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.
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