'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'