Born [Daniel Foe, name changed to Defoe in 1703,] in Cripplegate, 1660 or 1661. To school at Newington Green, 1674 or 1675. Went into business about 1685 [?]. Sided with Monmouth in Rebellion, 1685. Liveryman of City of London, 26 Jan. 1688. With William’s army, 1688. Bankrupt, about 1692 [?]. Accountant to the Commissioners of the Glass Duty, 1695–99. Vigorous partisan of King William. Prosecuted for libelling the Church, 1703. Sentenced to fine, pillory, and imprisonment during Queen’s pleasure, July 1703. Stood in pillory, which populace guarded and wreathed with flowers, July 1703. Imprisoned in Newgate. Released from prison, Aug. 1704. Wrote “The Review,” Feb. 1704 to June 1713. Sent to Edinburgh as secret agent in favour of Union, autumn 1706. Returned to England, spring 1708. On another mission to Scotland, 1708; again in 1712. Active political controversialist and pamphleteer. Prosecuted for libel and imprisoned, 22 April 1713, but pardoned immediately. Found guilty of libelling Lord Annesley, 12 July 1715, but escaped sentence. Wrote periodical “Mercurius Politicus,” 1716–20; edited “Mist’s Journal,” Aug. 1717 to Oct. 1724. Started “Whitehall Evening Post,” 1718, and “Daily Post,” 1719; wrote in “Whitehall Evening Post,” 1718–20; in “Daily Post,” 1719–25; in “Applebee’s Journal,” 1720–26. Died, in Moorfields, 26 April 1731. Buried in Bunhill Fields. Works: A complete list of Defoe’s works, numbering upwards of 250, is given in William Lee’s “Life of Defoe,” 1869. His political, religious, and social Controversial Tracts date from 1694 to 1731. In fiction, some of his best-known works are; “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” 1719; “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” 1719; “Life of Captain Singleton,” 1720; “Moll Flanders,” 1722; “Journal of the Plague Year,” 1722; “Life of John Sheppard,” 1724. Collected Works: “A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of The True Born Englishman, Corrected by Himself” (anon.), 1703; “Novels,” 1810: “Novels and Miscellaneous Works,” 20 vols., 1840–41; “Works,” with memoir by Hazlitt, 1840–43. Life, by W. Lee, 1869.

Personal

	DANIEL DE-FOE
	BORN 1661
	DIED 1731
	AUTHOR OF
	ROBINSON CRUSOE.
	————
	This monument is the result of an appeal,
	in the “Christian World” newspaper,
	to the boys and girls of England, for funds
	to place a suitable memorial upon the grave of
	Daniel De-Foe.
	It represents the united contributions
	of seventeen hundred persons.
	Septr. 1870.

  Whereas Daniel De Foe, alias De Fooe, is charged with writing a scandalous and seditious pamphlet, entitled “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters;” he is a middle-sized, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth; was born in London, and for many years was a hose-factor, in Freeman’s yard, in Cornhill, and now is owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, in Essex. Whoever shall discover the said Daniel De Foe to one of her majesty’s principal secretaries of state, or any of her majesty’s justices of the peace, so as he may be apprehended, shall have a reward of fifty pounds, which her majesty has ordered immediately to be paid on such discovery.

  The person who discovered Daniel Foe—for whom a reward of £50 was promised in the Gazette—sends to me for his money, but does not care to appear himself. If, therefore, your lordship will order the sum to be paid to Mr. Armstrong, I will take care that the person shall have it who discovered the said Foe, and upon whose information he was apprehended.

  One of those authors (the fellow that was pilloried, I have forgot his name) is indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue, that there is no enduring him.

  I remember an Author in the World some years ago, who was generally upbraided with Ignorance, and called an “Illiterate Fellow,” by some of the Beau-Monde of the last Age…. I happened to come into this Person’s Study once, and I found him busy translating a Description of the Course of the River Boristhenes, out of Bleau’s Geography, written in Spanish. Another Time I found him translating some Latin Paragraphs out of Leubinitz Theatri Cometici, being a learned Discourse upon Comets; and that I might see whether it was genuine, I looked on some part of it that he had finished, and found by it that he understood the Latin very well, and had perfectly taken the sense of that difficult Author. In short, I found he understood the Latin, the Spanish, the Italian, and could read the Greek, and I knew before that he spoke French fluently—yet this Man was no Scholar. As to Science, on another Occasion, I heard him dispute (in such a manner as surprised me) upon the motions of the Heavenly Bodies, the Distance, Magnitude, Revolutions, and especially the Influences of the Planets, the Nature and probable Revolutions of Comets, the excellency of the New Philosophy, and the like; but this Man was no Scholar…. This put me upon wondering, ever so long ago, what this strange Thing called a Man of Learning was, and what is it that constitutes a Scholar? For, said I, here’s a man speaks five Languages and reads the Sixth, is a master of Astronomy, Geography, History, and abundance of other useful Knowledge (which I do not mention, that you may not guess at the Man, who is too Modest to desire it), and yet, they say this Man is no Scholar.

  De Foe, a man of talents, but of indifferent character, was the darling of the whig mob, and the contempt of men of genius, because he disgraced himself by every low artifice as a writer. He wrote poetry, and on politics; and was a plagiary.

  That De Foe was a man of powerful intellect and lively imagination, is obvious from his works; that he was possessed of an ardent temper, a resolute courage, and an unwearied spirit of enterprise, is ascertained by the events of his changeful career: and whatever may be thought of that rashness and improvidence by which his progress in life was so frequently impeded, there seems no reason to withhold from him the praise of integrity, sincerity, and unvaried consistency.

  When, or upon what occasion it was, that De Foe made the alteration in his name, by connecting with it the foreign prefix, no where appears. His enemies said, he adopted it because he would not be thought an Englishman; but this notion seems to have no other foundation than the circumstance of his having, in consequence of his zeal for King William, attacked the prejudices of his countrymen, in his well-known satire of “The True-born Englishman.” Oldmixon intimates, that it was not until after he had stood in the pillory, that he changed his name; and Dr. Browne tells us, that he did it at the suggestion of Harley:

“Have I not chang’d by your advice my name.”

But no reliance is to be placed upon the testimony of either of these writers when speaking of De Foe. His motive was, probably, a dislike to his original name, either for its import, or its harshness; or he might have been desirous of restoring it to its Norman origin.

  De Foe has left one descendant,—a Crusoe without a Friday,—in an island to him a desert…. There are men who may be warmed by the reflected glory of their ancestors; but, however elevated and unclouded, it falls feebly on the deathbed of the forsaken…. Daniel De Foe wants no statue, and is far beyond any other want; but, alas, there is one behind who is not so. Let all contribute one penny for one year: poor James De Foe has lived seventy-seven, and his dim eyes cannot look far into another…. It was in the power of Johnson to relieve the granddaughter of Milton; Mr. Editor, it is in yours, to prop up the last scion of De Foe. If Milton wrote the grandest poem and the most energetic and eloquent prose of any writer in any country; if he stood erect before Tyranny, and covered with his buckler not England only, but nascent nations; if our great prophet raised in vision the ladder that rose from earth to heaven, with angels upon every step of it; lower indeed, but not less useful, were the energies of De Foe. He stimulated to enterprise those colonies of England which extend over every sea, and which carry with them, from him, the spirit and the language that will predominate throughout the world. Achilles and Homer will be forgotten before Crusoe and De Foe.

  Could the life of this extraordinary man be represented in a dramatic form, we should behold him in the utmost extremes of social position, each explicable by his course as an author. He might be seen the familiar and admired habitué of a Puritan coffee-house, ardently discussing the latest news from the seat of war, or the local question of the hour; alternating between his hosier’s shop in Cornhill and the Dissenters’ chapel at Surrey; in arms for the Duke of Monmouth; one of the handsomely-mounted escort of volunteers who attended William and Mary from Whitehall to the Mansion house; a bankrupt refugee, talking with Selkirk at the Red Lion Tavern in Bristol; the confidential visitor ensconced in the cabinet of William of Orange; the occupant of a cell in Newgate; an honored guest at Edinburgh, promoting the Union; a secret ambassador to the Continent; the delegate of the people, handing to Harley a mammoth petition; the cynosure of a hundred sympathetic and respectful eyes as he stands in the pillory; in comfortable retirement at Newington; and at last a victim of filial ingratitude, his health wasted in noble intellectual toil, dying at the age of seventy. Such are few of the strong contrasts which the mere external drama of De Foe’s life presents…. While Swift was noting the banquets he attended for the diversion of Stella, Steele dodging bailiffs in his luxurious establishment, Addison, in elegant trim, paying his court to the Countess of Warwick, and Bolingbroke embodying his heartless philosophy in artificial rhetoric, De Foe was wrestling for truth in Cripplegate…. His contemporary authors are known to us through elaborate and loving memoirs; their portraits adorn noble galleries; scholars still emulate their works, and glorify them in reviews; while their monumental effigies are clustered in imposing beauty in the venerable Abbey. Our knowledge of De Foe’s appearance is chiefly derived from an advertisement describing him as a fugitive.

  On my visiting that sacred spot of departed patriotism—the last solemn resting-place of the mortal remains of Daniel De Foe, Bunhill Fields Cemetery—I was struck with the condition of the tombstone, which was broken, and the inscriptions, two or three, obliterated by neglect and the corrosive influence of time and atmosphere. I pointed this gravestone to the sexton:—“That tombstone is broken, and the inscriptions are worn off through the corrosive influence of the atmosphere.” “Yes sir, the lightning did it,” was the reply. Lightning did it—impossible! The tomb of De Foe requiring lightning from heaven to destroy it! This truly is one way of obliterating the memorial of departed greatness; for De Foe was both great and good—yes, he was a good man. What!—the white reeky haze of the sulphurous exhalations of the vale of Sodom and Gomorrah here? Forbid it, Heaven! Daniel De Foe’s last resting-place to be torn up by fire from heaven!—he; one of the first writers on free trade and political economy, and every branch of civil and religious liberty, in all seasons of prosperity or national danger—he; not only statesman but philanthropist—be torn up or disturbed, in his last resting-place, by fire from heaven! Impossible! The tomb is broken of that man, who dared to show to arbitrary powers in church and in state; how to pull their house about their ears—THE SHORTEST WAY.

  He was a great, a truly great liar, perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived. His dishonesty went too deep to be called superficial, yet, if we go deeper still in his rich and strangely mixed nature, we come upon stubborn foundations of conscience…. Shifty as Defoe was, and admirably as he used his genius for circumstantial invention to cover his designs, there was no other statesman of his generation who remained more true to the principles of the Revolution, and to the cause of civil and religious freedom. No other public man saw more clearly what was for the good of the country, or pursued it more steadily…. Defoe cannot be held up as an exemplar of moral conduct, yet if he is judged by the measures that he laboured for and not by the means that he employed, few Englishmen have lived more deserving than he of their country’s gratitude. He may have been self-seeking and vain-glorious, but in his political life self-seeking and vain-glory were elevated by their alliance with higher and wider aims. Defoe was a wonderful mixture of knave and patriot. Sometimes pure knave seems to be uppermost, sometimes pure patriot; but the mixture is so complex, and the energy of the man so restless, that it almost passes human skill to unravel the two elements. The author of “Robinson Crusoe,” is entitled to the benefit of every doubt.

