THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS AND 'FRANCE
SIR,—All students of Anglo-French literary relations will be grateful to Mr. Harold Nicolson for his delightful " Marginal Comment " on this subject in The Spectator of December 21st, 1945. He is surely mistaken, ' however, when he writes that "our great romantics were almost wholly- unaffected by French modes of thought." To- take two examples only : Wordsworth was profoundly affected not only by Rousseau, but also by Ramond de Carbonnieres, whom Legouis described as that "most accurate and poetical " painter of Swiss scenery, and by his conversations' with Michel Beaupuy, the Republican officer (see The Prelude, Book IX), while Shelley owed an immense debt both to the French " philosophes " of the eighteenth century and to Constantin de Volney, author of the once famous Ruines ou Meditations sur les Revolutions des Empires.—Yours
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