DEFOE, Daniel, a man of varied and original genius, who distinguished himself as a political writer, and, above all, immortalized his name by the incomparable romance of Robinson Crusoe, was born in London about the year 1663. He was the son of James Foe, butcher in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, and grandson of Daniel Foe, of Elton, in Northamptonshire, yeoman. How he came to take the name of De Foe or Defoe, we are not informed; but his enemies have asserted that he assumed the De in order to pass for a Frenchman. It appears, however, that in January 1688 he was, under the name of Daniel Foe, admitted to the freedom of the city by reason of his birth. The family of Defoe were Protestant dissenters; and Daniel, who had received his education in an academy belonging to that body at Newington Green, near London, became by reflection attached to those principles which he had inherited by his birth, and approved himself through life their able and zealous defender. Fortune seemed to have destined him to be merely an artisan, and, accordingly, he was bound apprentice to a hosier; but his naturally active mind, already expanded by his early studies, sought to exercise itself on other objects than the details of a mechanical profession, and he read assiduously the public papers, in which subjects of great interest were sometimes discussed. The unpopular government of James the Second had begun to agitate the minds of men on questions of religion and politics; and that of Defoe, who had not yet attained his twenty-first year, partook largely of the general excitement. His first publication, which appeared in 1683, was a Treatise against the Turks, written in order to combat the prevailing sentiment of the time in favour of the Ottomans, as opposed to the house of Austria. But Defoe soon showed that he could wield the sword as well as the pen, and that he was as ready to fight as to write in defence of freedom. In June 1683, when he had not yet completed his twenty-third year, he appeared in arms for the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth; an exploit of which he was accustomed to boast, in the latter period of his life, when it had ceased to be dangerous to avow participation in that imprudent and ill-fated enterprise: and he had the good fortune not merely to escape the hazards of the field, but the still more imminent perils of Judge Jefferies’ sanguinary “western campaign.” In 1687 he attacked the proclamation for the repeal of the penal laws, in a tract, in which he exposed the unconstitutional measures pursued by King James, and warned the dissenters against the insidious toleration with which the court had sought to delude them. In common with all the friends of liberty, Defoe warmly greeted the Revolution, which he had endeavoured to promote by his sword as well as his pen; and when King William and Queen Mary were entertained by the city of London, on the 29th of October 1689, he was one of the regiment of volunteers which, commanded by the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, attended their majesties on that occasion from Whitehall to the Mansion-house.

At this period Defoe is said to have acted as a hosier in Freeman’s Court, Cornhill: but with the imprudence which is too frequently the concomitant of genius, he neglected business for pleasure; frequented companies, where the readiness and vivacity of his wit made him always a welcome guest; and spent those hours in social enjoyment or the cultivation of literature which ought to have been devoted to the cares and calculations of the countinghouse. The consequence was, that in 1692 he fell into difficulties, and being obliged to abscond for a time, a commission of bankruptcy was issued against him; but this was afterwards superseded on the petition of his principal creditors, who, on his own personal bond, accepted a composition which, by efforts of unwearied diligence, he punctually and honourably paid. Nor did even this satisfy the scrupulous integrity of the author of Robinson Crιιsoe. For when, by the favour of King William, his circumstances[7:7:669] had been improved, he paid such of his creditors as had themselves fallen into distress, their full claims, and, exclusively of the composition already mentioned, at length reduced his whole debts from seventeen to less than five thousand pounds; an instance of probity admirable in itself, and, considering that it was exemplified by a man who had to struggle with a numerous family, without assistance excepting his own industry, often paralysed by misfortunes, deserving of unqualified commendation. As yet he had mortified no great man by his keen satire, and offended no party by his caustic pamphlets; whilst by his powers of pleasing, which never deserted him, he had acquired friends who evinced a desire to serve him. Their . project was that he should settle as a factor at Cadiz, a place with which he had previously had some correspondence as a trader; but, as he himself remarks, Providence, which had other work for him to do, placed a secret aversion in his mind to quitting England.

