KINGS CHARLES, JAMES, AND WILLIAM, 261 SOME LITERARY FELLOWS, 268 A PAMPHLETEER, 272 OF QUEEN ANNE, 277 AN IRISH DRAGOON, 280 STEELE’S LITERARY QUALITIES, 285 JOSEPH ADDISON, 288 SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY, 291 CHAPTER VIII. ROYAL GRIEFS AND FRIENDS, 301 BUILDERS AND STREETS, 306 JOHN GAY, 308 JONATHAN SWIFT, 312 SWIFT’S POLITICS, 324 HIS LONDON JOURNAL, 328 IN IRELAND AGAIN, 333 _ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._ CHAPTER I. We take outlook to-day from the threshold of the seventeenth century. Elizabeth is dead (1603), but not England. The powers it had grown to under her quickening offices are all alive. The great Spanish dragon has its teeth drawn; Cadiz has been despoiled, and huge galleons, gold-laden, have come trailing into Devon ports. France is courteously friendly. Holland and England are in leash, as against the fainter-growing blasts of Popedom. In Ireland, Tyrone has been whipped into bloody quietude. A syndicate of London merchants, dealing in pepper and spices, has made the beginnings of that East-Indian empire which gives to the present British sovereign her proudest title. London is growing apace in riches and in houses; though her shipping counts for less than the Dutch shipping, great cargoes come and go through the Thames--spices from the East, velvets and glass from the Mediterranean, cloths from the Baltic. Cheapside is glittering with the great array of goldsmiths’ shops four stories high, and new painted and new gilded (in 1594) by Sir Richard Martin, Mayor. The dudes of that time walk and “publish” their silken suits there, and thence through all the lanes leading to Paul’s Walk--which is, effectively, the aisle of the great church. There are noblemen who have tall houses in the city and others who have built along the Strand, with fine grounds reaching to the river and looking out upon the woods which skirt the bear-gardens of Bankside in Southwark. The river is all alive with boats--wherries, barges, skiffs. There are no hackney carriages as yet for hire; but rich folks here and there rumble along the highways in heavy Flemish coaches.