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 De Quincey; 
 
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MASTERS OF 
 LITERATURE 
 
 DE QUINCEY 
 
MASTERS OF LITERATURE 
 
 Crown %vo. y. 6d. net 
 
 This new Series aims at giving in handy volumes the 
 finest passages from the writings of the greatest authors. 
 Each volume is edited by a well-known scholar, and 
 contains representative selections connected by editorial 
 comments. The Editor also contributes a lengthy Intro- 
 duction, biographical and literary. A Portrait is included 
 in each volume. 
 
 First List of Volumes: 
 
 SCOTT. By Professor A. J. Grant. 
 FIELDING. By Professor Saintsbury. 
 CARLYLE. By Rev. A. W. Evans. 
 DEFOE. By John Masefield. 
 THACKERAY. By G. K. Chesterton. 
 EMERSON. By G. H. Perris. 
 DE QUINCEY. By Sidney Low. 
 DICKENS. By Thomas Seccombe. 
 
 London: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 
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 ^.gt.W/a/w.£obh. 
 
 f/X/U/-. 
 
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MASTERS OF LITERATURE 
 
 DE QUINCEY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SIDNEY LOW 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 
 
 1911 
 

 ^7z 
 
 jX.^s-j^io 
 
 CHISWICK press: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON 
 
To 
 GEORGE RAVENSCROFT DENNIS 
 
 TO WHOSE UNGRUDGING AID AND SCHOLARLY JUDGMENT 
 
 IS LARGELY DUE SUCH VALUE AS THERE MAY BE 
 
 IN THIS ATTEMPT TO GIVE WIDER CURRENCY 
 
 TO THE THOUGHTS AND WORDS OF A 
 
 MASTER OF LITERATURE WHOM 
 
 WE BOTH ADMIRE 
 
 ^r 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Poetry of Wordsworth 
 
 Coleridge 
 
 Charles Lamb 
 
 Hazlitt . 
 
 Lucretius and Horace 
 
 Jean Paul Richter . 
 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister 
 
 History 
 
 The Decay of Rome 
 Joan of Arc . 
 
 Satire 
 
 Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts . 
 
 Fiction 
 
 The Spanish Military Nun .... 
 
 Analecta ........ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 195 
 209 
 216 
 224 
 226 
 228 
 234 
 
 247 
 267 
 
 280 
 
 331 
 342 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In an age of journalism there ought to be no lack «f 
 interest in a man of genius whose work was all done 
 for the periodical press. Thomas de Quincey was a 
 great writer of whom it is very nearly true to say that 
 he never wrote a book.^ His works are a library in 
 themselves, a vast miscellany that fills twelve, fourteen, 
 twenty-two volumes in English and American collected 
 editions; but all this mighty gtore of wit, wisdom, 
 imagination, humour, and diverse learning, had been 
 garnered in by De Quincey and his editors from the 
 harvest fields and dried stubble-lands of the magazines, 
 reviews, journals, and cyclopedias of the nineteenth 
 century. In a sense therefore he is a great journalist, 
 though he can but rarely have entered a newspaper office, 
 and his practical experience of the craft was limited to 
 a brief and unsuccessful adventure as the editor of a 
 small provincial Gazette. But the true description of 
 him is that which M. Maxime du Camp applies to Th^o- 
 phile Gauthier: he was a "polygrapher," a man of 
 letters who wrote about all sorts of subjects as they 
 came to hand or as his own fancy and the public taste 
 ^ictated them. Mr. Andrew Lang says that our ances- 
 tors compendiously described such persons as hacks; 
 modern politeness prefers to label them ' ' miscellaneous 
 writers." The description, at any rate, covers some 
 famous names. Swift, Johnson, Smollett, Southey, 
 Coleridge, Jean Paul, Lessing, Landor, Gauthier, were 
 all polygraphers, who instead of devoting themselves to 
 
 ' It is not quite true ; because the tale called Klosterheim (1832) 
 and The Logic of Political Economy (1844) were both published in 
 the first instance in book form. 
 
X THOMAS DE QUlNCEY 
 
 a "special subject," or to one definite and distinct line 
 of creative production, made divagations through many 
 highways and by-ways of literature, and did not often 
 follow any route to the journey's end. 
 
 The polygrapher is sometimes born and oftener made. 
 Most commonly he is driven to the business, as Johnson, 
 and Southey, and Gauthier were, by the urgent necessity 
 of bringing his talents to the market. A man of letters, 
 unless the imaginative impulse is supreme within him, 
 and sometimes when it is, must live by producing in 
 sufficient quantity such wares as the readers and the 
 dealers want. If he is poor, and cannot wait till the 
 world has discovered, and is prepared to reward him 
 for, the exercise of his distinctive talent, or if he has the 
 critical and analytic rather than the creative faculty, he 
 must resort to those who do business in the literary 
 mart, and he may esteem himself lucky if he does not 
 become a day-labourer condemned to "work for bread 
 upon Athenian stalls." In the eighteenth century he 
 went to the "booksellers"; in our day he goes to the 
 newspapers ; in the earlier half of the nineteenth century 
 he wrote for the magazines. 
 
 De Quincey's active life synchronized with the period 
 when the English and Scottish literary periodicals were 
 at the apogee of their influence and success. They sup- 
 plied the public with a great deal both of its "serious," 
 and its lighter, reading; they were powerful, wealthy, 
 and important, and their circulation was, for their time, 
 large ; they were conducted by enterprising publishers or 
 keen men of business who, in their ardent rivalry with 
 one another, were eager to draw the ablest pens of Britain 
 into their service. A monthly or quarterly press which 
 had among its contributors such writers as Coleridge, 
 Keats, Landor, Sir William Hamilton, Christopher North, 
 Lockhart, Hood, Lamb, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, John Stuart 
 Mill, Carlyle, and Macaulay, had some reason to think 
 well of itself. 
 
 And it appealed to a body of readers which, numerous 
 as it was, still expected, or at any rate was prepared to 
 accept, articles and essays written with a certain regard 
 
INTRODUCTION xl 
 
 to literary form and a certain appeal to literary tradition. 
 The day of the real "popular " magazine, which was to 
 go down in its hundreds of thousands to a public that 
 could only just read and write, was yet to come. It was 
 still worth while to pay critics and historians to write 
 on Herodotus and Plato and the philosophy of Kant. But 
 there was no pedantic stiffness about this periodical 
 journalism, which often struck the " personal note" with 
 a freedom denied to its successors, and was already alive 
 to the fact that it was much safer to shock readers than 
 to bore them. The serious magazines of the 'thirties and 
 'forties were sometimes quite startling in their vivacity. 
 It was into this eddying stream that De Quincey 
 poured himself for his literary life of nearly six-and- 
 thirty years which followed upon another six-and-thirty 
 years of dreams and drugs and omnivorous ill-assorted 
 reading. When the time came for him to commence 
 author, which he did about the age at which Byron died, 
 he was equipped, if any man was, to be a polyhistor. 
 Since his earliest childhood, if De Quincey was ever a 
 child or ever ceased to be one, his life had been mostly 
 spent with books when it had not been spent in solitary 
 musing. At six he was beginning to philosophize, at 
 thirteen he was a scholar and a metaphysician, at fifteen 
 he was lecturing a married lady eleven years his senior 
 on theology and Greek. He read widely, discursively, 
 heroically: he was versed not only in the poets, the 
 historians, the philosophers, of the chief ancient and 
 modern literatures, but also in more abstruse and less 
 known authors. Like Coleridge he had ploughed a way 
 where, as he said, few or none would follow, through 
 the dense underwoods, the tangled coppices, the selva 
 selvaggia of mediaeval scholastic theology and modern 
 German metaphysics. He had Kant and Hegel at his 
 fingers' ends, as well as Goethe and Richter, and Homer 
 and Aristotle, and Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne. 
 And his memory, if loose and shifty, was prodigious ; it 
 betrayed him into many misquotations and inaccuracies, 
 but it enabled him to put together, with a scanty pro- 
 vision of reference-books and systematic notes, essays 
 
xii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 teeming- with literary and historical references which 
 no other person could have written without a library 
 at his elbow. Nor was he a mere devourer of printed 
 matter. He had thought much, analyzed, reflected, syn- 
 thetized, always it is true in an irregular, desultory 
 fashion, but always with logical clearness and a deter- 
 mined independence and originality. Eccentric little 
 recluse though he was, he had not cut himself adrift 
 from the living world or forgotten that life in itself was 
 more interesting than any of the things written about it. 
 Add to this that his style was unworn and unhackneyed 
 when he first accosted the world with it; and it was 
 such a style as no other Englishman of his age, or almost 
 of any age, could write, a style as splendid an d.j?affiex{ul 
 as it wa£jucid^nd[mtelligibl&u. 
 
 — So^ifted"and so limited, he burst upon the period- 
 ical world of Britain in 182 1 with the Confessions of an 
 English Opium-eater, and at once became famous. But 
 his fame only led him further into the periodical mesh, 
 from which he never shook his limbs free. Every- 
 thing he wrote thereafter (with the unimportant excep- 
 tions noted) was cut to the magazine scale, and framed 
 more or less on the magazine pattern. His longer pieces 
 are fragments jointed together after their primary publica- 
 tion, or portions of a larger whole usually left unfinished. 
 His capricious, irregular industry, his verbal fluency, and 
 overflowing fertility of expression, and the temptation 
 he lay under to fill a few pages of a magazine when the 
 occasion offered or a taking title presented itself, com- 
 bined to make his Collected Works a vast and ill-assorted 
 miscellany. Splendid flights of imaginative description, 
 
 I torsos of impassioned rhetoric that will live as long as 
 the language in which they are written, passages of 
 
 /.acute criticism, subtle analysis, and haunting pathos, 
 
 / are wedged in among blocks of wandering talk and dis- 
 
 7 cursive discussion. 
 
 i/ To read De Quincey through from beginning to end 
 is not a profitable exercise, nor I think will many people 
 undertake the task. Much that he wrote was hardly 
 worth reproducing, and his editors have done him small 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 service by ransacking its forgotten receptacles. In one 
 of the most amusing of his sketches he relates how he 
 kept his manuscripts in a huge bath where they accumu- 
 lated in unplumbed confusion. When he was suddenly 
 called upon for an essay, he fished among these depths, 
 and if he did not find what he sought he hooked up 
 something else — it might be only a blank sheet of paper 
 with the heading of a projected article. His mind was 
 a repository of chaotic erudition and bubbling ideas, 
 into which he dived when he set about to write for a 
 magazine. He might tap a vein of special knowledge 
 and original thought on the subject of his search, but 
 there was quite likely to be a good deal of loose dross 
 clinging to the ore. 
 
 Whatever it was, De Quincey was ton tp fte" indinf-d 
 t q let it n il frn in For he had the journalistic vice, he 
 lay under the painful journalistic necessity, of making 
 copy ; and as the editors would always print a contribu- 
 tion from the "English Opium-eater," whatever its 
 character, De Quincey gave them and their public plenty 
 of padding. He is desultory , discursiye,_and d iffuse . 
 beyond most writers, though all these blemishes fade 
 away when he rises to the dignity , the clarity, the pul- 
 sating eloquence, of his better passages. For this reason 
 theru ai'e fSw authors who have less to lose and more 
 to gain by being read in Selections. The best of him 
 can be presented in comparatively small compass ; and 
 though it is true that from this volume much is omitted 
 that might be interesting (for De Quincey, even when 
 weakest and most tr'v'al; '" splHnm npinterestinp'), much 
 also is dispensed with that served a passing purpose, 
 and can now be advantageously left unread by such as 
 would taste the true quality of a most original, acute, 
 and penetrating intelligence, and a great master of 
 English writing,- who in the ornate magnificence of his 
 style has had no rival, save one, since the prose-poets of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^ 
 
 ' Tennyson said that the six authors in whom the most eloquent 
 Eng-lish prose was to be found were Hooker, Bacon, Milton, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Ruskin, and De Quincey. 
 
xiv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Much moonshine has been shed over De Quincey's 
 life. He became a Hterary legend long before he passed 
 away, and has so remained for many people who per- 
 haps know very little of his writing at first-hand. For 
 this he was himself primarily responsible. When a man 
 first comes before the world as a professed opium-eater, 
 in a mood of the most prodigal self-revelation, he cannot 
 be surprised or annoyed if the world considers him a 
 strange creature. De Quincey was neither surprised nor 
 annoyed. Modest, reserved, and solitary in his personal 
 habits, in print he was absolutely without reticence. He 
 gave himself away, and sometimes gave away his friends, 
 with unqualified freedom, and satisfied to the full the 
 taste of an age which still felt the impulse of Rousseau, 
 Goethe, Chateaubriand, and Byron, and enjoyed un- 
 draped autobiographical exhibitions. It liked the literary 
 man to strip himself to the soul and lecture scientifically, 
 sentimentally, or sensationally on himself. 
 
 De Quincey recognized this element in the public taste, 
 and upon it he played ^l^libf r^^'^'y He perceived that his 
 opium-eating was a first-rate literary asset and he made 
 the most of it. As long as he lived he was the English 
 Opium-eater ; it was the pseudonym with which he often 
 signed his essays, even when they dealt with subjects 
 which had no connection with opium. In the earlier 
 part of the last century there was a good deal of mystery 
 about the uses and properties of this drug, a sort 'of 
 Oriental glamour and dark fascination, which made 
 people regard "opium-eating" with a shivering fas- 
 cination. All this De Quincey quite understood, and 
 he made tremendous copy out of his dealings with the 
 mighty stimulant, dweUing on its pains and pleasures, 
 exaggerating his own servitude to the morbid habit and 
 the intensity of his wrestle for emancipation, and artistic- 
 ally heightening the lights and shadows of the psycho- 
 logical romance of which he was the hero and subject. 
 
 The stories that got wind about his personal eccen- 
 tricities, and some of his later essays and reminiscences, 
 steeped in delightful egotism and attractive indiscre- 
 tions, added force to the general impression. The Con- 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 fessions, to a hasty reader, convey the idea that the 
 writer had passed through a long course of chequered, 
 and at times depraved, experience; many I daresay 
 have figured him as a kind of Richard Savage or Thomas 
 Otway, a man of genius sunk for years in the depths of 
 misery and degradation. They omit to notice that 
 De Quincey's struggle with loneliness and poverty in 
 London lasted only a few months; that he was a boy 
 of seventeen at the time who had run away from school ; 
 and that he had a very comfortable home to which he 
 was free to return, and in fact did so, as soon as he 
 was tired of his escapade. Long afterwards De Quincey 
 passed some years in serious pecuniary embarrassment ; 
 but during the greater part of his life he was in pos- 
 session of a moderate income, and of such distress and 
 conflict as fell to the lot of many literary men (Samuel 
 Johnson, for instance, or that later imitator and disciple 
 of his own, B. V. Thomson), he knew nothing. 
 
 His life, indeed, looked at objectively, was singularly 
 uneventful. The storm of psychical and intellectual ex- 
 perience, described in so many eloquent pages, raged 
 against a grey and placid background. Few external 
 incidents, in any respect interesting or remarkable, can 
 be recovered by De Quincey's biographers. That wider 
 world which lies beyond the seas of Britain he had never 
 seen; of his own country he had seen comparatively 
 little. He knew London, and Manchester, and Oxford, 
 the hills and valleys of the Lake country, the streets and 
 suburbs of Edinburgh ; in boyhood he had wandered for 
 a few weeks in Wales and had visited the west of Ire- 
 land. The modern man of letters who must needs refresh 
 a jaded brain at frequent intervals with journeys to Sicily 
 or Spain, to America, Eastern Asia, or Northern Africa, 
 who fears to lose touch with the world if he withdraws 
 too long from the whirl and tumult of great capitals, 
 may marvel where De Quincey found the materials for 
 so many volumes. They were drawn from his books, 
 and from his own unquiet mind and restless, searching 
 soul. 
 
 His adveqtures were thpse of the spirit and the intellect; 
 
xvi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the lamp of Romance was alight in heart and brain, but 
 it threw scarcely a fitful gleam upon him from without. 
 It is to be feared that no industrious investigator will 
 find in his career material to gratify the prevailing taste 
 for literary love-stories. De Quincey's love-story was 
 only "romantic" as that of millions of unimportant 
 wedded couples everywhere is romantic. To the good 
 woman he married he was an affectionate husband ; and 
 if shadowy forms of other women who exercised a faint 
 passing influence upon him appear in his Reminiscences 
 he contrived, it is clear, to get through life on a limited 
 allowance of that passionate association with the other 
 sex sometimes deemed essential to the development of 
 the artistic temperament. 
 
 And so it was in other ways. He was a man to whom 
 not many things happened. He could hardly ever have 
 encountered any greater danger than that of losing him- 
 self in one of his ' midnight walks ; he had seldom to 
 grapple with foes more formidable than illiberal publish- 
 ers or vociferating landladies ; his most serious practical 
 enterprise was to enter new lodgings or to take the lease 
 of a new house ; the worst of his anxieties was a pecuni- 
 ary embarrassment, which however did not, except for 
 brief intervals, involve him in real want. Clear away 
 the legend and the opium mist, and behind there is re- 
 vealed the existence of a quiet and reserved student, 
 the picture of a life passed in solitary labour, in modest 
 comfort, in the enjoyment of the domestic affections 
 Opium did not prevent De Quincey, like Coleridge, 
 from doing his work, paying his debts, and attending 
 to his family. 
 
 He belonged, by origin, to that wealthy mercantile 
 class which was growing opulent and powerful in the 
 later eighteenth century. His father wrote his name 
 Quincey; the son revived or invented the prefix De, 
 being of the opinion that the family had ' ' come over 
 with the Conqueror. " Thomas Quincey was a Manchester 
 merchant who made money in the West India trade, 
 wrote A Tour in the Midland Counties (1775), and mar- 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 rieda Miss Penson, "a lady of good family connections," 
 with brothers in the service of the Honourable East 
 India Company. Eight children the couple had, of whom 
 Thomas De Quincey was the fifth. He was born in Man- 
 chester on 15th August 1785 ; during his early childhood 
 his father removed to a house at Greenhay, then in a 
 rustic neighbourhood a mile outside the town. It was 
 a pleasant suburban mansion, with its gardens and lawns, 
 and the family lived there in some style. The father was 
 mostly away travelling on his business in Portugal, 
 America, and the West Indies. Household aiFairs were 
 managed by his wife, a lady of a somewhat masterful 
 disposition, seriously addicted to. Hannah More and the 
 evangelical religion, who never quite "took to" her 
 gifted second son. Of the first years of his life in the 
 Manchester home, De Quincey has given an account in 
 the earlier chapters of his Autobiographic Sketches. 
 
 It is an amazing record, amazing when it is remem- 
 bered that it is written by a man of forty-three looking 
 back on his recollections of life as a child of seven or 
 ten, amazing in its revelation of emotional and intellectual 
 precocity. We must allow much for De Quincey's literary 
 embroidery. It is impossible to believe that a boy 
 scarcely out of the nursery could have been so mature 
 in some respects, so childish in others, as the youthful 
 scholar and philosopher of these delightful pages. There 
 is an artistic finish in the details which seems to betray 
 the after-thoughts of the practised executant, engaged 
 in creation rather than in reminiscence. Thus we are 
 told that Thomas and his tyrannical elder brother William 
 played for months together at the game of pretending to 
 be the sovereigns of imaginary realms. Master William's 
 haughty and aggressive empire was called Tigrosylvania; 
 the younger brother was the ruler of a squalid little king- 
 dom, inhabited by a race of semi-savages, exposed to 
 constant invasion, which was known as Gombroon. The 
 names are magnificent. What composer of a political 
 romance could have invented better ones than Tigro- 
 sylvania and Gombroon? But could boys of seven and 
 twelve have invented them? It is true they were not 
 
 b 
 
xviii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 ordinary boys. William, the Tigrosylvanian conqueror, 
 informed his brother of Gombroom that he had ascer- 
 tained from the works of Lord Monboddo that certain 
 low specimens of humanity were still provided with tails, 
 and that this was the unhappy condition of the degraded 
 Gombroonians : whose sovereign was advised to issue 
 an edict requiring his subjects to sit down for at least 
 six hours daily, which, said the Emperor William, a 
 Lamarckian born out of season, though it could not do 
 much might at least do something towards reducing the 
 superfluous appendage. 
 
 These suggestions caused great grief to the King of 
 Gombroon, who in those years, and long afterwards, 
 was easily grieved. The picture he draws of himself is 
 that of a weakly child, small in stature, brooding, shy, 
 and sensitive, with an intense emotional capacity, and 
 an irrepressibly alert intelligence. The pathos and mystery 
 of Death were first brought home to him at six years of 
 age when his elder sister Elizabeth died. The episode is 
 the subject of an exquisite passage in the Autobiography. 
 No one who has once read it will forget the picture of 
 the child stealing into the chamber where the dead girl 
 lay, or lose the cadence of the sentences that tell how a 
 wind, " the saddest that ever mortal heard," such a wind 
 as ' ' might have swept the fields of mortality for a thous- 
 and centuries," swelled through the open window, and 
 it seemed to the boy as if a shaft of sunlight ran up to 
 the vault of the far blue sky. A little later he had another 
 experience of "the almighty pomp in which this great 
 idea of Death apparelled itself" when his father one 
 summer evening came home from the West Indies to die 
 of consumption in his thirty-ninth year. 
 
 The family was well provided for with an income of 
 ;^i,6oo a year, and the event did not much disturb the 
 even current of life at Greenhay. The peace of mind, 
 however, of young Thomas de Quincey was considerably 
 shaken by the conduct of his elder brother. Master Wil- 
 liam, the Emperor of Tigrosylvania aforementioned, 
 who made a fag, serf, and much overburdened retainer 
 of his junior, involving him in constant Homeric en- 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 counters with the boys of the neighbouring cotton fac- 
 tories whom they met on their way to school in Man- 
 chester. In spite of these distractions, the boy read 
 much and thought more, and at eleven he was already 
 something of a philosopher, a good deal of a moralist, 
 an anxious literary critic, and a very close and in- 
 terested observer of every manifestation of life which 
 came before him. In 1796, Mrs. Quincey sold the house 
 at Greenhay and went to live at Bath, Thomas was sent 
 to the Grammar School at that town, where he spent two 
 years, and astonished the masters by his rapid progress 
 in the classical languages, and his skill in Latin verse. 
 After that he had a year at a private school in Wiltshire, 
 and then he went on a long visit to an aristocratic young 
 friend in Ireland. 
 
 The friend was Lord Westport, son of the third Earl 
 of Altamont. He was an Eton boy rather younger than 
 De Quincey, whose acquaintance he had made during a 
 holiday visit to Bath with his tutor. Master Thomas 
 travelled with his host to Holyhead and Dublin, and 
 stayed with him for several weeks at Lord Altamont's 
 mansion at Connemara. Here he enjoyed himself very 
 much and had many interesting experiences. Ladies took 
 kindly to the clever boy of fifteen, with his minute frame, 
 his delicate handsome face, and his premature wisdom. 
 On the canal boat from Dublin he met the Countess of 
 Errol and her sister, Miss Blake, a beautiful girl, who 
 first brought before the young gentleman ' ' the pure and 
 powerful ideal of womanhood and womanly excellence." 
 From that day, he says, he was "an altered creature," 
 a child no more. However, he is careful to tell us that 
 he did not fall in love with this lady, or with any other 
 woman, being obsessed with the "demoniac fascination" 
 of solving philosophic problems beyond the strength 
 of all human beings. Notwithstanding this formidable 
 preoccupation he was clearly, at this time and for years 
 afterwards a very likeable, vivacious youngster, fond 
 of company, and not too sage to be above amusing him- 
 self. His melancholy, of which he makes a good deal, 
 was at this period rather of the Byronic or Wertherian 
 
XX THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 kind. He brooded when in solitude, and had already an 
 excessive sense of the sadness and sorrow of life. But m 
 the company of others he could always revive— as many 
 people of the hypochondriac temperament will— and was 
 a conversationalist of unfailing animation and resource- 
 fulness. 
 
 In these days of opening manhood he had plenty of 
 gaiety and easily made friends. After the Irish trip he 
 went on another country-house visit at Laxton, the seat 
 of Lord and Lady Carbery, in Northamptonshire. Lady 
 Carbery, a friend of his mother, a woman of six-and- 
 twenty, with pretensions both to beauty and brains, 
 made much of the young " Admirable Crichton," as she 
 called him. She happened at the time to be in trouble 
 about her soul, and felt that her doubts could only be 
 resolved by a knowledge of the text of the Greek Testa- 
 ment. De Quincey very readily undertook the task of 
 coaching the young matron, and no doubt pleasant 
 mornings were spent over lexicons and grammars by 
 teacher and pupil. In return Lady Carbery made her 
 preceptor comfortable, and had him taught riding by 
 a competent groom, and shooting by one of the keepers 
 who, says De Quincey, "regarded me probably as an 
 object of mysterious curiosity rather than of sublunary 
 hope." 
 
 After these divagations it must have been a shock 
 to the youthful philosopher and man of the world to 
 be reduced once more to the status of a schoolboy. 
 However, his mother and guardians decided that he 
 should now be sent to Manchester Grammar School, to 
 which place of education De Quincey went with exceed- 
 ing reluctance. At the school he was unhappy and dis- 
 contented and in bad health. The Manchester air was 
 infected by the smoke of " diabolical factories "; exercise 
 was no part of the school plan, so that in winter it was 
 impossible even to get an hour's walk a day, a severe 
 deprivation to De Quincey who, if no sportsman, was 
 always a walker ; and by an arrangement which would 
 seem criminal in these days the dinner-hour was so 
 curtailed that the boys had to bolt their food in haste. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 ' ' I have barely time to push it down and as to chewing 
 it that is out of the question. " Gastric troubles ensued 
 and tormented their victim for the rest of his life. 
 Athletics and school hygiene were not considered in 
 the educational systems of 1801. Moreover, the boy 
 took little interest in his companions, or in such society 
 as he could get in a city entirely given up to trade and 
 manufactures. He could not stir out of doors without 
 being "nosed by a factory, a cotton-bog, a cotton- 
 dealer, or something else allied to that most detestable 
 commerce." Worst of all, the head master could teach 
 him nothing, being a pompous and ignorant pedant 
 whose pupils laughed at his clumsy scholarship. 
 
 In spite of his urgent appeals De Quincey's mother 
 and guardians declined to remove him from the school. 
 He resolved to remove himself. He borrowed ;^io from 
 his friend Lady Carbery, and quietly slipped out of his 
 boarding-house in the early hours of a summer morning, 
 being not then quite seventeen. He walked to Chester 
 where his mother was living, having with her at the 
 time her brother, Colonel Penson, home from India 
 on furlough. The Bengal officer took a more indulgent 
 view of the lad's escapade than the lady, and the young 
 truant was allowed to set out on a sort of walking tour 
 in Wales. With an allowance of a guinea a week he 
 wandered about the Welsh valleys during the autumn, 
 lodging in farmhouses or village inns, carrying a port- 
 able tent and sleeping on the hillsides, suffering some 
 privations, but on the whole enjoying himself a good 
 deal. Before long he dropped all correspondence with 
 his guardians, thus deliberately cutting off supplies, 
 and naturally found himself reduced to poverty. So he 
 decided to migrate to London, hoping to raise some 
 ;^20o from the money-lenders on his expectations, and 
 with this sum to support himself in the capital during 
 the four remaining years ot his minority. 
 
 This London adventure belongs to literature, for it 
 forms the main theme of the first portion of the Con- 
 fessions of an English Opium^Eater. It lasted only some 
 seven months, from the late autumn of 1802 to the 
 
xxii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 spring or early summer of 1803. They were months 
 teeming with experience for the impressionable, sensi- 
 tive, super-intellectualized lad, fresh from the school- 
 room, and the mountain-villages of Wales. In London 
 he was a penniless outcast. He hung about the office of 
 a low-class money-lending attorney, vainly trying to ne- 
 gotiate a loan, slept and starved in a half-empty house 
 in Soho with a pauper child for his companion, and 
 roamed about the streets, making friends with the 
 "pariah women," who haunted the " endless terraces" 
 of Oxford Street. It is all set down in the Confessions, 
 with that magic of imaginative presentation which De 
 Quincey knew how to throw about the common things 
 of life when they concerned himself. If that faculty is 
 poetry, then assuredly was he a poet of no mean rank. 
 Nothing that he had ever seen or felt or read was to 
 him trivial or commonplace, unfit to be described in 
 elaborate detail, or incapable of being lifted into an 
 atmosphere vibrating with emotion, glowing with rhe- 
 toric, and made musical with the chords of pathos. 
 
 Many other educated and well-nurtured youths must 
 have found themselves stranded for a few months in 
 a great city, not knowing where to turn for money or 
 even for food and shelter. With most men the brief 
 episode would soon be submerged amid the other inter- 
 ests of active life ; in after years it would be no more 
 than a blurred reminiscence, dimly recalled with a smile 
 or a sigh. For De Quincey it was an experience that bit 
 into the fibres of his being, and left ineffaceable impn-es- 
 sions. Twenty years later his tenacious brain could bring 
 back the minutest incidents of those sorrow-laden, 
 thought-laden weeks, and exhibit them as living pic- 
 tures with flashing lights and moving forms. It is the 
 quality which distinguishes the vague generalizing 
 memory of the average man from that clean-cutting 
 creative organ of the literary artist, which picks out the 
 ordinary things as they pass, and makes them wonder- 
 ful and strange. Swift, we know, could write beautifully 
 about a broomstick; Mr. Chesterton, we are given to 
 understand, finds mystery and romance in a lamp-post. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 De Quincey could have made a philosophy of broom- 
 sticks, and shown, with a wealth of discursive erudition 
 and pungent argument, that in a lamp-post there are 
 thoughts that may often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 His attempts to raise a loan in London were fruitless. 
 Nor was he more successful in endeavouring to borrow 
 from a young nobleman of his acquaintance at Eton 
 Being at the end of his resources and, no doubt, tired 
 of starvation, he returned some time in the earlier part 
 of 1803 to his mother's house. It was obviously out 
 of the question to send him back to school ; his guar- 
 dians wished him to prepare for some regular work 
 in life, though the youth himself had already decided 
 that his chief interest must always lie in literature and 
 meditation. In December he went up to Oxford and 
 matriculated at Worcester College. He would have pre- 
 ferred Christ Church ; but Worcester had the reputation 
 of being a cheap college, and De Quincey, on the in- 
 adequate allowance of ;5ioo a year made to him by his 
 guardians, was forced to be economical. 
 
 For this, among other reasons, he did not take very 
 kindly to Oxford nor Oxford to him. Like Gibbon and 
 Shelley and some other men of genius, he acknowledged 
 small obligations to his university, passed through it 
 without distinction, and left it without regret. The 
 beauty of Oxford should have appealed to him, and 
 its famous tradition could hardly fail to touch his vivid 
 historic sense. An essay written in after years shows 
 that he kept a penetrating and observant eye on the social, 
 educational, and financial aspects of the place. But, 
 during his college years he was solitary, unhappy, and 
 unknown. For this "child who had been in hell"' it 
 was, no doubt, as hard to find congenial companions 
 among the Worcester " men " as it had been among the 
 schoolboys of Manchester. He took no part in the 
 sports or amusements of the university, and made no 
 particular impression either on his contemporaries or 
 the college authorities. With his tutor, he says, he 
 
 ' See infra, p. xxxix. 
 
xxiv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 never exchanged more than three sentences. The 
 Provost of Worcester had discernment enough to per- 
 ceive that he was a remarkable young man; and he 
 could no doubt have taken high honours if he had 
 chosen to work in the academic groove. As a fact he 
 took no honours at all, having for some reason or other 
 absented himself from the viva voce part of his final 
 examination. 
 
 But at Oxford he was occupied with other interests 
 than those of the Schools, nor was his ambition directed 
 towards a first-class or a fellowship. He found a com- 
 panion in a German undergraduate who taught him his 
 own language and Hebrew ; and he plunged fiercely into 
 German philosophy and metaphysics, into theology, medi- 
 aeval history, and English literature, subjects which in 
 those days at Oxford did not "pay" in the schools. He was 
 passionately attracted by the revival of English romantic 
 poetry, and already fascinated by Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge. He began a correspondence with the former, and 
 made ineffectual efforts to meet the latter as early as 
 1804 or 1805. The meeting, postponed for a time by 
 Coleridge's journey to Malta, took place a couple of 
 years later at Bridgewater, when Coleridge, after the first 
 greetings and civilities, " swept at once into a con- 
 tinuous strain of eloquent dissertation." 
 
 He was often in London during these Oxford years, 
 and made acquaintance with Charles Lamb and other 
 literary people. Another acquaintance he also formed 
 at this period. His health had been badly shaken by 
 the privations of his first London visit. He suffered 
 much from gastric troubles, neuralgia, and rheumatic 
 pains in the head. A friend recommended opium as a 
 specific. De Quincey turned into the shop of a druggist 
 in Oxford Street — the " immortal druggist " of the Con- 
 fessions " sent down to earth on a special mission to my- 
 self" — and found that "happiness might be -bought for 
 a penny and carried in the waistcoat pocket." This was 
 in his second year at college, when he was nineteen or 
 twenty. 
 
 Two years later he left the university and came to 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 live in London. His ostensible business was to prepare 
 for the Bar. His real purpose was that of reading- almost 
 every thing in the world except law. H e had now come into 
 the property left to him under his father's will, and had a 
 sufficient income, though he had already begun to make 
 inroads upon his moderate capital. He had raised money 
 from "the Jews " to supplement his insufficient allowance 
 at college, and if his habits were simple and frugal he 
 was careless in all business matters and extremely gener- 
 ous. A year after he came of age he was in Bristol where 
 he heard from Cottle, the bookseller, that Coleridge was in 
 great distress for want of money and profoundly dejected. 
 De Quincey placed ;^3oo in Cottle's hands to be given 
 to Coleridge from "a young man of fortune who admired 
 his talents." The philosopher, not unaccustomed to re- 
 ceive substantial tributes to his genius, accepted the 
 money without making too particular inquiries as to the 
 name of his benefactor. 
 
 De Quincey did other services for Coleridge. In this 
 year, 1807, the great man had decided to quarter his 
 family upon Southey at Keswick ; and as he was unable to 
 accompany them himself from Bristol, it was the young 
 Oxonian who acted as their convoy on the journey to 
 the Lakes. The party rested two days at Wordsworth's 
 cottage at Grasmere. Next year De Quincey was again 
 at Grasmere helping Wordsworth with his pamphlet 
 on the Convention of Cintra. And in the autumn of 
 i8og, at Dorothy Wordsworth's suggestion, he cut 
 himself loose from London, and installed himself and 
 his books in the little cottage at Townend, Grasmere, in 
 which Wordsworth himself had lived till he had quitted 
 it for Allan Bank, a mile or so distant. " Cottage im- 
 mortal in my remembrance," he says, " as well it might 
 be, for this cottage I retained through just seven-and- 
 twenty years : this was the scene of struggles the most 
 tempestuous and bitter within my own mind : this the 
 scene of my despondency and unhappiness : this the 
 scene of my happiness — a happiness which justified the 
 faith of man's earthly lot as upon the whole a dowry from 
 heaven ! " 
 
xxvi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 He settled down very comfortably and contentedly as 
 a "Laker," a title he was proud to claim thoug-h per- 
 haps he was never recognized by the austere and exclu- 
 sive members of the school as one of their inner circle. 
 He roamed about the hills, made friends with the dales- 
 men and their children, and enjoyed the society of the 
 Wordsworths, his near neighbours, of Southey at 
 Keswick, Charles Lloyd at Brathay, and, above all, of 
 John Wilson, the "Christopher North" oi Blackwood, 
 who had recently come to live at Elleray on Winder- 
 mere. Wilson and De Quincey had been contemporaries 
 at Oxford ; but the recluse of Worcester had never met, 
 or apparently even heard of, the brilliant gentleman- 
 commoner of Magdalen, who was the leader of under- 
 graduate society, with a great reputation as athlete, 
 scholar, wit, and conversationalist. In the Lakes the shy 
 little philosopher and the handsome yellow-haired giant 
 became close friends. They spent hours together in 
 interminable discussion and heroic mountain rambles; 
 and though De Quincey, as Professor Masson says, was 
 " one of the smallest and feeblest-looking of mortals, 
 hardly more than five feet high, while Wilson was one of 
 the most magnificent young athletes that ever attracted 
 men's or women's eyes in street or on the heather," 
 they were equally matched both as walkers and talkers. 
 De Quincey's pedestrian ability lasted longer than that 
 of his friend, and he was still plodding through the 
 Midlothian lanes when Christopher North was in his 
 grave. 
 
 With all these enjoyments, social and other, with 
 his library of books overflowing the narrow rooms of 
 the tiny white-walled cottage, and with opium, not yet 
 a merciless tyrant but only a stimulus to thought and an 
 aid to tranquil meditation, De Quincey passed some 
 pleasant and fruitful years ; fruitful not in actual literary 
 production, for he wrote nothing, but in enlarging the 
 enormous range of his miscellaneous erudition. In 
 particular he studied the German philosophy, and satur- 
 ated himself in the writings of the Transcendentalists. 
 In 1814 Wilson induced him to pay a visit to Edinburgh, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 where he stayed for some weeks, and made his own 
 mark in the notable group of which Christopher North 
 was an honoured member. Men like Sir William Hamil- 
 ton and Lockhart recognized that there was something 
 out of the common in this omnivorous reader and accom- 
 plished talker, whose musical cadences wandered, as 
 one of them said, from beeves to butterflies, and thence 
 to metaphysics and the soul's immortality, to Plato and 
 Kant, to Milton's early years and Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
 to Homer and Aeschylus, or to St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 St. Chrysostom, and St. Basil. He had gained a reputa- 
 tion in Edinburgh long before he came eventually to 
 settle there. 
 
 In 1816 De Quincey married. His bride was Margaret 
 Simpson, the daughter of a Westmorland farmer, a 
 beautiful and good woman, who bore her part bravely 
 in the troubled years that were presently to come. To 
 her De Quincey was deeply attached. He speaks of the 
 period immediately following his marriage as " those 
 heavenly years through which I lived, beloved, with 
 thee, A? thee, _/fer thee, dythee." The domestic sentiment, 
 the family affections meant a great deal to him, as any 
 one can see from the earlier chapters of his Autobio- 
 graphic sketches. To children he was always devoted ; 
 the death of Wordsworth's little daughter Kate plunged 
 him into a passion of sorrow so violent that we might 
 regard his own references to it as sheer exaggeration if 
 we had not other evidence of the intensity with which 
 the chords of emotion vibrated in him. He was the last 
 person to make light of parental and marital responsi- 
 bilities ; and though his eccentric habits must have some- 
 times made him "gey ill to live wi'," he was the most 
 kindly and affectionate of fathers to the five sons and 
 three daughters who were the offspring of his marriage. 
 
 Margaret Simpson's wedded life was not smooth or 
 easy. De Quincey had been taking opium through the 
 nine years of his Grasmere residence, at first, as he 
 declares, with no other result than a general exaltation 
 of his mental faculties. But after the pleasures of the 
 drug came the pains and penalties terrifically described 
 
xxviii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 in the Confessions. He had been steadily increasing the 
 dose, until at length he tells us he could take 320 grains 
 of opium in the form of eight thousand drops of lauda- 
 num a day. Then, according to his own account, he fell 
 into a degrading servitude to this indulgence which he 
 knew to be destructive to mind and body. His nights 
 were made dreadful by the fearful dreams that clustered 
 about his pillow and threatened him with madness. His 
 days were passed in torpor and brooding gloom. He 
 was incapable of intellectual labour or sustained exertion 
 of any kind. He could not even read, at least so he 
 says, though I do not believe him. The image of a 
 De Quincey who for nearly two years "read nothing" 
 is to me inconceivable. 
 
 But he had lost all power of systematic thought and 
 regular study. His long-cherished idea of a great philo- 
 sophical treatise to which he had proposed to give the 
 title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's, De Emendatione 
 Humani Intellectus, was now finally abandoned. In a 
 ' ' momentary flash " of intellectual vigour he read 
 Ricardo, and was so far revived by that suggestive 
 thinker that he drew up a proposal for a volume of his 
 own on Economics. But with the printers waiting for 
 copy and the book already advertised De Quincey's 
 energy flickered out. The Prolegomena to all Future 
 Systems of Political Economics reposed beside its elder 
 and more dignified brother. Under the " Circean spell" 
 of the drug the will was paralyzed just as the intellect 
 was dormant; the opium-slave could not rouse himself 
 to perform the ordinary duties of life, he could hardly 
 bring himself to write a letter, he was a prey to in- 
 decision, procrastination, intolerable remorse. 
 
 How far De Quincey did really sink to the depths 
 must always be an open question. We have to take his 
 word for it that he passed through this black valley of 
 degradation and suffering from which the outlet seemed 
 likely to be melancholia or dementia. My own strong 
 belief, though I can adduce no evidence to support it, 
 since we really know nothing of the whole matter beyond 
 what De Quincey has chosen to tell us, is that the col- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 lapse was by no means so complete as it appears in the 
 pages of the Confessions. He wanted to make his story 
 as effective and melodramatic as possible, and he 
 naturally heightened and darkened the picture. The 
 book was an autobiographical romance, and its author 
 was quite entitled to treat the facts of his life with 
 artistic freedom. Besides, it was impossible for him to 
 handle the most ordinary incident or experience that 
 concerned himself without making his canvas burn with 
 vivid and startling colour. That was the characteristic 
 of his genius, the manner in which his creative power 
 projected itself. His consciousness was abnormally in- 
 tense, his self-consciousness sensitive to every touch, 
 and both faculties focussed their rays upon literary ex- 
 pression. A man who could draw dreams and dramas 
 and seas of emotion out of a walk down the street or a 
 drive on a coach could hardly be expected to restrain 
 his brush-work upon so tempting a subject as that of 
 the philosopher lying bound and helpless under the spell 
 of the Eastern enchantment. 
 
 At any rate De Quincey's opium-paralysis did not, in 
 its severer form, last very long. He married, as we have 
 seen, in 1816, and for some time afterwards, probably 
 till the middle of the next year, he says that he lived in 
 tranquil happiness and was at the height of his mental 
 and bodily activity 1 The stage of prostration and extreme 
 dejection appears to have set in during 1817, and it per- 
 sisted through the following year. Its victim was roused 
 from his torpor by the rough shock of financial embarrass- 
 ment. For some time his pecuniary affairs had been 
 falling into disorder. Though honourable and even 
 punctilious in all money matters he was childishly un- 
 businesslike and imprudently generous, always ready to 
 assist his friends with loans and gifts which his resources 
 did not warrant. The parsimony of his guardians had 
 caused him to anticipate his patrimony in order to sup- 
 plement his inadequate allowance at Oxford, and no 
 doubt he had to pay heavily for the favours of ' ' the 
 Jews. " Then came the failure of a business firm in which 
 a good deal of his capital was invested, and it became 
 
XXX THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 necessary for him to earn money. He could do nothing 
 for which the world was inclined to pay except, it might 
 be, to write. He had been reading and studying and 
 meditating for thirty years; bales of miscellaneous in- 
 formation were warehoused in the dark recesses ot his 
 brain ; he had already some reputation, through Wilson 
 and other friends, in the Blackwood and Quarierly circles. 
 He now turned to literature as a profession. 
 
 He began with a brief interlude of regular journalism. 
 The Lonsdales and other Tory magnates of the Lake 
 country had started a weekly journal, the Wesimorland 
 Gazette, in order to counteract ' ' the infamous levelling 
 doctrines of Mr. Brougham " and the Whigs. In the 
 summer of 1819 the editorship was offered to De Quincey 
 at a salary of ;^i6o a year, out of which he paid a sub- 
 editor. It was not a princely appointment; but he 
 accepted it gladly, and went to work, oscillating for 
 some months between Grasmere and Kendal, where the 
 Gazette was published. He was not cut out for a suc- 
 cessful editor, though he had some good ideas. One of 
 them was to describe and discuss celebrated crimes, a 
 distinctly popular journalistic vein which he subsequently 
 worked in the most brilliant of his satirical essays. But 
 his massive leading articles were above the heads of the 
 Westmorland squires who were probably not impressed 
 by his promise to make their journal famous throughout 
 Great Britain by essays on German literature! The 
 editorship only lasted about eighteen months. In 1820 
 De Quincey was in Edinburgh prospecting the ground 
 for other literary employment. He concluded, however, 
 that his best chances lay in London. 
 
 To the capital therefore he went in 1821 and offered 
 his services to the proprietors of the London Magazine, 
 one of the best and most enterprising of the new month- 
 lies. Its staff of contributors included Hazlitt, Thomas 
 Hood, Allan Cunningham, and Lamb, and it had been 
 enriched by verses from the hand of Keats. It was in the 
 number for September 182 1 that there appeared anony- 
 mously the first instalment of The Confessions of an English 
 Opium-eater; being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 A second instalment was published in the following 
 month. The papers were instantaneously and enorm- 
 ously successful. The striking originality of the whole 
 scheme, the daring frankness of the self- revelation, the 
 fascination that clung about the mysterious drug, the 
 vigour and brilliancy of the style, the pathos and wit of 
 some of the pages, and the splendid rhetoric of others, 
 were irresistible. The public were attracted, dazzled, 
 horrified, but at any rate profoundly interested both in 
 the strange tale and its unknown author. 
 
 He did not remain unknown for long. Publishers and 
 editors soon found out that the opium-eater was the 
 little scholar of the Lakes, a man of whom there had 
 already been some talk in literary circles. The London 
 Magazine made a great hit with its new contributor, and 
 its readers clamoured for more of him. De Quincey had 
 the world of the periodicals at his feet, and if he could 
 have satisfied its demands he might have acquired wealth 
 as well as fame. The publishers of the London brought 
 out the Confessions, in their original unextended form, 
 as a small volume, still without the author's name, in 
 1822. De Quincey, if he had possessed the business 
 instinct which is not always withheld from the literary 
 temperament, would have taken his fortune at the flood, 
 and followed the book rapidly with others more or less 
 in the same manner, and so established himself as an 
 author with a selling value. But he was not yet ready — 
 he never was ready — for a sustained flight, a long and 
 systematic piece of original composition. The public 
 were waiting for books from the "Opium-eater"; he 
 could give them only magazine essays. These he pro- 
 ceeded to turn out with fair rapidity considering the 
 stiffening of solid learning and analytic thought he 
 worked into most of them. He wrote the Letters to a 
 Young Man whose Education had been Neglected, and be- 
 gan to reveal the results of his long solitary voyagings 
 on "the German Ocean of literature" in articles on 
 Kant, Herder, Jean Paul, Carlyle's translation of Wil- 
 helm Meister, and so on ; he translated a long and dull 
 German novel; he wrote on Malthas, on the Rosicru- 
 
xxxii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 cians and Freemasons, and other themes. Charles 
 Knight started his new Magazine in 1823 and promptly 
 enlisted this brilliant recruit; Lockhart in 1825 takmg 
 over the editorship of the Quarterly made advances to 
 him; and in 1826, with an article on Lessing's Ltwcoon, 
 he began an association with Blackwoodvi\i\c\y was mam- 
 tained until his literary life was drawing towards its end. 
 
 In these years, then, when he was between thirty-six 
 and forty-one, De Quincey had "found himself.'' He had 
 learnt that he could do something; he had qualities that 
 could turn the twitching restless ear of that great incuri- 
 ous animal, the public, in his direction ; he had discovered 
 that he could draw from a heaped store of emotional and 
 intellectual miscellanea commodities that would sell. 
 But these five or six years of his first literary adventures 
 were not happy or prosperous. He had left his wife and 
 family at Grasmere, and was for the most part living 
 gloomily in London lodgings, very disconsolate, and 
 drifting back to laudanum. In his new celebrity he 
 might have become a personage in literary and general 
 society ; but he was solitary and brooding, and saw little 
 company, except that of the Lambs, whose kindness to 
 him at this period he repaid afterwards in a beautiful 
 tribute to " Saint Charles" and his sister. 
 
 His solitude and depression were partly due to poverty. 
 Though he was now, in a sense, a popular author he was 
 not making money. It does not seem to have occurred 
 to him that the "Opium-eater" was entitled to some- 
 thing more than the limited remuneration paid for 
 magazine padding. He appears to have received no 
 more for essays which bore witness to weeks of hard 
 work and the study of years than was given to other 
 men for quite inconspicuous reviews and hastily written 
 articles on topics of the day. He was pouring out his 
 eloquence, his humour, his masterly criticism, his "im- 
 passioned prose," his intrusive but attractive personal 
 sketches, at a guinea a page. His income from his pen 
 could hardly have amounted to more than ;^I50 or ;^200 
 a year. Meanwhile he was spending money in London 
 lodgings and he had to maintain the establishment at 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 Grasmere. He was in debt and miserable. " I am quite 
 free from opium," he writes to Wilson little more than 
 three years after the publication of the Confessions, " but 
 it has left the liver, the Achilles' heel of almost every 
 human fabric, subject to affections which are tremend- 
 ous for the weight of wretchedness attached to them. 
 To fence with these with the one hand, and with the 
 other to maintain the war with the wretched business of 
 hack-author, with all its horrible degradations, is more 
 than I am able to bear. . . . With a good publisher and 
 leisure to premeditate what I write, I might yet liberate 
 myself." So is Pegasus bound to the dung-cart ! A man 
 of genius toiling in the galley, with some shrewish 
 editor or loud-lunged advertising publisher as boatswain 
 to call the stroke ! It is not an uncommon spectacle even 
 in these days. 
 
 But would De Quincey ever have liberated himself 
 even with means and leisure? One may doubt it. If he 
 had found time to premeditate what he wrote, would he 
 have written at all? I think he would have ended as he 
 began by merely " premeditating." After his death, Dr. 
 Japp, in looking through his papers found scattered 
 notes marked "for my History of England "; " for my 
 book on the Infinite"; "for my book on the relations 
 of Christianity to man " ; and so forth. But the great 
 books did not get beyond notes and memoranda. De 
 Quincey never could write a great book, or at least a big 
 one. To compose by fits and starts, in splendid frag- 
 ments, and under the pressure of necessity, was the 
 condition under which alone, as it seems, he could ex- 
 press himself. A hack-author, the most richly endowed 
 mercenary in all that age-long army of martyrs, his 
 temperament and his history had decreed that Thomas 
 De Quincey should be. He did something to ennoble 
 the painful craft. ' ' Even in a palace life may be well 
 led." With a great heart, a fine intellect, life may be well 
 led — even in Grub Street. 
 
 London was at any rate a harsh nurse to De Quincey. 
 His thoughts were turning to Wilson and to his kindly 
 admirers at Edinburgh. He was there and at Grasmere 
 
 c 
 
xxxiv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 on several occasions from 1827 to 1829. He met Carlyle, 
 who said Carlylese thing's about him later, and bit him 
 into one unforgettable scrap of etching, but nevertheless 
 wrote, as he could write, strong and tender words of 
 comfort for this troubled struggling soul. " Believe it 
 you are well loved here, and none feels better than I 
 what a spirit is for the present eclipsed in clouds. For 
 the present it can only be ; time and chance are for all 
 men ; this troublous season will end." It ended, or at 
 least was lightened, with De Quincey's removal to 
 Edinburgh, where he settled with his wife and children 
 in 1 830, being then forty-five. And in Edinburgh he spent 
 the twenty-nine years of life and work still left him, in 
 Edinburgh or near it he passed the rest of his sedulous 
 days, and in Edinburgh he sleeps in an unregarded 
 grave. 
 
 He was in the Northern capital rather than of it. 
 His reputation was established and he might have played 
 a leading part in the society of a city that was still 
 a famous literary centre. But De Quincey's taste for 
 society, literary or other, never very keen, had passed 
 away, and his liking for solitude had grown upon him. 
 He lived a retired, domestic, laborious, oddly irregular 
 kind of life. The irregularities were quite harmless, ex- 
 cept in so far as they included a moderate indulgence in 
 drug-taking. His daughters have testified to his affec- 
 tion for his children, his care for their education, his 
 gentle and pathetic solicitude on their account. 
 
 His material situation improved; he contributed to 
 Blackwood and Taifs Magazine and other reviews ; and 
 some legacies came in as a convenient supplement to 
 his precarious literary earnings. Though the period of 
 affluence never returned his worst poverty was over, and 
 he was able to live in modest comfort. But as the head 
 of a household he was no more successful than in other 
 relations of practical life. His peculiar habits must have 
 been a trial in any well-ordered family. He could not 
 work except in the midst of a congeries of books and 
 manuscripts which he kept about him in unimaginable 
 confusion, until the flood so rose upon him that at length 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 he would flee before it in despair, turn the key upon the 
 whole collection, and transfer himself bodily to other 
 quarters. 
 
 In 1837 he lost his excellent wife, after two of her 
 sons had preceded her to her grave. The eldest, William, 
 who died in his eighteenth year, was a youth of pre- 
 cocious intellectual development and extraordinary pro- 
 mise, " the crown and glory of my life," his father called 
 him. The daughters had inherited their mother's pru- 
 dence and quiet strength of character. The eldest, 
 Margaret, a mere girl, took charge both of the helpless 
 genius and her five younger sisters and brothers. They 
 rented a cottage, near Lasswade, seven miles from 
 Edinburgh, a pleasant little house with a garden. This 
 was De Quincey's head-quarters ; but he passed most of 
 his time in various lodgings in Edinburgh, moving from 
 one to another under stress of the process described 
 above, so that sometimes he had three or four of these 
 apartments in his simultaneous occupation, with un- 
 trustworthy landladies as the custodians of his printed 
 and manuscript treasures. The children grew up, and 
 gradually passed out of his life, all but one daughter, who 
 remained his faithful companion and guardian to the end. 
 One son, an officer in the Cameronians, died in China of 
 fever; another joined the Indian army, with which the 
 family, on the maternal side, had a long-standing con- 
 nection ; and Florence, the second daughter, also became 
 associated with the glory and peril of our Empire in the 
 East, for she married Colonel Baird Smith, the famous 
 chief engineer at the siege of Delhi. 
 
 De Quincey meanwhile managed to get through a vast 
 amount of work in his own fashion. To Blackwood and 
 Taifs Edinburgh Magazine, and afterwards to Hogg's 
 Weekly Instructor, he contributed voluminously. For 
 Tait in the early period of his Edinburgh residence he 
 wrote the Autobiographical Sketches and the papers on 
 Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and other men of 
 letters he had known. The series achieved a popularity 
 which was partly a succhs de scandale. The public was 
 immensely amused at this candid treatment of great 
 
xxxvi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 writers still living or recently dead. The essays, those 
 on Coleridge and Wordsworth in particular, are enter- 
 taining reading, and it must be said that some ot the 
 personal descriptions have the only justification which 
 this kind of gossiping biography can claim ; they do 
 help to illustrate the literary development and character 
 of their victims. The personalities are not mere tattle, 
 they possess a certain critical value. But they are un- 
 warrantably intrusive, they make an unfair use, especially 
 in the case of the Wordsworths, of knowledge obtained 
 from private intercourse, and they are often ill-natured. 
 Personally De Quincey was all gentleness, refinement, 
 and shrinking courtesy; but he was not overburdened 
 with delicacy in print, and he made " copy" out of many 
 matters which most people would have preferred to keep 
 to themselves. He wrote about his friends with the 
 same freedom he displayed in writing about himself. 
 
 This, no doubt, was due in part to that journalistic in- 
 stinct which made it difficult for him to resist dealing 
 with a catching subject. But there was sometimes a 
 spice, or more than a spice, of malice in the business. 
 Southey might be excused for saying that De Quincey 
 was a spiteful little creature who deserved to be thrashed. 
 In fact, he bore a grudge against the Lakers, and was 
 not sorry to pay off the score. During his residence at 
 Grasmere the great men had not treated him too well. 
 The austere Wordsworth responded to his ardent devo- 
 tion with cold reserve; Southey would not take him 
 seriously ; Coleridge choSe to bestow a disdainful patron- 
 age oh him, and was jealous of an erudition which 
 invaded his own transcendental and critical preserves. 
 Then it appears that the poets and the philosopher were 
 barely polite to De Quincey's wife, and declined to admit 
 the dalesman's daughter to their highly select tea-tables. 
 De Quincey, who in his earlier, hero-worshipping, Bos- 
 wellian, phase, had been of real service to Wordsworth, 
 and had treated Coleridge with a generosity for which 
 no acknowledgement was ever made, was wounded by 
 these slights ; and pondering over them in his Edinburgh 
 lodgings he retaliated by showing that the great men had 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 their share of human weaknesses. The satire is not often 
 really offensive; and though there are some passages 
 that ought not to have been written we cannot be sorry 
 that they were. The world would have been poorer 
 without the excursus on Wordsworth's legs, or the 
 picture of Coleridge attended on his walks by a hired 
 prize-fighter paid to interpose his burly person between 
 the philosopher and the druggists' doorways. And we 
 can pardon all De Quincey's indiscretions, if some of 
 his contemporaries could not, in return for the passages 
 on Wordsworth's poetry, on Hazlitt's style, on Cole- 
 ridge's conversation, and such character-sketches as that 
 of Wilson, Charles Lloyd, and Bishop Watson, and the 
 exquisite picture of Charles and Mary Lamb. 
 
 In 1844 De Quincey suffered much from his chronic 
 gastric troubles and severe mental depression. Under 
 the stress of these maladies he fell back upon the ex- 
 cessive use of laudanum, and had a return of his former 
 experiences — a spell of demoralization and gloom which 
 threatened the loss of reason. And again by persistent 
 effort and careful dietetic management he was able to 
 emancipate himself sufficiently to keep the habit under 
 some amount of control. He did not abandon it en- 
 tirely, being convinced that a moderate indulgence in 
 this stimulant had now become necessary and could not 
 be given up without injury to his health and intellectual 
 activity. Herein he was no doubt right. Opium was by 
 no means an unmitigated "curse" to De Quincey, ex- 
 cept when he took too much of it. Consumed in mod- 
 eration it was probably beneficial. He himself believed 
 that he owed the prolongation of his life to the drug, 
 and that it warded off the tendency to tuberculosis of 
 which his father had died at the age of thirty-nine. He 
 suffered from other maladies, and particularly from a 
 species of gastralgia, or a low inflammatory condition of 
 the mucous membrane of the stomach, amounting at 
 times to ulceration. This distressing disease, which 
 often leads to extreme nervous disturbance and renders 
 the patient unable to take solid food without severe 
 pain, is best relieved by opium. De Quincey's "opium- 
 
xxxviii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 eating," so long as it was kept within bounds, was in 
 fact a form of medical treatment, and on the whole that 
 which was best suited to his chronic complaint. " How 
 much," said Dr. Warburton Begbie, the physician who 
 attended him on his deathbed, "the substantial power 
 and brilliant fancy of his writings had to do with the 
 opium-eating I do not inquire; but that it helped to 
 keep active and entire, during so many long years of 
 bodily feebleness, that large and constant -working 
 brain — that, in a word, it fed it — I have no manner of 
 doubt." 
 
 At any rate, we have the fact that this man of frail 
 physique and overstrung nerves, so delicate as a child 
 that his life was despaired of, a constant martyr to 
 neuralgia as well as to acute dyspepsia, lived to the age 
 of seventy-four with his intellectual, and to a great ex- 
 tent his physical, powers unimpaired almost to the 
 close. Neither opium, nor advancing age, nor ill- 
 health caused him to abandon his habit of outdoor exer- 
 cise. He walked miles most days — or night.s — in wet 
 weather or fine. His publisher, Hogg, describes how 
 De Quincey, at seventy, starting with him from Lass- 
 wade one hot summer afternoon, easily walked him 
 down. They came to a steep hill which De Quincey 
 "ascended like a squirrel," talking of the beauties of 
 Herder all the way to the younger man who arrived at 
 the summit " much exhausted." In these later years his 
 specific physical maladies became less troublesome, and 
 he was released alike from the severer forms of pain and 
 from the necessity of applying the remedy in any but 
 quite manageable doses. 
 
 His literary activity was never greater, nor the quality 
 of his work higher, than in the seventh decade of his 
 life. Between his sixtieth and seventieth years he pro- 
 duced his most imaginative prose, his best critical 
 essays, and his most successful effort in fiction. The 
 Suspiria de Profundis, and The English Mail-Coach, 
 the prose-elegy on Joan of Arc, papers on Hazlitt, 
 Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth's poetry, and Landor, and 
 The Spanish Military Nun, belong to this period. In 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxlx 
 
 the animation of his thought, the exuberance of his 
 fancy, the richness and variety of his style, and the 
 quality of his humour, De Quincey at sixty and sixty- 
 five shows no falling off from his own best standard of 
 achievement a quarter of a century earlier. 
 
 In spite of his shy shrinking from observation and his 
 eccentric habits — partly perhaps because of them — he 
 had become a celebrity. Strangers, from America and 
 elsewhere, sometimes sought to track him to one of his 
 lairs, and Edinburgh literary society tried to lure him 
 to its dinner-tables not always without success. His 
 fame as a conversationalist was great and well deserved ; 
 for when his lips were unsealed in congenial company 
 a silvery flood of learning, wit, fancy, and philosophy 
 poured from them, and he would hold his hearers en- 
 chained until the lights burnt low. He had Coleridge's 
 fertility and Macaulay's invincible memory, without the 
 egotistical absorption of either ; for he was always gentle, 
 courteous, and considerate, willing to listen as well as 
 talk. Of his personal characteristics and oddities we have 
 several records. Carlyle's vignette is unkind but com- 
 pelling : 
 
 "He was a pretty little creature, full of wire-drawn 
 ingenuities ; bankrupt enthusiasms, bankrupt pride ; 
 with the finest silver-toned low voice, and most elabor- 
 ate gently-winding courtesies and ingenuities in con- 
 versation. You would have taken him, by candle-light, 
 for the beautifuUest little Child ; blue-eyed, blond-haired, 
 sparkling face — had there not been something too which 
 said, ' Eccovi, this child has been in Hell.' " 
 
 Thomas Hill Burton gave a more elaborate picture of 
 him as ' ' Papaverius " in The Book-hunter, as he appeared 
 to a sympathetic eye during the middle portion of his 
 Edinburgh career: 
 
 " - . . A strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and puerile 
 figure wherein, however, resided one of the most potent 
 and original spirits that ever frequented a tenement of 
 clay. . . . The first impression that a boy has appeared 
 vanishes instantly. On the contrary, on one occasion 
 when he corrected an erroneous reference to an event as 
 
xl THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 being a century old by saying he recollected its ocqur- 
 rence, one felt almost a surprise at the necessary l»™ta^ 
 tion in his age— so old did he appear, with his arched 
 brow loaded with thought, and the countless little 
 wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thickly 
 round the curious expressive and subtle lips. These 
 lips are speedily opened by some casual remark, and 
 presently the flood of talk passes forth from them, free, 
 clear, and continuous — never rising into declamation, 
 never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all con- 
 sisting of sentences as exquisitely joined together as if 
 they were destined to challenge the criticism of the re- 
 motest posterity. Still the hours stride over each other, 
 and still flows on the stream of gentle rhetoric, as if it 
 were labitur et Idbetur in omne volubilis aevum. . . . 
 Roofed by a huge wide-awake which makes his tiny 
 figure look like the stalk of some great fungus, and 
 with a lantern of more than common dimensions in his 
 hand, away he goes — down the wooded path, up the 
 steep bank, along the brawling stream, and across the 
 waterfall — and ever as he goes there comes from him a 
 continued stream of talk concerning the philosophy of 
 Immanuel Kant, and other kindred matters. Surely if 
 we two were to be seen by any human eyes, it must 
 have been supposed that some gnome or troll or kelpie 
 was luring the listener to his doom. The worst of such 
 affairs as this was the consciousness that, when left, he 
 would continue walking on until, weariness overcoming 
 him, he would take his rest wherever that happened like 
 some poor mendicant. He used to denounce with the 
 most fervid eloquence that barbarous and brutal pro- 
 vision of the law of England which rendered sleeping in 
 the open air an act of vagrancy and so punishable if the 
 sleeper could not give a satisfactory account of himself 
 — a thing which Papaverius could never give under any 
 circumstances." 
 
 His eccentricities diminished in the last ten years of 
 his life, and he passed much of his time in the quiet 
 domesticity of Lasswade, though he continued to give 
 his family trouble by his habit of renting depositories 
 
INTRODUCTION xU 
 
 for his papers in Edinburgh, and by his "wanton 
 charity," as Mrs. Baird Smith calls it, in relieving every 
 mendicant or other person in real or pretended distress 
 who chose to ask him for alms. "His presence at home 
 was the signal for a crowd of drunken beggars, among 
 whom borrowed babies and drunken old women were 
 sure of the largest share of his sympathy." " He was 
 not," adds his daughter, " a reassuring man for nervous 
 people to live with, as those nights were exceptions on 
 which he did not set something on fire, the commonest 
 incident being for some one to look up from work or 
 book to say casually ' Papa, your hair is on fire,' of which 
 a calm ' Is it, my love? ' and a hand rubbing out the 
 blaze was all the notice taken." 
 
 His reputation in these years had been growing in 
 America even more than in Britain, and many readers 
 were anxious to have his writings in an accessible 
 form. To meet this demand the Boston publishing 
 firm of Ticknor and Fields began to disinter his 
 papers from the various periodicals in which they had 
 appeared in order to issue them in a uniform and 
 regular shape. This was the American Edition of De 
 Quincey's Works published in twenty volumes, between 
 1851 and 1855. The edition was authorized by De 
 Quincey, and he gave some assistance to it, receiving in 
 return a liberal share of the profits of the sale from the 
 Boston house. At the same time he was engaged upon 
 another edition, in which he took a jnore direct and 
 personal part. The enterprise was carried out by 
 James Hogg, to whose magazine De Quincey began to 
 contribute freely in 1849, when he abandoned his long 
 connection with Blackwood. In 1850 Hogg induced him 
 to begin supervising the republication of such of his 
 writings as he deemed best worth preservation in a per- 
 manent form. The project was beset with many difficul- 
 ties. For thirty years De Quincey had been scattering 
 himself up and down the English and Scottish reviews, 
 magazines, and cyclopaedias. He had kept no index, 
 analysis, or systematic record of these various contribu- 
 tions ; some of them had been forgotten by everybody, 
 
xlii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 including the author, and they had to be searched out 
 among the dusty files of periodicals which perhaps had 
 ceased to appear. For a man of De Quincey's dilatory 
 and unmethodical habits, the task of recovery, classifi- 
 cation, and arrangement might well have seemed in- 
 superable. How it was accomplished is graphically 
 described by Professor Masson : 
 
 The American edition, coming over to him in successive 
 volumes, was his greatest help ; but till it was complete and 
 sometimes even then, he had to rummage for his old papers, 
 or employ Mr. Hogg to rummage for him, hurriedly squeez- 
 ing together what was readiest at intervals, to make up a 
 volume when the press became ravenous. Hence the most 
 provoking jumble in the contents of the volumes — mixed kinds 
 of matter in the same volume, and dispersion of the same kind 
 of matter in the volumes wide apart, and yet all with a pre- 
 tence of grouping and with factitious sub-titles invented for 
 the separate volumes on the spur of the moment. 
 
 In one way or another the business got itself performed, 
 and the edition, under the title Selections Grave and Gay 
 from Writings published and unpublished by Thomas de 
 Quincey, appeared in fourteen volumes, between 1853 
 and i860. It was reissued (1862-1871) in sixteen volumes 
 as De Quincey's Works by Messrs. A. and C. Black. 
 The same firm some years later brought out The Col- 
 lected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, under the editorship 
 of Prof. Masson (14 vols., 1889-90), with elaborate notes, 
 prefaces, and biographical and bibliographical introduc- 
 tions. No praise can be too high for the industry and 
 scholarly care which the editor bestowed upon this 
 monument to a writer whom he regarded with unquali- 
 fied admiration. It is to be regretted that he included 
 in the collection a good deal of fugitive matter which 
 De Quincey himself would have willingly let die. Nor is 
 the editor's scheme of re-arrangement, under which he 
 sometimes welds together papers separated in their com- 
 position by long intervals of time, altogether satisfactory. 
 But a completely satisfactory edition of an author whose 
 work was produced under such fragmentary and torment- 
 ing conditions is no doubt beyond the compass of 
 
INTRODUCTION xliii 
 
 human endeavour. Masson, at any rate, has given the 
 world a worthy editio princeps, and all students of De 
 Quincey must be grateful to him for his labours. 
 
 The work of recension, arrangement, and classification 
 for the Selections was done by De Quincey at 42, Lothian 
 Street, the last and best of his Edinburgh lodgings, 
 where he was in good hands and carefully tended. Only 
 the unremitting efforts and kindly pressure of Mr. Hogg 
 could have kept the perturbed but diligent and pains- 
 taking little workman at his toil till it was brought to 
 its conclusion. On the whole, however, it would seem 
 that these closing years were among the happiest of his 
 life. Age had toned down his eccentricities, and had also, 
 as it sometimes does, relieved him of his chronic gastric 
 complaint ; the tyranny of opium was relaxed ; he was 
 not unconscious of the attentions he received from 
 Americans and other admiring strangers; and he en- 
 joyed the society of a few Edinburgh friends, and found 
 infinite comfort in such contact as he could obtain with 
 the surviving members of his scattered family. Miss De 
 Quincey still kept the cottage at Lasswade, and her 
 father, indefatigable pedestrian almost to the end, made 
 nothing of walking the seven miles out from Edinburgh 
 ±0 spend the evening with her. In his seventy-third year 
 he was induced to pay a visit to his eldest daughter 
 Margaret, then married and living in Ireland, and the 
 mother of two young sons whom De Quincey saw for 
 the first time. 
 
 He was still occupied with literary projects and ideas, 
 and proposed to Hogg a new History of England in 
 twelve volumes, which he thought he could complete in 
 four years. It would have been an extraordinarily inter- 
 esting book, though one may doubt whether at any 
 period of his career De Quincey could have lived through 
 the composition of twelve volumes devoted to a single 
 subject. At an.y rate it was now too late to make the 
 attempt. In the autumn of 1859, having entered upon 
 his seventy-fifth year, his health began to fail fast, from 
 general debility rather than from any specific malady; 
 and on December 8th he passed away in the Lothian 
 
xHv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Street lodging, with his eldest and youngest daughters 
 at his bedside. He was buried in the West Churchyard 
 at Edinburgh beside his wife and two of his children. 
 
 De Quincey, in the Preface to the Edinburgh edition, 
 divided his writings under three heads : first, those which 
 " propose primarily to amuse the reader," such as the 
 autobiographical sketches ; secondly, those that address 
 themselves chiefly to the understanding, like the critical, 
 biographical, and historical essays, the papers on the 
 Roman Caesars, etc.; and thirdly, that "far higher 
 class of compositions," which are described as "modes 
 of impassioned prose ranging under no precedents that 
 I am aware of in any literature," that is to say, the Con- 
 fessions, the Suspiria de Profundis, and the dream-series 
 in general. 
 
 The classification is hasty and unscientific, nor did De 
 Quincey himself adhere to it in the arrangement of his 
 papers. It certainly does not enable us to find the con- 
 necting thread which binds together the loose sheaves 
 he left strewn upon the harvest field of the periodical press 
 of his time, nor does it assist us to indicate in a phrase 
 the precise quality and character of his genius. His own 
 luminous, if now somewhat threadbare, distinction be- 
 tween the literature of knowledge and the literature of 
 power is more fruitful. All the best of his writing be- 
 longs to the latter class, even when it seems intended by 
 its subject " primarily to amuse " or to convey informa- 
 tion. Literature, according to his conception, in its 
 highest expression, was an appeal to " the understand- 
 ing heart," and its function was that of raising the whole 
 emotional nature to a higher pitch of intensity. Mere 
 intelligence he regarded as "the meanest quality of the 
 human mind," and to minister to that alone was not the 
 purpose of the literary artist, whose duty it was, even 
 when engaged in instruction and explanation, to illumin- 
 ate his subject by exhibiting its relations with other 
 aspects of human or natural activity, to expose its ele- 
 ments of pathos, of humour, of sublimity, to show how 
 it touches upon that sea of infinite mystery in which all 
 
INTRODUCTION xlv 
 
 our knowledge is islanded. Often he fell below his own 
 standard, writing as he did too hurriedly and too much. 
 But these are the characteristics of his best pieces, and 
 to a certain extent they are revealed in all, though not 
 to the same extent, and though their manifestations are 
 too often embedded in a soil sprouting with a rank under- 
 growth of the trivial and the irrelevant. 
 
 His genius was of a kind unique in our literature, or 
 it may be in any literature. The gifts of insight, of 
 imaginative vision, of supreme expression were his ; but 
 he was not endowed in any equal degree with the ethical 
 or the creative passion. He was a Seer, but not a 
 prophet ; he had no message to deliver, no faith to ex- 
 pound. And though he steeped himself in the beauty 
 and the mystery of life, it was not with that impulse to 
 produce things beautiful and mysterious which has in- 
 spired most of the greater masters, whether of form, of 
 colour, of music, or of words. Thus be was not the 
 poet, B-oiijr^c, the "maker," any more than he was the 
 philosopher. He did not burn to vindicate the ways of 
 God to man, to explain the moral order, to lift the veil 
 of appearances and reveal the reality it hides, to find a 
 way through the confused labyrinth of being, to project 
 the energy of his own soul upon the consciousness of 
 others. The systematizing and the productive faculties 
 were both weak in him. All the philosophies of all tlie 
 ages had filtered through the convolutions of his brain, 
 but he wrote no philosophic treatise. He would indeed 
 have written nothing but for the urgent stimulus of 
 external necessity, nor did he begin to write until he 
 was moving towards middle-age. Yet, as the immense 
 exuberant fertility of nearly forty later years showed, 
 this was due to no coldness of the mental organism, no 
 lack of inventive capacity or difficulty of expression. It 
 was the productive instinct that lay dormant; no irre- 
 pressible impulse drove him on to create; he would 
 have been content to the end, perhaps, to ponder, to 
 wonder, to analyse, and to dream. 
 
 "From my birth," he said, "I was made an intel- 
 lectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my 
 
xlvi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 pursuits and pleasures have been." The statement may 
 be easily misunderstood. If by an intellectual creature 
 is meant a nature compact only of thought and reason, 
 cut off from the springs of feeling, then assuredly De 
 Quincey did not belong to the species. He was shot 
 through with sympathy, emotion, sensitiveness, intense 
 and almost morbid affection; he was a man of many 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief, and a man also of 
 many joys, which were not those of the mind but of the 
 heart, the joys of love, fatherhood, friendship, charity; 
 his "pursuits and pleasures" included a not illiberal 
 gratification of the senses. But De Quincey was a 
 creature of the intellect, for he was one who sought to 
 understand life rather than to act upon it or to add to it. 
 Deficient in the ethical impulse, wanting in the creative 
 faculty, with no practical efficiency whatever, he was an 
 inspired expositor ; a critic and commentator of genius, 
 with a passionate interest in every manifestation of 
 human activity and individuality, with the eye to see 
 into and see through much that was revealed imperfectly 
 to others, and with the knowledge and the judgement 
 to exhibit things in their relativity. History, literature, 
 economics, social ethics, the problems of personality and 
 character and mental experience, as he drew them from 
 the reservoirs of his own consciousness and memory, he 
 exposed to view, heightened, enriched, and ennobled to 
 the fullest extent the subject permitted by distinction 
 of style, by vigour of imagination, by the results of wide 
 reading and keen observation, by an alert sense of 
 humour, and by an instant response to the appeal of 
 mystery and pathos. The moralist may explain life, the 
 philosopher may explain it away, the artist may imitate 
 it. De Quincey preferred to examine and describe it; 
 not so much concerned to show it bad or make it good, 
 as to render it interesting. 
 
 I began by saying that De Quincey was a great jour- 
 nalist. He was so, and not merely for the purely^ me- 
 chanical reason that he published his works in periodicals 
 and in fragments. He had the journalistic temper, the 
 spirit which informs the avocation for those to whom it 
 
INTRODUCTION xlvii 
 
 is something more than a trade. To the journalist the 
 world may seem ugly, evil, purposeless, unorganized; 
 but he cannot afford to find it dull. When the curtain 
 is up — and for him it is never down — he must not yawn 
 over the puppets on the stage, or allow himself to re- 
 member that what moves before him is but a passing 
 pageant, transitory, brief, unreal. He must deem Life 
 interesting in all its multiplex manifestations ; interest 
 is to him what beauty is to the artist and goodness to 
 the saint. To De Quincey the world was a very great 
 and wonderful show. That faded wisp of a man, trem- 
 bling before strident landladies in obscure lodgings, 
 moving furtively through dim Edinburgh streets, or 
 wandering among the miry lanes at midnight, was in- 
 cessantly unrolling before his mind some scene in the 
 picture-play of humanity. 
 
 Life gives her mysteries and her glories not to the eye 
 that has seen or the ear that has heard but to the 
 visualizing auditory brain. One man may gather more 
 impressions from a ride in a suburban tram-car than 
 another will bring back from a journey round the globe. 
 
 'Tis but to measure a cord and to prove limitation we travel. 
 
 De Quincey had travelled but little ; he had not seen, or 
 " done " much ; nor for that matter had Thomas Carlyle 
 or William Wordsworth. But, like those great teachers, 
 he made up for the poverty of external impressions by 
 the flame of imaginative intensity in which he fused all 
 the knowledge gained from observation, experience, 
 contemplation, and learning. He was on the watch for 
 the slightest indications that could guide him towards 
 the interesting and the significant. He has told us in his 
 Autobiography that his gaze was "fixed and fascinated " 
 at a very early age by one section of the tale of Aladdin 
 in the Arabian Nights. It is that which tells how the 
 magician in the heart of Africa is listening with his ear to 
 the ground for the footsteps of a child in the streets of 
 Baghdad, who alone can declare the secret of the lamp. 
 De Quincey's imagination was caught by this picture of 
 
xlviii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the wonder-worker disentangling from all the clamant 
 sounds of earth the beat of one solitary infant's tread on 
 the banks of the Tigris, " distant by four hundred and 
 forty days march of an army or a caravan." The reader, 
 he says, who comes to that Eastern tale with his imagina- 
 tion alive. 
 
 Has the power still more unsearchable of reading in that 
 hasty movement an alphabet of new and infinite symbols ; for 
 in order that the sound of the child's feet should be significant 
 and intelligible, that sound must open into a gamut of infinite 
 compass. The pulses of the heart, the motions of the will, the 
 phantoms of the brain, must repeat themselves in secret hiero- 
 glyphics uttered by the flying footsteps. Even the inarticulate 
 or brutal sounds of the globe must be all so many languages 
 and ciphers that somewhere have their corresponding keys — 
 have their own grammar and syntax ; and thus the least things 
 in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest. 
 
 Even so was De Quincey's ear laid close to the earth, 
 to find " new and infinite symbols "in the confusion of 
 sounds that came to him from places near or remote, 
 from the passing or the vanished years. He caught the 
 tramp of marching armies, the song of feasters at Roman 
 banquets, the shout of triumph, the sigh of the desolate, 
 the sorrowful murmur of the poor, the restless tumult 
 of action. His is the true journalist's motto: quidquid 
 agunt homines. But he took it in the wider sense ; not 
 only what men do, but what also they think and feel 
 is the loading of his many pages. He has the journal- 
 istic impressionism ; he takes the aspect of his subject 
 that strikes him at the moment, shows it in its sig- 
 nificance, its relationships, its picturesqueness, and then 
 leaves it. He makes it no part of a systematic whole; 
 he writes an " article," not a treatise. And he has the 
 journalistic weakness or the journalistic strength of 
 over-emphasis. The poet exaggerates the element of 
 beauty, the philosopher the element of system, the jour- 
 nalist, like the dramatist, the element of interest. The 
 journalist in De Quincey heightened the effect of emo- 
 tions, incidents, sentiments, experiences, his own or 
 those of others, but particularly his own, till they become 
 
INTRODUCTION xlix 
 
 colossal. Considerhis tremendous account of the Williams 
 crimes in the Postscript to Murder as One of the Fine 
 Aris, a truly sublime example of " writing up " news, a 
 piece of descriptive reporting in excelsis; or let the 
 reader turn to The English Mail Coach^ and reflect 
 that the whole magnificent "Vision of Sudden Death" 
 is based upon nothing more remarkable than a collision 
 between two carriages on the King's highway which 
 might have occurred — but did not. You might have a 
 Vision of Sudden Death every time you cross the 
 Strand, if you were De Quincey. The Confessions, the 
 whole opium series, are vitalized by the same power of 
 investing the commonplace, the ordinary, the trivial with 
 mystery, romance, and pathos. 
 
 De Quincey was possessed of an incessant inquisi- 
 tiveness, but that was no merely intellectual quality. It 
 was, to adapt a famous phrase, curiosity touched with 
 emotion. His best achievements, whether of reminis- 
 cence, "exposition, or description, are instinct not merely 
 with thought, but with feeling. He wrote well because 
 he felt deeply. 
 
 That, I think, is what gives his style its magic and its 
 charm. It is a great error to represent De Quincey as a 
 mere brilliant rhetorician. He does, it is true, deliber- 
 ately strive at times after rhetorical effect, and attain 
 it. Style, as he says, has two main functions : ' ' first to 
 brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is obscure 
 to the understanding ; secondly, to regenerate the normal 
 power and impressiveness of a subject which has become 
 dormant to the sensibilities." In order to convey subtle 
 or profound shades of meaning with the fullest arresting 
 effect only two modes of composition are effective ; the 
 one is the employment of metre, which is the natural 
 vehicle for impassioned thought ; the other is that kind 
 of eloquence by which an orator appeals to an audience 
 already stimulated by an atmosphere of excitement and 
 the contagion of the crowd. The writer of prose has 
 neither advantage ; he must create the atmosphere, and 
 
 ' See infra, p. io6. 
 d 
 
1 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 find a substitute for that elevation of tone and increase 
 of tension naturally produced by metre. De Quincey 
 aimed at the same effects, so far as his medium per- 
 mitted, by the use of a stately and expressive vocabulary, 
 by the flowing rhythms of his sentences, by the exquisite 
 and balanced music of his cadences, by the Miltonic 
 harmony of his long periods, and by a bannered pomp 
 of metaphor, illustration, and imagery. The process 
 reaches its consummation in those " modes of impas- 
 sioned prose," like the Suspiria de Profundis and the 
 dream-passages of the Confessions, which have the 
 quality of poetry in their appeal to depths of emotion 
 and phases of consciousness that lie beyond the plane of 
 ordinary experience. 
 
