The father of Daniel Defoe was a butcher in the parish of St. Giles's,
Cripplegate, London. In this parish, probably, Daniel Defoe was born in
1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II. The boy's parents
wished him to become a dissenting minister, and so intrusted his
education to a Mr. Morton who kept an academy for the training of
nonconformist divines. How long Defoe staid at this school is not known.
He seems to think himself that he staid there long enough to become a
good scholar; for he declares that the pupils were "made masters of the
English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any
school at that time." If this statement be true, we can only say that
the other schools must have been very bad indeed. Defoe never acquired a
really good style, and can in no true sense be called a "master of the
English tongue."
Nature had gifted Defoe with untiring energy, a keen taste for public
affairs, and a special aptitude for chicanery and intrigue. These were
not qualities likely to advance him in the ministry, and he wisely
refused to adopt that profession. With a young man's love for adventure
and a dissenter's hatred for Roman Catholicism, he took part in the Duke
of Monmouth's rebellion (1685) against James II. More fortunate than
three of his fellow students, who were executed for their share in this
affair, Defoe escaped the hue and cry that followed the battle of
Sedgemoor, and after some months' concealment set up as a wholesale
merchant in Cornhill. When James II. was deposed in 1688, and the
Protestant William of Orange elected to the English throne, Defoe
hastened to give in his allegiance to the new dynasty. In 1691 he
published his first pamphlet, "A New Discovery of an Old Intrigue, a
Satire leveled at Treachery and Ambition." This is written in miserable
doggerel verse. That Defoe should have mistaken it for poetry, and
should have prided himself upon it accordingly, is only a proof of how
incompetent an author is to pass judgment upon what is good and what is
bad in his own work.
In 1692 Defoe failed in business, probably from too much attention to
politics, which were now beginning to engross more and more of his time
and thoughts. His political attitude is clearly defined in the title of
his next pamphlet, "The Englishman's Choice and True Interest: in the
Vigorous Prosecution of the War against France, and serving K. William
and Q. Mary, and acknowledging their Right." "K. William" was too astute
a manager to neglect a writer who showed the capacity to become a
dangerous opponent. Defoe was accordingly given the place of accountant
to the commissioners of the glass duty (1694). From this time until
William's death (1702), he had no more loyal and active servant than
Defoe. Innumerable pamphlets bear tribute to his devotion to the King
and his policy,--pamphlets written in an easy, swinging, good-natured
style, with little imagination and less passion; pamphlets whose
principal arguments are based upon a reasonable self-interest, and for
the comprehension of which no more intellectual power is called for than
Providence has doled out to the average citizen. Had Defoe lived in the
nineteenth century, instead of in the seventeenth, he would have
commanded a princely salary as writer for the Sunday newspaper, and as
composer of campaign documents and of speeches for members of the House
of Representatives.
In 1701 Defoe published his "True-born Englishman," a satire upon the
English people for their stupid opposition to the continental policy of
the King. This is the only metrical composition of prolific Daniel that
has any pretensions to be called a poem. It contains some lines not
unworthy to rank with those of Dryden at his second-best. For instance,
the opening:--
"Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination
The latter has the largest congregation."
Or, again, this keen and spirited description of the origin of the
English race:--
"These are the heroes that despise the Dutch,
And rail at newcome foreigners so much,
Forgetting that themselves are all derived
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived;
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,
Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns:
The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot
By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought;
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains:
Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed."
Strange to say, the English people were so pleased with this humorous
sketch of themselves, that they bought eighty thousand copies of the
work. Not often is a truth teller so rewarded.
Not unnaturally elated by the success of this experiment, the next year
Defoe came out with his famous "Shortest Way with the Dissenters," a
satire upon those furious High Churchmen and Tories, who would devour
the dissenters tooth and nail. Unfortunately, the author had
overestimated the capacity of the average Tory to see through a stone
wall. The irony was mistaken for sincerity, and quoted approvingly by
those whom it was intended to satirize. When the truth dawned through
the obscuration of the Tories' intellect, they were naturally enraged.
They had influence enough to have Defoe arrested, and confined in
Newgate for some eighteen months. He was also compelled to stand in the
pillory for three days; but it is not true that his ears were cropped,
as Pope intimates in his
"Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe."
What are the exact terms Defoe made with the ministry, and on exactly
what conditions he was released from Newgate, have not been ascertained.
