Robinson Crusoe Examin'd and Criticis'dNow Published with an Introduction and Explanatory NotesTogether with an Essay on Gildon's Life

Charles Gildon's pamphlet on De Foe, though very popular at the time of its first issue, is now rare, the British Museum copy being the only one easily available. It is so important for a study of the composition and development of Robinson Crusoe, that its publication seems to me indispensable to complete my thesis, Daniel de Foe et ses romans.

My first idea was to reprint the text exactly as in the 1719 edition, merely adding explanatory notes. But as the only modern biography of Gildon is a very incomplete one in the Dictionary of National Biography, I found it necessary to make further researches, and was rewarded by the discovery of many hitherto unknown and unpublished manuscript documents concerning Gildon, both in the British Museum and the Public Record Office. The result of these researches I have embodied in an Essay on Gildon's life.

The great writers of the Augustan Age have been very little studied, and the minor literati not at all. A life of one of the poor hack-writers of Grub-street is of some interest for the literary history of the period. Gildon's life is representative in this respect. He was, moreover, in relationship with many of the most celebrated men of his time. The history of his relations with them throws new light on some details in the lives of Addison, Dennis, Pope, and Prior, and enables us to arrive at a true estimate of the famous Addison- Pope quarrel.

I have added notes on some obscure passages in Gildon’s pamphlet, and on his allusions to De Foe’s novel. The references to the text of Robinson Crusoe apply to the most easily available edition of De Foe’s works, that published by Hazlitt in 1840. I have systematically refrained from comments on Gildon’s style, which is ordinary eighteenth-century English and presents no interesting peculiarities.

I have been much encouraged in my research by the courtesy of the officials in the Public Record Office and the British Museum, and wish formally to express my thanks to them, and also to Miss E. Deane of the University of Liverpool, to Prof. Cazamian and Prof. Guyot of the Sorbonne, for many helpful suggestions.

This book having been printed in France, the number of words divided at the end of the lines is rather unusual.

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES GILDON

I

Gildon’s first attempts as a writer

Charles Gildon was born in 1665 in Dorsetshire, at Gillingham, then a small village hidden among the woody hills which skirt the river Stour. The ravages of the Great Plague did not reach this pleasant and healthy countryside, and the boy grew up, sound and sturdy, when in all the chief cities of England the pitiless scourge struck new-born babes, and there was a new massacre of the Innocents.

Gildon was by birth a gentleman, and never failed throughout his life to emphasize the fact (1) ¹ . His ancestors were substantial English yeomen, who had remained passionately attached to the Roman Catholic religion. His grand-father, a staunch old Cavalier, by his services to the Royalist Party drew on his head Cromwell’s hatred, and two thirds of the family estate were confiscated by the Commonwealth. Charles’s father, a zealous champion of the cause of the Stuarts, stoically bore persecu-

tion, unswerving in his faith as Papist and Royalist. When the Restoration came, he hoped for an ample reward for his loyalty: but, like many others, he was forgotten by the Merry Monarch. Reduced thus to comparative poverty, he was obliged to sell the best part of his estate and retire to Gillingham, where his son, Charles, was born.

Of the considerable fortune that had belonged to the family, there was little left. Charles’s father, a scholar, "member of the Hon. Society of Gray’s Inn" (1) ² , resolved to give his son a liberal education, to enable him to earn an easy living. Charles was sent at first to school at Gillingham, where he got "the first rudiments of learning under a very honest and learned master, Mr Young." But he was only nine, when his father died. His relations decided that he should enter the priesthood, "which was supposed the best support of a Gentleman whose Fortunes and Relations could promise him no greater advantage". At fourteen, he was sent to Douai, to the "Collège des Anglois", — a college of secular priests reserved for young Englishmen. Here he stayed for 5 years and became a very good scholar in Greek and Latin. His masters, finding him zealous in his studies, hoped to make an eminent priest of him; but "he found his inclinations point him another way": the Muses had already won his allegiance. In 1684-5 he was back in England, waiting impatiently for his coming of age.

As soon as he was 21, he went to London, resolved to lead the gay fashionable life of his dreams. Scarcely arrived in the "Modern Babylon", he became the friend of young rakes who introduced him to all the pleasures of the Town, so that he was not long in squandering the

remainder of the paternal estate. And, "to crown his other imprudences" (1)³ , he was not yet 23 when, being totally ruined, he married a penniless girl, who bore him several children.

At this time he attended the meetings of wits, where he often read verses of his own making. He was a constant frequenter of the salon of the "famous" Mrs Behn, "the divine Astraea", who loved to gather round her all the young libertines of the town. The literary fecundity of the "incomparable Mrs Behn" was greater than that of Dryden, and was a perpetual subject of wonder to contemporary writers. Young Gildon was enthusiastic, and later, gave remarkable instances of her extraordinary fluency (2) ⁴ : "Her Muse was never subject to the curse of bringing forth with Pain: for she always writ with the greatest ease in the world, and that in the midst of company and discourse of other matters. I saw her myself write Oroonoko (3)⁵ and keep her turn in discoursing with several present in the room."

Gildon was also, like De Foe and Samuel Wesley (4)⁶ , a member of the "Athenian Society", a literary club founded by John Dunton, the eccentric Non-conformist bookseller. Gildon was honoured with the task of writing the history of the learned society; the work was published in 1691, and won the approval of Dunton himself, who long continued a business acquaintance with the young historian, now a writer of vogue. Dunton passed this

indulgent judgment him (1)⁷ : "Mr Gildon is well acquainted with the languages and writes with a peculiar briskness which the common Hacks can’t boast of; in regard they want the life and spirit, and the same liberty, and extent of genius. He was always very just in the Engagements where I had any concern, and his performances were done as well as the designs would admit. He writ the History of the Athenian Society which contained the just merits of that Cause."

As Gildon advanced in age, he became more and more "dissatisfied with the tenets of the Church of Rome, that he had imbib’d with his mother’s milk". But the Catholic stamp was so deeply engraved on his mind that, as he tells us himself, "it cost him above 7 years’ study and contest before he could entirely shake off all those opinions that had grown with him from a Child " (2)⁸ . He followed closely the religious controversies of the reign of James the Second (1685-88), and — a fact which shows his sincerity — abandoned Roman Catholicism at a time when Papists were in great favour at Court. The sermons of Dr. Tillotson, who was later lord Archbishop of Canterbury, against Transubstantiation and the Infallibility of the Roman Church, were lent to Gildon by a lawyer "that at he same time cheated him out of 400 pounds "(3)⁹ . Gildon pardoned this theft, because the discourses of the Reverend Doctor had brought peace to his soul: he definitely abjured the Roman Catholic Church, which he scornfully called thereafter "the Whore of Babylon" (4)¹⁰ .

young men, who gathered round Charles Blount, a disciple of Hobbes, and an apostle of philosophical religion (1)¹¹ . Tempted by the doctrine of his new friends, and irresistibly drawn by the desire —frequent among young writers — to shock the bourgeois mind, Gildon became one of the pupils and admirers of Blount; he was soon chosen as the secretary and historiographer of the Deistical Club.

Since the loss of his fortune, Gildon earned his living by his pen: he had become a "hack-writer" or "Grub-street author", one of the class which, in order to secure a good sale for their writings, sought noisy successes obtained through slander and blackmail, lowered their talent to the coarse tastes of the Vulgar, and, at the bidding of unscrupulous booksellers, embittered contemporary polemics by hastily-written pamphlets. Among Gildon’s works published in the year 1692 (2)¹² , the most characteristic in this respect are: The Post-boy robb'd of his Mail, an adaptation, composed in great part by him, of some licentious letters of the Italian novelist Pallavicino (3)¹³ — and Nuncius Infernalis, which consists of 2 dialogues, one after the manner of Lucian, the other imitated from Machiavelli’s novelle Belfegor Arcidiavolo (4)¹⁴ . This second part was evidently expected to

ensure the success of the whole book; it is a good specimen of the coarse wit of the time: the Ghosts of Cuckolds of several nations — Merchants, Quakers, Lawyers, Poets, — describe their wrongs, and are finally condemned by Lucifer, Lord of Hell, to be thrown into "the cuckolds’ cave, 10.000 fathoms deeper than the Whoremasters, and next the keeping Cullys, and let each have 2 wives to torment him". The dialogue ends with these lines, obviously intended for the popular taste, spoken by Lucifer:

From his relations with the Deists, Gildon derived some profit by publishing books on their theories which obtained the great success of all works of scandal: perhaps this consideration was not absent from his mind when he gave his adhesion to Blount’s doctrines. He prepared in 1693 a Collection of letters written by the chief deists — Blount, Richardson, Yaxly, Rogers and himself — to correspondents of high rank; he gave the Collection a sensational title, The Oracles of Reason. Meanwhile, Blount’s suicide (August 1693) drew general attention to Gildon’s little volume. The success of the Oracles of Reason was extraordinary. Many were the divines who, indignant at the temerity of those scorners of revealed religion, retorted in writing (1)¹⁵ : "It is the

first book I ever saw which did openly avow infidelity!" exclaimed William Nicholls: and he added, with feigned disdain: "This book is chiefly made up of a few letters wrote between some Sparks at London and some Translations made out of one or two Greek and Latin books." This religious controversy was still going on in 1719!

Gildon had sufficient business sense to grasp immediately that he had found a rich vein which should be worked without loss of time. In 1695 he collected in one volume Blount’s works, to which he prefixed the biography of the famous Deist; commenting on Blount’s death, he made an extravagant apology of suicide, and in the heat of enthusiasm announced his resolution of ending his days in the same manner. Perhaps he was sincere and dreamt of martyrdom in a Cause that seemed holy to him. The Miscellaneous Works had not as great a success as the Oracles of Reason, but they were notwithstanding much discussed, and thus added somewhat to the editor’s reputation.

Gildon was chosen by several booksellers as the editor of many compilations. He published with pious care the posthumous works of Mrs Behn. In a volume of Miscellaneous Letters and Essays he included an original Apology for Poetry which he dedicated to Walter Moyle (1)¹⁶ , one of the wits of Will’s coffee-house and a wealthy man. He also published Miscellanies of poems and maxims; one of those collections, which appeared in 1692, Miscellany Poems upon several Occasions, contains some of his own work: two light pieces entitled To Sylvia, and a mediocre imitation of the beginning of the first satire of Persius. In the volume of 1694 — Chorus Poetarum — is included another of his poems: To my friend Mr

Thanks to his excellent education, Gildon had a competent knowledge of classical authors. This was universally recognised in his time: David Crawford, who became historiographer of Scotland, chose him to edit his Imitations of Ovid (1)¹⁷ , and to write the dedication of the book to Lord Boyle. By such work Gildon was able to make a tolerable living. We know that Lintot, the enterprising bookseller who employed him as editor of the Examen Miscellaneum, a collection of modern verse, translations from Anacreon and maxims from Greek writers, paid him 5 1. 7 s. 6 d. on the 15th of November 1702 (2)¹⁸ . But the money obtained from booksellers was not the chief resource of our author: like all the writers of his time, distinguished and obscure, he dedicated his books to rich patrons who rewarded the poor writer’s outrageous panegyric of their virtue and generosity with ringing gold coins. In order to be introduced to wealthy benefactors, he tried to become the friend of Tom D’Urfey (3)¹⁹ , then at the pinnacle of fame: he addressed to him a long and learned letter, full of allusions to the ancient dramatists, in praise of his comedy The Marriage Hater match'd, which had been bitterly attacked by envious writers; and D’Urfey, when he published the comedy (1692), inserted this letter as a preface. In return he wrote the preface to Gildon’s first work of imagination Nuncius Infernalis, and undertook to introduce the young

writer to the literary world: "the modesty of my friend being such, that he would not venture into the world alone. "

A few years later, Gildon succeeded at last in making the acquaintance of patrons of rank. The descendants of the Earl of Rochester chose him as co-editor with Tom Brown (1)²⁰ of the Familiar Letters, written by their ancestor the famous libertine (1697). The Earl of Dorset allowed him to publish several of his original poems (2). ²¹ About 1701, Gildon was entrusted by the Duke of Buckinghamshire (3)²² with his Essay on Poetry, which had won the praise of Dryden. Gildon published it in Examen Miscellaneum and soon after began, under the Duke’s direction, a learned commentary on the Essay; but the commentary, through circumstances independent of Gildon’s will, was published only after the Duke’s death, in 1721.

II

Gildon’s career as a playwright

Such high patronage, though profitable, brought little compared to the riches Gildon hoped to accumulate through his plays: for he had soon turned to the drama, then the only kind of literary work that yielded important profits. Already in 1694 he had been involved in a controversy concerning the English Stage. A minor critic named Rymer (4)²³ in a pamphlet entitled: A short

view of Tragedy: its original Excellency and Corruption : with some Reflections on Shakespeare and other Practitioners for the Stage (1692) pretended to scorn the Shakespearean Art and called Othello "a bloody farce without salt or savour". Gildon defended Shakespeare, claiming that he was a great dramatist (1)²⁴ ; he did not, however, admire him unreservedly, for he was ever very severe in his judgment of others, and declared that Shakespeare was not classical enough. It is curious to remark what he singles out for praise: "Of all Shakespeare’s characters", he wrote (2)²⁵ , "I like his clown best: he always speaks Truth, therefore I am pleased with his freedom; he shuns all Complaisance, therefore I doat on him for his rusticity. Methinks it comes nearest to Nature and Honesty: our Reason was given us to judge of Things, and our Tongues to declare that Judgment ". He agreed with Rymer that Othello was not a good play, because one dramatist cannot succeed in painting different passions (3)²⁶ : "Shakespeare that drew Othello so finely has made but a scurvy piece of Desdemona. " Shakespeare never was Gildon’s model: Lee (4)²⁷ and Otway (5)²⁸ appealed more to his taste.

Behn had left him the manuscript of a comedy, the Younger Brother, or the Amorous Jilt, which she had written hastily in the presence of her admirers. In 1696, through Gildon’s efforts, it was played at the Royal Theatre; Gildon suppressed many tedious passages and carefully altered a few political reflections, but, in spite of these changes, the play was a failure. Gildon hastened to explain (1)²⁹ : "Out of respect to her Memory and a deference which was too nice to her Judgment, he [Gildon] durst not make any alterations in it, but what were absolutely necessary, and then only in the first and second acts which reflected on the Whigs — when, if he had alter’d the jejune style of the 3 last acts betwixt Prince Frederick and Mirtilla, which was too heavy, in all probability it would have been more to the Advantage of his Purse". To obtain some reward for his work, he published the comedy in its entirety, with a short biography, very agreeably and briskly written, of the famous authoress (2)³⁰ . The edition was quickly sold, as the name of the "incomparable Mrs Behn " on the titlepage of a book was always a sufficient passport to success.

In the following year, Gildon having increased confidence in his own talents, produced in the same theatre his first tragedy the Roman Bride's Revenge. He explained its failure by its hurried composition (3)³¹ : "The Roman Bride’s Revenge was writ in one month, so it had the fate of those untimely births: as hasty a Death." It was a mediocre classical tragedy, in which

Gildon tried, without success, to imitate the style of "fiery Lee " (1)³² . Though admitting defects in his play, he was proud both of its complex plot, which was entirely of his own invention except for a hint taken from Camma of Galata (2)³³ , — and of the bloody catastrophe which Lee would have much approved: "the Moral is one of the most noble of any of our Modern Plays, it being to give us an example in the Punishment of Martian that no consideration in the World ought to make us delay the service of our country". (3)³⁴

In 1698, Gildon obtained a creditable success with Phaeton, or the Fatal Divorce, a tragedy, which ran several nights at the Royal Theatre. The plot was taken from a French opera of the same title by Quinault, but Gildon modified Quinault’s conception after a close study of Euripides’ dramatic style in Medea, and blended the character of Phaeton in a strange manner with that of Jason (4)³⁵ . Proud of the success, which he certainly deserved, Gildon published the tragedy, dedicating it to the Right Honourable Charles Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He added a refutation of Collier’s famous pamphlet A Short View of the immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.

Eager to retain his new popularity, Gildon turned Measure for Measure into an opera ; the historian Old-

mixon (1)³⁶ wrote a prologue and an epilogue (2)³⁷ , the famous actor Betterton took the part of Angelo, and the composer Purcell (3)³⁸ wrote the music. Gildon simplified Shakespeare’s plot and introduced masques and musical entertainments at the end of every act: dances of wizards and witches, or of tritons and nereids, disfigure Shakespeare’s poignant drama. In this Gildon was only following the example of D’Avenant (4)³⁹ , who had already, in 1662, altered the play to suit contemporary taste, giving it the title of Law against Lovers. Gildon’s opera, which had a fair success, was played at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which had just been opened by Betterton. (5)⁴⁰

But it was in 1701 that Gildon obtained his only real theatrical triumph with his tragedy Love's Victim, or the Queen of Wales (6)⁴¹ , also produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Gildon’s model for the dramatic structure was Otway, whose panegyric he wrote in the preface to the play; he had obeyed Betterton’s suggestions, and combined the rigid classical tragedy with operatic elements such as processions of druids on the stage, magnificent scenery, and the frequent use of thunderstorms. This tragedy brought Gildon what he most desired, financial

In 1702, Gildon wrote an adaptation of Lee’s Junius Brutus, which had been forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain as being an "antimonarchical play" (1)⁴² , after it had run for three nights (1681). Gildon transported the scene from Rome to Florence, and made Cosmo di Medici the hero instead of Brutus: for the Master of the Revels had refused to license his first adaptation of the play, in which he had merely suppressed "all reflections on Monarchy" (2)⁴³ . Under its new title The Patriot, or the Italian Conspiracy, Gildon’s tragedy — with the addition of songs composed by Daniel Purcell (3)⁴⁴ — was relatively successful. The Prologue was written by John Dennis (4)⁴⁵ , with whom Gildon was to entertain close relations for the rest of his life; the Epilogue, by the famous Farquhar (5)⁴⁶ . Encouraged by these renowned patrons, Gildon, when he published his play in 1703, boldly dedicated it to the Queen; the Duke of Leeds presented it to Her Majesty, at the same time asking her to reward the author. The Queen immediately wrote to her tyrannical counsellor, the Duchess of Marlborough, keeper of the Privy Purse "to ask her how much would be proper". (6) ⁴⁷

We do not know how much Gildon received from his Sovereign, but it is not likely that the rapacious Duchess was, contrary to her habits, generously inclined towards an obscure playwright.

During the last years of William the Third’s reign, Gildon’s reputation as a dramatic critic was firmly established. The booksellers Thomas Leigh and William Turner commissioned him to re-write and complete the biographical dictionary published in 1691 by Langbaine (1)⁴⁸ under the following title: The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets. He was also chosen by the enemies of Bevil Higgons (2)⁴⁹ , a poor Jacobite writer, to ridicule his tragedy, the Generous Conqueror ; to merciless criticism of the play, Gildon added general ideas concerning the English stage: he extolled Shakespeare and Jonson, attacked Dryden for lack of originality, and reproached Steele for not being sufficiently classical.

About this time, Gildon was the intimate of most of the great living authors, and of renowned actors and actresses: Mrs Bracegirdle (3)⁵⁰ , Mrs Porter (4)⁵¹ , and Betterton (5)⁵² ,

who played the chief part in all his plays, and whose biography he wrote a few weeks after the great actor’s death in 1710. It is very likely, too, that he himself played secondary parts in his tragedies, according to a frequent custom at the time (1)⁵³ . He probably was an indifferent player. He certainly was an indifferent dramatist, though at least honest in indicating his models and sources, and he does not perhaps deserve Young’s severe satire of his talent in the Love of Fame: (2)⁵⁴

Gildon’s relations with actresses did not help to improve the detestable reputation he had acquired from his connections with the Deists. He led, in fact, a very dissolute life. De Foe, always self-indulgent but hard upon others, branded Gildon’s vices in doggerel lines, in a poem entitled More Reformation (July 1703):

Evidently, in these outspoken lines, De Foe is merely exaggerating stories that were commonly reported of Gildon’s life; his cynical behaviour and youthful bluster contributed certainly to give credence to those rumours. But the attacks against his private conduct became so violent, that he felt bound to protest, though at the same time he admitted his incredulity in matters of religion. In the preface to Chorus Poetarum he wrote, in answer to slanders spread by his adversaries: "I confess I was sensibly touch’d with the Scandalous Judgment those Gentlemen made of my morals, which I do without Arrogance pretend to be as orthodox as any Man’s, how Heterodox soever my other opinions may be thought by some". But the mere fact that he proclaimed himself a deist was sufficient to make good souls reckon him among the worst rakes, and it undoubtedly injured him financially, as it turned away the patronage of rich and influential lords. As he advanced in age, his youthful enthusiasm for doctrines which seemed revolutionary and subversive to most Englishmen gave way to his practical sense. Little by little he turned to the Established Church, and allowed himself to be converted by Charles Leslie’s (1)⁵⁵ poor arguments in favour of Christianity, contained in a long pamphlet with this cumbrous title: A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, wherein the truth of the Christian Religion is demonstrated by such rules as stand upon the conviction of our outward Senses,

and which are incompatible with the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Deities, the Delusions of Mahomet, or any other Imposture whatsoever.

Resolved to reap the utmost benefit from bis conversion, Gildon proclaimed it widely. In July 1704, Leslie addressed to him a long gratulatory letter, and the new proselyte wrote a treatise, the Deist's Manual, in which he abjured all his former errors. He dedicated this production to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Thus back in the ranks of loyal English Protestants, Gildon easily found lucrative work. The Whigs and Tories, at this time, were waging a terrible newspaper war, and each was eager to enrol new* pamphleteers in his service. Gildon had no fixed political opinions, and let it be known that he was ready to offer his talent to whatever party felt inclined to reward his labours.

III

Gildon as pamphleteer

Gildon’s first political pamphlet showed him that he was treading dangerous ground. The High-Tory leaders were at this time greatly incensed against the Queen for having raised a Whig ministry to power. They knew her secret attachment to her exiled brother, the Pretender, and resolved to take their revenge by balking her hopes. On the 15th of November 1705, they brought forward in Parliament a proposal that Anne should invite to England the Heir Presumptive to the throne, the Electress Sophia. Thus they affronted the Queen publicly, and at the same time threw confusion into the ranks of the Whigs, who were greatly alarmed by this suspicious zeal for the Protestant Succession. The Tories hoped that

by this move they would cause a quarrel between the reigning Queen and the Queen to be — the touchy and dominating character of the latter was well known — and that they might take advantage of the trouble that would ensue to return to power themselves (1)⁵⁶ . Their plan failed, but they had the good fortune to lay their hands on two very important letters. One, dated Nov. 3rd, 1705, had been sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury by Princess Sophia, and seemed to intimate her wish to visit England, so as to be ready in case of Anne’s sudden death. The other had been sent on Jan. 12th, 1706, to the Earl of Stanford by Sir Rowland Gwynne, an English Gentleman at the Court of Hanover: Gwynne showed that in order to baffle the endeavours of the Jacobites, it was necessary that the Electress should come to England, and he expressed plainly a suspicion of the loyalty of the Queen and her Ministers towards the Protestant Succession. Both letters were given by a Tory leader to poor Gildon, who saw how much money their publication would bring in. Not suspecting that he was being used as a tool by the Tories in their war against the Queen, he published the letters, and added a review of those sensational documents, in which he dwelt at length on the advantages that would ensue from Sophia’s visit. Urged perhaps by the Tories, he even dedicated his pamphlet, with a touching ingenuity, to the Queen. The result soon appeared. His work was censured by both Houses and declared "a seditious libel, tending to create a misunderstanding between Her Majesty and the Princess Sophia". The author of the libel was easily discovered; Gildon indeed did not seek concealment. On June 8th,

1706, the Secretary of State, Robert Harley, issued a warrant thus worded: "Charles Gildon to be apprehended for being concern’d in publishing a seditious libel". (1)⁵⁷ On the 14th, Harley issued a second warrant to the keeper of Newgate, ordering him to receive the culprit, who had been examined and confessed his guilt. Without further delay, Harley announced Gildon’s arrest to the English Ambassador in Hanover, Mr Howe: "I do not know what Sir Rowland Gwin does at Hamburg", he wrote (2)⁵⁸ , "but one Charles Gildon who has printed a book to justify Sir Rowland Gwyn’s letter, and impudently dedicated it to the Queen is committed to Newgate. He was the person who reprinted Sir Rowland Gwyn’s letter: he takes the writing of the book upon himself, but it may be he will be obliged to produce the true author or authors ere long."

The hope expressed by the astute minister, who sought to reach his political enemies in this way, was never realised: Gildon did not inform against any one, perhaps because he did not know whom to denounce or because he feared revenge. On the 18th of June, he wrote to Harley’s secretary, Erasmus Lewis (3)⁵⁹ , "desiring to know whether he would be pleased to take his bail, as Mr Stephen had satisfied Mr Borrett (4)⁶⁰ , having two very substantial men, one with five or six thousand pounds; the other, besides his trade in the bookselling, has a place of 50 1. a year for his life" (5)⁶¹ . This offer was accepted, and Gildon did not remain long

He was tried on the 12th of February 1707 at the Guildhall, and found guilty (2)⁶³ . Sentence was deferred till the following term. Terrified by the mere idea of the pillory and prison, Gildon sought a protector everywhere: he applied to Richard Steele, who had just been appointed gazetteer, on the recommendation of Arthur Mainwaring (3)⁶⁴ . Honest, kind-hearted Dick Steele was always ready to help a brother-writer in distress. He wrote to the Queen, on behalf of Gildon, a petition for a Noli Prosequi, the first draught of which, in his own hand, has been preserved in his papers (4)⁶⁵ : "To the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. The humble Petition of Charles Gildon sheweth. That yʳ Petitioner has by an unhappy mistake and not out of any malicious design against the Happiness and Quiet of yʳ Majesty’s Government been concern’d in publishing a pamphlet call’d Sr R. Gwinn’s letter etc. That yʳ Petʳ has had a liberal education and fortune and expects this Term a sentence worse than Death for the same. That he is under the greatest sorrow and contrition for this His high offense against so good and gracious a Queen, and shall hereafter abhor and avoid all license in speech and writing unbefitting a quiet, humble, and Peaceable subject. Yʳ Pᵗʳ therefore most humbly Prays, etc." Harley received this petition on the 2nd of May; he read it on the 4th, and wrote a short note on the paper: " He

to apply again after sentence" (1)⁶⁶ . At last, on the 17th, Gildon appeared before the Bench. The judge soon gathered that he had been merely a tool, ignorant of the grave significance of his act. Gildon escaped imprisonment, but was condemned to a fine of 100 1., a large sum for a poor hack-writer. On the 27th of November, we find him sending a new petition to Harley, to be relieved from his fine (2)⁶⁷ , and we may believe that this request was granted, since it was presented by Mainwaring, who was very powerful with the ministers.

