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Updated: May 23, 2025
It is the only one of Defoe's tales that shows what he could do as an artist. We might have seen from the others that he had the genius of a great artist; here we have the possibility realized, the convincing proof of accomplished work. Moll Flanders is in some respects superior as a novel.
Haywood's wares were known to the more frothy minds of the polite world and to the daughters of middle-class trading families, such as the sisters described in Defoe's "Religious Courtship," whose taste for fashionable plays and novels was soon to call the circulating library into being. Beside the proceeds arising from the sale of her works, Mrs.
Usually, as in Defoe's "Moll Flanders" or Fielding's "Tom Jones," ignorance of birth was an essential element in the plot. A story of this type in which the catastrophe is prevented by a timely discovery of the hero's parentage, is "The Force of Nature: or, the Lucky Disappointment" .
For the discovery of this "strange and surprising" chapter in Defoe's life, which clears up much that might otherwise have been disputable in his character, the world is indebted solely to Mr. William Lee. Accident put Mr.
Saintsbury has raised the question whether the representation of an extreme case, in which the veil is never lifted from the writer's own opinions, can properly be called irony at all. This last is, perhaps, a question belonging to the strict definition of the figures of speech; but, however that might be settled, it is a mistake to describe Defoe's art in this pamphlet as delicate.
Yet throughout Dalrymple's indictment is no hint of any such offence. Claverhouse is accused of oppression by excessive fines and illegal quartering of troops, of malversation, and so forth; but of taking man's life unlawfully there is no single word. Another of Defoe's victims is Matthew Mekellwrath.
But although Defoe's friends could take the sting out of the terrible hours during which he stood as an object for mockery they could do little else for him. So he went back to prison to remain there during the Queen's pleasure. This, of course, meant ruin to him.
As these insinuations were the chief war-cry of the Whigs, and we now know that they were not without foundation, it is easy to understand why Defoe's pamphlets, though Anti-Jacobite, were resented by the party in whose interest he had formerly written.
In 1705 he was able, to boast that he had reduced his debts in spite of many difficulties from 17,000£. to 5,000£., but these sums included liabilities resulting from the failure of his pantile factory. Defoe's first conspicuous literary service to King William, after he obtained Government employment, was a pamphlet on the question of a Standing Army raised after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697.
If we study any writing of Defoe's in connexion with the circumstances of its production, we find that it is many-sided in its purposes, as full of side aims as a nave is full of spokes.
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