" And it was not only the Greek, we imagine, but the
eloquence, too, was included in this praise. In this, as in the subtlety
of the analytical power (so strangely mistaken for entire intellectual
supremacy in our day), De Quincey must have strongly resembled
Coleridge. Both were fine Grecians, charming discoursers, eminent
opium-takers, magnificent dreamers and seers; large in their promises,
and helpless in their failure of performance. De Quincey set his heart
upon going to college earlier than his guardians thought proper; and, on
his being disappointed in this matter, he ran away from his tutor's
house, and was lost for several months, first in Wales and afterward in
London. He was then sixteen. His whole life presents no more remarkable
evidence of his constant absorption in introspection than the fact that,
while tortured with hunger in the streets of London, for many weeks, and
sleeping (or rather lying awake with cold and hunger) on the floor of an
empty house, it never once occurred to him to earn money. As a classical
corrector of the press, and in other ways, he might no doubt have
obtained employment; but it was not till afterward asked why he did not,
that the idea ever entered his mind. How he starved, how he would have
died but for a glass of spiced wine in the middle of the night on some
steps in Soho Square, the Opium-eater told all the world above thirty
years since; and also of his entering college; of the love of wine
generated by the comfort it had yielded in his days of starvation; and
again, of the disorder of the functions of the stomach which naturally
followed, and the resort to opium as a refuge from the pain.
Pages:
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313