In his innermost sensibilities he would have shrunk from this vulgar notice as from pollution itself. It would be monstrous to conceive of him in such situations, except for the purpose of showing that he had very much in his outward habit that would readily attract such a notice. In the same light we are to regard some illustrations which J. Hill Burton has given in "The Book-Hunter" of similar features in his character, and which I take the liberty of introducing here; for, although they have appeared in "Blackwood," and more lately in a book-form, they are still unpublished to many of my readers.
Thus, we have him pictured to us as he appeared at a dinner, "whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the 'Golden Ass' of Apuleius. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some [pg 364] dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers,—some one suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them." De Quincey, led on by the current of his own thoughts,—though he was always too courteous to absorb the entire conversation,—talks on "till it is far into the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilization, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the specials, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours: for was it not the other night, that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch?"
"Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should get a penny and go home,—a proposal which he subjected to some philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him. How that wearied, worn little body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem: soft food disagreed with him; the hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense! If the wineglasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk,—and so the weary is at rest for a time.
"At early morn, a triumphant cry of 'Eureka!' calls me to his place of rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims his attention—my best-bound quarto—is spread upon a piece of bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony."
I cannot refrain from quoting from Mr. Burton one more example, illustrative of the fact that De Quincey, in money-matters, considered merely the immediate and pressing exigencies of the present. "He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission,—a process in which he often endured impediments,—he represents, with his usual silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the realm,—the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely [pg 365] to prove unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document which he is prepared to deposit with the lender,—a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety which the moat prudent person could experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable, possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of paper, and spread it out,—a fifty-pound bank-note! All sums of money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use; and, with more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the bank-note, might he inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been entirely a stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to him at the time when the exigency occurred to him, he had just succeeded in negotiating a loan of two-pence."
These pictures, though true to certain phases of De Quincey's outward life, are yet far from personally representing him, even to the eye. They satisfy curiosity, and that is about all. As to the real character of the man, they are negative and unessential; they represent, indeed, his utter carelessness as to all that, like dress, may at pleasure be put on or off, but "the human child incarnate" is not thus brought before us. For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then should we forget these inferior attributes; just as, looking upon the Memnonian statues, one forgets the horrid nicknames of "Shandy" and "Andy" which they have received from casual travellers, observing merely their grotesque features. Features of this latter sort "dislimn" and yield, as the writing on palimpsests, to the regal majesty of the divine countenance, which none can look upon and smile. Let me paint De Quincey's face as at this moment I seem to see it. It is wrinkled as with an Homeric antiquity; arid it is, and sallow, as parchment. Through a certain Bedouin-like conformation,—which, however, is idealized by the lofty, massive forehead, and by the prevailing subtilty of the general expression,—it seems fitted to desert solitudes; and in this respect it is truly Memnonian. In another respect, also, is it Memnonian,—that, whenever should rest upon its features the morning sunlight, we should surely await its responsive requiem or its trembling jubilate. By a sort of instinctive palmistry (applied, not to the hands, but to the face) we interpret symbols of ineffable sorrow and of ineffable peace. These, too, are Memnonian,—as is also that infinite distance which seems to interpose between its subtile meanings and the very possibility of interpretation. This air of remoteness, baffling the impertinent crowd not less effectually than the dust which has gathered for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises from that childlike simplicity and sweetness which lurk in gentle undulations of the features,—undulations as of happy wavelets set in motion ages since, and that cannot cease forever; but chiefly it is born of a dream-like, brooding eternity of speculation, which we can trace neither to the eye alone, nor to the mouth, but rather to the effect which both together produce in the countenance.
This is the face which for more than half a century opium veiled to mortal eyes, and which refuses to reveal itself save through hints the most fugitive and impalpable. Here are draperies and involutions of mystery from which mere curiosity stands aloof. This is the head which we have loved, and which in our eyes wears a triple wreath of glory: the laurel for his Apollo-like art, the lotos-leaf for his impassioned dreams, and roses for his most gentle and loving nature.
How much of that which glorified De Quincey was due to opium? Very little as to quality, but very much as to the [pg 366] degree and the peculiar manner in which original qualities and dispositions are developed, for here it is that the only field of influence open to abnormal agencies lies. Coleridge, as an opium-eater, is the only individual worthy of notice in the same connection. Had he also confessed, it is uncertain what new revelations might have been made. It is certain that opium exercised a very potent effect upon him; for it was generally after his dose that his remarkable intellectual displays occurred. These displays were mostly confined to his conversations, which were usually long-winded metaphysical epics, evolving a continued series of abstractions and analyses, and, for their movement, depending upon a sort of poetic construction. A pity it is that we must content ourselves with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere, opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is metaphysically predisposed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of any sort in his waistcoat-pocket, be they opium or whatever else, and we can assure you that that man is an aërobat,—that somehow, in one sense or another, he walks in the air above other men's heads. Whatever disturbs the healthful isolation of the nervous system is prosperous to metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances of men who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets, if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[9] If Tacitus had fared in any sort like his brother,—if there had been anything like an equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than probable that we should have lost the illustrious historian.
Coleridge was indolent from temperament, a disposition which was increased by opium. Hence De Quincey was of the opinion that it injured Coleridge's poetic faculties; which probably was the case, since in genuine poetry the mind is prominently realistic, its motions are all outward, and therefore excessive indolence must of necessity be fatal.
De Quincey's physical system, on the contrary, seemed preconformed to opium: it demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing else. No temptation so strong could have been presented to Coleridge. De Quincey really craved the drug. His stomach was deranged, and was still suffering from the sad results of his youthful wanderings in London. It seems almost as if fate had compelled the unfortunate course into which he finally drifted. The craving first appeared in the shape of a horrid gnawing at the stomach; afterwards this indefinite yearning gave place to a specific one, which was unmistakable in its demands. Daily, like the daughters of the horse-leech, it cried, "Give, give!" Toward the last, this craving became, in De Quincey's solemn [pg 367] belief, an animal incarnate, and the opium-eater reasoned after the following fashion:—It is not I that eat, it is not I that am responsible either for the fact of eating or the amount; am I the keeper of this horrid monster's conscience? He even carried the conceit so far as to consider a portion of each meal as especially devoted to this insane stomachic reveller, just as a voracious Greek or Roman would have attributed no small part of his outrageous appetite to the gods, as eating by proxy through the mouths of mortals. This is almost as bad as the case reported of Stonewall Jackson, who, it is said, religiously believed that whatever he ate was, by some mysterious physiological economy, conveyed into his left leg.