AN INDUSTRIOUS MAN OF LETTERS. 28

they will proceed against her as they shall find cause. In this way pleas
and defences are heard on the various points that present themselves in the
subjects named, and not seldom with a lively dramatic interest.”

In August 1704, De Foe, at the instance of the statesman Harley, who
was now in power, received his releaso from Newgate. Hariey, always
anxious to seeure the assistance of able and moderate writers, had sent a
message “by word of mouth” to the author of “The Trve-born Englishman:”
“Pray, ask Mr. De Foe what I can do for him.” De Foe took a piece of
paper and wrote in reply: “ Lord, dost thou see that I am blind, and yet
ask me what thou shalt do forme! My answer is plain in my misery—
‘Lord, that I may receive my sight!’” *

With his health much injured by his long imprisonment, De Foe retired
to a small house at Bury in Suffolk. He did not desist, however, from his
literary labours. Marlborough had commenced his wonderful career with
the great victory of Blenheim, and De Foo celebrated it in a “ Hymn to
Victory.” Then followed replies to High Church and Tory pamphlets; a
wise and earnest invective against indiscriminate alms-giving (“ Giving Alms
in Charity”); The Double Welcome,” a poem to the Duke of Marlborough
(1708), as prosaic as most of his poems; and an admirable prose satire on
the follies of the times, entitled * The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry
Transactions from the World in the Moon. Translated from the Lunar
Language.”

De Foe by this time had returned to London, and, as an avowed supporter
of the Harley or Whig Government, had again plunged into the thick of the
political fray. For his own happiness he had better have kept out of it, and
only a strong sense of duty could have supported him under the afflictions
he endured. His enemies employed every artifice of annoyance, and the
whole machinery of persecution. He was harassed with false warrants of
wrest; with sham actions; with claims for pretended debts. His life was
threatened in anonymous letters; the foullest slanders assailed his morals;
he was subjected to the grossest misrepresentation of his principles. Yet,
bating not one jot of heart or hope, he pursued the even tenor of his way,
advocating whatever he thought would advance the cause of truth and
liberty, fiercely denouncing the intolerance of bigots and the dishonesty of

faction. In his “ Hymn to Peace” (1706), he forcibly describes his con-
dition —

“Storms of men,
Voracious and unsatisfied as Death,
Spoil in their hands, and poison in their breath,
With rage of devils hunt me down.”

But De Foe was not the man to be hunted down, and he turned on his
hunters with a daring and a resolution that effectually brought them to bay.
The first example of that marvellous realism which is the special charac

* De Foe, ‘‘ Appeal to Honour and Justice ” p. 12.