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Learn JavaScript
with p5.js
Coding for Visual Learners
—
Engin Arslan
 Learn JavaScript
with p5.js
Coding for Visual Learners

Engin Arslan
Learn JavaScript with p5.js: Coding for Visual Learners
Engin Arslan
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-3425-9 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-3426-6

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3426-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935139

Copyright © 2018 by Engin Arslan

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Table of Contents
About the Author��������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii
About This Book����������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix

Chapter 1: Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������1
Why Learn Coding?�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1
Coding vs. Programming���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������2
On HTML and CSS�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3
Why Learn JavaScript?�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4
Why Do We Have Different Languages?����������������������������������������������������������������6
Learning JavaScript with p5.js�����������������������������������������������������������������������������8

Chapter 2: Getting Started������������������������������������������������������������������13

Installing p5.js�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������13
Gentle Introduction to JavaScript������������������������������������������������������������������������16
Getting Started with p5.js�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������24
More About Functions�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������26
Coordinates in p5.js��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������31
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35
Practice���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������36

Chapter 3: Colors in p5.js�������������������������������������������������������������������37

Color Functions in p5.js��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37
Changing Shape Colors���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������39

iii
Table of Contents

Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������42
Practice���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������42

Chapter 4: Operators and Variables����������������������������������������������������45

Setup�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������45
Variables�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47
Variables Continued��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������49
Predefined Variables in p5.js�������������������������������������������������������������������������������55
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������58
Practice���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������59

Chapter 5: Conditional Statements and Comparison Operators���������61

frameCount, frameRate, and frame���������������������������������������������������������������������61
Conditionals��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������66
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������75
Practice���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������76

Chapter 6: More p5.js Variables���������������������������������������������������������77

mouseIsPressed��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������77
mouseX and mouseY������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������80
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������83
Practice���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������84

Chapter 7: Loops���������������������������������������������������������������������������������85
For Loop��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85
Random and Noise Functions�����������������������������������������������������������������������������92
Summary������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������99
Practice�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������100

iv
 Table of Contents

Chapter 8: Functions������������������������������������������������������������������������101
Creating Functions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������101
Revisiting Setup and Draw Functions���������������������������������������������������������������107
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108
Practice�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108

Chapter 9: Objects����������������������������������������������������������������������������109
Using Object Initializer��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������109
Using the Constructor Function������������������������������������������������������������������������117
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������123

Chapter 10: Arrays����������������������������������������������������������������������������125

Using the push Method�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������125
Using Arrays������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������133
Using the remainder Operator���������������������������������������������������������������������������136
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������141
Practice�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������141

Chapter 11: Events���������������������������������������������������������������������������143

Using mousePressed����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������143
Using keyPressed ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������145
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������151
Practice�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������151

Chapter 12: More on p5.js����������������������������������������������������������������153

Rotate and Translate�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������153
Push and Pop����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������164
Practice�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������165

v
Table of Contents

Chapter 13: Final Project������������������������������������������������������������������167

Getting Started��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������168
User Interaction�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������176
Keeping the User Score������������������������������������������������������������������������������������181
Final Code���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������198
Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������208

Appendix: Final Words����������������������������������������������������������������������209

W
 here to Go Next����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������210
Additional Resources����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������212

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������213

vi
About the Author
Engin Arslan is a Software Developer with a Bachelor of Science in
Materials Engineering and a Postgraduate Degree in Visual Effects. Before
becoming a Developer, he worked as a Visual Effects Artist / Technical
Director on films and TV shows including Resident Evil, Tron, Mama,
Pompeii, Vikings, and Strain. He received an Emmy nomination and won a
Canadian Screen Award for his achievements in Visual Effects. During his
time in VFX, he fell in love with Python and with programming in general.
As a result, he changed careers to be able to immerse himself completely
in software development. Engin currently works at a Toronto-based digital
services company, where he helps develop solutions in strategic problem
spaces using emerging technologies. He also works at Seneca College as
a part-time professor and creates online courses for Lynda/LinkedIn and
Pluralsight.

vii
About This Book
The emphasis of this book will be primarily on learning programming
using JavaScript and p5.js and secondarily in creating visuals. The main
focus is to teach you how to program so that you can choose to pursue
whatever field that you would like with your newly established skill set.
The skills that you will acquire from this book are highly transferrable and
can be used with whatever you choose to build: whether web applications,
programmable robots, or generative art. This means that I will provide
you with enough context so that you can build a strong foundation for
programming. But I also won’t hinder your momentum with irrelevant
technical or theoretical points. The aim is to build a strong but a minimum
viable knowledge to get you running with coding. This is the book that I
wished I had available when I was learning coding myself.
If you are an artist or a visual designer, this book is perfect for you as
you might find the examples we will be building to be directly relevant
to your work. If not, this is still a great book for learning programming as
the visual nature of the exercises will help you grasp the fundamentals
of programming more easily and let you build a strong foundation in a
shorter amount of time.
This book will present various JavaScript and p5.js features and
concepts in the following chapters. The knowledge will be reinforced
by building several useful examples like an animation and a data
visualization; and as a final project, we will be building a game that can be
deployed online using what we learned in this book!

ix
About This Book

Here is a rundown of the topics that we will be covering:

Chapter 1 - Introduction: Provides an overview of coding versus
programming.
Chapter 2 - Getting Started: We will learn some very basic JavaScript
commands and operations to get started with using p5.js.
Chapter 3 - Colors in p5.js: This will be a p5.js-specific chapter where
we learn about how colors are defined and used in p5.js. This doesn't
pertain to JavaScript but needs to be explored regardless to be able to use
p5.js in a comfortable manner.
Chapter 4 - Operations and Variables: We will make use of the
JavaScript knowledge we acquired in the second chapter in p5.js context.
Chapter 5 - Conditional Statements and Comparison Operators:
This chapter will allow us to write programs that can respond to different
conditions by using conditionals and comparison operators.
Chapter 6 - More p5.js Variables: This will be another p5.js-specific
chapter where we will learn about several library-specific variables.
Chapter 7 - Loops: Here we will learn about loops, which will allow us
to build programs that handle enormous amounts of calculations.
Chapter 8 - Functions: Functions are the building blocks of JavaScript
and we will learn more about them in order to build more scalable,
modular, and robust programs.
Chapter 9 - Objects and Chapter 10 - Arrays: Objects and Arrays
are JavaScript data structures that will allow us to organize our code and
handle complexity in more intelligent ways.
Chapter 11 - Events: Event handling will allow us to write programs
that handles user interaction.
Chapter 12 - More on p5.js: Another p5.js-only chapter where we
learn more about library-specific features before diving into our final
project.
Chapter 13 - Final Project: We will build a game using everything we
have learned up to this chapter!

x
CHAPTER 1

Introduction
At this age and time that we live in, coding is simply invaluable. It has
the power to uplift your career, your future prospects, and even your
intellectual capacity. Computation is driving one of the largest capital
expansions in history, and there has never been a better time to learn
coding than now.

Why Learn Coding?

My first serious interaction with coding was at college. We had to take a
course on a programming language called C Sharp. I failed the course the
first time I had to take it and barely passed it the second time when I had
to take it again. With that defeat in mind, I stayed away from coding for
the longest time. I considered it to be a talent that I simply didn’t possess.
Later, I went on to change my career from engineering to visual effects as
I wanted to work in a field that had more room for creative expression.
But working in visual effects, I came to realize that the entire operation is
actually enabled by the power of computation. From the software that is
used to the pipeline management that facilitates the production… Coding
is everywhere. It allows studios to deliver mind-blowing effects for movies
that make hundreds of millions of dollars in the box office.
Upon realizing the power of coding in my field, I decided to embark
on a journey to learn more about it. I ended up teaching myself Python,
a programming language that is widely used in visual effects. And doing

© Engin Arslan 2018 1

E. Arslan, Learn JavaScript with p5.js, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3426-6_1
Chapter 1 Introduction

so has been immensely gratifying. Not only has it allowed me to become

more accomplished in my work in visual effects and create award-winning
effects, but it has also empowered me to transition to an even more
rewarding career in software development.

Coding vs. Programming

You must be hearing the terms coding and programming in similar
contexts and might be wondering what the difference between them
is. In the past few years, coding has become the term of choice to make
programming more approachable to the general population. Basically the
premise is that you could be coding and still be contributing to the digital
economy without actually doing programming.
Let me give you an example of that: you could be using web languages
such as HTML and CSS, which are not programming languages. So when
coding in those languages you are not really programming but styling
or structuring websites (more on their usage in the next section). But
you could also be coding in JavaScript, which is an actual programming
language. Programming languages allow you to make a computer “do”
things. Every time you are programming something, you are also coding.
But when you are coding, you might not be programming. Coding is a
more general term that is used for describing all cases where you are
communicating intent to the computer.
Basically you can think of programming as a subset of coding. But if
truth be told, these two terms are used almost interchangeably nowadays.
The main purpose of this book is to teach you how to program. We will be
coding for programming purposes by using the programming language
JavaScript.

