Part 8
“‘For this grieve not! Thou knowest what thanks The Weary-souled and Meek owe To Death!’ I awoke, and heard four planks Fall down with a saddening echo. _I heard four planks_ _Fall down with a hollow echo._”
This was the epithalamium of James Clarence Mangan sung by himself.
THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
I bought my copy new for fourpence-halfpenny, in Holywell Street. It was published by George Routledge and Sons, of the Broadway, London. The little volume is made up of a “Preface,” by Thomas de Quincey; “Confessions of an English Opium-eater;” and “Notes from the Pocket-book of a late Opium-eater;” including “Walking Stewart,” “On the Knocking at the Gates in _Macbeth_,” and “On Suicide.” When it last left my hands it boasted a paper cover, on which appeared the head of the illustrious Laker. At my elbow now it lies, divested of its shield; and I sit face to face with the title-page, as though my author had taken off his hat and overcoat, and I were asking him which he preferred, clear or thick soup, while the servant stood behind filling his glass with Amontillado. How that cover came to be removed I do not know. The last borrower was of the less destructive sex, and I am at a great loss to account for the injury.
I object to the presence of “Walking Stewart,” and “On Suicide,” otherwise I count my copy perfect. With the exception of _Robinson Crusoe_ and Poe’s _Tales_ I have read nothing so often as the _Opium-eater_. Only twice in my life up to five-and-twenty years of age did I sit up all night to read a book: once when about midnight I came into possession of _Enoch Arden_, and a second time when, at the same witching hour I drew a red cloth-bound edition of the _Opium-eater_ out of my pocket, in my lonely, dreary bedroom, five hundred miles from where I am now writing. The household were all asleep, and I by no means strong of nerve. The room was large, the dwelling ghostly. I sat in an embrasure of one of the windows, with a little table supporting the candles on one side, and on the other a small movable bookcase. Thus I was in a kind of dock, only open on one side, that fronting the room. It was in the beginning of autumn, and a low, warm wind blew the complaining rain against the pane on a level with my ear. At that time I had not seen London, and I remember being overpowered and broken before the spectacle of that sensitive and imaginative boy in the text, hungry and forlorn, in the unsympathetic mass of innumerable houses, every door of which was shut against him.
As I read on and the hour grew late, the succession of splendours and terrors wrought on my imagination, until I felt cold and exhausted, and had scarcely strength to sit upright in my chair. My hand trembled, and my mind became tremulously apprehensive of something vague and awful; I could not tell what. Sounds of the night which I had heard a thousand times before, which were as familiar to me as the bell of my parish church, now assumed dire, uncertain imports. The rattling of the sash was not the work of the wind, not the work of ghostly hands, but worse still, of human hands belonging to men in some more dire extremity than the approach of death. The beating of the rain against the glass was made to cover voices trying to tell me secrets I could not hear and live, and which yet I would have given my life to know.
I cannot tell why I was so exhilarated by terror. The _Confessions_ alone are not calculated to produce inexplicable disturbance of the mind. It may be I had eaten little or nothing that day; it may be I had steeped myself too deeply in nicotine. All I know for certain is that I was in such a state of abject panic I had not courage to cross the room to my bed. It was in the dreary, pitiless, raw hour before the dawn I finished the book. Then I found I durst not rise. I put down the book and looked at the candles. They would last till daylight.
I would have given all the world to lie on that bed over there, with my back secure against it, warmed by it, comforted by it. But that open space was more terrible to me than if it were filled with flame. I should have been much more at my ease in the dark, yet I could not bring myself to blow out the lights; not because I dreaded the darkness, but because I shrank from encountering the possibilities of that awful moment of twilight between the full light of the candles and the blank gloom.
