PR
'813,
CONFESSIONS
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
To weep afresh a long since cancelled woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight. Shakspeare's Sonnets.
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THIRD EDITION.
/
LONDON: PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY,
93, FLEET STREET,
AND 13, WATERLOO PLACE.
1823.
1988
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NOTICE TO THE READER.
The incidents recorded in the Preli- minary Confessions, lie within a period of which the earlier extreme is now rather more, and the latter extreme less, than nineteen years ago : conse- quently, in a popular way of comput- ing dates, many of the incidents might be indifferently referred to a distance of eighteen or of nineteen years ; and, as the notes and memoranda for this * narrative were drawn up originally about last Christmas, it seemed most natural in all cases to prefer the former date. In the hurry of composing the narrative, though some months had then elapsed, this date was every where retained : and, in many cases,
IV NOTICE TO THE READER.
perhaps, it leads to no error, or to none of importance. But in one in- stance, viz. where the author speaks of his own birth-day, this adoption of one uniform date has led to a positive inaccuracy of an entire year : for, during the very time of composition, the nineteenth year from the earlier term of the whole period revolved to its close. It is, therefore, judged pro- per to mention, that the period of that narrative lies between the early part of July, 1802, and the beginning or middle of March, 1803.
Oct, 1, 1821.
CONFESSIONS
OF AN
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
TO THE READER.
I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life : according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an inte- resting record, but, in a considerable de- gree, useful and instructive. In that hope it is, that I have drawn it up : and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to Eng-
Z CONFESSIONS OF AN
lish feelings, than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that ' de- cent drapery/ which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them : accordingly, the greater part of our confes- sions (that is spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adven- turers, or swindlers : and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German, which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before the public eye, until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published) : and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step, that I have, at last, con- cluded on taking it.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 6
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice : they court privacy and solitude : and, even in their choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
— humbly to express A penitential loneliness.
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so : nor would I willingly, in my own person, mani- fest a disregard of such salutary feelings ; nor in act or word do any thing to weaken them. But, on the one hand, as my self- accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and b2
4 CONFESSIONS OF AN
misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede from, the shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the of- fender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence : in proportion as the tempta- tions to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm, that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher : from my birth I was made an intellectual creature : and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my school-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded^ of any other man, it is no less true, that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a
* ' Not yet recorded,* I say : for there is one cele- brated man of the present day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in , .quantity.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Q
ieligious zeal, and have, at length, accom- plished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man — have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist, that in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be re- stricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge : and, if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium- eaters. But who are they ? Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents,
6 CONFESSIONS OF AN
or of eminent station), who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters : such, for instance, as the eloquent and be- nevolent , the late dean of ; Lord
; Mr. , the philosopher ; a late
under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium, in the very same words
as the dean of , viz. C( that he felt as
though rats were gnawing and abrading the
coats of his stomach") ; Mr. ; and
many others, hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could fur- nish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference, that the entire population of England would furnish a pro- portionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me, which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will men- tion two : 1 . Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 7
be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me, that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was, at this time, immense ; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2. (which will possibly surprise the reader more,) some years ago, on pass- ing through Manchester, I was informed by- several cotton - manufacturers, that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating ; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The imme- diate occasion of this practice was the low- ness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits : and, wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease : but, as I do not readily believe that any man, having once
8 CONFESSIONS OF AN
tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted,
That those eat now, who never ate before ; And those who always ate, now eat the more.
Indeed the fascinating powers of opium are admitted, even by medical writers, who are its greatest enemies : thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich-hospital, in his " Essay on the Effects of Opium," (published in the year 1763,) when attempt- ing to explain, why Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, coun- teragents, &c. of this drug, expresses him- self in the following mysterious terms, (pcovavra a-vvEToia-i) : <e perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common ; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution, which should prevent their experiencing the ex- tensive power of this drug : for there are many properties in it, if universally known,
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. V
that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us than the Turks themselves : the result of which knowledge," he adds, " must prove a general misfortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur: but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my confessions, where I shall present the reader with the moral of my narrative.
B5
PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS,
These preliminary confessions, or intro- ductory narrative of the youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for three several reasons :
1. As forestalling that question, and giv- ing it a satisfactory answer, which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium-Confessions — "How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain ?" — a question, which, if not somewhere plau- sibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton folly, to inter- fere with that degree of sympathy which
12 CONFESSIONS OF AN
is necessary in any case to an author's purposes.
2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of the opium-eater.
3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a man " whose talk is of oxen," should become an opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) — he will dream about oxen : whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the opium- eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams (waking or sleeping, day- dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character,
Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb intellect
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 13
in its analytic functions (in which part of the pretension, however, England can for some generations show but few claimants ; at least, he is not aware of any known can- didate for this honour, who can be styled emphatically a subtle thinker, with the ex- ception of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in a narrower department of thought, with the recent illustrious exception # of David Ri- cardo) — but also such a constitution of the moral faculties, as shall give him an
* A third exception might perhaps have been added: and my reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed himself to philosophical themes ; his riper powers having been all dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligible ground, under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over philosophical subjects, that he has ob- viously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic education : he has not read Plato in his youth (which most likely was only his misfortune) ; but neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault.)
14 CONFESSIONS OF AN
inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our human nature : that constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest degree, — and Scottish* pro- fessors in the lowest.
I have often been asked, how I first came to be a regular opium-eater ; and have suf- fered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of plea- surable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me : but so long as I took
* I disclaim any allusion to existing nrofessors^ of whom indeed I know only one. -;$//^''C&0r>^ &\
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 15
it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of interposing long intervals be- tween the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating plea- sure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty- eighth year of my age, a most painful affec- tion of the stomach, wThich I had first ex- perienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. Dur- ing the season of hope and redundant hap- piness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered : for the three following years it had revived at intervals : and now, under unfavourable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful sufferings, which first produced this de- rangement of the stomach, were interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances
16 CONFESSIONS OF AN
that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them.
My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small ; and was very early distin- guished for my classical attainments, espe- cially for my knowledge of Greek. x4t thirteen, I wrote Greek with ease ; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrass- ment— an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the news- papers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore: for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention, for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, rela- tions of things, &c. gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. " That boy," said one of my masters,
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 17
pointing the attention of a stranger to me, " that boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English one." He who honoured me with this eulogy, was a scholar, " and a ripe and good one:" and, of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Un- fortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indigna- tion), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic, lest I should expose his ignorance ; and finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed
to his situation by College, Oxford ;
and was a sound, wTell-built scholar, but (like most men, whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favour- ite master: and, besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice, the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and to know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in
18 CONFESSIONS OF AN
knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only : for the two boys, who jointly with myself composed the first form, wrere better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles ; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our ' Archididascalus' (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before he went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses ; whilst we never condescended to open our books until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such important matter. My two class- fellows were poor, and dependent for their future prospects at the university, on the recommendation of the head-master : but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to support
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
19
me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made earnest representa- tions on the subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance : two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian : uncondi- tional submission was what he demanded : and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth- day was fast approaching ; after which day I had sworn within myself, that I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great dis-
20 CONFESSIONS OF Atf
tinction, requesting that she would ' lend' me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; and I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a servant put into my hands a double letter, with a coro- net on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging : the fair writer was on the sea- coast, and in that way the delay had arisen : she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin ner. Kow then, I was prepared for my scheme : ten guineas, added to about two which I had remaining from my pocket money, seemed to me sufficient for an inde- finite length of time: and at that happy age, if no definite boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and plea- sure makes it virtually infinite.
