nd most of his journalistic work. This is
included in numberless pamphlets, broad-sheets, newspapers, and the
like, and is admirable expository matter on the public questions of the
day. Second, his fiction, 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Captain Singleton,'
'Colonel Jack,' 'Roxana,' and 'Moll Flanders.' Third, his miscellaneous
work; innumerable biographies and papers like the 'History of the
Plague,' the 'Account of the Great Storm,' 'The True Relation of the
Apparition of One Mrs. Veal,' etc. Between the last two classes there is
a close connection, since both were written for the market; and his
fictions proper are cast in the autobiographical form and are founded on
incidents in the lives of real persons, and his biographies contain a
large proportion of fiction.

Some knowledge of Defoe's political work is necessary to a comprehension
of the early eighteenth century. During his life the power of the people
and of the House of Commons was slowly extended, and the foundations of
the modern English Constitution were laid. The trading and manufacturing
classes, especially in the city of London, increased in wealth and
political consequence. The reading public on which a popular writer
could rely, widened. With these changes--partly as cause and purely as
consequence--came the establishment of "News Journals" and "Reviews."
Besides Addison's Spectator for the more cultured classes, multitudes of
periodicals were founded which aimed to reach a more general public. The
old method of a broad-sheet or the pamphlet, hawked in the streets or
exposed for sale and cried at the book-stalls, was still in use, but the
regular issue of a news-letter was taking its place. Defoe attacked the
public in both ways with unwearied assiduity. His poem 'The True-Born
Englishman' was sold in the streets to the astonishing number of
eighty thousand. In 1704 he established the Review, a bi-weekly. It ran
to 1713, and Defoe wrote nearly all of each number. Afterwards he was
for eight years main contributor and substantially manager of Mist's
Journal, a Tory organ; and one of the most serious and well-founded
charges against this first great journalist is, that he was deficient in
journalistic honor, and remained in the pay of the Whig Ministry while
attached to the Opposition organ. During this period he founded and
conducted several other journals.

Defoe possessed in a large measure the journalistic sense. No one ever
had a finer instinct in the subtl