If at all correct, certainly no man seems to have less merited the ill-treatment he received from the party to which he was most attached. Setting aside his employment by Harley, although, so far as can be shown, in no business which compromised a single particle of honour or principle; the reasons of offence against him were simply that on a few occasions of expediency he differed in opinion with those on whose side. he was self-enlisted, and thought fit to record it., Party allows of no private opinions, and no writer is highly valued by one, who goes not implicitly with the crowd. Every thing exceptive is at best deemed an impertinence, and resented accordingly. If subsequently proved to be right, as generally the case with De Foe, the offence is only rendered so much the worse; what right has any man to see clearer than his fellows? Oh, if more compliable literary partizans would now and then withdraw the curtain of their experience, what exhibitions of human nature of this curious description might they not disclose!

was

At this time De Foe was on the verge of threescore, and began to be afflicted with both the gout and stone. Is anything further necessary to prove the rich mental resources of the man, than that he forthwith commenced his career as a writer of fiction, to the production of one work at least, that will never die, and of many more which show him possessed of the very first order of inventive power if not always felicitous in its application. But of these more anon-to carry on this very slight outline of a life so active, it may be added that the remainder of it was occupied in writing for his daily bread; that he lived in a house of his own building, at Stoke Newington, in comparative credit, interrupted, however, by legal embarrassments, which at one time subjected him to a temporary imprisonment for debt-that in addition to other evils, he had to endure the pang which " is sharper than a serpent's tooth" in the base deportment of a son to whom he had assigned property for the general benefit of the family, and that he ultimately died at the age of seventy, on the 24th April, 1731; not at Stoke Newington, but in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where he first drew his breath. Meagre as are the accounts, which even the industry of Mr. Wilson has been able to amass, relative to the private life of De Foe, they would have been much more so as regards the latter part of it, but for the marriage of his younger daughter Sophia to the celebrated naturalist, Henry Baker; who left behind him papers recording several anecdotes of the circumstances which followed his introduction to the family, at VOL. XIII.—Westminster Review.

G

Stoke Newington; and which occurred during the period of a courtship, which lasted for a year or two.

Slight and unsatisfactory as are the particulars, which can be acquired of the precise complexion of De Foe's private conduct; and whatever suspicion may be entertained that a life of such continual trouble and embarrassment, must be connected, more or less, with great personal imprudence, there is no want of materials to judge of him as a writer and public man. We began by regarding him as an individual of a description, which, at the period in which he lived, England alone could produce. This may be observed generally of the pamphleteers and journalists of De Foe's day, but more especially of himself, the qualities of whose mind were as national as his application of them. It is well remarked by Mr. Wilson that posterity is almost uniformly niggardly in its due estimation of the political writers, who have been most useful in their generation, a truth of which the rank for a long time past assigned to De Foe supplies a notable example. How few, even among well-informed persons know, or care to know, more of him, than that he was the author of "Robinson Crusoe. A certain number of amateurs of native English invention extend their acquaintance to some of his miscellanies and ingenious fictions; but scarcely one in ten thousand cares a jot for political controversy, which, however serviceable in its day, or productive of lasting benefit, neither can, nor ought to, engross any large share of attention, as times and circumstances alter. De Foe's is no doubt an extreme case because few writers on temporary topics have discovered so much general acuteness, and thrown out so many valuable hints, several of which have been subsequently adopted; whilst others, in respect to trade and kindred matters, are sanctioned by the strongest authorities now existing. Still we can anticipate no possible benefit to any but the annalist or historian, in a long course of desultory reading for a certain number of sound convictions, which may be obtained with far less time and trouble from more direct and modern sources, So much in advertence to a reported intention of republishing the whole of the works of De Foe, who, in his capacity of party writer and journalist, must submit to the common lot; and so far, as Dr. Paley might say, become a sacrifice to the good of his country. Some things must be forgotten at certain times, to make room for a due entertainment of others; and whatever its occasional value to the historian or biographer, the general reader can possibly spare nothing better than the battling of even the ablest partizans, during a period of great political

excitement, especially when time has tolerably well settled the various points in dispute. Moreover, although De Foe, like many of his less clear-headed brethren, had been persecuted into a perception of the justice and necessity of toleration, there is reason to believe, that neither he nor they, carried the doctrine of religious liberty to the only sound and equitable extent which forms its natural ne plus ultra-that civil rights are not to be made dependent on creeds and professions of faith. This says little against the man, but it is wholly useless to direct general attention to argument in detail, which the spirit of Society has so completely passed by.

