Part 11
In 1685 he opened a shop as a hosier in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. There is nothing memorable to record of him while he was in this line of trade, saving that in 1688, at the Revolution, he made haste to accentuate his adhesion to William III. by joining a company of volunteer horse, a royal regiment made up of the principal citizens of London: these men, gallantly mounted and richly accoutred, with Defoe in their midst and the Earl of Monmouth at their head, guarded the king and queen to a banquet at Whitehall. His prosperity as a hosier ended in 1692, in which year he fled to Bristol, a bankrupt, with debts, according to his own showing, amounting to seventeen thousand pounds. He did not, however, long lie in hiding. In recognition of his services as a pamphleteer, the post of accountant to the Commissioners of the Glass Duty was given to him. We then find him prospering again. He started a brick-making manufactory at Tilbury, and set up a coach and a pleasure-boat. His pen, moreover, was ceaselessly employed; the titles of the productions of a single month would more than fill the slender space allotted me. He fought for Non-conformity till 1698, then broke with the Dissenters because of their practice of occasional conformity, which, he pretends, disgusted him. His argument was, let a man be wholly a Dissenter, or wholly a Churchman. But don't let him go to chapel one Sunday and church the next. He can never be taken seriously, however, in these short flights any more than in his long novels. There is no consistency in his writings, because there is no conscience in his opinions. In his "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," he faces about, and the man who was at war with Howe, the most eloquent of Non-conformist divines, second only to Jeremy Taylor in richness of thought and splendor of diction, is, on the merits of that piece of irony, accepted by posterity as the foremost champion of Dissent.
Defoe's loyalty to King William, however, must pass unquestioned. "The True Born Englishman" procured him the notice of the king, whose confidence he claims to have been honored with. His real character as a journalist and publicist grows quickly visible after the death of William III. His genius as a "trimmer" makes sheer irony of his most appealing and eloquent pieces. Swift says of himself that he wrote that reputation might stand him in the room of a title and coach and six; Defoe flourished his pen as a tradesman, for money. Swift claims to have been the greatest master of irony of his day, nay, to have invented that form of writing. But Defoe surely is his equal, and in "The Shortest Way" out and away his superior. The writer's gravity completely deceived the world. When it was known who was the author, the Dissenters were hardly less indignant than the High Churchmen. The satiric recommendations were indeed in the highest degree alarming. The Tory party had approved with complacency while they thought the piece a serious proposal. When they found out Defoe wrote it, they hunted him down and forced him to surrender himself. A hue-and-cry advertisement in the papers while he was a fugitive, survives as one of the best pen-and-ink sketches in the language: "He is a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown coloured hair, but wears a wig: a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." "The Shortest Way" was ordered to be burnt, and Defoe sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks to Queen Anne, to stand three times in the pillory, to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure, and to find sureties for his good behavior for seven years.
The genius of Eyre Crowe has given a wonderful life and color to this memorable incident. This dead thing seems charged with a very passion of vitality in the charming illustration that accompanies this sketch. It is impossible to recur to the degradation of one of Great Britain's finest geniuses, at the instance of men of no more importance to posterity than the worms which have eaten them up, without wrath and disgust. But he was popular, and the crowd used him handsomely. They pelted him with flowers and drank his health. Pope, in a famous line, speaks of the London Monument that, like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies, because of the inscription upon it that charged the Papists with causing the great fire. The malignant little hunchback, as malevolent as an ape for all his genius, could tell lies as great as any the chisel could grave, and unfortunately, infinitely more lasting. When he wrote: "Earless on high stands unabash'd Defoe," he knew he lied. Defoe did not lose his ears. He was pilloried simply, and for three days successively, stood in Cornhill, in Cheapside, and at Temple Bar, where our illustration exhibits him. He went to Newgate; the government dared not hinder him from writing, and it was while a prisoner that he heroically started "The Review," at first a weekly, and afterward a bi-weekly, issue. It was also in Newgate that he learnt much of those secrets of the prison-house which, translated into "Moll Flanders" and "Colonel Jack," are transcripts so exquisitely faithful that one knows not how to parallel them in art save by the paintings of Hogarth. He had a wife and six children at this time, and it is difficult to guess how he provided for them. His works at Tilbury were a failure: it may be supposed that his pen was his sole resource.
[Illustration: Defoe in the Pillory.]
