consistent and high-minded in his attitude toward public matters. After he was pilloried, the sense that he had been unjustly punished rankled in him, and he soon became dependent upon the bounty of Harley; to insure the continuance of that bounty, he sacrificed some, at least, of his convictions; in revenge, he began to betray his employer; and, in the end, he stood before the public as the most discredited and mercenary journalist of the day. Such was not the view of his early biographers, who found in him, as we have seen, only a maligned patriot and man of genius; but it seems impossible for the close student of Defoe's political writings, despite the sympathy he must feel for a kindly, brilliant and hardly used man, not to agree, in the main, with the contemporaries who denounced him.

It was held until recently that Defoe remained in Newgate until August 1704, although more careful examination of The Review would have led to a different conclusion. Research in other newspapers and the publication of his correspondence with Harley have now made it clear that he was released, through Harley's good offices, about 1 November 1703. This disposes of the story that The Review was founded while its editor was in prison, and it also absolves us from the necessity of supposing that, when, in his volume on the great storm, Defoe described devastations of which he had been an eye-witness, he was drawing on his imagination. The fact that, in this matter and in not a few others, research has tended to strengthen belief in his ability to tell the truth about himself ought to make it less possible for critics to treat him as totally untrustworthy. Such criticism has never been based upon adequate psychological study of the man, and it is not warranted by a minute examination even of his most discreditable writings. Instead of becoming a shameless and wholesale liar, Defoe, in all probability, developed into a consummate casuist who was often his own chief dupe. His experience of the pillory was ever before his eyes, and it seemed to him necessary and even meritorious to avoid the pitfalls that lay in those days before all journalists. For more than twenty years, he practised every sort of subterfuge to preserve his anonymity, and he soon grew sufficiently callous to write, presumably for pay, on all sides of any given subject. Within the arena of journalism, he was a treacherous mercenary who fought all comers with any weapon and stratagem he could command. Outside that arena, he was a pious, philanthropical, fairly accurate and trustworthy man and citizen.

Space fails us for a discussion of the pamphlets and poems of this period, the stream of which not even imprisonment or his employment as a busy agent for Harley could check. Mention should be made, however, of the two volumes of his collected writings— the only collection made by himself-which appeared in 1703 and 1705, as well as of controversial pamphlets against the eccentric John Asgill, the publicist Dr Davenant, the tory politician and promoter Sir Humphrey Mackworth and the fanatic Charles Leslie. Only one tract of them all possesses permanent interest, the famous Giving Alms no Charity, of November 1704, and even that is probably less of an economic classic than some have thought it. Defoe's real achievement of the time was his establishment of The Review, the importance of which as an organ of political moderation has been already pointed out. It was equally important as a model of straightforward journalistic prose, and, in its department of miscellanea, its editorial correspondence when Defoe was away from London and other features, it probably exerted an influence out of proportion to its circulation, which was never large. In its small four-paged numbers, in the main triweekly, the student of contemporary France, of English ecclesiastical history, of the union with Scotland, of the war of the Spanish succession, of the movements of the Jacobites, of the trial of Sacheverell, of British commerce and of manners and customs in general finds abundant materials to his hand. Why its eight large volumes and incomplete ninth supplementary volume (17 February 1704 to 11 June 1713) have never been reprinted from the unique set in the British Museum it is hard to say. Even as the record of one man's enterprise and pertinacity (Defoe wrote it practically unaided and kept it going with extraordinary regularity during the years he was serving as a government agent in Scotland), it would be worthy of a place on our shelves-much more so when that man is the author of Robinson Crusoe. Such republication would not be equivalent to the erection of a monument of shame, since, on the whole, the Defoe of The Review is liberal and consistent in his politics and far-sighted in commercial and economic matters. In a sense, too, a reissue of these rare volumes would be a monument to the prescience of that enigmatical, underestimated politician Robert Harley, who clearly perceived the political importance of the press.

Not even the briefest description can be given of Defoe's horseback rides through England in 1704 and 1705 as an election agent for Harley. Highhanded tories and creditors set on by his enemies tried

to stop him; but he eluded them and continued both to send Harley reports which prove him to have been a journalist of the first order, and to make observations which stood him in good stead in his later sociological and economic writings. He also found time to compose and publish his dull political allegory The Consolidator and to labour on his still more ponderous satire in verse Jure Divino, which appeared the next year, 1706, in folio, adorned with a fullwigged portrait of the self-complacent author. These, as well as his impudent satire The Dyet of Poland, his excellent pamphlets against religious intolerance in south Carolina, his indiscreet support, in a tract called The Experiment, of the clerical impostor Abraham Gill, his spirited answers to Lord Haversham, who had taunted him with poverty and writing for hire, are all, more or less, forgotten; but, so long as the literature of the supernatural finds favour, there will be interested readers of the one classic production of this stage of his career, A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal, the next Day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave at Canterbury, the 8th of September, 1705. Even this convincingly realistic narrative is, thanks to the researches of George A. Aitken, no longer to be credited, as Sir Walter Scott and many others have thought, to Defoe the master of verisimilitude in fiction. It is now seen to be the circumstantial account of a ghost story current at the time, a product of Defoe's genius for reporting, not a clever hoax designed to sell Drelincourt's pious manual.

