 Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas de Quincey, The Vision of Sudden Death, Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Note, the reader is to understand this present paper in its two sections of The Vision and The Dream Pugue, as connected with a previous paper on The English Mail Coach. The ultimate object was the Dream Pugue, as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with the colossal form of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains the Mail Coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest the variations of the dream, here taken up by the fugue, as well as other variations not now recorded. Confluent with these impressions, from the terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow Mail, were other and more general impressions derived from long familiarity with the English Mail, as developed in the former paper. Impressions, for instance, of animal beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented. Of connection with the government and public business of a great nation, but above all of connection with the national victories at an unexampled crisis. The Mail being the privileged organ for publishing and dispersing all news of that kind. From this function of the Mail arises naturally the introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the fugue. For the Mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in The Vision, naturally, all the accessory circumstances of pomp and grandeur investing this national carriage followed in the train of the principal image. End of note. What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that in different conditions of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and on the other hand as consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. Caesar, the dictator, at his last dinner party, Coena, and the very evening before his assassination, being questioned as to the mode of death which in his opinion might seem the most eligible, replied, that which should be most sudden. On the other hand the divine litany of our English church when breathing forth supplications as if in some representative character for the whole human race prostrate before God places such a death in the very van of horrors. From lightning and tempest, from plague, pestilence, and famine, from battle and murder, and from sudden death, good Lord deliver us. Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand assent of calamities. It is the last of curses and yet by the noblest of Romans it was treated as the first of blessings. In that difference most readers will see little more than the difference between Christianity and paganism, but there I hesitate the Christian church may be right in its estimate of sudden death and it is a natural feeling though after all it may also be an infirm one to wish for a quiet dismissal from life as that which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not however occur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English litany. It seems rather a petition indulged to human infirmity than extracted from human piety and however that may be two remarks suggest themselves as proven restraints upon a doctrine which else may wander and has wandered into an uncharitable superstition. The first is this that many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death. I mean the objective horror to him who contemplates such a death, not the subjective horror to him who suffers it. From the false disposition to lay stress upon words or acts simply because by an accident they have become words or acts. If a man dies for instance by sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror as though the intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident there can be no reason at all for allowing special emphasis to this act simply because through misfortune it became his final act. Nor on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his habitual transgressions will it be the more habitual or the more a transgression because some sudden calamity surprising him has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance, a feature of presumption and irreverence as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of God but this is no part of the case supposed and the only new element in the man's act is not any element of extra immorality but simply of extra misfortune. The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word sudden and it is a strong illustration of the duty which forever calls us to the stern valuation of words that very possibly Caesar and the Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed that is do not differ by any difference of doctrine as between pagan and Christian views of the moral temper appropriate to death but they are contemplating different cases, both contemplate a violent death a Greek biathentos death that is Greek biaeos but the difference is that the Roman by the word sudden means an unlingering death whereas the Christian litany by sudden means a death without warning consequently without any available summons to religious preparation the poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades dies by most sudden death in Caesar's sense one shock one mighty spasm one possibly not one groan and all is over but in the sense of the litany his death is far from sudden his offense originally his imprisonment his trial the interval between his sentence and its execution having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation meantime whatever may be thought of a sudden death as a mere variety in the modes of dying where death in some shape is inevitable a question which equally in the Roman and the Christian sense will be variously answered according to each man's variety of temperament certainly upon one aspect of sudden death there can be no opening for doubt that of all agonies incident to man it is the most frightful that of all martyrdoms it is the most freezing to human sensibilities namely where it surprises a man under circumstances which offer or which seem to offer some hurried and inappreciable chance of evading it any effort by which such an evasion can be accomplished must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts even that even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain self baffled and where the dreadful nail of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case namely where the agonizing appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation but to the conscience on behalf of another life besides your own accidentally cast upon your protection to fail to collapse in a service merely your own might seem comparatively venial though in fact it is far from venial but to fail in a case where providence has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interest of another of a fellow creature shattering between the gates of life and death this to a man of apprehensive conscience would mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity the man is called upon too probably to die but to die at the very moment when by any momentary collapse he is self-denounced as a murderer he had but the twinkling of an eye for his effort and that effort might at the best have been unavailing but from this shadow of a chance smaller great how if he has reconciled by a reasonable lashate the effort might have been without hope but to have risen to the level of that effort would have rescued him though not from dying yet from dying as a traitor to his duties the situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer lurking far down in the depths of human nature it is not that men generally are summoned to face such awful trials but potentially and in shadowy outline such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's natures muttering underground in one world to be realized perhaps in some other upon the secret mirror of our dream such a trial is darkly projected at intervals perhaps to every one of us that dream so familiar to a childhood of meeting a lion and from languishing prostration in hope and vital energy the constant sequel of lying down before him publishes the secret frailty of the human nature reveals its deep-seated pariah falsehood to itself records its abysmal treachery perhaps not one of us escapes that dream perhaps as by some sorrowful doom of man that dream repeats for every one of us through every generation the original temptation in Eden every one of us in this dream has a bait offered to the infirm places of his own individual will once again a snare is made ready for leading him into captivity to a luxury of ruin again as in aboriginal paradise the man falls from innocence once again by infinite iteration the ancient earth groans to God through her secret caves over the weakness of her child nature from her seat sighing through all her works again gives signs of woe that all is lost and again the countersai is repeated to the sorrowing heavens of the endless rebellion against God many people think that one man the patriarch of our race would not in his single person execute this rebellion for all his race perhaps they are wrong but even if not perhaps in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original act our English right of confirmation by which in years of awakened reason we take upon us the engagements contracted for us in our slumbering infancy how sublime a right is that the little poster gate