​DEFOE, DANIEL (c. 1659–1731), English author, was born in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of1659 or early in 1660, of a nonconformist family. His grandfather,Daniel Foe, lived at Etton, Northamptonshire, apparentlyin comfortable circumstances, for he is said to have kept apack of hounds. As to the variation of name, Defoe or Foe, itsowner signed either indifferently till late in life, and where hisinitials occur they are sometimes D. F. and sometimes D. D. F.Three autograph letters of his are extant, all addressed in 1705to the same person, and signed respectively D. Foe, de Foe andDaniel Defoe. His father, James Foe, was a butcher and acitizen of London.

Daniel was well educated at a famous dissenting academy,Mr Charles Morton’s of Stoke Newington, where many of the best-knownnonconformists of the time were his schoolfellows. Withfew exceptions all the known events of Defoe’s life are connectedwith authorship. In the older catalogues of his works twopamphlets,Speculum Crapegownorum, a satire on the clergy, andA Treatise against the Turks, are attributed to him before theaccession of James II., but there seems to be no publication of hiswhich is certainly genuine beforeThe Character of Dr Annesley(1697). He had, however, before this, taken up arms inMonmouth’s expedition, and is supposed to have owed his luckyescape from the clutches of the king’s troops and the law, to hisbeing a Londoner, and therefore a stranger in the west country.On the 26th of January 1688 he was admitted a liveryman of thecity of London, having claimed his freedom by birth. Before hiswestern escapade he had taken up the business of hosiery factor.At the entry of William and Mary into London he is said to haveserved as a volunteer trooper “gallantly mounted and richlyaccoutred.” In these days he lived at Tooting, and was instrumentalin forming a dissenting congregation there. His businessoperations at this period appear to have been extensive andvarious. He seems to have been a sort of commission merchant,especially in Spanish and Portuguese goods, and at some time tohave visited Spain on business. In 1692 he failed for £17,000.His misfortunes made him write both feelingly and forcibly onthe bankruptcy laws; and although his creditors accepted acomposition, he afterwards honourably paid them in full, afact attested by independent and not very friendly witnesses.Subsequently, he undertook first the secretaryship and then themanagement and chief ownership of some tile-works at Tilbury,but here also he was unfortunate, and his imprisonment in 1703brought the works to a standstill, and he lost £3000. Fromthis time forward we hear of no settled business in which heengaged.

The course of Defoe’s life was determined about the middle ofthe reign of William III. by his introduction to that monarchand other influential persons. He frequently boasts of hispersonal intimacy with the “glorious and immortal” king, andin 1695 he was appointed accountant to the commissioners ofthe glass duty, an office which he held for four years. Duringthis time he produced hisEssay on Projects (1698), containingsuggestions on banks, road-management, friendly and insurancesocieties of various kinds, idiot asylums, bankruptcy, academies,military colleges, high schools for women, &c. It displaysDefoe’s lively and lucid style in full vigour, and abounds withingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates alsothe unsystematic character of his mind. In the same year Defoewrote the first of a long series of pamphlets on the then burningquestion of occasional conformity. In this, for the first time,he showed the unlucky independence which, in so many otherinstances, united all parties against him. While he pointed outto the dissenters the scandalous inconsistency of their playing fastand loose with sacred things, yet he denounced the improprietyof requiring tests at all. In support of the government he published,in 1698,An Argument for a Standing Army, followed in1700 by a defence of William’s war policy calledThe Two Great Questions considered, and a set of pamphlets on the PartitionTreaty. Thus in political matters he had the same fate as inecclesiastical; for the Whigs were no more prepared than theTories to support William through thick and thin. He also dealtwith the questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption.But his most remarkable publication at this time wasThe True-Born Englishman (1701), a satire in rough but extremelyvigorous verse on the national objection to William as a foreigner,and on the claim of purity of blood for a nation which Defoechooses to represent as crossed and dashed with all the strains andraces in Europe. He also took a prominent part in the proceedingswhich followed the Kentish petition, and was the author,some say the presenter, of theLegion Memorial, which assertedin the strongest terms the supremacy of the electors over theelected, and of which even an irate House of Commons did notdare to take much notice. The theory of the indefeasible supremacyof the freeholders of England, whose delegates merely,according to this theory, the Commons were, was one of Defoe’sfavourite political tenets, and he returned to it in a powerfullywritten tract entitledThe Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted (1701).

