the fourth number, it was reduced to half-a-sheet, and sold for twopence, in smaller print and with double columns. After the eighth number, it was published twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Before the close of the first volume, it sent forth monthly supplements. And at last it appeared on the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of every week; and so continued, without intermission, and written solely by De Foe, for nine years. He wrote it in prison and out of prison; in sickness and in health. It did not cease when circumstances called him from England. No official employment determined it ; no politic consideration availed to discontinue it; no personal hostility or party censure weighed with him in the balance. against it. "As to censure," he exclaimed, "the writer expects it. He writes to serve the world, not to please A few wise, calm, disinterested men, he always had "the good hap to please and satisfy. By their judgment "he desires still to be determined; and, if he has any

pride, it is that he may be approved by such. To the rest, he sedately says, their censure deserves no notice." So, through all the vicissitudes of men and ministries, from 1704 to 1713, amid all the contentions and shouts of party, he kept with this homely weapon his single-handed way, a solitary watchman at the portals of the commonwealth. Remarkable for its rich and various knowledge,

"of quantity; two short clauses "would heal all these evils, would "prevent seditious pamphlets, lam"poons, and invectives against the "Government, or at least prevent "their going unpunished, and pre66 serve to every man the fruit of his "own labour and industry.

"First. That every author set his "name to what he writes, and that every printer or publisher that "prints or publishes a book without "it, shall be deemed the author, and "answerable for the contents. "Secondly. That no man shall "print another man's copy; or, in "English, that no printer or book

"seller shall rob another man's house, "for it really is no better, nor is it "any slander, notwithstanding the "aforesaid pretence, to call it by that "title."

Whether or not De Foe's plan would have proved effective, needs not now be discussed. Suffice it to observe, that it never occurred to him to provide a remedy by limiting the author's right to the fraction of time afterwards conceded to him; though he was fain to accept even that concession, wrung forth mainly by his own remonstrances, as an improvement on the existing system.

its humour, its satire, its downright hearty earnestness, it is a yet more surprising monument of inexhaustible activity and energy. It seems to have been suggested to him, in the first instance, as a resource against the uncertainties of his imprisonment, and their disastrous effects on his trade speculations (he had lost by his late prosecu tion more than 40007); and there is no doubt it assisted him in the support of his family for several of these years. But he had no efficient protection against its continued piracy. The thieves counted it by thousands, when worthy Mr. Matthews the publisher could only account by hundreds; and hence the main and most substantial profit its writer derived from all the anxiety and toil it cost him, was expressed in the proud declaration of one of its latest Numbers. "I have here espoused an honest interest, and have steadily adhered to it all my days. I never forsook it when it was oppressed; never made a gain by it when it was advanced; and, I thank God, it "is not in the power of all the Courts and Parties in "Christendom to bid a price high enough to buy me off "from it, or make me desert it."

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The arrangement of its plan was not less original than that of its form. The path it struck out in periodical literature was, in this respect, entirely novel. It classed the lesser and the larger morals; it mingled personal and public themes; it put the gravities of life in an entertaining form; and at once it discussed the politics, and corrected the vices, of the age. We may best indicate the manner in which this was done, by naming rapidly the subjects treated in the first volume, in addition to those of political concern. It condemned the fashionable practice of immoderate drinking; in various ways ridiculed the not less fashionable habit of swearing; inveighed against the laxity of marital ties; exposed the licentiousness of the stage; discussed, with great clearness and sound knowledge, questions affecting trade and the poor; laughed at the rage for gambling speculations; and waged inveterate war with that barbarous practice of the duel, in which

