into brutes. She 
 thus enchanted the men of Odysseus, but Odysseus himself, in¬ 
 structed by Hermes, not only himself defied her power, but pro¬ 
 cured the release of his men. (See Homer, Odyssey, Book x.) 
 
 Page 221. 
 
 I. 13. Exasperate. Not the usual meaning of the word, namely, 
 ‘ provoke, irritate,’ but ‘ increase in intensity.’ He Quincey else¬ 
 where (‘ The English Mail Coach,’ Works, xiii.) uses ‘exasperation’ 
 with a similar significance,—‘even that anguish is liable to a 
 hideous exasperation in one particular case.’ The word appears 
 to have been used in this sense by the older j)rose writers. Of. 
 Sir Thomas Browne, ‘ Many have studied to exasperate the ways 
 of death, but fewer hours have been spent to soften that necessity ’ 
 {Christian Morals, part ii., xiii.). Shakespeare uses the word in 
 the more modern sense— 
 
 ‘ And this report 
 
 Hath so exasperate the king, that he 
 Prepares for some attempt of war.’ 
 
 — Macbeth, Ill., vi. 38. 
 
 The Latin verb exasperare bears both meanings. 
 
 Page 222 . 
 
 II. 4-6. He had by one-half ... his soldiers. According to the 
 centurion in the Gospel who said to Christ, ‘ For I also am a 
 man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say 
 unto one, “ Go,” and he goeth ; and to another, “ Come,” and he 
 cometh.’—Luke vii. 8 . 
 
 11. Before CEdipus . . . Memphis. GEdipiis, King of Thebes 
 (Greek mythology) ; Priam, King of Troy ; Tyre, the chief city 
 of the Phoenicians ; Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. In 
 
NOTES. 36 s 
 
 other words, stories drawn from times before the earliest civilisa¬ 
 tions and the most ancient histories. 
 
 23. Midas. Son of Gordius and Cybele, King of Phrygia. 
 One story about him is that he prayed the god Dionysus that all 
 he touched might be turned hito gold. The god heard his prayer, 
 and it was as Midas desired, and even the food he touched was so 
 transformed. 
 
 30. Sympathetic ink. Acid ink which is of such a nature 
 that what is written in it remains invisible until heat or some 
 chemical is applied. 
 
 Page 223. 
 
 1. 23. A near relative. Mrs Baird Smith told Dr Garnett that 
 this w^as De Quincey’s mother. 
 
 Page 224. 
 
 1. 4. The dread book of account, etc. See Eevelation, xx. 12. 
 ‘ And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the 
 books were opened : and another book was opened, which is the 
 book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things 
 which were wudtten in the books, according to their works.’ 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Hilarion. Bishop of Poitiers, died a.d. 365. 
 
 Ariosto. Italian poet, Avrote the Orlando Furioso (1474-1533). 
 The quotation is from the Orlando Furioso, YIII., xlv. 
 
 ‘ And he apiiroaelied her, feigning sxich a call 
 As e’er Hilarion had, or holy Paxil.’ 
 
 {Rose’s Translation.) 
 
 Page 225. 
 
 1. 3. The common light of day,— 
 
 ‘ And fade into the light of common day.’ 
 
 —Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, v. 
 
 14. Livy. Titus Livius (b.c. 59-a.d. 17). One of the greatest 
 of Roman historians. He set himself to write the history of Rome 
 from the earliest times to his own age. Only a part of that 
 which Livy actually completed is extant. 
 
 24. Though no great reader of History. This must be under¬ 
 stood relatively, not absolutely. Other subjects De Quincey may 
 have read more, but his Avritings shoAv that he had read at least 
 most Avidely in many periods of human history. 
 
 24, 25. Made myself . . . one period of English history. De 
 Quincey has Avritten one paper on this period, namely, ‘ Palsihca- 
 
366 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 tion of English History ’ (JVorJcs, ix.), which, joartly anticipating 
 Carlyle, contains a vindication of Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 28. Interesting memoirs which survive. Such as the writings 
 of Clarendon, Bailley the Covenanter, May, D’Ewes, Whitelock, 
 Rushford, The Duchess of Newcastle, etc., etc. 
 
 Page 226. 
 
 I. 3. Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby. Marston Moor, 
 near York, July 2, 1644. Prince Rupert and Newcastle were 
 utterly defeated by the Earl of Leven, Fairfax and Cromwell. 
 There were two battles of Newhury (Berkshire), both indecisive : 
 the first, September 20,1643, in whicli Lord Falkland was killed; 
 the second, October 27, 1644. The battle of Naseby (in Leicester¬ 
 shire), June 14,1645, 2‘)ractically decided the war. The King was 
 utterly defeated by Fairfax and Cromwell. 
 
 6. As at the court of George IV. George IV. was the reigning 
 king at the time when the ‘ Confessions ’ were written. 
 
 II. Paludaments. Latin Paludamentum, the cloak worn by a 
 general commanding an army, and by his principal officers. It 
 was commonly either white or purple in colour. At the siege of 
 Alesia the paludamentum of Julius Ciesar was scarlet. 
 
 11. Paullus or Marius. Lucius .^Emilius Paullus Macedonicus, 
 one of the noblest Romans whom the Republic ever produced. 
 He was twice Consul, first in B.c. 181, and the second time in B.c. 
 168. He was the hero of the third Macedonian War, in 
 which he defeated Perseus at Pydna (668). Perseus afterwards 
 surrendered himself to Paullus, and was led a caj^tive together 
 with his children in Paullus’s triumph, which was one of the most 
 splendid Rome had ever witnessed. It was Paullus who finally 
 destroyed the great kingdom of Macedonia. 
 
 Caius Marius. Perhaps the greatest of Roman generals prior to 
 his nephew Julius Csesar. He was Consul seven tiines, first in 
 B.c. 107, and the seventh time in b.c. 86 . In 106 he took 
 command against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, and success¬ 
 fully finished a war which had cost the republic seven years’ 
 fighting. He distinguished himself in the Social War, but his 
 crowning gloiy is his conduct of the war against the German 
 invaders of Italy. He defeated Teutones at Aquae Sextiae b.c. 
 102 , and the Cimbri at the Raudine Plain b.c. 101 . It is not 
 too much to say that these victories saved not only Rome but the 
 whole of Romano-Greek civilisation. As a i:)olitician Marius was 
 not so successful. 
 
 15. Piranesi. John Baptist Piranesi, born at Venice, 1711, 
 died 1778. He was engraver, architect, and antiquary. He 
 lived and worked chiefly in Rome. Dr Garnett points out that 
 Piranesi never published any plates under this title (‘ Dreams’). 
 
NOTES. 
 
 367 
 
 * But,’ he adds, ‘ many of his architectural drawings, though 
 professedly representing actual edifices, are as visionary as 
 Martin’s views of Pandemonium.’ (De Quincey’s Confessions, 
 Ed. Garnett, 262.) 
 
 Footnote 1. 
 
 Masson adds the following remarks to this note :—‘ The King’s 
 standard, giving the signal for the English Civil War, was 
 raised on the Castle Hill at Nottingham, on the evening of 
 Monday the 22nd of August 1642, and is said to have been 
 thrown down by a violent wind that night,—though Rushworth’s 
 account discredits that legend. I do not understand the grounds 
 of De Quincey’s defence of Laud at this point against the imputa¬ 
 tion of superstitious belief in omens. Whether his faith in such 
 “mute warnings” was “special or exceptional,” in the sense of 
 being stronger than was usual in his age, may admit of cpiestion ; 
 but that he was tremendously sensitive to dreams, omens, etc., 
 is as certain as records can make anything.’ 
 
 The footnote is not in the edition of 1822. 
 
 Footnote 2. 
 
 De Quincey had jorobably in mind Plutarch’s account of the 
 Battle of Philippi b.c. 42. Brutus and Cassius hung on a spear a 
 crimson cloak as a signal for the battle to begin (Plutarch, Life of 
 M. Brutus). ‘ The next morning, by break of day, the signal of 
 battle was set out in Brutus’ and Cassius’ camp, Avhich was an 
 arming scarlet coat.’ {North's translation.) Of. Shakespeare, 
 Julius C(esar, V. i. 14. 
 
 ‘ Their bloody sign of battle is limig out.’ 
 
 Page 227. 
 
 1.21. The appearance, instantaneously, etc. The quotation is 
 from The Excursion, Book ii. 
 
 Page 228. 
 
 1. 3. Fuseli. Henry Fuseli, a distinguished painter, born at 
 Zurich, 1739 ; came to England in 1763, afterwards went to 
 Rome to study the Italian masters, returned to England in 1771 ; 
 elected a Royal Academician in 1790 ; died 1825. 
 
 7. The dramatist Shadwell. Thomas Shadwell (1646-1726), 
 dramatic poet, satirised by Dryden in his Macflechnoe. 
 
 9. (pdpfAaKov p-nTTirdfs. See note above on page 167. 
 
 18. The last Lord Orford. The famous Horace Walpole (1717- 
 *1797), author of the well-known Memoirs, and of numerous 
 letters. 
 
368 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Page 229. 
 
 '11. 5, 6. Hitherto the human face, etc. See above, p. 180, anrl 
 note. With this passage should be compared the whole of 
 the ‘Dream Fugue’ (Works, xiii.), which is a most elaborate 
 and detailed description of a De Quincean dream, such as is 
 here more roughly sketched. This passage, as usual, has had 
 touches added to it. The last sentence in the early version 
 runs, ‘ My agitation was infinite ; my mind tossed and surged 
 with the ocean.’ Notice how much is gained by the inversion, 
 ‘infinite was my agitation’ ; and between the concluding words 
 in either version there can be no comparison. 
 
 19. The Malay, etc. See above, page 189. 
 
 28. As the cradle of the human race. Because the garden 
 of Eden where Adam and Eve first dwelt is said to have been 
 situated there. 
 
 Page 230. 
 
 1. 3. The mystic sublimity of castes. In later years the 
 system of caste impressed De Quincey on a different side. See 
 his j)aper on ‘ The English in India,’ printed in Hogg’s Un¬ 
 collected Writings of De Quincey, where he speaks of caste as 
 ‘ that man-destroying system, more cruel than the bloody 
 religions of Mexico, which, for the deification of the individual, 
 made hopeless Helots of the multitude.’ .Uncollected Writings, 
 edited by James Hogg, vol. i. 303. 
 
 10. Officina gentium, Latin, ‘the workshop of nations.’ 
 
 34, 35. Brama, Vishnu, Seeva. The Hindu triad or Trinity,— 
 Brama, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Seeva, the destroyer. 
 
 36. Isis and Osiris. The two chief Egyptian divinities ; Isis 
 was the wife of Osiris. The ibis (Nile-bird) and the crocodile 
 were sacred animals in Egyptian worship. 
 
 Page 231. 
 
 1. 17. The cursed crocodile. See a description of a dream 
 or reverie of De Quincey’s in ‘ The English Mail Coach’ (Works, 
 xiii. 289), in which a driver of a mail coach becomes trans¬ 
 formed into a crocodile, and ‘ awakens a dreadful host of semi¬ 
 legendary animals—griffins, dragons, basilisks, sijhinxes.’ And 
 compare with the passage as it stands, the original paragraph 
 as it appeared in Blackwood’s. Masson gives the original in 
 a footnote, and the note may be studied with interest in con¬ 
 nection with the present passage in ‘ The Confessions.’ 
 
 Page 232. 
 
