kind which no Man would dare to meddle with. But I would perswade myself, Sir, that stopping such notorious Things is not without its good effect, particularly because as it is true that some People are generally found who do venture to print any Thing that offers, so stopping them here, is some Discouragement and Disappointment to them, and they often die in our Hands.

"I speak this, Sir, as well on Occasion of what you were pleased to say upon that Letter which I sent you formerly about Killing no Murder, as upon another with Verses in it, which Mr. Mist gave me Yesterday; which, upon my Word, is so villainous and scandalous, that I scarce dare to send it without your Order, and an assurance that my doing so shall be taken well. For I confess, it has a peculiar Insolence in it against his Majesty's Person, which (as blasphemous Words against God), are scarce fit to be repeated.

"I am the more concerned you shall know this also, because if I guess right, and Mr. Mist is of that Opinion too, it is the same Hand that the Manuscript which I shewed Mr. Buckley, of Sultan Galga, was written in, and, I suppose comes from the same Quarter.

"If you please to order my sending it, I shall obey; and, in the meantime, assure you no Eye shall see it.

"Here has been a very barbarous Attempt made by Curl, the Bookseller, upon Mr. Mist, (viz.) to trepann him into Words against the Government, with a Design to inform against him. I think Mist has escaped him; but if he brings it into your Office, I shall lay a clear state of the Matter before you. I know the Government is sufficient to itself for punishing Offenders, and is above employing trepanns to draw Men into Offences on purpose to resent them.

"I am, Sir, your most humble and obedient Servant, "DE FOE.

"Newington, June 4, 1718."

VI.

"SIR,-I gave you the Trouble of a Letter a few Days ago. The Account I gave you there of the Conditions I had engaged Mr. M[ist] to, will I hope be satisfactory, and particularly in his performance of those Conditions.

"I suppose you will remember I hinted when I had last the favour of waiting on you, that there was a Book printing at his House scandalously reflecting on my Lord Sund [erland]; that M[ist] was willing, as a Testimony of his Sincerity, to consent to a Method how to put it into his Lordship's Hands.

"I have gotten the Sheets into my Hands, in performance of this Promise; and would gladly receive your Commands about them.

"I believe the Time is come when the Journal, instead of affronting and offending the Government, may many Ways be made serviceable to the Government; and I have Mr. M[ist] so absolutely resigned to proper Measures for it, that I am perswaded I may answer for it.

"I am, Sir, your most humble and obedient Servant, "June 13, 1718." DE FOE.

These Letters appeared, shortly after their discovery, first in the London Review; accompanied by some disparaging reflections on the character and conduct of Defoe. They were afterward printed in Notes and Queries; and were followed, in that publication, by several articles, in which I endeavoured to consider-1. The history contained in the Letters. 2. The Criticism of the Reviewer. 3. What Defoe did under his engagement with the Government, as above. And 4. The Morality or otherwise of his conduct.

In this Introduction it is unnecessary to say more than that the above Letters to Mr. De la Faye, were all written within the space of two months in 1718; and they demonstrate that the political Life of Defoe, had not closed at that date.

To estimate how much is involved in such an error, it is necessary to consider the versatility of Defoe's mind, the fertility of his genius, the marvellous industry of his pen; and that this veil of obscurity overlaid and probably concealed a great part of his labours, during all the last sixteen years of his life. It will not excite surprise, that opening out the consideration of the Subject, in the articles above referred to, I predicated that these Letters pointed" to the materials for an entirely new chapter of the History of Defoe's Life and Times.” With such conviction I immediately searched for the publications upon which he had avowedly so engaged himself, namely Mercurius Politicus, Dormer's News Letter, and Mist's Weekly Journal. My primary object was to ascertain whether or not he deserved the animadversion of the London Reviewer; but I was soon led to extend my investigation generally to his hitherto unknown Journalistic writings; and to transcribe such portions as might be interesting to readers of the present age. The result is now placed before the world.

