me, if at all, according to your own fancy, and as a painter's fancy
should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail in that way to be a
gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of
my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of which latter
year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the elements of that
happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of
the interior of a scholar's library, in a cottage among the mountains, on
a stormy winter evening.

But now, farewell--a long farewell--to happiness, winter or summer!
Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to
hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep.
For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I am
now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record



THE PAINS OF OPIUM


As when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

SHELLEY'S _Revolt of Islam_.

Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention
to a brief explanatory note on three points:

1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for
this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give