 6. I dally with my subject, because to myself the remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any further cause to complain, for I now hasten to its close. In the road between slough and eaten I fell asleep, and just as the morning began to dawn I was awakened by the voice of a man standing over me and surveying me. I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking fellow, but not therefore of necessity an ill-meaning fellow. Or if he were, I suppose he thought that no person sleeping out of doors in winter could be worth robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I pegged to assure him, if he should be among my readers, that he was mistaken. After a slight remark he passed on, and I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me to pass through eaten before people were generally out. The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through eaten, unobserved, washed myself, and as far as possible adjusted my dress at a little public house in Windsor. And about eight o'clock went down towards Potts. On my road I met some junior boys of whom I made inquiries. Anetonian is always a gentleman, and in spite of my shabby abilements they answered me civilly. My friend, Lord, was gone to the University of Ibi Omni Cefusus Labor. Readest translation, all his labour was poured away. I had, however, other friends at eaten, but it is not to all that wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of Dee, to whom, though my acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with some others, I should not have shrunk from presenting myself under any circumstances. He was still at eaten, though I believe on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to breakfast. Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from any erroneous conclusions. Because I have had occasion, incidentally, to speak of various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any pretension to rank and high blood. I thank God that I have not. I am the son of a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for his great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits. Indeed, he was himself anonymously an author. If he had lived, it was expected that he would have been very rich, but dying prematurely, he left no more than about thirty thousand pounds, amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may mention with honour as still more highly gifted, although unpretending to the name and honours of a literary woman, I shall presume to call her, what many literary women are not, an intellectual woman. And I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure mother English, racy and fresh with idiomatic graces as any in our language, hardly accepting those of Lady M.W. Montague. These are my honours of dissent, I have no other, and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because in my judgment a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow creatures, is not the most favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities. Lord D. placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really so, but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent from being the first regular meal, the first good man's table that I had sat down to for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce eat anything. On the day when I first received my ten pounds banknote, I had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of rolls. This very shop I had two months or six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Oughtway, and feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no need for alarm. My appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what approached to a meal I continued to feel for weeks, or when I did not experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present occasion at Lord D's table, I found myself not at all better than usual, and in the midst of luxuries I had no appetite. I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine. I explained my situation therefore to Lord D, and gave him a short account of my late sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion and called for wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure, and on all occasions when I had an opportunity I never failed to drink wine, which I worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced, however, that this indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my malady, for the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a better regimen it might sooner and perhaps effectively have been revived. I hoped that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my eaten friends. I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D, on whom I was conscious I had not sufficient claims, the particular service in quest of which I had come down to eaten. I was, however, unwilling to lose my journey, and I asked it. Lord D, whose good nature was unbounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own direct claims, faltered nevertheless at this request. He acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings with moneylenders, and feared lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his connections. Moreover, he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations were so much more bounded than those of, hmm, would avail with my unchristian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute refusal, for after a little consideration he promised, under certain conditions which he pointed out, to give his security. Lord D was at this time not eighteen years of age, but I have often doubted on recollecting since the good sense and prudence which, on this occasion, he mingled with so much urbanity of manner. An urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sincerity, whether any statesman, the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy, could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people indeed cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. Re-comforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best, but far above the worst, that I had pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to London, three days after I had quitted it. And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord D's terms. Whether they would in the end have acceded to them and were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not. But many delays were made. Time passed on. The small fragment of my banknote had just melted away, and before any conclusion could have been put to the business, I must have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis an opening was made, almost by accident, for reconciliation with my friends. I quitted London in haste for a remote part of England. After some time I proceeded to the university, 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 poor Anne? For her I have reserved my concluding words. According to our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London at the corner of Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of everyone who was likely to know her, and during the last hours of my stay in London I put into activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested, and the limited extent of my power made possible. The street where she had lodged, I knew, but not the house, and I remembered at last some account which she had given me of ill treatment from her landlord, which made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She had few acquaintances. Most people besides thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved their laughter or their slight regard, and others thinking I was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and exclusively 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 and by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice, an address to, in, ah, shire, at that time the residence of my family. But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been some time in search of each other at the very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London, perhaps even within a few feet of each other, a barrier no wider than a London street often amounting in the end to a separation for eternity. During some years I hoped that she did live, and I suppose that in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word myriad I may say that on my different visits to London I have looked into many, many myriads of female faces in the hope of meeting her. I should know her again amongst a thousand if I saw her for a moment. For though not handsome she had a sweet expression of countenance and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years, but now I should fear to see her, and her cough, which grieved me when I parted with her, is now my consolation. I now wish to see her no longer, but think of her more gladly as one long since laid in