No More Learning

Defoe's writings, though all marked by his strong but limited per-
sonality, fall naturally into three classes:-
First, his political writings, in which may be included his wretched
attempts at political satire, and most of his journalistic work. This
is included in numberless pamphlets, broad-sheets, newspapers, and
the like, and is admirable expository matter on the public questions
of the day. Second, his fiction, Robinson Crusoe,' 'Captain Sin-
gleton, Colonel Jack,' 'Roxana,' and 'Moll Flanders. ' Third, his
miscellaneous work; innumerable biographies and papers like the
'History of the Plague,' the 'Account of the Great Storm,' 'The
True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal,' etc. Between the
last two classes there is a close connection, since both were written
for the market; and his fictions proper are cast in the autobiographi-
cal form and are founded on incidents in the lives of real persons,
and his biographies contain a large proportion of fiction.
Some knowledge of Defoe's political work is necessary to a com-
prehension of the early eighteenth century. During his life the
power of the people and of the House of Commons was slowly ex-
tended, and the foundations of the modern English Constitution were
laid. The trading and manufacturing classes, especially in the city
of London, increased in wealth and political consequence. The read-
ing public on which a popular writer could rely, widened. With these
changes-partly as cause and purely as consequence-came the
establishment of "News Journals" and "Reviews. " Besides Addison's
Spectator for the more cultured classes, multitudes of periodicals
were founded which aimed to reach a more general public. The
old method of a broad-sheet or the pamphlet, hawked in the streets
or exposed for sale and cried at the book-stalls, was still in use, but
the regular issue of a news-letter was taking its place. Defoe attacked
the public in both ways with unwearied assiduity. His poem The
True-Born Englishman' was sold in the streets to the astonishing
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DANIEL DEFOE
4481
number of eighty thousand.
In 1704 he established the Review, a
bi-weekly. It ran to 1713, and Defoe wrote nearly all of each num-
ber. Afterwards he was for eight years main contributor and sub-
stantially manager of Mist's Journal, a Tory organ; and one of the
most serious and well-founded charges against this first great jour-
nalist is, that he was deficient in journalistic honor, and remained in
the pay of the Whig Ministry while attached to the Opposition organ.
During this period he founded and conducted several other journals.
>>
Defoe possessed in a large measure the journalistic sense. No one
ever had a finer instinct in the subtle arts of "working the public
and of advertising. When the notorious Jack Sheppard was con-
demned, he visited him at Newgate, wrote his life, and had the high-
wayman, standing under the gallows, send for a copy and deliver
it as his "last speech and dying confession. " There is a certain
breadth and originality in this stroke, hardly to be paralleled in
modern journalism. Defoe had the knack of singling out from the
mass of passing events whatever would be likely to interest the pub-
lic. He brought out an account in some newspaper, and if successful,
made the occurrence the subject of a longer article in pamphlet or
book form. He was always on the lookout for matter, which he
utilized with a pen of marvelous rapidity. The gazette or embryonic
newspaper was at first confined to a rehearsal of news. Defoe
invented the leading article or "news-letter» of weekly comment,
and the society column of Mercure Scandaleuse.
The list of Defoe's political pamphlets is a large one, but they are
of more interest to the historian than to the general reader. While
they are far inferior in construction and victorious good sense to
Sydney Smith's magazine articles on kindred topics, and to Swift's
'Drapier's Letters' in subtle appeals to the prejudices of the igno-
rant, they show a remarkable command over the method of reaching
the plain people, to use President Lincoln's phrase, and taking it
to mean that great body of quiet persons who desire on the whole
to be fair in their judgments, but who must have their duty made
quite evident before they see it.
is, vituperative for a time when Pope and Swift and Dennis made
their personal invective so much higher flavored than modern taste
He seems to have been tolerant by nature; and although
this proceeds in his case from the fact that his moral enthusiasm
was never very warm, and not from any innate refinement of nature,
he is entitled to the credit of moderation in the use of abusive lan-
He is tolerant, too, of those who differ from him in pol-
Defoe is never vituperative—that
endures.
guage.
itics and religion; and though it is absurd to suppose, as some of
his biographers have done, that he was so far in advance of his
century as to have advocated the political soundness of free trade, he
VIII-281
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4482
DANIEL DEFOE
shows in his treatment of commercial questions the marks of a broad
and comprehensive mind. He speaks of foreigners in a cosmopolitan
spirit, with the exception of the Portuguese, for whom he seems to
feel a lively dislike, founded possibly on some of his early business
experiences. The reader will remember the dignified and courteous
demeanor of the Spaniards in 'Robinson Crusoe'; and although the
violent antipathy of the previous generation to Spanish Romanists
had abated, Defoe's freedom from insular prejudice is noteworthy,
the more so that a "discreet and sober bearing," such as he gives his
Spaniards, seems to have been his ideal of conduct. Defoe is a great
journalist, and although he is a typical hack, writing timely articles.
for pay, he has a touch of genius. He was always successful in
gaining the ear of his public; and in the one instance where he hit
upon a subject of universal interest, the life of the solitary castaway
thrown absolutely on his own resources, he wrote a book, without
any effort or departure from his usual style, which has been as pop-
ular with succeeding generations as it was with his own. It is a
mistake to call 'Robinson Crusoe' a "great boy's book," - unless we
regard the boy nature as persistent in all men, and perhaps it is in
all healthy men,- for. it treats the unaided conflict with nature and
circumstance, which is the essence of adult life, with unequaled
simplicity and force. Crusoe is not merely an adventurer; he is the
human will, courage, resolution, stripped of all the adventitious
support of society. He has the elements of universal humanity,
though in detail he is as distinctly English as Odysseus is Greek.
The characters of Defoe's other novels - Colonel Jack, Captain
Singleton, Moll Flanders, and Roxana - are so repulsive, and so en-
tirely unaware of their repulsiveness, that we can take little interest
in them. Possibly an exception might be made in favor of Colonel
Jack, who evinces at times an amusing humor. All are criminals, and
the conflict of the criminal with the forces of society may be the sub-
ject of the most powerful fiction. But these books are inartistic in sev-
eral regards. No criminals, even allowing them to be hypocrites, ever
disclose themselves in the open-hearted manner of these autobiogra-
phers. Vice always pays to virtue the homage of a certain reticence
in details. Despite all his Newgate experiences and his acquaintance
with noted felons, Defoe never understood either the weakness or
the strength of the criminal type. So all his harlots and thieves
and outcasts are decidedly amateurish. A serious transgression of
the moral law is to them a very slight matter, to be soon forgotten
after a temporary fit of repentance, and a long course of evil living
in no wise interferes with a comfortable and respectable old age.
His pirates have none of the desperation and brutal heroism of sin.
Stevenson's John Silver or Israel Hands is worth a schooner-load of


