island captivity. Of even the best of Defoe's other novels,--"Moll
Flanders," "Roxana," "Captain Singleton,"--the writer must confess that
his judgment coincides with that of Mr. Leslie Stephen, who finds two
thirds of them "deadly dull," and the treatment such as "cannot raise
[the story] above a very moderate level."[3]

The closing scenes of Defoe's life were not cheerful. He appears to have
lost most of the fortune he acquired from his numerous writings and
scarcely less numerous speculations. For the two years immediately
preceding his death, he lived in concealment away from his home, though
why he fled, and from what danger, is not definitely known. He died in a
lodging in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, on April 26, 1731.

The only description we have of Defoe's personal appearance is an
advertisement published in 1703, when he was in hiding to avoid arrest
for his "Shortest Way with the Dissenters:"--

"He is a middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown
complexion, and dark-brown colored hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose,
a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth."

In the years 1720-21 the plague, which had not visited Western Europe
for fifty-five years, broke out with great violence in Marseilles. About
fifty thousand people died of the disease in that city, and great alarm
was felt in London lest the infection should reach England. Here was a
journalistic chance that so experienced a newspaper man as Defoe could
not let slip. Accordingly, on the 17th of March, 1722, appeared his
"Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the most
Remarkable Occurrences, as well Publick as Private, which happened in
London during the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen