intellect, however, were undiminished. He scarcely seemed old even at seventy-six. His evening parties at Craigcrook, or at his house in Moray Place, were the special delight of his friends; his acts of generosity and charity and unaffected kindness were still more numerous. Recent circumstances had revived his interest in the 'Edinburgh Review.' His only child, a daughter, was married to Mr Empson, professor of law in the East India College at Haileybury; and in 1847, on the death of Mr Macvey Napier, Mr Empson succeeded to the editorship of that journal from which his illustrious relative had derived such solid and lasting honours. Lord Jeffrey might now be seen in his leisure hours turning over the leaves of a critique destined for publication, and perhaps suggesting some golden thought or happy illustration to be set like a 'coigne of vantage' in the text. He was so engaged within one week of his death! Within four days of that event he sat in court, not having missed a day during the season; and one of his last writings was a letter, full of tenderness, addressed to the widow of his early friend, Sydney Smith, who had sent him a printed copy of the Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered by Mr Smith so far back as 1806. His early associates and occupations-the names and the duties so long familiar-were thus vividly before him at the last! The closing hours were linked in beautiful sequency and uniformity with the morning splendour. On returning from the court on Tuesday, January 26, 1850, Lord Jeffrey had a slight accession of cold, which brought on his constitutional complaint, bronchitis; fever followed, and at six o'clock on Saturday afternoon, while his medical attendant was in the act of feeling his pulse, life became extinct. His remains were interred in the Western Cemetery, without any funereal pomp, as was his own desire, but mourned deeply and widely with no common sorrow. He had lived and died among his own people; and his native country, amidst her grief, rejoiced, and will long rejoice-in his fame.

DANIEL DE FOE.

AMONG the books which may be reckoned as belonging to the world's

acknowledged stereotypes, there are probably few that have been read more frequently, or proved acceptable to a greater variety of tastes, than the illustrious 'Robinson Crusoe.' While, however, in connection with this performance the author's name has become so extensively familiar, it is principally by means of it that he continues to be remembered. The generality of modern readers know little of the extent and merit of De Foe's political and controversial writings, or of the conspicuous position which he occupied on account of them with his contemporaries. Having reference chiefly to the disputes and contentions of his times, these productions have naturally lost much of their original interest, and their value has been therefore considerably diminished. It is nevertheless conceived that they are worthy of a more general investigation and attention; and accordingly it is here intended to furnish some account of them, and also to present such an outline of the writer's personal history, character, sufferings, and disappointments, for conscience' sake and otherwise, as can be conveniently rendered within the limits of the present Paper.

De Foe's entire works consist of more than two hundred separate publications, embracing a vast variety of subjects, and all exhibiting evidences of great ability, honesty of intention, and a keen perception of just and wholesome principles. As a politician, he was throughout his whole career the steady advocate of liberal interests, the manly and upright champion of justice, of tolerance, and of all those citizen-rights valued by honest Englishmen. Living in a turbulent era of our history, when the pretensions of rival and selfish factions were agitated with an inveterate and unprincipled animosity, he seems to have been in great part proof against the prevalent contagion, and to have entertained the questions in dispute with a scrupulous regard to their truthfulness or reasonable expediency. By being an honester man than the generality, he became the object of general misapprehension and opprobrium. Few men had more of the world's notice in his day; none more of its calumny and persecution. In a more than ordinary degree he shared the fate of every man who, by genius or cultivation, is in advance of his own times. The party whose aims and schemings he opposed he very naturally offended; but he was also not unfrequently misrepresented and calumniated by the

very party whose interests he endeavoured to promote. This party consisted of the nonconforming Presbyterians, who, as the successors of the Puritans of the foregoing age, continued to protest against the narrowness and dominancy of the Protestantism of the Reformation. De Foe is in a certain sense the representative of the aims and spirit of modern Independency: he was in creed and political principle a dissenting Presbyterian, and he advocated most of the claims and opinions by which the dissenting sects were then, and are still in part, distinguished; but he seems, upon the whole, to have been greatly superior to his party, inasmuch as he was less sectarian, and more liberal and catholic in his sentiments.

