While learning Latin and studying literature under his cousin Ford around 1726, he also wrote a number of English poems. At Pembroke, some of his work helped to promote his reputation in the academic community, notably a translation of Pope's already Latinate Messiah into Latin verse, prepared as a college exercise at Christmas 1729. This became Johnson's first published piece when it appeared in a miscellany two years later, and it allegedly impressed Pope himself.
Some of Johnson's satirical plays were popular but ridiculed (e.g. by Fielding). In addition to being a playwright, he acted in his plays and was highly regarded in Cheshire as a wit, comedian, and dancing-master. He was best known for his performance of Lord Flame, which persisted as his nickname. The DNB says he may be the SJ who was imprisoned for debt in the Fleet prison in 1728. Much of his life esp. early on remains unknown.
Johnson was a playwright who made his first success with his comedy The Wife's Relief, or, The Husband's Cure, featuring Colly Cibber. Johnson's best and most successful comedy was The Country Lasses which held the stage for nearly a century. Most of his plays were performed at Drury Lane. He had somewhat of a rivalry with Pope and was denounced in The Dunciad. He was responsive to shifts in theatrical taste and realized that his success depended much on the approval of female theatregoers.
While at university, Jenyns excelled at writing amatory and satiric verse in the post-Restoration style. In 1730 he produced a manuscript volume of songs and love poems dedicated to Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, a large portion of which was published in Dodsleys' collection. This led to his recognition as a wit and satirist. He published a few collections and continued to write occasional verse and jeux d'esprit, though he shifted his focus to essays on social, political, religious, and economic subjects. His Free Inquiry was ridiculed by Samuel Johnson.
Jeffreys seems to be a pretty eclectic writer, publishing plays (of varying success), verse (some of which published in GM), an oratorio, extempore epigrams, and translations from Latin and French. He was a close friend of Duncombe's, contributed versions of several of Horace's odes to Duncombe's translation of Horace, and was the dedicatee of at least one of Duncombe's translated versions. According to his obituarist, Jeffreys passed most of his life at leisure in the houses of his relations, the dukes of Chandos.
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My main impression of Pilkington is one of personal animus for his treatment of his wife, but abstracted from this his early career is that of a conventional Walpolian-careerist priest-poet, writing amatory verse to his future wife and birthday odes for George II. It is interesting that his publishing career has a very long hiatus from 1734 to 1770, when Pilkington moves into a completely different realm by writing an extensive biographical dictionary of painters.
Hinchliffe was a (minor?) bookseller who also published some of his own verse. In 1718 he published his collection of imitations and translations from Latin, pastorals, complimentary poems, etc. When he died, he left a translation of the first nine books of Fénelon's Télémaque in MS form.
In addition to his job as a public servant, Hill was a popular Latin poet, thanks to a single Latin poem, Nundinae Sturbrigienses, which secured his reputation. He published this and other verses in collections by Curll.
The DNB cites on critic who describes Hill as ‘the cultural glue that holds this literary period together’. Hill was a man of letters and entrepreneur with numerous business schemes, some of which proved costly. In the 1720s, he was an important patron and promoter of other writers. In some of his works, he petitioned the government and members of the royal family for public support of the arts. He wrote plays, poems, essays, and periodicals himself. He constantly tried to be involved in the theatre.