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DANIEL DEFOE
4483
them. Neither they nor their author seem to value virtue very
highly, though they are acutely sensitive to the discomfort of an
evil reputation. Possibly such people may be true to a certain type
of humanity, but they are exceedingly uninteresting. A writer who
takes so narrow a view cannot produce a great book, even though
his lack of moral scope and insight is partly compensated by a vivid
presentation of life on the low plane from which he views it.
'Moll Flanders' and 'Roxana' are very coarse books, but it can
hardly be said that they are harmful or corrupting. They are simply
vulgar. Vice has preserved all its evil by preserving all its gross-
ness. Passion is reduced to mere animalism, and is depicted with
the brutal directness of Hogarth. This may be good morals, but it is
unpleasant art. It is true that Defoe's test of a writer was that he
should "please and serve his public," and in providing amusement he
was not more refined nor more coarse than those whom he addressed;
but a writer should look a little deeper and aim a little higher than
the average morality of his day. Otherwise he may please but will
not serve his generation, in any true sense of literary service.
Defoe is sometimes spoken of as the first great realist. In a lim-
ited sense this may be true. No doubt he presents the surface of
a limited area of the eighteenth-century world with fidelity. With
the final establishment of Protestantism, the increase of trade, and
the building of physical science on the broad foundations laid down
by Newton, England had become more mundane than at any other
period. The intense faith and the imaginative quality of the sev-
enteenth century were deadened. The eighteenth century kept its
eyes on the earth, and though it found a great many interesting and
wonderful things there, and though it laid the foundations of Eng-
land's industrial greatness, it was neither a spiritual nor an artistic
age. The novel was in its infancy; and as if a "true story» was
more worthy of respect than an invention, it received from Defoe an
air of verisimilitude and is usually based on some real events. He is
careful to embellish his fictions with little bits of realism. Thus, Moll
Flanders gives an inventory of the goods she took to America, and
in the 'History of the Plague' Defoe adds a note to his description
of a burial-ground: -"N. B. The author of this Journal lies buried
in that very ground, being at his own desire, his sister having been
buried there a few weeks before. " This enumeration of particulars
certainly gives an air of reality, but it is a trick easily caught, and
it is only now and then that he hits as in the above instance - on
the characteristic circumstance which gives life and reality to the
narrative. Except in 'Robinson Crusoe,' much of his detail is irrele-
vant and tiresome. But all the events on the lonely island are
admirably harmonized and have a cumulative effect. The second
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4484
DANIEL DEFOE
part, after the rescue,-
written to take advantage of the popularity
of the first, is vastly inferior. The artistic selective power is not
exercised. This same concrete imagination which sees minute details
is also evident in his contemporary Swift, but with him it works at
the bidding of a far more fervid and emotional spirit.
Defoe is a pioneer in novel-writing and in journalism, and in both
he shows wonderful readiness in appreciating what the public would
like and energy in supplying them with it. To the inventor or dis-
coverer of a new form we cannot deny great credit. Most writers
imitate, but it cannot be said that Defoe founded himself on any
predecessor, while his successors are numbered by hundreds. A cer-
tain relationship could be traced between his work, and the picaresque
tales of France and Spain on the one hand and the contemporary
journals of actual adventure on the other; but not one close enough
to detract from his claim to original power.
-
Some of Defoe's political work, like The True-Born Englishman,'
'The Shortest Way with Dissenters,' 'Reasons against the Succession
of the House of Hanover,' are written in the ironical tone. Mr.
Saintsbury seems to think that Defoe's method is not truly ironical,
because it differs from Swift's; but if we remember that one writer
differeth from another in irony, there is no reason to deny Defoe's
mastery of this penetrating weapon, especially when we find that he
imposed on both parties. The judges told him that "irony of that
sort would bring him to the gallows," but the eighteenth-century
law of libel was more rigid in its constructions than the canons of
literary art.
Or
Defoe made several attempts at poetical satire, which are sufficient
to show that he lacked either the talent or the patience to write
political verse. Compared with Dryden's or Pope's, his work is mere
doggerel, enlivened by occasional vigorous couplets like-
"Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there:
And 'twill be found upon examination
The latter has the largest congregation. "
"No panegyric needs their praise record—
An Englishman ne'er wants his own good word. »
But an examination will confirm the impression that Defoe was not a
poet, as surely as the re-reading of 'Robinson Crusoe' will strengthen
our hereditary belief that he was a great writer of prose.
ввало буроват


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DANIEL DEFOE
4485
FROM ROBINSON CRUSOE›
CRUSOE'S SHIPWRECK
NOT
can describe the confusion of thought which I felt
when I sunk into the water; for though I swam very
well, yet I could not deliver myself from the waves so as
to draw my breath; till that wave having driven me or rather
carried me a vast way on towards the shore, and having spent
itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry, but
half dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of
mind as well as breath left, that seeing myself nearer the main-
land than I expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavored to
make on towards the land as fast as I could, before another
wave should return and take me up again; but I soon found it
was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the sea coming after me as
high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy which I had no
means or strength to contend with: my business was to hold my
breath, and raise myself upon the water, if I could; and so by
swimming to preserve my breathing, and pilot myself towards
the shore if possible; my greatest concern now being that the
wave, as it would carry me a great way towards the shore when
it came on, might not carry me back again with it when it gave
back towards the sea.
The wave that came upon me again, buried me at once
twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body; and I could feel
myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the
shore, a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted
myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to
burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up,
so to my immediate relief I found my head and hands shoot
out above the surface of the water; and though it was not two
seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me
greatly, gave me breath and new courage. I was covered again
with water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and
finding the water had spent itself, and began to return, I struck
forward against the return of the waves, and felt ground again
with my feet. I stood still a few moments to recover breath,
and till the water went from me, and then took to my heels
and ran with what strength I had farther towards the shore.


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4486
DANIEL DEFOE
But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea,
which came pouring in after me again; and twice more I was
lifted up by the waves and carried forward as before, the shore
being very flat.
The last time of these two had well-nigh been fatal to me;
for the sea having hurried me along as before, landed me, or
rather dashed me, against a piece of rock, and that with such
force that it left me senseless, and indeed helpless as to my
own deliverance; for the blow taking my side and breast, beat
the breath as it were quite out of my body, and had it returned
again immediately I must have been strangled in the water; but
I recovered a little before the return of the waves, and seeing
I should again be covered with the water, I resolved to hold fast
by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath if possible till
the wave went back. Now, as the waves were not so high as
the first, being nearer land, I held my hold till the wave abated,
and then fetched another run, which brought me so near the
shore, that the next wave, though it went over me, yet did not
so swallow me up as to carry me away; and the next run I took,
I got to the mainland, where to my great comfort I clambered
up the cliffs of the shore, and sat me down upon the grass, free
from danger and quite out of the reach of the water.
I was now landed, and safe on shore; and began to look up
and thank God that my life was saved, in a case wherein there
were, some minutes before, scarce any room to hope. I believe
it is impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and
transports of the soul are when it is so saved, as I may say, out
of the grave: and I did not wonder now at the custom, viz. ,
that when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck is
tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve
brought to him, I say I do not wonder that they bring a sur-
geon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him
of it; that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the
heart and overwhelm him.
"For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first. "
I walked about the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole
being, as I may say, wrapped up in the contemplation of my
deliverance; making a thousand gestures and motions which I
cannot describe; reflecting upon my comrades that were drowned,
and that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for as


