his Opium-Confessions, popular both as to matter and style, that he first conciliated and charmed the reading public,—­and to such a degree that great expectations were awakened as to anything which afterwards he might write.  This expectation heightens appreciation; and in this case it helped many a metaphysical dose down the voracious throat of the public, without its being aware of the nauseating potion, or experiencing any uncomfortable consequences.  The flood of popularity produced by the Opium-Confessions among that large intellectual class of readers who, notwithstanding their mental capacity, yet insist upon the graces of composition and upon a subject of immediate and moving interest, was sufficient to float into a popular haven many a ship of heavier freightage, which might else have fallen short of port.

The general interest which is manifested in De Quincey personally is also very much due to the fact that he was an opium-eater, and an opium-eater willing to breathe into the public ear the peculiarities of his situation and its hidden mysteries, or “suspiria de profundis.”  This interest is partly of that vulgar sort which connects itself with all mysterious or abnormal phenomena in Nature or in the human mind, with a “What is it?” or a spiritual medium, and which is satisfied with a palpable exhibition of the novelty; and partly it is of a philosophical order, inquiring into the causes and modes of the abnormal development.  It is rarely the case that human vision is especially or deliberately directed to the sun or the moon, except at the marvellous season of eclipse, when interest is awakened by the novelty of the appearance among the vulgar, and among philosophers by the unusual nature of the phenomenon, demanding explanation.  Then it is that the people inhabiting this globe are excited by something which calls off their attention from terrestrial trifles to that which connects them with unknown worlds.  If we had been born Hindoos, we should, at such times, exhibit our skittish tendencies, “shying” at the sun-eating monster with nervous apprehension, and should doubtless do our best, through horrid yells and tintinnabulations, towards getting up a tremendous counter-irritation upon the earth that should tell mightily on the nerves of this umbratilous tiger in the heavens.  But since we are neither Hindoos nor Egyptians, nor skittish heathen of any sort, we take defiant attitudes and look through smoked glasses.  At any rate, it is only at such times that we pay particular attentions, by way of courtesy, to foreign worlds.  And of all the creatures of God which come within the circle of human knowledge or notice, which is it that may be said to enjoy the most continuous round of attentions, and to live in excitement the most nearly approaching to perpetual?  It is the comet, which no sooner gets out of reach of our flying compliments than she becomes the pet of Jupiter’s magnificent citizens, or calls forth deprecating murmurs from our shy sister Venus, and Mercury, our milder brother, who, from all such mischiefs, creeps as nearly as possible under the paternal wings of the Sun.  No one of these erratic visitors can remember the time when she was not making a stir somewhere in the universe, or when a cloudy night, intercepting her from vision, would not have been as surely execrated as are the colds which afflict prima donnas.