No age in English history was more fertile in pamphlets than the
reigns of William and of Anne. Some men of real distinction
occasionally contributed to them, and others (such as Ferguson and
Maynwaring) obtained such literary notoriety as they possess by their
means. The total volume of the kind produced during the quarter of a
century between the Revolution and the accession of George the First
would probably fill a considerable library. But the examples which
really deserve exhumation are very few, and I doubt whether any can
pretend to vie with the masterpieces of Defoe and Swift. Both these
great writers were accomplished practitioners in the art, and the
characteristics of both lent themselves with peculiar yet strangely
different readiness to the work. They addressed, indeed, different
sections of what was even then the electorate. Defoe's unpolished
realism and his exact adaptation of tone, thought, taste, and fancy to
the measure of the common Englishman were what chiefly gave him a
hearing. Swift aimed and flew higher, but also did not miss the lower
mark. No one has ever doubted that Johnson's depreciation of _The
Conduct of the Allies_ was half special perversity (for he was always
unjust to Swift), half mere humorous paradox. For there was much more
of this in the doctor's utterances than his admirers, either in his
own day or since, have always recognised, or have sometimes been
qualified by Providence to recognise. As for the _Drapier's Letters_ I
can never myself admire them enough, and they seem to me to have been
on the whole under-rather than over-valued by posterity.

The 'Great Walpolian Battle' and the attacks on Bute and other
favourite ministers were very fertile in the pamphlet, but already
there were certain signs of alteration in its character. Pulteney and
Walpole's other adversaries had already glimmerings of the newspaper
proper, that is to say, of the continual dropping fire rather than the