	His fate he has earned,
	His book we have burned,
	That its soul may fly free!
	One and all, come and see
	Great London’s brave show!
	Here’s to Daniel Defoe!
	*        *        *        *        *
	On to the Pillory, ho!
	To punish rogue Daniel Defoe!
	Pelt him, maidens and men!
	For he thinks with a pen,
	And his thought is too free!
	God bless him! See! See!!
	Fill glasses! Fill, ho!
	Here’s to Daniel Defoe!

  The names of Dryden, Addison, Steele, Pope, Johnson conjure up before us the groups of friends which surrounded them, the clubs which they frequented, the disciples who sat admiringly at their feet. But Defoe strides through the press a solitary figure—sternly self-reliant, friendless, uncompanioned—always alone, but always sufficient to himself—less fortunate than the cast-away of his own creation, for he, at least, possessed the affection of a faithful attendant—active with a ceaseless activity, vigorous with a manly strength, but, from first to last, a lonely Man of Letters.

  His connection with Mist forced him to pass himself off as one of the Jacobites, “a generation who, I profess,” as he says in his letter in the State Paper Office of 26 April 1718, “my very soul abhores.” He had, therefore, to abandon his claims to integrity, and submit to pass for a traitor. No man has a right to make such a sacrifice; and if not precisely a spy, Mist and Mist’s friend would hardly draw the distinction.

  His fame is world-wide, yet all that is known of him is one or two of his least productions, and his busy life is ignored in the permanent place in literary history which he has secured. His characteristics, as apart from his conduct, are all those of an honest man; but when that most important part of him is taken into the question, it is difficult to pronounce him anything but a knave. His distinguishing literary quality is a minute truthfulness to fact which makes it almost impossible not to take what he says for gospel; but his constant inspiration is fiction—not to say, in some circumstances, falsehood. He spent his life in the highest endeavors that a man can engage in,—in the work of persuading and influencing his country, chiefly for her good,—and he is remembered by a boys’ book, which is, indeed, the first of boys’ books, yet not much more. Through these contradictions we must push our way before we can reach any clear idea of Defoe, the London tradesman, who, by times, composed almost all the newspapers in London, wrote all the pamphlets, had his finger in every pie, and a share in all that was done, yet brought nothing out of it but a damaged reputation and an unhonored end.

  It would not be fair to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.

  To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To dwell upon it is to take courage, and to praise God for the splendid possibilities of life…. Defoe is always the hero; his career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a kaleidoscope—he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned; it is shine, it is shower, it is couleur de rose, it is Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, Æneas more pious…. Te Deum laudamus, that, as before intimated, is the key-note to Defoe’s life, and no careful student thereof can help being struck with the frequency with which these three words occur. His whole life was one long cry, “We praise Thee, O Lord.” There was nothing of the pessimist in Defoe; and optimism beatified, and that only, could have carried him safely, as it did, through the surges that unceasingly broke upon him…. Defoe was temperate in his habits: unlike so many of his contemporaries, he never drank to excess. He did not smoke or take snuff. He considered smoking as “conducive to intemperate drinking;” and in his younger days, thanks to a fine constitution, he rarely troubled the doctor. The theatre, the ball-room, and the card-table were to him the very devil. In manly sports and athletic exercises he had always found an attraction; nor was there wanting in him the Puritan love of horse-play; and his reputation for swordsmanship was always a protection to him. In that “frenzy of the tongue,” as he puts it, called swearing he could see “neither pleasure nor profit.” He loved a good tale and a merry jest; but “low-prised wit,” indulged in at the expense of decency and morals, his soul abhorred. His talk, when he was excited, was pungent with witticisms; but he was in the habit of repeating favourite quotations with too great frequency.

  Most of the attacks upon Defoe published of late years have been based upon the work which he did for the Whigs under George I. in the guise of a Tory. But whatever view we may take of that matter, there are points which can be urged in Defoe’s favour. There is no reason to think that he wrote in these papers in a manner contrary to his principles; what he undertook, was to prevent others doing so, as far as might be. Neither did he betray the opponents among whom he found himself; on the contrary, he did his utmost to prevent them getting into trouble, or to shield them from punishment. The position was not altogether new to him, for he had been employed on secret services in the previous reign, and he had published ironical pamphlets which had misled members of both parties. It is impossible to believe that Defoe was not himself satisfied that the part he now played was consistent with honour. “No obligation,” he says, “could excuse me in calling evil good, or good evil.” This was written only a year before the compact with Townshend. The morality or immorality of “secret service” must depend upon the nature of the service required; and there can be no doubt that Defoe held that he could perform these duties without injuring his character. It should be remembered that he was in thorough sympathy with the statesmen by whom he was employed; that there was a real danger to the country in the sedition preached by the Jacobite papers which it was his business to render harmless; and that opposition to the Pretender’s cause was a leading principle throughout Defoe’s career. His critics seem to forget that even in these easy days there are few public men against whom charges of inconsistency and departure from the literal truth are not brought, rightly or wrongly; and they do not realise the difficulties against which Defoe had to contend.

  It is not of much use to discuss Defoe’s moral character, and it is sincerely to be hoped that no more revelations concerning it will turn up, inasmuch as each is more damaging than the last, except to those who have succeeded in taking his true measure once for all. It is that of a man who, with no high, fine, or poetical sentiment to save him, shared to the full the partisan enthusiasm of his time, and its belief that all was fair in politics.

Essay upon Projects, 1698

  There was also a book of DeFoe’s called an “Essay on Projects,” and another of Dr. Mather’s, called “Essays to do Good,” which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life.

  It is questionable if there is any other book that has so much benefited mankind in the practical manner as this little essay by the author of “Robinson Crusoe.”

  It displays Defoe’s lively and lucid style in full vigor, and abounds with ingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the unsystematic character of his mind.

  There is more fervid imagination and daring ingenuity than business talent in Defoe’s Essay; if his trading speculations were conducted with equal rashness, it is not difficult to understand their failure. The most notable of them are the schemes of a dictator, rather than of the adviser of a free Government. The essay is chiefly interesting as a monument of Defoe’s marvellous force of mind, and the strange mixture of steady sense with incontinent flightiness. There are ebullient sallies in it which we generally find only in the productions of madmen and charlatans, and yet it abounds in suggestions which statesmen might profitably have set themselves with due adaptations to carry into effect. The “Essay on Projects” might alone be adduced in proof of Defoe’s title to genius.

True-born Englishmen, 1701

  A satire which, if written in doggerel verse, and without the wit or pleasantry of Butler’s “Hudibras,” is a master-piece of good sense and just reflection, and shows a thorough knowledge both of English history and of the English character. It is indeed a complete and unanswerable exposure of the pretence set up to a purer and loftier origin than all the rest of the world, instead of our being a mixed race from all parts of Europe, settling down into one common name and people. Defoe’s satire was so just and true, that it drove the cant, to which it was meant to be an antidote, out of fashion; and it was this piece of service that procured the writer the good opinion and notice of King William. It did not, however, equally recommend him to the public. If it silenced the idle and ill-natured clamours of a party, by telling the plain truth,—that truth was not the more welcome for being plain or effectual.

  He lost a part of his strength, his facility, and his fancy, when he wrote in verse. Yet, even in verse, he made a lucky, nervous hit, now and then; and the best of his efforts was the “True-born Englishman.”

Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 1702

  On the 29th instant, Daniel Foe, alias, De Foe, stood in the pillory before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, as he did yesterday near the Conduit in Cheapside, and this day at Temple Bar; in pursuance of his sentence given against him at the last sessions at the Old Bailey for writing and publishing a seditious libel, entitled the “Shortest Way with the Dissenters.” By which sentence he is also fined 200 marks, to find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years; and to remain in prison till all be performed.

  Perhaps we might be allowed to ask, why De Foe, a thorough dissenter of the old Puritan school, should write a mad fire-and-faggot tract against the whole body of dissenters? De Foe’s principles were not the ordinary sunshine principles of prosperous mace or sword bearing dissent; but were of the true old persecuted Puritan class—a class doomed to conquest or death in the combat…. De Foe’s tract has always been held up for a very witty performance; it might be witty, but I cannot see the wit of it, and I never could see the wit of it; but I can conceive a man of De Foe’s power of discrimination perceiving the exact position of parties in England; and calculating the effect of a pushing the High Church principles to their extreme length.

  The traditional criticism of this remarkable pamphlet is a most curious example of the way in which thoroughly inappropriate descriptions of books pass from mouth to mouth. Every commentator (with the single exception of Mr. Chadwick) has dilated upon its “exquisite irony.” Now, the fact of the matter is, that in “The Shortest Way” there is no irony at all, and, as Defoe’s adversaries acutely remarked, irony would never have been pleaded had not the author got into trouble, when of course it suited him faire flèche de tout bois. The pamphlet is simply an exposition in the plainest and most forcible terms of the extreme “high-flying” position, and every line of it might have been endorsed, and was endorsed, by consistent high-churchmen. The author’s object clearly was by this naked presentation to awaken the dissenters to a sense of their danger, and to startle moderate churchmen by showing them to what end their favourite doctrines necessarily led. For neither of these purposes was irony necessary, and irony, we repeat, there is none. If any lingering doubt from the consensus of authority on the other side remain, let the student read “The Shortest Way” and then turn to Swift’s “Modest Proposal” or his “Reasons against Abolishing the Church of England.” He will soon see the difference.

  A work of high rhetorical art, modeled after the example set by him who imagined the speech of Antony over the dead body of Cæsar. The beginning is calm, gentle, charitable, with a touch of sadness over the fate of those steadfast clergymen who had either to sacrifice their worldly fortunes to their loyalty, or wrong their consciences by accepting the oath to the Revolution Settlement. There is a touch of inevitable yet half-suppressed indignation when the case of the Church in Scotland is casually noticed.

  The reader will observe a curious resemblance between the style of argument in “Killing No Murder”—incitement to the assassination of a man—which was meant to be taken seriously, and that in “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters”—incitement to the assassination of a party—which was meant to be taken as satire.

  Defoe’s immortal satire, “The Shortest Way with Dissenters,” so subtle and restrained as to deceive its victims into the belief that it was written by one of themselves, is a worthy exposure of the narrowness and intolerance which were the curse of High Churchmen; though at the same time it helps one to understand the causes which led to that intolerance, so thoroughly does Defoe present his enemies’ case.

The Review, 1704–13

  The poor “Review” is quite exhausted, and grown so very contemptible that, though he has provoked all his brothers of the quill, none will enter into a controversy with him. The fellow, who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning, is a lively instance of those wits who, as an ingenious author says, will endure but one skimming.

