Part 2

He employed this involuntary leisure in correcting for the press a collection of his writings, which, with several things he had no hand in, had been already published by a piratical printer. He thought it a most unaccountable boldness in him to print that particular book called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, while he lay under the public resentment for the same fact. In this collection of 1703, there are one-and-twenty treatises in poetry and prose, beginning with The True-born Englishman, and ending with The Shortest Way to Peace and Union. To this volume there was prefixed the first print of De Foe; to which was afterwards added, the apt inscription: _Laudatur et alget_[35].

In the solitariness of a gaol, the energy of De Foe projected the Review. This is a periodical paper in 4to., which was first published on the 19th of February, 1703-4; and which was intended to treat of news, foreign and domestic; of politics, British and European; of trade, particular and universal. But our author foresaw, from the natural aversion of the age to any tedious affair, that however profitable, the world would never read, if it were not diverting. With this design, both instructive and amusing, he skilfully institutes a Scandal Club, which discusses questions in divinity, morals, war, trade, language, poetry, love, marriage, drunkenness, and gaming. Thus, it is easy to see, that the Review pointed the way to the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians, which may be allowed, however, to have treated those interesting topics with more delicacy of humour, more terseness of style, and greater depth of learning; yet has De Foe many passages, both of prose and poetry, which, for refinement of wit, neatness of expression, and efficacy of moral, would do honour to Steele or to Addison. Of all this was Johnson unconscious, when he speaks of the Tatlers and Spectators as the first English writers who had undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply[36].

In the midst of these labours our author published, in July, 1704, The Storm; or, a Collection of the most remarkable Casualties, which happened in the tempest, on the 23rd of November, 1703[37]. In explaining the natural causes of winds De Foe shows more science, and in delivering the opinions of the ancients that this island was more subject to storms than other parts of the world, he displays more literature than he has been generally supposed to possess. Our author is moreover entitled to yet higher praise. He seized that awful occasion to inculcate the fundamental truths of religion; the being of a God, the superintendency of Providence, the certainty of heaven and hell, the one to reward, the other to punish.

While, as he tells himself, he lay friendless in the prison of Newgate, his family ruined, and himself without hopes of deliverance, a message was brought him from a person of honour, whom till that time he had not the least knowledge of. This was no less a person than sir Robert Harley, the speaker of the house of commons. Harley approved probably of the principles and conduct of De Foe, and doubtless foresaw, that, during a factious age, such a genius could be converted to many uses. And he sent a verbal message to the prisoner, desiring to know what he could do for him. Our author readily wrote the story of the blind man in the gospel; concluding--_Lord, that I may receive my sight_.

When the high-fliers were driven from the station which enabled them to inflame rather than conciliate, Harley became secretary of state, in April, 1704. He had now frequent opportunities of representing the unmerited sufferings of De Foe to the queen and to the treasurer; yet our author continued four months longer in gaol. The queen, however, inquired into his circumstances; and lord Godolphin sent, as he thankfully acknowledges, a considerable sum to his wife, and to him money to pay his fine and the expense of his discharge. Here is the foundation, says he, on which he built his first sense of duty to the queen, and the indelible bond of gratitude to his first benefactor. "Let any one say, then," he asks, "what I could have done, less or more than I have done for such a queen and such a benefactor?" All this he manfully avowed to the world[38], when queen Anne lay lifeless and cold as king William, his first patron; and when Oxford, in the vicissitude of party, had been persecuted by faction, and overpowered, though not conquered, by violence.

Such was the high interposition by which De Foe was relieved from Newgate, in August, 1704. In order to avoid the town-talk, he retired immediately to St. Edmund's Bury: but his retreat did not prevent persecution. Dyer, the newswriter, propagated that De Foe had fled from justice. Fox, the bookseller, published that he had deserted his security. Stephen, a state-messenger, everywhere said, that he had a warrant for seizing him. This I suppose was wit, during the witty age of Anne. In our duller days of law, such outrages would be referred to the judgment of a jury. De Foe informed the secretary of state where he was, and when he would appear; but he was told not to fear, as he had not transgressed. Notwithstanding this vexation, our author's muse produced, on the 29th of August, 1704, A Hymn to Victory, when the successful skill of Marlborough furnished our poets with many occasions to publish Gazettes in Rhyme[39].

