I

INTRODUCTION

N this volume are found two, or possibly three,

works by Daniel Defoe which have been con

nected with the name of a well-known char

acter of the early eighteenth century, Duncan Campbell. Two other works relating to the same man have been at times attributed to Defoe, but the best opinion is that they were not from his pen.

So far as the facts in the life of Campbell can now be ascertained, they are substantially the same as those related by Defoe in his History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell. The subject of this History was the son of a Mr. Campbell of Argyllshire and a lady of Lapland. On the death of his wife, whom he married abroad, Mr. Campbell returned to Scotland, taking with him his only child, a son, who seems to have been born about 1680.. This boy, Duncan, always passed for deaf and dumb, and there is no good reason to believe that he was not. Asserting that he had the gift of second sight, he became so famous in Scotland by his remarkable predictions that in 1694, desiring wider fame, he went up to London to become a professional seer. From then to the time of his death, his object was ever to keep himself in the notice of the English public.

In the earlier part of his career, when Campbell had just come of age, he seems to have been rather wild and extravagant. At one time he was SO

heavily in debt that he decided to sojourn in Holland for a while. Thence, after various adventures, he returned to London, where he married a young widow, lived in pretty fair style, and became more famous as a soothsayer than ever.

References in the Tatler and the Spectator prove that for years Duncan Campbell had a considerable vogue. In No. 14 of the former periodical, May 12th, 1709, Steele wrote under date of "White's Chocolate-house, May 11":"A gentleman here this evening was giving me an account of a dumb Fortune-Teller, who outdoes Mr. Partridge,1 myself, or the Unborn Doctor, for predictions: all his visitants come to him full of expectations, and pay his own rate for the interpretations they put upon his shrugs and nods. There is a fine rich Citywidow stole thither the other day,” — and then the Tatler goes on to tell of her wish to know whether she should marry again, of the fortune-teller's intimation that she should marry not once but twice, and of her speculations as to which gentlemen, among those who frequented the soothsayer's apartment, were her husbands-to-be.

Three years later Addison mentioned Campbell in No. 323 of the Spectator.2 Part of a young lady's

1 The vulgar almanac-maker who was the victim of Swift's famous hoax.

2 March 11th, 1712.

journal has supposedly come to the Spectator's attention, a week's journal of a life "filled with a fashionable kind of Gayety and Laziness ;" and in the last entry we read:"Monday. Eight a Clock. Waked by Miss Kitty. . . . Went in our Mobbs to the dumb Man, according to Appointment. Told me that my Lover's Name began with a G. Mem. the Conjurer was within a Letter of Mr. Froth's Name,

&c."

In September of the same year, in No. 474, Steele made a certain "Dulcibella Thankley" write enthusiastically of "Mr. Campbell, the dumb Man," to whom she wishes especially to render thanks, because through his prophecies she is become "the happiest She in Kent." Inasmuch as no reference to Mr. Campbell in either the Tatler or the Spectator was more flattering than this, Defoe gave the letter in full in Chapter VIII. of the present volume.

Later references of the Spectator to the dumb man are more satirical. In No. 505,1 appeared a letter which was supposed to come from one recommending himself as an interpreter of dreams. "I am pretty well qualified for this office, . . ." Addison made the correspondent write. "My great Uncle by my Wife's Side was a Scotch Highlander, and second Sighted." And at the conclusion the correspondent wrote, "N. B. I am not dumb."

Again Addison wrote in No. 560,2 “Everyone has heard of the famous Conjurer, who, according to the Opinion of the Vulgar, has studied himself dumb; 2 June 28th, 1714.

1 October 9th, 1712.

for which Reason, as it is believed, he delivers out all his Oracles in Writing. Be that as it will, the blind Teresias was not more famous in Greece, than this dumb Artist has been for some Years last past, in the Cities of London and Westminster."

Finally, in his 619th paper,1 the Spectator, in trying to give some idea of the variety of the letters which he receives, writes of one dated from Cornhill, from Charissa, who "desires to be eased in some Scruples relating to the Skill of Astrologers. Referred to the Dumb Man for an Answer."

Fads appear to have lasted longer at the beginning of the eighteenth century than at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth. Novelty did not succeed novelty then with the same rapidity as now. Still all things in time had their turn, and there is a sign that Mr. Campbell had had his in the advertising he resorted to towards the end of his life to keep his name before the public. Defoe's Life of Campbell, in a way, is part of this advertising. True, we cannot say that it was written at the suggestion of the fortune-teller. Defoe's unceasing interest in vulgar wonders would naturally have led him to "write up" Campbell ; moreover, the publisher, thinking the book a good commercial venture, may have offered Defoe a good price for it. Still, one cannot read the preface addressed "To the Ladies and Gentlemen of Great Britain," and signed by Campbell, without feeling that an important purpose of the book was to get

1 November 12th, 1714.

people into the habit of consulting the seer again. That they had got out of this habit is plain from Campbell's attacks on other fortune-tellers and all kinds of independent divination, and from his selfcommendation. There can be little doubt that Defoe was helping to advertise a partially forgotten favourite, when he wrote The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell. A Gentleman, who though born Deaf and Dumb, writes down any Stranger's Name at First Sight; and their Future Contingencies of Fortune. Now living in Exeter Court, over against the Savoy in the Strand.

This work was published by Curll on the thirtieth of April, 1720. Two days later, by clever management on some one's part, "Mr. Campbell, the Deaf and Dumb Gentleman . . Kiss'd the King's Hand, and presented to his Majesty The History of his Life and Adventures, which was by his Majesty most graciously received.” 1

Even this advertisement of Defoe's book seems not to have made it sell so well as had been hoped. The next month, accordingly, a pamphlet was issued it is conjectured to improve the sale- entitled, Mr. Campbell's Pacquet for the Entertainment of Gentlemen and Ladies, Containing, I, Verses to Mr. Campbell, Occasioned by the History of his Life and Adventures. By Mrs. Fowke, Mr. Philips, &c. II, The Parallel, a Poem comparing the Poetical Productions of Mr. Pope, with the Prophetical Predictions of Mr. Campbell. By Capt. Stanhope. III, 1 Daily Post, Wednesday, May 4th, 1720.