Chapter XIX: Front Matter (19)

We are chiefly indebted for the information or amusement we derive from Mr. Flaxman’s work, to the historical details of his subject. We cannot say that he has removed any of the doubts or stumbling-blocks in our way, or extended the landmarks of taste or reasoning. We turned with some interest to the Lecture on _Beauty_; for the artist has left specimens of this quality in several of his works. We were a good deal disappointed. It sets out in this manner: ‘That beauty is not merely an imaginary quality, but a real essence, may be inferred from the harmony of the universe; and the perfection of its wondrous parts we may understand from all surrounding nature; and in this course of observation we find, that man has more of beauty bestowed on him as he rises higher in creation.’ The rest is of a piece with this exordium,—containing a dissertation on the various gradations of being, of which man is said to be at the top,—on the authority of Socrates, who argues, ‘that the human form is the most perfect of all forms, because it contains in it the principles and powers of all inferior forms.’ This assertion is either a flat contradiction of the fact, or an _antique_ riddle, which we do not pretend to solve. Indeed, we hold the ancients, with all our veneration for them, to have been wholly destitute of philosophy in this department; and Mr. Flaxman, who was taught when he was young to look up to them for light and instruction in the philosophy of art, has engrafted too much of it on his Lectures. He defines beauty thus: ‘The most perfect human beauty is that _most free from deformity_, either of body or mind, and may be therefore defined—The most perfect soul is the most perfect body.’

In support of this truism, he strings a number of quotations together, as if he were stringing pearls:

‘In Plato’s dialogue concerning the beautiful, he shows the power and influence of mental beauty on corporeal; and in his dialogue, entitled “The greater Hippias,” Socrates observes in argument, “that as a beautiful vase is inferior to a beautiful horse, and as a beautiful horse is not to be compared to a beautiful virgin, in the same manner a beautiful virgin is inferior in beauty to the immortal Gods; for,” says he, “there is a beauty incorruptible, ever the same.” It is remarkable, that, immediately after, he says, “Phidias is skilful in beauty.” Aristotle, the Scholar of Plato, begins his Treatise on Morals thus:—“Every art, every method and institution, every action and council, seems to seek some good; therefore the ancients pronounced the beautiful to be good.” Much, indeed, might be collected from this philosopher’s treatises on morals, poetics, and physiognomy, of the greatest importance to our subject; but for the present we shall produce only two quotations from Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_, which contain the immediate application of these principles to the arts of design. In the dialogue between Socrates and the sculptor Clito, Socrates concludes, that “Statuary must represent the emotions of the soul by form;” and in the former part of the same dialogue, Parrhasius and Socrates agree that, “the good and evil qualities of the soul may be represented in the figure of man by painting.” In the applications from this dialogue to our subject, we must remember, philosophy demonstrates that rationality and intelligence, although connected with animal nature, rises above it, and properly exists in a more exalted state. From such contemplations and maxims, the ancient artists sublimated the sentiments of their works, expressed in the choicest forms of nature; thus they produced their divinities, heroes, patriots, and philosophers, adhering to the principle of Plato, that “nothing is beautiful which is not good;” it was this which, in ages of polytheism and idolatry, still continued to enforce a popular impression of divine attributes and perfection.’

If the ancient sculptors had had nothing but such maxims and contemplations as these to assist them in forming their statues, they would have been greatly to seek indeed! Take these homilies on the Beautiful and the Good, together with Euclid’s Elements, into any country town in England, and see if you can make a modern Athens of it. The Greek artists did not learn to put expression into their works, because Socrates had said, that ‘statuary must represent the emotions of the soul by form;’ but he said that they ought to do so, because he had seen it done by Phidias and others. It was from the diligent study and contemplation of the ‘choicest forms of nature,’ and from the natural love of beauty and grandeur in the human breast, and not from ‘shreds and patches,’ of philosophy, that they drew their conceptions of Gods and men. Let us not, however, be thought hard on the metaphysics of the ancients: they were the first to propose these questions, and to feel the curiosity and the earnest desire to know what the _beautiful_ and the _good_, meant. If the will was not tantamount to the deed, it was scarcely their fault; and perhaps, instead of blaming their partial success, we ought rather to take shame to ourselves for the little progress we have made, and the dubious light that has been shed upon such questions since. If the Professor of Sculpture had sought for the principles of beauty in the antique statues, instead of the _scholia_ of the commentators, he probably might have found it to resolve itself (according, at least, to their peculiar and favourite view of it) into a certain symmetry of form, answering in a great measure, to harmony of colouring, or of musical sounds. We do not here affect to lay down a metaphysical theory, but to criticise an historical fact. We are not bold enough to say that beauty in general depends on a regular gradation and correspondence of lines, but we may safely assert that Grecian beauty does. If we take any beautiful Greek statue, we shall find that, seen in profile, the forehead and nose form nearly a perpendicular straight line; and that finely turned at that point, the lower part of the face falls by gentle and almost equal curves to the chin. The cheek is full and round, and the outline of the side of the face a general sloping line. In front, the eyebrows are straight, or gently curved; the eyelids full and round to match, answering to that of Belphœbe, in Spenser—

