'He from the well of life three drops instilled.' "What was their operation? 'So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced. But him the gentle angel by the hand Soon raised.' "The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum." The fundamental error here, and that which vitiates and renders ridiculous all that follows, is the purblind assumption that Milton's Paradise Lost is a true account of the transactions of our first parents in the garden of Eden. But it is not, and Adam had no vision of the future or of death. Even if Milton's were the true account, I would not be inclined to believe that he meant laudanum. If the archangel had power to show visions of the future he would have had power to prepare Adam for the spectacle by far other than earthly means. There was a _tree of life_ in the garden of Eden, but no well of life is recorded in sacred history. But Milton says of the archangel (as De Quincey quotes): "He from the well of life three drops instilled." A rather small dose to see visions upon; I believe the ordinary dose for an adult is from fifteen to twenty drops. However, a well of life would hardly be the designation for a well of laudanum. Milton undoubtedly derived his idea of a well of life from the tree of life spoken of in holy writ, whose fruit had the power of conferring immortality. "And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Gen. iii. 22-24. Milton is indebted to this hint, and his own imagination, for his well of life, and the powers he ascribes to its waters; and De Quincey is indebted to his imagination solely for his idea that it was laudanum which constituted the potent waters of this imaginary well. The whole thing is simply ridiculous. Still, it has an object, which object is, taken in connection with what remains of his essay on Coleridge and opium eating, to give some excuse, or palliation, as he puts it, for writing his (De Quincey's) opium confessions. We give his own words: "It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased powers of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the practice of opium eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer