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THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 BIVEBSIDE EDITION. 
 VOLUME L 
 

 lAdi/midu t^/ru-Hf^ 
 
 Mrhi^^ %u,oCU 
 
CONFESSIONS 
 
 ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 
 
 AND KINDRED PAPERS. 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 
 
 ©ambribge: SClie Kioersitre |)ress. 
 
 1877. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 
 
 TtOKNOB AND TlElDS, 
 
 In tlie Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1876, 
 Bt HUKD and HOUGHTON. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
 Printed ty H. O. Houghton and Company. 
 
PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The present is the first volume of a reissue of the 
 Works of Thomas De Quincey in twelve uniform vol- 
 umes. The series is based upon the American Edition 
 of De Quincey's Works, published originally in twenty- 
 two volumes. After that edition was issued, a complete 
 English edition was published in Edinburgh and was 
 edited and revised in part by the author. This edition 
 contained changes and additions, and the opportunity is 
 now taken, in reissuing the American edition to incor- 
 porate the new material which appeared in the English 
 edition. At the same time, the arrangement of the sev- 
 eral productions will be more systematic and orderly 
 than was possible when the collection was first made, , 
 at different intervals, under difficulties which render the 
 work of the first editor especially praiseworthy. In 
 the final volume, an introduction to the series will set 
 forth the plan carried out in this new arrangement, and 
 that volume wUl also contain a very full index to the 
 entire series. Throughout the series, the notes of the 
 editor wiU be distinguished from those of the author by 
 being inclosed in brackets [ J. 
 
PEOM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR 
 OF HIS WORKS. * 
 
 These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your 
 house, and, so far as regards the U. S., of your house exclu- 
 sively ; not with any view to further emolument, but as an 
 acknowledgment of the services which you have aheady ren- 
 dered me ; namely, first, in having brought together so widely 
 scattered a collection, — a difficulty which in my own hands 
 by too painful an experience I had found from nervous de- 
 pression to be absolutely insurmountable ; secondly, in hav- 
 ing made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the 
 American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any 
 expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could 
 plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and 
 merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these 
 new papers, I hope, will not be without their value in the 
 eyes of those who have taken an interest in the original 
 series. But at all events, good or bad, they are now ten- 
 dered to the appropriation of your individual house, the 
 Messes. Ticknor and Fields, according to the amplest 
 extent of any power to make such a transfer that I may be 
 found to possess by law or custom in America. 
 
 I wish this transfer were Ukely to be of more value. But 
 the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I ofiEer it, 
 may express my sense of the Uberality manifested throughout 
 this transaction by your honorable house. 
 Ever believe me, my dear sir, 
 
 Your faithful and obliged, 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 * The stereotype plates of De Quincey's Works and the right of 
 publication were transferred by Ticknor and Fields to James E, 
 OsGOCD AND Co., and by them to Huud and Houghton. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 — • — 
 
 PASX 
 
 CONTESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 
 
 Fkom the Author to the Eeadee vu 
 
 Pkelimlnaet Cohfessions 15 
 
 The PleAjSUREs of Opium 64 
 
 Introduction to the Pains of Opium .... 83 
 
 The Pains of Opium 101 
 
 Appendix 131 
 
 SUSPIEIA DE PEOFDNDIS. 
 
 Intkoductort Notice 147 
 
 Part I. The Affliction of Childhood . . . 160 
 
 The Palimpsest 225 
 
 Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow . . . 237 
 
 The Apparition of the Beocken 247 
 
 Finale ; Savannah-la-mar 253 
 
 Part II. Vision of Life 257 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM EATER. 
 
 De Quincet 289 
 
 My Guardians 295 
 
 A Manchester Home 308 
 
 At the Manchester Grammar School .... 313 
 
Vl CONTENTS. 
 
 fAOX 
 
 Elopement from Manchesteb ... . 354 
 
 Wasdekings in Noeth Wales 374 
 
 From Wales to London 404 
 
 The Plans laid for London Life 427 
 
 Barbara Lewthwaite 437 
 
 The Daughter of Lebanon 445 
 
 Notes on the Use of Opium 455 
 
 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING 476 
 
 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 
 
 The Glory of Motion 517 
 
 The Vision of Sudden Death 549 
 
 Dream Fugue 572 
 
 NOTES 583 
 
FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE RIADER. 
 
 I HERE present you, courteous reader, with the 
 record of a remarkable period of my life ; accord- 
 ing 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 tlwti 
 must be my apology for breaking through that del- 
 icate and honorable 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 mir confessions 
 (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confes- 
 
/UI FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE EEADEE. 
 
 sions) proceed from demireps, . adventurers, oi 
 swindlers; and for any such acts of gratuitous self- 
 humiliation from those who can be supposed in 
 sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part 
 of society, we must look to French literature, or to 
 that part of the German which is tainted with the 
 spurious and defective sensibility of the French. 
 All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I 
 alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for 
 many months hesitated about the propriety of 
 allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come 
 before the public eye, until after my death (when, 
 for many reasons, the whole will be published) : 
 and it is not without an anxious review of the rea- 
 sons 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 the choice of a grave, will sometimes 
 sequester themselves from the general population 
 of the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellow- 
 ship 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 
 
FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. IX 
 
 all, that it should be so ; nor would I willingly, in 
 my own person, manifest a disregard of such salu- 
 tary 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 bene- 
 fit resulting to others, from the record of an experi- 
 ence purchased at so heavy a price, might compen- 
 sate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done 
 to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach 
 of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, 
 of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, or 
 recede from, the shades of that dark alliance, 
 in proportion to the probable motives and pros- 
 pects of the offender, and the palliations, known 
 or secret, of the oflfence; in proportion as the 
 temptations to it were potent from the first, and 
 the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was ear- 
 nest to the last. For my own part, without breach 
 jf 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 
 
E FKOM THr AUTHOR TO THE READER. 
 
 in it to an excess, not yet recorded* of any other 
 man, it is no less true, that I have struggled 
 against this fascinating enthralment with a relig- 
 ious zeal, and have at length accomplished what 
 r never yet heard attributed to any other man — 
 have untwisted, almost to its final links, the 
 accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self- 
 conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbal- 
 ance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not 
 to insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was 
 unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts 
 of casuistry, according as that name shall be 
 extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, 
 or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excite- 
 ment 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 
 
 * "Not yet recorded," I say ; for there is one celebrated man ot 
 he present day, -jrho, if all be true which is reported of him, has 
 greatly exceeded me in quantity. 
 
FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. KI 
 
 distinguished for talent, or of eminent station) who 
 were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium- 
 eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and 
 
 benevolent ;i the late Dean of f Lord 
 
 ; Mr. , the philosopher;^ a late under- 
 secretary of state (who described to me the sensa- 
 tion which first drove him to the use of opium, in 
 
 the very same words as the Dean of , namely, 
 
 "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 fur- 
 nish a proportionable number. The soundness of 
 this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts 
 became known to me, which satisfied me that it 
 was not incorrect. I will mention two : 1. Three 
 respectable London druggists, in widely remote 
 quarters of London, from whom I happened lately 
 to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured 
 me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as 
 I may terrh them) was, at this time, immense ; and 
 that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, 
 to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, 
 
XJI FROM THE AUTIIOR TO THE EEADEK. 
 
 from such as were purchasing it with a view to 
 suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and dis- 
 putes. This evidence respected London only. 
 But, 2 (which will possibly surprise the reader 
 more), some years ago, on passing through Man- 
 chester, I was informed by several cotton manu- 
 facturers that their work-people were rapidly 
 getting into the practice of opium-eating ; so much 
 so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of 
 the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, 
 or three grains, in preparation for the known 
 demand of the evening. The immediate occa- 
 sion of this practice was the lowness of wages, 
 which, at that time, would not allow them to 
 indulge in ale or spirits; and, wages rising, it may 
 be thought that this practice would cease : but, 
 as I do not readily believe that any man, having 
 once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will 
 afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoy- 
 ments 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 
 
FROM THE AUTHOR TO WIK READER. XllI 
 
 on the Effects of Opium" (published in the yeai 
 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had 
 not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, 
 counter-agents, &c., of this drug, expresses him- 
 self in the following mysterious terms (jpovoPTtu 
 avveroici) ; " Perhaps he thought the subject of too 
 delicate a nature to be made common; and as 
 many people might then indiscriminately use it, 
 it would take from that necessary fear and caution, 
 which should prevent their experiencing the exten- 
 sive power of this drug; for there are many prop- 
 erties in it, if universally known, that would habit- 
 uate the use, and inake it more in request with us 
 than the Turks themselves ; the result of which 
 knowledge," he adds, " must prove a general mis- 
 fortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do 
 not altogether concur ; but upon that point I shall 
 have occasion to speak at the close of my Confes- 
 sions, where I shall present the reader with the 
 moral of my narrative.* 
 
PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS. 
 
 These preliminary confessions, or introductory nar- 
 rative of the youthful adventures which laid, the founda- 
 tion of the writer's habit of opium-eating' in after life, 
 Jt has been judged proper to premise, for three several 
 reasons : 
 
 1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satis- 
 factory answer, which else would painfully obtrude itself 
 in the course of the Opium Confessions — " How came 
 any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke 
 of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, 
 and knowingly to fetter himself with such a seven-folf. 
 chain ? — '' a question which, if not somewhere plausibly 
 resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation which it 
 would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton folly. 
 to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is 
 accessary in any case to an author's purposes. 
 
 2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremen- 
 dous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of 
 the op'um-eater, 
 
 3 As creating some previous interest of a persona] 
 sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter 
 of the confessions, which cannot faU to render the 
 
Ifi CONFESSIONS OF AW 
 
 confessions themselves more interesting. If a man 
 " whose talk is of oxen " should become an opium- 
 eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to 
 dream at all) he will dream about oxen: whereas, in 
 the case before him, the reader will find that the opium- 
 eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accord- 
 ingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams (waking 
 or sleeping, day dreams or night dreams) is suitable to 
 one who, in that character, 
 
 Humani nihil a se alienuui putat. 
 
 For amongst the conditions which he deems indis- 
 pensable to the sustaining of any claim to tbe title of 
 philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb 
 intellect in its a?ialytic functions (in which part of the 
 pretension, however, England can for some generations 
 show but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of 
 any known candidate for this honor who can be styled 
 emphatically a subtle thinker, vrith the exception of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and, in a narrower depart- 
 ment of thought, with the recent illustrious exception * 
 
 * A third exception might perhaps have been added : and my 
 reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only 
 in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly 
 addressed himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers have 
 been dedicated (on very excusabla and very intelligible grounds, 
 under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to 
 criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt 
 whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a 
 subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over 
 philosophical subjects, that he has obviously not had the advan- 
 tage of a regular scholastic education : he has not read Plato in 
 his youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), but 
 neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault) 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. ll 
 
 of David Ricardo), — but also on such a constilution 
 of the Tntr-al faculties as shall give him an inner eye 
 and power of intuition for the vision and mysteries of 
 human nature : that constitution of faculties, in short, 
 which {amongst all the generations of men that from 
 the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it 
 were, upon this planet) our English poets have pos- 
 sessed in the highest degree — and Scottish * professors 
 in the lowest. 
 
 I have often been asked how I first came to be a 
 regular opium-eater; and have suffered, very unjustly, 
 in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed 
 to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I 
 shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in 
 this practice, purely for the sake of creating an artificial 
 state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a 
 misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that- for 
 nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the 
 sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long 
 as 1 took it with this view, I was effectually protected 
 from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of 
 interposing long intervals between the several acts of 
 indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensa- 
 tions. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, 
 but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that 
 r first began to use' opium as an article of daily diet. 
 In the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most painful 
 affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced 
 about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. 
 This affection had originally been caused by the extrem ■ 
 
 * I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of whom, 
 indeed, 1 know only one. 
 
 2 
 
18 CONVESSIONS OF AN 
 
 eties of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During 
 the season of hope and redundant happiness which 
 succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had 
 slumbered : for the three following years it had revived 
 at intervals ; and now, under unfavorable circumstances, 
 from depression of spirits, it attacked me with violence 
 that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful 
 sufferings vvhich first produced this derangement of the 
 stomach were interesting in themselves and in the 
 circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly 
 retrace them. 
 
 My father died when I was about seven years old, 
 and left me to the care of four guardians.^ I was sent 
 to various schools, great and small ; and was very early 
 distinguished for my classical attainments, especially 
 for ray 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 would converse in Greek fluently, and 
 without embarrassment — an accomplishment which I 
 have not since met with in any scholar of my times, 
 and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of 
 daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek 1 
 could furnish extempore ; for the necessity of ransacking 
 my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations 
 of periphraslic expressions, as equivalents for modern 
 ideas, images, relations of thing's, &c., gave me a com- 
 pass of diction which would never have been called out 
 by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. " That 
 boy,'" said one of my masters, pointing the attention of 
 a stranger to me, " that boy could harangue an Athenian 
 inob better than you or I could address an English 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 19 
 
 one." He who honored me with this eulogy was a 
 scholar, "and a ripe and good one,'' and, of all my 
 tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. 
 Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to 
 this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred 
 to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual 
 panic lest I should expose his ignorance.; and, finally, 
 to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great 
 school on an ancient foundation. This man had been 
 
 appointed to his situation by College, Oxford ; and 
 
 was a sound, 'well-built scholar, but (like most men 
 whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, 
 and inelegant. A raiseraWe contrast he presented, in 
 my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite 
 master ; and, besides, he could not disguise from my 
 hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his under- 
 standing. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and 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 Griecians 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 "Archididas- 
 ealus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson 
 before we went up, and laying a regular train, with 
 lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as 
 it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses ; 
 whilst we never condescended to open our books, until 
 
20 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 the moment of going up, and were generally employed 
 in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such import- 
 ant matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and 
 dependent, for their future prospects at the university, 
 on the recommendation of the head-master ; but I, who 
 had a small patrimonial property, the income of which 
 was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be 
 sent thither immediately. I made earnest representa- 
 tions on the subject to my guardians, but all to no 
 purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had 
 more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at 
 a distance ; two of the other three resigned all theii 
 authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth, 
 with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his 
 way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposi- 
 tion to his will. After a certain number of letters and 
 personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope 
 for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my 
 guardian : unconditional submission was what he de- 
 manded; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other 
 measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty 
 steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approach- 
 ing ; after which day I had sworn within myself that 
 I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys.^ 
 Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman 
 of high rank,'' who, though young herself, had known 
 me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great 
 distinction, requesting that she would " lend " me five 
 guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; 
 and I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a 
 servant put into my hands a double letter, with a 
 coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging ; 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 21 
 
 the fait writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way 
 the delay had arisen ; she enclosed doubl« of what 1 
 had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should 
 Tiever repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now, 
 then, I T/as prepared for my scheme : ten gniineas, 
 added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket 
 Tioney, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length 
 of time ; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary 
 can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and 
 pleasure makes it virtually infinite. 
 
 It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot 
 often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one) 
 that we never do anything consciously for the last 
 time (of things, that is, which we have long been in 
 the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This 
 
 truth I felt deeply when I came to leave , a place 
 
 which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. 
 
 On the evening before I left forever, I grieved 
 
 when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with 
 the evening service, performed for the last time in my 
 hearing; and at night, when the muster-roll of names' 
 was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first 
 I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who 
 was standing by, I bowed to him, and lookmg earnestly 
 in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, 
 and in this world I shall not see him again." I was 
 right; I never diid see him again, nor never shall. 
 He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, 
 returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and 
 we parted (though he knew it not) forever. I could 
 not reverence him intellectually; but he had been 
 uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul- 
 
'£i CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 gences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica 
 tion I should inflict upon him. 
 
 The morning came, which was to launch me into the 
 world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, 
 in many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged 
 in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from 
 my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, 
 which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. 
 At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion 
 
 at the ancient towers of , " drest in earliest light,' 
 
 and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a 
 cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in 
 my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncer- 
 tain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen 
 the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of afiiiction, which 
 soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. 
 To this agitation the deep peace of the morning pre- 
 sented 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 morn- 
 ing is more touching than all other silence, because, the 
 .ight being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at 
 other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per- 
 fect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and 
 thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures 
 of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as 
 the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, 
 are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed ipyself, 
 took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the 
 room. For the last year and a half this room had been 
 my " pensive citadel : " here I had reotd and studied 
 through al. the hours of night ; and, though true it was, 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 23 
 
 that, for the latter part of this time, I, who was framed 
 for love and gentle aflfections, had lost my gayety and 
 happiness, during the strife and fever of contention 
 with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so 
 passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual 
 pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy 
 hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as 1 
 looked round on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and 
 other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I 
 looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write 
 this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this moment, I 
 see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, the lineaments 
 and expressions of the object on which I fixed my parting 
 
 gaze : it was a picture of the lovely , which hung 
 
 over the mantel-piece ; the eyes and mouth of which 
 were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant 
 with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a 
 thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to 
 gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron 
 saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones 
 
 of clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I 
 
 went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked 
 out, and closed the door forever ! 
 
 •TP tP Tf* Tl" ^P •»«* 
 
 So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions 
 of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall, without 
 smi.'ing, 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, 
 mv room was at an aerial elevation in the house, and 
 
24 UONfESSIONS Of AN 
 
 (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 favorite with all the servants; and 
 Knowing that any of them would screen me, and act 
 confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a 
 groom of the head-master's. The groom swore he 
 would do anything I wished ; and, when the time 
 arrived, went up stairs to bring the trunk down. This 
 I feared was beyond the strength of any one man: 
 however, the grqom was a man 
 
 Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies ; 
 
 and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plains. Ac- 
 cordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk 
 alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of the last 
 flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard 
 him descending with slow and firm steps; but, unfor- 
 tunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the 
 dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery 
 his foot slipped ; and the mighty burden, falling from 
 his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each 
 step of the descent, that, on reaching the bottom, it 
 trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise 
 of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the 
 archididascalus. My first thought was, that all vras lost : 
 and that n\j only chance for executing a retreat was 
 to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, 1 
 determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the 
 utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine : 
 but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the 
 ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems taken possession 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 25 
 
 of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous 
 peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven 
 Sleepers. At the sound of this, resonant merriment, 
 within the very ears of insulted authority, I' could not 
 forliear joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by 
 the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it 
 had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter 
 
 of course, that Dr. would sally out of his room ; 
 
 for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out 
 like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, how- 
 ever, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had 
 ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard 
 
 in the bed-room. Dr. had a painful complaint, 
 
 which sometimes keeping him awake, made him sleep, 
 perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering 
 courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden 
 again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent 
 without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed 
 on a wheelbarrow, and on its road to the carrier's : then, 
 " with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carry 
 ing a small parcel, with some articles of dress under 
 my arm : a favorite English poet in one pocket ; and a 
 small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of 
 Euripides, in the other. 
 
 It had been my intention, originally, to proceed to 
 Westmoreland, both from the love I bore to that county, 
 and on other personal accounts. Accident, however, 
 gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent 
 my steps towards North Wales.^ 
 
 After wandering about for some time in Denbigh- 
 shire, Merionethshire, and Caernarvonshire, I took 
 lodgings in a small neat house in B .9 Here T might 
 
86 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 nave staid with great comfort for many weeks; fro 
 
 provisions were cheap at B , from the scarcity ot 
 
 other markets for the surplus products of a viride agri- 
 cultural district. An accident, however, in which, 
 perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to 
 wander again. I know not whether my reader may 
 have remarked, but I have often remarked, thai the 
 proudest class of people in England (or, at any rate, 
 the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families 
 of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about 
 with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification 
 of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies 
 also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, 
 to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth, or 
 descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Caven- 
 dish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such 
 persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of 
 their claims already established, except among those 
 who are ignorant of the ^vorld, by virtue of their own 
 obscurity; "Not to know them argues one's self un- 
 known." Their manners take a suitable tone and 
 coloring; and, for once that they find it necessary to 
 impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they 
 meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and 
 tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension 
 With the families of bishops it is otherwise ; with them 
 it is all up-hill work to make known their pretensions ; 
 for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from 
 noble families is not at any time very large ; and the 
 Buccession to these dignities is so rapid, that the public 
 ear seldom has time to become familiar with them 
 unless where they are connected with some literarj 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 21 
 
 reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops 
 carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, 
 indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, — a sort 
 of noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of 
 too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitive- 
 ness of a gouty man, from all contact with the ol noXloi. 
 Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual good- 
 ness of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness ; 
 but, in general, the truth of my representation will be 
 acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in such 
 families, appears, at least, more upon the surface of their 
 manners. This spirit of manners naturally communi- 
 cates itself to their domestics, and other dependants. 
 Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, 
 
 in the family of the Bishop of ; and had but lately 
 
 married away and " settled" (as such people express 
 
 it) for life. In a little town like B , merely to have 
 
 lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction ; 
 and my good landlady had rather more than her share 
 of the pride i have noticed on that score. What " my 
 lord" said, and what " my lord "did, — how useful he 
 was in parliament, and how indispensable at Oxford, — 
 formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore 
 very well ; for I was too good-natured to laugh in any- 
 body's face, and I could make an ample allowance for 
 the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however, 
 I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately 
 impressed with the bishop's importance ; and, perhaps- 
 'o punish me for my indifference, or, possibly, by ac- 
 cident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in 
 which I was indirectly a party concrrned. She had 
 been ti the palace to pay her respects to the family ; 
 
28 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 and, dinner beina: over, was summoned into the dining- 
 room. In (giving an account of her household economy 
 she happened to mention that she had let her apart- 
 ments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had 
 taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of 
 inmates ; " for," said he, " you must recollect, Betty, 
 that this place is m the high road to the Head ; so that 
 multitudes of Irish swindlers, running away from their 
 debts into England, and of English swindlers, running 
 away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to 
 take this place in their route." This advice was cer- 
 tainly not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted 
 to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations, 
 than specially reported to me. What followed, how- 
 ever, was somewhat worse : — " O, my lord," answered 
 my landlady (according to her own representation of 
 the matter), "I really don't think this young gentleman 
 
 is a swindler; because ." "You don't think me a 
 
 swindler?" said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of in- 
 dignation ; " 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 
 seeinea disposed to make ; but a harsh and contemptu- 
 ous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned 
 dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn; and 
 reconciliation then bename impossible. I w^as, 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 vould furnish some presumption that I was nn 
 twindlei would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 'JH 
 
 reply in the same language ; in which casR. I doubted 
 not to make it appear, that if I was not so rich as his 
 lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, 
 however, drove this boyish design out of my mind : for 
 1 considered that the bishop was in the right to counsel 
 an old servant ; that he could not have designed that 
 his advice should be reported to me ; and that the same 
 coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat 
 the advice at all might have colored it in a way more 
 agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the 
 actual expressions of the worthy bishop. 
 
 I left the lodging the very same hour ;'" and this turned 
 out a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because, 
 living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money 
 very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short 
 allowance ; that is, I could allow myself only one meal 
 a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant 
 exercise and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, 
 I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen ; 
 for the single meal which I could venture to order was 
 coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length with- 
 drawn ; and, afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, 
 I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on 
 the casual hospitalities which I now and then received, 
 in return for such little services as I had an opportunity 
 of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business 
 for cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liver- 
 pool or in London ; more often I wrote love-letters to 
 their sweethearts for young women who had lived as 
 servants in Shrewsbury, or other towns on the English 
 border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction 
 to my hunib\e friends, and was generally treated 'Sith 
 
30 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 hospitality; and once, in particular, near the village ct 
 Llan-y-styndwr (or some such name), in a sequesterea 
 part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards 
 of three days by a family of young people, with ar 
 affectionate and fraterna. kindness that left an impres- 
 sion upon my heart not yet impaired. The family con- 
 sisted, at that time, of four sisters and three brothers, al. 
 grown up, and remarkable for elegance and delicacy of 
 manners. So much beauty, and so much native good 
 breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have 
 seen before or since in any cottage, except once or 
 twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke 
 English J an accomplishment not often met with in so 
 many members of one family, especially in villages 
 remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first 
 introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the 
 brothers, who had served on board an English man-of- 
 war; and, more privately, two love-letters for two of the 
 sisters. They were both interesting looking girls, and 
 one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of theii 
 confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving 
 me general instructions, it did not require any great 
 penetration to discover that what they wished was that 
 their letters should be as kind as was consistent with 
 pioper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper my 
 expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both 
 feelings ; and they were much pleased with the way in 
 vhich I had expressed their thoughts, as (in their sim- 
 plicity) they were astonished at my having so readily 
 discovered them. The reception one meets with from 
 the women of a family generally determines the tenoi 
 of one's whole entertainment. In this case I had dis- 
 
E'JiLISH OPIUM-EATER. 31 
 
 charged my confidential duties as secretary so much 
 to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them 
 with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a 
 cordiality which I had little inclination to resist. I slept 
 with the brothers, the only unoccupied- bed standing in 
 the apartment of the young women : but in all other 
 points they treated me with a respect not usually paid 
 to purses as light as mine ; as if my scholaiship were 
 sufficient evidence that I was of " gentle blood." Thus 
 I lived with them for three days, and great part of a 
 fourth ; and, from the undiminished kindness which they 
 continued to show me, I believe I might have staid with 
 them up to this time, if their power had corresponded 
 with their wishes. On the last morning, however, I 
 perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at 
 breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communi- 
 cation which was at hand ; and soon after, one of the 
 brothers explained to me, that their parents had gone, 
 the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of 
 Methodists, held at Caernarvon, and were that day 
 expected to return; "and if they should not be so civil 
 as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the 
 young people, that I would not take it amiss. The 
 parents returned with churlish faces, and " Dym Sas- 
 senach " (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 
 jny way. For, though they spoke warmly to theii 
 parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of 
 the old people, by saying that it was " only their ^vay,'' 
 yet I easily understood 'that my talent for writing love* 
 'etters would do as little to recommend me with two 
 
32 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek 
 Sapphics or Alcaics; and what had been hospitality, 
 when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my 
 young friends, would become charity, when connected 
 with the harsh demeanor of these old people. Cer- 
 tainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old 
 age; unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of 
 opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and 
 blighter to the genial charities of the human heart. 
 
 Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I mus< 
 omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London." 
 And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long 
 sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression, 
 i might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for 
 upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of 
 hunger in various degrees of intensity; but as bitter, 
 perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered 
 who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my 
 reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured ; fo. 
 extremities such as these, under any circumstances of 
 heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, 
 even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful 
 to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it 
 suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few 
 fragments of bread from the breakfast-table of one 
 individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know 
 of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain 
 intervals, constituted my whole support. During the 
 former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in 
 Wales, and always for the first two months in London), 
 I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. 
 To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 3*j 
 
 mainly, that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly 
 however, when cold and more inclement weather came 
 on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had 
 begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was, 
 no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person tn 
 whose breakfast-table I had access allowed me to sleep 
 in a large, unoccupied house, of which he was tenant, 
 Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or 
 establishmant in it; noi any furniture, indeed, except a 
 table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking pos- 
 session of my new quarters, that the house already 
 contained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, 
 apparently ten years old; but she seemed hunger- 
 bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children 
 look older than they are. From this forlorn child I 
 learned, that she had slept and lived there alone, for 
 some time before I came ; and great joy the poor crea- 
 ture expressed, when she found that I was in future to 
 be her companion through the hours of darkness. The 
 house was large ; and, from the want of furniture, the 
 noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the 
 spacious staircase and hall ; and, amidst the real fleshly 
 ills of cold, and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had 
 found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the 
 self- created one of ghosts. I promised her protection 
 against all ghosts whatsoever ; but, alas ! I could offer 
 her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a 
 bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no 
 other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak ; 
 afterwards, however, we discovered, in a garret, an old 
 sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of 
 other articles, which added a little to our warmth. The 
 3 
 
3t CONFESSIONS Of AN 
 
 poor child crept close to me for warmth, aiij for Secu- 
 rity against her ghostly enemies. When I was not 
 more than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, 
 m general, she was tolerably warm, and often slept 
 when I could not ; for, during the last two months of my 
 sufferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to 
 fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep 
 distressed me more than my watching; for, besides the 
 turnultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so 
 awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter 
 as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than 
 what is caWed dog-sleep ; so that I could hear myself 
 moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened 
 suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a 
 hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell 
 into a slumber, which has since returned upon me, at 
 different periods of my life, namely, a sort of twitching 
 (I know not where, but apparently about the region of 
 the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out 
 my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation 
 coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to 
 relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only 
 from exhaustion ; and, from increasing weakness (as 1 
 said bciore), I was constantly falling asleep, and con- 
 stantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house 
 sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early , 
 sometimes not till ten o'clock; sometimes not at all. 
 He was in constant fear of bailiffs; improving on the 
 plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different 
 quarter of London ; and I observed that he never failed 
 to examine, through a private window, the appearance 
 of those who knocked at the door, before he would 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 35 
 
 allow it to be opened. . He breakfasted alone ; indeed, 
 his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of hia 
 hazarding an invitation to a second person, anj more 
 than the quantity of esculent material, which, for the 
 most part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits, 
 which hn had bought on his road from the place where 
 he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as I once 
 learnedly and facetiously observed to him, the several 
 members of it must have stood in the relation to each 
 other (not sate in any relation whatever) of succession, 
 as the metaphysicians have it, and not of coexistence ; 
 in the relation of parts of time, and not of the parts 
 of space. During his breakfast, 1 generally contrived 
 a reason for lounging in; and, with an air of as much 
 indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments 
 as he had left, — sometimes, indeed, there were none 
 at all. In doing this, I committed no robbery, except 
 upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I be- 
 lieve), now and then, to send out at noon for an extra 
 biscuit ; for, as to the poor child, she was never admitted 
 into his study (if I may give that name to his chief de- 
 pository of parchments, law writings, &c.) ; that room 
 was to her the Blue-beard room of the house, being 
 regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six 
 o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the 
 night. Whether this child was an illegitimate daugh- 
 ter of Mr. ,^^ or only a servant, I could not ascer- 
 
 tam ; she did not herself know ; but certainly she was 
 treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did 
 
 Mr. make his appearance, than she went below 
 
 stairi, brushed his shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when 
 she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged 
 
36 CONFESSIONS Ot AN 
 
 from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchens, to the uppni 
 air, until my welcome knock at night -called up hei 
 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, there- 
 fore, 1 went off and sate in the parks, or elsewhere, 
 until night-fall. 
 
 But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the 
 house, himself? Reader, he was one of those anoma- 
 lous practitioners in lower departments of the law, who, 
 — what shall I say ? — who, on pi:udential reasons, oi 
 from necessity, deny themselves all the indulgence in 
 the luxury of too delicate a conscience (a periphrasis 
 which might be abridged considerably, but that I leave 
 to the reader's taste) ; in many walks of life, a con- 
 science is a more expensive incumbrance than a wife 
 or a carriage ; and just as people talk of " laying down " 
 
 their carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. , had 
 
 " laid down " his conscience for a time ; meaning, doubt- 
 less, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The 
 inner economy of such a man's daily life would present 
 a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse 
 the reader at his expense. Even with my limited 
 opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many 
 scenes of London intrigues, and complex chicanery, 
 '/cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes 
 smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite 
 of my misery. My situation, however, at that time, 
 gave me little experience, in my own person, of any 
 qualities in Mr. 's character but such as did him 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 31 
 
 honor; and of his whole strange composition, I must 
 forg-et overj'thing but that towards me he was obiiging, 
 and, to tlie extent of his power, generous. 
 
 That power was not, indeed, very extensive. How- 
 ever, in common with the rats, I sate rent free ; and as 
 Dr, Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his 
 life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me 
 be grateful that, on that single occasion, I had as large 
 a choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could 
 possibly desire. Except the Blue-beard room, which 
 the. poor child believed to be haunted, all others, from 
 the attics to the cellars, were at our service. " The 
 world was all before us," and we pitched our tent for 
 ihe night in any spot we chose. This house I have 
 already described as a large one. It stands in a con- 
 spicuou.s situation, and in a well-known part of London.'' 
 Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, 
 within a tew hours of reading this. For myself, 1 
 never fail to visit it when business draws me to Lon- 
 don. About ten o'clock this very night, August 15, 
 1821, being my birth-day,'* I turned aside from my 
 evening walk, down Oxford-street, purposely to take a 
 glance at it. It is now occupied by a respectable 
 family, and, by the lights in the front drawing-room, I 
 observed a domestic party, assembled, perhaps, at tea, 
 and apparently cheerful and gay ; — marvellous contrast, 
 m my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desola- 
 tion, of that same house eighteen years ago, when its 
 lightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a 
 neglected child. Her, by the by, in after years, I vainly 
 endeavored to trace. Apart from her situation, she wa? 
 not what would be called an interesting child She 
 
3& CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, uoi 
 remarkably pleasing in manners But, thank God . 
 even in those years 1 needed not the embellishments of 
 novel accessories to conciliate my affections. Plain 
 human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, 
 was enough for me ; and I loved the child because she 
 was my partner in wretchedness. If she is now living, 
 she is probably a mother, with children of her own ; but, 
 as I have said, I could never trace her. 
 
 This I regret ; but another person there was, at that 
 time, whom I have since sought to trace, with far deeper 
 earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. 
 This person was a young woman, and one of that un- 
 happy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. 
 I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avow- 
 ing, that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with 
 many women in that unfortunate condition. The reader 
 needs neither smile at this avowal, nor frown ; for, not 
 to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb, 
 "Sine Cerere," &c., it may well be supposed that in 
 the existing state of my purse my connection with 
 such women could not have been an impure one. But 
 the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been 
 a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or ap- 
 proach of any creature that wore a human shape. On 
 the contrary, from my very earliest youth, it has been 
 my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all 
 human beings, — man, woman, and child, — that chance 
 might fling in my way : a practice which is friendly to 
 the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and 
 to that franlcness of address which becomes a man 
 who would be thought a philosopher; for a philosopher 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 39 
 
 thcuid not see with the eyes of the poor limitary crea- 
 ture calling himself a man of the world, and filled 
 with narrow and self'Tegarding prejudices of birth and 
 education, but should look upon himself as a catholic 
 creature, and as standing in an equal relation to high 
 and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and 
 the innocent. Being myself, at that time, of necessity, 
 a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturajly 
 fell in, more frequently, with those female peripatetics, 
 who are technically called street-walkers. Many of 
 these women had occasionally taken my part against 
 watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of 
 houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, — 
 the one on whose account I have at all introduced this 
 subject, — yet no ! let me not class thee, oh noble- 
 minded Ann , with that order of women ; — let me 
 
 find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate 
 the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion — 
 ministering to my necessities when all the world had 
 forsaken me — I owe it that I am at this time alive. 
 For many weeks, I had walked, at nights, with this 
 poor friendless girl, up and down Oxford-street, or had 
 rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porti- 
 coes. She could not be so old as rnyself : she told me, 
 indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. 
 By such questions as my interest about her prompted, 
 I had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers 
 was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had 
 reason to think), and one in which, if London benefi- 
 cence had Detter adapted its arrangements to meet it, 
 the power of the law might oftener be interposed to 
 protect and to avenge. But the stream of London 
 
40 CONFESSIONS OJ IN 
 
 charity flo-ws in a channel which, though deep and 
 mighty, is yet noiseless and under ground; — net cbvi- 
 ous or readily accessible to poor, houseless wanderers : 
 and it cannot be denied that the outside air and frame- 
 work of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. 
 In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries 
 might easily have been redressed ; and I urged her 
 often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magis- 
 trate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she 
 would meet with immediate attention ; and that English 
 justice, which was no respecter of persons, would 
 speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian 
 who had plundered her little property. She promised 
 me often that she would; but she delayed taking the 
 steps I pointed out, from time to time ; for she was timid 
 and dejected to a degree which showed how deeply 
 sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and per- 
 haps she thought justly that the most upright judge 
 and the most righteous tribunals could do nothing to 
 repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, 
 would perhaps have been done ; for it had been settled 
 between us, at length, — but, unhappily, on the very last 
 time but one that I was ever to see her, — that in a day 
 or two we should speak on her behalf. This little ser- 
 vice it was destined, however, that I should never real- 
 ize. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and 
 which was greater than I could ever have repaid her, 
 was this : — One night, when we were pacing slowly 
 along Oxford-street, and after a day when I had felt 
 unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with 
 me into Soho-square. Thither we went; and we sate 
 down en the steps of a house, which, to this hoiu 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-FITER. 41 
 
 I never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner act 
 of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory 
 of the noble act which she there performed. Sud- 
 denly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been 
 leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I 
 sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. 
 From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner convic- 
 tion of the liveliest kind, that without some powerful 
 and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the 
 spot, or should, at least, have sunk to a point of exhaus- 
 tion from which all reascent, under my friendless cir- 
 cumstances, would soon have become hopeless. Then 
 it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan 
 companion, who had herself met with little but injuries 
 in this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. 
 Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, 
 she .ran off into Oxford-street, and in less time than 
 could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port- 
 wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach 
 (which at that time would have rejected all solid food) 
 with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for 
 this glass the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out 
 of her own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered, 
 when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the 
 Lare necessaries of life, and when she could have no 
 reason to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse 
 her. O, youthful benefactress ! how often, jn suc- 
 ceeding years, standing in solitary places, and thinking 
 of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, — how often 
 tiave I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a 
 father was "Believed to have a supernatural power, and 
 to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfil- 
 
42 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 tneiit, — even so the benediction of a heart oppressed 
 with gratitude might have a like prerogative; might 
 have power given to it from above to chase, to haunt, 
 to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central 
 darknesa of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) 
 into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee 
 with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and 
 of final reconciliation ! 
 
 I do not often weep ; for not only do my thoughts an 
 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 tend- 
 ency to meditative sorrow, would, by that same levity, 
 be made incapable of ""esisting it on any casual access of 
 such feelings ; but also, 1 believe, that all minds which 
 nave contemplated such objects as deeply as I have 
 done, must, for their own protection from utter despond- 
 ency, have early encouraged and cherished some tran- 
 quillizing belief as to the future balances and the 
 hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On these 
 accounts I am cheerful to this hour; and, as I have 
 said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, though 
 not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than 
 others ; and often, when I walk, at this time, in Oxford 
 street, by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those airs 
 played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me 
 and my dear companion (as I must always call her), 
 I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious 
 dispensation which so suddenly and so critically s?pa 
 
ENGLISH OPHTM-EATEB. 43 
 
 rated as forever. How it happened, the reader will 
 undeistand from what remains of this introductorj' 
 narration. 
 
 Soon after the period of the last incident 1 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 
 iamily ; and he challenged me upon the strength of 
 my family likeness, I did not attempt any disguise ; 
 I answered his questions ingenuously, and, on his 
 pledging his word of honor that he would not betray 
 me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my 
 friend, the attorney. 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 his look and manner informed me that he 
 suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honorably 
 and without demur. 
 
 This present, from the particular service to which it 
 was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose 
 which had allured me up to London, and which I had 
 been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first 
 day of my arrival in London, to that of my final de- 
 parture. 
 
 In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my 
 readers that I should not have found some means of 
 staving off the last extremities of penury ; and it will 
 strike them that two resources, at least, must have been 
 i)pen to me, namely, either to seek assistance from the 
 friends of ray family, or to turn my youthful talents 
 and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolu. 
 rnent. As to the first course, I may observe, generally 
 
44 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the 
 chance of being- reclaimed by my guardians ; not 
 doubting that whatever power the law gave them 
 would have been enforced against me to the utmost ; 
 that is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the 
 school which I had quitted ; a restoration which, as it 
 would, in my eyes, have been a dishonor, even if sub- 
 mitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from 
 me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and 
 efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than 
 aeath, and which would indeed have terminated in 
 death. I was, therefore, shy enough of applying fol 
 assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of 
 receiving it, at the risk of furnishing my guardians with 
 any clue for recovering me. But, as to London in par- 
 ticular, though doubtless my father had in his lifetime 
 had many frienda there, yet (as ten years had passed 
 since his death) I remembered few of them even by 
 name ; and never having seen London before, except 
 once for a few hours, I knew not the address of even 
 those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, 
 in part the difficulty, but much more the paramount 
 fear which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. 
 In regard to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to 
 join my reader in wondering that I should have over- 
 Looked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other 
 way), I might, doubtless, have gained enough for my 
 slender wants. Such an office as this I could have 
 discharged witn an exemplary and punctual accuracy 
 that would soon have gained me the confiden te of my 
 employers. But it must not be forgotten that even for 
 such an office as this, it was necessary that I should 
 
ENGLISH OPlUM-liATER. 46 
 
 first of all have an introduction to some respectable 
 publisher ; and this I had no means of obtainmg. To 
 say the truth, however, it had never once occurred to 
 me to think of literary labors as a source of profit. No 
 mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining- money had ever 
 occurred to me, but that of borrowing it on the strength 
 of my future claims and expectations. This mode I 
 sought by every avenue to compass ; and amongst other 
 persons I applied to a Jew '^ named D .* 
 
 ♦ To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months after- 
 wards, I applied again on the same business ; and, dating at that 
 time from a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his 
 serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not atisen 
 from any extravagance, or youthful levities (these, my habits and 
 the nature of my pleasures raised me far above), but simply from 
 the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found himself 
 no longer able to prevent me from going to the miiversity, had, au 
 a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an order for 
 granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school, 
 namely, one hundred pounas per annum. Upon this sum, it was, in 
 my time, barely possible to have lived in college ; and not possible 
 to a man, who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious 
 disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided, 
 nevertheless, rather too n.uch in servants, and did not delight in 
 the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became 
 embarrassed ; and, at length, after a most voluminous negotiation 
 with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse 
 them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in possession 
 of the sum I asked for, on the " regular" terms of paying the Jew 
 seventeen and a half per cent, by way of annuity on all the money 
 furnished; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than 
 about ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney's 
 bill (for what services, to whom rendered, and when, — wliether at 
 the siege of Jerusalem, at the building of the Second Temple, or 
 on some earlier occasion, — I have not yet been able to discover). 
 How many perches this bill measured I really forget; but I still 
 keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities, and some time or other 
 I believe I shall present it to the British Museum. 
 
46 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders 
 (some of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had intro- 
 duced myself, with an account of my expectations ; 
 which account, on examining my father's will at Doc- 
 tor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. 
 
 The person there mentioned as the second son of 
 
 was found to have all the claims (or more than all) that 
 I had stated : but one question still remained, which the 
 faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested, — was 
 I that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me 
 as a possible one ; I had rather feared, whenever my 
 Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might be 
 too well known to be that person, and that some 
 scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping 
 me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to 
 me to find my own self, materialiter considered (so I 
 expressed it, for I doted on logical accuracy of dis- 
 tinctions), accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeit- 
 ing my own self, forTrudvter considered. However, to 
 satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my 
 power. Whilst I was in Wales, I had received various 
 letters from young friends: these I produced, — for I 
 carried them constantly in my pocket, — being, indeed, 
 by this time, almost the only relics of my personal in- 
 cumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore), which I had 
 not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these let- 
 ters were from the Earl of .^^ who was, at that time, 
 
 my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These 
 letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from 
 
 the Marquis of ,'^ his father, who, though absorbed 
 
 in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian 
 himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs 
 to be, still retained an affection for classical studies^ 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 47 
 
 and for youthful scholars. He had, accordingly, from 
 the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me ; 
 sometimes upon the great improvements which he had 
 
 made, or was meditating, in the counties of M and 
 
 SI ,'* since I had been there ; sometimes upon the 
 
 merits of a Latin poet ; at other times, suggesting sub- 
 jects to me on which he wished me to write verses. 
 
 On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends 
 agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my 
 personal security, provided I could persuade the young 
 earl, — who was, by the way, not older than myself, — to 
 guarantee the payment on our coming of age : the 
 Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the 
 trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the 
 prospect of establishing a connection with my noble 
 friend, whose immense expectations were well known 
 to him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the 
 Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received the 
 ten pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly three 
 pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending 
 friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in 
 order that the writings might be 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. A smaller sum I had 
 given to my friend the attorney (who was connected with 
 the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, indeed, 
 he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About 
 fifteen shillings I had employed in reestablishing 
 (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the re- 
 mainder, I gave one-quarter to Ann, meaning, on my 
 return, to have divided with her whatever might remain 
 
48 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 These arrang-ements made, soon after six o'clock, on 
 a dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, 
 towards Piccadilly; for it was ray intention to go down 
 as far as Salt Hill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our 
 course lay through a part of the town which has now 
 all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its 
 ancient boundaries : Swallow-street, I think it was 
 called. Having time enough before us, however, we 
 bore away to the left, until we came into Golden- 
 square : there, near the corner of Sherrard-street, we 
 sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze 
 of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans some time 
 before ; and now I assured her again that she should 
 share in my good fortune, if I met with any ; and that 
 I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to 
 protect her. This I fully intended, as much from incli- 
 nation as from a sense of duty ; for, setting aside grati- 
 tude, which, in any case, must have made me her debtor 
 for life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been 
 my sister ; and at this moment with seven-fold tender- 
 ness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. 1 
 had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because 1 
 was leaving the saviour of my life ; yet I, considering 
 the shock my health had received, was cheerful and 
 full of hope. She, on the contrary, wtio was parting 
 with one who had had little means of serving her, ex- 
 cept by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome 
 by sorrow; so that, when I kissed her at our final 
 farewell, she put her arms about ray 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 49 
 
 for me, at six o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titch- 
 field-street, which had been our customary haven, as it 
 were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other 
 in the great Mediterranean of Oxford-street. This, 
 and other measures of precaution, I took : one, only, I 
 forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter 
 of no great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It 
 is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank 
 in her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women 
 of higher pretensions) to style themselves Miss Doug- 
 lass, Miss Montague, &c., but simply by their Chris- 
 tian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, Sec. Her surname, 
 as the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have 
 inquired; but the truth is, having no reason to think 
 that our meeting could, in consequence of a short inter- 
 ruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had 
 been for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment 
 adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst luy 
 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 and hoarseness with which 
 she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late 
 to recall her. 
 
 It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Glouces- 
 ter Coffee-House, and the Bristol Mail being on the 
 point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine 
 fluent motion * of this mail soon laid me asleep. It is 
 somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing 
 
 * The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom, owing 
 to the double advantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra 
 sum for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. 
 4 
 
of CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the 
 outside of a mail-coach, — a bed which, at this day, 1 
 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 ne^'er been in any great distress, may pass 
 through life without knowing, in his own person, at 
 least, anything of the possible goodness of the human 
 heart, or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vile- 
 ness. 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 con- 
 founded, — the vast and multitudinous compass of theii 
 several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of 
 differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of ele- 
 mentary sounds. The case was this : for the first foul 
 or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow-pas- 
 senger on the roof, by occasionally falling against him 
 when the coach gave a lurch to his side ; and, indeed, 
 if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I 
 should have fallen off", from weakness. Of this annoy- 
 ance he complained heavily, as, perhaps, in the same 
 circumstances, most people would. He expressed his 
 complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion 
 seemed to warrant; and if I had parted with him at 
 that moment, I should have thought of him (if I had 
 considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a 
 surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was con- 
 scious that I had given him some cause for complaint, 
 and, therefore, I apologized to him, and assured him I 
 would do what 1 could to avoid falling asleep for the 
 
ENRIJSH OPIUM-EATER. 51 
 
 future , aud at the same time, in as few words as pos- 
 sible, I explained to him that I was ill, and in a weak 
 state from long suffering, and that I coald not afford, at 
 that time, to take an inside place. The man's manner 
 changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an instant ; 
 and when I next woke for a minute, from the noise and 
 lights of Hounslow (for, in spite of my wishes and 
 efforts, I had fallen asleep again within two minutes 
 ftrom the time I had spoken to him), I found that he had 
 put his arm round me to protect me from falling off; 
 and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with 
 the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost 
 lay in his arms; and this was the more kind, as he 
 could not have known that I was not going the whole 
 way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I dk 
 go rather further than I intended ; for so genial and 
 refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after leav- 
 ing Hounslow, that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden 
 pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and, 
 on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maidenhead, 
 six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salt Hill. Here I 
 alighted ; and for the half-minute that the mail stopped, 
 I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from 
 the transient glimpse I had of him in Piccadilly, 
 seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person 
 of that rank), to go to bed without delay. This I prom- 
 ised, though with no intention of doing so ; and, in fact, 
 I immediately set forward, or, rather, backward, on 
 foot. It must then have been nearly midnight ; but so 
 slowly did 1 creep along, that I heard a clock in a 
 cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from 
 Slough to Eton. The air and the sleep had bott 
 
52 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 refreshed me ; bat I was weary, nevertheless. I remem- 
 ber a thought (obvious enough, and which has been 
 prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me 
 some consolation, at that moment, under my poverty. 
 There had been, some time before, a murder committed 
 on or near Hounslovv Heath.'' I think I cannot be mis- 
 taken when 1 say that the name of the murdered person 
 was Steele, and that he was the owner of a lavender 
 plantation in that neighborhood. Every step of my 
 progress was bringing me nearer to the heath ; and it 
 naturally occurred to me that I and the accursed mur- 
 derer, if he were that night abroad, might, at every 
 mstant, be unconsciously approaching each other 
 through the darkness ; in which case, said I, supposing 
 I — instead of being (as, indeed, I am) little better than 
 an outcast, 
 
 Lord of my learning, and no land beside — 
 
 were, like my friend Lord ?'' heir, by general re- 
 pute, to £ 70,000 per annum, what a panic should I be 
 under, at this moment, about my throat! Indeed, it 
 
 was not likely that Lord should ever be in my 
 
 situation ; but, nevertheless, the spirit of the remark 
 remains true, that vast power and possessions make a 
 man shamefully afraid of dying; and I am convinced 
 that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by 
 fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural 
 courage, would, if, at the very instant of going into 
 action, news were brought to them that they had unex- 
 pectedly succeeded to an estate in England of £50,000 
 a year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharp- 
 
BKGLISH OPIUM-EATER. ^ 53 
 
 eued,* and their efforts at perfect equanimity and se.lf- 
 possession proportionably difficult. So tue it is, in the 
 language of a wise man, whose own experience had 
 made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches am 
 better fitted 
 
 To slacken virtue, and abatr her edgr, 
 
 Tiian tempt her to do aught may merit praise. 
 
 Paradise Regained. 
 
 I dally with my subject, because, to myself, the 
 remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. 
 But my reader shall not have any further cause to 
 complain ; for I now hasten to its close. In the road 
 between Slough and Eton I fell asleep ; and, just as 
 the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the 
 7oice of a man standing over me and surveying me 
 I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow, 
 but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill-meaning fellow; 
 or, if he were, I suppose he thought that no person 
 sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing. 
 In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, 1 
 beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, 
 that he was mistaken. After a slight remark, he passed 
 on. I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me 
 to pass through Eton before people were generally up. 
 The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards 
 the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the 
 ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I 
 
 * It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank an<) 
 wealth, have, in our own day, as well as throughout our history, 
 been amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True ; 
 out this is not the case supposed. Long familiaiity with power 
 has, to them, deadened its effect and its attractions. 
 
54 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 slipped through Eton unobserved ; washed myself, and, 
 as far as possible, adjusted my dress, at a little public 
 house in Windsor ; and, about eight o'clock, went down 
 towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys, 
 of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a 
 gentleman, and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, fhey 
 
 answered me civilly. My friend. Lord , was gone 
 
 to the University of ?^ " Ibi omnis efFusus labor ! " 
 
 I had, however, other friends at Eton ; but it is not 
 to all who wear that name in prosperity that a man is 
 willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting 
 
 myself, however, I asked for the Earl of D ,^ to 
 
 whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so 
 intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk 
 from presenting myself under any circumstances. He 
 was still at Eton, though, I believe, on the wing fox 
 Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to 
 breakfast. 
 
 Here let me stop, for a moment, to check my reader 
 from any erroneous conclusions. Because I have had 
 occasion incidentally to speak of various patrician 
 friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any 
 pretensions to rank or high blood. I thank God that 1 
 have not. I am the son of a plain English merchant, 
 esteemed, during his life, for his great integrity, and 
 strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was 
 himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived,- it 
 was expected that he would have been very rich ; but, 
 dying prematurely, he left no more than about £30,000 
 amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may 
 mention with honor, asi still more highly gifted ; for, 
 though unpretending to the name and honors of a UIk- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 55 
 
 rary woman, I shall presume to call her ;^what many 
 literary women are not) an intellectual woman ; and J 
 believe that if ever her letters should be collected and 
 published, they would be thought generally to exhibit 
 as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as 
 pure " mother English," racy and fresh with idiomatic 
 graces, as any in our language, — hardly excepting those 
 of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honors of 
 descent; I have no others; and I have thanked God 
 sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a 
 station which raises a man too eminently above the 
 level of his fellow-creatures, is not the most favorable 
 to moral or to intellectual qualities. 
 
 Lord D placed before me a most magnificent 
 
 breakfast. It was really so ; but in my eyes it seemed 
 trebly magnificent, from being the first regular meal, the 
 first "good man's table," that I had sat down to for months. 
 Strange to say, however, I could scarcely eat anythmg. 
 On the day when I first received my ten-pound bank- 
 note, I had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple 
 of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six weeks 
 before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it 
 was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remem- 
 bered the story about Otway; and feared that there 
 might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no 
 need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I 
 became sick before I had eaten half of what I had 
 bought. This effect, from eating what approached to a 
 meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or, when I did not 
 experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, 
 sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately and 
 without any acidity. On the present occasion, at Loid 
 
56 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 D 's table, 1 found myse.l not at all oetter than 
 
 usual ; and, in the midst of luxuries, I had no appetite 
 I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving 
 for wine ; I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord 
 D , and gave him a short account of my late suf- 
 ferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and 
 called for wine. This gave me a momentary relief 
 and pleasure; and on all occasions, when I had ar 
 opportunity, I never failed to drink wine, which 1 
 worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. 
 I am convinced, however, that this indulgence in wine 
 continued to strengthen my msilady, for the tone of 
 my stomach was apparently quite sunk ; but, by a better 
 regimen, it might sooner, and, perhaps, effectually, have 
 been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of 
 wine that I lingered in the neighborhood of my Eton 
 friends; I persuaded myself then that it was from re- 
 luctance to ask of Lord D , nn whom I was con- 
 scious I had not sufficient claims, the particular service 
 in quest of which I had come to Et^n. I was, however, 
 unwilling to lose my journey, and, — I asked it. Lord 
 
 D , whose good nature was unbounded, and which, 
 
 in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his 
 compassion perhaps for my condition, and his knowl- 
 edge of my intimacy with some of bis relatives, than 
 by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own 
 direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He 
 acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings 
 with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction 
 might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover 
 he doubted whether Ms signature, whose e\pertation3 
 were so much more bounded than those of would 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 5T 
 
 avail with n.y unchristian friends. Howeiier, he did 
 not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute 
 refusal ; for, after a little consideration, he promised, 
 under certain conditions, which he pointed out, to give 
 
 his security. Lord D was at this time not eighteen 
 
 years of age ; but I have often doubted, on recollecting, 
 since, the good sense and prudence which on this occa- 
 sion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an 
 urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sin- 
 cerity), whether any statesman — the oldest and the 
 most accomplished in diplomacy — could have ac- 
 quitted himself better under the same circumstances. 
 Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a 
 business, without surveying you with looks as austere 
 and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. 
 
 Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite 
 equal to the best, but far above the worst, that I had 
 pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor 
 coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And 
 now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not 
 
 approve of Lord D 's terms ; whether they would 
 
 in the end have acceded to them, and were only seek- 
 ing time for making due inquiries, I know not; but 
 many delays were made, — time passed on, — the small 
 fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and 
 before any conclusion could have been put to the busi- 
 ness, I must have relapsed into my former state of 
 wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an 
 opening was made, almost by accident, for reconcilia- 
 tion with my friends.^^ I quitted London in haste, for n 
 remote part of England ; after some time, I proceeded 
 to the university ; and it was not until many monins 
 
58 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 had passed away, that I had it in my jrawer again to 
 revisit the ground which had become so interesting to 
 me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of 
 my youthful sufferings. 
 
 Meantime, what had become of poor Ann ? For her 
 I have reserved my concluding words; according to our 
 Agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every 
 night, so long as I stayed in London, at the corner of 
 Titchfield-street. I. inquired for her of everyone who 
 was likely to know her ; and during the last hours of 
 my stay in London, I put into activity every means of 
 tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested, 
 and the limited extent of my power made possible. 
 The street where she had lodged I knew, but not the 
 house ; and I remembered, at last, some account which 
 she had given of ill treatment from her landlord, which 
 made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings 
 before we parted. She had few acquaintances ; most 
 people, besides, thought that the earnestness of my 
 inquiries arose from motives which moved their laugh- 
 ter or their slight regard ; and others, thinking that 1 
 was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some 
 trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give 
 me any clue to her, if, indeed, they had any to give. 
 Finally, as my despairing resource, on the day I left 
 London, I put into the hands of the only person who (1 
 was sure) must know Anr; by sight, from having been 
 
 in company with us once or twice, an address to 
 
 in shire, at that time the residence of my family 
 
 But, to this hour, I have never heard a syllable about 
 her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meel 
 witl\ in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 59 
 
 rhe lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in 
 search of each other, at the very same moment, through 
 the mighty labyrinths of London ; perhaps even within 
 a few feet of each other, — a barrier no wider, in a Lon- 
 don street, often amounting in the end to a separation 
 for eternity ! During some years, I hoped- that she did' 
 live ; and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical 
 use of the word myriad, I may say, that on my different 
 visits to London, I have looked into many, many myriads 
 of female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I should 
 know her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a 
 moment; for, though not handsome, she had a sweet 
 expression of countenance, and a peculiar and graceful 
 carriage of the head. I sought her, I have said, in 
 hope. So it was for years ; but now I should fear to 
 see her ; and her cough, which grieved me when 1 
 parted with her, is now my consolation. I now wish to 
 see her no longer, but think of her, more gladly, as one 
 long since laid in the grave ; — in the grave, I would 
 hope, of a Magdalen ; — taken away, before injuries 
 and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingen- 
 uous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had completed 
 the ruin they had begun. 
 
 So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted stepmother, 
 thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest 
 the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from 
 thee ! — the time was come, at last, that I no more should 
 pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; no more 
 should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of 
 hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and Ann, 
 have, doubtless, since then trodden in our footsteps, 
 inheritors of our calamities; other orphans than Ann 
 
tfU CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 have sighed , tears have been shed by other children; 
 and thou, Oxford-street, hast since echoed to the groans 
 of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm 
 which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge 
 of a long fair weather; the premature sufferings which 
 I had paid down, to have been accepted as a ransom for 
 many years to come, as a price of long immunity from 
 sorrow; and if again I walked in London, a solitary 
 and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked 
 for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. And, 
 although it is true that the calamities of my novitiate in 
 London had struck root so deeply in my bodily con- 
 stitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished 
 afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has 
 overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these 
 second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude 
 more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intel- 
 lect, and with alleviations from sympathizing afiection, 
 how deep and tender ! 
 
 Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years 
 that were far asunder were bound together by subtile 
 links of suffering derived from a common root. And 
 herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of 
 human desires, — that oftentimes, on moonlight nights, 
 during my first mournful abode in London, my consola- 
 tion was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from Ox- 
 ford-street up every avenue in succession which pierces 
 through the heart of Mary-le-bone to the fields and the 
 woods ; for that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the 
 long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, 
 
 "that is the road to the north, and, therefore, to ; 
 
 and if I had the ^vings of a dove, that way I would fiy 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 61 
 
 for comfort." Thus I said, and thus 1 srished in my 
 blindness ; yet, even in that very northern region it was, 
 in that veiry valley, nay, in that very house to which 
 my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of 
 my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to 
 besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that 
 for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as 
 ghastly phantoms, as ever haunted the couch of an 
 Orestes ; and in this unhappier than he, — that sleep, 
 which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and 
 to him especially as a, blessed balm for his wounded 
 heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest 
 scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires; yet, if a 
 veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man 
 and his future calamities, the same vale hides from 
 him their alleviations ; and a grief which had not been 
 feared is met by consolations which had not been 
 hoped. I, therefore, who participated, as it were, in 
 the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated 
 conscience), participated no less in all his supports ; 
 my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and 
 stared in upon me through the curtains ; but, watching 
 by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me 
 co.npany through the heavy watches of the night, sat 
 my Electra ; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of 
 my later years, thou wast my Electra ! and neither in 
 nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst 
 permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English 
 wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble 
 offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of ten- 
 derest affection ; to wipe away for years the unwhole- 
 some dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips 
 
62 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 when parched and baked with fever; nor even when 
 thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy be- 
 come infected with the spectacle of my dread contest 
 with phantoms and shadowy enemies, that oftentimes 
 bade me "sleep no more!" — not even then didst 
 thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw 
 thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, 
 more than Electra did of old. For she, too, though she 
 was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king* 
 of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face t in hei 
 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 rttum no more. 
 Meantime I am again in London ; and again I pace the 
 terraces of Oxford-street by night; and oftentimes, — 
 when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my 
 philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, 
 and yet remember that I am separated from thee by 
 three hundred miles, and the length of three dreary 
 months, — I look up the streets that run northward 
 from Oxford-street, upon moonlight nights, and recol- 
 lect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remem- 
 
 * Agamemnoa. 
 
 t Oui.ia del? iig TTeirKov. The scholar will know that through- 
 out this passage I refer to the eariy scenes of the Orestes, — one of 
 the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic aSections which 
 even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, 
 it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening of the 
 drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the 
 demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythol- 
 ogy of the play, haunted by the furies), and in circumstances of 
 immediate dauger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard 
 from nominal friends. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 63 
 
 bering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, 
 and mistress of that very house to which my heart 
 turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think that, 
 though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, 
 the promptings of my heart may yet have had refer- 
 ence to a remoter time, and may be justified if read 
 in another meaning; and if I could allow myself to 
 descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I 
 should again say to myself, as I look to the north, " O 
 that I had the wings of a dove ! " and with how just 
 a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I 
 add the other half of my early ejaculation, — "And 
 that way I would fly for comfort ! " 
 
THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM. 
 
 It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had 
 been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgot- 
 ten Us date : I ut cardinal events are not to be forgotten i 
 and, from circumstances connected with it, I remember 
 that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. Dur- 
 ing that season I was in London, having come thither 
 for the first time since my entrance at college. And 
 my introduction to opium arose in the following way : 
 From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my 
 head in cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly 
 seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relaxation 
 caused by an accidental intermission of that practice ; 
 jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of 
 cold water, and, with hair thus wetted, went to 
 sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I 
 awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head 
 and face, from which I had hardly any respite for 
 about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it 
 was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; 
 rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than 
 with any distinct purpose. By accident, I met a college 
 acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 66 
 
 agent cf unimaginable pleasure and pain ! I had heard 
 of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no 
 further ; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! 
 what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart ! 
 what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remem- 
 brances ! Eeverting for a moment to these, I feel a 
 mystic importance attached to the minutest circum- 
 stances connected with the place, and the time, and the 
 man (if man he was), that first laid open to me the para- 
 dise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet 
 and cheerless ; and a duller spectacle this earth of oiirs 
 has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My 
 road homewards lay through Oxford-street; and near 
 " the stately Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has oblig- 
 ingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The drug- 
 gist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures !), as 
 if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and 
 stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected • 
 to look on a Sunday; and when I asked for the tinc- 
 ture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man 
 might do ; and, furthermore, out of my shilling returned 
 to me what seemed to be a real copper half-penny, taken 
 out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, io spite 
 of such indications of humanity, he has evor since 
 existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an immor- 
 tal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission 
 to myself. And it confirms me in this way of con- 
 sidering him, that when I next came up to London, I 
 sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him 
 not , and thus to me, who knew not his name (if, indeed, 
 he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from 
 Oxford-street than to have -removed to any bodily 
 5 
 
66 (CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as, 
 possibly, no more than a sublunary druggist: it may 
 be so, but my faith is better : I believe him to have 
 evanesced,* or evaporated. So unwillingly would I 
 connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and 
 place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted 
 with the celestial drug. 
 
 Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I 
 lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I 
 was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery 
 of opium-taking; and what I took, I took under every 
 disadvantage. But I took it ; and in an hour, — oh 
 heavens ! what a revulsion ! what an upheaving, from 
 its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apoc- 
 alypse of the world within me ! That my pains had 
 vanished was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative 
 effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those posi- 
 tive effects which had opened before me, in the ahyss 
 of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was 
 a panacea, a (pagfiaxov venevdes, for all human woes ; 
 here was the secret of happiness, about which philos- 
 ophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discov- 
 ered ; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and 
 
 * Evanesced : — this way of going off from the stage of life 
 appears to have been well known in the 17th century, but at that 
 time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood royal 
 and by no means f be allowed to druggists. For, about the year 
 1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by the by, did 
 ample justice to his name), namely, Hi. Flat-u/^n, in speaking 
 of the death of Charles II., expressSS^ hi« surprise that any piinci; 
 should commit so absurd an act as dying ; because, says he, 
 
 E^ngs should disdain to die, and only disappear ; 
 They should absamd, that is, into the other world. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 67 
 
 carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies 
 might be had corked up in a pint-bottle ; and peace of 
 mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. 
 But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am 
 laughing; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh 
 long who deals much with opium : its pleasures even 
 are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and, in his hap- 
 piest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself ir. 
 the character of L' Allegro ; even then, he speaks and 
 thinks as becomes H Periseroso. Nevertheless, I have 
 a very reprehensible way of jesting, at times, in the 
 midst of my own misery; and, unless when I am 
 checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I 
 shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these 
 annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must 
 allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect ; and, 
 with a few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor 
 to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like 
 opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy 
 as it is falsely reputed. 
 
 And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects ; 
 for upon all that has been hitherto written on the sub- 
 ject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who 
 may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial 
 tight) or by professors of medicine, writing ex cathedra 
 I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce, — 
 Lies ! lies ! lies ! I remember once, in passing a book- 
 stall, to have caught these words from a page of some 
 satiric author : " By this time I became convinced 
 that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice 
 a week, namely, on Tuesday and Saturday, and might 
 safely be depended upon for — the list of bankrupts.'' 
 
68 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 In like manner, T do by no means deny that some 
 truths have been delivered to the world in regard to 
 opium; thus, it has been repeatedly affirmed, by the 
 learned, that opium is a dusky brown in color, — 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 particularly dis- 
 agreeable to any man of regular habits, namely, — die.* 
 These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true ; 
 I cannot gainsay them; and truth ever was, and will 
 be, commendable. But, in these three theorems, I 
 believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as 
 yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And, 
 therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for 
 further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come 
 forward and lecture on this matter. 
 
 First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for 
 granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or 
 incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. 
 Now, reader, assure yourself, meo periculo, that no 
 quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As 
 to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum), 
 that might certainly intoxicate, if a man could bear tp 
 take enough of it; but why? because it contains so 
 
 * Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted ; 
 for, in a pirated edition of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, which 
 I once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it 
 for the benefit of her ^ealth, the doctor was made to say, — "Bo 
 particularly careful never to take above five-and-twenty ounces of 
 laudanum at once." The true reading being probably five-and-twenty 
 drops, which are held to be equal to about one grain of Tude opium. 
 
ENGUSH OPIUM-EATEh. 69 
 
 much proof" spirit, and not because it contains so much 
 opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is 
 incapable of producing any state of body at all resem- 
 bling that which is produced by alcohol ; and not in 
 degree only incapable, but even in kind ; it is not in 
 the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, 
 that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine 
 is always mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which 
 it declines ; that from opium, when once generated, is 
 stationary for eight or ten hours : the first, to borrow a 
 tefehnical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, 
 the second of chronic, pleasure ; the one is a flame, 
 the other a steady and equable glow. But the main 
 distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the 
 mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a 
 proper manner), introduces amongst them the most 
 exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs 
 a man of his self-possession ; opium greatly invigorates 
 it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives 
 a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation, to the 
 contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the 
 hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, com- 
 municates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, 
 active or passive ; and, with respect to the temper and 
 moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of 
 vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and 
 which would probably always accompany a bodily con- 
 stitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, foi 
 instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the 
 heart and the benevolent affections; but, then, with this 
 remarkable difference, that m the sudden development 
 of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation. 
 
70 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 there is always more or less of a maudlin charactf r 
 which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. 
 Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed 
 tears, — no mortal knows why; and the sensual crea- 
 ture is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the 
 bemgner feeliags, incident to opium, is no febrile ac- 
 cess, but a healthy restoration to that state which the 
 mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any 
 deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and 
 quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just 
 and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain 
 point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and 
 to steady the intellect; I myself, who have never been 
 a great wine-drinker, used to find that half a dozen 
 glasses of wine advantageously afTected the faculties, 
 brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave 
 to the mind a feeling of being " ponderibus librata suis;" 
 and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular lan- 
 guage, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, 
 on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety; 
 and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentle- 
 man says in Athenaeus) that men display themselves in 
 their true complexion of character ; which surely is not 
 disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads 
 a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance: 
 and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilize and 
 to disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium 
 always seems to compose what had been agitated, and 
 to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to 
 sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, oi 
 tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a con- 
 dition which calls up into supremacy the merely human 
 
ENGLISH OPIDM-EATEK. 71 
 
 too often the brutal, part of his nature; but the 
 opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from 
 any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels 
 that the diviner part of his nature is paramount ; that 
 is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless 
 serenity ; and over all is the great light of the majestic 
 intellect. 
 
 This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject 
 of opium : of which church I acknowledge myself to 
 be the only member, — the alpha and omega ; but then 
 it is to be recollected, that I speak from the ground ol 
 a large and profound personal experience, whereas most 
 of the unscientific* authors who have at all treated of 
 
 * Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently 
 by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, 
 I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of 
 *^Anastasiv,s." This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to pre- 
 sume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him 
 in that character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he has 
 given of its effects, at page 215-217, of vol. I. Upon consideration, 
 it must appear such to the author himself; for, waiving the errors 
 £ have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in 
 *he 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 mad-house. But, for my part, I see into this 
 old gentleman and his motives ; the fact is, he was enamored oJ 
 " the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug," which Auas 
 tasius carried about him ; and no way of obtaining it so safe and 
 so feasible occurred, as that of frightening its owner out of his 
 wits (which, by the by, are none of the strongest). This com- 
 mentary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improve 
 it as a story ; for the old gentleman's speech, considered as a lec- 
 ture on pharmacy, is highly absurd ; but, considered as a hoax «!■ 
 
 Iknastasius, it reads excellently. 
 
72 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 opium, and even of those who have written expressly 
 on the materia medica, make it evident, from the hor- 
 ror they express of it, that their experimental knowl- 
 edge of its action is none at all. I will, however, 
 candidly acknowledge that I have lact with one person 
 who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as 
 staggered my own incredulity ; for he Tvas a surgeon, 
 and had himself taken opium largely .2* Ihappened to say 
 to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him 
 with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends 
 apologized for him by suggesting that he was con- 
 stantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now, the 
 accusation, said I, is not prima facie, and of necessity, 
 an absurd one ; but the defence is. To my surprise, 
 however, he insisted that both his enemies and his 
 friends were in the right. " I will maintain,'' said he, 
 "that 1 do talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain 
 that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with 
 any view to profit, but solely and simply," said he, 
 " solely and simply, — solely and simply (repeating if 
 three times over), because I am drunk with opium ; 
 and that daily." I replied, that as to the allegation of 
 his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such 
 respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties 
 concerned all agreed in it, it did not become me to 
 question it ; but the defence set up I must demur to. He 
 proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his 
 reasons ; but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an 
 argument which must have presumed a man mistaker 
 m a point belonging to his own profession, that I did 
 not press him even when his course of argument 
 seemed open to objection ; not to mention that a man 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 73 
 
 who talks nonsense, even though "with no view to 
 profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a 
 dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, 
 however, that the. authority of a surgeon, and one who 
 was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to 
 my prejudice ; but still I must plead my experience, 
 which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand 
 drops a day ; and though it was not possible to suppose 
 a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic 
 symptoms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me that 
 he might proceed on a logical error of using the word 
 intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it 
 generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead 
 of restricting it as the expression of a specific sort of 
 excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. Some 
 people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had 
 been drunk upon green tea ; and a medical student in 
 London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have 
 reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, 
 that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got 
 drunk on a beef-steak. 
 
 Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error 
 m respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second 
 and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits 
 produced by opium is necessarily followed by a propor- 
 tionate depression, and that the natural and even imme- 
 diate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation 
 animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall 
 content myself with simply denying; assuring my 
 rsader, that for ten years, during which I took opium at 
 ntervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed 
 
74- CONFESSIONS OF AH 
 
 itiyself this luxury was always a day af unusually good, 
 spirits. 
 
 With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, oi 
 rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of 
 Turkish opium-eqters) to accompany, the practice of 
 opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is 
 classed under the head of narcotics, and some such 
 effect it may produce in the end; but the primury 
 effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, 
 to excite and stimulate the system : this first stage of 
 its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, 
 for upwards of eight hours ; so that it must be the fault 
 of the opium-eater himself, if he does not so time his 
 exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the 
 whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend 
 upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are 
 absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, 
 on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But, that the 
 reader may judge of the degree in which opium is 
 likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall 
 (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather 
 than argumentatively) describe the way in which I 
 myself often passed an opium evening in London, 
 during the period between 1804 and 1812. -It will be 
 seen, that at least opium did not move me to seek soli- 
 tude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid 
 state of self-involution ascribed to the Turks. I give 
 this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy 
 enthusiast or visionary ; but I regard that little. I must 
 desire my reader to bear in mind, that I was a hard 
 student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my 
 time ; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxa- 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. IB 
 
 tioiis as well as other people : these, however, I allowed 
 myself but seldom. 
 
 The late Duke of 25 ygg^ to say, " Next Friday, 
 
 by the blessing of Heaven, I purpose to be drunk ;" and 
 in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often, 
 within a given time, and when, I would commit a 
 debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in 
 three weeks ; for at that time I could not have ventured 
 to call every day (as I did afterwards) for " a glass of 
 laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar." No; as 
 I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, 
 more than once in three weeks : this was usually on a 
 Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which 
 was this. In those days, Grassini^^ sang at the opera, and 
 her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever 
 heard. I know not what may be the state of the opera- 
 house now, having never been within its walls for seven 
 or eight years ; but at that time it was by much the most 
 pleasant place of resort in London for passing an even- 
 ing. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which 
 was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the 
 theatres ; the orchestra was distinguished, by its sweet 
 and melodious grandeur, from all English orchestras, the 
 composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to my 
 ear, from the predominance of the clangorous instru- 
 ments, and the almost absolute tyranny of the violin. 
 The choruses were divine to hear ; and when Grassini 
 appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured 
 forth her passionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of 
 Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that 
 ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had 
 half the pleasure I had. , But, indeed, I honor the barbn- 
 
76 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 rians too much by supposing them capable of anj 
 pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an 
 Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual 
 pleasure, according to the temperament of him who 
 hears it. And, by the by, with the exception of the 
 fine extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I 
 do not recollect more than one thing said adequately 
 on the subject of music in all literature ; it is a passage 
 in the Eeligio Medici* of Sir T. Brown, 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 to its 
 effects. But this is not so ; it is by the reaction of the 
 mind upon the notices of the ear (the matter coming by 
 the senses, the form from the mind) that the pleasure is 
 constructed ; and therefore it is that people of equally 
 good ear differ so much in this point from one another. 
 Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the 
 mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular 
 mode of its activity by which we are able to construct 
 out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate 
 intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession 
 of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabia 
 characters : I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas ! my 
 good sir ? there is no occasion for them ; all that class 
 of ideas which can be available in such a case has a 
 language of representative feelings. But this is a sub- 
 
 * I have not the book at this moment to consult ; but I think the 
 passage begins, " And even that tavern music, which makes one 
 man merry, another mad, in me strikesa deep fitof devctiou," &c. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. T7 
 
 iect foiuign to my present purposes ; it is sufBcienf to 
 say, that a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony, displayed 
 before me, as in a piece of arras-work, the whcle of my 
 past life, — not as if recalled by an act of memory, 
 bat as if present and incarnated in the music ; no longer 
 painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents 
 removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its 
 passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this 
 was to be had for five shillings. "And over and above 
 the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around 
 me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of the 
 Italian language talked by Italian women, — for the gal- 
 lery was usually crowd'>d with Italians, — and I listened 
 with a pleasure such as that with which Weld, the trav- 
 eller, lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter 
 of Indian women ; for the less you understand of a lan- 
 guage, the more sensible you are to the melody or harsh- 
 ness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was 
 an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, 
 reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor 
 understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken. 
 
 These were my opera pleasures ; but another pleasure 
 I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday 
 night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera ; 
 for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the 
 regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall 
 be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all 
 mare so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many 
 other biographers and auto-biographers of fair reputa- 
 tion. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only 
 i)n a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night 
 to me, more than any rther night ? I had no labors tha> 
 
78 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 1 rested from ; no wages to receive ; what needed I to 
 care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons 
 to hear Grassini ? True, most logical reader; what 
 you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, 
 that whereas different men throw their feelings iiitc 
 different channels, and most are apt to show their inter- 
 est in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy, 
 expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses 
 and sorrows, I, at that time, was disposed to express my 
 interest by sympathizing with their pleasures. The 
 pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of, — more 
 than I wished to remember; but the pleasures of the 
 poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from 
 bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. 
 Now, Saturday night is the season for the chief regular 
 and periodic return of rest to the poor ; in this point the 
 most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge' a common 
 link of brotherhood ; almost all Christendom rests from 
 its labors. It is a rest introductory to another rest ; and 
 divided by a whole day and two nights from the 
 renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, on a 
 Saturday night, as though I also were released from 
 some yoke of labor, had some wages to receive, and 
 tome luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, there- 
 tore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a 
 spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, 1 
 iised often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, 
 to wander forth, without much regarding the direction 
 or the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of 
 London, to which the poor resort on a Saturday night, 
 for layinf! out their wages. Many a family party, con- 
 sisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or t%vo 
 
ENSLISH OPIUM-EATER. 79 
 
 of his children, have I listened to, as they stood con« 
 suiting on their ways and means, or the strenglh of 
 their exchequer, or the price of household articles. 
 Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, theii 
 difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might 
 be heard murmurs of discontent; but far oftener 
 expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of 
 patience, hope, and tranquillity. And, taken generally, 
 I must say, that, in this point, at least, the poor are far 
 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 1 
 saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be 
 intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion 
 upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always 
 judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages 
 were a little higher, or expected to be so, or the quar- 
 tern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions 
 and butter were expected to fall, I was glad ; yet, if the 
 contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of 
 consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that ex- 
 tracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and 
 from the soot 2' of chimneys) can overrule all feelings 
 into a compliance with the master-key. Some of these 
 rambles led me to great distances; for an- opium-eater 
 is too happy to observe the motion of time. And 
 sometimes, in my attempts to steer homewards, upon 
 nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, 
 and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead 
 of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I 
 had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly 
 npon such knotty problems of alleys, sufh enigmatical 
 
80 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 entries, and such sphinx's riddles of streets without 
 thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity 
 of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney- 
 coachmen. I could almost have believed, at times, that 
 I must be the first discoverer of some of these terra 
 incognitm, and doubted whether they had yet been laid 
 down in the modern charts of London. For all this, 
 however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when 
 the human face tyrannized 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, or anguish and remorse to the conscience. 
 
 Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, 
 produce inactivity or torpor ; but that, on the contrary, 
 it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in 
 candor, I will admit that markets and theatres are not 
 the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when in the 
 divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, 
 crowds become an oppression to him ; music, even, too 
 sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and 
 silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or 
 profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consum- 
 mation of what opium can do for human nature. I, 
 whose disease it was to meditate too much and to 
 observe too little, and who, upon my first entrance at 
 college, was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, 
 from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had 
 witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the 
 tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to 
 counteract them. I was, indeed, like a person who 
 according to the old legend, had entered the cave o! 
 
KNGLJSH OPIUM-EATER 81 
 
 Trophonius ; ami the remedies I sought were to force 
 myself into society, and to keep my understanding in 
 continual activity upon matters of science. But for 
 these remedies, I should certainly have become hypo- 
 chondriacally melancholy. In after years, however, 
 when ray cheerfulness was more fully reestablished, I 
 yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. 
 And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon 
 taking opium ; and more than once it has happened to 
 me, on a summer night, when I have been at an open 
 window, in a room from which I could overlook the sea 
 at a mile below me, and could command a view of the 
 
 great town of L ,^8 at about the same distance, that 1 
 
 have sat from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without 
 wishing to move. 
 
 I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quiet- 
 ism, &c. ; but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, 
 the younger, was one of our wisest men ; and let my 
 readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as 
 unmystical as I am. 1 say, then, that it has often 
 struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical 
 of what took place in such a reverie. The town of 
 
 L represented the earth, with its sorrows and its 
 
 graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly for- 
 gotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, 
 and 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, 
 and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the 
 fever, and the strife, were suspended ; a respite granted 
 from the secret burdens of the heart; o sabbath of 
 repose ; a resting from human labors. Here were the 
 6 
 
S2 COKFESS.ONS OF AN ENGLISH OPitTM-EATEB . 
 
 hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with 
 the peace which is in the grave ; motions of the intel- 
 lect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a 
 halcyon calm; a tranquillity that- seemed no product of 
 mertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antag- 
 onisms; infinite activities, infinite repose. 
 
 O just, subtile, and mighty opium ! that to the hearts 
 of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never 
 heal, and for " the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," 
 bringest an assuaging balm ; — eloquent opium ! that 
 with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of 
 wrath, and, to the guilty man, for one night givest back 
 the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from 
 blood ; and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for 
 
 Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged ; 
 
 that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the 
 triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and 
 confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of 
 unrighteous judges ; — thou buildest upon the bosom of 
 darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities 
 and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, — 
 beyond the splendor of Babylon and Hekatompylos ; 
 and, "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep," callest 
 into sunny light the faces cf long-buried beauties, and 
 the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the 
 "dishonors of the grave." Thou only givest these 
 gifts to man ; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh 
 just, subtile, and mighty opium ! 
 
mTRODUCTIOl* 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PAINS OF OPIUM. 
 
 CotrETEous, and, 1 hope, indulgent reader (for all 
 my readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, 1 
 shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy), 
 having accompanied me thus far, now let me request 
 you to move onwards, for about eight years ; that is to 
 say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with 
 opium first began) to 1812. The years of academic 
 life are now over and gonis, — almost forgotten ; the 
 student's cap no longer presses iny temples; if my 
 cap exists at all, it presses those of some youthful 
 scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate 
 a lover of knowledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare 
 to say, in the same condition with many thousands of 
 excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, diligently 
 pel used by certain studious moths and worms; or 
 departed, however (which is all that I know of its 
 fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which 
 all the tea'cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c.. 
 
84 CONFESSIONS OK AN 
 
 have departed (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such 
 as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.), which occa- 
 sional resemblances in the present generation of tea- 
 cups, &c., remind me of having once possessed, but of 
 whose departure and final fate, I, in common virith 
 most gownsmen of either university, could give, I sus- 
 pect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The 
 persecutions of the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome 
 summons to six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers 
 no longer ; the porter who rang it, upon whose beauti- 
 ful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retali- 
 ation, so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, 
 is dead, and has ceased to disturb anybody; and I, 
 and many others who suffered much from his tintin- 
 nabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his 
 errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell 1 
 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 treach- 
 erous 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 favorable as the malice of the bei. 
 itself could wish ; for I am two hundred and fifty miles 
 away from it, and buried in the depth of moun- 
 tains. And what am I doing amongst the mountains ? 
 Taking opium. Yes, but what else ? Why, reader, in 
 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for 
 some years previous, I have been chiefly studying 
 German metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 85 
 
 Schelling &c, And how, and in what manner, do 1 
 live ? in short, what class or description of men do 1 
 belong to ? I am at this period, namely, in 1812, living 
 in a cottage ; and with a single female servant {honi soil 
 qui mal y pense), who, amongst my neighbors, passes by 
 the name of my "house-keeper." And, as a scholar 
 and a man of learned education, and in that sense a 
 gentleman, I may presume to class myself as an unwor- 
 thy member of that indefinite body called gentlemen. 
 Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps, — 
 partly because, from my having no visible calling or 
 business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on 
 my private fortune, — I am so classed bj' my neighbors ; 
 and, by the courtesy of modern England, I am usually 
 addressed on letters, &c.. Esquire, though having, I fear, 
 in the rigorous construction of heralds, but slender 
 pretensions to that distinguished honor; — yes, in popu- 
 lar estimation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice 
 of the Peace, nor Gustos Eotulorum. Am I married ? 
 Not yet. And I still take opium ? On Saturday nights. 
 And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since 
 " the rainy Sunday," and " the stately Pantheon," and 
 " the beatific druggist " of 1804 ? Even so. And how 
 do I find my health after all this opium-eating ? in- 
 short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, 
 reader ; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, " as well 
 as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the 
 real and simple truth (it must not be forgotten that 
 hitherto I thought, to satisfy the theories of 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 " particular Madeira,'' 
 
86 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 which, ill all probability, you, good reader, have taken 
 and design to take, for every term of eight years, during 
 your natural life, may as little disorder your health as 
 mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the 
 eight years between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may 
 see again the danger of taking any medical advice 
 from Anastasius ;^ in divinity, for aught I know, or law, 
 he may be a safe counsellor, but not in medicine. 
 No ; it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan, as I did ; for 
 I never forgot that worthy man's excellent suggestion, 
 and I was " particularly careful not to take above five- 
 and-twenty ounces of laudanum." To this moderation 
 and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I 
 suppose, that as yet, at least (that is, in 1812), I am 
 ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which 
 opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At 
 the same time, I have been only a dilettante eater of 
 opium ; eight years' practice, even, with the single pre- 
 caution of allowing sufficient intervals between ever} 
 indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium 
 necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now 
 comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, 
 to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just 
 quitted, I had suffered much in bodily health from dis- 
 tress of mi"d connected with a very melancholy event. 
 This event, being no ways related to the subject now 
 before me, further than through bodily illness which it 
 produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether 
 this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813, I 
 know not ; but so it was, that, in the latter year, I was 
 attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, 
 HI all respects the same as that which had caused mp 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 81 
 
 SO much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a re- 
 vival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my 
 narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, 
 the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And 
 nere I find myself in a perplexing dilemma : — Either, 
 on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience, 
 by such a detail of my malady, and of my struggles 
 with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my 
 inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and con- 
 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 miscon- 
 struction of having slipped by the easy and gradual 
 steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the 
 final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which 
 there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers^ 
 from my previous acknowledgments). This is the 
 dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to 
 toss and gore any column of patient readers, though 
 drawn jp sixteen deep, and constantly relieved by fresh 
 men ; consequently that is not to be thought of. It 
 remains, then, that I postulate so much as is necessary 
 for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for 
 what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, 
 at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not 
 so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion 
 through my own forbearance and regard for your 
 comfort. No ; believe all that I ask of you, namely, that 
 I could resist no longer, — believe it liberaHjr, and as 
 an act of grace, or else in mere prudence ; for, if not, 
 then, in the next edition of my Opium Confessions 
 
88 CONFESSIONS OF Alt 
 
 revised and enlarged, I will make- you believe, and trem- 
 ble ; and, a force d'ennuyer, by mere dint of pandicula- 
 tion, 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 
 1 began to take opium daily, I could not have done 
 otherwise. Whether, indeed, afterwards, I might not 
 have succeeded in breaking ofT the habit, even when 
 it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, 
 and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I 
 did make might not have been carried much further, 
 and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not 
 have been followed up much more energetically, — these 
 are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might 
 make out a case of palliation ; but — shall I speak ingen- 
 uously ? — I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, 
 that I am too much of an Eudaemonist; I hanker too 
 much after a state of happiness, both for myself and 
 others ; I cannot face misery, whether my ovfn or not, 
 with an eye of sufficient firmness ; and am little capa- 
 ble of encountering present pain for the sake of any 
 reversionary benefit. On some other matters, I can 
 agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade* at Man- 
 chester in affecting the Stoic philosophy ; but not in 
 this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, 
 and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect 
 that will condescend more to the infirm condition of ar. 
 
 *A handsome news-room, of which I was very politely m^de 
 free in passing through Manchester, by several gentlemen of thai 
 place, is called, I thinlc, Tlie Porch; whence I, who am a strangei 
 in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess 
 themselves followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that 
 inis is a mistake. 
 
ENGLISH OPITTM-EATER. tftj 
 
 opium-eatev ; that are " sweet men," as Chaucer says, 
 •' to give absolution," and will show some conscience 
 in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of absti- 
 nence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An 
 inhuman moralist I can no more endure, in my nervous 
 state, than opium that has not been boiled. At any 
 rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight 
 of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage 
 of moral improvement, must make it clear to my under- 
 standing 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 labors I have 
 on my hands; and, therefore, let no man expect to 
 frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any 
 part of it upon desperate adventures of morality. 
 
 Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the 
 struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from 
 this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and 
 confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any 
 particular day he had or had not taken opium, would 
 be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, 
 or- the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand 
 now, reader, what I am ; and you are by this time 
 aware, that no old gentleman, " with- a snow-white 
 beard,'' will have any chance of persuading me to sur- 
 render " the little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
 drug." No • I give notice to all, whether moralists or 
 surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in 
 their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for 
 any countenance from me, if they think to begin by 
 any savage proposition for a Lent or Hamadam of absti* 
 
90 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 nence from opium. This, then, being all fully under- 
 stood between us, we shall in future sail before the wmd. 
 Now, then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we 
 have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you 
 please, and walk forward about three years more. Now 
 draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new 
 character. 
 
 If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would 
 tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and 
 the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all 
 cry out, Hear him ! hear him ! As to the happiest 
 day, that must be very difficult for any wise man to 
 name ; because any event, that could occupy so dis- 
 tinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life, or 
 be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one 
 day, ought to be of such an enduring character, as that 
 (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the 
 same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many 
 years together. To the happiest histrum, however, or 
 even to the happiest year, it may be allowed to any man 
 to point without discountenance from wwsdom. This 
 year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have 
 now reached ; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthe- 
 sis between years of a gloomier character. It was a 
 yaar of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of 
 jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloom 
 and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may 
 sound, I had a little before this time descended sud- 
 denly, and without any considerable effort, from three hun- 
 dred and twenty grains of opium (that is, eight* thou- 
 
 * I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to 
 one grain of opium, which, J h'llieve, is the common estimate 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEB. 91 
 
 sand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, oi 
 ont-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, 
 the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon 
 my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll 
 away from the summits of mountains, drew off in one 
 day; passed off with its murky banners as simultane- 
 ously as a ship that has been stranded, and is floated off 
 by a spring tide, — 
 
 That moveth altogether, if it move &t all. 
 
 Now, then, I was again happy : I now took only one 
 thousand drops of laudanum per day, — and what was 
 that ? A latter spring had come to close up the season 
 of youth : my brain performed its functions as healthily 
 as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I under 
 stood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of 
 pleasure expanded themselves to all around me ; and, if 
 any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither 
 had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, 
 I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a 
 reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever 
 else was wanting to a wise man's happiness,, of lauda- 
 num I would have given him as much as he wished, 
 and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I 
 speak of giving laudanum away, I remember, about 
 this time, a little incident, which I mention, because, 
 
 However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude 
 opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I 
 suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a cal- 
 culation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. 
 Small ones hold ab lut one hundred drops : so that eight thousand 
 drops are about eighty times a tea-spoonful. The readei sees ho'n 
 much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowanc«. 
 
92 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 trifling as .t was, the reader will soon meet it again iii 
 my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than 
 could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my 
 door. What business a Malay could have to transact 
 amongst English mountains, I cannot conjecture; but 
 possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty 
 miles distant.^" 
 
 The servant who opened the door to him was a 
 young girl, boi;n and bred amongst the mountains, who 
 had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort : his turban, 
 therefore, confounded her not a little ; and as it turned 
 out that his attainments in English were exactly of the 
 same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be 
 an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of 
 ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In 
 this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning 
 of her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a 
 knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides 
 perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me 
 to understand that there was a sort of demon below 
 whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise 
 from the house. I did not immediately go down; but 
 when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged 
 as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took 
 hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of 
 the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the 
 opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had 
 ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on 
 the wall with dark wood, that from age and rubbing 
 resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of 
 entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban . 
 and loose trousers of dmgy white relieved upon the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 93 
 
 dark panelling; he had placed himself nearer to the 
 girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit 
 of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of 
 Bimple awe which her countenance expressed, as she 
 gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more 
 striking picture there could not be imagined, than the 
 beautiful English face of the girl,^i and its exquisite 
 fairness, together with her erect and independent atti» 
 tude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the 
 Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by 
 marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, 
 slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the 
 ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child from a 
 neighboring cottage, who had crept in after him, and 
 was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing 
 upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, 
 whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the 
 young woman for protection. 
 
 My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remark- 
 ably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words, — 
 the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium 
 (madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius. And, 
 as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Ade- 
 lung's Mithridates, which might have helped me to a 
 few words, I addressed him in some lines from the 
 Iliad ; considering that, of such language as I pos- 
 sessed, the Greek, in point of longitude, came geo- 
 graphically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped 
 me in a devout manner, and replied in what I suppose 
 was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with 
 my neighbors ; for the Malay had no means of betray- 
 ing the secret He lay down upon the floor for about an 
 
94 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure 
 I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an 
 Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar, 
 and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. 
 Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consterna- 
 tion when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his 
 mouth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the wholf, 
 divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quan- 
 tity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses. 
 Find I felt some alarm for the poor creature ; but what 
 could be done? I had given him the opium in com- 
 passion for his solitary life, on recollecting that, if he 
 had travelled on foot from London, it must be nearly 
 three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought 
 with any human being. I could not think of violating 
 the laws of hospitality by having him seized and 
 drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into 
 a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some 
 English idol. No; there was clearly no help for it. 
 He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious; 
 but, as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I 
 became convinced that he was used* to opium, and 
 
 * Thift, however, is not a necessary conclusion ; the varieties of 
 effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. Jl 
 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 fobtt drops ; the next night 
 BixTT, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever ; 
 and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country 
 surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle • 
 and, in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will pub- 
 lish provided the Collegeof Surgeons will pay me for enlightening 
 theii benighted understandings upon this subject, I vill relate i*. 
 nut it is fat too ^ood a story to be published gratis. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 95 
 
 that I must have done hirti the service I designed, by 
 giving him one night of respite frbra the pains of 
 vfandenng. 
 
 This incident I have digressed to mention, because 
 this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he 
 assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I ccnnected 
 with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon 
 my dreams, and brought other Malays with him worse 
 than himself, that ran " a-muck " * at me, and led me 
 into a world of troubles. But, to quit this episode, and 
 to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have 
 said already, that on a subject so important to us all as 
 happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any mail's 
 experience or experiments, even though he were but a 
 ploughboy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed 
 very deep in such an intractable soil as that of human 
 pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches 
 upon any very enlightened principles. But I, who have 
 taken happiness, both in a solid and a liquid shape, both 
 boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey, - 
 who have conducted my experiments upon this inter- 
 esting 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 hundred 
 drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reasoii 
 as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with a 
 cancer, — an English one, twenty years ago, with 
 plague, — and a third, I know not of what nation, with 
 hydrophobia), — I, it will be admitted, must surely 
 
 * See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller bv voyager, 
 of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have takjp 
 >pium, o' arc reduced tr desperation by ill luck at gambling. 
 
96 CONFESSIONS Of AN 
 
 know what happiness is, if anybody does. And there- 
 fore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness 
 and, as the most interesting mode of communicating 
 it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapt up and 
 involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every 
 evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, 
 though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir 
 of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of hap- 
 piness altogether, and pass to a very different one, — 
 the 'pains of opium. 
 
 Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley ,^2 eighteen 
 miles from any town ; no spacious valley, but about 
 two miles long by three quarters of a mile in average 
 width, — the benefit of which provision is, that all the 
 families resident within its circuit will compose, as it 
 were, one larger household, personally familiar to your 
 eye, and more or less, interesting to your affections. 
 Let the mountains be real mountains, between three and 
 four thousand feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, 
 not (as a witty author has it) " a cottage with a double 
 coach-house ; " let it be, in fact (for I must abide by 
 the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with 
 flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of 
 flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the win- 
 dows, through all the months of spring, summer, and 
 autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending 
 with jasmine. Let it, however, twI be spring, nor 
 summer, nor autumn ; but winter, in its sternest shape. 
 This is a most important point in the science of happi- 
 ness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, 
 and think it matter of congratulation that vsrinter is 
 ^jing, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. »T 
 
 On the contrary, I put up a petition, annually, for as 
 much snow, hail, frost, or storm of one kind or other, 
 as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely everybody 
 IS aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter 
 fireside, — candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, 
 tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in 
 ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain 
 are raging audibly without, , 
 
 And at the doors and windows seem to call 
 As heaven and earth they would together mell ; 
 Yet the least entrance find they none at all j 
 Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. 
 
 Cattle of Indolence. 
 
