of seeing them both now and then, upon such a circumstance he could gladly give the days to solitude to have the comfort of half an hour now and then with them both for two or three weeks.”  Nevertheless, as if he considered this plan out of the question, he ends with a touching expression of grief that, being near his journey’s end, he may never see them again.  It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he did not wish to see his son-in-law, and that Baker wished to see him about money matters, and suspected him of evading an interview.

Was this evasion the cunning of incipient madness?  Was his concealing his hiding-place from his son-in-law an insane development of that self-reliant caution, which for so many years of his life he had been compelled to make a habit, in the face of the most serious risks?  Why did he give such an exaggerated colour to the infamous conduct of his son?  It is easy to make out from the passage I have quoted, what his son’s guilt really consisted in.  Defoe had assigned certain property to the son to be held in trust for his wife and daughters.  The son had not secured them in the enjoyment of this provision, but maintained them, and gave them words and promises, with which they were content, that he would continue to maintain them.  It was this that Defoe called making them “beg their bread at his door, and crave as if it were an alms” the provision to which they were legally entitled.  Why did Defoe vent his grief at this conduct in such strong language to his son-in-law, at the same time enjoining him to make a prudent use of it?  Baker had written to his father-in-law making inquiry about the securities for his wife’s portion; Defoe answers with profuse expressions of affection, a touching picture of his old age and feebleness, and the imminent ruin of his family through the possible treachery of the son to whom he has entrusted their means of support, and an adjuration to his son-in-law to stand by them with comfort and counsel when he is gone.  The inquiry about the securities he dismisses in a postscript.  He will not sell the house, and he does not know who has the policy of assurance.

One thing and one thing only shines clearly out of the obscurity in which Defoe’s closing years are wrapt—­his earnest desire to make provision for those members of his family who could not provide for themselves.  The pursuit from which he was in hiding, was in all probability the pursuit of creditors.  We have seen that his income must have been large from the year 1718 or thereabouts, till his utter loss of credit in journalism about the year 1726; but he may have had old debts.  It is difficult to explain otherwise why he should have been at such pains, when he became prosperous, to assign property to his children.  There is evidence, as early as 1720, of his making over property to his daughter Hannah, and the letter from which I have quoted shows that he did not hold his Newington estate in his own name.  In this