THE period of the Civil War in England has been styled by D'Israeli, in an essay on pamphlets, "The Age of Pamphlets," an expression he had borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, from Johnson. Previously to that era, controversialists had, in the time of Eliza beth, commenced their fire of paper bullets and all the horrors of literary warfare; and indeed, from the beginning of letters, controversy must have had some existence, though in England it had not become a recognized department of popular literature before the epoch of which we have spoken. The reasons for its rapid growth about this time are sufficiently obvious and may be easily recounted. There was in the minds of a majority of the people of England an unsettling of old opinions, chiefly with respect to government, though the discussion of religious opinions soon came to be so closely mingled with debates that originally were devoted to political disquisition, that a man's politics became a fair test of his religious opinions, and vice versa. An Independent was, of course, a fifth-monarchy man; a royalist was equally of course a high churchman; a moderate republican, then as now, was scouted by both parties as a time-server and trimmer. Church and State were indissolubly connected. The divine institution of Episcopacy and the divine right of kings went hand in hand. At an earlier and at a later period matters were carried still farther. A devoted loyal ist in the reign of Henry VII., must have been a Roman Catholic, if he would preserve consistency; upon the same grounds that would have made a Scotch whig a Presbyterian, in the middle of the last century.

But we are not going into the early history of the Pamphlet, a form of writing that bears the same relation to political treatises, in speculative inquiries or practical suggestions, that the song or ballad does to the classical epic. The one is alluded to with respect, if seldom read; the other stowed into the pocket and read by everybody at his leisure. Locke and

Sydney wrote for scholars, Defoe and Tom Paine wrote for the people. The treatise is for the student of abstract principles; the tract, for those who look to a practical application of them. In a previous paper we noticed the principal political writers of the commonwealth; there were numberless writers of minor consequence. said nothing, as we wish to say nothing, of the endless theoretical battles of the disputants of the same era; an era of the narrowest bigotry of doctrine and the fiercest contest for victory; an era which we rejoice is past, and trust may never return.

We

We intend to commence our present sketch with a notice of Sir Roger L'Estrange. This literary knight-errant and political hack, is said to have been the first political writer in England who regularly adhered to a party, from which he received remuneration for his services; or, in brief, the first regular party-writer who was taken into pay. We select this redoubtable partisan, as the first of a few prominent instances of professional political writers, by no means aiming at a scrutinizing criticism of all the political pamphleteers that might be found in the meagerest bookseller's catalogue; and also requesting the reader to consider this, like the preceding papers of a similar cast, and such of a like character as may succeed the present, as by no means pretending to exhaust topics of which they pretend to little more than a clear and faithful general view.

Roger L'Estrange was born in 1616, the son of a zealous royalist, whose doctrines he retained and ardently defended through a long and varied career. At an early age, twenty-two, he became a personal attendant about the person of Charles I., whom he accompanied on his fatal expedition into Scotland. But the commencement of his advancement and his misfortunes was simultaneous; he was detected by the partisans of the Parliament with the King's commission in his pocket, and was taken as a spy and thrust into prison. Here he remained for four

years, in a most perplexing state of uncertainty, ignorant of the issue of his captivity, when he escaped through the connivance of his gaoler to the continent. At the Restoration, his politics, his devotion, and his talents brought him into favorable notice, and he received the lucrative appointment of Licenser.

Shortly after this he set up a London gazette, wholly devoted to the Court interest, the Observator: and we may give this praise, at least,to the political course of L'Estrange, that it was consistent and firm, through a variety of fortune, which, in his depressed circumstances, often held out baits that a merely avaricious spirit could never have resisted. Of the political writings of L'Estrange we may give only a traditional opinion, as, after a diligent search, we have been unable to meet with a single tract. Our public libraries are singularly deficient in the rarer works of the elder English literature: the catalogue of our City Library furnishes the title of one book of L'Estrange, but "The Holy Cheat" has vanished into the collection of some individual unknown, who has, perhaps, a horror of treating religious hypocrisy with too much levity, and in consequence keeps an exposition of it out of the way. L'Estrange is said to be abusive and libellous in his matter, and careless and slovenly in his manner. Yet he was very popular, and several writers are thought to have formed their styles upon him. We imagine him to have been a sort of educated Cobbett: a gentleman by birth and breeding, but, although a high-toned royalist, writing like the prince of the radicals. To general scholars he is known best by his translations of books, which every man of education reads, and some of which are universally studied. The style of these translations is congenial and idiomatic in a high degree: fresh, easy, and thoroughly English. Esop's Fables is perhaps the most popular, but hardly less so than the Visions of Quevedo; Seneca's Morals, with an afterthought, fall into fewer hands; and so with his Offices of Cicero. Of the translation of Josephus we know nothing.

