ing and affecting, as well as the most comic, passages of Castle Rackrent, if narrated by one who had a less regard for "the family" than the immortal Thady, who, while he sees that none of the dynasty which he celebrates were perfectly right, has never been able to puzzle out wherein they were certainly wrong. Mr Galt's country Provost, and still more his reverend Annalist of the Parish, should be also distinguished in this class. Wordsworth, himself, has assumed, in one of his affecting poems, the character of a sea-faring person retired to settle in the country.

These are, however, all characters of masquerade: We believe that of De Foe was entirely natural to him. The high-born Cavalier, for instance, speaks nearly the same species of language, and shows scarce a greater knowledge of society than Robinson Crusoe; only he has a cast of the grenadier about him, as the other has the trim of a seaman. It is greatly to be doubted whether De Foe could have changed his colloquial, circuitous, and periphrastic style for any other, whether more coarse or more elegant. We have little doubt it was connected with his nature, and the particular turn of his thoughts and ordinary expressions, and that he did not succeed so much by writing in an assumed manner, as by giving full scope to his

own.

The subject is so interesting, that it is worth while examining it a little more closely; with which view we have reprinted, as illustrating our commentary on what may be called the plausible style of composition, The True History of the Appa

1

rition of one Mrs Veal the next day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, the eighth of September, 1705, which Apparition recommends the perusal of Drelincourt's Book of Consolation against the Fears of Death." We are induced to this, because the account of the origin of the pamphlet is curious, the pamphlet itself short, and, though once highly popular, now little read or known, and particularly because De Foe has put in force, within these few pages, peculiar specimens of his art of recommending the most improbable narrative, by his specious and serious mode of telling it.

An adventurous bookseller had ventured to print a considerable edition of a work by the Reverend Charles Drelincourt, minister of the Calvinist Church in Paris, and translated by M. D'Assigny, under the title of the Christian's Defence against the Fear of Death, with several directions how to prepare ourselves to die well. But however certain the prospect of death, it is not so agreeable (unfortunately) as to invite the eager contemplation of the public; and Drelincourt's book, being neglected, lay a dead stock on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency, he applied to De Foe to assist him (by dint of such means as were then, as well as now, pretty well understood in the literary world) in rescuing the unfortunate book from the literary death to which general neglect seemed about to consign it.

De Foe's genius and audacity devised a plan,

1 [See Appendix, No. II.]

which, for assurance and ingenuity, defied even the powers of Mr Puff in the Critic; for who but himself would have thought of summoning up a ghost from the grave to bear witness in favour of a halting body of divinity? There is a matter-offact, businesslike style in the whole account of the transaction, which bespeaks ineffable powers of self-possession. The narrative is drawn up "by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone, in Kent, a very intelligent person." And, moreover, "the discourse is attested by a very sober and understanding gentlewoman, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which Mrs Bargrave lives." The Justice believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit, as not to be put upon by any fallacy-and the kinswoman positively assures the Justice, "that the whole matter, as it is related and laid down, is really true, and what she herself heard, as near as may be, from Mrs Bargrave's own mouth, who, she knows, had no reason to invent or publish such a story, or any design to forge and tell a lie, being a woman of so much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of piety." Scepticism itself could not resist this triple court of evidence so artfully combined, the Justice attesting for the discerning spirit of the sober and understanding gentlewoman his kinswoman, and his kinswoman becoming bail for the veracity of Mrs Bargrave. And here, gentle reader, admire the simplicity of those days. Had Mrs Veal's visit to her friend happened in our time, the conductors of the daily press would have given the word, and seven gentlemen, unto the said press

belonging, would, with an obedient start, have made off for Kingston, for Canterbury, for Dover,—for Kamtschatka if necessary,-to pose the Justice, cross-examine Mrs Bargrave, confront the sober and understanding kinswoman, and dig Mrs Veal up from her grave, rather than not get to the bottom of the story. But in our time we doubt and scrutinize: our ancestors wondered and believed.

Before the story is commenced, the understanding gentlewoman, (not the Justice of Peace,) who is the reporter, takes some pains to repel the objections made against the story by some of the friends of Mrs Veal's brother, who consider the marvel as an aspersion on their family, and do what they can to laugh it out of countenance. Indeed, it is allowed, with admirable impartiality, that Mr Veal is too much of a gentleman to suppose Mrs Bargrave invented the story-scandal itself could scarce have supposed that although one notorious liar, who is chastised towards the conclusion of the story, ventures to throw out such an insinuation. No reasonable or respectable person, however, could be found to countenance the suspicion, and Mr Veal himself opined that Mrs Bargrave had been driven crazy by a cruel husband, and dreamed the whole story of the apparition. Now all this is sufficiently artful. To have vouched the fact as universally known, and believed by every one, nem. con., would not have been half so satisfactory to a sceptic as to allow fairly that the narrative had been impugned, and hint at the character of one of those sceptics, and the motives of another, as sufficient to account for their want of belief. Now to the fact itself.

Mrs Bargrave and Mrs Veal had been friends in youth, and had protested their attachment should last as long as they lived; but when Mrs Veal's brother obtained an office in the customs at Dover, some cessation of their intimacy ensued, "though without any positive quarrel." Mrs Bargrave had removed to Canterbury, and was residing in a house of her own, when she was suddenly interrupted by a visit from Mrs Veal, as she was sitting in deep contemplation of certain distresses of her own. The visitor was in a riding-habit, and announced herself as prepared for a distant journey, (which seems to intimate that spirits have a considerable distance to go before they arrive at their appointed station, and that the females at least put on a habit for the occasion.) The spirit, for such was the seeming Mrs Veal, continued to wave the ceremony of salutation, both in going and coming, which will remind the reader of a ghostly lover's reply to his mistress in the fine old Scottish ballad:

"Why should I come within thy bower?

I am no earthly man:

And should I kiss thy rosy lips,

Thy days would not be lang."

They then began to talk in the homely style of middle-aged ladies, and Mrs Veal proses concerning the conversations they had formerly held, and the books they had read together. Her very recent experience probably led Mrs Veal to talk of death, and the books written on the subject, and she pronounced, ex cathedrâ, as a dead person was best entitled to do, that " Drelincourt's book on death was the best book on the subject ever written."