But if the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales had consisted only of duchesses, young noblemen and beautiful women of fashion, it would have been much like any other court. What gave Leicester House its peculiar distinction was the presence of poets, writers and learned men, who were drawn thither by the Princess. The Prince, like his father, had a great contempt for men of letters, and for literature generally. He did not love “boetry,” as he called it, and once when Lord Hervey was composing a poem he said to him testily that such an occupation was unbecoming to a man of his rank; he should leave the scribbling of verses to “little Mr. Pope”. But Caroline thought differently, and she endeavoured at Leicester House to set up a court modelled upon the one she had known in her early years at Lützenburg, and she held, as far as she could, the same réunions. Learned and scientific men were more familiar figures at courts in those days than now. Louis the Fourteenth had set the fashion among royal personages for appreciating “learned incense”. In the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century the more famous writers were to be met as a matter of course in the highest social and political circles, and the position of men of letters never stood higher in England than during the reign of Anne. Tories and Whigs vied with one another in winning over to their side the ablest writers of the day. It is not contended that this advanced the higher interests of literature, but an age which produced Pope, Addison, Swift, Congreve, Defoe, Gay and Steele (to name only a few) cannot be considered barren. There was an intimate link between diplomacy and letters. Matthew Prior, in return for scribbling some indifferent verses, rose to become ambassador at Paris; Addison, who undertook a good deal of diplomatic work, became eventually Secretary of State; Gay had dabbled in diplomacy; and Steele, from being a trooper in the Guards, was advanced to a lucrative position in the Civil Service. Many men of letters, at the advice of their patrons, took Holy Orders, and the Church was regarded as a convenient way of providing for their necessities; Swift was an instance of this, and many another besides. The press, as we understand it to-day, was then only in its infancy; but in the patronage extended by statesmen and noble lords who wished to play the part of Mæcenas to pamphleteers, playwrights, poetasters and so forth, we see the first recognition of what is now known as the power of the press. When George the First ascended the throne, nearly all the cleverest pamphleteers were Tories or Jacobites, and the King was indifferent whether they were so or not. But Caroline saw the necessity of employing some able writers on the side of the dynasty, and so counteracting the Jacobite publications. In pursuance of this policy, after the Jacobite rising, Addison was employed by the