In proceeding to narrate the principal events and transactions of his life, it may be well to mention at the outset that the particle De-for reasons which cannot now be ascertained-was adopted, and not inherited, by our author; his original family name being simply Foe, without any euphonious or ornamental prefix. Of his ancestry or immediate progenitors there is very little known. The earliest that has been mentioned is his grandfather, Daniel Foe, who was a substantial English yeoman, and farmed his own estate at Elton in Northamptonshire. He is supposed to have been attached to the Cavalier and High Church party; and as an evidence of his respectability, it has been recorded that he kept a pack of hounds for his diversion. Daniel pleasantly relates, that his grandfather's huntsman had the irreverent habit of naming his dogs after the most illustrious officers in the Puritan and Royal forces: he had his Roundhead and his Cavalier, his Goring and his Waller, and all the generals in both armies were hounds in his pack; till the times turning, the old gentleman was fain to scatter the pack, and make them up of more dog-like surnames.' Besides scattering his hounds, it would seem that Mr Foe had also to disperse his family, for we find that James Foe, who is presumed to have been a younger son, sent at a proper age to London,' and there apprenticed to a butcher. In this calling he became afterwards established in St Giles's, Cripplegate, and after flourishing in business for many years, he ultimately retired upon a decent competency, which he enjoyed until his death. He was the father of our celebrated Daniel, who was born in the parish of St Giles's aforesaid in the year 1661.

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His parents having embraced the Nonconformists' principles, the boy was accordingly brought up in their faith. Of the manner in which he spent his early years there is no existing record. The imagination is left to picture him as it can. A lively and pleasant fellow we conceive him to have been, of quick and generous impulses, not backward to contend in feats of sport or warfare, but nowise given to the exaction of unfair advantages, for he says he learned from a boxing English boy not to strike an enemy when he is down.' One cannot readily bring his figure and appearance very near to us; but there assuredly, in St Giles's parish, Cripplegate, he once visibly lived and went to school with his contemporaries. Nightly for some years was he perhaps seated at the family table in the sitting-room-a little back parlour, as we fancy, behind the butcher's shop-conning lessons for the coming day, and possibly relieving his strained attention by counting the flies upon the ceiling. There were times, doubtless, when he read books for his own amusement: most likely the historical portions of the Bible, and probably the wondrous

allegory of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' On Sundays he had to put on a grave face, and go forth with the family to the meeting-house in Little St Helen's, Bishopsgate Street,' to hear the Rev. Dr Annelsey, 'an esteemed Presbyterian minister,' who had been formerly ejected from the incumbency of Cripplegate. There, with subdued and steady countenance, in the grave Presbyterian congregation, Daniel undoubtedly sat and listened to the fervid eloquence of the preacher, and imbibed from it something of the manly independence and invincible love of liberty which he was destined afterwards to display in his own career. It is even conceivable that the good minister sometimes visited his father's house, and it is not unlikely that, on suitable occasions, he may have put his hand on the boy's head, and bade him remember to stand resolutely by the principles and religious doctrines in which he had been instructed.

