CHAPTER VIII.
LATER JOURNALISTIC LABOURS.
For the discovery of this "strange and surprising" chapter in Defoe's life, which clears up much that might otherwise have been disputable in his character, the world is indebted solely to Mr.William Lee.

Accident put Mr.Lee on the right scent, from which previous biographers had been diverted by too literal and implicit a faith in the arch-deceiver's statements, and too comprehensive an application of his complaint that his name was made the hackney title of the times, upon which all sorts of low scribblers fathered their vile productions.

Defoe's secret services on Tory papers exposed him, as we have seen, to misconstruction.

Nobody knew this better than himself, and nobody could have guarded against it with more sleepless care.

In the fourth year of King George's reign a change took place in the Ministry.