Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2De Quincey, Thomas
Philosophy
Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
the same rebellion in the attitude, the same pomp of malice in the
features to a universe seasoned for its assaults.
The reader must look to Dr. Nichol's book, at page 51, for the picture
of this abominable apparition. But then, in order to see what _I_
see, the obedient reader must do what I tell him to do. Let him
therefore view the wretch upside down. If he neglects that simple
direction, of course I don't answer for anything that follows: without
any fault of mine, my description will be unintelligible. This
inversion being made, the following is the dreadful creature that will
then reveal itself.
_Description of the Nebula in Orion, as forced to show out by Lord
Rosse._--You see a head thrown back, and raising its face, (or eyes,
if eyes it had,) in the very anguish of hatred, to some unknown
heavens. What _should_ be its skull wears what _might_ be an
Assyrian tiara, only ending behind in a floating train. This head rests
upon a beautifully developed neck and throat. All power being given to
the awful enemy, he is beautiful where he pleases, in order to point
and envenom his ghostly ugliness. The mouth, in that stage of the
apocalypse which Sir John Herschel was able to arrest in his eighteen-
inch mirror, is amply developed. Brutalities unspeakable sit upon the
upper lip, which is confluent with a snout; for separate nostrils there
are none. Were it not for this one defect of nostrils; and, even in
spite of this defect, (since, in so mysterious a mixture of the angelic
and the brutal, we may suppose the sense of odor to work by some
compensatory organ,) one is reminded by the phantom's attitude of a
passage, ever memorable, in Milton: that passage, I mean, where Death
first becomes aware, soon after the original trespass, of his own
future empire over man. The 'meagre shadow' even smiles (for the first
time and the last) on apprehending his own abominable bliss, by
apprehending from afar the savor 'of mortal change on earth.'
----'Such a scent,' (he says,) 'I draw
Of carnage, prey innumerable.'
As illustrating the attitude of the phantom in Orion, let the reader
allow me to quote the tremendous passage:--
'So saying, with delight he snuff'd the smell
Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock
Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,
Against the day of battle, to a field,
Where armies lie encamp'd, come flying, lured
With scent of living carcasses design'd
For death, the following day, in bloody fight;
So scented the grim feature, [Footnote: 'So scented the grim
feature,' [_feature_ is the old word for _form or outline that
is shadowy_; and also for form (shadowy or not) which abstracts from
the _matter_.] By the way, I have never seen it noticed, that
Milton was indebted for the hint of this immortal passage to a superb
line-and-a-half, in Lucan's Pharsalia.] and upturn'd
His nostril wide into the murky air,
Sagacious of his quarry from so far.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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