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DANIEL DEFOE
4487
for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them,
except three of the hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not
fellows.
I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel when the breach and
froth of the sea being so big I could hardly see it, it lay so far
off - and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on
shore ?
-
CRUSOE MAKES A NEW HOME
I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement,
particularly because it was upon a low moorish ground, near the
sea, and I believed it would not be wholesome; and more particu-
larly because there was no fresh water near it; so I resolved
to find a more healthy and more convenient spot of ground.
I consulted several things in my situation which I found
would be proper for me: first, air and fresh water, I just now
mentioned; secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun; thirdly,
security from ravenous creatures, whether men or beasts;
fourthly, a view to the sea, that if God sent any ship in sight, I
might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of which I
was not willing to banish all my expectation yet.
I searched for a place proper for this. I found a little plain
on the side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain
was steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon
me from the top. On the side of this rock there was a hollow
place, worn a little way in, like the entrance or door of a cave;
but there was not really any cave, or way into the rock at all.
On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I
resolved to pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred
yards broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green before
my door; and at the end of it descended irregularly every way
down into the low ground by the seaside. It was on the N. N. W.
side of the hill, so that it was sheltered from the heat every day,
till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or thereabouts, which in
those countries is near the setting.
Before I set up my tent I drew a half-circle before the hollow
place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from
the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter from its beginning
and ending.
In this half-circle I pitched two rows of long stakes, driving
them into the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the


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4488
DANIEL DEFOE
biggest end being out of the ground about five feet and a half,
and sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above
six inches from one another.
Then I took the pieces of cable which I cut in the ship, and
laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle between
these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in
the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high,
like a spur to a post: and this fence was so strong that neither
man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a
great deal of time and labor, especially to cut the piles in the
woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth.
The entrance into this place I made to be not by a door, but
by a short ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was
in, I lifted over after me; and so I was completely fenced in
and fortified, as I thought, from all the world, and consequently
slept secure in the night, which otherwise I could not have
done; though as it appeared afterwards, there was no need of
all this caution against the enemies that I apprehended danger
from.
A FOOTPRINT
It happened one day about noon, going toward my boat, I
was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot
on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I
stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition.
I listened, I looked about me, but I could hear nothing or see
anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went
up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one: I could
see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see
if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my
fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly
the print of a foot-toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How
it came hither I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine; but
after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly con-
fused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not
feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last
degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistak-
ing every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance
to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various
shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in,
how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and


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DANIEL DEFOE
4489
what strange unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts
by the way. When I came to my castle (for so I think I called
it ever after this) I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I
went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the
hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot remember;
no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never frightened
hare fled to cover or fox to earth with more terror of mind than
I to this retreat.
FROM HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON >
SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS OF THE PEOPLE
B
Ur I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising
time; while the fears of the people were young, they were
increased strangely by several odd incidents, which put
altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people
did not rise as one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the
place as a space of ground designed by heaven for an Akeldama
doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all
that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name
but a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so
many wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have
often wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.
In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for sev-
eral months before the plague, as there did the year after,
another, a little before the fire; the old women, and the phleg-
matic hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost
call the old women too, remarked, especially afterward, though
not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets
passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses
that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city
alone. That the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull,
languid color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow; but
that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or as
others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that
accordingly one foretold a heavy judgment, slow but severe,
terrible, and frightful, as was the plague. But the other foretold
a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, as was the conflagration; nay,
so particular some people were, that as they looked upon that
comet preceding the fire they fancied that they not only saw it


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4490
DANIEL DEFOE
pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with
their eye, but they even heard it, that it made a rushing mighty
noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance and but just per-
ceivable.
-
――――
I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had had so
much of the common notion of such things in my head that I
was apt to look upon them as the forerunners and warnings of
God's judgments; and especially when the plague had followed
the first, I saw yet another of the like kind, I could not but
say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the city.
The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely in-
creased by the error of the times, in which I think the people,
from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to
prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives'
tales, than ever they were before or since: whether this unhappy
temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who
got money by it, that is to say, by printing predictions and prog-
nostications, I know not; but certain it is, books frighted them
terribly; such as 'Lily's Almanack,' 'Gadbury's Astrological Pre-
dictions,' 'Poor Robin's Almanack,' and the like; also several
pretended religious books, one entitled, 'Come out of Her, my
People, lest Ye be Partakers of her Plagues'; another called
'Fair Warning'; another, 'Britain's Remembrancer'; and many
such, all or most part of which foretold, directly or covertly, the
ruin of the city; nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to
run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they
were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who like
Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, "Yet forty days, and
London shall be destroyed. " I will not be positive whether he
said forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about naked,
except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night,
like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, "Woe to Jerusa-
lem! " a little before the destruction of that city; so this poor
naked creature cried, "Oh! the great and the dreadful God! " and
said no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice.
and countenance full of horror, a swift pace; and nobody could
ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least
that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several
times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would
not enter into speech with me or any one else, but kept on his
dismal cries continually.


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DANIEL DEFOE
4491
These things terrified the people to the last degree; and
especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already,
they found one or two in the hills, dead of the plague at St.
Giles's.
Next to these public things were the dreams of old women;
or I should say, the interpretation of old women upon other
people's dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of
their wits. Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for
that there would be such a plague in London, so that the living
would not be able to bury the dead; others saw apparitions in
the air; and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without
breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and
saw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of the peo-
ple was really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if
they who were poring continually at the clouds saw shapes and
figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing in
them but air and vapor. Here they told us they saw a flaming
sword held in a hand, coming out of a cloud, with a point
hanging directly over the city. There they saw hearses and
coffins in the air carrying to be buried. And there again, heaps
of dead bodies lying unburied and the like; just as the imagina-
tion of the poor terrified people furnished them with matter to
work upon.
"So hypochondriac fancies represent
Ships, armies, battles in the firmament;
Till steady eyes the exhalations solve,
And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve. »
I could fill this account with the strange relations such people
give every day of what they have seen; and every one was so
positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that
there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or
being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand and pro-
fane and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague
was begun, otherwise than as I have said in St. Giles's,—I think
it was in March,- seeing a crowd of people in the street I joined
with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up
into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to
her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in
his hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She
described every part of the figure to the life, showed them the