At the same time he was occupied in a controversy on the conformity question with John How (or Howe) on the practice of “occasional conformity.” Defoe maintained that the dissenters who attended the services of the English Church on particular occasions to qualify themselves for office were guilty of inconsistency. At the same time he did not argue for the complete abolition of the tests, but desired that they should be so framed as to make it possible for most Protestants conscientiously to subscribe to them. Here again his moderation pleased neither party.

The death of William was a great misfortune to Defoe, and he soon felt the power of his adversaries. After publishingTheMock Mourners, intended to satirize and rebuke the outbreak of Jacobite joy at the king’s death, he turned his attention once more to ecclesiastical subjects, and, in an evil hour for himself, wrote the anonymousShortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), a statement in the most forcible terms of the extreme “high-flying” position, which some high churchmen were unwary enough to endorse, without any suspicion of the writer’s ironical intention. The author was soon discovered; and, as he absconded, an advertisement was issued offering a reward for his apprehension, and giving 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 conducted; at any rate he was fined 200 marks, and condemned to be pilloried three times, to be imprisoned indefinitely, and to find sureties for his good behaviour during seven years. It was in reference to this incident that Pope, whose Catholic rearing made him detest ​the abettor of the Revolution and the champion of William of Orange, wrote in theDunciad—

—though he knew that the sentence to the pillory had long ceasedto entail the loss of ears. Defoe’s exposure in the pillory (July29, 30, 31) was, however, rather a triumph than a punishment,for the populace took his side; and hisHymn to the Pillory,which he soon after published, is one of the best of his poeticalworks. Unluckily for him his condemnation had the indirecteffect of destroying his business at Tilbury.

He remained in prison until August 1704, and then owed hisrelease to the intercession of Robert Harley, who representedhis case to the queen, and obtained for him not only liberty butpecuniary relief and employment, which, of one kind or another,lasted until the termination of Anne’s reign. Defoe was uniformlygrateful to the minister, and his language respectinghim is in curious variance with that generally used. Thereis no doubt that Harley, who understood the influence wieldedby Defoe, made some conditions. Defoe says he received nopension, but his subsequent fidelity was at all events indirectlyrewarded; moreover, Harley’s moderation in a time of theextremest party-insanity was no little recommendation to Defoe.During his imprisonment he was by no means idle. A spuriousedition of his works having been issued, he himself produced acollection of twenty-two treatises, to which some time afterwardshe added a second group of eighteen more. He also wrote inprison many short pamphlets, chiefly controversial, published acurious work on the famous storm of the 26th of November 1703,and started in February 1704 perhaps the most remarkable of allhis projects,The Review. This was a paper which was issuedduring the greater part of its life three times a week. It wasentirely written by Defoe, and extends to eight complete volumesand some few score numbers of a second issue. He did notconfine himself to news, but wrote something very like finishedessays on questions of policy, trade and domestic concerns;he also introduced a “Scandal Club,” in which minor questionsof manners and morals were treated in a way which undoubtedlysuggested theTatlers andSpectators which followed. Only onecomplete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in theBritish Museum. It is probable that if bulk, rapidity of production,variety of matter, originality of design, and excellenceof style be taken together, hardly any author can show a workof equal magnitude. After his release Defoe went to Bury StEdmunds, though he did not interrupt either hisReview or hisoccasional pamphlets. One of these,Giving Alms no Charity,and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation (1704), isextraordinarily far-sighted. It denounces both indiscriminatealms-giving and the national work-shops proposed by SirHumphrey Mackworth.

In 1705 appearedThe Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon,a political satire whichis supposed to have given some hints forSwift’sGulliver’s Travels; and at the end of the year Defoe performed a secretmission, the first of several of the kind, for Harley. In 1706appeared theTrue Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal,long supposed to have been written for a bookseller to help off anunsaleable translation of Drelincourt,On Death, but considerabledoubt has been cast upon this by William Lee. Defoe’s nextwork wasJure divino, a long poetical argument in (bad) verse;and soon afterwards (1706) he began to be much employed inpromoting the union with Scotland. Not only did he writepamphlets as usual on the project, and vigorously recommend itinThe Review, but in October 1706 he was sent on a politicalmission to Scotland by Sidney Godolphin, to whom Harley hadrecommended him. He resided in Edinburgh for nearly sixteenmonths, and his services to the government were repaid by aregular salary. He seems to have devoted himself to commercialand literary as well as to political matters, and prepared at thistime his elaborateHistory of the Union, which appeared in 1709.In this year Henry Sacheverell delivered his famous sermons,and Defoe wrote several tracts about them and attacked thepreacher in hisReview.

