'
Now, then, I was again happy; I took only a thousand drops of
Laudanum per day, and what was that? A latter spring had come to
close up the season of youth; my brain performed its functions as
healthily as ever before; I read Kant again, and again I
understood him, or fancied that I did." There have been many
authors who, in condemning De Quincey for unjustly throwing about
the opium habit a halo of literary beauty which has tempted many
to destruction, absolutely deny the truth of his statements. No
one has any stable reason on which to found denial of De
Quincey's statements as to the magnitude of the doses he was able
to take; and his frankness and truthfulness is equal to that of
any of his detractors. William Rosse Cobbe, in a volume entitled
"Dr. Judas, or Portrayal of the Opium Habit," gives with great
frankness of confession and considerable purity of diction a
record of his own experiences with the drug. One entire chapter
of Mr. Cobb's book and several portions of other chapters are
devoted to showing that De Quincey was wrong in some of his
statements, but notwithstanding his criticism of De Quincey, Mr.
Cobbe seems to have experienced the same adventures in his
dreams, showing, after all, that De Quincey knew the effects of
opium even if he seemed to idealize it.
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