Maecenas and the Poets

Abstract

D R. JOHNSON in his Dictionary defined a patron as commonly a wretch, who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery, and again in a letter to Lord Chesterfield he wrote: Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? It hardly called for high courage to say these things in Johnson's day; for literature was beginning to dispense with patronage, and the profession of letters, as we understand it, was coming into existence. Pope had won financial independence by his verse, and others were ready to profit by his example. Literature could now make its own way in the world without the help of patrons, and it began to enter the market on its own terms.