"I was born and passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple," he tells us. "Its church, its halls, its garden, its fountains, its river ... these are my oldest recollections. Indeed it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time, the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses. What a cheerful liberal look hath that portion of it, which from three sides, overlooks the greater gardens, that goodly pile ... confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place of my kindly engendure) right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden foot.... A man would give something to have been born in such a place." When Lamb was twenty-five years of age he went back to live in the Temple, at 16, Mitre Court Buildings, in an "attic storey for the air." His bed faced the river, and by "perking on my haunches and supporting my carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my neck I can see," he wrote to a friend, "the white sails glide by the bottom of King's Bench Walk as I lie in my bed." Here he passed nine happy years, and then, after a short stay in Southampton Buildings, he returned to the Temple for the second time, to 4, Inner Temple Lane, fully intending to pass the remainder of his life within its precincts. His new set of chambers "looked out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it." But fate intervened, and he and his sister soon after left the Temple, never to return. It was no easy parting, however, for he wrote in after years, "I thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench.... We never can strike root so deep in any other ground." It was when Dr. Johnson had a set of chambers on the first floor of No. 1, Inner Temple Lane, that Boswell first went to see him. Boswell wrote: "He received me very courteously, but it must be confessed that his apartment, furniture, and morning dress were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty, he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig which was too small for his head, his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose, his black worsted stockings ill drawn up, and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly peculiarities were forgotten the moment that he began to talk."