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Samuel Johnson
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Another place that lives in literature is Child's Bank (the Teilson's of "A Tale of Two Cities "), where Nell Gwynne kept her account, as Oliver Cromwell did before her, and whose muniment room was once in Temple Bar itself, which stood here within living memory.
To mention all the little courts and alleys whose names recall the past, although most of them have lost their atmosphere architecturally and otherwise; or the notable people who have lived in Fleet street, from Izaak Walton, at the corner of Chancery lane, to the great Delane in Serjeants' Inn; or the famous taverns which once stood in the street, would be to write a separate book and a good sized one at that.
But one figure is associated with Fleet Street in a way in which no other figure is associated with any of the streets of London that of Samuel Johnson.
You can no more walk down it, as he so often did, without thinking of that tremendous personality than you can think of Weimar without recalling Goethe, or Tours without visualizing Balzac. Johnson is Fleet Street's special deity.
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