 All these are items in the description of a winter 
 evening which must surely be familiar to everybody 
 born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of 
 these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low 
 temperature of the atmosphere to produce them : they 
 are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather 
 stormy or inclement, in some way or other. I am not 
 '^particular," as people say, whether it be snow, or 
 
 black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. ^'says) 
 
 " you may lean your back against it like a post." 1 
 can put up even with ram, provided that it rains ;ats 
 and dogs; but something of the sort I must have; and 
 if I have not, I think myself in a manner ill used : fur 
 why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in 
 coals, and candles, and various privations that will occur 
 even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good 
 of its kind ' No : a Canadian winter, for my money ; 
 or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprie • 
 ioi with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own 
 7 
 
98 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 cars. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter, 
 that I cannot relish a winter night fully, if it be much 
 past St. Thomas' day, and have degenerated into dis 
 gusting tendencies to vernal appearances ; — no. it must 
 be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return 
 of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of Octobei 
 to Christmas-eve, therefore, is the period during which 
 happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters: he 
 room with the tea-tray ; for tea, though ridiculed by 
 those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become 
 so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influ- 
 ence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the 
 favorite beverage of the intellectual ; and, for my part, 
 I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a helium internect- 
 num against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person 
 who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save 
 myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will 
 introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest 
 of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, 
 unless a good deal weather-stained ; but, as the readei 
 now understands that it is a winter night, his services 
 will not be required except for the inside of the house. 
 Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, 
 and net more than seven and a half feet high. This, 
 reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, 
 the drawing-room; but being contrived "a double debt 
 to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library; 
 for it happens that books are the only article of property 
 in which I am richer than my neighbors. Of these I 
 have about five thousand, collected gradually since my 
 eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as 
 vou can into this room. Make it populous with books 
 
fiNGUSH OPIUM-EATEK. 99 
 
 end, furthermore, paint me a good fire ; and furniture 
 plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of 
 ii scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table ; and 
 (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one, 
 ?uch 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. Pa,int her arms like 
 Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's; — but no, dear 
 M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to 
 illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable 
 as mere personal beauty j or that the witchcraft of 
 angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly 
 pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to something 
 more within its power; and the next article brought 
 forward should naturally be myself, — a picture of the 
 Opium-eater, with his "little golden receptacle of the 
 pernicious drug " lying beside him on the table. As to 
 the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of that, 
 though I would rather see the original ; you may paint 
 it, if you choose ; but I apprize you that no " little " 
 receptacle would, even in 1816, answer my purpose, 
 who was at a distance from the " stately Pantheon," and 
 all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No : you may 
 as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of 
 gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as 
 possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-colored 
 laudanum; that, and a book of German metaphysics 
 
100 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OITUM-EATRR. 
 
 placeJ by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in 
 the neighborhood ; but as to myself, there I demur. 1 
 admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground 
 of the picture ; that being the hero of the piece, or (if 
 you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be 
 had into court. This seems reasonable ; but why should 
 I confess, on this point, to a painter ? or, why confess at 
 all? If the public (into whose private earl afti confi- 
 dentially whispering my confessions, and not into any 
 painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable 
 picture for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, — should 
 have ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant person, 
 or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear 
 from it so pleasing a delusion, — pleasing both to the 
 public and to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according 
 to your own fancy; and, as a painter's fancy should 
 teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way, 
 to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through 
 all the ten categories of my condition, as it stood about 
 1816 — 1817, up to the middle of which latter year 
 1 judge myself to have been a happy man; and the 
 elements of that happiness I have endeavored to place 
 before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a 
 scholar's library, — in a cottage among the mountains, 
 on a stormy winter evening. 
 
 But now farewell, a long farewell, to happiness, 
 winter or summer! farewell to smiles and laughter! 
 farewell to peace of mind ! farewell to hope and to 
 tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of 
 sleep ! For more than three years and a half I am 
 summoned away from these ; I am now arrived at an 
 Iliad rf WOPS : for I havu now to record 
 
THE PAINS OF OPIUM. 
 
 - as when some great painter dips 
 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. 
 
 Shelley's Revolt of Islam. 
 
 Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must 
 request your attention to a brief explanatory note on 
 three points : 
 
 1. For several reasons, 1 have not been able to com- 
 pose the notes for this part of my narrative into any 
 regular and connected shape. I give the notes dis- 
 jointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up 
 from memory. Some of them point to their own date ; 
 some I have dated ; and some are undated. Whenever 
 it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the 
 natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to 
 do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes 
 in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were 
 written exactly at the period of time to which they 
 relate ; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the 
 impressions were such that they can never fade from 
 my mind. Much has been omitted. I cnuld not, 
 without effort, constrain myself to the task of eiihei 
 recu'ling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the 
 
1U2 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 whole burden of horrors which lies upon my braiit 
 This feeling, partly, I plead in excuse, and partly that J 
 am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person 
 who cannot even arrange his own papers without 
 assistance; and I am separated from the hands 
 which are wont to perform for me- the offif^s of an 
 amanuensis. 
 
 2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential 
 and communicative of my own private history. It may 
 be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, 
 and follow my own humors, than much to consider who 
 is listening to me ; and, if I stop to consider what is 
 proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon 
 come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The 
 fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty 
 years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to 
 those who will be interested about me hereafter; and 
 wishing to, have some record of a time, the entire 
 history of yvhich no one can know but myself, I do it 
 as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable 
 of making, because I know not whether 1 can ever find 
 time to do it again. ^f 
 
 3. It will occur to you often to a,sk. Why did I not 
 release myself from the horrors of opium, by leaving 
 it off", or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly; 
 it might be supposed that 1 yielded to the fascinations 
 of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any 
 map can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may 
 be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to 
 reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed 
 the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the 
 first tc beg me tc desist. But could not I havo reduced 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 103 
 
 it a drop a day, or, by adding wa;ter, have bisected oi 
 trisected a drop ? A thousand drops bisected would 
 thus have taken nearly six years to reduce ; and that 
 they vvould certainly not have answered. But this ia 
 a comnxon mistake of those who know nothing of opium 
 experimentally ; I appeal to those who do, whether it is 
 not always found that down to a certain point it can be 
 reduced with ease, and even pleasure, but that, after that 
 point, further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, 
 say many thoughtless persons, whoi know not what they 
 are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and 
 dejection, for a few days. I answer, no ; there ia 
 nothing like low spirits ; on the contrary, the mere 
 animal spirits are uncommonly raised ; the pulse is 
 improved; the health is better. It is not there that the 
 suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings 
 caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable 
 irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like 
 dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and 
 feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without 
 more space at my command. 
 
 I shall now enter "in medias res,'' and shall anticipate, 
 from a time when my opium pains might be said to be 
 at their acmi, an account of their palsying effects on the 
 intellectual faculties. 
 
 My studies have now been long interrupted. I can 
 not read to myself, with any pleasure, hardly with a 
 miment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for 
 the pleasure of others ; because reading is an acconj- 
 plishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word 
 accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain 
 meat, almost the only one I possess ; and formerly i/ 
 
104 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 1 had any vanity at all connected with any endowmenl 
 or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had 
 observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players 
 
 are the worst readers of all : reads vilely; 8' and 
 
 Mrs. , who is so celebrated, can read nothing 'vell 
 
 but dramatic compositions ; Milton she cannot read suf- 
 ferably. People in general either read pc«try without 
 any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of 
 nature, and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt 
 moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand 
 lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmo- 
 nies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when 
 read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes 
 and drinks tea with us ; at her request and M.'s, I now 
 
 and then read W 's poems to them. (W.,'* by the 
 
 by, is the only poet I ever met who could read his own 
 verses; often, indeed, he reads admirably.) 
 
 For nearly two years I believe that I read no book 
 but one ; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a 
 great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. 
 The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as 
 I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my 
 proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of 
 the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, 
 analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued 
 by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics 
 for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c., were all be 
 come insupportable to me ; I shrunk from them with a 
 sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave 
 me an anguish the greater from remembering the time 
 when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; 
 and for this further reason, because I had devoti-d the 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. lOfy 
 
 labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, 
 blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of 
 constructing one single work, to which I had presumed 
 to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's, 
 namely, Be Emendatione Humani Intellectiis. 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 
 a life of labor 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 founda- 
 tions laid that were never to support a superstructure, 
 of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this 
 ■ state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned my 
 attention to political economy ; my understanding, 
 which formerly had been as active and restless as a 
 hyena, 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 pari, that is to say, 
 but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts 
 on each part), yet the several parts may be detached 
 and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration 
 of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my 
 knowledge ; and my understanding had been for too 
 many years intimate" with severe thinkers, with logic, 
 and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of 
 the utter feebleness of the mam herd of modern ccono" 
 mists. I had "been led in 1811 to look into loads of 
 
106 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 books and pamphlets on many branches of econowjy ; 
 ind, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters 
 from more recent worlds, or parts of parliamentary 
 debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs 
 and rinsings of the human intellect; and thai; any man 
 of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with schx)!- 
 astic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of 
 modern economists, and throttle them between heayen 
 and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their 
 fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, 
 in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me dowii Mr. 
 Ricardo's book; and, recurring to my own prophetic 
 anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this 
 science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, 
 ■' Thou art the man ! " Wonder and curiosity were 
 emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I won- 
 dered once more : I wondered at myself that I could 
 once again be stimulated to the effort of reading ; and 
 much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound 
 work been really written in England during the nine- 
 teenth century ? Was it possible ? I supposed think- 
 ing* had been extinct in England. Could it be 
 that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, 
 but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had 
 accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a 
 century of thought, had failed even to advance by one 
 
 * The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking ; 
 because, else, this would be a very presumptuous expressiou 
 Eagliind, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the 
 departments of creative and combining thought ; but there is a sad 
 dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman 
 3f eminent name has lately lold us, that he is obliged to quit evei 
 mathematics lor want of encouragement. 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-SATER. 107 
 
 hair's breadth ? All other writers had been crushed and 
 overlaid by the enormous weights of facts and docu- 
 ments; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, d, priori, from the 
 understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light 
 into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had con- 
 structed what had been but a collection of tentative dis- 
 cussions into a science of regular proportions, now Erst 
 standing on an eternal basis. 
 
 Thus did one simple work of a profound understand- 
 ing avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which 
 I had not known for years ; — it roused me even to 
 write, or, at least, to dictate what M. wrote for me. 
 It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped 
 even " the inevitable eye " of Mr. Eicardo ; and, as 
 these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I 
 could express or illustrate them more briefly and 
 elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy 
 and loitering diction of economists, the whole would 
 not have filled a pocket-book ; and being so brief, with 
 M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as 
 I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolego- 
 mena to all Future Systems of Political Economy. I 
 hope it w;ill npt be found redolent of opium ; though, 
 indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufiJcieni 
 opiate. 
 
 This exertion, however, was but a temporary fiash, 
 as the sequel showed ; for I designed to publish my 
 work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press, 
 about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An addi- 
 tional compositor was retained for some days, on this 
 account. The work was even twice advertised ; and 
 1 was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment of my 
 
108 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 intention. But J had a preface to write; and a Jedi 
 cation, which I v;ished to make a splendid one, to Mr. 
 Ricardo. I found myselt quite unable to accomplish 
 all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the 
 compositor dismissed, and my "prolegomena" rested 
 peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified 
 brother. 
 
 I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual 
 torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part 
 of the four years during which I was under the Circean 
 spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, 
 indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I 
 seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an 
 answer of a few words, to any that 1 received, was 
 the utmost that I could accomplish ; and often that not 
 until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my 
 writing-table. Without the aid of M., all records of 
 bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished ; and my 
 whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political 
 Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. 
 I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case ; it 
 is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the 
 end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from 
 the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct 
 embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrasti- 
 nation of each day's appropriate duties, and from the 
 remorse which must often exasperate the stings of 
 these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. 
 The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities 
 or aspirations ; he wishes and longs as earnestly as 
 ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to 
 be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension 
 
FNGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 
 
 109 
 
 of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of 
 execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies 
 under the weight of incubus and night-mare ; he lies in 
 sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man 
 forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a 
 relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury oi 
 outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love : — ■ 
 he curses the spells which chain him down from motion ; 
 he would lay down his life if he might but get up and 
 walk ; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even 
 attempt to rise. 
 
 I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter 
 confessions, to the history and journal of what took place 
 in my dreams ; for these were the immediate and prox- 
 imate cause of my acutest suffering. 
 
 The first notice I had of any important change going 
 on in this part of my physical economy, was from the 
 reawaking of a state of eye generally incident to 
 childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not 
 whether my reader is aware that many children, per- 
 haps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon 
 the darkness, all sorts of phantoms : in some that 
 power is simply a mechanic aflfection of the eye ; 
 others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to 
 dismiss or summon them ; or, as a child once said to 
 me, when I questioned him on this matter, " I can tell 
 them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come 
 wh ;p. I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told 
 him that he had almost as unlimited a command ovei 
 apparitions as a Roman centurion over his solditrs, 
 ..n the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty 
 became positively distressing to me : at night, when I 
 
110 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along^ in. 
 mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that 
 to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were 
 stories drawn from times before CEdipus or Priam, before 
 Tyre, before Memphis. And, at the same time, a cor- 
 responding 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 
 splendor. And the four following facts may be men- 
 tioned, as noticeable at this time : 
 
 I. That, a? the creative state of the eye increased, a 
 sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the 
 dreaming states of the brain in one point, — that what- 
 soever I happened to call up and to trace by a volun- 
 tary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer 
 itself to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this 
 faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that 
 yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires. 
 so whatsoever things capable of being visually repre- 
 sented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately 
 shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and, by a 
 process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once 
 traced in faint and visionary colors,.like writings in sym- 
 pathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the fierce chemis- 
 try of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that fretted 
 my heart. 
 
 II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, 
 were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy 
 melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by 
 words. I seemed every night to descend — not meta- 
 phorically, but literally to descend — intc chasms and 
 sunless abysses, depths below depths, frim which ii 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Ill 
 
 stietned hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did 1, 
 by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not 
 dwell upon ; because the state of gloom which attended 
 these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter 
 darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be 
 approached by words, 
 
 III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense ot 
 time, vere both powerfully affected. Buildings, land- 
 scapes, &c., were e:?hibited in proportions so vast as 
 the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, 
 and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. 
 This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast 
 expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived 
 for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, 
 sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, 
 passed in that time, or, hovyever, of a duration far beyond 
 tbe limits of any human experience. 
 
 IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten 
 scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not 
 be said to recollect thera; for if 1 had been told of 
 them \vhen waking, I should not have been able to 
 acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. 
 But placed as they were before me, in dreams like 
 intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circum- 
 stances and accompanying feelings, I recognized them 
 instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative 
 of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a 
 river, and being on the very verge of death but for the 
 critical assistance which reached her, she saw in. a 
 moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, annyed 
 before her simultaneously as in a mirror ; and she had 
 a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the 
 
112 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 whole and every part.'' This, from some opium expe^ 
 riences of mine, I can believe; I have, indeed, seen the 
 same thing asserted twice in modem books, and accom- 
 panied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely, 
 that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures 
 speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. 
 Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such 
 thing, as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand 
 accidents may and will interpose a veil between our 
 present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the 
 mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away 
 this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the 
 inscription remains forever ; just as the stars seem to 
 withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, 
 in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn 
 over them as a veil ; and that they are waiting to be 
 revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall have with- 
 drawn. 
 
 Having noticed these four facts as memorably distin- 
 guishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now 
 cite a case illustrative of the first fact ; and shall then 
 cite any others that I remember, either in their chro- 
 nological order, or any other that may give them moie 
 effect as pictures to the reader. 
 
 I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional 
 amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess 
 that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other 
 of the Roman historians ; and I had often felt as most 
 solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically 
 representative of the majesty of the Roman peop'e, the 
 two words so often occurring in Livy — Consul Roma- 
 nus ; especially when the consul is introduced in iiw 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 11.1 
 
 military character. I mean to say, that the words 
 king, sultan, regent, &c., or any other titles of those 
 who embody in their own persons the collective majesty 
 of a great people, had less power over my reverential 
 feelings. I had, also, though no great reader of history, 
 made myself minutely and critically familiar with one 
 period of English history, namely, the period of the Par- 
 liamentary War, having been attracted by the moral 
 grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the 
 many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet 
 times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, having 
 furnished me often with matter of reflection, now fur- 
 nish 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 per- 
 haps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or 
 I said to myself, " These are English ladies from the 
 unhappy times of Charles 1. These are the wives and 
 daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the 
 same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood ; 
 and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642,'8 never 
 smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field 
 of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at 
 Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, 
 and washed away in blood the memory of ancient 
 friendship." The ladies danced, and looked as lovely 
 as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my 
 dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two 
 centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; and, 
 at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart- 
 quaking sound of Constd Eomanus ; and immediately 
 came " sweeping by,'' in gorgeous paludaments, Paulua 
 
il4 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 or Marius, girt around by a company of centurions, with 
 the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by 
 the alalagmos of the Roman legions. 
 
 Man)' years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's 
 Antiquities: of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing 
 bj', described to me a set of plates by that artist, called 
 his Breams, and which record the scenery of his own 
 visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them 
 (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's ac- 
 count) represented vast Gothic halls ; on the floor of 
 which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, 
 cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c., expressive of 
 enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. 
 Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a 
 staircase ; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was 
 Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little further, and 
 you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination, 
 without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards 
 to him who had reached the extremity, except into the 
 depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, 
 you suppose, at least, that his labors must in some way 
 terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a 
 second flight of stairs still higher; on which again 
 Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the verj 
 brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a 
 still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld ; and again is 
 poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors ; and so on, 
 until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in 
 the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power 
 of endless growth and self-reproduction did my archi- 
 lecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my 
 malady, the splendors of my dreams were indeed 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 115 
 
 chiefly aichitectutal ; and I beheld such pomp of cities 
 and palaces as was never yet beheld by the Waking 
 eye, unless in the clouds. From a greatmodern 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 frequently in sleep ; 
 
 The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
 Was of a mighty city — boldly say 
 A wilderness of building, sinking far 
 And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, 
 Far sinking into splendor — without end! 
 Fabric it 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 
 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 j on them, and on the coves. 
 And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto 
 The vapors had receded — taking there 
 Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c. 
 
 The sublime circumstance — " battlements that on 
 their restless fronts bore stars " ^- might have been 
 copied from my architectural dreams, for it often oc- 
 curred. We hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli 
 in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw 
 meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams : how 
 much better, for such a purpose^ to have eaten opium, 
 which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded 
 to have done, except the dramatist Sh id well ; and in 
 ancient days. Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have 
 known the virtues of opium> 
 
116 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes, 
 and silvery expanses of water: these haunted me so 
 much, that I feared (though possibly it wi'l appeal 
 ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state oi 
 tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to 
 use a metaphysical word) objective, and the sentient 
 organ project itself as its own object. For two months 
 I suffered greatly in my head — a part of my bodily 
 structure which had hitherto been so clear from all 
 touch or taint of weakness (physically, I mean), that 1 
 used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his 
 stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my 
 person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, oi 
 any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused 
 by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, 
 though it must have been verging on something very 
 dangerous. 
 
 The waters now changed their character, — from 
 translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they now be- 
 came seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous 
 change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, 
 through many months, promised an abiding torment ; 
 and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of 
 my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in 
 my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special 
 power of tormenting. But now that which I have 
 called the tyranny of the human face, began to unfold 
 itself Perhaps some part of my London life might be 
 answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was 
 that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human 
 face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with 
 innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens ; faces. 
 
JiNGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 117 
 
 miploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by 
 thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries: 
 my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and surged 
 with the ocean. 
 
 May, 1818. — The Malay had been a fearful enemy 
 for months. 1 have been every night, through his 
 means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not 
 whether others share in my feelings on this point ; but 
 I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego 
 England, and to live in China, and among Chinese 
 manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go 
 mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of 
 them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in 
 general, is the seat of awful images and associations. 
 As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have 
 a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But 
 there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the 
 wild, barbarous, and capricious i superstitions of Africa, 
 or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way 
 that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, 
 and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere 
 antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, 
 modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the 
 vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of 
 youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to 
 me an antediluvian man renewed. Even English- 
 men, though not bred in any knowledge of such insti- 
 tutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity 
 of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, 
 through such immemorial tracts of time ; nor can any 
 man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the 
 Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that 
 
118 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 Southern Asia is, and has beeti for thousands of years 
 the part of the earth most swarming with human life, 
 the great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those 
 regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enor- 
 mous population of Asia has always been cast, give a 
 further sublimity to the feelings assbciated with all ori- 
 ental names or images. In China, over and above what 
 it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am 
 terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the 
 barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy, 
 placed betweeri us by feelings deeper than I can ana- 
 lyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute ani- 
 mals. All this, and much more than I can say, or 
 have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he 
 can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these 
 dreams of oriental imagery, and mythological tortures, 
 impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of 
 tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together 
 all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, 
 usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical 
 regions, and assembled them together in China or In- 
 dostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt 
 and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, 
 hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by 
 paroc[uets, by cockatods. I ran into pagodas, and was 
 fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms : 
 I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; 
 I was sacrificed. I fled from the Wrath of Brama 
 through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; 
 Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isia 
 and Osiris: 1 had done a deed, they said, which the 
 ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buned, for a 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 119 
 
 thousand years, in stone cofKns, with mummies and 
 ejihinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal 
 pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by 
 crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable 
 slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 
 
 I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my 
 oriental dreams, which always filled me with such 
 amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror 
 seemed absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment. 
 Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed 
 up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in ter- 
 ror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. 
 Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim 
 sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and 
 infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. 
 Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight 
 exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror 
 entered. All before had been moral and spiritual ter- 
 rors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or 
 snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed 
 crocodile became to me the object of more horror than 
 almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him ; 
 and (as was always the case, almost, in my dreams) for 
 centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in 
 Chinese houses with cane tables, &c. All the feet of 
 the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life : 
 the abominiable head of the crocodile, and his leering 
 eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repe- 
 titions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And bo 
 often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that 
 many times the very same dream was broken up in the 
 rery same way : I heard gentle voicos speaking to me 
 
120 CONFESSIONS OF AW 
 
 (I. hear everytliing when I am sleeping), and instantly 
 I awoke : it was broad noon, and my children were 
 standing, hand in hand, at my bedside; come to show 
 me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me 
 see them dressed for going out. I protest that so 
 awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, 
 and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my 
 dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of 
 infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of 
 mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their 
 faces. 
 
 JuTie, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at 
 various periods of my life, that the deaths of those 
 whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death 
 generally, is (cmteris paribus) more affecting in sum- 
 mer than in any other season of the year. And the 
 reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible 
 heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, 
 and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; 
 the clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the dis- 
 tance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads are 
 in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated 
 in far grander and more towering piles : secondly, the 
 light and the appearances of the declining and the set- 
 ting sun are much more fitted to be types and charac- 
 ters 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 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 121 
 
 repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these 
 accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the 
 thought of death when I am walking alone in the end- 
 less days of summer ; and any particular death, if not 
 more affecting, at least haunts ray mind more obstinately 
 and besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this cause, and 
 a slight incident which I omit, might have been the 
 immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, 
 however, a predisposition must always have existed in 
 my mind ; but having been once roused, it never left me, 
 and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often 
 suddenly reunited, and composed again the original 
 dream. 
 
 I tht/ught 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. Eight before me lay the very 
 scene which could really be commanded from that situa- 
 tion, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the 
 power of dreams. There were the same mountains, and 
 the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the mountains 
 were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was 
 interspace far larger between them of meadows and 
 forest lawns ; the hedges were rich with white roses ; 
 and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in 
 the green church-yard there were cattle tranquilly repos- 
 ing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round 
 about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved^ 
 just as 1 had really beheld them, a little before sunrise, 
 in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed 
 upon the well-known scene, and I said aloud (as 1 
 '.bought) to myself, " It yet wants much of sunrise • and 
 
122 CONFESSIONS OF Alt 
 
 It is Easter Sunday ; and that is the day on which they 
 celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk 
 abroad ; old griefs shall be forgotten to-day ; for the aii 
 is cool and still, and the hills are high, and stretch away 
 to heaven ; and the forest glades are as quiet as tho 
 church-yard ; and with the dew I can wash the fever 
 from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no 
 longer." And I turned, as if to open my garden gate ; 
 and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far differ- 
 ent ; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled 
 into harmony with the other. The scene was an orien- 
 tal one ; and there also it vras Easter Sunday, and very 
 early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visi- 
 ble, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas 
 of a great city — an image or faint abstraction, caught, 
 perhaps, in childhood, from some picture of Jerusalem. 
 And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, and shaded 
 by Judean palms, there sat a woman ; and I looked, and 
 it was — Ann ! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly ; 
 and I said to her, at length, " So, then, I have found you, 
 at last." I waited ; but she answered me not a word. 
 Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet, 
 again, how different ! Seventeen years ago, when the 
 lamp-light fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed 
 her lips (lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted !), her 
 eyes were streaming with tears ; — her tears were now 
 wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was 
 at that time, but in all other points the same, and not 
 older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solem- 
 nity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some 
 awe ; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and, turn- 
 ing to the mountains, I perceived vapors rolling between 
 
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 123 
 
 ns ; in a moment, all had vanished ; thick darkness 
 :anie on ; i>nd in the twinkling of an eye I was far away 
 from mountains, and by lamp-light in Oxford-street, 
 walking again with Ann — just as we walked seventeen 
 years before, when we were both children. 
 
 As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, 
 from 1820. 
 
 The dream commenced with a music which now I 
 often heard in dreams — a music of preparation and 
 of awakening suspense ; a music like the opening of the 
 Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feel- 
 ing of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing ofi", and 
 the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was 
 come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final hope 
 for human nature, then sufTering some mysterious 
 eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Some- 
 where, I knew not where — Somehow, I knew not how 
 — by some beings, I knew not whom — a battle, a strife, 
 an agony, was conducting, — was evolving like a great 
 drama, or piece of music ; with which my sympathy was 
 the more insupportable from my confusion as to its 
 place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is 
 usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves 
 central to every movement), had the power, and yet had 
 not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could 
 raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the 
 power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, 
 or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than 
 ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a 
 chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest 
 was at stake ; some mightier cause than ever yet the 
 Bword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then 
 
124 CONFESSIONS OF AN 
 
 came sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; trepidations 
 of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether from the 
 good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest 
 and human faces ; and at last, with the sense that all 
 was lost, female forms, and the features that v/ere worth 
 all the world to me, and but a moment allowed, — and 
 clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then 
 — everlasting farewells ! and, with a sigh, such as the 
 caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered 
 the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated 
 — everlasting farewells ! and again, and yet again rever- 
 berated — everlasting farewells ! 
 
 And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — "I will 
 sleep no more ! " 
 
 But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative 
 which has already extended to an unreasonable length. 
 Within .more spacious limits, the materials which I 
 have used might have been better unfolded ; and much 
 which I have not used might have been added with 
 effect. Perhaps, however, enough has been given. Il 
 now remains that I should say something of the way in 
 which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to its 
 crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage 
 near the beginning of the introduction to the first part) 
 that the opium-eater has, in some way or other, "un- 
 wound, altnost to its final links, the accursed chain 
 which bound him." By what means ? To have nar- 
 rated this, according to the original intention, would 
 have far exceeded the space which can now be allowed. 
 It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridg- 
 ing it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case, have 
 been exoeedingyl unwilling to injur-j, by any such unaf- 
 
ENtJLISH OPlD)iI-EATER. 125 
 
 fecting details, the impiession of the history itself, as an 
 appeal to the prudence and the conscience of the yet 
 unconfirmed opium-eater, or even (though a very inferior 
 consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The 
 interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself 
 chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the 
 fascinating power. Not the opium-eater, but the opium, 
 is the true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on 
 which the interest revolves. The object was to display 
 the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure oi 
 for pain; if that is done, the action of the piece has 
 closed. 
 
 However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the 
 contrary, will persist in asking what became of the 
 opium-eater, and in what state he now is, I answer for 
 him thus : The reader is aware that opium had long 
 ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it 
 was solely by the tortures connected with the attempt 
 to abjure it, that it kept its hold. Yet, as other tor- 
 tures, no less, it may be thought, attended the non- 
 abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evik was 
 left; and that might as well have been adopted, which, 
 however terrific in itself, held out a prospect of fnal 
 restoration to happiness. This appears true ; but good 
 logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. IIow- . 
 ever, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis 
 for other objects still dearer to him, and which will 
 always be far dearer to him than his life, even now 
 that it is again a happy one. I saw that I must die, if 
 I continued the opium : I determined, therefore, if thai 
 should be required, to die in throwing it off. How 
 much I was at that time taking, I cannot say ; for the 
 
126 CONFESSIONS Of AN 
 
 opium which I used had been purchased for nie by a 
 friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so 
 that I could not ascertain even what quantity I had 
 used within a year. I apprehend, however, that I took 
 it very irregularly, and that I varied from about fifty or 
 sixty grains to one hundred and fifty a day. My first 
 task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and, as fast as I 
 could, to twelve grains. 
 
 I triumphed ; but think not, reader, that therefoio 
 my sufferings were ended ; nor think of me as of one 
 sitting in a dejected state. 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 the most innocent sufferer* (of 
 the time of James I.). Meantime, I derived no benefit 
 from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by an 
 Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, namely, ammo- 
 iiiated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, 
 of my emancipation, I have not much to give ; and 
 Rven that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of 
 medicine as myself, would probably tend only to mis- 
 lead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situa- 
 tion. The moral of the narrative is addressed to the 
 opium-eater; and therefore, of necessity, limited in its 
 application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, enougVi 
 has been effected. But he may say, that the issue of 
 my case is at least a proof that opium, after a seven- 
 
 * William Lithgow ; his book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedanti- 
 cally written ; but the account of bis own sufferings on tlie rack at 
 Malaga is overpoweringly affecting. 
 
ENGLISH OProm-EAlER. 127 
 
 teen 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, oi that, 
 with a stronger constitution than mine, he may obtain 
 the same results with less. This may be true ; 1 would 
 not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my 
 own. I heartily wish him more energy ; I wish him the 
 same success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to 
 myself which he may unfortunately want ; and these 
 supplied me with conscientious supports, which mere 
 personal interests might fail to supply to a mind debili- 
 tated by opium. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor*" conjectures that it may be as painful 
 to be -born as to die. I think it probable ; and, during 
 the whole period of diminishing the opium, I had the 
 torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence 
 into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of 
 physical regeneration, and, I may add, that ever since, 
 at intervals, I have had a restoration of more than 
 youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties, 
 which, in a less happy state of mind, I should have 
 called misfortunes. 
 
 One memorial of my former condition still remains ; 
 my dreams are not yet perfectly calm ; the dread swell 
 and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the 
 legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not 
 all departed ; my sleep is 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 dreadtul faces thronged and fieiy arms. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Thk proprietors of this little work having deter- 
 mined on reprinting it, some explanation seems called 
 for, to account for the non-appearance of a Third Part, 
 promised in the London Magazine of December last; 
 and the more so, because the proprietors, under whose 
 guarantee that promise was issued, might otherwise be 
 implicated in the blame — little or much — attached 
 to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the 
 author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the 
 exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropriates, 
 is a very dark question to his own judgment, and not 
 much illuminated by any of the masters on casuistry 
 whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one 
 hand, it seems generally agreed that a promise is bind- 
 ing in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is 
 made: for which reason it is that we see many per- 
 sons break promises without scruple that are made to a 
 whole nation, who keep their faith religiously in ah pri- 
 vate engagements, — breaches of promise towards the 
 stronger party being committed at a man's own peril : 
 on the pther hand, the only parties interested in the 
 promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a 
 
132 APPENDIX. 
 
 point of modesty in any author to believe as few as pos- 
 sible ; or perhaps only one, in which case any promise 
 imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shock- 
 mg to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, — the 
 author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of 
 all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay, 
 in the following account of his own condition from the 
 end of last year, when the engagement was made, up 
 nearly to the present time. For^ any purpose of self- 
 excuse, it might be sufficient to say, that intolerable 
 bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any 
 exertion of mind, more especially for such as demand 
 and presuppose a pleasurable and a genial state of feel- 
 ing; but, as a case that may by possibility contribute ri 
 trifle to the medical history of opium in a further stage 
 of its action than can often have been brought under the 
 notice of professional men, he has judged that it might 
 be acceptable to some readers to have it described more 
 at length. Fiat experimentum in corpore vUi is a just 
 rule where there is any reasonable presumption of ben- 
 efit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may 
 be, will admit of a doubt ; but there can be none as to 
 the value of the body, for a more worthless body than 
 his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is 
 his pride to believe, that it is the very ideal of a base, 
 crazy, despicable human system, that hardly ever could 
 have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under 
 the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of Lfe . and, 
 indoed, if that were the creditable way of disposmg 
 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 
 
APPENDIX. 138 
 
 sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a cumber 
 some periphrasis, the author will take the liberty o* 
 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 suffer- 
 ing necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of 
 surveying his own case as a cool spectator, aad a 
 degree of spirits for adequately describing it, which it 
 would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speak 
 ing from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, 
 because I, who had descended from so large a quantity 
 as eight thousand drops to so small a one (compara- 
 tively speaking) as a quantity ranging between three 
 hundred and one hundred and sixty 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 impres- 
 sion 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. 
 [n 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 neces- 
 sitj for making it was more apparent every month 
 
134 APPENDIX. 
 
 [n particular, I became aware of an increasing tallous* 
 ness or defect of sensibility in the stomach : and this 1 
 imagined might imply a schirrous state of that organ 
 either formed or forming. An eminent physician, 
 to whose kindness I was, at that time, deeply indebted, 
 informed me that such a termination of my case was not 
 impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different 
 termination, in the event of my continuing the use of 
 opium. Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure, 
 as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my 
 undivided attention and energy to this purpose. It was 
 not, however, until the 24th of June last that any toler- 
 able concurrence of facilities for such an attempt 
 arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having 
 previously settled in my own mind that I would not 
 flinch, but would " stand up to the scratch," under any 
 possible "punishment." I must premise, that about 
 one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty 
 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many 
 months. Occasionally I had run up as high as five 
 hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred. In re- 
 peated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone 
 as low as one hundred drops, but had found it impos- 
 sible to stand it beyond the fourth day, which, by the 
 way, 1 have always found more difficult to get over 
 than any of the preceding three. I went off under 
 easy sail — one hundred and thirty drops a day for 
 three days ; on the fourth I plunged at once to eighty 
 The misery which I now suffered "took the conceit" 
 out of me, at once ; and for about a month I continued 
 off and on about this mark ; then I sunk to sixty, and 
 the next day to — none at all. This was the first 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 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 twenty-five drops ; then abstained ; and 
 80 on. 
 
 Meantime, the symptoms which attended my case 
 for the first six weeks of the experiment were these : 
 enormous irritability and excitement of the whole sys- 
 tem ; the stomach, in particular, restored to a full 
 feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great 
 pain ; unceasing restlessness night and day ; sleep — I 
 scarcely knew what it was — three hours out of the 
 twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated 
 and shallow that I heard every sound that was near 
 me ; lower jaw constantly swelling ; mouth ulcerated ; 
 and many other distressing symptoms that would be 
 tedious to repeat, amongst which, however, I must men- 
 tion one, because it had never failed to accompany any 
 attempt to renounce opium, — namely, violent sternu- 
 tation. This now became exceedingly troublesome ; 
 sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and recurring 
 at least twice or three times a day. I was not much 
 surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewhere 
 heard or read, that the membrane which lines the nos- 
 trils is a prolongation of that which lines the stomach ; 
 whence, I believe, are explained the inflammatory ap- 
 pearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The 
 sudf'tin 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 
 
136 APPENDIX 
 
 through which 1 had taken opium, I had never once 
 caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest 
 cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a 
 cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a 
 
 letter begun about this time to , I find these 
 
 words : — " Yofl" ask me to write the . Do 
 
 you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of Thierry 
 and Theodoret? There you will see my case as to 
 sleep; nor is it much of an exaggeration in other 
 features. I protest to you that I have a greater influx 
 of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year 
 under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the 
 thoughts which had been frozen up for a decade of 
 years by opium had now, according to the old fable, 
 been thawed at once, such a multitude stream in upon 
 me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and 
 hideous irritability, that, for one which I detain and 
 write down, fifty escape me. In spite of my weariness 
 from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or 
 sit for two minutes together. ' I nwK, et versus tecum 
 meditare canoros.' " 
 
 At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbor- 
 mg surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see 
 me. In the evening he came, and after briefly stating 
 the case to him, I asked this question : Whether he 
 did not think that the opium might have acted as a 
 stimulus to the digestive organs ; and that the present 
 state of suffering in the stomach, which manifestly was 
 the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise from 
 indigestion ? His answer was, — No : on the contrary, 
 he thought that the suflTering was caused by digestion 
 itself which should naturally go on below thn con- 
 
IST 
 
 BCiousness, but which, from the unnatural state of the 
 stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was be- 
 come distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausi- 
 ble, and the unintermitting nature of the suffering dis- 
 poses me to think that it was true ; for, if it had 
 been any mere irregular affection of the stomach, it 
 should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and con- 
 stantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature, 
 as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is, to with- 
 draw 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 sur- 
 geon, I tried bitters. For a short time these greatly 
 mitigated the feelings under which 1 labored ; but 
 about the forty-second day of the experiment the 
 symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new 
 ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting 
 class ; under these, with but a few intervals of remis- 
 sion, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss 
 them undescribed for two reasons : first, because the 
 mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any suffer- 
 ings from which it is removed by too short or by no 
 interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make 
 the review of any use, would be indeed " infandum 
 renovare dolorem" and possibly without a sufficient 
 motive : for, 2dly, I doubt whether this latter state be 
 any way referable to opium, positively considered, oi 
 even negatively ; that is, whether it is to be numbered 
 amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, 
 yc f-ven amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a 
 
138 ' APPENDIX. 
 
 want of opium in a system long deranged by its use 
 Certainly one part of the symptoms might be ac 
 counted for from the time of year (August); for 
 though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case 
 the sum of all the heat funded (if one may say so) 
 during the previous months, added to the existing heat 
 of that month, naturally renders August in its better 
 half the hottest part of the year; and it so happened 
 that the excessive perspiration, which even at Christmas 
 attends any great reduction in the daily quantum of 
 opium, and which in July was so violent as to oblige 
 me to use a bath five or six times a day, had about the 
 setting in of the hottest season wholly retired, on which 
 account any bad effect of the heat might be the more 
 unmitigated. Another symptom, namely, 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 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 connection with the latter stage of my bodily 
 
 * 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 
 \iave been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with 
 any house in this mountainous district which is wholly water- 
 proof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on 
 just principles in this country ; but for any other architecture, it is 
 in a barbarou'3 state, and, what is worse, in a retroifradc state 
 
APPENDIX. 139 
 
 wretchedness — (except, indeed, as an occasional cause, 
 as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus 
 predisposed to any mal-influence whatever), — I wil- 
 lingly spare my reader all description of it : let it perish 
 to him ; and would that I could as easily say, let it per- 
 ish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of 
 tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of 
 possible human misery ! 
 
 So much for the sequel of my experiment ; as to the 
 former stage, in which properly lies the experiment and 
 its application to other cases, I must request my reader 
 not to forget the treasons 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 inten- 
 tions, in consequence of the torpor of mind, pain of body, 
 »nd extreme disgust to the subject, which besieged me 
 whilst writing that part of my paper ; which part being 
 immediately sent oflT to the press (distant about five 
 degrees of latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. 
 But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evi- 
 dent 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 sufierings than an 
 ordinary resolution may support ; and by a pretty rapid 
 course* of descent. 
 
 ♦ On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid, 
 and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated ; or rather, per- 
 luips, it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. 
 But, that the reader may judge for himself, and, ahoFe 9II, that 
 
140 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 To communicate this result of my experiment, was 
 my foremost purpose. 2dly, as a purpose collateral tc 
 
 the opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may 
 aave every sort of iDformation before him, I subjoin my diary.^ 
 
 FIKBT WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Laud. 
 lUond. June 24 130 
 
 BECOND WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Lauc 
 .... 80 
 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 23 
 29 
 30 
 
 140 
 130 
 80 
 80 
 80 
 80 
 
 Mond. July 1 
 
 " 2 
 
 " 3 
 
 " 4 
 
 " S 
 
 " 6 
 
 " 7 
 
 . 80 
 , 90 
 100 
 SO 
 80 
 80 
 
 THIRD WEEK. FOUETH WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Land. Drops of Laud. 
 Uond. July 8 300 Mond. July 15 76 
 
 50 
 
 Hiatus in 
 MS. 
 
 .76 
 
 16 
 17 
 13 
 19 
 20 
 21 
 
 . 73i 
 . 73i 
 . 70 
 .240 
 . 80 
 .360 
 
 FIFTH WEEK. 
 
 Drops of Layd. 
 
 Mond. July 22 60 
 
 " 23 none 
 
 " 24 none 
 
 " 25 none 
 
 " 26 200 
 
 " 27 none 
 
 What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to 
 Buch numbers as 300, 350, &c. 7 The impulse to these relapses waa 
 mere infirmity of purpose ; the motive, where any motive blended 
 with this impulse, was either the principle of " remler pour mieui 
 .TO-jiir — (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a 
 day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which, on awaking, 
 mnnd itself nartiv .ic^ iistnni»d tn this new ration), or else it wai! 
 
AFFENDIX. l41 
 
 this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible 
 for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany 
 this republication : for during the very time of this 
 experiment, the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent 
 to me from London ; and such was my inability to 
 expand or to improve them, that I could not even ben r 
 to read them over with attention enough to notice the 
 press errors, or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. 
 These were my reasons for troubling my reader with 
 any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so 
 truly base a subject as my own body ; and I am ear- 
 nest with the reader, that he will not forget them, or so 
 far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would 
 condescend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or, 
 indeed, for any less object than that of general benefit 
 to others. Such an animal as the self-observing vale- 
 tudinarian, I know there is. I have met him myself 
 occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imagin- 
 able heaviontimoroumeiws ; 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 undigni- 
 fied and selfish habit, that 1 could as little condescend 
 to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor 
 servant-girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad 
 or other making love at the back of my house. Is it 
 for a Transcendental philosopher to feel any curiosity 
 
 ihis principle —that of sufTerings otherwise equal, those will oe 
 home lest which meet with a mood of anger j now, whenever I 
 ascended to any large dose, I was furiously incensed on the follow 
 inc! day, and could then have borne anything. 
 
142 APPENDIX. 
 
 on such an occasion ? Or can I, whose life is worth 
 only eight and a half years' purchase, he supposed 
 to have leisure for such trivial employments ? How 
 ever, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing 
 which will, perhaps, shock some readers; but I am 
 sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on 
 which I say it. No man, 1 suppose, employs much of 
 his time on the phenomena of his own body without 
 some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so 
 far from looking upon mine with any complacency or 
 regard, I hate it and make it the object of my bitter 
 ridicule and contempt ; and I should not be displeased 
 to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts 
 upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might here- 
 after fall upon it. And in testification of my sincerity 
 in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like 
 other men, I have particular fancies about the place of 
 my burial; having lived chiefly in a mountainous re- 
 gion, 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 
 repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Go] 
 gothas 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 1 will 
 take care that mine shall be legally secured to them 
 — that is, as soon as I have done with it myself. Let 
 them not hesitate to express their wishes upon any 
 scruples of false delxacy and consideration for my 
 feelings ; I assure them that they will do me too much 
 honor by " demonstrating " on such a crazy body as 
 
APPENDIX. 143 
 
 mine ; and it will give me pleasure to anticipate this 
 posthumous revenge and insult inflicted upon that which 
 has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such be- 
 quests are not common ; reversionary benefits contingent 
 upon the death of the testator are indeed dangerous to 
 announce in many cases. Of this we have a remarka- 
 ble instance in the habits of a Roman prince, who used, 
 upon any notification made to him by rich persons, that 
 they had left him a handsome estate in their wills, to 
 express his entire satisfaction at such arrangements, and 
 his gracious acceptance of those royal legacies ; but then, 
 if the testators neglected to give him immediate posses- 
 sion of the property, — if they traitorously " persisted in 
 living " (si vivere perseverarent, as Suetonius expresses 
 it), he was highly provoked, and took his measures 
 accordingly. lu those times, and from one of the worst 
 of the Csesars, we might expect such conduct ; but 1 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. 80M 1822. 
 
SUSPIRIA DB PROFUNDIS: 
 
 BEINQ A SEQDEL TO THE 
 
 (X)NFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIDM-EATEH 
 
 10 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUISDIS: 
 
 BEma A SEQUEL TO THE 
 
 "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEB." 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work, — in 
 1822, as a separate volume, — appeared the "ConfeS" 
 sions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that 
 work was to reveal something of the grandeur which 
 belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever may 
 be the number of those in whom this faculty of dream- 
 ing splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not 
 perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He 
 whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen, 
 and the condition of human life, which yokes so vast a 
 majority to a daily experience incompatible with much 
 elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of 
 grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even 
 for those whose minds are populous with solemn im- 
 agery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must 
 have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in 
 the first place, and even this, where it exists strongly 
 
148 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 is too much liable to disturbance from tho gathering 
 agitation of our present English life. Already, in this 
 year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years 
 of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the 
 earth, what by the continual development of vast 
 physical agencies, — steam in all its applic-ationSj light 
 getting under harness as a slave for man,* powers 
 from heaven descending upon education and accelera- 
 tions of the press, powers from hell (as it might seem 
 but these also celestial) commg round upon artillery 
 and the forces of destruction, — the eye of the calmesf 
 observer is troubled ; the brain is haunted as if by 
 some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us • 
 and it becomes too evident that, unless this colossal 
 pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be 
 expected), or, which is happily more probable, can be met 
 by counter forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in 
 the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that 
 shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so 
 perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely 
 human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic 
 a tumult must be to evil ; for some minds to lunacy, 
 for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much 
 this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too 
 exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat 
 the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen 
 in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in 
 varied company. The word dissipation, in one of its 
 uses, expresses that effect; the action of thought and 
 feeling is toe ranch dissipated and squandered. Tc 
 
 * Dagurrrentype, &c. 
 
OF AN ENKLISH OPIUM-EATER. 149 
 
 reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity 
 IS felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring 
 from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities 
 of his own intellect who does not at least checker his 
 •ife with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. 
 Or, if not true in that rigor of expression, to this formula 
 undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must approx- 
 imate. 
 
 Among the powers in man which suffer by this too 
 intense life of the socied instincts, none suffers more than 
 the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. 
 The machinery for dreaming planted in the human 
 brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in 
 alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great 
 tube through which man communicates with the shad- 
 owy. And the dreaming organ, in connection with the 
 heart, the eye and the ear, compose the magnificent 
 apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers 
 of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from 
 eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping 
 mind. 
 
 But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, 
 which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the 
 other hand, it is certain that some merely physical agen- 
 cies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost 
 pretematurally. Amongst these is intense exercise ; to 
 some extent at least, and for some persons ; but beyond 
 dll others is opium, which indeed seems to possess a spe- 
 cific power in that direction ; not merely for exalting thi " 
 colors of dream-scenery, but for deepening its shadows, 
 and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful 
 realities. 
 
50 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 The Opium Confessions were written with some slight 
 secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of 
 opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much more with 
 the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the out- 
 line of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a 
 reader acquainted with the true object of the Confes- 
 sions as here stated, namely, the revelation of dreaming 
 to have put this question : 
 
 " But how came you to dream more splendidly than 
 others ? " 
 
 The answer would kave been — 
 
 " Because {prcBmissis preemittendis) 1 took excessive 
 quantities of opium." 
 
 Secondly, suppose him to say, " But how came you 
 to take opium in this excess ? " 
 
 The answer to that would be, " Because some early 
 events m my life had left a weakness in one organ 
 which required (or seemed to require) that stimu- 
 lant." 
 
 Then, because the opium dreams could not always 
 have been understood without a knowledge of these 
 events, it became necessary to relate them. Now, these 
 two questions and answers exhibit the law of the work ; 
 that is, the principle which determined its form, but pre- 
 cisely in the inverse or regressive order. The work 
 itself opened with the narration of my early adventures. 
 These, in the natural order of succession, led to the opium 
 Bs a resource for healing their consequences ; and the 
 opium as naturally led to the dreams. But in the syn- 
 thetic order of presenting the facts, what stood last in 
 the successioE of development stood first in the order of 
 tny purposes 
 
OF 4N ENGLISH Ol'IUM-EATEK. 15] 
 
 At the close of this little work, the reader was in- 
 btructed to believe, and trvly instructed, that I had 
 mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is, that 
 twice I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodi- 
 gious in the second of these cases than in the first. 
 But one error I committed in both. I did not connect 
 with the abstinence from opium, so trying to the forti- 
 tude under any circumstances, that enormity of excess 
 which (as I have since learned) is the one sole re- 
 source for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those 
 days, the one sine qua rum for making the triumph 
 permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third 
 time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the over- 
 sight as to exercise), partly from other causes, on which 
 it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moral- 
 ize, if I chose ; and perhaps he will moralize, whether 
 I choose it or not. But, in the mean time, neither of 
 us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of 
 the case : I, from natural bias of judgment, not alto- 
 gether acquainted; and he (with his permission) not 
 at all. 
 
 During this third prostration before the dark idol, 
 and after some years, new and monstrous phenomena 
 began slowly to arise. For a time, these were neg- 
 lected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as 
 I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from 
 myself that thebe dreadful symptoms were moving 
 forward forever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and 
 equably increasing, I endeavored, with some feeling 
 of panic, for a third time to retrace my steps. But 
 [ had not reversed my motions for many weeks, 
 before 1 became profoundly aware that this was im» 
 
•,62 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 possible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which trans- 
 lated everything into their own language, I saw through 
 vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress 
 which hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at 
 last barred against my retreat, and hung with funeraJ 
 crape. 
 
 As applicable to this tremendous situation (the situa- 
 tion of one escaping by some refluent current from the 
 maelstrom roaring for him in the distance, who finds 
 suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling 
 round upon the same maelstrom), I have since remem- 
 bered a striking incident in a modern novel. A lady 
 abbess of a convent, herself suspected of Protestant 
 leanings, and in that way already disarmed of all 
 effectual power, finds one of her own nuns (whom she 
 knows to be innocent) accused of an offence leading 
 to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be 
 immured alive, if she is found guilty ; and there is no 
 chance that she will not, for the evidence against her is 
 strong, unless something were made known that cannot 
 be made known ; and the judges are hostile. All fol- 
 lows in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses 
 depose ; the evidence is without effectual contradiction : 
 the conviction is declared ; the judgment is delivered ; 
 nothing remains but to see execution done. At this 
 crisis, the abbess, alarmed too late for effectual interpo- 
 sition, considers with herself that, according to the reg- 
 ular forms, there will be one single night open, during 
 which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her ovo 
 separate jurisdiction. This one night, therefore, she 
 will use, at any hazard to herself, for the salvation of 
 her friend. At midnight, when all is hushed in th« 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 153 
 
 com ent, the lady traverses the passages which lead to 
 the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under 
 her professional habit. As this will open every door in 
 every corridor, already, by anticipation, she feels the 
 luxury of holding her emancipated friend within her 
 arms. Suddenly she has reached the door ; she descries 
 B dusky object ; she raises her lamp, and, ranged within 
 the recess of the entrance, she beholds the funeral ban- 
 ner of the holy office, and the black robes of its inexor- 
 able officials. 
 
 I apprehend that, in a situation such as this, suppos- 
 ing it a real one, the lady abbess would not start, would 
 not show any marks externally of consternation or 
 horror. The case was beyond that. The sentiment 
 which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost 
 silently is gathered up into the heart ; it is too deep for 
 gestures or for words ; and no part of it passes to the 
 outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any 
 point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, 
 and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is under- 
 stood to be absolute, where sympathy cannot be conso- 
 lation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. 
 The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the 
 spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at 
 least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung 
 with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, 
 spoke not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound 
 sigh ascended from ray heart, and I was silent for 
 days. 
 
 It is the record of this third or final stage of opium, 
 Bs one differing in something more than degree from 
 the others, that I am now undertaking. But a. scruple 
 
154 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 arises as to the true interpretation of these final symp- 
 toms. 1 have elsewhere explained, that it was no 
 particular purpose of mine, and why it was no par- 
 ticular purpose, to warn other opium-eaters. Still, as 
 eome few persons may use the record in that way, it 
 becomes a matter of interest to ascertain how far it 
 is likely, that, even with the same excesses, other 
 dpium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do 
 not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosjm- 
 crasy in myself. Possibly every man has an idiosyn- 
 crasy. In some things, undoubtedly, he has. For no 
 man ever yet resembled another man so far, as not to 
 differ from him in features innumerable of his inner 
 nature. But what I point to are not peculiarities of 
 temperament or of organization, so much as peculiar 
 circumstances and incidents through which my own 
 separate experience had revolved. Some of these were 
 of a nature to alter the whole economy of my mind. 
 Great convulsions, from whatever cause, — from con- 
 science, from fear, from grief, from struggles of the 
 will, — sometimes, in passing away themselves, do not 
 carry off the changes which they have worked. All 
 the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have 
 threaded in his life, he neither ought to report, not 
 wuld report. But one which affected my childhood is 
 a privileged exception. It is privileged as a proper 
 eommunication for a stranger's ear; because, though 
 relating to a man's proper self, it is a self so far 
 removed from his present self as to wound no feel- 
 ings of delicacy or just reserve. It is privileged, also, 
 as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. 
 kxi adult sympathizes with himself m childhood 
 
OF AN ENOLISH OPIUM-EATER. 155 
 
 because he is *he same, and because (being ihe same) 
 yet he is not the same. He acknowledges the deep, 
 mysterious identity between himself, as adult and 
 as infant, for the ground of his sympathy; and yet, 
 with this general agreement, and necessity of agree 
 ment, he feels the differences between his two selves 
 as the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities 
 the infirmities, as they arise to light in his young fore- 
 runner, which now, perhaps, he does not share ; he 
 looks indulgently upon the errors of the understanding, 
 OT limitations of view which now he has long survived ; 
 and sometimes, also, he honors in the infant that recti- 
 tude of will which, under some temptations, he may 
 since have felt it so difficult to maintain. 
 
 The particular case to which I refer in my own child- 
 hood was one of intolerable grief; a trial, in fact, 
 more severe than many people at any age are called 
 upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands 
 to my latter opium experiences is this : — Those vast 
 clouds of gloomy grandeur which overhung my dreams 
 at all stages of opium, but which grew into the darkest 
 of miseries in the last, and that haunting of the human 
 face, which latterly towered into a curse, — were they 
 not partly derived from this childish experience ? It 
 is certain that, from the essential solitude in which 
 my childhood was passed ; from the depth of my sen- 
 sibility ; from the exaltation of this by the resistance of 
 an intellect too prematurely developed ; it resulted that 
 the terrific grief which I passed through drove a shaft 
 (or me into the worlds of death and darkness which 
 never again closed, and through which it might be said 
 '■hat I ascended and descended at will, according to the 
 
15fi A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESS DNT 
 
 temper of my spirits. Some of the phenomena devel- 
 oped in my dream-scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeal 
 the experiences of childhood; and others seem likely 
 to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at 
 that time sown. 
 
 The reasons, therefore, for prefixing some account 
 of a " passage " in childhood to this record of a dread- 
 ful visitation from opium excess are, 1st, That, in 
 coloring, it harmonizes with that record, and, there- 
 fore, is related to it at least in point of feeling ; 2dly, 
 That, possibly, it was in part the origin of some features 
 in that record, and so far is related to it in logic; 
 3dly, That, the final assault of opium being of a nature 
 to challenge the attention of medical men, it is import- 
 ant to clear away all doubts and scruples which can 
 gather about the roots of such a malady. Was it 
 opium, or was it opium in combination with something 
 else, that raised these storms ? 
 
 Some cynical reader will object, that for this last 
 purpose it would have been sufficient to state the fact, 
 without rehearsing in exteitso the particulars of that 
 case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness 
 (for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have- 
 more discernment; and he will perceive that it is not 
 for the mere facts that the case is reported, but be 
 cause these facts move through a wilderness of natural 
 thoughts or feelings : some in the child who suffers , 
 some in the man who reports ; but all so far interesting 
 as they relate to solemn objects. Meantime, the objec- 
 tion of the sullen critic reminds me of a scene some- 
 times beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself 
 an energetic tourist, who protests everywhere that he 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPItJM-EATEE. IST 
 
 eomes only to see the lakes. He has no business what- 
 ever ; he is not searching for any recreant indorser of 
 a bill, but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet 
 <his man adjures every landlord, " by the virtue of his 
 oath," to tell him, and, as he hopes for peace in this 
 world, to tell him truly, which is the nearest road to 
 Keswick. Next, he applies to the postilions, — the 
 Westmoreland postilions always fly down hills at full 
 stretch without locking, — but, nevertheless, in the full 
 career of their fiery race, our picturesque man lets 
 down the glasses, pulls up four horses and two postil- 
 ions, at the risk of six necks and twenty legs, adjuring 
 them to reveal whether they are taking the shortest 
 road. Finally, he descries my unworthy self upon the 
 road ; and, instantly stopping his flying equipage, he 
 demands of me (as one whom he believes to be a 
 scholar and a man of honor) whether there is not, 
 in the possibility of things, a shorter cut to Keswick. 
 Now, the answer which rises to the lips of landlord, 
 two postilions, and myself, is this : " Most excellent 
 stranger, as you come to the lakes simply to see 
 their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after 
 the most beautiful road, rather than the shortest? 
 Because, if abstract shortness, if to brevity, is your 
 object, then the shortest of all possible tours would 
 seem, with submission, never to have left London." 
 On the same principle, I tell my critic that the whole 
 course of this narrative resembles, and was meant to 
 resemble, a caducous wreathed about with meandering 
 ornaments, or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round 
 md surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant 
 The mere medical subject of the opium answers tc 
 
15S A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSieNS 
 
 the dry, withered pole, which shoots all the rings 
 of the flowering plants, and seems to do so by some 
 dexterity of its own ; whereas, in fact, the plant and 
 Its tendrils have curled round the sullen cylinder by 
 mere luxuriance of theirs. Just as in Cheapside, if 
 you look right and left, the streets so narrow, that lead 
 off at right angles, seem quarried and blasted out of 
 some Babylonian brick-kiln; bored, not raised artifi- 
 cially by the builder's hand. But, if you inquire of 
 the worthy men who live in that neighborhood, you 
 will find it unanimously deposed — that not the streets 
 were quarried out of the bricks, but, on the contrary 
 (most ridiculous as it seems), that the bricks have 
 supervened upon the streets. 
 
 The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks, but 
 those cursed bricks came to imprison the streets. 
 So, also, the ugly pole — hop-pole, vine-pole, espa- 
 lier, no matter what — is there only for support. Not 
 the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the 
 flowers. Upon the same analogy, view me as one 
 (in the words of a true and most impassioned poet *) 
 " viridantem jkrrUms hastas " — making verdant, and 
 gay with the life of flowers, murderous spears and 
 halberts — things that express death in their origin 
 (being made from dead substances that once had lived 
 in forests), things that express ruin in their use. The 
 true object in my " Opium Confessions " is not the 
 naked physiological theme, — on the contrary, that is 
 the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert, — but 
 those wandering musical variations upon the theme, — 
 
 • Valerias F.accus. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 159 
 
 those parasitical thoughts, feelings, digressions, which 
 climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid 
 stock; ramble away from it at times with perhaps 
 too rank a luxuriance; but at the same time, by the 
 eternal interest attached to the subjects of these digres- 
 sions, no matter what were the execution, spread a 
 glory over incidents that for themselves would be - 
 less than nothing. 
 
160 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity 
 that any indirect traits of vanity should even seem to 
 creep into records of profound passion ; and yet, on the 
 other hand, it is so impossible, without an unnatural 
 restraint upon the freedom of the narrative, to prevent 
 oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circum- 
 stances of luxury or elegance as did really surround 
 wy childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to 
 tell him, from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in 
 what order of society my family moved at the time 
 from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Other- 
 wise it would happen that, merely by moving truly 
 and faithfully through the circumstances of this early 
 experience, I could hardly prevent the reader from 
 receiving an impression as of some higher \ rank than 
 did really belong to my family. My father was a 
 merchant ; not in the sense of Scotland, whore it 
 means a man who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the 
 English sense, a sense severely exclusive — namely, 
 he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no 
 other ; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other, 
 — which last circumstance it is important to mention, 
 be;ause it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's 
 
Ot iN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 16] 
 
 condescending distinction * — as one to be despised, 
 certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by 
 a Roman senator. He — this imperfectly despicable 
 man — died at an early age, and very soon after the 
 incidents here recorded, leaving to his family, then 
 consisting of a wife and six children, an unburthened 
 estate producing exactly £1600 a year. Naturally, 
 therefore, at the date of my narrative, — if narrative it 
 can be called, — he had an income still larger, from the 
 addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any 
 man who is acquainted with commercial life, but, above 
 all, with such life in England, it will readily occur that 
 in an opulent English family of that class, — opulent, 
 though not rich in a mercantile estimate, — the domes- 
 tic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality 
 altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders 
 in foreign nations. Whether as to the establishment of 
 servants, or as to the provision made for the comfort of 
 all its members, such a household not uncommonly 
 eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer 
 classes of our nobility, though the most splendid in 
 Europe — a fact which, since the period of my infancy, 
 I have had many personal opportunities for verifying 
 both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar 
 anomaly, affecting the domestic economy of merchants, 
 there arises a disturbance upon the general scale of 
 outward signs by which we measure the relations of 
 rank. The equation, so to speak, between one order 
 
 * Cicero, in a well-known passage of his Ethics, speaks of trade 
 as irredeemably base, if petty ; but as not so absolutely felonious, 
 if wholesale. He gives a real merchant (one who is such in the 
 Rnelis'' sense) leave to think himsel'' a shade above small beei". 
 11 
 
162 A SEaUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 of society and another, which usually tra-oels in the nat- 
 ural line of their comparative expenditure, is here inter- 
 rupted and defeated, so that one rank would be collected 
 from the name of the occupation, and another rank, 
 much higher, from the splendor of the domestic nUnage. 
 I warn the reader, therefore (or, rather, my explanation 
 has already warned him), that he is not to infer, from 
 any casual gleam of luxury or elegance, a corresponding 
 elevation of rank. 
 
 We, the children of the house, stood in fact upon the 
 very happiest tier in the scaffolding of society for all 
 good influences. The prayer of Agar — "Give me 
 neither poverty nor riches " — was realized for us. 
 That blessing had we, being neither too high nor too 
 low : high enough we were to see models of good 
 manners ; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of 
 solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of 
 wealth, extra means of health, of intellectual culture, 
 and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we knew 
 nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the 
 consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into 
 restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspir- 
 ing, we had no motives for shame, we had none fox 
 pride. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst 
 luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan 
 simplicity of diet, — that we fared; in fact, very much 
 less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the 
 model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should 
 return thanks to Providence for all the separate bless- 
 ings of my early situation, these four I would single 
 out as chiefly worthy to be commemorated-^ that I 
 lived in the country ; that I lived in s»)litude , that my 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 16,'f 
 
 infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, 
 not by horrid pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and they 
 were dutiful children, of a pure, holy, and magnificent 
 church. 
 
 The earliest incidents in my life which affected me 
 so deeply as to be rememberable at this day were two, 
 and both before I could have completed my second year ; 
 namely, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a 
 favorite nurse, which is interesting for a reason to be 
 noticed hereafter; and, secondly, the fact of having con- 
 nected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, 
 very early in the spring, of some crocuses. This I 
 mention as inexplicable, for such annual resurrections of 
 plants and flowers affect us only as memorials, or sug- 
 gestions of a higher change, and therefore in connection 
 with the idea of death ; but of death I could, at that 
 time, have had no experience whatever. 
 
 This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two 
 eldest sisters — eldest of three then living, and also elder 
 than myself — were summoned to an early death. The 
 first who died was Jane, about a year older than my- 
 self. She was three and a half, I two and a half, phis 
 or minus some trifle that I do not recollect. But death 
 was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not 
 so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplex- 
 ity. There was another death in the house about 
 the same time, namely, of a maternal grandmother ; but 
 as she had in a manner come to us for the express 
 purpose of dying in her daughter's society, and from 
 illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery party 
 
Itil A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by 
 the death (which I witnessed) of a favorite bird, namely, 
 a kina:fisher who had been injured by an accident. 
 With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as 
 I have said, less sorrowful than unintelligible) there 
 was, however, connected an incident which made a 
 most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my 
 tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond 
 what would seem credible for my years. If there was 
 one thing in this world from which, more than from 
 any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutal- 
 ity and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the family 
 that a woman-servant, who by accident was dravvn off 
 from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a 
 day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, 
 if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened 
 within two days of her death, ho that the occasion of it 
 must have been some fretfulness in the poor child 
 caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense 
 of awe diffused through the family. I believe the 
 story never reached my mother, and possibly it was 
 exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. 1 
 did not often see the person charged with this cruelty ; 
 but, when I did, my eyes sought the ground ; nor 
 could 1 have borne to look her in the face — not 
 through anger; and as to vindictive thoughts, how 
 could these lodge in a powerless infant ? The feeling 
 which fell upon me was a shuddering awe, as upon a 
 first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil 
 ind strife. Though born in a large town, I had passed 
 the whole of my childhood, except for the few earliest 
 weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 16b 
 
 sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, 
 and shut up forever in a silent garden from all knowl- 
 edge of poverty, or oppression, or outrage, I had not 
 suspected until this moment the true complexion of the 
 world in which myself and my sisters were living. 
 Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have 
 changed greatly ; for so representative are some acts, 
 that one single case of the 'class is sufficient to throw 
 open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in 
 that direction. I never heard that the woman, accused 
 of this cruelty, took it at all to heart, even after the 
 event which so immediately succeeded had reflected 
 upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other hand, I 
 knew of a case, and will pause to mention it, where a 
 mere semblance and shadow of such cruelty, under sim 
 liar circumstances, inflicted the grief of self-reproach 
 through the remainder of life. A boy, interesting in 
 his appearance, as also from his remarkable docility, was 
 attacked, on a cold day of spring, by a complaiilt of the 
 trachea — not precisely croup, but like it. He was 
 three years old, and had been ill perhaps for four 
 days ; but at intervals had been in high spirits, and 
 capable of playing. This sunshine, gleaming through 
 dark clouds, had continued even on the fourth day ; 
 and from nine to eleven o'clock at night he had showed 
 more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant, 
 hearing of his illness, had called to see him ; and her 
 mode of talking with him had excited all the joyou? 
 ness of his nature. About midnight, his mother, fancy- 
 ing that his feet felt cold, was muffling them up in 
 flannels ; and, as he seemed to resist her a little, she 
 struck lightly on the sole of one foot as a mode of 
 
166 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 admoniahing him to be quiet. He did not repeat his 
 motion ; and in less than a minute his mother had him 
 in her arms with his face looking upwards. " What is 
 the meaning," she exclaimed, in sudden affright, "of 
 this strange repose settling upon his features ? " She 
 called loudly to a servant in another room ; but before 
 the servant could reach her, the child had drawn two 
 inspirations, deep, yet gentle — and had died in his 
 mother's arms ! Upon this, the poor afflicted lady made 
 the discovery that those struggles, which she had sup- 
 posed to be expressions of resistance to herself, were the 
 struggles of departing life. It followed, or seemed to 
 follow, that with these final struggles had blended an 
 expression, on her part, of displeasure. Doubtless the 
 child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother 
 could never look back to that incident without self- 
 reproach. And seven years after, when her own death 
 happened, no progress had been made in reconciling her 
 thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have 
 viewed as an offence. 
 
 So passed away from earth one out of those sisterb 
 that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my 
 acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with 
 mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality 
 than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; 
 but, perhaps, she would come back. Happy interval of 
 heaven-born ignorance ! Gracious immunity of infancy 
 from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was 
 sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart 1 
 trusted that she would come again. Summer and 
 winter came again — crocuses and roses ; why not little 
 Jane? 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 16T 
 
 Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my 
 infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble 
 Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy 
 sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a 
 tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy 
 premature intellectual grandeur, — thou whose head, for 
 its superb developments, was the astonishment of sci- 
 ence, * — thou next, but after an interval of happy 
 years, thou also wert summoned away from our nurs- 
 ery ; and the night which, for me, gathered upon that 
 event, ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at 
 this day I resemble little_ for good or for ill that which 
 else I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go 
 before me to guide and to quicken, — pillar of dark* 
 ness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, 
 
 *" The astonishment of science." — Her medical attendants were 
 Dt, Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a cor- 
 respondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White, 
 a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced lier head 
 to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had 
 ever seen, — an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated 
 in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaint- 
 ince with the subject may be presumed from this, that he wrote and 
 published a work on the human skull, supported by many measure- 
 ments which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of 
 the human species. Meantime, as I would be loath that any trait 
 of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will 
 candidly admit that she died of hydrocephalus ; and it has been 
 often supposed that the premature expaiision of the intellect in 
 cases of that class is altogether morbid, — forced on, in fact, by the 
 mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a 
 possibility, the very inverse order of relation between the disease 
 and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always 
 have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect ; but, on tkr 
 contrary, this growth coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the 
 «ipa;tties of the physical structure, may have caused the disease. 
 
168 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my 
 young heart, — in what scales should I weigh thee ? Was 
 the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence, or the 
 blight which followed thy departure ? Can a man weigh 
 off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness 
 of hurricane ? Or, if he could, how is it that, when a 
 memorable love has been followed by a memorable be- 
 reavement, even suppose that God would replace the suf- 
 ferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience, 
 and offer to cancel the woe, but so that the sweet face 
 which had caused the woe should also be obliterated, 
 vehemently would every man shrink from the exchange ! 
 In the Paradise Lost, this strong instinct of man, to pre- 
 fer the heavenly, mixed and polluted with the earthly, to 
 a level experience offering neither one nor the other, is 
 divinely commemorated. What words of pathos are in 
 that speech of Adam's — " If God should make another 
 Eve," &c. ; that is, if God should replace him in his 
 primitive state, and should condescend to bring again a 
 second Eve, one that would listen to no temptation, still 
 that original partner of his earliest solitude — 
 
 " Creature in whom excelled 
 Whatever can to sight or thought be formed. 
 Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet" — 
 
 even now, when she appeared in league with an eternity 
 of woe, and ministering to his ruin, could not be dis- 
 placed for him by any better or happier Eve. " Loss 
 jf thee ! '• he exclaims, in this anguish of trial — 
 
 " Loss of thee 
 Would never from my heart ; do, no, I feel 
 The link of natu s draw me ; flesh of flesh. 
 
OF AW ENGLISH OPnJM-EATEH. 169 
 
 Bone of my bone thou art ; and from thy state 
 Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe." * 
 
 But what was it that drew my heart, by gravitation 
 <>o strong, to my sister ? Could a child, little above six 
 years of age, place any special value upon her intellect- 
 ual forwardness? Serene and capacious as her mind 
 appeared to me upon after review, was that a charm for 
 stealing away the heart of an infant ? O, no ! I think of 
 it Tvaw with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear 
 some justification to the excess of my fondness. But 
 then it was lost upon me ; or, if not lost, was but dimly 
 perceived. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not 
 the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious 
 heart overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with ten- 
 derness, and stung, even as mine was stung, by the 
 necessity of being loved. This it was whiah crowned 
 thee with beauty — 
 
 "Love, the holy sense. 
 Best gift of God, in thee was most intense." 
 
 * Amongst the oversights in the Paradise Lost, some of which 
 hdve not yet been perceived, it is certainly one — that, by placing 
 in such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam 
 to his love for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the 
 guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say after 
 wards does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action ; 
 :evicwing it calmly, we condemn, but taking the impassioned sta- 
 tion of Adam at the moment of temptation, we approve in our 
 liearts. This was certainly an oversight ; but it was one very dif- 
 ficult to redress. I remember, amongst the many exquisite thoughts 
 of John Paul (Richter), one which strikes me as particularly touch- 
 ing, upon this subject. He suggests, not as any grave theological 
 comment, but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart, that, had 
 Adam conquered the anguish of separatiou as a pure sacrifice oi 
 obedience to God, bis reward would have been the pardon and 
 reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration 'r =^Tl^cenc<^. 
 
170 A SEqTJEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me 
 which shono so steadily in thee ; and never but to thee 
 only, never again since thy departure, durst I utter the 
 feelings which possessed me. For I was the shyest of 
 children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held 
 the back at all stages of life, from exposing the least 
 ray of feelings which I was not encouraged whoUy to 
 reveal. 
 
 It would be painful, and it is needless, to pursue the 
 course of that sickness which carried off my leader 
 and companion. She (according to my recollection at 
 this moment) was just as much above eight years as I 
 above six. And perhaps this natural precedency of 
 authority in judgment, and the tender humility with 
 which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the 
 fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday 
 evening, or so people fancied, that the spark of fatal 
 fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain 
 complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. 
 She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of 
 a laboring man, the father of an old female servant. 
 The sun had set when she returned in the company of 
 this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations 
 after a fervent day. From that time she sickened. 
 Happily, a child in such circumstances feels no anxie- 
 ties. Looking upon medical men as people whose 
 natural commission it is to heal diseases, since it is 
 iheir natural function to profess it, knowing them only 
 as ez officio privileged to make war upon pain and sick- 
 ness, I never had a misgiving about the result. I 
 grieved, indeed, that my sister should lie in bed , I 
 grieved still more sometimes to hear her moan. Bu» 
 
OS AN EKGLISH OPI0M-EATEK. 171 
 
 all this appeared to me no more than a night of trouble, 
 on which the dawn would soon arise. 0! moment 
 of darkness and delirium, when a nurse awakened me 
 from that delusion, and launched God's thunderbolt 
 at my heart in the assurance that my sister must die. 
 Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it " cannot 
 be remembered."^ Itself, as a remarkable thing, is 
 swallowed up in its own chaos. Mere anarchy and con- 
 fusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was, as 
 I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recall the 
 circumstances of that time, when my agony was at its 
 height, and hers in another sense was approaching. 
 Enough to say, that all was soon over ; and the morning 
 of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon 
 her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is 
 no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which 
 there is no consolation. 
 
 On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet 
 temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scru- 
 tiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once 
 more. Not for the world would I have made this 
 known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. 
 1 hid never heard of feelings that take the name of 
 " sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But 
 grief even in a child hates the light, and shrinks from 
 human eyes. The house was large; there were two 
 staircases; and by one of these I knew that about 
 noon, when all would be quiet, I could steal up into her 
 chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon 
 
 * " I stood in unimaginable trance 
 
 And agony, which cannot he remembered." ' 
 
 Speech of Mhadra, in Coleridge' h Remme. 
 
172 A SEQUEL TO THE CONPESSIONS 
 
 When 1 reaijhed the chamber door; it was locked bm ^ 
 the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the 
 door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which 
 ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the 
 silent walls. 1 hen turning round, I sought my sister's 
 face. But the bed had been moved, and the back was 
 now turned. Nothing met my eyes but one large 
 window wide open, through which the sun of midsum- 
 mer at noondpy was showering down torrents of splen- 
 dor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the 
 blue depths seemed the express types of infinity ; and it 
 was not possible for eye to behold or for heart to con- 
 ceive any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of 
 life. 
 
 Let rae pause for one instant in approaching a remem- 
 brance so affecting and revolutionary for my own mind, 
 and one which (if any earthly remembrance) will sur- 
 vive for me in the hour of death, — to remind some 
 readers, and to inform others, that in the original 
 Opium Confessions I endeavored to explain the reason * 
 why deaths cceteris paribus, is more profoundly affect- 
 ing in summer than in other parts of the year; so 
 far, at least, as it is liable to any modification at all 
 from accidents of scenery or season. The reason, as 
 I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the 
 tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark 
 sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the 
 grave we haunt with our thoughts ; the glory is around 
 us, the darkness is within us. And the two coming 
 into collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief 
 
 *Some readers will question the fact, and seek no reason Bet 
 did thev ever suft'er grief at any season of the year ? 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 173 
 
 But in my case there was even a subtler reason whj 
 the summer had this intense power of vivifying the 
 spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recolleciing 
 it, often I have been struck with the important trutli, 
 that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass 
 to us through perplexed combinations of concrete ob- 
 jects, pass to us as involutes (if I may com that woid'* 
 in compound experiences incapable of being di!<cn 
 tangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own 
 abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst our 
 nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated 
 with many pictures. And in long dark evenings, as 
 my three sisters with myself sate by the firelight round 
 the guard of our nursery, no book was so much in 
 request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as 
 mysteriously as music. One young nurse, whom we 
 all loved, before any candle was lighted, would often 
 strain her eye to read it for us; and, sometimes, 
 according to her simple powers, would endeavor to 
 explain what we found obscure. We, the children, 
 were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness ; 
 the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by 
 firelight suited our evening state of feelings ; and 
 they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and 
 mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the 
 story of a just man — man and yet not man, real 
 above all things, and yet shadowy above all things, 
 who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine — 
 slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. 
 The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differ- 
 ences in oriental climotes; and all these differences 
 (as it happens) express themselves in the great van- 
 
174 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESMONS 
 
 eties of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria 
 — those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the 
 disciples plucking the ears of corn — that must be 
 summer; but, above all, the very name of Palm Sun- 
 day (a festival in the English church) troubled me 
 like an anthem. " Sunday ! " what was that 1 That 
 was the day of peace which masked another peace 
 deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. 
 " Palms ! " what were they ? That was an equivo- 
 cal word ; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed 
 the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, 
 expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this 
 explanation does not suffice ; it was not merely by the 
 peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest 
 below all rest, and of ascending glory, that I had been 
 haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to 
 those . deep images both in time and in place. The 
 great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm 
 Sunday came ; and the scene of that Sunday was near 
 in place to Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem ? 
 Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) of the earth 1 
 That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, 
 and once for Delphi ; and both pretensions had become 
 ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. 
 Yes; but if not of the earth, for earth's tenant, Jeru- 
 salem was the omphalos of mortality. Yet how ? there, 
 on the contrary, it was, as we infants understood, that 
 mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but, 
 for that very reason, there it was that mortality had 
 opened iti. very gloomiest crater. There it was, indued, 
 that the human had risen on wings from the grave ; 
 but, foi that reason, there also ii was that the divine had 
 
01 .Uf ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 175 
 
 been swalloived up by the abyss; the lesser star could 
 not rise, before the greater would submit to eclipse. 
 Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death, 
 not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also through 
 intricate relations to scriptural scenery and events. 
 
 Out of this digression, which was almost necessary 
 for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feel- 
 ings and images of death were entangled with those 
 of summer, I return to the bed-chamber of my sister. 
 From the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the 
 corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure ; there the 
 angel face ; and, as people usually fancy, it was said 
 in the house that no features had suffered any change. 
 Had they not ? The forehead, indeed, — the serene and 
 noble forehead, — that might be the same; but the frozen 
 eyelids, the darlcness that seemed to steal from beneath 
 them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to 
 palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish, 
 
 — could these be mistaken for life ? Had it been so, 
 wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with 
 tears and never-ending kisses ? But so it was not. I 
 stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon 
 me ; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, 
 
 — the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful ! 
 that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept 
 the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many 
 times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is about 
 the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and 
 uttering the same hollow, solemn. Memnonian, but 
 samtly swell : it is in this world the one sole audible 
 symbol of eternity. And three times in my life I have 
 happened to hear the same sound in the same circum- 
 
176 A SEQUEL TO THL CONFF.SRIONS 
 
 istances, namely, when standing between an open win- 
 dow and a dead body on a summer day. 
 
 Instantly, when my ear caught this vast ^olian into- 
 nation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of 
 life, the pomps and glory of the heavens outside, and 
 turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread 
 my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me.. A 
 vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, 
 a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on 
 billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the 
 billows seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that 
 also ran before us and fled away continually. The 
 flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and 
 ever. Frost, gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of 
 death, seemed to repel me; I slept — for how long 
 1 cannot say : slowly I recovered my self-possession, 
 and found myself standing, as before, close to my 
 sister's bed. 
 
 O* flight of the solitary child to the solitary God 
 — flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could 
 not be ruined! — how rich wert thou in truth for aftei 
 years ! Rapture of grief that, being too mighty for a 
 child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven- 
 born dream, and within that sleep didst concea a 
 dream, whose meaning, in after years, when slowly I 
 deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me new light ; 
 and even by the grief of a child, as I will show you, 
 reader, hereafter, were confounded the falsehoods of 
 philosophers.! 
 
 * ^vyti ^lovov rcQog fioror, — Plotinus. 
 
 ■f The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes ; as at this 
 iKiint they seemed too much to interrupt the course of the narrative 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 17"/ 
 
 In the Opium Confessions I touched a little upon the 
 extraordinary power connected with opium (after long 
 use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space, also, 
 It amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But 
 time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power 
 of opium chiefly spends its operation. Time becomes 
 infinitely elastic, stretching out to such immeasurable 
 and vanishing termini, that it seems ridiculous to com- 
 pute the sense of it, on waking, by expressions com- 
 mensurate to human life. As in starry fields one 
 computes by diameters of the earth's orbit, or of 
 Jupiter's, so, in valuing the virtual time lived during 
 some dreams, the measurement by generations is ridic- 
 ulous — by millenia is ridiculous; by seons, I should 
 say, if ffions were more determinate, would be also 
 ridiculous. On this single occasion, however, in my 
 life, the very inverse phenomenon occurred. But why 
 speak of it in connection with opium ? Could a child 
 of six years old have been under that influence ' No, 
 but simply because it so exactly reversed the operation 
 of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding into a 
 vast one, upon this occasion a long one had contracted 
 into a minute. I have reason to believe that a very 
 long one had elapsed during this wandering or suspen- 
 sion of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself, 
 there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I waa 
 alarmed ; for I believed that, if anybody should detect 
 me, means would be taken to prevent my coming 
 again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should 
 kisE no more, and slunk like a guilty thing with stealthy 
 ikteps from the room. Thus perished the vision, love 
 liest amongst all the shows which earth has reveale*! 
 12 
 
178 A. SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 to me; thus mutilated was the parting which should 
 have lasted forever; thus tainted with fear was the 
 farowell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and 
 perfect grief. 
 
 O, Ahasuerus, everlasting Jew!* fable or not a 
 fable, thou when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage 
 of woe, — thou when first flying through the gates of 
 Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing 
 curse behind thee, — couldst not more certainly have read 
 thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled 
 brain than I when passing forever from my sister's 
 room. The worm was at my heart; and, confining 
 myself to that state of life, I may say, the worm 
 that could not die. For if, when standing upon the 
 threshold of manhood, I had ceased to feel its perpetual 
 gnawings, that was because a vast expansion of intel- 
 lect, it was because new hopes, new necessities, and 
 the frenzy of youthful blood, had translated me into a 
 new creature. Man is doubtless one by some subtle 
 nexus that we cannot perceive, extending from the new- 
 born infant to the superannuated dotard : but as regards 
 many affections and passions incident to his nature at 
 different stages, he is Twt one ; the unity of man in this 
 respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to 
 which the passion belongs. Some passions, as that of 
 sexual love, are celestial by one half of their origin, 
 animal and earthly by the other half. These will not 
 survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which 
 is (dtogether holy, like that between two children, will 
 
 * " Everlasting Jew ! " — der eaige Jade — which is the commoi 
 German expression for The Wandering Jew, and suhlimer even than 
 our own. 
 
on AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 179 
 
 revisit undoubtedly by glimpses the silence and the dark- 
 ness of old age : and I repeat my belief — that, unless 
 bodily torment should forbid it, that final experience in 
 my sister's bed-room, or some other in which her inno- 
 cence was concerned, will rise again for me, to illuminate 
 the hour of death. 
 
 On the day following this which 1 have recorded, 
 came a body of medical men to examine the brain, and 
 the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of 
 lis symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. Such 
 is the sanctity of death, and especially of death alight- 
 ing on an innocent child, that even gossiping people 
 do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently, I knew 
 nothing of the purpose which drew together these sur- 
 geons, nor suspected anything of the cruel changes 
 which might have been wrought in my sister's head. 
 Long after this, I saw a similar case ;. I surveyed the 
 corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy, eighteen, years old, 
 who had died of the same complaint) one hour after the 
 surgeons had laid the skull in ruins ; but the dishonors 
 of this scrutiny were hidden by bandages, and had not 
 disturbed the repose of the Countenance. So it might 
 have been here ; but, if it were not so, then I was 
 happy in being spared the shock, from having that mar- 
 ble image of peace, icy and rigid as it was, unsettled by 
 disfiguring images. Some hours after the strangers had 
 withdrawn, I crept again to the room ; but the door was 
 now locked, the key was taken away — and I was shut 
 out forever. 
 
 Then came the funeral. 1, as a point of decorum, 
 was carried thither. 1 was put into a carriage with 
 some gentlemen whom I did not know. They wert 
 
180 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 kind to me ; but naturally they talked of things discon 
 nected with the occasion, and their ctnversation was a 
 torment. At the church, I was told to hold a white 
 handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy ! What 
 need had he of masques or mockeries, whose heart died 
 within him at every word that was uttered ? During 
 that part of the service which passed within the church, 
 I made an effort to attend ; but I sank back continually 
 into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little con- 
 sciously, except some fugitive strains from the sublime 
 chapter of St. Paul, which in England is always read 
 at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our 
 present illustrious laureate. When I heard those 
 dreadful words, — for dreadful they wern to me, — 
 " It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption ; 
 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory;" such 
 was the recoil of my feelings, that I could even have 
 shrieked out a protesting — " O, no, no ! " if I had 
 not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion 
 In after years, reflecting upon this revolt of my feel- 
 ings, which, being the voice of nature in a child, must 
 be as true as any mere opinion of a child might 
 probably be false, I saw, at once, the unsoundness of 
 a passage in The Excursion. The book is not here, 
 but the substance I remember perfectly. Mr. Words- 
 worth argues, that if it were not for the unsteady 
 faith which people fix upon the beatific condition aftel 
 death of those whom they deplore, nobody could be 
 found so selfish as even secretly to wish for the res- 
 toration to earth of a beloved object. A mother, for 
 instance, could never dream of yearning for her child, 
 and secretly calling it back by her silent aspiration.' 
 
or AN ENGLISH 0?:;JM-EATEK. 18\ 
 
 from the arms of God, if she were hut reconciled to 
 the belief that really it was in those arms. But this I 
 utterly deny. To take my own case, when I heard 
 those dreadful words of St. Paul applied to my sis- 
 ter, namely, that she should be raised a spiritual body, 
 nobody can suppose that selfishness, or any other 
 feeling than that of agonizing love, caused the rebel- 
 lion of my heart against them. I knew already that 
 she was to come again in beauty and power. I did 
 not now learn this for the first time. And that thought, 
 doubtless, made my sorrow sublimer ; but also it made 
 it deeper. For here lay the sting of it, namely, in the 
 fatal words — "We shall be changed." How was the 
 unity of my interest in her to be preserved, if she 
 were to be altered, and no longer to reflect in her 
 sweet countenance the traces that were sculptured on 
 my heart? Let a magician ask any woman whether 
 she will permit him to improve her child, to raise it 
 even from deformity to perfect beauty, if that must be 
 done at the cost of its identity, and there is no loving 
 mother but would reject his proposal with horror. 
 Or, to take a case that has actually happened-, if a 
 mother were robbed of her child, at two years old, by 
 gypsies, and the same child were restored to her at 
 twenty, a fine young man, but divided by a sleep as 
 it were of death from all remembrances that could 
 restore the broken links of their once tender connec- 
 tion, — would she not feel her grief unhealed, and her 
 heart defrauded ? Undouhtedly she would. All of us 
 ask not of God for a better thing than that we have 
 lost; we ask for the same, even with its faults and its 
 frailties. Tt is true that the sorrowing person will 
 
182 A SEQTTEL TO THE CONFESSIOKS 
 
 also be changed eventually, but that must be by death. 
 And a prospect so remote as that, and so alien from oul 
 present nature, cannot console us in an affliction which 
 IS not remote, but present — which is not spiritual, bm 
 human. 
 
 Lastly came the magnificent service which the Eng- 
 lish Church performs at the side of the grave. There 
 is exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. 
 All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, 
 and the day of departure from earth, — records how 
 useless ! and dropped into darkness as if messages 
 addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes 
 the symbolic, ritual, tearing and shattering the heart 
 with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from the 
 final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its 
 home ; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacris- 
 tan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and stones. 
 The priest's voice is heard once more, — earth to 
 earth, and the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the 
 coffin; ashes to ashes, and -again the killing sound is 
 heard ; dust to dust, and the farewell volley announces 
 that the grave — the coffin — the face are sealed up 
 for ever and ever. 
 
 O, grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing 
 passions. And true it is, that thou humblest to the 
 dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest 
 as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou 
 sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. 
 Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensi- 
 bility to shame. And, ten ynars afterwards, I usod to 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 183 
 
 reproach myself with this infirmity, by supposing the 
 case, that, if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a 
 perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain ttiat 
 aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering 
 faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty 
 It is true, that no such case had ever acttially occurred, 
 so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax my- 
 self with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, 
 was to feel condemnation ; and the crime which might 
 have been was in my eyes the crime which had been. 
 Now, however, all was changed ; and for anything 
 which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I 
 received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a 
 case resembling it. 1 saw a ewe suddenly put off and 
 abjure her own nature, in a service of love, — yes, 
 slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his 
 skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from 
 which all escape was hopeless, without the aid of man. 
 And to a man she advanced boldly, bleating clamor- 
 ously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. 
 Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand 
 sneering faces would not have troubled me in any office 
 of tenderness to my sister's memory. Ten legions 
 would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there 
 was a chance that she could be found. Mockery ! it 
 was lost upon me. Laugh at me, as one or two people 
 did ! I valued not their laughter. And when I was 
 told insultingly to cease " my girlish tears," that word 
 " girlish " had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo 
 to the one eternal thought of my heart, — that a girl 
 was the sweetest thing I, in my short lifQ, had known 
 — that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with 
 
1 84 A SEQUEL TO THE JONFESSIONS 
 
 beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure 
 celestial love, from which, in this world, I was to drink 
 no more. 
 
 Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep 
 feelings agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and 
 are nursed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how 
 naturally do these ally themselves with religious feel- 
 ing ; and all three — love, grief, religion — are haunters 
 of solitary places. Love, grief, the passion of reverie, 
 or the mystery of devotion, — what were these, without 
 solitude ? All day long, when it was not impossible 
 for me to do so, I sought the most silent and seques- 
 tered nooks in the grounds about the house, or in the 
 neighboring fields. The awful stillness occasionally of 
 summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the ap- 
 pealing silence of gray or misty afternoons, — these 
 were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods or 
 the desert air I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in 
 them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of be- 
 seeching looks. I tormented the blue depths with 
 obstinate scrutiny, sweeping them with my eyes, and 
 searching them forever after one angelic face that 
 might, perhaps, have permission to reveal itself for a 
 moment. The faculty of shaping images in the dis- 
 tance out of slight elements, and grouping them after 
 the yearnings of the heart, aided by a slight defect in 
 my eyes, grew upon me at this time. And I recall at 
 tke present moment one instance of that sort, which 
 may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of bright- 
 ness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis 
 for this creative faculty. On Sunday morning.s I was 
 always taken to church : it was a church on the old 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATKR. ISS 
 
 and natural model of England, having aisles, galleries, 
 organs, all things ancient and venerable, and the pro- 
 portions majestic. Here, virhilst the congregation knelt 
 through the long litany, as often as we came to that 
 passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, whore 
 God is supplicated on behalf of "all sick persons and 
 young children," and that he would "show his pity 
 upon all prisoners and captives," — I wept in secret, 
 and raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the 
 galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a 
 spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. 
 The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass, 
 through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the 
 golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination 
 mingling with the earthly emblazonries of what is 
 grandest in man. There were the apostles that had 
 trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of 
 celestial love to man. There were the martyrs that 
 had borne witness to the truth through flames, through 
 . torments, and through armies of fierce insulting faces. 
 There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, 
 had glorified God by meek submission to his will. 
 And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memo- 
 rials held on ^s the deep chords from an accompani- 
 ment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field 
 of the window, where the glass was uncolored, white 
 fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky ; 
 were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, 
 immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, 
 it grew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white 
 lawny curtains ; and in the beds lay sick children, 
 dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and weep 
 
186 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 ing clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious 
 reason, could not suddenly release them from theii 
 pain ; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise 
 slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds ascended 
 into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, his arms 
 descended from the heavens, that he and his young 
 children, whom in Judea, once and forever, he had 
 blessed, though they must pass slowly through the 
 dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the 
 sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These 
 visions needed not that any sound should speak to me, 
 or music mould my feelings. The hint from the litany, 
 the fragment from the clouds, — those and the storied 
 windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of 
 the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate crea- 
 tions. And oftentimes in anthems, when the mighty 
 instrument threw its vast columns of sound, fierce yet 
 melodious, over the voices of the choir, — when it rose 
 high in arches, as might seem, surmounting and over- 
 riding the strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by . 
 strong coercion the total storm into unity, — sometimes 
 I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds which 
 so recently I had looked up to as mementos of prostrate 
 sorrow, and even as ministers of sorrow in its creations ; 
 yes, sometimes under the transfigurations of music 1 
 felt* of grief itself as a fiery chariot for mounting vic- 
 toriously above the causes of grief. 
 
 * "I felt " — The reader must not forget, in reading this ana 
 other passages, that, though a child's feelings are spoken of, it is 
 not the child who speaks. / decipher what the child only felt in 
 cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from 
 pointing to anything metaphysical or doubtful that a man must \m 
 
OF AN ENOLISH OPIUM-EATER. 181 
 
 I point SO often to the feelings, the ideas, or the cere- 
 monies of religion, because there never yet was pro- 
 found grief nor profound philosophy which did not 
 inosculate at many points with profound religion. But 
 I request the reader to understand, that of all things 1 
 was not, and could not have been, a child trained to 
 talk of religion, least of all to talk of it controveisially 
 or polemically. Dreadful is the picture, which in books 
 we sometimes find, of children discussing the doctrines 
 of Christianity, and even teaching their seniors the 
 boundaries and distinctions between doctrine and doc- 
 trine. And it has often struck me with amazement, 
 that the two things which God made most beautiful 
 among his works, namely, infancy and pure religion, 
 should, by the folly of man (in yoking them together 
 on erroneous principles), neutralize each other's beauty, 
 or even form a combination positively hateful. The 
 religion becomes nonsense, and the child becomes a 
 hypocrite. The religion is transfigured into cant, and 
 the innocent child into a dissembling liar.* 
 
 grossly unobservant who is not aware of what 1 am here noticing, 
 not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all 
 children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to 
 his own consciousness in mature life, mast have preexisted in germ 
 during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, consciously 
 read in my own deep feelings these ideas. No, not at all ; not 
 was it possible for a child to do so. I, the child, had the feel- 
 ings ; I, the man, decipher them. In the child lay the hiindwrit- 
 ing mysterious to him; ir. me, the interpretation and the comment. 
 * I except, however, one case, — the case of a child dying of an 
 organic disorder, so, therefore, as to die slowly, and aware of its 
 own condition. Because such a child is solemnized, and sometimes, 
 in a partial senso, inspired, — inspired by the depth of its suffer- 
 ings, and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child, having pat 
 oS <.be earthly mind in many things, may naturally hsve out off the 
 
l!^ A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 God, be assured, takes care for the religion of chil- 
 dren, wheresoever his Christianity exists. Wheresoevei 
 there is a national church established, to which a child 
 sees his friends resorting, — wheresoever he beholds all 
 whom he honors periodically prostrate before those 
 illimitable heavens which fill to overflowing his young 
 adoring heart, — wheresoever he sees the sleep of death 
 falling at intervals upon men and women whom he 
 knows, depth as confounding to the plummet of his 
 mind as those heavens ascend beyond his power to 
 pursue, — there take you no thought for the religion of 
 a child, any more than for the lilies how they shall be 
 arrayed, or for the ravens how they shall feed theii 
 young. 
 
 God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the 
 oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above 
 all things, when made vocal by the truths and services 
 of a national church, God holds "communion undis- 
 turbed " with children. Solitude, though silent as light, 
 is, like light, the mightiest of agencies'; for solitude is 
 essential to man. All men come into this world alone ; 
 all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, 
 whispering consciousness, that if he should be sum- 
 moned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse 
 will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to 
 carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his 
 trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, 
 
 cnildish mind in all things. I thereby, speaking for myself only, 
 acknowledge lo have read with emotion a record of a little girl, 
 who, knowing herself for months to be amongst the elect of death, 
 became anxious, even to sickness of heart, for what she called thn 
 conversion of her father. Her filial duty and revererce bad been 
 swallowed up in filial love. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 189 
 
 philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty 
 galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this 
 world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo 
 of a far deeper solitude through which already he has 
 passed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through 
 which he has to pass : reflex of one solitude — prefigur- 
 ation of another. 
 
