REVIEW.-Wilson's Memoirs of De Foe. 146 tion of political power. He wrote immediately after his sentence a keen satirical poem, called a "Hymn to the Pillory," which passed rapidly through several editions. He thus apostrophizes the wooden apparatus of the law: De Foe cheered the hours of his confinement in Newgate by the unremitted prosecution of his literary pursuits; he produced many tracts on various topics of the day, edited a genuine collection of his foriner productions, and commenced a weekly paper called the Review, in which politics, public morals, and other matters of existing interest and importance, formed the subjects. This publication has afforded incidentally many valuable facts for his biography. The Tatler and Spectator were afterwards produced much on the plan of De Foe's Review, On the night of November 27, 1703, while De Foe was expiating his party delinquency in Newgate, the great storm occurred. This afforded an excellent and popular subject for his versatile and productive pen, and having procured various authentic documents from the clergy and other intelligent eye-witnesses as materials, in July 1704, he produced "The Storm, or a Collection of the most remarkable casualties and disorders which happened in the late dreadful Tempest both by sea and land. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.' Neh. i. 3." This is a valuable historical narrative, consisting of 272 pages; the main facts are supported by the evidence of the original papers, from which they were derived, but the genius of De Foe could not forego the opportunity afforded of representing the author of the book as an eye-wit [Feb. ness of several minute occurrences detailed, though he was at the time a close prisoner in Newgate. On the accession of Mr. Harley to office in 1704, a favourable turn presented itself in De Foe's affairs. At his intercession the Queen sent some relief to his wife and family, through her treasurer Mr. Godolphin, and transinitted to himself a sufficient sum to pay his fine and the fees on his enlargement from prison. De Foe was henceforth taken into the confidence of Harley and Godolphin as a political agent; on one occasion he was employed by the former in a secret mission on the Continent; and on his return home he received an appointment for his services. About this time a circumstance took place, which afforded De Foe an opportunity for the exercise of the artillery of his wit, which it must be confessed he always played off con amore against the Established Church. On the 18th June, 1706, a benefit was given at Drury-lane Theatre towards defraying the expense of fitting up as an episcopal Chapel a Meeting-house in Russel-court, lately occupied by a Dissenting minister. There appears to us no harm in this, no reason why players should not contribute towards building a place for the worship of God, or attend in it when so built. On the other hand, we are not disposed to deny that a certain stigma of licentiousness has always attached to the stage, derived rather from the character of the times in which the actors lived, than from any necessary defect of the profession. Under proper regulations, the Drama is a source of high intellectual enjoyment, and the public spirit, the taste, and the morals of the community at large, may be influenced by it in a most important manner. Will any one be so senseless as to say that the consequences of ambition and crime are not brought home to every one's bosom in Macbeth, or that the horrors of a bad conscience are not de picted with all their awful consequences in the death of Beaufort? It is arrant stupidity or miserable cant to see nothing in the playhouse but a hot-bed of dissipation and vice. To return to the affair which we were noticing. There certainly were circumstances readily susceptible of ridicule in this benefit for pious purposes, because worldly and religious matters were so 1831.] REVIEW. Wilson's Memoirs of De Foe. easily brought in point of contrast. De Foe's keen eye did not overlook this, and he therefore published in his Review for 20 Juue, 1706, an exquisitely humourous satirical account of the matter. This was soon pirated and hawked about the streets, under the title of "A Sermon preached by Mr. Daniel De Foe, at the fitting up of Mr. Daniel Burgess's late Meeting house." He takes the play-bill as his text, the performance was Hamlet, with other amusements. In one passage De Foe asks how can the Church be in danger? "The Parliament addresses, the Queen consults, the Ministry execute, the army fights, and all for the Church! But at home we have other heroes that act for the Church. Peggy Hughes sings, Monsieur Ramadon plays, Miss Santlow dances, Monsieur Cherrier teaches, and all for the Church. Here's heavenly doings,-here's harmony, your singing psalms is hurdygurdy to this music, and all your preaching actors are fools to these. Besides, there's another sort of music here, the case is altered, the Clergy preach and read there, &c. and get money for it of the Church. But these sing and act, and talk bawdy, and the Church gets money by the bargain; there's the music of it!" He concludes by recommending the following inscription to be placed over the door of the Chapel : "This Church was re-edified anno 1706, at the expence and by the charitable contributions of the enemies of the Reformation of Morals, and to the eternal scandal and most just reproach of the Church of England and the Protestant Religion. Witness our hands, Lucifer Prince of Darkness, and Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Churchwardens."