through which the baby in its cradle has been silently placed for a time within the glory of God's countenance suddenly rises to the clouds as a triumphal arch through which with banners displayed and martial pumps we make our second entry as crusading soldiers militant for God by personal choice and by sacramental oath each man says in effect lo I re-baptize myself and that which once was sworn on my behalf now I swear for myself even so in dreams perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper lighted up to the consciousness at the time but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished each several child of our mysterious race completes for himself the aboriginal fall as I drew near the Manchester post office I found that it was considerably past midnight but to my great relief as it was important for me to be in Westmoreland by the morning I saw by the huge saucer eyes of the mail blazing through the gloom of overhanging houses that my chance was not yet lost past the time it was but by some luck very unusual in my experience the mail was not even yet ready to start I ascended to my seat on the box where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the bridge water arms I had left it there in imitation of a nautical discoverer who leaves a bit of bunting on the shores of his discovery by way of warning off the ground the whole human race and signalizing to the Christian and the heathen worlds with his best compliments that he has planted his throne forever upon that virgin soil hence forward claiming the juice domini to the top of the atmosphere above it and also the right of driving shafts to the center of the earth below it so that all people found after this warning either loft in the atmosphere or in the shafts or squatting on the soil will be treated as trespassers that is decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant the owner of said bunting possibly my cloak might not have been respected and the juice gentium might have been cruelly violated in my person for in the dark people commit deeds of darkness gas being a great ally of morality but it so happened that on this night there was no other outside passenger and the crime which else was but too probable missed fire for want of a criminal by the way I may as well mention at this point since a circumstantial accuracy is essential to the effect of my narrative that there was no other person of any description whatever about the male the guard the coachman and myself being allowed for except only one a horrid creature of the class known to the world as insiders but whom young Oxford called sometimes Trojans in opposition to our Grecian selves and sometimes vermin a Turkish effendi who peaks himself on good breeding will never mention by name a pig yet it is but too often that he has reason to mention this animal since constantly in the streets of Stambul he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature running between his legs but under any excessive hurry he is always careful out of respect to the company he is dining with to suppress the odious name and to call the wretch that other creature as though all animal life beside form one group and this odious beast to whom as chrysopus observed salt serves as an apology for a soul formed another an alien group on the outside of creation now I who am an English effendi that think myself to understand good breeding as well as any son of Ottoman beg my readers pardon for having mentioned an insider by his gross natural name I shall do no more and if I should have occasion to glance at so painful a subject I shall always call him that other creature let us hope however that no such distressing occasion will arise but by the way an occasion arises at this moment for the reader will be sure to ask when we come to the story was this other creature present he was not or more correctly perhaps it was not we drop the creature or the creature by natural in facility dropped itself within the first ten miles from Manchester in the latter case I wish to make a philosophical remark of a moral tendency when I die or when the reader dies and by repute suppose a fever it will never be known whether we died in reality of the fever or of the doctor but this other creature in the case of dropping out of the coach will enjoy a coroner's inquest consequently he will enjoy an epitaph for I insist upon it that the verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs it is brief so that the public all find time to read it is pithy so that the surviving friends if any can survive such a loss remember it without fatigue it is upon oaths so that rascals and Dr. Johnson's cannot pick holes in it died through the visitation of intense stupidity by impinging on a moonlight night against the off hind wheel of the Glasgow Mail dead and upon the said wheel two pence what a simple lapidary inscription nobody much in the wrong but an off wheel and with few acquaintances and if it were rendered into choice Latin though there would be a little bother in finding a Ciceroan word for off wheel Marcellus himself that great master of sepulchral eloquence could not show a better why I call this little remark moral is from the compensation it points out here by the supposition is that other creature on the one side the beast of the world and he or it gets an epitaph you and I on the contrary the pride of our friends get none but why linger on the subject of vermin having mounted the box I took a small quantity of loudenum having already traveled 250 miles namely from a point 70 miles beyond London upon a simple breakfast in the taking of loudenum there was nothing extraordinary but by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor on the box the coachman and in that there was nothing extraordinary but by accident and with great delight drew my attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of size and that he had but one eye in fact he had been foretold by Virgil as monstrum, horrendum, informe Injes Cui lumen adempium he answered in every point a monster he was dreadful shapeless huge who had lost an eye but why should that delight me had he been one of the calendars in the Arabian nights and had paid down his eyes the price of his criminal curiosity what right had I to exalt in his misfortune I did not exalt I delighted in no man's punishment though it were even merited but these personal distinctions identified in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of male coachmen he was the man in all Europe that could best have undertaken to drive six in hand full gallop over Al-Sirat that famous bridge of Maumit across the bottomless gulf backing himself against the prophet and twenty such fellows I used to call him Cyclops Mastigophorus Cyclops the whip bearer until I observed that his skill made whips useless except to fetch off an impertinent fly from leader's head upon which I changed his Grecian name to Cyclops Defrelates Cyclops the charioteer I and others known to me studied under him the Defrelatic art excuse reader a word too elegant to be pedantic and also take this remark from me as a gage d'amitié that no word ever was or can be pedantic which by supporting a distinction supports the accuracy of logic or which fills up a chasm for the understanding as a pupil though I paid extra fees I cannot say that I stood high in his esteem it showed his dogged honesty though observe not his discernment that he could not see my merits perhaps we ought to excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye that made him blind to my merits irritating as this blindness was surely it could not be envy he always courted my conversation in which art I certainly had the whip hand of him on this occasion great joy was at our meeting but what was Cyclops doing here had the medical men recommended northern air or how I collected from such explanations as he volunteered that he had an interest at stake in a suited law pending at Lancaster so that probably he had got himself transferred to the station for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits and instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit meantime what are we stopping for surely we've been waiting long enough oh this procrastinating mail and oh this procrastinating post office can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me some people have called me procrastinating now you are witness reader that I was in time for them but can they lay their hands on their hearts and say that they were in time for me I during my life have often had to wait for the post office the post office never waited a minute for me what are they about the guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign males this night owing to irregularities caused by war in the packet service when as yet nothing is done by steam for an extra hour it seems the post office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheat and correspondence of Glasgow and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns we can hear the flails going at this moment but at last all is finished sound your horn guard Manchester goodbye we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post office which however though I do not mean to part with the serviceable ground of complaint and one which really is such for the horses to me secretly is an advantage since it compels us to recover this last hour amongst the next eight or nine off we are at last and at eleven miles an hour and at first I detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops from Manchester to Kendall which virtually though not in law is the capital of Westmoreland where at this time seven stages of eleven miles each the first five of these dated from Manchester terminated in Lancaster which was there for fifty five miles north of Manchester and the same distance exactly from Liverpool the first three terminated in Preston called by the way of distinction from the other towns of that name Proud Preston at which place it was that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north became confluent within these first three stages lay the foundation the progress and the termination of our night's adventure during the first stage I found out that Cyclops was mortal he was liable to the shocking affection of sleep a thing which I had never previously suspected if a man is addicted to the vicious habit of sleeping all the skill and irrigation of Apollo himself with the horses of Aurora to execute the motions of his will avail him nothing oh Cyclops I exclaimed more than one Cyclops my friend thou had mortal thou snorest through this first eleven miles however he betrayed his infirmity which I grieved to say he shared with the whole pagan pantheon only by short stretches on waking up he made an apology for himself which instead of mending the matter laid an ominous foundation for coming disasters the summer Assises were now proceeding at Lancaster in consequence of which for three nights and three days he had not lain down in a bed during the day he was waiting for his uncertain summons as a witness on the trial in which he was interested or he was drinking with the other witnesses under the vigilance surveillance of the attorneys during the night or that part of it when the least temptation existed to conviviality he was driving throughout the second stage he grew more and more drowsy in the second mile of the third stage he surrendered himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous temptation all his past resistance had but deepened the weight of his final oppression seven atmospheres of sleep seemed resting upon him and to consummate the case our worthy guard after singing love against the roses for the 50th or 60th time without any invitation from Cyclops or myself and without applause for his poor labors had moodily resigned himself to slumber not so deep doubtless as the coachman's but deep enough for mischief and having probably no similar excuse and thus at last about 10 miles from Preston I found myself left in charge of his majesty's London and Glasgow mail then running about 11 miles an hour what made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been thought was the condition of the roads at night during these seizes at that time all the law, business of populous Liverpool and of populous Manchester with its vast signature of populous rural districts was called up by ancient uses to the tribunal of Lilliput and Lancaster to break up this old traditional usage required a conflict with powerful established interests a large system of new arrangements and a new parliamentary statute as things were at present twice in the year so vast a body of business rolled northward from the southern quarter of the country that a fortnight at least occupied the severe exertions of two judges for its dispatch the consequence of this was that every horse available for such a service along the whole line of road was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits by sunset therefore it usually happened that through utter exhaustion amongst the men and horses the roads were all silent except exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a contested election nothing like it was ordinarily witnessed in England on this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard and to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace I myself, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie the month was August in which lay my own birthday a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often cyborn thoughts the county was my own native county upon which, in its southern section more than upon any equal area known to man past or present had descended the original curse of labour in its heaviest form not mastering the bodies of men only as of slaves or criminals in minds but working through the fiery will upon no equal space of earth was or ever had been the same energy of human power put forth daily at this particular season also of the Assises that dreadful hurricane of flight and pursuit as it might have seemed to a stranger that swept to and from Lancaster all day long hunting the county up and down and regularly subsiding about sunset united with the permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel of labour to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision of rest of saintly repose from strife and sorrow towards which as to their secret haven the profounder aspirations of man's heart are continually travelling obliquely we were nearing the sea upon our left which also must under the present circumstances be repeating the general state of Halcyon repose the sea, the atmosphere, the light, born orchestral part in this universal lull moonlight in the first timid tremblings of the John were now blending and those blendings were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist motionless and dreamy that covered the woods and fields but with a veil of equitable transparency except the feet of our own horses which running on a sandy margin of the road made little disturbance there was no sound abroad in the clouds and on earth prevailed the same majestic peace and in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done in the ruin of our sublimer thoughts which are the thoughts of our infancy we still believe in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere whatever we may swear with our false feigning lips in our faithful hearts we still believe and must forever believe in fields of air traversing the total gulf between earth and the central heavens still in the confidence of children that treated without fear every chamber in their father's house and to whom no door is closed we in that sabatic vision which sometimes is revealed for an hour upon nights like this ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of God suddenly from thoughts like these I was awakened to a sullen sound as of some motion on the distant road it stole upon the air for a moment I listened in awe but then it died away once roused however I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses ten years experience had made my eye learn it in the valuing of motion and I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour I pretended to no presence of mind on the contrary my fear is that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action the palsy of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of a dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when the signal is flying for action but on the other hand this accursed gift I have as regards thought that in the first step towards the possibility of a misfortune I see its total evolution in the radix I see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence I read already the last it was not that I feared for ourselves what could injure us our bulk and impetus charmed us against peril in any collision and I had rode through too many hundreds of perils that were frightful to approach that were matter of laughter as we looked back upon them for any anxiety to rest upon our interests the mail was not built I felt assured nor bespoke that could betray me who trusted to its protection but any carriage that we could meet would be frail in light in comparison to ourselves and I remarked this ominous accident of our situation we were on the wrong side of the road but then the other party if other there was might also be on the wrong side and two wrongs might make a right that was not likely the same mode of which had drawn us to the right hand side of the road namely the soft beaten sand as contrasted with the paved center would prove attractive to others our lamps still lighted would give the impression of vigilance on our part and every creature that met us would rely upon us for quartering all this and if the separate links of the anticipation had been a thousand times more I saw not discursively or by effort but as by one flash of horrid intuition under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which might be gathering ahead a reader what a sullen mystery of fear what a sigh of woe seemed to steal upon the air as again the far off sound of a wheel was heard a whisper it was a whisper from perhaps four miles off secretly announcing a ruin that being foreseen was not the less inevitable what could be done who was it that could do it to check the storm flight of these maniacal horses what could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman you reader think that it would have been in your power to do so and I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself but from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh this was impossible the guard subsequently found it impossible after this danger had passed not the grasp only but also the position of this polyphemous made the attempt impossible you still think otherwise see then that bronze