It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and what cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one,) that we never do any thing consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply, when I came to leave
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 21
— — , a place which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. On the evening before I left — — for ever, I grieved when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with the evening service, per- formed for the last time in my hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and. passing the head master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I was right : I never did see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my saluta- tion (or rather, my valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him intellectually : but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indulgences : and I grieved at the thought of the mortification I should inflict upon him.
The morning came, which was to launch me into the world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, in many important points,
22 CONFESSIONS OF AN
taken its colouring. I lodged in the head master's house, and had been allowed, from my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion at the ancient
towers of , " drest in earliest light," and
beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and immoveable in my purpose : but yet agitated by anticipation of uncertain danger and troubles ; and, if I could have foreseen the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight : and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day, chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures of God, seems to
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 23
be secure and deep, only so long as the pre- sence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my " pensive citadel : " here I had read and studied through all the hours of night : and, though true it was, that for the latter part of this time I, who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness, during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian ; yet, on the other hand, as a boy, so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pur- suits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general dejec- tion. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other fami- liar objects, knowing too certainly, that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this, it is eighteen years ago : and yet, at this moment, I see distinctly as if it were yesterday, the lineaments and expres- sion of the object on which I fixed my parting gaze : it was a picture of the lovely
24 CONFESSIONS OF AN
-, which hung over the mantle-piece ;
the eyes and mouth of which were so beau- tiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity, and divine tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen, or my book, to gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it, the deep tones of
clock proclaimed that it was four
o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out, and closed the door for ever i
So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recal, without smiling, an incident which occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the imme- diate execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight ; for, besides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's : my room was at an aerial elevation in the house, and (what was worse) the stair- case, which communicated with this angle of the building, was accessible only by a
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 25
gallery, which passed the head master's chamber-door. I was a favourite with all the servants ; and, knowing that any of them would screen me, and act confiden- tially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head master's. The groom swore he would do any thing I wished ; and, when the time arrived, went up stairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength of any one man : how- ever, the groom was a man —
Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies;
and had a back as spacious as Salisbury plain. Accordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of the last flight, in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him descending with slow and firm steps ; but, unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, his foot slipped ; and the mighty burden falling from his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent, that, on reaching
26 CONFESSIONS OF AN
the bottom, it tumbled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bed-room door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was, that all was lost ; and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection, I deter- mined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine : but, in spite of this, so irre- sistibly had the sense of the ludicrous, in this unhappy contretems, taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might "have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it : subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy etourderie of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter
of course, that Dr. ■ would sally out of
his room : for, in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 27
ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be
heard in the bed-room. Dr. had a
painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, made his sleep, perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the remain- der of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheel-barrow, and on its road to the car- rier's : then, " with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, — carrying a small parcel, with some articles of dress, under my arm ; a favourite English poet in one pocket ; and a small 12mo. volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other.
It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmorland, both from the love I bore to that country, and on other per- sonal accounts. Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps towards North Wales.
After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and Caernar- vonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B — — . Here I might have staid c2
28 CONFESSIONS OF AN
with great comfort for many weeks; for
provisions were cheap at B , from the
scarcity of other markets for the surplus produce of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which, perhaps, no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the proudest class of people in England (or at any rate, the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen, and their children, carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear, adequate expo- nents of high birth, or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such persons, therefore, find every where a due sense of their claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world by virtue of their own obscurity : 6< Not to know them, argues one's self un- known." Their manners take a suitable
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 29
tone and colouring ; and, for once that they find it necessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension* With the families of bishops it is otherwise : with them it is all up-hill work, to make known their pretensions : for the proportion of the episcopal bench, taken from noble families, is not at any time very large ; and the succession to these dignities is so rapid, that the public ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where they are connected with some literary reputation. Hence it is, that the children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of noli me tangere manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man, from all contract with the oi ttqxkqi. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual good- ness of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness : but, in general, the truth of my representation will be acknowledged :
30 CONFESSIONS OF AN
pride, if not of deeper root in such families, appears, at least, more upon the surface of their manners. This spirit of manners natu- rally communicates itself to their domestics, and other dependents. Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid, or a nurse, in the
family of the Bishop of 5 and had but
lately married away and u settled" (as such people express it) for life. In a little town like B — — , merely to have lived in the bishop's family, conferred some distinction : and my good landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. What " my lord" said, and what " my lord" did, how useful he was in par- liament, and how indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore very well : for I was too good- natured to laugh in any body's face, and I could make an ample allowance for the gar- rulity of an old servant. Of necessity, how- ever, I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with "the bishop's importance : and, perhaps, to punish me for my indifference, or possibly by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 31
in which I was indirectly a party con- cerned. She had been to the palace to pay her respects to the family ; and, dinner being over, was summoned into the dining-room. In giving an account of her household eco- nomy, she happened to mention that she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of inmates : " for/ said he, u you must recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high road to the Head ; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers, running away from their debts into England — and of English swindlers running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route." This advice was certainly not without rea- sonable grounds : but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private medita- tions, than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat worse ; — *f Oh, my lord," answered my landlady (according to her own representation of the matter), " I really don't think this young
gentleman is a swindler ; because :"
"You don't think me a swindler?" said I,
32 CONFESSIONS OF AN
interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation : "for the future I shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it." And without delay I prepared for my departure. Some con- cessions the good woman seemed disposed to make : but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn : and reconciliation then became impossible. I was, indeed, greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen : and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek : which, at the same time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language ; in which case, I doubted not to make it appear, that, if I was not so rich as his lordship, I was a better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish design out of my mind : for I considered that the bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his advice should be reported to me ;
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 33
and that the same coarseness of mind which
had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at
all, might have coloured it in a way more
agreeable to her own style of thinking, than
to the actual expressions of the worthy
bishop.
I left the lodgings the same hour ; and
this turned out a verv unfortunate occur- j
rence for me : because, living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short allowance ; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant exer- cise, and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen; for the single meal, which I could venture to order, was coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn : and afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c, or on the casual hospitalities wThich I now and then received, in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. Some- times I wrote letters of business for cot- c 5
34 CONFESSIONS OF AN
tagers, who happened to have relatives in Liverpool, or in London : more often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants in Shrews- bury, or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfac- tion to my humble friends, and was generally treated with hospitality : and once, in parti- cular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I w7as entertained for up- wards of three days by a family of young people, with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The family consisted, at that time, of four sisters, and three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good-breeding and re- finement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any cottage, except once or twice in Westmorland and Devonshire. They spoke English: an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 35
introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the brothers, who had served on board an English man of war; and more privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both interesting looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to discover that what they wished w7as, that their letters should be as kind as was con- sistent with proper maidenly pride. I con- trived so to temper my expressions, as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings : and they w^ere as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their thoughts, as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of a family, generally determines the tenour of one's whole entertainment. In this case, I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary, so much to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay with«a cordiality which I had little inclina-
36 CONFESSIONS OF AN
tion to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing in the apart- ment of the young women : but in all other points, they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as mine ; as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence, that I was of a gentle blood/' Thus I lived with them for three days, and great part of a fourth : and, from the undiminished kind- ness which they continued to show me, I believe I might have staid with them up to this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last morning, however, I perceived upon their counte- nances, as they sat at breakfast, the expres- sion of some unpleasant communication which was at hand ; and soon after one of the brothers explained to me, that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at Caernarvon, and were that day expected to return : u and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned, with churlish faces, and " Dym Sassenach"
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 37
(no English), in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood ; and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way. For, though they spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people, by saying, that it was " only their way/' yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me, with two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists, as my Greek Sapphics or Alcaics: and what had been hospitality, when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity, when connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old age : unless powerfully counter- acted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human heart.
Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings ; without using a disproportionate
38 CONFESSIONS OF AN
expression I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured : for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest mis- conduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in Lon- don) I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, how- ever, when colder and more inclement wea-
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 39
ther came on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was, no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house, of which he was tenant. Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or establish- ment in it ; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table, and a few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, apparently ten years old ; but she seemed hunger bitten ; and sufferings of that sort often make children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned, that she had slept and lived there alone for some time before I came : and great joy the poor creature expressed, when she found that I was, in future, to be her companion through the hours of darkness. The house was laAge; and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase and hall ; and, amidst the real fleshly ills of cold, and, I
40 CONFESSIONS OP AN
fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against all ghosts whatso- ever ! but, alas ! I could offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow : but with no other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak : afterwards, how- ever, we discovered, in a garret, an old sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill, I took her into my arms, so that, in general, she wras tole- rably warm, and often slept when I could not : for, during the last two months of my sufferings, I slept much in the day-time, and was apt to fall into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my watching : for, besides the tumul- tuousness of my dreams (which were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by opium),
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 41
my sleep was never more than what is called dog-sleep ; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, wakened suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me, at dif- ferent periods of my life, viz. a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion ; and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was constantly falling asleep, and constantly awTaking. Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early, sometimes not till ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs : improving. on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different quarter of London ; and I observed that he never failed to examine, through ^ private window, the appearance of those
42 CONFESSIONS OF AN
who knocked at the door, before he would allow it to be opened. He breakfasted alone : indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second person — any more than the quantity of esculent materiel, which, for the most part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits, which he had bought on his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he had asked a party, as I once learn- edly and facetiously observed to him — the several members of it must have stood in the relation to each other (not sat in any rela- tion whatever) of succession, as the meta- physicians have it, and not of co-existence ; in the relation of the parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast, I generally contrived a reason for lounging in ; and, with an air of as much indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left — sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this, I committed no robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit ; for, as to the poor child, she was never
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 43
admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c); that room was to her the Blue-beard room of the house, being regu- larly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. , or only a servant, I could not ascer- tain ; she did not herself know ; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial ser- vant. No sooner did Mr. make his
appearance, than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchens, &c. to the upper air, until my welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the day-time, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own account at night ; for, as soon as the hours of business commenced, I saw that my absence would be acceptable ; and, in general, therefore, I went off, and sat in the parks, or elsewhere, until night- fall.
44 CONFESSIONS OF AN
But who, and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower departments of the law, who — what shall I say? — who, on prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves all in- dulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience : (a periphrasis which might be abridged considerably, but that I leave to the reader's taste :) in many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encum- brance, than a wife or a carriage ; and just as people talk of " laying down" their
carriages, so I suppose my friend, Mr. —
had " laid down" his conscience for a time ; meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The inner economy of such a man's daily life would present a most strange picture, if I could allow my^ self to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London intrigues, and complex chicanery, " cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes smile to this day — and at which I smiled then, in spite of my misery.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 45
My situation, however, at that time, gave me little experience, in my own person, of
any qualities in Mr. 's character but
such as did him honour ; and of his whole strange composition, I must forget every thing but that towards me he was obliging, and, to the extent of his power, generous.
That power was not, indeed, very exten- sive ; however, in common with the rats, I sat rent free ; and, as Dr. Johnson has recorded, that he never but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me be grateful, that on that single oc- casion I had as large a choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the Blue-beard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service ; " the world was all before us ;" and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot we chose. This house I have already described as a large one ; it stands in a conspicuous situation, and in a well- known part of London. Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of reading this. For
46 CONFESSIONS OF AN
myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws me to London; about ten o'clock, this very night, August 15, 1821, being my birth-day, — I turned aside from my evening wralk, down Oxford-street, purposely to take a glance at it : it is now occupied by a respectable family ; and, by the lights in the front drawing-room, I observed a do- mestic party, assembled perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast in my eyes to the darkness — cold — silence — and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly occu- pants were one famishing scholar, and a neglected child ! — Her, by the by, in after years, I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child : she was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank God ! even in those years I needed not the embellishments of novel-accessaries to conciliate my affections ; plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me : and I loved the child because she was my partner in
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 47
wretchedness. If she is now living, she is probably a mother, with children of her own ; but, as I have said, I could never trace her.
This I regret, but another person there was at that time, whom I have since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal, nor frowrn. For, not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb — u Sine Cerere," &c. it may well be supposed that in the existing state of my purse, my connexion with such women could not have been an impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape : on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my pride to
48 CONFESSIONS OF AN
converse familiarly, more Socratico, with all human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way : a practice which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes a man who would be thought a philosopher. For a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor limitary creature, calling himself a man of the world, and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon himself as a Catholic creature, and as standing in an equal relation to high and low7 — to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the inno- cent. Being myself at that time of ne- cessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who are technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had occasionally taken "my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, the one on whose account I have at all introduced this subject — yet no ! let me not class thee, oh
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 49
noble-minded Ann , with that order
of women; let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the condi- tion of her to whose bounty and compas- sion, ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive. — For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friend- less girl up and down Oxford-street, or had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticos. She could not be so old as myself: she told me, indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted, I had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordi- nary occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted its arrange- ments to meet it, the power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect, and to avenge. But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet noiseless and un- derground ; not obvious or readily acces- sible to poor houseless wanderers : and it
D
50 CONFESSIONS OF AN
cannot be denied that the outside air and frame-work of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been redressed ; and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magistrate : friendless as she was, I assured her that she would meet with immediate attention ; and that English justice, which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised me often that she would; but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out from time to time; for she was timid and de- jected to a degree which showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart: and perhaps she thought justly that the most upright judge, and the most righteous tribunals, could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps have been done : for it had been settled between us at length, but un- happily on the very last time but one that I was ever to see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate,
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 51
and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her, was this : — One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford-street, and after a day when I had felt more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho-square : thither we went ; and we sat down on the steps of a house, which, to this hour, I never pass without a pang of grief, and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble action which she there per- formed. Suddenly, as we sat, I grew much worse : I had been leaning my head against her bosom ; and all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind that without some powerful and reviving stimu- lus, I should either have died on the spot — or should at least have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all re-ascent under my friendless circumstances would soon i)2
52 CONFESSIONS OF AN
have become hopeless. Then it was/ at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan companion — who had herself met with little but injuries in this world — stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of ter- ror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford-street, and in less time than could be imagined, returned to me with a glass of port wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, (which at that time would have rejected all solid food) with an instantaneous power of restoration : and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her own humble purse at a time — be it remembered ! — when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should
ever be able to reimburse her. Oh !
youthful benefactress! how often in suc- ceeding years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love, how often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 53
self- fulfilment, — even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude, might have a like prerogative ; might have power given to it from above to chase — to haunt — i to way-lay — to overtake — to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave — there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation !
I do not often weep : for not only do my thoughts on subjects connected with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand fathoms i( too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears — want- ing of necessity to those who, being pro- tected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be made incapable of re- sisting it on any casual access of such feelings : — but also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated such ob- jects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from utter despond-
54 CONFESSIONS OF AN
ency, have early encouraged and cherished some tranquillizing belief as to the future balances and the hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On these accounts, I am cheerful to this hour ; and, as I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some feel- ings, though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others ; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford-street by dreamy lamp-light, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispen- sation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened, the reader will understand from what re- mains of this introductory narration.
Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded, I met, in Albemarle-street, a gentleman of his late majesty's household. This gentleman had received hospitalities, on different occasions, from my family : and he challenged me upon the strength of my family likeness. I did not attempt any disguise : I answered his questions inge-
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 55
nuously, — and, on his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend the attorney's. The next day I re- ceived from him a 10/. Bank-note. The letter enclosing it was delivered with other letters of business to the attorney; but, though his look and manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honourably and without demur.
This present, from the particular service to which it was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first day of my arrival in London, to that of my final departure.
In so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my readers that I should not have found some means of staving off the last extremities of penury: and it will strike them that two resources at least must have been open to me, — viz. either to seek as- sistance from the friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolument.
56 CONFESSIONS OF AN ^
As to the first course, I may observe, gene- rally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of being reclaimed by my guardians ; not doubting that whatever power the law gave them would have been enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted : a resto- ration which as it would in my eyes have been a dishonour, even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in contempt and defiance of my known wishes and efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would, indeed, have terminated in death. I was, therefore, shy enough of applying for assistance even in those quar- ters where I was sure of receiving it — at the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue for recovering me. But, as to London in particular, though, Joubtless, my father had in his life-time had many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since his death) I remembered few of them even by name : and never having seen London before, except once for a few hours,
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 57
I knew not the address of even those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the difficulty, but much more the para- mount fear which I have mentioned, ha- bitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my reader in wondering that I should have overlooked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way), I might doubt- less have gained enough for my slender wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. But it must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it was necessary that I should first of all have an introduction to some respectable publisher: and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had never once occurred to me to think of literary labours as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred to me, but that of borrowing it on the strength of my future claims and expectations. This mode I sought by every avenue to compass, d5
58 CONFESSIONS OF AN
and amongst other persons I applied to a Jew named D .#
* To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I applied again on the same busi- ness ; and, dating at that time from a respectable col- lege, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any extravagance, or youthful levities (these my habits and the nature of my pleasures raised me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found himself no longer able to prevent me from going to the university, had, as a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school — viz. 100Z. per annum. Upon this sum it was, in my time, barely possible to have lived in college ; and not possible to a man who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided, nevertheless, rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became embarrassed : and at length, after a most volu- minous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in possession of the sum 1 asked for — on the " regular" terms of paying the Jew seven- teen and a half per cent., by way of annuity, on all the money furnished ; Israel, on his part, graciously resum- ing no more than about ninety guineas of the said
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEE. . 59
To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom were, I be- lieve, also Jews), I had introduced myself with an account of my expectations ; which account, on examining my father's will, at Doctor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person there mentioned as
the second son of , was found to have
all the claims (or more than all) that I had stated : but one question still remained, which the faces of the Jews pretty signifi- cantly suggested, — was I that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one : I had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might be too well known to be that person — and that some scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping me,
■money, on account of an attorney's bill (for what ser- vices, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of Jerusalem — at the building of the Second Temple — or on some earlier occasion, I have not yet been able to discover). How many perches this bill measured I really forget: but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities ; and sometime or other, I believe, I shall present it to the British Museum.
60 CONFESSIONS OF AN
and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to me to find my own $e\{j*materia- liter considered (so I expressed it, for I doted on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own self, formaliter considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales, I had received various letters from young friends : these I produced : for I carried them constantly in my pocket — being, indeed, by this time, almost the only relics of my per- sonal encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wTore) which I had not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these letters were
from the Earl of , who was at that time
my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. I had
also some from the Marquess of , his
father, who, though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be — still retained an affection for clas- sical studies, and for youthful scholars. He had, accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me ; some-
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 61
times upon the great improvements which he had made, or was meditating, in the coun- ties of M — and SI — since I had been there ; sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet ; at other times suggesting subjects to me,- on which he wished me to write verses.
On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to furnish two or three hun- dred pounds on my personal security — pro- vided I could persuade the young Earl, who was, by the way, not older than myself, to guarantee the payment on our coming of age : the Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the prospect of establishing a connexion with my noble friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. In pursuance of this proposaLon the part of the Jew, about eight
or nine davs after I had received the 10/.; I
t/ *
prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly 3/. of the money I had given to my money- lending friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order that the writings might be preparing whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart
62 CONFESSIONS OF AN
that he was lying ; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my friend the attorney (who was connected with the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the remain- der I gave one quarter to Ann, meaning on my return to have divided with her whatever might remain. These arrangements made, — soon after six o'clock, on a dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Piccadilly ; for it was my intention to go down as far as Salt-hill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the town which has now all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its ancient boundaries : Swallow-street, I think it was called. Having time enough before us, however, we bore away to the left until we came into Golden-square : there, near the corner of Sherrard-street, we sat down ; not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 63
some time before ; and I now assured her again that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with any ; and that I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully intended, as much from inclination as from a sense of duty : for, setting aside gratitude, which in any case must have made me her debtor for life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been my sister: and at this moment, with sevenfold tenderness, from pity at witness- ing her extreme dejection. I had, appa- rently, most reason for dejection, because I was leaving the saviour of my life : yet I, considering the shock my health had re- ceived, was cheerful and full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow; so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put her arms about my neck, and wept without speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and every night after- wards, she should wait for me at six o'clock,
64 CONFESSIONS OF AN
near the bottom of Great Titchfield-street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford-street. This, and other measures of precaution, I took : one only I forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten, her sur- name. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in her unhappy con- dition, not (as novel-reading women of higher pretensions) to style themselves — Miss Douglass, Miss Montague, &c. but simply by their Christian names, Mary, Jane, Frances, 8cc. Her surname, as the surest means of tracing her hereafter, I ought now to have inquired : but the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting could, in conse- quence of a short interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had been for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my memoranda against this parting interview : and, my final anxieties being- spent in comforting her with hopes, and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 65
some medicines for a violent cough and hoarseness with which she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late to recal her.
It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester coffee-house : and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion # of this mail soon laid me asleep : it is somewhat remarkable, that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months, was on the outside of a mail-coach — a bed which, at this day, I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep was a little incident, which served, as hundreds of others did at that time, to convince me how easily a man who has never been in any great distress, may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at least, any thing of the possible goodness of the human heart — or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a
* The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the king- dom — owing to the double advantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra sum for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants.