‘Upon her eyebrows many Graces sat,
Under the shadow of her even brows:’

The space between the eyebrows is broad, and the two sides of the nose straight, and nearly parallel; the nostrils form large and distinct curves; the lips are full and even, the corners being large; the chin is round, and rather short, forming, with the two sides of the face, a regular oval. The opposite to this, the Grecian model of beauty, is to be seen in the contour and features of the African face, where all the lines, instead of corresponding to, or melting into, one another, in a kind of _rhythmus_ of form, are sharp, angular, and at cross-purposes. Where strength and majesty were to be expressed by the Greeks, they adopted a greater squareness, but there was the same unity and correspondence of outline. Greek grace is harmony of movement. The _ideal_ may be regarded as a certain predominant quality or character (this may be ugliness or deformity as well as beauty, as is seen in the forms of fauns and satyrs) diffused over all the parts of an object, and carried to the utmost pitch, that our acquaintance with visible models, and our conception of the imaginary object, will warrant. It is extending our impressions farther, raising them higher than usual, from the _actual_ to the _possible_.[31] How far we can enlarge our discoveries from the one of these to the other, is a point of some nicety. In treating on this question, our author thus distinguishes the Natural and the Ideal Styles:

‘The Natural Style may be defined thus: a representation of the human form, according to the distinction of sex and age, in action or repose, expressing the affections of the soul. The same words may be used to define the Ideal Style, but they must be followed by this addition—_selected from such perfect examples as may excite in our minds a conception of the preternatural_. By these definitions will be understood that the Natural Style is peculiar to humanity, and the Ideal to spirituality and divinity.’

We should be inclined to say, that the female divinities of the ancients were Goddesses because they were _ideal_, rather than that they were _ideal_ because they belonged to the class of Goddesses; ‘By their own beauty were they deified.’ Of the difficulty of passing the line that separates the actual from the imaginary world, some test may be formed by the suggestion thrown out a little way back; _viz._ that the _ideal_ is exemplified in systematizing and enhancing any idea whether of beauty or deformity, as in the case of the fauns and satyrs of antiquity. The expressing of depravity and grossness is produced here by approximating the human face and figure to that of the brute; so that the mind runs along this line from one to the other, and carries the wished-for resemblance as far as it pleases. But here both the extremes are equally well known, equally objects of sight and observation: insomuch that there might be a literal substitution of the one for the other; but in the other case, of elevating character and pourtraying Gods as men, one of the extremes is missing; and the combining the two, is combining a positive with an unknown abstraction. To represent a Jupiter or Apollo, we take the best species, (as it seems to us,) and select the best of that species: how we are to get beyond that _best_, without any given form or visible image to refer to, it is not easy to determine. The _ideal_, according to Mr. Flaxman, is ‘the scale by which to heaven we do ascend;’ but it is a hazardous undertaking to soar above reality, by embodying an abstraction. If the ancients could have seen the immortal Gods, with their bodily sense, (as it was said that Jupiter had revealed himself to Phidias,) they might have been enabled to give some reflection or shadow of their countenances to their human likenesses of them: otherwise, poetry and philosophy lent their light in vain. It is true, we may magnify the human figure to any extent we please, for that is a mechanical affair; but how we are to add to our ideas of grace or grandeur, beyond any thing we have ever seen, merely by contemplating grace and grandeur that we have never seen, is quite another matter. If we venture beyond the highest point of excellence of which we have any example, we quit our hold of the natural, without being sure that we have laid our hands on what is truly divine; for that has no earthly image or representative—nature is the only rule or ‘legislator.’ We may combine existing qualities, but this must be consistently, that is, such as are found combined in nature. Repose was given to the Olympian Jupiter to express majesty; because the greatest power was found to imply repose, and to produce its effects with the least effort. Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom, was represented young and beautiful; because wisdom was discovered not to be confined to age or ugliness. Not only the individual excellencies, but their bond of union, were sanctioned by the testimony of observation and experience. Bacchus is represented with full, exuberant features, with prominent lips, and a stern brow, as expressing a character of plenitude and bounty, and the tamer of savages and wild beasts. But this _ideal_ conception is carried to the brink; the mould is full, and with a very little more straining, it would overflow into caricature and distortion. Mercury has wings, which is merely a grotesque and fanciful combination of known images. Apollo was described by the poets (if not represented by the statuary) with a round jocund face, and golden locks, in allusion to the appearance and rays of the sun. This was an allegory, and would be soon turned to abuse in sculpture or painting. Thus we see how circumscribed and uncertain the province of the _ideal_ is, when once it advances from ‘the most perfect nature to spirituality and divinity.’ We suspect the improved Deity often fell short of the heroic original; and the Venus was only the most beautiful woman of the time, with diminished charms and a finer name added to her. With respect to _ideal_ expression, it is superior to common _every-day_ expression, no doubt; that is, it must be raised to correspond with lofty characters placed in striking situations; but it is tame and feeble compared with what those characters would exhibit in the supposed circumstances. The expressions in the _Incendio del Borgo_ are striking and grand; but could we see the expression of terror in the commonest face in real danger of being burnt to death, it would put all imaginary expressions to shame and flight.

