When you meet a dog trotting along the road, you naturally expect that
his master is not far off. In the same way, where you find a poet, still
more a poetaster, there you may feel certain you will light upon a
patron. The Kit-kat was made up of Mæcenases and their humble servants;
and in the same club with Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the minor
poets, we are not at all surprised to find Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke
of Somerset, Halifax, and Somers.

Halifax was, _par excellence_, the Mæcenas of his day, and Pope
described him admirably in the character of Bufo:--

'Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill,
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill;
_Fed with soft dedication_ all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.'

The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, Smith, and
a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on a higher pinnacle;
and in return the powerful minister was not forgetful of the douceur
which well-tuned verses were accustomed to receive. He himself had tried
to be a poet, and in 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the
Kit-kat. His lines to a Dowager Countess of ----, are good enough to
make us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a specimen:--

'Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style;
Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle!
Nature did ne'er so equally divide
A female heart 'twixt piety and pride:
Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day,