It is to us, we confess, a perfect mystery how any one could have been deceived. Party spirit is the most dull and earthy of all spirits. The banter is so evident on the very face of the thing, that none but religious disputants could have doubted it. De Foe often boasted of having a letter by him from a Churchman in the country to his bookseller, which was as follows: Sir, I received yours, and with it that pamphlet which makes so much noise in the world, called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," for which I thank you. I join with that author in all he says, and have such a value for the book that, next to the Holy Bible and sacred Comments, I take it for the most valuable piece I have. I pray God put it into her Majesty's heart to put what is there proposed in execution.' Truly if his belief came from no more deep study of his Bible and Comments than he could have given this tract, it was of small value.

No sooner, however, was the authorship of the satire traced to De Foe than a storm burst on his head. The High Flyers were ashamed at having been so thoroughly deceived, and vexed at having their designs so discovered and given to the world by an Independent; and they blushed when they reflected how they had applauded the book, and as they were now obliged to condemn it, so they were hampered betwixt doing so and pursuing their rage at the Dissenters. The greater part of them, in order to condemn the author, condemned the principles, for it was impossible to do one without the other, and they laboured in print and in the pulpit to clear their church of the slander. But this still answered the writer's end; for, the more they censured the practices he recommended, the more they condemned such wretches as their pet Sacheverell. But he had wounded the tenderest part of these men's human nature; and few men can pardon a wound in their self-esteem. They might have overlooked, or answered, an insult, but he had made them laughing-stocks to themselves, and their very discovery of this made them laughing-stocks to the world. So they resolved to punish him. A reward of fifty pounds was offered for his apprehension; and his pamphlet was burnt by the hangman. He wrote a defence, but it availed nothing. His printers were arrested, and he, to save them, gave himself up to the law, which treated him with the utmost cruelty. He was tried at the Old Bailey in June 1703, having lain in prison six months. He was advised to plead guilty, with many half-promises that if he abstained from defending himself he would find mercy. In this his own lawyers concurred, and he accordingly did so. But it was a snare. He was found guilty; there was no recommendation to mercy; and his sentence was-a fine of 200 marks; to

stand thrice in the pillory; to be imprisoned during pleasure; and to find sureties for good behaviour for seven years.

This infamous sentence was sufficiently severe in itself. But its consequences were severer still; from being in respectable circumstances, he was reduced to ruin. His Pantile Company was completely broken up; and he had no other means of supporting his wife and children, while in prison, than by his pen. Besides which, he lost the countenance of many of his friends, who could not believe an innocent man would be so severely punished.

The brave man was not to be subdued by means like these. He was put up in the pillory at Temple-bar, in Cheapside, and at the Royal Exchange, where every second man knew him; but, by a poem which he circulated among the people, he turned the disgrace of the punishment upon those who inflicted it. Hail! hieroglyphic state machine,' he exclaimed, addressing the pillory,

Contrived to punish Fancy in.'

'Tell all people that De Foe stands upon it :

"Because he was too bold,

And told those truths which he should not have told,
That thus he is an example made

To make men of their honesty afraid!

Tell them the men that placed him here

Are scandals to the times,

Are at a loss to find his guilt,

And can't commit his crimes!"

For this publication, however, the Government did not care to prosecute him, having already gone too far that way.

And now he turned with stern determination to provide bread for his family. We cannot give an abstract of all he wrote in his imprisonment; we shall only refer to some of the chief topics. In his 'Reformation of Manners,' he says of the slave traders, respecting their infamous traffic, which had never before been censured:

'The harmless natives basely they trepan,

And barter baubles for the souls of man:
The wretches they to Christian climes bring o'er,
To serve worse heathens than they did before.'

Thus stepping far in advance of his age in this as in so many other things. He wrote several pamphlets in defence of the Dissenters from various enemies, as well as against the High Church party. He entered into the question of The liberty of Episcopal Dissenters in Scotland,' in which he ad

verted (as afterwards at greater length in his Memoirs of the Church of Scotland') to the miseries and brutalities to which they had been subjected by the High Flyers in past and present times. We wish that poor Aytoun had read some of his statements before he put out his absurd prose prefaces to the 'Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.' De Foe now turned his pen to the defence of suffering Nonconformity in Ireland, where the Episcopalians, under pretence of preventing the growth of Popery, had got Dissenters shut out of all place and power in govern

ment.

6

His most extraordinary work, which he commenced and carried on in prison, was the Review,' a periodical which he at first issued once, then twice, and ultimately thrice a week, writing the whole of it himself, and continuing it for nine years. This, independently of his other elaborate works, written at the same time, is a feat unparalleled in the history of letters; and considering the variety, pathos, wit, and satire contained in it, would have served, if he had left no other works, as an imperishable monument of his genius.

In 1704 his enemies' administration ended, and Harley entered office. De Foe's almost boundless talents and invention, although employed under all the disadvantages of personal captivity, had naturally drawn much attention to him. Many attempts had been made to win him, but in vain-he was not in the market; they could not buy the indomitable Dissenter. But Harley was almost one of his own school, and though he could not buy his services, he got him set free from prison, and afterwards made a useful public servant of him. He left Newgate in August of that year.

