queen's death, which took place shortly after (in July, 1714), left him defenceless to the attacks of his rancorous enemies. No sooner," says he, "was the queen dead, and the king, as right required, proclaimed, but the rage of men increased upon me to that degree, that their threats were such as I am unable to express; and though I have written nothing since the queen's death, yet a great many things are called by my name, and I bear the answerer's insults. This was the darkest period of our author's life. He had lost his appointment, whatever it was; he had been obliged to give up his Review; everything he ventured to publish besides was received with suspicion, and he was on all hands overborne by faction, injury, and insult. His health declined fast under these unmerited sufferings, but the vigour of his mind remained; and he determined to assert the innocence of his conduct, and to clear his blemished fame. He accordingly published, in 1715, An Appeal to Honour and Justice, though it be of his worst Enemies, being a true Account of his Conduct in Public Affairs. This work contains a long account and defence of his political conduct from the outset, and a most affecting detail of his sufferings; but the subject had been too much for him. When he reviewed what he had done, and how he had been rewarded; how much he had deserved, and how heavily he had suffered; the ardent spirit of De Foe sunk before the picture, and he was struck with apoplexy before he could finish his work. It was published, nevertheless, by his friends, and the profits of its sale seem to have been the only source of his sup port. This was the terminating period of our author's political career. He recovered his health, but his mind had changed its tone; and it was now that the history of Selkirk first suggested to him the idea of Robinson Crusoe. It has been thought by some to detract from the merit of De Foe, that the idea was not originally his own but really the story of Selkirk, which had been published a few years before in Woodes Rogers's Voyage round the World, appears to have furnished our author with so little beyond the bare idea of a man living upon an uninhabited island, that it seems quite immaterial whether he took his hint from that, or from any other similar story, of which many were then current. In order to enable our readers to judge how very little De Foe has been assisted by Selkirk's narrative, we have extracted the whole from Woodes Rogers's Voyage, and subjoined it to this article.

The sale of Robinson Crusoe was, as we have already stated, rapid and extensive, and De Foe's profits were commensurate. The work was attacked on all sides by his ancient opponents, whose la

1 See Appendix, No. I.

bours have long since quietly descended with their authors to merited oblivion; but our author, having the public on his side, set them all at defiance; and the same year he published a second volume with equal success. Thus far

With steady bark and flowing sail

He ran before the wind;

but, incited by the hope of further profit, and conceiving the theme of Crusoe inexhaustible, he shortly after published Serious reflections during the Life of Robinson Crusoe, with his Vision of the Angelic Worll. These Visions and Reflections were well received at the time although by no means so much in requisition now.

With the return of his good fortune, our author's health was re-established, and the vigour of his mind restored. He published, in 1720, The Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton; and finding it safer, it would seem, as well as more profitable, to amuse the public, than to reform them, he continued this course, with little variation, for the remainder of his life.

His subsequent publications, to all of which a considerable degree of popularity was attached, though none of them equalled the reputation of Robinson Crusoe, were The Dumb Philosopher, History of Duncan Campbell, Remarkable Life of Colonel Jack, Fortunate Mistress, and New Voyage round the World.

We are now to take leave of our author, who died in 1751, at the age of 68, in Cripplegate, London, leaving a widow and large family in tolerable circumstances.

That De Foe was a man of powerful intellect and lively imagi– nation, is obvious from his works; that he was possessed of an ardent temper, a resolute courage, and an unwearied spirit of enterprise, is ascertained by the events of his changeful career; and whatever may be thought of that rashness and improvidence, by which his progress in life was so frequently impeded, there seems no reason to withhold from him the praise of as much, nay more, integrity, sincerity, and consistency, than could have been expected in a political author writing for bread, and whose chief protector, Harley, was latterly of a different party from his own. As the author of Robinson Crusoe, his fame promises to endure as long as the language in which he wrote.

So far my late regretted friend. But these trifling sketches of literary biography being now collected, it seems injustice to the author of Robinson Crusoe to permit his memoirs to be inserted, with

out a brief attempt to account for that popularity, which, in his principal work at least, has equalled that of any author who ever wrote. And we must, in the first place, remark, that the fertility of De Foe was astonishing. He wrote on all occasions, and on all subjects, and seemingly had little time for preparation upon the subject in hand, but treated it from the stores which his memory retained of early reading, and such hints as he had caught up in society, not one of which seems to have been lost upon him. A complete list of De Foe's works, notwithstanding the exertions of the late George Chalmers, has not yet been procured, and a perfect collection even of such books as he is well known to have written, can scarce be procured, even by the most active bibliomaniac. The preceding memoir does not notice one half of his compositions, all, even the meanest, of which have something in them to distinguish them as the works of an extraordinary man. It cannot, therefore, be doubted, that he possessed a powerful memory to furnish him with materials, and a no less copious vein of imagination to weave them up into a web of his own, and supply the rich embroidery which in reality constitutes their chief value. De Foe does not display much acquaintance with classic learning, neither does it appear that his attendance on the Newington seminary had led him deep into the study of ancient languages. His own language is genuine English, often simple even to vulgarity, but always so distinctly impressive, that its very vulgarity had, as we shall presently show, an efficacy, in giving an air of truth or probability to the facts and sentiments it conveys. Exclusive of politics, De Foe's studies led chiefly to those popular narratives, which are the amusement of children and of the lower classes; those accounts of travellers who have visited remote countries; of voyagers who have made discoveries of new lands and strange nations; of pirates and bucaneers who have acquired wealth by their desperate adventures on the ocean. His residence at Limehouse, near the Thames, must have made him acquainted with many of those wild mariners, half privateers, half robbers, whom he must often have heard relate their adventures, and with whose manners and sentiments he thus became intimately acquainted. There is reason to believe, from a passage in his Review (we have unfortunately mislaid the reference), that he was acquainted with Dampierre, a mariner whose scientific skill in his profession and power of literary composition were at that time rarely found in his profession, especially among those rough sons of the ocean who acknowledged no peace beyond the Line, and had as natural an enmity to a

