novelists directly inspired by the _Nouvelle Héloïse_, and in a much lesser degree by _Emile_, practically ceases, and the advent of Walter Scott gave them their _coup de grâce_. The excessive admiration of Englishmen for the imaginative writings of Rousseau was already on the wane, or rather it was beginning to be old-fashioned. That very remarkable work, _The Diary of a Lover of Literature_, by Thomas Green (1769-1825), gives us a valuable insight into the critical opinions of the opening years of the nineteenth century. It was published in 1810, but it reflects the feeling of a slightly earlier time. It represents the views of an independent and transitional thinker, remote from all the literary cliques, who read extensively in his hermitage at Ipswich, and it mirrors the mind of the average educated Englishman between 1795 and 1805. We discover that there were persons of cultivation in England at that time who did not hesitate deliberately to pronounce that Rousseau was, "without exception, the greatest genius and the finest writer that ever lived." This opinion the judicious Green is by no means able to endorse; but he makes a very curious confession which throws a strong light on the best English opinion in 1800. The Lover of Literature says that Rousseau is a character "who has by turns transported me with the most violent and opposite emotions of delight and disgust, admiration and contempt, indignation and pity." He points out, with great acumen, the peculiar conditions of Rousseau's "distempered sensibility," and says that his wrath against evil-doing burns "in consuming fire." Green's analysis of Rousseau's genius is very ingenious and glowing, but he sees spots in the sun, and thus, at the immediate opening of the new century, we meet with high critical commendation, but also with the faint beginnings of reproof.