hn Gay, John
Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little
pickings out of the public purse.(57) The wits of whose names we shall
treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the king's
coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming
round for them.

They all began at school or college in the regular way, producing
panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public
events, battles, sieges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of
Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to
the fashion of the time in France and in England. "Aid us Mars, Bacchus,
Apollo," cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough.
"_Accourez, chastes nymphes de Parnasse_," says Boileau, celebrating the
Grand Monarch. "_Des sons que ma lyre enfante_, marquez-en bien la
cadence, _et vous, vents, faites silence! je vais parler de __ Louis!_"
Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now
of this scholastic fashion. The Olympians are left quite undisturbed in
their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a
country newspaper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the
birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman? In the past
century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves
at these queer compositions; and some got fame, and some gained patrons
and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what
they were pleased to call their muses.

William Congreve's(58) Pindaric Odes are still to be found in _Johnson's
Poets_, that now unfrequented poets' corner, in which so many forgotten
bigwigs have a niche--but though he was also voted to be one of the
greatest tragic poets of any day, it was Congreve's wit and humour which
first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded, that his
first play, the _Old Bachelor_, brought our author to the notice of that
great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Halifax, who being
desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity,
instantly made him one of the Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches,
bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe-office, and likewise a post
in the Custom-house of the value of 600_l._

A commissionership of hackney-coaches--a post in the Custom-house--a place
in the Pipe-office, and all for writi