Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,
by
DANIEL DEFOE.
and
Two Letters from the“Journey through England by a Gentleman.”
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris, new york& melbourne.
1888.
At the end of this book there are a couple of letters from avolume of the “Travels in England” which were not byDefoe, although resembling Defoe’s work so much in form andtitle, and so near to it in date of publication, that a volume ofone book is often found taking the place of a volume of theother. A purchaser of Defoe’s “Travels inEngland” has therefore to take care that he is not buyingone of the mixed sets. Each of the two works describesEngland at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenthcentury. Our added descriptions of Bath, and of the journeyby Chester to Holyhead, were published in 1722; Defoe’s“Journey from London to the Land’s End” waspublished in 1724, and both writers help us to compare the pastwith the present by their accounts of England as it was in thedays of George the First, more than a hundred and sixty yearsago. The days certainly are gone when, after a good haul ofpilchards, seventeen can be bought for a halfpenny, and twogentlemen and their servant can have them broiled at a tavern anddine on them for three farthings, dressing and all. Inanother of his journeys Defoe gives a seaside tavern bill, inwhich the charges were ridiculously small for everything exceptfor bread. It was war time, and the bread was the mostcostly item in the bill.
In the earlier part of this account of the “Journey fromLondon to the Land’s End,” there is interest in thefresh memories of the rebuilding and planting at Hampton Court byWilliam III. and Queen Mary. The passing away, and inopinion of that day the surpassing, of Wolsey’s palacethere were none then to regret.
A more characteristic feature in this letter will be found inthe details of a project which Defoe says he had himselfadvocated before the Lord-Treasurer Godolphin, for the settlementof poor refugees from the Palatinate upon land in the NewForest. Our friendly relations with the Palatinate hadbegun with the marriage of James the First’s eldestdaughter to the Elector Palatine, who brought on himself muchtrouble by accepting the crown of Bohemia from the subjects ofthe Emperor Ferdinand the Second. As a Protestant Princeallied by marriage to England, he drew from England sympathiesand ineffectual assistance. Many years afterwards, duringthe war with France in Queen Anne’s time, the allies wereunprosperous in 1707, and Marshal Villars was victorious upon theRhine. The pressure of public feeling on behalf of refugeesfrom the Palatinate did not last long enough for any action to betaken. But if it had seemed well to the Government toaccept the project advocated by Defoe, we should have had aclearance of what is now the most beautiful part of the NewForest, near Lyndhurst; and in place of the little area thatstill preserves all the best features of forest land, we shouldhave had a town of Englishmen descended from the latest of theGerman settlements upon our soil. Upon the politicaleconomy of Defoe’s project, and the accuracy of hiscalculations, and the more or less resemblance of his scheme tothe system of free grants of land in unsettled regions beyond thesea, each reader wil