CHAPTER X.

HIS MYSTERIOUS END.



"The best step," Defoe says, after describing the character of a
deceitful talker, "such a man can take is to lie on, and this shows the
singularity of the crime; it is a strange expression, but I shall make
it out; their way is, I say, to lie on till their character is
completely known, and then they can lie no longer, for he whom nobody
deceives can deceive nobody, and the essence of lying is removed; for
the description of a lie is that it is spoken to deceive, or the design
is to deceive. Now he that nobody believes can never lie any more,
because nobody can be deceived by him."

Something like this seems to have happened to Defoe himself. He touched
the summit of his worldly prosperity about the time of the publication
of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719). He was probably richer then than he had
been when he enjoyed the confidence of King William, and was busy with
projects of manufacture and trade. He was no longer solitary in
journalism. Like his hero, he had several plantations, and companions to
help him in working them. He was connected with four journals, and from
this source alone his income must have been considerable. Besides this,
he was producing separate works at the rate, on an average, of six a
year, some of them pamphlets, some of them considerable volumes, all of
them calculated to the wants of the time, and several of them extremely
popular, running through three or four editions in as many months. Then
he had his salary from the Government, which he delicately hints at in