he, all the while that he was professing to be of the Church of
England, expressing both zeal and affection to it, was yet secretly
reconciled to the Church of Rome; thus mocking God, and deceiving the
world with so gross a prevarication. And his not having the honesty or
courage to own it at the last; his not shewing any sign of the least
remorse for his ill-led life, or any tenderness either for his
subjects in general, or for the queen and his servants; and his
recommending only his mistresses and their children to his brother's
care, would have been a strange conclusion to any other's life, but
was well enough suited to all the other parts of his.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 105: From the "History of Our Own Times."]
[Footnote 106: The profligate earl, of whom the best-known anecdote is
that he once pinned to the door of the King's chamber the following
quatrain:
"Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on:
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one."
It is recorded of the King that, when he saw these lines he remarked
that they were quite true, inasmuch as his words were his own and his
acts were those of his ministers.]
DANIEL DEFOE
Born in 1661, died in 1731; his father a butcher in London;
served in the army in 1688; traveled on the Continent; wrote
pamphlets in favor of William III; arrested and placed in
the pillory for an attack on Dissenters in 1703; engaged in
political intrigues and wrote many articles and pamphlets;
"Robinson Crusoe" published in 1719, "Moll Flanders" in
1722, "The Journal of the Plague" in 1722.
I
THE SHIPWRECK OF CRUSOE[107]
Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sunk
into the water; for tho I swam very well, yet I could not deliver
myself from the waves so as to draw my breath; till that wave having
driven me or rather carried me a vast way on toward the shore, and
having spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry,
but half dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of mind
as well as breath left, that seeing myself nearer the mainland than I
expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavored to make on toward the
land as I could, before another wave should return and take me up
again; but I soon found it was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the
sea coming after me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an
enemy which I had no means or strength to contend with: my business
was to hold my breath, and raise myself upon the water, if I could;
and so by swimming to preserve my breathing, and pilot myself toward
the shore if possible; my greatest concern now being that the wave, as
it would carry me a great way toward the shore when it came on, might
not carry me back again with it when it gave back toward the sea.
The wave that came upon me again buried me at once twenty or thirty
feet deep in its own body; and I could feel myself carried with a
mighty force and swiftness toward the shore, a very great way; but I
held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my
might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt
myself rising up, so to my immediate relief I found my head and hands
shoot out above the surface of the water; and tho it was not two
seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me
greatly, gave me breath and new courage. I was covered again with
water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the
water had spent itself, and began to return, I struck forward against
the return of the waves, and felt ground again with my feet. I stood
still a few moments to recover breath, and till the water went from
me, and then took to my heels and ran with what strength I had farther
toward the shore. But neither would this deliver me from the fury of
the sea, which came pouring in after me again; and twice more I was
lifted up by the waves and carried forward as before, the shore being
very flat.
The last time of these two had well-nigh been fatal to me; for the sea
having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me
against a piece of rock, and that with such force that it left me
senseless, and indeed helpless as to my own deliverance; for the blow
taking my side and breast, beat the breath as it were quite out of my
body, and had it returned again immediately I must have been strangled
in the water; but I recovered a little before the return of the waves,
and seeing I should again be covered with the water, I resolved to
hold fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath if possible
till the wave went back. Now, as the waves were not so high as the
first, being nearer land, I held my hold till the wave abated, and
then fetched another run, which brought me so near the shore that the
next wave, tho it went over me, yet did not so swallow me up as to
carry me away; and the next run I took, I got to the mainland, where
to my great comfort I clambered up the cliffs of the shore, and sat me
down upon the grass, free from danger and quite out of the reach of
the water.
I was now landed, and safe on shore; and began to look up and thank
God that my life was saved, in a case wherein there were, some minutes
before, scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible to
express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul
are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the grave: and I did not
wonder now at the custom, viz., that when a malefactor who has the
halter about his neck is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and
has a reprieve brought to him--I say I do not wonder that they bring
a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of
it; that the surprize may not drive the animal spirits from the heart
and overwhelm him.
"For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first."
I walked about the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as
I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance; making a
thousand gestures and motions which I can not describe; reflecting
upon my comrades that were drowned, and that there should not be one
soul saved but myself; for as for them, I never saw them afterward, or
any sign of them, except three of the hats, one cap, and two shoes
that were not fellows.