In 1710 Harley returned to power, and Defoe was placed in asomewhat awkward position. To Harley himself he was boundby gratitude and by a substantial agreement in principle, butwith the rest of the Tory ministry he had no sympathy. Heseems, in fact, to have agreed with the foreign policy of the Toriesand with the home policy of the Whigs, and naturally incurredthe reproach of time-serving and the hearty abuse of both parties.At the end of 1710 he again visited Scotland. In the negotiationsconcerning the Peace of Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported theministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, displayed inan attempted prosecution against some pamphlets of his on theall-important question of the succession. Again the influence ofHarley saved him. He continued, however, to take the side ofthe dissenters in the questions affecting religious liberty, whichplayed such a prominent part towards the close of Anne’s reign.He naturally shared Harley’s downfall; and, though the loss ofhis salary might seem a poor reward for his constant support of theHanoverian claim, it was little more than his ambiguous,not to say trimming, position must have led him to expect.

Defoe declared that Lord Annesley was preparing the army inIreland to join a Jacobite rebellion, and was indicted for libel;and prior to his trial (1715) he published an apologia entitledAn Appeal to Honour and Justice, in which he defended his politicalconduct. Having been convicted of the libel he was liberatedlater in the year under circumstances that only became clear in1864, when six letters were discovered in the Record Office fromDefoe to a Government official, Charles Delafaye, which, accordingto William Lee, established the fact that in 1718 at least Defoewas doing not only political work, but that it was of a somewhatequivocal kind—that he was, in fact, sub-editing the JacobiteMist’s Journal, under a secret agreement with the governmentthat he should tone down the sentiments and omit objectionableitems. He had, in fact, been released on condition of becominga government agent. He seems to have performed the samenot very honourable office in the case of two otherjournals—Dormer’s Letter and theMercurius Politicus; and to havewritten in these and other papers until nearly the end of hislife. Before these letters were discovered it was supposedthat Defoe’s political work had ended in 1715.

Up to that time Defoe had written nothing but occasional literature,and, except theHistory of the Union andJure Divino,nothing of any great length. In 1715 appeared the first volumeofThe Family Instructor, which was very popular during the 18thcentury. The first volume of his most famous work, the immortalstory—partly adventure, partly moralizing—ofThe Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, was publishedon the 25th of April 1719. It ran through four editions in asmany months, and then in August appeared the second volume.Twelve months afterwards the sequelSerious Reflections, nowhardly ever reprinted, appeared. Its connexion with the twoformer parts is little more than nominal, Crusoe being simplymade the mouth-piece of Defoe’s sentiments on various points ofmorals and religion. Meanwhile the first two parts were reprintedas afeuilleton inHeathcote’s Intelligencer, perhaps the earliestinstance of the appearance of such a work in such a form. Thestory was founded on Dempier’sVoyage round the World (1697),and still more on Alexander Selkirk’s adventures, as communicatedby Selkirk himself at a meeting with Defoe at the houseof Mrs Damaris Daniel at Bristol. Selkirk afterwards told MrsDaniel that he had handed over his papers to Defoe.Robinson Crusoe was immediately popular, and a wild story was set afloatof its having been written by Lord Oxford in the Tower. Acurious idea, at one time revived by Henry Kingsley, is that theadventures of Robinson are allegorical and relate to Defoe’s ownlife. This idea was certainly entertained to some extent at thetime, and derives some colour of justification from words ofDefoe’s, but there seems to be no serious foundation for it.Robinson Crusoe (especially the story part, with the philosophicaland religious moralizings largely cut out) is one of theworld’s classics in fiction. Crusoe’s shipwreck and adventures,his finding the footprint in the sand, his man “Friday,”—thewhole atmosphere of romance which surrounds the position of ​the civilized man fending for himself on a desert island—thesehave made Defoe’s great work an imperishable part of Englishliterature. Contemporaneously appearedThe Dumb Philosopher,orDickory Cronke, who gains the power of speech at the end of hislife and uses it to predict the course of European affairs.

