of Charles II's age, though openly and generally worse, were, in particular respects, not so bad as those of James I; neither was the stage of even Wycherley and Etherege so deeply immoral as that of Beaumont and Fletcher.

We do not know if the Muses resented, in De Foe's case, this unfriendliness to one of their favourite haunts; but when he attempted to woo them on his account, they answered somewhat coyly to his call. A collection of Fugitive Verses, published by Dunton, appeared at this time-made," says the eccentric bookseller, "by "the chief wits of the age; namely, Mr. Motteux, Mr. "De Foe, Mr. Richardson, and, in particular, Mr. Tate, "now poet-laureat." (Swift was among them, too, but not important enough yet to be named.) Mr. De Foe's contribution was, "The character of Dr. Annesley by "way of Elegy;" and we must confess, of this elegiacal tribute to the memory of his old Presbyterian pastor, that it seems to us rightly named Fugitive; whether we apply the word actively to the poetry that flies away, or passively to that which makes the reader do the same. De Foe lost a part of his strength, his facility, and his fancy, when he wrote in verse. Yet, even in verse, he made a lucky, nervous hit, now and then; and the best of his efforts was the True-born Englishman.

It appeared in 1701. It was directed against the unrelenting and bitter attacks from which William at that time more particularly suffered, on the ground of his birth and of the friends he had ennobled. They were no true-born Englishmen: that was the cant in vogue. Mr. Tutchin's poem of The Foreigners was on every body's tongue. The feeling had vented itself, in the previous year, on that question of the dismissal of the Dutch Guards, which the King took so sorely to heart. The same feeling had forced the Tories into power; it had swelled their Tory majority with malcontent Whigs; and it now threatened the fair and just rewards which William had offered to his deserving Generals. It is

recorded of him at this juncture, that even his great silent heart at last gave way. "My Guards have done. "for them what they could not do for themselves, and "they send them from me." He paced his cabinet in uncontrollable emotion. He would have called out his assailants, he said, if he had been a private man. If he had not had the obligation of other than private duties, he would have resigned the crown.

Then it was that De Foe stepped in with his timely service. The True-born Englishman was a doggerel, but a fine one. It was full of earnest, weighty sense; of excellent history; of the nicest knowledge of our English character; and it thrust right home at the point in issue. It proved the undeniable truth, that, so far from being of pure birth and blood, Englishmen are the most mixed race on the earth, and owe to that very circumstance their distinction over other feebler races. Whilst others, for the lack of such replenishment, have dwindled or perished, the English have been invigorated and sustained by it, and their best blood has owed its continual predominance mainly to the very rudeness and strength of the admixture. This True-born Englishman exposed a vulgar prejudice, even as it flattered a reasonable vanity; and few things of a merely temporary interest have ever equalled its success. Its first four lines-

"Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation,"-

are all that perhaps fairly can be said to have survived, of couplets that were then shouted from street to street; yet it would be easy, by any dozen lines taken at random from those that have perished out of memory, to show not only its merit as a vigorous piece of writing, but the art with which it appealed to the common people. Such an example would present itself at once in the passage which exhibits Charles the Second, with a view to fresh supply

against the drain upon noble blood occasioned by the Civil Wars, contributing by his personal exertion six dukes to the peerage of England—

"And carefully repeopling us again,

Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign;
French cooks, Scotch pedlars, and Italian whores,
Were all made lords, or lords' progenitors.
Beggars and bastards by his new creation
Still multiplied the peerage of the nation,
Who will be all, ere one short age runs o'er,

As true-born lords as those we had before;

Then, with true English pride, they may contemn
Schomberg and Portland, new-made noblemen !"

The instant popularity of the satire was astonishingly great. Besides the nine editions of which De Foe himself received the profit, upwards of twelve editions were pirated, printed, and sold, in defiance of his interdict. More than eighty thousand copies, we are told, were thus disposed of in the streets alone. But it is more important to have to remark, that it destroyed the cant against which it was directed. "Nothing was more frequent in our mouths be"fore that; nothing so universally blushed for, and laughed "at since. Whereas, before, you had it in the best writers, "and in the most florid speeches, before the most august assemblies, upon the most solemn occasions,"-Now, without a blush or a laugh, you never heard it named.

It may be doubted if this great King had ever so deeply felt a service. His opportunities were few. De Foe has recorded how he was sent for to the palace, on the special occasion of his book; with what kindness he was received; "how employed; and how, above his "capacity of deserving, rewarded." His free access to

William's cabinet never ceased from this time. There are statements, throughout his writings, of the many points of public policy he had been permitted frankly to discuss with the sovereign. On the agitated questions of the partition treaties, he was many times consulted; and there was one grand theme, nobly characteristic

of the minds of both, often recurred to in these interviews. It was the Union of Scotland with England. "It shall be done," said William; "but not yet." Other things more nearly and closely pressed him then.

The rapid growth and march of the Revolution might be aptly measured by the incidents and disputes of the last year of his reign. They turned solely on the power claimed by the lower house of legislature. In several ably-written pamphlets, and particularly in a Letter distinguished for its plain and nervous diction, and in which the grounds of popular representation were so happily condensed and clearly stated, that it has been a text-book of political disputants from the days of the expulsion of Walpole and of Wilkes to those of the Reform Bill,'

1 This remarkable pamphlet in defence of Popular Rights, may be briefly described as a demonstration of the predominance of the Original over the Delegated authority, and remains still, as it was when first written, the most able, plain, and courageous exposition in our language, of the doctrine on which our own and all free political constitutions rest. Its argument proceeds from four general propositions, which are worked out with masterly power and clearness. The first is, That all government is contrived and instituted by the consent and for the mutual benefit and protection of the governed. The second, That its constituent members -whether King, Lords, or Commons -if they invert the great end of their institution, cease to be, and surrender their power to the source from which it proceeded. The third, That no collective or representative body of men whatsoever, in matters of politics or religion, have been infallible. And the fourth, That reason is the test and touchstone of laws, which cease to be binding, and become void when contradictory to reason. Of which propositions the close and inseparable interdependence is shown, by exhibiting the respective relations and

obligations of the various authorities
of the State to each other and to their
supreme head; it being the grand pur-
pose of the argument to demonstrate
the sole safety and efficacy of the
latter in the final resort. 66
For, not-
"withstanding all the beauty of our
"constitution, and the exact sym-
"metry of its parts, about which some
"have been so very eloquent, this
"noble, well-contrived system has
"been overwhelmed, the government
"has been inverted, the people's
"liberties have been trampled on, and
"parliaments have been rendered
"useless and insignificant. And
"what has restored us? The last
'resort has been to the people. Vox
"Dei has been found there, not in
"the representatives, but in their
original, the represented." And
let no man dread such last resort,
wisely adds De Foe. For what say
the practical results of history as to
the unvarying political tendencies of
the English people? "The genius of
"this nation has always appeared to
"tend to a limited monarchy; and
"having had, in the late Revolution,
66 a full and uninterrupted liberty to
"cast themselves into what form of

66

66

government they pleased, there was "not discovered the least inclination

-De Foe impugned the full extent of the claim on the ground of a non-representation of the people; but a power had lately arisen within that house itself indicative of the changed relations of the Government of England, wiser in effect than the wisdom of Somers, and more cunning than the cunning of Sunderland. "The Tories," said the latter to William," are better speakers