DIFFICULTIES IN RE-CHANGING SIDES 103

CHAPTER VIII.
LATER JOURNALISTIC LABOURS 115

CHAPTER IX.
THE PLACE OF DEFOE'S FICTIONS IN HIS LIFE 130

CHAPTER X.
HIS MYSTERIOUS END 155




CHAPTER I.

DEFOE'S YOUTH AND EARLY PURSUITS.


The life of a man of letters is not as a rule eventful. It may be rich
in spiritual experiences, but it seldom is rich in active adventure. We
ask his biographer to tell us what were his habits of composition, how
he talked, how he bore himself in the discharge of his duties to his
family, his neighbors, and himself; what were his beliefs on the great
questions that concern humanity. We desire to know what he said and
wrote, not what he did beyond the study and the domestic or the social
circle. The chief external facts in his career are the dates of the
publication of his successive books.

Daniel Defoe is an exception to this rule. He was a man of action as