  One of the leading objects of the “Review,” after the discussion of politics, was to correct the vices of the times. Throughout the work, the writer carries on an unsparing warfare against folly and vice, in all their forms and disguises. In forcible terms he inveighs against the fashionable practice of immoderate drinking, the idle propensity to swearing, the little regard that was paid to the marriage vow, and the loose conversation and habits of men in general. In well-pointed satire, he chastises the licentiousness of the stage; and condemns, in strong language, the barbarous practice of duelling. He has also some just remarks upon the rage for gambling speculations, which, in this reign, had risen to a great height. Upon all these subjects, he brings forth his capacious stores of wit and humour to the assistance of grave reasoning, adducing examples occasionally of the flagitious courses he condemns; but with sufficient delicacy to shew that his aim was the reformation, rather than the exposure, of the offender. No man paid a greater regard to those decencies of expression which have so much influence in regulating the intercourses of life; and although few individuals had greater provocation, from the coarse and illiberal writers of the day, yet he rarely suffers his temper to be disturbed, or departs from courtesy of language towards even his bitterest opponents.

  Defoe’s greatest work, greatest undoubtedly, as to its magnitude, and perhaps, in value and importance; yet the least known of his multifarious writings…. When it is remembered, that no other pen was ever employed than that of Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement must be pronounced a great one, even had he written nothing else. If we add that, between the dates of the first and last numbers of the “Review,” he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct works, containing 4727 pages, and perhaps more, not now known, the fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of his capacity for labour…. Only those who have read the “Review” can be thoroughly acquainted with Daniel Defoe.

  It is probable that if the five points of bulk, rapidity of production, variety of matter, originality of design, and excellence of style are taken together, hardly any author can show a work of equal magnitude.

  While Defoe’s “Review,” with its invention of the leading article, its splendid versatility, and its fearless criticism of topics of the day, must be granted an important place in the history of journalism; large reservation must be made when it is claimed that its author anticipated Steele. Few writers more than Defoe elude classification. He occupies a tantalizing position at the threshold of two great developments in prose literature, and it is as difficult to deny that the “Review” led the way to the “Tatler” as to maintain that “Pamela” was not influenced by “Crusoe” or “Roxana.”… It is generally hazardous to appeal against any long-sustained verdict of public literary opinion, but it cannot be admitted that the oblivion into which the “Review” has fallen is a wholly merited one.

Apparition of Mrs. Veal, 1706

  An adventurous bookseller had ventured to print a considerable edition of a work by the Reverend Charles Drelincourt, minister of the Calvinist Church in Paris, and translated by M. D’Assigny, under the title of the “Christian’s Defence against the Fear of Death, with several directions how to prepare ourselves to die well.” But however certain the prospect of death, it is not so agreeable (unfortunately) as to invite the eager contemplation of the public; and Drelincourt’s book, being neglected, lay a dead stock on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency he applied to De Foe to assist him (by dint of such means as were then, as well as now, pretty well understood in the literary world) in rescuing the unfortunate book from the literary death to which general neglect seemed about to consign it. De Foe’s genius and audacity devised a plan which, for assurance and ingenuity, defied even the powers of Mr. Puff in the Critic; for who but himself would have thought of summoning up a ghost from the grave to bear witness in favour of a halting body of divinity? There is a matter-of-fact, businesslike style in the whole account of the transaction, which bespeaks ineffable powers of self-possession…. The effect was most wonderful. “Drelincourt upon Death,” attested by one who could speak from experience, took an unequalled run. The copies had hung on the book-seller’s hands as heavy as a pile of lead bullets. They now traversed the town in every direction, like the same balls discharged from a field-piece. In short, the object of Mrs. Veal’s apparition was perfectly attained.

  No English writer has ever excelled him in his power of painting fictitious events in the colours of truth. His simple and natural style has much to do with this. “The Relation of Mrs. Veal’s Apparition,” prefixed to “Drelincourt on Death,” affords, perhaps, the best specimen of Defoe’s wonderful power of clothing fiction with the garb of truth.

  Never, perhaps, has a story been so misunderstood as this apparition of Mrs. Veal. The idle tradition that it was written to promote the sale of Drelincourt’s work on “The Fear of Death,” has been conclusively disposed of by Mr. Lee, who proves that when “Mrs. Veal” appeared “Drelincourt” was already a popular work in its third edition, and, furthermore, that Mrs. Veal’s recommendation, contrary likewise to tradition, did not have any appreciable effect on the sale of “Drelincourt.” These traditions, which arose from the fact that the printer of “Drelincourt” was permitted to reprint Defoe’s pamphlet in the fourth edition of “Drelincourt,” deceived even so acute a critic as Sir Walter Scott. “Drelincourt,” which long continued popular, was subsequently printed sometimes with and sometimes without “Mrs. Veal.” But there is another erroneous notion concerning “Mrs. Veal” that requires to be dealt with, and that is the assumption that the narrative is a fiction. Whoever will read the story, says Sir Walter Scott, “as told by Defoe himself will agree that, could the thing have happened in reality, so it would have been told.” But the extraordinary thing is that nobody should have inquired whether it was not true, that is to say, whether a lady of Defoe’s acquaintance, to whom he gives the name of Mrs. Bargrave, did not tell him, and in good faith, this story; and that such was certainly the case, no one who reads carefully Defoe’s works on “Magic and Apparitions,” can possibly doubt. Defoe, as we shall show, when dealing with those books, believed firmly in apparitions; he had had stories told him which there was no getting over, and this of Mrs. Bargrave’s was one of them.

  The fact that there is no record of Defoe’s story being contradicted by contemporary writers might have suggested that it was at least based on fact; for enemies were not slow to blame Defoe for saying that “Robinson Crusoe” and other tales were true. It has become the fashion of late to assume that Defoe was romancing when he said that his narratives were true histories, and the more he has asserted it the more critics have laughed at his skill or abused him for the immorality of his devices, according to the way the matter struck them. This scepticism has been extended to matters relating to Defoe’s own life and character, and the late Professor Minto went so far as to say that he was “perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived.” The result of this attitude has been a marked change in the common estimate of Defoe, as shown by the chance notices of him in the newspapers…. But does not the story told in this paper show that we should be at least as likely to arrive at the truth by believing what Defoe says, in the absence of proof to the contrary?

Family Instructor, 1715

  My very good friend. Having, at your request, read over the book, called the “Family Instructor,” I do, upon several accounts, very much approve of the design of it; and wish I could say any thing to recommend it to the perusal of others. The decay of family religion is very visible, and frequently matter of complaint; and, therefore, I doubt not such an attempt as this will be well received by all serious and thoughtful persons among us. The printer has been faulty to a degree that I am afraid will render the reader very uneasy, and I wish the author had thought fit to communicate his papers to you before they had fallen into such hands; but the substance of the book, however, will command regard; and if I may judge for others by myself, will afford some pleasure and entertainment.

  “The Family Instructor” of this author, in which he inculcates weightily his own notions of puritanical demeanour and parental authority, is very curious. It is a strange mixture of narrative and dialogue, fanaticism and nature; but all done with such earnestness, that the sense of its reality never quits us. Nothing, however, can be more harsh and unpleasing than the impression which it leaves. It does injustice both to religion and the world. It represents the innocent pleasures of the latter as deadly sins, and the former as most gloomy, austere, and exclusive. One lady resolves on poisoning her husband, and another determines to go to the play, and the author treats both offences with a severity nearly equal!

Robinson Crusoe, 1719

  The | LIFE | and | Strange Surprizing | ADVENTURES | of | ROBINSON CRUSOE, | Of YORK, Mariner: | Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the | Coast of America, near the Mouth of | the Great River of Oroonoque; | Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, where | in all the Men perished but himself. | With | An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by PYRATES. | Written by Himself. | LONDON. | Printed for W. Taylor at the Ship in Pater-Noster Row. MDCCXIX. |

  If ever the story of any private man’s adventures in the world were worth making public, and were acceptable when published, the Editor on this account thinks this will be so. The wonders of this man’s life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the life of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety. The story is told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application of events to the uses to which wise men always apply them, viz., to the instruction of others by this example, and to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of our circumstances, let them happen how they will. The Editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it; and, however, thinks, because all such things are despatched, that the improvement of it, as well to the diversion as to the instruction of the reader, will be the same. And as such, he thinks, without farther compliment to the world, he does them a great service in the publication.

  The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D—DeF—, of London, Hosier, who has lived above fifty years by himself, in the Kingdoms of North and South Britain. The various Shapes he has appear’d in, and the Discoveries he has made for the Benefit of his Country. In a Dialogue between Him, Robinson Crusoe, and his Man Friday. With Remarks Serious and Comical upon the life of Crusoe. Qui vult decipi, decipiatur. London. Printed for J. Roberts in Warwick Lane.

  We may remember that we have been most of us, when Children, wonderfully pleased with the achievements of Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-Killer, Don Bellianis of Greece, The Seven Champions of Christendom, and such like extraordinary Heroes; and many of us, in our more advanced Age, are little less delighted with such Books as, “The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe;” which seems to have had that uncommon Run upon the Town for some Years past, for no other Reason but that it is a most palpable Lye, from Beginning to End; and I doubt not that the famous Passage of his Swimming to Shore Naked, with his Pockets full of Biscuits, tho’ a most notorious Blunder in the Author, has pass’d for a very good Jest, and been received with abundance of Pleasure by many of his Readers.

  Since we must have books, there is one which, to my mind, furnishes the finest of treatises on education according to nature. My Émile shall read this book before any other; it shall for a long time be his entire library, and shall always hold an honorable place. It shall be the text on which all our discussions of natural science shall be only commentaries. It shall be a test for all we meet during our progress toward a ripened judgment, and so long as our taste is unspoiled, we shall enjoy reading it. What wonderful book is this? Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is “Robinson Crusoe.”

  “Robinson Crusoe” must be allowed, by the most rigid moralists, to be one of those novels which one may read, not only with pleasure, but also with profit. It breathes throughout a spirit of piety and benevolence; it sets in a very striking light … the importance of the mechanic arts, which they, who know not what it is to be without them, are apt to undervalue: it fixes in the mind a lively idea of the horrors of solitude, and, consequently, of the sweets of social life, and of the blessings we derive from conversation and mutual aid; and it shows, how, by labouring with one’s own hands, one may secure independence, and open for one’s self many sources of health and amusement. I agree, therefore, with Rousseau, that this is one of the best books that can be put in the hands of children.

  Was there ever yet any thing written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting “Don Quixote,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress?”

