i5">Books and Odd Volumes wanted 357

Notices to Correspondents 358

Advertisements 358

List of Notes and Queries volumes and pages

THE CLAIMS OF LITERATURE.

This day two years, on presenting to the public, and to the Literary Men of England the first number of NOTES AND QUERIES, as "a medium by which much valuable information might become a sort of common property among those who can appreciate and use it," we ventured to say, "We do not anticipate any holding back by those whose 'Notes' are most worth having, or any want of 'Queries' from those best able to answer them. Whatever may be the case in other things, it is certain that those who are best informed are generally the most ready to communicate knowledge and to confess ignorance, to feel the value of such a work as we are attempting, and to understand that, if it is to be well done, they might help to do it. Some cheap and frequent means for the interchange of thought is certainly wanted by those who are engaged in Literature, Art, and Science; and we only hope to persuade the best men in all, that we offer them the best medium of communication with each other."

How fully these anticipations have been realised, how all the "best men" have come forward, we acknowledge with feelings of gratitude and pride. May we now hope that, in thus forming one fresh bond of union among the lovers and professors of Literature in this country, we have contributed towards a recognition of Literature as an honorable profession, and hastened the time when the claims of Literature, Science, and Art to some of those honorary distinctions hitherto exclusively conferred upon the Naval, Military, or Civil Servants of the Crown, will be admitted and acted upon. For as we hold with Chaucer:

so we would have those men especially honoured, whose "gentil dedes" in Literature, Science, and Art tend to elevate the minds, and thereby promote the happiness of their fellow-men.

That gallant gentleman, Captain Sword, whose good services we readily acknowledge, has hitherto monopolized all the honours which the sovereign has thought proper to distribute. We would fain see good Master Pen now take his fair share of them;[1] and the present moment, when Peace has just celebrated her Jubilee in the presence of admiring millions, is surely the fittest moment that could be selected for the establishment of some Order (call it of Victoria, or Civil Merit, or what you will) to honour those followers of the Arts of Peace to whose genius, learning, and skill the great event of the year 1851 owes its brilliant conception, its happy execution, its triumphant success.

[1]We are glad to find that the views we have here advocated, have the support of the leading journal of Europe. Vide The Times of Wednesday last.

The reign of the Illustrious Lady who now fills with so much dignity the Throne of these Realms, has happily been pre-eminently distinguished (and long may it be so!) by all unexampled progress made in all the Arts of Peace. Her Majesty has been pre-eminently a Patron of all such Arts. How graceful then, on the part of Her Majesty, would be the immediate institution of an Order of Civil Merit! How gratifying to those accomplished and worthy men on whom Her Majesty might be pleased to confer it!

Notes.

DANIEL DEFOE AND THE "MERCATOR."

Wilson, in his Life of Defoe, vol. iii. p. 334., gives an account from Tindal, Oldmixon, Boyer, and Chalmers, of the Mercator and its antagonist, the British Merchant. He commences by observing that Defoe "had but little to do with this work" (the Mercator), and quotes Chalmers, who seems totally to mistake the passage in Defoe's Appeal to Honour and Justice, pp. 47-50., in which the Mercator is mentioned, and to consider it as a denial on his part of having had any share in the work. Defoe's words are—

"What part I had in the Mercator is well known, and would men answer with argument and not with personal abuse, I would at any time defend any part of the Mercator which was of my writing. But to say the Mercator is mine is false. I never was the author of it, nor had the property, printing, or profit of it. I had never any payment or reward for writing any part of it, nor had I the power of putting what I would into it, yet the whole clamour fell upon me."

Defoe evidently means only to deny that he was the originator and proprietor of the Mercator, not that he was not the principal writer in it. The Mercator was a government paper set on foot by Harley to support the proposed measure of the Treaty of Commerce with France; and the Review, which Defoe had so long and so ably conducted, being brought to a close in the beginning of May, 1713, he was retained to follow up the opinions he had maintained in the Review as to the treaty in this new periodical. He had not the control of the work undoubtedly, otherwise, cautiously abstaining as he does himself from all personal attacks upon his opponents, the remarks on Henry Martin would not have appeared, which led to a severe and very unjust retaliation in the British Merchant, in which Defoe's misfortunes are unfeelingly introduced. There cannot, however, be the slightest doubt to any one at all acquainted with Defoe's style, or who compares the Mercator with the commercial articles in the Review, that the whole of the Mercator, except such portion as appears in the shape of letters, and which constitutes only a small part of the work, was written by Defoe. The principal of these letters were probably written by William Brown.

The excessive rarity of the Mercator, which Wilson could never obtain, and of which probably very few copies exist, has rendered it the least known of Defoe's publications. Even Mr. M'Culloch, from the mode in which he speaks of it (Literature of Political Economy, p. 142.), would appear not to have seen it. And therefore, whilst the British Merchant, "the shallow sophisms and misstatements" of which we now treat with contempt, is one of the most common of commercial books, having gone through at least three editions, besides the original folio, the Mercator, replete as it is with the vigour, the life and animation, the various and felicitous power of illustration, which this great and truly English author