The author has long sought for his poem termed Caledonia, without being able to obtain a sight of it.

South-American Spaniard as a greyhound to a hare, and who, though distinguished by the somewhat milder term of bucaneer, were little better than absolute pirates. The English Government, it is well known, were not, however, very active in destroying this class of adventurers while they confined their depredations to the Dutch and Spaniards, and, indeed, seldom disturbed them, if they returned from their roving life, and sat down to enjoy their illgotten gains. The courage of these men, the wonderful risks. which they incurred, their hair-breadth escapes, and the romantic countries through which they travelled, seem to have had infinitive charms for De Foe. He has written several books on this subject, all of which are entertaining, and remarkable for the accuracy with which he personates the character of a bucaneering adventurer. The New Voyage round the World, the Voyages and Piracies of Captain Singleton, are of this class, and the second part of Robinson Crusoe properly belongs to it. De Foe's general acquaintance with nautical affairs has not been doubted, as he is said never to misapply the various sea-phrases, or show an ignorance unbecoming the character under which he wrote. His remarks upon trade, which are naturally mixed with these accounts of foreign parts, might naturally be expected from one whose speculations in every channel of trade had enabled him to write An Account of Commerce, and also a work called the English Tradesman, from which he appears to have been familiar with foreign countries, their produce, their manners, and government, and whatever rendered it easy or difficult to enter into trade with them. We may therefore conclude that Purchas's Pilgrim, Hackluyt's Voyages, and the other ancient authorities, had been curiously examined by him, as well as those of his friend Dampierre, of Wafer, and others who had been in the South Seas, whether as privateers, or, as it was then called, Upon the account.

Shylock observes, there are land thieves and water thieves; and as De Foe was familiar with the latter, he was not without some knowledge of the practices and devices of the former. We are afraid we must impute to his long and repeated imprisonments, the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the secrets of thieves and mendicants, their acts of plunder, concealment, and escape. But whatever way he acquired his knowledge of low life, De Foe certainly possessed it in the most extensive sense, and applied it in the composition of several works of fiction in the style termed by the Spaniards Gusto Picaresco, of which no man was ever a greater master. This class of the fictitious narrative may be termed the Romance of Roguery, the subjects being the adventures of thieves, rogues, vagabonds, and swindlers, including viragoes and courtezans. The improved taste of the present age

has justly rejected this coarse species of amusement, which is, besides, calculated to do an infinite deal of mischief among the lower classes, as it presents in a comic, or even heroic shape, the very crimes and vices to which they are otherwise most likely to be tempted. Nevertheless, the strange and blackguard scenes which De Foe describes, are fit to be compared to the gipsy-boys of the Spanish painter Murillo, which are so justly admired, as being, in truth of conception, and spirit of execution, the very chefs-d'œuvre of art, however low and loathsome the originals from which they are taken. Of this character is the History of Colonel Jack, for example, which had an immense popularity among the lower classes; that of Moll Flanders, a shop-lifter and prostitute; that of Mrs. Christian Davis, called Mother Ross; and that of Roxana, as she is termed, a courtezan in higher life. All of these contain strong marks of genius; in' the last they are particularly predominant, But from the coarseness of the narrative, and the vice and vulgarity of the actors, the reader feels as a well-principled young man may do, when seduced by some entertaining and dissolute libertine into scenes of debauchery, that, though he may be amused, he must be not a little ashamed of that which furnishes the entertainment. So that, though we could collect from these picaresque romances a good deal that is not a little amusing, we let them pass by, as we would persons, howsoever otherwise interesting, who may not be in character and manners entirely fit for good society.

A third species of composition, to which the author's ctive and vigorous genius was peculiarly adapted, was the account of great national convulsions, whether by war, or by the pestilence, or the tempest. These were tales which are sure, when even moderately well told, to arrest the attention, and which, narrated with that impression of reality which De Foe knew so well how to convey, make the hair bristle and the skin creep. In this manner he has written the Memoirs of a Cavalier, which have been often read and quoted as a real production of a real personage. Born himself almost immediately after the Restoration, De Foe must have known many of those who had been engaged in the civil turmoils of 1642-6, to which the period of these memoirs refers. He must have lived among them at that age when boys, such as we conceive De Foe must necessarily have been, cling to the knees of those who can tell them of the darings and the dangers of their youth, at a period when their own passions, and views of pressing forward in life, have not begun to operate upon their minds, and while they are still pleased to listen to the adventures which others have encountered on that stage, which they themselves have not yet entered upon. The Memoirs of a Cavalier have certainly been enriched