Interdum vulgus rectum videt.
HOR., Ep. ii. 1, 63.

Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright. When I travelled I took
a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come
from father to son, and are most in vogue among the common people of
the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that
anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude,
though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it
some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man. Human
nature is the same in all reasonable creatures; and whatever falls
in with it will meet with admirers amongst readers of all qualities
and conditions. Moliere, as we are told by Monsieur Boileau, used
to read all his comedies to an old woman who was his housekeeper as
she sat with him at her work by the chimney-corner, and could
foretell the success of his play in the theatre from the reception
it met at his fireside; for he tells us the audience always followed
the old woman, and never failed to laugh in the same place.

I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent
perfection of simplicity of thought, above that which I call the
Gothic manner in writing, than this, that the first pleases all
kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to
themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors and
writers of epigram. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the
language of their poems is understood, will please a reader of plain
common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an epigram of
Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the contrary, an ordinary song
or ballad that is the delight of the common people cannot fail to