: The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque Commonly Called Colonel Jack by Defoe Daniel - England Social life and customs 18th century Fiction; Adventure stories English; Picaresque fiction

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

Introduction Author's Preface The Life of Colonel Jacque The True-born Englishman The Shortest Way with the Dissenters

COLONEL JACQUE

PART I

Escaping with the purloined horse.

PART II

Colonel Jacque and the lady

Colonel Jacque's arrival is announced

INTRODUCTION

"With the sloop I sent letters to my wife and to my chief manager with orders to load her back, as I there directed, viz., that she should have two hundred barrels of flour, fifty barrels of pease; and, to answer my other views, I ordered a hundred bales to be made up of all sorts of European goods, such as not my own warehouses only would supply, but such as they could be supplied with in other warehouses where I knew they had credit for anything."

Defoe, in this reply to Tutchin's pamphlet, sought to prove that the king and his foreign friends had as good right to the esteem of the English as any patriots in the history of the country. In the first part of the "poem," as Defoe called his satire, he showed that William, with his Dutch blood, was as much entitled to the name of Englishman as any of his subjects, who came of mixed British, Pictish, Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman blood. In short, Defoe made the English out a hybrid race, and with excellent good sense showed that their national vigour was due largely to their being so. Much of what he said might well be said to-day of the people of the United States, as for instance, the following from Defoe's explanatory preface:--

"The multitudes of foreign nations who have taken sanctuary here, have been the greatest additions to the wealth and strength of the nation; the essential whereof is the number of its inhabitants. Nor would this nation ever have arrived to the degree of wealth and glory it now boasts of, if the addition of foreign nations . . . had not been helpful to it. This is so plain, that he who is ignorant of it is too dull to be talked with."

The other side to Defoe's picture is shown in verses which, with a few changes, would likewise be applicable to the United States to-day. Defoe is trying to prove that even with lapse of years the English race remains hybrid.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!