Hours in a Library, Volume I | Page 8

It is only towards the end that the
ironical purpose crops out in what we should have thought an
unmistakable manner. Few writers would have preserved their
incognito so long. The caricature would have been too palpable, and
invited ridicule too ostentatiously. An impatient man soon frets under
the mask and betrays his real strangeness in the hostile camp.
De Foe in fact had a peculiarity at first sight less favourable to success
in fiction than in controversy. Amongst the political writers of that age
he was, on the whole, distinguished for good temper and an absence of
violence. Although a party man, he was by no means a man to swallow
the whole party platform. He walked on his own legs, and was not
afraid to be called a deserter by more thoroughgoing partisans. The
principles which he most ardently supported were those of religious
toleration and hatred to every form of arbitrary power. Now, the
intellectual groundwork upon which such a character is formed has
certain conspicuous merits, along with certain undeniable weaknesses.
Amongst the first may be reckoned a strong grasp of facts--which was
developed to an almost disproportionate degree in De Foe--and a

resolution to see things as they are without the gloss which is
contracted from strong party sentiment. He was one of those men of
vigorous common-sense who like to have everything down plainly and
distinctly in good unmistakable black and white, and indulge a
voracious appetite for facts and figures. He was, therefore, able--within
the limits of his vision--to see things from both sides, and to take his
adversaries' opinions as calmly as his own, so long, at least, as they
dealt with the class of considerations with which he was accustomed to
deal; for, indeed, there are certain regions of discussion to which we
cannot be borne on the wings of statistics, or even of common-sense.
And this, the weak side of his intellect, is equally unmistakable. The
matter-of-fact man may be compared to one who suffers from
colour-blindness. Perhaps he may have a power of penetrating, and
even microscopic vision; but he sees everything in his favourite black
and white or gray, and loses all the delights of gorgeous, though it may
be deceptive, colouring. One man sees everything in the forcible light
and shade of Rembrandt: a few heroes stand out conspicuously in a
focus of brilliancy from a background of imperfectly defined shadows,
clustering round the centre in strange but picturesque confusion. To
another, every figure is full of interest, with singular contrasts and
sharply-defined features; the whole effect is somewhat spoilt by the
want of perspective and the perpetual sparkle and glitter; yet when we
fix our attention upon any special part, it attracts us by its undeniable
vivacity and vitality. To a third, again, the individual figures become
dimmer, but he sees a slow and majestic procession of shapes
imperceptibly developing into some harmonious whole. Men profess to
reach their philosophical conclusions by some process of logic; but the
imagination is the faculty which furnishes the raw material upon which
the logic is employed, and, unconsciously to its owners, determines, for
the most part, the shape into which their theories will be moulded. Now,
De Foe was above the ordinary standard, in so far as he did not, like
most of us, see things merely as a blurred and inextricable chaos; but he
was below the great imaginative writers in the comparative coldness
and dry precision of his mental vision. To him the world was a vast
picture, from which all confusion was banished; everything was
definite, clear, and precise as in a photograph; as in a photograph, too,
everything could be accurately measured, and the result stated in

figures; by the same parallel, there was a want of perspective, for the
most distant objects were as precisely given as the nearest; and yet
further, there was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in
natural objects by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of
imaginative passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or
Scott what a portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke
or Reynolds, though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to
make a De Foe are almost as rare as those which form the more
elevated artist.
To illustrate this a little more in detail, one curious proof of the want of
the passionate element in De Foe's novels is the singular calmness with
which he describes his villains. He always looks at the matter in a
purely business-like point of view. It is very wrong to steal, or break
any of the commandments: partly because the chances are that it won't
pay, and partly also because the devil will doubtless get hold of