66 CONFESSIONS OF AN
curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expression of men's natures, that to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie be- tween them, are all confounded — - the vast and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alpha- bet of elementary sounds. The case was this : for the first four or five miles from London, I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against him when the coach gave a lurch to his side ; and indeed, if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I should have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoyance he com- plained heavily, as perhaps in the same cir- cumstances most people would ; he expressed his complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion seemed to warrant ; and, if I had parted with him at that moment, I should have thought of him (if I had considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that I had given him some cause for complaint : and, therefore, I apologized
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 67
to him, and assured him I would do what I could to avoid falling asleep for the future ; and, at the same time, in as few words as possible, I explained to him that I was ill and in a weak state from long suffering ; and that I could not afford at that time to take an inside place. The man's manner changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an instant : and when I next woke for a minute from the noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to him), I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling off: and for the rest of my journey he be- haved to me with the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost lay in his arms : and this was the more kind, as he could not have known that I was not going the whole way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I did go rather farther than I intended : for so genial and refreshing was my sleep, that the next time after leavhag Hounslow that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post office) ; and, on inquiry, I found that
68 CONFESSIONS OF AN
we had reached Maidenhead — six or seven miles, I think, a-head of Salt-hill. Here I alighted : and for the half minute that the mail stopped, I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler — or person of that rank) to go to bed without delay. This I promised, though with no intention of doing so : and in fact, I immediately set forward, or rather backward, on foot. It must then have been nearly midnight : but so slowly did I creep along, that I heard a clock in a cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from Slough to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me ; but I was weary nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and which has been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me some consolation at that moment under my poverty. There had been some time before a murder committed on or near Hounslow-heath. I think I cannot be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person was Steele, and that he was the owner of a lavender plantation in that
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 69
neighbourhood. Every step of my progress was bringing me nearer to the heath : and it naturally occurred to me that I and the accursed murderer, if he were that nioht abroad, might at every instant be uncon- sciously approaching each other through the darkness : in which case, said I, — sup- posing that I, instead of being (as indeed I am) little better than an outcast, —
Lord of my learning and no land beside,
were, like my friend, Lord , heir by
general repute to 70,000/. per ann., what a panic should I be under at this moment about my throat ! — indeed, it was not likely that Lord should ever be in my situa- tion. But nevertheless, the spirit of the remark remains true — that vast power and possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying : and I am convinced that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by fortu- nately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural courage, would, if at the very instant of going into action news were brought to them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of 50,000/. a year,
70 CONFESSIONS OF AN
feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharpened # — and their efforts at perfect equanimity and self-possession proportion- ably difficult. So true it is, in the language of a wise man whose own experience had made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches are better fitted —
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than tempt her to do aught may merit praise.
Paradise Regained.
I dally with my subject because, to my- self, the remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any further cause to complain : for I now hasten to its close. — In the road between Slough and Eton, I fell asleep : and, just as the morning began to dawn, I was awakened by the voice of a man stand- ing over me and surveying me. I know not what he was : he was an ill-looking fellow —
* It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth, have in our own day, as well as through- out our history, been amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True : but this is not the case sup- posed : long familiarity with power has to them dead- ened its effect and its attractions.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 71
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 conclu- sion, however, as it regarded myself, I beg 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 Eton before people were generally up. The night had been heavy and lowering : but towards the morning it had changed to a slight frost : and the ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through Eton unobserved ; washed myself, and, as far as possible, adjusted my dress at a little public-house in Windsor; and about eight o'clock went down towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys of whom I made inquiries : an Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they answered me
civilly. My friend, Lord , was gone to
the University of . " Ibi omnis effusus
labor!" I had, however, other friends at Eton: but it is not to all who wear that
72 CONFESSIONS OF AN
name in prosperity that a man is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of
D , to whom, (though my acquaintance
with him was not so intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk from pre- senting myself under any circumstances. He was still at Eton, though I believe on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to breakfast.
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 pre- tensions to rank or 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 30,000/. amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may mention with honour, as still more
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 73
highly gifted. For though unpretending to the name and honours of a literary woman, I shall presume to call her (what many lite- rary 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 excepting those of Lady M. W. Mon- tague.—These are my honours of descent : I have no others : and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow- creatures is not the most 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 scarcely eat any thing. On the day when I first received my 10/. Bank-note, I
E
74 CONFESSIONS OF AN
had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of rolls : this very shop I had two months or six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remem- bered the story about Otway ; and feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no need for alarm, my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what approached to a meal, I continued to feel for weeks : or, when I did not experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately, and without any acidity. On the present occasion, at
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, how- ever, unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine : I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord D , and gave him a short ac- count 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
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 75
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 con- tributed to strengthen my malady ; for the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk; but by a better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered in the neigh- bourhood of my Eton friends : I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D , on whom I was con- scious I had not sufficient claims, the parti- cular service in quest of wliich I had come down to Eton. 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, neverthe- less, at this request. He acknowledged that he id not like to have any dealings with e2
76 CONFESSIONS OF AN
money-lenders, and feared lest such a trans- action might come to the ears of his con- nexions. Moreover, he doubted whether his signature, whose expectations were so
much more bounded than those of ,
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.
Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best, but far above
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 77
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 Bank-note had just melted away ; and before any con- clusion 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 reconciliaton with my friends. I quitted London, in haste, for a remote part of England : after some time, I pro- ceeded 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 con-
78 CONFESSIONS OF AN
eluding words : according to our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every night, so long as I staid in London, at the corner of Titchfield-street. I inquired for her of every one 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 acquaintance ; most people, besides, thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved their laughter, or their slight regard 5 and others, thinking T wTas in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if, indeed, they had any to give. Finally, as my despairing resource, on the day I left London I put into the hands of the onlv person who (I wTas sure) must know
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 79
Anne by sight, from having been in com- pany with us once or twice, an address to
in shire, at that time the residence
of my family. But, to this hour, I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest afflic- tion.— If she lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London ; perhaps even within a few feet of each other — a barrier no wider in a 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 1 should fear
80 CONFESSIONS, &C.
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 Magdalen ; 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.
CONFESSIONS
OF Atf
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
PART II.
So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted step- mother ! thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee : the time was come at last that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; no more should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and Ann, have, doubtless, since trodden in our footsteps, — inheritors of our calamities : other orphans than Ann have sighed : tears have been shed by other children : and thou, Oxford-street, hast since, e5
82 CONFESSIONS OF AN
doubtless, echoed to the groans of innu- merable 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 contem- plative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. And, although it is true that the calamities of my noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily consti- tution that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and dark- ened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were met with a forti- tude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathising affection — how deep and tender !
Thus, however, with whatsoever allevia- tions, years that were far asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 83
derived from a common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human desires, that oftentimes on moon- light 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 Marylebone to the fields and the woods ; and that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, te that is the road to the north, and therefore
to , and if I had the wings of a
dove, that way I would fly for comfort." Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blind- ness ; yet, even in that very northern re- gion 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 Orestes : and in this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a respite
84 CONFESSIONS OI AN
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 calami- ties, 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 Orestes (excepting only in his agitated con- science), participated no less in all his supports : my Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the curtains : but, watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra : for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra ! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection, wrouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not
* 4>iXov Imcv OsXyvr^oy Ittikov^ov yocov.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 85
much to stoop to humble offices of kind- ness, and to servile# ministrations of ten- derest 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 ie sleep no more!" — not even then, didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love more than Electra did of old. For she too, though she were a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the kingf of men, ye( wept sometimes, and hid her face J in her robe.
But these troubles are past: and thou
* r$v bovXevpa,. Eurip. Or est,
X llApa. flew' ha-co ttbttXcm. The scholar will know that throughout this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes ; one of the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader, it may be necessary to say, that the situation at the opening
86 CONFESSIONS OF AN
wilt read these records of a period so dolo- rous 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 op- pressed 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 northwards 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 mis- tress 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 prompt-
of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 87
ings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and may be justified if read in another meaning : — and, if I could allow myself to descend again to the impo- tent 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- — u And that way I would fly for comfort."
THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM.
