CHAPTER IV.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH.

   
 
 

political life virtually terminated at the accession of George I.
Fa ER, to the throne of Great Britain; and that thenceforward he de-
a ROS voted himself to the cultivation of his astonishing genius as a
writer of fiction. Others, indeed, have gone somewhat further.
Admitting that he wrote but little, politically, after the fall of his
patron Harley, they have asserted that what he did write was
in open contradiction of the principles he had formerly espoused, and that
he, the great Whig pamphleteer, wrote Tory pamphlets for Tory money.

Mr. Lee, however, has recently proved two important facts: first, that
De Foe continued to labour as a politician while busiest as a novelist; and
that, second, he was still in the service of, and remunerated by, the King’s
Government. His position was a curious one: he was paid by the Ministry
to write in the Tory papers —more particularly in the so-called Mist’s
Journal—and to write in them, not in avowed advocacy of Government
measures, yet, as it were, in mitigation and defence of them. It must be
owned that this was an ingenious method of turning an enemy’s arms
against himself, but it cannot be considered altogether worthy of a man of
honour and sincerity.

The following account of this curious transaction is given by Mr. Lee,*
who founds it upon letters written by De Foe himself :—

De Foe says, that with the approbation of Lord Sunderland, one of the
Whig Ministry, he introduced himself to the proprietor of Mist's Journal,
with the view of keeping it in the circle of a secret management, so that it
might pass as a Tory paper, and yet be disabled and enervated of its trea-
sonable character, “so as to do no mischief, or give any offence to the
Government.” De Foe had no share in the property of this paper, and had
therefore no absolute power to reject improper communications; but he
trusted to the moral influence he should he able to acquire and maintain
over Mist, the proprietor, who had no suspicion that the Government was
indirectly concerned in the matter. This Journal was the organ of the Pre-
tender’s interest, and, according to De Foe, its correspondents and supporters
* Lee, “Life of Daniel De Foe,” i. 271, 272