form; that good artists, like people who build upon a short lease, will calculate the duration of a lie surely to answer their purpose; to last just as long, and no longer, than the turn is served. . . .

The properest contradiction to a lie is another lie. For example, if it should be reported that the Pretender was in London, one would not contradict it by saying he never was in England; but you must prove by eye-witnesses that he came no further than Greenwich, and then went back again. Thus, if it be spread about that a great person were dying of some disease, you must not say the truth, that they are in health and never had such a disease, but that they are slowly recovering of it. So there was not long ago a gentleman who affirmed that the treaty with France, for bringing popery and slavery into England, was signed the 15th of September; to which another answered very judiciously, not by opposing truth to his lie, that there was no such treaty; but that to his certain knowledge there were many things in that treaty not yet adjusted.

Letter to Pope.

I little doubt of your kind concern for me, nor of that of my Lord Bathurst. I have nothing to repay my friends with at present but prayers and good wishes. I have the satisfaction to find that I am as officiously served by my friends as he that has thousands to leave in legacies, besides the assurance of their sincerity. God Almighty has made my bodily disease as easy as a thing of that nature can be. I have found relief sometimes from the air of this place; my nights are bad, but many poor creatures are worse. As for you, my good friend, I think since our first acquaintance there has not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies which often affect the sincerest friendship, I am sure not on my side. I must be so sincere as to own that though I could not help valuing you for those talents which the world praises, yet they were not the foundation of my friendship: They were quite of another sort; nor will I at present offend you by enumerating them. And I make it my last request, that you will continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice which you seem naturally endued with, but still with regard to your own safety, and study more to reform than chastise, though the one cannot be effected without the other.

Lord Bathurst I have always honoured for every good quality that a person of his rank ought to have. Pray give my respects and kindest wishes to the family. My venison stomach is gone, but I have those about me, and often with me, who will be very glad of his present. If it is left at my house, it will be transmitted safe to me. A recovery in my case, and at my age, is impossible : The kindest wishes of my friends is an Euthanasia. Living or dying I shall be Yours.

Arbuthnot's Miscellaneous Works were, with a Life, published in 1770. There is a good Life of him by G. A. Aitken (1892). John Bull and The Art of Political Lying are included in the earlier collected editions of Swift.

John Strype (1643-1737), the son of John van Strijp, a religious refugee from Brabant, was born in London, was educated at St Paul's School and Cambridge, and became incumbent of Low Leyton, Essex, but was known to the world as an ecclesiastical historian and biographer. His prolix and illarranged, but honest and invaluable, works (27 vols.,

Clar. Press ed., 1821-43) include Memorials of Cranmer (1694); Lives of Sir Thomas Smith (1698), Bishop Aylmer (1701), Sir John Cheke (1705), Archbishop Grindal (1710), Archbishop Parker (1711), and Archbishop Whitgift (1718); Annals of the Reformation (1709–31); and the Ecclesiastical Memorials, 1513–58 (1721)—his best work. He also edited Stow's Survey of London (1720). The following letter to his mother from Cambridge sets the life of a university man about that period in a vivid light :

Good Mother,

Yours of the 24th instant I gladly received, expecting indeed one a week before, but I understand both by Waterson and yourself of your indisposednesse then to write. The reason you receive this no sooner is, because I had a mind (knowing of this honest woman's setting out so suddenly for London from hence, and her businesse laying so neer to Petticote Lane) that she should deliver it into your hands, that so you may the better and more fully heare of me, and know how it fareth with me. She is my laundresse; make her welcome, and tell her how you would have my linen washed, as you were saying in your letter. I am very glad to hear that you and my brother Johnson do agree so well, that I believe you account an unusual courtesie that he should have you out to the cake-house. However, pray mother, be careful of yourself and do not over-walke yourself, for that is wont to bring you upon a sick bed. I hear also my brother Sayer is often a visitor: truly I am glad of it. I hope your children may be comforts to you now you are growing old. Remember me back again most kindly to my brother Sayer.

Concerning the taking up of my things, 'tis true I gave one shilling too much in the hundred: but why I gave so much, I thought indeed I had given you an account in that same letter: but it seems I have not. The only reason is, because they were a scholar's goods: it is common to make them pay one shilling more than the town's people. Dr Pearson himself payed so, and several other lads in this college and my tutor told me they would expect so much of me, being a scholar and I found it so.

