Mr. Lee, who has brought all these facts to light, seems to share
Defoe's ingenuous astonishment at this "strange instance of ungrateful
violence," and conjectures that it must have proceeded from imaginary
wrong of a very grievous nature, such as a suspicion that Defoe had
instigated the Government to prosecute him. It is perhaps as well that
it should have fallen to so loyal an admirer to exhume Defoe's secret
services and public protestations; the record might otherwise have been
rejected as incredible.

Mr. Lee's researches were not confined to Defoe's relations with Mist
and his journal, and the other publications mentioned in the precious
letter to Mr. de la Faye. Once assured that Defoe did not withdraw from
newspaper-writing in 1715, he ransacked the journals of the period for
traces of his hand and contemporary allusions to his labours. A rich
harvest rewarded Mr. Lee's zeal. Defoe's individuality is so marked that
it thrusts itself through every disguise. A careful student of the
_Review_, who had compared it with the literature of the time, and
learnt his peculiar tricks of style and vivid ranges of interest, could
not easily be at fault in identifying a composition of any length.
Defoe's incomparable clearness of statement would alone betray him; that
was a gift of nature which no art could successfully imitate.
Contemporaries also were quick at recognising their Proteus in his many
shapes, and their gossip gives a strong support to internal evidence,
resting as it probably did on evidences which were not altogether
internal. Though Mr. Lee may have been rash sometimes in quoting little
scraps of news as Defoe's, he must be admitted to have established that,
prodigious as was the number and extent of the veteran's separate
publications during the reign of the First George, it was also the most
active period of his career as a journalist. Managing Mist and writing
for his journal would have been work enough for an ordinary man; but