And he added, suddenly revealing the tortuous Slavonic nature molded by

the Jesuits:--"Moreover, this signature is really a mere farce. Our own

property is returned to us, that is all, and I shall not consider myself

in the slightest degree bound by this. Who knows?--these very thousands

of pounds may help us to recover the throne."

The Queen impetuously raised her head, looked him straight in the eyes

for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders, saying:

"Do not make yourself out viler than you are. You know that when once

you have signed--but no. The truth is, you lack strength and fortitude;

you desert your kingly post at the most perilous moment, when a new

society, that will acknowledge neither God nor master, pursues with its

hatred the representatives of Divine right, makes the heavens tremble

over their heads and the earth under their steps. The assassin's knife,

bombs, bullets, all serve their purpose. Treachery and murder are on

every side. In the midst of our pageantry or our festivities, the best

of us as well as the worst, not one of us does not start if only a man

steps forward out of the crowd. Hardly a petition that does not conceal

a dagger. On leaving his palace what king is certain of returning alive?

And this is the hour you choose to leave the field!"

"Ah! if fighting could do it!" eagerly said Christian II. "But to

struggle as we do against ridicule, against poverty, against all the

petty meannesses of life, and feel that we only sink deeper every day--"

A ray of hope lit up her eyes:--"Is it true? would you fight? Then

listen."

Breathlessly she related, in a few rapid words, the expedition she and

Elysee had been preparing for the last three months by letters,

proclamations, and dispatches, which Father Alphee, ever on the move,

carried from one mountain village to the other. This time it was not to

the nobility they appealed, but to the people; the muleteers, the

porters of Ragusa, the market-gardeners of Breno, of La Brazza, the

islanders who go to market in their feluccas, the nation which had

remained faithful to the monarchical tradition, which was ready to rise

and die for its king, on condition that he should lead them. Companies

were forming, the watchword was already circulating, only the signal now

remained to be given.

The Queen, hurling her words at Christian to rout his weakness by a

vigorous charge, had a cruel pang when she saw him shake his head,

showing an indifference which was even greater than his discouragement.

Perhaps at the bottom of his heart he was annoyed that the expedition

should have been so far organized without his knowledge. But he did not

believe in the feasibility of the plan. It would not be possible to

advance into the country; they would be compelled to hold the islands,

and devastate a beautiful country with very little chance of success: a

second edition of the Duc de Palma's adventure, a useless effusion of

blood.

"No, really, my dear Frederique, you are led away by the fanaticism of

your chaplain and the wild enthusiasm of that hot-headed Gascon. I also

have my sources of information, far more reliable than yours. The truth

is, that in Dalmatia, as in many other countries, monarchy has had its

day. They are tired of it, they will have no more of it."

"Oh! I know the coward who will have no more of it," said the Queen. And

she went out hurriedly, leaving Christian much surprised that the scene

should have ended so abruptly. He hastily thrust the deed into his

pocket, and prepared to go out in his turn, when Frederique reappeared,

accompanied this time by the little prince.

Roused out of his sleep and hurriedly dressed, Zara, who had passed from

the hands of his nurse to those of the Queen without a word having been

uttered, opened wide his bewildered eyes under his auburn curls, but

asked no questions; he remembered confusedly in his poor little dizzy

head similar awakenings for hasty flights, in the midst of pallid faces

and breathless exclamations. It was thus that he had acquired the habit

of passive obedience; that he allowed himself to be led anywhere,

provided the Queen called him in her grave and resolute voice, and held

ready for his childish weakness the shelter of her tender arms and the

support of her strong shoulder. She had said: "Come!" and he had come

with confidence, surprised only at the surrounding silence, so different

from those other stormy nights, with their visions of blood and flames,

roar of cannon, and rattle of musketry.

He saw the King standing, no longer the careless good-natured father who

at times surprised him in his bed or crossed the schoolroom with an

encouraging smile, but a stern father, whose expression of annoyance

became more accentuated as he saw them enter. Frederique, without

uttering one word, led the child to the feet of Christian II. and

abruptly kneeling, placed him before her, crossing his little fingers in

her joined hands:--

"The king will not listen to me, perhaps he will listen to you, Zara.

Come, say with me, 'Father.'" The timid voice repeated, "Father."

"'My father! my king! I implore! do not despoil your child. Do not

deprive him of the crown he is to wear one day. Remember that it is not

yours alone; it comes from afar, from God himself, who gave it six

hundred years ago to the house of Illyria. God has chosen me to be a

king, father. It is my inheritance, my treasure; you have no right to

take it from me.'"

The little prince accompanied his fervent murmur with the imploring

looks of a supplicant; but Christian turned away his head, shrugged his

shoulders, and furious though still polite, he muttered a few words

between his teeth: "Exaggeration! most improper; turn the child's head."

Then he tried to withdraw and gain the door. With one bound the Queen

was on her feet, caught sight of the table from which the parchment had

disappeared, and comprehending at once that the infamous deed was

signed, that the king had it in his possession, gave a despairing

shriek:--

"Christian!"

He continued to advance towards the door.

She made a step forward, picking up her dress as if to pursue him; then

suddenly said:--

"Well, be it so."

He stopped short and turned round. She was standing before the open

window, her foot upon the narrow stone balcony, with one arm clasping

her son ready to bear him into death, the other extended menacingly

towards the cowardly deserter. The moon lit up from without this

dramatic group.

"To an operetta King, a Queen of tragedy," she said, stern and terrible.

"If you do not burn this instant what you have just signed, and swear on

the cross that it will never be repeated, your race is ended, crushed,

wife and child, there on the stones."

Such earnestness seemed to inspire her vibrating tone, her splendid

figure bent towards the emptiness of space as though to spring, that the

King, terrified, dashed forward to stop her.

"Frederique!"

At the cry of his father, at the quiver of the arm that held him, the

child--who was entirely out of the window--thought that all was

finished, that they were about to die. He never uttered a word nor a

moan; was he not going with his mother? Only, his tiny hands clutched

the queen's neck convulsively, and throwing back his head with his fair

hair hanging down, the little victim closed his eyes before the

appalling horror of the fall.

Christian could no longer resist. The resignation, the courage of this

child, who of his future kingly duties already knew the first--to die

well--overcame him. His heart was bursting. He threw upon the table the

crumpled parchment which for a moment he had been nervously holding in

his hand, and fell sobbing in an arm-chair. Frederique, still

suspicious, read the deed through from the first line to the very

signature, then going up to a candle, she burned it till the flame

scorched her fingers, shaking the ashes upon the table; she then left

the room, carrying off her son, who was already falling asleep in her

arms in his heroically tragic attitude.

Translation of Laura Ensor and E. Bartow.

MADAME DU DEFFAND

(MARIE DE VICHY-CHAMROND)

(1697-1780)

[Illustration: MADAME DU DEFFAND]

Madame du Deffand is interesting as a personality, a type, and an

influence. Living through nearly the whole of the eighteenth century,

she assimilated its wealth of new ideas, and was herself a product of

the thought-revolution already kindling the spirit of 1789.

She very early showed her mental independence by puzzling questions upon

religion. The eloquent Massillon attempted to win her to orthodoxy. But

he soon gave up the task, told the Sisters to buy her a catechism, and

went off declaring her charming. The inefficacy of the catechism was

proved later, when the precocious girl developed into the graceful,

unscrupulous society woman. She was always fascinating to the brightest

men and women of her own and other lands. But the early years of social

triumph, when she still had the beautiful eyes admired by Voltaire, are

less significant than the nearly thirty years of blindness in the

convent of St. Joseph, which after her affliction she made her home.

Here she held her famous receptions for the literary and social

celebrities of Paris. Here Mademoiselle Lespinasse endured a miserable

ten years as her companion, then rebelled against her exactions, and

left to establish a rival salon of her own, aided by her devoted

D'Alembert. His preference Madame du Deffand never forgave. Henceforth

she opposed philosophy, and demanded from her devotees only stimulus and

amusement. It was here that Horace Walpole found the "blind old woman"

in her tub-like chair, and began the friendship and intellectual

flirtation of fifteen years. It proved a great interest in her life,

notwithstanding Walpole's dread of ridicule at a suggestion of romance

between his middle-aged self and this woman twenty years older.

She was a power in the lives of many famous people, intimate with Madame

de Stael, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Madame de Choiseul, the Duchess of

Luxembourg, Madame Necker, Hume, Madame de Genlis. In her salon old

creeds were argued down, new ideas disseminated, and _bons mots_ and

witty gossip circulated. She has recounted what went on, and explained

the reign of clever women in her century. Ignoring her blindness, she

lived her life as gayly as she could in visiting, feasting, opera-going,

and letter-writing. But even her social supremacy and brilliant

correspondence with Voltaire, Walpole, and others, did not satisfy her.