De Foe opened the year 1704-5 with his Double Welcome to the duke of Marlborough; disclaiming any expectation of place or pension. His encomiastic strains, I fear, were not heard while he wrote like an honest Englishman, against the continuance of the war; a war indeed of personal glory, of national celebration, but of fruitless expense. De Foe's activity, or his needs, produced in March, 1705, The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions, from the World in the Moon. It was one of De Foe's felicities to catch the 'living manners as they rose,' or one of his resources, to 'shoot folly as it flew.' In the lunar language he applies his satiric file to the prominences of every character: of the poets, from Dryden to Durfy; of the wits, from Addison to Prior; of the metaphysicians, from Malbranche to Hobbes; of the freethinkers, from Asgyl to the Tale of a Tub. Our author continually complains of the ill usage of the world; but with all his acuteness he did not advert, that he who attacks the world, will be by the world attacked. He makes the lunar politicians debate the policy of Charles XII. in pursuing the Saxons and Poles, while the Muscovites ravaged his own people. I doubt whether it were on this occasion that the Swedish ambassador was so ill-advised as to complain against De Foe, for merited ridicule of a futile warfare[40]. They had not then discovered, that the best defence against the shafts of satire is to let them fly. Our author's sentiment was expanded by Johnson, in those energetic lines, which thus conclude the character of the Swedish Charles:

"Who left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

De Foe was so little disturbed by the appearance of The Moon Calf[41], or accurate Reflections on the Consolidator, that he plunged into a controversy with sir Humphrey Mackworth about his bill for employing the poor. This had been passed by the commons with great applause, but received by the peers with suitable caution. De Foe, considering this plausible project as an indigested chaos, represented it, through several reviews, as a plan which would ruin the industrious, and thereby augment the poor. Sir Humphrey endeavoured to support his workhouses, in every parish, with a parochial capital for carrying on parochial manufacture. This drew from De Foe his admirable treatise, which he entitled, Giving Alms no Charity. As an English freeholder he claimed it as a right to address his performance to the house of commons, having a particular interest in the common good; but considering the persons before whom he appeared, he laid down his archness, and assumed his dignity. He maintained, with wonderful knowledge of fact and power of argument, the following positions: 1st, That there is in England more labour than hands to perform it; and consequently a want of people, not of employment: 2ndly, No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor merely for want of work: 3rdly, All workhouses for employing the poor, as now they are employed, serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor: 4thly, It is a regulation of the poor that is wanted, not a setting them to work. Longer experience shows this to be a difficult subject, which increases in difficulty with the effluxion of time[42].

De Foe had scarcely dismissed sir Humphrey, when he introduced lord Haversham, a peer, who is famous in our story, as a maker and publisher of speeches. His lordship published his speech on the state of the nation, in 1705, which was cried about the town with unusual earnestness. Our author's prudence induced him to give no answer to the speech; but a pamphlet, which was hawked about the streets and sold for a penny, our author's shrewdness considered as a challenge to every reader. He laughed and talked so much, through several Reviews, about this factious effusion, as to provoke a defence of topics, which his lordship ought neither to have printed nor spoken. De Foe now published a Reply to Lord Haversham's Vindication of his Speech. During such battles the town never fails to cheer the smaller combatant. Our author, with an allusion to the biography of both, says sarcastically: "But fate, that makes footballs of men, kicks some up stairs, and some down; some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy; some are raised without merit, some are crushed without a crime; and no man knows by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a peerage or a pillory[43]."

In the midst of these disputes, either grave or ludicrous, De Foe published Advice to all Parties. He strenuously recommends that moderation and forbearance, which his opponents often remarked he was not so prone to practise as to preach. While he thus gave advice to all parties, he conveyed many salutary lessons to the dissenters, whom he was zealous to defend. In the Review, dated the 25th of December, 1705, he conjures them for God's sake, if not for their own sake, to be content. "Are there a few things more you could wish were done for you? resolve these wishes into two conclusions: 1st, Wait till Providence, if it shall be for your good, shall bring them to pass; 2ndly, Compare the present with the past circumstances, and you cannot repine without the highest ingratitude both to God and man."

