[265] [In his _Essay, Supplement to the Preface_ (_Poems by William Wordsworth_, ed. 1820, iii. 315-348), Wordsworth maintains that the appreciation of great poetry is a plant of slow growth, that immediate recognition is a mark of inferiority, or is to be accounted for by the presence of adventitious qualities: "So strange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.... Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word _popular!_ ... The voice that issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that _Vox Populi_ which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry--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 this 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." Naturally enough Byron regarded this pronouncement as a taunt if not as a challenge. Wordsworth's noble appeal from a provincial to an imperial authority, from the present to the future, is not strengthened by the obvious reference to the popularity of contemporaries.] {215}[266] [Southey's _Madoc in Wales, Poetical Works_, Part I. Canto V. Ed. 1838, v. 39.] [ep] _Not having looked at many of that hue,_ _Nor garters--save those of the_ "honi soit"--_which lie_ _Round the Patrician legs which walk about,_ _The ornaments of levee and of rout_.--[M.S.] [267] [Probably Lady Charlemont. See "Journal," November 22, 1813.] {216}[268] [The cyanometer, an instrument for ascertaining the intensity of the blue colour of the sky, was invented by Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799); see his _Essai sur l'Hygrométrie_. F.H. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) "made great use of his instrument on his voyages, and ascertained by the colour the degree of blueness, the accumulation and the nature of the non-transparent exhalations of the air."--_Alexander von Humboldt_, by Professor Klencke, translated by Juliette Bauer, 1852, pp. 45, 46.] [eq] _I'll back a London_ "Bas" _against Peru_. or, _I'll bet some pair of stocking beat Peru_. or, _And so, old Sotheby, we'll measure you_.--[MS.]