In 1720 cameThe Life and Adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell.This was not entirely a work of imagination, its hero, the fortune-teller,being a real person. There are amusing passages in thestory, but it is too desultory to rank with Defoe’s best. In thesame year appeared two wholly or partially fictitious histories,each of which might have made a reputation for any man. Thefirst was theMemoirs of a Cavalier, which Lord Chatham believedto be true history, and which William Lee considers the embodimentat least of authentic private memoirs. The Cavalier wasdeclared at the time to be Andrew Newport, made Lord Newportin 1642. His elder brother was born in 1620 and the Cavaliergives 1608 as the date of his birth, so that the facts do not fit thedates. It is probable that Defoe, with his extensive acquaintancewith English history, and his astonishing power of working updetails, was fully equal to the task of inventing it. As a modelof historical work of a certain kind it is hardly surpassable, andmany separate passages—accounts of battles and skirmishes—havenever been equalled except by Carlyle.Captain Singleton,the last work of the year, has been unjustly depreciated by mostof the commentators. The record of the journey across Africa,with its surprising anticipations of subsequent discoveries, yieldsin interest to no work of the kind known to us; and the semi-piraticalQuaker who accompanies Singleton in his buccaneeringexpeditions is a most life-like character. There is also a Quakerwho plays a very creditable part inRoxana (1724), and Defoeseems to have been well affected to the Friends. In estimatingthis wonderful productiveness on the part of a man sixty yearsold, it should be remembered that it was a habit of Defoe’s tokeep his work in manuscript sometimes for long periods.

In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the nexttwelvemonth three capital works appeared. These wereThe Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders,The Journal of the Plague Year, andThe History of Colonel Jack.Moll Flanders andThe Fortunate Mistress (Roxana), which followed in 1724,have subjects of a rather more than questionable character, butboth display the remarkable art with which Defoe handles suchsubjects. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the differencebetween the two is that between gross and polished vice. Thereal difference is much more one of morals than of manners.Moll is by no means of the lowest class. Notwithstanding thegreater degradation into which she falls, and her originallydependent position, she has been well educated, and has consortedwith persons of gentle birth. She displays throughoutmuch greater real refinement of feeling than the more high-flyingRoxana, and is at any rate flesh and blood, if the flesh besomewhat frail and the blood somewhat hot. Neither of theheroines has any but the rudiments of a moral sense; but Roxana,both in her original transgression and in her subsequent conduct,is actuated merely by avarice and selfishness—vices which arepeculiarly offensive in connexion with her other failing, andwhich make her thoroughly repulsive. The art of both storiesis great, and that of the episode of the daughter Susannah inRoxana is consummate; but the transitions of the later plotare less natural than those inMoll Flanders. It is only fair tonotice that while the latter, according to Defoe’s more usualpractice, is allowed to repent and end happily, Roxana is broughtto complete misery; Defoe’s morality, therefore, required morerepulsiveness in one case than in the other.

In theJournal of the Plague Year, more usually called, from thetitle of the second edition,A History of the Plague, the accuracyand apparent veracity of the details is so great that manypersons have taken it for an authentic record, while others havecontended for the existence of such a record as its basis. Buthere too the genius of Mrs Veal’s creator must, in the absence ofall evidence to the contrary, be allowed sufficient for the task.The History of Colonel Jack is an unequal book. There is hardlyinRobinson Crusoe a scene equal, and there is consequently notin English literature a scene superior, to that where the youthful pickpocket first exercises his trade, and then for a time loses his ill-gotten gains. But a great part of the book, especially the latter portion, is dull; and in fact it may be generally remarked of Defoe that the conclusions of his tales are not equal to the beginning, perhaps from the restless indefatigability with which he undertook one work almost before finishing another.

To this period belong his stories of famous criminals, of Jack Sheppard (1724), of Jonathan Wild (1725), of the Highland Roguei.e. Rob Roy (1723). The pamphlet on the first of these Defoe maintained to be a transcript of a paper which he persuaded Sheppard to give to a friend at his execution.

