government by means
of employment or rewards. They were supported also by the public
through the high social consideration which was freely accorded to men
of talent. Literary success was a passport to the houses and the
intimacy of the great. But under the first two Georges and the
administration of Walpole the government was seconded by the public in
its neglect of authors and their works. In those days the circle of
readers was too small to afford remuneration to authorship. Employment
or help from the government was almost a _sine qua non_ for the
production of works which required time and research. While under Anne,
Swift received a deanery, Addison was Secretary of State, Steele a
prominent member of Parliament, and Newton, Locke, Prior, Gay, Rowe,
Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Pope all received direct or indirect
aid from the government, in the reigns of George I and George II,
Steele died in poverty, Savage walked the streets for want of a
lodging, Johnson lived in penury and drudgery. Thomson was deprived of
a small office which formed his sole dependence.[92] This neglect of
authors and of literature was only partially due to an unappreciative
government. It was supported by the indifference of a public in a high
degree material and unintellectual. Conversation in France, said
Chesterfield, "turns at least upon some subject, something of taste,
some point of history, criticism, and even philosophy; which, though
probably not quite so solid as Mr. Locke's, is, however, better and
more becoming rational beings than our frivolous dissertations upon the
weather or upon whist."

In keeping with the unimpassioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the
low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church,
both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper classes of
society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of belief.
Statesman and nobles in the most prominent positions combined professed
irreligion with open profligacy, while the lower classes were left,
through the indolence and selfishness of the clergy, almost without
religious teaching. Montesquieu found that people laughed when religion
was mentioned in London drawing-rooms. Sir Robert Walpole put the
general feeling in his own coarse way. "Pray, madam," said he to the
Princess Emily, when it was suggested that the archbishop should be
called to the death-bed of Queen Caroline, "let this farce be played;
the archbis