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DANIEL DEFOE
4492
motion and the form, and the poor people came into it so
eagerly and with so much readiness: "Yes! I see it all plainly,"
says one, "there's the sword as plain as can be;" another saw
the angel; one saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious
creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked
as earnestly as the rest, but perhaps not with so much willing-
ness to be imposed upon; and I said indeed that I could see
nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side by the shining of
the sun upon the other part. The woman endeavored to show
it me, but could not make me confess that I saw it, which
indeed if I had, I must have lied; but the woman turning to me
looked me in the face and fancied I laughed, in which her imagi-
nation deceived her too, for I really did not laugh, but was
seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified by the
force of their own imagination. However, she turned to me,
called me a profane fellow and a scoffer, told me that it was a
time of God's anger, and dreadful judgments were approaching,
and that despisers such as I should wander and perish.
The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she, and I
found there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at
them, and that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able
to undeceive them. So I left them, and this appearance passed
for as real as the blazing star itself.
Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was
in going through a narrow passage from Petty France into
Bishopsgate Churchyard, by a row of almshouses. There are two
churchyards to Bishopsgate Church or parish; one we go over to
pass from the place called Petty France into Bishopsgate Street,
coming out just by the church door; the other is on the side of
the narrow passage where the almshouses are on the left, and a
dwarf wall with a palisade on it on the right hand, and the city
wall on the other side more to the right.
In this narrow passage stands a man looking through the
palisades into the burying-place, and as many people as the nar-
rowness of the place would admit to stop without hindering the
passage of others; and he was talking mighty eagerly to them,
and pointing now to one place, then to another, and affirming
that he saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone there: he
described the shape, the posture, and the movement of it so
exactly, that it was the greatest amazement to him in the world
that everybody did not see it as well as he. On a sudden he


## p. 4493 (#271) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4493
would cry, "There it is! Now it comes this way! " then, «Tis
turned back! " till at length he persuaded the people into so firm
a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it; and thus he came
every day making a strange hubbub, considering it was so nar-
row a passage, till Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the
ghost would seem to start, and as if he were called away, dis-
appear on a sudden.
I looked earnestly every way and at the very moment that
this man directed, but could not see the least appearance of
anything; but so positive was this poor man that he gave them
vapors in abundance, and sent them away trembling and fright-
ened, till at length few people that knew of it cared to go
through that passage, and hardly anybody by night on any ac-
count whatever.
This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the
houses, and to the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating,
or else they so understanding it, that abundance of people should
come to be buried in that churchyard, as indeed happened; but
that he saw such aspects, I must acknowledge I never believed,
nor could I see anything of it myself, though I looked most
earnestly to see it if possible.
HOW QUACKS AND IMPOSITORS PREYED ON THE FEARS OF THE PEOPLE
I cannot omit a subtlety of one of those quack operators, with
which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did
nothing for them without money. He had, it seems, added to
his bills which he gave out in the streets, this advertisement in
capital letters; viz. , "He gives advice to the poor for nothing. "
Abundance of people came to him accordingly, to whom he
made a great many fine speeches, examined them of the state of
their health and of the constitution of their bodies, and told
them many good things to do which were of no great moment;
but the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a prepara-
tion which, if they took such a quantity of every morning, he
would pawn his life that they should never have the plague,—
no, though they lived in the house with people that were infected.
This made the people all resolve to have it; but then the price
of that was so much,-I think it was half a crown. "But, sir,”
says one poor woman, "I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by
the parish, and your bills say you give the poor your help for


## p. 4494 (#272) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4494
nothing. " "Ay, good woman," says the doctor, "so I do, as I
published there; I give my advice, but not my physic! "
« Alas,
sir," says she, "that is a snare laid for the poor then, for you
give them your advice for nothing: that is to say, you advise
them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every
shopkeeper with his wares. " Here the woman began to give him
ill words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to
all the people that came, till the doctor, finding she turned away
his customers, was obliged to call her up-stairs again and give
her his box of physic for nothing, which perhaps too was good
for nothing when she had it.
THE PEOPLE ARE QUARANTINED IN THEIR HOUSES
This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel
and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made
bitter lamentations; complaints of the severity of it were also
daily brought to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly and some
maliciously shut up; I cannot say, but upon inquiry, many that
complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued;
and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person
and the sickness not appearing infectious, or if uncertain, yet
on his being content to be carried to the pest-house, was released.
As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o'clock
there was a great noise; it is true indeed that there was not
much crowd, because the people were not very free to gather
together, or to stay together when they were there, nor did I
stay long there; but the outcry was loud enough to prompt my
curiosity, and I called to one who looked out of a window, and
asked what was the matter.
A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post
at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected,
and was shut up; he had been there all night for two nights.
together, as he told his story, and the day watchman had been
there one day, and was now come to relieve him; all this while
no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen,
they called for nothing, sent him on no errands, which used to be
the chief business of the watchman, neither had they given him
any disturbance, as he said, from Monday afternoon, when he
heard a great crying and screaming in the house, which as he
supposed was occasioned by some of the family dying just at


## p. 4495 (#273) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4495
that time. It seems the night before, the dead-cart, as it was
called, had been stopt there, and a servant-maid had been brought
down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were
called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and
carried her away.
«<
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he
heard that noise and crying as above, and nobody answered a
great while; but at last one looked out and said with an angry
quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one
that was crying, What d'ye want, that you make such a knock-
ing? »
He answered, "I am the watchman; how do you do?
What is the matter? » The person answered, "What is that to
you? Stop the dead-cart. " This, it seems, was about one o'clock;
soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then
knocked again, but nobody answered; he continued knocking, and
the bellman called out several times, "Bring out your dead;" but
nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called
to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.
The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let
them alone till the morning man, or day watchman, as they
called him, came to relieve him. Giving him an account of the
particulars, they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody
answered, and they observed that the window or casement at
which the person looked out who had answered before, continued
open, being up two pair of stairs.
Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long
ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into
the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in
a dismal manner, having no clothes on her but her shift; but
though he called aloud, and putting in his long staff, knocked
hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could
he hear any noise in the house.
He came down upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who
went up also, and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint
either the lord mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did
not offer to go in at the window. The magistrate, it seems,
upon the information of the two men ordered the house to be
broken open, a constable and other persons being appointed to
be present, that nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it
was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that
young woman, who having been infected and past recovery, the


## p. 4496 (#274) ###########################################

4496
DANIEL DEFOE
rest had left her to die by herself, and every one gone, having
found some way to delude the watchman and to get open the
door, or get out at some back door, or over the tops of the
houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and
shrieks which he heard, it was supposed they were the passionate
cries of the family at this bitter parting, which to be sure it was
to them all, this being the sister to the mistress of the family.
The man of the house, his wife, several children and servants,
being all gone and fled; whether sick or sound, that I could
never learn, nor indeed did I make much inquiry after it.
MORAL EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE
Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to
take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile
men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly
owing to our easy situation in life, and our putting these things
far from us, that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued,
prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much
kept and so far carried on among us as it is: another plague
year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with
death or with diseases that threaten death would scum off the
gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and
bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked
on things before; as the people who had been used to join with
the church were reconciled at this time with the admitting
the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off
from the communion of the Church of England, were now con-
tent to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the
worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror
of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their
less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.
I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into
arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable com-
pliance one with another; I do not see that it is probable such a
discourse would be either suitable or successful; the breaches
seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening farther than to
closing; and who am I that I should think myself able to influ
ence either one side or the other? But this I may repeat again,
that it is evident death will reconcile us all-on the other side
the grave we shall be all brethren again; in heaven, whither