 But it would be an error to suppose that De Quincey's 
 adoption of this method was a mere literary artifice. In- 
 deed it would convey a wrong impression to say that he 
 ' ' adopted " any manner of writing at all. For he held with 
 Wordsworth that language was not the garb of thought, 
 but its incarnation : the form in which the mind reveals 
 itself to the external world. The style is organically, 
 rather than mechanically, associated with the idea and 
 the treatment; it is a living thing, and it draws its 
 nutriment from the roots of the author's temperament, 
 his outlook upon life, his philosophic attitude, his special 
 genius. Le style c'esi Vhomme. In De Quincey's case it 
 must be remembered that his style represented the re- 
 action against the pseudo-classicism, thehard rationalism, 
 and the severe conventionality, of the eighteenth century. 
 He was the prose-poet, the critic and essayist, of the 
 romantic movement. The great formative influences 
 upon his mind at its most receptive period were Words- 
 worth's and Coleridge's poetry and the metaphysics of 
 Kant ; and though the earlier idolatrous admiration was 
 much qualified later, his writing bore to the end the im- 
 press of the Lake school and the Transcendentalists, or 
 rather of the spirit which had animated both the poets 
 and the philosophers. Like them, he rejected that pre- 
 dominant claim of the human intellect which the leaders 
 of eighteenth-century thought and literature had as- 
 
INTRODUCTION li 
 
 serted. They appealed to the understanding mind ; their 
 successors to the understanding heart; the one set liked 
 to plant their feet on the well-kept path of positive 
 knowledge, the others strayed into the dim coppices 
 and flowering meadowlands of emotion and faith. Their 
 temper is reflected in the diversity of their styles. A 
 prose, which is acute and enlightening rather than sym- 
 pathetic, would naturally fall into a "correct" regu- 
 larity. But that which aims at quickening and stimulat- 
 ing what De Quincey calls "the human sensibilities," 
 which seeks "power" by raising man to his highest 
 level of emotional capacity, must be rich, subtle, allu- 
 sive, and rhythmical. De Quincey could not -emulate 
 the thin lucidity of Locke and Hume any more than 
 Shelley could have written like Pope, or John Ruskin 
 like James Mill. 
 
 But if the style is the incarnation of the thought it is 
 also the representation of the subject. De Quincey's 
 varied according to the nature of the theme. It is not 
 always or even comriionly keyed to the highest pitch, 
 it is rhetorical and ornate only at intervals. Often it 
 is merely critical and argumentative ; the trumpet-notes 
 and orchestral harmonies sink to the easy tones of con- 
 versation; the music of the long flowing sentences 
 breaks up into the rapid staccato of satire or the dance 
 of wit; too frequently it patters along in page after page 
 of undignified colloquialism and discursive triviality. I 
 do not think it is seen quite at its best in those chromatic 
 passages which have become famous, where the struggle 
 to produce a striking effect is sometimes obvious enough 
 to impart a sense of artificiality and affectation. There 
 is a nearer approach to perfection in many of the auto- 
 biographical and critical papers where the fluent rhythm 
 of the phrasing holds the reader's attention without 
 effort, and where expressions of singular felicity and 
 freshness rise quietly like daisies ip the grass, and some- 
 times cluster into groups of perfumed blossom, or hang 
 star-like heads drenched with the dew of tears. The 
 humour and the pathos of life are always with De 
 Quincey. Of the latter quality there can be no question. 
 
Hi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 There are few writers who arrest one so often with some 
 phrase that knocks upon the heart with the note of wist- 
 fulness, of sorrow, of the sense of loss and bereavement, 
 of that "yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable 
 face," which is his own beautiful definition of the Latin 
 desiderium. He was born under a g-rieving star; melan- 
 choly, growing with solitude and opium, had set its seal 
 upon him, and though he sought relief in the contempla- 
 tion of action, heroic enterprise, patriotic achievement, 
 for him, nevertheless, the world-spectacle moved against 
 a background of world-sorrow, and the figures of man- 
 kind were shadows flickering upon the curtain of Infinity. 
 It is here that he touches hands with his contemporaries, 
 the greater poets of the ronlantic revival. 
 
 He did not reach their level. With all his gifts he 
 does not rank among the elect few whose writings have 
 profoundly and permanently affected the human spirit. 
 His genius was checked by too many limitations to 
 allow it to reach its full fruition. His mind, like his 
 writing, was fragmentary and inchoate. He had thought 
 of many things ; but it seems that he had thought out 
 none. We search his works in vain for any systematic 
 view of life, for any coherent philosophy, for any com- 
 plete handling of any theme. He can throw beams of 
 vivid illumination upon any part of any subject, but not 
 on the whole. There are brilliant flashes of truth every- 
 where, but they are not followed out : they guide us to 
 nothing, or lead us astray into some tangled swamp of 
 discursive prolixity. Often It seems as If he worked 
 without method or plan, writing as the thoughts came 
 Into his head, throwing upon paper whatever trou- 
 vaille rose to his hand as he ransacked [the vast un- 
 catalogued stores of his miscellaneous reading, running 
 breathlessly up any by-path of scholarship, reminiscence. 
 Illustration that crossed the main track. An essay 
 may start on one topic, and go wandering off upon 
 half-a-dozen others, until the thread of continuity Is 
 lost, and the reader loses patience with the jumble of 
 wit, erudition, triviality, and argument In which he 
 finds himself involved. De Quincey condemned "anec- 
 
INTRODUCTION liii 
 
 dotage," but he is himself an inveterate and shameless 
 anecdotist. 
 
 His digressions are sometimes amazingf in their irrelev- 
 ance, and occasionally he will pile digression upon di- 
 gression in a bewildering fashion. A hundred examples 
 might be given. Thus in one of the essays on Words- 
 worth, contributed to Taifs Magazine, he sets out with 
 some appearance of regularity to speak of the poet's 
 birth and parentage. But before he has fairly started 
 on this road he remembers that Wordsworth's father 
 was agent to "the bad Lord Lonsdale," and he promptly 
 drops Wordsworth and goes off for some pages upon 
 an account of that nobleman, his temper, his eccentrici- 
 ties, his duels, his " thundering droves of wild horses," 
 and so forth. In another paper of the series on the Lake 
 Poets he finds occasion to mention Wordsworth's tea- 
 table. This leads him into disquisitions on (i) lawyers in 
 the House of Commons, and the reason of their frequent 
 failure as parliamentary orators; (2) the connection 
 between dinner and conversation; (3) the hour of the 
 chief meal among the Greeks and the Romans; with 
 (4) a subsidiary digression (in a Note) on the proper mean- 
 ing of coena and prandium. After this, with the casual 
 remark " I have been led insensibly into this digression," 
 he gets back to his narrative ; only, however, to break 
 off a page or so later into adiscussion of the roads through 
 the Westmorland passes, and the method of driving 
 over them. Again, the essay on Sir William Hamilton is 
 occupied with rambling dissertations upon postal diffi- 
 culties in the Lake Country, upon Professor Wilson, 
 upon youth and age, upon "civilation," boxing, Achilles 
 and the tortoise, the drunkenness of the Cretans, and 
 various other matters, in the course of which the philo- 
 sopher and his philosophy are barely mentioned. But to 
 give adequate illustration of this tendency would lead one 
 to imitate De Quincey's own discursiveness. 
 
 He was aware of his weakness in this respect, and he 
 put it down, as he did much else, to opium. "I am 
 sensible that my record is far too diffuse. Feeling this 
 at the very time of writing I was ,yet unable to correct 
 
liv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 it; so little self-control was I able to exercise under the 
 afflicting agitations and the unconquerable impatience of 
 my nervous malady." The passage may be compared 
 with what De Quincey says generally of the effects of the 
 drug: 
 
 Opium gives and it takes away. It defeats the steady habit 
 of exertion ; but it creates spasms of irregular energy. It ruins 
 the natural powers of life; but it develops preternatural 
 paroxysms of intermitting power. 
 
 In a touching and deeply interesting letter to an intimate 
 friend, quoted by Dr. Japp,' he goes more closely into 
 the case : — 
 
 Through the ruin, and by the help of the ruin, I looked into 
 and read the later states of Coleridge. His chaos I com- 
 prehended by the darkness of my own, and both were the 
 work of laudanum. It is as if ivory carvings and elaborate 
 fretwork and fair enamelling should be found with worms and 
 ashes amongst coffins and the wrecks of some forgotten life or 
 some abolished nature. In parts and fractions eternal creations 
 are carried on, but the nexus is wanting, and life and the 
 central principle which should bind together all the parts at 
 the centre, with all its radiations to the circumference, are 
 wanting. Infinite incoherence, ropes of sand, gloomy in- 
 capacity of vital pervasion by some one plastic principle, that 
 is the hideous incubus upon my mind always. 
 
 I believe that this is a correct summary of the writer's 
 psychological condition ; no doubt opium aggravated it, 
 and its special literary manifestations were encouraged 
 by the habit of production for the periodical press. One 
 may doubt, however, whether the results would have 
 been very different if De Quincey had never tasted 
 laudanum and had never contributed to the magazines. 
 The passage just given was written under the depres- 
 sion produced by a prolonged relapse into the excesses 
 of the drug habit; but in it the writer lays his finger 
 upon the source of his limitations. The central nexus 
 was wanting; the plastic principle: which might have 
 bound together and moulded into shape the whole 
 
 ' H. A, Pag^e, Thomas De Quincey, vol. i, p. 325. 
 
INTRODUCTION Iv 
 
 organism, fired it with a less fitful and flickering flame 
 of creative impulse, or kept it glowing with the steady 
 warmth of some great directing purpose. "Infinite 
 incoherence, ropes of sand," is an unduly bitter piece 
 of self-criticism; yet even the convinced admirer of 
 De Quincey must feel in his heart that there is some 
 ground for it. 
 
 Industrious as he was in the acquisition of knowledge, 
 painstaking in actual composition, De Quincey sufi^ered 
 from a kind of intellectual impotence, an incapacity for' 
 virile and concentrated mental effort. He played with 
 great ideas, but he could not strain them to his heart 
 with the ardour of possession, set the impress of his 
 personality upon them, and force them to bear the 
 children of his soul. When the search for truth threatens' 
 to become exhausting, he is quite content to abandon it 
 in order to sit down by the wayside and pluck a flower, 
 or, it may be, a weed, from the hedgerows. He is too 
 often satisfied to be merely suggestive, to find something 
 interesting to say about one or other aspect of his theme, 
 instead of working it out to a conclusion, or making it 
 a part of a coherent whole. His mosaic is full of charm- 
 ing bits and gleaming tessellations ; but the design, the 
 synthetic pattern, is weak. His attitude towards some 
 of the greater questions is almost exasperating. No 
 man, as his essay on The Political Parties of Modem 
 England shows, had a more luminous insight into the 
 real character of our party system and the evolution it 
 was undergoing ; yet, because it was.too much trouble to 
 throw over his prejudices and shape out a new formula, 
 he lazily acquiesced in remaining, as he says, " a perfect 
 specimen of a fossil Tory." And in religion, this student 
 of all the theologies and the philosophies is back among 
 the orthodox divines and Anglican bishops, the War- 
 burtons, and Hurds, and Beatties of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, accepting the plenary inspiration of the Bible, 
 " submitting to every proposition in the Scriptures which 
 is really and truly there," and persuading himself that 
 the Thirty-nine Articles were quite consistent with the 
 higher rationalism, if one only understood Reason in the 
 
Ivi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 correct Kantian sense. He was content to repose on a 
 vague and rather bigoted Anglicanism, which had dt 
 least the advantage of fortifying him in his hostility 
 against Radicalism, Freethinkers, Roman Catholics, 
 French scepticism, and other things and persons he dis- 
 liked. On the relations of Christianity to the modern 
 movement of thought he professed to have pondered 
 with the utmost profundity ; but he flinched from the 
 task of formulating a definite philosophical creed 
 grounded upon faith and revelation. His life was strewn 
 with great refusals.' 
 
 I have dwelt somewhat upon these defects since it is 
 necessary to explain why De Quincey has fallen short 
 both of the highest standard of popularity and the 
 highest level of achievement. I suppose it is not to be 
 hoped that the mass of his writings will ever again find 
 a body of readers proportionate in number to their 
 merits; nor can one claim that their author stands 
 among the few great lonely figures whose place is secure 
 through the ages. But we need not belittle or reject the 
 work a man of genius has done because he has not done 
 something else. De Quincey's station among our 
 Masters of Literature is high if it is not quite with the 
 highest. As an Essayist it would be hard to find his 
 superior. No one has excelled him in taking one branch 
 of some large subject and rendering it fruitful and 
 significant by bathing it in a stream of original reflec- 
 tion, varied illustration, unhackneyed knowledge, and 
 luminous comment. You cannot read a page or two of 
 
 1 Lest I may seem to do injustice to De Quincey liere I give (in 
 the Analecta at the end of this volume) some passages from 
 one of the Essays on Coleridge where it is suggested that there 
 can be no philosophy of the highest kind which does not begin and 
 end with Christianity. But this proposition, though De Quincey 
 frequently recurs to it, he did not develop, or attempt to sub- 
 stantiate, save in a fragmentary and superficial fashion. His atti- 
 tude towards religion was not in reality very different from that of 
 Dr. Johnson, though he moved in an atmosphere which that sturdy 
 champion of Toryism and the Church of England had never 
 breathed, and under a firmament shot with lights invisible to the 
 Johnsonian eye. 
 
INTRODUCTION Ivii 
 
 De Quincey, even when he is most formless and most 
 irritatingly discursive or trivial, without coming upon 
 some sentence that arrests you with its perfected felicity 
 of expression, some phrase that almost startles with its 
 pregnant suggestiveness, its sudden glimpse of half- 
 seen avenues and dim cathedral aisles of thought, some 
 shaft that carries far below the surface of things. He 
 shed the rays of a penetrating insight and a large sym- 
 pathetic intelligence over history, philosophy, literature, 
 and society; and if he settled nothing he illuminated 
 everything, so that whether you read him on the Roman 
 Caesars, on the toilet of the Hebrew lady, on the last 
 days of Kant, on secret societies, on Judas Iscariot, or 
 on English cookery, you are sure to find new lights 
 thrown upon the subject and new ideas introduced. 
 His mind possessed the rare quality of being equally at 
 home with abstract thought and with concrete vital 
 realities. He is a logician with a sense of humour. He 
 loved subtle analysis, but he also loved humanity in all 
 its phases. So there is no theme which he can handle for 
 long on the coldly intellectual flame. He must bring it 
 to earth to exhibit it in its relation to life and to the 
 elements of mystery, pathos, and paradox, of which life 
 is built up. 
 
 He exhibits this characteristic even in his treatment 
 of economics. As a political economist he is now for- 
 gotten. But his Logic of Political Economy, the only 
 formal treatise he ever wrote, will repay study, for it is 
 a really remarkable contribution to the science, written 
 at a period when the "classical" theory was in the 
 ascendant and the pontificate of Mill presently to be 
 established. On the whole he accepted the doctrines of 
 Adam Smith, modified by Ricardo-, for whom he had an 
 intense admiration. But he rebelled against the mytho- 
 logy of the Utilitarians with their unreal figures of the 
 Consumer and Producer and the rest, their crude 
 analysis of motives, and their readiness to regard limited 
 and local tendencies as universal laws. Mill waved him 
 aside rather haughtily, and some of Mill's disciples 
 have spoken as if it were gross presumption on the part 
 
Iviii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of De Quincey, a mere literary person, to enter the 
 hortus conclusus of the professor and the practical man. 
 But in some respects he was much closer to the line of 
 later thought than the philosopher of the India House; 
 for he showed that the abstractions like Supply and 
 Demand, to which the English " classic " writers attri- 
 bute a kind of mysterious potency as if they were forces 
 of nature, are, in fact, only names that cover the actions 
 and desires of human beings. There is nothing dull or 
 " dismal " in his dissertation on these points in the Logic 
 and in the series of papers called Dialogues of Three 
 Templars. The keenness of the analysis and the close 
 precision of the reasoning are found consistent with a 
 flexibility and distinction of style like a rose-garden in a 
 barren land after the forbidding aridity and the cold 
 dogmatism with which the masters of political economy 
 have so often chosen to convey their opinions to the 
 world. 
 
 The same qualities are revealed in a large measure 
 in his Literary Criticism. Here, as in other parts of his 
 writings, we see his peculiar and exceptional quality, 
 well described by Dr. Japp as "the logical or quantitat- 
 ive faculty working alongside the dreaming or purely 
 abstractive faculty without sense of discord." In his 
 criticism he is often perverse, and he mingles passages 
 which deserve his own favourite epithet of " sublime " 
 with undignified gossip, creaking satire, and forced 
 jocularity; he is wilfully blind to the merits of some 
 writers and hyperbolical in his praises of others. All the 
 same he is one of the most inspiring and the most preg- 
 nant of critics. He loved literature for its own sake; and 
 his wide miscellaneous reading and prodigious memory 
 made it easy for him to handle the works of many 
 authors, to compare and to contrast them in a singularly 
 fruitful fashion. 
 
 He brought to the task something more than a mere 
 intellectual curiosity. Literature to him was always kept 
 in its place ; it is not, as he says, life itself but only an 
 aspect, a manifestation, of life. Below the written word, 
 as below the external fact, he was perpetually searching 
 
INTRODUCTION lix 
 
 for the vital principle, for the realities they symbolized. 
 " Problems of taste," considered in the light of a philo- 
 sophical method, " expand to problems of human na- 
 ture"; and literary art is in itself no more than a part 
 of the larger creation of which it is significant. He 
 speaks the language of the great Romantics of whom he 
 was the interpreter when he defines poetry as ' ' the 
 science of human passion in all its fluxes and refluxes — 
 in its wondrous depths below depths, and its starry atti- 
 tudes that ascended to the heavens." 
 
 Here, too, he was in the reaction against those who 
 had set the brain above the heart, the capacity to reason 
 over the capacity to feel. His criticism is sometimes ex- 
 traordinarily valuable, because while it carefully examines 
 the mechanism of literary composition, while it seeks 
 to explain the effects produced by deductions from in- 
 telligible rules, it recurs in the end to that ' ' unfathomed 
 deep" of emotion which surges below all artistic expres- 
 sion. Passion is requisite even for true intellectual re- 
 velation. Without struggle and suffering there can be 
 no penetrating vision, only a shallow gaze upon the 
 surface of things. It is on this account that De Quincey 
 insists on the superiority of the best modern, over the 
 best of the ancient, literature, the literature saturated 
 with ^he. sense of sorrow and sin and spiritual tumult 
 over the frozen tranquillity of Hellenic Paganism. Mil- 
 ton, he thinks, has more depth, and Chaucer more 
 humanity, than Homer; life throbs warm in the bosoms 
 of Shakespeare's women, while it looks coldly through the 
 "marble eyes" of the goddesses and heroines of Attic 
 tragedy. Clytemnestra, one would think, and Medea 
 were made of flesh and blood ; but De Quincey's illus- 
 trative examples will not always bear investigation, any 
 more than the specific applications of his literary judge- 
 ment. Still he did as much as anyone in England to 
 emancipate criticism from the bondage to words and 
 forms, and to reconstruct our standard of literary values. 
 His definition of genius, his masterly discrimination be- 
 tween "power" and knowledge, his discussion of the 
 Miltonic "sublimity," of rhetoric and eloquence, of the 
 
Ix THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 scope and limits of poetry, and many other contributions 
 to aesthetics have been among the "dynamic influences" 
 of the nineteenth century, and have affected thousands 
 who know Uttle of his actual text. And in his writing 
 on Shelley, on Goldsmith, on Lamb and Hazlitt, on 
 Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne,_and in many 
 other beautiful passages, he shows that criticism can it- 
 self be drawn into the circle of "power," that it can be 
 made to move the spirit and touch the heart as well as 
 to instruct and inform. 
 
 True it is that in his criticism of books as in his criti- 
 cism of life he often reveals what has been not very 
 happily called his "John Bulhsm." Anybody less like 
 the typical John Bull I cannot imagine than this super- 
 subtle, ultra-sensitive student, nursed on solitude and 
 contemplation. But I suppose it is meant that he had a 
 large share of traditional British prejudice and tradi- 
 tional British sentiment. He had a superstitious venera- 
 tion for what was old and established; his temper in 
 that sense was conservative ; he disliked hasty innova- 
 tion ; he detested the Radicals, and distrusted the Whigs ; 
 and he had a hearty delight in vigorous action, in heroic 
 deeds, in the clash of arms, in courage, enterprise, 
 victorious energy, in the greatness and glory of Eng- 
 land. He was almost the only one among the greater 
 thinkers and writers of the past hundred years who was 
 first and last an avowed Tory. But he was a Tory who 
 knew that the Revolution, as we say now, had come to 
 stay. " It has succeeded; it is propagating its life; it 
 is travelling on to new births — conquering and yet to 
 conquer." His " fossil Toryism " was consistent with 
 the deepest sympathy with the poor, the outcasts, and 
 the suffering, and with passionate resentment against 
 the levity and callousness with which their wrongs were 
 treated by the prosperous and the rich. No reforming 
 democrat could have been touched more profoundly by 
 the common lot of the common people. 
 r But neither as the essayist nor the critic will he 
 live longest. It is as the explorer of the mystery and 
 magic of the dream-world that his place is most secure. 
 
INTRODUCTION Ixi 
 
 The Confessions will be read even if their author's other 
 writings are forgotten. They are perhaps likely to ob- 
 tain an even wider vogue in the future. For they touch 
 upon a vein of interest which has been opened afresh in 
 our own day. There is a whole fashionable philosophy, 
 a new science, growing up about the conception that 
 the intellect, developed as a useful appendage to our 
 physical evolution, is powerless to pierce the veil of its 
 own conditional existence, and grasp the realities which 
 lie behind our perception of phenomena. Only the imag- 
 ination, released^from the trammels of conscious mind, 
 can soar into this region: the poet, the mystic, the 
 visionary can pass the portal at which science halts and 
 philosophy knocks unanswered. De Quincey deliber- 
 ately set himself to throw back the gates and survey the 
 ground beyond; he dreamed systematically, and, as it 
 were, scientifically; he used opium, the "great tube 
 that connects man with the infinite," to magnify his 
 sensations and stimulate his receptivity; and all the 
 while he was on the watch, in the very ecstasy of his 
 possession, to observe the processes and tabulate the 
 results. We are but on the threshold of that strange 
 uncharted continent, that other dimension of psychical 
 space, which we know, or do not know, as dreamland. 
 De Quincey's dream-records, vague, uncertain, shifting, 
 too often artificial in their conscious straining after 
 literary effects, still keep their fascination for those who 
 suspect that one path to transcendental truth may lie 
 through those rich and peopled solitudes from which the 
 Opium-eater bore back his coruscating spoils. 
 
 We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on. 
 
 There can hardly be oblivion for the literary seer who 
 added something to the illimitable significance of a 
 thought that means perhaps more to us than it did even 
 to him. 
 
 Of his Style perhaps enough has been said already. 
 It has been extravagantly praised, and indeed at its best 
 it is difficult to over-praise it ; and it has been condemned 
 
fxii THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 as too uniformly rhetorical, too sonorous, too elaborately 
 ornamented. Referringto itinthecourseof a rather savage 
 onslaught upon De Quincey, the late Sir Leslie Stephen 
 enunciated the opinion' that the "great writers" have 
 generally been content to adopt a form " as transparent 
 and inconspicuous as possible," and that the best style 
 " according to modern canons of taste," is like the best 
 dress "which attracts least attention from its wearer." 
 De Quincey, he adds, "scorns this sneaking maxim of 
 prudence, and boldly challenges our admiration by ap- 
 pearing in the richest colouring that can be got out of 
 the dictionary." But are we bound by a "canon of 
 taste," which would make Sir Leslie Stephen a great 
 writer, and put Bacon and Milton, Sterne and Carlyle, 
 among the small ones? In any case the suggestion that 
 De Quincey is perpetually engaged in throwing fine 
 words at his readers is uncritical and unfair. It is an 
 error to suppose that he is always writing a spiecies of 
 unmetrical poetry, or that he habitually occupies himself 
 -in striking out rotund phrases and sounding periods. 
 On the contrary he rises to his impassioned effects and 
 " bravura "passages somewhat rarely, and only when they 
 are expressly demanded by the occasion. For his chief 
 excellence is that he has not one style but many styles, 
 and varies the manner of expression according to the 
 theme and the emotion as a great dramatist or composer 
 does. Between the prose of Our Ladies of Sorrow and 
 that of Murder considered as One of the Fine Arts, there 
 is as much difference as there is between the blank-verse 
 of Hamlet and the lyrics of As You Like It. De Quincey 
 has numberless changes of tone ; sometimes he is smooth, 
 "sequacious," and flowing, sometimes the sentences 
 droop with the mournful cadence of pathos, sometimes 
 they march with the brisk short stride of satire, often 
 they move with the quiet, level, easy gait of argument and 
 conversation, now and again they are swept by the 
 symphonic winds of passion, so that they surge and roll 
 and thunder. The style adapts itself to the thought and 
 
 1 In the Fortnightly Review for March 1870. 
 
INTRODUCTION Ixiii 
 
 the matter ; and if there is a uniform quality anywhere 
 it lies in the sense of rhythm, which makes every phrase 
 pulsate with living motion, and in that subtle feeling for 
 verbal values, alike in their sound and their significance, 
 which causes harsh and ugly words, and those which 
 have been worn threadbare by conventional usage, to be 
 avoided like a false or jarring note in music. 
 
 To the appeal, the meaning, the power of music De 
 Quincey was more intensely alive than any writer of his 
 own age. By some of his greater contemporaries in 
 English letters that appeal was little felt. They were 
 barely conscious of the reach and splendour of the new 
 romantic art that was to rival, it may be to supersede, 
 their own. De Quincey was keenly sensitive to it. 
 Writing of Charles Lamb he says that the sense of 
 music "was utterly obliterated, as with a sponge, by 
 nature herself from Lamb's organization"; and it fol- 
 lowed that he had no sense of the rhythmical in prose 
 composition. "Rhythms, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous 
 ascent of clauses in the structure of sentences, were 
 effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the 
 voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. " He himself, 
 he adds, occupies " the very station of polar opposition 
 to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one 
 excess as he is in the other." Music was his solace m the 
 evenings at Lasswade; he delighted in the " infinity " of 
 the violin; and in one of the notable passages of the 
 Confessions he describes how he derived a pleasure, 
 higher than that of any Turk who ever entered the 
 paradise of opium-eaters, by stimulating his nerves with 
 laudanum so that they might vibrate more vividly to 
 the heavenly and harp-like voice of the " angelic 
 Grassini " at the Opera. ^ And it is music, more than any 
 of the other arts, to which his impassioned prose is 
 nearest akin. I can at least agree with Sir Leslie 
 Stephen when he says that it is not "word-painting" 
 De Quincey gives us in his more exquisite passages so 
 much as a kind of musical composition, in which words 
 
 ^ See infra, p. 34. 
 
Ixiv THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 and sentences stand for notes and phrases, and by their 
 mere structure and combinations and rhythms attune 
 themselves to the emotions, and suggest ideas that 
 cannot easily be given articulate and precise expression. 
 One may go further. Is it fanciful to suggest that the 
 spirit of the great tone-poets gives a distinctive quality 
 to his own best writing, so that we seem to find in it 
 some impress or reflection of the majesty of Beethoven, 
 the lucent vision of Mozart, the mass and volume of 
 Handel, and the pregnant solemnity of Bach? At least 
 one may suppose that an age like ours, too restless and 
 impatient to find the old relief in poetry and the plastic 
 arts, will turn again to pages which have more of music, 
 in its varied cadences and swelling harmonies, its stormy 
 orchestral effects and melodic sweetness, its passion and 
 its pain, than those of any other master who ever played 
 upon the instrument of English prose. 
 
 [The Selections given in the pages that follow are derived either 
 from the periodical publications in which they originally appeared, 
 or fronKthe volumes of the Edinburgh Collective Edition of 1862-3. 
 Some obvious errors and misprints have been corrected. I have 
 not always thought it necessary to adhere to De Quincey's punctua- 
 tion, or to his arrangement of his text in paragraphs usually of 
 excessive length. Nor have I followed his regrettable practice of 
 printing Greek words without the accents. — S. L.] 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 EDITIONS 
 
 The Works of Thomas De Quincey. Ticknor and Fields. 
 
 Boston, 1851-55. 20 vols. 
 Selections Grave and Gay from Writings Published and 
 
 Unpublished by Thomas De Quincey. James Hog-g. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1853-60. 14 vols. 
 The Works of Thomas De Quincey. A. and C. Black. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1862-63. 15 vols. A supplementary 
 
 volume was issued in 1871. 
 The Works of Thomas de Quincey. Riverside edition. 
 
 Houghton and MifHin. Boston and New York, 
 
 1877. 12 vols. 
 The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. Edited 
 
 by David Masson. Edinburgh, A. and C. Black. 
 
 1889-90. 14 vols. [Re-issued in 1896-97.] 
 The Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. With 
 
 Preface and Notes by James Hogg. London, 1890. 
 
 2 vols. 
 The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey. Edited 
 
 by Alexander H. Japp. London, 1891-93. 2 vols. 
 The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. London, 
 
 1822. Second Edition with Appendix, 1823 ; fre- 
 quently reprinted. The first edition was reprinted 
 
 with notes, etc., under the editorship of Dr. Richard 
 
 Garnett. London, 1891. 
 Klosterheim, or The Masque. Edinburgh, 1832. 
 The Logic of Political Economy. Edinburgh, 1844, 
 
Ixvi THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 BIOGRAPHIES, ETC. 
 
 Thomas De Quincey, his Life and Writings. By H. A. 
 Page [Dr. A. H. Japp]. London, 1877. 2 vols. This 
 is a very creditable piece of biographical work, contain- 
 ing many extracts from private letters and other docu- 
 ments, and much interesting matter contributed by 
 De Quincey's daughters and some of his friends. A 
 second edition, revised, was issued in one volume 
 in 1890. 
 
 Personal Recollections of Thomas De Quincey. By John 
 Richard Findlay. Edinburgh, 1886. 
 
 De Quincey Memorials. Edited by A. H. Japp, LL.D. 
 London, 1891. 2 vols. 
 
 De Quincey and his Friends. Personal recollections, 
 souvenirs, and anecdotes, written and collected by 
 James Hogg. London, 1895. 
 
 De Quincey. By David Masson. London, 1881. [A 
 compendious memoir, accurate and discriminating, 
 contributed by Professor Masson to Messrs. Mac- 
 millan's well-known "English Men of Letters" series.] 
 
 De Quincey. By Henry S. Salt. (Bell's Miniature Series 
 of Great Writers.) London: George Bell and Sons. 
 1904. [An admirable and extremely well written little 
 book, which gives in a small compass useful bio- 
 graphical information, and much sound and sympa- 
 thetic criticism.] 
 
 Outcast Essays. By Shadworth H. Hodgson, LL.D. 
 London, 1 88 1. [Contains two valuable papers on 
 "The Genius of De Quincey" and " De Quincey as 
 Political Economist."] 
 
 De Quincey's Literary Criticism. Edited with an Intro- 
 duction by H. Darbishire. London, 1909. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH 
 OPIUM-EATER 
 
 [It was in his thirty-seventh year that De Quincey suddenly 
 leaped into fame with the work that has taken its place among the 
 classics of nineteenth-century literature. In September 182 1 the 
 London Magazine, a monthly periodical that had among its con- 
 tributors Lamb, Hazlitt, Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, and other 
 notable writers, published the first part of the Confessions of an 
 English Opium-Eater. The second part followed in October. A 
 third part was promised but did not appear. The Confessions at 
 once attracted attention, they were much noticed by the news- 
 papers, and the " English Opium-Eater" became a person of con- 
 siderable interest to the public. De Quincey took advantage of 
 the curiosity which he had aroused to contribute other papers on 
 various subjects to the London Magazine during the next few years 
 " By the author of the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," 
 and it was as the "Opium-Eater" (sometimes veiled by the 
 signature "X. Y. Z.")that he continued to be known to the world 
 of magazine-readers for years. The popularity of the Confessions 
 induced the publisher of the London to reprint them in volume form 
 in 1822. The book went through several editions before De Quincey 
 took it in hand in 1853 for the Edinburgh edition of his writings. 
 In this edition the Confessions appear in a much extended form 
 with many additions to the autobiographical recollections and in- 
 cidents. 
 
 The Confessions are concerned with many things besides opium, 
 De Quincey himself said that his main object was to lead up to an 
 account of the dreams and visions of the night, mysterious, 
 splendid, and terrible, which in the fullness of time come upon 
 the victim to the drug; and the dreams he actually describes 
 were intended to form part of a much longer series. In order to 
 prepare the reader's mind for these revelations, De Quincey 
 thought it necessary to relate the story of his early life up to 
 the period when, as a strangely precocious youth of seventeen, 
 he ran away from Manchester Grammar School and plunged 
 
 B 
 
2 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 into London, an unknown and almost destitute young vagrant. 
 The experience coloured his whole later career, and is described 
 with such a wealth of vivid detail that many hasty readers of 
 the Confessions have probably supposed that it lasted through 
 years of desperate poverty and struggle. As a fact it endured 
 only for a few months, when it was ended by the lad's return 
 to his mother's house at Chester; and later in the same year, 
 1803, he went into residence at Oxford. But during those few 
 months he saw much and felt much; he learnt to khow what 
 hunger was like, and homelessness and want; he joined hands 
 with the outcasts, the pariah-women of the streets, and he 
 gained a sense of the pathos of common things, the lacrimae rerum, 
 which never left him and appears again and again in his writings 
 to the end.] 
 
 ALONE IN LONDON 
 
 [In Part I of the Confessions, De Quincey, after his lengthy and 
 interesting reminiscences of boyhood, explains how he fled from 
 school, and found himself, penniless and alone, in London, and 
 under an immediate necessity of obtaining money in some way.] 
 
 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 in- 
 terest upon it, would subdivide into four sums of ;^So. 
 Now, what interval was it that divided me from my 
 majority? Simply an interval of four years. London, I 
 knew or believed, was the dearest of all cities for three 
 items of expenditure : (i) servants' wages ; (2) lodgings;' 
 (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 respect- 
 ability, it has always been possible for the last half century 
 to obtain two furnished rooms at a weekly cost of half- 
 
 ^ Not universally. Glasgow, if you travel from Hammerfest 
 southwards (that is, from the northernmost point of Norway, or 
 Swedish Lapland, traversing all latitudes of Europe to Gibraltar 
 on the west, or Naples on the east), is the one dearest place for 
 lodgings known to man. A decent lodging for a single person, in 
 Edinburgh which could be had readily for half-a-guinea a week, 
 will in Glasgow cost a guinea. Glasgow, except as to servants, is 
 a dearer abode than London. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 3 
 
 a-guinea. This sum (or say £2^) deducted, would 
 leave me annually about the same sum for my other 
 expenses. Too certainly I knew that this would suffice. 
 If, therefore, I could obtain the ;^2oo, 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 real, small or great, from resid- 
 ence at a university. But, as in fact I never drew the 
 slightest advantage or emolument from any university, 
 my scheme when realised would have landed me in the 
 same point which finally I attained by its failure. The 
 plan was simple enough, but it rested on the assumption 
 that I could melt the obduracy of money-lenders. On 
 this point I had both hopes and fears. But more irri- 
 tating than either was the delay which eventually I came 
 to recognise as an essential element in the policy of all 
 money-lenders : in that way only can they raise up such 
 claims on behalf of their law-agents as may be fitted for 
 sustaining their zeal. 
 
 I lost no time in opening the business which had 
 brought me to London. By ten a.m., an hour when all 
 men of business are presumed to be at their posts, 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), endeavoured to win his favourable atten- 
 tion. 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 pro- 
 secuting 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- 
 
4 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 sheriflF) 
 in Greek Street, Soho. 
 
 The house was not in itself, supposing that its 
 face had been washed now and then, at all disrespect- 
 able. But it wore an unhappy countenance of gloom 
 and unsocial fretfulness, due in reality to the long 
 neglect of painting, cleansing, and, in some instances, 
 of repairing. There were, however, no fractured panes 
 of glass in the windows; and the deep silence which 
 invested the house, not only from the absence of all 
 visitors, but also of those common household function- 
 aries, bakers, butchers, beer-carriers, sufficiently ac- 
 counted for the desolation, by suggesting an excuse 
 not strictly true — viz. , that it might be tenantless. The 
 house already had tenants through the day, though of a 
 noiseless order, and was destined soon to increase them. 
 Mr. Brown-Brunell, after reconnoitring me through a 
 narrow side-window (such as is often attached to front- 
 doors in London), admitted me cheerfully, and conducted 
 me, as an honoured guest, to his private officina diplo- 
 matum at the back of the house. From the expression 
 of his face, but much more from the contradictory and 
 self-counteracting play of his features, you gathered in a 
 moment that he was a man who had much to conceal, 
 and much, perhaps, that he would gladly forget. His 
 eye expressed wariness against surprise, and passed in 
 a moment into irrepressible glances of suspicion and 
 alarm. No smile that ever his face naturally assumed 
 but was pulled short up by some freezing counteraction, 
 or was chased by some close-following expression of 
 sadness. One feature there was of relenting goodness 
 and nobleness in Mr. Brunell's character, to which it 
 was that subsequently I myself was most profoundly in- 
 debted for an asylum that saved my life. He had the 
 deepest, the most liberal, and unaffected love of know- 
 ledge, but, above all, of that specific knowledge which 
 we call literature. His own stormy (and no doubt 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 5 
 
 oftentimes disgraceful) career in life, that had entang-led 
 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 sur- 
 rounding him with opportunities for taking advantages 
 not strictly honourable, before he had formed any fixed 
 principles at all. From the very first, Mr. Brunell had 
 entered zealously into such conversations with myself 
 as either gave openings for reviving his own delightful 
 remembrances of classic authors, or brought up some- 
 times doubts for solution, sometimes perplexities and 
 cases of intricate construction for illustration and dis- 
 entanglement. Hunger-bitten as the house and the house- 
 hold genius seemed, wearing the legend of Famine upon 
 every mantelpiece or "coigne of vantage," and vehe- 
 mently protesting, as it must have done through all its 
 echoes, against the introduction of supernumerary 
 mouths, nevertheless there was (and, I suppose, of neces- 
 sity) a clerk, who bore the name of Pyment, or Pyemont, 
 then first of all, then last of all, made known to me as a 
 possible surname. Mr. Pyment had no alias — or not to 
 my knowledge — except, indeed, in the vituperative 
 vocabulary of Mr. Brunell, in which most variegated 
 nomenclature he bore many scores of opprobrious 
 names, having no reference whatever to any real habits 
 of the man, good or bad. At two rooms' distance, Mr. 
 .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, unless it happened (as now and 
 then it did) that he could do so with ludicrous effect. 
 What made the necessity for Pyment was the continual 
 call for " an appearance" to be put in at some of the 
 subordinate courts inWestminster— courts of conscience, 
 sheriff courts, etc. But it happens often that he who is 
 most indispensable, and gets through most work at one 
 hour, becomes a useless burden at another, as the 
 
6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 hardest working reaper seems, in the eyes of an ignora- 
 mus, on a wet, wintry day, to be a luxurious idler. Of 
 these ups and downs in Pyment's working life, Mr. 
 Brunell made a most cynical use; making out that 
 Pyment not only did nothing, but also that he created 
 much work for the afflicted Brunell. However, it hap- 
 pened occasionally that the truth vindicated itself, by 
 making a call upon Pyment's physics — aggressive or 
 defensive — that needed an instant attention. " Pyment, 
 I say; this way, Pyment; you're wanted, Pyment." In 
 fact, both were big, hulking men, and had need to be 
 so ; for sometimes, whether with good reason or none, 
 clients at the end of a losing suit, or of a suit nominally 
 gained, but unexpectedly laden with heavy expenses, 
 became refractory, showed fight, and gave Pyment 
 reason for saying that at least on this day he had 
 earned his salary by serving an ejectment on a client 
 whom on any other plan it might have been hard to 
 settle with. 
 
 But I am anticipating. I go back, therefore, for a 
 few explanatory words, to the day of my arrival in 
 London. How beneficial to me would a little candour 
 have been at that early period! If (which was the 
 simple truth, known to all parties but myself) I had 
 been told that nothing would be brought to a close in 
 less than six months, even assuming the ultimate adop- 
 tion of my proposals, I should from the first have dis- 
 missed all hopes of this nature, as being unsuited to the 
 practicabilities of my situation. It will be seen further on 
 that there was a real and sincere intention of advancing 
 the money wanted. But it was then too late. And uni- 
 versally I believe myself entitled to say, that even 
 honourable lawyers will not in a case of this nature 
 move at a faster pace: they will all alike loiter upon 
 varied allegations through six months; and for this 
 reason, that any shorter period, they fancy, will hardly 
 seem to justify, in the eyes of their client, the sum which 
 they find themselves entitled to charge for their trouble 
 and their preliminary correspondence. How much better 
 for both sides, and more honourable, as more frank and 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 7 
 
 free from disguises, that the client should say, "Raise 
 this sum " (of, suppose, ;^40o) "in three weeks, which 
 can be done, if it can be done in three years, and here 
 is a bonus of ;^ioo. Delay for two months, and I decline 
 the whole transaction." Treated with that sort of open- 
 ness, 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 re- 
 freshing my hopes with new delusions, whiling me on 
 with pretended preparation of deeds, and extorting from 
 me out of every little remittance I received from old 
 family friends casually met in London as much as 
 possible for the purchase of imaginary stamps, the 
 result was that I myself was brought to the brink of 
 destruction through pure inanition ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, those concerned in these deceptions gained no- 
 thing that might not have been gained honourably and 
 rightfully under a system of plain dealing. As it 
 was, subject to these eternal deceptions, I continued 
 for seven or eight weeks to live most parsimoniously 
 in lodgings. These lodgings, though barely decent in 
 my eyes, ran away with at least two-thirds of my re- 
 maining guineas. At length, whilst it was yet pos- 
 sible to reserve a solitary half-guinea towards the more 
 urgent interest of finding daily food, I gave up my 
 rooms; and, stating exactly the circumstances in which 
 I stood, requested permission of Mr. Brunell to make 
 use of his large house as a nightly asylum from the open 
 air. Parliament had not then made it a crime, next 
 door to a felony, for a man to sleep out of doors (as 
 some twenty years later was done by our benign legis- 
 lators) ; 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 parlia- 
 mentary wretch I had been in elder days, 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 when Mr. Brunell not only most 
 readily assented to my request, but begged of me to 
 
8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 re- 
 gretted that I had not, at a much earlier period, applied 
 for this liberty ; since I might thus have saved a con- 
 siderable fund of guineas, applicable, of course, to all 
 urgent necessities, but at this particular moment to one 
 clamorous urgency — viz., the purchase of blankets. O 
 ancient women, daughters of toil and suffering, amongst 
 all the hardships and bitter inheritances of flesh that ye 
 are called upon to face, not one — not even hunger — 
 seems in my eyes comparable to that of nightly cold. 
 To seek a refuge from cold in bed, and then, from the 
 thin, gauzy texture of the miserable, worn-out blankets, 
 " not to sleep a wink," as Wordsworth records of poor 
 old women in Dorsetshire, where coals, from local 
 causes, were at the very dearest — what a terrific enemy 
 was that for poor old grandmothers to face in fight! 
 How feelingly I learned at this time, as heretofore I had 
 learned on the wild hill-sides in Wales, what an un- 
 speakable blessing is that of warmth! A more killing 
 curse there does not exist for man or woman than that 
 bitter combat between the weariness that prompts sleep, 
 and the keen, searching cold that forces you from the 
 first access of sleep to start up horror-stricken, and to 
 seek warmth vainly in renewed exercise, though long 
 since' fainting under fatigue. However, even without 
 blankets, it was a fine thing to have an asylum from the 
 open air ; and to be assured of this asylum as long as I 
 was likely to want it. 
 
 Towards nightfall I went down to Greek Street ; and 
 found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the 
 house already contained one single inmate — a poor, 
 friendless child, apparently ten years old ; but she seemed 
 hunger-bitten; and sufferings of that sort often make 
 children look older than they are. From this forlorn child 
 I learned that she had slept and lived there alone for 
 some time before I came ; and great joy the poor creature 
 expressed when she found that I was in future to be her 
 companion through the hours of darkness. The house 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 9 
 
 could hardly be called large — that is, it was not large on 
 each separate storey ; but, having four storeys in all, it 
 was large enough to impress vividly the sense of its 
 echoing loneliness ; and, from the want of furniture, the 
 noise of the rats made a prodigious uproar on the stair- 
 case and hall ; so that, amidst the real fleshly ills of cold 
 and hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer 
 still more from the self-created one of ghosts. Against 
 these enemies I could promise her protection; human 
 companionship was in itself protection ; but of other and 
 more needful aid I had, alas ! little to offer. We lay upon 
 the floor, with a bundle of law-papers for a pillow, but 
 with no other covering than a large horseman's cloak ; 
 afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old 
 sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of 
 other articles, which added a little to our comfort. The 
 poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security 
 against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than 
 usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in general, 
 she was tolerably warm, and often slept when I could 
 not ; for, during the last two months of my sufferings, I 
 slept much in the daytime, and was apt to fall into tran- 
 sient dozingsatall hours. Butmysleep distressed me more 
 than my watching; for, besides the tumultuousness of 
 my dreams (which were only not so awful as those which 
 I shall have hereafter to describe as produced by opium), 
 my sleep was never more than what is called dog-sleep ; 
 so that I could hear myself moaning; and very often I 
 was awakened suddenly by my own voice. About this 
 time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I 
 fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me, at 
 different periods of my life — viz., a sort of twitching (I 
 knew not where, but apparently about the region of my 
 stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out my 
 feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming 
 on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve 
 it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from 
 exhaustion ; and, through increasing weakness (as I said 
 before), I was constantly falling asleep and constantly 
 awaking. Too generally the very attainment of any deep 
 
lo THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 repose seemed as if mechanically linked to some fatal 
 necessity of self-interruption. It was as though a cup 
 were gradually filled by the sleepy overflow of some 
 natural fountain, the fulness of the cup expressing sym- 
 bolically the completeness of the rest ; but then, in the 
 next stage of the process, it seemed as though the rush 
 and torrent-like babbling of the redundant waters, when 
 running over from every part of the cup, interrupted the 
 slumber which in their earlier stage of silent gathering 
 they had so naturally produced. Such and so regular in 
 its swell and its collapse— in its tardy growth and its 
 violent dispersion — did this endless alternation of stealthy 
 sleep and stormy awaking travel through stages as 
 natural as the increments of twilight, or the kindlings of 
 the dawn ; no rest that was not a prologue to terror; no 
 sweet tremulous pulses of restoration that did not sud- 
 denly explode through rolling clamours of fiery disruption. 
 Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in 
 upon us suddenly, and very early ; sometimes not till ten 
 o'clock ; sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear 
 of arrest. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every 
 night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I 
 observed that he never failed to examine, through a 
 private window, the appearance of those who knocked 
 at the door, before he would allow it to be opened. He 
 breakfasted alone ; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly 
 have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second 
 person, any more than the quantity of esculent material, 
 which, for the most part, was little more than a roll, or 
 a few biscuits, purchased on his road from the place 
 where he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as I 
 once learnedly observed to him, the several members of it 
 must have stood in the relation to each other (not ^a^in any 
 relation whatever) of succession, and not of co-existence ; 
 in the relation of parts of time, and not of the parts of 
 space. During his breakfast, I generally contrived a 
 reason for lounging in ; and, with an air of as much in- 
 difference as I could assume, took up such fragments as 
 might chance to remain ; sometimes, indeed, none at all 
 remained. In doing this I committed no robbery, except 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER ii 
 
 upon Mr. Brunell himself, who was thus obliged, now 
 and then, to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; but 
 he, through channels subsequently explained, was repaid 
 a thousand-fold ; and, as to the poor child, s?ie was never 
 admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his 
 chief depository of parchments, law-writings, etc.), that 
 room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being 
 regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six 
 o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the 
 day. Whether this child were an illegitimate daughter 
 of Mr. Brunell, or only a servant, I could not ascertain ; 
 she did not herself know; but certainly she was treated 
 altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. 
 Brunell make his appearance than she went below-stairs, 
 brushed his shoes, coat, etc. ; and, except when she was 
 summoned to run upon some errand, she never emerged 
 from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchens to the upper 
 air until my welcome knock towards nightfall called up 
 her little trembling footsteps to the front-door. Of her 
 life during the daytime, however, I knew little but what 
 I gathered from her own account at night ; for, as soon 
 as the hours of business commenced, I saw that my ab- 
 sence would be acceptable ; and, in general, therefore, I 
 went off and sat in the parks or elsewhere until the ap- 
 proach of twilight. 
 
 But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the 
 house himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous 
 practitioners in lower departments of the law who, on 
 prudential Jreasons, or from necessity, deny themselves 
 all indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience. 
 In many walks of life a conscience is a more expensive 
 encumbrance than a wife or a carriage ; and, as people 
 talk of " laying down " their carriages, so I suppose my 
 friend, Mr. Brunell, had " laid down " his conscience for 
 a time ; meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he 
 could aflFord it. He was an advertising attorney, who 
 continually notified to the public, through the morning 
 papers, that he undertook to raise loans for approved 
 parties in what would generally be regarded as desperate 
 cases — viz. , where there was nothing better than personal 
 
12 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 security to offer. But, as he took good care to ascertain 
 that there were ample funds in reversion to be counted 
 on, or near connections that would not suffer the family- 
 name to be dishonoured, and as he insured the borrower's 
 life over a sufficient period, the risk was not great ; and 
 even of this the whole rested upon the actual money- 
 lender, who stood aloof in the background, and never 
 revealed himself to clients in his proper person, transact- 
 ing all affairs through his proxies learned in the law — 
 Mr. Brunell or others. The inner economy of such a 
 man's daily life would present a monstrous picture. 
 Even with my limited opportunities for observing what 
 went on, I saw scenes of intrigue and complex chicanery 
 at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at which I 
 smiled then in spite of my misery. My situation, how- 
 ever, at that time, gave me little experience, in my own 
 person, of any qualities in Mr. Brunell's character but 
 such as did him honour ; and of his whole strange com- 
 position I ought to forget everything, but that towards 
 me he was obliging, and, to the extent of his power, 
 generous. 
 
 That power was not, indeed, very extensive. How- 
 ever, in common with the rats, I sat rent free; and, as 
 Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his 
 life had as much wall-fruit as he wished, so let me be 
 grateful that, on that single occasion, I had as large a 
 choice of rooms, or even of apartments, in a London 
 mansion — viz., as I am now at liberty to add, at the 
 north-west corner of Greek Street, being the house on 
 that side the street nearest to Soho Square — as I could 
 possibly desire. Except the Bluebeard room, which the 
 poor child believed to be permanently haunted, and 
 which, besides, was locked, all others, from the attics to 
 the cellars, were at our service. " The world was all 
 before us," and we pitched our tent for the night in any 
 spot we might fancy. This house I have described 
 as roomy and respectable. It stands in a conspicuous 
 situation, and in a well-known part of London. Many 
 of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within 
 a few hours of reading this. For myself, I never fail 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 13 
 
 to visit it when accident draws me to London. About 
 ten o'clock this very night (August 15, 1821, being 
 my birthday), I turned aside from my evening walk 
 along Oxford Street, in order to take a glance at it. 
 It is now in the occupation of some family, apparently 
 respectable. The windows are no longer coated by 
 a paste composed of ancient soot and sviperannuated 
 rain ; and the whole exterior no longer wears an aspect 
 of gloom. By the lights in the front drawing-room I 
 observed a domestic party, assembled, perhaps, at tea, 
 apparently cheerful and gay — marvellous contrast, in my 
 eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desolation of 
 that same house nineteen years ago, when its nightly 
 occupants were one famishing scholar and a poor, neg- 
 lected child. Her, by the bye, in after years, I vainly 
 endeavoured to trace. Apart from her situation, she was 
 not what would be called an interesting child. She was 
 neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remark- 
 ably pleasing in manners. But, thank God! even in 
 those years I needed not the embellishments of elegant 
 accessories to conciliate my affections. Plain human 
 nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was 
 enough for me ; and I loved the child because she was 
 my partner in wretchedness. If she is now living, she is 
 probably a mother, with children of her own ; but, as I 
 have said, I could never trace her. 
 
 ANN OF OXFORD STREET 
 
 [The concluding portion of De Quincey's London experiences in 
 tlie Confessions deals with his further attempts to "raise the 
 wind " by means of the money-lenders. But the narrative is inter- 
 woven with the profoundly touching and beautiful account of 
 Ann, the poor girl with whom De Quincey became acquainted 
 when he, like her, was a friendless wanderer on the stony pave- 
 ments of Oxford Street. This celebrated episode reveals the 
 author in his best mood of emotional pathos without ^ touch of 
 meretricious sentiment.] 
 
 This I regret; but another person there was, at that 
 time, whom I have since sought to trace, with far deeper 
 
14 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 earnestness, and with far deeper sorrpw at my failure. 
 This person was a young woman, and one of that un- 
 happy class who belong to the outcasts and pariahs of 
 our female population. I feel no shame, nor have any 
 reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on familiar 
 and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate 
 condition. Smile not, reader too carelessly facile ! Frown 
 not, reader too unseasonably austere! Little call was 
 there here either for smiles or frowns. A penniless school- 
 boy could not be supposed to stand within the range of 
 such temptations ; besides that, according to the ancient 
 Latin proverb, "sine Cerere et Baccho," etc. These un- 
 happy women, to me, were simply sisters in calamity; 
 and sisters amongst whom, in as large measure as 
 amongst any other equal number of persons, command- 
 ing more of the world's respect, were to be found 
 humanity, disinterested generosity, courage that would 
 not falter in distress of the helpless, and fidelity that 
 would have scorned to take bribes for betraying. But the 
 truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person 
 to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any 
 creature that wore a human shape. I cannot suppose, I 
 will not believe, that any creatures wearing the form of 
 man or woman are so absolutely rejected and reprobate 
 outcasts, that merely to talk with them inflicts pollution. 
 On the contrary, from my very earliest youth, it has been 
 my pride to converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all 
 human beings — man, woman, and child — that chance 
 might fling in my way ; for a philosopher should not see 
 with the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling him- 
 self a man of the world, filled with narrow and self- 
 regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should 
 look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as standing 
 in an equal relation to high and low, to educated and 
 uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being my- 
 self, at that time, of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker 
 of the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with 
 those female peripatetics who are technically called street- 
 walkers. Some of these women had occasionally taken 
 my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 15 
 
 the steps of houses where I was sitting ; others had pro- 
 tected me against more serious aggressions. But one 
 amongst them — the one on whose account I have at all 
 introduced this subject — yet, no ! let me not class thee, 
 
 O noble-minded Ann , with that order of women ; 
 
 let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to de- 
 signate the condition of her to whose bounty and com- 
 passion — ministering to my necessities when all the 
 world stood aloof from me — I owe it that I am at this 
 time alive. 
 
 For many weeks I had walked, at nights, with this poor 
 friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested 
 with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes. 
 She could not be so old as myself; she told me, in- 
 deed, 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. Here was a 
 case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason 
 to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had 
 better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of 
 the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to 
 avenge. But the stream of London charity flows in a 
 channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet noiseless 
 and underground ; — not obvious or readily accessible to 
 poor, houseless wanderers ; and it cannot be denied that 
 the outside air and framework of society in London, as 
 in all vast capitals, is unavoidably harsh, cruel, and re- 
 pulsive. In any case, however, I saw that a part of her 
 injuries might have been redressed ; and I urged her often 
 and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magistrate. 
 Friendless as she was, I assured her that she would 
 meet with immediate attention ; .and that English justice, 
 which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and 
 amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian who had plun- 
 dered her little property. She promised me often that 
 she would; but she delayed taking the steps I pointed 
 out, from time to time ; for she was timid and dejected 
 to a degree which showed how deeply sorrow had taken 
 hold of her young heart ; and perhaps she thought justly 
 that the most upright judge and the most righteous 
 
i6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 I, accompanied by her, should state 
 her case to a magistrate. This little service it was des- 
 tined, however, that I should never reaHse. 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 re- 
 quested her to turn off with me into Soho Square. 
 Thither we went; and we sat down on the steps of a 
 house, which to this hour I never pass without a pang of 
 grief, and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that 
 unhappy girl, in memory of the noble act which she there 
 performed. Suddenly, as we sat, I grew much worse. 
 I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all 
 at once I sank from her arms, and fell backwards on the 
 steps. From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner 
 conviction of the liveliest kind, that, without some power- 
 ful and reviving stimulus, I should either have died on 
 the spot, or should, at least, have sunk to a point of ex- 
 haustion from which all re-ascent, under my friendless 
 circumstances, would soon have become hopeless. Then 
 it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan 
 companion, who had herself met with little but injuries 
 in this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. Utter- 
 ing a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she 
 ran off into Oxford Street, and, in less time than could 
 be imagined, returned to me with a glass of port-wine 
 and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach (which 
 at that time would have rejected all solid food) with an 
 instantaneous power of restoration ; and for this glass 
 the generous girl, without a murmur, paid out of her 
 own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered, when 
 she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare ne- 
 cessaries 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 in succeeding years, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 17 
 
 standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with 
 grief of heart and perfect love — how often have I wished 
 that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed 
 to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object 
 with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment, even so the 
 benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might 
 have a like prerogative ; might have power given it from 
 above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to pursue thee into 
 the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were 
 possible) even into the darkness of the grave, there to 
 awaken thee with an authentic message qf peace and 
 forgiveness, and of final reconciliation ! 
 
 Some feelings, though not deeper or more passionate, 
 are more tender than others ; and often when I walk, at 
 this time, in Oxford Street by dreamy lamp-light, and 
 hear those airs played on a common street-organ which 
 years ago solaced me and my dear youthful companion, 
 I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious 
 dispensation which so suddenly and so Critically separ- 
 ated us for ever. How it happened, the reader will 
 understand from what remains of this introductory nar- 
 ration. 
 
 Soon after the period of the last incident 1 have re- 
 corded, I met in Albemarle Street a gentleman of his 
 late Majesty's household. This gentleman had received 
 hospitalities, on different occasions, from my family ; and 
 he challenged me upon the strength of my family like- 
 ness. I did not attempt any disguise, but answered his 
 questions ingenuously ; and, on his pledging his word of 
 honour that he would not betray me to my guardians, I 
 gave him my real address in Greek Street. The next 
 day I received from him a ten-pound bank-note. The 
 letter enclosing it was delivered^ with other letters of 
 business, to the attorney; but, though his look and 
 manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he 
 gave it up to me honourably, and without demur. 
 
 This present, from the particular service to which much 
 of it was applied, leads me naturally to speak again of 
 the original purpose which had allured me up to London, 
 and winch I had been without intermission prosecuting 
 
 c 
 
i8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 through Mr. Brunell from the first day of my arrival in 
 London. 
 
 In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my 
 readers that I should not have found some means of 
 staving off the last extremities of penury; and it will 
 strike them that two resources, at least, must have been 
 open to me — viz., either to seek assistance from the 
 friends of my family, or to turn my youthful accomplish- 
 ments, such as they were, into some channel of pecuniary 
 emolument. As to the first course, I may observe, gener- 
 ally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the 
 chance of being reclaimed by my guardians, not doubt- 
 ing that whatever power the law gave them would have 
 been enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, to the 
 extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I 
 had quitted; a restoration which, as it would, in my 
 eyes, have been a dishonour, even if submitted to volun- 
 tarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in contempt 
 and defiance of my own known wishes and earnest 
 resistance, to have proved a humiliation worse to me 
 than death, and which would, indeed, have terminated 
 in death. I was, therefore, shy enough of applying for 
 assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of 
 receiving it, if at any risk of furnishing my guardians 
 with a clue for tracing me. My father's friends, no 
 doubt, had been many, and were scattered all over the 
 kingdom; but, as to London in particular, though a large 
 section of these friends would certainly be found there, 
 yet (as full ten years had passed since his death) I knew 
 very few of them even by name; and, never having seen 
 London before — except once, in my fifteenth year, for a 
 few hours — I knew not the address of even those few. 
 To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the 
 difficulty, but much more the danger which I have men- 
 tioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other 
 mode — that of turning any talents or knowledge that I 
 might possess to a lucrative use — I now feel half inclined 
 to join my reader in wondering that I should have over- 
 looked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other 
 way), I might surely have gained enough for my slender 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER ig 
 
 wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged 
 with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would 
 soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. 
 And there was this great preliminary advantage in giving 
 such a direction to my efforts, that the intellectual dignity 
 and elegance associated with all ministerial services 
 about the press would have saved my pride and 
 self-respect from mortification. In an extreme case, such 
 as mine had now become, I should not have absolutely 
 disdained the humble station of "devil." A subaltern 
 situation in a service inherently honourable is better than 
 a much higher situation in a service pointing to ultimate 
 objects that are mean or ignoble. I am, indeed, not sure 
 that I could adequately have discharged the functions of 
 this office. To the perfection of the diabolic character, 
 I fear that patience is one of the indispensable graces ; 
 more, perhaps, than I should be found on trial to possess 
 for dancing attendance upon crochety authors, super- 
 stitiously fastidious in matters of punctuation. But why 
 talk of my qualifications? Qualified or not, where could 
 I obtain such an office? For it must not be forgotten 
 that even a diabolic appointment requires interest. 
 Towards that, I must first of all have an introduction 
 to some respectable publisher ; and this I had no means 
 of obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had never 
 once occurred to me to think of literary labours as a 
 source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining 
 money had ever suggested itself, but that of borrowing 
 it on the strength of my future claims and expectations. 
 This mode I sought by every avenue to compass; and, 
 amongst other persons, I applied to a Jew named 
 
 D . 
 
 To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders, 
 I had introduced myself, with an account of my expecta- 
 tions, which account they had little difficulty in ascer- 
 taining 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 
 
20 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 occurred to me as a possible one ; I had rather feared, 
 whenever my Jewish friends scrutinised me keenly, that 
 I might be too well known to be that person, and that 
 some scheme might be passing in their minds for entrap- 
 ping me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange 
 to me to find my own self, viaterialiter considered (so I 
 expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of distinc- 
 tions), suspected of counterfeiting my own s&\f, formaliter 
 considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I took 
 the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales, I 
 had received various letters from young friends ; these I 
 produced, for I carried them constantly in my pocket. 
 Most of these letters were from the Earl of Altamont, 
 who was at that time, and had been for some years back, 
 amongst my confidential friends. These were dated from 
 Eton. I had also some from the Marquis of Sligo, his 
 father; who, though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, 
 yet, having been an Etonian himself, and as good a 
 scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still retained an 
 affection for classical studies and for youthful scholars. 
 He had, accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, 
 corresponded with me — sometimes upon the great im- 
 provements which he had made, or was meditating, in 
 the counties of Mayo and Sligo, since I had been there; 
 sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet; at other 
 times, suggesting subjects on which he fancied that I 
 could write verses myself, or breathe poetic inspiration 
 into the mind of my once familiar companion, his son. 
 
 On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed 
 to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my personal 
 security, provided I could persuade the young earl — who 
 was, by the way, not older than myself — to guarantee 
 the payment on our joint coming of age ; the Jew's final 
 object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he 
 could expect to make by me, but the prospect of estab- 
 lishing a connection with my noble friend, whose great 
 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 ;^io, I prepared to visit 
 Eton. Nearly three guineas of the money I had given to 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 21 
 
 my money-lending friend in the background; or, more 
 accurately, I had given that sum to Mr. Brunell, alias 
 Brown, as representing Mr. Dell, the Jew; and a smaller 
 sum I had given directly to himself, on his own separate 
 account. What he alleged in excuse for thus draining 
 my purse at so critical a moment was, that stamps must 
 be bought, in order that the writings might be prepared 
 whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart 
 that he was lying, but I did not wish to give him any 
 excuse for charging his own delays upon me. About 
 fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing- 
 (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the re- 
 mainder, I gave one quarter (something more than 
 a guinea) to Ann, meaning, on my return, to have 
 divided with her whatever might remain. These ar- 
 rangements made, soon after six o'clock, on a dark 
 winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards 
 Piccadilly, for it was my intention to go down as far 
 as the turn to Salt Hill and Slough on the Bath or 
 Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the town 
 which has now totally disappeared, so that I can no 
 longer retrace its ancient boundaries — having been re- 
 placed by Regent Street and its adjacencies. Swallow 
 Street is all that I remember of the names superseded 
 by this large revolutionary usurpation. Having time 
 enough before us, however, we bore away to the left, 
 until we came into Golden Square; there, near the 
 corner of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing to 
 part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told 
 Ann of my plans some time before, and now I assured 
 her again that she should share in my good fortune, if 
 I met with any, and that I would never forsake her, as 
 soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully intended, 
 as much from inclination as from a sense of duty; for, 
 setting aside gratitude (which in any case must have 
 made me her debtor for life), I loved her as aifectionately 
 as if she had been my sister ; and at this moment with 
 sevenfold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her extreme 
 dejection. I had apparently most reason for dejection, 
 because I was leaving the saviour of my life, yet I, con- 
 
22 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 sidering the shock my health had received, was cheerful 
 and full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting 
 with one who had little means of serving her, except by 
 kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by 
 sorrow, so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, 
 she put her arms about my neck, and wept, without 
 speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week, at 
 furthest, and I agreed with her that, on the fifth night 
 from that, and every night afterwards, she should wait 
 for me, at six o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titchfield 
 Street, which had formerly been our customary haven of 
 rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the 
 great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This and other 
 measures of precaution I took ; one, only, I forgot. She 
 had either never told me, or (as a matter of no great 
 interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It is a general 
 practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in her un- 
 happy condition, not (as novel-reading women of higher 
 pretensions) to style themselves Miss Douglas, Miss 
 Montague, etc., but simply by their Christian names — 
 Mary, Jane, Frances, etc. Her surname, as the surest 
 means of tracing her, I ought now to have inquired; but 
 the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting 
 again could, in consequence of a short interruption, be 
 more difficult or uncertain than it had been for so many 
 weeks, I scarcely for a moment adverted to it as neces- 
 sary, or placed it amongst my memoranda against this 
 parting interview ; and my final anxieties being spent in 
 comforting her with hopes, and in pressing upon her the 
 necessity of getting some medicine for a violent cough 
 with which she was troubled, I wholly forgot this pre- 
 caution until it was too late to recall her. 
 
 I returned in a Windsor coach to London three days 
 after I had quitted it. And now I come to the end of 
 my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord Desert's 
 conditions, or so they said ; whether they would in the 
 end have acceded to them, and were only seeking time 
 for making further inquiries, I know not; but many 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 23 
 
 delays were made — time passed on — the small fragment 
 of my bank-note had just melted away, and before any 
 conclusion could have been put to the business, I must 
 have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. 
 Suddenly, at this crisis an opening was made, almost by 
 accident, for reconciliation with my guardians. I quitted 
 London in haste, and returned to the Priory ; after some 
 time, I proceeded to Oxford ; and it was not until many 
 months had passed away that I had it in my power again 
 to revisit the ground which had become so interesting 
 to me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of 
 my youthful sufferings. 
 
 Meantime, what had become of Ann? Where was 
 she? Whither had she gone? According to our agree- 
 ment, I sought her daily, and waited for her every 
 night, so long as I staid in London, at the corner of 
 Titchfield Street ; and during the last days of my stay in 
 London I put into activity every means of tracing her 
 that my knowledge of London suggested, and the 
 limited extent of my power made possible. The street 
 where she had lodged I knew, but not the house ; and I 
 remembered, at last, some account which she had given 
 of ill-treatment from her landlord, which made it prob- 
 able that she had quitted those lodgings before we 
 parted. She had few acquaintance; most people, be- 
 sides, thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose 
 from motives which moved their laughter or their slight 
 regard; and others, thinking that I was in chase of a 
 girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally 
 and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if, 
 indeed, they had any to give. Finally, as my despairing 
 resource, on the day I left London I put into the hands 
 of the only person who (I was sure) must know Ann by 
 sight, from having been in company with us once or 
 twice, an address to the Priory. All was in vain. To this 
 hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, 
 amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this 
 life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubt- 
 less we must have been sometimes in search of each 
 other, at the very same moment, through the mighty 
 
24 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 labyrinths of London ; perhaps even within a few feet of 
 each other — a barrier no wider, in a London street, 
 often amounting in the end to a separation for eternity ! 
 During some years I hoped that she did live ; and I sup- 
 pose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word 
 myriad, I must, on my different visits to London, have 
 looked into many myriads of female faces in the hope of 
 meeting Ann. I should know her again amongst a 
 thousand, and if seen but for a moment. Handsome she 
 was not ; but she had a sweet expression of countenance, 
 and a peculiarly graceful carriage of the head. I sought 
 her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years ; but now 
 I should fear to see her, and her cough, which grieved 
 me when I parted with her, is now my consolation. Now 
 I wish to see her no longer, but think of her more 
 gladly, as one long since laid in the grave — in the grave, 
 I would hope, of a Magdalen ; taken away before injuries 
 and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her in- 
 genuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had com- 
 pleted the ruin they had begun. 
 
 So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, 
 thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest 
 the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from 
 thee ! The time was come that I no more should pace in 
 anguish thy never-ending terraces; no more should 
 wake and dream in captivity to the pangs of hunger. 
 Successors too many to myself and Ann have, doubtless, 
 since then trodden in our footsteps, inheritors of our 
 calamities. Other orphans than Ann have sighed ; tears 
 have been shed by other children; and thou, Oxford 
 Street, hast since those days echoed to the groans of in- 
 numerable 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 25 
 
 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 over- 
 shadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these second 
 assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more 
 confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, 
 and with alleviations, how deep! from sympathising 
 affection. 
 
 Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years 
 far asunder were bound together by subtle links of 
 suffering derived from a common root. And herein I 
 notice the short-sightedness of human desires — that 
 oftentimes, on moonlight nights, during my first mourn- 
 ful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it 
 could be thought) to gaze from Oxford Street up every 
 avenue in succession which pierces northwards through 
 the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods ; for 
 that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas 
 which lay part in light and part in shade — '■^that'\s the 
 road to the north, and, therefore, to Grasmere " (upon 
 which, though as yet unknown to me, I had a presenti- 
 ment that I should fix my choice for a residence) ; ' ' and, 
 if I had the wings of a dove, that way I would fly for 
 rest." Thus I said, and thus I wished in my blindness; 
 yet, even in that very northern region it was, in that 
 very valley to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that 
 this second birth of my sufferings began, and that they 
 again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and hope. 
 There it was that for years I was persecuted by visions 
 as ugly, and by phantoms as ghastly, as ever haunted 
 the couch of Orestes ; and in this unhappier than he — 
 that sleep, which comes to all as a respite and a restora- 
 tion, and to him especially as a blessed balm for his 
 wounded heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my 
 bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires. And 
 yet, if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of 
 man and his future calamities, the same veil hides from 
 him their alleviations ; and a grief which had not been 
 
26 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 feared is met by consolations which had not been hoped. 
 I, therefore, who participated, as it were, in the troubles 
 of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated conscience), 
 participated no less in all his supports ; my Eumenides, 
 like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me 
 through the curtains ; but, watching by my pillow, or 
 defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through 
 the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra ; for thou, 
 
 beloved 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 TO.uch to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to 
 servile ministrations of tenderest affection ; to wipe away 
 for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or 
 to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; 
 nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long 
 sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my 
 dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies, that 
 oftentimes bade me " sleep no more! " — not even then 
 didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor with- 
 draw 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 ' in 
 her robe. 
 
 ^ [Margaret, De Quincey's wife, who was at the Grasmere home 
 while the Confessions were being written in a back room of Mr. 
 H. G. Bohn's premises, No. 4, York Street, Covent Garden.— L.] 
 
 ^ Agamemnon — dva^ avSpSiv. 
 
 ^ "Ofi/ia Bile' lie ttskXov. — The scholar will know that throughout 
 this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes, one of 
 the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic aifections which 
 even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the unlearned reader, 
 it may be necessary to say that the situation at the opening of the 
 drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the 
 demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the myth- 
 ology of the play, haunted by the Furies), under circumstances of 
 immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard 
 from nominal friends. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 27 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM 
 
 [In Part II of the Confessions De Quincey describes his experi- 
 ences with the drug during the year after he had left London and 
 Oxford and settled down in the Lake Country. From 1809, when 
 he was twenty-four, to 1816, he lived at Grasmere in Words- 
 worth's old cottage, as a bachelor; and from 1816 to 1821 as a 
 married man. During the first part of this period he was in com- 
 fortable circumstances ; but soon after his marriage he met with 
 the reverse of fortune which eventually compelled him to rely upon 
 his pen for a great part of his livelihood.] 
 
 It is very long since I first took opium ; so long that, if 
 it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have 
 forgotten its date ; but cardinal events are not to be for- 
 gotten ; and, from circumstances connected with it, I 
 remember that this inauguration into the use of opium 
 must be referred to the spring or to the autumn of 1804; 
 during which seasons I was in London, having come 
 thither for the first time since my entrance at Oxford. 
 And this event arose in the following way: from an 
 early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in 
 cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly seized 
 with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused 
 by the casual intermission of that practice ; jumped out 
 of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and 
 with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, 
 as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheu- 
 matic pains of the head and face, from which I had 
 hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the 
 twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I 
 went out into the streets ; rather to run away, if possible, 
 from my torments, than with any distinct purpose of 
 relief. By accident, I met a college acquaintance, who 
 recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimagin- 
 able pleasure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had heard 
 of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmean- 
 ing a sound was opium at that time! What solemn 
 chords does it now strike upon my heart ! What heart- 
 quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! 
 
28 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic import- 
 ance attached to the minutest circumstances connected 
 with the place, and the time, and the man (if man he was) 
 that first laid open to me the paradise of opium-eaters. 
 
 It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and 
 a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show 
 than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards 
 lay through Oxford Street; and near _" the stately 
 Pantheon" (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called 
 it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious 
 minister of celestial pleasures!), as if in sympathy with 
 the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any 
 mortal druggist might be expected to look on a rainy 
 London Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of 
 opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do, 
 and, furthermore, out of my shilling returned - to me 
 what seemed to be real copper half-pence, taken out of 
 a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, and notwith- 
 standing all such indications of humanity, he has ever 
 since figured in my mind as a beatific vision of an im- 
 mortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission 
 to myself. And it confirms me in this way of considering 
 him, that when I next came up to London, I sought him 
 near the stately Pantheon, and found him not ; and thus 
 to me, who knew not his name (if, indeed, he had one), 
 he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford Street, 
 than to have flitted into any other locality, or (which 
 some abominable man suggested) to have absconded 
 from the rent. The reader may choose to think of him 
 as, possibly, no more than a sublunary druggist; it 
 may be so, but my faith is better. I believe him to 
 have evanesced.' So unwillingly would I connect any 
 
 ^ "Evanesced :" — This way of going- off from the stage of life 
 appears to have been well known in the seventeenth century, but 
 at that time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of royalty, 
 and by no means open to the use of druggists. For, about the year 
 1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, apparently, did 
 justice to his name) — viz., Mr. Flatman — in speaking of the death 
 of Charles II, expressed his surprise that any prince should com- 
 mit so vulgar an act as dying ; because, says he, 
 
 " Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear." 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 29 
 
 mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and 
 creature that first brought me acquainted with the 
 celestial drug. 
 
 Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I 
 lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I 
 was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery 
 of opium-taking, and what I took, I took under every 
 disadvantage. But I took it ; and in an hour, O heavens ! 
 what a revulsion! what a resurrection, from its lowest 
 depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the 
 world within me ! That my pains had vanished, was now 
 a trifle in my eyes ; this negative effect was swallowed 
 up in the immensity of those positive effects which had 
 opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus 
 suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a ipapixoKov 
 vriTrevdes for all human woes ; here was the secret of hap- 
 piness, about which philosophers had disputed for so 
 many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now 
 be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat- 
 pocket ; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a 
 pint-bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down by the 
 mail. 
 
 And, first, one word with respect to its bodily effects ; 
 for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject 
 of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may 
 plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), 
 or by professors of medicine writing ex cathedrA, I have 
 but one emphatic criticism to pronounce — Nonsense! 
 I remember once, in passing a bookstall, to have caught 
 these words from a page of some satiric author — " By 
 this time I became convinced that the London news- 
 papers spoke truth at least twice a week — viz., on 
 Tuesday and Saturday' — and might safely be depended 
 upon for — the list of bankrupts." In like manner, I do 
 by no means deny that some truths have been delivered 
 to the world ' in regard to opium ; thus, it has been 
 repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a 
 
 1 " Tuesday and Saturday : ' — viz., the two days on which the 
 Gazette is (or used to be) published. 
 
30 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 tawny brown in colour — and this, take notice, I grant; 
 secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant, for 
 in my time. East India opium has been three guineas a 
 pound, and Turkey eight ; and, thirdly, that, if you eat 
 a good deal of it, most probably you must do what is 
 disagreeable to any man of regular habits — viz., die. 
 These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true; 
 I cannot gainsay them, and truth ever was, and will be, 
 commendable. But, in these three theorems, I believe we 
 have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumu- 
 lated 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 quan- 
 tity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As to the 
 tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum), that 
 might certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to take 
 enough of it; but why? Because it contains so much 
 proof spirits of wine, and not because it contains so 
 much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, 
 is incapable of producing any state of body at all re- 
 sembling 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 
 rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which as 
 rapidly it declines ; that from opium, when once gener- 
 ated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to 
 borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case 
 of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure ; the one is a 
 flickering flame, the other a steady and equable glow. 
 But the main distinction lies in this — that, whereas wine 
 disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary 
 (if taken in proper manner), introduces amongst them 
 the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. 
 Wine robs a man of his self-possession ; opium sustains 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 31 
 
 and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the judgment, and 
 gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to 
 the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the 
 hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, 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, for 
 instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the 
 heart and the benevolent affections ; but, then, with 
 this remarkable difference — that, in the sudden develop- 
 ment of kindheartedness which accompanies inebriation, 
 there is always more or less of a maudlin and a transi- 
 tory character, which exposes it to the contempt of the 
 bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, 
 and shed tears — no mortal knows why; and the animal 
 nature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the 
 benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, 
 no fugitive paroxysm ; it is a healthy restoration to that 
 state which the mind would naturally recover upon the 
 removal of any deep-seated irritation from pain that had 
 disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart 
 originally just and good. True it is, that even wine up 
 to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to 
 exalt and to steady the intellect; I myself, who have 
 never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a- 
 dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the 
 faculties, brightened and intensified the consciousness, 
 and gave to the mind a feeling of being " ponderibus 
 librata suis," and certainly it is most absurdly said, in 
 popular language, of any man — that he is disguised in 
 liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by 
 sobriety, and exceedingly disguised ; and it is when they 
 are drinking that men display themselves in their true 
 complexion of character ; which surely is not disguising 
 themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to 
 the brink of absurdity and extravagance ; and, beyond a 
 certain point, it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the 
 
32 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to 
 compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate 
 what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one 
 word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, 
 is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into 
 supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part 
 of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him 
 simply as such, and assume that he is in a normal state 
 of health) feels that the diviner part of his nature is 
 paramount — that is, the moral affections are in a state 
 of cloudless serenity ; and high over all the great light of 
 the majestic intellect. 
 
 Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error 
 in respect to opium, I shall notice briefly a second and a 
 third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced 
 by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate de- 
 pression, and that the natural and even immediate con- 
 sequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal as 
 well as mental. The first of these errors I shall content 
 myself with simply denying : assuring my reader that, for 
 ten years, during which I took opium, not regularly, but 
 intermittingly, the day succeeding to that on which I 
 allowed myself this luxury was always a day of un- 
 usually good spirits. 
 
 With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or 
 rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of 
 Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of 
 opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is 
 classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect 
 it may produce in the end ; but the primary effects of 
 opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite 
 and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action 
 always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upwards 
 of eight hours ; so that it must be the fault of the opium- 
 eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the 
 dose, as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence 
 may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 33 
 
 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 my- 
 self often passed an opium evening in London, during 
 the period between 1804 and 181 2. It will be seen that 
 at least opium did not move me to seek solitude, and 
 much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self- 
 involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at 
 the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or 
 visionary; but I regard that little. I must desire my 
 reader to bear in mind that I was a hard student, and at 
 severe studies for all the rest of my time ; and certainly 
 I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as other 
 people. 
 
 THE KEYS OF PARADISE 
 
 [In the following pagfes De Quincey deals with his dnig-taking 
 and other pursuits and pleasures during the period immediately 
 succeeding his residence at Oxford, which terminated in 1807. In 
 that and the following year he was mostly in London, sauntering 
 and reading and seeing something of Lamb and Hazlitt and other 
 literary persons.] 
 
 The late Duke of Norfolk used to say, "Next Mon- 
 day, wind and weather permitting, I purpose to be 
 drunk"; and in like manner I used to fix beforehand 
 how often within a given time, when, and with what ac- 
 cessory circumstances of festal joy, I would commit a 
 debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in 
 three weeks ; for at that time I could not have ventured 
 to call every day (as afterwards I did) for "a £'lass of 
 laudanum negus, warm, and •without sugar ^ No; once 
 in three weeks sufficed ; and the time selected was either 
 a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which 
 was this : — Tuesday and Saturday were for many years 
 the regular nights of performance at the King's Theatre 
 
 D 
 
34 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 (or Opera House) ; and there it was in those times that 
 Grassini sang; and her voice (the richest of contraltos) 
 was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. 
 Yes, or have since heard ; or ever shall hear. I know not 
 what may be the state of the 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 evening.^ Half-a-guinea 
 admitted you to the pit, under the troublesome con- 
 dition, however, of being en grande tenue. But to the 
 gallery five shillings admitted you ; and that gallery was 
 subject to far less annoyance than the pit of most 
 theatres. The orchestra was distinguished 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 in some instances from the tyranny of the 
 violin. Thrilling was the pleasure with which almost 
 always I heard this angelic Grassini. Shivering with 
 expectation I sat, when the time drew near for her 
 golden epiphany; shivering I rose from my seat, in- 
 capable of rest, when that heavenly and harp-like voice 
 sang its own victorious welcome in its prelusive thret- 
 tdnelo — threttdnelo ^ (OpeTrdveXa — OptTTavEXb)). The 
 choruses were divine to hear; and, when Grassini ap- 
 peared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured 
 
 ' I trust that my reader has not been so inattentive to the wind- 
 ings of my narrative as to fancy me speaking here of the Brown- 
 Brunell and Pyment period. Naturally I had no money disposable 
 at that period for the opera. I am speaking here of years stretch- 
 ing far beyond those boyish scenes — interludes in my Oxford life, 
 or long after Oxford. 
 
 ' "Threttdnelo — threttdnelo:" — The beautiful representative echo 
 by which Aristophanes expresses the sound of the Grecian phor- 
 minx, or of some other instrument, which conjecturally has been 
 shown most to resemble our modem European harp. In the case 
 of ancient Hebrew instruments used in the Temple service, random 
 and idle must be all the guesses through the Greek Septuagint or 
 the Latin Vulgate to identify any one of them. But as to Grecian 
 instruments the case is different ; always there is a remote chance 
 of digging up some marble sculpture of orchestral appurtenances 
 and properties. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 35 
 
 forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of 
 Hector, etc., I question whether any Turk, of all that 
 ever entered the paradise of opium-eaters, can have had 
 half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour the bar- 
 barians too much by supposing them capable of any 
 pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an 
 Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual 
 pleasure, according to the temperament of him who 
 hears it. And, by the bye, with the exception of the fine 
 extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I do not 
 recollect more than one thing said adequately on the 
 subject of music in all literature ; it is a passage in the 
 Religio Medici of Sir T. Browne, and, though chiefly 
 remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, 
 inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. 
 The mistake of most people is to suppose that it is 
 by the ear they communicate with music, and there- 
 fore that they are purely passive as to its effects. But 
 this is not so ; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the 
 notices of the ear (the matter coming by the senses, the 
 form from the mind) that the pleasure is constructed; 
 and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ 
 so much in this point from one another. Now opium, 
 by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally 
 increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its 
 activity by which we are able to construct out of the 
 raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual 
 pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession of musical 
 sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic char- 
 acters: I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas! my dear 
 friend ! there is no occasion for them ; all that class of 
 ideas which can be available in such a case has a lan- 
 guage of representative feelings. But this is a subject 
 foreign to my present purposes ; it is sufficient to say 
 that a chorus, etc., of elaborate harmony displayed 
 before me, as in a piece of arras-work, the whole of my 
 past life — not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as 
 if present and incarnated in the music ; no longer painful 
 to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed, or 
 blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions ex- 
 
36 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 alted, spiritualised, and sublimed. All this was to be had 
 for five shillings — that being the price of admission to 
 the gallery; or, if a man preferred the high-bred society 
 of the pit, even this might be had for half-a-guinea ; or, 
 in fact, for half-a-crown less, by purchasing beforehand 
 a ticket at the music shops. And over and above the 
 music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around 
 me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of 
 the Italian language talked by Italian women — for the 
 gallery was usually crowded with Italians — and I 
 listened with a pleasure such as that with which Weld, 
 the traveller, lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet 
 laughter of Indian women ; for, the less you understand 
 of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody 
 or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, there- 
 fore, it was an advantage to me that in those days I was 
 a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little and not 
 speaking it at all, nor understanding a tenth part of 
 what I heard spoken. 
 