A portion of the miscellany of De Foe is open to similar objections, although not in so great a degree. It is highly to the credit of this active and ingenious man, that whether derived from him or not, a number of hints in his "Essay on Projects;" and other productions have been carried into execution, among which that of Savings Banks and a London University form striking instances; but, after all, as reading of the present day, they would afford little that is not well known, and of that little a portion that has not stood the test of subsequent investigation and experience. Upon the worthlessness of a portion of this miscellany it would be loss of time to dilate; not that we are misled by the title pages ad captandum to which it must be presumed that the poverty, rather than the will, of the harassed author consented. One great fault in several of them is, that they are formally written down to, not only the understanding, but the prejudices of the vulgar. With respect to Essays on Apparitions; Systems of Magic, et hoc genus omne, this is self-evident; although Mr. Wilson labours to prove that De Foe was himself a believer in a kind of spiritual agency. Query, was not this a mere addition to the bait? But, setting aside productions of this palpable class, it is but too probable that something similar may be predicated of his " Complete Tradesman," Strictures on the Conduct of Servants," "Use and Abuse of the marriage Bed," &c.; which, while they exhibit the extraordinary faculty which he possessed of thinking in the vein of the most sober portion of the active and industrious classes, also convey the idea of a direct intention to make a profitable use of it. The result, as might be expected, is the adulteration of a considerable portion of good sense, with the prejudices and common-places of the persons more immediately consulted. "The Complete Tradesman" has no small portion of this alloy; but his complaints of servants amount to nothing more than what ever have been, and ever will be, the back-parlour wailings of many under a

certain class, who keep them. Who has not heard honest souls of the feminine gender wonder what the world would come to, because female domestics carried their arms covered; and others express a similar curiosity in respect to the termination of all things, because they adopted long sleeves. Curls, ear-bobs, and necklaces seem to be the present grievances; in De Foe's time the serpentine temptation consisted in laced shoes instead of leathern ones; woollen hose with silk clocks in lieu of yarn; and the exchange of pattens for leathern clogs. This sort of republication can scarcely be wanted; it may be doubted if even the " Religious Courtship," and "Family Instructor," ingeniously and dramatically composed as they are, are calculated for being either very serviceable or very attractive in the present day; certain it is, that the lessons, even when sound and unobjectionable, might be conveyed in a manner much better adapted to it.

We now come to the merits of De Foe as a writer of fiction, in respect to which, if in a certain sense his domain was confined, he was a mighty magician indeed. No writer upon earth ever exceeded him in a mastery of those thoughts which come home to the business and bosoms of the general run of mankind, and of course when he presents such, he is the very genius of verisimilitude. This confinement as to character by no means implies a similar restriction as to circumstances, of which his Crusoe is a special instance. The great beauty of that exquisite fiction, consists, not in the hero, but his situation, and the admirably natural manner in which he is made to adapt himself to it. Human sympathy attends his every action, and the simple and natural pathos of a plain unsophisticated man on the sublimity and awfulness of perfect solitude moves more than would all the feeling and eloquence of Rousseau had he attempted a similar story. No wonder this tale is translated into all the European languages, and even into Arabic as we are informed by Burkhardt, although that people possess a sort of Crusoe, in "Hai Ebn Yokdan, of their own. It will be in vain to contend for anything like the same merit in Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack, and Roxana; yet it is, in part, of the same description. We advert to the singular truth and correctness of the individual portraiture. Whether it is possible to benefit the world by veritable likenesses of harlots, pirates, and sharpers, may be doubted; but, it is something to have them exhibited in their native deformity, without being sentimentalized into Gulnares, Conrades, and interesting enfans perdus of that Byronic description. Whatever caveat may be entered against these produc

tions, that first rate sign of genius, the power of imagining a character within a certain range of existence, and throwing into it the breath of life and individualization, was a pre-eminent mental characteristic of De Foe. This was equally well shown in the mock memoirs of a Cavalier, of Captain George Carleton, Captain Roberts; and above all the rest in "A Citizen's Account of the Plague," which deceived Dr. Mead, as did the memoirs of Carleton, Dr. Johnson. We will not contend for the strict morality of giving fictions to the world, with all the solemn pretensions of matter of fact; but, however this may be settled, the inventive genius of De Foe remains the same. One remark however must not be omitted; and we wish Mr. Wilson had spared us the trouble. There can be no absolute justification of an endeavour to aid the quackeries of an impostor like Duncan Campbell, or of assisting the sale of a dull, religious book, by inventing a ghost story, by way of introduction and puff, like that of the appearance of the ghost of Mrs. Veal to Mrs. Bargrave. It is impossible to attend to the complete manner in which he adapted himself to the intellects of the tribe to whom the bait was offered, without a smile ; but the exquisite keeping and genuine nature, with which the fraud was concocted, will not, in a moral sense, atone for it. And perhaps it is to a little undefensible latitude this way, and in his very objectionable title pages, that he owes a portion of the affected contempt of Pope, Swift, and Co. It would in fact depreciate character in any age; and with all due allowance for the misfortunes and depressions of an ill-treated and ingenious man, it ought to do so, although not exactly justificatory of the manner of the wits aforesaid. And, after all, more tricking, shuffling, baseness and equivocation have been displayed in a single East Retford debate, than by poor De Foe in the whole of his long and harassing career.

To conclude: although not agreeing in opinion with Mr. Wilson, as to the utility of so much attention to exploded controversy; either in the way of partial or complete republication; we are decidedly with him as to the general merits of De Foe, whom we deem a highly-gifted, possibly an imprudent, but certainly an ill-treated, man. Whatever be the defects of such men, it will be a bad sign for England when the middle ranks cease to supply individuals of the same tenacious description. Happily there is no great fear of this at present; while there is every reason to hope, that a course of education is in progressive diffusion, which will double their opportunities for showing talent, while it proportionally magnifies the probability of not showing it in vain.