In 1724 appeared also the first volume ofA Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, which was completed in the two following years. Much of the information in this was derived from personal experience, for Defoe claims to have made many more tours and visits about England than those of which we have record; but the major part must necessarily have been dexterous compilation. In 1725 appearedA New Voyage round the World, apparently entirely due to the author’s own fertile imagination and extensive reading. It is full of his peculiar verisimilitude and has all the interest of Anson’s or Dampier’s voyages, with a charm of style superior even to that of the latter.

In 1726 Defoe published a curious and amusing little pamphlet entitledEverybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business,or Private Abuses Public Grievances,exemplified in the Pride,Insolence,and Exorbitant Wages of our Women-Servants,Footmen,&c. This subject was a favourite one with him, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views by advocating legislative interference in these matters. Towards the end of this same yearThe Complete English Tradesman, which may be supposed to sum up the experience of his business life, appeared, and its second volume followed two years afterwards. This book has been variously judged. It is generally and traditionally praised, but those who have read it will be more disposed to agree with Charles Lamb, who considers it “of a vile and debasing tendency,” and thinks it “almost impossible to suppose the author in earnest.” The intolerable meanness advocated for the sake of the paltriest gains, the entire ignoring of any pursuit in life except money-getting, and the representation of the whole duty of man as consisting first in the attainment of a competent fortune, and next, when that fortune has been attained, in spending not more than half of it, are certainly repulsive enough. But there are no reasons for thinking the performance ironical or insincere, and it cannot be doubted that Defoe would have been honestly unable even to understand Lamb’s indignation. To 1726 also belongsThe Political History of the Devil. This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe’s ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others areA System of Magic (1726), andAn Essay on the History of Apparitions (1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible; but inThe 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 earnestness.A Plan of English Commerce, containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared in 1728.

During the years from 1715 to 1728 Defoe had issued pamphlets and minor works too numerous to mention. The only one of them perhaps which requires notice isReligious Courtship (1722), a curious series of dialogues displaying Defoe’s unaffected religiosity, and at the same time the rather meddling intrusiveness with which he applied his religious notions. This was more flagrantly illustrated in one of his latest works,The Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (1727), which was originally issued with a much more offensive name, and has been called “an excellent book with an improper title.”The Memoirs of Captain Carleton (1728) were long attributed to Defoe, but the internal evidence is strongly against his authorship. They have been also attributed to Swift, with greater probability ​as far as style is concerned.The Life of Mother Ross, reprintedin Bohn’s edition, has no claim whatever to be consideredDefoe’s.

There is little to be said of Defoe’s private life during thisperiod. He must in some way or other have obtained a considerableincome. In 1724 he had built himself a large house at StokeNewington, which had stables and grounds of considerable size.From the negotiations for the marriage of his daughter Sophiait appears that he had landed property in more than one place,and he had obtained on lease in 1722 a considerable estate fromthe corporation of Colchester, which was settled on his unmarrieddaughter at his death. Other property was similarly allotted tohis widow and remaining children, though some difficulty seemsto have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom, for somepurpose, the property was assigned during his father’s lifetime,and who refused to pay what was due. There is a good deal ofmystery about the end of Defoe’s life; it used to be said that hedied insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death.As a matter of fact, after great suffering from gout and stone, hedied in Ropemaker’s Alley, Moorfields, on Monday the 26th ofApril 1731, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. He left no will,all his property having been previously assigned, and letters ofadministration were taken out by a creditor. How his affairs fellinto this condition, why he did not die in his own house, and whyin the previous summer he had been in hiding, as we know he wasfrom a letter still extant, are points not clearly explained. Hewas, however, attacked by Mist, whom he wounded, in prison in1724. It is most likely that Mist had found out that Defoe wasa government agent and quite probable that he communicatedhis knowledge to other editors, for Defoe’s journalistic employmentalmost ceased about this time, and he began to writeanonymously, or as “Andrew Moreton.” It is possible that hehad to go into hiding to avoid the danger of being accused asa real Jacobite, when those with whom he had contracted toassume the character were dead and could no longer justifyhis attitude.