It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgotten its date : but cardi- nal 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 thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my intro- duction 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
88 CONFESSIONS OF AN
a day : being suddenly seized with tooth- ache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of that practice ; jumped out of bed : plunged my head into a basin of cold water; and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day, I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance who recommended opium. Opium ! dread agent of unimaginable plea- sure and pain ! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further : how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest circum- stances connected with the place and the
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 89
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 ce- lestial pleasures ! — as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be ex- pected 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 half- pence, 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
90 CONFESSIONS OF AN
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 drug- gist : it may be so : but my faith is better : I believe him to have evanesced,* or evapor- ated. So unwillingly would I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be sup-
* Evanesced : — this way of going off the stage of life appears to have been well known in the 17th cen- tury, but at that time to have been considered a pecu- liar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686, a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by the by, did ample justice to his name), viz. Mr. Flat-man, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying; be- cause, says he,
Kings should disdain to die, and only disappear. They should abscond, that is, into the other world.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 91
posed 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 revul- sion ! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoca^- lypse 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 Qagpouiov vwevdes for all human woes : here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once disco- vered : happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket : portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle : and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail coach. But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing : and I can assure him, that nobody will laugh long
92 CONFESSIONS OF AN
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 V Allegro : even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes II Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery : and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader 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-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.
And, first, one wTord with respect to its bodily effects : for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors of me- dicine, writing ex cathedra, — I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce — Lies !
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 93
lies ! lies ! I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author : — " By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for
the list of bankrupts." In like
manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium : thus it has been repeat- edly 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-India opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight : and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must do what is particularly dis- agreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. die#. These weighty propositions are, all
* Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted : for in a pirated edition of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, which I once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife who was studying it for the benefit of her
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and singular, true : I cannot gainsay them : and truth ever was, and will be, commend- able. But in these three theorems, I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further dis- coveries, 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, meopericulo, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) that might certainly in- toxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it ; but why ? because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it con- health, the doctor was made to say — ' Be particularly careful never to take above five-and-twenty ounces of laudanum at once ;' the true reading being probably five-and-twenty drops, which are held equal to about one grain of crude opium.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 95
tains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of produc- ing 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, of chronic pleasure : the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self- possession : opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds,
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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 accom- pany 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-hearted- ness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the contempt of the by- stander. 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 natu- rally recover upon the removal of any deep- seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATEK. 97
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 advan- tageously affected the faculties — brightened and intensified the consciousness — and gave to the mind a feeling of being " pon- deribus librata suis :" and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor : for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety ; and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenseus), that men bocvtov; epQaivigouo'iv oiriveg ilalv — 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
F
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word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature : but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other remote effects of opium,) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect.
This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only menber — 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 unscien- tific* authors who have at all treated of
* Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c. who show sufficiently by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of"Ana- stasius.'' This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impos-
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 99
opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, riiake it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, can-
sible to consider him in that character from the griev- ous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects, at p. 215 — 17, of vol. i. — Upon consideration, it must appear such to the author himself: for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit, that an old gentleman " witli a snow-white beard,'' who eats " ample doses of opium/' and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely, or sends them into a mad-house. But, for my part, I see into this old gentleman and his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of u the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" which Anastasius carried about him ; and no way of obtain- ing it so safe and so feasible occurred, as that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the • by, are none of the strongest). This commentary tlirows a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story: for the old gentleman's speech, consi- dered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd : but, considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excel- lently.
f2
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didly acknowledge that I have met witk one person who bore evidence to its intoxi- cating power, such as staggered my own incredulity : for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him, by suggesting that he was con- stantly in a state of intoxication from opium. NowT the accusation, said I, is not prima facie, and of necessity, an absurd one : but the defence is. To my surprise, how- ever, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right : st I will main- tain/' said he, a 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 agreed
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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 objection : not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though u with no view to profit/' is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or re- spondent. 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 7000 drops a day; and, though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous 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 generi- cally to all modes of nervous excitement,
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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 pro- duced 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 ; assur- ing 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 wras always a day of unusually good spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to
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follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics ; and some such effect it may produce in the end : but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system : this first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, 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 stupify the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than argu- mentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London, during the period between 1804 and
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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 pro- nounced 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 occasion- ally to relaxations as well as other people : these, however, I allowed myself but seldom.
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 laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar" No : as I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, more than once in three weeks : this was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night ; my reason for which was this. In those days
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 105
Grassini sang at the Opera : and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of the Opera-house now, having never been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that time it was by much the most pleasant place of 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 con- fess, 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 Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache, at the tomb of Hector, 8cc. 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 f 5
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ones of an Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure, according to the temperament of him who hears it. And, by the by, with the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in Twelfth Night, I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature : it is a passage in the Religio Medici # of Sir T. Brown ; and, though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is to sup- pose that it is by the ear, they communi- cate 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
* I have*- not the book at this moment to consult : but I think the passage begins — "And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c.
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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 representa- tive feelings. But this is a subject foreign to my present purposes : it is sufficient to say, that a chorus, &c. of elaborate harmony, displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life — not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music : no longer painful to dwell upon : but the detail of its incidents removed, or blended in some hazy abstraction ; and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the music of the stage and the orches- tra, I had all around me, in the intervals of
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the performance, the music of the Italian- language talked by Italian women : for the gallery was usually crowded with Italians : and I listened with a pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women ; for the less you under- stand 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 speak- ing it at all, nor understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken.
These were my Opera pleasures: but another pleasure I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the Opera ; for, at that time, Tuesday and Saturday were the regular Opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but, I can assure the reader, not at all more so than Marinus in his life of Proclus, or many other biographers and auto-biographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night.
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What then was Saturday night to me more than any other night ? I had no labours that I rested from ; no wages to receive : what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader : what 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 sympa- thising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of ; more than I wished to remember : but the plea- sures of the poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contem- plate. Now Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest to the poor : in this point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a com- mon link of brotherhood : almost all Christ- endom rests from its labours. It is a rest
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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 pos- sible, 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 on a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent : but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. Ill
tranquillity. And, taken generally, I must say, that, in this point at least, the poor are far more philosophic than the rich — that they show a more ready and cheerful sub- mission to what they consider as irremedi- able 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 quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad : yet, if the con- trary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials in- discriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into a compliance with the master key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances : for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time. And sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-
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star, and seeking ambitiously for a north- west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and headlands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphinx's rid- dles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellects of hack- ney-coachmen. I could almosthave believed, at times, that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terra incognita, and doubt- ed, whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannized over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities moral or intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the con- science.
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,
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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 sen- sual 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 wTas 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 ten- dencies 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 were to force myself into society, and to keep my under- standing in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies, I should certainly have become hypochondriacally
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melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-establish- ed, 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 window7, in a room from which I could over- look the sea at a mile below me, and could
command a view of the great town of L ,
at about the same distance, that I have sat, from sun-set to sun-rise, motionless, and without wishing to move.
I shall be charged with mysticism, Beh- menism, quietism, &c. but that shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest men ; and let my readers see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as unmystical as I am. — I say, then, that it has often struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of L repre- sented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 115
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 burthens of the heart ; a sabbath of repose ; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave ; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm : a tran- quillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms ; infinite activities, infinite repose.
Oh ! 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," bring- est an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath ; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his
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youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and to the proud man, a brief oblivion for
Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unavenged ;
that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest perjury; and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges : — thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles — beyond the splen- dour of Babylon and Hekat&mpylos : and (i from the anarchy of dreaming sleep," call- est into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household counte- nances, cleansed from the <c dishonours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man ; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM.