I must say, at this preliminary stage, that I have omitted very much that would have illustrated the political history of the period; believing that party-contention would not necessarily be acceptable, merely because it had been written by Daniel Defoe. My extracts therefore are more historical than political; but they also include more than three hundred and fifty Essays and Letters, moral and religious-imaginative,— humourous, amatory,-ironical, and miscellaneous. Writing, as he did, on topics of popular interest, as they daily arose, there is a peculiar freshness in his relations of incidents, and his comments thereon; and I have been able to extract much in his charming style, on the Rebellion of 1715, and the subsequent proceedings of the Pretender and his adherents ;-on Commerce and Trade ;-the South Sea Scheme and Bubbles,and other epidemic popular delusions; on the Plague in France; and on offences, political and criminal, and their punishment. The whole is interspersed with a multitude of

anecdotes, answers to correspondents, and scraps of news, characteristic of the writer's remarkable faculty of humour.

In his Letters to Mr. De la Faye, Defoe recapitulates the nature of his engagement under Government during the two preceding years. I first commenced my investigation, therefore, with the year 1716, but discovering, as I proceeded, that a new Memoir of the remainder of his life would be necessary, as an accompaniment to his writings, and, that the beginning of his engagement with the Government would afford but an indifferent starting point, I was driven backward, first to the appearance of his Appeal to Honour and Justice, in 1715, when it had been believed his non-political life commenced. That pamphlet took me necessarily still farther back to the more remote causes of this supposed entire change in his life; and I became convinced that those causes had been in operation from 1712, culminating at the death of Queen Anne, and the accession of George I. My investigation was therefore extended over the twenty years, from 1712 to the end of Defoe's life, in 1731, and I thus found that he had been, before and afterward, the writer of other Journals, besides those specified in his Letters to Mr. De la Faye.

The party Journals of the last century differed, as in our days, from each other very widely in their views on all subjects of public interest; but there was then, from the lower state of educational refinement, a greater tendency to descend, in controversy, from logical argument to the practice of personal abuse. An actual examination of such newspapers would be necessary to an adequate conception of the coarse, indecent brutality of invective, too often resorted to by rival journalists. No controversial writer of that age was more perfectly free from this great fault than Defoe; yet none was more vilified by his opponents. I must confess, however, that when I have commenced, with some hesitation, to follow his pen on a new track, all doubt has been frequently removed by following, at the same time, the cue of slander against him, published in rival papers; and that, amidst such abuse, there

frequently came out valuable facts of personal history, that would otherwise have remained unknown. I was thus induced again to extend my researches by a cursory examination of all the accessible Newspapers and Journals, published during the whole of Defoe's literary life, extending over about fifty years; so that nothing published therein, and relating to him, might be omitted. The labour was great, but it contributed to the accuracy of my Memoir, and especially to the chronological order of events.

The notices and advertisements of new books, &c., in these newspapers, furnished me with the exact dates when the greater part of his known works were published,-led me to the discovery of other works written by, but not heretofore attributed to him, and compelled me to reject many that had been placed to his authorship, without sufficient, or indeed, any reason. A revision of the entire Catalogue of his Works was an obvious and necessary consequence. In many instances, the arrangement according to their respective proper dates involved much more than an inversion of their previous order; in fact, a corresponding alteration in the sequence of portions of his life.

The contemporary comments in other Journals, as to his character and writings, the differing versions of passing occurrences, the facts and statements, contradictory or confirmatory, illustrating the topics upon which he was engaged from time to time,—often necessary to the full understanding of the subject, could only with difficulty, if at all, have been interwoven with his Journalistic Writings, but could all find their proper places in a new Memoir of his Life. Without this, my transcripts might have had interest arising from the genius of their author, but would have wanted that cohesion and unity which a Memoir only could supply.

I cannot speak in too high terms of commendation on the patient industry of Mr. Walter Wilson, in his Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe. A Catalogue of the books and tracts, examined and referred to, in his two thousand pages,