Until rather near the end of the eighteenth century, those who made their living in England by writing were chiefly publishers’ hacks, fellows of the Dunciad sucking their quills in garrets and selling their labor for a crust, for the reading public was too small to support them.  Or they found a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household.  Or frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the Red Tape Office.  But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the reading public and the politicians’ indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account.  Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense.  To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough.  The greater public outside could be ignored.  This attitude changed with the coming of the French Revolution.  Here was a new force unrealized before—­that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real grievance, could, when it liked, take a club and go after what it wanted.  For the first time in many years in England—­such were the whiffs of liberty across the Channel—­the power of an unrepresented public came to be known.  It was not that the English crowd had as yet taken the club in its hands, but there were new thoughts abroad in the world, and there was the possibility to be regarded.  To influence this larger public, therefore, men who could write came little by little into a larger demand.  And as writers were comparatively scarce, all kinds—­whether they wrote poems or prose—­were pressed into service.  It is significant, too, that it was in the decades subjected to the first influence of the French Revolution that the English daily paper took its start as an agent to influence public opinion.

It was therefore rather more than one hundred years ago that writers came to a better prosperity.  They came out of their garrets, took rooms on the second floor, polished their brasses and became Persons.  I can fancy that a writer after spending a morning in the composition of a political article on the whisper of a Cabinet Minister, wrote a sonnet after lunch, and a book review before dinner.  Let us see in what mood they took their advancement!  Let us examine their temper—­but in book reviewing only, for that alone concerns us!  In doing this, we have the advantage of knowing the final estimate of the books they judged.  Like the witch, we have looked into the seeds of time and we know “which grain will grow and which will not.”