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. FORSTER, JOHN, 1845-58, Daniel De Foe, Edinburgh_Review; Historical and Biographical Essays, vol. II, p. 90.

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

"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.—HUNT, LEIGH, 1849, A Book for a Corner.

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 neverfailing 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.SPALDING, WILLIAM, 1852-82, A History of English Literature, p. 321.

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.-BLAKEY, ROBERT, 1855, The History of Political Literature, vol. II, p. 172.

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.-MASSON, DAVID, 1859, British Novelists and Their Styles, p. 95.

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, southwest, 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. -TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. II, bk. iii, ch. vi, p. 153.

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. -SMITH, GEORGE Barnett, 1875, Henry Fielding, Poets and Novelists, p. 275.

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 con

scious. WYON, FREDERICK WILLIAM, 1876, The History of Great Britain During the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. I, p. 139.

"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.-LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1877, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I,

p. 608.

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.

MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1877, About Old Story-Tellers, p. 202.

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. BURTON, JOHN HILL, 1880, A History of the Reign of Queen Anne, vol. I, p. 94.

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 flowergirls were about, and Defoe's pillory was strewn with roses. Defoe's pillory is a new starting point for English LiterWith Defoe especially it may be

ature.

said that we have the beginning of a form of literature written with the desire to reach all readers.-MORLEY, HENRY, 1881, Of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria, with a Glance at the Past, p. 68.

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. ject which inspired his own life. His novels He gave to his fictions the same moral obfollowed 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. 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.TUCKERMAN, BAYARD, 1882, A History of English Prose Fiction, p. 184.

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.DAWSON, GEORGE, 1886, Biographical Lectures.

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."-BÜLBRING, KARL D., 1890, ed., The Compleat English Gentleman, Forewords, pp. ix, xxvi.

'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.-WARD, WILLIAM C., 1890, Samuel Richardson, Gentleman's Magazine, N. S., vol. 44, p. 77.

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.-WALKLEY, A. B., 1892, London Daily Chronicle, Feb. 17.

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. -CRAIK, HENRY, 1894, English Prose, Introduction, vol. 3, p. 5.

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 assidiously 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.-HALES, JOHN W., 1894, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. III, pp. 356, 357, 358.

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.-LEWIS, EDWIN HERBERT, 1894, The History of the English Paragraph, p. 108.

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.-SIMONDS, WILLIAM EDWARD, 1894, Introduction to the Study of English Fiction, p. 40.

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.-AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1895, ed. Defoe's Romances and Narratives, General Introduction, vol. 1, pp. xlvi, xlvii.

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.-MATTHEWS, BRANDER, 1896, Aspects of Fiction, p. 157.

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. -JOHNSON, CHARLES FREDERICK, 1897, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. VIII, p. 4482.

If Steele be the father of fiction, Defoe