Note 27 — Chapter IX

Mr. Wordsworth, in some fine lines, reproaches the French with having ‘no single volume paramount, no master-spirit’—

‘But equally a want of books and men.’

I wish he would shew any single author that exercises such a ‘paramount’ influence over the minds of the English, as four or five ‘master-spirits’ do on those of the French. The merit is not here the question, but the effect produced. He himself is not a very striking example of the sanguine enthusiasm with which his countrymen identify themselves with works of great and original genius!