  It was the happiness of De Foe, that as many writers have succeeded in relating enterprises by land, he excelled in narrating adventures by sea, with such felicities of language, such attractive varieties, such insinuative instruction, as have seldom been equalled, but never surpassed.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” the favourite of the learned and the unlearned, of the youth and the adult; the book that was to constitute the library of Rousseau’s Emilius, owes its secret charm to its being a new representation of human nature, yet drawn from an existing state; this picture of self-education, self-inquiry, self-happiness, is scarcely a fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance; and is not a mere narrative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of one of the most original minds our literature can boast. The history of the work is therefore interesting. It was treated in the author’s time as a mere idle romance, for the philosophy was not discovered in the story; after his death it was considered to have been pillaged from the papers of Alexander Selkirk, confided to the author, and the honour, as well as the genius, of DeFoe were alike questioned…. “Robinson Crusoe” was not given to the world till 1719, seven years after the publication of Selkirk’s adventures. Selkirk could have no claims on De Foe; for he had only supplied the man of genius with that which lies open to all; and which no one had, or perhaps could have, converted into the wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself. Had De Foe not written “Robinson Crusoe,” the name and story of Selkirk had been passed over like others of the same sort; yet Selkirk has the merit of having detailed his own history, in a manner so interesting, as to have attracted the notice of Steele, and to have inspired the genius of De Foe.

  I have for some time past been engaged in an Arabic exercise, which has proved of great utility to me; it is the metamorphosis of the well-known novel of “Robinson Crusoe,” into an Arabian tale, adapted to Eastern taste and manners. A young Frank, born at Aleppo, who speaks Arabic like a native, but who neither reads nor writes it, has been my assistant in the undertaking. I take the liberty of sending you here enclosed a copy of this travestied Robinson, or as I call the book in Arabic, Dur el Bakur, the Peal of the Seas.

  Perhaps there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in the English language, which has been more generally read, and more universally admired, than the “Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” It is difficult to say in what the charm consists, by which persons of all classes and denominations are thus fascinated: yet the majority of readers will recollect it as among the first works which awakened and interested their youthful attention; and feel, even in advanced life, and in the maturity of their understanding, that there are still associated with Robinson Crusoe, the sentiments peculiar to that period, when all is new, all glittering in prospect, and when those visions are most bright, which the experience of afterlife tends only to darken and destroy.

  Never did human being excite more sympathy in his fate than this shipwrecked mariner: we enter into all his doubts and difficulties, and every rusty nail which he acquires fills us with satisfaction. We thus learn to appreciate our own comforts, and we acquire, at the same time, a habit of activity; but, above all, we attain a trust and devout confidence in divine mercy and goodness. The author also, by placing his hero in an uninhabited island in the Western Ocean, had an opportunity of introducing scenes which, with the merit of truth, have all the wildness and horror of the most incredible fiction. That foot in the sand—those Indians who land on the solitary shore to devour their captives, fill us with alarm and terror, and, after being relieved from the fear of Crusoe perishing by famine, we are agitated by new apprehensions for his safety. The deliverance of Friday, and the whole character of that young Indian, are painted in the most beautiful manner; and, in short, of all the works of fiction that have ever been composed, Robinson Crusoe is perhaps the most interesting and instructive.

  Compare the contemptuous Swift with the contemned De Foe, and how superior will the latter be found! But by what test?—Even by this; that the writer who makes me sympathize with his presentations with the whole of my being, is more estimable than he who calls forth, and appeals but to, a part of my being—my sense of the ludicrous, for instance. De Foe’s excellence it is, to make me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, and to raise me while I read him, into the universal man.

  There scarce exists a work so popular as “Robinson Crusoe.” It is read eagerly by young people; and there is hardly an elf so devoid of imagination as not to have supposed for himself a solitary island in which he could act “Robinson Crusoe,” were it but in the corner of the nursery. To many it has given the decided turn of their lives, by sending them to sea. For the young mind is much less struck with the hardships of the anchorite’s situation than with the animating exertions which he makes to overcome them; and “Robinson Crusoe” produces the same impression upon an adventurous spirit which the “Book of Martyrs” would do on a young devotee, or the “Newgate Calendar” upon an acolyte of Bridewell; both of which students are less terrified by the horrible manner in which the tale terminates, than animated by sympathy with the saints or depredators who are the heroes of their volume. Neither does a re-perusal of “Robinson Crusoe,” at a more advanced age, diminish our early impressions. The situation is such as every man may make his own, and, being possible in itself, is, by the exquisite art of the narrator, rendered as probable as it is interesting. It has the merit, too, of that species of accurate painting which can be looked at again and again with new pleasure.

  What man does not remember with regret the first time that he read “Robinson Crusoe?” Then, indeed, he was unable to appreciate the powers of the writer; or rather, he neither knew nor cared whether the book had a writer at all. He probably thought it not half so fine as some rant of Macpherson about dark-browed Foldath and white-bosomed Strinadona. He now values Fingal and Temora only as showing with how little evidence a story may be believed, and with how little merit a book may be popular. Of the romance of Defoe, he entertains the highest opinion. He perceives the hand of a master in ten thousand touches, which formerly he passed by without notice. But though he understands the merits of the narrative better than formerly, he is far less interested by it. Xury, and Friday, and pretty Poll, the boat with the shoulder-of-mutton sail, and the canoe which could not be brought down to the water’s edge, the tent with its hedge and ladders, the preserve of kids, and the den where the old goat died, can never again be to him the realities which they were.

  Few things, in an ordinary life, can come up to the interest which every reader of sensibility must take in the author of “Robinson Crusoe.” “Heaven lies about us in our infancy;” and it cannot be denied, that the first perusal of that work makes a part of the illusion:—the roar of the waters is in our ears,—we start at the print of the foot in the sand, and hear the parrot repeat the well-known sounds of “Poor Robinson Crusoe! Who are you? Where do you come from; and where are you going?”—till the tears gush, and in recollection and feeling we become children again! One cannot understand how the author of this world of abstraction should have had any thing to do with the ordinary cares and business of life; or it almost seems that he should have been fed, like Elijah, by the ravens. What boots it then to know that he was a hose-factor, and the owner of a tile-kiln in Essex—that he stood in the pillory, was over head and ears in debt, and engaged in eternal literary and political squabbles?

  It has become a household thing in nearly every family in Christendom. Yet never was admiration of any work—universal admiration—more indiscriminately or more inappropriately bestowed. Not one person in ten—nay, not one person in five hundred—has, during the perusal of “Robinson Cruso,” the most remote conception that any particle of genius, or even of common talent, has been employed in its creation! Men do not look upon it in the light of a literary performance. Defoe has none of their thoughts—Robinson all. The powers which have wrought the wonder have been thrown into obscurity by the very stupendousness of the wonder they have wrought! We read, and become perfect abstractions in the intensity of our interest; we close the book, and are quite satisfied that we could have written as well ourselves. All this is effected by the potent magic of verisimilitude. Indeed the author of “Crusoe” must have possessed, above all other faculties, what has been termed the faculty of identification—that dominion exercised by volition over imagination, which enables the mind to lose its own in a fictitious individuality.

  It sinks into the bosom while the bosom is most capable of pleasurable impressions from the adventurous and the marvellous; and no human work, we honestly believe, has afforded such great delight. Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey, in the much longer course of ages, has incited so many to enterprise, or to reliance on their own powers and capacities. It is the romance of solitude and self-sustainment; and could only so perfectly have been written by a man whose own life had for the most part been passed in the independence of unaided thought, accustomed to great reverses, of inexhaustible resource in confronting calamities, leaning ever on his Bible in sober and satisfied belief, and not afraid at any time to find himself Alone, in communion with nature and with God.

  One of the most truly genial, perfect, and original fictions that the world has ever seen.

  “Robinson Crusoe” is understood to be founded on the real history of Alexander Selkirk, a summary of which, charmingly written, was given to the public by Steele. The greatest genius might have been proud to paint a picture after that sketch. Yet we are not sure that Selkirk’s adventure was not an injury, instead of a benefit to De Foe. A benefit it undoubtedly was, to him and to all of us, if it was required in order to put the thought into De Foe’s head; but what we mean is, that the world would probably have had the fiction, whether the fact had existed or not. Desert islands and cast-away mariners existed before Selkirk: children have played at hermits and house-building, even before they read “Robinson Crusoe;” and the whole inimitable romance would have required but a glance of De Foe’s eye upon a child at play, or at a page in an old book of voyages, or even at his own restless and isolated thoughts. This is a conjecture, however, impossible to prove; and we only throw it out in justice to an original genius. After all, it would make little difference; for Selkirk was not Crusoe, nor did he see the ghost of a human footstep, nor obtain a man Friday. The inhabitant of the island was De Foe himself.

  That Robertson, however, had carefully studied the best writers, with a view to acquire genuine Anglicism, cannot be doubted. He was intimately acquainted with Swift’s writings; indeed, he regarded him as eminently skilled in the narrative art. He had the same familiarity with Defoe, and had formed the same high estimate of his historical powers. I know, that when a Professor in another University consulted him on the best discipline for acquiring a good narrative style, previous to drawing up John Bell of Antermony’s “Travels across Russia to Tartary and the Chinese Wall,” the remarkable advice he gave him was to read “Robinson Crusoe” carefully; and when the Professor was astonished, and supposed it was a jest, the historian said he was quite serious: but if “Robinson Crusoe” would not help him, or he was above studying Defoe, then he recommended “Gulliver’s Travels.”

  “The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” appeared as far back as the year 1719, and at once rose to the popularity which it has ever since maintained. But it failed to attract the notice of the critics. The men who sat in judgment on the small elegances of the wits of the reign of George I., and marked how sentences were balanced and couplets rounded, could not stoop to notice a composition so humble as a novel, more especially a novel written by a self-taught man. But his singularly vivacious production forced a way for itself, leaving the fine sentences and smart couplets to be forgotten. In a short time it was known all over Europe; several translations appeared simultaneously in France…. And such was the rage of imitation which it excited in Germany, that no fewer than forty-one German novels were produced that had Robinson Crusoes for their heroes, and fifteen others that, though equally palpable imitations, had heroes that bore a different name.

  This novel too, like many of the best ever written, has in it the autobiographical element which makes a man speak from greater depths of feeling than in a purely imaginary story.

  The vast mass of Defoe’s writings received no kindly aid from distinguished contemporaries to float them down the stream; everything was done that bitter dislike and supercilious indifference could do to submerge them. “Robinson Crusoe” was their sole life-buoy.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” which is a fairy tale to the child, a book of adventure to the young, is a work on social philosophy to the mature. It is a picture of civilization. The essential moral attributes of man, his innate impulses as a social being, his absolute dependence on society, even as a solitary individual, his subjection to the physical world, and his alliance with the animal world, the statical elements of social philosophy, and the germs of man’s historical evolution have never been touched with more sagacity, and assuredly have never been idealised with such magical simplicity and truth. It remains, with Don Quixote, the only prose work of the fancy which has equal charms for every age of life, and which has inexhaustible teaching for the student of man and of society.

