stances of men
who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets,
if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their
teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the
superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had
fared in any sort like his brother,--if there had been anything like an
equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than
probable that we should have lost the illustrious historian.

[Footnote A: It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's
immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind
exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite
direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results
from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the
physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has
impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is
manifested, towards the near approach of death, an almost insane
brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who
occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile
mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating
smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it
may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant
vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian
faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary
glimmerings of a maniac's mind have been adduced for precisely the same
purpose.]

Coleridge was indolent from temperament, a disposition which was
increased by opium. Hence De Quincey was of the opinion that it injured
Coleridge's poetic faculties; which probably was the case, since in
genuine poetry the mind is prominently realistic, its motions are all
outward, and therefore excessive indolence must of necessity be fatal.

De Quincey's physical system, on the contrary, seemed preconformed to
opium: it demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing else. No
temptation so strong _could_ have been presented to Coleridge. De
Quincey really craved the drug. His stomach was deranged, and was still
suffering from the sad results of his youthful wanderings in London. It
seems almost as if fate had compelled the unfortunate course into which
he finally drifted. The craving first appeared in the shape of a horrid
gnawing at