 O, burthen of solitude, that cleavest to man through 
 every stage of his being! in his birth, which has been, 
 — in his life, which is, — in his death, which shall be, — 
 mighty and essential solitude ! that wast, and art, and 
 art to be; — thou broodest, like the spirit of God moving 
 upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that 
 sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast 
 laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or 
 less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the 
 principles of all things, solitude for the child is the 
 Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the 
 solitude in life of millions upon millions, who, with 
 hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. 
 Deep is the solitude of those who, with secret griefs, 
 have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those 
 who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to 
 counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these 
 solitudes is that which broods over childhood, bringing 
 before it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches 
 for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. 
 Reader, I tell you a truth, and hereafter I will convinen 
 you of this truth, that for a Grecian child solitude was 
 nothmg, but for a Christian child it has become the 
 Dower of God and the mystery of God. O, mighty 
 and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to 
 
190 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 be ! thoi. kindling under ihe torch of Christian reve 
 lations, art now transfigured forever, and hast passed 
 from a blank negation into a secret hieroglyphic from 
 God, shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dim- 
 mest of his truths ! 
 
 " But yaw forget ]ier," says the cynic ; " ym hap- 
 pened one day to forget this sister of yours." Why 
 not? To cite the beautiful words of Wallenstein, — 
 
 " What pang 
 Is permanent with man 7 From the highest, 
 As from the vilest thing of every day. 
 He learns to wean himself. For the strong hours 
 Conquer him."* 
 
 Ves, there lies the fountain of human oblivions. It 
 IS Time, the great conqueror, it is the " strong hours " 
 whose batteries storm every passion of men. For, in 
 the fine expression of Schiller, " Was verschmerzte nichi 
 der mensch ? " What sorrow is in man that will not 
 finally fret itself to sleep? Conquering, at last gates 
 of brass, or pyramids of granite, why should it be a 
 marvel to us, or a triumph to Time, that he is able to 
 •onquer a frail human heart ? 
 
 However, for this once, my cynic must submit to be 
 told that he is wrong. Doubtless, it is presumption in 
 me to suggest that his sneers can ever go awry, any 
 more than the shafts of Apollo. But still, however 
 impossible such a thing is, in this one case it happens 
 that they have. And when it happens that they do 
 not, I will tell you, reader, why, in my opinion, it is* 
 and yo'i will see that it warrants no exultation in the 
 
 * Death of Wallenstein, Act v. Scene 1 (Coleridge's TranslH 
 tion), relating to his remembrances of the younger Piccnlomini. 
 
Of AS ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 191 
 
 cyme. Repeatedly I have heard a mother reproaching 
 herself when the birth-day revolved of the little daugh- 
 ter whom so suddenly she had lost, with her own in- 
 sensibility, that could so soon need a remembrancer of 
 the day. But, beeides that the majority of people in 
 this world (as being people called to labor) have no 
 time left for cherishing grief by solitude and medita- 
 tion, always it is proper to ask whether the memory of 
 the lost person were chiefly dependent upon a visual 
 image. No death is usually half so affecting as the 
 death of a young child from two to five years old. 
 
 But yet, for the same reason whiih makes the grief 
 more exquisite, generally for such a loss it is likely to 
 be more perishable. Wherever the image, visually or 
 audibly, of the lost person, is more essential to the life 
 of the grief, there the grief will be more transitory. 
 
 Faces begin soon (in Shakspeare's fine expression) 
 to " dislimn ;" features fluctuate ; combinations of feature 
 unsettle. Even the expression becomes a mere idea 
 that you can describe to another, but not an image that 
 you can reproduce for yourself. Therefore it is that 
 the faces of infants, though they are divine as flowers 
 in a savanna of Texas, or as the carolling of birds in a 
 ■forest, are, like flowers in Texas, and the carolling of 
 birds in a forest, soon overtaken by the pursuing 
 darkness that swallows up all things human. All glo- 
 ries of flesh vanish ; and this, the glory of infantine 
 beauty seen in the mirror of the memory, soonest ot 
 all. But when the departed persons worked upon your- 
 self by powers that were intellectual and moral, — 
 powers in the flesh, though not o/" the flesh, — the memo- 
 rials in your own heart become more steadfast, if less 
 
192 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 aflecting at the first. Now, in my sister were com- 
 bined for me both graces, — the graces of childhood, and 
 the gmces of expanding thought. Besides that, as 
 regards merely the persmial image, always the smooth 
 rotundity of baby features must vanish sooner, as 
 being less individual than the features in a child of 
 eight, touched with a pensive tenderness, and exalted 
 into a characteristic expression by a premature intel- 
 lect. 
 
 Rarely do things perish from my memory that are 
 worth remembering. Rubbish dies instantly. Hence 
 it happens that passages in Latin or English poets, 
 which I never could have read but once (and that 
 thirty years asro), often begin to blossom anew when 
 I am lying awake, unable to sleep. I become a dis- 
 tinguished compositor in the darkness : and, with my 
 aerial composing-stick, sometimes I "set up" half a 
 page of verses, that would be found tolerably correct 
 if collated with the volume that I never had in my 
 hand but once. I mention this in no spirit of boasting. 
 Far from it: for, on the contrary, among my mortifica- 
 tions have been compliments to my memory, when, 
 in fact, any compliment that I had merited was due to 
 the higher faculty of an electric aptitude for seizing 
 analogies, and by means of those aerial pontoons pass- 
 ing over like lightning from one topic to another. Still 
 it is a fact that this pertinacious life of memory for 
 things that simply touch the ear, without touching the 
 consciousness, does, in fact, beset me. Said but once, 
 said but softly, not marked at all, words revive before me 
 in darkness and solitude ; and they arrange themselves 
 gradually into sentences, but through an effort som(j- 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 193 
 
 times of a distressing kind, to which I am in a manner 
 forced to become a party. This being so, it was no 
 great instance of that power, that three separate pas- 
 sages in the funeral service, all of which but one had 
 escaped my notice at the time, and even that one as 
 to the part I am going to mention, but all of which 
 must have struck on my ear, restored themselves per- 
 fectly when I was lying awake in bed ; and though 
 struck by their beauty, I was also incensed by what 
 seemed to me the harsh sentiment expressed in two of 
 these passages. I will cite all the three in an abbre- 
 viated form, both for my immediate purpose, and for the 
 indirect purpose of giving to those unacquainted with 
 the English funeral service some specimens of its 
 beauty. 
 
 The first passage was this : " Forasmuch as it hath 
 pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy, to take unto 
 himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we 
 therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, 
 ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of 
 the resurrection to eternal life." * * * 
 
 I pause to remark that a sublime effect arises at this 
 point through a sudden rapturous interpolation from the 
 Apocalypse, which, according to the rubric, "shall be 
 saia or sung;" but always let it be sung, and by the full 
 choir : 
 
 "1 heard a voice from heaven saying unto me. Write 
 from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the 
 Lord ; even so saith the Spirit ; for they rest from theit 
 labors." 
 
 The second passage, almost immediately succeeding 
 to this awful burst of heavenly trumpets, and the one 
 13 
 
194 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 which more particularly offended me, though otherwise 
 even then, in ray seventh year, I could not but be 
 touched by its beauty, was this: — "Almighty God 
 with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence 
 in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, 
 after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, 
 are in joy and felicity; we give thee hearty thanks that 
 it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the 
 miseries of this sinful world ; beseeching thee, that i( 
 may please thee of thy gracious goodness shortly to 
 accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy 
 kingdom." * * * * • 
 
 In what world was I living when a man (calling 
 himself a man of God) could stand up publicly and 
 give God " hearty thanks " that he had taken away 
 my sister ? But, young child, understand — taken her 
 away from the miseries of this sinful world. yes ! 
 I hear what you say ; I understand that ; but that 
 makes no difference at all. She being gone, this vvorld 
 doubtless (as you say) is a world of unhappiness. 
 But for me ubi Ctssar, ibi Soma — where my sister 
 was, there was paradise; no matter whether in heaven 
 above, or on the earth beneath. And he had taken her 
 away, cruel priest ! of his " great mercy ! " I did not 
 presume, child though I was, to think rebelliously 
 against that. The reason was not any hypocritical or 
 canting submission where my heart yielded none, but 
 because already my deep musing intellect had per- 
 ceived a mystery and a labyrinth in the economies of 
 this world. God, I saw, moved not as we moved - 
 walked not as we walked — thought not as we think 
 Still I saw no mercy to myself, a poor, frail, dependent 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 195 
 
 creature, torn away so suddenly from the prop on 
 which altogether it depended. O yes ! perhaps thure 
 was ; and many years after I came to suspect it. 
 Nevertheless it was a benignity that pointed far ahead ; 
 such as by a child could not have been perceived, 
 because then the great arch had not come round ; could 
 not have been recognized, if it had come round ; could 
 not have been valued, if it had even been dimly reccg- 
 nized. 
 
 Finally, as the closing prayer in the whole service, 
 stood this, which I acknowledged then, and now ac- 
 knowledge, as equally beautiful and consolatory ; for in 
 this was no harsh peremptory challenge to the infirmi- 
 ties of human grief, as to a thing not meriting notice in 
 a religious rite. On the contrary, there was a gracious 
 condescension frotn the great apostle to grief, as to a 
 passion that he might perhaps himself have participated. 
 
 " O, merciful God ! the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, in whom 
 whosoever believeth shall live, though he die ; who also 
 taught us by his holy apostle St. Paul not to be sorry, 
 as men without hope, for them that sleep in him; we 
 meekly beseech thee, oh Father ! to raise us from the 
 death of sin unto the life of righteousness ; that, when 
 we shall depart this life, we may rest in him as our hope 
 is — that this our sister doth." ' 
 
 Ah, that was beautiful, — that was heavenly! We 
 might be sorry, we had leave to be sorry; only not 
 without hope. And we were by hope to rest in Him, 
 as this our sister doth. And howsoever a man may 
 think that he is without hope, I, that have read the 
 writing upon these great abysses ol grief, and viewed 
 
196 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 their shadows under the correction of mightier bhadowi 
 from deeper abysses since then, abysses cf aboriginal 
 fear and eldest darkness, in which yet 1 believe that 
 all hope had not absolutely died, know that he is in a 
 natural error. If, for a moment, 1 and so many others, 
 wallowing in the dust of affliction, could yet rise up 
 suddenly like the dry corpse * which stood upright in 
 the glory of life when touched by the bones of the 
 prophet ; if in those vast choral anthems, heard by my 
 childish ear, the voice of God wrapt itself as in a cloud 
 of music, saying — " Child, that sorrowest, I command 
 thee to rise up and ascend for a season into my heaven 
 Df heavens," — then it was plain that despair, that the 
 anguish of darkness, was not essential to such sorrow, 
 but might come and go even as light comes and goes 
 upon our troubled earth. 
 
 Yes ! the light may come and go ; grief may wax 
 and wane; grief may sink; and grief again may rise, 
 as in impassioned minds oftentimes it does, even to the 
 heaven of heavens ; but there is a necessity that, if 
 too much left to itself in solitude, finally it will descend 
 into a depth from which there is no reascent; into a 
 disease which seems no disease ; into a languishing 
 which, from its very sweetness, perplexes the mind, and 
 is fancied to be very health. Witchcraft has seized 
 upon you, — nymph olepsy has struck you. Now you 
 rave no more. You acquiesce ; nay, you are passion- 
 
 *"Like the dry corpse which stood vprigkt." — See the Second 
 Book of Kings, chiipler xiii. v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this 
 impressive incident was made the subject of a large aitar-picco 
 by Mr. AUston, an interesting American artist, then resident in 
 Landon 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 19T 
 
 Btely delighted in your condition. Sweet becomes the 
 grave, because you also hope immediately to travel 
 thither: luxurious is the separation, because only per- 
 haps for a few weeks shall it exist for you; and it will 
 then prove but the brief summer night that had retarded 
 a little, by a refinement of rapture, the heavenly dawn 
 of reiinion. Inevitable sometimes it is in solitude — that 
 this should happen with minds morbidly meditative ; 
 that, when we stretch out our arms in darkness, vainly 
 striving to draw back the sweet faces that have vanished, 
 slowly arises a new stratagem of grief, and we say, — 
 " Be it that they no more come back to us, yet what hin- 
 ders but we should go to them ? " 
 
 Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect per- 
 fectly the same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor Af- 
 rican Obcah,* this sublimer witchcraft of grief will, if left 
 to follow its own natural course, terminate in the same 
 catastrophe of death. Poetry, which neglects no phe- 
 nomena that are interesting to the heart of man, has 
 scmetimes touched a little 
 
 "On tUe sublime attractions of the grave." 
 
 * "African Obeah." — Tliirty years ago it would not have been 
 necessary to say one word of the Obi or Oheaii magic ; because at 
 that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth, for in- 
 stance, in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fic- 
 tions, and because the remarltable history of Three-fingcn d Jack, 
 a stoiy brought upon the stage, had made the superstition niloricus 
 as a fact. Now, however, so long after the case lias prolialily 
 passed out of the public mind, it may be proper to mention, that 
 when an Obeah man — that is, a professor of this dark cullusina 
 with human fears and human credulity — had once woven his drcad- 
 flil i,et of ghostly terrors, and had thrown it over h's selected vic- 
 tim, vainly did that victim flutter, struggle, languish in the meshes, 
 qhIlss the spells ware reversed, he generally perished ; and with- 
 on r wound, except from his own too domineering fancv. 
 
198 A SECIUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 But you think that these attractions, existing at times 
 for the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand 
 that you are wrong. Understand that these attractions 
 do exist for the child ; and perhaps as much more 
 strongly than they can exist for the adult, by the vhole 
 difference between the concentration of a childish love, 
 and the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objecto of 
 any love that can affect any adult. There is a German 
 superstition (well known by a popular translation) of the 
 Erl-king's Daughter, who fixes her love upon some child, 
 and seeks to wile him away into her own shadowy 
 kingdom in forests. 
 
 "Who is it that rides through the forest so fast?" 
 
 it IS a knight, who carries his child before him on 
 the saddle. The Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right 
 hand, and still whispers temptations to the infant audible 
 only to him. 
 
 " If thou wilt, dear baby, with me go away, 
 We will see a fine show, we will play a fine plav 
 
 The consent of the baby is essential to her success. 
 And finally she does succeed. Other charms, other 
 temptations, would have been requisite for me. My 
 intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But 
 could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to 
 me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she 
 might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest 
 forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at 
 that time. Still I languished for things " which " (a 
 voice from heaven seemed to answer through my own 
 heart) " cannot, be granted ; " and which, when again 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 199 
 
 t languished, agaic the voice repeated, "cannot be 
 granted." 
 
 Well it was for me that, at this crisis, I was sum- 
 moned to put on the harness of life by commencing my 
 classical studies under one of my guardians, a clergyman 
 of the English Church, and (so far as regarded Latin) 
 a most accomplished scholar. 
 
 At the very commencement of my new studies there 
 happened an incident which afflicted me much for a short 
 time, and left behind a gloomy impression, that suffering 
 and wretchedness were diffused amongst all creatures tliut 
 breathe. A person had given me a kitten. There are 
 three animals which seem, beyond all others, to reflect 
 the beauty of human infancy in two of its elements — 
 namely, joy and guileless innocence, though less in its 
 third element of simplicity, because that requires lan- 
 guage for its full expression : these three animals are 
 the kitten, the lamb, and the fawn. Other creatures 
 may be as happy, but they do not show it so much 
 Great was the love which poor silly I had for this 
 little kitten ; but, as I left home at ten in the morning, 
 and did not return till near five in the afternoon, I was 
 obliged, with some anxiety, to throw it for those seven 
 hours upon its own discretion, as infirm a basis for 
 reasonable hope as could be imagined. I did not wish 
 the kitten, indeed, at all less foolish than it was, ex- 
 cept just when I was leaving home, and then its exceed- 
 ing folly gave me a pang. Just about lliat time, 
 it happened that we had received, as a present from 
 Lei:estershire, a fine young Newfoundland dog, whc 
 
200 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 was under a cloud of disgrace for crimes of his youth 
 ful blood committed in that county. One day he hat 
 taken too great a liberty with a pretty little cousin of 
 
 mine, Emma H , about four years old. He had, in 
 
 fact, bitten off her cheek, which, remaining attached by 
 a shred, was, through the energy of a governess, re- 
 placed, and subsequently healed without a scar. His 
 name being Turk, he was immediately pronounced by 
 the best Greek scholar of that neighborhood, Inoivu/ioi, 
 (that is, named significantly, or reporting his nature in 
 his name). But as Miss Emma confessed to having 
 been engaged in taking away a bone from him, on which 
 subject no dog can be taught to understand a joke, it 
 did not strike our own authorities that he was to be 
 considered in a state of reprobation ; and as our gar- 
 dens (near to a great town) were, on account chiefly of 
 melons, constantly robbed, it was held that a moderate 
 degree of fierceness was rather a favorable trait in his 
 character. My poor kitten, it was supposed, had been 
 engaged in the same playful trespass upon Turk's 
 property as my Leicestershire cousin, and Turk laid 
 her dead on the spot. It is impossible to describe my 
 grief when the case was made known to me at five 
 o'clock in the evening, by a man's holding out the little 
 creature dead : she that I had left so full of glorious life 
 — life which even in a kitten is infinite, — was naw 
 stretched in motionless repose. I remember that thert 
 was a large coal-stack in the yard. I dropped my Latin 
 books, sat down upon a huge block of coal, and burst 
 »nto a passion of tears. The man, struck with rav 
 tumultuous grief, hurried into the house; and from 
 the lower regions deployed instantly the women of the 
 
OF AN liNGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 201 
 
 laundry and the kitchen. No one subject is sb abso- 
 lutely sacred, and enjoys so classical a sanctity among 
 servant-girls, as 1. Grief; and 2. Love which is unfor- 
 tunate. All the young women took me up in theit 
 arms and kissed me ; and, last of all, an elderly woman, 
 who was the cook, not only kissed me, but wept so 
 audibly, from some suggestion doubtless of grief per- 
 sonal to herself, that I threw my arms about her neck 
 and kissed her also. It is probable, as I now suppose, 
 that some account of my grief for my sister had reached 
 them. Else I was never allowed to visit their Kg\on of 
 the house. But, however that might be, afterwards it 
 struck me, that if I had met with so much sympathy, 
 or with any sympathy at all, from the servant chiefly 
 connected with myself in the desolatmg grief 1 had 
 suffered, possibly I should not have been so profoundly 
 shaken. 
 
 But did 1 in the mean time feel anger towards Turk ? 
 Not the least. And the reason was this: — My guard- 
 ian, who taught me Latin, was in the habit of coming 
 over and dining at my mother's table whenever he 
 pleased. On these occasions, he, who like myself pitied 
 dependent animals, went invariably into the yard of the 
 ofBces, taking me with him, and unchained the dogs. 
 There were two, — Grim, a mastiff, and Turk, our 
 young friend. My guardian was a bold, athletic man, 
 and delighted in dogs. He told me, which also my own 
 heart told me, that these poor dogs languished out 
 their lives under this confinement. The moment that I 
 and my guardian {ego et rex meus) appeared in sight of 
 the two kennels, it is impossible to express the joy of 
 the dogs. Turk was usually restless ; Grim slept awa) 
 
BOa * SLyiUEL. TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 his life in surliness. But at the sight of us, — of mj 
 little insignificant self and my six-foot guardian, — both 
 dogs yelled with delight. We unfastened their chains 
 with our own hands, they licking our hands ; and as to 
 myself licking my miserable little face ; and at one 
 bound they reentered upon their natural heritage of 
 joy. Always we took them through the fieldsj where 
 they molested nothing, and closed with giving them a 
 cold bath in the brook which bounded my father's prop- 
 erty. What despair must have possessed our dogs when 
 they were taken back to their hateful prisons ! and I, 
 for my part, not endunng to see their misery, slunk 
 away when the rechaining commenced. It was in vain 
 to tell me that all people, who had property out of doors 
 to protect, chained up dogs in the same way. This only 
 proved the extent of the oppression ; for a monstrous 
 oppression it did seem, that creatures, boiling with life 
 and the desires of life, should be thus detained in cap- 
 tivity until they were set free by death. That liberation 
 ^'isited poor Grim, and Turk sooner than any of us ex- 
 pected, for they were both poisoned, within the year that 
 followed, by a party of burglars. At the end of that year, 
 I was reading the jEneid ; and it struck me, who remem- 
 bered the howling recusancy of Turk, as a peculiarly fine 
 circumstance, introduced amongst the horrors of Tar- 
 tarus, that sudden gleam of powerful animals, full of life 
 and conscious rights, rebelling against chains : — 
 
 " ItEeque leonum 
 Vinela recusantum." * 
 
 * What follows, I think (for book I bare none of any kind where 
 his paper is proceedingj, namely: et serA sub node ruden^um, is 
 
OF AN ElIGLiSH OPIUM-EATER. 203 
 
 \nrgil Imd doubtless picked up that gem in his visits at 
 feeding-time to the caveis of the Roman amphitheatre. 
 But the rights of brute creatures to a merciful forbear- 
 ance on the part of man could not enter into the 
 feeblest conceptions of one belonging to a nation that 
 (although too noble to be wantonly cruel) yet in the 
 same amphitheatre manifested so little regard even to 
 human rights. Under Christianity the condition of 
 the brute has improved, and will improve much more. 
 There is ample room. For, I am sorry to say, that the 
 commonest vice of Christian children, too often surveyed 
 with careless eyes by mothers that in their human rela- 
 tions are full of kindness, is cruelty to the inferior crea- 
 tures thrown upon their mercy. For my own part, 
 what had formed the ground-work of my happiness 
 (since joyous was my nature, though overspread with 
 a cloud of sadness) had been from the first a heart 
 overflowing with love. And I had drunk in too pro- 
 foundly the spirit of Christianity from our many nursery 
 readings, not to read also in its divine words the justi- 
 fication of my own tendencies. That which I desired 
 was the thing which I ought to desire ; the mercy that 
 I loved was the mercy that God had blessed. From 
 the Sermon on the Mount resounded forever in my 
 ears — "Blessed are the merciful!" I needed not to 
 add — " For they shall obtain mercy." By lips so holy, 
 and when standing in the atmosphere of truths so divine, 
 simply to have been blessed — that was a sufficient rati- 
 tication; every truth so revealed, and so hallowed by 
 
 probably a mistake of Virgil's j the lions did not roar because 
 aight was approaching, but because night brought with it their 
 principal meal, and consequently the impatience of hunger 
 
204 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 position, starts into sudden life, and becomes to itsrlf 
 its own aathentication, needing no proof to convince, — 
 needing no promise to allure. 
 
 It may well be supposed, therefore, that having 
 so early awakened within me virhat may be philosoph- 
 ically called the transcendental justice of Christianity, 
 [ blamed not Turk for yielding to the coercion of his 
 nature. He had killed the object of my love. But, 
 besides that he was under the constraint of a primary 
 appetite, Turk was himself the victim of a killing 
 oppression. He was doomed to a fretful exisfence so 
 long as he should exist at all. Nothing could reconcile 
 this to my benignity, which at that time rested upon 
 two pillars, — upon the deep, deep heart which God had 
 given to me at my birth, and upon exquisite health. 
 Up to the age of two, and almost through that entire 
 space of twenty-four months, I had suffered from ague ; 
 but when tJiat left me, all germs and traces of ill 
 health fled away forever, except only such (and those 
 how curable !) as I inherited from my school-boy dis- 
 tresses in London, or had created by means of opium 
 Even the long ague was not without ministrations of 
 favor to my prevailing temper ; and, on the whole, no 
 subject for pity, since naturally it won for me the sweet 
 caresses of female tenderness, both young and old. I 
 was a little petted ; but you see by this time, reader, 
 that I must have been too much of a philosopher, 
 even in the year one ah urbe condita of my frail 
 earthly tenement, to abuse such indulgence. It also 
 won for me a ride on horseback whenever the weather 
 permitted. I was placed on a pillovv^, in front of a 
 cankered old man, upon a large white horfe not so 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 20S 
 
 young as I was, but still showing traces of blood. 
 And even the old man, who was both the oldest and 
 the worst of the three, talked with gentleness to 
 myself, reserving his surliness for all the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 These things pressed with a gracious power of incu 
 Ijation upon my predispositions ; and in my overflowing 
 love I did things fitted to make the reader laugh, and 
 sometimes fitted to bring myself into perplexity. One 
 instance from a thousand may illustrate the combi- 
 nation of both effects. At four years old, I had repeat- 
 edly seen the housemaid raising her long broom, and 
 pursuing (generally destroying) a vagrant spider. The 
 holiness of all life, in my eyes, forced me to devise 
 plots for saving the poor doomed wretch ; and think- 
 ing intercession likely to prove useless, my policy 
 was, to draw off the housemaid on pretence of show- 
 ing her a picture, until the spider, already en route, 
 should have had time to escape. Very soon, however, 
 the shrewd housemaid, marking the coincidence of 
 these picture exhibitions with the agonies of fugitive 
 spiders, detected my stratagem ; so that, if the reader 
 (viU pardon an expression borrowed from the street, 
 henceforwards the picture was " no go." However, as 
 she approved of my motive, she told me of the many 
 murders that the spider had committed, and next 
 (which was worse) of the many that he certainly would 
 commit, if reprieved. This staggered me. I could 
 have gladly forgiven the past ; but it did seem a false 
 mercy to spare one spider in order to scatter death 
 amongst fifty flies. I thought timidly, for i moment, 
 of suggesting that people sometimes repented, and tha( 
 
V06 A SEQUEL TO XHE CONFESSIONS 
 
 he might repent ; but 1 checked myself, on considering 
 that I had never read any account, and that she might 
 laugh at the idea, of a penitent spider. To desist was a 
 necessity, in these circumstances. But the difficulty 
 which the housemaid had suggested did not depart, 
 it troubled my musing mind to perceive that tb i wel- 
 fare of one creature might stand upon the luin of 
 another; and the case of the spider remained thence- 
 torwards even more perplexing to my understanding 
 than it was painful to my heart. 
 
 The reader is likely to differ from me upon the ques- 
 tion, moved by recurring to such experiences of child- 
 hood, whether much value attaches to the perceptions 
 and intellectual glimpses of a child. Children, like 
 men, range through a gamut that is infinite, of tem- 
 peraments and characters, ascending from the very 
 dust below our feet to highest heaven. I have seen 
 children that were sensual, brutal, devilish. But, 
 thanks be to the vis medicatrix of human nature, and 
 to the goodness of God, these are as rare exhibitions 
 as all other monsters. People thought, when seeing 
 such odious travesties and burlesques upon lovely 
 human infancy, that perhaps the little wretches might 
 bo Mlcrops.* Yet, possibly (it has since occurred to 
 me), even these children of the fiend, as they seemed, 
 might have one chord in their horrible natures that 
 answered to the call of some sublime purpose. There 
 is a mimic instance of this kind, often found amongst 
 ourselves in natures that are not really " horrible," but 
 
 * " Kilcrops.^* — See, amongst Southey's 'arly poems, one upon 
 this superstitio'i. Southey argues contra, but, for my part, ] 
 should have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 20T 
 
 which seem such to persons viewing them from a 
 station not sufficiently central : — Always there are 
 mischievous boys in a neighborhood, — -boys who tie 
 canisters to the tails of cats belonging to ladies, — a 
 thing which greatly I disapprove ; and who rob orchards, 
 — a thing which slightly I disapprove; and, behold! 
 the next day, on meeting the injured ladies, they say to 
 me, " O, my dear friend, never pretend to argue for 
 him! This boy, we shall all see, will come to ho. 
 hanged." Well, that seems a disagreeable prospect 
 for all parties ; so I change the subject ; and, lo ! five 
 years later, there is an English frigate fighting with a 
 frigate of heavier metal (no matter of what nation). 
 The noble captain has manoeuvred as only Ms coun- 
 trymen can manosuvre ; he has delivered his broad- 
 sides as only the proud islanders can deliver them. 
 Suddenly he sees the opening for a eoup-de-main ; 
 through his speaking-trumpet he shouts, " Where are 
 my boarders ? " And instantly rise upon the deck, 
 with the gayety of boyhood, in white shirt-sleeves 
 bound with black ribands, fifty men, the ilite of the 
 crew; and, behold! at the very head of them, cutlass 
 in hand, is our friend, the tier of canisters to the tails 
 of ladies' cats, — a thing which greatly I disapprove, 
 and also the robber of orchards, — a thing which slightly 
 I disapprove. But here is a man that will not suffer 
 you either greatly or slightly to disapprove him. Fire 
 celestial burns in his eye; his nation — his glorious 
 nation — is in his mind ; himself he regards no more 
 than the life of a cat, or the ruin of a (anister. On 
 the deck of the enemy he throws himself with rapture ; 
 and if he is amongst the killed, --if he, for an object sc 
 
208 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 gloriously unselfish, lays down with joy his life and 
 glittering youth, — mark this, that, perhaps, he will not 
 be the least in heaven. 
 
 But coming back to the case of childhood, I maintain 
 steadfastly that into all the elementary feelings of man 
 children look with more searching gaze than adults. 
 My opinion is, that where circumstances favol, where 
 the heart is deep, where humility and tenderness exist 
 in strength, where the situation is favorable as to soli- 
 tude and as to genial feelings, children have a specific 
 power of contemplating the truth, which departs as 
 they enter the world. It is clear to me, that children, 
 upon elementary paths which require no knowledge 
 of the world to unravel, tread more firmly than men ; 
 have a more pathetic sense of the beauty which lies 
 in justice ; and, according to the immortal ode of our 
 great laureate [ode " On the Intimations of Immortality 
 in Childhood"], a far closer communion with God. I, 
 if you observe, do not much intermeddle with religion, 
 properly so called. My path lies on the interspace 
 between religion and philosophy, that connects them 
 both. Yet here, for once, I shall trespass on grounds 
 not properly mine, and desire you to observe in St. 
 Matthew, chapter xxi., and verse 15, who were those 
 that, crying in the temple, made the first public recog- 
 nition of Christianity. Then, if you say, "O, but 
 children echo what they hear, and are no independent 
 authorities." I must request you to extend your read- 
 ing into verse 16, where you will find that the testi- 
 mony of these children, as bearing an original value, 
 was ratified by the highest testimony ; and the recog 
 oition of these children did itself receive a heavealy 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 20!^ 
 
 rncognition And this could not have been, unless there 
 were children in Jerusalem who saw into truth with o 
 far sharper eye thail Sanhedrims and Rabbis. 
 
 It is impossible, with respect to any memorable grief 
 that it can be adequately exhibited so as to indicate 
 the enormity of the convulsion which really it caused, 
 without viewing' it under a variety of aspects, — a thing 
 which is here almost necessary for the effect of propor- 
 tion to what follows : 1st, for instance, in its immediate 
 pressure, so stunning and confounding; 2dly, in its 
 oscillations, as in its earlier agitations, frantic with 
 tumults, that borrow the wings of the winds ; or in its 
 diseased impulses of sick languishing desire, through 
 which sorrow transforms itself to a sunny angel, that 
 beckons us to a sweet repose. These phases of revolv- 
 mg affection I have already sketched. And I shall 
 also sketch a third, that is, where the affliction, seem- 
 ingly hushing itself to sleep, suddenly soars upwards 
 again upon combining with another mode of sorrow, 
 namely, anxiety without definite limits, and the trouble 
 of a reproaching conscience. As sometimes,* upon the 
 English lakes, water-fowl that have careered in the air 
 until the eye is wearied with the eternal wheelings of 
 their inimitable flight — Grecian simplicities of motion, 
 amidst a labyrinthine infinity of curves that would 
 baffle the geometry of Apollonius — seek the water at 
 last, as if with some settled purpose (you imagine) of 
 reposing. Ah, how little have you understood the 
 
 * In this place I derive my feeling partly from a lovely sketch 
 if the appearance, in verse, by Mr. Wordsworth ; partly from my 
 own experience of the case ; and, not having thv poems heie ) 
 Iraow not how to proportion my acknowledgments 
 
 14 
 
210 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 omnipotence of that life which they inherit! They 
 want no rest: they laugh at resting; all is "make 
 believe," as when an infant hides its laughing face 
 behind its mother's shawl. For a moment it is still. 
 Is it meaning to rest ? Will its impatient heart endure 
 to lurk there for long ? Ask, rather, if a cataract will 
 stop from fatigue. Will a sunbeam sleep on its travels ? 
 or the Atlantic rest from its labors ? As little can the 
 infant, as little can the water-fowl of the lalies, suspend 
 their play, except as a variety of play, or rest unlesa 
 when nature compels them. Suddenly starts off the 
 infant, suddenly ascend the birds, to new evolutions 
 as incalculable as the caprices of a kaleidoscope ; and 
 the glory of their motions, from the mixed immortalities 
 of beauty and inexhaustible variety, becomes at least 
 pathetic to survey. So also, and vv-ith such life of 
 variation, do the primary convulsions of nature — such, 
 perhaps, as only primary* formations in the human 
 system can experience — come round again and again by 
 reverberating shocks. 
 
 * " And so, then," the cynic objects, " you rank your own mind 
 (and you tell us ?o frankly) amongst the primary formations J " 
 As I love to annoy him, it would give me pleasure to reply — 
 " Perhaps I do." But as I never answer more questions than ars 
 necessary, I confine myself to Faying, that this is not a necessary 
 construction of the words. Some minds stand nearer to the 
 type of the original nature in man, are lT'i«r than others to the 
 great magnet in our dark planet. Minds that are impassioned 
 on a more colossal scale than ordinary, deeper in their vibrations, 
 and more extensive in the scale of their vibrations, whether, 
 in other parts of their intellectual system, they had or had not 
 a corresponding compass, will tremble to greater depths from a 
 fearful convulsion, and will comf round by a longer curve of 
 undulations. 
 
OP AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 211 
 
 ITcie new intercourse with my guardian, and the 
 changes of scene which naturally it led to, were of 
 use in weaning my mind from the mere disease which 
 threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my 
 total solitude. But out of these changes grew an 
 incident which restored my grief, though in a more 
 troubled shape, and now for the first time associated 
 with something like remorse and deadly anxiety. I 
 can safely say that this was my earliest trespass, and 
 perhaps a venial one, all things considered. Nobody 
 ever discovered it; and but for my own frankness it 
 would not be known to this day. But that I could not 
 know ; and for years, — that is, from seven or earlier up 
 to ten, — such was my simplicity, that I lived in constant 
 terror. This, though it revived my grief, did me 
 probably great service ; because it was no longer a state 
 of languishing desire tending to torpor, but of feverish 
 irritation and gnawing care, that kept alive the activity 
 of my understanding. The case was this: — It hap- 
 pened that I had now, and commencing with my first 
 introduction to Latin studies, a large weekly allowance 
 of pocket-money, — too large for my age, but safely 
 mtrusted to myself, who never spent or desired to 
 spend one fraction of it upon anything but books. But 
 all proved too little for my colossal schemes. Had the 
 Vatican, the Bodleian, and the Bibliothegue du Eoi, 
 been all emptied into one collection for my privete 
 gratification, little progress would have been made 
 towards content in this particular craving. Very soon 
 I had run ahead of my allowance, and was about 
 three guineas deep in debt. There I paused ; for deep 
 uuxiety now began *•> oppress me as to the course in 
 
212 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 which this mysterious (and indeed guilty) lurrent of 
 debt would finally flow. For the present it was frozen 
 up ; but I had some reason for thinking that Christmas 
 thawed all debts whatsoever, and set them m motion 
 towards innumerable pockets. Now my debt would be 
 thawed with all the rest; and in what direction would 
 it flow ? There was no river that would carry it ofT to 
 sea ; 1» somebody's pocket it would beyond a doubt 
 make its way; and who was that somebody? This 
 question haunted me forever. Christmas had come, 
 Christmas had gone, and I heard nothing of the three 
 guineas. But I was not easier for that. Far rather ] 
 leould have heard of it ; for this indefinite approach of 
 a loitering catastrophe gnawed and fretted my feelings. 
 No Grecian audience ever waited with more shudder 
 ing horror for the anagnorisis* of the CEdipus, than 1 
 for the explosion of my debt. Had I been less igno- 
 rant, I should have proposed to mortgage my weekly 
 allowance for the debt, or to form a sinking fund for 
 redeeming it; for the weekly sum was nearly five per 
 cent, on the entire debt. But 1 had a mysterious awe 
 of ever alluding to it. This arose from my want of 
 some confidential friend ; whilst my grief pointed con- 
 tinually to the remembrance, that so it had not always 
 been. But was not the bookseller to blame in sutler- 
 ing a child scarcely seven years old to contract such 
 a debt ? Not in the least. He was both a rich man, 
 
 * That is (as on account of English readers is added), the recog- 
 nition of his true identity, which, in one moment, and by a horrid 
 flash of revelation, connects him with acts incestuous, murderous, 
 parricidal in the past, and with a mysterious fatality of woe lurk 
 ing in '.he future. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 213 
 
 who could not possibly care for my trifling custom, 
 and notoriously an honorable man. Indeed, the money 
 which I myself spent every week in books wouk' 
 reasonably have caused him to presume that so small 
 a sum as three guineas might well be authorized by my 
 family. He stood, however, on plainer ground ; for 
 my guardian, who was very indolent (as people chose 
 to call it), — that is, like his little melancholy ward, 
 spent all his time in reading, — often enough would send 
 ms to the bookseller's with a written order for books. 
 This was to prevent my forgetting. But when he 
 found that such a thing as " forgetting," in the case of 
 a book, was wholly out of the question for me, the 
 trouble of writing was dismissed. And thus I had 
 become factor-general, on the part of my guardian, 
 both for his books, and for such as were wanted on my 
 own account, in the natural course of my education 
 My private " little account " had therefore in fact flowed 
 homewards at Christmas, not (as I anticipated) in the 
 shape of an independent current, but as a little tributary 
 rill, that was lost in the waters of some more import- 
 ant river. This I now know, but could not then have 
 known with any certainty. So far, however, the aflfaii 
 would gradually have sunk out of my anxieties, as time 
 wore n. But there was another item in the case, 
 which, from the excess of my ignorance, preyed upon 
 my spirits far more keenly; and this, keeping itself 
 alive, kept also the other incident alive. With respect 
 to the debt, I was not so ignorant as to think it of much 
 danger by the mere amount, — my own allowance fur- 
 Dished a scale for preventing that mistake ; — it was the 
 principle, — the having presumed to contract debts or 
 
214 A SEQITEl. TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 my own account, — that I feared to have exposed. Bui 
 this other case was a ground for anxiety, even as 
 regarded the amount ; not really, but under the jesting 
 representation made to me, which I (as ever before and 
 after) swallowed in perfect faith. Amongst the books 
 which I had bought, all English, was a history of 
 Great Britain, commencing, of course, with Brutus and 
 a thousand years of impossibilities ; these fables being 
 generously thrown in as a little gratuitous extra to the 
 mass of truths which were to follow. This was to be 
 completed in sixty or eighty parts, 1 believe. But 
 there was another work left more indefinite as to its 
 ultimate extent, and which, from its nature, seemed to 
 imply a far higher range. It was a general history of 
 navigation, supported by a vast body of voyages. Now, 
 when I considered with myself what a huge thing the 
 sea was, and that so many thousands of captains, com- 
 modores, admirals, were eternally running up and down 
 it, and scoring lines upon its face so rankly, that in 
 some of the main "streets'' and "squares" (as one 
 might call them), their tracts would blend into one 
 undistinguishable blot, I began to fear that such a 
 work tended to infinity. What was little England to 
 the universal sea ? And yet that went perhaps to 
 fourscore parts. Not enduring the uncertainty that now 
 besieged my tranquillity, I resolved to know the worst; 
 and, on a day ever memorable to me, I went down to 
 the bookseller's. He was a mild, elderly man, and to 
 myself had always shown a kind, indulgent manner. 
 Par'ly, perhaps, he had been struck by my extreme 
 gravity; and partly, during the many conversations i 
 had with him, on occasion of my guardian's orders foi 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 215 
 
 uooks, with ray laughable simplicity. But there was 
 another reason which had early won for me his paternal 
 regard. For the first three or four months I had found 
 Latin something of a drudgery ; and the incident which 
 forev«r knocked away the " shores," at that time pre- 
 venting my launch upon the general bosom of Latin 
 literature, was this : — One day, the bookseller took 
 down a Beza's Latin Testament; and, opening it, 
 asked me to translate for him the chapter which he 
 pointed to. I was struck by perceiving that it was 
 the gpreat chapter of St. Paul on the grave and resur- 
 rection. I had never seen a Laitin version ; yet, from 
 the simplicity of the scriptural style in any translation 
 (though Beza's is far- from good), I could not well have 
 failed in construing; But, as it happened to be this par- 
 ticular chapter; which in English I had read again and 
 again with so passionate a sense of its grandeur, I read 
 it off with a fluency and effect like some great opera 
 singer' uttering a rapturous bravura. My kind old 
 friend expressed himself gratified, making me a present 
 of the book as a mark of his approbation. And it is 
 remarkable, that from this moment, when the deep 
 memory of the English words had forced me into 
 seeing the precise correspondence of the two concurrent ■ 
 streams, — Latin and English, — never again did any 
 difficulty arise to check the velocity of my progress in 
 this particular language. At less than eleven jrears 
 of age, when as yet I was a very indifferent Grecian, 
 I had become a brilliant master of Latinity, as my 
 alcaics and choriambics remain to testify ; and the 
 whole occasion of a change so memorable to a boy, 
 was this casual summons to translate a composition 
 
216 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 with which my heart was filled. Ever after this ne 
 showed me a caressing kindness, and so condescend 
 ingly, that, generally, he would leave any people, for a 
 m'-ment, with whom he was engaged, to come and speak 
 to me. On this fatal day, however, — for such it proved 
 to me, — he could not do this. He saw me, indeed, and 
 nodded, but could not leave a party of elderly strangers. 
 This accident threw me unavoidably upon one of his 
 young people. Now, this was a market day, and there 
 was a press of country people present, whom I did not 
 wish to hear my question. J^ever did a human crea- 
 ture, with his heart palpitating at Delphi for the solution 
 of some killing mystery, stand before the priestess of 
 the oracle, with lips that moved more sadly than mine, 
 when now advancing to a smiling young man at a desk. 
 His answer was to decide, though I could not exactly 
 know that, whether, for the next two years, I was to 
 have an hour of peace. He was a handsome, good- 
 natured young man, but full of fun and frolic; and 1 
 dare say was amused with what must have seemed to 
 him the absurd anxiety of my features. I described 
 the work to him, and he understood me at once. How 
 many voiames did he think it would extend to ' 
 There was a whimsical expression, perhaps, of droll 
 ery about his eyes, but which, unhappily, under my 
 preconceptions, I translated into scorn, as he replied, 
 '' How many volumes ? O ! really, I can 't say ; may- 
 be a matter of 15,000, be the same more or less." 
 "■More?" I said, in horror, altogether neglecting the 
 contingency of " less." " Why," he said, " we can't 
 settle these things to a nicety. But, considering the 
 subject " [ay, that was the very thing which I mTsel) 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 217 
 
 eonsidered], " I should say there might be some trifle 
 over, as suppose 400 or 500 volumes, be the same 
 more or less." What, then, — here there might bo 
 supplements to supplements, — the work might posi- 
 tively never end ! On one pretence or another, if an 
 author or publisher might add 500 volumes, he might 
 add another round 15,000. Indeed, it strikes one even 
 noyr, that by the time all the one-legged commodores 
 and yellow admirals of that generation had exhausted 
 their long yarns, another generation would have grown 
 another crop of the same gallant spinners. I asked no 
 more, but slunk out of the shop, and never again 
 entered it with cheerfulness, or propounded any frank 
 questions, as heretofore. For I was now seriously 
 afraid of pointing attention to myself as one that, by 
 having purchased some numbers, and obtained others 
 on credit, had silently contracted an engagement to 
 take all the rest, though they should stretch to the 
 crack of doom. Certainly I had never heard of a work 
 that extended to 15,000 volumes ; but still there was no 
 natural impossibility that it should ; and, if in any case, 
 in none so reasonably as one upon the inexhaustible 
 sea. Besides, any slight mistake as to the letter of 
 the number could not affect the horror of the final 
 prospect. I saw by the imprint, and I heard, that this 
 work emanated from London, a vast centre of mystery 
 to me, and the more so, as a thing unseen at any time 
 by my eyes, and nearly two hundred milesi distant. I 
 felt the fatal truth, that here was a ghostly cobweb radi- 
 ating into all the provinces from the mighty metropolis. 
 I secretly had trodden upon the outer circumference, — 
 Dad damaged or deranged the fine threads or links. — 
 
218 A SEtilTi.L TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 concealripnt or roparation there could be none. Slowly 
 perhaps, but surely, the vibration would travel bach 
 to London. The ancient spider that sat there at the 
 centre would rush along the net-work through all longi- 
 tudes an I latitudes, until he found the responsible 
 caitiff, author of so much mischief. Even with less 
 ignorance than mine, there was something to appal a 
 child's imagination in the vast systematic machinery 
 by which any elaborate work could disperse-' itself, could 
 levy money, could put questions and get answers, — 
 all in profound silence, nay, even in darkness, search- 
 ing every nook of every town and of every hamlet in 
 so populous a kingdom. I had some dim terrors, also, 
 connected with the Stationers' Company. I had often 
 observed them in popular works threatening unknown 
 men with unknown chastisements, for offences equally 
 unknown; nay, to myself, absolutely inconceivable 
 Could I be the mysterious criminal so long pointed out, 
 as it were, in prophecy ? I %ured the stationers, doubt- 
 less all powerful men, pulling at one rope, and my 
 unhappy self hanging at the other end. But an image, 
 which seems now even more ludicrous than the rest, at 
 that time, was the one most connected with the revival 
 of my grief. It occurred to my subtlety, that the Sta- 
 tioners' Company, or any other company, could not 
 possibly demand the money until they had delivered the 
 volumes. And, as no man could say that I had ever 
 positively refused to receive them, they would have no 
 pretence for not accomplishing this delivery m a civil 
 manner. Unless I should turn out to be no customer 
 at all, at jjresent it was clear that I had a right to be 
 considered a most excellent customer ; one, in lact 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. S19 
 
 who had giveu an order for fifteen thousand volumes. 
 Then rose up before me this great opera-house. 
 •' scena '' of the delivery. There would be a ring at 
 the front door. A wagoner in the front, with a bland 
 voice, would ask for "a young gentleman who had 
 given an order to their house.'' Looking out, I should 
 perceive a procession of carts and wagons, all advanc- 
 ing in measured movements; each in turn would pre-' 
 sent its rear, deliver its cargo of volumes, by shooting 
 them, like a load of coals, on the lawn, and wheel off to 
 the rear, by way of clearing the road for its successors. 
 Then the impossibility of even asking the servants to 
 cover with sheets, or counterpanes, or table-cloths, such 
 a mountainous, such a " star-y-pointing " record of my 
 past offences, lying in so conspicuous a situation ! Men 
 would not know my guilt merely, they would see it. 
 But the reason why this form of the consequences, so 
 much more than any other, stuck by my imagination 
 was, that it connected itself with one of the Arabian 
 Nights which had particularly interested myself and 
 my sister. It was that tale, where a young porter, 
 having his ropes about his person, had stumbled into 
 the special " preserve " of some old magician. He 
 finds a beautiful lady imprisoned, to whom (and not 
 without prospects of success) he recommends himself 
 as a suitor more in harmony with her own years than 
 a withered magician. At this crisis, the magician 
 returns. The young man bolts, and for that day 
 successfully; but unluckily he leaves his ropes behind. 
 Next morning he hears the magician, too honest by 
 half, ihqumng at the front door, with much expression 
 of condolence, for the unfortunate young man who had 
 
220 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 lost his ropes in his own zenana. Upon this stoiy 
 1 used to amuse my sister by ventriloquizing to the 
 magician, from the lips of the trembling young man, — 
 " O, Mr. Magician, these ropes cannot be mine ! They 
 are far too good ; and one would n't like, you know, tc 
 rob some other poor young man. If you please, Mr 
 Magician, I never had money enough to buy so beauti- 
 ful a set of ropes." But argument is thrown away 
 upon a magician, and off he sets on his travels with the 
 young porter, not forgetting to take the ropes along with 
 him. 
 
 Here now was the case, that had once seemed so 
 impressive to me in a mere fiction from a far distant 
 age and land, literally reproduced in myself. For, 
 what did it matter whether a magician dunned one 
 with old ropes for his engine of torture, or Stationers' 
 Hall with fifteen thousand volumes (in the rear of which 
 there might also be ropes) ? Should / have ventrilo- 
 quized, would my sister have laughed, had either of us 
 but guessed the possibility that I myself, and vidthin one 
 twelve months, and, alas ! standing alone in the world 
 as regarded confidential counsel, should repeat within 
 my own inner experience the shadowy panic of the 
 young Bagdat intruder upon the privacy of magicians 1 
 It appeared, then, that I had been reading a legend 
 concerning myself in the Arabian Nights. I had been 
 contemplated in types a thousand yeais befcre, on the 
 banks of the Tigris. It was horror and grief that 
 prompted that thought. 
 
 0, heavens! that the misery of a child should by 
 possibility become the laughter of adults ! — that even 
 1, the sufferer, should be capable of amusing myself, 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 22 i 
 
 Bs if it had been a jest, with what for three years had 
 constituted the secret affliction of my life, and its eter- 
 nal trepidation — like the ticking of a death-watch to 
 patients lying awake in the plague ! I durst ask no 
 counsel ; there was no one to ask. Possibly my sistei 
 could have given me none in a case which neither of 
 us should have understood, and where to seek for inform- 
 ation from others would have been at once to betray 
 the whole reason for seeking it. But, if no advice, she 
 would have given me her pity, and the expression of 
 her endless love; and, with the relief of sympathy, 
 that heals for a season all distresses, she would have 
 given me that exquisite luxury — the knowledge that, 
 having parted with my secret, yet also I had not parted 
 with it, since it was in the power only of one that could 
 much less betray me than I could betray myself. At 
 this time, — that is, about the year when I suffered 
 most, — I was reading Caesar. O, laurelled scholar, 
 sunbright intellect, " foremost man of all this world," 
 how often did I make out of thy immortal volume a pil- 
 low to support my wearied brow, as at evening, on my 
 homeward road, I used to turn into some silent field, 
 where I might give way unobserved to the reveries 
 which besieged me ! 1 wondered, and found no end 
 of wondering, at the revolution that one short year had 
 made in my happiness. I wondered that such billows 
 could overtake me. At the beginning of that year, how 
 radiantly happy ! At the end, how insupportably alone ! 
 
 " Into what depth thou seest, 
 From what height fallen." 
 
 Fort ver I searched the abysse? with some wandering 
 
222 A iEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 thoughts unintelligible to myself. Forevei f dallied 
 with some obscure notion, how my sister's love might be 
 made in some dim way available for delivering me from 
 misery ; or else how the misery I had suffered and was 
 suffering might be made, in some way equally dim, the 
 ransom for winning back her love. 
 
 Here pause, reader ! Imagine yourself seated in 
 some cloud-scaling swing, oscillating under the impulse 
 of lunatic hands ; for the strength of lunacy may belong 
 to human dreams, the fearful caprice of lunacy, and the 
 malice of lunacy, whilst the victim of those dreams 
 may be all the more certainly removed from lunacy; 
 even as a bridge gathers cohesion and strength from 
 the increasing resistance into which it is forced by 
 increasing pressure. Seated in such a swing, fast as 
 you reach the lowest point of depression, may you 
 rely on racing up to a starry altitude of corresponding 
 ascent. Ups and downs you will see, heights and 
 depths, in our fiery course together, such as will some- 
 times tempt you to look shyly and suspiciously at me, 
 your guide, and the ruler of the oscillations. Here, at 
 the point where I have called a halt, the reader has 
 reached the lowest depths in my nursery afflictions. 
 From that point, according to the principles of art 
 which govern the movement of these Confessions, 1 
 had meant to launch him upwards through the whole 
 arch of ascending visions which seemed requisite to 
 balance the sweep downwards, so recently described in 
 his course. But accidents of the press have made it 
 impiissible to accomplish this purpose in the present 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EArER. UU3 
 
 month's journal. There is reason to regret that the 
 advantages of position, which were essential to the full 
 effect of passages planned for the equipoise and mutual 
 resistance, have thus been lost. Meantime, upon the 
 principle of the mariner, who rigs a ^'^ry-mast in default 
 of his regular spars, I find my resource in a sort of 
 "jury" peroration, not sufficient in the way of a balance 
 by its proportions, but sufficient to indicate the quality 
 of the balance which I had contemplated. He who has 
 really read the preceding parts of these present Confes- 
 sions will be aware that a stricter scrutiny of the past, 
 such as was natural after the whole economy of the 
 dreaming tfaculty had been convulsed beyond all prece- 
 dents on record, led me to the conviction that not one 
 agency, but two agencies, had cooperated to the tremen- 
 dous result. The nursery experience had been the ally 
 and the natural coefficient of the opium. For that 
 reason it was that the nursery experience has been nar- 
 rated. Logically it bears the very same relation to the 
 convulsions of the dreaming faculty as the opium. The 
 idealizing tendency existed in the dream-theatre of my 
 childhood; but the preternatural strength of its action 
 and coloring was first developed after the confluence 
 of the two causes. The reader must suppo.^e me at 
 Oxford ; twelve years and a half are gone by ; I am in 
 the glory of youthful happiness : but I have now first 
 tampered with opium; and now first the agitations of 
 my childhood reopened in strength, now first they swept 
 in upon the brain with power, and the grandeur of recov- 
 ered life, under the separate and the concurring inspiia- 
 hons of opium. 
 
 Once again, after twelve years' intervalj the nursery 
 
224 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 of my childhood expanded before me : my sister was 
 moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with 
 fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, 
 but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon 
 some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like 
 the superb Medea standing alone with her children 
 in the nursery at Corinth,* smote me senseless to the 
 ground. Again I was in the chamber with my sister's 
 corpse, again the pomps of life rose up in silence, the 
 glory of summer, the frost of death. Dream formed 
 itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford 
 dreams remoulded itself continually the trance in my 
 sister's chamber, — the blue heavens, the everlasting 
 vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the 
 thought (but not the sight) of " Him that sate there- 
 on;" the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of 
 my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession 
 gathered; the priest in his white surplice stood wait 
 ing with a book in his hand by the side of an open 
 grave, the sacristan with his shovel; the coflin sank; 
 the dust to dust descended. Again I was in the church 
 on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight 
 of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his 
 martyrs, his saints ; the fragment from the litany, the 
 fragment from the clouds, awoke agiiin the lawny 
 beds that went up to scale the heavens — awoke again 
 the shadowy arms that moved downward to meet 
 them. Once again arose the swell of the anthem, 
 the burst of the Hallelujah chorus, the storm, the 
 trampling movement of the choral passion, the agi1a< 
 
 * Euripides. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 22il 
 
 tion of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult 
 of the choir, the wrath of the organ. Once more 1, 
 that wallowed, became he that rose up to the clouds. 
 And now in Oxford all was bound up into unity : the 
 first state and the last were melted into' each other as in 
 some sunny glorifying haze. For high above my own 
 station hovered a gleaming host of heavenly beings 
 surrounding the pillows of the dying children. And 
 such beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels 
 and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the 
 children that are languishing in death, and the children 
 that live only to languish in tears. 
 
 THE PALIMPSEST. 
 
 you know perhaps, masculine reader, better than 1 
 can tell you, what is a Palimpsest. Possibly, you have 
 one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of others 
 who may not know, or may have forgotten, suffer me 
 to explain it here, lest any female reader, who honors 
 these papers with her notice, should tax me with 
 explaining it once too seldom ; which would be worse 
 to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve 
 proud men, that 1 had explained it three times too often. 
 \ou therefore, fair reader, understand, that for your 
 accommodation exclusively, 1 explain the meaning of 
 this word. It is Greek ; and our sex enjoys the office 
 and privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all ques 
 tions of Greftk. We are, under favor, perpetual and 
 15 
 
SSJ6 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 hereditary Uragoraans to you. So that if, by accident 
 you know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by cour- 
 tesy to us, your counsel learned in that matter, you will 
 always seem not to know it. 
 
 A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed of 
 its manuscript by reiterated successions. 
 
 What was the reason that the Greeks and the 
 Romans had not the advantage of printed books ? The 
 answer will be, from ninetyrnine persons in a huhired, 
 — Because the mystery of printing was not then dis- 
 covered. But this isaltogether a mistake. The secret 
 of printing must have been discovered many thousands 
 of times before it was used, or cmdd be used. The 
 inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stu- 
 pidity is divine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the 
 slow development of the sofa through successive genera- 
 tions of immortal dulness. It took centuries of block- 
 heads to raise a joint stool into a chair ; and it required 
 something like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of 
 elder generations, to reveal the possibility of lengthening 
 a chair into a chaise-longue, or a sofa. Yes, these were 
 inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. 
 But still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the 
 stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the 
 task of evading an object which stared him in the face 
 with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Athenian 
 intellect to read the main secret of printing in manv 
 scores of processes which the ordinary uses of lift 
 were daily repeating. To say nothing of analogous 
 artifices amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is 
 essentiivl ip printing must have been known to every 
 pation that struck coins and medals. Not thereforp, 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 22T 
 
 uny want of a printing art, — that is, of an art for 
 multiplying impressions, — but the want of a chenp 
 material for receiving such impressions, was the obstacle 
 to an introduction of printed books, even as early as 
 Pisistratus. The ancients did apply printing to records 
 of silver and gold; to marble, and many other sub- 
 stances cheaper than gold and silver, they did not, since 
 each monument required a separate effort of inscrip- 
 tion. Simply this defect it was of a cheap material for 
 receiving impresses, which froze in its very fountains 
 the early resources of printing. 
 
 Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was 
 luminously expounded by Dr. Whately, the present 
 Archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe, of 
 having first suggested it. Since then, this theory has 
 received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that origi- 
 nal scarcity affecting all materials proper for durable 
 books, which continued up to times comparatively 
 modern, grew the opening for palimpsests. Natur- 
 ally, when once a roll of parchment or of vellum had 
 done its office, by propagating through a. series of gen- 
 erations what once had possessed an interest for Ihem, 
 but which, under changes of opinion or of taste, had 
 faded to their feelings or had become obsolete for their 
 undertakings, the whole membrana or vellum skin, the 
 two-fold product of human skill, costly material, and 
 costly freight, of thought, which it carried, drooped in 
 value concurrently — supposing that each were inalien- 
 ably associated to the other. Once it had been the 
 impress of a human mind which stamped its value upon 
 the vellum; the vellum, though costly, had contributed 
 out a secondary .■•lement of value to the total resu t 
 
5J28 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 At length, however, this relation between the vehicle 
 and its freight has gradually been undermined. The 
 vellum, from having been the setting of the jewel, has 
 risen at lepgth to be the jewel itself; and the burden of 
 thought, from having given the chief value to the 
 vellum, has now become the chief obstacle to its value ; 
 nay, has totally extinguished its value, unless it can be 
 dissociated from the connection. Yet, if this unlinking 
 can be effected, then, fast as the inscription upon the 
 membrane is sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself 
 is reviving in its separate importance ; and, from bearing 
 a ministerial value, the vellum has come at last to absorb 
 the whole value. 
 
 Hence the importance for our ancestors that the 
 separation should be effected. Hence it arose in the 
 middle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to 
 discharge the vsrriting from the roll, and thus to make 
 it available for a new succession of thoughts. The 
 soil, if cleansed from what once had been hot-house 
 plants, but now were held to be weeds, would be ready 
 to receive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that 
 object the monkish chemist succeeded; but after a 
 fashion which seems almost incredible, — incredible not 
 as regards the extent of their success, but as regards 
 the delicacy of restraints under which it moved, — so 
 equally adjusted was their success to the immediate 
 interests of that period, and to the reversionary objects 
 of our own. They did the thing ; bu not so radically 
 as to prevent us, their posterity, from wwdoing it. They 
 expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the 
 new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to make the 
 traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable for us 
 
aV AN ENGLISH OPIITM-EATER. 226 
 
 Could magic, could Hermes Trismegistus, have done 
 more ? What would you think, fair reader, of a prob- 
 lem such as this, — to write a book which should be 
 sense for your own generation, nonsense for the next, 
 bhould revive into sense for the next after that, but 
 again become nonsense for the fourth ; and so on by 
 alternate successions, sinking into night or blazing into 
 day, like the Sicilian river Arethusa, and the English 
 riyer Mole ; or like the undulating motions of a flat- 
 tened stone which children cause to skim the breast of 
 a river, now diving below the water, now grazing its 
 surface, sinking heavily into darkness, rising buoyantly 
 into light, through a long vista of alternations ? Such 
 a problem, you say, is impossible. But really it is a 
 DToblem not harder apparently than — to bid a genera- 
 tion kill, but so that a subsequent generation may call 
 back into life ; bury, but so that posterity may command 
 to rise again. Yet that was what the rude chemistry 
 of past ages effected when coming into combination 
 with the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our 
 own. Had they been better chemists, had we been worse, 
 the mixed result, namely, that, dying for them, the 
 flower should revive for us, could not have been effected. 
 They did the thing proposed to them : they did it effect- 
 ually, for they founded upon it all that was wanted ; 
 and yet ineffectually, since we unravelled their work . 
 effacing all above which they had superscribed; restor- 
 ing all below which they had effaced. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a parchment which contained 
 some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of ^schylus, 
 or the PhoBnissBB of Euripides. This had possessed a 
 va ue almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished 
 
iJ30 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 scholars, continually growing rarer through generation!) 
 But four centuries are gone by since the destruction 
 of the Western Empire. Christianity, with towering 
 grandeurs of another class, has founded a different 
 empire; and some bigoted, yet perhaps holy monk, his 
 washed away (as he persuades himself) the heathen's 
 tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend; which 
 legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents, and yet 
 in a higher sense is true, because interwoven with 
 Christian morals, and with the sublimest of Christian 
 revelations. Three, four, five centuries more, find man 
 still devout as ever ; but the language has become 
 obsolete, and even for Christian devotion a new era has 
 arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal 
 or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The mermhrana, is wanted 
 now for a knightly romance — for " my Cid," or Cceui 
 Je Lion; for Sir Tristrem, or Lybseus Disconus. In 
 this way, by means of the imperfect chemistry known 
 to the mediaeval period, the same roll has served as a 
 conservatory for three separate generations of flowers 
 and fruits, all perfectly different, and yet all specially 
 adapted to the wants of the successive possessors. 
 The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend the knightly 
 romance, each has ruled its own period. One harvest 
 after another has been gathered into the garners of 
 man through ages far apart. And the sa ne hydraubc 
 machinery has distributed, through the same marble 
 fountains, water, milk, or wine, according to the habits 
 and training of the generations that came to quench 
 their thirst. 
 
 Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem- 
 is/ry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our jwn 
 
OP AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EAIEE. 231 
 
 aays has reversed all these motions of our simple an- 
 cestors, which results in every stage that to them 
 would have realized the most fantastic amongst the 
 promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracel- 
 sus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out 
 01 the ashes settling from its . combustion — that is now 
 rivalled in this modern achievement. The traces of 
 each successive handwriting, regularly effaced, as had 
 been imagined, have, in the inverse order, been regu- 
 larly, called back: the footsteps of the game pursued, 
 wolf or stag, in each several chase, have been un- 
 linked, and hunted back through all their doubles; 
 and, as the chorus of the Athenian stage unwove 
 through the antistrophe every step that had been mys- 
 tically woven through the strophe, so, by our moderr. 
 conjurations of science, secrets of ages remote from 
 each other have been exorcised* from the accumu- 
 lated shadows of centuries. Chemistry, a witch as 
 potent as the Erictho of Lucanto {Pharsalia, lib. vi. 
 or vii.), has extorted by her torments, from the dust 
 and ashes of forgotten centuries, the secrets of a life 
 extinct for the .general eye, but still glowing in the 
 embers. Even the fable of the Phcenix, that secular 
 bird, who propagated his solitary existence, and his 
 solitary births, along the line of centuries, through 
 eternal relays of funeral mists, is but a type of what 
 we have done with Palimpsests. We have backed 
 
 *Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English experi- 
 ence, that the word exorcise, means properly banishment to the 
 shades. Not so. Citation Jrom the shades, or sometimes the 
 torturing coercion of mystic adjurations, is more truly the Jirimary 
 sense. 
 
232 SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 upon each phcenix in the long regressus, and forced 
 him to expose his ancestral phoenix, sleeping in the 
 ashes below his own ashes. Our good old forefathers 
 would have been aghast at our sorceries ; and, if they 
 speculated on the propriety of burning Dr. Faustus 
 us they would have burned by acclamation. Trial 
 there would have been none ; and they could not 
 otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen prof- 
 ligacy marking our modem magic, than by ploughing 
 up the houses of all who had been parties to it, and 
 sowing the ground with salt. 
 
 Fancy not, reader, that this tumult of images, illus- 
 trative or allusive, moves under any impulse or pur- 
 pose of mirth. It is but the coruscation of a restless 
 understanding, often made ten times more so by irri- 
 tation of the nerves, such as you will first learn to 
 comprehend (its how and its why) some stage or two 
 ahead. The image, the memorial, the record, which 
 for me is derived from a palimpsest, as to one great 
 fact in our human being, and which immediately I 
 will show you, is but too repellent of laughter; or, 
 even if laughter had been possible, it would have been 
 such laughter as oftentimes is thrown off from the 
 fields of ocean,* laughter that hides, or that seems to 
 
 *" Laughter Jrom the fields of ocean." — Many readers 'wUl 
 recall, though, at the moment of writing, my own thoughts did 
 not recall, the well-known passage in the Prometheus — 
 
 TToi'Tiwv re Kv^aTvsv 
 
 "O maltitndinous laughter of the ocean billows!" It is no> 
 clear whether ^schylt s contemplated the larghter as i\ddresaing 
 the ear or the eye. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPITTM-EATEE. 233 
 
 evade mustering tumult; foam-bells that weave gar- 
 lands of phosphoric radiance for one moment round 
 the eddies of gleaming abysses; mimicries of earth- 
 born flowers that for the eye raise phantoms of gayety, 
 as oftentimes for the ear they raise the echoes of fugitive 
 laughter, mixing with the ravings and choir- voices of an 
 angry sea. 
 
 What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is 
 the human brain ? Such a pahmpsest is my brain ; such 
 a palimpsest, oh reader! is yours. Everlasting layers 
 o: ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain 
 softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury 
 all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one has 
 been extinguished. And if, in the vellum palimpsest, 
 lying amongst the other diplmnata of human archives 
 or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which move.s 
 to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesqu' 
 collisions of those successive themes, having no natural 
 connection, which by pure accident have consecutively 
 occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created pa- 
 limpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, 
 there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The 
 fleeting accidents of a man's life, and its external shows, 
 may indeed be irrelate and incongruous ; but the organ- 
 izing principles which fuse into harmony, and gather 
 about fixed predetermined centres, whatever heterogene- 
 ous elements life may have accumulated from without, 
 will not permit the grandeur of human unity greatly to 
 ne violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled, in the 
 retrospect from dying moments, or from other great 
 convulsions. 
 
 Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual sufTr- 
 
234 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 cation, as in drowning; and, in the original Opium 
 Confessions, I mentioned a case of that nature com- 
 municated to me by a lady from her own childish 
 experience. The lady is still living, though now of 
 unusually great age; and Imay mention that amongst 
 her faults never was numbered any levity of principle, 
 or carelessness of the most scrupulous veracity; but, 
 on the contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too 
 harsh, perhaps, and gloomy indulgent neither to others 
 nor herself. And, at the time of relating this incident, 
 when already very old, she had become religious to 
 asceticism. According to my present belief, she had 
 completed her ninth year, when, playing by the side of 
 a solitary brook, she fell into one of its deepest pools. 
 Eventually, but after what lapse of time nobody ever 
 knew, she was saved from death by a farmer, who, 
 riding in some distant lane, had seen her rise to the 
 surface ; but not until she had descended within the 
 abyss of death, and looked into its secrets, as far, per- 
 haps, as ever human eye can have looked that had 
 permission to return. At a certain stage of this descent, 
 a blow seemed to strike her, phosphoric radiance sprang 
 forth from her eyeballs ; and immediately a mighty 
 theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, every act, every desisu of 
 her past life, lived again, arraying themselves not as 
 A succession, but as parts of a coexistence. Such a 
 hght fell upon the whole path of her life backwards 
 "nto the shades of infancy, as the light, perhaps, which 
 wrapt the destined Apostle on his road to Damascus. 
 Vet that light blinded for a season ; but hers poured 
 celestial vision upon the brain, so that her consciousnosi 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 235 
 
 became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in 
 the infinite review. 
 
 This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time 
 by some critics. But, besides that it has since been 
 confirmed by other experience essentially the same, 
 reported by other parties in the same circumstances, 
 who had never heard of each other, the true point for 
 astonishment is not the simultaneity of arrangement 
 under which the past events of life, though in fact 
 successive, had formed their dread line of revelation. 
 This was but a secondary phenomenon ; the deeper lay 
 in the resurrection itself, and the possibility of resurrec- 
 tion, for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall, 
 deep as oblivion, had been thrown by life- over every 
 trace of these experiences; and yet suddenly, at a 
 silent command, at the signal of a blazing rocket' sent 
 up from the brain, the pall draws up, and the whole 
 depths of the theatre are exposed. Here was the 
 greater mystery : now this mystery is liable to no doubt; 
 for it is repeated, and ten thousand times repeated, by 
 opium, for those who are its martyrs. 
 
 Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand-writ- 
 ings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselvea 
 successively upon the palimpsest of your brain ; and. 
 like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the 
 undissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling 
 upon light,, the endless strata have covered up each 
 other in forgetfulness. But by the hour of death, but' 
 by fever, but by the searchings of opium, all these can 
 revive in strength. They are not dead, but . sleeping 
 In the illustration imagined by myself, from the case 
 of some individual palimpsest, the Grecian tragedy h»iJ 
 
:i36 A SSEQUEL, TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 seemed to be displaced, but was Twt displaced, by the 
 monkish legend; and the monkish legend had seemed 
 to be displaced, but was not displaced, by the knightly 
 romance. In some potent convulsion of the system, 
 all wheels back into its earliest elementary stage. The 
 bewildering romance, light tarnished with darkness, the 
 semi-fabulous legend, truth celestial mixed with human 
 falsehoods, these fade even of themselves, as life ad- 
 vances. The romance has perished that the young 
 man adored; the legend has gone that deluded the boy; 
 but the deep, deep tragedies of infancy, as when the 
 child's hands were unlinked forever from his mother's 
 neck, or his lips forever from his sister's kisses, these 
 remain lurking below all, and these lurk to the last. 
 Alchemy there is none of passion or disease that can 
 scorch away these immortal impresses ; and the dream 
 which closed the preceding section, together with the 
 succeeding dreams of this (which may be viewed as 
 in the nature of choruses winding up the overture 
 contained in Part I.), are but illustrations of this truth, 
 such as every man probably will meet experimentally 
 who passes through similar convulsions of dreaming or 
 delirium from any similar or equal disturbance in his 
 nature.* 
 
 *This, it may be said, requires a corresponding duration of 
 exiierience '^ut, as an argument for this mysterious power lurking 
 in our nalura, I may remind tlie reader of one phenomenon open to 
 the notice of everybody, namely, the tendency of very aged per- 
 sons to throw back and concentrate the light of their memory upon 
 scenes of early childhood, as to which they recall many traces that 
 had faded even to themselves in middle life, whilst they often for 
 get altogether the whole intermediate stages of their experience. 
 This shows that naturally, and without violent agencies thf 
 human brain is by tendency a palimpsest. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPmM-EATEE. 23T 
 
 LEY ANA AND OrTR LADIES OF SORROW. 
 
 Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. 
 [ knew her by her Boman symbols. Who is Levana 1 
 Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very 
 much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for 
 telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that per- 
 formed for the new-born infant the earliest office of 
 ennobling kindness, — typical, by its mode, of that 
 grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that 
 benignity in powers invisible which even in Pagan 
 worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very 
 moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first 
 time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid 
 on the ground. That might bear different interpreta- 
 tions. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should 
 grovel there for more than one instant, either the pater- 
 nal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some 
 near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, 
 bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and 
 presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in 
 his heart, " Behold what is greater than yourselves ! " 
 This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. 
 And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face 
 (except to me in dreams), but always acted by delega- 
 tion, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the 
 'talian verb) levare, to raise aloft. 
 
 This is the explanation of LevEftia. And hence it has 
 arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 
 tutehry power that controls the education of the nur- 
 sery She, that would not suffer at his birth even a 
 
238 A SEQI/EL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, 
 far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation 
 attaching to the non-development of his powers. She 
 therefore watches over human education. Now, the 
 word edvco, with the penultimate short, was derived 
 (by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of 
 languages) from the word edueo, with the penultimate 
 long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates. By 
 the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, — not the 
 poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and gram- 
 mars, but by that mighty system of central forces hid- 
 den in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, 
 by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, 
 works forever upon children, — resting not day or night, 
 any more than the mighty wheel of day and night them- 
 selves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glim- 
 mering* forever as they revolve. 
 
 If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
 works, how profoundly must she reverence the agen- 
 cies of grief! But you, reader! think, — that children 
 
 ♦ " Glimmering." — As I have never allowed myself to covet any 
 man's ux nor his ass, nor anything that is his, still less would it 
 become a philosopher to covet other people's images, or meta- 
 phors. Here, therefore, I restore to Mr. Wordsworth this fine 
 image of tlie revolving wheel, and the glimmering spokes, as applied 
 by him to the flying successions of day and night. I borrowed it 
 for one moment in order to point my own sentence ; which being 
 lone, the reader is witness that I now pay it back instantly by a 
 note made for that sole purpose. On the same principle loften 
 borrow their seals from young ladies, when closing my Utters. 
 Because there is sure to be some tender sentiment upon then", about 
 " memory," or " hope," or " roses, or " reunion ; " and my corre- 
 spondent must be a sad brute who is not touched by the eloquenc 
 of the seal, even if his taste is so bad that he remains deaf to 
 micei 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEIi,. 239 
 
 generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There 
 are two senses in the word generally, — the sense of 
 Euclid, where it means universally (or in the whole 
 extent of the gemis), and a foolish sense of this world, 
 where it means itsually. Now, I am far from saying 
 that children universally are capable of grief like mine. 
 But there are more than you ever heard of who die of 
 grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common 
 case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the 
 foundation should be there twelve years : he is super- 
 annuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at 
 six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at 
 that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. 
 The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; 
 but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
 killed more than ever have been counted amongst its 
 martyrs. 
 
 Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the 
 powers that shake man's heart : therefore it is that she 
 dotes upon grief. " These ladies," said I softly to my- 
 self, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was 
 conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; and they are three 
 in number, as the Graces are three, who dress man's 
 life with beauty : the Farcce are three, who weave the 
 dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always 
 with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic 
 crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit 
 with retributions called from the other side of the grave 
 offences that walk upon this; and at once even the 
 Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or 
 the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned 
 creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom 1 
 
210 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford J 
 said, " one of whom I know, and the others too surely 
 i shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, 1 
 saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ground of my 
 dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. 
 These sisters — by what name shall we call them ? 
 
 If I say simply, " The Sorrows,'' there will be a 
 chance of mistaking the term; it might be understood 
 of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sorrow, — 
 whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstrac- 
 tions that incarnate themselves in all individual suffer- 
 ings of man's heart ; and I wish to have these abstrac- 
 tions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed 
 with human attributes of life, and with functions point- 
 ing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, Our Ladies 
 of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked 
 in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one 
 mysterious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; 
 but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw 
 often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about my- 
 self. Do they talk, then ? O, no ! Mighty phantoms 
 like these disdain the infirmities of language. They 
 may utter voices through the organs of man when they 
 dwe.l in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no 
 voice nor sound ; eternal silence reigns in their king- 
 doms. Th£y spoke not, as they talked with Levana,; 
 they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes 
 methought they might have sung: for I upon earth 
 had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by 
 harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, 
 whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure 
 <iot by sounds tnat perish, or by words that go astray 
 
O." AM ENGLISH OProM-EATEK. 241 
 
 but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by 
 pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, 
 and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. 
 They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They 
 telegraphed from afar ; / read the signds. They con- 
 spired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my 
 eje traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; mine 
 are the words. 
 
 What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they do ? 
 Let me describe their form, and their presence ; if form 
 it were that still fluctuated in its outline ; or presence 
 it were that forever advanced to the front, or forever 
 receded amongst shades. 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
 marutn, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and 
 day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She 
 stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation, 
 — Kachel weeping for her children, and refused to be 
 comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the 
 night when Herod's sword swept its nurseiies of Inno- 
 cents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, 
 heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, 
 woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not 
 unmarked in heaven. 
 
 Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by 
 turns ; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes chal- 
 lenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her 
 head. And I knew by childish memories that she could 
 go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing 
 of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she 
 beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, 
 the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her 
 16 
 
242 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 girdle, which open every cottage and every palace 
 She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bed- 
 side of the blii d beggar, him that so often and so gladly 
 I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old 
 with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of 
 play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty 
 roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send 
 her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year, and 
 whilst yet her own spring was budding, he recalled her 
 to himself. But her blind father mourns forever over 
 her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding 
 hand is locked within his own ; and still he wakens to 
 a darkness that is tww within a second and a deeper 
 darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sit- 
 ting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber 
 of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not 
 less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and 
 left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the 
 power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides 
 a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, 
 sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the 
 Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she 
 is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, 
 let us honor with the title of " Madonna." 
 
 The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our 
 Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 
 abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And 
 her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither 
 sweet nor subtile ; no man could read their story ; they 
 would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with 
 wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
 eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban 
 
OF A.^ ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 243 
 
 droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps 
 not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at inter- 
 vals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and 
 frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and 
 demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs 
 never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious' 
 aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the 
 meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she 
 may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is 
 to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, 
 but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is 
 desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone 
 down to his rest. This sister is the visiter of the Pariah, 
 of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediter- 
 ranean galleys ; of the English criminal in Norfolk 
 Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in 
 sweet far-off England ; of the baffled penitent reverting 
 his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him 
 seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody 
 sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be avail- 
 ing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, oc 
 towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave 
 that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid 
 reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our 
 general mother, but for him a step-mother, — as he points 
 with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, 
 but against Mm sealed and sequestered;* — every 
 
 *This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the cotton and 
 tobacco States of North America ; but not to them only : on whirjh 
 account I have not scrupled to figure the sun, which looks down 
 upon slavery, as tropical; no matter if strictly within the tiopi» 
 «r simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate. 
 
5J44 A fc^^TTEL TO THE CONTESSIONS 
 
 woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter he! 
 head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the 
 heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of 
 holy affections, which God implanted in her womanlj 
 bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now 
 burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst 
 the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning 
 May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge; 
 every captive in every dungeon ; all that are betrayed, 
 and all that are rejected ; outcasts by traditionary law, 
 and children of hereditary disgrace, — all these waik 
 with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key ; 
 but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chieflj 
 amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant 
 of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man 
 she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious 
 England there are some that, to the world, carry their 
 heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have 
 received her mark upon their foreheads. 
 
 But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! 
 
 Hush. ! whisper whilst we talk of her ! Her kingdom 
 is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but within that 
 kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that 
 of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She 
 droops not ; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden 
 by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be 
 hidden; througn the treble veil of crape which she 
 wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests 
 not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon 
 of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read 
 from the very ground. She is the defier of God, She 
 also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPnJM-EATER 245 
 
 saicides. Deep lie the roots of her power ; but narrow 
 IS the nation that she rules. For she can approach only 
 those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved 
 by central convulsions ; in whom the heart trembles 
 and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from 
 without and tempest from within. Madonna moves 
 with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic 
 grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealth- 
 ily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable 
 motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She car- 
 ries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, 
 she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter 
 at all. And her name is Mater Teruhrarum, — Our 
 Lady of Darkness. 
 
 These were the Semnai Tlieai, or Sublime God- 
 desses,* these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies 
 (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of 
 my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by 
 her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beck- 
 oned to Our Lady of Sighs ; and what she spoke, trans- 
 lated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man 
 reads, was this : 
 
 " Lo ! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to 
 my altars. This is he that once I made my darling 
 Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I 
 stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did 
 he become idolatrous ; and through me it was, by lan- 
 
 *" Sublime Goddesses." — The word asfivoq is usually rendered 
 renei able in dictionaries ; not a very flattering epithet fcr emales. 
 But by weighing a number of passages in which the word is used 
 pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to out ides 
 of the sublime, as near as a Greek word could come. 
 
240 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 guisbing desires, that he worshipped the worm, ana 
 prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to 
 him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption 
 Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee 
 dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now 
 to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. 
 And thou," — turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she 
 said, — " wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do 
 thou take him from Jier. See that thy sceptre lie 
 heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tender- 
 ness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frail- 
 ties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the 
 fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. 
 So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall 
 he see the things that ought rwt to be seen, sights that 
 are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So 
 shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fear 
 ful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And 
 so shall our commission be accomplished which from 
 God we had, — to plague his heart until we had un- 
 folded the capacities of his spirit." * 
 
 * The reader, who wishes at all to understand the course of these 
 Confessions, ought not to pass over this dream-legend. There is 
 no greatwonder that a vision, which occupied my waking thoughts 
 m those years, should reappear in my dreams. It was, in fact, a 
 legand recurring in sleep, most of which I had myself silently writ- 
 ten or sculptured in my daylight reveries. But its importance to 
 the present Confessions is this, that it rehearses or prefigures th eir 
 course. This first part belongs to Madonna. The thied belongs 
 to the "Mater Suspiriorum," and will be entitled The Pariaii 
 fVorlds. The fouhth, which terminates the work, belongs to the 
 ' Mater Tenebrarum," and will be entitled The Kingdom of Dark- 
 ness. As to the second, it is an interpolation requisite to tnf 
 effect of the others, and will be explained in its proper place. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 247 
 
 THE APPAKITION OF THE BROCKEN. 
 
 Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the 
 Brocken of North Germany. The dawn opened in 
 cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but, 
 as the hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that 
 sometimes cares little for racing across both frontiers 
 of May, frets the bridal lady's sunny temper with 
 sallies of wheeling and careering showers, flying and 
 pursuing, opening and closing, hiding and restoring. 
 On such a morning, and reaching the summits of the 
 forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have one 
 chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the 
 Brocken* Who and what is he? He is a solitary 
 
 * " Spectre qfthe Brocken. " — This very striking \ lienomenon ha? 
 been continually described by writers, both German and English 
 for the last fifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met 
 with these descriptions ; and on their account 1 add a fewwords in 
 explanation, referring them for the best scientific comment on the 
 sase to Sir David Brewster's " Natural Magic." The spectre takes 
 the shape of a human figure, or, if the visiters are more than one, 
 then the spectres multiply j they arrange themselves on the blue 
 ground of the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that maybe in 
 the right quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a 
 curtain of rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting 
 gigantic proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal 
 size, every spectator supposes the appearance to be quite independ- 
 ent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own 
 mctions and gestures mimicked ; and wakens to the conviction that 
 the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan 
 amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious vanish- 
 ing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy in 
 coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he 
 is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions 
 andei which only the phenomenon can be manifested ; the sun musi 
 
248 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 apparition, in the sense of loving solitude; else he is 
 not always solitary in his personal manifestations, but, 
 on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a 
 strength quite sufficient to alarm those who had been 
 insulting him. 
 
 Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious 
 apparition, we will try two or three experiments upon 
 him. What we fear, and with some reason, is, that a3 
 he lived so many ages with foul Pagan sorcerers, and 
 witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his heart 
 may have been corrupted ; and that even now his faith 
 may be wavering or impure. We will try. 
 
 Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he 
 repeats it (as on Whitsunday* he surely ought to do). 
 
 be near to the horizon (which of itself implies a time of day incon- 
 venient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbiager- 
 ode) ; the spectator must have his back to the sun ; and the air 
 must contain some vapor, but partially distributed. Coleridge 
 ascended the Broclcen on the Whitsunday of 1799, with a party of 
 English students from Goettingen, but failed to see the phantom ; 
 afterwards in England (and under the three same conditions) he saw 
 a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in the following 
 eight lines. I give them from a correct copy (the apostrophe in the 
 beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal conception) : 
 
 " And art thou nothing ? Such thou art as when 
 The woodman winding westward up the glen 
 At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze 
 The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze, 
 Sees full before him, gliding without tread. 
 An image with a glory round its head ; 
 This shade he worships for its golden hues. 
 And makes (not knowing) that which he pursues." 
 
 *" On Whitsunday." — It is singular, and perhaps owing to the 
 temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of sum 
 mer, tnat more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on 
 Whitsunday than on any other day. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 249 
 
 Look! he does repeat it; but the driving showers per- 
 plex the images, and that, perhaps, it is which gives 
 him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively. 
 Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the show- 
 ers have swept off like squadrons of cavalry fo the rear. 
 We will try him again. 
 
 Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones 
 which once was called the sorcerer's flower,* and bore 
 a part, perhaps, in this horrid ritual of fear; carry it to 
 that stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar, 
 and once was called the sorcerer's altar;* then bend- 
 ing your knee, and raising your right hand to God, 
 say, — " Father, which art in heaven, this lovely ane- 
 mone, that once glorified the worship of fear, has 
 travelled back into thy fold; this altar, which once 
 reeked with bloody rites to Cortho, has long been 
 rebaptized into thy holy service. The darkness is 
 gone; the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred; 
 the moans have passed away which the victims uttered ; 
 the cloud has vanished which once sate continually upon 
 their graves, cloud of protestation that ascended forever 
 to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless, and the 
 anger of the just. And lo! I thy servant, with this dark 
 phantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pen- 
 tecost I make my servant, render thee united worship 
 in this thy recovered temple." 
 
 *" The sorcerer's Jlower," and "the sorcerer's altar." — These 
 aie names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an 
 dltar-shaped fragment of granite near one of the summi:s ; and it 
 is not doubted that they both connect themselves, through links of 
 ancient tradition, with the gloomy realities of Paganism, when the 
 whole Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the 1 asi 
 asylum to a ferocious but perishing idolatry. 
 
250 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 Look now! the apparition plucks an anemone, and 
 places it on an altar ; he also bends his knee, he also 
 raises his right hand to God. Dumb he is ; but some- 
 times the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it 
 occurs to you, that perhaps on this high festival of the 
 Christian, church he may be overruled by supernatural 
 influence into confession of his homage, having so 
 often been made to bow and bend his knee at murder- 
 ous rites. In a service of religion he may be timid. 
 Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, 
 where he will have no bias either from fwor or from 
 fear. 
 
 If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affection 
 that was ineffable, — if once, when powerless to face such 
 an enemy, you were summoned to fight with the tigei 
 that couches within the separations of the grave, — in 
 that case, after the example of Judaea (on the Roman 
 coins), — sitting under her palm-tree to weep, but sit- 
 ting with her head veiled, — do you also veil your 
 head. Many years are passed away since then ; and 
 you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly 
 above six years old ; or perhaps (if you durst tell all 
 the truth), not quite so much. But your heart was 
 deeper than the Danube ; and, as was your love, so was 
 your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness 
 settled on your head; many summers, many winters; 
 yet still its shadows wheel round upon you at intervals, 
 like these April showers upon this glory of bridal June. 
 Therefore now, on this dovelike morning of Pentecost, 
 do you veil your head like Judaea in memory of that 
 transcendent woe, and in testimony that, indeed, it sur- 
 passed all utterance of words. Immediately you see 
 
OF AN ENGLISli OPIUM-EATER. 251 
 
 that the apparition of the Brocken veils his head, aftet 
 the model of Judtea weeping under her palm-tree, as if 
 he also had a human heart, and that he also, in child- 
 hood, having suffered an affliction which was ineffable, 
 wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh towards 
 neaven in memory of that affliction, and by way of 
 record, though many a year after, that it was indeed 
 unutterable by words. 
 
 This trial is decisive. You are now satisfied that the 
 apparition is but a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering 
 your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the 
 dark symbolic mirror for reflection to the daylight what 
 else must be hidden forever. 
 
 Such a relation does the Dark Interpreter, whom 
 immediately the reader will learn to know as an intruder 
 into my dreams, bear to my own mind. He is origi 
 nally a mere reflex of my inner nature. But as the 
 apparition of the Brocken sometimes is disturbed by 
 storms or by driving showers, so as to dissemble his 
 real origin, in like manner the Interpreter sometimes 
 swerves out of my orbit, and mixes a little with alien 
 natures. I do not always know him in these cases as 
 my own parhelion. What he says, generally, is but 
 that which I have said in daylight, and in meditation 
 deep enough to sculpture itself on my heart. But 
 sometimes, as his face alters, his words alter; and they 
 do not always seem such as I have used, or couid use. 
 No man can account for all things that occur in dreams. 
 Generally I believe this, — that he is a faithful represent 
 ative of myself; but he also is at times subject to the 
 action of the good Phantoms, who rules in dreams. 
 
252 A SECJUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 Hailstone choruses* besides, and storms, enter my 
 dreams. Hailstones and fire that run along the ground, 
 sleet and blinding hurricanes, revelations of glory in- 
 sufferable pursued by volleying darkness, — these are 
 povsrers able to disturb any features that originally virere 
 but shadowr, and so send drifting the anchors of any 
 vessel that rides upon deeps so treacherous as those of 
 dreams. Understand, however, the Interpreter to bear 
 generally the office of a tragic chorus at Athens. The 
 Greek chorus is perhaps not quite understood by critics, 
 any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself. But 
 the leading function of both must be supposed this — not 
 to tell you anything absolutely new, — that vras done by 
 the actors in the drama ; but to recall you to your own 
 lurking thoughts, — hidden for the moment or imper- 
 fectly developed, — and to place before you, in immediate 
 connection with groups vanishing too quickly for any 
 effort of meditation on your own part, such comment- 
 aries, prophetic or looking back, pointing the moral or 
 deciphering the mystery, justifying Providence, or miti- 
 gating the fierceness of anguish, as would or might have 
 occurred to your own meditative heart, had only time 
 been allowed for its motions. 
 
 The Interpreter is anchored and stationary in my 
 dreams ; but great storms and driving mists cause him 
 to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to retire altogether, 
 Tike his gloomy counterpart, the shy phantom of the 
 Brocken, — and to assume new features or strange 
 
 * "Hailstone choruses." — I need not tell any lover of Handel 
 that his oratorio of " Israel in Egypt" contains a chorus familiarly 
 ftnown by this name. The words are : " And he ^ave them hail 
 stones tor rain ; fire, mingled with hail, ran along upon Ihe ground 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 253 
 
 features, as in dreams always there is a power not con- 
 tented with reproduction, but which absolutely creates 
 or transforms. This dark being the reader will see 
 again in a further stage of my opium experience ; and I 
 warn him that he will not always be found sitting inside 
 my dreams, but at times outside, and in open daylight 
 
 FINALE TO PART I. — SAVANNAH-LA-MAR. 
 
 God smote Savannah-la-mar, and in one night, by 
 earthquake, removed her, with all her towers standing 
 and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations 
 of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God 
 said, — " Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men 
 through seventeen centuries : this city I will bury, but 
 not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my 
 mysterious anger, set in azure light through genera- 
 tions to come ; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome 
 of my tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a mighty 
 galleon with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying, 
 and tackling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless 
 depths of ocean ; and oftentimes in glassy calms, 
 through the translucid atmosphere of water that now 
 stretches like an air-woven awning above the silent 
 encampment, mariners from every clime look down 
 into her courts and terraces, count her gates, and 
 number the spires of her churches. She is one ample 
 cemetery, and has been for many a year ; but in the 
 mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes 
 she fascinates the eye with a Fata-Morgana revelation, 
 
254 A SEQtTEI. TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums 
 sacred from the storms that torment our upper air. 
 
 Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, 
 by the peace of human dwellings privileged from 
 molestation, by the gleam of marble altars sleepmg 
 in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and 
 the Dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided 
 us from her streets. We looked into the belfries, 
 where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the 
 summons which should awaken their marriage peals ; 
 together we touched the mighty organ-keys, that sang 
 no jubilates for the ear of Heaven, that sang no re- 
 quiems for the ear of human sorrow; together we 
 searched the silent nurseries, where the children were 
 all asleep, and fiad been asleep through five genera- 
 tions. " They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," 
 whispered the Interpreter to himself: " and, when that 
 comes, the bells and the organs will utter a jubilate 
 repeated by the echoes of Paradise." Then, turning 
 to me, he said, — "This is sad, this is piteous; but 
 less would not have sufficed for the purpose of God. 
 Look here. Put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred 
 drops of water; let these run out as the sands in an 
 hour-glass; every drop measuring the hundredth part 
 of a second, so that each shall represent but the three- 
 hundred -and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, 
 count the drops as they race along; and, when the 
 fiftieth of the hundred is passing, behold ! forty-nine 
 are not, because already they have perished ; and fifty 
 are not, because they are yet to come. You see, 
 therefore, how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the 
 true and actual present. Of that time which we c*.!! 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 255 
 
 the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs either 
 to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on 
 the wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, 
 or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth 
 is infinitely false. For again subdivide that solitary- 
 drop, which only was found to represent the present, 
 into a ower series of similar fractions, and the actua' 
 present which you arrest measures now but the thirty- 
 sixth-millionth of an hour; and so by infinite declen- 
 sions the true and very present, in which only we live 
 and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote, dis- 
 tinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the 
 present, which only man possesses, offers less capacity 
 for his footing than the slenderest film that ever spider 
 twisted from her womb. Therefore, also, even this 
 incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moon- 
 light is more transitory than geometry can measure, or 
 thought of angel can overtake. The time which is 
 contracts into a ma thematic point; and even that point 
 perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth. 
 All is finite in the present; and even that finite is 
 infinite in its velocity of flight towards death. But in 
 God there is nothing finite ; but in God there is nothing 
 transitory ; but in God there can be nothing that tends to 
 death. Therefore, it follows, that for God there can be 
 no present. The future is the present of God, and to 
 the future it is that he sacrifices the human present. 
 Therefore it is that he works by earthquake. There- 
 fore it is that he works by grief. O, deep is the plough- 
 mg of earthquake ! 0, deep " — [and his voice swelled 
 'ike a sanctus rising from the choir of a cathedral] — 
 "O, deep is the ploughing of grief! But oftentimes 
 
256 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 less would not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon 
 a night of earthquake he builds a thousand years of 
 pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an 
 infant he raises oftentimes from human intellects glori- 
 ous vintages that could not else have been. Less than 
 these fierce ploughshares would not have stirred the 
 stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth, our planet. 
 — for earth itself as the dwelling-place of man; but 
 the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest 
 instrument, — yes " [and he looked solemnly at myself], 
 ' is needed for the mysterious children of the fiarth ' " 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EAT]!R. '^/>'i 
 
 PART II 
 
 VISION OF LIFE. 
 
 The Oxford visions, of which some have been given, 
 were but anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse 
 opened of childhood (as being its reaction). In this 
 Second part, returning from that anticipation, I retrace 
 an abstract of my boyish and youthful days, so far as 
 they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences 
 in worlds more shadowy. 
 
 Upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and 
 twenties over every thousand years, fell too powerfully 
 and too early the vision of life. The horror of life 
 mixed itself already in earliest youth with the heavenly 
 sweetness of life ; that grief, which one in a hundred 
 has sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect 
 of life in its closing stage, for me shed its dews as a 
 prelibation upon the fountains of life whilst yet spark- 
 ling to the morning sun. I saw from afar and from 
 before what I was to see from behind. Is this the 
 description of an early youth passed in the shades of 
 gloom ? No ; but of a youth passed in the divinest 
 happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have) 
 the passion, without which there is no reading of the 
 legend and superscription upon man's brow, if he is 
 not (as most are deafer than the grave to every deep 
 note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves of 
 tuman life, he will know that the rapture of life (or 
 
 n 
 
258 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 anything which by approach can merit that name) does 
 not arise, unless as perfect music arises, music of 
 Mozart or Beethoven, by the confluence of the mighty 
 and terrific discords with the subtile concords. Not by 
 contrast, or as reciprocal foils, do these elements act, 
 which is the feeble conception of many, but by union. 
 They are the sexual forces in music : " male and female 
 created he them;" and these mighty antagonists do not 
 put forth their hostilities by repulsion, but by deepest 
 attraction. 
 
 As " in to-day already walks to-morrow," so in the 
 past experience of a youthful life may be seen dimly 
 the future. The collisions with alien interests or hostile 
 views, of a child, boy, or very young man, so insulated 
 as each of these is sure to be, — those aspects of opposi- 
 tion which such a person can occupy, — are limited by 
 the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connection 
 along which he is able to radiate any essential influence 
 whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. 
 Circumstances may magnify his importance for the 
 moment ; but, after all, any cable which he carries out 
 upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud arising. 
 Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an 
 adult or responsible man with the circles around him, 
 as life advances. The net-work of these relations is a 
 thousand times moie intricate, the jarring of these intri- 
 cate relations a thousand times more frequent, and 
 the vibrations a thousand times harsher which these 
 jarrings diffuse. This truth is felt beforehand mis- 
 givingly and- in troubled vision, by a young man who 
 stands upon the threshold of manhood. One earliest 
 instinct of fear and horror would darken his spirit, if it 
 
OF Alt ENGLISH OPIUM-EaTER. 259 
 
 could be revealed to itself and self-questioned at the 
 moment of birth : a second instinct of the same nature 
 would again pollute that tremulous mirror, if the 
 moment were as punctually marked as physical birth is 
 marked, which dismisses him finally upon the tides of 
 absolute self-control. A dark ocean would seem the 
 total expanse of life from the first ; but far darker and 
 more appalling would seem that interior and second 
 chamber of the ocean which called him away forever 
 from the direct accountability of others. Dreadful 
 would be the morning which should say, " Be thou a 
 human child incarnate ;" but more dreadful the morning 
 which should say, " Bear thou henceforth the sceptre of 
 thy self-dominion through life, and the passion of life ! " 
 Yes, dreadful would be both ; but without a basis of the 
 dreadful there is no perfect rapture. It is a part through 
 the sorrow of life, growing out of dark events, that this 
 basis of awe and solemn darkness slowly accumulates. 
 That I have illustrated. But, as life expands, it is more 
 through the strife which besets us, strife from conflicting 
 opinions, positions, passions, interests, that the funereal 
 ground settles and deposits itself, which sends upward 
 the dark lustrous brilliancy through the jewel of life, 
 else revealing a pale and superficial glitter. Either the 
 human being must suffer and struggle as the price of a 
 more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow, and 
 without intellectual revelation. 
 
