CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, AND SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS, BY THOMAS DE dUIN.CEY. BOSTON: TICK NOR, REED, AND FIELDS. MDCCCL. BOSTON: THURSTON, TORRY & COMPANY, PRINTERS, DEVONSHIRE STREET.I have often been asked, how I first came to be a regular opium-eater ; and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice, purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is, that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium, for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me ; but, so long as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences, by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensa- tions. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age, a most painful affection of the stomach, which 1 had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by the extre- * I disclaim any allusion to existing professors, of whom indeed I know only one. 4 CONFESSIONS OF AN mities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered : for the three following years it had revived at intervals ; and now, under unfavorable circumstan- ces, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful sufferings, which first produced this de- rangement of the stomach, were interesting in them- selves and in the circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them. My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small ; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease ; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without embarrassment — an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore ; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, dec, gave me a com- pass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. " That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, " that boy could harangue an Athenian mob, better than you or I could address an English ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 5 one.", He who honored me with this eulogy was a scholar, " and a ripe and good one," and of all my tutors, was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me, (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation,) I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance ; and finally, to that of a respectable scholar, at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by College, Oxford ; and was a sound, well built scholar, but (like most men, whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favorite master; and besides, he could not disguise from my hourly notice, the poverty and meagreness of his under- standing. It is a bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only ; for the two boys, who jointly with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the head-master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our " Archididas- calus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lesson before we went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses ; whilst we never condescended to open our books, until t) CONFESSIONS OF AN the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig, or some such impor- tant matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent, for their future prospects at the university, on the recommendation of the head-master ; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I m de earnest representa- tions on the subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable, and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance ; two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; and this fourth with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposi- tion to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian : unconditional submission was what he de- manded ; and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth-day was fast approach- ing ; after which day I had sworn within myself, that I would no longer be numbered amongst school-boys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would " lend " me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came ; and I was beginning to despond, when, at length, a servant put into my hands a double letter, with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging ; ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 7 the fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen ; she inclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted, that if I should never repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now then, I was prepared for my scheme : ten guineas, added to about two that I had remaining from my pocket money, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length of time ; and at that happy age, if no definite boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure makes it virtually infinite. It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and what cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one,) that we never do any thing consciously for the last time, (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply, when I came to leave , a place which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. On the evening before I left for ever, I grieved when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with the evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looking earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I was right ; I never did see him again, nor never shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled good naturedly, returned my salutation, (or rather, my valediction,) and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him intellectually ; but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me maNY INDULGENCES

CONFESSIONS 



AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, 



BEING AN 



EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A SCHOLAR. 

I here present you, courteous reader, with 
the record of a remarkable period of my life ; 
according to my application of it, I trust that it 
will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, 
in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. 
In that hope it is, that I have drawn it up j and 
that must be my apology for breaking through 
that delicate and honorable reserve, which, for 
the most part, restrains us from the public expos- 
ure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, 
indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, 
than the spectacle of a human being obtruding 
on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tear- 
ing away that " decent drapery," which time, or 
indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn 
over them : accordingly, the greater part of our 
confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judi- 
cial confessions) proceed from demireps, 

adventurers, or swindlers ; and for any such acts of 
gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can 
be supposed in sympathy with the decent and 
self-respecting part of society, we must look to 
French literature, or to that part of the German, 
which is tainted with the spurious and defective 
sensibility of the French. All this I feel so 
forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach 
of this tendency, that I have for many months 
hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or 
any part of my narrative, to come before the 
public eye, until after my death (when, for many 
reasons, the whole will be published) : and it is 
not without an anxious review of the reasons, 
for and against this step, that I have, at last, 
concluded on taking it. 

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, 
from public notice : they court privacy and sol- 
itude ; and, even in their choice of a grave, will 
sometimes sequester themselves from the general 
population of the church-yard, as if declining to 
claim fellowship with the great family of man, 
and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. 
Wordsworth) 

Humbly to express 

A penitential loneliness. 

It is well, upon the whole, and for- the interest 
of us all, that it should be so ; nor would I will- 
ingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. IX 

such salutary feelings ; nor in act or word do any 
thing to weaken them. But, on the one hand, 
as my self-accusation does not amount to a con- 
fession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible 
that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, 
from the record of an experience purchased at so 
heavy a price, might compensate, by a vast over- 
balance, for any violence done to the feelings 
I have noticed, and justify a breach of the gen- 
eral rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of ne- 
cessity, imply guilt. They approach, or recede 
from, the shades of that dark alliance, in propor- 
tion to the probable motives and prospects of the 
offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of 
the offence ; in proportion as the temptations to 
it were potent from the first, and the resistance 
to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. 
For my own part, without breach of truth or 
modesty, I may affirm, that my life has been, on 
the whole, the life of a philosopher : from my 
birth I was made an intellectual creature ; and 
intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and 
pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy 
days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, 
and if I am bound to confess that I have in- 
dulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded * of 

* " Not yet recorded,'''' I say; for there is one celebrated 
man of the present day, who, if all be true which is reported 
of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity. 

any other man, it is no less true, that 1 have 
struggled against this fascinating enthralment 
with a religious zeal, and have at length accom- 
plished what I never yet heard attributed to any 
other man — have untwisted, almost to its final 
links, the accursed chain which fettered me. 
Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off 
in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self- 
indulgence. Not to insist, that, in my case, the 
self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indul- 
gence open to doubts of casuistry, according as 
that name shall be extended to acts aiming at 
the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted 
to such as aim at the excitement of positive 
pleasure. 

Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge ; and, 
if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve 
on the present act of confession, in consideration 
of the service which I may thereby render to the 
whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they ? 
Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous 
class indeed. Of this I became convinced some 
years ago, by computing at that time, the num- 
ber of those in one small class of English society 
(the class of men distinguished for talent, or of 
eminent station) who were known to me, directly 
or indirectly, as opium-eaters ; such, for instance, 

as the eloquent and benevolent , the late 

dean of ; Lord ; Mr. , the philo- 



FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. XI 

sopher ; a late under-secretary of state (who 
described to me the sensation which first drove 
him to the use of opium, in the very same words 

as the dean of , viz., " that he felt as though 

rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his 

stomach ; ") Mr. ; and many others, hardly 

less known, whom it would be tedious to men- 
tion. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, 
could furnish so many scores of cases, (and that 
within the knowledge of one single inquirer,) it 
was a natural inference, that the entire popula- 
tion of England would furnish a proportionable 
number. The soundness of this inference, how- 
ever, I doubted, until some facts became known 
to me, which satisfied me, that it was not incor- 
rect. I will mention two : 1. Three respectable 
London druggists, in widely remote quarters of 
London, from whom I happened lately to be 
purchasing small quantities of opium, assured 
me, that the number of amateur opium-eaters 
(as I may term them) was, at this time, im- 
mense ; and that the difficulty of distinguish- 
ing these persons, to whom habit had rendered 
opium necessary, from such as were purchasing 
it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily 
trouble and disputes. This evidence respected 
London only. But, 2. (which will possibly sur- 
prise the reader more,) some years ago, on pass- 
ing through Manchester, I was informed by 



Xll FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

several cotton manufacturers, that their work 
people were rapidly getting into the practice of 
opium-eating ; so *nuch so, that on a Saturday 
afternoon the counters of the druggists were 
strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, 
in preparation for the known demand of the 
evening. The immediate occasion of this prac- 
tice was the lowness of wages, which, at that 
time would not allow them to indulge in ale or 
spirits ; and wages rising, it may be thought that 
this practice would cease : but, as I do not readily 
believe that any man, having once tasted the 
divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend 
to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I 
take it for granted, 

That those eat now, who never ate before ; 
And those who always ate, now eat the more. 

Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are 
admitted, even by medical writers who are its 
greatest enemies : thus, for instance, Awsiter, 
apothecary to Greenwich hospital, in his " Essay 
on the Effects of Opium/' (published in the 
year 1763,) when attempting to explain why 
Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the 
properties, counter-agents, &c, of this drug, ex- 
presses himself in the following mysterious terms, 
(ipovovTia cwsToioi :| " perhaps he thought the subject 
of too delicate a nature to be made common ; 
and as many people might then indiscriminately 
use it, it would take from that necessary fear and 
caution, which should prevent their experiencing 
the extensive power of this drug : for there are 
many properties in it, if universally known, that 
would habituate the use, and make it more in 
request with us than the Turks themselves ; the 
result of which knowledge," he adds, " must 
prove a general misfortune." In the necessity 
of this conclusion I do not altogether concur ; 
but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak 
at the close of my Confessions, where I shall 
present the reader with the moral of my nar- 
rative. 



PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS. 



These preliminary confessions, or introductory nar- 
rative of the youthful adventures which laid the founda- 
tion of the writer's habit of opium eating in after life, 
it has been judged proper to premise, for three several 
reasons : 

1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satis- 
factory answer, which else would painfully obtrude 
itself in the course of the Opium Confessions — " How 
came any reasonable being to subject himself to such 
a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so 
servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a 
seven-fold chain ? " a question which, if not some- 
where plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the 
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against 
an act of wanton folly, to interfere with that degree 
of sympathy which is necessary in any case to an 
author's purposes. 

2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremen- 
dous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of 
the opium-eater. 

3 As creating some previous interest of a personal 
sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter 
1 



A CONFESSIONS OF AN 

of the confessions, which cannot fail to render the 
confessions themselves more interesting. If a man 
" whose talk is of oxen," should become an opium- 
eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to 
dream at all) he will dream about oxen : whereas, 
in the case before him, the reader will find that the 
opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher ; and 
accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of his dreams 
(waking or sleeping, day dreams or night dreams) 
is suitable to one who in that character, 
Humani nihil a se alienum putat. 

For amongst the conditions which he deems indis- 
pensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of 
philosopher, is not merely the possession of a superb 
intellect in its analytic functions (in which part of the 
pretension, however, England can for some generations 
show but few claimants ; at least, he is not aware of 
any known candidate for this honor who can be styled 
emphatically a subtle thinker, with the exception of 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in a narrower depart- 
ment of thought, with the recent illustrious exception * 

* A third exception might perhaps have been added : and my 
reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only 
in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to, expressly 
addressed himself to philosophical themes; his riper powers have 
been dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligil.de grounds, 
under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to 
criticism and the fine arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt 
whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a 
subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over 
philosophical subjects, that he has obviously not had the advantage 
of a regular scholastic education: he has not read Plato in his youth, 
(which most likely was only his misfortune,) but neither has he read 
Kant in his manhood, (which is his fault.)  

of David Ricardo) — but also on such a constitution 
of the moral faculties, as shall give him an inner eye 
and power of intuition for the vision and mysteries of 
human nature : that constitution of faculties, in short, 
which (amongst all the generations of men that from 
the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it 
were, upon this planet) our English poets 

have possessed in the highest degree — 

and Scottish * professors 
in the lowest.