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 archbishop will act it very well.  You may bid him be as short as you will.  It will do the queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don’t pretend to be as great fools as they are."[93] This low state of religious sentiment was brought about by much the same causes which, at a later time, substituted a moral and liberal for the old dogmatic Christianity.  The dislike of theological controversy left by the civil wars was aided by the Act of Toleration in giving the nation a religious peace, and in diverting human energy from religious speculations or emotions.  The rational character of the national intellect was inclined to what was material and tangible, to physical study or industry.  The general desire to submit all questions to the test of a critical reason, induced the clergy to apply the same test to theology.  But while these tendencies, in their final result, were on the whole beneficial to religion, their temporary