 Through accident it was in part, and, where through 
 no accident but my own nature, not through features of 
 it at all painful to recollect, that constantly in early life 
 (that is, from boyish days until eighteen, when, by going 
 (o Ox'brd, practically I became my own master) I «as 
 
260 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle, with some 
 person or body of persons, that sought, like the Roman 
 retiarius, to throw a net ot deadly coercion or constraint 
 over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom. The 
 steady rebellion upon my part in one half was a mero 
 human reaction of justifiable indignation ; but in the 
 other half it was the struggle of a conscientious nature, 
 — disdaining to feel it as any mere right or discretional 
 privilege, — no, feeling it as the noblest of duties to 
 resist, though it should be mortally, those that would 
 have enslaved me, and to retort scorn upon those that 
 would have put my head below their feet. Too much, 
 even in later life, I have perceived, in men that pass foi 
 good men, a disposition to degrade (and if possible to 
 degrade through self-degradation) those in whom unwil- 
 lingly they feel any weight of oppression to them- 
 selves, by commanding qualities of intellect or character. 
 They respect you: they are compelled to do so, and 
 they hate to do so. Next, therefore, they seek to throw 
 off" the sense of this oppression, and to take vengeance 
 for it, by cooperating with any unhappy accidents in 
 your life, to inflict a sense of humiliation upon you, and 
 (if possible) to force you into becoming a consenting 
 party to that humiliation. 0, wherefore is it that those 
 who presume to call themselves the " friends " of this 
 man or that woman are so often those, above all others, 
 whom in the hour of death that man or woman is most 
 likely to salute vrith the valediction — Would God I had 
 never seen your face ? 
 
 In citing one or two cases of these early struggles, 1 
 have chiefly in view the effect of these upon my subse- 
 quent vi&ions under the reign of opium. And this indul- 
 
OJ AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 201 
 
 gent reflection should accompany the mature readei 
 through all such records of boyish inexperience. A 
 good-tempered man, who is also acquainted with the 
 world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of 
 servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright 
 simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in 
 the science of worldly address, cannot always evade 
 without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this man 
 ner may, it is true, be reconciled with firmness in the 
 matter; but not easily by a young person who wants 
 all the appropriate resources of knowledge, of adroit 
 and guarded language, for making his good temper 
 available. Men are protected from insult and wrong, 
 not merely by their own skill, but also, in the absence 
 of any skill at all, by the general spirit of forbearance 
 to which society has trained all those whom they are 
 likely to meet. But boys meeting with no such for- 
 bearance or training in other boys, must sometimes be 
 thrown upon feuds in the ratio of their own firmness, 
 much more than in the ratio of any natural proneness 
 to quarrel. Such a subject, however, will be best illus- 
 trated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds. 
 
 The first, but merely transient and playful, nor worth 
 noticing at all, but for its subsequent resurrection undei 
 other and awful coloring in my dreams, grew out of an 
 imaginary slight, as I viewed it, put upon me by one of 
 my guardians. I had four guardians ; and the one of 
 these who had the most knowledge and talent of the 
 whole — a banker, living about a hundred miles from my 
 home — had invited me, when eleven years old, to his 
 house. His eldest daughter, perhaps a year yoingei 
 than myself, wore at that time upon her veTy lovely 
 
'262 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 face the most angelic expression of character and tem- 
 per that I have almost ever seen. Naturally, I fell in 
 love with her. It seems absurd to say so ; and the 
 more so, because two children more absolutely innocent 
 than we were cannot be imagined, neither of us having 
 ever been at any school ; but the simple truth is, that in 
 the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And 
 the proof that I was so showed itself in three separate 
 modes : I kissed her glove on any rare occasion when I 
 found it lying on a table; secondly, I looked out for 
 some excuse to be jealous of her; and, thirdly, I did 
 my very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the 
 quarrel for was the luxury of a reconciliation ; a hill 
 cannot be had, you know, without going to the expense 
 of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of a 
 moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet how, 
 but through such a purgatory, could one win the para- 
 dise of her returning smiles ? All this, however, came 
 to nothing; and simply because she positively would 
 not quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because 
 there was no decent subject for such a passion, unless 
 it had settled upon an old music-master, whom lunacy 
 itself could not adopt as a rival. The quarrel, mean- 
 time, which never prospered with the daughter, silently 
 kindled on my part towards the father. His offence was 
 this. At dinner, I naturally placed myself by the side 
 of M., and it gave me great pleasure to touch her hand 
 at intervals. As M. was my cousin, though twice or 
 even three times removed, I did not feel it taking too 
 great a liberty in this little act of tenderness. No matter 
 if three thousand times removed, I said, my cousin is 
 my cousin ; nor had I very much designed to conceal the 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 263 
 
 act ; or if so, rather on her account than my own. One 
 evening, however, papa observed my manosuvre. Did 
 he seem displeased? Not at all; he even ronde 
 scended to smile. But the next day he placed M. on 
 the side opposite to myself. In one respect this was 
 really an improvement, because it gave me a better 
 view of my cousin's sweet countenance. But then 
 there was the loss of the hand to be considered, and 
 secondly there was the affront. It was clear that ven- 
 geance must be had. Now, there was but one thing in 
 this world that I could do even decently ; but that I 
 could do admirably. This was writing Latin hexame- 
 ters. Juvenal — though it was not very much of him 
 that I had then read — seemed to me a divine model. 
 The inspiration of wrath spoke through him as through 
 a Hebrew prophet. The same inspiration spoke now in 
 me. Facit indignatio versum, said Juvenal. And it 
 must be owned that indignation has never made such 
 good verses since as she did in that day. But still, 
 even to me, this agile passion proved a Muse of genial 
 inspiration for a couple of paragraphs ; and one line I 
 will mention as worthy to have taken its place in 
 Juvenal himself. I say this without scruple, having 
 uot a shadow of vanity, nor, on the other hand, a shadow 
 of false modesty connected with such boyish accomplish* 
 ments. The poem opened thus : 
 
 " Te nemis austerum sacrs qui fcedera mensa: 
 Diruis, insector Satyrs reboante flagello. " 
 
 But the line which I insist upon as of Roman strength 
 was the closing one of the next sentence. The general 
 pfifect of the sentiment was, that my clamorous wrath 
 
264 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 should make its way even into ears that were past 
 hearing : 
 
 * ' mea sseva quere.a 
 
 Auribus insidet ceratis, auribas etsi 
 Non audituris hyberni nocte procellam." 
 
 The power, however, which inflated my verse, soon 
 collapsed ; having heen soothed, from the very first, by 
 finding, that except in this one instance at the dinner- 
 table, which probably had been viewed as an indecorum, 
 no further restraint, of any kind whatever, was medi- 
 tated upon my intercourse with M. Besides, it was too 
 painful to lock up good verses in one's own solitary 
 breast. Yet how could I shock the sweet filial heart 
 of my cousin by a fierce lampoon or stylites against 
 ner father, had Latin even figured amongst her accom- 
 plishments? Then it occurred to me that the verses 
 might be shown to the father. But was there not 
 something treacherous in sraining a man's approbation 
 under a mask to a satire upon himself? Or would he 
 have always understood me? For one person, a year 
 after, took the sacrm menscB (by which I had meant the 
 sanctities of hospitality) to mean the sacramental ta- 
 ble. And on consideration, I began to suspect that 
 many people would pronounce myself the party who 
 had violated the holy ties of hospitality, which are 
 equally binding on guest as on host. Indolence, which 
 sometimes comes in aid of good impulses as well as 
 bad, favored these relenting thoughts. The society 
 of M. did still more to wean me from further efforts 
 of satire; and, finally, my Latin poem remained a 
 torso But, upon the whole, my guardian had a nar- 
 low escape of descending to posterity in a disadvan- 
 
OF AM EiJGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 865 
 
 tageous light, had he rolled down to it through my 
 hexameters. 
 
 Here was a case of merely playful feud. But the 
 same talent of Latin verses soon after connected me with 
 a real feud, that harassed my mind more than would be 
 supposed, and precisely by this agency, namely, that it 
 arrayed one set of feelings against another. It divided 
 my mind, as by domestic feud, against itself. About a 
 year after returning from the visit to my guardian's, 
 and when I must have been nearly completing my 
 twelfth year, I was sent to a great public school. 
 Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys so great 
 an advantage. I condemned, and do condemn, the 
 practice of sometimes sending out into such stormy . 
 exposures those who are as yet too young, too de- 
 pendent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensi- 
 bilities too exquisite. But at nine or ten the masculine 
 energies of the character are beginning to be developed ; 
 or if not, no discipline will better aid in their develop- 
 ment than the bracing intercourse of a great English 
 classical school. Even the selfish are forced into 
 accommodating themselves to a public standard of 
 generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule 
 of manliness. I was myself at two public schools ; and 
 I think with gratitude of the benefit which I reaped 
 from both ; as also I think with gratitude cf the upright 
 guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so 
 effectually. But the small private schools which 1 
 witnessed for brief periods, containing thirty to forty 
 ■>oys, were models of ignoble manners as respected 
 some part of the juniors, and of favoritism amongst 
 the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public jus- 
 
266 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 tice so broadly exemplified as in an English school 
 There is not in the universe such an areopagus for fan 
 play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an Eng- 
 lish mob, or one of the English time-honored public 
 schools. But my own first introduction to such an 
 establishment was under peculiar and contradictory cir- 
 cumstances. When my " rating," or graduation in the 
 school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to 
 speak astronomically) was taken by the proficiency in 
 Greek. But I could then barely construe books so 
 easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was 
 considered quite well enough for my age ; but still it 
 caused me to be placed three steps below the highest 
 rank in the school. Within one week, however, my 
 talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered 
 strength and expansion, became known. I was honored 
 as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Not 
 properly belonging to the flock of the head master, but 
 to the leading section of the second, I was now 
 weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribu- 
 nal of the school ; out of which at first grew nothing but 
 a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart, still 
 brooding upon solitude. Within six weeks this had 
 changed. The approbation, indeed, continued, and the 
 public testimony of it. Neither would there, in the 
 ordinary course, liave been any [gainful reaction from 
 jealousy, or fretful resistance to the soundness of my 
 pretensions ; since it was sufficiently known to some of 
 my school-fellows, that I, who had no male relatives but 
 military men, and those in India, could not have bene- 
 fited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, the head 
 inaster was at that time dissatisfied with some pomts in 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 26T 
 
 the progress of his head form; and, as it soon appeared, 
 was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy 
 of my verses at twelve, by comparison with theirs at 
 seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. I had observed him 
 sometimes pointing to myself; and was perplexed at 
 seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what 
 French reporters call " sensation," in these young men, 
 whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys 
 that were called young men, men that were reading 
 Sophocles — (a name that carried with it the sound of 
 something seraphic to my ears), — and who never had 
 vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. 
 The day was come, however, when all that would be 
 changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in 
 the public play-grounds, and delivering a blow on my 
 shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, but as a 
 mere formula of introduction, asked me " What the 
 d — 1 I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying 
 other people in that manner? Were other people to 
 have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, 
 were horribly bad ? " There might have been some 
 difficulty in returning an answer to this address, but 
 none was required. I was briefly admonished to see 
 
 that I wrote worse for the future, or else . At this 
 
 aposiopesis, 1 looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he 
 filled up the chasm by saying that he would " annihi- 
 late " me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such 
 a demand ? I was to write worse than my own stand- 
 ard, which, by his account of my verses, must be diffi- 
 cult; and I was to write worse than himself, which 
 might be impossible. My feelings revolted, it may be 
 Bupposed against so arrogant a demand, unless it had 
 
268 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 been far otherwise expressed ; and on the next occasion 
 for sending up verses, so far from attending to the orders 
 issued, I double-shotted my guns; double applause de- 
 scended on myself; but I remarked, with some awe 
 though not repenting of what I had done, that double 
 confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. 
 Amongst them loomed out in the distance my " annihi- 
 lating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but 
 with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He 
 took an early opportunity of paying his respects to 
 me, saying, " You little devil, do you call this writing 
 your worst?" "No," I replied; "I call it writing my 
 best." The annihilator, as it turned out, was really 
 a good-natured young man ; but he soon went off to 
 Cambridge ; and with the rest, or some of them, I 
 continued to wage war for nearly a year. And yet, 
 for a word spoken with kindness, I would have resigned 
 the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of bau- 
 bles. Undoubtedly praise sounded sweet in my ears 
 also. But that was nothing oy comparison with wha^ 
 btood on the other side. I detested distinctions that 
 were connected with mortification to others. And, even 
 if I could have got over that, the eternal feud fretted 
 and tormented my nature. Love, that once in child- 
 hood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long 
 been a mere reflected ray from a departed sunset. 
 But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no 
 longer possible (as so rarely it is in this world), was 
 the absolute necessity of my heart. To contend with 
 somebody was still my fate ; how to escape the con- 
 tention I could not see; and yet for itsflf, and the 
 deadly passions into which it forced me, I hated and 
 
OF AM ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 269 
 
 .oavhed it more than death. It added to the distraction 
 and internal feud of my own mind, that I could not 
 altogether condemn the upper hoys. I was made a 
 handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time, 
 if I had an advantage in one accomplishment, which is 
 all a matter of accident, or peculiar taste and feeling, 
 they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over me 
 in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek, and of chorai 
 G^reek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at their 
 hatred of myself. Yet still, as they had chosen to 
 adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel that I 
 had any choice but to resist. The contest was termi- 
 nated for me by my removal from the school, in conse- 
 quence of a very threatening illness affecting my head ; 
 but it lasted nearly a year, and it did not close before 
 several amongst my public enemies had become my 
 private friends. They were much older, but they invited 
 me to the houses of their friends, and showed me a 
 respect which deeply affected me, — this respect having 
 more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had exhib- 
 ited, than to the splendor of my verses. And, indeed, 
 these had rather drooped, from a natural accident ; 
 several persons of my own class had formed the 
 practice of asking me to write verses for them. 1 
 could not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were 
 the same for all of us, it was not possible to take so 
 many crops off the ground without starring the quality 
 of all. 
 
 Two years an:l a half from this time, I was again at 
 a public school of ancient foundation. Now I was 
 myself one of the three who formed the highest class. 
 Now 1 myself vas familiar with Sophocles, who once 
 
270 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 had been so shadowy a name in my ear. But, strange 
 to say, now, in my sixteenth year, I cared nothing at 
 all for the glory of Latin verse. All the business of 
 school was light and trivial in my eyes. Costing me 
 not an effort, it could not engage any part of my 
 attention ; that was now swallowed up altogether by the 
 literature of my native land. I still reverenced the 
 Grecian drama, as always I must. But else I cared 
 little then for classical pursuits. A deeper spell -had 
 mastered me ; and I lived only in those bowers where 
 deeper passions spoke. 
 
 Here, however, it was that began another and more 
 important struggle. I was drawing near to seventeen, 
 and, in a year after that, would arrive the usual time 
 for going to Oxford. To Oxford my guardians made 
 no objection ; and they readily agreed to make the 
 allowance then universally regarded as the minimum 
 for an Oxford student, namely, £200 per annum. But 
 they insisted, as a previous condition, that I should 
 make a positive and definite choice of a profession. 
 Now, I was well aware, that, if I did make such a 
 choice, no law existed, nor could any obligation be 
 created through deeds or signature, by which I could 
 finally be compelled into keeping my engagement. But 
 this evasion did not suit me. Here, again, I felt indig- 
 nantly that the principle of the attempt was unjust. 
 The object was certainly to do me service by saving 
 money, since, if I selected the bar as my profession, 
 it was contended by some persons (misinformed, how- 
 ever), that not Oxford, but a special pleader's office, 
 would be my proper destination; but I cared not for 
 arguments of that sort. Oxford I was determined to 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OProM-EATEK. 27 J 
 
 Eake my home ; and also to bear my future course 
 utterly untrammelled by promises that I might repent. 
 Soon came the catastrophe of this struggle. A little 
 before my seventeenth birth-day, I walked off, one 
 lovely summer morning, to North Wales, rambled there 
 for months, and, finally, under some obscure hopes of 
 raising money on my personal security, I went up to 
 London. Now I was in my eighteenth year, and 
 during this period it was that I passed through that 
 trial of severe distress, of which I gave some account 
 in my, former Confessions. Having a motive, however, 
 for glancing backwards briefly at that period in the 
 present series, I will do so at this point. 
 
 I saw in one journal an insinuation that the incidents 
 in the preliminary narrative were possibly without 
 foundation. To such an expression of mere gratuitous 
 malignity, as it happened to be supported by no one 
 argument, except a remark, apparently absurd, but 
 certainly false, I did not condescend to answer. In 
 reality, the possibility had never occurred to me that 
 any person of judgment would seriously suspect me of 
 taking liberties with that part of the work, since, 
 thougb no one of the parties concerned but myself 
 stood in so central a position to the circumstances as 
 to be acquainted with aU of them, many were acquainted 
 with each separate section of the memoir. Relays 
 of witnesses might have been summoned to mount 
 guard, as it were, upon the accuracy of each particular 
 VD the whole succession of incidents; and some of 
 these people had an interest, more or less strong, in 
 exposing any deviation from the strictest letter of the 
 truth, had it been in their power to do so It is now 
 
272 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 twenty-two years since I saw the objection here alluded 
 to; and in saying that I did not condescend to 
 notice it, the reader must not find any reason for 
 taxing me with a blamable haughtiness. But every 
 man is entitled to be haughty when his veracity is 
 impeached ; and stil jr.iore when it is impeached by a 
 dishonest objection, or, if not that, by an objection 
 which argues a carelessness of attention almost amount- 
 ing to dishonesty, in a case where it was meant to 
 sustain an imputation of falsehood. Let a man read 
 carelessly, if he will, but not where he is meaning to 
 use his reading for a purpose of wounding another man's 
 honor. Having thus, by twenty-two years' silence, 
 sufficiently expressed my contempt for the slander,* 
 I now feel myself at liberty to draw it into notice, 
 for the sake, inter alia, of showing in how rash a spirit 
 malignity often works. In the preliminary account 
 of certain boyish adventures which had exposed me 
 to sutfering of a kind not commonly incident to persons 
 in my station in life, and leaving behind a temptation 
 to the use of opium under certain arrears of weakness, 
 I had occasion to notice a disreputable attorney in 
 London, who showed me some attentions, partly on my 
 
 * Being constantly almost an absentee from London, and very 
 often from other great cities, so as to command oftentimes no favor- 
 aMe opportunities for overlooking the great mass of public journals, 
 it is possible enough that other slanders of the same tenor may 
 have existed. I speak of what met my own eye, or was accident- 
 ally reported to me ; but, in fact, all of us are exposed to this evil 
 of calumnies lurking unseen, for no degree of energy, and no 
 excess of disposable time, would enable any man to exercise thia 
 sort of vigilant police over all journals. Better, therefore, traa- 
 g*iillT to leave all such malice to confound itself. 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 273 
 
 own a.',couii-t as a boy of some expectations, but much 
 more \Tith the purpose of fastening his professional 
 
 grappling-hooks upon the young Earl of A 1," my 
 
 former companion, and my present correspondent. This 
 man's house was slightly described, and, with more 
 minuteness, I had exposed some interesting traits in 
 ■his household economy. A question, therefore, natu- 
 rally arose in several people's curiosity — Where was 
 this house situated? and the more so because I had 
 pointed a renewed attention to it by saying, that on 
 that very evening (namely, the evening on which that 
 particular page of the Confessions was written) I had 
 visited the street, looked up at the windows, and, 
 instead of the gloomy desolation reigning there when 
 myself and a little girl were the sole nightly tenants, — 
 sleeping, in fact (poor freezing creatures that we both 
 were), on the floor of the attorney's law-chamber, and 
 making a pillow out of his infernal parchments, — I had 
 seen, with pleasure, the evidences of comfort, respect- 
 ability, and domestic animation, in the lights and stir 
 prevailing through different stories of the house. Upon 
 this, the upright critic told his readers that I had 
 described the house as standing in Oxford-street, and 
 then appealed to their own knowledge of that street 
 whether such a house could be so situated. Why not 
 ^^ he neglected to tell us. The houses at the east end 
 of Oxford-street are certainly of too small an order 
 to meet my account of the attorney's house ; but why 
 should it be at the east end ? Oxford-street is a mile 
 and a quarter long, and, being built continuously on both 
 sides, finds room for houses of many classes. Mean- 
 time it happens that, although the true house w»i» 
 18 
 
274 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 most obscurely indicated, any house whatever in Ox- 
 ford-street was most luminously excluded. In all the 
 immensity of London there was but one single street 
 that could be challenged by an attentive reader of the 
 Confessions as peremptorily not the street of the attor- 
 ney's house, and that one was Oxford-street; for, in 
 speaking of my own renewed acquaintance with the 
 outside of this house, I used some expression implying 
 that, in order to make such a visit of reconnoissance, 
 I had turned aside from Oxford-street. The matter 
 is a perfect trifle in itself, but it is no trifle in a 
 question affecting a writer's accuracy. If in a thing 
 so absolutely impossible to be forgotten as the true 
 situation of a house painfully memorable to a man's 
 feelings, from being the scene of boyish distresses the 
 most exquisite, nights passed in the misery of cold, 
 and hunger preying upon him, both night and day, in a 
 degree which very many would not have survived, — 
 he, when retracing his school-boy annals, could have 
 shown indecision, even far more dreaded inaccuracy, 
 in identifying the house, — not one syllable after that, 
 which he could have said on any other subject, 
 would have won any confidence, or deserved any, 
 from a judicious reader. I may now mention — the 
 Herod being dead whose persecutions I had reason to 
 i'ear — that the house in question stands in Greek 
 street on the west, and is the house on that side near- 
 est to Soho-square, but without looking into the 
 square. This it was hardly safe to mention at the 
 date of the published Confessions. It was my private 
 opinion, indeed, that there were probably twenty-five 
 ihances to one in favor of my friend the attorne-v 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-Ej .TEB . 27o 
 
 having been by that time hanged. But then this 
 argued inversely; one chance to twenty-five that my 
 friend might be Mwhanged, and knocking about the 
 streets of London ; in which case it would have been 
 a perfect god-send to him that here lay an opening (of 
 my contrivance, not his) for requesting the opinion of 
 a jury on the amount of solatium due to his wounded 
 feelings in an action on the passage in the Confessions. 
 To have indicated even the street would have been 
 enough ; because there could surely be but one such 
 Grecian in Greek-street, or but one that realized the 
 other conditions of the unknown quantity. There was 
 also a separate danger not absolutely so laughable as 
 it sounds. Me there was little chance that the attor- 
 ney should meet ; but my book he might easily have 
 met (supposing always that the warrant of Sus. per 
 coll. had not yet on his account travelled down to 
 Newgate). For he was literary; admired literature; 
 and, as a lawyer, he wrote on some subjects fluently; 
 might he not publish Ms Confessions? Or, which 
 would be worse, a supplement to mine, printed so as 
 exactly to match ? In which case I should have had 
 the same affliction that Gibbon the historian dreaded so 
 much, namely, that of seeing a refutation of himself, and 
 his own answer to the refutation, all bound up in one 
 and the same self-combating volume. Besides, he 
 would have cross-examined me before the public, in 
 Old Bailey style ; no story, the most straightforward 
 that ever was told, could be sure to stand that. And 
 my readers might be left in a state of painful doubt, 
 whether he might not, after all, have been a model of 
 nuffiiring innocence — I fto say the kindest thing pos 
 
iJ76 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 sible) plagued with the natural treacheries of a school- 
 boy's memory. In taking leave of this case and the 
 remembrances connected with it, let me say that, 
 although really believing in the probability of the 
 attorney's having at least found his way to Australia, 
 I had no satisfaction in thinking of that result. I knew 
 my friend to be the very perfection of a scacnp. And 
 in the running account between us (I mean, in the 
 ordinary sense, as to money), the balance could not be 
 in his favor; since I, on receiving a sum of money 
 (considerable in the eyes of us both), had transferred 
 pretty nearly the whole of it to him, for the purpose 
 ostensibly held out to me (but of course a hoax) of 
 purchasing certain law " stamps ; " for he was then 
 pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various 
 Jews who lent money to young heirs, in some trifling 
 proportion on my own insignificant account, but much 
 
 more truly on the account of Lord A 1, my young 
 
 friend. On the other side, he had given to me sim- 
 ply the relics of his breakfast-table, which itself was 
 hardly more than a relic. But in this he was not to 
 blame. He could not give to me what he had not for 
 himself, nor sometimes for the poor starving child 
 whom I now suppose to have been his illegitimate 
 c/aughter. So desperate was the running fight, yard- 
 arm to yard-arm, which he maintained with creditors 
 fierce as famine and hungry as the grave, — so deep 
 also was his horror (I know not for which of the various 
 reasons supposable) against falling into a prison, — that 
 he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in the 
 same house. That expense of itself must have pressed 
 beavily in London, where you pay. half a crown at least 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 217 
 
 <or a bed that would cost only a shilling in the proy- 
 inces. In the midst of his knaveries, and, what were 
 even more shocking" to my remembrance, his confi- 
 dential discoveries in his rambling conversations of 
 knavish designs (not always pecuniary), there was a 
 light of wandering niisery in his eye, at times, which 
 affected me afterwards at intervals, when I recalled it 
 in the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the 
 solemn tranquillities of Oxford. That of itself was 
 interesting; the man was worse by far than he had 
 been meant to be ; he had not the mind that reconciles 
 itself to evil. Besides, he respected scholarship, which 
 appeared by the deference he generally showed to 
 myself, then about seventeen ; he had an interest in 
 literature, — that argues something good ; and was 
 pleased at any time, or even cheerful, when I turned 
 the conversation upon books ; nay, he seemed touched 
 with emotion when I quoted some sentiment noble and 
 impassioned from one of the great poets, and would 
 ask me to repeat it. He would have been a man of. 
 memorable energy, and for good purposes, had it not 
 been for his agony of conflict with pecuniary embar- 
 rassments. These probably had commenced in some 
 fatal compliance with temptation arising out of funds 
 confided to him by a client. Perhaps he had gained 
 fifty guineas for a moment of necessity, and had sacri- 
 ficed for that trifle only the serenity and the comfort 
 of a life. Feelings of relenting kindness it was not 
 in my nature to refuse in such a case ; and I wished 
 (^o ^ •«• ^ -Jp ^ ^ 
 
 But I never succeeded in tracing his steps through the 
 wilderness of LonHnn until some years back, when f 
 
iJ78 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 ascertained that he was dead. Generally speaking, tht 
 few people whom I have disliked in this world were 
 flourishing people, of good repute. Whereas the knaves 
 whom 1 have known, one and all, and by no means few, 
 I think of with pleasure and kindness. 
 
 Heavens ! when I look back to the sufferings which 
 1 have witnessed or heard of, even from this one brief 
 London experience, I say, if life could throw open its 
 long suites of chambers to our eyes from some station 
 beforehand, — if, from some secret stand, we could look by 
 anticipation along its vast corridors, and aside into the 
 recesses opening upon them from either hand, — halls of 
 tragedy or chambers of retribution, simply in that small 
 wing and no more of the great caravanserai which we 
 ourselves shall haunt, — simply in that narrow tract (rf 
 time, and no more, where we ourselves shall range, 
 and confining our gaze to those, and no others, for 
 whom personally we shall be interested, — what a recoil 
 we should suffer of horror in our estimate of life ! 
 What if those sudden catastrophes, or those inexpiable 
 afflictions, which ham already descended upon the 
 people within my own knowledge, and almost below my 
 own eyes, all of them now gone past, and some long 
 past, had been thrown open before me as a secret exhi- 
 bition when first I and they stood within the vestibule 
 of morning hopes, — when the calamities themselves had 
 hardly begun to gather in their elements of possibility, 
 and when some of the parties to them were as yet no 
 more than infants ! The past viewed not as the past, 
 but by a spectator who steps back ten years deeper into 
 the rear, in order tnat he may regard it as a future ; 
 the calamity of 1840 contemplated from the station of 
 
OF A^ ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 279 
 
 1830, — • the doom that rang the knell of happineai 
 viewed from a point of time when as yet it was neither 
 feared nor would even have been intelligible, — the 
 name that killed in 1S43, which in 1835 would have 
 struck no vibration upon the heart, — the portrait that 
 on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have been 
 admired by you with a pure disinterested admiration, 
 but which, if seen to-day, would draw forth an involun- 
 tary groan, — cases such as these are strangely moving 
 for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep sensibility. 
 As the hastiest of improvisations, accept, fair reader 
 (for you it is that will chiefly feel sucli an invocation 
 of the past), three or four illustrations from my own 
 experience. 
 
 Who is this distinguished-looking young woman, with 
 her eyes drooping, and the shadow of a dreadful shock 
 yet fresh upon every feature ? Who is the elderly lady, 
 with her eyes flashing fire ? Who is the downcast 
 child of sixteen ? What is that torn paper lying at 
 their feet? Who is the writer? Whom does the papet 
 concern ? Ah ! if she, if the central figure in the 
 group — twenty-two at the moment when she is revealed 
 to us — could, on her happy birth-day at sweet seven- 
 teen, have seen the image of herself five years onwards, 
 just as we see it now, would she have prayed for life 
 as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have 
 prayed to be taken from the evil to come — to be taken 
 awsy one evening, at least, before this day's sun arose ? 
 [t is true, she still wears a look of gentle pride, and a 
 relic of that noble smile which belongs to her that 
 suffers an injury which many times over she would 
 have died sooner than inflict. Womanly prid-j refuses 
 
280 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 itself before witnesses to the total prostration of the 
 blow ; but, for all thnt, you may see that she longs to 
 be left alone, and that her tears will flow without 
 restraint when she is so. This room is her pretty 
 boudoir, in which, till to-night — poor thing ! — she has 
 been glad and happy. There stands her miniature con- 
 servatory, and there expands her miniature library ; as 
 we circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to 
 regard all female libraries in the light of miniatures. 
 None of these will ever rekindle a smile on her face ; 
 and there, beyond, is her music, which only of all that 
 she possesses will now become dearer to her than ever ; 
 but not, as once, to feed a self-mocked pensiveness, or 
 to cheat a half visionary sadness. She will be sad, 
 indeed. But she is one of those that will suffer in 
 silence. Nobody will ever detect her failing in any 
 point of duty, or querulously seeking the support in 
 others which she can find for herself in this solitary 
 room. Droop she will not in the sight of men ; and, 
 for all beyond, nobody has any concern with that, 
 except God. You shall hear what becomes of her, 
 before we take our departure ; but now let me tell you 
 what has happened. In the main outline I am sure 
 you guess already, without aid of mine, for we leaden- 
 eyed men, in such cases, see nothing by comparison 
 with you our quick-witted sisters. That haughty- 
 looking lady, with the Eoman cast of features, who must 
 once have been strikingly handsome, — an Agrippina, 
 even yet, in a favorable presentation, — is the youngei 
 lady's aunt. She, it is rumored, once sustained, in 
 her younger days, some injury of that same cruel 
 nature which has this day assailed her niece, and ever 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 281 
 
 Bince she has worn an air of disdain, not altogether 
 unsupported by real dignity towards men. This aunt 
 it was that tore the letter which lies upon the floor. It 
 deserved to be torn ; and yet she that had the best right 
 to do so would not have torn it. That letter was an 
 elaborate attempt on the part of an accomplished young 
 man to release himself from sacred engagements. What 
 need was there to argue the case of such engagements ? 
 Could it have been requisite with pure female dignity to 
 plead anything, or do more than look an indisposition to 
 fulfil them i The aunt is now moving towards the 
 door, which 1 am glad to see ; and she is followed by 
 that pale, timid girl of sixteen, a cousin, who feels the 
 case profoundly, but is too young and shy to offer an 
 intellectual sympathy. 
 
 One only person in this world there is who could 
 to-night have been a supporting friend to our young 
 sufferer, and that is her dear, loving twin-sister, th^t 
 for eighteen years read and wrote, thought and sang, 
 slept and breathed, with the dividing-door open forever 
 between their bed-rooms, and never once a separation 
 between their hearts ; but she is in a far-distant land. 
 Who else is there at her call? Except God, nobody. 
 Her aunt had somewhat sternly admonished her, though 
 still with a relenting in her eye as she glanced aside 
 at the expression in her niece's face, that she must 
 " call pride to her assistance.'' Ay, true ; but pride, 
 though a strong ally in public, is apt in private to turn 
 as treacherous as the worst of those against whom she 
 is invoked. How could it be dreamed, by a person of 
 sense that a brilliant young man, of merits vaiious and 
 eminent, in spite of his baseness, to whom, for nearly 
 
282 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 iwo years, this young woman had given her whole con 
 fiding love, might be dismissed from a heart like hers on 
 the earliest summons of pride, simply because she 
 herself had been dismissed from his, or seemed to have 
 been dismissed, on a summons of mercenary calculation ? 
 Look ! now that she is relieved from the weight of an 
 unconfidential presence, she has sat for two hours with 
 her head buried in her hands. At last she rises to look 
 for something. A thought has struck her; and, taking 
 a little golden key which hangs by a chain within her 
 bosom, she searches for something locked up amongst 
 her few jewels. What is it ? It is a Bible exquisitely 
 illuminated, with a letter attached by some pretty silken 
 artifice to the blank leaves at the end. This letter is a 
 beautiful record, wisely and pathetically composed, ot 
 maternal anxiety still burning strong in death, and 
 yearning, when all objects beside were fast fading from 
 her eyes, after one parting act of communion with the 
 twin darlings of her heart. Both were thirteen years 
 old, within a week or two, as on the night before her 
 death they sat weeping by the bedside of their mother, 
 and hanging on her lips, now for farewell whispers and 
 now for farewell kisses. They both knew that, as hei 
 strength had permitted during the latter month of her 
 life, she had thrown the last anguish of love in her 
 beseeching heart into a letter of counsel to themselves. 
 Through this, of which each sister had a copy, she 
 trusted long to converse with her orphans. And the 
 last promise which she had entreated on this evening 
 from both was, that in either of two contingencies they 
 would review her counsels, and the passages to which 
 she pointed their attention in the Scriptures ; nainelj 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. 283 
 
 first, in the event of any calamity, that, for one sister or 
 for both, should overspread their paths with total dark- 
 ness ; and, secondly, in the event of life flowing in too 
 profound a stream of prosperity, so as to threaten them 
 with an alienation of interest from all spiritual objects. 
 She had not concealed that, of these two extreme cases, 
 she would prefer for her own children the first. And now 
 had that case arrived, indeed, which she in spirit had 
 desired to meet. Nine years ago, just as the silvery 
 voice of a dial in the dying lady's bed-room was strik- 
 ing nine, upon a summer evening, had the last visual 
 ray streamed from her seeking eyes upon her orphan 
 twins, after which, throughout the night, she had slept 
 away into heaven. Now again had come a summer 
 evening memorable for unhappiness ; now again the 
 daughter thought of those dying lights of love which 
 streamed at sunset from the closing eyes of her mother ; 
 again, and just as she went back in thought to this 
 image, the same silvery voice of the dial sounded nine 
 o'clock. Again she remembered her mother's dying 
 request; again her own tear-hallowed promise, — and 
 with her heart in her mother's grave she now rose to 
 fulfil it. Here, then, when this solemn recurrence to a 
 testamentary counsel has ceased to be a mere office of 
 duty towards the departed, having taken the shape of a 
 consolation for herself, let us pause. 
 
 Now, fair companion in this exploring voyage of 
 inquest into hidden scenes, or forgotten scenes of human 
 life, perhaps it might be instructive to direct our 
 glasses upon the false, perfidious lover. It might. But 
 do not let us do so. We might like him better, or pity 
 
284 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 him more, than either of us would desire. His name 
 and memory have long since dropped out of every- 
 body's thoughts. Of prosperity, and (what is more 
 important) of internal peace, he is reputed to have had 
 no gleam from the moment when he betrayed his faith, 
 and in one day threw away the jewel of good con- 
 science, and " a pearl richer than all his tribe." But, 
 however that may be, it is certain that, finally, he 
 became a wreck ; and of any hopeless wreck it is pain- 
 ful to talk, — much more so, when through him others 
 also became wrecks. 
 
 Shall we, then, after an interval of nearly two years 
 has passed over the young lady in the boudoir, look in 
 again upon her? You hesitate, fair friend; and I my- 
 self hesitate. For in fact she also has become a vn-eck ; 
 and it would grieve us both to see her altered. At the 
 end of twenty-one months she retains hardly a vestige of 
 resemblance to the fine young woman we saw on that 
 unhappy evening, with her aunt and cousin. On con- 
 sideration, therefore, let us do this. — ^We will direct our 
 glasses to her room at a point of time about six weeks 
 further on. Suppose this time gone ; suppose her now 
 dressed for her grave, and placed in her coffin. The 
 advantage of that is, that though no change can restore 
 the ravages of the past, yet (as often is found to happen 
 with young persons) the expression has revived from her 
 girlish years The child-like aspect has revolved, and 
 settled back upon her features. The wasting awsy of 
 the flesh is less apparent in the face; and one might 
 imagiue that in this sweet marble countenance was 
 seen the very same upon which, eleven years ago, hei 
 mother's darkening eyes had lingered to the last, urti] 
 
OF AN EN&LISH OPIUM-EATEK. 285 
 
 c.ouds had swallowed up the vision of her beloved twins. 
 Yet, if that were in part a fancy, this, at least, is no 
 fancy, — that not only much of a child-like truth and 
 simplicity has reinstated itself in the temple of her now 
 reposing features, but also that tranquillity and perfect 
 peace, such as are appropriate to eternity, but which 
 from the lioing countenance had taken their flight for- 
 ever, on that memorable evening when we looked in 
 upon the impassioned group, — upon the towering and 
 denouncing aunt, the sympathizing but silent cousin, 
 the poor, blighted niece, and the wicked letter lying in 
 fragments at their feet. 
 
 Cloud, that hast revealed to us this young creature 
 and her blighted hopes, close up again. And now, a 
 few years later, — not more than four or five, — give 
 back to us the latest arrears of the changes which thou 
 concealest within thy draperies. Once more, "open 
 sesame ! " and show us a third generation. Behold a 
 lawn islanded with thickets. How perfect is the ver- 
 dure; how rich the blossoming shrubberies that screen 
 with verdurous walls from the possibility of intrusion, 
 whilst by their own wandering line of distribution they 
 shape, and umbrageously embay, what one might call 
 lawny saloons and vestibules, sylvan galleries and 
 closets ! Some of these recesses, which unlink them- 
 selves as fluently as snakes, and unexpectedly as the 
 shyest nooks, watery cells, and crypts, amongst the 
 shores of a forest-lake, being formed by the mere 
 caprices and ramblings of the luxuriant shrubs, are so 
 small and so quiet that one might fancy them meant 
 for boudoirs. Here is one that in a less fickle climate 
 would make the loveliest of studies for a writer of 
 
286 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS 
 
 breathings from some solitary heart, or of suspiria frun 
 some impassioned memory ! And, opening from one 
 angle of this embowered study, issues a little narrow 
 corridor, that, after almost wheeling back upon itself, in 
 its playful mazes, finally widens into a little circular 
 chamber; out of which there is no exit (except back 
 again by the entrance), small or great; so that, adjacent 
 to his study, the writer would command how sweet a 
 bed-room, permitting him to lie the summer through, 
 gazing all night long at the burning host of heaven. 
 How silent that would be at the noon of summer nights 
 — how grave-like in its quiet ! And yet, need there be 
 asked a stillness or a silence more profound than is felt 
 at this present noon of day ? One reason for such 
 peculiar repose, over and above the tranquil character 
 of the day, and the distance of the place from the high- 
 roads, is the outer zone of woods, which almost on every 
 quarter invests the shrubberies, swathing them (as one 
 may express it), belting them and overlooking them, 
 from a varying distance of two and three furlongs, so as 
 oftentimes to keep the winds at a distance. But, how- 
 ever caused and supported, the silence of these fancifu 
 .awns and lawny chambers is oftentimes oppressive in the 
 depths of summer to people unfamiliar with solitudes, 
 either mountainous or sylvan ; and many would be apt 
 to suppose that the vilfa, to which these pretty shrub- 
 beries form the chief dependencies, must be untenanted. 
 But that is not the case. The house is inhabited, and 
 by its own legal mistress, the proprietress of the whole 
 domain ; and not at all a silent mistress, but as noisy as 
 most little ladies of five years old, for that is her age. 
 Now, and just as we are speaking, ycu may hear her 
 
OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 287 
 
 little joyous clamor, as she issues from the house. This 
 way she comes, bounding like a fawn ; and soon she 
 rushes into the little recess which I pointed out as a 
 proper studj for any man who should be weaving the 
 deep harmonies of memorial suspiria. But I fancy that 
 she will soon dispossess it of that character, for her sus- 
 piria are not many at this stage of her life. Now she 
 comes dancing into sight; and you see that, if she 
 keeps the promise of her infancy, she will be an inter- 
 esting creature to the eye in after life. In other respects, 
 also, she is an engaging child, — loving, natural, and 
 wild as any one of her neighbors for some miles round 
 namely, leverets, squirrels, and ring-doves. But what 
 will surprise you most is, that, although a child of pure 
 English blood, she speaks very little English ; but more 
 Bengalee than perhaps you will find it convenient to 
 construe. That is her ayah, who comes up from behind, 
 at a pace so different from her youthful mistress's. But, 
 if their paces are different, in other things they agree 
 most cordially; and dearly thej' love each other. In 
 reality, the child has passed her whole life in the arms 
 of this ayah. She remembers nothing elder than her ; 
 eldest of things is the ayah in her eyes ; and, if the 
 ayah should insist on her worshipping herself as the 
 goddess Eailroadina or Steamboatina, that made Eng- 
 land, and the sea, and Bengal, it is certain that the 
 little thing would do so, asking no question but this, — 
 whether kissing would do for worshipping. 
 
 Every evening at nine o'clock, as the ayah sits by the 
 little creature lying awake in bed, the silvery tongue of 
 a dial tolls the hour. Reader, you know who she is 
 She is the grand-daughter of her that faded away abou( 
 
288 A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS, ETC. 
 
 sunset in gazing at her twin orphans. Her name is 
 Grace. And she is the niece of that elder and once 
 happy Grace, who spent so much of her happiness m 
 this very room, but whom, in her utter desolation, we 
 saw in the boudoir, with the torn letter at her feet. She 
 is the daughter of that other sister, wife to a military 
 officer who died abroad. Little Grace never saw her 
 grandmamma, nor her lovely aunt, that was her name- 
 sake, nor consciously her mamma. She was born six 
 months after the death of the elder Grace; and her 
 mother saw her only through the mists of mortal suffer- 
 ing, which carried her off three weeks after the birth of 
 her daughter. 
 
 This view was taken several years ago; and since 
 then the younger Grace, in her turn, is under a cloud 
 of affliction. But she is still under eighteen ; and of 
 her there may be hopes. Seeing such things in so short 
 a space of years, for the grandmother died at thirty-two, 
 we say, — Death we can face : but knowing, as some of 
 us do, what is human life, which of us is it that without 
 shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned) 
 f»ce the hour of birth ? 
 
ADDITIONS 
 
 TO THE "CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER." 
 
 DE QUINCEY. 
 
 This family, which split (or, as a grammatical purist 
 lately said to me, in a tone of expostulation, splai) 
 into three national divisions, — English, French, and 
 American, — originally was Norwegian ; and in the 
 year of our Christian era one thousand spoke (I be- 
 lieve) the most undeniable Norse. Throughout the 
 eleventh century, the heads of this family (in com- 
 mon with all the ruffians and martial vagabonds of 
 Europe, that had Venetian sequins enough disposa- 
 ble for such a trip) held themselves in readiness to 
 join any likely leader ; and did join William the Nor- 
 man. Very few, indeed, or probably none, of his 
 brigands were Frenchmen, or native Neustrians ; 
 Normans being notoriously a name not derived/rom 
 any French province, but imported irdo that province 
 by trans-Baltic, and in a smaller proportion by cis- 
 Baltic aliens. This Norwegian family, having as- 
 sumed a territorial denomination from the district or 
 village of Quincy, in the province now called Nor- 
 mandy, transplanted themselves to England ; where, 
 
 (289) 
 
290 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 and subsequently by marriage in Scotland, they as 
 cended to the highest rank in both kingdoms, and 
 held the highest offices open to a subject. A late 
 distinguished writer, Mr. Moir, of Musselburgh, the 
 Delia of "Blackwood's Magazine," took the trouble 
 (which must have been considerable) of tracing theii 
 aspiring movements in Scotland, through a period 
 when Normans transferred themselves from England 
 to Scotland in considerable numbers, and with great 
 advantages. This elaborate paper, published many 
 years ago in " Blackwood's Magazine," first made 
 known the leading facts of their career in Scotland. 
 Meantime in England they continued to flourish 
 through nine or ten generations ; took a distin- 
 guished part in one, at least, of the Crusades ; and 
 a still more perilous share in the Barons' Wars, 
 under Henry III. No family drank more deeply or 
 more frequently from the cup of treason, which in 
 those days was not always a very grave offence in 
 people who having much territorial influence had 
 also much money. But, happening to drink once 
 too often, or taking too long a " pull " at the cup, 
 the Earls of Winchester suddenly came to grief. 
 Amongst the romances of astronomy, there is one, 
 I believe, which has endeavored to account for the 
 little asteroids of our system, by supposing them 
 fragments of some great planet that had, under 
 internal convulsion or external collision, at some 
 period suddenly exploded-. In our own planet Tellus, 
 such a county as York, under a similar catastrophe, 
 would make a very pretty little asteroid. And, with 
 Bomn miniature resemblance to such a case, some- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EAJTER. 291 
 
 times benefiting by the indulgence of the crown, 
 Bometimes by legal devices, sometimes by aid of 
 matrimonial alliances, numerous descendants, con- 
 fessedly innocent, from the guilty earl, projected 
 themselves by successive efforts, patiently vratching 
 their opportunities, from the smoking ruins of the 
 great feudal house ; stealthily through two genera- 
 tions creeping out of their lurking holes ; timidly, 
 when the great shadows from the threatening throne 
 had passed over, reassuming the family name. Con- 
 currently with these personal fragments projected 
 from the ancient house, flew off random splinters 
 and fragments from the great planetary disk of the 
 Winchester estates, little asteroids that formed ample 
 inheritances for the wants of this or that provincial 
 squire, of this or that tame villatic squireen.* 
 
 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." This muti- 
 lation forever prevented it from aspiring cloudwards 
 by means of some mighty stem, such as grows upon 
 Norwegian hills, fit to be the mast of "some great 
 ammiral." Nevertheless, we see daily amongst the 
 realities of nature, that a tree, after passing through 
 such a process of degradation, yet manifests the 
 great arrears of vindictive life lurking within it, by 
 throwing out a huge radiation of slender boughs and 
 
 * This last variety of the rustic regulus is of Hibernian origin ; 
 and, as regards the name, was unknown to us in England until 
 Miss Edgeworth had extended the horizon of our social experience, 
 f et, without the name, I presume that the thing must have been 
 known occasionally even in England. 
 
292 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 miniature shoots, small but many, so that we are 
 forced exactly to invert the fine words of Lucan, 
 saying no longer, irunco, nonfrondibus efficitumbram, 
 but, on the contrary, non trunco sed frondibus effioit 
 umbram. This great cabbage-head of this ancient 
 human tree threw a broad massy umbrage over more 
 villages than one ; sometimes yielding representa- 
 tives moody and mutinous, sometimes vivacious and 
 inventive, sometimes dull and lethargic, until at last, 
 one fine morning, on rubbing their eyes, they found 
 themselves actually in the sixteenth century abreast 
 of Henry VIII. and his fiery children. Ah, what a 
 century was that I Sculptured as only Froude can 
 sculpture those that fight across the chasms of eter- 
 nity ; grouped as only Froude can group the mighty 
 factions, acting or sufiering, arraigning before chan- 
 ceries of man, or protesting before chanceries of God 
 — what vast arrays of marble gladiators fighting for 
 truth, real or imagined, throng the arenas in each 
 generation of that and the succeeding century ! And 
 how ennobling a distinction of modern humanity, 
 that in Pagan antiquity no truth as yet existed, none 
 had been revealed, none emblazoned, on behalf of 
 which man could have fought ! As Lord Bacon re- 
 marks, — though strangely, indeed, publishing in the 
 very terms of this remark his own blindness to the 
 causes and consequences, — religious wars were un- 
 known to antiquity. Personal interests, and those 
 only, did or could furnish a subject of conflict. But 
 throughout the sixteenth century, whether in Eng- 
 land, in France, or in Germany, it was a spiritual 
 interest, shadowy and aerial, which embattled armies 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 293 
 
 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 com- 
 binations 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 particu- 
 lar' 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. Enamored of 
 democracy, this family, laying aside the aristocratic 
 De attached to their name, settled in New England, 
 where they subsequently rose, through long public 
 services, to the highest moral rank — as measured 
 by all possible expressions of public esteem that are 
 consistent with the simplicities of the great republic. 
 M'. Josiah Quincy, as head of this distinguished fam- 
 ily, 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 fam- 
 ily had, at a much earlier period, settled in France. 
 Finally, the squires and squireens — that is, 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 honor 
 
■294 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 of seeing him ; in fact, it was impossible that I should 
 have such an honor, since he died during the Amer- 
 ican 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 Eutland. Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek observes, as one of his sentimental re- 
 membrances, that he also at one period of his life had 
 been "adored." "I was adored once," says the 
 knight, seeming to acknowledge that he was not 
 adored then. But the squireen was "adored" in a 
 limited way to the last. This fading representative 
 'of a crusading house declined gradually into the 
 oracle of the bar at the Ked Lion ; and was adored 
 by two persons at the least (not counting himself), 
 namely, the landlord, and occasionally the waiter. 
 Mortgages had eaten up the last vestiges of the old 
 territorial wrecks ; and, with his death, a new era 
 commenced for this historical family, which now (as 
 if expressly to irritate its ambition) finds itself dis- 
 tributed amongst three mighty nations, — France, 
 America, and England, — and precisely those three 
 that are usually regarded as the leaders of civiliza- 
 tion.* 
 
 * The onyssion of the De, as an addition looking better at a tour- 
 nament than as an endorsement on a bill of exchange, began, as 
 to many hundreds of English names, fall three hundred years ago. 
 Many English families have disused this affix simply from indo- 
 lence. As to the terminal variations, cy, cie, cey, those belong, as 
 natural and inevitable exponents of a transitional condition, to the 
 ansettled spelling that characterizes the early stages of literature in 
 all countries Blike. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 295 
 
 MT GDABDIANS.^' 
 
 Mt father died when I was in my seventh year, leav- 
 ing six children, including myself (viz., four sons and 
 two daughters), to the care of four guardians and of our 
 mother, who was invested with the legal authority of a 
 guardian. This word " guardian " kindles a fiery thrill- 
 ing in my nerves ; so much was that special power of 
 guardianship, as wielded by one of the four, concerned 
 in the sole capital error of my boyhood. To this error 
 my own folly would hardly have been equal, unless by 
 concurrence with the obstinacy of others. From the 
 bitter remembrance of this error in myself — of this ob- 
 stinacy in my hostile guardian, sufier me to draw the priv- 
 ilege 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 civilization, any trust or delegated duty 
 which has more often been negligently or even perfidi- 
 ously administered. In the days of classical Greece and 
 Rome, my own private impression, founded on the colla- 
 tion of many incidental notices, is — that this, beyond 
 all other forms of domestic authority, furnished to whole- 
 sale rapine and peculation their very amplest arena. 
 The relation of father and son, as was that oi patron and 
 client, were 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 had their very 
 root and origin in the teuderest adjurations of a dying 
 friend, though subsequently refreshed by the hourly spec- 
 tacle of helpless orphanage playing round the margins 
 of pitfalls hidden by flowers, spoke but seldom to the 
 
296 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 sensibilities of a Koman through any language of orac- 
 ular power. Few indeed, if any, were the obligations 
 in a proper sense moral which pressed upon the Roman. 
 The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by 
 law or by custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage 
 had corrupted itself through the facility of divorce, and 
 through the consequences of that facility (viz. levity in 
 choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so 
 exquisite a trafiSc 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 chUd 
 had all its capacities of holy tenderness crushed out of it 
 under the fierce pressure of penal and vindictive enforce- 
 ments. The duties of the client to his patron stood upon 
 no basis of simple gratitude or simple fidelity (correspond- 
 ing to the feudal /ea%), 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 afiections, there is an end to freedom 
 in the act, to purity in the motive, to dignity in the 
 personal relation. Accordingly, in the France of the 
 pre-revolutionary period, and in the China of all periods, 
 it has been with baleful effects to the national morals 
 that positive law has come in aid of the paternal rights. 
 And in the Rome of ancient history it may be said that 
 this one orginal and rudimental wrong done to the holy 
 freedom of human affections, had the effect of extinguish- 
 ing thenceforward all conscieniioiis 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 297 
 
 mere ignoble 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, there- 
 fore, it would have been if the tutor of obscure orphans, 
 with extra temptations, and extra facilities for indulging 
 them, should have shown himself more faithful to his 
 trust than the governor of provinces — praetorian or 
 proconsular. Yet who more treacherous and rapacious 
 than he? Rarest of men was the upright governor 
 that accepted no bribes from the criminal, and extorted 
 no ransoms from the timid. He nevertheless, as a public 
 trustee, was watched by the jealousy of political com- 
 petitors, and had by possibility a solemn audit to face in 
 the senate or in the forum ; perhaps in both. But the 
 tutor, who administered a private trust on behalf of 
 orphans, might count on the certainty that no public at- 
 tention could ever be attracted to concerns so dbscure, 
 and politically so uninteresting. Reasonably, therefore, 
 and by all analogy, a Roman must have regarded the 
 ordinary domestic tutor as almost inevitably a secret de- 
 linquent using the opportunities and privileges of his 
 office as mere instruments for working spoliation and 
 ruin upon the inheritance confided to his care. This 
 deadly and besetting evU 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 introducing amongst them a separate and 
 imminent danger. Leaving behind him a little house- 
 hold of infants, a little fleet (as it might be represented) 
 
298 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 of fairy pinnaces, just raising their aiicliors in prepara- 
 tion for crossing the mighty deeps of life, he made 
 signals for " convoy." Some one or two (at best im- 
 perfectly known to him), amongst those who traversed 
 the same seas, he accepted in that character ; but doubt- 
 fully, sorrowfully, fearfully ; and at the very moment 
 when the faces of his children were disappearing amongst 
 the vapors of death, the miserable thought would cross 
 his prophetic soul — that too probably this pretended 
 " convoy," under the strong temptations of the case, 
 might eventually become pirates ; robbers, at the least ; 
 and by possibility wilful misleaders to the inexperience 
 of his children. 
 
 From this dreadful aggravation of the anguish at any 
 rate besetting the death-beds of parents summoned away 
 from a group of infant children, there has been a mighty 
 deliverance wrought in a course of centuries by the vast 
 diffusion of Christianity. In these days, wheresoever 
 an atmosphere is breathed that has been purified by 
 Christian charities and Christian principles — this house- 
 hold pestilence has been continually dwindling : and in 
 the England of this generation there is no class of pecu- 
 lation which we so seldom hear of: one proof of which 
 is found in the indifference with which most of us re- 
 gard the absolute security offered to children by the 
 Court of Chancery. My father, therefore, as regarded 
 the quiet of his dying hours, benefited by the felicity of 
 his times and his country. He made the best selection 
 for the future guardianship of his six children that his 
 opportunities allowed ; from his circle of intimate 
 friends, he selected the four who stood highest in his 
 estimation for honor and practical wisdom : which done, 
 
CONFESSIONS bp AN OPITJM-EATER. 299 
 
 and relying for the redressing of any harsh tendencies in 
 male guardians upon the discretional power lodged in 
 my mother, thenceforth he rested from his anxieties. 
 Not one of these guardians but justified his choice so 
 far as honor and integrity were concerned. Yet, after 
 all, there is a limit (and sooner reached perhaps in Eng- 
 land than in other divisions of Christendom) to the good 
 that can be achieved in such cases by prospective wis- 
 dom. For we, in England, more absolutely than can 
 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 
 thirds of their time. To Spain it is that we must look 
 for an aristocracy physically * degraded under the igno- 
 ble training of women and priests ; and for princes 
 (such as Ferdinand VII.) that make it the glory of their 
 lives to have embroidered a petticoat. Amongst our- 
 selves of this current generation, whilst those functions 
 of guardianship may be surely counted on which pre- 
 sume conscientious loyalty to the interests of their wards ; 
 on the other hand, all which presume continued vigil- 
 ance and provision from afar are, in simple truth, hardly 
 compatible with our English state of society. The 
 guardians chosen by my father, had they been the wisest 
 and also the most energetic of men, could not in many 
 
 * 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 rough- 
 aTid-tiiTrible discipline of a popular education) exhibit in their very per- 
 sons and bodily development undisguised evidences of effeminate hab- 
 its operating through many generations. It would be satisfactory to 
 know the unexaggerated truth on this point ; the truth unbiassed alike 
 oy national and by democratic prejudices. 
 
300 ADDITIONS ■A) THE 
 
 conceivable emergencies have fulfilled his secret wishes. 
 Of the four men, one was a merchant (not in the nar- 
 row sense of Scotland, derived originally from France, 
 where no class of merchant princes has ever existed, 
 but in the large, noble sense of England, of Florence, 
 of Venice) : consequently his extensive relations with . 
 sea-ports and distant colonies continually drawing off 
 his attention, and even his personal presence, from 
 domestic affairs, made it hopeless that he should even 
 attempt more on behalf of his wards than slightly to 
 watch the administration of their pecuniary interests. 
 A second of our guardians was a rural magistrate, but 
 in a populous district close upon Manchester, which even 
 at that time was belted with a growing body of turbulent 
 aliens — Welsh and Irish. He therefore, overwhelmed 
 by the distractions of his official station, rightly perhaps 
 conceived himself to have fulfilled his engagements as a 
 guardian, if he stood ready to come forward upon any 
 difSculty arising, but else in ordinary cases devolved his 
 functions upon those who enjoyed more leisure. In that 
 category stood, beyond a doubt, a third of our guardians, 
 the Rev. Samuel H., who was at the time of my father's 
 death a curate at some church (I believe) in Manchester 
 or in Salford.* This gentleman represented a class — 
 
 * Salford is a large town legally distinguished from Manchester for 
 parliamentary purposes, and divided from it physically by a river, but 
 else virtually, as regards intercourse and reciprocal influence, is a quar- 
 ter of Manchester; in fact holding the same relation to Manchester 
 that Southwark does to London ; or, if the reader insists upon having 
 a classical illustration of the case, the same relation that in ancient 
 days Argos did to Mycenae. An invitation to dinner, given by the 
 public herald of Argos, could be heard to the centre of Mycenae ; and 
 by a gourmand, if the dinner promised to be specially good, in the re- 
 moter suburb. 
 
CONFE88IOK8 OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 301 
 
 large enough at all times by necessity of human nature, 
 but in those days far larger than at present — that class, 
 I mean, who sympathize with no spiritual sense or spir- 
 itual capacities in man ; who understand by religion sim- 
 ply a respectable code of ethics, leaning for support 
 upon some great mysteries dimly traced in the back- 
 ground, and commemorated in certain great church fes- 
 tivals by the eldm- churches of Christendom ; as, e. g., 
 by the English, which does not stand as to age on the 
 Reformation epoch, by the Romish, and by the Greek. 
 He had composed a body of about 330 sermons, which 
 thus, at the rate of two every Sunday, revolved through 
 a cycle of three years ; that period being modestly as- 
 sumed 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 val- 
 uation of the pulpit as an organ of civilization for cooper- 
 ating with books ; but it was impossible for any man, 
 starting from the low ground of themes so unimpas- 
 sioned and so desultory as the benefits of industry, the 
 danger from bad companions, the importance of setting a 
 good example, or the value of perseverance — to pump 
 up any persistent stream of earnestness either in him- 
 self 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 re- 
 sult of their esteem for my reverend guardian, a num 
 
302 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ber of them combined to build a church for him — viz., 
 St. Peter's — at the point of confluence between Mosely 
 Street and the newly projected Oxford Street ; then ex- 
 isting only as a sketch in the portfolio of a surveyor. 
 But what connected myself individually with Mr. H. 
 was, that two or three years previously I, together with 
 one of my brothers (five years my senior), had been 
 placed under his care for classical instruction. This was 
 done, I believe, in obedience to a dying injunction of 
 my father, who had a just esteem, for Mr. S. H., as an 
 upright man, but apparently too exalted an opinion of 
 his scholarship : for he was but an indifferent Grecian. 
 In whatever way the appointment arose, so it was that 
 this gentleman, previously 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 intel- 
 lectual attainments of Mr. H., were therefore infiuen- 
 tially 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 in- 
 strument of improvement. One half of these, indeed, 
 were all that I heard ; for, as my father's house 
 (Greenhay) stood at this time in the country, Man- 
 chester not having yet overtaken it, the distance 
 obliged us to go in a carriage, and only to the morn- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 pansion — but preserving as much as possible of the 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 303 
 
 original language ; and also (which puzzled me pain- 
 fully) preserving the exact succession of the thoughts ; 
 which might be easy where they stood in some depend- 
 ency upon each other, as, for instance, in the develop- 
 ment of an argument, but in arbitrary or chance ar- 
 rangements 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 — agi- 
 tated 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 
 
 * " Tliat whole congregation: " — Originally at churches which I do 
 not remember, where, however, in consideration of my tender age, 
 the demands levied upon my memory were much lighter. Two or 
 three years later, when I must have been nearing my tenth year, and 
 when St. Peter's had been finished, occurred the opening, and con- 
 sequently (as an indispensable pre-condition) the consecration of that 
 edifice by the bishop of the diocese (viz. , Chester). I, as a ward of 
 the incumbent, was naturally amongst those specially invited to the 
 festival ; and I remember a little incident, which exposed broadly the 
 the conflict of feelings inherited by the Church of England from the 
 Puritans of the seventeenth century. The architecture of the church 
 was Grecian ; and certainly the enrichments, inside or outside, were 
 few enough, neither florid nor obtrusive. But in the centre of the 
 ceiling, for the salie of breaking the monotony of so large a blank 
 white surface, there was moulded, in plaster-of-Paris, a large tablet or 
 shield, charged with a cornucopia of fruits and flowers. And yet, 
 when we were all assembled in the vestry waiting — rector, church- 
 wardens, architect, and trains of dependents — there arose a deep 
 buzz of anxiety, which soon ripened into an articulate expression of 
 fear, that the bishop would think himself bound, like the horrid eikon- 
 oclasts of 1645, to i.ssue his decree of utter averruncation to the sim- 
 ple decoration overhead. Fearfully did we all tread the little aisles in 
 the procession of the prelate. Earnestly my lord looked upwards ; 
 but finally — were it courtesy, or doubtfulness as to his ground, or ap- 
 probation — he passed on. 
 
304 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 this annoyance was not wholly lost : and those same 
 3|a sermons, which (lasting only through sixteen min- 
 utes 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 have dazzled my feeble vision, and in both the 
 gigantic thinking would have crushed my efforts at ap- 
 prehension. I drew, in fact, the deepest benefits from 
 this weekly exercise. Perhaps, also, in the end it 
 ripened into a great advantage for me, though long and 
 bitterly I complained of it, that I was not allowed to 
 use a pencil in taking notes ; all was to be charged upon 
 the memory. But it is notorious that the memory 
 strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes 
 trustworthy as you trust it. So that, in my third year 
 of practice, I found my abstracting and condensing 
 powers sensibly enlarged. My guardian was gradually 
 better satisfied : for unfortunately (and in the beginning 
 it was unfortunate) always one witness could be sum- 
 moned against me upon any impeachment of my fidelity 
 — viz., the sermon itself; since, though lurking amongst 
 the 330, the wretch was easily forked out. But these 
 appeals grew fewer ; and my guardian, as I have said, 
 was continually better satisfied. Meantime, might not I 
 be continually less satisfied with him and his 330 ser- 
 mons ? Not at all : loving and trusting, without doubt 
 or reserve, and with the deepest principles of veneration 
 rooted in my nature, I never, upon meeting something 
 more impressive than the average complexion of my 
 guardian's discourses, for one moment thought of him as 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIITM-EATER. 
 
 305 
 
 worse or feebler than others, but simply as different; 
 and no more quarrelled with him for his characteristic 
 langor, 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 ferment- 
 ing 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 Rich- 
 ard Baxter — who battled often with self-created storms 
 from the first dawn of the Parliamentary War in 1 642, 
 through the period of Cromwell (to whom he was per- 
 sonally odious), and, finally, through the trying range of 
 the second Charles and of the second James. As a pul- 
 pit orator, he was perhaps the Whitfield of the seven- 
 teenth century — the Leuconomos of Cowper. And 
 thus it is that he describes the impassioned character of 
 his own preaching — 
 
 "I preach' d, as never sure to preach again ; " 
 
 [Even that was telling ; but then followed this thuuder- 
 pedC] 
 
 " And as a dying man to dying men." 
 
 This couplet, which seemed to me equally for weight 
 and for splendor like molten gold, laid bare another as- 
 pect of the Catholic Church ; revealed it as a Church 
 militant and crusading. 
 
 Not even thus, however, did I descry any positive im- 
 perfection in my guardian. He and Baxter had fallen 
 upon different generations. Baxter's century, from first 
 to last was revolutionary. Along the entire course of 
 that seventeenth century, the great principles of repre- 
 20 
 
306 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 sentative government and the rights of conscience * were 
 passing through the anguish of conflict and fiery 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 — but on behalf of our 
 neighbors, no longer of ourselves. No longer, there- 
 fore, was invoked the heroic pleader, ready for martyr- 
 dom, preaching, therefore, " as never sure to preach 
 again ; " and I no more made it a defect in my guardian 
 that he wanted energies for combating evils now forgot- 
 ten, than that he had not in patriotic fervor 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 an- 
 ticipation, on Sunday night, under sadder experimental 
 knowledge, of my trying task, I slept ill ; my pillow 
 was stuffed with thorns ; and until Monday morning's 
 inspection and armilustrium had dismissed me from 
 parade to " stand at ease," verily I felt like a false 
 steward summoned to some killing audit. Then sup- 
 pose Monday to be invaded by some horrible intruder, 
 visitor perhaps from a band of my guardian's poor re- 
 lations, that in some undiscovered nook of Lancashire 
 
 * " The rights of conscience :" — With which it is painful to know- 
 that Baxter did not sympathize. 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." 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 307 
 
 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 be saddened 
 by a faint welcome. In such cases very possibly, the 
 whole week did not see the end of my troubles. 
 
 On these terms for upwards of three and a half years 
 — that is, from my eighth to beyond. my eleventh birth- 
 day — my guardian and I went on cordially : he was 
 never once angry, as indeed he never had any reason 
 for anger ; I never once treating my task either as odi- 
 ous (which in the most abominable excess it was), or, on 
 the other hand, as costing but a trivial effort, which 
 practice might have taught me to hurry through with 
 contemptuous ease. To the very last I found no ease at 
 all in this weekly task, which never ceased to be " a 
 thorn in the flesh : " and I believe that my guardian, like 
 many of the grim Pagan divinities, inhaled a flavor of 
 fragrant incense, from the fretting and stinging of anxi- 
 ety 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, oflTered an interval of rest, for me was signal- 
 ized as a day of martyrdom. Yet in this, after all, it is 
 possible that he did me a service : for my constitutional 
 infirmity of mind ran but too determinately towards the 
 sleep of endless reverie, and of dreamy abstraction from 
 life and its realities. 
 
 "Whether serviceable or not, however, the connection 
 
308 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 between my guardian and myself was now drawing to 
 its close. 
 
 A MANCHESTER HOME.*' 
 
 Some months after my eleventh birthday, Greenhay * 
 was sold, and my mother's establishment — both chil- 
 dren 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, of a young married couple in Man- 
 chester — viz., Mr. and Mrs. K . This incident, 
 
 though otherwise without results, I look back upon with 
 feelings inexpressibly profound, as a jewelly parenthesis 
 of pathetic happiness — such as emerges but once in any 
 man's life. Mr. K. was a young and rising American 
 merchant ; by which I mean, that he was an Englishman 
 who exported to the United States. He had married 
 about three years previously a pretty and amiable young 
 woman, well educated, and endowed with singular com- 
 pass of intellect. But the distinguishing feature in this 
 household was the spirit of love which, under the benign 
 superintendence of the mistress, diffused itself through 
 all its members. 
 
 The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, amongst many novel 
 ideas, which foimd no welcome even with his friends, in- 
 
 * ' ' 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. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-BATER. 
 
 309 
 
 sisted earnestly and often upon this — viz., that a great 
 danger was threatening our social system in Great Brit- 
 ain, from the austere separation existing between our 
 educated and our working classes ; and that a more con- 
 ciliatory style of intercourse between these two bisec- 
 tions of our social body must be established, or else — 
 a tremendous revolution. This is not the place to dis- 
 cuss so large a question ; and I shall content myself with 
 making two remarks. The first is this — that, although 
 a change of the sort contemplated by Dr. Arnold might, 
 if considered as an operative cause, point forward to 
 some advantages, on the other hand, if considered as an 
 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 partictular, do so 
 because they speak from the lofty stations of persons hav- 
 ing civil rights to those who have none. Two centuries 
 back, when a military chieftain addressed his soldiers as 
 " my children," he did so because he was an irresponsi- 
 ble despot exercising uncontrolled powers of life and 
 death. From the moment when legal rights have been 
 won for the poorest classes, inevitable respect on the 
 part of the higher classes extinguishes forever the affec- 
 tionate style which belongs naturally to the state of pu- 
 pilage or infantine bondage. 
 
 That is my first remark : my second is this — that 
 the change advocated by Dr. Arnold, whether promising 
 or not, is practically impossible ; or possible, I should 
 say through one sole channel — viz., that of domestic 
 servitude. There only do the two classes concerned 
 come hourly into contact. On that stage only they 
 
310 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 meet without intrusion upon each other. There only is 
 an opening for change. And a wise mistress, who pos- 
 sesses tact enough to combine a gracious affability with 
 a self-respect that never slumbers nor permits her to de- 
 scend 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 ser- 
 vants from the first, by making the amplest provision 
 for their comfort ; their confidence, by listening with 
 patience, and counselling with prudence ; and their re- 
 spect, by refusing to intermeddle with gossiping person- 
 alities always tending to slander. To this extent, per- 
 haps, most mistresses perhaps might follow her example. 
 
 But the happiness which reigned in Mrs. K 's house 
 
 at this time depended very much upon special causes. 
 All the eight persons had the advantage of youth ; and 
 the three young female servants were under the spell of 
 fascination, such as could rarely be counted on, from a 
 spectacle held up hourly before their eyes, that spectacle 
 which of all others is the most touching to womanly 
 sensibilities, and which any one of these servants might 
 hope without presumption, to realize 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 labors, as generally in respectable 
 English services, were finished for the most part by two 
 o'clock ; and as the hours of evening drew nearer, when 
 the master's return might be looked for without fail, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AK OPIUM-EATBK. 311 
 
 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 sympathizing hand-maidens. One child, 
 a little girl of two years old, had then crowned the hap- 
 piness of the K s. She naturally lent her person at 
 
 all times, and apparently in all places at once, to the im- 
 provement of the family groups. My brother and my- 
 self, who had been trained from infancy to the courteous 
 treatment of servants, filled up a vacancy in the gradu- 
 ated 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 jeal- 
 ousies ; nor, though the privilege of our common youth, 
 either angry recollections breathing from the past, or 
 fretting anxieties gathering from the future. The spirit 
 of hope and the spirit of peace (so it seemed to me, 
 when looking back upon this profound calm) had, for 
 their own enjoyment, united in a sisterly league to blow 
 a solitary bubble of visionary happiness — and to se- 
 quester from the unresting hurricanes of life one soli- 
 tary 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 vapor. 
 
 How deep was that lull ! and yet, as in a human at- 
 mosphere, how fraU ? 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 Shakespeare, minted by himself, 
 and drawn from his own aerial fancy, like a cloud it 
 
312 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THB 
 
 " dislimned ; " lost its lineaments by stealthy steps. Al- 
 ready the word ^'parting " (for myself and my brother 
 were under summons for Ba_th) hoisted the first signal 
 for breaking up. Next, and not very long afterwards, 
 came a mixed signal : alternate words of joy and 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, to- 
 gether with her first-born child. Some years later, per- 
 haps twenty from this time, as I stood sheltering myself 
 from rain in a shop within the most public street of 
 Manchester, the master of the establishment drew my 
 attention to a gentleman on the opposite side of the 
 street — roaming along in a reckless style of movement, 
 and apparently insensible to the notice which he at- 
 tracted. " 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 dis- 
 cretion. But what with these commercial calamities, and 
 deaths in his family, he lost all hope ; and you see what 
 sort of consolation it is that he seeks " — meaning to say 
 that his style of walking argued intoxication. T did not 
 think so. There was a settled misery in his eye, but 
 complicated with that an expression of nervous distrac- 
 tion, that, if it should increase, would make life an in- 
 tolerable 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 ascer- 
 
• CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 313 
 
 tained, some time previously to this casual rencounter, 
 that he and myself were at that date, all that remained 
 of the once joyous household. At present, and for many 
 a year, I am myself the sole relic from that household 
 sanctuary — sweet, solemn, profound — that concealed, 
 as in some ark floating on solitary seas, eight persons, 
 since called away, all except myself, one after one, to 
 that rest which only could be deeper than ours was then. 
 
 AT THE MANCHESTER GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 
 
 "When I left the K s, I left Manchester ; and dur- 
 ing the next three years I was sent to two very differ- 
 .ent schools ; first, to a public one — viz., the Bath 
 Grammar School, then and since famous for its excel- 
 lence — secondly, to a private school in Wiltshire. At 
 the end of the three years, I found myself once again in 
 Manchester. I was then fifteen years old, and a trifle 
 more ; and as it had come to the knowledge of Mr. G., 
 a banker in Lincolnshire (whom hitherto I have omitted 
 to notice amongst my guardians, as the one too gener- 
 ally prevented from interfering by his remoteness from 
 the spot, but whom otherwise I should have recorded 
 with honor, as by much the ablest amongst them), that 
 some pecuniary advantages were attached to a residence 
 at the Manchester Grammar School, whilst in other re- 
 spects that school seemed as eligible as any other, he 
 had counselled my mother to send me thither. In fact, 
 a three years' residence at this school obtained an an- 
 nual allowance for seven years of nearly (if not quite) 
 £50 ; which sum, added to my ovni patrimonial income of 
 £1.50, would have made up the annual £200 ordinarily 
 considered the proper allowance for an Oxford under 
 
314 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 graduate. No objection arising from any quarter, this 
 plan was adopted, and soon afterwards carried into 
 eflfect. 
 
 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 propor- 
 tions some hint of its pretensions as an endowed school, 
 or school of that class which I believe peculiar to Eng- 
 land. To this limited extent had the architectural sense 
 of power been timidly and parbimoniously invoked. Be- 
 yond that, nothing had been attempted ; and the dreary 
 expanse of whitewashed walls, that at so small a cost 
 might have been embellished 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 re- 
 lief by sculpture or painting. But this building was 
 dedicated to purposes that were noble. The naked walls 
 clamored for decoration : and how easily might tablets 
 have been moulded — exhibiting (as a first homage to 
 literature) Athens, with the wisdom of Athens, in the 
 person of Pisistratus, concentrating the general energies 
 upon the revisal and the re-casting of the " Iliad." Or 
 (second) the Athenian captives in Sicily, within the 
 fifth century b. c, as winning noble mercy for them- 
 selves by some 
 
 "Repeated air 
 Of sad Klectra's poet." 
 
 Such, and so sudden, had been the oblivion of earthly 
 
CONFESSIONS or AN OPIUM-EATER. 315 
 
 passions wrought by the contemporary poet of Athens 
 that in a moment the wrath of Sicily, with all its billows, 
 ran down into a heavenly calm ; and he that could 
 plead for his redemption no closer relation to Euripides 
 than the accident of recalling some scatterings from his 
 divine verses, suddenly found his chains dropping to the 
 ground ; and himself, that in the morning had risen a 
 despairing slave in a stone-quarry, translated at once as 
 a favored 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 re- 
 lented at the thought of literature, and 
 
 "Bade spare 
 The house of Pindarus, -when temple and tower 
 Went to the ground." 
 
 Alexander might have been represented amongst the col- 
 onnades of some Persian capital — Ecbatana or Babylon, 
 Susa or Persepolis — in the act of receiving from 
 Greece, as a nuzzur more awful than anything within 
 the gift of the " barbaric East," a jewelled casket con- 
 taining the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey ; " creations that 
 already have lived almost as long as the Pyramids. 
 
 Puritanically bald and odious therefore, in my eyes, 
 was the hall up which my guardian and myself paced 
 solemnly — though not Miltonically " riding up to the 
 Soldan's chair," yet, in fact, within a more limited 
 kingdom, advancing to the chair of a more absolute 
 despot. This potentate was the head-master, or arcM 
 didasealus, of the Manchester Grammar School ; and 
 that scnool was variously distinguished. It was (1.) 
 ancient, having in fact been founded by a bishop of 
 
316 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 Exeter in an early part of the sixteenth, century, so as 
 to be now, in 1866, more than 830 years old; (2.) it 
 was rich, and was annually growing richer ; and (3.) it 
 was dignified by a beneficial relation to the magnificent 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 The head-master at that time was Mr. Charles Law- 
 son. In former editions of this work, I created him a 
 doctor ; my object being to evade too close an approach 
 to the realities of the case, and consequently to person- 
 alities, which (though indifferent to myself) would have 
 been in some cases displeasing to others. A doctor, 
 however, Mr Lawson was not ; nor in the account of 
 law a clergyman. Yet most people, governed uncon- 
 sciously by the associations surrounding their composite 
 idea of a dignified schoolmaster, invested him with the 
 clerical character. And in reality he had taken deacon's 
 orders in the Church of England. But not the less he 
 held himself to be a layman, and was addressed as such 
 by all his correspondents of rank, who might be sup- 
 posed best to understand the technical rules of English 
 etiquette. Etiquette in such cases cannot entirely detach 
 itself from law. Now, in English law, as was shown in 
 Home Tooke's case, the rule is, once a clergyman, and 
 always a clergyman. The sacred character with which 
 ordination clothes a man is indelible. But, on the other 
 hand, who is a clergyman? Not he that has taken 
 simply the initial orders of a deacon, so at least I have 
 heard, but he that has taken the second and full orders 
 of a priest. If otherwise, then there was a great mistake 
 current amongst Mr. Lawson's friends in addressing him 
 as an esquire. 
 
 Squire or not a squire, however, parson or not a par- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 317 
 
 Bon — 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, which 
 was — to fight with a painfal malady, and fighting to 
 die. He still had his dying to do : he was in arrear 
 as to that : else all was finished. It struck me (but, 
 with such limited means for judging, I might easily be 
 wrong) that his understanding was of a narrow order. 
 But that did not disturb the interest which surrounded 
 him now in his old age (probably seventy-five, or more), 
 nor make any drawback from the desire I had to spell 
 backwards and re-compose the text of his life. What 
 had been his fortunes in this world ? Had they trav- 
 elled upwards or downwards ? What triumphs had he 
 enjoyed in the sweet and solemn cloisters of Oxford? 
 What mortifications in the harsh world outside ? Two 
 only had survived in the malicious traditions of " his 
 friends." He was a Jacobite (as were so many amongst 
 my dear Lancastrian compatriots) ; had drunk the Pre- 
 tender's health, and had drunk it in company with that 
 Dr. Byrom who had graced the symposium by the famous 
 equivocating impromptu * to the health of that prince. 
 
 * " Equivocating impromptu : " — TUe party had gathered in a tu- 
 multuary way; so that some Capulets had mingled with the Mon- 
 tagues, one of whom called upon Dr. Byrom to drink The King, God 
 bless him I and Confusion to the Pretender 1 Upon which the doctor 
 fang out — 
 
 '* God bless the King, of church and state defender; 
 God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender ! 
 But who Pretender is, and who the King — 
 God bless us all ! that 's quite another thing." 
 
 Dr. Byrom was otherwise famous than as a Jacobite — viz., as the 
 
318 iDDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 
 ambiguous expressions of favor in the lady ? or that she 
 in cruel caprice had disowned the hopes which she had 
 authorized ? However this might be, half a century of 
 soothing and reconciling years had cicatrized the wounds 
 of Mr. Lawson's heart. The lady of 1762, if living in 
 1800, must be furiously wrinkled. And a strange meta- 
 physical question arises : Whether, when the object of 
 an impassioned love has herself faded into a shadow, the 
 fiery passion itself can stUl survive as an abstraction, 
 still mourn over its wrongs, still clamor for redress. I 
 have heard of such cases. In Wordsworth's poem of 
 " Ruth '' (which was founded, as I happen to know, upon 
 facts), it is recorded as an aflFecting 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 confine- 
 ment ; and upon finding herself uncontrolled among the 
 pastoral scenes where she played away her chOdhood, 
 she gradually fell back to the original habits of her 
 life whilst yet undisturbed by sorrow. Something simi- 
 lar had happened to Mr. Lawson ; and some time after 
 
 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 pro- 
 jected by Bishop Wilkins, by Leibnitz, &c.) should be brought to bear, 
 in that case Dr. Byrom'a work would furnish the proper character for 
 its notation." 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 319 
 
 his first shock, amongst other meaus for effacing that 
 deep-grooved impression, he had labored to replace him- 
 self, as much as was possible, in the situation of a col- 
 lege student. In this effort he was assisted considerably 
 by the singular arrangement of the house attached to his 
 official station. For an English house it was altogether 
 an oddity, being, in fact, built upon a Eoman plan. All 
 the rooms on both stories had their windows looking 
 down upon a little central court. This court was quad 
 rangular, but so limited in its dimensions, that by a Ro- 
 man it would have been regarded as the impluvium : for 
 Mr. Lawson, however, with a little exertion of fancy, it 
 transmuted itself into a college quadrangle. Here, 
 therefore, were held the daily " callings-over," at which 
 every student was obliged to answer upon being named. 
 And thus the unhappy man, renewing continually the 
 fancy that he was still standing in an Oxford quadrangle, 
 perhaps cheated himself into the belief that all had 
 been a dream which concerned the caprices of the lady, 
 and the lady herself a phantom. College usages also, 
 which served to strengthen this fanciful alili — such, for 
 instance, as the having two plates arranged before him 
 at dinner (one for the animal, the other for the vegeta- 
 ble food) — were reproduced in Millgate. One sole 
 luxury, also somewhat costly, which, like most young men 
 of easy income, he had allowed himself at Oxford, was 
 now retained long after it had become practically use- 
 less. This was a hunter for himself, and another for his 
 groom, which he continued to keep, in spite of the in- 
 creasing 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 
 
326 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 considerable effort, he swung himself into the saddle, 
 ^moved off at a quiet amble, and, in about fifteen or 
 twehty minutes, might be seen returning from an excur- 
 sion of two miles, under the imagination that he had 
 laid in a stock of exercise sufficient for another period 
 of a hundred days. Meantime Mr. Lawson had sought 
 his main consolation in the great classics of elder days. 
 His senior alumni were always working their way 
 through some great scenic poet that had shaken the 
 stage of Athens ; and more than one of his classes, 
 never ending, still beginning, were daily solacing him 
 with the gayeties of Horace, in his Epistles or in his Sa- 
 tires. The Horatian jests indeed to him never grew 
 old. On coming to the plagosus Orbilius, or any other 
 sally of pleasantry, he still threw himself back in his 
 arm-chair, as he had done through fifty years, with what 
 seemed heart-shaking bursts of sympathetic merriment. 
 Mr. Lawson, indeed, could afford to be sincerely mirth- 
 ful 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 degrad- 
 ing for any but affected mirth. Allusions that are too 
 fearfully personal cease to be subjects of playfulness. 
 Sycophancy only it is that laughs ; and the artificial 
 merriment is but the language of shrinking and grovel- 
 ling deprecation. Different, indeed, was the condition of 
 the Manchester Grammar School. It was honorable 
 both to the masters and the upper boys, through whom 
 mly such a result was possible, that in_ that school, dur- 
 ing my knowledge of it (viz., during the closing year of 
 the eighteenth century, and the two opening years of 
 the nineteenth), all punishments, that appealed to the 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 321 
 
 sense of bodily pain, had fallen into disuse ; and this at 
 a period long before any public agitation had begun tq. 
 stir in that direction. How then was discipline main- 
 tained? It was maintained through the self-discipline 
 of the senior boys, and through the efficacy of their ex- 
 ample, combined with their system of rules. Noble are 
 the impulses of opening manhood, where they are not 
 utterly ignoble : at that period, I mean, when the poetic 
 sense begins to blossom, and when boys are first made 
 sensible of the paradise that lurks in female smiles. 
 Had the school been entirely a day-school, too probable 
 it is that the vulgar brawling tendencies of boys left to 
 themselves would have prevailed. But it happened that 
 the elder section of the school — those on the brink of 
 manhood, and by incalculable degrees the more scholar- 
 like section, all who read, meditated, or began to kindle 
 into the love of literature — were boarders in Mr. Law- 
 son's house. The students, therefore, of the house car- 
 ried an overwhelming influence into the school. They 
 were bound together by links of brotherhood ; whereas 
 the day-scholars were disconnected. Over and above 
 this it happened luckily that there was no playground, 
 not the smallest, attached to the school ; that is, none 
 was attached to the upper or grammar school. But 
 there was also, and resting on the same liberal endow- 
 ment, a lower school, where the whole machinery of 
 teaching was applied to the lowest mechanical accom- 
 plishments of reading and writing. The hall in which 
 this servile business was conducted ran under the upper 
 school ; it was, therefore, I presume, a subterraneous 
 duplicate of the upper hall. And, since the upper rose 
 only by two or three feet above the level of the neigh- 
 21 
 
322 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 boring streets, the lower school should naturally have 
 been at a great depth helow these streets. In that case 
 it would be a dark crypt, such as we see under some 
 cathedrals ; aud it would have argued a singular want 
 of thoughtfulness in the founder to have laid one part 
 of his establishment under an original curse of darkness. 
 As the access to this plebeian school lay downwards 
 through long flights of steps, I never found surplus en- 
 ergy enough for investigating the problem. But, as the 
 ground broke away precipitously at that point into 
 lower levels, I presume, upon consideration, that the 
 subterranean crypt will be found open on one side to 
 visitations from sun and moon. So that, for this base 
 mechanic school there may, after all, have been a play- 
 ground. But for ours in the upper air, I repeat, there 
 was none ; not so much as would have bleached a lady's 
 pocket-handkerchief; and this one defect carried along 
 with it unforeseen advantages. 
 
 Lord Bacon it is who notices the subtle policy which 
 may lurk in the mere external figure of a table. A 
 square table, having an undeniable head and foot, two 
 polar extremities of what is highest and lowest, a peri- 
 helion and an aphelion, together with equatorial sides, 
 opens at a glance a large career to ambition ; whilst a 
 circular table sternly represses all such aspiring dreams, 
 and so does a triangular table. Yet if the triangle 
 should be right-angled, then the Lucifer seated at the 
 right angle might argue that he subtended all the tenants 
 of the hypothenuse ; being, therefore, as much nobler 
 than they, as Atlas was nobler than the globe which he 
 carried. It was by the way, some arrangement of this 
 nature which constituted the original feature of distinc- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 323 
 
 tion in Jolin o' Groat's house, and not at all (as most 
 people suppose) the high northern latitude of this house. 
 John, it seems, finished the feuds for precedency — not 
 by legislating this way or that — but by cutting away 
 the possibility of such feuds through the assistance of a 
 round table. The same principle must have guided 
 King Arthur amongst his knights ; Charlemagne 
 amongst his paladins ; and sailors in their efiectual dis- 
 tribution of the peril attached to a mutinous remon- 
 strance by the admirable device of a " round-robin." 
 Even two little girls, as Harrington remarks in his 
 " 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, but then that the 
 other shall have the right of choice. " You divide, and I 
 choose." Such is the formula ; and an angel could not 
 devise a more absolute guarantee for the equity of the 
 division, than by thus forcing the divider to become the 
 inheritor of any possible disadvantages that he may have 
 succeeded in creating by his own act of division. In all 
 these cases one seemingly trivial precaution opens, in 
 the next stage, into a world of irresistible consequences. 
 And in our case, an effect not less disproportionate fol- 
 lowed 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 boy- 
 ish sports, found, through the defect of a playground, 
 that our choice and our pride were also our necessity. 
 Even the proudest of us benefited by that coercion ; for 
 
324 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 many would else have sold their privilege of pride for 
 an hour's amusement, and have become, at least, occa- 
 sional 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. Indis- 
 criminate familiarity would have followed as an uncon- 
 trollable result ; since to mingle with others in common 
 acts of business may leave the sense of reserve undis- 
 turbed : but all reserve gives way before a common inter- 
 course in pleasure. As it was, what with our confedera- 
 tion through house-membership, with what our reciprocal 
 sympathies in the problems suggested by books, we bad 
 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-re- 
 specting as can often exist even amongst adults. Even 
 the subterraneous school contributed something to our 
 self-esteem. It formed a subordinate section of our own 
 establishment, 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 eiForts : everything 
 mechanic is limited; whereas we felt that our object, 
 even if our name of grammar school presented that ob- 
 ject in what seemed too limited a shape, was substantially 
 noble, and tended towards the infinite. But in no long 
 time I came too see that, as to the name, we were all of 
 us under a mistake. Being asked what a grammar 
 school indicates, what it professes to teach, there is 
 scarcely any man who would not reply, " Teach ? why, 
 it teaches grammar : what else ? " But this is a mis- 
 
CONPESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 325 
 
 take : as I have elsewhere explained, grammatica in tliis 
 combination does not mean grammar (though grammar 
 also obeys the movements of a most subtle philosophy), 
 but literature. Look into Suetonius. Those " gram- 
 matici" whom he memorializes 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 litterateurs — that is they 
 were men who (1.) studied literature ; (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 uppur 
 school), I return to my own inaugural examination. On 
 this day, memorable to myself, as furnishing the starting- 
 point for so long a series of days, saddened by haughty 
 obstinacy on one side, made effective by folly on the 
 other, no sooner had my guardian retired, than Mr. Law- 
 son produced from his desk a volume of the " Specta- 
 tor," and instructed me to throw into as good Latin as I 
 could some paper of Steele's — not the whole, but per- 
 haps a third part. No better exercise could have been 
 devised for testing the extent of my skill as a Latinist. 
 And here I ought to make an explanation. In the 
 previous edition of these " Confessions," writing some- 
 times too rapidly, and with little precision in cases of 
 jittle importance, I conveyed an impression which I had 
 not designed, with regard to the true nature of my pre- 
 tensions as a Grecian ; and something of the same 
 correction will apply to that narrower accomplish- 
 
326 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ment which was the subject of my present examination. 
 Neither in Greek nor in Latin was my knowledge very 
 extensive ; my age made that impossible ; and especially 
 because in those days there were no decent guides through 
 the thorny jungles of the Latin language, far less of the 
 Greek. When I mention that the Port Eoyal Greek 
 Grammar translated by Dr. Nugent was about the best 
 key extant in English to the innumerable perplexities of 
 Greek diction ; and that, for the res meirica, Morell's 
 valuable " Thesaurus," having then never been reprinted, 
 was rarely to be seen, the reader will conclude that a 
 schoolboy's knowledge of Greek could not be other than 
 slender. Slender indeed was mine. Yet stop ! what 
 was slender? Simply my knowledge of Greek ; for that 
 knowledge stretches by tendency to the infinite ; but not 
 therefore my command of Greek. The knowledge of 
 Greek must always hold some gross proportion to the 
 time spent upon it, probably, therefore, to the age of the 
 student ; but the command over a language, the power 
 of adapting it plastically to the expression of your own 
 thoughts, is almost exclusively a gift of nature, and has 
 very little connection with time. Take the supreme 
 trinity of Greek scholars that flourished between the 
 English Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century — which trinity I suppose to be con- 
 fessedly, 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 
 elassic languages. Sixty years ago, we had, from four 
 
CONFESSIONS' OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 327 
 
 separate doctors, four separate Greek versions of " Gray's 
 El^gji" all unworthy of the national scholarship. Yet 
 one of these doctors was actually Porson's predecessor 
 in the Greek chair at 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 Rich- 
 ard 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 conception or more childish in expression 
 than these attempts. Now, against them I will stake in 
 competition a copy of iambic verses by a boy, who died, 
 I believe, at sixteen — viz., a son of Mr. Pitt's tutor, 
 Tomline, Bishop of Winchester.* Universally I contend 
 that the faculty of clothing the thoughts in a Greek 
 dress is a function of natural sensibility, in a great de- 
 gree disconnected from the extent or the accuracy of the 
 writer's grammatical skill in Greek. 
 
 * " 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 
 freeh' in Greek. If such verses are examined, it will be found that 
 the orchestral magnificence of the metre, and the sonorous cadence 
 of each separate line, absolutely forces upon- the thoughts a mere ne- 
 cessity 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 Miltonioally written. 
 
328 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 These explanations are too long. The reader will 
 understand, as their sum, that what I needed in such a 
 case was, not so much a critical familiarity with the 
 syntax of the language, or a ropia verborum, or great 
 agility in reviewing the relations of one idea to another 
 — so as to present modern and unclassical objects under 
 such aspects as might suggest periphrases in substitution 
 for direct names, where names could not be had, and 
 everywhere to color my translation with as rich a display 
 of idiomatic forms as the circumstances of the case would 
 allow. I succeeded, and beyond my expection. For 
 once — being the first time that he had been known to 
 do such a thing, but also the very last — Mr. Lawson 
 did absolutely pay me a compliment. And with another 
 compliment more than verbal he crowned his gracious 
 condescensions — viz., with my provisional instalment 
 in his highest class ; not the highest at that moment, 
 since there was one other class above us ; but this other 
 was on the wing for Oxford within some few weeks ; 
 which change being accomplished, we (viz., I and two 
 otbei's) immediately moved up into the supreme place. 
 
 Two or three days after this examination — viz., on the 
 Sunday following — I transferred myself to head-quar- 
 ters at Mr. Lawson's house. About nine o'clock in the 
 evening, I was conducted by a servant up a short flight 
 of stairs, through a series of gloomy and unfurnished 
 little rooms, having small windows but no doors, to the 
 common room (as in Oxford it would technically be 
 called) of the senior boys. Everything had combined 
 to depress me. To leave the society of accomplished 
 women — that was already a signal privation. The 
 season besides was rainy, which in itself is a sure source 
 
CONFESSIONS Olj' AN OPITTM-EATKIl. 329 
 
 of depression ; and tlie forlorn aspect of the rooms com- 
 pleted 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 six- 
 teen or eighteen, scattered about the room, two or three, 
 whose age entitled them to the rank of leaders, came 
 forward to receive me with a courtesy which I had not 
 looked for. The grave kindness and the absolute sin- 
 cerity of their manner impressed me most favorably. I 
 had lived familiarly with boys gathered from all quar- 
 ters of the island at the Bath Grammar School ; and for 
 some time (when visiting Lord Altamont at Eton) with 
 boys of the highest aristocratic pretensions. At Bath 
 and at Eton, though not equally, there prevailed a tone 
 of higher polish ; and in the air, speech, deportment of 
 the majority could be traced at once a premature knowl- 
 edge of the world.* They had indeed the advantage 
 over my new friends in graceful self-possession ; 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 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 
 
330 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 preeminence, as re- 
 gards energy, power to face suffering, and other high 
 qualities, to the natives of Lancashire. Even a century 
 back, they were distinguished for the culture of refined 
 tastes. In musical skill and sensibility, no part of 
 Europe, with the exception of a few places in G-ermany, 
 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 previ- 
 ously taken only wine, and never once in quantities to 
 affect my spirits. So much the greater was my astonish- 
 ment 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 Sun- 
 day evening exercise ? No, I replied ; not at all ; what 
 was that exercise ? Simply an off-hand translation 
 from the little work of Grotius * on the Evidences of 
 Christianity. Did I know the book? No, I did not; 
 all the direct knowledge which I had of Grotius was 
 built upon his metrical translations into Latin of various 
 fragments surviving from the Greek scenical poets, and 
 these translations had struck me as exceedingly beauti- 
 * Entitled Be Veritate Chrisliance Religionis. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 331 
 
 ful. On the other hand, his work of highest pretension, 
 " De Jure Belli et Pads," so signally praised by Lord 
 Bacon, I had not read at all ; but I had heard such an 
 account of it from a very thoughtful person, as made it 
 probable that Grotius was stronger, and felt himself 
 stronger, on literary than on philosophic ground. Then, 
 with regard to his little work on the Mosaic and Chris- 
 tian revelations, I had heard very disparaging opinions 
 about it ; two especially. One amounted to no more 
 than this — that the question was argued with a logic 
 far inferior, in point of cogency, to that of Lardner and 
 Paley. Here several boys interposed their loud assent, 
 as regarded Paley in particular. Paley's " Evidences," 
 at that time just seven years old, had already become a 
 subject of study amongst them. But the other objection 
 impeached not so much the dialectic acuteness as the 
 learning of Grotius — at least, the appropriate learning. 
 According to the anecdote current upon this subject. 
 Dr. Edward PocOcke, the great oriental scholar of Eng- 
 land in the seventeenth century, when called upon to 
 translate the little work of Grotius into Arabic or 
 Turkish, had replied by pointing to the idle legend of 
 Mahomet's pigeon or dove, as a reciprocal messenger 
 between the prophet and heaven — which legend had 
 been accredited and adopted by Grotius in the blindest 
 spirit of credulity. Such a baseless fable, Pococke 
 alleged, would work a double mischief: not only it 
 would ruin the authority of that particular book in the 
 East, but would damage Christianity for generations, by 
 making known to the followers of the Prophet that their 
 master was undervalued amongst the Franks on the 
 authority of nursery tales, and that these tales were ac- 
 credited by the leading Prankish scholars. 
 
