man, too, as I have
said, could take his chance in political writing, and occasionally
condescend to show his skill at an essay of the _Spectator_ model. But a
certain contempt for the professional writer is becoming characteristic,
even of men like Horace Walpole, who have a real taste for literature.
He is inclined to say, as Chesterfield put it in a famous speech, 'We,
my lords, may thank Heaven that we have something better than our brains
to depend upon.' As literature becomes more of a regular profession,
your noble wishes to show his independence of anything like a commercial
pursuit. Walpole can speak politely to men like Gibbon, and even to
Hume, who have some claim to be gentlemen as well as authors; but he
feels that he is condescending even to them, and has nothing but
contemptuous aversion for a Johnson, whose claim to consideration
certainly did not include any special refinement. Johnson and his circle
had still an odour of Grub street, which is only to be kept at a
distance more carefully because it is in a position of comparative
independence. Meanwhile, the author himself holds by the authority of
Addison and Pope. They, he still admits for the most part, represent the
orthodox church; their work is still taken to be the perfection of art,
and the canons which they have handed down have a prestige which makes
any dissenter an object of suspicion. Yet as the audience has really
changed, a certain change also makes itself felt in the substance and
the form of the corresponding literature.

One remarkable book marks the opening of the period. The first part of
Young's _Night Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, and the poem at once acquired
a popularity which lasted at least through the century. Young had been
more or less associated with the Addison and Pope circles, in the later
part of Queen Anne's reign. He had failed to obtain any satisfactory
share of the patronage which came to some of his fellows. He is still a
Wit till he has to take orders for a college living as the old Wits'
circle is decaying. He tried with little success to get something by
attaching himself to some questionable patrons who were induced to carry
on the practice, and the want of due recognition left him to the end of
his life as a man with a grievance. He had tried poetical epistles, and
satires, and tragedies with undeniable success and had shown undeniable
ability. Yet somehow or other he had not, one may say, emerged from the
secon