metaphor of parentage, though honoured by
use, fits badly on to literary history; none the less the tradition
which describes him as the father of modern English prose is very near
the truth. He puts into practice for the first time the ideals,
described in the first chapter of this book, which were set up by the
scholars who let into English the light of the Renaissance. With the
exception of the dialogue on Dramatic Poesy, his work is almost all of
it occasional, the fruit of the mood of a moment, and written rather in
the form of a _causerie_, a kind of informal talk, than of a considered
essay. And it is all couched in clear, flowing, rather loosely jointed
English, carefully avoiding rhetoric and eloquence and striving always
to reproduce the ease and flow of cultured conversation, rather than the
tighter, more closely knit style of consciously "literary" prose. His
methods were the methods of the four great prose-writers who followed
him--Defoe, Addison, Steele, and Swift.

Of these Defoe was the eldest and in some ways the most remarkable. He
has been called the earliest professional author in our language, and if
that is not strictly true, he is at any rate the earliest literary
journalist. His output of work was enormous; he wrote on any and every
subject; there was no event whether in politics or letters or discovery
but he was not ready with something pat on it before the public interest
faded. It followed that at a time when imprisonment, mutilation, and the
pillory took the place of our modern libel actions he had an adventurous
career. In politics he followed the Whig cause and served the Government
with his pen, notably by his writings in support of the union with
Scotland, in which he won over the Scots by his description of the
commercial advantage which would follow the abolition of the border.
This line of argument, taken at a time when the governing of political
tendencies by commercial interests was by no means the accepted
commonplace it is now, proves him a man of an active and original mind.
His originality, indeed, sometimes over-reached the comprehension both
of the public and his superiors; he was imprisoned for an attack on the
Hanoverian succession, which was intended ironically; apparently he was
ignorant of what every journalist ought to know that irony is at once
the most dangerous and the most ineffectual weapon in the whole armoury
of the press. The fertility and ingenuity of his intell