To explain to, and inform the world of, “the marvellous power of opium in dealing with the shadowy and the dark,” did not require him to run riot in his imagination, in calling up and “doing” over again his opium debaucheries. I fail utterly to perceive the part “the shadowy and the dark” play in them. [That section of De Quincey’s work relating to his dreams is not here referred to; neither is there in it anything dangerous to the public that I recall.] But, lest we “crack the wind of the poor phrase, wronging it thus,” we desist; there is no use in driving a question to beggary, or in searching for reasons where they never were “as thick as blackberries.”
Poor De Quincey, rest to his shade!—he suffered enough for all purposes.
“No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion.
In the preceding chapter I have apparently gone out of my way to strike a blow at De Quincey’s “Confessions.” So I have, because it was a part of the purpose of this treatise so to do.
While I seek at every opportunity to commiserate the condition of the man De Quincey, his works are public property, of which every man has a right to express his own opinion. With these remarks, I now conclude this work; hoping, trusting, praying, that it may be the means of warning others, before they taste the venomous stuff, of the chasm before them; that to touch it is to tread upon “a slumbering volcano,” and that, once into the crater, they are lost for life. I warn them of a reptile more subtle and more charming than the serpent itself, under whose fascination it conceals a sting so deadly, that
“—no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all the simples that have virtue,”