marshall - daniel defoe as satirist

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Daniel Defoe as SatiristAuthor(s): Ashley MarshallSource: Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 2007), pp. 553-576Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2007.70.4.553 .

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| . 70, . 4 553Pp. 553–576. ©2007 by Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 0018-7895 | - 1544-399. All rights reserved.For permission to photocopy or reproduce article content, consult the University o Caliornia Press Rights and Permissionswebsite, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintIno.asp. DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2007.70.4.553.

primarily as a novelist, secondarily asa journalist and a topical commentator on politics and economics. During his lie-time, however, he was widely known as a satirist, especially as the amous author o

Te rue-Born Englishman, the signature he used in many o his subsequent publica-tions. Deoe wrote some fy satirical or partly satirical texts over a period o nearly our decades, but because these works do not correspond very closely to “Augustan”-centered views o eighteenth-century satire, they have never received much attentionrom modern critics—certainly ar less than his novels. Even the substantial biogra-phies by Paula Backscheider, Maximillian E. Novak, and John Richetti do not treatDeoe as a satirist in any sustained or serious way.

We severely distort our sense o Deoe as a thinker and writer i we ignorethe satires that he produced over most o his adult lie. Furthermore, although Deoe’s

satires take up a variety o subjects and are highly topical, they also reveal a remarkabledegree o consistency and commitment. Deoe has been called that “most chameleon-like o writers,” and is ofen regarded by literary critics as a hired pen, dashing off party propaganda with a purely mercenary motive. His satiric output, however, calls into

For invaluable advice I am grateul to Clement Hawes, Kathryn Hume, Robert D. Hume, Joan Landes,Geoffrey M. Sill, David Wallace Spielman, and Ryan J. Stark. For their help with the Appendix, I am in-debted to W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank.

. In the revised list o attributions suggested by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, satire occupies asurprisingly prominent place, but whether one accepts their drastically reduced canon (as I do) or

rejects it, the act remains that Deoe’s corpus includes a substantial number o satires. For the revisedcanon, see Furbank and Owens, A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (London, ). Teir bibliog-raphy de-attributes texts, reducing by roughly hal the canon proposed by John Robert Moore;or Moore’s canon, see Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, d ed. (Hampden, Conn., ).

. Backscheider,Daniel Defoe: His Life (Baltimore, ); Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions(Oxord, ); Richetti, Te Life of Daniel Defoe (Malden, Mass., and Oxord, ).

. Katherine A. Armstrong, Defoe: Writer as Agent (Victoria, B.C., ), . Lennard J. Davis goesso ar as to call Deoe a proessional liar whose writings are “lled with disguise, lies, indirection, or-gery, deceit, and duplicity”;Factual Fictions: Te Origins of the English Novel (New York, ), .

Daniel Deoe as Satirist

Ashley Marshall


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question his long-standing notoriety as an inconsistent, unprincipled scribbler. Deoethe satirist is a man o conviction.

Defoe’s Reputation as a Satirist

Deoe’s rst known satire appeared in and his last in , a span o thirty-sixyears—roughly three decades longer than his novel-writing career. A quick glance atthe dates o his satiric compositions shows that Deoe was an active satirist throughoutmuch o his writing lie. (For a list o his satirical works, see the Appendix to this arti-cle.) I we are to understand his importance as a satirist, we need to consider the ex-tent to which he was recognized as such in his own day. How was “Daniel Deoe”conceived o by contemporaries? Which o his works were read as satirical, and whatimpact did they have?

Deoe’s earliest satires were anonymous, including his ourth effort in the genre

and his rst major achievement in it, Te rue-Born Englishman (). Te poem ap-parently sold in tremendous numbers, and it went through twenty-two known edi-tions in his lietime (it was also pirated). A ood o responses ollowed, and thoughthe satire originally appeared anonymously, Deoe was publicly identied as the au-thor at least as early as (by William Pittis in Te rue-Born-Hugonot: or, Danielde Foe. A Satyr ). While we cannot calculate precisely how many people made the con-nection, Deoe’s contemporaries identied him as “Te rue-Born Englishman”—aphrase he requently used as a nom de plume, especially or satirical works. Te dis-closure meant that these other texts were also publicly linked with him. “Te rue-

Born Englishman” became something o a celebrity, and so, to some extent, didDeoe. Te Shortest Way scandal, which brought arrest and connement in the pil-lory, did its part to make him more o an icon. By , he was aware o his own emi-nence: in the preace to Te Dyet of Poland , joking about the attribution o that piece,he says, “Hawkers, they tell me, will according to Custom, Cry it about street in the a-mous Name o Daniel de Foe.”

Deoe denitely had a reputation as a satirist in his own time, and the requentreprinting o his satirical works offers evidence o a sizeable readership. His modernreputation as a “Merchant-Writer” addressing hoi polloi, however, is misleading.Richetti says, or example, that Te rue-Born Englishman was “very much popular

. Beore he stood in the pillory, Deoe wrote and distributed “A Hymn to the Pillory,” which takesas its theme “the rights and grandeur o authorship and its power to turn even the pillory to advantage.By a brilliant succession o conceits, the pillory is made to stand or all the institutions o society”(Furbank and Owens, introduction to Te rue-Born Englishman and Other Writings [London andNew York, ], xx). As Moore observed, Deoe may be the only person in history whose experiencein the pillory urthered rather than tarnished his eminence (Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World [; reprint ed., ], ).

. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural by Daniel Defoe, vol. , ed. W. R. Owens (London, ), –; quotation at . I cite Deoe’s satires rom the eight- volume Pickering and Chatto edition (–; Furbank and Owens, general editors) wheneverpossible. A Letter to Mr. Bisset and A Sharp Rebuke from one of the People called Quakers to Henry Sacheverell are not yet available in the Pickering and Chatto volumes. For these works, I reer to therst edition (as available on Eighteenth-Century Collections Online). For all o the texts, I note theedition used upon rst mention, and subsequently cite page or line numbers in the text.




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poetry, near-doggerel directed at untutored understandings, ready to be hawked in thestreets like a tabloid newspaper”—but this poem was reprinted in very pricey collec-tions that were successully marketed to affluent readers. Te dissemination history o Deoe’s satires does not suggest that he wrote primarily or a lower-end audience. A

brie survey o the earliest collections o Deoe’s works will provide some sense o dis-semination. Te rst compilation was printed in under the title A rue Collectionof the Writings of the Author of the rue Born English-man. Tough Deoe’s name didnot appear, his portrait did, and by that time his identity seems to have been generally known. Te anthology contained several early satires (including Te Mock Mourners,Reformation of Manners, Te Spanish Descent , and Te Shortest Way , in addition to thesignature piece), and did well enough to prompt another edition. A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the rue-Born Englishman was published in , includ-ing, among other texts, the ollowing satires: A New Discovery of an Old Intreague,

More Reformation, An Elegy on the Author of the rue-Born Englishman, A Hymn to thePillory , Te Pacicator , and Te Dissenter Misrepresented and Represented . He signedthe preace “D. F.” (or Daniel Foe). Tese two collections, then, linked a number o previously unidentied satires to “Te rue-Born Englishman,” and by extension toDeoe himsel. Te Second Volume cost six shillings—a substantial sum—but, again,sold well enough to justiy urther editions.

Tese two volumes were reprinted again in (also priced at six shillings), andsubsequent editions were published (with some variations) in , , and (thelast advertised as “Te Works of Mr. D. De Foe, two vols.”). In , yet another volume

appeared, entitled Te Genuine Works of Mr. Daniel D’Foe, Author of the rue-bornEnglish-Man, a Satyr. Tis collection included orty works and sold or a staggeringtwelve shillings. Despite the topicality o the works they comprised, urthermore, theseeditions had a relatively long shel lie. Such were his hopes o marketing his work thathis longest satire, Jure Divino (), was published by subscription or feen shillings(he signed the preace “D. F.,” and the title page as “Te rue-Born Englishman”; a poem named him as the author). Pirated versions appeared or a third o that price,and then in twelve parts or a penny each. Exactly how much money Deoe made romthese editions is impossible to calculate, but several points are clear. Deoe’s early satires were popular enough to sell long afer their “occasion”; they sold sufficiently well to warrant urther editions; his readership does not appear to have been limited tothe masses, but instead extended to those well-off enough to pay remarkably highprices or their books; and throughout the rst two decades o the eighteenth century,Deoe was very publicly identied as a satirist.