 2. The contemplation of death ... in summer. Thus the 
 
NOTES. 
 
 369 
 
 first section of De Quincey’s Dream Fugue., a vision based upon 
 the theme of sudden death, begins ‘ Lo, it is summer—almighty 
 summer ! The everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown 
 open wide,’ etc. (IForks, xiii. 319). 
 
 11. 2, 3. Caeteris paribus, Latin, ‘other things being epuah’ 
 
 16-19. For it may be observed . . . suggest each other. Com¬ 
 pare a passage in the ‘English Mail Coach’ {Works, xiii. 310), 
 where De Quincey speaks of ‘the hurricane of flight and pursuit’ 
 along the Lancaster road at the time of the Assizes, and the 
 thought of Lancashire itself, as ‘the metropolis and citadel of 
 labour,’ pointing ‘ the thoughts pathetically upon that counter¬ 
 vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards 
 which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of 
 man’s heart are in solitude continually travelling.’ 
 
 Page 233. 
 
 1. 7. A child whom I had once tenderly loved. ‘Little Kate 
 Wordsworth ’ (see above, page 185, and note). 
 
 12. The first-fruits of the Resurrection. Compare the ‘ Easter 
 
 Anthem ’ of the Church of England, taken from St Paul’s 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians, xv. 20-23. ‘ But now is Christ 
 
 risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that 
 slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the 
 resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so 
 in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his 
 own order : Christ the first-fruits ; afterward they that are 
 Christ’s at his coming.’ 
 
 28. Shaded by Judean palms. The picture here, as De Quincey 
 elsewhere tells us (Works, i. 54), is suggested by the figure of 
 Judea as portrayed on Roman coins. See the passage referred 
 to:—‘If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that 
 was inetfable: if once, when powerless to face such an enemy, 
 you were summoned to fight with the tiger that couches within 
 the separations of the grave—in that case, after the example of 
 Judea, sitting under her palm-tree to weep, but sitting with her 
 head veiled, do you also veil your head.’ 
 
 Page 234. 
 
 1. 9. Terraces of Oxford Street. Dr Garnett in his notes to his 
 edition of the Confessions prints three paragraphs which appear 
 in the original MSS., but were cancelled by the author himself. 
 They tell us how De Quincey ‘ at length grew afraid to .sleep,’ 
 and of the ‘ savage torture ’ he endured in his dreams. 
 
 10-30. Compare with this passage a passage somewhat similar 
 in the ‘Dream Fugue,’ sections iv. and v., in which ‘Waterloo 
 and Recovered Christendom ’ furnish the theme or keynote for the 
 
 '2 A 
 
370 
 
 DE (JU/NCEY. 
 
 magnificent dream fugue there described. It may be noticed that 
 in the original ‘ Confessions/ after ‘ a battle, a ship, an agency . . . 
 a great drama,’ there followed the words ‘ a piece of music,^ and it 
 is in a piece of music or Fugue that De Quincey has enshrined the 
 dream phantasy which closes ‘ The English Mail Coach.’ 
 
 27, and folloioing lines. I, as is usual. Compare the following 
 jjassage in ‘The English Mail Coach’ (lEor^-s, xiii. 304) ; ‘The situa¬ 
 tion here contemi^lated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far down 
 in the depths of human nature. It is not that men generally 
 are summoned to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in 
 shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in 
 jrerhaps all men’s natures. Upon tbe secret mirror of our dreams 
 such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, to every one of us. 
 Tliat dream, so familiar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, 
 through languishing prostration in hope and the energies of hope, 
 that constant secprel of lying down before the lion, j)ublishes the 
 secret frailty of linnian nature—reveals its deeiD-seated falsebood 
 to itself—records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us 
 escapes that dream ; perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, 
 that dream repeats for every one of us, through every generation, 
 the original temptation in Eden. Every one of us, in this 
 dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own indi¬ 
 vidual will ; once again a snare is presented for tempting him 
 into captivity to a luxury of ruin ; once again, as in aboriginal 
 Paradise, the man falls by his own choice ; again, by infinite 
 iteration, the ancient earth groans to Heaven, through her 
 secret caves, over the weakness of her child. “ Nature, from her 
 seat, sighing through all her works,” again “ gives signs of woe 
 that all is lost ” ; and again the counter-sigh is repeated to the 
 sorrowing heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is 
 not without probability that in the woidd of dreams every one 
 of us ratifies for himself the original trangression. In dreams, 
 perhajDs under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, 
 lighted Lij) to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the 
 memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our 
 mvsterious race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal 
 fall.’ 
 
 33. The oppression of inexpiable guilt. Compare in ‘ The 
 English Mail Coach’ (Works, xiii. 311), ‘The palsy of doubt and 
 distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed 
 remembrances.’ « 
 
 33. ‘ Deeper than ever plummet sounded.’ Shakespeare, llie 
 Tempest, V. i. 56. 
 
 ‘ I’ll break my staff, 
 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 
 And deeper than did ever plummet sound 
 I’ll drown my hook.’ 
 
NOTES. 
 
 371 
 
 Page 235. 
 
 11. 6-8. And with a sigh . . . Death. See Milton, Paradise 
 Lost, ii. 787. 
 
 ‘ I fled and cried out Death ! 
 Hell trembled at the hideous iiame, and sighed 
 From all her caves, and back resounded Death.’ 
 
 The ‘incestuous mother’ is Sin —(‘To whom the incestuous 
 mother thus replied’— Paradise Lost, x. 602). She is incestuous 
 because in Milton’s terrible allegory, after bearing Death to Satan, 
 she by Death became the motlier of a brood of ‘ yelling monsters.’ 
 
 12. Now, at last. The next two paragraphs in the edition of 
 1822 are entirely different from those in the text. 
 
 38. Pretty nearly in the following words. A reference to the 
 passage as it occurs in the early edition will show that the 
 paragraph has been very materially altered. 
 
 Page 236. 
 
 1. 23. I had motives external to myself. De Quincey’s wife 
 and family. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 William Lithgow, died 1640, a native of Scotland, travelled on 
 foot through many countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His 
 narrative was published in the year of his death. The title—or 
 ])art of it—ran as follows :— The Total Discourse of the Rare 
 Adventures and Painful Peregrinations of Nearly Nineteen Years’ 
 Travels from Scotland to the Most Famous Kingdoms in Europe, 
 Asia,, and Africa. Perfited by Three Dear-Bought Voyages in 
 Surveying Forty-Eight Kingdoms, Ancient and Modern; Twenty- 
 One Republics; Ten Absolute Principcdities, with Two Hundred 
 Islands. At Malaga, in Spain, he was arrested as an English spy, 
 thrown into prison, and subjected to the most excruciating 
 tortures. On his return to England he endeavoured to obtain 
 some redress for the wrongs he had suffered, but apparently 
 without success. 
 
 Juan Van Halen. Born in Spain, commanded troops in 
 Belgium in 1830. His Narrative of his Imprisonment in the 
 Inquisition was published in London in two volumes, 1827. 
 
 Page 237. 
 
 1. 14. With dreadful faces, etc. Paradise Lost, rfi. 644. 
 
372 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 NOTES ON THE DAUGHTER OE LEBANON. 
 
 Page 238. 
 
 1. Damascus, first born of cities. Damascus is probably the most 
 ancient city of the world. It is mentioned in Genesis, xiv. 15, 
 and XV. 2, as existing in the time of Abraham, that is, nearly 
 2000 years before Christ. Thus we may say it has lasted some 
 4000 years. It is situated at the foot of the eastern promontory 
 of Mt. Lebanon, on a spot on the edge of a vast sandy desert, but 
 itself most fertile and luxuriant. It is watered by the Abana and 
 Pharpar, ‘ rivers of Damascus,’ and its fruits were celebrated in 
 ancient as in modern times. It formed the capital of the kingdom 
 of Syria ; fora short time it was subjugated by King David ; after¬ 
 wards it was subdued by the Assyrians, by the Babylonians, by 
 the Persians, by the Greek Kings of Syria (the Seleucidse), and by 
 the Romans. It flourished greatly in the time of the Emperors. 
 Julian speaks of it as ‘The Eye of all the East.’ Diocletian 
 established in it a factory for arms ; hence the famous Damascus 
 blades. In b.c. 634, it was captured by the Mahomedan Arabs. 
 In 1516, it was captured by the Turks. It is still a thriving and 
 prosperous city. 
 
 2. That was before the Pyramids. This is doubtful ; the Great 
 Pyramid of Cheops was built probably some 5000 years ago. 
 
 4. That wind away . . . desert. The desert of sand, of eight 
 days’ j' ourney, that stretches to the Euphrates. 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 The siege of Troy. De Quincey appears to have regarded the 
 siege of Troy as an actual historical occurrence. The traditional 
 date assigned to the capture of Troy is b.c. 1184. 
 
 May be inferred from Genesis, xv. 2. ‘ And Abram said, 
 
 Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the 
 steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus.’ Damascus is 
 also mentioned in the preceding chapter. 
 
 15. A great evangelist ... a great physician, St Luke.. In 
 Colossiansiv. 14, St Paul writes, ‘ Luke, the beloved physician, 
 and Demas, greet you.’ An early Christian tradition describes St 
 Luke as a painter also. 
 
 20. To Palmyra. A city of Syria which stood in an oasis of 
 the Syrian Desert, aboirt 176 miles N.E. of Damascus. It was 
 founded by Solomon, and w'as called Tadmor, translated by the 
 Greeks to Palmyra, i.e., ‘ City of Palms.’ Under the early 
 Roman Emperors, that is, after the time of De Quincey’s alle¬ 
 gorical tale, it became very prosperous, especially iir the time of 
 Hadrian and the Antonines. Palmyra is perhaps most famous 
 in connection with its c[ueen Zenobia, who claimed to be Queen 
 
NOTES. 
 
 373 
 
 of the East (see Gibbon’s Decline and Fall., ch. xi.), Zenobia 
 was defeated by the Emperor Anrelian (see De Quincey’s foot¬ 
 note), and Palmyra captured a.d. 273. 
 
 Page 239. 
 
 7. Cressets and bright tripods. Cresset, an open frame or basket 
 tilled with combustible material; an open lamp. Gf, Milton’s 
 Paradise Lost, i. 729. 
 
 ‘ Starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
 With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
 As from a sky. ’ 
 
 7. Tripod. Gk. rp'nrovs, a vessel or utensil having three feet; 
 often used as an altar, on which a sacred fire was kept burning. 
 
 9. Daphne. A suburb of Antioch. See note on the ‘ Con¬ 
 fessions,’ p. 3. 
 
 9. The Orontes. The greatest river of Syria. It flows into 
 the sea near Antioch. 
 
 12. Filled with cedar boughs. Lebanon has always been famed 
 for its cedar groves. See the description of Solomon’s ‘ house of 
 the forest of Lebanon,’ built of cedar, I. Kings, vii. 
 
 13. There sat a woman. The lady of Lebanon, the idealised 
 and glorified Ann of Oxford Street. 
 
 26. That not Solomon . . . lilies of the field. ‘ Consider the lilies 
 of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; 
 and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these.’ Matthew, vi. 28, 29. 
 
 28. Should not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. ‘ And grieve not 
 the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of 
 redemption.’ Ephesians, iv. 30. 
 
 29. Rabbi. Hebrew, ‘ Master.’ 
 
 Page 240. 
 
 5. That blew the Spirit . . . nostrils of man. ‘ And the Lord God 
 formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of life ; and man became a living soul.’ Genesis, ii. 7. 
 
 6. From him all power ... to bind and to loose. The mysterious 
 power given by Christ to the apostles :—‘ Verily I say unto you, 
 Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaveii; 
 and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.’ 
 Matthew, xviii. 18. 
 
 Page 241. 
 
 1. 2. She sought not to varnish her history. In the following 
 passage we have the history of Ann of Oxford Street, if 
 we translate ‘the Prince of Lebanon’ into some English peasant, 
 or London tradesman, or labourer. 
 
374 
 
 DE QLINCEY. 
 
 20. A burning fever. This is the consumptive cough which De 
 Quincey says was ‘ his consolation when he pondered on the 
 possible subsequent history of Ann.’ {Confessions, p. 161.) See 
 also what he says of the prevalence of consumption in England, 
 j). 209, ‘ dedicating to an early grave ’ the ‘ vernal section of 
 our population,’ as the ‘ burning fever desolated Damascus.’ 
 
 26. ‘ Woman be thou whole.’ Whole, in the biblical sense of 
 restored to full health,—‘ And her daughter was made whole from 
 that very hour.’ Matthew, xv. 28. 
 
 28. Perfect freedom belongs to Christian service. Cf. Galatians, 
 V. 1, ‘The liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,’ and 
 James,i. 25, ‘ The perfect law of liberty.’ 
 
 30. Up rose the sun . . . driving storms. This circumstance is 
 no doubt allegorical, symbolising, perhaps, the innocent state of 
 man at the beginning, darkened by the sin of Adam, and again 
 gloriously redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ; or perhaps the 
 history of Ann ; the brightness of her childhood, the sin and 
 misery of her girlhood, and her subsequent salvation. 
 
 Page 242. 
 
 1. 2. The rose-gardens of Damascus. Lebanon was noted for the 
 beauty and abundance of its flowers. 
 
 4. White baptismal robes. White, which symbolises purity, sin¬ 
 lessness. Thus in St John’s Revelation, vii. 9, the multitude of the 
 blessed, ‘whom no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, 
 and people, and tongues, stood before the Throne and before the 
 Lamb, clothed white robes, and palms in their hands.’ 
 
 16. That sweet twin-born sister. Perhaps this is an incident 
 borrowed from Ann’s story. 
 
 28. His pastoral staff. The staff borne by or before a bishop, 
 shaped like a shepherd’s crook, and symbolising the bishop’s 
 authority over his spiritual flock. 
 
 34. A mighty mass .... morning’s storm. Symbolical of the 
 lingering effects of sin, even after repentance. 
 
 Page 243. 
 
 1. 18. What armies are these. Comjpare with this the vision 
 vouchsafed by God to the desponding servant of the prophet 
 Elisha, Kings, II. vi. 17, ‘ And Elisha prayed, and said, “ Lord, 
 open his eyes that he may see.” And the Lord opened the eyes 
 of the young man ; and he saw : and behold, the mountain "was 
 full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’ 
 
 Page 244. 
 
 1. 6. The Magdalen of Lebanon. See The Confessions, ‘in the 
 grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen,’ and note, on p. 161. 
 
VOTES. 
 
 375 
 
 NOTES TO APPENDIX 1. 
 
 Page 245. 
 
 1. 7. Venetian sequins. Sequin, from zecca, the mint, an old coin 
 worth about 9s. 3d. sterling. As it was not struck at Venice till 
 the end of the thirteenth century, De Quincey is here guilty of 
 an anachronism. 
 
 10. Neustrians. Neustria, the Frankish kingdom of Western 
 France, made tip of the older kingdoms of Orleans, Paris, and 
 Soissons. (See Hallam, Middle Ages, i. 6, 118-120.) De Quincey 
 means that William’s followers were neither native French, i.e. 
 Celts, nor Franks, i.e. German conquerors of France. 
 
 12. Trans-Baltic .... cis-Baltic. ‘Beyond the Baltic’ and 
 ‘ on this side of the Baltic,’ borrowed from the Latin names Gallia 
 Trans-Aljnna, and Gallia Cis-Alpina. 
 
 18. Mr Moir of Musselburgh. David Macbeth Moir, physician, 
 poet, and novelist (1798-1851). He was born at Musselburgh, 
 a small town near Edinburgh. Dr Moir was a regular con¬ 
 tributor to Blackwood, in which his various articles were signed 
 A (Delta). The ‘ paper ’ De Quincey refers to appears to be De 
 Quincey’s Revenge, a Ballad in Three Fittes, by Delta (Blackivood’s 
 Magazine, November 1840). It is a long historical ballad of 
 some 450 lines, with very copious notes dealing with the achieve¬ 
 ments of the Scotch De Quinceys. 
 
 Page 246. 
 
 1.5. In our one planet Tellus. Tellus (Latin), the earth. 
 
 19. Tame villatic squireen. A parody of Milton’s ‘tame villatic 
 fowl,’ Samson Agonistes, line 1695. 
 
 24. ‘ Some great ammiral.’ 
 
 ‘His spear—to equal wliicli the tallest pine 
 Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
 Of some great ammiral, were but a wand.’ 
 
 —Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 294. 
 
 30. Trunco.umbram. ‘ It cast a shade with its trunk, 
 
 not its leaves,’ a quotation from Lucan’s Pharsalia. (M. Annaeus 
 Lucanus, Eoman poet, a.d. 39-65.) The other Latin sentence 
 means, of course, ‘Not with its trunk, but with its leaves it casts 
 a shade.’ 
 
 The cj^uotation is from Pharsalia, i. 140. 
 
 ‘ nudo.sque per aera ramos 
 Effundens, trunco non trondibus elhcit umbram.’ 
 
376 
 
 DE (2U1NCEY. 
 
 37. Sculptured as only Froude. Froucle’s great History of Eng¬ 
 land from the fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Armada was given 
 to the public between the years 1856 and 1870. It is pleasant 
 to think, amid the many hard things that have been said about 
 Froude and his writings, that De Quincey in his old age recog¬ 
 nised the younger writer as a great historian and a master of 
 style. In 1856, De Quincey contributed to Titan a review of the 
 first two volumes of Fronde’s history under the title. Storms in 
 English History. The essay is not included in Masson’s edition, 
 but will be found in Hogg’s Uncollected Writings of De Quincey., 
 vol. i. De Quincey ends his review in these words :—‘ Mr Froude 
 is the first writer (first and sole) who has opened his eyes to com¬ 
 prehend the grandeur of this tremendous reign ’—that is, the reign 
 of Henry VIII. De Quincey appears to have taken the greatest 
 interest in Froude and his work. Miss De Quincey, among 
 some details supplied to Dr Japp of her father’s last days, 
 writes, ‘About a week before he died, while sitting up in an 
 easy chair ... he gave me a long account of Fronde’s views 
 upon the history of Henry VIII.’ (Japp’s At/e of De Quincey, 
 449.) 
 
 43. And how ennobling a distinction, etc. The passage that fol¬ 
 lows is curiously characteristic of De Quincey’s essential unfairness 
 to all pre-christian and non-christian ages and civilisations (see 
 Introduction, xxi.). He loves to dwell upon ‘the essential 
 difference’ between Christianity and Paganism. He will not 
 allow that the finger of God can be discerned in all religions “ that 
 man did ever find.” Masson, in his Introduction to vol. v. of the 
 Works, has some excellent remarks on this point:—‘Nothing here’ 
 — i.e., in De Quincey’s speculative and the theological essays— 
 ‘ nothing here,’ he says, ‘ it will be seen, of the modern scientific 
 notion of a certain respectability, more or less, in all religions. 
 If De Quincey had ever heard of this notion, he was obstinate as 
 a mule against it, and stood out stifiiy for the old-fashioned 
 Christian tradition.’ In the present case his contention cannot 
 for a moment be accepted. The Greeks who fought and fell at 
 Marathon and Thermopylte, the Eomans who died at Canna 3 
 or Aquae Sextiae ; even Caesar at Alesia and Pharsalia, fought 
 for something infinitely nobler than ‘ j)ersonal interests.’ 
 
 45. As Lord Bacon remarks. The reference is to Bacon’s Essay, 
 Of Unity in Religion. ‘ The quarrels and divisions aljout 
 religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, 
 because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and 
 ceremonies than in any constant belief.’ So far De Quincey 
 might go along with Bacon, but Bacon goes on to declare that 
 wans intended to propagate religion are unjustifiable, a conclusion 
 which De Quincey denie.s. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 377 
 
 Footnote. 
 
 Until Miss Edgeworth, etc. The allusion is to Miss Edge- 
 W’orth’s novels, Gastle Rachrent, and others, which deal with 
 Irish life. 
 
 Pcuje 247. 
 
 1. 22. Mr Josiah Quincey. ‘ A younger branch of the family was 
 amongst the earliest emigrants to New England ; and yielding to 
 the democratic atmosphere in which they found themselves, they 
 laid aside the aristocratic prefix, only to attach to the name of 
 Quincey a distinction still more historical, as that of great 
 American Senators and men of letters.^ (Ji'PP? Quincey, 
 
 2.) At p. 284 of the same work will be found a letter from De 
 Quincey to Mr Josiah Quincey, jun., the son of the Josiah 
 Quincey here mentioned, Avho had called on his distinguished 
 relative in Edinburgh. Mr Josiah Quincey (1772-1844) was a 
 celebrated American statesman and soldier. 
 
 36. Sir Andrew Aguecheek observes. Shakespeare’s Twelfth 
 Night, II. iii. 195. 
 
 ‘ Sir Toby. She’s a beagle, true Iwed, and one that adores me ; what o’ 
 that? 
 
 Sir Andrew. I was adored once too.’ 
 
 41. The red lion. A common sign for inns and public-houses. 
 
 NOTES ON APPENDIX II. 
 
 This Appendix is a very cliaracteristic performance. Although 
 its subject, Barbara Lewthwaite, is touched upon in the begin¬ 
 ning and comes in again at the end, the bulk of the Aj^pendix 
 has little or nothing to do with Barbara, or indeed with any 
 other matter directly bearing on ‘ The Confessions.’ It is indeed 
 a discussion on the arguments for the immortality of the in¬ 
 dividual soul deduced respectively by Plato and Wordsworth. 
 To Plato, De Quincey is, as usual, studiously disrespectful, 
 whilst his attitude to the modern poet is so reverential as 
 scarcely to be classed ‘ on this side idolatry.’ 
 
 Page 248. 
 
 1. 2. With her pet lamb. In a preliminary note to The Pet Lamb, 
 
378 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Wordsworth distinctly tells us that Barbara Lewthwaite was not 
 the child whom he had seen and overheard as described in thepoein. 
 
 3. The mighty Fairfield. Fairfield, a mountain in Westmore¬ 
 land. 
 
 6. The composition of another picture. The incident described 
 in the latter part of the Appendix. Her part in the picture 
 is, however, very unimportant. 
 
 8. Plato. For De Quincey’s estimate of Plato, a very inadequate 
 one, see his paper on the ‘ The Republic of Plato’ (TVorhs, viii.). 
 See also a letter to his daughter, Margaret, published by Dr Japp 
 {Life of De Quincey, 402, 403), in which De Quincey again 
 discusses the arguments of Plato and Wordsworth on the 
 immortality of the soul, and declares Plato to Ire ‘ as far astray on 
 this question of immortality as it is well possible to he.’ Plato’s 
 discussion of this question occurs in his dialogue, Phcedo; 
 Wordsworth’s in the famous ode. Intimations of Immortality 
 from Recollections of Early Childhood. 
 
