and A History, by a Scots Gentleman, in the Swedish Service, of the Wars of Charles XII. This list does not include, moreover, numerous pamphlets, many of which were certainly from his pen.

Defoe's magazine activities did not cease, as was once supposed, with the death of the Mercator, in 1714. He used his pen actively in political writings until, about 1730, old age, gout, and apoplexy forced him to give in. His most important work of this kind was with a Jacobite paper, Mist's Journal. The discovery of certain papers by Mr. William Lee in 1864 has revealed the until then well-guarded secret. The government, it seems, was looking about for a man who, apparently aiding Mist, should in reality check him. Defoe, who had already been suspected of Jacobite conspiracies in Ireland, was just the man; for the government, knowing the secret, could run no danger, and Mist, believing in Defoe's sympathy and rejoicing in a friend not altogether the enemy of the government, readily accepted his coöperation. "The Weekly Journal and Dormer's Letter, as also The Mercurius Politicus," Defoe reported to the government, will be always kept (mistakes excepted) to pass as Tory papers, and yet be disabled and enervated, so as to do no mischief or give any offence." For eight years he kept up the deception and reported to his employers. Finally Mist discovered the secret and attempted to murder Defoe, much to that gentleman's astonishment at such ingratitude! The Mercurius Politicus ran for four years (1716-1720), and Dormer's News-Letter for two (1716-1718). Defoe also wrote for many other periodicals, chief among them Applebee's Journal, during the years 1720-1726.

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The climax of Defoe's literary work, however, was in the novel. He was about sixty years old when Robinson Crusoe was written, and he had not written much fiction as such until then. He had had, nevertheless, abundant practice in the use of effective details; he had learned, in the journalistic sense, to make a good "story," so that novel-writing was really not a new step for him. As early as 1706, in the Apparition of Mrs. Veal, he had shown himself able to write excellent fiction. The first part of Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719, the second and third parts in 1720. Defoe asserted that the story, really based on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, was written as early as 1708 from his own experiences, thus cleverly putting the date just one year ahead of Selkirk's appearance in London. The significant thing is that the tale is so real that the author might as well have been Selkirk himself. That was Defoe's greatest art; by it only did he play so successfully the various games, political and literary, which he attempted.

During the years 1720 and 1722 Defoe turned his hand to the writing of fiction with an energy since equaled only by Scott. In 1720 appeared Captain Singleton, Duncan Campbell, and Memoirs of a Cavalier. In 1722 were brought out Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and the Journal of the Plague Year, as credible as if Defoe had actually undergone the experiences he describes. Roxana, of the same type as Moll Flanders, was written in 1724. Defoe was indefatigable. The Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain belongs to 1724-26; the Complete English Tradesman to 1725-27; Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business to 1725; the

History of the Devil to 1726; and Captain Carleton (possibly not his) to 1728.

This ceaseless publication, together with salary from the government, put him for a time in considerable comfort. He built a large house at Stoke Newington, kept a coach, continued his schemes of business, and worked several plantations. Towards the end, however, financial ruin again beset him. His last years are clouded in strange obscurity. Mist seems to have kept his creditors busy. At all events, the old man went into hiding in September, 1729. From his hidingplace he addressed in 1730 a pathetic, querulous appeal to a rather shrewd and unsympathetic son-in-law, Baker. The only redeeming feature of these last years, in fact, is his eagerness to provide for his family. He died finally on the 26th of April, 1731, in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, then a more respectable quarter than now. Pausing to contemplate the life of Defoe one is filled with various emotions, pity for his infirmities, disgust at his trickery, and complete wonder at his vitality and versatility. Perhaps one of the most striking things about him is his loneliness, his lack of friends. The gay wits and great writers of Queen Anne's day knew one another; they gathered often at the coffee-houses, for both jest and quarrel. Even spiteful Mr. Pope was there, and the calm Mr. Addison. But the face of the "Sunday Gentleman " never looked in on their gatherings. He never jested with them, never even quarreled frankly and openly in society. In closing his account of him Mr. Minto says, "Sometimes pure knave seems to be uppermost, sometimes pure patriot; but the mixture is so complex, and the energy of the man so restless, that it almost passes human skill to

unravel the two elements." Yet, whatever, good or bad, may be said of Defoe's life, posterity will never forget the author of Robinson Crusoe. Mankind will always be interested in the man who wrote a book which has taken so strong a hold on two centuries of readers.

JONATHAN SWIFT

JONATHAN SWIFT, the great Dean of St. Patrick's, the famous author of Gulliver, the fiercest satirist of English literature, stands alone in the age of Queen Anne. Addison had his little coterie, Pope had his bright circle of wits, Steele was the cheerful friend of all; Congreve, Gay, and Prior may be thought of in their groups. True, Swift had many friends, notably Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, but, in the deeper sense, he was a solitary figure, solitary by the sad circumstances of his life and by the might of his intellect. Even when dictator of London letters and politics, the centre of all eyes, he was alone. He needed friends, needed them bitterly. Yet no one could completely satisfy his demand; had one given all, Swift would have asked more. And so, when Stella, the one for whom he cared more than for any other, was gone out of his life, his strong intellect turned savagely on itself and broke him on his own wheel. Once his had been the keenest intellect in the whole kingdom, but towards the end, as his mind weakened, he grew violent. Unlike his polished contemporaries, he strove earnestly to speak "the plain truth," and was consistently misunderstood. Nothing is more illustrative of the comparative shallowness of the Augustan Age than Swift's solitariness in it.

There has been, however, especially in the shorter biographies of Swift, a great deal of injustice done the man. Those that have not been misled by a phrase or two or by the unfairness of Irish biographers, who knew Swift