2
 Chapter 1 Introduction

On HTML and CSS

Looking at my path for learning programming, I find some of the efforts to
teach coding to beginners to be a bit lacking. One of the primary problems
in the area is using HTML and CSS as introductory languages.
The problem with these languages is that they are not even
programming languages! HTML is a markup language that is used to
define the structure of a document in a way that a web browser would
understand. For example, HTML teaches you how to write text for a
browser so that the browser would know what parts of it is a document
header vs. a paragraph, etc…
Likewise, CSS is not a programming language either. It is a styling
language that allows us to style HTML documents to have them look
aesthetically pleasing and ideally make them more user friendly than
before. Furthermore, even though CSS can be used to create incredibly
good looking results, it is usually very unintuitive to work with and can be
hard to reason about even for a programmer. Learning CSS, you are not
only not learning programming, you are very likely engaging in an activity
that might not be fun as a beginner if styling websites is not your sole
intention.
This push to teach coding using these languages is understandable.
After all, given the large dominance of web applications and their
immense profitability in certain cases, people found themselves wanting
to build their own projects for the Web. And if you are to build a website,
you need to use these languages to a certain degree. But having these
languages as a starting point could create a misconception about what
coding is. Coding can be an immensely rewarding and engaging activity
when you are building programs or applications as the domain of
possibilities is substantially bigger. As discussed previously, we need to be
using programming languages to build programs so the apparent question
is: “What makes a language a programming language?”

3
Chapter 1 Introduction

You can always check Wikipedia for a semi-formal definition. But to

me, for a language to be considered a programming language, it needs to
have certain control structures available to it that would allow us to express
some basic operations. Even this definition probably makes little sense
to a beginner. What is meant is that there are structures in programming
languages that allow the computer to perform logical operations. Some of
the examples of such structures, which we will see more about later, are the
following: conditionals that allow the program to output different results
based on given conditions and variables that store values or loops that
allow a program to repeat operations for a desired amount of time. Don’t
worry if none of this makes any sense right now; the purpose of this book is
for us to learn about all these fundamental programming concepts.
Almost all programming languages have these kinds of basic structures
that enable us to construct immensely more complicated applications.
Think of English, or any other language you might know. You have verbs,
nouns, and adjectives. And using these building blocks, people can say
the simplest things or go on to write amazing novels. And these are the
building blocks that are missing from HTML and CSS that make people
miss out on what could be achieved when using programming languages.
In this book we will learn all these basic structures that would allow
us to communicate our intent to the computer using the programming
language JavaScript.

Why Learn JavaScript?

There are many programming languages out there. This book will be
teaching you how to code, by using the immensely popular programming
language JavaScript.
JavaScript is one of the most widely used programming languages out
there as it is built into every web browser. Due to this, almost all the web
pages and applications out there use JavaScript to some degree. In recent

4
 Chapter 1 Introduction

years JavaScript started to be used not only to program user interaction in

web pages but also server side - back-end - applications, Internet of Things
(IOT) devices or mobile apps for platforms such as Android or iPhone.
Even though it has its roots in web development, JavaScript knowledge is
now applicable to a vast number of other domains.
Given the popularity and ubiquity of JavaScript, it is really easy to find
resources and information about it if you are to ever get stuck. It has a big,
vibrant community behind it. In the popular Q&A website, StackOverflow,
there are more than a million questions that are related to JavaScript. If you
end up coding in this language and get stuck in a problem, the chances are
that someone else also had the same problem, posted a question on this
website, and got an answer that you can learn from.
I won’t go into details of what makes a programming language
dynamic or static, but being a dynamic programming language, JavaScript
code is more concise and easier to write compared to static languages.
Listings 1-1 and 1-2 are some examples where a simple statement that
displays the words ‘hello world’ to the screen are written by using different
languages. Notice how much shorter it is to write the same code using
JavaScript.

Listing 1-1. Displaying Hello World to the screen in C++ (Source:

http://helloworldcollection.de/)
// Hello World in C++ (pre-ISO)
#include <iostream.h>

main()
{
        cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
        return 0;
}

5
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The "Iliad," a terrible task for Pope, executed through long years of
advice from all quarters, of doubt, and of weariness, was a triumph,
celebrated in charming verses by Gay's "Welcome to Mr. Pope on His
Return from Greece". In that strange age the noble, the great, the
beautiful swelled Pope's triumph; literature was fashionable. Pope's
"Iliad" can never be superseded as a masterpiece of English
literature. He was no scholar, but he had many friends to help him,
and his plan was to give the spirit of the Epic, as he conceived it, in
a form which his age could appreciate. It is almost as if he had
taken Homer's theme and written the poem himself. The minor
characteristics of the antique manner are gone; but his age would
have thought them barbarous and fatiguing. Wherever there is
rhetoric, as in the speeches of the heroes, Pope is magnificent;
where there are pictures of external nature he is conventional. But
he is never slow. His conventions were those of his age, and are
extinct, but time cannot abate the splendour of his spirit.
In doing the "Odyssey," of which the first part appeared in 1725, he
was aided by Fenton and Broome, who, under his supervision, wrote
exactly like himself. With them, too, there were quarrels; they were
not paid in what they reckoned a satisfactory style. Pope received
about £10,000 in all for Homer, a large sum in those days, and not
likely to be equalled by the gains of any later translator of Homer. He
dabbled in the shares of the South Sea Bubble, and appears to have
been rather a winner than a loser.
He had accumulated quarrels to his heart's content, hence "The
Dunciad" of 1728-1729: a satire on minor men of letters, in which he
shows wit and ill-nature enough, with a vein of true poetry in the
conclusion; but the dirt and the personalities are now rather amazing
than agreeable; while the necessary notes below drive the text into
the garrets of the page. Not even Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who
had laughed at Pope's attempts to make love to her, escaped a flick
of the whip of scandal in "The Dunciad". Perhaps Pope had not been
gently treated, but nobody admires his revenges. The business of
publication was managed with all the intricate wiles and subterfuges
in which he took such strange delight. One of his butts, Cibber,
retorted in kind, and was successful in giving pain: Theobald, a
useful editor of Shakespeare, Pope assailed, because Theobald had
not spared the errors in his own edition (1728).
His later works, Epistles to Burlington and Arbuthnot, "The Essay on
Man," the "Imitations of Horace," are full of the wit and polished
verse that were natural to Pope, and were fostered by his friendships
with St. John (Bolingbroke), Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot; friendships
that never failed, and eternally testify to the better part in Pope,
despite his tempers of malice and his feline arts. His enthusiasm for
Atterbury, exhibited in letters written before the bishop's too well-
merited exile, is the most romantic point in his career. Late in life he
was kind to Johnson and Thomson; he had been a good son; his
character greatly irritated his most learned editor, Mr. Elwin; but
nobody suffered so much from his faults of jealousy and
suspiciousness as Pope himself. He died on 30 May, 1744.
Ever since the romantic movement of the early nineteenth century,
people have asked "Was Pope a poet?" He was, in the highest
degree, the kind of poet that his age and the English society of his
age desired and deserved; a town poet—where rural nature is
concerned, conventional and unobservant; where Man is concerned
a poet of Man, literary, political, and fashionable. In the great fight
over Pope's claim to be a poet, of 1819, when Bowles was the
assailant, Byron was the champion of Pope: Byron himself being a
satirist and a poet of mankind, urban, political, and fashionable, as
well as piratical. Horace was busied with the same field of human
nature (not with the desperate pirate and remorseful Giaour) but
nobody has asked "Was Horace a poet?"
Pope wrote in reaction against the conceited poetry of the
seventeenth century; he did well, though the manner was already
dead, but he never came within sight or hearing of the inspired
songs of Lovelace and Carew. The world of Pope was in many ways
a limited and evanescent and artificial world; but in his verse it lives
eternally, and that is enough for his fame, and testimony sufficient to
his genius. He brought his instrument, the decasyllabic couplet, to
the perfection required for his purpose, each couplet existing in and
for itself. But in reading him we feel that "paper-sparing Pope" wrote
down his best passages, detached, on the backs of letters; they are
separate inspirations, and are fitted into the whole like fragments of
a mosaic: for example the lines on Atticus are fitted into "The Epistle
to Arbuthnot". His rhymes, as "fault" to "thought," are not the things
on which he bestowed most pains.
Concerning other poets—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare—we feel
that, in any age of literature, in any period of taste, under any
conventions, they must have been great. Pope, on the other hand,
cannot easily be thought of as having the capacity for greatness,
except in the literary conditions of the early eighteenth century. But
in that period he was supreme.

Prior.
From the galaxy of wits who dined with Harley and St. John and
were addressed in that splendid society by their Christian names,
Jonathan or Mat, Matthew Prior stands somewhat apart. His duties
as a diplomatist carried him abroad; he owed his diplomatic posts to
his wit, not to his birth, which Queen Anne spoke of as unpleasantly
obscure. He was born on 14 July, 1664, at Wimborne or Winburn, in
Dorsetshire; Westminster was his school, and St. John's, Cambridge,
his college. Here he took his degree, in 1686, and obtained a
fellowship in 1688. He attracted the notice of the Whigs by
parodying Dryden's "Hind and Panther," in "The Town and Country
Mouse," aided in the jest by Charles Montagu. Dryden is very
improbably said to have wept; the Whigs, at all events, laughed, and
in 1691 made Prior secretary to the Embassy in Holland. He held the
same post at Versailles later; at this time he was a sincere eulogist
of our Dutch deliverer, William III, whom he celebrated in "The
Carmen Seculare" (1700), indeed constantly, like Horace, he
"praising his tyrant sung". Reviewing history, he places William
before a number of Roman heroes, and, remembering that William's
wife is a Stuart, bids the god Janus
 Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.