 8. A mightier than Plato. It must be remembered that De 
 Quincey, overflowing with enthusiasm for Wordsworth, was 
 obstinately blind to Plato’s merit. 
 
 15. Our own Dodwell. Henry Dodwell (1641-1711), critic and 
 theologian ; he wrote, ‘ An Epistolary Discourse, proving that the 
 Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal, but Immortalised actually 
 by the Pleasure of God’ (London, 1706). This work called forth 
 several answers. 
 
 19. The single passage in Job. The j)assage to which De 
 Quincey alludes is as follows ‘For I know that my Redeemer 
 liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth ; 
 and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my 
 flesh shall I see God : whom I shall see for myself, and mine 
 eyes shall behold, and not another ; though my reins he consumed 
 within me,’ Job, xix. 25-27. 
 
 As it stands, this passage seems to proclaim not only the 
 immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, hut 
 also makes Job prophesy concerning the coming of Christ. 
 Criticism, however, has shown that the passage is mis-translated. 
 To begin with, the words italicised are not in the original, hut 
 are mere guesses of the translators. Secondly, ‘ in my flesh ’ 
 should he ‘ out of my flesh,’ or ‘ without my flesh ’: the word 
 translated ‘ Redeemer ’ really means ‘ avenger of blood.’ The 
 whole passage has been translated as follows :—‘ But I know 
 that my avenger liveth, though it be at the end upon my dust; 
 my witness will avenge these things, and a curse alight upon my 
 enemies. My reins are consumed, because you say : “ How we 
 shall persecute him! ” Fear, for yourselves, the sword, for 
 wrath overtaketh iniquities.’ Indeed, it would seem that Job 
 
NOTES. 
 
 379 
 
 elsewhere expressly denies the resirrrection of the body and the 
 immortality of the soul. See an article in The Contemporary 
 Review for July 1893, entitled ‘The Original Poem of Job,’ by 
 Ur E. J. Dillon, and Fronde’s essay. The Booh of Job (Short 
 Studies on Great Sirbjects, vol. i.). 
 
 23. The ridiculous interpolation in Josephus. The passage 
 occurs in Book xviii., chap. 3, of The Antiquities of the Jews. 
 The interpolation, ho-wever, says nothing about the ‘ personal 
 appearance of Christ,’ but merely says he was ‘ a wise man,’ a 
 ‘doer of wonderful works,’ etc. For further remarks on this 
 point, see De Quincey’s essay, ‘The Essenes ’ (Works, vii. 127, 
 128). Flavius Josephus, a Jew, born a.d. 57, wrote The History 
 of the Jewish Wars, The Antiquities of the Jews, His own Life, etc. 
 He died about a.d. 100. Josephus, it maybe remarked, shares 
 with Napoleon the distinction of having been intensely hated by 
 De Quincey. 
 
 31. German scholars. Such as Strauss and others, who have 
 applied to the biblical writings the same style of criticism as 
 previously only ‘profane’ literature had been subjected to. The 
 note of German Biblical Criticism is scepticism, or, at least, 
 heterodoxy. 
 
 34. Warburton. William Warburton (1698-1779), Bishop of 
 Gloucester ; a voluminous writer, editor of Shakespeare, Pope, 
 etc. The work alluded to is his Divine Legation of Moses Vindi¬ 
 cated. Warburton’s argument as summed iip by himself (Works, 
 edited hy Hurd, vi. 141) is, ‘ That the doctrine of a future state 
 is necessary to tlie well-being of society, under the ordinary 
 government of Providence; that all mankind have ever so 
 considered of the matter ; that the IMosaic Institution was 
 without this support, and that yet it did not want [need] it. 
 What follows but that the Jewish affairs were administered by 
 an extraordinary Providence, distributing rewards and punish¬ 
 ments 'with an ef[ual hand ; consequently, that the Mission of 
 Moses was divine.’ 
 
 In other -words, if the Jewish society did not fall to jJieces 
 owing to the lack of a belief Avhich was absolutely essential to 
 the preservation of all societies governed by an ordinary Provi¬ 
 dence, the Jews must have been upheld by a special Providence. 
 
 42. The Sadducees. A JeAvish sect, taking their name (perhaps) 
 from one Zadok, denied, in contradistinction to the Pharisees, 
 the existence of spirits, the immortality of the soul, and the 
 resurrection of the body. 
 
 Pctge 249. 
 
 1. 3. The Pharisees. The most orthodox and exclusiAm of Jewish 
 religious parties ; were strict observers of the letter of the law, 
 
380 
 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 external rites, ceremonies, etc., etc.; held the doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead. They 
 were denounced as hypocrites hy Christ. 
 
 10. The Sophist in the Phsedo. Plato’s Fliccdo gives an account 
 of the last conversation and death of Socrates. Socrates and his 
 friends discuss the question of the immortality of the soul, which 
 Socrates (or rather Plato—for the greater part of the dialogue is 
 Platonic, and not Soc ratio) defends hy various arguments. One 
 of these arguments falls hack upon the doctrine of ‘ Reminis¬ 
 cences,’ already developed in the Meno, that all knowledge is a 
 recollection of what was known in some previous existence. 
 This shows that the soul does not perish with the body. Words¬ 
 worth’s argument for the immortality of the soul, whatever De 
 Quincey may say, has a certain resemblance to this part of Plato’s 
 demonstration. From the doctrine of Reminiscences follows 
 the doctrine of the Transmigration of souls, which Plato held in 
 common with Pythagoras and the philosoj)hies and religious 
 systems of India. Again, by a process of logic not very con¬ 
 vincing, Plato tries to show that as an ojoposite is generated from 
 an opposite, and as life is the opposite of death, so life is gener¬ 
 ated from death. Once more Plato argues in reply to Simmias, 
 who thought the soul to be a ‘ harmony of the elements of the 
 body ’ [Simmias is a sort of materialist], and therefore heterogeneous, 
 that if the doctrine of Reminiscences be true, which Simmias 
 admits, that the soul cannot be a harmony of bodily elements, 
 since it existed before the elements falsely said to compose it. 
 Thus, the soul is not heterogeneous, but homogeneous, and the 
 homogeneous is more lasting than the heterogeneous, and, there¬ 
 fore, the soul survives the body. Lastly, the Platonic doctrine of 
 Ideas is summoned as a further support. An Idea cannot admit 
 its opp)osite, or anything connected with its opposite. The Idea 
 of cold cannot admit the idea of heat, nor of fire. Now the Idea 
 of death is the opposite of the Idea of life, and the Idea of life is 
 inseiiarable from the Idea of the soul, since it is the soul which 
 brings life to whatsoever contains her. Therefore, the soul can¬ 
 not admit the Idea of death, which is the opposite of life; that 
 is to say, the soul is immortal. 
 
 Such are the ‘ scholastic conundrums ’ {i.e., mere word-choj)ping, 
 similar to the reasoning of the mediteval theologians, Aquinas 
 and the rest) which De Quincey refers to. The contemptuous 
 way in which De Quincey here alludes to Socrates as the ‘ sophist 
 of the Phtedo ’—Socrates, the determined enemy of all sophists— 
 and his cavalier treatment of Plato, is a good example of his 
 unaccountable prejudice against Plato and his master. (Compare 
 with this the reference to Socrates c[uoted in the Introduction.) 
 The Phcedo might reasonably demand a far different handling. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 381 
 
 for, whatever the A^alue of its metaphysics, its historical part, that 
 is to say, the story of the last hours of the great Athenian teacher, 
 has always been justly regarded as one of the noblest passages in 
 all literature. 
 
 Parje 250. 
 
 1. 14. ‘ Travels further from the East.’ 
 
 ‘ The youth, who daily further from the east 
 Must travel.’ 
 
 —Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, v. 
 
 16. The little Carnarvonshire girl. In a prefatory note to We are 
 Seven, Wordsworth says that he met tlie little girl who is tlie 
 heroine of the poem ‘in the Area of Goodrich Castle,’ on the 
 Wye, in 1793. 
 
 28. Little M-. Margaret, married Mr Robert Craig, died 1871. 
 
 See a letter from De Quincey to his daughter Emily (Nov. 6th, 
 1856), printed in Japp’s Life (397), ‘ I wrote a long letter to 
 M. about Froude, and the sixteenth century; and, moreover, in 
 the Appendix to the “ Confessions,” introduced a little anecdote 
 about M., when under two, and Barbara Lewthwaite, which it is 
 likely enough .she never heard.’ 
 
APPENDIX TO THE NOTES. 
 
 I. De Quincey’s Letteu in the London Magazine foe 
 December 1821. 
 
 To the Editor of the Lomlon Magazine. 
 
 Sib, 
 
 I liave seen in the Sheffield Iris a notice of my two papers 
 entitled Confessions of an English Opium-eater. Notice of any sort 
 from Mr Montgomery could not have failed to gratify me, by proving 
 that I had so far succeeded in my efforts as to catch the attention 
 of a distinguished man of genius : a notice so emphatic as this, 
 and introduced by an exordium of so much beauty as that contained 
 in the two first paragraphs on the faculty of dreaming, I am 
 hound in gratitude to acknowledge as a more flattering expression 
 10 and memorial of success than any wliich I had allowed myself to 
 anticipate. 
 
 I am not sorry that a passage in Mr Montgomery’s comments 
 enables me to take notice of a doubt which had reached me before. 
 The passage I mean is this : in the fourth page of the Iris, amongst the 
 remarks with which Mr Montgomery has introduced the extracts 
 which he has done me the honour to make, it is said—“whether this 
 character” (the character in which the Opium-eater speaks) “he real 
 or imaginary, we know not.” The same doubt was reported to me as 
 having been made in another quarter, but in that instance as 
 20 clothed in such discourteous expressions that I do not think it would 
 have lieen right for me, or that on a principle of just self-respect I 
 could have brought myself, to answer it at all; which I say in no 
 anger, and I hope with no other pride than that which may reasonably 
 influence any man in refusing an answer to all direct impeachments of 
 his veracity. From Mr Montgomery, however, this scruple on the 
 question of authenticity comes in the shape which might have been 
 anticipated from his own courteous and honourable nature, and implies 
 no more than a suggestion (in one view perhaps complimentary to 
 myself) that the whole might be professedly and intentionally a 
 30 fictitious case as respected the incidents, and chosen as a more im¬ 
 pressive form for communicating some moral or medical admonitions 
 to the unconfirmed Opium-eater. Thus shaped, I cannot have any 
 right to quarrel with this scruple. But on many accounts I should be 
 sorry that such a view were taken of the narrative by those who may 
 have happened to read it. And therefore I assure Mr Montgomery, 
 in this public way, that the entire Confessions were designed to convey 
 a narrative of my own experience as an Opium-eater, drawn up with 
 entire simplicity and fidelity to the facts ; from which they can in no 
 
APPENDIX TO THE NOTES. 
 
