The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daniel Defoe, by William Minto

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Title: Daniel Defoe

Author: William Minto

Release Date: February 3, 2005 [EBook #14892]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANIEL DEFOE ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

DANIEL DEFOE

BY

WILLIAM MINTO

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

FRANKLIN SQUARE

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.

   JOHNSON Leslie Stephen.
   GIBBON J.C. Morison.
   SCOTT R.H. Hutton.
   SHELLEY J.A. Symonds.
   HUME T.H. Huxley.
   GOLDSMITH William Black
   DEFOE William Minto.
   BURNS J.C. Shairp.
   SPENSER R.W. Church.
   THACKERAY Anthony Trollope.
   BURKE John Morley.
   MILTON Mark Pattison.
   HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr.
   SOUTHEY E. Dowden.
   CHAUCER A.W. Ward
   BUNYAN J.A. Froude.
   COWPER Goldwin Smith.
   POPE Leslie Stephen.
   BYRON John Nichol.
   LOCKE Thomas Fowler.
   WORDSWORTH F. Myers.
   DRYDEN G. Saintsbury.
   LANDOR Sidney Colvin.
   DE QUINCEY David Masson.
   LAMB Alfred Ainger.
   BENTLEY R.C. Jebb.
   DICKENS A.W. Ward.
   GRAY E.W. Gosse.
   SWIFT Leslie Stephen.
   STERNE H.D. Traill.
   MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison.
   FIELDING Austin Dobson.
   SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant.
   ADDISON W.J. Courthope.
   BACON R.W. Church.
   COLERIDGE H.D. Traill.
   SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J.A. Symonds.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

There are three considerable biographies of Defoe—the first, by George Chalmers, published in 1786; the second by Walter Wilson, published in 1830; the third, by William Lee, published in 1869. All three are thorough and painstaking works, justified by independent research and discovery. The labour of research in the case of an author supposed to have written some two hundred and fifty separate books and pamphlets, very few of them under his own name, is naturally enormous; and when it is done, the results are open to endless dispute. Probably two men could not be found who would read through the vast mass of contemporary anonymous and pseudonymous print, and agree upon a complete list of Defoe's writings. Fortunately, however, for those who wish to get a clear idea of his life and character, the identification is not pure guess-work on internal evidence. He put his own name or initials to some of his productions, and treated the authorship of others as open secrets. Enough is ascertained as his to provide us with the means for a complete understanding of his opinions and his conduct. It is Defoe's misfortune that his biographers on the large scale have occupied themselves too much with subordinate details, and have been misled from a true appreciation of his main lines of thought and action by religious, political, and hero-worshipping bias. For the following sketch, taking Mr. Lee's elaborate work as my chronological guide, I have read such of Defoe's undoubted writings as are accessible in the Library of the British Museum—there is no complete collection, I believe, in existence—and endeavoured to connect them and him with the history of the time.

W.M.

CONTENTS.

PAGE CHAPTER I. DEFOE'S YOUTH AND EARLY PURSUITS 1

CHAPTER II. KING WILLIAM'S ADJUTANT 13

CHAPTER III. A MARTYR TO DISSENT? 30

CHAPTER IV. THE REVIEW OF THE AFFAIRS OF FRANCE 51

CHAPTER V. THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE AND UNION 62

CHAPTER VI. DR. SACHEVERELL, AND THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT 73

CHAPTER VII. DIFFICULTIES IN RE-CHANGING SIDES 103

CHAPTER VIII. LATER JOURNALISTIC LABOURS 115

CHAPTER IX. THE PLACE OF DEFOE'S FICTIONS IN HIS LIFE 130

CHAPTER X. HIS MYSTERIOUS END 155

CHAPTER I.

DEFOE'S YOUTH AND EARLY PURSUITS.

The life of a man of letters is not as a rule eventful. It may be rich in spiritual experiences, but it seldom is rich in active adventure. We ask his biographer to tell us what were his habits of composition, how he talked, how he bore himself in the discharge of his duties to his family, his neighbors, and himself; what were his beliefs on the great questions that concern humanity. We desire to know what he said and wrote, not what he did beyond the study and the domestic or the social circle. The chief external facts in his career are the dates of the publication of his successive books.

Daniel Defoe is an exception to this rule. He was a man of action as well as a man of letters. The writing of the books which have given him immortality was little more than an accident in his career, a comparatively trifling and casual item in the total expenditure of his many-sided energy. He was nearly sixty when he wrote Robinson Crusoe. Before that event he had been a rebel, a merchant, a manufacturer, a writer of popular satires in verse, a bankrupt; had acted as secretary to a public commission, been employed in secret services by five successive Administrations, written innumerable pamphlets, and edited more than one newspaper. He had led, in fact, as adventurous a life as any of his own heroes, and had met quickly succeeding difficulties with equally ready and fertile ingenuity.

For many of the incidents in Defoe's life we are indebted to himself. He had all the vaingloriousness of exuberant vitality, and was animated in the recital of his own adventures. Scattered throughout his various works are the materials for a tolerably complete autobiography. This is in one respect an advantage for any one who attempts to give an account of his life. But it has a counterbalancing disadvantage in the circumstance that there is grave reason to doubt his veracity, Defoe was a great story-teller in more senses than one. We can hardly believe a word that he says about himself without independent confirmation.

Defoe was born in London, in 1661. It is a