## p. 4497 (#275) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4497
I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall
find neither prejudice nor scruple; there we shall be of one prin-
ciple and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand
in hand to the place where we shall join heart and hand, with-
out the least hesitation and with the most complete harmony.
and affection; I say, why we cannot do so here, I can say noth-
ing to, neither shall I say anything more of it but that it remains
to be lamented.
TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE STREETS
This [38,195 deaths in about a month] was a prodigious num-
ber of itself; but if I should add the reasons which I have to
believe that this account was deficient, and how deficient it was,
you would with me make no scruple to believe that there died
above 10,000 a week for all those weeks, and a proportion for
several weeks both before and after. The confusion among the
people, especially within the city, at that time was inexpressible;
the terror was so great at last that the courage of the people
appointed to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several
of them died, although they had the distemper before, and were
recovered; and some of them dropped down when they had been
carrying the bodies even at the pitside, and just ready to throw
them in; and this confusion was greater in the city, because they
had flattered themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the
bitterness of death was past. One cart, they told us, going up
to Shoreditch, was forsaken by the drivers, or being left to one
man to drive, he died in the street; and the horses, going on,
overthrew the cart and left the bodies, some thrown here, some
there, in a dismal manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in
the great pit in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or having
been gone and abandoned it; and the horses running too near it,
the cart fell in and drew the horses in also. It was suggested
that the driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon
him, by reason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the
bodies; but that, I suppose, could not be certain.
In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times,
as I have heard, found standing at the churchyard gate, full of
dead bodies; but neither bellman, nor driver, nor any one else
with it. Neither in these nor in many other cases did they know
what bodies they had in their cart, for sometimes they were let
down with ropes out of balconies and out of windows; and some-
VIII-282


## p. 4498 (#276) ###########################################

4498
DANIEL DEFOE
times the bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes other
people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they trouble them-
selves to keep any account of the numbers.
THE PLAGUE DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES
I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of
God, and the reverence to his Providence, which ought always
to be on our minds on such occasions as these; doubtless the
visitation itself is a stroke from heaven upon a city, or country,
or nation where it falls, a messenger of his vengeance, and a
loud call to that nation, or country, or city, to humiliation and
repentance, according to that of the prophet Jeremiah, xviii.
7, 8: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and
concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and pull down, and destroy
it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from
their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto
them. " Now to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on
the minds of men on such occasions, and not to lessen them,
it is that I have left those minutes upon record.
I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason
of those things upon the immediate hand of God, and the
appointment and direction of his Providence; nay, on the con-
trary there were many wonderful deliverances of persons when
infected, which intimate singular and remarkable Providence in
the particular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my
own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it
with thankfulness.
But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising
from natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propa-
gated by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgment for
its being under the conduct of human causes and effects: for as
the Divine power has formed the whole scheme of nature, and
maintains nature in its course, so the same power thinks fit to
let his own actings with men, whether of mercy or judgment, to
go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he is pleased
to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means; excepting
and reserving to himself nevertheless a power to act in a super-
natural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident that in
the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occa-
sion for supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of things.


## p. 4499 (#277) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4499
appears sufficiently armed and made capable of all the effects
that heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes
and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection, impercep-
tible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute the
fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon super-
naturals and miracles.
This acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such,
and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most
exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must
be allowed to believe, and I have so many examples fresh in
my memory to convince me of it that I think none can resist
their evidence,-I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one
in this whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but
who received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody,
or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody that was infected
'before.
SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE THROUGH NEcessities of THE POOR
Before people came to right notions of the infection, and
of infecting one another, people were only shy of those that
were really sick; a man with a cap upon his head, or with
cloths round his neck, which was the case of those that had
swellings there,- such was indeed frightful. But when we saw a
gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his hand,
his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not
the least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while
freely, especially with their neighbors and such as they knew.
But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well
from the sound,- that is, the seemingly sound, as the sick, and
that those people that thought themselves entirely free were often-
times the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood.
that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I
say, they began, to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of
people locked themselves up so as not to come abroad into any
company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promis-
cuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least
not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of
any smell from them; and when they were obliged to con-
verse at a distance with strangers, they would always have
preservatives in their mouths, and about their clothes, to repel
and keep off the infection.
-


## p. 4500 (#278) ###########################################

4500
DANIEL DEFOE
It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these
cautions, they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did
not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others
before; and thousands of families were preserved, speaking with
due reserve to the direction of divine Providence, by that means.
But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the
poor; they went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers,
full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless
of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well.
Where they could get employment, they pushed into any kind of
business, the most dangerous and the most liable to infection;
and if they were spoken to, their answer would be:-"I must
trust in God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for,
and there is an end of me;" and the like. Or thus:-"Why,
what must I do? I cannot starve; I had as good have the
plague as perish for want; I have no work, what could I do?
I must do this or beg. " Suppose it was burying the dead, or
attending the sick, or watching infected houses, which were all
terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same. It is
true, necessity was a justifiable, warrantable plea, and nothing
could be better; but their way of talk was much the same where
the necessities were not the same. This adventurous conduct of
the poor was that which brought the plague among them in a
most furious manner; and this, joined to the distress of their cir-
cumstances when taken, was the reason why they died so by
heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one jot of better hus-
bandry among them, I mean the laboring poor,-while they
were all well and getting money, than there was before, but as
lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for to-morrow as ever;
so that when they came to be taken sick, they were immedi-
ately in the utmost distress, as well for want as for sickness, as
well for lack of food as lack of health.
-


