greater part of his life.  At the best it was a painful and dreary ending for so vigorous a life, and unless we pitilessly regard it as a retribution for his moral defects, it is some comfort to think that the old man’s infirmities and anxieties were not aggravated by the pressure of hopeless and helpless poverty.  Nor do I think that he was as distressed as he represented to his son-in-law by apprehensions of ruin to his family after his death, and suspicions of the honesty of his son’s intentions.  There is a half insane tone about his letter to Mr. Baker, but a certain method may be discerned in its incoherencies.  My own reading of it is that it was a clever evasion of his son-in-law’s attempts to make sure of his share of the inheritance.  We have seen how shifty Defoe was in the original bargaining about his daughter’s portion, and we know from his novels what his views were about fortune-hunters, and with what delight he dwelt upon the arts of outwitting them.  He probably considered that his youngest daughter was sufficiently provided for by her marriage, and he had set his heart upon making provision for her unmarried sisters.  The letter seems to me to be evidence, not so much of fears for their future welfare, as of a resolution to leave them as much as he could.  Two little circumstances seem to show that, in spite of his professions of affection, there was a coolness between Defoe and his son-in-law.  He wrote only the prospectus and the first article for Baker’s paper, the Universal Spectator, and when he died, Baker contented himself with a simple intimation of the fact.

If my reading of this letter is right, it might stand as a type of the most strongly marked characteristic in Defoe’s political writings.  It was a masterly and utterly unscrupulous piece of diplomacy for the attainment of a just and benevolent end.  This may appear strange after what I have said about Defoe’s want of honesty, yet one cannot help coming to this conclusion in looking back at his political career before his character underwent its final degradation.  He was a great, a truly great liar, perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived.  His dishonesty went too deep to be called superficial, yet, if we go deeper still in his rich and strangely mixed nature, we come upon stubborn foundations of conscience.  Among contemporary comments on the occasion of his death, there was one which gave perfect expression to his political position.  “His knowledge of men, especially those in high life (with whom he was formerly very conversant) had weakened his attachment to any political party; but, in the main, he was in the interest of civil and religious liberty, in behalf of which he appeared on several remarkable occasions.”  The men of the time with whom Defoe was brought into contact, were not good examples to him.  The standard of political morality was probably never so low in England as during his lifetime.  Places were dependent on the favour of the Sovereign, and the Sovereign’s