. Richetti, Life of Defoe, , .. Furbank and Owens have provided the ullest account o the publishing history o Deoe’s works

in Critical Bibliography , –. For the edition dates and prices, I am indebted to them.. According to the Economic History website (), six shillings in is the

equivalent o roughly orty-two pounds in . Tat estimate is in act very conservative, likely to below by a actor o two or three. On the difficulty o calculating the modern equivalents o eighteenth-century prices, see Robert D. Hume, “Te Economics o Culture in London, –,”HuntingtonLibrary Quarterly (): –.




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Defoe’s Satiric Purpose

A basic question presents itsel: what did Deoe imagine himsel accomplishing in hissatires? He seems ever the journalist, concerned with the Kentish petition, the Scot-tish union, and the War o Spanish Succession. His attention to subjects we think o as

nonliterary—most are classied in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online under“Politics,” “Religion and Philosophy,” or “Social Sciences” rather than “Language andLiterature”—suggests one reason that he is excluded rom literary histories o satire.Te occasional nature o his work and the long-standing charge o political inconsis-tency have urther discouraged critics rom looking or any enduring concerns in histopical compositions. Deoe’s aims as a satirist have never really been considered.

I we look at the totality o Deoe’s satiric works and take them seriously on theirown terms, what do we nd? He wrote so many satiric pieces over such a long period o time that a detailed description o relevant texts would require more space than an ar-

ticle affords, and my aim here is not sustained analysis o individual texts. I want pri-marily to suggest that despite his copious output, and despite the variousness o thespecic topics he addresses, a ew principal themes dominate his satirical publicationsand seem undamental to his sense o the world and o himsel as a writer. Althoughscholars have generally assumed that Deoe’s political and economic concerns prevailover his moral and theological commitments, in his satires the reverse is maniestly true: his anxieties about Protestantism underlie and are inseparable rom his satiric judgments on everyday affairs.

Politics, society, morality, and theology are constantly overlapping categories

or Deoe. His works reveal his undamental belie that the humdrum events o an in-dividual’s daily lie are connected to the political events o the nation, and these arelinked with the broader international stage, and all o these are in turn united in theright order o a Christian cosmos. Individual manners affect the health o a nation orDeoe, and conversations about statecraf necessarily occur within a sacred context.For the purposes o this discussion, I will treat the principal recurrent themes individ-ually. Other categories are indeed possible, but my object is merely to establish, inDeoe’s extensive satiric output, the coherence and consistency among many o histexts. Central to both his politics and his religion is his sense o Catholicism as anti-thetical to Protestantism, a topic that emerges in most o his satires. A second promi-nent theme involves dissent and toleration, and a third deals with social mores andChristian conduct.

. Te title o the eight-volume Pickering and Chatto edition o Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on theSupernatural (London, –) stresses Deoe’s satiric practice in a virtually unprecedented way.

. Furbank and Owens provide short synopses o Deoe’s texts in their Critical Bibliography .. See, or example, Novak, Defoe: Master of Fictions, , and Manuel Schonhorn, “Deoe and the

Limits o Jacobite Rhetoric,” ELH (): –. Schonhorn criticizes the “slippage,” in discussionso Deoe’s Jacobitism, “rom a political preerence construed as treasonous . . . to a party ideology re-

ecting a legitimate political program, to a distinctive religious aith” (p. ), concluding that Deoe’santi-Jacobitism is “non-ideological,” always “phrased in the language o politics, not religion” (p. ).




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Anti-Catholicism. Te most consistent theme in Deoe’s satires is his categoricalcondemnation o Catholicism. Deoe ought or Charles II’s illegitimate Protestant sonin Monmouth’s rebellion (), and his antipathy to Catholic rule—absolute in bothpolitical and theological terms—never subsided. Te ear o usurpation by an ousted

Stuart king lurking across the Channel was not dispelled in his lietime (the ailedJacobite uprising o took place ourteen years afer his death). Most o his satiresinclude at least an attack en passant on some aspect o this threat, and the struggle be-tween Protestantism and Catholicism underlies his political commentary—includingworks like the long popular rue-Born Englishman as well as the more ephemeral andheavily topical satires.

Deoe identies William as antithetical to James Stuart, and the Revolution o as but one historical instance o the undamental contrast between Protestantgood and Catholic evil. In his rst known satire, A New Discovery of an Old Intreague

(), he lampoons a group o Jacobite petitioners creating unrest under the hero-king. Manuel Schonhorn concludes that this text unctions as “more a comment onLondon politics than an attack on Jacobites,” but that explanation requires us to dis-count the work’s proound theological concerns. Under James II, or example, Eng-land became a “Prot’stant Body with a Popish Head,” and Deoe evocatively depictsJames as “ Antichrist .” Te gure o a Popish Antichrist is literal rather than meta-phorical, and in the satirical Political History of the Devil () James again appears asan agent o the Prince o Darkness. Deoe’s discussion o the Devil in the Review andelsewhere seems, in John Mullan’s phrasing, “more than an easy idiom.” Catholicism

embodies political and theological perversion, and England is saved rom theCatholic threat by William.

Deoe’s praise o William is part o a wholesale denunciation o the king’s (Jaco-bite) enemies, especially in Te rue-Born Englishman () and Te Mock Mourners(). Te ormer centers on this antithesis: Deoe celebrates William as “the truegospel o statesmanship,” and as the glorious alternative to James who, in beingorced off the throne, was “punish’d only, not betray’d” (p. ). Te latter poem is lessscathing than didactic, as Deoe attempts to nudge the English populace in the right di-rection. Deoe labels it a “Satyr,” and, as in Te rue-Born Englishman, he encourages hisreaders to be grateul or what William’s arrival made possible—nothing less than theProtestant way o lie. Te ailure o the English to appreciate William is tantamount to

. For more on Deoe’s participation in Monmouth’s rebellion, see Novak, Defoe: Master ofFictions, –.

. Schonhorn, “Deoe and the Limits o Jacobite Rhetoric,” –.. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–.. Deoe, Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , vol. , ed. Mullan (London, ), .. In A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe (London, ), Furbank and Owens observe that at

times Deoe suggests that William is “another Messiah, his saving o England resembling Christ’ssalvation o mankind” (p. ).

. Ibid.. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–.




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the most proound irreverence: the English have been “Secur’d by Heav’n’s regard, andWilliam’s toil,” but they are “o both Ungrateul, and to both Untrue” (lines –).

Inseparable rom Deoe’s domestic politics is an urgent international vision,central to his thinking both during William’s reign and long afer thr king’s death. In

a thirty-seven-stanza ballad called “A New Satyr on the Parliament” (), he directly reviles Parliament, particularly or its ailure to support the Protestant Dutch and to re-strain Catholic France. In Te Address (), another satirical ballad, he similarly re-proaches the ory-dominated House o Commons, not least or “their irtations withthe Pretender.” Deoe condemns France or political error, to be sure, but the moreserious charge is doctrinal: in Te Spanish Descent () he inveighs against theFrench, who “mock their Maker with Religious Lyes” (line ). Te twin enemies o popery and despotism are indivisible but not identical, and Protestantism is never, orDeoe, a solely political position. Tis theme appears again in a set o ironical pam-

phlets o on the Hanoverian succession, including And What if the Pretender Should Come? (discussed below) as well as in An Account of the Great and Generous Ac-tions of James Butler () and Te Danger of Court Differences (). Te commit-ment is consistent, and so too is his allegiance to the toleration o dissent.

Dissent and Toleration. A Protestant dissenter, Deoe campaigns or liberty o conscience (or Protestants only, to be sure). In avowing the sanctity o conscience he vilies the intolerant High Churchmen as well as those Dissenters who practice Occa-sional Conormity. As with his anti-Catholicism, Deoe’s antagonism toward religiouspersecution and Occasional Conormity appears in virtually all o his works. Much ink

has been spilled on the supposed misring o Te Shortest Way , in which Deoe mim-ics the “incendiary rhetoric o the conservative clerical antagonists o the dissenters,such as the notorious Anglican rebrands, Dr. Henry Sacheverell and CharlesLeslie,” to uncertain rhetorical and satirical ends. Tese and other “high-yers”sought to suppress nonconormity entirely, and the debates surrounding this issue alsoprovoke the satiric animus or a number o Deoe’s little studied works, such as Te Dis-senter Misrepresented and Represented (), o the Honourable, the C—S of England

Assembled in P—t (), Te Consolidator (), A Letter to Mr. Bisset (),

. Although Novak generally marginalizes the importance o Deoe’s Protestantism to his poli-

tics, he does observe the writer’s “involvement with the Protestant cause on an international level”(Defoe: Master of Fictions, ). J. G. A. Pocock discusses Deoe’s concern about England’s role in inter-national affairs, especially with regard to Deoe’s deense o William’s policy o having a standing army;see Te Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Tought and the Atlantic Republican radition(; reprint ed., Princeton, N.J., ), esp. – and –.

