ture was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encouragement, by a vast system of bounties and premiums. There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honours of the state. The chiefs of both the great parties into which the kingdom was divided patronised literature with emulous munificence. But soon after the accession of the House of Hanover a change took place. Walpole scarcely ever befriended a man of genius, and the opposition were not able to give anything more than praise. The patronage of the public did not yet furnish the means of comfortable subsistence. Hence ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunginghouses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well. might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar. among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub-street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glasshouse in December, to die in an hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty

years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in parliament, and would have been entrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle-street or in Paternoster-row.

As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, assuredly, has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe-lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in goldlaced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge Island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste; they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable.

They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilised communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken into the offices of social man than the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered to their necessities. To assist them was impossible; and the most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving relief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in strange freaks, and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquaintance for twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were forthwith turned into taverns. All order was destroyed; all business was suspended. The most good-natured host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning.

A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had been raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in his youth, both the great political parties had extended to his Homer. Young had received the only pension

ever bestowed, to the best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets who attached themselves to the opposition, Thomson in particular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe suffering, the means of subsistence from their political friends. Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for subsistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson, were certainly four of the most distinguished persons that England produced during the eighteenth century. It is well known that they were all four arrested for debt."

Of Oliver Goldsmith, one of the most famous and most reckless of writers of this period, we give an illustration to accompany our remarks. Not merely was he careless in his life; but even in his talk he seemed a fool. "He talked like poor Poll," it was said. But when he took his pen in his hand all was changed, and it had to be confessed that he "wrote like an angel."

Times have indeed changed in the Victorian era. In our own day the best writers earn what would then have been considered fabulous sums.

Grub-street has vanished with the Georgian era. The "curious stranger" will search the directory in vain for it. If he be curious about such matters, however, let him repair to Milton-street, Fore-street, E.C., for such is now the name of this once famous locality.

ENN AND

HIS COLONY.

ENN, although his character has often been attacked, must be considered by all unprejudiced reasoners to have been an exceptionally nobleminded man. We propose here to give a short account of his exertions in America. His first engagement in the plantation of America was in 1676: in consequence of being chosen arbitrator in a dispute between two Quakers, who had become jointly concerned in the colony of New Jersey. Though nowise concerned, by interest or proprietorship (until 1681, when he purchased a share in the eastern district in New Jersey), he took great pains in this business; he arranged terms, upon which colonists were invited to settle; and he drew up the outline of a simple constitution, reserving to them the right of making all laws by their representatives, of security from imprisonment or fine except by the consent of twelve men of the neighbourhood, and perfect freedom in the exercise of their religion: "regulations," he said, "by an adherence to which they could never be brought into bondage but by their own consent." In these transactions he had the opportunity of contemplating the glorious results which might be hoped from a colony founded with no interested views, but on the principles of universal peace, toleration, and liberty; and he felt an earnest desire to be the instrument in so great a work, more especially as it held out a prospect of deliverance to his persecuted Quaker brethren in England, by giving them a free and happy asylum in a foreign land. Cir

The

cumstances favoured his wish. Crown was indebted to him £16,000, for money advanced by his father for the naval service. It was not unusual to grant not only the property, but the right of government, in large districts in the uncleared part of America, as in the case of New York and New Jersey respectively to the Duke of York and Lord Baltimore; and though it was hopeless to extract money from Charles, yet he was ready enough, in acquittal of this debt, to bestow on Penn, whom he loved, a tract of land from which he himself could never expect any pecuniary return. Accordingly, Penn received, in 1681, a grant by charter of that extensive province named Pennsylvania by Charles himself, in honour of his father; by which charter he was invested with the property in the soil, with the power of ruling and governing the same; of enacting laws, with the advice and approbation of the freemen of the territory assembled for the raising of money for public uses; of appointing judges and administering justice. He immediately drew up and published "Some Account of Pennsylvania, etc."; and then "Certain Conditions or Concessions, etc.," to be agreed on between himself and those who wished to purchase land in the province. These having been accepted by many persons, he proceeded to frame the rough sketch of a constitution, on which he proposed to base the charter of the province. The price fixed on land was forty shillings, with the annual quit-rent of one shilling, for one hundred acres; and it was provided that no one should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian without incurring the same penalty as if the offence had been committed against a fellow planter; that