pillory and in Newgate. His most considerable political achievement was his share in effecting the union between England and Scotland; his principal means of persuasion would seem to have been the alvantages to Scottish traders.

6

His active mind was fertile in practical projects. In 1697 he published an Essay on Projects.' "He wrote," says Mr George Chalmers, "many sheets about the coin; he proposed a register for seamen, long before the Act of Parliament was thought of; he projected county banks, and factories for goods; he mentioned a proposal for a commission of inquiries into bankrupts' estates; he contrived a pension office for the relief of the poor." One of the projects in his 'Essay' was a society on the model of the French Academy "for encouraging polite learning, for refining the English language, and for preventing barbarisms of manners."

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary. A good many of Defoe's phrases are old-fashioned, and have long since dropped out of current English. We should not be safe to use an expression upon his authority. He is an excellent representative of the colloquial style of the time; but colloquial phrases have their day. Owing to his frequent use of homely idioms, his writings are a very rewarding study to verbal reformers, who desire to weed the language of slip-shod idioms that have indolently been allowed to establish themselves, and who are anxious to back their proposed reforms with the practice of elder writers.

As we should expect in an author writing upon such a variety of topics, his command of English is prodigious. If one may judge from a general impression of variety, no writer comes nearer to the Shakspearian profusion of language. His sympathies were so catholic that it is difficult to find out in what region he was deficient. He is seldom deciamatory or pathetic, but when he is, the words seem to flow in the choicest abundance. The rich vein in his vocabulary is easier to discover. From his wide practice as a controversialist, he is a great master of the language of sarcasm and abuse; even Swift's range is probably not more extensive, as his powers of ridicule were less versatile.

He was too popular a writer to be eccentric in his general language; yet sometimes in the extravagance of high spirits he whimsically coins words that are not unlike some of the eccentricities of Carlyle. The following is an example:

"The yet further extravagances which naturally attend the mischief of wit, are beauism, dogmaticality, whimsification, impudensity, and various kinds of fopperosities (according to Mr Boyle), which, issuing out of the

brain, descend into all the faculties, and branch themselves by infinite variety into all the actions of life."

Sentences and Paragraphs.-In this mechanical part of composition our author is singularly negligent, especially in his hurried political tracts. Had he been, like Temple, a careful builder of sentences-studious of the arts of arrangement—he could not have produced one-tenth of what he wrote. His ungrammatical laxity

would not be allowed in any modern writer.

He is so careless that it would answer no purpose to exemplify his errors, and so irregular that it would not be easy to discover peculiarities of structure.

His only merit lies in his being consecutive. Whatever be the distribution of the matter into sentences and paragraphs, he is desirous that the connection be clearly apparent, and is very explicit in his phrases of reference.

Figures of Speech-Similitudes.—Illustrative force is the most remarkable thing in Defoe's similitudes. In conjunction with the general spirit and vigour of his language, their effect is electrifying. Agreeably to the wonderful discursiveness of his intellect, they are taken from all sources, not forcibly hunted out for embellishment, but used for illustration when they present themselves. As suited a vigorous popular style, his preference was for the homely, and even the coarse. His allusions are sometimes learned, but always easily understood from the homeliness of the expression. We may quote a few examples :—

"Dryden might have been told his fate that, having his extraordinary genius slung and pitched upon a swivel, it would certainly turn round as fast as the times, and instruct him how to write elegies to Oliver Cromwell and King Charles the Second with all the coherence imaginable; how to write 'Religio Laici' and the Hind and Panther,' and yet be the same man, every day to change his principle, change his religion, change his coat, change his master, and yet never change his nature."

He describes, in the following metaphorical terms, the wonderful psychological revelations of the Chinese philosopher, Mira-cho-cholasmo:

"There you have that part of the head turned inside outward, in which nature has placed the materials of reflecting; and, like a glass beehive, represents to you all the several cells in which are lodged things past, even back to infancy and conception. There you have the repository, with all its cells, classically, annually, numerically, and alphabetically disposed. There you may see how, when the perplexed animal, on the loss of a thought or a word, scratches his poll, every attack of his invading fingers knocks at nature's door, alarms all the register-keepers, and away they run, unlock all the classes, search diligently for what he calls for, and immediately deliver it up to the brain; if it cannot be found, they entreat a little patience, till they step into the revolvary, where they run over little ratalogues of the minutest passages of life, and so, in time, never fail to hand on the thing; if not just when he calls for it, yet at some other time."

