He knows little of De Foe who would ed. It had lately received potent assistance suspect him of a class-prejudice of his own from the unequalled wit of Congreve, whose in this. When, in the present year, the Maskwell and Lady Touchwood were now Presbyterian Lord Mayor, going in his robes affecting even the Lobbies with a touch of and chain in the morning to the church, and shame. Nevertheless, while we admit his in the afternoon to the Pinners' Hall meet- excellent intention, we cannot think De ing-house, raised a vehement and bitter dis- Foe made any figure in the argument. He cussion on the question of Occasional Con- many times returned to it, but never with formity; ardent Dissenter though he was, much effect. His objections would as freely De Foe did not hesitate to take part with have applied to the best-conducted theatre. the Church. He could not see, he said, Nor, in the special immoralities assigned, why Sir Humphrey Edwin should wish, had he hit the point exactly. To bring like a boy upon a holiday, to display his fine women into the performance of characters, clothes at either church or meeting-house. was a decided improvement. The morals In a religious view, he thought that if it of Charles II.'s age, though openly and was a point of conscience with a Dissenter generally worse, were, in special respects, not to conform to the Established Church; not so bad as those of James I.; neither he could not possibly receive a dispensation was the stage of even Wycherley and Ethto do so from the mere fact of his holding a erege so deeply immoral as that of Beaucivic office; in a political view, he thought mont and Fletcher. what was called Occasional Conformity, a surrender of the dignity and independence of Dissent, likely to lead to larger and dangerous concessions; and he maintained these opinions with great force of argument. He was in the right; and the party never forgave him. On no question, no matter how deeply affecting their common interests, could they afterwards bring themselves to act cordially with De Foe. Ministers took his moral treatises into their pulpits with them, but they were careful to suppress his

name.

We do not know if the Muses resented, in De Foe's case, this unfriendliness to one of their favorite haunts; but, when he attempted to woo them on his account, they answered coyly to his call. A collection of Fugitive Verses, published by Dunton, appeared at this time-made,' says the eccentric bookseller, by the chief wits of the age; namely, Mr. Motteux, Mr. De Foe, Mr. Richardson, and, in particular, Mr. Tate, now poet-laureat.' (Swift was among them too, but not important enough to be named.) And we must confess, of De Foe's contribution to the memory of his old Presbyterian pastor, that it seems to us rightly named fugitive; whether we apply the word actively to the poetry that flies away, or passively to that which makes the reader do the same. He lost a part of his strength, his facility, and his fancy, when he wrote in verse. Yet, even in verse, he made a lucky, nervous hit, now and then; and the best of his efforts was the Trueborn Englishman.

Another point of attack in his publications on the manners of his time, had reference to the Stage. With whatever views we approach the consideration of this subject, there can be but one opinion of the existing condition of the theatres. They were grossly profligate. Since that year after the Restoration in which Mr. Evelyn saw the performance of Hamlet, and had reason to note that the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad,' vice had made its It appeared in 1701. It was directed home in the theatres. Nor had any check against the bitter attacks from which Wilbeen at this time given to it. The severe liam at that time suffered, on the ground of tone of William's Court had made the con- his birth and the friends he had ennobled. trast but more extreme. Collier had not They were no true-born Englishmen that yet published his Short View. Burnet had was the cant in vogue. Mr. Tutchin's not yet written that volume of his Own poem of The Foreigners, was on every Time wherein he described, with perhaps body's tongue. The feeling had vented more sense than logic, the stage as the cor- itself, in the previous year, on that question rupter of the town, and the bad people of of the dismissal of the Dutch Guards, which the town as the corrupters of the stage; and the King took so sorely to heart. The same proclaimed it a shame to our nation and feeling had forced the Tories into power; religion to see the stage so reformed in it had swelled their Tory majority with France, and so polluted still in England.' malcontent Whigs; and it now threatened Neither was the evil merely left unrestrain- the fair and just rewards which William had

offered to his deserving generals. It is re- treaties, he was throughout consulted; and corded of him at this juncture, that even there was one grand theme, nobly charac

his great, silent heart gave way at last. My guards have done for them what they could not do for themselves, and they send them from me.' He paced his cabinet in uncontrollable emotion. He would have called out his assailants, he said, if he had been a private man. If he had not had the obligation of other than private duties, he would have resigned the crown.

