“Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that ‘decent drapery’, which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them: accordingly; the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed to be in sympathy with the decent and self respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German, which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French.”
Thomas De Quincey, “Confessions of an English Opium Eater”, 1822
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