M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast
my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering
affection would'st permit that a Grecian sister should excel an
English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble
offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest
affection; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the
forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever;
nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become
infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and
shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more'--not even
then did'st thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy
angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than did
Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and
the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her
face in her robe!"

Hard indeed, no doubt, was the wife's lot through all those years; but
the world will never have more than this mere glimpse of her sorrow and
her devotion. Yet to a person gifted with imagination, it is enough. He
can reconstruct from it that long period of patient watchfulness and
unwearied devotion; he can share her hopes when her loved one makes a
battle with his enemy, her tears when he is defeated, her rapture when
he makes a seeming conquest, the bitterness of her anguish when he again
falls. For all this was gone through, not once, but three times, in the
course of De Quincey's life. It was not until he felt that death was
inevitable if he continued the use of opium (which he was then taking in
enormous quantities) that he ever resolved to give up its use. He knew
he must die if he kept on, he thought he should die if he gave it up,
but he determined to make the effort. His studies had long been
abandoned; he could not even read. For two years he had read but one
book; he shrank from study with a sense of infantine powerlessness that
gave him great anguish when he remembered what his mind had formerly
been. From misery and suffering, he might almost be described as being
in a dormant state. His wife managed all the affairs of the household,
and attended to necessary business. He did not lose his moral
sensibilities or aspirations, as so many opium eaters do, but his
intellect seemed dead. His brain had become a theatre, which presented
specta