Gildon had learnt from his misfortunes the danger of meddling with politics; henceforward he behaved like "a quiet and peaceable subject", and paid court to men in office. He cherished the hope of being appointed, like De Foe, to some minor official post. In July 1708, he wrote a poem in praise of Marlborough’s victory at Oudenarde, and to obtain pardon for his past offence, dedicated it to the Electoral Prince of Hanover, afterwards George the First. He kept up more studiously than ever his acquaintances with men of renown, both in the literary and political world. He frequently visited "ancient Mr Wycherley", who was still held in reverence by the wits; in one of these visits he met the youthful Pope, whom he described later as a "little Aesopic sort of an Animal", — which, naturally enough, incensed the touchy poet (3)⁶⁸ . He remained on good terms with Steele to whom, in gratitude for his kindness, he dedicated his Life of Betterton: "The following piece was scarce yet an Embryo", he wrote, "when I designed its full growth for your Protection." In return, Steele, under his favourite pseudonym

of Isaac Bickerstaft (1)⁶⁹ , wrote the following humorous preface for a Grammar of the English Tongue, which Gildon began, in 1710, at the request of a bookseller named Brightland: "The following treatise being submitted to my censure, that I may pass it with Integrity, I must declare that as Grammar in general is on all hands allow’d the Foundation of all Arts and Sciences, so it appears to me that this Grammar of the English Tongue has done that justice to our language which till now it never obtained. The Text will improve the most ignorant, and the notes will employ the more learned. I therefore enjoin all my female Correspondents to buy, read and study this Grammar, that their letters may be something less enigmatic; and on all my male Correspondents likewise, who make no conscience of false-spelling and False- English, I lay the same Injunction, on pain of having their epistles expos’d in their own proper dress, in my Lucubrations. — I. B. censor." Gildon hoped much from the success of this grammar, which was dedicated "To the Queen’s most excellent Majesty". He contributed also to a translation of Lucian’s works, and wrote a Latin Grammar (2)⁷⁰ . He thought these academic treatises likely to recommend him to the great minister Harley, who had returned to power after a short eclipse. There are extant two letters of Gildon to the famous statesman (3)⁷¹ (1711).

He began by declaring that "he knew Harley’s own excellent parts, and the character he had of a Favourer of Men of letters and his generosity to such", then went on to explain a series of projects which, he said, would enable Harley to earn an eternal reputation as a "Great Protector of Arts and Sciences". The first of Gildon’s projects was for the promotion of virtue and morality: "Some ingenious person was to compose a Speech with all the flowers of Oratory and Rhetoric, and then he himself, if duly qualified, or another person indued with all the Graces and advantages of speaking was to pronounce it in a house to be built for that purpose in the centre of Lincoln’s Inn Square" (1)⁷² . Gildon obviously repented the license of his theatrical career, since this project tended to create opposition against the stage, by means of moralizing lectures destined to "advance the polite Sciences." An other proposal of Gildon was for the founding of an English Academy on the same lines as the French: the idea was by no means novel. Roscommon had already brought it forward (2)⁷³ , then De Foe in his Essay upon Projects (1607) and Prior in his Carmen Seculare (1700); and a few months after Gildon, Swift made exactly the same proposal in his Letter to the Earl of Oxford (Harley). Gildon’s last project was intended by him to prejudice in his

favour Harley, who was a specialist in economic questions. To induce the great statesman to grant him an audience, Gildon declared himself ready to lay before him "a method of Improving Her Majesty’s Revenue 50.000 or 60.000 l. per an. without injury to any one"; he does not give any more details of this marvellous project. He sent with his letters copies of his books, at least of those he thought likely to interest Harley, for example, his Grammar, for which he shamelessly claimed a reward in cash: "I have yet had no benefit of any consequence from the great pains and labour I have been at in this work but the hopes of a public service, and wish that my circumstances did not compel me to seek any other. But since those are so narrow I hope from our true Patriots another Reward more agreeable to the necessity of my affairs": and he went on to insinuate that among those patriots, Robert Harley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the most likely to be generous.

At the same time, in order to obtain support for his demands, Gildon sent some of his books to Edward Harley, brother of the Minister, "to divert a leisure hour" (1)⁷⁴ . He tried to interest him also in his proposals, which, he repeated, were designed "to advance the polite Arts to a greater perfection than they have yet known in these nations." This clever campaign probably did not fulfil the extravagant hopes entertained by Gildon, who was far from being modest. It is very likely, however, that he received some money, for at the end of his life we find him, poorer and more beggarly than ever, sending new petitions to the Harley family, through the medium of their great friend Prior.

During the reign of Queen Anne, a poor hack-writer like Gildon was at the mercy of rapacious booksellers,

who compelled him to lead a life of drudgery and semi-starvation, so that he had little time for original work. In 1709, Gildon was the chief contributor to two collections of anecdotes entitled the Golden Spy, dedicated to Swift: these were stories tending to show the corruptive power of gold in European Courts, and telling with many details the "scandalous amours" of Fouquet, Mme de Montpensier, and other worthies of the Court of Versailles. In 1710 Gildon came under the tyranny of Curll, a bookseller famous for his piracies and his obscene publications, who was justly vilified by De Foe in a well-known paper (1)⁷⁵ : "he is odious in his person, scandalous in his Fame, he is mark’d by Nature, for he has a bawdy Countenance, and a debauched Mien, his Tongue is an Echo of all the beastly Language his Shop is fill’d with, and Filthiness drivels in the very Tone of his Voice." Curll hired poor, starving Gildon to add to Rowe’s six-volume edition of Shakespeare (2)⁷⁶ a piratical seventh volume, containing Shakespeare’s Poems. Gildon was very sucessful in this task (3)⁷⁷ . He wrote an essay on the drama in Ancient Literature and in England, compiled a Glossary of archaic words in Shakespeare, and added summaries of the plays. The book, which was dedicated to the Earl of Peterborough, would be far from contemptible, if Shakespeare’s Sonnets were not lost amid a flood of inferior poetry by other authors.

Gildon seems to have been one of the miserable hacks regularly employed by Curll. He lived in a garret in Chancery Lane, and his nightly drudgery by candle-light began to affect his eyesight. His letters to Harley (1711) show that already he could scarcely see what he wrote. Gradually his sight grew worse, and by the end of the year 1718 he was blind.

It was at the precise moment when, to the anguish of the struggle for his daily bread, was added the terror of being less and less able to see the paper he was obliged to cover with hurried lines all day long and a great part of the night, that he found himself launched into a quarrel with the most formidable antagonist of the time, Alexander Pope. He was one of the "distinguished Frogs of Helicon", that tried in vain to devour the dread "Wasp of Twickenham" (1)⁷⁸ .

IV

Gildon's quarrel with Pope, and last days

Gildon’s first attack against Pope was made in 1714: perhaps it was due not merely to natural antipathy, but to the fact that any book written against Pope was sure of a prompt answer, and hence of a good sale, since the public was always interested in literary polemics. In the New Rehearsal (2)⁷⁹ — a very dull comedy — Gildon bitterly

criticised the plays of Rowe, Pope’s great friend, whom he described under the name of Bays the Younger in these insulting terms: " A Pedantic Reciting Poet, admired by the Mob and himself, but justly contemn’d by Men of Sense and Learning, and a despiser of Rules and Art." Pope was introduced in the same work as "Sawney (1)⁸⁰ Dapper, a young Poet of the Modern Stamp, an easy versifier, conceited, and a contemner secretly of all others." To enrage Pope further, Gildon added scurrilous abuse of the Rape of the Lock. Pope was very touchy on this special point, as the poem was his most cherished work: De Foe had incurred his rage, and earned a niche in the Dunciad merely because he had ventured on a few slight taunts about sylphs and gnomes (2)⁸¹ . So we may well imagine Pope’s fury at seeing himself and his friend thus insulted by a low hack-writer.

Gildon renewed his attack a few years later. He had become the faithful jackal of the bilious critic John Dennis, who probably aided him to find work with the booksellers. Dennis certainly collaborated with him in one of his most discreditable productions, A true character of Mr Pope, published by Curll in 1716 (3)⁸² . But the worst was yet to come. On the 3rd of May, 1718, the Evening Post announced the publication of the Life of William Wycherley, Esq (4)⁸³ ; by Charles Gildon Gent., with a

character of Mr Wycherley and his writings by the Lord Landsdown. To which are added some familiar Letters written by Mr Wycherley and a true copy of his last Will and Testament. Price I s. Printed for E. Curll (1)⁸⁴ . The following paragraph in the book was calculated to incense Pope to the highest degree: Gildon recounts a meeting with Pope in Wycherley’s chambers, and speaks scornfully of Pope’s "rustick parent" about the time of the sudden death of the latter: "I remember I was once to wait on Mr Wycherley and found in his Chamber this little Aesopic sort of an Animal, in his own cropt Hair, and Dress agreeable to the Forest he came from. I confess the Gentleman was very silent all my stay there, and scarce utter’d three Words on any Subject we talk’d of, nor cou’d I guess at what sort of Creature he was, and shou’d indeed have guess’d all the Pretenses of Mankind round before I shou’d have imagined him a Wit and Poet. I thought indeed he might be some Tenant’s Son of his, who might make his Court for continuance in his Lease on the Death of his Rustick Parent, but was sufficiently surpris'd when Mr Wycherley afterwards told me he was Poetically inclin’d and wrote tolerably smooth Verses..." Gildon continues in this abusive tone for five whole pages.

order to explain plausibly his final rupture with Addison, he made to Spence (1)⁸⁶ the following justification of his conduct: "Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr Addison, that his jealous temper could never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published". And Nichols in his Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th century asserts plainly: "Gildon abused Mr P(ope) very scandalously in an anonymous pamphlet of the Life of Mr Wycherley printed by Curll" (2)⁸⁷ . It is curious to find that the biographers of Pope and Addison agree unanimously that this Life of Wycherley, from which we quote, had never existed outside Pope’s malignant imagination (3)⁸⁸ . Pope’s allegations had a firm basis, but his hostility to Addison had shown itself long before the Life of Wycherley appeared, for the famous attack on Addison under the character of Atticus dates from July 1715, and was provoked by the fact that Addison encouraged Tickell, author of a translation of the Iliad which was intended to compete with Pope’s translation. It may be, however, that, after hearing Warwick’s story, Pope sent di-

It remains to inquire into the truth of Pope’s allegation, and to see if he had any serious reasons for believing the Earl of Warwick’s gossip. It seems he had, — for there is extant a letter, dated the 12th of February 1719, which Gildon dictated to his amanuensis and sent to Addison (2)⁹⁰ . This letter proves that there had been relations of some kind between the two men: Gildon alludes to past correspondence, and reminds Addison that he had sent him one of his books as a New Year gift, and is still waiting for "the relief which Justice required to his sufferings"; he adds that he is troubled by some rumours according to which the collection of letters he sent him had given him offence. Finally, "to incite his native generosity to be the more active in his cause", he sends him 3 copies of his Cases in Latin, in the hope that Addison, still powerful with the government which he had just left on account of ill-health, would undertake to procure for him a small annuity. It is very likely that Addison, who loved to appear a generous patron, sent 10 guineas to Gildon in answer to this appeal. But was the money sent because Gildon had abused Pope in the Life of Wycherley? It is very doubtful: Addison, it is true, never felt any sympathy for Pope, and probably read Gildon’s attack with pleasure. It may be that Lord War-

wick, Addison’s brother-in-law, knew of the gift of money to Gildon. He may, during a temporary estrangement with Addison, in order to be revenged on him, have told Pope, either in good faith or maliciously, that the money was given for the purpose he alleged, knowing that Pope was not likely to let such an injury pass unpunished. It is quite certain that Pope had no reason to doubt the truth of Lord Warwick’s story.

Pope considered Gildon a contemptible enemy, and did not reply with the virulence which the poor hack-writer desired, in order to promote the sale of his books. Gildon, Pope thought, was an insignificant satellite of Dennis, for whom also he affected the greatest disdain:

A curious fact is that Dennis was ashamed of Gildon’s friendship and deemed it convenient to deny his close relations with him; he published two letters written to him by Gildon, the respectful tone of which, he maintained, sufficiently showed that the writer was not an intimate friend of his. "Now, is it not plain", Dennis claimed, "that any one who sends such compliments to an other, has not been us’d to write in Partnership with him to whom he sends them?" (2)⁹² And yet both writers had jointly published, on the 5th of February 1720, a polemical work entitled A New Project for the Regulation of the Stage, by Mr D-nis and Mr G-don. The authors supported the Lord Chamberlain in his quarrel with Steele,

whose license to play at Drury Lane theatre had just been suppressed for "great misbehaviour". Gildon’s ingratitude towards his former patron met with success, as a second edition of the book was issued 3 days after the first (1)⁹³ . Indeed, Pope was right in uniting Gildon and Dennis, both workers under Curll’s rod, in the same shameful immortality in the Dunciad:

Pope, however, underrated Gildon; for one of the latter’s works, the Complete Art of Poetry, which was published in 1718 a few weeks before he became completely blind, shows that he had real merit as a critic. Pope, who could not appreciate a book which aimed so many poisoned shafts at his poetical kingship, might have said with justice that Gildon had but poorly applied in his works the rules he prescribed so clearly. We must acknowledge, however, that Gildon has at least summed up adequately the chief principles of classical art; he possessed erudition, though he was often pedantic in the display of it.

The Complete Art of Poetry consists of 5 dialogues, the of which show the spirit of the whole work:

The frequent repetition of the word rule is enough to prove how intolerantly classical were Gildon’s theories: according to him, "no Modern had any merit but what he owed to the rules and precedents of the Ancients" (1)⁹⁵ . Shakespeare, in his opinion, was great only when he observed the rules: "He had a genius, indeed, capable of coming up to the rules, but not sufficient to find them out himself, though it be plain from his own words he saw the absurdities of his own conduct... Sir Philip Sidney had discovered the faults of the English Stage in his Apologie for Poetrie, and Shakespeare himself had written one or two almost regular plays; therefore Shakespeare’s errors are the more inexcusable". To Gildon, Shakespeare was tolerable only in extracts; and at the end of his Complete Art he published a selection of beauties from Shakespeare’s plays in modernized English, entitled Shakespeariana. Gildon’s book was, on the whole, a good code for beginners, or, according to the poet Matthew Green: "Poetic buckets for dry wells" (2)⁹⁶ .

Gildon appears to us more classical than Boileau, whose Art Poétique, translated in 1680 by William Soame, had been modified by Dryden to suit English taste (1)⁹⁷ . Gildon was the extreme theorist of the tendencies that prevailed in English poetry from the Restoration to the end of the 18th century. His book is interesting to study in this light; it is very learned, sometimes even pedantic in tone, but often original, as for example in the last dialogue in which musical notations are used to explain the theory of stressed syllabes in English metre.

Gildon evidently founded extravagant hopes on this book, of which he was very proud. The humble dedication which he addressed to King George the First was probably rewarded with some money. But the book did not obtain the success it deserved: the bookseller had for three years to advertise it continually as "just published", in order to get rid of the whole edition. Gildon was happily indemnified by the rapid sale of his pamphlet against Robinson Crusoe, published in the following year (2)⁹⁸ . But the success of one book in those days could afford only a very temporary relief. Merely to live, Gildon was obliged to beg from the rich patrons of literary men. He sent his works to any nobleman who was likely to give him a few guineas. He probably received a generous gift from the Earl of Carnarvon (3)⁹⁹ , who was well known for his liberality to poor writers: Gildon had written in his honour a poem of over 600 lines entitled Canons, or the Vision (4)¹⁰⁰ .

He was also amply rewarded by the Duchess of Buckinghamshire and Normanby: he had long before prepared a commentary on the Duke’s Essay on Poetry, which His Grace himself had been pleased to read and correct, but did not think fit to publish. At the Duke’s death on the 24th of February 1721, the manuscript was returned to Gildon who added two similar commentaries on the Essay on translated Verse by the Earl of Roscommon, and Lord Landsdowne’s (1)¹⁰¹ On Unnatural Flights in Poetry. The whole was published under the title The Laws of English Poetry: it was much discussed in literary circles, because of the names of the poets, but the commentaries are heavy, pedantic, and full of absurdities such as this: "Mr Addison in the Spectators, in his criticisms upon Milton, seems to have mistaken the matter, in endeavouring to bring that poem to the rules of the epopoeia, which cannot be done... It is not an Heroic Poem, but a Divine one, and indeed of a new species. It is plain that the proposition of all the heroic poems of the Ancients mentions some one person as the subject of their poem... But Milton begins his poem of things, not of men". Such discussions seem to us trifling and ridiculous: but at that time they allowed their author to pass as a critic of considerable mark. What pleased Gildon certainly more than the reputation of his book or its success — which was but indifferent (2)¹⁰² — was the important sum he received from the Duke's widow; but, he tells us himself (3)¹⁰³ , "though my

Lady Duchess’s present was extremely handsome, yet my anticipations upon it were so large that I had but little left of it as soon as received". Having paid his debts, Gildon, penniless once more, resolved to start a collection in his own favour: he thought that if he interested the Harleys, success would be certain. His old friend Dennis had often received money from the ex-minister through the intermediary of the poet Prior, who was a favourite of the Harleys. From his dark and filthy garret in Bull Head Court, at the corner of Jewin St. and Aldersgate St., Gildon now begins a long correspondence with Prior. His letters, which were never answered, are interesting as they show that notwithstanding his low and miserable condition, he was still full of intolerable vanity.

About the middle of February (1721) Gildon had sent to Prior’s house in Duke St. the manuscript of a tragedy, which, from the description given, seems to have been simply the old manuscript of his tragedy, the Patriot: which was impudent enough, as Prior was expected to believe that it was original work. To the manuscript Gildon joined a letter begging Prior for his intercession with Harley. A week later, on the 21st, Gildon, who was growing impatient at receiving no acknowledgment, sent the following missive in praise of his work (1)¹⁰⁴ :

"It is now a week since I presumed to trouble you with a manuscript tragedy and a letter to beg your mediation and recommendation of it to my Lord Harley and his Lady, that is, provided it met with your own approval, which I flatter myself it would do, because it moves the passions in so eminent a degree, which is the chief excellence in that way of writing, and so allowed to be by all ages till the present, when we have had a sort of grammat-

ical critics arise, who have put the diction or language upon a foot with it, nay, who have made the diction, though scarce taken notice of by Aristotle, the chief mark and characteristic of a good or bad tragedy, and such a sort of diction, which, though correct enough in itself, is yet by its uniformity scarce tolerable in this way of writing, if we may give any credit to Horace, Boileau, and even to the nature of things; for tragedy consisting of the representation of different passions, must of necessity vary its style according to the nature of each passion which it brings on the stage. But this is a subject of too large an extent for a letter, and considering the knowledge and judgment of the person I write to, wholly superfluous. I must confess that there may be some bold metaphors of Mr Lee’s which I have retained in this alteration, and which I choose rather to do than to deviate too far from the genius and spirit of my author, but I hope they are not many nor so great but that the excellence of the passions may sufficiently atone for them. It was by this quality alone that Otway fixed his immortal reputation with all but the verbal critics, and I think I may say that after Otway the tragedy under our consideration claims the next place in that particular; but I forgot myself. If this play wants an apology to such a judge as Mr Pryor, I am sure it deserves none. If it does not, it will sufficiently recommend itself. I therefore only once more beg, that, if you approve on’t, you would recommend it to my Lord and Lady Harley’s perusal and patronage. — P. S. - I would have waited on you myself, but that I have been confined to my chamber by blindness and lameness and a very infirm health."

Many weeks passed. Prior thought Gildon troublesome and neither answered his letter, nor spoke to Harley. By the middle of July, having spent the money he had received from the Duchess of Buckinghamshire, Gildon ordered 3 of his books to be left at Harley’s, one directed to

My Lord himself, one to My Lady, and the third to the distinguished poet, their friend. A fortnight passed, and there was still no answer; so, on the 1st of August, Gildon sent a more pressing epistle, reminding Prior of his gift of books, and begging his "earnest and speedy assistance" to obtain Harley’s help for the collection he was beginning. The chief argument he used in his appeal was that the poet had already used his influence with Harley for writers in similar circumstances: "These two last terms, my old acquaintance Sam. Briscoe (1)¹⁰⁵ called upon me, and among other things informed me that he had in his trouble met with no act of generosity but from Mr Prior who had given him 5 guineas for a set of Tom Brown’s (2)¹⁰⁶ works, and had prevailed with my lord Harley to give him five more for another set. He farther informed me that one Mr Jacups (3)¹⁰⁷ , a new author, told him that Mr Prior had made a collection for him to pay his debts. These generous actions to these two makes me hope that I likewise shall find the good effect of your beneficient temper, having every way, I think, as reasonable a claim to it, as the two persons I have mentioned, and by this a stronger, that I am in years, blind and lame, and of a very infirm health. I am endeavouring to get a collection made for me to enable me to remove from this out-of-the-way place to one more proper for my condition, and to provide against the attacks of necessity

by setting up a lecture (1)¹⁰⁸ which will be sufficient to supply my wants. Being sensible that to engage my Lord Harley in this collection, there is nothing wanting but your mediation, that is what now I most earnestly beg at your hands..." (2)¹⁰⁹ .

Another week passed, and Gildon, in despair, gave vent to his angry feelings of wounded dignity in an epistle, the whole of which is worth quoting as being characteristic of his vanity and lack of self-respect (3)¹¹⁰ : "I understand that you and my Lord’s family are all moving out of town next Saturday. I am the more surprised because I have not had one line from you about the present I sent you, or my subsequent letter to you, which is a treatment that I have not met with from any one but Mr Prior; for though I have written to the greatest men in England, both ecclesiastical and temporal, yet not one of them ever thought me unworthy of a civil answer, but I suppose that it is not Mr Prior’s way. As a gentleman, as I may say I am both by birth and education, and I think without much vanity I may say a scholar, I thought I had a right to an answer from another gentleman, but it seems I was mistaken, which confirms the opinion of a very intimate friend of mine, who told me that I had so long locked myself up from the world that I had forgot the world. And yet I hope that my mistaking Mr Prior will not be a very strong proof of this assertion, because upon my sending one of my books to one of the greatest persons in

England (1)¹¹¹ , he not only sent me 20 guineas, but likewise ordered his chaplain to send me a very obliging answer. I have much more to say to you upon this head, but shall defer till you return to town. I shall trouble you with no more at present."

But Prior was spared Gildon’s recriminations, for he never came back to London; he died at Wimpole, Harley’s country-seat, in September 1721.

Gildon’s last years were lamentable; they were as uneventful and sad as his youth had been agitated and gay. His blindness overwhelmed him, and it needed tremendous energy to carry on the drudgery of a hackwriter. He never thought of getting rid of his woes through suicide, as he had announced he would do, in the early days of his deistical career. Lloyd, his amanuensis, read to him daily from the papers or new books, and wrote letters or original work at his dictation (2)¹¹² . His garret seemed darker than ever, as the visits of his friends grew rarer. Soon, he was too lame to go out, and perpetually in a state of ill-health. Nevertheless he had still to work day and night at small tasks for the booksellers. On the 12th of January 1724 (3)¹¹³ , Death struck this literary beggar in the 58th year of his age; it must have been welcomed as a deliverer.

tioned Gildon’s death and described him as a man "of great literature but mean genius". The Universal Journal for Jan. 15th published a poem To the Memory of Mr Charles Gildon, which, for all its coarse wit, sums up fairly the career of the unhappy writer:

Such was the epitaph of a man whose life would constitute one of the most pitiful chapters of a Vie de Boheme in England at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century.

A

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST

OF GILDON’S WORKS

INTRODUCTION

TO GILDON’S PAMPHLET

When De Foe’s novel, the Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, was issued on the 25th of April 1719, its extraordinary and immediate success filled the poor hack-writers of Grub-street with envy. The author, whose name was easily guessed, was not one of the literati that frequented Swift and Pope, or Steele and Addison; he was a popular journalist, living by his pen, whose poor instruction excited much raillery, and whose dubious political dealings gave rise to much scandal. His book had already a second edition on the 12th of May, a third on the 6th of June, and a fourth on the 8th of August; success so tremendous was unheard of before. Gildon, who could scarcely sell out one edition of those learned works which revealed his extensive knowledge of the Ancient writers, was full of jealousy at the triumph so easily achieved by a rival writer who always wrote hastily, was no scholar, and who, besides, had formerly abused him in two poems, More Reformation and the Pacificator.

Gildon reflected that he could do a good piece of business, and at the same time have his revenge on De Foe, by writing a sharp criticism of Robinson Crusoe: any thing connected with this great book was sure of an easy sale. He had De Foe’s work read to him, and, on hearing each passage, dictated reflections upon it. He intended to

compose an open epistle to the author of Robinson Crusoe; this was the form then generally taken by controversial pamphlets between politicians or men of letters. The epistle occupied Gildon a whole fortnight in August, for he was obliged to work slowly, and could not afford to interrupt his drudgery for the booksellers.

Gildon had scarcely ended his Epistle when, on the 20th of August, the second volume of Robinson Crusoe appeared. He thought this a good opportunity to double the size of his projected pamphlet, and thus raise its price from 6 d to 1 s. He continued to work hastily, for he was eager to profit by the popularity of De Foe’s novel to launch his little work, and he dictated a long Postscript. Then a bright idea occurred to him: he had hitherto considered Robinson Crusoe only as an absurd romance, entirely invented by De Foe’s "prolific brain"; he was struck now by a passage in the preface to the Further Adventures. De Foe, finding that he could not long pretend that Robinson Crusoe was, as he at first claimed, "a just history of fact", had cleverly managed an escape for himself, in case he should be convicted of "lying": "The just application of every incident", he insinuated, "the religious and useful inferences drawn from every part, are so many testimonies to the good design of making it public, and must legitimate all the part that may be called invention or parable in the story".

The word parable was a flash of light to Gildon’s mind. Very likely, De Foe had written it without attaching any great importance to it; he merely had a vague intention of asserting later, that Robinson Crusoe was an example of man’s helplessness in the hands of Providence, designed to bring the readers to complete submissiveness to the Divine Will. This idea, however, was only dawning on his mind: his primitive intention had simply been to

write a fictitious biography, and pass it off as truth. But Gildon understood how much more pointed his satire would be, if he connected the chief events of Crusoe’s life with De Foe’s past; he could easily ridicule De Foe by showing that he was more stupid and insane, even, than his hero.

Gildon dictated a dialogue, which has little originality in form, but contains a long tirade, the most interesting part of the pamphlet, in which De Foe himself explains to Robiuson that he was merely his image; and, to emphasize this similitude, Gildon added a title, closely copied from De Foe’s, which suggested the idea expressed in the dialogue, that Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of De Foe’s life. Full of confidence, Gildon gave his work to the bookseller J. Roberts, who issued it on the 25th of September. It was advertised in the Daily Courant for the same day, and again, as "Just published", in the number for the first of October.

Gildon was well rewarded for his labour. His little book was, as he had expected, a success. Pamphlet-writing was not, indeed, very lucrative; booksellers generally paid 2 guineas for every 500 copies sold; but even such poor payment was welcome to a starving author. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Daniel De Foe soon had a second edition, then a third, issued in Dublin in the same year. Though it had been published anonymously at first, the name of the author was known, and was advertised in later editions. The work created much discussion in the literary world, and this had a happy effect on the sale of Gildon’s other works.

Gildon’s pamphlet is desultory; the paragraphs follow one another in chance succession, without any logical connexion. His blindness obliged him to compose in that manner, so that no unity was possible. The chief interest

of the work is in the details it gives of De Foe’s life and of his novel. Thanks to Gildon we know that Robinson Crusoe was written in De Foe’s residence at Stoke Newington, and thus we can put aside the claims of other cities, — Halifax, Gateshead, Witechapel, Hartley, — to be the place of its composition. The general public was amused by a pamphlet that enumerated the contradictions and impossibilities in a famous book, and fellow-writers were pleased to find some one who gave utterance to their envious hatred of a successful colleague.

