[1833.]
Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths
of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!
Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here
was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed
for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and
carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an
Opium Eater."
He was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.
He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops
of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which
contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous
tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and
trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.
He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind
struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of
the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the
room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial
interrogatory.
He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am
indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn
breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical.
"I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under
the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke,
to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.
"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice:
I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured
that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm
friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your
pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."
"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves;
"but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and
annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet
wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all
that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort
to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but
it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."
I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that
the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any
alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind?
Is it not rather an aggravation?"
"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I
know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its
character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has
broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed
me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real
ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has
afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another;
very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh
while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"
"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid
images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the
effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents
which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride.
At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more
frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your
own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give
place to a dozen others.
'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"
He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of
features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy;
for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without
transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange
glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye
alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features
were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."
"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the
use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the
substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has
now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth,
honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all
shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own
thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full
gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to
that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to
which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully
solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I
make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the
light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard
thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of
misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and
under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of
misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have
often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable
to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I
realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct
existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.
"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter
disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I
recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning
it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation
to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I
can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with
your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any
degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its
poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of
Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which
unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some
people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find
patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he
chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject,
he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own
part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that
"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;
And, till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.'"
He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen
Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in
the affirmative.
"Do you not think her a fine woman?"
"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very
beautiful."
"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same
before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the
mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and
see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act
over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just
Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish
her no worse punishment.
"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally,
faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the
meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which
nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile,
trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of
moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.
"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a
thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of
some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was,
you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was
speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from
herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which
alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines,
you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its
own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living
something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--[See Memoirs
of Maria Eleonora Schoning.]
"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident
divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity;
a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration,
one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful
without, but dark and unseemly within.
"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life,
when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart.
Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the
common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their
direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent
imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious
dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and
purity and constancy.
"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty,
when compared with mere external loveliness. The mind, invisible and
complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the
senses. It is comprehended only by its similitude in others. It
reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty
of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen
and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material
loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon
the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before
us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual
loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful
varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the
beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like
a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or
immaterial beauty.
"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was
gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my
attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes
feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of
her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance,
or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of
coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to
study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful
repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget
everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me.
Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental
deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had
no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of
her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others,
gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar
character.
"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my
boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the
revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and
sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had
magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from
her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension
of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and
frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception
is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We
suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of
our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it
away from us.
"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after
objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them,
and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge
of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified
and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination
fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the
outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of
reality. Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had
been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did
not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart
and intellect. But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from
her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm
previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so,
of studying her true character. The world had not yet taught me its
ungenerous lesson. I had not yet learned to apply the rack of
philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold
process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of
all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty. And it
may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and
from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our
interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself,
by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart,
without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not
in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious
aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable
doubts of the source from which it is derived.
"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and
over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the
perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all
at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or
interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery
glared full upon me.
"I saw her wedded to another. It was a beautiful morning; and never had
the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered
together at the village church. I witnessed the imposing ceremony which
united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored,
because more wealthy, rival. As the grayhaired man pronounced the
inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not
lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after
hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the
words died away in my throat. And the ceremony went on, and the death-
like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the
priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful
day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that
if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be
joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well
assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's
word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.' As the solemn tones of
the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a
supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear. But there was no sound.
For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly
to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had
been in the glance I had given her. And I could see the folds of her
rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away
her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.
"I returned to my lodgings. I heeded not the gay smiles and free
merriment of those around me. I hurried along like one who wanders
abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the
morning as things of reality. But, when I spurred my horse aside, as
the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible
truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil
thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It
was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling
throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time
a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the
natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.
"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw
myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation
and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and
unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection
which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the
presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand
sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and
variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of
the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness. Then, too,
came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a
knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a
disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and
jestings of others. Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of
outraged feeling. 'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing
from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong
step; 'never!' And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce
light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the
Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of
suicide started before me. I felt that I might escape the ordeal of
public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood
defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose
every breath was torment.
"My resolution was fixed. 'I will never see another morrow!' I said,
sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me. Indeed, I
seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements
for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had
been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at
the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings;
and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more
enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.
"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk
lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is
wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay
volleys of convivial fellowship,
'With the difficult utterance of one
Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'
"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I
had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered
an everlasting farewell!
"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time
upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself
that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I
was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me.
The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the
blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the
valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf
stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as
a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched
away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness
and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate
the pangs of the last, long farewell.
