So much must be said, because the literary work was being more and more distinctly addressed to the middle class. The literary profession is now taking more of the modern form. Grub Street is rapidly becoming respectable, and its denizens--as Beauclerk said of Johnson when he got his pension--will be able to 'purge and live cleanly like gentlemen.' Johnson's incomparable letter (1755) rejecting Chesterfield's attempt to impose his patronage, is the familiar indication of the change. Johnson had been labouring in the employment of the booksellers, and always, unlike some more querulous authors, declares that they were fair and liberal patrons--though it is true that he had to knock down one of them with a folio. Other writers of less fame can turn an honest penny by providing popular literature of the heavier kind. There is a demand for 'useful information.' There was John Campbell, for example, the 'richest author,' said Johnson, who ever grazed 'the common of literature,' who contributed to the _Modern Universal History_, the _Biographica Britannica_, and wrote the _Lives of the Admirals_ and the _Political Survey of Great Britain_, and innumerable historical and statistical works; and the queer adventurer Sir John Hill, who turned out book after book with marvellous rapidity and impudence, and is said to have really had some knowledge of botany. The industrious drudges and clever charlatans could make a respectable income. Smollett is a superior example, whose 'literary factory,' as it has been said, 'was in full swing' at this period, and who, besides his famous novels, was journalist, historian, and author of all work, and managed to keep himself afloat, though he also contrived to exceed his income and was supported by a number of inferior 'myrmidons' who helped to turn out his hackwork. He describes the author's position in a famous passage in _Humphry Clinker_ (1756). Smollett also started the _Critical Review_ in rivalry to the _Monthly Review_, begun by Griffiths a few years before (1749), and these two were for a long time the only precursors to the _Edinburgh Review_, and marked an advance upon the old _Gentleman's Magazine_. In other words, we have the beginning of a new tribunal or literary Star Chamber. The author has not to inquire what is said of his performances in the coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the presidency of Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or failure will depend. That means again that the readers to whom he is to appeal are mainly the middle class, who are not very highly cultivated, but who have at any rate reached the point of reading their newspaper