penetrating, and even
microscopic vision; but he sees everything in his favourite black and
white or gray, and loses all the delights of gorgeous, though it may be
deceptive, colouring. One man sees everything in the forcible light and
shade of Rembrandt: a few heroes stand out conspicuously in a focus of
brilliancy from a background of imperfectly defined shadows, clustering
round the centre in strange but picturesque confusion. To another, every
figure is full of interest, with singular contrasts and sharply-defined
features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the want of perspective
and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet when we fix our attention
upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable vivacity and
vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become dimmer, but
he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes imperceptibly
developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to reach their
philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the imagination
is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which the logic is
employed, and, unconsciously to its owners, determines, for the most
part, the shape into which their theories will be moulded. Now, De Foe
was above the ordinary standard, in so far as he did not, like most of
us, see things merely as a blurred and inextricable chaos; but he was
below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness and dry
precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast picture,
from which all confusion was banished; everything was definite, clear,
and precise as in a photograph; as in a photograph, too, everything
could be accurately measured, and the result stated in figures; by the
same parallel, there was a want of perspective, for the most distant
objects were as precisely given as the nearest; and yet further, there
was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in natural objects
by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of imaginative
passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a
portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds,
though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a De Foe
are almost as rare as those which form the more elevated artist.

To illustrate this a little more in detail, one curious proof of the
want of the passionate element in De Foe's novels is the singular
calmness with which he describes his villains. He always