sense! If
the wineglasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal
size, there was no risk,--and so the weary is at rest for a time.

"At early morn, a triumphant cry of '_Eureka!_' calls me to his place of
rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a
considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims
his attention--my best-bound quarto--is spread upon a piece of
bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him
pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of
attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according
to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered
a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a
very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face
from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it
occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch
paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony."

I cannot refrain from quoting from Mr. Burton one more example,
illustrative of the fact that De Quincey, in money-matters, considered
merely the immediate and pressing exigencies of the present. "He arrives
very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission,--a process in
which he often endured impediments,--he represents, with his usual
silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being
then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the
realm,--the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he
very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or
fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove
unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any
difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he
is at that moment in possession of a document which he is prepared to
deposit with the lender,--a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to
remove any feeling of anxiety which the moat prudent person could
experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which
develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable,
possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled
bit of paper, and spread it out,--a fifty-pound bank-note! All sums of
money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use;
and, with more solemn pomp of