In clubs and coffee-houses, in broadsheets and ballads, some inconsistencies in Robinson Crusoe had already been satirized. Cox, the piratical bookseller, had suppressed a few, and tried, often awkwardly, to palliate the grossest impossibilities of the book, in the abridged edition he issued in August, to the great annoyance of De Foe and still more of Taylor, the editor of Robinson. Gildon repeated many criticisms already commonly made, and added considerable new material. Several of his attacks are unjust, but most show his critical finesse. His pamphlet was only a short essay; he passed over a great many important contradictions, though this may be due to his infirmity, which was a terrible handicap for the task. He did not notice De Foe’s frequent errors in dates and numbers. It is strange also that Gildon who had specially studied the first pages of the novel did not notice the following glaring anachronism: in 1651, Robinson’s father talks of his late elder son, while on the preceding page we are told that this son was killed at the battle against the Spaniards near Dunkirk, which took place only in 1658. A whole book might be made of the inconsistencies in the novel, but Gildon had neither the time nor the means to make a close study of the text.

the influence it exercised on De Foe. Gildon’s criticism stung De Foe to the quick, but at the same time furnished him with a good defence against the charge of being a "novelist", that is a "liar". In the preface to the Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, published on the 6th of August 1720, De Foe declared impudently that Robinson Crusoe was no romance, but an allegory of his own unhappy life: "(The story) is the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in the world, sincerely adapted to and intended for the common good of mankind, and designed at first, as it is now farther applied, to the most serious uses possible." He proceeds to show how several episodes of Crusoe’s story were suggested by real episodes in his own life: "In a word, there is not a circumstance in the imaginary story, but has its just allusion to a real story, and chimes part for part and step for step with the inimitable Life of Robinson Crusoe." He wisely refrains from trying to demonstrate in detail the truth of this assertion; for, in spite of his talent for paradox, he could hardly have proved decisively the allegorical character of his novel. But he explains why, instead of telling simply his own life, he had recourse to such a curious stratagem; this astounding piece of impudence shows that De Foe was not afraid of fooling the public from whom he derived his living: "Had the common way of writing a man’s private history been taken, and I had given you the conduct or life of a man you know, and whose misfortunes and infirmities perhaps you had sometimes unjustly triumphed over, all I could have said would have yielded no diversion, and perhaps scarce have obtained a reading, or at best no attention; the teacher, like a greater, having no honour in his own country. Facts that are formed to touch the mind must be done a great way off, and by somebody never heard of.

Even the miracles of the blessed Saviour of the world suffered scorn and contempt, when it was reflected that they were done by the carpenter’s son; one whose family and original they had a mean opinion of, and whose brothers and sisters were ordinary people like themselves." — In this preface, De Foe took care not to mention Gildon; at the most, a contemptuous sentence in the Publisher’s Introduction may apply to him: "those who challenged the author most maliciously with not making his pen useful, will have leisure to reflect, that they passed their censure too soon, and, like Solomon’s fool, judged of the matter before they heard it." Indeed, why should De Foe have been offended with a man who had furnished him with a helpful suggestion, and who, by attacking Robinson Crusoe, advertised it and contributed to augment its sale?

The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe consist mostly of old essays which De Foe had long kept in his papers, and which he tried to adapt to his story. From Gildon he took many a hint: thus his long chapters on the state of religion in the world were certainly inspired by one of Gildon’s criticisms. But De Foe too often forgot that he had adopted the idea that Robinson Crusoe was an allegorical tale, and told anecdotes about himself which could not be applied to "wild, wicked Robinson Crusoe", and vice versa.

Gildon’s pamphlet was read carefully by the booksellers; in the abridgment of the three volumes of De Foe’s novel which was published by Bettesworth on the 27th of February 1722, all the inconsistencies pointed out by Gildon are suppressed: we may even ask, as the preface of this work repeats Gildon’s theories on the legitimacy of abridgments, if Gildon himself had not something to do with this more or less piratical compilation: the author must at least have closely studied the pamphlet.

Gildon’s attacks on Robinson Crusoe were resumed in November 1725 by Bishop Hoadly in an article of the London Journal. De Foe answered in Applebee's Journal for Nov. 20th, but refrained from any precise refutation of the Bishop’s charges; he merely contended that if Robinson Crusoe was a lie, the London Journal was also full of "many Fables and forged Stories, not to say Lies". Then, dropping the subject, he launched into a long digression on the wickedness of the time.

After a few years, while the glory of Robinson Crusoe was still in the ascendant, Gildon’s pamphlet fell into oblivion: it was brought to light again much later by De Foe’s early biographers. In 1785, the bookseller Stockdale entrusted an eminent jurist named De Lolme with the direction of a reprint of De Foe’s History of the Union, and at the same time wrote letters to all his learned friends in order to get material for a Life of De Foe. He received from the Rev. Lort a copy of Gildon’s pamphlet and was full of hope at the title. But he was extremely disappointed on reading the contents, as, for a man unacquainted with the particulars of De Foe’s life, Gildon’s allusions are mere riddles. Stockdale then resumed his search and was fortunate enough to receive an excellent essay from De Foe’s first great biographer, George Chalmers.

In his long Life and Times of Daniel Defoe, Wilson is very severe on Gildon’s pamphlet, which, without having much inquired into its contents, he calls "a low performance". Lee, De Foe’s next biographer, dismisses it as "indecent and scurrilous". Wright alone, in his biography of De Foe, recognizes the merits of the performance, and after an impartial examination of Gildon’s pamphlet concludes with these words: "In fine, because we admire De Foe and Crusoe, we are not going to follow

our predecessors in the biographical office, and call Gildon a carping fool." — We think that such will be the reader’s mind, when he has studied Gildon’s work; and we hope that those who will undertake this short excursion into the world of the poor hack-writers of the Augustan Age, will not be repelled by the filthy streets and the stench of the dark deep courts.

THE

PREFACE. ¹⁶⁷

IF ever the Story of any private

Man's Adventures in the World

were worth making publick, and

were acceptable when publish'd,

the Editor of this Account thinks this will

be so.

The Wonders of this Man's Life exceed

all that (he thinks) is to be found Extant;

the Life of one Man being scarce capable

of greater Variety.

The Story is told with greater Modesty

than perhaps some Men may think necessary

to the Subject, the Hero of our Dialogue not

*being very conspicuous for that Virtue, a more¹⁶⁸

than common Assurance carrying him thro' all

*those various Shapes and Changes which he has¹⁶⁹

pass'd without the least Blush. The Fabu-

*lous Proteus of the Ancient Mythologist was

¹⁷⁰ but a very faint Type of our Hero, whose

Changes are much more numerous, and he

far more difficult to be constrain'd to his

own Shape. If his Works should happen to

live to the next Age, there would in all pro-

bability be a greater Strife among the several

Parties, whose he really was, than among

* the seven Graecian Cities, to which of them¹⁷¹

Homer belong'd: The Dissenters first would

claim him as theirs, the Whigs in general

* as theirs, the Tories as theirs, the Non- ¹⁷²

jurors as theirs, the Papists as theirs,

the Atheists as theirs, and so on to what

Sub-divisions there may be among us; so

that it cannot be expected that I should give

you in this short Dialogue his Picture at

length; no, I only pretend to present you

with him in Miniature, in Twenty Fours,

* and not in Folio. But of all these Things,¹⁷³

with some very surprizing Incidents in some

new Adventures of his own for the rest of

his Life, I may perhaps give a farther Ac-

count hereafter.

A

DIALOGUE

BETWIXT

* D..... F...e, ¹⁷⁴

ROBINSON CRUSOE,

And his Man

FRIDAY.

* SCENE, A great field betwixt Newing- ¹⁷⁵

ton-Green and Newington Town, at

one a Clock in a Moon-light Morning.

AN

EPISTLE

TO

D....... D' F...e,

* The Reputed Author ²⁶⁶

OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE,

* Mr F—e, ²⁶⁷

I Have perus'd your pleasant

Story of Robinson Crusoe; and

if the Faults of it had extend-

ed no farther than the fre-

* quent Solecisms, Looseness and Incorrect- ²⁶⁸

* ness of Stile, Improbabilities, and some- ²⁶⁹

times Impossibilities, I had not given

(2)

you the Trouble of this Epistle. But

when I found that you were not content

with the many Absurdities of your Tale,

but seem’d to discover a Design, which

* proves you as bad an Englishman as a ²⁷⁰

Christian, I could not but take Notice

in this publick Manner of what you had

written; especially when I perceiv ’d that

* you threaten’d us with more of the same ²⁷¹

Nature, if this met with that Success

which you hop’d for, and which the

Town has been pleas’d to give it. If

by this I can prevent a new Accession of

Impieties and Superstition to those which

the Work under our Consideration has

furnish’d us with, I shall not think my

Labour lost.

I am far from being an Enemy to the

Writers of Fables, since I know very

well that this Manner of Writing is not

* only very Ancient, but very useful, I ²⁷²

might say sacred, since it has been made

* use of by the inspir’d Writers themselves; ²⁷³

but then to render any Fable worthy of

being receiv’d into the Number of those

which are truly valuable, it must natu-

* rally produce in its Event some useful ²⁷⁴

Moral, either express’d or understood;

but this of Robinson Crusoe, you plainly

inculcate, is design’d against a publick

good. I think there can be no Man so

(3)

ignorant as not to know that our Navi-

gation produces both our Safety, and our

Riches, and that whoever therefore shall

endeavour to discourage this, is so far

a profest Enemy of his Country’s Prospe-

rity and Safety; but the Author of Ro-

binson Crusoe, not only in the Beginning,

but in many Places of the Book, employs

all the Force of his little Rhetoric to

dissuade and deter all People from going

* to Sea, especially all Mothers of Chil- ²⁷⁵

dren who may be capable of that Service,

from venturing them to so much Hazard

and so much Wickedness, as he repre-

sents the Seafaring Life liable to. But

whatever Mr F—e may think of the

Matter, I dare believe that there are

few Men who consider justly, that would

* think the Profession of a Yorkshire Attor- ²⁷⁶

ney more innocent and beneficial to Man-

kind than that of a Seaman, or would

judge that Robinson Crusoe was so very

criminal in rejecting the former, and

* chusing the latter, as to provoke the ²⁷⁷

* Divine Providence to raise two Storms, ²⁷⁸

and in the last of them to destroy so ma-

ny Ships and Men, purely to deter him

from that Course of Life, to which at

last he was to owe so ample a Reward of

all his Labours and Fatigues, as the End

(4)

of this very Book plainly tells us he met

with.

* I know you will reply, that it was his ²⁷⁹

Disobedience to his Parents, for which he

was punish’d in all the Misfortunes he

* met with, and that you frequently re- ²⁸⁰

mind us of the Conviction of his Con-

science in this Particular thro’ the whole

Course of his Life. I would by no

* Means be thought to encourage Disobe- ²⁸¹

dience to Parents; but the honouring our

Father and Mother does not include a

Duty of blindly submitting to all their

Commands, whether good or bad, ra-

tional or irrational, to the entire exclu-

ding of all Manner of free Agency from

the Children, which would in effect be

to make the Children of Freemen abso-

lute Slaves, and give the Parent a Power

even beyond that of a Sovereign, to

whom both Parents and Children are

subject. Tho’ the Authority therefore of

Parents be great, it cannot extend to the

Suppression of our Obedience to Reason,

Law and Religion; and when a Child

obeys these, tho’ contrary to his Parents

Command, he is not to be esteem’d dis-

obedient or culpable. To apply this to

the Case in Hand, Robinson Crusoe was

* above eighteen Years of Age when he ²⁸²

left his Father’s House, and this after a

(5)

long Deliberation and Struggle with

that secret Impulse to a Seafaring Life,

* to which Impulse you so often recom- ²⁸³

mend a blind Obedience, whether ground-

ed on Reason or not, and would perswade

us that it proceeds from the secret Inspira-

tion either of Providence or some good

Spirit; but here Robinson had a great ma-

ny Reasons to urge and justify himself; for

notwithstanding the wise Harangue of the

Father to the Son of the great Advan-

tages of a middle State of Life; yet I

cannot find that he himself thought that

what he was to leave his Son would be

sufficient to support him in that middle

* State, on which he had made so te- ²⁸⁴

dious an Encomium; for he propos’d to

* put him out either to some Trade or ²⁸⁵

to an Attorney. But first, as to a Trade,

either he propos’d to put him to a bene-

ficial Trade, or to one that was not so;

if to a beneficial Trade, then he depart-

ed from his own Principle of a Medio-

crity; if to a Trade that was not so, his

Design was extremely foolish, since the

Cares and Solicitudes of that mean Pro-

fession might prove, and would in pro-

bability be as great, if not greater, than

those of a more beneficial Employment;

and this, indeed, would be contrary to

the Design and Aim of all People who

(6)

put their Children to Trades, since they

always propose and hope, that the Trades

to which they put them will in the end

make them Rich and Prosperous. If

this was his Father’s Design in putting

him to a Trade, he acted directly against

the principle he laid down, of being con-

tented with what they had; if it was not

his Design, he acted confessedly without

Reason, and therefore could not reasona-

bly desire an implicit Obedience to his

Will: But if instead of a Trade he de-

sign’d his Son for an Attorney, a con-

scientious youth might well scruple to

obey him in that particular. You have

given him the Education of a Free-

School, besides House Learning, as you

* are pleas’d to call it; which I confess I ²⁸⁶

never met with before in all my Reading

and Conversation; but by a Free-School

* Education till eighteen years of Age ²⁸⁷

* he must have been perfect in all the Clas- ²⁸⁸

sicks, and fit for the University; and his

Conversation with those Books might

well inspire him with Notions abhorrent

of a Profession in which there was nothing

* generous, and I am afraid very little just. ²⁸⁹

* But because you have said it, we will ²⁹⁰

suppose that Robinson Crusoe was not de-

ter’d from being an Attorney by any of

(7)

these more noble Considerations, but by

a pure rambling Fancy, which render’d

him incapable of taking up any Profes-

sion that was more confin’d than that of a

* Seafaring Person; yet, how could he ima- ²⁹¹

gine that he should raise his Fortune by

going to Sea in the Manner that he went?

that is, indeed, as a common Seaman,

contrary to his Friends Inclination, or any

Provision made by himself to turn and

improve by his Navigation; but this

Difficulty vanishes, when we remember

what you tell us from his own Mouth,

* that he never was in the right in his ²⁹²

* Life. Omitting, therefore, the Oddness ²⁹³

of his running away at so well grown

an Age, tho’ he had not done it in his

more early and giddy Years, we’ll pro-

ceed: He is now set out, arriv’d at Hull,

and got on Board a Ship, without so

* much as ever saying one Word to the ²⁹⁴

Master of her, who we must suppose ne-

ver saw him for about three Weeks, till,

after his Ship was cast away, he met him

in Yarmouth, and was there inform’d by

* his Son, who, and what he was; tho’ ²⁹⁵

presently after he had heard this, he asks

him, who, and what he was, as if he

had known nothing of the Matter; and

* plainly tells him that his Ship was cast ²⁹⁶

away upon his Account, making his

(8)

* Case and that of Jonas the same, who

²⁹⁷ was actually in Disobedience to the posi-

tive Command and Order of God him-

self. But you, indeed, every where are

pleas’d to make very free with the Holy

* Scriptures, which you quote as fluently, ²⁹⁸

* as the Devil once did, and much to the ²⁹⁹

same End; that is, to make a Lie go

down for Truth. But more of this here-

after. Well, the Master of the Ship having

now understood who and what he was,

* makes this fine Speech to him: And, young³⁰⁰

Man, said he, depend upon it, if you do

not go back, where-ever you go, you will

meet with nothing but Disasters and Disap-

pointments, till your Father's Words are ful-

* fill'd upon you. Here he makes the Mas- ³⁰¹

* ter of the Ship a Prophet, as well as he ³⁰²

had done his Father, which I should as

little suspect him to be, considering the

wicked Character you give of all Seamen,

as that a profest Seaman should make a

Speech, and urge the Storms for a Mo-

tive against any one’s going to Sea. But

I must not dwell too long upon mere Ab-

surdities, I shall therefore take no No-

* tice of Robinson's swooning away at the ³⁰³

Noise of a Gun, tho’ he knew not for

what End the Gun was discharg’d; yet

I cannot pass in Silence his Coining of

Providences; that is, of his making Pro-

(9)

vidence raise a Storm, cast away some

* Ships, and damage many more, meerly

³⁰⁴ to fright him from going to Sea. If this

be not a bold Impiety, I know not what

is, and an Impiety for which I can see

very little ground; for why should he

imagine that the Storm was sent to hin-

der him from going to Sea, more than

any other that were in it, and suffer’d

more by it? Nor, indeed, can I see any

reason why your Crusoe should think it

any more a Crime in him to go to Sea,

than in a hundred and fifty thousand

more, who constantly use the Sea in these

Nations, besides ten times that Num-

ber in all the Nations of the World who

* do the same. If Storms are sent by ³⁰⁵

Providence to deter Men from Naviga-

tion, I may reasonably suppose, that

there is not one of all that vast Num-

ber I have mention’d, to whom Provi-

dence has not sent the same Warning.

At this absurd Way of Arguing most of

the Communication and Traffick of Na-

tions would soon be at an end, and Islan-

ders especially would be entirely cut off

from the rest of the World; and if your

Doctrine prevail’d, none would venture

upon Salt Water, but such as cared

not for the Safety either of Body or

Soul, both which you all along en-

(10)

deavour to perswade us are more in dan-

ger there than any where else. But sure,

dear Sir, you have neither consider’d the

* Wickedness, nor the Hazards of the Land; ³⁰⁶

for if you had, you would find that it

was morally impossible that the Seamen,

at least, while on Shipboard, could be

guilty of the tenth part of the Crimes

which abound every where on Shore.

For the Seaman, however wicked he may

be in his Will, has not the Power in his

floating Castle to reduce that Wicked-

ness to Action; and to conclude that he

is so wicked in Will, requires some bet-

ter Proof than you have been pleas’d any

where to give us. It is plain, that the

Seafaring Men are generally (for here we

speak only of Generals, and not of Parti-

culars) generally, I say, are more free,

open, disinterested, and less tricking and

designing than those who never go to Sea;

and tho’ you are pleas’d often to mention

the Wickedness of Crusoe, whom, being a

* Creature of your own, you might have ³⁰⁷

made as wicked as you pleas’d: This

very Crusoe, I say, does not appear to be

* guilty of any heinous Crimes; and it ³⁰⁸

would be very hard to perswade us to

believe, that a Man, who seems in all

Things else innocent enough, should be

so very abandon’d in Impiety, as ne-

(11)

ver to pray and acknowledge the over-

ruling Providence of God in all the

Transactions of this World; and by con-

sequence in all that did or could hap-

pen to him. But after all, if you will

needs have him this impious Person; for

he is a Creature of your making, and not

of God's; you have given him Manners,

as the Critics call it, quite out of Na-

* ture, and no ways necessary to your Fable. ³⁰⁹

* But more of this hereafter.

³¹⁰

* We must now attend Monsieur Crusoe³¹¹

from Yarmouth to London, where he ar-

rives with that small remainder of his

* Yarmouth Collection he had left; and ³¹²

tho' a Stranger in this great City, the

* next thing we hear of him, is, that he ³¹³

abounds in fine Cloaths and Money, be-

ing able to put on board the Guinea

Man a Venture of forty Pounds, which

* how he comes by the Lord knows. He ³¹⁴

tells us, indeed, some time after, that he

got this Money of his Friends; but it is

not very probable, at least it is not very

common, for People that have Money,

to trust it to a young Fellow who had

run from his Father, and was likewise

under Age. This I say is not common;

nay, I believe, never did happen to any

Body in his Circumstances, but to Ro-

binson Crusoe, and may well be put into

(12)

the Number of the Miracles of his Life.

Well, we’ll suppose, with Robinson him-

self, that his Father secretly encourag’d

his Friends to supply him; yet certainly

* his Father would have been very cautious ³¹⁵

of letting him be entrusted with Money

entirety to manage it himself, since he

had given him no Reason to imagine

that his Prudence would dispose of it to

the best Advantage; and, indeed, it was

* very plain that he did not, since he laid ³¹⁶

it out in fine Cloaths, and keeping Com-

pany with such People, from whom he

could propose to derive very little Bene-

* fit: And, I believe, he is the first young ³¹⁷

Gentleman that ever thought, that to see

the World by Travel, was to go to

Guinea amongst the barbarous Negroes.

Well, let that pass, Crusoe has found a

Master of a Vessel according to his own

Heart, and so embarks both his Cargo

and himself with him for Guinea, makes

a prosperous Voyage, his forty Pounds

having produc'd about three hundred;

* two of which he puts into a Female ³¹⁸

Friend’s Hand, and with the third sets

out for a second Voyage to the African

Shore, but is taken by a Turkish Rover

* and carried into Sallee; where, after he ³¹⁹

had remain’d in Bondage above two

Years, he makes his escape by throw-

(13)

* ing his Master's Kinsman into the Sea ³²⁰

and carrying off his Master's Boat, a Kind

of Long-Boat, and his Boy Xury; and

in this small Vessel goes above a thousand

* Miles thro' various Hazards and Adven- ³²¹

tures, to which I have nothing to say.

All that I shall remark, is, that you

seem very fond of all Occasions of throw-

ing in needless Absurdities to make the

Truth of your Story still the more doubt-

ed. What occasion else had you to make

Xury speak broken English, when he ne-

* ver convers'd with any English but Ro- ³²²

binson Crusoe? so that it had been more

natural to have made Robinson speak

broken Arabick, which Language he must

be forc'd in some Measure to learn;

whereas Xury had no motive in the

World to study so much English as he

makes him speak; but this is a Pecca-

dillo and not worth dwelling upon. Well

then, we are now to suppose Robinson

* Crusoe and Xury got as far almost as Cape³²³

de Verd, when a Portuguese Ship takes

them up and carries them to Brasil;

where, with the Money he had rais'd by

* the Sale of his Boat, his Skins, and his ³²⁴

Boy, he settles himself as a Planter, and

* accordingly turns Papist in Thankfulness ³²⁵

to Heaven for his great Deliverance; and,

indeed, he always retains some Spice of

(14)

the Superstition of that Religion, in that

vain Faith, which he not only himself

* puts in secret Hints, as he calls them, ³²⁶

but earnestly recommends to all others.

Well, having fix’d his Plantation, he

sets out upon new Adventures, as Super-

cargo to a Portuguese Ship, bound to

the Coast of Guinea to buy Slaves; and

tho’ he afterwards proves so scrupulous

about falling upon the Cannibals or Men-

Eaters, yet he neither then nor after-

wards found any check of Conscience in

* that infamous Trade of buying and sel- ³²⁷

ling of Men for Slaves; else one would

have expected him to have attributed

his Shipwreck to this very Cause.

He sets out from Brasil, is taken in a

Storm, and at last cast away upon an un-

inhabited Island in the Mouth of the Ri-

ver Oroonoque; where he only escapes, all

the rest being drown’d. But here I can’t

omit one Observation of his, which is,

that the Waves buried him twenty or

thirty Foot in their own Body; I would

* fain know by what Art Robinson could ³²⁸

distinguish between five Foot, and twen-

ty five or thirty. Well, be that as it

will, your Friend Robinson is now got

on Shore, tho’ bruised in Body and trou-

bled in Mind; and had, indeed, been in

a very pitiful Condition, had not you

(15)

the next Day sent the Ship on Shore af-

ter him; I mean, so near the Shore, that

Robinson could easily get on Board her,

and furnish himself with all Necessaries

which his solitary Mansion requir’d; that

is, with Tools, Powder, Guns, Cutlasses,

Bullets, and other Shot, and Lead to

make more, as well as Cloaths, Linnen

and Woollen; besides so large a Car-

go of Rum, that it lasted him, uncon-

sum’d, above eight and twenty years.

* Tho’ I should have wonder’d how three ³²⁹

English Bible came on Board a Portu-

guese Ship, had he not told us, that

they had come to him in a cargo from

England; yet I must still wonder, why

Robinson should put three on Board for

his Voyage to Guinea, when one was

likely to be more than he would make

use of, if we may believe his own Account

of the little regard he had to any Reli-

* gion. But it was necessary that he should ³³⁰

have a Bible, to furnish you with the

Means of Burlesquing the Sacred Writ,

in the tedious Reflections you design’d to

* put into his Mouth; of which by and by.

³³¹

* I shall not take Notice of his striping ³³²

himself to swim on Board, and then fil-

ling his Pockets with Bisket, because

that is already taken Notice of in Pub-

lick; and in the last Edition, at least, of

(16)

the Book, you have endeavour'd to salve

this Difficulty, by making him keep his

Breeches on; tho’ why he should do so I

can see no reason; and tho’ he did do so,

I don’t find how the Pocket of a Sea-

* man’s Breeches could receive any Biskets, ³³³

that being generally no bigger than to con-

tain a Tobacco Pouch, or the like. I can-

not pretend to dwell upon all the Absur-

dities of this Part of your Book, I shall

only touch upon some few: And first, on

his stated Account of the Good and

* Evil of his present Condition in Page 77, ³³⁴

where hee says, on the dark side of his

Account, I have no Cloaths to cover me.

* But this is a downright Lie, according to ³³⁵

his own Account, by which he brought a

considerable Quantity of Linnen and

Woollen from on Board the Ship: And

then the next Head on the same side is,

I am without any Defence, or Means to re-

sist any Violence of Man or Beast. This is

likewise another plain Contradiction of

what he told us before, when he let us

know, that he had brought on Shore two

or three Barrels of Gunpowder, six or se-

ven Guns, and several Pistols, with Shot

and Bullets, besides Swords, Axes,

Hatchets, etc. Next, I must observe, that

* Robinson, like other great Wits, has but ³³⁶

* a very short Memory; for in Page 66, he ³³⁷

(17)

tells us, that the Storm had carried the

Wreck or Ship quite out of sight; or, as

he expresses it, It blew very hard all that

Night, and in the Morning when I look'd

out, behold no more Ship was to be seen;

and yet six Months after, he tells us,

* that looking towards the Wreck, it lay³³⁸

higher out of the Water than it us'd to do.

I think the Contradiction is pretty plain,

if seeing a Thing and not seeing it be a

Contradiction.

Not to examine too nicely into Parti-

culars; I shall pass on to Page 155, where

* he again falls foul upon the Seamen and ³³⁹

a Seafaring Life. But, alas! falling

early into the Seafaring Life, which of all

the Lives is most destitute of the Fear of

God, tho' his Terrors are always before

them; I say, falling early into a Seafaring

Life, and into Seafaring Company, all that

little Sense of Religion which I had enter-

tain'd, was laugh'd out of me by my Mess-

mates, by a harden'd despising of Dangers,

and the Views of Death, which grew ha-

bitual to me by my long Absence from all

manner of Opportunities to converse with any

thing but what was like myself, or to hear

anything that was good or tended towards it.

