DE FOE.* Tins edition of a book which has perhaps

had more readers and given more delight than any other fiction in the language belongs to the famous " Globe " series of popular authors. The preface, gracefully written, but very brief, tells as much about De Foe as the ordinary reader will care to learn, and those who wish for additional information are referred to the volumes of Chalmers, Wilson, and Chadwick. Mr. Kingsley confesses that he is dependent on these biographers f Or his facts, and remarks that he is ashamed to write after Wilson, whose life of Be Foe is "a splendid piece of standard biography." Few readers who are acquainted with that work will be inclined to agree with Mr. Kingsley. The labour bestowed by Wilson was immense, and his three bulky volumes form a vast storehouse of information. The biographer deserves infinite credit for the patient care with which he has disinterred every notable fact relating to Be Foe, and his book must ever be a standard authority. But then the memoir is better adapted for service than for delight. The wheat itself is safely garnered, but the golden beauty of the wheat field has disappeared before the hand of the reaper.

The most recent memoir of Be Foe is written by Mr. Chadwick. It is a strange book, full of crude notions, incoherent statements, and careless repetitions of opinions for which the author has no basis in his facts. Mr. Chadwick intended to honour De Foe by this

Robinson Crusoe. Edited after the Original Editions, with a Biographical Intro election., by Henry Kingsley. London: Macmillan and Co. 1868.

memorial, but unwittingly has done his utmost to degrade him. In one place he declares that De Foe was eaten up with vanity and ambition; in another that he was a thoughtless, vain man, and that "all his projects failed through his own imprudence, extravagance, and folly ;" in a third, that his want of stability "would cause him to sell his talent for a mess of pottage, and stamp him in the estimation of a hard-hearted world as a scoundrel, a man destitute of all worth or principle, a mere hack scribe, who would write or do anything for anybody for a shilling." It is a comfort to know that although, according to Mr. Chadwick, De Foe was a party writer for bread who possessed neither prudence nor stability, who did not scruple to tell a lie when he found it con- venient to do so, who was a great boaster and remarkable for personal vanity, yet, that notwithstanding these faults, he was both a wise and a good man. Truly, Mr. Chadwick, to quote a phrase of Dr. Johnson's, is "a dead hand at a life."

Be Foe, who has been justly termed the founder of the English novel, commenced his vocation as fiction writer when far advanced

in life. Like Richardson, he won his fame at a period when in

most men the imaginative faculty becomes dormant. All his life long he had been before the public as a manly, vigorous writer, who did not scruple to say out what he thought, whether to friend or enemy. Born in 1661 and dying in 1731, he lived at a time when a man could not speak the thing he would without the risk of imprisonment, fine, and social degradation. De Foe en- countered the risk and accepted the punishment. No one ever justly accused him of cowardice, but it must be allowed that he was occasionally wanting in the better part of valour.

Be Foe's father was a Presbyterian, and to the same form of religious faith the son adhered through life. But in his political as well as in his religious creed he appears to have stood alone. He offended the Whigs, and they abused him ; he offended the Dis-

