Notes.
De Quincey's "Dream-Fugue" is as luxuriant and extravagant a use of
metaphor as Macaulay's "Puritans" is of the use of antithesis
and the balanced structure. The whole thing is a metaphor,
and every part is a metaphor within a metaphor.
This is much more than mere fine writing. It is a metaphorical
representation of the incident he has previously described.
In that incident he was particular struck by the actions of the lady.
The young man turned his horse out of the path of the coach, but some
part of the coach struck one of the wheels of the gig, and as it did so,
the lady involuntarily started up, throwing up her arms, and at once
sank back as in a faint. De Quincey did not see her face, and hence he
speaks in this description of "averted signs?" The "woman bursting her
sepulchral bonds" probably refers to a tomb in Westminster Abbey which
represents a woman escaping from the door of the tomb, and Death,
a skeleton, is just behind her, but too late to catch her "arching foot"
as she flies upward---presumably as a spirit.
So every image corresponds to a reality, either in the facts or in
De Quincey's emotion at the sight of them.
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