"In 1824 I had come up to London upon an errand--in itself sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments by literary labors; but, as always happened hitherto, with very imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through the deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great and my application was unintermitting, but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ deranged; and secondly, by a reflex effect of depression, through my own thoughts in estimating my prospects, together with the aggravation of my case by the inevitable exile from my own mountain home--all this reduced the value of my exertion in a deplorable way. It was rare, indeed, that I could satisfy my own judgment even tolerably with the quality of any article I produced; and my power to make sustained exertions drooped in a way I could not control, every other hour of the day; insomuch that, what with parts to be cancelled, and what with whole days of torpor and pure defect of power to produce any thing at all, very often it turned out that all my labors were barely sufficient (sometimes not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my residence in London. Gloomy indeed was my state of mind at that period, for though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, yet all availed me not, and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. One canopy of murky clouds brooded forever upon my spirits, which were in one uniformly low key of cheerless despondency." De Quincey has given his views pretty freely as to the regimen to be observed by reforming opium-eaters, in a paper on "The Temperance Movement" which is specially worthy of attention.