senters, and they denounced him. When he wrote in favour of the Hanoverian succession, he was accused of being a Jacobite ; when he thought to serve the sectaries by a masterful piece of irony, he was first placed in the pillory, and then thrust into prison for his pains. No man ever led a busier life, and few men, perhaps, have had a more troubled one. Thirteen times, he relates, he had been rich and poor. He was out with Monmouth when a young man, although Mr. Chadwick asserts the contrary, and had escaped from Jeffreys bygoing abroad; "gallantly mounted and richly accoutred," he was among the foremost to welcome William. He was so active, so curious, and possessed such superabundant energy, that nothing escaped his observation or his pen. Before De Foe became a novelist he had written more than one hundred and sixty distinct volumes or pamphlets. As a trader his own business affairs were frequently out of order, but whether he was in hiding at Bristol, or suffering in the horrible dens of Newgate, which he afterwards described so forcibly in Moll Flanders, he was ever ready to advocate what he regarded as the interests of the nation. On all the political and ecclesiastical questions of the age he had an opinion to give, and expressed it in a style which even Swift might have envied. He was a social reformer, too, and anticipated or suggested many of the salutary improvements which have been made since his day. He denounced begging as strongly as Archbishop Whately, and on the same grounds; he demanded entire freedom of the press ; he pointed out the evils of the slave trade long before the conscience of the nation had revolted against it ; he proposed the foundation of an University in London, of an hospital for foundlings, and of an Academy of Music ; he suggested plans for diminishing the evils of prostitution, he pronounced duelling to be a folly and a sin, he wrote against the multiplica- tion of unnecessary oaths ; he advocated, as he well might, prison reform ; he suggested plans for the prevention of street robberies, he argued for the importance of a standing army, and for the necessity of giving a liberal education to women. "I would have men take women for companions," he said, "and educate them to be fit for it." De Foe, moreover, called himself a poet, and the title may pass, as it was assumed by all men in those days who tagged verses. One of his poems, the "True-Born Englishman," although little better than doggrel, contains lines which, from their rough good sense, live in the memory of many readers. It proved of good service to the author by attracting the attention of the King ; but De Foe, although he reverenced William, did not allow his intercourse with the monarch to restrain his pen, since he wrote his reasons against a war with France at the very time he was receiving the favour and protection of his Sovereign. "The gist of the piece," says Mr. Kingsley, "is that it is no casus belli for the French King to acknowledge the Prince of Wales as King of England ; this is headlong Radicalism with a ven- geance." If De Foe as a politician did not shrink from offend- ing the best friend he ever bad, he was equally ready as a polemic to attack the most illustrious members of the sect to which he owned allegiance. Among his pamphlets is one entitled an Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters in Cases of Preferment, the original edition of which attracted little attention. Three years after its publication Sir Thomas Abney, a distinguished Dissenter, whose name is linked in modern ears to the melancholy associations of a cemetery, was appointed Lord Mayor of London. He was a member of a Dissenting con- gregation at Newington which "sat under" the Rev. John Howe, thrum et renerabile nomen ! a divine of vast acquirements and transcendent virtues. Howe, of whom, by the way, Mr. Kingsley seems to know nothing, since he merely speaks of him as "a man of De Foe's own party," was as learned as he was holy, as pure in morals as he was elevated in thought. Perhaps the most marked feature of his character was his generous charity

and toleration. He loved broad principles better than the dogmas of party, and was too good a Christian to be a good sectary.

On the preferment of Sir Thomas Abney to which we have alluded, De Foe published a new edition of his Enquiry, with a preface ad- dressed to Howe, "as you," he says, "have more immediate relation to our present Lord Mayor, who is, or has been, a member of the Church of Christ under your charge" and he asks Howe "to declare

to the world whether the practice of alternate communion be allowed either by your congregation in particular or the Dissenters in general." Here, then, was a challenge and an accusation ; the challenge demanding that Howe, as "one of the most learned and judicious of the Dissenting ministry," should either defend the practice of occasional conformity, or disown it ; the accusation denouncing, though not openly, the conduct of a worthy magis- trate, as one who had practised occasional conformity, and had done so for the sake of preferment. De Foe's argument may be summed up in the following aphorism. Nothing can be lawful and unlawful at the same time ; to say that a man can be of two religions is a contradiction ; if conformity is allowable, schism is a sin. "If it be not lawful for me to dissent, I ought to conform ; but if it be unlawful for me to conform, I must dissent."

