George Saintsbury

“ The real difference is much more one of morals than of manners. Moll is by no means of the lowest class. Notwithstanding the greater degradation into which she falls, and her originally dependent position, she has been well educated, and has consorted with persons of gentle birth. She displays throughout much greater real refinement of feeling than the more high-flying Roxana, and is at any rate flesh and blood, if the flesh be somewhat frail and the blood somewhat hot. ”

“ Defoe possessed genius, and his secret is at the last as impalpable as the secret of genius always is. The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated in his works. He, the satirist of the true- born Englishman, was himself a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did not see, and there was often no logical con nection whatever between his vision and his blindness. ”

“ Commercial lifeJames Foe, the father of the author of Robinson Crusoe, was a butcher and a citizen of London. Of his mother nothing is known. Daniel was chiefly educated at a famous dissenting academy, Mr Morton's of Stoke Newington, where many of the celebrated nonconformists of the time were brought up. It is noteworthy that one of his school fellows suggested the unusual name of Crusoe. In after life Defoe frequently asserted the sufficiency of his education and the excellence of the methods observed by his teacher. ”

“ His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in The D rapier's Letters. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. ”

“ With very few exceptions all the known events of Defoe's life are connected with authorship. In the older catalogues of his works two pamphlets, Speculum Crapegownorum (a satire on the clergy) and A Treatise against the Turks, are attributed to him before the accession of James II., but there seems to be no publication of his which is certainly genuine before The Character of Dr Annesley, the family minister, published in 1697. He had, however, before this (if we may trust tradition) played an active part in public affairs. ”

“ This essay contains suggestions on banks, road-management, friendly and insurance societies of various kinds, idiot asylums, bankruptcy, academies (in the French sense) , military colleges, high schools for women, &c. It displays Defoe s lively and lucid style in full vigour, and abounds with ingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the unsystematic character of his mind. In the same year Defoe wrote the first of a long series of pamphlets on the then burning question of occasional conformity. ”

“ His characters are never marionettes, much less sticks. He has some irritating mannerisms, notably a trick of repetition of the same form of words. He is sometimes absolutely vulgar,—that is to say, he does not deal with low life, but shows, though always robust and pure in morality, a certain coarseness of taste. He is constantly rather trivial, and perhaps nowhere out of the Barset series (which, however, is of itself no inconsiderable work) has he produced books that will live. ”

“ It is only fair to notice that while the latter, according, to Defoe s more usual practice, is allowed to repent and end happily, Roxana is brought to complete misery ; Defoe s morality, therefore, required more repulsiveness in one case than in the other. The Journal of the Plague Year, more usually called, from the title of the second edition, A History of the Plague, has perhaps lacked less of its due meed of admiration than any of its author s minor works. ”

“ With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature. ”

“ The rest of the novels have been judged very differently by different persons. There is no doubt that their enormous volume prejudiced readers against them even long before the author let the public into the secret of their manufacture, which has made the prejudice deeper. ”

“ This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe s ideas on mo rality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are A System of Magic, and An Essay on the History of Apparitions. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible ; but in The History of the Devil he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the manner in which he handles the subject is an odd and not altogether satisfactory mixture of irony and earnest- ss. ”

“ A journey on post-office business to the West Indies gave him material for a book of travel, The West Indies and the Spanish Main, which he frankly and quite truly acknowledges to be much better than some subsequent work of his in the same kind. From this time his production (mainly of novels) was incessant, and the sums which he received were very large, amounting in one case to as much as £3525 for a single book, and to nearly £70,000 in the twenty years between 1859 and 1879. All these particulars are given with great minuteness by himself, and are characteristic. ”

“ Nothing of it but the novels is remarkable for merit. His Cæsar and the Cicero are curious examples of a man's undertaking work for which he was not in the least fitted. Thackeray exhibits (though Trollope appears to have both admired Thackeray as an artist and liked him as a man) grave faults of taste and judgment and a complete lack of real criticism. The books of travel are not good, and of a kind not good. ”

“ 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. It is unlucky that only one complete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in a private library. After his release he went to Bury St Edmunds for change of air, though he did not in terrupt either his Eevieio or his occasional pamphlets. ”

“ Is it not of the same sort as the knack of a painter who takes in the birds with his fruit 1" And De Quincey regards the literary skill of writers of this class as comparatively inferior because of the close resemblance of their writings to the current speech arid manner of their day. But nothing is really a greater triumph of art than this similarity, and Macaulay has certainly made a mistake in confounding the requirements of painting and of writing. Scott justly observed that Defoe s style " is the last which should be attempted by a writer of inferior genius ”

