Without Lifting A Finger

Though nothing's 100%, I'm already dreaming about Scotland. Already there in Boswellian time (Johnson is getting too cozy in Dunvegan Castle). Hoping to see De Quincey (in situ) and a few other sights (see below). Nota Bene: None of these photos are mine. All hail from Wikipedia. If it happens, of course I'll have pics of my own. ***   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portree           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunvegan_Castle           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenfinnan_Viaduct     

She is at least part of why I am dipping into De Quincey again. In which of her works did she say, Read Quincey. That I no longer remember. * Woolf on De Quincey: Clearly, therefore, De Quincey as an autobiographer labours under great defects. He is diffuse and redundant; he is aloof and dreamy and in bondage to the old pruderies and conventions. At the same time he was capable of being transfixed by the mysterious solemnity of certain emotions; of realising how one moment may transcend in value fifty years. He was able to devote to their analysis a skill which the professed analysts of the human heart–the Scotts, the Jane Austens, the Byrons — did not then possess. We find him writing passages which, in their self-consciousness, are scarcely to be matched in the fiction of the nineteenth century: And, recollecting it, I am struck with the truth, that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as invo...

Thomas Penson De Quincey ( / ˈ t ɒ m ə s d ə ˈ k w ɪ n s i / ; [ 1 ] 15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West. Medical Issues: A number of medical practitioners have speculated on the physical ailments that inspired and underlay De Quincey's resort to opium, and searched the corpus of his autobiographical works for evidence. One possibility is "a mild … case of infantile paralysis" that he may have contracted from Wordsworth's children. [ 28 ] De Quincey certainly had intestinal problems, and problems with his vision – which could have been related: "uncorrected myopic astigmatism … manifests itself as digestive problems in men." [ 29 ] De Quincey also suffered neuralgic facial pain, "trigeminal neuralgia"  – "attack...