:

Do not wonder so much at our commons: they are more than many colleges have. Trinity itself (where Herring and Davies are), which is the famousest college in the University, have but three half-pence. We have roast meat, dinner and supper, throughout the weeke; and such meate as you know I not use to care for; and that is veal: but now I have learnt to eat it. Sometimes, neverthelesse, we have boiled meat, with pottage; and beef and mutton, which I am glad of; except Fridays and Saturdays, and sometimes Wednesdays; which days we have fish at dinner, and tansy or pudding for supper. Our parts then are slender enough. But there is this remedy; we may retire unto the butteries, and there take a half-penny loafe and butter or cheese; or else to the kitchen, and take there what the cook hath. But, for my part, I am sure, I never visited the kitchen yet, since I have been here, and the butteries but seldom after meals; unlesse for a ciza, that is for a farthing-worth of smallbeer so that lesse than a peny in beer doth serve me a whole day. Neverthelesse sometimes we have exceedings: then we have two or three dishes (but that is very rare) otherwise never but one: so that a cake and a

cheese would be very welcome to me; and a neat's tongue, or some such thing, if it would not require too much money. If you do intend to send me any thing, do not send it yet, until you hear further of me : for I have many things to send for, which may all, I hope, be put into that box you have at home: but what they are, I shall give you an account of hereafter, when I would have them sent and that is, when I have got me a chamber: for as yet, I am in a chamber that doth not at all please me. I have thoughts of one, which is a very handsome one, and one pair of stairs high, and that looketh into the master's garden. The price is but 20s. per annum, ten whereof a knight's son, and lately admitted into this college, doth pay: though he did not come till about midsummer, so that I shall have but 10s. to pay a year: besides my income, which may be about 40s. or thereabouts. Mother, I kindly thank you for your orange pills you sent me. If you are not too straight of money, send me some such thing by the woman, and a pound or two of almonds and raisons. But first ask her if she will carry them, or if they be not too much trouble to her. I do much approve of your agreeing with the carrier quarterly he was indeed telling me of it, that you had agreed with him for it and I think he means both yours and mine. Make your bargain sure with him.

I understand by your letter that you are very inquisitive to know how things stand with me here. I believe you may be well enough satisfied by the woman. My breakings-out are now all gone. Indeed I was afraid at my first coming it would have proved the itch: but I am fairly rid on it but I fear I shall get it, let me do what I can for there are many here that have it cruelly. Some of them take strong purges that would kill a horse, weeks together for it, to get it away, and yet are hardly rid of it. At my first coming I laid alone: but since, my tutor desired me to let a very clear lad lay with me, and an alderman's son of Colchester, which I could not deny, being newly come: he hath laid with me now for almost a fortnight, and will do till he can provide himself with a chamber. I have been with all my acquaintance, who have entreated me very courteously, especially Jonathan Houghton. I went to his chamber the Friday night I first came, and there he made me stay and sup with him, and would have had me laid with him that night, and was extraordinary kind to me. Since, we have been together pretty often. He excused himselfe that he did not come to see me before he went, and that he did not write to me since he had been come. He hath now, or is about obtaining, £10 more from the college.

We go twice a day to Chapel; in the morning about 7, and in the evening about 5. After we come from Chapel in the morning, which is towards 8, we go to the butteries for our breakfast, which usually is five farthings; an halfepenny loaf and butter, and a cize of beer. But sometimes I go to an honest house near the college, and have a pint of milk boiled for my breakfast.

Truly I was much troubled to hear that my letter for Ireland is not yet gone. I wish if Mr Jones is not yet gone, that it might be sent some other way. Indeed I wish I could see my cousin James Bonnell here within three or four years: for I believe our University is less strict to observe lads that do not in every point conforme than theirs at Dublin: though ours be bad enough. Pray remember me to my uncle, and all my friends there, when you write. Remember me to my cousin James Knox. I am glad he is recovered from his dangerous sickness,

whatsoever it is; for I cannot make any thing of it, as you have written it. And thus, for want of paper, I end, desiring heartily to be remembered to all my friends. Excuse me to my brother and sister that they have not heard from me yet. Next week I hope to write to them both. Excuse my length, I thought I would answer your letter to the full. I remaine your dutiful son,

J. STRIJP.

These for his honoured Mother
Mrs. Hester Stryp widdow,

dwelling in Petticoat Lane, right over against the
Five Ink-Hornes, without Bishops-Gate, in London.

This letter was printed by Sir Henry Ellis for the Camden Society in a series of Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men (1843).

