Some peculiarities of that work follow as a natural corollary from those considerations. His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in The D rapier's Letters. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant of everything which told against his own view.
The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works. The morality of these is almost amusing in its downright positive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature. We have noticed, in remarking on The Use and Abuse, the worst instance of this blundering morality. Another, though very different instance, is his amusingly feminine indignation at the in creased wages and embellished dress of servants. He is, in fact, an incarnate instance of the tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the English, to drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste, and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of wrong, wicked, and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books. His periodical publications necessarily fall to some extent under the two foregoing heads, and only deserve separate notice because of the novelty and importance of their conception. His poetry, as poetry, is altogether beneath criticism. It is sometimes vigorous, but its vigour is merely that of prose. Of his novels we have already spoken in detail, excepting, as universally known, Robinson Crusoe.
Biographies.The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr Towers in the Biographia Britannica. Chalmers's Life, however (1786), added very considerable information. In 1838 Mr Walter Wilson wrote the book which is the standard on the subject. It is coloured by political prejudice; it does not display any critical power of a high order; and it is in many parts rather a history of England with some relation to Defoe than a life of the latter; but it is a model of painstaking care, and by its abundant citations from works both of Defoe and of others, which are practically inaccessible to the general reader, is invaluable. In 1859 appeared a life of Defoe by Air William Chadwick, an extraordinary rhapsody in a style which is half Cobbett and half Carlyle, but amusing, and by no means devoid of acuteness. In 1864 the discovery of the six letters stirred up Air William Lee to a new investigation, and the results of this were published (London, 1869) in three large volumes. The first of these (well illustrated) contains a new life and particulars of the author's discoveries. The second and third contain fugitive writings assigned by Mr Lee to Defoe for the first time. For most of these, however, we have no authority but Mr Lee's own impressions of style, &c.; and consequently, though qualified judges will in most cases agree that Defoe may have written them, it cannot positively be stated that he did. Mr Lee is equally chary of his reasons for attributing and denying many larger works to his author. His work, though full of research and in many ways useful in correcting and enlarging previous accounts of Defoe, has therefore to be used with some caution. Besides these publications devoted exclusively to Defoe, there are others of the essay kind which may be consulted respecting him. Such articles have been written by Scott, Hazlitt, Forster, a writer in The Retrospective Review, Mr Leslie Stephen, and others. No criticisms can, however, compare with three short pieces by Charles Lamb, two of which were written for Wilson's book, and the third for The Reflector.
BibliographyIt has been a frequent and well-grounded complaint that no complete edition of Defoe's works has ever been published. There is, as may be gathered from what has already been said, considerable uncertainty about many of them; and even if all contested works be excluded, the number is still enormous. Besides the list in Bohn's Lowndes, which is somewhat of an omnium gatherum, three lists drawn with more or less care have been compiled in the last half century. Wilson's contains 210 distinct works, three or four only of which are marked as doubtful; Hazlitt's enumerates 183 "genuine" and 52 "attributed" pieces, with notes on most of them; Mr Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. Of these large numbers many are in the original editions, extremely scarce, if not unique. Only one perfect copy of the Review is known to exist, and this, as well as the partially printed but never published Complete Gentleman, is in the hands of Mr James Crossley of Manchester, whose Defoe collection is nearest to completeness. Of reprints only one has ever aspired to be exhaustive. Thia was edited for the "Pulteney Library" by Hazlitt in 1840-43. It contains a good and full life mainly derived from Wilson, the whole of the novels (including the Serious Reflections now hardly ever published with Robinson Crusoe), Jure Divino, The Use and Abuse of Marriage, and many of the more important tracts and smaller works. The introductions are not written on a very uniform principle, but it is otherwise an excellent edition, and had it been continued (it stopped abruptly after the third volume had been completed and a few parts of a fourth issued) would have been satisfactory enough. It is still far the best, but is unfortunately scarce and expensive. There is also an edition, often called Scott's, but really edited by Sir G. 0. Lewis, in twenty volumes (London, 1841). This contains the Complete Tradesman, Religious Courtship, The Consolidator, and other works not comprised in Hazlitt's, but is correspondingly deficient. It also is somewhat expensive in a complete state, and the editions chosen for reprinting are not always the best. Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of the novels, in 12 vols. Bohn's libraries contain an edition which through want of support was stopped at the seventh volume. It includes the novels (except the third part of Robinson Crusoe), The History of the Devil, The Storm, and a few political pamphlets, also the undoubtedly spurious Mother Ross. In 1870 Mr Nimmo of Edinburgh published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains Chalmers's Life, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee, Robinson Crusoe, pts. i. and ii., Colonel Jack, The Cavalier, Duncan Campbell, The Plague, Everybody's Business, Mrs Veal, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Giving Alms no Charity, The True-born Englishman, Hymn to the Pillory, and very copious extracts from The Complete English Tradesman. Had the space occupied by Robinson Crusoe, which in one form or another every one possesses, been devoted to a further selection from the minor works, this book would have gone far to supply a very fair idea of Defoe to all but professed students of literature. If we turn to separate works, the bibliography of Defoe is practically confined (except as far as original editions are concerned) to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Veal has been to some extent popularized by the work which it helped to sell; Religious Courtship and The Family Instructor had a vogue among the middle class until well into this century, and The History of the Union was republished in 1786. But the reprints and editions of Crusoe have been innumerable; it has been often translated; and the eulogy pronounced on it by Rousseau gave it special currency in France, where imitations (or rather adaptations) have also been common.
(g. sa.)