De Foe found leisure, notwithstanding all those labours, perhaps a necessity, to publish in 1705, A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-born Englishman. The same reasons which formerly induced him to collect some loose pieces; held good, says he, for proceeding to a second volume, "that if I do not, somebody else will do it for me." He laments the scandalous liberty of the press; whereby piratic printers deprive an author of the native product of his own thought, and the purity of his own style. It is said, though perhaps without authority, that the vigorous remonstrances of De Foe procured the Act[44] for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the copies of printed books in the authors or their assigns. The vanity of an administration, which affected to patronise the learned, concurring, with the mutual interest of bookmakers and booksellers, produced this salutary law, that our author alone had called for without success. De Foe's writings, thus collected into volumes, were soon a third time printed, with the addition of a key. The satire being now pointed by the specification of characters, and obscurities being illuminated by the annexation of circumstances, a numerous class of readers were induced, by their zeal of party, or desire of scandal, to look for gratification from our author's treatises. He is studious to complain, "that his writings had been most neglected of them, who at the same time have owned them useful." The second volume of 1705, containing eighteen treatises in prose and rhyme, begins with A New Discovery of an old Intrigue, and ends with Royal Religion[45].

The year 1705 was a year of disquiet to De Foe, not so much from the oppressions of state as from the persecutions of party. When his business, of whatever nature, led him to Exeter, and other western towns, in August, September, and October, 1705, a project was formed to send him as a soldier to the army, at a time when footmen were taken from the coaches as recruits; but conscious of his being a freeholder of England, and a liveryman of London, he knew that such characters could not be violated, in this nation, with impunity. When some of the western justices, of more zeal of party than sense of duty, heard from his opponents of De Foe's journey, they determined to apprehend him as a vagabond: but our author, who, among other qualities, had personal courage in a high degree, reflected, that to face danger is most effectually to prevent it. In his absence, real suits were commenced against him for fictitious debts: but De Foe advertised, that genuine claims he would fairly satisfy. If all these uncommon circumstances had not been published in the Review, we should not have seen this striking picture of savage manners. So much more free are we at present, that the editor of a newspaper, however obnoxious to any party, may travel peaceably about his affairs over England, without fear of interruption. Were a justice of peace, from whatever motive, to offer him any obstruction, such a magistrate would be overwhelmed by the public indignation, and punished by the higher guardians of our quiet and our laws.[46]

De Foe began the year 1706 with A Hymn to Peace[47]; occasioned by the two houses of parliament joining in one address to the queen. On the 4th of May he published An Essay at removing National Prejudices against an Union with Scotland. A few weeks after, he gave the world a second essay, to soften rancour and defeat perversity. But the time was now come when he was to perform what he had often promised: and his fruitfulness produced, in July, 1736, _Jure Divino_, a satire against Tyranny and Passive Obedience, which had been delayed for fear, as he declares, of parliamentary censure. Of this poem, it cannot be said, as of Thomson's Liberty, that it was written to prove what no man ever denied. This satire, says the preface, had never been published, though some of it has been a long time in being, had not the world seemed to be going mad a second time with the error of passive obedience, and non-resistance. "And because some men require," says he, "more explicit answers, I declare my belief, that a monarchy, according to the present constitution, limited by parliament, and dependent upon law, is not only the best government in the world, but also the best for this nation in particular, most suitable to the genius of the people, and the circumstances of the whole body." Dryden had given an example, a few years before, of argumentative poetry, in his Hind and Panther; by which he endeavoured to defend the tenets of the church of Rome. Our author now reasoned in rhyme, through twelve books, in defence of every man's birthright by nature, when all sorts of liberty were run down and opposed. His purpose is doubtless honester than Dryden's; and his argument being in support of the better cause, is perhaps superior in strength: but in the _Jure Divino_ we look in vain for

The varying verse, the full-resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine.[48]

Our author was soon after engaged in more important, because much more useful, business. Lord Godolphin, who knew how to discriminate characters, determined to employ him on an errand, "which," as he says, "was far from being unfit for a sovereign to direct, or an honest man to perform." By his lordship he was carried to the queen, who said to him, while he kissed her hand[49], "that she had such satisfaction in his former services, that she had again appointed him for another affair, which was something nice, but the treasurer would tell him the rest." In three days he was sent to Scotland. His knowledge of commerce and revenue, his powers of insinuation, and above all, his readiness of pen, were deemed of no small utility in promoting the Union. He arrived at Edinburgh, in October, 1706. And we shall find him no inconsiderable actor in the performance of that greatest of all good works. He attended the committees of parliament, for whose use he made several of the calculations[50] on the subject of trade and taxes. He complains[51], however, that when afterwards some clamour was raised upon the inequality of the proportions, and the contrivers began to be blamed, and a little threatened _a-la-mob_, then it was D. F.[52] made it all, and he was to be stoned for it. He endeavoured to confute[53] all that was published by Webster and Hodges, and the other writers in Scotland against the Union: and he had his share of danger, since, as he says, he was watched by the mob; had his chamber windows insulted; but by the prudence of his friends, and God's providence, he escaped[54]. In the midst of this great scene of business and tumult, he collected the documents which he afterwards published for the instruction of posterity, with regard to one of the most difficult, and, at the same time, the most fortunate transactions in our annals.