teristic of the minds of both, often recurred to in these interviews. It was the Union of Scotland with England. 'It shall be done,' said William; but not yet' Other things more nearly and closely pressed him then.

The rapid growth and march of the Revolution might be aptly measured by the incidents and disputes of the last year of his Then it was that De Foe stepped in with reign. They turned solely on the power his timely service. The True-born English- claimed by the Lower House of legislature. man was a doggerel, but a fine one. It was In several ably-written pamphlets, and parfull of earnest weighty sense; of excellent ticularly in a Letter distinguished for its history; of the nicest knowledge of our plain and nervous diction, (and in which English character; and it thrust right home the grounds of popular representation were at the point in issue. It proved the unde- so happily condensed, and clearly stated, niable truth, that so far from being of pure that it has been a text-book of political disbirth and blood, Englishmen are the most mixed race on the earth; and owe their distinction over other feebler races, to that very circumstance. While it exposed a vulgar prejudice, it flattered a reasonable vanity; and few things of a merely temporary interest have ever equalled its success. Its first two lines

putants from the expulsion of Walpole and of Wilkes, to the days of the Reform Bill,) De Foe impugned the full extent of the claim on the ground of a non-representation of the people; but a power had lately arisen within that House itself, indicative of the changed relations of the government of England; wiser in effect than the wisdom of Somers, more cunning than the cunning of Sunderland. "The Tories,' said the latter to William,' are better speakers than the Whigs in the House of Commons.' It had arisen into a peculiar art— the art of oratory-there. Confessedly one of the most influential of its members was

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there'are all that can be said to have survived, of couplets that were then shouted from street to street. Beside the nine editions of which De Foe himself received the profits, upwards of twelve editions were pirated, he whom the last three Parliaments of Wilprinted, and sold, in defiance of his interdict. More than eighty thousand copies, we are told, were thus disposed of in the streets alone. But it is more important to have to remark, that it destroyed the cant against which it was directed. Whereas, before, you had it in the best writers, and in the most florid speeches, before the most august assemblies, upon the most solemn occasions,'-now, without a blush or a laugh, you never heard it named.

It may be doubted if this great King had ever so deeply felt a service. His opportunities were few. De Foe has recorded how he was sent for to the palace, on the special occasion of his book; with what kindness he was received; 'how employed; and how, above his capacity of deserving, rewarded.' His free access to William's cabinet never ceased from this time. There are statements throughout his writings of the many points of public policy he had been permitted frankly to discuss with the sovereign. On the agitated question of the partition

liam elected for their Speaker; yet no man would have listened patiently for five minutes to Robert Harley, any where but in the House of Commons. There, he was supreme. The country gentlemen voted for him, though they remembered that his family went to a meeting-house. The younger members put forth their most able and graceful representative to honor him, when Henry St. John seconded his third nomination. Posterity had cause to be grateful to him, when he joined Tory and Whig in a common demand for the best securities of the Act of Settlement. It was not genius, it was not eloquence, it was not statesmanship, that had given Harley this extraordinary power. It was House of Commons tact. A thing born of the Revolution; and destined, through whatever immediate effects, to strengthen and advance it in the end. For it rested on the largest principles, even while it appealed to the meanest passions.