. Furbank and Owens, Critical Bibliography , . As a result o this satire and Legion’s Humble Address to the Lords(also ), the authorities attempted to capture Deoe, but he managed to avoidbeing arrested; Furbank and Owens, Political Biography , .

. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–. AsFurbank and Owens have argued, Te Spanish Descent has topical resonance as a satire on the HighAdmiral Sir George Rooke and his “bungled expedition to Cadiz”; Political Biography , .

. Richetti, Life of Defoe, .. Te Consolidator () attacks the High Church position, and, more generally, has been de-scribed as “a dark and doubtul journey, a jeremiad on the corruption o church and state” (Deoe,Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , vol. , ed. Geoffrey M. Sill [London, ], ). For a




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A New est of the Sense of the Nation (), and the ironical squib Te Speech of theStone Chimney-Piece (). In the years preceding the Hanoverian accession, Deoerequently uses his satire to attack what he perceives as the pernicious agenda o theSacheverellites and the equally odious orsaking o conscience by the Occasional

Conormists. His belie in conscience as a guiding orce in individual lie dominatesmuch o his satirical writing. Te satires pertaining to dissent deal most broadly withhypocrisy and pretense, vices he attacks in his more wide-ranging satires on manners.Such iniquity, or Deoe, represents nothing less than an affront to God.

English Manners. “Reormation o Manners” became a battle cry in post-Revolution England, beginning under William and Mary and intensiying underAnne. Efforts to move away rom the lewdness associated with the Carolean court in-spired widespread exhortations to morality and manners. Deoe criticized the soci-eties ounded or reormation, judging that such groups missed their mark in

chastising the poor rather than the gentry, but he supported the spirit behind themand took up his pen against impiety. HisReformation of Manners () and More Ref-ormation () include sweeping indictments o English incivility. In the ormer, thepoet claims to expose the “Shams o Reormation” (line ), the charade o public mod-eration that only thinly disguises private indulgences. In Te Conduct of Christians

Made the Sport of Indels (), the urkish letter-writer similarly disparages theBritish Christians who proess religion but lack the moral restraint to practice it in any meaningul way. Te scathing attack on the indecency o nominal Christians iswide-ranging, but these seemingly general poems on English manners always have, in

D. N. DeLuna’s phrasing, “urgently topical preoccupations,”

and they are in act o apiece with the rest o Deoe’s satires. Te example o Te rue-Born Englishman mostclearly reveals the congruence o his major satiric themes: in Deoe’s account o thecurrent state o affairs, bad manners endanger the Protestant state. Rudeness—especially in the orm o anti-Williamite ingratitude—makes men “Rebels to God, andto Good Nature too” (line ). A committed Protestant in early-eighteenth-century England, Deoe does not make that charge lightly.

Deoe connects bad manners with the ailure to take seriously the claims o in-dividual conscience, both o which indicate a society that is irreverent and so in gravetrouble. He recognizes the degree to which society at large has lost its sense o the sa-cred, making possible (or example) the increasing currency o deism and atheism.Tese positions, with Socinianism, recur as bugbears in several o Deoe’s works, andthough he devotes no entire satire to attacking them, their advocates appear as re-quent targets o his unmitigated scorn. Applying reason improperly, such men allow religion to be “Bully’d by Philosophy” (Reformation of Manners, line ). Deoespecically rebukes John oland in several poems, including A New Satyr on Parlia-ment and Te Reformation of Manners, where oland is described as “poyson[ing]

ull description o the satiric argument o Te Consolidator , see also Furbank and Owens, PoliticalBiography , –.

. See Deoe, Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–.. DeLuna, “Yale’s Poetasting Deoe,” 1650–1850 (): – at .




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Souls with his inected Breath” (line ). In An Elegy on the Author of the rue-BornEnglishman (), he laments that in the absence o satire, “ Atheistsmay, unmolested,now Blaspheme,” committing the ultimate sin as they “banter the Supreme” (lines–). As Rodney M. Baine has observed, Deoe “was striving in an age o sensu-ous epistemology to reestablish the reality o an unseen world,” and throughout hiscareer—as in the late-lie Political History of the Devil—he satirizes those who discreditthe supernatural.

Deoe’s satiric output shows remarkable thematic unity—but he does not alwayswrite satire in the same way. Te two most heavily studied o his satires demonstratethis variation in technique: Te Shortest Way depends upon indirection, but in Terue-Born Englishman Deoe really does take the shortest way, making his point im-possible to misread. He produces direct and indirect satires throughout his writing lie,and I will argue that he used both methods toward the same end. By “direct” satires, I

mean those texts in which Deoe uses invective or other straightorward means to ex-press an argument that matches his own opinion. Te indirect satires—in which heorceully dramatizes a position with which he does not agree, practicing what Fur-bank has called “the art o mendacity”—require more o the reader. In his directsatires, however, Deoe explicitly tells his readers what he wants them to take rom thetext, and his obvious preoccupation with a ew major themes in these works providesyet more help in determining his aims as a satirist.

Defoe’s Direct Satires

Many o Deoe’s satires are exceedingly direct. He states his moral in plain, clear lan-guage, and he does so over and over. He makes no secret o the effect he wants hissatires to have, or o the audience he imagines himsel addressing. In the direct satires,Deoe explains—ofen at length—exactly what he is trying to accomplish.

Deoe the satirist wants to make people eel bad. But who are those people, and“bad” in what sense? In More Reformation, Deoe deals in some detail with “Shame,”which he identies as the sister sin to “Pride.” Te trouble with shame, he explains, isthat it allows people to substitute public repentance, embarrassment, or even modi-cation or a more meaningul and lasting improvement. Te experience o guilt be-

comes a public perormance rather than a private effort: when men are caused to“blush” at their sins, they only exchange “publick Crimes or private Vice, / Andwhere’s the Reormation pray o this?” (lines –). Te words “shame” and

. In Defoe and the Idea of Fiction 1713–1719 (Newark, Del., ), Geoffrey M. Sill discusses atlength the antagonism between Deoe and oland, the latter o whom “was regarded as a threat by theentire Dissenting community” (see pp. –; quotation at ). For more on Deoe’s critique o ree-thinking, see Novak, “Deoe, the Occult, and the Deist Offensive,” in J. A. Leo Lemay, ed.,Deism,

Masonry, and the Enlightenment (Newark, Del., ): –.. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–.

. Baine, Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural (Athens, Ga., ), .. Furbank, “Deoe’s Minutes of Mesnager : Te Art o Mendacity,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction (): –.

. Reproduced in acsimile in Satire, Fantasy, and Writings on the Supernatural , :–.




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“blush” recur requently in Deoe’s direct satires, and suggest what he does and doesnot seek to elicit rom his readers: he wants them to be disappointed in themselves.Satirists are ofen taken to task or their willingness to humiliate their targets, butDeoe seems entirely uninterested in making his victims look bad or an audience’s

viewing pleasure—he publicly exposes only individuals such as Sacheverell and Leslie,who practice deception at a public level. Except in those very particular circumstances,he wants to make his victims feel bad, intensely but privately, and so he ocuses not onpublic reputation but on the guilty conscience. In Te Spanish Descent (as in A NewSatyr on Parliament ), or example, he specically invites the offenders to eel the pangso their “secret Guilts”: the blameworthy, he predicts, will “purge their Coffers andtheir Consciences, / Cursing their Ill-got ries, but in vain: / For still the Guilt, and stillthe Fears remain” (lines , –). Deoe’s satires are ofen homiletic: somewhat inthe ashion o writers o sermons, he appeals to private scruples rather than outward

dignity. He also calls upon individuals to take responsibility or their own actions, in-sisting that individual deeds (and misdeeds) have personal, public, and even sacreddimensions.

Individual behavior matters, Deoe suggests, in ways that the individual may ormay not comprehend. Te themes o Te rue-Born Englishman, or example, resonatesimultaneously on several levels: “manners” cannot be separated rom the welare o English Protestantism, and personal sins endanger more than one’s mortal soul. Ap-pended to that poem is a speech by Charles Duncomb, in which the ory .. boastully catalogues his many transgressions. Te scale shifs rom the individual to the commu-

nal when Duncomb explains that he took advantage o his personal beneactor rst, andthen o his second beneactor, “the Publick rust” (line ,). A sinner on one level be-comes a sinner on another, and decency works in the same way: “ ’is Personal Virtueonly ,” Deoe asserts in the nal line, that “makes us great .” Tis is exactly the opposite o what Mandeville would argue in Te Grumbling Hive (), and given Deoe’s relent-less insistence on a link between the individual and the collective, we have every reasonto take seriously his argument that private vice jeopardizes the public interest.