I have transcrib’d these Words of your

Hero, honest D—n, that I may show

you what an ungrateful and lying Rascal

(18)

he is; ungrateful in his Return of so many

Favours and so much Honesty, which he

had receiv'd from the Masters of both

* the Portuguese and English Ships. He be- ³⁴⁰

spatters the whole Body of Seafaring Men,

as a Company of impious Rogues, nay the

most impious and abandon’d of all Man-

kind; and as for his Lying, it is plain, from

his charging them all with profest Infideli-

ty, and particulary of laughing him out

his Fear of God; when, if we may

give Credit to his own Narration, he ne-

ver kept Company with Seamen above

* three Weeks in all his Life, and that was ³⁴¹

from Hull to Yarmouth; and even those

Seamen, Master and all included, sent

* up their Prayers to Heaven in their Dis- ³⁴²

tress. But was Robinson Crusoe's Religion

so very little settled in him, by his Free-

School and House Learning, even at

eighteen Years of Age, as to be laugh’d

* out of it in three Weeks time by a Com- ³⁴³

pany of ignorant Seamen? They might

* perhaps laugh at his Fear of the Storm, they ³⁴⁴

being made intrepid upon that Account

by Use. But, honest D—n, I am afraid,

with all your Sagaciousness, you do not

* sufficiently distinguish between the Fear ³⁴⁵

of God, and the Fear of Danger to your

own dear Carcass. The Fear of God is

an Excellence, a Virtue, a Duty; and, as

(19)

* the Holy Scripture says, the Beginning of³⁴⁶

Wisdom; but the Fear of Danger is

* mean, scandalous, unmanly, a Vice, ³⁴⁷

and the Beginning of Folly; and, indeed,

incompatible with that Fear of God, of

which you have talk’d so much. Forti-

tude is by all acknowledg’d a Virtue,

and of that Intrepidity is likewise ac-

knowledg’d a considerable Part; and from

hence flows that contempt of Danger,

which you seem to impute to a want of

the Fear of God; whereas, it may with

much more Justice, be deriv’d from a

firm Confidence in, or a perfect Resigna-

tion to the Divine Providence in all its

Dispensations. It is, indeed, as I have

observ’d, plain, that you are very much

mistaken in your Notion of the Fear of

God, which is a sort of a Filial Awe

* not only consistent with Love, but, in- ³⁴⁸

deed, a Child of it; for Love makes

every one, who is possess’d by it, afraid

of being guilty of any Thoughts or Ac-

tions, which may be displeasing or of-

fensive to the Object belov’d; and this

you would be very sensible of, if in all

* your Life you had ever lov’d any thing ³⁴⁹

better than yourself. But the Fear, which

you contend for, is a meer abject, wo-

* manish Pusillanimity, or rank Cowardice ³⁵⁰

(20)

* perpetually terrified with those Acci- ³⁵¹

* dents which all sublunary Things are na- ³⁵²

* turally subject to: a Fear, that has been ³⁵³

the Mother of all the most dreadful Mis-

chiefs to which Mankind has ow'd great

Part of his Unhappiness. It has produc’d

both private and publick Murders, De-

vastations and Ruin of Nations and Peo-

ple; for to this may we justly attribute

the inhuman Barbarities of the Spaniards

in the West-Indies, who, stimulated by

this Fury, destroy’d above one and twen-

ty Millions of People according to their

own Writers: This Fear is the Ground

and Origin of all, or most of our Re-

venges; our supplanting one another, and

all that Injustice and Dishonesty which is

too visible in the Transactions of the

World: This Fear, therefore, being but

too much spread thro’ Humankind, it has

been the Care and Study of the Wise and

Good of all Polite Nations to root it

as much as possible out of the Mind, or

at least so far to abate it, as to render its

Effect less fatal to our Happiness. And

yet this is the Fear which you endeavour

to establish as the Fear of God, and

measure the Piety and Impiety of Men, by

the Share that they have of this; as if

Cowards only could be good Chris-

* tians. But to return to Crusoe, at his ³⁵⁴

(21)

coming to Town, he says, he fell into

very good Company, and among the rest,

into the Acquaintance of a Master of a

Guinea Ship, who was extreamly pleas'd

* with his Conversation; which, as he ³⁵⁵

tells us himself, was not at that time

to be despis'd. Well, he goes to Guinea

with this honest Captain, was his Mess-

mate, and learnt of him during his

Voyage the Art of Navigation; so that

he could not have so much Time upon

his Hands, as to be laugh’d out of his

Religion in his Conversation with the

Common Seamen; nor do I think he had

the Opportunity of knowing their Senti-

ments in this Particular. It must there-

fore be the Captain and his Mate, who

learnt him to despise God and Religion;

and he must have a strange Alacrity in

* Sinking, if he could fall from those set- ³⁵⁶

tled Notions, that a Religious Education

must needs have fixt in him, in one

* Voyage to Guinea; for this is the only ³⁵⁷

time, except the Hull Voyage, that he

had convers’d with Seafaring Men. But

if this were true, he ought not to lay the

Crime of the Captain and his Mate upon

all the Body of Seamen, since no Logick

will ever allow arguing from a Particular

to a General; and as it is bad Logick, so

it is worse Religion, to lay the Crime of

(22)

Two upon a Million. Early in his next

voyage he is taken by the Salleeman;

and for the greatest Part of his fourth

Voyage, he had no Companion but poor

Xury. The Remainder of this Voyage he

made in a Portuguese Ship, to the Master

of which he ow’d, not only his Life then,

but his Riches afterwards; and he was too

* ignorant of the Portuguese Tongue, to ³⁵⁸

make any Discovery of the Vices of that

Ship’s Crew, or of being corrupted by

* them; nor could he in his fifth Voyage ³⁵⁹

from Brasil, to the Time of his being

cast away, furnish himself with any fresh

* Observations of this Kind, they being for ³⁶⁰

the most part in that Storm which

brought on their Shipwreck, in which he

* only escap’d. So that upon the whole, ³⁶¹

we find that Robinson Crusoe, even when

he pretends to repent, is for throwing

the Guilt of his Sin upon others, who,

as far as we can possibly discover, did

not at all deserve the Charge; and I

dare believe, that he was in reality the

only Person among them, who ever liv’d

so many Years without saying his Prayers,

or acknowledging God and his Provi-

dence, and is likely therefore rather to

have been the Corrupter, than the Cor-

rupted. But it seems he is not yet come

so forward towards a true Repentance,

(23)

as to take the whole Guilt on himself,

which in reality no Body else had any

Share in. He says, indeed, his Repen-

tance was hinder’d by his Conversation

with none but such as were worse than

himself, and where he never heard men-

tion of any thing that was good. But,

dear D—n, this seems another gross Fib

of your Friend Robinson, as I hope I have

sufficiently prov’d in what I have said up-

on this Head. I have been longer than I

design’d upon these Remarks, and there-

fore shall only transiently touch upon

some few Occurrences of your Book: And

tho’ Nonsense be too frequent thro’ the

whole to merit a particular Remark as

often as it occurs, I can’t pass over

* this in Page 164: And now I saw how³⁶²

easy it was for the Providence of God to

make the most miserable Condition, Mankind

* could be in, worse. How, Friend D—n!³⁶³

Worse than the worst, I thought, that be-

yond the superlative Degree there was

nothing; I am sure that Robinson's School

Learning could not teach him this, per-

haps he had it from his House Learning,

with all the other false Grammar, which

is to be found almost in every Page, par-

* ticulary the Nominative Case perpetually ³⁶⁴

put for the Accusative. But this is not

worth stopping at. To proceed therefore:

(24)

* Tho’ I cannot see how he could let the ³⁶⁵

Goat out of the Pit, when he says it was

so fierce that he durst not come near it; yet

let that pass. He tells us, that he went

* out for five or six Days; he would have ³⁶⁶

done well to have satisfied us, not only

* how he carried his Provisions for that long ³⁶⁷

Time, but also what became of his

* Goats, who were not milk’d in so many ³⁶⁸

* Days; whereas he afterwards tells us, ³⁶⁹

that three Days Absence had lik’d to have

spoil’d them on that very Account; he

would have done likewise well, to have

given his Reasons why he thought the Sa-

* vages more dangerous than the Devil. ³⁷⁰

Tho’ I have a great deal to say upon

his Reflections, and their frequent Repe-

tition almost in the same Words; yet for

Brevity Sake, I shall say of them all, that

* they seem brought in only to encrease the ³⁷¹

Bulk of your Book; they are seldom Just

or truly Religious; but they have this

terrible Circumstance, that they demon-

strate that the Author has not the Fear of

* God before his Eyes. Ludere cum Sacris³⁷²

is what he has not at all scrupl’d; as if he

esteem’d it no Crime to set off his Fable

with the Words of the Holy Scripture;

* nay, he makes a Kind of Sortes Virgilianae³⁷³

of the Bible, by making Crusoe dip in-

to it for Sentences to his purpose. To

(25)

me the Impiety of this Part of the

Book, in making the Truths of the Bi-

ble of a Piece with the fictitious Story of

* Robinson Crusoe, is so horribly shocking ³⁷⁴

that I dare not dwell upon it; but must

say, that they make me think that this

* Book ought to be printed with Vaninus, ³⁷⁵

* the Freethinker, and some other Atheisti- ³⁷⁶

cal Tracts, which are condemn’d and

held in Abhorrence by all good Chris-

tians.

It is an odd Whimsy of Crusoe, to

think of making Malt, which yet he

knew not how to compass; whereas, he

* might make good Wine with little or no ³⁷⁷

trouble. But you tell us that your

Friend Robinson was never in the right in

his Life, and, I think, that you have

pretty well kept up that Part of his Cha-

racter, in all that he says or does

* In Page 207, and several subsequent ³⁷⁸

Pages, as 234, 296 and 342, he presses very

earnestly our serious Regard to the secret

Hints and Impulses of the Mind, of which

we can give no Rational Account. But I

must tell him, that this is only the Effect

of a blind superstitious Fear, which ought

not to be minded by any Man of com-

mon Sense or Religion. We read, indeed,

* of the Daemon of Socrates, who generally ³⁷⁹

gave him notice and warning of any Evil

(26)

* that threaten'd him: Cardan, a Modern Ita- ³⁸⁰

lian, pretended to the same, but has been

laugh'd at for that Pretence by all the

Learned Men who mention it: There

* have likewise been some Enthusiastick ³⁸¹

Papists, who have believ'd that some of

their Saints had done them the same Fa-

vour; but for a Protestant to recommend

this Superstition, is something extraordi-

nary: But here the Dregs of Popery still

hang about Mr Crusoe.

* I would ask Mr. Crusoe how he could ³⁸²

see the saucer Eyes of the Goat in the

Cave, when he tells us it was so dark

that he could see nothing there; this is

not helpt by saying, that a Ray of the

Light struck thro' the Mouth of the

Cave, for then there was Light, which

he says there was not; and if there was,

then he might have seen the Goat’s Bo-

dy as well as his Eyes.

* He tells us that his Man Friday would ³⁸³

not eat Salt, but we see not how he him-

self had any to eat; well, we'll suppose

he had made it out of the Sea Water.

* He would have done well likewise to ³⁸⁴

have told us how Friday could make his

escape, since he assures us that the Victims

were all bound till executed; but per-

haps this Caution was made use of after

Friday had made his escape. He agrees

(27)

* with the Spaniard and Friday's Father, ³⁸⁵

that they should bring a Contract in

Writing, under the Hands of the other

Spaniards, tho' he knew they had neither

Pen, Ink, nor Paper; nay, he had

done well if he had inform'd us, how he

could give them Instructions in Writing,

when his Ink was gone so many Years

before.

Well, Crusoe at last, and his Man Fri-

day, get away from his Island into En-

gland; and from thence he makes a

Voyage to Portugal, where having set-

tled all his Affairs and found himself a

* Rich Man, in obedience to his secret ³⁸⁶

Hints, he resolves not to go by Sea back,

but thro' Spain and France by Land, and

so only cross the Seas from Calais to Do-

ver. All that happens in this Land

Journey worth taking Notice of, is the

* monstrous Story of his Man Friday and ³⁸⁷

the Bear; they are passing the Pyrenean

Mountains thro’ a very great Snow, the

Roads were so infested with Wolves, that

two of them fell upon their Guide, and

wounded him and his Horse, before Fri-

day could come up and shoot them; but

notwithstanding this Wound of the Guide,

and the howling of the Wolves all about,

and that it was within two Hours of

Night, and they had near three Leagues

(28)

to ride in the Snow, he makes a matter

of thirty Passengers, and the wounded

Guide, stand still in the Cold, to see

* Friday make laugh, as he calls it, with ³⁸⁸

a Bear, that by Chance came that Way.

* Friday pulls off his Boots and claps on his ³⁸⁹

Pumps, runs to the Bear and takes up a

* great Stone, which he throws at him; but ³⁹⁰

how Friday could pick up a great Stone

in a Place all cover’d deep with Snow,

I know not; nor can I tell, how Friday

came to know the Nature of the Bear,

* since that is a Creature, which is never ³⁹¹

found in such a warm Climate, as Fri-

day's Country must needs be, since it was

so near the Equinox: I believe it is equal-

* ly true, that the whole Company laugh’d ³⁹²

at Friday's managing the Bear; but, in-

deed, this Book seems calculated for the

Mob, and will not bear the Eye of a ra-

tional Reader. Well, Robinson at last

gets again to London, marries, has three

Children; he is near sixty five years of

Age, which one would think was old

* enough to leave off Rambling, having ³⁹³

* especially a plentiful Fortune; yet he ³⁹⁴

tell us, that he takes a Trip, as it were

for Pleasure, to his old Island in America,

and thence to Brasil, and so rambles

about till seventy five years of Age, and

how much longer I know not, an Ac-

(29)

count of which he promises in his next

Volume. I hope, dear D—n, that you

have taken more care of Probability and

Religion than you have in this; tho’ I

am afraid you are too harden’d a Sinner in

these Particulars, to give us any Proof in

your Works of your sincere Repentance,

which yet is heartily wish’d you, by

Your Friend and Servant, etc.

POSTSCRIPT.

* Having just run thro’ the first Volume ³⁹⁵

and clos'd my Letter, I was told that

the second Volume was at last come out.

I was too much tir’d with the Badness of

the Road in my first Journey, to venture

upon another the same Way, without

resting to recover my Patience, of which

I was to have sufficient use in my passing

thro’ the second Part. I am afraid that

Robinson Crusoe reserv'd so much Opium

* for his own Use, when he dispos’d of the ³⁹⁶

rest to the Merchant of Japan, that he

has scarce been thoroughly awake ever

* since; and has communicated that som- ³⁹⁷

niferous Quality of the Drug to his

Writing thro’ the whole second Part,

which every where prepares you for

(30)

Sleep ; to avoid a Lethargy therefore, I

shall not dwell upon it, and its perpetual

Succession of Absurdities, but only touch

upon some few, which may serve for

Samples of the whole. I cannot, how-

ever, omit taking particular Notice of

the Editor’s Preface, because it is not on-

ly written by the same Hand, but also

very singular in its Kind: you begin with

* a Boast of the Success of your Book, and ³⁹⁸

which you say deserves that Success by

its Merits, that is, The surprizing Variety

of the Subject, and the agreeable Man-

ner of the Performance. It’s well you tell

* us so yourself, the judicious Reader else ³⁹⁹

must have been puzzel’d to find out the

Mystery of its Success. For first, as to the

Variety of the Subject, it will be a hard

Matter to make that good, since it’s spread

* out into at least five and twenty Sheets, ⁴⁰⁰

clog’d with Moral Reflections, as you

are pleas’d to call them, every where in-

* sipid and awkward, and in many Places ⁴⁰¹

of no manner of Relation to the Occa-

sion on which they are deliver’d, besides

being much larger than necessary, and

frequently impious and prophane; and al-

* ways canting are the Reflections which ⁴⁰²

you are pleas’d to call religious and use-

* ful, and the brightest Ornaments of your⁴⁰³

Book, tho’ in reality they were put in by

(31)

* you to swell the Bulk of your Treatise ⁴⁰⁴

up to a five Shilling Book; whereas,

the Want of Variety in your Subject,

would never have made it reach to half

the Price; nay, as it is, you have been

forc'd to give us the same Reflections

* over and over again, as well as repeat ⁴⁰⁵

the same Fact afterwards in a Journal,

which you had told us before in a plain

Narration. So agreeable is the Manner

of your Performance! which is render’d

more so by the excessive Sterility of your

Expression, being forc’d perpetually to

say the same Things in the very self same

* Words four or five times over in one ⁴⁰⁶

Page, which puts me in Mind of what

* Hudibras says, ⁴⁰⁷

Would it not make one strange	5
That some Mens Fancies should ne'er change,	6
But always make them do and say	7
The self same Thing, the self same Way?	8

20 Another agreeable Thing in the Perfor-

* mance is, that every Page is full of So- ⁴⁰⁸

lecisms or false Grammar. However, this

may be, for ought I know, a very agree-

* able Performance to most of your Buy- ⁴⁰⁹

ers.

Your next Triumph is, that the Re-

proaches of your Book as a Romance,

(32)

* and as being guilty of bad Geography, ⁴¹⁰

Contradictions, and the like, have prov’d

Abortive (I suppose you mean ineffectu-

al) and as impotent as malicious; but

here, as well as in other Places, you are

guilty of a great Abuse of Words: For

first, they have not been impotent, since all

* but the very Canaille are satisfied by them ⁴¹¹

of the Worthlessness of the Performance;

nor can the exposing the Weakness and

Folly of any assuming and ignorant Scrib-

bler be properly call’d malicious; they

who malign eminent Worth, may, in-

deed deserve such a Name; but what

hath been said of, or done against such an

incoherent Piece as Robinson Crusoe, can

at worst been only call’d Indignation; and

* that was what the eminent Satirist was ⁴¹²

not asham’d to own, as the Motive and

Support of his Verses.

Si Natura negat facit Indignatio versum.

And thus I may say of my present Let-

ter to you; that if want of Genius for-

bid my Writing at all, that Defect is

largely supplied by Indignation, not Ma-

* lice or Envy; for Folly and Ignorance ⁴¹³

can never produce them. However, I

find that these Endeavours you seem to

contemn as impotent, have yet had so

(33)

great a Force upon yourself, as to make

* you more than tacitly confess, that your ⁴¹⁴

Book is nothing but a Romance. You

say, indeed, The just Application of every

Incident, the religious and useful Inferences

drawn from every Part, are so many Testi-

monies to the good Design of making it Pub-

lick, and must Legitimate all the Part that

may be called Invention or Parable in the

Story. But when it is plain that there are

* no true, useful or just Inferences drawn ⁴¹⁵

from any of the Incidents; when Reli-

gion has so little to do in any Part of

these Inferences; when it is evident that

what you call Religion, is only to mis-

lead the Minds of Men to reject the Dic-

tates of Reason, and embrace in its

* Room a meer superstitious Fear of I ⁴¹⁶

know not what Instinct from unbodied

Spirits; when you impiously prophane

the very Name of Providence, by allot-

ting to it either contradictory Offices, or

an unjust Partiality: I think we may

justly say, that the Design of the Publi-

cation of this Book was not sufficient to

justify and make Truth of what you al-

low to be Fiction and Fable; what you

mean by Legitimating, Invention, and Pa-

rable, I know not; unless you would

have us think, that the manner of your

telling a Lie will make it a Truth. One

(34)

may say a great Deal in Answer to what

* you urge against the Abridgment of your ⁴¹⁷

* Book, but it is too absurd to dwell upon, ⁴¹⁸

and against the Practice of all Ages and

all Nations: what think you, honest

* D—n of the History of Justin? Was not ⁴¹⁹

that an Abridgment of Trogus Pompeius,

whose long History of the World is lost,

and the Abridgment of Justin remains to

this Day? nor can I find that ever he

was stigmatiz’d for it with a Crime as

bad as Robbing on the Highway. What

* think you of Darius Tibertus, a Modern ⁴²⁰

Italian, who abridg’d the Lives of Plu

tarch in the Latin tongue? what do you

suppose of the Abridgment of the Vo-

* luminous History of Guarini? what of ⁴²¹

* the Latin Abridgment of Pliny? what ⁴²²

* think you of the great Fontinel? (for I ⁴²³

think I may call him great, after what

* Sir William Temple has said of him) he ⁴²⁴

tells you himself, in his Preface to his

History of Oracles, that this Book is but

* an Abridgment of Van Dale, who writ a ⁴²⁵

prolix Treatise upon that Subject. But

not to dwell upon Foreigners, we have

* a hundred Instances in our own Tongue ⁴²⁶

of the like Practice, in many of which

Booksellers of undoubted Probity have

been concern’d; indeed, there is this

to be said, that most of these Abridg-

(35)

ments have been of Books of a real

intrinsick Value; but yours might for

me have continu’d unabridg’d, and still

retain’d all its brightest Ornaments, as you

call them; but if the omitting of those

* be the only Fault of the Abridgment, I ⁴²⁷

can’t but think his Work more valuable

* than the Original, nor do I see that he ⁴²⁸

has done your Proprietor any damage,

since he has left to your larger Volume

all those Beauties you are so fond of, and

may, indeed, be said to be only an Ad-

vertiser of them to those that have them

not. If he has preserv’d the Fable entire,

* the Judicious will not want your clum- ⁴²⁹

sy and tedious Reflections to recom-

mend it; for, indeed, by what you say,

you seem not to understand the very Na-

ture of a Fable, which is a sort of Wri-

ting which has always been esteem’d by

the wisest and best of Men to be of great

use to the Instruction of Mankind; but

then this Use and Instruction should natu-

rally and plainly arise from the Fable it-

self, in an evident and useful Moral, either

exprest or understood; but this is too large

a Subject to go thro’, and to shew that

* by the Rules of Art you have not attain'd ⁴³⁰

any one End and Aim of a Writer of

Fables in the Tale that you have given

us. I shall therefore proceed to those few

(36)

Remarks, which I have made in a cursory

* reading of your second Part. ⁴³¹

The first Thing I remark, is, that you

* are at your Dreams again Page 3d and ⁴³²

4th: for most of the Religion of your

Book consists in Dreams. The next Thing

I shall just hint at, is what you say

about the three Pirate Sailors in the same

Page — So if I had hang’d them all, I had

been much in the right, and should have

been justifiable both by the Laws of God and

Man, the contrary of which Assertion is

directly true, viz. That if you had hang’d

them all, you had been guilty of down-

right Murther by all the Laws of God

* and Man; for pray, sweet Sir, what Au- ⁴³³

thority had Robinson Crusoe so much as to

fine, or inflict any Punishment upon any

Man?

Some Follies, I find, are like some Dis-

* tempers, catching: Thus, Madam Crusoe, ⁴³⁴

* by conversing with her wise Husband, ex- ⁴³⁵

travagantly fancies his fantastick Whim-

sies to be the Impulse of Divine Provi-

dence, ibid.

Against the next Edition of your

Book, profound Da—l, I wish you

would take the Pains to explain the fol-

lowing Piece of Nonsense, so far as to

make it intelligible; for I can meet with

no Body, no, not the most skill’d in the

(37)

abstruser Sciences, that can so much as

* guess what you would be at. I transcribe ⁴³⁶

them for your serious Consideration, No-

thing can be a greater Demonstration of a fu-

ture State, and of the Existence of an invi-

sible World, than the Concurrence of second

Causes with the Ideas of Things, which we

form in our Minds, perfectly reserv'd and not

communicated to any in the World, Page

* 10; and in Page 12, he is making it a ⁴³⁷

resisting of Providence, if he did not go

a rambling at about sixty five Years of

* Age. I only note this en passant, to re- ⁴³⁸

mind you of what noble Offices you as-

sign to the Divine Providence, by attri-

buting to the Impulse of that all Things

that are irrational; a very pious Notion

of the eternal Divine Wisdom! I shall

only observe on that odd Account, given

* Page 20, of the extravagant Joy of the ⁴³⁹

French that were sav’d by Crusoe, when

their Ship was burnt, that they were cer-

tainly a Ship-load of extreme Cowards or

Madmen; for nothing but the Extremity

of Cowardice or Lunacy could ever pro-

* duce so general a Distraction. It is con- ⁴⁴⁰

fess’d, that unexpected Deliverances will

have strange Effects upon some very few

particular People, but then this Delive

rance must be very sudden and very un-

ex-

(38)

expected: but this is not the Case here;

for all the Time the Ship was burning,

* Crusoe discharg'd Guns to let them know ⁴⁴¹

that Relief was at Hand; and all the

Night after, when the Flame of the burnt

Ship was extinguish'd by the Sea, the

* same Crusoe set out Lights upon his Ship, ⁴⁴²

and frequently discharg'd Guns to direct

the Boats loaded with the Crew of the

burnt Ship towards their Safety, which

they found could not be far off; and to-

wards which, by this Means, they might

* every Minute make some approach; so ⁴⁴³

* that Hope was not gone, no not for one ⁴⁴⁴

Minute, which makes all those extrava-

gant Effects of Joy utterly improbable;

nay, I may say, impossible.

I shall pass Friday’s speaking broken

English twelve Years after he had been

with his Master, and almost as unintelli-

gibly, as after he had been with him

but twelve Days; nor shall I stop long

upon the Spaniards Prognosticating Hu-

* mour, from Dreams and unaccountable ⁴⁴⁵

Whimsies, because the Spaniard seems to

have learnt this by dwelling so long in

Crusoe’s Habitation; for he has the same

Notion of secret Correspondence betwixt

unbodied and embodied Spirits, which

Crusoe every where avows. But, dear

Da-l, you have forgot yourself, you

make

(39)

make a Spaniard speak here, the most bi-

* gotted of all Papists; and therefore it ⁴⁴⁶

had been more natural for him to have

attributed this secret Intelligence to Saint

Jago or the Blessed Virgin, or even to

his Angel Guardian: But, indeed, you

frequently forget the Religion of your

Speaker, and make the Spaniard in your

* first Part quote Scripture Instances, which ⁴⁴⁷

he could never be suppos’d to have read

in all his Life, or ever heard mention’d.

But to go on, for I will say nothing of

* the Savages Landing in the Night to ⁴⁴⁸

make their Feast; for they are your Sa-

vages, and you may make them go

where and when you please, and for

what you please. I shall pass, therefore,

on to Crusoe's Learned Discourse with the

* French Popish Priest in Page 146, etc. ⁴⁴⁹

which has, indeed, as gross Marks of

Falshood and inartificial Fiction, as any

thing in your Book: you make the Priest

call the Living of the four Englishmen

with their Indian Wives (because unmar-

ried according to the Laws and Customs

* of any Christian Country) Adultery. Had ⁴⁵⁰

Crusoe call’d it so it might have been tole-

rable, and have pass’d for the Ignorance

of a Seafaring Man; but to make a Priest

talk so, whose Trade it is to know the

distinct

(40)

distinct Names of every Sin, is a plain

Proof that all this came out of thy in-

ventive Noddle. For you must know,

Friend Da—l, that all Carnal Com-

merce between two single Persons is cal-

led Fornication, and not Adultery; Adul-

tery is when a married Woman or a

married Man has this criminal Commerce

with any other but her Husband, or his

Wife: How, therefore, a Romish Priest

should tell Crusoe, that his Englishmen

without Marriage would live in continual

Adultery, is what you would do well

to make out; for I am satisfy’d, no Priest

in Christendom would call it by any

other Name but Fornication. Nor has that

a better Face of Truth, which you make

* the Popish Priest speak about Idolatry, ⁴⁵¹

Page 150; where, in the Person of the

* Popish Priest, he complements Popery ⁴⁵²

with a known and intolerable Lie, where

he makes him express his Zeal for bring-

ing the Indians over to the Christian Re-

ligion in general; nay, even to the making

* of them Protestants: Now it is very well ⁴⁵³

known, that the Papists in general, and

much more a zealous Popish Priest and

Missionary, do not allow any Heretick,

as they call all Protestants, any better

Place in the next World than that of

eter-

(41)

eternal Damnation; so that unless he

brought the Pagans over entirely to Po-

pery, he must throw away all his Labour

and Pains, in his own Opinion, as much

as if he had done nothing at all. Of the

* same absurd Nature is all that passes be- ⁴⁵⁴

twixt the Priest and Atkins; for tho’ At-

kins knows him not to be a Popish Priest,

he knows very well that Atkins is an

English Protestant Heretick, and there-

fore, that he shall set him no nearer to

Salvation by the Repentance he per-

swaded him to, than if he had left him

where he found him. Well, Atkins's Wife

* gets to be christen’d by this Means, and ⁴⁵⁵

* is married to her Husband, as Jack of all⁴⁵⁶

Trades is to the young Woman taken up

at Sea; but for the rest, we hear no more

* of their Marriage, than of Friday's be- ⁴⁵⁷

ing christen’d himself, during his twelve

Years Service with that zealous Teacher

of the Christian Religion Robinson Cru-

soe.

I shall not quit this Popish Priest, till

I have said something upon a Point, for

which he is recommended to our Ad-

miration by this same Protestant Crusoe;

and that is, upon the Popish Missiona-

ries being sent about the World to make

Converts from one Idolatry to another,

from

(42)

from a less to a greater; that is, from

Paganism to Popery. Well, let us hear

* what the Priest says in Page 151. It is⁴⁵⁸

a Maxim, Sir, that is, or ought to be

receiv'd among all Christians, of what

Church or pretended Church soever, (viz.)