  Grimmelshausen has here introduced an idea which had already played a certain part in Shakspeare’s “Tempest,” and which Defoe made, fifty years later, the centre of his remarkable work, “Robinson Crusoe.” But the idea started by Grimmelshausen remained dormant until it came before the public in a new form from England. Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” appeared in 1719; it was at once translated into various languages, and it continued for a long time to call forth numerous imitations in Germany. Foreign nations as well as native districts were made to furnish names for all these Robinsons or Adventurers; there was an Italian, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Saxon, Silesian, Thuringian, Swabian, Brandenburg, and Palatinate Robinson, a Swiss, Danish, Dresden, and Leipzig Adventurer. The most celebrated achievement of this literature of Robinsonades, which was continued down into the age of Frederick the Great, was a four-volume story, which appeared between 1731 and 1743, and was called “The Island of Felsenburg,” after the scene of the narrative. It was written by Johann Gottfried Schnabel, court-agent and newswriter to Count Stolberg. His literary apparatus is on the whole the same as that employed in “Simplicissimus,” but he gives still greater scope to ghostly and magical elements, he does not mind repeating himself, and he makes no attempt to introduce any higher thoughts into his fascinating narrative of changeful incidents.

  While he was not a great artist, he was a wonderful craftsman. That is to say, he studied his fellow-creatures from the point of view of their relations to society; he writes as a reformer with a direct practical end, with the end that was foremost in the minds of his generation, that of promoting civilization. Take his “Robinson Crusoe,” for example; full as it is of fine things, as when Robinson sees with terror the print of a human print upon the sand, it is singularly devoid of any expression of the feeling of vast loneliness that would weigh down on the spirit of any such hero in a novel of the present day. The problem that lay before him, and which he accomplished, was how to make himself over from a worthless person into a peaceable, God-fearing citizen. The shadow of the municipal law and of the English Sunday seems to lie over the lonely island. The moral of the book, in short, is this: If a man in solitude, with a few scraps from a wreck and an occasional savage, dog, and cat to help him, can lead so civilized a life, what may we not expect of good people in England with abundance about them? This moral is what now makes the value of the book as a means of education for boys, that they may see, as Rousseau put it, that the stock of an ironmonger is better than that of a jeweller, and glass better than diamonds.

  No theory as to children’s books would be worth much attention which found itself obliged to exclude that memorable work. Although it submits in a certain measure to classification, it is almost sui generis; no book of its kind, approaching it in merit, has ever been written. In what, then, does its fascination consist? There is certainly nothing hermetic about it; it is the simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact narrative of events, comprehensible without the slightest effort, and having no meaning that is not apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and grown people also, read it again and again, and cannot find it uninteresting. I think the phenomenon may largely be due to the nature of the subject, which is really of primary and universal interest to mankind. It is the story of the struggle of a man with wild and hostile nature,—in the larger sense an elementary theme,—his shifts, his failures, his perils, his fears, his hopes, his successes. The character of Robinson is so artfully generalized or universalized, and sympathy for him is so powerfully aroused and maintained, that the reader, especially the child reader, inevitably identifies himself with him, and feels his emotions and struggles as his own. The ingredient of suspense is never absent from the story, and the absence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its artificiality. It is, in fact, a type of the history of the human race, not on the higher plane, but on the physical one; the history of man’s contest with and final victory over physical nature. The very simplicity and obviousness of the details give them grandeur and comprehensiveness: no part of man’s character which his contact with nature can affect or develop is left untried in Robinson. He manifests in little all historical earthly experiences of the race; such is the scheme of the book; and its permanence in literature is due to the sobriety and veracity with which that scheme is carried out. To speak succinctly, it does for the body what the hermetic and cognate literature does for the soul; and for the healthy man, the body is not less important than the soul in its own place and degree. It is not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent upon creation.

  When a boy I loved those books that other boys love, and I love them still. I well remember a little scene which took place when I was a child of eight or nine. “Robinson Crusoe” held me in his golden thrall, and I was expected to go to church. I hid beneath a bed with “Robinson Crusoe,” and was in due course discovered by an elder sister and a governess, who, on my refusing to come out, resorted to force. Then followed a struggle that was quite Homeric. The two ladies tugged as best they might, but I clung to “Crusoe” and the legs of the bed, and kicked till, perfectly exhausted, they took their departure in no very Christian frame of mind, leaving me panting, indeed, but triumphant.

  When we read “Robinson Crusoe” we feel that the hero would not naturally have acted in any other way than he actually did. And it is this fact which gives its life to the book. Defoe might have kept his inventive powers in their place and never have gained his reputation for untrustworthiness, and still have given “Robinson Crusoe” to the world as perfect as it is now, no doubt, but we must look at facts as they are and not as we should wish them to be. And the fact is that this immortal story-teller was a man to whom the truth was a stranger. He was seldom straightforward. He was fertile in expedients to pass off falsehood for truth, and it is this gift of invention which, rightfully exercised in “Robinson Crusoe,” made, when carried into actual practice in life, so untrustworthy a character as his…. In spite of all his faults he was great enough to write for his time, and for all time, “Robinson Crusoe.”

  “Robinson Crusoe” has a place in literature as unassailable as “Gulliver’s Travels” or as “Don Quixote.”… Had he not written “Robinson Crusoe,” he would still have held a high place in English literature, because of the other romances that came from his teeming brain, and because of the political tracts, that made so deep and lasting an impression even in that age of famous political tracts. But “Robinson Crusoe” is to his other works like Aaron’s serpent, or the “one master-passion in the breast,” which the poet has compared with it—it “swallows all the rest.”

  And if you should ever have any story of your own to tell, and want to tell it well, I advise you to take “Robinson Crusoe” for a model; if you ever want to make a good record of any adventures of your own by sea, or by land, I advise you to take “Robinson Crusoe” for a model; and if you do, you will not waste words in painting sunsets, or in decorating storms and sea-waves; but, without your straining, and by the simple colorless truth of your language, the sunsets will show their glow, and the storms rise and roar, and the waves dash and die along the beach as they do in nature.

  It is one of those immortal stories which appeal equally to the interest and sympathy of any period and any civilised race.

  Defoe would hardly recognize “Robinson Crusoe” as “a picture of civilization,” having innocently supposed it to be quite the reverse; and he would be as amazed as we are to learn from Mr. Frederic Harrison that his book contains “more psychology, more political economy, and more anthropology than are to be found in many elaborate treatises on these especial subjects,”—blighting words which I would not even venture to quote if I thought that any boy would chance to read them, and so have one of the pleasures of his young life destroyed.

  Defoe’s narratives all aim at exhibiting the processes of memory, untouched by the shaping imagination. And unambitious though such an aim may be, it was perhaps a necessary exercise for the modern novel in its infancy…. Robinson Crusoe typifies the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race, and illustrates in epitome the part it has played in India and America. He keeps his house in order, stores the runlets of rum, and converts Friday, telling him that God is omnipotent, that he “could do everything for us, give everything to us, take everything from us.” Poor Friday believed in a Great Spirit, and held that “All things say O to him”—an unpractical view that receives no manner of notice from Crusoe, who nevertheless reports their conversations, and honestly admits that he was “run down to the last degree” by some of Friday’s theological arguments. But the very deficiencies in the story of Crusoe, and the imagination of Defoe, only gave the writer fuller scope for the exhibition of his particular talent. On a blank canvas small splashes are striking, and Defoe forces the reader to take the deepest interest in the minutest affairs of the castaway. It is a testimony to the practical nature of childhood that the book is so widely regarded as the best boy’s book in the world. When the story leaves the magic limits of the island, it must be said the interest flags; and at last, in the “Serious Reflections,” subjoined by an afterthought, it positively stagnates. But the main piece of original narrative is a masterpiece, and marks a new era in the writing of prose fiction.

  Jean-Jacques pronounced a splendid eulogy upon the educational qualities of the work, preferring its author to Aristotle, Pliny and Buffon…. He saw quite clearly how closely the author of “Robinson Crusoe” had adhered to life, and perceived the lofty teaching he had managed to extract from it. Rousseau raised to its proper position what had been regarded nothing more than a novel, when in reality it was a moral treatise. It was his testimony to its qualities that gave Daniel Defoe’s work a place in the philosophical heritage of humanity.

  Aha, old Crusoe! I see thee now in yonder case smiling out upon me as cheerily as thou didst smile those many years ago when to a little boy thou broughtest the message of Romance! And I do love thee still, and I shall always love thee, not only for thy benefaction in those ancient days, but also for the light and the cheer which thy genius brings to all ages and conditions of humanity.

  It was an invention, a great, unexpected stroke of British genius, and it was immediately hailed as such by the rest of Europe. It was one of the first English books which was widely imitated on the Continent, and it gave direction and impetus to the new romantico-realistic conception of fiction all over the world…. In England, however, the bourgeois romances of Defoe long remained without influence and without prestige, widely read indeed, but almost furtively, as vulgar literature fit for the kitchen and the shop.

  “Robinson Crusoe” has proved itself more than a story-book. At the beginning nobody thought it a mere book for children; and there is now something out of the way in that house where it is treated simply as a child’s book. Its steady popularity, as great now as ever, is not easily explained by the critics. A boy who likes it need not, probably cannot, tell why he likes it. No, nor can the best critics, by counting the words or telling why the sentences are long or short, explain why the boy ought to like it. What is certain is this, that so many new editions of it are published every year that no librarian pretends to keep the account of them.

  The first of my favorite authors of fiction is Daniel Defoe, and he comes to the front as naturally as if he saw a sail upon the horizon and was anxious to discover to what sort of craft it belonged…. Defoe’s prominence in my mind is based upon his ability to transmute a fictional narrative into a record of facts; things which might have been became, in his hands, things which actually were. But it is to the story itself that his supremacy as a fictional writer is confined; it does not extend to his personages. It is in the relation of a story, not in the delineation of character, that this great author excels…. To reduce romance to realism without depriving the former of any of its charms was the example set by Defoe to the writers of English fiction. His characters, his situations, his incidents, his material, and his machinery, have all been surpassed, but his story telling never…. I may sum up what I have to say about Defoe in the statement that it is the telling of his story and not the story itself which charms me and holds me to my allegiance. “Robinson Crusoe” is not the best work of English fiction, but it is, in my opinion, the best told story.

  “Robinson Crusoe,” first edition, 2 vols., 1719. Roxburghe (1812), £1, 4s. Sotheby’s (1846), £4, 16s. (with “Serious Reflections,” 3 vols., 1719–20). Alfred Crampton, 1896 (3 vols.), £75. Sir Cecile Domvile, 1897 (part i.) £45, 10s.

  Thus ends the authentic history of Alexander Selkirk. He left no children, but representatives of the family from which he sprang are still to be found in his native town. Mr. David Gillies, whose mother was a great-grandniece of Selkirk, has commemorated him in a statue which, since its unveiling by the Countess of Aberdeen in 1885, has made the leading feature of Largo for every visitor to the place. If you ask a native where any one lives, the position will almost certainly be indicated from a reference to “the statue.” Nor is there any difficulty in identifying the statue, for the sculptor has dressed his Crusoe in the very garb with which necessity first and Defoe afterward adorned him…. And Juan Fernandez has its memorial, too. Two thousand feet above the sea-level, on the height which Selkirk called his “Lookout,” a handsome tablet commemorates him in the following inscription:  

In memory of ALEXANDER SELKIRK, mariner, a native of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland, who lived on this island in complete solitude for four years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96 tons, 18 guns, A. D. 1704, and was taken off in the Duke, privateer, 12th February, 1709. He died Lieutenant of H. M. S. Weymouth, A. D. 1723, aged 47. This tablet is erected near Selkirk’s lookout, by Commodore Powell and the officers of H. M. S. Topaze, A. D. 1868.