Daniel Defoe,

the author of Robinson Crusoe, was born towards the close of 1659 in the London parish of St Giles, Cripplegate. His father, James Foe, was a butcher there; his grandfather was a yeoman of Etton near Peterborough; and the change to De Foe or Defoe was made by Daniel about 1697. He was educated for the Nonconformist ministry at a Stoke Newington academy, learning Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and, above all, English ; but by 1683 he was in business as a hose-factor. He was apparently out with Monmouth, joined King William at Henley in 1688, travelled in Scotland, France, and Spain, and went bankrupt in 1692; his debts he scrupulously paid up later. He next became accountant to the glass-duty commissioners and secretary and owner of a Tilbury tile factory. His Essay upon Projects appeared in 1698, and he became noted as an able pamphleteer in support of the king's policy—e.g. in his vigorous poem, The True-born Englishman (1701). Its success was prodigious; eighty thousand copies sold upon the streets. Defoe was no poet, but he could reason in verse, and had an unlimited command of homely, forcible language. The satire opens with a paraphrase of Burton (see Vol. I. P. 440):

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the larger congregation.

Defoe's restless pen was active throughout the bitter struggle under Anne between the HighChurch party and the Dissenters; and his famous treatise, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703), first deceived and then infuriated his opponents. The House of Commons ordered the pamphlet to be burned; and, when tried at the Old Bailey in July, he was sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks, to stand thrice in the pillory, to find sureties for his good behaviour during seven years, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure. On the first day he suffered appeared his Hymn to the Pillory, and that portion of his penalty was converted into a Whig triumph. During his imprisonment in Newgate he continued an incessant literary activity upon 'occasional conformity' and other

controversies, and started his Review (February 1704-June 1713), at first a weekly, then a bi-weekly, and finally a tri-weekly newspaper. This was his largest, if not his most important, work, embracing in over five thousand pages essays on almost every branch of human knowledge. During the same nine years he published eighty distinct works, with 4727 pages. His 'Scandal Club' was the forerunner of the Tatlers and Spectators.

In August 1704 Defoe was released from prison through Harley, who further procured him employment. Giving Alms no Charity (1704) was a masterly denunciation of indiscriminate charity and national workshops. In 1705 appeared The Consolidator: or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon, a political satire, which perhaps supplied a hint for Gulliver's Travels; and in 1706 The True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal, which Mr Aitken has proved to be founded on fact or supposed fact. Jure Divino was a tedious political satire in twelve books of poor verse. In 1705 Defoe was sent by Harley on a secret mission to the west of England; in 1706-7 he was in Scot

ever, of Harley, now Lord Oxford, Defoe obtained a pardon under the Great Seal, confuting the charges brought against him, and exempting him from any consequences thereafter on account of those publications. In his Review he had striven in vain to preserve the semblance of consistency; and, playing a dubious part in the intrigues that preceded and attended the accession of the House of Hanover, he found himself in a general discredit which his Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715) did not remove. In 1718 he was in equivocal government service, too ingeniously sub-editing Jacobite

land as a secret agent to promote the Union. His History of the Union appeared in 1709. After Harley's fall (1708) he found himself able to be a staunch Whig under Godolphin; but on Harley's return to power (1710) he once more supported a Tory Ministry. In 1713 Defoe again tried his hand at political irony, and issued three pamphlets- Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover; What if the Pretender should Come? and What if the Queen should Die? Neither Whig nor Tory could understand Defoe's ironical writings. He was taken into custody, and had to find bail, himself in £800, and two friends in £400 each, to answer for the alleged libels. Through the influence, how

and High-Church organs. Defoe was not scrupulous in his point of honour; still, it is certain he never was a Tory, but always at heart devoted to the glorious Revolution and the Protestant succession. None the less, it is amazing to find Mr Thomas Wright thus vindicating his conduct: If it is dishonourable to be a spy, Defoe's conduct be defended; if it is not dishonourable, let no stones be cast at him.' In 1715 appeared the first volume of the Family Instructor, and on 25th April 1719 the first volume of the immortal Robinson Crusoe, founded partly on

cannot

Dampier's Voyage (see page 103 above), but mainly on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, which were described at length in Woodes Rogers's Cruising Voyage round the World and Captain Cooke's Voyage (both published in 1712), and were made more accessible in Steele's Englishman (see the article on Steele in this volume) in 1713, from Selkirk's own narration. Perhaps no man in the whole history of literature ever devised at fifty-nine a more splendid masterpiece of creative imagination. The same year appeared the second volume, and in 1720 the unreadable Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, according to which the original story was an allegory of the novelist's own life. In this his most prolific