But, as thou dwell'st upon that heavenly name

To grief for ever sacred, as to fame,
O! read it to thyself: in silence weep!
Is the name Charles or Mary? At this time there was a fashionable
cult of Mary Stuart. This long ode, granting the mythology, has
considerable merit, though, says Dr. Johnson, "Who can be
supposed to have laboured through it?" Not the Doctor, as he
candidly confesses.
Under Queen Anne, Prior was tempted over to the Tory party, and
his doings, as a negotiator with France, were thought, and perhaps
not unjustly, to smack of Jacobitism. He was in Paris when Beatrix
Esmond's Duke of Hamilton was about to go thither on a mission,
and there seems little doubt (from a record by Lockhart of Carnwath,
the leader of the Scottish Cavaliers) that Hamilton was to bring over
to England, in disguise, the exiled son of James II, "the Pretender,"
as Colonel Esmond does in Thackeray's novel. But Hamilton fell in a
duel with Mohun, and that chance was lost.
As acknowledged ambassador, Prior was at the French Court from
August, 1712, to August, 1714, when the death of Queen Anne
scattered the Tories. Early in 1715 he was locked up on suspicion of
treason, and was not released till three years later.
The hope of the Whigs was to decapitate Harley, who lay in the
Tower; but Harley could have involved Marlborough, possessing a
fatal letter of his, and finally Prior and Harley were released. He had
now no resources except his college fellowship, but his friends by
securing a large subscription for his poems, and by the generosity of
the family of Harley, placed him beyond want. He died on September
18, 1721.
Prior does not live by his "Alma, or the Progress of the Mind," a long
poem in rhymed eight syllable couplets, in the manner of Butler's
"Hudibras". This work is a kind of comic history of Psychology, and
ends with Barry Lyndon's rhyme to Aristotle, "Here, Jonathan, your
master's bottle!" Prior's "Solomon," on the vanity of knowledge,
pleasure, and power, in heroic rhymed verse, is best remembered for
two lines to Abra, and might, so easily does the author take his
theme, be called the vanity of melancholy, though it closes in serious
admonitions to "the weary King Ecclesiast".
Prior's tales in the manner of Fontaine's "Contes," are lively, like
these; and like these, may have seemed coarse to such a moralist as
Sir Richard Steele.
Prior, in fact, lives by his merry, tender, light, and bright social
verses, in tripping measures, for example, "Thus Kitty, beautiful and
young" (for Gay's patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry), "To a
Child of Quality," "The Merchant, to Secure His Treasure," "Dear
Chloe, how blubber'd is that pretty face," and many other things; the
best reminding us more of the charming trifles in the Greek
Anthology than of Horace.

Gay.
The spoiled improvident child in the group of wits was John Gay, to
whom Pope and Swift were attached by the most tender affection.
Gay was an author who never aimed high, but who almost always
hit his mark and pleased the Town. But his success was so much the
consequence of choosing the happy moments, his poems are so
completely poems of his age, that he is now praised at a venture
rather than read. He was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire (1685);
though of an old family he "was without prospect of hereditary
riches," and was "placed apprentice with a silk-mercer" in London.
Perhaps some fair customer discovered that he had a soul above
silk; the Duchess of Monmouth, the heiress of the Scotts of
Buccleuch, made him her secretary (1712). Becoming acquainted
with Pope, Gay dedicated to him (1713) his "Rural Sports" in the
usual heroic rhymed couplets. Gay's descriptions of nature, and his
praises, are more genuine than, in that age of the Town, such things
usually were. He writes of angling "with his eye on the object," in
Wordsworth's phrase. His remarks on fishing with the worm, a
theme unworthy of the Muse, are judicious. As to fly fishing, Gay is
among those who advocate a search for the insect in the waters and
an exact imitation. He would have us fish "fine and far off," with "a
single hair" next the hook, and perhaps he is the first to recommend
the use of the "dry" or floating fly: "Upon the curling surface let it
glide," not sunk. The catching of a salmon is not ill described, but as
Gay retains his "single hair," he must always have been broken if he
did happen to hook a fish. For his own part, he never uses either
worm or the natural fly: never tries for coarse fish—pike, perch, and
so forth,—and this justifies the affection of his friends.
In "The Shepherd's Week" (1714) his Idylls describe real peasants
with their folklore superstitions, but Virgil, or Theocritus, is still
imitated. The pastoral is an extinct species of literature, but Gay's
were more natural and popular than Pope's. Dedicated to St. John,
in verses celebrating the recovery of Queen Anne, who presently
died, the poems were ungrateful to the Hanoverian Court, and Gay
lost the secretaryship to an ambassador.
Gay's "Welcome from Greece, to Mr. Pope on his having finished his
translation of the 'Iliad,'" has already been mentioned as one of the
most charming relics of that golden age of letters, wit, and
friendship.
Friendship did not aid wit, when Pope and Arbuthnot took hands in,
and ruined, Gay's "Three Hours after Marriage," a comedy which
was not comic (1717). In 1720 his collected poems brought Gay
£1000: but a gift of stock in the South Sea Bubble was profitless, as
Gay would not sell out in time. In 1727 he was offered by George II
a Court place so small and ludicrous that it was declined.
Gay next made an immense but not a lucrative success with "The
Beggar's Opera," which had an unexampled run of seven weeks. A
sequel was not licensed by the censor; Gay was recouped by a
subscription, and fell out of Court favour. The Duchess of
Queensberry (Prior's Kitty), carried him to her place in the country,
and here he was petted till his death, which seems to have been
caused by indolence and the pleasures of the table.
His "Trivia; or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," is a
vivacious picture of the crowds, dirt, and bustle: his "Fables," though
original and witty, are, like pastorals, an obsolete form of literary
entertainment. He wrote his own epitaph,
Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.
He took a different view of this important theme in "Thoughts on
Eternity".

Ambrose Philips.
But for his friendship with Addison and the collision of his
"Pastorals," with those of Pope, producing Pope's famous ironical
review, Ambrose Philips (1675-1749) would scarcely be
remembered. The modern art of "booming" was illustrated in
Philips's case. A whole 'Spectator' was devoted to a puff of his
adaptation ("The Distressed Mother") of the "Andromache" of
Racine: and another told how it affected Sir Roger de Coverley. As
has occasionally happened more recently, though advertised by
Addison, and by his own threat to birch Pope, "Philips became
ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his
friends," and his Christian name, Ambrose, became the ludicrous
nickname, Namby-pamby. But for Philips there was not lacking a
patron, Boulter, Primate of Ireland, and in Ireland places were found
for the exile. Philips translated several Odes of Pindar, and though he
had not the pinion of the Theban eagle, the sentiments of Pindar are
plainly visible in his versions.

Tickell.
Among the minor stars in the golden galaxy of Queen Anne's reign
scrutiny detects Thomas Tickell. (Born in Cumberland in 1686,
educated at Queen's, Oxford.) He is best remembered in connexion
with Pope's story that to damage his translation of the "Iliad,"
Addison translated the First Book and published it, averring that
Tickell was the author. That Addison was guilty of a villainous action
is, says Macaulay, highly improbable, that Tickell was capable of a
villainy is highly improbable, that the twain were united in a base
conspiracy is improbable "out of all whooping". But that Pope's mind,
resentful, brooding, and inventive, came to believe in the conspiracy,
is, unfortunately, only too natural. We know the figments of all sorts
which the imagination of Shelley imposed on him: they were, at
least, more romantic than the figments of Pope. In both cases there
is a resemblance to the fancy of persecutions which haunts the
insane.
Tickell had the honour and happiness to be a friend of Addison, and
wrote verses commendatory of his opera, "Rosamond," and of his
tragedy, "Cato". His translation of the First Book of the "Iliad" is
really good, when we consider the poetic conventions of the age,
and the inevitable use of the rhyming heroic couplets. He who would
estimate the difficulties of Pope's and Tickell's task, should
endeavour, himself, to do a few of the lines of Homer into the
classical metre of Queen Anne's day. When Tickell makes
Agamemnon, speaking of Chryseis, say
Not Clytæmnestra boasts a nobler race,
A sweeter temper, or a lovelier face,
he is comically remote from what Agamemnon does say in Homer,
and the sweetness of Clytæmnestra's temper was never famous.
Tickell's "Thou fierce-looked talker with a coward soul" is much less
spirited and literal than Pope's "Thou dog in forehead and in heart a
deer" ("Drunkard, with eyes of dog and heart of deer," is the literal
version). Tickell, more bound by the taste of his age than Pope,
shirks the dog and deer. None the less Tickell's version is spirited
and lucid; the course of events can be easily followed: the reader is
enabled to understand the tragic situation from which the whole epic
evolves itself. If Pope had not written, if Tickell had finished his
version as well as he began it, he would have satisfied public taste,
and won considerable fame.
Tickell, following Addison, was a Whig, "most Whiggish of Whigs,"
Swift said. This makes his line on "An Original Picture of King Charles
I, Taken at the Time of His Trial," all the more curious. The portrait,
of which several replicas exist, was mezzotinted from the All Souls'
copy in Tickell's day, about 1714. (Bower was the painter.)
How meagre, pale, neglected, worn with care,
What steady sadness and august despair!
says Tickell. The look is one of melancholy scorn rather than of
despair. Tickell falls foul of the artist:
Thy steady hands thy savage heart betray,
Near thy bad work the stunn'd spectators faint,
Nor see unmoved what thou unmoved could'st paint.
Bower, in fact, produced the most sympathetic portrait of the King.
Tickell proceeds to curse Cromwell, bless the Restoration, and salute
Queen Anne as a Stuart.
Not much Whiggery here! But when the Hanoverian dynasty and the
Whigs came in, Tickell was strong on the winning side. His "Epistle
from a Lady in England to a Gentleman at Avignon," from a Jacobite
lady to a gentleman at James's Court, is very prettily written, and
the following lines are true.
Then mourn not, hapless prince, thy kingdoms lost;
A crown, though late, thy sacred brows may boast;
Heaven seems, through us, thy empire to decree,
Those who win hearts have given their hearts to thee,
On his side "James reckons half the fair".
Say, will he come again?
Nay, Lady, never.
 Say, will he never reign?
Ay, Lady, ever,
sings a modern poet, whose heart is true to George? However,
Tickell's lady reflects that the Hanoverian sway is good for trade, and
in the end prefers London to Avignon.
In 1717 Addison made Tickell his under-secretary—Tickell had
always been his "understudy". In 1740 Tickell died, in the enjoyment
of one of these lucrative places which rewarded the loyalty of literary
Whigs.
With Tickell, the name of Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) goes
naturally. He was a minor light among the wits; was befriended by
Swift, and is remembered for "The Hermit," "The Night-Piece on
Death," and one or two other effusions.

