De Quincey took laudanum for the toothache, and afterwards continued it at intervals for the pleasure it gave him, until finally, his stomach giving way, he was precipitated into the daily use of it.
Which of these men was the most to blame in getting into the habit, is not the object of these present remarks. I agree, however, with Coleridge, that De Quincey’s work, entitled, “The Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” tends rather to induce others into the habit, “through wantonness,” than to warn them from it. Coleridge said as much in a couple of private notes, which were printed, after his death, in his “Life” by Gillman. He likewise used the following significant language in one of the said notes:
“From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free, as far as acts of my free will and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work (‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’), I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had, even then, to deter, perhaps, not to forewarn.”
This raised the ire of De Quincey, who animadverted very freely upon Gillman’s “Life of Coleridge,” Coleridge and Gillman, in a paper entitled, “Coleridge and Opium Eating,” which is, in my opinion, far more creditable to the parties attacked than to its author. In this paper he also attempts to give some excuse for writing his “Confessions,” in the doing of which he makes a most startling blunder, by assuming that Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is the true history of our first parents; and then, on the strength of that, proving that laudanum was known and used in Paradise!
See a separate note at the end of this work, in which this unlooked for, though unmistakable, evidence and result of having too freely “eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner,” is fully discussed.
His excuse for writing his “Confessions” I give in his own words:
“It is in the faculty of mental vision; it is in the increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the practice of opium eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse; and in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for reporting the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked.”
The world had much better have remained in ignorance, if it was necessary for the “Confessions” to be written in their present spirit. But there was no necessity for calling the attention of the public to the “pleasures of opium,” thereby drawing into the vortex of the habit any who might rely too much upon his statement, that he had used opium periodically for eight years, without its having become necessary as “an article of daily diet.”
“Wanton” is the very word that describes his “Confessions” to my mind. He has thrown a glamour of enchantment over the subject of opium, irresistibly tempting to some minds.
Yet I can conceive, I think, the state of mind necessary to produce the “Confessions” as they are. De Quincey had been for a long time passing through the fiery ordeal of reducing the quantity of opium taken, preparatory to its final abandonment. The appetite must have been strong upon him. He felt free from the oppression of opium, and his spirits were good. He could only realize in his own mind the “pleasures of opium,” without its “pains;” he was under the thraldom of the appetite which perverted his judgment; that is, the appetite would not allow him to give the pains their due weight, or of course they would have kicked the pleasures “higher than a kite.” His mind, I say, under the influence of the appetite, dwelt upon the pleasures; he yearned towards them, and longed to indulge himself to the full. But he had given out that he was quitting opium; he dared not indecently ignore his own declarations, and the expectations of his friends, by unceremoniously suspending his efforts to quit, and plunging at once and unrestrained to his fullest depth into opium; he must prepare the way, he must break the fall; and this he did in the “Confessions.” That is, this is my theory of the case. I pretend to have no direct evidence of the fact; I simply derive my opinion from the work itself, and other of his works. He therein (that is, in the “Confessions”) involves as many as possible, and makes the habit “as common as any, the most vulgar thing to sense.” He gave a dangerous publicity to opium that it never had before. He gave a fascination to the drug outside of its own influence; to wit, the drug, when it gets hold of one, is fascinating enough, but he gave to the subject of opium allurements to those who had never yet tasted the article itself.