The Earl of Nottingham resigned office in 1704, and was succeeded by Robert Harley, afterward Earl of Oxford. Harley, who had a high sense of Defoe's genius, sent a messenger to the author lying in jail to inquire what he could do for him. This was in May, yet it does not seem that he was released until August. The government forthwith employed him. His career from this period, whether as a journalist, or whether as a government hireling employed on secret services, is, to say the least, dishonest. In short he was a needy man, willing to write for anybody and say anything for money. In 1706 he was sent as a spy to Scotland. Nothing was then talked about but the union of the two kingdoms; on both sides of the Tweed the masses of the people were crazy with the excitement of the subject. Of what value Defoe's services were, it is hard now to imagine. Professor Minto supposes that his business "was to ascertain and report the opinions of influential persons, and keep the government informed as far as he could of the general state of feeling." When Harley fell, Godolphin continued to employ Defoe as a government secret emissary and writer. He was again sent to Scotland in 1708, in relation to the suspected invasion of that country by the French; but he found time to keep his "Review" going. We see him "trimming" afresh, with masterly disregard to every appeal save that of his purse, when Godolphin surrendered the treasurer's staff, and Harley once more became prime minister. "My duty," says he, with that wonderful countenance of gravity, and that fine air of outraged honor, which express him in his political writings certainly, as the very prince of humbugs, "was to go along with every ministry, so far as they did not break in upon the constitution and the laws and liberty of my country." At what price did he value the constitution? And how much, leaning across the counter of his literary calling would he ask for the laws and liberties of his country? Both Godolphin and Harley, no doubt, exactly knew.
But enough in this brief sketch has been said of him as politician, journalist, controversialist, spy. He heaped pamphlet upon pamphlet, volume upon volume, and in July, 1715, was found guilty of what was called a scandalous libel against Lord Anglesea. Sentence was deferred, but he was never brought up for judgment. His representations of ardent devotion to the Whig interest seem to have procured his absolution. Be this as it may, it is extraordinary to reflect that he should live to be fifty-eight years of age before he could find it in him to produce that masterpiece of romance, "Robinson Crusoe," the delight, I may truly call it, of all reading nations. The fiction is based upon the experiences of Alexander Selkirk. He had read Steele's story of that man lonely in the South Sea island, and Woodes Roger's account of the discovery of him. Sir Walter Scott has pointed out that Defoe was known to the great circumnavigator Dampier, and he assumes with good reason that he drew many hints from the conversation and recollections of that fine seaman. He was a prosperous man when he wrote "Robinson Crusoe," had built a house at Stoke Newington, and drove in his own coach. This had come about through his successful connection with certain journals; he was also rapidly producing, and nearly all that he wrote sold handsomely. Almost as many fine things have been said about "Robinson Crusoe" as about Niagara Falls, or sunrise and sunset. The world has decided to consider it Defoe's masterpiece, and to neglect all else that he wrote for it. Nor can the world be blamed. The deliberate and dangerous lewdness of Defoe is one of the most deplorable things in letters. We shelve much of Smollett, much of Fielding, without great regret, but it is lamentable that works of powers and perceptions so supreme as "Moll Flanders" and "Colonel Jack" should be found unfit and unreadable, infinitely more perilous to the young than the coarser, but honester, freedoms of Smollett and Fielding, because of Defoe's base tradesman-like trick of representing in colors as tempting as possible the sins which with formal, pulpitic, hypocritical gravity he entreats you to avoid. "Robinson Crusoe" is wholesome: one can see one's daughter with that book in her hand and feel easy. Yet it has not the strength nor the art of "Roxana," "Colonel Jack," and "Moll Flanders." In fact, it may be said that when Defoe set about to write this book he had no thoughts whatever of art in his head. He was to relate what happened to a castaway, and the skill shown is that of a sailor who writes up his log-book. No one could have been more astonished by the success of the book than Defoe himself. He afterward went to work to communicate a needless significance to the narrative, whose charm is its eternal grace of freshness and simplicity, by writing the "Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe," in which he would have us believe that Crusoe's story is an allegory based on Defoe's own life. This is accepted by some even in our own time. It is easy to understand that Defoe should lose no opportunity to recommend his works by every species of advertisement; no man could lie in a literary sense with more self-complacency, and a clearer conception of the business value of the falsehood; but it is wonderful to find people choosing to travesty the palpably obvious, sooner than accept the plain truth as it lies naked on the face of the printed page.