 383 
 
 respect have deviated, except by such trifling inaccuracies of date, &c., 
 as the memoranda I have with me in London would not, in all cases, 
 enable me to reduce to certainty. Over and above the want of these 
 memoranda, I laboured sometimes (as I will acknowledge) under 
 another, and a graver embarrassment:—To tell nothing hut the truth 
 must, in all cases, be an unconditional moral law : to tell the whole 
 truth is not equally so : in the earlier narrative I acknowledge that I 
 could not always do this ; regards of delicacy towards some who are 
 yet living, and of just tenderness to the memory of others who are 
 dead, obliged me, at various points of my narrative, to suppress what 
 would have added interest to the story, and sometimes, p)erhaps, have 
 left impressions on the reader favourable to other pur[)oses of an auto¬ 
 biographer. In cases which touch too closely on their own rights and 
 interests, all men should hesitate to trust their own judgment: thus 
 far I imposed a restraint upon myself, as all just and conscientious 
 men would do : in everything else I spoke fearlessly, and as if writing 
 private memoirs for my own dearest friends. Events, indeed, in my 
 life, connected with so many remembrances of grief, and sometimes of 
 self-reproach, had become too sacred from habitual contemplation to 
 be altered or distorted for the unworthy j)urposes of scenical effect and 
 display, without violating those feelings of self-resjrect which all men 
 should cherish, and giving a lasting wound to my conscience. 
 
 Having replied to the question involved in the passage cpioted from 
 the Iris, I ought to notice an objection conveyed to me tbrough many 
 channels, and in too friendly terms to have been overlooked if I had 
 thought it unfounded : whereas, I believe it is a very just one.—It is 
 this : that I have so managed the second narrative as to leave an over¬ 
 balance on the side of the 'pleasures of opium, and that the very 
 horrors themselves, described as connected with the use of opium, do 
 not pass the limit of pleasure.—I know not how to excuse myself on 
 this head, unless by alleging (what is obvious enough) that to describe 
 any p)aius, of any class, and that at p)erfect leisure for choosing and 
 rejecting thoughts and exjrressions, is a most difficult task. In my case 
 I scarcely know whether it is competent to me to allege further that I 
 was limited, both as to space and time, so long as it ap)pears on the 
 face of my p■)aper that I did not turn all that I had of either to the 
 best account. It is known to you, however, that I wrote in extreme 
 haste, and under very depressing circumstances in other resprects.—On 
 the whole, perhaps, the best way of meeting this objection will be to 
 send you a Third Part of my Confessions' : drawn upr with such 
 assistance from fuller memoranda, and the recollections of my only 
 companion during those years, as I shall be able to command on my 
 
 * In the Third Part I will fill up an omission noticed hy the Medical 
 Intelligencer (Xo. 24); viz. the omission to record tlie particular eifects of the 
 Opium between 1804-12. This Medical Intelligencer is a sort of digest or analytic 
 summary of contemporary medical essays, reviews, &c., wherever disi)ersed. 
 Of its general merits I cannot pretend to judge: but, in justice to the writer 
 of the article which respects myself, I ought to say that it is the most re¬ 
 markable specimen of skilful abridgment and judicious composition that I 
 remember to have met with. 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 30 
 
 40 
 
384 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 return to the north. I hope that I shall be able to return thither in 
 the course of next week : and, therefore, by the end of January, or 
 thereabouts, I shall have found leisure from my other employments to 
 linish it to my own satisfaction. I do not venture to hope that it will 
 realise the whole of what is felt to be wanting : but it is fit that I 
 should make the effort, if it were only to meet the expressions of 
 interest in my previous papers which have reached me from all 
 quarters, or to mark my sense of the personal kindness which, in many 
 cases, must have dictated the terms in which that interest w^as conveyed. 
 10 This, I think, is what I had to say. Some things which I might 
 have been disposed to add would not be fitting in a public letter. 
 Let me say, however, generally, that these two papers of mine, short 
 and inconsiderable as they are, have, in one way, produced a dispro¬ 
 portionate result, though but of a personal nature, by leading to many 
 kind acts, and generous services, and expressions of regard, in many 
 different shapes, from men of talents in London. 
 
 To these hereafter I shall look back as to a fund of pleasant remem¬ 
 brances. Meantime, for the present, they have rendered me a service 
 not less acceptable by making my residence in London, in many 
 20 respects, agreeable, at a time rvhen, on other accounts, it shoirld 
 naturally have been far otherwise. 
 
 I remain. Sir, 
 
 Your faithful friend and servant, 
 
 X. Y. Z. 
 
 London, Nov. 27, 1821. 
 
 II. The “Appendix” to the Confessions on theie Fiest 
 Publication in Book Foem in 1822. 
 
 The Proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it, 
 some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance 
 of a Third Part promised in the London Magazine of December last ; 
 80 and the more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee 
 that promise was issued, might otherwise bo implicated in the blame 
 —little or much—attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in 
 mere justice, the author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the 
 exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark 
 question to his own judgment, and not much illuminated by any of 
 the masters on casuistry whom he has consulted on the occasion. On 
 the one hand, it seems generally agreed that a promise is binding in 
 the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made : for which reason 
 it is that we see many persons break promises without scruple that 
 40 are made to a whole nation who keep their faith religiously in all 
 private engagements,—breaches of promise towards the stronger party 
 being committed at a man’s own peril. On the other hand, the only 
 parties interested in the promises of an author are his readers ; and 
 these it is a point of modesty in any author to believe as few as 
 
TO THE NOTES. 
 
 385 
 
 possible ; or perhaps only one,—in which case any promise imposes a 
 sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to think of. Casuistry 
 dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the indulgent con¬ 
 sideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay, 
 in the following account of his own condition from the end of last year, 
 when the engagement was made, up nearly to the present time. For 
 any purpose of self-excuse, it might be sufficient to say that intolerable 
 bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any exertion of mind, 
 more especially for such as demand and presuppose a pleasurable and 
 a genial state of feeling ; but, as a case that may by possibility con¬ 
 tribute a trifle to the medical history of Opium in a further stage of its 
 action than can often have been brought under the notice of professional 
 men, he has judged that it might be acceptable to some readers to have 
 it described more at length. Fiat experimentiim in corpore vili is a 
 just rule where there is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise 
 on a large scale. What the benefit may be will admit of a doubt ; 
 but there can be none as to the value of the bod}' : for a more w'orth- 
 less body than his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be. It 
 is his pride to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable 
 human system, that hardly ever could have been meant to be sea¬ 
 worthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of 
 life: and, indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of 
 human bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to 
 bequeath his wretched structure to any respectable dog.—But now to 
 the case ; which, for the sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a 
 cumbersome periphrasis, the author will take the liberty of giving in 
 the first person. 
 
 Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with 
 the impression that I had wholly renounced the use of Opium. This 
 impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons : first, because 
 the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering 
 necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own 
 case as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describ¬ 
 ing it, which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking 
 from the station of an actual sufferer ; secondly, because I, who had 
 descended from so large a quantity as 8000 drops to so small a one 
 (comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 160 
 drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In 
 suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed Opium- 
 eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself; and, as may be 
 seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general 
 tone of the conclusion, and not from any specific words, —which are in 
 no instance at variance with the literal truth.—In no long time after 
 that paper was written, I became sensible that the effort which 
 remained would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated ; and 
 the necessity for making it was more apparent every month. In 
 particular, I became aware of an increasing callousness or defect of 
 sensibility in the stomach ; and this I imagined might imply a 
 scirrhous state of that organ, either formed or forming. An eminent 
 
 2 B 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 30 
 
 40 
 
386 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 physician, to whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed 
 me that such a termination of my case was not impossible, though likely 
 to be forestalled by a different termination, in the event of my continuing 
 the use of opium. Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure, as soon 
 as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and 
 energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June 
 last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt 
 arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously 
 settled in my OAvn mind that I would not flinch, but would “ stand up 
 10 to the scratch,” under any possible “punishment.” I must premise 
 that about 170 or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for 
 many months. Occasionally I had run up as high as 500, and once 
 nearly to 700. In repeated preludes to my final experiment I had 
 also gone as low as 100 drops, but had found it impossible to stand it 
 beyond the fourth day,—which, by the way, I have always found more 
 difficult to get over than any of the preceding three. I went off under 
 easy sail—130 drops a day for three days : on the fourth I plunged at 
 once to 80. The misery which I now suffered “ took the conceit ” out 
 of me at once ; and for about a month I continued off and on about 
 20 this mark ; then I sunk to 60, and the next day to—none at all. 
 This was the first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without 
 opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours ; that is, 
 
 upwards of half a week. Then I took-ask me not how much : 
 
 say, ye severest, what would ye have done ? Then I abstained again : 
 then took about 25 drops ; then abstained ; and so on. 
 
 Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six 
 weeks of the experiment were these : enormous irritability and excite¬ 
 ment of the whole system ; the stomach, in particular, restored to a 
 full feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain ; unceas- 
 30 ing restlessness night and day : sleep—I scarcely knew what it was : 
 three hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so 
 agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me : lower 
 jaw constantly swelling : mouth ulcerated : and many other distressing 
 symptoms that would be tedious to repeat; amongst which, however, 
 I must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany any 
 attempt to renounce opium,—viz. violent sternutation. This now 
 became exceedingly troublesome ; sometimes lasting for two hours at 
 once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not 
 40 much surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or 
 read that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of 
 that vdiich lines the stomach ; whence, I believe, are explained the 
 inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The 
 sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed 
 itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable also that, during the 
 whole period of years through which I had taken opium, I had never 
 once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. But 
 now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an un¬ 
 finished fragment of a letter begun about this time to -, I find 
 
 these words ; “You ask me to write the-, Do you know 
 
 50 Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of Thierry and Theodoret ? There you 
 
TO THE NOTES. 
 
 387 
 
 •will see my case as to sleep; nor is it mucli of an exaggeration in 
 other features, I protest to you that I have a gi’eater influx of thoughts 
 in one hour at present than in a 'vv’hole year under the reign of opium. 
 
 It seems as though all the thoughts which had been frozen up for a 
 decade of years by opium had now, according to the old fable, been 
 thawed at once, such a multitude streana in upon me from all quarters. 
 Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability that, for one which 
 I detain and write down, fifty escape me. In spite of my weariness 
 from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit for two 
 minutes together. ‘ I nunc., et versus tecum meditare canoros.’ ” 10 
 
 At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon, 
 requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he 
 came ; and, after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this ques¬ 
 tion : Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted 
 as a stimulus to the digestive organs, and that the present state of 
 sufl'ering in the stomach, which manifestly was the cause of the 
 inability to sleep, might arise from indigestion ? His answer was,— 
 
 No : on the contrary, he thought that the suffering was caused by 
 digestion itself,—which should naturally go on below the conscious¬ 
 ness, but which, from the unnatural state of the stomacdi, vitiated by '20 
 so long a use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This 
 opinion was plausible ; and the uniutermitting nature of the suffering 
 disposes me to think that it was tnre ; for, if it had been any mere 
 irregular affection of the stomach, it should naturally have intermitted 
 occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of 
 nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is to withdraw 
 from our notice all the vital motions, such as the circulation of the 
 blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic action 
 of the stomach, &c. ; and opium, it seems, is able in this, as in other 
 instances, to counteract her purposes.—By the advice of the surgeon, 30 
 I tried hitters. For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings 
 under which I laboured ; but about the forty-second day of the experi¬ 
 ment the symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new ones to 
 arise of a different and far more tormenting class : under these, with 
 but a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer. But 
 I dismiss them undescribed for two reasons : 1st, because the mind 
 revolts from retracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is 
 removed by too short or by no interval : to do this with minuteness 
 enough to make the review of any use would be indeed infandum 
 renovaredolorem,” and possibly without a sufficient motive : for, 2dly, 4d 
 I doubt whether this latter state be any way referrible to opium, 
 positively considered, or even negatively ; that is, whether it is to bo 
 numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or 
 even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a want of opium in a 
 system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms 
 might be accounted for from the time of year (August) ; for, though 
 the summer was not a hot one, j’^et in any case the sum of all the heat 
 funded (if one may say so) during the previous mouths, added to the 
 existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in its better half 
 the hottest part of the year ; and it so happened that the excessive 50 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 388 
 
 perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in 
 the daily quantum of opium, and which in July was so violent as to 
 oblige me to use a bath five or six times a day, had about the setting 
 in of the hottest season wholly retired : on which account any had 
 effect of the heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom, 
 viz. what in my ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes 
 affecting the shoulders, &c., but more often appearing to be seated in 
 the stomach), seemed again less probably attributable to the opium 
 or the want of opium than to the dampness of the house which I 
 10 inhabit,^ which had about that time attained its maximum,—July 
 having been, as usual, a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part 
 of England. 
 
 Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion 
 with the latter stage of my bodily wuetchedness,—(except, indeed, as 
 an occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, 
 and thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever),—I willingly 
 spare my reader all description of it. Let it perish to him ; and would 
 that I could as easily say let it perish to my own remembrances, that 
 any future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an 
 20 ideal of possible human misery ! 
 
 So much for the sequel of my experiment ; as to the former stage, 
 in which properly lies the experiment and its application to other 
 cases, I must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I 
 have recorded it. These were two: 1st, a belief that I might add 
 some trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am 
 aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence 
 of the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the sub¬ 
 ject, which besieged me whilst -writing that part of my paper ; which 
 part, being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees 
 30 of latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from this account, 
 rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may 
 arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium,— 
 namely, to Opium-eaters in general,—that it establishes, for their 
 consolation and encouragement, the fact that opium may be renounced, 
 and without greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support; 
 and by a pretty rapid course of descent.^ 
 
 To communicate this result of my experiment was my foremost 
 purpose. 2dly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain 
 how it had become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time 
 40 to accompany this republication : for during the very time of this 
 
 1 In saying this I meant no disrespect to the individual house, as the 
 reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or 
 two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated with 
 Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous dis¬ 
 trict which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, 
 is conducted on just principles in this country; but for any other architecture 
 it is in a barbarous state, and, what is worse, in a retrograde state. 
 
 2 On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid, and the 
 suffering therefore needlessly aggravated ; or rather, perhaps, it was not 
 sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But, that the reader may 
 judge for himself, and, above all, that the Opium-eater who is preparing to 
 
TO THE NOTES. 
 
 389 
 
 experiment the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from 
 London ; and such was my inability to expand or to improve them 
 that I could not even hear to read them over with attention enough to 
 notice the press errors, or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. These 
 were my reasons for troubling my reader with any record, long or 
 short, of experiments relating to so truly base a subject as my owm 
 body ; and I am earnest with the reader, that he will not forget them, 
 or so far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would con¬ 
 descend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or, indeed, for any 
 less object than that of general benefit to others. Such an animal as 10 
 the self-observing valetudinarian I know there is : I have met him 
 myself occasionally ; and I know that he is the worst imaginable 
 heautontimorouimnos; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into 
 distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under 
 a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But, 
 as to myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and 
 selfish habit that I could as little condescend to it as I could to spend 
 
 retire from business may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin 
 my diary. 
 
 FIRST WEEK. SECOND WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud. 
 
 Mond. June 24 . 130 Alond. July 1 . 80 
 
 „ 25 140 „ 2 . 80 
 
 „ 26 130 „ 3 . 90 
 
 ,,27 80 „ 4 . 100 
 
 „ 28.SO „ 5.80 
 
 ,,29 80 ,, 6 80 
 
 ,,30 80 ,, 7 80 
 
 Mond. 
 
 THIRD W'EEK. 
 
 FOURTH W'EEK. 
 
 
 8 . 
 
 Drops of Laud. 
 
 Mond. July 15 
 
 Drops of Laud. 
 . 76 
 
 9 . 
 
 .50 
 
 „ 16 
 
 
 . 73h 
 
 lOA 
 
 
 n 17 
 
 
 7Si 
 
 Hiatus in 
 
 „ 18 
 
 
 70 
 
 12 1 
 
 MS. 
 
 „ 19 
 
 
 . 240 
 
 is) 
 
 
 „ 20 
 
 
 SO 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 76 
 
 „ 21 
 
 
 . 350 
 
 FIFTH WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Laud. 
 
 Mond. July 22 . . . 
 
 .60 
 
 „ 23 . . . . 
 
 . . . none 
 
 „ 24 . . . . 
 
 . . . none 
 
 „ 25 . . . . 
 
 . . . none 
 
 „ 26 . . . . 
 
 ... 200 
 
 „ 27 . . . . 
 
 
 What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to such num¬ 
 bers as 300, 350, etc. ? The impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of 
 purpose : the motive, where any motive blended with this impulse, was either 
 the principle of “ reeuler pour mieux sauter "—(for under the torpor of a large 
 dose, whicli lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomacli, 
 which, on aAvaking, found itself partly accustomed to this new ration),—or else 
 it \vas this principle—that of sufferings otherwise equal those will be borne 
 best which meet with a mood of anger : now, whenever I ascended to any large 
 dose, I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne 
 anything. 
 
390 
 
 APPENDIX TO THE NOTES. 
 
 my time in watcliinfi; a poor servant-girl,—to whom at this moment I 
 liear some lad or other making love at the back of my honse. Is it 
 for a Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an 
 occasion ? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years’ 
 purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments ? 
 —However, to put this oiit of question, I shall say one thing which 
 ■will, perhaps, shock some readers ; brrt I am sure it ought not to do 
 so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, 
 employs m\rch of his time on the phenomena of his own body without 
 10 some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking 
 upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it and make it the 
 object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be dis¬ 
 pleased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon 
 the bodies of the ■worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And, 
 in testification of my sincerity in saying this, I shall make the follow¬ 
 ing ofifer. Like other men, I have particular fancies about the place 
 of my burial : having lived chiefly in a mountainous I’egion, I rather 
 cleave to the conceit that a grave in a green church-yard amongst the 
 ancient and solitary hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of 
 20 repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Golgothas of London. 
 Yet, if the gentlemen of Surgeons’ Hall think that any benefit can 
 redound to their science from inspecting the appearances in the body 
 of an Opium-eater, let them speak but a word, and I will take care 
 that mine shall be legally secured to them— i.e., as soon as I have done 
 with it myself. Let them not hesitate to express their wishes upon 
 any scruples of false delicacy and consideration for my feelings : I 
 assure them that they will do me too much honour by “ demonstrat¬ 
 ing ” on such a crazy body as mine ; and it will give me pleasure to 
 anticipate this posthirmous revenge and insult inflicted upon that which 
 30 has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such bequests are not 
 common : reversionary benefits contingent upon the death of the 
 testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases. Of this ive 
 have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Enraan prince,—who 
 used, \ipon any notification made to him by rich persons that they had 
 left him a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire satisfac¬ 
 tion at sirch arrangements, and his gracious acceptance of those loyal 
 legacies ; but then, if the testators neglected to give him immediate 
 possession of the property,—if they traitorously “ persisted in living” 
 (si viverc perseverarent, as Suetonius expresses it),—he was highly 
 40 provoked, and took his measures accordingly. In those times, and 
 from one of the worst of the C?esars, we might expect such conduct ; 
 but I am sure that, from English surgeons at this day, I need look for 
 no expressions of impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are 
 answerable to that pure love of science and all its interests which 
 induces me to make such an offer. 
 
 Sept, mh, 1822. 
 
INDEX TO THE NOTES 
 
 Abergavenny, the, 325. 
 
 Acheron, 329. 
 
 Adelung, 352. 
 vEolian power, 302. 
 rEsculapius, 360. 
 
 A force cVennuyer, 350. 
 Agamemnon, 340. 
 
 Agnecheek, Sir Andrew, 377. 
 Alcaics, 324. 
 
 Alfresco, 317. 
 
 Aliens, turbulent, 268. 
 
 Altamont, Lord, 283, 305. 
 Altrincham, 307. 
 
 Alumni, 277. 
 
 Ambrose, Isaac, 303. 
 
 Ambrosia, 341. 
 
 Amiens, peace of, 292, 320. 
 Amram’s son, 359. 
 
 Anarchy of dreaming sleep, 348. 
 Anastasius, 343, 352. 
 Andromache, 344. 
 
 Angel, better, 292. 
 
 Angelic hair-splitting, 262. 
 
 Ann of Oxford Street, 333, 338, 
 373, 374. 
 
 Anodyne, 259. 
 
 Antediluvian health, 342. 
 Antique or antic, 349. 
 
 A parte ante, 355. 
 
 Aphelion, 279, 358. 
 
 Apocalypse, 341. 
 
 Apotheosis, 328. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, 264. 
 
 Arcadia, 317. 
 
 Archididascalus, 275. 
 Architecture, 269, 313. 
 
 Ariosto, 365. 
 
 Aristophanes, 345. 
 
 Armilustrium, 272. 
 
 Arnold, Dr, 273. 
 
 Arthur, King, 280. 
 
 Artis est artem celare, 322. 
 Arundel Marbles, 319. 
 
 Athenian captives in Sicily, 274. 
 Athenian dramatists, 277, 289. 
 Atlantcan shoulders, 306. 
 
 Atlas, 280. 
 
 Audrey, in ‘ As you like it,’ 311. 
 Aurora, 355. 
 
 Avatar, 328. 
 
 Averruncation, 270. 
 
 Awful sounds that live, etc., 328. 
 Awsiter, John, 256. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 279, 284, 361, 376. 
 Baird Smith, Mrs (Florence De 
 Quincey), 258, 315, 365. 
 Balaam, 287. 
 
 Baptismal initiation, 262, 
 Barbaric East, 275. 
 
 Barrow, Isaac, 269, 288. 
 
 Bath, 274. 
 
 Baxter, Kichard, 270. 
 
 Beatific vision, 341. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir George, 344. 
 Bellum interneciniom, 354. 
 Belshazzar’s thundering, 314. 
 Bentley, Richard, 282. 
 
 Berners, Lord, 291. 
 
 Bibliothecse, 288. 
 
 Blowing wdiither it listeth, the 
 wind, 302. 
 
 Bluebeard room, 332. 
 
 Bodleian library, 326, 348. 
 Bolton Abbey, 317. 
 
 Bolt the whole, 352. 
 
392 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bone and blood, 329. 
 
 Bore, the, 310. 
 
 Bottle-imp, 311. 
 
 Brahininical cows, 321. 
 
 Brama, 368. 
 
 Brought me acquainted, 341. 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 288, 345, 
 364. 
 
 Brummagem, 317. 
 
 Brutes within the gate, 272. 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 323. 
 Buchan, Dr, 342, 350. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 308. 
 
 Butler, Lady Eleanor, 317. 
 Butlers, the, 323. 
 
 Byrom, Dr John, 276. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 298. 
 
 Cresars, the twelve, 328. 
 
 Cceteris paribus, 368. 
 
 Calderon, 289. 
 
 Caliban, 264. 
 
 Camera obscura, 329. 
 
 Campbell, Mr T. Dykes, 261. 
 Canning, George, 291. 
 
 Capulets, 276. 
 
 Carbery, Lady, 283, 296, 297, 
 334. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 268, 271. 
 Carnival, 288. 
 
 Caste, 368. 
 
