language; nay, purely
impassioned prose as 'The Confessions' and 'Suspiria de Profundis' is
scarcely to be found in any language; but the narration of dreams, while
exposed to all its difficulties, is invested with superadded
difficulties, arising from the shifting, visionary character of the
world in which its scenes are laid, 'where a single false note, a single
word in a wrong key, will ruin the whole music.' De Quincey's habit of
dreaming was constitutional, and displayed itself even in infancy. He
was naturally extremely sensitive, and of a melancholy temperament; he
was so passionately fond of undisturbed repose, that he willingly
submitted to any amount of contempt if he could only be let alone; he
had that weird faculty which is forever peopling the darkness with
myriads of phantoms; then came the afflictions of childhood--that night,
which ran after his footsteps far into life--and finally came opium,
which is a specific 'for exalting the dream scenery, for deepening its
shadows, and, above all, for strengthening the sense of its fearful
realities:' all these allied characteristics and circumstances, combined
with his vast intellectual capacity, imparted to De Quincey's dreams a
terrific grandeur. They were sometimes frightful, sometimes sublime, but
always accompanied by anxiety and melancholy gloom. 'I seemed,' says he,
'every night to descend--not metaphorically, but literally to
descend--into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from
which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by
awaking, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because
the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting,
at least, to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be
approached by words.' De Quincey's most elaborate dreams are: 'The
Daughter of Lebanon,' 'Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,' 'The Vision of
Sudden Death,' and 'Dream Fugue.' The last named is the most perfect in
its conception, the most powerful in its execution. It is too long to
quote, too sublime to be marred by abbreviation. If any one desires to
see what can be done with the English language in an 'effort to wrestle
with the utmost power of music,' let him read that dream. We shall,
meanwhile, present one from the year 1820, and leave the reader to
form his own estimate of it:

'The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in
dreams--a music of preparation and of