"Optics: a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light."

Newton died in 1727, and after his death was found to have left a great number of notes and papers on Biblical subjects, the results of his constant and thoughtful study of the Bible. His "Observations upon the Prophecies of Holy Writ" was published after his death.

CHAPTER XVII.

PROSE WRITERS: DE FOE, SWIFT, STEELE, AND ADDISON

(1688-1745).

THE later years of the seventeenth century and the earlier part of the eighteenth were a period of much vigour in prose literature. The deeper struggle for freedom was now over; the great questions which had stirred the very hearts of the English people in the first half of the seventeenth century, and which had brought out the lyric poetry of the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, were settled. The political and religious strife had now become one of parties, rather than of great ideas; and whilst in this there was much excitement, there was little enthusiasm or poetry of feeling.

With the French influence there had come into England a taste for short, clever papers, or essays, written with much finish of style, and dealing with subjects of general interest in a clear form, and with a vein of satire running through them. Every writer must so far accommodate himself to the taste of his time, as to put what he has to say into such a form as will be the most readily received, and we shall find this form of prose literature was turned to good account by the greatest men of this time.

The first in age of this group of writers was Daniel De Foe, who is also so well known as the first great English novelist. He was born in London in 1661, and was the son of a butcher. His father was a nonconformist, and

De Foe was educated by a Mr. Morton, who afterwards went out to New England and became vice-president of Harvard College. At twenty-four De Foe took part in Monmouth's rebellion, and was at the battle of Sedgemoor. He managed to escape after the battle, and went to Spain and Portugal, where he stayed for two years. On his return to England, James II. was making use of arbitrary power to set aside the persecuting laws of Charles II. in order thereby to benefit Roman Catholics. Although De Foe, as a dissenter, benefited by the king's taking upon himself to dispense with these laws, he saw that it was an action full of danger to the State, because if it were taken as a precedent, other laws might also be dispensed with, and there would be no security in any Act of Parliament. De Foe, therefore, wrote three tracts against this proceeding of the king; and in these he showed that love of truth and independent justice which through life were always dearer to him than the triumph of any particular party.

Soon after this De Foe married, and became engaged in business in London. All this time his mind was busy with plans for the improvement of many things he saw to be wrong, and being obliged through losses in his business to leave London and go to Bristol, he there wrote his "Essay on Projects." In this book he suggests many things, which have since been adopted, and many others, still under discussion. Some of these are:-A Savings Bank for the Poor, Insurance Offices, An Asylum for Idiots, Friendly Societies, and a College for the Higher Education of Women. He closes a number of arguments in favour of this lastarguments that have lain dormant for nearly two hundred years by saying, "I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to women, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice; it is a thing will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is not an essay at the thing, and I refer the practice to those happy days, if

ever they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it." After De Foe's return to London he took the management of Tile Works at Tilbury. The struggle of religious opinions had become very much a strife of parties, and this rose into greater violence in Queen Anne's reign. De Foe saw how strong was the spirit of intolerance on both sides, and how useless were the measures intended to force persons into one outward Church; he wrote therefore in 1703 a very clever satire, which he called "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." He assumes for himself the character of an extreme churchman; one who has no question but that there should be only one form of religion in England, and that form should be his own. Under this character De Foe shows, with strict justice, how the Puritans had used persecution to carry out their idea of making England wholly Puritan, and now the time had come when England was to be made wholly Episcopalian. But how, he asks, is this to be done? To fine a man a shilling, because he stayed away from church, only brought in shillings, but not dissenters; they remained where they were before, as numerous as ever, and outside of the Church. There was but one way to really secure the unity of the Church, urged De Foe, in his assumed character of the intolerant churchman, and that was by getting rid of the dissenters altogether. Let them all be sent as a body out of the country, and all their ministers be hanged, then every one in England would belong to the one Church. If any one should object by saying that the dissenters were a great part of the nation, and might refuse to be turned out of their own country, this is answered by urging that the more numerous, the more dangerous; that they are not so numerous as they pretend; that at all events the plan should be tried. Or if it should appear to some an unmerciful act; "is it," asks the intolerant churchman, "unmerciful to kill a serpent, a toad, a viper? it is an act of mercy to our neighbours; much more to get

rid of those who poison the soul, corrupt our life, and destroy our peace."

De Foe meant to show here what the spirit of intolerance would lead to if it were fully carried out, so that we could not endure to live among those who differ from us in religious opinions; but he did not suspect that the extreme churchmen of that time would receive his suggestion as a real proposal, and highly approve of it, while the dissenters, on the other hand, also took it as earnest, and were alarmed at the bold suggestion. A Fellow of one of the colleges in Cambridge wrote: "I join with that author in all he says-I pray God put it into her Majesty's heart to put what is there proposed in execution."

The fact that both parties at first accepted the satire as an actual suggestion, and did not perceive that it was intended to show the injustice which lay at the very heart of intolerance, is an indication of how little the spirit of toleration was understood on either side. When it was discovered what was the real object of the book, both parties were indignant at the writer, who had so cleverly carried out the wrong principle to its true conclusions. De Foe had to fly from his opponents and his friends, and a reward of £50 was offered to any one who should find him. In the proclamation offering this reward, he is described as "a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown hair (but wears a wig); a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth." No one gained the £50, for De Foe, finding the printer of the pamphlet had been seized, voluntarily gave himself up. He was sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, to pay 200 marks (nearly £67), and to be imprisoned in Newgate during the queen's pleasure.

De Foe was put in the pillory, but pilloried his persecutors in his sturdy "Hymn to the Pillory," in which he showed how impossible it is for a clear conscience and