II
THE RESCUE OF MAN FRIDAY[108]
About a year and a half after I entertained these notions (and by long
musing had, as it were, resolved them all into nothing, for want of an
occasion to put them in execution), I was surprized one morning early
by seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together on my side
the island, and the people who belonged to them all landed and out of
my sight. The number of them broke all my measures; for seeing so
many, and knowing that they always came four or six, or sometimes
more, in a boat, I could not tell what to think of it, or how to take
my measures to attack twenty or thirty men single-handed; so lay still
in my castle, perplexed and discomforted. However, I put myself into
all the same postures for an attack that I had formerly provided, and
was just ready for action, if anything had presented. Having waited a
good while, listening to hear if they made any noise, at length, being
very impatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder, and clambered
up to the top of the hill, by my two stages, as usual; standing so,
however, that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they
could not perceive me by any means. Here I observed, by the help of my
perspective glass, that they were no less than thirty in number; that
they had a fire kindled, and that they had meat drest. How they had
cooked it, I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing, in I
know not how many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round
the fire.
While I was thus looking on them, I perceived, by my perspective, two
miserable wretches dragged from the boats, where, it seems, they were
laid by, and were now brought out for the slaughter. I perceived one
of them immediately fall; being knocked down, I suppose with a club or
wooden sword, for that was their way; and two or three others were at
work immediately, cutting him open for their cookery, while the other
victim was left standing by himself, till they should be ready for
him. In that very moment, this poor wretch, seeing himself a little at
liberty, and unbound, Nature inspired him with hopes of life and he
started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the
sands, directly toward me; I mean toward that part of the coast where
my habitation was. I was dreadfully frightened, that I must
acknowledge, when I perceived him run my way; and especially when, as
I thought, I saw him pursued by the whole body; and now I expected
that part of my dream was coming to pass, and that he would certainly
take shelter in my grove; but I could not depend, by any means, upon
my dream, that the other savages would not pursue him thither, and
find him there. However, I kept my station, and my spirits began to
recover when I found that there was not above three men that followed
him; and still more was encouraged, when I found that he outstript
them exceedingly in running, and gained ground on them; so that, if he
could but hold it for half an hour, I saw easily he would fairly get
away from them all.
There was, between them and my castle, the creek, which I mentioned
often in the first part of my story, where I landed my cargoes out of
the ship; and this I saw plainly he must necessarily swim over, or the
poor wretch would be taken there; but when the savage escaping came
thither, he made nothing of it, tho the tide was then up; but,
plunging in, swam through in about thirty strokes, or thereabouts,
landed and ran with exceeding strength and swiftness. When the three
persons came to the creek I found that two of them could swim, but the
third could not, and that, standing on the other side, he looked at
the others, but went no farther, and soon after went softly back
again; which, as it happened, was very well for him in the end. I
observed that the two who swam were yet more than twice as long
swimming over the creek than the fellow was that fled from them. It
came very warmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now
was the time to get me a servant, and perhaps a companion or
assistant; and that I was plainly called by Providence to save this
poor creature's life. I immediately ran down the ladder with all
possible expedition, fetched my two guns, for they were both at the
foot of the ladder, as I observed before, and getting up again with
the same haste to the top of the hill, I crost toward the sea; and
having a very short cut, and all down hill, clap'd myself in the way
between the pursuers and the pursued, hallooing aloud to him that
fled, who, looking back, was at first perhaps as much frightened at me
as at them; but I beckoned with my hand to him to come back; and, in
the mean time, I slowly advanced toward the two that followed; then
rushing at once upon the foremost, I knocked him down with the stock
of my piece.
I was loath to fire, because I would not have the rest hear; tho at
that distance it would not have been easily heard, and being out of
sight of the smoke, too, they would not have known what to make of it.