There was something very striking in the

notion of De Foe, to bring it suddenly face to face with those higher principles. His Kentish Petition and Legion Memorial, are in all the histories which relate the Tory impeachment of William's four Whig lords. It was creating a people, it is true, before the people existed; but it was done with the characteristic reality of genius, and had a startling effect. As Harley passed into the house, a man, muffled in a cloak, placed the Memorial in his hands. The Speaker knew De Foe's person, and is said by the latter to have recognized him; but he kept his counsel.

No one has doubted, that in the excitement of the debates that followed, the Whigs and William recovered much lost ground; and the coffee houses began to talk mightily of a pamphlet, wherein Lord Portland figured as Phocion, Lord Oxford as Themistocles, Lord Halifax as Pericles, and Lord Somers as Aristides. The subsequent declaration of war against France, still further cheered and consoled the King. He sent for De Foe, received from him a scheme for opening new channels of trade,' in connexion with the war, and assigned to him the main office of its execution. He felt that he ruled at last, and was probably never so reconciled to his adopted kingdom. But, in the midst of grand designs and hopes, he fell from his horse in hunting, sickened for a month, and died.

There are many Mock Mourners at royal deaths, and, in a poem with that title, De Foe would have saved his hero's memory from them. He claimed for him nobler homage than such tributes raise, ' to damn their former follies by their praise.' He told what these mourners were, while yet their living King appeared, and what they knew they merited, they feared.' He described what has since become matter of history, that toast of William's horse' which had lightened their festivities since his accident:-"'twould lessen much our woe, had Sorrel stumbled thirteen years ago. And he closed with eloquent mention of the heroic death which Burnet's relation made so distasteful to High Church bigotry

6

Nothing could replace, nothing too gratefully remember, the past. 'I never forget his goodness to me,' he said, when his own life was wearing to its close. 'It was my honor and advantage to call him master as well as sovereign. I never patiently heard his memory slighted, nor ever can do so. Had he lived, he would never have suffered me to be treated as I have been in this world.' Ay! good, brave, Daniel De Foe! There is indeed but sorry treatment now in store for you.

Even if she

The accession of Anne was the signal for Tory rejoicings. She was thirty-seven, and her character was formed and known. It was a compound of weakness and of bigotry, but in some sort these availed to counteract each other. Devotion to a High Church principle was needful to her fearful conscience; but reliance on a woman-favorite was needful to her feeble mind. She found Marlborough and Godolphin in office, where they had been placed by their common kinsman, Sunderland; and she raised Godolphin to the post of Lord-Treasurer, and made Marlborough Captain-General. had not known them to be Tories, she would yet have done this; for she had been some years under the influence of Marlborough's strong-minded wife, and that influence availed to retain the same advisers when she found them converted Whigs. The spirit of The Great lives after them; and this weak, superstitious, good sort of woman,' little thought, when she uttered with so much enjoyment the slighting allusions to William in her first speech from the throne, that the legacy of foreign administration left by that greatminded sovereign, would speedily convert the Tories, then standing by her side, into undeniable earnest Whigs.

At first, all was well with the most highflying Churchmen. Jacobites came in with proffered oaths of allegiance; the landed interest' rubbed its hands with anticipation of discountenance to trade; tantivy parsons cried their loudest halloo against dissent; the martyrdom of Charles became the theme of pulpits, for comparison of the martyr to the Saviour; and, by way of significant 'No conscious guilt disturb'd his royal breast, hint of the royal sanctity, and the return of Calm as the regions of eternal rest.' the throne to a more lineal succession, the The sincerity of the grief of De Foe had gift of the royal touch was solemnly revived. in this work lifted his verse to a higher Nor did the feeling explode in mere talk, and firmer tone. It was a heartfelt grief. or pass without practical seconding. The There was no speeding the going, welcom- Ministry introduced a bill against Occaing the coming sovereign, for De Foe.sional Conformity, the drift of which was to

disqualify Dissenters from all civil employ-perfect gravity and earnestness, the exments; and though the ministers themselves treme of the ferocious intolerance to which were indifferent to it, court bigotry pressed their views and wishes tended. We can it so hard, that even the Queen's husband, himself an occasional conformist, was driven to vote for it. My heart is vid you,' he said to Lord Wharton, as he divided against him. It was very charmingly foreign to the purpose.