During all those labours and risks, De Foe published, in December, 1706, Caledonia, a poem, in honour of the Scots nation[55]. This poetic essay, which was intended to rescue Scotland from slander in opinion, Caledonia herself bade him dedicate to the duke of Queensbury. Besides other benefactions, the commissioner gave the author, whom he calls Daniel De Foe, esquire, an exclusive privilege to sell his encomiastic strains for seven years, within the country of his celebration. Amidst our author's busy occupations at Edinburgh, he was anxious to assure the world, that wherever the writer may be, the Reviews are written with his own hand; no person having, or ever had, any concern in writing them, but the known author, D. F. On the 16th of January, the act of Union was passed by the Scots parliament; and De Foe returned to London, in February, 1706-7. While he thus acted importantly at Edinburgh, he formed connections with considerable persons, who were proud of his future correspondence, and profited from his political interests[56].

How our author was rewarded by the ministers who derived a benefit from those services, and from that danger, as he does not tell, cannot now be known. Before his departure for Scotland, indeed, lord Godolphin, as he acknowledges[57], obtained for him the continuance of an appointment, which her majesty, by the interposition of his first benefactor, had been pleased to make him, in consideration of a former service, in a foreign country, wherein he run as much risk as a grenadier on the counterscarp. As he was too prudent to disclose his secret services, they must at present remain undiscovered. Yet is there reason to think that he had a pension rather than an office, since his name is not in the red book of the queen; and he solemnly avers, in his Appeal, that he had not interest enough with lord Oxford to procure him the arrears due to him in the time of the former ministry. This appointment, whatever it were, he is studious to tell, he originally owed to Harley; he, however, thankfully acknowledges, that lord Godolphin continued his favour to him after the unhappy breach that separated his first benefactor from the minister, who continued in power till August, 1710.

The nation, which was filled with combustible matter, burst into flame the moment of that memorable separation, in 1707. In the midst of this conflagration our author was not inactive. He waited on Harley after he had been driven from power, who generously advised him to continue his services to the queen, which he supposed would have no relation to personal differences among statesmen. Godolphin received him with equal kindness, by saying, I always think a man honest till I find to the contrary. And if we may credit De Foe's asseverations, in the presence of those who could have convicted him of falsehood, he for three years held no correspondence with his principal benefactor, which the great man never took ill of him.

As early as February 1706-7, De Foe avowed his purpose to publish the History of the Union, which he had ably assisted to accomplish. This design he executed in 1709, though he was engaged in other lucubrations, and gave the world a Review three times a week. His history seems to have been little noticed when it first appeared; for, as the preface states, it had many difficulties in the way; many factions to encounter, and parties to please. Yet it was republished in 1712; and a third time in 1786, when a similar union had become the topic of public debate and private conversation[58]. The subject of this work is the completion of a measure, which was carried into effect, notwithstanding obstructions apparently insurmountable, and tumults approaching to rebellion, and which has produced the ends designed, beyond expectation, whether we consider its influence on the government, or its operation on the governed. The minuteness with which he describes what he saw and heard on the turbulent stage, where he acted a conspicuous part, is extremely interesting to us, who wish to know what actually passed, however this circumstantiality may have disgusted contemporaneous readers. History is chiefly valuable as it transmits a faithful copy of the manners and sentiments of every age. This narrative of De Foe is a drama, in which he introduces the highest peers and the lowest peasants, speaking and acting, according as they were each actuated by their characteristic passions; and while the man of taste is amused by his manner, the man of business may draw instruction from the documents, which are appended to the end, and interspersed in every page. This publication had alone preserved his name, had his Crusoe pleased us less.

De Foe published in 1709, what indeed required less effort of the intellect or the hand, The History of Addresses; with no design, he says, and as we may believe, to disturb the public peace, but to compare the present tempers of men with the past, in order to discover who had altered for the better, and who for the worse. He gave a second volume of Addresses in 1711, with remarks serious and comical[59]. His purpose plainly was to abate, by ridicule, the public fervour with regard to Sacheverell, who, by I know not what fatality, or folly, gave rise to eventful changes. De Foe evinces, by these timeful publications, that amidst all that enthusiasm and tumult, he preserved his senses, and adhered to his principles.