-vol. iii. p. 457. Previously to the Union with Scotland, De Foe was charged with two secret missions by the ministry to that country, of which he acquitted himself with such approbation, that he was rewarded, through the intervention of Harley, with a pension: on the retirement of that minister, it fell into arrears, and was ultimately discontinued. On the death of the Queen and the accession of George the First, Harley's party lost their power, and De Foe had to experience all the wretchedness of "that poor man," who has lived on the favour of a faction in the State. "No sooner was the Queen dead (says he), and the King, as right required, proclaimed, but the rage of men increased upon me 147 to that degree, that the threats and insults I received were such as I am not able to express." (vol. iii. p. 379.) His editor pertinently remarks, "De Foe's political life was now drawing to a close. During a period of more than forty years, he had taken an active part in public affairs, either as a warm partizan of liberal politics, or in opposing the factions of the times. In the course of the contest he had been involved in personal quarrels, and had met with some severe rebukes, but the fortitude of his mind at all times rose superior to his difficulties, and enabled him to triumph in the rectitude of his principles. He had now arrived at a period of life when the mind seeks repose from the turbulence of faction, and the course of political events having thrown him in the back ground, he was destined to beat out a new path to fame, which will render his name respected when temporary politics are forgotten." In the 17th chapter of his third volume, De Foe's merits as a writer of fiction are analysed by Mr. Wilson, and among the rest his ever-popular publication Robinson Crusoe is of course particularly noticed. It is a singular fact, that the MS. of this celebrated work went nearly through the whole of the trade, before a purchaser could be found in William Taylor of the Ship in Paternoster-row, who published the first part in April 1719. It need not be added that his purchase proved a very valuable speculation to him, although, as in many other similar instances, the author was but slenderly remunerated. How many literary men of worth know the force of that sentence "Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes!" The second part soon followed by the same publisher in August of the same year. The vulgar imputation which has passed current to every schoolboy, that he purloined the contents of Alexander Selkirk's MSS. who had passed four years on the solitary island of Juan Fernandez, is shown to be entirely destitute of truth. All that De Foe owed to Selkirk's adventure was the fact of a human being having been so situated, which, with a description of his mode of life, had appeared in a periodical paper called the Englishman, by Sir Richard Steele, No. 28. Sir Richard says, that he had seen and frequently conversed with Selkirk on his arrival in England in 1711. 148 REVIEW.-Wilson's Memoirs of De Foe. The perfect air of vraisemblance which De Foe contrived to give to all his works of fiction, in none is more completely developed than in the story prefixed to the translation of Drelincourt's Consolations against the Fear of Death. The sale of the book proving heavy on its first production, De Foe offered the publishers to make it go off, by the recommendation of a ghost, and immediately penned the Apparition of Mrs. Veal the next day after her death, to one Mrs. Bargrave of Canterbury, in the course of which supernatural rencontre and colloquy, the spectre strongly recommends the perusal of Drelincourt's treatise to her friend. The book went through forty editions! The "Journal of the Plague Year, being Observations or Memorials of the most remarkable Occurrences, as well public as private, which happened in London during the last great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen, who continued all the while in London; never made public before. London, F. Nutt, 1722;" and "The Memoirs of a Cavalier, or a Military Journal of the Wars in Germany and the Wars in England, from 1632 to 1648. Written threescore years ago, by an English Gentleman;" &c. &c. are prominent instances of his admirable skill in giving identical reality to the hero of his piece. These two last volumes have been frequently considered and referred to as descriptions by eye-witnesses of the scenes to which they relate. It will afford some idea of the industry of De Foe, and the fertility of his genius, to inform the reader that a catalogue of no less than two hundred and ten separate publications is given by Mr. Wilson as from the pen of De Foe. His Romances must have placed him during their run in easy circumstances; for about 1721 he built himself a handsome house at Stoke Newington, and is said to have kept his coach. Here, as human life is seldom exempt from some counterbalance to happiness, which places the affluent and the needy on a par, he was troubled with frequent attacks of those excruciating diseases the gout and stone.