He retired with his family to the country, where he continued his literary labours. But malignity followed him there. He was said to have stolen from custody; this he answered by offering himself to the officer who said he had a warrant against him. His works were reprinted in a garbled form. His Reviews were stolen from the coffee-houses to prevent their being read. His debts were bought up that he might be prosecuted. He was summoned before magistrates on frivolous pretences. He was harassed in every conceivable way. At one time, he says, he had fifteen letters threatening to kill him, some naming the very day and manner of the murder.

Still he held on his way; steadfastly walking by that inner light of truth which was his constant guide. Not too peacefully, however, for he took every occasion to show his scorn of his opponents. He was several times waylaid, but came to no harm; and he told his enemies that he put such trust in God and his own rectitude, that he should adopt no other caution

against them than to stay at home at night, because he was persuaded they would not do their murderous work by day; or by day, he would wear armour on his back, because he was sure they would not attack him face to face.

So time passed. Space fails us to speak of his controversies and tracts much further. We had purposed to enter on his belief in apparitions, and his ludicrous imposition on the credulity of the public, in order to sell Drelincourt's terrible book of divinity on the Fear of Death.' We must pass these by, however, to speak very briefly of one or two more of his greatest works.

In 1706, he went to Scotland in a diplomatic character. The object of his mission was the union of that country with England. There he was, at first, very unpopular, but he conducted himself so well that at last he became somewhat of a favourite. His services were repaid with a pension on his return to England in 1708. He wrote several very popular works at this time, but the best is the History of the Union,' a huge quarto, now seldom to be met with, but which we should much like to see reprinted. It contains some of the most vigorous passages that ever came from his pen. When in the commencement of this year Harley left office, De Foe prepared to fall with his semipatron; but Harley would not have it so, and passages to the honour of all parties occurred, by which his pension was continued by Harley's successors.

We can but allude to his writings against the Pretender against theatrical performances, which he condemned, as men of experience in them usually do; and upon the subject of literary copyright. Far seeing, and gifted with the courage necessary to propound the almost innumerable schemes that crossed his mind-schemes which were then ridiculed, but are now adopted, he was, of course, subject to the most virulent attacks. His old enemies were ever persecuting him, and in business, and in letters alike, he met with care and misfortune sufficient to have crushed a less resolute man.

When George I. came to the throne, and the Whigs, on whose behalf De Foe had written and suffered so much, regained power, the ungrateful treatment he received from them seems to have saddened and subdued the spirit of the great man. Old age was stealing rapidly upon him, and disappointment, and poverty, and persecution, were doing their swift work. It seemed as though the stern conqueror of the strongholds of tyranny and priestcraft was about to fall into the back ground, and his sun was to go down in darkness. Yet he made one great effort to defend his career, and in his Appeal to Honour and Justice,' he has left a piece of pathetic self

defence, which few we think who know his life can read unmoved. By the hint of mortality,' he says, and by the infirmities of a life of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason to think I am not a very great way off from, if not very near to, the great ocean of eternity; and the time may not be long ere I embark on the last voyage. Wherefore I think I should even accounts with this world before I go. I am unconcerned at the rage and clamour of party-men; but I cannot be unconcerned to hear good men and good Christians prepossessed and mistaken about me. However, I cannot doubt but it will please God at some time or other to open such men's eyes. A constant steady adhering to personal virtue, and to public peace, which, I thank God, I can appeal to him, has always been my practice, will at last restore me to the opinion of sober and impartial men, and that is all I desire.' But this self-defence was not completed ere a stroke of apoplexy laid him low.

And now comes the most wonderful part of our tale. He languished for six months (Mr. Chalmers says six weeks), between life and death, at the end of which time his constitution suddenly threw off his disease, and he returned once more to the world. But he was no longer a dispirited and broken man. Like a phoenix new rising from the ashes, he came from the bed of sickness as with new youth, with fresh energies and renovated powers.

He devoted them almost entirely to fresh pursuits. Thirty years of political struggling was enough even for him. His first work was The Family Instructor,' written in dialogue. Its object was the revival of family religion, which had visibly decayed; and the piety, as well as the nature and good sense pervading it, have kept it popular till the present day.

His chief labours were, however, in fiction; and the series of imaginative works which he now poured forth, will, as Mr. Wilson says, entail honour on his name, as long as true genius, consecrated by moral worth, shall be esteemed. His stores of reading, and his intimate knowledge of mankind, were now turned to account. His fancy and judgment had been ripened, and, at the same time, chastened, by his many sufferings. The first and greatest of these works was 'Robinson Crusoe.'

The number of genuine good works that have been refused by the trade,' is extraordinary. The Fathers,' as Southey calls them, are a timid race. Novelty is the worst characteristic of a book with them; good, common-place matter, is the safer card. It has ever been so. Not to speak of 'Paradise Lost,' and works of olden times-in our days 'Pelham' was refused, and 'Vestiges of Creation' was refused; and Mary Barton' went