[4.] His best known—and it is also his greatest—work is Robinson Crusoe; and this book, which every one has read, may be compared with ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ for the purpose of observing how imaginative effects are produced by different means and in different ways. Another vigorous work of imagination by Defoe is the Journal of the Plague, which appeared in 1722. There are three chief things to be noted regarding Defoe and his writings. These are: first, that Defoe possessed an unparalleled knowledge—a knowledge wider than even Shakespeare’s—of the circumstances and details of human life among all sorts, ranks, and conditions of men; secondly, that he gains his wonderful realistic effects by the freest and most copious use of this detailed knowledge in his works of imagination; and thirdly, that he possessed a vocabulary of the most wonderful wealth. His style is strong, homely, and vigorous, but the sentences are long, loose, clumsy, and sometimes ungrammatical. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was too eager to produce large and broad effects to take time to balance his clauses or to polish his sentences. Like Sir Walter Scott, again, he possesses in the highest degree the art of particularising.
[5.] Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the greatest prose-writer, in his own kind, of the eighteenth century, and the opposite in most respects—especially in style—of Addison, was born in Dublin in the year 1667. Though born in Ireland, he was of purely English descent—his father belonging to a Yorkshire family, and his mother being a Leicestershire lady. His father died before he was born; and he was educated by the kindness of an uncle. After being at a private school at Kilkenny, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was plucked for his degree at his first examination, and, on a second trial, only obtained his B.A. “by special favour.” He next came to England, and for eleven years acted as private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired statesman and ambassador, who lived at Moor Park, near Richmond-on-Thames.
In 1692 he paid a visit to Oxford, and there obtained the degree of M.A. In 1700 he went to Ireland with Lord Berkeley as his chaplain, and while in that country was presented with several livings. He at first attached himself to the Whig party, but stung by this party’s neglect of his labours and merits, he joined the Tories, who raised him to the Deanery of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. But, though nominally resident in Dublin, he spent a large part of his time in London. Here he knew and met everybody who was worth knowing, and for some time he was the most imposing figure, and wielded the greatest influence in all the best social, political, and literary circles of the capital. In 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, Swift’s hopes of further advancement died out; and he returned to his Deanery, settled in Dublin, and “commenced Irishman for life.” A man of strong passions, he usually spent his birthday in reading that chapter of the Book of Job which contains the verse, “Let the day perish in which I was born.” He died insane in 1745, and left his fortune to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin. One day, when taking a walk with a friend, he saw a blasted elm, and, pointing to it, he said: “I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top.” For the last three years of his life he never spoke one word.
[6.] Swift has written verse; but it is his prose-works that give him his high and unrivalled place in English literature. His most powerful work, published in 1704, is the Tale of a Tub—a satire on the disputes between the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches. His best known prose-work is the Gulliver’s Travels, which appeared in 1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,—on humanity. “The power of Swift’s prose,” it has been said by an able critic, “was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after times.” His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift’s style—as every genuine style does—reflects the author’s character. He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott describes him as “tall, strong, and well made, dark in complexion, but with bright blue eyes (Pope said they were “as azure as the heavens”), black and bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, and features which expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind.” He grew savage under the slightest contradiction; and dukes and great lords were obliged to pay court to him. His prose was as trenchant and powerful as were his manners: it has been compared to “cold steel.” His own definition of a good style is “proper words in proper places.”
[7.] Joseph Addison (1672-1719), the most elegant prose-writer—as Pope was the most polished verse-writer—of the eighteenth century, was born at Milston, in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at Charterhouse School, in London, where one of his friends and companions was the celebrated Dick Steele—afterwards Sir Richard Steele. He then went to Oxford, where he made a name for himself by his beautiful compositions in Latin verse. In 1695 he addressed a poem to King William; and this poem brought him into notice with the Government of the day. Not long after, he received a pension of £300 a-year, to enable him to travel; and he spent some time in France and Italy. The chief result of this tour was a poem entitled A Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax. In 1704, when Lord Godolphin was in search of a poet who should celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called The Campaign was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all English readers, and of “the town.” A violent storm had passed over England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as cool and serene amid shot and shell as in a drawing-room or at the dinner-table, to the Angel of the Storm. The lines are these:—
“So when an Angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,