Wordsworth's request, I
added a long note on Spanish affairs which is printed in the Appendix. The
opinions I expressed in this note on the Spanish character at that time
much calumniated, on the retreat to Corunna then fresh in the public mind,
above all, the contempt I expressed for the superstition in respect to the
French military prowess which was then universal and at its height, and
which gave way in fact only to the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, fell in, as
it happened, with Mr. Stewart's political creed in those points where at
that time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I think, that I saw
him for the last time: and by the way, on the day of my parting with him,
I had an amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of ubiquity
ascribed to him by a witty writer in the London Magazine: I met him and
shook hands with him under Somerset-house, telling him that I should leave
town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I went by the very shortest
road (_i.e._ through Moor-street, Soho--for I am learned in many
quarters of London) towards a point which necessarily led me through
Tottenham-court-road: I stopped nowhere, and walked fast: yet so it was
that in Tottenham-court-road I was not overtaken by (_that_ was
comprehensible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Certainly, as the above
writer alleges, there must have been three Walking Stewarts in London.
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