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conceive nothing so seasonable, or in the execution so inimitably real. We doubt if a finer specimen of serious irony exists in the language. In the only effective mode, it stole a march on the blind bigotry of the one party, and on the torpid dullness of the The bill, passed by the Tory House of other. To have spoken to either in a graver Commons, (where Harley had again been tone, would have called forth a laugh or a chosen Speaker,) was defeated by the Whig stare. Only discovery could effect prevenlords, to the ministers' great comfort. But tion. A mine must be sprung, to show the the common people, having begun their rev- combustibles in use, and the ruin and disel of High Church excitement, were not to be aster they were fraught with. "Tis in balked so easily. They pulled down a few vain,' said the Shortest Way, 'to trifle in dissenting chapels; sang High Church this matter. We can never enjoy a settled, songs in the streets; insulted known Dis- uninterrupted union in this nation, till the senters as they passed; and otherwise or- spirit of Whiggism, faction, and schism, is thodoxly amused themselves. It seemed to melted down like the old money. Here is De Foe a little serious. On personal the opportunity to secure the Church, and grounds he did not care for the bill, its ac- to destroy her enemies. I do not prescribe ceptance, or its rejection; but its political fire and faggot, but Delenda est Carthago. tendency was unsafe; it was designed as They are to be rooted out of this nation, if an act of oppression; the spirit aroused was ever we will live in peace or serve God. dangerous; and the attitude taken by Dis- The light foolish handling of them by fines, senters wanted both dignity and courage. is their glory and advantage. If the galNor let it be supposed, while he stili looked lows instead of the compter, and the galleys doubtingly on, that he had any personal rea- instead of the fines, were the reward of son which would not strongly have with- going to a conventicle, there would not be held him from the fray. He had now six so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrchildren; his affairs were again thriving; dom is over. They that will go to church the works at Tilbury had reasonably pros- to be chosen sheriffs and mayors, would go pered; and passing judgment, by the world's to forty churches rather than be hanged." most favored tests, on the house to which he had lately removed at Hackney, on the style in which he lived there, and on the company he kept, it must be said that Daniel De Foe was at this time most respectable' and well to do. He kept his coach, and visited county members. But as the popular rage continued, he waived prudential considerations. There was a foulmouthed Oxford preacher named Sacheverell, who had lately announced from his pulpit to that intelligent University, that he could not be a true son of the Church who did not lift up her banner against the Dissenters; who did not hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance;' and this sermon was selling for twopence in the streets. It determined him, he tells us, to delay no longer. He would make an effort to stay the plague. And he wrote and published his Shortest Way with the Dissenterswithout his name, of course.

If a justification of this masterly pamphlet were needed, would it not be strikingly visible in the existence of a state of society wherein such arguments as these could be taken to have grave intention? Gravely, they were so taken. Sluggish, timid, cowardly Dissenters were struck with fear; rabid High Churchmen shouted approval. A Cambridge Fellow wrote to thank his bookseller for having sent him so excellent a treatise, it being, next to the Holy Bible and the Sacred Comments, the most valuable he had ever seen. But then came a whisper of its true intention, and the note suddenly changed. There arose a clamor for discovery and punishment of the writer, unequalled in its vehemence and intensity. To the lasting disgrace of the Dissenters, they joined the cry. They took revenge for their own dulness. That the writer was De Foe was now generally known; and they owed his wit no favor. It had troubled Its drift was to personate the opinions them too often before their time. They preand style of the most furious of the high-ferred to wait till Sacheverell's bloody flag flying Church party, and to set forth, with was hoisted in reality: such a pamphlet

