DEFOE
finements of personal affection; one tear is dropped, one moment of despair allowed, and then “on with the story”. She has a spirit that loves to breast the storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. When she discovers that the man she has married in Virginia is her own brother she is violently disgusted; she insists upon leaving him; but as soon as she sets foot in Bristol, “I took the diversion of going to Bath, for as I was still far from being old so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme”. Heartless she is not, nor can any one charge her with levity; but life delights her, and a heroine who lives has us all in tow. Moreover, her ambition has that slight strain of imagination in it which puts it in the category of the noble passions. Shrewd and practical of necessity, she is yet haunted by a desire for romance and for the quality which to her perception makes a man a gentleman. “It was really a true gallant spirit he was of, and it was the more grievous to me. ’Tis something of relief even to be undone by a man of honour rather than by a scoundrel,” she writes when she had misled a highwayman as to the extent of her fortune. It is in keeping with this temper that she should be proud of her final partner because he refuses to work when they reach the plantations but prefers hunting, and that she should take pleasure in buying him wigs and silver-hilted swords “to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman”. Her very love of hot weather is in keeping, and the passion with which she kissed the ground that her son
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