military colleges, high schools for women, &c. It displays Defoe s lively and lucid style in full vigour, and abounds with ingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the unsystematic character of his mind. In the same year Defoe wrote the first of a long series of pamphlets on the then burning question of occasional conformity. In this, for the first time, he showed the unlucky independence which, in so many other instances, united all parties against him. On the one hand he pointed out to the dissenters the scandalous inconsistency of their playing fast and loose with sacred things, and on the other he denounced the impropriety of requiring tests at all. In direct support of the Government he published, towards the close of the reign, a Defence of Standing Armies, against Trenchard, and a set of pamphlets on the Partition Treaty Thus in political matters he had the same fate as in ecclesiastical ; for the Whigs were no more prepared than the Tories to support William through thick and thin, He also dealt with the questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption. But his most remarkable publication at this time the publication, indeed, as the author of which he became famous was The True-Born Englishman, a satire in rough but extremely vigorous verse on the national objection to William as a foreigner, and on the claim of purity of blood for a nation which Defoe chooses to represent as crossed and clashed with all the strains and races in Europe. He also took a prominent part in the proceedings which followed the famous Kentish petition, and was the author, and some say the presenter, of the equally famous Legion Memorial, which asserted in the strongest terms the supremacy of the electors over the elected, and of which even an irate House of Commons did not dare to take any great notice. The theory of the in defeasible supremacy of the freeholders of England, whose delegates merely (according to this theory) the Commons were, was one of Defoe s favourite political tenets, and he returned to it in a most powerfully written tract entitled The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted. At the same time he was occupied in a controversy on the conformity question with the well-known John How (usually spelt Howe at present), and wrote several minor political tracts. The death of William was a great misfortune to Defoe, and he soon felt the power of his adversaries. After publishing The Mock Mourners, intended to satirize and rebuke the outbreak of Jacobite joy at the king s death, he turned his attention once more to ecclesiastical subjects, and, in an evil hour for himself, wrote the famous Shortest Way with the Dissenters. The traditional criticism of this remarkable pamphlet is a most curious example of the way in which thoroughly inappropriate descriptions of books pass from mouth to mouth. Every commentator (with the single exception of Mr Chadwick) has dilated upon its " exquisite irony." Now, the fact of the matter is, that in The Shortest Way there is no irony at all, and, as Defoe s adversaries acutely remarked, irony would never have been pleaded had not the author got into trouble, when of course it suited him faire fleclie de tout bois. The pamphlet is simply an exposition in the plainest and most forcible terms of the extreme "high-flying" position, and every line of it might have been endorsed, and was endorsed, by consistent high-churchmen. The author s object clearly was by this naked presentation to awaken the dissenters to a sense of their danger, and to startle moderate churchmen by showing them to what end their favourite doctrines necessarily led. For neither of these purposes was irony necessary, and irony, we repeat, there is none. If any lingering doubt from the consensus of authority on the other side remain, let the student read The Shortest Way and then turn to Swift s Modest Proposal or his Reasons against Abolishing the Church of England. He will soon see the difference. Ironical or not, however, it was unlikely that the high-churchmen and their leader Nottingham (the Don Dismal of Swift) would let such a performance pass unnoticed. The author was soon discovered ; and, as he absconded, an advertisement was issued offering a reward for his apprehension, and giving us the only personal description we possess of him, as " a middle-sized 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, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." In this conjuncture Defoe had really no friends, for the dissenters were as much alarmed at his book as the high-flyers were irritated. He surrendered, and his defence appears to have been injudiciously con ducted ; at any rate he was fined 200 marks, and condemned to be pilloried three times, to be imprisoned indefinitely, and to find sureties for his good behaviour during seven years. His sojourn in the pillory, however, was rather a triumph than a punishment, for the populace took his side ; and his Hymn to the Pillory, which he soon after published, is one of the best of his poetical works. Unluckily for him his condemnation had the indirect effect of destroying his busi ness. He remained in prison until August 1704, and then owed his release to the intercession of Harley, who repre sented his case to the queen, and obtained for him not only liberty but pecuniary relief and employment, which, of one kind or another, lasted until the termination of Anne s reign. Defoe was uniformly grateful to the minister, and his language respecting him is in curious variance with that generally used. There can be little doubt that, independ ently of gratitude, Harley s moderation in a time of the extremest party-insanity was no little recommendation to Defoe. During his imprisonment the latter was by no means idle. A spurious edition of his works having been issued, he himself produced a collection of twenty-two treatises, to which some time afterwards he added a second group of eighteen more. He also wrote in prison many short pamphlets, chiefly controversial, published a curious work on the famous storm of November 26, 1703, and started perhaps the most remarkable of all his projects, The Review. This was a paper which was issued during the greater part of its life three times a week. It was entirely written by Defoe, and extends to eight complete volumes and some few score numbers of a second issue. He did not confine himself to news, but threw his writing into the form of something very like finished essays on questions of policy, trade, and domestic concerns ; while he also introduced a so-called " Scandal Club," in which minor questions of manners and morals were treated in a way which undoubt edly suggestsd the Tatlers and Spectators which followed. It is probable that if the five points of bulk, rapidity of production, variety of matter, originality of design, and excellence of style are taken together, hardly any author can show a work of equal magnitude. It is unlucky that only one complete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in a private library. After his release he went to Bury St Edmunds for change of air, though he did not in terrupt either his Eevieio or his occasional pamphlets. One of these, Giving Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation, is for the time an extraordinarily far-sighted performance. It denounces on the one hand indiscriminate alms-giving, and on the other the folly of national work shops, the institution of which on a parochial system had been proposed by Sir Humphrey Mackworth.
In 1705 appeared The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Govern- Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon, a political ment CT1 satire which is supposed to have given some hints for P-y m Gidliver ; and at the end of the year Defoe performed a
secret mission (the first of several of the kind) for Harley.