  Thus while Defoe himself remains undistinguished by statue or mark of public favor of any kind, the humble hero whose fame he created is memorialized in two widely separated corners of the globe.

Memoirs of a Cavalier, 1720?

  The most life-like account of the Civil Wars in England in the seventeenth century that I know is contained in De Foe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier,” which it is impossible to read without believing that it is the work of a writer who had been himself an actor in the scenes which he describes—and which Lord Chatham indeed quoted as a genuine history. And yet it is as much a fiction as Waverley, with its picture of the Rebellion of 1745.

  Almost all the battles and incidents it relates, are so evidently taken from Clarendon and other contemporaries of the Civil Wars (with whose writings I was familiar before I read this work) that I confess I was not so much struck with “The Cavalier” as I expected.

  Defoe is with me not seldom. The style of these men is refreshing. For narrative, it would be difficult to beat Defoe. “The History of a Cavalier” is a downright masterpiece.

  It is well known that the Earl of Chatham believed the “Memoirs of a Cavalier” to be genuine history, and said they gave the best account of the Civil War which was extant. Opinions as to the duties of a serious historian have altered much since then; historical romances, if good of their kind, will always be welcome, and will serve other useful ends besides amusements; but nowadays we expect a writer to make it clear whether his work is fact or fiction. Defoe felt perfectly warranted in giving greater point and interest to his narrative by the interposition of an imaginary Cavalier who could describe the events of the time as his own experiences. He thought it much more important that his readers should have before them a striking picture of the chief events of a war than that the story should be of impeccable accuracy, but dull. There is certainly a place in the historical library for such work as Defoe’s, and the “Memoirs of a Cavalier” is, from the historical point of view, one of the very best books of its class in existence.

  One of the most vivid and apparently genuine military histories ever printed.

Moll Flanders, 1722

  The various incidents in the eventful life of Moll Flanders, from the time of her seduction to that of her becoming a convict and a quiet settler in Maryland, are those of real life, as exemplified by multitudes of individuals, who have run the career of their vicious propensities. The artless disposition of the narrative, the lively interest excited by unlooked for coincidences, the rich natural painting, the moral reflections, are all so many proofs of the knowledge and invention of the writer; but the facts were furnished him by the annals of Newgate…. From the character of the incidents that compose the present narrative, De Foe was fully aware of the objections that would be urged against it by the scrupulous. To conceal a single fact, would have taken so much from the fidelity of the portrait; all that he could do, therefore, was to neutralize the poison, by furnishing the strongest antidotes. Accordingly, whilst he paints the courses of an every-day profligate in their natural colours, he shows us with the same faithfulness their natural tendency; and that, first or last, vice is sure to bring down its own punishment. His villains never prosper; but either come to an untimely end, or are brought to be penitents. In dressing up the present story, he tells us, he had taken care to exclude every thing that might be offensive; but conscious that he had a bad subject to work upon, he endeavours to interest the reader in the reflections arising out of it, that the moral might be more enticing than the fable.

  Of these novels we may, nevertheless, add, for the satisfaction of the inquisitive reader, that “Moll Flanders” is utterly vile and detestable: Mrs. Flanders was evidently born in sin. The best parts are the account of her childhood, which is pretty and affecting; the fluctuation of her feelings between remorse and hardened impenitence in Newgate; and the incident of her leading off the horse from the inn-door, though she had no place to put it in after she had stolen it.

  Deals with the sore of society in very much the spirit of M. Zola and his followers. Defoe lays bare the career of an abandoned woman, concealing nothing, extenuating nothing, but also hoping nothing. It could only be when inspired by the hope of amelioration, that such a narrative could be endurable. But Defoe’s novel is inspired merely by hope of the good sale which of course it achieved: the morbid way in which he, like M. Zola, lingers over disgusting detail, and the perfunctory manner in which any necessary pieces of morality are introduced, preclude us from attributing any moral purpose to a vivid and clever, but most revolting novel.

Religious Courtship, 1722

  As a work of pure and orthodox morality, its progress was slow, but sure. Seven years elapsed before a Second Edition was required; but in 1789, the twenty-first was published, and they have since been innumerable, from the respectable octavo, to the coarse paper publications for cheap distribution. It is still the most popular work ever published on the subject; and would alone secure the lasting fame of its author, independently of any other of his productions. The framework of the book is skilfully contrived, yet no art whatever is apparent. The reader becomes interested in the welfare of a particular family, and is carried along through the history of its members; sharing their happiness, and, as a friend, touched with their cares and anxieties. It combines the rare advantages of a continuous narrative with those of natural and well sustained dialogue, a form of writing in which Defoe greatly excelled. Like his other works on religion and morality, it is based on the Bible alone, and is equally acceptable to all denominations of orthodox Protestants. It displays, throughout, the characteristics of his best style of writing, and is distinguished as much for its practical utility as for its ability.

  For this work both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lee professed unbounded admiration. To say that I too enjoyed reading it would be untrue. A little of the powder of “admirable unsectarian morality,” as Mr. Lee calls it, in a large spoonful of the preserve of fiction could be put up with; but when, as in the case of “Religious Courtship,” there is a heaped-up spoonful of this “admirable unsectarian morality,” relieved by only the thinnest streak of preserve, one makes wry faces.

Journal of the Plague Year, 1722

  The “History of the Great Plague in London” is one of that particular class of compositions which hovers between romance and history. Undoubtedly De Foe embodied a number of traditions upon this subject with what he might actually have read, or of which he might otherwise have received direct evidence. The subject is hideous almost to disgust, yet, even had he not been the author of “Robinson Crusoe,” De Foe would have deserved immortality for the genius which he has displayed in this work, as well as in the “Memoirs of a Cavalier.”

  Such is the veri-similitude of all the writings of Defoe, that unless we have had some other means of refuting their authenticity than internal evidence, it would be a very difficult task to dispute their claims to credit. Such is the minuteness of detail; such a dwelling is there upon particular circumstances, which one is inclined to think would have struck no one but an actual spectator; such, too, is the plainness and simplicity of style; such the ordinary and probable nature of his materials, as well as the air of conscientiousness thrown over the whole, that it is a much easier thing to say the narrative is tedious, prolix, or dull, than to entertain a doubt of its veracity. All these marks of genuineness distinguish the work before us perhaps more than any other compositions of the same author.

  Who, in reading his thrilling “History of the Great Plague,” would not be reconciled to a few little ones?

  For the grandeur of the theme and the profoundly affecting familiarity of its treatment, for the thrilling and homely touches which paint at once the moral and the physical terrors of a pestilence, is one of the noblest prose epics of the language.

  The “Journal of the Plague Year” is in some respects Defoe’s masterpiece.

  Of all the prolific Daniel’s two hundred and fifty-odd works, none better exhibits his most striking features of style. The minute detail, the irresistible verisimilitude, the awful realism, are all there, and almost persuade us that he saw all that he describes, in spite of our knowledge that he was a boy—though a precocious one—of five, when the pestilence was raging.

Colonel Jack, 1722

  Every wicked reader will here be encouraged to a change, and it will appear that the best and only good end of a wicked and misspent life is repentance. That is this, there is comfort, peace, and oftentimes hope; and, that the penitent shall be returned like the prodigal, and his latter end be better than his beginning.

  The “Life of Colonel Jacque,” is a work excellent in its kind, although less known than some of the author’s other performances. If it contains much manner of low-life, it aspires to an elevation of character; whilst the painting is that of nature, and the tendency strictly virtuous. There is in truth but little that can associate it in character with Moll Flanders; for, if there is a correspondency in some of their actions, the principle that actuated them was widely different, and our hero appears through the greater part of the volume, a personage entitled to some respect.

  The Life of Colonel Jack, like its predecessor, is a book that a religious, or even prudent father could not safely place in the hands of his children; yet is there much in the character of the hero that entitles him to respect…. Notwithstanding the obvious objections of fastidious delicacy to this book, and paying due respect to the refinement of modern civilization, I venture to doubt whether more good was effected, at the time, even by our author’s excellent work on “Religious Courtship,” than by “Colonel Jack,” remembering the different classes for whom they were respectively written.

  “The History of Colonel Jack” is an unequal book. There is hardly in “Robinson Crusoe” a scene equal, and there is consequently not in English literature a scene superior, to that praised by Lamb, and extracted in Knight’s “Half Hours with the Best Authors,”—the scene where the youthful pickpocket first exercises his trade, and then for a time loses his ill-gotten (though for his part he knows not the meaning of the word ill-gotten) gains. But great part of the book, and especially the latter portion, is dull.

Complete English Tradesman, 1725–27

  I have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel Defoe, “The Complete English Tradesman.” The pompous detail, the studied analysis of every little mean art, every sneaking address, every trick and subterfuge, short of larceny, that is necessary to the tradesman’s occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe’s liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same amiable purpose,—namely, the sacrificing of every honest emotion of the soul to what he calls the main chance,—if you read it in an ironical sense, and as a piece of covered satire, make it one of the most amusing books which Defoe ever writ, as much so as any of his best novels. It is difficult to say what his intention was in writing it. It is almost impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching and infectious as those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have recommended to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented “The Fable of the Bees,” to have presented this book of Defoe’s in preference, as of a far more vile and debasing tendency.

  The plays of Heywood, Massinger, and Ben Jonson, do not give us the citizens of their time more vividly, nor better contrast the staidness and the follies of old and of young, than De Foe has here accomplished for the traders of William and Anne. We are surprised to be told that this book was less popular than others of its class; but perhaps a certain surly vein of satire which was in it, was the reason.

  He did more by his pen for the benefit of mankind than almost any English author that ever lived; for his “Complete Tradesman” alone is, perhaps, one of the best books ever printed: a work which did much to form the character of the great American, Benjamin Franklin; and was the very work which Franklin might have been supposed to have written—for it is characteristic of Franklin throughout—it is Franklin all over. This work alone ought to have handed down the name of Daniel De Foe with reverence, to the latest posterity of all true Englishmen.

