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

men :

"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 comes, 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.

66

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 trade, such as promises made them by others who owe them money, or the supposition 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

most distinct style of expression. When, as in the above case, he is put upon his mettle to be perspicuous, he observes a certain precision of method, giving express notice when he passes from one consideration to another: "In the first place, let us look back to the occasion; ""Again, come to the merchant;" "But let us come, I say, to the morality of it." But he writes too hurriedly to be precise in expression. When we study for a little what he writes, we can see that he has a clear and vigorous mind, and is seldom oppressed by confusion of thought. But his expression is often imperfect. He hurries on, and is content to leave it incomplete. The above phrases of transition, for example, are incomplete the first particularly. We see what they mean after we have read the paragraph they introduce, but not before.

Strength.-Defoe's general style may be described as nervous. It has the strength arising from variety, copiousness, and vigorous fitness of plain words and metaphors, with an occasional "tang" of antithesis.

He wants the power of sonorous declamation; as may be seen in the coarse vigour of his familiar expostulation with the people of England concerning their political dissensions. In his 'Seasonable Warning and Caution,' touching the same theme, he attempts a loftier flight, but mars the effect by occasional expressions in his more usual tone of familiarity. Thus

"Why, how now, England! what ailest thee now? What evil spirit now possesseth thee? Ŏ thou nation famous for espousing religion, and defending liberty; eminent in all ages for pulling down tyrants, and adhering steadily to the fundamentals of thy own constitution: that has not only secured thy own rights, and handed them down unimpaired to every suc ceeding age, but has been the sanctuary of other oppressed nations; the strong protector of injured subjects against the lawless invasion of oppressing tyrants.

"To thee the oppressed Protestants of France owed, for some ages ago, the comfort of being powerfully supported, while their own king, wheedled by the lustre of a crown, became apostate, and laid the foundation of their ruin among themselves; in thee their posterity find a refuge, and flourish in thy wealth and trade, when religion and liberty find no more place in their own country.

"To thee the distressed Belgii owe the powerful assistance by which they took up arms in defence of liberty and religion against Spanish cruelty, the perfidious tyranny of their kings, and the rage of the bloody Duke d'Alva. But what has all this been for? And to what intent and purpose was all this zeal, if you will sink under the ruin of the very fabric ye have pulled down? If ye will give up the cause after ye have gained the advantage, and yield yourselves up after you have been delivered; to what purpose then has all this been done? Why all this money expended? Why all this blood spilt? To what end is France said to be reduced, and peace now concluded, if the same Popery, the same tyranny, the same arbitrary methods of government shall be received among you again? Sure your posterity will stand amazed to consider how lavish this age has been of their money and their blood, and to how little purpose; since no age since the

creation of the world can show us a time whenever any nation spent so much blood and treasure to end just where they begun: as, if the arts of our enemies prevail, we are like to do."

His homely nervous style is well suited to the relation of lively horrors, or of exciting commotions, such as riots and mutinies. In recording the alarms caused by the fear of infection during the Great Plague of 1666, he is incomparably graphic and impressive. He produces his effects not by ponderous epithets, or impressive reflections, but by the accumulation of striking details in homely language. As an example:

"Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a citizen's house, where they knew him very well; the servant let him in, and being told the master of the house was above, he ran up, and came into the room to them as the whole family were at supper. They began to rise up a little surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he bade them sit still, he only came to take his leave of them. They asked him, Why, Mr where are you going?' Going,' says he, I have got the sickness, and shall die to-morrow night.' It is easy to believe, though not to describe, the consternation they were all in; the women and the man's daughters, which were but little girls, were frightened almost to death, and got up, all running out, one at one door and one at another, some down-stairs and some up-stairs, and getting together as well as they could, locked themselves into their chambers, and screamed out at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of their wits. The master, more composed than they, though both frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him and throw him down-stairs, being in a passion; but then considering a little the condition of the man, and the danger of touching him, horror seized his mind, and he stood like one astonished. The poor distempered man, all this while, being, as well, diseased in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed; at length he turns round, 'Ay!' says he, with all the seeming calmness imaginable, is it so with you all? Are you all disturbed at me? Why then I'll e'en go home and die there.' And so he goes immediately down-stairs. The servant that had let him in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he would do; the man went and opened the door, and went out and flung the door after him."

