Queen's Ministers. He joined naturally in the exultation over
Marlborough's successes, but in the _Review_, and in his _Hymn to
Victory_, separately published, he courteously diverted some part of the
credit to the new Ministry. "Her Majesty's measures, moved by new and
polished councils, have been pointed more directly at the root of the
French power than ever we have seen before. I hope no man will suppose I
reflect on the memory of King William; I know 'tis impossible the Queen
should more sincerely wish the reduction of France than his late
Majesty; but if it is expected I should say he was not worse served,
oftener betrayed, and consequently hurried into more mistakes and
disasters, than Her Majesty now is, this must be by somebody who
believes I know much less of the public matters of those days than I had
the honour to be informed of." But this praise, he represented, was not
the praise of a partisan; it was an honest compliment wrung from a man
whose only connexion with the Government was a bond for his good
behaviour, an undertaking "not to write what some people might not
like."

Defoe's hand being against every member of the writing brotherhood, it
was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms.
He often complained of the insults, ribaldry, Billingsgate, and
Bear-garden language to which he was exposed; and some of his
biographers have taken these lamentations seriously, and expressed their
regret that so good a man should have been so much persecuted. But as he
deliberately provoked these assaults, and never missed a chance of
effective retort, it is difficult to sympathise with him on any ground
but his manifest delight in the strife of tongues. Infinitely the
superior of his antagonists in power, he could affect to treat them with
good humour, but this good humour was not easy to reciprocate when
combined with an imperturbable assumption that they were all fools or