-At Stoke Newington Mr. H. Baker became the guest of his family, and forming an attachment for Sophia, De Foe's youngest daughter, married her in 1729. De Foe was doomed to experience, [Feb. as he approached the threshold of the "He who had borne so long the buffetings of the world, possessed a spirit that refused to sink under them, until he was touched by the hand that should have nourished and protected him. He could say, in the language of the prophet, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.' It seems that, to prevent the shipwreck of his property, obligation as well as private understanding, he had conveyed it to his son, with a legal that it was for the joint benefit of his wife and two unmarried daughters. But he proved an unfaithful steward, converting the property to his own use, and leaving his mother and sisters to want." A most touching original letter from De Foe to his son-in-law Mr. Baker, on the subject of his calamity, is given in vol. III. p. 605; it seems to have been written after his enlargement, and is dated Greenwich in Kent, 12 Aug. 1730, where he probably had sheltered himself in retirement, from the pressure of an insolvency which had been so cruelly brought upon him. De Foe did not long survive this last shock of worldly fortune, redoubled as its force had been by filial ingratitude. The particulars of his last moments are not on record; nothing more is known than that he died of a lethargy on the 24th of April, 1731, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, where he had drawn his first breath, and that he was buried two days after in Tindall's burying-ground, Bunhillfields. Thus have we briefly noticed, as they occur in the course of Mr. Wilson's elaborate narrative, the incidents and occupations which marked the life of a genius who has left us at this time only to regret that so many of the productions of his truly English pen 1831.] REVIEW.-Rev. W. Pashley's Voice of Reason. should have been devoted to temporary subjects of evanescent interest.-We have had no space to enter with Mr. Wilson into the analysis of the principal writings of De Foe, into the description of the parties of his day, or into details of historical characters acting on the same stage with himself. On all these points Mr. Wilson has considerably, nay, sometimes we have thought almost superfluously enlarged. His book is written in a plain, perspicuous, and flowing style. It will be found to afford much amusement to the mere lounging reader who may dip into it for anecdote here and there, while it forms a valuable volume of reference for such as would acquaint themselves with the state of politics and literature at the time immediately preceding the revolution of 1688, and forty years subsequent. We cannot, as we have observed before, follow De Foe and his biographer in their leaning towards the Puritan faction in the State; at the same time we can make due allowance for erroneous opinions and prejudices, which may tincture the lives of the best of men. We are quite aware how much the true catholicism of Christianity may be forwarded by forbearance and a mild construction of the influential motives of our neighbour, and we are willing to believe that, guided by sincerity of purpose, and unperverted by the fiery spirit of fanaticism, men of different religious sects are often much closer to union than they themselves believe. The Voice of Reason in Defence of the Christian Faith, as may be supposed would be now raised by the departed Spirit of the Author of "The Age of Reason," &c. By the Rev. William Pashley, B.A. 8vo. pp. 190. WE do not think that the manner in which divines combat infidelity, is that which is most efficient. They assume premises which are pointless weapons in regard to sceptics, because they leave the grounds of objection unassailed. With humility, then, we would propose a new system of tactics, and treat Revelation according to philosophical principles and the laws of Providence; neither of which seem to have been studied by that popular demagogue named Paine, with the prænomen of Tom;-apropos enough, both as he derived his name from the doubting apostle, and also resembled a great 149 bell, usually called Tom, very loud and very hollow. Noise enough he certainly made; but sound and sense are distinct things. We assume that infinitorum nulla sit ars; that no one can physically predicate what is in figure and essence Deity, and yet must do so, if he opposes Revelation; that is to say, he must predicate what God cannot possibly be, before he has any foundation for objection. If he finds a posteriori, from reason, that he cannot be what savages and pagans, and possibly what he himself, have made of him, he is vindicated, but he has no faculties or means of going further. Every philosopher knows that hydrogen and oxygen are both connected with combustion; he possibly predicates, therefore, that if he can compound them both, he will produce a combustible power, which will consume all before it. No, instead of this, he produces water, which quenches fire. Again, it is known that wherever there is moisture, organic being is sure to arise, of which no man can predicate the possible forms, whether vegetable or animal. Moreover, he sees only the phenomena of generation and vitality, but he knows nothing of the principles. Under these circumstances, therefore, how can he predicate any thing which exceeds hypothesis; and such being the foundation, viz. air, what must be the superstructure but a castle in that air? But the infidel says, and says truly with Locke, faith is an involuntary act, I have no faith, and you cannot compel faith. Admitted. Our author quotes Paine as saying that "No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases; but it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.”