De Foe had to confess, with shame, that he had once during his life been engaged. Its machinery for matters non-political was a so-called Scandalous Club, organized to hear complaints, and entrusted with the power of deciding them. We will show how it acted. A gentleman appears before the Club, and complains of his wife. She is a bad wife; he cannot exactly tell why. There is a long examination, proving nothing; when suddenly a member of the Club begs pardon for the question, and asks if his worship was a good husband. His worship, greatly surprised at such a question, is again at a loss to answer. Whereupon the Club pass three resolutions. 1. That most women that are bad wives are made so by bad husbands. 2. That this society will hear no complaints against a virtuous bad wife from a vicious good husband. 3. That he that has a bad wife, and can't find the reason of it in her, 'tis ten to one that he finds it in himself. And the decision finally is, that the gentleman is to go home, and be a good husband for at least three months; after which, if his wife is still uncured, they will proceed against her as they shall find cause. In this way, pleas and defences are heard on the various points that present themselves in the subjects named; and not seldom with a lively dramatic interest. The graver arguments and essays, too, have an easy homely vigour, a lightness and pleasantry of tone, very different from the ponderous handling peculiar to the Ridpaths and the Dyers, the Tutchins and the Leslies. We open at an essay on Trade, which would delight Mr. Cobden himself. De Foe is arguing against impolitic restrictions. We think to plague the foreigner, he says; and in reality we but deprive ourselves. "If you vex me, "I'll eat no dinner, said I, when I was a little boy: till my "mother taught me to be wiser by letting me stay till I "was hungry."

The reader will remember the time when this Review was planned. Ensign Steele was yet but a lounger in the lobbies of the theatres, and Addison had not emerged from his garret in the Haymarket. The details of common

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life had not yet been invested with the graces of literature. the social and polite moralities were still disregarded in the press, the world knew not the influence of my Lady Betty Modish, and Colonel Ranter still swore at the waiters, Where, then, shall we look for "the first sprightly "runnings" of Tatlers and Spectators if we have not found them in De Foe's Review? The earlier was indeed the ruder workman: but wit, originality, and knowledge were not less the tools he worked with; and the later "twopenny authors," as Mr. Dennis is pleased to call them, found the way well struck out for their finer and more delicate art. What had been done for the citizen classes, they were to do for the beauties and the wits. They had watched the experiment, and seen its success. The Review was enormously popular. It was stolen, pirated, hawked about every where; and the writer, with few of the advantages, paid all the penalties of success. He complains that his name was made "the hackney title of the times." Hardly a penny or twopenny pamphlet was afterwards cried in the streets, or a broadside put forth appealing to the people, to which the scurrilous libeller, or witless dunce, had not forged that popular name. Nor was it

without its influence on the course of events which now gradually changed the aspect and the policy of Godolphin's government. De Foe has claimed for himself large share in preparing a way for what were called the "modern Whigs;" and the claim was undoubtedly well founded.

Nottingham and Rochester had resigned; and the great House of Commons tactician was now a member of the government. The seals of the Home and War offices had been given to Harley and his friend Henry St. John. The Lord-Treasurer could not yet cross boldly to the Whigs, and he would not creep back to the Tories; but to join with Robert Harley was to do neither of these things. This famous person appears to us to have been the nearest representative of what we might call the practical spirit of the Revolution, of any who lived in that age. In one of his casual sayings, reported by Pope, we seem to

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find a clue to his character. Some one had observed of a measure proposed, that the people would never bear it: "None of us," replied Harley, "know how far the good 'people of England will bear." All his life he was engaged in attempts upon that problem. If he had thought less of the good people of England, he would have been a less able, a more daring, and certainly a more successful statesman. We do not think he was a Trimmer, in the ordinary sense of the word. When he went to church, and sent his family to the meeting house,-when, upon asking a clergyman to his Sunday table, he was careful to provide a clergyman "of another sort" to meet him,-we should try to find a better word for it, if we would not find a worse for the Revolution. The Revolution trimmed between two parties; and the Revolution, to this day, is but the grand unsolved experiment of how much the people of England will bear. To call Harley a mere court intriguer, is as preposterous as to call him a statesman of commanding genius. He had less of mere courtliness than any of his colleagues. The fashionable French dancing-master who wondered what the devil the Queen should have seen in him to make him an Earl and Lord-Treasurer, for he had attended him two years, and never taught such a dunce,-gives us a lively notion of his homely, bourgeois manners. Petticoat politics are to be charged against him; but to no one who thoroughly knew the Queen can it be matter of severe reproach, that he was at the pains to place Abigail Hill about her person. He knew the impending downfall of Marlborough's too imperious wife; and was he to let slip a power so plainly within his grasp, and see it turned against him? His success in the Bedchamber never shook his superior faith in the agencies of Parliament and the Press. These two were the levers of the Revo

lution; and they are memorably associated with the Government of Robert Harley.

As soon as he joined Godolphin, he seems to have turned his thoughts to De Foe. He was not, indeed,