That Christian Knowledge ought to be

propagated by all possible Means, and

on all possible Occasions. 'Tis on this

Principle that our Church sends Missiona-

ries into Persia, India, and China; and

that our Clergy, even of the superior Sort,

willingly engage in the most hazardous

Voyages, and the most dangerous Residence

among Murtherers and Barbarians, to teach

them the Knowledge of the true God, and

to bring them over to embrace the Christian

Faith.

There is scarce one Word of Truth in

all this Quotation; and it is only drest up

* in Words, that are calculated to give the ⁴⁵⁹

Protestant Reader an agreeable Idea of

Popery, on purpose to smooth the Way,

as far as his little Abilities can do it, for

the Popish Superstition to enter these

Kingdoms; that the Popish Church does,

indeed, send Missionaries to these three

Places, mention’d in the Quotation, and

some others, is certainly true. I do con-

fess that they will roam about the

World

(43)

World to make one Proselite, but then

it is as true, that they make this Prose-

lite ten times more the Child of the De-

vil than he was before; it is true, I say,

that they do send their Clergy abroad,

* but not their superiour Clergy, as this ⁴⁶⁰

Quotation falsly asserts, but Jesuits and

some other regular Orders; nor is their

* Business in reality to bring the Pagans to ⁴⁶¹

the Knowledge of the true God and the

* Christian Religion, but to carry on a pri- ⁴⁶²

vate interloping Trade, by which they

bring in vast Treasures into their particu-

lar Orders. What sort of Christians

* they make, is evident from that great ⁴⁶³

Noise and Stir, which has been made

some years before the Congregation De

Propaganda Fide in Rome itself; where it

has been prov’d, even by Roman Catho-

* lics, that the Jesuit Missionaries in China⁴⁶⁴

have only incorporated the Heathen Re-

ligion of that Place into that which the

Romish Church professes; and that they

* have admitted Confucius into the Kalen- ⁴⁶⁵

dar among the Saints, to be pray’d to, as

well as St Peter and St Paul, and the

Virgin Mary. Dear Da—l art thou not

now asham'd of having brought in such

* notorious Falsities in the Defence of Po- ⁴⁶⁶

pery? If Zeal for the Propagating the

Gos-

(44)

Gospel of Christ were the Motive that

set these Itinerant Preachers to work, why

do they not go to the poor Tartars, whose

* Ignorance and Idolatry you do pretend ⁴⁶⁷

to describe? why do they not go to the

* poor Laplanders and Samoides, where ⁴⁶⁸

there is nothing to be got; no Traffick to

be establish’d beneficial enough to warm

their Zeal, and make it travel for the

Conversion of Souls in those cold Coun-

tries? why do they seek all the richer

and more gainful Part of the World for

their Missions? But to go on with these

sort of Queries, would be to swell my

Postscript to a much greater Bulk than

I design. From what has been said, I be-

lieve, it may be pretty plain, that this

sending of Missionaries of the Popish

Church, is a mere Political Trick, with-

out the least Tincture of true Reli-

gion.

I have been so long upon this, that

I shall say nothing of honest Robinson's

being oppress’d by the Power of the

Priest’s Reasoning, which yet is so very

weak and false as I have show’d you;

or proceed to a particular Confutation of

* what the Priest advances upon Matri- ⁴⁶⁹

mony, tho’ in many Things very false.

But it is observable that Crusoe, after all

the

(45)

the Zeal of the Popish Priest against the

Pirates living with their Indian Wives

* without Marriage, sends from Brasil⁴⁷⁰

several Women for the use of the Span-

ards, who were not before married; and

that without sending any Priest with

i them to marry them.

* I shall pass over, likewise, the Maid’s ⁴⁷¹

Discourse upon Starving, because I can-

not see that it is any ways entertaining

or instructive, but a very clumsy Pro-

duct of the most unphilosophical Head in

the World.

* And I shall only ask you, how a Man ⁴⁷²

should chuse any particular Way or Voca-

tion of Life, if he must not take his own

Judgment; for this is plainly to tell us,

that Man must chuse no Way nor Voca-

tion at all, since you will not allow him

the only Means of chusing which God

and Nature has given him: This is the

plain English of your Assertion in Page

218. From hence I shall skip to Page

* 302, where there is a very particular ⁴⁷³

Blunder or Contradiction; for he first

* tells you, that the Horse the Chinese Man-⁴⁷⁴

darin rid upon, was a poor lean Creature,

not worth above 30 or 40 Shillings; and

yet presently after, in Page 304, he says,

that there was not a Horse in the Reti-

nue

(46)

nue of the Mandarin, but was so covered

with Equipages, Mantles, Trappings, and

such like Trumpery, that you cannot see

whether they are Fat or Lean: In a Word,

we could scarce see any thing but their Feet

and their Heads.

Before 1 follow him out of China, I

shall only add one Word or two on his

Account of that famous Kingdom, which,

contrary to all those who have realty been

* there, he makes a most despicable Place, ⁴⁷⁵

where there is nothing of Politeness or

Learning; but that Singularity of yours

will never perswade us to think, that the

Writer of it was ever nearer to Pequin

than London: And, therefore, I shall not

* doubt but that Sir William Temple fol- ⁴⁷⁶

low’d as just Relations of this Country,

as any Mr De F—e could pretend to

meet with, who makes it the most Po-

lite and magnificent Empire in the

World.

Well, I am quite tir’d with your Jour-

ney of the Caravan, and can but just

take Notice of Robinson Crusoe and the

* Scotchman's burning one of the Tartarian⁴⁷⁷

Gods, at the Hazard, not only of their

own Lives, but of all the rest of the Cara-

van, which must certainty have follow’d,

* had not the Ingenuity of a Tartar in their ⁴⁷⁸

Re-

(47)

Retinue turn’d off the Storm, and set the

ten thousand Tartars upon a wrong Scent,

which should lead them, at least, five

hundred Miles out of their Way. And

here I conclude, satisfied with having

* check’d that Vanity which is so apparent ⁴⁷⁹

in both your Volumes, especially in the

Preface to your last, by offering some

few only of that Multitude of Absur-

dities and Profaneness of which both

Parts are full; for to have touch’d upon

every one, would have swell’d my Re-

marks to the Bigness of at least one of

* your Volumes. But ex pede Herculem, ⁴⁸⁰

ex ungue Leonem, a small Sample is suffi-

cient to give a Taste of the whole.

The Christian Religion and the Doc-

* trines of Providence are too Sacred to be ⁴⁸¹

deliver’d in Fictions and Lies, nor was

this Method ever propos’d or follow’d

by any true Sons of the Gospel; it is

what has been, indeed, made use of by

* the Papists in the Legends of their ⁴⁸²

Saints, the Lying Wonders of which

are by Length of Time grown into such

Authority with that wretched People,

that they are at last substituted in the

Place of the Holy Scriptures themselves.

For the Evil Consequences of allowing

Lies to mingle with the Holy Truths of

Re-

(48)

* Religion, is the certain Seed of Atheism⁴⁸³

and utter Irreligion; whether, therefore,

you ought to make a publick Recanta-

tion of your Conduct in this Particular, I

leave to yourself.

FINIS.

INDEX TO GILDON'S LIFE

INDEX TO THE PAMPHLET

1. (1) See his edition of Langbaine’s Lives of the English Dramatic Poets, and his letters to Prior (Longleat Mss. III, 507). Back

2. (1)The quotations are taken from Gildon's autobiography in the Appendix to Langbaine's Lives. Back

4. (2) In the Preface to his edition of Mrs Behn’s play The younger Brother (1696). Back

5. (3) Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave, the famous tale which inspired a very successful tragedy of Southerne. Back

10. (4) See the Epistle prefixed to The Golden Spy (1709) and Leland’s View of the principal deistical writers (1754). Back

11. (1) He was the chief precursor of Toland. Macaulay, in his History of England (chapter XIX, 1693) judged him with excessive severity. Back

13. (3) Ferrante Pallavicino, an Italian novelist and satirical Poet (1615-1644) who wrote the Corriere Svaligiato (1640). He was beheaded at Avignon as a heretic, after a life full of adventures. Back

14. (4) A satire against marriage, where the Devil is brought to admit that Hell itself is prefectablc to the company of a wife. Back

15. (1) A Conference with a Theist, by William Nicholls, D. D.; 1696, 8 vo, pp. 266. — Mr Blount's Oracles of Reason examin'd and answered, by Josiah King, 1698. — Moral Essays, together with an answer to some chapters in the Oracles of Reason concerning deism, by J. Lowde, 1699. — A Discourse concerning the being and Attributes of God, in answer to the author of the Oracles of Reason, by S. Clarke. D. D. 1716 (5th ed. in 1719). Back

16. (1) (1672-1721): Politician and student: a great friend of Congreve’s and Dennis's. Back

18. (2) NICHOLS. Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century, 1812 ed., VIII, 293. Pope received only 7 1. for the first ed. of the Rape of the Lock. Back

19. (3) (1653-1723), poet and dramatist. He was the nephew of Honoré d’Urfé, author of the romance of L'Astée. Back

20. (1) (1663-1704). A miscellaneous writer, known chiefly for his violent quarrel with D’Urfey in 1699. Back

22. (3) The Duke bore only at that time the title of Marquis of Normandy (see the Preface to the Laws of Poetry; 1721). Back

24. (1) He wrote Reflections on Mr Rymer’s Short View, in an Essay dedicated to Dryden and inserted in his Miscellaneous Letters (1694) (pp. 64 to 118). As M. Huchon rightly surmises (See Mrs Montague and her friends, p. 93 m.) it is undoubtedly by Gildon. Back

25. (2) A comparison between the 2 Stages (Drury Lane, and Lincoln's Inn Fields): Pref. Back

27. (4) (1653-i692): he followed Dryden's method in his most successful tragedy, the Rival Queens (1677). Back

28. (5) (1652-1685): two of his tragedies, the Orphan, and Venice Preserved, still keep the stage. Back

29. (1) and (3) See his autobiography (appendix to Langbaine’s Lives) and Genest’s History of the English Stage, II, 112. Back

30. (2) He dedicated the book to a friend of Creech aud Dennis, Colonel Codrington (1668-1710) who, by this time, had acquired the reputation of a wit and a scholar. Back

31. (1) and (3) See his autobiography (appendix to Langbaine’s Lives) and Genest’s History of the English Stage, II, 112. Back

32. (1) This expression is borrowed from Dennis’s preface to Gildon’s tragedy The Patriot (1703). Back

33. (2) Camma, reine de Galatie, a tragedy by Thomas Corneille, first played at the Hotel de Bourgogne on Jan. 28th, 1661. Published in the same year. Back

35. (4) See a favourable judgment of this tragedy in Genest’s History II, 138. Back

36. (1) John Oldmixon (1673-1742) began his literary career as a poet, and in 1700 produced at Drury Lane an opera The Grove, with music by D. Purcell. Back

39. (4) (1606-1668), the well-known dramatist who mangled many of Shakespeare's plays. Back

40. (5) Strangely enough, this opera was advertised in the edition of Gildon’s tragedy Love's Victim as Measure for Measure, a comedy alter’d from Beaumont and Fletcher, by Mr Gilden. Back

42. (1) Some lines on the effeminacy and immorality of Tarquin had been interpreted as a reflection on Charles the Second. Back

44. (3) This day is published a set of airs in 4 parts, perform’d in the tragedy call’d The Italian Conspiracy, written by Mr Dan. Purcell. 1 s. 6 d. (Advertisement in the papers for Dec. 1 st, 1702). Back

48. (1) Gerard Langbaine, the Younger (1656-1692), known chiefly as a dramatic biographer. Back

49. (2) Higgons (1670-1735) was accused, when he published his tragedy, of having tried to defend the Divine Right and Impeccability of James the Second. Gildon’s book against him is entitled: A Comparison between the 2 Stages (1702). Back

50. (3) Anne Bracegirdle’s (1663-1748) appearance in Gildon’s Love's Victim (1701) was one of her greatest triumphs, and Gildon thanked her in the Preface to his tragedy. This did not prevent him, a few mouths afterwards, from giving the following opinion of her virtue: "I believe no more on it than I believe of John Maudevil". (A Comparison, etc. p. 18). Back

51. (4) In Gildon's tragedy, Love's Victim, she played the part of Tyrelius, a boy of 12, and spoke the Epilogue. She died in 1765. Back

52. (5) Gildon’s Life of Betterton is rather a dissertation on drama and the dramatic art: to it was added a comedy by Betterton The Amorous Widow (imitated from Molière) which had been successfully acted on the 10th of January 1673. See Times L. S. for Sept. 14th, 1922: p. 584). Back

54. (2) This is Edward Young (1683-1765), the author of the Nights. The quotation is taken from the seventh satire of the Love of Fame. Back

55. (1) (1650-1722). Nourjuror and controversialist, known for his quarrels with the Quakers and the chief Whig journalists of the time, Tutchin and De Foe, in opposition to whom he started a paper entitled The Rehearsal. The first edition of his Short and Easy Method was issued in 1698. Back

56. (1) In the old Histoire d'Angleterre by Rapiu-Thoyras(1749) these curious negociatious are very clearly explained. (vol. XII, p. 170, etc). Back

58. (2) Letter dated 18/29 June 1706 (P. R. O. — S. P. foreign. Hanover, entry book). Back

64. (3) (1668-1712). M. P., auditor of inquests, member of the Kit-Kat Club, one of the heads of the Whig Party. Back

65. (4) British Museum. Add. Mss. 5145. This document has been pointed out by Aitken, Life of Steele, I, 152. Back

68. (3) In the Life of William Wycherley: the quarrel between Pope and Gildon makes the subject of my 4th chapter. Back

69. (1) It was under this pseudonym that Steele wrote for the Tatler (1709). The name Isaac Bickerstaff had already been assumed by Swift when he attacked John Partridge the almanac-maker (1707), and it was, later on, taken by De Foe when he wrote his mock-prophecies, the British Visions (I711). Back

70. (2) This is evidently Cases in Latin, 3 copies of which Gildon sent to Addison in Feb. 1719 (B. M. Mss. E. G. 1971). Back

72. (1) This project was not fully explained in Giildon’s first letter to Harley, but we know in what it consisted from a passage of A Reinforcement of the Reasons proving that the Stage is an Antichristian Diversion (Oct. 1733, p. 31), by the Rev. George Anderson, who was a friend of Gildon’s, and probably influenced his sudden dislike for the stage. Back

73. (2) Dillon Wantworth, Earl of Roscommon had attempted the formation of a literary Academy in imitation of that at Caen, in which town he had lived, during the Commonwealth. He was a classical poet (1633-85) and, according to Pope, the only moral writer of the reign of the Merry Monarch. Back

75. (1) Against the Sin of Curlicism, in Mist's Journal for April 5th, 1719. — Curll (1675-1747) replied in a pamphlet entitled Curlicism Displayed. He was attacked in the Dunciad. Back

76. (2) Rowe (1674-1718) was poet-laureate. His intimacy with Pope had exposed him to Curll’s hatred. His edition of Shakespeare was reissued in 1714 in 8 vols., when Curll again issued Gildon's work as a 9th vol. Back

78. (1) These curious expressions are taken from the Daily Journal (April and May 1728), which had begun a violent quarrel with Pope. Back

79. (2) The epigraph of this pamphlet is significant in itself: "Why is he honour’d with a Poet’s Name, 1 Who neither knows nor would observe a rule?" 2 (Roscommon). Back

80. (1) Sawney is a corruption of Sandy the Scottish abbreviation of Alexander. Back

81. (2) In A System of Magic (1726). Already in The Life of Mr Duncan Campbell (1720), De Foe published verses by a certain Mr Stanhope, intended to ridicule Pope’s poem. Back

82. (3) In the first edition of his Key to the Dunciad, Curll declared that Gildon was the author of the book. This declaration was omitted in subsequent editions, and in the Curliad, Dennis was named as the writer. Back

84. (1) In Gildon’s work, Wycherley’s poetry was roughly handled, a fact which displeased Dennis, so that, later, Gildon had to apologise: "I am sorry I have not pleased you in what I have said of Mr Wycherley" (Letter dated Aug. 11th, 1721, and published by Dennis in his Remarks upon several Passages in the Preliminaries to the Dunciad, etc.). Back

85. page of the book, Gildon is not named (see List of Gildon’s works). The public was intended to suppose that Lord Landsdowne was the author of the whole. This was one of Curll's favourite tricks. Back

86. (1) Spence (1699-1768) related this bit of scandal in his invaluable Anecdotes (p. 148). It was also recounted in similar terms by Warburton in his comments on Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1751 ed. of Pope’s Works, IV, 25-27). Back

89. (1) I had long concluded that Gildon’s Life of Wycherley must be in existence, and had traced a copy in the New- York Public Library, when I found I had been forestalled by Mr George Sherburn, who described Gildon’s book in a very interesting communication to the Times L. S. for May 11th, 1922. But all the facts recounted in these pages about Addison’s attitude in the quarrel are new. Back

91. (1) Epistle to Arbuthnot. In later editions the word venal was substituted for meaner. Back

95. (1) See a short paper on Gildon’s theories in the Modern Language Review XIV, p. 386. (Two minor Critics of the Age of Pope, by D. S. Sarma). Back

97. (1) See Charlanne: L'Influence francaise en Angleterre au 17th siecle, 1, p. 315. Back

100. (4) Canons (near Edgware), was the name of the Earl's magnificent residence. It was described by De Foe in his Tour through Great Britain, (II, 3). Back

101. (1) George Granville, baron Landsdowne (1667-1735) verse-writer and dramatic author. Back

102. (2) The bookseller advertised it again in 1723 (British Journal for March 20th) which shows that the edition was not yet sold out. Back

103. (3) In his 2nd letter to Prior (Aug. 1st, 1721). Hist. Mss. Comm. Mss. of the Marquis of Bath, III, 507. Back

105. (1) A poor bookseller and writer, who had been reduced to bankruptcy. Gildon had compiled for him the translation of Lucian’s Works. Back

107. (3) The name was misspelt by Gildon’s amanuensis; this is Giles Jacob (1686-1744) known chiefly for his Poetical Register, or Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets (1719-20). In 1721 Jie dedicated a poem, Human Happiness, to Prior. Back

108. (1) This was evidently a new form of Gildon’s project (of which he had already spoken to Harley) for opposing the stage by moral lectures (see chap. III). Back

109. (2) Hist. Mss. Comm. Rep. — Mss. of the Marquis of Bath, III, 506-7. Back

110. (3) Id. p. 507. This letter has been published by Mr. Bickley in his Life of Prior (pp. 266-7). Back

111. (1) This was most probably the Earl of Carnarvon, who, when this was written, had been created Duke of Chandos and appointed Governor of the Charterhouse. Back

112. (2) Letter to Dennis, dated Jan. 19th, 1722. (Published in Dennis’s Remarks upon several Passages). Back

113. (3) And not on the 14th, as Nichols erroneously states (Literary Anecdotes, I, 25 n). See Musgrave's Obituary, Jacob’s Poets, I, 115, etc. Back

114. (4) (1667-1729), a French Huguenot who had taken refuge in England. An annalist and journalist, he is known chiefly for his polemics with De Foe. Back

119. [8° pp XXXII and 112] [The Epistle Dedicatory signed Charles Gildon]. (Reissued in 1698 with the following title. The Poetical Remaines of the Duke of Buckingham, Sir G. Etheridge, Mr Milton, etc.). Back

120. [8 vo pp. XXIV and 488] [The Epistle Dedicatory signed C.G.](Reissued in one vol. "with the addition of many and ingenious letters, never before publish’d". London. 1706). Back

122. [8 vo, pp. XVI and 176] (the Epistle Dedicatory signed Charles Gildon). Back

123. [mostly by Gildon]. [8 vo, pp. XVI and 231] (The Epistle Dedicatory, and many Essays signed Charles Gildon). October 1694. Back

131. 2 vols. (12o) [another edition in 1705; 7th ed. in 1722; 8th in 1735; 9th in 1751]. Back

138. [edited by Gildon][8 vo, pp XII and 152] (Dedication signed Charles Gildon]. Back

144. [8 vo, pp LXXII and 476] (Reissued as 9th Vol. in 1714; as 7th Vol. in 1725; as 10th Vol. in 1728). Back

152. price 1 s. [pp 42]. 3 May (Advertised by the Evening Post as The Life of William Wycherley esq. by Charles Gildon, gent. with a Character of Mr Wycherley and his Writings by the Lord Landsdown, etc) Back

156. The following pages are an exact reprint of the first edition of Gildon's pamphlet. For the convenience of the reader, we have numbered the lines. The asterisks in the margin refer to the notes at the end of the book. Back

157. l. 6. — D... De F... means Daniel de Foe. Throughout the pamphlet D..n is put for Dan, and D...1 for Daniel (with perhaps an intention to suggest D(evi)l as well as D(anie)l. Back

158. 1. 8. — De Foe always styled himself a "trader" and denied he had ever stood behind the counter; and, in fact, as early as 1683, he had a wholesale office in Freeman’s Yard, nearly opposite the entrance to Change Alley. He exported hosiery and cloth, and imported wines and drugs. Whenever his enemies wanted to wound his pride, they called him hosier, sock-seller, or civet-cat merchant. Back

159. 1. 10. — De Foe was born in 1660, so that he was 59 when Gildon wrote his pamphlet. Back

160. l. 11. — There is some truth in saying that De Foe lived by himself, because his work as a governmental spy prevented his having many friends, and he never mixed with "polite" or literary circles.

North Britain. This alludes to De Foe's frequent visits to Scotland, from 1706 to 1712. He was sent by Harley to watch events during the discussions about the Union, and later to study the consequences of the treaty. Back

162. l. 13. — Discoveries: this word does not apply to any precise part of Gildon’s pamphlet. It alludes probably to De Foe’s plans, most of which had been explained in his Essay upon Projects (1697). Back

164. l 22. — "Let him be deceived, who wants to be deceived" (Cp. Luke VIII, 8). Latin epigraphs were the rule in pamphlets. Swift, in the Examiner, taunted De Foe with being "illiterate", and De Foe was sufficiently concerned to answer: "I have been in my time pretty well master of five languages, and have not lost them yet, though I write no bill over my door, nor set Latin quotations in the front of the Review"(Rev. VII, 455). Back

165. l. 23. — J. Roberts had already published two of Gildon’s works: the New Rehearsal (1714), and Canons, or the Vision (1717). He always prudently refrained from publishing seditious libels. Back

167. P. III. — The beginning is an imitation of the Preface to Robinson Crusoe: "If ever the story of any private man’s adventures in the world were worth making public, and were acceptable when published, the Editor of this account thinks this will be so. — The wonders of this man’s life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the life of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety. The story is told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application of events..." — Then the texts differ. Back

168. 1. 14. — There is some truth in this sarcasm: in his prefaces and dedications, De Foe showed no small opinion of his own merits; and even when he wished to appear modest and humble (as in the Letter to Mr. How, 1701) his humility savoured much of the Pharisee. Back

169. l. 16. — An allusion to De Foe’s political changes. He was a Moderate Whig, but his attachment to Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, led him to compromise with his conscience, when, in 1710, Harley became the head of a Tory ministry. Back

170. 1. 18 etc. — Proteus, a sea-god who is represented as having knowledge of the past, present and future; but unwilling to give away his knowledge, he assumed different shapes in order to terrify those who came to consult him. Menelaus took him by surprise during his sleep, and seized him, holding more tightly at each new shape he assumed, until at last having exhausted his tricks, the God returned to his ordinary form and gave Menelaus the information he wanted (Odyssey). Back

171. P. IV. — l. 7. — In reality there were about 19 cities which claimed the honour of being Homer’s birthplace. But the common tradition mentions only 7 of them, viz. Chios, Smyrna, Cyme, Colophon, Pylos, Argos and Athens. Back

172. l. 10. — Nonjurors, Papists, and Atheists. — This is entirely false. De Foe, a staunch Dissenter, always waged an implacable war against Jacobite Priests (Nonjurors), Roman Catholics, and Atheists whom he called Men-devils (Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe). He had so zealously endeavoured to thwart the efforts of the Jacobites that he would probably have been hanged if the Pretender "had enjoyed his own again". Back

173. 1. 18. — This last sentence is an imitation of the last sentence in Robinson Crusoe: "all these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adveutures of my own for ten years more, I may, perhaps, give a farther account of hereafter". Back

174. P. V. — l. 4. — De Foe hated being called Daniel Foe, which was his real name. In 1695, when he had become a courtier, hee had assumed the aristocratic particle De, thus reverting to the primitive name which was probably borne by his Flemish ancestors (See our book: Daniel De Foe et ses romans, I, 3). Throughout the pamphlet itself, Gildon calls him Foe (see p. XIV). Back

175. 1. 8. — De Foe had been educated at Newington Green, in Morton’s Academy, and finding the country agreeable, fixed his abode at Newington Town (also called Stoke Newington) in 1709. Robinson Crusoe was written in his large house in Church Street, which was almost a mansion, with a magnificent garden and extensive pleasure-grounds. He often went on horseback to London (3 1/2 miles), returning home in the evening. It is unlikely that De Foe ever an reality crossed the fields on foot after midnight, when he had a coach and horses, and very well knew that the environs of London were not safe. Back

176. 1. 16. — The beginning of the Augustan Period was the age of kidnappers and highwaymen: the exploits of Cartouche, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild, are famous in the literature of the time. De Foe invented very successful biographies of rogues, such as Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack. In 1728, Gay’s Beggar's Opera was received with extraordinary applause. Back

177. P. VI. — l. 1. — Geneva, or gin, "a mixed water", newly imported from Holland. Its cheapness made it very popular, and in 1719 gin-shops were opening everywhere. Some retailers even exhibited placards in their windows intimating that there "people might get drunk for 1 d. and clean straw in comfortable cellars would be provided for customers". De Foe wrote against the immoderate use of gin, and advocated good English beer in its stead. (See his articles in Applebee’s and Mist’s Journals, and the pamphlets he wrote under the pseudonym of Andrew Moreton). Back

178. l 2. — That the roads were unsafe about Stoke Newington may be seen by a reference to contemporary papers. The Daily Post for Feb. 6th 1720 announced: "On Wednesday last (Feb. 3rd) in the evening, the stagecoach was robb’d near the Palatine houses, going from the town to Stoke Newington, by two highwaymen who took from the company their money, a watch, and from one gentlewoman about 30 pounds’ worth of new cloaths". But De Foe was no coward. He often sent challenges to men who threatened to cane him "If this gentleman thinks himself capable to give me personal correction, he knows me well enough, and need never want an opportunity to be welcome" (Letter to Mr. How)... "I move about the world unguarded and unarmed; a little stick, not strong enough to correct a dog, supplies the place of Mr. Observator’s [Tutchin] great oaken towel; a sword sometimes, perhaps, for decency, but it is all harmless, to a mere nothing, and can do no hurt anywhere but just at the tip of it, called the point: and what is that in the hands of a feeble author?" (Review, II, 214)... "As to defence, I have some thoughts to stay at home by night, and by day to wear a piece of armour on my back; the first, because I am persuaded these murderers will not do their work by daylight; and the second, because I firmly believe they will never attempt it fairly to my face." (Review, VI, Pref.). — His enemies vainly tried to waylay him; some of them had their revenge on his brother-in-law, Samuel Tuffley, whom they mercilessly caned on one occasion (1711). Back

179. l. 7. — Philistines: perhaps Gildon is sneering at De Foe’s frequent references to the Bible. Back

