C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

London

London! the needy villain’s general home,
The common-sewer of Paris and of Rome!
With eager thirst, by folly or by fate,
Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.

Dr. Johnson.

Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead.

Dr. Johnson.

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy,
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool’s head—and there is London Town.

Byron.

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