Having knocked this fellow down, the other who pursued him stopt, as
if he had been frightened, and I advanced toward him; but as I came
nearer, I perceived presently he had a bow and arrow, and was fitting
it to shoot at me; so I was then obliged to shoot at him first, which
I did, and killed him at the first shot. The poor savage who fled,
but had stopt, tho he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he
thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece
that he stood stock still, and neither came forward nor went backward,
tho he seemed rather inclined still to fly than to come on. I hallooed
again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily
understood, and came a little way; then stopt again, and then a little
farther, and stopt again; and I could then perceive that he stood
trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner, and had just been to be
killed, as his two enemies were. I beckoned to him again to come to
me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of;
and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve
steps, in token of acknowledgment for saving his life. I smiled at
him, and looked pleasantly, and beckoned to him to come still nearer;
at length, he came close to me; and then he kneeled down again, kissed
the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and, taking me by the
foot, set my foot upon his head; this, it seems, was in token of
swearing to be my slave forever. I took him up, and made much of him,
and encouraged him all I could.
But there was more work to do yet; for I perceived the savage whom I
had knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow, and began
to come to himself. So I pointed to him, and showed him the savage,
that he was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and tho I
could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear;
for they were the first sound of a man's voice that I had heard, my
own excepted, for above twenty-five years. But there was no time for
such reflections now; the savage who was knocked down recovered
himself so far as to sit up upon the ground, and I perceived that my
savage began to be afraid; but when I saw that, I presented my other
piece at the man, as if I would shoot him; upon this my savage, for so
I call him now, made a motion to me to lend him my sword, which hung
naked in a belt by my side, which I did. He no sooner had it, but he
runs to his enemy, and at one blow cut off his head as cleverly, no
executioner in Germany could have done it sooner or better; which I
thought very strange for one who, I had reason to believe, never saw a
sword in his life before, except their own wooden swords: however, it
seems, as learned afterwards, they make their wooden swords so sharp,
so heavy, and the wood is so hard, that they will even cut off heads
with them, ay, and arms, and that at one blow too. When he had done
this, he comes laughing to me in sign of triumph, and brought me the
sword again, and with abundance of gestures which I did not
understand, laid it down, with the head of the savage that he had
killed just before me. But that which astonished him most, was to know
how I killed the other Indian so far off; so pointing to him, he made
signs to me to let him go to him; and I bade him go, as well as I
could. When he came to him, he stood like one amazed, looking at him,
turning him first on one side, then on the other; looked at the wound
the bullet had made, which it seems was just in his breast; where it
had made a hole, and no great quantity of blood had followed; but he
had bled inwardly, for he was quite dead.
Upon this he made signs to me that he should bury them with sand, that
they might not be seen by the rest, if they followed; and so I made
signs to him again to do so. He fell to work; and in an instant he had
scraped a hole in the sand with his hands, big enough to bury the
first in, and then dragged him into it, and covered him; and did so by
the other also; I believe he had buried them both in a quarter of an
hour. Then calling him away, I carried him, not to my castle, but
quite away to my cave, on the farther part of the island; so I did not
let my dream come to pass in that part, that he came into my grove for
shelter. Here I gave him bread and a bunch of raisins to eat, and a
draft of water, which I found he was indeed in great distress for from
his running; and having refreshed him, I made signs for him to go and
lie down to sleep, showing him a place where I had laid some rice
straw, and a blanket upon it, which I used to sleep upon myself
sometimes; so the poor creature lay down, and went to sleep.
III
IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT PLAGUE[109]
A blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague,
as there did the year after, another, a little before the fire; the
old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the other sex,
whom I could almost call the old women too, remarked, especially
afterward, tho not till both those judgments were over, that those two
comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses
that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone.
That the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid
color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow; but that the comet
before the fire was bright and sparkling, or as others said, flaming,
and its motion swift and furious; and that accordingly one foretold a
heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible, and frightful, as was the
plague. But the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, as
was the conflagration; nay, so particular some people were, that as
they looked upon that comet preceding the fire they fancied that they
not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the
motion with their eye, but they even heard it--that it made a rushing
mighty noise, fierce and terrible, tho at a distance and but just
perceivable.
The shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and
unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter
lamentations; complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought
to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly and some maliciously shut up;
I can not say, but upon inquiry, many that complained so loudly were
found in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection
being made upon the sick person and the sickness not appearing
infectious, or if uncertain, yet on his being content to be carried to
the pest-house, was released.
