ht
politics, might recommend them to such men as Halifax or Somers. The
political power of the press was meanwhile rapidly developing. Harley,
Lord Oxford, was one of the first to appreciate its importance. He
employed Defoe and other humble writers who belonged to Grub
Street--that is, to professional journalism in its infancy--as well as
Swift, whose pamphlets struck the heaviest blow at the Whigs in the last
years of that period. Swift's first writings, we may notice, were not a
help but the main hindrance to his preferment. The patronage of
literature was thus in great part political in its character. It
represents the first scheme by which the new class of parliamentary
statesmen recruited their party from the rising talent, or rewarded men
for active or effective service. The speedy decay of the system followed
for obvious reasons. As party government became organised, the patronage
was used in a different spirit. Offices had to be given to gratify
members of parliament and their constituents, not to scholars who could
write odes on victories or epistles to secretaries of state. It was the
machinery for controlling votes. Meanwhile we need only notice that the
patronage of authors did not mean the patronage of learned divines or
historians, but merely the patronage of men who could use their pens in
political warfare, or at most of men who produced the kind of literary
work appreciated in good society.

The 'town' was the environment of the wits who produced the literature
generally called after Queen Anne. We may call it the literary organ of
the society. It was the society of London, or of the region served by
the new penny-post, which included such remote villages as Paddington
and Brompton. The city was large enough, as Addison observes, to include
numerous 'nations,' each of them meeting at the various coffee-houses.
The clubs at which the politicians and authors met each other
represented the critical tribunals, when no such things as literary
journals existed. It was at these that judgment was passed upon the last
new poem or pamphlet, and the writer sought for their good opinion as he
now desires a favourable review. The tribunal included the rewarders as
well as the judges of merit; and there was plenty of temptation to
stimulate their generosity by flattery. Still the relation means a great
improvement on the preceding state of things. The aristocrat was no
doubt conscious of his inherent dignity, but he