is written on his tomb. No more can fiery wrath and indignation reach him where he lies by Stella’s side in the aisle over against his chamber window. The touch of her quiet dust must have soothed, one would think, the last fever that lingered still in him even after death had done its worst. CHAPTER IV THE AUTHOR OF “ROBINSON CRUSOE” The age of Queen Anne was one which abounded in paradoxes, and loved them. It was an age when England was full of patriotic policy, yet every statesman was a traitor; when tradition was dear, yet revolution practicable; when speech was gross and manners unrefined, yet the laws of literary composition rigid, and correctness the test of poetry. It was full of high ecclesiasticism and strict Puritanism, sometimes united in one person. In it ignorance was most profound, yet learning most considered and prominent. An age when Parson Trulliber was not an unfit representative of the rural clergy, yet the public could be interested in such a recondite pleasantry as the “Battle of the Books,” seems the strangest self-contradiction; yet so it was in this paradoxical age. No man lived who was a more complete paradox than Defoe. His fame is world-wide, yet all that is known of him is one or two of his least productions, and his busy life is ignored in the permanent place in literary history which he has secured. His characteristics, as apart from his conduct, are all those of an honest man, but when that most important part of him is taken into the question it is difficult to pronounce him anything but a knave. His distinguishing literary quality is a minute truthfulness to fact which makes it almost impossible not to take what he says for gospel. But his constant inspiration is fiction, not to say, in some circumstances, falsehood. He spent his life in the highest endeavors that a man can engage in: in the work of persuading and influencing his country, chiefly for her good; and he is remembered by a boy’s book, which is indeed the first of boy’s books, yet not much more. Through these contradictions we must push our way before we can reach to any clear idea of Defoe, the London tradesman who by times composed almost all the newspapers in London, wrote all the pamphlets, had his finger in every pie, and a share in all that was done, yet brought nothing out of it but a damaged reputation and an unhonored end.