Most readers o satire appreciate it chiey as it exposes the sins o others; as Swifknew perhaps better than anyone, the guilty reader rarely recognizes the description o his own guilt. Te relationship between writer and reader is particularly important insatire: the writer has an agenda and wants to produce a result, and this is entirely trueor Deoe. Just as he appears uninterested in satire or the sake o mere humiliation (arivolous enterprise, he would say), he likewise seems very little concerned withwriting satire in an attempt to reorm the morally reprehensible—that is, those inca-pable o shame. Te distinction is crucial: Deoe writes not to scorn or reorm his ene-mies, but to school like-minded readers, both in their own ways and in the ways o their adversaries.

Deoe imagines a properly attuned reader—something like Milton’s t audi-ence. I will return later to the importance o Protestantism in making sense o his less

. For more on Milton’s t audience in theological (rather than narrowly political) terms, see RyanJ. Stark, “Paradise Lost as Incomplete Argument,” orthcoming in 1650–1850.




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explicit satires, but or now the key point is that he wrote or a reader sensitive to theclaims o conscience. Deoe does not hope to reach those who are impervious to moralreproach (whether delivered rom an external source or generated by their own senseo right and wrong), as he explains to personied “Satyr” in More Reformation:

For when to Beasts and Devils men descend,Reorming’s past, and Satyr’s at an end.No decent Language can their crimes rehearse,Tey lye below the Dignity of Verse.But i among thy Lines he would have place,Petition him to Counterfeit some Grace,Let him like something o a Christian sin,Ten thou’t ha’ some pretence to bring him in.

(Lines –)

In Deoe’s understanding o satire, the right reader is he who sins “like something o aChristian,” a reader who is, in other words, capable o sel-reproach. Tis passage is hismost developed commentary on audience, but in general his ubiquitous entreaties tothe guilty conscience assume a reader receptive to such appeals. Te properly attunedreader will understand satire as Deoe does—that is, as the exposure o a true distinc-tion between good and bad. Spiritually misguided individuals cannot be expected toacknowledge this lesson, and o these morally insensitive readers Deoe can only say, “I

must do as Providence does, let you alone to your own Wills” (Preace, A New Discov-ery of an Old Intreague). For Deoe, satire is useul precisely or the undamental differ-entiation it makes between right and wrong; and he directs his appeals only tolike-minded readers who can perceive these distinctions and reect on their ownmoral lapses.

In his direct satires, Deoe is maniestly concerned with making these distinc-tions—or, rather, with making these distinctions known. Protestantism and Catholi-cism represent one undamentally antithetical relationship, but the principal pair o irreconcilable opposites is good and evil.

Antipathies in Nature may agree,Darkness and Light, Discord and Harmony;Te distant Poles, in spight o space may kiss;Water capitulate, and Fire make Peace:But Good and Evil never can agree,Eternal Discord’s there, Eternal Contrariety.

(Reformation of Manners, lines –)

Deoe’s insistence on “Eternal Contrariety” between good and evil provides more thana moral justication or his satire. Tis is not, in other words, mere cant. Ever the occa-sional writer, Deoe is not merely expounding abstractions. In “an Age o Plot andDeceit, o Contradiction and Paradox ,” one cannot always know “Friends” rom “Ene-




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mies.” Satire, as Deoe understands it, can impart the crucial clarication, exposingthe most pernicious enemy o true Christians—the wol in sheep’s clothing.

Deoe pronounces his satiric purpose most clearly in the preace to A New Dis-covery of an Old Intreague, his rst satire: “Te End o Satyr ,” he contends, “ought to beexposing Falshood.” As a platitude ofen expressed by satirists, this declaration mightsound merely sel-righteous, but his later satires seem to work toward precisely thisstated end. Deoe appears committed to using satire as a way o delineating negativeand positive contraries, ormally as well as thematically. In Te Reformation of Man-ners, or example, he offers a catalogue o contrasts, emphasizing substantial incon-gruity by way o ormal alternation:

Vertue’s a Native Rectitude o Mind,Vice the Degeneracy o Human-kind,

Vertue is Wisdom Solid and Divine,Vice is all Fool without, and Knave within.

(Lines –)

Deoe continues this pattern at length (culminating in the passage on the “EternalContrariety”), and it reappears in More Reformation. Te point here is not the subjectbut the ormal pattern: “Te equal Object equally will last, / Tat o a Christ to come,this o a Jesus past” (lines –). Te “that/this” alternation continues, again, or sev-eral lines, and Deoe’s emphasis on contraposition suggests his awareness o, as well as

his desire to train his readers in, these antithetical relationships.Te theme has more than ormal resonance: drastically incompatible contraries

become dangerous when their incompatibility is not heeded or, rather, is willully dis-regarded. He who tries to connect “two Extreams which never can be mix’d” earnsDeoe’s solemn indignation ( More Reformation, line ), and none is more offensiveon this subject than the Occasional Conormist, whose direct opposite is the incor-ruptible “Man o Conscience.” Occasional Conormists become, in Deoe’s witheringrendition, “ Ambo-Dexters in Religion,” contemptibly practicing both dissent and con-ormity (Reformation of Manners, lines , ). Teir inner belie conicts with the

outward show, and they circumvent this incompatibility by describing external proes-sions as purely civil (rather than religious) acts. Deoe thinks otherwise, contendinginstead that the ostensible reconciliation o irreconcilable contraries signals only theabsence o real conviction: the Occasional Conormists who “Alternate Oaths andSacraments can take, / Alternate Sacraments and Oaths can break” ( More Reformation,lines –). Tis theme emerges again in Te Dyet of Poland (), in which Deoedistrusts the Polish (English) because “Mysterious Contraries they reconcile.” He listsseveral examples o these “blind Impossibilities,” describing the people as “humbly high,” “Profoundly Empty ,” “Debauch’dly Civil and Prophanely Good ” (lines –). Herepeatedly calls attention to antithetical relationships, and expresses alarm about thosewho collapse or ignore insuperable differences. Why?

. Letter to Mr. Bisset (London, ), .




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Deoe’s relentless exposure o contraries has to do with another idée xe: thetheme o knowing one’s enemies. In a duplicitous age, he understands that the too-innocent reader can be easily misled by a seemingly harmless speaker (or worse, aseemingly benevolent one)—and his emphatic differentiation between truth and alse-

hood must be understood with that in mind. In a polemical tract called A Sharp Re-buke from one of the People called Quakers to Henry Sacheverell (), Deoe’s Quakeraccuses Sacheverell o being too uent in “Subtilty and Equivocation, delivering thy-sel in deceitul Words, that thy People might be deceived thereby; speaking Sentenceso doubtul Interpretation, that so thou may’st reserve the Meaning thereo, as mightbest serve thy wicked Purposes.” Te key word here is “Subtilty,” the most dangerousorm o understatement. As or Milton, who describes the serpent as the “subtlest beasto all the eld” (Paradise Lost , .), so or Deoe subtlety represents a nearious andeven diabolical orm o obuscation. “Subtilty” is antithetical to truth.

Troughout his satiric career, Deoe worries about the danger o dishonesty.He appears to have been, as Furbank and Owens observe, “perennially ascinated by credulity and the ease with which it could be played upon.” As a satirist, he takesup the pen in order to undo the damage done in an “Age o Plot and Deceit,” keen toreveal the difference between truth and alsehood, and to expose those who oolothers through cunning verbal maneuvers. Deoe preaches against scheming andchicanery—against, in other words, the sort o behavior o which he himsel is so ofenaccused. Tis satiric agenda seems to be at odds with his modern reputation. TeShortest Way is evidence enough o his ability to present orceully a position he does

not support. More generally, Lennard J. Davis has argued that or Deoe, writing“carried a quality o deception and inauthenticity,” and was “inused with disguise,trickery, raming, and abrication.” Deoe’s denunciation o duplicity seems espe-cially problematic, then, given his ability—and apparent willingness—to lie.

How do we explain the incongruity? o answer this question, I want to look more closely at the indirect satires—works like Te Shortest Way , in which Deoeseems to mislead his readers, articulating a position in such a way as to expose it. Satireuses ction, o course, but Deoe ofen uses ction that masquerades as truth—andthis sort o invention has unsettled readers and critics. I will argue that Deoe uses in-direction in a very particular way, and that only afer we have ully considered hissatiric commentary upon liars can we understand what is in effect satiric lying.

