English Lands, Letters and Kings, vol. 2: From Elizabeth to Anne

by Donald Grant Mitchell

A writer, however, of that time, of about the same age with Congreve, whom King William did favor, and did take at one period into his confidence,—and one of whose books, at least, you all have liked at some epoch of your life, and thought quite wonderful and charming—I must tell you more about. His presence counted for nothing; he was short, wiry, hook-nosed—not anyway elegant; Mr. Congreve would have scorned association with him. He was the son of a small butcher in London, and had never much schooling; but he was quick of apprehension, always eager to inform himself; bustling, shrewd, inquisitive, with abundance of what we call “cheek.” He never lacked simple, strong language to tell just what he thought, or what he knew; and he never lacked the courage to put his language into print or into speech, as the case might be.

By dint of his dogged perseverance and much natural aptitude he came to know Latin and Spanish and Italian, and could speak French, such as it was, very fluently. He was well up in geography and history, and such science as went into the books of those days. He wrote sharp, stinging pamphlets about whatever struck him as wrong, or as wanting a good slap, whether in morals, manners, or politics.

He was in trade, which took him sometimes into France, Spain, or Flanders. He could tell everyone how to make money and how to conduct business better than he could do either himself. He had his bankruptcies, his hidings, his compoundings with creditors, and his times in prison; but he came out of all these experiences with just as much animation and pluck and assurance as he carried into them.

There was a time when he was advertised as a fugitive, and a reward offered for his apprehension—all due to his sharp pamphlet-writing; and he was apprehended and had his fines to pay, and stood in the pillory; but the street-folk, with a love for his pluck and for his trenchant, homely, outspokenness, garnished the pillory with flowers and garlands. It was this power of incisive speech, and his capacity to win audience of the street-people, that made King William value his gifts and put them to service.

But I cannot tell of the half he wrote. Now it was upon management of families; again an Essay on Projects—from which Dr. Franklin used to say he derived a great many valuable hints—then upon a standing army; then upon the villainies of stock-jobbery. What he called poems, too, he wrote, with a harsh jingle of rhymes; one specially, showing that—

“as the world goes, and is like to go, the best way for Ladies is to keep unmarried, for I will ever expose,” he says, “these infamous, impertinent, cowardly, censorious, sauntering Idle wretches, called Wits and Beaux, the Plague of the nation and the Scandal of mankind.” But, he continues, “if Lesbia is sure she has found a man of Honor, Religion and Virtue, I will never forbid the Banns: Let her love him as much as she pleases, and value him as an Angel, and be married to-morrow if she will.”

Again, he has a whole volume of Advice to English Tradesmen, as to how to manage their shops and bargainings; and it gives one a curious notion of what was counted idle extravagance in that day to read his description of the extraordinary and absurd expenditure of a certain insane pastry-cook:

“It will hardly be believed,” he says, “in ages to come, that the fitting of his shop has cost 300 pounds! I have good authority for saying that this spendthrift has sash-windows all of looking-glass plate twelve inches by sixteen—two large pier looking-glasses, and one very large pier-glass seven feet high; and all the walls of the shop are lined up with galley tiles.”

He advises a young apothecary who has not large acquaintance to hire a stout man to pound in a big mortar (though he may have nothing to pound) all the early hours of the morning, and all the evening, as if he were a man of great practice. Then, in his Family Instructor, he advises against untruth and all hypocrisies; and he compresses sharp pamphlets into the shape of a leading article—is, in fact, the first man to design “leading articles,” which he puts into his Review or Indicator, in which periodicals he saves a corner for well-spiced gossip and scandal, to make—he says—the “paper relished by housewives.” He interviews all the cut-throats and thieves encountered in prison, and tells stories of their lives. I think he was the first and best of all interviewers; but not the last! Fifty of these pages of mine would scarce take in the mere titles of the books and pamphlets he wrote. His career stretched far down throughout Queen Anne’s days, and was parallel with that of many worthy men of letters, I shall have to mention; yet he knew familiarly none of them. Swift, who knew everybody he thought worth knowing, speaks of him as an illiterate fellow, whose name he has forgotten; and our pamphleteer dies at last—in hiding—poor, embroiled with his family, and sought by very few—unless his creditors.

I do not suppose you have read much that he wrote except one book; that, I know you have read; and this bustling, bouncing, inconsistent, indefatigable, unsuccessful, earnest scold of a man was named Daniel Defoe;[98] and the book you have read is Robinson Crusoe—loved by all boys better than any other book; and loved by all girls, I think, better than any other book—that has no love in it.