## p. 4501 (#279) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4501
FROM
COLONEL JACK›
COLONEL JACK AND CAPTAIN JACK ESCAPE ARREST
WE HAD not parleyed thus long, but though in the dead of
W* the night, came a man to the other inn door-for as I
said above, there are two inns at that place — and called
for a pot of beer; but the people were all in bed, and would not
rise; he asked them if they had seen two fellows come that way
upon one horse. The man said he had; that they went by in
the afternoon, and asked the way to Cambridge, but did not stop
only to drink one mug. "Oh! " says he, are they gone to Cam-
bridge? Then I'll be with them quickly. " I was awake in a
little garret of the next inn, where we lodged; and hearing the
fellow call at the door, got up and went to the window, having
some uneasiness at every noise I heard; and by that means heard
the whole story.
Now the case is plain, our hour was not come;
our fate had determined other things for us, and we were to be
reserved for it. The matter was thus: -When we first came to
Bournbridge we called at the first house and asked the way
to Cambridge, drank a mug of beer, and went on, and they
might see us turn off to go the way they directed; but night
coming on, and we being very weary, we thought we should not
find the way; and we came back in the dusk of the evening and
went into the other house, being the first as we came back, as
that where we called before was the first as we went forward.
You may be sure I was alarmed now, as indeed I had reason
to be. The Captain was in bed and fast asleep, but I wakened
him, and roused him with a noise that frighted him enough.
"Rise, Jack," said I, "we are both ruined; they are come after
us hither. " Indeed, I was wrong to terrify him at that rate; for
he started and jumped out of bed and ran directly to the win-
dow, not knowing where he was, and not quite awake, was just
going to jump out of the window, but I laid hold of him.
"I won't be taken," says
་
What are you going to do? " says I.
he; "let me alone; where are they? "
This was all confusion; and he was so out of himself with the
fright, and being overcome with sleep, that I had much to do to
prevent his jumping out of the window. However, I held him.
fast and thoroughly wakened him, and then all was well again.
and he was presently composed.


## p. 4502 (#280) ###########################################

4502
DANIEL DEFOE
Then I told him the story, and we sat together upon the bed-
side, considering what we should do; upon the whole, as the fel-
low that called was apparently gone to Cambridge, we had
nothing to fear, but to be quiet till daybreak, and then to mount
and be gone.
Accordingly, as soon as day peeped we were up; and having
happily informed ourselves of the road at the other house, and
being told that the road to Cambridge turned off on the left
hand, and that the road to Newmarket lay straight forward: I
say, having learnt this, the Captain told me he would walk away
on foot towards Newmarket, and so when I came to go out I
should appear as a single traveler; and accordingly he went out
immediately, and away he walked, and he traveled so hard that
when I came to follow I thought once that he had dropped me,
for though I rode hard, I got no sight of him for an hour. At
length, having passed the great bank called the Devil's Ditch, I
found him and took him up behind me, and we rode double till
we came almost to the end of Newmarket town. Just at the
hither house in the town stood a horse at a door, just as it was
at Puckeridge. "Now," says Jack, "if the horse was at the
other end of the town I would have him, as sure as we had the
other at Puckeridge; " but it would not do; so he got down, and
walked through the town on the right-hand side of the way.
He had not got half through the town, but the horse, having
somehow or other got loose, came trotting gently on by himself,
and nobody following him. The Captain, an old soldier at such
work, as soon as the horse was got a pretty way before him, and
that he saw nobody followed, sets up a run after the horse, and
the horse, hearing him follow, ran the faster; then the Captain
calls out, "Stop the horse! " and by this time the horse was got
almost to the farther end of the town; the people of the house
where he stood not missing him all the while.
Upon his calling out "Stop the horse! " the poor people of
the town, such as were next at hand, ran from both sides of the
way and stopped the horse for him, as readily as could be, and
held him for him till he came up; he very gravely comes up to
the horse, hits him a blow or two, and calls him "dog" for run
ning away; gives the man twopence that catched him for him,
mounts, and away he comes after me.
This was the oddest adventure that could have happened, for
the horse stole the Captain, the Captain did not steal the horse.


## p. 4503 (#281) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4503
When he came up to me, "Now, Colonel Jack," says he, "what
do you say to good luck? Would you have had me refuse the
horse, when he came so civilly to ask me to ride? "-"No, no,”
said I; "you have got this horse by your wit, not by design; and
you may go on now, I think; you are in a safer condition than
I am, if we are taken. "
COLONEL JACK FINDS CAPTAIN JACK HARD TO MANAGE
We arrived here very easy and safe, and while we were con-
sidering of what way we should travel next, we found we were
got to a point, and that there was no way now left but that by
the Washes into Lincolnshire, and that was represented as very
dangerous; so an opportunity offering of a man that was travel-
ing over the fens, we took him for our guide, and went with him
to Spalding, and from thence to a town called Deeping, and so
to Stamford in Lincolnshire.
This is a large populous town, and it was market day when
we came to it; so we put in at a little house at the hither end
of the town, and walked into the town. Here it was not possible
to restrain my Captain from playing his feats of art, and my
heart ached for him; I told him I would not go with him, for he
would not promise to leave off, and I was so terribly concerned
at the apprehensions of his venturous humor that I would not so
much as stir out of my lodging; but it was in vain to persuade
him. He went into the market and found a mountebank there,
which was what he wanted. How he picked two pockets there
in one quarter of an hour, and brought to our quarters a piece
of new holland of eight or nine ells, a piece of stuff, and played
three or four pranks more in less than two hours; and how after-
wards he robbed a doctor of physic, and yet came off clear in
them: all this, I say, as above, belongs to his story, not mine.
I scolded heartily at him when he came back, and told him he
would certainly ruin himself and me too before he left off, and
threatened in so many words that I would leave him and go
back, and carry the horse to Puckeridge, where we borrowed it,
and so go to London by myself.
He promised amendment, but as we resolved (now we were
in the great road) to travel by night, so, it being not yet night,
he gives me the slip again; and was not gone half an hour, but
he comes back with a gold watch in his hand.
"Come," says he,


## p. 4504 (#282) ###########################################

4504
DANIEL DEFOE
"why ain't you ready? I am ready to go as soon as you will: "
and with that he pulls out the gold watch. I was amazed at
such a thing as that in a country town; but it seems there were
prayers at one of the churches in the evening, and he, placing
himself as the occasion directed, found the way to be so near a
lady as to get it from her side, and walked off with it unper-
ceived.
The same night we went away by moonlight, after having
the satisfaction to hear the watch cried, and ten guineas offered
for it again; he would have been glad of the ten guineas instead
of the watch, but durst not venture to carry it home. "Well,"
says I, "you are afraid, and indeed you have reason; give it to
me; I will venture to carry it again;" but he would not let me,
but told me that when we came into Scotland we might sell any-
thing there without danger; which was true indeed, for there
they asked us no questions.
We set out, as I said, in the evening by moonlight, and
traveled hard, the road being very plain and large, till we came
to Grantham, by which time it was about two in the morning,
and all the town as it were dead asleep; so we went on for
Newark, where we reached about eight in the morning, and there
we lay down and slept most of the day; and by this sleeping so
continually in the daytime, I kept him from doing a great deal
of mischief which he would otherwise have done.
COLONEL JACK'S FIRST WIFE IS NOT DISPOSED TO BE ECONOMICAL
We soon found a house proper for our dwelling, and so went
to housekeeping; we had not been long together but I found
that gay temper of my wife returned, and she threw off the
mask of her gravity and good conduct that I had so long fancied
was her mere natural disposition, and now, having no more
occasion for disguises, she resolved to seem nothing but what
she really was, a wild untamed colt, perfectly loose, and careless
to conceal any part, no, not the worst of her conduct.
She carried on this air of levity to such an excess that I
could not but be dissatisfied at the expense of it, for she kept
company that I did not like, lived beyond what I could support,
and sometimes lost at play more than I cared to pay; upon
which one day I took occasion to mention it, but lightly, and