332 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 A twofold result of evil would follow : not only would 
 our Christian erudition and our Christian scholars be 
 scandalously disparaged; a consequence that in some 
 cases might not be incompatible with a sense amongst 
 Mahometans that the strength of Christianity itself was 
 unaffected by the errors and blunders of its champions ; 
 but, secondly, there would be in this case a strong reac- 
 tion against Christianity itself. Plausibly enough it 
 would be inferred that a vast religious philosophy could 
 have no powerful battery of arguments in reserve, when 
 it placed its main anti-Mahometan reliance upon so 
 childish a fable : since, allowing even for a blameless 
 assent to this fable amongst nations having no direct in- 
 tercourse with Mussulmans, still it would argue a shock- 
 ing 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 ut- 
 terly desperate, G (a boy whom subsequently I had 
 
 reason to admire as equally courageous, truthful, and 
 far-seeing) suddenly changed the whole field of view. 
 He offered no defence for the ridiculous fable of the 
 pigeon ; which pigeon, on the contrary, he represented 
 as drawing in harness with that Christian goose which 
 at one time was universally believed by Mahometans to 
 lead the vanguard of the earliest Crusaders, and which, 
 in a limited extent, really had been a true historical per- 
 sonage. So far he gave up Grotius as indefensible.. 
 But on the main question, and the very extensive ques- 
 tion of his apparent imbecility when collated with Paley, 
 etc., suddenly and in one sentence he revolutionized the 
 whole logic of that comparison. Paley and Lardner, he 
 
OONFEeSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 333 
 
 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 ? 
 Not at all. Too often had he (the boy G — — ) secretly 
 noticed the abstinence of Grotius (apparently unaccount- 
 able) from certain obvious advantages of argument, not 
 .to suspect that, in narrowing his own field of disputation, 
 he had a deliberate purpose, and was moving upon the 
 line of some very different policy. Clear it was to him, 
 that Grotius, for some reason, declined to receive evi- 
 dence except from one special and limited class of wit- 
 nesses. Upon this, some of us laughed at such a self- 
 limitation as a wild bravado, recalling that rope-dancing 
 feat of some verse-writers who, through each several 
 stanza in its turn, had gloried in dispensing with some 
 one separate consonant, some vowel, or some diphthong, 
 and thus achieving a triumph such as crowns with laurel 
 that pedestrian athlete who wins a race by hopping on 
 one leg, or wins it under the inhuman condition of con- 
 fining both legs within a sack. " No, no," impatiently 
 
 interrupted G . " All such fantastic conflicts with 
 
 self-created difficulties terminate in pure ostentation, 
 and profit nobody. But the self-imposed limitations of 
 Grotius had a special purpose, and realized a value not 
 otherwise attainable.'' If Grotius accepts no arguments 
 or presumptions except from Mussulmans, from Infidels, 
 or from those who rank as Neutrals, then has he adapted 
 his book to a separate and peculiar audience. The 
 Neutral man will hearken to authorities notoriously 
 
334 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 Neutral ; Mussulmans will show deference to the state- 
 ments of Mussulmans ; the Skeptic will bow to the rea- 
 sonings of Skepticism. All these persons, that would 
 have been repelled on the very threshold from such tes- 
 timonies as begin in a spirit of hostility to themselves, 
 will listen thoughtfully to suggestions offered in a spirit 
 of conciliation ; much more so if offered by people occu- 
 pying the same ground at starting as themselves. 
 
 At the cost of some disproportion, I have ventured to 
 rehearse this inaugural conversation amongst the leaders , 
 
 of the school. Whether G were entirely correct 
 
 in this application of a secret key to the little work of 
 Grotius, I do not know. I take blame to myself that 
 I do not ; for I also must have been called upon for my 
 quota to the Sunday evening studies on the " De Veri- 
 tate ; " and must therefore have held in my hands the 
 ready means for solving the question.* 
 
 Meantime, as a solitary act of silent observation in a 
 
 boy not fifteen, this deciphering idea of G 's, in 
 
 direct resistance to the received idea, estorted my ad- 
 miration ; and equally, whether true or false as regarded 
 the immediate fact. That any person, in the very middle 
 storm of chase, when a headlong movement carries all 
 impulses into one current, should in the twinkling of 
 an eye recall himself to the unexpected " doubles " of 
 the game, wheel as that wheels, and sternly resist the in- 
 
 * Some excuse, however, for my own want of energy is suggested 
 by the fact, that very soon after my matriculation Mr. Lawson sub- 
 stituted for Grotius, as the Sunday evening lecture-book, Dr. Clark's 
 Commentary ou 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 \?ayside. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 335 
 
 stincts of the one preoccupying assumption, argues a 
 
 sagacity not often heard of in boyhood. Was G 
 
 right ? In that case he picked a lock which others had 
 failed to pick. Was he wrong ? In that case he sketched 
 the idea and outline of a better work (better, as more 
 original and more special in its service) than any which 
 Grotius has himself accomplished. 
 
 Not, however, the particular boy, but the particular 
 school, it was my purpose, in this place, to signalize 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 in the ordinary conversation 
 and in the favorite reading of young gownsmen be- 
 longing to the many different colleges of Oxford. Gene- 
 rally speaking, each college had a filial connection 
 (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 Cam- 
 bridge, this arrangement guarantees a sound system 
 of teaching ; so that any failures in the result must 
 presumably be due to the individual student. Failures, 
 on the whole, I do not suppose that there were. Classical 
 attainments, that might be styled even splendid, were 
 not then, nor are now, uncommon. And yet in one 
 great feature many of those schools, even the very best, 
 
 * "Strict ornot strict:" — In some colleges the claims of alumni 
 from certain schools were absolute ; in some, I believe, conditional ; 
 In others, again, concurrent with rival claims from favored schools or 
 favored counties. 
 
336 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 when thus tried by their fruits, left a painful memento 
 of failure ; or rather not of failure as in relation to any 
 purpose that they steadily recognized, but of wilful and 
 intentional disregard as towards a purpose alien from 
 any duty of theirs, or any task which they had ever 
 undertaken — a failure, namely, in relation to modern 
 literature — a neglect to unroll its mighty charts : and 
 amongst this modern literature a special neglect (such 
 as seems almost brutal) of our own English literature, 
 though pleading its patent of precedency in a voice so 
 trumpet-tongued. To myself, whose homage ascended 
 night and day towards the great altars of English Poetry 
 or Eloquence, it was shocking and revolting to find in 
 high-minded young countrymen, burning with sensibility 
 that sought vainly for a corresponding object, deep un- 
 consciousness of an all sufBcient 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 forever — forests teem- 
 ing with gorgeous life, floral wildernesses hidden inac- 
 cessibly ; whilst, at the same time, in contraposition to 
 that evil, behold 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, in the world of things 
 enjoyable, balanced by an equal waste in the organs and 
 the machineries of enjoyment ! This picture — would 
 it not fret the heart of an Englishman ? Some years 
 (say twenty) after the era of my own entrance at that 
 Oxford which then furnished me with records so painful 
 of slight regard to our national literature, behold at the 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 337 
 
 court of London a French ambassador, a man of genius 
 blazing (as some people thought) with nationality, Tbut, 
 in fact, with something inexpressibly nobler and deeper 
 — viz., patriotism. For true and unaffected patriotism 
 will show its love in a noble form by sincerity and truth. 
 But nationality, as I have always found, is mean ; is 
 dishonest ; is ungenerous ; is incapable of candor ; and 
 being continually besieged with temptations to false- 
 hood, too often ends by becoming habitually menda- 
 cious. This Frenchman above all things valued litera- 
 ture : his own trophies of distinction were all won upon 
 that field : and yet, when called upon to review the lit- 
 erature of Europe, he found himself conscientiously 
 coerced into making his work a mere monument to the 
 glory of one man, and that man the son of a hostile 
 land. The name of Milton, in Ms estimate, swallowed 
 up all others. This Frenchman was Chateaubriand. 
 The personal splendor which surrounded him gave a 
 corresponding splendor to his act. And because he, as 
 an ambassador, was a representative man, this act might 
 be interpreted as a representative act. The tutelary 
 genius of France in this instance might be regarded as 
 bending before that of England. But homage so free, 
 homage so noble, must be interpreted and received in a 
 corresponding spirit of generosity. It was not, like the 
 testimony of Balaam on behalf of Israel, an unwilling 
 submission to a hateful truth : it was a concession, in 
 the spirit of saintly magnanimity, to an interest of 
 human nature that, as such, transcended by many de- 
 grees all considerations merely national. 
 
 Now, then, with this unlimited devotion to one great 
 luminary of our literary system emblazoned so conspic- 
 
 22 
 
338 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 uously in the testimony of a Frenchman — that is, of 
 one trained and privileged to be a public enemy — con- 
 trast the humiliating spectacle of young Englishmen suf- 
 fered (so far as their training is concerned) to ignore the 
 very existence of this mighty poet. Do I mean, then, 
 that it would have been advisable to place the '' Para- 
 dise Lost," and the " Paradise Eegained," and the " Sam- 
 son," in the library of schoolboys ? By no means. That 
 mode of sensibility which deals with the Miltonic sub- 
 limity, is rarely developed in boyhood. And these di- 
 vine 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 mean- 
 time, selections from, Milton, from Dryden, from Pope, 
 and many other writers, though not everywhere appre- 
 ciable by those who have but small experience oi 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 man- 
 agement) to engage the interest of those who are no 
 longer boys, but have reached the age which is presum- 
 able in English university matriculation — viz., the close 
 of the eighteenth year. Search through all languages, 
 from Benares the mystica;!, and the banks of the Ganges, 
 travelling westwards to the fountains of the Hudson, I 
 deny that any two such bibliotheca for engaging youth- 
 ful 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 
 
C0NFE8SI0KS OF AN OPI.0M-EATEK. 339 
 
 Bimply by the extremity of ignorance on which it re- 
 poses) that we English have no tolerable writer of prose 
 subsequent to Lord Bacon, it so happens that the seven- 
 teenth century, and specially that part of it concerned in 
 this case — viz., the latter seventy years (a. d. 1628- 
 1700) — produced the highest efforts of eloquence (phil- 
 osophic, 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, Chilling- 
 worth, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, 
 South, Barrow, form a pleiad, a constellation of seven 
 golden stars, such as no literature can match in their 
 own class. From these seven writers, taken apart from 
 all their contemporaries, I would undertake to build up 
 an entire body of philosophy* upon the supreme inter- 
 ests of humanity. One error of M. Cousin's doubtless 
 lay in overlooking the fact — that all conceivable prob- 
 lems of philosophy can reproduce themselves under a 
 theological mask : and thus he had absolved himself from 
 reading many English books, as presumably mere pro- 
 fessional pleadings of Protestant polemicsj 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 
 
 * "Philosophy:" — At this point it is that the main misconception 
 would arise. Theology, and not philosoph}', most people will fancy, 
 is likely to form the staple of these writers. But I have elsewhere 
 maintained, that the main hulk of English philosophy has always hid- 
 den itself in the English divinity. In Jeremy Taylor, for instance, 
 ire exhibited all the practical aspects of philosophy ; of philosophy 
 as it bears upon Life, upon Ethics, and upon Transcendent Prudence 
 — i, e.f briefly upon the Greek summum honwn. 
 
340 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 it was killed by the frost of the Puritauical spirit sea- 
 soning all flesh for the Parliamentary War. No litera- 
 ture, not excepting even that of Athens, has ever pre- 
 sented such a multiform theatre, such a carnival display, 
 mask and antimask, 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 vv^as 
 or could be effected in that field of composition which 
 the gloomy satirist contemplated, whatsoever in fact 
 our mediasval ancestors exhibited in their " Dance of 
 Death,'' drunk with tears and laughter, may here be re- 
 viewed, scenically grouped, draped, and gorgeously col- 
 ored. What other national drama can pretend to any 
 competition with this? The Athenian has in a great 
 proportion perished ; the Eoman was killed prematurely 
 by the bloody realities of the amphitheatre, as candle- 
 light by day-light ; the Spanish, even in the hands of 
 Calderon, offers only undeveloped sketchings ; and the 
 French, besides other and profounder objections, to 
 which no justice has yet been done, lies under the signal 
 disadvantage of not having reached its meridian until 
 sixty years (or two generations) after the English. In 
 reality, the great period of the English drama was ex- 
 actly closing as the French opened : f consequently the 
 
 * " 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 which rehearse the prevail- 
 ing themes of his own Satires gatiiered in the great harvests of Rome. 
 
 t It is remarkable that in the period immediately anterior to that of 
 Corneille, a stronger and more living nature was struggling for utter- 
 ance in French tragedy. Guizot has cited from an early drama (I 
 forget whether of Eotrou or of Hardy) one scene most thoroughly im- 
 
CONFKSSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATBK. 
 
 3il 
 
 French lost the prodigious advantage for scenical eifects 
 of a romantic and picturesque age. This had vanished 
 when the French theatre culminated ; and the natural 
 result was, that the fastidiousness of French taste, by 
 this time too powerfully developed, stifled or distorted 
 the free movements of French genius. 
 
 I beg the reader's pardon for this dis proportioned di- 
 gression, into which I was hurried by my love for our 
 great national literature, my anxiety to see it amongst 
 educational resources invested with a ministerial agency 
 of far ampler character, but at all events to lodge a pro- 
 test against that wholesale neglect of our supreme authors 
 which leaves us open to the stinging reproach of " tread- 
 ing daily with our clouted shoon " (to borrow the words 
 of Comus) upon that which high-minded foreigners re- 
 gard as the one paramount jewel in our national dia- 
 dem. 
 
 That reproach fell heavily, as my own limited experi- 
 ence inclined me to fear, upon most of our great public 
 
 passioned. The situation is that of a prince, wlio 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 con- 
 trary, 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 ex- 
 erting 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, still he is overruled by the tendei-ness of his 
 sorrowing love into finding new occasions for awakening thoughts of 
 the lost girl in the very words chiefly relied on for calling off his feel- 
 .ngs from her image. The scene (as Guizot himself remarks) is thor- 
 oughly Shaksperian ; and I venture to think that this judgment would 
 have been countersigned by Charles Lamb. 
 
342 ^.DDITIONB ro THE 
 
 schools, otherwise so admirably conducted.* But from 
 the Manchester Grammar School any such reproach 
 altogether rebounded. My very first conversation with 
 the boys had arisen naturally upon a casual topic, and 
 had shown them to be tolerably familiar with the outline 
 of the Christian polemics in the warfare with Jew, Ma- 
 hometan, Infidel, and Skeptic. But this was an excep- 
 tional case ; and naturally it happened that most of us 
 sought for the ordinary subjects of our conversational 
 discussions in Hterature — viz., in our own native litera- 
 ture. Here it was that I learned to feel a deep respect 
 for my new school-fellows : deep it was, then ; and a 
 larger experience has made it deeper. I have since 
 known many literary men, men whose profession was 
 literature ; who were understood to have dedicated them- 
 selves to literature ; and who sometimes had with some 
 one special section or little nook of literature an ac- 
 quaintance critically minute. But amongst such men I 
 have found but three or four who had a knowledge which 
 came as near to what I should consider a comprehensive 
 knowledge, as really existed amongst these boys collec- 
 tively. What one boy had not, another had ; and thus, 
 by continual intercourse, the fragmentary contribution of 
 one being integrated by the fragmentary contributions of 
 others, gradually the attainments of each separate in- 
 dividual became, in some degree, the collective attain- 
 ments of the whole senior common room. It is true, 
 undoubtedly, that some parts of literature were inacces- 
 
 * It will strike everybody that such works as the " Microcosm ," 
 conducted notoriously by Eton boys, and therefore, in part, by Can- 
 ning, 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 contrib- 
 ntor, but must even have made it his necessity, to cultivate some ac- 
 quaintance with his native literature. 
 
C0NFE8SI0KS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 343 
 
 sible, simply because the books were inaccessible to boys 
 at school ; for instance, Froissart in the old translation 
 by Lord Berners, now more than three centuries old ; 
 and some parts were, to the young, essentially repulsive. 
 But, measuring the general qualifications by that standard 
 which I have since found to prevail amongst professional 
 Utierateurs, 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 intercouse with those amongst them 
 who had any conversational talents, greatly stimulated 
 my intellect. 
 
 This intercourse, however, fell within narrower limits 
 soon after the time of my entrance. I acknowledge, with 
 deep self-reproach, that every possible indulgence was 
 allowed to me which the circumstances of the establish- 
 ment 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 noth- 
 ing disagreeable in this double use of it. Naturally, 
 however, this means of retirement tended to sequester me 
 from my companions ; for, whilst liking the society of 
 some amongst them, I also had a deadly liking (perhaps 
 a morbid liking) for solitude. To make my present 
 solitude the more fascinating, my mother sent me five 
 guineas extra, for the purchase of an admission to the 
 Manchester Library ; a library which I should not at 
 present think very extensive, but which, however, bene- 
 fited in its composition, as also in its administration, by 
 she good sense and intelligence of some amongst its 
 original committees. These two luxuries were truly 
 and indeed such ; but a third, from which I had antici- 
 
344 ' ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 pated even greater pleasure, turned out a total failure ; 
 and for a reason which it may be useful to mention, by 
 way of caution to others. This was a pianoforte, to- 
 gether 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 in- 
 dispensable towards any great proficiency on this instru- 
 ment. Another discovery finished my disenchantment ; 
 it was this. For the particular purpose which I had in 
 view, it became clear that no mastery of the instrument, 
 not even that of Thalberg, would be available. Too 
 soon I became aware that to the deep voluptuous enjoy- 
 ment 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 
 cooperating impulse from the foot of the auditor, even 
 that, even so much as an occasional touch of the foot, 
 would utterly undermine all your pleasure. A single 
 psychological discovery, therefore, caused my musical 
 anticipations to evanesce. Consequently, one of my 
 luxuries burst like a bubble at an early stage. In this 
 state of things, when the instrument had turned out a 
 bubble, it followed naturally that the music-master 
 should find himself to be a bubble. But he was so 
 thoroughly good-natured and agreeable, that I could not 
 reconcile myself to such a catastrophe. Meantime, 
 though accommodating within certain limits, this music- 
 
CONFESSION'S OF AN OHUM-EATER. 345 
 
 master was yet a conscientious man, and a man of hon- 
 orable 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 forever. Un- 
 less 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 neighbor- 
 hood. But it remained for months as a lumbering mon- 
 ument of labor misapplied, of bubbles that had burst, 
 and of musical visions that, under psychological tests, had 
 foundered forever. 
 
 Yes, certainly, this particular luxury — one out of 
 three — had proved a bubble ; too surely this had foun- 
 dered ; but not, therefore, the other two. The quiet 
 study, lifted by two stories above the vapors of earth, 
 and liable to no unseasonable intrusion ; the Manchester 
 Library, so judiciously and symmetrically mounted in all 
 its most attractive departments — no class dispropor- 
 tioned to the rest — these were no bubbles, these had not 
 foundered. Oh, wherefore, then was it — through what 
 inexplicable growth of evil in myself or in others — 
 that now in the summer of 1802, when peace was brood- 
 ing over all the land, peace succeeding to a bloody seven 
 years' war, but peace which already gave signs of break- 
 ing into a far bloodier war, some dark sympathizing 
 movement within my own heart, as if echoing and re- 
 peating in mimicry the political menaces of the earth, 
 swept with storm-clouds across that otherwise serene and 
 radiant dawn which should have heralded my approach- 
 'ng entrance into life. Inexplicable I have allowed my- 
 self to call this fatal error in my life, because such it 
 must appear to others ; since, even to myself, so often as 
 
346 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 I fail to realize the case by reproducing a reflex impres- 
 Bion in kind, and in degree, of the suffering before which 
 my better angel gave way -r- yes, even to myself this 
 collapse of my resisting energies seems inexplicable. 
 Yet again, in simple truth, now that it becomes possible, 
 through changes worked by time, to tell the whole truth 
 (and not, as in former editions, only a part of it), there 
 really was no absolute mystery at all. But this case, in 
 common with many others, exemplifies to my mind the 
 mere impossibility of making full and frank " Confes- 
 sions," whilst many of the persons concerned in the in- 
 cidents 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 circum- 
 stanced, any kindhearted man wiU choose to mutilate his 
 narrative ; will suppress facts, and will mystify explana- 
 tions. For instance, at this point in my record, it has 
 become my right, perhaps I might say my duty, to call 
 a particular medical man of the penultimate generation a 
 blockhead ; nay, doubtfully, to call him a criminal 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 daugh- 
 ters, and by the scientific accomplishments of the son. 
 Not the less this man, at that particular moment when a 
 crisis of gloom was gathering over my path, became ef- 
 fectually my evil genius. Not that singly perhaps he 
 could have worked any durable amount of mischief ; but 
 
CONPES8ION8 OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 347 
 
 he, as a cooperator unconsciously with others, sealed and 
 ratified that sentence of stormy sorrow then hanging 
 over my head. Three separate persons, in fact, made 
 themselves unintentional accomplices in that ruin (a ruin 
 reaching me even at this day by its shadows), which 
 threw me out a homeless vagrant upon the earth before 
 I had accomplished my seventeenth year. Of these 
 three persons, foremost came myself, through my wilful 
 despair and resolute abjuration of all secondary hope ; 
 since, after all, some mitigation was possible, supposing 
 that perfect relief might not be possible. Secondly, 
 came that medical rufHan, through whose brutal igno- 
 rance it happened that my malady had not been arrested 
 before reaching an advanced stage. Thirdly, came Mr 
 Lawson, through whose growing infirmities it had arisen 
 that this malady ever reached its very earliest stage. 
 Strange it was, but not the less a fact,- that Mr. Lawson 
 was gradually becoming a curse to all who fell under his 
 influence, through pure zealotry of conscientiousness. 
 Being a worse man, he would have carried far deeper 
 blessings into - his circle. K he could have reconciled 
 himself to an imperfect discharge of his duties, he would 
 not have betrayed his insuiBciencyfor those duties. But 
 this he would not hear of. He persisted in travelling 
 over the appointed course to the last inch ; and the con- 
 sequences told most painfully upon the comfort of all 
 around him. By the old traditionary usages of the 
 school, going in at 7 A. m., we ought to have been dis- 
 missed for breakfast and a full hour's repose at nine. 
 This hour of rest was in strict justice a debt to the stu- 
 dents — liable to no discount either through the caprice 
 or the tardiness of the supreme master. Yet such were 
 
348 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 
 rhythmun that marked the advancing stages of the half- 
 hour, regularly announced to us, on issuing from the 
 school-room, that the bread and milk which composed 
 our simple breakfast must be dispatched at a pace fitter 
 for the fowls of the air than students of Grecian philos- 
 ophy. 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 ex- 
 action of duties, could not allege that Mr. Lawson suf- 
 fered less. If he required others to pay, he also paid up 
 to the last farthing. The same derangement took place, 
 with the same refusal to benefit by any indemnification, 
 at what should have been the two-hours' pause for dinner. 
 Only for some mysterious reason, resting possibly upon 
 the family arrangements of the day-scholars, which, if 
 once violated, might have provoked a rebellion of fathers 
 and mothers, he still adhered faithfully to five o'clock 
 p. M. as the closing hour of the day's labors. 
 
 Here then stood arrayed the whole machinery of mis- 
 chief 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 perceiv- 
 ing it) barred up all avenues from morning to night 
 through which any bodily exercise could be obtained. 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 349 
 
 Two or three chance intervals of five minutes each, and 
 even these not consecutively arranged, composed the 
 whole available fund of leisure out of which any stroll 
 into the country could have been attempted. But in a 
 great city like Manchester the very suburbs had hardly 
 been reached before that little fraction of time was ex- 
 hausted. Very soon after Mr. Lawson's increasing in- 
 firmities had begun to tell severely in the contraction of 
 our spare time, the change showed itself powerfully in mj 
 drooping health. Gradually the liver became affected ; 
 and connected with that affection arose, what often ac- 
 companies such ailments, profound melancholy. In such 
 circumstances, indeed under any the slightest disturbance 
 of my health, I had authority from my guardians to call 
 for medical advice : but I was not left to my own discre- 
 tion in selecting the adviser. This person was not a 
 physician, who would of course have expected the ordi- 
 nary fee of a guinea for every visit ; nor a surgeon ; but 
 simply an apothecary. In any case of serious illness, a 
 physican would have been called in. But a less costly 
 style of advice was reasonably held to be sufficient in 
 any illness which left the patient strength sufficient to 
 walk about. Certainly it ought to have been sufficient 
 here : for no case could possibly be simpler. Three doses 
 of calomel or blue pill, which unhappily I did not then 
 know, would no doubt have reestablished 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. Law- 
 son) of seventy miles' walking in each week. Unhap- 
 pily my professional adviser was a comatose old gentle- 
 man, rich beyond all his needs, careless of his own prac- 
 
350 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 tice, and standing under that painful necessity (according 
 to the custom then regulating medical practice, which pro- 
 hibited fees to apothecaries) of seeking his remuneration 
 in excessive deluges of medecine. 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 circum- 
 stances, and with plenty of exercise, no creature could 
 be healthier than myself. But my organization 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 " Sittings " 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., Repetatur haustus ; * and instead of doing 
 
 any such dangerous thing, called upon Mr. (the 
 
 apothecary), begging to know if his art had not amongst 
 its reputed infinity of resources any less abominable, 
 and less shattering to a delicate system than this. " None 
 whatever," he replied. Exceedingly kind he was : in- 
 sisted on my drinking tea with his really aimiable daugh- 
 ters ; but continued at intervals to repeat " None what- 
 ever — none whatever ; " then as if rousing himself to an 
 eifort, he sang out loudly, " None whatever," which in 
 this final utterance he toned down syUabically into, 
 
 * " Let the draught be repeated." 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 361 
 
 " whsitever — ever — ver — er." The whole wit of man, it 
 seems, had exhausted itself upon the preparation of that 
 one infernal mixture. 
 
 Now then we three — Mr. Lawson, the somnolent 
 apothecary, and myself — had amongst us accomplished 
 a climax of perplexity. Mr. Lawson, by mere dint of 
 conscientiousness, had made health for me impossible. 
 The apothecary had subscribed his little contribution, 
 by ratifying and trebling the ruinous effect of his seden- 
 tariness. And for myself, as last in the series, it now 
 remained to clench the operation by my own little con- 
 tribution, 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 igno- 
 rance, so equally deep being that of my official counsellor. 
 I could not expect that Mr. Lawson would modify his 
 system — his instincts of duty being so strong, his inca- 
 pacity to face that duty so steadily increasing. " It comes 
 then to this,'' thought I, " that in myself only there lurks 
 an arrear of help : " as always for every man the ultimate 
 reliance should be on himself. But this self of mine 
 seemed absolutely bankrupt ; bankrupt of counsel or de- 
 vice — of effort in the way of action, or of suggestion in 
 the way of plan. I had for two months been pursuing 
 with one of my guardians, what I meant for a negotiation 
 upon this subject ; the main object being to obtain some 
 considerable abbreviation of my school residence. But 
 negotiation was a self-flattering name for such a corre- 
 spondence, since there never had been from the begin- 
 
352 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ning any the s-Iightest leaning on my guardian's part to- 
 wards the shiiJow or pretence of a compromise. What 
 compromise, indeed, was possible where neither party 
 could concede a part, however small : the ■Oihole must be 
 conceded, or nothing : since no mezzo termine was conceiv- 
 able. In reality, when my eyes first glanced upon that 
 disagreeable truth — that no opening offered for recipro- 
 cal concession, that the concession must all be on one 
 side — naturally it struck me that no guardian could be 
 expected to do that. At the same moment it also struck 
 ine, that my guardian had all along never for a moment 
 been arguing with a view to any practical result, but 
 simply in the hope that he might win over my assent to 
 the reasonableness of what, reasonable or not, was settled 
 immovably. These sudden discoveries, flashing upon me 
 simultaneously, were quite sufficient to put a summary 
 close to the correspondence. And I saw also, which 
 strangely had escaped me tUl 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 been so nearly worthless when gained, then it be- 
 came a kind of pleasure to have lost it. All considera- 
 tions united now in urging me to waste no more of either 
 rhetoric, tallow, or logic, upon my impassive granite 
 block of a guardian. Indeed, I suspected, on reviewing 
 his last communication, that he had just reached the last 
 inch of his patience, or (in nautical diction) had "paid 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 353 
 
 out " the entire cable by which he swung ; so that if I, 
 acting on the apothecary's precedent of " repetatur hau- 
 stus," had endeavored to administer another bolus or 
 draught of expostulation, he would have followed my 
 course as to the tiger-drench, in applying his potential 
 No to any such audacious attempt. To my guardian, 
 meantime, I owe this justice — that, over and above the 
 absence on my side of any arguments wearing even a 
 colorable strength (for to him the suffering from bil- 
 iousness 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 ma- 
 terial some three years ahead." My patrimonial income, 
 at the moment of my father's death, like that of all my 
 brothers (then three), was exactly £160 per annum.* 
 Now according to the current belief, or boldly one might 
 say, according to the avowed traditional maxim through- 
 out England, such an income was too little for an under- 
 graduate, keeping his four terms annually at Oxford or 
 Cambridge. Too little — by how much ? By £50 : the 
 adequate income being set down at just £200. Conse- 
 quently the precise sum by which my income was sup- 
 posed (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 funds of the 
 Manchester Grammar School allocated to every student 
 
 * £160per annum ; " — Why in a long minoritj'' 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 negative injuries, 
 which so extensively disfigure the representative picture of guardian- 
 ship all over Christendom. 
 23 
 
354 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 rea- 
 sons that could neutralize such overwhelming pleadings 
 of just and honorable prudence for submitting to the 
 further residence required. reader, urge not the cry- 
 ing arguments that spoke so tumultously against me. Too 
 sorrowfully I feel them. Out of thirty-six months' res- 
 idence required, I had actually completed nineteen — 
 4. e., the better half. Still, on the other hand, it is true 
 that my sufferings were almost insupportable ; and, but 
 for the blind unconscious conspiracy of two persons, these 
 sufferings would either (1) never have existed ; or (2) 
 would have been instantly relieved. In a great city like 
 Manchester lay, probably, a ship-load of that same mer- 
 cury which, by one fragment, not so large as an acorn, 
 would have changed the color of a human life, or would 
 have intercepted the heavy funeral knell — heavy, though 
 it may be partially muffled — of his own fierce self-re- 
 proaches. 
 
 ELOPEMENT FROM MANCHBSTBK." 
 
 But now, at last, came over me, from the mere excess 
 of bodily suffering and mental disappointments, a frantic 
 and rapturous re-agency. In the United States the case 
 is well known, and many times has been described by 
 travellers, of that furious instinct which, under a secret 
 call for saline variations of diet, drives all the tribes of 
 buffaloes for thousands of miles to the common centre of 
 the " Salt-licks." Under such a compulsion does the 
 locust, under such a compulsion does the leeming, trav- 
 erse its mysterious path. They are deaf to danges 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 355 
 
 deaf to the cry of battle, deaf to the trumpets of death. 
 Let the sea cross their path, let armies with artillery 
 bar the road, even these terrific powers can arrest only 
 by destroying ; and the most frightful abysses, up to the 
 very last menace of engulfment, up to the very instant 
 of absorption, have no power to alter or retard the line 
 of their inexorable advance. 
 
 Such an instinct it was, such a rapturous 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 of an eye, I came to an adamantine resolution 
 
 — not as if issuing from any act or any choice of my 
 own, but as if passively received from some dark oracu- 
 lar legislation external to myself. That I would elope 
 from Manchester — this was the resolution. Ahscond 
 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 cooperate 
 to one result, however little designing it, unavoidably 
 the mind unifies as a hostile confederacy. But the hope 
 
 — how shall I explain tliat ? "Was it the first-born of 
 the resolution, or was the resolution the first-born of 
 the hope ? Indivisibly they went together, like thunder 
 and lightning ; or each interchangeably ran before and 
 after the other. Under that transcendent rapture which 
 the prospect of sudden liberation let loose, all that natu- 
 ral anxiety which should otherwise have interlinked 
 itself with my anticipations was actually drowned in the 
 blaze of joy, as the light of the planet Mercury is lost 
 
356 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 and confounded on sinking too far within the blaze of 
 the solar beams. Practically I felt no care at all stretch- 
 ing beyond two or three weeks. Not as being heedless 
 and improvident ; my tendencies lay generally in the 
 other direction. No ; the cause lurked in what Words- 
 worth, when describing the festal state of France during 
 the happy morning-tide of her First Revolution (1788- 
 1790), calls " <^e senselessness of joy." this it 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 cap- 
 tive : I was in a house of bondage : one fulminating 
 word — Let there he freedom — spoken from some hid- 
 den recess in my own will, had as by an earthquake rent 
 asunder my prison gates. At any minute I could walk 
 out. Already I trod by anticipation the sweet pastoral 
 hills, already I breathed gales of the everlasting moun- 
 tains, that to my feelings blew from the garden of Para- 
 dise ; and in that vestibule of an earthly heaven, it was 
 no more possible for me to see vividly or in any linger- 
 ing detail the thorny cares which might hereafter multi- 
 ply 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 set- 
 tled. But when and whither ? When could have but one 
 answer, for on more reasons than one I needed summer 
 weather : and as much of it as possible. Besides that, 
 when August came, it would bring along with it my own 
 
 * " 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 1788-9, from a sleep of ten 
 centuries. 
 
CONFES8IOX8 OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 357 
 
 birthday : now, one codicil in my general vow of free- 
 dom had been, that my seventeenth birthday 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 distin- 
 guished me at Bath and elsewhere, for some years, by 
 flattering attentions ; and for the last three years in par- 
 ticular, Lady Carbery, a young woman some ten years 
 older than myself, and who was as remarkable for her 
 intellectual pretensions as she was for her beauty and 
 her benevolence, had maintained a correspondence with 
 me upon questions of literature. She thought too highly 
 of my powers and attainments, and everywhere spoke of 
 me with an enthusiasm that, if I had been five or six 
 years older, and had possessed any personal advantages, 
 might have raised smiles at her expense. To her I now 
 wrote, requesting the loan of five guineas. A whole 
 week passed without any answer. This perplexed and 
 made me un6asy : 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 sug- 
 gested some suspicion (which seemed impossible) of the 
 real purposes which I contemplated in the employment 
 of the five guineas. Could I incautiously have said 
 anything in my own letter tending that way? Cer- 
 tainly not ; then why But at that moment my 
 
 speculations were cut short by a letter bearing a coro- 
 netted seal. It was from Lady Carbery, of course, and 
 inclosed ten guineas instead of five. Slow in those 
 
358 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 days were the mails ; besides which, Lady Carbery hap- 
 pened to be down at the seaside, whither my letter had 
 been sent after her. Now, then, including my own 
 pocket-money, I possessed a dozen guineas, which seemed 
 sufficient for my immediate purpose ; and all ulterior 
 emergencies, as the reader understands, I trampled un- 
 der foot. This sum, however, spent at inns on the most 
 economic footing, could not have held out for much 
 above a calendar month ; and as to the plan of selecting 
 secondary inns, these are not always cheaper ; but the 
 main objection is — that in the solitary stations amongst 
 the mountains (Cambrian no less than Cumbrian) there 
 is often no choice to be found : the high-priced inn is 
 the only one. Even this dozen of guineas it became 
 necessary to diminish by three. The age of " vails " 
 and perquisites to three or four servants at any gentle- 
 man's house where you dined — this age, it is true, had 
 passed away by thirty years perhaps. But that flagrant 
 abuse had no connection at all with the English custom 
 of distributing money amongst that part of the domestics 
 whose daily labors may have been increased by a visi- 
 tor's residence in the family for some considerable space 
 of time. This custom (almost peculiar, I believe, to 
 the English gentry) is honorable and just. I person- 
 ally had been trained by my mother, who detested sor- 
 did habits, to look upon it as ignominious in a gentleman 
 to leave a household without acknowledging the oblig- 
 ing services of those who cannot openly remind him of 
 their claims. On this occasion, mere necessity com- 
 pelled me to overlook the housekeeper : for to her I 
 could not have offered less than two or three guineas ; 
 and, as she was a fixture, I reflected that I might send 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-BATEK. 359 
 
 it at some future period. To three inferior servants I 
 found that I ought not to give less than one guinea each: 
 
 so much, therefore, I left in the hands of G , the 
 
 most honorable and upright of boys; since to have 
 given it myself would have been prematurely to publish 
 my purpose. These three guineas deducted, I still had 
 nine, or thereabouts. And now all things were settled, 
 except one : the when was settled, and the how ; but 
 not the whither. That was stUl subjudice. 
 
 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 be- 
 tween four well-known points — viz., the small towns of 
 Ulverstone and Penrith as its two poles — south and 
 north ; between Kendal, again, on the east, and Egrer 
 mont 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 eight year, spiritually strong. 
 The southern section of that district, about eighteen or 
 twetity miles long, which bears the name of Furness, 
 figures in the eccentric geography of English law as a 
 section of Lancashire, thoilgh separated from that county 
 by the estuary of Morecombe 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 fila- 
 ment of air, some fraction of denizenship in the fairy 
 little domain of the English lakes. The major part of 
 these lakes lies in Westmoreland and Cumberland : but 
 the sweet reposing little water of Esthwaite, vrith its few 
 emerald fields, and the grander one of Coniston, with 
 
360 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 the sublime cluster of mountain groups, and the little 
 network of quiet dells lurking about its head * all the 
 way back to Grasmere, lie in or near the upper chamber 
 of Furness ; and all these, together with the ruins of 
 the once glorious abbey, had been brought out not many 
 years before into sunny splendor by the great enchantress 
 of that generation — Anne Eadcliffe. But more even 
 than Anne Radcliffe had the landscape painters, so many 
 and so various, contributed to the glorification of the 
 English lake district ; drawing out and impressing upon 
 the heart the sanctity of repose in its shy recesses — its 
 Alpine grandeurs in such passes as those of Wastdale- 
 head, Langdale-head, Borrowdale, Kirkstone, Hawsdale, 
 &c., together with the monastic peace which seems to 
 brood over its peculiar form of pastoral life, so much 
 nobler (as Wordsworth notices), in its stern simplicity 
 
 * "Its head : " — That end of a lake wMch receives the rivulets and 
 brooks feeding its waters, is locally called its head ; and in continuation 
 of the same constructive image, the counter terminus, which discharges 
 its surplus water, is called its foot. By the way, as a suggestion from 
 this obvious distinction, I may remark, that in all cases the very exist- 
 ence 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 con- 
 temptuous designation of ^^pond poets ; " a variation which some part 
 of the public readily caught up as a natural reverberation of that spite- 
 fulness, so petty and apparently so groundless, which notoriously Lord 
 Bryon cherished against Wordsworth steadily, andmore fitfully against 
 Southey. The effect of transforming a living image — an image of 
 restless motion — into an image of foul stagnation was tangibly appre- 
 hensible. But what was it that contradistinguished the "vivilacus^^ 
 of "Virgil from rotting ponds mantled with verdant slime V 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. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPItJSI-EATBK. 361 
 
 and continual conflict with danger hidden in the vast 
 draperies of mist overshadowing the hills, and amongst 
 the armies of snow and hail arrayed by fierce northern 
 winters, than the effeminate shepherd's life in the dassicai 
 Arcadia, or in the flowery pastures of Sicily. 
 
 Amongst these attractions that drew me so strongly 
 to the Lakes, there had also by that time arisen in this 
 lovely region the deep deep magnet (as to me only in all 
 this world it then was) of William Wordsworth. Inev- 
 itably this close connection of the poetry which most 
 of all had moved me with the particular region and 
 scenery that most of all had fastened upon my affections, 
 and led captive my imagination, was calculated, under 
 ordinary circumstances, to impress upon my fluctuating 
 deliberations a summary and decisive bias. But the 
 very depth of the impressions which had been made 
 upon me, either as regarded the poetry or the scenery, 
 was too solemn and (unaffectedly I may say it) too spir- 
 itual, to clothe itself in any hasty or chance movement 
 as at all adequately expressing its strength, or reflecting 
 its hallowed character. If you, reader, were a devout 
 Mahometan, throwing gazes of mystical awe daily to- 
 wards Mecca, or were a Christian devotee looking with 
 the same rapt adoration to St. Peter's at Rome, or to El 
 Kodah — the Holy City of Jerusalem — (so called even 
 amongst the Arabs, who hate both Christian and Jew), 
 how painfully would it jar upon your sensibilities, if 
 some friend, sweeping past you upon a high road, with a 
 train (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 Eed Sea, and here 's a spare dromedary ; " or " off 
 
862 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 for Borne, nnd here 's a well-cushioned barouche ; " sen- 
 sonable and conveniont it might happen that the invita- 
 tion were ; but still it would shock you tliat a journey 
 which, with or without your consent, could not but as- 
 sume the character eventually of a saintly pilgrimage, 
 should arise and take its initial movement upon a oxsusJ 
 summons, or upon a vulgai- opening of momentary con- 
 venience. In the present case, under no cii-cumstanoes 
 should I have dreamed of presenting myself to Words- 
 worth. The principle of " veneration " (to speak phren- 
 ologically) 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 over- 
 ture coming from Jiitn. I could not even tolerate tlie 
 prospect (as a bare possibility) of Wordsworth's hearing 
 my name first of all associated with some case of pecu- 
 niai-y embarrassment. And apai-t from all t/iat, it vul- 
 garized the whole " interest '' (no other term c^vu I find 
 to express tlie case collectively) — the whole " interest" 
 of poetry and tlie enchanted laud: equally it vulgarized 
 person and thing, the vineyard and the vintage, the gar- 
 dens and the ladies, of the Hesperides, together with all 
 their golden fruitage, if I should rush upon tltem in a 
 hurried and thoughtless state of excitement. 1 remem- 
 bered the fine caution on this subject involved in a ti-a- 
 dition preserved by Pausanias. Those (he tells us) who 
 visited by night the great field of INIaratlion (where at 
 certain times phantom cavalry careered — flying and pur- 
 suing) in a temper of vulgar sight-seeking, and under no 
 higher impulse than tlie degrading one of curiosity, were 
 met and punished severely in tlie dark, by the same sort 
 of people, I presume, as those who handled Falstaff so 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 363 
 
 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 aU the purposes of a 
 pilgrimage or sacred mission. Under my present cir- 
 cumstances, I saw that the very motives of love and honor, 
 which would have inclined the scale so powerfully in 
 favor of the northern lakes, were exactly those which 
 drew most heavily in the other direction — the circum- 
 stances being what they were as to hurry and perplexity. 
 And just at that moment suddenly unveiled itself another 
 powerful motive against taking the northern direction 
 — viz., consideration for my mother — which made my 
 heart recoil from giving her too great a shock ; and in 
 what other way could it be mitigated than by my per- 
 sonal presence in a case of emergency ? For such a 
 purpose North Wales would be the best haven to make 
 for, since the road thither from my present home lay 
 through Chester — where at that time my mother had 
 fixed her residence. 
 
 If I had hesitated (and hesitate I did very sincerely) 
 about such a mode- of expressing the consideration due 
 to my mother, it was not from any want of decision in 
 my feeling, but really because I feared to be taunted 
 with this act of tenderness, as arguing an exaggerated 
 estimate of my own importance in my mother's eyes. 
 To be capable of causing any alarming shock, must I not 
 suppose myself an object of special interest ? No : I 
 did not agree to that inference. But no matter. Better 
 to stand ten thousand sneers, than one abiding pang, such 
 as time could not abolish, of bitter self-reproach. So T 
 
364 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 resolved to face this taunt without flinohing, and to steer 
 a course for St. John's Priory — my mother's residence 
 near Chester. At the very instant of coming to this re- 
 solution, a singular accident occurred to confirm it. On 
 the very day before my rash journey commenced, I re- 
 ceived through the post-office a letter bearing this ad- 
 dress in a foreign handwriting — A Monsieur Monsieur 
 de Quincy, Chester. This iteratton of the Monsieur as 
 a courteous French fashion* for efifecting 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, how- 
 ever, I spelled out as satisfied me that the letter could 
 not have been meant for myself. The post-mark was, I 
 think, Hamhurgh : but the date within ,was from some 
 place in Normandy ; and eventually it came out that the 
 person addressed was a poor emigrant, some relative of 
 Quatremdre de Quincy,t who had come to Chester, prob- 
 
 * '* ^s a courteous French fashion,:^^ — And not at all a modern 
 fashion. That famous Countess of Derby (Charlotte de Tremouille) 
 yfho presided in the defence of Lathom House ("which, and not Knows- 
 [ej', was then the capital domicile of the St^leys), when addressing 
 Prince Eupert, sometimes superscribes her envelope A Monseigneur le 
 Prince JRupert, 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. 
 
 t " Z)e Quincy : " — The family of De Quincey, or Quincy, or Quin- 
 cie (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 
 m the eleventh century this family emigrated from Norway to the South ; 
 and since then it has thrown off three separate swarms — French, Eng- 
 lish, and Anglo-American, each of which writes the name with its own 
 slight variations. A brief outline of their migrations will be found in 
 the Appendix. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 365 
 
 ably 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 natur- 
 ally unknown to any English post-office ; and the letter 
 had been forwarded to myself, as the oldest male mem- 
 ber of a family at that time necessarily' well- known in 
 Chester. 
 
 I was astonished to find myself translated by a touch 
 of the pen not only into a Monsieur, but even into a 
 self-multiplied Monsieur ; or, speaking algebraically, into 
 the square of Monsieur ; having a chance at some future 
 day of being perhaps cubed into Monsieur*. From the 
 letter, as I had hastily torn it open, out dropped a draft 
 upon Smith, Payne, & Smith for somewhere about forty 
 guineas. At this stage of the revelations opening upon 
 me, it might be fancied that the interest of the case 
 thickened : since undoubtedly, if this windfall could be 
 seriously meant for myself, and no mistake, never de- 
 scended upon the head of man, in the outset of a peril- 
 ous adventure, aid more seasonable, nay, more melodra- 
 matically critical. But alas ! my eye is quick to value 
 the logic of evil chances. Prophet of evil I ever am to 
 myself : forced forever into sorrowful auguries that I 
 have no power to hide from my own heart, no, not 
 through one night's solitary dreams. In a moment I 
 saw too plainly that I was not Monsieur''. I might be 
 Monsieur, but not Monsieur to the second power. Who 
 indeed could be my debtor to the amount of forty guin- 
 eas ? If there really was such a person, why had he 
 been so many years in liquidating his debt ? How 
 shameful to suffer me to enter upon my seventeenth 
 year, before he made known his debt or even his amiable 
 
366 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 existence. Doubtless, in strict morals, this dreadful pro- 
 crastination could not be justified. Still, as the man 
 was apparently testifying his penitence, and in the most 
 practical form (viz., payment),! felt perfectly willing to 
 grant him absolution for past sins, and a general release 
 from all arrears, if any should remain, through all com- 
 ing generations. But alas ! the mere seasonableness of 
 the remittance floored my hopes. A five-guinea debtor 
 might have been a conceivable being : such a debtor 
 might exist in the flesh : Mm I could believe in ; but 
 further my faith would not go ; and if the money were, 
 after all, bond fide meant for myself, clearly it must come 
 from the Fiend : in which case it became an open ques- 
 tion whether I ought to take it. At this stage the case 
 had become a Sphinx's riddle ; and the solution, if any, 
 must be sought in the letter. But, as to the letter, O 
 heaven and earth ! if the Sphinx of old conducted her 
 intercourse with Oedipus by way of letter, and pro- 
 pounded her wicked questions through the post-office of 
 Thebes, it strikes me that she needed only to have used 
 French penmanship, in order to baffle that fatal deciph- 
 erer of riddles forever and ever. At Bath, where the 
 French emigrants mustered in great strength (six thou- 
 sand, 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 calligraphy. From this ex- 
 perience I had learned that the French aristocracy still 
 persisted (did persist at that period — 1797-1800) in a 
 traditional contempt for all accomplishments of that class 
 as clerkly and plebeian, fitted only (as Shakspeare says, 
 when recording similar prejudices amongst his own 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 367 
 
 countrymen) to do "yeoman's service." One and all 
 they delegated the care of their spelling to valets and 
 femmes-de-ckambre ; sometimes even those persons who 
 scoured their blankets and counterpanes, scoured their 
 spelling — that is to say, their week-day spelling ; but 
 as to their Sunday spelling, that superfine spelling which 
 they reserved for their efforts in literature, this was con- 
 signed to the care of compositors. Letters written by 
 the royal family of France in 1792-3 still survive, in 
 the memoirs of Cl^ry and others amongst their most 
 faithful servants, which display the utmost excess of ig- 
 norance 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 let- 
 ters, as if executed (I should say) with a pair of snuffers. 
 I do not speak thus in any spirit of derision. Such accom- 
 plishments were wilfully neglected, and even ambitious- 
 ly, 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 dishon- 
 ored by any deficiencies in the snobbish accomplishments 
 of penmanship, grammar, or correct orthography, than a 
 gentleman amongst ourselves by inexpertness in the 
 mystery of cleaning shoes, or of polishing furniture. 
 The result, however, from this systematic and ostentatious 
 neglect of calligraphy is oftentimes most perplexing to 
 all who are called upon to decipher their MSS. It hap- 
 pens, indeed, that the product of this carelessness thus 
 far differs : always it is coarse and inelegant, but some- 
 times (say in j'jth of the cases) it becomes specially 
 legible. Far otherwise was the case before me. Being 
 
368 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 greatly hurried on this my fare veil day, I could not make 
 out two consecutive sentences. Unfortunately one-half 
 of a sentence sufficed to show that the inclosure be- 
 longed 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 suf- 
 fered some days' delay. When I noticed this, I found 
 my sympathy with the poor stranger naturally quick- 
 ened. Already, and unavoidably, he had been suffering 
 from the vexation of a letter delayed; but henceforth, 
 and continually more so, he must be suffering from the 
 anxieties of a letter gone astray. Throughout this fare- 
 well 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 my- 
 self, on the written acknowledgment of the post-office, 
 from all farther responsibility, I was most reluctant to 
 give up the letter. It is true, that the necessity of com- 
 mitting a forgery (which crime in those days was pun- 
 ished inexorably with death), before the money could 
 have been fraudulently appropriated, would, if made 
 known to the public, have acquitted any casual holder of 
 the letter from all suspicion of dishonest intentions. But 
 the danger was, that during the suspense and progress 
 of the case, whilst awaiting its final settlement, ngly 
 rumors should arise and cling to one's name amongst 
 the many that would hear only a fragmentary version 
 of the whole affair. 
 
 At length all was ready : midsummer, like an army 
 with banners, was moving through the heavens : already 
 the longest day had passed ; those arrangements, few 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATEK. 369 
 
 and imperfect, through which I attempted some partial 
 evasion of disagreeable contingencies likely to arise, had 
 been finished : what more remained for me to do of 
 things that I was able to do ? None ; and yet, thiaugh 
 now at last free to move off, I lingered ; lingered as un- 
 der some sense of dim perplexity, or even of relenting 
 love for the very captivity itself which I was making so 
 violent an effort to abjure, but more intelligibly for all 
 the external objects — living or inanimate — by which 
 that captivity had been surrounded and gladdened. 
 What I 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, how- 
 ever, through various and urgent motives which it sug- 
 gested, quickened my movements ; and the same hour 
 which brought this letter into my hands, witnessed my 
 resolution (uttered audibly to myself in my study), that 
 early on the next day I would take my departure. A 
 day, therefore, had at length arrived, had somewhat 
 suddenly arrived, which would be the last, the very 
 last, on which I should make my appearance in the 
 school. 
 
 It is a just and a feeling remark of Dr. Johnson's that 
 we never do anything consciously for the last time (of 
 things, that is to say, which we have been long in the 
 habit of doing), without sadness of heart. The secret 
 sense of a farewell or testamentary act I carried along 
 with me into every word or deed of this memorable day. 
 Agent or patient, singly or one of a crowd, I heard for- 
 ever some sullen echo of valediction in every change, 
 casual or periodic, that varied the revolving hours from 
 morning to night. Most of all I felt this valedictory 
 
 24 
 
370 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 sound as a pathetic appeal, when the closing hour of fivts 
 p. M. brought with it the solemn evening service of the 
 English Church — read by Mr. Lawson ; read now, as 
 always, under a reverential stillness of the entire school. 
 Already in itself, without the solemnity of prayers, the 
 decaying light of the dying day suggests a mood of pen- 
 sive and sympathetic sadness. And if the changes in 
 the light are less impressively made known so early as 
 five o'clock in the depth of summer-tide, not the less we 
 are sensible of being as near to the hours of repose, and 
 to the secret dangers of the night, as if the season were 
 mid-winter. Even thus far there was something that 
 oftentimes had profoundly impressed me in this evening 
 liturgy, and its special prayer against the perils of dark- 
 ness. But greatly was that effect deepened by the sym- 
 bolic treatment which this liturgy gives to this darkness 
 and to these perils. Naturally, when contemplating that 
 treatment, I had been led vividly io feel the memorable 
 rhdbdomaney* or magical power of evocation which 
 
 * ^^Rhdbdomaney:" — The Greek word mantela (fiavTeia), repre- 
 sented by the English form mancy, constitutes the stationary element 
 in a large family of compounds : it means dimnation, or the art of 
 magically deducing some weighty inference (generally prophetic) from 
 any one of the many dark sources sanctioned by Pagan superstition. 
 And universally the particular source relied on is expressed in the 
 prior half of the compound. For instance, oneiros is the Greek word 
 for a dream ; and therefore oneiromancy indicates that mode- of 
 prophecy which is founded upon the interpretation of dreams. Omis, 
 again (in the genitive case ornithos) is the common Greek word for a 
 bird ; accordingly omithomancy means prophecy founded on the par- 
 ticular mode of flight noticed amongst any casual gathering of birds. 
 Ckeir (xetp) 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. NeJcros, a dead man, and 
 consequently necromancy, prophecy founded on the answer extorted 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 371 
 
 Christianity has put forth here and in parallel cases. 
 The ordinary physical rhabdomantist, who undertakes 
 
 either 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 rhabdos (pi/JSos), a rod — not that sort of rod which 
 the Koman lictors carried, viz., a bundle of twigs, but a wand about 
 as thick as a commor 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 countj' of England, a 
 potent instrument of divination. But let it be understood that divina- 
 tion, expresses an idea ampler by much than the word prophecy ; 
 whilst even this word^opAccj/, already more limited than divination, 
 is most injuriously narrowed in our received translation of the Bible. 
 To unveil or decipher what is hidden — that is, in effect, the meaning 
 of divination. And accordingly, in the writings of St. Paul, the phrase 
 gifts of prophecy never once indicates what the English reader sup- 
 poses, but exegetic gifts, gifts of interpretation applied to what is 
 dark, of analysis applied to what is logically perplexed, of expansion 
 applied to what is condensed, of practical improvement applied to 
 what might else be overlooked as purely speculative. In Somerset- 
 shire, 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, hold- 
 ing the willow rod horizontally: wherever that dips, or inclines itself 
 spontaneously to the ground, there will be found water. I have my- 
 self not only seen the process tried with success, but have witnessed 
 the enormous trouble, delay, and expense, accruing to those of the op- 
 posite faction who refused to benefit by this art. To pursue the tenta- 
 tive plan {i. e., the plan of trying for water by boring at hap-hazard) 
 ended, so far as I was aware, in multiplied vexation. In reality, these 
 poor men are, after all, more philosophic than those who scornfully re- 
 ject their services. For the artists obey unconsciously the logic of 
 Lord Bacon: they build upon a long chain of induction, upon the uni- 
 form 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 h priori, there ought not to be any 
 
372 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 Chris- 
 tianity called up from darkness sentiments the most 
 august, previously inconceivable — formless — and with- 
 out life ; for previously there had been no religious 
 philosophy equal to the task of ripening such senti- 
 ments ; but also, at the same time, by incarnating these 
 sentiments in images of corresponding grandeur, 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 coloring as gor- 
 geous as the heavens, had through thousands of years 
 been the heritage of children — honored as the jewelry 
 of God only by thorn, when suddenly the voice of Chris- 
 tianity, countersigning the voice of infancy, raised them 
 to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although 
 founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all 
 his glory not to be arrayed like one of these. Winds 
 
 such experience. Now, a sufficient course of facts overtlirows all 
 antecedent plausibilities. Whatever science or scepticism may say, 
 most of the teakettles in the vale of Wrington are filled by rhdbdo^ 
 mcmcy. And after all, the supposed d priori scruples against this 
 rhabdomancy are only such scruples as would, antecedently to a trial, 
 have pronounced the mariner's compass impossible. Theje is in both 
 cases alike a blind sympathy of some unknown force, which no man 
 can explain, with a passive index that practically guides you aright — 
 even if Mephistopheles should be at the bottom of the affair. 
 
CONFKSSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEE. 373 
 
 again, hurricanes, the eternal breathings soft or loud, of 
 ^olian power, wherefore had they, raving or sleeping, 
 escaped all moral arrest and detention ? Simply because 
 vain it were to oiFer 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 neces- 
 sary to the purposes of a spiritual religion that the spirit 
 of man, as the fountain of all religion, should in some 
 commensurate reflex image have its grandeur and its 
 mysteriousness emblazoned, suddenly the pomp and 
 mysterious path of winds and tempests, blowing whither 
 they list, and from what fountains no man knows, are 
 cited from darkness and neglect, to give and to receive 
 reciprocally an impassioned glorification, where the lower 
 mystery enshrines and illustrates the higher. Call for 
 the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that ? It 
 is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all 
 human sentiments, what is that ? It is, that man should 
 forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. And 
 these two grandeurs, the mighty sentiment and the 
 mighty spectacle are by Christianity married together. 
 
 Here again, in this prayer, " Lighten our darkness, 
 we beseech thee, O Lord ! " were the darkness and the 
 great shadows of night made symbolically significant : 
 these great power. Night and Darkness, that belong to 
 aboriginal Chaos, were made representative of the perils 
 that continually menace poor afflicted human nature. 
 With deepest sympathy I acccompanied the prayer 
 against the perils of darkness — perils that I seemed to 
 see, in the ambush of midnight solitude, brooding around 
 
374 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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. 
 
 ■WANDERINGS IN NORTH WALBS.^ 
 
 On leaving Manchester, by a southwestern route, to- 
 wards Chester and Wales, the first town that I reached 
 (to the best of my remembrance) was Altrincham — 
 colloquially called Awtrigem. 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 ; and, in order to benefit by as large a 
 compass as possible of varying atmospheres, I and my 
 nurse had been made to rest for the first night of our 
 tour at this cheerful little town of Altrincham. On the 
 next morning, which ushered in a most dazzling day of 
 July, I rose earlier than my nurse fully approved : but 
 in no long time she found it advisible to follow my ex- 
 ample ; 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 gayety 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 clean- 
 
CONFESSIONS 01' AN OPIUM-EATEK. 
 
 375 
 
 liness, appeared attractive : and the bonny young women 
 of Altrincham were all tripping about in caps and aprons 
 coquettishly disposed. The general hilarity of the scene 
 at this early hour, with the low murmurings of pleasur- 
 able conversation and laughter, that rose up like a foun- 
 tain to the open window, left so profound an impression 
 upon me that I never lost it. All this occurred, as I 
 have said, about eight o'clock on a superb July morning. 
 Exactly at that time of the morning, on exactly such an- 
 other heavenly day of July, did I, leaving Manchester at 
 six A. M., naturally enough find myself in the centre of 
 the Altrincham market-place. Nothing had altered. 
 There were the very same fruits and flowers ; the same 
 bonny young women tripping up and down in the same 
 (no, not the same) coquettish bonnets ; everything was 
 apparently the same : perhaps the window of my bed- 
 room was still open, only my nurse and I were not look- 
 ing out ; for alas ! on recollection, fourteen years pre- 
 cisely had passed since then. Breakfast time, however, 
 is always a cheerful stage of the day ; if a man can for- 
 get 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 coinci- 
 dence, 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 pleasura- 
 ble 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 Alt- 
 
376 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 rincham, I said to myself, " All places, it seems, are not 
 Whispering Galleries.'' The distance between Man- 
 chester and Chester was about forty miles. What it is 
 under railway changes, I know not. This I planned to 
 walk in two days ; for, though the whole might have 
 been performed in one, I saw no use in eihausting my- 
 self ; and my walking powers were rusty from long 
 disuse. I wished to bisect the journey ; and, as nearly 
 as I could expect — i. e., within two or three miles — 
 such a bisection was attained in a clean roadside inn, of 
 the class, so commonly found in England. A kind, 
 motherly landlady, easy in 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. On the following morning 
 there remained not quite eighteen miles between myself 
 and venerable Chester. Before I reached it, so mighty 
 now (as ever before and since) had become the benefit 
 from the air and the exercise, that oftentimes I felt in- 
 ebriated and crazy with ebullient spirit. But for the 
 accursed letter, which sometimes 
 
 " Came over me, 
 As doth the raren o'er the infected house," 
 
 I should have too much forgot my gravity under this 
 new-born health. For two hours before reaching Ches- 
 ter, from the accident of the southwest course which the 
 road itself pursued, I saw held up aloft before my eyes 
 that inatchless spectacle, 
 
 " New, and yet as old 
 As the foundations of the heavens and earth," 
 
 an elaborate and pompous sunset hanging over the 
 mountains of North Wales. The clouds passed slowly 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 377 
 
 through several arrangements, and in the last of these I 
 
 read the very scene which six months before I had read 
 
 in a most exquisite poem of Wordsworth's, extracted 
 
 entire into a London newspaper (I think the " St. 
 
 James's Chronicle.") It was a Canadian lake, — 
 
 " With all its fairy crowds 
 Of islands that together lie 
 As quietly as spots of sky 
 
 Amongst the erening clouds." 
 
 The scene in the poem (" Ruth ") that been originally 
 mimicked by the poet from the sky, was here re-mim- 
 icked and rehearsed to the life, as it seemed, by the sky 
 from the poet. Was I then, in July, 1802, really quot- 
 ing from Wordsworth ? Yes, reader ; and I only in all 
 Europe. In 1799, 1 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 writ- 
 ten to Wordsworth. In May of 1803, 1 had received a 
 very long answer from Wordsworth. 
 
 The next morning after reaching Chester, my first 
 thought on rising was directed to the vexatious letter in 
 my custody. The odious responsibility, thrust upon me 
 in connection with this letter, was now becoming every 
 hour more irritating, because every hour more embar- 
 rassing to the freedom of my own movements, since it 
 must by this time have drawn the post-office into the 
 ranks of my pursuers. Indignant I was that this letter 
 should have the power of making myself an accomplice 
 jn causing anxiety, perhaps even calamity, to the poor 
 emigrant — a man doubly liable to unjust suspicion ; 
 first, as by his profession presumably poor ; and, sec- 
 ondly, as an alien. Indignant I was that this most filthy 
 
378 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 of letters stould also have the power of forcing me into 
 all sorts of indirect and cowardly movements at inns ; 
 for beyond all things it seemed to me important that I 
 should not be arrested, or even for a moment chal- 
 lenged, as the wrongftd holder of an important letter, 
 before I had testified, by my own spontaneous transfer 
 of it, that I had not dallied with any idea of converting 
 it to my own benefit. In some way I must contrive to 
 restore the letter. But was it not then the simplest of 
 all courses, to take my hat before sitting down to break- 
 fast, present myself at the post-office, tender my explan- 
 ation, 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 favorite fawn should be carried oflf" by 
 a lion, would it not be a very simple and easy course to 
 walk after the robber, follow him into his den, and rea- 
 son with the wretch on the indelicacy of his conduct? 
 In my particular circumstances, the post-office was in 
 relation to myself simply a lion's den. Two separate 
 parties, I felt satisfied, must by this time be in chase of 
 me ; and the two chasers would be confluent at the 
 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. Now, if I 
 went to the post-office, I felt sure that nothing else 
 would be the result ; and afterwards it turned out that 
 in this anticipation I had been right. Foi; it struck me 
 that the nature of the inclosure in the French letter — 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 379 
 
 viz., the fact that without a forgery it was not negotiar 
 ble — could not be known certainly to anybody but my- 
 self. Doubts upon that point must have quickened the 
 anxieties of all connected with myself, or connected 
 with the case. More urgent consequently would have 
 been the applications of " Monsieur Monsieur " to the 
 post-office ; and consequently of the post-office to the 
 Priory ; and consequently more easily suggested and 
 concerted between the post-offloe and the Priory would 
 be all the arrangements for stopping me, in the event of 
 my taking the route of Chester — in which case it was 
 natural to suppose that I might personally return the 
 letter to the official authorities. Of course none of these 
 measures was certainly known to myself; but I guessed 
 at them as reasonable probabilities ; and it was evident 
 that the fifty and odd hours since my elopement from 
 Manchester had allowed ample time for concerting all 
 the requisite preparations. As a last resource, in de- 
 fault of any better occurring, it is likely enough that my 
 anxiety would have tempted me into this mode of sur- 
 rendering my abominable trust, which by this time I re- 
 garded 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 
 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 recollec- 
 
380 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 tion that some of the servants from the Priory were 
 sure on every forenoon to be at times in the streets. 
 The streets, however, could be evaded by shaping a 
 course along the city walls ; which I did, and descended 
 into some obscure lane that brought me gradually to the 
 banks of the river Dee. In the infancy of its course 
 amongst the Denbighshire mountains, this river (famous 
 in our pre-Norman history for the earliest parade * of 
 English monarchy) is wild and picturesque ; and even 
 below my mother's Priory wears a character of interest. 
 But, a mile or so nearer to its mouth, when leaving 
 Chester for Parkgate, it becomes miserably tame ; and 
 the several reaches of the river take the appearance of 
 formal canals. On the right bank f of the river runs an 
 artificial mound, called the Cop. It was, I believe, orig- 
 inally 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 
 
 * ^^ Earliest parade:'' — It was a very scenical parade, for some- 
 where 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. 
 
 t * ' Right bank : " — But which bank is right, and which left, under 
 circumstances of position varying by possibility without end ? This is 
 a reasonable demur; but yet it argues an inexperienced reader. For 
 always the position of the spectator is conventionally fixed. In mili- 
 tary tactics, in philosophic geography, in history, &c., the uniform as- 
 sumption is. that you are standing with your back to the source of the 
 river, and j'our 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. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-BATEK. 381 
 
 this bank I was walking, and throwing my gaze along 
 the formal vista presented by the river. Some trifle of 
 anxiety might mingle with this gaze at the first, lest 
 perhaps Philistines might be abroad ; for it was just 
 possible that I had been watched. But I have gen- 
 erally found that, if you are in quest of some certain es- 
 cape from Philistines of whatsoever class — sheriiF-offi- 
 cers, 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 tender- 
 ness to their young, when deprived of them ; and, in 
 short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these 
 quiet creatures. On the present occasion, there were 
 many cows grazing in the fields below the Cop : but all 
 along the Cop itself, I could descry no person whatever 
 answering to the idea of a Philistine : in fact, there was 
 nobody at all, except one woman, apparently 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 I was near enough to see so much. This 
 woman might be a quarter-of-a-mile distant; and was 
 steadily advancing towards me — face to face. Soon, 
 therefore, I was beginning to read the character of her 
 features pretty distinctly ; and her countenance natu- 
 rally served as a mirror to echo and reverberate my own 
 feelings, consequently my own horror (horror without 
 exaggeration it w'as), at a sudden uproar of tumultuous 
 sounds rising clamorously ahead. Ahead I mean in re- 
 lation to myself, but to her the sound was from the rear. 
 Our situation was briefly this. Nearly half-a-mile be- 
 
382 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 hind 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 nearlj a right- 
 angled turn, lay entirely out of view. From this un- 
 seen reach it was that the angry clamor, 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. Only this I felt, that 
 blind, unorganized nature it must be — and nothing in 
 human or in brutal wrath — that could utter itself by 
 such an anarchy of sea-like uproars. What was it ? 
 Where was it? Whence was it.' Earthquake was it? 
 convulsion of the steadfast earth ? or was it the break- 
 ing loose from ancient chains of some deep morass like 
 that of Solway? More probable it seemed, that the 
 avui TTorafiuiv of Euripides (the flowing backwards of 
 rivers to their fountains) now, at last, after ages of ex- 
 pectation, had been suddenly realized. Not long I 
 needed to speculate ;. for within half-a-minute, perhaps, 
 from the first arrest of our attention, the proximate 
 cause of this mystery declared itself to our eyes, al- 
 though the remote cause (the hidden cause of that visible 
 cause) was still as dark as before. Round that right- 
 angled turn which I have mentioned as wheeling into 
 the next succeeding reach of the river, suddenly as with 
 the trampling of cavalry — but all dressing, accurately — 
 and the water at the outer angle sweeping so much 
 faster than that at the inner angle, as to keep the front 
 of advance rigorously in line, violently careered round 
 into our own placid watery vista a huge charging block 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 383 
 
 of waters, filling the whole channel of the river, and 
 coming down upon us at the rate of forty miles an hour. 
 Well was it for us, myself and that respectable rustic 
 woman, us the Deucalion and Pyrrha of this perilous 
 moment, sole survivors apparently of the deluge (since 
 by accident there was at that particular moment on that 
 particular Cop nothing else to survive), that by means 
 of this Cop, and of ancient Danish hands (possibly not 
 yet paid for their work), we could survive. In fact, this 
 watery breastwork, a perpendicular wall of water carry- 
 ing itself as true as if controlled by a mason's plumb- 
 line, rode forward at such a pace, that obviously the 
 fleetest horse or dromedary would have had no chance 
 of escape. Many a decent railway even, among rail- 
 ways since born its rivals, would not have had above the 
 third of a chance. Naturally, I had too short a time for 
 observing much or accurately ; and universally I am a 
 poor hand at observing ; else I should say, that this 
 riding block of crystal waters did not gallop, but went at 
 a long trot ; 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 appall me more if 
 coming up at a long diabolical trot, than at a canter or 
 gallop. The first impulse to both of us was derived 
 from cowardice ; cowardice the most abject and selfish. 
 Such is man, though a Deucalion elect ; such is woman, 
 though a decent Pyrrha. Both of us ran like hares ; 
 neither did I, Deucalion, think of poor Pyrrha at all for 
 the first sixty seconds. Yet, on the other hand why 
 should I? It struck me seriously that St. George's 
 Channel (and if so, beyond a doubt, the Atlantic Ocean) 
 had broke loose, and was, doubtless, playing the same 
 
384 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 insufferable gambols upon all rivers along a seaboard of 
 six to seven thousand miles ; in which case, as all the 
 race of woman must be doomed, how romantic a specula- 
 tion it was for me, sole relic of literature, to think speci- 
 ally of one poor Pyrrha, probably very illiterate, whom 
 I had never yet spoken to. That idea pulled me up. 
 Not spoken to her ? Then I would speak to her ; and 
 the more so, because the sound of the pursuing river 
 told me that flight was useless. And, besides, if any 
 reporter or sub-editor of some Chester chronicle should, 
 at this moment, with his glass be sweeping the Cop, and 
 discover me flying under these unchivalrous circum- 
 stances, he might gibbet me to all eternity. Halting, 
 therefore (and really I had not run above eighty or a 
 hundred steps), I waited for my solitary co-tenant of the 
 Cop. She was a little blown by running, and could not 
 easily speak ; besides which, at the very moment of her 
 coming up, the preternatural column of waters, running 
 in the very opposite direction to the natural current of 
 the river, came up with us, ran by with the ferocious up- 
 roar of a hurricane, sent up the sides of the Cop a sa- 
 lute 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, I it 
 was that spoke first ; notwithstanding the fact, notorious 
 and undeniable, that I had never been introduced to her. 
 Here, however, be it understood, as a case now solemnly 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 385 
 
 ndjudicated and set at rest, that in the midst of any 
 great natural convulsion — earthquake, suppose, water- 
 spout, tornado, or eruption of Vesuvius — it shall and 
 may be lawful in all time coming (any usage or tradi- 
 tion to the contrary notwithstanding), for two English 
 people to communicate with each other, although, by 
 affidavit made before two justices of the peace, it shall 
 have been proved that no previous introduction had 
 been possible ; in all other cases the old statute of non- 
 intercourse holds good. Meantime, the present case, in 
 default of more circumstantial evidence, might be re- 
 garded, 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 re- 
 serve gave way under this boiling sense of having been 
 so recently running for life : and then again, suppose 
 the water column should come back — riding along with 
 the current, and no longer riding against it — in that 
 case, we and all the country Palatine might soon have 
 to run for our lives. Under such threatenings of com- 
 mon peril, surely the irapprjo-ia, or unlimited license of 
 speech, ought spontaneously to proclaim itself without 
 waiting for sanction. 
 
 So I asked her the meaning of this horrible tumult in 
 the waters ; how did she read the mystery ? Her an- 
 swer was, that though she had never before seen such a 
 tiling, yet from her grandmother she had often heard of 
 it ; and, if she had run before it, that was because /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 
 25 
 
386 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 of these." So ignorant was I, that, until that m oient, I 
 had never heard of such a nervous affection in rivers. 
 Subsequently I found that, amongst English rivers, the 
 neighboring river Severn, a far more important stream, 
 suffered at spring tides the same kind of hysterics, and, 
 perhaps, some few other rivers in this British island ; but 
 amongst Indian rivers, only the Ganges. 
 
 At last, when the Bore had been discussed to the full 
 extent of our united ignorance, I went off to the subjefif 
 of that other curse, far more afflicting than any conceiva- 
 ble bore — viz., the foreign letter iu 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 per- 
 son truly qualified to receive it. Might not my fair friend 
 on the Cop be marked out by Fate as " the coming 
 woman " born to deliver me from this pocket curse? It 
 is true that she displayed a rustic simplicity somewhat 
 resembling that of Audrey in " As you like it." Her, 
 in fact, not at all more than Audrey, had the gods been 
 pleased to make "poetical." But, for my particular 
 mission, that might be amongst her best qualifications. 
 At any rate, I w^as wearied in spirit under my load of re- 
 sponsibility ; personally to liberate myself by visiting 
 the post-office, too surely I felt as the ruin of my enter- 
 prise in its very outset. Some agent must be employed ; 
 and where could one be found promising by looks, words, 
 manners, more trustworthiness than this agent, sent by 
 accident ? The case almost explained itself. She 
 readily understood how the resemblance of a name had 
 thrown the letter into my possession ; and that the 
 simple remedy was — to restore it to the right owner 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 387 
 
 Jirough the right channel, which channel was the never- 
 snoiigh-to-be-esteemed General Post-office, at that time 
 pitching its tents and bivouacking nightly in Lombard 
 Street, but for this special case legally represented by 
 the Chester head-office ; a service of no risk to her, for 
 which, on the contrary, all parties would thank her. I, 
 to begin, begged to put my thanks into the shape of half- 
 a-crown ; but, as some natural doubts arose with respect 
 Trf^W pre'cise station in life (for she might be a farmer's 
 wife, and not a servant), I thought it advisable to postu- 
 late the existence of some youthful daughter ; to which 
 mythological person I begged to addres my offering, 
 when incarnated in the shape of a doll. 
 
 I therefore, Deucalion that was or had been provis- 
 ionally 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 Thessalian vales of Tempe, but — 
 O ye powers of moral anachronism ! to the Chester 
 Post-office ; and warning her on no account to be pre- 
 maturely wheedled out of her secret. Her position, 
 diplomatically speaking, was better (as I made her un- 
 derstand) than that of the post-office ; she having some- 
 thing in her gift — viz., an appointment to forty guineas ; 
 whereas in the counter-gift of the proud post-office was 
 nothing; neither for instant fruition nor in far off rever- 
 sion. Her, in fact, one might regard as a Pandora, 
 carrying a box with something better than hope at the 
 bottom ; for hope too often betrays, but a draft upon 
 Smith, Payne, & Smith, which never betrays, and for a 
 Bum which, on the authority of Goldsmith, makes an 
 English clergyman " passing rich " through a whole 
 
388 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 twelvemonth, entitled her to look scornfully upon every 
 second person that she met. 
 
 In about two hours the partner of my solitary king- 
 dom upon the Cop reappeared, with the welcome assur- 
 ance that Chester had survived the Bore, that all was 
 right, and that anything which ever had been looking 
 crooked was now made straight as the path of an arrow. 
 She had given " my love " (so she said) to the post-office ; 
 had been thanked by more than either one or two 
 amongst the men of letters who figured in the equipage 
 of that establishment ; and had been assured that, long 
 before daylight departed, one large cornucopia of justice 
 and felicity would be emptied out upon the heads of all 
 parties in the drama. I myself, not the least afHicted 
 person on the roll, was already released — suddenly re- 
 leased, 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 have brought the postmaster-gen- 
 eral down upon their haunches ; and the household at 
 the Priory were released from all anxieties, great and 
 small, sound and visionary, on the question of my fancied 
 felony. 
 
 In those anxieties, one person there was that never 
 had condescended to participate. This was my eldest 
 sister, Mary — just eleven months senior to myself. 
 She was among the gentlest of girls, and yet from the 
 very first she had testified the most incredulous disdain 
 of all who fancied her brother capable of any thought so 
 base as that of meditating a wrong to a needy exile. At 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 389 
 
 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 me in 
 Chester, except what concerned this particular sister. 
 My business with her was not to thank her for the reso- 
 lute justice which she had done me, since as yet I could 
 not know of that service, but simply to see her, to learn 
 the domestic news of the Priory, and, according to the 
 possibilities of the case, to concert with her some plan 
 of regular correspondence. Meantime it happened that 
 a maternal uncle, a military man on the Bengal estab- 
 lishment, who had come to England on a three years' 
 leave of absence (according to the custom in those days), 
 was at this time a visitor at the Priory. My mother's 
 establishment of servants was usually limited to five 
 persons — all, except one, elderly and torpid, But my 
 uncle, who had brought to England some beautiful Arab 
 and Persian horses, found it necessary to gather about 
 his stables an extra body of men and boys. These were 
 all alert and active ; so that, when I reconnoitred the 
 windows of the Priory in the dusk, 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 natu- 
 rally have been occupied by her, but I also found myself 
 growing into an object of special attention to certain un- 
 known servants, who, having no doubt received instruc- 
 
 * Some people are irritated, or even fancy themselves insulted, by 
 overt acts of alliteration, as many people are by puns. On their ac- 
 count 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 lime there were nine f's in the original cast of the sentence, 
 until I, in pity of the affronted people, substituted ^emafe agent tuxfe- 
 ■naU friend. 
 
390 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 tions to look out for me, easily inferred from my anxious 
 movements that I must be the person "wanted." 
 Unfiasy at all the novel appearances of things, I went 
 away, and returned, after an hour's interval, armed with 
 a note to my sister, requesting her to watch for an op- 
 portunity of coming out for a few minutes under the 
 shadows of the little ruins in the Priory garden * where 
 
 * " The little ruins in the Priory garden ; " — St. John's Priory had 
 been part of the monastic foundation attached to the very ancient 
 church of St. John, standing beyond the walls of Chester. Early in 
 the seventeenth century, this Priory, or so much of it as re- 
 mained, was occupied as a dweUing-house by Sir Robert Cotton the 
 antiquary. And there, according to tradition, he had been visited by 
 Ben Jonson. All that remained of the Priory when used as a domestic 
 residence by Cotton was upon a miniature scale, except only the 
 kitchen — a noble room, with a groined roof of stone, exactly as it had 
 been fitted to the uses of the monastic establishment. The little hall 
 of entrance, the dining-room, and principal bedroom, were in a mod- 
 est style of elej^ance, fitted by the scale of accommodation for the 
 abode of a literary bachelor, and pretty nearly as Cotton had left them 
 two centuries before. But the miniature character of the Priory, which 
 had dwindled by succcessive abridgments from a royal quarto into a 
 pretty duodecimo, was seen chiefly in the beautiful ruins which 
 adorned the little lawn, across which access was gained to the house 
 through the hall. These ruins amounted at the most to three arches 
 — which, because round and not pointed, were then usually called 
 Saxon, as contradistinguished from Gothic. What might be the exact 
 classification 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 appendage, wore a character of harsh and naked simplicity 
 that was repulsive. But the little ruins were really beautiful, and 
 drew continual visits from artists and sketchers through every succes- 
 sive summer. Whether they had any architectural enrichments, I do 
 not remember. But they interested all people — first by their minia- 
 ture scale, which would have qualified them (if portable) for a direct 
 introduction amongst the "properties" and Dramatis personae on our 
 London opera boards ; and, secondly, by the exquisite beauty of the 
 Bhrubs, wild flowers, and ferns, that surmounted the arches with natu- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-BATEK. 
 
 391 
 
 I meantime would be waiting. This note I gave to a 
 stranger, whose costume showed him to be a groom, 
 begging him to give it to the young lady whose address 
 it bore. He answered, in a respectful tone, that he 
 would do so ; but he could not sincerely have meant it, 
 since (as I soon learned) it was impossible. In fact, not 
 one minute had I waited, when in glided amongst the 
 ruins — not my fair sister, but my bronzed Bengal uncle ! 
 A Bengal tiger would not more have startled me. Now, 
 to a dead certainty, I said, here comes a fatal barrier to 
 the prosecution of my scheme. I was mistaken. Be- 
 tween my mother and my uncle there existed the very 
 deepest affection ; for they regarded each other as sole 
 relics of a household once living together in memora- 
 ble harmony. But in many features of character no 
 human beings could stand off from each other in more 
 lively repulsion. And this was seen on the present oc- 
 casion. My dear excellent mother, from the eter- 
 nal 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 
 
 ral coronets of the richest composition. In this condition of attractive- 
 ness my mother saw this little Priory, which was then on sale. As a 
 residence, it had the great advantage of standing somewhat aloof from 
 the city of Chester, which however (like all cathedral cities), was quiet 
 and respectable in the composition of its population. My mother 
 bought it, added a drawing-room, eight or nine bedrooms, dressing- 
 rooms, etc., all on the miniature scale corresponding to the original 
 plan : and thus formed a very pretty residence, with the grace of 
 monastic antiquity hanging over the whole little retreat. 
 
392 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 was a man of even morbid activity. It was so exquisitely 
 natural in his eyes that any rational person should pre- 
 fer moving about amongst the breezy mountains of 
 Wales, to a slavish routine of study amongst books grim 
 with dust, and masters too probably still more dusty, 
 that he seemed disposed to regard my conduct as an ex- 
 traordinary act of virtue. On his advice, it was decided 
 that there could be no hope in any contest with my 
 main wishes, and that I should be left to pursue my 
 original purpose of walking amongst the Welsh moun- 
 tains ; provided I chose to do so upon the slender allow- 
 ance 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 have clandestinely given me anything I asked. 
 But I myself, from general ignorance (in which accom- 
 plishment I excelled), judged this to be sufficient ; and 
 at this point my mother, hitherto passively acquiescent 
 in my uncle's proposals, interfered with a decisive rigor 
 that in my own heart I could not disapprove. Any 
 larger allowance, most reasonably she urged, what was 
 it but to '' make proclamation to my two younger broth- 
 ers that rebellion bore a premium, and that mutiny was 
 the ready road to ease and comfort ? " My conscience 
 smote me at these words : I felt something like an elec- 
 tric shock on this sudden reference, so utterly unex- 
 pected, to my brothers ; for, to say the truth, I had 
 never once admitted them to my thoughts in forecasting 
 the eventual consequences that might possibly unroll 
 themselves from my own headstrong act Here now, 
 within three days, rang like a solemn knell, reverberat- 
 vng from the sounding-board within my awakened con- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 393 
 
 science, one of those many self-reproaches so dimly 
 masked, but not circumstantially prefigured, by the se- 
 cret 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 
 wight take effect thrilled me with remorse. My next 
 brother, a boy of generous and heroic temper, was at a 
 school governed by a brutal and savage master. This 
 brother, I well know, had justifying reasons, ten times 
 weightier than any which I could plead, for copying my 
 precedent. Most probable it was that he would do so ; 
 but I learned many years subsequently from himself that 
 in fact he did not. The man's diabolical malice at last 
 made further toleration impossible. Without thinking 
 of my example, under very different circumstances my 
 brother won his own emancipation in ways suggested by 
 his own views and limited by his own resources ; he got 
 afloat upon the wide, wide world of ocean ; ran along a 
 perilous seven-years' career of nautical romance ; had 
 his name almost blotted out from all memories in Eng- 
 land ; 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 storm- 
 ing party at Monte Video, fought under the eye of Sir 
 Home Popham, the commodore, and within twenty-four 
 hours after the victory was rated as a midshipman on 
 board the Diadem (a 64-gun ship), which bore Sir 
 Home's flag. All this I have more circumstantially 
 narrated elsewhere. I repeat the sum of it here, as 
 
394 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 showing that his elopement from a brutal tyrant was not 
 due to any misleading of mine. I happen to know this 
 now — but then I could not know it. And if I had so 
 entirely overlooked one such possible result, full of 
 calamity to my youthful brothers, why might I not have 
 overlooked many hundreds beside, equally probable — 
 equally full of peril ? That consideration saddened me, 
 and deepened more and more the ominous suggestion — 
 the oracle full of woe — that spoke from those Belshazzar 
 thunderings upon the wall of the Whispering Gallery. 
 In fact, every intricate and untried path in life, where it 
 was from the first a matter of arbitrary choice to enter 
 upon it or avoid it, is effectually a path through a vast 
 Hercynian forest, unexplored and unmapped, where each 
 several turn in your advance leaves you open to new 
 anticipations of what is next to be expected, and conse- 
 quently open to altered valuations of all that has been 
 already traversed. Even the character of your own ab- 
 solute experience, past and gone, which (if anything in 
 this world) you might surely answer for as sealed and 
 settled forever — even this you must submit to hold in 
 suspense, as a thing conditional and contingent upon what 
 is yet to come — liable to have its provisional character 
 aflBrmed or reversed, according to the new combinations 
 into which it may enter with elements only yet perhaps 
 in the earliest stages of development. 
 
 Saddened by these reflections, I was still more sad- 
 dened by the chilling manner of my mother. If I could 
 presume to descry a fault in my mother, it. was — that 
 she turned the chilling aspects of her high-toned char- 
 acter too exclusively upon those whom, in any degree, she 
 knew or supposed to be promoters of evil. Sometimes 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 395 
 
 her austerity might seem even unjust. But at present 
 the whole artillery of her displeasure seemed to be un- 
 masked, m\A justly unmasked, against a moral aberra- 
 tion, that offered for itself no excuse that was obvious in 
 one moment, that was legible at one glance, that could 
 utter itself in one word. My mother was predisposed 
 to think ill of all causes that required many words : I, 
 predisposed to subtleties of all sorts and degrees, had 
 naturally become acquainted with cases that could not 
 unrobe their apparellings down to that degree of sim- 
 plicity. If in this world there is one misery having no 
 relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incom- 
 municable. And if another Sphinx should arise to pro- 
 pose 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 Incom- 
 municable. At this moment, 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 hope- 
 lessness that was immeasurable from all effort at ex- 
 planation. 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 
 realize in one deadly experience the suffering with 
 which I had fought through more than three months, the 
 amount of physical anguish, the desolation of all genial 
 life, she would have uttered a rapturous absolution of 
 that which else must always seem to her a mere ex- 
 plosion of wilful insubordination. " In this brief ex- 
 perience," she would exclaim, " I read the record of 
 your acquittal ; in this fiery torment I acknowledge the 
 
396 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 gladiatorial resistance.'' Such in the case supposed 
 would have been her revised verdict. But this case was 
 exquisitely impossible. Nothing which offered itself to 
 my rhetoric gave any but the feeblest and most childish 
 reflection of my past suiferings. Just so helpless did I 
 feel, disarmed into just the same languishing impotence 
 to face (or make an effort at facing) the difficulty before 
 me, as most of us have felt in the dreams of our child- 
 hood when lying down without a struggle before some 
 all-conquering lion. I felt that the situation was one 
 without hope ; a solitary word, which I attempted to 
 mould upon my lips, died away into a sigh ; and pas- 
 sively I acquiesced in the apparent confession spread 
 through all the appearances — that in reality I had no 
 palliation to produce. 
 
 One alternative, in the offer made to me, was, that I 
 had permission to stay at the Priory. The Briory or 
 the mountainous region of Wales, was offered freely to 
 my choice. Either of the two offered an attractive 
 abode. The Priory, it may be fancied, was clogged with 
 the liability to fresh and intermitting reproaches. But 
 this was not so. I knew my mother sufficiently to be 
 assured that, once having expressed her sorrowful con- 
 demnation of my act, having made it impossible for me 
 to misunderstand her views, she was ready to extend 
 her wonted hospitality to me, and (as regarded all prac- 
 tical matters) her wonted kindness ; but not that sort of 
 kindness which could make me forget that I stood un- 
 der the deepest shadows of her displeasure, or could 
 leave me for a moment free to converse at my ease upon 
 any and every subject. A man that is talking on simple 
 toleration, and, as it were, under permanent protest, can- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-BATEK. 397 
 
 not feel himself morally at his ease, unless very obtuse 
 and coarse in his sensibilities. 
 
 Mine under any situation approaching to the present, 
 were so far from being obtuse, that they were morbidly 
 and extravagantly acute. I had erred : that I knew, 
 and did not disguise from myself. Indeed, the rapture 
 of anguish with which I had recurred involuntarily to 
 my experience of the Whispering Gallery, and the sym- 
 bolic meaning which I had given to that experience, 
 manifested indirectly my deep sense of error through 
 the dim misgiving which attended it — that in some 
 mysterious way the sense and the consequences of this 
 error would magnify themselves at every stage of life, 
 in proportion as they were viewed retrospectively from 
 greater and greater distances. I had, besides, through 
 the casual allusion to my brothers, suddenly become 
 painfully aware of another and separate failure in the 
 filial obligations resting on myself Any mother, who 
 is a widow, has especial claims on the cooperation of 
 her eldest son in all means of giving a beneficial bias 
 to the thoughts and purposes of the younger children : 
 and, if any mother, then by a title how special could my 
 own mother invoke such cooperation, who had on her 
 part satisfied all the claims made upon her maternal 
 character, by self-sacrifices as varied as privately I knew 
 them to be exemplary. Whilst yet comparatively young, 
 not more than thirty-six, she had sternly refused all 
 countenance, on at least two separate occasions, to dis- 
 tinguished 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 
 
398 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 corresponding earnestness on my part in lightening, as 
 much as possible, the burden of her responsibilities? 
 Alas ! too certainly, as regarded that duty, I felt my 
 own failure : one opportunity had been signally lost, and 
 yet, on the other hand, I also felt that more might be 
 pleaded on my behalf than could by possibility be ap- 
 parent 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 sole auxiliary ; that was my eldest sister Mary ; for 
 my younger sister Jane was a mere infant. Blindly and 
 mechanically, I stretched out my arms as if to arrest her 
 attention ; and giving utterance to my laboring 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 groon's 
 ready acceptance of my letter to her had pre-occupied 
 me with the belief that I should see her in a few mo- 
 ments. But she was far away, on a mission of anxious, 
 sisterly love. Immediately after my elopement, an ex- 
 press had been sent off to the Priory from Manchester ; 
 this express, well mounted, had not spent more than four 
 hours on the road. He must have passed me on my 
 first day's walk ;■ and, within an hour after his arrival, 
 came a communication from the 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 connect- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 399 
 
 ing tlie two incidents. I was grateful to dear Mary for 
 resisting such strong plausibilities against me ; and yet 
 I could not feel entitled to complain of those who had 
 not resisted. The probability seemed that I must have 
 violated the laws to some extent, either by forgery or 
 by fraudulent appropriation. In either case, the most 
 eligible course seemed to be my instant expatriation. 
 France (this being the year of peace) or Holland would 
 offer the best asylum until the affair should be settled ; 
 and, as there could be no anxieties in any quarter as to 
 the main thing concerned in the issue — viz., the money 
 — in any case there was no reason to fear a vindictive 
 pursuit, even on the worst assumption as regarded the 
 offence. An elderly gentleman, long connected with the 
 family, and in many cases an agent for the guardians, 
 at this moment offered his services as counsellor and 
 protector to my sister Mary. Two hours therefore from 
 the arrival of the Manchester express (who, starting 
 about 11 A. M., had reached Chester at 3 p. m.), all the 
 requisite steps having been concerted with one of the 
 Chester banks for getting letters of credit, etc., a car- 
 riage-and-four was at the Priory gate, into which stepped 
 ray 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 Preston, 
 about twenty more. Within a trifle, these three stages 
 make fifty miles ; and so much did my chasers, that 
 sursued when no man fled, accomplish before sleeping. 
 On the next day, long and long before the time when I, 
 
400 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 in my humble pedestrian character, reached Chester, my 
 sister's party had reached Ambleside — distant about 
 ninety-two miles from Liverpool, consequently some- 
 where about a hundred and seven miles from the Priory. 
 This chasing party, with good reason, supposed them- 
 selves to be on my traces ever after reaching " proud 
 Preston," which is the point of confluence for the 
 Liverpool and Manchester roads northwards. For I 
 myself, having originally planned my route for the 
 English lakes, purposely suiFered some indications of 
 that plan to remain behind me, in the hope of thus 
 giving a false direction to any pursuit that might be at- 
 tempted. 
 
 The further course of this chase was disagreeably 
 made known to me about four years later, on attaining 
 my majority, by a " little account " of about £150 against 
 my little patrimonial fortune. Of all the letters from the 
 Priory (which, however, from natural oversight were 
 not thought of until the day after my own arrival at 
 the Priory — i. «., the third day after my sister's depar- 
 ture), not one caught them : which was unfortunate. For 
 the journey to and from the lakes, together with a circuit 
 of more than one hundred and fifty miles amongst the 
 lakes, would at any rate have run up to nearly four 
 hundred miles. But it happened that my pursuers not 
 having time to sift such intelligence as they received, 
 were misled into an excursus of full two hundred miles 
 more, by chasing an imaginary " me " to the caves, thence 
 to Bolton Abbey, thence nearly to York. Altogether, 
 the journey amounted to above six hundred miles, all 
 performed with four horses. Now at that time the cost 
 of four horses — which in the cheapest hay and corn 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OIIUM-BATEB. 101 
 
 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, postUions, hostlers ; so that the total 
 amount, with the natural expenses of the three travellers 
 at the inns, ran up to five shillings a mile. Conse- 
 quently, five shillings being a quarter of the 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 UUeswater) — 
 
 To an echo, first quality ^0 10 
 
 To do., second quality 050 
 
 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 snobs who would put up with a vile Brum- 
 magem substitute for " the genuine article." 
 
 Trivial, meantime, as regarded any permanent conse- 
 quences, would have been this casual inroad upon my 
 patrimony. Had I waited until my sister returned 
 home, which I might have been sure could only have 
 been delayed through the imperfectly concerted system 
 of correspondence, all would have prospered. From her 
 I should have received the cordiality and the genial sym- 
 pathy which I needed ; I could have quietly pursued my 
 studies ; and my Oxford matriculation would have fol- 
 lowed as a matter of course. But unhappily, having for 
 so long a time been seriously shaken in health, any in- 
 terruption of my wild open-air system of life instantly 
 threw me back into nervous derangements. Past all doubt 
 it had now become that the alfresco life, to which I had 
 
 26 
 
402 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 looked with so much hopefulness for a, sure and rapid 
 restoration to health, was even more potent than I had 
 supposed it. Literally kresistible it seemed in reorgan- 
 izing 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 o-ui/rpo^ov ojli/*o, 
 beaming with perfect sympathy, I resolved to avail my- 
 self of those wild mountainous and sylvan attractions 
 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 attractive. 
 The vale of Gressford, for instance, within the Flintshire 
 border, and yet not more than seven miles distant, 
 offered a lovely little seclusion ; and to this I had a 
 privileged access ; and at first I tried it ; but it was a 
 dressed and ornamented pleasure-ground; and two ladies 
 of some distinction, nearly related to each other, and old 
 friends of my mother, were in a manner the ladies para- 
 mount within the ring fence of this Arcadian vale. But 
 this did not offer what I wanted: Everything was ele- 
 gant, polished, quiet, throughout the lawns and groves 
 of this verdant retreat: no rudeness was allowed here; 
 even the little brooks were trained to " behave them- 
 selves ; '' 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 power. Here 
 my introductions were rather too favorable ; since they 
 forced me into society. From Gressford, however, the 
 character of the scene, considered as a daily residence, 
 very soon repelled me, however otherwise fascinating by 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 403 
 
 the accomplishments of its two possessors. Just two- 
 and-twenty miles from Chester, meantime, lay a far 
 grander scene, the fine vale of Llangollen in the centre of 
 Denbighshire. Here, also, the presiding residents were 
 two ladies, whose romantic retirement from the world at 
 an early age had attracted for many years a general 
 interest to their persons, habits, and opinions. These 
 ladies were Irish — Miss Ponsonby, and Lady Eleanor 
 Butler, a sister of Lord Ormond. I had twice been 
 formally presented to them by persons of rank to stamp 
 a value upon this introduction. But naturally, though 
 high-bred courtesy concealed any such open expressions 
 of feeling, they must have felt a very slight interest in 
 myself or my opinions. * I grieve to say that my own 
 feelings were not more ardent towards them. Never- 
 theless, I presented myself at their cottage as often as I 
 passed through Llangollen ; and was always courteously 
 received when they happened to be in the country. 
 However, as it was not ladies that I was seeking in Wales, 
 I now pushed on to Carnarvonshire ; and for some weeks 
 
 * It is worthy of notice that, when I, in this year 1802, and again in 
 after years, endeavored to impress them favorably with regard to 
 Wordsworth as a poet (that subject having not been introduced by my- 
 self, but by one of the ladies, who happened to have a Cambridge 
 friend intimate with the man, and perhaps with his works), neither of 
 them was disposed to look with any interest or hopefulness upon his 
 pretensions. But, at a period long subsequent to this, when the House 
 of Commons had rung with applause on Sergeant Talfourd's mention 
 of his name, and when all American tourists of any distinction flocked 
 annually to Kydal 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. 
 