the grave, in the grave I would hope of a Magdalene. Taken away before injuries and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun. End of Section 6 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Section 7 of Confessions of an English Opium Eater This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey Section 7 Part 2 From the London Magazine for October 1821 So then Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, Thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee. The time was come at last that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces, no more should dream and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors too many, to myself and Anne, have doubtless since then trodden in our footsteps, inheritors of our calamities, other orphans than Anne have sighed, tears have been shed by other children, and thou, Oxford Street, hast since doubtless echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long fair weather, the premature sufferings which I had paid down to have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long immunity from sorrow. And if again I walked in London a solitary and contemplative man, as often times I did, I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. And although it is true that the calamities of my novitiate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbridge that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a matureer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathising affection, how deep and tender! Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human desires, that often times on moonlight nights, during my first mournful abode in London, my consolation was, if such it could be thought, to gaze from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces through the heart of Mar-Eleban, to the fields and the woods. For that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, that is the road to the north, and therefore to, and if I had the wings of a dove, that way would I fly for comfort. Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blindness, yet even in that very northern region it was, even in that very valley, nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an arrestee's, and in this unhappier than he, that sleep which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and to him especially as a blessed balm for his wounded heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires, yet if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their alleviations, and a grief which had not been feared is met by consolations which had not been hoped. I, therefore, who participated as it were in the troubles of arrestee's, accepting only in his agitated conscience, participated no less in all his supports. My humanities 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, said my Electra, for thou, beloved M, dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra, and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stupid humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection, to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever, nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me sleep no more. Not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love more than Electra did evold. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe. But these troubles are past, and thou wilt read records of a period so dolerous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return no more. Meantime I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces of Oxford Street by night, and oftentimes when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three hundred miles, and the length of three dreary months, I look up the streets that run northward from Oxford Street upon moonlight nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish, and remembering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago. I think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remota time, and may be justified if read in another meaning, and if I could allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say to myself, as I look to the north, oh that I had the wings of a dove, and with how just a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejaculation, and that way would I fly for comfort, the pleasures of opium. It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date. But cardinal events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come dither for the first time since my entrance at college, and my introduction to opium arose in the following way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold water, at least once a day. Being suddenly seized with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of that practice. Jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets, rather to run away if possible from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance who recommended opium. Opium dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain. I had heard of it as I had of manor or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that time. What solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart? What heart quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances? Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place and the time, and the man, if man he was, that first laid open to me the paradise of opium eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless, and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford Street, and near the stately pantheon, as Mr Wordsworth has obligingly called it, I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist, unconscious minister of celestial pleasures, as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday. And when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do, and furthermore out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real copper havens, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of considering him that when I next came up to London, I sought him near the stately pantheon, and found him not. And thus to me, who knew not his name, if indeed he had one, he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a sublunary druggist. It may be so, but my faith is better. I believe him to have even nest, or evaporated. So unwillingly would I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drugg. Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium taking, and what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it, and in an hour. Oh heavens, what a revulsion! What an upheaving from its lowest depths of 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 pharmacone for all human woes. Here was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages at once discovered. Happiness might now be bought for a penny and carried in the Wescott pocket. Portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the male coach. But if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium. Its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the opium eater cannot present himself in the character of l'allegro. Even then he speaks and thinks as becomes il pensiroso. Nevertheless I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery, and unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect, and with a few indulgences of that sort I shall endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-micurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed. And first one word with respect to its bodily effects, for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey, who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial rite, or by professors of medicine writing ex-cathedra, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce. Lies, lies, lies. I remember once in passing a bookstore to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author. By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, vis 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 dusky brown in colour, and this take notice I grant. Secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant, for in my time East Indian opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight. And thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, vis die. These weighty propositions are all and singular true. I cannot gainsay them, and truth ever was, and will be commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by men on the subject of opium. End of Section 7. Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey. Section 8 of Confessions of an English Opium Eater. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey. Section 8. 