of human life, and
it was to use as far as possible the language actually used by plain
men in speaking to each other. Both these demands had to submit to
modification; but both profoundly influenced the subsequent development
of English poetry: and both were, as Wordsworth knew, opposed to the
teaching and practice of Johnson. The return to simplicity involved a
preference for such poetry as Percy's Ballads which Johnson had
ridiculed, and a distaste for the poetry of the town which Johnson
admired. And both in the famous _Preface_ and in the _Appendix_ and
_Essay Supplementary_ added to it Wordsworth refers to Johnson and
seems to recognize him as the most dangerous authority with whom he has
to contend. In that contest Wordsworth was on the whole decidedly
victorious; and to that extent again Johnson was discredited. Nor was
it the language of poetry only which was affected. Under the
influences which Wordsworth, Scott and Byron set {179} moving, the old
colourless, abstract, professedly classical language was supplanted
even in prose. The new prose was enriched by a hundred qualities of
music, colour and suggestion, at which the prose of the eighteenth
century had never aimed. Those who had enjoyed the easy grace of Lamb,
the swift lightnings of Carlyle, the eloquence, playfulness and
tenderness of Ruskin, the lucid suavity of Newman, were sure to
conclude in their haste that the prose of Johnson was a thing pompous,
empty and dull.

But against all these indictments a reaction has now begun. Like other
reactions its first utterances are apt to be extravagant. In
literature as in politics those who at last take their courage in their
hands and defy the established opinion are obliged to shout to keep
their spirits up. So Sir Walter Raleigh, whose _Six Essays_ at once
put the position of Johnson on a new footing, has allowed himself to
say of some sentences from _The Rambler_ that they are "prose which
will not suffer much by comparison with the best in the language."
But, apart from these inevitable over-statements of defiance, what he
has said about Johnson is unanswered and unanswerable. And at last it
is able to fall upon a soil prepared for it. In all directions the
Gothic movement, which was so inevitably {180} unfavourable to the fame
of Johnson, has crumbled and collapsed. A counter movement seems to be
in progress. The classical revival in architecture is extending into
other fields and thoug