Dissimulation as Satiric Method

Was the author o Te Shortest Way a liar, a ailed ironist, a too-successul imperson-ator, or a satirist with Swifian ambitions but without Swifian genius? Te answer isthat he was none o the above. Te Shortest Way has generated almost as much contro- versy among Deoe’s modern readers as it did among his contemporaries. A “contrived

. A Sharp Rebuke from one of the People called Quakers to Henry Sacheverell (London, ), .

. Deoe links “subtilty” with diabolical cunning in several texts, including the satires Memoirs of Count ariff , Te Quarrel of the School-Boys at Athens, and Te Political History of the Devil .

. Furbank and Owens, Political Biography , .. Davis, Factual Fictions, .




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piece o bigotry,” the text is an ironic impersonation o the High Church position in away that makes it absurdly and dangerously extreme. About that much scholars agree.But they have wavered between dening Te Shortest Way as non-satirical and judgingit a “ailed” satire, and Bonamy Dobrée’s tentative assessment remains relevant:

Is it possible to classiy it? Purposeul parody, yes: but o what sort? Canyou call irony what is so nearly burlesque? I it is ironical, it is irony car-ried so ar that it ceases to be itsel. Yet what are you to call it? For it isn’tsatire, which attacks rontally; it isn’t invective, except perhaps inversely,which might reconstitute a branch o the ironic; nor is it sardonic.

Dobrée’s irresolution is standard, and critics such as Novak and Richetti have attemptedto nd more suitable labels—the text is a “hoax” or a “parody,” or example—but the

judgment is undamentally unchanged. Te work is widely recognized as an “unmiti-gated disaster” or a “misre,” and discussion o it is almost always ormulated in neg-ative terms.

My objective here is to consider Te Shortest Way in relationship to Deoe’sother satiric works, both direct and indirect. I contend that he uses “lying” as a pur-poseul satiric method, although his aims in doing so have not been properly under-stood. I also want to suggest that his satiric dissimulation supplements rather thanconicts with the ediying agenda established in his direct satires, and that his practiceo this kind o indirection appears in works other than Te Shortest Way.

Deoe imagines a t reader and uses satire primarily to promote truth and ex-pose alsehood. Recognizing these essential elements, so apparent in his direct satires,allows us better to comprehend his satiric dissimulation. Te most detailed discussiono Te Shortest Way and its readers is undertaken by J. A. Downie, who emphasizes thatthe Dissenters were a signicant part o Deoe’s intended audience. On that point Iagree entirely, though I wish to consider the matter in theological as well as politicalterms. Deoe’s right readers, as I have suggested, must be receptive to the claims o conscience. Tey must be Christians. More specically, they must be Protestants—

. Michael Seidel, “Crisis Rhetoric and Satiric Power,” New Literary History (): –at . For uller discussions o Deoe’s strategy, see Novak, “Deoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters:Hoax, Parody, Paradox, Fiction, Irony, and Satire,” Modern Language Quarterly (): –,esp. –; L. S. Horsley, “Contemporary Reactions to Deoe’sShortest Way with the Dissenters,”SEL (): – at ; Backscheider, “No Deense: Deoe in ,”PMLA (): –at ; and, most recently, Richetti, Life of Defoe, –.

. Bonamy Dobrée has argued against calling Te Shortest Way a satire; “Some Aspects o Deoe’sProse,” in James L. Clifford and Louis A. Landa, eds., Pope and His Contemporaries: Essays Presented toGeorge Sherburn (Oxord, ): – at . Ian Watt argues that it is a ailed satire, concluding thatDeoe’s “only conscious exercise in irony, in act, was indeed a masterpiece, but a masterpiece not o irony but o impersonation” (Te Rise of the Novel [Berkeley, Cali., ], ).

. Dobrée, “Some Aspects o Deoe’s Prose,” .

. Novak, “Deoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” –; Richetti, Life of Defoe, .. Richetti, Life of Defoe, .. Downie, “Deoe’s Shortest Way with the Dissenters: Irony, Intention, and Reader-Response,”

Prose Studies (): – at –.




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even dissenting or Low Church Protestants. Deoe staunchly supports liberty o con-science; he insists on the categorical difference between Protestantism and Catholi-cism; and, most crucially, he addresses only those individuals who would agree withhim on both counts. Tis conception o his satiric role is central to our understanding

o Te Shortest Way.What did Deoe require o his reader in Te Shortest Way ? Scholars have as-

sumed that he overestimated the audience’s ability to read with proper care, but toocus on intellectual competence or analytic attentiveness is to misunderstand the na-ture o Deoe’s demands. Te task is not to read like a critic. As in his description o the proper target o satire as he who sins “like something o a Christian,” so too theproper reader is he who reads rom the appropriate theological standpoint. Tisperspective is especially important when Deoe (posing as a high-yer) concludeshis pamphlet, in Richetti’s words, “with a wild-eyed lumping o dissenters and

Catholics.” Te only separation between Dissent and Catholicism, the speaker judges, is “a ew modes and accidents,” mere “tries.” Te properly attuned readerwould not in any way entertain this conclusion. Deoe’s speaker asks, “What’s the Di-erence betwixt [Dissent], and being subjected to the Power o the Church o Rome,rom whence we have reorm’d? I one be an extreme on one Hand, and one on another,’tis equally destructive to the ruth.” Such a position ignores the “Eternal Contrari-ety” between good and evil and also distorts the nature o the opposition between two vastly different systems o belie. Te near literal identication o the Church’s ellow Protestants and the inimical Catholics should disturb the theologically attuned reader,

who knows the vital importance o doctrinal distinction.

Te key question or modern scholars has been whether readers should havebeen able to detect Deoe’s irony given this sort o signal. I argue that whether or notthey could or would is beside Deoe’s point. Tis is not author-centered satire. Whatthe reader is meant to nd in the pamphlet is not necessarily a Dissenter’s ironic attack on the High Church, but instead the threat inherent in the High Church position. Crit-ics have recognized that Deoe is trying to expose this menace, o course, but they havenot recognized that the pamphlet’s success as satire has little to do with Deoe’s realopinions being readily discovered. I Deoe’s primary goal were to expose the Churchto public indignity, then he would need his irony to be perceptible. But i he writes in-stead to train his ellow Dissenters, to improve their acility or moral discernment,

. See, or example, Horsley, “Contemporary Reactions,” , and Dustin Griffin, Satire: A Critical Reintroduction (Lexington, Ky., ), –.

. While Leopold Damrosch misunderstands the nature o the connection between Deoe andhis reader (and thus can conclude that Deoe’s ambiguity is or the most part insuperable), he is right tosuggest that Deoe is not “much concerned with a really suspicious skeptic; he is concerned rather withgiving the credulous reader reasons or believing what he already wants to believe”; “Deoe as Am-biguous Impersonator,” Modern Philology (): – at .

. Richetti, Life of Defoe, –.. Reproduced in acsimile in Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe, vol. ,

ed. W. R.Owens (London, ): –; quotation at .. Backscheider rightly points out that the Dissenters’ reaction “surprised Deoe,” who “consid-

ered them the. . . in-group or whom the satire would speak and to whom meaning and method wouldbe immediately clear” (Defoe: His Life, ).




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then distinguishable irony seems less important. Te Shortest Way should not be ap-proached in Swifian ashion, with the aim o identiying the “real” authorial positionbehind the persona, but in terms o judgment o content. What Deoe most crucially seeks to communicate is a capacity or reading with conviction and heightened per-

spicacity. Like-minded readers (principled Dissenters with whom he sympathizes) areencouraged to see through the deception o their enemies. Satiric lying representsDeoe’s efforts not to deceive, but to undeceive.

Modern scholars have devoted so much attention to the uproar caused byTe Shortest Way that we can hardly think o that work without thinking o its conse-quences or Deoe. Immediately afer its publication, Robert Harley had Sidney Godolphin investigate the authorship, at which point Deoe was not a suspect; Godol-phin delegated the job to the Earl o Nottingham, who arrested Edward Bellamy, whoin turn conessed that he had taken the manuscript to the printer, George Croome.

Deoe was named as the author in the Observator or December– January .When the author o Te Shortest Way was identied as a Dissenter, circumstances be-came dire: the Church elt it had been parodied, the government worried that the satirewould be a catalyst or a nonconormist uprising, and the Dissenters themselves wereunsure what to believe or whom to trust. Te wariness on the part o his target audi-ence would, I suspect, have been welcomed by Deoe—but he obviously ailed to ore-see how others might react to his pamphlet.