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, at my own peril, that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium, commonly called lotinum, that might certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it. But why? Because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm parenturally, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol, and not in degree only incapable, but even in kind. It is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after which it declines. That from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours. The first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, the second, the chronic pleasure. The one is a flame, the other a steady and equitable glow. But the main distinction lies in this. That whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium on the contrary, if taken in a proper manner, introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession. Opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempt and the admirations, the loves of the hatreds of the drinker. Opium on the contrary communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive, and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium like wine gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections. But then with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a mortal in 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 sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irritation of pain that are 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 librat asuis. Reader's translation in equilibrium through its own weight, 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 it is when they are drinking, as some old gentleman says in Atheneus, that men, che autos, infanis dos sin, hoitines e sin, display themselves in their true complexion of character, which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain point it is sure to volatilize and to disperse the intellectual energies, whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy, the merely human, to often the brutal part of his nature. But the opium eater, I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease or other remote effects of opium, feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount, that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity, and overall is the great light of the majestic intellect. This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium, of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member, the Alpha and the Omega. But then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident from the horror they express of it that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity, for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happen to say to him that his enemies, as I had heard, charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologised for him by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not prima facie, at first appearance, and of necessity an absurd one, but the defence is. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right. I will maintain, said he, that I do talk nonsense, and secondly I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply, said he, solely and simply, solely and simply, repeating it three times over, because I am drunk with opium and that daily. I replied that as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agree in it, it did not become me to question it. But the defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter and to lay down his reasons. But it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which must have presumed a man, mistaken, in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press him, even when his course of argument seemed open to projection. Not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though with no view to profit, is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice. But still I must plead my experience, which was greater than his greatest, by seven thousand drops a day. And though it was not possible to suppose a medical man, unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of Vinus intoxication, it yet struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead of restricting it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained in my hearing that they had been drunk upon green tea, and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day that a patient in recovering from an illness had got drunk on a beef steak. Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third, which are that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying, assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits. 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. The first stage of its action always lasted with me during my novitiate for upwards of eight hours, so that it must be the fault of the opium eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose to speak medically as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit like so many equestrian statues on logs of wood as stupid as themselves, but that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman. I shall, by way of treating the opium illustratively rather than argumentatively, describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between 1804 and 1812. It will be seen that at least opium did not move me to seek 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. These, however, I allowed myself but seldom. End of Section 8. The late Duke of—used to say, Next Friday by the blessing of heaven I purpose to be drunk. And in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often within a given time and when I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks, for at that time I could not have ventured to call every day, as I did afterwards, for a glass of lodnum neegas warm and without sugar. No, as I have said, I seldom drank lodnum at that time more than once in three weeks. This was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night. My reason for which was this. In those days Grasini sang at the opera, and her voice was delightful to me, beyond all that I had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of the opera house now, having never been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that time it was by much the most pleasant place of public resort in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the theatres. The orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and melodious grandeur from all English orchestras, the composition of which I confess is not acceptable to my ear from the predominance of the clangorous instruments and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were divine to hear, and when Grasini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate vision at 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 barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman, for music is an intellectual or sensual pleasure according to the temperament of him who hears it. And by the by, with the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in twelfth night, I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature. It is a passage in the religio medici of Sir T. Brown, and though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity has also a philosophic value in as much as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is to suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so. It is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear, the matter coming by the senses, the form from the mind, that the pleasure is constructed, and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases of necessity that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters. I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas, my good sir, there is no occasion for them. All that class of ideas which can be available in such a case has a language of representative feelings. But this is a subject foreign to my present purposes. It is sufficient to say that a chorus, etc., of elaborate harmony, displayed before me as in a piece of Arras work, the whole of my past life, not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music. No longer painful to dwell upon, but the detail of its incidents removed or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualised, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the music of the stage and the orchestra I had all around me in the intervals of the performance, the music of the Italian language, talked by Italian women. For the gallery was usually crowded with Italians, and I listened with a pleasure such as that with which well to the traveller lay and listened in Canada to the sweet laughter of Indian women. For the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a tense part of what I heard spoken. These were my opera pleasures. But another pleasure I had, which as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the opera. For at that time Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but I can assure the reader, not at all more so than Marinos in his life of proclas, 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 Grasini? True, most logical reader, what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor, chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses and sorrows, I at that time was disposed to express my interest by sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of, more than I wished to remember. But the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of spirit and their reposes from bodily toil can never become oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular and periodic return of rest of the poor. 