THIRD WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 8........ 300 Tuesday, " 9........ 50 Wednesday, " 10 Thursday, " 11 Hiatus in Friday, " 12 MS Saturday, " 13 Sunday, " 14....... 76
FOURTH WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 15....... 76 Tuesday, " 16....... 73-1/2 Wednesday, " 17....... 73-1/2 Thursday, " 18....... 70 Friday, " 19....... 240 Saturday, " 20....... 80 Sunday, " 21....... 350
FIFTH WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 22....... 60 Tuesday, " 23.......none. Wednesday, " 24.......none. Thursday, " 25.......none. Saturday, " 27.......none. Friday, " 26....... 200
What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, etc.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended with the impulse, was either the principle of "_reculer pour mieux sauter_" (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awaking found itself partly accustomed to this new ration), or else it was this principle--that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now whenever I ascended to any large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne any thing.
The narrative part of De Quincey's "Confessions" by no means exhausts the story of his suffering as recorded by himself. Scattered through his miscellaneous papers are to be found frequent references to the opium habit and its protracted hold upon the system long after the drug itself had been discarded. The succeeding extracts from his "Literary Reminiscences" will throw light upon his bodily and mental condition in the years immediately following his opium struggle:
"I was ill at that time and for years after--ill from the effects of opium upon the liver, and one primary indication of any illness felt in that organ is peculiar depression of spirits. Hence arose a singular effect of reciprocal action in maintaining a state of dejection. From the original physical depression caused by the derangement of the liver arose a sympathetic depression of the mind, disposing me to believe that I never _could_ extricate myself; and from this belief arose, by reaction, a thousand-fold increase of the physical depression. I began to view my unhappy London life--a life of literary toils odious to my heart--as a permanent state of exile from my Westmoreland home. My three eldest children, at that time in the most interesting stages of childhood and infancy, were in Westmoreland, and so powerful was my feeling (derived merely from a deranged liver) of some long, never-ending separation from my family, that at length, in pure weakness of mind, I was obliged to relinquish my daily walks in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens from the misery of seeing children in multitudes that too forcibly recalled my own.