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DANIEL DEFOE
4505
said to her by way of raillery that we lived merrily for as long
as it would last. She turned short upon me:
"What do you
mean? " says she; "why, you do not pretend to be uneasy, do
ye ? »
"No, no, madam, not I, by no means; it is no business
of mine, you know," said I, "to inquire what my wife spends,
or whether she spends more than I can afford, or less; I only
desire the favor to know, as near as you can guess, how long
you will please to take to dispatch me, for I would not be too
long a-dying. ”
"I do not know what you talk of," says she. "You may die
as leisurely or as hastily as you please, when your time comes;
I ain't a-going to kill you, as I know of. "
«<
"But you are going to starve me, madam," said I; and
hunger is as leisurely a death as breaking upon the wheel. "
"I starve you! why, are not you a great Virginia merchant,
and did not I bring you £1500? What would you have? Sure,
you can maintain a wife out of that, can't you? "
"Yes, madam," says I, "I could maintain a wife, but not a
gamester, though you had brought me £1500 a year; no estate
is big enough for a box and dice. "
She took fire at that, and flew out in a passion, and after a
great many bitter words told me in short that she saw no occa-
sion to alter her conduct; and as for not maintaining her, when
I could not maintain her longer she would find some way or
other to maintain herself.
Some time after the first rattle of this kind she vouchsafed to
let me know that she was pleased to be with child; I was at
first glad of it, in hopes it would help to abate her madness;
but it was all one, and her being with child only added to the
rest, for she made such preparations for her lying-in, and other
appendixes of a child's being born, that in short I found she
would be downright distracted; and I took the liberty to tell her
one day she would soon bring herself and me to destruction, and
entreated her to consider that such figures as those were quite
above us and out of our circle; and in short, that I neither
could nor would allow such expenses; that at this rate two or
three children would effectually ruin me, and that I desired her
to consider what she was doing.
She told me with an air of disdain that it was none of her
business to consider anything of that matter; that if I could not
allow it she would allow it herself, and I might do my worst.


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4506
DANIEL DEFOE
I begged her to consider things for all that, and not drive me
to extremities; that I married her to love and cherish her, and
use her as a good wife ought to be used, but not to be ruined
and undone by her. In a word, nothing could mollify her, nor
any argument persuade her to moderation; but withal she took it
so heinously that I should pretend to restrain her, that she told
me in so many words she would drop her burthen with me, and
then if I did not like it she would take care of herself; she
would not live with me an hour, for she would not be restrained,
not she; and talked a long while at that rate.
I told her, as to her child, which she called her burthen, it
should be no burthen to me; as to the rest she might do as she
pleased; it might however do me this favor, that I should have
no more lyings-in at the rate of £136 at a time, as I found she
intended it should be now. She told me she could not tell that;
if she had no more by me, she hoped she should by somebody
else. "Say you so, madam? " said I; "then they that get them
shall keep them. " She did not know that neither, she said, and
so turned it off jeering, and as it were laughing at me.
This last discourse nettled me, I must confess, and the more
because I had a great deal of it and very often; till, in short,
we began at length to enter into a friendly treaty about parting.
Nothing could be more criminal than the several discourses
we had upon this subject; she demanded a separate maintenance,
and in particular, at the rate of £300 a year; and I demanded
security of her that she should not run me in debt; she demand-
ing the keeping of the child, with an allowance of £100 a year
for that, and I demanding that I should be secured from being
charged for keeping any she might have by somebody else, as
she had threatened me.
In the interval, and during these contests, she dropped her
burthen (as she called it), and brought me a son, a very fine
child.
She was content during her lying-in to abate a little, though
it was but a very little indeed, of the great expense she had
intended; and with some difficulty and persuasion was content
with a suit of child-bed linen of £15 instead of one she had
intended of threescore; and this she magnified as a particular
testimony of her condescension, and a yielding to my avaricious
temper, as she called it.


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DANIEL DEFOE
4507
THE DEVIL DOES NOT CONCERN HIMSELF WITH PETTY
MATTERS
From The Modern History of the Devil›
NOR
OR will I undertake to tell you, till I have talked farther
with him about it, how far the Devil is concerned to dis-
cover frauds, detect murders, reveal secrets, and espe-
cially to tell where any money is hid, and show folks where to
find it; it is an odd thing that Satan should think it of conse-
quence to come and tell us where such a miser hid a strong box,
or where such an old woman buried her chamberpot full of
money, the value of all which is perhaps but a trifle, when,
at the same time he lets so many veins of gold, so many un-
exhausted mines, nay, mountains of silver (as we may depend on
it are hid in the bowels of the earth, and which it would be so
much to the good of whole nations to discover), lie still there,
and never say one word of them to anybody. Besides, how does
the Devil's doing things so foreign to himself, and so out of his
way, agree with the rest of his character; namely, showing a
friendly disposition to mankind, or doing beneficent things?
This is so beneath Satan's quality, and looks so little, that I
scarce know what to say to it; but that which is still more pun-
gent in the case is, these things are so out of his road, and so
foreign to his calling, that it shocks our faith in them, and seems
to clash with all the just notions we have of him and of his
business in the world. The like is to be said of those merry
little turns we bring him in acting with us and upon us upon
trifling and simple occasions, such as tumbling chairs and stools
about house, setting pots and kettles bottom upward, tossing
the glass and crockery-ware about without breaking, and such-
like mean foolish things, beneath the dignity of the Devil, who
in my opinion is rather employed in setting the world with the
bottom upward, tumbling kings and crowns about, and dashing
the nations one against another; raising tempests and storms,
whether at sea or on shore; and in a word, doing capital mis-
chiefs, suitable to his nature and agreeable to his name Devil,
and suited to that circumstance of his condition which I have
fully represented in the primitive part of his exiled state.
But to bring in the Devil playing at push-pin with the world,
or like Domitian, catching flies,- that is to say, doing nothing to


