name Bohemia. The original Grub Street, it is said, first
became associated. with authorship during the increase
of pamphlet literature, produced. by the civil wars. Fox,
the martyrologist, was one of its original inhabitants.
Another of its heroes was a certain Mr. Welby, of whom
the sole record is, that he "lived there forty years without
being seen of any." In fact, it was a region of holes and
corners, calculated. to illustrate that great advantage of
London life, which a friend of Boswell's described by say-
ing, that a man could there be always "close to his bur-
row." The "burrow" which received the luckless wight,
was indeed no pleasant refuge. Since poor Green, in the
earliest generation of dramatists, bought his "groat's worth
of wit with a million of repentance," too many of his
brethren had trodden the path which led to hopeless
misery or death in a tavern brawl. The history of men
who had to support themselves by their pens, is a record
of almost universal gloom. The names of Spenser, of
Butler, and of Otway, are enough to remind us that even
warm contemporary recognition was not enough to raise
an author above the fear of dying in want of necessaries.
The two great dictators of literature, Ben Jonson in the
earlier and Dryden in the later part of the century, only
kept their heads above water by help of the laureate's pit-
tance, though reckless imprudence, encouraged by the
precarious life, was the cause of much of their sufferings.
Patronage gave but a fitful resource, and the author could
hope at most but an occasional crust, flung to him from
better provided tables.

In the happy days of Queen Anne, it is true, there had
been a gleam of prosperity. Many authors, Addison,
Congreve, Swift, and others of less name, had won by
their pens not only temporary profits but permanent

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