CHAPTER XXVII.

AUGUSTAN PROSE.

Steele.
Steele and Addison are the Twins among the stars of the age of
Queen Anne. Swift impresses us as a greater genius than either
Steele or Addison, but he is not loved, and he is not read as they
are. Their lives, till two or three years before Addison's death, were
united. They were schoolfellows at Charterhouse, fellow-
undergraduates at Oxford, each was apt to take a hand in the
other's play when the stage attracted them; they wrote together in
the two famous journals, "The Tatler" and "The Spectator," which
Steele created; some essays therein are a patchwork of pieces from
both hands. They were both anxious to cleanse the stage; to bring
decent morals and manners into fashion In the original manuscript
of Steele's comedy, "The Conscious Lovers" (1722), are rough notes
for a preface, written after Addison's death, "The fourth act was the
business of the play. The case of duelling I have fought nor shall I
ever fight again... Addison told me I had a faculty of drawing tears...
Be that as it will, I shall endeavour to do what I can to promote
noble things...."
Both men were moralists, but while Addison was the more moral,
Steele was infinitely the more greatly given to moralizing. His heart
was in the right place. He honoured women and pure affection, and
temperance, and the wedded state. But his many brief notes to his
second wife "Prue" (Miss Scurlock), written from all manner of places
and at all sorts of hours, prove that poor Prue had often to dine
alone. Business detained her Richard; he came home with the milk,
and had a terrible headache next day. With the posts which he held
under Government, with what he gained by his pen (and he was the
owner of his own paper, and his own paymaster), with Mrs. Steele's
fortune, they had resources enough, but Richard at intervals sends
Prue a guinea or two; Richard is constantly in hiding from the
bailiffs; is never out of debt; sometimes there is no coal, candle, or
meat in the house. Steele was the most affectionate of men and the
most generous. He boasted that the world owed Addison's essays to
him, because he had made Addison overcome his laziness, and he
told the world how greatly Addison was his superior. He wishes that
they might write together some work to be called "The Monument,"
the memorial of their friendship. He took the side of poor discharged
soldiers, whipped from parish to parish for their poverty. He adored
children; his tears were as ready and heroic as the tears of Homer's
warriors. But when he yielded to the temptations of the bottle and of
extravagance, his wife and children had to suffer just as much as if
Richard, in place of being a Christian Hero, had been no better than
the wicked. Like Balzac he was a man of debts and of projects; he
even wasted money on alchemy, and had a scheme for getting
wealth in connexion with a lottery, a scheme which even then was
found to be illegal. Mr. Swinburne called Steele "a sentimental
debauchee," and indeed he shone more in preaching than in
practice. Addison calls him "poor Dick," he is "poor Dick" to all the
world now, if he were Sir Richard "to all Europe". But, when lip
preached, he meant what he said, and his pleasant sermons, or
rather pleas for goodness, kindness, faith, did "promote noble
things," and he left the world more decent and more human than he
found it.
Steele was born in Dublin in 1672; his family were not Celtic Irish
folk; his father was in what is reckoned the less noble branch of the
legal profession. When Sir Richard assumed heraldic bearings he
calmly annexed those of another family of Steele, as' the elder
Osborne, in "Vanity Fair," was supplied by his coachbuilder with the
arms of the House of Leeds. Like the cousin of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff,
in "The Tatler" (No. 14), he was guilty of "treason against the Kings
at Arms". Of his childhood we know only what he tells in that
pathetic passage about his father's funeral: "I had a battledore in my
hand and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa, for, I know not
how, I had some idea that he was locked up there.... My mother was
a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought
struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what
it was to grieve, seized my very soul and has made pity the
weakness of my heart ever since" ("Tatler," No. 181). "Hence it is
that in me good nature is no merit, but having been so frequently
overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the cause of any
affliction... I imbibed consideration, remorse, and an unmanly
gentleness of mind, which has since ensnared me into ten thousand
calamities...." So a "Night of Memories and Sighs" is consecrated by
Richard to his beloved dead, "when my servant knocked at the door
with a letter, attended by a hamper of wine, of the same sort with
that which is to be put on sale at Garraway's coffee house. Upon the
receipt of it I sent for three friends.... We drank two bottles a man,"
and, as Mr. Arthur Pendennis says, found that there "was not a
headache in a hogshead".
The fluid, in fact, as we know from the advertisement in this number
of "The Tatler," was "extraordinary French claret". Dick
conscientiously tested its merits, and gave it a puff in addition to the
advertisement which was paid for. Thus he "promoted everything
noble," including the vintage of Bordeaux, and, as Thackeray saw,
there is no more characteristic essay of Steele's than this meditation
on death and grief and loyal memory: à léal souvenir!
Steele lost his mother also in his childhood. He had an uncle, Henry
Gascoigne, who, like Swift's uncle, provided for his education, but
more generously. Attached to "Erin's high Ormonde," Gascoigne
obtained for Steele a nomination to Charterhouse (1684)
(Thackeray's school), where Steele met Addison, and their friendship
began. In 1689 Steele went up to Christ Church, Addison being at
Magdalen; in 1691 Steele gained a "postmastership" (a scholarship)
at Merton, a college to which he was warmly attached, presenting its
ancient library with the volumes of "The Tatler". He left just before
his Schools (that is his examination for a degree). In 1694 he
entered the Duke of Ormonde's Guards as a trooper, apparently
gentlemen did this as a way of approaching a commission. Steele
got his as a reward for a poem on the death of Queen Mary—the
piece was dedicated to Lord Cutts, Colonel of the Coldstreams. He
befriended Steele, who, stationed at the Tower, made the
acquaintance of Congreve and the wits, and defeated Captain Kelly
in a duel. Probably the contrast between the delicacy of Steele's
sentiments, and his vein of sincere piety, on one hand, with his
addiction to mundane pleasures, on the other, made him as notable
in his regiment as Aramis, Abbé d'Herblay, among the Musketeers of
Louis XIV.
Steele, when once he took a pen in his hand, wrote much against
duelling, exposing the ludicrousness of the institution. His remarks
had no effect; what killed the duel in England was the use of the
pistol: unromantic, fatal, and fortuitous. His duel may have made
men more wary of bantering Steele, but his "Christian Hero," a work
of military devotion (1701) lowered his character in the regiment. To
restore it he wrote his comedy "The Funeral" (1701); to show that
blasphemy and intrigue were no necessary components of a play: for
he was wholly of the party of Jeremy Collier. The idea of the plot,
the revival of Lord Brampton while his coffin is waiting for him, and
his watching of the manœuvres of his hateful widow, while his fair
ward, Lady Sharlot, escapes in the coffin from her enemies (a
common situation in ancient ballads) is too grotesque. But the
scenes with the hired mutes, with the poor broken soldiers, with
Lady Brampton and her maid, are very amusing. Steele's exposure of
the low tricks of lawyers, his appeal for cheap and accessible justice
for all, are much in, Dickens's manner, and the loves of Lord Hardy
and Lady Sharlot are as pure as bonny Kilmeny, while Lady Sharlot,
in her encounter with Lady Brampton, gives proof of high spirit, and
Lady Harriet is a flirt as harmless as lively.
Like the other wits, Steele was presented with lucrative posts, such
as the editorship of the colourless official "Gazette". In the same
year, 1707, he married his second wife, Miss Scurlock, the adored
Prue, a woman of some property. He had a house at Hampton Wick,
horses, gardeners, footmen, everything handsome about him. In
1709 he founded "The Tatler," a folio sheet of printed matter,
appearing thrice a week and containing news, political and social,
correspondence, and the charming essays which soon became most
important. Steele wrote 188 of these papers, Addison, forty-two, in
thirty-six both men took a hand. Swift wrote very seldom. The
essays, with those which he wrote in "The Spectator," and in other
papers, are the foundation of the fame of Steele. They vary much in
theme and style. To digest the "Iliad" into a journal, and reckon up
the days of the events, cannot have much amused the public. There
is plenty of dramatic criticism. Steele openly avows that he is a
member of the Society for the Reformation of Manners; blames the
plays of Wycherley and the rest, and calls in the name of Virtue for
frequent representations of Shakespeare. "The apt use of the
theatre is the most agreeable and easy way of making a polite and
moral gentry, which would end in making the rest of the people
regular in their behaviour," a pleasing opinion which is not quite
justified by experience.
Dick was a constant patron of the best plays, but regular his
behaviour was not. Various, excellent, and amiable as are Steele's
essays, neither in style nor in thought do they wear quite so well as
Addison's. Yet it is scarcely just to draw a distinction which may rest
only on individual taste.
"The Tatler's" last appearance was on 2 January, 1711. Steele ended
with a paper in which he generously attributes to his friend the
essays which he deemed of most value. On 1 March the first number
of "The Spectator" appeared—it ceased to exist on 6 December,
1712. Steele's new journal, "The Guardian," lasted for six months in
1713; he was elected as member for Stockbridge, and then came a
quarrel of Whig and Tory with Swift, who wrote in "The Examiner".
The arrival of George I from Hanover procured various lucrative
posts, a patent for a theatre, and a knighthood for Steele: he edited
"The Englishman," and attacked Swift's fallen friends, Harley and St.
John; and in 1716 he got an income of £1000 a year as one of the
commissioners of the estates forfeited by the Scottish Jacobites who
were out for their King in the rising of 1715. This was not a pleasant
appointment to a man of feeling. Of the coolness between Steele
and Addison we speak elsewhere.
In 1722 Steele's "Conscious Lovers," with another attack on duelling
was acted with success, and dedicated to the "gracious and amiable
sovereign," George I. Cibber the actor added scenes rather more gay
than the rest, for so moral is this drama that Fielding's Parson
Adams, in "Joseph Andrews," said "it contains some things almost
solemn enough for a sermon". His connexion with the theatre
brought Steele into more than one lawsuit; his failing health, and the
assiduities of his creditors caused him to prefer to reside in Wales;
he died in Carmarthen on I September, 1729. Like Goldsmith,
Charles Lamb, Walton, and Scott, he has made all his readers his
friends, and if his plays are not acted much, the Lydia Languish of
Sheridan, and the Tony Lumpkin of Goldsmith, are reflections from
his Biddy and Humphrey in "The Tender Husband," a not successful
comedy of 1705.

