It was a day that will stand out
like a mountain in my life;" adding, however, "Fleet Street and the Strand
are better places to live in, for good and all. I could not _live_ in
Skiddaw. I could spend there two or three years; but I must have a
prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope
and pine away." He loved even its smoke, and asserted that it suited his
vision. A short time previously he had, in a touching letter to Wordsworth
(1801), enumerated the objects that he liked so much in London. "These
things," he writes, "work themselves into my mind: the rooms where I was
born; a bookcase that has followed me about like a faithful dog (only
exceeding him in knowledge) wherever I have moved; old chairs; old tables;
squares where I have sunned myself; my old school: these are my
mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you;
I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends with
anything."
Besides his native London, "the centre of busy interests," he had great
liking for unpretending men, who would come and gossip with him in a
friendly, companionable way, or who liked to talk about old authors or old
books.
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