ople believed him to be under the insuperable
displeasure of the Whigs, and he was really rendering them such
dangerous service in connexion with the Tory journals, that he should
convince the world of his misfortunes and his honesty. The _Serious
Reflections_ consist mainly of meditations on Divine Providence in times
of trouble, and discourses on the supreme importance of honest dealing.
They are put into the mouth of Robinson Crusoe, but the reader is warned
that they occurred to the author himself in the midst of real incidents
in his own life. Knowing what public repute said of him, he does not
profess never to have strayed from the paths of virtue, but he implies
that he is sincerely repentant, and is now a reformed character. "Wild
wicked Robinson Crusoe does not pretend to honesty himself." He
acknowledges his early errors. Not to do so would be a mistaken piece of
false bravery. "All shame is cowardice. The bravest spirit is the best
qualified for a penitent. He, then, that will be honest, must dare to
confess that he has been a knave." But the man that has been sick is
half a physician, and therefore he is both well fitted to counsel
others, and being convinced of the sin and folly of his former errors,
is of all men the least likely to repeat them. Want of courage was not a
feature in Defoe's diplomacy. He thus boldly described the particular
form of dishonesty with which, when he wrote the description, he was
practising upon the unconscious Mr. Mist.

"There is an ugly word called cunning, which is very pernicious
to it [honesty], and which particularly injures it by
hiding it from our discovery and making it hard to find.
This is so like honesty that many a man has been deceived
with it, and have taken one for t'other in the markets: nay,
I have heard of some who have planted this _wild honesty_, as
we may call it, in their own ground, have made use of it in
their friendship and dealings, and thought it had been the
true plant. But they always lost credit by it, and that was
not the worst neither, for they had the loss who dealt with
them, and who chaffered for a counterfeit commodity; and
we find many deceived so still, which is the occasion there is
such an outcry about false friends, and about sharping and
tricking in men's ordinary dealings with the world."

A master-mind in the art of working a man, as Bacon calls it, is surely
apparent here. Who could have s