his disgraced
benefactor; yet Harley, as he lay in the Tower awaiting his trial on an
impeachment of high treason, issued a disclaimer concerning the _Secret
History_ and another pamphlet, entitled _An Account of the Conduct of
Robert, Earl of Oxford_. These pamphlets, he said, were not written with
his knowledge, or by his direction or encouragement; "on the contrary,
he had reason to believe from several passages therein contained that it
was the intention of the author, or authors, to do him a prejudice."
This disclaimer may have been dictated by a wish not to appear wanting
in respect to his judges; at any rate, Defoe's _Secret History_ bears no
trace on the surface of a design to prejudice him by its recital of
facts. _An Appeal to Honour and Justice_ was Defoe's next production.
While writing it, he was seized with a violent apoplectic fit, and it
was issued with a Conclusion by the Publisher, mentioning this
circumstance, explaining that the pamphlet was consequently incomplete,
and adding: "If he recovers, he may be able to finish what he began; if
not, it is the opinion of most that know him that the treatment which he
here complains of, and some others that he would have spoken of, have
been the apparent cause of his disaster." There is no sign of
incompleteness in the _Appeal_; and the Conclusion by the Publisher,
while the author lay "in a weak and languishing condition, neither able
to go on nor likely to recover, at least in any short time," gives a
most artistic finishing stroke to it. Defoe never interfered with the
perfection of it after his recovery, which took place very shortly. The
_Appeal_ was issued in the first week of January; before the end of the
month the indomitable writer was ready with a Third Part of the _Secret
History_, and a reply to Atterbury's _Advice to the Freeholders of
England_ in view of the approaching elections. A series of tracts
written in the character of a Quaker quickly followed, one rebuking a
Dissenting preacher for inciting the new Government to vindictive
severities, another rebuking Sacheverell for hypocrisy and perjury in
taking the oath of abjuration, a third rebuking the Duke of Ormond for
encouraging Jacobite and High-Church mobs. In March, Defoe published his
_Family Instructor_, a book of 450 pages; in July, his _History, by a
Scots Gentleman in the Swedish Service, of the Wars of Charles XII_.

Formidable as the list of these works seems, it does not represent