equestrian statue the cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries unbridle him for a minute if you please and wash his mouth with water or stay reader unhorse me that marble emperor knock me those marble feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne the sounds ahead strengthened and were now too clearly the sounds of wheels who and what could it be was it industry in a taxed cart was it youthful gaiety in a gig whoever it was something must be attempted to warn them upon the other party rest the active responsibility but upon us and what was me that us was my single cell rest the responsibility of warning yet how should this be accomplished might I not seize the guard's horn already on the first thought I was making my way over the roof to the guard's seat but this from the foreign males being piled upon the roof was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly 300 miles of outside traveling and fortunately before I had lost much time in the attempt our frantic horses swept round an angle of the road which opened upon us the stage where the collision must be accomplished the parties that seemed summoned to the trial and the impossibility of saving them by any communication with the guard before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow 600 yards perhaps in length and the abradious trees which rose in a regular line from either side meeting high overhead gave to it the character of a cathedral isle these trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light but there was still light enough to perceive at the further end of this gothic isle a light reedy gig in which were seated a young man and by his side a young lady ah young sir what are you about if it is necessary that you should whisper your communications to this young lady though really I see nobody at this hour and on this solitary road likely to overhear your conversation is it therefore necessary that you should carry your lips forward to hers the little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour and the parties within it being thus tenderly engaged are naturally bending down their heads between them and eternity to all human calculation there is but a minute and a half what is it that I shall do strange it is into a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable that I should need a suggestion from the Iliad to prompt the sole recourse that remained but so it was suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles and its effect but could I pretend to shout like the sound of Peleus aided by Pallas no certainly but then I needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia militant a shout would suffice such as should carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young people and one gig horse I shouted and the young man heard me not the second time I shouted and now he heard me for now he raised his head here then all had been done that by me could be done more on my part was not possible mine had been the first step the second was for the young man the third was for God if said I the stranger is a brave man and if indeed he loves the young girl at his side or loving her not if he feels the obligation pressing upon every man worthy to be called a man of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his protection he will at least make some effort to save her if that fails he will not perish the more or by a death more cruel for having made it and he will die as a brave man should with his face to the danger and with his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save but if he makes no effort shrinking without a struggle from his duty he himself will not the less certainly perish for this baseness of pultrinary he will die no less and why not wherefore should we grieve that there is one craven less in the world no let him perish without a pitting thought of ours wasted upon him in that case all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now upon the least shadow of failure in him must by the fiercest of translations must without time for a prayer must within seventy seconds stand before the judgment seat of God but craven he was not sudden had been the call upon him and sudden was his answer to the call he saw he heard he comprehended the ruin that was coming down but he it's gloomy shadow darkened above him and already he was measuring his strength to deal with it what a vulgar thing this courage seen when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a day what a sublime thing this courage seen when some fearful crisis on the great deeps of life carries a man as if running before a hurricane up to the giddy crest of some mountainous wave from which accordingly he describes two courses and a voice says to him audibly this way lies hope take the other way and mourn forever yet even then amidst the raving of the seas and the frenzy of the danger the man is able to confront his situation is able to retire for a moment into his solitude with God and to seek all his counsel from him for seven seconds it might be of his seventy the stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us as if to search and value every element in the conflict before him for five seconds more he stared immovably like one that mused on some great purpose for five he stared with eyes appraised like one that prayed in sorrow under some extremity of doubt for wisdom to guide him towards the better choice then suddenly he rose stood upright and by a sudden strain upon the rains raising his horses four feet from the ground he slewed him round on the pivot of his hind legs so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at a right angles to ours thus far his condition was not improved except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second if no more were done nothing was done for the little carriage still occupied the very center of our path though in an altered direction yet even now it may not be too late fifteen of the twenty seconds may still be unexhausted and one almighty bound forward may avail to clear the ground hurry then, hurry for the flying moments they hurry oh hurry hurry my brave young man for the cruel hoofs of our horses they also hurry faster the flying moments faster are the hoofs of our horses fear not for him even energy can suffice faithful was he that drove to his terrific duty faithful was the horse to his command one blow, one impulse given with voice and hand by the stranger one rush from the horse one bound as if in the act of rising to a fence landed the docile creatures four feet upon the crown or arching center of the road the larger half of the little equipage had then cleared a glowing shadow that was evident even to my own agitated sight but it mattered little that one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human freightage the rear part of the carriage was that certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? what power could answer the question glance or eye, thought of man, wing of angel which of these had speed enough to sweep between the question and the answer and divide one from the other light does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly than did our all conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig that must the young man have felt too plainly his back was now turned to us not by sight could he any longer communicate with the peril but by the dreadful rattle of our harness too truly had his ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded any further effort of his designation he rested from his struggle and perhaps in his heart he was whispering father which art above do thou finish in heaven what I on earth have attempted we ran past them faster than ever mill race in our inexorable flight o' raving of hurricanes that must have sounded in the young ears at the moment of our transit either with the swingle bar or with the haunch of our near leader we struck the off wheel of the little gig which stood rather obliquely and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near wheel the blow from the fury of our passage resounded terrifically I rose in horror to look upon the ruins we might have caused from my elevated station I looked down and look back upon the scene which in a moment told its tale and wrote all its records on my heart forever the horse was planted immovably with his four feet upon the paved crests of the central road he of the whole party was alone untouched by the passion of death the little cany carriage partly perhaps from the dreadful torsion of the wheels in its recent movement partly from the thundering blow we had given to it as if it sympathized with human horror was all alive with trembling and shiverings the young man sat like a rock he stirred not at all but his was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by horror and yet he dared not look around for he knew that if anything remained to do by him it could no longer be done and as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished but the lady but the lady oh heavens will that spectacle ever depart from my dreams as she rose and sank upon her seat sank and rose threw up her arms wildly to heaven clutched at some visionary object in the air fainting praying raving bearing figure to yourself reader the elements of the case suffer me to recall before your mind circumstances of the unparalleled situation from the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night