Addison.
There were few forms of literature, from the sacred hymn to the
libretto of an opera, in which Addison did not adventure himself with
success more than respectable. It is, however, as an essayist that he
survives, and is read and admired. Born on 1 May, 1672, he was the
eldest son of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, who, after acting as
chaplain to the garrisons of Dunkirk and, later, of Tangier, obtained
the small living of Milston, married the sister of a bishop, and in
1683 received the Deanery of Lichfield. He was something of a
Jacobite, and as an author had pleasing traits of humour and irony.
His son Joseph passed through two local schools, and thence to
Charterhouse (Thackeray's school) whence first to Queen's, then to
Magdalen, Oxford, where he held a demyship (scholarship), and was
later a Fellow.
"Addison's Walk" is in the little wood round which two branches of
the Cherwell meander with a mazy motion. Addison was soon
admired for the excellence of his Latin verses: he made Dryden's
acquaintance, and complimented him in verse; he began a
translation of Ovid for Tonson, in the usual ten-syllable rhyming
couplets.
Some of the stories of the Metamorphoses remain, with notes of
literary criticism, including a compliment to William III. "The
smoothness of our English verse," he casually remarks, "is too much
lost by the repetition of proper names," which, in fact, are sonorous
ornaments of the verse of Milton, Scott, Tennyson, and others. But
Addison, bent on "smoothness" had not yet come to appreciate
Milton; still less, in his early "Account of the English Poets," Spenser,
who
Can charm an understanding age no more.
The young champion of smoothness and common sense
unblushingly rhymed "success" to "verse".
Reluctant to take Orders, without which his Fellowship must lapse,
Addison, through Congreve, was introduced to Charles Montagu
(later Halifax) who, with Somers, wished to enlist Addison for his
powers as a writer. They obtained for him a travelling pension of
£300 yearly, and in December, 1699, left Marseilles for Italy.
His published remarks on Italy, written in a simple and easy style,
are of interest mainly because they are so unlike modern ecstasies
about the country. What most pleased Addison was to compare the
scenes and towns which he saw, with the descriptions of them
which, in Latin authors, he had read. To the natural beauties of the
land, and to the works of Christian art, he is almost blind; Paul
Veronese leaves him cold; at Verona he says nothing of the tomb of
Romeo and Juliet, which, perhaps, was not yet shown. At Venice he
is most concerned about the military strength of the place; "Tintoret
is in greater esteem than in other parts of Italy," and that is enough
about Tintoret! The Venetian comedies "are more lewd than in other
countries". Addison paid a good deal of attention to ancient coins;
and Pope wrote commendatory verses for his "Dialogues on Medals,"
and hoped that, on medals, Addison and Craggs will be represented:
Craggs's effigy is to have an inscription in six heroic lines. Though
the Dialogues be antiquated as archæology the description of
collectors of coins is amusing: one of the speakers hastens to add
that the science "must appear ridiculous to those who have not
taken the pains to examine it". Addison, in a kind humorous way,
strove to convince his age that ignorance is not the best judge of the
historical, social, and artistic value of numismatics.
Returning to England in 1703 Addison was poor, and had no
prospect of employment. The Whigs, however, wanted to make the
most of Marlborough's victory at Blenheim. Strange as it seems to
us, poetry had influence, a poet was needed, Halifax recommended
Addison; the Chancellor of the Exchequer found him "up three pairs
of stairs," and "The Campaign" was written. The scene is familiar to
readers of "Esmond". Thackeray, devoted to Addison as he was, asks
"how many fourth form boys at Mr. Addison's school of Charterhouse
could write as well as that now?" as well as Addison writes in several
passages of "The Campaign". Probably no fourth form boys would
write
 With floods of gore that from the vanquished fell,
The marshes stagnate, and the rivers swell.
However the simile of the Angel has been reckoned fine, and the
poem "fulfilled the purpose for which it was written. It strengthened
the position of the Whig Ministry" (what a task for the Muse!) and
obtained patent places for the poet. As Under-secretary of State,
Addison had leisure to write the libretto of "Rosamond," an opera, in
which Queen Eleanor does not poison Rosamond, but gives her, like
Juliet, a sleeping draught. The King says
O quickly relate
This riddle of fate!
My impatience forgive
Does Rosamond live?
Eleanor explains the situation:—
Soon the waking nymph shall rise
And, in a convent placed, admire
The cloistered walls and virgin choir:
With them in songs and hymns divine
The beauteous penitent shall join.
Finally the King and Queen sing
Who to forbidden joys would rove
That know the sweets of virtuous love?
Who indeed?
The rise of Blenheim Palace is prophesied, and Marlborough is
flattered ingeniously by the Muse of Whiggery. The "understanding
age" was not charmed: it was not absolutely destitute of humour.
Nor was Addison. The intentionally funny parts of the opera, though
not so comic as the serious passages, are not unworthy of Sir W. S.
Gilbert. Sir Trusty, finding Rosamond's corpse, as he supposes, says
The King this doleful news shall read
In lines of my inditing;
Great Sir
 Your Rosamond is dead,
As I'm at present writing.
Addison's unacknowledged comedy, "The Drummer," based on the
famous rapping spirit at Tedworth (1662), was a failure, and died on
its third night (1715).
Of his lucky tragedy, "Cato," he seems to have written four acts in
Italy. As early as April, 1711, Addison confided his ideas on Tragedy
to the Town ("Spectator," No. 39). They show us how far the wits of
"the understanding age" of Anne, had moved from the taste of the
Restoration stage. Addison is "very much offended when I see a play
in rhyme; which is as absurd in English, as a tragedy of hexameters
would have been in Greek or Latin". But blank verse is "in such due
medium between rhyme and prose that it seems wonderfully
adapted to tragedy," as the Elizabethan tragedians had not failed to
discover. The thoughts of English tragic writers, especially of
Shakespeare, "are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard
metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed". These
expressions, however, have been admired by many. The English
tragedian is apt to make his hero successful in the fifth act: Addison
does not approve of a modernization of "Lear," in which, as in the
chronicles which told the story, King Lear and Cordelia triumph in the
end. Aristotle says, Addison reports, that the populace preferred
tragedies which ended ill (but Addison himself has made the tale of
Fair Rosamond end happily). He makes no universal rule, only
protests that a tragedy should not be compelled to conclude with
comfort. There is "nothing which delights and terrifies our English
theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody
shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play." Addison applauds the
handling of the ghost in "Hamlet": ghosts, in fact, need delicate
handling. For the moving of pity, our principal machine is the
handkerchief; and the introduction of an orphan or two, but not of
half a dozen fatherless children. "That dreadful butchering of one
another," with the use of racks, thumbscrews, and other instruments
of torture, gives occasion to French critics to think us a people who
delight in blood.
In practice, Addison produced a tragedy which political accidents
made highly successful at the moment, and which has enriched the
stock of quotations. But Dr. Johnson described it as rather a poem in
dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in
elegant language than a representation of natural affections.... The
events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without
joy or sorrow. The "love interest," Pope says, was a popular after-
thought, and Pope told Addison that the play was better fitted to be
read than to be acted. Thanks to the habit of mingling literature with
politics, the play (13 April, 1713) was "expected" with "solicitude" by
Whigs and Tories. "All the foolish industry possible has been used to
make it thought a party play," says Pope. The leaders of each party
clapped loudly at each remark that might be twisted into a political
allusion, while Addison, with Dr. Berkeley and two or three friends, in
a side-box "had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and
champagne, with which the author (though a very sober man)
thought necessary to support his spirits". A run of thirty-five nights,
a great marvel then, also sustained the spirits of Addison.
Addison does not hold his high and enviable place in our literature
by virtue of his plays, poems, and work on Medals, but of his brief
Essays in "The Tatler" and "The Spectator". We have already seen
how Steele and he worked, in the most pleasant, kindly, and
humorous tone, for the improvement of morals and manners in the
Court and Town.
The aim of Addison was "to temper wit with morality and to enliven
morality with wit," and he succeeded so well that, to this day, if one
opens a volume of "The Spectator" for any reason, one cannot lay it
down. The spectacle of that world comes before us in all its aspects
—toy shops, theatres, streets, coffee-houses, masquerades: there
are allegories, sportive or serious, reflections at the opera, or among
the monuments of the dead at Westminster Abbey; there are letters,
real or "done in the office," asking for advice on points of etiquette;
there are musical strains of solemn prose, or passages of exquisite
banter; there are creations of character, Sir Roger de Coverley, Will
Wimble, and the rest. There are criticisms, as of Milton, which led
taste back from the fantasies of the Restoration to that great poet
who lived lonely, fallen on evil days and evil tongues. Even the folk-
poetry of the past, "songs and fables that are come from father to
son, and are most in vogue among the common people of the
countries through which I passed," give Addison "a particular
delight," he says, in his paper on Chevy Chase, "the favourite ballad
of the common people of England". In our time, a critic would fall
back on the history of the ballad, showing how "Chevy Chase" is a
later version of "Otterbourne," a poem common, with patriotic
variations, to England and Scotland. For Addison "Chevy Chase" is
an heroic poem: as such he treats it, and shows how touches of
Nature make it akin to Homer and Virgil.
Here we are far away from the Restoration, and the age of conceits;
we are on the way to the romantic movement, to Scott and "The Lay
of the Last Minstrel". In quite another style take Addison's musings
on a "lady's library," mixed with "a thousand odd figures in China
ware," Japanese lacquer, and old silver. Leonora has "all the Classic