Mr. Flaxman makes an attempt to vindicate the golden ornaments, and eyes of precious stones, in the ancient statues, as calculated to add to the awe of the beholder, and inspire a belief in their preternatural power. In this point of view, or as a matter of religious faith, we are not tenacious on the subject, any more than we object to the wonder-working images and moving eyes of the patron saints in Popish churches. But the question, as it regards the fine arts in general, is curious, and treated at some length, and with considerable intricacy and learning, by the Lecturer.

‘We certainly know,’ he says, ‘that the arts of painting and sculpture are different in their essential properties. Painting exists by colours only, and form is the peculiarity of sculpture; but there is a principle common to both, in which both are united, and without which neither can exist—and this is drawing; and in the union of light, shadow, and colour, sculpture may be seen more advantageously by the chill light of a winter’s day, or the warmer tints of a midsummer’s sun, according to the solemnity or cheerfulness of the subject. These positions will be generally agreed to; but the question before us is, “How far was Phidias successful in adding colours to the sculpture of the Athenian Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter?”—which examples were followed by succeeding artists.

‘We have all been struck by the resemblance of figures in coloured wax-work to persons in fits, and therefore such a representation is particularly proper for the similitude of persons in fits, or the deceased: but the Olympian Jupiter and the Athenian Minerva were intended to represent those who were superior to death and disease. They were believed immortal, and therefore the stillness of these statues, having the colouring of life, during the time the spectator viewed them, would appear divinity in awful abstraction or repose. Their stupendous size alone was preternatural; and the colouring of life without motion increased the sublimity of the statue and the terror of the pious beholder. The effect of the materials which composed these statues has also been questioned. The statues themselves (according to the information of Aristotle, in his book concerning the world) were made of stone, covered with plates of ivory, so fitted together, that at the distance requisite for seeing them, they appeared one mass of ivory, which has much the tint of delicate flesh. The ornaments and garments were enriched with gold, coloured metals, and precious stones.

‘Gold ornaments on ivory are equally splendid and harmonious, and in such colossal forms must have added a dazzling glory, like electric fluid running over the surface: the figure, character, and splendour must have had the appearance of an immortal vision in the eyes of the votary.

‘But let us attend to the judgment passed on these by the ancients: we have already quoted Quintilian, who says, “they appear to have added something to religion, the work was so worthy of the divinity.” Plato says, “the eyes of Minerva were of precious stones,” and immediately adds, “Phidias was skilful in beauty.” Aristotle calls him “the wise sculptor.” An opinion prevailed that Jupiter had revealed himself to Phidias; and the statue is said to have been touched by lightning in approbation of the work. After these testimonies, there seems no doubt remaining of the effect produced by these coloured statues; but the very reasons that prove that colours in sculpture may have the effect of supernatural vision, _fits_, or _death_, prove at the same time that such practice is utterly improper for the general representation of the human figure: _because, as the tints of carnation in nature are consequences of circulation, wherever the colour of flesh is seen without motion, it resembles only death, or a suspension of the vital powers_.

‘Let not this application of colours, however, in the instances of the Jupiter and Minerva, be considered as a mere arbitrary decision of choice or taste in the sculptor, to render his work agreeable in the eyes of the beholder. It was produced by a much higher motive. It was the desire of rendering these stupendous forms[32] living and intelligent to the astonished gaze of the votary, and to confound the sceptical by a flash of conviction, that something of divinity resided in the statues themselves.

‘The practice of painting sculpture seems to have been common to most countries, particularly in the early and barbarous states of society. But whether we look on the idols of the South Seas, the Etruscan painted sculpture and _terra-cotta_ monuments, or the recumbent coloured statues on tombs of the middle ages, we shall generally find the practice has been employed to enforce superstition, or preserve an exact similitude of the deceased.

‘These, however, are in themselves perverted purposes. The real ends of painting, sculpture, and all the other arts, are to elevate the mind to the contemplation of truth, to give the judgment a rational determination, and to represent such of our fellow-men as have been benefactors to society, not in the deplorable and fallen state of a lifeless and mouldering corpse, but in the full vigour of their faculties when living, or in something corresponding to the state of the good received among the just made perfect.’

