Note 11 — Chapter IV · : LONDON STREETS

Here is a minor clue to the region of London best mapped out in his mind. From the Academy, 1900, he tore Mr. Whitten's review of an atlas of London, in which a comment is made on the restrictions of the scale—three inches to the mile; so that "York Street, Covent Garden, is merged in Tavistock Street; and Panton Street, Haymarket, and its short continuation, Spur Street, are marked but not named." When Francis does not dog de Quincey he is at the heel of Coleridge. Each had gone for a soldier; both were accosted with friendship in London. The Strand is remembered as the place where Coleridge was, as a youth, once walking in abstraction with waving arms, to find himself with his hand in a pedestrian's pocket and accused of attempted thieving. "I thought, sir, I was swimming in the Hellespont," he explained, and made a friend only less valuable than Mr. McMaster.