The Novels And Miscellaneous Works Of Daniel De Foe (Volxix)

Front matter

THE NOVELS

AND

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS

Chap. I. Mr. Campbell’s descent, family, birth

&c., page 7 . Also an account of Mr. Archibald Campbell’s Travels into Lapland, where he married a rich lady of that country, who was daughter to the under prefect, or deputy governor of the district of Uma Lapmark ; with some letters from him to his father in the isle of Shetland, in Scotland, particularly one concerning the birth of his son, our present Mr. Duncan Campbell 22

Chap. II. After the death of Mr. Duncan Camphell’s mother, in Lapland, his father, Mr. Archibald Campbell, returned into Scotland with his little son and family. His second marriage; and how his son, being bom deaf and dumb, was first learned to read and write -

Chap. III. The method of teaching deaf and dumb persons to write, read, and understand a language .

xxii

CONTENTS.

Page

Chap. IV. Young Duncan Campbell returns with his mother to Edinburgh. The earl of Argyle’s overthrow'. The ruin of Mr. Archibald Campbell, and his death. Young Duncan’s practice in prediction at Edin¬ burgh, w'hile yet a boy - - - - 43

Chap. V. An argument proving the perception which men have had, and have, by all the senses, as seeing, hearing, &c., of demons, genii, or familiar spirits - - - - 61

Chap. VI, A narrative of Mr. Campbell’s coming to London, and taking upon him the pro¬ fession of a predictor; together with an account of many strange things that came to pass just as he foretold - - - 96

Chap. VII. A philosophical discourse concerning

the second-sight - - - - - 134

Chap. VIII. A dissertation upon magic under all its branches, with some remarkable par¬ ticulars relating to Mr. Campbell’s private life, p. 158. The first objection against the existence of spirits, and the refutations thereof, p. 199. The second objection against the existence of witches - - 206

The Appendix ------- 227

Verses addressed to Mr. Campbell - 247

A Remarkable Passage of an Apparition, 1665

CONTENTS.

xxm

TO WHICH ARE ADDED :

THE DUMB PHILOSOPHER: or, Great Britain’s Wonder. Containing: I. A faithful and very sur¬ prising Account how Dickory Cronke, a Tinner’s son, in the county of Cornwall, was born Dumb, and con¬ tinued so for Fifty-eight Years ; and how, some Days before he died, he came to his Speech ; with Memoirs of his Life, and the Manner of his death. II. A De¬ claration of his Faith and Principles in Religion ; with a Collection of Select Meditations, composed in his Retirement. III. His Prophetical Observations upon the Affairs of Europe, more particularly of Great Britain, from 1720 to 1729. The whole extracted from his Original Papers, and confirmed by unques¬ tionable Authority. To which is annexed his Elegy, written by a young Cornish Gentleman, of Exeter College, in Oxford, with an Epitaph by another hand.

AND,

EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS IS NOBODY’S BU¬ SINESS ; or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances : exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and exorbitant Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c.

THE

HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND SURPRISING ADVENTURES

OF

MR. DUNCAN CAMPBELL.

——

THE INTRODUCTION.

Op all the writings delivered in an historical manner to the world, none certainly were ever held in greater esteem than those which give us the lives of distinguished private men at full length; and, as I may say, to the life. Such curious fragments of biography are the rarities which great men seek after with eager industry, and when found prize them as the chief jewels and ornaments that enrich their libraries, and deservedly; for they are the beauties of the greatest men’s lives handed down by way of example or instruction to posterity, and commonly handed down likewise by the greatest men. Since, therefore, persons distinguished for merit in one kind or other are the constant subjects of such discourses, and the most elegant writers of each age have been u'sually the only authors who choose upon such subjects to employ their pens, and since, persons of the highest rank and dignity, and / I*, d. c. b geniuses of the most refined and delicate relish, are frequently curious enough to be the readers of them, and to esteem them the most valuable pieces in a whole collection of learned works; it is a wonder to me that when any man’s life has something in it peculiarly great and remarkable in its kind, it should not move some more skilful writer than my¬ self to give the public a taste of it, because it must be at least vastly entertaining, if it be not, which is next to impossible, immensely instructive and pro¬ fitable withal.

If ever the life of any man under the sun was re¬ markable, this Mr. Duncan Campbell’s, which I am going to treat upon, is so to a very eminent degree.

It affords such variety of incidents, and is accom¬ panied with such diversity of circumstances that it includes within it what must yield entire satisfaction to the most learned, and admiration to persons of a moderate understanding. The prince and the pea¬ sant will have their several ends of worthy delight in reading it; and Mr. Campbell’s life is of that extent, that it concerns and collects, as I may say, within itself, every station of life in the universe. Besides, there is a demand in almost every page that relates any new act of his, for the finest and closest disquisitions that learning can make upon human nature, to account how those acts could be done by him. For he daily practised, and still practises, those things naturally, which puts art to the rack to find out how nature can so operate in him; and his fleshly body, by these operations, is a living practical system, or body of new philosophy, which exceeds even all those that have hitherto been compounded by the labour and art of many ages.

