The Not of an English Opium-Eater

Notebook of an English
Opium-Eater

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Opium-Eater
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Title: The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater
Author: Thomas de Quincey
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6881] [Yes, we are more than

one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 6,
2003]
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NOTEBOOK OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER ***

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THE NOTE BOOK OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

CONTENTS.
THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS TRUE RELATIONS OF THE
BIBLE TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE LITERARY HISTORY OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES
THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY MILTON _vs._ SOUTHEY AND
LANDOR FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY A
PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER ON SUICIDE SUPERFICIAL
KNOWLEDGE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES DRYDEN'S
HEXASTICH POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON

THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS.
A SEQUEL TO 'MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE
ARTS.' [1]
[1854.]
It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine and gloomy a class,
that they cannot enter with genial sympathy into any gaiety whatever,
but, least of all, when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of
the extravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize is not to understand;

and the playfulness, which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid, or
absolutely without meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls have
withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there remains a large
majority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they
have derived from a former paper of mine, 'On Murder considered as
one of the Fine Arts;' at the same time proving the sincerity of their
praise by one hesitating expression of censure. Repeatedly they have
suggested to me, that perhaps the extravagance, though clearly
intentional, and forming one element in the general gaiety of the
conception, went too far. I am not myself of that opinion; and I beg to
remind these friendly censors, that it is amongst the direct purposes and
efforts of this bagatelle to graze the brink of horror, and of all that
would in actual realization be most repulsive. The very excess of the
extravagance, in fact, by suggesting to the reader continually the mere
aeriality of the entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of
disenchanting him from the horror which might else gather upon his
feelings. Let me remind such objectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's
proposal for turning to account the supernumerary infants of the three
kingdoms, which, in those days, both at Dublin and at London, were
provided for in foundling hospitals, by cooking and eating them. This
was an extravaganza, though really bolder and more coarsely practical
than mine, which did not provoke any reproaches even to a dignitary of
the supreme Irish church; its own monstrosity was its excuse; mere
extravagance was felt to license and accredit the little _jeu d'esprit_,
precisely as the blank impossibilities of Lilliput, of Laputa, of the
Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If, therefore, any man thinks it worth
his while to tilt against so mere a foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture
on the aesthetics of murder, I shelter myself for the moment under the
Telamonian shield of the Dean. But, in reality, my own little paper may
plead a privileged excuse for its extravagance, such as is altogether
wanting to the Dean's. Nobody can pretend, for a moment, on behalf of
the Dean, that there is any ordinary and natural tendency in human
thoughts, which could ever turn to infants as articles of diet; under any
conceivable circumstances, this would be felt as the most aggravated
form of cannibalism--cannibalism applying itself to the most
defenceless part of the species. But, on the other hand, the tendency to
a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and murders is universal. If