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Confessions of an English Opium Eater
by Thomas de Quincey
Picture of Thomas de Quincey
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 cardinal 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 introduction 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 a day: being suddenly seized with
toothache, 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 pleasure 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 circumstances
connected with the place and the 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 celestial pleasures! -- as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull
and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected 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 halfpence,
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 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
druggist: it may be so: but my faith is better: I believe him to have evanesced,{1} or
evaporated. 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 supposed 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 revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the
inner spirit! what an apocalypse 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 [pharmakon nepenthez] for all human woes: here
was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at
once discovered: 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 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 /Il Allegro/: even then,
he speaks and thinks as becomes /Il 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 word with respect to its bodily effects: for upon all that has been
hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travelers in Turkey (who may plead
their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors of medicine,
writing /ex cathedra/, -- I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce -- Lies! 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
repeatedly 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 I also 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 disagreeable
to any man of regular habits, viz. die.{2} These weighty propositions are, all and
singular, true: I cannot gainsay them: and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. 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 discoveries, 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, /meo periculo/, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could intoxicate.
As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) /that/ might certainly intoxicate
if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? because it contains so much proof
spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily,
is incapable of producing 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, 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 accompany 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-heartedness 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 naturally
recover upon the removal of any deep- seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and
quarrelled with the impulses of a heard 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 advantageously affected the faculties -- brightened and intensified
the consciousness -- and gave to the mind a feeling of being "ponderibus 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 Athenaeus), that men [eantonz
emfanixondin oitinez eidin]. -- 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
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 member -- 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 unscientific{3} authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of
those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident, from the horror
they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I
will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to
its intoxicating 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 constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the
accusation, said I, is not /prima facie/, and of necessity, an absurd one: but the defence
/is/. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in
the right: "I will maintain," said he, "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 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 "with no view to
profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as
opponent or respondent. 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 generically to all modes
of nervous excitement, connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in
my hearing, that they had been drunk on 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
produced 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; assuring 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 was always a day of unusually good spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to 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 novitiate, 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 argumentively) describe the way in
which I myself often passed an opium evening in London, during the period between
1804-1812. 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 pronounced 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 had a right occasionally
to relaxations as well as the other people: these, however, I allowed myself but seldom.
The late Duke of Norfolk 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 no 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
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 confess, 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, &c. 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 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 bye, 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/{4} 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 suppose
that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and, therefore, that they are purely
passive to its effects. But this is not so: it is by the re-action 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 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
representative 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 orchestra, I had all around me, in the
intervals of 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 understand 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 speaking 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. 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 sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had
lately seen too much of; more than I wished to remember: but the pleasures of the poor,
their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become
oppressive to contemplate.
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 common link of
brotherhood: almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest 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 possible, 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 tranquility. 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 submission to what they consider as irremediably 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 contrary were true, I
drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its
materials indiscriminately 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-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west
passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my
outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical
entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive,
baffle the audacity of porters, and confound the intellects of hackney- coachmen. I could
almost have believed, at times, that I must be the first discoverer of some of these
/terrae incognitae/, and doubted, whether they had yet been aid 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 conscience.
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, 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 sensual 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 was 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 tendencies 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 understanding in continual activity upon matters of
science. But for these remedies, I should certainly have become hypochondriacally
melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, 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 window, in a room from which I could overlook
the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town of Liverpool, at
about the same distance, that I have sate, from sun-set to sun-rise, motionless, and
without wishing to move.
I shall be charged with mysticism, behmenism, 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 Liverpool represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left
behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting 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 tranquility 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,"
bringest and 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
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 splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos: and "from the
anarchy of dreaming sleep," callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried
beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the "dishonours of
the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise,
oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!
-----
{1} /Evanesced:/ -- this way of going off the stage of life appears to have been well
known in the 17th century, but at the time to have been considered a peculiar 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 bye, 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; because, says he,
Kings should disdain to die, and only /disappear./
They should /abscond/, that is, into the other world.
{2} 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 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.
{3} 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
especially against the brilliant author of /"Anastasius."/ This gentleman, whose
wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him
in that character from the grievous misrepresenta-tion which he gives of its effects, at
pp. 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 "with 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
madhouse. But, for my part, I see into this old gentleman and his motives: the fact is, he
was enamoured of "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" which
Anastasius carried about him; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred,
as that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the bye, are none of the
strongest). This commentary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a
story: for the old gentleman's speech, considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly
absurd: but, considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently.
{4} 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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