British men of letters took this road tentatively at first, later with confidence. They were sped on by sympathetic aristocrats and an elite of responsible publishers like Strahan and Andrew Millar: “I respect iMillar, Sir,” Samuel Johnson said, “he has raised the price of literature.”^ It had been customary to solicit the financial support of wealthy noblemen through cringing dedications; even Dryden had not been able to escape servility. But early in the eighteenth century Alexander Pope pointedly dedicated his translation of the Iliad to a fellow-writer, Congreve, a mere commoner, and remarked (it has often been repeated) that he liked “liberty without a coach.” So, evidently, did David Hume; when he was a young man, he laid