As an example of his more ambitious illustrations, take his comparison between the doctrine of passive obedience and the Copernican system:—

"I take the doctrines of passive obedience, &c., among the statesmen, to be like the Copernican system of the earth's motion among philosophers, which, though it be contrary to all ancient knowledge, and not capable of demonstration, yet is adhered to in general, because by this they can better solve and give a more rational account of several dark phenomena in nature than they could before.

"Thus our moderu statesmen approve of this scheme of government; not that it admits of any rational defence, much less of demonstration, but because by this method they can the better explain, as well as defend, all coercion in cases invasive of natural right than they could before."

Contrast.-Although our author is not a studious cultivator of point or epigram, yet these arts form one among his many instruments of ridicule. We shall produce two examples. The first is an account of some of the things that he saw when he visited the moon, through a wonderful glass that penetrated beneath all disguises :

"Here we saw the state of the war among nations; here was the French giving sham thanks for victories they never got, and somebody else addressing and congratulating the sublime glory of running away; here was Te Deum for sham victories by land, and there was tha ksgiving for ditto by sea; here we might see two armies fight, both run away, and both come and thank God for nothing. Here we saw a plan of a late war like that in Ireland; there was all the officers cursing a Dutch general, because the damned rogue would fight and spoil a good war, that, with decent management and good husbandry, might have been eked out this twenty years; there were whole armies hunting two cows to one Irishman, and driving off black cattle declared the noble end of the war. Here we saw a country full of stone walls and strong towns, where, every campaign, the trade of war was carried on by the soldiers with the same intriguing as it was carried on in the council chambers; there were millions of contributions raised, and vast sums collected, but no taxes lessened; whole plate-fleets surprised, but no treasure found; vast sums lost by enemies, and yet never found by friends; ships loaded with volatile silver, that came away full and got home empty; whole voyages made to beat nobody, and plunder everybody; two millions robbed from the honest merchants, and not a groat saved for the honest subjects. There we saw captains listing men with the Government's money, and letting them go again for their own; ships fitted out at the rate of two millions a-year, to fight but once in three years, and then run away for want of powder and shot.".

The next seems to be an extravagant parody of the epigram :

"He told me, as the inhabitants were the most numerous, so they were the strangest people that lived; both their natures, tempers, qualities, actions, and way of living, was made up of innumerable contradictions; that they were the wisest fools and the foolishest wise men in the world; the weakest, strongest, richest, poorest, most generous, covetous, bold, cowardly, false, faithful, sober, dissolute, surly, civil, slothful, diligent, peaceable, quarrelling, loyal, seditious nation that ever was known."

QUALITIES OF STYLE

Simplicity. The use of homely language is one of the most remarkable features in Defoe's style. It is one of the secrets of the continued popularity of Robinson Crusoe.'

Two things may be specially exemplified under this head. One is, the coarse plainness of language that he sometimes adopted for purposes of ridicule; and the other, his orderly colloquial exposition of subjects that might have been treated in a more pretentious and abstruse style.

As an example of a very undignified tone of banter, take the beginning of his 'Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover,' another ironical piece that was taken for earnest, and led to his temporary imprisonment :

"What strife is here among you all? And what a noise about who shall or shall not be king, the Lord knows when? Is it not a strange thing we cannot be quiet with the queen we have, but we must all fall into confusion and combustions about who shall come after? Why, pray folks, how old is the queen, and when is she to die? that here is this pother made about it. I have heard wise people say the queen is not fifty years old, that she has no distemper but the gout, that that is a life-long disease, which generally holds people out twenty, or thirty, or forty years; and let it go how it will, the queen may well enough linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a huge old wife neither. Now, what say the people? must we think of living twenty or thirty years in this wrangling condition we are now in? This would be a torment worse than some of the Egyptian plagues, and would be intolerable to bear, though for fewer years than that. The animosities of

