from his friends. The Craftsman was itself on The Spectator or Examiner model; but, as a party organ, inspired and partly written by the leaders of the Opposition, it had something of the position of a modern newspaper; and Amhurst, no doubt, though in a very dependent position, may be regarded as a humble forerunner of the full-blown editor of later days.
Meanwhile, however, the comparative calm of the political atmosphere under Walpole was favourable to another direction of literary development. Defoe found time for the multitudinous activities which entitle him to be a great-grandfather of all modern journalism. He helped to start newspapers; he published secret documents; he interviewed Jack Sheppard at the foot of the gallows; he collected ghost stories; he wrote accounts of worthy dissenting divines recently deceased; he wrote edifying essays upon the devil and things in general; he described tours in the country; he passed Robinson Crusoe through a journal like a modern feuilleton, and, in short, he opened almost every vein of periodical literature that has been worked by his successors. As the time goes on we find authors who really make a decent living by their pens. There is John
