It is to be
feared that the description given in those extraordinary "Confessions"
has acted more strongly in tempting young people to seek the eight
years' pleasures he derived from laudanum than, that of his subsequent
torments in deterring them. There was no one to present to them the
consideration that the peculiar organization of De Quincey, and his
bitter sufferings, might well make a recourse to opium a different thing
to him than to any body else. The quality of his mind and the exhausted
state of his body enhanced to him the enjoyments which he called
"divine," whereas there is no doubt of the miserable pain by which men
of all constitutions have to expiate an habitual indulgence in opium.
Others than De Quincey may or may not procure the pleasures he
experienced; but it is certain that every one must expiate his offense
against the laws of the human frame. And let it be remembered that De
Quincey's excuse is as singular as his excess. Of the many who have
emulated his enjoyment, there can hardly have been one whose stomach had
been well-nigh destroyed by months of incessant, cruel hunger.
This event of his life, his resort to opium, absorbed all the rest.
There is little more to tell in the way of incident. His existence was
thenceforth a series of dreams, undergone in different places, now at
college, and now in a Westmoreland cottage, with a gentle, suffering
wife, by his side, striving to minister to a need which was beyond the
reach of nursing.
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