 These were my opera pleasures ; but another pleasure 
 I had, which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, 
 occasionally struggled with my love of the opera ; for, in 
 those years, Tuesday and Saturday were the regular 
 opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be 
 rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all 
 more so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many 
 other biographers and autobiographers of fair reputation. 
 This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a 
 Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night to me 
 more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested 
 from ; no wages to receive ; what needed I to care for 
 Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear 
 Grassini? True, most logical reader; what thou sayest 
 is, and ever will be, unanswerable. And yet so it was, 
 that, whereas different men throw their feelings into 
 different channels, and most men- are apt to show their 
 interest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy 
 with their distresses and sorrows, I at that time was 
 disposed to express mine by sympathising with their 
 pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 37 
 
 much of — more than I wished to remember; but the 
 pleasures of the poor, their hopes, their consolations of 
 spirit, and their restings from toil, can never become op- 
 pressive to contemplate. Now, Saturday nig-ht is the 
 season for the chief regular and periodic return of rest 
 to the poor, and to all that live by bodily labour ; in this 
 point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a 
 common link of brotherhood; almost all Christendom 
 rests from its labours. It is a rest introductory to an 
 other rest ; and divided by a whole day and two nights 
 from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, 
 on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from 
 some yoke of bondage, had some wages to receive, and 
 some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, 
 of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spec- 
 tacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used 
 often, on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to 
 wander forth, without much regarding the direction or 
 the distance, to all the markets, and other parts of 
 London, whither the poor resort on a Saturday night, 
 for laying out their wages. Many a family party, con- 
 sisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of 
 their children, have I listened to, as they stood consult- 
 ing on their ways and means, or the strength of their 
 exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually 
 I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and 
 their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard mur- 
 murs of discontent; but far oftener expressions on the 
 countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, of hope, 
 and of reconciliation to their lot. Generally speaking, 
 the impression left upon my mind was, that the poor are 
 practically more philosophic than the rich; that they 
 show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they 
 consider as irremediable evils or irreparable losses. 
 Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appear- 
 ing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my 
 opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not 
 always judicious, was always received indulgently. If 
 wages were a little higher, or were expected to be so — 
 if the quartern loaf were a little lower, or it was reported 
 
38 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 that onions and butter were falling, I was glad ; yet, if 
 the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means 
 of consolation. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its 
 materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot ^ 
 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 home- 
 wards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on 
 the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west 
 passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and 
 headlands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I 
 came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, 
 alleys without soundings, such enigmatical entries, and 
 such sphinx's riddles of streets, without obvious out- 
 lets or thoroughfares, as must baffle the audacity of 
 porters, and confound the intellects of hackney coach- 
 men. I could almost have believed, at times, that I must 
 be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae, 
 and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the 
 modern charts of London. Positively, in one line of com- 
 munication to the south of Holborn, for foot-passengers 
 (known, I doubt not, to many of my London readers), 
 the road lay through a man's kitchen ; and, as it was a 
 small kitchen, you needed to steer cautiously, or else you 
 might run foul of the dripping-pan. For all this, how- 
 ever, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the 
 human face tyrannised over my dreams, and the per- 
 plexities of my steps in London came back and haunted 
 my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities moral or intel- 
 lectual, that brought confusion to the reason, that 
 brought anguish and remorse to the conscience. 
 
 1 '^Soot:" — In the large capacious chimneys of the rustic cot- 
 tages throughout the Lake district, you can see up the entire 
 cavity from the seat which you occupy, as an honoured visitor, in 
 the chimney corner. There I used often to hear (though not to see) 
 bees. Their murmuring was audible, though their bodily forms 
 were too small to be visible at that altitude. On inquiry, I found 
 that soot (chiefly from wood and peats) was useful in some stage 
 of their wax or honey manufacture. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 39 
 
 Thus I have shown, or tried to show, that opium does 
 not of necessity produce inactivity or torpor ; but that, 
 on the contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres. 
 Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and theatres 
 are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater, when 
 in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that 
 state crowds become an oppression 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 ob- 
 serve 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 wit- 
 nessed in London, was sufficiently aware of these ten- 
 dencies in my own thoughts to do all I could to counter- 
 act them. I was, indeed, like a person who, according 
 to the old Pagan legend, had entered the cave of 
 Trophonius; and the remedies I sought were to force 
 myself into society, and to keep my understanding in 
 continual activity upon subtleties of philosophic specula- 
 tion. But for these remedies, I should certainly have 
 become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, 
 however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re- 
 established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a 
 solitary life. At that time I often fell into such reveries 
 after taking opium ; and many a time it has happened 
 to me on a summer night — when I have been seated at an 
 open window, from which I could overlook the sea at a 
 mile below me, and could at the same time command a 
 view of some great town standing on a different radius 
 of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same distance 
 — that from sunset to sunrise, all through the hours of 
 night, I have continued motionless, as if frozen, without 
 consciousness of myself as of an object anywise distinct 
 from the multiform scene which I contemplated from above. 
 Such a scene in all its elements was not unfrequently 
 realised for me on the gentle eminence of Everton. 
 Obliquely to the left lay the many-languaged town of 
 
40 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Liverpool ; obliquely to the right, the multitudinous sea. 
 The scene itself was somewhat typical of what took 
 place in such a reverie. The town of Liverpool repre- 
 sented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left 
 behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The 
 ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded 
 over by dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the 
 mind, and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed 
 to me as if then first I stood at a distance aloof from the 
 uproar of life ; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife 
 were suspended ; a respite were granted from the secret 
 burdens of the heart; some sabbath of repose; some 
 resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which 
 blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace 
 which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as un- 
 wearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon 
 calm ; tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but 
 as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms ; in- 
 finite activities, infinite repose. 
 
 just, subtle, and all-conquering opium ! that, to the 
 hearts of rich and poor alike, for the wounds that will 
 never heal, and for the pangs of grief that "tempt the 
 spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm; — eloquent 
 opium ! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the 
 purposes of wrath, pleadest effectually for relenting pity, 
 and through one night's heavenly sleep callest back to 
 the guilty man the visions of his infancy, and hands 
 washed pure from blood ; — O just and righteous opium ! 
 that to the chancery of dreams summonest, for the 
 triumphs of despairing innocence, false witnesses; and 
 confoundest perjury ; and dost reverse the sentences of 
 unrighteous judges ; — thou buildest upon the bosom of 
 darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities 
 and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles — 
 beyond the splendours of Babylon and Hekatompylos ; ' 
 
 1 I.e., the hundred-gated (from iKorov, hekaton, a hundred, and 
 irwXij, pyle, a gate). This epithet of hundred-gated was applied to 
 the Egyptian Thebes in contradistinction to the EwrairwXoe (hepta- 
 pyhs, or seven-gated) which designated the Grecian Thebes, 
 within one day's journey of Athens. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 41 
 
 and "from the anarchy of dreaming- sleep," callest into 
 sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the 
 blessed household countenances, cleansed from the " dis- 
 honours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to 
 man ; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, 
 and mighty opium ! 
 
 THE HAPPY VALLEY 
 
 [In 1809 De Quincey became the tenant of the little cottag-e at 
 Townend, Grasmere, which Wordsworth had quitted in 1807. 
 Here the "opium-eater" passed some peaceful and, as he tells 
 us, very happy years; first, as a bachelor, and after 1816 as a 
 married man. His occupations are described in the pleasant 
 pages that follow.] 
 
 Courteous, and I hope indulgent reader, having ac- 
 companied me thus far, now let me request you to move 
 onwards for about eight years ; that is to say, from 1804 
 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium began) 
 to 1 81 2. The years of academic life are now over and 
 gone — almost forgotten ; the student's cap no longer 
 presses my temples ; if my cap exists at all, it presses 
 those of some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as my- 
 self, 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 excellentjbooksjin the Bodleian — viz. , 
 diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms ; 
 or departed, however (which is all that I know of its fate), 
 to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all the 
 tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, etc. , have de- 
 parted, which occasional resemblances in the present 
 generation of tea-cups, etc. , remind me of having once 
 possessed, but of whose departure and final fate I, in 
 common with most gownsmen of either university, could 
 give but an obscure and conjectural history. The per- 
 secutions of the chapel bell, sounding its unwelcome 
 summons to matins, interrupt my slumbers no longer ; 
 
42 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the porter who rang it is dead, and has ceased to disturb 
 anybody; and I, with many others who suffered much 
 from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed 
 to overlook his errors, and have forgiven him. Even 
 with the bell I am now in charity ; it rings, I suppose, 
 as formerly, thrice a day, and cruelly annoys, I doubt 
 not, many worthy gentlemen and disturbs their peace of 
 mind; but, as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its 
 treacherous voice no longer (treacherous, I call it, for, by 
 some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and 
 silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party) ; 
 its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let 
 the wind sit as favourably as the malice of the bell itself 
 could wish ; for I am two hundred and fifty miles away 
 from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. And what 
 am I doing amongst the mountains? Taking opium. 
 Yes; but what else? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we 
 are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, 
 I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, in the 
 writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, etc. 
 
 And how, and in what manner, do I live? — in short, 
 what class or description of men do I belong to? I am at 
 this period — viz., in 18 12 — living in a cottage; and with 
 a single female servant (honi soit qui mul y pense), who, 
 amongst my neighbours, passes by the name of my 
 " housekeeper." And, as a scholar and a man of learned 
 education, I may presunje to class myself as an unworthy 
 member of that indefinite body called gentlemen. Partly 
 on the ground I have assigned — partly because, from 
 having no visible calling or business, it is rightly judged 
 that I must be living on my private fortune — I am so 
 classed by my neighbours; and, by the courtesy of 
 modern England, I am usually addressed on letters, etc., 
 Esquire, though having, I fear, in the rigorous construc- 
 tion of heralds, antique or an,tic, dressed like the knaves 
 of spades or diamonds, but slender pretensions to that 
 distinguished honour ; — yes, in popular estimation, I am 
 X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice of the Peace nor 
 Custos Rotulorum. Am I married? Not yet. And I still 
 take opium? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 43 
 
 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-eatingu? in short, how do I do? Why, 
 pretty well, thank you, reader. In fact, if I dared to say 
 the real and simple truth (though, in order to satisfy the 
 theories of some medical men, I ought to be ill), I was 
 never better in my life than in the spring of 181 2; and I 
 hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or 
 " London particular Madeira," which, in all probability, 
 you, good reader, have taken, and design to take, for 
 every term of eight years during your natural life, may 
 as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by 
 all the opium I had taken (though in quantity such that 
 I might well have bathed and swum in it) for the eight 
 years between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again 
 the danger of taking any medical advice from Anasiastus ;^ 
 in divinity, for anything I know, he may be a safe coun- 
 sellor, but not in medicine. No ; it is far better to con- 
 sult 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 181 2) I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging 
 terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its 
 long-suffering. At the same^time, as yet I had been only 
 a dilettante eater of opium ; even eight years' practice, 
 
 ' [De Quincey's note to this passage in the Edinburgh edition of 
 his Works is as follows : " The reader of this generation will marvel 
 at these repeated references to Anastasius. It is now an almost 
 forgotten book, so vast has been the deluge of novel-writing talent, 
 really original and powerful, which has overflowed our literature 
 during the lapse of thirty-five years from the publication of these 
 Confessions. Anastasius was written by the famous and opulent 
 Mr. Hope; and was in 1821 a book both of high reputation and of 
 great influence amongst the leading circles of sotaety." Thomas 
 Hope, a member of a wealthy Amsterdam family, a great virtuoso 
 and collector, published his Anastasitts, or Memoirs of a Modem 
 Greek in 1819. — L.] 
 
44 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 with the single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals 
 between every indulgence, has not been sufficient^ to 
 make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. 
 But now comes a different era. Move on, then, if you 
 please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we 
 have just quitted, I had suffered much in bodily health 
 from distress of mind connected with a melancholy event. 
 This event, being nowise related to the subject now before 
 me, further than through the bodily illness which it pro- 
 duced, I need not more particularly notice. 
 
 Whether this illness of 18 12 had any share in that of 
 1 81 3, 1 know not; but so it was that, in the latter year, I 
 was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, 
 in all respects the same as that which had caused me so 
 much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of 
 all the old dreams. Now, then, it was — viz., in the year 
 1813 — that I became a regular and confirmed (no longer 
 an intermitting) opium-eater. And here I find myself in 
 a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must 
 exhaust the reader's 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 constant suffering; or, on the other 
 hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my 
 story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression 
 left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open 
 to the misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and 
 gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to 
 the final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to 
 which there will be a lurking predisposition in most 
 readers, from my previous acknowledgments). This is 
 the dilemma, the first horn of which is not to be thought 
 of. It remains, then, that I postulate so much as is neces- 
 sary for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for 
 this as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the 
 expense of your patience and my own. Be not so un- 
 generous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through 
 my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No ; 
 believe all that I ask of you — viz., that I could resist no 
 longer — believe it liberally, and as an act of grace, or 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 45 
 
 else in mere prudence; for, if not, then in my next 
 edition I will make you believe and tremble; and, a force 
 d'ennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation, vulgarly called 
 yawning, I will terrify all readers of mine from ever 
 again questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to 
 make. 
 
 This, then, let me repeat: I postulate that, at the time 
 I began to take opium daily, I could not have done other- 
 wise. Whether, indeed, afterwards I might not have 
 succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed 
 to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether 
 many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might 
 not have been carried much further, and my gradual 
 re-conquests of lost ground might not have been followed 
 up much more energetically — these are questions which 
 I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of 
 palliation; but (shall I speak ingenuously?) I confess it, 
 as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of 
 an Eudaemonist; I hanker too much after a state of 
 happiness, both for myself and others; I cannot face 
 misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient 
 firmness ; and am little capable of encountering present 
 pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some 
 other matters I can agree with the gentlemen of The 
 Porch' at Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy; 
 but not in this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic 
 philosopher, and I look out for some courteous and con- 
 siderate sect that will condescend more to the infirm 
 condition of an opium-eater; that are pleasant men and 
 courteous, such as Chaucer describes, to hear confession 
 or to give absolution ; and will show some conscience in 
 the penances they inflict, or the efforts of abstinence they 
 exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist 
 
 ' A handsome news-room, of which I was very courteously 
 made free, in passing through Manchester, by several gentlemen 
 of that place, is called either The Porch or The Portico, which in 
 Greek is the Stoa; from which I, a stranger in Manchester, in- 
 ferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves Stoics, or 
 followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a 
 mistake. 
 
46 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 mortifica- 
 tion upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement, 
 must make it clear to my understanding that the concern 
 is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six-and-thirty years 
 of age'), it cannot be supposed that I have much energy 
 to spare ; in fact I find it all little enough for the intel- 
 lectual labours I have on my hands; and, therefore, let no 
 man expect to frighten me, by a few hard words, into 
 embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of 
 morality. 
 
 Desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle 
 in 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. Now, then, reader, you 
 understand what I am ; and you are by this time aware, 
 that no old gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," will 
 have any chance of persuading me (like Anastasius) to 
 surrender "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
 drug." No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or 
 surgeons, that, whatever be their pretensions and skill 
 in their respective lines of practice, they must not hope 
 for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by 
 any savage proposition for a Lent or Ramadan of abstin- 
 ence from opium. This being fully understood between 
 us, we shall in future sail before the wind ; now, then, 
 reader, from the year 1813, where all this time we have 
 been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, 
 walk forward about three years more ; draw up the 
 curtain, 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, 
 
 1 This was written at the time of original publication. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 47 
 
 that must be very difficult for any wise man to assign ; 
 because any event that could occupy so distinguished a 
 place in a man's retrospect of life, or be entitled to have 
 shed a special, separate, and supreme felicity on any one 
 day, ought to be of such an enduring character as that 
 (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the 
 same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on very 
 many years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, 
 or even to the happiest _j/ear, a man may perhaps allow- 
 ably point without discountenance from wisdom. This 
 year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have now 
 reached; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis 
 between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of 
 brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), 
 set, as it were, and insulated, in the gloomy umbrage of 
 opium. Strange as it may sound, I had, a little before 
 this time, descended suddenly, and without any consider- 
 able effort, from three hundred and twenty grains of 
 opium (that is, eight * thousand drops of laudanum) per 
 day, to forty grains, or one-eighth part. Instantaneously, 
 and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy 
 which rested upon my brain, like some black vapours 
 that I have seen roll away from the summit of a moun- 
 tain, drew off in one week; passed away with its murky 
 banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been 
 stranded, and is floated off by a spring tide, 
 
 That moveth altogether, if it move at all. 
 
 Now, then, I was again happy ; I now took only one 
 
 ^ I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to 
 one grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. 
 However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude 
 opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I 
 suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calcu- 
 lation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. 
 Small ones hold about one hundred drops ; so that eight thousand 
 drops, which obviously read into eighty hundred drops, fill a small 
 tea-spoon eighty times. But large modem tea-spoons hold very 
 much more. Some even approach in their capacity to dessert- 
 spoons. The reader sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's 
 indulgent allowance. 
 
48 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 thousand drops of laudanum per day— and what was 
 that? A latter spring had come to close up the season of 
 youth. My brain performed its functions as healthily as 
 ever before. I read Kant again ; and again I understood 
 him , or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure 
 expanded themselves to all around me ; and if any man 
 from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, 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 might be want- 
 ing to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have 
 given him as much as he wished, and in a silver-gilt, if 
 not golden cup. And, by the way, now that I speak of 
 giving laudanum away, I remember about this time a 
 little incident, which I mention because, trifling as it 
 was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, 
 which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. 
 One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business 
 a Malay could have to transact amongst the recesses 
 of English mountains is not my business to conjecture; 
 but possibly he was on his road to a seaport — viz., 
 Whitehaven, Workington, etc. — about forty miles 
 distant. 
 
 The servant who opened the door to him was a young 
 girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who had 
 never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort: his turban, 
 therefore, confounded her not a little ; and, as it turned 
 out that his knowledge of English was exactly commen- 
 surate with hers of Malay, there seemed to be an impass- 
 able gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if 
 either party had happened to possess any. In this 
 dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of 
 her master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a 
 knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, 
 perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to 
 understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom 
 she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the 
 house. The group which presented itself, arranged as it 
 was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold 
 of my fancy and my eye more powerfully than any of the 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 49 
 
 statuesque attitudes or groupes exhibited in the ballets 
 at the opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex. 
 In a cottage kitchen, but not looking so much like that 
 as a rustic hall of entrance, being panelled on the wall 
 with dark wood, that from age and rubbing resembled 
 oak, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trousers of 
 dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling; he had 
 placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to 
 relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity 
 contended with the feeling of simple awe which her 
 countenance expressed, as she gazed upon the tiger-cat 
 before her. A more striking picture there could not be 
 imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl,^ and 
 its exquisite bloom, together with her erect and inde- 
 pendent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious 
 skin of the Malay, veneered with mahogany tints by 
 climate and marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, 
 thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half hidden 
 by the ferocious-looking Malay, was a little child from a 
 neighbouring cottage, who had crept in after him, and 
 was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing 
 upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, 
 whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the lovely 
 girl for protection. 
 
 1 This girl, Barbara Lewthwaite, was already at that time a 
 person of some poetic distinction, being (unconsciously to herself) 
 the chief speaker in a little pastoral poem of Wordsworth's. That 
 she was really beautiful, and not merely so described by me for the 
 sake of improving the picturesque effect, the reader will judge 
 from this line in the poem, written, perhaps, ten years earlier, 
 when Barbara might be six years old : 
 
 'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare ! 
 
 This, coming from William Wordsworth, both a fastidious judge 
 and a truth-speaker of the severest literality, argues some real 
 pretensions to beauty, or real at that time. But it is notorious that, 
 m the anthologies of earth through all her zones, one flower 
 beyond every other is liable to change, which flower is the counten- 
 ance of woman. Whether in his fine stanzas upon "Mutability," 
 where the most pathetic instances of this earthly doom are solemnly 
 arrayed, Spenser has dealt sufiiciently upon this, the saddest of all, 
 I do not remember. 
 
so THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 My knowledge of the oriental tongues is not remark- 
 ably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words — 
 the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium 
 (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius. And, 
 as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's 
 Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few 
 words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad, 
 considering that, of such languages as I possessed, the 
 Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically near- 
 est to an oriental one. He worshipped me in a devout 
 manner, and replied in what I suppose to have been 
 Malay. In this way I saved my reputation as a linguist 
 with my neighbours; for the Malay had no means of 
 betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for 
 about an hour, and then pursued his journey. On his 
 departure I presented him, inter alia, with a piece of 
 opium. To him, as a native of the East, I could have 
 no doubt that opium was not less familiar than his daily 
 bread ; and the expression of his face convinced me that 
 it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little con- 
 sternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to 
 his mouth, and bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, 
 at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill some 
 half-dozen dragoons, together with their horses, sup- 
 posing neither bipeds nor quadrupeds to be regularly 
 trained opium-eaters. I felt some alarm for the poor 
 creature; but what could be done? I had given him the 
 opium in pure compassion for his solitary life, since, if 
 he had travelled on foot from London, it must be nearly 
 three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought 
 with any human being. Ought I to have violated the 
 laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched 
 with an emetic, thus frightening him into a notion that 
 we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol? 
 No ; there was clearly no help for it. The mischief, if 
 any, was done. He took his leave, and for some days I 
 felt anxious ; but, as I never heard of any Malay, or 
 of any man in a turban, being found dead on any part of 
 the very slenderly peopled road between Grasmere and 
 Whitehaven, I became satisfied that he was familiar 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 51 
 
 with opium/ and that I must doubtless have done hkn 
 the service I designed, by giving him one night of respite 
 from the pains of wandering. 
 
 This incident I have digressed to mention, because 
 this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he 
 assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected 
 with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon 
 my fancy, and through that upon my dreams, bringing 
 with him other Malays worse than himself, that ran 
 " a-muck " ^ at me, and led me into a world of nocturnal 
 troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my 
 intercalary year of happiness. I have said already that, 
 on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we 
 should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or 
 experiments, even though he were but a ploughboy, who 
 cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep in such 
 an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, 
 or to have conducted his researches upon any very en- 
 lightened principles. But I, who have taken happiness, 
 both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and un- 
 boiled, both East Indian and Turkish — who have con- 
 ducted my experiments upon this interesting subject 
 with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general 
 benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the 
 poison of eight thousand drops of laudanum per day (and 
 for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated him- 
 self lately with a cancer, an English one, twenty years 
 ago, with plague, and a third, who was also English, 
 with hydrophobia), I, it will be admitted, must surely 
 now know what happiness is, if anybody does. And 
 therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness ; 
 
 ' This, however, is not a necessary conclusion j the varieties of 
 effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A 
 London magistrate (Harriott's Struggles through Life, vol. iii, 
 p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his 
 trying laudanum for the gout, he took forty drops ; the next night 
 SIXTY, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever; 
 and this at an advanced age. 
 
 '^ See the common accounts, in any eastern traveller or voyager, 
 of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken 
 opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling. 
 
52 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 and, as the most interesting mode of communicating 
 it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and 
 involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every 
 evening during the intercalary year, when laudanum, 
 though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir 
 of pleasure. 
 
 Let there be a cottage standing in a valley 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 moun- 
 tains 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 windows, through all 
 the months of spring, summer, and autumn ; beginning, 
 in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let 
 it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn; 
 but winter, in its sternest shape. This is a most import- 
 ant point in the science of happiness. And I am sur- 
 prised to see people overlook it, as if it were actually 
 matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if com- 
 ing, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I 
 put up a petition annually, for as much snow, hail, frost, 
 or storm of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly 
 afford. Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures 
 which attend a winter fire side — 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 ; 
 Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. 
 
 Castle of Indolence. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 53 
 
 All these are items in the description of a winter even- 
 ing, which must surely be familiar to everybody born in 
 a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these 
 delicacies cannot be ripened without weather stormy or 
 inclement in some way or other. I am not "particular" 
 whether it be snow — or black frost, or wind so strong 
 that (as Mr. Anti-slavery Clarkson says) "you may lean 
 your back against it like a post." I can put up even 
 with rain, provided that it rains cats and dogs, or, as 
 sailors say, "great guns and marline-spikes;" but 
 something of the sort I must have ; and if I have it not, 
 I think myself in a manner ill-used : for why am I called 
 on to pay so heavily for winter in coals, candles, etc. , if 
 I am not to have the article good of its kind? No: a 
 Canadian winter for my money, or a Russian one, where 
 every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in 
 the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an 
 epicure am I in this matter, that I cannot relish a winter 
 night fully, if it be much past St. Thomas's Day, and 
 have degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards 
 vernal indications : in fact, it must be divided by a thick 
 wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. 
 Start, therefore, at the first week of November : thence 
 to the end of January, Christmas Eve being the meridian 
 line, you may compute the period when happiness is in 
 season, which, in my judgment, enters the rooms with 
 the tea-tray. For tea, though ridiculed by those who 
 are naturally coarse in their nervous sensibilities, or are 
 become so from wine-dri,nking, and are not susceptible 
 of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the 
 favourite beverage of the intellectual ; and, for my part, 
 I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a helium intemecimim 
 against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who 
 should have presumed to disparage it. But here, to save 
 myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will 
 introduce a painter, and give him directions for the 
 rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, 
 unless a good deal weather-stained; but, as the reader 
 now understands that it is a winter night, his services 
 will not be required except for the inside of the house. 
 
54 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and 
 not more than seven and a'half feet high. This, reader, 
 is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the draw- 
 ing-room; but, being contrived " a double debt to pay," 
 it is also, and more justly, termed the library; for it hap- 
 pens that books are the only article of property in which 
 I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about 
 five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth 
 year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into 
 this room. Make it populous with books; and, further- 
 more, paint me a good fire; and furniture plain and 
 modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. 
 And near the fire paint me a tea-table ; and (as it is clear 
 that no creature can come to see one on such a stormy 
 night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; 
 and, if you know how to paint such a thing, symbolic- 
 ally or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — eternal 
 a parte ante, and a parte post; for I usually drink tea 
 from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. And, 
 as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for 
 one's-self, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the 
 table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and her smiles like 
 Hebe's ; but no, dear M ! not even in jest let me in- 
 sinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests 
 upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty ; or 
 that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire 
 of any earthly pencil. Pass, then, my good painter, to 
 something more within its power ; and the next article 
 brought forward should naturally be myself — a picture 
 of the Opium-eater, with his ' ' little golden receptacle of 
 the pernicious drug " lying beside him on the table. 
 
 As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture 
 of that; you may paint it, if you choose; but I apprise 
 you that no "little" receptacle would, even in 1816, 
 answer my purpose, who was at a distance from the 
 " stately Pantheon " and all druggists (mortal or other- 
 wise). No : you may as well paint the real recep- 
 tacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much 
 like a sublunary wine-decanter as possible. In fact, one 
 day, by a series of happily conceived experiments, I dis- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 55 
 
 covered that it was a decanter. Into this you may put a 
 quart of ruby-coloured laudanum ; that, and a book of 
 German metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently 
 attest my being in the neighbourhood ; but, as to my- 
 self, there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to 
 occupy the foreground of the picture; that, being the 
 hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the 
 bar, my body should be had into court. This seems 
 reasonable ; but why should I confess on this point to a 
 painter? or why confess it at all? If the public (into 
 whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my 
 Confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance 
 to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the 
 Opium-eater's exterior — should have ascribed to him, 
 romantically, an elegant person or a handsome face — 
 why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a de- 
 lusion? — pleasing both to the public and to me. No: 
 paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy ; and, 
 since a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful crea- 
 tions, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And 
 now, reader, we have run all through the ten cate- 
 gories of my condition, as it stood about 1816-17, up 
 to the middle of which latter year I judged myself to 
 have been a happy man ; and the elements of that happi- 
 ness I have endeavoured to place before you, in the 
 above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, in a 
 cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter even- 
 ing, rain driving vindictively and with malice afore- 
 thought against the windows, and darkness such that you 
 cannot see your own hand when held up against the sky. 
 But now farewell, a long farewell, to happiness, winter 
 or summer ! farewell to smiles and laughter ! farewell to 
 peace of mind, to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed 
 consolations of sleep ! For more than three years and a 
 half I am summoned away from these. Here opens 
 upon me an Iliad of woes; for I now enter upon the 
 
 PAINS OF OPIUM. 
 
 As when some gjreat painter dips 
 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. 
 
 Shelley's Revolt of Islam, 
 
56 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 A POTENT MEDICINE 
 
 [Characteristically enough De Quincey setting out to embark 
 upon the pains of opium begins by a further discussion of its 
 benefits, in particular its value as a prophylactic against con- 
 sumption.] 
 
 Rkader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must 
 request your attention, before we go farther, to a few 
 explanatory notes. 
 
 I. You are already aware, I hope — else you must have 
 a low opinion of my logic — that the opium miseries, 
 which are now on the point of pressing forward to the 
 front of this narrative, connect themselves with my early 
 hardships in London (and therefore more remotely with 
 those in Wales), by natural links of affiliation — that is, 
 the early series of sufferings was the parent of the later. 
 Otherwise, these Confessions would break up into two 
 disconnected sections — first, a record of boyish calamities; 
 secondly, a record (totally independent) of sufferings 
 consequent upon excesses in opium. And the two sec- 
 tions would have no link whatever to connect them, 
 except the slight one of having both happened to the 
 same person. But a little attention will show the strict- 
 ness of the inter-connection. The boyish sufferings, 
 whether in Wales or London, pressing upon an organ 
 peculiarly weak in my bodily system — viz., the stomach 
 — caused that subsequent distress and irritability of the 
 stomach which drove me to the use of opium as the sole 
 remedy potent enough to control it. Here already there 
 is exposed a sufficient causal connection between the two 
 several sections of my experience. The opium would 
 probably never have been promoted into the dignity of a 
 daily and life-long resource, had it not proved itself to be 
 the one sole agent equal to the task of tranquillising the 
 miseries left behind by the youthful privations. Thus far 
 the nexus, as between cause and effect, is sufficiently 
 established between the one experience and the other — 
 between the boyish records and the records of mature 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 57 
 
 life. There needed no other nexus to justify the unity of 
 the entire Confessions. But, though not waated, never- 
 theless it happens that there is another and a distinct 
 link connecting the two separate records. The main 
 phenomenon by which opium expressed itself per- 
 manently, and the sole phenomenon that was com- 
 municable, lay in the dreams (and in the peculiar 
 dream-scenery) which followed the opium excesses. But 
 naturally these dreams, and this dream-scenery, drew 
 their outlines and materials — their great lights and 
 shadows — from those profound revelations which had 
 been ploughed so deeply into the heart, from those 
 encaustic records which in the mighty furnaces of 
 London life had been burned into the undying memory 
 by the fierce action of misery. And thus in reality the 
 early experiences of erring childhood not only led to the 
 secondary experiences of opium, but also determined 
 the particular form and pressure of the chief phenomena 
 in these secondary experiences. Here is the briefest 
 possible abstract of the case: — The final object of the 
 whole record lay in the dreams. For the sake of those 
 the entire narrative arose. But what caused the dreams? 
 Opium used in unexampled excess. But what caused 
 this excess in the use of opium ? Simply the early suffer- 
 ings; these, and these only, through the derangements 
 which they left behind in the animal economy. On this 
 mode of viewing the case, moving regressively from the 
 end to the beginning, it will be seen that there is one 
 uninterrupted bond of unity running through the entire 
 succession of experiences — first and last: the dreams 
 were an inheritance from the opium ; the opium was an 
 inheritance from the boyish follies. 
 
 2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential 
 and communicative of my own private history. It may 
 be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, 
 and follow my own humours, than much to inquire who 
 is listening to me; for, if once I stop to consider what is 
 proper to be said, I shall soon come to doubt whether 
 any part at all is proper. The fact is, I imagine myself 
 writing at a distance of twenty — thirty — fifty years ahead 
 
58 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of this present moment, either for the satisfaction of the 
 few who may then retain any interest in myself, or of 
 the many (a number that is sure to be continually grow- 
 ing) who will take an inextinguishable interest in the 
 mysterious powers of opium. For opium is mysterious; 
 mysterious to the extent, at times, of apparent self- 
 contradiction; and so mysterious, that my own long ex- 
 perience in its use — sometimes even in its abuse — did 
 but mislead me into conclusions ever more and more 
 remote from what I now suppose to be the truth. Fifty- 
 and-two years' experience of opium, as a magical resource 
 under all modes of bodily suffering, I may now claim to 
 have had, allowing only for some periods of four or six 
 months during which, by unexampled efforts of self- 
 conquest, I had accomplished a determined abstinence 
 from opium. These parentheses being subtracted, as 
 also, and secondly, some off-and-on fits of tentative and 
 intermitting dalliance with opium in the opening of my 
 career — these deductions allowed for, I may describe 
 myself as experimentally acquainted with opium for 
 something more than half-a-century. What, then, is my 
 final report upon its good and evil results ? In particular, 
 upon these two capital tendencies of habitual opium- 
 eating under the popular misconceptions — viz., its sup- 
 posed necessity of continually clamouring for increasing 
 quantities; secondly, its supposed corresponding declen- 
 sion 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. It is my duty, it seems, thus far 
 to be a physician — to guarantee, so far as human 
 foresight ca7t guarantee, my own corporeal sanity. 
 And this, trying the case by ordinary practical tests, 
 I have accomplished. And I add solemnly, that with- 
 out opium, most certainly I could not have accom- 
 plished such a result. Thirty-five years ago, beyond all 
 doubt, I should have been in my grave. And as to the 
 two popular dilemmas — that either you must renounce 
 opium or else indefinitely augment the daily ration; and, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 59 
 
 secondly, that, even submitting to such a postulate, you 
 must content yourself, under any scale of doses, with 
 an effect continually decaying, in fact, that you must 
 ultimately descend into the despairing- condition of the 
 martyr to dram-drinking — at this point I make a resolute 
 stand, in blank denial of the whole doctrine. Originally, 
 when first entering upon my opium career, I did so with 
 great anxiety : and before my eyes floated for ever the 
 analogies — dim or not dim, according to my spirits at the 
 moment — of the poor, perishing brandy-drinker, often on 
 the brink of delirium tremens! Opium I pursued under a 
 harsh necessity, as an unknown, shadowy power, leading 
 I knew not whither, and a power that might suddenly 
 change countenance upon this unknown road. Habitually 
 I lived under such an impression of awe as we have all 
 felt from stories of fawns, or seeming fawns, that have 
 run before some mounted hunter for many a league, 
 until they have tempted him far into the mazes of a 
 boundless forest, and at that point, where all regress had 
 become lost and impossible, either suddenly vanished, 
 leaving the man utterly bewildered, or assumed some 
 more fearful shape. A part of the evil which I feared 
 actually unfolded itself; but all was due to my own 
 ignorance, to neglect of cautionary measures, or to 
 gross mismanagement of my health in points where I 
 well knew the risks but grievously underrated their 
 urgency and pressure. I was temperate: that solitary 
 advantage I had; but I sank under the lulling seduc- 
 tions of opium into total sedentariness, and that whilst 
 holding firmly the belief, that powerful exercise was 
 omnipotent against all modes of debility or obscure 
 nervous irritations. The account of my depression, and 
 almost of my helplessness, in the next memorandum 
 (No. 3), is faithful as a description to the real case. 
 But, in ascribing that case to opium, as any transcendent 
 and overmastering agency, I was thoroughly wrong. 
 Twenty days of exercise, twenty times twenty miles of 
 walking, at the ordinary pace of three and a half miles 
 an hour, or perhaps half that amount, would have sent 
 me up as buoyantly as a balloon into regions of natural 
 
6o THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 and healthy excitement, where dejection is an impossible 
 phenomenon. O heavens ! how man abuses or neglects 
 his natural resources ! Yes, the thoughtful reader is dis- 
 posed 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 un- 
 natural. 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: — 
 
 I. With respect to the morbid growth upon the 
 opium-eater of his peculiar habit, when once rooted in 
 the system, and throwing out tentacula like a cancer, it 
 is out of my power to deliver any such oracular judgment 
 upon the case — i.e., upon the apparent danger of such a 
 course, and by what stages it might be expected to 
 travel towards its final consummation — as naturally I 
 should wish to do. Being an oracle, it is my wish to 
 behave myself like an oracle, and not to evade any decent 
 man's questions in the way that Apollo too often did at 
 Delphi. But, in this particular instance before me, the 
 accident of my own individual seamanship in presence 
 of this storm interfered with the natural evolution of the 
 problem in its extreme form of danger. I had become too 
 uneasy under the consciousness of that intensely artificial 
 condition into which I had imperceptibly lapsed through 
 unprecedented quantities of opium; the shadows of eclipse 
 were too dark and lurid not to rouse and alarm me into 
 a spasmodic effort for reconquering the ground which I 
 had lost. Such an effort I made : every step by which 
 I had gone astray did I patiently unthread. And thus 
 I fought off the natural and spontaneous catastrophe, 
 whatever that might be, which mighty Nature would 
 else have let loose for redressing the wrongs offered to 
 herself. But what followed? In six or eight months 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 6i 
 
 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." _ 
 
 Even 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 intricate, dances the 
 most elaborate, receding or approaching, round my 
 great central sun of opium ; Sometimes I ran perilously 
 close into my perihelion; sometimes I became frightened, 
 and wheeled off into a vast cometary aphelion, where 
 for six months "opium" was a word unknown. How 
 nature stood all these see-sawings is quite a mystery to 
 me : I must have led her a sad life in those days. Nervous 
 irritation forced me, at times, upon frightful excesses; 
 but terror from anomalous symptoms sooner or later 
 forced me back. This terror was strengthened by the 
 vague hypotheses current at that period about spon- 
 taneous 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 agency 
 — an unknown deposition — accumulated from some 
 vast redundancy of brandy, furnished the self-exploding 
 principle. But this startled the faith of most people ; and 
 a more plausible scheme suggested itself which depended 
 upon the concurrence of a lucifer-match. Without an 
 incendiary, a man could not take fire. We sometimes see 
 
 ' "Seesaw,'' etc.: — O dear reader, surely you don't want an 
 oracle to tell you that this is a good old nursery lyric, which 
 through four centuries has stood the criticism — stood the angei^ 
 against Daw's enemies— stood the pity for Daw herself, so in- 
 famously reduced to straw — of children through eighty generations, 
 reckoning five years to each nursery succession. 
 
62 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the hands of inveterate dram-drinkers throw off an 
 atmosphere of intoxicating vapours, strong enough to 
 lay flies into a state of sleep or coma ; and on the same 
 principle it was supposed that the breath might be so 
 loaded with spirituous particles, as to catch fire from a 
 match applied to a pipe when held between the lips. If 
 so, then what should hinder the "devouring element" 
 (as newspapers call fire) from spreading through the 
 throat to the cavity of the chest: in which case, not 
 being insured, the man would naturally become a total 
 loss. Opium, however, it will occur to the reader, is not 
 alcohol. That is true. But it might, for anything that 
 was known experimentally, be ultimately worse. Cole- 
 ridge, the only person known to the public as having 
 dallied systematically and for many years with opium, 
 could not be looked to for any candid report of its 
 history and progress ; besides that, Coleridge was under 
 a permanent craze of having nearly accomplished his 
 own liberation from opium, and thus he had come to 
 have an extra reason for self-delusion. Finding myself, 
 therefore, walking on a solitary path of bad repute, lead- 
 ing whither no man's experience could tell me, I became 
 proportionably cautious ; and, if nature' had any plot for 
 making an example of me, I was resolved to baulk her. 
 Thus it was that I never followed out the seductions of 
 opium to their final extremity. But, nevertheless, in 
 evading that extremity, I stumbled upon as great a dis- 
 covery as if I had not evaded it. After the first or second 
 self-conquest in this conflict — although finding it impos- 
 sible to persist through more than a few months in the 
 abstinence from opium — I remarked, however, that the 
 domineering tyranny of its exactions was at length 
 steadily declining. Quantities noticeably less had now 
 become sufficient: and, after the fourth of these victories, 
 won with continually decreasing efforts, I found that not 
 only had the daily dose (upon relapsing) suffered a self- 
 limitation to an enormous extent, but also that, upon 
 any attempt obstinately to renew the old doses, there 
 arose a new symptom — viz., an irritation on the surface 
 of the skin — which soonbecame insupportable, and tended 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 63 
 
 to distraction. In about four years, without any further 
 efforts, my daily ration had fallen spontaneously from a 
 varying quantity of eight, ten, or twelve thousand drops 
 of laudanum to about three hundred. I describe the drug 
 as laudanum, because another change ran along collater- 
 ally with this supreme change — viz., that the solid opium 
 began to require a length of time, continually increasing, 
 to expand its effects sensibly, oftentimes not less than 
 four hours; whereas the tincture manifested its presence 
 instantaneously. 
 
 Thus, then, I had reached a position from which au- 
 thoritatively it might be pronounced, as a result of long, 
 anxious, and vigilant experience, that, on the assump- 
 tion 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) euthan- 
 asy. Many years ago, when briefly touching on this 
 subject, I announced (as a fact even then made known 
 to me) that no instance of abstinence, though it were but 
 of three days' continuance, ever perishes. Ten grains, 
 deducted from a daily ration of five hundred, will tell 
 through a series of many weeks, and will be found again 
 modifying the final result, even at the close of the year's 
 reckoning. At this day, after a half-century of oscillate 
 ing experience, and after no efforts or trying acts of self- 
 denial beyond those severe ones attached to the several 
 processes (five or six in all) of re-conquering my freedom 
 from the yoke of opium, I find myself pretty nearly at 
 the same station which I occupied at that vast distance 
 of time. It is recorded of Lord Nelson that, even after 
 the Nile and Copenhagen, he still paid the penalty, on 
 the first days of resuming his naval life, which is gener- 
 ally exacted by nature from the youngest little middy or 
 the rawest griffin — viz. , sea-sickness. And this happens to 
 a considerable proportion of sailors : they do not recover 
 their sea-legs till some days after getting afloat. The 
 very same thing happens to veteran opium-eaters, when 
 first, after long intermissions, resuming too abruptly 
 their ancient familiarities with opium. It is a fact, 
 
64 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 which I mention as indicating the enormous revolutions 
 passed through, that, within these five years, I have 
 turned pale, and felt warnings, pointing towards such an 
 uneasiness, after taking not more than twenty grains of 
 opium. At present, and for some years, I have been 
 habitually content with five or six grains daily, instead 
 of 320 to 400 grains. Let me wind up this retrospect 
 with saying, that the powers of opium, as an ano- 
 dyne, but still more as a tranquilliser of nervous and 
 anomalous sensations, have not in the smallest degree 
 decayed ; and that, if it has casually unveiled its early 
 power of exacting slight penalties from any trivial in- 
 attention to accurate proportions, it has more than 
 commensurately renewed its ancient privilege of lull- 
 ing irritation and of supporting preternatural calls for 
 exertion. 
 
 My first proposition, therefore, amounts to this — that 
 the process of weaning one's-self from the deep bondage 
 of opium, by many people viewed with despairing eyes, 
 is not only, a possible achievement, and one which grows 
 easier in every stage of its progress, but is favoured and 
 promoted by nature in secret ways that could not, with- 
 out some experience, have been suspected. This, how- 
 ever, is but a sorry commendation of any resource 
 making great pretensions, that, by a process confessedly 
 trying to human firmness, it can ultimately be thrown 
 aside. Certainly little would be gained by the negative 
 service of cancelling a drawback upon an agency what- 
 ever, until it were shown that this drawback has availed 
 to disturb and neutralise great positive blessings lying 
 within the gift of that agency. What are the advantages 
 connected with opium that can merit any such name as 
 blessings ? 
 
 II. Briefly let me say, in the secotid 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 re- 
 gard. 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 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 65 
 
 tertian or quartan fever was also an unnatural pressure 
 upon human energies, he would begin to guess that two 
 counter unnaturals may terminate in one most natural 
 and salubrious result. Nervous irritation is the secret 
 desolator of human life ; and for this there is probably 
 no adequate controlling power but that of opium, taken 
 daily, under steady regulation. 
 
 III. But even moremomentous is the hurdenof my ihtrd 
 proposition. Are you aware, reader, what it is that con- 
 stitutes the scourge (physically speaking) of Great Brit- 
 ain and Ireland? All readers, who direct any part of their 
 attention to medical subjects must know that it is pul- 
 monary consumption. If you walk through a forest at 
 certain seasons, you will see what is called a blase of 
 white paint upon a certain ^liie of the trees marked .out 
 by the forester as, ripe for the axe. Such a blaze, if the 
 shadowy world could reveal its futurities, would be seen 
 everywhere distributing its secret badges of cognisance 
 amongst our youthful men and women. Of those that, 
 in the expression of Pericles, constitute the vernal sec- 
 tion 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 dedica- 
 tion to an early grave. How appalling in its amount is 
 this annual slaughter amongst those that should by 
 birthright be specially the children of hope, and levied 
 impartially from every rank of society ! Is the income-tax 
 or the poor-rate, faithful as each is to its regulating 
 tide-tables, paid by any class with as much punctuality 
 as this premature ^onlegium, this gathering and render- 
 ing up of blighted blossoms, by all classes? Then comes 
 the startling question — that pierces the breaking hearts 
 of so many thousand afflicted relatives — Is there no 
 remedy? Is there no palliation of the evil? Waste 
 not a thought upon the idle question, whether he that 
 speaks is armed with this form or that form of authoris- 
 ation 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 
 
66 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 scruples, or of fool-born superstitions, or the terror of a 
 word, or old traditional prejudice, had been allowed to 
 neutralise one chance in a thousand for her daughter — 
 had by possibility (but, as I could tell her, had sometimes 
 to a certainty) stepped between patients and deliverance 
 from the grave, sure and perfect ! " What matter," she 
 would cry out, indignantly, "who it is that says the 
 thing, so long as the thing itself is true? " 
 
 It is the potent and faithful word that is wanted, 
 in perfect slight of the organ through which it is 
 uttered. Let me premise this notorious fact, that all 
 consumption, though latent in the constitution, and 
 indicated often to the eye in bodily conformation, does 
 not therefore manifest itself as a disease, until some 
 form of "cold" or bronchitis, some familiar affection 
 of the chest or of the lungs, arises to furnish a starting- 
 point for the morbid development.^ Now the on& fatal 
 blunder lies in suffering that development to occur; 
 and the one counterworking secret for pre-arrestlhent 
 of this evil lies in steadily, by whatever means, keep- 
 ing up and promoting the insensible perspiration. In 
 that one simple art of controlling a constant function of 
 the animal economy, lies a magician's talisman for de- 
 feating the forces leagued against the great organs of 
 respiration. Pulmonary affections, if not previously 
 suffered to develop themselves cannot live under the 
 hourly counterworking of this magical force. Conse- 
 quently, the one question in arrear is, what potent drug 
 
 1 Here is a parallel case, equally fatal where it occurs, but 
 happily moving within a far narrower circle. About fifty years 
 ag-o, Sir Everard Home, a surgeon of the highest class, mentioned 
 as a dreadful caution, that, within his own experience, many an 
 indolent tumour in the face, not unfrequently the most trifling 
 pimple, which for thirty or more- years had caused no uneasiness 
 whatever, suddenly might chance to receive the slightest possible 
 wound from a razor in the act of shaving. Wliat 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 un- 
 instructed eyes? Yet, on the other hand, it is a thousand times 
 more likely to happen. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 67 
 
 is that which possesses this power, a power like that of 
 " Amram's son," for evoking salubrious streams, welling 
 forth benignly from systems else parched and arid as 
 rocks in the wilderness? There is none that I know of 
 answering the need but opium. The powers of that great 
 agent I first learned dimly to guess at from a remark 
 made to me by a lady in London ; then, and for some 
 time previously, she had been hospitably entertaining 
 Coleridge, whom, indeed, she tended with the anxiety of 
 a daughter. Consequently, she was familiarly acquainted 
 with his opium habits; and, on my asking, in reply 
 to some remark of hers, how she could be so sure as her 
 words implied that Coleridge was just then likely to be 
 incapacitated for writing (or, indeed, for any literary 
 exertion.), she said, " Oh, I know it well by the glisten- 
 ing of his cheeks." Coleridge's face, as is well known 
 to his acquaintances, exposed a large surface of cheek; 
 too large for the intellectual expression of his features 
 generally, had not the final eflfect been redeemed by what 
 Wordsworth styled his "godlike forehead." The result 
 was that no possible face so broadly betrayed and pub- 
 lished 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 de- 
 cipher, this resplendent acreage of cheek. But at last, 
 either propria 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 ^s- 
 culapius, 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, medi- 
 cally speaking, involved a mystery. At the com- 
 mencement of my opium career, I had myself been pro- 
 nounced repeatedly a martyr elect to pulmonary con- 
 sumption. And although, in the common decencies of 
 humanity, this opinion upon my prospects had always 
 been accompanied with some formal words of encourage- 
 ment — as, for instance, that constitutions, after all, 
 varied by endless diff'erences; that nobody could fix 
 
68 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 limits to the powers of medicine, or, in default of medicine, 
 to the healing resources of nature herself; yet, without 
 something like a miracle in my favour, I was instructed 
 to regard myself as a condemned subject. That was the 
 upshot of these agreeable communications ; alarming 
 enough ; and they were rendered more so by these three 
 facts : — first, the opinions were pronounced by the high- 
 est authorities in Christendom — viz., the physicians at 
 Clifton and the Bristol Hotwells, who saw more of pul- 
 monary disorders in one twelvemonth than the rest of 
 the profession through all Europe in a century ; for the 
 disease, it must be remembered, was almost peculiar as 
 a national scourge to Britain, interlinked with the local 
 accidents of the climate and its restless changes ; so that 
 only in England could it be studied, and even there only 
 in perfection at these Bristolian adjacencies — the reason 
 being this, all opulent patients resorted to the Devonshire 
 watering-places, where the balmy temperature of the air 
 and prevailing winds allowed the myrtle and other green- 
 house shrubs to stand out of doors all winter through; 
 and naturally on the road to Devonshire all patients 
 alike touched at Clifton. There I was myself continually 
 resident. Many, therefore, and of supreme authority, 
 were the prophets of evil that announced to me my 
 doom. Secondly, they were countenanced by the ugly 
 fact that I out of eight children was the one who most 
 closely inherited the bodily conformation of a father who 
 had died of consumption at the early age of thirty-nine. 
 Thirdly, I offered at the first glance, to a medical eye, 
 every symptom of phthisis broadly and conspicuously 
 developed. The hectic colours on the face, the nocturnal 
 perspirations, the growing embarrassment of the respira- 
 tion, and other expressions of gathering feebleness under 
 any attempts at taking exercise — all these symptoms 
 were steadily accumulating between the age of twenty- 
 two and twenty-four. What was it that first arrested 
 them? Simply the use, continually becoming more regu- 
 lar, of opium. Nobody recommended this drug to me ; 
 on the contrary, under that ignorant horror which every- 
 where invested opium, I saw too clearly that any avowed 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 69 
 
 use of it would expose me to a rabid persecution.^ Un- 
 der the sincere and unaffected hope of saving me from 
 destruction, I should have been hunted into the grave 
 within six months. I kept my own counsel ; said no- 
 thing; awakened no suspicions; persevered more and 
 more determinately in the use of opium; and finally 
 effected 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 personal 
 withdrawal from Clifton and its neighbourhoods. 
 
 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 pre- 
 sumable in opium, stand retracted; although, shrink- 
 ing from the labour 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 general 
 views upon the powers and natural tendencies of opium 
 were all supported and strengthened by this fortunate 
 advantage of a professional correspondence. My special 
 doctrine I now repeat at this point of valediction, and in 
 a rememberable form. Lord Bacon said once, too boldly 
 and hazardously, that he who discovers the secret of 
 making myrrh soluble by human blood has discovered 
 the secret of immortal life. I propose a more modest 
 
 1 " Habid persecution:" — I do not mean that, in the circum- 
 stances of my individual position, any opening' could have arisen 
 to an opposition more than verbal; since it would have been easy 
 for me at all times to withdraw myself by hundreds of leagues 
 from controversies upon the case. But the reasons for conceal- 
 ment were not the less urgent. For it would have been painful to 
 find myself reduced to the dilemma of either practising habitual 
 and complex dissimulation, or, on the other hand, of throwing my- 
 self headlong into that fiery vortex of hot-headed ignorance upon 
 the very name of opium, which to this hour (though with less of 
 rancorous bigotry) makes it hazardous to avow any daily use of so 
 potent a drug. 
 
70 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 form of magic — that he who discovers the secret of 
 stimulating and keeping up unintermittingly the insens- 
 ible perspiration, has discovered the secret of intercepting 
 pulmonary consumption. In my medical character, I 
 here take leave of the reader, and fall back into the cur- 
 rent of my regular narrative. 
 
 NEMESIS 
 
 [After the first period of pleasurable indulgence at Grasmere, 
 opium, taken in increasing doses, exacted its penalties. De 
 Quincey passed some three years in gloom and torpor. No doubt, 
 with his keen eye for literary effect, he exaggerated his own 
 misery ; but his account of his sufferings is a valuable psychological 
 document. No writer has ever described with more accuracy of 
 perception that paralysis of the will and stagnation of the intellect 
 which the habitual and excessive use of narcotics and stimulants 
 may produce. De Quincey believed that his sanity, if not his life, 
 was endangered, until the pressure of financial embarrassment 
 roused him to exertion in 1819, and compelled him to emancipate 
 himself in some degree from his thraldom.] 
 
 My studies have now been long interrupted. I can- 
 not read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a 
 moment's endurance. Yet I sometimes read aloud for 
 the pleasure of others; because reading is an accom- 
 plishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word 
 accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain- 
 ment, almost the only one I possess ; and formerly, if I 
 had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or 
 attainment of mine, it was with this ; for I had observed 
 that no accomplishment is more rare. Actors are the 
 worst readers of all. John Kemble is not effective as a 
 reader, though he has the great advantage of mature 
 scholarship ; and his sister, the immortal Siddons, with 
 all her superiority to him in voice, reads even less effect- 
 ively. She reads nothing well but dramatic works. 
 In the Paradise Lost, which I heard her attempt at 
 Barley Wood, her failure was distressing; almost as 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 71 
 
 distressing as the sycophantic applause of the surround- 
 ing' company — all lost, of course, in nearly speechless 
 admiration. Neither Coleridge nor Southey is a good 
 reader of verse. Southey is admirable almost in all 
 things, but not in this. Both he and Coleridge read as 
 if crying, or at least wailing lugubriously. People in 
 general either read poetry without any passion at all, 
 or else overstep the modesty of nature. Of late, if I 
 have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by 
 the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the 
 great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise 
 Regained, when read aloud by myself. We are far 
 from towns ; but a young lady sometimes comes and 
 drinks tea with us ; at her request and M— — 's, I now 
 and then read Wordsworth's Poems to them. (Words- 
 worth, by the bye, is the only poet I ever met who could 
 read his own verses; often, indeed, he reads admirably.) 
 For nearly two years I believe that I read nothing and 
 studied nothing. Analytic studies are continuous studies, 
 and not to be pursued by fits and starts or fragmentary 
 efforts. All these were become unsupportable to me ; I 
 shrank from them with a sense of powerless and infantile 
 feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from 
 remembering the time when I grappled with them to my 
 own hourly delight ; and for this further reason, because 
 I had devoted the labour of my whole life, had dedicated 
 my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate 
 toil of constructing one single work, to which I had pre- 
 sumed to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's 
 — viz., De Emendatione Huntani Intellectils. This was 
 now lying locked up as by frost, like any Spanish bridge 
 or aqueduct begun upon too great a scale for the re- 
 sources of the architect ; and, instead of surviving me, 
 as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and 
 long labours, dedicated to the exaltation of human 
 nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to 
 promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a 
 memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of bafiled 
 efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of founda- 
 tions laid that were never to support a superstructure. 
 
72 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state 
 of imbecility I had, for amusement, turned my attention 
 to poHtical economy. My understanding-, which formerly 
 had been as active and restless as a panther, could not, 
 I suppose (so long as I lived at all), sink into utter 
 lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to 
 a person in my state, that, though it is eminently an 
 organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts 
 on the whole, as the whole again reacts on and through 
 each part), yet still the several parts may be detached 
 and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration 
 of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my 
 knowledge; and my understanding had been for too 
 many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, 
 and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware oiF 
 a great call made by political economy at this crisis for 
 a new law and a transcendent legislator. Suddenly, in 
 i8i8, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's 
 book; and, recurring to my own prophetic anticipation 
 of some coming legislator for the science, I said, before 
 I had finished the first chapter, "Thou art the man! " 
 Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been 
 dead in me. Yet I wondered once more — wondered at 
 myself that could once again be stimulated to the eiFort 
 of reading; and much more I wondered at the book. 
 Had this profound work been really written during the 
 tumultuous hurry of the nineteenth century? Could it be 
 that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but 
 oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accom- 
 plished what all the universities of Europe, and a century 
 of thought, had failed even to advance by one hair's 
 breadth? Previous writers had been crushed and over- 
 laid by the enormous weights of facts, details, and excep- 
 tions; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the 
 understanding itself, laws which first shot arrowy light 
 into the dark chaos of materials, and had thus con- 
 structed what hitherto was but a collection of tentative 
 discussions into a science of regular proportions, now 
 first standing upon an eternal basis. 
 
 Thus did one simple work of a profound understand- 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 73 
 
 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. Ricardo; and, as these were, for 
 the most part, of such a nature that I could express or 
 illustrate them briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols, 
 the whole would hardly have reached the bulk of a 
 
 pamphlet. With M for my amanuensis, even at this 
 
 time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew 
 up, therefore, my Prolegomena to all Future Systems of 
 Political Economy. 
 
 This exertion, however, was but a momentary flash, 
 as the sequel showed. Arrangements were made at a 
 provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for print- 
 ing it. An additional compositor was retained for some 
 days, on this account. The work was even twice adver- 
 tised ; and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment 
 of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a 
 dedication, which I wished to make impressive, to 
 Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish 
 all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the 
 compositor dismissed, and my Prolegomena rested 
 peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified 
 brother. 
 
 In thus describing and illustrating my intellectual 
 torpor, I use terms that apply, more or less, to every 
 part of the years during which I was under the Circean 
 spells of opium. But for misery and suffering I might, 
 indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I 
 seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an 
 answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the 
 utmost that I could accomplish ; and often that not until 
 the letter had lain for weeks, or even months, on my 
 
 writing-table. Without the aid of M , my whole 
 
 domestic economy, whatever became of political econ- 
 omy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I 
 shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case ; it is 
 one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, 
 most oppressive and tormenting, from the sense of in- 
 
74 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 capacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments 
 incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's 
 appropriate labours, and from the remorse which must 
 often exasperate the stings of these evils to a conscien- 
 tious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral 
 sensibilities or aspirations ; he wishes and longs as earn- 
 estly as ever to realise what he believes possible, and 
 feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehen- 
 sion of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not 
 of execution only, but even of proposing or willing. He 
 lies under a world's weight of incubus and nightmare ; he 
 lies in sight of all that he would fain perform ; just as a 
 man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor 
 of paralysis, who is compelled to witness injury or out- 
 rage offered to some object of his tenderest love: — he 
 would lay down his life if he might but rise and walk ; 
 but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot so much as 
 make an effort to move. 
 
 THE DREAMS OF OPIUM 
 
 [De Quincey winds up his narrative with an impassioned and 
 vividly imaginative account of his nightly dreams when the opium- 
 cloud lay heaviest upon him, before he was able by desperate and 
 sustained efforts to reduce his drug-taking to manageable limits. 
 One may regret that he did not carry out his intention of adding 
 some further visions to this magnificent dream-series. What we 
 have is a mere fragment, but a fragment which has enriched 
 English literature with some imperishable pages.] 
 
 But from this I now pass to what is the main subject 
 of these latter Confessions — to the history and journal 
 of what took place in my dreams; for these were the 
 immediate and proximate cause of shadowy terrors that 
 settled and brooded over my whole waking life. 
 
 The first notice I had of any important change going 
 on in this part of my physical economy, was from the 
 reawaking of a state of eye oftentimes incident to child- 
 hood. I know not whether my reader is aware that 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 75 
 
 many children have a power of painting, as it were, 
 upon the darkness all sorts of phantoms; in some that 
 power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others 
 have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or 
 summon such phantoms ; or, as a child once said to me 
 when I questioned him on this matter, ' ' I can tell them 
 to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when I 
 don't tell them to come. "He had by one-half as unlimited 
 a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over 
 his soldiers. In the middle of 1817 this faculty became 
 increasingly distressing to me: at night, when I lay 
 awake in bed, vast processions moved along continually 
 in mournful pomp ; friezes of never-ending stories, that 
 to my feelings were as sad and solemn as stories drawn 
 from times before CEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before 
 Memphis. And, concurrently with this, a corresponding 
 change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed 
 suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which 
 presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splen- 
 dour. And the four following facts may be mentioned as 
 noticeable at this time: — 
 
 1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a 
 sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the 
 dreaming states of the brain in one point — that whatso- 
 ever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary 
 act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to 
 my dreams; and at length I feared to exercise this 
 faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yet 
 baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so 
 whatsoever things capable of being visually represented 
 I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped 
 themselves into phantoms for the eye; and, by a process 
 apparently no less inesiitable, when thus once traced in 
 faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic 
 ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of 
 my dreams, into insufferable splendour that fretted my 
 heart. 
 
 2. This and all other changes in my dreams were 
 accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and funereal melan- 
 choly, such as are wholly incommunicable by words, I 
 
76 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 seemed every night to descend — not metaphorically, but 
 literally to descend — into chasms and sunless abysses, 
 depths below depths, from which It seemed hopeless that 
 I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I 
 had reascended. Why should I dwell upon this? For 
 indeed the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous 
 spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness, as of 
 some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by 
 words. 
 
 3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, 
 were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, 
 etc. , were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily 
 eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was am- 
 plified to an extent of unutterable and self-repeating in- 
 finity. This disturbed me very much less than the vast 
 expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed to have lived 
 for seventy or a hundred years in one night ; nay, some- 
 times had feelings representative of a duration far be- 
 yond the limits of any human experience. 
 
 4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten 
 scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be 
 said to recollect them; for, if I had been told of them 
 when waking, I should not have been able to acknow- 
 ledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed 
 as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and 
 clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accom- 
 panying feelings, I recognised them instantaneously. 1 
 was once told by a near relative of mine, that, having in 
 her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very 
 verge of death but for the assistance which reached her 
 at the last critical moment, she saw in a moment her 
 whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents, arrayed be- 
 fore her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultan- 
 eously ; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for 
 comprehending the whole and every part.'^ This, from 
 
 ^ The heroine of this remarkable case was a girl about nine 
 years old ; and there can be little doubt that she looked down as 
 far within the crater of death — that awful volcano — as any human 
 being ever can have done that has lived to draw back and to re- 
 port her experience. Not less than ninety years did she survive 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 77 
 
 some opium experiences, I can believe ; I have, indeed, 
 seen the same thing twice asserted in modern books, and 
 accompanied by a remark which probably is true — viz., 
 that the dread book of account which the Scriptures 
 
 this memorable escape ; and I may describe her as hi all respects 
 a woman of remarkable and interesting qualities. She enjoyed 
 throughout her long life, as the reader will readily infer, serene 
 and cloudless health ; had a masculine understanding ; reverenced 
 truth not less than did the evangelists ; and led a life of saintly de- 
 votion, such as might have glorified ' ' Hilarion or Paul. " (The 
 words in italic are Ariosto's.) I mention these traits as character- 
 ising her in a memorable extent, that the reader may not suppose 
 himself relying upon a dealer in exaggerations, upon a. credulous 
 enthusiast, or upon a careless wielder of language. Forty-five 
 years had intervened between the first time and the last time of 
 her telling me this anecdote, and not one iota had shifted its 
 ground amongst the incidents, nor had any of the most trivial of 
 the circumstantiations suffered change. The scene of the accident 
 was the least of valleys, what the Greeks of old would have called 
 an ayicof, 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 suppress- 
 ing 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 ap- 
 parently on or in the brain, after which there was no pain or con- 
 flict; but in an instant succeeded a dazzling rush of light; im- 
 mediately after which came the solemn apocalypse of the entire 
 past life. Meantime, the child's disappearance in the water had 
 happily been witnessed by a farmer who rented some fields in this 
 little solitude, and by a rare accident was riding through them at 
 the moment. Not being very well mounted, he was retarded by 
 the hedges and other fences in making his way down to the water ; 
 some time was thus lost; but once at the spot, he leaped in, 
 booted and spurred, and succeeded in delivering one that must 
 have been as nearly counted amongst the populations of the 
 grave as perhaps the laws of the shadowy world can suffer to 
 return ! 
 
78 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 ultimSite forg-eiitngr; traces once impressed upon 
 the memory are indestructible; a thousand accidents 
 may and will interpose a veil between our present con- 
 sciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. 
 Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil. 
 But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription 
 remains for ever ; just as the stars seem to withdraw be- 
 fore 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, whenever 
 the obscuring daylight itself shall have withdrawn. 
 
 Having noted these four facts as memorably distin- 
 guishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now 
 cite a few illustrative cases ; and shall then cite such 
 others as I remember, in any order that may give them 
 most effect as pictures to the reader. 
 
 I had been in youth, and ever since, for occasional 
 amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that 
 I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the 
 Roman historians ; and I had often felt as solemn and 
 appalling sounds, emphatically representative of Roman 
 majesty, the two words so often occurring in Livy, 
 Consul Somanus; especially when the consul is intro- 
 duced in his military character. I mean to say that the 
 words, king, sultan, regent, etc., or any other titles of 
 those who embody in their own persons the collective 
 majesty of a great people, had less power over my 
 reverential feelings. I had also, though no great reader 
 of history, made myself critically familiar with one period 
 of English history — viz. , the period of the Parliamentary 
 War — having been attracted by the moral grandeur of 
 some who figured in that day, and by the interesting 
 memoirs which survive those unquiet times. Both these 
 parts of my lighter reading, having furnished me often 
 with matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter 
 for my dreatns. Often I used to see, after painting upon 
 the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a 
 crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 79 
 
 I heard it said, or I said to myself, "These are English 
 ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are 
 the wives and daughters of those who met in peace, and 
 sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or 
 by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, 
 never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the 
 field of battle ; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at 
 Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, 
 and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friend- 
 ship." The ladies danced, and looked as lovely as at the 
 court of George IV. Yet even in my dream I knew that 
 they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. 
 This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; and, at a clapping 
 of hands, would be heard the heart-shaking sound of 
 Consul Romanus, and immediately came " sweeping by," 
 in gorgeous paludaments, Paullus or Marius, girt around 
 by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic ' 
 hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos ^ of 
 the Roman legions. 
 
 Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's 
 Antiquities of Rome, Coleridge, then standing by, de- 
 scribed to me a set of plates from that artist, called his 
 "Dreams," and which record the scenery of his own 
 visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of these (I 
 describe only from memory of Coleridge's account) re- 
 presented vast Gothic halls ; on the floor of which stood 
 mighty engines and machinery, wheels, cables, catapults, 
 etc., expressive of enormous power put forth or resist- 
 ance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls 
 you perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his 
 way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a 
 little farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt 
 termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no 
 step onwards to him who should reach the extremity, ex- 
 cept into the depths below. Whatever is to become of 
 poor Piranesi, at least you suppose that his labours must 
 
 ' " The crimson tunic: ' — The sig'nal which announced a day of 
 battle. 
 
 ° "Alalagmos:" — A word expressing collectively the gathering 
 of the Roman war-cries — Aldla, Aldlal 
 
8o THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 now in some way terminate. But raise your eyes, and 
 behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which 
 again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the 
 very brink of the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, 
 and a still more aerial flight of stairs is descried ; and 
 there, again, is the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspir- 
 ing labours : and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the 
 hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the 
 hall. With the same power of endless growth and self- 
 reproductiondidmyarchitecture proceedin dreams. Inthe 
 early stage of the malady, the splendours of my dreams 
 were indeed chiefly architectural ; and I beheld such pomp 
 of cities and palaces as never yet was beheld by the 
 waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern 
 poet I cite the part of a passage which describes, as an 
 appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many 
 of the circumstances I saw frequently in sleep : — 
 
 The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 
 Was of a raig-hty city — boldly say 
 A wilderness of building, sinking far 
 And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth. 
 Far sinking into splendour without end ! 
 Fabric it seem'd of diamond and of gold, 
 With alabaster domes and silver spires. 
 And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
 Uplifted ; here, serene pavilions bright, 
 In avenues disposed ; there, towers begirt 
 With battlements that on their restless fronts 
 Bore stars — illumination of all gems! 
 By earthly nature had the effect been wrought 
 Upon the dark materials of the storm 
 Now pacified ; on them, and on the coves, 
 And mountain steeps and summits, whereunto 
 The vapours had receded — taking there 
 Their station under a cerulean sky. 
 
 The sublime circumstance — " that on their resiless fronts 
 bore stars " — might have been copied from my own 
 architectural dreams, so often did it occur. We hear it 
 reported of Dryden, and in later times of Fuseli, that 
 they ate raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid 
 dreams ; how much better, for such a purpose, to have 
 eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 8i 
 
 is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; 
 and in ancient days Homer is, I think, rightly reputed 
 to have known the virtues of opium as a (pdpfiaicov 
 vrprcvdeg — i.e., as an anodyne. 
 
 To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and 
 silvery expanses of water : these haunted me so much that 
 I feared lest some dropsical state or tendency of the brain 
 might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) 
 objective ; and that the sentient organ might be project- 
 ing itself as its own object. For two months I suffered 
 greatly in my head — a part of my bodily structure which 
 had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of 
 weakness (physically, I mean), that I used to say of it, as 
 the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed 
 likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now, I had 
 never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, 
 except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. 
 
 The waters gradually changed their character — from 
 translucent lakes, shining like mirrors, they became seas 
 and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, 
 unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many months, 
 promised an abiding torment ; and, in fact, it never left 
 me, though recurring more or less intermittingly. Hither- 
 to the human face had often mixed in my dreams, but 
 not despotically, nor with any special power of torment- 
 ing. But now that affection, which I have called the 
 tyranny of the human face, began to unfold itself. Per- 
 haps some part of my London life (the searching for Ann 
 amongst fluctuating crowds) might be answerable for 
 this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rock- 
 ing waters of the ocean the human face began to reveal 
 itself; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, 
 upturned to the heavens; faces, imploring, wrathful, 
 despairing; faces that surged upwards by thousands, by 
 myriads, by generations : infinite was my agitation ; my 
 mind tossed, as it seemed, upon the billowy ocean, and 
 weltered upon the weltering waves. 
 
 May, 1818. — The Malay has been a fearful enemy for 
 months. Every night, through his means, I have been 
 transported into Asiatic scenery. I know not whether 
 
 G 
 
82 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 others share in my feelings on this point; but I have 
 often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, 
 and to live in China, among Chinese manners and modes 
 of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my 
 horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to 
 others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful 
 images and associations. As the cradle of the human 
 race, if on no other ground, it would have a dim, rever- 
 ential feeling connected with it. But there are other 
 reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, 
 and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes 
 elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by 
 the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions 
 of Hindostan. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of 
 their institutions, histories, above all, of their myth- 
 ologies, etc. , 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 ante- 
 diluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not 
 bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but 
 shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed 
 apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial 
 tracts of time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by the 
 sanctity of the Ganges, or by the very name of the 
 Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that 
 South-eastern Asia is, and has been for thousands of 
 years, the part of the earth most swarming with human 
 life, the great qfficina gentium, Man is a weed in those 
 regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous 
 population of Asia has always been cast, give a further 
 sublimity to the feelings associated with all oriental 
 names or images. In China, over and above what it 
 has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am 
 terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, by the 
 barrier of utter abhorrence placed between myself and 
 them, by counter-sympathies deeper than I can analyse. 
 I could sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with 
 crocodiles, or snakes. All this, and much more than I 
 can say, the reader must enter into, before he can com- 
 prehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 83 
 
 oriental imagfery and mythological tortures impressed 
 upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat 
 and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, 
 birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and 
 appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and 
 assembled them together in China or Hindostan. From 
 kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and her gods 
 under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned 
 at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. 
 I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the 
 summit, or in secret rooms ; I was the idol ; I was the 
 priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from 
 the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia; 
 Vishnu hated me; Seeva lay in wait for me. I came 
 suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had done a deed, they 
 said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. 
 Thousands of years I lived and was buried in stone 
 coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers 
 at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with 
 cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded 
 with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic 
 mud. 
 
 i Some slight abstraction I thus attempt of my oriental 
 dreams, which filled me always with such amazement at 
 the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for 
 a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a 
 reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, 
 and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and 
 abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and 
 threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, 
 brooded a killing sense of eternity and infinity. Into 
 these dreams only it was, with one or two slight excep- 
 tions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. 
 All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But 
 here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or 
 crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile be- 
 came to me the object of more horror than all the rest. 
 I was compelled to live with him ; and (as was always 
 the case in my dreams) for centuries. Sometimes I es- 
 caped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet 
 
84 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of the tables, sofas, etc. , soon became instinct with life : 
 the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering 
 eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand 
 repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So 
 often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that 
 many times the very same dream was broken up in the 
 very same way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me 
 (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I 
 awoke ; it was broad noon, and my children were stand- 
 ing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their 
 coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them 
 dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to 
 me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt 
 translation from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy 
 summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable 
 abortions of miscreated gigantic vermin to the sight of 
 infancy, and innocent human natures. 
 
 June, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at various 
 periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we 
 love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death generally, 
 is (caeteris paribus) more afi^ecting in summer than in any 
 other season of the year. And the reasons are these 
 three, I think : first, that the visible heavens in summer 
 appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism 
 may be excused) more infinite; the clouds by which 
 chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion 
 stretched over our heads are in summer more volumin- 
 ous, more massed, and are accumulated in far grander 
 and more towering piles; secondly, the light and the 
 appearances of the declining and the setting sun are 
 much more fitted to be types and characters of the in- 
 finite; and, thirdly (which is the main reason), the ex- 
 uberant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces 
 the mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought 
 of death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it 
 may be observed generally, that wherever two thoughts 
 stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and 
 exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to 
 suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find 
 it impossible to banish the thought of death when I am 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 85 
 
 walking alone in the endless days of summer ; and any 
 particular death, if not actually more affecting, at least 
 haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly, in 
 that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident 
 which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions 
 of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposi- 
 tion must always have existed in my mind ; but, having 
 been once roused, it never left me, and split into a 
 thousand fantastic variations, which often suddenly re- 
 combined, locked backed into startling unity, and restored 
 the original dream. 
 
 I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May ; that 
 it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morn- 
 ing. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of 
 my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene 
 which could really be commanded from that situation, 
 but exalted, as was usual, and 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 inter- 
 space far larger between them of savannahs and forest 
 lawns ; the hedges were rich with white roses ; and no 
 living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the 
 green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing 
 upon the verdant graves, and particularly round about 
 the grave of a child whom I had once tenderly loved, 
 just as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise, 
 in the same summer when that child died. I gazed upon 
 the well-known scene, and I said to myself, "It yet 
 wants much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday; and 
 that is the day on which they celebrate the first-fruits of 
 Resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be 
 forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the 
 hills are high, and stretch away to heaven; and the 
 churchyard is as verdant as the forest lawns, and the 
 forest lawns are as quiet as the churchyard ; and with 
 the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead ; and 
 then I shall be unhappy no longer." I turned, as if to 
 open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the 
 left a scene far different; but which yet the power of 
 
86 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 dreams had reconciled into harmony. The scene was an 
 oriental one ; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and 
 very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were 
 visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and 
 cupolas of a great city — an image or faint abstraction, 
 caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of Jeru- 
 salem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone, 
 shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman; and I 
 looked, and it was — Ann ! She fixed her eyes upon me 
 earnestly; and I said to her at length, " So, then, I have 
 found you at last." I waited; but she answered me not 
 a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last ; 
 the same, and yet, again, how different ! Seventeen years 
 ago, when the lamp-light of mighty London fell upon 
 her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, 
 that to me were not polluted !), her eyes were streaming 
 with tears. The tears were no longer seen. Sometimes 
 she seemed altered; yet again sometimes not altered; 
 and hardly older. Her looks were tranquil, but with 
 unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon 
 her with some awe. Suddenly her countenance grew 
 dim ; and, turning to the mountains, I perceived vapours 
 rolling between us ; in a moment all had vanished ; thick 
 darkness came on ; and in the twinkling of an eye I was 
 far away from mountains, and by lamp-light in London, 
 walking again with Ann — just as we had walked, when 
 both children, eighteen years before, along the endless 
 terraces of Oxford Street. 
 
 Then suddenly would come a dream of far different 
 character — a tumultuous dream — commencing with a 
 music such as now I often heard in sleep — music of pre- 
 paration and of awakening suspense. The undulations 
 of fast-gathering tumults were like the opening of the 
 Coronation Anthem ; and, like that, gave the feeling of 
 a multitudinous movement, of infinite cavalcades filing 
 off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning 
 was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of ultim- 
 ate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious 
 eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Some- 
 where, but I knew not where — somehow, but I knew not 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 87 
 
 how — by some beings, but I knew not by whom — a battle, 
 a strife, an agony, was travelling through all its stages 
 — was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty 
 drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupport- 
 able from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its 
 cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is 
 usual in dreams where, of necessity, we make ourselves 
 central to every movement) had the power, and yet had 
 not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could 
 raise myself to will it ; and yet again had not the power, 
 for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the 
 oppression of inexpiable guilt. ' ' Deeper than ever plum- 
 met sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the 
 passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, 
 some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword had pleaded, 
 or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; 
 hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innumerable fugi- 
 tives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the 
 bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; 
 and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, 
 and the features that were worth all the world to me'; 
 and but a moment allowed — and clasped hands with 
 heart-breaking partings, and then — everlasting farewells! 
 and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when 
 the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of 
 Death, the sound was reverberated — everlasting fare- 
 wells ! and again, and yet again reverberated — everlast- 
 ing farewells ! 
 
 And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, " I will 
 sleep no more ! " 
 
 Now, at last, I had become awestruck at the approach 
 of sleep, under the condition of visions so afflicting, and 
 so intensely lifelike as those which persecuted my phan- 
 tom-haunted brain. More and more also I felt violent 
 palpitations in some internal region, such as are com- 
 monly, but erroneously, called palpitations of the heart 
 — being, as I suppose, referable exclusively to derange- 
 ments in the stomach. These were evidently increasing 
 rapidly in frequency and in strength. Naturally, there- 
 fore, on considering how important my life had become 
 
88 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 to others besides myself, I became alarmed ; and I paused 
 seasonably ; but with a difficulty that is past all descrip- 
 tion. Either way it seemed as though death had, in 
 military language, " thrown himself astride of my path." 
 Nothing short of mortal anguish, in a physical sense, it 
 seemed, to wean myself from opium; yet, on the other 
 hand, death through overwhelming nervous terrors — 
 death by brain-fever or by lunacy — ^seemed too certainly 
 to besiege the alternative course. Fortunately I had 
 still so much of firmness left as to face that choice, 
 which, with most of instant suffering, showed in the far 
 distance a possibility of final escape. 
 
 This possibility was realised; I did accomplish my 
 escape. And the issue of that particular stage in my 
 opium experiences (for such it was — simply a provisional 
 stage, that paved the way subsequently for many milder 
 stages, to which gradually my constitutional system 
 accommodated itself) was, pretty nearly in the following 
 words, communicated to my readers in the earliest edition 
 of these Confessions : — 
 
 I triumphed. But infer not, reader, from this word 
 " triumphed" a condition of joy or exultation. Think 
 of me as of one, even when four months had passed, still 
 agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; 
 and much, perhaps, in the situation of him who has been 
 racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the 
 affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer 
 (in the time of James I).^ Meantime, I derived no benefit 
 from any medicine whatever, except ammoniated tincture 
 of valerian. The moral of the narrative is addressed to 
 the opium-eater ; and therefore, of necessity, limited in 
 its application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, 
 enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue 
 of my case is at least a proof that opium, after an eighteen 
 years' use, and an eight years' abuse, of its powers, may 
 
 1 William Lithgow. His book (Travels, etc.) is tedious and not 
 well written ; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at 
 Malaga, and, subsequently, is overpoweringly affecting. Less 
 circumstantial, but the same in tendency, is the report of the 
 results from torture published in 1830 by Juan Van Halen. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER 89 
 
 still be renounced ; and that he may chance to bring to 
 the task greater energy than I did, or that, with a stronger 
 constitution, he may obtain the same results with less. 
 This may be true ; I would not presume to measure the 
 efforts of other men by my own. Heartily I wish him 
 more resolution; heartily I wish him an equal success. 
 Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he 
 may unfortunately want; and these supplied me with 
 conscientious supports such as merely selfish interests 
 might fail in supplying to a mind debilitated by opium. 
 
 Lord Bacon conjectures that it may be as painful to 
 be born as to die. That seems probable; and, during 
 the whole period of diminishing the opium, I had the 
 torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence 
 into another, and liable to the mixed or alternate pains 
 of birth and death. The issue was not death, but a sort 
 of physical regeneration ; and I may add that ever since, 
 a:t intervals, I have had a restoration of more than youth- 
 ful spirits. 
 
 One memorial of my former condition, nevertheless, 
 remains : my dreams are not calm ; the dread swell and 
 agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the 
 legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not 
 departed; my sleep is still tumultuous; and, like the 
 gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back 
 from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) 
 
 With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms. 
 
DREAMS AND FANTASIES 
 
 THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 
 
 [With the enlarg-ed edition of the Confessions in 1856 De Quincey 
 printed this short tale or apologfue, avowedly as an illustrative 
 specimen of the dreams and phantasms engendered under the 
 influence of opium. The heroine, he suggested, might be re- 
 garded in some sort as a transfigured presentation of that lost 
 Ann of Oxford Street, whose pathetic image glimmers fitfully 
 through the pages of the Confessions, and played so large a part 
 in the author's subsequent imaginings.] 
 
