Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey].

  • Thomas De Quincey
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ir. a limited sense, they were truths. They were expan- sions, often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or subse- quently by misconception of the scholar. For instance, as to Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus bad authorised men to believe in some vast African city, central to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty system of civili- sation. Others, improving on that chimera, asserted that this glorious city represented an inheritance derived from ancient Carthage; here, it was said, survived the ar ts and arms of that injured state; hither across Bilidulgerid had the children of Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome ; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had pointed its path to the carnage of Cannas, was still the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous fascice, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and the city of Tombuctoo was shown to be a real existence. Seeing was believing. And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed a belief in Tombuctoo, you would have made yourself an indorser of that huge forgery which had so long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in fact, a party to the total fraud. We have thought it right to direct the reader’s eye upon this correction of the common problem as to this or that place—Ceylon for example—answering to this or that classical name, because, in fact, the problem is more subtle than it appears to he. If you are asked whether you believe in the unicorn, undoubtedly you are within the letter of the truth in replying that you do ; for there tue several varieties of large animals which carry a single
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