"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate
Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and
affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own
fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his
love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing
flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into
heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell
of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the
onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and
bears evidence of its kindred affinities. Nor was the dream of the
ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.' The stars of heaven, the beauty and the
glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and
malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and
benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do
so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human
heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm
solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an
overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and
monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the
taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by
man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and
quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the
fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks
out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the
Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses
of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.
"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle
ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and
a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair;
and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm
of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an
overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up
and lost. I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing
for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious
elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human
happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of
the grave!
"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun. It touched and sat upon
the hill-top like a great circle of fire. I had never before fully
comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at
his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last
glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset
heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out
together. For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper
emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful
countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect
love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the
most glorious of them all. I felt, even to agony, the truth of these
exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:
'Blest power of sunshine, genial day!
What joy, what life is in thy ray!
To feel thee is such real bliss,
That, had the world no joy but this,
To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet,
It were a world too exquisite
For man to leave it for the gloom,
The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'
"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from
my sight. It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend. To
others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome
he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling
sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost
wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a
single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.
"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily
before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had
prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to
drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old
village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said
mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed
me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently
quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The
blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again
I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I,
'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth
and the deed was done!
"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from
my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful
termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief
moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to
me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing
witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full
and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--
'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,
And gather, in that drop of time,
A life of pain, an age of crime.'
"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death,
as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought
of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose
dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then
my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I
was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with
a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not;
for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness
went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain,
nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.
"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an
unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental
affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness
and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and
matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new
existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim
consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however,
the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of
the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my
heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger
influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the
druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was
meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though
not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to
me. It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I
was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace
dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I
had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also
convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which
philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion
of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life,
even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of
opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon'
found.
"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly
sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my
health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a
resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength
enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly
drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been
lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back
upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings
were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness
tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total
disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the
thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular
pain.--[ Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.]
"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many
respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use
of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of
sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have
been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous
to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that
opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping
operations, than in those of its wakefulness.
"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous
debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled
and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as
'a horror of thick darkness.' There was nothing distinct or certain in
my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet
unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable
footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling
like a great cloud from heaven.
"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these
dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while
suffering under the plague of darkness. I never read the awful
description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with
those of my own experience.
"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed
intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable
hell,
"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for
a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'
"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but
noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions
appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.
"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among
the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;
"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not
be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild
beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things
made them to swoon for fear.'--[Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.]
"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so
strongly, I have myself experienced. Indeed, it has been the principal
cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium
eating. It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish
faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the
mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will
became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in
other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images,
and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often,
after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of
darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for
years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it
were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and
betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets. And in the same way,
some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and
romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each
preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own
individuality and peculiar characteristics.--[Vide Emanuel Count
Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh
Phrenological Journal.]
"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they
came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at
length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality,
which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very
depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason
and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.
"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude
upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that
he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may
mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory;
there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once
any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated
itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole
and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind
about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another
species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the
gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of
condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling,
may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.
"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the
easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt,
all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to
look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of
seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and
a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay
for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of
suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed
them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a
corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse
of my friend.
[William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given
a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in
his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has
made a similar statement.]
"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and
the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but
not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and
then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had
preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating.
I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in
full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible.
It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned
full towards me,--calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of
death:
'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers
Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'
and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still
familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the
strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in
the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look
up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my
mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was
afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in
question, informing me of his recovery of health.
"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for
declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations,
most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same
illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some
passages of my early history which you have already heard.
"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage. Time, and the continued
action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and
awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings
towards her. Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early
passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied
to indifference. Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions,
young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed
a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections
of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in
upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the
uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my
bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject
to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish.
Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of
one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was
dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet
above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was
manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and
a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish
existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of
the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on
rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by,
a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy
Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim
I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more
distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.
"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind
had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when
these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of
their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their
existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding
sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting
the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.
[One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral
illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some
of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a
particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression
made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a
similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made
his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres
which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and
frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images
mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard
Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this
nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--
"I only knew thee as thou wert,
A being not of earth!
"I marvelled much they could not see
Thou comest from above
And often to myself I said,
'How can they thus approach the dead?'
"But though all these, with fondness warm,
Said welcome o'er and o'er,
Still that expressive shade or form
Was silent, as before!
And yet its stillness never brought
To them one hesitating thought."]
"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted
by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to
the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it,
but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my
physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily
recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to
the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining
myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one
third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most
essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental
and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs
of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction,
but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost
unendurable agony occasioned thereby.
"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a
diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of
its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and
suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness
of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a
practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed.
Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful
emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence,
passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of
active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool
of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are
troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths
of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the
mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of
sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of
feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither
hope nor fear."
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