Note A — Chapter III
Reading edition
It is said that “great wits jump together,” and it would appear that, under certain circumstances, the same saltatory exploit may be performed by a great and a small wit; for instance, Miss Martineau in her capital essay on the Lake District, treating of the inside cleanliness of the houses, makes nearly the same remark as I have made above. I am sorry that I cannot conscientiously adopt the complaint of the very modern literary gentleman who accused Shakspeare of forestalling all his best ideas, because the above passage, or at least the same idea, if it be one, occurred in the first edition of these papers, and was printed above three years before the appearance of Miss Martineau’s work.