inevitable that it
should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
day it is rarely owing to political causes.

One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won L20,000, kept
the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.

'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
for gambling among all classes.'[9]

One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, a