Courteous, 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 accom-
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panied 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 know- ledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare to say, in the same condition with many thousands of excellent books in the Bod- leian, viz. diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms : or departed, however (which is all that I know of its fate), to that great reservoir of somewhere, to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea- pots, tea-kettles, &c. have departed (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.) which occa- sional resemblances in the present genera- tion of tea-cups, &c. remind me of having once possessed, but of whose departure and final fate I, in common with most gowns- men of either university, could give, I sus-
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pect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The persecution of the chapel-bell, sound- ing 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 any body : and I, and many others, who suffered much from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity : it rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day : and cruelly annoys, I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind : but as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous voice no longer (treacherous, I call it, for, by some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party) : its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit as favourable as the malice of the bell itself could wish: for I am 250 miles away from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I doing amongst
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. U9
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, &c. And how, and in what manner, do I live ? in short, what class or description of men do I belong to ? I am at this period, viz. in 1812, living in a cottage ; and with a single female servant %/ (honi soit qui mal y pense), 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 gentlemen. Partly on the ground I have assigned, perhaps; partly because, from my having no visible calling or busi- ness, 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, &c. esquire, though having, I fear, in the rigorous construction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that
-
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distinguished honour : yes, in popular esti- mation, I am XT Y. Zv 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 f< the rainy Sunday," u and the stately Pantheon/' and u 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, u 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, " par- ticular Madeira," which, in all probability, you, good reader, have taken, and design to take, for every term of eight years, during your natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by the opium I had taken for the eight years, between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 121
from Anastasius; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe counsellor ; but not in medicine. No : it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan ; as I did : for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent sugges- tion : and I was " particularly careful not to take above five-and-twenty ounces of lauda- num/' 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 dilletante eater of opium : eight years' practice even, with the single pre- caution 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 had suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event.
122 CONFESSIONS OF AN
This event, being no ways 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, and of. my struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering : or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to the
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 123
misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers, from my previous acknowledg- ments.) 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 edi- tion of my Opium Confessions revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and trem- ble : and a force d'ennuyer, by mere dint of g2
124 CONFESSIONS OF AN
pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any pos- tulate 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 re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically — these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but, shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudaemonist: I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others : I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness : and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some other
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 125
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 con- siderate 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 con- science 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 ner- vous 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
* A handsome news-room, of which I was very politely made free in passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, The Porch : whence T, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess them- selves followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a mistake.
126 CONFESSIONS OF AN
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, there- fore, let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of morality.
Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from this date, the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whe- ther his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. —You un- derstand now, reader, what I am : and you are by this time aware, that no old gentle- man, u with a snow-white beard/' will have any chance of persuading me to surrender '* the little golden receptacle of the perni- cious drug.'' No : I give notice to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that, what- ever be their pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they must not
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 127
hope for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by any savage proposition for a Lent or 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.
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, 1 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 enti- tled 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, how-
128 CONFESSIONS OF AN
ever, 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 jewellers), set as it were, and insulated, in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from 320 grains of opium (i. e. eight # thousand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or
* I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium vary- ing much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops : so that 8000 drops are about eighty times a tea-spoonful. The reader sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 129
one eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melan- choly 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 (yvxh^ov) ; 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 altogether, if it move at all.
Now, then, I \^as again happy : I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum per day : and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up the season of youth : my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before : I read Kant again ; and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me : and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I should have wel- comed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, g5
130 CONFESSIONS OF AN
— of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember, about this time, a little incident, which I mention, because, trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English moun- tains, I cannot conjecture : but possibly he wTas on his road to a sea-port 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, there- fore, 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 impass- able gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning, of her
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 131
master (and, doubtless, giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides, perhaps, a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down : but, when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by acci- dent, 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 os- tentatiously 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 trowsers of dingy white relieved upon the dark pa- nelling : he had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish ; though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity con- tended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more
132 CONFESSIONS OF AN
striking picture there could not be ima- gined, than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany, by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious looking Malay, was a little child from a neighbouring cottage who had crept in after him, and was now in the act of revert- ing 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 know- ledge of the Oriental tongues is not remark- ably extensive, being indeed confined to two words — the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learnt from Anastasius. And, as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's Mithridates, which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad ; consider- ing that, of such languages as I possessed,
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 133
Greek, in point of longitude, came geo- graphically 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 lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and then pur- sued his journey. On his departure, I pre- sented 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. Neverthe- less, I was struck with some little conster- nation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the whole, 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
134 CONFESSIONS OF AN
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 frighten- ing 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
* This, however, is not a necessary conclusion: the varieties of effect produced by opium on different con- stitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Har- riott's Struggles through Life, vol. iii. p. 391, third edition,) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout, he took forty drops, the next night sixty, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever : and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle; and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish, provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this subject, I will relate it : but it is far too good a story to be published gratis.
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 135
him one night of respite from the pains of wandering.
This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly from the pic- turesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened after- wards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him worse than himself, that ran " a-muck " # at me, and led me into a world of troubles. — But to quit this epi- sode, 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 plough-boy, who cannot be sup- posed to have ploughed very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened prin- ciples. But I, who have taken happiness,
* See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling.
136 CONFESSIONS OF AN
both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey — -who have conducted my experi- ments 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 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just, for the same reason, as a French surgeon inocu- lated himself lately with cancer — an Eng- lish one, twenty years ago, with plague — and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), — J (it will be admitted) must surely know what happiness is, if any body 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 wrapt up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of plea- sure. 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
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 137
valley, 18 miles from any town — no spa- cious valley, but about two miles long, by three quarters of a mile in average width ; the benefit of which provision is, that all the families resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the mountains be real mountains, between 3 and 4000 feet high ; and the cottage, a real cottage ; not (as a witty author has it) " a cottage with a double coach-house :" let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering 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 hap- piness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, and think it matter of congra- tulation that winter is going ; or, if coming,
138 CONFESSIONS OF AN
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 every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fire-side : candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without, *
And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heav'n and earth they would together mell ; Yet the least entrance find they none at all; Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall.
Castle of Indolence.
All these are items in the description of a winter evening, which must surely be familiar to every body born in a high lati- tude. And it is evident, that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to pro- duce them : they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or incle- ment, in some way or other. I am not "particular" as people say, whether it be
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 139
snow, or black frost, or wind so strong,
that (as Mr. says) u 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 on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals, and candles, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good of its kind ? No : a Canadian winter for my money : or a Rus- sian 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 degene- rated 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
140 CONFESSIONS OF AN
ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine- drinking, and are not susceptible of influ- ence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual : and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a helium internecinum 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 wyhite 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 seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambi- tiously styled, in my family, the drawing- room : but, being contrived " a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library; for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 141
richer than my neighbours. Of these, I have about five thousand, collected gradu- ally since my eighteenth 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 fur- niture, plain and modest, befitting the un- pretending 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 saucers on the tea-tray : and, if you know how to paint such a thing symboli- cally, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea- pot— eternal a parte ante, and a parte post ; for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four 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 Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's : — But no, dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty ; or that the witch- craft of angelic smiles lies within the empire
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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 objec- tion to see a picture of that, though I would rather see the original : you may paint it, if you choose; but I apprize you, that no u little" receptacle would, even in 1816, answrer my purpose, who wras at a distance from the u stately Pantheon," and all drug- gists (mortal or otherwise). No : you may as wrell paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum : 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 pic- ture ; 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
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 143
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 painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, — should have ascribed to him, romantically, an ele- gant person, or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion — pleasing both to the public and to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy : and, as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I can- not fail, in that way, to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition, as it stood about 1816-17 : up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man : and the elements of that happi- ness I have endeavoured to place before you, in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening. But now farewell — a long farewell to
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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:
as when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Shelley's 'Revolt of Islam.
