A still smaller
one than Walsh was Stepney, who, like Garth, had begun life as a violent
Tory and turned coat when he found his interest lay the other way. He
was well repaid, for from 1692 to 1706 he was sent on no less than eight
diplomatic missions, chiefly to German courts. He owed this preferment
to the good luck of having been a schoolfellow of Charles Montagu,
afterwards Earl of Halifax. He died about 1707, and had as grand a
monument and epitaph in Westminster Abbey as if he had been a Milton or
Dryden.
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 Maecenases 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 Maecenas 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.
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