Defoe now began to meditate a variety of schemes for the benefit of his country, and, in January 1697, published his Essay upon Projects, which shows an extensive range of knowledge; recommends the establishment of a society for encouraging learning, refining the English language, and preventing barbarisms in manners as well as in speech; and well deserves the commendation which both Prior and Swift afterwards bestowed upon it. In 1695 Defoe was appointed accountant to the commissioners for managing the duties on glass; but this situation he lost in 1699, when the tax on glass was repealed by act of parliament. In 1701 appeared The True-born Englishman, a poem in vindication of King W illiam, who had been attacked by one Tutchen, in a scurrilous piece entitled The Foreigners. This was the first effort of his satirical muse, and it appears to have succeeded amazingly; for it had a prodigious sale, and the author was admitted to several personal interviews with the king, who certainly was not a frequent reader of poetry. After the peace of Ryswick, he published an argument to prove that a standing army, with consent of parliament, is not inconsistent with a free government; and afterwards, when the grand jury of Kent, in May 1701, presented a petition to the Commons, in which the honourable house were unceremoniously desired to mind the public business more and their private heats less, Dcfoe dictated a remonstrance, signed Legion, against the commitment of Culpepper, Polhill, Hamilton, and Champneys, who had avowed this intrepid paper, and he imitated the courage of those whose cause he espoused, by speaking plain truths in bold language. At this time also he published a treatise on the original power of the collective body of the people of England, which he dedicated to King William, in a strain of very vigorous eloquence, and which, whilst it vies with Mr Locke’s celebrated tract in force of reasoning, greatly transcends it in the graces of style. Soon after this appeared his pamphlet “against stockjobbing elections of parliament men,” which was a very seasonable production, and fully sustained his reputation. FI is Reasons against a War with France, which he next published, is one of the finest tracts in the English language, and replete throughout with eloquence and wisdom. He declares that he is not adverse to a war with France, provided it be undertaken on justifiable grounds; but he trusts that England will never become so inconsiderable a nation as to make use of dishonest pretences to bring about any of her designs; and he observes with striking truth, that he who desires that we should end the war honourably, ought also to desire that we should begin it fairly. King William could scarcely be supposed to relish a treatise which, however able, was diametrically opposed to his favourite line of policy; but he never evinced the smallest resentment against the author on this account; and his death, which happened soon afterwards,, deprived Defoe of a patron and protector whom he revered, and whose memory he could never patiently hear abused. In the midst of the furious party contests which took place on the accession of Queen Anne, he engaged in a controversy concerning the occasional conformity of dissenters ∙, a subject which then led to frequent disputes between the two houses of parliament, but which is now probably at rest forever. “During the first fury of high-flying,” says Defoe, “I fell a sacrifice for writing against the madness of that high spirit,and in the service of the dissenters.” This alludes to The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which he published in 1702, and which is a piece of exquisite irony, although, in the excited state of men’s minds at that time, it was pertinaciously interpreted ad pedem literce both by churchmen and dissenters, and being voted a gross libel by the House of Commons, was ordered to be burned as such by the hands of the common hangman.

