A Short Narrative of the Life and Actions of His Grace John, D. of Marlborogh

While no direct contemporary corroboration exists as evidence for Defoe's authorship, a considerable number of literary mannerisms, interests, and opinions appear to establish it conclusively.

As Professor John Robert Moore said, The Life is "exceptionally characteristic" of Defoe, so characteristic in fact that "one can recognize his style and manner as one would a familiar voice."[21 - For this and many other examples of Defoe's distinguishing qualities in this appendix, I am deeply indebted to the late Professor John Robert Moore.] The list of phrases and mannerisms which produce this effect is extensive: The insertion of qualifying or explanatory phrases ("The first time that I had the Honour of seeing John, Earl of Marlborough, [for so I shall call him till he was created Duke] …"), the use of "sentence paragraphs," the repetition of such introductory phrases as "To be short," "but now to the Truth of the matter," "in short," and "to put all this matter out of doubt," and the frequent use of words such as "matter" and "purpose" to emphasize the force and pertinence of his arguments mark Defoe's writings throughout his career. The use of the present participle construction as subject ("As for his Acting in Concert with the Heroick Prince of Savoy … is one of the strongest Arguments of his Art and Knowledge"), long sentences hung together with "and" and qualified with subordinate clauses, and a propensity for coining words ("over-Honored and over-Paid") make Defoe's writing nearly unmistakable and give it the hasty, colloquial quality. His Latin quotations are off hand and rather careless.

At the same time, Defoe has great stylistic virtuosity. He is always direct and forceful. Although he is attacking some of the most powerful men in politics and literature in The Life, there is nothing at all deferential. He includes trivial and often superfluous details which give whatever he writes an authentic tone; these details may be places ("After several Marches, we came to the Confines of Haynault, within a League of a small Town call'd Walcourt…"), names of people ("Mr. Sizar was our Pay-Master General…"), or observations ("twas supposed we would have a long and a late Fatigue"). The same sort of verisimilitude which deceived the readers of Memoirs of Captain Carleton and Journal of the Plague Year supports the illusion of an eye witness account. Defoe's metaphors are also distinctive. While there are no great number, they are graphic, often simplify and condense an idea, and join image and idea in much the same way that seventeenth-century conceits do. Drawing on the common place, the originality and force comes from their aptness ("'tis easie to guess out of what Quiver this Arrow of Scandal was drawn," "For the most eminent Virtues are but as so many fair Marks set up on high for Envy to shoot at with her poysonous darts"). Characteristic idioms – "Engineer that stands behind the curtains," "the Lord knows who and where" – can be found on every page. Small touches such as an allusion to one of Defoe's favorite jokes (Lord Craven's retort to de Vere concerning his ancestry) can also be identified.

Furthermore, the allusions to historical and Biblical figures are consistent with Defoe's life-long usage, opinions and interests. Sir Walter Raleigh and Hannibal, Moses and Solomon are referred to for the same purposes in writings from The Shortest Way with Dissenters to Atalantis Major (a typically explicit analog: from The Shortest Way– "Moses was a merciful meek man" and from The Life– "Moses … one of the Meekest Men upon the Earth"). Defoe habitually commented on the policies of military men and statesmen, traced topography, and included the large features of military campaigns which could be found in printed records. Defoe's opinions on drinking, swearing, reliance on Providence, leadership qualities, gratitude, and courage, to mention a few, are consistent throughout his life and found in this pamphlet. For example, he makes the same distinctions in types of courage in Journal of the Plague Year, the Review, Robinson Crusoe, Atalantis Major, and Memoirs of Captain Carleton that he does in The Life ("True courage cannot proceed from what Sir Walter Raleigh finely calls the art or philosophy of quarrel. No! It must be the issue of principle…").