As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o'clock there was
a great noise; it is true indeed that there was not much crowd,
because the people were not free to gather together, or to stay
together when they were there, nor did I stay long there; but the
outcry was loud enough to prompt my curiosity, and I called to one who
looked out of a window, and asked what was the matter.
A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door
of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut
up; he had been there all night for two nights together, as he told
his story, and the day watchman had been there one day, and was now
come to relieve him; all this while no noise had been heard in the
house, no light had been seen, they called for nothing, sent him on no
errands, which used to be the chief business of the watchman, neither
had they given him any disturbance, as he said from Monday afternoon,
when he heard a great crying and screaming in the house, which as he
supposed was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that
time. It seems the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had
been stopt there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door
dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into
the cart, wrapt only in a green rug, and carried her away.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that
noise and crying as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at
last one looked out and said with an angry quick tone, and yet a kind
of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, "What d'ye want,
that you make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman; how
do you do? What is the matter?" The person answered, "What is that to
you? Stop the dead-cart," This, it seems, was about one o'clock; soon
after, as the fellow said, he stopt the dead-cart, and then knocked
again, but nobody answered; he continued knocking, and the bellman
called out several times, "Bring out your dead"; but nobody answered,
till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would
stay no longer, and drove away.
The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone
till the morning man, or day watchman, as they called him, came to
relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked at
the door a great while, but nobody answered, and they observed that
the window or casement at which the person looked out who had answered
before, continued open, being up two pair of stairs.
Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder,
and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where
he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no
clothes on but her shift; but tho he called aloud, and putting in his
long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered;
neither could he hear any noise in the house.
He came down upon this and acquainted his fellow, who went up also,
and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the lord
mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at
the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two
men ordered the house to be broken open, a constable and other persons
being appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundered; and
accordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but
that young woman, who having been infected and past recovery, the rest
had left her to die by herself, and every one gone, having found some
way to delude the watchman and to get open the door, or get out at
some back door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew
nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it
was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at this
bitter parting, which to be sure it was to them all, this being the
sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the house, his wife,
several children and servants, being all gone and fled; whether sick
or sound, that I could never learn, nor indeed did I make much inquiry
after it....
This [38,195 deaths in about a month] was a prodigious number of
itself; but if I should add the reasons which I have to believe that
this account was deficient, and how deficient it was, you would with
me make no scruple to believe that there died above 10,000 a week for
all those weeks, and a proportion for several weeks both before and
after. The confusion among the people, especially within the city, at
that time was inexpressible; the terror was so great at last that the
courage of the people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail
them; nay, several of them died, altho they had the distemper before,
and were recovered; and some of them had dropt down when they had been
carrying the bodies even at the pitside, and just ready to throw them
in; and this confusion was greater in the city, because they had
flattered themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the
bitterness of death was past. One cart, they told us, going up to
Shoreditch, was forsaken by the drivers, or being left to one man to
drive, he died in the street; and the horses, going on, overthrew the
cart and left the bodies, some thrown here, some there, is a dismal
manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit in Finsbury
Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone and abandoned it;
and the horses running too near it, the cart fell in and drew the
horses in also. It was suggested that the driver was thrown in with it
and that the cart fell upon him, by reason his whip was seen to be in
the pit among the bodies; but that, I suppose, could not be certain.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 107: From "The Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe."]
[Footnote 108: From "The Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe."]
[Footnote 109: From the "History of the Great Plague in London." The
year of the plague was 1665.]
JONATHAN SWIFT
Born in 1667, died in 1745; educated at Trinity College,
Dublin; became secretary to Sir William Temple in 1688; held
small livings in Ireland in 1700 and other years; lived
mostly in London from 1701 to 1710, when he abandoned the
Whigs and became a Tory; appointed by Queen Anne dean of St.
Patrick's, Dublin, in 1713; intimate with Bolingbroke,
Addison, Steele and Pope; published "Gulliver's Travels" in
1726; his mind clouded in later years, and in 1741 he was
put under restraint.
I
ON PRETENSE IN PHILOSOPHERS[110]
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to
the academy. Every room hath in it one or more projectors, and I
believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.