When I thought of blowing out the lights and imagined the dread of catching a glimpse of some spectacle of supreme horror, I imprudently gave my imagination rein, and set myself to find out what would terrify me most. All at once, and before I had made more than the inquiry of my mind, I saw in fancy between me and the bed, a thing of unapproachable terror; I had not been recently reading _Christabel_, and yet it must have been remotely from that poem I conjured the spectre which so awed me. I placed out in the open of the room on the floor, between me and the door, and close to a straight line drawn between me and the bed, a figure shrouded in a black cloak, from hidden shoulder to invisible feet. Over the head of this figure was cast a cowl, which completely concealed the head and face. At any moment the cloak might open and disclose the body of that figure. I knew the body of that figure was a “thing to dream of, not to see.” I felt sure I should lose my reason if the cloak opened and discovered the loathsome body. I had no idea what I should see, but I knew I should go mad.
In my dock by the window, and with the light behind my eyes I felt secure. But at that moment no earthly consideration, no consideration whatever, would have induced me to face that ghostly form in the flicker of expiring light. I was not under any delusion. I knew then as well as I know now that there was no object on which the normal human eye could exercise itself between me and the bed. I deliberately willed the figure to appear, and although once I had summoned it I could not dismiss it, I had complete and self-possessed knowledge that I saw nothing with my physical eye. Moreover, full of potentiality for terror as that figure was in its present shape and attitude, it had no dread for me. I was fascinated by considering possibilities which I knew could not arise so long as the present circumstances remained unchanged. In other words, I knew I could trust my reason to keep my imagination in subjection, so long as my senses were not confused or my attention scared. If I attempted to extinguish the candles that figure might waver! if I moved across the floor it might get behind my back, and as I caught sight of it over my shoulder, the cloak might fall aside! Then I should go mad. Thus I sat and waited until daylight came. Then I fell asleep in my chair.
As I have said, the copy of the _Opium-eater_ I then had was bound in red cloth. It was a much handsomer book than the humble one published by Routledge. Since that memorable night many years ago in my high, dreary, lonely bedroom, I cannot tell you all the copies of the _Opium-eater_ which have been mine. I remember another, bound in dark blue cloth, with copious notes. There was a third, the outside seeming of which I forget, but which I think formed part of two volumes of selections from De Quincey. I love my little sixpenny volume for one reason chiefly. I can lend it without fear, and lose it without a pang. Why, the beggarliest miser alive can’t think much of fourpence-halfpenny! I have already dispensed a few copies of the _Opium-eater_, price fourpence-halfpenny. As it lies on my table now, I take no more care of it than one does of yesterday’s morning paper. When I read it I double it back, to show to myself how little I value the gross material of the book. Any one coming in likely to appreciate the book, and who has not read it is welcome to carry it off as a gift. Yet if I am free with the volume, I am jealous of the author. I do not mention his name to people I believe unwilling or unable to worship him becomingly.
But when I meet a true disciple what prodigal joy environs and suffuses me! What talks of him I have had, and speechless raptures in hearing of him! How thick with gold the air of evenings has been, spent with him and one who loved him! I recall one glorious summer’s day, when an old friend and I (we were then, alas! years and years younger than we are to-day), had toiled on through mountain heather for hours, until we were half-baked by the sun and famished with thirst. Suddenly we came upon the topmost peak of all the hills, and saw, many miles away, the unexpected sea. As we stood, shading our eyes with our hands, my companion chanted out, “Obliquely to the right lay the many-languaged town of Liverpool; obliquely to the left ‘the multitudinous sea.’” “Whose is that?” I asked eagerly, notwithstanding my drought. “What isn’t Shakespeare’s is De Quincey’s.” “Where did you find it?” “In the _Opium-eater_.” I remember cursing my memory because I had forgotten that passage. When I got home I looked through the copy I then had, and could not find the sentence. I wrote to my friend, saying I could not come upon his quotation. He answered that he now believed it did not occur in the body of the _Confessions_, but in a note in some edition, he could not remember which. What a sense of miserable desolation I had that this edition had never come my way!
There are only three marks of any kind in my present copy of the _Confessions_, one dealing with the semi-voluntary power children have over the coming and going of phantoms painted on the darkness. This mark is very indistinct, and, as I remember nothing about it, I think it must have been made by accident. The part indicated by it is only introductory to an unmarked passage immediately following which has always fascinated my imagination. It is in the “Pains of Opium,” and runs:--
“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 Œdipus and 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.”