from the pathetic blending of this sweet moonlight dawn light dream light from the manly tenderness of this flattering whispering murmuring love suddenly as from the woods and fields suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revelation suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet leaped upon her with the flashing of cataracts death the crown phantom with all the ecupage of his terrors and the tiger roar of his voice the moments were numbered in the twinkling of an eye our flying horses had carried us to the termination of the umbrageous isle at right angles we wheeled into our former direction the turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant and swept it into my dreams forever end of the vision of sudden death part one miscellaneous essays by thomas de quincey the vision of sudden death part two dream fugue on part one this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org dreamfugue on the above 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 traverse the resonant fugue paradise lost book 40 to motio sissiman mente passion of sudden death that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs footnote averted signs I read the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures but let it be remembered that I read all this from the rear never once catching the lady's full face and even her profile imperfectly end of note rapture of panic taking the shape which amongst tombs and 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 clasp holding hands waiting watching trembling praying for the trumpets call to rise from the dust forever a vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of abysses vision that dits start back that dits real away like a shriveling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind epilepsy so brief of horror wherefore is it that thou letst not die passing so suddenly into darkness wherefore is it still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams fragment of music too stern heard once and heard no more that aileth thee that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep and after thirty years have lost no element of horror one low 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 savanna the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating she upon a fairy pinnance and I upon an english three-decker but both of us are wooing gales the best of happiness within the domain of our common country within that ancient watery park within that pathless chase where england takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer and which stretches from the rising to the setting sun 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 heavy of human flowers young women how lovely young men how noble that we're dancing together and slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous coring bee from vintages amidst natural caroling and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter slowly the pinnace nears us gaily she hails us and slowly 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 overtaken 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 behold the forest was dismantled the revel and the revelers were found no more the glory of the vintage was dust and the forest was left without a witness to its beauty upon the seas but where and I turned to our own crew where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering coring bee whither have fled the noble young men that danced with them answered there was none only 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 will found her two I looked to the weather side and the summer had departed the sea was rocking and shaken with gathering wrath upon its surface sat mighty mists which grouped themselves into arches miles down one of these with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a crossbow ran a frigate right to thwart our course are they mad some voice exclaimed from our deck are they blind do they woo their ruin but in a moment as she was close upon us some impulse of a heady current or a sudden vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course and off she forged without a shock as she ran past us high loft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the penis the deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her towering surges of foam ran after her the billows were fierce to catch her but far away she was born into desert spaces of the sea while still by sight I followed her as she ran before the howling gale chased by angry seabirds and by maddening billows still I saw her as at the moment when she ran past us amongst the shrouds with her white draperies streaming before the wind there she stood with her hair disheveled 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 forever in driving to showers and afterwards but when I know not and how I know not three sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance wailing over the dead that died before the dawn awakened 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 with 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 left the shore and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in front to last 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 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 clutching as it some false deceiving hand stretched out from the clouds saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope and then her dying despair the head, the diadem the arm these all had sunk at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth except my own solitary tears and 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 I sate 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 the tears and funeral bells were hushed suddenly by a shout as of many nations and by a roar as from some great kings artillery advancing rapidly along the valleys and heard afar by its echoes among 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 then I listened more profoundly and said as I raised my head or else oh heavens it is victory that swallows up all strife for immediately in trance I was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom and placed upon a triumphal car amongst 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 our carriage as a center we heard them but we saw them not tidings had arrived in an hour of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries too full of pathos they were too full of joy that acknowledged no fountain but God to utter themselves by other language than by tears by restless anthems by reverberations rising from every choir of the gloria in excelsis these tidings we that sat upon the laurel 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 abraded us with delay wherefore was it that we delayed we waited for a secret word that should bear witness to the hope of nations as now accomplished forever at midnight the secret word arrived which word was Waterloo and recovered Christendom the dreadful word shone by its own light before us it went high above our leader's 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 to receive us the rivers were silent as we crossed all the infinite forests as we ran along their margins shivered in homage to the secret word and the darkness comprehended it two hours after midnight we reached 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 our equipage entered the grand file 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 kindle the new in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past 40 leagues we might have run in the cathedral and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us when we saw before us every pinnacle of the fret work every station of advantage amongst the traceries was crested by white robed choiesters that sang deliverance that wept no more tears as once their fathers had wept but at intervals that sang together to the generation saying chant the deliverers 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 remission thus as we ran like torrents thus as we swept with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo note it is probable that most of my readers will be acquainted with the history of the Campo Santo at Pisa composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a bed of sanctity as the highest prize which the noble piety of crusaders could ask or imagine there is another Campo Santo at Naples formed however, I presume on the example given by Pisa possibly the idea may have been more extensively copied 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 roll and perhaps a boyish remembrance of one particular cathedral across which I had seen passengers walk and burdens carried may have assisted my dream end of note 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 in the second minute it trembled through many changes 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 isle strode forward with haughty intrusion that ran back with mighty shadows into answering recesses every sarcophagus showed many boss reliefs boss reliefs of ballets boss reliefs of battlefields of battlefields from forgotten ages of battles from yesterday of battlefields that long since nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers of battlefields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage where the terraces ran there did we run where the towers curved there did we curve with the flight of swallows our horses swept round every