She wished to appeal to the heart, and she appealed only to the head. Of

all ills she most dreaded ennui, and the very dread of it made her

unhappy. She became more and more insufficient to herself, until at

eighty-three she died with clear-sighted indifference.

"She was perhaps the wittiest woman who ever lived," says Saintsbury.

Hers was an inextinguishable wit, always alert, epigrammatic, enriching

the language with proverbial phrases.

During her life Voltaire's science of unbelief and Rousseau's appeal to

nature and sentiment were stimulating Europe. For Rousseau, Madame du

Deffand had no respect; but Voltaire's philosophy appealed to her

egotism. It bade a human being investigate his own puzzles, and seek

solution in himself. Madame du Deffand agreed, but failed to find

satisfaction in her anxious analysis; she envied believers in God, and

longed for illusions, yet allowed herself none. Jealous, exacting,

critical, with all the arrogance of the old aristocracy, she was as

merciless to herself as to others. "All my judgments have been false and

daring and too hasty.... I have never known any one perfectly.... To

whom then can I have recourse?" she cries despairingly.

Sainte-Beuve emphasizes her noblest quality: with all her faults she was

true. She lived out her life frankly, boldly, without self-deception or

imposition. So in the entertaining volumes of her letters and

pen-portraits of acquaintances, she has left a valuable record. She

takes us back a century, and shows not only how people looked and what

they did, but how they thought and felt.

TO THE DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL

PARIS, Sunday, December 28th, 1766.

Do you know, dear Grandmama [a pet name], that you are the greatest

philosopher that ever lived? Your predecessors spoke equally well,

perhaps, but they were less consistent in their conduct. All your

reasonings start from the same sentiment, and that makes the perfect

accord one always feels between what you say and what you do. I know

very well why, loving you madly, I am ill at ease with you. It is

because I know that you must pity everybody who is unlike yourself. My

desire to please you, the brief time that I am permitted with you, and

my eagerness to profit by it, all trouble, embarrass, intimidate me and

discompose me.

I exaggerate, I utter platitudes; and end by being disgusted with

myself, and eager to rectify the impression I may have made upon you.

You wish me to write to M. de Choiseul, and to make my letter pretty and

bright. Ah, indeed! I'm the ruler of my own imagination, am I! I depend

upon chance. A purpose to do or to say such or such a thing takes away

the possibility. I am not in the least like you. I do not hold in my

hands the springs of my spirit. However, I will write to M. de Choiseul.

I will seize a propitious moment. The surest means of making it come is

to feel hurried.

I am sending you an extract from an impertinent little pamphlet entitled

'Letter to the Author of the Justification of Jean Jacques.' You will

see how it treats our friend. I am not sure that it should be allowed;

whether M. de Choiseul should not talk to M. de Sartines about it. It is

for you to decide, dear Grandmama, if it is suitable, and if M. de

Choiseul ought to permit licenses so impertinent.

I am dying to see you. In spite of my fear, in spite of my dreads, I am

convinced that you love me because I love you.

TO MR. CRAWFORD

SUNDAY, March 9th, 1766.

I read your letter to Madame de Forcalquier, or rather I gave it to her

to read. I thought from her tone that she liked it, but she will not

commit herself. She is more than incomprehensible. The Trinity is not

more mysterious. She is composed of systems, which she does not

understand herself; great words, great principles, great strains of

music, of which nothing remains. However, I am of your opinion, that she

is worth more than all my other acquaintances. She agrees that it would

be delightful to have you _live_ in this country; but if she were only

to see you _en passant_, it hardly matters whether you came or not; that

she has not forgotten you, but that she will forget you. Eh! Why

shouldn't she forget you? She does not know you.... A hundred speeches

of the sort which vex me.

They say of people who have too much vivacity that they were put in too

hot an oven. They might say of her, on the contrary, that she is

underdone. She is the sketch of a beautiful work, but it is not

finished. What is certain is, that her sentiments, if she has

sentiments, are sincere, and that she does not bore you. I showed her

your letter because I thought that would give you pleasure; but be sure

that no one in the world, not even she, shall see what you write me in

future except Niart [her secretary], who as you know is a well.

I have just made you a fine promise that I will not show your letters;

perhaps I shall never be able to show them. Truly, truly, I am like

Madame de Forcalquier, and do not know you!

I spent three hours with Mr. Walpole yesterday, but only half an hour

alone with him. Lord George and his wife returned his short call, but

your Dr. James stayed there all the time. He is a very gloomy,

uninteresting man.

Have you seen Jean Jacques? Is he still in London? Have you seen your

father? Imagine yourself _tete-a-tete_ with me in the corner of the

fireplace, and answer all my questions, but especially those which

concern your health. Have you seen the doctors? Have they ordered you

the waters? And tell me too, honestly, if I shall ever see you again.

Reflect that you are only twenty-five years old, that I am a hundred,

and that it only requires a brief kindness to put pleasure in my life.

No, I will not assume the pathetic. Do just what pleases you.

TO HORACE WALPOLE

TUESDAY, August 5th, 1766.

I have received your letter of July 31st--no number, sheets of different

sizes. All these observations mean nothing, unless it is that a person

without anything to do or to think occupies herself with puerile things.

Indeed, I should do very wrong not to profit by all your lessons, and to

persist in the error of believing in friendship, and regarding it as a

good; no, no; I renounce my errors, and am absolutely persuaded that of

all illusions that is the most dangerous.

You who are the apostle of this wise doctrine, receive my confession and

my vows never to love, never to seek to be loved by any one; but tell me

if it is permitted to desire the return of agreeable persons; if one may

long for news of them, and if to be interested in them and to let them

know it is to lack virtue, good sense, and proper behavior. I am

awaiting enlightenment. I cannot doubt your sincerity; you have given me

too many proofs of it; explain yourself without reserve.

WEDNESDAY, 6th.

Of all the things in your letter, what struck me the most yesterday were

your moralizings on friendship, which forced me to reply at once. I was

interrupted by Monsieur and Madame de Beauvan, who came to take me to

supper with them in the country at the good Duchess of Saint-Pierre's. I

returned early. I did not close my eyes during the night. I woke up

Niart [her secretary] earlier than usual to go on with my letter, and to

re-read me yours. I am better pleased with it this morning than I was

yesterday. The matter of friendship shocked me less. I find that the

conclusion is--let us be friends without friendship. Ah well, so be it;

I consent. Perhaps it is agreeable; let us learn by experience, and for

that--see each other the oftener! In truth, you have only a comic

actress, a deaf woman, and some chickens to leave, as you have only a

blind woman and many goslings to find; but I promise you that the blind

woman will have much to ask and much to tell.

I do not know what to say to you about your ministry. You have

entertained me so little with politics, that if others had not informed

me, all that goes on with you would be less intelligible to me than the

affairs of China. They have told me something of the character of the

count; and as for this certain good comrade [Conway], I think I know him

perfectly. I am pleased that he has remained, but not that he does not

oppose your philosophy. All your opinions are beautiful and

praiseworthy; but if I were in his place I should certainly hinder you

from making use of them, and not regulate my conduct by your moderation

and disinterestedness. Oh! as for my lord, you cannot keep him,--that's

the public cry. It seems to me that the brother and sister-in-law are

not pleased. Do you not detest the people? From the agrarian law to your

monument, your lamps, and your black standard, its joy, its sadness,

its applause, its complaints, are all odious to me. But I am going back

to speak to you about yourself. You say that your fortune, instead of

augmenting, will suffer diminution. I am much afraid of that. No liberty

without a competency. Remember that. If your economy falls upon your

trips to France I shall be miserable. But listen to this without getting

vexed.

I possess, as you know, a small lodging-room belonging to me, little

worthy of the son of Robert Walpole, but which may satisfy the

philosopher Horace. If he found it convenient, he could occupy it

without incurring the slightest ridicule. He can consult sensible

people, and while waiting, be persuaded that it is not my personal

interest which induces me to offer it to him.

Honestly, my mentor, you could not do better than take it. You would be

near me or a hundred leagues from me if you liked it better. It would

not engage you to any attention nor any assiduity; we would renew our

vows against friendship. It would even be necessary to render more

observance to the Idol [Comtesse de Boufflers]; for who could be

shocked, if not she? Pont-de-Veyle, who approves and advises this

arrangement, claims that even the Idol would find nothing to oppose.

Think of that.

* * * * *

Grandmama returned yesterday morning. My favor with her is better

established. She will take supper with me Friday; and as the supper was

arranged without foreseeing that she would be there, she will find a

company which will not exactly suit her,--among others the Idol, and the

Archbishop of Toulouse.

I shall have many things to tell you when I see you. It may be that they

will hardly interest you, but it will be the world of my Strawberry

Hill.