It is certain he never ceased to write, even while in prison, both
anonymously and under his own name. For some years, in addition to
pamphlet after pamphlet, he published a newspaper which he called the
"Review,"[1] in which he generally sided with the moderate Whigs,
advocated earnestly the union with Scotland, and gave the English people
a vast deal of good advice upon foreign policy and domestic trade. There
is no doubt that during this time he was in the secret service of the
government. When the Tories displaced the Whigs in 1710, he managed to
keep his post, and took his "Review" over to the support of the new
masters, justifying his turncoating by a disingenuous plea of preferring
country to party. His pamphleteering pen was now as active in the
service of the Tory prime minister Harley as it had been in that of the
Whig Godolphin. The party of the latter rightly regarded him as a
traitor to their cause, and secured an order from the Court of Queen's
Bench, directing the attorney-general to prosecute Defoe for certain
pamphlets, which they declared were directed against the Hanoverian
succession. Before the trial took place, Harley, at whose instigation
the pamphlets had been written, secured his henchman a royal pardon.
When the Tories fell from power at the death of Queen Anne (1714), and
the Whigs again obtained possession of the government, only one of two
courses was open to Defoe: he must either retire permanently from
politics, or again change sides. He unhesitatingly chose the latter. But
his political reputation had now sunk so low, that no party could afford
the disgrace of his open support. He was accordingly employed as a
literary and political spy, ostensibly opposing the government, worming
himself into the confidence of Tory editors and politicians, using his
influence as an editorial writer to suppress items obnoxious to the
government, and suggesting the timely prosecution of such critics as he
could not control. He was able to play this double part for eight years,
until his treachery was discovered by one Mist, whose "Journal" Defoe
had, in his own words, "disabled and enervated, so as to do no mischief,
or give any offense to the government." Mist hastened to disclose
Defoe's real character to his fellow newspaper proprietors; and in 1726
we find the good Daniel sorrowfully complaining, "I had not published my
project in this pamphlet, could I have got it inserted in any of the
journals without feeing the journalists or publishers.... I have not
only had the mortification to find what I sent rejected, but to lose my
originals, not having taken copies of what I wrote."[2] Heavy-footed
justice had at last overtaken the arch liar of his age.
Of the two hundred and fifty odd books and pamphlets written by Defoe,
it may fairly be said that only two--"Robinson Crusoe" and the "History
of the Plague in London"--are read by any but the special students of
eighteenth-century literature. The latter will be discussed in another
part of this Introduction. Of the former it may be asserted, that it
arose naturally out of the circumstances of Defoe's trade as a
journalist. So long as the papers would take his articles, nobody of
distinction could die without Defoe's rushing out with a biography of
him. In these biographies, when facts were scanty, Defoe supplied them
from his imagination, attributing to his hero such sentiments as he
thought the average Londoner could understand, and describing his
appearance with that minute fidelity of which only an eyewitness is
supposed to be capable. Long practice in this kind of composition made
Defoe an adept in the art of "lying like truth." When, therefore, the
actual and extraordinary adventures of Alexander Selkirk came under his
notice, nothing was more natural and more profitable for Defoe than to
seize upon this material, and work it up, just as he worked up the lives
of Jack Sheppard the highwayman, and of Avery the king of the pirates.
It is interesting to notice also that the date of publication of
"Robinson Crusoe" (1719) corresponds with a time at which Defoe was
playing the desperate and dangerous game of a political spy. A single
false move might bring him a stab in the dark, or might land him in the
hulks for transportation to some tropical island, where he might have
abundant need for the exercise of those mental resources that interest
us so much in Crusoe. The secret of Defoe's life at this time was known
only to himself and to the minister that paid him. He was almost as much
alone in London as was Crusoe on his desert island.
The success which Defoe scored in "Robinson Crusoe" he never repeated.
His entire lack of artistic conscience is shown by his adding a dull
second part to "Robinson Crusoe," and a duller series of serious
reflections such as might have passed through Crusoe's mind during his
island captivity. Of even the best of Defoe's other novels,--"Moll
Flanders," "Roxana," "Captain Singleton,"--the writer must confess that
his judgment coincides with that of Mr. Leslie Stephen, who finds two
thirds of them "deadly dull," and the treatment such as "cannot raise
[the story] above a very moderate level."[3]
The closing scenes of Defoe's life were not cheerful. He appears to have
lost most of the fortune he acquired from his numerous writings and
scarcely less numerous speculations. For the two years immediately
preceding his death, he lived in concealment away from his home, though
why he fled, and from what danger, is not definitely known. He died in a
lodging in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on April 26, 1731.