Captain Carleton, 1728

  He put Lord Eliot in mind of Dr. Walter Harte. “I know, (said he,) Harte was your Lordship’s tutor, and he was also tutor to the Peterborough family. Pray, my Lord, do you recollect any particulars that he told you of Lord Peterborough? He is a favourite of mine, and is not enough known; his character has been only ventilated in party pamphlets.” Lord Eliot said, if Dr. Johnson would be so good as to ask him any questions, he would tell what he could recollect. Accordingly some things were mentioned. “But, (said his Lordship), the best account of Lord Peterborough that I have happened to meet with, is in ‘Captain Carleton’s Memoirs.’ Carleton was descended of an ancestor who had distinguished himself at the siege of Derry. He was an officer; and, what was rare at that time, had some knowledge of engineering.” Johnson said, he had never heard of the book. Lord Eliot had it at Port Eliot; but, after a good deal of enquiry, procured a copy in London, and sent it to Johnson, who told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he was going to bed when it came, but was so much pleased with it, that he sat up till he had read it through, and found in it such an air of truth, that he could not doubt of its authenticity; adding, with a smile, (in allusion to Lord Eliot’s having recently been raised to the peerage) “I did not think a young Lord could have mentioned to me a book in the English history that was not known to me.”

  It seems to be now pretty generally believed that Carleton’s “Memoirs” were among the numberless fabrications of De Foe; but in this case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his “Cavalier,” he no doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer.

  I have abstained from stating why I have rejected a multitude of books that have been erroneously attributed to Defoe. My reason for so doing, after conviction that he was not their author, has been that the explanations would have occupied much space, and have added nothing of value to the memoirs of his life. I must, however, briefly notice an important work assigned to him by no less authority than Sir Walter Scott, Walter Wilson, William Hazlitt, Sir G. C. Lewis, and others; and placed conspicuously in all Lists of his writings. I allude to “The Military Memoirs of Captain George Carleton,” a volume published on the 27th of July 1728. It was with great misgivings that I first began to entertain doubts as to its paternity; but in order to remove all possible doubt, I read through it, carefully and critically, several times, until, contrary to my inclination, the conviction was forced upon me that Defoe had nothing whatever to do with any part of the work. I found, however, that the same research which overturned its genuineness, furnished much internal and other evidence in favour of its authenticity. Upon this I was led to a further investigation, which admitted no other conclusion than that Captain George Carleton was a real personage, and himself wrote this true and historical account of his own adventures.

  That men of the calibre of Lord Stanhope and Lord Macaulay—who were actually trustees of the British Museum, and moreover could probably have obtained ready access to every other collection of MSS. in the kingdom—should have deliberately abstained from making proper investigations into a matter on which they so unhesitatingly and decidedly published their ideas is, I think, one of the curiosities of modern English literature. On the other hand, though the Defoeists had as little solid grounds for denying altogether the personality of Capt. Carleton, yet there is no doubt that they were infinitely nearer the truth; for my researches have made it absolutely certain that in point of history the “Memoirs” of this officer are sheer fiction…. The broad outcome of my own scrutiny into the Carleton question lies, I think, in an establishment of the two great facts that the professed author of the “Memoirs” was a living, cashiered officer who actually was personally engaged (though wholly as a volunteer) in some of the operations in which he professes to have taken part; and secondly, that the general accounts of all these actions, together with some vital statements as to his own career, are intentionally untrue.

General

  This paper—“Mercator” … was, soon after, discovered to be the production of an ambidextrous mercenary scribbler, employed … by the Earl of Oxford, who … for this present dirty work allowed him a considerable weekly salary.

  Foe, as well as the Lord Treasurer, had been a rank Presbyterian, and their genius was so near akin that Harley could not but take him into his confidence as soon as he got acquainted with him. He was adored and caressed by that mighty statesman, who gave him, as that mercenary said himself, to the value of one thousand pounds in one year. Foe’s business was only to puzzle the cause by mercantile cant and bold sophistry.

  The first part of “Robinson Crusoe” is very good.—De Foe wrote a vast many things; and none bad, though none excellent, except this. There is something good in all he has written.

  Poetry was far from being the talent of De Foe. He wrote with more perspicuity and strength in prose, and he seems to have understood, as well as any man, the civil constitution of the kingdom, which indeed was his chief study…. Considered as a poet, Daniel De Foe is not so eminent, as in a political light: he has taken no pains in versification; his ideas are masculine, his expressions coarse, and his numbers generally rough. He seems rather to have studied to speak truth by probing wounds to the bottom, than, by embellishing his versification, to give it a more elegant keenness. This, however, seems to have proceeded more from carelessness in that particular, than want of ability.

  De Foe has not yet outlived his century, though he has outlived most of his contemporaries. Yet the time is come, when he must be acknowledged as one of the ablest, as he is one of the most captivating, writers of which this island can boast. Before he can be admitted to this pre-eminence, he must be considered distinctly, as a poet, as a novelist, as a polemic, as a commercial writer, and as a grave historian. As a poet, we must look to the end of his effusions rather than to his execution, ere we can allow him considerable praise…. As a novelist, every one will place him in the foremost rank, who considers his originality, his performance, and his purpose…. As a polemic, I fear we must regard our author with less kindness, though it must be recollected, that he lived during a contentious period, when two parties distracted the nation, and writers indulged in great asperities…. As a commercial writer, De Foe is fairly entitled to stand in the foremost rank among his contemporaries, whatever may be their performances or their fame…. As an historian, it will be found, that our author had but few equals in the English language, when he wrote. His “Memoirs of a Cavalier” show how well he could execute the lighter narratives. His “History of the Union” evinces that he was equal to the higher department of historic composition.

  The genius of De Foe has never been questioned, but his sphere of information was narrow; and hence his capacity of fictitious invention was limited to one or two characters. A plain sailor, as Robinson Crusoe,—a blunt soldier, as his supposed Cavalier,—a sharper in low life, like some of his other fictitious personages, were the only disguises which the extent of his information permitted him to assume. In this respect he is limited, like the sorcerer in the Indian tale, whose powers of transformation were confined to assuming the likeness of two or three animals only.

  After a vain attempt to apply those laws which hold in ordinary cases, we are compelled to regard him as a phenomenon; and to consider his genius as something rare and curious, which it is impossible to assign to any class whatever. Throughout the ample stores of fiction, in which our literature abounds more than that of any other people, there are no works which at all resemble his, either in the design or execution. Without any precursor in the strange and unwonted path he chose, and without a follower, he spun his web of coarse but original materials, which no mortal had ever thought of using before; and when he had done, it seems as though he had snapped the thread, and conveyed it beyond the reach of imitation.

  The works of De Foe seemed alternately to delight and disgust. His “Robinson Crusoe” is the most enchanting domestic Romance in the world: but his “Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders,” and his “Life of Col. Jaque,” are such low-bred productions, as to induce us to put an instantaneous negative on their admission into our Cabinets.

  While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the “Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” and shall continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer…. The narrative manner of Defoe has a naturalness about it beyond that of any other novel or romance writer. His fictions have all the air of true stories. It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them, that a real person is not narrating to you everywhere nothing but what really happened to himself. To this the extreme homeliness of their style mainly contributes. We use the word in its best and heartiest sense,—that which comes home to the reader…. The heroes and heroines of Defoe can never again hope to be popular with a much higher class of readers than that of the servant-maid or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough prescription. Singleton, the pirate; Colonel Jack, the thief; Moll Flanders, both thief and harlot; Roxana, harlot and something worse,—would be startling ingredients in the bill of fare of modern literary delicacies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and what harlots, are the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of Defoe! We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the lives of such characters are described, is guilt and delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the commission, or the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the intervening flashes of religious visitation upon the rude and uninstructed soul more meltingly and fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the tenderness of Bunyan; while the livelier pictures and incidents in them, as in Hogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to the concerns and pursuits of common life which an unrestrained passion for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger of producing.

  One of the most original writers of the English nation.

  The “Plan of the English Commerce” is full of information; and, though desultory, is ably written, and contains sundry passages in which the influence of trade and industry in promoting the well-being of the labouring classes and the public wealth is set in the most striking point of view…. “Giving Alms no Charity” is written with considerable cleverness…. But these arguments are not so conclusive as some have supposed…. The truth is, that in matters of this sort De Foe was quite as prejudiced and purblind as the bulk of those around him. He had not read, or if he had read, he had plainly, at all events, profited nothing by, the conclusive reasonings in the Tract on the East India Trade, previously referred to.

  De Foe is our only famous politician and man of letters, who represented, in its inflexible constancy, sturdy dogged resolution, unwearied perseverance, and obstinate contempt of danger and of tyranny, the great Middle-class English character. We believe it to be no mere national pride to say, that, whether in its defects or its surpassing merits, the world has had none other to compare with it…. He was too much in the constant heat of the battle, to see all that we see now. He was not a philosopher himself, but he helped philosophy to some wise conclusions. He did not stand at the highest point of toleration, or of moral wisdom; but, with his masculine active arm, he helped to lift his successors over obstructions which had stayed his own advance. He stood, in his opinions and in his actions, alone and apart from his fellow men; but it was to show his fellow men of later times the value of a juster and larger fellowship, and of more generous modes of action.

  De Foe was in one respect as unvulgar a man as can be conceived; nobody but Swift could have surpassed him in such a work as “Robinson Crusoe;” yet we cannot conceal from ourselves, that something vulgar adheres to our idea of the author of “Moll Flanders,” the “Complete English Tradesman,” and even of “Robinson” himself. He has no music, no thorough style, no accomplishments, no love; but he can make wonderful shift without them all; was great in the company of man Friday; and he has rendered his shipwrecked solitary immortal.

  He is very far from being an immoral writer: but most of his scenes are such as we cannot be benefited by contemplating. Were it not for this serious drawback, several of his stories, depicting ordinary life with extraordinary vigour and originality, and inspired by a never-failing sympathy for the interests and feelings of the mass of the people, might deserve higher honour than the writings of his more refined and dignified contemporaries. Nor is the author’s idiomatic English style the smallest of his merits.

  Daniel De Foe is a most voluminous political writer, and one of the most distinguished of his age and nation. No man ever battled more manfully and consistently for enlightened and liberal sentiments in politics than he did, and few have suffered more grievous and tantalising prosecutions for their steadfast adherence to them.

  In the main, as all know, he drew upon his knowledge of low English life, framing imaginary histories of thieves, courtesans, buccaneers, and the like, of a kind to suit a coarse, popular taste. He was a great reader, and a tolerable scholar, and he may have taken the hint of his method from the Spanish picaresque Novel, as Swift adopted his from Rabelais. On the whole, however, it was his own robust sense of reality that led him to his style. There is none of the sly humor of the foreign picaresque Novel in his representations of English ragamuffin life; there is nothing of allegory, poetry, or even of didactic purpose; all is hard, prosaic, and matter-of-fact, as in newspaper paragraphs, or the pages of the Newgate Calendar. Much of his material, indeed, may have been furnished by his recollections of occurrences, or by actual reports and registers; but it is evident that no man ever possessed a stronger imagination of that kind which, a situation being once conceived, teems with circumstances in exact keeping with it.

