Harley has never appeared in history as a great man, but when we consider that he was able thus to subjugate and secure to his own service two of the greatest intelligences of his time, it is impossible not to respect his influence and judgment. The great and somber genius of Swift, the daring, brilliant, and ever-ready intellect of Defoe, became instruments in the hands of this ordinary and scheming statesman. Once more, with a curious parallelism, these two men stand before us--no friends to each other. “An illiterate fellow, whose name I forget,” says Swift, with the almost brutal scorn which was part of his character; while Defoe replies to the taunt with angry virulence, setting forth his own acquirements, “though he wrote no bill at his door, nor set Latin on the front of his productions,” a piece of pretension, habitual to the time, of which the other was guilty. But Harley, who was not worthy, so far as intellect went, to clean the shoes of either, had them both at his command, serving his purposes, doing his bidding. Which of them suffered most by the connection it is not easy to say. It turned Swift’s head, and brought into humiliating demonstration the braggart and the bully in his nature. Defoe had not the demoralizing chance of being the lord treasurer’s boon companion; but Harley made a dishonest partizan, a paid and slippery special pleader and secret agent, out of the free-lance of politics. From this moment the defenders and champions of Defoe have to turn into casuists, as he himself did. They have to give specious explanations to suppress and account for his shifts and changes, though at first they were sufficiently innocent. The evil grew, however, so that toward the end of his career even the apologist must keep silence; but this is the nature of all evil. If excuses are to be sought for Defoe’s conduct in this first beginning of his slavery, it will not be difficult to find them. The age, for one thing, was corrupt through and through. There was not a statesman but had two strings to his bow, nor a politician of any description who did not attempt to serve two masters. To hold the balance between Hanover and St.-Germain, ready to perform a demi-volt in the air at any moment as the scale should turn, was the science of the day. On the other hand, Defoe was now a ruined man, with a family to support, and nothing but his busy and inexhaustible pen to do it with. The material inducement of a certain income to fall back upon, whatever [Illustration: ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD. ENGRAVED BY JOHN P. DAVIS, AFTER THE ORIGINAL PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]