Reader, who * have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points : .
1. For several reasons, I have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from memory. Some of them point to their own date ; some I have dated ; and some are undated. Whenever it could -answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 145
or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate ; but this can little affect their accuracy; as the im- pressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the whole burthen of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, arid am a helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance ; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis. 2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to con- sider who is listening to me $ and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this
146 CONFESSIONS OF AN
or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter ; and wishing to have some record of a time, the entire history of which no one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable of making, because I know not whether I can ever find time to do it again.
3. It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium, by leaving it off, or diminishing it ? To this I must answer briefly : it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily ; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced it a drop a
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 147
day, or by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop ? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce; and that way would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mis- take of those who know nothing of opium experimentally ; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that, after that point, further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, w^ho know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no ; there is nothing like low spirits ; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised : the pulse is improved : the health is better. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by in- tense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command. h2
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I shall now enter "■ in medias res" and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their acme, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.
My studies have now been long inter- rupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others ; because, reading is an accom- plishment of mine ; and, in the slang use of the word accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess : and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of
all : reads vilely : and Mrs. , who
is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions : Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and
ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 149
read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by any thing in books, it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us : at her request and M/s I now and then read
W 's poems to them. (W., by the by, is
the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses: often indeed he reads admirably.)
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one : and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I stilLread, as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are con- tinuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c. were all become insupportable to me ; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless
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and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elabo- rate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished .work of Spinosa's ; viz. De emendatioiie humani intdlectus. This was now lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect ; and, instead of surviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspira- tions, and a life of labour dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accu- mulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, — of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility, I had, for amusement, turned
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my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all) sink into utter lethargy ; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole, as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy ; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect ; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic
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with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book : and re- curring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, " Thou art the man ! " Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more : I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading : and much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth century? Was it possible ? I supposed thinking # had
* The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking : because, else this would be a very presump- tuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and combining thought: but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us, that he is obliged to quit even mathematics, for want of encouragement.
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been extinct in England. Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a century of thought, had failed even to advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori, from the understanding itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collec- tion of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.
Thus did one single work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years : — it roused me even to write, or, at least, to dictate, what M. wrote for me. It seemed to me, that some important truths had escaped even " the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo : and, as these were, for the most part, of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and h 5
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elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of econo- mists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, inca- pable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all future Systems of Political Economy. I hope it will not be found redolent of opium ; though, indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufficient opiate.
This exertion, however, was but a tem- porary flash ; as the sequel showed — for I designed to publish my work : arrangements were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additional compositor was retained, for some days, on this account. The work was even twice advertised : and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfilment of my intention. But I had a preface to write ; and a dedica- tion, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrange- ments were countermanded : the compositor dismissed : and my u Prolegomena" rested
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peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the utmost that I could accomplish ; and often that not until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my writing table. Without the aid of M/ all records of bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished : and my whole domestic1 'economy, whatever became of Political^TE^homy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. — I shall not after- wards allude to this part of the case : it is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and torment- ing as any other, from the sense of inca- pacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or
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procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensi- bilities, or aspirations : he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty ; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incu- bus and night-mare : he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man 'forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is com- pelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: — he curses the spells which chain him down from motion : — he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk ; bi^t he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and
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journal of what took place in my dreams; for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy, was from the re-awakening of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms : in some, that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others have a voluntary, or a semi-volun- tary power to dismiss or to summon them ; or, as a child once said to me when I ques- tioned him on this matter, u I can tell them to go, and they go ; but sometimes they come, when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions, as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. — In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me : at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast pro- cessions passed along in mournful pomp ;
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friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before GEdi- pus or Priam — before Tyre — before Mem- phis. And, at the same time, a corre- sponding change took place in my dreams ; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time :
1. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise be- tween the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point — that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and,
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by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sun- less abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had reas- cended. This I do not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despon- dency, cannot be approached by words.
3. The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity.
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This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time ; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in. that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.
4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived : I could not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past expe- rience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accom- panying feelings, I recognised them instan- taneously. I was once told by a near rela- tive of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very vero-e of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part.
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This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am con- vinced is true ; viz. that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind ; a thousand accidents may, and will interpose a veil between our present con- sciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind ; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil — and that they are waiting to be revealed, when the obscur- ing daylight shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memo- rably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall nowT cite a case illustrative of the first fact; and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their chro-
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nological order, or any other that may give them more effect as pictures to the reader.
I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a^ great reader of Livy, whom, I confess, that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians 5 and I had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the ma- jesty of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy — Consul Roma- mis; especially when the consul is "intro- duced in his military character. I mean to say, that the words king — sultan — regent, &c. or any other titles of those who embody in their ov\m persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I had * also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of English history, viz. the period of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survived those unquiet times. Both these parts of my
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lighter reading, having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the blank dark- ness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival, and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, " These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood ; and yet, after a certain day in August, 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field of battle ; and at Mars- ton Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship." — The ladies danced, and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. — This pageant would suddenly dissolve : and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-quaking sound of Consul Romanus : and immediately came " sweeping
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by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a company of centu- rions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Cole- ridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) repre- sented vast Gothic halls : on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and ma- chinery, w7heels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c. expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase ; and upon it, groping his way upwTards, was Piranesi himself : follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termi- nation, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below.
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Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher : on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld : and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours : and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. — With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture pro- ceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady, the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural : and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep :
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city — boldly say
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A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendour — without end ! Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold. With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright In avenues disposed ; there towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars — illumination of all gems ! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified : on them, and on the coves, And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded, — taking there Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c.
The sublime circumstance — Ci battle- ments that on their restless fronts bore stars," — might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it often occurred. — We hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams : how much bet- ter for such a purpose to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dra- matist Shadwell : and in ancient days,
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Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes — and silvery expanses of water: — these haunted me so much, that I feared (though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective; and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. — For two months I suffered greatly in my head — a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physi- cally, I mean,) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. — Till now I had never felt a headach even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on some- thing very dangerous.
The waters now changed their character, — from translucent lakes, shining like mir-
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rors, they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many months, promised an abiding torment ; and, in fact, it never left me until the wind- ing up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that wrhich I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear : the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens : faces, imploring, wrathful, despair- ing, surged upwards by thousands, by my- riads, by generations, by centuries : — my agitation was infinite, — my mind tossed — and surged with the ocean.
May, 1818. The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through
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his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep ; and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reve- rential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c. is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chi- nese seems to me an antediluvian man Renewed. Even Englishmen, though not i
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bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarm- ing with human life ; the great officina gen- tium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires also, into which the enor- mous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common w7ith the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can com- prehend the unimaginable horror which
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these dreams of Oriental imagery, and my- thological tortures, impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sun-lights, I brought toge- ther all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or In- dostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pago- das : and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms ; I was the idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wTrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me : Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris : I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mum- mies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles ; and i2
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laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy- things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight ab- straction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed, for a while, in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later, came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror, as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles ; especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him ; and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and
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found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, &c. All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c. soon became instinct with life : the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions : and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear every thing w^hen I am sleeping) ; and instantly I awoke : it was broad noon ; and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bed-side; come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transi- tion from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
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June, 1819. I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contempla- tion of death generally, is (ceteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; the clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles : secondly, the light