From the autumn of 1706 to the spring of 1710, Scotland is the main scene of Defoe's activity, and Scottish affairs are the main subject of his pen. His movements and whereabouts are not always certain; but it is evident that none of his biographers has realised how large a portion of his time he spent out of London as the agent, first of Harley, then of Godolphin. He was in Scotland from October 1706 to December 1707, forwarding the union in every way in his power and, after that was secured, labouring to allay popular discontent. He kept the press busy with pamphlets, the full tale of which will doubtless never be known. He wrote Harley long and interesting letters; he attended parliamentary committees; he furnished statistics on matters of trade; he wormed himself into the confidence of men in all positions -in short, to use his own phrase, he played the part of a perfect spy, developing his powers of duplicity at every turn. Few agents have ever more thoroughly earned their hire, or have served more niggardly masters than was Harley. When, at last, Defoe, almost

reduced to penury, was allowed to return without the place in the customs for which he hoped, he found his patron tottering to his fall. He was graciously permitted to transfer his services to Godolphin and, early in 1708, was sent back to Scotland. Of his labours for his new chief, we have no full account; but there was probably no decline in his faithfulness and efficiency. There was some decline in his literary activity, for the main work of 1708-9 is his huge, dull, but apparently accurate History of the Union, a volume which shows that Defoe had not a little of the methodical patience characteristic of latter-day historians, but, as yet, little of the skill in book-making which he was afterwards conspicuously to display.

In the early months of 1710, Defoe, although he saw clearly the folly of impeaching Sacheverell, made that noisy clergyman the subject of several tracts. Later, he transferred his services to Harley, not, however, without allowing himself free criticism of the extreme tories. In the autumn, he was sent to Scotland to watch the Jacobites, and it is a letter written to Harley at this time which first causes us to suspect that he was betraying his employer. Some years ago, William Lee attributed to Defoe, on strong internal evidence, a satirical pamphlet of 1711, entitled Atalantis Major; but no one would suspect, from the way in which Defoe refers to his efforts to suppress this tract, that he was its unblushing author. There is no absolute proof that he was; but, when, a little later, we find him charged with writing against Harley in The Protestant Post Boy, and, later still, encounter attacks upon that minister in pamphlets full of the characteristics of Defoe's style, our faith in the journalist's fidelity is greatly shaken.

Whether the inscrutable Harley, now earl of Oxford, had entire faith in his agent does not appear. Certain it is, however, that, for the next two or three years, Defoe was continually making surreptitious visits to the prime minister and sending him letters, which not infrequently contained requests for money. That he was as well paid by Oxford as enemies asserted may be doubted; but there is no doubt that his advice was sought on many matters and that he was employed by outsiders to secure the minister's countenance for various schemes. Meanwhile, the stream of pamphlets flowed unabated, and the tone of The Review was adroitly changed in favour of peace with France. As a result, Defoe was despised and distrusted by whigs and tories alike. The modern student, making allowance for (the factiousness of the times, for the undeveloped state of party government, for Defoe's pecuniary embarrassments and his social

ostracism after the pillorying, finds it possible to extenuate his conduct and is impelled to admire his dexterity and his resourcefulness. There is ground, too, for maintaining that, in some important respects, he was consistent, and a better counsellor than Oxford deserved. He opposed the passage of the obnoxious schism bill, and he seems never to have wavered in his support of the Hanoverian succession.

As luck would have it, his second imprisonment was the direct result of his activity against the Jacobites. During a visit to Scotland in the autumn of 1712, he was much alarmed at the progress Jacobitism seemed to be making, and he wrote several tracts on the subject, in some of which he made an unfortunate use of his favourite weapon, irony. Such a title as Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover should have deceived no one; but this tract and others furnished certain whigs with an occasion for bringing an action against him for treason. Their object was twofold-to crush Defoe and to besmirch Oxford, if the latter took any overt measures to protect his unacknowledged agent. The scheme was clever, but Defoe's measures to counteract it-too intricate to be described here-were cleverer. He would doubtless have come off scotfree, had he not made the tactical mistake of reflecting in The Review upon chief justice Parker. This contempt of court led to his being confined, for a few days, in the queen's bench prison in May 1713. Immediately upon his release, he began to edit a new trade journal Mercator, in the interest of Bolingbroke's treaty of commerce, suffering The Review to expire quietly. There is some, though, perhaps, not sufficient, evidence to show that, at this time, his services were controlled by Bolingbroke rather than by Oxford; but, towards the end of 1713, he was again in frequent communication with the latter, through whose favour he secured a pardon under the great seal for all past offences, thus effectually stopping, for the time, the schemes of his whig enemies.

The year 1714 was a turning point for him, as well as for his tory employers. He continued Mercator1 almost to the time of

1 Perhaps it may not be amiss to give a concrete illustration of Defoe's casuistry. This is furnished by a comparison of the evasive language he used in his Appeal (1715) with regard to his editorship of Mercator, and the frank language about his share in that journal which he permitted himself to use in a short-lived trade paper of 1719, The Manufacturer, which has escaped his bibliographers but was attributed to him by his contemporaries and is certainly his. Moreover, in the Appeal, he stated categorically that he had 'never had any payment or reward for writing any part' of Mercator; but in his letter to Oxford of 21 May 1714, he wrote that Arthur Moore,