angle like rivers and flood wheeling round headlands like hurricanes that sighed into the secrets of the forests faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness our flying echipage 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 crecy to true falgur and now had we reached the last sarcophagus now we abreast of the last boss relief already had we recovered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central isle when coming up this isle to meet us we beheld a female infant 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 top mass shafts of its pillars face to face she was meeting us face to face she rode as if danger there oh baby I exclaimed shout 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 also in horror at the thought rose one that was sculpted in the boss relief a dying trumpeter solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feet and unslinging his stony trumpet carried it in his dying anguish to his stony lips sounding once and yet again proclamation that in thy ears oh baby must have spoken from the battlements of death immediately deep shadows fell between us an aboriginal silence the choir had ceased to sing the hoofs of our horses the rattling of our harness alarmed the graves no more by horror the bass reliefs had been unlocked into life by horror we that were so full of life we men and our horses with their fiery forelegs rising in midair to their everlasting gallop were frozen to a bass 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 wither as the infant fled is the young child caught up to God low a far off in a vast recess rose three mighty windows to the clouds and on a level with their summits at height insupperable to man rose an altar of purest alabaster on its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory whence came that was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed through the windows was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs that were painted on the windows was it from the bloody bass reliefs of earth whence so ever it were there within that crimson radiance suddenly appeared a female head and then a female figure it was the child now grown up to woman's height clinging to the horns of the altar there she stood sinking rising trembling fainting raving despairing and behind the volume of incense that night and day streamed upwards from the altar was seen the fiery font and dimly was described the line of the dreadful being that should baptize her with baptism of death but by her side was kneeling her better angel that hid his face with wings that wept and pleaded for her that prayed when she could not that fought with heaven by tears for her deliverance which also as he raised his immortal countenance from his wings I saw by the glory in his eyes that he had won at last five then rose the agitation spreading through the infinite cathedral to its agony then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue the golden tubes of the organ which as yet had but sobbed and muttered at intervals gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense threw up as from fountains unfathomable columns of heart shattering music choir and antiquire were filling fast with unknown voices thou also dying trumpeter with thy love that was victorious and thy anguish that was finishing did stenter the tumult trumpet and echo farewell love and farewell anguish rang through the dreadful sanctus we that spread flight before us heard the tumult as of flight in fear we looked round for the unknown steps that in flight or in pursuit were gathering upon our own who were these that followed the faces which no man could count whence were they oh darkness of the grave I exclaimed that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font were it visited with secret light that were it searched by the effulgence of the angels eye were these indeed thy children pumps of life that from the burials of centuries rose again in the voice of perfect joy could it be ye that had wrapped me in the reflux of panic what ailed me that I should fear when the triumphs of earth were advancing ah pariah heart within me that could never hear the sound of joy without sullen whispers of treachery and ambush that from six years old it's never hear the promise of perfect love without seeing a loft amongst the stars fingers as of a man's hand writing the secret legend ashes to ashes dust to dust wherefore shouldst thou not fear though all men should rejoice low as I look back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral and saw the quick and the dead that sang together to God together that sang to the generations of man ah raving as of torrents that opened on every side trepidation as of female and infant steps that fled rushing as of wings that chase but I heard a voice from heaven which said let there be no reflux of panic let there be no more fear and no more sudden death cover them with joy and tides cover the shore that heard the children of the choir that heard the children of the grave all the hosts of jubilation made ready to move like armies that ride and pursuit they moved with one step us that with lord heads were passing from the cathedral through its eastern gates they overtook and as with the garment they wrapped us around with thunders they overpowered our own as brothers we moved together to the skies we rose to the dawn that advanced to the stars that fled rendering thanks to God in the highest that having hit his face through one generation behind thick clouds of war once again was ascending was ascending from Waterloo in the visions of peace rendering thanks for the young girl whom having overshadowed the ineffable passion of death suddenly did God relent suffer thy angel to turn aside his arm and even in these sister unknown shown to me for a moment only to be hidden forever found an occasion to glorify his goodness a thousand times amongst the phantoms of sleep has he shown thee to me standing before the golden dawn and ready to enter its gates a dreadful word going before thee with the armies of the grave behind thee shown thee to me sinking, rising, fluttering, fainting but then suddenly reconciled adoring a thousand times has he followed thee in the worlds of sleep through storms through desert seas through the darkness of quicksands through fugues and the persecution of fugues through dreams and the dreadful resurrections that are in dreams only that at the last with one motion of his victorious arm he might record and emblazen the endless resurrection of his love end of the vision of sudden death part two this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Robert Scott June the 27th 2007 section 14 dinner real and reputed part one great misconceptions have always prevailed about the Roman dinner dinner note coena was the only meal which the Romans as a nation took it was no accident but arose out of their whole social economy this we shall show by running through the history of a Roman day Redentum de Cary Verum quid vetat and the course of this review will expose one or two important truths in ancient political economy which have been wholly overlooked with the lark it was that the Roman rose not that the earliest lark rises so early in Latium as the earliest lark in England that is during summer but then on the other hand neither does it ever rise so late the Roman citizen was striving with the dawn which allowing for the shorter longest day and the longer, shortest day of Rome you may call about four in summer and seven in winter why did he do this because he went to bed at a very early hour but why did he do that by backing in this way we shall surely back into the very well of truth always if it is possible let us have the porqua of the porqua the Roman went to bed early for two special reasons first, because in Rome which had been built for a martial destiny every habit of life had reference to the usage of war every citizen if he not a mere proletarian animal kept at the public cost held himself a sort of soldier-elect the more noble he was the more was his liability to military service in short all Rome and at all times was consciously in prosainct footnote in prosainct Milton's translation note somewhere in the paradise regained of the technical phrase quote in prosainct 2 and quote and footnote warfare that every hour of daylight had a triple worth if valued against hours of darkness that was one reason a reason suggested by the understanding but there was a second reason far more remarkable and this was a reason dictated by blind necessity it is an important fact that this planet on which we live this little industrious earth of ours has developed her wealth by slow stages of increase she was far from being the rich little globe in Caesar's days that she is at present the earth in our days is incalculably richer as a whole than in the time of Charlemagne at that time she was richer by many millions of acres than in the era of Augustus in the Augustan era we describe a clear belt of cultivation averaging about 600 miles in depth running in a ring fence about the Mediterranean this belt and no more was in decent civilization beyond that belt there was only a wild Indian cultivation at present what a difference we have that very belt that is richer all things considered equitas equandis than in the Roman era the reader must not look in single cases as that of Egypt or other parts of Africa but take the whole collectively