The evil influences of opium on De Quincey were of a different, but a very pernicious sort: they weakened his will; they made him a colossal slave to a tiny tyrant; they shut him up (like the Genii in the "Arabian Tales") in a phial filled with dusky fire; they spread a torpor over the energies of his body; they closed up or poisoned the natural sources of enjoyment; the air, the light, the sunshine, the breeze, the influences of spring, lost all charm and power over him. Instead of these, snow was welcomed with an unnatural joy; storm embraced as a brother; and the stern scenery of night arose like a desolate temple round his ruined spirit. If his heart was not utterly hardened, it was owing to its peculiar breadth and warmth. At last his studies were interrupted, his peace broken, his health impaired, and then came the noon of his night; a form of gigantic gloom, swaying an "ebon sceptre," stood over him in triumph, and it seemed as if nothing less than a miraculous intervention could rescue the victim from his power. But the victim was not an ordinary one. Feeling that hell had come, and that death was at hand, he determined, by a mighty effort, to arise from his degradation. For a season his struggles were great and impotent, as those of the giants cast down by Jove under Etna. The mountain shook, the burden tottered, but the light did not at first appear. Nor has he ever, we suspect, completely emancipated himself from his bondage; but he has struggled manfully against it, and has cast off such a large portion of the burden that it were injustice not to say of him that he is now FREE. It were ungracious to have dwelt, even so long, upon the errors of De Quincey, were it not that, first, his own frankness of disclosures frees us from all delicacy; and that, secondly, the errors of such a man, like the cloud of the pillar, have two sides--his darkness may become our light--his sin our salvation. It may somewhat counteract that craving cry for excitement, that everlasting Give, give, so much the mistake of the age, to point strongly to this conspicuous and transcendent victim, and say to his admirers, "Go ye and do _otherwise_."