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 another rest and divided by a whole day and two nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always on a Saturday night as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake therefore of witnessing upon as large a scale as possible a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used often on Saturday nights after I had taken opium to wander forth without much regarding the direction or the distance to all the markets and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a Saturday night for laying out their wages. Many a family party consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children have I listened to as they stood consulting on their ways and means or the strength of their ex-checker or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties and their opinions. Sometimes they might be heard murmurs of discontent but far offener expressions on the countenance or uttered in words of patience, hope and tranquility. And taken generally I must say that in this point at least the poor are more philosophic than the rich, that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher or expected to be so, or the quarter low for little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad. Yet if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium, like the bee that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the sort of chimneys, can overrule all feelings into compliance with the master key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an opium eater is too happy to observe the motion of time, and sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards upon nautical principles by fixing my eye on the pole star and seeking unbitiously 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, such enigmatic entries, and such sphinxes riddles of streets without thoroughfares. As must I conceive baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terai incogniti, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep with the feeling of perplexities, moral and intellectual that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience. Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity produce inactivity or torpor, but that on the contrary it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet in 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 consummation of what opium can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to meditate too much and to observe too little, and who upon my first entrance at college was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. I was indeed like a person who, according to the old legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius, and the remedies I sought to force myself into society, and to keep my understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies I should certainly have become hyper-condriacally melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon taking opium. And more than once it has happened to me on a summer night when I have been at an open window, in a room from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town of El at about the same distance that I have set from sunset to sunrise motionless and without wishing to move. I shall be charged with mysticism, Brahmanism, quietism, etc. but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane the Younger was one of our wisest men, and let my reader see if he in his philosophical works be half as unmistakable as I am. I say then that it has often struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of El represented the earth with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance and aloof from the uproar of life, as if the tumult, the fever and the strife were suspended, a respite granted from the secret burdens of the heart, a sabbath of repose, arresting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life reconciled with the peace which is in the grave. Motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm, a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms, infinite activities, infinite repose. O just, subtle and mighty opium, that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal and for the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel bringest an assuaging balm. Elequent opium, that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and to the guilty man for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood, and to the proud man a brief oblivion for wrongs undressed and insults unevenged, that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence false witnesses, and confoundest perjury and dust 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 splendour of Babylon and Hecatompilos and from the anarchy of dreaming sleep callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances cleansed from the dishonours of the grave. Thou only givest these gifts to man, as thou hast the keys of paradise. O just, subtle and mighty opium! End of section 9 Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey Section 10 Introduction to the Pains of Opium Curtius and I hope indulgent reader, for all my readers must be indulgent ones, or else I fear I shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy. Having accompanied me thus far, now let me request you to move onwards for about eight years. That is to say, from 1804, when I have said that my acquaintance with opium first began, to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone, almost forgotten. The student's cap no longer presses my temples. If my cap exists at all, it presses those of some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge. My gown is by this time, I dare say, in the same condition with many thousand excellent books in the Bodleian, of his, diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms. Oh, departed, however, which is all that I know of his fate, to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all the tea cups, tea caddies, teapots, tea kettles, etc. have departed, not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed makers, etc. 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, I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of the chapel bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers no longer. The porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful nose bronze inlaid with copper, I wrote in retaliation so many Greek epigrams, whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has ceased to disturb anybody. And I, and many others who suffered much from his tintinabulous 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 a noise, 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 favourable 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 among 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, this in 1812, living in a cottage, and with a single female servant, Aniswaki Malipantz, who amongst my neighbours passes by the name of my housekeeper. And as a scholar and a man of learned education, and in that sense, a gentleman, I may presume to class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called gentleman. Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps, partly because from my having no visible calling or business it is rightly judged that I must be living on my private fortune. I am so classed by my neighbours. And by the courtesy of modern England I am usually addressed on letters, etc., Esquire. Though having I fear in the rigorous construction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that distinguished honour. Yet in popular estimation I am XYZ Esquire, but not Justice of the Peace nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I married? Not yet. And I still take opium. On Saturday nights. And perhaps have taken it unblushingly ever since the rainy Sunday and the stately Pantheon and the beatific druggist of 1804. Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why, pretty well I thank you, reader. In the phrase of ladies in the straw as well as can be expected. In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth, though to satisfy the theories of medical men I ought to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812. And I hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or particular Madeira which in all probability you, good reader, have taken and designed to take for every term of eight years during your natural life may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by the opium I had taken for eight years between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice from Anastasius. In divinity for ought I know or law he may be a safe counsellor, but not in medicine. No, it is far better to consult Dr. Buchen 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 Lodinum. To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet at least, i.e. in 1812, I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time it must not be forgotten that hitherto I have been only a dilettante eater of opium. Eight years practice even with a single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event being no way is related to the subject now before me. Further than through the bodily illness which it produced I need not more particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I know not. But so it was that in the latter year I was attacked by a 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. This is the point of my narrative on which as respects my own self-justification the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma. Either on the one hand I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a detail of my malady or of my struggles with it as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering. Or on the other hand by passing likely over this critical part of my story I must forgo 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 working predisposition in most readers from my previous acknowledgments. This is the dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to toss and gore any column of patient readers though drawn up sixteen deep and constantly relieved by fresh men. Consequently that is not to be thought of. It remains then that I postulate so much as is necessary for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it good reader at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No, believe all that I ask of you. Viz, that I could resist no longer. Believe it liberally and as an act of grace. Or else in mere prudence. For if not, then in the next edition of my opium confessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and tremble. And a fach star new ye by mere dint of pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make. This then let me repeat, I postulate that at the time I began to take opium daily I could not have done otherwise. Whether indeed afterwards I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been carried much further, and my gradual reconquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically. These are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation, but shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it as a besetting infirmity of mine that I am too much of a new demonist. 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 I am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some other matters I can agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade at Manchester in affecting the stoic philosophy, but not in this. Here I take the liberty of an eclectic philosopher, and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect that will condescend more to the infirm condition of an opium eater, that are sweet men, as Chaucer says, to give absolution, and will show some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist, I can no more endure in my nervous state than opium that has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful one. At my time of life, six and thirty years of age, it cannot be supposed that I have much energy to spare. In fact, I find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I have on my hands, and therefore let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of morality. Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in eighteen hundred and thirteen was what I have mentioned, and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium eater. Of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand now, reader, what I am, and you are by this time aware that no old gentleman with a snow-white beard will have any chance of persuading me to 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 their 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 a ramadan of abstinence from opium. This then being all fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now then, reader, from 1813 where all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain and you shall see me in a new character. End of section 10 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Section 11 of Confessions of an English Opium Eater This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey Section 11 If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us what had been the happiest day in his life and the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all cry out, hear him, hear him. As to the happiest day, that must be very difficult for any wise man to name because any event that could occupy so distinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life or be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one day ought to be of such an enduring character as that accidents apart, it should have continued to shed the same felicity or one not distinguishably less on many years together. To the happiest lustrum, however, or even to the happiest year, it may be allowed to any man to point without discountenance from wisdom. This year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have now reached, though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of brilliant water, to speak after the manner of jewelers, set, as it were, and insulated in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly and without any considerable effort from three hundred and twenty grains of opium, i.e. eight thousand drops of lodinum 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 summits of mountains, drew off in one day. Nuhtemiron passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded and is floated off by a spring tide that moveth all together if it move at all. Now then I was again happy. I now took only one thousand drops of lodinum 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 even announced to me in my unpretending cottage I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a wise man's happiness of lodinum I would have given him as much as he wished and in a golden cup. And by the way now that I speak of giving lodinum 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 among English mountains? I cannot conjecture but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant. The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl 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 attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma the girl recollecting the reputed learning of her master and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones came and gave me to understand that there was some sort of demon below whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down but when I did the group which presented itself arranged as it was by accident though not very elaborate took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the opera house though so ostentatiously complex had ever done. In a cottage kitchen but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen stood the Malay his turban and loose trousers of 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 and a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl and its exquisite fairness together with her erect and independent attitude contrasted with the sallow and billiest skin of the Malay enameled or veneered with mahogany by marine air his small fierce restless eyes thin lips slavish gestures and adorations half hidden by the ferocious looking Malay was a little child from a 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 young woman for protection My knowledge of the oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive being indeed confined to two words the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium madroun 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 Greek in point of longitude came geographically nearest to an oriental one he worshipped me in a most devout manner and replied in what I suppose was Malay In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret he laid down upon the floor for about an hour and then pursued his journey on his departure I presented him with a piece of opium to him as an orientalist I concluded that opium must be familiar and the expression of his face convinced me that it was nevertheless I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth and to use the schoolboy phrase bolt the hole divided into three pieces at one mouthful the quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses and I felt some alarm for the poor creature but what could be done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol No, there was clearly no help for it he took his leave and for some days I felt anxious but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead I became convinced that he was used to opium and that I must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering this incident I have digressed to mention because this 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 dreams and brought other Malays with him worse than himself that ran amok at me and led me into a world of troubles but to quit this episode and to return to my intercalary year of happiness I have said already that on a subject so important to us all as happiness we should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or experiments even though he were but a plow boy who cannot be supposed to have plowed very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles but I who have taken happiness both in a solid and liquid shape both boiled and unboiled both East India and Turkey who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery and have for the general benefit of the world inoculated myself as it were with the poison of eight thousand drops of Lodinum per day just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer an English one twenty years ago with plague and a third I know not of what nation with hydrophobia I it will be admitted must surely know what happiness is if anybody does and therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness and as the most interesting mode of communicating it I will give it not didactically but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when Lodinum though taken daily was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure this done I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether and pass to a very different one the pains of opium let there be a cottage standing in a valley 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 family resident within its circuit will compose as it were one larger household personally familiar to your eye and more or less interesting to your affections let the mountains be real mountains between three thousand 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 before I must abide by the actual scene a white cottage empowered with flowering shrubs so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls and clustering round the windows through all the months of spring, summer and autumn beginning in fact with May roses and ending with jasmine let it however not be spring nor summer nor autumn but winter in his sternest shape this is a most important point in the science of happiness and I am surprised to see people overlook it and think it matter of congratulation that winter is going or if coming is not likely to be a severe one on the contrary I put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost or storm of one kind or other as the skies can possibly afford us surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside candles at four o'clock warm hearth rugs tea, a fair tea maker shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without and at the doors and windows seem to call as heaven and earth they would together mel yet the least entrance find they none at all when sweeter grows our rest secure in Massey Hall Castle of Indolence all these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude and it is evident that most of these delicacies like ice cream require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way or other I am not particular as people say whether it be snow or black frost or wind so strong that as Mr. says you may lean your back against it like a post I can put up even with rain provided it rains cats and dogs but something of the sort I must have and if I have it not I think myself in a manner ill-used for why am I called upon to pay so heavily for winter in coals and candles and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen if I am not to have the article good of its kind no a Canadian winter for my money or a Russian one where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee simple of his own ears indeed so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas's day and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances no it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine from the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve therefore is the period during which happiness is in season which in my judgment enters the room with the tea tray for tea though ridiculed by those who are naturally of course nerves or are become so from wine drinking and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual and for my part I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum readers translation a struggle to the death against Jonas Hanway or any other impious person who should presume to disparage it but here to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description I will introduce a painter and give him directions for the rest of the picture painters do not like white cottages unless a good deal weather stained but as the reader now understands that it is a winter night his services will not be required except for the inside of the house paint me then a room 17 feet by 12 and not more than seven and a half feet high this reader is somewhat ambitiously styled in my family the drawing room but being contrived a double debt to pay it is also and more justly termed the library but it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbors of these I have about 5000 collected gradually since my 18th year therefore painter put as many as you can into this room make it populous with books and furthermore paint me a good fire and furniture plain and modest befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar and near the fire paint me a tea table and as it is clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy night place only two cups and sources on the tea tray and if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically or otherwise paint me an eternal teapot eternal a party and a party post for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning and as it is very unpleasant to make tea or to pour it out for oneself paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table paint her arms like auroras and her smiles like hebes but no dear M not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil pass then my good painter to something more within its power and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself a picture of the opium eater with his little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug lying beside him on the table as to the opium I have no objection to see a picture of that though I would rather see the original you may paint it if you choose but I apprise you that no little receptacle would even in eighteen hundred and sixteen answer my purpose who was at a distance from the stately pantheon and all drugists mortal or otherwise no you may as well paint the real receptacle which was not of gold but of glass and as much like a wine decanter as possible into this you may put a court of ruby coloured Lodinum that and a book of German metaphysics placed by its side will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood but as to myself there I demur I admit that naturally I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture that being the hero of the piece or if you choose the criminal at the bar my body should be had into court this seems reasonable but why should I confess on this point to a painter or why confess at all if the public into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions and not into any painters should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the opiometer's exterior should have ascribed to him romantically an elegant person or a handsome face why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion pleasing both to the public and to me no paint me if at all according to your own fancy and as a painter's fancy should team with beautiful creations I cannot fail in that way to be a gainer and now reader we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stored about 1816 to 17 up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of the interior of a scholars library in a cottage among the mountains on a stormy winter evening but now farewell a long farewell to happiness winter or summer farewell to smiles and laughter farewell to peace of mind farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams and to the blessed consolations of sleep for more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes for I have now to record the pains of opium end of section 11 recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey