So unwillingly would
I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and
creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole
art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every
disadvantage. But I took it--and in an hour--oh, heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit!
what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished
was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the
immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me--in the
abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a
[Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about
which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered:
happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat
pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and
peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I
talk in this way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure
him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures
even are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the
opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of _L'Allegro_: even
then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il Penseroso_.
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