Defoe founded, conducted, and wrote for a host of other newspapers--the
monthly _Mercurius Politicus_, an octavo of sixty-four pages
(1716-1720); the weekly _Dormer's News-Letter_ (written, not printed,
1716-1718); the _Whitehall Evening Post_ (a tri-weekly quarto-sheet,
established 1718); the _Daily Post_ (a daily single leaf, folio,
established 1719); and _Applebee's Journal_ (with which his connexion
began in 1720 and ended in 1726).

The contributions to these newspapers which Mr. Lee has assigned, with
great judgment it seems to me, to Defoe, range over a wide field of
topics, from piracy and highway robberies to suicide and the Divinity of
Christ. Defoe's own test of a good writer was that he should at once
please and serve his readers, and he kept this double object in view in
his newspaper writings, as much as in _Robinson Crusoe_, _Moll
Flanders_, and the _Family Instructor_. Great as is the variety of
subjects in the selections which Mr. Lee has made upon internal
evidence, they are all of them subjects in which Defoe showed a keen
interest in his acknowledged works. In providing amusement for his
readers, he did not soar above his age in point of refinement; and in
providing instruction, he did not fall below his age in point of
morality and religion. It is a notable circumstance that one of the
marks by which contemporaries traced his hand was "the little art he is
truly master of, of forging a story and imposing it on the world for
truth." Of this he gave a conspicuous instance in _Mist's Journal_ in an
account of the marvellous blowing up of the island of St. Vincent, which
in circumstantial invention and force of description must be ranked
among his master-pieces. But Defoe did more than embellish stories of
strange events for his newspapers. He was a master of journalistic art
in all its branches, and a fertile inventor and organizer of new
devices. It is to him, Mr. Lee says, and his researches entitle him to