was completed a great school of novelists was rising into
fame; and the years which elapsed between the death of Pope in 1744 and
that of George the Second in 1760 were filled with the masterpieces of
Richardson, Smollett, and Fielding. Their appearance was but a prelude
of a great literary revival which marked the closing years of the
eighteenth century. But the instant popularity of "Clarissa" and "Tom
Jones" showed the work of intellectual preparation which had been going
on through Walpole's days in the people at large; and it was inevitable
that such a quickening of intelligence should tell on English politics.
The very vulgarization of letters indeed, the broadsheets and pamphlets
and catchpenny magazines of Grub Street, were doing for the mass of the
people a work which greater writers could hardly have done. Above all
the rapid extension of journalism had begun to give opinion a new
information and consistency. In spite of the removal of the censorship
after the Revolution the press had been slow to attain any political
influence. Under the first two Georges its progress had been hindered by
the absence of great topics for discussion, the worthlessness of the
writers, and above all the lethargy of the time. But at the moment of
George the Third's accession the impulse which Pitt had given to the
national spirit, and the rise of a keener interest in politics, was fast
raising the press into an intellectual and political power. Not only was
the number of London newspapers fast increasing, but journals were being
established in almost every considerable town.

[Sidenote: Return of the Tories.]

With impulses such as these telling every day on it more powerfully,
roused as it was too into action by the larger policy of Pitt, and
emboldened at once by the sense of growing wealth and of military
triumph, it is clear that the nation must soon have passed from its old
inaction to claim its part in the direction of public affairs. The very
position of Pitt, forced as he had been into office by the sheer force
of opinion in the teeth of party obstacles, showed the rise of a new
energy in the mass of the people. It showed that a king who enlisted the
national sentiment on his side would have little trouble in dealing with
the Whigs. George indeed had no thought of such a policy. His aim was
not to control the Parliament by the force of national opinion, but
simply to win over the Parliament to his side, and through it to g