,
or power of seeing clearly and accurately what he describes, before he
attempts to put this description on paper. As Defoe was but four years
old at the time of the Great Plague, his personal recollection of its
effects must have been of the dimmest; but during the years of childhood
(the most imaginative of life) he must often have conversed with persons
who had been through the plague, possibly with those who had recovered
from it themselves. He must often have visited localities ravaged by the
plague, and spared by the Great Fire of 1666; he must often have gazed
in childish horror at those awful mounds beneath which hundreds of human
bodies lay huddled together,--rich and poor, high and low, scoundrel and
saint,--sharing one common bed at last. His retentive memory must have
stored away at least the outline of those hideous images, so effectively
recombined many years later by means of his powerful though limited
imagination.

* * * * *

Defoe had the ability to become a good scholar, and to acquire the
elements of a good English style; but it is certain he never did. He
never had time, or rather he never took time, preferring invariably
quantity to quality. What work of his has survived till to-day is read,
not for its style, but in spite of its style. His syntax is loose and
unscholarly; his vocabulary is copious, but often inaccurate; many of
his sentences ramble on interminably, lacking unity, precision, and
balance. Figures of speech he seldom abuses because he seldom uses; his
imagination, as noticed before, being extremely limited in range. That
Defoe, in spite of these defects, should succeed in interesting us in
his "Plague," is a remarkable tribute to his peculiar ability as
described in the preceding paragraph.

In the course of the Notes, the editor has indicated such corrections
as are necessary to prevent the student from thinking that in reading
Defoe he is drinking from a "well of English undefiled." The art of
writing an English prose at once scholarly, clear-cut, and vigorous, was
well understood by Defoe's great contemporaries, Dryden, Swift, and
Congreve; it does not seem to have occurred to Defoe that he could learn
anything from their practice. He has his reward. "Robinson Crusoe" may
continue to hold the child and the kitchen wench; but the "Essay on
Dramatic Poesy," "The Battle of the Books," and "Love for Love," are for
the men and women of culture.