bits of realism. Thus, Moll Flanders gives an inventory of the goods she
took to America, and in the 'History of the Plague' Defoe adds a note to
his description of a burial-ground:--"N.B. The author of this Journal
lies buried in that very ground, being at his own desire, his sister
having been buried there a few weeks before." This enumeration of
particulars certainly gives an air of reality, but it is a trick easily
caught, and it is only now and then that he hits--as in the above
instance--on the characteristic circumstance which gives life and
reality to the narrative. Except in 'Robinson Crusoe,' much of his
detail is irrelevant and tiresome. But all the events on the lonely
island are admirably harmonized and have a cumulative effect. The
second part,--after the rescue,--written to take advantage of the
popularity of the first, is vastly inferior. The artistic selective
power is not exercised. This same concrete imagination which sees minute
details is also evident in his contemporary Swift, but with him it works
at the bidding of a far more fervid and emotional spirit.

Defoe is a pioneer in novel-writing and in journalism, and in both he
shows wonderful readiness in appreciating what the public would like and
energy in supplying them with it. To the inventor or discoverer of a new
form we cannot deny great credit. Most writers imitate, but it cannot be
said that Defoe founded himself on any predecessor, while his successors
are numbered by hundreds. A certain relationship could be traced between
his work, and the picaresque tales of France and Spain on the one hand
and the contemporary journals of actual adventure on the other; but not
one close enough to detract from his claim to original power.

Some of Defoe's political work, like 'The True-Born Englishman,' 'The
Shortest Way with Dissenters,' 'Reasons against the Succession of the
House of Hanover,' are written in the ironical tone. Mr. Saintsbury
seems to think that Defoe's method is not truly ironical, because it
differs from Swift's; but if we remember that one writer differeth from
another in irony, there is no reason to deny Defoe's mastery of this
penetrating weapon, especially when we find that he imposed on both
parties. The judges told him that "irony of that sort would bring him to
the gallows," but the eighteenth-century law of libel was more rigid in
its constructions than the canons of literary art.

Defoe made several attempts at poetical sa