While ou one of these in the west of England he was molested, though with no serious result, by the zealous country justices. In 1705 also appeared the famous Mrs Veal. As is well known, this admirable fiction is said to have been composed for a bookseller, to help off an unsaleable translation of Drelincourt on Death. Mr Lee, however, has thrown some doubts on this story. Defoe s next considerable work was Jure Divino, a poetical argument in some 10,000 terribly bad verses ; and soon afterwards (170G) he began to be largely employed in promoting the union with Scotland. Not only did he write pamphlets as usual on the project, and vigorously recommend it in The Review, but in October 1706 he was sent on a political mission to Scotland by Godolphin, to whom Harley had recommended him. He resided in Edinburgh for nearly sixteen months, and his services to the Government were rewarded by a regular salary. He seems to have devoted himself to commercial and literary as well as to political matters, and prepared at this time his elaborate History of the Union, which appeared in 1709. In this latter year occurred the famous Sacheverel sermon, and Defoe wrote several tracts on the occasion. In 1710 Harley returned to power, and Defoe was placed in a somewhat awkward position. To Harley himself he was bound by gratitude and by a substantial agreement in principle, but with the rest of the Tory ministry he had no sympathy. He seems, in fact, to have agreed with the foreign policy of the Tories and with the home policy of the Whigs, and naturally incurred the reproach of time-serving and the hearty abuse of both parties. At the end of 1710 he again visited Scotland. In the negotiations concerning the Peace of Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported the ministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, and this wrath was dis played in an attempted prosecution against some pamphlets of his on the all-important question of the succession, but the influence of Harley saved him. He continued, how ever, to take the side of the dissenters in the questions affecting religious liberty, which played such a prominent part towards the close of Anne s reign. He naturally shared Harley s downfall ; and, though the loss of his salary might seem a poor reward for his constant support of the Hanoverian claim, it was little more than his ambiguous, not to say trimming, position must have led him to expect. He was violently attacked on all sides, and at last published in 1715 an apologia entitled An Appeal to Honour and Justice, in which he defends his political conduct, and which furnishes us with the main authority for the details of his life. With this publication his political work was formerly supposed to have ended; but in 1864 six letters were discovered in the Record Office from. Defoe to a Government official, Mr Del af aye, which established the fact that in 1718 at least Defoe was doing not only political work, but political work of a somewhat equivocal kind that he was, in fact, sub-editing the Jacobite Mist s Journal, under a secret agreement with the Government that he should tone down the sentiments and omit objectionable items. He seems to have performed the same not very honourable office in the case of two other journals Dormer s Letter and the Merc-arms Politicus ; and, if we may trust Mr Lee, he wrote in these and other papers till nearly the end of his life.
However this may be, the interest of Defoe s life from this time forward is very far from political. He was now a man of fifty-five years of age ; he had, up to this period, written nothing but what may be called occasional litera ture, and, except the History of the Union and Jure Divino, nothing of any great length. In 1715 appeared the first volume of The Family Instructor, which was subsequently continued, and which was very popular during the last century. Three years afterwards came forth the first volume of Robinson Crusoe. The first edition of this was published on the 25th of April 1719. It ran through four editions in as many months, and then in August appeared the second part Twelve months afterwards the third part, or Serious Reflections, appeared. This last part is now hardly ever reprinted. Its connection, indeed, with the two former is little more than nominal, Crusoe being simply made the mouth-piece of Defoe s sentiments on various points of morals and religion. Meanwhile the first two parts were reprinted as a,feuilleton in Heathcotes In telligencer, perhaps the earliest instance of the appearance of such a work in such a form. Crusoe was immediately popular, and various wild stories were set afloat of its having been written by Lord Oxford in the Tower, and of its being simply a piratical utilization of Alexander Selkirk s papers. It is sufficient to say that all such stories are not only intrinsically of the wildest improbability, but also possess not a tittle of evidence in their favour. A curious idea, recently revived by the late Mr H. Kingsley, is that the adventures of Robinson are allegorical and relate to Defoe s own life. This idea was certainly entertained to some extent at the time, and derives some colour of justifi cation from words of Defoe s, but there seems to be no serious foundation for it. The book was almost immediately imitated ; of such imitations Philip Quarll is the only one now known even by name. Contemporaneously with the later parts of Crusoe appeared The Dumb Philosopher, or Dickory Cronke. It is a short and rather dull book, of something the same type as the Serious Reflections. In 1720cameforth The Life and Adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell. This, unlike the two former, was not entirely a work of imagination, inasmuch as its hero, the fortune-teller, was a real person. There are amusing passages in the story, but it is too desultory to rank with Defoe s best. In the same prolific year appeared two wholly or partially fictitious histories, each of which might have made a repu tation for any man. The first was the famous Memoirs of a Cavalier, which, as has been often repeated, Lord Chatham believed to be true history, and which Mr Lee believes to be the embodiment at least of authentic private memoirs. It is more probable, however, that Defoe, with his extensive acquaintance with recent English history, and his astonishing power of working up details, was fully equal to the task of its unassisted composition. As a model of historical work of a certain kind it is hardly surpassable, and many separate passages accounts of battles and skir mishes have never been equalled except by Mr Carlylu. Captain Singleton, the last work of the year, has been un justly depreciated by most of the commentators. The record of the journey across Africa, with its surprising anticipations of recent discoveries (anticipations which were commented on by Dr Birdwood in a paper read before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1863, and which are probably due to Defoe s intercourse with Portugal) yields in interest to no work of the kind known to us ; and the semi-piratical Quaker who accompanies Singleton in his buccaneering expeditions is a character thoroughly deserving of life. It may be mentioned that there is also a Quaker who plays a very creditable part in Roxana, and that Defoe seems to have been well affected to the Friends. In estimating this wonderful productiveness on the part of a man sixty years old, it should be remembered that it was a habit of Defoe s to keep his works in manuscript some times for long periods. In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the next twelvemonth three capital works appeared. These were The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, The Journal of the Plague Year, and The History of Colonel Jack. Moll Flanders (as a whole") may be placed next to Robinson Crusoe in order of merit, or bracketted for
