ts
innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the
agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to
desist. But could not have I reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding
water, have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand drops bisected
would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that way would
certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake of those who
know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to those who do, whether
it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced
with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction
causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know
not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and
dejection for a few days. I answer, no; there is nothing like low
spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised:
the pulse is improved: the health is better. It is not there that the
suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by
renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach
(which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by intense
perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe
without more space at my command.

I shall now enter _in medias res_, and shall anticipate, from a time when
my opium pains might be said to be at their _acme_, an account of their
palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.

* * * * *

My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with
any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud
sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an
accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
"accomplishment" as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the
only one I possess; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected
with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had
observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst
readers of all:--reads vilely; and Mrs. ---, who is so celebrated, can
read nothing well but dramatic compositions: Milton she cannot read
sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at
all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars.
Of late, if I have felt moved by anything it has been by the grand
lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the S