It has been well observed that Defoe had, during the previous twenty years of his life, been unconsciously charging a mine which now blew both himself and his family into the air. He had fought for the Duke of Monmouth; he had opposed King James; he had vindicated the revolution; he had done justice to the character and memory of King William; he had displeased Godolphin and offended Marlborough, by objecting to the war in Flanders; he had defended the rights of the collective body of the people; he had bantered Sir Edward Seymour and Sir Christopher Musgrave, the Tory leaders of the House of Commons; and he had ridiculed all the high-flyers in the kingdom ;—in a word, by following a course of undeviating political rectitude, and by constantly directing the force of his great talents against every species of public delinquency or folly, he had incurred the hatred of all parties, and was at last obliged to seek shelter from their overpowering and resistless vengeance. A reward of fifty pounds was offered to any one who should discover his retreat; and although he immediately published an explanation of the alleged libel, yet, being apprehended, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to the pillory, fine, and imprisonment. Thus was Defoe ruined a second time; for, by this prosecution, he asserts that he lost above L.3500. Whilst in Newgate he amused some of his dreary hours by writing a Hymn to the Pillory, in which generous sentiments are intermingled with pointed satire, and the most cutting sarcasms against his persecutors. Defoe continued, in the solitude of his captivity, to pursue his literary labours, and to write on various subjects. He corrected for the press a collection of his writings, beginning with The True-born Englishman, and ending with The Shortest Way to Peace and Union ; and to this was prefixed a print of the author, with the too appropriate motto, Laudatur et alget. In his prison also he projected The Review, a periodical paper far superior to any thing of the kind that had yet appeared, and which formed the prototype of the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians, and contained many things which, in point of wit, elegance, and purity of diction, would have done honour to Steele or to Addison. In 1704 he published The Storm, being a collection of the most remarkable casualties which had occurred during the tempest of the 23d November 1703; a production which displays higher attainments in science and literature than Defoe had generally been supposed to possess, and which is altogether exceedingly interesting.

While the author lay in Newgate, with his family ruined, and his hopes of deliverance crushed, a verbal message was brought him from Harley, Speaker of the House of Commons, and afterwards Earl of Oxford, desiring to know what could be done for him. In a factious age, a political intriguer like Harley doubtless foresaw that a man of Defoe’s genius and ability might be rendered serviceable[7:7:670] to the purposes of his ambition; whilst, on the other hand, the captive and ruined author was fain to intimate a wish for his release from durance. But this was by no means easily nor speedily accomplished. Harley became secretary of state in April 1704; yet four months elapsed before his representations to the queen and the treasurer Godolphin, in favour of Defoe, produced the desired effect. The queen, however, inquired into the circumstances of the distressed author; Godolphin sent a considerable sum to his wife, and a further sum to Defoe himself, to enable him to pay his fine and the expense of his discharge; and at length, in August 1704, he was released from Newgate. Defoe was exceedingly grateful for this deliverance, and ever afterwards, amidst all the vicissitudes of party and faction, remained sincerely attached to the queen and to Oxford. In 1705 lie published The Consolidator, or Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon, in which he makes the lunar politicians discuss the policy of Charles the Twelfth in pursuing the Saxons and the Poles: he also engaged in a controversy respecting a project then brought forward for employing the poor; and he published a second volume of the “Writings of the Author of the True-born Englishman," containing eighteen pieces in prose and verse. The persecutions of party rendered this a year of disquiet to Defoe. For, when his affairs had led him to the west of England, a project was formed to send him perforce as a soldier to the army; but being a freeholder of England, and a liveryman of London, he knew that these characters could not be violated with impunity; and when the western justices had resolved to apprehend him as a rogue and vagabond, they were deterred from doing so by the courage with which he asserted his rights, and denounced the meditated attackon his personal liberty. In his absence, too, real suits were commenced against him for fictitious debts; but he manfully advertised, that whilst genuine claims would be fairly satisfied, such as were groundless and vexatious would be resisted to the last. All these circumstances were published in his Review.

