as when some great painter dips
his pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
shelley’s revolt of islam.
reader, who have thus far accompanied me, i must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points:
1. for several reasons i have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. i give the notes disjointed as i find them, or have now drawn them up from memory. some of them point to their own date, some i have dated, and some are undated. whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, i have not scrupled to do so. sometimes i speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. much has been omitted. i could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the whole burthen of horrors which lies upon my brain. this feeling partly i plead in excuse, and partly that i am now in london, and am a helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance; and i am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis.
2. you will think perhaps that i am too confidential and communicative of my own private history. it may be so. but my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and if i stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, i shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. the fact is, i place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have some record of time, the entire history of which no one can know but myself, i do it as fully as i am able with the efforts i am now capable of making, because i know not whether i can ever find time to do it again.
3. it will occur to you often to ask, why did i not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? to this i must answer briefly: it might be supposed that i yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. the reader may be sure, therefore, that i made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. i add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. but could not have i reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop? a thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that way would certainly not have answered. but this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; i appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense suffering. yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. i answer, no; there is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised: the pulse is improved: the health is better. it is not there that the suffering lies. it has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. it is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as i shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command.
i shall now enter in medias res, and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their acmé, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.
* * * * *
my studies have now been long interrupted. i cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment’s endurance. yet i read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word “accomplishment” as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one i possess; and formerly, if i had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for i had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. players are the worst readers of all:—reads vilely; and mrs. ---, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions: milton she cannot read sufferably. people in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars. of late, if i have felt moved by anything it has been by the grand lamentations of samson agonistes, or the great harmonies of the satanic speeches in paradise regained, when read aloud by myself. a young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us: at her request and m.’s, i now and then read w-’s poems to them. (w., by-the-bye is the only poet i ever met who could read his own verses: often indeed he reads admirably.)
for nearly two years i believe that i read no book, but one; and i owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. the sublimer and more passionate poets i still read, as i have said, by snatches, and occasionally. but my proper vocation, as i well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; i shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when i grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because i had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which i had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of spinosa’s—viz., de emendatione humani intellectus. this was now lying locked up, as by frost, like any spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and instead of reviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labour dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which god had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a super-structure—of the grief and the ruin of the architect. in this state of imbecility i had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hy?na, could not, i suppose (so long as i lived at all) sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly. great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet i could not forget my knowledge; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. i had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy; and, at my desire, m. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. i saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady’s fan. at length, in 1819, a friend in edinburgh sent me down mr. ricardo’s book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, i said, before i had finished the first chapter, “thou art the man!” wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. yet i wondered once more: i wondered at myself that i could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading, and much more i wondered at the book. had this profound work been really written in england during the nineteenth century? was it possible? i supposed thinking {19} had been extinct in england. could it be that an englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of europe and a century of thought had failed even to advance by one hair’s breadth? all other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents. mr. ricardo had deduced à priori from the understanding itself laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis.
thus did one single work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which i had not known for years. it roused me even to write, or at least to dictate what m. wrote for me. it seemed to me that some important truths had escaped even “the inevitable eye” of mr. ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature that i could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with m. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as i was of all general exertion, i drew up my prolegomena to all future systems of political economy. i hope it will not be found redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most people the subject is a sufficient opiate.
this exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel showed; for i designed to publish my work. arrangements were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. an additional compositor was retained for some days on this account. the work was even twice advertised, and i was in a manner pledged to the fulfilment of my intention. but i had a preface to write, and a dedication, which i wished to make a splendid one, to mr. ricardo. i found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. the arrangements were countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my “prolegomena” rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
i have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in terms that apply more or less to every part of the four years during which i was under the circean spells of opium. but for misery and suffering, i might indeed be said to have existed in a dormant state. i seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words to any that i received was the utmost that i could accomplish, and often that not until the letter had lain weeks or even months on my writing-table. without the aid of m. all records of bills paid or to be paid must have perished, and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of political economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. i shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case. it is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day’s appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. the opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. he lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
i now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
the first notice i had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. i know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. in some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as a child once said to me when i questioned him on this matter, “i can tell them to go, and they go ---, but sometimes they come when i don’t tell them to come.” whereupon i told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a roman centurion over his soldiers.—in the middle of 1817, i think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me: at night, when i lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before ?dipus or priam, before tyre, before memphis. and at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. and the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time:
1. that as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point—that whatsoever i happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that i feared to exercise this faculty; for, as midas turned all things to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented i did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart.
2. for this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. i seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that i could ever reascend. nor did i, by waking, feel that i had reascended. this i do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words.
3. the sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. this, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; i sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night—nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.
4. the minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived: i could not be said to recollect them, for if i had been told of them when waking, i should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. but placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, i recognised them instantaneously. i was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. this, from some opium experiences of mine, i can believe; i have indeed seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which i am convinced is true; viz., that the dread book of account which the scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual. of this at least i feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.
having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, i shall now cite a case illustrative of the first fact, and shall then cite any others that i remember, either in their chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as pictures to the reader.
i had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great reader of livy, whom i confess that i prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the roman historians; and i had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the majesty of the roman people, the two words so often occurring in livy—consul romanus, especially when the consul is introduced in his military character. i mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, &c., or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. i had also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of english history, viz., the period of the parliamentary war, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet times. both these parts of my lighter reading, having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. often i used to see, after painting upon the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. and i heard it said, or i said to myself, “these are english ladies from the unhappy times of charles i. these are the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the same table, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in august 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field of battle; and at marston moor, at newbury, or at naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship.” the ladies danced, and looked as lovely as the court of george iv. yet i knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. this pageant would suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-quaking sound of consul romanus; and immediately came “sweeping by,” in gorgeous paludaments, paulus or marius, girt round by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the alalagmos of the roman legions.
many years ago, when i was looking over piranesi’s, antiquities of rome, mr. coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. some of them (i describe only from memory of mr. coleridge’s account) represented vast gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c., expressive of enormous power put forth and resistance overcome. creeping along the sides of the walls you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you perceive it come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into the depths below. whatever is to become of poor piranesi, you suppose at least that his labours must in some way terminate here. but raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. again elevate your eye, and a still more a?rial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and 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 my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural; and i beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye unless in the clouds. from a great modern poet i cite 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,
far sinking into splendour—without end!
fabric it seem’d of diamond, and of gold,
with alabaster domes, and silver spires,
and blazing terrace upon terrace, high
uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
in avenues disposed; there towers begirt
with battlements that on their restless fronts
bore stars—illumination of all gems!
by earthly nature had the effect been wrought
upon the dark materials of the storm
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. &c. &c.
the sublime circumstance, “battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars,” might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it often occurred. we hear it reported of dryden and of fuseli, in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium, which yet i do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist shadwell; and in ancient days homer is i think rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
to my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of water: these haunted me so much that i feared (though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective; and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. for two months i suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically i mean) that i used to say of it, as the last lord orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. till now i had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. however, i got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something very dangerous.
the waters now changed their character—from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. and now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the winding up of my case. hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting. but now that which i have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. perhaps some part of my london life might be answerable for this. be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens—faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged with the ocean.
