formed not only the most
memorable and the most suggestively pathetic incident, but also _that_
which, more than any other, coloured--or (more truly, I should say)
shaped, moulded and remoulded, composed and decomposed--the great body
of opium dreams.'
After this loss of the greater portion of the 'Suspiria' copy, De
Quincey seems to have become indifferent in some degree to their
continuity and relation to each other. He drew the 'Affliction of
Childhood' and 'Dream Echoes,' which stood early in the order of the
'Suspiria,' into the 'Autobiographic Sketches,' and also the 'Spectre of
the Brocken,' which was meant to come somewhat later in the series as
originally planned; and, as we have seen, he appended 'The Daughter of
Lebanon' to the 'Opium Confessions,' without any reference, save in the
preface, to its really having formed part of a separate collection of
dreams.
From a list found among his MSS. we are able to give the arrangement of
the whole as it would have appeared had no accident occurred, and all
the papers been at hand. Those followed by a cross are those which are
now recovered, and those with a dagger what were reprinted either as
'Suspiria' or otherwise in Messrs. Black's editions.
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS.
1. Dreaming, [cross]
2. The Affliction of Childhood. [cross]
Dream Echoes. [cross]
3. The English Mail Coach. [cross]
(1) The Glory of Motion.
(2) Vision of Sudden Death.
(3) Dream-fugue.
4. The Palimpsest of the Human Brain. [cross]
5. Vision of Life. [cross]
6. Memorial Suspiria. [cross]
7. Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow.
8. Solitude of Childhood. [big cross]
9. The Dark Interpreter. [big cross]
10. The Apparition of the Brocken. [cross]
11. Savannah-la-Mar.
12. The Dreadful Infant. (There was the glory of innocence
made perfect; there was the dreadful beauty
of infancy that had seen God.)
13. Foundering Ships.
14. The Archbishop and the Controller of Fire.
15. God that didst Promise.
16. Count the Leaves in Vallombrosa.
17. But if I submitted with Resignation, not the less
I searched for the Unsearchable--sometimes in
Arab Deserts, sometimes in the Sea.
18. That ran before us in Malice.
19. Morning of Execution.
20. Daughter of Lebanon. [cross]
21. Kyrie Eleison.
22. The Princess that lost a Single Seed of a Pomegranate. [big cross]
23. The Nursery in Arabian Deserts.
24. The Halcyon Calm and the
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