Sir William Petty and Sir William Davenant are names referred to in tracts written just before our Revolution, but

we now believe they are now quite forgotten. Goldsmith gives Davenant, for manliness and clearness of style, a place even above Dean Swift; a criticism hardly, we should suspect, the fruit of judgment and reflection.

The reigns of Queen Anne and of George III. were almost equal in fruitfulness of political writers of the foremost ability. The first era includes the names of Swift, Bolingbroke, Addison, and Defoe: the second may claim the brighter glory of having produced Johnson, Burke, the author of Junius, and Thomas Paine. We have by no means arranged these names with any design of classification, but shall write of them, as they now stand, especially as they appear casu ally to have fallen into a natural order. Of the Queen Anne writers, the first two were high Tories: the last two, no less determined Whigs. And here any fancied resemblance ends; for each had a decidedly individual character and style of his own. Swift and Bolingbroke were personal friends and mutual admirers, yet no two writers differ more. Swift is plain, strong, pungent, and saturnine: Bolingbroke, vehement and oratorical. The Dean appears to address a meeting of mechanics: the Lord seems to be speaking to a political assembly. Their defects, too, grow out of opposite good qualities. The pithiness of Swift descends into coarseness, while the declamation of Bolingbroke runs into the merest verbosity. In personal appearance there could not have been wider contrasts: the uncouth, rough manner and plain person of the Irish priest, and the brilliant air and elocution, the handsome person and courtly address of Henry St. John. They had their gifts and knew their power; well distributed, their talents might have formed an irresistible union of grace and vigor. Swift should only have written for artizans, and Bolingbroke for men of fashion. The one mistook his walk when he attempted philosophy; and the other when he imagined the highest ecclesiastical office in the gift of the Queen was to be compared with his home reputation and the admiration of his friends. We hear more of the effects of Swift's tracts, but Bolingbroke is oftener quoted by later writers. "The Conduct of the Allies" had a vast influence on contemporary

politics, yet "The Patriot King" is called a master-piece by those who speak of Swift with an undue moderation of eulogium. For our own part we are inclined to prefer Swift's plain sense and plain writing to the factitious splendor and shallow declamation of Bolingbroke. Blair, after all, seems to have hit the literary character of this modern Alcibiades correctly, when he spoke of his writings as the least valuable of any English author of equal reputation. Yet we are apt to think Swift a little too plain, with too strong a love of facts and details: perhaps deficient in the philosophy of politics; somewhat dry and tedious; certainly no poet and orator.

Addison and Defoe were strenuous Whigs; and with many points in common; yet in points of essential importance as authors, they possess individual peculiarities. They were both men of a naturally religious tone of character, great sticklers for a comprehensive yet strict Christian morality, and upholding the principles and practice of pure piety in all their writings. Each writer had humor, but what a difference between the bare simplicity of Defoe and the elegant finish of Addison! A principal feature of their humor, too, was grave irony, yet how unlike is the literal seriousness of the author of "Robinson Crusoe" to the half jesting, solemn quiz of the " Spectator.' As writers, simplicity might be predicated as the chief characteristic of both: the simplicity of the one is to the simplicity of the other, however, as cotton is to silk. Defoe's is good homespun wear Addison's is of the richest texture. As politicians they were equally sincere, sensible, and consistent; advancing and upholding by their writings the cause of the Whig party and the Hanoverian succession, with a tact and ability more than a match, we are prone to think, for their opponents of the Tory sect.

Defoe was born in 1663, and inherited from his father a regard for the principles of dissent, in which he was assiduously bred, and for which he battled manfully during a long and extremely active literary and political life. Our author's religious doctrine is not to be ascribed merely to education or prejudice, but to rational inquiry: he was a

For a fuller expansion of these views,

dissenter on reflection, and from a natural bias to Independency. Constitutionally a man of cautious, moderate principles, he was no fit convert to the High Church party; neither was he one on whose conscience Popery could impose any fictitious terrors, or captivate his imagination by its gorgeous shows.