 Castilian sense, lofty, 326. 
 
 Castor, 305. 
 
 Catholic creature, 333. 
 
 Caves, the, 317. 
 
 Cedars of Lebanon, 373. 
 
 Chain of abject slavery, 259. 
 Chancery, Court of, 267. 
 
 Chaos, 303. 
 
 Charlemagne, 280. 
 
 Chaucer, friar of, 351. 
 
 Chester, 307. 
 
 Chillingworth, 288. 
 
 Christabel, 264. 
 
 Christ Church, 319. 
 
 Church, collegiate, 293, 304. 
 Churches of Christendom, 268. 
 Church militant, 271. 
 
 Circean spell, 364. 
 
 Cis-Baltic, 375. 
 
 Civil War, 288. j 
 Clark, Mrs, 335. 
 
 Clarke, Dr Adam, 286. 
 
 Clarkson, Anti-slavery, 354. 
 Cleaver, Dr, 319. 
 
 Clery, 300. 
 
 Climax of perplexity, 294. 
 
 Coigne of vantage, 330. 
 
 I Coleridge, S. T., 260, 261, 262,. 
 264, 353, 358, 359, 363. 
 Colocynth, 262. 
 
 Coma, 358. 
 
 Comatose, 294. 
 
 Comme il faut, 327. 
 
 Concern, the, 351. 
 
 Conformists, occasional, 280. 
 Contretemps, 307. 
 
 Cooke Taylor, Dr, 283. 
 
 Copia verborum, 283. 
 
 Corneille, 290. 
 
 Cornucopia, 311. 
 
 Cosmogony man, 319. 
 
 County Palatine, 310. 
 
 Court of pie poudre, 327. 
 
 Cousin, M., 288. 
 
 Cowper, William, 271. 
 
 Cradle of the human race, 368. 
 Craig, Margaret, 381. 
 Crepusculum, 303. 
 
 Cresset, 373. 
 
 Crocodile, the accursed, 368. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 331, 366, 
 Crusade, the first, 285. 
 
 Crypt, 279. 
 
 Cuba, 263, 
 
 Cuffe, William, 337. 
 
 Curse, a father’s, 334. 
 
 Curtius, Roman martyr, 271. 
 Custos Rotulorum, 349. 
 
 Damascus, 372. 
 
 Dames, the, 337. 
 
 Dampier, William, 263. 
 
 Danish language, 309. 
 
 Daphne, 261, 37^ 
 
 Dash, Mr, 255. 
 
 Dawes, Richard, 282. 
 
 Death, contemplation of, 369. 
 Decamerone of Boccaccio, 325. 
 Demireps, 253. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 393 
 
 Demoniac, 263. 
 
 De Quincey, Elizabeth (De 
 Quiiicey’s mother), 297, 315, 
 365. 
 
 -, Emily (De Quincey’s 
 
 daughter), 297, 376. 
 
 -, Florence (Mrs Baird 
 
 Smith, De Quincey’s daughter), 
 258, 315, 365. 
 
 -, Henry (De Quincey’s 
 
 brother), 313. 
 
 -, Jane (De Quincey’s 
 
 sister), 316. 
 
 -, Margaret (De Quincey’s 
 
 wife), 339, 355. 
 
 -, Margaret (Mrs Craig, De 
 
 Quincey’s daughter), 381. 
 
 -, Mary (De Quincey’s 
 
 sister), 311. 
 
 -, Richard (‘Pink,’ De 
 
 Quincey’s brother), 278, 313, 
 314. 
 
 -, Thomas (De Quincey’s 
 
 father), 266, 360. 
 
 -, Thomas (tire opium- 
 
 eater). 
 
 -, as a talker, 322. 
 
 -, digi’essions of, 
 
 280, 358. 
 
 -, dreaming pro¬ 
 pensity of, 305, 316, 330, 346, 
 356, 368. 
 
 -, a hedonist, 260. 
 
 -, humour of, 331, 
 
 342, 358. 
 
 -, knowledge of 
 
 Greek, 282, 318. 
 
 -, personal appear¬ 
 ance, 355. 
 
 -, his reading aloud, 
 
 361. 
 
 -, untidiness of, 
 
 258. 
 
 -rrse of epithets, 
 
 263. 
 
 -, William (De Quincey’s 
 
 elder brother), 269. 
 
 Deucalion, 310. 
 
 Devil, printer’s, 334. 
 
 Dillon, Dr E. J., 379. 
 
 Discipline at Manchester Gram¬ 
 mar School, 278, 284. 
 Dislimned, 274. 
 
 Dodwell, Dr, 378. 
 
 Dog-sleep, 331. 
 
 Dolgelly, 323. 
 
 Donne, John, 288. 
 
 Dons, Oxford, 319. 
 
 Drawing in harness, 285. 
 Dressing, 810. 
 
 Duodecimo, 313. 
 
 Earnest, 269. 
 
 Eatwell, Dr, 259, 262, 293, 331,, 
 333, 356, 357. 
 
 Eclectic philosopher, 351. 
 
 Edgar, King, 309. 
 
 Edgeworth, Miss, 377. 
 Eikonoclasts, 270. 
 
 Ejectment, serving an, 330. 
 Electra, 339. 
 
 Elite, 359. 
 
 Emathian conqueror, 275. 
 Encaustic record, 356. 
 
 Endor, witch of, 301. 
 
 Engine, 265. 
 
 English history, 365. 
 
 English literature, 286. 
 
 En grande tenue, 344. 
 
 Epiphany, 344. 
 
 Erictho, Lucan’s, 301. 
 
 Esquire, title of, 349. 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 337. 
 
 Ethics, 269. 
 
 Eton, 263, 283. 
 
 Eudsemonist, 350. 
 
 Eumenides, 339. 
 
 Euripides, 307, 309. 
 
 Euthauasy, 358. 
 
 Everton, 347. 
 
 Exasperate, 364. 
 
 Ex cathedra, 342. 
 
 ’e7rO(!A7r€Ke, 327. 
 
 Facts are stubborn things, 304. 
 Faineans, 267. 
 
 Fairfield, 378. 
 
 Falstaff, 299. 
 
 Fcmmes-de-chambre, 300. 
 Ferdinand VII., 267. 
 
394 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fichte, John Theophiliis, 348. 
 Fiend, 300. 
 
 Flatman, Thomas, 341. 
 
 Flavian family, 281. 
 
 Flihustiei', 263. 
 
 Flittings, three, 294. 
 
 Florence, merchants of, 268. 
 Flowers in religion, 302. 
 Forgery, 301. 
 
 Forget-me-nots, 325. 
 
 Forum, the Roman, 267. 
 Franks, the, 285. 
 
 Freedom, perfect, 374. 
 
 French, the, 271. 
 
 French drama, 289. 
 
 French literature, 253. 
 
 French taste, 290. 
 
 Froissart, John, 291. 
 
 Froude, J. A., 376, 379. 
 Fugitive, 342. 
 
 Fuseli, 367. 
 
 George III., 334. 
 
 George IV,, 366. 
 
 German biblical criticism, 379. 
 Ghostly enemies, 330. 
 
 Gilbert, A. T., 285, 297. 
 Glasgow, 329. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 311, 354. 
 Goodman’s table, 337. 
 ■Gownsmen, 348. 
 
 Grammar, 281. 
 
 Grasmere, 339, 349. 
 
 Grassini, 344. 
 
 Greek composition, 283. 
 
 Greek history, 266. 
 
 Greek Street, 330. 
 
 Griffin, 358. 
 
 Grosvenor, the, 325. 
 
 Grotius, Hugo, 284. 
 Guardianship, 267. 
 
 •Guizot, 290. 
 
 Halcyon, 262, 347. 
 
 Halen, Juan Van, 371. 
 
 Hall, Mr, 268, 281, 294, 335. 
 Halsewell, the, 325. 
 
 Hamann, J. G., 323. 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 323. 
 Handel, Frederic, 284. 
 
 Hanrvay, Jonas, 354. 
 
 Hardi, Alexander, 290. 
 
 I Hare, Archdeacon, 263. 
 
 I Harrington, James, 280. 
 Harriott’s struggles through life, 
 352. 
 
 Hartley, David, 276. 
 
 ‘ Hear him,’ 351. 
 
 Hebe, 355. 
 
 Hebrew antiquities, 303. 
 Hedonist, 361. 
 
 Hercynian forests, 314. 
 Hesperides, the, 299. 
 
 Hesperus, 305. 
 
 Hilarion, 365. 
 
 Hippel, T. G. Van, 323. 
 
 Hogg, John, 376. 
 
 Holwell, Governor, 326. 
 
 Home, Sir Everard, 359. 
 
 Homer, quoted, 307. 
 
 Homer, the Grenville, 319. 
 lloni soit qui mal y pensc, 349. 
 Hope, Thomas, 343. 
 
 Horace, 278. 
 
 Howards, the, 344. 
 
 Hypothenuse, square as, 280. 
 
 Ibi omnis effusus labor, 337. 
 
 Iliad of woes, 355. 
 
 Impedimenta, 325. 
 
 ] Inter alia, 352. 
 
 Intercalary year, 353. 
 
 Interlude, 344. 
 lo, 324. 
 
 Isis, 368. 
 
 Japp, Dr, 268, 294, 315, 329, 
 335, 338, 360, 376. 
 
 Jenkinson, Ephraim, 319. 
 Jerusalem, second temple of, 335. 
 
 -, siege of, 335. 
 
 Jessica’s moonlight, 327. 
 
 Jesuits, 264. 
 
 Jesuits’ bark, 359. 
 
 ! Jesus College, Cambridge, 337. 
 
 -, Oxford, 323. 
 
 Jew, the wandering, 320. 
 
 Jilted, 276. 
 
 Job, book of, 378. 
 
 John O’Groat’s House, 280. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 395 
 
 Johnson, l)i', 266, 321, 332. 
 Josephns, 379. 
 
 Judean palms, 369. 
 
 Justice of the Peace, 349. 
 
 Juvenal, 289, 290, 321, 336. 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 348. 
 
 Kantian logic, 335. 
 
 Kelsall, Mr and Mrs, 273. 
 Kemble, John, 362. 
 
 Kentucky, 267. 
 
 KeiurjXtou, 325. 
 
 Lady of the Lake, the, 354. 
 
 Lake poets, the, 298. 
 
 Lakes, prices at, 323. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 262, 288, 291. 
 Lancashire, musical skill in, 283. 
 Lardner, Nathaniel, 284. 
 Large-Paper copies, 325. 
 
 Lathom House, 300. 
 
 Lawson, Mr, 293, 295, 304. 
 Laying down, 332. 
 
 Leeming, 295. 
 
 Legate a latere, 343. 
 
 Leibnitz, 277. 
 
 Lent, 351. 
 
 Leuconomos, 271. 
 
 Lewthwaite, Barbara, 352, 377, 
 381. 
 
 Libraries at the bottom of the 
 sea, 325. 
 
 Lightning before death, 327. 
 Lithgow, William, 371. 
 
 Livy, 365. 
 
 Locus peniteniice, 327. 
 
 Locusts, 295. 
 
 Lord of my learning, etc., 337. 
 Lord’s-prayer, the, 307. 
 
 Lucan, 301, 375. 
 
 Lucifer, 279. 
 
 Luke, St, 372. 
 
 Lustrum, 351. 
 
 Madonna, 306. 
 
 Magdalen, grave of, 338. 
 
 -, of Lebanon, 374. 
 
 Mail coaches, 326. 
 