Authors—in wood," dummies! "A set of Elzevirs," small classic
volumes of the famous Dutch press, "by the same hand"—the
cabinetmaker's. There are several of the huge wandering heroic
French romances, and "Locke of Human Understanding, with a
paper of patches in it": "Clelia, which opened of itself in the place
that describes two lovers in a bower." Most of the books were
bought, not "for her own use," but "because the lady had heard
them praised, or because she had seen the authors of them".
Addison, it must be confessed, did not take the learning of the sex
very seriously. Now the learning of many of them is serious indeed;
but, we ask, are either men or women more seriously inclined, on
the whole, to study than they were in Queen Anne's day? Addison,
says Thackeray, "walks about the world watching women's pretty
humours—fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries, and noting them with
the most charming humour". It was not he, but Steele, who found in
a lady's society "a liberal education". But it was Addison whom Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu proclaimed to be "the best companion in the
world".
There is still no better companion: we can still hear him "sweetly talk
and sweetly smile" in his Essays. He knows so much, and he is never
tedious in giving information. Like Coleridge in talk with Keats, he
deals in ghost stories: and this child of an age of reason does not
scout them. He makes the judicious remark that Lucretius, the
Roman materialist, does not believe that the soul can exist apart
from the body, yet "makes no doubt of the reality of apparitions, and
that men often appeared after their death... he was so pressed with
the matter of fact, which he could not have the confidence to
deny...." He explains by "one of the most absurd unphilosophical
notions that was ever started"—in a different way of statement this
theory of Lucretius has lately been revived.
What a variety of themes Addison illustrates and adorns! His writings
are like better conversation than was ever held save in the Fortunate
Islands by the happy Dead.
The humour and the drawing of character in the papers on Sir Roger
de Coverley, have a delicacy, a minuteness, a happy humour, which
we scarcely meet again in our literature till they reappear, a century
later, in the novels of Miss Austen. It must be admitted that
Addison's manner of writing sent son vieux temps, is not "up to
date," but this only lends an agreeable quaintness. Nobody, to-day,
in writing of the scene in the "Odyssey" where the hero beholds, in
the next world, "the far-renowned brides of ancient song," would
speak of them as "a circle of beauties," "the finest women". Nor,
when the hero says "each of them gave me an account of her birth
and family," would a critic now say "this is a gentle satire upon
female vanity"! To give such an account is the universal practice in
Homer, when strangers meet, whether men or women.
"The Spectator" was dropped after running for about two years, not
before Addison had praised in his paper Pope's "Essay on Criticism".
Steele introduced Pope to Addison; perhaps they never were very
attached friends, for a man of Addison's sense could not but be
watchful of himself in the company of the vain and irritable little
satirist. Pope's jealousy and suspicions produced a coldness, and,
after Addison was dead, Pope emitted his venom in the poisonous
character of "Atticus":—
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to live, converse, and write with ease;
yet,
Bears, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,"
and so forth. Nothing that inspired skill and spite can do is better
than this satire; had Addison been alive when it was given to the
world he could not have hit a return blow, for cruelty was not in his
nature, and Pope was so sensitive that any retort on him was cruel.
In 1715 Addison conducted for six months another paper, "The
Freeholder," in the Whig interest; was made one of the
Commissioners for Trade and the Colonies, and married the
Dowager-Countess of Warwick. He died in 1719, "three years after
that splendid but dismal union," says Thackeray. A dowager-
countess is not usually splendid, and we really have no reason to
think that the union was "dismal". Addison's position as Secretary of
State was sufficiently good, not to speak of his fame, popularity, and
genius. In 1719 Addison was matched against Steele in a newspaper
controversy: Steele probably was not welcome to Lady Warwick at
Holland House, but the two men, says Steele, "still preserved the
most passionate concern for their mutual welfare. When they met
they were as unreserved as boys...."
Addison with Steele, founded a school of essayists of merit, who
never came near the supremacy of their masters: Addison not only
delighted his world, but left it better than he found it; not by
preaching violent sermons, not by "lashing the vices of the age," but
by sensibly lowering the tyranny of the fashion which insisted on the
duty of being vicious.
Swift.
Concerning the genius, character, and career of Jonathan Swift there
are interesting varieties of opinion, but nobody denies that the
genius was great or that the career was sad, strange, even
mysterious. In an old-fashioned comedy of Humours, Swift would
have been cast for the part of Wycherley's Captain Manly in "The
Plain Dealer"; the man of tender heart who hates an age and a
society that do not come up to his ideals. Swift had, indeed, depths
of affection, and a noble capacity for friendship, but, unlike Captain
Manly, he would never have made Fidelia, or any other woman,
happy. He lived in this world the life of a flogging schoolmaster. He
expresses a hope, at about the age of 26, that, in his poems,
Each line shall stab, shall blast, like daggers and like fire.
He hopes, at the same hopeful period, that
My hate, whose lash just heaven has long decreed,
Shall on a day make Sin and Folly bleed.
He lashed away, but Sin and Folly remained "more than usual calm,"
they did not hear, they did not heed him; and the presentable part of
his most comprehensive and ferocious satire of humanity, the one
book published by him which is still generally known, "Gulliver's
Travels," has been an innocent source of amusement to many
generations of children.
At about the age of 37, Swift, in a private letter, wrote thus of his
own case, "I envy very much your prudence and temper, and love of
peace and settlement: the reverse of which has been the great
uneasiness of my life, and is like to continue so". He recognizes one
source of his sorrows. As to "prudence," Swift had even too much of
it, if "prudence" were the motive which made him put off marriage
with the woman ("Stella," Esther Johnson) whom he loved, and who
loved him. But for "peace and settlement," he had no partiality; and
his temper was no better than he deemed it.
The curses of Swift were, first, his just consciousness of powers far
superior to those of the great politicians who adulated, and used,
and failed to reward him. With their wine, and their amours, and
their bitter, petty jealousies, they let the great opportunity go by,
and, lo! Harley is in the Tower; and Bolingbroke, a fugitive, drinks,
and loves, and intrigues in France, vituperating the Prince whose
cause he has helped to ruin; while Swift eats out his own heart in
that Ireland which he hated.
Another curse was that he had attached himself as a priest to the
Church of England; while the author of "The Tale of a Tub," however
loyal he might be in practice, certainly cannot have been "a trusty
and undoubting Church of England man". Of all the creeds, of all the
Churches and Sects, in his heart he thought like the Jupiter of his
poem,
You, who in various Sects were shamm'd,
And come to hear each other damn'd.
This bleak lucidity of soul, this consciousness of being able "to see
forward with a fatal clearness," this knowledge of the greatness of
his own genius,—thwarted by poverty, driven wild by servitude,
lacerated by the torments of a mysterious disease, crushed by
terrible forebodings of the appointed end; these things drove Swift
to cut himself among the tombs, and to curse in the wilderness.
Though born in Dublin (30 Nov. 1667) Swift was no Irishman: his
father belonged to an old Yorkshire, his mother to an old
Leicestershire family. But on his father's death, his mother being left
ill-provided, Swift's was the position of a poor relation. His training at
Kilkenny school and Trinity College, Dublin, was paid for by his uncle,
Godwin Swift, who was either poor or penurious. Men like Swift
seldom yield much attention to their tutors; and Swift, though he did
well in Greek and Latin, failed in physics and took no pains with his
Latin essay. He was, however, allowed to pass. In 1688 he went to
England, to his mother at Leicester, and in the following year
entered the household of Sir William Temple, a politician and
diplomatist, retired from active life, busy with literature and
gardening, but in friendly relations with William III and with men of
affairs.
Sir William Temple (1628-1699) was himself a writer admired for his
style, especially in his Essay on Poetry. His periods, though long, are
graceful and well balanced, but seldom have such brief melancholy
cadences as this reflection "when all is done, human life is, at the
greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played
with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then
the care is over".
Swift's position, at first, was between those of a secretary and an
upper servant; he left Temple's house for Ireland, in 1690; returned
in 1691: next year obtained a degree at Oxford; and in 1694, in
Ireland, took Orders, and received a small benefice, Kilroot, near
Belfast, where the people were Presbyterians, and he had no
congregation worth mentioning. He entangled himself with a Miss
Waring (Varina) and wrote "Pindaric" poems. Dryden, a remote
cousin of his, told him that he would never be a poet, and no other
reason has been discovered for Swift's flouts and jeers at Dryden's
reputation. The anecdote may be untrue, and, as a Catholic, Dryden
would be disapproved of by Swift.
In 1696 Swift was reconciled with Temple, and during the next two
years was treated with more favour, met politicians, met the King;
educated Stella, an inmate of Temple's house, then a girl of 15; read
much in Temple's library, and was about to attach himself to the
double-dyed traitor, Sunderland, when Sunderland was dismissed
from office. Swift went back to Ireland, held a living at Laracor, lived
much with Lord Berkeley at the Castle, Dublin; wrote lively verses of
the lighter sort, wrote a political pamphlet which was successful, and
showed leanings towards the Whig party. In London (1704) his "Tale
of a Tub" was published anonymously: it had been composed in
1696-1697.
In "An Apology" (1709) Swift, still, as always, anonymous, writes
"the book seems calculated to live as long as our language and our
taste admit no great alterations". In taste great alterations have
been admitted. Though excellent judges still applaud this whimsical
allegory, few readers who approach it with high expectations are
likely to escape disappointment. The allegory of Peter (Rome) Martin
(Anglicans and Lutherans) and Jack (Presbyterians and all other
Protestant sects), is utterly incoherent. At present no self-respecting
person would write of the religions of Islam and Buddha in such
terms and such temper as Swift wrote about the Churches and sects
of Christianity. Whatever we may think of Transubstantiation and
Vestments, we do not make uproarious fun of them.
Already Swift indulges his half-insane delight in malodorous
references; the wit of the dirty schoolboy scrawling on the walls.
Few things in the work are more witty than this on Dryden: "he has
often said to me in confidence, that the world would never have
suspected him to be so great a poet, if he had not assured them so
frequently in his prefaces, that it was impossible they could ever
doubt or forget it".
Thackeray remarks, "I think the world was right, and the Bishops
who advised Queen Anne not to appoint the author of 'The Tale of
the Tub' to a Bishopric, gave perfectly good advice". James IV did
not give Dunbar a benefice: the line must be drawn somewhere.
Swift, in his "Apology," denied that he had attacked religion: be it so,
he had written on matters ecclesiastical with amazingly bad taste.
His "Argument against Abolishing Christianity" (1708) is not the sort
of argument that we expect from a bishop-postulant, but its irony
seems as charming and dexterous now as it did two centuries ago.
In "The Tale of a Tub," on the other hand, we seldom find a passage
that wins a smile, except in "those fine curses" which Peter spoke,
and in some of the gambols of Jack. The apologue, in feet, is heavy-
handed; the author does not clearly know where he is making for;
the perfect clearness of his later style is absent. (These
observations, entirely candid, are at odds with the usual applause of
"The Tale of a Tub".)
With "The Tale of a Tub" was published, in the same volume, "The
Battle of the Books," written about 1697; this was a now belated
contribution to the controversy as to the relative merits of the
Ancients and the Moderns, begun in France by Charles Perrault, the
author of our most familiar fairy tales. As it happened, Temple, in an
essay, had taken up the cause of the Ancients, and had chosen, as
proofs of superiority of the oldest books, the Fables ascribed to
Æsop, and the Letters attributed to Phalaris, the half-mythical tyrant
of Agrigentum. The matter of the fables is prehistoric, but the
crooked slave, Æsop, did not contribute their form; and the Letters
of Phalaris were a literary exercise composed long after the tyrant's
date. Wotton, with some help from the greatest scholar of his day,
Richard Bentley, King's Librarian, and (1700) Master of Trinity,
Cambridge, replied to Temple, and Charles Boyle, of Christ Church,
Oxford, introduced a personal squabble with Bentley. The Christ
Church wits, including the formidable Atterbury, sided with Boyle,—
there was a war between elegant scholars, on Boyle's side; and the
nascent science of the Royal Society allied with perfect scholarship
and Bentley, on the other. Boyle did not insist that the Letters of
Phalaris were genuine; Bentley displayed his sagacious learning in
his proof that they were not. Temple was discreetly silent, but Swift
espoused the cause of the wits in "The Battle of the Books". The
Books in the King's Library, Ancient and Modern, meet in a parody of
a fight in Homer. The goddess, Dulness, befriends the Moderns, as
Aphrodite, in Homer, protects Paris and Æneas. The mock-Homeric
manner was not then outworn, and it amused; while Swift heaped
personal scorn on Bentley, and, of course, on Dryden, who is
ridiculed for being old. Bentley, crooked-legged and hump-backed, is
armed with a flail, and "a vessel full of ordure". Boyle transfixes
Bentley and Wotton as a cook spits a brace of woodcocks—and that
is the humour of it.
Infinitely more amusing were Swift's predictions of the death of a
prophetic almanac-maker, Partridge (1708), and the sequel of that
jest. Swift styled himself Isaac Bickerstaff, and lent the name to
Steele, for use in his new paper "The Tatler". He lived in close
friendship with Addison, Steele, Congreve, and Prior; and began his
love affair with Miss Vanhomrigh, the unfortunate Vanessa, rival of
Stella. Like Lord Foppington, Swift probably coveted nothing less
than her heart, which she gave, and his difficulty was "to get rid of
the rest of her body".
After a visit to Ireland, Swift returned to find the Tories in power, "a
new world" (September, 1710). He met Harley (Lord Oxford), took
service under him, and for three years was the Achitophel of the
Tories, writing for them lampoons and political pamphlets which
"were cried up to the skies". For half a year (1710-1711) Swift's
papers appeared in "The Examiner". Swift dined with Harley and St.
John—they called him, "Jonathan"; he snubbed their attempts to
treat him as a mere gentleman of the Press; and in the delightful
pages of his familiar "Journal to Stella," he paints the age, and
himself, triumphant, adulated, powerful, but "seeing all his own
mischance"; "I believe they will leave me Jonathan as they found
me".
Among the pamphlets of this period are "The Hue and Cry after
Dismal" (Lord Nottingham,'ancestor of Horace Walpole's "black
funereal Finches"), and the more important "Conduct of the Allies".
By 1713 Swift hoped "that the present age and posterity would learn
who were the real enemies of the country". The old question of Tory
Short and Whig Codlin! But he had cruelly offended the Duchess of
Somerset by "The Windsor Prophecy"; and the Queen could not
endure the author of "The Tale of a Tub". He asked for his reward,
and with much trouble obtained the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin
(June, 1713). He went to Ireland, but he could not get rid of
Vanessa. Her letters pursued him; other letters called him to town—
Harley and St. John were at odds, and he was needed. He engaged
in a paper war with Steele, now an enemy; he wrote "The Public
Spirit of the Whigs"; he offended the Scottish members, and the
Duke of Argyll, the hero of Malplaquet, an ill man to meddle with. He
was consoled by the friendship of Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, a good
man and a great humorist. They founded the Martinus Scriblerus
Club, for the writing of facetious papers: but politics went ill, Harley
and St. John quarrelled in the Queen's presence: her death was
near; Harley was overthrown by St. John; St. John had no courage,
and, on the death of Anne, was checked by Argyll and his regiment.
Bishop Atterbury would have proclaimed the King, King James over
the Water; the laymen dared not back him; the Elector of Hanover
occupied the throne; and of Swift's great friends St. John fled to
France, and Harley was imprisoned in the Tower; while Swift, hooted
by the pressmen whom he had bullied, made for Ireland. The
Jacobite Cause was lost, and we cannot here ask, would Swift (as St.
John says in "Esmond") have accepted the Primacy of England from
la bonne cause, the young Catholic King?
My life is now a burden grown
To others, ere it be my own,
Swift wrote. He corresponded (1716) with Atterbury, and Atterbury
was at the head of the Jacobite party in England. In 1719 Swift
dedicated to a Swedish diplomatist, Count Gyllenborg, a History of
England. "My intention was to inscribe it to the King, your late
Master, for whose great virtues I had ever the highest admiration, as
I shall continue to bear to his memory." This King, Charles XII, in
1716 meant to land in Britain with an army in support of the
Jacobites, and Gyllenborg, his ambassador, managed the plot in
England. Charles had invited Swift, at an earlier date, to Sweden:
now Swift dwells "in a most obscure disagreeable country" (Ireland),
"and among a most profligate and abandoned people".
All this does not look like zeal for the Protestant succession.
The years 1719-1723 saw the completion of Swift's ambiguous
poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," and the arrival of Vanessa in Swift's
neighbourhood. "In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed and
bullied; the news of the Dean's marriage to Stella at last reached
her; and it killed her,—Vanessa died of that passion" (Thackeray).
The marriage is still matter of controversy.
In 1724 Swift, who hated the English Government if he did not love
Ireland, wrote the famous "Drapier's Letters" against a job in copper
currency, and gained high popularity.
In 1726 he gave to the world the most famous of his books,
"Gulliver's Travels," in which his gift of narrative, his amazing power
of being truthful in the minutest details of the most extravagant
imaginations, his misanthropy, his irony, and his delight in unsavoury
things, are all carried to the highest perfection. In 1729 came the
"Modest Proposal" for eating Irish children; in 1738 his "Polite
Conversation" and "Directions to Servants," with the same merit of
humour, and the same inveterate fault.
In visits to London (1726, 1727) Swift had enjoyed the society of his
old friends and comrades in letters; and hoped there, perhaps, to
find a Fountain of Youth. He felt himself slipping into the vice of
hoarding; and rusting in a second-rate society. Bolingbroke had been
allowed to return from exile; the banished King had found him
worthless as a statesman: he had said his worst against the
banished King; nobody wanted Bolingbroke and nobody was afraid
of him. He played the philosopher, and Swift did not believe in his
affectation of philosophy. Arbuthnot, Swift loved, Pope he had
always admired; and he tried to protect Gay from his own reckless
improvidence. He ridiculed, in "Gulliver," the proofs brought against
Atterbury as a Jacobite agent: if Swift was not convinced by the
evidence he must have shut his eyes very hard.
In January, 1728, Stella died: Swift tried to fill the gap in his life by
activity in Irish politics. His disease, apparently some malady of the
ear which gradually affected the brain, became more unendurable,
but he had still to write some of his most powerful satires in verse.
Then his memory began to fail, and he drifted slowly into the half-
unconscious dotage of his last five years, dying on 19 October, 1745,
unconscious, probably, of the meteoric adventure of Prince Charles.
The failure of his party, of his political ambition, and measureless
hopes of greatness, gave Swift the retirement and the leisure to
produce his greatest works. If fortune had "bantered us" as
Bolingbroke said, he turned and bantered Fate and mankind. In the
long array of his volumes, so seldom opened, are many brief flights,
in verse and prose, which are full of entertainment, of wild fancy,
orderly and gravely presented; and there is the "Journal to Stella,"
with its infinite tenderness of affection; and the Letters, the
confidences of the wits from romantic Charles Wogan, who rescued
from prison the bride of a King, and died as Governor of the
appropriate province of La Mancha, to those of Pope and Arbuthnot
and Gay. The works of Swift are a library in themselves.