180. l. 9. — Secret Hint: De Foe believed that the sudden impulses of our mind are caused by a friendly daimon, the messenger of God’s Providence. Instances of the curious influence of the Supernatural World on the destiny of men are innumerable in Robinson Crusoe. In the Vision of the Angelic World (3rd vol.) he dedicates whole pages to the question. He sums up his ideas in a passage of the first vol. (p. 72): "When we are in a quandary, as we call it, a doubt, or hesitation, whether to go this way or that way, a secret hint shall direct us to go this way when we intended to go another way; nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business has called to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall overrule us to go this way, and it shall afterwards appear that had we gone that way which we would have gone, and even to our imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost..." Back

181. l. 14. — This is a mixture of Crusoe’s dress as described by De Foe and the classical dress of conspirators. — The hatchet was the only weapon Crusoe would give at first to Friday. Back

182. l. 20. — Friday is described as a good sprinter. He fled from his would-be butchers "with exceeding strength and swiftness", and Crusoe tells us "he was the swiftest fellow of his feet that I ever saw". (p. 93). Back

183. l. 28. — Devils of thy own raising. — This expression occurs in Lucan (I, 486), and later in Montaigne (Apol.) and Pascal (Pensées, Brunschvieg ed. 11, 88). Back

184. l. 31. — Poll (Crusoe’s parrot), waking his master, calls aloud: "Poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How came you here?" (p. 62). Back

186. 1. 11. — A parody of the absurd episode of the bear in the last pages of De Foe’s novel. Friday, spying a "very monstrous bear" says to his master: "O pray! O pray no shoot! me shoot by and then". He entices the bear up a tree, then on to a small bough, which he shakes lustily, "making good laugh" all the while. He at last shoots the bear, and turns triumphantly to Crusoe, saying: "So we kill bear in my country." (p. 111). Back

187. 1. 17. — Gildon here makes rather witty use of his belief that bears could not exist in Friday’s tropical country (see p. 28). Back

188. l. 19. — It is strange to hear Friday quote this name from Reynard the Fox, which was hardly to be known in his country "near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque". Back

189. l. 22. — Perhaps this expression is intended to ridicule De Foe’s solemn manner in his articles of the Review, — as the idea of the whole sentence may be intended to ridicule Crusoe’s reflections on the helplessness of man: "I then reflected that God, who was not only righteous but omnipotent, as he had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so he was able to deliver me; that if he did not think fit to do it, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to his will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in him, pray to him, and quietly to attend dictates and directions of his daily providence". (p. 66). Back

190. l. 30. — "Before the tribunal of Conscience". — De Foe’s adversaries taunted him with not knowing Latin, an accusation which annoyed him greatly. (See Review II, 149, and VIII, 429, and the Complete English Gen- tleman, p. 200). — Free-school and House learning are the vague terms by which De Foe describes his hero’s learning: "My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning as far as house education and a country free-school generally go." Gildon criticises these terms again on pp. X and 6 (see the notes to these pages). Back

191. P. VIII. — l. 5. — "I had alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with nothing but such as were like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree..." (p. 44). Back

192. 1. 8. — "... When I got on shore first here, and found all my ship’s crew drowned and myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of ecstasy and some transports of soul, which, had the grace of God assisted, might have come up to true thankfulness, but it ended where it begun, in a mere common flight of joy, or as I may say, being glad I was alive, without the least reflection upon the distinguishing goodness of the hand which had preserved me...; even just the same common sort of joy which seamen generally have after they have got safe on shore from a shipwreck, which they drown all in the next bowl of punch, and forget almost as soon as it is over, and all the rest of my life was like it... " (p. 44). Crusoe came back to the worship of God only when a violent fever put him in mind of death. Back

193. l 11-15. — Gildon alludes to Crusoe’s statement on p. 58: "falling early into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates". Gildon’s criticism that De Foe abused English sailors is unjust. De Foe always considered individuals and not nations; Crusoe met with a Portuguese who was honest and kind to him, but this Portuguese was not an ordinary sailor. The English captain of the ship that rescued Crusoe from his island is described as a just and bold fellow. It is true that, in the Further Adventures, the English crew of Crusoe’s nephew’s ship consists mostly of cruel and dissolute Englishmen. But among the colony of Crusoe’s island there are both "good" and "bad" Englishmen. Though De Foe’s love for paradox led him to describe honest and pious Spaniards and wicked Englishmen, he did not systematically condemn the English nation. Indeed, his writings are more conspicuous for jingoism than for xenomania (cp. p. .18). Back

194. l. 22. — "I had once a mind to have gone to the Brazils, and have settled myself there, for I was, as it were, naturalised to the place; but I had some little scruple in my mind about religion; which insensibly drew me back, of which I shall say more presently. However, it was not religion that kept me from going thither for the present; and as I had made no scruple of being openly of the religion of the country all the while I was among them, so neither did I yet; only that now and then having of late thought more of it than formerly, when I began to think of living and dying among them, I began to regret my having professed myself a Papist, and thought it might not be the best religion to die in". (p. 108). Back

195. 1. 30. — Popish Priests: the Prior of the Monastery of St Augustine in Brazil, who administered Crusoe’s property during his stay on the island, is a kind and honest man. In the Further Adventures, a French Catholic priest, who is both pious and tolerant is introduced. The Catholic Spaniards who inhabit Crusoe’s- island are peaceful and industrious men. Father Simon, a missionary whom Crusoe meets in China, is "courteous, easy in his manners and very agreeable company". De Foe loved paradox, and delighted to bewilder the mind of his simple readers; indeed, to a Puritan reader of De Foe’s time, a virtuous Papist was a greater wonder than a unicorn. Back

196. l. 31. — Popish religion: this is exaggerated. Crusoe admired some individual Catholics, but not Popery as a whole. He attacked "Romish Superstition" (p. 86), the Inquisition (p. 94), and, in the Further Adventures, he denounced Catholic intolerance (p. 46), Catholic errors (p. 59) and Catholic fanaticism (pp. 57, 72); he also bitterly criticised the work of Catholic missionaries (pp. 75-76). Back

197. P. IX. — l. 2. — Crusoe is 63 when he leaves England to revisit his island. He returns to London ten yeard afterwards, having visited Madagascar, India, China, and having crossed Asia from Pekin to Archangel. A strenuous voyage for an old man! Back

198. l. 10. — Gildon is right: Friday’s intelligence and extraordinary readiness in learning would be impossible in a Caribbee savage. Back

199. l. 12 etc. — "I made Friday go out upon the deck, and call out aloud to them in his language to know what they meant; which accordingly he did. Whether they understood him or not, that I know not; but as soon as he had called to them, six of them, who were in the foremost or nighest boat to us, turned their canoes from us, and, stooping down, showed us their naked backsides... Whether this was a defiance or challenge we know not; or whether it was done in mere contempt, or a signal to the rest, but immediately Friday cried out they were going to shoot; and unhappily for him (poor fellow) they let fly about 300 of their arrows, and, to my inexpressible grief, killed poor Friday, no other man being in their sight." (Further Adventures, pp. 55-6). Back

200. l. 25. — But Crusoe might reasonably have hoped that Friday could have made himself understood by men of a neighbouring tribe, even if their language was not exactly the dialect spoken by his own. Back

201. l. 25. — i. e. the French Priest rescued by Crusoe from a burning ship, who afterwards evangelized the colony on the island; Will Atkins, the pirate left on the island, who reformed and became a good Christian; the Priest in China (Father Simon), Crusoe’s companion in China; the Nephew's ship’s Crew, the gang of sailors who behaved so cruelly in Madagascar, and who, annoyed by Crusoe’s reproaches, abandoned him on shore in India. Back

202. l. 30. — Tuthill (Tothill St.) in Westminster, — Lime-house-hole, in the East-End. Back

203. l. 31. — Though this is intended to ridicule De Foe’s book, it is a striking acknowledgment of its extraordinary popularity in London (1st ed. April 25 th — 4 th ed. Aug. 8th). Back

204. P. X. — l. 2. — The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, was first published in 1678. Its success was such that in 1688 the booksellers were selling the 11th ed. Back

205. l. 3. — The Practice of Piety, directing a Christian how to walk that he may please God, by Lewis Bayly, bishop of Bangor, was first issued about 1611. In 1613 it had reached its 3rd, in 1619 its 11th, and in 1630 its 25th edition. It was translated into French (Geneva, 1625), into German (Zurich 1629), into Polish (1647), into Welsh (1630), into the language of the Indians of Massachusetts (Cambridge 1665), and into Romansch (1668). Bunyan tells us his wife "had for her part the Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and the Practice of Piety, which her father had left her when he died". Bayly’s book had an important influence over Bunyan's mind. Many Puritans looked upon it as an authority equal to the Bible.

The Triumphs of God's Revenge against Murther, expressed in 30 tragical histories, by John Rainolds (or Reynolds), — one of the translators of the Bible, — was first published in 1622. It ran into many successive editions (1629, 1635, 1640, 1657, 1662, 1670, 1679, 1685, 1704, 1708, etc.). To the 1679 ed. was added God's Revenge against Adultery, and the 1685 ed. bore the following title: the Glory of God’s Revenge against Murthcr and Adultery. — From one of Reynold’s "histories" Middleton and Rowley took the plot of their trngedy, the Changeling (1653, 1668). Back

206. 1. 6. — Pye Corner, in Giltspur St. near Smithfield Market; a poor quarter. Back

207. . 7. - — Guy of Warwick: the hero of a famous Anglo-Saxon legend which recounts the wonderful achievements by which he obtained the hand of his lady, the Fair Felice, — and also the adventures he subsequently met with in a pilgrimage to the Holy land and on his return home. The first poem that deals with the legend is a Norman-French poem of the end of the 13th century; the oldest English version is a little later. The first popular edition of the English version was printed by John Cawood in the latter end of the 16th century (The Historie of Guy, earl of Warwick; 4 to). The knight’s adventures made the subject of a poem by Samuel Rowlands (1607), which suggested a Play called the Life and Death of Guy of Warwick by John Day and Thomas Decker; the play is not now extant. A popular ballad on Guy of Warwick, by Humphrey Crouch, was first printed in 1665, and repeatedly reissued in the 17th and 18th centuries. The romance was reduced to prose by Martin Parker in 1640. A chapbook in 4 to, first issued in London in 1684, was frequently republished in all the chief cities of England. Another version in 12 mo, published in London in 1706, was still more successful. — In Hudibras (I, 2) Talgol, the butcher, is compared to Guy of Warwick:

208. l. 8. — The London Prentice is the title of many romances which were spread by pedlars throughout England, in ballads and chapbooks. The outlines of these romances are the same: they recount the exploits of a London apprentice who slew giants or dragons and rescued a beautiful princess whom he married. — Heywood's play, the Four Prentices of London (first played in 1601, published in 1615) was parodied and ridiculed in the Knight of the Burning Pestle (1611) by Beaumont and Fletcher. — Under the title The London Prentice, some chapbooks of the 18th century contain simply the well-known story of Dick Whittington. — Such romances as those quoted here by Gildon were certainly in the pack of Autolycus (Winter's Tale IV, 3).

M... w... r.. — I have been unable to find with certainty what name these initials represent. Perhaps Gildon thought of John Mawer, a poor hack-writer who wrote ballads and achieved some success in 1727 by his poem Liberty Asserted. But we have no evidence that connects Mawer in any way with De Foe’s work. Back

209. l. 18. — De Foe himself had already suggested this idea in the preface to the Further Adventures: "The just application of every incident, the religious and useful inferences drawn from every part, are so many testimonies to the good design of making it public, and must legitimate all the part that may be called invention or parable in the story". By insisting on the allegorical character of the tale, Gildon paved the way for the 3rd vol. of Robinson Crusoe. Back

210. l 23. — Before the Civil War, the city of Kidderminster (Worcestershire) was notorious for its ignorance and depravity. In 1640, some inhabitants sent a petition against their curate, and it was decided to appoint a free preacher in his stead. The Presbyterian minister Baxter was chosen. His preaching performed miracles, and whereas, before, the moral were to be counted on the ten fingers, ere long, the passing traveller heard the sounds of prayer in every household. Kidderminster became a model of Puritan cities, and was the stronghold of Puritanism in a county which sided with the Cavaliers. Hence the banner of Kidderminster became a symbol for the Dissenters. Back

211. l 26. — De Foe had had a better education at Morton’s Academy in Newington Green, as good almost as the education given in the Universities. Back

212. l. 30. - — The meaning of the expression out of my time is not clear. At first sight Gildon seems to mean that De Foe did not belong to his time, — was, according to the common expression, "born out of his time". — It is more likely from the context that Gildon uses "being out of" in the sense of "issued out of", and therefore that De Foe, on the contrary, belonged to his age, when impudence was a sure road to success. On p. XII De Foe is made to say, "anything that is boldly writ will go down with either party". Back

213. l 31. — De Foe was very popular as an orator in the Whig and Dissenting clubs of the City during the reign of James the Second, when he denounced the King’s policy towards Non-conformists. Back

214. P. XI. — l. 5. — De Foe published his first poem in 1691; he was then 31. The poem, A new discovery of an old intreague, was a satire levelled at the Jacobites. Back

215. l. 6. — Authorizing, i. e. authoring: perhaps a lapsus linguae when Gildon was dictating. De Foe discussed in pamphlets or satirical poems the chief problems of the reign of King William, as the legitimacy of a standing army, the predominance of Dutch Courtiers, Reformation of manners, Occasional Conformity for Dissenters etc. Back

216. l. 9-15. — Lime Kilns: about 1695, De Foe became secretary to a factory of bricks and pantiles at Tilbury. His connexion with this factory could not be the cause of his bankruptcy which had happened 3 years before (1692): at that time he had been obliged to leave his office in Freeman's Court, near the Royal-Exchange, and hide in Bristol. During his period of concealment, except on Sundays he never went into the streets for fear of bailiffs. It may be that on his way to Bristol he stopped in several towns, — which would justify Gildon's statement: "rambling from place to place". Back

217. l. 28. — De Foe became a professional author after his imprisonment in Newgate (1703) which ruined the brick and tile factory. Back

218. p. XII. l. 2. — De Foe being a Dissenter by upbringing had no choice but to join the New Whigs, devoted to William III, and the Protestant Succession. Back

219. l. 11. — Nutcrackers: a cant word for "pillory" (Dictionary of the canting Crew, 1700: the Cull lookt through the Nutcrackers). De Foe was arrested on May 20th, 1703, for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters in which by ironical suggesting extreme measures against the Dissenters, he ridiculed the intolerance of High-Churchmen against them. He was tried in July, found guilty of libel, and condemned to be exposed in the pillory on July 29th in front of the Royal-Exchange in Cornhill, on July 30th near the Conduit in Cheapside, and on July 31st at Temple Bar. But this punishment was a triumph, as the crowd sided with him against the government. Back

220. l. 15. — De Foe was not bribed by the Tories: he merely followed Harley who had rescued him from Newgate, when, in 1709, Harley entered the new ministry as a moderate Tory. This obliged De Foe to change the tone of the articles in his Review for fear of displeasing the new friends of his patron. Back

221. l. 20. — It is true that for some time the Whigs did not perceive the change in De Foe’s Review and continued to pay him. Back

222. l. 25. — This happened in February 1711, as we know from a letter to Harley in which De Foe complains for the first time of the hard usage he received from his old friends, the Whigs. The Captain was probably the officer of the Whig club who paid De Foe for his propaganda. Back

223. l. 28. — In reality, these words were uttered by Samuel’s ghost (I Sam. 28). Here Gildon ridicules De Foe's fondness for Bible quotations. Even in his correspondence, De Foe constantly quoted the Bible: thus, in a letter to the Secretary of State, dated April 26th, 1718, he called watching the Tory papers in the interest of the Whig ministry: "bowing in the House of Rimmon". Back

224. P. XIII. — l. 2. — Buenas Noches: the mistake in the text was made either by the printer, or by Lloyd, Gildon’s amanuensis, who was not a well-educated man and frequently spelt words wrong in the letters Gildon dictated to him. De Foe, in his novels, was fond of quoting scraps of foreign languages: here Gildon satirizes this habit, and suggests De Foe’s real ignorance by his humorous translation of the Spanish. Back

225. l. 5. — Saint-Germain, near Paris, where James II held his court, was long the centre of Jacobite intrigues. Gildon alludes to the Jacobite tendencies of Harley’s ministry; but De Foe remained faithful to the Protestant Succession, so that Gildon’s attack is unjust. Back

226. l. 6. — Proprietors: i.e. Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Saint John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whose influence appears for a short period in De Foe’s writings, for example in the commercial newspaper Mercator. Back

227. l. 8. — In the Further Adventures, Crusoe’s endeavour to burn an inoffensive Tartar Idol which he considered an insult to the true God brought on him and his companions the anger of the natives. Back

228. l. 9. — In 1713 De Foe wrote anti-Jacobite pamphlets with ironical titles: Reasons against the succession of the House of Hanover, — What if the Pretender should come? or some Considerations of the advantages and real consequences of the Pretender's possessing the Crown of Great Britain, — and What if the Queen should die? — The Whigs tried hard to indict him for high treason, hoping that Harley would imprudently come to the rescue of his faithful ally, and thus reveal their relations. Back

229. l. 11. — Tripos, i.e. the three-legged stool, upon which condemned men stood when they were to be hanged at Tyburn (near Paddington). — Gildon exaggerates here, for the Whigs did not hope to secure De Foe’s death: they simply sought to have him imprisoned in Newgate. Back

230. l. 12-13. — Harley helped De Foe to obtain a Royal Pardon, which was granted on Nov. 20th, 1713 and signed by Bolingbroke. De Foe published the text of his pardon in his Appeal to Honour and Justice. Back

231. 1. 14. — This is inexact. Since the king’s landing in England, (Sept. 18th, 1714), De Foe had cessed corresponding with Harley; he had deeply resented the latter’s repudiation of tracts he had written in his behalf (History of the White Staff, etc.). His subsequent pamphlets vindicating the conduct of Harley’s ministry were written not on Harley’s account, but to vindicate himself. (See Daniel De Foe mystificateur, in Revue Germanique, 1923). Back

232. l. 18-19. — This is a slander: De Foe had a lax conscience, but there were three masters who could never have bribed him into their service: the Pope, the Pretender, and the Devil. Back

233. l. 23. — De Foe’s facility for writing bad poetry was deplorable: John Dunton, the Whig bookseller, described him as "rhyming in his sleep". But De Foe did not write Jure Divino in three weeks. This long poetical poem in 12 books, which he considered his masterpiece, was begun in Newgate in the summer of 1703, and was issued by subscription on July 20th, 1706. De Foe got very little money for his labours, as his poem was pirated by a bookseller who bribed a pressman to steal copies of the sheets as they were successively printed. — It is true, as Gildon suggests, that there is little poetry in the composition. Back

234. P. XIV. — l. 1. — Dryden got £200 for his translation of Virgil. But Gildon is certainly referring to Pope, who received over £5.000 for his translation of the Iliad (1715). Back

235. l. 4. — Here Gildon enviously alludes to Prior who received from his publisher about 4.000 guineas for a complete edition of his poems (1718, folio), and on the same occasion £4.000 from Harley, to purchase Down Hall, an estate in Essex. Back

236. l. 12. — In 1701, De Foe, indignant at what he thought the ingratitude of his countrymen towards their deliverer, William of Orange, — and incensed by a poem of Tutchin, the Foreigners, in which the King and the Dutch in general were plentifully abused, wrote a satirical poem to prove that the English nation, was such a mixture of the worst of different races, that the expression True-born Englishman was meaningless. The success of the poem was tremendous: no less than 80.000 pirated copies were sold in the streets, and the King expressed a wish to know the author personally. — De Foe’s poem has since been used by enemies of Great Britain in the last years of the 19th century: parts of it were republished by Indian. Nationalists. Back

237. l. 16. — Vanity, not hatred of the English, was the chief motive that led De Foe to change his name (See p. V, note). De Foe seemed to indicate a Norman origin, while Foe looked like a plebeian Saxon name. Back

238. l. 24. — The idea of prepossessing the Papists in one’s favour would have been preposterous at a time when it was becoming more and more impossible that the Pretender would reign.— De Foe’s love of paradox, shown in his True-Born Englishman and Shortest Way with the Dissenters is probably the motive that led him to introduce some sympathetic Roman Catholics in Robinson Crusoe. Back

239. l. 27. — Fox-hunters, i.e. the country squires, many of whom, though Protestant, had remained attached to the Stuarts. Back

240. P. XV. — l. 1. — Old teachers: i.e. the Dissenting ministers and Low-churchmen. Back

241. l. 2. — A Friendly Epistle by way of Reproof, from one of the People called Quakers to Thos. Bradbury, a Dealer in many Words (Feb. 1715) was the first of a series of pamphlets by De Foe, all couched in the Quaker style. The Friends’ way of speaking was so well imitated that, in an advertisement in the London Gazette, the Quakers protested that they had no hand in the pamphlet which, by that time, had reached its 5th edition. Bradbury was reproved by De Foe for making political addresses in the pulpit, and particularly for calling for the blood of the late ministers. Back

242. l. 5. — i e. the Bishop of Bangor. De Foe’s pamphlet (1717) was entitled A Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadley, one of the High Priests of the Land, and of the Degree whom Men call Bishops. By a Ministering Friend, who writ to Thomas Bradbury, a Dealer in many Words. Gildon had certainly not read this pamphlet, which commended Hoadly’s Christian broad-mindedness. It is true that De Foe, when he found these pamphlets had an easy sale, wrote several of them on both sides of the Bangorian controversy. — He was so pleased with his talent in imitating the Quaker style that, in two novels, Captain Singleton and Roxana, he introduced Quakers who are among his best drawn characters. Back

243. l. 7. — Contrary to Gildon’s assertion, De Foe was only 59 in 1719. — The subsequent attack against De Foe for his supposed fickleness in religion is unjust, too: De Foe always remained a staunch Dissenter. Back

244. l. 10. — Coarse jokes of this kind were characteristic of the Augustan Period. Back

245. l. 12. — Mahometism, i.e. Mahometanism: though unusual, this form of the word was not absolutely incorrect at this time. Back

246. l. 13. — Coryate, a traveller who from the year 1612 till his death (1617) journeyed throughout Asia. He obtained an audience of the Great Mogul and delivered an oration in Persian. His letters, sent from the court of the mighty potentate to "several persons of quality in England", were first published in 1616; they were frequently reprinted in the 17th and 18th centuries. Back

247. l. 28. — This passage may have suggested to De Foe the idea of a review of the various religions of the world, which forms one of the longest chapters in the Serious Reflections. Crusoe concludes that English Protestantism is by far the best religion. Back

248. l. 30. — to catch a Tartar properly means to encounter some one who unexpectedly proves to be too strong an opponent. There is of course a pun in the text. De Foe used this expression in Captain Singleton (XVI): "Tell him, if he should try, he may catch a Tartar". (Hazlitt’s ed. p. 79).

A Leap into the Dark, i.e.: if De Foe was engaged in a dangerous enterprise, whose consequences he was unable to foresee. Back

249. P. XVI. — l. 3. — Janesaries, i.e., Janizaries (or Janissaries), Turkish soldiers of a privileged class. Back

250. l. 5. — You and I. — Gildon, later (p. 23, see note) accuses De Foe of continually putting the nominative for the accusative. Back

251. l. 6. — This is not true: De Foe was attached to the Protestant Succession, if merely through self-interest; for if the Pretender had succeeded Queen Anne, De Foe would have been sent to the gallows for his anti-jacobite pamphlets. Back

252. l. 8. — Monomotopa is a negro empire in the Zambesi region (Africa), about which fabulous tales were current at the time. Back

253. l. 19. — Deter all others is, of course, ironical, as the following lines show. Back

255. l. 30-31. — Friday’s curious English was intended by De Foe to give local colour to his tale. — Here, Gildon calls Robinson Crusoe a lie, i.e. a romance, which is inconsistent with his general statement that the book is allegorical. Back

256. P. XVII. — l. 2. — De Foe frequently quotes the Bible for the edification of his readers: in the first volume of Robinson Crusoe alone, no less than 20 complete verses are quoted. Back

257. l. 7. — i. e. the French Priest, Will Atkins, Father Simon, and the Crew of Crusoe’s nephew’s ship (see note to p. IX, 1. 25). Back

258. l. 13.. — If De Foe had written a criticism of Gildon’s pamphlet, he might have asked how every one of such a number of men could hold one of his limbs. Back

259. l. 25. — Bolus (Latin: morsel, bit), i.e. a large pill. The word was usual at the time in advertisements of quack medicines. Back

260. l. 27. — The first volume of Robinson Crusoe contains 364 pages of text, with Frontispiece, title-page and a preface 2 pp. long. — The text of the Further Adventures occupies 373 pages with map, title-page and preface of 4 pp. Back

261. P. XVIII. — l. 10-11. Past three a clock, etc.: the cry of the watchmen. Back

262. 1. 12. — There is perhaps here a reminiscence of the end of the scene of the witches in Macbeth, which Gildon had studied for his edition of the spurious 7th vol. of Shakespeare's Works. Back

263. 1. 17. — This coarse joke was a favourite with contemporary pamphleteers. The author of a broadsheet entitled "A Hue and Cry after Daniel De Foe for Denying the Queens hereditary right, by Robin Hog, 1711," directed the same piece of coarse wit against De Foe:

264. l. 21-22. — i.e. in 1691-2. If the Royal Regiment had been removed, England would have been left defenceless, and a successful Jacobite invasion would have entailed punishment for William’s zealous supporters. Back

265. l. 25. — Gildon had already criticised this sentence in the Postscript to his epistle (p. 37), and his use of it here must have seemed very witty to contemporary readers. Back

266. P. 1. — l. 5. — Robinson Crusoe was issued anonymously; but the author of such a "best-seller" could not remain long undiscovered. De Foe’s peculiar tricks of style were well-known from the Review which was very popular. Back

268. l. 13. — De Foe was in fact over-fond of long-winded sentences with endless parentheses. He sometimes uses popular, but incorrect, forms, such as double negations, who instead of whom, etc. He has frequent repetitions: 1) of the same idea ("his family and household, a kind of appetite and lust"); 2) of the same word (p. 84: "I catched hold of Friday: hold, said I"); and 3) of the same descriptions (his ladders, his tame goats, etc.). Back

269. l. 14-15. — Practically, the whole of Gildon's criticism turns on the improbabilities and impossibilities of De Foe’s tale. Back

270. P 2. — l. 5. — This charge had the power of wounding De Foe to the quick (see the Preface to the Serious Reflections). Back

271. l. 9. The last sentence of Robinson Crusoe (published on April 25th, 1719) ["all these things, with an account how 300 Caribbees came and invaded them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that number twice, and were at first defeated and one of them killed; but at last a storm destroying their enemies' canoes, they famished and destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island; — all these things with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures of my own for ten years more, I may perhaps give a farther account of hereafter."] shows that De Foe expected success. The Further Adventures, which were written hastily, appeared on August 20th. Gildon’s epistle was composed before the publication of this second volume. Back

273. 1. 23. — "Inspired writers" (i.e. the authors of the Bible) was Gildon’s contemptuous expression when he wrote deistical tracts. (See Gildon’s life). Back

274. 1. 27. — Useful Moral. — This is exactly what De Foe says in his preface to Robinson Crusoe: "The story is told... with a religious application of events to the uses to which wise men always apply them, viz. To the instruction of others by this example, and to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of our circumstances, let them happen how they will." Back

275. P. 3. — 1. 11. — When Robinson asked his mother to approach his father about his plans, she replied "that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after such a discourse as I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father used to me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction". And later, when Crusoe, alone on his island, repents of his wicked life, he particularly deplores his "falling early into the seafaring life, which of all the lives is the most destitute of the fear of God". So that there is much apparent truth in Gildon’s criticism. But Robinson Crusoe roused in many English boys their dormant desire of travelling to distant lands, and so attracted them to a seafaring life. Back

