The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-12-28
SOME LITERARY LIGHTS
OF THE OLD NORTH STATE
A Number of Poets and Prose Writers Whose Names
Did Not Appear in Dr. Kingsbury's
First Article

discussions, by reproducing these two
stanas:
eff I were dead,
And you should come, dear, and beside
my bier
Should stand and silently let fall a tear
Upon my pallid wasted, lifeless form
Should shower on me kisses moist and
Would not that impact make my life
Relume and make the d-time passion
burn
If I were dead?
If you were dead
ooh, God! and can it ever be? Your
face,
Sc flower like TRANSPORTED with the
grace
The nameless grace belonging unto
Death)
And l should madly call, would not the
breath
OF Life and Love make answer to my
Your pulses throb in riotous reply
If you were dead?"
OF course you have read that greatest
achievement in story writing for boys,
Robinson Crusoe," that appeared IN
1890, and will live, doubtless, so long
as there arc boys who read and love the
best books for them. But what dozen
know of the author of it, known now as
Daniel Defoe? His real name was Foe.
He wrote it first, d. Foe, for Daniel Foe.
Then he changed it to De Foe, and with
Daniel as a prefix. He was born in Lon
don. and his father was butcher. He
was born in 1861, and died in 1871, aged
about TO- His death was a mystery, and
his life was full of ups and downs. At
81 years he fed owing some 100000. He
was one of Englands most prolific
writer's and with the exception Of Dean
Swift, and possibly Lord Bolingbroke,
there were no Damphleters and political
essayists who euualed him. Swift was
greater. but not so prolific. He was
more yindictive more caustic, more ter
rible, but not more original Boiling
broke was a very great man. When L
was not more than twenty-five, | bought
his works in four large octavos. l never
read his scoffings at Christianity and
his general scepticism. | read the first
volume containing most of his greatest
political papers and discussions. 1t is
quite half century since then, and
would not rely on my early reading for
proper estimate of him. His rank is
very high among British statesmen. L
recall what I read many decades since,
that the celebrated William Pitt, the
Younger. being asked, What he consid-
cred the greatest desideratum in English
literature?' replied, "A speech from
Bolingbroke exactly reported" We note
that Edmond Gosse, the very gifted and
accomplished lecturer on English litera-
ture at Cambridge University, England,
quotes Pitt as declaring that Boiling
brokc's speeches are 1.-THE most de-
sirable of all the lost fragments OF liter
ature." 1 am sure that Pitt also said
what / have given, although probably
to some one else on a different occasion.
His literary Reflections upon
Exile" Letters on the Study and Use
of History and others, do not rank so
high now as with his appreciative con-
temporaries and later, Gosse is incisive
and swerves in his judgment of the value
of his writings. For instance, he says:
'EIis boosted style, though unquestionably
lucid, is slipshod and full of platitudes,
grand eloquent and yet Intellectual.
He laughs at his 'impudent assumption"
in assuming 1.-The airs of a great politi-
cal philosopher" Grim, brave, DR.. Sam
Johnson. said of him that "he was
scoundrel and coward. But somehow
Bolingbroke greatly impressed his times
and later He evidently had great per-
sonal attraction and magnetic force.
Gosse says "he dazzled his own genera
ton where he merely wearies ours"
In speech making he was clearly a great
success.
For twenty years De Foe flooded Eng
land and Scotland with his almost count
less productions. He was a very able,
a very gifted, very ingenius writer.
He wrote on very many, subjects. He
even dabbled in verse, and used keen
rapier. was bold, aggressive, re-
sourceful, powerful, even eloquent.
give a brief sample of his opinion of his
countrymen in satiric verse. An English
man disliking King William, had sought
to defame all the people in Europe by
"a vile pamphlet of abhorred verse;" to
quote De Foe, which was aimed at "The
Foreigners" De Foe replied in
rhyming satire of no great merit but of
exceeding candor. He seems to have
understood his countrymen, and said
what were the English themselves that
they should make a mock of foreigners
that they were the worst mongrel race
that ever lived upon the face of the
earth-that there was no such thing
as a true born Englishman," for they
we're all the offspring of foreigners; and
what was more, not OF the best, but of
the scum of foreigners. Now read:
"A true born Englishman's contra
diction,
In speech an irony in act fiction"
And here begins the ancient pedigree.
That so exalts our poor nobility,
IT'S that from some French trooper they
derive.
Who with the Norman bastard did arrive;
The trophies of the families appear,
Some show the sword the bow, and some
the spear.
Which their great ancestors, forsooth
did wear.
These in the herald's register remain,
Their noble, mean extraction to explain.