And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,
That comes to all.”——Milton.
The night side of opium-eating and smoking must be seen, as well as the bright and sunny day, before we lavish upon it encomiums, such as some of its votaries have indulged in. There may be a paradise to which the Theriaki can rise, but there is also an abyss into which he may fall. Lord MacCartney informs us that the Javanese, under an extraordinary dose of opium, become frantic as well as desperate. They acquire an artificial courage; and when suffering from misfortune and disappointment, not only stab the objects of their hate, but sally forth to attack in like manner every person they meet, till self-preservation renders it necessary to destroy them. As they run they shout Amok, amok, which means kill, kill! and hence the phrase running a muck. The practice of running amok is hardly known at Pinang or any of the three Straits settlements. Captain Low did not recollect more than two instances at that place, including Province Wellesley, within a period of seventeen years, and the last he had heard of, which took place on shore at Singapore, was many years ago. A man ran amok—or, as the Malays term it, meng amok. He had gambled deeply, it was said, and had killed one or more individuals of his family. He next dosed himself with opium and rushed through the streets with a drawn kris or dagger in his hand, and pursued by the police. Major Farquhar, the then resident, hearing the uproar, went out of his house, where the infuriated man, who was just about to pass it, dashed at him, and wounded him in the shoulder; but a sepoy, who was standing as sentry at the door, received the desperado on his bayonet at the same instant, and prevented a second blow.
Captain Beeckman was told of a Javanese who ran a muck in the streets of Batavia, and had killed several people, when he was met by a soldier, who ran him through with his pike. But such was the desperation of the infuriated man, that he pressed himself forward on the pike, until he got near enough to stab his adversary with a dagger, when both expired together.
But the worst Pandemonium which those who indulge in opium suffer, is that of the mind. Opium retains at all times its power of exciting the imagination, provided sufficient doses are taken; but when it has been continued so long as to bring disease upon the constitution, the pleasurable feelings wear away, and are succeeded by others of a very different kind. Instead of disposing the mind to be happy, it acts upon it like the spell of a demon, and calls up phantoms of horror and disgust. The fancy, still as powerful, changes its direction. Formerly it clothed all objects with the light of heaven—now it invests them with the attributes of hell. Goblins, spectres, and every kind of distempered vision haunt the mind, peopling it with dreary and revolting imagery. The sleep is no longer cheered with its former sights of happiness. Frightful dreams usurp their place, till at last the person becomes the victim of an almost perpetual misery.
The truth of all this is acknowledged by De Quincey, when writing of the pains of opium. Almost every circumstance becomes transformed into the source of terror. Visions of the past are still present in dreams, but not surrounded by a halo of pleasure any longer. The outcast Ann and the wandering Malay come back to torment him with their continued presence. All this is told in language so graphic, that it would be almost criminal to attempt its description in any other. The Dream of Piranesi is cited as a type of those he now suffered:——“Many years ago, as I was looking over Piranesi’s ‘Antiquities of Rome,’ Coleridge, then standing by, described to me a set of plates from that artist, called his ‘Dreams,’ and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of these represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood mighty engines and machinery—wheels, cables, catapults, &c.—expressive of enormous power put forth, or resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon this, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive them reaching an abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who should reach the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi! At least, you suppose that his labours must now in some way terminate. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Once again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is descried; and there again, is the delirious Piranesi, busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of the malady, the splendours of my dreams were, indeed, chiefly architectural, and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as never yet was beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet, I cite the part of a passage which describes as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what, in many of its circumstances, I saw frequently in sleep:——
“‘The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city—boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,