De Foe.
"One man in his time plays many parts," and no man played more
parts than Daniel Foe or De Foe. The son of a butcher in St. Giles's,
born in 1661, he received at a Nonconformist school an education
that was a sufficient basis for literary undertakings, but not tending
to such "classical" flights as led young University men to profitable
sinecures under Government. He is said to have been out under
Monmouth in 1685. He betook himself to commerce of various kinds,
thus acquiring little or no money (in 1692 he "broke," like Mr.
Badman), but a competent knowledge of the currents of trade, and
the courses of financial speculation, exhibited in his "Essay on
Projects," projects, educational and social as well as financial (1698).
In 1701 his "True Born Englishman," showing in the interest of
William III that the English are a mixed race, was successful.
In 1702 his famous "Shortest Way with the Dissenters" was
discovered to be, not a candid plea for the Church of England, but
an irritating parody of High Church pretensions, nearly as serious as
Swift's apology for cannibalism. De Foe was pilloried, but not pelted,
and imprisoned for his waggery; was released, probably through the
agency of Harley, Lord Oxford, the wavering and enigmatic "Dragon"
of Swift's correspondence; and while editing and indeed writing a
weekly "Review," the precursor in its social columns of Steele's
"Tatler," De Foe served Harley in divers subterranean ways. In
Scotland, in the autumn of 1706, he acted as Harley's spy and
newsagent: his letters to Harley contain an admirable picture of the
struggles for and against the Union of Scotland and England, and of
De Foe's own versatile, acute and daring character. He made himself
"all things to all men," could talk to each citizen as a member of his
own trade, explained all the economic conditions of the country,
understood, and did not revere, the Kirk, and the preachers; and, by
securing the services of that lively and humorous rogue and sham-
fanatic, Ker of Kersland, broke up an unholy alliance between the
extreme "Cameronians" and the Jacobite gentry and clansmen of
Perthshire and Angus. They had intended to break up the
Parliament; but the wild Whigs did not keep tryst.
It is plain that Harley treated De Foe very ill, and that, like most
spies, he was underpaid. Still he was working for a cause which he
had at heart; as he was later, when, to all appearance, playing the
part of journalist in the Tory or even Jacobite interest under
Government.
The needy De Foe was a man of dark corners, an absolute
"Johannes Factotum". Swift called him "a grave, sententious,
dogmatical rogue". He professed that he received assistance from
"The Divine Spirit".
No man who wrote so much and so variously has written so well. His
favourite topic, if we may judge by the frequency with which he
handled it, was "psychical research". Like Glanvill, Henry More, and
other writers in the sceptical age of the Restoration, he collected,
and told in his own inimitable manner, many current anecdotes of
wraiths, death-warnings, second sight, and phantasms of the dead.
The most prominent merit of De Foe, in fiction, is his power of
convincing the reader by the minute and sober realism of his details.
Some of his novels, in autobiographic form, have caused disputes as
to whether they be romances, or actual memoirs.
"A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal, on September 8,
1705" (published in 1706) has been described as "the first instance
of De Foe's wonderful lies like truth". "This relation is matter of fact,"
said De Foe in the Preface. Sir Walter Scott, a ghost-hunter himself,
explained the "fact" by saying that De Foe invented and wrote the
story as a puff of Drelincourt "On Death," which the appearance of
Mrs. Veal, on the day after her death recommended to her friend
(who believed her to be alive), Mrs. Bargrave.
But Mr. George Aitken has proved "that the piece was, as De Foe
said, 'a true relation of matter of fact,'" that is, De Foe merely wrote
the story as told by Mrs. Bargrave—"the percipient"—the person who
saw and conversed with the dead Mrs. Veal about her gown—"a
scoured silk, newly made up". Mr. Aitken found a manuscript note of
21 May, 1714, by some one who had interviewed Mrs. Bargrave, and
for whom Mrs. Bargrave made three or four minute additions. As for
Mrs. Veal herself, she died on 7 September, appeared on 8
September to Mrs. Bargrave, and we have the record of her burial
on 10 September, in the register of St. Mary's, Dover.
In another case, "The Botethan Ghost," told in an appendix to De
Foe's "Duncan Campbell," the tale was really written, as De Foe
says, not by himself, but by one of the people who saw the spectre,
the Rev. Mr. Ruddle of Launceston in Cornwall, in June, 1665; the
narrative was written on 4 September of the same year.
Thus De Foe's extraordinary gift of making things fictitious seem true
has caused him to be charged with inventing stories which he merely
retold, or printed from the manuscript of another.
De Foe was 60 years of age, and had suffered from apoplexy, when
he wrote the masterpiece which made him immortal, "Robinson
Crusoe" (1719). New editions appeared in May, June, and August; a
sequel followed which few read; still more scarce are readers of De
Foe's "Serious Reflections and Vision of the Angelic World" (1720).
The "metapsychical" world was always very near De Foe, practical
and shrewd man as he was.
"Crusoe" is based on Captain Rogers's narrative of the adventures of
Alexander Selkirk, a mariner of Largo, in Fife, marooned (1704) on
the Island of Juan Fernandez. An allegory of De Foe's own life has
been suspected, the idea is unimportant.
It is superfluous to dilate on the sterling merits of "Robinson
Crusoe". Before he published it a critic had recognized "the little art
he is truly master of, of forging a story, and imposing it on the world
for truth". The style is as simple as Swift's, and more "homely". The
tale of love was not De Foe's trade, any more than "the moving
accident" was Wordsworth's. "Moll Flanders," and "Roxana" are no
doubt meant to have a moral influence; but their readers are looking
for something else: like the readers of the edifying Monsieur Zola.
De Foe was one of the fathers of journalism, and almost "the only
begetter" of the story of adventure, the desert island romance, and,
in "Memoirs of a Cavalier," and "A Journal of the Plague Year," of the
historical autobiographical novel. "It was about the beginning of
September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard, in
ordinary discourse, that the plague was returned again in
Holland...." That keynote reverberates in scores of the historical
romances of 1885-1900.
The modern novelist, of course, avoids De Foe's strict statistical
method. De Foe's story reads precisely like a historical document,
and the modern reader dislikes nothing more than that sort of
reading. De Foe's hero saw a number of people looking at "a ghost
walking on a grave stone". Less fortunate Mr. Pepys "went forth, to
see (God forgive my presumption!) whether I could see any dead
corpse going to the grave, but, as God would have it, did not".
By a truly realistic touch De Foe's contemplative saddler closes his
journal with "a coarse but sincere stanza of my own,"
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!
The modern reader finds that De Foe's fictions are too like facts,
and, often, in the moral and religious reflections, too like tracts, for
his taste. On the other hand, to a contemplative mind, "Robinson
Crusoe," carefully read, and compared with its descendants in
fiction, is a source of delight. De Foe, at the age of 60, must have
been, while he wrote it, as happy as his innumerable readers. For
example, we compare Robinson's felling of a cedar tree "five feet ten
inches diameter at the lower part..." and his construction of a vessel