Defoe married, on New Year’s Day, 1684, Mary Tuffley, whosurvived until December 1732. They had seven children. Hissecond son, Bernard or Benjamin Norton, has, like his father, ascandalous niche in theDunciad. In April 1877 public attentionwas called to the distress of three maiden ladies, directly descendedfrom Defoe, and bearing his name; and a crown pension of £75a year was bestowed on each of them. His youngest daughter,Sophia, who married Henry Baker, left a considerable correspondence,now in the hands of her descendants. There are severalportraits of Defoe, the principal one being engraved by Vandergucht.

In his lifetime, Defoe, as not belonging to either of the greatparties at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjectedto obloquy on both sides. The great Whig writers leave himunnoticed. Swift and Gay speak slightingly of him,—theformer, it is true, at a time when he was only known as a partypamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in theDunciadtowards the end of his life, but he confessed to Spence in privatethat Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a laterperiod he was unjustly described as “a scurrilous party writer,”which he certainly was not; but, on the other hand, Johnsonspoke of his writing “so variously and so well,” and putRobinson Crusoe among the only three books that readers wish longer.From Sir Walter Scott downwards the tendency to judge literarywork on its own merits to a great extent restored Defoe tohis proper place, or, to speak more correctly, set him there forthe first time. Lord Macaulay’s description ofRoxana,Moll Flanders andColonel Jack as “utterly nauseous and wretched”must be set aside as a freak of criticism.

Scott justly observed that Defoe’s style “is the last whichshould be attempted by a writer of inferior genius; for though itbe possible to disguise mediocrity by fine writing, it appears in allits naked inanity when it assumes the garb of simplicity.” Themethods by which Defoe attains his result are not difficult todisengage. They are the presentment of all his ideas and scenesin the plainest and most direct language, the frequent employmentof colloquial forms of speech, the constant insertion of littlematerial details and illustrations, often of a more or less digressiveform, and, in his historico-fictitious works, as well as in his novels,the most rigid attention to vivacity and consistency of character.Plot he disregards, and he is fond of throwing his dialogues intoregular dramatic form, with by-play prescribed and stagedirections interspersed. A particular trick of his is also to dividehis arguments after the manner of the preachers of his day intoheads and subheads, with actual numerical signs affixed to them.These mannerisms undoubtedly help and emphasize the extraordinaryfaithfulness to nature of his fictions, but it would be agreat mistake to suppose that they fully explain their charm.Defoe possessed genius, and his secret is at the last as impalpableas the secret of genius always is.

The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearlyindicated in his works. He, the satirist of the true-born Englishman,was himself a model, with some notable variations andimprovements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a greatmany things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there werealso a great many things which he did not see, and there was oftenno logical connexion whatever between his vision and his blindness.The most curious example of this inconsistency, or ratherof this indifference to general principle, occurs in hisEssay on Projects. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of lifeinsurance, probably because it was then regarded as impiousby religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this refusalare to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows’funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundaboutmanner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it isevident that he was, according to his lights, a strictly honest andhonourable man. But sentiment of any “high-flying” description—touse the cant word of his time—was quite incomprehensibleto him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to becomprehended. He tells us with honest and simple pride thatwhen his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he forthree years held no communication with the former, and seemsquite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would haveobliged him to follow Harley’s fallen fortunes. His very anomalousposition in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather bluntmoral perception. One of the most affecting things in his novelsis the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to herexemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her ownfault, is drawn into certain breaches of definite moral laws whichDefoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, withhardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic orromantic was within Defoe’s view; he could not understandpassionate love, ideal loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anythingof the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordidtouches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as designed,not satire at all, but merely a faithful representationof the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was aunit.

His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatchedas clear presentations of the views of their writer. For drivingthe nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhapsonly inThe Drapier’s Letters. There is often a great deal to besaid against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoesees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided,being generally happily ignorant of everything which told againsthis own view.

The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moralworks. The morality of these is almost amusing in its downrightpositive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to pusha clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of rightand wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughlyEnglish horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequentlymake wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature.He is, in fact, an instance of the tendency, which has so oftenbeen remarked by other nations in the English, to drag in moraldistinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which isnovel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste, and incomprehensibleto the understanding, under the general epithets of ​wrong, wicked and shocking. His works of this class thereforeare now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of hisbooks.