—p. 56. Now here is fallacy. A man cannot be obliged to believe any thing. He cannot be obliged to believe that he owes his being to an antecession of fathers and mothers; but he cannot deny it, without being laughed at. Admit the fact, and the hearsay becomes evidence, like history. Paine, to have been a perfect infidel, should have denied the premises that the Almighty could have made any revelation at all; but then he well knew that he would inextricably have been in a Maelstrom. 150 REVIEW.-Voice of Reason.-Progress of Society. Allegate, that there cannot be a triune Deity; that there cannot have been a Son of God co-existent and co-eternal; that there cannot have been a Revelation, and so forth. Now you cannot prove what is not, by what is; nor what is, by what is not. You take upon you to decide physical questions, by private opinions only; and no science can be formed out of such niaterials. As to the Bible, its authenticity is determinable by its adaptation to or disagreement with the laws and acts of Providence. The chief of these is, as to the present subject, the progressive improvement of man. Now it is noted by geologists that such has been the progress in creation, at various periods, that a future race of men far superior to the present, may be in the contemplation of Providence; and fanatics, in consequence of this idea, have not very rationally understood it to mean a race of men consisting wholly of dissenters. The principle of the Bible is improvement, by means of a proper conception of the nature and action of Deity, in respect to man; nor is there a single unphilosophical absurdity in any intervention which it records. A miracle is only a suspension of the laws of nature, and prophecy only a supernatural impulse. An incarnation from the very birth of the intellectual conformation of a being suited to some especial divine purpose, is not also an unphilosophical absurdity; and nothing which cannot be demonstrated such, is to be treated with contempt. In proof, be it observed that philosophers admit the existence of a subtile fluid, which occupies completely the space of the universe, (see Arnott's Physics, ii. 4.) and of which the properties are not discoverable by man. This is an affair of physics; and all the acts of Deity are conducted by physical means, whereas infidelity is derived from metaphysics, a science which professes to determine all things by consciousness; but who can calculate eclipses by con sciousness? Paine was not a philosopher. If the Bible had not contained extraordinary things, it could not have been a revelation; and because it does contain extraordinary things, he allegates that it is undeserving of credit. For many centuries it was disputed whether there could possibly exist such beings as [Feb. ghosts; but Dr. Hibbert has plainly shown that such visionary beings are actually created before the eyes of the spectators, through certain states of disease in their own persons. It therefore follows that our organs are susceptible of being acted upon by unknown causes, so as per se to produce miracles and extraordinary things. Now if the Bible cannot be philosophically convicted of absurdity, and we think that it cannot, why then infidelity has no better ground-work than cavil? Paine has merely brought forward the quibbles of the French revolutionists; and Bishop Watson has most successfully exposed palpable sophism and gross falsifications of history. Paine, to make his case good, ought to have shown that it was the intention of the Almighty to make man an impeccable and perfect being, and that the Bible misrepresents that object. But physiologists know that it is not possible to reconcile the conformation of man and the existence of privatives (as darkness the defect of light, death of life, &c. &c.) with such an original intention. He never was or could be any other than such as the Bible represents him to be; and this might with great ease be physically proved. Mr. Pashley, like a zealous and wellmeaning clergyman, is anxious that his parishioners should not be misled by the charlatan Paine. We are bound to respect such intentions, and wish him every success; for in truth, to philosophers, Paine is a mere man of straw. He only gulls the ignorant. The Progress of Society. By the late Robert Hamilton, LL.D. F.R.S. Professor of Mathematics in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen, Author of an "Enquiry concerning the National Debt." 8vo. pp. 409. DR. HAMILTON has given in this work an excellent digest of the philosophical doctrines concerning the history of man, and the theories of political economy. To these abstracts are added original and shrewd observations. Like many distilled essences, his writings exhibit lucid clearness, and have great strength of spirit. We shall not premise further, because we have extracts to make, bearing upon present circumstances of great interest; and first, the state of the poor: |