276. l. 19. — "I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York... — My father... had designed me for the Law". (Robinson Crusoe, p. 17). Back

277. l. 24. — Here Gildon points out one of the characteristics of De Foe’s work. God’s Providence seems to have a special regard for Crusoe; sometimes it helps him, sometimes it thwarts his designs. It plays in fact the role of the Nemesis of the Ancients. Back

278. l. 25. — The first storm occurred during Crusoe’s early voyage to London. The second, when his ship foundered and he was the sole survivor, flung him on his desert island. Back

279. P. 4. — l. 3, etc. — But in the dialogue (p. XVI), Gildon, who wishes to find fault with De Foe at any price, insinuated that Robinson Crusoe was an immoral book because, in it, Crusoe’s disobedience to his parents was not punished. Back

280. 1. 6. — The popular idea of the potency of the paternal curse is frequently expressed in De Foe’s book. Crusoe’s father makes a prophecy (p. 18): "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born", (which, as it turns out, is not entirely true). At the end of his first voyage, Crusoe is told by the Captain of the ship he was embarked in (p. 21): "Young man, depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you". — Lastly Crusoe, alone on the island, laments (p. 45): "Now my dear father’s words are come to pass: God’s justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me". Back

281. 1. 10-20. — In Puritan families the authority of the father was still very great. De Foe described a Puritan, and wrote for Puritan readers. Back

282. l. 30. — Crusoe was born in 1632, and left his father’s house in Sept. 1651. Back

283. P. 5 — l. 3. — See note on p. VI (l. 9). — Gildon’s argument here is cunning enough, but De Foe might have answered that, after all, Crusoe came to fortune and happiness. Back

284. l. 16. — "He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life..." (p. 17). Back

285. 1. 18. — Though Crusoe’s father did not speak of putting his son to a trade, we know that he had contemplated it some time or other. — Crusoe represents to his mother "that he was 18 years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade". And a few lines lower, he says that "he continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business". — Gildon’s arguments concerning Crusoe’s problematic trade are tedious and farfetched: his criticism, which sometimes contradicts itself, is, in general, mere fault-finding. Back

286. P. 6. — l. 19. — See the note to p. VII. De Foe meant that Crusoe’s education was begun at home and finished in a free-school, at, or near, York. He could not assign to his hero a particular school or university, as the Gildons of the time might then have proved that the book was "a lie" and thus greatly diminished its sale. Back

287. l. 22. — De Foe does not give us definitely to understand that Robinson remained in his "country free-school" till the age of 18. Back

288. l. 23. — This statement, and a paragraph (p. X, l. 26) in the dialogue insinuate that De Foe was no scholar and did not know Latin. Back

289. l. 28. — This attack on attorneys is excusable when we remember that Gildon, when still a very young man, was cheated out of £400 by a dishonest lawyer (see Gildon's life, I). Back

290. "But I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father...that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me". (p. 17). — "I told my mother that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world, that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me his consent, than force me to go without it" (p. 18). Back

291. P. 7. — l. 5. — But De Foe’s intention was to represent a rash and inconsiderate boy, unable to resist the strong impulse that urged him to a seafaring life. Back

292. l. 14. — Crusoe never used this expression of himself; but it is true he laments that in his youth he often acted against "the dictates of common sense and of his own conscience". Back

293. l. 15. — Crusoe, belonging to a Puritan family, would not, when very young, have dared to oppose paternal authority. Back

294. l. 21. — Certainly De Foe does not relate conversations between Crusoe and the master of the ship, but a novelist is not obliged to tell everything. Back

295. l. 26. — Gildon is right in pointing out this contradiction. De Foe gives us to understand that the master of the ship knew of Crusoe’s presence on board at the beginning (p. 18), and he would need to have a very short memory to have forgotten it at Yarmouth. Back

296. 1. 30. — "I told him some of my story, at the end of which he burst out with a strange kind of passion. "What had I done", says he, "that such an unhappy wretch should come into my ship! I would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds" (p. 21). — This superstitious belief in the evil eye was common among sailors (cp. Further Adv. pp. 64-65). Back

297. P 8. — l. 1. — (Jonah, I). "Perhaps this all has befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the Ship of Tarshish", the master tells Crusoe (p. 21). Back

298. 1. 6. — De Foe’s habit of perpetually quoting the Bible was due to his upbringing. His father, James Foe, a well-to-do butcher of Fore-street, destined him for the ministry. His mother, Alice Foe, made him copy the whole Peutateuch as a task. The boy was sent to Morton’s Dissenting Academy in Newington Green. He might have become a peaceful Non-conformist minister, but "his inclinations led him another way". (Rev. VI, 341). — Some traces remained of his training, however; his articles in the Review for instance, and many of his pamphlets, almost look like sermons. Back

301. l. 17-18. — There is much truth in this criticism: De Foe’s heroes have all of them some traits of the Dissenting preacher in their character. Back

302. 1. 18-24. — A very awkwardly constructed sentence. Gildon’s thought is as follows; "which I should as little suspect him to be... as (I should suspect) that... " Back

303. l. 27. — But Crusoe was sea-sick and terrified, and unable to reflect calmly, so that the terrific noise of the gun seemed to him the signal of immediate death. Back

304. P. 9. — l. 2. — Crusoe’s conception of Providence is unorthodox, but it is part of his character. (See note to p. 3, 1. 24). Back

305. l. 17 etc. — Crusoe, a superstitious Puritan of the lower middle class could not be expected to reason like Gildon. — De Foe himself, though he believed in "secret hints" did not share the superstitious ideas of his hero. Back

306. P. 10. — l. 4, etc. — This comparison between the dangers and wickedness of life on sea and life on land is utterly futile. Back

307. 1. 24. — A creature of your own: this idea is repeated on p. 11 (1. 7). It shows that when he wrote this epistle, — that is, before he had read the preface to the Further Adventures, — Gildon did not yet consider the tale allegorical. (See: Introduction). Back

308. 1. 27. — Being a Puritan, Crusoe was always inclined to exaggerate his sins, and trembled all day long in fear of God’s wrath. Back

309. P. 11. — l. 10. — No ways necessary: De Foe's art consists exactly in this choice of small details, unnecessary to the plot, which give appearance of truth to his tale. Many people read Robinson Crusoe because they believed it a true biography: a Fable would not have interested them. Yet De Foe, in the preface, with his customary prudence, had cleverly insinuated a doubt of the authenticity of his tale: "The Editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it; and however thinks, because all such things are disputed, that the improvement of it, as well to the diversion as to the instruction of the reader, will be the same..." Back

310. l. 11. — Gildon copies many of De Foe’s peculiar tricks of style. More of this hereafter is a favourite sentence of De Foe’s. — Gildon copies other phrases from Robinson Crusoe: of which by and by (p. 15), of which in its place, etc. Back

311. 1. 12. — Monsieur is used with a contemptuous meaning. Since the Restoration the word was applied to fops and rakes. Cp. Wycherley’s Gentleman Dancing-Master, and Swift’s Salamander:

312. l. 15. — "We walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships; and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London, or back to Hull as we thought fit" (p. 20). Back

313. l. 17. — Gildon exaggerates: Crusoe only says "he had money in his pocket and good clothes upon his back" (p. 21). Back

314. 1. 21. — Crusoe tells us (p. 21): "I embraced the offer; and, entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an honest and plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him, and carried a small adventure with me, which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably, for I carried about 40 l. in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to buy. This 40 l. I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations whom I corresponded with, and who, I believe, got my father, or at least my mother, to contribute so much as that to my first adventure". It is not unlikely that a father should help a son, once he realised he was bent on keeping to the course of life he had chosen. Gildon himself, on the following page, suggests this possibility. Back

315. P. 12. — l. 5 — But Crusoe was young and unhappy, and what would not a father, even a Puritan father, do to relieve the distress of a son, even of a disobedient son? Back

316. l. 11. — Here Gildon misrepresents the text. Crusoe buys "good clothes", which is but natural after the wreck, and in London falls "into good company, which does not always happen to such loose and unguided young fellows"; the chief of his new friends is the Guinea trader, "an honest and plain-dealing man.". Back

317. l. 15. — Crusoe was not a "young gentleman" travelling for his pleasure", but a boy who, having to earn his living, took to a seafaring life because urged to it by his "rambling thoughts". Back

318. l. 25. — Gildon uses on purpose an equivocal term to name the widow of the Guinea trader who was "so just" to Crusoe. On p. 105 Crusoe calls her: "my benefactor and faithful steward". Back

319. 1. 29. — Sallee, i.e. Sale. a holy city on the coast of Morocco, which was, during the 18th century, the chief harbour of pirates on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Back

320. P. 13. — l. 1. — This episode is very dramatically told in De Foe’s novel. Back

321. l. 5. — Hazards and Adventures: i.e. Crusoe’s successive landings on the coast of Africa in order to get fresh water. He meets peaceful negroes who supply him with food, and kills several wild beasts. Back

322. l. 13. — Here Gildon recalls a statement made by De Foe, that Crusoe "had nobody to communicate his projects of escape to, that would embark with him, no fellow slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman, but himself". But De Foe contradicts himself; a few lines further, Crusoe mentions "the carpenter of the ship, who also was an English slave" (p. 22). — and again on p, 24 he states: "Such English Xury spoke by conversing among us slaves". — The real inconsistency in the episode has not been perceived by Gildon. Back

324. l. 27. — Skins: i.e. the skins of the wild animals he had killed on the coast of Africa. Back

325. l. 29. — Crusoe’s chief motive for turning Papist was that he could not have stayed in the country if he had been an heretic. At his age he had no religious preference of any kind; he tells us that he "had no scruple of being openly of the religion of the country all the while he was among them"(p. 108). Back

326. P. 14. — l. 3. — See note to p. VI (l. 9). — But this has nothing to do with Popery. It is a superstition common to the followers of all religions. Back

327. l. 13. — Crusoe, like his creator, cared little about humanitarian ideals. He was too matter-of-fact to indulge in philosophical musings about the ethics of a custom that was highly advantageous for his trade. The absence of any denunciation of the slave traffic hindered the popularity of Robinson Crusoe in America for a long time. — In Colonel Jack, De Foe advocates good treatment for slaves, but not the suppression of slavery. Back

328. l. 25. — The discussion is futile. Crusoe says "twenty or thirty feet" not to give a precise number, but simply to convey a vague impression of depth. Back

329. P. 15. — l. 12. — "Also I found three very good bibles which came to me in my cargo from England, and which I had packed up among my things; some Portuguese books also, and among them two or three popish prayer-books, and several other books, all which I carefully secured"(p. 37). Crusoe does not seem to have ever opened any of those books, except the Bible. Like Gildon we wonder why, on a Portuguese ship, he needed 3 English bibles. Back

330. l. 22 — This attack is unjust. Crusoe’s commentaries on the Bible are simple and full of common-sense. — It was a custom among the Puritans, when in doubt about anything, to open the Bible at random, and take the first verse they found as guidance (cp. the Pilgrim's Progress, Enoch Arden, etc.). (See note to p. 24, l. 29). Back

332. l. 27. — This absurdity had already been pointed out and ridiculed in the coffee-houses. The text is: "So I pulled off my clothes, for the weather was hot to extremity and took to water... I found that all the ship’s provisions were dry and untouched by the water; and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and eat it as I went about other things..." — De Foe was conscious of the contradiction and tried to mend matters in one of the next paragraphs: "While I was doing this, I found the tide began to flow, though very calm; and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on shore upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen and open-kneed, I swam on board in them and in my stockings" (p. 32). — But the only way out of the difficulty would be to suppose that Crusoe’s breeches were not part of his "clothes", which is ridiculous. — De Foe did not, as Gildon asserts, make any change in the subsequent editions of his novel. Gildon had evidently heard the contradiction discussed in conversation, and when the whole passage was read to him, he fancied that De Foe’s afterthought was a modification of the text, prompted by the ridicule it had excited. Back

333. P. 16. — l. 6. — Gildon’s criticism is reasonable enough, though we do not know whether Crusoe’s breeches were of the ordinary pattern of the breeches of seamen of that time. Back

335. l. 16. — These inconsistencies are glaring enough. Crusoe’s items in the balance of evil and good seem strange to us when we have just read of the useful tools he found in the wreck. Back

336. l. 30. — This applies to Wycherley, or — more likely — to Pope, whom Gildon frequently accused of being ungrateful (See the New Rehearsal, and the Life of Mr. Wycherley). Back

338. P. 17. — l. 7. — There is an inconsistency between De Foe’s account in the narrative, and that in the Journal. Gil- don’s first quotation is taken from the narrative. The second quotation is taken from the Journal under the date May 1st, and it corresponds to what had been previously said in the Journal (not in the narrative) under the date Oct. 25th: "It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of wind, during which time the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a little harder than before and was no more to be seen, except the wreck of her, and that only at low water". Back

339. l. 14. — To the ordinary English mind, this would seem the most telling of Gildon’s attacks against De Foe. The passage quoted will be found on p. 58 in Hazlitt’s ed. Back

340. P. 18. — l. 4. — Here Gildon, when it suits his argument, acknowledges that De Foe praised some English sailors, — which contradicts the statement on p. VIII (see the note to 1. 11). Back

341. l. 14. — But Crusoe must have frequented common sailors: 1° on the ship that took him to Guinea. — 2° on the ship that picked him up at Cape Verde. — 3° on the ship that was wrecked off the American coast, — and 4° on the ship that brought him back to England. Back

342. l. 77. — "However the storm was so violent, that I saw, what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others, more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom" (p. 20). But De Foe says that this conduct of the sailors was unusual: so it does not contradict his general statement about the "wickedness of a seafaring life". Back

343. l. 22 — Crusoe never tells us definitely that this happened in 3 weeks. Back

344. l. 24. — During the first storm, which was not dangerous, but made Crusoe sick and terrified, the sailors laughed at his fear: "Well, Bob,... how do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wa’n’t you, last night when it blew but a capfull of wind? — A capfull do you call it, said I, it was a terrible storm. — A storm, you fool you, replies he, do you call that a storm? Why it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you’re but a fresh water sailor, Bob; come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we’ll forget all that" (p. 19). Back

345. l. 28. But De Foe did not wish to describe a hero. Crusoe was an ordinary man, full of human weakness, who thought of God only when he was in danger. Back

346. p. 19. — l. 1. — "The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."(Prov. I, 7). Back

347. l. 3. — But the fear of danger is natural, and is found in pious men too, along with the fear of the Lord. Back

348. l. 20. — Gildon is right, according to Catholic or Anglican ideas. But Crusoe was a Puritan of the old stamp, preferring the Old Testament to the New, and believing in a vindictive Jehovah rather than in a mild and forgiving Christ. — This long and futile argument arises simply from the fundamental difference in religious point of view between Gildon and De Foe. Back

349. l. 27. — There is some truth in this statement, as selfishness was De Foe’s chief defect. But what of Gildon, who "kept six whores and starved his modest wife?" Back

350. l. 30. — Pusillanimity: Here Gildon’s attack seems to be directed particularly against the peaceful Quakers. Back

351. P. 20. — l. 1. — Crusoe began to feel the weight of God’s wrath when he became very ill of the ague: "through all the variety of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin, my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my present sins, which were great, or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life". (p. 44). Afterwards, when frightened by the earthquake, he declared that "God had appointed all this to befall him" (p. 45). Back

352. l. 2. — Sublunary is a favourite word with De Foe (for ex. p. 87: in a sublunary state). The word seems to have been fashionable at the time:

353. l. 3 etc. — Gildon’s reasoning is extremely confused. He probably thinks at first of the Puritans of the Commonwealth who committed "both private and public murders" because they believed God would have punished them if they did not revenge Him against unbelievers. The superstitious fear of the Lord, which prompted such crimes, is confused by Gildon with that fear of material loss which prompts dishonesty and conquest. Besides there were other causes than fear, for the cruelty of the Spaniards in Mexico: viz. greed and lust. — De Foe might have retorted to Gildon that more crimes are caused by ambition and passion than by a fanatic fear of God. Back

354. l. 31. — To return is another favourite phrase of De Foe’s (Hazlitt’s ed. p. 47). See note to p. 11 (1. 11). Back

355. P. 21. — l. 5. — "I first fell acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea... and who, taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at that time, ...told me... I should be his messmate and his companion". (p. 2.). Back

356. l.20. — Notions: not so settled as all that! Crusoe, it is true, had received "a good instruction of his father"; but, as he tells us himself, he had "a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good or conscience of evil", (p. 44): so that when he entered on a seafaring life he "entertained only a little sense of religion". (p. 58). Back

357. l. 23. — These were not the only times: see note to p. 18 (l. 14). Back

358. P. 22. — l. 9. — Gildon forgets there was a Scotchman on board the Portuguese ship which rescued Crusoe (Hazlitt’s ed. p. 26). Back

359. l. 12. — Fifth Voyage: the first was from Hull to Yarmouth; the second to Guinea, the third to Guinea again, but Crusoe was captured on the way by a Turkish rover; the fourth to Brazil. Back

360. l. 15. — Gildon forgets that in this voyage there was fair weather for 12 days before the storm broke. Back

361. l. 18. — Gildon’s attack is beside the point. De Foe had a right to choose a wicked character for his hero; Robinson’s defects prove nothing against him. Back

363. l. 21-22. — This is not perhaps logical, but the type of expression is common in English (cp. better than best). Back

364. l. 29. — Here are a few examples of De Foe’s use of who for whom: "His name was Ishmael, who they call Moley", "the boy who they called Xury" (p. 23). (Cp. in the Complete English gentleman, p. 100: "a gentleman who I had long had an intimacy with"). But De Foe does not always make this mistake; he writes: "from whom I was called Robinson" (p. 17), "some of my relations whom I corresponded with" (p. 21) (Cp. Complete English gentleman, p. 100 "like Solomon’s fool, of whom..."). Back

365. P. 24. — l. 1. — De Foe, in fact, does not tell us how Crusoe managed to let the goat escape (p. 63). Back

366. l. 5-8. — This happened when Crusoe, trying to sail round the island, was carried away by the current (p. 60). Back

367. l. 7. — But Crusoe tells us that he stored provisions in his boat before starting: "I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of my loaves (cakes I should rather call them) of barley bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice, a food I eat a great deal of, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder with shot for killing more, and two large watch coats." p. 60). — These provisions were easily sufficient for 5 or 6 days. Back

369. l. 10. — i.e. when Crusoe, in terror at the sight of the footprint, remained hidden in his castle for 3 days (p. 67). Back

370. l. 15. — "Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded that it must be some more dangerous kind of creature, viz. that it must be some of the savages of the main land over against me". (p. 66). — Crusoe’s practical common sense led him to conclude that the immediate danger of flesh-and-blood savages was greater than the problematic danger of an hypothetic devil. Back

371. 1. 20. — Gildon is right here. De Foe was paid according to the bulk of his books, and his tendency was of course to make his works as long as possible. Thus Crusoe’s journal simply repeats the narrative. The same moral reflections recur over and over again: for example Crusoe’s ideas about the wickedness of sailors are set forth in the same terms on pp. 44 and 58. Back

372. 1. 25. — "To trifle with sacred things". — Gildon was proud of his Latin and liked to show his superiority over De Foe in this respect. Back

373. 1. 29. — Sortes Virgilianae: a form of divination which consisted in taking the first passage on which the eye fell on opening a volume of Virgil as prophesying future events, or indicating a line of action to be taken. Crusoe used the Bible instead of Virgil’s works: but so did all Non-conformists. Back

374. p. 25. — l. 4. — So Gildon condemns De Foe’s didactic idea of teaching biblical lessons by means of a fictitious tale, thus using Art in the service of Religion. Back

375. l. 7. — This is Lucilio Vanini (1585-1619), an Italian philosopher who, like Bruno, professed sceptical views and even preached atheism. He stayed a short time in England (1614) but was imprisoned in London for 49 days on account of his doctrines. Later, he was arrested in Toulouse and condemned as an atheist to have his tongue cut out and to be strangled at the stake, — which sentence was carried out. Back

376. 1. 8. — The Freethinker, a collection of essays on Ignorance, Superstition, Bigotry, etc. Intermixed with several pieces of Wit and Humour; by Ambrose Phillips, Boulter, etc. — N° 1 was published on March 24th, 1718, and n° 159 (the last) on Sept. 28th, 1719). Back

377. 1. 15. — Crusoe, like a good middle-class Englishman, naturally enough thought first of beer. It is curious, nevertheless, that De Foe did not think of the easier possibility of making wine. But Crusoe had no casks for either, and had not succeeded in making any. (p. 70). Back

378. l. 21. — i.e. p. 72 in Hazlitt’s ed. "It came now very warmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was my time to get a servant, and perhaps a companion or assistant, and that I was called plainly by Providence to save this poor creature’s life". (p. 81). — "Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger!" (p. 96). — "Let no man slight the strong impulses of his own thoughts" (p. 109). — The same idea is repeated on pp. 49, 66, 71, 90, etc.). Back

379. l. 30 — The Daimon of Socrates was probably some kind of internal voice, akin to De Foe’s "secret hints". Back

380. P. 26 — l. 1 — Girolamo Cardan (or Cardano) (1501-1576), famous as a mathematician published in 1543 a treatise on astrology in which he prided himself particularly on having been vouchsafed the assistance of a guardian demon. Back

381. l. 5 — This applies to all visionaries and to many Catholic saints. But their guardian angel, not their patron saint, was their guide. — In Hudibras (II, I), Butler ridiculed the story of Saint Francis. In the Serious Reflections, De Foe himself ridiculed the legends of Popish Saints. Back

382. l. 12. — De Foe’s words are: "while I was cutting down some wood here. I perceived that behind a very thick branch of low brushwood, or underwood, there was a kind of hollow place... I found it was pretty large, that is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it...; but I must confess to you I made more haste out than I did in: when looking further into the place, which was perfectly dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars, the dim light from the cave’s mouth shining directly in, and making the reflection." (p. 73). — He repeats on the same page: "The place I was in was a most delightful cavity, or grotto, of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark." (If the work dark was suppressed, the contradiction would disappear). Cox, the piratical abridger of the novel, made matters still worse. He wrote: "Peeping further into the place, and which was totally dark, I saw two glaring eyes of some creature I knew not, which twinkled like stars, the light from the cave’s mouth shining directly in, and making the reflection". (p. 154). The anonymous author of the abridgment of the three volumes of Robinson Crusoe (1724) paid careful heed to Gildon’s criticism, and, in summing up this episode, suppressed the words dark and darkness. Back

383. l. 22. When Crusoe baked his bread, he told us: "Then I wanted a mill to grind it (the corn), sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread." (p. 54). — But, on p. 84, he offered salt to Friday, who "spat and sputtered at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it." Back

384. l. 26. — De Foe nowhere says that the victims were bound or fettered. Back

385. P. 27. — l. 1. — Gildon is right in pointing out this inconsistency. A few days after the first anniversary of his landing (p. 49), Crusoe says: "My ink began to fail me", — and, after the third year, (p. 58): "My ink had been gone for some time". But on the 28th year of his stay (p. 96), he says: "I gave him a strict charge in writing." Back

386. l. 15. — "I had been accustomed enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange aversion to go to England by sea at that time" (p. 109). Back

387. l. 21. — The epithet monstrous is not exaggerated. De Foe evidently wanted to fill up a number of pages, and imagined this ridiculous story, which, he knew, would be a subject of wonder and admiration to many a cook and apprentice. He was a good business man, and willing to gratify the popular taste for sensational stories. Back

388. P. 28. — l. 4. — "O! O! O! says Friday three times, pointing to the bear, O master! you give me te leave, me shakee te hand with him, me makee you good laugh." (p. 110). Back

389. l. 6. — "So down he sits, and gets his boots off in a moment, and puts on a pair of pumps, as we call the flat shoes they wear, and which he had in his pocket, and gives my other servant his horse, and, with his gun, away he flew, swift like the wind."(p. 110). Back

390. l. 8. — "Friday, who had, as we say, the heels of the bear, came up with him quickly, and takes up a great stone and throws at him, and hit him just on the head, but did him no more harm than if he had thrown it against a wall." (p. 111). — But it was quite possible for Friday to find a stone in the snow which was not very deep. Back

391. l. 13. — There are bears in the mountains of Venezuela and British Guiana, so that Friday might have seen some during the wanderings of his tribe. (cp. p. VII). Back

392. l. 17. — Friday climbs up a tree, and the angry bear follows him closely: "When we came to the tree, there was Friday got out to the small of a large limb of the tree, and the bear got about half way to him. As soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker. Ha, says he to us, now you see me teachee the bear dance; so he falls a-jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still, and began to look behind him to see how he should get back." (p. 111). Back

394. l. 26, etc. — These later travels are announced in the last page of the novel, which shows that De Foe expected success and was preparing a second volume. Back

395. P. 29. — l. 11.— The 2nd vol of Robinson Crusoe (Further Adventures) was issued on Aug. 20th, 1719. Gildon’s Postscript was written in the last days of August and the beginning of September. Back

396. l. 21. — "Our old Portuguese pilot brought a Japan merchant to us, who began to inquire what goods we had; and in the first place, he bought all our opium and gave us a very good price for it". (Further Adv. p. 76). Back

397. 1. 24. — The second vol. is in fact much inferior to the first. It contains many tedious passages, such as the episode of Atkins’s conversion, Crusoe’s dealing in China etc., but it is an exaggeration to say that it everywhere "prepares you for sleep". Back

398. P. 30. — l. 10. — "The success the former part of this work has met with in the world, has yet been no other than is acknowedged to be due to the surprising variety of the subject and to the agreeable manner of the performance". Back

399. l. 15. — By the word judicious, Gildon means the same thing as rational (p. 28), i.e. any reader not belonging to the vulgar class that was delighted at the time by Guy of Warwick. Back

401. l. 23. — It must be acknowledged that there are many digressions, such as the description of the starving maid (p. 53), or the disparagement of Chinese greatness (p. 78), which have no connexion whatever with the narrative. Back

402. l. 28. — Canting is the epithet which a severe critic might justly apply to Crusoe’s religion. Back

403. l. 30. — "By this [i.e. abridging the work by the suppression of all didactic elements] they leave the work naked of its brightest ornaments" (Pref.). Back

404. P. 31. — l. 1-2. — There is some truth in Gildon’s criticism, but De Foe was naturally long-winded, and wrote exactly as a garrulous person talks. — The price of each vol. of Robinson Crusoe was 5 s. Back

405. l. 7. — Gildon is right in complaining that the first pages of the Journal are a mere repetition of the events Crusoe had already told "in plain narration". De Foe was very careless in matters of style and composition. Back

406. l. 15. — These repetitions are to be found chiefly in the Journal (for example: "rain all day", "very ill", etc.); but they are natural in the diary of a "plain honest man". Back

407. l. 17.. — Hudibras II, 1st c. 1. 9-12. — Ouoting from memory, Gildon changed the words slightly:

409. l. 26. — In fact the Further Adventures had a second edition before the end of the year. Back

410. P. 32. — l. 1. — "All the endeavours of envious people to reproach it with being a romance, to search it for errors in geography, inconsistency in the relation, and contradictions in the fact, have proved abortive, and as impotent as malicious". — This shows that the success of Robinson Crusoe had been much discussed in coffee-houses. — The word abortive in the meaning of fruitless was not unusual in De Foe’s time. Cp. Addison, Cato, III, 7: "Our first design, my friends, has prov’d abortive". 9 Back

411. l. 8. — But the great Pope himself had told Spence: "The first part of Robinson Crusoe is very good; De Foe wrote a vast many things, and none bad, though none excellent, except this". Back

412. l. 18. — "If Nature refuses, Indignation makes verses". Juv. Sat. I, 79. Back

