should ever have thought of writing the lives of imaginary heroes, and should not have remained content with “forging stories and imposing them on the world for truth” about famous and notorious persons in real life.  The purveyors of news in those days could use without fear of detection a licence which would not be tolerated now.  They could not, indeed, satisfy the public appetite for news without taking liberties with the truth.  They had not special correspondents in all parts of the world, to fill their pages with reports from the spot of things seen and heard.  The public had acquired the habit of looking to the press, to periodical papers and casual books and pamphlets, for information about passing events and prominent men before sufficient means had been organized for procuring information which should approximate to correctness.  In such circumstances, the temptation to invent and embellish was irresistible.  “Why,” a paragraph-maker of the time is made to say, “if we will write nothing but truth, we must bring you no news; we are bound to bring you such as we can find.”  Yet it was not lies but truth that the public wanted as much as they do now.  Hence arose the necessity of fortifying reports with circumstantial evidence of their authenticity.  Nobody rebuked unprincipled news-writers more strongly than Defoe, and no news-writer was half as copious in his guarantees for the accuracy of his information.  When a report reached England that the island of St. Vincent had been blown into the air, Defoe wrote a description of the calamity, the most astonishing thing that had happened in the world “since the Creation, or at least since the destruction of the earth by water in the general Deluge,” and prefaced his description by saying:—­

“Our accounts of this come from so many several hands and several places that it would be impossible to bring the letters all separately into this journal; and when we had done so or attempted to do so, would leave the story confused, and the world not perfectly informed.  We have therefore thought it better to give the substance of this amazing accident in one collection; making together as full and as distinct an account of the whole as we believe it possible to come at by any intelligence whatsoever, and at the close of this account we shall give some probable guesses at the natural cause of so terrible an operation.”

Defoe carried the same system of vouching for the truth of his narratives by referring them to likely sources, into pamphlets and books which really served the purpose of newspapers, being written for the gratification of passing interests.  The History of the Wars of Charles XII., which Mr. Lee ascribes to him, was “written by a Scot’s gentleman, in the Swedish service.”  The short narrative of the life and death of Count Patkul was “written by the Lutheran Minister who assisted him in his last hours, and faithfully translated out of a High Dutch manuscript.”  M. Mesnager’s minutes