A pity it is that we must content ourselves
with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere,
opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever
there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is
metaphysically predisposed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are
raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the
region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of
_any_ sort in his waistcoat-pocket, be they opium or whatever else, and
we can assure you that that man is an _aerobat_,--that somehow, in one
sense or another, he walks in the air above other men's heads. Whatever
disturbs the healthful isolation of the nervous system is prosperous to
metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism
through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances 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.
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