It were interesting to know whether Daniel ever carried a butcher's tray, and what was the price of mutton, as his father retailed it to customers, two hundred years ago. To such questions as these, however, we can now obtain no answer. But judging from the prosperous circumstances of his family, and from the fact that young De Foe was early destined for the Presbyterian ministry, it seems improbable that he was ever actively connected with his father's business. At the age of fourteen, after he had been sufficiently qualified by inferior teachers, he was sent to a Nonconformist college, or academy, at Newington, then under the direction of the Rev. Charles Morton, a gentleman who had the reputation of being a 'polite and profound scholar.' Here he is reported to have had great advantages for learning, and to have lived in very agreeable society. Little, however, is known of his manner of life, or of the progress which he made while residing at this institution; but it has been concluded, from certain passages in his writings, that he had not failed to turn his opportunities to account. He has informed us that he had in his time been master of five languages, and that he had studied the mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, geography, and history. With the theory and practical capabilities of the English constitution he was thoroughly acquainted; and he sometimes boasts of having investigated politics as a science. Under the direction of his tutor, he went through the authorised courses of theology, in which he acquired such a proficiency as enabled him to cope with the acutest writers of the disputatious age in which he lived. His knowledge of ecclesiastical history was also very considerable; and indeed his attainments in all departments of general information were such as to entitle him to be considered a person of great intelligence and cultivation. A man of deep or extensive learning,' in the technical acceptation, he certainly never was, nor as such was he ever desirous of being regarded; but that he was anything like the illiterate person' which some of his opponents delighted to represent him to be, there is evidence enough in his writings to disprove. The poet Gay, adopting the cant of the Scriblerus Club, speaks of him as a fellow who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning,' and cites him as 'a lively instance of those wits who, as an ingenious author says, will endure but one skimming;' but this is a judgment which time has since emphatically reversed; and it is not likely that it will be again referred to, either in depreciation of De Foe, or by way of illustrating the poet's penetration.

At what time De Foe quitted the Newington institution is not distinctly known; neither is it apparent what induced him to abandon the design of entering the Presbyterian ministry. Perhaps he had no sufficient sense of any call to the work. It has even been surmised that the volatility of his disposition might have proved incompatible with that dignified vocation. An early turn for authorship, and an inveterate tendency for satire, may have contributed to unfit him for entering into the ministry with an exclusive devotion to its duties, and may possibly have determined him to renounce his purpose, for the sake of addressing himself more freely to literary and political pursuits. At anyrate, at the age of twenty-one he came forth boldly as an author, embracing the popular side in politics. His first production was a spirited lampoon, levelled at the noted Roger L'Estrange, who, in a work entitled a 'Guide to the Inferior Clergy,' had recently advanced some highly illiberal notions. De Foe's pamphlet bore the title of Speculum Crape-Gownorum; or a Looking-Glass for the Young Academicks, new Foyl'd: with Reflections on some of the late High-flown Sermons, to which is added an Essay towards a Sermon of the Newest Fashion. By a Guide to the Inferior Clergy. London: 1682.' The title was adopted in allusion to the crape-gowns then in use among the inferior clergy, and the banter was sufficiently effective to put them out of fashion, and thereby damage the respectability of the material, against which, however, the author had no particular antipathy. The design of the work was to expose and ridicule the pretensions of the High Church faction. The most amusing portion is the sermon, which is a clever parody of the pulpit discourses of the times, and was especially intended to satirise the 'crape-gown men' for their interferences with politics, that they may see how ridiculous they are, when they stand fretting, and fuming, and heating themselves about state affairs in their pulpits.' Its success with the town, and the fertility of the subject, induced the author to follow it up with a second part, in which, however, he deals more seriously with the government on account of its severity to Dissenters, and by exhibiting the practical effects of persecution, cleverly exposes its absurdity. The work seems to have attracted attention enough to lead some one to reply to it, as the same year we have notice of a publication bearing the title of 'Reflections upon Two Scurrilous Libels, called Speculum Crape-Gownorum.' The author is commonly supposed to have been L'Estrange himself.

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Three years after the publication of his pamphlet-namely, in the summer of 1685-De Foe engaged in practical hostility against the government of James II., by joining the standard of the Duke of Monmouth when he landed in Dorsetshire with his hundred and fifty men, for the purpose of delivering the country from the dominion of arbitrary rule, and the anticipated sway of popery, and thereby gaining for himself the crown of Englanda romantic kind of invasion,' says Welwood, which is scarcely paralleled in history.' On the suppression of this rebellion, our adventurous volunteer narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. Eluding pursuit, however, he managed to save his head; and being personally unknown in that part of the kingdom which was the seat of the insurrection, he does not appear to have been afterwards suspected, and therefore was never brought to trial for his treason. Returning subsequently to London, he next proceeded to settle himself peaceably in business, resolved, if possibly,