this nation, should they go on, as it seems they go on now, would by time become to such a height, that all charity, society, and mutual agreement among us, will be destroyed. Christians shall we be called? No; nothing of the people called Christians will be to be found among us. Nothing of Christianity, viz., charity, will be found among us! The name Christian may be assumed, but it will be all hypocrisy and delusion; the being of Christianity must be lost in the fog, and smoke, and stink, and noise, and rage, and cruelty, of our quarrel about a king. Is this rational? Is it agreeable to the true interests of the nation? What must become of trade, of religion, of society, of relation, of families, of people? Why, hark ye, you folk that call yourselves rational, and talk of having souls, is this a token of your having such things about you, or of your thinking rationally? if you have, pray what is it likely will become of you all? Why, the strife is gotten into your kitchens, your parlours, your shops, your countinghouses, nay, into your very beds. You gentlefolks, if you please to listen to your cook-maids and footmen in your kitchens, you shall hear them scolding, and swearing, and scratching, and fighting among themselves; and when you think the noise is about the beef and the pudding, the dishwater, or the kitchen-stuff, alas, you are mistaken! the feud is about the more mighty affairs of the government, and who is for the Protestant succession, and who for the Pretender. Here the poor despicable scullions learn to cry, High Church, No Dutch Kings, No Hanover, that they may do it dexterously when they come into the next mob. Here their antagonists of the dripping pan practise the other side clamour, No French Peace, No Pretender, No Popery. The thing is the very same up," &c.

Examples of his simple expositions may be found in any page of the Complete Tradesman.' The following is a very fair speci

men:

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"Another trading license is that of appointing and promising payments of money, which men in business are oftentimes forced to make, and forced to break, without any scruple; nay, and without any reproach upon their integrity. Let us state this case as clearly as we can, and see how it stands as to the morality of it, for that is the point in debate.

"The credit usually given by one tradesman to another, as particularly by the merchant to the wholesale man, and by the wholesale-man to the retailer, is such, that, without tying the buyer up to a particular day of payment, they go on buying and selling, and the buyer pays money upon account, as his convenience admits, and as the seller is content to take it. This occasions the merchant or the wholesale-man to go about, as they call it, a-dunning among their dealers, and which is generally the work of every Saturday. When the merchant comes to his customer the wholesaleman, or warehouse-keeper, for money, he tells him, I have no money, sir; I cannot pay you now; if you call next week, I will pay you.' Next week conies, and the merchant calls again; but it is the same thing, only the warehouseman adds, 'Well, I will pay you next week, without fail.' When the week comes, he tells him he has met with great disappointments, and he knows not what to do, but desires his patience another week: and when the other week comes, perhaps he pays him, and so they go on.

'Now, what is to be said for this? In the first place, let us look back to the occasion. This warehouse-keeper, or wholesale-man, sells the goods which he buys of the merchant-I say he sells them to the retailers, and it is for that reason I place it first there. Now, as they buy in smaller quantities than he did of the merchant, so he deals with more of them in number, and he goes about among them the same Saturday, to get in money that he may pay his merchant, and he receives his bag full of promises, too, everywhere instead of money, and is put off from week to week, perhaps by fifty shopkeepers in a day; and their serving him thus obliges him to do the same to the merchant.

'Again, come to the merchant. Except some whose circumstances are above it, they are by this very usage obliged to put off the Blackwellhall factor, or the packer, or the clothier, or whoever they deal with, in proportion; and thus promises go round for payment, and those promises are kept or broken as money comes in, or as disappointments happen: and all this while there is no breach of honesty, or parole; no lying, or supposition of it, among the tradesmen, either on one side or other.

"But let us come, I say, to the morality of it. To break a solemn promise is a kind of prevarication; that is certain, there is no coming off of it; and I might enlarge here upon the first fault, namely of making the promise, which, say the strict objectors, they should not do. But the tradesman's answer is this: all those promises ought to be taken as they are made -namely, with a contingent dependence upon the circumstances of tradę, such as promises made them by others who owe them money, or the supposi tion of a week's trade bringing in money by retail, as usual, both of which are liable to fail or at least to fall short; and this the person who calls for the money knows, and takes the promise with those attending casualties; which if they fail, he knows the shopkeeper or whoever he is, must fail him too."

Clearness. The last-quoted passage is a specimen of our author's