Scholars have assumed (either implicitly or explicitly) that Te Shortest Way represents a turning point or its author, not only in his personal lie but also in his

satiric practices. Never again, L. S. Horsley concludes, did he “risk so thoroughgoingan irony.” In later works, however, Deoe does indeed use a similarly indirectmethod; though these works never evoked the uror incited by their predecessor, weshould consider correspondences in approach as well as disparities in outcome. wo o the clearest and most sustained examples— A Letter to Mr. Bisset (), And What if the Pretender Should Come? ()—have been largely ignored by those who have com-mented on Te Shortest Way . Critical attention to the ormer, another attack on thehigh-yers, has been virtually nil. Te latter has received some notice as part o a tri-umvirate o ironical tracts on the Hanoverian succession or which Deoe was arrestedin (though with little sensation), but its method has not been much considered.

In A Letter to Mr. Bisset , Deoe ironically admonishes the titular recipient or hiscriticisms o Sacheverell’s sermon, which had been, says the author, admirably “honest and sincere.” Sacheverell should be applauded or having translated the real position o the Church into “ plain English,” or, in other words, or successully accomplishing whatthe writer o Te Shortest Way had set out to do. Te letter-writer praises Sacheverellor telling the bitter truth: “it would be much better or all Sides,” he contends, i high-yers like Sacheverell “would speak out plainly, and without Disguise” (p. ). He cites arecent historical example to explain how this political concealment has endangered

. Novak, Defoe: Master of Fictions, –.. Horsley, “Contemporary Reactions,” .. As in the case o Te Shortest Way , the authorities “had no patience with irony” in responding to

these sarcastic endorsements o the Pretender’s return (Furbank and Owens, Political Biography , ).




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the Dissenters: under Charles II, nonconormists had suffered under subtle policies o “gradual Encroachments,” but James II had instead stated “plainly what he meant, whathe aim’d at, and what indeed all his Ancestors had aim’d at”—namely, the eradication o dissent through violent means. Had James ollowed Charles’s approach, the Dissenters

would have been undone, but luckily he “took the contrary Method—Like the Rev-erend Dr Sacheverel,” and, when “the whole Plot” was revealed, “it ceased to be a Plot ”(p. ). Te level o irony in this satire does not match that o Te Shortest Way , to besure; Deoe’s impersonation is nowhere near as complete. Nevertheless, the differencebetween this satire and Te Shortest Way is one o degree, not o kind: he once againuses sustained irony to present a position he is in act trying to undercut, inviting hisreaders to apply their scruples, seriously and relentlessly, to the seemingly innocuousarguments sponsored by the most insidious dissemblers.

An ironical endorsement o Catholic rule in England, And What if the Pretender

Should Come? also operates by indirection. Among recent critics, Richetti has had themost to say about this text, in which Deoe is “out to shock his readers by the rigor o his logic and to expose the disastrous implications o not seeing the High-Church orHigh-Flying position or what it is and what it implies.” Deoe’s persona in this piece, asin Te Shortest Way , adopts the High Church stance. Te “ventriloquistic” energy o this satire, Richetti contends, perhaps lends the speaker too much “uency” in hishigh-ying rhetoric, and the satire becomes “somewhat unstable and liable to soundmore persuasive than Deoe wants it to be.” As in the scholarly assessments o TeShortest Way , the ocus here is on Deoe’s too-thorough impersonation o his antago-

nists. And, as in analyses o the earlier text, that ocus seems misplaced. Te internalprompt or the attuned reader resembles that o the earlier mock advocacy o the high-ying position. Here, as in Te Shortest Way , Deoe tries to provoke like-minded read-ers to react against the argument’s ailure to make theological distinctions. Deoe’sspeaker suggests that, ar rom earing French power, the English should seize the op-portunity to ally themselves with that country by installing the Catholic Pretender. I England cannot deeat France, then it should become that power’s “ast Friend.” Tecase is made at some length, but the underlying thesis is that a Catholic king could an-swer many practical concerns or the English people: the political criteria, in this ironi-cal account, eclipse any theological anxieties about Catholicism. Te right readerwould again object to such a conclusion, asserting instead a doctrinal distinction thattrumps political ears (to say nothing o acknowledging the very real political ear o absolutism). I agree with Geoffrey M. Sill that Deoe would nd criticizing the Pre-tender a waste o time and satiric energy, but we oversimpliy the pamphlet i we donot recognize that Deoe’s aims here have more to do with those he supports than withthose he opposes—this agenda is crucial to our understanding not only o his individ-ual satires but also o his broader concerns as a satirist. Here and elsewhere, his in-

. Richetti, Life of Defoe, , .. Reproduced in acsimile in Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe, vol. , ed. Furbank

(London, ): –; quotation at .. Sill, Defoe and the Idea of Fiction, .




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direction corresponds in surprising ways to the satiric program outlined so explicitly in his direct satires.

For Deoe the satirist, writing or like-minded readers, indirection comple-ments direction—his satiric lying is an extension o his satiric attacks on liars. Deoe

enjoins his audience in the direct satires not to believe everything they hear, and so ac-knowledges that straightorward instruction cannot stand alone in a world whereopen expression cannot be trusted. Rampant duplicity means that humankind cannot“discern their Evil, / Without a naked Vision o the Devil” ( More Reformation, lines–). Troughout his direct satires, he renders that “naked Vision,” vigorously andrepeatedly underlining the vicious ways o a allen world, or the sake not o correctingthe truly depraved but o conounding them—that is, or the sake o thwarting theirplans to afflict or misguide the virtuous. But the guile o others is only part o the prob-lem, and the wicked succeed because their dupes ail to discern and make the correct

choice between “Eternal Contrarieties.” Te sheep, in other words, too ofen takesheep’s clothing at ace value. Deoe writes, then, not primarily to rebuke or even to hu-miliate the enemy—not or the entertainment but or the edication o the good. Tatmission statement is no mere abstraction: it makes plain Deoe’s ultimate objective as asatirist, one who writes in the here and now and expects that writing to matter.

Deoe’s use o dissimulation as a satiric method is not unique. As a parallel Iwould point to the satiric practice o Kierkegaard, whose central worry was how to rein-troduce Christianity into Christendom. As David J. Gouwens explains, Kierkegaardaddresses primarily those “persons attempting to be human beings, and, perhaps,

Christians.” Kierkegaard the satirist knew well that “religious capacities cannot be di-rectly communicated,” and so relied ofen on indirection, a method that by necessity involves deception. Te reader must be deceived in order to learn the skills o unde-ceiving himsel and in order to deepen his own ethical and religious capacities, andKierkegaard accomplished such deceptions through memorable pseudonymouscharacters—the unscrupulous Seducer, the volatile Aesthete, the heavy-handed JudgeWilhelm, and so orth. Te need or both moral instruction and moral trainingthrough well-meaning deception is as central or Deoe as or Kierkegaard. Deoe’s di-rect satires supply indispensable knowledge; his indirect satires supplement this in-struction, indispensably communicating the necessary capability readers require todiscriminate between truth and alsehood.

Tis dual satiric program helps explain why Deoe writes indirect satire whenand as he does. Te majority o his satires are straightorward: however they vary inspecic detail and technique, they all convey literally the position he actually holds.Deoe employs direct satire all his writing lie, concerned in these works about thethemes I outlined above. He wrote ewer indirect satires by ar, and they do not coverthe same range o issues: these works deal almost exclusively with either Dissent (as inTe Shortest Way , A Letter to Mr. Bisset , and Te Consolidator ) or Jacobitism (as in And What if the Pretender Should Come? and Reasons against the Succession of the House of

. Gouwens,Kierkegaard as Religious Tinker (Cambridge, ), , .. For the helpul distinction between “the communication o knowledge and the communica-

tion o a capability,” I am indebted to Gouwens (ibid., ).




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Hanover []). Te use o indirection or these two topics is not coincidental: Deoeidenties in the arguments around these issues the most dangerous sort o deception.On the matters o Dissent and Catholic rule, the stakes are exceptionally high, andDeoe’s adversaries exceptionally devious. His direct satires provide an ongoing tuto-

rial on gullibility, duplicity, eigned benevolence, Protestant virtue, and Catholic vice.His indirect satires are timely tests meant to supplement those lessons—not to exist in-dependently o them, and certainly not to replace or to work against them. Deoe isdeeply concerned about “his” people (sometimes the English, sometimes the Whigs,sometimes the Protestants, and sometimes the Dissenters) not recognizing “their”enemy. He tells the truth about lying in his direct satires, and he lies to lead his readersto truth in his indirect satires. Deoe has a serious and sophisticated satiric agenda, intheory and in practice—but it is not the agenda o his more amous satiric counterparts.