 Malay, the, 368. 
 
 Maiina, 341. 
 
 Marathon, 299. 
 
 Marinus, 346. 
 
 Marius, C., 366. 
 
 Marston Moor, 366. 
 
 Martinet, 282. 
 
 Mai’ylebone, 339. 
 
 Mask and anti-mask, 289. 
 Ma.sson, Professor, 315, 367, 376. 
 Matins, 348. 
 
 Mead, Richard, 256. 
 Mediterranean of Oxford Street, 
 336. 
 
 Mei juris, 329. 
 
 Meo periculo, 342. 
 Mephistopheles, 302. 
 
 Merchant, Scotch meaning of, 
 268. 
 
 Mercury, the planet of, 296. 
 Metamorphosis, Ovidian, 260. 
 Methodists, 319, 324. 
 
 Mezzo termine, 294. 
 
 Microcosm, 291. 
 
 Midas, 365. 
 
 Millgate, 277. 
 
 Milner, Dean, 254. 
 
 Milton, John, 265, 287, 290, 
 306, 307, 310, 371, 375. 
 
 Moir, David, 375. 
 
 Mon possible, 299. 
 
 Moonshine, 264. 
 
 Morell, T., 282. 
 
 More Socratico, 333. 
 
 Motive, 266. 
 
 MovetJi altogether, etc., 352. 
 Multitudinous sea, 347. 
 Mutability, stanzas on, 352. 
 
 Napoleon, 345. 
 
 Naseby, 366. 
 
 Nationality, 266, 287. 
 
 Naughty, 269. 
 
 Nelson, Lord, 305, 358. 
 
 Xescit vox missa, etc., 305, 329. 
 Neustrians, 375. 
 
 Newbury, 366. 
 
 News, 329. 
 
 Nexus, 356. 
 
 Nugent, Dr, 282. 
 
 -Lord, 319. 
 
 Nuzzur, 275. 
 
396 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 CEdipus, 364. 
 
 Oestru.'B, 324. 
 
 Official counsellor, 294. 
 
 Officina diylomatum, 330. 
 
 - gentium, 368. 
 
 Oftentimes, 259, 300, 301. 
 Oracle of Delphi, 357. 
 
 Orbilius, 278. 
 
 Orestes, 339. 
 
 Orford, Lord, 367. 
 
 Organ, street, 334. 
 
 Ormskirk, 316. 
 
 Orontes, 373. 
 
 Osiris, 368. 
 
 Osmunda regalis, 353. 
 
 Oswestry, 325. 
 
 Othello, 265. 
 
 Otway, Thomas, 338. 
 
 Out of sight, out of mind, 286. 
 Ovid, 260. 
 
 Oxford, 276, 286, 287, 295, 308. 
 
 Pagan gods, 272. 
 
 Palaestra, 269. 
 
 Paley, 284. 
 
 Palmyra, 372. 
 
 Palvdamentum, 366. 
 Pandiculation, 350. 
 
 Pandora, 311. 
 
 Pantheon, 341, 350, 355. 
 Parenthesis, 273, 352, 357. 
 Pariah, 258, 272, 326, 333. 
 Parks, the, 332. 
 
 Parnell, Thomas, 253. 
 
 Paullus, 366. 
 
 Pausanias, 299. 
 
 Pennant, 320. 
 
 Pensive citadel, 305. 
 
 Penson, Colonel, 312, 313. 
 Pericles, 359. 
 
 Perihelion, 279, 358. 
 
 Peripatetic, 333. 
 
 Phsedo of Plato, 380. 
 
 Pharisees, 379. 
 
 Phidias, 348. 
 
 Philistines, 309. 
 
 Phosphorus, 305. 
 
 Pindar, 256. 
 
 Piranesi, 366. 
 
 Pisistratus, 274. 
 
 Pitt, William, 277, 323. 
 
 Plato, 377, 378. 
 
 Poach, 321. 
 
 Pococke, Edward, 284. 
 
 Pollux, 305. 
 
 Pompous, 308, 328. 
 
 Ponderihus librata suis, 343.. 
 Ponsonby, Miss, 317. 
 
 Pophain, Sir Home, 314. 
 
 Porch, the, 351. 
 
 Person, Kichard, 282, 319. 
 Port-Royal Greek Grammar, 282. 
 Praxiteles, 348. 
 
 Preston, proud, 316. 
 
 Prineeps senatus, 303. 
 Principality of Wales, 320. 
 Priory, the, 299, 312, 338. 
 Prize-money, 324. 
 
 Proclus, 346. 
 
 Proprio marte, 360. 
 
 Prospero, 264. 
 
 Providence their guide, 307. 
 Prudential motives, 264. 
 Punishment, corporal, 278. 
 Pyramids, the, 372. 
 
 Pyrrha, 310. 
 
 Tra^pTjo'la, 310. 
 
 (papuaKov vr]7rer6es, 321, 370. 
 
 Quarto, royal, 313. 
 
 Quincey, Mr Josiah, 377. 
 
 Radcliffe, Anne, 297. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 347. 
 Ramadan, 351. 
 
 Range of his guns, 327. 
 
 Ratified, 293, 294. 
 
 Reader, for the press, 324. 
 
 Red letter days, 329. 
 
 Red lion, 377. 
 
 Religio Medici, the, 345. 
 Representative government, 271. 
 Pes metrica, 282. 
 
 Resurrection, first fruits of, 369. 
 Ricardo, David, 363. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 322. 
 
 Ring fence, 317. 
 
 Roman drama, 289. 
 
 Roman house, 277. 
 
 Rotrou, Jean de, 290. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 397 
 
 Eound-robiii, 280. 
 
 Rubicon, 305. 
 
 Ruth, 276, 308. 
 
 Sadducees, 379. 
 
 Sail before the wind, 351. 
 
 Salt, 321. 
 
 Salt-licks, 295. 
 
 Sapphics, 324. 
 
 Scenical, 258, 290. 
 
 Schelling, F,, 348. 
 
 Sea-lawyer, 319. 
 
 Seeva, 368. 
 
 Senate, 267. 
 
 Senselessness of joy, the, 296, 
 Septuagint, 345. 
 
 Sequins, 375. 
 
 Servile ministrations, 339. 
 Servitude, domestic, 273. 
 
 Seven Sleepers, the, 307. 
 
 Seventh seal, the, 313. 
 
 Seventh son of a seventh son, 321. 
 Shad well, 367. 
 
 Shakespeare, 300, 308, 345, 347, 
 370. 
 
 Shakespeare first folio, 325. 
 Shelley, 356. 
 
 Shibboleth, 326. 
 
 Sliirley, James, 324. 
 
 Siddons, Mrs, 362. 
 
 Sidney, Algernon, 271. 
 
 Simmias, 380. 
 
 Sinbad the sailor, 309. 
 
 Sioie Cerere et Baccho, 333. 
 Sisyphus, 307. 
 
 Slewken virtue, etc., 337. 
 
 Slang, De Quincey’s use of, 264, 
 270, 272, 300, 301, 311, 330. 
 Sleep no more, 340. 
 
 Smart money, 327. 
 
 Snobbish, 300. 
 
 Snowdonia, 322. 
 
 Socrates, 333, 380. 
 
 Soho Square, 332. 
 
 Soldan’s chair, 275. 
 
 Solomon, 373. 
 
 Sophists, 380. 
 
 Sounding board, 313. 
 
 South, Robert, 288. 
 
 Space and time, 303. 
 
 Spanish Bridge, 363. 
 Spectator, the, 281. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 352. 
 Sphinx, the, 300, 315, 346. 
 Spinosa, 363. 
 
 Spirit of God, 373. 
 
 Squireen, 375. 
 
 Steele, Richard, 281. 
 
 Strauss, 379. 
 
 St Peter’s at Rome, 299. 
 
 St Thomas’s Day, 354. 
 Student’s cap, 348. 
 
 Sub judice, 297. 
 
 Sublime, sense of the, 270. 
 Suetonius, 281. 
 
 Summer resurrection, 327. 
 Sunday spelling, 300. 
 Sybaris, 231. 
 
 Sympathetic ink, 365. 
 Symposium, 276. 
 avvTpocpov 6/.i.iJ.a, 317. 
 
 Talbots, the, 323. 
 
 Talfourd, Sergeant, 318. 
 Talyllyn, 324. 
 
 Tartarus, 332. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 269. 
 
 Tellus, 375. 
 
 Teinpe, 311. 
 
 Terrse incognitse, 346. 
 
 Tertius inter pares, 303. 
 Thalberg, 291. 
 
 Theocritus, 298. 
 
 Thomson, James, 354. 
 
 Thorn in the flesh, 272. 
 Thugs, 321. 
 
 Tic, 259. 
 
 Time and space, 303. 
 
 Titan, 376. 
 
 Tooke, Horne, 275. 
 
 Tramps, 326. 
 
 Trans-Baltic, 375. 
 Transcendent prudence, 288. 
 Transcendentalism, 265. 
 Translated, 273. 
 
 Tripod, 373. 
 
 Trophonius, cave of, 346. 
 Troy, siege of, 372. 
 Trumpet-tongued, 287. 
 Turkish opium-eater, 344. 
 
398 INDEX. 
 
 Tutor, 267. >4 
 
 Twelfth night, 345. 
 OpiTTaveXu, 344. 
 
 Unmasked, 315. 
 
 Vails, 297. 
 
 Valckenaer, 282. 
 
 Vandals, 353. 
 
 Vandyke, 306. 
 
 Venetian sequins, 375. 
 
 Venice, merchants of, 268. 
 Vespasian, 281. 
 
 Vestal fire, 272. 
 
 Violin, tyranny of the, 344. 
 Virgil, 264, 298, 329, 337. 
 Vishnu, 368. 
 
 Vulgate, the, 345. 
 
 Wakefield, Vicar of, 319. 
 
 ‘ Wanted,’ 312. 
 
 Warburton, Bishop, 379. 
 
 We are seven, 308, 381. 
 
 AVeld, Isaac, 345. 
 
 Westmoreland, 296. 
 
 Whispering gallery, 305, 313„- 
 329. 
 
 White Doe of Rylstone, 253. 
 Whitfield, George, 271. 
 
 Wilkins, Bishop, 276. 
 
 Willows, hung upon, 292. 
 
 Wilson, Professor, 361. 
 
 Wings of a dove, 339. 
 
 Winterton, the, 325. 
 
 Wolf’s throat, 328. 
 
 Worcester College, Oxford, 335. 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 323, 363. 
 
 —-, John, 325. 
 
 -, Kate, 350, 369. 
 
 -, William, 253, 298, 299,. 
 
 308, 317, 323, 330, 339, 352.. 
 360, 365, 377, 378, 381. 
 
 ‘Z. Y. X.,’ 349. 
 
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 GERMAN EPIC TALES. By dr. karl neuhaus. 2s. 6d. 
 SCHEFFEL’S Ekkehard. By dr. h. hager. 3f. 
 
 The following Series are given in full in the body of the Cata: 
 
 GOMBERT’S French Drama. See page 31. 
 
 BELL’S Modern Translations. See page 
 BELL’S English Classics. See pp. 24, 23. 
 HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 TECHNOLOGICAL HANDBOOKS Seepage-in. 
 BELL’S Agricultural Series. See page i6. 
 
 BELL’S Reading Books and Geographical Readers. 
 
 See page 26. 
 
 See pp. 25 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS :■ 
 
 WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY L 
 

 
 
 
 
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