[Anatomy of Drunkenness]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 1 March 1828, p. 342. Never reprinted. Like the review of Andrew Thomson and the Bible Societies (see above, pp. 187–94), this critique undoubtedly combines the work of two writers. Of its fifteen original paragraphs, the first eleven (see below, pp. 283–7) may safely be attributed to De Quincey. No one else at the Post could have written so wittily (and also irreverently), with uncalled-for allusions to opium and to his English acquaintances Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Sir Humphry Davy. The frank discussion of drinking habits, emphasizing pleasure and pain rather than morality, makes these first eleven paragraphs doubly unlike the work of the other contributors to the Post. But the last four paragraphs (see below, pp. 287–8) are too direct and moral, and are incompatible both with the preceding paragraphs, and with De Quincey’s own opinions.