 Damascus, first-born of cities, Om el Denial mother of 
 generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast before 
 the Pyramids ! what sounds are those that, from a post- 
 ern gate, looking eastwards over secret paths that wind 
 away to the far distant desert, break the solemn silence 
 of an oriental night? Whose voice is that which calls 
 upon the spearmen, keeping watch for ever in the turret 
 surmounting the gate, to receive him back into his Syrian 
 home? Thou knowest him, Damascus, and hast known 
 him in seasons of trouble as one learned in the afflictions 
 of man ; wise alike to take counsel for the suifering spirit 
 or for the suffering body. The voice that breaks upon 
 the night is the voice of a great evangelist — one of the 
 four; and he is also a great physician. This do the 
 
 1 " Om elDenia;" — Mother of the World is the Arabic title of Da- 
 mascus. That it was before Abraham — i.e., already an old estab- 
 lishment much more than a thousand years before the siege of 
 Troy, and than two thousand years before our Christian era — may 
 be inferred from Gen. xv, 2 ; and by the general consent of all 
 eastern races, Damascus is accredited as taking precedency in 
 age of all cities to the west of the Indus. 
 
 90 
 
THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 91 
 
 watchmen at the gate thankfully acknowledge, and joy- 
 fully they give him entrance. His sandals are white with 
 dust; for he has been roaming for weeks beyond the 
 desert, under the guidance of Arabs, on missions of hope- 
 ful benignity to Palmyra ; * and in spirit he is weary of 
 all things, except faithfulness to God, and burning love 
 to man. 
 
 Eastern cities are asleep betimes; and sounds few or 
 none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the evangelist 
 paced onward to the market-place ; but there another 
 scene awaited him. On the right hand, in an upper 
 chamber, with lattices widely expanded, sat a festal 
 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 re- 
 vealed, as now, but 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 evan- 
 gelist went up, and touched her forehead ; and when he 
 found that she was indeed human, and guessed, from 
 the station which she had chosen, that she waited for 
 some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, 
 he groaned heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, 
 but half to her, " Wert thou, poor ruined flower, adorned 
 so divinely at thy birth — glorified in such excess, that 
 not Solomon in all his pomp — no, nor even the lilies of 
 the field — can approach thy gifts — only that thou should- 
 est grieve the Holy Spirit of God? " The woman trembled 
 exceedingly, and said, " Rabbi, what should I do? For 
 
 ' Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendour of Grecian 
 development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian, but it was 
 already a noble city. 
 
92 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 behold! all men forsake me." The evangelist mused a 
 little, and then secretly to himself he said, " Now wiU I 
 search this woman's heart— whether in very truth it in- 
 clineth itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery 
 compulsion." Turning therefore to the woman, the Pro- 
 phet' said, "Listen: 1 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 messenger I am : and from Him 
 all power is given me to bind and to loose, to build and 
 to pull down. Ask, therefore, whatsoever thou wilt — 
 great or small — and through me thou shalt receive it 
 from God. But, my child, ask not amiss. For God is 
 able out of thine own evil asking to weave snares for 
 thy footing. And oftentimes to the lambs whom He 
 loves, He gives by seeming to refuse; gives in some 
 better sense, or " (and his voice swelled into the power 
 of anthems) ' ' in some far happier world. Now, there- 
 fore, my daughter, be wise on thine own behalf; and say 
 what it is that I shall ask for thee from God." But the 
 Daughter of Lebanon needed not his caution; for im- 
 mediately dropping on one knee to God's ambassador, 
 whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell upon 
 the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her clasped 
 hands in supplication, and said, in answer to the evange- 
 list asking for a second time what gift he should call 
 down upon her from Heaven, " Lord, that thou wouldest 
 
 1 " The Prophet:" — Though a Prophet was not therefore and in 
 virtue of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist was 
 necessarily in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it be remem- 
 bered that a Prophet did not mean a /Vedicter, or /^oyeshower of 
 events, except derivatively and inferentially. What was a Prophet 
 in the uniform scriptural sense? He was a man, who drew aside 
 the curtain from the secret counsels of Heaven. He declared, or 
 made public, the previously hidden truths of God : and because 
 future events might chance to involve divine truth, therefore a re- 
 vealer of future events might happen so far to be a Prophet. Yet 
 still small was that part of a Prophet's functions which concerned 
 the foreshowing of events ; and not necessarily any part. 
 
THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 93 
 
 put me back into my father's house." And the evangelist, 
 because he was human, dropped a tear as he stooped to 
 kiss her forehead, saying, "Daughter, thy prayer is 
 heard in heaven ; and I tell thee that the daylight shall 
 not come and go for thirty times, not for the thirtieth 
 time shall the sun drop behind Lebanon, before I will 
 put thee back into thy father's house." 
 
 Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of 
 the evangelist. She sought not to varnish her history, 
 or to palliate her own transgressions. In so far as she 
 had offended at all, her case was that of millions in every 
 generation. Her father was a prince in Lebanon, proud, 
 unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done to his daughter 
 by her dishonourable lover, because done under favour 
 of opportunities created by her confidence in his integrity, 
 her father persisted in resenting as wrongs done by this 
 injured daughter herself; and, refusing to her all protec- 
 tion, drove her, whilst yet confessedly innocent, into 
 criminal compliances under sudden necessities of seeking 
 daily bread from her own uninstructed efforts. Great 
 was the wrong she suffered both from father and lover ; 
 great was the retribution. She lost a churlish father 
 and a wicked lover; she gained an apostolic guardian. 
 She lost a princely station in Lebanon; she gained an 
 early heritage in heaven. For this heritage is hers within 
 thirty days, if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst 
 the stealthy motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth 
 day, behold ! a burning fever desolated Damascus, which 
 also laid its arrest upon the Daughter of Lebanon, yet 
 gently, and so that hardly for an hour did it withdraw 
 her from the heavenly teachings of the evangelist. And 
 thus daily the doubt was strengthened — would the holy 
 apostle suddenly touch her with his hand, and say, 
 " Woman, be thou whole! " or would he present her on 
 the thirtieth day as a pure bride to Christ? But perfect 
 freedom belongs to Christian service, and she only must 
 make the election. 
 
 Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his 
 pomp, but suddenly was darkened by driving storms. 
 Not until noon was the heavenly orb again revealed ; then 
 
94 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the glorious light was again unmasked, and again the 
 Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour already ap- 
 pointed for the baptism of the new Christian daughter. 
 Heaven and earth shed gratulation on the happy festival; 
 and, when all was finished, under an awning raised above 
 the level roof of her dwelling-house, the regenerate 
 Daughter of Lebanon, looking over the rose-gardens of 
 Damascus, with amplest prospect of her native hills, lay 
 in blissful trance, making proclamation, by her white 
 baptismal robes, of recovered innocence and of reconcilia- 
 tion with God. And, when the sun was declining to the 
 west, the evangelist, who had sat from noon by the bed- 
 side 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 ever- 
 lasting cedars. And again the evangelist sat down by 
 her bedside ; whilst she by intervals communed with him, 
 and by intervals slept gently under the oppression of her 
 fever. But as evening drew nearer, and it wanted now 
 but a brief space to the going down of the sun, once 
 again, and with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to 
 his feet, and said, ' ' O daughter ! this is the thirtieth day, 
 and the sun is drawing near to his rest ; brief, therefore, 
 is the time within which I must fulfil the word that God 
 spoke to thee by me." Then, because light clouds of 
 delirium were playing about her brain, he raised his 
 pastoral staff, and pointing it to her temples, rebuked 
 the clouds, and bade that no more they should trouble 
 her vision, or stand between her and the forests of 
 Lebanon. And the delirious clouds parted asunder, 
 breaking away to the right and to the left. But upon 
 the forests of Lebanon there hung a mighty mass of 
 
THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 95 
 
 overshadowing vapours, bequeathed by the morning's 
 storm. And a second time the evangelist raised his pas- 
 toral staff, and, pointing it to the gloomy vapours, re- 
 buked them, and bade that no more they should stand 
 between his daughter and her father's house. And im- 
 mediately the dark vapours broke away from Lebanon 
 to the right and to the left ; and the farewell radiance of 
 the sun lighted up all the paths that ran between the 
 everlasting cedars and her father's palace. 
 
 But vainly the lady of Lebanon searched every path with 
 her eyes for memorials of her sister. And the evangelist, 
 pitying her sorrow, turned away her eyes to the clear blue 
 sky, which the departing vapours had exposed. And he 
 showed her the peace which was there. And then he 
 said, " O daughter! this also is but a mask." And im- 
 mediately for the third time he raised his pastoral staff, 
 and, pointing it to the fair blue sky, he rebuked it, and 
 bade that no more it should stand between her and the 
 vision of God. Immediately the blue sky parted to the 
 right and to the left, laying bare the infinite revelations 
 that can be made visible only to dying eyes. And the 
 Daughter of Lebanon said to the evangelist, " O father! 
 what armies are these that I see mustering within the 
 infinite chasm? " And the evangelist replied, "These are 
 the armies of Christ, and they are mustering to receive 
 some dear human blossom, some first-fruits of Christian 
 faith, that shall rise this night to Christ from Damascus." 
 Suddenly, as thus the child of Lebanon gazed upon the 
 mighty vision, she saw bending forward from the heavenly 
 host, as if in gratulation to herself, the one countenance 
 for which she hungered and thirsted. The twin-sister, 
 that should have waited for her in Lebanon, had died of 
 grief, and was waiting for her in Paradise. Immediately 
 in rapture she soared upwards from her couch ; imme- 
 diately 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 re- 
 fuse?" — "Oh yes — yes — yes," was the fervent answer 
 from the Daughter of Lebanon. Immediately the evan- 
 
96 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 gelist gave the signal to the heavens, and the heavens 
 gave the signal to the sun ; and in one minute after the 
 Daughter of Lebanon had fallen back a marble corpse 
 amongst her white baptismal robes ; the solar orb dropped 
 behind Lebanon ; and the evangelist, with eyes glorified 
 by mortal and immortal tears, rendered thanks to God 
 that had thus accomplished the word which he spoke 
 through himself to the Magdalen of Lebanon — that not 
 for the thirtieth time should the sun go down behind her 
 native hills, before he had put her back into her Father's 
 house. 
 
 SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS 
 
 [The mood in which he closed the Confessions — the mood of 
 reproducing or constructing' dreams in "impassioned prose" — 
 pursued De Quincey through life. Twenty-four years afterwards, 
 in 1845, he began in Blackwood's Magazine a series of dream- 
 fantasies under the title Suspiria de Profundis ; being a sequel to 
 the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. It was left in a frag- 
 mentary unfinished condition, and was broken up by De Quincey 
 when preparing his Collective Edition. But as it now stands the 
 series contains half-a-dozen short papers which are among the 
 finest examples of De Quincey's or anybody else's English style. 
 Levana may perhaps be called a mere exercise in literary myth- 
 ology; when you come to peer closely at them our Ladies of 
 Sorrow may not look quite so mysterious and so awful as they 
 seemed at the first reading. But the description of them is a 
 magnificent piece of writing, the supreme example of De Quincey's 
 power of appealing to the imagination and the emotions, particu- 
 larly the emotions of awe and pathos, in a rhythmical prose which 
 has all the elements of poetry except the metrical form. And for 
 that he found a substitute in the elaborated musical rhythm that 
 beats through every sentence and welds the whole piece into a 
 majestic symphony.] 
 
 VISION OF LIFE 
 
 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 sweet- 
 ness of life ; that grief, which one in a hundred has sensi- 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS 97 
 
 bility 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 sparkling to the 
 morning s\m. 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 superscrip- 
 tion 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 human life, he will know that 
 the rapture of life (or anything which by approach can 
 merit that name) does not arise, unless as perfect music 
 arises — music of Mozart or Beethoven — by tne confluence 
 of the mighty and terrific discords with the subtle con- 
 cords. 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 what- 
 ever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. Circum- 
 stances 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 other- 
 wise is the state of relations connecting an adult or 
 responsible man with the circles around him as life 
 advances. The network of these relations is a thousand 
 times more intricate, the jarring of these intricate rela- 
 tions a thousand times more frequent, and the vibrations 
 a thousand times harsher which these jarrings difi^use. 
 
 H 
 
98 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 This truth is felt beforehand misgivingly 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 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 in- 
 ferior and second chamber of the ocean which called him 
 away for ever 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 super- 
 ficial 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. 
 
 LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 
 
 Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I 
 knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? 
 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 newborn infant the earliest office of en- 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS 99 
 
 nobling kindness — t3'pical, by its mode of that grandeur 
 which belongs to man everywhere, and of the benignity 
 in powers invisible which even in Pagan worlds some- 
 times descends to sustain it. At the very moment of 
 birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the at- 
 mosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the 
 ground. That might bear different interpretations. But 
 immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there 
 for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as 
 proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, 
 as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look 
 erect as 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 repre- 
 sented the function of Levana. And that mysterious 
 lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in 
 dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name 
 from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, 
 to raise aloft. 
 
 This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has 
 arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 
 tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. 
 She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigur- 
 ative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less 
 could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attach- 
 ing to the non-development of his powers. She therefore 
 watches over human education. Now, the word educo, 
 with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process 
 often exemplified in the crystallisation of languages) from 
 the word educo, 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 grammars, but by that mighty 
 system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of 
 human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, 
 by the energies of resistance, works for ever upon child- 
 ren — resting not day or night, any more than the mighty 
 wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, 
 like restless spokes, are glimmering for ever as they 
 revolve. 
 
loo THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
 works, how profoundly must she reverence the agencies 
 of grief! But you, reader ! think— that children 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 usually. 
 Now, I am far from saying that children universally are 
 capable of grief like mine. But there are many 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 superannuated at eighteen, conse- 
 quently 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 tliat 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 Parcae are three, who weave the dark 
 arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with 
 colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson 
 and black ; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu- 
 tions called from the other side of the grave offences that 
 walk upon this ; and 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 I know." The last words I 
 say now; but in Oxford I said, " one of whom I know, 
 and the others too surely I shall know." For already, 
 in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark 
 background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of 
 the awful sisters. These sisters — by what name shall 
 we call them? 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS loi 
 
 If I say simply — "The Sorrows," there will be a chance 
 of mistaking' the term; it might be understood of in- 
 dividual sorrow — separate cases of sorrow — whereas 
 I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions 
 that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings 
 of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions 
 presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed with 
 human attributes of life, and with functions pointing 
 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 myself. 
 Do they talk, then? Oh, no! Mighty phantoms like these 
 disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter 
 voices through the organs of man when they dwell in 
 human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor 
 sound — eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They 
 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 mys- 
 teries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by 
 dulcimer and organ. Like God, wliose servants they 
 are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, 
 or by words that go astray, 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 ; / spelled 
 the steps. They telegraphed from afar ; / read the sig- 
 nals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of 
 darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the sym- 
 bols, — mine are the words. 
 
 What is it that 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 for ever advanced to the front, or for ever 
 receded amongst shades. 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, 
 Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves 
 
I02 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in 
 Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation — Rachel 
 weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. 
 She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when 
 Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the 
 little feet were stiffened for ever, which, heard at tinies as 
 they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love 
 in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. 
 Her eyes are sweet and subtle, 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 the 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 
 girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, 
 to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bedside of 
 the blind 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 Him- 
 self. But her blind father mourns for ever over her; 
 still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand 
 is locked within his own ; and still he wakens to a dark- 
 ness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. 
 This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting 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-bom of 
 her house, and has the widest empire, let us honour with 
 the title of " Madonna." 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS 103 
 
 The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our 
 Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 
 abroad upon th« winds. She wears no diadem. And 
 her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet 
 or subtle; 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, droops for 
 ever ; for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She 
 groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 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 clamours, 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. Mut- 
 ter 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 
 visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the 
 oar in the Mediterranean galleys, of the English criminal 
 in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remem- 
 brance in sweet far-off" England, of the baffled penitent 
 reverting his eyes for ever 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 availing, whether towards pardon that he might im- 
 plore, or 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 him sealed and sequestered ; ^ — every 
 woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her 
 
 ^ This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the cotton 
 and tobacco States of North America ; but not to them only ; on 
 which account I have not scrupled to figure the sun, which looks 
 down upon slavery as tropical — no matter if strictly within the 
 tropics, or simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate. 
 
I04 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 womanly 
 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 kinsmen, 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 walk with 
 " Our Lady of Sighs." She also carries a key; but she 
 needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the 
 tents of Sham, 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, mighth^ hidden by distance. 
 But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden ; through 
 the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light 
 of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for ves- 
 pers — for noon of day or for 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 suicides. 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 
 stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incal- 
 culable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She 
 
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS 105 
 
 carries no key ; for, thougfh coming rarely amongst men, 
 she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter 
 at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum — Our Lady 
 of Darkness. 
 
 These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddesses ; ^ 
 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 beckoned to Our Lady of 
 Sighs ; and what she spoke, translated 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 be- 
 come idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing 
 desires, that he worshipped the worm, and 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 tempt- 
 est and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy 
 sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her 
 tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the 
 frailties 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 not to be seen — sights that are 
 abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall 
 he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful 
 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 unfolded the capa- 
 cities of his spirit." 
 
 ' '^Sublime Goddesses." — The word aefivog is usually rendered 
 venerable in dictionaries ; not a very flattering epithet for females. 
 But I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea of 
 the sublime ; as near as a Greek word could come. 
 
io6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 
 
 [To the " Dream " series belong-s, at least in intention and aim, 
 the papers called "The English Mail-Coach," contributed under 
 separate heading's to Blackwood in October and December, 1849, 
 and put together under their present title in the Collective Edition. 
 De Quincey, in an Appendix, explained that once when travelling 
 by coach he had become the " witness of an appalling scene which 
 threatened instant death in a shape most terrific to two young 
 people " — in fact the coach might have, but apparently did not, run 
 into a trap carrying a young lady and gentleman. This " dreadful 
 scene " was transformed by De Quincey into a dream, " as tumultu- 
 ous and clanging as a musical fugue. " To lead up to this he de- 
 scribes the English mail-coach in the days of its greatest glory, 
 when it was carrying through the land the news of the victories 
 won over the French.] 
 
 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 be 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 pretensions of speed and 
 keeping time, but, on the other hand, who did not marry 
 the daughter of a duke. 
 
 These mail-coaches, as organised 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, 
 ist, through velocity, at that time unprecedented — for 
 
 1 Lady Madeline Gordon. 
 
 " " The same thing:" — Thus, in the calendar of the Church Festi- 
 vals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of 
 Constantino) is recorded (and one might think — with the express 
 consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 107 
 
 they first revealed the glory of motion; 2dly, through 
 grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the 
 darkness upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal 
 beauty and power so often displayed 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 obstacles into one steady co- 
 operation to a national result. For my own feeling, this 
 post-office service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, 
 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 organisation. But, 
 finally, that particular element in this whole combina- 
 tion which most impressed myself, and through which 
 it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system 
 tyrannises 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 Salamanca, of 
 Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in 
 the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed 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 Christen- 
 dom, with the vulgar 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 beneficial to 
 
 1 " Vast distances :" — One case was familiar to mail-coach travel- 
 lers, 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. 
 
io8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 modern modes of travelling cannot comp.are with 
 the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They 
 boast of more velocity, not, however, as a conscious- 
 ness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, 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 personal 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 evidence out of ourselves to indi- 
 cate the velocity. On this system the word was, Non 
 magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus. Yes, 
 " magna vivimus; " we do not make verbal ostentation 
 of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and 
 in the very experience 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, 
 we felt it as a thrilling ; and this speed was not the pro- 
 duct of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy 
 to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the 
 noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic 
 muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. The sensibility of the 
 horse, uttering itself in the maniac 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 gestures to the heart of his 
 servant the horse. 
 
 But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 109 
 
 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 imperial 
 nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric 
 sensibility of the horse; the inter-agencies are gone in 
 the modfe 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 process; and the trumpet 
 that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart- 
 shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, and pro- 
 claiming 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 acknovvledged one 
 sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway 
 station have as little unity as running water, and own 
 as many centres as there are separate carriages 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 life I have 
 beheld, merited the station which even now, from a 
 distance of forty years, she holds in 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. 
 
no THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, lived 
 at a mile's distance from that road ; but came so con- 
 tinually to meet the mail, that I on my frequent transits 
 rarely missed her, and naturally connected her 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 gathered 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 grand- 
 daughter ; 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 within the line of 
 his terrors? Certainly not, as regarded any physical pre- 
 tensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as a chance 
 passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) 
 counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed 
 admirers, if not open aspirants to her favour ; and prob- 
 ably not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself in 
 personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair ad- 
 vantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have under- 
 taken that amount of suitors. So the danger might have 
 seemed slight— only that woman is universally aristo- 
 cratic ; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that she is 
 so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour 
 might easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my 
 physical deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? 
 Why, yes; about as much love as one could make whilst 
 
 1 " '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 g^ard it did 
 belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant, 
 and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the dis- 
 charge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and 
 especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately 
 with London and the General Post-office, obtained the scarlet coat 
 only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying 
 and special) service. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH iii 
 
 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 offer 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 sugges- 
 tions. 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 as Fanny herself. 
 
 Say, all our praises why should lords 
 
 Stop, that 's not the line. 
 
 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 re- 
 sembled a crocodile. This lay in a monstrous 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 breadth of his 
 back, combined, possibly, with some growing stiffness 
 in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity of his I 
 planted a human advantage for tendering my homage 
 to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his honourable vigil- 
 ance, 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 har- 
 
 ^ " Turrets:' — ^As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his 
 unrivalled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterisation. 
 
113 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 ness, than I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, 
 by the mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my manner, 
 caused her easily to understand how happy it would 
 make me to rank upon her list as No. lo or 12, in which 
 case a few casualties amongst her lovers (and observe, 
 they A««^erf 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 acquiesced by 
 anticipation in her award^-supposing that she should 
 plant me in the very rear-ward of her favour, as No. 
 199+ I. Most truly I loved this beautiful and ingenuous 
 girl; and had it not been for the Bath mail, timing all 
 courtships by post-office allowance, heaven only knows 
 what might have come of it. People 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 even 
 the crowns and trophies of Waterloo : thunder and light- 
 ning are not the thunder and lightning which I remem- 
 ber. Roses are degenerating. The Fannies of our island 
 — though this I say with reluctance — are not visibly 
 improving; and the Bath road is notoriously super- 
 annuated. 
 
 GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY 
 
 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 vic- 
 tory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar 
 
 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 honour 
 of being admitted in my younger days. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 113 
 
 to Waterloo ; the second and third years of which period 
 {1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the 
 other nine (from 1805 to 181 5 inclusively) furnished a 
 long succession of victories ; the least of which, in such 
 a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of posi- 
 tion — 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 vulner- 
 ability 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 their arrogant armies, repeated from 
 time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in 
 one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom turned 
 in secret. How much more loudly must this proclama- 
 tion have spoken in the audacity ^ of having bearded 
 the dlite 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 situa- 
 tion, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the 
 rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any un- 
 authorised rumour 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, 
 
 ^ ^^ Audacity:' — Such the French accounted it ; and it has struck 
 me that Soult would not have beerr so popular in London, at the 
 period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on 
 occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the in- 
 solence 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 field of Waterloo, " Here 
 are the English — we have them ; they are caught en flagrant delit." 
 Yet no man should have known us better; no man had drunk 
 deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in 1809, when 
 ejected by us with headlong violence from Oporto, and pursued 
 through a long line of wrecks to the frontier of Spain ; subsequently 
 at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles, to say nothing of 
 Toulouse, he should have learned our pretensions. , 
 
 I 
 
114 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 attelage, 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 examination — wheels, axles, 
 linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed 
 and tested. Every part of every carriage had been 
 cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much 
 rigour 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, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, 
 oak-leaves and ribbons. The guards, as being officially 
 his Majesty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are 
 within the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal 
 liveries of course ; and as it is summer (for all the land 
 victories 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 gentle- 
 men are now hardly to be distinguished as such except 
 by dress ; for the usual reserve of their manner in speak- 
 ing to the attendants has on this night melted away. 
 
 ' " ^; that time:" — I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 115 
 
 One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by 
 the transcendent bond of his national blood. The spec- 
 tators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express 
 their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual 
 hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the post- 
 office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great 
 ancestral names of cities known to history through a 
 thousand years — Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, 
 Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, New- 
 castle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen 
 — expressing the grandeur 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 the 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 
 forever!" 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 gunpowder, 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 moment is destined to travel, without inter- 
 mission, westwards 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. 
 
u6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and 
 issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern 
 suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace 
 of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer 
 evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of set- 
 ting, we are seen from every storey of every house. 
 Heads of every age crowd to the windows — young and 
 old understand the language of our victorious symbols 
 — and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along 
 us, behind us, and before us. The beggar, rearing him- 
 self against the wall, forgets his lameness — real or 
 assumed — thinks not of his whining trade, but stands 
 erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The 
 victory has healed him, and says. Be thou whole ! Women 
 and children, from garrets alike and cellars, through 
 infinite London, look down or look up with loving eyes 
 upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels ; sometimes 
 kiss their hands ; sometimes hang out, as signals of 
 affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, any- 
 thing that, by catching the summer breezes, will express 
 an aerial jubilation. 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, every- 
 thing that goes on within. It contains three ladies — one 
 likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or eighteen, 
 who are probably her daughters. What lovely anima- 
 tion, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explain- 
 ing to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous 
 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 from both of 
 them — and by the heightened colour on their animated 
 countenances, we can almost hear them 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 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 117 
 
 his 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 honour 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 
 labour — 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 birth-right 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 ap- 
 proaching us another private carriage, nearly repeating 
 the circumstances of the former case. Here, also, 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 triumphal equipage. Our decorations 
 explain the case to her at once ; but she beholds them 
 with apparent 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 
 
ii8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 intervening, had given to the guard a Courier even- 
 ing 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 VICTORY, might catch the eye at once. To see 
 the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our 
 ensigns of triumph, explained everything ; 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 suffered some deep personal affliction in con- 
 nection with this Spanish war. 
 
 Here, now, was the case of one who, having formerly 
 suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be distressing her- 
 self with anticipations of another similar suffering. That 
 same night, and hardly three hours later, occurred the 
 reverse case. A poor woman, who too probably would 
 find herself, in a day or two, to have suffered the heavi- 
 est of afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to 
 express an exultation so unmeasured in the news and 
 its details as gave to her 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 rear and flanks in massy black- 
 ness ; these optical splendours, together with the pro- 
 digious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at 
 once scenical and affecting, theatrical and holy. 
 
 ^ " Glittering laurels :" — I must observe, that the colour oi green 
 suffers almost a spiritual changfe and exaltation under the effect of 
 Bengal lights. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 119 
 
 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 attention upon myself. The victory 
 which we were carrying down to the provinces on this 
 occasion, was the imperfect one of Talavera- — imper- 
 fect for its results, such was the virtual treachery of 
 the Spanish general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its 
 ever-memorable heroism. I told her the main outline of 
 the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so 
 conspicuous 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 was 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 — mier a trench where they could, into 
 it, and with the result of death or mutilation, when they 
 could Twt. What proportion cleared the trench is no- 
 where stated. Those who did, closed up and went down 
 upon the enemy with such divinity of fervour (I use the 
 word divinity by design: the inspiration of God must 
 have pronjpted this movement to those whom even then 
 He was calling to His presence), that two results fol- 
 lowed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, 
 I believe, originally three hundred and fifty strong, 
 paralysed 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 eventu- 
 ally, 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 aceldama — in which the young trooper served 
 
I20 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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-morrow, said I to my- 
 self — to-morrow, or the next day, will publish the worst. 
 For one night more, wherefore should 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 forbearance. But, if I told 
 her not of the bloody price that had been paid, not, 
 therefore, was I silent on the contributions from her 
 son's regiment to that day's service and glory. I showed 
 her not the funeral banners under which the noble regi- 
 ment were 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 gaily 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 cheerfully — as ever, after a long day's sport, 
 when infants, they had rested their wearied heads upon 
 their mother'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 his 
 regiment, and therefore that he, had rendered conspicu- 
 ous service in the dreadful conflict — a service which had 
 actually made them, within the last twelve hours, the 
 foremost topic of conversation in London — so absolutely 
 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 
 Tne the kiss which secretly was meant for him. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 121 
 
 DREAM-FUGUE 
 
 FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH 
 
 Whence the sound 
 Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
 Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
 Their stops and chords, was seen ; his volant touch 
 Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
 Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. 
 
 Par. Lost, Bh XI. 
 
 [After his animated and picturesque accoimt of coaching-travel 
 and episodes, De Quincey passes to his " Vision of Sudden 
 Death," in which he sets forth at great length the episode of the 
 imminent collision on the high-road between the coach and the 
 trap, and the tragedy which, for the space of seventy seconds, he 
 thought was about to occur. This leads him to his " Dream- 
 Fugue," which is worth reading, though it is by no means one of the 
 author's most successful efforts — it is altogether too mannered 
 and extravagant, and the effort to write something fine, to be 
 poetical and " impassioned," is far too obvious.] 
 
 Tumultuosissimamente 
 
 Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read and 
 interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs ! — rap- 
 ture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in 
 churches I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral 
 bonds — of woman's Ionic form bending forward from the 
 ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, 
 with clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, trem- 
 bling, 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 ! — vision that didst start 
 back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll 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 still thou sheddest thy sad funeral 
 blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams? Frag- 
 ment of music too passionate, heard once, and heard no 
 more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords 
 
122 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 everlasting 
 gates of life and summer are thrown open wide ; and on 
 the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the un- 
 known lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are 
 floating — she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an Eng- 
 lish three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales of festal 
 happiness within the domain of our common country, 
 within that ancient watery park, within that pathless 
 chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a 
 huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to 
 the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty 
 was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, 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 
 beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as 
 at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, 
 and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — all are hushed. 
 What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or over- 
 taking her? Did ruin to our friends couch within our 
 own dreadful shadow? was our shadow the shadow of 
 death? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, be- 
 hold! 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? Whither have fled the noble young men that 
 danced with them? " Answer there was none. But sud- 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 123 
 
 denly the man at the mast-head, whose countenance 
 darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather 
 beam! Down she comes upon us: in seventy seconds 
 she also will founder." 
 
 II 
 
 I looked to the weather side, and the summer had de- 
 parted. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gathering 
 wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped 
 themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. Down 
 one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a 
 cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. 
 "Are they mad? " some voice exclaimed from our deck. 
 "Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as she 
 was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or 
 local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off 
 she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, high 
 aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. 
 The deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, tower- 
 ing surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce 
 to catch her. But far away she was borne into desert 
 spaces of the sea : whilst still by sight I followed her, as 
 she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea- 
 birds and by maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at 
 the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst 
 the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before 
 the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one 
 hand clutched amongst the tackling — rising, sinking, 
 fluttering, 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 afterwards, but when 
 I know not, nor how, 
 
 III 
 
 Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, 
 wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened 
 
124 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. 
 The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, 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 peril, and vainly I shouted 
 to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster and faster 
 she ran ; round a promontory 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 of white roses around it were still 
 visible to the pitying heavens ; and, last of all, was 
 visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight 
 this fair 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, clutch- 
 ing, 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, ex- 
 cept my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from 
 the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a 
 requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her 
 blighted dawn. 
 
 1 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 mountains. " Hush! " I 
 said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen — " hush! " 
 — this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else " — and 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 125 
 
 then I listened more profoundly, and whispered as I 
 raised my head — "or else, oh heavens! it is vtcior^ tha.t 
 is final, victory that swallows up all strife." 
 
 IV 
 
 Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and 
 sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal 
 car, among-st companions crowned with laurel. 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 reverberated 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 fleshly weariness, 
 upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that we de- 
 layed? 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 dread- 
 ful 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 compre- 
 hended 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 
 us, reached them with its golden light, silently they 
 moved back upon their hinges ; and at a flying gallop 
 
126 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral. 
 Headlong was our pace ; and at every altar, in the little 
 chapels 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 flying 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 galleries of organ and 
 choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station of 
 advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by white- 
 robed choristers, that sang deliverance; that wept no 
 more tears, as once their fathers had wept; but at inter- 
 vals that sang together to the generations, saying. 
 
 Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue, 
 
 and receiving answers from afar, 
 
 Such as once 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, 
 built within 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. 
 
 ^ " Campo Santo:"— It is probable that most of my readers will 
 be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo (or cemetery) 
 at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem from a bed of 
 sanctity, as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders 
 could ask or imagine. To readers who are unacquainted with 
 England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted 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 might run ; and perhaps a boyish re- 
 membrance 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 dream. 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 127 
 
 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, upon the limits of the central aisle, strode 
 forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back with 
 mighty shadows into answering recesses. Every sarco- 
 phagus 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 carnag-e. Where the terraces ran, 
 there did lae run ; where the towers curved, there did we 
 curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept 
 round every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheeling round 
 headlands — like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of 
 forests — faster than ever light unwove the mazes of dark- 
 ness, 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 in God from Crdci to Trafalgar. 
 
 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 illimit- 
 able central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet 
 us we beheld afar off' a female child, 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 meet- 
 ing 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 to every people, be messengers of ruin to 
 thee!" In horror I rose at the thought; but then 
 
128 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 also, in horror at the thought, rose one that was sculp- 
 tured on a bas-relief— a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from 
 the field of battle he rose to his feet ; apd, unslinging 
 his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his 
 stony lips — sounding once, and yet once again ; procla- 
 mation 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 har- 
 ness, 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 muffling of storms and 
 darkness ; again the thunderings of our horses carried 
 temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, 
 as the clouds, drawing off 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 the martyrs 
 painted on the windows ? Was it from the bloody bas- 
 reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within 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, rising, raving, despairing; 
 and behind the volume of incense, 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 
 
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 129 
 
 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. 
 
 V 
 
 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 unfathom- 
 able, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and 
 anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou 
 also. Dying Trumpeter ! — with thy love that was victori- 
 ous, and thy anguish that was finishing — didst enter 
 the tumult ; trumpet and echo — farewell love, and fare- 
 well anguish — rang through the dreadful sanctus. Oh, 
 darkness of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and 
 from the fiety 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 cen- 
 turies, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye 
 indeed mingle with the festivals of Dea*i? Lo! as I 
 looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty 
 cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead that sang to- 
 gether to God, together that sang to the generations of 
 man. All the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in 
 pursuit, 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, hav- 
 ing hid His face through one generation behind 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 ineffable passion of death, 
 suddenly did God relent ; suffered thy angel to turn aside 
 
I30 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 enter- 
 ing 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 
 thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen thee 
 followed 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 ! 
 
 THE NEBULA IN ORION 
 
 [To the dream category also belongs the Jweird account De 
 Quincey gives of what certainly no other eye but his own ever 
 beheld — the nebula in Orion seen, not through a powerful tele- 
 scope, as the author professes, but through the transforming 
 medium of his own imagination. • This wonderful burst of fantastic 
 eloquence occurs in a review, contributed to Tait's Edinburgh 
 Magazine in 1846, of a book by Dr. J. P. Nichol, Professor of 
 Astronomy in the University of Glasgow. It does not detract from 
 the force of De Quincey's picture to observe that one may look for 
 hours at Orion and his nebula without perceiving anything at all 
 resembling that monstroiis image of Titanic horror and power 
 which is here suggested.] 
 
 If on some moonless night, in some fitting condition 
 of the atmosphere. Lord Rosse would permit the reader 
 and myself to walk into the front drawing-room of his 
 telescope, then I might say to my companion. Come, 
 and I will show you what is sublime ! In fact, what I am 
 going to lay before him from Dr. Nichol's work is, or at 
 least would be (when translated into Hebrew grandeur by 
 the mighty telescope), a step above even that object which 
 some four-and-thirty years ago in the British Museum 
 
THE NEBULA IN ORION 131 
 
 struck me as simply the sublimest sight which in this 
 sight-seeing world I had seen. It was the Memnon's 
 head, then recently brought from Egypt. I looked 
 at it, as the reader must suppose, in order to understand 
 the depth which I have here ascribed to the impression, 
 not as a human, but as a symbolic head ; and what it 
 symbolised to me were: — i. The peace which passeth 
 all understanding. 2. The eternity which baffles and 
 confounds all faculty of computation ; the eternity which 
 had been, the eternity which woi to be. 3. The diffusive 
 love, not such as rises and falls upon waves of life and 
 mortality, not such as sinks and swells by undulations 
 of time, but a procession, an emanation, from some 
 mystery of endless dawn. You durst not call it a smile 
 that radiated from the lips; the radiation was too awful 
 to clothe itself in adumbrations or memorials of flesh. 
 
 In that mode of sublimity, perhaps, I still adhere to 
 my first opinion, that nothing so great was ever beheld. 
 The atmosphere for this, for the Memnon, was the 
 breathlessness ' which belongs to a saintly trance; the 
 holy thing seemed to live by silence. But there is a pic- 
 ture, the pendant of the Memnon, there is a dreadful 
 cartoon, from the gallery which has begun to open upon 
 Lord Rosse's telescope, where the appropriate atmo- 
 sphere for investing it must be drawn from another 
 silence, from the frost and from the eternities of death. 
 It is the famous nebula in the constellation of Orion; 
 famous for the unexampled defiance with which it re- 
 sisted all approaches from the most potent of former 
 telescopes; famous for its frightful magnitude, and for 
 the frightful depth to which it is sunk in the abysses of 
 the heavenly wilderness ; famous just now for the sub- 
 mission with which it has begun to render up its secrets 
 to the all-conquering telescope; and famous in all time 
 coming for the horror of the regal phantasma which it 
 has perfected to eyes of flesh. Had Milton's ' ' incestu* 
 ous mother," with her fleshless son, and with the warrior 
 angel, his father, that led the rebellions of heaven, been 
 suddenly unmasked by Lord Rosse's instrument, in 
 these dreadful distances before which, simply as ex- 
 
132 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 pressions of resistance, the mind of man shudders and 
 recoils, there would have been nothing more appalling 
 in the exposure ; in fact, it would have been essentially 
 the same exposure : the same expression of power in the 
 detestable phantom, the same rebellion in the attitude, 
 the same pomp of malice in the features towards a uni- 
 verse seasoned for its assault. 
 
 Description of the Nebula in Orion, as forced to show 
 out by Lord Rosse. — You see a head thrown back, and 
 raising it, face (or eyes, if eyes it had) in the very 
 anguish of hatred, to some unknown heavens. What 
 should be its skull wears what might be an Assyrian 
 tiara, only ending behind in a floating train. This head 
 rests upon a beautifully developed neck and throat. All 
 power being given to the awful enemy, he is beautiful 
 where he pleases, in order to point and envenom his 
 ghostly ugliness. The mouth, in that stage of the apoca- 
 lypse which Sir John Herschel was able to arrest in his 
 eighteen-inch mirror, is amply developed. Brutalities 
 unspeakable sit upon the upper lip, which is confluent 
 with a snout ; for separate nostrils there are flone. Were 
 it not for this one defect of nostrils ; and, even in spite 
 of this defect (since, in so mysterious a mixture of the 
 angelic and the brutal, we may suppose the sense of 
 odour to work by some compensatory organ), one is re- 
 minded by the phantom's attitude of a passage ever 
 memorable, in Milton: that passage, I mean, where 
 Death first becomes aware, soon after the original tres- 
 pass, of his own future empire over man. The " meagre 
 shadow " even smiles (for the first time and the last) on 
 apprehending his own abominable bliss, by apprehend- 
 ing from afar the savour " of mortal change on earth " : 
 
 " Such a scent " (he says) " I draw 
 Of carnagfe, prey innumerable." 
 
 As illustrating the attitude of the phantom in Orion, 
 let the reader allow me to quote the tremendous pass- 
 age- 
 So saying-, with delight he snuff 'd the smell 
 Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock 
 
THE NEBULA IN ORION 133 
 
 Of ravenous fowl, thoug-h many a leagfue remote, 
 
 Against the day of battle, to a field. 
 
 Where armies lie encamp'd, come flying-, lured 
 
 With scent of living carcases design'd 
 
 For death, the following day, in bloody fight ; 
 
 So scented the grim feature, and upturn'd 
 
 His nostril wide into the murky air. 
 
 Sagacious of his quarry from so far.' 
 
 But the lower lip, which is drawn inwards with the 
 curve of a marine shell — oh, what a convolute of cruelty 
 and revenge is ^Ae^-e! Cruelty! — to whom? Revenge! — 
 for what? Pause not to ask; but look upwards to other 
 mysteries. In the very region of his temples, driving 
 itself downwards into his cruel brain, and breaking the 
 continuity of his diadem, is a horrid chasm, a ravine, a 
 shaft, that many centuries would not traverse ; and it 
 is serrated on its posterior wall with a harrow that is 
 partly hidden. From the anterior wall of this chasm rise, 
 in vertical directions, two processes ; one perpendicular, 
 and rigid as a horn, the other streaming forward before 
 some portentous breath. What these could be, seemed 
 doubtful; but now, when further examinations by Sir 
 John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, have filled 
 up the scattered outline with a rich umbrageous growth, 
 one is inclined to regard them as the plumes of a sultan. 
 Dressed he is, therefore, as well as armed. And finally 
 comes Lord Rosse, that glorifies him with the jewellery " 
 
 ^ I have never met with any notice of Milton's obligation to 
 Lucan in this tremendous passage ; perhaps the most sublime, all 
 things considered, that exists in human literature. The words in 
 Lucan close thus : — 
 
 " Et nare sagaci 
 Aera non sanum, tactumque cadavere sensit." 
 
 ' " The Jewellery of stars:" — And one thing is very remarkable, 
 viz., that not only the stars justify this name of jewellery, as usual, 
 by the life of their splendour, but also, in this case, by their arrange- 
 ment. No jeweller could have set, or disposed with more art, the 
 magnificent quadrille of stars which is placed immediately below 
 the upright plume. There is also another, a truncated quadrille, 
 wanting only the left hand star (or you might call it a bisected 
 lozenge) placed on the diadem, but obliquely placed as regards 
 
134 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of stars : he is now a vision " to dream of, not to tell: " 
 he is ready for the worship of those that are tormented 
 in sleep : and the stages of his solemn uncovering by 
 astronomy, first by Sir W. Herschel, secondly by his 
 son, and finally by Lord Rosse, is like the reversing of 
 some heavenly doom, like the raising one after another 
 of the seals that had been sealed by the angel in the 
 Revelation. 
 
 the curve of that diadem. Two or three other arrangements are 
 striking, though not equally so, both from their regularity and 
 from their repeating each other, as the forms in a kaleidoscope. 
 
EPISODES OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 [Almost everything that De Quincey wrote was more or less 
 autobiographical ; his own personality, his own experiences, especi- 
 ally those of youth and early manhood, coloured all his imagin- 
 ative, and most of his critical, speculative, and philosophical 
 work. Various fragmentary papers of an avowedly autobio- 
 graphic character were contributed by him to Taits and other 
 magazines. These papers give an account in minute detail of the 
 first three-and-twenty years of De Quincey, up to the time that 
 he left Oxford. His family, his childish recollections, his boyish 
 troubles and adventures, his precocious intellectual development, 
 are recalled by his prodigious memory and described with his 
 extraordinary faculty for throwing an atmosphere of romantic 
 interest over the most trivial and commonplace matters. The 
 Autobiography is De Quincey's real Confession, and a much more 
 genuine and veracious, and in some respects a more attractive, 
 document than the great opium fantasy. It is written with less 
 power and less imaginative effort ; but it contains many character- 
 istic examples of I^e Quincey's humour and pathos, and his com- 
 mand of beautiful and, appropriate language.] 
 
 THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my 
 memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two, 
 and both before I could have completed my second year ; 
 namely, ist, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur 
 about a favourite nurse, which is interesting to myself 
 for this reason — that it demonstrates my dreaming tend- 
 encies to have been constitutional, and not dependent 
 upon laudanum ; and, adly, the fact of having connected 
 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 suggestions 
 
 •35 
 
136 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of some higher change, and therefore in connection with 
 the idea of death ; yet 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 two years older than 
 myself. She was three and a-half, I one and a-half, 
 more or less by some trifle that I do not recollect. But 
 death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could 
 not so properly be said to suff"er sorrow as a sad per- 
 plexity. 
 
 So passed away from earth one of those three sisters 
 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 I trusted that 
 she would come again. Summer and winter came again 
 — crocuses and roses; why not little Jane? 
 
 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 science^ 
 
 ' ^^ Aureola:" — The aureola is the name given in the Legends of 
 the Christian Saints to that g-oJden diadem or circlet of super- 
 natural light (that glory, as it is commonly called in English) which, 
 amongst the great masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the 
 heads of Christ and of distinguished saints. 
 
 ^ " The astonishment of science:" — Her medical attendants were 
 Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a 
 correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles 
 White, the most distinguished surgeon at that time in the North of 
 
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 137 
 
 — thou next, but after an interval of happy years, thou 
 also wert summoned away from our nursery; 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 darkness, when thy countenance 
 was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to 
 my dawning fears the secret shadow of death, by what 
 mysterious gravitation was it that my heart had been 
 drawn to thine? Could a child, six years old, place any 
 special value upon intellectual forwardness? Serene and 
 capacious as my sister's mind appeared to me upon after 
 review, was that a charm for stealing away the heart of 
 an infant? Oh no ! I think of it now with interest, be- 
 cause 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 perceived only through its 
 effects. 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, strung, even as mine was strung, by the neces- 
 sity of loving and being loved. This it was which 
 crowned thee with beauty and power : — 
 
 England. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in 
 its development of any that he had ever seen — an assertion which, 
 to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with en- 
 thusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may 
 be presumed from this, that, at so early a stag'e of such inquiries, 
 he had published a work on human craniology, supported by 
 measurements of heads selected from all varieties of the human 
 species. Meantime, as it would grieve me that any trait of what 
 might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will admit that 
 my sister died of hydrocephalus ; and it has been often supposed, 
 that the premature expansion 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 opposite order of relation between the disease and the intel- 
 lectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused 
 the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely, this growth 
 of the intellect coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the 
 capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease. 
 
138 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Love, the holy sense, 
 Best gift of God, in thee was most intense. 
 
 That lamp of Paradise was, for myself, kindled by 
 reflection from the living light which burned so stead- 
 fastly in thee ; and never but to thee, never agaiij since 
 thy departure, had I power or temptation, courage or 
 desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I 
 was the shyest of children ; and, at all stages of life, a 
 natural sense of personal dignity held me back from ex- 
 posing the least ray of feelings which I was not encour- 
 aged wholly to reveal. 
 
 It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course 
 of that sickness which carried off my leader and com- 
 panion. She (according to my recollection St this mo- 
 ment) was just as near to nine years as I to six. And 
 perhaps this natural precedency in authority of years 
 and judgment, united to the tender humility with which 
 she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascina- 
 tions of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening, 
 if such conjectures can be trusted, 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 
 labouring man, the father of a favourite 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 day she sickened. In 
 such circumstances, a child, as young as myself, feels 
 no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people 
 privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war 
 upon pain and sickness, I never had a misgiving about 
 the result. I grieved, indeed, that my sister should lie 
 in bed ; I grieved still more to hear her moan. But all 
 this appeared to me no more than as a night of trouble, 
 on which the dawn would soon arise. O! moment of 
 darkness and delirium, when the elder 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 
 
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 139 
 
 be remembered."^ Itself, as a rememberable thing, is 
 swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy and 
 confusion 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 ap- 
 proaching. Enough it is 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 con- 
 solation. 
 
 On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet 
 temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human 
 scrutiny, 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. I had 
 never heard of feelings that take the name of ' ' senti- 
 mental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, 
 even in a child, hates the light, and shrinks from human 
 eyes. The house was large enough to have two stair- 
 cases ; and by one of these I knew that about mid-day, 
 when all would be quiet (for the servants dined at one 
 o'clock), I could steal up into her chamber. I imagine 
 that it was about an hour after high noon when I reached 
 the chamber-door ; it was locked, but 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 storeys, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then, 
 turning round, I sought my sister's face. But the bed 
 had been moved, and the back was now turned towards 
 myself. Nothing met my eyes but one large window, 
 wide open, through which the sun of midsummer at 
 mid-day was showering down torrents of splendour. 
 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- 
 
 1 I stood in unimaginable trance 
 
 And agony which cannot be remember'd. 
 
 Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse. 
 
HO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 ceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory 
 of life. 
 
 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 darkness that seemed to 
 steal from beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffen- 
 ing hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeating the sup- 
 plications 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 saddest that ear ever heard. 
 It was a wind that might have swept the fields of 
 mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, 
 upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, I 
 have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the 
 same hollow, solemn, Memnoniafl, but saintly swell : it 
 is in this world the one great audible symbol of eternity. 
 And three times in my life have I happened to hear the 
 same sound in the same circumstances — viz., when 
 standing between an open window and a dead body On 
 a summer day. 
 
 Instantly, when my ear caught this vast ^olian in- 
 tonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of 
 life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the 
 flowers below, 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 for ever. 
 I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also rose up the 
 shaft for ever; 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 
 
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 141 
 
 go on for ever and ever. Frost gathering frost, some 
 Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me ; some mighty 
 relation between God and death dimly struggled to 
 evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between 
 them ; shadowy meanings even yet continue to exercise 
 and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within 
 me. I slept — for how long I cannot say; slowly I re- 
 covered my self-possession ; and, when I woke, found 
 myself standing, as before, close to my sister's bed. 
 
 Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing pas- 
 sions. 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 sensibility to 
 shame. And, ten years 'afterwards, I used to throw my 
 self-reproaches with regard to that infirmity into this 
 shape — viz., that if I were summoned to seek aid for a 
 perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that 
 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 actually 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 that might 
 have been, was in my eyes the crime that 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 re- 
 sembling it. I 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, bleating clamorously, until he followed her 
 and rescued her beloved. Not less was the change in 
 myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not have 
 troubled me now in any office of tenderness to my sister's 
 
142 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from 
 seeking- her, if there had been a chance that she could 
 be found. Mockery ! it was lost upon me. Laughter ! I 
 valued it not. And when I was taunted insultingly with 
 "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 
 which I, in my short life, had known — that a girl it was 
 who had crowned the earth with beauty, and had opened 
 to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from which, 
 in this world, I was to drink no more. 
 
 Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of 
 solitude, those consolations which only I was destined 
 to taste; now, therefore, began to open upon me those 
 fascinations of solitude, which, when acting as a co- 
 agency with unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical 
 result of making out of grief itself a luxury; such a 
 luxury as finally becomes a snare, overhanging life it- 
 self, and the energies of life, with growing menaces. 
 All deep feelings of a chrwiic class agree in this, that 
 they seek for solitude, and are fed by solitude. Deep 
 grief, deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves 
 with religious feeling! and all three — love, grief, re- 
 ligion — are haunters of solitary places. Love, grief, and 
 the mystery of devotion — what were these without soli- 
 tude? All day long, when it was not impossible for me 
 to do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks 
 in the grounds about the house, or in the neighbouring 
 fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summer noons, 
 when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of 
 grey or misty afternoons — these were fascinations as of 
 witchcraft. Into the woods, into the desert air, I gazed, 
 as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied the 
 heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obstm- 
 ately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny, 
 sweeping them for ever with my eyes, and searching 
 them for one angelic face that might, perhaps, have per- 
 mission to reveal itself for a moment. 
 
 At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious 
 grief, that grasped at what it could not obtain, the 
 
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 143 
 
 faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight 
 elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the 
 heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at 
 the 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 mornings I went with the rest of my 
 family to church : it was a church on the ancient model 
 of England, having aisles, galleries, organ, all things 
 ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. 
 Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long 
 litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful 
 amongst many that are so, where 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 upper 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 win- 
 dows were rich with storied glass; through the deep 
 purples and crimsons streamed the golden light; em- 
 blazonries of heavenly illumination (from the sun) ming- 
 ling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and its 
 gorgeous colouring) 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 sub- 
 mission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult 
 of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from 
 some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the 
 wide central field of the window, where the glass was 
 Mwcoloured, 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 
 
144 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 sick children, dying children, th^t were tossing in anguish, 
 and weeping clamorously for death. God, for some 
 mysterious reason, could not suddenly release them from 
 their 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 de- 
 scended from the heavens, that he and his young child- 
 ren, whom in Palestine, once and for ever, 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 creations. And oftentimes in anthems, 
 when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of 
 sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of the choir 
 — high in arches, when it seemed to rise, surmounting 
 and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and gather- 
 ing by strong coercion the total storm into unity — some- 
 times I seemed to rise and walk triumphantly upon those 
 clouds which, but a moment before, I had looked up to 
 as mementos of prostrate sorrow; yes, sometimes under 
 the transfigurations of music, felt of grief itself as of a 
 fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes 
 of grief. 
 
 God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the 
 oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all 
 things, when made vocal to the meditative heart by the 
 truths and services of a national church, God holds with 
 children "communion undisturbed." Solitude, though 
 it may be 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 summoned 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 
 
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD 145 
 
 maiden, 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 — 
 prefiguration of another. 
 
 Oh, burden 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 meditating child is the 
 Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the 
 solitude of millions who, with hearts welling forth love, 
 have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those 
 who, under 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 under the passion of sorrow — bringing before 
 it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches for it, 
 and is waiting for it within the gates of death. Oh, 
 mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and 
 art to be ! thy kingdom is made perfect in the grave ; 
 but even over those that keep watch outside the grave, 
 like myself, an infant of six years old, thou stretchest 
 out a sceptre of fascination. 
 
146 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 THE PARIAH GIRLS 
 
 [This passage from De Quincey's Autobio^aphy shows how 
 early the idea of sorrow and suifering had entered into his mind. 
 All through life, as Professor Masson remarks, he was haunted by 
 this image of the pariah, the outcast, the being cut of from the 
 normal joys, the common social intercourse, of his fellows. The 
 thought that there were many men, and more women and children, 
 so situated was constantly with him, and it contributed a note of 
 special sadness to that undertone of melancholy which sounds 
 through much of his writing. His sympathies, always vivid, 
 assumed a phase of excessive intensity when he was brought into 
 contact with the sufferings of women and young children, as every 
 reader of the Confessions will remember.] 
 
 You have heard, reader, of pariahs. The pathos of that 
 great idea possibly never reached you. Did it ever strike 
 you how far that idea had extended? Do not fancy it 
 peculiar to Hindostan. Before Delhi was, before Agra, 
 or Lahore, might the pariah say, I was. The most in- 
 teresting, if only as the most mysterious, race of ancient 
 days, the Pelasgi, that overspread, in early times of 
 Greece, the total Mediterranean — a race distinguished for 
 beauty and for intellect, and sorrowful beyond all power 
 of man to read the cause that could lie deep enough for 
 so imperishable an impression — they were pariahs. The 
 Jews that, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, 
 were cursed in a certain contingency with a sublimer 
 curse than ever rang through the passionate wrath of 
 prophecy, and that afterwards, in Jerusalem, cursed 
 themselves, voluntarily taking on their own heads, and 
 on the heads of their children's children for ever and 
 ever, the guilt of innocent blood — they are pariahs to 
 this hour. Yet for them there has ever shone a sullen 
 light of hope. The gipsies, for whom no conscious or 
 acknowledged hope burns through the mighty dark- 
 ness that surrounds them — they are pariahs of pariahs. 
 Lepers were a race of mediaeval pariahs, rejected of 
 men, that now have gone to rest. But travel into the 
 forests of the Pyrenees, and there you will find their 
 modern representatives in the Cagots. Are these Pyre- 
 
THE PARIAH GIRLS 147 
 
 nean Cagots Pagans? Not at all. They are good 
 Christians. Wherefore, then, that low door in the 
 Pyrenean churches, through which the Cagots are forced 
 to enter, and which, obliging them to stoop almost to 
 the ground, is a perpetual memento of their degrada- 
 tion? Wherefore is it that men of pure Spanish blood 
 will hold no intercourse with the Cagot? Wherefore is 
 it that even the shadow of a Cagot, if it falls across a 
 fountain, is held to have polluted that fountain? All 
 this points to some dreadful taint of guilt, real or im- 
 puted, in ages far remote.' 
 
 But in ages far nearer to ourselves, nay, in our own 
 generation, and our own land, are many pariahs, sitting 
 amongst us all, nay, oftentimes sitting (yet not recog- 
 nised for what they really are) at good men's tables. 
 How general is that sensuous dulness, that deafness of 
 the heart, which the Scriptures attribute to human beings ! 
 ' ' Having ears, they hear not ; and, seeing, they do not 
 understand." In the very act of facing or touching a 
 dreadful object, they will utterly deny its existence. 
 Men say to me daily, when I ask them, in passing 
 " Anything in this morning's paper? " " Oh no, nothing 
 at all." And, as I never had any other answer, I am 
 bound to suppose that there never was anything in a 
 daily newspaper ; and, therefore, that the horrible burden 
 of misery and of change which a century accumulates as 
 
 ' The name and history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally 
 obscure. Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic 
 warfare with the Moors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that 
 betrayed the Christian cause and interests at a critical moment. 
 But all is conjecture. As to the name, Southey has somewhere 
 offered a possible interpretation of it ; but it struck me as far from 
 felicitous, and not what might have been expected from Southey, 
 whose vast historical research and commanding talent should 
 naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modern secrets, 
 if any unlocking does yet lie within the resources of human skill 
 and combining power, now that so many ages divide us from the 
 original steps of the case. I may here mention, as a fact acci- 
 dentally made known to myself, and apparently not known to 
 Southey, that the Cagots, under a name very slightly altered, are 
 found in France also, as well as Spain ; and in provinces of France 
 that have no connection at all with Spain. 
 
148 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 its facit or total result, has not been distributed at all 
 amongst its thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty- 
 five days : every day, it seems, was separately a blank 
 day, yielding absolutely nothing — what children call a 
 deaf nut, offering no kernel ; and yet the total product 
 has caused angels to weep and tremble. Meantime, 
 when I come to look at the newspaper with my own 
 eyes, I am astonished at the misreport of my informants. 
 Were there no other section in it than simply that 
 allotted to the police reports, oftentimes I stand aghast 
 at the revelations there made of human life and the 
 human heart — at its colossal guilt, and its colossal 
 misery; at the suffering which oftentimes throws its 
 shadow over palaces, and the grandeur of mute en- 
 durance which sometimes glorifies a cottage. Here 
 transpires the dreadful truth of what is going on for 
 ever under the thick curtains of domestic life, close 
 behind us, and before us, and all around us. News- 
 papers are evanescent, and are too rapidly recurrent, 
 and people see nothing great in what is familiar, nor 
 can ever be trained to read the silent and the shadowy 
 in what, for the moment, is covered with the babbling 
 garrulity of daylight. I suppose now that, in the next 
 generation after that which is here concerned, had any 
 neighbour of our tutor been questioned on the subject 
 of a domestic tragedy, which travelled through its 
 natural stages in a leisurely way, and under the eyes of 
 
 good Dr. S , he would have replied, "Tragedy! oh, 
 
 sir, nothing of the kind! You have been misled; the 
 gentleman must lie under a mistake : perhaps it was in 
 the next street." No, it was not in the next street; and 
 the gentleman does not lie under a mistake, or, in fact, 
 lie at all. The simple truth is, blind old neighbour, that 
 you, being rarely in the house, and, when there, only in 
 one particular room, saw no more of what was hourly 
 going on, than if you had been residing with the Sultan 
 of Bokhara. 
 
 But I, a child between seven and eight years old, 
 had access everywhere. I was privileged, and had the 
 entrie even of the female apartments; one conse- 
 
THE PARIAH GIRLS 149 
 
 quence of which was, that I put this and that together. 
 A number of syllables, that each for itself separately 
 might have meant nothing at all, did yet, when put 
 together, through weeks and months, read for my eyes 
 into sentences as deadly and significant as Tekel, up- 
 harsin. And another consequence was, that being, on 
 account of my age, nobody at all, or very near it, I 
 sometimes witnessed things that perhaps it had not been 
 meant for anybody to witness, or perhaps some half- 
 conscious negligence overlooked my presence. "Saw 
 things! What was it now? Was it a man at midnight, 
 with a dark lantern, and a six-barrel revolver?" No, 
 that was not in the least like what I saw : it was a great 
 deal more like what I will endeavour to describe. 
 Imagine two young girls, of what exact age I really do 
 not know, but apparently from twelve to fourteen, twins, 
 remarkably plain in person and features, unhealthy, and 
 obscurely reputed to be idiots. Whether they really 
 were such was more than I knew, or could devise any 
 plan for learning. Without dreaming of anything un- 
 kind or uncourteous, my original impulse had been to 
 say, " If you please, are you idiots? " But I felt that 
 such a question had an air of coarseness about it, 
 though, for my own part, I had long reconciled myself 
 to being called an idiot by my brother. There was, how- 
 ever, a further difficulty : breathed as a gentle, murmur- 
 ing whisper, the question might possibly be reconciled 
 to an indulgent ear as confidential and tender. Even to 
 take a liberty with those you love, is to show your trust 
 in their affection ; but, alas ! these poor girls were deaf; 
 and to have shouted out, "Are you idiots, if you please?" 
 in a voice that would have rung down three flights of 
 stairs, promised (as I felt, without exactly seeing why) 
 a dreadful exaggeration to whatever incivility might, at 
 any rate, attach to the question ; and some did attach, 
 that was clear, even if warbled through an air of Cheru- 
 bini's, and accompanied on the flute. Perhaps they were 
 not idiots, and only seemed to be such from the slowness 
 of apprehension naturally connected with deafness. 
 That I saw them but seldom, arose from their peculiar 
 
ISO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 position in the family. Their father had no private for- 
 tune ; his income from the church was very slender; and, 
 though considerably increased by the allowance made 
 for us, his two pupils, still, in a great town, and with so 
 large a family, it left him little room for luxuries. Con- 
 sequently, he never had more than two servants, and at 
 times only one. Upon this plea rose the scheme of the 
 mother for employing these two young girls in menial 
 offices of the household economy. One reason for that 
 was, that she thus indulged her dislike for them, which 
 she took no pains to conceal ; and thus, also, she with- 
 drew them from the notice of strangers. In this way, it 
 happened that I saw them myself but at uncertain in- 
 tervals. Gradually, however, I came to be aware of 
 their forlorn condition, to pity them, and to love them. 
 The poor twins were undoubtedly plain^ to the degree 
 which is called, by unfeeling people, ugliness. They 
 were also deaf, as I have said, and they were scrofulous ; 
 one of them was disfigured by the small-pox ; they had 
 glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and 
 scarcely half-open ; and they did not walk so much as 
 stumble along. There, you have the worst of them. 
 Now, hear something on the other side. What first 
 won my pity was, their affection for each other, united 
 to their constant sadness ; secondly, a notion which had 
 crept into my head, probably derived from something 
 said in my presence by elder people, that they were 
 destined to an early death; and, lastly, the incessant 
 persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, by 
 birth, to a more elevated rank than that of her husband, 
 and she was remarkably well-bred as regarded her 
 manners. But she had probably a weak understanding : 
 she was shrewish in her temper ; was a severe economist ; 
 a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty ; and, in 
 persecuting her two unhappy daughters, though she 
 yielded blindly to her unconscious dislike of them, as 
 creatures that disgraced her, she was not aware, per- 
 haps, of ever having put forth more expressions of 
 anger and severity than were absolutely required to 
 rouse the constitutional torpor of her daughters' nature ; 
 
THE PARIAH GIRLS 151 
 
 and where disgust has once rooted itself, and been 
 habitually expressed in tones of harshness, the mere 
 sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth the 
 eternal tones of anger, without distinct consciousness or 
 separate intention in the speaker. Loud speaking, be- 
 sides, or even shouting, was required by the deafness of 
 the two girls. From anger so constantly discharging its 
 thunders, naturally they did not show open signs of 
 recoiling ; but that they felt it deeply, may be presumed 
 from their sensibility to kindness. My own experience 
 showed that ; for, as often as I met them, we exchanged 
 kisses; and my wish had always been to beg them, if 
 they really were idiots, not to mind it, since I should 
 not like them the less on that account. This wish of 
 mine never came to utterance ; but not the less they 
 were aware, by my manner of salutation, that one 
 person at least, amongst those who might be considered 
 strangers, did not find anything repulsive about them ; 
 and the pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon 
 their kindly faces. 
 
 Such was the outline of their position ; and that being 
 explained, what I saw was simply this ; it composed a 
 silent and symbolic scene, a momentary interlude in 
 dumb show, which interpreted itself, and settled for ever 
 in my recollection, as if it had prophesied and inter- 
 preted the event which soon followed. They were rest- 
 ing from toil, and both sitting down. This had lasted 
 for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Suddenly from 
 below-stairs the voice of angry summons rang up to 
 their ears. Both rose in an instant, as if the echoing 
 scourge of some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted above 
 their heads ; both opened their arms ; flung them round 
 each other's necks; and then, unclasping them, parted 
 to their separate labours. This was my last remember- 
 able interview with the two sisters ; in a week both were 
 corpses. They had died, I believe, of scarlatina, and 
 very nearly at the same moment. 
 
LITERARY CRITICISM AND 
 PORTRAITURE 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE 
 LITERATURE OF POWER 
 
 [The distinction between the literature of knowledge and the 
 literature of power — between the writing that informs the under- 
 standing and that which moves the soul— is De Quincey's most 
 notable, or at any rate his best known, contribution to the science 
 of criticism. It is so well known, and has been repeated so often, 
 that it now seems obvious— like so many of the greatest discoveries 
 of the greatest minds. It is obvious of course that there is a con- 
 siderable difference in kind between a London Directory and a 
 love-lyric, between King Lear and a treatise on the construc- 
 tion of tramways; just as it has been obvious — since isth March 
 1493 — that any ship sailing continuously westward from Europe 
 would either touch Eastern Asia or some intervening continent. 
 But De Quincey brought into the domain of reality a conception 
 which the minds of men had held only in vague indefiniteness. And 
 perhaps even now many who repeat, at second-hand, De Quincey's 
 aphorism do not quite clearly grasp its inner meaning, and fail to 
 'understand that the lyric or the epic may not belong to the litera- 
 ture of power, whereas the essay, the biography, or the scientific 
 treatise quite conceivably may. It is all a question of the spirit 
 which underlies the treatment. " Power " was that which De 
 Quincey sought in all his uncharted wanderings through the fields 
 of literature. Keenly as he appreciated verbal felicities and the 
 subtler beauties of style, he valued literature not for its aesthetic 
 appeal but because, in its highest forms, it quickens and expands 
 man's " latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite." So he prized 
 most the emotional expression of Life in poetry, in rhetoric, in 
 " impassioned prose," in music, the avenues to that encompassing 
 ocean of mystery which the reason and the understanding, cling- 
 ing to fragmentary chains of causation, cannot touch. 
 
 The idea appears in diverse shapes in De Quincey's critical 
 writings. Of the two passages given below the first is from the 
 essay on " Alexander Pope " contributed to the North British 
 
 152 
 
LITERATURE 153 
 
 Review in 1848 and reprinted in vol. ix of the Collective Edition; 
 the second is from the series of " Letters to a Young Man whose 
 Education has been Neglected," first published twenty-five years 
 earlier in the London Magazine during 1823 before the wave of 
 curiosity thrown up by the Confessions had ebbed.] 
 
 I 
 
 What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and 
 amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything 
 that is printed in a book. Little logic is required to dis- 
 turb that definition; the most thoughtless person is 
 easily made aware, that in the idea of literature, one 
 essential element is, — some relation to a general and 
 common interest of man, so that, what applies only to a 
 local, or professional, or merely personal interest, even 
 though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not 
 belong to literature. So far the definition is easily nar- 
 rowed ; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is 
 much that takes a station in books not literature ; but 
 inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a 
 station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, 
 that vast pulpit Uterature which acts so extensively upon 
 the popular mind — to warn, to uphold, to renew, to com- 
 fort, to alarm, does not attain the sanctuary of libraries 
 in the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The drama 
 again, as for instance, the finest of Shakespeare's plays 
 in England, and all leading Athenian plays in the noon- 
 tide of the Attic stage, operated as a literature on the 
 public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter 
 of that term) published through the audiences that wit- 
 nessed ' their representation some time before they were 
 published as things to be read ; and they were published 
 in this scenical mode of publication with much more 
 effect than they could have had as books, during ages of 
 costly copying, or of costly printing. 
 
 ' Charles I, for example, when Prince of Wales, and many others 
 in his father's court, gained their known familiarity with Shak- 
 speare — not through the original quartos, so slenderly diffused, 
 nor through the first folio of 1623, but through the court repre- 
 sentations of his chief dramas at Whitehall. 
 
154 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea co-extensive 
 and interchangeable with the idea of literature; since 
 much literature, scenic, forensic, or didactic (as from 
 lecturers and public orators), may never come into 
 books ; and much that does come into books, may con- 
 nect itself with no literary interest/ But a far more im- 
 portant correction, applicable to the common vague idea 
 of literature, is to be sought — not so much in a better 
 definition of literature, as in a sharper distinction of the 
 two functions which it fulfils. In that great social 
 organ, which, collectively, we call literature, there may 
 be distinguished two separate offices that may blend and 
 often do so, but capable, severally, of a severe insula- 
 tion, and naturally fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There 
 is, first, the literature of knowledge; and, secondly, the 
 literature of power. The function of the first is — to 
 teach ; the function of the second is — to move : the first 
 is a rudder; the second, an oar or a sail. The first 
 speaks to the mere discursive understanding ; the second 
 speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher under- 
 standing or reason, but always through affections of 
 pleasure and sympathy. Remotely, it may travel towards 
 an object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry light ; but, 
 proximately, it does and must operate, else it ceases to 
 be a literature of power, on and through that humid 
 light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris 
 of human passions, desires, and genial emotions. 
 
 Men have so little reflected on the higher functions of 
 literature, as to find it a paradox if one should describe 
 it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give in- 
 formation. But this is a paradox only in the sense which 
 makes it honourable to be paradoxical. Whenever we 
 
 1 What are called The Blue Books, by which title are understood 
 the folio Reports issued every session of Parliament by committees 
 of the two Houses, and stitched into blue covers, — though often 
 sneered at by the ignorant as so much waste paper, will be acknow- 
 ledged grateftiUy by those who have used them diligently, as the 
 main well-heads of all accurate information as to the Great Britain 
 of this day. As an immense depository of faithful {and not su/per- 
 annuated) statistics, they are indispensable to the honest student. 
 But no man would therefore class the Blue Books as Uterature. 
 
LITERATURE 155 
 
 talk in ordinary language of seeking information or 
 gaining knowledge, we understand the words as con- 
 nected with something of absolute novelty. But it is 
 the grandeur of all truth, which can occupy a very high 
 place in human interests, that it is never absolutely 
 novel to the meanest of minds : it exists eternally by 
 way of germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the 
 highest, needing to be developed, but never to be 
 planted. To be capable of transplantation is the im- 
 mediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a lower scale. 
 Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth, namely, 
 power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is the effect, 
 for instance, upon society, of children ? By the pity, by 
 the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admira- 
 tion, which connect themselves with the helplessness, 
 with the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, 
 not only are the primal affections strengthened and con- 
 tinually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest in 
 the sight of heaven — the frailty, for instance, which ap-- 
 peals to forbearance ; the innocence which symbolizes 
 the heavenly, and the simplicity which is most alien from 
 the worldly, are kept up in perpetual remembrance, and 
 their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the 
 same nature is answered by the higher literature, viz., 
 the literature of power. What do you learn from Para- 
 dise Lost ? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a 
 cookery-book? Something new — something that you did 
 not know before, in every paragraph. But would you 
 therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher 
 level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe 
 to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million 
 separate items are still but a million of advancing steps 
 on the same earthly level ; what you owe, is power, that 
 is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of 
 sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each 
 separate influx is a step upwards — a step ascending as 
 upon a Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes 
 above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, fro^n first 
 to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could 
 never raise you one foot above your ancient level of 
 
156 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 earth : whereas, the very first step in power is a flight — 
 is an ascending movement into another element where 
 earth is forgotten. 
 
 Were it not that human sensibiHties are ventilated and 
 continually called out into exercise by the great pheno- 
 mena of infancy, or of real life as it moves through 
 chance and change, or of literature as it recombines 
 these elements in the mimicries of poetry, romance, etc., 
 it is certain that, like any animal power or muscular 
 energy falling into disuse, all such sensibilities would 
 gradually drop and dwindle. It is in relation to these 
 great moral capacities of man that the literature of power, 
 as contradistinguished from that of knowledge, lives and 
 has its field of action. It is concerned with what is 
 highest in man; for the Scriptures themselves never 
 condescended to deal by suggestion or co-operation, 
 with the mere discursive understanding : when speaking 
 of man in his intellectual capacity, the Scriptures speak 
 not of the understanding, but of " the understanding 
 heart" — making the heart, i.e., the great intuitive (or 
 non-discursive) organ, to be the interchangeable formula 
 for man in his highest state of capacity for the infinite. 
 Tragedy, romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore 
 to man's mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of 
 mercy, of retribution, which else (left to the support of 
 daily life in its realities) would languish for want of 
 sufficient illustration. What is meant, for instance, by 
 poetic justice?— It does not mean a justice that differs by 
 its object from the ordinary justice of human juris- 
 prudence; for then it must be confessedly a very bad 
 kind of justice ; but it means a justice that differs from 
 common forensic justice by the degree in which it attains 
 its object, a justice that is more omnipotent over its own 
 ends, as dealing — not with the refractory elements of 
 earthly life — but with the elements of its own creation, 
 and with materials flexible to its own purest precon- 
 ceptions. It is certain that, were it not for the litera- 
 ture of power, these ideals would often remain amongst 
 us as mere arid notional forms: whereas, by the 
 creative forces of man put forth in literature, they gain 
 
LITERATURE 157 
 
 a vernal life of restoration, and germinate into vital 
 activities. 
 
 The commonest novel, by moving in alliance with 
 human fears and hopes, with human instincts of wrong 
 and right, sustains and quickens those affections. Calling 
 them into action, it rescues them from torpor. And 
 hence the pre-eminency over all authors that merely 
 teach, of the meanest that moves ; or that teaches, if at 
 all, indirectly hy moving. The very highest work that 
 has ever existed in the literature of knowledge, is but a 
 provisional work : a book upon trial and sufferance, and 
 quamdiu bene se gesserit. Let its teaching be even par- 
 tially revised, let it be but expanded, nay, even let its 
 teaching be but placed in a better order, and instantly it 
 is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the litera- 
 ture of power, surviving at all, survive as finished and 
 unalterable amongst men. For instance, the Principia 
 of Sir Isaac Newton was a book militant on earth from 
 the first. In all stages of its progress it would have to 
 fight for its existence: ist, as regards absolute truth; 
 2dly, when that combat was over, as regards its form 
 or mode of presenting the truth. And as soon as a 
 La Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the 
 foundations laid by this book, effectually he throws it 
 out of the sunshine into decay and darkness ; by weapons 
 won from this book he superannuates and destroys this 
 book, so that soon the name of Newton remains, as a 
 mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, 
 has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the con- 
 trary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of .i^schylus, — the 
 Othello or King Lear, — the Hamlet or Macbeth, — and the 
 Paradise Lost, are not militant but triumphant for ever 
 as long as the languages exist in which they speak or 
 can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate 
 into new incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms, 
 or variations, even if in some things they should be im- 
 proved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine is 
 properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral 
 valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of 
 Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. These things 
 
iS8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 are separated not by imparity, but by disparity. They 
 are not thought of as unequal under the same stand- 
 ard, but as different in kind, and if otherwise equal, as 
 equal under a different standard. Human works of im- 
 mortal beauty and works of nature in one respect stand 
 on the same footing ; they never absolutely repeat each 
 other ; never approach so near as not to differ ; and they 
 differ not as better and worse, or simply by more and 
 less: they differ by undecipherable and incommunic- 
 able differences, that cannot be caught by mimicries, 
 that cannot be reflected in the mirror of copies, that can- 
 not become ponderable in the scales of vulgar com- 
 parison. 
 
 TV ^ W TT ^ 
 
 All the literature of knowledge builds only ground- 
 nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by 
 the plough ; but the literature of power builds nests in 
 aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or of 
 forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative 
 of the power literature ; and it is a greater which lies in 
 the mode of its influence. The knowledge literature, like 
 the fashion of this world, passeth away. An Encyclo- 
 paedia is its abstract ; and, in this respect, it may be 
 taken for its speaking symbol — that, before one genera- 
 tion has passed, an Encyclopaedia is superannuated j for 
 it speaks through the dead memory and unimpassioned 
 understanding, which have not the repose of higher 
 faculties, but are continually enlarging and varying 
 their phylacteries. But all literature, properly so called 
 — literature kot ti,oyj\v, for the very same reason that it 
 is so much more durable than the literature of know- 
 ledge, is (and by the very same proportion it is) more 
 intense and electrically searching in its impressions. 
 The directions in which the tragedy of this planet has 
 trained our human feelings to play, and the combinations 
 into which the poetry of this planet has thrown our 
 human passions of love and hatred, of admiration and 
 contempt, exercise a power bad or good over human 
 life, that cannot be contemplated, when stretching 
 through many generations, without a sentiment allied to 
 
LITERATURE 159 
 
 awe/ And of this let every one be assured — that he 
 owes to the impassioned books which he has read, many 
 a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously 
 trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these 
 emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life 
 like forgotten incidents of his childhood. 
 
 II 
 
 Here, however, to prevent all mistakes, let me estab- 
 lish one necessary distinction. The word literature is a 
 perpetual source of confusion, because it is used in two 
 senses, and those senses liable to be confounded with 
 each other. In a philosophical use of the word, litera- 
 ture is the direct and adequate antithesis of books of 
 knowledge. But, in a popular use, it is a mere term 
 of convenience for expressing inclusively the total books 
 in a language. In this latter sense, a dictionary, a 
 grammar, a spelling-book, an almanac, a pharmacopoeia, 
 a Parliamentary report, a system of farriery, a treatise 
 on billiards, the Court Calendar, etc., belong to the 
 literature. But, in the philosophical sense, not only 
 would it be ludicrous to reckon these as parts of the 
 literature, but even books of much higher pretensions 
 must be excluded — as, for instance, books of voyages 
 and travels, and generally all books in which the matter 
 to be communicated is paramount to the manner or form 
 of its communication (" ornari res ipsa negat, contenta 
 doceri "). 
 
 • The reason why the broad distinctions between the two litera- 
 tures of power and knowledge so little fix the attention, lies in the 
 fact, that a vast proportion of books — history, biography, travels, 
 miscellaneous essays, etc. , lying in a middle zone, confound these 
 distinctions by interblending them. All that we call " amusement " 
 or "entertainment," is a diluted form of the power belonging to 
 passion, and also a mixed form ; and where threads of direct in- 
 struction intermingle in the texture with these threads of power, 
 this absorption of the duality into one representative nuance neu- 
 tralizes the separate perception of either. Fused into a tertium 
 quid, or neutral state, they disappear to the popular eye as the 
 repelling forces, which, in fact, they are. 
 
i6o THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 It is difficult to construct the idea of "literature" 
 with severe accuracy; for it is a fine art — the supreme 
 fine art, and liable to the difficulties which attend 
 such a subtle notion; in fact, a severe construction 
 of the idea must be the result of a philosophical in- 
 vestigation into this subject, and cannot precede it. 
 But, for the sake of obtaining some expression for 
 literature that may answer our present purpose, let us 
 throw the question into another form. I have said that 
 the antithesis of literature is books of knowledge. Now, 
 what is that antithesis to knowledge, which is here im- 
 plicitly latent in the word literature? The vulgar anti- 
 thesis is pleasure (" aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare 
 poetae "). Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to 
 amuse. Indeed ! However, not to spend any words upon 
 it, I suppose you will admit that this wretched antithesis 
 will be of no service to us. And, by the way, let me re- 
 mark to you, in this, as in other cases, how men by 
 their own errors of understanding, by feeble thinking, 
 and inadequate, distinctions, forge chains of meanness 
 and servility for themselves. For, this miserable alter- 
 native being once admitted, observe what follows. In 
 which class of books does the Paradise Lost stand? 
 Among those which instruct, or those which anmse? 
 Now, if a man answers among those which instruct, he 
 lies ; for there is no instruction in it, nor could be in any 
 great poem, according to the meaning which the word 
 must bear in this distinction, unless it is meant that it 
 should involve its own antithesis. But if he says, " No; 
 amongst those which amuse," then what a beast must 
 he be to degrade, and in this way, what has done the 
 most of any human work to raise and dignify human 
 nature. But the truth is, you see that the idiot does not 
 wish to degrade it ; on the contrary, he would willingly 
 tell a lie in its favour, if that would be admitted ; but 
 such is the miserable state of slavery to which he has 
 reduced himself by his own puny distinction; for, as 
 soon as he hops out of one of his little cells, he is under 
 a necessity of hopping into the other. The true anti- 
 thesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but 
 
LITERATURE i6i 
 
 power. All that is literature seeks to communicate 
 power ; all that is not literature, to communicate know- 
 ledge. Now, if it be asked what is meant by com- 
 municating' power, I, in my turn, would ask by what 
 name a man would designate the case in which I should 
 be made to feel vividly, and with a vital consciousness, 
 emotions which ordinary life rarely or never supplies oc- 
 casions for exciting, and which had previously lain un- 
 wakened, and hardly within the dawn of consciousness 
 — as myriads of modes of feeling are at this moment in 
 every human mind for want of a poet to organize them? 
 I say, when these inert and sleeping forms are organ- 
 ized, when these possibilities are actualized, is this con- 
 scious and living possession of mine power, or what 
 is it? 
 
 When, in King Lear, the height, and depth, and 
 breadth, of human passion is revealed to us, and, for the 
 purposes of a sublime antagonism, is revealed in the 
 weakness of an old man's nature, and in one night two 
 worlds of storm are brought face to face — the human 
 world, and the world of physical nature — mirrors of each 
 other, semichoral antiphonies, strophe and antistrophe 
 heaving with rival convulsions, and with the double 
 darkness of night and madness, — when I am thus sud- 
 denly startled into a feeling of the infinity of the world 
 within me, is this power, or what may I call it? Space, 
 again, what is it in most men's minds ? The lifeless form 
 of the world without us, a postulate of the geometrician, 
 with no more vitality or real existence to their feelings 
 than the square root of two. But, if Milton has been 
 able to inform this empty theatre, peopling it with 
 Titanic shadows, forms that sat at the eldest counsels of 
 the infant world, chaos and original night, — 
 
 Ghostly shapes, 
 To meet at noontide. Fear and trembling- Hope, 
 
 Death the Skeleton, 
 And Time the Shadow, — 
 
 so that, from being a thing to inscribe with diagrams, it 
 has become under his hands a vital agent on the human 
 
 M 
 
i62 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 mind, — I presume that I may justly express the tendency 
 of the Paradise Lost, by saying that it communicates 
 power; a pretension far above all communication of 
 knowledge. Henceforth, therefore, I shall use the anti- 
 thesis power and knowledge as the most philosophical 
 expression for literature (that is, Literae Humaniores) 
 and anti-literature (that is, Literae didacticae — Wailiia). 
 