In this essay, which is written with great vigour and felicity of diction, De Foe has contrived to give a plausible appearance to a pre- posterous argument. He takes the side of the High-Church party when he asserts that schism is a sin, and he sides with an insig- nificant section of narrow-minded Dissenters when he speaks of the Churchman and Dissenter as holding two separate creeds, and being, as he broadly puts it, of "two religions." Howe's reply to the pamphlet is written in a loose, verbose style, which contrasts

unfavourably with the racy terseness of his antagonist. He strides with lumbering paces over ground which he need not have touched,

and reaches his goal by a painfully circuitous route. De Foe, who knew how to make the best of a bad argument, replied in his crisp, decisive style to Howe's long-winded treatise. One or two of his remarks are very telling, as when he asks his opponent who, as a Dissenting minister maintained a schism in the Established Church, whether he ought to be so indifferent as to boast that he never per-

suaded any man to conform or not to conform. "I am sure," he says, "if I was arrived to that coldness in the matter myself, I

would conform immediately." But the most significant passage in the letter will be found, as is so often the case, in the postscript :—

" Besides your book, Sir, which I think treats me coarsely enough, I am since threatened to be worse used by a gentleman who thinks him- self concerned in my affronting you, as be calls it. I assure you, Sir, I do not charge you with any part of it ; I believe you to be more of a Christian, and more of a gentleman, nor am I sensible I gave you any affront ; I am sure I intended you none. But because that gentleman, I understand, expects some answer this way, I have this to say to him, —that if he thinks himself capable to give me personal correction, he knows me well enough, and need never want an opportunity to be wel- come."

What a curious finale to a semi-religious controversy !

The loneliness of De Foe's position among his party in the Church and in the State strikes all his biographers, yet when we look at the character of the man there is nothing to surprise us in this isolation. His nature prompted him to set the world to rights and those who would have been his friends also, and of such a nature conflict and estrangement are the allotted portion. Mr. Kingsley asks whether he ever made a personal friend, and adds that the attack upon Howe which we have just mentioned "shows that his temper was too inexorable to keep friends, leaving alone the making of them."

In the world of letters, too, his position was equally anomalous. When Be Foe had scarcely passed the prime of manhood, a num- ber of wits whose works have made the age illustrious had won

fame, and wealth, and high social position by the sheer exercise of brain. It was indeed the golden age of authors. Addison, having written respectable verses and enchanting prose, was Secretary of State ; Prior, whose prettine.sses of versification have been imitated by Thomas Moore, was Ambassador at the French Court ; Ambrose Philips, who wrote tragedies and pastorals, and earned the nickname of " Namby Pamby, " was Secretary to the Lord Chancellor and Judge of the Prerogative Court ; Congreve was Secretary for Jamaica, and died a wealthy man ; and Gay, the linendraper's apprentice, won his way to Court smiles by his flattery and his songs, and became secretary to a duchess. Then Arbuthnot, bast-natured of men, who had written what has been pronounced, "the most ingenious and humorous political satire extant in our language," attained to the summit of his profession as physician to the Court ; then Pope, who as a Papist and invalid could not take office, possessed the sweets of it without the toil, and received under his roof at Twickenham the best society in the land ; then Swift, the most powerful writer of the age, was bold enough to browbeat the Queen's Ministers, and had influence enough to raise the foundation of many family fortunes ; and then, too, Richard Steele, a Whig, like De Foe, and like, him, an inveter- ate pamphleteer, corrected the morals of the town in his delight- ful Tattler, wrote in favour of morality while hiding from his creditors, and with the utmost tenderness to his "dearest Prue" while maudling at Button's, or drinking the lady's health with Addison at Sandy End. And Steele, who obtained four appoint- ments in consideration of his labours for the public, thought him- self ill rewarded, and grumbled at his lot.