How thankful we ought to be that it has never been our fate to sit in that awful theatre of prehistoric woes! There is surely nothing more appalling in the past than the interminably vain activities of that mysterious atomie, Egyptian man. Who could bear to look upon the three hundred thousand ant-like slaves swarming among the colossal monoliths piled up in thousands for the pyramid of Cheops! The bare thought makes one start back aghast and shudder.
I find the next mark opposite another awful passage dealing with infinity, on this occasion infinity of numbers, not of time:--
“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, not 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.”
Upon closer looking, I see an attempt has been made to erase the mark opposite this passage. Joining the fact with the faintness of the line opposite the former quotation I am driven to the conclusion that there is only one “stetted” note of admiration in the book. It is a whole page of the little volume. It begins on page 91, and ends on page 92. To show you how little I care for my copy of the _Confessions_, I shall cut it out. Even a lawyer would pay me more than fourpence-halfpenny for copying a page of the book, and, as I have said before, the volume has no extrinsic value for me. Excepting the Bible, I am not familiar with any finer passage of so great length in prose in the English language:--
“The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams; a music of preparation and awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a vast march--of infinite cavalcades filing off--and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting, was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ‘Deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were all the world to me, and but a moment allowed, and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! and again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, ‘I will sleep no more!’”
Upon reading this passage over I am glad I am not familiar with any finer one in English prose--it would be impossible to endure it. In these sentences it is not the consummate style alone that overwhelms one, the matter is nearly as fine as the manner. How tremendously the numbers and sentences are marshalled! How inevitable, overbearing, breathless is the onward movement! What awful expectations are aroused, and shadowy fears vaguely realized! As the spectral pageant moves on other cohorts of trembling shades join the ghostly legion on the blind march! All is vaporous, spectral, spiritual, until when we are wound up to the highest pitch of physical awe and apprehension, we stop suddenly, arrested by failure of the ground, insufficiency of the road, and are recalled to life and light and truth and fellowship with the kindly race of man by the despairing human shriek of incommunicable, inarticulable agony in the words, “I will sleep no more!” In that despairing cry the tortured soul abjectly confesses that it has been vanquished and driven wild by the spirit-world. It is when you contrast the finest passages in Macaulay with such a passage as this, that you recognise the difference between a clever writer and a great stylist.
A GUIDE TO IGNORANCE.
For a long time I have had it in my mind to write a guide to ignorance. I have been withheld partly by a feeling of diffidence and partly by a want of encouragement from those to whom I mentioned the scheme. I have submitted a plan of my book to a couple of publishers, but each of these assured me that such a work would not be popular. In their straightforward commercial way they told me they could see “no money in the idea.” I differ from them; I think the book would be greeted with acclaim and bought with avidity.
Novelties are, I know, always dangerous speculations except in the form of clothes, when they are certain of instant and immense adoption. The mind of man cannot conceive the pattern for trousers’ cloth or the design for a bonnet that will not be worn. There is nothing too high or too low to set the fashion to men and women in dress. Conquerors were crowned with mural wreaths, of which the chimney-pot hat is the lineal descendant; pigs started the notion of wearing rings in their noses, and man in the southern seas followed the example; kangaroos were the earliest pouch-makers and ladies took to carrying reticules.
But an innovation in the domain of education or thought is a widely different thing from a frolic in gear. It is easy to set going any craze which depends merely or mostly on the way of wearing the hair or the height of the cincture. Hence æstheticism gained many followers in a little time. But remember it took ages and ages to reconcile people to wearing any clothes at all. Once you break the ice the immersion in a new custom may become as rapid as the descent of a round shot into the sea. The great step was, so to speak, from woad to wampum, with just an Atlantic of time between the two. If you went to Poole any day this week and asked him to make you a suit of wampum he would plead no insuperable difficulty. If you asked him to make you a suit of woad he would certainly detain you while he inquired as to your sanity and sent for your friends. Yet it is only one step, one film, from woad to wampum.
