honest compliment wrung from a man
whose only connexion with the Government was a bond for his good
behaviour, an undertaking "not to write what some people might not
like."

Defoe's hand being against every member of the writing brotherhood, it
was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms.
He often complained of the insults, ribaldry, Billingsgate, and
Bear-garden language to which he was exposed; and some of his
biographers have taken these lamentations seriously, and expressed their
regret that so good a man should have been so much persecuted. But as he
deliberately provoked these assaults, and never missed a chance of
effective retort, it is difficult to sympathise with him on any ground
but his manifest delight in the strife of tongues. Infinitely the
superior of his antagonists in power, he could affect to treat them with
good humour, but this good humour was not easy to reciprocate when
combined with an imperturbable assumption that they were all fools or
knaves. When we find him, after humbly asking pardon for all his errors
of the press, errors of the pen, or errors of opinion, expressing a wish
that "all gentlemen on the other side would give him equal occasion to
honour them for their charity, temper, and gentlemanlike dealing, as for
their learning and virtue," and offering to "capitulate with them, and
enter into a treaty or cartel for exchange of good language," we may, if
we like, admire his superior mastery of the weapons of irritation, but
pity is out of place.

The number of February 17, 1705, was announced by Defoe as being "the
last Review of this volume, and designed to be so of this work." But on
the following Tuesday, the regular day for the appearance of the
_Review_, he issued another number, declaring that he could not quit the
volume without some remarks on "charity and poverty." On Saturday yet
another last number appeared, dealing with some social subjects which he
had been urged by correspondents to discuss. Then on Tuesday, February
27, apologising for the frequent turning of his design, he issued a
Preface to a new volume of the _Review_, with a slight change of title.
He would overtake sooner or later all the particulars of French
greatness which he had promised to survey, but as the course of his
narrative had brought him to England, and he might stay there for some
time, it was as well that this should be indicated in the title, which
was henceforth to be A