 RHETORIC 
 
 [Rhetoric, for some reason, is regarded with extreme disfavour 
 by most latter-day English critics ; which is the more remarkable 
 since some of the very greatest of English writers are nothing if 
 not rhetorical. Milton and Byron, the only two of our poets be- 
 sides Shakespeare who have gained a world-wide celebrity, are 
 rhetorical poets; our rhetorical prose, Milton's, Bacon's, Jeremy 
 Taylor's, Carlyle's, Ruskin's, De Quincey's own, is the noblest of 
 its kind in modern literature. There is, of course, a true and a 
 false rhetoric as there is a true and a false eloquence. The dis- 
 tinction is ably drawn in this Essay ; which moreover is, in its best 
 passages, a rich example of what De Quincey specifically meant 
 by rhetoric — namely, the art of ornate and allusive prose, which 
 depends for its effect not merely on lucid exposition and logical 
 statement, but on illuminative fancy, imaginative illustration, and 
 a wealth of verbal decoration. To read De Quincey's notices of 
 his masters and teachers, the great rhetoricians of the seventeenth 
 century, is to be convinced that English prose cannot for ever be 
 denied its most characteristic quality in favour of a Gallic lim- 
 pidity and thinness which may be suited to the Latin genius but 
 is alien from our own. 
 
 The Essay was contributed to Blackviood in December 1828 as 
 a review of Whateley 's Elements of Rhetoric. ] 
 
 Whatsoever is certain, or matter of fixed science, can 
 be no subject for the rhetorician : where it is possible for 
 the understanding to be convinced, no field is open for 
 rhetorical persuasion. Absolute certainty and fixed 
 science transcend opinion, and exclude the probable. 
 The province of rhetoric, whether meant for an influence 
 upon the actions, or simply upon the belief, lies amongst 
 that vast field of cases where there is a pro and a con, 
 with the chance of right and wrong, true and false, dis- 
 
RHETORIC 163 
 
 tributed in varying proportions between them. There is 
 also an immense range of truths, where there are no 
 chances at all concerned, but the affirmative and the 
 negative are both true ; as, for example, the goodness of 
 human nature and its wickedness; the happiness of 
 human life and its misery; the charms of knowledge, 
 and its hollowness ; the fragility of human prosperity, 
 in the eye of religious meditation, and its security, as 
 estimated by worldly confidence and youthful hope. 
 In all such cases the rhetorician exhibits his art by 
 giving an impulse to one side, and by withdrawing the 
 mind so steadily from all thoughts or images which sup- 
 port the other, as to leave it practically unde'r the pos- 
 session of a one-sided estimate. 
 
 Upon this theory, what relation to rhetoric shall we 
 assign to style and the ornamental arts of composition? 
 In some respect they seem liable to the same objection 
 as that which Aristotle has urged against appeals to the 
 passions ; both are extra-essential, or i^o> tov irpayfiaTog ; 
 they are subjective arts, not objective ; that is, they do 
 not affect the thing which is to be surveyed, but the eye 
 of him who is to survey. Yet, at a banquet, the epicure 
 holds himself not more obliged to the cook for the 
 venison, than to the physician who braces his stomach 
 to enjoy. And any arts which conciliate regard to the 
 speaker, indirectly promote the effect of his arguments. 
 On this account, and because (under the severest limita- 
 tion of rhetoric) they are in many cases indispensable to 
 the perfect interpretation of the thoughts, we may admit 
 arts of style and ornamental composition as the minis- 
 terial part of rhetoric. But with regard to the passions, 
 as contended for by Dr. Campbell, it is a sufficient 
 answer that they are already pre-occupied by what is 
 called Eloqtience. 
 
 Coleridge, as we have often heard, is in the habit of 
 drawing the line with much philosophical beauty be- 
 tween rhetoric and eloquence. On this topic we were 
 never so fortunate as to hear him : but if we are here 
 called upon for a distinction, we shall satisfy our imme- 
 diate purpose by a very plain and brief one. By Elo- 
 
i64 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 quence, we understand the overflow of powerful feelings 
 upon occasions fitted to excite them. But Rhetoric is 
 the art of aggrandizing and bringing out into strong 
 relief, by means of various and striking thoughts, some 
 aspect of truth which of itself is supported by no spon- 
 taneous feelings, and therefore rests upon artificial aids. 
 
 Greece, as may well be imagined, was the birthplace 
 of Rhetoric; to which of the Fine Arts was it not? And 
 here, in one sense of the word Rhetoric, the art had its 
 consummation : for the theory, or ars docens, was taught 
 with a fulness and an accuracy by the Grecian masters 
 not afterwards approached. In particular, it was so 
 taught by Aristotle, whose system we are disposed to 
 agree with Dr. Whately in pronouncing the best, as re- 
 gards the primary purpose of a teacher ; though other- 
 wise, for elegance and as a practical model in the art he 
 was expounding, neither Aristotle, nor any less austere 
 among the Greek rhetoricians, has any pretensions to 
 measure himself with Quintilian. In reality, for a triumph 
 over the difficulties of the subject, and as a lesson on 
 the possibility of imparting grace to the treatment of 
 scholastic topics, naturally as intractable as that of 
 Grammar or Prosody, there is no such chef-d'oeuvre 
 to this hour in any literature, as the Institutions of 
 Quintilian. Laying this one case out of the comparison, 
 however, the Greek superiority was indisputable. 
 
 Yet how is it to be explained, that with these advan- 
 tages on the side of the Greek rhetoric as an ars docens, 
 rhetoric as a practical art (the ars uteris) never made any 
 advances amongst the Greeks to the brilliancy which it 
 attained in Rome? Up to a certain period, and through- 
 out the palmy state of the Greek repubUcs, we may ac- 
 count for it thus : Rhetoric, in its finest and most 
 absolute burnish, may be called an eloquentia umbratica ; 
 that is, it aims at an elaborate form of beauty, which 
 shrinks from the strife of business, and could neither 
 arise nor make itself felt in a tumultuous assembly. 
 Certain features, it is well known, and peculiar styles of 
 countenance, which are impressive in a drawing-room, 
 become ineff"ective on a public stage. The fine tooling 
 
RHETORIC 165 
 
 and delicate tracery of the cabinet artist is lost upon a 
 building of colossal proportions. Extemporaneousness, 
 again, a favourable circumstance to impassioned elo- 
 quence, is death to Rhetoric. Two characteristics in- 
 deed there were, of a Greek popular assembly, which 
 must have operated fatally on the rhetorician — its fer- 
 vour, in the first place ; and, secondly, the coarseness of 
 a real interest. All great rhetoricians in selecting their 
 subject have shunned the determinate cases of real life: 
 and even in the single instance of a deviation from the 
 rule — that of the author (whoever he be) of the Declama- 
 tions attributed to Quintilian — the cases are shaped with 
 so romantic a generality, and so slightly circum- 
 stantiated, as to allow him all the benefit of pure 
 abstractions. 
 
 We can readily understand, therefore, why the fervid 
 oratory of the Athenian assemblies, and the intense 
 reality of its interest, should stifle the growth of rhe- 
 toric : the smoke, tarnish, and demoniac glare of Vesu- 
 vius easily eclipse the pallid coruscations of the aurora 
 borealis. And in fact, amongst the greater orators of 
 Greece, there is not a solitary gleam of rhetoric : Iso- 
 crates may have a little, being (to say the truth) neither 
 orator nor rhetorician in any eminent sense; Demos- 
 thenes has none. But when those great thunders had 
 subsided which reached " to Macedon and Artaxerxes' 
 throne," when the "fierce democracy" itself had per- 
 ished, and Greece had fallen under the common circum- 
 stances of the Roman empire, how came it that Greek 
 rhetoric did not blossom concurrently with Roman? 
 Vegetate it did; and a rank crop of weeds grew up 
 under the name of Rhetoric, down to the times of the 
 Emperor Julian and his friend Libanius (both of whom, 
 by the way, were as worthless writers as have ever 
 abused the Greek lang^iage). But this part of Greek 
 literature is a desert with no oasis. The fact is, if it 
 were required to assign the two bodies of writers who 
 have exhibited the human understanding in the most 
 abject poverty, and whose works by no possibility emit 
 a casual scintillation of wit, fancy, just thinking, or 
 
i66 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 good writing, we should certainly fix upon Greek rhe- 
 toricians and Italian critics. Amongst the whole mass 
 there is not a page, that any judicious friend to literature 
 would wish to reprieve from destruction. And in both 
 cases we apprehend that the possibility of so much in- 
 anity is due in part to the quality of the two languages. 
 The difFuseness and loose structure of Greek style unfit 
 it for the closeness, condensation, and to ayyiarpoi^ov of 
 rhetoric; the melodious beauty of the mere sounds, 
 which both in the Italian and in the Greek are combined 
 with much majesty, dwells upon the ear so delightfully, 
 that in no other language is it so easy as in these two to 
 write with little or no meaning, and to flow along 
 through a whole wilderness of inanity, without par- 
 ticularly rousing the reader's disgust. 
 
 In the literature of Rome it is that we find the true El 
 Dorado of rhetoric, as we might expect from the sinewy 
 compactness of the language. Livy, and, above all pre- 
 ceding writers, Ovid, display the greatest powers of 
 rhetoric in forms of composition, which were not par- 
 ticularly adapted to favour that talent. The contest of 
 Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles, in one of the 
 later books of the Metamorphoses, is a chef-d'cewvre of 
 rhetoric, considering its metrical form ; for metre, and 
 especially the flowing heroic hexameter, is no advantage 
 to the rhetorician.' The two Plinys, Lucan (though 
 again under the disadvantage of verse), Petronius 
 Arbiter, and Quintilian, but above all, the Senecas (for 
 a Spanish cross appears to improve the quality of the 
 rhetorician), have left a body of rhetorical composition 
 such as no modern nation has rivalled. Even the most 
 brilliant of these writers, however, were occasionally 
 surpassed in particular bravuras of rhetoric by several of 
 
 ^ This, added to the style and quality of his poems, makes it the 
 more remarkable that Virgil shduld have been deemed a rhetor- 
 ician. Yet so it was. Walsh notices, in the Life of Fi'jgi/ which he 
 furnished for his friend Dryden's Translation, that "his (Virgil's) 
 rhetoric was in such general esteem, that lectures were read upon 
 it in the reign of Tiberius, and the subject of declamations taken 
 out of him." 
 
RHETORIC 167 
 
 the Latin fathers, particularly Tertullian, Arnobius, St. 
 Austin, and a writer whose name we cannot at this 
 moment recall. In fact, a little African blood operated 
 as genially in this respect as Spanish, whilst an Asiatic 
 cross was inevitably fatal, by prompting a diffusion and 
 inflation of style radically hostile to the condensation of 
 keen, arrowy, rhetoric. Partly from this cause, and 
 partly because they wrote in an unfavourable language, 
 the Greek fathers are, one and all, Birmingham rhe- 
 toricians. Even Gregory Nazianzen is so, with sub- 
 mission to Messieurs of the Port Royal and other bigoted 
 critics who have pronounced him at the very top of the 
 tree among the fine writers of antiquity. Undoubtedly 
 he has a turgid style of mouthy grandiloquence (though 
 often the merest bombast) ; but for polished rhetoric he 
 is singularly unfitted, by inflated habits of thinking, by 
 loitering diffuseness, and a dreadful trick of calling 
 names. The spirit of personal invective is peculiarly ad- 
 verse to the coolness of rhetoric. As to Chrysostom and 
 Basil, with less of pomp and swagger than Gregory, 
 they have not at all more of rhetorical burnish and com- 
 pression. Upon the whole, looking back through the 
 dazzling files of the ancient rhetoricians, we are disposed 
 to rank the Senecas and Tertullian as the leaders of the 
 band; for St. Austin, in his Confessions, and wherever 
 he becomes peculiarly interesting, is apt to be impas- 
 sioned and fervent in a degree which makes him break 
 out of the proper pace of rhetoric. He is matched to 
 trot, and is continually breaking into a gallop. Indeed, 
 his Confessions have in parts, particularly in those which 
 relate to the death of his young friend and his own 
 frenzy of grief, all that real passion which is only ima- 
 gined in the Confessions of Rousseau, under a precon- 
 ception derived from his known character and unhappy 
 life. By the time of the Emperor Justinian (say a.d. 
 530), or in the interval between that time and the era 
 of Mahomet (a.d. 620), which interval we regard as 
 the common crepusculum between ancient and modern 
 history, all rhetoric (as the professional pretension of a 
 class) seems to have finally expired. 
 
i68 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 In the literature of modern Europe, rhetoric has been 
 cultivated with success. But this remark applies only 
 with any force to a period which is now long past ; and 
 it is probable, upon various considerations, that such 
 another period will never revolve. The rhetorician's art 
 in its glory and power has silently faded away before the 
 stern tendencies of the age ; and if, by any peculiarity 
 of taste or strong determination of the intellect, a rhe- 
 torician, en grand costume, were again to appear amongst 
 us, it is certain that he would have no better welcome 
 than a stare of surprise as a posture-maker or balancer, 
 not more elevated in the general estimate, but far less 
 amusing, than the acrobat, or funambulist, or equestrian 
 gymnast. No ; the age of rhetoric like that of chivalry 
 has passed amongst forgotten things; and the rhe- 
 torician can have no more chance for returning, than the 
 rhapsodist of early Greece or the troubadour of romance. 
 So multiplied are the modes of intellectual enjoyment in 
 modern times, that the choice is absolutely distracted; 
 and in a boundless theatre of pleasures, to be had at 
 little or no cost of intellectual activity, it would be mar- 
 vellous indeed if any considerable audience could be 
 found for an exhibition which presupposes a state of 
 tense exertion on the part both of auditor and per- 
 former. To hang upon one's own thoughts as an object 
 of conscious interest, to play with them, to watch and 
 pursue them through a maze of inversions, evolutions, 
 and harlequin changes, implies a condition of society 
 either like that in the monastic ages, forced to introvert 
 its energies from mere defect of books (whence arose the 
 scholastic metaphysics, admirable for its subtlety, but 
 famishing the mind, whilst it sharpened its edge in one 
 exclusive direction) ; or, if it implies no absolute starva- 
 tion of intellect, as in the case of the Roman rhetoric, 
 which arose upon a considerable (though not very 
 various) literature, it proclaims at least a quiescent state 
 of the public mind, unoccupied with daily novelties, and 
 at leisure from the agitations of eternal change. 
 
 Growing out of the same condition of society, there is 
 another cause at work which will for ever prevent the 
 
RHETORIC 169 
 
 resurrection of rhetoric, viz., the necessities of public 
 business, its vast extent, complexity, fulness of details, 
 and consequent vulgarity, as compared with that of the 
 ancients. The very same cause, by the way, furnishes 
 an answer to the question moved by Hume, in one of his 
 essays, with regard to the declension of eloquence in 
 our deliberative assemblies. Eloquence, or at least that 
 which is senatorial and forensic, has languished under 
 the same changes of society which have proved fatal to 
 rhetoric. The political economy of the ancient republics, 
 and their commerce, were simple and unelaborate ; the 
 system of their public services, both martial and civil, 
 was arranged on the most naked and manageable prin- 
 ciples ; for we must not confound the perplexity in our 
 modern explanations of these things, with a perplexity 
 in the things themselves. The foundation of these differ- 
 ences was in the differences of domestic life. Personal 
 wants being few, both from climate and from habit, and, 
 in the great majority of the citizens, limited almost to 
 the pure necessities of nature ; hence arose, for the mass 
 of the population, the possibility of surrendering them- 
 selves, much more than with us, either to the one para- 
 mount business of the state, war, or to a state of Indian 
 idleness. Rome, in particular, during the ages of her 
 growing luxury, must be regarded as a nation supported 
 by other nations ; by largesses, in effect ; that is to say, 
 by the plunder of conquest. Living, therefore, upon 
 foreign alms, or upon corn purchased by the product of 
 tribute or of spoils, a nation could readily dispense with 
 that expansive development of her internal resources, 
 upon which modern Europe has been forced by the more 
 equal distribution of power amongst the civilized world. 
 The changes, which have followed in the functions 
 of our popular assemblies, correspond to the great re- 
 volution here described. Suppose yourself an ancient 
 Athenian, at some customary display of Athenian ora- 
 tory, what will be the topics? Peace or war, vengeance 
 for public wrongs, or mercy to prostrate submission, 
 national honour and national gratitude, glory and 
 shame, and every aspect of open appeal to the primal 
 
170 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 sensibilities of man. On the other hand, enter an English 
 Parliament, having the most of a popular character in 
 its constitution and practice that is anywhere to be found 
 in the Christendom of this day, and the subject of debate 
 will probably be a road-bill, a bill for enabling a coal-gas 
 company to assume certain privileges against a com- 
 petitor in oil-gas, a bill for disfranchising a corrupt 
 borough, or perhaps some technical point of form in the 
 Exchequer Bills' bill. So much is the face of public 
 business vulgarized by details. The same spirit of 
 differences extends to forensic eloquence. Grecian and 
 Roman pleadings are occupied with questions of ele- 
 mentary justice, large and diffusive, apprehensible even 
 to the uninstructed, and connecting themselves at every 
 step with powerful and tempestuous feelings. In British 
 trials, on the contrary, the field is foreclosed against any 
 interest of so elevating a nature, because the rights and 
 wrongs of the case are almost inevitably absorbed to an 
 unlearned eye by the technicalities of the law, or by the 
 intricacy of the facts. 
 
 But this is not always the case ; doubtless not ; sub- 
 jects for eloquence, and therefore eloquence, will some- 
 times arise in our senate and our courts of justice. And 
 in one respect our British displays are more advan- 
 tageously circumstanced than the ancient, being more 
 conspicuously brought forward into effect by their con- 
 trast to the ordinary course of business. 
 
 Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, 
 Since seldom coming', in the long year set, 
 Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 
 Or captain jewels in the carcanet.' 
 
 But still the objection of Hume remains unimpeached 
 as to the fact that eloquence is a rarer growth of modern 
 than of ancient civil polity, even in those countries which 
 have the advantage of free institutions. Now why is 
 this? The letter of this objection is sustained, but sub- 
 stantially it is disarmed, so far as its purpose was to 
 argue any declension on the part of Christian nations, by 
 
 ' Shakspere, Sonnet 52. 
 
RHETORIC 171 
 
 this explanation of ours, which traces the impoverished 
 condition of civil eloquence to the complexity of public 
 business. 
 
 But eloquence in one form or other is immortal, and 
 will never perish so long as there are human hearts 
 moving- under the agitations of hope and fear, love and 
 passionate hatred. And, in particular to us of the mod- 
 ern world, as an endless source of indemnification for 
 what we have lost in the simplicity of our social systems, 
 we have received a new dowry of eloquence, and that of 
 the highest order, in the sanctities of our religion, a field 
 unknown to antiquity, for the pagan religions did not 
 produce much poetry, and of oratory none at all. 
 
 On the other hand, that cause, which, operating upon 
 eloquence, has but extinguished it under a single direc- 
 tion, to rhetoric has been unconditionally fatal. Elo- 
 quence is not banished from the public business of this 
 country as useless, but as difficult, and as not spon- 
 taneously arising from topics such as generally furnish 
 the staple of debate. But rhetoric, if attempted on a 
 formal scale, would be summarily exploded as pure fop- 
 pery and trifling with time. Falstaff, on the field of 
 battle, presenting his bottle of sack for a pistol, or 
 Polonius with his quibbles, could not appear a more un- 
 seasonable plaisanteur than a rhetorician alighting from 
 the clouds upon a public assembly in Great Britain met 
 for the despatch of business. 
 
 Under these malign aspects of the modern structure 
 of society, a structure to which the whole world will be 
 moulded as it becomes civilized, there can be no room 
 for any revival of rhetoric in public speaking ; and from 
 the same and other causes, acting upon the standard of 
 public taste, quite as little room in written composition. 
 In spite, however, of the tendencies to this consumma- 
 tion, which have been long ripening, it is a fact, that, 
 next after Rome, England is the country in which rhe- 
 toric prospered most, at a time when science was unborn 
 as a popular interest, and the commercial activities of 
 after-times were yet sleeping in their rudiments. This 
 was in the period from the latter end of the sixteenth to 
 
172 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 the middle of the seventeenth century ; and, though the 
 English rhetoric was less rigorously true to its own 
 ideal than the Roman, and often modulated into a higher 
 key of impassioned eloquence, yet unquestionably in 
 some of its qualities it remains a monument of the very 
 finest rhetorical powers. 
 
 Omitting Sir Philip Sidney, and omitting his friend, 
 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (in whose prose there are 
 some bursts of pathetic eloquence, as there is of rhetoric 
 in his verse, though too often harsh and cloudy), the first 
 very eminent rhetorician in the English literature is 
 Donne. Dr. Johnson inconsiderately classes him in 
 company with Cowley, etc., under the title of Meta- 
 physical Poets : metaphysical they were not ; Rhetorical 
 would have been a more accurate designation. In say- 
 ing that, however, we must remind our readers that we 
 Vevert to the original use of the word Rhetoric, as laying 
 the principal stress upon the management of the 
 thoughts, and only a secondary one upon the ornaments 
 of style. Few writers have shown a more extraordinary 
 compass of powers than Donne ; for he combined what 
 no other man has ever done — the last sublimation of 
 dialectical subtlety and address with the most impas- 
 sioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very 
 substance of his poem on the Metempsychosis, thoughts 
 and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy 
 sublimity of Ezekiel or .iEschylus, whilst a diamond 
 dust of rhetorical brilliances is strewed over the whole 
 of his occasional verses and his prose. No criticism was 
 ever more unhappy than that of Dr. Johnson's, which 
 denounces all this artificial display as so much perversion 
 of taste. There cannot be a falser thought than this; 
 for, upon that principle, a whole class of compositions 
 might be vicious by conforming to its own ideal. The 
 artifice and machinery of rhetoric furnishes in its degree 
 as legitimate a basis for intellectual pleasure as any 
 other; that the pleasure is of an inferior order, can no 
 more attaint the idea or model of the composition, than 
 it can impeach the excellence of an epigram that is not 
 a tragedy. Every species of composition is to be tried 
 
RHETORIC 173 
 
 by its own laws ; and if Dr. Johnson had urged explicitly 
 (what was evidently movingf in his thoughts), that a 
 metrical structure, by holding forth the promise of 
 poetry, defrauds the mind of its just expectations, he 
 would have said what is notoriously false. Metre is open 
 to any form of composition, provided it will aid the ex- 
 pression of the thoughts ; and the only sound objection 
 to it is, that it has not done so. Weak criticism, indeed, 
 is that which condemns a copy of verses under the ideal 
 of poetry, when the mere substitution of another name 
 and classification suffices to evade the sentence, and to 
 reinstate the composition in its rights as rhetoric. It 
 may be very true that the age of Donne gave too much 
 encouragement to his particular vein of composition; 
 that, however, argues no depravity of taste, but a taste 
 erring only in being too limited and exclusive. 
 
 The next writers of distinction, who came forward as 
 rhetoricians, were Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 
 and Milton in many of his prose works. They labour 
 under opposite defects: Burton is too quaint, fantastic, 
 and disjointed. Milton too slow, solemn, and continu- 
 ous. In the one we see the flutter of a parachute; in the 
 other the stately and voluminous gyrations of an ascend- 
 ing balloon. Agile movement, and a certain degree of 
 fancifulness, are indispensable to rhetoric. But Burton 
 is not so much fanciful as capricious ; his motion is not 
 the motion of freedom, but of lawlessness ; he does not 
 dance, but caper. Milton, on the other hand, polonaises 
 with a grand Castilian air, in paces too sequacious and 
 processional; even in his passages of merriment, and 
 when stung into a quicker motion by personal disdain 
 for an unworthy antagonist, his thoughts and his imagery 
 still appear to move to the music of the organ. 
 
 In some measure it is a consequence of these pecu- 
 liarities, and so far it is the more a duty to allow for 
 them, that the rhetoric of Milton though wanting in 
 animation is unusually superb in its colouring ; its very 
 monotony is derived from the sublime unity of the pre- 
 siding impulse; and hence, it sometimes ascends into 
 eloquence of the highest kind, and sometimes even into 
 
178 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 manding passion, intensity, and solemnity of his exalted 
 theme, which gave a final unity to the tumultuous motions 
 of his intellect. The only very obvious defects of Taylor 
 were in the mechanical part of his art, in the mere tech- 
 nique ; he writes like one who never revises, nor tries the 
 effect upon his ear of his periods as musical wholes ; and 
 in the syntax and connection of the parts seems to have 
 been habitually careless of slight blemishes. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor ' died in a few years after the Restora- 
 
 ^ In retracing the history of English rhetoric, it may strike the 
 reader that we have made some capital omissions. But in these he 
 will find we have been governed by sufficient reasons. Shakspere 
 is no doubt a rhetorician, majorum gentium ; but he is so much 
 more, that scarcely an instance is to be found of his rhetoric which 
 does not pass by fits into a higher element of eloquence or poetry. 
 The first and the last acts, for instance, of the Tmo Noble Kinsmen, 
 which, in point of composition, is perhaps the most superb work 
 in the language, and beyond all doubt from the loom of Shakspere, 
 would have been the most gorgeous rhetoric, had they not hap- 
 pened to be something far better. The supplications of the widowed 
 Queens to Theseus, the invocations of their tutelar divinities by 
 Palamon and Arcite, the death of Arcite, etc., are finished in a 
 more elaborate style of excellence than any other almost of Shak- 
 spere's most felicitous scenes. In their first intention, they were 
 perhaps merely rhetorical; but the furnace of composition has 
 transmuted their substance. Indeed, specimens of mere rhetoric 
 would be better sought in some of the other great dramatists, who 
 are under a less fatal necessity of turning everything they touch 
 into the pure gold of poetry. Two other writers, with great original 
 capacities for rhetoric, we have omitted in our list from separate 
 considerations: we mean Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Bacon. 
 The first will hardly have been missed by the general reader; for 
 his finest passages are dispersed through the body of his bulky 
 history, and are touched with a sadness too pathetic, and of too 
 personal a growth, to fulfil the conditions of a gay rhetoric as an 
 art rejoicing in its own energies. With regard to Lord Bacon, the 
 case is different. He had great advantages for rhetoric, being 
 figurative and sensuous (as great thinkers must always be), and 
 having no feelings too profound, or of a nature to disturb the 
 balance of a pleasurable activity; but yet, if we except a few 
 letters, and parts of a few speeches, he never comes forward as a 
 rhetorician. The reason is, that being always in quest of absolute 
 truth, he contemplates all subjects— not through the rhetorical 
 fancy, which is most excited by mere seeming resemblances, and 
 such as can only sustain themselves under a single phasis, but 
 through the philosophic fancy, or that which rests upon real 
 
KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH 179 
 
 tion. Sir Thomas Browne, though at that time nearly 
 thirty years removed from the first surreptitious edition 
 of his Religio Medici, lingered a little longer. But, when 
 both were gone, it may be truly affirmed that the great 
 oracles of rhetoric were finally silenced. South and 
 Barrow, indeed, were brilliant dialecticians in different 
 styles ; but after Tillotson with his meagre intellect, his 
 low key of feeling, and the smug and scanty draperies 
 of his style, had announced a new era, English divinity 
 ceased to be the racy vineyard that it had been in ages 
 of ferment and struggle. Like the soil of Sicily (vide Sir 
 H. Davy's Agricultural Chemistry), it was exhausted for 
 ever by the tilth and rank fertility of its golden youth. 
 
 ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH 
 
 [This extremely acute and sug'gestive fragment of criticism was 
 one of the " Notes from the Pocket-Book of a late Opium-Eater," 
 printed in the London Magazine in 1823, and reprinted thirty-seven 
 years later in the last volume of the Collective Edition. It is a mere 
 scrap; but it is like a pencil study by Michelangelo for an arm or 
 a leg. It reveals the master's hand. Most other men would have 
 made an elaborate essay out of this idea. De Quincey had intended 
 to do so — a project which went the way of so many other of his 
 unfiilfilled intentions. ] 
 
 From my boyish days I had always felt a great per- 
 plexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the 
 knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of 
 Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I 
 never could account. The effect was, that it reflected 
 back upon the murderer a peculiar awfulness and a 
 depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endea- 
 voured with my understanding to comprehend this, for 
 
 analogies. Another unfavourable circumstance, arising in fact out 
 of the plethoric fulness of Lord B. 's mind, is the short-hand style 
 of his composition, in which the connexions are seldom fully de- 
 veloped. It was the lively mot of a great modern poet, speaking 
 of Lord B.'s Essays, "that they are not plants, but seeds; not 
 oaks, but acorns." 
 
i82 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but 
 ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life ; an instinct 
 which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self- 
 preservation, is the same in kind (though different in 
 degree) amongst all living creatures : this instinct, there- 
 fore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades 
 the greatest of men to the level of ' ' the poor beetle that 
 we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most abject 
 and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little 
 suit the purposes of the poet. What then must he do? 
 He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sym- 
 pathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy 
 of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into 
 his feelings, and are made to understand them, — not a 
 sympathy of pity or approbation).' In the murdered 
 person, all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of 
 passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelm- 
 ing panic; the fear of instant death smites him " with its 
 petrific mace." But in the murderer, such a murderer as a 
 poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great 
 storm of passion — ^jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred 
 — which will create a hell within him ; and into this hell 
 we are to look. 
 
 In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enor- 
 mous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspere has 
 introduced two murderers : and, as usual in his hands, 
 they are remarkably discriminated : but, though in 
 Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, 
 the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught 
 chiefly by contagion from her, — yet, as both were finally 
 involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of 
 
 ' It seems almost ludicrous to guard and explain my use of a 
 word, in a situation where it would naturally explain itself. But it 
 has become necessary to do so, in consequence of the unscholar- 
 like use of the word sympathy, at present so general, by which, 
 instead of taking it in its proper sense, as the act of reproducing 
 in our minds the feelings of another, whether for hatred, indigna- 
 tion, love, pity, or approbation, it is made a mere synonym of the 
 ^florAp^ty, and hence, instead of saying " sympathy ■with another," 
 many writers adopt the monstrous barbarism of " sympathy y?»' 
 another, " 
 
KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH 183 
 
 necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to 
 be expressed ; and on its own account, as well as to make 
 it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending 
 nature of their victim, "the gracious Duncan," and 
 adequately to expound "the deep damnation of his 
 taking off," this was to be expressed with peculiar 
 energy. We were to be made to feel that the human 
 nature, i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread 
 through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly 
 withdrawn from man — was gone, vanished, extinct ; and 
 that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this 
 effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and 
 soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by 
 the expedient under consideration ; and it is to this that 
 I now solicit the reader's attention. If the reader has 
 ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting 
 fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affect- 
 ing moment in such a spectacle is thai in which a sigh 
 and a stirring announce the recommencement of sus- 
 pended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a 
 vast metropolis, on the day when some great national 
 idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and 
 chancing to walk near the course through which it 
 passed, has felt powerfully in the silence and desertion 
 of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, 
 the deep interest which at that moment was possessing 
 the heart of man — if all at once he should hear the death- 
 like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling 
 away from the scene, and making known that the tran- 
 sitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no 
 moment was his sense of the complete suspension and 
 pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, 
 as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the 
 goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action 
 in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made 
 apprehensible, by reaction. 
 
 Now apply this to the case in Macbeth. Here, as I 
 have said, the retiring of the human heart, and the 
 entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and 
 made sensible. Another world has stept in; and the 
 
i84 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 murderers are taken out of the region of human things, 
 human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured : 
 Lady Macbeth is "unsexed; " Macbeth has forgot that 
 he was born of woman; both are conformed to the 
 image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly 
 revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made 
 palpable? In order that a new world may step in, 
 this world must for a time disappear. The murderers, 
 and the murder must be insulated — cut off by an im- 
 measurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession 
 of human affairs — locked up and sequestered in some 
 deep recess ; we must be made sensible that the world of 
 ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid asleep — tranced 
 — racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihi- 
 lated ; relation to things without abolished ; and all must 
 pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension 
 of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is 
 done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the 
 world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the 
 clouds : the knocking at the gate is heard ; and it makes 
 known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the 
 human has made its reflux upon the fiendish ; the pulses 
 of life are beginning to beat again ; and the re-establish- 
 ment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first 
 makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis 
 that had suspended them. 
 
 O mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of other 
 men, simply and merely great works of art ; but are also 
 like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, 
 the stars and the flowers ; like frost and snow, rain and 
 dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied 
 with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the 
 perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or 
 too little, nothing useless or inert — but that, the farther 
 we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs 
 of design and self-supporting arrangement where the 
 careless eye had seen nothing but accident ! 
 
MILTON 185 
 
 MILTON 
 
 [It is much to be regretted that De Quincey never found time or 
 opportunity for a detailed examination of the life and writings of 
 Milton. There was no poet whom he had studied more deeply, 
 none whom he admired so much. To him Milton was indeed the 
 Prince of Poets, and he probably derived more satisfaction from 
 Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes than from Homer, Virgil, 
 Dante, and I daresay even Shakespeare. He admired Milton's 
 learning, his organ-like harmonies, his austerity, and his splendid 
 rhetoric ; and above all that impression of power and emotional 
 energy which he regarded as the supreme quality in literature. 
 There are many penetrating fragments of Miltonic criticism and 
 appreciation scattered through De Quincey's volumes. The pass- 
 age here given is from a short essay on Milton first pubHshed in 
 Blackwood iTv December 1839.] 
 
 Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a poet 
 amongst poets, but a power amongst powers ; and the 
 Paradise Lost is not a book amongst books, not a poem 
 amongst poems, but a central force amongst forces. 
 Let me explain. There is this great distinction amongst 
 books: some, though possibly the best in their class, 
 are still no more than books — not indispensable, not 
 incapable of supplementary representation by other 
 books. If they. had never been — if their place had con- 
 tinued for ages unfilled— ^not the less, upon a sufficient 
 excitement arising, there would always have been found 
 the ability, either directly to fill up the vacancy, or at 
 least to meet the same passion virtually, though by a 
 work differing in form. Thus, supposing Butler to have 
 died in youth, and the Hudibras to have been intercepted 
 by his premature death, still the ludicrous aspects of 
 the Parliamentary War, and its fighting saints, Avere 
 too striking to have perished. If not in a narrative 
 form, the case would have come forward in the drama. 
 Puritanical sanctity, in collision with the ordinary in- 
 terests of life, and with its militant propensities, offered 
 too striking a field for the Satiric Muse, in any case, to 
 have passed in total neglect. The impulse was too 
 strong for repression — it was a volcanic agency, that, by 
 
i86 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 some opening or other, must have worked a way for itself 
 to the upper air. Yet Butler was a most original poet, 
 and a creator within his own province. But, like many 
 another original mind, there is little doubt that he quelled 
 and repressed, by his own excellence, other minds of 
 the same cast. Mere despair of excelling him, so far as 
 not, after all, to seem imitators, drove back others who 
 would have pressed into that arena, if not already 
 brilliantly filled. Butler failing, there would have been 
 another Butler, either in the same, or in some analogous 
 form. 
 
 But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, 
 the case is far otherwise. If the man had failed, the 
 power would have failed. In that mode of power which 
 he wielded, the function was exhausted in the man — 
 the species was identified with the individual — the poetry 
 was incarnated in the poet. 
 
 Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act 
 upon man through his intellectual nature, the very 
 rarest is that which we moderns call the sublime. The 
 Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it were 
 that which they meant by to ai/ivov : for v\po£ was a com- 
 prehensive expression for all qualities which gave a 
 character of life or animation to the composition, such 
 even as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. In 
 the Roman poetry, and especially in Lucan, at times 
 also in Juvenal, there is an exhibition of a moral sublime, 
 perfectly distinct from anything known to the Greek 
 poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as 
 expressing itself through the principal leaders in the 
 Roman camps, or the trampling under foot of ordinary 
 superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned to 
 Labienus for passing the oracle of the Libyan Jupiter 
 unconsulted, are in a style to which there is nothing cor- 
 responding in the whole Grecian literature, nor would 
 they have been comprehensible to an Athenian. The 
 famous line — "Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque 
 moveris," and the brief review of such questions as 
 might be worthy of an oracular god, with the summary 
 declaration, that every one of those points we know 
 
MILTON 187 
 
 already by the light of nature, and could not know them 
 better though Jupiter Ammon himself were to impress 
 them on our attention — 
 
 Scimus, et haec nobis non altius inseret Aramon : 
 We know it, and no Ammon will ever sink it deeper into our hearts ; 
 
 all this is truly Roman in its sublimity ; and so exclusively 
 Roman, that there, and not in poets like the Augustan, 
 expressly modelling their poems on Grecian types, ought 
 the Roman mind to be studied. 
 
 On the other hand, for that species of the sublime 
 which does not rest purely and merely on moral energies, 
 but on a synthesis between man and nature — for what 
 may properly be called the Ethico-physical Sublime — 
 there is but one great model surviving in the Greek 
 poetry; viz., the gigantic drama of the Prometheus 
 crucified on Mount Elborus. And this drama differs so 
 much from everything else, even in the poetry of 
 ^schylus, as the mythus itself differs so much from all 
 the rest of the Grecian Mythology (belonging apparently 
 to an age and a people more gloomy, austere, and 
 nearer to the incunabula mundi, than those which bred the 
 gay and sunny superstitions of Greece), that much 
 curiosity and speculation have naturally gathered round 
 the subject of late years. Laying this one insulated case 
 apart, and considering that the Hebrew poetry of Isaiah 
 and Ezekiel, as having the benefit of inspiration, does not 
 lie within the just limits of competition, we may affirm 
 that there is no human composition which can be chal- 
 lenged as constitutionally sublime — sublime equally by 
 its conception and by its execution, or as uniformly 
 sublime from first to last, excepting the Paradise Lost. 
 In Milton only, first and last, is the power of the sublime 
 revealed. In Milton only does this great agency blaze 
 and glow as a furnace kept up to a white heat — without 
 suspicion of collapse. 
 
i88 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF POETRY 
 
 [In the passages g-iven below from an essay on Pope, De Quincey 
 exhibits his faculty for laying down broad critical principles and 
 rules. It is in these generalizations, buttressed on allusions and 
 illustrations, rather than in the appreciation of particular works 
 and authors (where his taste was apt to be distorted by prejudices 
 or personal prepossessions), that his powers as a critic are seen to 
 the best advantage. He had thought out his aesthetic philosophy, 
 and his conclusions are always worth attention, even though in 
 the application his judgement sometimes misled him. For Pope 
 he had, as we might expect, a very limited share of the enthusiasm 
 which was exhibited by Byron; but he did justice to "the most 
 brilliant of all wits who have at any period applied themselves to 
 the poetic treatment of human manners." This sentence is from 
 the article on Pope which De Quincey wrote for the seventh edition 
 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a careful and rather elaborate 
 study. The excursus on didactic poetry occurs in a paper (re- 
 printed by De Quincey in vol. ix of the Collective Edition) con- 
 tributed to the North British Review in 1848.] 
 
 If the question were asked, What ought to have been 
 the best among Pope's poems? most people would 
 answer, the Essay on Man. If the question were asked, 
 What is the worst? all people of judgment would say, 
 the Essay on Man. Whilst yet in its rudiments, this 
 poem claimed the first place by the promise of its sub- 
 ject ; when finished, by the utter failure of its execution, 
 it fell into the last. The case possesses a triple interest 
 — first, as illustrating the character of Pope modified by 
 his situation ; secondly, as illustrating the true nature 
 of that " didactic " poetry to which this particular poem 
 is usually referred ; thirdly, as illustrating the anomalous 
 condition to which a poem so grand in its ambition has 
 been reduced by the double disturbance of its proper 
 movement; one disturbance through the position of 
 Pope, another through his total misconception of didactic 
 poetry. First, as regards Pope's position, it may seem 
 odd — but it is not so — that a man's social position should 
 overrule his intellect. The scriptural denunciation of 
 riches, as a snare to any man that is striving to rise 
 above worldly views, applies not at all less to the intel- 
 
THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF POETRY 189 
 
 lect, and to any man seeking to ascend by some aerial 
 arch of flight above ordinary intellectual efforts. Riches 
 are fatal to those continuities of energy without which 
 there is no success of that magnitude. Pope had ;^8oo 
 a year. That seems not so much. No, certainly not, 
 supposing a wife and six children : but by accident Pope 
 had no wife and no children. He was luxuriously at his 
 ease ; and this accident of his position in life fell in with 
 a constitutional infirmity that predisposed him to indo- 
 lence. Even his religious faith, by shutting him out 
 from those public employments which else his great 
 friends would have been too happy to obtain for him, 
 aided his idleness, or sometimes invested it with a false 
 character of conscientious self-denial. He cherished his 
 religion too certainly as a plea for idleness. The result 
 of all this was, that in his habits of thinking and of 
 study (if study we can call a style of reading so desultory 
 as his). Pope became a pure dilettante; in his intellectual 
 eclecticism he was a mere epicure, toying with the 
 delicacies and varieties of literature; revelling in the 
 first bloom of moral speculations, but sated immediately ; 
 fastidiously retreating from all that threatened labour, or 
 that exactedcontinuous attention ; fathoming, throughout 
 all his vagrancies amongst books, no foundation; filling 
 up no chasms; and with all his fertility of thought 
 expanding no germs of new life. 
 
 This career of luxurious indolence was the result of 
 early luck which made it possible, and of bodily con- 
 stitution which made it tempting. And when we re- 
 member his youthful introduction to the highest circles 
 in the metropolis, where he never lost his footing, we 
 cannot wonder that, without any sufficient motive for 
 resistance, he should have sunk passively under his 
 constitutional propensities, and should have fluttered 
 amongst the flower-beds of literature or philosophy far 
 more in the character of a libertine butterfly for casual 
 enjoyment, than of a hard-working bee pursuing a pre- 
 meditated purpose. 
 
 Such a character, strengthened by such a situation, 
 would at any rate have disqualified Pope for composing 
 
igo THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 a work severely philosophic, or where philosophy did 
 more than throw a coloured light of pensiveness upon 
 some sentimental subject. If it were necessary that the 
 philosophy should enter substantially into the very 
 texture of the poem, furnishing its interest, and pre- 
 scribing its movement, in that case Pope's combining 
 and theorizing faculty would have shrunk as from the 
 labour of building a pyramid. And wo to him where it 
 did not, as really happened in the case of the Essay on 
 Man. For his faculty of execution was under an abso- 
 lute necessity of shrinking in horror from the enormous 
 details of such an enterprise to which so rashly he had 
 pledged himself. He was sure to find himself, as find 
 himself he did, landed in the most dreadful embarrass- 
 ment upon reviewing his own work. A work which, 
 when finished, was not even begun; whose arches 
 wanted their key-stones ; whose parts had no coherency ; 
 and whose pillars, in the very moment of being thrown 
 open to public view, were already crumbling into ruins. 
 This utter prostration of Pope in a work so ambitious 
 as an Essay on Man — a prostration predetermined from 
 the first by the personal circumstances which we have 
 noticed — was rendered still more irresistible, in the 
 second place, by the general misconception in which 
 Pope shared as to the very meaning of "didactic" 
 poetry. Upon which point we pause to make an exposi- 
 tion of our own views. 
 
 What is didactic poetry? What does "didactic" 
 mean when applied as a distinguishing epithet to such 
 an idea as a poem? The predicate destroys the subject : 
 it is a case of what logicians call contradictio in adjecto — 
 the unsaying by means of an attribute the very thing 
 which is the subject of that attribute you have just 
 affirmed. No poetry can have the function of teaching. 
 It is impossible that a variety of species should contradict 
 the very purpose which contradistinguishes its gentis. 
 The several species differ partially ; but not by the whole 
 idea which differentiates their class. Poetry, or any one 
 of the fine arts (all of which alike speak through the 
 genial nature of man and his excited sensibilities), can 
 
THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF POETRY 191 
 
 teach only as nature teaches, as forests teach, as the sea 
 teaches, as infancy teaches, viz., by deep impulse, by 
 hieroglyphic suggestion. Their teaching is not direct 
 or explicit, but lurking, implicit, masked in deep in- 
 carnations. To teach formally and professedly, is to 
 abandon the very differential character and principle 
 of poetry. If poetry could condescend to teach any- 
 thing, it would be truths moral or religious. But even 
 these it can utter only through symbols and actions. 
 The great moral, for instance, the last result of the 
 Paradise Lost, is once formally announced, viz., to justify 
 the ways of God to man ; but it teaches itself only by 
 diffusing its lesson through the entire poem in the total 
 succession of events and purposes : and even this suc- 
 cession teaches it only when the whole is gathered into 
 unity by a reflex act of meditation ; just as the pulsation 
 of the physical heart can exist only when all the parts in 
 an animal system are locked into one organization. 
 
 To address the insulated understanding is to lay aside 
 the Prospero's robe of poetry. The objection, therefore, 
 to didactic poetry, as vulgarly understood, would be 
 fatal even if there were none but this logical objection 
 derived from its definition. To be in self-contradiction 
 is, for any idea whatever, sufficiently to destroy itself. 
 But it betrays a more obvious and practical contradiction 
 when a little searched. If the true purpose of a man's 
 writing a didactic poem were to teach, by what sug- 
 gestion of idiocy should he choose to begin by putting 
 on fetters? wherefore should the simple man volunteer 
 to handcuff and manacle himself, were it only by the 
 encumbrances of metre, and perhaps of rhyme? But 
 these he will find the very least of his encumbrances. A 
 far greater exists in the sheer necessity of omitting in 
 any poem a vast variety of details, and even capital 
 sections of the subject, unless they will bend to purposes 
 of ornament. Now this collision between two purposes, 
 the purpose of use in mere teaching, and the purpose of 
 poetic delight, shows, by the uniformity of its solution, 
 which of the two is the true purpose, and which the 
 merely ostensible purpose. Had the true purpose been 
 
192 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 instruction, the moment that this was found incom- 
 patible with a poetic treatment, as soon as it was seen 
 that the sound education of the reader-pupil could not 
 make way without loitering to gather poetic flowers, the 
 stern cry of " duty " would oblige the poet to remember 
 that he had dedicated himself to a didactic mission, and 
 that he differed from other poets, as a monk from other 
 men, by his vows of self-surrender to harsh ascetic 
 functions. But, on the contrary, in the very teeth 
 of this rule, wherever such a collision does really take 
 place, and one or other of the supposed objects must 
 give way, it is always the vulgar object of teaching (the 
 pedagogue's object) which goes to the rear, whilst the 
 higher object of poetic emotion moves on triumphantly. 
 In reality not one didactic poet has ever yet attempted 
 to use any parts or processes of the particular art which 
 he made his theme, unless in so far as they seemed 
 susceptible of poetic treatment, and only because they 
 seemed so. Look at the poem of Cyder, by Philips, of 
 the Fleece by Dyer, or (which is a still weightier example) 
 at the Georgics of Virgil, — does any of these poets show 
 the least anxiety for the correctness of your principles, 
 or the delicacy of your manipulations in the worshipful 
 arts they affect to teach? No; but they pursue these 
 arts through every stage that offers any attractions of 
 beauty. And in the very teeth of all anxiety for teaching, 
 if there existed traditionally any very absurd way of 
 doing a thing which happened to be eminently pic- 
 turesque, and if, opposed to this, there were some 
 improved mode that had recommended itself to poetic 
 hatred by being dirty and ugly, the poet (if a good one) 
 would pretend never to have heard of this disagreeable 
 improvement. Or if obliged, by some rival poet, not 
 absolutely to ignore it, he would allow that such a thing 
 could be done, but hint that it was hateful to the Muses 
 or Graces, and very likely to breed a pestilence. 
 
 This subordination of the properly didactic function 
 to the poetic, which leaves the old essential distinction 
 of poetry viz. , its sympathy with the genial motions of 
 man's heart, to override all accidents of special variation, 
 
THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF POETRY 193 
 
 and shows that the essence of poetry never can be set 
 aside by its casual modifications, — will be compromised 
 by some loose thinkers, under the idea that in didactic 
 poetry the element of instruction is, in fact, one element, 
 though subordinate and secondary. Not at all. What 
 we are denying is, that the element of instruction enters 
 at all into didactic poetry. The subject of the Georgics, 
 for instance, is Rural Economy as practised by Italian 
 farmers : but Virgil not only omits altogether innumer- 
 able points of instruction insisted on as articles of 
 religious necessity by Varro, Cato, Columella, etc., but, 
 even as to those instructions which he does communicate, 
 he is careless whether they are made technically intel- 
 ligible or not. He takes very little pains to keep you 
 from capital mistakes in practising his instructions : but 
 he takes good care that you shall not miss any strong 
 impression for the eye or the heart to which the rural 
 process, or rural scene, may naturally lead. He pretends 
 to give you a lecture on farming, in order to have an 
 excuse for carrying you all round the beautiful farm. 
 He pretends to show you a good plan for a farm-house, 
 as the readiest means of veiling his impertinence in 
 showing you the farmer's wife and her rosy children. 
 It is an excellent plea for getting a peep at the bonny 
 milk-maids to propose an inspection of a model dairy. 
 You pass through the poultry-yard, under whatever 
 pretence, in reality to see the peacock and his harem. 
 And so on to the very end, the pretended instruction is 
 but in secret the connecting tie which holds together the 
 laughing flowers going off from it to the right and to 
 the left ; whilst if ever at intervals this prosy thread of 
 pure didactics is brought forward more obtrusively, it is 
 so by way of foil, to make more effective upon the eye 
 the prodigality of the floral magnificence. 
 
 We affirm, therefore, that the didactic poet is so far 
 from seeking even a secondary or remote object in the 
 particular points of information which he may happen to 
 communicate, that much rather he would prefer the 
 having communicated none at all. We will explain our- 
 selves by means of a little illustration from Pope, which 
 
 o 
 
194 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 will at the same time furnish us with a miniature type of 
 what we ourselves mean by a didactic poem, both in 
 reference to what it is and to what it is not. In the 
 Rape of the Lock there is a game at cards played, and 
 played with a brilliancy of effect and felicity of selection, 
 applied to the circumstances, which make it a sort of 
 gem within a gem. This game was not in the first 
 edition of the poem, but was an after-thought of Pope's, 
 laboured therefore with more than usual care. We 
 regret that ombre, the game described, is no longer 
 played, so that the entire skill with which the mimic 
 battle is fought cannot be so fully appreciated as in 
 Pope's days. The strategics have partly perished, which 
 really Pope ought not to complain of, since he suffers 
 only as Hannibal, Marius, Sertorius, suffered before 
 him. Enough, however, survives of what will tell its 
 own story. For what is it, let us ask, that a poet has to 
 do in such a case, supposing that he were disposed to 
 weave a didactic poem out of a pack of cards, as Vida 
 has out of the chess-board? In describing any particular 
 game he does not seek to teach you that game — he 
 postulates it as already known to you — but he relies 
 upon separate resources, ist. He will revive in the 
 reader's eye, for picturesque effect, the well-known per- 
 sonal distinctions of the several kings, knaves, etc., 
 their appearances and their powers. 2dly, He will 
 choose some game in which he may display a happy 
 selection applied to the chances and turns, of fortune, to 
 the manoeuvres, to the situations of doubt, of brightening 
 expectation, of sudden danger, of critical deliverance, or 
 of final defeat. The interest of a war will be rehearsed — 
 lis est de paupere regno — that is true ; but the depth of 
 the agitation on such occasions, whether at chess, at 
 draughts, or at cards, is not measured of necessity by 
 the grandeur of the stake ; he selects, in short, whatever 
 fascinates the eye or agitates the heart by mimicry of 
 life ; but so far from teaching, he presupposes the reader 
 already taught, in order that he may go along with the 
 movement of the descriptions. 
 
 Now, in treating a subject so vast as that which Pope 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 195 
 
 chose for his Essay, viz., man, this eclecticism ceases to 
 be possible. Every part depends upon every other part: 
 in such a nexus of truths, to insulate is to annihilate. 
 Severed from each other the parts lose their support, 
 their coherence, their very meaning ; you have no liberty 
 to reject or choose. Besides, in treating the ordinary 
 themes proper for what is called didactic poetry — say, 
 for instance, that it were the art of rearing silk-worms 
 or bees — or suppose it to be horticulture, landscape- 
 gardening, hunting, or hawking, rarely does there occur 
 anything polemic ; or if a slight controversy does arise, 
 it is easily hushed asleep — it is stated in a line, it is 
 answered in a couplet. But in the themes of Lucretius 
 and Pope everything is polemic — you move only through 
 dispute, you prosper only by argument and never-ending 
 controversy. There is not positively one capital proposi- 
 tion or doctrine about man, about his origin, his nature, 
 his relations to God, or his prospects, but must be 
 fought for with energy, watched at every turn with 
 vigilance, and followed into endless mazes, not under 
 the choice of the writer, but under the inexorable 
 dictation of the argument. 
 
 THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 
 
 [In his autobiographical sketches De Quincey has himself told 
 the story of that gradual estrangement from Wordsworth which 
 supervened upon a long period of ardent and even extravagant 
 attachment; and in various other passages, written during the 
 poet's lifetime, his personality and his family affairs were discussed 
 with a freedom which Wordsworth deeply and naturally resented. 
 De Quincey's utter lack of reticence and good taste in such mat- 
 ters is strikingly displayed in these amusing and occasionally 
 illuminating, but on the whole inexcusable, revelations. Words- 
 worth's austere frigidity and his patronizing contempt for his 
 effusive little admirer had deeply wounded a sensitive soul hungry 
 for responsive affiection; and De Quincey took a. rather ignoble 
 revenge, all the less creditable since it was combined with 
 a distinct recognition that tattle about the private lives of the 
 Lakers made good magazine copy. He had to admit, towards the 
 close of his life, that his friendships with his greater contempor- 
 
igG THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 aries ha,d ended unhappily. " Put not your trust in the intellectual 
 princes of your age," he sadly advised ; "form no connections too 
 close with those who live only in the atmosphere of admiration 
 and praise." But his personal feeling towards Wordsworth did 
 not affect his estimate of the poet's work; and he made some 
 amends for earlier offences by publishing, while Wordsworth still 
 lived, a discriminating but appreciative and justly eulogistic cri- 
 ticism of the whole body of his verse. The essay first appeared in 
 Taits Magazine for September 1845, and was reprinted in vol. vi 
 of the Collective Edition after the Laureate's death, with a severe 
 Note on the "Sybaritish indolence" which caused Wordsworth to 
 leave his doctrine of Poetic Diction in a fragmentary and incom- 
 plete condition.] 
 
 Amongst all works that have illustrated our own age, 
 none can more deserve an earnest notice than those of 
 the Laureate ; and on some grounds, peculiar to them- 
 selves, none so much. Their merit in fact is not only 
 supreme, but unique ; not only supreme in their general 
 class, but unique as in a class of their own. And there 
 is a challenge of a separate nature to the curiosity of the 
 readers, in the remarkable contrast between the first 
 stage of Wordsworth's acceptation with the public, and 
 that which he enjoys at present. 
 
 One original obstacle to the favourable impression of 
 the Wordsworthian poetry, and an obstacle purely self- 
 created, was his theory of poeticdiction. The diction itself, 
 without the theory, was of less consequence ; for the mass 
 of readers would have been too blind or too careless to 
 notice it. But the preface to the second edition of his 
 Poems (2 vols. 1799- 1800) compelled all readers to notice 
 it. Nothing more injudicious was ever done by man. An 
 unpopular truth would, at any rate, have been a bad 
 inauguration for what, on other accounts, the author 
 had announced as "an experiment." His poetry was 
 already, and confessedly, an experiment as regarded the 
 quality of the subjects selected, and as regarded the 
 mode of treating them. That was surely trial enough 
 for the reader's untrained sensibilities, without the un- 
 popular novelty besides as to the quality of the diction. 
 But, in the meantime, this novelty, besides being un- 
 popular, was also in part false; it was true, and it was 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 197 
 
 not true. And it was not true in a double way. Stating 
 broadly, and allowing it to be taken for his meaning, 
 that the diction of ordinary life (in his own words, ' ' the 
 very language of men ") was the proper diction for 
 poetry, the writer meant no such thing ; for only a part 
 of this diction, according to his own subsequent restric- 
 tion, was available for such a use. And, secondly, as 
 his own subsequent practice showed, even this part was 
 available only for peculiar classes of poetry. In his own 
 exquisite Laodamia, in his Sonnets, in his Excursion, few 
 are his obligations to the idiomatic language of life, as 
 distinguished from that of books, or of prescriptive 
 usage. 
 
 Coleridge remarked, justly, that the Excursion bristles 
 beyond most poems with what are called "dictionary" 
 words; that is, polysyllabic words of Latin or Greek 
 origin. And so it must ever be, in meditative poetry 
 upon solemn philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas 
 needs a corresponding gamut of expressions ; the scale 
 of the thinking, which ranges through every key, exacts, 
 for the artist, an unlimited command over the entire 
 scale of the instrument which he employs. Never, in 
 fact, was there a more erroneous direction — one falser 
 in its grounds, or more ruinous in its tendency — than 
 that given by a modern rector ' of the Glasgow University 
 to the students — viz., that they should cultivate the 
 Saxon part of our language rather than the Latin part. 
 Nonsense. Both are indispensable ; and, speaking gener- 
 ally, without stopping to distinguish as to subjects, both 
 are equally indispensable. Pathos, in situations which 
 are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections, 
 naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of 
 every kind, which (to merit the name of lyrical) must be 
 in the state of flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, 
 also requires the Saxon element of our language. And 
 why? Because the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the 
 basis, and not the superstructure ; consequently it com- 
 prehends all the ideas which are natural to the heart 
 
 ' '■^Modern rector:" — viz.. Lord Brougham. 
 
200 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 " One would suppose that in Athens no such thing had 
 been known as sorrow and weeping." Or Wordsworth 
 himself might say reproachfully to some of Mr. Hazlitt's 
 more favoured poets: "Judging by your themes, a man 
 must believe that there is no such thing on our planet as 
 fighting and kicking." Wordsworth has written many 
 memorable poems (for instance, On the Tyrolean and 
 the Spanish Insurrections, On the Retreat from Moscow, 
 On the Feast of Brougham Castle'), all sympathizing 
 powerfully with the martial spirit. Other poets, favour- 
 ites of Mr. Hazlitt, have never struck a solitary note 
 from this Tyrtsean lyre; and who blames them? Surely, 
 if every man breathing finds his powers limited, every 
 man would do well to respect this silent admonition of 
 nature, by not travelling out of his appointed walk, 
 through any coxcombry of sporting a spurious versatility. 
 And in this view, what Mr. Hazlitt made the reproach 
 of the poet, is amongst the first of his praises. But there 
 is another reason why Wordsworth could not meddle 
 with festal raptures like the glory of a wedding-day. 
 These raptures are not only too brief, but (which is 
 worse) they tend downwards : even for as long as they 
 last, they do not move upon an ascending scale. And 
 even that is not their worst fault : they do not diffuse or 
 communicate themselves : the wretches chiefly interested 
 in a marriage are so selfish, that they keep all the 
 rapture to themselves. Mere joy, that does not linger 
 and reproduce itself in reverberations and endless mirrors, 
 is not fitted for poetry. What would the sun be itself, if 
 it were a mere blank orb of fire that did not multiply its 
 splendours through millions of rays refracted and re- 
 flected ; or if its glory were not endlessly caught, splin- 
 tered, and thrown back by atmospheric repercussions? 
 
 There is, besides, a still subtler reason (and one that 
 ought not to have escaped the acuteness of Mr. Hazlitt) 
 why the muse of Wordsworth could not glorify a wed- 
 ding festival. Poems no longer than a sonnet he might 
 derive from such an impulse : and one such poem of his 
 there really is. But whosoever looks searchingly into the 
 characteristic genius of Wordsworth, will see that he 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 201 
 
 does not willingly deal with a passion in its direct aspect, 
 or presenting an unmodified contour, but in forms more 
 complex and oblique, and when passing under the shadow 
 of some secondary passion. Joy, for instance, that wells 
 up from constitutional sources, joy that is ebullient from 
 youth to age, and cannot cease to sparkle, he yet ex- 
 hibits in the person of Matthew,' the village school- 
 master, as touched and overgloomed by memories of 
 sorrow. In the poem of We are Seven, which brings into 
 day for the first time a profound fact in the abysses of 
 human nature — viz., that the mind of an infant cannot 
 admit the idea of death, cannot comprehend it, any more 
 than the fountain of light can comprehend the aboriginal 
 darkness (a truth on which Mr. Ferrier has since com- 
 mented beautifully in his Philosophy of Consciousness) — 
 the little mountaineer, who furnishes the text for this 
 lovely strain, she whose fulness of life could not brook 
 the gloomy faith in a grave, is yet (for the eifect upon 
 the reader) brought into connection with the reflex 
 shadows of the grave: and if she herself has not, the 
 reader has, and through this very child, the gloom of 
 that contemplation obliquely irradiated, as raised in 
 relief upon his imagination, even by her. That same 
 infant, which subjectively could not tolerate death, being 
 by the reader contemplated objectively, flashes upon us 
 the tenderest images of death. Death and its sunny 
 antipole are forced into connection. I remember, again, 
 to have heard a man complain, that in a little poem of 
 Wordsworth's, having for its very subject the universal 
 diff'usion (and the gratuitous diffusion) of joy — 
 
 Pleasure is spread through the earth. 
 In stray gifts to be claim'd by whoever shall find, 
 
 a picture occurs which overpowered him with melan- 
 choly : it was this — 
 
 In sight of the spires 
 All alive with the fires 
 
 ' See the exquisite poems, so little understood by the common- 
 place reader, of the Two April Mornings, and the Fountain. 
 
202 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Of the sun going down to his rest, 
 In the broad open eye of the solitary sky 
 They dance — there are three, as jocund as free. 
 While they dance on the calm river's breast. ' 
 
 Undeniably there is (and without ground for complaint 
 there is) even here, where the spirit of gaiety is pro- 
 fessedly invoked, an oblique though evanescent image 
 flashed upon us of a sadness that lies deep behind the 
 laughing figures, and of a solitude that is the real pos- 
 sessor in fee of all things, but is waiting an hour or so 
 for the dispossession of the dancing men and maidens 
 who for that transitory hour are the true, but, alas ! the 
 fugitive tenants. 
 
 An inverse case, as regards the three just cited, is 
 found in the poem of Hart-leap Well, over which the 
 mysterious spirit of the noonday Pan seems to brood. 
 Out of suffering there is evoked the image of peace. Out 
 of the cruel leap, and the agonizing race through thir- 
 teen hours — out of the anguish in the perishing' brute, 
 and the headlong courage of his final despair, 
 
 Not unobserved by sympathy divine — 
 
 out of the ruined lodge and the forgotten mansion, 
 bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses 
 that are dust — the poet calls up a vision of palingenesis 
 (or restorative resurrection); he interposes his solemn 
 images of sufi"ering, of decay, and ruin, only as a vision- 
 ary haze through which gleams transpire of a trembling 
 dawn far off", but surely even now on the road. 
 
 The pleasure-house is dust : behind, before. 
 This is no common waste, no common gloom ; 
 
 ' Coleridge had a grievous infirmity of mind as regarded pain. 
 He could not contemplate the shadows of fear, of sorrow, of suffer- 
 ing, with any steadiness of gaze. He was, in relation to that sub- 
 ject, what in Lancashire they call nesh — i.e., soft, or effeminate. 
 This frailty claimed indulgence, had he not erected it at times into 
 a ground of superiority. Accordingly, I remember that he also 
 complained of this passage in Wordsworth, and on the same 
 ground, as being too overpoweringly depressing in the fourth line, 
 when modified by the other five. 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 203 
 
 But Nature in due course of time once more 
 Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom. 
 
 She leaves these objects to a slow decay, 
 
 That what we are, and have been, may be known ; 
 
 But, at the coming of the milder day, 
 
 These monuments shall all be overgrown. 
 
 This influx of the joyous into the sad, and of the sad 
 into the joyous — this reciprocal entanglement of dark- 
 ness in light, and of light in darkness — offers a subject 
 too occult for popular criticism ; but merely to have sug- 
 gested it, may be sufficient to account for Wordsworth 
 not having chosen a theme of pure garish sunshine, such 
 as the hurry of a wedding-day, so long as others, more 
 picturesque or more plastic to a subtle purpose of crea- 
 tion, were to be had. 
 
 tF V "ff V "ff TT 
 
 It is astonishing how large a harvest of new truths 
 would be reaped, simply through the accident of a man's 
 feeling, or being made to feel, more deeply than other 
 men. He sees the same objects, neither more nor fewer, 
 but he sees them engraved in lines far stronger and more 
 determinate; and the difference in the strength makes 
 the whole difference between consciousness and sub- 
 consciousness. And in questions of the mere under- 
 standing, we see the same fact illustrated: The author 
 who wins notice the most, is not he that perplexes men 
 by truths drawn from fountains of absolute novelty — 
 truths as yet unsunned, and from that cause obscure; 
 but he that awakens into illuminated consciousness 
 ancient lineaments of truth long slumbering in the 
 mind, although too faint to have extorted attentic«i. 
 Wordsworth has brought many a truth into life both for 
 the eye and for the understanding, which previously had 
 slumbered indistinctly for all men. 
 
 For instance, as respects the eye, who does not ac- 
 knowledge instantaneously the magical strength of truth 
 in his saying of a cataract seen from a station two miles 
 off, that it was "frozen by distance?" In all nature, 
 there is not an object so essentially at war with the 
 
204 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 stiffening of frost, as the headlong and desperate life of 
 a cataract ; and yet notoriously the effect of distance is 
 to lock up this frenzy of motion into the most petrific 
 column of stillness. This effect is perceived at once 
 when pointed out; but how few are the eyes that ever 
 would have perceived it for themselves ! Twilight, again 
 — who before Wordsworth ever distinctly noticed its 
 abstracting power? — that power of removing, softening, 
 harmonizing, by which a mode of obscurity executes for 
 the eye the same mysterious office which the mind so 
 often, within its own shadowy realms, executes for itself. 
 In the dim interspace between day and night, all dis- 
 appears from our earthly scenery, as if touched by an 
 enchanter's rod, which is either mean or inharmonious 
 or unquiet, or expressive of temporary things. Leaning 
 against a column of rock, looking down upon a lake or 
 river, and at intervals carrying your eyes forward through 
 a vista of mountains, you become aware that your sight 
 rests upon the very same spectacle, unaltered in a single 
 feature, which once at the same hour was beheld by the 
 legionary Roman from his embattled camp, or by the 
 roving Briton in his "wolf-skin vest," lying down to 
 sleep, and looking 
 
 Through some leafy bower, 
 Before his eyes were closed. 
 
 How magnificent is the summary or abstraction of the 
 elementary features in such a scene, as executed by the 
 poet himself, in illustration of this abstraction daily 
 executed by nature, through her handmaid Twilight! 
 Listen, reader, to the closing strain, solemn as twilight 
 is solemn, and grand as the spectacle which it de- 
 scribes : — 
 
 By him \i.e., the roving Briton] was seen, 
 The self-same vision which we now behold, 
 At thy meek bidding, shadowy Power, brought forth, 
 These mighty barriers, and the gulf between ; 
 The floods, the stars — a spectacle as old 
 As the beginning of the heavens and earth. 
 
 Another great field there is amongst the pomps of 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 205 
 
 nature, which, if Wordsworth did not first notice, he 
 certainly has noticed most circumstantially. I speak of 
 cloud-scenery, or those pageants of sky-built archi- 
 tecture, which sometimes in summer, at noonday, and 
 in all seasons about sunset, arrest or appal the medita- 
 tive; "perplexing monarchs" with the spectacle of 
 armies manoeuvring, or deepening the solemnity of even- 
 ing by towering edifices, that mimic — but which also in 
 mimicking mock — the transitory grandeurs of man. It 
 is singular that these gorgeous phenomena, not less 
 than those of the Aurora Borealis, have been so little 
 noticed by poets. The Aurora was naturally neglected 
 by the southern poets of Greece and Rome, as not much 
 seen in their latitudes.' But the cloud-architecture of the 
 daylight belongs alike to north and south. Accordingly, 
 I remember one notice of it in Hesiod, a case where the 
 clouds exhibited 
 
 The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest. 
 
 Another there is, a thousand years later, in Lucan: 
 amongst the portents which that poet notices as pre- 
 figuring the dreadful convulsions destined to shake the 
 earth at Pharsalia, I remember some fiery coruscation 
 of arms in the heavens; but, so far as I recollect, the 
 appearances might have belonged equally to the work- 
 manship of the clouds or the Aurora. Up and down the 
 next eight hundred years, are scattered evanescent allu- 
 sions to these vapoury appearances ; in Hamlet and else- 
 
 ' But then, says the reader, why was it not proportionably the 
 more noticed by poets of the north? Certainly that question is 
 fair. And the answer, it is scarcely possible to doubt, is this : — 
 That until the rise of Natural Philosophy, in Charles II's reign, 
 there was no name for the appearance; on which account, some 
 writers have been absurd enough to believe that the Aurora did 
 not exist, noticeably, until about 1690. Shakspere, in his journeys 
 down to Stratford (always performed on horseback), must often 
 have been belated: he must sometimes have seen, he could not 
 but have admired, the fiery skirmishing of the Aurora. And yet, 
 for want of a word to fix and identify the gorgeous phenomenon, 
 how could he introduce it as an image, or even as the subject of an 
 allusion in his writings? 
 
2o6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 where occur gleams of such allusions ; but I remember 
 no distinct sketch of such an appearance before that in 
 the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspere, beginning, 
 
 Sometimes we see a cloud that 's dragonish. 
 
 Subsequently to Shakspere, these notices, as of all 
 phenomena whatsoever that demanded a familiarity with 
 nature in the spirit of love, became rarer and rarer. At 
 length, as the eighteenth century was winding up its 
 accounts, forth stepped William Wordsworth, of whom, 
 as a reader of all pages in nature, it may be said that, if 
 we except Dampier, the admirable buccaneer, the gentle 
 flibustier, and some few professional naturalists, he first 
 and he last looked at natural objects with the eye that 
 neither will be dazzled from without nor cheated by pre- 
 conceptions from within. Most men look at nature in 
 the hurry of a confusion that distinguishes nothing; their 
 error is from without. Pope, again, and many who live 
 in towns, make such blunders as that of supposing the 
 moon to tip with silver the hills behind which she is 
 rising, not by erroneous use of their eyes (for they use 
 them not at all), but by inveterate preconceptions. 
 Scarcely has there been a poet with what could be 
 called a learned eye, or an eye extensively learned, 
 before Wordsworth. Much affectation there has been 
 of that sort since his rise, and at all times much counter- 
 feit enthusiasm ; but the sum of the matter is this, that 
 Wordsworth had his passion for nature fixed in his 
 blood ; it was a necessity, like that of the mulberry-leaf 
 to the silk-worm ; and through his commerce with 
 nature did he live and breathe 
 
 A volume might be filled with such glimpses of novelty 
 as Wordsworth has first laid bare, even to the apprehen- 
 sion of the senses. For the understanding, when moving 
 in the same track of human sensibilities, he has done only 
 not so much. How often (to give an instance or two) 
 must the human heart have felt the case, and yearned 
 for an expression of the case, when there are sorrows 
 
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 207 
 
 which descend far below the region in which tears 
 gather; and yet who has ever given utterance to this 
 feeHng until Wordsworth came with his immortal line: — 
 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears? 
 
 This sentiment, and others that might be adduced 
 (such as "The child is father of the man"), have even 
 passed into the popular heart, and are often quoted by 
 those who know not whom they are quoting. Magnificent, 
 again, is the sentiment, and yet an echo to one which 
 lurks amongst all hearts, in relation to the frailty of 
 merely human schemes for working good, which so 
 often droop and collapse through the unsteadiness of 
 human energies — 
 
 Foundations must be laid 
 In heaven. 
 
 How? Foundations laid in realms that are above? But 
 that is impossible ; that is at war with elementary 
 physics ; foundations must be laid below. Yes ; and even 
 so the poet throws the mind yet more forcibly on the 
 hyperphysical character — on the grandeur transcending 
 all physics — of those spiritual and shadowy foundations 
 which alone are enduring. 
 
 But the great distinction of Wordsworth, and the 
 pledge of his increasing popularity, is the extent of his 
 sympathy with what is really permanent in human feel- 
 ings, and also the depth of this sympathy. Young and 
 Cowper, the two earlier leaders in the province of medit- 
 ative poetry, are too circumscribed in the range of their 
 sympathies, too narrow, too illiberal, and too exclusive. 
 Both these poets manifested the quality of their strength 
 in the quality of their public reception. Popular in some 
 degree from the first, they entered upon the inheritance 
 of their fame almost at once. Far different was the fate 
 of Wordsworth ; for in poetry of this class, which appeals 
 to what lies deepest in man, in proportion to the native 
 power of the poet, and his fitness for permanent life, is 
 the strength of resistance in the public taste. Whatever 
 is too original will be hated at the first. It must slowly 
 
2o8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 mould a public for itself ; and the resistance of the early 
 thoughtless judgments must be overcome by a counter 
 resistance to itself, in a better audience slowly muster- 
 ing against the first. Forty and seven years it is since 
 William Wordsworth first appeared as an author. 
 Twenty of those years he was the scoff of the world, 
 and his poetry a by-word of scorn. Since then, and 
 more than once, senates have rung with acclamations 
 to the echo of his name. Now at this moment, whilst 
 we are talking about him, he has entered upon his 
 seventy-sixth year. For himself, according to the eourse 
 of nature, he cannot be far from his setting; but his 
 poetry is only now clearing the clouds that gathered 
 about its rising. Meditative poetry is perhaps that 
 province of literature which will ultimately maintain 
 most power amongst the generations which are coming ; 
 but in this department, at least, there is little competi- 
 tion to be apprehended by Wordsworth from anything 
 that has appeared since the death of Shakspere. 
 
 COLERIDGE 
 
 [De Quincey's relations with Coleridge underwent a change 
 similar to that which obscured his intercourse with Wordsworth. 
 He began with an almost idolatrous devotion, bestowed assiduous 
 attention upon the philosopher, helped him with his literary work 
 and his personal affairs, and gave him a considerable sum of 
 money. Coleridge showed no gratitude, and affected towards his 
 admirer a scornful indifference which veiled a certain jealousy of 
 the rival expert in opium and metaphysics. This treatment De 
 Quincey repaid with a much more active dislike than he ever ex- 
 hibited for Wordsworth. His reverence for Coleridge's genius was 
 mingled with a certain contempt for his indolence, his dilatoriness, 
 his pretentiousness, and his vague, ill-organized, ill-digested learn- 
 ing. There was jealousy on both sides ; for De Quincey, who had 
 read as much as Coleridge, believed that he was a clearer thinker, 
 and could carry his burden without losing himself in quagmires of 
 misty speculation. But no student of Coleridge (if any such are 
 left upon this earth) can neglect De Quincey's numerous ill- 
 natured but acute, humorous, and often extraordinarily informing, 
 pages upon the philosopher and the man. De Quincey went near 
 to Boswellizing Coleridge ; he has transmitted to us a good deal 
 
COLERIDGE 209 
 
 of the vitality which his own age found in that great strange 
 figfure, that creature of infinite possibilities who made so little of a 
 splendid natural endowment. The following extracts are taken 
 from the essay on Coleridge and Opium-Eating, originally pub- 
 lished in Blackwood s Magazine for January 1845, as a review of 
 Gillman's Life of Coleridge.'\ 
 
 He was, in a literary sense, our brother; for he also 
 was amongst the contributors to Blackwood, 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 passed, awake no more emotion than 
 lastyear'sadvertisementsorobsolete directories; whereas 
 those who in a stormy age have swept the harps of 
 passion, 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 chorus of that intellectual music over which, 
 living, they presided. 
 
 Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader, and fought 
 among the primipili; yet comparatively he is still un- 
 known. 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 two questions, if those were all! And upon 
 neither question have we yet any investigation, such as, 
 by compass of views, by research, or even by earnest- 
 ness 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 character of accomplished 
 scholar. But if so, how much less can it be pretended 
 
 p 
 
2IO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 "slashing Bentley with his des- 
 perate hook," for an Addison, for a Johnson, for a 
 wicked Lauder, for an avenging Douglas, for an idol- 
 izing Chateaubriand, for a wild insulting infidel Curran ; 
 and yet, after all, little enough has been done towards 
 any comprehensive estimate of the mighty being con- 
 cerned. 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 architect yet presented his cre- 
 dentials. 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. 
 Whatever 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, there- 
 fore, for any honest critic, who should undertake this 
 later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that, after pur- 
 suing him through a zodiac of splendours corresponding 
 to those of Milton in kind, however different in degree, — 
 after weighing him as a poet, as a philosophic 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 Coleridge. This astonishing 
 
COLERIDGE 211 
 
 man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite 
 poet, a profound political speculator, a philosophic 
 student of literature through all its chambers and re- 
 cesses, was also a circumnavigator 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 Fitch and Oken. Where is the man who shall be 
 equal to these things? 
 
 COLERIDGE AS A CONVERSATIONALIST 
 
 There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less 
 broadly open to the 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 hadh.ea.rd 
 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 
 ?wi 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 
 
 • "Jacob Boehmen:" — We ourselves had the honour of present- 
 ing to Mr. Coleridg^e Law's English version of Jacob — a set of huge 
 quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying open, 
 and one volume, at least, overflowing, in parts, with the commen- 
 taries and the corollaries of Coleridge. Whither has this work, 
 and so many others swathed about with Coleridge's manuscript 
 notes, vanished from the world? 
 
212 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 power of vast combination. He gathered into focal con- 
 centration the largest body of objects, apparently discon- 
 nected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could 
 assemble, or, Aawwg' 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 impres- 
 sion. For when men's minds are purely passive, when 
 they are not allowed to react, then it is that they collapse 
 most, and that their sense of what is said must ever be 
 feeblest. Doubtless there must have been great conver- 
 sational masters elsewhere, and at many periods ; but in 
 this lay Coleridge's characteristic advantage, 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. 
 
 COLERIDGE AND OPIUM 
 
 Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge 
 himself, but the world, as interested in Coleridge's use- 
 fulness, 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 contri- 
 butions to literature — how large they were — which Cole- 
 ridge made in spite of opium. All who were intimate with 
 Coleridge 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 experi- 
 mentally of opium, once startled us by saying that she 
 " could tell to a certainty when Mr. Coleridge had taken 
 too much opium by his shining countenance. " She was 
 right, and we knew it; but thought the secret within 
 narrow keeping : we knew 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. Be that as 
 it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to 
 the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that con- 
 dition he made his most effective intellectual displays. 
 
COLERIDGE 213 
 
 It is true that he might not be happy under this fiery 
 animation ; and we fully believe that he was not. Nobody 
 is happy except for a very short term of years under an 
 artificial stimulation. But in what way did that operate 
 upoti his exertions as a writer ? We are of opinion that 
 it killed Coleridge as a poet. " The Harp of Quantock" ' 
 was silenced for ever by the torment of opium; but 
 proportionably it roused and stung by misery his meta- 
 physical instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can 
 flourish only in the atmosphere of happiness. But subtle 
 and perplexed investigations of difficult problems are 
 amongst the commonest resources for beguiling the 
 sense of misery. 
 
 It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic 
 speculations, opium operated unfavourably 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 
 vigour upon any question, there occurred soon after a 
 recoil of intense disgust, not from his own paper only, 
 but even from the entire subject. All opium-eaters are 
 tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and 
 suffering reactions of disgust ; but Coleridge taxed him- 
 self with that infirmity in verse before he could at all 
 have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much 
 assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer, that to leave 
 off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. 
 Indeed all opium-eaters, or indulgers in alcohol, make 
 the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which 
 they suffer to be the product of the stimulant used, 
 whereas a wise man will say, Suppose you do leave off 
 
 ' The Harp of Quantock: — Under that designation it was that 
 Wordsworth had apostrophized Coleridge as a poet after long years 
 of silence. The Quantock Hills, in southern Somersetshire, are 
 alluded to in Wordsworth's exquisite poem of Ruth ; and were the 
 early scene of joint wanderings on the part of the two poets, 
 when Wordsworth and his sister tenanted Alfoxton, during the 
 minority of Mr. St. Aubyn. 
 
214 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 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 another 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. Aye, 
 dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six 
 years old, while the songster was twenty-three. Take 
 twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have heard it said 
 that thirty-three will remain : at least Cocker, who was 
 a very obstinate man, went to his grave in that per- 
 suasion. But that extra burthen of thirty-three years 
 is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning, 
 even if brandy has been out of the question. 
 
 For our part, we are slow to believe that ever any 
 man did or could learn the somewhat awful truth, that 
 in a certain ruby-coloured elixir there lurked a divine 
 power to chase away the genius of pain, or secondly, of 
 ennui (which it is, far more than pain, that saddens our 
 human life), without sometimes, and to some extent, 
 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 preconformed to its power ; those which genially ex- 
 pand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude 
 them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the quali- 
 ties of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration 
 of — Fall or stand : doomed thou art to yield, or strength- 
 ened constitutionally to resist. 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 
 
COLERIDGE 2IS 
 
 for them effectually defeated by the sickness which nature 
 has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But 
 to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities vibrate 
 to their profoundest 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 eleventh book, in its 
 earlier part, that laudanum must already have existed 
 in Eden — nay, that it was used medicinally by an arch- 
 angel: for, after Michael had "purged with euphrasy 
 and rue " the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to 
 the mere stg-At 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 higher sensibility is found some 
 palliation for the practice of opium-eating ; in the greater 
 temptation lies a greater excuse. 
 
2i6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 [If some of De Quincey's literary friendships were unfortunate, 
 his relations with Charles Lamb were entirely happy. Many 
 beautiful and tender sentences have been written on the most 
 lovable of English men of letters, but none more beautiful and 
 tender than those of De Quincey. I do not think he was ever 
 among Lamb's closest friends ; but they saw a good deal of one 
 another during De Quincey's first period of London residence, 
 when he was cultivating literary society with diligence, and they 
 met from time to time when De Quincey came up to town from 
 Grasmere. Ill-natured critics have charged him with making too 
 much of his intimacy with Lamb for journalistic purposes. But I 
 do not see how any one can read the pages that follow without 
 being convinced that " Saint Charles " had touched those springs 
 of emotion in De Quincey which were deep and pure, .even if 
 they sometimes bubbled too easily to the surface. For him hard- 
 ness, callousness, insensibility, were the capital crimes in literature 
 and in life j and he loved Lamb, as many other good men have 
 loved him, because he found in him the embodied negation of 
 those qualities. 
 
 The first two extracts given below are from De Quincey's review 
 of Talfourd's Final Memorials of Charles Lamb in the North 
 British Seview for November 1848. The third appeared ten 
 years earlier — four years after Lamb's death — in one of the 
 " Opium-eater " series contributed to Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. 
 It appears in the number for April 1838, under the sub-heading 
 " Recollections of Charles Lamb."] 
 
 THE LIFE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 To appreciate Lamb it is requisite that his character 
 and temperament should be understood in their coyest 
 and most wayward features. A capital defect it would 
 be if these could not be gathered silently from Lamb's 
 works themselves. It would be a fatal mode of de- 
 pendency upon an alien and separable accident if they 
 needed an external commentary. But they do not. The 
 syllables lurk up and down the writings of Lamb which 
 decipher his eccentric nature. His character lies there 
 dispersed in anagram ; and to any attentive reader the 
 regathering and restoration of the total word from its 
 scattered parts is inevitable without an effort. Still it is 
 always a satisfaction in knowing a result, to know also 
 
CHARLES LAMB 217 
 
 its "why and how, and in so far as every character is 
 likely to be modified by the particular experience, sad 
 or joyous, through which the life has travelled, it is a 
 good contribution towards the knowledge of that result- 
 ing character as a whole to have a sketch of that par- 
 ticular experience. What trials did it impose? What 
 energies did it task? What temptations did it unfold? 
 These calls upon the moral powers, which in music so 
 stormy, many a life is doomed to hear, how were they 
 faced? The character in a capital degree moulds often- 
 times the life, but the life always in a subordinate degree 
 moulds the character. And the character being in this 
 case of Lamb so much of a key to the writings, it 
 becomes important that the life should be traced, how- 
 ever briefly, as a key to the character. 
 
