Before Allston, there had been ballad-writers who dealt with themes that are now familiar to readers of Wordsworth and Coleridge. In particular, the motive of the young and innocent girl who has been betrayed, and through her betrayal crazed, was a notable favourite. Lucius M. Sargent’s “Hubert and Ellen” (1812) is described as a poor imitation of Wordsworth, taking its cue, like Joseph Hutton’s ballad on Crazy Jane (“Leisure Hours,” 1812) and Henry C. Knight’s “Poor Margaret Dwy,” from one study or another of mental derangement in “Lyrical Ballads” or the “Poems” (by Wordsworth) of 1807. Doubtless a large number of parallels could be found in American literature to Wordsworth’s “Ruth,” and to his sympathetic treatment of other lowly types of humanity. In like manner, just as the same English poet fraternises with the robin and the butterfly, and Coleridge hails a young ass as his “brother,” and as Shelley in 1815 claims kindred with “bright bird, insect, or gentle beast,” so Knight addresses “The Caterpillar” (1821) as “cousin reptile.” The Puritans had averred, Most sins, and all sinners, are equal; Rousseau and the French Revolutionists went further, declaring, All men are equal; and now, responsive to the doctrine of Coleridge and his Pantisocrats, American poets were implying, All creatures are equal. Thus thrives the principle of democracy and fraternity. Themistocles is at length no better than the boorish islander, and the Apostles have lost their superiority to sparrows. “Cousin reptile,” of course, is an extreme case. On its saner side, the new impulse set in motion several writers of not a little promise. Such was John Neal (1793-1876), whose poem “The Battle of Niagara” (1818) reflects Wordsworthianism at second hand through Shelley and Keats, with a touch of Byronic grandiloquence and tameness, but with a touch, too, of aboriginal nature, however crude. The native powers of Neal were later dissipated in journalism, novel-writing, and the like.