“ 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 got into debt; he got into ridiculous entanglements of love affairs, which he has very candidly avowed; he was in constant hot water with the authorities; and he seems to have kept some very queer company, which long afterwards stood him instead as models for some of his novel pictures. At last in August 1841 he obtained the appointment of clerk to one of the post-office surveyors in a remote part of Ireland, with a very small nominal salary. This salary, however, was practically quadrupled by allowances; living was cheap ”

“ The journey by land across South America is of especial interest, and forms an admirable pendant to the African travels in Singleton. In the same year Defoe wrote a curious little pamphlet entitled Everybody s Business is Nobody s Business, or Private Abuses Public Grievances, eremplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant. Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c. This subject was a very favourite one with Defoe, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views by advocat ing legislative interference in these matters. ”

“ In estimating this wonderful productiveness on the part of a man sixty years old, it should be remembered that it was a habit of Defoe s to keep his works in manuscript some times for long periods. In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the next twelvemonth three capital works appeared. These were The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, The Journal of the Plague Year, and The History of Colonel Jack. Moll Flanders (as a whole") may be placed next to Robinson Crusoe in order of merit, or bracketted for
that position with the somewhat similar Roxana. ”

“ Of his novels we have already spoken in detail, excepting, as universally known, Robinson Crusoe.
Biographies.The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr Towers in the Biographia Britannica. Chalmers's Life, however (1786) , added very considerable information. In 1838 Mr Walter Wilson wrote the book which is the standard on the subject. It is coloured by political prejudice; it does not display any critical power of a high order; and it is in many parts rather a history of England with some relation to Defoe than a life of the latter ”

“ In the negotiations concerning the Peace of Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported the ministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, and this wrath was dis played in an attempted prosecution against some pamphlets of his on the all-important question of the succession, but the influence of Harley saved him. He continued, how ever, to take the side of the dissenters in the questions affecting religious liberty, which played such a prominent part towards the close of Anne s reign. He naturally shared Harley s downfall ”

“ The author was soon discovered ; and, as he absconded, an advertisement was issued offering a reward for his apprehension, and giving us the only personal description we possess of him, as " 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, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." In this conjuncture Defoe had really no friends, for the dissenters were as much alarmed at his book as the high-flyers were irritated. He surrendered, and his defence appears to have been injudiciously con ducted ”

“ Mr Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. Of these large numbers many are in the original editions, extremely scarce, if not unique. Only one perfect copy of the Review is known to exist, and this, as well as the partially printed but never published Complete Gentleman, is in the hands of Mr James Crossley of Manchester, whose Defoe collection is nearest to completeness. Of reprints only one has ever aspired to be exhaustive. ”

“ He frequently boasts of his personal intimacy with the "glorious and immortal" king (epithets, by the way, to the invention of which he has considerable claim) , and in 1695 he was appointed accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, which office he held for four years. During this time he produced (January 1698) his Essay on Projects, one of the first and not the least noteworthy of his works. ”

“ From Scott downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits has to a great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more correctly, has set him there for the first time. Lord Macaulay s description of Roxana, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack as " utterly nauseous and wretched " must be set aside as a freak of criticism.
Character- T ^ e grounds upon which the last-mentioned writer bases istics. his depreciation of others of Defoe s minor works are curious. " ”

“ In direct support of the Government he published, towards the close of the reign, a Defence of Standing Armies, against Trenchard, and a set of pamphlets on the Partition Treaty Thus in political matters he had the same fate as in ecclesiastical ; for the Whigs were no more prepared than the Tories to support William through thick and thin, He also dealt with the questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption. ”

“ Such articles have been written by Scott, Hazlitt, Forster, a writer in The Retrospective Review, Mr Leslie Stephen, and others. No criticisms can, however, compare with three short pieces by Charles Lamb, two of which were written for Wilson's book, and the third for The Reflector.
BibliographyIt has been a frequent and well-grounded complaint that no complete edition of Defoe's works has ever been published. There is, as may be gathered from what has already been said, considerable uncertainty about many of them; and even if all contested works be excluded, the number is still enormous. ”

“ While ou one of these in the west of England he was molested, though with no serious result, by the zealous country justices. In 1705 also appeared the famous Mrs Veal. As is well known, this admirable fiction is said to have been composed for a bookseller, to help off an unsaleable translation of Drelincourt on Death. ”

“ Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of the novels, in 12 vols. Bohn's libraries contain an edition which through want of support was stopped at the seventh volume. It includes the novels (except the third part of Robinson Crusoe) , The History of the Devil, The Storm, and a few political pamphlets, also the undoubtedly spurious Mother Ross. In 1870 Mr Nimmo of Edinburgh published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains Chalmers's Life, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee, Robinson Crusoe, pts. i. ”