 That is one reason for detaining the reader with some 
 slight record of Lamb's career. Such a record by prefer- 
 ence and of right belongs to a case where the intellectual 
 display, which is the sole ground of any public interest 
 at all in the man, has been intensely modified by the 
 humanities and moral personalities distinguishing the 
 subject. We read a Physiology, and need no informa- 
 tion as to the life and conversation of its author; a 
 meditative poem becomes far better understood by the 
 light of such information ; but a work of genial and at 
 the same time eccentric sentiment, wandering upon un- 
 trodden paths, is barely intelligible without it. There is 
 a good reason for arresting judgment on the writer, that 
 the court may receive evidence on the life of the man. 
 But there is another reason, and, in any other place, a 
 better ; which reason lies in the extraordinary value of 
 the life considered separately for itself. Logically, it is 
 not allowable to say that here; and, considering the 
 principal purpose of this paper, any possible independent 
 value of the life must rank as a better reason for 
 reporting it. Since, in a case where the original object 
 is professedly to estimate the writings of a man, whatever 
 promises to further that object must, merely by that tend- 
 ency, have, in relation to that place, a momentary advan- 
 tage which it would lose if valued upon a more abstract 
 
2i8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 scale. Liberated from this casual office of throwing light 
 upon a book — raised to its grander station of a solemn 
 deposition to the moral capacities of man in conflict with 
 calamity — viewed as a return made into the chanceries of 
 heaven — upon an issue directed from that court to try the 
 amount of power lodged in a poor desolate pair of human 
 creatures for facing the very anarchy of storms — this 
 obscure life of the two Lambs, brother and sister (for 
 the two lives were one life), rises into a grandeur that is 
 not paralleled once in a generation. 
 
 Rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of Charles 
 Lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers to the 
 thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is awful, 
 and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in the record 
 which it furnishes, that by meekness of submission, and 
 by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit of cheerfulness, 
 it is possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very 
 heaviest of curses — even the curse of lunacy. Had it been 
 whispered, in hours of infancy, to Lamb, by the angel 
 who stood by his cradle — " Thou, and the sister that 
 walks by ten years before thee, shall be through life, 
 each to each, the solitary fountain of comfort; and 
 except it be from this fountain of mutual love, except it 
 be as brother and sister, ye shall not taste the cup of 
 peace on earth ! " — here, if there was sorrow in reversion, 
 there was also consolation. 
 
 But what funeral swamps would have instantly ingulfed 
 this consolation, had some meddling fiend prolonged the 
 revelation, and,holding up the curtain from the sad future 
 a little longer, had said scornfully — "Peace on earth! 
 Peace for you two, Charles and Mary Lamb ! What peace 
 is possible under the curse which even now is gathering 
 against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the 
 lunatic — peace for the parenticide — peace for the girl 
 that, without warning, and without time granted for 
 a penitential cry to Heaven, sends her mother to the 
 last audit? " And then, without treachery, speaking 
 bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added — 
 " Thou also, thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper 
 person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm ; 
 
CHARLES LAMB 219 
 
 even thou shait taste the secrets of lunacy, and enter 
 as a captive its house of bondage ; ' whilst over thy 
 sister the accursed scorpion shall hang suspended 
 through life, like Death hanging over the beds of hos- 
 pitals, striking at times, but more often threatening to 
 strike ; or withdrawing its instant menaces , only to lay 
 bare her mind more bitterly to the persecutions of a 
 haunted memory ! " Considering the nature of the 
 calamity, in the first place ; considering, in the second 
 place, its life-long duration ; and, in the last place, con- 
 sidering the quality of the resistance by which it was 
 met, and under what circumstances of humble resources 
 in money or friends — we have come to the deliberate 
 judgment, that the whole range of history scarcely 
 presents a more affecting spectacle of perpetual sorrow, 
 humiliation, or conflict, and that was supported to the 
 end (that is, through forty years) with more resignation, 
 or with more absolute victory, 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF LAMB 
 
 Somewhere about 1810 and 1812 I must have met 
 Lamb repeatedly at the Courier Office in the Strand; 
 that is, at Coleridge's, to whom, as an intimate friend, 
 Mr. Daniel Stewart (a proprietor of the paper) gave up 
 for a time the use of some rooms in the office. Thither, 
 in the London season (May especially and June), re- 
 sorted Lamb, Godwin, Sir H. Davy, and, once or 
 twice, Wordsworth, who visited Sir George Beaumont's 
 Leicestershire residence of Coleorton early in the spring, 
 and then travelled up to Grosvenor Square with Sir 
 George and Lady Beaumont ; ' ' spectatum veniens, veniens 
 spectetur ut ipse." 
 
 But in these miscellaneous gatherings, Lamb said 
 little, except when an opening arose for a pun. And 
 how effectual that sort of small shot was from him, I 
 need not say to anybody who remembers his infirmity of 
 
 ' Lamb was himself confined for six weeks at one period of his 
 life in a lunatic asylum. 
 
220 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 stammering, and his dexterous management of it for 
 purposes of light and shade. He was often able to train 
 the roll of stammers into settling upon the words imme- 
 diately preceding the effective one-; by which means the 
 key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting by the sudden 
 liberation of his embargoed voice, was delivered with 
 the force of a pistol shot. That stammer was worth an 
 annuity to him as an ally of his wit. Firing under cover 
 of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the 
 first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with 
 his distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the 
 silence of deep attention ; and then, whilst he had us all 
 hoaxed into this attitude of mute suspense by an appear- 
 ance of distress that he perhaps did not really feel, down 
 came a plunging shot into the very thick of us, with ten 
 times the effect it would else have had. 
 
 Since the rencontres with Lamb at Coleridge's, I had 
 met him once or twice at literary dinner-parties. One of 
 these occurred at the house of Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, 
 the publishers. I myself was suffering too much from 
 ilhiess at the time to take any pleasure in what passed, 
 or to notice it with any vigilance of attention. Lamb, I 
 remember, as usual, was full of gaiety ; and as usual he 
 rose too rapidly to the zenith of his gaiety; for he shot 
 upwards like a rocket, and, as usual, people said he was 
 "tipsy." To me. Lamb never seemed intoxicated, but 
 at most joyously elevated. He never talked nonsense, 
 which is a great point gained : nor polemically, which is 
 a greater ; for it is a dreadful thing to find a drunken 
 man bent upon converting one's-self : nor sentimentally, 
 which is greatest of all. You can stand a man's fraterniz- 
 ing with you ; or, if he swears an eternal friendship, only 
 once in an hour, you do not think of calling the police ; 
 but once in every three minutes is too much. Lamb did 
 none of these things ; he was always rational, quiet, and 
 gentlemanly in his habits. 
 
 In regard to wine. Lamb and myself had the same 
 habit — perhaps it rose to the dignity of a principle — viz.. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 221 
 
 to take a great deal during dinner — none after it. Con- 
 sequently, as Miss Lamb (who drank only water) retired 
 almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained for men 
 of our principles, the rigour of which we had illustrated 
 by taking rather too much of old port before the cloth 
 was drawn, except talking; amoebsean colloquy, or, in 
 Dr. Johnson's phrase, a dialogue of "brisk reciproca- 
 tion." But this was impossible; over Lamb, at this 
 period of his life, there passed regularly, after taking 
 wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended upon him as 
 softly as a shadow. In a gross person, laden with super- 
 fluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been 
 disagreeable; but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, 
 spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas 
 Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the aifection of 
 sleep seemed rather a network of aerial gossamer than 
 of earthly cobweb — more like a golden haze falling upon 
 him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling up- 
 wards from the flesh. Motionless in his chair as a bust, 
 breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, 
 he presented the image of repose midway between life 
 and death, like the repose of sculpture ; and to one who 
 knew his history, a repose affectingly contrasting with 
 the calamities and internal storms of his life. I have 
 heard more persons than I can now distinctly recall, 
 observe of Lamb when sleeping, that his countenance 
 in that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, 
 from its intellectual beauty of outline, its child-like sim- 
 plicity, and its benignity. It could not be called a trans- 
 figuration that sleep had worked in his face; for the 
 features wore essentially the same expression when 
 waking ; but sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted 
 it, and also harmonized it. Much of the change lay in 
 that last process. The eyes it was that disturbed the 
 unity of effect in Lamb's waking face. They gave a rest- 
 lessness to the character of his intellect, shifting, like 
 northern lights, through every mode of combination 
 with fantastic playfulness, and sometimes by fiery gleams 
 obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity 
 which was the predominant reading on his features. 
 
224 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Well and truly, therefore, did the poet say, in his beauti- 
 ful lines upon this man's grave and memory ' — 
 
 Oh, he was good, if e'er a good man lived ! 
 
 HAZLITT 
 
 [This brilliant fragment on Hazlitt is a purple patch sewn into 
 the essay on Lamb in the North British Review — the excuse being 
 that Hazlitt had evoked the " extravagant admiration " of Lamb, 
 and had been called by Lamb's biographer. Sergeant Talfourd, 
 " a great thinker."] 
 
 Unacquainted with Grecian philosophy, with Scholastic 
 philosophy, and with the recomposition of these philo- 
 sophies in the looms of Germany during the last seventy 
 and odd years, trusting merely to the untrained instincts 
 of keen mother-wit — whence should Hazlitt have had the 
 materials for great thinking? It is through the collation 
 of many abortive voyages to polar regions that a man 
 gains his first chance of entering the polar basin, or of 
 running ahead on the true line of approach to it. The 
 very reason for Hazlitt's defect in eloquence as a lecturer, 
 is sufficient also as a reason why he could not have been 
 a comprehensive thinker. " He was not eloquent," says 
 the Sergeant, " in the true sense of the term." But why? 
 Because it seems "his thoughts were too weighty to be 
 moved along by the shallow stream of feeling which an 
 evening's excitement can rouse," — an explanation which 
 leaves us in doubt whether Hazlitt forfeited his chance 
 of eloquence by accommodating himself to this evening's 
 excitement, or by gloomily resisting it. Our own ex- 
 planation is different, Hazlitt was not eloquent, because 
 he was discontinuous. No man can be eloquent whose 
 thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and (to borrow 
 an impressive word from Coleridge) non-sequacious. 
 Eloquence resides not in separate or fractional ideas, 
 but in the relations of manifold ideas, and in the mode 
 
 ' Wordsworth, in his poem of 1835, entitled Written after the 
 Death of Charles Lamb. 
 
HAZLITT 22S 
 
 of their evolution from each other. It is not indeed 
 enough that the ideas should be many, and their rela- 
 tions coherent ; the main condition lies in the key of the 
 evolution, in the law of the succession. The elements 
 are nothing without the atmosphere that moulds, and 
 the dynamic forces that combine. Now Hazlitt's bril- 
 liancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase 
 or image which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintilla- 
 tion for a moment, but spread no deep suffusions of 
 colour, and distribute no masses of mighty shadow. A 
 flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone. Rhetoric, accord- 
 ing to its quality, stands in many degrees of relation to 
 the permanencies of truth ; and all rhetoric, like all flesh, 
 is partly unreal, and the glory of both is fleeting. Even 
 the mighty rhetoric of Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy 
 Taylor, to whom only it has been granted to open the 
 trumpet-stop on that great organ of passion, oftentimes 
 leaves behind it the sense of sadness which belongs to 
 beautiful apparitions starting out of darkness upon the 
 morbid eye, only to be reclaimed by darkness in the 
 instant of their birth, or which belongs to pageantries 
 in the clouds. But if all rhetoric is a mode of pyrotechny, 
 and all pyrotechnics are by necessity fugitive, yet even 
 in these frail pomps, there are many degrees of frailty. 
 Some fireworks require an hour's duration for the ex- 
 pansion of their glory; others, as if formed from ful- 
 minating powder, expire in the very act of birth. Pre- 
 cisely on that scale of duration and of power stand the 
 glitterings of rhetoric that are not worked into the 
 texture, but washed on from the outside. Hazlitt's 
 thoughts were of the same fractured and discontinuous 
 order as his illustrative images — seldom or never self- 
 diff"usive ; and that is a sufficient argument that he had 
 never cultivated philosophic thinking. 
 
226 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 LUCRETIUS AND HORACE 
 
 [This comparison between a poet whose literary art De Quincey 
 admired and a poet whose principles he detested — for he is always 
 apt to lose his temper with materialist and anti-religious writers — 
 is in the Essay on John Keats, which was one of the Notes on Gil- 
 fiUan's Literary Portraits, contributed to Taifs Magazine in 1845 
 and 1846, and republished in vol. vi of the Collective Edition.] 
 
 The curiosa felicitas of Horace in his lyric compositions, 
 the elaborate delicacy of workmanship in his thoughts 
 and in his style, argue a scale of labour that, as against 
 any equal number of lines in Lucretius, would measure 
 itself by months against days. There are single odes in 
 Horace that must have cost him a six weeks' seclusion 
 from the wickedness of Rome. Do I then question the 
 extraordinary power of Lucretius? On the contrary, I 
 admire him as the first of demoniacs. The frenzy of an 
 earth-born or a hell-born inspiration ; divinity of stormy 
 music sweeping round us in eddies, in order to prove 
 that for us there could be nothing divine ; the grandeur 
 of a prophet's voice rising in angry gusts, by way of con- 
 vincing us that all prophets were swindlers ; oracular 
 scorn of oracles ; frantic efforts, such as might seem 
 reasonable in one who was scaling the heavens, for the 
 purpose of degrading all things, making man to be the 
 most abject of necessities as regarded his origin, to be 
 the blindest of accidents as regarded his expectations; 
 these fierce antinomies expose a mode of insanity, but 
 of an insanity affecting a sublime intellect.' And most 
 
 ' There is one peculiarity about Lucretius which, even in the 
 absence of all anecdotes to that effect, would have led an observ- 
 ingp reader to suspect some unsoundness in his brain. It is this, 
 and it lies in his manner. In all poetic enthusiasm, however grand 
 and sweeping may be its compass, so long as it is healthy and 
 natural, there is a principle of self-restoration in the opposite direc- 
 tion ; there is a counter state of repose, a compensatory state, as 
 in the tides of the sea, which tends continually to re-establish the 
 equipoise. The lull is no less intense than the fury of commotion. 
 But in Lucretius there is no lull. Nor would there seem to be any, 
 were it not for two accidents — first, the occasional pause in his 
 
LUCRETIUS AND HORACE 227 
 
 people who read Lucretius at all, are aware of the tra- 
 ditional story current in Rome, that he did actually write 
 in a delirious state ; not under any figurative disturbance 
 of brain, but under a real physical disturbance from 
 philtres administered to him by some enamoured woman. 
 But this kind of morbid afflatus did not deliver itself into 
 words and metre by lingering oscillations, and through 
 processes of stealthy growth : it threw itself forward, and 
 precipitated its own utterance, with the headlong move- 
 ment of a cataract. It was an oestrum, a rapture, the 
 bounding of a moenad, by which the muse of Lucretius 
 lived and moved. So much is known by the impression 
 about him current among his contemporaries ; so much 
 is evident in the characteristic manner of his poem, if 
 all anecdotes had perished. And, upon the whole, let 
 the proportions of power between Horace and Lucretius 
 be what they may, the proportions of labour are abso- 
 lutely incommensurable : in Horace the labour was di- 
 rectly as the power, in Lucretius inversely as the power. 
 Whatsoever in Horace was best, had been obtained by 
 most labour ; whatsoever in Lucretius was best, by least. 
 In Horace, the exquisite skill co-operated with the ex- 
 quisite nature ; in Lucretius, the powerful nature dis- 
 dained the skill, which, indeed, would not have been 
 applicable to his theme, or to his treatment of it, and 
 triumphed through mere precipitation of volume, and 
 headlong fury. 
 
 raving tone enforced by the interruption of an episode ; secondly, 
 the restraints (or at least the suspensions) imposed upon him by 
 the difficulties of argument conducted in verse. To dispute metric- 
 ally, is as embarrassing as to run or dance when knee-deep in sand. 
 Else, and apart from these counteractions, the motion of the style 
 is not only stormy, but self-kindling, and continually accelerated. 
 
228 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 JEAN PAUL RICHTER 
 
 [De Quincey might — and did — claim the credit of first making 
 Jean Paul as well as Lessing known to English readers. He was 
 an admiring and enthusiastic student of Richter, whose style and 
 literary manner largely influenced his own. Carlyle, a learner in 
 the same school, paid his more emphatic and better-known tribute 
 to the great German master of humour and pathos later than De 
 Quincey, whose article on John Paul Frederick Richter appeared 
 in the London Magazineior December 1821, and was his first con- 
 tribution to that publication after the Confessions. It was intro- 
 duced by a very apposite quotation from Trebellius PoUio referring 
 to " virum, ex hodiernis transrhenanis, quem ego prae cffiteris 
 stupeo, et qui locum principis inlitteris Germanicis meretur jure." 
 This was De Quincey's opinion. Jean Paul held a place in his 
 affections and in his critical estimation above that of all his German 
 contemporaries.] 
 
 In point of originality there cannot arise a question 
 between the pretensions of Richter and those of any 
 other German author whatsoever. He is no man's re- 
 presentative but his own ; nor do I think he will ever 
 have a successor. Of his style of writing, it may be said, 
 with an emphatic and almost exclusive propriety, that 
 except it proceeds in a spirit of perfect freedom, it can- 
 not exist ; unless moving from an impulse self-derived, 
 it cannot move at all. What then is his style of writing? 
 What are its general characteristics? These I will en- 
 deavour to describe with sufficient circumstantiality to 
 meet your present wants : premising only that I call him 
 frequently yoAw Paul, without adding his surname, both 
 because all Germany gives him that appellation as an 
 expression of affection for his person, and because he 
 has himself sometimes assumed it in the title-pages of 
 his works. 
 
 The characteristic distinction of Paul Richter amongst 
 German authors, I will venture to add amongst modern 
 authors generally, is the two-headed power which he 
 possesses over the pathetic and the humorous ; or, rather, 
 let me say at once, what I have often felt to be true, and 
 -ould (I think) at a fitting opportunity prove to be so. 
 
JEAN PAUL RICHTER 229 
 
 this power is not two-headed, but a one-headed Janus 
 with two faces : the pathetic and the humorous are but 
 diflFerent phases of the same orb ; they assist each other, 
 melt indiscernibly into each other, and often shine each 
 through each like layers of coloured crystals placed one 
 behind another. Take, as an illustration, Mrs. Quickly's 
 account of FalstafFs death. Here there were three things 
 to be accomplished : first, the death of a human being 
 was to be described; of necessity, therefore, to be de- 
 scribed pathetically ; for death being one of those events 
 which call up the pure generalities of human nature, and 
 remove to the background all individualities, whether 
 of life or character, the mind would not in any case 
 endure to have it treated with levity; so that, if any 
 circumstances of humour are introduced by the poetic 
 painter, they must be such as will blend and fall into 
 harmony with the ruling passion of the scene : and, by 
 the way, combining it with the fact, that humorous cir- 
 cumstances often have been introduced into death-bed 
 scenes, both actual and imaginary, — this remark of it- 
 self yields a proof that there is a. humour which is in 
 alliance with pathos. How else could we have borne 
 the jests of Sir Thomas More after his condemnation, 
 which, as jests, would have been unseasonable from any- 
 body else : but being felt in him to have a root in his 
 character, they take the dignity of humorous traits; 
 and do, in fact, deepen the pathos. So again, mere 
 natveid, or archness, when it is felt to flow out of the 
 cheerfulness of resignation, becomes humorous, and at 
 the same time becomes pathetic : as, for instance, Lady 
 Jane Grey's remark on the scaffold — " I have but a little 
 neck," etc. 
 
 But to return : the death of Falstaff, as the death of 
 a man, was, in the first place, to be described with 
 pathos, and if with humour, no otherwise than as the 
 one could be reconciled with the other ; but, second, it 
 was the death not only of a man, but also of a Falstaff; 
 and we could not but require that the description should 
 revive the image and features of so memorable a char- 
 acter; if not, why describe it at all? The understanding 
 
230 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 would as little bear to forget that it was the death-bed 
 of a Falstaff, as the heart and affections to forget that 
 it was the death-bed of a fellow-creature. Lastly, the 
 description is given, not by the poet speaking in his own 
 universal language, but by Mrs. Quickly — a character 
 as individually portrayed, and as well known to us, as 
 the subject of her description. Let me recapitulate: 
 first, it was to be pathetic, as relating to a man; second, 
 humorous, as relating to Falstaff; third, humorous in 
 another style, as coming from Mrs. Quickly. These 
 were difficulties rather greater than those of levelling 
 hills, filling up valleys, and arranging trees, in pictur- 
 esque groups: yet Capability Brown was allowed to 
 exclaim, on surveying a conquest of his in this walk of 
 art — "Ay! none but your Browns and your G — Al- 
 mighties can do such things as these." Much more 
 then might this irreverent speech be indulged to the 
 gratitude of our veneration for Shakspere, on witness- 
 ing such triumphs of his art. The simple words, "and 
 a' dabbled of green fields" I should imagine, must have 
 been read by many a thousand with tears and smiles 
 at the same instant; I mean, connecting them with a 
 previous knowledge of Falstaff and of Mrs. Quickly. 
 Such then being demonstrably the possibility of blend- 
 ing, or fusing, as it were, the elements of pathos and 
 of humour — and composing out of their union a third 
 metal sui generis (as Corinthian brass, you know, is said 
 to have been the product of all other metals, from the 
 confluence of melted statues, etc., at the burning of 
 Corinth) — I cannot but consider John Paul Richter as 
 by far the most eminent artist in that way since the 
 time of Shakspere. What! you will say, greater than 
 Sterne? I answer j/e*, to my thinking; and I could give 
 some arguments and illustrations in support of this 
 judgment. But I am not anxious to establish my own 
 preference, as founded on anything of better authority 
 than my idiosyncrasy, or more permanent, if you choose 
 to think so, than my own caprice. 
 
 Judge as you will on this last point, that is, on the 
 comparative pretensions of Sterne and Richter to the 
 
JEAN PAUL RICHTER 231 
 
 spolia opima in the fields of pathos and of humour ; yet 
 in one pretension he not only leaves Sterne at an infinite 
 distance in the rear, but really, for my part, I cease to 
 ask who it is that he leaves behind him, for I begin to 
 think with myself, who it is that he approaches. If a 
 man could reach Venus or Mercury, we should not say 
 he has advanced to a great distance from the earth : we 
 should say, he is very near to the sun. So also, if in 
 anything a man approaches Shakspere, or does but re- 
 mind us of him, all other honours are swallowed up in 
 that : a relation of inferiority to him is a more enviable 
 distinction than all degrees of superiority to others, the 
 rear of his splendours a more eminent post than the 
 supreme station in the van of all others. I have already 
 mentioned one quality of excellence, viz. the interpene- 
 tration of the humorous and the pathetic, common to 
 Shakspere and John Paul: but this, apart from its 
 quantity or degree, implies no more of a participation 
 in Shaksperean excellence, than the possession of wit, 
 judgment, good sense, etc., which, in some degree or 
 other, must be common to all authors of any merit at 
 all. 
 
 Thus far I have already said that I would not con- 
 test the point of precedence with the admirers of Sterne : 
 but, in the claim I now advance for Richter, which re- 
 spects a question of degree, I cannot allow of any com- 
 petition at all from that quarter. What then is it that I 
 claim? Briefly, an activity of understanding, so restless 
 and indefatigable that all attempts to illustrate, or ex- 
 press it adequately by images borrowed from the natural 
 world, from the motions of beasts, birds, insects, etc. 
 from the leaps of tigers or leopards, from the gamboling 
 and tumbling of kittens, the antics of monkeys, or the 
 running of antelopes and ostriches, etc., are baffled, 
 confounded, and made ridiculous by the enormous and 
 overmastering superiority of impression left by the thing 
 illustrated. The rapid, but uniform motions of the hea- 
 venly bodies, serve well enough to typify the grand and 
 continuous motions of the Miltonic mind. But the wild, 
 giddy, fantastic, capricious, incalculable, springing, vault- 
 
232 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY ) 
 
 ing, tumbling, dancing, waltzing, caprioling, piroueitit^, 
 sky-rocketing of the chamois, the harlequin, the Vestris, 
 the storm-loving raven — the raven? no, the lark (for often 
 he ascends " singing up to heaven's gates," but like the 
 lark he dwells upon the earth), in short, of the Proteus, 
 the Ariel, the Mercury, the monster — ^John Paul, can be 
 compared to nothing in heaven or earth, or the waters 
 under the earth, except to the motions of the same 
 faculty as existing in Shakspere. 
 
 You will naturally collect from the account here given 
 of John Paul's activity of understanding and fancy, that 
 over and above his humour, he must have an overflow- 
 ing opulence of wit. In fact he has. On this earth of 
 ours (I know nothing about the books in Jupiter, where 
 Kant has proved that the authors will be far abler than 
 any poor Terrae Filius, such as Shakspere or Milton), 
 but on this poor earth of ours I am acquainted with no 
 book of such unintermitting and brilliant wit as his 
 Vorschule der Aesthetik ; it glitters like the stars on a 
 
 frosty night; or like the stars on Count 's coat; or 
 
 like the avdpidfiov yiXaafia, the multitudinous laughing 
 of the ocean under the glancing lights of sunbeams ; or 
 like Sifeu-de-joie of fireworks : in fact, John Paul's works 
 are the galaxy of the German literary firmament. I defy 
 a man to lay his hand on that sentence which is not vital 
 and ebullient with wit. What is wit? We are told that 
 it is the perception of resemblances ; whilst the percep- 
 tion of differences, we are requested to believe, is re- 
 served for another faculty. Very profound distinctions 
 no doubt, but very senseless for all that. I shall not 
 here attempt a definition of wit : but I will just mention 
 what I conceive to be one of the distinctions between 
 wit and humour, viz., that whilst wit is a purely intel- 
 lectual thing, into every act of the humorous mood there 
 is an influx of the moral nature : rays, direct or refracted, 
 from the will and the affections, from the disposition and 
 the temperament, enter into all humour; and thence it 
 is, that humour is of a diffusive quality, pervading an 
 
JEAN PAUL RICHTER 233 
 
 entire course of thoughts ; whilst wit — because it has no 
 existence apart from certain logical relations of a thought 
 which are definitely assignable, and can be counted even 
 — is always punctually concentrated within the circle of 
 a few words. On this account I would not advise you 
 to read those of John Paul's works which are the 
 wittiest, but those which are more distinguished for 
 their humour. 
 
 So far was Shakspere from any capability of leaving 
 behind him a malignant libel on a whole body of learned 
 men, that, among all writers of every age, he stands 
 forward as the one who looked most benignantly, and 
 with the most fraternal eye, upon all the ways of men, 
 however weak or foolish. From every sort of vice and 
 infirmity he drew nutriment for his philosophic mind. 
 It is to the honour of John Paul, that in this, as in other 
 respects, he constantly reminds me of Shakspere. Every- 
 where a spirit of kindness prevails ; his satire is every- 
 where playful, delicate, and clad in smiles ; never bitter, 
 scornful, or malignant. But this is not all. I could pro- 
 duce many passages from Shakspere, which show that, 
 if his anger was ever roused, it was against the abuses 
 of the time; not mere political abuses, but those that 
 had a deeper root and dishonoured human nature. Here 
 again the resemblance holds in John Paul; and this is 
 the point in which I said that I would notice a bond of 
 affinity between him and Schiller. Both were intolerant 
 haters of ignoble things, though placable towards the 
 ignoble men. Both yearned, according to their different 
 temperaments, for a happier state of things : I mean for 
 human nature generally, and, in a political sense, for 
 Germany. To his latest years, Schiller, when suffering 
 under bodily decay and anguish, was an earnest con- 
 tender for whatever promised to elevate human nature, 
 and bore emphatic witness against the evils of the time. 
 John Paul, who still lives, is of a gentler nature; but 
 his aspirations tend to the same point, though expressed 
 in a milder and more hopeful spirit. With all this, how- 
 
234 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 ever, they give a rare lesson on the manner of conduct- 
 ing such a cause ; for you will nowhere find that they 
 take any indecent liberties, of a personal sort, with those 
 princes whose governments they most abhorred. Though 
 safe enough from their vengeance, they never forgot in 
 their indignation, as patriots and as philosophers, the 
 respect due to the rank of others, or to themselves as 
 scholars, and the favourites of their country. Some 
 other modern authors of Germany may be great writers ; 
 but Frederick Schiller and John Paul Richter I shall 
 always view with the feelings due to great men. 
 
 GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 
 
 [Some admirers of De Quincey may think that I do him an ill 
 turn by including in this volume passages from his savage on- 
 slaught upon Goethe and Wilhelm Meister. But if it is right to ex- 
 hibit his criticism in its breadth, its insight, its liberality, when it 
 is based on large principles and siited knowledge, it is also ad- 
 visable that the reader should see what it can become when — 
 which does not often happen — De Quincey allows himself to be 
 swayed by prejudice and caprice. He wrote wisely of Kant, en- 
 thusiastically of Schiller and Herder and Richter, and he was the 
 first to make Englishmen acquainted with the learning and aes- 
 thetic philosophy of Lessing's Laocoon. But if he was in advance 
 of all his contemporaries except Coleridge and Carlyle in his re- 
 cognition of the value of modern German literature, he was keenly 
 alive to its weaknesses, to its misty theorizing, its sentimentality, its 
 mawkishness, its want of spiritual depth. These faults he believed 
 to be exemplified and exaggerated in Goethe, particularly in the 
 Meister books. He was wilfully and unaccountably irresponsive 
 to all that accompanies and compensates for the defects of the 
 Lehrjahre and the Wanderjahre. Yet can we say that his scarifying 
 rigmarole is wholly undeserved ? After all, there is dulness, there 
 is coarseness, there is a most muddy and slobbering amorosity 
 instead oi clear and flamelike passion, in this famous romance 
 which Germany now reads rather unwillingly, and England, I 
 think, not at alL One cannot deny that there is common-sense as 
 well as abundant wit and satire in De Quincey's overdone "rag- 
 ging " and slashing of " Mr. Goethe " vrith all its Philistine irrever- 
 ence. 
 
 The criticism of Wilhelm Meister appeared in two numbers of 
 the London Magazine for 1824 as a review of Carlyle 's translation 
 of the Lehrjahre, which had just been pubUshed. The first part. 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 235 
 
 which contained an angry attack on the translator, was not re- 
 peated in the Collective Edition, Carlyle and De Quincey having- 
 in the meanwhile become good friends. Some years later De 
 Quincey contributed to the seventh edition of the Encychpaedia 
 Britannica a short memoir of Goethe, in which more justice is done 
 to the great man, though there is still a protest against " the 
 extravagant partisanship " which had " conferred upon every work 
 proceeding from his pen a sort of papal indulgence, an immunity 
 from criticism, or even from the appeals of good sense, such as it 
 is not wholesome that any man should enjoy."] 
 
 MiGNON. — The situation or character, one or both, of 
 this young person, is relied upon by all the admirers of 
 Goethe as the most brilliant achievement of his poetic 
 powers. We, on our part, are no less ready to take our 
 stand on this as the most unequivocal evidence of de- 
 praved taste and defective sensibility. The reader might 
 in this instance judge for himself with very little waste 
 of time, if he were to mark the margin of those para- 
 graphs in which the name of Mignon occurs, and to read 
 them detached from all the rest. An odd way, we admit, 
 of examining a work of any art, if it were really com- 
 posed on just principles of art: and the inference is 
 prettyplain, where such an insulation is possible; which, 
 in the case of Mignon, it is. The translator, indeed, is 
 bound to think Twt: for, with a peculiar infelicity of 
 judgment natural enough to a critic who writes in the 
 character of a eulogist, he says of this person, that 
 "her history runs like a thread of gold through the 
 tissue of the narrative, connecting with the heart much 
 that were else addressed only to the head." But a glit- 
 tering metaphor is always suspicious in criticism: in 
 this case it should naturally imply that Mignon in some 
 way or other modifies the action and actors of the piece. 
 Now, it is certain that never was there a character in 
 drama or in novel on which any stress was laid, which 
 so little influenced the movement of the story. Nothing 
 is either hastened or retarded by Mignon: she neither 
 acts nor is acted upon : and we challenge the critic to 
 point to any incident or situation of interest which would 
 not remain uninjured though Mignon were wholly re- 
 moved from the story. So removeable a person can 
 
236 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 hardly be a connecting- thread of gold ; unless, indeed, 
 under the notion of a thread which everywhere betrays, 
 by difference of colour or substance, its refusal to blend 
 with the surrounding tissue ; a notion which is far from 
 the meaning of the critic. 
 
 But without dwelling on this objection : the relation of 
 Mignon to the other characters and the series of the in- 
 cidents is none at all : but, waiving this, let us examine 
 her character and her situation each for itself, and not 
 as any part of a novel. The character in this case, if 
 Mignon can be said to have one, arises out of the 
 situation. And what is that? For the information of 
 the reader, we shall state it as accurately as possible. 
 First of all, Mignon is the offspring of an incestuous 
 connection between a brother and sister. Here let us 
 pause one moment to point the reader's attention to 
 Mr. Goethe, who is now at his old tricks; never rely- 
 ing on the grand high-road sensibilities of human 
 nature, but always travelling into bypaths of un- 
 natural or unhallowed interest. Suicide, adultery, in- 
 cest, monstrous situations, or manifestations of super- 
 natural power, are the stimulants to which he constantly 
 resorts in order to rouse his own feelings, originally 
 feeble, and, long before the date of this work, grown 
 torpid from artificial excitement. In the case before us, 
 what purpose is answered by the use of an expedient, 
 the very name of which is terrific and appalling to men 
 of all nations, habits, and religions? What comes of it? 
 What use, what result can be pleaded to justify the 
 tampering with such tremendous ag-encies? The father 
 of Mignon, it may be answered, goes mad. He does : 
 but is a madness, such as his, a justifying occasion for 
 such an adjuration; is this a digrius vindice nodus? a 
 madness, which is mere senile dotage and fatuity, pure 
 childish imbecility, without passion, without dignity, 
 and characterized by no one feeling but such as is base 
 and selfish, viz., a clinging to life, and an inexplicable 
 dread of little bqys\ A state so mean might surely have 
 arisen from some cause less awful : and we must add 
 that a state so capriciously and fantastically conceived, 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 237 
 
 so little arising out of any determinate case of passion, 
 or capable of expressing any case of passion as its 
 natural language, is to be justified only by a downright 
 affidavit to the facts, and is not a proper object for the 
 contemplation of a poet, we submit. Madhouses doubt- 
 less furnish many cases of fatuity, no less eccentric and 
 to all appearance arbitrary : as facts, as known realities, 
 they do not on this account cease to be affecting ; but 
 as poetic creations, which must include their own law, 
 they become unintelligible and monstrous. 
 
 Besides, we are concedmg too much to Mr. Goethe: 
 the fatuity of the old man is nowhere connected with 
 the unhappy circumstances of his previous life; on the 
 whole it seems to be the product of mere constitutional 
 weakness of brain, or probably is a liver case: for he 
 is put under the care of a mad doctor; and, by the help 
 chiefly of a course of newspapers, he begins to recover ; 
 and finally he recovers altogether by one of the oddest 
 prescriptions in the world: he puts a glassful of laudanum 
 into a ' ' firm, little, ground-glass phial : " of this, however, 
 he never drinks, but simply keeps it in his pocket ; and 
 the consciousness that he carries suicide in his waistcoat 
 pocket reconciles him to life, and puts the finishing hand 
 to the " recovery of his reason " (p, 274). With such a 
 pocket companion about him, the reader would swear 
 now that this old gentleman, if he must absolutely 
 commit suicide for the good of the novel, will die by 
 laudanum. Why else have we so circumstantial an 
 account of the " ground-glass phial," drawn up as if by 
 some great auctioneer — Christie or Squibb — for some 
 great Catalogue ("No. so and so, one firm, little, ground- 
 glass phial"). But no; he who is born to be hanged 
 will never be drowned; and the latter end of the old 
 half-wit is as follows: being discharged as cured (or 
 incurable) he one day enters a nobleman's house, where 
 by the way he had no sort of introduction ; in this house, 
 as it happens, Wilhelm Meister is a visitor, and has 
 some difficulty in recognizing his former friend ' ' an old 
 harper with a long beard " in a^ young gentleman, who is 
 practising as a dandy in an early stage. Goethe has an 
 
238 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 irresistible propensity to freeze his own attempts at the 
 pathetic by a blighting air of the ludicrous. Accordingly 
 in the present case he introduces his man of woe as 
 "cleanly and genteelly dressed;" "beard vanished;' 
 hair dressed with some attention to the mode ; and in 
 his countenance the look of age no longer to be seen." 
 This last item certainly is as wondrous as Mr. Coleridge's 
 reading fly : and we suspect that the old ^son, who had 
 thus recovered his juvenility, deceived himself when he 
 fancied that he carried his laudanum as a mere rever- 
 sionary friend who held a sinecure in his waistcoat 
 pocket; that in fact he must have drunk of it " pretty 
 considerably." Be that as it may, at his first d6but\iQ 
 behaves decently ; rather dull he is, perhaps, but rational, 
 " cleanly," polite, and (we are happy to state) able to 
 face any little boy, the most determined that ever carried 
 pop-gun. 
 
 But such heroism could not be expected to last for 
 ever: soon after he finds a MS. which contains an ac- 
 count of his own life ; and upon reading it he prepares 
 for suicide. And let us prepare also, as shorthand 
 writers to a genuine German Suicide! In such a case 
 now, if the novel were an English novel, supposing, 
 for instance, of our composition, who are English 
 reviewers, or of our reader's composition (who are 
 probably English readers) ; if then we were reduced to 
 the painful necessity of inflicting capital punishment 
 upon one or two of our characters (as surely in our 
 own novel, where all the people are our own creatures, 
 we have the clearest right to put all of them to death) ; 
 matters, we say, being come to that pass that we were 
 called on to make an example of a mutineer or two, and 
 it were fully agreed that the thing must be ; we should 
 cause them to take their laudanum, or their rifle bullet, 
 as the case might be and die sans phrase; die (as our 
 friend " the Dramatist " says): 
 
 Die nobly, die like demigods. 
 
 ' Vanished:" or should we read perhaps varnished'^ 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 239 
 
 Not so our German : he takes the matter more coolly ; 
 and dies transcendentally ; " by cold gradation and well- 
 balanced form." First of all, he became convinced that 
 it was now "impossible for him to live: " that is, the 
 idea struck him in the way of a theory : it was a new 
 idea, a German idea, and he was pleased with it. Next 
 he considered that, as he designed to depart this life 
 se offendendo. "Argal" if the water would not come 
 to him he must look out for the water ; so he pulls out 
 the "ground-glass phial," and pours out his laudanum 
 into a glass of "almond milk." Almond milk! Was 
 there ever such a German blunder! But to proceed: 
 having mixed his potion, a potion unknown to all the 
 pharmacopoeias in Christendom, "he raised it to his 
 mouth ; but he shuddered when it reached his lips ; he set 
 it down untasted ; went out to walk once more across the 
 garden," etc. (p. 284). O fie, fie ! Mr. Mignonette !' this is 
 sad work: "walking across the garden," and "shud- 
 dering," and " doing nothing," as Macmorris [Henry V) 
 says, ' ' when by Chrish there is work to be done, and 
 throats to be cut." 
 
 He returns from the garden, and is baulked in his 
 purpose by a scene too ludicrous to mention amongst 
 such tender and affecting matter ; and thus for one day 
 he gets a reprieve. Now this is what we call false 
 mercy: well knowing that his man was to die, why 
 should Mr. G. keep him lingering in this absurd way? 
 Such a line of conduct shall have no countenance in 
 any novel that we may write. Once let a man of ours 
 be condemned, and if he won't drink off his laudanum, 
 then (as Bernardine says. Measure for Measure) we will 
 " beat out his brains with billets," but he shall die that 
 same day, without further trouble to ourselves or our 
 readers. Now, on the contrary, Mr. Mignonette takes 
 three days in dying : within which term we are bold to 
 
 ^ His name is not Mignonette, Mr. Goethe will say. No : in fact 
 he has no name: but he is father to Mignon; and therefore in 
 default of a better name we cannot see why we should not be at 
 liberty to call him Mignonette. 
 
240 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 say that any reasonable man would have been sat upon 
 by the coroner, buried, unburied by the resurrection- 
 man, and demonstrated upon by the anatomical Pro- 
 fessor. Well, to proceed with this long concern of Mr. 
 Mignonette's suicide, which travels as slowly as a 
 Chancery suit or as the York coach in Charles II's 
 reign (note: this coach took fourteen days between 
 York and London, vide Eden's State of the Poor). To 
 proceed, we say: on the second day, Mr. Mignonette 
 cut his own throat with his own razor : and that, you 
 will say, was doing something towards the object we all 
 have in view. It was; at least it might seem so; but 
 there 's no trusting to appearances ; it 's not every man 
 that will die because his throat is cut: a Cambridge 
 man of this day ' (Diary of an Invalid) saw a man at 
 Rome, who, or whose head rather, continued to express 
 various sentiments through his eyes after he (or his 
 head) had been entirely amputated from him (or his 
 body). By the way, this man might have some little 
 headache perhaps, but he must have been charmingly 
 free from indigestion. 
 
 But this is digressing : to return to Mr. Mignonette. 
 In conversing with a friend upon his case, we took a bet 
 that, for all his throat was cut, he would talk again, 
 and talk very well too. Our friend conceived the thing 
 to be impossible ; but he knew nothing of German. "It 
 cannot be, " said he, ' ' for when the larynx — " ' ' Ay, bless 
 your heart!" we interrupted him, " but in this case the 
 larynx of the party was a German larynx." However, to 
 go on with Mr. Mignonette's suicide. His throat is cut ; 
 and still, as Macmorris would be confounded to hear, 
 ' ' by Chrish there is nothing done : " for a doctor mends 
 it again (p. 283), and at p. 284 we win our bet ; for he talks 
 as well as ever he did in his life ; only we are concerned 
 to say that his fear of little boys returns. But still he 
 talks down to the very last line of p. 284 ; in which line, 
 
 ' Matthews, a man of extraordinary intellectual promise, and a 
 special friend of Lord Byron's. He defrauded all the expectations 
 of his friends by dying prematurely. The reader will do well, how- 
 ever, to look into his Diary. 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 241 
 
 by the way, is the very last word he is known to have 
 uttered; and that is "glass; " not, however, that well- 
 known unexceptionable " firm little ground-glass phial," 
 but another which had less right to his dying recol- 
 lections. 
 
 Now then, having heard the " last word of dying 
 Mignonette," the reader fondly conceives that certainly 
 Mignonette is dead. Mit nichten, as they say in Ger- 
 many, by no means; Mignonette is not dead, nor like 
 to be for one day; nor perhaps would he have been 
 dead at this moment if he had not been a German 
 Mignonette ; being so, however, the whole benefit of a 
 German throat is defeated. His throat is mended by the 
 surgeon; but having once conceived a German theory 
 that it was impossible for him to live, although he is so 
 composed as to relate his own theory and the incident 
 which caused it, he undoes all that the doctor has done, 
 tears away the bandages, and bleeds to death. This 
 event is ascertained on the morning after he had uttered 
 his last word, " glass ; " the brittle glass of Mignonette's 
 life is at length broken past even a German skill to 
 repair it ; and Mignonette is dead, — dead as a door nail, 
 we believe ; though we have still some doubts whether 
 he will not again be mended and reappear in some 
 future novel ; our reason for which is not merely his 
 extreme tenacity of life, which is like that of a tortoise, 
 but also because we observe that though he is said to be 
 dead, he is not buried; nor does anybody take any 
 further notice of him or even mention his name ; but all 
 about him fall to marrying and giving in marriage ; and 
 a few pages wind up the whole novel in a grand bravura 
 of kissing and catch-match-making : we have Mr. 
 Goethe's word for it, however, that Mignonette is dead, 
 and he ought to know. But, be that as it may, nothing 
 is so remarkable as the extreme length of time which it 
 took to do the trick: not until " the third rosy-fingered 
 morn appears " (to speak Homerically) is the suicide 
 accomplished ; three days it took to kill this old young 
 man, this flower, this Mignonette : which we take to be, 
 if not the boldest, the longest suicide on record. And so 
 
 R 
 
242 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 much for Mr. Mignonette; and so much for a German 
 suicide.' 
 
 HISTORY OF MR. MEISTER'S "AFFAIRS OF THE 
 HEART " 
 
 First we find him "in love " (oh ! dishonoured phrase !) 
 with Mariana ; rapturously in love, if the word of Mr. 
 Goethe were a sufficient guarantee. Not so, however. 
 An author may assert what he will of his own creatures ; 
 and as long as he does not himself contradict it by the 
 sentiments, wishes, or conduct which he attributes to 
 them, we are to take his word for it; but no longer. 
 We, who cannot condescend to call by the name of 
 " love " the fancies for a pretty face, which vanish before 
 a week's absence or before a face somewhat prettier, 
 still less the appetites of a selfish voluptuary, know 
 what to think of Wilhelm's passion, its depth, and its 
 purity, when we find (p. 211, i) "the current of his 
 spirits and ideas " stopped by "the spasm of a sharp 
 jealousy." Jealousy about whom? Mariana? No, but 
 Philina. And by whom excited? By the "boy" Fred- 
 erick. His jealousy was no light one; it was " a fierce 
 jealousy" (p. 221, i); it caused him "a general dis- 
 comfort, such as he had never felt in his life before 
 (p. 211, i) ; and, had not decency restrained him, he 
 could have " crushed in pieces all the people round 
 him" (p. 221, i). Such a jealousy, with regard to 
 Philina, is incompatible, we presume, with any real 
 fervour of love for Mariana: we are now therefore at 
 liberty to infer that Mariana is dethroned, and that 
 Philina reigneth in her stead. Next he is "in love " with 
 the Countess ; and Philina seldom appears to him as an 
 object of any other feelings than those of contempt. 
 Fourthly, at page 45, ii, he falls desperately in love with 
 " the Amazon," i.e., a young lady mounted on a grey 
 
 ' Mignonette has taken so long in killing that we have no room 
 for Mignon in the gallery ; but as she is easily detached from the 
 novel, we hope to present her on some other opportunity as a 
 cabinet picture. 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 243 
 
 courser, and wrapped up in " a man's white great-coat." 
 His love for this incognita holds on throughout the work 
 like the standing bass, but not so as to prevent a running 
 accompaniment, in thetreble, of various other "passions." 
 
 And these passions not merely succeed each other with 
 rapidity, but are often all upon him at once ; at p. 64, ii, 
 " the recollection of the amiable Countess is to Wilhelm 
 infinitely sweet; but anon, the figure of the noble 
 Amazon would step between ; " and two pages further 
 on he is indulging in day-dreams that " perhaps Mariana 
 might appear," or, "above all, the beauty whom he 
 worshipped" {i.e., the Amazon). Here, therefore, there 
 is a sort of glee for three voices between the Countess, 
 Mariana, and the Amazon. Fifthly, he is in love with 
 Theresa, the other Amazon, And this love is no joke ; 
 for at p. 134, iii, meditating upon "her great virtues" 
 (and we will add, her political economy) he writes a 
 letter offering her his hand ; and at this time (what time? 
 why, post time to be sure) " his resolution was so firm, 
 and the business was of such importance " that, lest 
 Major Socrates should intercept his letter, he carries it 
 himself to the office. But, sixthly, see what the resolu- 
 tions of men are ! In the very next chapter, and when 
 time has advanced only by ten pages (but unfortunately 
 after the letter-bags were made up), Wilhelm finds him- 
 self furiously in love with a friend of Theresa's; not 
 that he has seen her since post-time, but he has been 
 reminded of her : this lady is Natalia, and turns out to 
 be "the Amazon." No sooner has he a prospect of 
 seeing her than " all the glories of the sky," he vows, 
 " are as nothing to the moment which he looks for." 
 
 In the next page (145), this moment arrives; Wilhelm 
 reaches the house where she lives; on entering, " finds it 
 the most earnest and (as he almost felt) the holiest place 
 which he had ever trod;" on going upstairs to the 
 drawing-room is obliged to kneel down "to get a 
 moment's breathing time ; " can scarcely raise himself 
 again; and upon actual introduction to the divinity, 
 ' ' falls upon his knee, seizes her hand, and kisses it with 
 unbounded rapture." What's to be done now, Mr. 
 
344 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Meister? Pity you had not known this the night before, 
 or had intrusted your letter to Socrates, or had seen 
 some verses we could have sent you from England — 
 
 'Tis good to be merry and wise, 
 
 'Tis good to be honest and true ; 
 'Tis good to be off with the old love, 
 
 Before you be on with the new. 
 
 Matters begin to look black, especially as Theresa 
 accepts his offer; and (as though Satan himself had a 
 plot against hirn) in consequence of that very visit to 
 Natalia which made him pray that she would not. " I 
 hope you will be grateful," says the new love: " for she 
 (viz. , the old love) asked me for advice ; and as it hap- 
 pened that you were here just then, I was enabled to 
 destroy the few scruples which my friend still enter- 
 tained." Here's delectable news. A man receives a 
 letter from a lady who has had "her scruples" — ac- 
 cepting him nevertheless, but begging permission "at 
 times to bestow a cordial thought upon her former 
 friend " (Lothario to wit): in return for which she "will 
 press his child (by a former mother) to her heart : " such 
 a letter he receives from one Amazon; "when with 
 terror he discovers in his heart most vivid traces of an 
 inclination " for another Anjazon. A man can't marry 
 two Amazons. 
 
 Well, thank Heaven ! it 's no scrape of ours. A Ger- 
 man wit has brought us all into it; and a German 
 dinouement shall help us all out. Le •voici! There are 
 two Amazons, the reader knows. Good: now one of 
 these is ci-devant sweetheart to Lothario, the other his 
 sister. What may prevent therefore that Meister shall 
 have the sister, and Lothario (according to Horace's 
 arrangement with Lydias) his old sweetheart? Nothing 
 but this sweetheart's impatience, who (p. 184, iii) 
 "dreads that she shall lose hint" (Meister) "and not 
 regain Lothario; " i.e., between two chairs, etc., and as 
 Meister will not come to her, though she insists upon 
 it in letter after letter, she comes to Meister; de- 
 termined to " hold him fast " (p. 184, iii). O Amazon 
 
GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER 245 
 
 of little faith! put your trust in Mr. Goethe, and he will 
 deliver you ! This*he does by a coup de tM&tre. That 
 lady whose passions had carried her into the South of 
 France, had bestowed someof her favours upon Lothario : 
 but she is reputed the mother of Theresa ; and hence had 
 arisen the .' separation between Theresa and Lothario. 
 This maternal person however is suddenly discovered 
 NOT to be the mother of Theresa: the road is thus 
 opened to a general winding up of the whole concern ; 
 and the novel, as we said before, hastens to its close amid 
 a grand bravura of kissing and catch-match-making. In 
 the general row, even old Major Socrates catches a wife ; 
 and a young one ^ too, though probably enough we fear 
 a Xantippe. 
 
 Thus we have made Mr. von Goethe's novel speak for 
 itself. And, whatever impression it may leave on the 
 reader's mind, let it be charged upon the composer. If 
 that impression is one of entire disgust, let it not be 
 forgotten that it belongs exclusively to Mr. Goethe. 
 The music is his : we have but arranged the concert, and 
 led in the orchestra. 
 
 Even thus qualified, however, the task is not to us an 
 agreeable one: our practice is to turn away our eyes 
 from whatsoever we are compelled to loath or to disdain ; 
 and to leave all that dishonours human nature to travel 
 on its natural road to shame and oblivion. If in this 
 instance we depart from that maxim, it is in considera- 
 tion of the rank which the author has obtained else- 
 where, and through his partisans is struggling for in 
 this country. Without the passport of an eminent name, 
 Wilhelm Meister is a safe book; but backed in that way 
 the dullest books are floated into popularity (thousands 
 
 ' This young lady we overlooked in the general muster: her 
 name is Lydia : and her little history is that she had first of all set 
 her cap at Lothario and succeeded in bringing him to her feet ; 
 secondly, had been pushed aside to make room for Theresa; 
 thirdly, had forced herself into Lothario's house and bedroom under 
 the pretext of nursing him when wounded ; but fourthly, had been 
 fairly ejected from both house and bedroom by a stratagem in 
 which "our friend" in the character of toad-eater takes a most 
 ungentlemanly part. 
 
246 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 echoing their praise, who are not aware of the matter 
 they contain): and thus even such books become, in- 
 fluential and are brought within the remark of Cicero 
 {De Le^g. lib. 3) on the mischief done by profligate men 
 of rank: " Quod non solum vitia concipiunt, sed ea 
 infundunt in civitatem; neque solum obsunt quia ipsi 
 corrumpuntur, sed quia corrumpunt; plusque exemplo 
 quam peccato nocent." 
 
HISTORY 
 
 [One of the things which De Quincey missed being was a great 
 historian. If he had possessed the capacity for carrying out a 
 work which involved sustained and systematic labour devoted to 
 a single subject he might have made a notable addition to the 
 classics of historical literature. His essays in history and bio- 
 graphy show that to his erudition, his keen insight, his independ- 
 ence of view, he added a full measure of the historic sense. The 
 word evolution was not in fashion when he wrote, but De Quincey 
 had grasped what it meant when applied to the conduct of man 
 in society, and the growth of states and people; he could have 
 been as learned as Gibbon, and more philosophic ; and the dignity 
 and force of his style, with the rush and movement of his narrative 
 manner, might have made him, if the conditions had been pro- 
 pitious, something between an English Tacitus and an English 
 Livy. Dis aliter visum est. De Quincey was fated to produce only 
 fragments: very fine and carefully finished fragments in some 
 cases, like his series of essays on the Roman Caesars, which be- 
 long to the literature of knowledge, while his Revolt of the Tartars, 
 a singularly impressive piece of dramatic description, may claim 
 its place in the literature of power. This latter is too long to 
 quote ; it must be read as a whole, for its effect is cumulative, and 
 it could not be fairly represented by extracts. The passage given 
 below is from a paper, " Philosophy of Roman History," published 
 in Blackwood in November 1839.] 
 
 THE DECAY OF ROME 
 
 It would be thought strange indeed if there should exist 
 a large, a memorable, section of history, traversed by 
 many a scholar with various objects, reviewed by many 
 a reader in a spirit of anxious scrutiny, and yet to this 
 hour misunderstood; erroneously appreciated; its ten- 
 dencies mistaken, and its whole meaning, import, value, 
 not so much inadequately as falsely, ignorantly, per- 
 versely, deciphered. PrimA facie, one would pronounce 
 this impossible. Nevertheless, it is a truth; and it is a 
 
 2+7 
 
248 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 solemn truth ; and what gives to it this solemnity is the 
 mysterious meaning, the obscure hint of a still pro- 
 founder meaning in the background, which begins to 
 dawn upon the eye when first piercing the darkness now 
 resting on the subject. 
 
 Perhaps no one arc or segment, detached from the 
 total cycle of human records, promises so much before- 
 hand, so much instruction, so much gratification to 
 curiosity, so much splendour, so much depth of interest, 
 as the great period — the systole and diastole, flux and 
 reflux — of the Western Roman Empire. Its parentage 
 was magnificent and Titanic. It was a birth out of the 
 death-struggles of the colossal Republic ; its foundations 
 were laid by that sublime dictator, ' ' the foremost man 
 of all this world," who was unquestionably for compre- 
 hensive talents the Lucifer, the Protagonist, of all anti- 
 quity. Its range, the compass of its extent, was appalling 
 to the imagination. Coming last amongst what are called 
 the Great Monarchies of Prophecy, it was the only one 
 which realized in perfection the idea of a monarchia, 
 being (except for Parthia and the great fable of India 
 beyond it) strictly coincident with ^ okovftivri, or the 
 civilized world. Civilization and this Empire were com- 
 mensurate; they were interchangeable ideas, and co- 
 extensive. Finally, the path of this great Empire, through 
 its arch of progress, synchronized with that of Chris- 
 tianity : the ascending orbit of each was pretty nearly 
 the same, and traversed the same series of generations. 
 These elements, in combination, seemed to promise a 
 succession of golden harvests : from the specular station 
 of the Augustan age, the eye caught glimpses by anticipa- 
 tion of some glorious El Dorado for human hopes. 
 What was the practical result for our historic experience? 
 Answer — A sterile Zaarrah. Prelibations, as of some 
 heavenly vintage, were inhaled by the Virgils of the day, 
 looking forward in the spirit of prophetic rapture; 
 whilst, in the very sadness of truth, from that age for- 
 wards the Roman World drank from stagnant marshes. 
 A paradise of roses was prefigured; a wilderness of 
 thorns was found. 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 249 
 
 Even this fact has been missed — even the bare fact 
 has been overlooked; much more the causes, the prin- 
 ciples, the philosophy of this fact. The rapid barbarism 
 which closed in behind Caesar's chariot wheels has been 
 hid by the pomp and equipage of the imperial court. 
 The vast power and domination of the Roman Empire, 
 for the three centuries which followed the battle of 
 Actium, have dazzled the historic eye, and have had the 
 usual re-action on the power of vision : a dazzled eye is 
 always left in a condition of darkness. The battle of 
 Actium was followed by the final conquest of Egypt. 
 That conquest rounded and integrated the glorious 
 empire; it was now circular as a shield — orbicular as 
 the disk of a planet; the great Julian arch was now 
 locked into the cohesion of granite by its last keystone. 
 From that day forward, for three hundred years, there 
 was silence in the world : no muttering was heard : no 
 eye winked beneath the wing. Winds of hostility might 
 still rave at intervals : but it was on the outside of the 
 mighty empire; it was at a dream-like distance; and, 
 like the storms that beat against some monumental 
 castle, "and at the doors and windows seem to call," 
 they rather irritated and vivified the sense of security 
 than at all disturbed its luxurious lull. 
 
 That seemed to all men the consummation of political 
 wisdom — the ultimate object of all strife — the very 
 euthanasy of war. Except on some fabulous frontier, 
 armies seemed gay pageants of the Roman rank rather 
 than necessary bulwarks of the Roman power: spear 
 and shield were idle trophies of the past : ' ' the trumpet 
 spoke not to the alarmed throng." Hush, ye palpita- 
 tions of Rome! was the cry of the superb Aurelian,' 
 
 ' " Of the superb Aurelian;" — The particular occasion was the 
 insurrection in the East, of which the ostensible leaders were the 
 great lieutenants of Palmyra — Odenathus, and his widow, Zenobia. 
 The alarm at Rome was out of all proportion to the danger, and 
 well illustrated the force of the great historian's aphorism, Omne 
 ignotum pro magnifico. In one sentence of his despatch, Aurelian 
 aimed at a contest with the great Julian gasconade of Veni, vidi, 
 vici. His words are: Fugavimus, obsedimus, cruciavimus, occi- 
 dimus. 
 
2SO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 from his far-off pavilion in the deserts of the Euphrates 
 —Hush, fluttering heart of the Eternal City! Fall back 
 into slumber, ye wars, and rumours of wars ! Turn upon 
 your couches of down, ye Children of Romulus — sink 
 back into your voluptuous repose ! We, your almighty 
 armies, have chased into darkness those phantoms that 
 had broken your dreams. We have chased, we have 
 besieged, we have crucified, we have slain. " Nihil est, 
 Romulei Quirites, quod timere possitis. Ego efficiam ne 
 sit aliqua solicitudo Romana. Vacate ludis, vacate cir- 
 censibus. Nos publicae necessitates teneant : vos occu- 
 pent voluptates." Did ever Siren warble so dulcet a song 
 to ears already prepossessed and medicated with spells 
 of Circean effeminacy? 
 
 But in this world all things re-act; and the very ex- 
 tremity of any force is the seed and nucleus of a counter- 
 agency. You might have thought it as easy (in the 
 words of Shakspeare) to 
 
 Wound the loud winds, or with be-mock'd-at stabs 
 Kill the still-closing waters, 
 
 as to violate the majesty of the imperial eagle, or to 
 rufile "one dowle that's in his plume." But luxurious 
 ease is the surest harbinger of pain : and the dead lulls 
 of tropical seas are the immediate forerunners of tor- 
 nadoes. The more absolute was the security obtained 
 by Caesar for his people, the more inevitable was his 
 own ruin. Scarcely had Aurelian sung his requiem to 
 the agitations of Rome, before a requiem was sung by 
 his assassins to his own warlike spirit. Scarcely had 
 Probus, another Aurelian, proclaimed the eternity of 
 peace, and, by way of attesting his own martial supre- 
 macy, had commanded ' ' that the brazen throat of war 
 should cease to roar," when the trumpets of the four 
 winds proclaimed his own death by murder. Not as any- 
 thing extraordinary; for, in fact, violent death — death 
 by assassination — was the regular portal (the porta 
 Lihitina, or funeral gate) through which the Caesars 
 passed out of this world ; and to die in their beds was 
 the very rare exception to that stern rule of fate. Not, 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME ' 251 
 
 therefore, as in itself at all noticeable, but because this 
 particular murder of Probus stands scenically contrasted 
 with the great vision of Peace which he fancied as lying 
 in clear revelation before him, permit us, before we 
 proceed with our argument, to rehearse his golden 
 promises. The sabres were already unsheathed, the 
 shirt-sleeves were already pushed up from those mur- 
 derous hands which were to lacerate his throat and to 
 pierce his heart, when he ascended the Pisgah from 
 which he descried the Saturnian ages to succeed: — 
 " Brevi," said he, "milites non necessaries habebimus. 
 Romanus jam miles erit nullus. Omnia possidebimus. 
 Respublica orbis terrarum, ubique secura, non arma 
 fabricabit. Boves habebuntur aratro ; equus nascetur ad 
 pacem. Nulla erunt bella, nulla captivitas. Ubique pax ; 
 ubique Romanae leges ; ubique judices nostri." The his- 
 torian himself, tame and creeping as he is in his ordinary 
 style, warms in sympathy with the Emperor ; his diction 
 blazes up into a sudden explosion of prophetic grandeur ; 
 and he adopts all the views of Caesar. " Nonne omnes 
 barbaras nationes subjecerat pedibus?" he demands with 
 lyrical tumult, and then, while confessing the immediate 
 disappointment of his hopes, thus repeats the great 
 elements of the public felicity whenever they should be 
 realized by a Caesar equally martial for others, but more 
 fortunate for himself: — "Aeternos thesauros haberet 
 Romana Respublica. Nihil expenderetur a principe; 
 nihil a possessore redderetur. Aureum profecto seculum 
 promittebat. Nulla futura erant castra : nusquam lituus 
 audiendus: arma non erant fabricanda. Populus iste 
 militantium, qui nunc bellis civilibus Rempublicam vexat " 
 — ay, how was that to be absorbed? How would that 
 vast crowd of half-pay emeriti employ itself? ' ' Araret ; 
 studiis incumberet: erudiretur artibus: navigaret." And 
 he closes his prophetic raptures thus: "Adde quod 
 nullus occideretur in bello. Dii boni ! quid tandem vos 
 ofFenderet Respublica Romana, cui talem principem 
 sustulistis? " 
 
 Even in his lamentations, it is clear that he mourns 
 as for a blessing delayed — not finally denied. The land 
 
252 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of promise still lay, as before, in steady vision below his 
 feet, only that it waited for some happier Augustus, who, 
 in the great lottery of Caesarian destinies, might happen 
 to draw the rare prize of a prosperous reign not pre- 
 maturely blighted by the assassin; with whose purple 
 alourgis might mingle no fasciae of crape — with whose 
 imperial laurels might entwine no ominous cypress. The 
 hope of a millennial armistice, of an eternal rest for the 
 earth, was not dead; once again only, and for a time, 
 it was sleeping in abeyance and expectation. That bless- 
 ing, that millennial blessing, it seems, might be the gift 
 of Imperial Rome. 
 
 Well — and why not? the reader demands. What have 
 we to say against it? This Caesar, or that historian, 
 may have carried his views a little too far, or too pre- 
 maturely ; yet, after all, the very enormity of what they 
 promised must be held to argue the enormity of what 
 had been accomplished. To give any plausibility to a 
 scheme of perpetual peace, war must already have become 
 rare, and must have been banished to a prodigious dis- 
 tance. It was no longer the hearths and the altars, home 
 and religious worship, which quaked under the tumults 
 of war. It was the purse which suffered — the exchequer 
 of the state; secondly, the exchequer of each individual; 
 thirdly, and in the end, the interests of agriculture, of 
 commerce, of navigation. This is what the historian 
 indicates in promising his brother Romans that omnia 
 possidebimus, by which, perhaps, he did not mean to lay 
 the stress on omnia, as if, in addition to their own pro- 
 perty, they were to have that of alien or frontier nations, 
 but (laying the stress on the word possidebimus) meant 
 to say, with regard to property already their own — " We 
 shall no longer hold it as joint proprietors with the state, 
 and as liable to fluctuating taxation, but shall hence- 
 forwards /owew it in absolute exclusive property." This 
 is what he indicates in saying, Boves habebuntur aratro ; 
 that is, the oxen, one and all available for the plough, 
 shall no longer be open to the everlasting claims of the 
 public fruTnentarii for conveying supplies to the frontier 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 253 
 
 armies. This is what he indicates in saying of the indi- 
 vidual liable to military service that he should no longer 
 live to slay or to be slain, for barren bloodshed or violence, 
 but that henceforth araret or navigaret. All these pas- 
 sages, by pointing the expectations emphatically to 
 benefits of purse exonerated, and industry emancipated, 
 sufficiently argue the class of interests which then suf- 
 fered by war ; that it was the interests of private property, 
 of agricultural improvement, of commercial industry, 
 upon which exclusively fell the evils of a belligerent state 
 under the Roman empire : and there already lies a mighty 
 blessing achieved for social existence when sleep is made 
 sacred and thresholds secure ; when the temple of human 
 life is safe, and the temple of female honour is hallowed. 
 These great interests, it is admitted, were sheltered under 
 the mighty dome of the Roman empire : that is already 
 an advance made towards the highest civilization; and 
 this is not shaken because a particular emperor should 
 be extravagant or a particular historian romantic. 
 
 No, certainly ; but stop a moment at this point. Civil- 
 ization, to the extent of security for life and the primal 
 rights of man, necessarily grows out of every strong 
 government. And it follows also that, as this govern- 
 ment widens its sphere, as it pushes back its frontiers 
 ultra et Garamantas et Indos, in that proportion will the 
 danger diminish (for in fact the possibility diminishes) 
 of foreign incursions. The sense of permanent security 
 from conquest, or from the inroad of marauders, must 
 of course have been prodigiously increased when the 
 nearest standing enemy of Rome was beyond the Tigris 
 and the Inn, as compared with those times when Carth- 
 age, Spain, Gaul, Macedon, presented a ring-fence of 
 venomous rivals, and when every little nook in the 
 eastern Mediterranean swarmed with pirates. Thus far, 
 inevitably, the Roman police, planting one foot of its 
 golden compasses in the same eternal centre, and with 
 the other describing an arc continually wider, must have 
 banished all idea of public enemies, and have deepened 
 the sense of security beyond calculation. Thus far we 
 have the benefits of police, and those are amongst the 
 
254 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 earliest blessings of civilization ; and they are one indis- 
 pensable condition, what in logic is called the conditio 
 sine qua non, for all the other blessings. But that, in 
 other words, is a negative cause, a cause which, being 
 absent, the effect is absent ; but not the positive cause, 
 or causa sufficiens, which being present, the effect will 
 be present. The security of the Roman empire was the 
 indispensable condition, but not in itself a sufficient 
 cause, of those other elements which compose a true 
 civilization. Rome was the centre of a high police, which 
 radiated to Parthia eastwards, to Britain westwards ; but 
 not of a high civilization. 
 
 On the contrary, what we maintain is — that the Roman 
 civilization was imperfect ab intra — imperfect in its central 
 principle ; was a piece of watchwork that began to go 
 down, to lose its spring, and was slowly retrograding 
 to a dead stop from the very moment that it had com- 
 pleted its task of foreign conquest: that it was kept 
 going from the very first by strong reaction and antagon- 
 ism : that it fell into torpor from the moment when this 
 antagonism ceased to operate: that thenceforwards it 
 oscillated backwards violently to barbarism: that, left 
 to its own principles of civilization, the Roman empire 
 was barbarizing rapidly from the time of Trajan : that, 
 abstracting from all alien agencies whatever, whether 
 accelerating or retarding, and supposing Western Rome 
 to have been thrown exclusively upon the resources and 
 elasticity of her own proper civilization, she was crazy 
 and superannuated by the time of Commodus — must soon 
 have gone to pieces, must have foundered ; and, under any 
 possible benefit from favourable accidents co-operating 
 with alien forces, could not by any great term have re- 
 tarded that doom which was written on her drooping 
 energies, prescribed by internal decay, and not at all (as 
 is universally imagined) by external assault. 
 
 "Barbarizing rapidly!" the reader murmurs — "Bar- 
 barism! Oh, yes, I remember the Barbarians broke 
 in upon the Western Empire — the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, 
 Vandals, Burgundians, Huns, Heruli, and swarms be- 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 255 
 
 side. These wretches had no taste, no literature, prob- 
 ably very few ideas, and naturally they barbarized and 
 rebarbarized wherever they moved. But surely the writer 
 errs : this influx of barbarism was not in Trajan's time, 
 at the very opening of the second century of Christ, but 
 throughout the fifth century." No, reader; it is not we 
 who err, but you. These were not the barbarians of 
 Rome. That is the miserable fiction of Italian vanity, 
 always stigmatizing better men than themselves by the 
 name of barbarians ; and, in fact, we all know that to be 
 ultramontane is with them to be a barbarian. The hor* 
 rible charge against the Greeks of old, viz., suatantum 
 mirantur, a charge implying in its objects the last descent 
 of narrow sensibility and of illiterate bigotry, in modern 
 times has been true only of two nations, and those two 
 are the French and the Italians. But, waiving that topic, 
 we affirm — and it is the purpose of our essay to affirm — 
 that the barbarism of Rome grew out of Rome herself; 
 that these pretended barbarians — Gothic, Vandalish,' 
 Lombard — or by whatever name known to modern history 
 — were in reality the restorers and regenerators of the 
 effete Roman intellect ; that, but for them, the indigenous 
 Italian would probably have died out in scrofula, mad- 
 ness, leprosy; that the sixth or seventh century would 
 have seen the utter extinction of these Italian strulbrugs; 
 for which opinion, if it were important, we could show 
 cause. 
 
 But it is much less important to show cause in be- 
 half of this negative proposition — " that the Goths and 
 Vandals were not the barbarians of the western empire " 
 
 ' " Pretended barbarians, Gothic, Vandalish," etc. — Had it been 
 true that these tramontane people were as ferocious in manners 
 and appearance as was allegfed, it would not therefore have fol- 
 lowed that they were barbarous in their modes of thinking and 
 feeling ; or, if that also had been true, surely it became the Romans 
 to recollect what very barbarians, both in mind and manners and 
 appearance, were some of their own Caesars. Meantime, it appears 
 that not only Alaric the Goth, but even Attila the Hun, in popular 
 repute the most absolute ogre of all the Transalpine invaders, turns 
 out in more thoughtful representations to have been a prince of 
 peculiarly mild demeanour, and apparently upright character. 
 
2s6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 — than in behalf of this affirmative proposition, " that the 
 Romans were." We do not wish to overlay the subject, 
 but simply to indicate a few of the many evidences which 
 it is in our power to adduce. We mean to rely, for the 
 present, upon four arguments as exponents of the bar- 
 barous and barbarizing tone of feeling which, like so 
 much moss or lichens, had gradually overgrown the 
 Roman mind, and by the third century had strangled all 
 healthy vegetation of natural and manly thought. During 
 this third century it was, in its latter half, that most of the 
 Augustan History was probably composed. Laying aside 
 the two Victors, Dion Cassius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and 
 a few more indirect notices of history during this period, 
 there is little other authority for the annals of the Western 
 Empire than this Augustan History, and at all events, 
 this is the chief well-head of that history; hither we 
 must resort for most of the personal biography and the 
 portraiture of characters connected with that period, and 
 here only we find the regular series of princes — the whole 
 gallery of Caesars, from Trajan to the immediate pre- 
 decessor of Diocletian. The composition of this work 
 has been usually distributed amongst six authors, viz., 
 S{)artian, Capitolinus, Lampridius, Volcatius Gallicanus, 
 Trebellius Pollio, and Vopiscus. Their several shares, 
 it is true, have been much disputed to and fro, and other 
 questions have been raised affecting the very existence 
 of some amongst them. But all this is irrelevant to our 
 present purpose, which applies to the work, but not at 
 all to the writers, excepting in so far as they (by what- 
 ever names known) were notoriously and demonstrably 
 persons belonging to that era, trained in Roman habits 
 of thinking, connected with the court, intimate with the 
 great palatine officers, and therefore presumably men of 
 rank and education. We rely, in so far as we rely -at all 
 upon this work, upon these two among its characteristic 
 features : first, upon the quality and style of its bio- 
 graphic notices; secondly, upon the remarkable un- 
 certainty which hangs over all lives a little removed from 
 the personal cognizance or immediate era of the writer. 
 But, as respects not the History, but the subjects of the 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 257 
 
 History, we rely, thirdly, upon the peculiar traits of 
 feeling which gradually began to disfigure the ideal con- 
 ception of the Roman Caesar in the minds of his subjects; 
 fourthly, without reference to the Augustan History, or 
 to the subjects of that History, we rely generally, for 
 establishing the growing barbarism of Rome, upon the 
 condition of the Roman literature after the period of 
 the first twelve Caesars. 
 
 ANECDOTAGE 
 
 We infer the increasing barbarism of the Roman mind 
 from the quality of the personal notices and portraitures 
 exhibited throughout these biographical records. The 
 whole may be described by one word — Anecdotage. It is 
 impossible to conceive the dignity of History more de- 
 graded than by the petty nature of the anecdotes which 
 compose the bulk of the communications about every 
 Caesar, good or bad, great or little. ... In this strain 
 — how truly worthy of the children of Romulus, how 
 becoming to the descendants from Scipio Africanus, 
 from Paulus Aemilius, from the colossal Marius and the 
 godlike Julius — the whole of the Augustan History 
 moves. There is a superb line in Lucan which represents 
 the mighty phantom of Paulus standing at a banquet to 
 reproach or to alarm : 
 
 Et Pauli ing^entem stare miraberis umbram ! 
 
 What a horror would have seized this Augustan scrib- 
 bler, this Roman Tims, if he could have seen this "mighty 
 phantom " at his elbow looking over his inanities, and 
 what a horror would have seized the phantom ! Once, in 
 the course of his aulic memorabilia, the writer is struck 
 with a sudden glimpse of such an idea, and he reproaches 
 himself for recording such infinite littleness. After report- 
 ing some anecdotes, in the usual Augustan style, about an 
 Imperial rebel, as, for instance, that he had ridden upon 
 ostriches (which he says was the next thing to flying) ; 
 
258 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 that he had eaten a dish of boiled hippopotamus;^ and 
 that, having a fancy for tickling the catastrophes of 
 crocodiles, he had anointed himself with crocodile fat, 
 by which means he humbugged the crocodiles, ceasing 
 to be Caesar and passing for a crocodile, swimming and 
 playing amongst them; these glorious facts being re- 
 corded, he goes on to say: " Sed haec scire quid prod- 
 est? cum et Livius et Sallustius taceant res leves de iis 
 quorum vitas scribendas arripuerint. Non enim scimus 
 quales mulos Clodius habuerit ; nee utrum Tusco equo 
 sederit Catilina an Sardo ; vel quali chlamyde Pompeius 
 usus fuerit, an purpurd." No, we do not know. Livy 
 would have died " in the high Roman fashion" before he 
 would have degraded himself by such babble of nursery- 
 maids, or of palace pimps and eaves-droppers. 
 
 But it is too evident that babble of this kind grew up 
 not by any accident, but as a natural growth, and by a 
 sort of physical necessity, from the condition of the 
 Roman mind after it had ceased to be excited by opposi- 
 tion in foreign nations. It was not merely the extinction 
 of republican institutions which^ operated (that might 
 operate as a co-cause) ; but, had these institutions even 
 survived, the unresisted energies of the Roman mind, 
 having no purchase, nothing to push against, would 
 have collapsed. The eagle, of all birds, would be the 
 first to flutter and sink plumb down, if the atmosphere 
 should make no resistance to his wings. The first Roman 
 of note who began this system of anecdotage was 
 Suetonius. In him the poison of the degradation was 
 much diluted by the strong remembrances, still surviv- 
 ing, of the mighty Republic. The glorious sunset was 
 still burning with gold and orange lights in the west. 
 True, the disease had commenced; but the habits of 
 health were still strong for restraint and for conflict 
 with its power. Besides that, Suetonius graces his 
 minutiae and embalms them in amber by the exquisite 
 
 ^ " Eaten a dish of hoihd hippopotamus." — We once thought that 
 some error might exist in the text — edisse for edidisse — and that a 
 man exposed a hippopotamus at the games of the amphitheatre ; 
 but we are now satisfied that he ate the hippopotamus. 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 259 
 
 finish of his rhetoric. But his case, coming so early 
 among the Caesarian annals, is sufficient to show that 
 the growth of such history was a spontaneous growth 
 from the circumstances of the empire, viz., from the 
 total collapse of all public antagonism. 
 
 The next literature in which the spirit of anecdotage 
 arose was that of France. From the age of Louis Treize, 
 or perhaps of Henri Quatre, to the Revolution, this 
 species of chamber-memoirs — this eavesdropping bio- 
 graphy — prevailed so as to strangle authentic history. 
 The parasitical plant absolutely killed the supporting 
 tree. And one remark we will venture to make on that 
 fact : the French Literature would have been killed, and 
 the national mind reduced to the strulbrug condition, 
 had it not been for the situation of France amongst 
 other great kingdoms, making her liable to potent reac- 
 tions from them. The Memoirs of France — that is, the 
 valet-de-chambre's archives substituted for the states- 
 man's, the ambassador's, the soldier's, the politician's — 
 would have extinguished all other historic composition, 
 as in fact tihey nearly did, but for the insulation of 
 France amongst nations with more masculine habits of 
 thought. That saved France. Rome had no such advan- 
 tage; and Rome gave way. The props, the buttresses, 
 of the Roman intellect were all cancered and honey- 
 combed by this dry-rot in her political energies. One 
 excuse there is : storms yield tragedies for the historian ; 
 the dead calms of a universal monarchy leave him little 
 but personal memoranda. In such a case he is nothing 
 if he is not anecdotical. 
 
 Secondly, we infer the barbarism of Rome, and 
 the increasing barbarism, from the inconceivable ignor- 
 ance which prevailed throughout the Western Empire 
 as to the most interesting public facts that were not 
 taken down on the spot by a tachygraphus or short-hand 
 reporter. Let a few years pass, and everything was for- 
 gotten about everybody. Within a few years after the 
 death of Aurelian, though a kind of saint amongst the 
 armies and the populace of Rome (for to the Senate he 
 
26o THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 was odious), no person could tell who was the Emperor's 
 mother, or where she lived ; though she must have been 
 a woman of station and notoriety in her lifetime, having 
 been a high priestess at some temple unknown. Alex- 
 ander Severus, a very interesting Caesar, who recalls to 
 an Englishman the idea of his own Edward the Sixth, 
 both as a prince equally amiable, equally disposed to 
 piety, equally to reforms, and because, like Edward, he 
 was so placed with respect to the succession and position 
 of his reign, between unnatural monsters and bloody ex- 
 terminators, as to reap all the benefit of contrast and 
 soft relief; this Alexander was assassinated. That was 
 of course. But, still, though the fact was of course, the 
 motives often varied, and the circumstances varied ; and 
 the reader would be glad to know, in Shakspere's lan- 
 guage, ' ' for which of his virtues " it was deemed requisite 
 to murder him ; as also, if it would not be too much 
 trouble to the historian, who might be the murderers, 
 and what might be their rank, and their names, and 
 their recompense-^whether a halter or a palace. But 
 nothing of all this can be learned. And why? All had 
 been forgotten. ' Lethe had sent all her waves over the 
 whole transaction ; and the man who wrote within thirty 
 years found no vestige recoverable of the imperial 
 murder more than you or we, reader, would find at this 
 day, if we should search for fragments of that imperial ^ 
 tent in which the murder happened. Again, with respect 
 to the princes who succeeded immediately to their part 
 of the Augustan History now surviving, — princes the 
 
 ' " All had heen forgotten." — It is true that the Augustan writer, 
 rather than appear to know nothing- at all, tells a most idle fable 
 about a scurra having intruded into Caesar's tent, and, upon finding 
 the young Emperor awake, excited his comrades to the murder 
 for fear of being punished for his insolent intrusion. But the whole 
 story is nonsense — a camp legend, or, at the best, a fable put forth 
 by the real Conspirators to mask the truth. The writer did not 
 believe it himself. By the way, a scurra does not retain its classical 
 sense of a buffoon in the Augiistan History ; it means a <rwparo0uXn?, 
 or bodyguard, but why is. yet undiscovered. Our own belief is that 
 the word is a Thracian or a Gothic word, the bodyguards being 
 derived from those nations. 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 261 
 
 most remarkable, and cardinal to the movement of 
 history, viz., Diocletian and Constantine — many of the 
 weightiest transactions in their lives are washed out as 
 by a sponge. Did Diocletian hang himself in his garters? 
 or did he die in his bed? Nobody knows. And, if Dio- 
 cletian hanged himself, why did Diocletian hang himself? 
 Nobody can guess. Did Constantine, again, marry a 
 second wife? Did this second wife fall in love with her 
 stepson Crispus? Did she, in resentment of his scorn, 
 bear false witness against him to his father? Did his 
 father, in consequence, put him to death? What an 
 awful domestic tragedy! — was it true? Nobody knows. 
 On the one hand, Eusebius does not so much as allude 
 to it ; but, on the other hand, Eusebius had his golden 
 reasons for favouring Constantine, and this was a matter 
 to be hushed up rather than blazoned. Tell it not in 
 Gath! Publish it not in Ascalon! Then, again, on the 
 one hand, the tale seems absolutely a leaf torn out of 
 the Hippolytus of Euripides. It is the identical story, 
 only the name is changed; Constantine is Theseus, 
 his new wife is Phaedra, Crispus is Hippolytus. So far 
 it seems rank with forgery. Yet, again, on the other 
 hand, such a duplicate did bond fide occur in modern 
 history. Such a domestic tragedy was actually re- 
 hearsed, with one unimportant change ; such a leaf was 
 positively torn out of Euripides. Philip II played the 
 part of Theseus, Don Carlos the part of Hippolytus, 
 and the Queen filled the situation (without the animus) 
 of Phaedra. Again, therefore, one is reduced to blank 
 ignorance, and the world will never know the true 
 history of the Caesar who first gave an establishment 
 and an earthly throne to Christianity, because history 
 had slept the sleep of death before that Caesar's time, 
 and because the great muse of history had descended 
 from Parnassus, and was running about Caesar's palace 
 in the bed-gown and slippers of a chambermaid. 
 
 Many hundreds of similar lacunae we could assign 
 with regard to facts the most indispensable to be known; 
 but we must hurry onwards. Meantime, let the reader 
 contrast with this dearth of primary facts in the history 
 
i62 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 mind, — I presume that I may justly express the tendency 
 of the Paradise Lost, by saying- that it communicates 
 power; a pretension far above all communication of 
 knowledge. Henceforth, therefore, I shall use the anti- 
 thesis power and knowledgfe as the most philosophical 
 expression for literature (that is, Literae Humaniores) 
 and anti-literature (that is, Literae didacticae — Timliia). 
 
