HAZLITT says that the principle of universal suffrage
is all very well in matters of political government,
which affect the common interests of society, but is not in the
least applicable to matters of taste, which can only be decided
by the most refined understandings.* But, in the affairs
of Parnassus, the judgments of the refined will often be found
indisputably wrong, and those of the commonalty as indis-
putably right. Quinctilian thought that the " Argonautics " of
Apollonius was a performance of a very high order of merit ;
but the great mass of his countrymen invariably deemed it,
what it unquestionably is, a performance of a very low order of
merit. It cannot be denied that Queen Caroline was a lady
of strong intellectual predilections ; at least so say Clarke and
Leibnitz ; yet Stephen Duck was her favourite poet. Akehside
and Warton were, probably, the most refined writers of their
age. Yet Akenside thought so highly of Dyer's long since
forgotten "Fleece," as to accept the light in which it was
■ regarded by the public, as a test of the poetical qualities of the
age. The lofty opinion which Warton had of the miserable

/' * ' ' Round Table, '' vol. ii. , p. 260.
I



2 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS.
