Burke was thirty years old before he approached even the threshold of
the arena in which he was destined to be so great a figure. He had
made a mark in literature, and it was to literature rather than to
public affairs that his ambition turned. He had naturally become
acquainted with the brother-authors who haunted the coffee-houses in
Fleet Street; and Burke, along with his father-in-law, Dr. Nugent,
was one of the first members of the immortal club where Johnson did
conversational battle with all comers. We shall, in a later chapter,
have something to say on Burke's friendships with the followers of
his first profession, and on the active sympathy with which he helped
those who were struggling into authorship. Meanwhile, the fragments
that remain of his own attempts in this direction are no considerable
contributions. His _Hints for an Essay on the Drama_ are jejune and
infertile, when compared with the vigorous and original thought of
Diderot and Lessing at about the same period. He wrote an Account of
the European Settlements in America. His _Abridgment of the History of
England_ comes down no further than to the reign of John. A much more
important undertaking than his history of the past was his design for
a yearly chronicle of the present. The _Annual Register_ began to
appear in 1759. Dodsley, the bookseller of Pall Mall, provided the
sinews of war, and he gave Burke a hundred pounds a year for his
survey of the great events which were then passing in the world. The
scheme was probably born of the circumstances of the hour, for this
was the climax of the Seven Years' War. The clang of arms was heard in
every quarter of the globe, and in East and West new lands were being
brought under the dominion of Great Britain.

In this exciting crisis of national affairs, Burke began to be
acquainted with public men. In 1759 he was introduced, probably by