Up to this time in the history of man there has, with few exceptions, been an infatuated pursuit of this will-o’-the-wisp, knowledge. Why should not man now turn his glance to ignorance, if it were only for a little while and for the sake of fair play? The idea is of course revolutionary, so also is every other new idea revolutionary, and (I am not now referring to politics) it is only from revolutionary ideas we derive what we regard as advantages. The earth and heavens themselves are revolutionary. Why then should we not fairly examine the chance of a revolution in the aim of man?
The disinclination to face new attitudes of thought comes from the inherent laziness of man, and hence at the outset of my career towards that guide I should find nearly the whole race against me. Humboldt, who met people of all climes and races and colours, declares laziness to be the most common vice of human nature. Hence the initial obstacle is almost insuperable. But it is only almost, not quite insuperable. Men can be stirred from indolence only by a prospect of profit in some form. Even in the Civil Service they are incited to make the effort to continue living by the hope of greater leisure later in life, for with years comes promotion and promotion means less labour.
By a little industry in the pursuit of ignorance greater repose would be attained in the immediate future. It would be very difficult to prove that up to this hour progress has been of the slightest use or pleasure to man. Higher pleasures, higher pains. Complexities of consciousness are merely a source of distraction from centralisation. The jelly fish may, after all, be the highest ideal of living things, and we may, if the phrase be admitted, have been developing backward from him. Of all the creatures on earth man is the most stuck up. He arrogates everything to himself and because he can split a flint or make a bow or gun-barrel he thinks he centres the universe, and insists that the illimitable deeps of space are focused upon him. Astronomers, a highly respectable class of people, assert there are now visible to us one hundred million fixed stars, one hundred million suns like our own. Each may have its system of planets, such as earth, and each planet again its attendant satellites. With that splendid magnanimity characteristic of our race, man would rather pitch the hundred million suns into chaos than for a moment entertain the idea that he is a humbug and of no use whatever. And yet after all the jelly-fish may be a worthier fellow than the best of us.
I do not of course insist on reversion to the jelly-fish. In this climate his habits of life are too suggestive of ague and rheumatism. In fact I do not know that I am urging reversion to anything, even to the flocks of pastoral man. But I am saying that as myriads of facilities are given for acquiring knowledge, one humble means ought to be devised for acquiring ignorance. If I had anywhere met with the encouragement which I think I merited, I should have undertaken to write the book myself.
I should open by saying it was not until I had concluded a long and painful investigation that I considered myself in any way qualified to undertake so grave and important a task as writing a guide to ignorance: that I had not only inquired curiously into my own fitness, but had also looked about carefully among my friends in the hope of finding some one better qualified to carry out this important undertaking. But upon gauging the depth of my own knowledge and considering conscientiously the capacity of my acquaintances, I came to the conclusion that no man I knew personally had so close a personal intimacy with ignorance as myself. There are few branches, I may say no branch, of knowledge except that of ignorance in which any one of my friends was not more learned than myself. I was born in such profound ignorance that I had no personal knowledge of the fact at the time. I had existed for a long time before I could distinguish between myself and things which were not.
As a boy I was averse from study; and since I have grown to manhood I have acquired so little substantive information that I could write down in a bold hand on one page of this book every single fact, outside facts of personal experience, of which I am possessed.
I know that the Norman invasion occurred in 1066, and the Great Fire in 1666. I know that gunpowder is composed of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, and sausages of minced meat and bread under the name of Tommy. I am aware Milton and Shakespeare were poets, and that needle-grinders are short lived. I know that the primest brands of three-shilling champagnes are made in London. I can give the Latin for seven words, and the French for four. I can repeat the multiplication table (with the pence) up to six times. I know the mere names of a number of people and things; but, as far as clear and definite information goes, I don’t believe I could double the above brief list. I am, I think, therefore, warranted in concluding that few men can have a more close or exhaustive personal acquaintance with ignorance. If you want learning at secondhand you must go to the learned: if you want ignorance at first hand you cannot possibly do better than come to me.