You agree with me about the letters, which pleases me. I believe myself

a genius when I find myself in agreement with you. This Prince Geoffrin

is excellent. Surely heaven is witness that I do not love you, but I am

forced to find you very agreeable.

Are you waiting until your arrival here to give a jug to the Marechale

de Luxembourg? I see no necessity of making a present to the Idol;

incense, incense, that is all it wants!

I have a great desire that you should read a Memoir of La Chalottais; it

is very rare, very much "prohibited," but I am intriguing to get it.

M. de Beauvan begs you to send me a febrifuge for him. It is from Dr.

James, I think. There are two kinds; one is mild and the other violent.

He requires a louis's worth of each.

You are mightily deceiving yourself if you think Voltaire author of the

analysis of the romance of 'Heloise'. The author is a man from Bordeaux,

a friend of M. de Secondat. Apropos of Voltaire, he has had the King of

Prussia sounded to know if he would consent to give him asylum at Wesel

in case he were obliged to leave his abode. This his Majesty has very

willingly granted.

Good-by. I am counting upon being able in future to give you news of

your court and your ministry. I have made a new acquaintance, who is a

favorite of Lord Bute and the most intimate friend of Lord Holderness. I

do not doubt that this lord is aiming at my Lord Rochefort's place, who

they say scarcely troubles himself about the embassy.

Write me, I beg you, at least once a week.

Tell me if M. Crawford is in Scotland.

It is thought that the first news from Rome will inform us of the death

of Chevalier Macdonald.

PORTRAIT OF HORACE WALPOLE

NOVEMBER, 1765.

No, no! I do not want to draw your likeness; nobody knows you less than

I. Sometimes you seem to me what I wish you were, sometimes what I fear

you may be, and perhaps never what you really are. I know very well that

you have a great deal of wit of all kinds and all styles, and you must

know it better than any one.

But your character should be painted, and of that I am not a good judge.

It would require indifference, or impartiality at least. However, I can

tell you that you are a very sincere man, that you have principles, that

you are brave, that you pride yourself upon your firmness; that when you

have come to a decision, good or bad, nothing induces you to change it,

so that your firmness sometimes resembles obstinacy. Your heart is good

and your friendship strong, but neither tender nor facile. Your fear of

being weak makes you hard. You are on your guard against all

sensibility. You cannot refuse to render valuable services to your

friends; you sacrifice your own interest to them, but you refuse them

the slightest of favors. Kind and humane to all about you, you do not

give yourself the slightest trouble to please your friends in little

ways.

Your disposition is very agreeable although not very even. All your ways

are noble, easy, and natural. Your desire to please does not lead you

into affectation. Your knowledge of the world and your experience have

given you a great contempt for men, and taught you how to live with

them. You know that all their assurances go for nothing. In exchange you

give them politeness and consideration, and all those who do not care

about being loved are content with you.

I do not know whether you have much feeling. If you have, you fight it

as a weakness. You permit yourself only that which seems virtuous. You

are a philosopher; you have no vanity, although you have a great deal of

self-love. But your self-love does not blind you; it rather makes you

exaggerate your faults than conceal them. You never extol yourself

except when you are forced to do so by comparing yourself with other

men. You possess discernment, very delicate tact, very correct taste;

your tone is excellent.

You would have been the best possible companion in past centuries; you

are in this, and you would be in those to come. Englishman as you are,

your manners belong to all countries.

You have an unpardonable weakness to which you sacrifice your feelings

and submit your conduct--the fear of ridicule. It makes you dependent

upon the opinion of fools; and your friends are not safe from the

impressions against them which fools choose to give you.

Your judgment is easily confused. You are aware of this weakness, which

you control by the firmness with which you pursue your resolutions. Your

opposition to any deviation is sometimes pushed too far, and exercised

in matters not worth the trouble.

Your instincts are noble and generous. You do good for the pleasure of

doing it, without ostentation, without claiming gratitude; in short,

your spirit is beautiful and high.

DANIEL DEFOE

(1660?-1731)

BY CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON

[Illustration: DANIEL DEFOE.]

Daniel Defoe, one of the most vigorous and voluminous writers of the

last decade of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth

centuries, was born in St. Giles parish, Cripplegate, in 1660 or 1661,

and died near London in 1731. His father was a butcher named Foe, and

the evolution of the son's name through the various forms of D. Foe, De

Foe, Defoe, to Daniel Defoe, the present accepted form, did not begin

much before he reached the age of forty. He was educated at the

"dissenting school" of a Mr. Martin in Newington Green, and was intended

for the Presbyterian ministry. Although the training at this school was

not inferior to that to be obtained at the universities,--and indeed

superior in one respect, since all the exercises were in English,--the

fact that he had never been "in residence" set Defoe a little apart from

the literary society of the day. Swift, Pope, Addison, Arbuthnot, and

the rest, considered him untrained and uncultured, and habitually spoke

of him with the contempt which the regular feels for the volunteer.

Swift referred to him as "an illiterate fellow whose name I forget," and

Pope actually inserted his name in the 'Dunciad':--

"Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe."

This line is false in two ways, for Defoe's ears were not clipped,

though he was condemned to stand in the pillory; and there can hardly be

a greater incongruity conceived than there is between our idea of a

dunce and the energetic, shifty, wide-awake Defoe,--though for that

matter a scholar like Bentley and a wit like Colley Cibber are as much

out of place in the poet's ill-natured catalogue. Defoe angrily resented

the taunts of the university men and their professional assumption of

superiority, and answered Swift that "he had been in his time master of

five languages and had not lost them yet," and challenged John Tutchin

to "translate with him any Latin, French, or Italian author, and then

retranslate them crosswise, for twenty pounds each book."

Notwithstanding the great activity of Defoe's pen (over two hundred

pamphlets and books, most of them of considerable length, are known to

be his; and it is more than probable that much of his work was anonymous

and has perished, or could be only partly disinterred by laborious

conjecture) he found time to engage twice in business, once as a factor

in hosiery and once as a maker of tiles. In each venture he seems to

have been unfortunate, and his business experience is alluded to here

only because his practical knowledge of mercantile matters is evident in

all his work. Even his pirates like Captain Bob Singleton, and

adventurers like Colonel Jack, have a decided commercial flavor. They

keep a weather eye on the profit-and-loss account, and retire like

thrifty traders on a well-earned competency. It is worth mentioning,

however, to Defoe's credit, that in one or two instances at least he

paid his debts in full, after compromising with his creditors.

Defoe's writings, though all marked by his strong but limited

personality, fall naturally into three classes:--

First, his political writings, in which may be included his wretched

attempts at political satire, and most of his journalistic work. This is

included in numberless pamphlets, broad-sheets, newspapers, and the

like, and is admirable expository matter on the public questions of the

day. Second, his fiction, 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Captain Singleton,'

'Colonel Jack,' 'Roxana,' and 'Moll Flanders.' Third, his miscellaneous

work; innumerable biographies and papers like the 'History of the

Plague,' the 'Account of the Great Storm,' 'The True Relation of the

Apparition of One Mrs. Veal,' etc. Between the last two classes there is

a close connection, since both were written for the market; and his

fictions proper are cast in the autobiographical form and are founded on

incidents in the lives of real persons, and his biographies contain a

large proportion of fiction.

Some knowledge of Defoe's political work is necessary to a comprehension

of the early eighteenth century. During his life the power of the people

and of the House of Commons was slowly extended, and the foundations of

the modern English Constitution were laid. The trading and manufacturing

classes, especially in the city of London, increased in wealth and

political consequence. The reading public on which a popular writer

could rely, widened. With these changes--partly as cause and purely as

consequence--came the establishment of "News Journals" and "Reviews."

Besides Addison's Spectator for the more cultured classes, multitudes of

periodicals were founded which aimed to reach a more general public. The

old method of a broad-sheet or the pamphlet, hawked in the streets or

exposed for sale and cried at the book-stalls, was still in use, but the

regular issue of a news-letter was taking its place. Defoe attacked the

public in both ways with unwearied assiduity. His poem 'The True-Born

Englishman' was sold in the streets to the astonishing number of

eighty thousand. In 1704 he established the Review, a bi-weekly. It ran

to 1713, and Defoe wrote nearly all of each number. Afterwards he was

for eight years main contributor and substantially manager of Mist's

Journal, a Tory organ; and one of the most serious and well-founded

charges against this first great journalist is, that he was deficient in

journalistic honor, and remained in the pay of the Whig Ministry while

attached to the Opposition organ. During this period he founded and

conducted several other journals.

Defoe possessed in a large measure the journalistic sense. No one ever

had a finer instinct in the subtle arts of "working the public" and of

advertising. When the notorious Jack Sheppard was condemned, he visited

him at Newgate, wrote his life, and had the highwayman, standing under

the gallows, send for a copy and deliver it as his "last speech and

dying confession." There is a certain breadth and originality in this

stroke, hardly to be paralleled in modern journalism. Defoe had the

knack of singling out from the mass of passing events whatever would be

likely to interest the public. He brought out an account in some

newspaper, and if successful, made the occurrence the subject of a

longer article in pamphlet or book form. He was always on the lookout

for matter, which he utilized with a pen of marvelous rapidity. The

gazette or embryonic newspaper was at first confined to a rehearsal of

news. Defoe invented the leading article or "news-letter" of weekly

comment, and the society column of Mercure Scandaleuse.

The list of Defoe's political pamphlets is a large one, but they are of

more interest to the historian than to the general reader. While they

are far inferior in construction and victorious good sense to Sydney

Smith's magazine articles on kindred topics, and to Swift's 'Drapier's

Letters' in subtle appeals to the prejudices of the ignorant, they show

a remarkable command over the method of reaching the plain people,--to

use President Lincoln's phrase, and taking it to mean that great body of

quiet persons who desire on the whole to be fair in their judgments, but

who must have their duty made quite evident before they see it. Defoe is

never vituperative--that is, vituperative for a time when Pope and Swift

and Dennis made their personal invective so much higher flavored than

modern taste endures. He seems to have been tolerant by nature; and

although this proceeds in his case from the fact that his moral

enthusiasm was never very warm, and not from any innate refinement of

nature, he is entitled to the credit of moderation in the use of abusive

language. He is tolerant, too, of those who differ from him in politics

and religion; and though it is absurd to suppose, as some of his

biographers have done, that he was so far in advance of his century as

to have advocated the political soundness of free trade, he shows in

his treatment of commercial questions the marks of a broad and

comprehensive mind. He speaks of foreigners in a cosmopolitan spirit,

with the exception of the Portuguese, for whom he seems to feel a lively

dislike, founded possibly on some of his early business experiences. The

reader will remember the dignified and courteous demeanor of the

Spaniards in 'Robinson Crusoe'; and although the violent antipathy of

the previous generation to Spanish Romanists had abated, Defoe's freedom

from insular prejudice is noteworthy, the more so that a "discreet and

sober bearing," such as he gives his Spaniards, seems to have been his

ideal of conduct. Defoe is a great journalist, and although he is a

typical hack, writing timely articles for pay, he has a touch of genius.

He was always successful in gaining the ear of his public; and in the

one instance where he hit upon a subject of universal interest, the life

of the solitary castaway thrown absolutely on his own resources, he

wrote a book, without any effort or departure from his usual style,

which has been as popular with succeeding generations as it was with his

own. It is a mistake to call 'Robinson Crusoe' a "great boy's

book,"--unless we regard the boy nature as persistent in all men, and

perhaps it is in all healthy men,--for it treats the unaided conflict

with nature and circumstance, which is the essence of adult life, with

unequaled simplicity and force. Crusoe is not merely an adventurer; he

is the human will, courage, resolution, stripped of all the adventitious

support of society. He has the elements of universal humanity, though in

detail he is as distinctly English as Odysseus is Greek.

The characters of Defoe's other novels--Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton,

Moll Flanders, and Roxana--are so repulsive, and so entirely unaware of

their repulsiveness, that we can take little interest in them. Possibly

an exception might be made in favor of Colonel Jack, who evinces at

times an amusing humor. All are criminals, and the conflict of the

criminal with the forces of society may be the subject of the most

powerful fiction. But these books are inartistic in several regards. No

criminals, even allowing them to be hypocrites, ever disclose themselves

in the open-hearted manner of these autobiographers. Vice always pays to

virtue the homage of a certain reticence in details. Despite all his

Newgate experiences and his acquaintance with noted felons, Defoe never

understood either the weakness or the strength of the criminal type. So

all his harlots and thieves and outcasts are decidedly amateurish. A

serious transgression of the moral law is to them a very slight matter,

to be soon forgotten after a temporary fit of repentance, and a long

course of evil living in no wise interferes with a comfortable and

respectable old age. His pirates have none of the desperation and brutal

heroism of sin. Stevenson's John Silver or Israel Hands is worth a

schooner-load of them. Neither they nor their author seem to value

virtue very highly, though they are acutely sensitive to the discomfort

of an evil reputation. Possibly such people may be true to a certain

type of humanity, but they are exceedingly uninteresting. A writer who

takes so narrow a view cannot produce a great book, even though his lack

of moral scope and insight is partly compensated by a vivid presentation

of life on the low plane from which he views it.

'Moll Flanders' and 'Roxana' are very coarse books, but it can hardly be

said that they are harmful or corrupting. They are simply vulgar. Vice

has preserved all its evil by preserving all its grossness. Passion is

reduced to mere animalism, and is depicted with the brutal directness of

Hogarth. This may be good morals, but it is unpleasant art. It is true

that Defoe's test of a writer was that he should "please and serve his

public," and in providing amusement he was not more refined nor more

coarse than those whom he addressed; but a writer should look a little

deeper and aim a little higher than the average morality of his day.

Otherwise he may please but will not serve his generation, in any true

sense of literary service.

Defoe is sometimes spoken of as the first great realist. In a limited

sense this may be true. No doubt he presents the surface of a limited

area of the eighteenth-century world with fidelity. With the final

establishment of Protestantism, the increase of trade, and the building

of physical science on the broad foundations laid down by Newton,

England had become more mundane than at any other period. The intense

faith and the imaginative quality of the seventeenth century were

deadened. The eighteenth century kept its eyes on the earth, and though

it found a great many interesting and wonderful things there, and though

it laid the foundations of England's industrial greatness, it was

neither a spiritual nor an artistic age. The novel was in its infancy;

and as if a "true story" was more worthy of respect than an invention,

it received from Defoe an air of verisimilitude and is usually based on

some real events. He is careful to embellish his fictions with little

bits of realism. Thus, Moll Flanders gives an inventory of the goods she

took to America, and in the 'History of the Plague' Defoe adds a note to

his description of a burial-ground:--"N.B. The author of this Journal

lies buried in that very ground, being at his own desire, his sister

having been buried there a few weeks before." This enumeration of

particulars certainly gives an air of reality, but it is a trick easily

caught, and it is only now and then that he hits--as in the above

instance--on the characteristic circumstance which gives life and

reality to the narrative. Except in 'Robinson Crusoe,' much of his

detail is irrelevant and tiresome. But all the events on the lonely

island are admirably harmonized and have a cumulative effect. The

second part,--after the rescue,--written to take advantage of the

popularity of the first, is vastly inferior. The artistic selective

power is not exercised. This same concrete imagination which sees minute

details is also evident in his contemporary Swift, but with him it works

at the bidding of a far more fervid and emotional spirit.

Defoe is a pioneer in novel-writing and in journalism, and in both he

shows wonderful readiness in appreciating what the public would like and

energy in supplying them with it. To the inventor or discoverer of a new

form we cannot deny great credit. Most writers imitate, but it cannot be

said that Defoe founded himself on any predecessor, while his successors

are numbered by hundreds. A certain relationship could be traced between

his work, and the picaresque tales of France and Spain on the one hand

and the contemporary journals of actual adventure on the other; but not

one close enough to detract from his claim to original power.

Some of Defoe's political work, like 'The True-Born Englishman,' 'The

Shortest Way with Dissenters,' 'Reasons against the Succession of the

House of Hanover,' are written in the ironical tone. Mr. Saintsbury

seems to think that Defoe's method is not truly ironical, because it

differs from Swift's; but if we remember that one writer differeth from

another in irony, there is no reason to deny Defoe's mastery of this

penetrating weapon, especially when we find that he imposed on both

parties. The judges told him that "irony of that sort would bring him to

the gallows," but the eighteenth-century law of libel was more rigid in

its constructions than the canons of literary art.

Defoe made several attempts at poetical satire, which are sufficient to

show that he lacked either the talent or the patience to write political

verse. Compared with Dryden's or Pope's, his work is mere doggerel,

enlivened by occasional vigorous couplets like--

"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

"No panegyric needs their praise record--

An Englishman ne'er wants his own good word."

But an examination will confirm the impression that Defoe was not a

poet, as surely as the re-reading of 'Robinson Crusoe' will strengthen

our hereditary belief that he was a great writer of prose.

[Illustration: signature (Charles F Johnson)]

FROM 'ROBINSON CRUSOE'

CRUSOE'S SHIPWRECK

Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sunk

into the water; for though 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 towards 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 towards the land

as fast 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 towards the shore if

possible; my greatest concern now being that the wave, as it would carry

me a great way towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me

back again with it when it gave back towards 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 towards 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 though 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 towards 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,

though 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

surprise 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, wrapped up in the contemplation of my deliverance; making a

thousand gestures and motions which I cannot 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 afterwards, or

any sign of them, except three of the hats, one cap, and two shoes that

were not fellows.

[Illustration: _DEFOE._

Facsimile, somewhat reduced, of the frontispiece to the first edition of

ROBINSON CRUSOE.

1719.

The full title reads:--The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of

Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived eight-and-twenty years all

alone, on an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth

of the Great River of Oroonoque: Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck,

wherein all the others perished but himself. With An Account how he was

at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself.]

I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel--when the breach and froth of the

sea being so big I could hardly see it, it lay so far off--and

considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore?

CRUSOE MAKES A NEW HOME

I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement, particularly

because it was upon a low moorish ground, near the sea, and I believed

it would not be wholesome; and more particularly because there was no

fresh water near it; so I resolved to find a more healthy and more

convenient spot of ground.

I consulted several things in my situation which I found would be proper

for me: first, air and fresh water, I just now mentioned; secondly,

shelter from the heat of the sun; thirdly, security from ravenous

creatures, whether men or beasts; fourthly, a view to the sea, that if

God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my

deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation

yet.

I searched for a place proper for this. I found a little plain on the

side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was steep

as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from the top.

On the side of this rock there was a hollow place, worn a little way in,

like the entrance or door of a cave; but there was not really any cave,

or way into the rock at all.

On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved to

pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards broad, and about

twice as long, and lay like a green before my door; and at the end of it

descended irregularly every way down into the low ground by the seaside.

It was on the N. N. W. side of the hill, so that it was sheltered from

the heat every day, till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or thereabouts,

which in those countries is near the setting.

Before I set up my tent I drew a half-circle before the hollow place,

which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and

twenty yards in its diameter from its beginning and ending.

In this half-circle I pitched two rows of long stakes, driving them into

the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being

out of the ground about five feet and a half, and sharpened on the top.

The two rows did not stand above six inches from one another.

Then I took the pieces of cable which I cut in the ship, and laid them

in rows, one upon another, within the circle between these two rows of

stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning

against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post: and

this fence was so strong that neither man nor beast could get into it or

over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labor, especially to cut

the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the

earth.

The entrance into this place I made to be not by a door, but by a short

ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over

after me; and so I was completely fenced in and fortified, as I thought,

from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the night, which

otherwise I could not have done; though as it appeared afterwards, there

was no need of all this caution against the enemies that I apprehended

danger from.

A FOOTPRINT

It happened one day about noon, going toward my boat, I was exceedingly

surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was

very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as

if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked about me, but I could

hear nothing or see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look

farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one: I

could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if

there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but

there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a

foot--toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came hither I knew

not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering

thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home

to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but

terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three

steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a

distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various

shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many

wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange

unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to

my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this) I fled into it

like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived,

or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot

remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never

frightened hare fled to cover or fox to earth with more terror of mind

than I to this retreat.

FROM 'HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON'

SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS OF THE PEOPLE

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time; while

the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by

several odd incidents, which put altogether, it was really a wonder the

whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon their

dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by heaven for

an Akeldama doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that

all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a

few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards and

cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there was

any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, 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, though 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, though at a distance and but just

perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had had so much of the

common notion of such things in my head that I was apt to look upon them

as the forerunners and warnings of God's judgments; and especially when

the plague had followed the first, I saw yet another of the like kind, I

could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the city.

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the

error of the times, in which I think the people, from what principle I

cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological

conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales, than ever they were before

or since: whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the

follies of some people who got money by it,--that is to say, by printing

predictions and prognostications,--I know not; but certain it is, books

frighted them terribly; such as 'Lily's Almanack,' 'Gadbury's

Astrological Predictions,' 'Poor Robin's Almanack,' and the like; also

several pretended religious books, one entitled, 'Come out of Her, my

People, lest Ye be Partakers of her Plagues'; another called 'Fair

Warning'; another, 'Britain's Remembrancer'; and many such, all or most

part of which foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city; nay,

some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with

their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city;

and one in particular, who like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets,

"Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed." I will not be positive

whether he said forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about naked,

except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a

man that Josephus mentions, who cried, "Woe to Jerusalem!" a little

before the destruction of that city; so this poor naked creature cried,

"Oh! the great and the dreadful God!" and said no more, but repeated

those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a

swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any

sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature

several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would

not enter into speech with me or any one else, but kept on his dismal

cries continually.

These things terrified the people to the last degree; and especially

when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one or

two in the hills, dead of the plague at St. Giles's.

Next to these public things were the dreams of old women; or I should

say, the interpretation of old women upon other people's dreams; and

these put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voices

warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in

London, so that the living would not be able to bury the dead; others

saw apparitions in the air; and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope

without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and

saw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of the people was

really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if they who were

poring continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations

and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapor. Here they

told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand, coming out of a cloud,

with a point hanging directly over the city. There they saw hearses and

coffins in the air carrying to be buried. And there again, heaps of dead

bodies lying unburied and the like; just as the imagination of the poor

terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon.

"So hypochondriac fancies represent

Ships, armies, battles in the firmament;

Till steady eyes the exhalations solve,

And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve."

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people give

every day of what they have seen; and every one was so positive of their

having seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting

them without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude and

unmannerly on the one hand and profane and impenetrable on the other.

One time before the plague was begun, otherwise than as I have said in

St. Giles's,--I think it was in March,--seeing a crowd of people in the

street I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all

staring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to

her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his

hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described every

part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and the form,

and the poor people came into it so eagerly and with so much readiness:

"Yes! I see it all plainly," says one, "there's the sword as plain as

can be;" another saw the angel; one saw his very face, and cried out

what a glorious creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I

looked as earnestly as the rest, but perhaps not with so much

willingness to be imposed upon; and I said indeed that I could see

nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side by the shining of the sun

upon the other part. The woman endeavored to show it me, but could not

make me confess that I saw it, which indeed if I had, I must have lied;

but the woman turning to me looked me in the face and fancied I laughed,

in which her imagination deceived her too, for I really did not laugh,

but was seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified by the

force of their own imagination. However, she turned to me, called me a

profane fellow and a scoffer, told me that it was a time of God's anger,

and dreadful judgments were approaching, and that despisers such as I

should wander and perish.

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she, and I found there

was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and that I should

be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. So I left them,

and this appearance passed for as real as the blazing star itself.

Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in going

through a narrow passage from Petty France into Bishopsgate Churchyard,

by a row of almshouses. There are two churchyards to Bishopsgate Church

or parish; one we go over to pass from the place called Petty France

into Bishopsgate Street, coming out just by the church door; the other

is on the side of the narrow passage where the almshouses are on the

left, and a dwarf wall with a palisade on it on the right hand, and the

city wall on the other side more to the right.

In this narrow passage stands a man looking through the palisades into

the burying-place, and as many people as the narrowness of the place

would admit to stop without hindering the passage of others; and he was

talking mighty eagerly to them, and pointing now to one place, then to

another, and affirming that he saw a ghost walking upon such a

gravestone there: he described the shape, the posture, and the movement

of it so exactly, that it was the greatest amazement to him in the world

that everybody did not see it as well as he. On a sudden he would cry,

"There it is! Now it comes this way!" then, "'Tis turned back!" till at

length he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that one

fancied he saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub,

considering it was so narrow a passage, till Bishopsgate clock struck

eleven, and then the ghost would seem to start, and as if he were called

away, disappear on a sudden.

I looked earnestly every way and at the very moment that this man

directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything; but so

positive was this poor man that he gave them vapors in abundance, and

sent them away trembling and frightened, till at length few people that

knew of it cared to go through that passage, and hardly anybody by night

on any account whatever.

This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, and to

the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else they so

understanding it, that abundance of people should come to be buried in

that churchyard, as indeed happened; but that he saw such aspects, I

must acknowledge I never believed, nor could I see anything of it

myself, though I looked most earnestly to see it if possible.

HOW QUACKS AND IMPOSITORS PREYED ON THE FEARS OF THE PEOPLE

I cannot omit a subtlety of one of those quack operators, with which he

gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did nothing for them

without money. He had, it seems, added to his bills which he gave out in

the streets, this advertisement in capital letters; viz., "He gives

advice to the poor for nothing."

Abundance of people came to him accordingly, to whom he made a great

many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their health and of

the constitution of their bodies, and told them many good things to do

which were of no great moment; but the issue and conclusion of all was,

that he had a preparation which, if they took such a quantity of every

morning, he would pawn his life that they should never have the

plague,--no, though they lived in the house with people that were

infected. This made the people all resolve to have it; but then the

price of that was so much,--I think it was half a crown. "But, sir,"

says one poor woman, "I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by the parish,

and your bills say you give the poor your help for nothing." "Ay, good

woman," says the doctor, "so I do, as I published there; I give my

advice, but not my physic!" "Alas, sir," says she, "that is a snare laid

for the poor then, for you give them your advice for nothing: that is to

say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does

every shopkeeper with his wares." Here the woman began to give him ill

words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to all the

people that came, till the doctor, finding she turned away his

customers, was obliged to call her up-stairs again and give her his box

of physic for nothing, which perhaps too was good for nothing when she

had it.

THE PEOPLE ARE QUARANTINED IN THEIR HOUSES

This 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

cannot 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 very 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, wrapped 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 stopped 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 her but her shift; but though 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.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE

Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of

it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good

principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy

situation in life, and our putting these things far from us, that our

breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of

charity and of Christian union so much kept and so far carried on among

us as it is: another plague year would reconcile all these differences;

a close conversing with death or with diseases that threaten death would

scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and

bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things

before; as the people who had been used to join with the church were

reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters, who with an

uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of

England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to

conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the

terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their

less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.

I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into arguments

to move either or both sides to a more charitable compliance one with

another; I do not see that it is probable such a discourse would be

either suitable or successful; the breaches seem rather to widen, and

tend to a widening farther than to closing; and who am I that I should

think myself able to influence either one side or the other? But this I

may repeat again, that it is evident death will reconcile us all--on the

other side the grave we shall be all brethren again; in heaven, whither

I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find

neither prejudice nor scruple; there we shall be of one principle and of

one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand to the place

where we shall join heart and hand, without the least hesitation and

with the most complete harmony and affection; I say, why we cannot do so

here, I can say nothing to, neither shall I say anything more of it but

that it remains to be lamented.

TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE STREETS

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, although they had the distemper before, and were

recovered; and some of them dropped 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, in 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.

In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I have

heard, found standing at the churchyard gate, full of dead bodies; but

neither bellman, nor driver, nor any one else with it. Neither in these

nor in many other cases did they know what bodies they had in their

cart, for sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and

out of windows; and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart,

sometimes other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they

trouble themselves to keep any account of the numbers.

THE PLAGUE DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the

reverence to his Providence, which ought always to be on our minds on

such occasions as these; doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke

from heaven upon a city, or country, or nation where it falls, a

messenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country,

or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophet

Jeremiah, xviii. 7, 8: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a

nation, and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and pull down, and destroy

it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,

I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Now to prompt

due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions,

and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those minutes upon

record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those

things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment and direction

of his Providence; nay, on the contrary there were many wonderful

deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular and

remarkable Providence in the particular instances to which they refer;

and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do

record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural

causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural

means; nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under the

conduct of human causes and effects: for as the Divine power has formed

the whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so the

same power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercy

or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he

is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means;

excepting and reserving to himself nevertheless a power to act in a

supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident that in the

case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for

supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of things appears

sufficiently armed and made capable of all the effects that heaven

usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this of

the secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, is

more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of Divine vengeance,

without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

This acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the

infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution

could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to

believe,--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me

of it that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must be

allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the

sickness or infection but who received it in the ordinary way of

infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody

that was infected before.

SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE THROUGH NECESSITIES OF THE POOR

Before people came to right notions of the infection, and of infecting

one another, people were only shy of those that were really sick; a man

with a cap upon his head, or with cloths round his neck, which was the

case of those that had swellings there,--such was indeed frightful. But

when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his

hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the

least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely,

especially with their neighbors and such as they knew. But when the

physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound,--that

is, the seemingly sound,--as the sick, and that those people that

thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal; and

that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it,

and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of

everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up so as not to

come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad

in promiscuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least

not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any

smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance

with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths,

and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection.

It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautions,

they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did not break into

such houses so furiously as it did into others before; and thousands of

families were preserved, speaking with due reserve to the direction of

divine Providence, by that means.

But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor; they

went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries

and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardy

and obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employment,

they pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and the most

liable to infection; and if they were spoken to, their answer would

be:--"I must trust in God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided

for, and there is an end of me;" and the like. Or thus:--"Why, what must

I do? I cannot starve; I had as good have the plague as perish for want;

I have no work, what could I do? I must do this or beg." Suppose it was

burying the dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected houses,

which were all terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same.

It is true, necessity was a justifiable, warrantable plea, and nothing

could be better; but their way of talk was much the same where the

necessities were not the same. This adventurous conduct of the poor was

that which brought the plague among them in a most furious manner; and

this, joined to the distress of their circumstances when taken, was the

reason why they died so by heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one

jot of better husbandry among them,--I mean the laboring poor,--while

they were all well and getting money, than there was before, but as

lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for to-morrow as ever; so

that when they came to be taken sick, they were immediately in the

utmost distress, as well for want as for sickness, as well for lack of

food as lack of health.

FROM 'COLONEL JACK'

COLONEL JACK AND CAPTAIN JACK ESCAPE ARREST

We had not parleyed thus long, but though in the dead of the night, came

a man to the other inn door--for as I said above, there are two inns at

that place--and called for a pot of beer; but the people were all in

bed, and would not rise; he asked them if they had seen two fellows come

that way upon one horse. The man said he had; that they went by in the

afternoon, and asked the way to Cambridge, but did not stop only to

drink one mug. "Oh!" says he, "are they gone to Cambridge? Then I'll be

with them quickly." I was awake in a little garret of the next inn,

where we lodged; and hearing the fellow call at the door, got up and

went to the window, having some uneasiness at every noise I heard; and

by that means heard the whole story. Now the case is plain, our hour was

not come; our fate had determined other things for us, and we were to be

reserved for it. The matter was thus:--When we first came to Bournbridge

we called at the first house and asked the way to Cambridge, drank a mug

of beer, and went on, and they might see us turn off to go the way they

directed; but night coming on, and we being very weary, we thought we

should not find the way; and we came back in the dusk of the evening and

went into the other house, being the first as we came back, as that

where we called before was the first as we went forward.

You may be sure I was alarmed now, as indeed I had reason to be. The

Captain was in bed and fast asleep, but I wakened him, and roused him

with a noise that frighted him enough. "Rise, Jack," said I, "we are

both ruined; they are come after us hither." Indeed, I was wrong to

terrify him at that rate; for he started and jumped out of bed and ran

directly to the window, not knowing where he was, and not quite awake,

was just going to jump out of the window, but I laid hold of him. "What

are you going to do?" says I. "I won't be taken," says he; "let me

alone; where are they?"

This was all confusion; and he was so out of himself with the fright,

and being overcome with sleep, that I had much to do to prevent his

jumping out of the window. However, I held him fast and thoroughly

wakened him, and then all was well again and he was presently composed.

Then I told him the story, and we sat together upon the bedside,

considering what we should do; upon the whole, as the fellow that called

was apparently gone to Cambridge, we had nothing to fear, but to be

quiet till daybreak, and then to mount and be gone.

Accordingly, as soon as day peeped we were up; and having happily

informed ourselves of the road at the other house, and being told that

the road to Cambridge turned off on the left hand, and that the road to

Newmarket lay straight forward: I say, having learnt this, the Captain

told me he would walk away on foot towards Newmarket, and so when I came

to go out I should appear as a single traveler; and accordingly he went

out immediately, and away he walked, and he traveled so hard that when I

came to follow I thought once that he had dropped me, for though I rode

hard, I got no sight of him for an hour. At length, having passed the

great bank called the Devil's Ditch, I found him and took him up behind

me, and we rode double till we came almost to the end of Newmarket town.

Just at the hither house in the town stood a horse at a door, just as it

was at Puckeridge. "Now," says Jack, "if the horse was at the other end

of the town I would have him, as sure as we had the other at

Puckeridge;" but it would not do; so he got down, and walked through the

town on the right-hand side of the way.

He had not got half through the town, but the horse, having somehow or

other got loose, came trotting gently on by himself, and nobody

following him. The Captain, an old soldier at such work, as soon as the

horse was got a pretty way before him, and that he saw nobody followed,

sets up a run after the horse, and the horse, hearing him follow, ran

the faster; then the Captain calls out, "Stop the horse!" and by this

time the horse was got almost to the farther end of the town; the people

of the house where he stood not missing him all the while.

Upon his calling out "Stop the horse!" the poor people of the town, such

as were next at hand, ran from both sides of the way and stopped the

horse for him, as readily as could be, and held him for him till he came

up; he very gravely comes up to the horse, hits him a blow or two, and

calls him "dog" for running away; gives the man twopence that catched

him for him, mounts, and away he comes after me.

This was the oddest adventure that could have happened, for the horse

stole the Captain, the Captain did not steal the horse. When he came up

to me, "Now, Colonel Jack," says he, "what do you say to good luck?

