Norton, from Daniel and Ostræa sprung[101],
Bless'd with his father's front, and mother's tongue,
it is only said that he was a wretched writer in the Flying Post, and the author of Alderman Barber's Life. De Foe probably died insolvent; for letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted to Mary Brooke, widow, a creditrix, in September, 1733, after summoning in official form the next of kin to appear[102]. John Dunton[103], who personally knew our author, describes him, in 1705, as a man of good parts and clear sense; of a conversation, ingenious and brisk; of a spirit, enterprising and bold, but of little prudence; with good nature and real honesty. Of his petty habits, little now can be told, more than he has thus confessed himself[104]: "God, I thank thee, I am not a drunkard, or a swearer, or a whoremaster, or a busybody, or idle, or revengeful; and though this be true, and I challenge all the world to prove the contrary, yet, I must own, I see small satisfaction in all the negatives of common virtues; for though I have not been guilty of any of these vices, nor of many more, I have nothing to infer from thence, but Te Deum laudamus." He says himself:
Confession will anticipate reproach,
He that reviles us then, reviles too much;
All satire ceases when the men repent,
'Tis cruelty to lash the penitent.
When De Foe had arrived at sixty-five, while he was encumbered with a family, and, I fear, pinched with penury, Pope, endeavoured, by repeated strokes, to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. This he did without propriety, and, as far as appears, without provocation; for our author is not in the black list of scribblers, who by attempting to lessen the poet's fame, incited the satirist's indignation. The offence and the fate of Bentley and De Foe were nearly alike. Bentley would not allow the translation to be Homer: De Foe had endeavoured to bring Milton into vogue seven years ere the Paradise Lost and Chevy Chase had been criticised in the Spectators by Addison. Our author had said in More Reformation,
Let this describe the nation's character,
One man reads Milton, forty ——.
The case is plain, the temper of the time,
One wrote the lewd, the other the sublime.
An enraged poet alone could have thrust into the Dunciad, Bentley, a profound scholar, Cibber, a brilliant wit, and De Foe, a happy genius. This was the consequence of exalting satire as the test of truth; while truth ought to have been enthroned the test of satire. Yet, it ought not to be forgotten, that De Foe has some sarcasm, in his System of Magic, on the sylphs and gnomes, which Pope may have deemed a daring invasion of his Rosicrucian territories.
De Foe has not yet outlived his century, though he have outlived most of his contemporaries. Yet the time is come, when he must be acknowledged as one of the ablest, as he is one of the most captivating, writers, of which this island can boast. Before he can be admitted to this pre-eminence, he must be considered distinctly, as a poet, as a novelist, as a polemic, as a commercial writer, and as a grave historian.
As a poet, we must look to the end of his effusions rather than to his execution, ere we can allow him considerable praise. To mollify national animosities, or to vindicate national rights, are certainly noble objects, which merit the vigour and imagination of Milton, or the flow and precision of Pope; but our author's energy runs into harshness, and his sweetness is to be tasted in his prose more than in his poesy. If we regard the Adventures of Crusoe, like The Adventures of Telemachus, as a poem, his moral, his incidents, and his language, must lift him high on the poet's scale. His professed poems, whether we contemplate the propriety of sentiment, or the suavity of numbers, may indeed, without much loss of pleasure or instruction, be resigned to those, who, in imitation of Pope, poach in the fields of obsolete poetry for brilliant thoughts, felicities of phrase, or for happy rhymes.
As a novelist, every one will place him in the foremost rank, who considers his originality, his performance, and his purpose. The Ship of Fools had indeed been launched in early times; but, who like De Foe, had ever carried his reader to sea, in order to mend the heart, and regulate the practice of life, by showing his readers the effect of adversity, or how they might equally be called to sustain his hero's trials, as they sailed round the world. But, without attractions, neither the originality, nor the end, can have any salutary consequence. This he had foreseen; and for this he has provided, by giving his adventures in a style so pleasing, because it is simple, and so interesting, because it is particular, that every one fancies he could write a similar language. It was, then, idle in Boyer formerly, or in Smollett lately, to speak of De Foe as a party writer, in little estimation. The writings of no author since have run through more numerous editions. And he whose works have pleased generally and pleased long, must be deemed a writer of no small estimation; the people's verdict being the proper test of what they are the proper judges.
As a polemic, I fear we must regard our author with less kindness, though it must be recollected, that he lived during a contentious period, when two parties distracted the nation, and writers indulged in great asperities. But, in opposition to reproach, let it ever be remembered, that he defended freedom, without anarchy; that he supported toleration, without libertinism; that he pleaded for moderation even amidst violence. With acuteness of intellect, with keenness of wit, with archness of diction, and pertinacity of design; it must be allowed that nature had qualified, in a high degree, De Foe for a disputant. His polemical treatises, whatever might have been their attractions once, may now be delivered without reserve to those who delight in polemical reading. De Foe, it must be allowed, was a party writer: But, were not Swift and Prior, Steel and Addison, Halifax and Bolingbroke, party writers? De Foe, being a party writer upon settled principles, did not change with the change of parties: Addison and Steel, Prior and Swift, connected as they were with persons, changed their note as persons were elevated or depressed.