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.  He could amuse his predominant faculties by reading metaphysical philosophy and analytical reasoning on any subject, and by elaborating endless analyses and reasonings of his own, which he had not energy to embody.  Occasionally the torpor encroached even on his predominant faculties, and then he roused himself to overcome the habit; underwent fearful suffering in the weaning; began to enjoy the vital happiness of temperance and health, and then fell back again.  The influence upon the moral energies of his nature was, as might be supposed, fatal.  Such energy he once had, as his earlier efforts at endurance amply testify.  But as years passed on, he had not only become a more helpless victim to his prominent vice, but manifested an increasing insensibility to the most ordinary requisitions of honor and courtesy, to say nothing of gratitude and sincerity.  In his hungry days, in London, he would not beg nor borrow.  Five years later he wrote to Wordsworth, in admiration and sympathy; received an invitation to his Westmoreland Valley; went, more than once, within a few miles, and withdrew and returned to Oxford, unable to conquer his painful shyness; returned at last to live there, in the very cottage which had been Wordsworth’s; received for himself, his wife, and a growing family of children, an unintermitting series of friendly and neighborly offices; was necessarily admitted to much household confidence, and favored with substantial aid, which was certainly not given through any strong liking for his manners, conversation, or character.