They are nearly as forcible as Dryden's political and
controversial prefaces, which are pamphlets themselves in their way,
and they excel them in knowledge of affairs, in urbanity, in
adaptation to the special purpose. In all these points they resemble
more than anything else the pamphlets of Paul Louis Courier, and
there can be no higher praise than this.
No age in English history was more fertile in pamphlets than the
reigns of William and of Anne. Some men of real distinction
occasionally contributed to them, and others (such as Ferguson and
Maynwaring) obtained such literary notoriety as they possess by their
means. The total volume of the kind produced during the quarter of a
century between the Revolution and the accession of George the First
would probably fill a considerable library. But the examples which
really deserve exhumation are very few, and I doubt whether any can
pretend to vie with the masterpieces of Defoe and Swift. Both these
great writers were accomplished practitioners in the art, and the
characteristics of both lent themselves with peculiar yet strangely
different readiness to the work.
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