This article of De Quincey's was not approved by Coleridge's friends and relations; on the contrary, it roused their indignation and incurred their just resentment. "Defective sensibility" is something De Quincey is forever referring to, often to "depraved sensibility." What madman would not have known he was injuring his friend by hauling into notice and retailing such stuff as this? Aggravating and augmenting it by his terse and vigorous mode of expression! The following passage from De Quincey, is enough to have brought upon himself perpetual infamy as the most traitorous of friends, and sufficient to have caused the outraged feelings of Coleridge's friends, expressed in indignation, to have persecuted him to the grave; yet it is expressed in such language as exhibits an utter unconsciousness of the injury done, of the poison administered. In fact, the assumed attitude of the writer is that of a panegyrist, while his _real_ attitude would be more truthfully compared to that of a venomous reptile, which charms its prey with beautiful visions only that its final attack may be more fatal--it is the song of the siren alluring to deadly rocks. "Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed." "Listen to this: "... I will assert finally, that having read for thirty years in the same track as Coleridge--that track in which few in any age will ever follow us, such as German metaphysicians, Latin school men, thaumaturgic Platonists, religious mystics,--and having thus discovered a large variety of trivial thefts, I do nevertheless most heartily believe him to have been as entirely original in all his capital pretensions as Archimedes in ancient days, or as Shakespeare in modern." Did any one ever before hear such an insane compound of contradictions? "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 'Tis "the juice of the cursed hebenon," set forth in a glass of highly colored wine. "No man can ever be a great enemy but under the garb of a friend. If you are a cuckold, it is your friend that makes you so, for your enemy is not admitted to your house; if you are cheated in your fortune, 'tis your friend that does it, for your enemy is not made your trustee; if your honor or good name is injured, 'tis your friend that does it still, for your enemy is not believed against you."--_Wycherly._