text: " Otherwise for the general fact that he the reader of 1845 does understand without much difficulty the dramatic poet whom in 1665 the gulf of years and the mutations of speech from father to son had rendered "unintelligible"--for the general verity of this unforeseen and improbable but indisputable fact the reader's recollection of his own personal history since he was eight or ten years old may be left satisfactorily to vouch