th talents which were to
make him equally famous with these, took up his residence at Grasmere,
in the Lake country, occupying for many years the cottage which
Wordsworth had given up on his removal to ampler quarters at Rydal
Mount. 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. This is the drawing-room, although it might
more justly be termed the library, for it happens that books are the
one form of property in which the owner is wealthy. Of these he has
about 5000, collected gradually since his eighteenth year. The room
is, therefore, populous with books. There is a good fire on the
hearth. The furniture is plain and modest, befitting the unpretending
cottage of a scholar. Near the fire stands a tea table; there are only
two cups and saucers on the tray. It is an "eternal" teapot that the
artist would like us to imagine, for he usually drinks tea from eight
o'clock at night to four in the morning. There is, of course, a
companion at the tea table, and very lovingly does the husband suggest
the pleasant personality of