millions in ages to come, would never have heard his name but for
_Robinson Crusoe_. To his contemporaries the publication of that work
was but a small incident in a career which for twenty years had claimed
and held their interest. People in these days are apt to imagine,
because Defoe wrote the most fascinating of books for children, that he
was himself simple, child-like, frank, open, and unsuspecting. He has
been so described by more than one historian of literature. It was not
so that he appeared to his contemporaries, and it is not so that he can
appear to us when we know his life, unless we recognise that he took a
child's delight in beating with their own weapons the most astute
intriguers in the most intriguing period of English history.

Defoe was essentially a journalist. He wrote for the day, and for the
greatest interest of the greatest number of the day. He always had some
ship sailing with the passing breeze, and laden with a useful cargo for
the coast upon which the wind chanced to be blowing. If the Tichborne
trial had happened in his time, we should certainly have had from him an
exact history of the boyhood and surprising adventures of Thomas Castro,
commonly known as Sir Roger, which would have come down to us as a true
record, taken, perhaps, by the chaplain of Portland prison from the
convict's own lips. It would have had such an air of authenticity, and
would have been corroborated by such an array of trustworthy witnesses,
that nobody in later times could have doubted its truth. Defoe always
wrote what a large number of people were in a mood to read. All his
writings, with so few exceptions that they may reasonably be supposed to
fall within the category, were _pièces de circonstance_. Whenever any
distinguished person died or otherwise engaged public attention, no
matter how distinguished, whether as a politician, a criminal, or a
divine, Defoe lost no time in bringing out a biography. It was in such
emergencies that he produced his memoirs of Charles XII., Peter the