foremost champion of
Dissent.

Defoe's loyalty to King William, however, must pass unquestioned. "The
True Born Englishman" procured him the notice of the king, whose
confidence he claims to have been honored with. His real character as
a journalist and publicist grows quickly visible after the death of
William III. His genius as a "trimmer" makes sheer irony of his most
appealing and eloquent pieces. Swift says of himself that he wrote
that reputation might stand him in the room of a title and coach and
six; Defoe flourished his pen as a tradesman, for money. Swift claims
to have been the greatest master of irony of his day, nay, to have
invented that form of writing. But Defoe surely is his equal, and in
"The Shortest Way" out and away his superior. The writer's gravity
completely deceived the world. When it was known who was the author,
the Dissenters were hardly less indignant than the High Churchmen. The
satiric recommendations were indeed in the highest degree alarming.
The Tory party had approved with complacency while they thought the
piece a serious proposal. When they found out Defoe wrote it, they
hunted him down and forced him to surrender himself. A hue-and-cry
advertisement in the papers while he was a fugitive, survives as one
of the best pen-and-ink sketches in the language: "He is a
middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion
and dark brown coloured hair, but wears a wig: a hooked nose, a sharp
chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." "The Shortest Way"
was ordered to be burnt, and Defoe sentenced to pay a fine of 200
marks to Queen Anne, to stand three times in the pillory, to be
imprisoned during the queen's pleasure, and to find sureties for his
good behavior for seven years.

The genius of Eyre Crowe has given a wonderful life and color to this
memorable incident. This dead thing seems charged with a very passion
of vitality in the charming illustration that accompanies this sketch.
It is impossible to recur to the degradation of one of Great Britain's
finest geniuses, at the instance of men of no more importance to
posterity than the worms which have eaten them up, without wrath and
disgust. But he was popular, and the crowd used him handsomely. They
pelted him with flowers and drank his health. Pope, in a famous line,
speaks of the London Monument that, like a tall bully, lifts its head
and lies, because of the inscription upon it that charged the Papists
wit