 RHETORIC 
 
 [Rhetoric, for some reason, is regarded with extreme disfavour 
 by most latter-day English critics ; which is the more remarkable 
 since some of the very greatest of English writers are nothing if 
 not rhetorical. Milton and Byron, the only two of our poets be- 
 sides Shakespeare who have gained a world-wide celebrity, are 
 rhetorical poets; our rhetorical prose, Milton's, Bacon's, Jeremy 
 Taylor's, Carlyle's, Ruskin's, De Quincey's own, is the noblest of 
 its kind in modern literature. There is, of course, a true and a 
 false rhetoric as there is a true and a false eloquence. The dis- 
 tinction is ably drawn in this Essay; which moreover is, in its best 
 passages, a rich example of what De Quincey specifically meant 
 by rhetoric — namely, the art of ornate and allusive prose, which 
 depends for its effect not merely on lucid exposition and logical 
 statement, but on illuminative fancy, imaginative illustration, and 
 a wealth of verbal decoration. To read De Quincey's notices of 
 his masters and teachers, the great rhetoricians of the seventeenth 
 century, is to be convinced that English prose cannot for ever be 
 denied its most characteristic quality in favour of a Gallic lim- 
 pidity and thinness which may be suited to the Latin genius but 
 is alien from our own. 
 
 The Essay was contributed to Blackwood in December 1828 as 
 a review of Whateley's Elements of Rhetoric.\ 
 
 Whatsoever is certain, or matter of fixed science, can 
 be no subject for the rhetorician : where it is possible for 
 the understanding to be convinced, no field is open for 
 rhetorical persuasion. Absolute certainty and fixed 
 science transcend opinion, and exclude the probable. 
 The province of rhetoric, whether meant for an influence 
 upon the actions, or simply upon the belief, lies amongst 
 that vast field of cases where there is a pr^) and a con, 
 with the chance of right and wrong, true and false, dis- 
 
RHETORIC 163 
 
 tributed in varying proportions between them. There is 
 also an immense range of truths, where there are no 
 chances at all concerned, but the affirmative and the 
 negative are both true ; as, for example, the goodness of 
 human nature and its wickedness; the happiness of 
 human life and its misery; the charms of knowledge, 
 and its hollowness ; the fragility of human prosperity, 
 in the eye of religious meditation, and its security, as 
 estimated by worldly confidence and youthful hope. 
 In all such cases the rhetorician exhibits his art by 
 giving an impulse to one side, and by withdrawing the 
 mind so steadily from all thoughts or images which sup- 
 port the other, as to leave it practically under the pos- 
 session of a one-sided estimate. 
 
 Upon this theory, what relation to rhetoric shall we 
 assign to style and the ornamental arts of composition? 
 In some respect they seem liable to the same objection 
 as that which Aristotle has urged against appeals to the 
 passions ; both are extra-essential, or i^u tov irpayfiaros ; 
 they are subjective arts, not objective; that is, they do 
 not affect the thing which is to be surveyed, but the eye 
 of him who is to survey. Yet, at a banquet, the epicure 
 holds himself not more obliged to the cook for the 
 venison, than to the physician who braces his stomach 
 to enjoy. And any arts which conciliate regard to the 
 speaker, indirectly promote the effect of his arguments. 
 On this account, and because (under the severest limita- 
 tion of rhetoric) they are in many cases indispensable to 
 the perfect interpretation of the thoughts, we may admit 
 arts of style and ornamental composition as the minis- 
 terial part of rhetoric. But with regard to the passions, 
 as contended for by Dr. Campbell, it is a sufficient 
 answer that they are already pre-occupied by what is 
 called Eloquence. 
 
 Coleridge, as we have often heard, is in the habit of 
 drawing the line with much philosophical beauty be- 
 tween rhetoric and eloquence. On this topic we were 
 never so fortunate as to hear him : but if we are here 
 called upon for a distinction, we shall satisfy our imme- 
 diate purpose by a very plain and brief one. By Elo- 
 
264 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 household gods, the majesty of the empire, the sacra- 
 mentum militare, all had given way, all had yawned be- 
 neath his feet. 
 
 The imagination of man can frame nothing so awful — 
 the experience of man has witnessed nothing so awful — 
 as the situation and tenure of the Western Caesar. The 
 danger which threatened him was like the pestilence 
 which walketh in darkness, but which also walketh in 
 noon-day. Morning and evening, summer and winter, 
 brought no change or shadow of turning to this par- 
 ticular evil. In that respect it enjoyed the immunities of 
 God ; it was the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 After three centuries it had lost nothing of its virulence; 
 it was growing worse continually; the heart of man 
 ached under the evil, and the necessity of the evil. Can 
 any man measure the sickening fear which must have 
 possessed the hearts of the ladies and the children com- 
 posing the imperial family? To them the mere terror, 
 entailed like an inheritance of leprosy upon their family 
 above all others, must have made it a woe like one of 
 the evils in the Revelation — such in its infliction, such in 
 its inevitability. It was what Pagan language denom- 
 inated " a sacred danger," a danger charmed and con- 
 secrated against human alleviation. 
 
 At length, but not until about three hundred and twenty 
 years of murder had elapsed from the inaugural murder 
 of the great imperial founder, Diocletian rose, and, as a 
 last resource of despair, said, Let us multiply our image, 
 and try if that will discourage our murderers. Like Ke- 
 hama, entering the eight gates of Padalon at once, and 
 facing himself eight times over, he appointed an assessor 
 for himself; and, each of these co-ordinate Augusti 
 having a subordinate Caesar, there were in fact four co- 
 eval Emperors. Caesar enjoyed a perfect alibi: like the 
 royal ghost in Hamlet, Caesar was hie et ubique. And 
 unless treason enjoyed the same ubiquity, now, at least, 
 one would have expected that Caesar might sleep in se- 
 curity. But murder — imperial murder — is a Briareus. 
 There was a curse upon the throne of Western Rome : 
 it rocked like the sea, and for some mysterious reason 
 
THE DECAY OF ROME 265 
 
 could not find rest ; and few princes were more memor- 
 ably afflicted than the immediate successors to this 
 arrangement. 
 
 A nation living in the bosom of these funereal convul- 
 sions, this endless billowy oscillation of prosperous 
 murder and thrones overturned, could not have been 
 moral, and therefore could not have reached a high 
 civilization had other influences favoured. No causes 
 act so fatally on public morality as convulsions in the 
 state. And against Rome all other influences combined. 
 It was a period of awful transition. It was a period of 
 tremendous conflict between all false religions in the 
 world (for thirty thousand gods were worshipped in 
 Rome) and a religion too pure to be comprehended. 
 That light could not be comprehended by that darkness. 
 And, in strict philosophic truth, Christianity did not 
 reach its mature period, even of infancy, until the days 
 of the Protestant Reformation. In Rome it has always 
 blended with Paganism; it does so to this day. But 
 then, i.e., up to Diocletian (or the period of the Au- 
 gustan History), even that sort of Christianity, even this 
 foul adulteration of Christianity, had no national in- 
 fluence. Even a pure and holy religion therefore, by 
 arraying demoniac passions on the side of Paganism, 
 contributed to the barbarizing of Western Rome. 
 
 Finally, we infer the barbarism of Rome from the 
 condition of her current literature. Anything more 
 contemptible than the literature of Western (or indeed 
 of Eastern) Rome after Trajan, it is not possible to con- 
 ceive. Claudian, and two or three others, about the 
 times of Carinus, are the sole writers in verse through a 
 period of four centuries. Writers in prose there are 
 none after Tacitus and the younger Pliny. Nor in Greek 
 literature is there one man of genius after Plutarch, ex- 
 cepting Lucian. As to Libanius, he would have been 
 " a decent priest where monkeys are the gods; " and he 
 was worthy to fumigate with his leaden censer, and 
 with incense from such dull weeds as root themselves in 
 Lethe, that earthly idol of modern infidels — the shallow, 
 
266 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 but at the same time stupid, Julian. Upon this subject, 
 however, we may have two summary observations to 
 make: first, it is a fatal ignorance in disputing-, and 
 has lost many a good cause, not to perceive on which 
 side rests the onus of proof. Here, because on our alle- 
 gation the proposition to be proved would be negati-ve, 
 the onus probandi must lie with our opponents ; for we 
 peremptorily affirm that from Trajan downwards there 
 was no literature in Rome. To prove a negative is im- 
 possible; but any opponent who takes the affirmative 
 side and says there was will find it easy to refute us. 
 Only be it remembered that one swallow does not make 
 a summer. Secondly (which, if true, ought to make all 
 writers on general literature ashamed), we maintain 
 that in any one period of sixty years in any one of those 
 centuries which we call so familiarly the Dark Ages 
 (yes, even in the tenth or eleventh), we engage to name 
 more and better books as the product of the period 
 given than were produced in the whole 350 years from 
 Trajan to Honorius and Attila. Here, therefore, is at 
 once a great cause, a great effect, and a great exponent 
 of the barbarism which had overshadowed the Western 
 Empire before either Goth or Vandal had gained a settle- 
 ment in the land. The quality of their history, the tenure 
 of the Caesars, the total abolition of literature, and the 
 convulsion of public morals — these were the true key to 
 the Roman decay. 
 
 JOAN OF ARC 
 
 [To the literature of power most unmistakably belongs another 
 of the essays which must be classed as historical or biog^raphical, 
 that on Joan of Arc. De Quincey's sensibilities were deeply 
 touched by the Maid of France, and he consecrates to her one of 
 the most emotional and carefully elaborated of his prose lyrics. 
 The essay appeared in Taits Magazine in March and August, 
 1847, ^""i '^^^ written, according to its author, to vindicate Jeanne 
 from the aspersions of the Revolutionary writers and the grudging 
 appreciation of Michelet.] 
 
 What is to be thought of herl What is to be thought 
 of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of 
 
JOAN OF ARC 'i6^ 
 
 Lorraine, that — ^like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the 
 hills and forests of Judaea — rose suddenly out of the 
 quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, 
 rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van 
 of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right 
 hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic 
 mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man 
 could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read 
 her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. 
 Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender ; 
 but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices 
 of all who saw them from a station of good-will, both 
 were found true and loyal to any promises involved in 
 their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference 
 between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a 
 splendour and a noonday prosperity, both personal and 
 public, that rang through the records of his people, and 
 became a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand 
 years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The 
 poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself 
 from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. 
 She never sang together with thfe songs that rose in her 
 native Domr^my, as echoes to the departing steps of 
 invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vau- 
 couleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of 
 France. No ! for her voice was then silent ; no ! for her 
 feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! 
 whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of 
 truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest 
 pledges for thy truth, that never once — no, not for a 
 moment of weakness — didst thou revel in the vision of 
 coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee ! Oh 
 no ! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those 
 that share thy blood. ^ Daughter of Domr^my, when the 
 gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleep- 
 ing the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but 
 she will not hear thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to 
 come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found 
 
 ' " Those that share thy blood: " — A collateral relative of Joanna's 
 was subsequently ennobled by the title of Z)u Lys. 
 
268 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, 
 as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of 
 the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, 
 thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for 
 five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion 
 in this life ; that was thy destiny ; and not for a moment 
 was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short ; 
 and the sleep which is in the grave is long ! Let me use 
 that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly 
 dreams destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. 
 This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of even a 
 visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses 
 more obvious — never once did this holy child, as regarded 
 herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was 
 travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very 
 manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, 
 the aerial altitude of the fiery scaff^old, the spectators 
 without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a 
 coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, 
 the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked 
 but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth 
 broke loose from artificial restraints; — these might not 
 be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. 
 But the voice that called her to death, that she heard 
 for ever. 
 
 Great was the throne of France even in those days, 
 and great was he that sat upon it : but well Joanna knew 
 that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was ior her; 
 but, on the contrary, that she was for them; not she 
 by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. 
 Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries 
 had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and 
 sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and 
 man combined to wither them ; but well Joanna knew, 
 early at Domr^my she had read that bitter truth, that 
 the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. 
 Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for 
 her. 
 
 The education of this poor girl was mean according 
 
JOAN OF ARC 269 
 
 to the present standard : was ineffably grand, according 
 to a purer philosophic standard : and only not good for 
 our age, because for us it would be unattainable. She 
 read nothing, for she could not read ; but she had heard 
 others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept 
 in sympathy with the sad Misereres of the Romish 
 Church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant 
 Te Deums of Rome : she drew her comfort and her vital 
 strength from the rites of the same church. But, next 
 after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the 
 advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domr^my 
 was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was 
 haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest 
 [curd) was obliged to read mass there once a-year, in 
 order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are 
 important, even in a statistical view: certain weeds 
 mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark its solitude. As 
 surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy 
 sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualler. 
 A village is too much for her nervous delicacy : at most, 
 she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. We may 
 judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble 
 which they gave to the parson, in what strength the 
 fairies mustered at Domrdmy; and, by a satisfactory 
 consequence, how thinly sown with men and women 
 must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. 
 
 But the forests of Domr^my — those were the glories of 
 the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and 
 ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. "Ab- 
 beys there were, and abbey windows," — "like Moorish 
 temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely 
 power both in" Lorraine and in the German Diets. These 
 had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a 
 league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy 
 legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these 
 abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude 
 of the region ; yet many enough to spread a network or 
 awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have 
 seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious 
 talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts 
 
37© THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 (like myself,, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into 
 courage to wander for days in; their sylvan recesses. 
 
 The mountains of the Vosges, on the eastern frontier of 
 France, have never attracted much notice from Europe, 
 except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, when they fell 
 within Napoleon's line of defence against the Allies. 
 But they are interesting for this, amongst other features, 
 that they do not,, like some loftier ranges, repel woods : 
 the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. Live and 
 let live, is their motto. For this reason, in part, these 
 tracts in Lorraine were a favourite hunting-ground with 
 the Carlovingian princes. About six hundred years be- 
 fore Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have 
 hunted there. That, of itself, was a grand incident in the 
 traditions of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, 
 also, were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those 
 mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into 
 visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen (if any- 
 where seen) that ancient stag who was already nine 
 hundred years old, but possibly a hundred. or two more, 
 when met by Charlemagne ; and the thing was put be- 
 yond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. . . . 
 
 But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in 
 any solitary frontier between two great empires, as here, 
 for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the 
 Euphrates, there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of 
 any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom 
 images of, powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, 
 therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, 
 would be led continually to brood over the political con- 
 dition of her country, by the traditions of the past no 
 less than by the mementoes of the local present. 
 
 But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought 
 wonders so great for France, was she not elated? Did 
 she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of 
 mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so 
 giddy? Let her enemies declare. During the progress of 
 her movement, and in the centre of ferocious struggles, 
 
JOAN OF ARC 271 
 
 she had manifested the temper of her feelings, by the 
 pity which she had everywhere expressed for the suflfer-- 
 ing enemy. She forwarded to the English leaders a 
 touching invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, 
 in a common crusade against infidels, thus opening the 
 road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to protect 
 the captive or the wounded — she mourned over the ex- 
 cesses of her countrymen — she threw herself off her 
 horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, and to com- 
 fort him with such ministrations, physical or spiritual, 
 as his situation allowed. " Nolebat," says the evidence, 
 " uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere. " She sheltered 
 the English, that invoked her aid, in her owji quarters. 
 She wept as she beheld, stretched on the field of battle, 
 so many brave enemies that had died without confession. 
 And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed itself 
 thus : On the day when she had finished her work, she 
 wept ; for she knew that, when her tritcmphal task was 
 done, her end must be approaching. Her aspirations 
 pointed only to a place, which seemed to her more than 
 usually full of natural piety, as one in which it would 
 give her pleasure to die. And she utte.red, between 
 smiles and tears, as a wish that inexpressibly fascin- 
 ated her heart, and yet was half-fantastic, a broken 
 prayer that God would-return her to the solitudes from 
 which he had drawn her, and suffer her to become a 
 shepherdess once more. It was a natural prayer, because 
 nature has laid a necessity upon every human heart to 
 seek for rest, and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, 
 it was a half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood 
 upwards, visions that she had no power to mistrust, 
 and the voices which sounded in her ear for ever, had 
 long since persuaded her mind, that for Iter no such 
 prayer could be granted. Too well she felt that her mis- 
 sion must be worked out to the end, and that the end 
 was now at hand. All went wrong from this time. She 
 herself had created the funds out of which the French 
 restoration should grow; but she was not suffered to 
 witness their development, or their prosperous applica- 
 tion. More than one military plan was entered upon 
 
272 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 which she did not approve. But she still continued to 
 expose her person as before. Severe wounds had not 
 taught her caution. And at length, in a sortie from 
 Compi6gne (whether through treacherous collusion on 
 the part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), she 
 was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally sur- 
 rendered to the English. 
 
 Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course 
 under English influence, was conducted in chief by the 
 Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to 
 English interests, and hoping, by favour of the English 
 leaders, to reach the highest preferment. Bishop that 
 art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal that mayest be, 
 were the words that sounded continually in his ear; 
 and doubtless a whisper of visions still higher, of a 
 triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, some- 
 times stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to 
 keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of 
 the English. True. But it does not better the case for 
 his countryman — that, being an accomplice in the crime, 
 making himself the leader in the persecution against 
 the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in the 
 spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. 
 
 Never from the foundations of the earth was there such 
 a trial as this, if it were laid Open in all its beauty of 
 defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of 
 France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot 
 by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, 
 quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to 
 its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by 
 many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, 
 and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not 
 scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, 
 even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of 
 judges examining the prisoner against himself; seduc- 
 ing him, by fraud, into treacherous conclusions against 
 his own head ; using the terrors of their power for ex- 
 torting confessions from the frailty of hope ; nay (which 
 is worse), using the blandishments of condescension and 
 snaky kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude 
 
JOAN OF ARC 273 
 
 those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? Wicked 
 judges! Barbarian jurisprudence! that, sitting in your 
 own conceit on the summits of social wisdom, have yet 
 failed to learn the first principles of criminal justice ; sit 
 ye humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl from 
 Domr^my, that tore your webs of cruelty into shreds 
 and dust. " Would you examine me as a witness against 
 myself? " was the question by which many times she 
 defied their arts. Continually she showed that their in- 
 terrogations were irrelevant to any business before the 
 court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against 
 her. 
 
 General questions were proposed to her on points 
 of casuistical divinity ; two-edged questions, which not 
 one of themselves could have answered, without, on the 
 one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), 
 or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of 
 self-esteem. Next came a wretched Dominican, that 
 pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the 
 Bible, would tax every one of its miracles with unsound- 
 ness. . . . 
 
 Her answer to this, if there were room to place the 
 whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. 
 Another thought to entrap her by asking what language 
 the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked ; as though 
 heavenly counsels could want polyglot interpreters for 
 every word, or that God needed language at all in whis- 
 pering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a worse 
 devil, who asked her whether the archangel Michael had 
 appeared naked. Not comprehending the vile insinua- 
 tion, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her simplicity 
 that it might be the costliness of suitable robes which 
 caused the demur, asked them if they fancied God, who 
 clothed the flowers of the valleys, unable to find raiment 
 for his servants. The answer of Joanna moves a smile 
 of tenderness, but the disappointment of her judges 
 makes one laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, 
 who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if that 
 greater Father, whom she believed herself to have been 
 serving, did not retain the power of dispensing with his 
 
 T 
 
274 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 own rules, or had not said, that for a less cause than 
 martyrdom, man and woman should leave both father 
 and mother. 
 
 On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long pro- 
 ceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that 
 she had been poisoned. It was not poison. Nobody had 
 any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. Michelet, 
 whose sympathies with all feelings are so quick, that 
 one would gladly see them always as justly directed, 
 reads the case most truly. Joanna had a two-fold malady. 
 She was visited by a paroxysm of the complaint called 
 home-sickness ; the cruel nature of her imprisonment, and 
 its length, could not but point her solitary thoughts, in 
 darkness and in chains (for chained she was), to Dom- 
 rdmy. And the season, which was the most heavenly 
 period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. 
 That was one of 'her maladies — nostalgia, as medicine 
 calls it; the other was weariness and exhaustion from 
 daily combats with malice. She saw that everybody 
 hated her, and thirsted for her blood ; nay, many kind- 
 hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, 
 as regarded all political charges, had their natural feel- 
 ings warped by the belief that she had dealings with 
 fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was 
 not the misery : the misery was, that this consummation 
 could not be reached without so much intermediate 
 strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where 
 chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a 
 moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, did she 
 contend? Knowing that she would reap nothing from 
 answering her persecutors, why did she not retire by 
 silence from the superfluous contest? It was because 
 her quick and eager loyalty to truth would not suffer her 
 to see it darkened by frauds, which she could expose, 
 but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not ; 
 it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul, which 
 taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to 
 her punishment, but taught her not to submit — no, not 
 for a moment — to calumny as to facts, or to miscon- 
 struction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries 
 
JOAN OF ARC 27s 
 
 all around the court taking down her words. That was 
 meant for no good to her. But the end does not always 
 correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might say to 
 herself — these words that will be used against me to- 
 morrow and the next day, perhaps in some nobler genera- 
 tion may rise again for my justification. Yes, Joanna, 
 they are rising even now in Paris, and for more than 
 justification. 
 
 Woman, sister — there are some things which you do 
 not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever 
 will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will ever pro- 
 duce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a 
 Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or 
 a great scholar. By which last is meant — not one who 
 depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an 
 infinite and electrical power of combination ; bringing 
 together from the four winds, like the angel of the 
 resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's 
 bones, into the unity of breathing life. If you can create 
 yourselves into any of these great creators, why have 
 you not? 
 
 Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find a 
 Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, and 
 with the love that burns in depths of admiration, I ac- 
 knowledge that you can do one thing as well as the best 
 of us men — a greater thing than even Milton is known 
 to have done, or Michael Angelo — you can die grandly, 
 and as goddesses would die, were goddesses mortal. 
 If any distant worlds (which inay be the case) are so far 
 ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources, as to see 
 distinctly through their telescopes all that we do on 
 earth, what is the grandest sight to which we ever treat 
 them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter 
 Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas? Oh no! 
 my friend : suggest something better ; these are baubles 
 to them; they see in other worlds, in their own, far 
 better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for 
 it, are nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, 
 then, we have to show them is a scaffold on the morn- 
 ing of execution. I assure you there is a strong muster 
 
276 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of 
 those who happen to find themselves occupying the 
 right hemisphere for a peep at us. How, then, if it be 
 announced in some such telescopic world by those who 
 make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our news- 
 papers, whose language they have long since deciphered, 
 that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a 
 woman? How, if it be published in that distant world, 
 that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of 
 many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should 
 be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming 
 forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morn- 
 ing air her head, turned grey by sorrow, daughter of 
 Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, 
 as one that worships death? How, if it were the noble 
 Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with 
 the loveliest of persons, that with homage waiting upon 
 her smiles wherever she turned her face to scatter them 
 — homage that followed those smiles as surely as the 
 carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the re- 
 appearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills 
 — yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust 
 upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance from hell 
 for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! these were spectacles 
 indeed for those sympathizing people in distant worlds ; 
 and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom 
 themselves, because they could not testify their wrath, 
 could not bear witness to the strength of love and to the 
 fury of hatred that burned within them at such scenes ; 
 could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious 
 dust which rested in the catacombs of earth. 
 
 Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a 
 scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But for the departing 
 minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the fare- 
 well crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and 
 flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured 
 and the torturer have the same truce from carnal tor- 
 ment; both sink together into sleep; together both 
 
JOAN OF ARC 277 
 
 sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists 
 were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd 
 girl — when the pavilions of life were closing up their 
 shadowy curtains about you — let us try, through the 
 gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your 
 separate visions. 
 
 The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, 
 from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, 
 she, from her duel with fire, as she entered her last 
 dream — saw Domr^my, saw the fountain of Domr^my, 
 saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had 
 wandered. That Easter festival, which man had denied 
 to her languishing heart — that resurrection of spring- 
 time, which the darkness of dungeons had intercepted 
 from her, hungering after the glorious liberty of forests 
 — were by God given back into her hands, as jewels 
 that had been stolen from her by robbers. With those, 
 perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into 
 ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of child- 
 hood. By special privilege, for her might be created, in 
 this farewell dream, a second childhood, innocent as the 
 first ; but not, like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful 
 mission in the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. 
 The storm was weathered, the skirts even of that mighty 
 storm were drawing off. The blood that she was to 
 reckon for had been exacted ; the tears that she was to 
 shed in secret had been paid to the last. The hatred to 
 herself in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been 
 suffered, had been survived. And in her last fight upon 
 the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously 
 she had tasted the stings of death. For all, except this 
 comfort from her farewell dream, she had died — died, 
 amidst the tears of ten thousand enemies — died, amidst 
 the drums and trumpets of armies — died, amidst peals 
 redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys, from the 
 saluting clarions of martyrs. 
 
 Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burdened man 
 is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful 
 of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror — 
 rising (like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian 
 
278 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 deserts) from the fens of death — most of all are reflected 
 the sweet countenances which the man has laid in ruins; 
 therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering your 
 final dream, saw Domr^my. That fountain, of which 
 the witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes 
 in pure morning dews : but neither dews, nor the holy 
 dawn, could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent 
 blood upon its surface. By the fountain, bishop, you 
 saw a woman seated, that hid her face. But as you, 
 draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. Would 
 Domr^my know them again for the features of her child? 
 Ah, hut you know them, bishop, well! Oh, mercy! what 
 a groan was ihai which the servants, waiting outside 
 the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his labour- 
 ing heart, as at this moment he turned away from the 
 fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests afar 
 off. Yet not so to escape the woman, whom once again 
 he must behold before he dies. In the forests to which 
 he prays for pity, will he find a respite? What a tumult, 
 what a gathering of feet is there ! In glades, where only 
 wild deer should run, armies and nations are as- 
 sembling ; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phan- 
 toms that belong to departed hours. There is the great 
 English Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of 
 Winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and made 
 no sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to 
 the shelter of thickets. What building is that which 
 hands so rapid are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold? 
 Will they burn the child of Domr^my a second time? 
 No : it is a tribunal that rises to the' clouds ; and two 
 nations stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my 
 Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and 
 again number the hours for the innocent? Ah no ! he is 
 the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the 
 mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to 
 their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are 
 sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh ! but this is 
 sudden. My lord, have you no counsel? "Counsel I 
 have none: in heaven above, or on earth beneath, 
 counsellor there is none now that would take a brief 
 
JOAlSf OF ARC 279 
 
 from me: all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? 
 Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the 
 crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search 
 in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of some- 
 body that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh 
 from Domr^my? Who is she in bloody coronation robes 
 from Rheims ? Who is she that cometh with blackened 
 flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, 
 the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, 
 whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, 
 that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that 
 would plead for you: yes, bishop, she — when heaven 
 and earth are silent. 
 
SATIRE 
 
 ON MURDER, CONSIDERED AS ONE OF 
 THE FINE ARTS 
 
 [Next to the Confessions the satirical piece with this heading is 
 the best known of De Quincey's writings. It gives him a definite 
 claim to a place among the English humourists, though humour 
 and pathos are scattered up and down all his writings. In this 
 " murder" series De Quincey, as he pointed out himself, was pur- 
 suing the same vein of extravagant satire, or ironical burlesque, 
 which Swift had tapped in his " Modest Proposal " for the cooking 
 and eating of superfluous Irish children. But while the crude and, 
 savage plainness of the Dean's manner makes his jest inhuman, , 
 De Quincey is easy and playful throughout, and never allows us ■ 
 to forget that his rather horrible text is only the excuse for a gro- 
 tesque extravaganza. You rise from the "Modest Proposal" with 
 a shudder, from Murder as a Fine Art with a hearty and unforced 
 laughter. Besides, as De Quincey has also observed, the cooking 
 and eating of babies is not an obvious subject of human contempla- 
 tion : our thoughts do not naturally turn to infants as articles of 
 diet. Whereas murder is a theme of the profoundest intellectual 
 interest, quite apart from its horror; as long as man's blood is 
 shed by man the mind will ponder over the methods, the circum- 
 stances, the scenical accessories, of the crime. De Quincey's 
 solemn irony had here a foundation, as all irony, all humour should 
 have, in something that is large, elemental, profound, rooted in the 
 depths of our nature. 
 
 ■The "murder" essays must be read in extenso, for it is difficult 
 to convey their elaborate parody, and mock seriousness of 
 argument, and the rollicking humour to which they work up at the 
 close, by means of extracts. The papers are here given from De 
 Quincey's revised reprint in the Collective Edition of the two 
 chapters which appeared originally in Blackwood for February 
 1827, and November 1839.] 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT OF A MAN MORBIDLY VIRTUOUS 
 
 Most of us, who read books, have probably heard of a 
 Society for the Promotion of Vice, of the Hell-Fire 
 
 z8o 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 281 
 
 Club, founded in the last century by Sir Francis Dash- 
 wood, etc. At Brighton I think it was, that a Society 
 was formed for the Suppression of Virtue; That society 
 was itself suppressed ; but I am sorry to say that another 
 exists in London, of a character still more atrocious." In 
 tendency, it may be denominated a Society for the En- 
 couragement of Murder; but, according to their own 
 delicate ' e{i<j>tiixitrfi6s, it is styled, The Society of Con- 
 noisseurs in Murder. They profess to be curious in 
 homicide ; amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes 
 of carnage; and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh 
 atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe 
 bring up, they meet and criticize as they would a pic- 
 ture, statue. Or other work of art. But I need not 
 trouble myself with any attempt to describe the spirit of 
 their proceedings, as the reader will collect ihai much 
 better from one of the Monthly Lectures read before the 
 society last year. This has fallen into my hands accid- 
 entally, in spite of all the vigilance exercised to keep 
 their transactions from the public eye. The publication 
 of it will alarm them ; and my purpose is, that it should. 
 For I would much rather put them down quietly, by an 
 appeal to public opinion, than by such an exposure of 
 names as would follow an appeal to Bow Street ; which 
 last appeal, however, if this should fail, I must really 
 resort to. Forjny intense virtue will not put up with 
 such things in a Christian land. Even in a heathen 
 land, the toleration "of" murder^=^viz. , in the dreadful 
 shows of the amphitheatre — was felt by a Christian 
 writer to be the most crying reproach of the public 
 morals. This writer was Lactantius; and with his 
 words, as singularly applicable to the present occasion, 
 I shall conclude: — " Quid tarn horribile," says he, " tam 
 tetrum, quam hominis trucidatio? Ideo severissimis 
 legibus vita nostra munitur ; ideo bella execrabilia sunt. 
 Invenit tamen consuetudo quatenus homicidium sine 
 bello ac sine legibus faciat: et hoc sibi voluptas quod 
 scelus vindicavit. Quod si interesse homicidio sceleris 
 conscientia est, — et eidem facinori spectator obstrictus 
 est cui et admissor ; ergo et in his gladiatorum caedibus 
 
282 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 non minus cruore profunditur qui spectat, quam ille qui 
 facit: nee potest esse immunis a sanguine qui voluit 
 efFundi; aut videri non interfecisse, qui interfectori et 
 favit et proemium postulavit." "What is so dreadful," 
 says Lactantius, " whaLso dismal and revolting, as th e 
 murder of a humaji_creature? Therefore it is, that life 
 for us is protected by laws the most rigorous : therefore 
 it is, that wars are objects of execration. And yet the 
 traditional usage of Rome has devised a mode of author- 
 izing murder apart from war, and in defiance of law ; 
 and the demands of taste (voluptas) are now become the 
 same as those of abandoned guilt." Let the Society of 
 Gentlemen Amateurs consider this ; and let me call their 
 especial attention to the last sentence, which is so 
 weighty, that I shall attempt to convey it in English: 
 " Now, if merely tobe present atja^murder fastens on a 
 man the character of an accomplice ; if barel y to he a 
 spectator involves usin one commqn_g;uilt_withjhg4ifit. 
 petratdr, it follows, of necessity, thatj^ in_the^__murders. 
 of the amphitheatre7,the hand which inflicts the_ fatal 
 blow is not more deeply imbrued in .blood than his 
 who passively looks on;' neither can he be clear of 
 blood who has countenanced its shedding; nor that man 
 seem other than a participator in murder, who gives his 
 applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes on his 
 behalf." The " proemia postulavit" I have not yet heard 
 charged upon the Gentlemen Amateurs of London, 
 though undoubtedly their proceedings tend to that ; but 
 the ' ' interfectori favit " is implied in the very title of this 
 association, and expressed in every line of the lecture 
 which follows. 
 
 X. Y. Z. 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 Gentlemen, — I have had the honour to be appointed 
 by your committee to the trying task of reading the 
 Williams' Lecture on Murder considered as one of the 
 Fine Arts ; a task which might be easy enough three or 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 283 
 
 four centuries ago, when the art was little understood, 
 and few great models had been exhibited; but in this 
 age, when masterpieces of excellence have been exe- 
 cuted by professional men, it must be evident, that in 
 the style of criticism applied to them, the public will look 
 for something of a corresponding improvement. Prac- 
 tice and theory must advance pari passu. People begin 
 to see that something more goes to t hg_gO-'Hpo'''ti"" "fa 
 Tme murdeFthan two blockheads to kill and be killed- 
 
 knife — a purse — and a dark Jane^ Design^ gentlemen, 
 grouping;^ li^tand_shade, poetry, sentiment, are now 
 _3eemed Indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. 
 Williams has exalted the idearof murder to all of us ; ' 
 and to me, therefore, in particular, has deepened the 
 arduousness of my task. Like iEschylus or Milton in 
 poetry, like Michael Angelo in painting, he has carried 
 his art to a point of colossal sublimity; and, as Mr. 
 Wordsworth observes, has in a manner ' ' created the 
 taste by which he is to be enjoyed." To sketch the his- 
 tory of the art, and to examine its principles critically, 
 now remains as a duty for the connoisseur, and for judges 
 of quite another stamp from his Majesty's Judges of 
 Assize. 
 
 Before I begin, let me say a word or two to certain 
 prigs, who affect to speak of our society as if it were in 
 some degree immoral in its tendency. Immoral! Jupiter 
 protect me, gentlemen, what is it that people mean? I 
 am for morality, and always shall be, and for virtue, and 
 all that ; and I do affirm, and always shall (let what will 
 come of it) that murder is an improper Jina. of ceaduct, 
 highly improper; and I do not stick to assert, that any 
 man who deals in murder, must have very incorrect 
 ways of thinking, and truly inaccurate principles; and 
 
 ' Qohn Williams murdered the occupants of two houses (those 
 of Mr. Marr and Mr. Williamson) in Ratcliffe Highway in December 
 181 1.. After the second murder he was captured, and committed 
 suicide in prison. A circumstantial account of Williams's crimes is 
 given by De Quincey in a long Postscript which he appended to 
 this Essay when he reprinted it in the Collective Edition of his 
 writings. — S. L.] 
 
284 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 so farjrpm aiding and abetting hijn by pointin g out his 
 victim's hidingiE&cej_as'a great" moralist ' of G ernia ny 
 declared it to be every good man's duty to do, I would 
 subscribe one sHillihg and sixpence to have Him a££re- 
 hended," which is more by eighteenpence than the most 
 eminent moralists have hitherto subscribed for lEEat 
 purpose. But what then? Everything in this world has 
 two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of 
 by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit, and 
 at the Old Bailey) ; and that, I confess, is its weak side; 
 or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the- Germans 
 call it — that is, in relation to good taste. 
 
 To illustrate this, I will urge the authority of three 
 eminent persons; viz., S. T. Coleridge, Aristotle, and 
 Mr. Howship the surgeon. To begin with S. T. C. One 
 night, many years ago, I was drinking tea with him in 
 Berners Street (which, by the way, for a short street, 
 has been uncommonly fruitful in men of genius). Others 
 were there besides myself; and, amidst some carnal 
 considerations of tea and toast, we were all imbibing a 
 dissertation on Plotinus from the Attic lips of S. T. C. 
 Suddenly a cry arose of, " Fire— fire ! " upon which all of 
 us, master and disciples, Plato and 01 inpi. rov nXaVui/a, 
 rushed out, eager for the spectacle. The fire was in Ox- 
 ford Street, at a pianoforte-maker's; and, as it pro- 
 mised to be a conflagration of merit, I was sorry that 
 my engagements forced me away from Mr. Coleridge's 
 party, before matters had come to a crisis. Some days 
 after, meeting with my Platonic host, I reminded him of 
 the case, and begged to know how that very promising 
 exhibition had terminated. "Oh, sir," said he, "it 
 
 ' Kant — who carried his demands of unconditional veracity to 
 so extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an 
 innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on 
 being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and -to point 
 out the retreat of the innocent person, under any certainty of 
 causing murder. Lest this doctrine should be supposed to have 
 escaped him in any heat of dispute, on being taxed with it by a 
 celebrated French writer, he solemnly re-affirmed it, with his 
 reasons. 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 285 
 
 turned out so ill that we damned it unanimously." Now, 
 does any man suppose that Mr. Coleridge — who, for all 
 he is too fat to be a person of active virtue, is un- 
 doubtedly a worthy Christian — that this good S. T. C, 
 I say, was an incendiary, or capable of wishing any ill 
 to the poor man and his pianofortes (many of them, 
 doubtless, with the additional keys)? On the contrary, I 
 know him to be that sort of man, that I durst stake my 
 life upon it, he would have worked an engine in a case 
 of necessity, although rather of the fattest for such fiery 
 trials of his virtue. But how stood the case? Virtue was 
 in no request. On the arrival of the fire engines, morality 
 had devolved wholly on the insurance office. This being 
 the case, he had a right to gratify his taste. He had left 
 his tea. Was he to have nothing in return? 
 
 I contend that the most virtuous man, under the pre- 
 mises stated, was entitled to make a luxury of the fire, 
 and to hiss it, as he would any other performance that 
 raised expectations in the public mind which afterwards 
 it disappointed.' Again, to cite another great authority, 
 what says the Stagirite? He (in the Fifth Book, I think 
 it is, of his Metaphysics) describes what he calls kXettt-^i' 
 riXetov — i.e., aj^erfectjldef; and, as to Mr. Howship, in 
 a work of his on Indigestion, he makes no scruple to 
 talk with admiration of a certain ulcer which he had 
 seen, and which he styles '^a_beautiful ulcer." Now, 
 will any man pretend, that, abstractedly considered, a 
 thief could appear to Aristotle a perfect character, or 
 that Mr. Howship could be enamoured of an ulcer? 
 Aristotle, it is well known, was himself so very moral a 
 character, that, not content with writing his Nicho- 
 machean Ethics, in one volume octavo, he also wrote 
 another system, called Magna Moralia, or Big Ethics. 
 Now, it_is imposs ible that a ma nvjio composes an y 
 gthic s at airrSJ^^^Ti ttle. should admir e a thi ^ MlH-Se; 
 and^as to Mr. Howship, it is well known that he makes 
 war upon all ulcers, and, without suffering himself to be 
 seduced by their charms, endeavours to banish them 
 from the County of Middlesex. But the truth is, that, 
 however objectionable per se, yet, relatively to others of 
 
286 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 their class, both a thief and an ulcer may hay£mfinjte 
 degrees p/. merit. They are both impeffections, it is 
 true ; but, to be imperfect being their essence, the very 
 greatness of their imperfection becomes their perfection. 
 Spartam nactus es, hanc exoma. A thief like Autolycus 
 or the once famous George Barrington, and a grim 
 phagedsenic ulcer, superbly defined, and running regu- 
 larly through all its natural stages, may no less justly be 
 regarded as ideals after their kind, than the most fault- 
 less moss-rose amongst flowers, in its progress from bud 
 to "bright consummate flower;" or, amongst human 
 flowers, the most magnificent young female, apparelled 
 in the pomp of womanhood. And thus not only the 
 ideal of an inkstand may be imagined (as Mr. Coleridge 
 illustrated in his celebrated correspondence with Mr. 
 Blackwood), in which, by the way, there is nbt so much, 
 because an inkstand is a laudable sort of thing, and a 
 valuable member of society ; but even imperfection itself 
 may have its ideal or perfect state. 
 
 Really, gentlemen, I beg pardon for so much philo- 
 sophy at one time ; and now let me apply it. When a 
 murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense — not done, 
 not even (according , to m^iLernpurism) 6ei»^_,^gag,.but_ 
 only going to be done — and a rumour of it comes to our 
 ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose 
 it over and done, and that you can say of it, TETiXetTToi, 
 It is finished, or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) 
 cipyaarai, Done it is : it is a /ati accompli; suppose__tljg 
 poor murdered man to be out of his pain,_ and the rascaL. 
 that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither ; sup- 
 pose , Jasti;^;_that we_have_done • QJif^est, by putt ing gut 
 our legs^.to trip^up the fello.wjnhia, flight, but all to no 
 purpose — "abiit, evasit, excessit, erupit," etc. — ^why, 
 then, I say, vviiat^^^ejise of any more virtue? Enough 
 has been given fo morality r now comes the turn "fff 
 Taste and the Fine Arts. A sad thing it was, no doubt, 
 very sad ; but we can't mend it. Therefore l et us mak e 
 
 the ^est_of a bad^jnatterj andj^^as^jj_J^g irnjgnggibleiltP 
 
 Tiammer a^^ng out of it ?qr mpraLpurposeSjigtus_ 
 treat it aesthetically, and see if it will turn to acfioiint_in 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 287 
 
 that way. Such is the logic of a sensible man, and what 
 follows? We dry up our tears, and have the satisfaction, 
 perhaps, to discover that a transaction, which, morally 
 considered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand 
 upon, 5daen.tidedfey.^ria6iples-Q£Ta.stfi,jMi3isuMit_tahe 
 a very meritodous performance. Thus all the world is 
 pleased ; the old proverb is justified, that it is an ill wind 
 which blows nobody good ; the amateur, from looking 
 bilious and sulky, by too close an attention to virtue, 
 begins to pick up his crumbs ; and general hilarity pre- 
 vails. Virtue has had her day; and henceforward. 
 Virtu, so nearly the same thing as to differ only by a 
 single letter (which surely is not worth haggling or hig- 
 gling about) — Virtit, I repeat, and Connoisseurship, 
 have leave to provide for themselves. Upon this prin- 
 ciple, gentlemen, I propose to guide your studies, from 
 Cain to Mr. Thurtell.' Through this great gallery of 
 murder, therefore, together let us wander hand in hand, 
 in delighted admiration ; while I endeavour to point your 
 attention to the objects of profitable criticismu- 
 
 The first murder is familiar to you all. A§ the inventor 
 of_murd^, and the father of the art, Cain_must^ haye 
 been a man of first-rate genius. All the Cains were men 
 of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, or some 
 such thing. But, whatever might be the originality and 
 genius of the artist, every art was then in its infancy, 
 and the works turned out from each several studio, must 
 be criticized with a recollection of that fact. Even Tubal's 
 work would probably be little approved at this day in 
 Sheffield ; and therefore of Cain (Cain senior, I mean) it 
 is no disparagement to say, that his performance was 
 but so-so. Milton, however, is supposed to have thought 
 differently. By his way of relating the case, it should 
 seem to have been rather a pet murder with him, for he 
 
 ^ [John Thurtell, son of a mayor of Norwich, murdered William 
 Weare on the St. Albans road in 1823. He made a vigorous 
 speech in his own defence, but was convicted and hanged. — S.L 
 
 H 
 
288 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 retouches it with an apparent anxiety for its picturesque 
 effect : 
 
 Whereat he inly raged ; and, as they talk'd, 
 Smote him into the midriff with a stone 
 That beat out life : he fell ; and, deadly pale, 
 Groan'd out his soul Tuith gushing blood effused. 
 
 Par, Lost, B. xi. 
 
 Upon this, Richardson the painter, who had an eye 
 for effect, remarks as follows, in his Notes on Paradise 
 Lost, p. 497: "It has been thought," says he, "that 
 Cain beat (as the common saying is) the breath out of 
 his brother's body with a great stone ; Milton gives in to 
 this, with the addition, however, of a large wound." In 
 this place it was a judicious addition ; for the rudeness 
 of the weapon, unless raised and en riched, b y a warm , 
 sanguinary colpunrfg,~Tias' too much^sflthe^ngked„gi£jjf 
 the' savage school ; as if the deed were perpetrated by a 
 Polypheme ^without science, premeditation, or a nything 
 but a mjJEtpn_bone; HoweveF71~arn"cHieflyT5l^a§ea with 
 tSe improvement, as it implies that Milton was an 
 amateur. As to Shakspere, there never was a better; 
 witness his description of the murdered Duncan, Banquo, 
 etc. ; and above all, witness his incomparable miniature, 
 in Henry VI, of the murdered Gloucester.' 
 
 ' The passage occurs in the second part (act 3) of Henry VI, 
 and is doubly remarkable — first, for its critical fidelity to nature, 
 were the description meant only for poetic effect ; but, secondly, 
 for \he judicial value impressed upon it when offered (as here it is 
 offered) in silent corroboration legally of a dreadful whisper, all at 
 once arising, that foul play had been dealing with a great prince, 
 clothed with an official state character. It is the Duke of Glouces- 
 ter, faithful guardian and loving uncle of the simple and imbecile 
 king, who has been found dead in his bed. How shall this event 
 be interpreted? Had he died under some natural visitation of 
 Providence, or by violence from his enemies? The two court fac- 
 tions read the circumstantial indications of the case into opposite 
 constructions. The affectionate and afflicted young king, whose 
 position almost pledges him to neutrality, cannot, nevertheless, 
 disguise his overwhelming suspicions of hellish conspiracy in the 
 background. Upon this, a leader of the opposite faction en- 
 deavours to break the force of this royal frankjiess, countersigned 
 and echoed most impressively by Lord Warwick. "What in~ 
 stance," he asks — meaning by instance not example or illustration. 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 389 
 
 The foundation of the art having been once laid, it is 
 pitiable to see how it slumbered without improvement 
 for ages. In fact, I shall now be obliged to leap over all 
 murders, sacred and profane, as utterly unworthy of 
 notice, until long after the Christian era. Greece, even 
 in the age of Pericles, produced no murder, or at least 
 none is recorded, of the slightest merit ; and Rome had 
 too little originality of genius in any of the arts to 
 succeed where her model failed her.' In fact, the Latin 
 
 as thoug-htless commentators have constantly supposed, but in the 
 common scholastic sense — what instantia, what pressure of argu- 
 ment, what urg-ent plea, can Lord Warwick put forward in support 
 of his "dreadful oath" — an oath, namely, that, as surely as he 
 hopes for the life eternal, so surely 
 
 I do believe that violent hands were laid 
 Upon the life of this thrice fam^d duke. 
 
 Ostensibly the challenge is to Warwick, but substantially it is 
 meant for the king. And the reply of Warwick, the argument on 
 which he builds, lies in a solemn array of all the changes worked 
 in the duke's features by death, as irreconcileable with any other 
 hypothesis than that this death had been a violent one. What argu- 
 ment have I that Gloucester died under the hands of murderers? 
 Why, the following roll-call of awful changes, affecting head, face, 
 nostrils, eyes, hands, etc., which do not belong indifferently to 
 any mode of death, but exclusively to a death by violence : 
 
 But see, his face is black and full of blood ; 
 
 His eyeballs farther out than when he lived, 
 
 Staring full ghastly, like a strangled man ; 
 
 His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling; 
 
 His hands abroad display 'd, as one that grasp'd 
 
 And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. 
 
 Look on the sheets : — his hair, you see, is sticking ; 
 
 His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged. 
 
 Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged. 
 
 It cannot be but he was murder'd here ; 
 
 The least of all these signs were probable. 
 
 As the logic of the case, let us not for a moment forget, that, to be 
 of any value, the signs and indications pleaded must be sternly 
 diagnostic. The discrimination sought for is between death that is 
 natural, and death that is violent. All indications, therefore, that 
 belong equally and indifferently to either, are equivocal, useless, 
 and alien from the very purpose of the signs here registered by 
 Shakspere. 
 
 ' At the time of writing this, I held the common opinion upon 
 that subject. Mere inconsideration it was that led to so erroneous 
 
 U 
 
ago THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 language sinks under the very idea of murder. "The 
 man was murdered;" — how will this sound in Latin? 
 Interfectus est, interemptus est — which simply expresses 
 a homicide; and hence the Christian Latinity of the 
 middle ages was obliged to introduce a new word, such 
 as the feebleness of classic conceptions never ascended 
 to. Murdratus est, says the sublimer dialect of Gothic 
 ages. Meantime, the Jewish school of murder kept alive 
 whatever was yet known in the art, and gradually trans- 
 ferred it to the Western World. Indeed, the Jewish 
 school was always respectable, even in its medieval 
 stages, as the case of Hugh of Lincoln shows, which 
 was honoured with the approbation of Chaucer, on 
 occasion of another performance from the same school, 
 which, in his Canterbury Tales, he puts into the mouth 
 of the Lady Abbess. 
 
 Recurring, however, for one moment, to classical 
 antiquity, I cannot but think that Catiline, Clodius, 
 and some of that coterie, would have made first-rate 
 artists; and it is on all accounts to be regretted, that 
 the priggism of Cicero robbed his country of the only 
 chance she had for distinction in this line. As the subject 
 of a murder, no person could have answered better than 
 himself. Oh Gemini! how he would have howled with 
 panic, if he had heard Cethegus under his bed. It would 
 have been truly diverting to have listened to him ; and 
 satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he would have preferred 
 the utile of creeping into a closet, or even into a cloaca, 
 to the honestum of facing the bold artist. 
 
 a judgment. Since then, on closer reflection, I have seen ample 
 reason to retract it : satisfied I now am, that the Romans, in every 
 art which allowed to them any parity of advantages, had merits as 
 racy, native, and characteristic, as the best of the Greeks. Else- 
 where I shall plead this cause circumstantially, with the hope of 
 converting the reader. In the meantime, I was anxious to lodge 
 my protest against this ancient error ; an error which commenced 
 in the time-serving sycophancy of Virgil the court^oet. With the 
 base purpose of gratifying Augustus in his vindictive spite against 
 Cicero, and by way of introducing, therefore, the little clause, 
 ordbunt Causas melius as applying to all Athenian against all 
 Roman orators, Virgil did not scruple to sacrifice by wholesale the 
 just pretensions of his compatriots collectively. 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 291 
 
 To come now to the dark ages — (by which we that 
 speak with precision mean, par excellence, the tenth 
 century as a meridian line, and the two centuries imme- 
 diately before and after, full midnight being from a.d. 888 
 to 1 1 1 1) — these ages ought naturally to be favourable to 
 the art of murder ; as they were to church architecture, 
 to stained glass, etc. ; and, accordingly, about the latter 
 end of this period, there arose a great character in our 
 art, I mean the Old Man of the Mountains. He was a 
 shining light, indeed, and I need not tell you, that the 
 very word ' ' assassin " is deduced from him. So keen 
 an amateur was he, that on one occasion, when his own 
 life was attempted by a favourite assassin, he was so 
 much pleased with the talent shown, that, notwithstand- 
 ing the failure of the artist, he created him a duke upon 
 the spot, with remainder to the female line, and settled 
 a pension on him for three lives. Assassination is a 
 branch of the art which demands a separate notice ; and 
 it is possible that I may devote an entire lecture to it. 
 
 Meantime, I shall only observe how odd it is, that this 
 branch of the art has flourished by intermitting fits. It 
 never rains, but it pours. Our own age can boast of 
 some fine specimens, such, for instance, as Bellingham's 
 affair with the prime minister Percival, the Due de 
 Berri's case at the Parisian Opera House, the Mar^chal 
 Bessieres' case at Avignon ; and about two and a half 
 centuries ago, there was a most brilliant constellation of 
 murders in this class. I need hardly say, that I allude 
 especially to those seven splendid works — ^tlje assas- 
 sinations of William I, of Orange; of the three French 
 HenrieSj, viz. — Henri, Duke of Guise, that had! a fancy 
 for the throne of France; of Henrj. Ill, last prince in the 
 line of Valois, who then occupied that throne ; and finally^ 
 ^il.Henri IV, his brother-in-law, who succeeded to that 
 ' throne as first prince in the line of Bourbon ; not eighteen 
 years later came the sth. on the_ roll, viz. , that of. our. 
 Duke of Buckingham (which you will find excellently 
 described in the letters published by Sir Henry Ellis, of 
 the British Museum), 6tbly.sX .Gustavus MolEto-S, aad 
 7thly of Wallenstein. What a glorious Pleiad of murders ! 
 
292 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 And it increases one's admiration — that this bright con- 
 stellation of artistic displays, comprehending 3 Majesties, 
 3 Serene Highnesses, and i Excellency, all lay within so 
 narrow a field of time as between a.d. 1588 and 1635. 
 The King of Sweden's assassination, by the by, is 
 doubted by many writers, Harte amongst others; but 
 they are wrong. He was murdered ; and I consider his 
 murder unique in its excellence ; for he was murdered at 
 noon- day, and on the field of battle — a feature of original 
 conception, which occurs in no other work of art that I 
 remember. To conceive the idea of a secret murder on 
 private account, as enclosed within a little parenthesis 
 on a vast stage of public battle-carnage, is like Hamlet's 
 subtle device of a tragedy within a tragedy. Indeed, all 
 of these assassinations may be studied with profit by 
 the advanced connoisseur. They are all of them exernr- 
 plaria, model murders, pattern murders, of which one 
 may say — 
 
 NoctumS. versate manu, versate diurnl; 
 
 especially noctum&. 
 
 In these assassinations of princes and statesmen, there 
 is nothing to excite our wonder ; important changes often 
 depend on their deaths ; and, from the eminence on which 
 they stand, they are peculiarly exposed to the aim of 
 every artist who happens to be possessed by the craving 
 for scenical effect. But there is another class of assas- 
 sinations, which has prevailed from an early period of 
 the seventeenth century, that really does surprise me ; I 
 mean the assassination of philosophers. For, gentlemen, 
 it is a fact, that every philosopher of eminence for the two 
 last centuries has either been murdered, or, at the least, 
 been very near it ; insomuch, that if a man calls himself 
 a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest 
 assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke's 
 philosophy in particular, I think it an unanswerabte 
 objection (if we needed any), that, although he carried his 
 throat about with him in this world for seventy-two 
 years, no man ever condescended to cut it. As these 
 cases of philosophers are not much known, and are 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 293 
 
 generally good and well composed in their circum- 
 stances, I shall here read an excursus on that subject, 
 chiefly by way of showing my own learning. 
 
 The first great philosopher of the seventeenth century 
 (if we except Bacon and Galileo) was Des Cartes ; and if 
 ever one could say of a man that he was all bui murdered 
 — ^murdered within an inch — one must say it of him. The 
 case was this, as reported by Baillet in his " Vie De M. 
 Des Cartes," torn. I. p. 102-3. I n the year 162 1. when 
 Des Ca rtes might be about twenty-six years old, hgjvas 
 louring about as~lisual ( for^jie_was as r estless ^ag^a 
 hyena) ; and, cqming;_to_th£ JElbej|_eithir7gt_GhicSstadt 
 or at Ilamburgh, he took^ s hippin g forjast Friezland . 
 What he couldwant in East Friezland no man has ever 
 discovered ; and perhaps he took this into consideration 
 himself; tor, on reaching Embden, he resolved to sail 
 instantly for Wesi Friezland ; and being very impatient 
 of delay, he hired a bark, with a few mariners to navigate 
 it. No sooner had he got out to sea, than he made a 
 pleasing discovery, viz., t hat he had shut himself u pJa. 
 a den of murderers. His crew, says M. baillet, he soon 
 found out to be " des sc^l^rats " — not amateurs, gentle- 
 men, as we are, but professional men — the height of 
 whose ambition at that moment was to cut his individual 
 throat. But the story is too pleasing to be abridged ; I 
 shall give it, therefore, accurately, from the French of 
 his biographer: " M. Des Cartes had no company but 
 that of his servant, with whom he was conversing in 
 French. The sailors, who took him for a foreign mer- 
 chant, rather than a cavalier, concluded that he must 
 have money about him. Accordingly, they came to a 
 resolution by no means advantageous to his purse. 
 There is this difference, however, between sea-robbers 
 and the robbers in forests, that the latter may, without 
 hazard, spare the lives of their victims; whereas the 
 others cannot put a passenger on shore in such a case 
 without running the risk of being apprehended. The 
 crew of M. Des Cartes arranged their measures with a 
 view to evade any danger of that sort. They observed 
 that he was a stranger from a distance, without acquaint- 
 
294 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 ance in the country, and that nobody would take any 
 trouble to inquire about him, in case he should never 
 come to hand (quand il viendroit a Titanquer)." Think; 
 gentlemen, of these Friezland dOgs discussing a phi- 
 losopher as if he were a puncheon of rum consigned to 
 some ship-broker. "His temper, they remarked, was 
 very mild and patient ; and, judging from the gentleness 
 of his deportment, and the courtesy with which he 
 treated themselves, that he could be nothing more than 
 some green young man, without station or root in the 
 world, they concluded that they should have all the 
 easier task in disposing of his life. They made no 
 scruple to discuss the whole matter in his presence, as 
 not supposing that he understood any other language 
 than that in which he conversed with his servant ; and 
 the amount of their deliberation was — to murder him, 
 then to throw him into the sea, and to divide his 
 spoils." 
 
 Excuse my laughing, gentlemen; but the fact is, I 
 always do laugh when I think of this case — two things 
 about it seem so droll. One is, the horrid panic or 
 ' ' funk " (as the men of Eton call it) in which Des Cartes 
 must have found himself, upon hearing this regular 
 drama sketched for his own death — funeral — succession 
 and administration to his effects. But another thing 
 which seems to me still more funny about this affair is, 
 that if these Friezland hounds had been "game," we 
 should have no Cartesian philosophy ; and how we could 
 have done without thai, considering the world of books 
 it has produced, I leave to any respectable trunk-maker 
 to declare. 
 
 However, to go on : spite of his enormous funk, Des 
 Cartes showed fight, and by that means awed these 
 Anti-Cartesian rascals. " Finding," says M. Baillet, 
 "that the matter was no joke, M. Des Cartes leaped 
 upon his feet in a trice, assumed a stern countenance 
 that these cravens had never looked for, and, addressing 
 them in their own language, threatened to run them 
 through on the spot if they dared to give him any 
 insult." Certainly, gentlemen, this would have been an 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 295 
 
 honour far above the merits of such inconsiderable 
 rascals — to be spitted like larks upon a Cartesian sword ; 
 and therefore I am glad M. Des Cartes did not rob the 
 gallows by executing his threat, especially as he could 
 not possibly have brought his vessel to port, after he 
 had murdered his crew ; so that he must have continued 
 to cruise for ever in the Zuyder Zee, and would prabably 
 have been mistaken by sailors for the Flying Dutchman, 
 homeward bound. "The spirit which M. Des Cartes 
 manifested," says his biographer, "had the effect of 
 magic on these wretches. The suddenness of their con- 
 sternation struck their minds with a confusion which 
 blinded them to their advantage, and they conveyed 
 him to his destination as peaceably as he could desire." 
 
 Possibly, gentlemen, you may fancy that, on the model 
 of Caesar's address to his poor ferryman — " Caesarem 
 vehis et fortunas ejus" — M. Des Cartes needed only to 
 have said, " Dogs, you cannot cut my throat, for you 
 carry Des Cartes and his philosophy," and might safely 
 have defied them to do their worst. A German emperor 
 had the same notion, when, being cautioned to keep out 
 of the way of a cannonading, he replied, "Tut! man. 
 Did you ever hear of a cannon-ball that killed an 
 emperor? " ' As to an emperor I cannot say, but a less 
 thing has sufficed to smash a philosopher ; and the next 
 great philosopher of Europe undoubtedly was murdered. 
 This was Spinoza. 
 
 I know very well the common opinion about him is, 
 that he died in his bed. Perhaps he did, but he was 
 murdered for all that ; and this I shall prove by a book 
 published at Brussels in the year 1731, entitled La Vie 
 de Spinoza, par M. Jean Colerus, with many additions, 
 from a MS. life, by one of his friends. Spinoza died on 
 the 2ist February 1677, being then little more than forty- 
 
 ' This same argument has been employed at least once too 
 often : some centuries back a dauphin of France, when admonished 
 of his risk from small-pox, made the same demand as the emperor 
 — " Had any gentleman heard of a dauphin killed by small-pox?" 
 No J not any gentleman had heard of such a case. And yet, for all 
 that, this dauphin died of that same small-pox. 
 
296 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 four years old. This, of itself, looks suspicious; and 
 M. Jean admits, that a certain expression in the MS. 
 life of him would warrant the conclusion, "que sa mort 
 n'a pas ^t^ tout-k-fait naturelle." Living in a damp 
 country, and a sailor's country, like Holland, he may 
 be thought to have indulged a good deal _ in grog, 
 especially in punch,' which was then newly discovered. 
 Undoubtedly he might have done so; but the fact is, 
 that he did not. M. Jean calls him " extr^mement sobre 
 en son boire et en son manger. " And though some wild 
 stories were afloat about his using the juice of man- 
 dragora (p. 140) and- opium (p. 144), yet neither of these 
 articles is found in his druggist's bill. Living, therefore, 
 with such sobriety, how was it possible that he should 
 die a natural death at forty-four? Hear his biographer's 
 account: " Sunday morning, the 21st of February, before 
 it was church time, Spinoza came down stairs, and con- 
 versed with the master and mistress of the house." At 
 this time, therefore, perhaps ten o'clock on Sunday morn- 
 ing, you see that Spinoza was alive, and pretty well. 
 But it seems "he had summoned from Amsterdam a 
 certain physician, whom," says the biographer, " I shall 
 not otherwise point out to notice than by these two 
 letters, L. M." This L. M. had directed the people of the 
 house to purchase " an ancient cock," and to have him 
 boiled forthwith, in order that Spinoza might take some 
 broth about noon ; which in fact he did ; and ate some of 
 the old cock with a good appetite, after the landlord and 
 his wife had returned from church. 
 
 ' ' In the afternoon, L. M. staid alone with Spinoza, 
 the people of the house having returned to church ; on 
 coming out from which, they learned, with much sur- 
 
 ' "June I, 1675. — Drinke part of three boules of punch (a liquor 
 very strainge to me)," says the Rev. Mr. Henry Teonge, in his 
 Diary published by C. Knight. In a note on this passage, a refer- 
 ence is made to Fryer's Travels to the East Indies, 1672, who 
 speaks of " that enervating liquor called paunch (which is Hindo- 
 stanee for five), from five ingredients." Made thus, it seems the 
 medical men call it diapente; if with four only, diatessaron. No 
 doubt, it was this evangelical name that recommended it to the 
 Rev. Mr. Teonge. 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 297 
 
 prise, that Spinoza had died about tjiree o'clock, in the 
 presence of L. M., who took his departure for Amster^- 
 dam that same evening, by the night-boat, without pay- 
 ing the least attention to the deceased," and probably 
 without paying very much attention to the payment of 
 his own little account. ' ' No doubt he was the readier 
 to dispense with these duties, as he had possessed him- 
 self of a ducatoon, and a small quantity of silver, to- 
 gether with a silver-hafted knife, and had absconded 
 with his pillage. " Here you see, gentlemen, the murder 
 is plain, and the manner of it. It was L. M._ who.jiiUX= 
 dered Spingz a for his mcmg x. Poor Spinoza was an 
 invalid, meagre and weak ; as no blood was observed, 
 L. M. no doubt threw him down, and smothered him 
 with pillows — the poor man being already half-suffocated 
 by his infernal dinner. After masticating that "ancient 
 cock," which I take to mean a cock of the preceding 
 century, in what condition could the poor invalid find 
 himself for a stand-up fight with L. M.? But who was 
 L. M.? It surely never could be Lindley Murray, for I 
 saw him at York in 1825; and, besides, I do not think 
 he would do such a thing — at least, not to a brother 
 grammarian: for you know, gentlemen, that Spinoza 
 wrote a very respectable Hebrew grammar. 
 
 Hobbes — but why, or on what principle. I never could 
 understand — was not murdered. This was a capital 
 oversig'ht of the ■professional:- nren in the seventeenth 
 century ; because in every light he was a fine subject for 
 murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny ; 
 for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very 
 funny) he had no right to make the least resistance; 
 since, according to himself, _irresistible power creates 
 tbfi. vagy-higbest species of right^ SO that it is reBeniOtrof 
 tjie blackest 4le_ to refuse to be murdered, when a con> 
 petent force appears to murffer you. However, gehtle- 
 men, though he was not murdered, I am happy to assure 
 you that (by his own account) he was three times very 
 near being murdered, which is consolatory. The first 
 time was in the spring of 1640, when he pretends to have 
 circulated a little MS. on the king's behalf against the 
 
298 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Parliament; he never could produce this MS., by the 
 by; but he says, that, " Had not His Majesty dissolved 
 the Parliament " (in May), " it had brought him into 
 danger of his life." Dissolving the Parliament, however, 
 was of no use ; for in November of the same year the 
 Long Parliament assembled, and Hobbes, a second time 
 fearing he should be murdered, ran away to France. 
 This looks like the madness of John Dennis, who thought 
 that Louis XIV would never make peace with Queen 
 Anne, unless he (Dennis to wit) were given up to French 
 vengeance; and actually ran away from the sea-coast 
 under that belief. In France, Hobbes managed to take 
 care of his throat pretty well for ten years ; but at the 
 end of that time, by way of paying court to Cromwell, 
 he published his Leviathan. The old coward now be- 
 gan to "funk" horribly for the third time; he fancied 
 the swords of the cavaliers were constantly at his throat, 
 recollecting how they had served the Parliament am- 
 bassadors at The Hague and Madrid. "Turn," says he, 
 in his dog-Latin life of himself, 
 
 Turn venit in mentem mihi Dorislaus et Ascham ; 
 Tanquam proscripto terror ubique aderat. 
 
 And accordingly he ran home to England. Now, cer- 
 tainly, it is very true that a man deserved a cudgelling 
 for writing Leviathan; and two or three cudgellings 
 for writing a pentameter ending so villainously as "terror 
 ubique aderat ! " But no man ever thought him worthy 
 of anything beyond cudgelling. And, in fact, the whole 
 story is a bounce of his own. For, in a most abusive 
 letter which he wrote "to a learned person" (meaning 
 Wallis the mathematician), he gives quite another account 
 of the matter, and says (p. 8), he ran home " because he 
 would not trust his safety with the French clergy; " in- 
 sinuating that he was likely to be murdered for his re- 
 ligion, which would have been a high joke indeed — Tom's 
 being brought to the stake for religion. 
 
 Bounce or not bounce, however, certain it is that 
 Hobbes, to the end of his life, feared that somebody 
 would murder him. This is proved by the story I am 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 299 
 
 going to tell you : it is not from a manuscript, but (as 
 Mr. Coleridge says) it is as good as manuscript ; for it 
 comes from a book now entirely forgotten, viz., "The 
 Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined: in a Conference be- 
 tween him and a Student in Divinity " (published about 
 ten years before Hobbes's death). The book is anonym- 
 ous, but it was written by Tennison, the same who, 
 about thirty years after, succeeded Tillotson as Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. The introductory anecdote is 
 as follows: — "A certain divine" (no doubt Tennison 
 himself) ' ' took an annual tour of one month to different 
 parts of the island." In one of these excursions (1670), 
 he visited the Peak in Derbyshire, partly in consequence 
 of. Hobbes's description of it. Being in that neighbour- 
 hood, he could not but pay a visit to Buxton ; and at the 
 very moment of his arrival, he was fortunate enough to 
 find a party of gentlemen dismounting at the inn-door, 
 amongst whom was a long thin fellow, who turned out 
 to be no less a person than Mr. Hobbes, who probably 
 had ridden over from Chatsworth.^ 
 
 Meeting so great a lion, a tourist, in search of the 
 picturesque, could do no less than present himself in the 
 character of bore. And luckily for this scheme, two of Mr. 
 Hobbes's companions were suddenly summoned away by 
 express ; so that, for the rest of his stay at Buxton, he had 
 Leviathan entirely to himself, and had the honour of bows- 
 ing with him in the evening. Hobbes, it seems, at first 
 showed a good deal of stiffness, for he was shy of divines ; 
 but this wore off, and he became very sociable and funny, 
 and they agreed to go into the bath together. How Tenni- 
 son could venture to. gambol in the same water, with Levia- 
 than, I cannot explam^but so it was: they frollicked 
 about like two dolphins, though Hobbes must haye beeji 
 
 ' Chatsworth was then, as now, the superb seat of the Caven- 
 dishes in their highest branch — in those days Earl, at present 
 Duke, of Devonshire. It is to the honour of this family that, through 
 two generations, they gave an asylum to Hobbes. It is noticeable 
 that Hobbes was born in the year of the Spanish Armada, i.e., in 
 1588: such, at least, is my belief. And, therefore, at this meeting 
 with Tennison in 1670, he must have been about 82 years old. 
 
300 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 as old as the hills; and " in those intervals wherein they 
 abstained from swimming and plunging themselves " 
 {i.e., diving), "they discoursed of many things relating 
 to the baths of the Ancients, and the Origine of Springs. 
 When they had in this manner passed away an hour, they 
 stepped out of the bath ; and, having dried and cloathed 
 themselves, they sate down in expectation of such a 
 supper as the place afforded ; designing to refresh them- 
 selves like the Deipnosophistae, and rather to reason than 
 to drink profoundly. But in this innocent intention they 
 were interrupted by the disturbance arising from a little 
 quarrel, in which some of the ruder people in the house 
 were for a short time engaged. At this Mr. Hobbes 
 seemed much concerned, though he was at some dis- 
 tance from the persons." And why was he concerned, 
 gentlemen? No doubt, you fancy, from some benig n 
 and disinterestedTove of pea.ce, w orthy of an old m an 
 and3_ghiiqsopher. Biit listen — " Fo r awhile he -was not 
 composedj|_ but related h once or twi ce as to himselt, 
 with a low and careful, i.e., anxious, tone, how Sextus 
 Roscius was murthered after supper by the Balneae Pala- 
 tinae. Of such general extent is that remark of Cicero, 
 in relation to Epicurus the Atheist, of whom he observed, 
 that he of all men dreaded most those things which he 
 contemned — Death and the Gods." Merely because it 
 was supper time, and in the neighbourhood of a bath, 
 Mr. Hobbes must have the fate of Sextus Roscius. He 
 must be mur^Aered, because Sextus Roscius was mur- 
 ^Aered. What logic was there in this, unless to a man 
 who was always dreaming of murder? Here was Levia- 
 than, no longer afraid of the daggers of English cavaliers 
 or French clergy, but "frightened from his propriety" 
 by a row in an alehouse between some honest clod- 
 hoppers of Derbyshire, whom JMg^ ow n gaunt scarecr ow 
 
 of a person . rthat belong-ed . to gnitf^ annthfir rpintiu-y, 
 
 wouldJiave frigMened-Out of their Avits. 
 
 Malebranche, it will give you pleasure to hear, was 
 murdered. The man who murdered him is well known: 
 it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is familiar, though 
 hitherto not put in a proper light. Berkeley, when a 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 301 
 
 young man, went to Paris, and called on P^re Male- 
 branche. He found him in his cell cooking. Cooks have 
 ever been a genus irritdbile; authors still more so: 
 Malebranche was both : a dispute arose ; the old father, 
 warm already, became warmer; culinary and meta- 
 p hysical irritations united to dera n^y^ \i\^ liver : ha took 
 to his bed, and died. Such is the common version of the 
 story: " So the whole ear of Denmark is abused." The 
 fact is, that the matter was hushed up, out of consider- 
 ation for Berkeley, who (as Pope justly observes) had 
 " every virtue under heaven:" else it was well known 
 that Berkeley, feeling himself nettled by the waspishness 
 of the old Frenchman, squared at him ; a turn-up was 
 the consequence ; Malebranche was floored in the first 
 round ; the conceit was wholly taken out of him ; and he 
 would perhaps have given in ; but Berkeley's blood was 
 now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman's retract- 
 ing his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The vanity of the 
 man was too great for this ; and he fell a sacrifice to the 
 impetuosity of Irish youth, combined with his own ab- 
 surd obstinacy; 
 
 Leibnitz, being every way superior to Malebranche, 
 one might, a fortiori, have counted on his being murdered; 
 which, however, was not the case. I believe he was 
 nettled at this neglect, and felt himself insulted by th e 
 security in which he passe^his days. In no other way 
 can I explam his conducT afThe Tatter end of his life, 
 when he chose to grow very avaricious, and to hoard up 
 large sums of gold, which he kept in his own house. 
 This was at Vienna, where he died ; and letters are still 
 in existence, describing the immeasurable anxiety which 
 he entertained for his throat. Still his ambition, for being 
 attempted at least, was so great, that he would not fore- 
 go the danger. A late English pedagogue, of Birming- 
 ham manufacture — viz., Dr. Parr — tpok a more selfish 
 course under the same circumstance. He had amassed 
 a considerable quantity of gold and silver plate, which 
 was for some time deposited in his bedroom at his par- 
 sonage house, Hatton. But growing every day more 
 afraid of being murdered, which he knew that he could 
 
302 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 not stand (and to which, indeed, he never had the 
 slightest pretensions), he transferred the whole to the 
 Hatton blacksmith ; conceiving, no doubt, that the mur- 
 der of a blacksmith would fall more lightly on the salm 
 reipublicae, than that of a pedagogue. But I have heard 
 this greatly disputed ; and it seems now generally agreed, 
 that one good horse-shoe is worth about two and a 
 quarter Spital sermons.' 
 
 As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to 
 have died, partly of the fear that he should be murdered, 
 and partly of vexation that he was not, Kant, on the 
 otherhand — who manifested no "ambition in that way — 
 had a rSirrower escape from a murderer than any man 
 we read of, except Des Cartes. So absurdly does fortune 
 throw about her favours ! The case is told, I think, in an 
 anonymous life of this very great man. For health's 
 sake, Kant imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk 
 of six miles every day along a high-road. This fact be- 
 coming known to a man who had his private reasons for 
 committing murder, at the third milestone from Konigs- 
 berg, he waited for his "intended," who came up to 
 time as duly as a mail-coach. 
 
 But for an accident, Kant was a dead man. This 
 accident lay in the scrupulous, or what Mrs. Quickly 
 would have called the peevish, morality of the murderer. 
 An old professor, he fancied, might be laden with sins. 
 Not so a young child. On this co nsiderajtion. h e turned 
 away from Kant at the cnticaTnioment, and soorTafter^ 
 murdered aHuIH^of liye"'years"'^^~Such is the German 
 account of the matter ; but my opinion is, that the mur- 
 derer was an amateur, whp_jelt_howJittle_^fiuld^_be 
 gained to the cause o£ good ta^ie by_murdering an old, 
 arid, and adust metaphysician; there was no room for 
 
 ' " Spital Sermons :" — Dr. Parr's chief public appearances as an 
 author, after his orig-inal appearance in the famous Latin preface 
 to BellendSnus (don't say Bellendenus), occurred in certain Sermons 
 at periodic intervals, delivered on behalf of some hospital (I really 
 forg-et what) which retained for its official designation the old word 
 Spital; and thus it happened that the Sermons themselves were 
 generally known by the Title of ^ital Sermons, 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 303 
 
 display, as the man CDuld_Q_pt possibly look_moreJike a 
 mummy when dead, than he had doneajiye.. 
 
 Thus, gentlemen, J havejraced the connection be t-ween 
 PiJLlo§PEfel_aQd-Our ajct, until insensibly I^^that 1 have 
 wandered into our own era. This I shall not take any 
 pains to characterize apart from that which preceded it, 
 for, in fact, they have no distinct character. The seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, together with so much 
 of the nineteenth as we have yet seen, jointly compose 
 the Augustan age ^f murden The finest work of the 
 seventeenth century is, unquestionably, the murder of 
 Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, which has my entire appro- 
 bation. In the grandJe^aicex»fjayi£^g?3ij, which in some 
 shape or other ought to colour eyery_ judicious attempt 
 at murder, it is excellent; fo r. the mystery is nof yet dis- 
 persed. The attempt to fasten the murder upon the 
 Papists, which would injure it as much as some well- 
 known Correggios have been injured by the professional 
 picture-cleaners, or would even ruin it by translating it 
 into the spurious class of mere political or partisan mur- 
 ders, thoxougliljj_wanting in th e murderous animus, I 
 exhort the society to discounteriarice. 
 
 In fact, this notion is altogether baseless, and arose 
 in pure Protestant fanaticism. Sir Edmondbury had not 
 distinguished himself amongst the London magistrates 
 by any severity against the Papists, or in favouring the 
 attempts of zealots to enforce the penal laws against indi- 
 viduals. He had not armedaga inst hims e'f tbfi animosities 
 of any j^gllgjous sectwhateyer. And as to the droppings 
 of wax lights upon the dress of the corpse when first dis- 
 covered in a ditch, from which it was inferred at the time 
 that the priests attached to the Popish Queen's Chapel 
 had been concerned in the murder, either these wer e mere 
 fraudulent artifices devised by those who wished to fix 
 the suspicion upon 'ffie^Papists, or elsie1±[e wTiole allfir 
 ga tipn — wax-clroppinjj's, and the suggested cause of the 
 droggings^-mi^F*Be a bounce or fib of Bishop Burnet ; 
 who, as the Duchess of Portsmouth used to say, was the 
 one great master of fibbing and romancing in the seven- 
 
304 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 teenth century. At the same time it must be observed 
 that the quantity of murder was not great in Sir Ed- 
 mondbury's century, at least amongst our own artists ; 
 whichj perhajtSj^js attributable to the want of enUghtgUfid 
 gatronage. Sint Maecenates,non deerant, Flacce,Marones. 
 Consulting Grant's Observations on the Bills of Mor- 
 tality (4th edition, Oxford, 1665), I find that, out of 
 229,250, who died in London during one period of twenty 
 years in the seventeenth century, not more than eighty- 
 six were murdered ; that is, about four three-tenths per 
 annum. 
 
 A small number this, gentlemen, to found an academy 
 upon; and certainly, where the quantity is so small, 
 we have a right to expect that the quality should 
 be first-rate. Perhaps it was ; yet^ stilly \?-F^, of SP'^^'^S 
 that the best artist in this century was not equau^Sbe 
 best in„that .which_folIowed. For instance, however 
 praiseworthy the case of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey may 
 be (and nobody can be more sensible of its merits than I 
 am), still, I cannot consent to place it on a level with 
 that of Mrs. Ruscombe of Bristol, either astooriginality 
 of design, or boldness and breadth ^fst^e. This good 
 lady's murder took place early in the reign of George III 
 — a reign which was notoriously favourable to the arts 
 generally. She lived in College Green, with a single 
 maid-servant, neither of them having any pretension to 
 the notice of history but what they derived trom the great 
 artist whose workmanship I am recording. One fine 
 morning, when all Bristol was alive and in motion, some 
 suspicion arising, the neighbours forced an entrance 
 into the house, and found Mrs. Ruscombe murdered in 
 her bedroom, and the servant murdered on the stairs : 
 this was at noon ; and, not more than twg^ hours before, 
 both, miatrass. and- servant _had been seen alive. "T^the 
 best of my remembrance, this was in 1764; upwarSs of 
 'sixty years, therefore, have now elapsed, and yet the 
 artist is still undiscovered. The suspicions of posterity 
 have settled upon two pretenders — a baker and a chim- 
 ney-sweeper. But posterity is wrong; no unpractised 
 artist could have conceived so bold an idea as that of a 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 305 
 
 noonday murder in the heart of a great city. It was no 
 obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney- 
 sweeper, be assured, that executed this work. I know 
 who it was. {Here there was a general buss, which at 
 length broke out into open applause; upon which the 
 lecturer blushed, and went on with much earnestness.) 
 For heaven's sake, gentlemen, do not mistake me; it 
 was not I that did it. I have not the vanity to think 
 myself eqtial to" any such achievement; be assured that 
 you greatly overrate my poor talents ; Mrs. Ruscombe's 
 affair was far beyond my slender abilities. But I came 
 to know who the artist was, from a celebrated surgeon 
 who assisted at his dissection. This gentleman had a 
 private museum in the way of his profession, one corner 
 of which was occupied by a cast from a man of remark- 
 ably fine proportions. 
 
 "That," said the surgeon, "is a cast from the cele- 
 brated Lancashire highwayman, who concealed his pro- 
 fession for some time from his neighbours, by drawing 
 woollen stockings over his horse's legs, and in that way 
 muffling the clatter which he must else have made in 
 riding up a flagged alley that led to his stable. At the 
 time of his execution for highway robbery, I was study- 
 ing under Cruickshank: and the man's figure was so 
 uncommonly fine, that no money or exertion was spared 
 to get into possession of him with the least possible 
 delay. By the connivance of the under-sheriff, he was 
 cut down within the legal time, and instantly put into a 
 chaise-and-four ; so that, when he reached Cruickshank's, 
 
 he was positively not dead. Mr. , a young student 
 
 at that time, had the honour of giving him the coup de 
 grace, and finishing th"e sentence of the law." This re- 
 markable anecdote, which seemed to imply that all the 
 gentlemen in the dissecting-room were amateurs of bu~ 
 class, struck me a good deal; and I was repeating it 
 one day to a Lancashire lady, who thereupon informed 
 me, that she had herself lived in the neighbourhood of 
 that highwayman, and well remembered two circum- 
 stances, which combined, in the opinion of all his neigh- 
 bours, to fix upon him the credit of Mrs. Ruscombe's 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 affair. One was, the fact of his absence for a whole fort- 
 night at the period of that murder; the other, that, 
 within a very little time after, the neighbourhood of this 
 highwayman was deluged with dollars : now, Mrs. Rus- 
 combe was known to have hoarded about two thousand 
 of that coin. Be the artist, however, who he might, the 
 affair remains a durable monument of his genius ; jfor 
 such wasthe impression of awe, and the s ense of power 
 left behind, by~the strength of c onception rnanifested in 
 tiite7inurder.,!]t&at no tenant (as I was told in 1810) had 
 been„found. up tO-that luhfi JEDX_MrSi_Ruscombe's house. 
 But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian caseTTet 
 me not be supposed to overlook the many other speci- 
 mens of extraordinary merit spread over the face of this 
 century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or 
 of Captain Donellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, 
 shall never have any countenance from me. Fie on these 
 dealers in poison, say I : canjthejj^not keep tq_thg_old 
 honest way of cutting throats, withj3,ut intro dilcing ^^ such 
 aEominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these 
 poisoning cases, compared with the legitimate style, as 
 no better than wax-work by the side of sculpture, or a 
 lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato. But, 
 dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of 
 art in a pure style, such as nobody need be ashamed to 
 own; and this every candid connoisseur will admit. 
 Candid, observe, I say; for great allowances must be 
 made in these cases ; no artist can ever be sure of carry- 
 ing through his own fine preconception. Awkward dis- 
 turbances will arise; peoplewill not submit to have 
 their throats cut quietly; they will run, theywilTkick, 
 t hey will bite; and wh ilst the portrait painter "often has 
 16 complain ot too iriuch torpor in his subject, the artist 
 in our line Is "generally embarrassed by too muclTaM^ 
 jnation. At the same time, however disagreeable to the 
 artist, this tendency in murder to excite and irritate the 
 subject is certainly one of its advantages to the world in 
 general, which we ought not to overlook, since it favours 
 the development of latent talent. Jeremy Taylor notices 
 with admiration the extraordinary leaps which people 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 307 
 
 will take under the influence of fear. There was a strik- 
 ing instance of this in the recent case of the M'Keans : 
 the boy cleared a height, such as he will never clear 
 again to his dying day. Talents also of the most brilliant 
 description for thumping, and, indeed, for all the gym- 
 nastic exercises, have sometimes been developed by the 
 panic which accompanies our artists ; talentsjelse buried 
 and hid under a bushelj to thepossessorSj.agmucK^tp 
 their friends, I remember an interesting illustration of 
 this fact, in a case which I learned in Germany. 
 