Would you have had me refuse the horse, when he came so civilly to ask

me to ride?"--"No, no," said I; "you have got this horse by your wit,

not by design; and you may go on now, I think; you are in a safer

condition than I am, if we are taken."

COLONEL JACK FINDS CAPTAIN JACK HARD TO MANAGE

We arrived here very easy and safe, and while we were considering of

what way we should travel next, we found we were got to a point, and

that there was no way now left but that by the Washes into Lincolnshire,

and that was represented as very dangerous; so an opportunity offering

of a man that was traveling over the fens, we took him for our guide,

and went with him to Spalding, and from thence to a town called Deeping,

and so to Stamford in Lincolnshire.

This is a large populous town, and it was market day when we came to it;

so we put in at a little house at the hither end of the town, and walked

into the town. Here it was not possible to restrain my Captain from

playing his feats of art, and my heart ached for him; I told him I would

not go with him, for he would not promise to leave off, and I was so

terribly concerned at the apprehensions of his venturous humor that I

would not so much as stir out of my lodging; but it was in vain to

persuade him. He went into the market and found a mountebank there,

which was what he wanted. How he picked two pockets there in one quarter

of an hour, and brought to our quarters a piece of new holland of eight

or nine ells, a piece of stuff, and played three or four pranks more in

less than two hours; and how afterwards he robbed a doctor of physic,

and yet came off clear in them: all this, I say, as above, belongs to

his story, not mine.

I scolded heartily at him when he came back, and told him he would

certainly ruin himself and me too before he left off, and threatened in

so many words that I would leave him and go back, and carry the horse to

Puckeridge, where we borrowed it, and so go to London by myself.

He promised amendment, but as we resolved (now we were in the great

road) to travel by night, so, it being not yet night, he gives me the

slip again; and was not gone half an hour, but he comes back with a gold

watch in his hand. "Come," says he, "why ain't you ready? I am ready to

go as soon as you will:" and with that he pulls out the gold watch. I

was amazed at such a thing as that in a country town; but it seems there

were prayers at one of the churches in the evening, and he, placing

himself as the occasion directed, found the way to be so near a lady as

to get it from her side, and walked off with it unperceived.

The same night we went away by moonlight, after having the satisfaction

to hear the watch cried, and ten guineas offered for it again; he would

have been glad of the ten guineas instead of the watch, but durst not

venture to carry it home. "Well," says I, "you are afraid, and indeed

you have reason; give it to me; I will venture to carry it again;" but

he would not let me, but told me that when we came into Scotland we

might sell anything there without danger; which was true indeed, for

there they asked us no questions.

We set out, as I said, in the evening by moonlight, and traveled hard,

the road being very plain and large, till we came to Grantham, by which

time it was about two in the morning, and all the town as it were dead

asleep; so we went on for Newark, where we reached about eight in the

morning, and there we lay down and slept most of the day; and by this

sleeping so continually in the daytime, I kept him from doing a great

deal of mischief which he would otherwise have done.

COLONEL JACK'S FIRST WIFE IS NOT DISPOSED TO BE ECONOMICAL

We soon found a house proper for our dwelling, and so went to

housekeeping; we had not been long together but I found that gay temper

of my wife returned, and she threw off the mask of her gravity and good

conduct that I had so long fancied was her mere natural disposition, and

now, having no more occasion for disguises, she resolved to seem nothing

but what she really was, a wild untamed colt, perfectly loose, and

careless to conceal any part, no, not the worst of her conduct.

She carried on this air of levity to such an excess that I could not but

be dissatisfied at the expense of it, for she kept company that I did

not like, lived beyond what I could support, and sometimes lost at play

more than I cared to pay; upon which one day I took occasion to mention

it, but lightly, and said to her by way of raillery that we lived

merrily for as long as it would last. She turned short upon me: "What do

you mean?" says she; "why, you do not pretend to be uneasy, do ye?" "No,

no, madam, not I, by no means; it is no business of mine, you know,"

said I, "to inquire what my wife spends, or whether she spends more than

I can afford, or less; I only desire the favor to know, as near as you

can guess, how long you will please to take to dispatch me, for I would

not be too long a-dying."

"I do not know what you talk of," says she. "You may die as leisurely or

as hastily as you please, when your time comes; I ain't a-going to kill

you, as I know of."

"But you are going to starve me, madam," said I; "and hunger is as

leisurely a death as breaking upon the wheel."

"I starve you! why, are not you a great Virginia merchant, and did not I

bring you L1500? What would you have? Sure, you can maintain a wife out

of that, can't you?"

"Yes, madam," says I, "I could maintain a wife, but not a gamester,

though you had brought me L1500 a year; no estate is big enough for a

box and dice."

She took fire at that, and flew out in a passion, and after a great many

bitter words told me in short that she saw no occasion to alter her

conduct; and as for not maintaining her, when I could not maintain her

longer she would find some way or other to maintain herself.

Some time after the first rattle of this kind she vouchsafed to let me

know that she was pleased to be with child; I was at first glad of it,

in hopes it would help to abate her madness; but it was all one, and her

being with child only added to the rest, for she made such preparations

for her lying-in, and other appendixes of a child's being born, that in

short I found she would be downright distracted; and I took the liberty

to tell her one day she would soon bring herself and me to destruction,

and entreated her to consider that such figures as those were quite

above us and out of our circle; and in short, that I neither could nor

would allow such expenses; that at this rate two or three children would

effectually ruin me, and that I desired her to consider what she was

doing.

She told me with an air of disdain that it was none of her business to

consider anything of that matter; that if I could not allow it she would

allow it herself, and I might do my worst.

I begged her to consider things for all that, and not drive me to

extremities; that I married her to love and cherish her, and use her as

a good wife ought to be used, but not to be ruined and undone by her. In

a word, nothing could mollify her, nor any argument persuade her to

moderation; but withal she took it so heinously that I should pretend to

restrain her, that she told me in so many words she would drop her

burthen with me, and then if I did not like it she would take care of

herself; she would not live with me an hour, for she would not be

restrained, not she; and talked a long while at that rate.

I told her, as to her child, which she called her burthen, it should be

no burthen to me; as to the rest she might do as she pleased; it might

however do me this favor, that I should have no more lyings-in at the

rate of L136 at a time, as I found she intended it should be now. She

told me she could not tell that; if she had no more by me, she hoped she

should by somebody else. "Say you so, madam?" said I; "then they that

get them shall keep them." She did not know that neither, she said, and

so turned it off jeering, and as it were laughing at me.

This last discourse nettled me, I must confess, and the more because I

had a great deal of it and very often; till, in short, we began at

length to enter into a friendly treaty about parting.

Nothing could be more criminal than the several discourses we had upon

this subject; she demanded a separate maintenance, and in particular, at

the rate of L300 a year; and I demanded security of her that she should

not run me in debt; she demanding the keeping of the child, with an

allowance of L100 a year for that, and I demanding that I should be

secured from being charged for keeping any she might have by somebody

else, as she had threatened me.

In the interval, and during these contests, she dropped her burthen (as

she called it), and brought me a son, a very fine child.

She was content during her lying-in to abate a little, though it was but

a very little indeed, of the great expense she had intended; and with

some difficulty and persuasion was content with a suit of child-bed

linen of L15 instead of one she had intended of threescore; and this she

magnified as a particular testimony of her condescension, and a yielding

to my avaricious temper, as she called it.

THE DEVIL DOES NOT CONCERN HIMSELF WITH PETTY MATTERS

From 'The Modern History of the Devil'

Nor will I undertake to tell you, till I have talked farther with him

about it, how far the Devil is concerned to discover frauds, detect

murders, reveal secrets, and especially to tell where any money is hid,

and show folks where to find it; it is an odd thing that Satan should

think it of consequence to come and tell us where such a miser hid a

strong box, or where such an old woman buried her chamberpot full of

money, the value of all which is perhaps but a trifle, when, at the same

time he lets so many veins of gold, so many unexhausted mines, nay,

mountains of silver (as we may depend on it are hid in the bowels of the

earth, and which it would be so much to the good of whole nations to

discover), lie still there, and never say one word of them to anybody.

Besides, how does the Devil's doing things so foreign to himself, and so

out of his way, agree with the rest of his character; namely, showing a

friendly disposition to mankind, or doing beneficent things? This is so

beneath Satan's quality, and looks so little, that I scarce know what to

say to it; but that which is still more pungent in the case is, these

things are so out of his road, and so foreign to his calling, that it

shocks our faith in them, and seems to clash with all the just notions

we have of him and of his business in the world. The like is to be said

of those merry little turns we bring him in acting with us and upon us

upon trifling and simple occasions, such as tumbling chairs and stools

about house, setting pots and kettles bottom upward, tossing the glass

and crockery-ware about without breaking, and such-like mean foolish

things, beneath the dignity of the Devil, who in my opinion is rather

employed in setting the world with the bottom upward, tumbling kings and

crowns about, and dashing the nations one against another; raising

tempests and storms, whether at sea or on shore; and in a word, doing

capital mischiefs, suitable to his nature and agreeable to his name

Devil, and suited to that circumstance of his condition which I have

fully represented in the primitive part of his exiled state.

