De Quincey in the second edition — as much as Ludlow tries to avoid this fate, both here and in his preface, the comparisons were inevitable. Ludlow was called “a minor DeQuincey” for his later writings on opium, and Harper’s New Monthly Magazine wrote of The Hasheesh Eater that Ludlow, while “unequal to De Quincey in literary culture and in the craft of book-making, the author of this work compares favorably with him in the passion for philosophical reflection, in the frankness of his personal revelations, and in preternatural brilliancy of fancy. In point of compact and orderly method in the narration of his story he has a decided advantage over De Quincey. The comparative merits of hasheesh and opium as a stimulant to the intellect and the source of wild, imaginative dreams, may be learned from a comparison of the two volumes.”