Defoe’s Non-Augustan SatireDeoe did not know that he lived in the Age o Swif and Pope. Although modern ac-counts o early-eighteenth-century satire are dominated by these two gures, Deoe’scontemporaries would not have recognized them as the denitive writers o theperiod. Satiric practice in England was ar more varied than that o the so-called“Augustans,” rom whom our notions o early-eighteenth-century satire are largelyderived. Te case o Deoe presents us with a problem: his considerable satiric outputchallenges us to acknowledge the incompleteness o our theories—and to rethink them.

Studies o early-eighteenth-century satire rarely discuss Deoe’s contribution at

any length, despite the act that he was perhaps the most prolic and certainly amongthe most prominent satirists o that period. (And, given the prices at which some o hisworks were sold, one must grant a readership beyond the hardscrabble London mob:Deoe sold penny ballads to the masses; he sold Jure Divino or feen shillings toanother group entirely.) I Deoe’s name comes up in modern accounts o satire in thisperiod, the reerence is almost alwaysen passant. David Worcester mentions him threetimes, and Ian Jack and James Sutherland only twice each; Gilbert Highet does not citeDeoe at all. Ronald Paulson and Claude Rawson each reer once to Te Shortest Way without comment, and Dustin Griffin includes only one sentence on that text (the loneexample o Deoe’s satiric works that he mentions). Most recently, Fredric V. Bogel al-ludes only to the Journal of the Plague Year , and Michael Seidel and Charles A. Knighttreat only Te rue-Born Englishman among Deoe’s satires (Knight merely to high-light the use o national stereotypes in that poem). Te neglect is unortunate but notentirely surprising: Deoe’s reputation as a “middle-class moralist,” along with his lack o concern or “classicizing canons o taste,” seems to have justied the exclusion.

. Worcester, Te Art of Satire (New York, ); Jack, Augustan Satire: Intention and Idiom inEnglish Poetry, 1660–1750 (Oxord, ); Sutherland, English Satire (Cambridge, ); Highet, Te

Anatomy of Satire(Princeton, N.J., ); Paulson,Te Fictions of Satire (Baltimore, ); Rawson,

Satire and Sentiment 1660–1830 (New Haven, Conn., ); Griffin,Satire: A Critical Reintroduction;Bogel, Te Difference Satire Makes: Rhetoric and Reading from Jonson to Byron (Ithaca, N.Y., );Seidel, “Satire, lampoon, libel, slander,” in Steven N. Zwicker, ed.,Te Cambridge Companion to Eng-lish Literature, 1650–1740 (Cambridge, ): –; Knight, Te Literature of Satire (Cambridge, ).

. Rawson, Satire and Sentiment , , .




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More important, perhaps, is the act that his example would complicate, muddle up,and challenge rather than conrm the ways in which early-eighteenth-century satire isusually discussed. Some Deoe scholars have objected to the omission—but in doingso they have typically conused the issue by emphasizing his most literary efforts and

his ties to the period’s satiric luminaries.Both attacks on Deoe and deenses o him issue rom the same set o assump-

tions about his aspirations. D. N. DeLuna contests the image o “Yale’s PoetastingDeoe,” or instance, and criticizes in particular the distortions o Frank H. Ellis, theeditor o the relevant volumes o Poems on Affairs of State, or singling out the Reor-mation poems as “evidence o how ‘Augustan’ Deoe is.” She aults Ellis or his “pa-tronizing condescension” toward Te Pacicator , a poem she regards as “an arresting, verbally intricate perormance in mock-panegyric satire—a eat only later matched by A ale of a ub and the Epistle to Augustus and Te Dunciad .” Her battle against Ellis

has everything to do with her attempt to demonstrate Deoe’s artistic concerns andcapabilities—her desire to prove him worthy o inclusion in our Augustan-centeredliterary pantheon. Her claim that Deoe sought “eminence as a published state affairspoet in a line o wit extending on rom Butler, Marvell, and Dryden,” however, is noless problematic than the judgment it challenges. Deoe wrote on state affairs, but thathe ancied himsel the next Dryden seems highly improbable. Backscheider likewisestresses Deoe’s debts to and kinship with the more major literary gures. She high-lights the ways in which Deoe resembles Pope, and then notes the differences betweenthe two in maniestly negative terms: the “limitation” o Jure Divino, or example,

comes rom “a act o Deoe’s entire artistic lie”—namely, that he “never learned to usecurrent events with restraint and artistic objectivity.” Deoe becomes, in these rendi-tions, a topical author who wrote or bread, but also a high-minded and ambitious lit-erary would-be whose artistry either never developed properly or has been unjustly overlooked. But both the attack on Deoe or ailing to become Pope and the deense o

. John M. McVeagh calls attention to Deoe’s borrowings rom Rochester (and, to a lesser extent,Butler) in “Rochester and Deoe: A Study in Inuence,” SEL (): –. In “Te Verse Essay,John Locke, and Deoe’s Jure Divino” (ELH []: –), Backscheider explains that Jure Divino“has more literary ties . . . than appear at rst sight,” citing among Deoe’s literary debts the model o

Cowley’s Davideis (pp. , –).. Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714, vol. , ed. Ellis (New Haven,

Conn., ), .. DeLuna, “‘ Modern Panegyrick’ and Deoe’s ‘Dunciad,’ ” SEL (): – at .. DeLuna, “Yale’s Poetasting Deoe,” .. DeLuna’s triumvirate o satiric predecessors, moreover, includes writers who differ radically

not only in satiric practice but also in political and theological worldview. While Deoe may have bor-rowed rom any or all o them, judging him to be their satiric successor seems to miss most o his pointin writing satire.

. See, or example, “Te Verse Essay, John Locke, and Deoe’s Jure Divino,” where Backscheiderconcludes that “Deoe’s poetic aspirations, like Cowley’s, Milton’s, Dryden’s, and Pope’s, drew him tothe ambitious poetic orm” (p. ).

. Backscheider,Daniel Defoe: Ambition and Innovation (Lexington, Ky., ), . She arguesthat, “Deoe is close to the traditional satiric themes and stances that Alexander Pope would exploit inhis late poetry,” and that the two writers both “point out that Satyr shames men who ignore law andreligion” (p. ).




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his merits in a high-culture tradition are misguided. Deoe did not ail to replicateDryden or to become Pope; he did not try to do those things. He did not care to be whatmodern scholars think o as an “Augustan,” and we should neither try to make him onenor deride him or alling short in what he never attempted.

Deoe certainly had literary capability, but he does not appear to have had whatwe think o as literary concerns, at least in the realm o satire; he does not seem to haveimagined himsel either drawing upon or contributing to a tradition o artists. Te ex-ception might appear to be Te Pacicator (), a mock-heroic description o thebattle between the Men o Sense and the Men o Wit. But, despite Richetti’s argumentthat Deoe intended Te Pacicator to participate in the “war between wit and sense,”

the poem disdains literary wars more than it seeks to engage in them. Te joke o themock-heroic is to expose the discrepancy between the seriousness with which thesewriters take themselves and the actual triviality o their enterprises, but they are worse

than rivolous: the skirmishing literati weaken the state, and Deoe comments on theirbattle not with a desire or inclusion, but rather with the distance and condescension o an outsider keen to preserve that status. He perceived climacterics everywhere in hisEngland, and he believed in a writer’s public responsibilities—and we should considerthis poem alongside his other satires with that in mind. Te urgency with which heelsewhere writes on English affairs is related to his earnest attack here, as he disparagesthe literati who (engaged in imagined crusades) stand aloo rom those crises in whichtheir positive involvement could matter.

Deoe certainly saw the essential importance o quotidian events—the separa-

tion o “topical” and “undamental” would likely not have made sense to him. But,however seriously he took his topical compositions, he does not appear to have meantthem as culture-or-posterity. Deoe would not have written a satire anything like

Mac Flecknoe or Te Dunciad . He used satire to address the everyday and the immedi-ate. Dryden undoubtedly composed Absalom and Achitophel or the moment, and thatsatire is primarily a party document—but its author was England’s Poet Laureate andwas distinctly aware o that role. I we insist on seeing Deoe as an aspirant to literary ame—as a would-be Dryden, Swif, or Pope—then we distort our sense o his objec-tives and commitments, in lie and in writing.

Te clichés about Deoe have been much repeated: he is a hired pen, unscrupu-lous and acquisitive, at best inconsistent and at worst a ruthlessly mercenary liar.

Critics acknowledge his lielong Protestantism, but suppose that its principles gureonly very minimally in his writing, and that his economic and political concernstrump any deeper convictions. His Christian sensibility, in Novak’s reading, “is re-placed, or the most part, by a progressive and secular vision,” and Schonhorn de-scribes Deoe as one or whom “interest will always ght or dominance over

. Richetti, Life of Defoe, .. Paul Alkon describes Deoe’s “labyrinthine lie” as “literary masquerade” marked by a series o

“devious personal enterprises”; review article, “Defoe’s Fiction; Defoe’s Perpetual Seekers: A Study of the Major Fiction; Te Elusive Daniel Defoe,” Eighteenth-Century Studies (): – at .




