The Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ...culture--the leisure, the ease, the solitude, the society, the domestic peace, the local scenery--Paradise for his eye, in Miltonic beauty, lying outside his windows, Paradise for his heart, in the perpetual happiness of his own fireside; and, finally, when increasing years might be supposed to demand something more of modern luxuries, and expanding intercourse with society in its most polished forms, something more of refined elegances, that his means, still keeping pace, in almost arithmetical ratio, with his wants, had shed the graces of art upon the failing powers of nature, had stripped infirmity of discomfort, and (so far as the necessities of things will allow) had placed the final stages of life, by means of many compensations, by universal praise, by plaudits reverberated from senates, benedictions wherever his poems have penetrated, honor, troops of friends--in short, by all that miraculous prosperity can do to evade the primal decrees of nature--had placed the final stages upon a level with the first. This report of Wordsworth's success in life will rejoice thousands of hearts. And a good nature will sympathize with that joy, will exult in that exultation, no matter for any private grievances, and with a non obstante to any wrong, however stinging, which it may suppose itself to have suffered. Yet, William Wordsworth, nevertheless, if you ever allowed yourself to forget the human tenure of these mighty blessings--if, though wearing your honors justly--most justly, as respects A. and B., this man and that man--you have forgotten that no man can challenge such trophies by any absolute or meritorious title, as respects the dark powers which give and take away--if, in the blind spirit of presumption, you have insulted the less...