meanwhile, was a scurrilous irreverence to ly produce extreme licentiousness in pracreligion and authority, and they would have tice. We do not know who defended De none of it. A worthy Colonel of the party Foe; but he seems to have been ill-defended. said, 'he'd undertake to be hangman, rather He was advised to admit the libel, on a than the author should want a pass out of loose assurance in the court that a high inthe world; and a self-denying chairman of fluence was not indisposed to protect him. one of the foremost Dissenters' clubs pro- He was declared guilty, and sentenced to fessed such zeal, that if he could find the pay a fine of two hundred marks, to stand libeller he would deliver him up without the three times in the pillory, to be imprisoned reward. For government had now offered during the Queen's pleasure, and to find a reward of fifty pounds for the apprehension sureties for good behaviour for seven years. of Daniel De Foe. There is no doubt that Alas for the fate of Wit in this world! De the moderate chiefs were disinclined to this; Foe was taken back to Newgate and told to but they were weak at that time. Lord prepare for the pillory. The high influence Nottingham had not yet been displaced; whispered of made no sign now. But there was a Tory House of Commons, which some years after, when it was her interest not even Harley's tact could always man- to say it, the Queen condescended to say, age, and by which the libel had been voted that she left all that matter to a certain to the hangman; nor had Godolphin's re- person, and did not think he would have luctance availed against the wish of the used Mr. De Foe in such a manner.' Court, that office should be given to the But what was the manner to Mr. De Foe? member most eminent for opposition to the He went to the pillory, as in those after late King while he lived, and for insults to years he went to the palace, with the same his memory. De Foe had little chance; quiet temper. In truth, writers and thinkand Nottingham, a sincere bigot, took the ers lived nearer to it then than we can well task of hunting him down. The proclama- fancy possible now. It had played no ignotion in the London Gazette described him, minious part in the grand age passed away. 'a middle-sized, spare man, about forty Noble hearts had been tried and tempered years old, of a brown complexion, and dark-in it. Daily had been elevated in it, menbrown colored hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth; owner of the brick and pan-tile works near Tilbury Fort, in Essex.' But it was not immediately successful. Warrants then threw into custody the printer and the bookseller; and De Foe concealed himself no longer. He came forth, as he says, to brave the storm. He stood in the Old Bailey dock in 1703. Harcourt, who before had carried up the impeachment of Somers, and was afterwards counsel for Sacheverell, prosecuted. 'A man without shame,' says Speaker Onslow, but very able.' It was his On the 29th of July, 1703, there appeardoctrine, that he ought to prosecute every ed, in twenty-four quarto pages, A Hymn man who should assert any power in the to the Pillory, by Daniel De Foe; and on people to call their governors to account; that day, we are informed by the London taking this to be a right corrollary from Gazette, Daniel De Foe stood in the pillory the undoubtedly existing law of libel, that before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill; on no man might publish a writing reflecting the day following, near the conduit in on the government, or even upon the capa- Cheapside; and on the 31st, at Templecity and fitness of any one employed in it. | Bar. A large crowd had assembled to proThe Revolution had not altered this law; vide themselves sport; but the pillory they and it was in effect the direct source of the most enjoyed was not of the government's profligate and most prolific personal libels erecting. Unexpectedly they saw the Law of the age we are entering on. For Har- pilloried, and the Ministers of State; the court's policy was found impracticable, and dulness which could not comprehend, and retaliation was substituted for it;-as the the malice which on that account would denial of all liberty in theory will common-punish a popular champion. They veered

tal independence, manly self-reliance, robust athletic endurance. All from Within that has undying worth, it had in those times, but the more plainly exposed Without. The only Archbishop that De Foe ever truly reverenced, was the son of a man, who, in it, had been tortured and mutilated; and the saintly character of that Prelate was even less saintly than his father's. A Presbyterian's first thought would be of these things; and De Foe's preparation for the pillory was to fortify his honest dignity by remembrance of them in the most nervous and pointed verses he had ever written.