DANIEL DEFOE

BY

WILLIAM MINTO

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

FRANKLIN SQUARE

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.

   JOHNSON Leslie Stephen.
   GIBBON J.C. Morison.
   SCOTT R.H. Hutton.
   SHELLEY J.A. Symonds.
   HUME T.H. Huxley.
   GOLDSMITH William Black
   DEFOE William Minto.
   BURNS J.C. Shairp.
   SPENSER R.W. Church.
   THACKERAY Anthony Trollope.
   BURKE John Morley.
   MILTON Mark Pattison.
   HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr.
   SOUTHEY E. Dowden.
   CHAUCER A.W. Ward
   BUNYAN J.A. Froude.
   COWPER Goldwin Smith.
   POPE Leslie Stephen.
   BYRON John Nichol.
   LOCKE Thomas Fowler.
   WORDSWORTH F. Myers.
   DRYDEN G. Saintsbury.
   LANDOR Sidney Colvin.
   DE QUINCEY David Masson.
   LAMB Alfred Ainger.
   BENTLEY R.C. Jebb.
   DICKENS A.W. Ward.
   GRAY E.W. Gosse.
   SWIFT Leslie Stephen.
   STERNE H.D. Traill.
   MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison.
   FIELDING Austin Dobson.
   SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant.
   ADDISON W.J. Courthope.
   BACON R.W. Church.
   COLERIDGE H.D. Traill.
   SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J.A. Symonds.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

There are three considerable biographies of Defoe—the first, by GeorgeChalmers, published in 1786; the second by Walter Wilson, published in1830; the third, by William Lee, published in 1869. All three arethorough and painstaking works, justified by independent research anddiscovery. The labour of research in the case of an author supposed tohave written some two hundred and fifty separate books and pamphlets,very few of them under his own name, is naturally enormous; and when itis done, the results are open to endless dispute. Probably two men couldnot be found who would read through the vast mass of contemporaryanonymous and pseudonymous print, and agree upon a complete list ofDefoe's writings. Fortunately, however, for those who wish to get aclear idea of his life and character, the identification is not pureguess-work on internal evidence. He put his own name or initials to someof his productions, and treated the authorship of others as opensecrets. Enough is ascertained as his to provide us with the means for acomplete understanding of his opinions and his conduct. It is Defoe'smisfortune that his biographers on the large scale have occupiedthemselves too much with subordinate details, and have been misled froma true appreciation of his main lines of thought and action byreligious, political, and hero-worshipping bias. For the followingsketch, taking Mr. Lee's elaborate work as my chronological guide, Ihave read such of Defoe's undoubted writings as are accessible in theLibrary of the British Museum—there is no complete collection, Ibeli

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