CHARLES LAMB'S CRITICISM. 42

without any attempt to disguise it, or to render it attractive by meretricious
colouring. For the rest, the fiction to which I am alluding contains some
of its author’s finest touches; is instinct in many passages with a very
powerful pathos; and everywhere exhibits an extraordinary knowledge of
humanity.

The last of De Foe’s novels appeared in March 1724, under the title of
~The Fortunate Mistress: or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of
Fortunes of Mademoiselle de’ Belau; afterwards called the Countess of
Windelsheim in Germany. Being the Person known by the name of the
Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II.’ This story of the life of
un abandoned woman is doubtlessly written in all honesty of purpose; but
assuredly it is not the hook a father would put into the hands of his
daughters, and again I doubt whether such a method of attacking vice is
ever successful.

All that can be said of the secondary fictions of De Foe has, however, been
said with excellent force and humour by Charles Lamb ;* and his defence
of them I may leave to the consideration of my readers :—

FROM CHARLES LAMB.

The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness about it beyond that
of any other novel or romance writer. His fictions have all the air of true
stories. It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them, that a real
person is not narrating to you everywhere nothing but what really happened
to himself. ‘lo this the extreme homediness of their style mainly contributes.
We use the word in its best and heartiest sense—that which comes home to
the reader. The narrators everywhere are chosen from low life, or have had
their origin in it; therefore they tell their own tales, as persons in their
degree are observed to do, with infinite repetition, and an overacted exact-
ness, lest the hearer should not have minded, or have forgotten, some things
that had been told before...... The heroes and heroines of De Foe can never
again hope to be popular with a much higher class of readers than that of
the servant-maid or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough pre-
scription, Singleton, the pirate; Colonel Jack, the thief; Moll Flandcrs,
both thief and harlot; Roxana, harlot, and somethiny worse—would be
startling ingredients in the bill of fare of modern literary delicacies.— But,
then, what pirates, what thieves, and what harlots, is the thief, the harlot,
and the pirate of De Foe! We would not hesitate to say, that in no other
hook of fiction, where the lives of such characters are described, is guilt
and delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering made more closely tc
follow the commission, or the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or
the intervening flashes of religious visitation upon the rude and uninstructed
soul more meltingly and fearfully painted.

* Charles Lamb, “ Eliana”: De Foe’s Secondary Novels.
1 It must be remembered that Charles Lamb wrote before English literature had been
enriched (?) with ‘‘sensational novels.”