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conscience, loyalty and love o country.” In general, scholars have tended to assumethat Deoe writes as will most prot him, and either changes his convictions as conven-ient or has none. His attitude toward writing has almost always been seen as casual and variable, but his satires contradict his modern reputation. Deoe the satirist took up hispen to address those issues about which he worried most: Protestantism and theProtestant succession, dissent and liberty o conscience, and the practical and moralnecessities o good manners. His commitment to the positive values set orth in hissatires appears not to have changed much over the course o his career. Deoe thesatirist is neither detached moralist nor amoral opportunist. He takes his role seriously,he writes rom deep and consistent convictions, and his satires—ar more than thection or which he is most amous—reect his undamental and lasting sense opurpose as a writer.

Scholars think o Deoe primarily as a novelist, secondarily as a journalist and a commentator on poli-tics and economics. Most assume that he wrote as most proted him, and changed his convictions asconvenient or perhaps had none. In recent revisions to the bibliography o Deoe’s writings, satireoccupies a prominent place, and in this article Ashley Marshall shows Deoe’s consistency o argumentand approach in satires written over a period o thirty-six years. She argues that they were not onlycentral to his contemporary reputation but also seriously challenge his long-standing reputation as aninconsistent, unprincipled scribbler. Keywords: Daniel Deoe, Deoe’s satiric purpose, Augustan satire,Te rue-Born Englishman, Te Shortest Way with the Dissenters

appendix overleaf

. Novak, Defoe: Master of Fictions, ; Schonhorn, “Deoe and the Limits o Jacobite Rhetoric,”. For Deoe, Schonhorn argues, religion is unequivocally “subordinated to power struggles over the

possession o lands, commercial routes, and overseas expansion. Crusades and holy expeditions werecheats o the past. Markets, not martyrs and denominations, were the locales o contention betweencountries.”




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Appendix: Satires by Daniel Defoe

I include (in chronological order o original publication) works that Deoe himsel identied as satires, those that were regarded as such by his contemporaries, and those

that have been since treated as such either by modern scholars or in databases such asthe English Short itle Catalogue. For the works identied by Furbank and Owens asprobable attributions, I ollow the entry with “(P).” I give the title, date o rst appear-ance, ormat and length, original price i known, and note reprints and inclusion incollections. With respect to text length, I have simplied the collational ormulas andprovided only sum total o pages (instead o “vi + ,” or example, I give “”). Num-bers , , and were reprinted in Poems on Affairs of State (); number wasreprinted in POAS (); number was reprinted in POAS () and in Somers racts(); and numbers and were reprinted in A Collection of the Best English Poetry

( vols.; ). I abbreviate the titles o collections o Deoe’s work as ollows:

C A rue Collection of the Writings of the Author of the rue Born English-man(), p.; °.

SV A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the rue-Born Englishman(), p.; °; s.

A second edition o C appeared with SV in (s.); a pirated version was alsopublished. A Collection of the Writings of the Author of the rue-Born Englishman in

two volumes appeared in , and a third edition o that work came out in . In ,Te Works of Mr. D. De Foe was published in two volumes, and in appeared TeGenuine Works of Mr. Daniel D’Foe, Author of the rue-Born English-Man, a Satyr, alsoin two volumes (s.).

() A New Discovery of an Old Intreague: a satyr level’d at treachery and ambition(Jan. ), p.; º; rpt. , SV.

() An Encomium upon a Parliament (composed in May ); many manuscript versions have been ound, but no ull copy is known to have appeared in ; p. in

POAS as Te Patriots. (P)

() Te Pacicator (Feb. ), p.; º; rpt. , SV.

() Te rue-Born Englishman (Jan. ), p.; º; rpt. , C and SV; moreeditions in the century.

() Ye rue-Born Englishman Proceed (sometimes listed as New Satyr on the Parlia-ment ) (), p.; Bs.; rpt. times in . (P)

() Te Mock Mourners: a satyr, by way of elegy on King William ( May ), p.; º; editions in ; Rpt. C.

() Reformation of Manners, a Satyr (July/Aug. ), p.; º; editions in ;rpt. C.




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() Te Shortest Way with the Dissenters (Dec. ), p.; º; editions in ;rpt. , C.

() Te Spanish Descent (Dec. ), p.; º; rpt. C.

() A Dialogue between a Dissenter and the Observator (Jan. ), p.; º;rpt. pirated C. (P)

() More Reformation. A Satyr upon Himself ( July ), p.; º; rpt. SV.

() A Hymn to the Pillory ( July ), p.; º; rpt. , , (pirated), SV.

() A Hymn to the Funeral Sermon ( Oct. ), p.; º. (P)

() Te Lay-Man’s Sermon upon the Late Storm (Feb. ), p.; º. (P)

() o the Honourable, the C—S of England Assembled in P—t (Mar. ),apparently only or private distribution; p.; º.

() Te Address (Mar./Apr. ), p.; º.

() An Elegy on the Author of the rue-Born-English-Man. With an Essay on the LateStorm (July/Aug. ), p.; º; rpt. Dublin, , (pirated), (cheaper edi-tion), SV.

() Te Dissenter Misrepresented and Represented (Dec. ?), published only in SV; p. in SV.

() Te Consolidator (Mar. ), p.; º; rpt. .

() Te Dyet of Poland (June/July ), p.; º; Dublin edition, .

() Jure Divino ( July ), p. in parts; º; published by subscription, s.;pirated edition, s.

() Te Vision, a Poem (Edinburgh, ), p.; º; rpt. London, .

() A Reply to the Scots Answer, to the British Vision(Edinburgh, Nov. ), hal-sheet, º; rpt. as A Poem to the Author of the Scots Answer to the British Vision().

() Par—n Pl—ton . . . turnd inside out (lef in MS), -line verse satire; known only rom a transcript by George Staniland to an unknown recipient ( May ).

() A Letter to Mr. Bisset ( Dec. ), p.; º; rpt. Dublin, ; nd

ed., Dublin andLondon, . (P)

() A New est of the Sense of the Nation (Oct. ), p.; º. (P)

() Te Secret History of the October Club (Apr. ), p.; º; s. (P)

() Atalantis Major (June ), p.; º. (P)

() Te Secret History . . .Part II (June ), p.; º; s. (P)

() A Speech of a Stone Chimney-Piece (Dec. ), printed only in the Review andTe Present State of the Parties ; p. in the latter collection. (P)

() Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover (Feb. ), p.; º; d.;th ed., .




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() And What if the Pretender should come? (Mar. ), p.; º; d.; nd ed., .

() Memoirs of Count ariff (Aug. ), p.; º; s. (P)

() Te Secret History of the Secret History of the White Staff (Jan. ), p.; º; d.

() A Hymn to the Mob (Sep. ), p.; º; d. (P)

() An Account of the Great and Generous Actions of James Butler (Sep. ), p.; º;d.; rpt. Dublin, . (P)

() Some Toughts of an Honest ory in the Country (Jan. ), p.; º; d. (P)

() Secret Memoirs of a reasonable Conference at S— House (Nov. ), p.; º; s.;nd ed., .

() Te Danger of Court Differences(Jan. ), p.; º; d. (P)

() Te Quarrel of the School-Boys at Athens (Jan. ), p.; º; d. (P)

() Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (June ), p.; º; nd ed., .

() A Declaration of ruth to Benjamin Hoadly (June/July ), p.; º; d.; rpt.Dublin, .

() Te Conduct of Christians Made the Sport of Indels (July ), p.; º; d. (P)

() Te Old Whig and Modern Whig Revived (July/Aug. ), p.; º; d. (P)

() A Continuation of Letters written by a urkish Spy at Paris (Aug. ), p.; º. (P)

() Te Anatomy of Exchange-Alley (summer ), p.; º; s. (P)

() Te Great Law of Subordination Consider’d (Mar./Apr. ), p.; º; s. d.

() Te Political History of the Devil ( May ), p.; º; nd ed., ; rd ed., ;reprinted at least eleven more times in the century; translated into French (, )and German ().

() Mere Nature Delineated ( July ), p.; º; s. d. (P)

() A System of Magick. . . Being an Historical Account of Mankind’s most early Dealing with the Devil (Dec. ), p.; º; Re-issue, ; rpt. ; nd ed., .

() An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (Mar. ), p.; º.

marshall - daniel defoe as satirist

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