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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    CEYLON. horn in the forehead.* But, virtually, by such an answer you would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend, since you are well aware that, in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon, and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more and also less. And this case is a type of many others standing in the same logical circumstances. But, secondly, as to Ceylon being the local represen- tative of Paradise, we may say, as the courteous French- man did to Dr Moore upon the Doctor’s apologetically remarking of a word which he had used, that he feared it was not good French—“Non, Monsieur, il n’est pas; mais il merite bien l’etre.” Certainly, if Ceylon was not, at least it ought to have been, Paradise; for at this day there is no place on earth which better supports the para- disiacal character (always excepting Lapland, as an Upsal professor observes, and Wapping, as an old seaman reminds is) than this Pandora of islands, which the Hindoos call Lanka, and Europe calls Ceylon. We style it the “ Pan- * Unicom: and strange it is that, in ancient dilapidated monuments of the Ceylonese, religions sculptures, &c., the unicorn of Scotland frequently appears according to its true heraldic (t'.c., fabulous) type.
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