Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey (urban books to read .TXT) 📕

for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say afterwards does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action; reviewing it calmly, we condemn, but taking the impassioned station of Adam at the moment of temptation, we approve in our hearts. This was certainly an oversight; but it was one very difficult to redress. I remember, amongst the many exquisite thoughts of John Paul (Richten), one which strikes me as particularly touching, upon this subject. He suggests, not as any grave theological comment, but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart, that, had Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God, his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration to innocence. ↩

“I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony, which cannot be remembered.”

Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge’s Remorse

↩

Some readers will question the fact, and seek no reason. But did they ever suffer grief at any season of the year? ↩

Φυγη μονου πςος μονον. —⁠Plotinus ↩

The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes; as at this point they seemed too much to interrupt the course of the narrative. ↩

Der ewige Jude⁠—which is the common German expression for “the Wandering Jew,” and sublimer even than our own. ↩

The reader must not forget, in reading this and other passages, that, though a child’s feelings are spoken of, it is not the child who speaks. I decipher what the child only felt in cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from pointing to anything metaphysical or doubtful that a man must be grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing, not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all children. Whatsoever in a man’s mind blossoms and expands to his own consciousness in mature life, must have preexisted in germ during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, consciously read in my own deep feelings these ideas. No, not at all; nor was it possible for a child to do so. I, the child, had the feelings; I, the man, decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to him; in me, the interpretation and the comment. ↩

I except, however, one case⁠—the case of a child dying of an organic disorder, so, therefore, as to die slowly, and aware of its own condition. Because such a child is solemnized, and sometimes, in a partial sense, inspired⁠—inspired by the depth of its sufferings, and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child, having put off the earthly mind in many things, may naturally have put off the childish mind in all things. I thereby, speaking for myself only, acknowledge to have read with emotion a record of a little girl, who, knowing herself for months to be amongst the elect of death, became anxious, even to sickness of heart, for what she called the “conversion” of her father. Her filial duty and reverence had been swallowed up in filial love. ↩

Death of Wallenstein, Act V, Scene 1 (Coleridge’s translation), relating to his remembrances of the younger Piccolomini. ↩

See the Second Book of Kings, Chapter XIII v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this impressive incident was made the subject of a large altarpiece by Mr. Allston, an interesting American artist, then resident in London. ↩

Thirty years ago it would not have been necessary to say one word of the Obi or Obeah magic; because at that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth, for instance, in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fictions, and because the remarkable history of Three-fingered Jack, a story brought upon the stage, had made the superstition notorious as a fact. Now, however, so long after the case has probably passed out of the public mind, it may be proper to mention, that when an Obeah man⁠—that is, a professor of this dark collusion with human fears and human credulity⁠—had once woven his dreadful net of ghostly terrors, and had thrown it over his selected victim, vainly did that victim flutter, struggle, languish in the meshes, unless the spells were reversed, he generally perished; and without a wound, except from his own too domineering fancy. ↩

What follows, I think (for book I have none of any kind where his paper is proceeding), namely: et sera sub nocte rudentum, is probably a mistake of Virgil’s; the lions did not roar because night was approaching, but because night brought with it their principal meal, and consequently the impatience of hunger. ↩

See, amongst Southey’s early poems, one upon this superstition. Southey argues contra, but, for my part, I should have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side. ↩

In this place I derive my feeling partly from a lovely sketch of the appearance, in verse, by Mr. Wordsworth; partly from my own experience of the case; and, not having the poems here I know not how to proportion my acknowledgments. ↩

“And so, then,” the cynic objects, “you rank your own mind (and you tell us so frankly) amongst the primary formations?” As I love to annoy him, it would give me pleasure to reply⁠—“Perhaps I do.” But as I never answer more questions than are necessary, I confine myself to saying, that this is not a necessary construction of the words. Some minds stand nearer to the type of the original nature in man, are truer than others to the great magnet in our dark planet. Minds that are impassioned on