in the process. But after all as things go, it is something to
find that a journalist has really a conscience, even though his
conscience be a little too open to solid arguments. He was still capable
of blushing. Let us be thankful that in these days our journalists are
too high-minded to be ever required to blush. Here, however, I have only
to speak of the effect of De Foe's position upon his fictions. He had
early begun to try other than political modes of journalism. His account
of the great storm of 1703 was one of his first attempts as a reporter;
and it is characteristic that, as he was in prison at the time, he had
already to report things seen only by the eye of faith. He tried at an
early period to give variety to his 'Review' by some of the 'social'
articles which afterwards became the staple of the 'Tatler' and
'Spectator.' When, after the death of Queen Anne, there was a political
lull he struck out new paths. It was then that he wrote lives of
highwaymen and dissenting divines, and that he patched up any narratives
which he could get hold of, and gave them the shape of authentic
historical documents. He discovered the great art of interviewing, and
one of his performances might still pass for a masterpiece. Jack
Sheppard, when already in the cart beneath the gallows, gave a paper to
a bystander, of which the life published by De Foe on the following day
professed to be a reproduction. Nothing that could be turned into copy
for the newspaper or the sixpenny pamphlet of the day came amiss to this
forerunner of journalistic enterprise. This is the true explanation of
'Robinson Crusoe' and its successors. 'Robinson Crusoe,' in fact, is
simply an application on a larger scale of the device which he was
practising every day. It is purely and simply a masterly bit of
journalism. It affects to be a true story, as, of course, every story
in a newspaper affects to be true; though De Foe had made the not very
remote discovery that it is often easier to invent the facts than to
investigate them. He is simply a reporter _minus_ the veracity. Like any
other reporter, he assumes that the interest of his story depends
obviously and entirely upon its verisimilitude. He relates the
adventures of the genuine Alexander Selkirk, only elaborated into more
detail, just as a modern reporter might give us an account of Mr.
Stanley's African expedition if Mr. Stanley had been unable to do so for
himself. He is always in the attitude