All this may be very true and very fine; what the greater part of it has to do with the colouring of statues, we are at a loss to comprehend. Whenever Mr. Flaxman gives a reason, it usually makes against himself; but his faith in his conclusion is proof against contradiction. He says, that adding flesh-colour to statues gives an appearance of death to them, _because the colour of life without motion argues a suspension of the vital powers_. The same might be said of pictures which have colour without motion; but who would contend, that because a chalk-drawing has the tints of flesh (denoting circulation) superadded to it, this gives it the appearance of a person in fits, or of death? On the contrary, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes it an objection to coloured statues, that, as well as wax-work, they were too much like life. This was always the scope and ‘but-end’ of his theories and rules on art, that it should avoid coming in too close contact with nature. Still we are not sure that this is not the true reason, _viz._ that the imitation ought not to amount to a deception, nor be effected by gross or identical means. We certainly hate all wax-work, of whatever description; and the idea of colouring a statue gives us a nausea; but as is the case with most bigoted people, the clearness of our reasoning does not keep pace with the strength of our prejudices. It is easy to repeat that the object of painting is colour and form, while the object of sculpture is form alone; and to ring the changes on the purity, the severity, the abstract truth of sculpture. The question returns as before; Why should sculpture be more pure, more severe, more abstracted, than any thing else? The only clew we can suggest is, that from the immense pains bestowed in sculpture on mere form, or in giving solidity and permanence, this predominant feeling becomes an exclusive and unsociable one, and the mind rejects every addition of a more fleeting or superficial kind as an excrescence and an impertinence. The form is hewn out of the solid rock; to tint and daub it over with a flimsy, perishable substance, is a mockery and a desecration, where the work itself is likely to last for ever. A statue is the utmost possible developement of form; and that on which the whole powers and faculties of the artist have been bent: It has a right then, by the laws of intellectual creation, to stand alone in that simplicity and unsullied nakedness in which it has been wrought. _Tangible form_ (the primary idea) is blind, averse to colour. A statue, if it were coloured at all, ought to be inlaid, that is, done in mosaic, where the colour would be part of the solid materials. But this would be an undertaking beyond human strength. Where art has performed all that it can do, why require it to begin its task again? Or if the addition is to be made carelessly and slightly, it is unworthy of the subject. Colour is at best the mask of form: paint on a statue is like paint on a real face,—it is not of a piece with the work, it does not belong to the face, and justly obtains the epithet of _meretricious_.

Mr. Flaxman, in comparing the progress of ancient and modern sculpture, does not shrink from doing justice to the latter. He gives the preference to scriptural over classical subjects; and, in one passage, seems half inclined to turn short round on the Greek mythology and morality, and to treat all those Heathen Gods and Goddesses as a set of very improper people:—as to the Roman bas-reliefs, triumphs, and processions, he dismisses them as no better than so many ‘vulgar, military gazettes.’ He, with due doubt and deference, places Michael Angelo almost above the ancients. His statues will not bear out this claim; and we have no sufficient means of judging of their paintings. In his separate groups and figures in the _Sistine Chapel_, there is, we indeed think, a conscious vastness of purpose, a mighty movement, like the breath of Creation upon the waters, that we see in no other works, ancient or modern. The forms of his Prophets and Sibyls are like moulds of _thought_. Mr. Flaxman is also strenuous in his praises of the _Last Judgment_; but on that we shall be silent, as we are not converts to his opinion. Michael Angelo’s David and Bacchus, done when he was young, are clumsy and unmeaning; even the grandeur of his Moses is confined to the horns and beard. The only works of his in sculpture which sustain Mr. Flaxman’s praise, are those in the chapel of Lorenzo de Medici at Florence; and these are of undoubted force and beauty.

We shall conclude our extracts with a description of Pisa, the second birth-place of art in modern times; and in speaking of which, the learned Lecturer has indulged a vein of melancholy enthusiasm, which has the more striking effect as it is rare with him.

‘The Cathedral of Pisa, built by Buskettus, an architect from Dulichium, was the second sacred edifice (St. Mark’s, in Venice, being the first) raised after the destruction of the Roman power in Italy. It has received the honour of being allowed by posterity to have taken the lead in restoring art; and indeed the traveller, on entering the city gates, is astonished by a scene of architectural magnificence and singularity not to be equalled in the world. Four stupendous structures of white marble in one group—the solemn Cathedral, in the general parallelogram of its form, resembling an ancient temple, which unites and simplifies the arched divisions of its exterior; the Baptistry, a circular building, surrounded with arches and columns, crowned with niches, statues, and pinnacles, rising to an apex in the centre, terminated by a statue of the Baptist; the Falling Tower, which is thirteen feet out of the perpendicular, a most elegant cylinder, raised by eight rows of columns surmounting each other, and surrounding a staircase; the Cemetery, a long square corridor, 400 by 200 feet, containing the ingenious works of the improvers of painting down to the sixteenth century. This extraordinary scene, in the evening of a summer’s day, with a splendid red sun setting in a dark-blue sky, the full moon rising in the opposite side, over a city nearly deserted, affects the beholder’s mind with such a sensation of magnificence, solitude, and wonder, that he scarcely knows whether he is in this world or not.’

After the glossiness, and splendour, and gorgeous perfection of Grecian art, the whole seems to sink into littleness and insignificance, compared with the interest we feel in the period of its restoration, and in the rude, but mighty efforts, it made to reach to its former height and grandeur;—with more anxious thoughts, and with a more fearful experience to warn it—with the ruins of the old world crumbling around it, and the new one emerging out of the gloom of Gothic barbarism and ignorance—taught to look from the outspread map of time and change beyond it—and if less critical in nearer objects, commanding a loftier and more extended range, like the bursting the bands of death asunder, or the first dawn of light and peace after darkness and the tempest!