But to bring in the Devil playing at push-pin with the world, or like

Domitian, catching flies,--that is to say, doing nothing to the

purpose,--this is not only deluding ourselves, but putting a slur upon

the Devil himself; and I say, I shall not dishonor Satan so much as to

suppose anything in it; however, as I must have a care to how I take

away the proper materials of winter-evening frippery, and leave the

goodwives nothing of the Devil to frighten the children with, I shall

carry the weighty point no farther. No doubt the Devil and Dr. Faustus

were very intimate; I should rob you of a very significant proverb if I

should so much as doubt it. No doubt the Devil showed himself in the

glass to that fair lady who looked in to see where to place her patches;

but then it should follow too that the Devil is an enemy to the ladies

wearing patches, and that has some difficulties in it which we cannot

easily reconcile; but we must tell the story, and leave out the

consequences.

DEFOE ADDRESSES HIS PUBLIC

From 'An Appeal to Honor and Justice'

I hope the time has come at last when the voice of moderate principles

may be heard. Hitherto the noise has been so great, and the prejudices

and passions of men so strong, that it had been but in vain to offer at

any argument, or for any man to talk of giving a reason for his actions;

and this alone has been the cause why, when other men, who I think have

less to say in their own defense, are appealing to the public and

struggling to defend themselves, I alone have been silent under the

infinite clamors and reproaches, causeless curses, unusual threatenings,

and the most unjust and unjurious treatment in the world.

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few

are concerned to clear the innocent. I hope some will be inclined to

judge impartially, and have yet reserved so much of the Christian as to

believe, and at least to hope, that a rational creature cannot abandon

himself so as to act without some reason, and are willing not only to

have me defend myself, but to be able to answer for me where they hear

me causelessly insulted by others, and therefore are willing to have

such just arguments put into their mouths as the cause will bear.

As for those who are prepossessed, and according to the modern justice

of parties are resolved to be so, let them go; I am not arguing with

them, but against them; they act so contrary to justice, to reason, to

religion, so contrary to the rules of Christians and of good manners,

that they are not to be argued with, but to be exposed or entirely

neglected. I have a receipt against all the uneasiness which it may be

supposed to give me, and that is, to contemn slander, and think it not

worth the least concern; neither should I think it worth while to give

any answer to it, if it were not on some other accounts, of which I

shall speak as I go on. If any young man ask me why I am in such haste

to publish this matter at this time, among many other good reasons which

I could give, these are some:--

1. I think I have long enough been made Fabula Vulgi, and borne the

weight of general slander; and I should be wanting to truth, to my

family, and to myself, if I did not give a fair and true state of my

conduct, for impartial men to judge of when I am no more in being to

answer for myself.

2. By the hints of mortality, and by the infirmities of a life of sorrow

and fatigue, I have reason to think I am not a 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, that no actions [slanders] may lie

against my heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, to disturb

them in the peaceable possession of their father's [character]

inheritance.

3. I fear--God grant I have not a second sight in it--that this lucid

interval of temper and moderation which shines, though dimly too, upon

us at this time, will be of but short continuance; and that some men,

who know not how to use the advantage God has put into their hands with

moderation, will push, in spite of the best Prince in the world, at such

extravagant things, and act with such an intemperate forwardness, as

will revive the heats and animosities which wise and good men were in

hopes should be allayed by the happy accession of the King to the

throne.

It is and ever was my opinion, that moderation is the only virtue by

which the peace and tranquillity of this nation can be preserved. Even

the King himself--I believe his Majesty will allow me that freedom--can

only be happy in the enjoyment of the crown by a moderative

administration. If his Majesty should be obliged, contrary to his known

disposition, to join with intemperate councils, if it does not lessen

his security I am persuaded it will lessen his satisfaction. It cannot

be pleasant or agreeable, and I think it cannot be safe, to any just

prince to rule over a divided people, split into incensed and

exasperated parties. Though a skillful mariner may have courage to

master a tempest, and goes fearless through a storm, yet he can never be

said to delight in the danger; a fresh fair gale and a quiet sea is the

pleasure of his voyage, and we have a saying worth notice to them that

are otherwise minded,--"Quit ama periculum, periebat in illo."

ENGAGING A MAID-SERVANT

From "Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business"

Besides, the fear of spoiling their clothes makes them afraid of

household work, so that in a little time we shall have none but

chambermaids and nurserymaids; and of this let me give you one instance.

My family is composed of myself and sister, a man and maid; and being

without the last, a young wench came to hire herself. The man was gone

out, and my sister above-stairs, so I opened the door myself, and this

person presented herself to my view, dressed completely, more like a

visitor than a servant-maid; she, not knowing me, asked for my sister.

"Pray, madam," said I, "be pleased to walk into the parlor; she shall

wait on you presently." Accordingly I handed madam in, who took it very

cordially. After some apology I left her alone for a minute or two,

while I, stupid wretch! ran up to my sister and told her there was a

gentlewoman below come to visit her. "Dear brother," said she, "don't

leave her alone; go down and entertain her while I dress myself."

Accordingly down I went, and talked of indifferent affairs; meanwhile my

sister dressed herself all over again, not being willing to be seen in

an undress. At last she came down dressed as clean as her visitor; but

how great was my surprise when I found my fine lady a common

servant-wench.

My sister, understanding what she was, began to inquire what wages she

expected. She modestly asked but eight pounds a year. The next question

was, "What work she could do to deserve such wages?" to which she

answered she could clean a house, or dress a common family dinner. "But

cannot you wash," replied my sister, "or get up linen?" She answered in

the negative, and said she would undertake neither, nor would she go

into a family that did not put out their linen to wash and hire a

charwoman to scour. She desired to see the house, and having carefully

surveyed it, said the work was too hard for her, nor could she undertake

it. This put my sister beyond all patience, and me into the greatest

admiration. "Young woman," she said, "you have made a mistake; I want a

housemaid, and you are a chambermaid." "No, madam," replied she, "I am

not needlewoman enough for that." "And yet you ask eight pounds a year,"

replied my sister. "Yes, madam," said she, "nor shall I bate a

farthing." "Then get you gone for a lazy impudent baggage," said I; "you

want to be a boarder, not a servant; have you a fortune or estate, that

you dress at that rate?" "No, sir," said she, "but I hope I may wear

what I work for without offense." "What! you work?" interrupted my

sister; "why, you do not seem willing to undertake any work; you will

not wash nor scour; you cannot dress a dinner for company; you are no

needlewoman; and our little house of two rooms on a floor is too much

for you. For God's sake, what can you do?" "Madam," replied she pertly,

"I know my business, and do not fear service; there are more places than

parish churches: if you wash at home, you should have a laundrymaid; if

you give entertainments, you must have a cookmaid; if you have any

needlework, you should have a chambermaid; and such a house as this is

enough for a housemaid, in all conscience."

I was so pleased at the wit, and astonished at the impudence of the

girl, so dismissed her with thanks for her instructions, assuring her

that when I kept four maids she should be housemaid if she pleased.

THE DEVIL

From 'The True-Born Englishman'

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.

For ever since he first debauched the mind,

He made a perfect conquest of mankind.

With uniformity of service, he

Reigns with general aristocracy.

No non-conforming sects disturb his reign,

For of his yoke there's very few complain.

He knows the genius and the inclination,

And matches proper sins for every nation.

He needs no standing army government;

He always rules us by our own consent;

His laws are easy, and his gentle sway

Makes it exceeding pleasant to obey.

The list of his vicegerents and commanders

Outdoes your Caesars or your Alexanders.

They never fail of his infernal aid,

And he's as certain ne'er to be betrayed.

Through all the world they spread his vast command,

And death's eternal empire is maintained.

They rule so politicly and so well,

As if they were Lords Justices of hell;

Duly divided to debauch mankind,

And plant infernal dictates in his mind.

THERE IS A GOD

From 'The Storm'

For in the darkest of the black abode

There's not a devil but believes a God.

Old Lucifer has sometimes tried

To have himself deified;

But devils nor men the being of God denied,

Till men of late found out new ways to sin,

And turned the devil out to let the Atheist in.

But when the mighty element began,

And storms the weighty truth explain,

Almighty power upon the whirlwind rode,

And every blast proclaimed aloud

There is, there is, there is a God.

EDUARD DOUWES DEKKER

(1820-1887)