him there were no forms of government or separate possession of women and children... the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which grew on trees and shrubs unbidden and were not planted by the hand of man.'

The age of Cronos corresponds to the age of Saturn in Prometheus Unbound (Act II, Sc. 4).

According to Plato's myth there comes, however, a change: In the fulness of time the pilot of the universe let the helm go... and then fate and innate desire reversed the motion of the world . . . and the world, turning round with a sudden shock... was shaken by a mighty earthquake which wrought a new destruction of all manner of animals, afterwards, when sufficient time had elapsed, the tumult and confusion ceased, and the universal creature, once more at peace, attained to a calm and settled down into his own orderly and accustomed course.'

This convulsion which ends the reign of Saturn is several times alluded to by Shelley (Act IV, 1. 316. Act IV, 1. 295). Plato's myth goes on to relate how the world, left to itself, executes the will of its Maker less and less faithfully: From God, the constructor, the world received all that is good in him, but from a previous state came elements of evil and unrighteousness, which, thence derived, first of all passed into the world and were then transmitted to the animals.. and at last small was the good and great was the admixture of evil and there was a danger of universal ruin to the world.'

In these 'dark ages' the condition of man was pitiful, for he was deprived of the care of God; he was left defenceless and shelterless; he was torn in pieces by the beasts, who were now fierce and wild; man's food had failed and he did not know how to grow it until the lesser deities took pity on him and fire was given to man by Prometheus and the arts by Hephaestus and Athene.

This time of darkness and gloom corresponds, of course, to the age of Jupiter as given by Shelley, which steadily deteriorates till the good of the world seems wellnigh lost (Prometheus Unbound, Act II, Sc. 4. Ibid., Act I, 11. 170–80).

In Plato's myth these times of gloom are succeeded by times of guidance when God will again seat himself at the helm, restore order and make the world 'imperishable and immortal'.

It is such a 'reversal' which is described in Act III of Prometheus Unbound, the animals are at peace with one another, even the kingfishers feeding upon berries, and all

things are harmless. Men are free from hate and all its disasters and delivered from earthly rule:

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise

Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance and death and mutability.

DEFOE'S TRUE-BORN ENGLISHMAN.

ALMOST from the beginning of his reign William III was unpopular in England. He was disliked not only because he was habitually harsh or silent, but also because he was a Dutchman. Nothing but gratitude for their deliverance from James II could have made the English feel any affection for their new king, and gratitude was almost lost in hatred of the nation to which he belonged. Moreover, William distrusted English statesmen and took the advice of his personal friends (who were Dutchmen) whenever he could. In 1699 Parliament compelled William to dismiss his Dutch guards, resolved that the English army should consist of none but natural born Englishmen, and appointed a commission to inquire into William's grants of forfeited Irish estates to Dutch favourites. In 1700 the Commons insisted upon the resumption of these grants and the Lords agreed (April 10).

On August 1, 1700, John Tutchin published The Foreigners.

Part I. In 1715 Defoe described it as 'a vile abhorred Pamphlet, in very ill verse, written by one Mr. Tutchin, and called The Foreigners; in which the author, who he was I then knew not, fell personally upon the King himself, and then upon the Dutch Nation. And after having reproached his Majesty with Crimes that his worst Enemies could not think of without horror, he sums up all in the odious name of a Foreigner. This filled me with a kind of Rage against the Book, and gave birth to a trifle which I never could hope should have met with so general an acceptance as it

did; I mean The True-Born Englishman.' (Appeal to Honour and Justice.)

The Foreigners is an imitation of Dryden's manner in Absalom and Achitophel. The English are 'Israelites': the Dutch are 'Gibeonites': Parliament is the 'Sanhedrin'. Its purpose is to attack the Dutch, and especially William's Dutch favourites-Bentinck (called 'Bentir') and Keppel (called 'Keppech'); but Tutchin did not 'fall personally upon the King himself': nor did he call the king a foreigner. The style may be judged from the following lines:

'A Country lies, due East from Judah's Shoar,
Where stormy Winds and noisy Billows roar;
A Land much differing from all other Soils,
Forc'd from the Sea, and buttress'd up with Piles.
No marble Quarrys bind the spungy Ground,
But Loads of Sand and Cockle-shells are found:
Its Natives void of Honesty and Grace,
A Boorish, rude, and an inhumane Race;
From Nature's Excrement their Life is drawn,
Are born in Bogs, and nourish'd up from Spawn.
Their hard-smoak'd Beef is their continual Meat,
Which they with Rusk, their luscious Manna, eat;
Such Food with their chill stomachs best agrees,
They sing Hosannah to a Mare's-milk Cheese.
To supplicate no God, their Lips will move;
Who speaks in Thunder like Almighty Jove,
But watry Deities they do invoke,

Who from the Marshes most Divinely croak.
Their Land, as if asham'd their Crimes to see,
Dives down beneath the surface of the Sea.
Neptune, the God who do's the Seas command,
Ne'er stands on Tip-toe to descry their Land ;
But seated on a Billow of the Sea,

With Ease their humble Marshes do's survey.
These are the Vermin do our State molest;
Eclipse our Glory, and disturb our Rest.'

Defoe's True-Born Englishman is said to have been published in January, 1701 (D. N. B., art. Defoe): the title-page of the first edition is dated 1700. The poem was extremely

popular and had a very large sale. Defoe was well pleased with his success, and often referred to himself later as 'the Author of The True-Born Englishman'. Posterity has troubled itself little with Defoe's verse, but on the whole seems to have regarded The True-Born Englishman as his best production in that form.

Unfortunately all the modern reprints have been made from one of the later editions, in which the last part of the poem (11. 1045-1190) is now unintelligible. The allusions in these lines were probably clear enough to Defoe's contemporaries, and in the first edition any doubt about their purpose was removed by the heading Sir C.....s D.....b's Fine Speech, &c., printed before 1. 1064. Sir C.....s D.....b was Sir Charles Duncombe, the Tory banker, well known to modern readers from Macaulay's dramatic account of his disgrace (History of England, chap. xxiii). In 1700 Duncombe was a candidate for the Lord Mayoralty of London, and for a seat in Parliament, and the speech is full of allusions to his personal history. But the heading was changed to His Fine Speech, &c., in subsequent editions, and the original form was never restored. Editors have reprinted the later form, and have left the allusions unexplained: the biographers have followed the editors: and as far as I can discover, no edition or biography of Defoe deals with this part of the poem, nor does any biography of Duncombe notice Defoe's attack upon him.

Several replies to the True-Born Englishman were published in 1701 (see Lee's Defoe, i. 44, note ‡). One of them, entitled The True-Born Englishman Answer Paragraph by Paragraph, was dedicated to Duncombe, and contains a reply to Defoe's satire upon him. But the reply adds nothing to our knowledge.

The first edition of the True-Born Englishman also contained an attack on Tutchin (ll. 624-53), which was omitted in subsequent editions.