Defoe commenced the year 1706 with A Hymn to Peace, occasioned by the two houses of parliament uniting in an address to the queen; in May he published an “Essay at removing national prejudices against an Union with Scotland ;” and in July appeared his Jure Oivino, in which he attacked the doctrines of passive obedience and divine right, respecting which the world then seemed to be running stark mad, from the sheer fanaticism of servility. About this time, Godolphin, who knew how to discriminate men, resolved to employ Defoe on a mission of importance; and he was accordingly sent to Scotland, where his knowledge of commerce and revenue, his powers of insinuation, and the aptitude of his pen, which was that of a ready writer, proved of no small utility in promoting the great measure of the union. He arrived in Edinburgh in October 1706; be attended the committees of parliament, which he furnished with calculations on the subject of trade and taxes; he endeavoured to confute all that was published against the project of the union; and, though exposed to considerable danger, he escaped the vengeance of the populace, by whom he was continually watched, and sometimes insulted. In the midst of this agitating scene of business and tumult, he collected those documents, which he afterwards published for the instruction of posterity, respecting one of the most critical and important transactions in our whole national annals. Towards the close of this year he published Caledonia, a poem in honour of the Scottish nation; and soon after the act of union had been passed by the parliament of Scotland, he returned to London. How he was rewarded by the ministers for the important services he performed on this difficult occasion, has not been ascertained; but Mr Chalmers is of opinion that a pension was settled on him. He published his History of the Union in 1709; but it attracted little notice on its first appearance, though it' was republished in 1712, and again in 1786, when the project of a union with Ireland had become a topic of frequent discussion. In the year 1709 also appeared his History of Addresses, which, in 1711, was followed by a second volume, intended to abate the public ferment occasioned partly by the mad harangues of Sacheverel, and still more by the incredible folly which raised them into consequence by the parliamentary censure of their author.

Defoe now lived at Newington in comfortable circumstances, and employed himself chiefly in writing the Review, which, however, he at length relinquished in order to commence A General History of Trade; but this last production, although it exhibits all the ingenuity and strength of Defoe, extended only to two numbers; the author having been silenced by noise, obloquy, and insult, and forced to withdraw for a time to the borders of Lancashire. Here, observing the insolence of the Jacobite party, and incapable of remaining an indolent or passive spectator of events, he published several pamphlets, with ironical titles, which were much approved by the friends of the Protestant succession, and diligently dispersed throughout the country; yet, for writing these seasonable tracts, Defoe was arrested, held to bail in the enormous sum of L.800, and ultimately committed to Newgate in Easter term of 1713. But on making a proper submission, he was soon released, and the Earl of Oxford being still in power, interceded to procure him the queen’s pardon. Still darker days were, however, at hand. “No sooner was the queen dead,” says he, “but the rage of men increased upon me to that degree, that their threats were such as I am unable to express. Though I have written nothing since the queen’s death, yet a great many things are called by my name, and I bear the answerers’ insults. I have not seen or spoken with the Earl of Oxford since the king’s landing but once; yet he bears the reproach of my writing for him, and I the rage of men for doing it.” Stunned by factious clamour, and overborne though not silenced by unmerited obloquy, Defoe appears to have lost his original appointment on the final expulsion from power of the Earl of Oxford; and instead of meeting with any reward for his zealous services in support of the Protestant succession, he was, on the accession of George I. discountenanced even by those who had derived most benefit from his active exertions. This cruel treatment preyed on his mind, and brought him to the very verge of the grave. In 1715 he published an Appeal to Honour and Justice, containing an account of his conduct in public affairs; and in stating his motives for doing so, he affecting-ly says, “By the limits of mortality, and the infirmities of a life of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason to think that I am 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 make even accounts with the world before I go, that no slanders may lie against my heirs, to disturb them in the peaceable possession of their father’s inheritance, his character.” But before he had finished his “appeal” he was struck with apoplexy; and as he languished for more than six weeks in a state which held out but little prospect of recovery, his friends judged it proper not to delay the publication any longer. The treatment which he here complains of was undoubtedly the cause of this calamity: when he reflected on what he had done and suffered, his heart yielded to despair, and he sunk under the agony of his own desponding feelings. But this shock, severe as it proved, was not altogether without its benefit on the mind of Defoe, which it served to wean from politics, and to estrange from pursuits productive of nothing but disappointment and sorrow. The death of [7:7:671]Queen Anne, and the accession of George the First, convinced him of the vanity of party-writing; and from this period he appears to have studied, not how to mend the state, but how to improve the human heart and to regulate the practice of daily life. The only other production of Defoe’s which appeared in 1715, was The Family Instructor, in three parts; but Religious Courtship, which may be considered as the third volume, was not published until 1722.

