"Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as
to die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of my
diminishing opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one
mode of existence into another. . . . One memorial of my former
condition still remains; my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the
dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided.
My dreams are still tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to
our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still, in the
tremendous line of Milton,
'With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.'"
It is sad to learn that after all his struggles he never really
succeeded in freeing himself from the spell of opium. We learn that
"after having at one time abstained wholly for sixty-one days, he was
compelled to return to its moderate use, as life was found to be
insupportable; and there is no record of any further attempt at total
abstinence." His indulgence was, however, very limited in his later
years. Weakly as he was, and with a stomach which could digest but the
smallest quantity of food, he lived in tolerable health until he was
seventy-four years old. His wife died over twenty years before he passed
away; and his daughters made a home for him during that time, and cared
for him, as his wife had done. He could never be trusted with any
practical matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling money,
and would give away bank-notes to get them out of his way. He was very
generous when young, and gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one
time, insisting upon making it five hundred, which was not allowed. He
never had a friend who was not welcome to his purse. While he had no
care whatever about his dress, and would frequently enter the
drawing-room, even when company was there, with but one stocking on, or
minus some other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was very dainty and
neat about many things. The greasy, crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes
annoyed him. He did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting
with them, and he washed and polished shillings up to their pristine
brightness before giving them away. He used to complain of Wordsworth,
because of a lack of neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at
seeing the old poet cut the leaves of a new book with a knife taken
from the supper-table, where buttered toast had been eaten. Coleridge
was also distressed over Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that
one would as soon trust a bear in a tulip-garden as Wordsworth in a
library.
De Quincey was a very charming companion and a most brilliant talker. He
says of himself and Lamb, that they both had a childish love of
nonsense,--headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat
shy, he had a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which
made his society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted
with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the
simplest. His whole manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred
courtesy, though he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary
conventionalities of life. He could never be depended upon for keeping
any sort of engagement, and if a friend wanted him to dinner, he must go
for him with his carriage, and take him away. His manner to his
daughters was the perfection of chivalrous respect, as well as
affection.
What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium
eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was
thought to be one who might do anything,--all things. What he really did
do, of permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of
his friends.
Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this
weakness seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the same
unavailing sorrow with which we weep over the graves of other men of
great gifts, but some fatal defect of will, which allows them to be
bound and held captive all their lives in the chains of some darling
vice. Mingled with the rosemary of our remembrance for such, must be the
fennel and the rue.
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