Now pacified; on them, and on the coves
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded—taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.’”
Further confessions describe the characteristics of some of these opiatic visions in connection with tropical lands. “Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures—birds, beasts, reptiles; all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Hindostan. From kindred feelings, I brought Egypt and her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms. I was the idol—I was the priest—I was worshipped—I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia—Vishnu hated me—Seeva lay in wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thousands of years I lived, and was buried in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.”
Again he says: “The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case in my dreams,) for centuries. Sometimes I escaped, and found myself in Chinese houses. All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life; the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into ten thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. So often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way. I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke; it was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or let me see them dressed for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt translation from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of miscreated gigantic vermin, to the sight of infancy and innocent human creatures.”
And yet again: “Somewhere, but I knew not where—somehow, but I knew not how—by some beings, but I knew not by whom—a battle, a strife, an agony was travelling through all its stages—was evolving itself like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I had the power, and yet had not the power to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake—some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed, and clasped hands, with heart-breakings, partings, and then—everlasting farewells! And with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! And again and yet again, reverberated—everlasting farewells!
“And I awoke in struggles and cried aloud, ‘I will sleep no more!’”
These visions, and those of a like character, in which the Malay and the outcast girl appear and re-appear, are almost repeated again in a work of more recent years, the production of another mind and of a widely different character. Whoever has read Kingsley’s “Alton Locke,” cannot fail to have been struck with the vivid opium-like dreams which pass through the brain of the hero when struck down by fever. One could almost imagine that its author had himself suffered some of the fearful experiences which De Quincey narrates. In these the place once occupied by the two persons above named, are usurped by the cousin and Lillian; change the names, and apart from the intimate connection of the two with each other, one could almost believe himself reading a continuation of those dreams which an unfortunate accident prevented the English opium-eater giving to the world.
“I was wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya. On my right the line of snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky. Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me. As I looked down the abysses I could see far below, through the thin veils of blue mist that wandered in the glens, the silver spires of giant deodars, and huge rhododendrons, glowing like trees of flame. The longing of my life to behold that cradle of mankind was satisfied. My eyes revelled in vastness, as they swept over the broad flat jungle at the mountain foot, a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses, furrowed with the paths of the buffalo and rhinoceros, with barren sandy water courses, desolate pools, and here and there a single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by mountain floods; and far beyond the vast plains of Hindostan, enlaced with myriad silver rivers and canals, tanks and rice fields, cities with their mosques and minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the boundless horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow sandstone. I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose and tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres around my head; and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping jaws to clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing the pillars of the portico, bent them like reeds; an earthquake shook the hills—great sheets of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the valleys. A tornado swept through the temple halls, which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm: a crash—a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air—choked me—blinded me—burned me—