We have now reached that period in the life of Defoe when he gave to the world the most remarkable, and perhaps the most lasting, of all his works; we mean the Life and surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which appeared in 1719. This extraordinary production met with the most favourable reception, and immediately became so popular, that Taylor, who purchased the manuscript after every other bookseller had refused it, is said to have gained a thousand pounds by the transaction. Seldom, indeed, has any immediate decision of the public respecting a literary performance been so fully ratified by posterity. At the distance of more than a century it has lost none of its original attraction. There is an air of reality and truth about it which belongs to no other work of fiction; we cannot indeed persuade ourselves that it is the creation of fancy, nor divest ourselves of the conviction, which every circumstance conspires to rivet on the mind, that we are perusing real adventures, and conversing with actual personages. Hence, whilst it carries captive the affections of childhood, it fixes the admiration of mature years; it is the book of all countries, and of every age and class; it delights the illiterate, and amuses as well as instructs persons of the most cultivated minds; and it speaks in the resistless language of nature to all hearts. It also contains, if not a treatise, at least a practical exemplification of a system of natural education, detailed with matchless truth and simplicity. “Puisqu’il nous faut absolument des livres,” says Rousseau in his Emile, “il en existe un qui fournit, à mon gré, le plus heureux traite d’éducation naturelle. Ce livre sera le premier que lira mon Emile; seul il composera long-temps toute sa bibliothèque, et il y tiendra toujours une place distinguée. Il sera le texte auquel tous nos entretiens sur les sciences naturelles ne serviront que de commentaires. Il servira d’épreuve durant nos progrès, à l’état de notre jugement; et tant que notre goût ne sera pas gâté, sa lecture nous plaira toujours. Quel est dont ce merveilleux livre? Est-ce Aristote? Est-ce Platon? Non, c’est Robinson Crusoe! In a word, had all Defoe’s other writings perished, the history of the author of this extraordinary production would still have been an object of literary curiosity. As to the story that the author had surreptitiously obtained and unceremoniously appropriated the papers of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish mariner, who, having suffered shipwreck, had lived for three or four years on the island of Juan Fernandez, it is scarcely deserving of serious notice, and is certainly as unworthy of reputation as the fable published by Mr James Stanier Clarke, that the first volume of Robinson Crusoe was written by the Earl of Oxford during his imprisonment in the Tower of London. Calumnies of this sort always track the footsteps of genius; and dull malignity, where it dares not condemn a work, often seeks to tarnish the fame of its author, by trying to fasten on him a charge of plagiarism. In the present case, all that is needful to repel the accusation has been amply supplied by Chalmers and Wilson, who have proved that Selkirk had in truth no papers to lose, and, moreover, shown that the internal evidence is decidedly in favour of the entire originality of Defoe’s inimitable fiction. How, indeed, could the rude journal of a rough sailor ever be supposed to have entered into the composition of such a finished mas terpiece? or even allowing that some hints had been derived from such a source, how can that be held as in any degree detracting from the genius of him who bade these dry bones live?