404 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 took a very miniature suite of rooms — viz., one room 
 and a closet — at Bangor. 
 
 FROM WALES TO LONDON.** 
 
 There were already, even in those days of 1802, nu- 
 merous inns, erected at reasonable distances from each 
 other, 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 travel- 
 ling. Indeed, the majority of those whom I met as fel- 
 lovr-tourists in the quiet little cottage-parlors of the 
 Welsh posting-houses were pedestrian travellers. All 
 the way from Shrewsbury through Llangollen, Llanrwst,* 
 Conway, Bangor, then turning to the left at right angles 
 through Carnarvon, and so on to Dolgelly (the chief 
 town of Merionethshire), Tan-y-Bwlch, Harlech, Bar- 
 mouth, and through the sweet solitudes of Cardiganshire, 
 or turning back sharply towards the English border 
 through the gorgeous wood scenery of Montgomery- 
 shire — everywhere at intermitting distances of twelve 
 to sixteen miles, I found the most comfortable inns. One 
 feature indeed of repose in all this chain of solitary rest- 
 ing-houses — viz., the fact that none of them rose above 
 two stories in height — was due to the modest scale on 
 which the travelling system of the Principality had 
 moulded itself in correspondence to the calls of England, 
 which then (but be it remembered this then was in 1802, 
 a year of peace) threw a very small proportion of her 
 -.fast migratory population annually into this sequestered 
 
 * *' Llanrwst ;" — This is an alarming word for the eye ; one vowel 
 to what the English eye counts as seven consonants : but it is easily 
 pronounced as Tlanroost. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 405 
 
 channel. No huge Babylonian centres of commerce 
 towered into the clouds on these sweet sylvan routes : 
 no hurricanes of haste, or fever-stricken armies of horses 
 and flying chariots, tormented the echoes in these moun- 
 tain 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 Den- 
 bigh, Montgomery, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and Cardigan. 
 Sleeping, for instance, and breakfasting at Carnarvon ; 
 then, by an easy nine-mile walk, going forwards to din- 
 ner at Bangor, thence to Aber — nine miles ; or to 
 Llanberris ; and so on forever, accomplishing seventy 
 to ninety or one hundred miles in a week. This, upon 
 actual experiment, and for week after week, I found the 
 most delightful of lives. Here was the eternal motion 
 of winds and rivers, or of the Wandering Jew liberated 
 from the persecution which compelled him to move, and 
 turned his breezy freedom into a killing captivity. 
 Happier life I cannot imagine than this vagrancy, if the 
 weather were but tolerable, through endless successions 
 of changing beauty, and towards evening a courteous 
 welcome in a pretty rustic home — that having all the 
 luxuries of a fine hotel (in particular some luxuries * 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. 
 
406 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 Life on this model was but too delightful ; and to my- 
 self especially, that am never thoroughly in health un- 
 less 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 fla- 
 grant health, health boiling over in fiery rapture, which 
 ran along, side by side, with exercise on this scale, whilst 
 all the while from morning to night I was inhaling 
 mountain air, soon passed into a hateful scourge. Per- 
 quisites 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 ex- 
 pense of a bed and the chambermaid by sleeping amongst 
 ferns or furze upon a hillside ; and perhaps with a cloak 
 of sufficient weight as well as compass, or an Arab's bur- 
 noose, 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, and not larger 
 than an ordinary umbrella : but to pitch this securely 
 I found difficult ; and on windy nights it became a troub- 
 lesome companion. As winter drew near, this bivouack- 
 ing system became too dangerous to attempt. Still one 
 may bivouac 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 
 
COKFBSSIONS 01" AN OPIUM-EATER. 407 
 
 only through, ignorance of zoology, was, lest, whilst my 
 sleeping face was upturned to the stars, some one of the 
 many little Brahminical-looking cows on the Cambrian 
 hills, one or other, might poach her foot into the centre 
 of my face. I do not suppose any fixed hostility of that 
 nature to English faces in Welsh cows : but everywhere 
 I observe in the feminine mind something of beautiful 
 caprice, a lioral exuberance of that charming wilful- 
 ness which characterizes our dear human sisters I fear 
 through all worlds. Against Thugs I had Juvenal's 
 license to be careless in the emptiness of my pockets 
 {cantabit vacuus* 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 shil- 
 ling in one's purse, without reading in that Juvenalian 
 vacuitas any privilege or license of exemption from the 
 general fate of travellers that intrude upon the solitude 
 of robbers. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, upon some occasion, which I have for- 
 gotten, is represented by his biographers as accounting 
 fot an undeserving person's success in these terms : 
 " Why, I suppose that his nonsense suited their non- 
 sense." 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 whatsoever way, success is success ; 
 
 * " Vaewus: " — I am afraid, though many a year hag passed since 
 last I read Juvenal, that the true classical sense of vacuus is, careless, 
 clear from all burden of anxiety, so that vacuitas will be the result of 
 immunity from robbery. But suffer me to understand it in the sense 
 al free from the burden of property, in which sense vacuitas would be 
 the cause of such an immunity. 
 
408 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 and even nonsense, if it is to be victorious nonsense, — 
 victorious over tlie fatal habit of yawning in those who 
 listen, and in some cases over the habit of disputing, — 
 must involve a deeper art or more effective secret of 
 power than is easily attained. Nonsense, in fact, is a 
 very diflBcult thing. Not every seventh son of a seventh 
 son (to use Milton's words) is equal to the task of keep- 
 ing and maintaining a company of decent men in ortho- 
 dox nonsense for a matter of two hours. Come from 
 what fountain it may, all talk that succeeds to the ex- 
 tent of raising a wish to meet the talker again, must 
 contain salt ; must be seasoned with some flavoring ele- 
 ment pungent enough to neutralize the natural tenden- 
 cies of all mixed conversation, not vigilantly tended, to 
 lose itself in insipidities and platitudes. Above all 
 things, I shunned, as I would shun a pestilence, Coler- 
 idge's capital error, which through life he practised, of 
 keeping the audience in a state of passiveness. Unjust 
 this waiS to others,, but most of all to himself. This 
 eternal stream of talk which never for one instant inter- 
 mitted, and allowed no momentary opportunity of reac- 
 tion to the persecuted and baited auditor, was absolute 
 ruin to the interests of the talker himself. Always pas- 
 sive — always acted upon, never allowed to react, into 
 what state did the poor afiBicted listener — he that played 
 the role of listener — collapse ? He returned home in 
 the exhausted condition of one that has been drawn up 
 just before death from the bottom of a well occupied by 
 foul gases ; and, of course, hours before he had reached 
 that perilous point of depression, he had lost all power of 
 distinguishing, understanding, or connecting. I, for my 
 part, without needing to think of the nnamiable arro- 
 
CONFESSIONS or AN OPIUM-EATER. 409 
 
 gance involved in such a habit, simply on principles of 
 deadliest selfishness, should have avoided thus incapaci- 
 tating 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 mem- 
 ory, and the far greater advantage of a logical instinct 
 for feeling in a moment the secret analogies or parallel- 
 isms that connected things else apparently remote, I en- 
 joyed these two peculiar gifts for conversation : first, an 
 inexhaustible fertility of topics, and therefore of resources 
 for illustrating or for varying any subject that chance or 
 purpose suggested ; secondly, a prematurely awakened 
 sense of art applied to conversation. I had learned the 
 use of vigilance in evading with civility the approach of 
 wearisome discussions, and in impressing, quietly and 
 oftentimes imperceptibly, a new movement upon dia- 
 logues that loitered painfully, or see-sawed unprofitably. 
 That it was one function of art to hide and mask itself 
 {artis est artem celare), this I well knew. Neither was 
 there much art required. The chief demand was for new 
 facts, or new views, or for views newly-colored impress- 
 ing 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 myste- 
 rious ; pointed epigrammatic sayings and jests — even 
 somewhat worn — were useful ; a seasonable quotation 
 in verse was always effective ; and illustrative anecdotes 
 diffused a grace over the whole movement of the dia- 
 
410 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 logue. It would have been coxcombry to practise any 
 elaborate or any conspicuous art : few and simple were 
 any artifices that I ever employed ; but, being hidden 
 and seasonable, they were often effective. And the whole 
 result was, that I became exceedingly popular within 
 my narrow circle of friends. This circle was necessarily 
 a fluctuating one, since it was mainly composed of 
 tourists that happened to linger for a few weeks in or 
 near Snowdonia, making their headquarters at Bethgel- 
 lert 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 vcommission of lieutenant in our 
 British navy, but now, in an interval of peace, was 
 seeking to extend his knowledge of England, and also 
 of the English language ; though in that, as regarded 
 the fullest command of it colloquially, he had little, in- 
 deed, to learn. From him it was that I obtained my 
 first lessons in German, and my first acquaintance with 
 German literature. Paul Richter I then first heard of, 
 together with Hippel, a humorist admired by Kant, and 
 Hamann, also classed as a humorist, but a nondescript 
 writer, singularly obscure, whom I have never since seen 
 in the hands of any Englishman, except once of Sir Wil- 
 liam Hamilton. With all these writers Mr. De Haren 
 had the means of making me usefully acquainted in the 
 small portable library which filled one of his trunks. 
 But the most stationary members of this semi-literary 
 circle were Welshmen ; two of them lawyers, one a clergy- 
 man. This last had been regularly educated at Oxford 
 — as a member of Jesus (the Welsh college) — and was 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 411 
 
 a man of extensive information. The lawyers had not 
 enjoyed the same advantages, but they had read diligent- 
 ly, and were interesting companions. "Wales, as is pretty 
 well known, breeds a population somewhat litigious. I 
 do not think the worse of them for that. The martial 
 Butlers and the heroic Talbots of the fifteenth century, 
 having no regular opening for their warlike fury in the 
 seventeenth century, took to quarrelling with each other ; 
 and no letters are more bitter than those which to this 
 day survive from the hostile correspondence of the 
 brother * Talbots contemporary with the last days of 
 Shakespeare. 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 the principal towns in their districts. 
 In those towns continually I met them ; and continually 
 we renewed our literary 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 partially intermitting, that it was easy beyond 
 measure upon any three weeks' expenditure, by living 
 with cottagers, to save two guineas out of the three. 
 Mr. De Haren assured me that even in an inn, and not 
 in a poor man's cottage (but an unpretending rustic 
 inn, where the mistress of the house took upon herself 
 the function of every possible servant in turn — cook, 
 waiter, chambermaid, boots, ostler), he had passed a day 
 
 * See especially in the book written by Sir Egerton Brydges (I for. 
 get the title) on the Peerage in the reign of James I. 
 
412 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 or two ; and for what he considered a really elegant 
 dinner, as regarded ever jthing except the table equipage 
 Cthat being rude and coarse), he had paid only sixpence. 
 This very inn, about ten or twelve miles south of Dol- 
 gelly, I myself visited some time later ; and I found Mr. 
 De Haren's account in all points confirmed ; the sole 
 drawback upon the comfort of the visitor being, that the 
 fuel was chiefly of green wood, and with a chimney that 
 smoked. I suffered so much under this kind of smoke, 
 which irritates and inflames the eyes more than any 
 other, that on the following day reluctantly I took leave 
 of that obliging pluralist the landlady, and really felt 
 myself blushing on settling the bill, until I bethought 
 me of the green wood, which, upon the whole, seemed 
 to balance the account. I could not then, nor can I now, 
 account for these preposterously low prices ; which same 
 prices, strange to say, ruled (as Wordsworth and his 
 sister often assured me) among the same kind of scenery 
 — i. e., amongst the English lakes — at the very same 
 time. To account for it, as people often do, by alleging 
 the want of markets for agricultural produce, is crazy 
 political economy ; since the remedy for paucity of 
 markets, and consequent failure of competition, is, cer- 
 tainly not to sell at losing rates, but to forbear producing, 
 and consequently not to sell at all. * 
 
 * 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 thehealth of my excellent hostess, that deter- 
 mined 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPITJM-EATER. 
 
 413 
 
 So cheap in fact were all provisions, which one had 
 any chance of meeting with in a laboring man's house, 
 that I found it difficult under such a roof to spend six- 
 pence a day. Tea or coffee there was none ; and I did 
 not at that period very much care for either. Milk, with 
 bread (coarse, but more agreeable by much than the in- 
 sipid whity-gray bread of towns), potatoes if one wished, 
 and also a little goat's, or kid's flesh — these composed 
 the- cottager's choice of viands ; not luxurious, but pala- 
 table enough to a person who took much exercise. 
 And, if one wished, fresh-water fish could be had cheap 
 
 and another tourist who claimed her services in three or four other 
 characters previously. I inquired after the chimney — was it still 
 smoking ? She seemed surprised that it had ever been suspected of 
 anything criminal; so, as it was not a season for fires, I said no more. 
 But I saw plenty of green wood, and but a small jiroportioi^ of peats. 
 I fear, therefore, that this, the state room of the whole concern still, poi- 
 sons the peace of the unhappy tourists. One personal indemnification, 
 meantime, I must mention which this liltle guilty room made to me on 
 that same night for all the tears it had caused me to shed. It hap- 
 pened that there was a public dance held at this inn on this verj' night. 
 I therefore retired early into my bedroom, having had so long a walk, 
 and not wishing to annoy the company, or the excellent landlady, 
 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 parlor, separated from my bedroom 
 overhead by the slightest and most pervious of ceilings, arose with the 
 rising dawn the very sweetest of female voices perhaps that ever I 
 had heard, although for many j'ears an habitue ot the opera. She 
 was a stranger; a visitor from some distance; and tl was told in the 
 morning) a Methodist. What she sang, or at least sang last, were the 
 beautiful verses ot 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 chirn- 
 aey. 
 
414 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 enough ; especially trout of the very finest quality. In 
 these circumstances, I never found it easy to spend even 
 five shillings (no, not three shillings, unless vchortleber- 
 ries or fish had been bought) in one week. And thus 
 it was easy enough to create funds for my periodical 
 transmigrations back into the character of gentleman- 
 tourist. 
 
 .... About this time — just when it was becoming 
 daily more diflScult to eke out the weekly fands for high- 
 priced inns by the bivouacking system — as if some 
 overmastering fiend, some instinct of migration, sorrow- 
 ful but irresistible, were driving me forth to wander like 
 the unhappy lo of the Grecian mythus, some oestrum of 
 hidden persecution that bade my fly when no man pur- 
 sued ; not in false hope, for my hopes whispered but 
 a doubtful chance, not in reasonable fear, for all was 
 sweet pastoral quiet and autumnal beauty around me, 
 suddenly I took a fierce resolution to sacrifice my weekly 
 allowance, to slip my anchor, and to throw myself in 
 desperation upon London. Not to make the case more 
 frantic than it really was, let the reader remember what 
 it was that I found grievous in my present position, and 
 upon what possibilities it was that I relied for bettering 
 it. With a more extended knowledge of life than I at 
 that time had, it would not have been so hopeless a 
 speculation for a boy, having my accomplishments, to 
 launch himself on the boundless ocean of London. I 
 possessed attainments that bore a money value. For 
 instance, as a "Reader" to the Press in the field of 
 Greek re-publications, I might perhaps have earned a 
 Mvelihood. But these chances, which I really had, never 
 occurred to me in the light of useful resources ; or, to 
 
CCWB-ESSIONS OP AN )PIUM-15ATER. 415 
 
 Bpeak 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 com- 
 plained of in the life that I was at present living ? It 
 was this ; the dilemma proposed to my choice was — 
 that if I would — positively would — have society, I 
 must live at inns. But if I reconciled myself to a quiet 
 stationary abode in some village or hamlet, in that case 
 for me, so transcendently careless about diet, my weekly 
 guinea would have procured all that I wanted ; and in 
 some houses the advantage, quite indispensable to my 
 comfort, of a private sitting-room. Yet even here the 
 expense was most needlessly enhanced by the aristocratic 
 luxuriousness of our English system, which presumes it 
 impossible for a gentleman to sleep in his sitting-room. 
 On this footing, however, I might perhaps have com- 
 manded clean and comfortable accommodations in some 
 respectable families, to whom my noiseless habits, and 
 my respectful courtesy to women, would have recom- 
 mended me as a desirable inmate. But the deadly 
 drawback on this scheme was — the utter want of access 
 to books, or (generally speaking) to any intellectual in- 
 tercourse. I languished all the day through, and all the 
 week through — with nothing whatever, not so much as 
 the county newspaper once in seven days to relieve my 
 mortal ennui. 
 
 I have told the reader how inexplicably cheap was 
 the life in poor men's cottages. But this did not affect 
 the prices at the first-class hotels, where only I had any 
 chance of meeting society. Those, and chiefly on the 
 plea that the season was so brief, charged London prices. 
 To meet such prices, it would no longer be possible, as 
 
416 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 winter came on, to raise one-half the funds by passing 
 half the time in a less costly mode. There was an end 
 of any feasible plan for interleaving days of hardship 
 with days of ease and intellectual luxury. Meantime, 
 whilst this perplexity was resounding in one ear, in the 
 other were continually echoing the kind offers of my 
 "Welsh friends, especially the two lawyers, to furnish me 
 with any money which I might think necessary for my 
 visit to London. Twelve guineas, at length, I men- 
 tioned as probably enough. This they lent me on the 
 spot. And now, all at once, I was — ready for Lon- 
 don. 
 
 My farewell to the Principality was in the same un- 
 assuming character of pedestrian tourist as that in which 
 I had entered it. Impedimenta of any kind — that is, 
 the encumbrances of horse or baggage — I had none 
 even to the last. Where I pleased, and when I pleased, 
 I could call a halt. My last halt of any duration was 
 at Oswestry ; mere accident carried me thither, and ac- 
 cident 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 coer- 
 cion of kindness, detained me for several days; for de- 
 nial he would not take. Being as yet unmarried, he 
 could not vivify the other attractions of his most hospi- 
 table abode by the reinforcement of female society. His 
 own, however, coming recommended as it did by the 
 graces of a youthful frankness and a kindling intellect, 
 was all-sufficient for the beguiling of the longest day. 
 This Welsh friend was one of many whom I have 
 crossed in life, chained by early accident or by domestic 
 necessity to the calls of a professional service, whilst all 
 
COKFES8ION8 OF AN OMUM-KATER. 417 
 
 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 or- 
 dinary chances of provincial book-collection could be 
 reasonably expected. For generally one-half, at the 
 least, of a young man's library in a provincial town may 
 be characterized 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 sim- 
 ply 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 heav- 
 iest of household goods. Sometimes also, though more 
 rarely, it happens that an ancient family dying out, hav- 
 ing unavoidably left to executors the duty of selling 
 every chattel attached to its ancient habits of life, sud- 
 denly with meteoric glare there emerges from its hiding 
 place of centuries some great jewel of literature, a First 
 Folio of the 1623 Shakspere, an un castrated Became- 
 rone, or other dazzling Kei/iijXiov. And thus it is that a 
 large provincial library, though naturally and peacefully 
 accumulated, yet sometimes shows mute evidence of con- 
 vulsions and household tragedies ; speaks as if by records 
 of storms, and through dim mementoes of half-forgotten 
 shipwrecks. Eeal shipwrecks present often such inco- 
 herent libraries on -the floors of the hungry sea. Mag- 
 nificent 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 end- 
 ing Forget-me-nots of mighty English Indiamen. The 
 27 
 
418 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 Halsewell, with its sad parting between the captain and 
 his daughters, the Grosvenor, the Winterton, the Aber- 
 gavenny, and scores of vessels on the same scale, with 
 populations varying by births, deaths, and marriages, 
 populations large as cities, and rich as gold mines, capa- 
 ble of factions and rebellions, aU and each have liberally 
 patronized, 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 ; every- 
 thing was there that you never expected to meet any- 
 where, but certainly not to meet in company ; so that, 
 what between the library and the mercurial conversation 
 of its proprietor, elated by the rare advantage of frater- 
 nal sympathy, I was in danger of finding attractions 
 strong enough to lay me asleep over the proprieties of 
 the case, or even to set me a-dreaming over imaginary 
 cases. In fact, I had some excuse for doing so ; since I 
 knew very imperfectly the common routine of my friend's 
 life ; and from his lofty Castilian sense of the obligations 
 imposed by the great goddess Hospitality, I never should 
 have been suffered to guess at the extent in which I was 
 now gradually and unconsciously coming daily into col- 
 lision with the regular calls upon his time. To ride oflF, 
 under mask of "business," upon a circuit of a week, 
 would, in Jds eyes, have been virtually, as regards the 
 result, meanly and evasively, as regards the mode, to 
 turn me out of his house. He would sooner have died. 
 But in the meantime an accident, which revealed to me 
 the true state of things, or at least revealed a suspicion 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 419 
 
 of it, all at once armed my sense of delicacy against any 
 further lingering. Suddenly and peremptorily I an- 
 nounced my departure — that and the mode of it. For 
 a long time he fought with unaffected zeal against my 
 purpose, as nowise essential to his own free action. But 
 at last, seeing that I was in earnest, he forebore to op- 
 pose my plan, contenting himself with guiding and im- 
 proving its details. My plan had been, to walk over the 
 border into England, as far as Shrewsbury (distant from 
 Oswestry, I think, about eighteen miles), and there to 
 ascend any of the heavy stages which would convey me 
 cheaply to Birmingham — the grand focus to which all 
 the routes of England in its main central area converge. 
 Any such plan moved on the assumption that rain would 
 be falling steadily and heavily — a reasonable assumption 
 at the close of November. But, in the possible event 
 of fair weather lasting over four or five days, what should 
 prevent me from traversing the whole distance on foot? 
 It is true, that the aristocratic scowl of the landlord 
 might be looked for as a customary salutation at the 
 close of each day's journey ; but, unless at solitary post- 
 ing-houses, this criminal fact of having advanced by base 
 pedestrian methods, known only to patriarchs of older 
 days and to modern " tramps " (so they are called in 
 solemn acts of Parliament), is easily expiated and 
 cleansed, by distributing your dust, should you fortu- 
 nately 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 
 
420 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 artifice of diving into the crowds of those untainted by 
 that guilt, will emerge, for all prattical 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 favorably 
 known at some other inn. Else, as a general imputa- 
 tion, undoubtedly pedestrianism, in the estimate of Eng- 
 lish landlords, carries with it the most awful shadow and 
 shibboleth of the pariah. My Welsh friend knew this, 
 and strongly urged me to take advantage of the public 
 carriages, both on that motive and others. 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 sugges- 
 tions prompted so entirely by consideration for my own 
 comfort, I submitted to my friend's plan in all its details ; 
 one being that I should go by the Holyhead Mail, and 
 not by any of the heavy coaches. This stipulation 
 pointed to a novel feature in the machinery of travelling 
 just then emerging. The light coaches charged almost 
 mail prices. But the heavy coaches were at that time 
 beginning to assume a new and dreadful form. Loco- 
 motion was so prodigiously on the increase, that, in 
 order to meet its demands, the old form of coach (carry- 
 ing at most six insides) was exchanging itself, on all 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 421 
 
 great roads, for a long, boat-like vehicle, very much re- 
 sembling our modern' detestable omnibus, but without 
 our modern improvements. This carriage was called a 
 " long coach," and the p9,ssengers, twelve or fourteen in- 
 sides, sat along the sides ; and, as ventilation was little 
 regarded in those days — the very existence of an at- 
 mosphere being usually ignored — it followed that the 
 horrors of Governor Holwell's black cage at Calcutta 
 was every night repeated, in smaller proportions, upon 
 every great English road. It was finally agreed that I 
 should leave Oswestry on foot, simply with a view to 
 the best enjoyment of the lovely weather ; but that, as 
 the mail passed through Oswestry, my friend should se- 
 cure 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 iive miles by my warm hearted friend) was a day 
 of golden sunshine amongst the closing days of Novem- 
 ber. As truly as Jessica's moonlight (" Merchant of 
 Venice "), this golden sunshine might be said to sleep 
 upon the woods and the fields ; so awful was the universal 
 silence, so 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 gleams from 
 an expiring lamp, mimicking what is called the " light- 
 
422 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ning 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 in- 
 flammation hurrying forwards through fierce struggles 
 into the final repose of mortification. For a time the 
 equilibrium has been maintained between the hostile 
 forces ; but at last the antagonism is overthrown ; the 
 victory is accomplished for the powers that fight on the 
 side of death ; simultaneously with the confiict, 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 noise- 
 less deeps of the Infinite. So sweet, so ghostly, in its 
 soft, golden smiles silent as a dream, and quiet as the 
 dying trance of a saint, faded through all its stages this 
 departing day, along the whole length of which I bade 
 farewell for many a year to Wales, and farewell to sum- 
 mer. 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 resigna- 
 tion when bending before some irresistible agency. 
 And at intervals I heard — in how different a key ! — 
 the raving, the everlasting uproar of that dreadful me- 
 tropolis, which at every step was coming nearer, 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, but it was at least two hours after 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 423 
 
 nightfall, when I reached Shrewsbury. Was 1 not lia- 
 ble to the suspicion of pedestrianism ? Certainly I 
 was : but, even if my criminality had been more une- 
 quivocally attested than it could be under the circum- 
 Btances, still there is a, locus penitentice in such a case. 
 Surely a man may repent of any crime ; and therefore 
 of pedestrianism. I might have erred ; and a court of 
 pie poudre (dusty foot) might have found the evidences 
 of my crime on my shoes. Yet secretly I might be 
 forming good resolutions to do so no more. Certainly 
 it looked like this, when I announced myself as a pas- 
 senger " booked " for that night's mail. This character 
 at once installed me as rightfully a guest of the inn, 
 however profligate a life I might have previously led as 
 a pedestrian. Accordingly I was received with special 
 courtesy; and it so happened that I was received with 
 something even like pomp. Four wax-lights carried be- 
 fore me by obedient mutes, these were but ordinary hon- 
 ors, 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 recognized at once as 
 passively within range, and amenable to orders. I have 
 always looked upon this fine of five or seven shillings 
 (for wax that you do not absolutely need) as a sort of 
 inaugural honorarium entrance-money, what in jails 
 used to be known as smart money, proclaiming me to be 
 a man comme ilfaut ; and no toll in this world of tolls 
 do I pay so cheerfully. This, meantime, as I have said, 
 
424 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 was too customary a form to confer much distinction. 
 The wax-lights, to use the magnificent Grecian phrase 
 eTTo/x-Treue, moved pompously before me, as the holy, 
 holy fire, the inextinguishable fire and its golden hearth, 
 moved before Coesar semper Augustus, when he made 
 his ofl^ioial or ceremonial avatars. Yet still this moved 
 along the ordinary channels of glorification : it rolled 
 along ancient grooves : I might say, indeed, like one of 
 the twelve Caesars when dying, Ut puio, Deus fio (It 's 
 my private opinion that at this very moment I am turn- 
 ing 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 proportions — r lighted, if I chose to 
 issue orders, by three gorgeous chandeliers, not basely 
 wrapped up in paper, but sparkling through all their 
 thickets of crystal branches, and flashing back the soft 
 rays of my tall waxen lights. There were, moreover, 
 two orchestras, which money would have filled within 
 thirty minutes. And, upon the whole, one thing only 
 was wanting — viz., a throne — for the completion of 
 my apotheosis. 
 
 It might be seven p. m. when first I entered upon my 
 kingdom. About three hours later I rose from my 
 chair, and with considerable interest looked out into the 
 night. For nearly two hours I had heard fierce winds 
 arising ; and the whole atmosphere had, by this time, 
 
 * " It was a tall-room :" — The explanation of the cafie was simply, 
 that the hotel was under some extensive process of purification, adorn- 
 ment, and, I believe, extension : and under the accident of being my- 
 self on that particular night the sole visitor of the house, I slipped 
 unavoidably into the honors of a semi-regal reception. 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 425 
 
 become one vast laboratory of hostile movements in all 
 directions. Such a chaos, such a distracting wilder- 
 ness of dim sights, and of those awful " sounds that 
 live in darkness " (Wordsworth's " Excursion,") never 
 had I consciously witnessed. Rightly, and by a true in- 
 stinct, had I made my farewell adieus to summer. All 
 through the day, Wales and her grand mountain ranges 
 — Penmaenmawr, Snowdon, Cader Idris — had divided 
 my thoughts with London. But now rose London — 
 sole, dark, infinite — brooding over the whole capacities 
 of my heart. Other object, other thought, I could 
 not admit. Long before midnight the whole household 
 (with the exception of a solitary waiter) had retired to 
 rest. Two hours, at least, were left to me, after twelve 
 o'clock had struck, for heart-shaking reflections. More 
 than ever I stood upon the brink of a precipice ; and 
 the local circumstances around me deepened and inten- 
 sified these reflections, impressed upon them solemnity 
 and terror, sometimes even horror. It is all but incon- 
 ceivable to men of unyielding and callous sensibilities, 
 how profoundly others find their reveries modified and 
 overruled by the external characters of the immediate 
 scene around them. Many a suicide that hung dubi- 
 ously in the balances has been ratified, and carried into 
 summary eflfect, through the forlorn, soul-revolting as- 
 pect of a crazy, dilapidated home. Oftentimes, without 
 extravagance, the whole difference between a mind that 
 spurns life, and the same mind reconciled to life, turns 
 upon the outside features of that particular domestic 
 scenery which hourly besieges the eyes. I, in this 
 Shrewsbury hotel, naturally contemplated a group of 
 objects tending to far different results. And yet in 
 some respects they agreed. 
 
426 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 The unusual dimensions of the rooms, especially their 
 towering height, brought up continually and obstinately, 
 through natural liuks of associated feelings or images, 
 the mighty vision of London waiting for me afar off. 
 An altitude of nineteen or twenty feet showed itself 
 unavoidably upon an exaggerated scale in some of the 
 smaller side-rooms — meant probably for cards or for 
 refreshments. This single feature of the rooms — their 
 unusual altitude, and the echoing hollowness which had 
 become the exponent of that altitude — this one terrific 
 feature (for terrific it was in the effect), together with 
 crowding and evanescent images of the flying feet that 
 so often had spread gladness through these halls on the 
 wings of youth and hope at seasons when every room 
 rang with music — all this, rising in tumultuous vision, 
 whilst the dead hours of night were stealing along, all 
 around me — household and town — sleeping, and whilst 
 against the windows more and more the storm outside 
 was raving, and to all appearance endlessly growing, 
 threw me into the deadliest condition of nervous emotion 
 under contradictory forces, high over which predom- 
 inated horror recoiling from that unfathomed abyss 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, swept in such a direction as 
 to clear away the vast curtain of vapor, 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 expand- 
 ing her visionary gates to receive me, like some dread- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 427 
 
 ful mouth of Acheron (^Acherontis 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 
 be unlinked. 
 
 Such thoughts, and visions without number corres- 
 ponding to them, were moving acrpss the camera ohscura 
 of my fermenting fancy, when suddenly I heard a sound 
 of wheels ; which, however, soon died off into some re- 
 mote quarter. I guessed at the truth — viz., that it was 
 the Holyhead Mail * wheeling off on its primary duty 
 of delivering its bags at the post-office. In a few min- 
 utes it was announced as having changed horses ; and 
 off I was to London. 
 
 THE PLANS LAID FOK LONDON LIFE.*' 
 
 All the mails in the kingdom, with one solitary ex- 
 ception (that of Liverpool), in those days, were so ar- 
 
 * The Holyhead Mail, depending in its earliest stages upon winds 
 and waters (though not upon tides), could not realize the same ex- 
 quisite accuracy as mails that moved exclusively upon land. Sixty 
 miles of watery transit between Dublin and Holyhead were performed 
 with miraculous precision. The packets were intrusted by the General 
 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 competition. No evil there- 
 fore, which care, foresight, and professional skill could remedy, was 
 suffered to exist. Yet, after all, baffling winds would now and then 
 (especially in three or four weeks after the equinox) make it impos- 
 sible for the very ablest man, under the total defect of steam re- 
 sources, to keep his time. Six hours, I believe, were allowed by the 
 Vost-office for the sixty miles ; but at times this must have proved a 
 very inadequate allowance. 
 
428 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ranged as to reach London early in the mornhig. Be- 
 tween the hours of four and six A. M., one after the 
 other, according to their station upon the roll, all the 
 mails from the N[orth] — the E[ast] — the W[est] 
 — the S[outh] — whence, according to some curious 
 etymologists, comes the magical word NEWS — drove 
 up successively to the post-office, and rendered up their 
 heart-shaking budgets ; none earlier than four o'clock, 
 none later than six. I am speaking of days when all 
 things moved slowly. The condition of the roads was 
 then such, that, in order to face it, a corresponding build 
 of coaches hyperbolically massive was rendered neces- 
 sary ; the mails were upon principle made so strong as 
 to be the heaviest of all carriages known to the wit or 
 the experience of man ; and from these joint evils of 
 ponderous coaches and roads that were quagmires, it 
 was impossible for even the picked breed of English 
 coach-horses, all bone and blood, to carry forward their 
 huge tonnage at a greater rate than six-and-a-half miles 
 an hour. Consequently, it cost eight-and-twenty massy 
 hours for us, leaving Shrewsbury at two o'clock in the 
 dead of night, to reach the General Post-office, and 
 faithfully to deposit upon the threshing-floors of Lom- 
 bard 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 dona- 
 tion to England. 
 
 On reflection, I have done myself some injustice. Not 
 altogether without a plan had I been from the first ; and 
 in coming along I had matured it. My success in such 
 a plan would turn upon my chance of borrowing on 
 personal security. £200, without counting any interest 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 429 
 
 upon it, would subdivide into four sums of £50. Now, 
 what interval was it that divided me from my majority ; 
 Simply an interval of four years. London, I knew or 
 believed, was the dearest of all cities for three items of 
 expenditure: (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 respecta- 
 bility, it has always been possible for the last half-cen- 
 tury to obtain two furnished rooms at a weekly cost of 
 half-a-guinea. This sum (or say £25) deducted, would 
 leave me annually about the same sum for my other ex- 
 penses. 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 connections 
 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 Teal, small or great, from res- 
 idence at a university. But, as in fact I never drew 
 the slightest advantage or emolument from any univer- 
 sity, my scheme when realized would have landed me in 
 the same point which finally I attained by its failure. 
 The plan was simple enough, but it rested on the as- 
 sumption that I could melt the obduracy of money- 
 lenders. On this point I had both hopes and fears. 
 
 * Not universally. Glasgow, if you travel from Hammerfest south- 
 wards (that is from the northermost 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 
 London. 
 
430 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 But more irritating than either was the delay, which 
 eventually I came to recognize as an essential element 
 in the policy of all money-lenders : in that way only 
 can they raise up such claims on behalf of their law- 
 agents as may be fitted for sustaining their zeal. 
 
 I lost no time in opening the business which had 
 brought me to London. By ten A. M., an hour when aU 
 men of business are presumed to be at their posts, per- 
 sonally 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 
 my pecuniary expectations (some of which statements it 
 afterwards appeared that he had personally investigated 
 and verified), endeavored to win his favorable 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 prose- 
 cuting 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-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 unhappy counte- 
 nance of gloom and unsocial fretfulness, due in reality 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATKR. 431 
 
 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 si- 
 lence which invested the house, not only from the 
 absence of all visitors, but also of those common 
 household functionaries, bakers, butchers, beer-carriers, 
 sufficiently accounted for the desolation, by suggesting 
 an excuse not strictly true — viz., that it might be ten- 
 antless. The house had already tenants through the 
 day, though of a noiseless order, and was destined soon 
 to increase them. Mr. Brown-Brunell, after reconnoi- 
 tring me through a narrow side-window (such as is 
 often attached to front-doors in London), admitted me 
 cheerfully, and conducted me, as an honored guest, to 
 his private officina diplomatum at the back of the house. 
 From the expression of his face, but much more from 
 the contradictory and self-counteracting play of his fea- 
 tures, 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 sur- 
 prise, and passed in a moment into irrepressible glances 
 of suspicion and alarm. No smile that ever his face 
 naturally assumed, but was pulled short up by some 
 freezing counteraction, or was chased by some close-fol- 
 lowing expression of sadness. One feature there was 
 of relenting goodness and nobleness in Mr. Brunell's 
 character, to which it was that subsequently I myself 
 was most profoundly indebted for an asylum that saved 
 my life. He had the deepest, the most liberal, and un- 
 affected love of knowledge, but, above all, of that spe- 
 cifio knowledge which we call literature. His own 
 stormy (and no doubt oftentimes disgraceful) career in 
 
432 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 life, that had entangled him in perpetual feuds with his 
 fellow-men, he ascribed, with bitter imprecations, to the 
 sudden interruption of his studies consequent upon his 
 father's violent death, and to the necessity which threw 
 him, at a boyish age, upon a professional life in the 
 lower branches of law — threw him, therefore, upon 
 daily temptations, by surrounding him with opportuni- 
 ties for taking advantages not strictly honorable, before 
 he had formed any fixed principles at all. From the 
 very first, Mr. Brunell had entered zealously into such 
 conversations with myself as either gave openings for 
 reviving his own delightful remembrances of classic 
 authors, or brought up sometimes doubts for solution, 
 sometimes perplexities and cases of intricate construc- 
 tion for illustration and disentanglement. Hunger-bit- 
 ten as the house and the household genius seemed, wear- 
 ing the legend of Famine upon every mantelpiece or 
 "coigne of vantage," and vehemently protesting, as it 
 must have done through all its echoes, against the intro- 
 duction of supernumerary mouths, nevertheless there 
 was (and, I suppose, of necessity) a clerk, who bore the 
 name of Pymeut, or Pyemont, then first of all, then last 
 of all, made known to me as a possible surname. Mr. 
 Pyment had no alias — or not to my knowledge — ex- 
 cept, indeed, in the vituperative vocabulary of Mr. 
 Brunell, in which most variegated nomenclature he bore 
 miuiy 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 answer, un- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 
 
 438 
 
 less it happened (as now and then it did) that he could 
 do so without ludicrous effect. What made the neces- 
 BJity for Pyment was the continual call for " an appear- 
 ance " 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 use- 
 less burden at another ; as the hardest working reaper 
 seems, in the eyes of an ignoramus, on a wet, wintry 
 day, to be a luxurious idler. Of these ups and downs 
 in Pyment's working life, Mr. Brunell made a most cyn- 
 ical use ; making out that Pyment not only did nothing, 
 but also that he created much work for the afHicted 
 Brunell. However, it happened occasionally that the 
 truth vindicated itself, by making a call upon Pyment's 
 physics — aggressive or defensive — that needed an in- 
 stant attention. " Pyment, I say ; this way, Pyment — 
 you 're wanted, Pyment." In fact, both were big, hulk- 
 ing men, and had need to be so ; for sometimes, whether 
 with good reason or none, clients at the end of a losing 
 suit, or of a suit nominally gained, but unexpectedly 
 laden with heavy expenses, became refractory, showed 
 fight, and gave Pyment reason for saying that at least 
 on this day he ha4 earned his salary by serving an eject- 
 ment 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 candor 
 have been at that early period ! If (which was the sim- 
 ple truth, known to all parties but myself) I had been 
 told that nothing would be brought to a close in less 
 28 
 
434 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 than six months, even assuming the ultimate adoption of 
 my proposals, I should from the first have dismissed all 
 hopes of this nature, as being unsuited to the practica- 
 bilities 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 univer- 
 sally I believe myself entitled to say, that even honor- 
 able lawyers will not in a case of this nature mov;e at a 
 faster pace : they will all alike loiter upon varied alle- 
 gations through six months ; and for this reason, that 
 any shorter period, they fancy, will hardly seem to jus- 
 tify, in the eyes of their client, the sum which they find 
 themselves entitled to charge for their trouble and their 
 preliminary correspondence. How much better for both 
 sides, and more honorable, as more frank and free from 
 disguises, that the client should say, " Raise 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 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 my- 
 self was brought to the brink of destruction through 
 pure inanition ; whilst, on the other hand, those con- 
 cerned in these deceptions gained nothing that might 
 
COSfFESSIOire OF AN OPIUM-EATEB. 435 
 
 not have been gained honorably and rightfully utidef 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 lodg- 
 ings, though barely decent in my eyes, rao away with at 
 least two thirds of my remaining guineao. At length, 
 whilst it was yet possible to reserve a solitary half- 
 guinea towards the more urgent interest of finding daily 
 food, I gave up my rooms ; and, stating exactly the cir- 
 cumstances 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 back to 
 the Cambrian hills from distant years, discovered to my 
 Surprise what a parliamentary wretch I had been in 
 elder daiys, when I slept amongst cows on the open hill- 
 sides. Lawful as yet this was ; but not, therefore, less 
 full of misery. Naturally, then, I was delighted w'hen 
 Mr. Brunell not only most readily assented to my re- 
 quest, but begged of me to come that very night, and 
 turn the house to account as fully as I possibly could. 
 The cheerfulness of such a concession brought with it 
 one drawback. I now regretted that I had not, at_ a 
 much earlier period, applied for this liberty ; since I 
 might thus have saved a considerable fund of guineas, 
 applicable, of course, to all urgent necessities, but at this 
 particular moment to one of clamorous urgency — viz., 
 the purchase of blankets. O ancient women, daughters 
 of toil and suffering, amongst all the hardships and bit- 
 
436 . ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 ter inheritances of flesh that ye are called upon to face, 
 not one — not even hunger — seems in my eyes compar- 
 able to that of nightly cold. To seek a refuge from 
 cold ill 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 Dorset- 
 shire, where coals, from local causes, were at the very 
 dearest — what a terrific enemy was that for poor old 
 grandmothers to face in fight ! How feelingly I learned 
 at this time, as heretofore I had learned on the wild hill- 
 sides in Wales, what an unspeakable blessing is that of 
 warmth ! A more killing curse there does not exist for 
 man or woman, than that bitter combat between the 
 weariness that prompts sleep, and the keen, searching 
 cold that forces you from the first access of sleep to 
 start up horror-stricken, and to seek warmth vainly in 
 renewed exercise, though long since fainting under 
 fatigue. However, even without blankets, it was a fine 
 thing to have an asylum from the open air ; and to be 
 assured of this asylum as long as I was likely to 
 want it. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 437 
 
 BARBARA LEWTHWAITB.'*' 
 
 This girl was 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, writ- 
 ten, perhaps, ten years earlier, when Barbara might 
 be six years old : 
 
 " 'T was little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare ! ' 
 
 This, coming from William Wordsworth, both a fas- 
 tidious judge 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 " Mutabilitj'," where the most pathetic 
 instances of this earthly doom are solemnly arraj'ed, 
 Spenser has dwelt sufficiently upon this the saddest 
 of all, I do not remember. 
 
 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 hor 
 girlhood, with the turbaned Malay, and the little 
 cottage child. But, subsequently, when a young 
 woman, she entered unconsciously into the composi- 
 tion of another picture even more rememberable, 
 
438 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 suggesting great iiames, connected with the greatest 
 of themes ; the names being those of Plato, and, in 
 this instance, at least, of a mightier than Plato^ 
 namely, William Wordsworth ; and the theme con- 
 cerned being that problem which, measured by its 
 interest to man, by its dependencies, by the infinite 
 jewel staked upon the verdict, we should all con- 
 fess to be the most solemn and heart-shaking that 
 is hung out by golden chains from the heaven of 
 heavens to human investigation, namely — Is the 
 spirit of man numbered amongst things naturally 
 perishable 1 The doctrine of our own Dodwell (a 
 most orthodox man), was, that naturally and per se 
 it was perishable, but that by supernatural endow- 
 ment it was made immortal. Apparently the ancient 
 oracles of the Hebrew literature had all and every- 
 where assumed the soul's natural mortality. The 
 single passage in Job, that seemed to look in the 
 counter direction, has long since received an inter- 
 pretation painfully alien from such a meaning ; not 
 to mention that the same objection would apply to 
 this passage, if read into a Christian sense, as applies 
 to the ridiculous interpolation in Josephus describing 
 Christ's personal appearance, namely — Once sup- 
 pose it genuine, and why were there not myriads of 
 other passages in the same key? Imagine, for a 
 moment, the writer so penetrated with premature 
 Christian views, by what inexplicable rigor of absti- 
 nence 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 thai 
 the objections to this Christian interpretation of Job 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 439 
 
 rest solely with German scholars. Coleridge, one 
 of the most devout and evangelical amongst modern 
 theologians, took the same view ; and has expressed 
 it with decision. But Job is of slight importance in 
 comparison with Moses. Now, Warburton, in his 
 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 assump- 
 tion 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 opin- 
 ion, a vicarious support — a secret and divine sup- 
 port. This extreme view will be rejected, perhaps, 
 by most people. But, in the mean time, the very 
 existence of such a sect as the Sadducees proves 
 euflSciently that no positive affirmation of the soul's 
 immortality could have been accredited amongst the 
 Hebrew nation as a Mosaic doctrine. The rise of a 
 counter sect, the Pharisees, occurred in later days, 
 clearly under a principle of " development " applied 
 to old traditions current among the Jews. It was 
 not alleged as a Mosaic doctrine, but as something 
 deducible from traditions countenanced by Moses. 
 From Hebrew literature, therefore, no help is to 
 be looked for on this great question. Pagan litera- 
 ture first of all furnishes any response upon it favor- 
 able to human yearnings. But, unhappily, the main 
 argument upon which the sophist in the Fhcedo relies, 
 is a pure scholastic conundrum, baseless and puerile. 
 The homogeneity of human consciousness, upon which 
 is made to rest its indestructibility, is not established 
 
440 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 or made probable by any plausible logic. If we 
 should figure to ourselves some mighty angOi mount- 
 ing guard upon human interests twenty-three centu- 
 ries ago, this tutelary spirit would have smiled deri- 
 sively 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 pre- 
 ternatural gift, but as a natural prerogative of the 
 human spirit. This time the angel would have paused 
 and hearkened. The auguries for immortality, which 
 Wordsworth drew from indications running along 
 the line of daily human experience, were two. The 
 first was involved in the exquisite little poem of 
 " We are Seven." That authentic voice, said Words- 
 worth, which aflSrmed life as a necessity inalienable 
 from man's consciousness, was a revelation through 
 .the lips of childhood. Life in its torrent fulness — 
 that is, life in its earliest stage — afiirmed itself; 
 whereas the voice which whispered doubts was an 
 adventitious and secondary voice consequent upon 
 an earthly experience. The child in this little poem 
 is unable to admit the thought of death, though, in 
 compliance with custom, she uses the word. 
 
 " The first that died was little Jane ; 
 la 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 
 
CONrESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-llATER. 441 
 
 graves as lying in the churchyard, in order to prove 
 that they were living : 
 
 " ' Their graves are green, they may be seen,' 
 
 The little maid replied, 
 • Twelve steps or more from my mother's doori 
 
 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. 
 
 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 mat- 
 ter 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 belonged 
 to a life ever more and more receding into a distance 
 buried in clouds and vapors. 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 splendor investing man's natural homo, that 
 the heavenly lights which burned in his morning 
 grow fainter and fainter as he " travels further from 
 the East." 
 
442 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 The little Caimarvoiishire child in " W~e are Seven," 
 who is represented as repelling the idea of death 
 under an absolute inability to receive it, had com- 
 pleted her eighth year. But this might be an ambi- 
 tious exaggeration, such as aspiring female children 
 are generally disposed to practise. It is more prob- 
 able that she might be in the currency of her eighth 
 year. Naturally we must not exact from Words- 
 worth any pedantic rigor 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 oi five. However, I will say four. 
 In that case the following anecdote seems to impeach 
 the philosophic truth of this doctrine. I give the 
 memorandum as it was drawn up by myself at the 
 time : 
 
 My second child, but eldest daughter, little M ■, 
 
 is between two and three weeks less than two years 
 old ; and from the day of her birth she has been uni- 
 formly attended by Barbara Lewthwaite. We are 
 now in the first days of June ; but, about three weeks 
 since, consequently in the earlier half of May, some 
 
 one of our neighbors gave to M • a little bird. I 
 
 am no great ornithologist. " Perhaps only a tenth- 
 rate one," says some too flattering reader. dear, 
 no, nothing near it ; I fear, no more than a five hun- 
 dred and tenth rater. Consequently, I cannot orni- 
 thologically describe or classify the bird. But I 
 believe that it belonged to the family of finches — 
 either a goldfinch', bullfinch, or at least something 
 ending in inch. The present was less splendid than at 
 first it seemed. For the bird was wounded ; though 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEB. 443 
 
 not in a way that made the wound apparent ; and 
 too sensibly as the evening wore away it drooped. 
 None of us knew what medical treatment to suggest ; 
 and all that occurred was to place it with free access 
 to 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 rou- 
 tine of prayers ; namely, first, the Lord's Prayer, and, 
 finally, the four following lines (a Roman Catholic 
 bequest to the children of Northern England) : 
 
 " Holy* 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 " yoddo- 
 num." Having always seen me taking laudanum, 
 and for the purpose (as she was told) of growing 
 better in health, reasonably it struck her that the 
 little bird would improve under the same regimen. 
 For her satisfaction, I placed a little diluted lauda- 
 num 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 hap- 
 pened that I sat up through the whole night ; and 
 
 * " Holy Jesus ;" — This was a very judicious correction intro- 
 duced by Wordsworth. Originally the traditional line had stood, 
 " Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.'' But Wordsworth, offended hy 
 the idle iteration of one idea in the words, gentle, meek, mild, 
 corrected the text into Holy. 
 
444 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 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 danger- 
 ously sanguine. And, as the morning was one of 
 heavenly splendor, I proposed that we should im- 
 prove 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 percTi on which the bird rested, one thrill- 
 ing song, louder than the rest, arose from a neigh- 
 boring hedge. Immediately the bird's eye, previ- 
 ously dull, kindled into momentary fire ; the bird 
 rose on its perch, struggled for an instant, seemed 
 to be expanding its wings, made one aspiring move- 
 ment upwards, in doing so fell back, and in another 
 moment was dead. Too certainly and apparently all 
 these transitions symbolically interpreted themselves, 
 and to all of us alike ; the proof of which was — that 
 man, woman, and child spontaneously shed tears ; a 
 weakness, perhaps, but more natural under the regu- 
 lar processional evolution of the scenical stages, than 
 when simply read as a narrative ; for too evident it 
 was, to one and aU of us, without needing to com- 
 municate by words, whal vision had revealed itself 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATEB. 445 
 
 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 exhib- 
 ited, as on the stage of a theatre — there had passed 
 before the eyes of us all — passed, and was finished — 
 tlie everlasting mystery of death 1 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. 
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. ' 
 
 AN OPIUM DKEAM. 
 
 Pkefatoey Note. — By accident, a considerable part of the 
 Confessions (all, in short, except the Dreams) had originally 
 been ■written hastily; and, from -various causes, had ne^er reoeiyed 
 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 insuf- 
 ficiently expanded. * * * * 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 influ- 
 ence. These have disappeared : some under circumstances which 
 allow me a reasonable prospect of recovering them ; some unac- 
 countably ; and some dishonorably. Five or six, I believe, Tere 
 
446 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 burned in a sudden conflagration which arose from the spark of a 
 candle falling unobserved amongst a very large pile of papers in 
 a bedroom, vfhen I vras alone and reading. Falling not on, but 
 amongst B.nA within the papers, the fire would soon ha^e been 
 ahead of conflict ; and, by communicating with the slight wood-work 
 and draperies of a bed, it would have immediately enveloped the 
 laths of a ceiling overhead, and thus the house, far from fire-engines, 
 would have been burned down in half-an-hour. My attention was 
 first drawn by a sudden light upon my book ; and the whole dif- 
 ference between a total destruction of the premises and a trivial 
 loss (from books charred) of five guineas, was due to a large Span- 
 ish cloak. This, thrown over, and then drawn down tightly, by 
 the aid of one sole person , somewhat agitated, but retaining her 
 presence of mind, effectually extinguished the fire. Amongst the 
 papers burned partially, but not so burned as to be absolutely 
 irretrievable, was the " Daughter of Lebanon ; " and this I have 
 printed, and have intentionally placed it at the end, as appro- 
 priately 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, col- 
 ored — or (more truly I should say) shaped, moulded and 
 remoulded, composed and decomposed — the great body of opium 
 dreams. The search after the lost features of Ann, which I spoke 
 of as pursued in the crowds of London, was in a more proper 
 sense pursued through many a year in di-eams. The general idea 
 of a search and a chase reproduced itself in many shapes. The 
 person, the rank, the age, the soenical position, all varied them- 
 selves forever ; but the same leading traits more or less faintly 
 remained of a lost Pariah woman, and of some shadowy malice 
 which withdrew her, or attempted to withdraw her, from restora- 
 tion and from hope. Such is the explanation which I offer why 
 that particular addition, which some of my friends had been 
 authorized to look for, has not in the main been given, nor for the 
 present could be given ; and, secondly, why that part which it 
 given has been placed in the conspicuous situation (as a closing 
 passage) which it now occupies. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 447 
 
 Damascus, fil-st-boin of cities, Om el Denia,* mother 
 of generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast 
 before the Pyramids 1 what sounds are those that, 
 from a postern gate, looking eastwards over secret 
 paths that wind away to the far distant desert, break 
 the solemn silence of an oriental night ? Whose 
 voice is that which calls upon the spearmen, keeping 
 watch forever in the turret surmounting the gate, 
 to receive him back into his Syrian home ? Thou 
 knowest him, Damascus, and hast known him in 
 seasons of trouble as one learned in the afflictions of 
 man ; wise alike to take counsel for the suffering 
 spirit or for the suifering body. The voice that 
 breaks upon the night is the voice of a great evan- 
 gelist — one of the four ; and he is also a great 
 physician. This do the watchmen at the gate thank- 
 fully acknowledge, and joyfully they give him en- 
 trance. His sandals are white with dust ; for he 
 has been roaming for weeks beyond the desert, under 
 the guidance of Arabs, on missions of hopeful benig- 
 nity to Palmyra ; f and in spirit he is weary of all 
 
 * " Om el Denia :" — Mother of the World is the Arabic title 
 of Damascus. That it was before Abraham — that is, already an old 
 establishment much more than a thousand years before »he 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. 
 
 t Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendor of Grecian 
 development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian, but it was 
 already a noble city. 
 
448 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 things, except faithfulness to God, and burning love 
 to man. 
 
 Eastern cities are asleep betimes ; and sounds few 
 or none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the 
 evangelist paced onward to the market-place ; but 
 there another scene awaited him. On the right hand, 
 in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded, 
 sat a festal company of youths, revelling under a 
 noonday blaze of light, from cressets and from bright 
 tripods that burned fragrant woods — all joining in 
 choral songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from 
 Daphne and the banks of the Orontes. Them the 
 evangelist heeded not ; but far away upon the left, 
 close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a solitary 
 vase of iron fretwork filled with cedar boughs, and 
 hoisted high upon a spear, behold there sat a woman 
 of loveliness so transcendent, that, when suddenly 
 revealed, as now, out of deepest darkness, she 
 appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. 
 Was she born of woman ? Was it perhaps the 
 angel — so the evangelist argued with himself — that 
 met him in the desert after sunset, and strengthened 
 him by secret talk ? The evangelist went up, and 
 touched her forehead ; and when he found that she 
 was indeed human, and guessed, from the station 
 which she had chosen, that she waited for some one 
 amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he 
 groaned heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, 
 but half to her, " Wert thou, poor, ruined flower, 
 adorned so divinely at thy birth — glorified in such 
 excess, that not Solomon in all his pomp, no, nor 
 even the lilies of the field, can approach thy gifts — 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEB. 449 
 
 only that thou shouldest grieve the Holy Spirit of 
 God ? " The womaa trembled exceedingly, and said^ 
 " Rabbi, what should I do ? For behold ! all men 
 forsake me." The evangelist mused a little, and 
 then secretly to himself he said, " Now will I search 
 this woman's heart, whether in very truth it 
 inclineth itself to God, and hath strayed only before 
 fiery compulsion." Turning therefore to the woman, 
 the Prophet* said, " Listen : I am the messenger of 
 Him whom thou hast not known ; of Him that made 
 Lebanon, and the cedars of Lebanon ; that made the 
 sea, and the heavens, and the host of the stars ; that 
 made the light ; that made the darkness ; that blew 
 the spirit of life into the nostrils of man. His mes- 
 senger I am : and from Him all power is given me to 
 bind and to loose, to build and to pull down. Ask, 
 therefore, whatsoever thou wilt — great or small — ■ 
 and through me thou shalt receive it from God. But, 
 my child, ask not amiss. For God is able out of thy 
 own evil asking to weave snares for thy footing. 
 
 * " TTie Prophet : " — Though a Prophet was not therefore and 
 in virtue of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist 
 was necessarily in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it bo 
 remembered that a Prophet did not mean u; Predictor or Fore- 
 shower of events, except derivatively and infereutially. What 
 teas a Prophet in the uniform scriptural sense? He was a man, 
 who drew aside the curtain from the secret counsels of Heaven. 
 He declared, or made public, the previously hidden truths of God : 
 and because future events might chance to involve divine truth, 
 therefore a revealer of future events might happen so far to be a 
 Prophet. Yet still small was that part of a Prophet's functions 
 which concerned the foreshowing of events ; and not necessarily 
 any part. 
 
 29 
 
450 ADDITIONS lO THE 
 
 And oftentimes to the lambs whom he loves he gives 
 by seeming to refuse ; gives in some better sense, 
 or " (and his voice swelled into the power of anthems) 
 " in some far happier world. Now, therefore, my 
 daughter, be wise on thy own behalf, and say what 
 it is that! shall ask for thee from God." But the 
 Daughter of Lebanon needed not his caution ; for 
 immediately dropping on one knee to God's ambas- 
 sador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch 
 fell upon the glory of a penitential eye, she raised 
 her clasped hands in supplication, and said, in answer 
 to the evangelist asking for a second time what gift 
 he should call down upon her from Heaven, " Lord, 
 that thou wouldest put me back into my father's 
 house." And the evangelist, because he was human, 
 dropped a tear as he stooped to kiss her forehead, 
 saying, "Daughter, thy prayer is heard in heaven; 
 and I tell thee that the daylight shall not come and 
 go -for thirty times, not for the thirtieth time shall 
 the sun drop behind Lebanon, before I will put thee 
 back into thy father's house." 
 
 Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship 
 of the evangelist. She sought not to varnish her 
 'history, or to palliate her own transgressions. In so 
 far as she had offended at all, her case was that of 
 millions in every generation. Her father was a 
 prince in Lebanon, proud, unforgiving, austere. The 
 wrongs done to his daughter by her dishonorable 
 lover, because done under favor of opportunities 
 created by her confidence in his integiity, her father 
 persisted in resenting as wrongs done by this injured 
 daughter herself; and, refusing to her all protection. 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATER. 451 
 
 drove her, whilst yet confessedly innocent, into crim 
 inal 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 churl- 
 ish father and a wicked lover ; she gained an apos- 
 tolic guardian. She lost a princely station in Leba- 
 non ; she gained an early heritage in heaven. For 
 this heritage is hers within thirty days, if she will 
 not defeat it herself And, whilst the stealthy 
 motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth day, 
 behold ! a burning fever desolated Damascus, which 
 also laid its arrest upon the Daughter of Lebanon, 
 yet gently, and so that hardly for an hour did it 
 withdraw her from the heavenly teachings of the 
 evangelist. And thus daily the doubt was strength- 
 ened, would the holy apostle suddenly touch her 
 with his hand, and say, " Woman, be thou whole I " 
 or. would he present her on the thirtieth day as a 
 pure bride to Christ ? But perfect freedom belongs 
 to Christian service, and she only must make the 
 election. 
 
 Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his 
 pomp, but suddenly was darkened by driving storms." 
 Not until noon was the heavenly orb again revealed ; 
 then the glorious light was again unmasked, and 
 again the Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour 
 already appointed for the baptism of the new Chris- 
 tian daughter. Heaven and earth shed gratulation 
 on the happy festival ; and, when all was finished, 
 under an awning raised above the level roof of her 
 dwelling-house, the regenerate daughter of Lebanon, 
 
462 
 
 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 looking over the rose-gardens of Damascus, with 
 amplest prospect of her native hills, lay, in blissful 
 trance, making proclamation, by her white baptismal 
 robes, of recovered innocence and of reconciliation 
 with God. And, when the sun was declining to the 
 west, the evangelist, who had sat from noon by the 
 bedside of his spiritual daughter, rose solemnly, and 
 said, " Lady of Lebanon, the day is already come, 
 and the hour is coming, in which my covenant must 
 be 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 evangelist 
 sat down by her bedside ; whilst she by intervals 
 communed with him, and by intervals slept gen- 
 tly under the oppression of her fever. But as 
 evening drew nearer, and it wanted now but a brief 
 space to the going down of the sun, once again, and 
 with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to his 
 feet, and said, "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 bade that no more 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 453 
 
 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 vapors, 
 bequeathed by the morning's storm. And a second 
 time the evangelist raised his pastoral staff, and, 
 pointing it to the gloomy vapors, rebuked them, 
 and bade that no more they should stand between 
 his daughter and her father's house. And imme- 
 diately the dark vapors 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 evan- 
 gelist, pitying her sorrow, turned away her eyes to 
 the clear blue sky, which the departing vapors had 
 exposed. And he showed her the peace which was 
 there. And then he said, "0 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. 
 Immediately the blue sky" parted to the right and to 
 the left, laying bare the infinite revelations that can 
 / be made visible only to dying eyes. And the Daugh- 
 ter of Lebanon said to the evangelist, "0 father 1 
 what armies are these that I see mustering within 
 the infinite chasm ? " And the evangelist replied, 
 " These are the armies of Christ, and they are mus- 
 tering to receive some dear human blossom, some 
 
454 ADDITIONS TO CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 
 
 first-fruits of Christian faith, that shall rise this night 
 to Christ from Damascus." Suddenly, as thus the 
 child of Lebanon gazed upon the mighty vision, she 
 saw bending forward from the heavenly host, as if in 
 gratulation to herself, the one countenance for which 
 she hungered and thirsted. The twin-sister, that 
 should have waited for her in Lebanon, had died of 
 grief, and was waiting for her in Paradise. Immedi- 
 ately in rapture she soared upwards from her couch ; 
 immediately in weakness she fell back ; and, being 
 caught by the evangelist, she flung her arms around 
 his neck, whilst he breathed' into her ear his final 
 whisper, " Wilt thou now suffer that God should 
 give by seeming to refuse?" — "0 yes — yes — 
 yes 1 " was the fervent answer from the Daughter of 
 Lebanon. Immediately the evangelist gave the sig- 
 nal to the heavens, and the heavens gave the signal 
 to the sun ; and in one minute after the Daughter of 
 Lebanon had fallen back a marble corpse amongst 
 her white baptismal robes ; the solar orb dropped 
 behind Lebanon ; and the evangelist, with eyes 
 glorified by mortal and immortal tears, rendered 
 thanks to God that had thus accomplished the word 
 which he spoke through himself to the Magda- 
 len of Lebanon — that not for the thirtieth time 
 should the sun go down behind her native hills, 
 before he had put her back into her Father's house. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 455 
 
 NOTES ON THE USE OF OPIUM.™ 
 
 FiFTT-AND-TWO year's experience of opium, as a 
 magical resource under all modes of bodily suflfering, I 
 may now claim to have had — allowing only for some 
 periods of four or six months, dux-ing which, by unex- 
 ampled efforts of self-conquest, I had accomplished a 
 determined abstinence from opium.* These parenthesis 
 
 * 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 on this side and on that), to the daily 
 use of opium. But with silent changes, many and great (worked 
 apparently by these reiterated struggles), in the opium-eating habits. 
 Amongst other changes was this, that the quantity required graduallj' 
 fell by an enormous proportion. According to the modem 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 laudanum) — 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 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 teaspoon, of that 
 order which you find still lingering amongst the respectable poor. 
 Eighty such quantities, therefore, would have filled eighty of such an- 
 tediluvian spoons — that is, it would have been the common hospital 
 dose for three hundred and twenty adult patients. But the ordinarj' 
 teaspoon 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 exclu- 
 sively women ; men, even in educated classes, very often persisting 
 (down to the French revolution) in treating such a beverage as an idle 
 and effeminate indulgence. This obstinate twist in masculine habits it 
 was that secretly controlled the manufacture' of teaspoons. Up to 
 Waterloo, teaspoons were adjusted chiefly to the calibre of female 
 mouths. Since then, greatly to the benefit of the national health, the 
 grosser and brownest sex have universally fallen into the effeminata 
 
456 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 being subtracted, as also, and secondly, some off-and-on 
 fits of tentative and intermitting dalliance with opium in 
 the opening of my career — these deductions allowed 
 for, I may describe myself as experimentally acquainted 
 with opium for something more than half-a-century. 
 What, then, is my final report upon its good and evil 
 results ? In particular, upon these two capital tenden- 
 cies of habitual opium-eating under the popular miscon- 
 ceptions — viz., its supposed necessity of continually 
 clamoring for increasing quantities ; secondly, its sup- 
 posed corresponding declension in power and efficacy. 
 Upon these ugly scandals, what is my most deliberate 
 award ? At the age of forty, the reader is aware that, 
 under our ancestral proverb, every man is a fool or a 
 physician. Apparently our excellent ancestors, aiming 
 undeniably at alliteration, spelled physician with an f. 
 And why not ? A man's physic might be undeniable, 
 although his spelling should be open to some slight im- 
 provements. But I presume that the proverb meant to 
 exact from any man only so much medical skill as should 
 undertake the responsibility of his own individual health. 
 It is my duty, it seems, thus far to be a physician — to 
 guarantee, so far as human foresight can guarantee, my 
 own corporeal sanity. And this, trying the case by or- 
 dinary practical tests, I have accomplished. And I 
 add solemnly, that without opium, most certainly I could 
 not have accomplished such a result. Thirty-five years 
 ago, beyond all doubt, I should have been in my grave. 
 And as to the two popular dilemmas — that either you 
 
 habit of tea-drinking ; and tlie capacity of teaspoons has naturally 
 coiiformed to the new order of cormorant mouths that have alighted 
 by myriads upon the tea-trays of these later generations. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 457 
 
 must renounce opium, or else indefinitely augment the 
 daily ration ; and, secondly, that, even submitting to 
 such a postulate, you must content yourself, under any 
 scale of doses, with an effect continually decaying, in 
 fact, that you must ultimately descend into the despair- 
 ing condition of the martyr to dram-drinking — at this 
 point, I make a resolute stand, in blank denial of the 
 whole doctrine. Originally, when first entering upon 
 my opium career, I did so with great anxiety : and be- 
 fore my eyes floated forever 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 
 necessity, as an unknown, shadowy power, leading I 
 knew not whither, and a; power that might suddenly 
 change countenance upon this unknown road. Habitu- 
 ally I lived under such an impression of awe as we have 
 all felt from stories of fawns, or seeming fawns, that 
 have run before some mounted hunter for many a league, 
 until they have tempted him far into the mazes of a 
 boundless forest, aud at that point, where all regress had 
 become lost and impossible, either suddenly vanished, 
 leaving the man utterly bewildered, or assumed some 
 more fearful shape. A part of the evil which I feared 
 actually unfolded itself ; but all was due to my own ig- 
 norance, to neglect of cautionary measures, or to gross 
 mismanagement of my health in points where I well 
 knew the risks but grievously underrated their urgency 
 and pressure. I was temperate : that solitary advan- 
 tage I had ; but I sank under the lulling seductions of 
 opium into total sedentariness, and that whilst holding 
 firmly the belief, that .powerful exercise was omnipotent 
 
458 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 against all modes of debility or obscure nervous irrita- 
 tions. The account of my depression, and almost of my 
 helplessness, in the next memorandum (No. 3), is faith- 
 ful as a description to the real case. But, in ascribing 
 that case to opium, as any transcendent and overmaster- 
 ing agency, I was thoroughly wrong. Twenty days of 
 exercise, twenty times twenty miles of walking, at the 
 ordinary pace of three and a-half miles an hour, or per- 
 haps half that amount, would have sent me up as buoy- 
 antly as a balloon into regions of natural and healthy 
 excitement, where dejection is an impossible phenome- 
 non. O heavens ! how man abuses or neglects his natu- 
 ral 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 unnat- 
 ural. 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 proposi- 
 tions, all of them unsuspected by the popular mind, and 
 the last of them (as cannot much longer fail to be dis- 
 covered) bearing a national value — I mean, as meeting 
 our English hereditary complaint : — 
 
 1. With respect to the morbid growth upon the opium- 
 eater of his peculiar habit, when once rooted in the sys- 
 tem, and throwing out tentacula like a cancer, it is out of 
 my power to deliver any such oracular judgment upon the 
 case — i. e., upon the apparent danger of such a course, 
 and by what stages it might be expected to travel towards 
 its final consummation — as naturally I should wish 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 459 
 
 to do. Being an oracle, it is my wish to behave myself 
 like an oracle, and not to evade any decent man's ques- 
 tions in the way that Apollo too often did at Delphi. 
 But, in this particular instance before me, the accident 
 of my own individual seamanship in presence of this 
 storm interfered with the natural evolution of the prob- 
 lem in its extreme form of danger. I had become too 
 uneasy under the consciousness of that intensely artifi- 
 cial condition into which I had imperceptibly lapsed 
 through unprecedented quantities of opium ; the shad- 
 ows of eclipse were too dark and lurM not to rouse and 
 alarm me into a spasmodic effort for reconquering the 
 ground which I had lost. Such an effort I made : 
 every step by which I had gone astray did I patiently 
 unthread. And thus I fought off the natural and spon- 
 taneous catastrophe, whatever that might be, which 
 mighty Nature would else have let loose for redressing 
 the wrongs offered to herself. But what followed ? 
 In six or eight months more, upon fresh movements 
 arising of insupportable nervous irritation, I fleeted 
 back into the same opium lull. To and fro, up and 
 down, did I tilt upon those mountainous seas, for year 
 after year. " See-saw,* like Margery Daw, that sold 
 her bed and lay on straw." Evea so did I, led astray, 
 perhaps, by the classical example of Miss Daw, see-saw 
 for year after year, out and in, of manoeuvres the most in- 
 
 * " Ste-saw," &c. : — dear reader, surely you don't want an ora- 
 cle to tell you that this is a good old nursery lyric, which through four 
 centuries has stood the criticism — stood the anger against Daw's ene- 
 mies — stood the pity for Daw herself, so infamously reduced to straw 
 — of children through eighty generations, reckoning five years to 
 each nursery succession. 
 
460 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 tricate, 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 com- 
 etary aphelion, where for six months " opium " was a 
 word unknown. How nature stood all these see-saw- 
 ings is quite a mystery to me : I must have led her a 
 sad life in those days. Nervous irritation forced me, at 
 times, upon frightful excesses ; but terror from anoma- 
 lous symptoms sooner or later forced me back. This 
 terror was strengthened by the vague hypothesis cur- 
 rent at that period about spontaneous combustion. 
 Might I not myself take leave of the literary world in 
 that fashion? According to the popular fancy, there 
 were two modes of this spontaneity ; and really very 
 little to choose between them. Upon one variety of 
 this explosion, a man blew up in the dark, without 
 match or candle near him, leaving nothing behind him 
 but some bones, of no use to anybody, and which were 
 supposed to be his only because nobody else ever ap- 
 plied for them. It was fancied that some volcanic 
 ageacy — an unknown deposition — accumulated from 
 some vast redundancy of brandy, furnished the self-ex- 
 ploding principle. But this startled the faith of most 
 people ; and a more plausible scheme suggested itself, 
 which depended upon the concurrence of a l'ucifer-ma,tch. 
 Without an incendiary, a man could not take fire. We 
 sometimes see the hands of inveterate dram-drinkers 
 throw oif an atmosphere of intoxicating vapors 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 
 
COSFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 461 
 
 fire from a match applied to a pipe when held between 
 the lips. If so, then what should hinder the " devour- 
 ing element" (as newspapers call fire) from spreading 
 through the throat to the cavity of the chest : in which 
 case, not being insured, the man would naturally become 
 a total loss. Opium, however, it will occur to the 
 reader, is not alcohol. That is true. But it might, for 
 anything that was known experimentally, be ultimately 
 worse. Coleridge, the only person known to the public 
 as having dallied systematically and for many years with 
 opium, could not be looked to for any candid report of 
 its history and progress ; besides that, Coleridge was 
 under a permanent craze of having nearly accomplished 
 his own liberation from opium ; and thus he had come 
 to have an extra reason for self-delusion. Finding my- 
 self, therelbre, walking on a solitary path of bad repute, 
 leading whither no man's experience could tell me, I be- 
 came proportionably cautious ; and if nature had any 
 plot for making an example of me, I was resolved to 
 baulk her. Thus it was that I never followed out the 
 seductions of opium to their final extremity. But, 
 nevertheless, in evading that extremity, I stumbled upon 
 as great a discovery as if I had not evaded it. After the 
 first or second self-conquest in this conflict — although 
 finding it impossible to persist through more than a few 
 months in the abstinence from opium — I remarked, 
 however, that the domineering tyranny of its exactions 
 was at length steadily declining. Quantities noticeably 
 less had now become sufficient : and after the fourth of 
 these victories, won with continually decreasing efforts, 
 I found that not only had the daily dose (upon relaps- 
 ing) suffered a self-limitation to an enormous extent, bat 
 
462 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 also that, upon any attempt obstinately to renew the 
 old doses, there arose a new symptom — viz., an irrita- 
 tion on the surface of the skin — which soon became 
 insupportable, and tended to distraction. In about four 
 years, without any further efforts, my daily ration had 
 fallen spontaneously from a varying quantity of eight, 
 ten, or twelve thousand drops of laudanum to about 
 three hundred. I describe the drug as laudanum, be- 
 cause another change ran along collaterally y^ith this su- 
 preme change — viz., that the solid opium began to re- 
 quire a length of time, continually increasing, to expand 
 its effects sensibly, oftentimes not less than four hours ; 
 whereas the tincture manifested its presence instanta- 
 neously. 
 
 Thus, then, I had reached a position from which au- 
 thoritatively it might be pronounced, as a result of long, 
 anxious, and vigilant experience, that, on the assumption 
 of earnest (even though intermitting) efforts towards 
 recurrent abstinences on the part of the opium-eater, 
 the practice of indulging to the very greatest excess in 
 this narcotic tends to a natural (almost an inevitable) 
 euthanasy. Many years ago, when briefly touching on 
 this subject, I announced (as a fact even then made 
 known to me) that no instance of abstinence, though it 
 were but of three days' continuance, ever perishes. Ten 
 grains, deducted from a daily ration of five hundred, 
 will tell through a series of many weeks, and will be 
 found again modifying the final result, even at the close 
 of the years reckoning. At this day, after a half-cen- 
 tury of oscillating experience, and after no efforts or 
 trying acts of self-denial beyond those severe ones at- 
 tached to the several processes (five or six in all) of re- 
 
CONFESSIONS or AN OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 463 
 
 conquering my freedom from the yoke of opium, I find 
 myself pretty nearly at the same station which I occu- 
 pied at that vast distance of time. It is recorded of 
 Lord Nelson, that, even after the Nile and Copenhagen, 
 he still paid the penalty, on the first days of resuming 
 his naval life, which is generally exacted by nature from 
 the youngest little middy or the rawest grifiin — viz., 
 sea-sickness. And this happens to a considerable pro- 
 portion of sailors : they do not recover their sea-legs till 
 some days after getting afloat. The very same thing 
 happens to veteran opium-eaters, when first, after long 
 intermissions, resuming too abruptly their ancient famil- 
 iarities with opium. It is a fact, which I mention as in- 
 dicating the enormous revolutions passed through, that 
 within these five years, I have turned pale, and felt 
 warnings, pointing towards such an uneasiness, after tak- 
 ing not more than twenty grains of opium. At present, 
 and for some years, I have been habitually content with 
 five or six grains daily, instead of three hundred and 
 twenty to four hundred grains. Let me wind up this 
 retrospect with saying that the powers of opium, as an 
 anodyne, but still more as a tranquillizer of nervous and 
 anomalous sensations, have not in the smallest degree 
 decayed ; and that, if it has casually unveiled its early 
 power of exacting slight penalties from any trivial inat- 
 tention to accurate proportions, it has more than com- 
 mensurately renewed its ancient privilege of lulling irri- 
 tation, and of supporting preternatural calls for exer- 
 tion. 
 
 My first proposition, therefore, amounts to this — that 
 the process of weaning one's-self from the deep bondage 
 of opium, by many people viewed with despairing eyes, 
 
464 APDITIONS TO THE 
 
 is not only a possible achievement, and one which grows 
 easier in every stage of its progress, but is favored an<J 
 promoted by nature in secret ways that could not, with- 
 out some experience, have been suspected. This, how- 
 ever, is but a sorry commendation of any resource mak- 
 ing great pretensions, that, by a process confessedly try- 
 ing to human firmness, it can ultimately be thrown 
 aside. Certainly little would be gained by the negative 
 service of cancelling a drawback upon any agency what- 
 ever, until it were shown that this drawback has availed 
 to disturb and neutralize great positive blessings lying 
 within the gift of that agency. What are the advantages 
 connected with opium that can merit any such name as 
 blessings ? 
 
 II. Briefly let me say, in the second proposition, that 
 if the reader had, in any South American forest, seen 
 growing rankly some great febrifuge (such as the 
 Jesuits' bark), he would probably have noticed it with 
 slight regard. To understand its value, he must first 
 have suffered from intermittent fever. Bark might 
 strike him as an unnatural stimulant ; but, when he 
 came to see that tertian or quartan fever was also an un- 
 natural pressure upon human energies, he would begin 
 to guess that two counter unnaturals may terminate in 
 one most natural and salubrious result. Nervous ir- 
 ritation is the secret desolator of human life; and for 
 this there is probably no adequate controlling power 
 but that of opium, taken daily, under steady regula- 
 fion. 
 
 III. But even more momentous is the burden of 
 my third proposition. Are you aware, reader, what it 
 is that constitutes the scourge (physically speaking) 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 465 
 
 of Great Britain and Ireland ? All readers, who direct 
 any part of their attention to medical subjects must 
 know that it is pulmonary consumption. If you walk 
 through a forest at certain seasons, you will see what is 
 called a blaze of white paint upon a certain 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 its 
 secret badges of cognizance amongst our youthful men 
 and women. Of those that, in the expression of Pericles, 
 constitute the vernal section of our population, what a 
 multitudinous crowd would be seen to wear upon their 
 foreheads the same sad ghastly blaze, or some equivalent 
 symbol of dedication to an early grave. How appalling 
 in its amount is this annual slaughter amongst those 
 that should by birthright be specially the children of 
 hope, and levied impartially from every rank of society ! 
 Is the income-tax or the poor-rate, faithful as each is to 
 its regulating tide-tables, paid by any class with as much 
 punctuality as this ■pTe.raa.tare jlorilegium, this gathering 
 and rendering up of blighted blossoms, by all classes ? 
 Then comes the startling question — that pierces the 
 breaking hearts of so many thousand afiBicted relatives 
 — Is there no remedy ? Is there no palliation of the 
 evil? Waste not a thought upon the idle question, 
 whether he that speaks is armed with this form or that 
 form of authorization and sanction ! Think within 
 yourself how infinite would be the scorn of any poor 
 sorrow-stricken mother, if she — standing over the coffin 
 of her daughter — could believe or could imagine that 
 any vestige of ceremonial scruples, or of fool-born su- 
 perstitions, or the terror of a word, or old traditional 
 30 
 
466 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 prejudice, had been allowed to neutralize 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 matter,'' she would cry out, indig- 
 nantly, " who it is that says the thing, so long as the 
 thing itself is true ? " It is the potent and faithful word 
 that is wanted, in perfect slight of the organ through 
 which it is uttered. Let me premise this notorious fact, 
 that all consumption, though latent in the constitution, 
 and indicated often to the eye in bodily conformation, 
 does not therefore manifest itself as a disease, until some 
 form of " cold," or bronchitis, some familiar affection of 
 the chest or of the lungs, arises to furnish a starting- 
 point for the morbid development.* Now the one fatal 
 blunder lies in suffering that development to occur ; and 
 the one counterworking secret for pre-arrestment of this 
 evil lies in steadily, by whatever means, keeping up arid 
 promoting the insensible perspiration. In that one 
 simple art of controlling a constant function of the ani- 
 mal economy, lies a magician's talisman for defeating 
 the forces leagued against the great organs of respira- 
 
 * Here is a parallel case, equally fatal where it occurs, but happily 
 moving within a far narrower circle. About flfty years ago, Sir 
 Everard Home, a surgeon of the highest class, mentioned as a dread- 
 ful caution, that, within his own experience, many an indolent tumor 
 in the face, not unfrequently the most trifling pimple, which for thirty 
 or more years had caused no uneasiness whatever, suddenly might 
 chance to receive the slightest possible wound from a razor in the act 
 of shaving. What followed ? Once disturbed, the trivial excrescence 
 became an open cancer. Is the parallel catastrophe in the pulmonary 
 system, when pushed forward into development, at all less likely to 
 hide its importance from uninstructed eyes ? Yet, on the other hand, 
 it is a thousand times more likely to happen. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 467 
 
 tion. Pulmonary affections, if not, previov^ly suffered to 
 develop themselves, cannot live under the hourly coun- 
 terworking of this magical force. Consequently the one 
 question in arrear is, what potent drug is that which pos- 
 sesses 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 wil- 
 derness ? There is none that I know of answering the 
 need but opium. The powers of the great agent I first 
 learned dimly to guess at from a remark made to me by 
 a lady in London ; then, and for some time previously, 
 she had been hospitably entertaining Coleridge, whom, 
 indeed, she tended with the anxiety of a daughte^r. 
 Consequently, she was familiarly acquainted with his 
 opium habits ; and on my asking, in reply to some re- 
 mark of hers, how she could be so sure as her words im- 
 plied, that Coleridge was just then likely to be incapac- 
 itated 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 ac- 
 quaintances, ex.posed a large surface of cheek ; too large 
 for the intellectual expression of his features generally, 
 had not the final effect been redeemed by what Words- 
 worth styled his " godlike forehead." The result was, 
 that no possible face so broadly betrayed and published 
 any effects whatever, especially these lustrous effects 
 from excesses in opium. For some years I failed to 
 consider reflectively, or else, reflecting, I failed to deci- 
 pher, 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 JEscu- 
 
468 ADDITIONS TO THB 
 
 lapius, simply reported the gathering accumulations of 
 insensible perspiration. In the very hour, a memorable 
 hour, of making that discovery, I made another. My 
 own history, medically speaking, involved a mystery. 
 At the commencement of my opium career, I had my- 
 self been pronounced repeatedly a martyr elect to pul- 
 monary consumption. And although, in the common 
 decencies of humanity, this opinion upon my prospects 
 had always been accompanied with some formal words 
 of encouragement — as, for instance, that constitutions, 
 after all, varied by endless differences ; that nobody 
 could fix limits to the powers of medicine, or, in default 
 of medicine, to the healing resources of nature herself; 
 yet, without something like a miracle in my favor, I was 
 instructed to regard myself as a condemned subject. 
 That was the upshot of these agreeable communications ; 
 alarming enough ; and they were rendered more so by 
 these three facts : first, that the opinions were pro- 
 nounced by the highest authorities in Christendom — 
 viz., the physicians at Clifton and the Bristol Hotwells, 
 who saw more of pulmonary disorders in one twelve- 
 month than the rest of the profession through all Eu- 
 rope in a century ; for the disease, it must be remem- 
 bered, was almost peculiar as a national scourge to Brit- 
 ain, interlinked with the local accidents of the climate 
 and its restless changes ; so that only in England could 
 it be studied ; and even there only in perfection at these 
 Bristolian adjacencies — the reason being this, all opu- 
 lent patients resorted to the Devonshire watering-places, 
 where the balmy temperature of the air and prevailing 
 winds allowed the myrtle and other greenhouse shrubs 
 to stand out-of-doors all winter through ; and naturally 
 
CONFESSIONS OP AN OPIUM-EATBK. 
 
 469 
 
 on the road to Devonshire all patients alike touched at 
 Clifton. There I was myself continually resident. 
 Many, therefore, and of supreme authority, were the 
 prophets of evil that announced to me my doom. Sec- 
 ondly, 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 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 devel- 
 oped. The hectic colors in the -face, the nocturnal per- 
 spirations, the growing embarrassments of the respira- 
 tion, and other expressions of gathering feebleness 
 under any attempts at taking exercise — all these symp- 
 toms were steadily accumulating between the age of 
 twenty-two and twenty-four. What was it that first ar- 
 rested them ? Simply the use, continually becomiog 
 more regular of opium. Nobody recommended this 
 drug to me ; on the contrary, under that ignorant horror 
 which everywhere invested opium, I saw too clearly that 
 any avowed use of it would expose me to a rabid perse- 
 cution.* Under the sincere and unaffected hope of saving 
 me from destruction, I should have been hunted into the 
 
 * " 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 ur- 
 gent. 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 vor- 
 tex of hgtheaded ignorance upon the very name of opium, which to 
 this hour (though with less of rancorous bigotry) malses it hazardous 
 to avow any daily use of so potent a drug. 
 
470 ADDITIONS TO 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 ef- 
 fected so absolute a conquest over all pulmonary symp- 
 toms, as could not have failed to fix upon me the astonish- 
 ment of Clifton, had not the sense of wonder been broken 
 by the lingering time consumed in the several stages of 
 the malady, and still more effectually by my own per- 
 sonal withdrawal from Clifton and its neighborhoods. 
 
 Finally, arose what will inevitably turn out a more 
 decisive chapter in such a record. I had always fixed 
 my eyes and my expectations upon a revolution in the 
 social history of opium, which could not (as I assured 
 myself) by accident or by art be materially deferred. 
 The great social machinery of life-insurance, supposing 
 no other agency to be brought into play, how would that 
 affect the great medicinal interests of opium ? I knew 
 that insurance offices, and the ablest actuaries of such 
 offices, were not less ignorant upon the real merits of the 
 opium question, and (which was worse) not less pro- 
 foundly 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-insur- 
 ance. Waiving the question whether it really did in- 
 crease that risk, in any case that increase of risk, like 
 other risks, could be valued, and must be valued. New 
 habits were arising in society : that I weU knew. And 
 the old machineries for insuring life interests, under 
 these or any other shifting conditions, would be obliged 
 to adapt themselves to changing circumstances. If the 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 471 
 
 old offices should be weak enough to persist in their 
 misdirected obstinacy, new ones would arise. Mean- 
 time the history of this question moved through the fol- 
 lowing aspects : Sixteen and seventeen years ago, the 
 offices all looked with horror upon opium-eaters. Thus 
 far, all men must have disapproved the principles of 
 their policy. Habitual brandy-drinkers met with no re- 
 pulse. And yet alcohol leads into daily dangers — for 
 instance, that of delirium tremens. But no man ever 
 heard of opium leading into delirium treme7is. 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 dis- 
 covered. However, the offices would not look at us who 
 came forward avowing ourselves to be opium-eaters. 
 Myself in particular they regarded, I believe, as the 
 abomination of desolation. And fourteen offices in 
 succession, within a few months, repulsed me as a can- 
 didate 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 say- 
 ing, " Ten years hence, gentlemen, you will have come to 
 understand your own interests better.'' In less then seven 
 years I received a letter from Mr. Tait, surgeon to the 
 Police Force in Edinburgh, reporting a direct investiga- 
 tion 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 rea- 
 jOBs for believing, that the habit of opium-eating was 
 spreading extensively, and through classes of society 
 widely disconnected. This diffiision would, beyond a 
 
472 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 doubt, as one of its earliest consequences, coerce the in- 
 surance offices into a strict revision of their old blind 
 policy. Accordingly it had already done so ; and the 
 earliest fruits of this revolution were now before me in 
 the proof-sheets so obligingly transmitted by Mr. Tait. 
 His object, as I understood it, in sending these proofs to 
 myself, was simply to collect such additional notices, 
 suggestions, or skeptical queries, as might reasonably be 
 anticipated from any reflective opium experience so 
 extensive as my own. Most unhappily, this gentleman, 
 during the course of our brief correspondence, was sud- 
 denly attacked by typhus fever ; and after a short illness, 
 to my own exceeding regret, he died. On all accounts 
 I had reason for sorrow. Knowing him only through 
 his very interesting correspondence with myself, I had 
 learned to form high expectations from Mr. Tait's philo- 
 sophic spirit and his determined hostility to traditional 
 cant. He had recorded, in the communications made to 
 myself, with great minuteness and anxiety for rigor of 
 accuracy, the cases of more than ninety patients. And 
 he had shown himself inexorably deaf to all attempts at 
 confounding evils specially belonging to opium as a 
 stimulant, as a narcotic, or as poison, with those which 
 belong to opium merely as a cause of constipation or 
 other ordinary irregularities in the animal economy. 
 Most people of sedentary habits, but amongst such people 
 notoriously those who think much, need some slight 
 means of stimulating the watchwork of the animal sys- 
 tem into action. Neglect of such means will of course 
 derange the health. But in such derangements there is 
 no special impeachment of opium : many thousands ol 
 agents terminate in the same or more obstinate derange- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER. 473 
 
 ments, unless vigilantly counteracted. The paramount 
 mission of Mr. Tait, under his instructions from insur- 
 ance offices, as I interpreted his own account of this mis- 
 sion, was to report firmly and decisively upon the tend- 
 encies of opium in relation to the lengthening or short- 
 ening of life. At that point where his proof-sheets were 
 interrupted by the fatal attack of fever, he had not en- 
 tirely finished his record of cases ; so that his final judg- 
 ment or summing up had not commenced. It was, 
 however, evident to me in what channel this final judg- 
 ment would have flowed. To a certainity, he would 
 have authorized his clients (the insurance offices) to dis- 
 miss all anxiety as to the life-abridging tendencies of 
 opium. But he would have pointed their jealousy in 
 another direction — viz., this, that in some proportion 
 of cases there may always be a reasonable ground for 
 suspecting, not the opium as separately in itself any 
 cause of mischief, but the opium as a conjectural indica- 
 tion 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 affijction. In all such circumstances, the insurance 
 office is entitled to call for a frank disclosure of the ail- 
 ment ; but not, as hitherto, entitled to assume the opium 
 as itself an ailtnent. 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' un- 
 usual exertion, qualifying him both as to spirits and as 
 to strength ; or again, simply the general purpose of 
 
474 ADDITIONS TO THE 
 
 seeking relief from ennui, or tmdium vitee — any one of 
 these motives may satisfactorily account for the applic- 
 ant's having resorted to opium. He might reply to the 
 office in Professor "Wilson's vrord * " Gentlemen, I am a 
 Hedonist ; and if you must know why I take opium, that 's 
 the reason why." But still upon every admission from 
 a candidate that he took opium, it would be a prudent 
 question and a just question on the part of the office, to 
 ask " why ; " and in what circumstances the practice had 
 originated. If any local uneasiness, then would arise a 
 natural right on the part of the office to press for a surg- 
 ical examination. But, apart from such special cases, it 
 was evident that this acute and experienced surgeon saw 
 no reason whatever in the simple practice of opium-eat- 
 ing for hesitating upon a life-insurance proposal, or for 
 exacting a higher rate of premium. 
 
 Here I pause. The reader will infer, from what I 
 have now said, that all passages, written at an earlier 
 period under cloudy and uncorrected views of the evil 
 agencies presumable in opium, stand retracted ; although, 
 shrinking from the labor of altering an error diffused so 
 widely under my own early misconceptions of the truth, 
 I have suffered them to remain as they were. My gen- 
 eral views upon the powers and natural tendencies of 
 opium were all supported and strengthened by this 
 fortunate advantage of a professional correspondence. 
 My special doctrine I now repeat at this point of 
 valediction, and in a rememberable form. Lord Ba- 
 con said once, too boldly and hazardously, that he who 
 
 * From the Greek word for volvptnom pleasure — viz., Bedane 
 ChSoki)) — Professor Wilson coined the English word Hedonist, which 
 he sometimes applied in playful reproach to myself and others. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATEK. 475 
 
 discovers the secret of making myrrh soluble by human 
 blood, has discovered the secret of immortal life. I pro- 
 pose a more modest form of magic — that he who dis- 
 covers the secret of stimulating and keeping up uninter- 
 mittingly the insensible perspiration, has discovered the 
 secret of intercepting pulmonary consumption. 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 What is the deadest of things earthly ? It is, says 
 the world, ever forward and rash, " a door nail." 
 But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than 
 a doornail — viz., Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i. Dead, 
 more dead, most dead is Gillman's Coleridge, vol. i., 
 and this upon more arguments than one. The book 
 has clearly not completed its elementary act of respi- 
 ration ; the systole of vol. i. is absolutely useless and 
 lost without the diastole of that vol. ii. which is 
 never to exist. That is one argument ; and perhaps 
 this second argument is stronger. Gillman's Col- 
 eridge, vol. i., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost ma- 
 liciously with some of our own particular friends ; 
 and yet, until late in this summer. Anno Domini 
 1844, we — that is, neither ourselves nor our friends 
 — never heard of its existence. Now, a sloth, even 
 without the benefit of Mr. Waterton's evidence to his 
 character, will travel faster than that; but malice, 
 which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and 
 oold at starting when it can thus have lingered in the 
 rear for six years ; and therefore, though the world 
 was so far ^igh^, that people do say, " Dead as a door 
 
 nail," yet henceforward the weakest of these people 
 
 (476) 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 477 
 
 will see the propriety of saying, " Dead as Gillman's 
 Coleridge." 
 
 The reader of experience, on sliding over 'the sur- 
 face of this opening paragraph, begins to think there's 
 mischief singing in the upper air. No, reader ; not a" 
 all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we 
 protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the sub- 
 ject, — Coleridge and Opium Eating, — Mr. Gillman 
 would have been dismissed by us unnoticed. Indeea, 
 we not only forgive Mr. Gillman, but we have a kind- 
 ness for him ; aind on this accctunt, that he was good, 
 he was generous, he was most forbearing, through 
 twenty years, to poor Coleridge, when thrown upon 
 his hospitality. An excellent thing that, Mr. Gillman, 
 and one sufficient to blot out a world of libels on our- 
 selves. But still, noticing the theme suggested by 
 this unhappy vol. i., we are forced at times to notice 
 its author. Nor is this to be regretted, "We remem- 
 ber a line of Horace never yet properly translated, 
 viz., — 
 
 " Neo scutica digmim horribili sectSre flagelltt." 
 
 The true translation of "which, as we assure the un- 
 learned reader, is, " Nor must you pursue with the 
 horrid knout of Christopher that man who merits only 
 a switching." Very true. We protest against all at- 
 tempts to invoke the exterminating knout, for that 
 sends a man to the hospital for two months ; but you 
 see that the same judicious poet, who dissuades an 
 appeal to the knout, indirectly recommends the switch, 
 which, indeed, is rather pleasant than otherwise, ami- 
 
478 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 ably playful in some of its little caprices, and, in its 
 worst, suggesting only a pennyworth of diachylon. 
 
 We begin by professing with hearty sincerity our 
 fervnnt admirat.on of the extraordinary man who 
 furnishes the theme for Mr. Gillman's coup d'essai in 
 biography. He was, in a literary sense, our brother ; 
 for he also was amongst the contributors to Black- 
 wood, and will, we presume, take his station in that 
 Blackwood gallery of portraits which in a century 
 hence will possess more interest for intellectual 
 Europe than any merely martial series of portraits,, 
 or any gallery of statesmen assembled in congress, 
 except as regards one or two leaders ; for defunct 
 major generals and secondary diplomatists, when their 
 date is past, awake no more emotion than last year's 
 advertisements or obsolete directories ; whereas those 
 who in a stormy age have swept the harps of pas- 
 sion, of genial wit, or of the wrestling and gladiatorial 
 reason, become more interesting to men when they 
 can no longer be seen as bodily agents than even 
 in the middle chords of that intellectual music over 
 which, living, they presided. 
 
 Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader, and 
 fought amongst the primipili ; yet comparatively he 
 is still unknown. Heavy, indeed, are the arrears still 
 due to philosophic curiosity on the real merits and 
 on the separate merits of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 Coleridge as a poet, Coleridge as a philosopher,— 
 how extensive are those questions, if those were all ! 
 And upon neither question have we yet any investiga- 
 tion, such as, by compass of views, by research, oi 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 479 
 
 even by earnestness of sympathy with the subject, 
 can or ought to satisfy a philosophic demand. Blind 
 is that man who can persuade himself that the interest 
 in Coleridge, taken as a total object, is becoming an 
 obsolete interest. We are of opinion that even Milton, 
 now viewed from a distance of two centuries, is still 
 inadequately judged or appreciated in his character of 
 poet, of patriot, and partisan, or, finally, in his charac- 
 ter of accomplished scholar. But if so, how much 
 less can it be pretended that satisfaction has been 
 rendered to the claims of Coleridge ! for upon Milton 
 libraries have been written. There has been time for 
 the malice of men, for the jealousy of men, for the 
 enthusiasm, the scepticism, the adoring admiration of 
 men to expand themselves. There has been room 
 for a Bentley, for an Addison, for a Johnson, for a 
 wicked Lauder, for an avenging Douglas, for an idol- 
 izing Chateaubriand ; and yet, after all, little enough 
 has been done towards any comprehensive estimate of 
 the mighty being concerned. Piles of materials have 
 been gathered to the ground ; but, for the monument 
 which should have risen from these materials, neither 
 the first stone has been laid, nor has a qualified archi- 
 tect yet presented his credentials. On the other hand, 
 upon Coleridge little comparatively has yet been 
 written ; whilst the separate characters on which the 
 judgment is awaited are more by one than those 
 which Milton sustained. Coleridge, also, is a poet. 
 Coleridge, also, was mixed up with the fervent politics 
 of his age: — an age how memorably reflecting the 
 revolutionary agitations of Milton's 'age ! Coleridge, 
 also, was an extensive and brilliant scholar. What. 
 
480 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 ever might be the separate proportions of the two 
 men in each particular department of the three here 
 noticed, think as the reader will upon that point, sure 
 we are that either subject is ample enough to make a 
 strain upon the amplest faculties. How alarming, 
 therefore, for any honest critic, who should undertake 
 this later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that, after 
 pursuing him through a zodiac of splendors corre- 
 sponding to those of Milton in kind, however different 
 in degree, — after weighing him as a poet, as a philo- 
 sophic politician, as a scholar, — he will have to wheel 
 after him into another orbit — into the unfathomable 
 nimbus of transcendental metaphysics ! Weigh him 
 the critic must in the golden balance of philosophy the 
 most abstruse, — a balance which even itself requires 
 weighing previously, — or he will have done nothing that 
 can be received for an estimate of the composite Coler- 
 idge. This astonishing man, be it again remembered, 
 besides being an exquisite poet, a profound political 
 speculator, a philosophic student of literature through 
 all its chambers and recesses, was also a circum- 
 navigator on the most pathless waters of scholasticism 
 and metaphysics. He had sounded, without guiding 
 charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and Plotinus ; he 
 had laid down buoys on the twilight or moonlight ocean 
 of Jacob Boehmen ; ^ he had cruised over the broad 
 Atlantic of Kant and Schelling, of Fichte and Oken. 
 Where is the man who shall be equal to these things .' 
 We at least make no such adventurous effort ; or, 
 if ever we should presume to do so, not at present, 
 Here we design only to make a coasting voyage of 
 survey round the headlands and most conspicuous 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING 481 
 
 seamarks of our subject as they are brought forward 
 by Mr. Gillraan or collaterally suggested by our own 
 reflections ; and especially we wish to say a word or 
 two on Coleridge as an opium eater. 
 
 Naturally the first point to which we direct our 
 attention is the history and personal relations of Coler- 
 idge. Living with Mr. Giliman for nineteen years as 
 a domesticated friend, Coleridge ought to have been 
 known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect, 
 from so much intercourse, some additions to our 
 slender knowledge of Coleridge's adventures, (if we 
 may use so coarse a word,) and of the secret springs 
 ftt work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cam- 
 bridge, London, Bristol, which have been rudely told 
 to the world, and repeatedly told, as showy romances, 
 but never rationally explained. 
 
 The anecdotes, however, which Mr. Giliman has 
 added to the personal history of Coleridge are as little 
 advantageous to the effect of his own book as they are 
 to the interest of the memorable character which he 
 seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without 
 grace, and generally are suspicious in their details. 
 Mr. Giliman we believe to be too upright a man {or 
 countenancing any untruth. He has been deceiveit. 
 For example, will any man believe this > A certain 
 " excellent equestrian," falling in with Coleridge on 
 horseback, thus accosted him : " Pray, sir, did you 
 meet a tailor along the road.'" "J[ tailor!" an- 
 swered Coleridge. " I did meet a perso7i answering 
 such a description, wJw told me he had dropped his 
 goose ; that, if I rode a little farther, I should find it. 
 And I guess he must have meant you." In Joe Miller 
 
 31 
 
48'2 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 a 
 
 this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has 
 privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the 
 mouth of a Joe Millerism ; but Mr. Gillman, writing 
 the life of a philosopher, and no jest book, is under a 
 different law of decorum. That retort, however, which 
 silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one ; 
 and we are desired to believe that in this case the 
 baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candor, 
 saying aloud to himself, like the excellent philosopher 
 that he evidently was, " Caught a Tartar ! " 
 
 But another story of a sporting baronet, who was 
 besides a member of Parliament, is much worse, and 
 altogether degrading to Coleridge. This gentleman, 
 by way of showing off before a party of ladies, is 
 represented as insulting Coleridge by putting questions 
 to him on the qualities of his horse,*' so as to draw the 
 animal's misei'able defects into public notice, and then 
 closing his display by demanding what he would take 
 for the horse, " including the rider." The supposed 
 reply of Coleridge might seem good to those who un- 
 derstand nothing of true dignity ; for, as an dmpromptu, 
 it was smart, and even caustic. The baronet, it seems, 
 was reputed to have been bought by the minister ; and 
 the reader will at once divine that the retort took ad- 
 vantage of that current belief, so as to throw back the 
 sarcasm, by proclaiming that neither horse ncr rider 
 had a price placarded in the market at which any man 
 could become their purchaser. But this was not the 
 temper in which Coleridge either did reply or could 
 have replied. Coleridge showed, in the spirit of his 
 manner, a profound sensibility to the nature of a gen- 
 tleman ; and he felt too justly what it became a self- 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 483 
 
 respecting person to say ever to have aped the sort of 
 flashy fencing which might seem fine to a theatrical 
 blood. 
 
 Another story is self-refuted. " A hired partisan " 
 had come to one of Coleridge's political lectures with 
 the express purposo of bringing the lecturer into 
 trouble ; and most preposterously he laid himself open 
 to his own snare by refusing to pay for admission. 
 Spies must be poor artists who proceed thus. Upon 
 which Coleridge remarked, " that, before the gen- 
 tleman kicked up a dust, surely he would down with 
 the dust." So far the story will not do. But what 
 follows is possible enough. The same " hired " gen- 
 tleman, by way of giving unity to the tale, is described 
 as having hissed. Upon this a ciy arose of " Turn 
 him out ! " But Coleridge interfered to protect him. 
 He insisted on the man's right to hiss if he thought fit ; 
 it was legal to hiss ; it was natural to hiss : " For what 
 is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of 
 reason come in contact with redhot aristocracy, but a 
 hiss ? " Euge ! 
 
 Amongst all the anecdotes, however, of this splendid 
 man, often trivial, often incoherent, often unauthenti- 
 cated, there is one which strikes us as both true and 
 interesting; and we are grateful to Mr. Gill man for 
 preserving it. We find it introduced, and partially au- 
 thenticated, by the following sentence from Coleridge 
 himself: " From eight to fourteen I was a playless 
 daydreamer, a helluo Ubrorum, my appetite for which 
 was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger, who 
 was struck by my conversation, made me free of a 
 circulating library in King's Street, Cheapside." The 
 
484 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATISTG. 
 
 more circumstantial explanation of Mr. Gillman is this 
 ' The incident, indeed, was singular. Going down the 
 Strand in one of his daydreams, fancying himself 
 swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hand^ 
 before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came 
 in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman 
 seized his hand : turning I'ound and looking at him 
 with some anger, — 'What! so young, and yet so 
 wicked ? ' at the same time accusing him of an attempt 
 to pick his pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out his 
 denial of the intention, and explained to him how he 
 thought himself Leander swimming across the Helles- 
 pont. The gentleman was so struck and delighted 
 with the novelty of the thing and with the simplicity 
 and intelligence of the boy that he subscribed, as be- 
 fore stated, to the library ; in consequence of which 
 Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of 
 reading." 
 
 We fear that this slovenly narrative is the very per- 
 fection of bad story telling. But the story itself is 
 striking, and, by the veiy oddness of the incidents, not 
 likely to have been invented. The effect, from the po- 
 sition of the two parties, — on the one side a simple 
 child from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he 
 was swimming over from Sestos to Abydos, and, on 
 tht other, the experienced man, dreaming only of this 
 world, its knaves and its thieves, but still kind and gen- 
 erous, — is beautiful and picturesque. O, si sic omnia ! 
 
 But the most interesting to us of the personalities 
 connected with Coleridge are his feuds and his persona! 
 dislikes. Incomprehensible to us is the war of exter- 
 mination which Coleridge made upon the political econ. 
 
rOLEEIDGE AND OPIUJI EATING. 485 
 
 3inwts. Did Sir James Steuart, in speaking of vino 
 dressers, (not as vine dressers, but generally as culti 
 vators,) tell his rcadsrs, that, if sucii a man simply re 
 placed his own consumption, having no surplus what 
 ever or increment for the public capital, he could noi 
 be considered a useful citizen, not the beast in the 
 Revelation is held up by Coleridge as more hateful to 
 the spirit of truth than the Jacobite baronet. And yet 
 we know of an author — viz., one S. T. Coleridge — 
 who repeated that same doctrine without finding any 
 evil in it. Look at the first part of the Wallenstein, 
 where Count Isolani having said, " Poh ! we are all 
 his subjects," i. e., soldiers, (though unproductive la- 
 borers,) not less than productive peasants, the em- 
 peror's envoy replies, " Yet with a difierence, gen- 
 eral ; " and the difference implies Sir James's scale, 
 his vine dresser being the equatorial case between the 
 two extremes of the envoy. Malthus again, in his pop- 
 ulation book, contends for a mathematic difference be- 
 tween animal and vegetable life in respect to the law 
 of increase ; as though the first increased by geometri- 
 cal ratios, the last by arithmetical ! No proposition 
 more worthy of laughter, since both, when permitted 
 to expand, increase by geometrical ratios, and the latter 
 by much higher ratios ; whereas Malthus persuaded 
 himself of his crotchet simply by refusing the requisite 
 condition in the vegetable case and granting it in the 
 other. If you take a few grains of wheat, and are re- 
 quired to plant all successive generations of their 
 produce in the same flower pot forever, of course you 
 neutralize its expansion by your own act of arbitrary 
 limitation.*^ But so you would do if you tried the case 
 
48t) COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 of animal increase by still exterminating all but one 
 replacing couple of parents. This is not to try, but 
 merely a pretence of trying, one order of powers 
 against another. That was folly. But Coleridge com- 
 bated this idea in a manner so obscure that nobody 
 understood it. And leaving these speculative conun- 
 drums, in coming to the gi'eat practical interests afloat 
 in the poor laws, Coleridge did so little real work 
 that he left, as a res Integra, to Dr. Alison, the capi- 
 tal argument that legal and adequate provision for the 
 poor, whether impotent poor or poor accidentally out 
 of work, does not extend pauperism ; no ; but is the 
 one great resource for putting it down. Dr. Alison's 
 overwhelming and experimental manifestations of that 
 truth have prostrated Malthus and his generation for- 
 ever. This comes of not attending to the Latin maxim, 
 ^"•Hoc age," (Mind the object before you.) Dr. Ali- 
 son, a wise man, " hoc egit ; " Coleridge " aliud egit." 
 And we see the result. In a case which suited him, 
 by interesting his peculiar feeling, Coleridge could 
 command 
 
 "Attention full ten times as much as there needs." 
 
 But search documents, value evidence, or thresh out 
 bushels of statistical tables, Coleridge could not, any 
 more than he could ride with Elliot's dragoons. 
 
 Another instance of Coleridge's inaptitude for such 
 studies as political economy is found in his fancy, by 
 no means " rich and rare," but meagre and trite, that 
 [axes can never injure public prosperity by mere ex- 
 cess of quantity. If they injure, we are to concluda 
 
COLEKIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 487 
 
 that it must be by their quality and mode of operation 
 or by their false appropriation, (as, for instance, if 
 they are sent out of the country and spent abroad ;) 
 because, says Coleridge, if the taxes are exhaled from 
 the country as vapors, back they come in drenching 
 showers. Twenty pounds ascend in a Scotch mist to 
 the chancellor of the exchequer from Leeds ; but does 
 it evaporate ? Not at all. By return of post, down 
 comes an order for twenty pounds' worth of Leeds 
 cloth on account of government, seeing that the poor 
 
 men of the th regiment want new gaiters. True ; 
 
 but, of this return twenty pounds, not more than four 
 will be profit — i. e., surplus accruing to the public capi- 
 tal ; whereas of the original twenty pounds every shit- 
 ling was surplus. The same unsound fancy has been 
 many times brought forward, often in England, often 
 in France ; but it is curious that its first appearance upon 
 any stage was precisely two centuries ago, when as yet 
 political economy slept with the pre-Adamites — viz., in 
 the, Long Parliament. In a quarto volume of the de- 
 bates during 1644-45, printed as an independent work, 
 will be found the same identical doctrine, supported 
 very sonorously by the same little love of an illustra- 
 tion from the seesaw of mist and rain. 
 
 Political economy was not Coleridge's forte. In 
 politics he was happier. In mere personal politics he 
 (like every man, when reviewed from a station distant 
 by forty years) will often appear to have erred ; nay, 
 he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is 
 the necessity of us all. Keen are the refutations of 
 lime ; and absolute results to posterity are the latal 
 touchstone of opinions in the past. It is undeniable, 
 
488 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 besides, that Coleridge had strong personal antipathies 
 for instance, to Messrs. Pitt and Dundas. Yet why 
 we never could understand. We once heard him tell 
 a story upon Windermere to the late Mr. Curwen, 
 then M. P. for Workington, which was meant appar- 
 ently to account for this feeling. The story amounted 
 to this, that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr. Pitt 
 had wantonly amused himself at a dinner paity, in 
 Trinity, in smashing with filberts (discharged in 
 showers like grape shot) a most costly dessert set 
 of cut glass ; from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 argued a principle of destructiveness in his cerebellum. 
 Now, if this dessert set belonged to some poor suffer- 
 ing Trinitarian, and not to himself, we are of opinion 
 that he was faulty, and ought, upon his own great 
 subsequent maxim, to have been coerced into " indem- 
 nity for the past and security for the future." But, 
 besides that this glassy mythus belongs to an era fif- 
 teen years earlier than Coleridge's, so as to justify a 
 shadow of scepticism, we really cannot find in such 
 an escapade under the boiling blood of youth any 
 sufficient justification of that withering malignity to- 
 wards the name of Pitt which runs through Coleridge's 
 famous Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. As this little 
 viperous jeu d^esprit (published anonymously) subse- 
 quently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner 
 discussion in London at which Coleridge (comme de 
 raison) was the chief speaker, the reader of this gener- 
 ation may wish to know the question at issue ; and, in 
 order to judge of that, he must know the outline of 
 this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene 
 three pleasant young ladies — viz., Miss Fire, Miss 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 489 
 
 Famine, and Miss Slaughter. " What are you up to ' 
 What's the row } " we may suppose to be the intro- 
 ductory question of the poet. And the answer of the 
 ladies makes us aware that they are fresh from laricing 
 in Ireland and in France. A glor'ous spree they had ; 
 lots of fun, and laughter a discretion. At all times 
 grains puellce risus ab angulo ; so that we listen to 
 their little gossip with interest. They had been setting 
 men, it seems, by the ears ; and the drollest little 
 atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have 
 seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is 
 concerned ; but the pet little joke was in La Vendee. 
 Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the 
 question, whether any of them can tell the name of 
 the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell ; if 
 no, let her whisper it. 
 
 " "Whisper it, sister, so and so, 
 In a dark hint, distinct and low." 
 
 Upon which the playful Miss Slaughter replies, — 
 
 " Letters four do form his name. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 He came by stealth and unlocked my den ; 
 And I have drunk the blood since then 
 Of thrice three hundred thousand men." 
 
 Good ; but the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. 
 If this quadriliteral man had done so much for them, 
 (though, really, we think 6s. 8d. might have settled his 
 claim,) what, says Fire, setting her arms akimbo, would 
 they do for him ? Slaughter replies, rather crustily, 
 that, as far as a good kicking would go, or (says Fam- 
 ine) a little matter of tearing to pieces by the mob, 
 
490 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 tliey would be glad to take tickets at his benefit 
 " How, you bitches ! " says Fire. " Is that all ? 
 
 " I alone am faithful ; I 
 Clitig to him everlastingly." 
 
 The sentiment is diabolical ; and the question argued 
 at the London dinner table was, Could the writer have 
 been other than a devil ? The dinner was at the late 
 excellent Mr. Sotheby's, known advantageously in those 
 days as the translator of Wieland's Oberon. Several 
 of the great guns amongst the literary body were pres- 
 ent — in particular. Sir Walter Scott; and he, we be- 
 lieve, with his usual good nature, took the apologetic 
 side of the dispute ; in fact, he was in the secret. 
 Nobody else, barring the author, knew at first whose 
 good name was at stake. The scene must have been 
 high. The company kicked about the poor diabolic 
 writer's head as if it had been a tennis ball. Coler- 
 idge, the yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired 
 and fumed in pleading for the defendant ; the company 
 demurred; the orafoi' grew urgent; wits began to 
 smoke the case, as active verbs — the advocate to smoke, 
 as a neuter verb ; the " fun grew fast and furious ; " 
 until at length delinquent arose, burning tears in his 
 eyes, and confessed to an audience, (now bursting with 
 stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to be bursting 
 with fiery indignation,) " Lo, I am he that wrote it ! " 
 
 For our own part, we side with Coleridge. Malice 
 is not always of the heart ; there is a malice of the 
 understanding and the fancy. Neither do we think 
 the worse of a man for having invented the most horri 
 ble and old woman troubling curse that demons evei 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 491 
 
 flstened to. We are too apt to swear horribly our- 
 selves ; and often have we frightened the cat — to say 
 nothing of tho kettle — by our shocking (far too shock- 
 ing) oaths. 
 
 There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge 
 detested, or seemed to detest — Paley, Sir Sidney 
 Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord Donoughmore,) 
 and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipa- 
 thy had been purely philosophic ; but we believe that 
 partly it was personal ; and it tallies with this belief, 
 that, in his earliest political tracts, Coleridge charged 
 the archdeacon repeatedly with his own joke, as if it 
 had been a serious saying — viz., "that he could not 
 afford to keep a conscience ; " such luxuries, like a 
 carriage for instance, being obviously beyond the 
 finances of poor men. 
 
 With respect to the philosophic question between the 
 parties as to the grounds of moral election, we hope it 
 is no treason to suggest that both were perhaps in error. 
 Against Paley, it occurs at once that he himself would 
 not have made consequences the practical test in valu- 
 ing the morality of an act, since these can very seldom 
 be traced at all up to the final stages, and in the earli- 
 est stages are exceedingly different under different cir- 
 cumstances ; so that the same act, tried by its conse- 
 quences, would bear a fiuctuating appreciation. This 
 could not have been Paley's revised meaning ; conse- 
 quently, had he been pressed by opposition, it would 
 have come out that by test he meant only speculative 
 test — a very harmless doctrine, certainly, but useless 
 and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The 
 reader may catch our meaning in the following iHuS" 
 
492 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 tration. It is a matter of general belief that happi- 
 ness, upon the whole, follows in a higher degree from 
 constant integrity than from the closest attention to self- 
 interest. Now, happiness is one of those consequences 
 which Paley meant by final or .remotest ; but we could 
 never use this idea as an exponent of integrity or in- 
 terchangeable criterion, because happiness cannot be 
 ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of 
 time, whereas the particular act of integrity depends 
 continually upon the election of the moment. No 
 man, therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, 
 Do what makes you happy ; use this as your test of 
 actions, satisfied that in that case always you will do 
 the thing which is right ; for he cannot discern independ- 
 ently what will make him happy ; and he must decide 
 on the spot. The use of the nexus between morality 
 and happiness must, therefore, be inverted ; it is not 
 practical or prospective, but simply retrospective ; and 
 in that form it says no mpre than the good old rules 
 hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no prac- 
 tical guide for moral election which a man had not 
 before he ever thought of this nexus. In the sense in 
 which it is true, we need not go to the professor's chair 
 for this maxim ; in the sense in which it would serve 
 Paley, it is absolutely false. 
 
 On the other hand, as against Coleridge, it is certain 
 that many acts could be mentioned which are judged 
 tc be good or bad only because their consequences 
 are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts of 
 life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haugh- 
 tily) independent of consequences. For instance 
 fidelitj- to a trust is a law of immutable moralitj 
 
rOLEEIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 493 
 
 subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left 
 executor to a friend ; you are to pay over his last 
 legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel ; and you are 
 to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, 
 though a good man and a wise man, struggling with 
 adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all con- 
 templation of results. It was your deceased friend's 
 right to make the will ; it is yours simply to see it exe- 
 cuted. Now, in opposition to this primary class of 
 actions stands another, such as the habit of intoxica- 
 tion, which is known to be wrong only by observing 
 the consequences. If drunkenness did not terminate, 
 after some years, in producing bodily weakness, irrita- 
 bility in the temper, and so forth, it would not be a 
 vicious act ; and accordingly, if a transcendent motive 
 should arise in favor of drunkenness, as that it would 
 enable you to face a degree of cold or contagion else 
 menacing to life, a duty would arise, pro hac vice, of 
 getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered 
 under the infirmity of cowardice ; an awful coward he 
 was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had cour- 
 age enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. 
 Therefore in an emergency, whei'e he knew himself 
 sudden'5' loaded with the responsibility of defending a 
 family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. But 
 to violate a trust could never become right under any 
 change of circumstances. Coleridge, however, alto- 
 gether overlooked this distinction ; which on the other 
 hand, stirring in Paley's mind, but never brought out to 
 distinct consciousness, nor ever investigated, nor lim- 
 ited, has undermined his system. Perhaps it is not 
 very important how a man theorizes upon morality, 
 
494 COLERIDGE A.ND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 happily for us all, God has left no man in such ques- 
 tions practically to the guidance of his understanding ; 
 but still, considering that academic bodies are partly 
 instituted for the support of speculative truth as well as 
 truth practical, we must think it a blot upon the splen- 
 dor of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them, in a 
 Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their 
 ethics, the alternative being Aristotle. And in our 
 mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, 
 Aristotle is often' less of a pagan than Paley. 
 
 Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the 
 Egyptian Lord Hutchinson fell under the category 
 of Martial's case : — 
 
 " Non amo te, Sabidi, nee possum dicere quare ; 
 Hoc solum novi — non amo te, Sabidi." 
 
 Against Lord Hutchinson we never heard him plead 
 any thing of moment except that he was finically 
 Frenchified in his diction ; of which he gave this in- 
 stance : that having occasion to notice a brick wall, 
 (which was literally that, not more and not less,) 
 when reconnoitring the French defences, he called it 
 a reoitement. And we ourselves remember his using 
 the French word gloriole rather ostentatiouslji' — that 
 is, when no particular emphasis attached to the case. 
 But every man has his foibles ; and few, perhaps, are 
 less conspicuously annoying than this of Lord Hutch- 
 inson. Sir Sidney's crimes were less distinctly re- 
 vealed to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred 
 of him was more to our taste ; for (though quite unrea- 
 sonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He 
 insisted on it that our British John Hunter was the gen- 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 495 
 
 uine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now 
 speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so 
 far as that ; but, when publicly we address that most 
 respectable character, en grand costume, we always 
 mean to back Coleridge ; for we are a horrible John 
 Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes, it makes 
 no difference to us — right or wrong, black or white — 
 when our countrymen are concerned ; and John Hunter, 
 notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet,^ was really 
 a great man ; though it will not follow that Cuvier must 
 therefore have been a little one. We do not pretend 
 to be acquainted with the tenih part of Cuvier's per- 
 formances ; but we suspect, that Coleridge's range in 
 that respect was not much greater than our own. 
 
 Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might re- 
 vive from our recollections of Coleridge had we a suf- 
 ficient motive ; but in compensation, and by way of 
 redressing the balance, he had many strange likings, — 
 equally monomaniac, — and, unaccountably, he chose 
 to exhibit his whimsical partialities by dressing up, as 
 it were, in his own clothes such a set of scarecrows as 
 eye has not beheld. Heavens ! what an ark of unclean 
 beasts would have been Coleridge's private menagerie 
 of departed philosophers could they all have been trot- 
 ted out in succession ! But did the reader feel them to 
 be the awful bores which, in fact, they were } No • 
 because Coleridge had blown upon these withered anat- 
 omies, through the blowpipe of his own creative genius, 
 a stream of gas that swelled the tissue of their ante- 
 diluvian wrinkles, forced color upon their cheeks and 
 splendor upon their sodden eyes. Such a process of 
 ventriloquism never has existed. He spoke by their 
 
496 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATIN'G. 
 
 organs ; they were the tubes ; and he forced throi gh 
 their wooden machinery his own Beethoven harmonies. 
 Fii-st came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was 
 he dull .? Is a wooden spoon dull .' Fishy were his 
 eyes ; torpedinous was his manner ; and his main idea, 
 out of two'which he really had, related to the moon — 
 from which you infei', perhaps, that he was lunatic. 
 By no means. It was no craze, under the influence of 
 the moon, which possessed him ; it was an idea of 
 mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people, like 
 many others, had an idea that she influenced the 
 weather. Subsequently the Herschels, senior and jun- 
 ior, systematized this idea ; and then the wrath of An- 
 drew, previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to 
 a plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland people (for at 
 the lakes it was we knew him) expounded his condi- 
 tion to us by saying that he was " maffled ; " which 
 word means " perplexed in the extreme." His wrath 
 did not pass into lunacy ; it produced simple distraction; 
 an uneasy fumbling with the idea — like that of an old 
 superannuated dog who longs to woriy, but cannot for 
 want of teeth. In this condition you will judge that he 
 was rather tedious ; and in this condition Coleridge 
 took him up. Andrew's other idea, because he had 
 two, related to education. Perhaps six sevenths of that 
 also came from Madras. No matter ; Coleridge took 
 that up ; Southey also ; but Southey with his usual 
 temperate fervor. Coleridge, on the other hand, found 
 celestial marvels both in the scheme and in the man. 
 Then commenced the apotheosis of Andrew Bell ; and 
 because it happened that his opponent, Lancaster, be- 
 tween ourselves, really had stolen his ideas from Bell, 
 
COLERIDGE AND OP'.UM EATING. 497 
 
 what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the 
 celestial transfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge 
 heated himself to such an extent that people, when 
 referring to that subject, asked each ether, " Have you 
 heard Coleridge lecture on Bel and the Dragon ? " 
 
 The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Wool- 
 man, the Quaker. Him, though we once possessed his 
 works, it cannot be truly affirmed that we ever read. 
 Try to read John we often did ; but read John we did 
 not. This, however, you say, might be our fault, and 
 not John's. Very likely ; and we have a notion that 
 now, with our wiser thoughts, we should read John if 
 he were here on this table. It is certain that he was a 
 good man, and one of the earliest in America, if not 
 in Christendom, who lifted up his hand to protest 
 against the slave trade ; but still we suspect that, had 
 John been all that Coleridge represented, he would not 
 have repelled us from reading his travels in the fearful 
 way that he did. But again we beg pardon, and en- 
 treat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains 
 of John Woolman ; for he was an Israelite, indeed, in 
 whom there was no guile. 
 
 The third person raised to divine honors by Col- 
 eridge was Bowyer, the master of Christ's Hospital, 
 London — a man whose name rises into the nostrils of 
 all who knew him with the gracious odor of a tallow 
 chandler's melting house upon melting day, and whose 
 memory is embalmed in the hearty detestation of all 
 his pupils. Coleridge describes this man as a pro- 
 found critic. Our idea of him is different. We are 
 jf opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the 
 eighteenth century. We may be wrong ; but we can- 
 32 
 
498 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 not be far wrong. Talk of knouting indeed ! which 
 we did at the beginning of this paper in the mere 
 playfulness of our hearts, — and which the great mas- 
 ter of the knout, Christopher, who visited men's tres- 
 passes like the Eumenides, never resorted to but in 
 love for some great idea which had been outraged, — 
 why, this man kriouted his way through life, from 
 bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol ! 
 whose altars reeked with children's blood, and whose 
 dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess 
 of the Thugs smiles when the sound of human lamen- 
 tations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster 
 fed upon this great idea of " flogging," and transmuted 
 it into the very nutriment of his heart, that he seems to 
 have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all 
 mankind ; nay, worse ; for Mr. Gillmari, on Coleridge's 
 authority, tells us (p. 24) the following anecdote : — 
 
 " ' Sirrah, Til flog you,'' were words so familiar to 
 him, that on one occasion some female friend of one 
 of the boys " (who had come on an errand of inter- 
 cession) " still lingering at the door, after having been 
 abruptly told to go, Bowyer exclaimed, ' Bring that 
 woman here, and I'll flog her.' " 
 
 To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, 
 Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, ascribes ideas 
 upon criticism and taste which every man will recog- 
 nize as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge. Could 
 these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then 
 how do we know but he wrote the Ancient Mariner 1 
 Yet, on consideration, no ; for even Coleridge admit- 
 ted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon composi- 
 tion, Mr. Bowyer did not prosper in the practice — of 
 
COLEHIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 499 
 
 which he gave us this illustration ; and, as it is sup- 
 posed to be the only specimen of the Bowyeriana 
 which now survives in this sublunary world, we are 
 glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious 
 _ example extant of the melodious in sound : — 
 
 " 'Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain." 
 
 " Smooth'd'st ! " Would the teeth of a crocodile not 
 splinter under that word } It seems to us as if Mr. 
 Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled before they can be 
 read. And when he says, ''Twas thou, what is the 
 wretch talking to .' Can he be apostrophizing the 
 knout .' We very much fear it. If so, then, you see, 
 (reader,) that, even when incapacitated by illness 
 from operating, he still adores the image of his holy 
 scourge, and invokes it as alone able to smooth " his 
 rough-rugg'd bed." O thou infernal Bowyer ! upon 
 whom even TroUope (History of Christ''s Hospital) 
 charges " a discipline tinctured with more than due 
 severity," can there be any partners found for thee 
 in a quadrille except Draco, the bloody lawgiver. 
 Bishop Bonner, and Mrs. Brownrigg ?^ 
 
 The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning 
 Bowyer Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly 
 wrote ; concerning Bell he did not write much, but 
 chiefly talked ; concerning Ball, however, he both 
 wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any 
 plan for having Ball blackballed or for rebelling 
 against Bell. Think of a man who had fallen into 
 one pit called Bell ; secondly, falling into another pit 
 
500 COLERIDGE AKD OPIUM EATING. 
 
 called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged 
 to quote poetry against them : — 
 
 " Letters four do form his name. 
 He came by stealth and unlocked my den; 
 And the nightmare I have felt since then 
 Of thrice three hundred thousand men." 
 
 Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander 
 Ball. He was about the foremost, we believe, in all 
 good qualities, amongst Nelson's admirable captains 
 at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four most 
 effectually in that battle ; he governed Malta as well 
 as Sancho governed Barataria ; and he was a true 
 practical philosopher — as, indeed, was Sancho. But 
 still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir Alexander 
 had no taste for the abstract upon any subject, and 
 would have read as mere delirious wanderings those 
 philosophic opinions which Coleridge fastened like 
 wings upon his respectable but astounded shoulders. 
 
 We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at 
 these crazes of Coleridge ; but laugh we did, of mere 
 necessity, in those days, at Bell and Ball, whenever 
 we did not groan. And, as the same precise alterna- 
 tive offered itself now, — viz., that, in recalling the 
 case, we must reverberate either the groaning or the 
 laughter, — we presumed the reader would vote for 
 the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed all 
 these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men — 
 these diseased impulses, that, like the mirage, showed 
 lakes and fountains where in reality there were only 
 arid deserts — to the derangements worked by opium 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 601 
 
 But now, for the sake of change, let us pass tc another 
 topic. Suppose we say a word or two on Coltiridge's 
 accomplishments as a scholar. We are not going to 
 enter on so large a field as that of his scholarship in 
 connection with his philosophic labors — scholarship in 
 the result ; not this, but scholarship in the means and 
 machinei-y, range of verbal scholarship, is what we 
 propose for a moment's review. 
 
 For instance, what sort of a German scholar was 
 Coleridge .? We dare say that, because in his version 
 of the Wallenstein there are some inaccuracies, those 
 who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in 
 this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, 
 they will be wrong. Coleridge was not very accurate 
 in any thing but in the use of logic. All his philologi- 
 cal attainments were imperfect. He did not talk 
 German; or so obscurely, — and, if he attempted to 
 speak fast, so erroneously, — that in his second sen- 
 tence, when conversing with a German lady of rank, 
 he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion 
 
 she was a . Hard it is to fill up the hiatus 
 
 decorously ; but, in fact, the word very coarsely ex- 
 pressed that she was no better than she should be. 
 Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a 
 German, whose colloquial English had been equally 
 neglected. Having obtained an interview with an 
 English lady, he opened his business (whatever it 
 might be) thus : " Highborn madam, since your 
 husband have kicked de bucket " " Sir ! " in- 
 terrupted the lady, astonished and displeased. " O, 
 pardon! — nine, ten thousand pardon! Now I make ■ 
 ae\» beginning — quite oder beginning. Madam, since 
 
502 COLEKIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 your husband have cut his stick " It may be 
 
 supposed that this did not mend matters ; and, reading 
 that in the lady's countenance, the German drew out 
 an octavo dictionary, and said, perspiring with shame 
 at having a second time missed fire, " Madam, since 
 
 your husband have gone to kingdom come " This 
 
 he said beseechingly ; but the lady was past propitia- 
 tion by this time, and rapidly moved towards the door. 
 Things had now reached a crisis ; and, if something 
 were not done quickly, the game was up. Now, 
 therefore, taking a last hurried look at his dictionary, 
 the German flew after the lady, crying out, in a voice 
 of despair, " Madam, since your husband, your most 
 
 respected husband, have hopped de twig "^ This 
 
 was his sheet anchor ; and, as this also came Jiome, of 
 course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned 
 out that the dictionary he had used — (Arnold's, we 
 think) — a work of a hundred years back, and, from 
 mere ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom 
 Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular writers — had 
 put down the verb sterlen (to die) with the following 
 worshipful series of equivalents : 1. To kick the 
 bucket ; 2. To cut one's stick ; 3. To go to kingdom 
 come ; 4. To hop the twig. 
 
 But, though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent 
 command of conversational German, he read it with 
 great ease. His knowledge of German literature was, 
 indeed, too much limited by his rare opportunities for 
 commanding any thing like a well-mounted library. 
 And particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew 
 little or nothing of John Paul (Eichter.) But his 
 acquaintance with the German philosophic masters 
 
COIURIDGE AND OPIUM EATING 503 
 
 was extensive ; and his valuation of many individual 
 German words oi phrases was delicate, and sometimes 
 profound. 
 
 As a Grecian, Coleridge must be estimated with a 
 reference to the state and standard of Greek literature 
 at that time and in this country. Porson had not yet 
 raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of Coleridge 
 were gathered, however, in that field. Yet no man 
 will, at this day, pretend that the Greek of his prize 
 ode is sufferable. Neither did Coleridge ever become 
 an accurate Grecian in later times, when better mod- 
 els of scholarship and better aids to scholarship had 
 begun to multiply. But still we must assert this 
 point of superiority for Coleridge, that, whilst he 
 never was what may be called a well-mounted scholar 
 n any department of verbal st^holarship, he yet dis- 
 played sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity 
 and a felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this 
 path, such as better scholars do not often attain, and 
 of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But, 
 as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the 
 reader the state of Greek literature in England during 
 Coleridge's youth ; and in all equity, as a means of 
 placing Coleridge in the balances, specifically we 
 must recall the state of Greek metrical composition 
 at that period. 
 
 To measure the condition of Greek literature even 
 in Cambridge, about the initial period of Coleridge, 
 we need only look back to the several translations of 
 Gray's Elegy by three (if not four) of the reverend 
 gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College, 
 Mathias, no very great scholar himself in this particu- 
 
504 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 lai- field, madn himself meny, in his Pursuiti >f 
 Literature, with these Eton translations. In that he 
 was right. But he was not right in praising a con- 
 temporary translation by Cook, who (we believe) wab 
 the immediate predecessor of Porson in the Greek 
 chair. As a specimen of this translation,'^ we cite 
 one stanza ; and we cannot be supposed to select 
 unfairly, because it is the stanza which Mathias praises 
 in extravagant terms. " Here," says he, " Gray, Cook, 
 and Nature do seem to contend for the mastery." The 
 English quatrain must be familiar to every body : — 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour : 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
 
 And the following, we believe, though quoting from 
 a thirty-three years' recollection of it, is the exact 
 Greek version of Cook : — 
 
 'Axapts ivjivewv, xapty a j3o(rt\7;t5os apxas, 
 Attioa Tvxv^ XPi'ff'?^.^^ 'A<f)oo5iT77y Ka\a ra dcapa, 
 IlavQ^ u^a TaVTa Tcflrr/xs, xat ttdev ftogatfiov afiaQ' 
 
 Mow, really, these verses, by force of a little mosaic 
 tessellation from genuine Greek sources, pass fluently 
 over the tongue ; but can they be considered other 
 than a cento ? Swarms of English schoolboys at this 
 day would not feel very proud to adopt them. In 
 fact, we remember (at a period say twelve years later 
 than this) some iambic verses, which were really com- 
 posed by a boy — viz., a son of Dr. Prettyman, (after 
 
COLEKIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 605 
 
 Wards Tsmline,) Bishop of Winchester, and, in earliei 
 times, private tutor to Mr. Pitt. They were published 
 by Middleton, first bishop of Calcutta, in the preface 
 to his work on the Greek article ; and, for racy idiom- 
 atic Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking 
 bird's iteration of alien notes, are so much superior to 
 all the attempts of these sexagenarian doctors as 
 ■distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new 
 generation in this diflScult accomplishment within the 
 first decennium of this century. It is singular that 
 only one blemish is suggested by any of the con- 
 temporary critics in Dr. Cook's verses — viz., in the 
 word ^vvov for which this critic proposes to substitute 
 (hoirov, to prevent, as he observes, the last syllable of 
 d)xeTo from being lengthened by the ?. Such con- 
 siderations as these are necessary to the trutina casti- 
 ■gatio before we can value Coleridge's place on the 
 scale of his own day ; which day, quoad hoc, be it 
 remembered, was 1790. 
 
 As to French, Coleridge read it with too little free- 
 dom to find pleasure in French literature. According- 
 ly we never recollect his referring for any purpose, 
 either of argument or illustration, to a French classic. 
 Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally he 
 lead with a scholar's fluency ; and indeed he read 
 constantly in authors such as Petrarch, Erasmus, 
 Calvin, &c., whom he could not then have found in 
 translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an ac- 
 quaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And 
 it is remarkable that Wordsworth, edcicated most negli- 
 gently at Hawkshead school, subsequently, by reading 
 the lyric poetry of Horace, sjmoly for his own delight 
 
506 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 as a student of compositioa, made himself a master of 
 Lalinity in its most difficult form ; whilst Coleridge, 
 trained regularly in a great southern school, never 
 carried his Latin to any classical polish. 
 
 There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, 
 less broadly open to tlie judgment of this generation, 
 and not at all of the next — viz., his splendid art of 
 conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a 
 word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare 
 performance had not yet ceased to vibrate in men's 
 ears, what a sensation was gathering amongst the 
 educated classes on this particular subject ! What a 
 tumult of anxiety prevailed to " hear Mr. Coleridge," 
 or even to talk with a man who had heard him. Had 
 he lived till this day, not Paganini would have been so 
 much sought after. That sensation is now decaying, 
 because a new generation has emerged during the ten 
 years since his death. But many still remain whose 
 sympathy (whether of curiosity in those who did not 
 know him or of admiration in those who did) still 
 reflects as in a mirror the great stir upon this subject 
 which then was moving in the world. To these, if 
 they should inquire for the great distinguishing principle 
 of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was 
 the power of vast combination " in linked sweetness 
 long drawn out." He gathered into focal concentra- 
 tion the largest body of objects, apparently disconnected, 
 that any man ever yet, by any magic, could assemble, 
 or, having assembled, could manage. His great fault 
 was, that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply, or 
 suggestion, or collateral notice, he not only narrowed 
 his own field, but he grievously injured the final ira. 
 
COLERIDGE AND OPITJM EATING. 507 
 
 pression. For when men's minds are purely passive, 
 when they are not allowed to react, then it is that they 
 collapse most, and tha^ their sense of what is said 
 must ever be feeblest. Doubtless there must have been 
 great conversational masters elsewhere, and at many 
 periods ; but in this lay Coleridge's characteristic ad- 
 vantage, that he was a great natural power, and also a 
 great artist. He was a power in the art ; and he 
 carried a new art into the power. 
 
 But now, finally, — having left ourselves little I'oom 
 for more, — one or two words on Coleridge as an 
 opium eater. 
 
 We have not often read a sentence falling from a 
 wise man with astonishment so profound as that par- 
 ticular one in a letter of Coleridge's^ to Mr. Gillman 
 which speaks of the effort to wean one's self from 
 opiurp as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several 
 such passages ; but we refer to that one in pai'ticular 
 which assumes that a single " week " will suffice for 
 the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is, indeed, 
 leviathan so tamed ? In that case, the quarantine of 
 the opium eater might be finished within Coleridge's 
 time and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark 
 the contradictions of this extraordinary man. Not 
 long ago we were domesticated with a venerable rustic, 
 strongheaded, but incurably obstinate in his prejudices, 
 who treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant 
 pretenders, knowing absolutely nothing of the system 
 which they professed to superintend. This, you will 
 remark, is no very singular case. No ; nor, as we 
 believe, is the antagonist case of ascribing to such 
 Dien magical powers. Nor, what is worse still, the 
 
508 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 coexistence of both cases in the same mind, as in fact 
 happened here ; for this same obstinate friend of ours, 
 who treaf^d all medical pretensions as the mere jest of 
 the universe, every third day was exacting from his 
 own medical attendants some exquisite towr deforce, 
 as that they should know or should do something, 
 which, if they had known or done, all men would have 
 suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated the 
 whole medical body as infants ; and yet whai he ex- 
 acted from them every third day, as a matter of course, 
 virtually presumed them to be the only giants within 
 the whole range of science. Parallel and equal is the 
 contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium ex- 
 cess — his own excess we mean — the excess of twenty- 
 five years — as a thing to be laid aside easily and for- 
 ever within seven days ; and yet, on the other hand, 
 he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic 
 pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one almighty 
 blight which had desolated his life. 
 
 This shocking contradiction we need not press. 
 All readers will see that. But some will ask, Was 
 Mr. Coleridge right in either view .' Being so atro- 
 ciously wrong in the first notion, (viz., that the opium 
 of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be for- 
 sworn,) where a child could know that he was wrong, 
 was he even altogether right, secondly, in believing 
 that his own life, root and branch, had been withered 
 by opium .? For it will not follow, because, with a 
 relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have 
 found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of 
 energies and great purposes, he must have been the 
 wreck whicti he seems to suppose. Opium gives and 
 
COLEilDGE AND OPIUM EATING 509 
 
 takes away. It defeats the steady habit of exerlion ; 
 but it creates spasms of irregular exertion. It ruins the 
 natural power of life ; but it develops preternatui'al 
 paroxysms of intermitting power. 
 
 Let us ask of any man who holds that not Col- 
 eridge himself, but the world, as interested in Col- 
 eridge's usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to 
 opium, whether he is aware of the way in which 
 opium affected Coleridge ; and, secondly, whether he 
 is aware of the actual contributions to literature — 
 how large they were — which Coleridge made in 
 spite of opium. All who were intimate with Col- 
 eridge must remember the fits of genial animation 
 which were created continually in his manner and in 
 his buoyancy of thought by a recent or by an extra 
 dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew 
 nothing experimentally of opium, once told us that 
 she " could tell when Mr. Coleridge had taken too 
 much opium by his shining countenance." She was 
 right : we know that mark of opium excesses well 
 and the cause of it ; or at least we believe the cause 
 to lie in the quickening of the insensible perspiration 
 which accumulates and ' glistens on the face. Bo that 
 as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us 
 as tQ the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in 
 that condition he made his most effective intellectual 
 displays. It is true that he might not be happy under 
 this fiery animation ; and we fully believe that he was 
 not. Nobody is happy under laudanum ' except for a 
 very short term of years. But in what way did that 
 operate upon his exertions as a writer } We are of 
 opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. " The harp 
 
510 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 of Quantock " was silenced forever by the torment of 
 opium ; but proportionably it roused and stung by 
 misery his metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic 
 life. Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of 
 happiness. But subtle and perplexed investigations 
 of difiicult problems are amongst the commonest re- 
 sources for beguiling the sense of misery. And for 
 this we have the direct authority of Coleridge himself, 
 speculating on his own case. In the beautiful though 
 unequal ode entitled Dejection, stanza six, occurs the 
 following passage : — 
 
 " For not to think of what I needs must feel, 
 But to be still and patient all I can, 
 And haply hy abstruse research to steal 
 From my own nature all the natural man, — 
 This was my sole resource, my only plan ; 
 Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 
 And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.' 
 
 Considering the exquisite quality of some poems 
 which Coleridge has composed, nobody can grieve 
 (or has grieved) more than ourselves at seeing so 
 beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But, had 
 Coleridge been a happier man, it is our fixed belief 
 that we should have had far less of his philosophy, 
 and perhaps, but not certainly, might have had more 
 of his general literature. In the estimate of the 
 public, doubtless, that will seem a bad exchange 
 Every man to his taste. Meantime, what we wish to 
 show is, that the loss was not absolute, but merely 
 relative. 
 
 Tt is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic 
 
COLEEIDSE AND OPIUM EATING. 511 
 
 speculations, opium operated unfavorably in one re- 
 spect, by often causing him to leave them unfinished. 
 This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly 
 charged, or saturated, with opium) had written with 
 distempered vigor upon any question, there occurred 
 soon after a recoil of intense disgust, not from his 
 own paper only, but even from the subject. All 
 opium eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving 
 works unfinished and sufiering reactions of disgust ; 
 but Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in 
 verse before he could at all have commenced opiun^ 
 eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge 
 and by his biographer that to leave ofi" opium was 
 of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium 
 eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or 
 irritation which they suifer to be the product of opium ; 
 whereas a wise man will say. Suppose you do leave 
 off opium, that will not deliver you from the load of 
 years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back. 
 Charles Lamb, another man of true genius, and an- 
 other head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery, made 
 that mistake in his Confessions of a Drunkard. " I 
 looked back," says he, " to the time when always, on 
 waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my lips." 
 At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no such 
 song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunk- 
 ard was fifty-six years old, the songster was twenty- 
 three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have 
 some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain, 
 which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good 
 reason for not singing in the morning, even if brandy 
 has been out of the question. 
 
SI2. COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr. Gill, 
 man never says one word upon the event of the great 
 Highgale experiment for leaving off laudanum, though 
 Coleridge came to Mr. Gillrnan's for no other purpose ; 
 and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and 
 all that in them is, was to have been accomplished. 
 We raylher think, as Bayley junior observes, that thr 
 explosion must have hung fire. But that is a trifle 
 We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject 
 Mr. Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a 
 flyleaf of his own Castle of Indolence, having de- 
 scribed Coleridge as "a noticeable man with large 
 gray eyes," goes on to say, " He " (viz., Coleridge) 
 " did that other man entice " to view his imagery. 
 Now, we are sadly afraid that "the noticeable man 
 with large gray eyes" did entice "that other man," 
 viz., Gillman, to commence opium eating. This is 
 droll ; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman 
 should have reformed him; and lo, lie corrupts Gill- 
 man ! S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of 
 being converted from the heresy of opium ; and the 
 issue is, that in two months' time various grave 
 men, amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first 
 in great pomp, are found to have faces shining and 
 glorious as that of jEsculapius — a fact of which we 
 have already explained the secret meaning. And 
 scandal says (but then, what will not scandal say.?) 
 that a hogshead of opium goes up daily throuo-h 
 Highgate tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our 
 hypothesis may be found in the fact that vol. i. of 
 Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand unpropped by 
 vol. ii. ; for we have already observed that opium 
 
OOLEEIDGK AND OPIUM EATING. 513 
 
 eaters, though good fellows upon the wiiole, never 
 finish any thing. 
 
 What then .' A man has a right never to finish 
 any thing. Certainly he has, and by Magna Charta; 
 but he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva 
 Charta, to slander decent men like ourselves and our 
 friend the author of the Opium Confessions. Here 
 it is that our complaint arises against Mr. Gillman. 
 If he has taken to opium eating, can we help that f 
 If his face shines, must our faces be blackened p 
 He has very improperly published some intemperate 
 passages'^'from Coleridge,s letters which ought to have 
 been considered confidential, unless Coleridge had left 
 them for publication, charging upon the author of the 
 Opium Confessions a reckless disregard of the temp- 
 tations which in that work he was scattering abroad 
 .amongst men. Now, this author is connected with 
 ourselves ; and we cannot neglect his defence, unless 
 in the case that he undertakes it himself. 
 
 We complain also that Coleridge raises (and is 
 backed by Mr. Gillman in raising) a distinction, per- 
 fectly perplexing to us, between himself and the au- 
 thor of the Opium Confessions upon the question, 
 why they severally began the practice of opium eat- 
 ing. In himself, it seems, this motive was to relieve 
 pain ; whereas the confessor was surreptitiously seek- 
 ing for pleasure. Ay, indeed, where did he learn 
 that 1 We have no copy of the Confessions here, 
 so we cannot quote chapter and verse ; but we dis- 
 tinctly remember that toothache is recorded in that 
 book as the particular occasion which first introduced 
 33 
 
514 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 
 
 the author to the knowledge of opium. Whethei 
 afterwards, having been thus initiated by the demon 
 of pain, the opium, confessor did not apply powers 
 thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a 
 question for himself; and the same question applies 
 with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began 
 in rheumatic pains. What then ? This is no proof 
 that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our part, 
 we are slow to believe that ever any man did or 
 could learn the somewhat awful truth that in a cer- 
 tain ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power 
 to chase away the genius of ennui without subse- 
 quently abusing this power. To taste but once from 
 the tree of knowledge is fatal to the subsequent 
 power of abstinence. True it is, that generations 
 have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, 
 hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its 
 powers as a voluptuous stimulant ; but that, be sure, 
 has arisen from no abstinence in them. There are, 
 in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific 
 drug — those which are and those which are not 
 precon formed to its power ; those which genially 
 expand to its temptations, and those which frostily 
 exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but 
 in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the 
 dread arbitration of — Fall, or stand: doomed thou 
 art to yield, or, strengthened constitutionally, to re- 
 sist. Most of those who have but a low sense of 
 the spells lying couchant in opium have practically 
 none at all ; for the initial fascination is for them 
 eifectually defeated by the sickness which Nature has 
 
COLEEIDGE AND OPIUM EATING. 515 
 
 associated with the first stages of opium eating. But 
 to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate 
 to their profounJest depths under the first touch of the 
 angelic poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing 
 unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves, opium 
 is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the 
 Paradise Lost ? and you remember from the elev- 
 enth book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already 
 existed in Eden — -nay, that it was used medicinally 
 by an archangel ; for, after Michael had " purged with 
 euphrasy and rue " the eyes of Adam, lest he should 
 be unequal to the mere sight of the great visions 
 about to unfold their draperies before him, next he 
 fortifies his fleshly spirits against the affliction of 
 these visions, of which visions the first was death. 
 And how ? 
 
 " He from the well of life three drops instilled." 
 
 What was their operation > 
 
 " So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, 
 Even to the inmost seat of mental sight. 
 That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, 
 Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced. 
 But him the gentle angel by the hand 
 Soon raised " 
 
 The second of these lines it is which betrays the 
 presence of laudanum. It is in the faculty of mental 
 vision, it is in the increased power of dealing with 
 the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic 
 virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original highei 
 
516 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM BATING. 
 
 sensibility is found some' palliation for the practice of 
 opium eating ; in the greater temptation is a greater 
 excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is 
 found some palliation for reporting the case to the 
 world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have 
 overlooked. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 SECTION THE FIRST. — THE GLORY OF MOTION. 
 
 Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at 
 Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M. P. for Bath, had 
 accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little 
 planet, the Earth, however cheap they may he held by 
 eccentric people in comets — he had invented mail- 
 coaches, and he had married the daughter™ of a duke. 
 He was, therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, 
 who did certainly invent (or which is the same thing,^ 
 discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next 
 things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pre- 
 tensions of speed and keeping time, but, on the other 
 hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke. 
 
 These mail-coaches, as organzied by Mr. Palmer, 
 are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, 
 having had so large a share in developing the anarchies 
 of my subsequent dreams ; an agency which they 
 accomplished, 1st, through velocity, at that time un- 
 precedented — for they first revealed the glory of mo- 
 tion ; 2dly, through grand effects for the eye between 
 lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads ; 
 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often dis- 
 played in the class of horses selected for this mail 
 service ; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a 
 central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances*^ 
 — of storms, of darkness, of danger — overruled all 
 
 [517] 
 
518 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national 
 result. For my own feeling, this post-oifice service 
 spoke as by some migbty orcbestra, where a thousand 
 instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in 
 danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the 
 supreme baton of some great leader, terminate in a 
 perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and 
 lungs, in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, 
 that particular element in this whole oonibination 
 which most impressed myself, and through which it is 
 that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system ty- 
 rannizes over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, 
 lay in the awful political mission which at that time it 
 fulfilled. The mail-coach it was that distributed over 
 the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic 
 vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Sala- 
 manca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the 
 harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, re- 
 deemed the tears and blood in which they had been 
 sown. Neither was -the meanest peasant so much- 
 below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to 
 confound battles such as these, which were gradually 
 moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vul- 
 gar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more 
 than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The 
 victories of England in this stupendous contest rose 
 of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven ; and it 
 was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such 
 a crisis of general prostration, were not more benefi- 
 cial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, 
 and to the nations of all western or central Europe, 
 through whose pusillanimity it was that the French 
 domination had prospered. 
 
THE GliOKT OF MOTION, 519 
 
 The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing 
 the?e mighty events thus diffusively influential, became 
 itself a spiritualized and glorified object to an impas- 
 sioned heart ; and naturally, in the Oxford of that 
 day, all hearts were impassioned, as being all (or 
 nearly all) in early manhood. In most universities 
 there is one single college ; in Oxford there were five- 
 and-twenty, all of which were peopled by young men. 
 the elite of their own generation ; not boys, but men ; 
 none under eighteen. In some of these many col- 
 leges, the custom permitted the student to keep what 
 are called " short terms ; ' that is, the four terms of 
 Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept by a 
 residence, in the aggregate of ninety-one days, or 
 thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it 
 was possible that a student might have a reason for 
 going down to his home four times in the year. This 
 made eight journeys to and fro. But, as the homes 
 lay dispersed through all the shires of the island, and 
 most of us disdained all coaches except his majesty's 
 mail, no city out of London could pretend to so ex- 
 tensive a connection with Mr. Palmer's establishment 
 as Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember as 
 passing every day through Oxford, and benefiting by 
 my personal patronage — viz., the Worcester, the Glou- 
 cester, and the Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore 
 it became a point of some interest with us, whose jour- 
 neys revolved every six weeks on an average, to look 
 a little into the executive details of the system. With 
 some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern ; they rested 
 upon b3'e-laws enacted by posting-houses for their own 
 benefit, and upon other bye-laws, equally stern, enacted 
 by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own 
 
520 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 haughty exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to 
 rouse our scorn, from which the transition was .not 
 very long to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say 
 1804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had been the 
 fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an old 
 tradition of all public carriages derived from the reign 
 of Charles II.), that they, the illustrious quaternion, 
 constituted a porcelain variety of the human race, 
 whose dignity would have been compromised by ex- 
 changing one word of civility ynth. the three miserable 
 ielf-ware outsides. ' Even to have kicked an outsider, 
 might have been held to attaint the foot concerned in 
 that operation ; so that, perhaps, it would have re- 
 quired an act of parliament to restore its purity of 
 blood. What words, then, could express the horror, 
 and the sense of treason, in that case, which had hap- 
 pened, where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) 
 made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast- 
 table or dinner-table with the consecrated four ? I 
 myself witnessed such an attempt ; and on that occa- 
 sion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe 
 his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the 
 outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the 
 next assizes, the court would regard it as a case of 
 lunacy, or delirium tremens, rather than of treason. 
 England owes much of her grandeur to the depth of 
 the aristocratic element in her social composition, when 
 pulling against her strong democracy. I am not the 
 man to laugh at it. But sometimes, undoubtedly, it 
 expressed itself in comic shapes. The course taken 
 with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt 
 which I have noticed, was, that the waiter, beckoning 
 them away from the privileged salle-d-manger, sang 
 
THE GLOKY OF MOTION. Ml 
 
 out, ' This way, my good men,' and then entic cd these 
 good men away to the kitchen. But that plan had 
 not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, 
 cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger 
 than usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely 
 refused to budge, and so far carried their point, as to 
 have a separate table arranged for themselves in a 
 corner of the general room. Yet, if an Indian screen 
 could be found ample enough to plant them out from 
 the very eyes of the high table, or dais, it then be- 
 came possible to assume as a fiction of law — that the 
 three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They 
 could be ignored by the porcelain men, under the 
 maxim, that objects not appearing, and not existing, 
 are governed by the same logical construction.^ 
 
 Such being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, 
 what was to be done by us of young Oxford ? We, 
 the most aristocratic of people, who were addicted to 
 the practice of looking down superciliously even upon 
 the insides themselves as often very questionable 
 characters — were we, by voluntarily going outside, to 
 court indignities ? If our dress and bearing sheltered 
 us, generally, from the suspicion of being ' raff ' (the 
 name at that period for" snobs "^), we really were such 
 constructively, by the place we assumed. If we did 
 not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered 
 at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy 
 of theatres was valid against us, where no man can 
 complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gal- 
 lery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher 
 price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy 
 we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be 
 pretended that the inferior situations have any separata 
 
522 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 attractioQS, unless the pit may be supposed to have an 
 advantage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic 
 reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. For 
 most people, the sole benefit is in the price. Now, on 
 the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own in- 
 communicable advantages. These we could not fore- 
 go. The higher price we would willingly have paid, 
 but not the price connected with the condition of riding 
 inside ; which condition we pronounced insufferable. 
 The air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the 
 horses, the elevation of seat — these were what we 
 required ; but, above all, the certain anticipation of 
 purchasing occasional opportunities of driving. 
 
 Such was the difficulty which pressed us ; and under 
 the coercion of this difficulty, we instituted a searching 
 inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the dif- 
 ferent apartments about -the mail. We conducted' 
 this inquiry on metaphysicar principles ; and it was 
 ascertained satisfactorily, that the roof of the coach, 
 which by some weak men had been called the attics, 
 and by some the garrets, was in reality the drawing- 
 room ; in which drawing-room the box was the chief 
 ottoman or sofa ; whilst it appeared that the inside, 
 which had been traditionally regarded as the only room 
 tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar 
 in disguise. 
 
 Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long 
 before struck the celestial intellect of China. Amongst 
 the presents carried out by our first embassy to that 
 country was a state-coach. It had been specially 
 selected as a personal gift by George III. ; but the ex- 
 act mode of using it was an immense mystery to Pekin. 
 The ambassador, indeed (Lord Macartney), bad made 
 
THE GIOKT OF MOTION 523 
 
 some impel feet explanations upon this point ; but, as 
 his excellency communicated these in a diplomatic 
 whisper, at the very moment of his departure, the 
 celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and it 
 became necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand 
 state question, " Where was the emperor to sit?" The 
 hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous ; 
 and partly on that consideration, but partly also be- 
 cause the box offered the most elevated seat, was 
 nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it 
 was resolved by acclamation that the box was the im- 
 perial throne, and for the scoundrel who drove, he 
 might sit where he could find a perch. The horses, 
 therefore, being harnessed, solemnly' his imperial 
 majesty ascended his new English throne under a 
 flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treas- 
 ury on his right band, and the chief jester on bis left. 
 Peldn gloried in the spectacle ; and in the whole 
 flowery people, constructively present by representa- 
 tion, there was but one discontented person, and thai 
 was the coachman. This mutinous individual auda- 
 ciously shouted, " Where am I to sit ? " But the privy 
 council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously 
 opened the door, and kicked him into the inside. He 
 had all the inside places to himself ; but such is the 
 rapacity of ambition, that he was still dissatisfied. '' I 
 say," he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed 
 to the emperor through the window — "I say, how 
 am I to catch hold of the reins?" — "Anyhow," was the 
 imperial answer ; " don't trouble me, man, in my glory. 
 How catch the reins ? Why, through the windows, 
 tlirough the keyholes — arayhow." Finally this con- 
 tumacious coachman lengthened the check-strings into 
 
524 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 a sort of jury-reins, communicating with tte horses ; 
 with, these ho drove as steadily as Pekin had any right 
 to expect. The emperor returned after the briefest of 
 circuits ; he descended in g-reat pomp from his throne, 
 with the severest resolution never to remount it. A 
 public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's 
 happy escape from the disease of broken neck ; and 
 the state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a 
 votive offering to the god Fo, Fo — whom the learned 
 more accurately called Fi, Fi. 
 
 A revolution of this same Chinese character did 
 young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution of 
 mail-coach society. It was a perfect French revolu- 
 tion ; and we had good reason to say, pa ira. In fact, 
 it soon became too popular. The ' public,' a well- 
 known character, particularly disagreeable, though 
 slightly respectable, and notorious for affecting the 
 chief seats in synagogues — had at first loudly op- 
 posed this revolution ; but when the opposition showed 
 itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable friend went 
 into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a sort of 
 race between us ; and, as the public is usually from 
 thirty to fifty years old, naturally we of young Oxford, 
 that averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then 
 the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse-keep- 
 ers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans 
 on the box-seat. That, you know, was shocking to 
 all moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, said we, a ad 
 there is an end to all morality, Aristotle's, Zeno's, 
 Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use 
 was it ? For we bribed also. And as our bribes to 
 those of the public were as five shillings to sixpence, 
 here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the 
 
THE GLOKT OF MOTION'. 525 
 
 contest was ruinous to the principles of the stables 
 connected with the mails. This whole corporation 
 was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often siur-rebribed ; 
 a mail-coach yard was like the hustings in a contested 
 election ; and a horse-keeper, hostler, or helper, was 
 held by the philosophical at that time to be the most 
 corrupt character in the nation. 
 
 There was an impression upon the public mind, 
 natural enough from the continually augmenting ve- 
 locity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an outside 
 seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. 
 On the contrary, I maintained that, if a man had be- 
 come nervous from some gipsy prediction in his child- 
 hood, allocating to a particular moon now approaching 
 some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnest- 
 ly, '' Whither can I fly for shelter ? Is a prison the 
 safest retreat ? or a lunatic hospital ? or the British 
 Museum ? " I should have replied, " Oh, no ; I'll tell 
 you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty 
 days on the box of his majesty's mail. Nobody can 
 touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety days after 
 date that you are made unhappy — if noters and pro- 
 testers are the sort of wretches whose astrological 
 shadows darken the house of life — then note you what 
 I vehemently protest — viz., that no matter though the 
 sheriff and under-sheriff in every county should be run- 
 ning after you with his posse, touch a hair of your 
 head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your 
 legal domicile on the box of the mail. It is felony to 
 atop the mail ; even the sheriff cannot do that. And 
 m extra touch of the whip to the leaders (no great 
 matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees 
 your safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house 
 
526 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 seems a safe enough retreat, yet it is liable to its own 
 notorious nuisances — to robbers by night, to rats, to 
 fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, 
 the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the 
 barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again ! — there 
 are none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in 
 Von Troll's Iceland;^ except, indeed, now and then a 
 parliamentary rat, who always hides his shame in whai 
 I have shown to be the ' coal-cellar.' And as to fire, 
 I never knew but one in a mail-coach, which was in 
 the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate sailor 
 bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law 
 and the lawgiver that had set their faces against his 
 offence, insisted on taking up a forbidden seat* in the 
 rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his 
 own yarns with those of the guard. No greater of- 
 fence was then known to mail-coaches : it was treason, 
 it was Icesa majestas, it was by tendency arson ; and 
 the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of 
 the hinder boot containing the mail-bags, raised a 
 flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threat- 
 ened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even 
 this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dig- 
 nified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting 
 with benign composure upon our knowledge that the 
 fire would have to burn its way through four inside 
 passengers before it could reach ourselves. I remark- 
 ed to the coachman, with a quotation from Virgil's 
 ' .iEneid ' really too hackneyed — 
 
 ' Jam proximus ardet 
 Ucalegon.' 
 
 But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the coach- 
 man's education might have been neglected, I inter- 
 
THE GLOKT OF MOTION. 627 
 
 prettd so far as to say, that pethaps at that moment 
 the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother 
 and inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman made 
 no answer, which is my own way when a stranger 
 iddresses me either in Syriac or in Coptic, but by his 
 faint sceptical smile he seemed to insinuate that he 
 knew better ; for that Ucalegon, as it happened, was 
 not in the way-bill, and therefore could not have been 
 booked. 
 
 No dignity is perfect which does not at some point 
 ally itself with the mysterious. The connection of 
 the mail with the state and the executive government 
 — a connection obvious, but yet not strictly defined — 
 gave to the whole mail establishment an official gran- 
 deur which did us service on the roads, and invested 
 us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive 
 were those terrors, because their legal limits were 
 imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates ; 
 with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient 
 start, they fly open at our approach ! Look at that 
 long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously 
 usurping the very crest of the road. Ah ! traitors, 
 they do not hear us as yet ; but, as soon as the dread- 
 ful blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation 
 of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation 
 they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our 
 wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quar- 
 terings. Treason they feel to be their crime ; each 
 individual carter feels himself under the ban of con- 
 fiscation and attainder ; his blood is attainted through 
 six generations ; and nothing is wanting but the heads- 
 man and his axe, the block and the saw-dust, to close 
 up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it be witliin 
 
528 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the 
 high road ? — to interrupt the great respirations, ebb 
 and flood, systole and diastole, of the national inter- 
 course ? — to endanger the safety of tidings, running 
 day and night between all nations and languages ? 
 Or can it be fancied, amongst the weakest of men, 
 that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to 
 their widows for Christian burial? Now the doubts 
 which were raised as to our powers did more to wrap 
 them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, than 
 could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of 
 the law from the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts 
 (we, the collective mail, I mean), did our utmost to 
 exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with 
 which we wielded them. Whether this insolence 
 rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon con- 
 scious power that haughtily dispensed with that sanc- 
 tion, equally it spoke from a potential station ; and 
 the agent, in each particular insolence of the moment, 
 was viewed reverentially, as one having authority. 
 
 Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would 
 become frisky; and in its difficult wheelings amongst 
 the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an 
 apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was 
 the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. I, as 
 far as possible, endeavored in such a case to represent 
 the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail ; 
 and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached 
 under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth 
 my hands in sorrow saying (in words too celebrated at 
 that time, from the false echoes^' of Marengo), ' Ah ! 
 wherefore have we not time to weep over you? 'which 
 was evidently impossible, since, in fa'!t, we had not 
 
THE GLOBT OF MOTION. 529 
 
 time to langt over them. Tied to post-office allow- 
 ance, in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles, 
 could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices 
 of sympathy and condolence ? Could it be expected 
 to provide tears for the accidents of the road? If 
 even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I 
 felt, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. 
 
 Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I 
 upheld its rights ; as a matter of duty, I stretched to 
 the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and 
 astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I 
 biated to be lurking constructively in the charters of 
 this proud establishment. Once I remember being on 
 the box of the Holyhead maU, between Shrewsbury 
 and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, 
 some ' Tallyho ' or ' Highflyer,' all flaunting with 
 green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a 
 contrast to our royal simplicity of form and color in 
 this plebeian wretch ! The single ornament on our 
 dark ground of chocolate color was the mighty 
 shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in pro- 
 portions as modest, as a signet-ring bears to a seal of 
 office. Even this was displayed only on a single 
 panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our rela- 
 tions to the mighty state ; whilst the beast from Bir- 
 mingham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleet- 
 ing, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing and 
 painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled 
 a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some 
 time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side 
 — a piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed 
 to me sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a move- 
 ment of the horses announced a desperate intention of 
 34 
 
530 THE ENGIISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 leaying us betind. ' Do you see that ? ' I said to the 
 coacliman. — ' I see,' was his short answer. He waa 
 -wide awake, yet he waited longer than seemed pru- 
 dent ; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a 
 disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his 
 motive was loyal ; his wish was, that the Birmingham 
 conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When 
 that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by 9 
 stronger word, he sprang, his known resources : he 
 slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting- 
 leopards, after the affrighted game. How they could 
 retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work 
 they had accomplished, seemed hard to explain. But 
 on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a 
 tower of moral strength, namely, the king's name, 
 ' which they upon the adverse faction wanted.' Pass- 
 ing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw 
 them into the rear with so lengthening an interval 
 between us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery 
 of their presumption ; whilst our guard blew back a 
 shattering blast of triumph, that was really too pain- 
 fully full of derision. 
 
 I mention this little incident for its connection with 
 what followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, 
 asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me 
 during the progress of the race ? 1 said, with phi- 
 losophic calmness. No ; because we were not racing 
 with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In 
 fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birming- 
 ham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welsh- 
 man replied, that he didn't see that; for that a cat 
 might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might 
 lawfully race the Holyhead mail. ■ Race as, if you 
 
THE GLOET OF MOTION. 531 
 
 like,' I replied, ' though. eTen tJiat has an air of sedi- 
 hon, but not beat us. This ■would have been treason ; 
 and for its own sake I am glad that the " Tallyho " was 
 disappointed.' So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem 
 with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell him a 
 rery fine story from one of our elder dramatists — viz., 
 that once, in some far oriental kingdom, when the 
 sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and 
 chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk sud- 
 denly flew at a majestic eagle ; and in defiance of the 
 eagle's natui'al advantages, in ■contempt also of the 
 eagle's traditional royalty, and before the whole as- 
 sembled field of astonished spectators from Agra, and 
 Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement 
 seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and burning 
 admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded 
 that the hawk should be brought before him ; he 
 caressed the bird with enthusiasm ; and he ordered 
 that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, 
 a diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed 
 on the hawk's head ; but then that, immediately after 
 this solemn coronation, the bird should be led off to 
 execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but 
 not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebel- 
 liously against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, 
 the eagle. ' Now,' said I to the "Welshman, ' to you 
 and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it 
 would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, 
 the " Tallyho," in the impossible case of a victory over 
 us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, 
 with paste diamonds, and Roman pearls, and then led 
 off to instant execution.' The Welshman doubted il 
 that could be warranted by law. And when I hinted 
 
532 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 at the eth of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regu- 
 lating the precedency of coaches, as being probably 
 the statute relied on for the capital punishment of 
 such offences, he replied drily, that if the attempt to 
 pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that 
 the ' Tallyho ' appeared to have so imperfect an ac- 
 quaintance with law. 
 
 The modern modes of travelling cannot compare 
 with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and 
 power. They boast of more velocity, not, however, 
 as a consciousness, but as a fact of o\ir lifdess knowl- 
 edge, resting upon alien evidence ; as, for instance, 
 because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles 
 in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a per- 
 sonal experience, or upon the evidence of a result, as 
 that actually we find ourselves in York four hours 
 after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, 
 or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. 
 But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evi- 
 dence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On 
 this system the word was, Nov, magna loquimur, as 
 upon railways, but vivimus. Yes, ' magna vivimus ; ' 
 we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, 
 we realize our grandeurs in act, and in the very ex- 
 perience of life. The vital experience of the glad 
 animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the 
 question of our speed ; we heard our speed, we saw it, 
 w^e felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the 
 product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sym- 
 pathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs 
 of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, 
 spasmodic muscles, and thunder-heating hoofs. The 
 gensibUity of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac 
 
THE OlORY OP MOTION. 533 
 
 light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a 
 movement ; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. 
 But the intervening links that connected them, that 
 spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeball of the 
 horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings 
 — kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then 
 propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and 
 gestui'es to the heart of his servant the horse. 
 
 But now, on the new system of travelling, iron 
 tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from 
 the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar 
 has power to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. 
 The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever ; man's impe- 
 rial nature no longer sends itself forward through the 
 electric sensibility of the horse ; the inter-agencies are 
 gone in the mode of communication between the horse 
 and his master, out of which grew so many aspects of 
 sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden 
 blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
 solitudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all 
 nations, must henceforwards travel by culinary pro- 
 cess ; and the trumpet that once announced from afar 
 the laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard scream- 
 ing on the wind, and proclaiming itself through the 
 darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, 
 has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of 
 the boiler. 
 
 Thus have perished multiform openings for public 
 expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great 
 national tidings ; for revelations of faces and groups 
 that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating 
 mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers 
 about a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowl- 
 
534 IHE ENGLISH MAIl-COACH. 
 
 edged one sole interest. Bnt tte crowds attending at 
 a railway station have as little unity as running water, 
 Nand own as many centres as there are separate car- 
 riages in the train. 
 
 How else, for example, than as a constant watcher 
 for the dawn, and for the London mail that in summer 
 months entered about daybreak amongst the lawny 
 thickets of Marlborough forest, couldst thou, sweet 
 Fanny of the Bath road, have become the glorified 
 inmate of my dreams? Yet Fanny, as the loveliest 
 young woman for face and person that perhaps in my 
 whole nfe I have beheld, merited the station which 
 even now, from a distance of forty years, she holds ir 
 my dreams ; yes, though by links of natural association 
 she brings along with her a troop of dreadful creatures, 
 fabulous and not fabulous, that are more abominable 
 to the heart, than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. 
 Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, 
 lived at a mile's distance from the road ; but came so 
 continually to meet the mail, that I on my frequent 
 transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected hei 
 image with the great, thoroughfare where only I had 
 ever seen her. Why she came so punctually, I do not 
 exactly know ; but I believe with some burden of 
 commissions to be executed in Bath, which had gath- 
 ered to her own residence as a central rendezvous for 
 converging them. The mail-coachman who drove the 
 Bath mail, and wore the royal livery,^ happened to be 
 Fanny's grandfather. A good man he was, that loved 
 his beautiful granddaughter ; "and, loving her wisely, 
 was vigilant over her deportment in any case where 
 young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did my 
 vanity then suggest that I myself, individually, could fall 
 
THE GIOKT or MOTION. 535 
 
 witMn the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as 
 regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead ; 
 for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her own neigh- 
 borhood once told me) counted in her train a hundred 
 and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open aspi- 
 rants to her favor ; and probahly not one of the whole 
 brigade but excelled myself in personal advantages. 
 Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his accursed 
 bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount of 
 suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight — 
 only that woman is universally aristocratic ; it is 
 amongst her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now, 
 the aristocratic distinctions in my favor might easily 
 with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical defi- 
 ciencies. Did I then make love. to Fanny? Why, 
 yes ; about as much love as one could make whilst the 
 mail was changing horses — a process which, ten years 
 later, did not occupy above eighty seconds ; but then 
 ■ — viz., about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. 
 Now, four hundred seconds ofier a field quite ample 
 enough for whispering into a young woman's ear a 
 great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some 
 trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to 
 watch me. And yet, as happens too often to the 
 grandpapas of earth, in a contest with the admirers of 
 granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched 
 me had I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny ! She, 
 it is my belief, would have protected herself against 
 any man's evil suggestions. But he, as the result 
 showed, could not have intercepted the opportunities 
 for such suggestions. Yet, why not ? Was he not 
 active ? Was he not blooming ? Blooming he was ag 
 Fanny herself. 
 
536 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 ' Say, all our praises why should lords ' 
 
 Stop, that's not the lino. 
 
 ' Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? ' 
 
 The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
 deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being 
 drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from the fountains 
 of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, some 
 infirmities he had ; and one particularly in which he 
 too much resembled a crocodile. This lay in a mon- 
 strous inaptitude for turning round. The crocodile, -I 
 presume, owes that inaptitude to the absurd length of 
 his back ; but in our grandpapa it arose rather from 
 the absurd hreadth of his back, combined, possibly, 
 with some growing stiffness in his legs. Now, upon 
 this crocodile infirmity of his I planted a human ad- 
 vantage for tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In 
 defiance of all his honorable vigilance, no sooner had 
 he presented to us his mighty Jovian back (what a 
 field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet ! '), 
 whilst inspecting professionally the buckles, the straps, 
 and the silvery turrets ^° of his harness, than I raised 
 Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed ten- 
 derness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her 
 easily to understand how happy it would make me to 
 rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12, in which case a 
 few casualties amongst her lovers (and observe, they 
 hanged liberally in those days might have promoted 
 me speedily to the top of the, tree ; as, on the other 
 hand, with how much loyalty of submission I acqui- 
 esced by anticipation in her award, supposing that she 
 should plant me in the very rearward of her favor, as 
 No. 199 -|-1. Most truly! loved this beautiful and 
 ingenuous girl ; and had it not been for the Bath 
 
THE GLOKY OF MOTION. 537 
 
 mail, timing all courtships by post-office allowance, 
 heaven only knows what might have come of it. Peo- 
 ple talk of being over head and ears in love ; now, the 
 mail was the cause that I sank only over ears in love, 
 - which, you know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook 
 the whole conduct of the affair. 
 
 Ah, reader ! when I look back upon those days, it 
 seems to me that all things change — all things perish. 
 ' Perish the roses and the palms of kings : ' perish ever 
 the crowns and trophies of Waterloo : thunder and 
 lightning are not the thunder and lightning which I 
 remember. Koses are degenerating. The Fannies of 
 our island — though this I say with reluctance " — are 
 not visibly improving ; and the Bath road is notoriously 
 superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are station- 
 ary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does 
 not change ; that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is 
 just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of 
 the Pharaohs. That may be ; but the reason is, that 
 the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach, 
 I believe it is generally understood among naturalists, 
 that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own im- 
 pression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads. 
 Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered 
 over Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular 
 mistake that prevailed through innumerable genera- 
 tions on the Nile. The crocodile made the ridiculous 
 blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly for his 
 own eating. Man, taking a different view of the sub- 
 ject, naturally met that mistake by another : he viewed 
 the crocodile as a thing sometimes to worship, but al- 
 ways to run away from. And this continued until Mr. 
 Waterton'" changed the relations between the animals. 
 
538 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed tu 
 be, not by running away, but by leaping on its hack, 
 booted and spurred. The two animals had misunder- 
 sto )d each other. The use of the crocodile has now 
 been cleared up — viz., to be ridden ; and the final 
 cause of man is, that he may improve the health of the 
 crocodile by riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast. 
 And it is pretty certain that any crocodile, who has 
 been regularly hunted through the season, and is mas- 
 ter of the weight he carries, will take a six-harred gate 
 now as well as ever he would have done in the infancy 
 of the pyramids. 
 
 If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all things 
 else undeniably do : even the shadow of the pyramids 
 grows less. And often the restoration in vision of 
 Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically 
 sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I hap- 
 pen to call back the image of Fanny, up rises suddenly 
 from a gulf of forty years a rose in June ; or, if I think 
 for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly 
 face of Fanny. One after the other, like the antipho- 
 nies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in 
 June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. 
 Then come both together, as in a chorus — roses and 
 Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick as blos- 
 soms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, 
 in a royal livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen 
 capes ; and the crocodile is driving four-in-hand from 
 the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the 
 mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, scidptured with 
 the hours, that mingle with the heavens and the hea- 
 venly host. Then all at once we are arrived at Marl- 
 borough forest, amongst the lovely households ^ of tlin 
 
IHE GLOST OP MOTION. o39 
 
 roe-deer ; the deer and tteir fawns retire into the 
 dewy thickets ; the thickets are rich with roses ; once 
 again the roses call up the sweet countenance of Fanny ; 
 and sh&, being the granddaughter of a crocodile, awak- 
 ens a dreidful host of semi-legendary animals — griffins, 
 dragons, basilisks, sphinxes — till at length the whole 
 vision of fighting images crowds into one towering 
 armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities 
 and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered 
 heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, 
 whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair 
 female hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, 
 sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, where ia 
 sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the 
 frailty of earth and her children. 
 
 GOING DOWN WITH VICTOBT. 
 
 But the grandest chapter of our experience, within 
 the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions 
 when we went down from London with the news of 
 victory. A period of about ten years stretched from 
 Trafalgar to Waterloo ; the second and third years of 
 which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively 
 sterile ; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815 inclu- 
 sively) furnished a long succession of victories ; the 
 least of which, in such a contest of Titans, had an 
 inappreciable value of position — partly for its absolute 
 interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more 
 from its keeping alive through central Europe the 
 sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even 
 to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by 
 continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it 
 were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of theii 
 
540 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sulleu 
 ])roclamatioii of power lodged in one quarter to -wHch 
 the hopes of Christendom turned in secret. How much 
 more loadly must this proclamation have spoken in the 
 audacity'^ of having bearded the elite of their troops, 
 and having beaten them in pitched battles ! Five years 
 of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an 
 outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the 
 first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted 
 that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of 
 our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of 
 intelligence, rarely did any unauthorized rumor steal 
 away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular 
 despatches. The government news was generally the ' 
 earliest news. 
 
 From eight p. m., to fifteen or twenty minutes later, 
 imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard 
 Street, where, at that time,''^ and not in St. Martin' s- 
 le-Grand, was seated the General Post-office. In what 
 exact strength we mustered I do not remember ; but, 
 from the length of each separate atielage, we filled the 
 street, though a long one, and though we were drawn 
 up in double file. On any night the spectacle was 
 beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appoint- 
 ments about the carriages and the harness, their 
 strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful 
 simplicity — but, more than all, the royal magnificence 
 of the horses — were what might first have fixed the 
 attention. Every carriage, on every morning in the 
 year, was taken down to an official inspector for exam- 
 ination — wheels, axles, linchpins, poles, glasses, lamps, 
 were all critically probed and tested. Every part of 
 every carriage had been cleaned every horse had been 
 
THE GLOET OF MOTION. 541 
 
 groomed, with as mucli rigor as if they belonged to a 
 private gentleman ; and that part of the spectacle 
 offered itself always. But the night before us is a 
 night of victory ; and, behold ! to the ordinary display, 
 what a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, car- 
 riages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves 
 and ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Maj- 
 esty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within 
 the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liveries 
 cf course ; and as it is summer (for all the land victo- 
 ries were naturally won in summer), they wear, on this 
 fine evening, these liveries exposed to view, without 
 any covering of upper coats. Such a costume, and the 
 elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilate 
 their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal con- 
 nection with the great news, in which already they 
 have the general interest of patriotism. That great 
 national sentiment surmounts and quells all sense of 
 ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen 
 to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as 
 such except by dress ; for the usual reserve of their 
 manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night 
 melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, con- 
 nects every man by the transcendent bond of his 
 national blood. The spectators, who are numerous 
 beyond precedent, express their sympathy with thesa 
 fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every momen; 
 are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and sum- 
 moned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities 
 known to history through a thousand years — Lincoln, 
 Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, 
 Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
 Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grande'.u 
 
542 THE ENGLISH MA.II1- COACH. 
 
 of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the 
 grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive 
 radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you 
 hear thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. 
 That sound to each individual mail is the signal for 
 drawing off, which process is the finest part of the 
 entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. 
 Horses ! can these be horses that bound off with the 
 action and gestures of leopards ? What stir ! — what 
 sea-like ferment ! — what a thundering of wheels ! — 
 what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a sounding of 
 trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — what redoubling 
 peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name 
 of the particular mail — ' Liverpool for ever ! ' — with 
 the name of the particular victory — ' Badajoz for 
 ever ! ' or ' Salamanca for ever ! ' The half-slumbering 
 consciousness that, all night long and all the next 
 day — perhaps for even a longer period — many of 
 these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpow- 
 der, will be kindling at every instant new successions 
 of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying 
 the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination 
 into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A 
 fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that mo- 
 ment is destined to travel, without intermission, west- 
 wards for three hundred '^ miles — northwards for 
 six hundred ; and the sympathy of our Lombard 
 Street friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by 
 a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering 
 sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going 
 to awake. 
 
 Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and 
 issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the north- 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 543 
 
 em suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural 
 pace of ten miles an hour. In tie broad ligbt of the 
 summer evening, tbe sun, perhaps, only just at the 
 point of setting, we are seen from every story of every 
 house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows — 
 young and old understand the language of om victori- 
 ous syidbols — and rolling volleys of sympathizing 
 cheers ran along us, behind us, and before us. The 
 beggar, rearing hilnself against the wall, forgets his 
 lameness — real or assumed — thinks not of his whin- 
 ing trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, 
 as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and 
 says. Be thou whole ! Women and chUdren, from 
 giirrets alike and cellars, through infinite London, look 
 down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay rib- 
 bons _ and our martial laurels ; sometimes kiss their 
 hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, 
 pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, 
 by catching the summer breezes, will express an aerial 
 iubilation. On the London side of Barnet, to which 
 we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe 
 that private carriage which is approaching us. The 
 weather being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and 
 one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything 
 that goes on within. It contains three ladies — one 
 likely to be ' mamma,' and two of seventeen or eigh- 
 teen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely 
 animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, 
 explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these in- 
 genuous girls ! By the sudden start and raising of the 
 hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage ! — 
 by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady 
 2rom both of them — and by the heightened color on 
 
544 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH.. 
 
 their animated countenances, we can almost tear ihem 
 saying, ' See, see ! Look at their laurels ! Oh, 
 mamma ! there has been a great battle in Spain ; 
 and it has been a great victory.' In a moment -we 
 are on the point of passing them. We passengers— - 
 I on the box, and the two on the roof behind me — 
 raise our hats to the ladies ; the coachman makes hia 
 professional salute with the whip ; the guard even, 
 though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an 
 officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies 
 move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness of 
 gesture ; all smile on each side in a way that nobody 
 could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand 
 national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. 
 "Will these ladies say that we are nothing to them ? 
 Oh, no ; they will not say that. They cannot deny — 
 they do not deny — that for this night they are our 
 sisters ; gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, 
 for twelve hours to come, we on the outside have the 
 honor to be their brothers. Those poor women, again, 
 who stop to gaze upon us with delight at the entrance 
 of Barnet, and seem, by their air of weariness, to be 
 returning from labor — do you mean to say that they 
 are washerwomen and charwomen ? Oh, my poor 
 friend, you are quite mistaken. I assure you they 
 stand in a far higher rank ; for this one night they feel 
 themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, 
 and answer to no humbler title. 
 
 Every joy, however, even rapturous joy — such is 
 the sad law of earth — may carry with it grief, or fear 
 of grief, to some. Three miles beyond Barnet, we see 
 approaching us another private carriage, nearly repeat- 
 ing the circumstances of the former case. Here, also, 
 
THE &LOKY OF MOTION. 545 
 
 the glasses are all down — here, also, is an elderly 
 lady seated ; but the two daughters are missing ; for 
 the single young person sitting by the lady's side, 
 seems to be an attendant — so I judge from her dress, 
 and her air of respectful reserve. The lady is in 
 mourning ; and her countenance expresses sorrow. 
 At first she does not look up ; so that I believe she 
 is not aware of our approach, until she hears the 
 measured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she 
 raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our tri- 
 umphal equipage. Our decorations explain the case 
 to her at once ; but she beholds them with appa- 
 rent anxiety, or even with terror. Some time before 
 this, I, finding it difficult to hit a flying mark, when 
 embarrassed by the coachman's person and reins inter- 
 \ening, had given to the guard a ' Courier ' evening 
 paper, containing the gazette, for the next carriage that 
 might pass. Accordingly he tossed it in, so folded 
 that the huge capitals expressing some such legend 
 as — GLORIOUS TicTOET, might catch the eye at 
 once. To see the paper, however, at all, interpreted 
 as it was by our ensigns of triumph, explained every- 
 thing ; and, if the guard were right in thinking the 
 lady to have received it with a gesture of horror 
 it could not be doubtful that she had sufiered some 
 deep personal afiliction in connection with this Span- 
 ish war. 
 
 Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly 
 sufliered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing 
 herself with anticipations of another similar suffering. 
 That same night, and hardly three hours later, oc- 
 curred the reverse case. A poor woman, who too 
 probably would find herself, in a day or two, to 
 35 
 
046 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 have suffered the heaviest afflictions by the battle, 
 blindly allowed herself to express an exultation si 
 unmeasured in the n^ws and its details, as gave to hei 
 the appearance which amongst Celtic Highlanders is 
 called fey. This was at some little town where we 
 changed horses an hour or two after midnight. Some 
 fair or wake had kept the people up out of their beds, 
 and had occasioned a partial illumination of the stalls 
 and booths, presenting an unusual but very impressive 
 effect. We saw many lights moving about as we drew 
 near ; and perhaps the most' striking scene on the 
 whole route was our reception at this place. The 
 flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance of blue 
 lights (technically, Bengal lights) upon the heads of 
 our horses ; the fine effect of such a showery and 
 ghostly illumination falling upon our flowers and 
 glittering laurels ; '' whilst all around ourselves, that 
 formed a centre of light, the darkness gathered on the 
 roar and flanks in massy blackness ; these optical 
 sp)endors, together with the prodigious enthusiasm 
 of the people, composed a picture at once scenical 
 and affecting, theatrical and holy. As we staid for 
 three or four minutes, I alighted ; and immediately 
 from a dismantled stall in the street, where no doubt 
 she had been presiding through the earlier part of the 
 night, advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The 
 sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her at- 
 tention upon myself. The victory which we were 
 carrying down to the provinces on this occasion, was 
 the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for its re- 
 sults, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish 
 general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever-raemora- 
 hle heroism I. told her the main outline of the battle. 
 
THE GLOSY or MOTION. 547 
 
 The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so con- 
 spicuous when listening, and when first applying for 
 information, that I could not but ask her if she had 
 not some relative in the Peninsular army. Oh, yes ; 
 her only son vt us there. In what regiment ? He was 
 a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart sank within 
 me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, 
 which an Englishman should never mention without 
 raising his hat to their memory, had made the most 
 memorable and effective charge recorded in military 
 annals. They leaped their horses — over a trench 
 where they could, into it, and with the result of death 
 or mutilation when they could not. What proportioD 
 cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who did, 
 closed up and went down upon the enemy with such 
 divinity of fervor (I use the word divinity by design : 
 the inspiration of God must have prompted this move- 
 ment to those whom even then he was calling to his 
 presence), that two results followed. As regarded the 
 enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, originally 
 three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French 
 column, six thousand strong, then ascended the hill, 
 and fixed the gaze of the whole French army. As 
 regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first 
 to have been barely not annihilated ; but eventually, 
 I believe, about one in four survived. And this, then, 
 was the regiment — a regiment already for some hours 
 glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London, as 
 lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one bloody 
 Bceldama — in which the young trooper served whose 
 mother was now talking in a spirit of such joyous 
 enthusiasm. Did I tell her the truth? Had I the 
 heart to break up her dreams ? No. To-morrciw, said 
 1 to myself — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish 
 
548 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 the worst. For one night more, wlierefore stould she 
 not sleep in peace ? After to-morrow, the chances are 
 too many that peace will forsake her pillow. This 
 brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and my for- 
 bearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody price 
 that had been paid, not, therefore, was I silent on tha 
 contributions from her son's regiment to that day's ser- 
 vice and glory. I showed her not the funeral tanners 
 under which the noble regiment was sleeping. I lifted 
 not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody trench 
 in which horse and rider lay mangled together. But 
 I told her how these dear children of England, officers 
 and privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles 
 as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase. I told her 
 how they rode their horses into the mists of death 
 (saying to myself, but not saying to her), and laid 
 down their young lives for thee, O mother England ! 
 as willingly — poured out their noble blood as cheer- 
 fully — as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, 
 they had rested their wearied heads upon their moth- 
 er's knees, or had sunk to sleep in her arms. Strange 
 it is, yet true, that she seemed to have no fears for her 
 son's safety, even after this knowledge that the 23d 
 Dragoons had been memorably engaged ; but so much 
 was she enraptured by the knowledge that Ms regi- 
 ment, and therefore that he, had rendered conspicuous 
 service in the dreadful conflict — a service which had 
 actually made them, within the last twelve ht urs, the 
 foremost topic of conversation in London — so abso- 
 lutely was fear swallowed up in joy — that, in the 
 mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor woman 
 threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her 
 son, and gave to me the kiss which secretly was meant 
 for him. 
 
THE EN&LISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 SECTION THE SECOND. — THE VISION OF SUDDEN 
 DEATH. 
 
 What is to be taken as the predominant opinion ol 
 man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death ? 
 It is remarkable that, in .different conditions of society, 
 sudden death has been variously regarded as the con- 
 summation of an earthly career most fervently to ba 
 desired, or, again, as that consummation which is with 
 most horror to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, 
 at his last dinner party {coma), on the very evening 
 before his assassination, when the minutes of his earth- 
 ly career were numbered, being asked what death, in 
 his judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, 
 replied, ' That which should be most sudden.' On 
 the other hand, the divine Litany of our English 
 Chiurch, when breathing forth supplications, as if in 
 some representative character for the whole human 
 race prostrate before God, places such a death in the 
 very van of horrors : — ' From lightning and tempest ; 
 from plague, pestilence, and famine ; from battle and 
 murder, and from sudden death — Good Lord, de- 
 liver us.' Sudden death is here made to crown the 
 climax in a grand ascent of calamities ; it is ranked 
 among the last of curses ; and yet, by the noblest of 
 
 [549J 
 
550 THE ENGLISH MAIl-COACH. 
 
 Romans, it was ranked as the first of blessings. In 
 that difference, most readers will see little more than 
 the essential difference between Christianity and Pa- 
 ganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. Thfl 
 Christian Church may be right in its estimate of sud- 
 den death ; and it is a natural feeling, though after all 
 it may also be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dis- 
 missal from life ■— as that which seems most reconcil- 
 able with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and 
 with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does 
 not, however, occur to me any direct scriptural war- 
 rant for this earnest petition of the English Litany, 
 unless under a special construction of the word ' sud- 
 den.' It seems a petition — indulged rather and con- 
 ceded to human infirmity, than exacted from human 
 piety. It is not so much a doctrine built upon the 
 eternities of the Christian system, as a plausible opin- 
 ion built upon special varieties of physical tempera- 
 ment. Let that, however, be as it may, two remarks 
 suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doc- 
 trine, which else may wander, and has wandered, into 
 an uncharitable superstition. The first is this : that 
 many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a 
 sudden death, from the disposition to lay a false stress 
 upon words or acts, simply because by an accident 
 they have become Jinal words or acts. If a man dies, 
 for instance, by some sudden death when he happens 
 to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with 
 peculiar horror ; as though the intoxication were sud- 
 denly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is unphilo- 
 Sophie. The man was, or he was not, habitually a 
 drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary 
 accident, there can be no reason for allowing special 
 
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 551 
 
 emphasis to this act, simply because through misfor- 
 tune it became his final act. Nor, on the other hand, 
 if it were no accident, but one of his habitual trans- 
 gressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a 
 transgression, because some sudden calamity surprising 
 him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also 
 a final one. Could the man have had any reason even 
 dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would 
 have been a new feature in his act of intemperance — 
 feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, 
 having known himself drawing near to the presence of 
 God, should have suited his demeanor to an expecta- 
 tion so awful. But this is no part of the case sup- 
 posed. And the only new element in the man's act is 
 not any element of special immorality, but simply of 
 special misfortune. 
 
 The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
 the word sudden. Very possibly Csesar and the Chris- 
 tian Church do not difier in the way supposed ; that 
 is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as be- 
 tween Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper 
 appropriate to death, but perhaps they are contem- 
 plating different cases. Both contemplate a violent 
 death, a Bia6avaroe — death that is Biaios, or, in other 
 words, death that is brought about, not by internal 
 and spontaneous change, but by active force, having 
 its origin from without. In this meaning the two 
 authorities agree. Thus far they are in harmony. 
 But the difierence is, that the Roman by the word 
 ' sudden ' means unlingering ; whereas the Christian 
 Litany by ' sudden death ' means a death without 
 learning, consequently without any available summons 
 to religious preparation. The poor mutineer, who 
 
552 THE ENGLISH MAIL-Cl ACH. 
 
 kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from 
 tv/elve firelocks of his pitying comrades, dies by a 
 most sudden death in Csesar's sense ; one shock, one 
 mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) groan, and all is 
 over. But in the sense of the Litany, the mutineer's 
 death is far from sudden ; his offence originally, his 
 imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sen- 
 tence and its execution, having all furnished him -with 
 separate warnings of his fate — having all summoned 
 him to meet it with solemn preparation. 
 
 Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
 comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy 
 Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor depart- 
 ing children, that God would vouchsafe to them the 
 last great privilege and distinction possible on a death- 
 bed — viz., the opportunity of untroubled preparation 
 for facing this mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere 
 variety in the modes of dying, where death in some 
 shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice 
 which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, 
 will be variously answered according to each man's 
 variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect of 
 sudden death there is, one modification, upon which 
 no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the 
 most agitating — viz., where it surprises a man undor 
 circumstances which oifer (or which seem to offer) 
 some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of 
 evading it. Sudden as the danger which it affron';g, 
 must be any effort by which such an evasion can oe 
 accomplished. Even tJiat, even the sickening necessi- 
 ty for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems 
 destined to be vain, even that anguish is liable to a 
 hideous exasperation in one particular case — viz., 
 
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 553 
 
 where the appeal is made not exclusively to the in- 
 stinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on 
 behalf of some other life besides your own, accidentally 
 thrown upon your protection. To faU, to collapse in 
 a service merely your own, might seem comparatively 
 venial ; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to 
 fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into 
 your hands the final interests of another — a fellow- 
 creature shuddering between the gates of life and 
 death ; this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, 
 would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality 
 vith the misery of a bloody calamity. You are called 
 upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die ; but to die 
 at the very moment when, by any even partial failure, 
 or effeminate collapse of your energies, you will be 
 self-denounced as a murderer. You had but the 
 twinkling of an eye for your efibrt, and that effort 
 might have been unavailing ; but to have risen to the 
 level of such an effort, would have rescued you, 
 though not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor 
 to your final and farewell duty. 
 
 The situation here contemplated 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 per- 
 haps all men's natures. Upon the secret mirror of 
 our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, 
 to every one of us. That dream, so familiar to child- 
 hood, of meeting a lion, and, through languishing 
 prostration in hope and the energies of hope, that 
 eonstant sequel of lying down before the lion, pub- 
 lishes the secret frailty of human nature — reveals its 
 
55-.V THE ENGLISH MAIl-COA-CH. 
 
 deep-seated falsehood 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 individual will ; once again 
 a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity to 
 a luxury of ruin ; once again, as in aboriginal Para- 
 dise, 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 aU her 
 works,' again • gives signs of wo 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 world of dreams 
 every one of us ratifies for himself the original trans- 
 gression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret 
 conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the 
 consciousness at the time, but darkened to the mem- 
 ory as soon as all is finished, each several child of our 
 mysterious race completes for himself the treason of 
 the aboriginal fall. 
 
 The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 
 of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, 
 which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden 
 Death, occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a 
 solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the 
 Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third 
 summer after "Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate 
 the circumstances, because they are such as could not 
 
THB VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 555 
 
 have occurred unless under a singular comTjination of 
 accidents. In those days, the ohlique and lateral 
 communications with many rural post-offices were so 
 arranged, either through necessity or through defect 
 of system, as to make it requisite for the main north- 
 western mail (i. e., the down mail), on reaching Man- 
 chester, to ,halt for a numher of hours ; how many, I 
 do not remember ; six or seven, I think ; but the 
 result was, that, in the ordinary course, the mail 
 recommenced its journey northwards about midnight. 
 Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy hotel, 
 I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the 
 sake of fresh air ; meaning to fall in with the mail 
 and resume my seat at the post-ofEce. The night, 
 however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely 
 risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, so as to 
 offer no opportunities for asking the road, I lost my 
 way ; and did not reach the post-office until it was con- 
 siderably past midnight ; but, to my great relief (as it 
 was important for me to be in Westmoreland by the 
 morning), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, 
 blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my 
 chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was, but, 
 by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet 
 ready to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, 
 where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the 
 Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imitation 
 cf a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting 
 on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off 
 the ground the whole human race, and notifying to 
 the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
 compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-handker- 
 chief once and for ever upon that virgin soil ; thence. 
 
556 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 forward claiming tlie JTis dominii to the top of the 
 atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving 
 shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all 
 people found after this warning, either aloft in upper 
 chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterrane- 
 ous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of 
 the soil, will be treated as trespassers — kicked, that is 
 to say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by 
 their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket- 
 handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable that 
 my cloak might not have been respected, and the jus 
 gentium might have been cruelly violated in my person 
 — for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, 
 gas being a great ally of morality — but it so hap- 
 pened that, on this night, there was no other outside 
 passenger ; and thus the crime, which else was but too 
 probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 
 
 Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of 
 laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and 
 fifty miles — viz., from a point seventy miles beyond 
 London. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing 
 extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the 
 special attention of my assessor on the box, the coach- 
 man. And in that also there was nothing extraordi- 
 nary. But by accident, and with great delight, it 
 drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman 
 was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but 
 one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as 
 
 ' Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum." 
 
 He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
 items : — 1, a monster he was ; 2, dreadful ; 3, shape- 
 less; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But wh;v 
 
THE VISION Of SUDDEN DEATH. 657 
 
 should tliat delight me ? Had lie been one of the 
 Calendars in the ' Arabian Nights,' and had paid 
 down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, 
 what right had I to exult in his misfortune ? I did 
 not exult : I delighted in no man's punishment, though 
 it were even merited. But these personal distinctions 
 (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old 
 friend of mine, whom I had known in the south for 
 some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. 
 He was the man in aU Europe that could (if any 
 could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over Al 
 Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no 
 side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a 
 razor's edge — leading right across the bottomless 
 gulf. Under this emiuent man, whom in Greek I 
 cognominated Cyclops diphrelates (Cyclops the cha- 
 rioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the 
 diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant 
 to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, 
 it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his 
 esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, ob- 
 serve, not his discernment), that he could not see my 
 merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular, 
 by remem.bering his want of an eye. Doubtless thai 
 'made him blind to my merits. In the art of conversa- 
 tion, however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand 
 of him. On this present occasion, great joy was at 
 our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? 
 Had the medical men recommended .northern air, or 
 how ? I collected, from such explanations as he vol- 
 unteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- 
 at-law now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he 
 had got himself transferred to this station, for the pur 
 
558 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 pose of connecting witli h.is professional pursuits au 
 instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 
 
 Meantime, what are we stopping for.' Surely we 
 have now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastina- 
 ting mail, and this procrastinating post-office ! Can't 
 they take a lesson upon that subject from me ? Some 
 people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are 
 witness, reader, that I was kept here waiting for the 
 post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand on its 
 heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever 
 it waited for me ? What are they about ? The guard 
 tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of 
 foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused 
 by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, 
 which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an 
 extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged 
 in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of 
 Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser 
 intermediate towns. But at last all is finished. Sound 
 your horn, guard. Manchester, good-by ; we've lost 
 an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : 
 which, however, though I do not mean to part with a 
 serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really 
 is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, 
 since it compels us to look sharply for this lost liout 
 amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if 
 we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off 
 we are at last, and at eleven miles per hour : and for 
 the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in 
 the skill of Cyclops. 
 
 From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though 
 not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were 
 at this time seven stages of elef en miles each. The 
 
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 559 
 
 first five of these, counting from Manchester, terminate 
 ia Lancaster, which is therefore fifty-five miles north 
 of Manchester, and the same distance exactly from 
 Liverpool. The first three stages terminate in Preston 
 (called, by way of distinction from other towns of that 
 name, proud Preston), at which place it is that the 
 separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to 
 the north become confluent. ™ Within these first three 
 stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termina- 
 tion of our night's adventure. During the first stage, 
 I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to 
 the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which pre- 
 viously I had never suspected. If a man indulges in 
 the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation 
 of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to exe- 
 cute his notions, avail him notliing. ' Oh, Cyclops ! ' 
 I exclaimed, 'thou art mortal. My friend, thou snor- 
 est.' Through the first eleven miles, however, this 
 infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared with 
 the whole Pagan Pantheon — betrayed itself only by 
 brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology 
 for himself, which, instead of mending matters, laid 
 open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The sum- 
 mer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
 Lancaster : in consequence of which, for three nights 
 and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. Dur- 
 ing the day, he was waiting for his own summons as a 
 witness on the trial in which he was interested : or 
 else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, 
 was drinking with the other witnesses, under the pas- 
 toral surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, 
 or that part of it which at sea would form the middle 
 watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly 
 
560 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way w'hicli made 
 it mucli more alarming ; since now, after several days 
 resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily 
 giving way. Throughout the second stage he grew 
 more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the 
 third stage, he surrendered himself finally and without 
 a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past 
 resistance had but deepened the weight of this final 
 oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon 
 him ; and to consummate the case, our worthy guard, 
 after singing ' Love amongst the Roses ' for perhaps 
 thu-ty times, without invitation, and without applause, 
 had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — 
 not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep 
 enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten 
 miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself 
 left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow 
 mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. 
 
 What made this negligence less criminal than else it 
 must have been thought, was the condition of the 
 roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all 
 the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of 
 populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of popu- 
 lous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to 
 the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up 
 this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with 
 powerful established interests; 2, a large system of 
 new arrangements ; and 3, a new parliamentary statute. 
 But as yet this change was merely in contemplation. 
 As things were at present, twice in the year'^ so vast 
 a body of business rolled northwards, from the south- 
 ern quarter of the county, that for a fortnight at least 
 it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its 
 
THE TlSIOir OF STIDDEW DEATH. 561 
 
 despatcli. The consequence of this was, that every 
 horse available for such a service, along the whole line 
 of road, was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes 
 of people who were parties to the different suits. By 
 sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through 
 utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the roads 
 sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in 
 the vast adjacent county of York from a contested 
 election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery 
 uproar was ever witnessed in England. 
 
 On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude pre- 
 vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to 
 be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious con- 
 fidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that 
 the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. 
 For my own part, though slightly alive to the possibil- 
 ities of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of 
 the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie, 
 The month was August, in the middle of which lay 
 my own birth-day — a festival to every thoughtful man 
 suggesting solemn and often sigh-born™ thoughts. 
 The county was my own native county — Upon which, 
 in its southern section, more than upon any equal area 
 kno'vn to man past or present, had descended the 
 original curse of labor in its heaviest form, not master- 
 ing the bodies only of men as of slaves, or criminals in 
 mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no 
 equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same 
 energy of human power put forth daily. At this par- 
 ticilar season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurri- 
 cane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to 
 It stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster all day 
 long, hunling the county up and down, and regularly 
 36 
 
562 THE ENGLISH MAIl-GOACH. 
 
 subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not laiJ 
 (when united witt this permanent distinction of Lan- 
 cashire as the very metropolis and citidal of labor) to 
 point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vis- 
 ion of rest, of saintly yepose from strife and sorrow, 
 towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder 
 aspii'ations of man's heart are in solitude continually 
 travelling. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing 
 the sea, which also must, under the present circum- 
 stances, be repeating the general state of halcyon 
 repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each 
 an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight, 
 and the first timid tremblings of the dawn, were by 
 this time blending ; and the blendings were brought 
 into a still more exquisite state of unit)' by a slight 
 silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the 
 woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transpa- 
 rency. Except the feet of our own horses, which, 
 running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little 
 disturbance, there was no sound abroad. In the 
 clouds, and on the earth, prevailed the same majestic 
 peace ; and in spite of all that the villain of a school- 
 master has done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, 
 which are the thoughts of our infancy, we still believe 
 in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. What- 
 ever we may swear with our false feigning lips, in our 
 faithful hearts we still believe, and must for ever be- 
 lieve, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between 
 earth and the central heavens. Still in the confidence 
 of children that tread without fear every chamber in 
 their father's house, and to whom no door is closed 
 we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed 
 for a I hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy 
 
THE TISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 563 
 
 steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth, upwards 
 to thu sandals of God. 
 
 Suddenly, from thoughts like these, I was awakened 
 10 a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant 
 road. It stole upon the air for a moment ; I listenod 
 in awe ; but then it died away. Once roused, how- 
 ever, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened 
 motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had 
 made my eye learned in the valuing of motion ; and I 
 saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. 
 I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, 
 my fear is, that I am miserably and shamefully de- 
 ficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy 
 of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight 
 of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies, 
 when the signal is flying for action. But, on the 
 other hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought, 
 that in the first step towards the possibility of a mis- 
 fortune, I see its total evolution ; in the radix of the 
 series I see too ■ certainly and too instantly its entire 
 expansion ; in the first syllable of the dreadful sen- 
 tence, I read already the last. It was not that I feared 
 for ourselves. Us, our bulk and impetus charmed 
 against peril in any collision. And I had ridden 
 through too many hundreds of perils that were fright- 
 ful to approach, that were matter of laughter to look 
 back upon, the first face of which was horror — the 
 parting face a jest, for any anxiety to rest upon our 
 interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, noi 
 bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its pro- 
 tection. But any carriage that we could meet would 
 be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And 
 J remark tliis ominous accident of our situation. W» 
 
564 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 were on the -sxrong side of the road. But then, it may 
 be said, the other party, if other there was, might also 
 be on the wror.g side ; and two wrongs might make a 
 right. That was not likely. The same motive which 
 had drawn us to the right-hand iside of the road — 
 viz., the luxury of the soft beaten sand, as contrasted 
 with the paved centre — would prove attractive to 
 others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to 
 a certainty, be travelling on the same side ; and from 
 this side, as not being ours in law, the crossing over to 
 the other would, of course, be looked for from MS.™ 
 Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impression of 
 vigilance on our part. And every creature that met 
 us, would rely upon us for quartering.^ All this, and 
 if the separate links of the anticipation had been a 
 thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by 
 effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid 
 simultaneous intuition. 
 
 Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the 
 evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sul- 
 len mystery of fear, what a sigh of wo, was that which 
 stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel 
 was heard ? A whisper it was — a whisper from, 
 perhaps, four miles off — secretly announcing a ruin 
 that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable ; that, 
 being known, was not, therefore, healed. What could 
 be done — who was it that could do it — to check the 
 storm-flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not 
 seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coach- 
 man ? You, reader, think that it would have been in 
 your power to do so. And I quarrel not with j'our 
 estimate of yourself. But, from the way in which the 
 coarhman's hand was viced between his upper and 
 
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 5G5 
 
 lower thigh, this was impossible. Easy, was it ? See, 
 then, that bfonze equestrian statue. The- cruel rider 
 has kept the bit in his horse's mouth foi' two centu- 
 ries. Unbridle him, for a minute, if you please, and 
 wash his mouth with water. Easy, was it ? Unhorse 
 me, then, that imperial rider ; knock ive those marble 
 feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 
 
 The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too 
 clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could 
 it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was it 
 youthful gayety in a gig ? Was it sorrow that loiter- 
 ed, or joy that raced ? For as yet the snatches of 
 sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher 
 the character of the motion. Whoever were the 
 travellers, something must be done to warn them. 
 Upon the other party rests the active responsibility, 
 but upon us — and, wo is me ! that us was reduced to 
 my frail opium-shattered self — rests the responsibility 
 of warning. Yet how should this be accomplished ? 
 Might I not sound the guard's horn? Already, on 
 the first thought, I was making my way over the roof 
 to the guard's seat. But this, from the accident which 
 I have mentioned, of the foreign mails' being piled 
 upon the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous at- 
 tempt to one cramped by nearly three hundred miles 
 of outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had 
 lost much time in the attempt, our frantic horses swept 
 round an angle of the road, which opened upon us 
 that final stage where the collision must be accom- 
 plished, and the catastrophe sealed. All was appar- 
 ently finished. The cjurt was sitting ; the case was 
 heard; the judge had finished; and the only verdicf 
 was yet in arrear. 
 
566 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 Before us lay an. avenue, straiglit as an arrow, sis 
 hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageoua 
 trees, wliicK rose in a regular line from either side, 
 meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a 
 cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity 
 to the early light ; but there was stUl light enough to 
 perceive, at the further end of this Gothic aisle, a frail 
 reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by 
 his side a young lady. Ah, young sh- ! what are you 
 about r If it is requisite that you should whisper your 
 communications to this young lady — though reaUy I 
 see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely 
 to overhear you — is it therefore - requisite that you 
 should carry your lips forward to hers ? The little 
 carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the 
 parties within it being thus tenderly engaged, are 
 naturally bending down their heads. Between them 
 and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a 
 minute and a-half. Oh heavens ! what is it that I 
 shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? 
 Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might 
 seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from 
 the ' Iliad ' to prompt the sole resource that remained. 
 Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of 
 Achilles, and its effect. But coald I pretend to shout 
 like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but 
 then I needed not the s^iout that should alarm all Asia 
 militant ; such a shout would suffice as might carry 
 terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young peo- 
 ple, and one gig horse. I shouted — and the young- 
 man hoard me not. A second time I shouted — ard 
 now he heard me, for now he raised his head. 
 
 Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could be 
 
THE VISION OF 8IJDDBN DEATH 667 
 
 done : more oji my part was not possible. Mine had 
 been tbe first step ; tbe second was for the young 
 man ; the third was for God. If, said I, this stranger 
 is a brave man, and if, indeed, he loves the young girl 
 at his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the obliga- 
 tion, pressing upon every man worthy to be called a 
 man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his 
 protection — he will, at least, make some effort to 
 save her. If that fails, he will not perish the more, or 
 by a death more cruel, for having made it ; and he will 
 die as a brave man should, with his face to the dan- 
 ger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought 
 in vain to save. But, if he makes no effort, shrinking, 
 without a struggle, from his duty, he himself will not 
 the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroon- 
 ery. He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore 
 should we grieve that there is one craven less in the 
 world ? No ; let him perish, without a pitying thought 
 of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case, all our 
 grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl 
 who now, upon the least shadow of failure in him, 
 must, by the fiercest of translations — must, without 
 time for a prayer — must, within seventy seconds, 
 stand before the judgment-seat of God. 
 
 But craven he was not : sudden had been the call 
 upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 
 He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
 was coming down : already its gloomy shadow dark- 
 ened above him ; and already he was measuring his 
 strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar thing 
 does courage seem, when we see nations buying it and 
 gelling it for a shilling a-day : ah ! what a sublime 
 ihing does courage seem, when some fearful summons 
 
568 THE ENGLISH MA.IL-COA.CH. 
 
 on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running 
 before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some 
 tumultuous crisis, from which, lie two courses, and a 
 voice says to him audibly, ' One way lies hope ; take 
 the other, and mourn for ever ! ' How grand a 
 triumph, if, even then, amidst the raving of all around 
 him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able 
 to confront his situation — is able to retire for a 
 moment into solitude with God, and to seek his 
 counsel from Mm ! 
 
 For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
 stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, 
 as if to search and value every element in the conflict 
 before him. For five seconds more of his seventy he 
 sat immovably, like one that mused on some great 
 purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes 
 upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, under some 
 extremity of doubt, for light that should guide him to 
 the better choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood 
 upright ; and by a powerful strain upon the reins, 
 raising his horse's fore-feet from the ground, he 
 slewed him round on the pivot of his hind-legs, so 
 as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at 
 right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not 
 improved, except as a first step had been taken to- 
 wards the possibility of a second. If no more were 
 done, nothing was done ; for the little carriage still 
 occupied the very centre of our path, though in an 
 altered direction. Yet even now it may not be too 
 late: fifteen of the seventy seconds may still be unex-- 
 hausted ; and one almighty bound may avail to clear 
 the ground. Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying mo- 
 merts — they hurry! Oh, hurry, hurry, my bravo 
 
THE TISION OF STJDDEN DEATH. 569 
 
 young man! for the cruel hoofs of our horfes — they 
 albo hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the 
 hoofs of our horses. But fear not for hw\,, if human 
 energy can sufB.ce ; faithful was he that drove to his 
 terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to Ms command. 
 One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, 
 by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound 
 as if in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile 
 creature's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre 
 of the road. The larger half of the little, equipage 
 had then cleared our overtowering shadow : that was 
 evident even to my own agitated sight. But it mat- 
 tered little that one wreck should float off in safety, 
 if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the 
 human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — 
 was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? 
 What power could answer the que.stion ? Glance of 
 eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these 
 had speed enough to sweep between the question and 
 the answer, and divide the one from the other ? 
 Light does not tread upon- the steps of light more 
 indivisibly, than did our all-conquering arrival upon 
 the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young 
 man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned 
 to us ; not by sight could he any longer communicate 
 with the peril ; but by the dreadful rattle of our 
 harness, too truly had his ear been instructed — that 
 all was finished as regarded any further effort of his. 
 Already in resignation he had rested from his struggle ; 
 and perhaps in his heart he was whispering, ' Father, 
 which art in heaven, do thou finish above what I on 
 earth have attempted.' Faster than ever mill-race we 
 ran past them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of 
 
570 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 hurricatiBS that must have sounded in their young ears 
 at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment 
 the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the 
 Bwingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we 
 had struck the off- wheel of the little gig, which stood 
 rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced, as to 
 be accurately parallel with the near-wheel. The blow, 
 from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. 
 I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have 
 caused. From my elevated station I looked down, 
 and looked back upon the scene, which in a moment 
 told its own tale, and wrote all its records on my heart 
 for ever. 
 
 Here was the map of the passion that now had 
 finished. The horse was planted immovably, with his 
 fore-feet upon the paved crest of the central road. 
 He of the whole party might be supposed untouched 
 by the passion of death. The little cany carriage — 
 partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels 
 in its recent movement, partly from the thundering 
 blow we had given to it — as if it sympathized with 
 human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiv- 
 erings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. 
 He sat like a rock. But his was the steadiness of 
 agitation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared 
 not to look round ; for he knew that, if anything 
 remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. 
 And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety 
 were accomplished. But the lady 
 
 But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle 
 
 ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank 
 upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly 
 to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, 
 
THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 571 
 
 fainting, praying, ra'i ing, despairing ? Figure to your- 
 self, reader, the elements of the case ; suffer me to 
 recall before your mind the circumstances of that 
 unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep 
 peace of this saintly summer night — from the pa- 
 thetic blending of this sweet mo6nlight, dawnlight, 
 dreamlight — from the manly tenderness of this flat- 
 tering, whispering, murmuring love — suddenly as 
 from the woods and fields — suddenly as from the 
 chambers of the air opening in revelation — suddenly 
 as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon 
 her, with the flashing of cataracts. Death the crowned 
 phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and the _ 
 tiger roar of his voice. 
 
 The moments were numbered ; the strife was fln- 
 ished ; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an 
 eye, our flying horses had carried us to the termina- 
 tion of the umbrageous aisle ; at right angles we 
 wheuled into our former du-ection ; the turn of the 
 road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, 
 •nd swept it into my dreams for ever. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 SECTION THE THIRD. —DREAM-FUGUE. 
 
 FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATS 
 
 ' Whence the sound 
 Of instruments, that made melodious chime. 
 Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
 Their stops and cliords, was seen ; his volant touch 
 Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
 Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.' 
 
 Par. Lost, B xi. 
 
 Tumultuosissimamente . 
 
 Passion of sudden death ! that once in youtL I read 
 and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs ! ^^ 
 
 — rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst 
 tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting 
 her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form bend- 
 ing from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with 
 eyes upraised, with clasped adoring hands — waiting, 
 watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to 
 rise from dust for ever ! Ah, vision too fearful of 
 shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses I 
 
 — vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, 
 like a shrivelling scroU from before the wrath of fire 
 racing on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief 
 of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? 
 Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that 
 Btill thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon thb 
 gorgeous mosaics of dreams ? Fragment of music too 
 
 [5T2] 
 
DREAM-FUGTTE. 573 
 
 passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth 
 thee, thav thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals 
 through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years, 
 have lost no element of horror ? 
 
 I. 
 
 Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The ever- 
 lasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide ; 
 and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, 
 the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I my- 
 self are floating — she upon a fiery pinnace, and I upon 
 an English three-decker. Both of us are wooing galea 
 of festal happiness within the domain of our common 
 country, within that ancient watery park, within that 
 pathless chase of ocean, where England takes hei 
 pleasure as a huntress through vidnter and summer, 
 from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilder- 
 ness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly re- 
 vealed, upon the tropic islands through which the 
 pinnace moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of 
 human flowers — young women how lovely, young 
 men how noble, that were dancing together, and 
 slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, 
 amidst ■ blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi 
 from vintages, amidst natural carolling and the echoes 
 of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears 
 us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears be- 
 neath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as 
 at sorile signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, 
 and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all are 
 hushed. What evil has smitten the pinrace, meeting 
 or' overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends couch 
 within our own dreadful shadow ? Was our shadow 
 
574 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 the shadow of death ? I looked over the bo-iv for an 
 answer, and, behold ! the pinnace was dismantled , 
 the revel and the revellers were found no more ; the 
 glory of the vintage was dust ; and the forests with 
 their beauty were left without a witness upon the 
 seas. ' But where,' and I turned to our crew — 
 ' where are the lovely women that danced beneath 
 the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi ! Wliither 
 have fled the noble young men that danced with 
 them ? ' Answer there was none. But suddenly the 
 man at the masthead, whose countenance darkened 
 with alarm, cried out, ' SaU on the weather beam ! 
 Down she comes upon us : in seventy seconds she 
 also will founder.' 
 
 n. 
 
 1 looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
 departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
 gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
 which grouped themselves into arches and long cathe- 
 dral aisles. Down one of these, with the flery pace of 
 a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart 
 our com-se. * Are they mad ? ' some voice exclaimed 
 from our deck. ' Do they woo their ruin ? ' But in 
 a moment, she was close upon us, some impulse of a 
 heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to 
 her couise, and off' she forged without a shock. As 
 shs ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood 
 the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in 
 malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran aftei 
 her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But fat 
 Away she was borne into desert spaces of the se» : 
 whilst still by sight I followed her as she ran bofrrn 
 
DREAM-Ft GITE. 575 
 
 chj howLng gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by 
 maddening billows ; still I saw ber, as at the moment 
 when sbe ran past us, standing amongsl the shrouds, 
 with her white draperies streaming before the wind. 
 There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand 
 clutched amongst the tackling — rising, sinking, flut- 
 tering, trembling, praying — there for leagues I saw 
 her as she stood, raising, at intervals one hand to 
 heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves 
 and the raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a 
 sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all 
 was hidden for ever in driving showers ; and after- 
 wards, but when I know not, nor how. 
 
 ur. 
 
 Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, 
 waUing over the dead that die before the dawn, awak- 
 ened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar 
 shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking ; 
 •md, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a 
 girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her 
 head for some great festival, running along the solitary 
 strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the 
 running of panic ; and often she looked back as to 
 some dreadful enemy in the rear. But when I leaped 
 ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril 
 in front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peill, 
 and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay 
 ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promon- 
 tory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant I 
 also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous 
 sands gathering above her head. Already her person 
 was buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem 
 
576 THE ENSIISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 of white roses around it. were still visible to tlie pity- 
 ing heavens : and, last of all, was visible one white 
 marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fait 
 young head, as it was sinking down to darkness — saw 
 this marble arm, as it rose above her head and her 
 treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching 
 as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the 
 clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, 
 and then uttering her dying despair. The head, the 
 diadem, the arm — these all had sunk ; at last over 
 these also the cruel quicksand had closed ; and no 
 memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, 
 except my own solitary tears, and Jhe funeral beUs 
 from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, 
 sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and 
 over her blighted dawn. 
 
 I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
 ever given to the memory of those that died before 
 the dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. 
 But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed 
 by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from 
 some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along 
 the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- 
 tains. ' Hush ! ' I said, as I bent my ear earthwards 
 to listen — ' hush ! — this either is^ the very anarchy 
 of strife, or else ' — and then I listened more pro- 
 foundly, and whispered as I raised my head — ' or 
 else, oh heavens ! it is victory that is final, victory that 
 swallows up all strife.' 
 
 IV. 
 
 Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and 
 to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a tri 
 
 fe& 
 
DKEAM-FTIGUE. 577 
 
 amphal car, amongst companions crowned with Iiiurel. 
 The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all 
 the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were 
 weaving restlessly about ourselves as a centre : we 
 heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had arrived, 
 within an hour, of a grandeur that measured itself 
 against centuries ; too full of pathos they were, too 
 full of joy, to utter themselves by other language than 
 by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Deums reverbe- 
 I'ated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These 
 tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for 
 our privilege to publish amongst all nations. And 
 already, by signs audible through the darkness, by 
 snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew 
 no fear of fleshy weariness, upbraided us with delay. 
 Wherefore was it that we delayed ? We waited for a 
 secret word that should bear witness to the hope of 
 nations, as now accomplished for ever. At midnight 
 the secret word arrived ; which word was — Waterloo 
 and Recovered Christendom ! The dreadful word 
 shone by its own light ; before us it went ; high above 
 our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden light 
 over the paths which we traversed. Every city, at the 
 presence of the secret word, threw open its gates. The 
 rivers were conscious as we crossed. All the forests, 
 as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to 
 the secret word. And the darkness comprehended it. 
 
 Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty 
 Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were 
 closed. But when the dreadful word, that rode before 
 ■iSy reached them with its golden light, silently they 
 moved back upon their hinges ; and at a flying gallop 
 our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral, 
 37 
 
578 THE EN&LISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 Headlong was our pace ; and at every altar, in ttffi 
 little otapels and oratories to the right hand and left 
 of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled 
 anew in sympathy with the secret word that was fly- 
 ing past. Forty leagues we might have run in the 
 cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had 
 reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleriea 
 of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, 
 every station of advantage amongst the traceries, was 
 crested by white-robed choristers, that sang deliver- 
 ance ; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers 
 had wept ; but at intervals that sang together to the 
 generations, saying, 
 
 ' Chant the deliverer's praise in erery tongue.' 
 and receiving answers from afar, 
 
 ' Such as onoe in heaven and earth were sung.' 
 
 And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong 
 pace was neither pause nor slackening. 
 
 Thus, as we ran like torrents — thus, as we swept 
 with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo '^ of the 
 cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of a 
 vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — a city 
 of sepulchres, buUt \vithin the saintly cathedral for the 
 warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. 
 Of purple granite was the necropolis ; yet, in the first 
 minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so 
 mighty was the distance. In the second minute it 
 trembled through many changes, growing into terraces 
 and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the 
 pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful 
 gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi 
 rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, 
 ipon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward 
 
DREAM-rUGTJE. 679 
 
 aith haughty intrusion, that ran back wi'.h mighty 
 shadows into answering recesses. Every scarcophagns 
 showed many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and 
 of battle-fields ; battles from forgotten ages — battles 
 from yesterday — battle-fields that, long since, nature 
 had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet 
 oblivion of flowers — battle-fields that were yet angry 
 and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, 
 there did we run ; where the towers curved, there did 
 we curve. With the fiight of swallows our horses 
 swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheel- 
 ing round headlands — like hurricanes that ride into 
 the secrets of forests — faster than ever light unwove 
 the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried 
 earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst 
 the dust that lay around us — dust oftentimes of our 
 noble fathers that had slept ia God from Creci to Tra- 
 falgar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, 
 now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already had 
 we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable 
 central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we 
 beheld afar off a female chUd, that rode in a carriage 
 as frail as flowers. The mists, which went before her, 
 hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the 
 shells and tropic flowers with which she played — but 
 could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered 
 her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim 
 that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of 
 its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us ; face to 
 face she rode, as if danger there were none. ' Oh, 
 baby ! ' I exclaimed, ' shalt thou be the ransom for 
 Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy 
 10 every people, be messengers of ruin to thee ! ' In 
 
530 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH. 
 
 horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in horroi 
 at the thought, rose one that was sculptured on a bas- 
 relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field 
 of battle he rose to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony 
 trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony 
 lips — sounding once, and yet once again ; proclama- 
 tion that, in thy ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battle- 
 ments of death. Immediately deep shadows fell 
 between us, and aboriginal silence. The choir had 
 ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful 
 rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, 
 alarmed the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief 
 had been unlocked into life. By horror we, that were 
 so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery 
 fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, 
 were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the 
 trumpet sounded ; the seals were taken off all pulses ; 
 life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels 
 again ; again the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, 
 as from the mufiling of storms and darkness ; again 
 the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into 
 the graves. One cry burst from oui lips, as the clouds, 
 drawing ofi" from the aisle, showed it empty before us 
 — ' Whither has the infant fled ? — is the young child 
 caught up to God ? ' Lo ! afar off, in a vast recess, 
 rose three mighty windows to the clouds ; and on a 
 level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, 
 rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face 
 was trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from 
 the reddening dawn that now streamed through the 
 windows ? Was it from the crimson robes of thu 
 mai'tjTS painted on the windows? Was it from the 
 bloody has-! sliefs of earth ? There, suddenly, within 
 
CHEAM-KUGUE. 
 
 581 
 
 that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a woman's 
 head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it was 
 ' — grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the 
 horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sinking, ris- 
 ing, raving, despairing ; and behind the volume of in- 
 cense, that, night and day, streamed upwards from the 
 altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow 
 of that dreadful being who should have baptized her 
 with the baptism of death. But by her side was 
 kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings ; 
 that wept and pleaded for her ; that prayed when she 
 could not ; that fought with Heaven by tears for her 
 deliverance ; which also, as he raised his immortal 
 countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his 
 eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 
 
 Then was completed the passion of the mighty 
 fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had 
 but muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds 
 and surges of incense — threw up, as from fountains 
 unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. 
 Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown 
 voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter! — with thy 
 love . that was victorious, and thy anguish that was 
 finishing — didst enter the tumult ; trumpet and echo 
 — farewell love, and farewell anguish — rang through 
 the dreadful sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! 
 that from the cripson altar and from the fiery font 
 wert visited and searched by the effulgence in the 
 angel's eye — were these indeed thy children ? Pomps 
 of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again 
 o ihe voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with 
 
582 THE ENGLISH MAI1-C0A.CH. 
 
 the festivals of Death? Lo ! as I looked back fot 
 seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, I saw 
 the quick and the dead that sang together to God, 
 together that sang to the generations of man. All 
 the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pur- 
 suit, moved with one step. Us, that, with laurelled 
 heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, 
 and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round with 
 thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved 
 together; to the dawn that advanced — to the stars 
 that fled ; rendering thanks to God in the highest — 
 that, having hid his face through one generation be- 
 hind thick clouds of War, once again was ascending — 
 from the Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending — 
 in the visions of Peace ; rendering thanks for thee, 
 young girl ! whom, having overshadowed with his in- 
 eifable passion of death, suddenly did God relent; 
 suffered thy angel to turn aside his arm ; and even in 
 thee, sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only 
 to be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify his 
 goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms 
 of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the 
 golden dawn — with the secret word riding before 
 thee — with the armies of the grave behind thee : 
 seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; a thou- 
 sand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee fol-, 
 lowed by God's angel through storms ; through desert 
 seas; through the darkness of quicksands; through 
 dreams, and the dreadful revelations ,that are in dreams 
 — only that at the last, with one sling of his victorious 
 arm, he might snatch thee back from ruin, and might 
 emblazon in thy deliverance the endless resurrections 
 of his love ! 
 
IsTOTES. 
 
 [When Mr. De (.Juwioey undertook the revision of his writings, ia 
 1853, The Confessions of an English Opium-Eatee suffered the 
 most violent change at his hands. The original work with all its 
 splendor and abruptness had been before the world for more than 
 thirty years, and had been the foundation of the author's fame. 
 Written when his power was most intense, it was revised when the 
 garrulousness of age made him linger over the recollections of that 
 portion of his life, but the original work has passed so completely 
 into literature that it is impossible for the revision to dislodge it and 
 take its place. In issuing a new edition, therefore, of the writings of 
 De Quinoey, it has been thought best to leave " The Confessions " and 
 the "Suspiria" intact, as originally published, and to arrange under 
 the title, *' Additions to the Confessions of an Opium Eater," those 
 passages which were introduced in the revised edition, or added as 
 notes. By this means, while the original work is retained in its integ- 
 rity, 'the reader is put in possession of all that De Quincey subse- 
 quently wrote under. the same title, and by means of the references 
 given below is endfflfed to connect the several additions with their 
 proper chronological place in the main narrative. 
 
 The article on " Coleridge and Opium Eating," is placed in this 
 volume in order to bring together all that De Quincey has written on 
 the subject of his own experience in this habit, although the main 
 part of the paper is otherwise associated, and would properlj'- fall into 
 place in another volume. '* The English Mail Coach," as he has him- 
 self explained, belongs properly with the " Suspiria." This explana- 
 tion occurs in one of his prefaces, and is herewith subjoined.] 
 
 "The English Mail-Coach." — This little paper, according to my 
 original intention, formed part of the " Suspiria de Profundis," from 
 which, for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and 
 to publish it apart, as sutSciently intelligible even when dislocated 
 from its place in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or 
 wo critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, 
 
584 NOTES. 
 
 professed their inability to apprclicnd the meaning of the whole, or 
 to follow the links of the connection between its several parts. I am 
 mvselt as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to de- 
 tect any lurking obscurity, as those critics found themsrlves to un- 
 ravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral 
 judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the 
 little paper according to my own original design, and then leave the 
 reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the actual 
 execution. 
 
 Thirty-seven 3'ears ago, or rather more, accident made me, in 
 the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary 
 witness to an appalling scene, which threatened instant death, in a 
 shape the most terrific, to two young people, whom I had no means 
 of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give them a most hur- 
 ried warning of their danger; but even that not until they stood 
 within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the 
 most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than sev- 
 enty seconds. 
 
 Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of 
 this paper radiates as a natural expansion. The scene is circumstan- 
 tially narrated in Section the Second, entitled, "The Vision of Sudden 
 Death." 
 
 But a movement of horror and of spontaneous recoil from this 
 dreadful scene naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and 
 idealized into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of 
 dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the 
 mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as 
 a musical fugue. This troubled dream is circua|||antially reported in 
 Section the Third, entitled, " Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden 
 Death." What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the scen- 
 Ical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there 
 witnessed them moving in ghostly silence; this duel between life and 
 death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the 
 collision neared, ^all these elements of the scene blended, tmder the 
 law of association, with the previous and permanent features of dis- 
 tinction investing the mail itself, which features at that time lay — 
 Ist, in velocity unprecedented ; 2dly, in the power and beauty of the 
 horses; 3dly, in the official connection with the government of a great 
 nation ; and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of 
 publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, 
 and especially the great battles during a conflict of unparalleled 
 grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circumstan- 
 
■NOTES. 585 
 
 tially in the Fikst or introductory section (" Tlie Glory of Motion "). 
 The three first were distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth 
 and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and 
 this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. 
 Waterloo, I understood, was the particular feature of the " Dream- 
 Fugue " which my censors were least able to account for. Yet surely 
 Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had been 
 our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturallj' en- 
 tered the Dream under the license of our privilege. If not — if there 
 be anything amiss — let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a 
 law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for 
 not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in 
 the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily 
 from the incidents' of the actual scene, or from secondaiy features 
 associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived it- 
 self from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves 
 together at the point of approaching collision, namely, an arrow-like 
 section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights 
 described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's 
 horn, again — a humble instrument in itself — was yet glorified as the 
 organ of publication for so many great national events. And the in- 
 cident of the Dying Triimpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, 
 and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of 
 warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my 
 own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow a warning 
 blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the 
 responsible party. 
 
 Note 1. Page xi. 
 
 [In reprinting the address "From the Author to the Reader," in 
 the revised edition of "The Confessions of an Opium Eater," De 
 Quincey heads it " Original Preface in the Year 1821." The attentive 
 reader will discover, however, that the author has not contented him- 
 self with reprinting the preface, as the caption would intimate, as a 
 historical matter, but has altered this "original preface" in verbal 
 particulars, and, amongst other slight changes, has filled in the blanks 
 so that one reads " the eloquent and benevolent William Wilberforce; 
 the late Dean of Carlisle, Dr. Isaac Milner; the first Lord Erskine ; 
 
 Mr. , the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state (viz., Mr. 
 
 Addington, brother to the first Lord Sidmouth, who described to me the 
 sensation which first drove him to the use of opium, in the very same 
 (rords as the Dean of Carlisle, viz. : ' that he felt as though i;ata were 
 
586 NOTES. 
 
 gnawing at the coats of his stomach '); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and 
 many others hardly less celebrated."] 
 
 Note 2. Page xi. 
 
 "The late Dean of :" — 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 cir- 
 cle as the head of Queen's College, Cambridge, where he usually 
 resided. In common with his brother, Joseph of Hull, he was sub- 
 stantially a Wesleran Methodist ; and in that character, as regarded 
 principles and the general direction of his sympathies, he pursued his 
 deceased brother's History of the Christian Church down to the era of 
 Luther. In these days, he would perhaps not be styled a Methodist, 
 but simply a, Low-Churchman. By whatever title described, it is 
 meantime remarkable that a man confessedly so conscientioiis as Dean 
 Milner could have reconciled to his moral views the holding of church 
 preferment so important as this deanery in combination with the head- 
 ship of an important college. One or other must have been consciously 
 neglected. Such a record, meantime, powerfully illustrates the ad- 
 vances made by the Church during the last generation in practical 
 homage to self-denying reli<;ious 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 cur- 
 rent generation. We do injustice daily to our own age ; which, by 
 many a sign, palpable and secret, I feel to be more emphatically, than 
 any since the period of Queen Elizabeth and Charles I., an intellectual, 
 a moving, and a self-contiicting age : and inevitably, where the intel- 
 lect has been preternaturally awakened, the moral sensibility must 
 soon be commensurately stirred. The very distinctions, psychologic 
 or metaphysical, by which, as its hinges and articulations, our modern 
 thinking moves, proclaim the subtler character of the questions which 
 now occupy our thoughts. Not as pedantic only, but as suspiciously 
 unintelligible, such distinctions would, one hundred and thirty years 
 ago, have been viewed as indictable ; and perhaps (in company with 
 Mandeville's "Political Economy") would have been seriously pre- 
 sented as a nuisance to the Middlesex Quarter-Sessions. Recurring, 
 aowever, to Dean Milner, and the recollections of his distinguished 
 talents amongst the contemporary circles of the first generation in this 
 lineteenth century, I wish to mention that these talents are most 
 
NOTES. 587 
 
 feebly measured by any of his occasional writings, all drawn from him 
 apparently by mere pressure of casual convenience. In conversation 
 it was that he asserted adequately his preeminent place. Wordsworth, 
 who met him often at the late Lord Lonsdale's table, spoke of him uni- 
 formly as the chief potentate colloquially of his own generation, and 
 as the man bej'ond all others (Burke being departed) who did not live 
 upon his recollections, but met the demands of every question that 
 engaged his sympathy by spontaneous and elastic movements of novel 
 and original thought. As an opium-eater. Dean Milner was understood 
 to be a strenuous wrestler with the physical necessity that coerced him 
 into this habit. From several quarters I have heard that his daily 
 ration was 34 grains (or about 850 drops of laudanum), divided into 
 four portions, and administered to him at regular intervals of six 
 hours by a confidential valet. 
 
 Note 3. Page xi. 
 "Mr. , the philosopher:" — Who is Mr. Dash, the philoso- 
 pher ? Keally 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 edi- 
 tion of the book, thirty-five years ago. I was not consulted ; and did 
 not discover the absurd blanks until months afterwards, when I was 
 taunted with them very reasonably by a caustic reviewer. Nothing 
 could have a more ludicrous effect than this appeal to shadows — to 
 my Lord Dash, to Dean Dash, and to Mr. Secretary Dash. Very nat- 
 urally it thus happened to Mr. Philosopher Dash that his burning 
 light, alas ! was extinguished irrecoverably in the general melee. 
 Meantime, there was no excuse whatever for this absurd interference 
 such as might have been alleged in any personality capable of caus- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Note i. Page xiii. 
 [The original preface stopped at this point, but the " Original Pref- 
 ace in the Year 1821," as reprinted by Mr. De Quincey, continues, by 
 the momentum it had acquired, for two or three pages more, which 
 are here given. The author, in the last paragraph, it will be seen, ad- 
 vises the reader that he must take the words " original preface" with 
 some modification.] 
 
588 
 
 And at this point I shall say no more than that opium, as the one 
 sole caihoUc anodyne which hitherto has been revealed to man ; 
 secondly, as the one sole anodyne which in a vast majoi'ity 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 
 tce-lium vilce ; fourthly, as by possibility, under an argument undeni- 
 ably plausible, alleged by myself, 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 a7iy of these, four beneficent characteris- 
 tics — I say that any agent whatever making good such pretensions, 
 no matter what its name, is entitled haughtily to refuse the ordinary 
 classification and treatment which opium receives in books. I say 
 that opium, or any agent of equal power, is entitled to assume that it 
 was revealed to man for some higher object than that it should fur- 
 nish a, target for moral denunciations, ignorant where they are not 
 hypocritical, childish where not dishonest ; that it should be set up as 
 a theatrical scarecrow for superstitious terrors, of which the result is 
 oftentimes to defraud human suffering of its readiest alleviation, and 
 of which the purjfose is, " Ut pueris placeant et declamatio fiant." * 
 
 In one sense, and remotely, all medicines and modes of medical 
 treatment oifer themselves as anodynes — that is, so far as they prom- 
 ise ultimately to relieve the suffering connected with physical mal- 
 adies 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 re- 
 lief, and pursue it as theprimary and immediate object. If, by giving 
 tonics to a child suffering periodic pains in the stomach, we were ulti- 
 mately to banish those pains, this would not warrant us in calling 
 such tonics by the name of anodynes ; for the neutralization of the 
 pains would be a circuitous process of nature, and might probably re- 
 quire 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 ano- 
 dynes, we may rank hemlock, henbane, chloroform, and opium. But 
 unquestionably the three first have a most narrow field of action, by 
 comparison with opium. This, beyond all other agents made known 
 
 * That they may win the applause of schoolboys, and f uruKh matter for a 
 wize essay. 
 
NOTES. 589 
 
 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 revolution- 
 ary magic, opium would have had altars and priests consecrated to its 
 benign and tutelary powers. But this is not my own object in the pres- 
 ent little work. Very many people have thoroughly misconstrued 
 this object; and therefore I beg to sa}' here, in closing my Original 
 Preface, a little remodelled, that what I contemplated in these Con- 
 fessions was to emblazon the power of opium — not over bodii}' disease 
 and pain, but over the grander and more shadowy world of dreams. 
 
 Note 5. Page 18. 
 [At the mention of this circumstance in the revised edition of the 
 Confessions, De Quincey enters into a fuller account of these guar- 
 dians, and episodically of the relation of guardianship. These pages 
 are given in the Additions, p. 295 of this volume.] 
 
 Note 6. Page 20. 
 [The experience summed up in the two pages ending at this point 
 was afterward expanded into the chapters in the Additions, headed 
 *'A Manchester Home," p. 308, and "At the Manchester Grammar 
 School," p. 313.] 
 
 Note 7. Page 20. 
 
 [Lauy Carbery. See also for an amplification of this part of his 
 experience the chapter in the Additions, headed " Elopement from 
 Manchester," p. 354.] 
 
 Note 8. Page 25. 
 
 [The summary of this brief paragraph is fully extended in the 
 chapter, " Wanderings in North Wales," in the Additions, p. 374.] 
 
 * " Adequately made known : " — Precisely this, liowever, 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 recLuiring elaborate prepar- 
 ation, or requiring much manufacturing skill. When the process of obtain- 
 ing any manufactured drug was slow and iutricate, it could most rarely be 
 called for. And rarely called for, why should ifc be produced ? By looking 
 into the history and times of Herod the Great, as reported by Josephus, the 
 reader will gain some notion of the mystery and the suspicion surrounding 
 all attempts at importing such drugs as could be applied to murderous pur- 
 poses, consequently of the delay, the difficulty, and the peril in forming any 
 familiar acquaintance with opium. 
 
590 
 
 Note 9. Page 25. 
 [" B : " — Bangor. The Bishop of B , is the Bishop of Ban- 
 gor, then Dr. Cleaver.] 
 
 Note 10. Page 29. 
 [De Quincey's wanderings from this time until he reached London 
 are given in detail in the chapter in Additions, entitled, "From Wales 
 to London,"' p. 404.] 
 
 Note 11. Page 32. 
 [The means on which De Quincey relied for sustaining himself in 
 London are given in Additions, in the chapter, " The Plans laid for 
 London Life," p. 427.] 
 
 Note 12. Page 35. 
 
 f " Mr. : " — This person, under the name of Brown-Branell or 
 
 Brunell-Brown is described at greater length in the chapter of the Ad- 
 ditions last cited.] 
 
 Note 13. Page 37. 
 
 ["/n a well Icnownpwrt of London : " — De Quincey felt himself at 
 liberty, when revising the Confessions, to point out the exact location, 
 "at the northwest corner of Greek Street, being the house on that 
 side the street nearest to Soho Square."] 
 
 Note 14. Page 37. 
 ["My birthday:" — De Quincey was born August 15, 1785.] 
 
 Note 15. Page 45. 
 
 ** / applied to a Jew named D .* " — At this period (autumn of 
 
 1856), when thirtj'-five years frave elapsed since the first publication of 
 these memoirs, reasons of delicacy can no longer claim respect for 
 concealing the Jew's name, or at least the name which he adopted in 
 his dealings with the Gentiles. I say, therefore, without scruple, that 
 the name was Dell : and some years later it was one of the names that 
 came before the House of Commons in connection with something or 
 other (I have long since forgotten wliat) growing out of the parlia- 
 mentary movement against the Duke of York, in reference to Mrs. 
 Clark, &c. Like all the other Jews with whom I have had negotia- 
 tions, he was frank and honorable in his mode of conducting busi- 
 ness. What he promised, he performed ; and if his terms were high, 
 as naturally they could not Imt be, to cover his risks, he avowed them 
 from the first. 
 
NOTES. 591 
 
 Note 16. Page 46. 
 f " Earl of : " — Earl of Altamont.] 
 
 Note 17. Page 46. 
 [" Marquis of : " — Marquis of Sligo.] 
 
 Note 18. Page 47. 
 £" M and SI.:" — Mayo and Sligo.] 
 
 Note 19. Page 52. 
 " A murder committed on or near H&u/nslow Heath :" — Two men, 
 HoUoway and Haggerty, were long afterwards convicted, upon very 
 questionable evidence, as the perpetrators of this murder. The main 
 testimony against them was that of a Newgate turnkey, who had im- 
 perfectly overheard a conversation between the two men. The cur- 
 rent impression was that of great dissatisfaciion with the evidence; 
 and this impression was strengthened by the pamphlet of an acute 
 lawyer, exposing the unsoundness and incoherency of the statements 
 relied upon by the court. They were executed, however, in the teeth 
 of all opposition. And as it happened that an enormous wreck of life 
 occured at the execution (not fewer, I believe, than sixty persons hav- 
 ing been trampled under foot by the unusual pressure of some brew- 
 ers' draymen forcing their way with linked arms to the space below 
 the drop), this tragedy was regarded for manj- years by a section of 
 the London mob as a providential judgment upon the passive metrop- 
 olis. 
 
 Note 20. Page 52. 
 
 [" My friend, Lord : " — Lord Altamont.] 
 
 Note 21. Page 54. 
 
 [" Univereity of : " — Lord Altamont was gone to Jesus Col- 
 lege, Cambridge.] 
 
 Note 22. Page 54. 
 
 [ ' ' Earl of D :" — Lord Desert. "I had known Lord Desert, " 
 
 says De Quincey elsewhere, "the eldest son of a very large family, 
 some years earlier, when bearing the title of Lord Castlecuffe. Cuffe 
 was the family name ; and I believe that they traced their descent 
 from a person of some historic interest — viz., that Cuffe who was sec- 
 retary to the unhappy Earl of Essex during his treasonable emeute 
 ■gainst the government of Queen Elizabeth.] 
 
692 
 
 Note 23, Page 57. 
 
 [" Reconciliation with my friends: " — These friends were his guar- 
 dian, and the remote part of England to which he went was the 
 Priorvj near Chester, mentioned on p. 389.] 
 
 Note 24. Page 72. 
 
 '•^ For he was a surgeon and had himself taken opium largely : " — This 
 surgeon it was who first made me aware of the dangerous variability 
 in opium as to strength under the shifting proportions of its combina- 
 tion with alien impurities. Naturally, as a man professionally alive 
 to the danger of creating any artificial need of opium beyond what 
 the anguish of his malady at any rate demanded, trembling every 
 hour on behalf of his poor children, lest, by any indiscretion of his 
 own, he should precipitate the crisis of his disorder, he saw the neces- 
 sity of reducing the daily dose to a minimum. But to do this he must 
 first obtain the means of measuring the quantities of opium; not the 
 apparent quantities as determined by weighing, hut the virtual qimn- 
 tities 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 boil- 
 ing the opium. That done, the residuum became equable in strength; 
 and the daily doses could be 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 
 1= ^^, 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 suddenly began a 
 fiercer stage of anguish fi'om his disease. But then, also, the fight 
 was finished, and the victory was won. All duties were fulfilled ; his 
 children prosperously launched in life; and death, which to himself 
 was becoming daily more necessary as a relief from torment, now fell 
 injuriously upon nobody. 
 
 Note 25. Page 75. 
 '* The late Duke of : "—The late Duke of Norfolk. My author- 
 ity was the late Sir George Beaumont, an old familiar acquaintance of 
 ^he duke's. But such expressions are always liable to grievous mis- 
 
NOTES. ■ 593 
 
 application. Bj- " the late " duke, Sir George meant that dulte once so 
 well known to the nation as the partisan friend of Fox, Burke, Sheri- 
 dan, etc., at the era of the great French Revolution, in 1789-1793. 
 Since his time, I believe there have been three generations of ducal 
 Howards — who are always interesting to the English nation, first, 
 from the bloody historic traditions surrounding their great house ; sec- 
 ondly, from the fact of their being at the head of the British Peerage. 
 
 Note 26. Page 75. 
 
 " Grassini: " — Thrilling was the pleasure with which almost always 
 I heard this angelic Grassini. Shivering with expectation I sat, 
 when the time drew near for her golden epiphany; shivering I rose 
 from ray seat, incapable of rest, when that heavenly and harp-like 
 voice sang its own victorious welcome in its prelusive threttdnelo — 
 threttdnelo. This is the beautiful representative echo by which Aris- 
 tophanes expresses the sound of the Grecian phormihx, or of some 
 other instrument, which conjecturally has been shown most to resem- 
 ble our modern European harp. In the case of ancient Hebrew in- 
 struments 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 ; 
 alwa3'S 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, when gorged 
 with English gold, went off to Paris ; and when I heard on what terms 
 she lived with a man so unmagnanimous as Napoleon, I came to hate 
 her. Did I complain of any man's hating England, or teaching a 
 woman to hate her benefactress? Not at all; but simply of his adopt- 
 ing at second hand the malice of a jealous nation, with which orig- 
 inally he could have had no sincere sympathy. Hate us, if you please; 
 but not sycophantishly, by way of paying court to others. 
 
 Note 27. Page 79. 
 
 " 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 3'ou occupy, as an honored visitor, in the chimney 
 corner. There I used often to hear (though not to see) bees. Their 
 murmuring was audible, though their bodilj' forms were too small to 
 be visible at" that altitude. On inquiry, I found that soot (chiefly from 
 wood and peats) was useful in some stage of their wax or honey man- 
 ufacture. 
 
 38 
 
594 
 
 Note 28. Page 81. 
 [" Great town of L : " — Liverpool.] 
 
 KoTE 29. Page 86. 
 " Anastaeius ; " — The reader of this generation will marvel at these 
 repeated references to "Anastasius; " it is now an almost forgotten 
 book, so vast has been the deluge of novel-writing talent, really orig- 
 inal and powerful, which has overflowed our literature during the 
 lapse of thirty-five years from the publication of these Confessions. 
 "Anastasius" was written by the famous and opulent Mr. Hope; 
 and was in 1821 a book both of high reputation and of great influence 
 amongst the leading circles of society. 
 
 Note 30. Page 92. 
 ^^ A seaport about forty miles distant ; " — Between the seafaring pop- 
 ulations on the coast of Lancashire, and the coiTesponding populations 
 on the coast of Cumberland (such as Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Work- 
 ington, Maryport, etc.), there was a slender current of interchange 
 constantly going on, and especially in the days of pressgangs — in 
 part by sea, but in part also by land. By the way, I may mention, 
 as an interesting fact which I discovered from an almanac and itin- 
 erary, dated about the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign (say, 1579), 
 that the official route in her days for queen's messengers to the north 
 of Ireland, and of course for travellers generally, was not (as now) 
 through Grasmere, and thence by St. John's Vale, Threlkeld (for the 
 short cut by Shoulthwaite Moss was then unknown), Keswick, Cook- 
 ermouth, and Whitehaven. Up to St. Oswald's Church, Gresmere (so 
 it was then spelled, in deference to its Danish original), the route lay 
 as at present. Thence it turned round the lake to the left, crossed 
 Hamraerscar, up Little Langdale, across Wrynose to Egremont, and 
 from Egremont to Whitehaven. 
 
 Note 31. Page 93. 
 [" Beautiful English face of the girl: " — For a further reference to 
 this girl, who was Barbara Lewthwaite, made famous by Wordsworth, 
 see the chapter in the Additions, headed " Barbara Lewthwaite," page 
 437.] 
 
 Note 32. Page 96. 
 " Let there be a cottage standing in a valley : " — 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 
 
NOTES. 595 
 
 occupied for more than twenty years by myself, as immediate suc- 
 cessor, in the year 1809, to "Wordsworth. Looking to the limitation 
 here laid down — viz., in those days — the reader will inquire, in what 
 way Time can have afEected the beauty of Grasmere. Do the West- 
 moreland valleys turn gray -headed ? Oh, reader! this is a painful 
 memento for some of us ! Thirty years ago, a gang of Vandals (name- 
 less, I thank Heaven, to me), for tlie sake of building a mail-coach 
 road that never would be wanted, carried, at a cost of ^3,000 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 Osmunda 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 Inde- 
 pendent line through all the records of verse 
 
 " Or lady of the lake, 
 Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.-' 
 
 Eightly, therefore, did I introduce this limitation. The Grasmere be- 
 fore and after this outrage were two different vales. 
 
 Note 33. Page 97. 
 [" As Mr. says: "] — Mr. Anti-Slavery Clarkson. 
 
 Note 34. Page 102. 
 [The section numbered 2, has been very much amplified in the re- 
 vision and is now given at page 455, under the title " Notes on the 
 Use of Opium."] 
 
 NOTK 35. Page 104. 
 
 [" reads vilely: " — John Kemble is referred to, and afterward 
 
 Mrs. Siddons.] 
 
 Note 36. Page 104. 
 
 [" W." —Wordsworth.] 
 
 Note 37. Page 112. 
 
 " The whole and every part : " — 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 vol- 
 cano — as any human being ever can have done that has lived to draw 
 jack and to report her experience. Not less than ninety years did 
 
69b 
 
 she survive this memorable escape ; and I maj- describe her as in all 
 respects a woman of remarltable and interesting qualities. She en- 
 joyed, 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 devo- 
 tion, such as might have glorified " IlilaHon or Paul." [The words 
 in italic are Ariosto's.] I mention these traits as characterizing her 
 in a memorable extent, that the reader may not suppose himself rely- 
 ing upon a dealer in exaggerations, upon a credulous enthusiast, of 
 upon a careless wielder of language. Forty-five j-ears had intervened 
 between the first time and the last time of her telling me this anec- 
 dote, and not one iota had shifted its ground amongst the incidents, 
 nor had any the most trivial of tlie circumstantiations suffered 
 change. The scene of the accident was the least of valleys, what the 
 Greeks of old would have called an av*o?, and we English should 
 properly call a dell. Human tenant it had none : even at noonday it 
 was a solitude ; and would oftentimes have been a silent solitude but 
 for the brawling of a brook — not broad, but occasionally deep — 
 which ran along the base of the little hills. Into this brook, probably 
 into one of its dangerous pools, the child fell : and, according to the 
 ordinary chances, she could have had but a slender prospect indeed of 
 any deliverance , for, although a dwelling-house was close by, it was 
 shut out from view by the undulations of the ground. How long the 
 child lay in the water, was probably never inquired earnestly until the 
 answer had become irrecoverable: for a servant, to whose care the 
 child was then confided, had a natural interest in suppressing the 
 whole case. From the child's own account, it should seem that 
 asphyxia must have announced its commencement. A process of 
 struggle and deadly suffocation was passed through half consciously. 
 This process terminated by a sudden blow apparently on or in the 
 brain, after which there was no pain or conflict; but in an instant sue" 
 ceeded a dazzling rush of light ; immediately after which came the 
 solemn apocalypse of the entire past life. Meantime, the child's dis- 
 appearance in the water had happily been witnessed by a farmer who 
 rented some fields in this little solitude, and by a rare accident was 
 riding through them at the moment. Not being very well mounted, 
 he was retarded by the hedges and other fences in making his way 
 down to tile 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 
 crave as perhaps the laws of the shadowy world can suffer to return I 
 
597 
 
 Note 38. Page 113. 
 " August, 1642 : " — I think (but at the moment have no means of 
 verifying my conjecture) that this day was the 24th of August. Oil 
 or about that day Charles raised the roj'al standard at Nottingham; 
 which, ominously enough (considering the strength of such supersti- 
 tions in the .«eventeentli centmy, and, amongst the generations of that 
 century, more especially in this particular generation of the Parliament- 
 ary War), was blown down during the succeeding night. Let me re- 
 mark, 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. 
 
 Note 39. Page 115. 
 "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 
 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 honor 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 splendor of the verses. 
 
 Note 40. Page 127. 
 "Jeremy Taylor:" — 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 volu- 
 minous writings ; but the exact passage moving in my mind had evi- 
 dently been this which follows, from Lord Bacon's "Essay on 
 Death: " "It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant 
 perhaps the one is as painful as the other." 
 
598 NOTES. 
 
 Note 41. Page 273. 
 [' ' A 1 :"— Altamont.] 
 
 Note 42. Page 295. 
 [ ' My Guardians : " — See page 18, and Note 6.] 
 
 Note 43. Page 308. 
 ["A Manchester Home : " — See page 20, and Note 6.] 
 
 Note 44. Page 354. 
 [" Elopement from Manchester:" — See page 20, and Note 7.] 
 
 Note 45. Page 374. 
 [" Wanderings in North Wales: " — See page 25, and Note 8.] 
 
 Note 46. Page 404. 
 [" From Wales to London : " — See page 29, and Note 10.] 
 
 Note 47. Page 427. 
 [" The Plans laid/or London Life: " — See page 32, and Note 11.] 
 
 Note 48. Page 437. 
 l"Bariara Levithwaite: " — See page 93, and Note 31.] 
 
 Note 49. Page 455. 
 [" JVbies on the use of Opium: " — See page 102, and Note 34.] 
 
 Note 50. Page 480. 
 *' Jacob Boehmen : " — We ourselves had the honor of presenting to 
 Mr. Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob — a set of huge quar- 
 tos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying open, and one 
 volume at least overflowing, in parts, with the commentaries and the 
 corollaries of Coleridge. Whither has this work, and so many others 
 swathed about with Coleridge's manuscript notes, vanished from the 
 world ? 
 
 Note 51. Page 482. 
 
 " Qualities of his horse:" — One fact, tolerably notorious, should 
 have whispered to Mr. Gillman that all anecdotes which presuppose 
 for their basis any equestrian skill or habits in Coleridge rest upon 
 moonshine. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's first attempts at horseman- 
 Bhjp were pretty nearly his last. What motive swayed the judgment, 
 or what stormy impulse drove the passionate despair of Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge into quitting Jesus College, Cambridge, was never clearly or 
 
NOTES. 599 
 
 certainly made known to the very nearest of his friends ; which lends 
 further probability to a rumor, already in itself probable enough, 
 that this motive which led, or this impulse which drove, the unhappy 
 man into headlong acts of desperation, was — the reader will guess 
 for himself, though ten miles distant — a woman. In fact, most of us 
 play the fool at least once in our life-career ; and the criminal cause of 
 our doing so is pretty well ascertained by this time in all cases to be a 
 woman. Coleridge was hopelessly dismissed by his proud, disdainful 
 goddess, although really she might have gone farther and fared worse- 
 I am able, by female aid, to communicate a pretty close description of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge as he was in the year 1796. In stature, ac- 
 cording to the severe measurement taken down in the studio of a very 
 distinguished artist, he was exactly 5 feet 10 inches in height ; with a 
 blooming and healthy complexion; beautiful and luxuriant hair, fall- 
 ing in natural curls over his shoulders; and, as a lady (the successor 
 of Hannah More in her most lucrative boarding-school) said to me 
 about the year of Waterloo, " simply the most perfect realization of a 
 pastoral Strephon that in all her life she had looked upon.*' Strephon 
 was the romantic name that survived from her rosj' days of sweet 
 seventeen; at present, Strephon, as well as Chloe, are at a discount; 
 but what she meant was an Adonis. By reason of reading too much 
 Kant and Schelling, he grew fat and corpulent towards "Waterloo ; 
 but he was then slender and agile as an antelope. 
 
 / 
 Note 52. Page 485. 
 
 "Arbitrary limitation: " — Malthus would have rejoined by saying 
 that the flower-pot limitation was the actual limitation of Nature in our 
 present circumstances. In America it is otherwise, he would say ; 
 but England is the very flower pot you suppose ; she is a flower pot 
 which cannot be multiplied, and cannot even be enlarged. Very well; 
 so be it ; (which we say in order to waive irrelevant disputes ; ) but then 
 the true inference will be, not that vegetable increase proceeds under a 
 different law from that which governs animal increase, but that, 
 through an accident of position, the experiment cannot be tried in 
 England. Surely the levers of Archimedes, with submission to Sir 
 Edward B. Lytton, were not the less levers because he wanted the 
 locum standi. It is proper, by the way, tLat we should inform the 
 reader of this generation where to look for Coleridge's skirmishings 
 with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in the late Mr. William 
 Hazlitt's work on that subject — a work which Coleridge so far claimed 
 as to assert that it had been substantially made up from his own con- 
 versation. 
 
600 
 
 Note 53. Page 495. 
 Vide, in particular, for tlie most exquisite exliibition of pigheaded- 
 ness tliat tlie world can furnisli, his perverse evidence on the once fa» 
 mous case at the Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning 
 his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton. 
 
 Note 54. Page 499. 
 ' ' Mrs. Brownrigg ; " — Draco and the Bishop belong to history, — 
 the first as bloody lawgiver in the days of the elder Athens, the 
 Bishop as fiery disciplinarian to weak, relapsing^eruerto [such is the 
 modern slang] : sneaking perverts like myself and my ever-honored 
 reader, who would be very willing to give the Bishop a kick in the 
 dark, but would find ourselves too much of cowards to stand to it 
 when the candles were brought. These men are well known ; but 
 who is Mrs. Brownrigg ? The reader would not have asked had he 
 lived in the days of the Anti-Jacobin, who describes Mrs. Brownrigg 
 as the woman 
 
 " who whipp'd two female 'prentices to death, 
 And hid them in the coal-hole,*' 
 
 Note 55. Page 502. 
 " Mopped de twig :" — 1st ebenjetzt gestorhen was his German idea, 
 which he thus rendered in classical English. 
 
 Note 56. Page 504. 
 It was printed at the end of Aristotle's Poetics, which Dr. Cook 
 edited. 
 
 Note 57. Page 504. 
 
 Xpvaeii;. It is remarkable that this epithet has been everywhere 
 assigned to ruxns. Awpa rvxi\<s, the gifts of Fortune, which in this place 
 is meant to indicate riches, corresponding to Gray's "All that Wealth 
 e'er gave," might seem at first sight to justify this allocation of the 
 epithet golden. But on this way of understanding the appropriation, 
 we are met by a prosaic and purely mechanic fact — the gifts of golden 
 Fortune, as the giver of golden coins — Persian darics or English 
 guineas. Meantime this epithet has an old traditional consecration 
 to Venus, and in such an application springs upward like a pyramid 
 of fire into a far more illimitable and imaginative value. A truth 
 which Shakespeare caught at once by a subtle divination of his own 
 unfathomable sensibility. Accordingly, without needing any Grecian 
 guidance or model, how profound is tlie effect of that line : — 
 "What is 't that takes from thee thy golden sleep? 
 
601 
 
 Note 58. Page 507. 
 [" J. letter of Coleridge's :" — The passage referred to is as follows : 
 "You will never hear anything but truth from me; prior habits 
 render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully ob- 
 Berred, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this de- 
 tested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty hours have yet 
 passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last week 
 comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need 
 not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week, I shall 
 not, I must not be permitted to leave your house, unless with you." 
 Gillman's "Life of Culeridge," vol. i., page 275. I think that De 
 Quincey hardly treats this passage fairly when he assumes that Coler- 
 idge regards a week as sufiicient for weaning one's self from opium.] 
 
 Note 59. Page 513. 
 
 [" Some intemperate passages ; " — The following are the passages 
 referred to : " God knows that from that moment I was the victim of 
 pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as 
 a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensations. I needed 
 none ; and oh ! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the ' Confes- 
 sions of an Opium Eater, ' in which the writer with morbid vanity, 
 makes a boast of what was my misfortune, for he had been faithfully 
 and with an agony of zeal warned of the gulf, and yet willingly 
 struck into the current .... Oh, may the God to whom I look for 
 mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the ' Confessions 
 of an Opiura'Eater,' it as I have too strong reason to believe, his book 
 has been the occasion of seducipg others into this withering vice 
 through wantonness. From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, 
 been free, as far as acts of my free will and intention are concerned; 
 even to the author of that work I pleaded with flowing tears, and with 
 an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had 
 then even to deter perhaps not to forewarn." Gillman's "Life of 
 Coleridge," vol. i., pp. 2i7, 248, 250. 
 
 As further illustrative of this point at issue between Coleridge and 
 De Quincey, we give here a passage bearing upon it, inserted at the 
 opening of the new edition of the Confessions.] Coleridge was 
 doubly in en*or when he allowed himself to aim most unfriendly blows 
 at my supposed voluptuousness in the use of opium ; in error as to a 
 principle, and in error as to a fact. A letter of his, which I will hope 
 hat he did not design to have published, but which, however, has been 
 oublished, points the attention of his correspondent to a broad dis- 
 
602 NOTES. 
 
 tinction separating my case as an opium-eater from his own ; he, it 
 seems, had fallen excusably (because unavoidably) into this habit of 
 eating opium — as the one sole therapeutic resource available against 
 his particular malady; but I, wretch that I am, being so notoriously 
 charmed by fairies against pain, must have resorted to opium in the 
 abominable character of an adventurous voluptuary, angling in all 
 streams for variety of pleasures. Coleridge is wrong to the whole ex- 
 tent of what was possible ; wrong in his fact, wrong in his doctrine; 
 in his little fact, and his big doctrine. I did not do the thing which 
 he charges upon me; and if I had done it, this would not convict me 
 as a citizen of Sybaris or Daphne. There never was a distinction 
 more groundless and visionary than that which it has pleased him to 
 draw between my motives and his own ; nor could Coleridge have 
 possibly owed this mis-statement to any false information ; since no 
 man, surely, on a question of my own private experience, could have 
 pretended to be better informed than myself. Or, if there really is 
 such a person, perhaps he will not think it too much trouble to re- 
 write these Confessions from first to last, correcting their innumerable 
 faults ; and, as it happens that some parts of the unpublished sections 
 for the present are missing, would he kindly restore them — brighten- 
 ing the colors that may have faded, rekindling the inspiration that 
 may have drooped; filling up all those chasms, which else-are likely 
 to remain as permanent disfigurations of myhttlework? Meantime 
 the reader, who takes any interest in such a question, will find that I 
 myself (upon such a theme not simply the best, but surely the sole 
 authority) have, without a shadow of variation, always given a dif- 
 ferent account of the matter. Most truly I have told the reader, that 
 not any search after pleasure, but mere extremity of pain from rheu- 
 matic toothache — this and nothing else it was that first drove me into 
 the use of opium. Coleridge's bodily affliction was simple rheuma- 
 tism. Mine, which intermittingly raged for ten years, was rheumatism 
 in the face combined with toothache. This I had inherited from my 
 father; or inherited (I should rather say) from my own desperate ig- 
 norance; since a trifling dose of colocynth, or of any similar medicine, 
 taken three times a week, would more certainly than opium have de- 
 livered me from that terrific curse.* In this ignorance, however, 
 
 * " That terrific curse : " — Two things blunt the general sense of horror, 
 which "would else connect itself with toothache — viz., first, its enormoua 
 diffusion ; hardly a household in Europe being clear of it, each in turn hav- 
 hig some one chamber intermittingly echoing the groans extorted by this 
 eruel torture. There — viz., in its ubiquity — lies one cause of its slight val- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 603 
 
 which misled me into making war upon toothache when ripened and 
 'manifesting itself in effects of pain, rather than upon its germs and 
 gathering causes, I did but follow the rest of the world. To intercept 
 the evil whilst yet in elementary stages of formation, was the true 
 policy: whereas I in my blindness sought only for some mitigation to 
 the evil when already formed, and past all reach of interception. In 
 this stage of the suiTering, formed and perfect, I was thrown passively 
 upon cliance 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 appreciated. 
 
 Coleridge, therefore, and myself, as regards our baptismal initia- 
 tion into the use of that mighty drug, occupy the very same position. 
 We are embarked in the self-same boat; nor is it within the compass 
 even of angelic hair-splitting, to show that the dark shadow thrown by 
 our several trespasses in this tield, mine and his, had by so much as 
 a pin's point any assignable diiTerence. Trespass against trespass (if 
 any trespass there were) — shadow against shadow (if any shadow 
 were really thrown by this trespass over the snowy disk of pure ascetic 
 moralitjOj in any case, that act in either of us would read into the 
 same meaning, would count up as a debt into the same value, would 
 measure as a delinquency into the same burden of responsibility. 
 And vainly, indeed, does Coleridge attempt to differentiate two cases 
 which ran into absolute identity, differing only as rheumatism differs 
 from toothache. Amongst tiie 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 manage- 
 
 Tzation. A second cause is found in its immunity from danger. This latter 
 ground of undervaluation is noticed in a saying ascribed (but on what author- 
 ity I know not) to Sir Philip Sidney — viz., that supposing toothache liable in 
 ever so small a proportion of its cases to a fatal issue, it would be generally 
 ranJied 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 miy be looked for, bringing long halcyon 
 calms, have an unfair effect in lowering the appreciation of this malady con- 
 eidered as a trial of fortitude and patience. No stronger expression of its in- 
 tensity and scorching fierceness can be imagined than this fact — that, wi thin 
 my private knowledge, two persons who had suffered alike under toothache 
 and cancer, have pronounced the former to be, on the scale of torture, by 
 Ipany degrees the worse. In both, there are at times what surgeons call 
 ' lancinating " pangs — keen, glancing, arrowy radiations of anguish ; ami 
 upon these the basis of comparison was rested — paroxysm against paroxysm 
 — with the result that I have stated. 
 
604 NOTES. 
 
 ment of controversial questions, and his demoniac inaccuracy in th 
 statement of facts. The more also was my sense of Coleridge's wan- 
 ton injustice in relation to myself individually. Coleridge's gross 
 mis-statement of facts, in regard to our several opium experiences, 
 had its origin, sometimes in flighty reading, sometimes in partial and 
 incoherent reading, sometimes in subsequent f orgetf ulness : and any 
 one of these lax habits (it will occur to the reader) is a venial infir- 
 mity. Certainly it is^ but surely nof venial, when it is allowed to 
 opei-ate disadvantageously upon the character for self-control of a 
 brother, who had never spoken of hiin but in the spirit of enthusiastic 
 admiration ; of that admiration which his exquisite works so amply 
 cJiallenge. Imagine the case that I really had done something wrong, 
 still it would have been ungenerous — me it would have saddened, I 
 confess, to see Coleridge rushing forward with a public denunciation 
 of my fault: " Know all men by these presents, that I, S. T. C, a 
 noticeable man with large gray eyes* am a licensed opium-eater, 
 whereas this other man is a buccaneer, a pirate, a flibustier,t and can 
 have none but a forged license in his disreputable pocket. In the name 
 of Virtue arrest him! " But the truth is, that inaccuracy' as to facts 
 and citations from books was in Coleridge a mere necessity of nature. 
 Not three daj's ago, in reading a short comment of the late Archdea- 
 con Hare ("Guesses at Truth ") upon a bold speculation of Coleridge's 
 (utterly baseless) with respect to the machinery of Etonian Latin 
 verses, I found my old feelings upon this subject refreshed by an in- 
 stance that is irresistibly comic, since everything that Coleridge had 
 relied upon as a citation from a book in support of his own hypothesis, 
 turns out to be a pure fabrication of his own dreams; though, doubt- 
 less (which indeed it is that constitutes the characteristic interest of" 
 the case), without a suspicion on his part of his own furious romanc- 
 ing. 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 
 
 * See Wordsworth."s exquisite picture of S. T. C. and himself as occasional 
 denizens in the " Castle of Indolence."' 
 
 t This word — in common use, and so spelled as I spell it, amongst the 
 grand old French and English buccaneers contemporary with our own admi- 
 rable Dampier, at the close of the seventeenth century — has recently been 
 reTived 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 j^Wibust- 
 ers. Meantime, written in whatsoever way, it is understood to be a Franco- 
 Bpanish corruption of the English vfotdi Jreebooter, 
 
NOTES. 605 
 
 entire statement upon that subject is perfect moonshine, and, like the 
 sculptured imagery of the pendulous lamp in " Christabel," 
 
 " All carved from the carver's brain/' 
 
 This case, therefore, might now be counted on as disposed of; and 
 what sport It could yield might reasonably be thought exhausted. 
 Meantime, on consideration, another and much deeper oversight of 
 Coleridge's becomes apparent ; and as this connects itself with an as- 
 pect of the case that furnishes the foundation to the whole of these 
 ensuing Confessions, it cannot altogether be neglected. Any attentive 
 reader, after a few moments' reflection, will perceive that, whatever 
 may have been the casual occasion of mine or Coleridge's opium-eat- 
 ing, this could not have been the permanent ground of opium-eating ; 
 because neither rheumatism nor toothache is any abiding affection of 
 the system. Both are intermittent maladies, and not at all capable of 
 accounting for a^ermowewi habit of opium-eating. Some months^e 
 requisite to found that. Making allowance for constitutional differ- 
 ences, 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-con- 
 quest in renouncing it, and even suddenly renouncing it. On Satur- 
 day you aie an opium-eater, on Sunday no longer such. What then 
 was it, after all, that made Coleridge a slave to opium, and a slave that 
 could not break his chain ? He fancies, in his headlong carelessness, 
 that he has accounted for this habit and this slavery ; and in the mean- 
 time he has accounted for nothing at all about which any question has 
 arisen. Rheumatism, he says, drove him to opium. Very well; but 
 with proper medical treatment the rheumatism would soon have 
 ceased; or, even without medical treatment, under the ordinary oscil- 
 lations of natural causes. And when the pain ceased, then the opium 
 should have ceased. Why did it not ? Because Coleridge had come 
 to taste the genial pleasure of opium ; and thus the very impeachment, 
 which he fancied himself in some mysterious way to have evaded, 
 recoils upon him In undiminished force. The rheumatic attack would 
 have retired before the habit could have had time to form itself. Or 
 suppose that I underrate the strength of the possible habit — this tells 
 equally in my favor ; and Coleridge was not entitled to forget in my 
 case a plea remembered in his own. It is really memorable in the an- 
 nals of human self-deceptions, that Coleridge could have held such 
 language in the face of such facts. I, boasting not at all of my self- 
 conquests, and owning no moral argument against the free use of 
 opium, nevertheless on mere prudential motives break through the 
 vassalage more than once, and by efforts which I have recorded as 
 
606 
 
 modes of transcendent suffering. Coleridge, professing to believe 
 (without reason assigned) that opium-eating is criminal, and in some 
 mysterious sense more criminal than wine-drinking or porter-drinking, 
 having, therefore, the strongest moral motive for abstaining from it, 
 yet suffers himself to fall into a captivity to this same wicked opium, 
 deadlier 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 des- 
 potic master. Like Caliban, he frets his very heart-strings against the 
 rivets of his chain. Still, at intervals through the gloomy vigils of 
 his prison, you hear muttered growls of impotent mutineering swelling 
 upon the breeze : — 
 
 " Irasque leonum 
 Yiacla recusantum " — 
 
 rcQiisantum, it is true, still refusing yet still accepting, protesting for- 
 ever against the fierce, overmastering curb-chain, yet forever submit- 
 ting to receive it into the mouth. It is notorious that in Bristol (to 
 that I can speak myself, but probably in many other places) he went 
 so far as to hire men — porters, hackney-coachmen, and others — to 
 oppose by force his entrance into any druggist's shop. But, as the 
 authority for stopping him was derived simply from himself, naturally 
 these poor men found themselves in a metaphysical fix, not provided 
 for even by Thomas Aquinas or by the prince of Jesuital casuists. 
 And in this excrnciating dilemma would occur such scenes as the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 " Oh, sir," would plead the suppliant porter — suppliant, yet semi- 
 imperative (for equally if he did, and if he did not, show fight, the 
 poor man's daily 5s. seemed endangered) — "really you .must not; 
 
 consider, sir, your wife and " 
 
 » Transcetidental Philosopher, " Wife ! what wife ? I have uo 
 wife."* 
 
 Porter, " But, really now, you must not, sir. Did n't yon sayuo 
 longer ago than yesterday " 
 
 Transcend. Philos, " Pooh, pooh ! yesterday is a long time ago. 
 Are you aware, my man, that people are known to have dropped 
 down dead for timely want of opium ? " 
 
 Porter, " Ay, but you tell't me not to hearken " 
 
 Transcend. Philos, " Oh, nonsense ! An emergency, a shocking 
 emergency, has arisen — quite unlocked for. No matter what I told 
 
 ' ride " Othello.' 
 
NOTES. 607 
 
 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 res- 
 pectable druggist, I shall have a good ground of action against you 
 for assault and battery." 
 
 Am I the man to reproach Coleridge with this vassalage to opium ? 
 Heaven forbid ! Having groaned myself under that yoke, I pity, and 
 blame him not. But undeniably, such a vassalage must have been 
 created wilfully and consciously by his own craving after genial stim- 
 ulation ; a thing which I do not blame, but Coleridge did. For my 
 own part, duly as the torment relaxed in relief of which I had resorted 
 to opium, I laid aside the opium, not under any meritorious effort of 
 self-conquest ; nothing of that sort do I pretend to ; but simply on a 
 prudential instinct warning me not to trifle with an engine so awful of 
 consolation and support, nor to waste upon a momentary uneasiness 
 what might eventually prove, in the midst of all-shattering hurricanes, 
 the great elixir of resurrection. What was it that did in reality make 
 me an opium-eater ? That affection which finally drove me into the 
 habitual use of opium, what was it ? Pain was it 'i No, but misery. 
 Casual overcasting of sunshine was it ? No, but blank desolation. 
 Gloom was it that might have departed V No, but settled and abiding 
 
 darkness — 
 
 " Total eclipse, 
 Without all hope of day I " * 
 
 Yet whence derived? Caused by what? Caused, as I might truly 
 plead, bj' youthful distresses in London ; were it not that these dis- 
 tresses were due, in their ultimate origin, to my own unpardonable 
 folly ; and to that folly I trace many ruins. Oh, spirit of merciful 
 interpretation, angel of forgiveness to youth and its aberrations, that 
 hearkenest forever as if to some sweet choir of far-off female interces- 
 sions ! will ye, choir that intercede — wilt thou, angel th^t forgiveat — 
 join together, and charm away that mighty phantom, born amidst the 
 gathering mists of remorse, which strides after me in pursuit from for- 
 gotten days — towering forever into proportions more and more colos- 
 sal, overhanging and overshadowing my head as if close behind, yet 
 dating its nativity from hours that are fled by more than half a cen- 
 tury ? Oh, heavens ! that it should be possible for a child not seven- 
 teen years old, by a momentary blindness, by listening to a false, false 
 Aihisper from his own bewildered heart, by one erring step, by a mo- 
 tion this way or that, to change the currents of his destiny, to poison 
 
 * " Samson AgonisteB." 
 
608 NOTES. 
 
 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 bit- 
 ter self-reproaches as are now extorted from me by the anguish of my 
 recollections, it cannot.be with any purpose of weaving plausible ex- 
 cuses or of evading blame, that I trace the origin of my confirmed opiam- 
 eating to a necessity growing out of my early sufferings in the streets 
 of London. Because, though true it is that the re-agency of these 
 London sufferings did in after years enforce, the use of opium, equally 
 it is true that the sufferings themselves grew out of my own folly. 
 What really calls for excuse, is not the recourse to opium, when opium 
 had become the one sole remedy available for the malady, but those 
 follies which had themselves produced that malady. 
 
 I, for my part, after I had become a regular opium-eater, and from 
 mismanagement had fallen into miserable excesses in the use of opium, 
 did nevertheless, four several times, contend successfully against the 
 dominion of this drug ; did four several times renounce it; renounced 
 it for long intervals ; and finally resumed it upon the warrant of my 
 enlightened and deliberate judgment, as being of two evils by very 
 much the least. In this I acknowledge nothing that calls for excuse. 
 I repeat again and again, that not the application of the opium, with 
 its deep tranquillizing powers, to tlje mitigation of evils, bequeathed by 
 my London hardships, is what reasonably calls for sorrow, but that 
 extravagance of childish folly which precipitated me into scenes natu- 
 rally producing such hardships. 
 
 [lu the latest edition of his works De Quincey adds this note also, 
 respecting Coleridge's personal appearance : — ] 
 
 '* From some misconception at the press, the account of Coleridge's 
 personal appearance, in the paper entitled ' Coleridge and Opium 
 Eating,' was printed off whilst yet imperfect, and, in fact, wanting its 
 more interesting half. It had been suggested to me, as a proper off-set 
 to a very inaccurate report characterizing Coleridge's person and con- 
 versation, by an American traveller, who had, however, the excuse 
 that his visit was a very hasty one, and that Coleridge had then be- 
 come corpulent and heavy — wearing some indications that already 
 (though according to my present remembrance, not much more than 
 forty-eight at the time) he had entered within the shadows of prema- 
 ture old age. The authorities for my counter-report are — 1. A Bris- 
 tol lady who, with her sisters, had become successors in a young 
 ladies' boarding-school to the celebrated Hannah More ; 2. Words- 
 worth, in his supplementary stanzas to the * Castle of Indolence ; ' 3. 
 Two (if not three) artists. These shall be first called into court, as 
 
NOTES. 
 
 609 
 
 deposing to Coleridge's figure, i. e., to the permanent base in the de- 
 scription — all tlie rest being fugitive accompaniments. One of these 
 artists, wlio is now no longer such, took down, in the j^ear 1810, at 
 Allan Bank, Grasmere, the exact measurement? of both Samuel Tay- 
 lor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (at that time the host of Cole- 
 ridge and myself). His memorandum on that occasion is missing. 
 But as he found the two poets agreeing in height to a hair's-breadth, 
 which I myself, as an attentive bystander, can vouch for, it will be 
 sufficient for me to refer the curious reader to the Autobiography of 
 Haydon, in whose studio Wordsworth was measured with technical 
 nicety on a day regularly dated. The report is — 5 feet 10 inches, 
 within a trifling fraction ; and the same report, therefore, stands good 
 to a nicety for Coleridge. Next, for the face and bearing of Coleridge 
 at the time refen-ed to by the lady (1796), an ample authority is found 
 in Wordsworth's fine stanzas — ' Ah ! piteous sight it was ' [ I can- 
 not recall the two or three words of filling up] ' when he,' 
 
 " ' This man, came back to ub a withered flow'r.' 
 
 That was perhaps in 1807, when he returned from Malta, where it was 
 that, from solitude too intense, he first took opium in excess. But in 
 1796, whilst yet apparently unacquainted with opium, 
 
 " Noisey he was, and gamesome as a boy — 
 Tossing his limbs about him in delight. 
 
 Happiest and most genial he then was of all that taste the morning 
 breezes of life. From Wordsworth we learn (what afterwards my 
 own experience verified) that his eyes were large, and in color were 
 gray ; — 
 
 " ' Profound his forehead was, but not severe ; 
 And some did think' [viz., in the Castle of Indolence] 'that Ae had little 
 business there.' 
 
 " The lady, as her little contribution to this pic-mc portrait, insisted 
 on his beautiful black hair, which lay in masses of natural curls half 
 way down his back. Among all his foibles, however, it ought to be 
 mentioned that vanity connected with personal advantages was never 
 one: he had been thoroughly laughed out of that by his long experi- 
 ence of life at a great public school. But that which he himself ut- 
 terly ignored female eyes bore witness to ; and the lady of Bristol 
 assured me that in the entire course of her life she had not seen a 
 young man so engaging by his exterior. He was then a very resur- 
 rection of the old knight's son in Chaucer, of him that had jousted 
 t^ith infidels, 
 
610 NOTES. 
 
 " * And ridden iu B61miirie.' 
 
 " I should add that, whereas throughout his thirty-fire years of opiutc 
 he was rather corpulent, not at any period emaciated, as those who 
 write romances about opium fancy to be its effect, — in 1796, when he 
 had nearly accomplished his twenty-sixth year, he was slender iu the 
 degree most approved by ladies. 
 
 ' ' Such was Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. Ask for him ten 
 years later, and the vision had melted into air." 
 
 Note 60. Page 517. 
 Lady Madeline Gordon. 
 
 Note 61. Page 517. 
 ' The same thing : ' — Thus, in the calendar of the Church Fes- 
 tivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of 
 Constantine) is recorded (and one might think — with the ex- 
 press consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross. 
 
 Note 62. Page 517. 
 ' Vast distances : ' — One case was familiar to mail-coach trav- 
 ellers, where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, 
 starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, 
 met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the 
 total distance. 
 
 Note 63. Page 521. 
 De non apparentibus, 4"<;. 
 
 Note 64. Page 621. 
 tinobs,' and its antithesis, ' nobs,' arose among the internal 
 factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, 
 the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then 
 first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at 
 some assizes which happened to fix the public attention. 
 
 Note 65. Page 526. 
 ' Von Trail's Iceland : ' — The allusion to a well-known chap' 
 tcr in Von Troil's work, entitled, ' Concerning the Snakes oi 
 
NOTES. 611 
 
 Iceland.' The entire chapter consists of these six words — -• TAei i 
 »re no snakes in Iceland.' 
 
 N0IE66. Page 526. 
 ' Forbidden seat : ' — The yery sternest code of rules was en- 
 •broed upon the mails by the Post-office. Throughout England, 
 only three outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the 
 box, and the other two immediately behind the box; none, under 
 any pretext, to come near the guard; an indispensable caution; 
 bince else, under the guise of passenger, a robber might by any 
 one of a thousand advantages — which sometimes are created, but 
 always are favored, by the animation of frank, social intercourse 
 — have disarmed the guard. Beyond the Scottish border, the 
 regulation was so far relaxed as to allow of four outsides, but not 
 relaxed at all as to the mode of placing them. One, as before, 
 was ueated on the box, and the other three on the front of the 
 roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the little 
 insulated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded by 
 way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of 
 population. England, by the superior density of her popula- 
 tion, might always count upon a large fund of profits in the frac- 
 tional trips of chance passengers riding for short distances of two 
 or three stages. In Scotland, this chance counted for much less. 
 And therefore, to make good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed 
 a compensatory profit upon one extra passenger. 
 
 Note 67. Page 528. 
 ' False echoes : ' — Yes, false! for the words ascribed to Napo- 
 leon, as breathed to the memory of Desaix, never were uttered at 
 aP They stand in the same category of theatrical fictions as the 
 cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur, as the vaunt 
 of General Cambronne at Waterloo, ' La Garde meurt, mais ne 
 te rend pas,' or as the repartees of Talleyrand. 
 
 Note 68. Page 534. 
 
 • Wore the royal livery:' — The general impression was, that 
 
 the royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their 
 
 professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did 
 
 belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official war 
 
612 NOTES. 
 
 tint, and as a means of instant identification for his person, in 
 the discharge )f his important public duties. But the coachman, 
 and especiallj if his place in the series did not connect him im- 
 mediately with London and the General Post-office, obtained the 
 scarlet coat only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not 
 liajg, trying and special) service 
 
 Note 69. Page 536. 
 • Turrets :' — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his 
 unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterization, 
 and of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the 
 word torrettes is used by him to designate the little devices 
 through which the reins are made to pass. This same word, in 
 the same exact sense, I heard uniformly used by many scores of 
 illustrious mail-coachmen, to whose confidential friendship I had 
 the honor of being admitted in my younger days. 
 
 Note 70. Page 537. 
 ' Mr. WaUrton : ' — Had the reader lived through the last 
 generation, he would not need to be told that some thirty or 
 thirty-five years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gen- 
 tleman of ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted 
 and rode in top-boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and 
 very impertinent, but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed 
 and tried to kick, but vainly. He was no more able to throw the 
 squire, than Sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used his 
 back without paying for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly 
 immoral, perhaps, though some think not) of murdering the old 
 fraudulent jockey, and so circuitously of unhorsing him. 
 
 Note 71. Page 538. 
 ' Households : ' — Roe-deer do not congregate in herds like the 
 fallow or the red deer, but by separate families, parents and 
 children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of 
 human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and 
 graceful proportions, conciliate to them an interest of peculiar 
 tenderness, supposing even that this beautiful creature is leas 
 characteristically impressed with the grandeurs of savage and 
 forest life. 
 
NOTES 613 
 
 Note 72. Page 340. 
 'Jludacity:' — Such the French accounted it; and it has 
 struck me that Soult would not have been so popular in London 
 at the period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Man- 
 chester, on occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been 
 aware of the inso'ence with which he spoke of us in notes written 
 at intervals from the field of Waterloo. As though it had been 
 mere felony in our army to look a French one in the face, he said 
 in more notes than one, dated from two to four p.m., on the fieM 
 of Waterloo, ' Here are the Knglish — we have them; they are 
 caught en flagrant delit.' Tet no man should have known ua 
 better; no man had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation 
 than Soult had in 1809, when ejected by us with headlong vio- 
 lence from Oporto, and pursued through a long line of wrecks to 
 the frontier of Spain ; subsequently at Albuera, in the blood'.csst 
 of recorded battles, to say nothing of Toulouse, he should have 
 learned our pretensions. 
 
 Note 73. Page 540. 
 ' At that time :' — I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. 
 
 Note 74. Page 542. 
 ' Three hundred :' — Of necessity, this scale of measurement, 
 to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must 
 sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an 
 American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, 
 by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, 
 constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and con- 
 cluding in something like these terms : — ' And, sir, arriving at 
 London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least 
 two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed the aston- 
 ishing distance of one hundred and seventy miles.' And this the 
 candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the 
 Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure 
 fiction gravely, else one might say that no Englishman out of 
 Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a 
 continent; nor, consequently could have thought of looking for 
 the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its cours* 
 
g24 NOTES. 
 
 or in the B-xtent of soil which it drains; yet, if he had been bo 
 absurd, the American might have recollected that a river, not to 
 be compared with the Thames even as to volume of water -^ viz , 
 the Tiber — has contrived to make itself heard of in this world 
 for twenty-five centuries to an extent not reached as yet by any 
 river, however corpulent, of his own land. The glory of the 
 Thames is measured by the destiny of the population to which it 
 ministers, by the commerce which it supports, by the grandeur 
 of the empire in which, though far from the largest, it is the most 
 influential stream. Upon some such scale, and not by a transfer 
 of Columbian standai-ds, is the course of our English mails to be 
 valued. The American may fancy the effect of his own valua- 
 tions to our English ears, by supposing the case of a Siberian 
 glorifying his country in these terms : — ' These wretches, sir, in 
 France and England, cannot march half a mile in any direction 
 without finding a house where food can be had and lodging; 
 whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, 
 that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage that 
 a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find 
 an apology for breakfast.' 
 
 Note 75. Page 546. 
 ' Glittering laurels : ' — I must observe, that the color of 
 green suffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the 
 effect of Bengal lights. 
 
 Note 76. Page 559. 
 ' Confluent; ' — Suppose a capital Y (the Pythagorean letter) : 
 Lancaster is at the foot of this letter ; Liverpool at the top of the 
 right branch ; Manchester at the top of the left ; proud Preston 
 at the centre, where the two branches unite. It is thirty-three 
 miles along either of the two branches; it is twenty-two miles 
 along the stem — viz., from Preston in the middle, to Lancaster 
 at the root. There's a lesson in geography for the reader. 
 
 NoTK 77. Page 560. 
 ' Twice in the year : ' — There were at that time only two ag- 
 jues even in the most populous counties — viz., the Lent Assizes, 
 and thn Summer Assizes. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 615 
 
 Note 78. Page 561. 
 • Sigh-born :' — l owe the suggestion of this word to an 
 obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in ' Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis ' — viz., suspiriosm cogitationes. 
 
 Note 79. Page 664. 
 It is true that, according to the law of the case as established 
 by legal precedents, all carriages were required to give ■way be- 
 fore Royal equipages, and therefore- before the mail as one of 
 them. But this only increased the danger, as being a regulation 
 very imperfectly made known, very unequally enforced, and 
 therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides. 
 
 Note 80. Page 564. 
 ' Qv-artering : ' — This is the technical word, and, I pre- 
 sume, derived from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or anji 
 obstacle. 
 
 Note 81. Page 572. 
 ■ Jlverted signs : ' — I read the course and changes of the lady's 
 agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures ; but it must 
 be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once 
 catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 
 
 Note 82. Page 578. 
 ' Campo Santo ; ' — It is probable that most of my readers 
 will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or cem- 
 etery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a 
 bed of sanctity, as the highest prize which the noble piety of 
 crusaders could ask or imagine. To readers who are unac- 
 quainted with England, or who (being English) are yet unac- 
 quainted with the cathedral cities of England, it may be right to 
 mention that the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a 
 flat pavement over which carriages and horses migjt run ; and 
 perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral, 
 across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried, as 
 about two centuries back they were through the middle of St 
 Paul's in London, may have assisted my iream.