But if Defoe had never written a line of "Robinson Crusoe," we should know him to be a great genius and a fine artist by the opening pages of "Colonel Jack." All about the lives of the three boys, their sleeping in glass houses, their picking of pockets, the loss of the money in the hollow tree, and then the recovery of it, is in its kind matchless in fiction. Wonderfully fine too are many of the touches in "Moll Flanders": the whole story of her descent from the honesty of a simple serving-maid to the horrors of Newgate and transportation, is so masterful, the art is so consummate, the impersonation by Defoe of the character of a subtle trollop full of roguish moralizings and thin sentimentalities, is so extraordinary, that one can never cease to deplore that, not the subject of the book, but Defoe's indecent handling of it, should compel the world virtually to taboo it. "Roxana" is also on the condemned list for the same reason. But literature could sooner spare this book than the other two. It was completed by another hand, and Defoe's own share might have very well been the work of the person who wrote the sequel.
Another masterpiece is his "History of the Plague." This shows his imagination at its highest, and it is not impossible but that its composition may have cost him more trouble than "Robinson Crusoe" itself. There is no space left to deal with his other works. Reference can only be made to "Captain Singleton," "A System of Magic," "A History of the Devil," "The Family Instructor," "The Plan of English Commerce," "A New Voyage Round the World," etc. In naming these I abbreviate the titles. Most of Defoe's title-pages epitomize his works, and merely as a list would fill a stout volume.
It has been suggested that Defoe in his old age became insane, and hid himself from his family for no discoverable reasons. It is certain that in September, 1729, he mysteriously removed from his house, and went into hiding in the neighborhood of Greenwich. From his secret retreat he addressed letters to his son-in-law Baker, complaining of his having been inhumanly ill-used by someone whom Mr. Lee, one of his biographers, conjectures was Mist, the proprietor of _Mist's Journal_, with whom Defoe had been associated in business. Other biographers seem to think that Defoe was merely hiding from the pursuit of his creditors, and dodging in his old dexterous manner the obligation of making over property to his daughter Hannah, who was married to Baker. For two years he was homeless and fugitive; it is not asserted, however, that he was in actual distress at the time of his death. He died in a lodging in a then respectable neighborhood called Ropemaker's Alley, Moor Fields, April 26, 1731, in his seventieth year.
[Signature of the author.]
DEAN SWIFT
By SAMUEL ARCHER
(1667-1745)
[Illustration: Dean Swift.]
Jonathan Swift's father died before the boy was born, and the care of his education was kindly undertaken by Mr. Godwin Swift, his uncle, a very eminent attorney at Dublin, who likewise took his mother and his sister under his protection, and thus became a guardian to the family. When his nephew was six years of age he sent him to school at Kilkenny, and about eight years afterward he entered him a student of Trinity College in Dublin, where Swift lived in perfect regularity and in an entire obedience to the statutes; but the moroseness of his temper often rendered him unacceptable to his companions, so that he was little regarded and less beloved; nor were the academical exercises agreeable to his genius.
He held logic and metaphysics in the utmost contempt, and he scarcely attended at all to mathematics and natural philosophy, unless to turn them into ridicule. The studies which he chiefly followed were history and poetry, in which he made great progress; but to other branches of science he had given so very little application, that when he appeared as a candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts, after having studied four years, he was set aside on account of insufficiency, and at last obtained his admission _speciali gratiá_, a phrase which in that university carries with it the utmost marks of reproach. Swift was fired with indignation at the treatment he had received in Ireland, and therefore resolved to pursue his studies at Oxford. However, that he might be admitted _ad eundem_, he was obliged to carry with him a testimonial of his degree. The expression _speciali gratiá_ is so peculiar to the university of Dublin, that when Mr. Swift exhibited his testimonial at Oxford, the members of the English university concluded that the words _speciali gratiá_ must signify a degree conferred in reward of some extraordinary diligence and learning. He was immediately admitted _ad eundem_, and entered himself at Hart Hall, now Hartford College, where he constantly resided (some visits to his mother, at Leicester, and to Sir William Temple, at Moose Park, excepted) till he took his degree of master of arts, which was in the year 1691. And in order to recover his lost time he now studied eight hours daily for seven years.
Swift, as soon as he had quitted the University of Oxford, lived with Sir William Temple as his friend and domestic companion. When he had been about two years with Sir William, he contracted a very long and dangerous illness by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this surfeit he was often heard to ascribe that giddiness in his head which, with intermissions sometimes of longer and sometimes of shorter continuance, pursued him to the end of his life.
In compliance with the advice of physicians, when he was sufficiently recovered to travel, he went to Ireland, to try the effects of his native air; but finding the greatest benefit arose from the exercise of travelling, he followed his own inclination. He soon returned into England, and was again received in a most affectionate manner by Sir William Temple, who was then settled at Shene, where he was often visited by King William.