At the age of twenty-one he published his first effort, a treatise against the Turks, who up to that age had been looked upon as the common enemy of Christendom. We now hear less of them than of any other continental power. At the age of twenty-three he made his debut as a soldier, fighting for the Duke of Monmouth. He doubtless acquitted himself as fearlessly in this character, as afterwards in that of author. From the very first, at the Revolution, he sided with the Prince of Orange, whom as King William (the hero of his "True-born Englishman,") he idolized, as a pattern of military and regal greatness. Nor were his idolatry and zeal ill-placed: the king became his patron and friend.

During this period, and for some time later, Defoe had been carrying on his trade of hosier, in which his imprudence, his attention to public affairs, and, doubtless, his literary undertakings, were effectual bars to permanent success. Yet he soon regained whatever he lost, and was scrupulously honest in every transaction. A story is told much to the credit of Defoe's mercantile character. Having brought bankruptcy on himself, he was offered by all his creditors a composition, and that on his single bond. Most men would have considered themselves entirely free from further claims, but not so thought our author; after a lapse of time, having retrieved his affairs, and actually growing rich, (he might have left a princely fortune had he narrowed his soul to nothing but money-getting), he hears of the distress of certain of his old creditors, visits them, and tenders the remainder of his whole former debt to each one. This was a man whose pamphlets on banking might be trusted: too many of our modern financiers act upon a contrary principle, and build up their credit systems on a foundation of moral corruption. Until the accession of George I., through the striking period

see Arcturus, 2d vol. Art. Bolingbroke.

of Queen Anne's reign, Defoe ceased not in his exertions for the two great objects of public interest that lay nearest his heart, the permanent establishment of the house of Hanover, and the cause of dissent, or rather of toleration. A third point, of almost equal importance with our author, was the settle ment of the union between Scotland and England, toward which his writings, no less than his personal negotiations, contributed in no inconsiderable degree. But his very zeal, more than the most flagrant indifference, was of material injury even to the political character of our author. In most of his tracts he adopted a line of argument that continually assumed the air of solemn irony, a figure of all others the most easily misapprehended, and to his use of which he owed his ill fortune, and even imprisonment. His "Shortest Way with the Dissenters," while it was, at first, read as a grave proposal by the Tories, elicited their warmest praise, which was changed into bitter reproaches when they discovered the jest. It was burnt at Newgate by the common hangman, and its author incarcerated. This unjust sentence produced among other fruitful runnings of invention, the famous Hymn to the Pillory." Defoe was released by the urgent solicitations of Harley, whom he ever after regarded as his kindest patron, and who, with the Queen, shared his sincere gratitude. Our author's tracts on behalf of the dissenters, also, were couched in similar ambiguities of phrase, aud his real attachment continually suspected. Some of his pieces, designed to forward Whig principles, were stigmatized as libels on the administration in favor of the Pretender. The style of the political tracts, like that of the rest of Defoe's writings, is perfectly plain and copious. It is much of the same cast with the ordinary tone of discussion in newspapers and political debates, without any peculiar beauty of its own, though a lucid mirror of the thoughts of its author.

The Review was a journal started to maintain the favorite doctrines of its editor, in the field of political theory, but it embraced another department which served as the original of a more celebrated work-the Spectator. This was the narrative of the conversations of a scandal club which discussed

questions on divinity, morals, trade, war, love and marriage, language and poetry, drunkenness and gaming, similar to the famous club of Addison.

On the accession of George I., Defoe relinquished politics and devoted himself to literary composition. He is so much better known as a miscellaneous than as a political author, that we cannot omit, after a brief survey of his political character, some notice of his remarkable essays in the class of prose fiction. As a political writer, Defoe is characterized by directness, candor, perspicuity, and a mastery of his subject. The matter of fact character of his mind is clearly stamped on his writings. They are occupied with the three principal topics we have lately adverted to, and the more general subjects of trade and commerce, banking and credit. The Essay on Projects, which Franklin averred had determined the direction of his pursuits, disappointed us much several years ago, when we first looked into it; and perhaps may be taken as the vagary of a great man, who had a right to speak a little at random. In this, as in the other departments of literature which he illustrated by so many excellent works, he was remarkably copious; a genius fertile almost beyond precedent, yet clear and fresh to the last. Much of his argument is comparatively useless, now that the maxims he attempted to establish are thoroughly settled; but they had their weight and just influence in his own day. The tenets of the author of Robinson Crusoe are of a mixed nature, owing to the spirit of eclecticism in his character and his wide toleration. He was a species of republican monarchist and loyal citizen at the same time; writing against the divine right of kings, and yet a staunch advocate of the House of Hanover, a hater of Catholic tyranny, and friend to dissent. Practically, a preacher of proper subordination, yet an independent thinker; a moderate reformer and a warm patriot; a sensible, ingenious, sincere speculatist, and a truly honest man.

