CHAPTER VL ·

FROM 1700 TO 1730.

THROUGHOUT last century this period was venerated as the Augus tan Age in English Literature, the idea being that it had reached a crowning pitch of refinement in the arts of composition, and that in this respect the Augustan Age was its prototype. The present century has not sanctioned the venerable title: our critics will not allow that Pope, Swift, and Addison are equal in literary power either to their great predecessors of the age of Elizabeth, or to their great successors of more recent times; and on that ground refuse them the dignified appellation of Augustan. We may agree with the criticism of this century and yet leave the Queen Anne celebrities in possession of their coveted title. In the quality of careful finish the Queen Anne men were undoubtedly as much superior to their predecessors as the Augustan men were to their predecessors. In other and more universally impressive qualities the Shakspeare period and the Byron period surpass both Queen Anne and Augustus-rising, if not "above all Greek," certainly "above all Roman fame."

We have here to do only with prose; and, in that department, even the doctrine that the Queen Anne men are superior to their predecessors in elaborate finish may be assailed with plausible, if not destructive casuistry. Defoe was probably as careless and hurried in composition as any author that ever lifted pen in the Elizabethan or in any other age. Addison probably committed more errors in syntax than Thomas Fuller. Swift finished his great compositions with extreme care, but he learned the habit of painstaking from his master Sir William Temple. One cannot be too careful in making sweeping generalisations about the characteristics of a period. Probably all that can be affirmed with safety about Queen Anne prose is that, taken as a whole, the prose

written by this generation contained fewer grammatical errors, and was, within certain limits, more varied in expression than the prose written by the preceding generation; and this can probably be affirmed of any generation of writers in the history of our literature. We are too apt to attribute the characteristics of a leading writer to his age; because Addison wrote with refined wit and elegant simplicity, and had a certain number of imitators, we are not to ascribe these qualities to the whole prose literature of the reign of Queen Anne.

1

DANIEL DEFOE, 1661-1731.

One of the most indefatigable and productive of our prose writers, pamphleteer, journalist, writer of Commercial Treatises, of Religious Treatises, of History, and of Fiction. He is so well known as the author of 'Robinson Crusoe,' that many think of him in no other capacity; and forget, if they ever hear of, the extraordinary number and variety of his works. He is reputed author of 250 distinct publications. He was nearly sixty years old when he published his first novel; and before that time he had written some hundred and fifty treatises on politics, religion, commerce, and what not.

He is sometimes represented as an illiterate London tradesman with no education but what he gave himself after leaving school. His own account is that he was educated by his father, a well-to-do butcher in St Giles's, Cripplegate, with a view to the Dissenter ministry, and that he studied for five years with that express aim. At whatever time or times he had picked up his knowledge, he was well informed, and even accomplished: being (by his own account) master of five languages-including Latin; widely read in books of history and travel; and acquainted with such science as was known in his day.

His life was stirring and eventful, although comparatively few of the incidents are known. His enemies taunted him with beginning business as a hosier. This he denied, describing himself as a trader. From other authority we know that in course of business he visited Portugal, and perhaps other parts of the Continent. Whatever his trade may have been, he was too volatile to stick to it. An ardent politician, he wrote in 1683 a political pamphlet on the war between the Turks and the Austrians; and in 1685 rode out (at least so he says) and joined the western rising for the Duke of Monmouth. In 1692 he had to compound with his creditors. It is a fair conjecture that about this time he began to

1 He is sometimes called the first author by profession; but this is hardly correct. Fuller had little to depend upon but the sale of his works, and Birken. head, Needham, and L'Estrange, lived by their literary services to a party.

cherish, with or without encouragement, hopes of patronage from the Minister of State. Some friends offering to settle him as a factor at Cadiz, he preferred his prospects at home. Another business speculation was unsuccessful: he started a pantile work, but, according to his own account, it lost him £3000. In 1695 he was appointed accountant to the commissioners for managing the duties on glass; and held that office till the duty was abolished in 1699. In 1701 his metrical satire 'The True-Born Englishman' -an energetic defence of King William, the Dutch, and the Revolution-brought him into high favour with the King. In 1702 an ironical proposal-The Shortest Way with the Dissenters' gave such offence that he was put in the pillory, fined, and imprisoned. During his imprisonment he collected and revised twenty-one of the numerous tracts that he had written up to that date, and projected a weekly periodical called the 'Review,' the prototype of the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator.' The first number of the Review' was published on 19th February 1704, and it was continued single-handed for eight years. In 1704, through the intervention of Harley, he was not only released, but was taken into the confidence of Government, and employed on secret services. In 1706-7 he spent four months in Edinburgh as an agent for promoting the Union, and his skilful advocacy of the commercial advantages of the measure is supposed to have exercised no small influence on the happy result. Through the changes of alministration during the latter years of Queen Anne, he continued in the secret service of Government, all the time writing periodicals and pamphlets with his characteristic prolific industry. Nor did he lose this profitable connection with the ruling powers on the accession of George I. and the Whigs. Till a discovery made by Mr William Lee in 1869, it was supposed that at this date he retired from politics, and wrote his more elaborate works: his 'Family Instructor' (1715), 'Religious Courtship' (1722), ‘Complete English Tradesman' (1726),Political History of the Devil' (1726); and his novels the foundation of his literary fameRobinson Crusoe' (1719), 'Captain Singleton' (1720), Duncan Campbell' (1720), 'Moll Flanders' (1721), 'Colonel Jack' (1721), 'Journal of the Plague' (1722), Roxana (1724), Memoirs of a Cavalier' (undated). But it seems that for several years after 1715 he played a very double game; being paid by the Whig statesmen to insinuate himself into the staff of an extreme Jacobite paper, Mist's Journal,' and repress its most obnoxious attacks. In one of the newly discovered letters he says, "I ventured to assure his Lordship the Sting of that mischievous Paper should be entirely taken out, though it was granted that the style should continue Tory, as it was, that the Party might be amused, and not set up another, which would have destroyed the design. And this