Here Swift had frequent conversations with that prince, in some of which the king offered to make him a captain of horse, which offer, in splenetic dispositions, he always seemed sorry to have refused; but at the time he had resolved within his own mind to take orders: and during his whole life his resolutions, when once fixed, were ever after immovable.
About this time he assisted Sir William Temple in revising his works. He likewise corrected and improved his own "Tale of a Tub," a sketch of which he had drawn up while he was a student at Trinity College, Dublin. Sir William's conversation naturally turned upon political subjects, and Swift improved the frequent opportunities he had of acquiring from this able statesman a competent knowledge of public affairs. But at length he suspected that Sir William neglected to provide for him, merely that he might keep him in his family; and he resented this so very warmly that a quarrel ensued, and they parted in the year 1694, and he went to Ireland, where he took orders.
Sir William, however, notwithstanding the differences between them, recommended him in the strongest terms to Lord Capel, then lord-deputy, who gave him a prebend, of which the income was about £100 a year. Swift soon grew weary of his preferment: it was not sufficiently considerable, and was at so great a distance from the metropolis that it absolutely deprived him of that conversation and society in which he delighted. He had been used to different scenes in England, and had naturally an aversion to solitude and retirement. He was glad, therefore, to resign his prebend in favor of a friend, and to return to Shene, to Sir William Temple, who was so much pleased with his return, which he considered as an act of kindness to him in the close of life, that a sincere reconciliation took place, and they lived together in perfect harmony till the death of Sir William. By his will he left him a considerable legacy in money, and the care, trust, and emolument of publishing his posthumous works. During Swift's residence at Shene he became intimately acquainted with Miss Johnson, who was the daughter of Sir William's steward, and who was afterward so distinguished and so much celebrated in Swift's works under the name of Stella.
Soon after the death of his patron, Swift came to London, and took the earliest opportunity of transmitting a memorial to King William, under the claim of a promise made by his majesty to Sir William Temple, "that Mr. Swift should have the first vacancy that happened among the prebends of Westminster or Canterbury." The memorial had no effect; and, indeed, Swift himself afterward declared that he believed the king never received it. After a long and fruitless attendance at White Hall, Mr. Swift reluctantly gave up all thoughts of a settlement in England. In the year 1701 he took his doctor's degree; and toward the latter end of that year King William died.
On the accession of Queen Anne, Dr. Swift came to England. It cannot be denied that the chief ministers of the queen, whether distinguished under the titles of Whigs or Tories, of high-church or of low-church, were from the beginning to the end of her reign encouragers of learning and patrons of learned men. The wits of that era were numerous and eminent. Amid the crowd, yet superior to the rest, appeared Dr. Swift. In a mixture of those two jarring parties called Whig and Tory, consisted the first ministry of Queen Anne; but the greater share of the administration was committed to the Whigs, who soon engrossed the whole. The queen, whose heart was naturally inclined toward the Tories, remained an unwilling prisoner several years to the Whigs, till Mr. Harley at length took her majesty out of their hands, and during the remainder of her life surrounded her with a set of Tories, under the conduct of the Duke of Ormond and himself.
Dr. Swift was known to the great men of each denomination. It is certain that he was bred up and educated with Whigs, at least with such as may be found ranged under the title. His motives for quitting Whigism for Toryism appear throughout his works. He had commenced as a political author in 1701, when he published "A Discourse on the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, with the Consequences they had upon both States." This was written in defence of King William and his ministers against the violent proceedings in the House of Commons. But from this time to the year 1708, Lord Orrery informs us, he did not write any political pamphlet. From this year to 1710 he worked hard to undermine the Whigs and to open a way for the Tories to come into power. His intimacy with Harley commenced, as may be deduced from his works, in October, 1710. It seems undeniable that a settlement in England was the constant object of Dr. Swift's ambition; so that his promotion to a deanery in Ireland was rather a disappointment than a reward, as appears by many expressions in his letters to Mr. Gay and Mr. Pope.
The business which first introduced him to Harley was a commission sent to him by the primate of Ireland to solicit the queen to release the clergy of that kingdom from the twentieth-penny and first-fruits. As soon as he received the primate's instructions, he resolved to wait on Harley; but before the first interview he took care to get himself represented as a person who had been ill used by the last ministry, because he would not go such lengths as they would have had him. The new minister received him with open arms, soon after accomplished his business, bade him come often to see him privately, and told him that he must bring him to the knowledge of Mr. St. John (Lord Bolingbroke). Swift presently became acquainted with the rest of the ministry, who appear to have courted and caressed him with uncommon assiduity.