on that scheme of valuation we have the old Roman belt the Mediterranean Rib Band not much tarnished but we are up to boot or speaking in scholars language as a lucro panamus we say nothing of remoder gains such being the case our mother the earth being note as a whole so incomparably poor could not in the pagan era support the expense of maintaining great empires her purse would not reach that cost wherever she undertook in those early ages to rear man in great abundance it must be where nature would consent to work in partnership with herself where warmth was to be had for nothing where clothes were not so entirely indispensable but that a ragged fellow might still keep himself warm where slight shelter might serve and where the soil if not absolutely richer in reversionary wealth was more easily cultivated nature must come forward liberally and take a number of shares in every new joint stock concern before it could move man therefore went to bed early simply because his worthy mother could not afford him candles she good old lady note or good young lady for geologists know not whether she is in that stage of her progress which corresponds to gray hairs or to infancy or to a certain age she good lady would certainly have shuttered her nations asking for candles footnote geologists know not observe reader we are not at all questioning the pre-human earth scripture is silent not upon the 6000 years does our doubt revolve but upon a very different thing vis to what age in man these 6000 years correspond by analogy in a planet in man the 60th part is a very venerable age but as to a planet as to our little earth instead of arguing dotage 6000 years may have scarcely carried her beyond babyhood some people think she is cutting her first teeth some think her in her teens but seriously it is a very interesting problem do the 60 centuries of our earth imply youth maturity or dotage and footnote quote candles and quote she would have said quote whoever heard of such a thing and with so much excellent daylight running to waste as I have provided gratis what will the wretches want next end quote the daylight furnished gratis was certainly quote neat and quote undeniable in its quality and quite sufficient for all purposes that were honest Seneca even in his own luxurious period called those men quote and by other ugly names who lived chiefly by candlelight none but rich and luxurious men nay even amongst those none but idolars did live by candlelight an immense majority of men in Rome never lighted a candle unless sometimes in the early dawn and this custom of Rome was the custom also of all nations that lived ground the great pond of the Mediterranean in Athens Egypt Palestine Asia Minor like good boys from seven to nine o'clock footnote quote everywhere the ancients went to bed like good boys from seven to nine o'clock end quote as we are perfectly serious we must beg the reader who fancies any joke in all this to consider what an immense difference it must have made to the earth considered as a steward of her own resources whether great nations in a period when their resources were so feebly developed did or did not for many centuries require candles and we may add fire the five heads of human expenditure are one food two shelter three clothing four fuel five light all were pitched on a lower scale in the pagan era and the two last were almost banished from ancient housekeeping what a great relief this must have been for our good mother earth who at first was obliged to request of her children that they would settle around the Mediterranean she could not even afford them water unless they would come and fetch it themselves out of a common tank or cistern the Turks and other people who have succeeded to the stations and the habits of the ancients do so at this day the Roman therefore who saw no joke in sitting round a table in the dark went off to bed as darkness began everybody did so old Numa Pompilius himself was obliged to trundle off in the dusk Tarquinius might be a superb fellow but we doubt whether he ever saw a farthing rush light and though it may be thought that plots and conspiracies would flourish in such a city of darkness it is to be considered that the conspirators themselves had no more candles than honest men both parties were in the dark being up then and striving not long after the lark much mischief did the Roman go about first nowadays he would have taken a pipe or a cigar but alas for the ignorance of the poor heathen creatures they had neither one nor the other in this point we must tax our mother earth with being really too stingy in the case of the candles we approve of her parsimony of the light but it was coming in too strong to allow no tobacco many a wild fellow in Rome your grotchy, sillis catalyze would not have played H. Blank and Tommy in the way they did if they could have soothed their angry stomachs with a cigar a pipe has intercepted many an evil scheme but the thing is past helping now at Rome you must do as quote they does and quote at Rome so after shaving note supposing the age of the barbitai to be past what is the first business that our Roman will undertake forty to one he is a poor man born to look upwards to his fellow men and not to look down upon anybody but his relatives he goes therefore to the palace of some grandee some top soyer of the senatorian order this great man for all his greatness has turned out even sooner than himself for he also has had no candles and no cigars and he well knows that before the sun looks into his portals all his halls are closing with the matinsuceros of courtiers the quote main cellutantes and quote footnote to follow it is as much as his popularity is worth to be absent himself or to keep people waiting footnote quote the main cellutantes and quote there can be no doubt that the leaves of modern princes have been inherited from this ancient usage of Rome one which belong to Rome republican as well as Rome imperial the fiction in our modern practice is that we wait upon the levy or rising of the prince in France at one era this fiction was realized the courtiers did really attend the king's dressing even up to the revolution Marie Antoinette almost from necessity gave audience at her toilet and footnote but surely the reader might think this poor man he might keep waiting no he might not for though poor being a citizen he is a gentleman that was the consequence of keeping slaves wherever there is a class of slaves he that enjoys the just suffragi no matter how poor is a gentleman the true latin word for gentleman is in gentius a free man and the son of a free man yet even here there were distinctions under the emperors the courtiers were divided with respect to the superior class it was said of the sovereign that he saw them note with respect to the other that he was seen note quote even Plutarch mentions it as a common boast in his times note greek aemus idon ho basilias here is in the habit of seeing me or as a common plea for evading a suit note greek or a malon i am sorry to say he is more inclined to look upon others and this usage derived itself note mark that well from the republican era the olex spirit was propagated by the empire from a republican root having paid his court you will suppose our friend comes home to breakfast not at all no such discovery as quote breakfast had been made breakfast was not invented for many centuries after that we have always admired and always shall admire as the very best of all human stories charles lambs account of the origin of roast pig in china ching ping it seems had suffered his father's house to be burned down the outhouses were burned along with the house and in one of these the pigs by accident were roasted to a turn memorable were the results for all future china and future civilization ping who, note like all chinese beside had hitherto eaten his pig raw now for the first time tasted it in a state of torrification of course he made his peace with his father by a part note tradition says a leg of the new dish the father was so astounded with the discovery that he burned his house down once a year for the sake of coming at an annual banquet of roast pig a curious prying sort of fellow one chang pang got to know of this he also burned down a house with a pig in it and had his eyes opened the secret was ill kept the discovery spread many great conversions were made houses were blazing in every part of the celestial empire the insurance offices took the matter up one chong pang detected in the very act of shutting up a pig in his drawing room and then firing a train was indicted on a charge of arson the chief justice of p. king on that occasion requested an officer of the court to hand him a piece of the roast pig the corpus delectae for pure curiosity led him to taste but within two days after it was observed that his lordship's townhouse burned down in short all china apostatized the new faith and it was not until some centuries had passed that a great genius arose who established the second era in the history of roast pig by showing that it could be had without burning down a house no such genius had yet arisen in Rome breakfast was not suspected no prophecy no type of breakfast had been published in fact it took as much time and research to arrive at that great discovery as at the Copernican system true it is reader you have heard of such a word as genticulum and your dictionary translates that old heathen