Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9781153644068
Paperback|9781153644068
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Excerpt: ... contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium excess, his own excess, we mean-the excess of twenty-five years-as a thing to be laid aside easily and for ever within seven days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his life. This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see that. But some will ask-Was Mr. Coleridge right in either view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion, (viz., that the opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn, ) where a child could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the steady habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world, as interested in Coleridge's usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether he is aware of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly, whether he is aware of the actual contributions to literature-how large they were-which Coleridge made in spite of opium. All who were intimate with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or by an extra dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew nothing experimentally of opium, once told us, that she 'could tell when Mr. Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance.' She was right; we know that...
| ISBN-13 | 9781153644068 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 1153644061 |
| Weight | 0.47 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.32 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 136 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2010-03-01 |
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