The only description we have of Defoe's personal appearance is an
advertisement published in 1703, when he was in hiding to avoid arrest
for his "Shortest Way with the Dissenters:"--
"He is a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown
complexion, and dark-brown colored hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose,
a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth."
In the years 1720-21 the plague, which had not visited Western Europe
for fifty-five years, broke out with great violence in Marseilles. About
fifty thousand people died of the disease in that city, and great alarm
was felt in London lest the infection should reach England. Here was a
journalistic chance that so experienced a newspaper man as Defoe could
not let slip. Accordingly, on the 17th of March, 1722, appeared his
"Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the most
Remarkable Occurrences, as well Publick as Private, which happened in
London during the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen
who continued all the while in London. Never made public before." The
story is told with such an air of veracity, the little circumstantial
details are introduced with such apparent artlessness, the grotesque
incidents are described with such animation, (and relish!) the horror
borne in upon the mind of the narrator is so apparently genuine, that we
can easily understand how almost everybody not in the secret of the
authorship believed he had here an authentic "Journal," written by one
who had actually beheld the scenes he describes. Indeed, we know that
twenty-three years after the "Journal" was published, this impression
still prevailed; for Defoe is gravely quoted as an authority in "A
Discourse on the Plague; by Richard Mead, Fellow of the College of
Physicians and of the Royal Society, and Physician to his Majesty. 9th
Edition. London, 1744." Though Defoe, like his admiring critic Mr.
Saintsbury, had but small sense of humor, even he must have felt tickled
in his grave at this ponderous scientific tribute to his skill in the
art of realistic description.
If we inquire further into the secret of Defoe's success in the "History
of the Plague," we shall find that it consists largely in his vision,
or power of seeing clearly and accurately what he describes, before he
attempts to put this description on paper. As Defoe was but four years
old at the time of the Great Plague, his personal recollection of its
effects must have been of the dimmest; but during the years of childhood
(the most imaginative of life) he must often have conversed with persons
who had been through the plague, possibly with those who had recovered
from it themselves. He must often have visited localities ravaged by the
plague, and spared by the Great Fire of 1666; he must often have gazed
in childish horror at those awful mounds beneath which hundreds of human
bodies lay huddled together,--rich and poor, high and low, scoundrel and
saint,--sharing one common bed at last. His retentive memory must have
stored away at least the outline of those hideous images, so effectively
recombined many years later by means of his powerful though limited
imagination.
* * * * *
Defoe had the ability to become a good scholar, and to acquire the
elements of a good English style; but it is certain he never did. He
never had time, or rather he never took time, preferring invariably
quantity to quality. What work of his has survived till to-day is read,
not for its style, but in spite of its style. His syntax is loose and
unscholarly; his vocabulary is copious, but often inaccurate; many of
his sentences ramble on interminably, lacking unity, precision, and
balance. Figures of speech he seldom abuses because he seldom uses; his
imagination, as noticed before, being extremely limited in range. That
Defoe, in spite of these defects, should succeed in interesting us in
his "Plague," is a remarkable tribute to his peculiar ability as
described in the preceding paragraph.
In the course of the Notes, the editor has indicated such corrections
as are necessary to prevent the student from thinking that in reading
Defoe he is drinking from a "well of English undefiled." The art of
writing an English prose at once scholarly, clear-cut, and vigorous, was
well understood by Defoe's great contemporaries, Dryden, Swift, and
Congreve; it does not seem to have occurred to Defoe that he could learn
anything from their practice. He has his reward. "Robinson Crusoe" may
continue to hold the child and the kitchen wench; but the "Essay on
Dramatic Poesy," "The Battle of the Books," and "Love for Love," are for
the men and women of culture.
* * * * *
The standard Life of Defoe is by William Lee (London, J.C. Hotten,
1869). William Minto, in the "English Men of Letters Series," has an
excellent short biography of Defoe. For criticism, the only good
estimate I am acquainted with is by Leslie Stephen, in "Hours in a
Library, First Series." The nature of the article on Defoe in the
"Britannica" may be indicated by noticing that the writer (Saintsbury)
seriously compares Defoe with Carlyle as a descriptive writer. It would
be consoling to think that this is intended as a joke.
Those who wish to know more about the plague than Defoe tells them
should consult Besant's "London," pp. 376-394 (New York, Harpers).
Besant refers to two pamphlets, "The Wonderful Year" and "Vox
Civitatis," which he thinks Defoe must have used in writing his book.