, outside
the exciting and noisy London world in which the poor invalid had been
jostled. Addison soared into the loftier regions of politics and
married his Countess, and ceased to preside at Buttons'. Steele held on
for a time, but in declining prosperity and diminished literary
activity, till his retirement to Wales. No one appeared to fill the gaps
thus made in the ranks either of the Whigs' or the Tories' section of
literature. The change was obviously connected with the systematic
development of the party system. Swift bitterly denounced Walpole for
his indifference to literature! 'Bob the poet's foe' was guided by other
motives in disposing of his patronage. Places in the Customs were no
longer to be given to writers of plays or complimentary epistles in
verse, or even to promising young politicians, but to members of
parliament or the constituents in whom they were interested. The
placemen, who were denounced as one of the great abuses of the time,
were rewarded for voting power not for literary merit. The patron,
therefore, was disappearing; though one or two authors, such as Congreve
and Gay, might be still petted by the nobility; and Young somehow got a
pension out of Walpole, probably through Bubb Dodington, the very
questionable parson who still wished to be a Maecenas. Meanwhile there
was a compensation. The bookseller was beginning to supersede the
patron. Tonson and Lintot were making fortunes; the first Longman was
founding the famous firm which still flourishes; and the career of the
disreputable and piratical Curll shows that at least the demand for
miscellaneous literature was growing. The anecdotes of the misery of
authors, of the translators who lay three in a bed in Curll's garret, of
Samuel Boyse, who had reduced his clothes to a single blanket, and
Savage sleeping on a bulk, are sometimes adduced to show that literature
was then specially depressed. But there never was a time when authors of
dissolute habits were not on the brink of starvation, and the
authorities of the Literary Fund could give us contemporary
illustrations of the fact. The real inference is, I take it, that the
demand which was springing up attracted a great many impecunious
persons, who became the drudges of the rising class of booksellers. No
doubt the journalist was often in a degrading position. The press was
active in all political struggles. The great men, Walpole, Bolingbroke,
and Pulteney, wrote pamphlets or contributed