The Ludicrous.-The extravagance of Defoe's sense of the ludicrous is in proportion to the marvellous energy of the man. He deals in the same kind of undisguised banter as Macaulay; only he is more exuberant, stands less upon his dignity, hits fearlessly at greater antagonists, and altogether has a more magnanimous air. At the risk of being formal, we may compare him with the other three great prose wits in this age of wits, Addison, Steele, and Swift. He is more openly derisive and less bitter than Addison, having no mastery of the polite sneer: he is not a loving humorist like Steele, but sarcastically and derisively humorous; and he is more magnanimous and less personal than Swift, dealing with public not with private conduct, and carrying into the warfare a spirit less savagely ferocious.

Ꮓ

Passages already quoted illustrate the extravagance of his hu mour, as it appears in epigrammatic paradox, and in the application of very homely language to affairs usually treated with stiff dignity. His Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the Moon,' is, as we should expect from the title, full of extravagant fun-so extravagant that the satire is converted into humour. In the passage quoted concerning the Irish and French wars (p. 349), the satire is predominant; but very often he loses sight of his polemical purpose, and gives a loose rein to his powers of ludicrous invention. The metaphorical description of the discoveries of the great psychologist (p. 348) is a fair example. Here is another:

"If these labours of mine shall prove successful, I may, in my next journey that way, take an abstract of their most admirable tracts in navigation, and the mysteries of Chinese mathematics; which outdo all modern inven tion at that rate, that it is inconceivable; in this elaborate work I must run through the 365 volumes of Augro-machi-lanquaro-zi, the most ancient mathematician in all China; from thence I shall give a description of a fleet of ships of a hundred thousand sail, built at the expense of the emperor Tangro the XVth.; who, having notice of the general deluge, prepared these vessels, to every city and town in his dominions one, and in bulk proportioned to the number of its inhabitants; into which vessel all the people, with such movables as they thought fit to save, and with a hundred and twenty days' provisions, were received at the time of the flood; and the rest of their goods being put into great vessels made of China ware, and fast luted down on the top, were preserved unhurt by the water: these ships they furnished with six hundred fathom of chain instead of cables, which being fastened by wonderful arts to the earth, every vessel rid out the deluge just at the town's end; so that when the waters abated, the people had nothing to do but to open the doors made in the ship-sides and come out, repair their houses, open the great China pots their goods were in, and so put themselves in statu quo."

One of the most striking features in our author's wit is his power of irony. Of this power he received very disagreeable proof: his ironical proposal, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' was praised by the extreme High-fliers as an admirable idea, and the mocking author imprisoned when they discovered to their fury how they had been cheated; and eleven years later, his ironical Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover' was misinterpreted by the Government, and much to his surprise, he was incarcerated as a genuine Jacobite. We have quoted the opening of the latter piece. The following is a portion of the mock declamation of his 'Shortest Way:'

"It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and most flourishing church in the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed, by a sort of men who God in His providence has suffered to insult over her, and bring her down; these have been the days of her humiliation and tribulation. She was born with an invincible patience, the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers, and delivered her from the oppression of the stranger.

"And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of, and friend to the Church of England. Now that they find they are in danger of the Church of England's just resentments; now they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood, till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them.

"No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over; you should have practised peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected any yourselves.

"We have heard more of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church-doors, and the church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not; where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them? that having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not dispense with that oath, their King being still alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch government? These have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their estates double taxed, to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they can't starve? And now the tables are turned upon you, you must not be persecuted, 'tis not a Christian spirit!

"Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you reduced to a mere king of cl-s, is enough to give any future princes such an idea of your principles, as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your clutches; and, God be thanked, the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will have a care of you."

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

Defoe, as is testified by every page of his writings, excelled in the graphic presentation both of concrete things and of states of mind. He did not attempt comprehensive formal delineations of complicated scenes, and so does not exhibit Descriptive method in its most difficult application; yet he must be allowed to be one of our greatest masters of single descriptive touches.

One variety of descriptive method, indeed, he may be said to have employed, and that with the highest success-the presentation of scenes from the traveller's point of view. He puts before us the various features of a country as they turn up in his narrative. There is no full description of Robinson Crusoe's island in any one place, but particular is added to particular as they occurred to Robinson himself, and before the close of the narrative we know the island from shore to shore. He acts upon the same plan in all his narratives. One of his narratives in particular, his 'Voyage Round the World,' is framed expressly for descriptive purposes; in that work his main object is to present a systematic