If one that had speculated deep into abstruse matters, and made it his study not only to know how to assign natural reasons for some strange new acts that looked like miracles by being peculiar to the individual genius of some particular admired man, but carrying his inquiry to a much greater height, had speculated likewise what might possibly be achieved by human genius in the full perfection of nature, and had laid it down as a thesis by strong arguments, that such things might be compassed by a human genius, if in its true degree of perfection, as are the hourly operations of the person’s life I am writing, he would have been counted a wild ro¬ mantic enthusiast, instead of a natural philosopher. Some of the wisest would be infidels to so new and so refined a scheme of thinking, and demand expe¬ riment, or cry it was all against reason, and would not allow the least tittle to be true without it. Yet the man that had found out so great a mystery as to tell us what might be done by human genius, as it is here actually done, would have been a great man within himself; but wanting further experi¬ mental proof, could lay no claim to the belief of others, or consequently to their esteem; but how great, then, is the man, who makes it constantly his practice actually to do what would not otherwise have been thought to be of such a nature as might ever be acquired by mortal capacity, though in its full complement of all possible perfection ? He is not only great within himself, he is great to the world; his experiments force our belief, and the amazing singularity of those experiments provokes both our wonder and esteem.

If any learned man should have advanced this proposition, that mere human art could give to the deaf man what should be equal to his hearing, and to the dumb man an equivalent for his want of speech, so that he should converse as freely almost as other hearing or talking persons, that he might,

b2

4 THE LIFE AND ADVENTUBES

though born deaf, be by art taught how to read, write, and understand any language, as well as students that have their hearing, would not the world, and many even of the learned part of it, say, that nothing could be more extravagantly wild, more mad and frantic? The learned Dr. Wallis, geometry professor of Oxford, did first of all lay down this proposition, and was counted by many to have overshot the point of learning, and to have been the author of a whimsical thesis. And I should not have wondered if, after a man’s having asserted this might be done before it was actually done, some blind devout people in those days had accused him of heresy, and of attributing to men a power of working miracles. The notion of the antipodes was by the most learned men of the age in which St. Augustin lived, and by the great St. Austin himself, treated in no milder a manner; yet if the ability of teaching the deaf and the dumb a language, proved a truth in experience afterwards, ought not those to turn their contempt into admira¬ tion? ought not those very people to vote him into the Royal Society for laying down this propo¬ sition, who, before it proved true in fact, would have been very forward to have sent him to Bedlam? The first instance of this accomplishment in a dumb person was proved before king Charles II. by this same Dr. Wallis, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the most ingenious of that so¬ ciety.

But notwithstanding this, should I come after¬ wards and say that there is now living a deaf and dumb man, and born so, who could, by dint of his own genius teach all others deaf and dumb to read, write, and converse with the talking and hearing part of mankind, some would, I warrant, very reli¬ giously conclude that I was about to introduce some strange new miracle-monger and impostor into the world, with a design of setting up some new sect of antichristianism, as formidable as that of the Brah¬ mins. Should I proceed still further, and say that this same person so deaf and dumb might be able also to show a presaging power, or kind of prophet¬ ical genius, if I may be allowed the expression, by telling any strange persons he never saw before in his life, their names at first sight in writing, and by telling them the past actions of their lives, and predicting to them determined truths of future contingences; notwithstanding what divines say, that In futuris contingentibus non datur determinata veritas , would not they conclude that I was going to usher in a new Mahomet? Since, therefore, there does exist such a man in London, who actually is deaf and dumb, and was born so, who does write and read, and converse, as well as anybody, who teaches others deaf and dumb to write and read, and converse with anybody, who likewise can, by a presaging gift, set down in writing the name of any stranger at first sight, tell him his past actions, and predict his future occurrences in fortune, and since he has practised this talent as a profession with great success, for a long series of years, upon innu¬ merable persons in every state and vocation of life, fipm the peeress to the waiting-woman, and from the lady mayoress to the milliner and sempstress, will it not be wonderfully entertaining to give the world a perfect history of this so singular a man’s life ? And while we are relating the pleasant ad¬ ventures with such prodigious variety, can anything be more agreeably instructive in a new way, than to intersperse the reasons, and account for the manner, how nature, having a mind to be remarkable, per¬ forms by him acts so mysterious.