  He had the kind of mind suitable to such a hard service, solid, exact, entirely destitute of refinement, enthusiasm, pleasantness. His imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed and, as it were, jammed down with facts. He tells them as they come to him, without arrangement or style, like a conversation, without dreaming of producing an effect or composing a phrase, employing technical terms and vulgar forms, repeating himself at need, using the same thing two or three times, not seeming to suspect that there are methods of amusing, touching, engrossing, or pleasing, with no desire but to pour out on paper the fulness of the information with which he is charged. Even in fiction his information is as precise as in history. He gives dates, year, month and day; notes the wind, north-east, south-west, north-west; he writes a log-book, an invoice, attorneys’ and shopkeepers’ bills, the number of moidores, interest, specie payments, payments in kind, cost and sale prices, the share of the king, of religious houses, partners, brokers, net totals, statistics, the geography and hydrography of the island, so that the reader is tempted to take an atlas and draw for himself a little map of the place, to enter into all the details of the history as clearly and fully as the author. It seems as though he had performed all Crusoe’s labours, so exactly does he describe them, with numbers, quantities, dimensions, like a carpenter, potter, or an old tar. Never was such a sense of the real before or since.

  In the fictitious element he was, of course, remarkably strong; his art was undoubtedly good, but it was the art of the inventor, and not the narrator…. His energy, his irrepressibility, his misery, all combined to make him one of the strongest writers of his age; but he must yield the palm to Fielding in the art of novel writing.

  It may be safely said of Defoe that no author ever wrote with a more entire absence of vanity, with a more ardent wish to instruct and benefit mankind, and with so little expectation of profit or fame. Of his extraordinary creative powers he himself seems not to have been at all conscious.

  “Giving Alms no Charity,” one of the most admirable of the many excellent tracts of Defoe. No man then living was a shrewder or more practical observer, and he has collected many facts which throw a vivid light on the condition of the labouring poor.

  He was what would have been called in our time, I dare say, a hot-headed radical; and if he had been born a century and a half later, would have made a capital editorial writer for a slashing morning journal, in either New York or Washington.

  Defoe was not an accomplished satirist, in the sense of leaving behind the touch of the poisoned sting, that in either of his contemporaries, Swift or Tom Brown, would have revealed the work of his hand. Defoe turns about his victim with a resistless but good-humoured jocularity, showing his strength rather than his venom.

  He was condemned to imprisonment and set in the pillory on each of the last three days of July 1703. “A Hymn to the Pillory,” which he wrote for distribution to the crowd, caught easily the ears and understandings of the people. The flower-girls were about, and Defoe’s pillory was strewn with roses. Defoe’s pillory is a new starting point for English Literature. With Defoe especially it may be said that we have the beginning of a form of literature written with the desire to reach all readers.

  There is probably no writer with whose works his life and personality are more intimately connected. It is impossible to consider the one separate from the other. Defoe began to write novels as a tradesman, as a literary hack, and as a reformer. Being dependent on his pen for his bread, he wrote what was likely to bring in the most immediate return. He calculated exactly the value and quality of his wares. He gave to his fictions the same moral object which inspired his own life. His novels followed naturally on his other labors, and partook of their character. It was his custom, on the death of any celebrated person, to write his life immediately, and to send it to the world while public interest was still fresh. But being often unable to obtain complete or authentic information concerning the subject of his biography, he supplemented facts and rumors by plausible inventions. Fiction entered into his biographies, just as biography afterward entered into his novels. But in writing the lives of real individuals Defoe recognized the necessity of impressing his reader with a sense of the truth and exactitude of the narrative. This effect he attained by the use of a literary faculty which he possessed in a degree unequalled by any other writer—that of circumstantial invention. By the multiplication of small, unimportant details, each one of which is carefully dwelt upon, and by the insertion of uninteresting personal incidents and moral reflections, seeming true from their very dulness, he gave to his work a remarkable verisimilitude.

  He was a brave, active man, who saw things as they were and said what he thought; a man battling for liberty, who fought with a wrongdoer, whether friend or foe; the Ishmael of political writing.

  The “Compleat English Gentleman,” by Daniel Defoe, which appears now for the first time in print, is preserved, in the author’s handwriting, in the manuscript collection of the British Museum, numbered 32,555 of the Additional MSS. John Forster was the first to mention the existence of the work, in his “Biographical Essays,” London, 1860, foot-note on page 155. Fuller particulars were made public by William Lee (“Life of Daniel Defoe,” London, 1869, pp. 451, 452, and 457), and to these subsequent writers have added nothing further…. The work is written in the classic style which has so often been praised in Defoe. His mastery of language in this late work is still as complete and admirable as ever; the sentences flow in an uninterrupted stream, and the author never seems to hesitate except, as indeed often happens, to return to his proper subject after a digression into which his flood of language has carried him. The most obvious peculiarity of his diction is the tendency to write over-long sentences, and to use as many words as possible; but this excessive copiousness of expression rarely or never destroys the lucidity, or even the simplicity, of his language. He never indulges in the clumsy or grotesque classical constructions which characterized many writers of the previous century, nor in the oppressive quotations from Horace, Virgil, and “their chiming train,” upon whom so many others still liked to “draw a bill.”

  ’Tis true the poverty of Defoe’s heroes sometimes leads them into questionable society, and engages them in more than questionable enterprises. His works are strongly spiced with the gusto picaresco, popular long before in Spain, and he relates with evident relish the exploits of his harlots and vagabonds. It may be worth considering whether portions, for instance, of “Colonel Jack” and “Moll Flanders” might not with advantage be published in a convenient duodecimo as a “Pickpocket’s Companion, or Complete Guide to the Art of Pilfering.” This notwithstanding, the general tendency of Defoe’s novels is unexceptionally moral, and his rough homespun is wrought of more lasting, more serviceable material than the gay brocade of most of his contemporaries and predecessors in English fiction.

  However much we may praise Defoe’s writings, however much—which is not always the same thing—we may enjoy them, we cannot choose but regret that he had not more leisure to be brief. His great, his gigantic literary qualities, his gift of narrative, his verisimilitude, his racy vocabulary, his inimitable art of vivid presentation went hand in hand with a lack of all sense of proportion, measure, restraint, form.

  No man ever wielded his pen with more consummate ease: and no man ever made his style fit so aptly to his theme, and clothe imaginative creations with such an irresistible air of reality, as Defoe. It was impossible that any language could be handled as Defoe handled it, and yet not carry on its face the impress of his genius: but it is nevertheless true that his position is unique, and that we cannot look upon him, as we look upon Dryden or upon Addison, as marking a distinct phase in the development of English prose.

  His brain was singularly active and fecund. He had his own views upon all the current questions, and he was eager and resolute to say his say about them. And many questions he himself started, and urged upon his age with characteristic pertinacity and vigour. He was an indefatigable journalist, and struck out new lines in journalism, so that he has left a permanent impression upon our periodical press. The leading article may be said to be one of his creations, or a development of one of them. He was a trenchant pamphleteer, and twice received from the government the painful compliment of imprisonment for his brilliant success in that department. In the fierce clamours of his time one may incessantly—one might almost say always—detect his voice, clear, irrepressible, effective…. He had in an eminent degree the gift of ready writing, and this gift he assiduously cultivated, so that to write, and what is more to write with success, was as easy to him as to speak. He never let his gift of ready writing prove his ruin…. Defoe kept his gift well in hand. He never permitted himself to be merely self-confident and careless. Nor, after all, incessantly as he wrote, did he ever yield idly to the impulse to say something when in fact he had nothing to say…. Within his limits he was an admirable and a most successful artist. He produced precisely the effects he wished to produce and used always his material with singular judgment and skill. We may feel his world of thought somewhat narrow, and, as we enter it, may be keenly aware that there are more things in heaven and earth—so many more!—than are dreamt of in his philosophy; but in that world he is supreme. Thus no one has ever equalled Defoe in the art of literary deception, that is, in the art of making his own inventions pass for realities, in the art of “lying like truth”: no one has ever so frequently and completely taken in his readers.

  If Locke is, in certain formal respects, the best paragrapher of his day, Defoe is in all respects the worst. He really knows no difference between the sentence and the paragraph; he paragraphs for emphasis only. The sentence of “Robinson Crusoe” is nearly as long as the paragraph of the “Essay on Projects.” It would be hard to find another writer of such irregularities in sentence-length. Defoe’s coherence in narrative is good, for his pictorial imagination is exceedingly vivid, and his diction and method those of swift, lucid conversation. But in argument all this is changed. Here he neglects every device of transition and pours out his ideas in the most haphazard way. In argument he is vigorous enough, but his vigor is wasted by utter disregard of method.

  Defoe gained a marvellous knowledge of men; in this respect it has been claimed that he surpasses Shakespeare. He had the journalist’s faculty for seeing what was of interest to the people, and the skill to stimulate that interest to his own advantage. It cannot be denied that he concocted news most unblushingly, and that he was an adept in preparing the market for his wares.

  In his greatest works Defoe remains, in his own way, unsurpassed; it is when we turn to the tales which are less known that we see how later writers have developed the art of fiction…. If Defoe’s narratives are generally less thrilling, if there is less humour or sentiment, if there is a want of imagination and a neglect of the aid furnished by picturesque descriptions of scenery or past times, the honour remains to him of having a great share in the education and inspiration of those who carried the art to a higher level than that to which he usually attained. If his range of vision was limited, it was very vivid; and he was so great a master of the simple style of narration, that all his readers, whether illiterate or refined, can understand and find pleasure in his works.

  Defoe, for instance, like Le Sage, was a story-teller above all things; he had this precious faculty in the highest degree, and perhaps he had little else.

  Despite all his Newgate experiences and his acquaintance with noted felons, Defoe never understood either the weakness or the strength of the criminal type. So all his harlots and thieves and outcasts are decidedly amateurish. A serious transgression of the moral law is to them a very slight matter, to be soon forgotten after a temporary fit of repentance, and a long course of evil living in no wise interferes with a comfortable and respectable old age. His pirates have none of the desperation and brutal heroism of sin. Stevenson’s John Silver or Israel Hands is worth a schooner-load of them.

  If Steele be the father of fiction, Defoe is the parent of journalism. Defoe, again, is no paragon. He was a struggling man of restless enterprise, who lived from hand to mouth—a manufacturer, a merchant adventurer, a reformer, and an author. He mastered every practical department except success. William had listened to his schemes of finance. A bankrupt himself, he projected bankruptcy reforms. In the days of the Second George he was still inditing manuals of trade. In Queen Anne’s time he conducted the Review. It would be difficult to define his politics. He spied for Harley as he had spied for Godolphin. It would be difficult to define his creed. The indignant Dissenter who penned the “Legion” pamphlet was the same who assured Harley, “Nay, even, the Dissenters, like Casha (sic) to Cæsar, lift up the first dagger at me. I confess it makes me reflect on the whole body of the Dissenters with something of contempt.” The informer against Sacheverell to the Whigs was the same who, in the autumn of 1710, “was concerned to see people spread the grossest absurdities, by which they would make their disgusts at the late changes appear rational.” But, with all inconsistencies, he was a patriot and a reformer. By perpetual projects of improvement, by a voluminous trick of emphatic expansion which suited his audience, he appealed to the bourgeoisie and the artisan. That religion should be real, that law should be simplified, that commerce should walk honest and erect, he wrestled like a giant and roared like a Stentor.