The success of Robinson Crusoe induced Defoe to publish, in 1720, The Life arid Piracies of Captain Singleton, a romance of the same description, but much inferior in all respects. In 1725, he brought out another fictitious narrative, entitled A New Voyage round the World by a Course never sailed before, a work which displays uncommon skill, and is highly interesting throughout. The History of Duncan Campbell, who was born deaf and dumb, and who taught others in the same unfortunate situation with himself, had appeared in 1720; and the Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, the morality of which cannot be commended, followed in 1721, when he also published the Life of Colonel Jaque, a work of a similar tendency. The Adventures of Roxana, which appeared in 1724, is likewise a production by which few will be made wiser, and none better. But the Memoirs of a Cavalier is a work of a very different description. This romance is so like truth that it has been mistaken for real history; and in fact it contains the best account extant of the civil wars, the narrative being drawn up with great simplicity, and enlivened with such just and natural reflections as at once to instruct the ignorant and entertain the instructed. The Family Instructor and Religious Courtship have been already noticed. But there are other performances of his possessing not inferior merit. In 1722, he published A Journal of the Plague, which, like his Memoirs of a Cavalier, is, in its frame-work, a pure fiction; The great Laic of Subordination appeared in 1724; the Political History of the Devil, and a System of Magic, which may be regarded as a supplement thereto, came out in 1726; and the Treatise on the Use and Abuse of the Marriage-bed, an excellent book, with an absurd title, was given to the world in 1727. He also published a Tour through England in 1724 and 1725, and one through Scotland in 1727. But the reader must not be misled by this title; for Defoe was one of those travellers who seldom quit the banks of the Thames. His last works were the Complete English Tradesman, published in 1727, and a Plan of the English Commerce, which appeared in 1728. In these treatises are many directions for the conduct of business, and many lessons of prudence and economy, which cannot be too frequently and earnestly inculcated.

But the glass of the indefatigable Defoe was now nearly run. After a laborious and checkered life, he died in April 1731, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, leaving a widow, who did not long survive him, and six sons and daughters. From several circumstances, it is more than probable that he died insolvent; and it is at least certain that he left no other inheritance to his children but his good name and high literary reputation. Defoe was a man of strong natural parts and of clear good sense; ingenious and lively in conversation; bold and enterprising in spirit, but scantily gifted with prudence; and withal possessed of good nature and of real honesty. As a writer he is distinguished for the fertility of his invention, the vivid distinctness of his conceptions, the transparent perspicuity of his style, the keenness of his wit, the justness and originality of his reflections, and the inimitable ease and simplicity which more or less characterize all his performances. But though his merits both as a man and as a writer were undoubtedly great, yet few men have experienced more unjust treatment at the hands of their contemporaries; and, notwithstanding the general integrity of his conduct, he was repeatedly represented as an unprincipled writer, who had no view but to his own advantage, and who would employ his pen for any party which [7:7:672]chose to hire his services. These charges, however, are refuted by the whole tenor of his life; and, indeed, they are in all probability the offspring of political rancour, which, in fact, no man ever did more to provoke. His readiness and power as a political writer, and, above all, the unsparing use which he made of ridicule and sarcasm, weapons which in his hands were peculiarly formidable, must have raised him up a host of enemies; and those who might feel themselves unequal to contend with the gifted writer, could at least find no difficulty in traducing the man. It has often struck us as surprising that his political works, on which he employed the very best of his days and his talents, should, comparatively speaking, be so little known. They constitute a mine which none can explore without being enriched with much that is precious in wisdom, impressive in eloquence, and striking in truth. But still his fame must principally rest upon those works which were entirely the offspring of imagination; and amongst these, and indeed all others of the kind, whether we regard the felicity of the design, the truth of the incidents, the variety and minute discrimination of the details, the natural justness of the sentiments, or the beautiful simplicity of the whole narrative, Robinson Crusoe must ever occupy the first place. Defoe, indeed, was an essentially original writer; and hence all his productions possess a raciness and a freshness which add incalculably to their attraction. But if he had any model at all, it was Bunyan, an author whom he must have read in his youth, and from whose works he probably imbibed that taste for simplicity in writing for which lie was throughout distinguished; and what renders this still more certain is, that in the second volume of Robinson Crusoe may be discovered obvious traces of the religious principles so beautifully unfolded in Bunyan’s admirable allegory. It must be admitted, however, that Defoe borrowed from the Pilgrims Progress little else than the love of natural simplicity; and that in ħll which essentially distinguishes him as a writer, he is remarkable for nothing so much as for inexhaustible fertility, allied to extraordinary freshness and originality. (a.)