Of more interest is his very high praise of Dryden, "a Man for Learning and universal Writing in Poetry, perhaps the greatest that England has produc'd" [p. l5], and his comment upon the critical detraction from which he suffered. He compares Pope, interestingly enough, with Dryden, remarking that Pope ("a Person tho' Inferior to Mr. Dryden, yet speaking Impartially has few Superiors in this Age") also is persecuted by envy; and he has generous praise for that poet's translation of Homer. One may note that Defoe avoids the shortcomings of the critics whom he condemns for judging according to party. He distributes his praise indiscriminately between Whig and Tory writers. In short, his essay hardly does more than confirm the critical commonplaces of the time and attest to the catholicity of the author's taste.
Of particular interest for students of Defoe is the paragraph [p. 2l] in which Defoe defends the hack-writers who must write for subsistence. One should not expect their writings, which are necessarily numerous, to be as correct and finished as they might be. After comparing their pens to prostitutes because of their venality, he claims, in a half-ironic tone, for both authors and booksellers the liberty of writing and printing for either or both sides without ignominy. After all, they must write and print to live. Such practice is certainly, he observes, no more unjust or disreputable than other ways of gaining wealth such as one finds in Exchange-Alley.
This paragraph gains point when one remembers that Defoe had served both Whig and Tory governments. In 1718, as letters written to Lord Stanhope in that very year testify, he was engaged in the perhaps dubious business of masquerading as a Tory, while actually in the service of the Whig ministry, to take the "sting" out of the more violent Tory periodicals; and he was much concerned with the danger of his ambiguous position. In December of 1717 he had been identified as a writer for Mist's Weekly Journal, the leading Tory paper, and was subjected to growing attacks in the Whig press. One can hardly doubt that this paragraph is a thinly veiled defense of his own practice as a professional journalist.
It is no surprise to find the author of A Vindication, in discussing the qualifications of writers, advocating the importance of genius and "Natural Parts" above mere learning. He instances the author of The True-Born Englishman and Shakespeare, the former "Characteriz'd as a Person of Little Learning, but of prodigious Natural Parts" and the latter having "but a small share of Literature." The further example of the literary achievements of the "Fair Sex," who had, of course, no university education, reminds one of Defoe's championship elsewhere of women. The business of a writer is "to please and inform," and the general implication is that genius is more necessary to this end than learning.
Also characteristic of Defoe is his emphasis upon the advantage to an author of conversation, "the Aliment of Genius, the Life of all airy Performances" [p.32]. Likewise, his digression upon education [pp. 34f.], his charge that people of quality in England all too often neglect their children's education, his remarks upon the advantages of travel and the need of training in the vernacular, all will be familiar to readers of Defoe.
A Vindication of the Press is chiefly important for the corroboration of our knowledge of Daniel Defoe. It presents nothing that is new, but it gives further evidence of his pride in authorship, of his rationalization of his actions as a professional journalist, and of his belief in the importance of a free press. Many of his characteristic ideas are repeated with his usual consistency in point of view. Although the critical comments in the essay are thoroughly conventional, they offer evidence of contemporary literary judgments and reveal Defoe as a well-informed man of moderation and commonsense, though certainly not as a profound critic. In the catholicity of his tastes and interests Defoe is far ahead of his Puritan fellows, and his essay may be taken as one indication of the growing interest of the middle-classes for whom he wrote in the greater world of literature. As Professor Trent remarks in his ms. notes, "Defoe rarely wrote a tract without introducing something worthy of attention and comment, and the present pamphlet is no exception to the rule."
I should like to thank Dr. Henry C. Hutchins for his generosity in making available to me Professor Trent's ms. notes on A Vindication and Dr. John Robert Moore for his kindness, criticisms, and suggestions.
Otho Clinton Williams
San Jose State College
Vindication of the Press:
OR, AN ESSAY ON THE Usefulness of Writing, ON CRITICISM, AND THE