PREFACE.


There are three considerable biographies of Defoe--the first, by George
Chalmers, published in 1786; the second by Walter Wilson, published in
1830; the third, by William Lee, published in 1869. All three are
thorough and painstaking works, justified by independent research and
discovery. The labour of research in the case of an author supposed to
have written some two hundred and fifty separate books and pamphlets,
very few of them under his own name, is naturally enormous; and when it
is done, the results are open to endless dispute. Probably two men could
not be found who would read through the vast mass of contemporary
anonymous and pseudonymous print, and agree upon a complete list of
Defoe's writings. Fortunately, however, for those who wish to get a
clear idea of his life and character, the identification is not pure
guess-work on internal evidence. He put his own name or initials to some
of his productions, and treated the authorship of others as open
secrets. Enough is ascertained as his to provide us with the means for a
complete understanding of his opinions and his conduct. It is Defoe's
misfortune that his biographers on the large scale have occupied
themselves too much with subordinate details, and have been misled from
a true appreciation of his main lines of thought and action by
religious, political, and hero-worshipping bias. For the following
sketch, taking Mr. Lee's elaborate work as my chronological guide, I
have read such of Defoe's undoubted writings as are accessible in the
Library of the British Museum--there is no complete collection, I
believe, in existence--and endeavoured to connect them and him with the