Part I therefore take entirely on myself still." He continued his prodigious literary activity to the very last, dying in April 1731.1

In a proclamation offering a reward for his capture in 1703 (after his "Shortest Way with the Dissenters"), Defoe is described as a middle-sized spare man about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown hair, though he wears a wig, having a hook nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth."

His constitution must have been very robust to endure the enormous amount of work that he went through in the course of his threescore and ten years of life. Not only was he constantly engaged in literary work, but, as a secret agent of the Government, he managed harassing negotiations and braved considerable danger-sometimes, as he said in his hyperbolical way, "running as much risk as a grenadier on a counterscarp.' Of his domestic life we know nothing, except that he was married and had six children.

The number, variety, freshness, and popularity of Defoe's works, furnish the best possible evidence of the fertility and ingenuity of his intellect. For thirty years always ready with something upon every political and social question that was passing, he still had energy, when this excitement was over, to conquer a new field of literature; and was quite as prolific on subjects of perennial and universal interest as he had been on the more exciting topics of the hour. The nature no less than the number of his works conveys the impression of amazing versatile energy. Little trouble has been taken with the mere literary workmanship; the author of 'Robinson Crusoe' can never be classed among the masters of carefully elaborated prose. The labour has been expended on making his narrative minutely circumstantial-his reflection of life a picture of unparalleled fidelity and detail. His novels are in the autobiographical form; and the circumstances of the various situations, the adventures encountered by the supposed narrator, and the feelings of different moments, are detailed with such minuteness that all his fictions would pass for records of actual experience. None of our writers, not even Shakspeare, shows half such a knowledge of the circumstances of life among different ranks and conditions of men; none of them has realised with such fidelity how so many different persons lived and moved. He displays especial subtlety in tracing the gradual growth of an opinion or a purpose, from its first suggestion to its full development: this power meets us in all his works, and perhaps nowhere is more con

1 I have mentioned only the most prominent of Defoe's writings. To mention them all is impossible within our limits; the titles alone would occupy at least thirty or forty of our pages.

spicuous than in his representation of the growth of religious conviction in the Family Instructor.'

Supple and versatile of intellect, he was not distinguished for either intensity or delicacy of feeling. He seems to have been a vain, impulsive, audaciously boastful sort of man. His controversial works are brimful of happy egotism; he exults in his ingenuity and clearness of vision, and boils over in ironical mockery of his duller opponents. It is a tribute to his powers of imagination, but few people will consider it a compliment to his honesty, to say that we can believe hardly a word that he tells us about himself. The stories that he gives about his youthful enthusiasm in joining the Duke of Monmouth, and about the unheard of persecutions that he suffered in later life, are probably no less fictitious than the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

In

The characteristics of his intellect come out strongly in his active life. If the precepts in the 'Complete English Tradesman' were drawn from his own practice, he must have been a most adroit man of business. His insinuating address was fully appreciated by those that employed him on secret affairs of state. dealing with men, his fertile ingenuity and profound observation left him never at a loss. He would seem to have been a most consummate dissembler; his easy success in playing the hypocrite gave him the fullest confidence, and his daring effrontery well entitled him to Pope's epithet-" unabashed Defoe.' He was one of the most au laciously shifty and supple of men.

It is but just to his fair fame to add that his hypocrisy was not turned to malevolent objects: if he was not persecuted so much as he represents, he is not accused of persecuting others. He was probably too magnanimous for personal grudges. What is more, no discoveries that have yet been made implicate him in transactions detrimental to the public good.

Our author, as we have seen, wrote something like 150 treatises on passing questions between 1688 and 1715; an exhaustive account of his opinions would take us over the entire political, social, and commercial history of that period. A few of the more notable of his views may be singled out. He was a strong supporter of the Revolution; his True-Born Englishman was a reply to a personal attack on the "foreigner" ruler and his Dutch favourites. He strongly opposed the war with France; we shall quote from the Consolidator,' of date 1705, a satirical passage that might have been the basis of Swift's famous 'Conduct of the Allies' in 1711. By birth a Dissenter, he frequently made the High-fliers, as the High Churchmen were called, the objects of his ridicule; one of these attacks, we have seen, landed him in the

1 See p. 367.