Moreover, the pamphlet itself bears certain marks indicative of Defoe's hand. It was published by John Baker, "at the Black-Boy in Pater-noster-Row," Defoe's usual publisher for that year. Had it been published by, say, Tonson, the immediate conclusion would be that it was not Defoe's. Baker appeared to take greater care with Defoe's pamphlets than he did with some others; A Defence of Dr. Sacheverell, for example, has fifty lines of small type to the page. Six other tracts by Defoe have titles beginning with "Short" or "Shortest." The use of the eye witness narrator and the soldier narrator are recurring devices which Defoe used to protect himself or his sources and to add weight to what he was purporting to be factual.

Finally Marlborough was one of Defoe's heroes until at least late 1711. He praises him highly in Seldom Comes a Better, Atalantis Major, and The Quaker's Sermon. It is with reluctance that Defoe is persuaded that Marlborough must be displaced, and even in the poem on the occasion of Marlborough's funeral, his disapproval seems to be more for the ostentatiousness and inappropriateness of the funeral than for the man himself. All in all, there is scarcely a line in The Life which does not bear Defoe's fingerprints.

notes

1

Harley as a "trickster is a doctrine as deeply rooted in historical opinion as the military skill of Marlborough and the oratorical accomplishments of Bolingbroke." John Hill Burton, A History of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1880), iii, p. 71. See also Elizabeth Hamilton, The Backstairs Dragon: A Life of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969).

2

Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough; His Life and Times (New York: Scribner's, 1938), vi, pp. 85-6.

3

Marlborough was systematically deprived of the men upon whom he relied most. The ministry took over Army promotions and dismissed existing officers under the guise of protecting the Queen. Churchill, vi, pp. 334-5.

4

Burton, iii, pp. 92-3.

5

Defoe to Harley, July 28, 1710. George Healey, ed., The Letters of Daniel Defoe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).

6

Examiner, February 15, 1711. Herbert Davis, ed., The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1940), p. 87.

7

Defoe's Review, January 22, 1712.

8

Cf. discussions of this in John Ross, Swift and Defoe: A Study in Relationship (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941); Richard I. Cook, Jonathan Swift as A Tory Pamphleteer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), and Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works and the Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), ii, pp. 450ff. and 526ff.

9

This is similar to an argument Defoe uses to distinguish between types of debtors in the Review (iii, 83-4 and 397-400). Whether or not the crime was "Wilful" was very important to Defoe; perhaps his revised opinion of Marlborough as most obvious in his tribute to him at his death is the result of his change of opinion about Marlborough's motives and removing him from the list of heroes who possessed the "courage of honor" as described in An Apology for the Army.

10

William Coxe, Memoirs of John, Duke of Marlborough with his Original Correspondence (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820), vi, p. 48.

11

Coxe, vi, p. 123.

12

Coxe, vi, 126.

13

The advantage France gained from Marlborough's fall and their complete awareness of it is discussed in Churchill, vi, pp. 462-69.

14

Coxe, vi, p. 126; Hamilton, p. 172, and The Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough (London: John Murray, 1845), v.

15

J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 255-56; Defoe's An Appeal to Honor and Justice; and Chalmers says Defoe wrote what "either gratified his prejudices or supplied his needs."

16

Davis, "A Letter to the Examiner," p. 221.

17

Moore, pp. 58-61.

18

Burton, ii, p. 171.

19

Bedlam and Grub Street as the colleges in the vicinity of Moorefields were standard jokes. Moorfields was also associated with cheap lodging, prostitution, theft, and the Pesthouse Burying Ground, altogether an unhealthy environment.

20

Defoe discusses this in Robinson Crusoe, Serious Reflections, and a Collection of Miscellaney Letters and several other places. He says, for example:

The custom of the ancients in writing fables is my very laudable pattern for this; and my firm resolution in all I write to exalt virtue, expose vice, promote truth, and help men to serious reflection, is my first moving cause and last directed end.

    (Preface to the Review)

Things seem to appear more lively to the Understanding, and to make a stronger Impression upon the Mind when they are insinuated under the cover of some Symbol or Allegory, especially where the moral is good, and the Application obvious and easy.