WILSON’S LIFE AND TIMES OF DANIEL DEFOE

VOL. L.] [_January 1830._

This is a very good book, but spun out to too great a length. Mr. Wilson will not bate an inch of his right to be tediously minute on any of the topics that pass in review before him, whether they relate to public or private matters, the author’s life and writings, or the answers to them by Tutchin and Ridpath. He is indeed so well furnished with materials, and so full of his subject, that instead of studying to reduce the size of his work, he very probably thinks he has shown forbearance in not making it longer. We could not wish a more distinct or honest chronicler. There is scarcely a sentence, or a sentiment in his work, that we disapprove, unless we were to quarrel with what is said in dispraise of the _Beggar’s Opera_. In general, his opinions are sound, liberal, and enlightened, and as clear and intelligible in the expression as the intention is upright and manly. The style is plain and unaffected, as is usually the case where a writer thinks more of his subject than of himself. Mr. Wilson appears as the zealous and consistent friend of civil and religious liberty; and not only never swerves from, or betrays his principles, but omits no opportunity of avowing and enforcing them. He has ‘excellent iteration in him.’ If he repeats the old story over again, that liberty is a blessing, and slavery a curse,—if he depicts persecution and religious bigotry in the same unvarying and odious colours, and never sees the phantom of _divine right_ without proceeding to have a tilting-bout with it,—as honest Hector Macintire could not be prevented by his uncle, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, from encountering a _seal_ whenever he saw one,—we confess, notwithstanding, that we like this pertinacity better than some people’s indifference or tergiversation. The biographer of Defoe, like Defoe himself, is a Whig, and of the true stamp; that is, he is a staunch and incorruptible advocate of Whig principles, and of the great aims the leaders of the Revolution had in view, as opposed to the absurd and mischievous doctrines of their adversaries; though this does not bribe his judgment, but rather makes him more anxious in pointing out and lamenting the follies, weaknesses, and perversity of spirit, which sometimes clogged their proceedings, defeated their professed objects, and turned the cause of justice and freedom into a by-word, and the instrument of a cabal.

Mr. Wilson cannot be charged with going too copiously or indiscriminately into the details of Defoe’s private life. The anecdotes and references of this kind are ‘thinly scattered to make up a show,’—_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_. Little was known before on this head, and the author, with all his diligence and zeal, has redeemed little from obscurity and oblivion. But he makes up for the deficiency of personal matter, by a superabundance of literary and political information. All that is to be gleaned of Defoe’s individual history might be stated in a short compass.

Daniel Defoe, or Foe, as the name was sometimes spelt, was born in London in the year 1661, in the parish of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate. His father, James Foe, was a butcher; and his grandfather, Daniel, the first person among his ancestors of whom any thing is positively known, was a substantial yeoman, who farmed his own estate at Elton, in Northamptonshire. The old gentleman kept a pack of hounds, which indicated both his wealth and his principles as a royalist; for the Puritans did not allow of the sports of the field, though his grandson (_contra bonos mores_) sometimes indulged in them. In alluding to this circumstance, Defoe says, ‘I remember my grandfather had a huntsman, who used the same familiarity (that of giving party names to animals) with his dogs; and he had his Roundhead and his Cavalier, his Goring and his Waller; and all the generals in both armies were hounds in his pack, till, the times turning, the old gentleman was fain to scatter his pack, and make them up of more dog-like sirnames.’ It was probably from this relative that Defoe inherited a freehold estate, of which he was not a little vain; and which seems to have influenced his opinions in his theory of the right of popular election, and of the British constitution. His father was a person of a different cast—a rigid dissenter; and from him his son appears to have imbibed the grounds of his opinions and practice. He was living at an advanced age in 1705. The following curious memorandum, signed by him at this period, throws some light on his character, as well as on that of the times:—‘Sarah Pierce lived with us, about fifteen or sixteen years since, about two years, and behaved herself so well, that we recommended her to Mr. Cave, that godly minister, which we should not have done, had not her conversation been according to the gospel. From my lodgings, at the Bell in Broad Street, having lately left my house in Throgmorton Street, October 10, 1705. Witness my hand, JAMES FOE.’

Young Defoe was brought up for the ministry, and educated with this view at the dissenting academy of Mr. Charles Morton, at Newington-Green, where Mr. Samuel Wesley, the father of the celebrated John Wesley, and who afterwards wrote against the dissenters, was brought up with him. Whether from an unsettled inclination, or his father’s inability to supply the necessary expenses, he never finished his education here. He not long after joined in Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685, and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner with the rest of the Duke’s followers. It is supposed he owed his safety to his being a native of London, and his person not being known in the west of England, where that movement chiefly took place. He now applied himself to business, and became a kind of hose-factor. He afterwards set up a Dutch tile-manufactory at Tilbury, in Essex, and derived great profit from it; but his being sentenced to the pillory for his _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, (one of the truest, ablest, and most seasonable pamphlets ever published,) and the heavy fine and imprisonment that followed, involved him in distress and difficulty ever after. He occasionally, indeed, seemed to be emerging from obscurity, and to hold his head above water for a time, (and at one period had built himself a handsome house at Stoke-Newington, which is still to be seen there,) but this show of prosperity was of short continuance; all of a sudden, we find him immersed in poverty and law as deeply as ever; and it would appear that, with all his ability and industry, however he might be formed to serve his country or delight mankind, he was not one of those who are born to make their fortunes,—either from a careless, improvident disposition, that squanders away its advantages, or a sanguine and restless temper, that constantly abandons a successful pursuit for some new and gilded project. Defoe took an active and enthusiastic part in the Revolution of 1688, and was personally known to King William, of whom he was a sort of idolater, and evinced a spirit of knight-errantry in defence of his character and memory whenever it was attacked. He was released from prison (after lying there two years) by the interference and friendship of Harley, who introduced him to Queen Anne, by whom he was employed on several confidential missions, and more particularly in effecting the Union with Scotland. His personal obligations to Harley fettered his politics during the four last years of Queen Anne, and threw a cloud over his popularity in the following reign, but fixed no stain upon his character, except in the insinuations and slanders of his enemies, whether of his own or the opposite party. It was not till after he had retired from the battle, covered with scars and bruises, but without a single trophy or reward, in acknowledgment of his indefatigable and undeniable services in defence of the cause he had all his life espoused—when he was nearly sixty years of age, and struck down by a fit of apoplexy—that he thought of commencing novel-writer, for his amusement and subsistence. The most popular of his novels, _Robinson Crusoe_, was published in the year 1719, and he poured others from his pen, for the remaining ten or twelve years of his life, as fast, and with as little apparent effort, as he had formerly done lampoons, reviews, and pamphlets.

We are in the number of those who, though we profess ourselves mightily edified and interested by the researches of biography, are not always equally gratified by the actual result. Few things, in an ordinary life, can come up to the interest which every reader of sensibility must take in the author of _Robinson Crusoe_. ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy;’ and it cannot be denied, that the first perusal of that work makes a part of the illusion:—the roar of the waters is in our ears,—we start at the print of the foot in the sand, and hear the parrot repeat the well-known sounds of ‘Poor Robinson Crusoe! Who are you? Where do you come from; and where are you going?’—till the tears gush, and in recollection and feeling we become children again! One cannot understand how the author of this world of abstraction should have had any thing to do with the ordinary cares and business of life; or it almost seems that he should have been fed, like Elijah, by the ravens. What boots it then to know that he was a hose-factor, and the owner of a tile-kiln in Essex—that he stood in the pillory, was over head and ears in debt, and engaged in eternal literary and political squabbles? It is, however, well to be assured that he was a man of worth as well as genius; and that, though unfortunate, and having to contend all his life with vexations and disappointments, with vulgar clamour and the hand of power, yet he did nothing to leave a blot upon his name, or to make the world ashamed of the interest they must always feel for him. If there is nothing in a farther acquaintance with his writings to raise our admiration higher, (which could hardly happen without a miracle,) there is a great deal to enlarge the grounds of it, and to strengthen our esteem and confidence in him. To say nothing of the incessant war he waged with crying abuses, with priestcraft and tyranny, and the straight line of consistency and principle which he followed from the beginning to the end of his career,—he was a powerful though unpolished satirist in verse, (as his _True-born Englishman_ sufficiently proves);—was master of an admirable prose style;—in his _Review_, (a periodical paper which was published three times a week for nine years together,) led the way to that class of essay-writing, and those dramatic sketches of common life and manners, which were afterwards so happily perfected by Steele and Addison;—in his _Essays on Trade_, anticipated many of those broad and liberal principles which are regarded as modern discoveries;—in his Moral Essays, and some of his Novels, undoubtedly set the example of that minute description and perplexing casuistry, of which Richardson so successfully availed himself;—was among the first to advocate the intellectual equality, and the necessity of improvements in the education of women;—suggested the project of _Saving Banks_, and an _Asylum for Idiots_;—among other notable services and claims to attention, by his thoughts on the best mode of watching and lighting the streets of the metropolis, might be considered as the author of the modern system of police;—and even in party matters, and the heats and rancorous differences of jarring sects, generally seized on that point of view which displayed most moderation and good sense, and in his favourite conclusions and arguments, was half a century before his contemporaries, who, for that reason, made common cause against him.