But De Foes although he was not without patrons in high quarters, and was more than once employed in affairs of State, gained no prominent position either in the world of letters or of politics. In both he won notoriety, and yet from both he appears to have been ostracized. Pope sneered at him in the Dunciad, and Swift in the Examiner ; Gay damned him with faint praise as a fellow who had excellent natural parts, but whose writings would endure but one skimming ; while wiser men than Gay, better men than Swift or Pope, passed him by in silence. One of De Foe's best patrons was Harley, who released him from what might have proved a life-long confinement in Newgate, and gave him honour- able employment, but it does not appear that the Minister had any personal regard for the man whom he befriended. "Dc Foe's inexorable honesty," says Mr. Kingsley, "alienated every one." His political life lasted for more than thirty years—a period of unceasing conflict, which he rather courted than shunned. No wonder, then, that he suffered all that time from the scurrility a party scribblers, and was neglected by men who did not know his worth. This neglect of the most honest—if not the ablest—political writer of that age (Mr. Kingsley says of any) has continued to the present time. When Hume speaks of De Foe as a "party writer in very little estimation," the judg- ment does not surprise us ; but it is strange that he should be neglected by such historians as Lord Macaulay, and Lord Mahon, and that to the bulk of well read men in our day he is unknown save as a writer of fiction.

At fifty-eight the politician was worn with conflict, the tradesman was unable to cope with his losses, and the heart- weary writer pathetically exclaimed, "Had William lived, he -would never have suffered me to be treated as I have been in this world." A fit of apoplexy had like to have ended his sorrows, but he recovered from it to commence a new life, and to gain a literary immortality. In 1719 appeared Robinson Crusoe, a book that age cannot stale, nor fashion render obsolete, and which has won for its author the kindly love of all readers for all time. This, the first of our novels, is still, perhaps, the most popular, and it is pleasant to have so dear a favourite presented, as in the edition before us, in the original dress. Mr. Kingsley hazards the assertion that "this wondrous romance of Robinson Crusoe is no romance at all, but merely an allegorical account of De Foe's own life for twenty-eight years," and states that he has come into the belief most reluctantly. We think, and are glad to think, that the biographer has failed in making out his case. That the sad, musing, solitary man dwelt much upon his own fate when he wrote of Crusoe's is probable enough, and thus his sorrows may have given a tone to the narrative, but to call the tale in any strict sense of the term an allegory, and to say, as Mr. Kingsley -does, "that by Crime he meant himself, that by the can- nibal Caribbees he meant the Tories, and that the name of the first savage he killed with his gun was called Sacheverell, there is no doubt at all," is, we think, assuming a great deal more than the evidence he produces will justify. True, Indeed, that in his Serious Reflections De Foe states that . the tale is both allegorical and historical, and that "there's not a circumstance in the imaginary story but has its just allusion to a real story, and chimes, part for part, and step for step, with the inimitable Life of Robinson Crusoe ;" but it must be remembered that in writing thus De Foe was trying to obviate an objection which some silly critic had raised against the book as wholly fictitious. Moreover, these remarks occur in the preface to another fiction, and in the same preface the writer avers that "the fable is always made for the moral, not the moral for the fable." If Mr. Kingsley accepts this statement as literal, we are not surprised at his reception of the other. Readers of De Foe will remember that one great aim in all his works is to destroy the illusions of romance, and to write as though he were telling in homely language a narrative of ordinary life. His realism is so intense that it has been frequently deceptive, and the produce of a fine imagination has been accepted as a simple record of events. "Lord Chatham," says Mr. Forster, "thought the Cavalier a real person, and his description of the civil wars the best in the language ; Dr. Mead quoted the book upon the Plague as the narrative of an eye-witness ; and Dr. Johnson sat up all night over Captain Carleton's Memoirs as a new work of English history he wondered not to have seen before." It was De Foe's aim in all his tales to encourage this misconception ; and just as in the preface to Roxana he declares the work to be a history and not a story, as in the preface to TtIoll Flanders he observes that "the world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine where the names and other circumstances of the person are concealed," —so we believe that in writing about Robinson Crusoe his views as a novelist led him to adopt the same system of innocent decep- tion. There may be many passages in this wonderful fiction suggested by the vicissitudes of his own career, but this, we think, is all that can safely be allowed ; and this is not enough to con- vert a delightful romance into "a merely allegorical account of De Foe's own life."