The pillory was a terrible punishment.  In a public place, raised on a platform, in full view of the passing crowd, the victim stood.  Round his neck was a heavy collar of wood, and in this collar his hands were also confined.  Thus he stood helpless, unable to protect himself either from the sun or rain or from the insults of the crowd.  For a man in the pillory was a fitting object for laughter and rude jests.  To be jeered at, to have mud thrown at him, was part of his punishment.

But for Defoe it was a triumph rather than a punishment.  To the common people he was already a hero.  So they formed a guard round him to protect him from the mud and rotten eggs his enemies would now thrown.  They themselves threw flowers, they wreathed the pillory with roses and with laurel till it seemed a place of honor rather than of disgrace.  They sang songs in his praise and drank to his health and wished those who had sent him there stood in his place.  Thus through all the long, hot July hours Defoe was upheld and comforted in his disgrace.  And to show that his spirit was untouched by his sentence he wrote A Hymn to the Pillory.  This was bought and read and shouted in the ears of his enemies by thousands of the people.  It was a more daring satire than even The Shortest Way.  In the end of it Defoe calls upon the Pillory, “Thou Bugbear of the Law,” to speak and say why he stands there:—­

    “Tell them, it was, because he was too bold,
    And told those truths which should not have been told! 
    Extol the justice of the land,
    Who punish what they will not understand!

    Tell them, he stands exalted there
    For speaking what we would not hear: 
    And yet he might have been secure,
    Had he said less, or would he have said more!

    Tell them the men that placed him here
    Are scandals to the Times! 
    Are at a loss to find his guilt,
    And can’t commit his crimes!”

But although Defoe’s friends could take the sting out of the terrible hours during which he stood as an object for mockery they could do little else for him.  So he went back to prison to remain there during the Queen’s pleasure.

This, of course, meant ruin to him.  For himself he could bear it, but he had a wife and children, and to know that they were in poverty and bitter want was his hardest punishment.

From prison Defoe could not manage his factory.  He had to let that go, losing with it thousands of pounds.  For the second time he saw himself ruined.  But he had still left to him his pen and his undaunted courage.  So, besides writing many pamphlets in prison, Defoe started a paper called the Review.  It appeared at first once, then twice, and at last three times a week.  Unlike our papers of to-day, which are written by many hands, Defoe wrote the whole of the Review himself, and continued to do so for years.  It contained very little news and many