possible exception of Roxana. In delineating Moll, Defoe shows both more psychological interest than usual and more imagination. As we follow her changing fortunes, we feel that here is a fairly careful study of the character of a woman whose viciousness is caused largely by chance. In her early womanhood Moll is in a position so much like that of Richardson's Pamela that one is almost inclined to conjecture whether Moll Flanders had any influence on the first work of our first great novelist. Moll is a dependent in a family far above her socially, whose eldest son makes love to her; but, unlike Pamela, she has no parents to give her prudent advice; nor has she the precociously shrewd, calculating virtue of Pamela, which enables the latter to force her would-be seducer into marriage. The result is that poor Moll, worked upon by love and vanity, is ruined. Deserted now by the man she loves, she enters on a career of deceit and vice -vice that steadily becomes more and more a part of her life every step of which Defoe traces with logical care. Yet with all her vice, Moll never gets quite beyond our sympathy. We never quite forget that the instinct for self-preservation first drives Moll to her amours, and, when she grows older, to her thieving; though in both, it must be said, the excitement of the dangerous game she is playing leads her to keep on longer than she actually need. It is only to be expected that living thus by her wits, dependent altogether on herself, Moll should become extremely selfish. And yet, even in

her old age, the woman is not without a power of loving, which under favourable circumstances would have made her a good wife, a devoted mother, and withal an esteemed member of good provincial society. At times her love takes on an intensity which is romantic, as when in Virginia she kisses the ground where her newly-discovered son just stood, to whom she has not yet revealed herself. And there is romantic intensity in her love again, when her Lancashire husband leaves her the only one of her five husbands whom she really loved-and she sits the whole day in her room grieving silently, or calling out, "O Jemmy! . . . come back, come back."

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But though capable of such outbursts of passion, Moll Flanders is for the most part level-headed and unemotional in a cold-blooded way, characteristic of the people in Defoe's stories. In spite of her love for her Lancashire husband, she never tells him more of her history than it is prudent to divulge. And when she gives her newly-discovered son a gold watch, saying, "I had nothing of any value to bestow but that, and I desired he would now and then kiss it for my sake," there follows that admirable realistic touch:-"I did not, indeed, tell him that I stole it from a gentlewoman's side, at a meetinghouse in London. That's by the way."

In fine, Moll Flanders, with the mixture of good and evil in her nature, is as vital a character as Defoe ever created. Had he surrounded her with characters equally vivified, he would have anticipated Fielding in producing the English novel of real life.

One living character, however, does not make a novel any more than one swallow makes a summer; and so, after all, Moll Flanders, like Defoe's other narratives, is, properly speaking, only a "realistic biography." It is notable among his other "realistic biographies," however, in showing imagination, sympathetic insight into character, and creative ability, which are unfortunately rare in Defoe's fiction.

Following Moll Flanders, will be found An Appeal to Honour and Justice, tho' it be of his Worst Enemies, by Daniel Defoe. Being a True Account of his Conduct in Publick Affairs. This was a pamphlet published in January, 1715, but written in the preceding November. Defoe composed it as a vindication of his conduct, at a time when his temporising policy had left him few friends in either political party. The Whigs suspected, if they did not actually know, that close and none too honourable association of Defoe and Harley which has been established beyond doubt, only by a recent publication of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Many of them, for reasons partly personal and partly political, chose to misunderstand the obvious irony of two or three pamphlets 2 published

1 Cf. Defoe and Harley, English Historical Review, xv. p. 238; and Daniel Defoe in Scotland, Scottish Review, xxxvi. p. 250.

2 The two most important were : Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover, February, 1713; and And What if the Pretender should Come? March, 1713.

by Defoe towards the end of Anne's reign. He was accordingly indicted" for high crimes and misdemeanors," but promptly pardoned by the Queen. Since the royal policy at the time was directed by Tory leaders, the pardon could not have lessened the animosity of his Whig enemies. Neither was Defoe liked by the Tories, who could not but remember him as the champion of the Dissenters; and he did not decrease their dislike, when he took pains to parade his Whiggism on the accession of George I. Even so, he could regain the confidence of comparatively few Hanoverians. Thus, at the end of 1714, Defoe, mistrusted by both political parties, found himself obliged to write his Appeal to Honour and Justice, if he wished once more to command the respect of his old political friends.

The contents of the pamphlet are not exactly what the title would lead us to expect. It was not so much a "true account" of Defoe's conduct in public affairs, as an account of what he would have liked his conduct to be. He gives no hint of the fact that for years, whether in Harley's service or Godolphin's, he was nothing but a political spy. In fairness to Defoe, it should be said that, whatever the secret ambitions of the ministers during these years, the policy of the government in the main was wise, and that Defoe sincerely, it would seem-believed in it. It is only his underhand method of helping to carry out this policy that we condemn. Had Defoe, in all honour and openness, manifested his devotion to liberty, and his love of

moderation in both government and religion, which he declares in his Appeal, we should feel nothing but admiration for the man.

Apart from its historical interest, An Appeal to Honour and Justice is interesting in point of style. More carefully composed, on the whole, than Defoe's narratives, when it comes to the relation of his dealings with Harley, it falls into the less careful and more verbose manner of his stories. It is worth while to observe in this narrative of fact that the Lord Treasurer, Godolphin, shows his affability in the same manner as the characters of Defoe's fiction. When he first saw Defoe after Harley's dismissal, he "received me with great freedom, and told me, smiling,1 he had not seen me a long while."

G. H. MAYNADIER.

1 The italics are my own. Defoe's characters, as I have shown, seldom display their good-will except by smiling.