The opium eater is not an attractive personage. The appearance is even worse than the reality. He looks weak and inefficient; the lack-lustre of his eye, the pallor of his face, and the _offishness_ of his general expression, are the reverse of fascinating. This he knows, and feels keenly and continually. He feels absolutely dependent, and that, were he thrown out of employment, it might be utterly impossible to obtain another situation, with his tell-tale disadvantages arrayed like open informers against him. This is a contingent and collateral consequence, dependent upon the position in life occupied by the victim; but where the party is poor, though collateral as it were, as I have above said, it is not the least among the ills that afflict the unfortunate opium eater. CHAPTER XIII. ON ENERGY AND AMBITION AS AFFECTED BY THE OPIUM HABIT. I have devoted a separate chapter to the discussion of these two qualities, because they are more directly operated upon by the curse of opium than any other of the principles in human nature. Coleridge, "though usually described as doing nothing,--'an idler,' 'a dreamer,' and by many such epithets,--sent forth works which, though they had cost him years of thought, never brought him any suitable return." So says Gillman, in his unfinished life of Coleridge. It was so common to charge Coleridge with being constitutionally idle, that he at length came to believe the crime charged to be true, and endeavored to extenuate his offence and overcome his "inbred sin." Before he became an opium eater this offence was not charged. No one then said he lacked energy or perseverance. His poetical works having been composed in his early manhood, would give the lie to this assertion, were it made. It was not until the fountain of his genius was frozen by the withering frosts of opium, that this charge had any foundation, or supposed foundation, in fact. After that time, after being ensnared in the toils of opium, I think it would be absurd to claim that a mere casual observer might not think there was some foundation for the charge that he was "doing nothing," etc. His way was obstructed by almost impassable barriers. The fangs of the destroyer left wounds which rendered it impossible for him to work with reasonable facility and success at certain times. What he did accomplish is better done than it would have been had he attempted to write when unfit. At times literary labor must have been entirely out of the question; he must have been too ill to attempt it. To write at any time required tremendous exertion of the will, and a calm resignation to bear any suffering in order to accomplish something. It is not fair to measure the result of Coleridge's labors by that of other men. As De Quincey truthfully says, "what he did in spite of opium," is the question to be considered.