on. The People have already been justified,
and their eulogium pronounced by implication, when it was said,
above--that, of _good_ poetry, the _individual_, as well as the
species, _survives_. And how does it survive but through the People?
What preserves it but their intellect and their wisdom?

--Past and future, are the wings
On whose support, harmoniously conjoined,
Moves the great Spirit of human knowledge--
_MS._

The voice that issues from this Spirit is that Vox Populi which the
Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local
acclamation, or a transitory out-cry--transitory though it be for
years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error
who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in
the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever
governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the PUBLIC,
passes itself, upon the unthinking, for the PEOPLE. Towards the
Public, the Writer hopes that he feels as much deference as it is
entitled to: but to the People, philosophically characterized, and to
the embodied spirit of their knowledge, so far as it exists and moves,
at the present, faithfully supported by its two wings, the past and
the future, his devout respect, his reverence, is due. He offers it
willingly and readily; and, this done, takes leave of his Readers,
by assuring them--that, if he were not persuaded that the contents
of these Volumes, and the Work to which they are subsidiary, evince
something of the 'Vision and the Faculty divine'; and that, both in
words and things, they will operate in their degree, to extend the
domain of sensibility for the delight, the honour, and the benefit
of human nature, nothwithstanding the many happy hours which he
has employed in their composition, and the manifold comforts and
enjoyments they have procured to him, he would not, if a wish could
do it, save them from immediate destruction;--from becoming at this
moment, to the world, as a thing that had never been.

[Footnote 5: The learned Hakewill (a third edition of whose book bears
date 1635), writing to refute the error 'touching Nature's perpetual
and universal decay,' cites triumphantly the names of Ariosto,
Tasso, Bartas, and Spenser, as instances that poetic genius had not
degenerated; but be makes no mention of Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 6: This flippant insensibility was publicly reprehended by
Mr. Coleridge in a