Here he spent much of his time in the society of the men who
were then grouped in distinguished neighborhood; besides Wordsworth
and Coleridge, the poet Southey was accessible, and a frequent visitor
was John Wilson, later widely known as the "Christopher North" of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. Nor was De Quincey idle; his habits of study
were confirmed; indeed, he was already a philosopher at twenty-four.
These were years of hard reading and industrious thought, wherein he
accumulated much of that metaphysical wisdom which was afterward to
win admiring recognition.
In 1816 De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's daughter
living near. There is a pretty scene painted by the author
himself,[3] in which he gives us a glimpse of his domestic life at
this time. Therein he pictures the cottage, standing in a valley,
eighteen miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two miles
long by three-quarters of a mile in average width. The mountains are
real mountains, between 3000 and 4000 feet high, and the cottage a
real cottage, white, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to
unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around
the windows, through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn,
beginning, in fact, with May roses and ending with jasmine. It is in
the winter season, however, that De Quincey paints his picture, and so
he describes a room, seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven
and one-half feet high.
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