 Riding one day in the neighbourhood of Munich, I 
 overtook a distinguished amateur of our society, whose 
 name, for obvious reasons, I shall conceal. This gentle- 
 man informed me that, finding himself wearied with the 
 frigid pleasures (such he esteemed them) of mere ama- 
 teurship, be^Jiad^guitted England for the Continent; — 
 meaning jo practise a71IftTe^TofesSSnalIy7 For this pur- 
 pose he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in 
 that part of Europe to be more heavy and drowsy than 
 elsewhere. His d6but as a practitioner took place at 
 Mannheim ; and, knowing me to be a brother amateur, he 
 freely communicated the whole of his maiden adventure. 
 " Opposite to my lodging," said he, " lived a baker :_he 
 was spmewhat^f a miser, and lived qujiealone. Whether 
 It were his great expaiise'of chalky face, or what.d^ej 
 know not, but the fact was, I ' fancied ' him, and re- 
 solved t o commence business upon, his. th roat, which, by 
 tbfi^wai'l.Jlg.alwaYS carried bare — a fashion which \s very 
 ii:ntatingAj-mydg§ires- Precisely at eight o'clock in the 
 evening, I observed that he regularly shut up his win- 
 dows. One night I watched him when thus engaged — 
 bolted in after him — locked the door, and, addressing 
 him with great suavity, acquainted him with the nature 
 of my errand ; at the same time advising him to make no 
 resistance, which would be mutually unpleasant. So 
 saying, I draw out my tools; and was proceeding to 
 operate. But at this spectacle the baker, who seemed to 
 have been struck by catalepsy at my first announcement, 
 awoke into tremendous agitation. ' I wi l l not be mur- 
 dered ! ' he shrieked aloud j • what foir will P~(™^Sning 
 
3o8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 shall I) 'lose my precious throat?'— ' What for?' said 
 I ; 'if for no other reason, for this — that you put alum 
 in to your bread. But no matterj alum.or ^np_a.lum (for. J 
 was r§sd,YMJa.-fcu:estail_siiy "argument on that point), 
 Know that I am a virtuoso in tlie art of niurder— am 3e- 
 sirous .o£ improving myself in its details — and am en- 
 amoured of jour vast surface of throat, to ^yhich 1 ani 
 determined to be a customer.' — ' Is it so? ' said he, 'but 
 I'll find you a customer in another line ; ' and so saying, 
 he threw himself into a boxing attitude. The very idea 
 of his boxing struck me as ludicrous. It is true, a Lon- 
 don baker had distinguished himself in the ring, and 
 became known to fame under the title of the Master of 
 the Rolls; but he was young and unspoiled; whereas, 
 this man was a monstrous feather-bed in person, fifty 
 years old, and totally out of condition. Spite of all this, 
 however, and contending against me, who am a master 
 in the art, he made so desperate a defence, that many 
 times I feared he might turn the tables upon me; and 
 that I, an amateur, might be murdered by a rascally 
 baker. What a situation! Minds of sensibility will 
 sympathize with my anxiety. How severe it was, you 
 may understand by this, that for the first thirteen rounds 
 the baker positively had the advantage. Round the 14th, 
 I received a blow on the right eye, which closed it up ; in 
 the end, I believe, this was my salvation ; for the anger it 
 roused in me was so great, that, in the next, and every 
 one of the three following rounds, I floored the baker. 
 
 " Round 19th. The baker came up piping, and mani- 
 festly the worse for wear. His geometrical exploits in 
 the four last rounds had done him no good. However, 
 he showed some skill in stopping a message which I was 
 sending to his cadaverous mug ; in delivering which, my 
 foot slipped, and I went down. 
 
 ' ' Round 20th. Surveying the baker, I became ashamed 
 of having been so much bothered by a shapeless mass of 
 dough; and I went in fiercely, and administered some 
 severe punishment. A rally took place — both went 
 down — baker undermost — ten to three on amateur. 
 
 " Round 2 1 St. The baker jumped up with surprising 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 309 
 
 agility; indeed, he managed his pins capitally, and 
 fought wonderfully, considering that he was drenched 
 in perspiration; but the shine was now taken out of 
 him, and his game was the mere effect of panic. It was 
 now clear that he could not last much longer. In the 
 course of this round we tried the weaving system, in 
 which I had greatly the advantage, and hit him repeatedly 
 on the conk. My reason for this was, that his conk was 
 covered with carbuncles; and I thought I should vex 
 him by taking such liberties with his conk, which in fact 
 I did. 
 
 " The three next rounds, the master of the rolls stag- 
 gered about like a cow on the ice. Seeing how matters 
 stood, in round 24th I whispered something into his ear, 
 which sent him down like a shot. It was nothing more 
 than my private opinion of the value of his throat at an 
 annuity office. This little confidential whisper affected 
 him greatly; the very perspiration was frozen on his 
 face, and for the next two rounds I had it all my own 
 way. And when I called time for the 27th round, he lay 
 like a logon the floor." 
 
 After which, said I to the amateur, " It may be pre- 
 sumed that you accomplished your purpose." "You 
 are right," said he, mildly, " I did; and a great satis- 
 faction, you know, it was to my mind, for by this means 
 I killed two birds with one stone;" meaning that he 
 had both thumped the baker and murdered him. Now, 
 for the life of me, I could not see that; for, on the con- 
 trary, to my mind it appeared that he had taken two 
 stones to kill one bird, hayingL-been obliged_tQ_ take the 
 conc eit nut nf \\\n\ firgj- wjfh his fist, and then with hi s 
 tools. But no matter for his logic. .The moral of his 
 story was good, for it showed what an astonishing 
 stimulus to latent talent is contained in any reasonable 
 prospect of being murdered. A pursy, unwieldy, half 
 cataleptic baker of Mannheim had absolutely fought 
 seyen-and-twenty rounds with an accomplished English 
 boxer, merely upon this inspiration; so greatly was 
 natural genius exalted and sublimed by the genial pre- 
 sence of his murderer." ^ 
 
3IO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Really, gentlemen, when one hears of such things as 
 these, it becomes a duty, perhaps, a little to soften that 
 extreme asperity with which most men speak of murder. 
 To hear people talk, you would suppose that all the dis- 
 advantages and inconveniences were on the side of being 
 murdered, and that there were none at all in not being 
 murdered. But considerate men think otherwise. "Cer- 
 tainly," says Jeremy Taylor, " it is a less temporal evil to 
 fall by the rudeness of a sword than the violence of a 
 fever: and the axe" (to which he might have added the 
 ship-carpenter's mallet and the crowbar), " a much less 
 affliction than a strangury. Very true ; the bishop talks 
 like a wise man and an amateur, as I am sure he was ; 
 and another great philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, was 
 equally above the vulgar prejudices on this subject. He 
 declares it to be one of " the noblest functions of reason 
 to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or 
 not." (Book Hi, Colliers' Translation.) No sort of 
 knowledge being rarer than this, surely that man must 
 be a most philanthropic character, who undertakes to 
 instruct people in this branch of knowledge gratis, and 
 at no little hazard to himself. All this, however, I throw 
 out only in the way of speculation to future moralists ; 
 declaring in the meantime my own private conviction, 
 that very few men commit murder upon philanthropic or 
 patriotic principles, and repeating what I have already 
 said once at least — that, as to the majority of murderers, 
 they are very incorrect characters. 
 
 With respect to the Williams murders, the sublimest 
 and most entire in their excellence that ever were com- 
 mitted, I shall not allow myself to speak incidentally. 
 Nothing less than an entire lecture, or even an entire 
 course of lectures, would suffice to expound their merits. 
 One curious fact connected with his case I shall men- 
 tion, because it seems to imply that the blaze of his 
 genius absolutely dazzled the eye of criminal justice. 
 You all remember, I doubt not, that the instruments 
 with which he executed his first great work (the murder 
 of the Marrs) were a ship-carpenter's mallet and a knife. 
 Now, the mallet belonged to an old Swede, one John 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 311 
 
 Peterson, and bore his initials. This instrument Williams 
 left behind him in Marr's house, and it fell into the 
 hands of the magistrates. But, gentlemen, it is a fact 
 that the publication of this circumstance of the initials 
 led immediately to the apprehension of Williams, and, if 
 made earlier, would have prevented his second great 
 work (the murder of the Williamsons), which took place 
 precisely twelve days after. Yet the magistrates kept 
 back this fact from the public for the entire twelve days, 
 and until that second work was accomplished. That 
 finished, they published it, apparently feeling that Wil- 
 liams had now done enough for his fame, and that his 
 glory was at length placed beyond the reach of accident. 
 As to Mr. Thurtell's case, I know hot what to say. 
 Naturally, I have every disposition to think highly of my 
 predecessor in the chair of this society; and I acknow- 
 ledge that his lectures were unexceptionable. But, speak- 
 ing ingenuously, I do really think that his principal per- 
 formance, as an artist, has been much overrated. I admit, 
 that at first I was myself carried away by the general 
 enthusiasm. On the morning when the murder was 
 made known in London, there was the fullest meeting of 
 amateurs that I have ever known since the days of 
 Williams ; old bedridden connoisseurs, who had got into 
 a peevish way of sneering and complaining ' ' that there 
 was nothing doing," now hobbled down to our club- 
 room : such hilarity, such benign expression of general 
 satisfaction, I have rarely witnessed. On every side you 
 saw people shaking hands, congratulating each other, 
 and forming dinner parties for the evening ; and nothing 
 was to be heard but triumphant challenges of — " Well ! 
 will this do?" "Is this the right thing?" "Are you 
 satisfied at last?" But, in the middle of the row, I re- 
 member, we all grew silent, on hearing the old cynical 
 
 amateur L. S stumping along with his wooden leg ; 
 
 he entered the room with his usual scowl; and, as he 
 advanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole 
 way — "Mere plagiarism — bass plagiarism from hints 
 that I threw out! Besides, his style is as harsh as 
 Albert Dlirer, and as coarse as Fuselt." Many thought 
 
312 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 that this was mere jealousy, and general waspishness ; 
 but I confess that, when the first glow of enthusiasm 
 had subsided, I have found most judicious critics to 
 agree that there was something falseUo in the style of 
 Thurtell. The fact is, he was a member of our society, 
 which naturally gave a friendly bias to our judgments ; 
 and his person was universally familiar to the " fancy," 
 which gave him, with the whole London public, a tem- 
 porary popularity, that his pretensions are not capable 
 of supporting ; for opinionum commenta delet dies, naturae 
 judicia confirmat. There was, however, an unfinished 
 design of Thurtell's for the murder of a man with a pair 
 of dumb-bells, which I admired greatly ; it was a mere 
 outline, that he never filled in; but to my mind it 
 seemed every way superior to his chief work. I remem- 
 ber that there was great regret expressed by some ama- 
 teurs that this sketch should have been left in an un- 
 finished state : but there I cannot agree with them ; for 
 the fragments and first bold outlines of original artists 
 have often a felicity about them which is apt to vanish 
 in the management of the details. 
 
 The case of the M'Keans^ I consider far beyond the 
 vaunted performance of Thurtell — indeed, above all 
 praise; and bearing that relation, in fact, to the im- 
 mortal works of Williams, which the ^neid bears to 
 the Iliad. 
 
 But it is now time that I should say a few words 
 about the principles of murder, not with a view to regu- 
 late your practice, but your judgment : as to old women, 
 and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased 
 with anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the 
 mind of sensibility requires something more. First, 
 then, let us speak of the kind of person who is adapted 
 to the purpose of the murderer; secondly, of the place 
 where; thirdly, of the time when, and other little cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 1 [In August 1826, two brothers named Mackeans were con- 
 demned for the murder of Elizabeth Bates, and the attempted 
 murder of several other persons, in a public-house at Winton near 
 Manchester, — S. L.] 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 313 
 
 As to the person, I suppose it is evident that he ought 
 to be a good man; because, if he were not, he might 
 himself, by possibility, be contemplating murder at the 
 very time; and such "diamond-cut-diamond" tussles, 
 though pleasant enough where nothing better is stirring, 
 are really not what a critic can allow himself to call 
 murders. I could mention some people (I name no 
 names) who have been murdered by other people in a 
 dark lane ; and so far all seemed correct enough ; but, 
 on looking further into the matter, the public have be- 
 come aware that the murdered party was himself, at the 
 moment, planning to rob his murderer, at the least, 
 and possibly to murder him, if he had been strong 
 enough. Whenever that is the case, or may be thought 
 to be the case, farewell to all the genuine effects of the art. 
 For the final purpose of murder, considered as a fine 
 art, is precisely the same as that of tragedy, in Aris- 
 totle's account of it; viz., "to cleanse the heart by 
 means of pity and terror." Now, terror there may be, 
 but how can there be any pity for one tiger destroyed by 
 another tiger? 
 
 It is also evident that the person selected ought not 
 to be a public character. For instance, no judicious 
 artist would have attempted to murder Abraham New- 
 land.^ For the case was this: everybody read so much 
 about Abraham Newland, and so few people ever saw 
 him, that to the general belief he was a mere abstract 
 idea. And I remember, that once, when I happened to 
 mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in company 
 with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at 
 me, as though I had pretended to have played at 
 billiards with Prester John, or to have had an affair of 
 honour with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope would 
 
 ' Abraham Newland is now utterly forgotten. But when this 
 was written, his name had not ceased to ring in British ears, as 
 the most familiar and most significant that perhaps has ever existed. 
 It was the name which appeared on the face of all Bank of England 
 notes, great or small ; and had been, for more than a quarter of a 
 century (especially through the whole career of the French Revolu- 
 tion), a short-hand expression for paper money in its safest form. 
 
314 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 be a very improper person to murder : for he has such a 
 virtual ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like 
 the cuckoo, is so often heard but never seen, that I sus- 
 pect most people regard him also as an abstract idea. 
 Where, indeed, a public man is in the habit of giving 
 dinners, " with every delicacy of the season," the case is 
 very different : every person is satisfied that he is no 
 abstract idea; and, therefore, there can be no impro- 
 priety in murdering him ; only that his murder will fall 
 into the class of assassinations, which I have not yet 
 treated. 
 
 Thirdly. The subject chosen ought to be in good 
 health : for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick 
 person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. On this 
 principle, no tailor ought to be chosen who is above 
 twenty-five, for after that age he is sure to be dyspeptic. 
 Or at least, if a man will hunt in that warren, he will of 
 course think it his duty, on the old established equation, 
 to murder some multiple of 9— say 18, 27, or 36. And 
 here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick 
 people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to 
 soften and refine the feelings. The world in general, 
 gentlemen, are very bloody-minded ; and all they want in 
 a murder is a copious effusion of blood ; gaudy display 
 in this point is enough for them. But the enlightened 
 connoisseur is more refined in his taste ; and from our 
 art, as from all the other liberal arts when thoroughly 
 mastered, the result is, to humanize the heart ; so true 
 is it, that 
 
 Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, 
 EmoUit mores, nee sink esse feros. 
 
 A philosophic friend, well known for his philanthropy 
 and general benignity, suggests that the subject chosen 
 ought also to have a family of young children wholly de- 
 pendent on his exertions, by way of deepening the pathos. 
 And, undoubtedly, this is a judicious caution. Yet I 
 would not insist too keenly on such a condition. Severe 
 good taste unquestionably suggests it ; but still, where 
 the man was otherwise unobjectionable in point of morals 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 315 
 
 and health, I would not look with too curious a jealousy 
 to a restriction which might have the eflfect of narrowing 
 the artist's sphere. 
 
 So much for the person. As to the time, the place, 
 and the tools, I have many things to say, which at pre- 
 sent I have no room for. The good sense of the practi- 
 tioner has usually directed him to night and privacy. 
 Yet there have not been wanting cases where this rule 
 was departed from with excellent effect. In respect to 
 time, Mrs. Ruscombe's case is a beautiful exception, 
 which I have already noticed ; and in respect both to time 
 and place, there is a fine exception in the annals of 
 Edinburgh (year 1805), familiar to every child in Edin- 
 burgh, but which has unaccountably been defrauded of 
 its due portion of fame amongst English amateurs. The 
 case I mean is that of a porter to one of the banks, who 
 was murdered, whilst carrying a bag of money, in broad 
 daylight, on turning out of the High Street, one of the 
 most public streets in Europe ; and the murderer is, to 
 this hour undiscovered. 
 
 Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, 
 Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore. 
 
 And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, let me again 
 solemnly disclaim all pretensions on my own part to the 
 character of a professional man. I never attempted any 
 murder in my life, except in the year 1801, upon the 
 body of a tom-cat and that turned out differently from 
 my intention. My purpose, I own, was downright mur- 
 der. "Semper ego auditor tantum?" said I, " nun- 
 quamne reponam?" And I went downstairs in search 
 of Tom at one o'clock on a dark night, with the 
 "animus," and no doubt with the fiendish looks, of a 
 murderer. But when I found him, he was in the act of 
 plundering the pantry of bread and other things. Now 
 this gave a new turn to the affair; for the time being 
 one of general scarcity, when even Christians were re- 
 duced to the use of potato-bread, rice-bread, and all 
 sorts of things, it was downright treason in a tom-cat to 
 be wasting good wheaten-bread in the way he was 
 
3i6 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 doing. It instantly became a patriotic duty to put him 
 to death ; and, as I raised aloft and shook the glittering 
 steel, I fanced myself rising, like Brutus, effulgent from 
 a crowd of patriots, and, as I stabbed him, I 
 
 Call'd aloud on TuUy's name, 
 And bade the father of his country hail ! 
 
 Since then, what wandering thoughts I may have had 
 of attempting the life of an ancient ewe, of a super- 
 annuated hen, and such " small deer," are locked up in 
 the secrets of my own breast; but, for the higher de- 
 partments of the art, I confess myself to be utterly unfit. 
 My ambition does not rise so high. No, gentlemen, in 
 the words of Horace, 
 
 Fungar vice cotis, acutum 
 Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY PAPER ON MURDER 
 
 CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS ' 
 
 A GOOD many years ago, the reader may remember that 
 I came forward in the character of a dilettante in murder. 
 Perhaps dilettante is too strong a word. Connoisseur is 
 better suited to the scruples and infirmity of public taste. 
 I suppose there is no harm in that, at least. A man is 
 not bound to put his eyes, ears, and understanding into 
 his breeches-pocket when he meets with a murder. If 
 he is not in a downright comatose state, I suppose he 
 must see that one murder is better or worse than another, 
 in point of good taste. Murders have their little differ- 
 ences and shades of merit, as well as statues, pictures, 
 oratorios, cameos, intaglios, or what not. You may be 
 angry with a man for talking too much, or too publicly 
 (as to the too much, that I deny — a man can never 
 cultivate his taste too highly) ; but you must allow him 
 
 ' [This appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1839, 
 nearly thirteen years after the previous paper, — S. L.] 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 317 
 
 to think, at any rate. Well, would you believe it? all 
 my neighbours came to hear of that little aesthetic essay 
 which I had published ; and, unfortunately, hearing at 
 the very same time of a club that I was connected with, 
 and a dinner at which I presided — both tending to the 
 same little object as the essay, viz. , the diffusion of a 
 just taste among Her ' Majesty's subjects, they got up 
 the most barbarous calumnies against me. In particular, 
 they said that I, or that the club (which comes to the 
 same thing), had offered bounties on well-conducted 
 homicides — with a scale of drawbacks, in case of any 
 one defect or flaw, according to a table issued to private 
 friends. Now let me tell the whole truth about the 
 dinner and the club, and it will be seen how malicious 
 the world is. But first, confidentially, allow me to say 
 what my real principles are upon the matter in question. 
 As to murder, I never committed one in my life. It 's 
 a well-known thing amongst all my friends. I can get a 
 paper to certify as much, signed by lots of people. In- 
 deed, if you come to that, I doubt whether many people 
 could produce as strong a certificate. Mine would be as 
 big as a breakfast tablecloth. There is indeed one 
 member of the club, who pretends to say he caught me 
 once making too free with his throat on a club night, 
 after everybody else had retired. But, observe, he 
 shuffles in his story according to his state of civilation.' 
 When not far gone, he contents himself with saying 
 that he caught me ogling his throat; and that I was 
 nielancholy for some weeks after, and that my voice 
 sounded in a way expressing, to the nice ear of a con- 
 noisseur, the sense of opportunities lost; but the club all 
 know that he is a disappointed man himself, and that he 
 speaks querulously at times about the fatal neglect of a 
 man's coming abroad without his tools. Besides, all 
 
 ' Her Majesty : — In the lecture, having occasion to refer to the 
 reigning sovereign, I said '■'His Majesty" ; foratthattime William IV 
 was on the throne: but between the lecture and this supplement 
 had occurred the accession of our present Queen. 
 
 ^ [This word means " civilization " as it might be pronounced by 
 a person who had dined too well. — S. L.] 
 
3i8 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 this is an affair between two amateurs, and everybody 
 makes allowances for little asperities and fibs in such a 
 case. 
 
 "But," say you, "if no murderer, you may have 
 encouraged, or even have bespoken a murder." No, 
 upon my honour — no. And that was the very point I 
 wished to argue for your satisfaction. The truth is, I am 
 a very particular man in everything relating to murder; 
 and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far. The Stagirite 
 most justly, and possibly with a view to my case, placed 
 virtue in the to ixiaov, or middle point between two 
 extremes. A golden mean is certainly what every man 
 should aim at. But it is easier talking than doing ; and, 
 my infirmity being notoriously too much milkiness of 
 heart, I find it difficult to maintain that steady equatorial 
 line between the two poles of too much murder on the 
 one hand, and too little on the other. I am too soft — 
 and people get excused through me — nay, go through 
 life without an attempt made upon them, that ought 
 not to be excused. I believe, if I had the manage- 
 ment of things, there would hardly be a murder from 
 year's end to year's end. 
 
 In fact, I'm for peace, and quietness, and fawningness, 
 and what may be styled knocking-undemess. A man came 
 to me as a candidate for the place of my servant, just then 
 vacant. He had the reputation of having dabbled a little 
 in our art ; some said, not without merit. What startled 
 me, however, was, that he supposed this art to be part of 
 his regular duties in my service, and talked of having 
 it considered in his wages. Now, that was a thing I 
 would not allow; so I said at once, " Richard (or James, 
 as the case might be), you misunderstand my character. 
 If a man will and must practise this difficult (and allow 
 me to add, dangerous) branch of art — if he has an 
 overruling genius for it, — why, in that case, all I say is, 
 that he might as well pursue his studies whilst living in 
 my service as in another's. And also, I may observe, 
 that it can do no harm either to himself or to the subject 
 on whom he operates, that he should be guided by men 
 of more taste than himself. Genius may do much, but 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 319 
 
 long study of the art must always entitle a man to offer 
 advice. So far I will go — general principles I will 
 suggest. But as to any particular case, once for all I 
 will have nothing to do with it. Never tell me of any 
 special work of art you are meditating — I set my face 
 against it in toto. For, if once a man indulges himself 
 in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing ; 
 and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sab- 
 bath-breaking, and from that to incivility and pro- 
 crastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you 
 never know where you are to stop. Many a man has 
 dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps 
 he thought little of at the time. PHncipiis obsta — that 's 
 my rule." 
 
 Such was my speech, and I have always acted up to 
 it ; so, if that is not being virtuous, I should be glad 
 to know what is. But now about the dinner and the 
 club. The club was not particularly of my creation ; 
 it arose pretty much as other similar associations, for 
 the propagation of truth and the communication of new 
 ideas ; rather from the necessities of things, than upon 
 any one man's suggestion. As to the dinner, if any 
 man more than another could be held responsible for 
 that, it was a member known amongst us by the name 
 of Toad-in-the-hole. He was so called trom his gloomy 
 misanthropical disposition, which led him into constant 
 disparagements of all modern murders as vicious abor- 
 tions, belonging to no authentic school of art. The 
 finest performances of our own age he snarled at cynic- 
 ally; and at length this querulous humour grew upon 
 him so much, and he became so notorious as a laudator 
 tetnporis acti, that few people cared to seek his society. 
 
 This made him still more fierce and truculent. He went 
 about muttering and growling ; wherever you met him, 
 he was soliloquizing, and saying, ' ' despicable pretender 
 — without grouping — without two ideas upon handling — 
 without " — and there you lost him. At length existence 
 seemed to be painful to him ; he rarely spoke, he seemed 
 conversing with phantoms in the air; his housekeeper 
 informed us that his reading was nearly confined to 
 
320 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 God's Revenge upon Murder, by Reynolds, and a more 
 ancient book of the same title, noticed by Sir Walter 
 Scott in his Fortunes of NigeL Sometimes, perhaps, 
 he might read in the Newgate Calendar down to 
 the year 1788, but he never looked into a book more 
 recent. In fact, he had a theory with regard to the 
 French Revolution, as having been the great cause of 
 degeneration in murder. "Very soon, sir," he used to 
 say, " men will have lost the art of killing poultry: the 
 very rudiments of the art will have perished ! " In the 
 year 181 1, he retired from general society. Toad-in-the- 
 hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed 
 him from his wonted haunts — " nor up the lawn, nor at 
 the wood was he." By the side of the main conduit his 
 listless length at noontide he would stretch, and pore 
 upon the filth that muddled by. " Even dogs," this 
 pensive moralist would say, "are not what they were, 
 sir — not what they should lie. I remember in my grand- 
 father's time that some dogs had an idea of murder. I 
 have known a mastiff, sir, that lay in ambush for a rival, 
 yes, sir, and finally murdered him, with pleasing circum- 
 stances of good taste. I also was on intimate terms of 
 acquaintance with a tom-cat that was an assassin. But 
 
 now " and then, the subject growing too painful, he 
 
 dashed his hand to his forehead, and went off abruptly 
 in a homeward direction towards his favourite conduit, 
 where he was seen by an amateur in such a state, that 
 he thought it dangerous to address him. Soon after 
 Toad shut himself entirely up ; it was understood that he 
 had resigned himself to melancholy; and at length the 
 prevailing notion was, that Toad-in-the-hole had hanged 
 himself. 
 
 The world was wrong there, as it had been on some 
 other questions. Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, 
 but dead he was not ; and of that we soon had ocular 
 proof. One morning in 181 2, an amateur surprised us 
 with the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brushing 
 with hasty steps the dews away, to meet the postman 
 by the conduit side. Even that was something: how 
 much more, to hear that he had shaved his beard — had 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 321 
 
 laid aside his sad-coloured clothes, and was adorned 
 like a bridegroom of ancient days. What could be the 
 meaning of all this? Was Toad-in-the-hole mad — or 
 how? Soon after the secret was explained — in more 
 than a figurative sense " the murder was out." For in 
 came the London morning papers, by which it appeared 
 that but three days before a murder, the most superb of 
 the century by many degrees, had occurred in the heart 
 of London. I need hardly say, that this was the great 
 exterminating chef-d'oeuvre of Williams at Mr. Marr's, 
 No. 29, RatclifFe Highway. That was the ddbut of the 
 artist; at least for anything the public knew. What 
 occurred at Mr. Williamson's twelve nights afterwards — 
 the second work turned out from the same chisel — some 
 people pronounced even superior. But Toad-in-the-hole 
 always "reclaimed," he was even angry at such com- 
 parisons. ' ' This vulgar gout de comparaison, as La 
 Bruy^re calls it," he would often remark, "will be our 
 ruin ; each work has its own separate characteristics — 
 each in and for itself is incomparable. One, perhaps, 
 might suggest the Iliad — the other the Odyssey: but 
 what do you get by such comparisons? Neither ever 
 was, or will be surpassed; and when you've talked for 
 hours, you must still come back to that." Vain, how- 
 ever, as all criticism might be, he often said that volumes 
 might be written on each case for itself; and he even 
 proposed to publish in quarto on the subject. 
 
 Meantime, how had Toad-in-the-hole happened to hear 
 of this great work of art so early in the morning? He 
 had received an account by express despatched by a cor- 
 respondent in London, who watched the progress of art 
 on Toad's behalf, with a general commission to send off 
 a special express, at whatever cost, in the event of any 
 estimable works appearing. The express arrived in the 
 night-time; Toad-in-the-hole was then gone to bed; he 
 had been muttering and grumbling for hours, but of 
 course he was called up. On reading the account, he 
 threw his arms round the express, declared him his 
 brother and his preserver, and expressed his regret at 
 not having it in his power to knight him. We, amateurs. 
 
322 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 having heard that he was abroad, and therefore had not 
 hanged himself, made sure of soon seeing him amongst 
 us. Accordingly he soon arrived ; seized every man's 
 hand as he passed him — wrung it almost frantically, 
 and kept ejaculating, "Why, now, here's something 
 like a murder! — this is the real thing — this is genuine — 
 this is what you can approve, can recommend to a 
 friend : this — says every man, on reflection — this is the 
 thing that ought to be ! Such works are enough to make 
 us all young." And in fact the general opinion is, that 
 Toad-in-the-hole would have died but for this regenera- 
 tion of art, which he called a second age of Leo the 
 Tenth ; and it was our duty, he said, solemnly to com- 
 memorate it. At present, and en attendant, he proposed 
 that the club should meet and dine together. A dinner, 
 therefore, was given by the club ; to which all amateurs 
 were invited from a distance of one hundred miles. 
 
 Of this dinner, there are ample short-hand notes 
 amongst the archives of the club. But they are not 
 "extended," to speak diplomatically; and the reporter, 
 who only could give the whole report in extenso, is 
 missing — I believe murdered. Meantime, in years long 
 after that day, and on an occasion perhaps equally in- 
 teresting, viz. , the turning up of Thugs and Thuggism, 
 another dinner was given. Of this I myself kept notes, 
 for fear of another accident to the short-hand reporter. 
 And I here subjoin them. Toad-in-the-hole, I must men- 
 tion, was present at this dinner. In fact, it was one of 
 its sentimental incidents. Being as old as the valleys at 
 the dinner of 1812, naturally he was as old as the hills 
 at the Thug dinner of 1838. He had taken to wearing 
 his beard again ; why, or with what view, it passes my 
 persimmon to tell you. But so it was. And his appear- 
 ance was most benign and venerable. Nothing could 
 equal the angelic radiance of his smile, as he inquired 
 after the unfortunate reporter (whom, as a piece of 
 private scandal, I should tell you that he was himself 
 supposed to have murdered in a rapture of creative art) : 
 the answer was, *ith roars of laughter, from the under- 
 sheriff of our county — non est inventus. Toad-in-the- 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 323 
 
 hole laughed outrageously at this: in fact, we all 
 thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of 
 the company, a musical composer furnished a most 
 beautiful glee upon the occasion, which was sung five 
 times after dinner, with universal applause and inex- 
 tinguishable laughter, the words being these (and the 
 chorus so contrived, as most beautifully to mimic the 
 peculiar laughter of Toad-in-the-hole): — 
 
 Et interrogatum est k Toad-in-the-hole— Ubi est ille reporter? 
 Et responsum est cum cachinno — Non est inventus. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Deinde iteratum est ab omnibus, cum cachinnatione undulante 
 trepidante — Non est inventus. 
 
 Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine years 
 before, when an express from Edinburgh brought him 
 the earliest intelligence of the Burke-and-Hare revolu- 
 tion in the art, went mad upon the spot : and instead of 
 a pension to the express for even one life, or a knight- 
 hood, endeavoured to Burke him ; in consequence of 
 which he was put into a straight-waistcoat. And that 
 was the reason we had no dinner then. But now all of 
 us were alive and kicking, straight-waistcoaters and 
 others; in fact, not one absentee was reported upon 
 the entire roll. There were also many foreign amateurs 
 present. 
 
 Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was a 
 general call made for the new glee of Non est inventus ; 
 but, as this would have interfered with the requisite 
 gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, I over- 
 ruled the call. After the national toasts had been given, 
 the first official toast of the day was. The Old Man of 
 the Mountains — drunk in solemn silence. 
 
 Toad-in-the-hole returned thanks in a neat speech.. 
 He likened himself to the Old Man of the Mountains, in 
 a few brief allusions, and made the company yell with 
 laughter; and he concluded with giving the health of 
 
 Mr. Von Hammer, with many thanks to him for his 
 learned History of the Old Man and his subjects the 
 assassins. 
 
324 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Upon this I rose and said, that doubtless most of the 
 company were aware of the distinguished place assigned 
 by orientalists to the very learned Turkish scholar, Von 
 Hammer the Austrian; that he had made the pro- 
 foundest researches into our art, as connected with those 
 early and eminent artists, the Syrian assassins in the 
 period of the Crusaders; that his work had been for 
 several years deposited, as a rare treasure of art, in 
 the library of the club. Even the author's name, gen- 
 tlemen, pointed him out as the historian of our art — 
 Von Hammer 
 
 "Yes, yes," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, "Von 
 Hammer — he 's the man for a malleus haereticorum. You 
 all know what consideration Williams bestowed on the 
 hammer, or the ship-carpenter's mallet, which is the 
 same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another great ham- 
 mer — Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, in old 
 French, the Martel — he hammered the Saracens till 
 they were all as dead as door-nails." 
 
 " Charles the Hammer, with all the honours." 
 
 But the explosion of Toad-in-the-hole, together with 
 the uproarious cheers for the grandpapa of Charle- 
 magne, had now made the company unmanageable. 
 The orchestra was again challenged with shouts the 
 stormiest for the new glee. I foresaw a tempestuous- 
 evening; and I ordered myself to be strengthened with 
 three waiters on each side; the vice-president with as 
 many. Symptoms of unruly enthusiasm were beginning 
 to show out ; and I own that I myself was considerably 
 excited, as the orchestra opened with its storm of music, 
 and the impassioned glee began — " Et interrogatum est 
 i Toad-in-the-hole — Ubi est ille Reporter? " And the 
 frenzy of the passion became absolutely convulsing, as 
 the full chorus fell in — " Et iteratum est ab omnibus — 
 Non est inventus." 
 
 The next toast was — The Jewish Sicarii. 
 
 Upon which I made the following explanation to the 
 company: — " Gentlemen, I am sure it will interest you 
 all to hear that the assassins, ancient as they were, had 
 a race of predecessors in the very same country. All 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 325 
 
 over Syria, but particularly in Palestine, during the 
 early years of the Emperor Nero, there was a band of 
 murderers, who prosecuted their studies in a very novel 
 manner. They did not practise in the night-time, or in 
 lonely places ; but, justly considering that great crowds 
 are in themselves a sort of darkness by means of the 
 dense pressure, and the impossibility of finding out who 
 it was that gave the blow, they mingled with mobs 
 everywhere; particularly at the great paschal feast in 
 Jerusalem; where they actually had the audacity, as 
 Josephus assures us, to press into thej;emple — and whom 
 should they choose for operating "upon .but Jonathan 
 himself, the Pontifex Maximu§_?, They murdered him, 
 gentlemen, as beautifully as^^lf -they had had him 
 alone on a moonless night in a dark lane. And when 
 it was asked, who was the murderer, and where he 
 was " 
 
 "Why, then it was answered," interrupted Toad-in- 
 the-hole, ^' ' Non est inventus.' " And then, in spite of 
 all I could do or say, the orchestra opened, and the 
 whole company began — " Et interrogatum est k Toad- 
 in-the-hole — Ubi est ille Sicarius? Et responsum est ab 
 omnibus — Non est inventus." 
 
 When the tempestuous chorus had subsided, I began 
 again: — "Gentlemen, you will find a very circumstantial 
 account of the Sicarii in at least three different parts of 
 Josephus; once in Book XX, sec. v, c. 8, of his 
 Antiquities; once in Book I of his Wars; but in sec. x 
 of the chapter first cited you will find a particular 
 description of their tooling. This is what he says: — 
 ' They tooled with small scimitars not much different 
 from the Persian acinacae, but more curved, and for all 
 the world most like the Roman semi-lunar sicae.' It is 
 perfectly magnificent, gentlemen, to hear the sequel of 
 their history. Perhaps the only case on record where a 
 regular army of murderers was assembled, a Justus 
 exercitus, was in the case of these Sicarii. They mus- 
 tered in such strength in the wilderness, that Festus 
 himself was obliged to march against them with the 
 Roman legionary force. A pitched battle ensued; and 
 
326 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 this army of amateurs was all cut to pieces in the desert. 
 Heavens, gentlemen, what a sublime picture! The 
 Roman legions — the wilderness — ^Jerusalem in the dis- 
 tance — an army of murderers in the foreground ! " 
 
 The next toast was — "To the further improvement 
 of Tooling, and thanks to the Committee for their 
 services." 
 
 Mr. L. , on behalf of the Committee who had reported 
 on that subject, returned thanks. He made an interesting 
 extract from the report, by which it appeared how very 
 much stress had been laid formerly on the mode of 
 tooling by the fathers, both Greek and Latin. In con- 
 firmation of this pleasing fact, he made a very striking 
 statement in reference to the earliest work of antedilu- 
 vian art. Father Mersenne, that learned French Roman 
 Catholic, in page one thousand four hundred and thirty- 
 one ' of his operose Commentary on Genesis, mentions, 
 on the authority of several rabbis, that the quarrel of 
 Cain with Abel was about a young woman ; that, ac- 
 cording to various accounts, Cain had tooled with his 
 teeth (Abelem fuisse morsibus dilaceratum k Cain) ; 
 according to many others, with the jaw-bone of an ass, 
 which is the tooling adopted by most painters. But it is 
 pleasing to the mind of sensibility to know that, as 
 science expanded, sounder views were adopted. One 
 author contends for a pitchfork, St. Chrysostom for a 
 sword, Irenaeus for a scythe, and Prudentius, the Christian 
 poet of the fourth century, for a hedging-bill. This last 
 writer delivers his opinion thus : — 
 
 Frater, probatae sanctitatis aemulus, 
 Germana curvo colla frangit sarculo : 
 
 i.e., his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures 
 his fraternal throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All 
 which is respectfully submitted by your committee, not 
 so much as decisive of the question (for it is not), but in 
 order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance 
 
 ^ Pag-e one thousand four hundred and thirty-one: — literally, 
 good reader, and no joke at all. 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 327 
 
 which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling 
 by such men as Chrysostom and Irenaeus." 
 
 " Irenaeus be hanged;" said Toad-in-the-hole, who 
 now rose impatiently to give the next toast: — "Our 
 Irish friends; wishing them a speedy revolution in their 
 mode of tooling, as well as in everything else connected 
 with the art ! " 
 
 " Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day 
 of the year we take up a paper, we read the opening of a 
 murder. We say, this is good, this is charming, this is 
 excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a 
 little farther, before the word Tipperary or Ballina- 
 something betrays the Irish manufacture. Instantly we 
 loathe it ; we call to the waiter ; we say, ' Waiter, take 
 away this paper ; send it out of the house ; it is abso- 
 lutely a scandal in the nostrils of all just taste.' I 
 appeal to every man, whether, on finding a murder 
 (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish,' he 
 does not feel himself as much Insulted as when, Madeira 
 being ordered, he finds it to be Cape ; or when, taking 
 up what he takes to be a mushroom, it turns out what 
 children call a toad-stool. Tithes, politics, something 
 wrong in principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentle- 
 men, this must be reformed, or Ireland will not be a 
 land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we must 
 import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole 
 sat down, growling with suppressed wrath; and the 
 uproarious "Hear, hear!" clamorously expressed the 
 general concurrence. 
 
 The next toast was — " The sublime epoch of Burkism 
 and Harism ! " 
 
 This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the 
 members, who spoke to the question, made a very 
 curious communication to the company: — " Gentlemen, 
 we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own 
 times: and in fact no Pancirollus has ever enumerated 
 this branch of art when writing de rebus deperditis. Still, 
 I have ascertained that the essential principle of this 
 variety in the art iiaas known to the ancients ; although, 
 like the art of painting upon glass, of making the 
 
328 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 myrrhine cups, etc., it was lost in the dark ages for 
 want of encouragement. In the famous collection 6i 
 Greek epigrams made by Planudes, is one upon a very 
 fascinating case of Burkism : it is a perfect little gem of 
 art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at 
 this moment ; but the following is an abstract of it by 
 Salmasius, as I find it in his notes on Vopiscus : ' Est 
 et elegans epigramma Lucilii, ubi medicus et pollinctor 
 de compacto sic egerunt, ut medicus aegros omnes curae 
 suae commissos occideret' : This was the basis of the 
 contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor, for 
 himself and his assigns, doth undertake and contract 
 duly and truly to murder all the patients committed to 
 his charge : but why ? There lies the beauty of the case 
 — ' Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.' 
 The pollinctor, you are aware, was a person whose 
 business it was to dress and prepare dead bodies for 
 burial. The original ground of the transaction appears 
 to have been sentimental: ' He was my friend,' says the 
 murderous doctor; ' he was dear to me,' in speaking of 
 the pollinctor. But the law, gentlemen, is stern and 
 harsh : the law will not hear of these tender motives : to 
 sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is essential 
 that a ' consideration ' should be given. Now what laas 
 the consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the 
 pollinctor: he will be well paid for his services; but, 
 meantime, the generous, the noble-minded doctor gets 
 nothing. What was the equivalent, again I ask, which 
 the law would insist on the doctor's taking, in order to 
 establish that ' consideration,' without which the contract 
 had no force? You shall hear: ' Et ut pollinctor vicissim 
 reXa/iiivae quos furabatur de pollinctione mortuorum 
 medico mitteret donis ad alliganda vulnera eorum quos 
 curabat; ' i.e., and that reciprocally the pollinctor should 
 transmit to the physician, as free gifts for the binding 
 up of wounds in those whom he treated medically, 
 the belts or trusses (reXajuwvac) which he had succeeded 
 in purloining in the course of his functions about the 
 corpses. 
 
 " Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle 
 
MURDER AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS 329 
 
 of reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for 
 ever. The doctor was also a surgeon: he could not 
 murder all his patients : some of the patients must be 
 retained intact. For these he wanted linen bandages. 
 But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which 
 account it was that they bathed so often. Meantime, 
 there naas linen to be had in Rome; but it was mon- 
 strously dear; and the rtXa^fii'tf, or linen swathing 
 bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up 
 corpses, would answer capitally for the surgeon. The 
 doctor, therefore, contracts to furnish his friend with a 
 constant succession of corpses, provided, and be it 
 understood always, that his said friend, in return, should 
 supply him with one-half the articles he would receive 
 from the friends of the parties murdered or to be mur- 
 dered. The doctor invariably recommended his in- 
 valuable friend the pollinctor (whom let us call the 
 undertaker); the undertaker, with equal regard to the 
 sacred rights of friendship, uniformly recommended the 
 doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of 
 a perfect friendship : in their lives they were lovely : and 
 on the gallows, it is to be hoped, they were not divided. 
 
 "Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly, when I 
 think of those two friends drawing and re-drawing on 
 each other : ' Pollinctor in account with Doctor, debtor 
 by sixteen corpses : creditor by forty-five bandages, two 
 of which damaged. ' Their names unfortunately are lost ; 
 but I conceive they must have been Quintus Birkius and 
 Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody 
 heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably 
 settled in Ireland, considerably to the west, and does a 
 little business now and then ; but, as he observes with a 
 sigh, only as a retailer — nothing like the fine thriving 
 wholesale concern so carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. 
 ' You see what comes of neglecting business ' — is the 
 chief moral, the iirtfiildwv, as Aesop would say, which 
 Hare draws from his past experience." 
 
 At length came the toast of the day— TAug-dom in all 
 its branches. 
 
 The speeches attempted at this crisis of the dinner 
 
330 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 were past all counting. But the applause was so furious, 
 the music so stormy, and the crashing of glasses so 
 incessant, from the general resolution never again to 
 drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that I am 
 unequal to the task of reporting-. Besides which, Toad- 
 in-the-hole now became ungovernable. He kept firing 
 pistols hi every direction ; sent his servant for a blunder- 
 buss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We 
 conceived that his former madness had returned at the 
 mention of Burke and Hare ; or that, being again weary 
 of life, he had resolved to go off in a general massacre. 
 This we could not think of allowing; it became indis- 
 pensable, therefore, to kick him out ; which we did with 
 universal consent, the whole company lending their toes 
 uno pede, as I may say, though pitying his grey hairs 
 and his angelic smile. During the operation, the or- 
 chestra poured in their old chorus. The universal 
 company sang, and (what surprised us most of all) 
 Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing — 
 
 Et interrogatum est ab omnibus — Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-hole? 
 Et responsum est ab omnibus — Non est inventus. 
 
FICTION 
 
 THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 
 
 [De Quincey made several attempts at fiction. With one excep- 
 tion these are not among- his more successful productions. The 
 romance Klosterheim, one of the only two works which he pub- 
 lished in the first instance in book form, is gloomy and rather 
 dull. Some of his shorter tales, either original or adapted from 
 the German, show a certain skill in dealing with the elements of 
 horror and fear, and they may have suggested something to Edgar 
 Allan Poe who undoubtedly owed a good deal in various ways to 
 their author. But one piece De Quincey has left which may almost 
 be regarded as a masterpiece — pretty nearly the best humorous 
 romance or picaresque novel in the English language. It detracts 
 little from the writer's merit that the story is not original but only 
 a glorified, transformed, purified, and vitalised adaptation from the 
 French. The Spanish Military Nun first appeared in Tait's Edin- 
 burgh Magasine in 1847, under the clumsy title of The Nautico- 
 MUitary Nun and Ensign of Spain. De Quincey derived it 
 from an article called " Catalina de Erauso" in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes of February 1847, by Alexis de Valon. This is a 
 compressed version of tlie Spanish " History of the Nun-Lieu- 
 tenant Dona Catalina de Erauso written by Herself," which had 
 been recovered and printed from a manuscript by Joaquin Maria 
 de Ferrer in 1829. Dofia Catalina was an historic personage, and 
 the Ferrer manuscript was probably compiled from notes left by 
 those who had heard her own accounts of her highly adventurous 
 career. She was the daughter of a Basque gentleman and became 
 a novice in a convent at San Sebastian in 1603. In 1607 she 
 escaped from the convent, sailed for South America in male 
 attire, enlisted in one of the King of Spain's regiments, and served 
 in several campaigns in Chile and Peru. Her disguise was never 
 penetrated until she was dangerously wounded in a street-brawl, 
 and protected by the Bishop of Guamanga, to whom she re- 
 vealed her sex. She then returned to Spain where the report of 
 her adventures, and the conspicuous bravery she had often dis- 
 played, rendered her a notable personage. Subsequently she went 
 back to South America, and settled down prosperously to the 
 carrying trade. All that is authentically known of her is set forth 
 
 33' 
 
332 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 by Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, in the valuable Introduction and 
 Note to his English version of The Nun-Ensign (igoS). He points 
 out that De Quincey had never seen Ferrer's book, that he had not 
 taken the trouble even to read De Valon with care, and that he 
 added inaccuracies and discrepancies of his own to those of his 
 original. Nevertheless literature is indebted to him for turning the 
 truculent and rather vulgar virago of the Spanish Historia de la 
 Manja Alfires into the gallant, gay, and charming " Kate " of his 
 lively romance. 
 
 The extract given describes the last of the nun-ensign's adven- 
 tures in Peru, in the course of which she rescues a lady who is 
 threatened with death by a jealous husband, kills the husband, and 
 receives the wound which leads to the disclosure of her sex.] 
 
 This alcalde's acquaintance, however, was not destined 
 to drop here. Something had appeared in the young 
 caballero's bearing which made it painful to have 
 addressed him with harshness, or for a moment to have 
 entertained such a charge against such a person. He 
 despatched his cousin, therefore, Don Antonio Calderon, 
 to offer his apologies ; and at the same time to request 
 that the stranger, whose rank and quality he regretted 
 not to have known, would do him the honour to come 
 and dine with him. This explanation, and the fact that 
 Don Antonio had already proclaimed his own position 
 as cousin to the magistrate, and nephew to the Bishop 
 of Cuzco, obliged Catalina to say, after thanking the 
 gentlemen for their obliging attentions, " I myself hold 
 the rank of Alf^rez in the service of his Catholic Majesty. 
 I am a native of Biscay, and I am now repairing to 
 Cuzco on private business." — "To Cuzco !" exclaimed 
 Antonio ; " and you from dear lovely Biscay ! How very 
 fortunate ! My cousin is a Basque like you ; and, like 
 you, he starts for Cuzco to-morrow morning ; so that, if 
 it is agreeable to you, Senor Alfdrez, we will travel 
 together." It was settled that they should. To travel — 
 amongst "balcony witnesses," and anglers for "blind 
 horses " — not merely with a just man, but with the very 
 abstract idea and riding allegory of justice, was too 
 delightful to the storm-wearied cornet; and he cheer- 
 fully accompanied Don Antonio to the house of the 
 magistrate, called Don Pedro de Chavarria. Distin- 
 
THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 333 
 
 guished was his reception; the alcalde personally re- 
 newed his regrets for the ridiculous scene of the two 
 scampish oculists, and presented Kate to his wife — a 
 most splendid Andalusian beauty, to whom he had been 
 married about a year. 
 
 This lady there is a reason for describing; and the 
 French reporter of Catalina's memoirs dwells upon the 
 theme. She united, he says, the sweetness of the 
 German lady with the energy of the Arabian — a com- 
 bination hard to judge of. As to her feet, he adds, I say 
 nothing, for she had scarcely any at all. "ye ne parle 
 pointdesespieds, elle rCen avait presque pas. " ' ' Poor lady ! " 
 says a compassionate rustic : "no feet ! What a shock- 
 ing thing that so fine a woman should have been so 
 sadly mutilated ! " Oh, my dear rustic, you're quite in 
 the wrong box. The Frenchman means this as the 
 very highest compliment. Beautiful, however, she must 
 have been; and a Cinderella, I hope, but still not a 
 Cinderellula, considering that she had the inimitable 
 walk and step of Andalusian women, which cannot be 
 accomplished without something of a proportionate basis 
 to stand upon. 
 
 The reason which there is (as I have said) for de- 
 scribing this lady, arises out of her relation to the tragic 
 events which followed. She, by her criminal levity, was 
 the cause of all. And I must here warn the moralising 
 blunderer of two errors that he is likely to make: 
 ist, that he is invited to read some extract from a 
 licentious amour, as if for its own interest ; 2dly, or on 
 account of Donna Catalina's memoirs, with a view to 
 relieve their too martial character. I have the pleasure 
 to assure him of his being so utterly in the darkness of 
 error, that any possible change he can make in his 
 opinions, right or left, must be for the better : he can- 
 not stir, but he will mend, which is a delightful thought 
 for the moral and blundering mind. As to the first point, 
 what little glimpse he obtains of a licentious amour is, 
 .as a court of justice will sometimes show him such a 
 glimpse, simply to make intelligible the subsequent facts 
 which depend upon it. Secondly, as to the conceit that 
 
334 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Catalina wished to embellish her memoirs, understand 
 that no such practice then existed — certainly not in 
 Spanish literature. Her memoirs are electrifying by 
 their facts; else, in the manner of telling these facts, 
 they are systematically dry. 
 
 But let us resume. Don Antonio Calderon was a 
 handsome, accomplished cavalier. And in the course of 
 dinner Catalina was led to judge, from the behaviour to 
 each other of this gentleman and the lady, the alcalde's 
 beautiful wife, that they had an improper understanding. 
 This also she inferred from the furtive language of their 
 eyes. Her wonder was, that the alcalde should be so 
 blind ; though upon that point she saw reason in a day 
 or two to change her opinion. Some people see every- 
 thing by affecting to see nothing. The whole affair, 
 however, was nothing at all to her; and she would have 
 dismissed it altogether from her thoughts, but for the 
 dreadful events on the journey. 
 
 This went on but slowly, however steadily. Owing to 
 the miserable roads, eight hours a-day of travelling was 
 found quite enough for man and beast ; the product of 
 which eight hours was from ten to twelve leagues, 
 taking the league at 2\ miles. On the last day but one 
 of the journey, the travelling party, which was precisely 
 the original dinner party, reached a little town ten 
 leagues short of Cuzco. The corrdgidor of this place 
 was a friend of the alcalde ; and through his influence 
 the party obtained better accommodations than those 
 which they had usually commanded in a hovel calling 
 itself a venta, or in a sheltered corner of a barn. The 
 alcalde was to sleep at the corr^gidor's house ; the two 
 young cavaliers, Calderon and our Kate, had sleeping- 
 rooms at the public locanda; but for the lady was 
 reserved a little pleasure-house in an enclosed garden. 
 This was a mere toy of a house ; but the season being 
 summer, and the house surrounded with tropical flowers, 
 the lady preferred it (in spite of its loneliness) to the 
 damp mansion of the official grandee, who, in her 
 humble opinion, was quite as fusty as his mansion, and 
 his mansion not much less so than himself. 
 
THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 335 
 
 After dining gaily together at the locanda, and possibly 
 taking a " rise " out of his worship the corr6gidor, as a 
 repeating echo of Don Quixote (then growing popular in 
 Spanish America), the young man Don Antonio, who 
 was no young officer, and the young officer Catalina, 
 who was no young man, lounged down together to the 
 little pavilion in the flower-garden, with the purpose of 
 paying their respects to the presiding belle. They were 
 graciously received, and had the honour of meeting there 
 his mustiness the alcalde, and his fustiness the cor- 
 r^gidor; whose conversation ought surely to have been 
 edifying, since it was anything but brilliant. How they 
 got on under the weight of two such muffs, has been a 
 mystery for two centuries. But they did to a certainty, 
 for the party did not break up till eleven. Tea and turn- 
 out you could not call it ; for there was the turn-out in 
 rigour, but not the tea. One thing, however, Catalina 
 by mere accident had an opportunity of observing, and 
 observed with pain. The two official gentlemen, on 
 taking leave, had gone down the steps into the garden. 
 Catalina, having forgot her hat, went back into the 
 little vestibule to look for it. There stood the lady and 
 Don Antonio, exchanging a few final words (they were 
 final) and a few final signs. Amongst the last Kate 
 observed distinctly this, and distinctly she understood 
 it. First of all, by raising her forefinger, the lady drew 
 Calderon's attention to the act which followed as one of 
 significant pantomime ; which done, she snuffed out one 
 of the candles. The young man answered it by a look of 
 intelligence ; and then all three passed down the steps 
 together. The lady was disposed to take the cool air, 
 and accompanied them to the garden-gate; but, in 
 passing down the walk, Catalina noticed a second ill- 
 omened sign that all was not right. Two glaring eyes 
 she distinguished amongst the shrubs for a moment, 
 and a rustling immediately after. " What 's that? " said 
 the lady; and Don Antonio answered, carelessly, "A 
 bird flying out of the bushes." But birds do not amuse 
 themselves by staying up to midnight ; and birds do not 
 wear rapiers. 
 
336 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 Catalina, as usual, had read everything. Not a 
 wrinkle or a rustle was lost upon her. And, therefore, 
 when she reached the locanda, knowing to an iota all 
 that was coming, she did not retire to bed, but paced 
 before the house. She had not long to wait : in fifteen 
 minutes the door opened softly, and out stepped Calderon. 
 Kate walked forward, and faced him immediately ; telling 
 him laughingly that it was not good for his health to go 
 abroad on this night. The young man showed some 
 impatience ; upon which, very seriously, Kate acquainted 
 him with her suspicions, and with the certainty that the 
 alcalde was not so blind as he had seemed. Calderon 
 thanked her for the information; would be upon his 
 guard ; but, to prevent further expostulation, he wheeled 
 round instantly into the darkness. Catalina was too well 
 convinced, however, of the mischief on foot to leave him 
 thus. She followed rapidly, and passed silently into the 
 garden, almost at the same time with Calderon. Both 
 took their stations behind trees; Calderon watching 
 nothing but the burning candles, Catalina watching cir- 
 cumstances to direct her movements. The candles 
 burned brightly in the little pavilion. Presently one was 
 extinguished. Upon this, Calderon pressed forward to 
 the steps, hastily ascended them, and passed into the 
 vestibule. Catalina followed on his traces. What suc- 
 ceeded was all one scene of continued, dreadful dumb 
 show ; different passions of panic, or deadly struggle, or 
 hellish malice, absolutely suiFocated all articulate utter- 
 ances. 
 
 In the first moments a gurgling sound was heard, as 
 of a wild beast attempting vainly to yell over some 
 creature that it was strangling. Next came a tumbling 
 out at the door of one black mass, which heaved and 
 parted at intervals into two figures, which closed, which 
 parted again, which at last fell down the steps together. 
 Then appeared a figure in white. It was the unhappy 
 Andalusian; and she, seeing the outline of Catalina's 
 person, ran up to her, unable to utter one syllable. 
 Pitying the agony of her horror, Catalina took her 
 within her own cloak, and carried her out at the garden 
 
THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 337 
 
 gate. Calderon had by this time died ; and the maniacal 
 alcalde had risen up to pursue his wife. But Kate, 
 foreseeing what he would do, had stepped silently within 
 the shadow of the garden wall. Looking down the road 
 to the town, and seeing nobody moving, the maniac, for 
 some purpose, went back to the house. This moment 
 Kate used to recover the locanda, with the lady still 
 panting in horror. What was to be done? To think of 
 concealment in this little place was out of the question. 
 The alcalde was a man of local power, and it was certain 
 that he would kill his wife on the spot. Kate's generosity 
 would not allow her to have any collusion with this 
 murderous purpose. At Cuzco, the principal convent 
 was ruled by a near relative of the Andalusian ; and there 
 she would find shelter. Kate therefore saddled her horse 
 rapidly, placed the lady behind, and rode off in the 
 darkness. 
 
 About five miles out of the town their road was crossed 
 by a torrent, over which they could not hit the bridge. 
 " Forward !" cried the lady ; "Oh, heavens! forward!" 
 and Kate repeating the word to the horse, the docile 
 creature leaped down into the water. They were all 
 sinking at first ; but having its head free, the horse swam 
 clear of all obstacles through the midnight darkness, 
 and scrambled out on the opposite bank. The two riders 
 were, dripping from the shoulders downward. But, see- 
 ing a light twinkling from a cottage window, Kate rode 
 up ; obtaining a little refreshment, and the benefit of a 
 fire, from a poor labouring man. From this man she 
 also bought a warm mantle for the lady, who, besides 
 her torrent bath, was dressed in a light evening robe, so 
 that but for the horseman's cloak of Kate she would 
 have perished. But there was no time to lose. They had 
 already lost two hours from the consequences of their 
 cold bath. Cuzco was still eighteen miles distant ; and 
 the alcalde's shrewdness would at once divine this to be 
 his wife's mark. They remounted : very soon the silent 
 night echoed the hoofs of a pursuing rider; and now 
 commenced the most frantic race, in which each party 
 rode as if the whole game of life were staked upon the 
 
 z 
 
338 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 issue. The pace was killing : and Kate has delivered it 
 as her opinion, in the memoirs which she wrote, that the 
 alcalde was the better mounted. This may be doubted. 
 And certainly Kate had ridden too many years in the 
 Spanish cavalry, to have any fear of his worship's horse- 
 manship ; but it was a prodigious disadvantage that her 
 horse had to carry double ; while the horse ridden by her 
 opponent was one of those belonging to the murdered 
 Don Antonio, and known to Kate as a powerful animal. 
 
 At length they had come within three miles of Cuzco. 
 The road after this descended the whole way to the 
 city, and in some places rapidly, so as to require a 
 cool rider. Suddenly a deep trench appeared traversing 
 the whole extent of a broad heath. It was useless to 
 evade it. To have hesitated, was to be lost. Kate saw 
 the necessity of clearing it; but she doubted much 
 whether her poor exhausted horse, after twenty-one 
 miles of work so severe, had strength for the effert. 
 However, the race was nearly finished; a score of 
 dreadful miles had been accomplished; and Kate's 
 maxim, which never yet had failed, both figuratively for 
 life, and literally for the saddle, was — to ride at every- 
 thing that showed a front of resistance. She did so now. 
 Having come upon the trench rather too suddenly, she 
 wheeled round for the advantage of coming down upon 
 it with more impetus, rode resolutely at it, cleared it, 
 and gained the opposite bank. The hind feet of her 
 horse were sinking back from the rottenness of the 
 ground ; but the strong supporting bridle-hand of Kate 
 carried him forward; and in ten minutes more they 
 would be in Cuzco. 
 
 This being seen by the vengeful alcalde, who had 
 built great hopes on the trench, he unslung his carbine, 
 pulled up, and fired after the bonny black horse and 
 its two bonny riders. But this vicious manoeuvre would 
 have lost his worship any bet that he might have had 
 depending on this admirable steeplechase. For the bul- 
 lets, says Kate in her memoirSj whistled round the poor 
 clinging lady en croupe — luckily none struck her; but 
 one wounded the horse. And that settled the odds. 
 
THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 339 
 
 Kate now planted herself well in her stirrups to enter 
 Cuzco, almost dangerously a winner ; for the horse was 
 so maddened by the wound, and the road so steep, that 
 he went like blazes ; and it really became difficult for 
 Kate to guide him with any precision through narrow 
 episcopal ^ paths. 
 
 Henceforwards the wounded horse required uninter- 
 mitting attention ; and yet, in the mere luxury of strife, 
 it was impossible for Kate to avoid turning a little in her 
 saddle to see the alcalde's performance on this tight-rope 
 of the trench. His worship's horsemanship being, per- 
 haps, rather rusty, and he not perfectly acquainted with 
 his horse, it would have been agreeable for him to com- 
 promise the case by riding round, or dismounting. But 
 all that was impossible. The job must be done. And I 
 am happy to report, for the reader's satisfaction, the 
 sequel — so far as Kate could attend the performance. 
 Gathering himself up for mischief, the alcalde took a 
 mighty sweep, as if ploughing out the line of some vast 
 encampment, or tracing the pomoerium for some future 
 Rome ; then, like thunder and lightning, with arms flying 
 aloft in the air, down he came upon the trembling trench. 
 But the horse refused the leap ; to take the leap was im- 
 possible; absolutely to refuse it, the horse felt, was 
 immoral; and therefore, as the only compromise that 
 his unlearned brain could suggest, he threw his worship 
 right over his ears, lodging him safely in a sandheap, 
 that rose with clouds of dust and screams of birds into 
 the morning air. Kate had now no time to send back 
 her compliments in a musical halloo. The alcalde missed 
 breaking his neck on this occasion very narrowly ; but 
 his neck was no use to him in twenty minutes more, as 
 the reader will find. Kate rode right onwards: and, 
 coming in with a lady behind her, horse bloody, and 
 pace such as no hounds could have lived with, she 
 ought to have made a great sensation in Cuzco. But, 
 unhappily, the people of Cuzco, the spectators that 
 should have been, were fast asleep in bed. 
 
 * "Episcopal:" — The roads around Cuzco were made, and main- 
 tained, under the patronage and control of the bishop. 
 
340 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 The steeplechase into Cuzco had been a fine headlong 
 thing, considering the torrent, the trench, the wounded 
 horse, the lovely Andalusian lady, with her agonising 
 fears, mounted behind Kate, together with the meek 
 dove-like dawn: but the finale crowded together the 
 quickest succession of changes that out of a melodrama 
 ever can have been witnessed. Kate reached the con- 
 vent in safety; carried into the cloisters, and delivered 
 like a parcel, the fair Andalusian. But to rouse the ser- 
 vants and obtain admission to the convent caused a long 
 delay ; and on returning to the street through the broad 
 gateway of the convent, whom should she face but the 
 alcalde! How he had escaped the trench, who can tell? 
 He had no time to write memoirs ; his horse was too 
 illiterate. But he had escaped; temper not at all im- 
 proved by that adventure, and now raised to a hell of 
 malignity by seeing that he had lost his prey. The 
 morning light showed him how to use his sword, and 
 whom he had before him, and he attacked Kate with 
 fury. Both were exhausted ; and Kate, besides that she 
 had no personal quarrel with the alcalde, having now 
 accomplished her sole object in saving the lady, would 
 have been glad of a truce. She could with difficulty 
 wield her sword : and the alcalde had so far the advail- 
 tage, that he wounded Kate severely. That roused her 
 ancient Biscayan blood ; and she turned on him now with 
 deadly determination. At that moment in rode two ser- 
 vants of the alcalde, who took part with their master. 
 
 These odds strengthened Kate's resolution, but weak- 
 ened her chances. Just then, however, rode in and 
 ranged himself on Kate's side, the servant of the mur- 
 dered Don Calderon. In an instant Kate had pushed 
 her sword through the alcalde, who died upon the spot. 
 In an instant the servant of Calderon had fled. In an 
 instant the alguazils had come up. They and the ser- 
 vants of the alcalde pressed furiously on Kate, who was 
 again fighting for her life with persons not even known 
 to her by sight. Against such odds, she was rapidly 
 losing ground ; when, in an instant, on the opposite side 
 of the street, the great gates of the Episcopal Palace 
 
THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 341 
 
 rolled open. Thither it was that Calderon's servant had 
 fled. The bishop and his attendants hurried across. 
 " Senor Caballero," said the bishop, "in the name of 
 the Virgin, I enjoin you to surrender your sword." — 
 " My lord," said Kate, " I dare not do it with so many 
 enemies about me." — " But I," replied the bishop, 
 " become answerable to the law for your safe keeping." 
 Upon which, with filial reverence, all parties dropped 
 their swords. Kate being severely wounded, the bishop 
 led her into his palace. In another instant came the 
 catastrophe: Kate's discovery could no longer be de- 
 layed ; the blood flowed too rapidly ; and the wound was 
 in her bosom. She requested a private interview with 
 the bishop ; all was known in a moment ; surgeons and 
 attendants were summoned hastily; and Kate had 
 fainted. The good bishop pitied her, and had her at- 
 tended in his palace ; then removed to a convent ; then 
 to a second convent at Lima; and, after many months 
 had passed, his report of the whole extraordinary case 
 in all its details to the supreme government at Madrid, 
 drew from the king, Philip IV, and from the papal 
 legate, an order that the nun should be transferred to 
 Spain. 
 
ANALECTA 
 
 LIFE. — What is life? Darkness and formless vacancy 
 for a beginning, or something beyond all beginning ; then 
 next a dim lotos of human consciousness, finding itself 
 afloat upon the bosom of waters without a shore ; then 
 a few sunny smiles and many tears; a little love and 
 infinite strife; whisperings from paradise and fierce 
 mockeries from the anarchy of chaos; dust and ashes, 
 and once more darkness circling round, as if from the 
 beginning, and in this way rounding or making an 
 island of our fantastic existence; that is human life, 
 that the inevitable amount of man's laughter and his 
 tears — of what he suffers and he does — of his motions 
 this way and that way, to the right or to the left, back- 
 wards or forwards — of all his seeming realities and all 
 his absolute negations — his shadowy pomps and his 
 pompous shadows — of whatsoever he thinks, finds, 
 makes or mars, creates or animates, loves, hates, or in 
 dread hope anticipates. So it is, so it has been, so it 
 will be for ever and ever. 
 
 LOVE. — It is not usual for men to meet with their 
 capital disappointments in early life, at least not in 
 youth. For, as to disappointments in love, wJiich are 
 doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, 
 though otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in 
 this way made impossible at a very early age, that no 
 man can be in love to the whole extent of his capacity 
 until he is in full possession of all his faculties, and with 
 the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect love, such as 
 is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappoint- 
 
 342 
 
ANALECTA 343 
 
 ment, presumes also for its object, not a mere girl, 
 but woman, mature both in person and character, and 
 womanly dignity. 
 
 * # « 
 
 WASTE. — It is always a pity to see anything lost 
 and wasted, especially love. 
 
 LITERATURE AND INTELLECT.— Literature very 
 imperfectly represents the intellectual interests of any 
 people; and literary people are, in a large proportion, 
 as little intellectual people as any one meets with. 
 
 * # # 
 
 THE GAIN AND LOSS OF OPIUM-EATING.— 
 Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the steady 
 habit of exertion ; but it creates spasms of irregular 
 exertion. It ruins the natural power of life ; but it de- 
 velops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. 
 
 * # * 
 
 THE ROMAN MIND.— The Roman mind was great 
 in the presence of man, mean in the presence of nature ; 
 impotent to comprehend or to delineate the internal strife 
 oi passion, but powerful beyond any other national mind 
 to display the energy of the 110111 victorious over all 
 passion. 
 
 * * * 
 
 GERMAN LITERARY STYLE.— Every German re- 
 gards a sentence in the light of a package, and a package 
 not for the mail-coach but for the waggon, into which his 
 privilege is to crowd as much as he possibly can. Having 
 framed a sentence, therefore, he next proceeds to pack 
 it, which is effected partly by unwieldy tails and codicils, 
 but chiefly by enormous parenthetic involutions. All 
 qualifications, limitations, exceptions, illustrations, are 
 stuffed and violently rammed into the bowels of the 
 principal proposition. That all this equipage of acces- 
 sories is not so arranged as to assist its own orderly 
 
344 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 development, no more occurs to a German as any faul);, 
 than that in a package of shawls or of carpets the colours 
 and patterns are not fully displayed. 
 
 ISOLATION. — True it is that we who see most of each 
 other, nearest relations united in the same household, see 
 but little of that inner world, that world of secret self- 
 consciousness, in which each of us lives a second life 
 apart, and with himself alone, collateral to his other life, 
 or life which he lives in common with others. That is a 
 world in which every man, the very meanest, is a solitary 
 presence, and cannot admit the fellowship even of that 
 one among his fellow creatures whom he loves the most 
 and perhaps regards as his other self. 
 
 ANECDOTAGE.— ^// anecdotes, I fear, are false. I 
 am sorry to say so, but my duty to the reader extorts 
 from me the disagreeable confession, as upon a matter 
 specially investigated by myself, that all dealers in anec- 
 dotes are tainted with mendacity. Rarer than the phoenix 
 is that virtuous man (a monster he is — nay, he is an im- 
 possible man) who will consent to lose a prosperous story 
 on the consideration that it happens to be a lie. All 
 history, therefore! being built partly, and some of it 
 altogether, on anecdotage, must be a tissue of false- 
 hoods. . . . Date from Anno Domini or from the Julian 
 era, patronize Olympiads or patronize (as / do from 
 misanthropy because nobody else will) the era of Nabo- 
 nassar — no matter. Upon every road, thicker than mile- 
 stones, you see records of human mendacity, or (which 
 is much worse in my opinion) of human sympathy with 
 other people's mendacity. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.— It was a most witty saying with 
 respect to a piratical and knavish publisher who made a 
 trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors by 
 forged writings, that he was " among the new terrors 
 
ANALECTA 345 
 
 of death." But in the gravest sense it may be affirmed 
 of Shakespeare that he is among the modern luxuries 
 of life ; that life in fact is a new thing, and one more to 
 be coveted, since Shakespeare has extended the domains 
 of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers 
 into regions not so much as dimly descried or even sus- 
 pected before his time, far less illuminated (as they now 
 are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance. 
 
 SHELLEY. — When one thinks of the early misery 
 which he suffered, and of the insolent infidelity which, 
 being yet so young, he wooed with a lover's passion, 
 then the darkness of midnight begins to form a deep im- 
 penetrable background, upon which the phantasmagoria 
 of all that is to come may arrange itself in troubled 
 phosphoric streams and sweeping processions of woe. 
 Yet again, when one recurs to his gracious nature, his 
 fearlessness, his truth, his purity from all fleshliness of 
 appetite, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love and 
 tenderness — suddenly out of the darkness reveals itself 
 a morning of May, forests and thickets of rose advance 
 to the foreground, and from the midst of them looks 
 out "the eternal child," cleansed from his sorrow, 
 radiant with joy, having power given him to forget the 
 misery which he suffered, power given him to forget the 
 misery which he caused, and leaning with his heart upon 
 that dove-like faith against which his erring intellect 
 had rebelled. 
 
 GOLDSMITH.— My trust is that Goldsmith lived on 
 the whole a life which, though troubled, was one of 
 average enjoyment. Unquestionably, when reading at 
 midnight, in the middle watch of a century which he 
 never reached by one whole generation, this record of 
 one so guileless, so upright, or seeming to be otherwise 
 only in the eyes of those who did not know his diffi- 
 culties, nor could have understood them ; when recurring 
 also to his admirable genius, to the sweet natural gaiety 
 
346 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 of his oftentimes pathetic humour, and to the yaried 
 accomplishments from talent or erudition by which he 
 gave effect to endowments so fascinating — one cannot 
 but sorrow over the strife which he sustained and over 
 the wrong which he suffered. A few natural tears fall 
 from every eye at the rehearsal of so much contumely 
 from fools, which he faced unresistingly, as one bare- 
 headed in a hailstorm ; and worse to bear than the scorn 
 of fools was the imperfect sympathy and jealous self- 
 distrusting esteem which to the last he received from 
 his friends. Doubtless he suffered much wrong ; but so, 
 in one way or other, do most men ; he suffered also this 
 special wrong, that in his lifetime he never was fully 
 appreciated by any one friend — something of a counter- 
 movement ever mingled with praise for him; he never 
 saw himself enthroned in the heart of any young and 
 , fervent admirer ; and he was always overshadowed by 
 men less deeply genial, though more showy, than him- 
 self; but these things happen, and will happen for ever 
 to myriads amongst the benefactors of earth. Their 
 names ascend in songs of thankful commemoration, yet 
 seldom uiitil the ears are deaf that would have thrilled 
 to the music. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S WOMEN.— The possible beauty 
 of the female character had not been seen as in a dream 
 before Shakespeare called into perfect life the radiant 
 shapes of Desdemona, of Imogen, of Hermione, of Per- 
 dita, of Ophelia, of Miranda, and many others. The 
 Una of Spenser, earlier by ten or fifteen years than most 
 of these, was an idealized portrait of female innocence 
 and virgin purity, but too shadowy and unreal for a 
 dramatic reality. And as to the Grecian classics, let not 
 the reader imagine for an instant that any prototype in 
 this field of Shakespearean power can be looked^ for 
 there. The Antigone and the Electra of the tragic poets 
 are the two leading female characters that classical an- 
 tiquity offers to our respect, but assuredly not to our 
 impassioned love, as disciplined and exalted in the 
 
ANALECTA 
 
 347 
 
 school of Shakespeare. They challenge our admiration, 
 severe and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, 
 cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old 
 man, or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of 
 a brother, under circumstances of peril, of desertion, 
 and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Iphigenia, 
 again, though not dramatically coming before us in her 
 own person but according to the beautiful report of a 
 spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of 
 heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in 
 the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to 
 forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as 
 a moment's neglect of her own princely descent, that 
 she herself was "a lady in the land." These are fine 
 marble groups, but they are not the warm breathing 
 realities of Shakespeare; there is " no speculation " in 
 their cold marble eyes ; the breath of life is not in their 
 nostrils ; the fine pulses of womanly sensibilities are not 
 throbbing in their bosoms. And besides this immeasur- 
 able difference between the cold moony reflexes of life 
 as exhibited by the power of Grecian art and the true 
 sunny life of Shakespeare, it must be observed that the 
 Antigones, etc., of the antique put forward but one 
 single trait of character, like the aloe with its single 
 blossom. This solitary feature is presented to us as an 
 abstraction, and as an insulated quality; whereas in 
 Shakespeare all is presented in the concrete, that is to 
 say not brought forward in relief, as by some effort of 
 an anatomical artist, but embodied and embedded, so 
 to speak, as by the force of a creative nature, in the 
 complex system of a human life : a life in which all the 
 elements move and play simultaneously, and, with some- 
 thing more than mere simultaneity or co-existence, act- 
 ing and re-acting each upon the other — nay even acting 
 by each other and through edch other. In Shake- 
 speare's characters is felt for ever a real organic life, 
 where each is for the whole and in the whole, and 
 where the whole is for each and in each. They only are 
 real incarnations. 
 
348 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 WRITING UNDER PRESSURE.— Not that always 
 and unconditionally it is an evil to be hurried in writing 
 for the press. I doubt not that many a score of prac- 
 tised writers for the press will have been self-observing 
 enough to notice a phenomenon which I have many 
 times noticed, viz., that hurry and severe compression 
 from an instant summons that brooks no delay have 
 often a tendency to furnish the flint and steel for elicit- 
 ing sudden scintillations of originality; sometimes in 
 what regards the picturesque felicity of the phrase, 
 sometimes in what regards the thought itself or its 
 illustrations. To autoschediase or improvise is some- 
 times in effect to be forced into a consciousness of 
 creative energies that would else have slumbered through 
 life. The same stimulation to the creative faculty occurs 
 even more notoriously in musical improvisations; and 
 all great executants on the organ have had reason to 
 bemoan their inability to arrest these sudden felicities 
 of impassioned combinations, and these flying arabesques 
 of loveliest melody, which the magnetic inspiration of 
 the moment has availed to excite. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND KANT.— I can never think 
 that man a Christian who has blotted out of his scheme 
 the very powers by which only the great offices and 
 functions of Christianity can be sustained ; neither can 
 I think that any man, though he make himself a mar- 
 vellously clever disputant, ever could tower upwards 
 into a very great philosopher unless he should begin or 
 should end with Christianity* Kant is a dubious excep- 
 tion. Not that I mean to question his august preten- 
 sions, so far as they went, and in his proper line. 
 Within his own circle, none durst tread but he. But 
 that circle was limited. He was called, by one who 
 weighed him well, the alles-sermalmender, the world- 
 shattering Kant. He could destroy — his intellect was 
 essentially destructive. He was the Gog and he was 
 the Magog of Hunnish desolation to the existing schemes 
 
ANALECTA 349 
 
 of Philosophy. He probed them ; he showed the vanity 
 of vanities which besieged their foundations — the rot- 
 tenness below, the hollowness above. But he had no 
 instincts of creation or restoration within his Apollyon 
 mind; for he had no love, no faith, no self-distrust, no 
 humility, no child-like docility; all which qualities be- 
 longed essentially to Coleridge's mind and waited only 
 for manhood and for sorrow to bring them forward. . . . 
 But exoriare aliquis — and some philosopher I am per- 
 suaded •will arise; and "one sling of some victorious 
 arm" (Paradise Lost, bk. x) will yet destroy the de- 
 stroyer, in so far as he has applied himself to the 
 destruction of Christian hope. For my faith is that 
 though a great man, may by a rare possibility be an 
 infidel, an intellect of the highest order must build upon 
 Christianity. 
 
 WAR. — A great truth it was which Wordsworth 
 uttered, whatever might be the expansion which he 
 allowed to it, when he said that 
 
 God's most perfect instrument, 
 
 Is working out a pure intent, 
 
 Is man — array'd for mutual slaughter; 
 
 Yea, Carnage is God's daughter. 
 
 There is a mystery in approaching this aspect of the 
 case, which no man has read fully. War has a deeper 
 and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man, 
 than has yet been deciphered. To execute judgments of 
 retribution upon outrages offered to human rights or to 
 human dignity, to vindicate the sanctities of the altar 
 and the sanctities of the hearth — these are functions of 
 human greatness which war has many times assumed, 
 and many times faithfully discharged. But, behind all 
 these, there towers dimly a greater. The great phe- 
 nomenon of war it is, this and this only, which keeps 
 open in man a spiracle— an organ of respiration— for 
 
3SO THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 breathing q transcendent atmosphere, and dealing' with 
 an idea that else would perish — viz. , the idea of mixed 
 crusade and martyrdom, doing and suffering, that finds 
 its realization in a battle such as that of Waterloo — viz., 
 a battle fought for interests of the human race, felt even 
 where they are not understood ; so that the tutelary angel 
 of man, when he traverses such a dreadful field, when he 
 reads the distorted features, counts the ghastly ruins, 
 sums the hidden anguish, and the harvests 
 
 Of horror breathing' from the silent ground, 
 
 nevertheless, speaking as God's messenger, "blesses it, 
 and calls it very good." 
 
 THE CURSE OF REMEMBRANCE.— Martyrdom 
 it is, and no less, to revivify by effect of your own, or 
 passively to see revivified, in defiance of your own fierce 
 resistance, the gorgeous spectacles of your visionary 
 morning life, or of your too rapturous noontide, re- 
 lieved upon a background of funeral darkness. Such 
 poisonous transfigurations, by which the paradise of 
 youthful hours is forced into distilling demoniac misery 
 for ruined nerves, exist for many a profound sensibility. 
 And, as regards myself, touch but some particular key 
 of laughter and of echoing music, sound but for a mo- 
 ment one bar of preparation, and immediately the pomps 
 and glory of all that has composed for me the delirious 
 vision of life re-awaken for torment ; the orchestras of 
 the earth open simultaneously to my inner ear; and in 
 a moment I behold, forming themselves into solemn 
 groups and processions, and passing over sad phantom 
 stages, all that chiefly I have loved, or in whose behalf 
 chiefly I have, abhorred and cursed the grave — all that 
 should not have died, yet died the soonest— the brilliant, 
 the noble, the wise, the innocent, the brave, the beauti- 
 ful. With these dreadful masks, and under the persecu- 
 tion of their malicious beauty, wakens up the worm 
 that gnaws at the heart. Under that corrosion arises a 
 
ANALECTA • 351 
 
 hatred, blind and vague, and incomprehensible even to 
 one's self, as of some unknown snake-like enemy, in 
 some unknown hostile world, brooding- with secret power 
 over the fountains of one's own vitality. Such scourges, 
 at any rate, must be borne where the machinery of the 
 nerves brings round the hour of torment. 
 
 GENIUS. — With respect to the question of the com- 
 parative happiness enjoyed by men of genius, it is not 
 necessary to argue, nor does it seem possible to prove, 
 even in the case of any one individual poet, that, on the 
 whole, he was either more happy or less happy than the 
 average mass of his fellow-men: far less could this be 
 argued as to the whole class of poets. What seems really 
 open to proof is, that men of genius have a larger capacity 
 of happiness, which capacity, both from within and from 
 without, may be defeated in ten thousand ways. This 
 seems involved in the very word genius. For, after all 
 the pretended and hollow attempts to distinguish genius 
 from talent, I shall continue to think (what heretofore I 
 have advanced) that no distinction in the case is tenable 
 for a moment but this — viz. , that genius is that mode of 
 intellectual power which moves in alliance with ih^ genial 
 nature: i.e., with the capacities of pleasure and pain; 
 whereas talent has no vestige of such an alliance, and 
 is perfectly independent of all human sensibilities. Con- 
 sequently, genius is a voice or breathing that represents 
 the total nature of man, and, therefore, his enjoying and 
 suffering nature, as well as his knowing and distinguish- 
 ing nature; whilst, on the contrary, talent represents 
 only a single function of that nature. Genius is the 
 language which interprets the synthesis of the human 
 spirit with the human intellect, each acting through the 
 other ; whilst talent speaks only from the insulated in- 
 tellect. And hence also it is that, besides its relation to 
 suffering and enjoyment, genius always implies a deeper 
 relation to virtue and vice ; whereas talent has no shadow 
 of a relation to moral qualities any more than it has to 
 vital sensibilities. A man of the highest talent is often 
 
352 THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 
 obtuse and below the ordinary standard of men in his 
 feeling's ; but no man of genius can unyoke himself from 
 the society of moral perceptions that are brighter, and 
 sensibilities that are more tremulous, than those of men 
 in general. 
 
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