an of
genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
for the political party they were pledged to support.

England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.

The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
Coffee-house; and at a l