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4508
DANIEL DEFOE
the purpose, this is not only deluding ourselves, but putting a
slur upon the Devil himself; and I say, I shall not dishonor
Satan so much as to suppose anything in it; however, as I must
have a care too how I take away the proper materials of winter-
evening frippery, and leave the goodwives nothing of the Devil
to frighten the children with, I shall carry the weighty point no
farther. No doubt the Devil and Dr. Faustus were very inti-
mate; I should rob you of a very significant proverb if I should
so much as doubt it. No doubt the Devil showed himself in the
glass to that fair lady who looked in to see where to place her
patches; but then it should follow too that the Devil is an enemy
to the ladies wearing patches, and that has some difficulties in it
which we cannot easily reconcile; but we must tell the story,
and leave out the consequences.
――――
DEFOE ADDRESSES HIS PUBLIC
From An Appeal to Honor and Justice'
I
HOPE the time has come at last when the voice of moderate
principles may be heard. Hitherto the noise has been sc
great, and the prejudices and passions of men so strong, that
it had been but in vain to offer at any argument, or for any
man to talk of giving a reason for his actions; and this alone
has been the cause why, when other men, who I think have less
to say in their own defense, are appealing to the public and strug
gling to defend themselves, I alone have been silent under the infi-
nite clamors and reproaches, causeless curses, unusual threatenings,
and the most unjust and unjurious treatment in the world.
I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but
very few are concerned to clear the innocent. I hope some will
be inclined to judge impartially, and have yet reserved so much
of the Christian as to believe, and at least to hope, that a
rational creature cannot abandon himself so as to act without
some reason, and are willing not only to have me' defend myself,
but to be able to answer for me where they hear me causelessly
insulted by others, and therefore are willing to have such just
arguments put into their mouths as the cause will bear.
As for those who are prepossessed, and according to the
modern justice of parties are resolved to be so, let them go; I


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DANIEL DEFOE
4509
am not arguing with them, but against them; they act so contrary
to justice, to reason, to religion, so contrary to the rules of
Christians and of good manners, that they are not to be argued
with, but to be exposed or entirely neglected. I have a receipt
against all the uneasiness which it may be supposed to give me,
and that is, to contemn slander, and think it not worth the least
concern; neither should I think it worth while to give any
answer to it, if it were not on some other accounts, of which I
shall speak as I go on. If any young man ask me why I am in
such haste to publish this matter at this time, among many other
good reasons which I could give, these are some:
I. I think I have long enough been made Fabula Vulgi, and
borne the weight of general slander; and I should be wanting to
truth, to my family, and to myself, if I did not give a fair and
true state of my conduct, for impartial men to judge of when I
am no more in being to answer for myself.
2.
By the hints of mortality, and by the infirmities of a life
of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason to think I am not a great
way off from, if not very near to, the great ocean of eternity,
and the time may not be long ere I embark on the last voyage.
Wherefore I think I should even accounts with this world before
I go, that no actions [slanders] may lie against my heirs, execu-
tors, administrators, and assigns, to disturb them in the peaceable
possession of their father's [character] inheritance.
3. I fear-God grant I have not a second sight in it—that
this lucid interval of temper and moderation which shines,
though dimly too, upon us at this time, will be of but short
continuance; and that some men, who know not how to use the
advantage God has put into their hands with moderation, will
push, in spite of the best Prince in the world, at such extravagant
things, and act with such an intemperate forwardness, as will
revive the heats and animosities which wise and good men were
in hopes should be allayed by the happy accession of the King to
the throne.
It is and ever was my opinion, that moderation is the only
virtue by which the peace and tranquillity of this nation can be
preserved. Even the King himself - I believe his Majesty will
allow me that freedom-can only be happy in the enjoyment of
the crown by a moderative administration. If his Majesty should
be obliged, contrary to his known disposition, to join with intem-
perate councils, if it does not lessen his security I am persuaded


## p. 4510 (#288) ###########################################

4510
DANIEL DEFOE
it will lessen his satisfaction. It cannot be pleasant or agree-
able, and I think it cannot be safe, to any just prince to rule
over a divided people, split into incensed and exasperated parties.
Though a skillful mariner may have courage to master a tem-
pest, and goes fearless through a storm, yet he can never be
said to delight in the danger; a fresh fair gale and a quiet sea
is the pleasure of his voyage, and we have a saying worth
notice to them that are otherwise minded,--" Quit ama periculum,
periebat in illo. "
ENGAGING A MAID-SERVANT
From Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business>
B
ESIDES, the fear of spoiling their clothes makes them afraid of
household work, so that in a little time we shall have none
but chambermaids and nurserymaids; and of this let me
give you one instance. My family is composed of myself and
sister, a man and maid; and being without the last, a young
wench came to hire herself. The man was gone out, and my
sister above-stairs, so I opened the door myself, and this person
presented herself to my view, dressed completely, more like a
visitor than a servant-maid; she, not knowing me, asked for my
sister. "Pray, madam," said I, "be pleased to walk into the parlor;
she shall wait on you presently. " Accordingly I handed madam
in, who took it very cordially. After some apology I left her
alone for a minute or two, while I, stupid wretch! ran up to my
sister and told her there was a gentlewoman below come to visit
her. "Dear brother," said she, "don't leave her alone; go down and
entertain her while I dress myself. " Accordingly down I went,
and talked of indifferent affairs; meanwhile my sister dressed her-
self all over again, not being willing to be seen in an undress.
At last she came down dressed as clean as her visitor; but how
great was my surprise when I found my fine lady a common
servant-wench.
My sister, understanding what she was, began to inquire what
wages she expected. She modestly asked but eight pounds a
year. The next question was, "What work she could do to
deserve such wages? " to which she answered she could clean a
house, or dress a common family dinner. "But cannot you wash,”
replied my sister, "or get up linen? " She answered in the


## p. 4511 (#289) ###########################################

DANIEL DEFOE
4511
negative, and said she would undertake neither, nor would she
go into a family that did not put out their linen to wash and
hire a charwoman to scour. She desired to see the house, and
having carefully surveyed it, said the work was too hard for her,
nor could she undertake it.
This put my sister beyond all
patience, and me into the greatest admiration. "Young woman,”
she said, "you have made a mistake; I want a housemaid, and
you are a chambermaid. " "No, madam," replied she, "I am not
needlewoman enough for that. " "And yet you ask eight pounds a
year,” replied my sister. "Yes, madam," said she, "nor shall I
bate a farthing. " "Then get you gone for a lazy impudent bag-
gage," said I; "you want to be a boarder, not a servant; have
you a fortune or estate, that you dress at that rate? ” "No, sir,"
said she, "but I hope I may wear what I work for without
offense. " "What! you work? " interrupted my sister; "why, you
do not seem willing to undertake any work; you will not wash
nor scour; you cannot dress a dinner for company; you are no
needlewoman; and our little house of two rooms on a floor is too
much for you.
For God's sake, what can you do? " "Madam,"
replied she pertly, "I know my business, and do not fear service;
there are more places than parish churches: if you wash at
home, you should have a laundrymaid; if you give entertainments,
you must have a cookmaid; if you have any needlework, you
should have a chambermaid; and such a house as this is enough.
for a housemaid, in all conscience. "
I was so pleased at the wit, and astonished at the impudence
of the girl, so dismissed her with thanks for her instructions,
assuring her that when I kept four maids she should be house-
maid if she pleased.
THE DEVIL
From The True-Born Englishman'
WH
HEREVER God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.
For ever since he first debauched the mind,
He made a perfect conquest of mankind.