was pilloried, I have forgot his name) is indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue, that there is no enduring him.SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1708, A Letter from a Member of the House of Commons in Ireland to a Member of the House of Commons in England, concerning the Sacramental Test. 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 BeauMonde 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 Philosphy, 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.-DEFOE, DANIEL, 1720-26, Applebee's Journal. 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 artfice as a writer. He wrote poetry, and on politics; and was a plagiary.-NOBLE, MARK, 1806, A Biographical History of England, vol. II, p. 306. 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 withold from him the praise of . . . integrity, sincerity, and consistency.- BALLANTYNE, JOHN, 1810, ed. De Foe's Novels, Edinburgh ed., Memoir. 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 Trueborn 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 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. - WILSON, WALTER, 1830, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe, vol. 1, p. 231. De Foe has left one descendant, 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.-LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 1855? From The Times Newspaper, Life by Forster, p. 593. 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 advertisment describing him as a fugitive.-TUCKERMAN, HENRY T., 1857, Essays, Biographical and Critical, pp. 286, 288. On my visiting that sacred spot of departed patriotism-the last solemn resting-place of the mortal remains of Daniel De Foe, Bunhill Fields CemeteryI was struck with the condition of the tombstone, which was broken, and the inscriptions, two or three, obliterated by nelgect 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.' atmosphere." "Yes sir, the lightning did it," was the reply. Lightning did it For 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? bid 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.-CHADWICK, WILLIAM, 1859, The Life and Times of Daniel De Foe, p. 463. 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 vainglory 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.MINTO, WILLIAM, 1879, Daniel Defoe (English Men of Letters), pp. 165, 166, 167. His fate he has earned, His book we have burned, 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! -VENABLE, WILLIAM HENRY, 1885, Defoe in the Pillory; Melodies of the Heart, Songs of Freedom and Other Poems, p. 132. 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 selfreliant, 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.-ADAMS, W. H. DAVENPORT, 1886, Good Queen Anne, vol. II, p. 230. 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.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1888, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XIV, p. 288. 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.-OLIPHANT, M. O. W., 1893, The Author of "Robinson Crusoe," The Century, vol. 46, p. 740. It would not be fair to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our 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.-WRIGHT, THOMAS, 1894, The Life of Daniel Defoe, pp. 1, 83, 316. 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 diffitend.-AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1895, ed. culties against which Defoe had to conDefoe's Romances and Narratives, General Introduction, vol. 1, p. xxxiv. 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.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 547. 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.FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 1771-89, Autobiography, ed. Bigelow. 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.". PARTON, JAMES, 1864, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 1, p. 45. 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. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1877, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. VII. 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.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1879, Daniel Defoe (English Men of Letters), p. 18. 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 equally recommend him to the public. If King William. It did not, however, 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.—HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1830, Wilson's Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, Edinburgh Review, vol. 50, p. 413. 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.”—FORSTER, JOHN, 1845, Daniel De Foe, Edinburgh Review, vol. 82, p. 500. SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DIS- 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.--LONDON GAZETTE, 1703, July 31. 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 |