De Quincey charges Coleridge with having written many of his best things under the stimulus of opium. This may be so; he could not well write at all without being in some way affected by opium, seeing that he took it every day; but if this applied to the latter stage of opium eating (and I have reason to think it did), the little pleasurable sensation and stimulation he might well take advantage of, as at other times his condition must have been such as to interfere greatly with his writing at all to any purpose. But if this applied to the first stages, and he continued on writing after the stimulation and pleasurable sensation had subsided, his writings must have presented a very zigzag appearance; passing suddenly from the height of pleasure to the depth of misery--falling from the top round of stimulation and enjoyment to the lowest depth of dejection and debility. For it was my invariable experience during the first stages, that for every benefit received in intellectual force from stimulation, I suffered a corresponding injury or offset in the mental debility and prostration which ensued. The reaction that always followed the long strain of stimulation upon the brain, found me completely wilted and mentally exhausted. Up to the heights and down into the depths was the routine. Glorying in the skies or sweltering in the Styx. Like Sisyphus rolling his stone of punishment up the steep mountain, with which he no sooner reaches the top than away it rebounds to the bottom again, and so on eternally. In the latter stages, an opium eater cannot be blamed for taking advantage of the little pleasurable sensation which his nepenthe affords him. The enjoyment he gets lasts but a moment, and would not equal the pleasure derived by a healthy and sound man from the simple act of writing. And, as far as power gained from stimulation is concerned, the reader must remember that opium shatters, tears, and wears out the subject as it goes, and that all the benefit he could derive from stimulation, after having become an habituate, could not place his powers upon a level with what they would have been naturally had he never touched opium.