of these tracts. Partridge did not long survive the resuscitation of his
Almanac. What had been fiction became fact on June 24th, 1715, and his
virtues and accomplishments, delineated by a hand more friendly than
Swift's, were long decipherable, in most respectable Latin, on his tomb
in Mortlake Churchyard.

The Partridge hoax has left a permanent trace in our classical
literature. When, in the spring of 1709, Steele was about to start the
_Tatler_, he thought he could best secure the ear of the public by
adopting the name with which Englishmen were then as familiar as a
century and a half afterwards they became with the name of Pickwick. It
was under the title of the _Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff_ that the
essays which initiated the most attractive and popular form of our
periodical literature appeared.

The next tract, Gay's _Present State of Wit_, takes up the history of our
popular literature during the period which immediately succeeded the
discomfiture of poor Partridge. Its author, John Gay, who is, as we need
scarcely add, one of the most eminent of the minor poets of the Augustan
age, was at the time of its appearance almost entirely unknown. Born in
September 1685, at Barnstaple, of a respectable but decayed family, he
had received a good education at the free grammar school of that place.
On leaving school he had been apprenticed to a silk mercer in London. But
he had polite tastes, and employed his leisure time in scribbling verses
and in frequenting with his friend, Aaron Hill, the literary
coffee-houses. In 1708 he published a vapid and stupid parody, suggested
by John Philip's _Splendid Shilling_ and _Cider_, entitled _Wine_. His
next performance was the tract which is here printed, and which is dated
May 3rd, 1711. It is written with skill and sprightliness, and certainly
shows a very exact and extensive acquaintance with the journalistic world