Note Book of an English Opium-EaterDe Quincey, Thomas
Philosophy
Note Book of an English Opium-Eater
De Quincey, Thomas
Opium abuse -- England
Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and he really did say
the true thing about Swift's _essential_ irreligion), usually becomes
exhausted, like a boa-constrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The
boa gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of dyspepsy, in
which the horns and hoofs that he has swallowed may chance to avenge the
poor goat that owned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retires into a
corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking nonsense, until the gong
sounds again for a slight refection of sense. Accordingly he likens Swift,
before he has done with him, to whom? I might safely allow the reader
three years for guessing, if the greatest of wagers were depending between
us. He likens him to Kotzebue, in the first place. How faithful the
resemblance! How exactly Swift reminds you of Count Benyowski in Siberia,
and of Mrs. Haller moping her eyes in the 'Stranger!' One really is
puzzled to say, according to the negro's logic, whether Mrs. Haller is
more like the Dean of St. Patrick's, or the Dean more like Mrs. Haller.
Anyhow, the likeness is prodigious, if it is not quite reciprocal. The
other _terminus_ of the comparison is Wieland. Now there _is_ some shadow
of a resemblance there. For Wieland had a touch of the comico-cynical in
his nature; and it is notorious that he was often called the German
Voltaire, which argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his features
at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was far more playful and genial
than Swift's; something of this is shown in his romance of 'Idris,' and
oftentimes in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is his
'Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of Sir Huon and his enchanted
horn, with its gleams of voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any
suggestion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross the festal scenes?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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