Defoe ‘was too fond of the right to pursue the expedient;’ and had much too dry, hard, and concentrated an understanding of the truth, to allow of any compromise with it from courtesy to the feelings or opinions of others. This kept him in perpetual hot water. It was a virtue, but carried to a repeated excess. It set the majority against him, and turned his dearest friends into his bitterest foes. If you make no concessions to the world, you must expect no favours from it. Our author’s blindness and simplicity on this head, amount to the _dramatic_. He went on censuring and contradicting all sects and parties, setting them to rights, recommending peace to them, praying each to give up its darling prejudice and absurdity; and then he wonders that ‘a man of peace and reason,’ like himself, should be the butt of universal contumely and hatred. If an individual differs from you in common with others, you do not so much mind it—it is the act of a body, and implies no particular assumption of superior wisdom or virtue; but if he not only differs from you, but from his own _side_ too, you then can endure the scandal no longer; but join to hunt him down as a prodigy of unheard-of insolence and presumption, and to get rid of him and his boasted honesty and independence together. While, therefore, the author of the _True-born Englishman_, _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, and the _Legion Petition_, thought he was deserving well of God and his country, he was ‘heaping coals of fire on his own head.’ Nothing produces such antipathy in others as a total seeming want of sympathy with them. Defoe was urged on by a straight-forwardness and sturdiness of feeling, which did not permit him to give up a single iota of his convictions; but it was ‘stuff of the conscience’ with him; there was nothing of spleen, malevolence, or the spirit of contradiction in his nature. Still, we consider him rather as an acute, zealous, and well-informed partisan, than as a general and dispassionate reasoner. He was a distinguished polemic, rather than a philosopher. Though he exercised his understanding powerfully and variously, yet it was always under the guidance of a certain banner—in support of ‘a foregone conclusion.’ He was too much in the heat of the battle—too constantly occupied in attacking or defending one side or the other, to consider fairly whether both might not be in the wrong. He asked himself, (as he was obliged to do in his own vindication,)—‘Why am I in the right?’ and gave admirable reasons for it, supposing it to be so; but he never thought of asking himself the farther question,—‘Am I in the right or no?’ This would have been entering on a new and unexplored tract, and might have led to no very welcome results. As an example of what we mean—Defoe, though a most strenuous and persevering advocate for the rights of conscience and toleration to those dissenters who, in his view, agreed with the church in the _essentials_ of Christianity, was, notwithstanding, far from being disposed to extend the same indulgence to Socinians, Anabaptists, or other heretical persons. Of course, he would conceive that he, and those with whom he acted in concert, were not criminal in excluding others from the privilege in question; but he did not enlarge his views beyond this point, so as to change places with those who entirely differed with him; and in this respect fell short of the philosophical and liberal opinions of Locke, and even Toland, who placed toleration on the broad ground of a general principle, whatever exceptions might arise from particular circumstances, and urgent political expediency. We should, therefore, hardly be warranted in admitting Defoe into the class of perfectly free and unshackled speculative thinkers; though we certainly may rank him among the foremost of polemical writers for vigour, and ability of execution.

It will be easily conceived, that in the variety of subjects of which his author treated, and in the number and importance of the events in which he took part, either in person, or with his pen, Mr. Wilson, whose industry and patience seem to have increased with the field he had to traverse, is at no loss for materials either for reflection or illustration. The only fault is, that the life of Defoe is sometimes lost in the history of the events of his time, like a petty current in the ocean. Nevertheless, the writer has traced these events and their causes so faithfully and clearly, and with such pertinent reflections, that we readily pass over this fault, and can forgive the slowness of a pencil that only _drags_ from the weight of truth and good intention.

Mr. Wilson has extracted from Defoe’s _Review_ (7. p. 296,) his account of the origin and application of the far-famed terms—Whig and Tory; and it is so curiously circumstantial, that we shall lay it before our readers, though some of them, no doubt, are already well acquainted with it.

‘The word Tory is Irish, and was first made use of there in the time of Queen Elizabeth’s wars in Ireland. It signified a kind of robber, who being listed in neither army, preyed in general upon the country, without distinction of English or Spaniard. In the Irish massacre, anno 1641, you had them in great numbers, assisting in every thing that was bloody and villainous; and particularly when humanity prevailed upon some of the Papists to preserve Protestant relations. These were such as chose to butcher brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, the dearest friends and nearest relations; these were called _Tories_. In England, about the year 1680, a party of men appeared among us, who, though pretended Protestants, yet applied themselves to the ruin and destruction of their country. They began with ridiculing the Popish plot, and encouraging the Papists to revive it. They pursued their designs, in banishing the Duke of Monmouth and calling home the Duke of York; then in abhorring, petitioning, and opposing the bill of exclusion; in giving up charters, and the liberties of their country, to the arbitrary will of their prince; then in murdering patriots, persecuting dissenters, and at last, in setting up a Popish prince, on pretence of hereditary right, and tyranny on pretence of passive obedience. These men, for their criminal preying upon their country, and their cruel, bloody disposition, began to show themselves so like the Irish thieves and murderers aforesaid, that they quickly got the name of Tories. Their real god-father was Titus Oates, and the occasion of his giving them the name as follows—the author of this happened to be present: There was a meeting of some honest people in the city, upon the occasion of the discovery of some attempt to stifle the evidence of the witnesses [to the Popish plot], and tampering with Bedloe and Stephen Dugdale. Among the discourse, Mr. Bedloe said, he had letters from Ireland, that there were some Tories to be brought over hither, who were privately to murder Dr. Oates and the said Bedloe. The Doctor, whose zeal was very hot, could never after this hear any man talk against the plot, or against the witnesses, but he thought he was one of these Tories, and called almost every man a Tory that opposed him in discourse; till at last the word Tory became popular, and it stuck so close to the party in all their bloody proceedings, that they had no way to get it off; so at last they owned it, just as they do now the name of High-flyer.

