wholly wanting," &c. The 'forties were the days when critics still talked
learnedly of the "noble style," &c., "the vulgar," of "sinking" or "rising"
with "the subject," the days when Books of Beauty were in fashion, and
Rembrandt's choice of beggars, wrinkled faces and grey hairs, for his
favourite subjects seemed a low and reprehensible taste in "high art."
Though critics to-day still ingenuously confound an artist's subject with
his treatment of it, and prefer scenes of life to be idealised rather than
realised by writers, we have advanced a little since the days of the poet
Montgomery, and it would be difficult now to find anybody writing so
confidently--"Unfortunately the taste or circumstances of Defoe led him
mostly into low life," however much the critic might believe it. But let us
glance at a few passages in "Captain Singleton," which may show us why
Defoe excels as a realist, and why his descriptions of "low life" are
artistically as perfect as any descriptions of "higher life" in the works
of the English novelists. Take the following description of kidnapping:--

"The woman pretending to take me up in her arms and kiss me, and
play with me, draws the girl a good way from the house, till at
last she makes a fine story to the girl, and bids her go back to
the maid, and tell her where she was with the child; that a
gentlewoman had taken a fancy to the child and was kissing it, but
she should not be frightened, or to that purpose; for they were
but just there; and so while the girl went, she carried me quite
away.--Page 2.

Now here, in a single sentence, Defoe catches for us the whole soul and
character of the situation. It _seems_ very simple, but it sums up
marvellously an exact observation and knowledge of the arts of the gipsy
child-stealer, of her cunning flattery and brassy boldness, and we can
see the simple little girl running back to the house to tell the nurse