But in this, as in a great many other matters of literature, morals, and taste, Johnson did not prove himself an infallible doctor. Goldsmith’s taste, of a genuine _vates_, led him at once to appreciate the simple lyrics of Percy’s collection; and his charming ballad of the Hermit shows how he felt the fresh spirit of them. This excellent poem was written for the Countess of Northumberland. And here we may remark that three of the most attractive modern English poems were composed especially for ladies of high rank—or at their suggestion:—The Lay of the Last Minstrel, at the wish of Lady Anna Scott, daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch; The Sofa, for Lady Hesketh; and Goldsmith’s Ballad for the Countess. Goldsmith certainly took the initiative in the change which was followed and aided by “the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper”—before Wordsworth and Coleridge were heard of. He effected his share of the reform quietly; he wrote no doctrinal prefaces, but went and did what he meant. In teaching and practicing a new mode, he did not make the noise of a reformer. He was rather more favorable to the style of Dryden and Pope than to some of the ballad enthusiasts that talked and wrote in extremes. He reformed without any affectation of apostleship in the matter of words and syllables—was no literary red-republican. Thirty or forty years later Wordsworth cried, _Heureka_! as if something were then first done or found. He announced his theories in long didactic prefaces, laid down doctrines which the genius of Goldsmith and Cowper had already suggested or acted on, and fell into extravagancies which they never dreamed of—exhibiting his muse in a very _sans culotte_ condition; the term (having a masculine reference) is somewhat inapplicable—or should be in a well-regulated state of society—though Mrs. Bloomer is of a contrary opinion. But, Wordsworth, in his love of unadorned Nature, used, in fact, to pull off her _garments_, along with her _ornaments_, as if he thought, with those other honest fanatics, the early Quakers, that a state of nudity was a state of grace! Coleridge and Southey were his disciples, but not such mighty prosers; and Coleridge was a far superior spirit to the two others, in all subtle thought and lofty expression, though some of Wordsworth’s lines are truly fine. As for Southey, we are disposed to justify Lord Byron in his contempt of the man and his poetry. He was of an overweening and splenetic nature; there was nothing in his character to neutralize the impression made by the “Vision of Judgment” and “Don Juan” respecting him. With regard to Oliver Goldsmith, Southey is convicted of a willful injustice to the memory of a more genuine poet and better man than himself. In his Life of Cowper, speaking of the poets that came after Pope, he never once alludes to the author of The Deserted Village! He says “the school of Pope was gradually losing its influence,” in proof