‘As to the word _Whig_, it is Scotch. The use of it began there when the western men, called Cameronians, took arms frequently for their religion. Whig was a word used in those parts for a kind of liquor the Western Highlandmen used to drink, whose composition I do not remember,[33] and so became common to the people who drank it. It afterwards became a denomination of the poor harassed people of that part of the country, who, being unmercifully persecuted by the government, against all law and justice, thought they had a civil right to their religious liberties, and therefore frequently resisted the arbitrary power of their princes. These men, tired with innumerable oppressions, ravishings, murders, and plunderings, took up arms about 1681, being the famous insurrection at Bothwell-bridge. The Duke of Monmouth, then in favour here, was sent against them by King Charles, and defeated them. At his return, instead of thanks for the good service, he found himself ill-treated for using them too mercifully; and Duke Lauderdale told King Charles with an oath, that the Duke had been so civil to Whigs, because he was a Whig himself in his heart. This made it a court-word; and in a little time, all the friends and followers of the Duke began to be called Whigs; and they, as the other party did by the word Tory, took it freely enough to themselves.’

The cruelties of this reign, and the sufferings of the people, for conscience and religion, on this and so many other occasions, formed a striking contrast to the voluptuous effeminacy and callous indifference of the court; and this insolent and pampered want of sympathy, by adding wanton insult to intolerable injury, undermined all respect for the throne in the minds of a numerous class of the community, and took away all pity for its fall in the succeeding reign. Charles, however, who seemed to oppress his subjects only for his amusement, and played the tyrant as an appendage to the character of the fine gentleman, did not proceed to extremities, or throw off the mask, whatever his secret wishes or designs might be, by openly attacking large masses of power and opinion. James was a true monk,—a blind, narrow, gloomy bigot; and did not stop short in his mad and obstinate career, till he drove the country to rebellion, and himself into exile. As the French wit said of him, seeing him coming out of a Popish chapel abroad, ‘There goes a very honest gentleman, who gave up a kingdom for a mass.’ By great good luck he succeeded, for it turned upon a nice point at last. On James’s accession to the throne, addresses of loyalty and devotion poured in from all quarters, notwithstanding his well-known principles and designs. An address from the Middle Temple expressed the sentiments of that body of scholars and gentlemen, in a strain of fulsome servility. The University of Oxford promised to obey him ‘without limitations or restrictions;’ and the king’s promise, in his speech from the throne, (says Burnet,) passed for a thing so sacred, that those were looked upon as ill-bred who put into their address, ‘our religion established by law, excepted.’ The pulpits resounded with thanksgiving sermons, and the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; and the clergy were forward in tendering the unconditional surrender of their rights and liberties for themselves, their fellow-subjects, and their posterity. If James did not before think himself _God’s vicegerent upon earth_, he must have thought so now. But he no sooner took them at their word, and proceeded to appoint papists to be heads of colleges, and to induct them to protestant livings, and to send the bishops to the Tower for refusing to set their seal to his arbitrary mandates; that is, he no sooner alarmed the clergy for their authority spiritual, and their revenues temporal,—so that judgment began, as Dr. Sherlock expressed it, in the house of God,—than they turned round, and sent their loyalty and their monarch a-packing together. Had it not been for this attack on the Church of England, the People of England might have been left to struggle with the hand of power and oppression how they could; and would have received plenty of reproofs and taunts from orthodox pulpits, on their refractory and unnatural behaviour in resisting lawful authority. Mr. Wilson has quoted an eloquent passage from Defoe, in which he admirably exposes the indifference of the nation, at this period, to principles, and their short-sightedness as to consequences, till they actually arrived. We give the passage, both for the sense and style. It alludes to the favourers of the _Exclusion Bill_.

‘How earnestly did those honest men, whose eyes God had opened to see the danger, labour to prevent the mischiefs of a Popish tyranny? How did they struggle in Parliament, and out of Parliament, to exclude a prince that did not mock them, but really promised them in as plain language as actions could speak, that he would be a tyrant; that he would erect arbitrary power upon the foot of our liberties, as soon as he had the reins in his hands? How were the opposers of this inundation oppressed by power, and borne down in the stream of it? And when they were massacred by that bloody generation, how did they warn us at their deaths of the mischiefs that were coming? Yet all this while, deaf as the adder to the voice of the charmer, stupid and hard as the nether millstone, we would not believe, nor put our hand to our deliverance, till that same Popery, that same tyranny, and that very party we struggled with, were sent to be our instructors; and then we learnt the lesson presently. Tyranny taught us the value of liberty; oppression, how to prize the fence of laws; and Popery showed us the danger of the Protestant religion. Then passive pulpits beat the ecclesiastical drum of war; absolute subjection took up arms; and obedience for conscience-sake resisted divine right. And who taught them this heterodox lesson? Truly, the same schoolmaster they had hanged us for telling them of, the same dispensing power they had enacted, and the same tyranny they had murdered us for opposing.’

Defoe gives a very curious account of the insults offered to James II. after his fall, and of which he was an eyewitness.