=2. The Clubs and Coffee-houses.= Politicians are necessarily gregarious, and the increased activity in politics led to a great addition to the number of political clubs and coffee-houses, which became the _foci_ of fashionable and public life. In the first number of _The Tatler_ Steele announces as a matter of course that the activities of his new journal will be based upon the clubs. “All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure and Entertainment shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Will’s Coffee-House; Learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James’ Coffee-House.” These coffee-houses became the “clearing-houses” for literary business, and from them branched purely literary associations such as the famous Scriblerus and Kit-Cat Clubs, those haunts of the fashionable writers which figure so prominently in the writings of the period. =3. Periodical Writing.= The development of the periodical will be noticed elsewhere (see pp. 267–8). It is sufficient here to point out that the struggle for political mastery led both factions to issue a swarm of _Examiners_, _Guardians_, _Freeholders_, and similar publications. These journals were run by a band of vigorous and facile prose-writers, who in their differing degrees of excellence represent almost a new type in our literature. =4. The New Publishing Houses.= The interest in politics, and probably the decline in the drama, caused a great increase in the size of the reading public. In its turn this aroused the activities of a number of men who became the forerunners of the modern publishing houses. Such were Edmund Curll (1675–1747), Jacob Tonson (1656–1736), and John Dunton (1659–1733). These men employed numbers of needy writers, who produced the translations, adaptations, and other popular works of the time. It is unwise to judge a publisher by what authors say of him, but the universal condemnation leveled against Curll and his kind compels the belief that they were a breed of scoundrels who preyed upon authors and public, and (what is more remarkable) upon one another. The miserable race of hack-writers--venomously attacked by Pope in _The Dunciad_--who existed on the scanty bounty of such men lived largely in a thoroughfare near Moorfields called Grub Street, the name of which has become synonymous with literary drudgery.