word by the christian word breakfast but dictionaries one and all are dull deceivers between genticulum and breakfast the differences are as wide as between a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse differences in the time when in the place where in the manner how but preeminently in the thing which Galen is a good authority upon such a subject since if like other pagans he ate no breakfast himself in some sense he may be called the cause of breakfast to other men by treating of those things which could safely be taken upon an empty stomach as to the time he, note like many other authors says about the third or at farthest about the fourth hour and so exact is he that he assumes the day to lie exactly between six and six o'clock and to be divided into thirteen equal portions so the time will be a few minutes before nine or a few minutes before ten in the forenoon fair enough but it is not time in respect to its location that we are so much concerned with as time in respect to its duration now heaps of authorities take it for granted that you are not to sit down you are to stand and as to the place that any place will do quote any corner of the forum quote says Galen quote any corner that you fancy end quote which is like referring a man for his Sallaya manger to Westminster Hall or Fleet Street Augustus in a letter still surviving tells us that he gentibat or took his genticulum carriage in Ecedo now in a litter or palanquin in Lectica this careless and disorderly way as to time and place and other circumstances of haste sufficiently indicate the quality of the meal you are to expect already you are quote sagacious of your quarry from so far end quote not that we would presume excellent reader to liken you to death or to insinuate that you are quote a grim feature end quote but would it not make such a saint quote grim to hear of such preparations of the morning meal and then to hear of such consummations as panis sickus dry bread or note if the learned reader thinks it will taste better in greek note greek artos cheros and what may his word dry happen to mean quote does it mean stale bread end quote says salmesis quote shall we suppose end quote says he in quarrelous words quote molyet recente upon I end quote and from that antithesis conclude it to be quote durum et non reckons coctum yokei sicorium hardened stale and for that reason the more air it not quite so bad as that we hope or again quote sycampro biscotto uthodi vocamus sumimas footnote quote or again sycampro biscotto uthodi vocamus sumimas end quote it is odd enough that a scholar so complete as salmesis whom nothing ever escapes should have overlooked so obvious an alternative as that of sickus meaning without obsonium scotis without quote kitchen and footnote by hodai salmesis means amongst his countrymen of France where biscottos is verbatim reproduced in the word bis twice cuit baked whence our own biscuit biscuit might do very well could we be sure that it was cabin biscuit but salmesis argues that in this case he takes it to mean quote panis nauticus end quote that is the ship's company's biscuit broken with a sledgehammer in greek for the benefit again of the learned reader it is termed note greek depuros note greek depuros indicating that it has passed twice under the action of fire well you say no matter if it had passed 50 times and through the fires of mallock only let us have this biscuit such as it is in good faith then fasting reader you are not likely to see much more than you have seen it is a very marmoside feast we do assure you this same quote gentaculum at which insistence and patience are much more exercised than the teeth faith and hope are the cheap graces cultivated together with that species of the magnificum which is founded on the ignotum even this biscuit was allowed in the most limited quantities for which reason it is that the greeks called this apology for a meal by the name of note greek butchismos a word formed note as many words were in the post augustian ages from a latin word vis bouquet a mouthful not literally such but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put in his mouth at once quote we took a mouthful end quote says sir william waller took a mouthful paid our reckoning mounted and were off end quote but there sir william means by his plausible quote mouthful something very much beyond either nine or nineteen ordinary quantities of that denomination whereas the roman quote gentaculum was literally such and accordingly one of the varieties under which the ancient vocabularies express this model of evenness in quantities is a mere tasting and again it is called by another variety a mere taste note whence by the usual suppression of the s comes the french word for a collation or luncheon vis speaking of his uncle pliny the younger says post solemn plurumquay la vabatur dinde gustobot dormabot minimum mox quasi alio die studobot in coene tempus quote after taking the air he bathed after that he broke his fast on a bit of biscuit and took a very slight siesta which done as if awakening to a new day he set in regularity to his studies and pursued them to dinner time gustobot here meant that nondescript meal which arose at Rome when gentaculum and prandium were fused into one and that only a taste or mouthful of biscuit as we shall show further on possibly however most excellent reader like some epicurean traveler who in crossing the alps finds himself weather bound at st. Bernards on ash Wednesday you may surmise a remedy you describe some opening from the quote loopholes of retreat through which a few delicacies might be insinuated to spread verger on this arid desert of a biscuit casuistry can do much a dead hand at casuistry often proved more than a match for Lent with all his quarantines but sorry we are to say that in this case no relief is hinted at in any ancient author a grape or two note not a bunch of grapes a raisin or two a date an olive these are the whole amount of relief to follow which the chancery of the Roman kitchen granted in such cases footnote quote the whole amount of relief end quote from which it appears how grossly lock note see his education was deceived and fancying that Augustus practiced any remarkable abstinence in taking only a bit of bread and a raisin or two Augustus did no more than most people did secondly he abstained only with a view to dinner and thirdly for this dinner he never waited longer than up to four o'clock and footnote all things here hang together and prove each other the time, the place, the mode, the thing well might man eat standing or eat in public such a trifle as to this go home to such a breakfast as this you would as soon think of ordering cloth to be laid in order to eat a peach or of asking a friend to join you in an orange no man makes quote two bites of a cherry end quote so let us pass on to the other stages of the day only in taking leave of this morning stage throw your eyes back with us Christian reader upon this truly heathen meal fit for idolatrous dogs like your Greeks and your Romans survey through the vista of ages that thrice cursed biscuit with half a fig perhaps by way of garnish and a huge hammer by its side to secure the certainty of mastication by previous comminution then turn your eyes to a Christian breakfast hot rolls eggs coffee beef but down down rebellious visions we need say no more you reader will breathe a malediction on the classical era and thank your stars for making you a romanticist every morning we thank ours for keeping us back and reserving us to an age in which breakfast had been already invented in the words of Ovid we say present alios ego minuc denicue natum gratular ache ethos morbis apta mace end quote our friend the Roman sit has therefore thus far in his progress through life obtained no breakfast if he ever contemplated an idea so frantic but it occurs to you our faithful reader he will not always be thus unhappy we could bring wagon loads of sentiments Greek as well as Roman which provide more clearly than the most eminent pike staff that as the wheel of fortune revolves simply out of the fact that it has carried a man downwards it must subsequently carry him upwards no matter what dislike that wheel or any of its spokes may bear to that man non-simile nuksit et olim sic erit end quote and that of a man through the madness of his nation misses coffee and hot rolls at nine he may easily run into a leg of mutton at twelve true it is he may do so truth is commendable and we will not deny that a man may sometimes by losing his breakfast gain a dinner such things have been in various ages and will be again but not at Rome there are reasons against it we have heard of men who consider life under the idea of a wilderness dry as a remainder biscuit after a voyage and who consider a day under the idea of a little life life is the macrocosm our world at large day is the microcosm our world in miniature consequently if life is a wilderness then day as a little life is a little wilderness and this wilderness can be safely traversed only by having relays of fountains or stages of refreshment such stages they conceive are found in the several meals which Providence has stationed at due intervals through the day whenever the perverseness of man does not break the chain or derange the order of succession end of dinner real and reputed part one miscellaneous essays by Thomas DeQuincey recorded by Robert Scott June 27th 2007