what I may call a purfled style, tells us that--

"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of
wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To
dwell upon it is to take courage and to praise God for the
splendid possibilities of life.... Defoe is always the hero; his
career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his
fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a
kaleidoscope--he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned;
it is shine, it is shower, it is _couleur de rose_, it is
Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was
not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, Æneas more pious."

That is one way of putting it. Here is another way (as the cookery
books say):--"To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale
of a hosier and pantile maker, who had a hooked nose and wrote tracts
indefatigably--he was up, he was down, he was in the Pillory, he was
at Tooting; it was _poule de soie_, it was leather and prunella; and
it was always tracts. Æneas was not so pious a member of the Butchers'
Company; and there are a few milestones on the Dover Road; but Defoe's
life was as thick with tracts as a cornfield with corn." These two
estimates may differ here and there; but on one point they agree--that
Defoe was an extremely restless, pushing, voluble person, who could as
soon have stood on his head for twenty-eight years, two months, and
nineteen days as have kept silence for that period with any man or
woman in whose company he found himself frequently alone. Unless we
have entirely misjudged his character--and, I may add, unless Mr.
Wright has completely misrepresented the rest of his life--it simply
was not _in_ the man to keep this foolish vow for twenty-four hours.