year he also gave to the world the Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell; the famous Memoirs of a Cavalier; and Captain Singleton, a book of great brilliancy. In 1722 he issued Moll Flanders, a marvel of the novelistic art; The Journal of the Plague Year, better known by the title in the second edition, A History of the Plague, a fresh masterpiece of verisimilitude; and the History of Colonel Jacque, which, unequal throughout and actually feeble towards its close, is in parts the most charming of all his books. Later works were Roxana (1724), a weaker Moll Flanders; A Tour through Great Britain (1724–26); A New Voyage round the World (1725); The Complete English Tradesman (1725-27), a glorification of moneygetting; and The Political History of the Devil (1726), which may be grouped with his System of Magic (1726) and the Essay on the Reality of Apparitions (1727). Other works are his rather ignoble Religious Courtship (1722) and The Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (1727). Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725) is an amusing diatribe upon the insolence of domestic servants, in which he recommends for London shoeblacks the drastic discipline proposed by Fletcher of Saltoun (Vol. I. p. 828) for Scots vagabonds: Under the notion of cleaning our shoes, above ten thousand wicked, idle, pilfering vagrants are permitted to patrol about the city and suburbs. . . . I therefore humbly propose that these vagabonds should be put immediately under such taskmasters as the government shall appoint, and that they be employed, punished, or rewarded according to their capacities and demerits; that is to say, the industrious and docible to woolcombing, . . . as also to husbandry and other parts of agriculture.'

Meantime Defoe had built himself 'a very handsome house' at Stoke Newington, where he had 'a very genteel way of living' and amused himself with gardening and the company of his three daughters. But about 1729 his affairs seem to have fallen into confusion, one of his sons had behaved undutifully, and he was under apprehensions of trouble. He died in Ropemakers' Alley, Moorfields, 26th April 1731, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. In his last preserved letter, from some place where he was hiding near Greenwich, he writes: 'I am so near my journey's end, and am hastening to the place where the weary are at rest, and where the wicked cease to trouble; be it that the passage is rough, and the day stormy, by what way soever He please to bring me to the end of it, I desire to finish life with this temper of soul in all cases-Te Deum Laudamus?

As a novelist Defoe was the father of Richardson, and partly of Fielding; as an essayist he suggested the Tatler and Spectator. His imagination had no visions of surpassing loveliness, nor any rich combinations of humour and eccentricity; yet he is equally at home in the plain scenes of English life, in the wars of the cavaliers, in the

haunts of dissipation and infamy, in the roving adventures of the buccaneers, and in the appalling visitation of the plague. In scenes of diablerie and witchcraft he preserves the same unmoved and truth-like demeanour. Taste or circumstances led him mostly into low life, and his characters often are such as we cannot sympathise with. The whole arcana of roguery and villainy seem to have been open to him; his experiences of Newgate were not without their use. It might be thought that the good taste which led Defoe to write in a style of such pure and unpretending English, instead of the inflated manner of vulgar writers, would have dictated a nicer selection of his subjects, and kept him from wandering so frequently into the low and disgusting purlieus of vice. But he seems to have selected the adventures of pirates, pickpockets, demireps, and the like worthless characters for the simple reason that they would sell best; of course he nowhere holds them up for imitation. He evidently felt most at home where he had to descend, not to rise, to his subject. Robinson Crusoe's experiences, his shipwreck and sojourn in the solitary island, invest that incomparable tale with more romance than any of his other works. 'Pathos,' said Sir Walter Scott, 'is not Defoe's general characteristic; he had too little delicacy of mind. When it comes, it comes uncalled, and is created by the circumstances, not sought for by the author. The excess, for instance, of the natural longing for human society which Crusoe manifests while on board of the stranded Spanish vessel, by falling into a sort of agony as he repeated the words: "Oh, that but one man had been saved!-oh, that there had been but one!" is in the highest degree pathetic. The agonising reflections of the solitary, when he is in danger of being driven to sea, in his rash attempt to circumnavigate his island, are also affecting.' To these may be added Crusoe's sensations on finding the footprint on the sand-an incident conceived in the spirit of poetry. The great success of this novel induced the author to write a continuation to it, in which Crusoe is again brought among the busy haunts of men ; the attempt was hazardous, and it proved a failure. The once solitary island, peopled by mariners and traders, is disenchanted, and becomes tame, vulgar, and commonplace.

The relation of adventures, not the delineation of character and passion, was the forte of Defoe. His invention of common incidents and situations seems to have been unbounded; and those minute references and descriptions 'immediately lead us,' as was pointed out by Dunlop in his History of Fiction, 'to give credit to the whole narrative, since we think they would hardly have been mentioned unless they had been true. The same circumstantial detail of facts is remarkable in Gulliver's Travels, and we are led on by them to a partial belief in the most improbable narrations.' The power of Defoe in feigning reality,

or 'forging the handwriting of nature,' as it has been forcibly termed, may be seen in the narrative of Mrs Veal's apparition. It was prefixed to a religious book, Drelincourt on Death, and had the effect of drawing attention to an otherwise unsaleable and neglected work. The imposition was a bold one-perhaps the least defensible of all his inventions. Defoe is more natural even than Swift; and his style, though inferior in directness and energy, is more copious. He was strictly an original writer, with strong, clear conceptions ever rising up in his mind, which he was able to embody in language equally perspicuous and forcible. He had both read and seen much, and treasured up an amount of knowledge and observation certainly not equalled by the store of any writer of that day. When we consider Defoe's misfortunes and sufferings; if we remember that his spirit had been broken and his means wasted by prosecutions, that his health was broken by apoplexy, and that he was verging on sixty, his invention of Robinson Crusoe and the long train of fiction which succeeded it seems a marvellous triumph of native genius, self-reliance, and energy.

Defoe's irony was often too subtle and obscure for popular apprehension, but the following is as obvious as it is ingenious :

From 'What if the Pretender should Come?'

Give us leave, O people of Great Britain, to lay before you a little sketch of your future felicity, under the auspicious reign of such a glorious prince as we all hope and believe the Pretender to be. First, you are to allow that by such a just and righteous shutting up of the Exchequer in about seven years' time, he may be supposed to have received about forty millions sterling from his people, which not being to be found in specie in the kingdom, will for the benefit of circulation enable him to treasure up infinite funds of wealth in foreign banks, a prodigious mass of foreign bullion, gold, jewels, and plate, to be ready in the Tower or elsewhere, to be issued upon future emergency, as occasion may allow. This prodigious wealth will necessarily have these happy events, to the infinite satisfaction and advantage of the whole nation, and the benefit of which I hope none will be so unjust or ungrateful to deny. 1. It will for ever after deliver this nation from the burden, the expense, the formality, and the tyranny of parliaments. No one can perhaps at the first view be rightly sensible of the many advantages of this article, and from how many mischiefs it will deliver this nation. How the country gentlemen will be no longer harassed to come, at the command of every court occasion, and upon every summons by the prince's proclamation, from their families and other occasions, whether they can be spared from their wives, &c. or no, or whether they can trust their wives behind them or no; nay, whether they can spare money or no for the journey, or whether they must come carriage paid or no; then they will no more be unnecessarily exposed to long and hazardous journeys in the depth of winter, from the remotest corners of the island, to come to London, just to give away the country's money and go home again; all this will be dispensed with by the kind and gracious management of the Pretender, when he, God

bless us, shall be our most gracious sovereign. 2. In the happy consequence of the demise of parliaments, the country will be eased of that intolerable burden of travelling to elections, sometimes in the middle of their harvest, whenever the writs of elections arbitrarily summon them. 3. And with them the poor gentlemen will be eased of that abominable grievance of the nation, viz. the expense of elections, by which so many gentlemen of estates have been ruined, so many innocent people, of honest principles before, have been debauched and made mercenary, partial, perjured, and been blinded with bribes to sell their country and liberties to who bids most. It is well known how often, and yet how in vain, this distemper has been the constant concern of parliament for many ages to cure and to provide sufficient remedies for. Now if ever the effectual remedy for this is found out, to the inexpressible advantage of the whole nation; and this perhaps is the only cure for it that the nature of the disease will admit of; what terrible havoc has this kind of trade made among the estates of the gentry and the morals of the common people! How has it kept alive the factions and divisions of the country people, keeping them in a constant agitation, and in triennial commotions! so that, what with forming new interests and cultivating old, the heats and animosities never cease among the people. But once set the Pretender upon the throne, and let the funds be but happily stopped, and paid into his hands, that he may be in no more need of a parliament, and all these distempers will be cured as effectually as a fever is cured by cutting off the head, or as a halter cures the bleeding at the nose.

From the 'History of the Plague.'

Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards Bow, for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the river and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping, I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing one's self from the infection to have retired into a ship; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away over the fields, from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall, to the stairs that are there for landing or taking water.

Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank or seawall, as they call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the houses all shut up; at last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man. First I asked him how people did thereabouts. 'Alas! sir,' says he, almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, or in that village' (pointing at Poplar), 'where half of them are dead already, and the rest sick.' Then he, pointing to one house: 'There they are all dead,' said he, and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief,' says he, ' ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too last night.' Then he pointed to several other houses. 'There,' says he, they are all dead, the man and his wife and five children. There,' says he, 'they are shut up; you see a watchman at the door; and so of other houses.' 'Why,' says I, 'what do you here all alone?' 'Why,' says he, 'I am a poor desolate man: it hath pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family is, and one of my children dead.' 'How do you mean then,' said I, 'that you are not visited?' 'Why,' says he, 'that is my house' (pointing to a very little low-boarded