Note Book of an English Opium-EaterDe Quincey, Thomas
Philosophy
Note Book of an English Opium-Eater
De Quincey, Thomas
Opium abuse -- England
that, by their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood, proclaim
the fantasticalness of the life with which they are poetically connected--
it throws me into such convulsions of rage, that I move to the window, and
(without thinking what I am about) throwing it up, calling, '_Police!
police!_' What's _that_ for? What can the police do in the business? Why,
certainly nothing. What I meant in my dream was, perhaps [but one forgets
_what_ one meant upon recovering one's temper], that the police should
take Strephon and Corydon into custody, whom I fancied at the other end of
the room. And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recalling such
abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such abominable language,
sometimes transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one
hundred and thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John and
Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, with many others beside,
all cudgelled in a round robin, none claiming precedency of another, none
able to shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to recall me to
milder thoughts by saying, 'But surely, my friend, you never could wish to
see Addison cudgelled? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end,
if the police can show any warrant for doing it But Addison was a man of
great genius.' True, he was so. I recollect it suddenly, and will back out
of any angry things that I have been misled into saying by Schlosser, who,
by-the-bye, was right, after all, for a wonder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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