413. l. 26. — In spite of this assertion there was much envy in Gildon’s soul when he considered the tremendous success achieved by a rival writer. Back

414. P. 33. — l. 2-3. — De Foe’s statement in the Preface to the first vol. was: "The editor believes the thing to be a just history of fact". — In the beginning of the 18th century the novel was not yet born, and a book of which "it is all a lie" could be said, was doomed to failure. Back

415. l. 11. etc. — Gildon is unjust. The book tends to prove that man is entirely in the hands of God, Who never fails to punish him for his sins. Back

417. P. 34. — l. 2. — "And this makes the abridging this work as scandalous as it is knavish and ridiculous, seeing, while to shorten the book that they may seem to reduce the value, they strip it of all those reflections, as well religious as moral, which are not only the greatest beauties of the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader". (Pref.). — De Foe alludes to a piratical abridgment of the first volume, which was issued in the beginning of August by a bookseller named Cox, at the price of 2 s. Taylor, De Foe’s editor, denounced this book in his advertisement of the 4th ed. of Robinson Crusoe: "The pretended abridgment of this book clandestinely printed for T. Cox does not contain the third part of the work; but consists only of some scattered passages, incoherently tacked together; wherein the author’s sense throughout is wholly mistaken, the matters of fact misrepresented, and the moral reflections misapplied. It’s hoped the Public will not give encouragement to so base a practice, the proprietor intending to prosecute the vendors according to Law" (Daily Courant for Aug. 8th, 1719). — Cox’s abridgment (pp. 259) is certainly very bad: for example, we are not told that Crusoe saw a footprint on the sand, so that the sequel becomes incoherent. — Taylor began a suit in Chancery for the protection of his copyright. In the Flying Post for October 29th, Cox replied that the book had been published by his firm without his knowledge, while he was absent in Scotland, and he threatened to disclose some secrets about De Foe. The prosecution was stopped. — Cox died a few months later. (See the Pref. to the Serious Reflections). Back

418. l. 5. — But Gildon himself would have been extremely angry if a pirated edition of his Art of Poetry had been sold cheaper than the authorized edition, thus depriving him of part of his benefit. Back

419. l. 6. — Justin: a Latin historian who lived before the 5th cent. A.D. His work, Historiarum Philippicarum Libri XLVI is described by himself in the preface as an abridgment of an older history written in the time of Augustus by Trogus Pompeius; this work, Historiae Philippicae et totius Mundi origines et Terrae situs, was probably ousted from public favour by Justin’s shorter book. A new English version of Justin’s work, by Thomas Brown, appeared in 1712, and replaced Codrington’s older translation. Back

420. l. 13. — Darius Tibertus, or rather Dario Tiberti was born at Cesena; he died in the beginning of the 16th cent. He made a Latin abridgment of Plutarch’s Lives (Epitome vitarum Plutarchi, Ferrare 1501), an edition of which was issued in Paris in 1573. It was translated into French in the same year. Tiberti’s work was used by David Lloyd in the abridgment of the Lives which he published in 1665. Back

421. l. 17. — Guarini: this is evidently a mistake for Guicciardini (1482-1540) whose History of Italy was translated into English by Fenton as early as 1579 (new editions in 1599, 1618). Abridgments of it were published in England by Dallington in 1615 (republished in 1629). Back

422. l. 18. — This is of course Pliny the Naturalist (23-79), but it does not appear his works were ever abridged in Latin. The whole of the Natural History was translated into English by Philemon Holland (1601). Back

423. l. 19. — Fontenelle (1657-1757), the great French philosopher, whose History of Oracles (1687) was immediately translated into English and created a sensation in the philosophical world. Back

424. l. 21. — Sir William Temple (1628-99), the great statesman and essayist, professed himself an enthusiastic admirer of Fontenelle in his Letters (1700-03) and Essays (Miscellanies, 1705-08). Back

425. l. 24. — Van Dale (1638-1708), a Dutch philosopher, whose Latin treatise De Oraculis veterum ethnicorum (1683) was abridged by Fontenelle in his Histoire des Oracles. Back

426. l. 27. — These works were abridgments of foreign or classical authors, and not pirated abridgments of living English writers. Gildon gives no instance of the latter. Back

427. P. 35. — l. 6. — But it was not the only fault of the abridgment. (See note to p. 34, 1. 2). Back

428. l. 8. — This clever, but sophistical, argument must have annoyed De Foe greatly. Back

429. l. 15. — The chief interest of Cox’s abridgment is that it shows what, in the book, most interested contemporary readers. Cox dropped all moral reflections and briefly summed up Crusoe’s early adventures: he gave most space to Crusoe’s stay on the island. Back

430. l. 28. — Gildon’s literary criticism is contained in these words: Rules of Art. Nothing can be beautiful, he thought, if it does not follow the rules derived from the Ancients. Back

432. l. 4. — "My imagination worked up to such a height... that I actuallv supposed myself oftentimes upon the spot at my old castle behind the trees, saw my old Spaniard, Friday’s father, and the reprobate sailors whom I left upon the island... One time in my sleep I had the villany of the three pirate sailors so lively related to me by the first Spaniard and Friday’s father, that it was surprising; they told me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they set fire to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose to distress and starve them, things that I had never heard of, and that were yet all of them true in fact." (p. 5). Back

433. l. 16. — Though somewhat a casuist, Crusoe never tried to explain from what authority he derived his power. He maintained that land belongs to the first occupant, and accepted it as natural that he should be king of his island, and absolute master of the lives of the Spaniards who arrived on the island after his departure. Back

434. l. 21. — Madam is used here in a contemptuous sense, like Monsieur, on p. 11. — Trought the Beggar's Opera Gay used the word with this depreciatory meaning: see for exemple Lucy’s song in Act II, sc. 3: "Why, how now, Madam Flirt", etc. Back

435. l. 22. — My wife...told me very seriously one night, that she believed there was some secret powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again." (p. 6). Back

436. P. 37. — l. 2. — Further Adv. p. 7. — We have seen already what ludicrous use Gildon made of this awkward sentence (p. XVIII). De Foe seems to mean that we have premonitions ("secret hints") of events which come to pass later, even though we have not communicated these premonitions to any one who could be instrumental in the fulfilment of them. This shows that the secret hints are sent from an invisible supernatural world, — and from the existence of a supernatural world De Foe infers a future state. Back

437. l. 10. — "My ancient good friend the widow... earnestly struggled with me to consider my years, my easy circumstances, and the needless hazard of a long voyage, and, above all, my young children; but it was all to no purpose; I had an irresistible desire to the voyage; and I told her I thought there was something so uncommon in the impressions I had upon my mind for the voyage, that it would be a kind of resisting Providence if I should attempt to stay at home". (p. 8). — Crusoe’s departure looks like a novelist's trick and gives a poor idea of the occupations of Providence. Back

438. l. 13 — En passant was then a fashionable expression. De Foe did not use it in the homely style of Robinson Crusoe, but in the more elaborate style of Captain Carleton (p. 18). Back

439. l. 20. — De Foe liked to paint extreme passions, and there is in all his books a display of sentimentality to please the popular taste: his heroes weep on all occasions. The description of the violent emotions of the rescued occupies a whole page in Hazlitt’s edition: "There were some in tears, some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, several singing, some laughing, more crying; many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting, several swooning, and ready to faint; and a few were crossing themselves and giving God thanks". But then Crusoe carefully explains: "Perhaps also the case may have some addition to it from the particular circumstance of the nation they belonged to; I mean the French, whose temper is allowed to be more volatile, more passionate, and more sprightly, and their spirits more fluid, than of other nations." (p. 10). Back

440. l. 26. — But these people were saved after many long hours of anxiety. During the night their hopes rose and fell, so that the extremity of their joy in being saved at last is quite natural. Back

441. P. 38. l. 3. — "I immediately ordered that five guns should be fired, one soon after another, that, if possible, we might give notice to them that there was help for them at hand". (p. 9). Back

442. l. 7. — "To direct them as well as I could, I caused lights to be hung out in all the parts of the ship where we could, and which we had lanterns for, and kept firing guns all the night long, letting them know by this that there was a ship not far off". (p. 9). Back

443. l. 13. — On the contrary, it is rational to believe that they were in agonies of terror in the intervals of the guns, and afraid of losing the right direction. Back

444. l. 14. — Friday had been abnormally quick in learning English; but, like uneducated people in a foreign country, once he had arrived at the stage of making himself understood, he never got rid, or even sought to get rid, of his grammatical mistakes. When he saw the island again, he exclaimed: "Me see! me see! yes, yes, me see much man there, and there, and there". (p. 11). Back

445. l. 24. — Gildon is right. — De Foe could draw only one character; a Puritan Englishman of the middle class. The Spaniard and Crusoe are brothers: so are the French Priest and the Spaniard. Thus, on p. 20, in the Spaniard’s relation of the chief events on the island after Crusoe's departure, we find this passage: "It happened one night that the Spaniard governor... found himself very uneasy in the night, and could by no means get any sleep: he was perfectly well in body, as he told me the story, only found his thoughts tumultuous; his mind ran upon men fighting, and killing one another, but was broad awake and could not by any means get any sleep. In short, he lay a great while, but growing more and more uneasy, he resolved to rise". Then he roused one of his comrades who said: "Such things are not to be slighted", and added, as Crusoe would have done: "I am satisfied our spirits embodied have converse with, and receive intelligence from, the spirits unembodied, and inhabiting the invisible world; and this friendly notice is given for our advantage, if we know how to make use of it". — Of course, the "secret hint" was right: there was a whole army of cannibals on the island. (Cp. the notes to pp. VI and 25). Back

446. P. 39. — l. 2. — As Gildon maintains, the character of the Spaniard is full of inconsistencies and improbabilities. De Foe, always writing in haste, very probably forgot which of his heroes was speaking at the time. Back

447. l. 9. — In the first vol., p. 95: the Spaniard quotes Exodus XVI, 2-3. "You know the children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first of their being delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God himself, that delivered them when they came to want bread in the wilderness". — In the Further Adventures he quotes the Scriptures frequently (pp. 16, 27, etc.). It pleased De Foe’s paradoxical mind to shock the prejudices of his readers. Here he represents a good Spaniard ("the most gentlemanlike generous-minded man that ever I met with in my life") — a phenomenon which must have astonished many of his readers who had so often heard of the cruelty of the Spaniards in the West Indies. Back

448. l. 13. — In the Night. — We may suppose they were delayed by contrary currents. Besides, we are not told that they came for their barbarous feast (p. 20): they might have come to attack the inhabitants of the island, of whose presence they had heard. Back

449. l. 19. — This tedious conversation between the two men extends over 4 pages (40-43). It must have surprised De Foe’s readers to find a Popish priest so familiar with the Bible. As for De Foe’s representation of him as a broad-minded man, see note to p. VIII (l. 30). Back

450. l. 26. — "You have here 4 Englishmen, who have fetched women from among the savages, and have taken them as their wives, and have had many children by them all, and yet are not married to them after any stated legal manner, as the laws of God and man require, and, therefore, are yet, in the sense of both, no less than adulterers, and living in adultery" (p. 41). De Foe must have been greatly mortified by this piece of criticism, as he hated to be reproached with "writing false English". Back

451. P. 40. — l. 18. — "Now, sir, — said he, — though I do not acknowledge your religion, or you mine, yet we should be all glad to see the devil’s servants, and the subjects of his kingdom, taught to know the general principles of the Christian religion; that they might at least hear of God, and of a Redeemer, and of the resurrection, and of a future state, things we all believe; they had at least been so much nearer coming into the bosom of the true church, than they are now in the public profession of idolatry and devil worship" (p. 42). — Cp. "It is a maxim, sir, that is, or ought to be, received among all Christians, of what church or pretended church soever, viz., that Christian knowledge ought to be propagated by all possible means, and on all possible occasions. It is on this principle that our church sends missionaries into Persia, India and China; and that our clergy, even of the superior sort, willingly engage in the most hazardous voyages, and the most dangerous residence, among murderers and barbarians, to teach them the knowledge of the true God, and to bring them over to embrace the Christian faith (p. 42). Back

453. l. 25. — Gildon’s criticism must have been made already by many a good Protestant. But it was for the amazement of his readers that De Foe introduced into his tale that wonder of wonders, a tolerant Popish priest. — He carefully pointed out that this priest was a very rare exception: Crusoe cunningly told the priest (p. 46): "I cannot tell how to object the least thing against that affectionate concern which you shew for turning the poor people from their Paganism to the Christian religion; but how does this comfort you, while these people are, in your account, out of the pale of the Catholic Church, without which, you believe, there is no salvation; so that you esteem these but heretics still, and, for other reasons, as effectually lost as the pagans themselves?" — To which this Phoenix of priests answered "with abundance of candour and Christian Charity" (p. 47): "I am a Catholic of the Roman Church and a priest of the order of St. Benedict... but yet, I do not look upon you, who call yourselves reformed, without some charity; I dare not say, though I know it is our opinion in general, yet I dare not say that you cannot be saved; I will by no means limit the mercy of Christ so far as to think that he cannot receive you into the bosom of his church... you will allow it to consist with me, as a Roman, to dis- tinguish far between a Protestant and a Pagan, be- tween thim that calls on Jesus Christ, though in a way which I do not think is according to the true faith, and a savage, a barbarian, that knows no God, no Christ, no Redeemer at all... ...I would rejoice if all the savages in America were brought, like this poor woman, to pray to God, though they were to be all Protestants at first, rather than they should continue pagans and heathens". — Crusoe replied that "he believed, had all the members of his church the like moderation, they would soon be all Protestants". His final words are: "I thought he [the priest] had all the zeal, all the knowledge, all the sincerity of a Christian, without the errors of a Roman Catholic; and that I took him to be such a clergyman as the Roman bishops were, before the church of Rome assumed spiritual sovereignty over the consciences of men" (p. 50). Back

454. P. 41. — l. 6. — The rapidity of Atkins’s conversion is truly amazing (pp. 44-5). His long dialogue with Crusoe is highly improbable. Back

455. l. 15. — Atkins’s wife is abnormally quick in grasping abstruse theological ideas. The episode of her baptism is full of humour, but this must have passed unnoticed by "vulgar readers", whose sentimentality would have been deeply moved by the touching conversion. Back

456. l. 16. — Jack of all trades is the expression used by De Foe on p. 51. He describes this ingenious fellow in the following words: "I carried two carpenters, a smith, and a very handy ingenious fellow, who was a cooper by trade, but was also a general mechanic, for he was dexterous at making wheels and hand-mills to grind corn, was a good turner, and a good pot-maker; he also made anything that was proper to be made of earth or of wood; in a word we called him our Jack of all trades." (p. 8). Back

457. l. 19. — This is curious: Crusoe who had been at pains to instruct Friday in the Protestant religion forgets to have him baptized on his return to England; at least he does not tell us anything of it in the novel. Back

458. P. 42. — l. 3. — i.e. p. 42 in Hazlitt’s ed. See note to p. 40. 1. 25. Back

459. l. 21. — Gildon is unfair; the priest is described as a happy exception. De Foe hated Popery, and Crusoe often maintains that English Protestantism is by far the best form of religion (see note to p. VIII}. Gildon, a deserter from Roman Catholicism, was more violent against Popery than De Foe who had always been a Dissenter. Back

460. P .43. — l. 6. — There were bishops among Catholic missionaries as well as Jesuits of high rank. It is true, though, that missionaries belonged generally to the regular clergy. Back

461. l. 9. — Gildon does not remember that the priest is responsible for the statement on the preceding page. Crusoe himself judged very severely the work of Popish missionaries: "[we became] acquainted with three missionary Romish priests who were in the town, and who had been there some time converting the people to Christianity; but we thought they had made but poor work of it, and made them but sorry Christians when they had done... I must confess the conversion, as they call it, of the Chinese to Christianity is so far from the true conversion required to bring heathen people to the faith of Christ, that it seems to amount to little more than letting them know the name of Christ, say some prayers to the Virgin Mary and her son in a tongue which they understand not, and to cross themselves, and the like" (pp. 75-6). — De Foe admired the zeal and piety of some missionaries, but scorned their doctrine. Back

462. l. 11. — Gildon’s criticism made an impression on De Foe: in the 4th chapter of the Serious Reflections, he charged the Inquisition with condemning men whose riches were coveted by the clergy; "Inquisitors are scarce Christians", he concluded (p. 44). Back

463. l. 13. — The Dominicans, who were the Jesuits’ worst enemies, had denounced the trading of the latter and their over-supple principles in China before the Congregation De Propaganda Fide (for the propagation of faith), which had been established by Pope Gregory XV, in 1622. — In the Serious Reflections (p. 84), De Foe parodied the title of this congregation by applying it to the Devil’s agents on the earth. Back

464. 1. 20. — The Jesuit Ricci (1552-1610), founder of the Jesuit mission in China, had resolved to accommodate Christianity to the creeds and customs of the Chinese. After him, the Jesuits scrupulously respected all Chinese rites that were not too contrary to Christian morals, and laid aside all Catholic ceremonies that might have hurt Chinese prejudice; they admitted for instance the worship of Confucius and the cult of Ancestors. These facts were denounced by the Dominicans and condemned as early as 1645. But the Jesuits were so powerful that, though several times condemned, they continued their policy till 1742. Pope Clement XI’s Bull in 1715, ordering the suppression of all Chinese ceremonies and denouncing the conduct of the Jesuits, was hailed with contemptuous joy in Protestant England. In the SeriousReflections, De Foe, again taking the hint from Gildon’s work, condemned the Jesuits "who sung anthems to the immortal Idols of Tonquin" (p. 44). Back

465. l. 24. — In the Serious Reflections, De Foe, a severe judge of China and the Chinese, speaks thus of the great philosopher: "As to their religion, it is all summed up in Confucius’s Maxims, whose theology I take to be a rhapsody of moral conclusions; a foundation, or what we may call elements of polity, morality and superstition, huddled together in a rhapsody of words, without consistency, and, indeed, with very little reasoning in it" (p. 40). Back

466. l. 29. — De Foe was no promoter of Popery, but he was not such a fanatic as to condemn systematically all Papists. As the priest in Robinson Crusoe preferred Protestantism to Paganism, De Foe preferred Popery to Paganism. In the Serious Reflections, he wrote: "I hope none will object against calling the Roman Church a Christian Church, and the professors of the Popish Church Christians" (p. 66). Back

467. P. 44. — l.4. — Speaking of the Tartars, Crusoe says: "I wondered how the Chinese empire could be conquered by such contemptible fellows; for they are a mere herd or crowd of wild fellows, keeping no order, and understanding no discipline or manner of fight" (p. 82). — He is unable to find words strong enough for his indignation at the sight of the barbarous Tartar idol, "frightful as the Devil", at Nartschinsky; with a Crusader’s zeal he destroys it and gets into endless trouble (pp. 86-90). Back

469. l. 28. — "But, sir, the essence of the sacrament of matrimony (so he called it, being a Roman) consists not only in the mutual consent of the parties to take one another as man and wife, but in the formal and legal obligation that there is in the contract, to compel the man and woman at all times, to own and acknowledge each other; obliging the man to abstain from all other women, to engage in no other contract while these subsist, and on all occasions, as ability allows, to provide honestly for them and their children; and to oblige the women to the same or like conditions, mutatis mutandis, on their side" (p. 41). — Gildon would probably have been at a loss to explain what he found specially Popish in this passage. Back

470. P. 45 — l. 3. — "For my Spaniards, according to my promise, I engaged three Portugal women to go; and recommended it to them to marry them and use them kindly. I could have procured more women, but I remembered that the poor persecuted man had two daughters, and there were but five of the Spaniards that wanted; the rest had wives of their own, though in another country. — All this cargo arrived safe, and as you may easily suppose, very welcome to my old inhabitants, who were now (with this addition) between 60 and 70 people, besides little children, of which there were a great many" (p. 57). — A curious oversight for a Puritan! Back

471. 1. 8. — The episode is quite useless for the story, but, being full of grim and terrible details, it must have been very "entertaining for the canaille". Back

472. 1. 14. — "Let no wise man flatter himself with the strength of his own judgment, as if he was able to choose any particular station of life for himself. Man is a short- sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him; and as his passions are none of his best friends, so his particular affections are generally his worst counsellors" (p. 58). — De Foe simply states here that no man knows the future, and in the following sentence — which Gildon overlooked — he draws a moral conclusion from this: "But the secret ends of Divine Providence in thus permitting us to be hurried down the stream of our own desires, are only to be understood of those who can listen to the voice of Providence, and draw religious consequences from God’s justice and their own mistakes". Back

473. l. 24. — i.e. p. 79 in Hazlitt’s ed. — Gildon is right: there is a contradiction in the text. Back

474. l. 26. — "His horse was a poor, lean, starved, hobbling creature, such as in England might sell for about 30 or 40 shillings; and he had two slaves followed him on foot to drive the poor creature along" (p. 79). Back

475. P. 46. — l. 11. — This is another instance of De Foe’s love for paradox. It was fashionable at the time to exalt the Chinese Empire. De Foe contends that it is inferior to the English. His arguments are poor: "30.000 German or English foot or 10.000 French horse would fairly beat all the forces of China... There is not a fortified town in China could hold out one month against the batteries and attacks of an European army." — He calls the Chinese "a contemptible herd and crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves". (p. 78). — De Foe took his theories about China from the Relation de M. Evert Isbrants, envoyé de S. M. Czarienne à l'Empereur de la Chine en 1692, 1693 et 1694 par le Sr Adam Brand (Amsterdam 1699). Back

476. l. 17 — Sir William Temple adopted Father Le Comte’s favourable opinion of China. — In the Serious Reflections (pp. 40-42), De Foe, who had probably been annoyed by Gildon’s criticism, renewed his attack on Chinese greatness. Back

477. l. 26. — Though not so ridiculous as the episode of the bear in the first vol., this burning of the Idol seems to indicate that De Foe was again hard pressed to find a new incident to fill a certain number of pages (pp. 86-89). Back

478. l. 30. — "A cunning fellow, a Cossack, as they call them, of Jarawena, in the pay of the Moscovites, calling to the leader of the caravan, said to him: I will send all these people away to Sibeilka. This was a city 4 or 5 days’ journey at least to the south, and rather behind us" (p. 89). Back

479. P. 47. — l. 6. — How angry Gildon must have been, when the Publisher’s Introduction to the Serious Reflections was read to him: "If the foundation has been so well laid, the structure cannot but be expected to bear a proportion; and while the parable has been so diverting, the moral must certainly be equally agreeable ". Back

480. l. 14. — "One recognizes Hercules by the foot, and a lion by the claw". A Greek proverb made popular by Erasmus in his Adagia (I, 9). Back

481. l. 18. — This theory would tend to the suppression of all didactic tales. Back

482. l. 23. — De Foe would be in sympathy with Gildon, here. In the Serious Reflections (p. 10) he ridiculed the story of St. Hillary. Back

483. P. 48. — l. 1. — De Foe must have been very astonished and not a little troubled to find himself accused of promoting atheism; and this probably explains why he introduced in the Serious Reflections a long dialogue against atheists, or "men-devils". Back

"G----- writes Satyr, rails at Blasphemy,	3
And the next Page, lampoons the Deity;	4
Exposes his Darinda’s Vicious Life,	5
But keeps six whores and starves his modest wife;	6
Sets up for a reformer of the town,	7
Himself a first Rate Rake below Lampoon...	8
All men to errors and mistakes enclin’d,	9
To sin’s a vice in Nature, and we find	10

"If Dennis writes and rails in furious pet,	3
I'll answer Dennis when I am in debt.	4
If meagre Gildon draws his meaner quill,	5
I wish the man a dinner, and sit still" (1)⁹¹ .	6

"He many a Bore and huge Dun Cow	1
Did, like another Guy, o’erthrow	2
But Guy with him in fight compar’d	3
Had like the Bore or Dun Cow far’d."	4

Now Daniel De Foe, now run for thy life,	5
For Robin Hog swears by’s old grunting wife,	6
He’ll end all your government quarr’ls and strife...	7
He’ll hunt you thro’ all the Fanatical race,	8
Throw salt in your breech lest you stink in the chase.	9

"Is’t not enough to make one strange,	1
That some mens fancies should ne’er change?	2
But make all people do, and say,	3
The same things still the self-same way."	4

"For since their Grandame Eve in Eden fell,	1
The Sex has learnt the Damning Trade so well,	2
Where e’er that Rules, there’s little need of Hell."	3

"(Hence) Gildon rails, that raven of' the pit	1
Who thrives upon the carcases of wit".	2

And Reprehension’s not at all uncivil,	11
But to have Rakes reprove us, that’s the Devil!"	12

"He [Eusden] sleeps among the dull of ancient days,	7
Safe, where no critics damn, no duns molest,	8
Where wretched Withers, Ward and Gildon rest... "	9

"Ah Dennis, Gildon ah ! what ill-starr’d rage	10
Divides a friendship long confirm’d by age?	11
Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor,	12
But fool with fool is barbarous civil war.	13
Embrace, embrace, my sons! be foes no more!	14
Nor glad vile poets with true critics’ gore!" (2).	15

"I lov'd thee living, and I mourn thee dead,	16
Whose Fate 'twas to be better Taught than Fed.	17
Whate'er the Greek and Latin had in store	18
Of Art and Eloquence thou hadst and more...	19
From Mass to Common Prayer he early flew,	20
The Papists Terror, and the Deists too.	21
Who, whilst he lashed the Vices among Men,	22
Religion never suffer'd from his Pen...	23
To sum up all, we've lost an honest fellow,	24
That treated more in metal red than yellow.	25

"We say monsieur to an ape,	1
Without offence to human shape."	2

"Strolling Gods, whose usual trade is...	3
To pick up sublunary ladies."	4

ROBINSON CRUSOE EXAMIN'D AND CRITICIS'D

OR A NEW EDITION OF CHARLES GILDON'S FAMOUS PAMPHLET

NOW PUBLISHEDWITHAN INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

TOGETHER WITH an ESSAY ON GILDON'S LIFE

BYPaul DOTTIN

PREFACE

THE LIFEOFCHARLES GILDON

IGildon’s first attempts as a writer

IIGildon’s career as a playwright

IIIGildon as pamphleteer

IVGildon's quarrel with Pope, and last days

A CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF GILDON’S WORKS

INTRODUCTION TO GILDON’S PAMPHLET

THEPREFACE. 167

A DIALOGUE BETWIXT * D..... F...e, 174 ROBINSON CRUSOE, And his Man FRIDAY.

AN EPISTLE TOD....... D' F...e, * The Reputed Author 266 OF ROBINSON CRUSOE,

POSTSCRIPT.

INDEX TO GILDON'S LIFE

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

W

Y

INDEX TO THE PAMPHLET

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

J

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

V

W

X

Y

ROBINSON CRUSOE

EXAMIN'D AND CRITICIS'D

OR

A NEW EDITION OF CHARLES GILDON'S FAMOUS PAMPHLET

NOW PUBLISHED

WITH

AN INTRODUCTION AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

TOGETHER WITH

an ESSAY ON GILDON'S LIFE

BY

Paul DOTTIN

THE LIFE

OF

CHARLES GILDON

I

Gildon’s first attempts as a writer

II

Gildon’s career as a playwright

III

Gildon as pamphleteer

IV

Gildon's quarrel with Pope, and last days

A

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST

OF GILDON’S WORKS

INTRODUCTION

TO GILDON’S PAMPHLET

THE

PREFACE. ¹⁶⁷

A

DIALOGUE

BETWIXT

* D..... F...e, ¹⁷⁴

ROBINSON CRUSOE,

And his Man

FRIDAY.

AN

EPISTLE

TO

D....... D' F...e,

* The Reputed Author ²⁶⁶

OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE,