This glory he describes as "the leaf-gold which the devil has laid over
the backside of ambition, to make it glitter to the world."

Defoe's knowledge of the irritation caused among the Dissenters by his
_Shortest Way_, did not prevent him from shocking them and annoying the
high Tories by similar _jeux d'esprit_. He had no tenderness for the
feelings of such of his brethren as had not his own robust sense of
humour and boyish glee in the free handling of dangerous weapons. Thus
we find him, among his eulogies of the Grand Monarque, particularly
extolling him for the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By the
expulsion of the Protestants, Louis impoverished and unpeopled part of
his country, but it was "the most politic action the French King ever
did." "I don't think fit to engage here in a dispute about the honesty
of it," says Defoe; "but till he had first cleared the country of that
numerous injured people, he could never have ventured to carry an
offensive war into all the borders of Europe." And Defoe was not content
with shocking the feelings of his nominal co-religionists by a light
treatment of matters in which he agreed with them. He upheld with all
his might the opposite view from theirs on two important questions of
foreign policy. While the Confederates were doing battle on all sides
against France, the King of Sweden was making war on his own account
against Poland for the avowed purpose of placing a Protestant prince on
the throne. Extreme Protestants in England were disposed to think that
Charles XII. was fighting the Lord's battle in Poland. But Defoe was
strongly of opinion that the work in which all Protestants ought at that
moment to be engaged was breaking down the power of France, and as
Charles refused to join the Confederacy, and the Catholic prince against
whom he was fighting was a possible adherent, the ardent preacher of
union among the Protestant powers insisted upon regarding him as a
practical ally of France, and urged that the English fleet should be