Robinson Crusoe has cast too much in the shade the other admirable works of the same author. Of two divisions of prose fiction, Defoe may justly be styled the father, in England. The origin of Scott's historical novels may be traced to the Memoirs of a Cava

lier, so highly prized by Lord Chatham, and the History of the Great Plague. These productions are so faithful, so accurate, so naturally contrived, and so ingeniously executed, as to have deceived some of the best critics. Chatham, it is said, took the first novel to be a genuine biographical fragment of the times of the Civil War, and thought it the fairest narrative of those times. The celebrated Dr. Mead read the History as a veritable relation. Both of these eminent men might well be mistaken, as the vraisemblance is complete.

Defoe introduced the picaresco novel into England, in his Colonel Jack, as spirited a thing as Lazarillo de Tormes or Guzman d'Alfarache: in fact, the whole of low life was at the command of his pen, and he wanted only inclination, not power, to write us an English Gil Blas.

In a wide field, and in important scenes of life, Defoe was a prose Shakspeare. A long experience of life, great natural quickness, and the utmost tenacity of facts, furnished him with abundant material for a pen ready, strong and ingenious. To these gifts he added lively sympathies with the world around him, and a domestic imagination, creative of pictures from real life. He died at an advanced age, having lived, thought, acted, and written like a manly spirit, or as he would love to have been called, (a synonymous term, in his eyes), a true-born Englishman.

To the general reader, the transition may very likely appear violent from Defoe to Addison; but the political student must acknowledge its naturalness and propriety.

The Freeholder, contained in fifty-five numbers, from Dec. 23, 1715, to June 29, 1716, is the work of Addison's we shall examine. Its object may be easily determined from the title: to engage the landed interest on the side of King George, and to battle with the adherents of the Pretender. In order to attain these ends, as in his moral essays to subserve the cause of virtue, polished ridicule is substituted for tedious processes of argument, sentiment is opposed to prejudice, and a graceful style is read in place of the too frequent violence of political disquisition and political controversy. The Freeholder is, in effect, the Spectator turn

ed politician. There is the same fine sense and elegant humor, the same elevation of sentiment and satiric wit, the same classicality and finished style. Similar forms of writing are employed, not only the essay, but the letter and fictitious biography. The ladies are not neglected; their influence is solicited and obtained, exhibited often in a sufficiently singular manner. We care less to write of the work itself, however, than to give a fair idea of it. To do this, we must select a few specimens. The editor (and also sole contributor) thus pleasantly sets forth the advantages of property, in the introductory section of his first paper:

"The arguments of an author lose a great deal of their weight, when we are persuaded that he only writes for argument's sake, and has no real concern in the cause which he espouses. This is the case of one who draws his pen in the defence of property without having any; except, perhaps, in the copy of a libel, or a ballad. One is apt to suspect, that the passion for liberty, which appears in a Grub street Patriot, arises only from his apprehensions of a gaol; and that, whatever he may pretend, he does not write to secure, but to get something of his own. Should the government be overturned, he has nothing to lose but an old standish.

"I question not but the reader will conceive a respect for the author of this paper from the title of it; since he may be sure, I am so considerable a man, that I cannot have less than forty shillings a

year.

"I have rather chosen this title than

any other, because it is what I most glory mind the happiness of that government in, and what most effectually calls to my under which I live. As a British freeholder, I should not scruple taking place of a French Marquis; and when I see one of my countrymen amusing himself in his little cabbage-garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater person than the owner of the richest vineyard in Champagne.”

In a paper on party-lies, occurs the following striking portrait of William III., accompanied with the observations of a clear-sighted freeholder :

"But the most glorious of his Majes

ty's predecessors was treated after the same manner. Upon that Prince's first arrival, the inconsiderable party, who then labored to make him odious to the