I have premised this introduction, compounded

6 THE LITE AND ADVENTURES

of the merry and the serious, with the hopes of en¬ gaging many curious people of all sorts to be my readers, even from the airy nice peruser of novels and romances, neatly bound and finely gilt, to the grave philosopher that is daily thumbing over the musty and tattered pieces of more solid antiquity. I have all the wonders to tell that such a merry kind of a prophet has told, to entertain the fancies of the first gay tribe, by which means I may entice them into some solid knowledge and judgment of human nature; and I have several solid disquisitions of learning to make, accounting for the manner of these mysterious operations, never touched upon before, in due form and order, by the hands of the ancient or modern sages, that I may bribe the judgment of this last grave class so far as to endure the intermixing of entertainment with their severer studies.

OF MR. DXJNCAN CAMPBELL.

CHAP. L

Mr. CampbeWs descent , family , birth , fyc.

Of the goodness and antiquity of the name and family of this gentleman, nobody can ever make any question; he is a Campbell lineally descended from the house of Argyle, and bears a distant relation to the present duke of that name in Scotland* and who is now constituted a duke of England, by the style and title of the duke of Greenwich.

It happens frequently that the birth of extra¬ ordinary persons is so long disputed by different people, each claiming him for their own, that the real place where he first took breath grows at last dubious; and thus it fares with the person who is the subject of the following sheets; as there¬ fore it is my proposal to have a strict regard to historical faith, so am I obliged to tell the reader that I can with no certainty give an account of him till after he was three years old; from which age I knew him, even to this day; I will answer for the truths which I impart to the public during that time, and as for his birth and the circumstances of it, and how the first three years of his life passed, I can only deliver them the same account I have received from others, and leave them to their own judgments whether it ought to be deemed real or fabulous.

The father of our Mr. Duncan Campbell, as these relate the story, was from his infancy of a very curious inquisitive nature, and of an enterprising genius, and if he heard of anything surprising to be seen, the difficulty in practice was enough to re¬ commend to him the attempting to get a sight of it at any rate or any hazard. It is certain, that during some civil broils and troubles in Scotland, the grandfather of our Mr. Campbell was driven with his wife and family, by the fate of war, into the isle of Shetland, where he lived many years ; and dur¬ ing his residence there, Mr. Archibald Campbell, the father of our Duncan Campbell, was born.

Shetland lies north-east from Orkney, between sixty and sixty-one degrees of latitude. The largest isle of Shetland, by the natives called the Mainland, is sixty miles in length from south-west to the north¬ east, and from sixteen, to one mile, in breadth.

The people who live in the smaller isles have abundance of eggs and fowl, which contributes to maintain their families during the summer.

The ordinary folks are mostly very nimble and active in climbing the rocks in quest of those eggs and fowl. This exercise is far more diverting than hunting and hawking among us, and would cer¬ tainly for the pleasure of it, be followed by people of greater distinction, was it not attended with very great dangers, sufficient to turn sport into sorrow, and which have often proved fatal to those who toq eagerly pursue their game. Mr. Archibald Camp¬ bell, however, delighted extremely in this way of fowling, and used to condescend to mix with the common people for company, because none of the youths of his rank and condition were venturesome enough to go along with him.

The most remarkable experiment of this sort, is at the isle called the Noss of Brassah: the Noss standing at sixteen fathom distance from the side of the opposite Main; the higher and lower rocks have two stakes fastened in each of them, and to these there are ropes tied; upon the ropes there is an engine hung which they call a cradle, and in this a man makes his way over from the greater to the smaller rocks, where he makes a considerable purchase of eggs and fowl; but his return being by an ascent, makes it the more dangerous, though those on the great rock have a rope tied to the cradle, by which they draw it and the man safe over for the most part. Over this rock Mr. Archi¬ bald Campbell and five others were in that manner let down by cradles and ropes; but before they could be all drawn back again it grew dark, and their associates not daring to be benighted, were forced to withdraw, and Mr. Campbell was the un¬ fortunate person left behind, having wandered too far, and not minded how the day declined, being intent on his game. He passed that night, you may easily guess, without much sleep, and with great anxiety of heart. The night, too, as he lay in the open air, was, to add to his misfortune, as boi¬ sterous and tempestuous as his own mind; but in the end the tempest proved very happy for him. The reader is to understand that the Hamburghers, Bremeners, and Hollanders, carry on a great fish trade there. Accordingly, a Holland vessel, that was just coming in the sound of Brassah, was by this tempest driven into a creek of the rock, which nature had made into a harbour, and they were providentially saved from the bottom of the sea by a rock, from which, humanly speaking, they could expect nothing but destruction, and being sent to the bottom of that sea. As never could a man be taken hold of with so sudden and surprising a dis¬ aster, so nobody could meet with a more sudden and surprising relief than Mr. Campbell found when he saw a ship so near. He made to the ves¬ sel, and begged the Hollanders to take him in;

they asked Mm what he would give them, or, said the barbarous sailors, we will even leave you where you are; he told them his disaster, but they asked money, and nothing else would move them: as he knew them a self-interested people, he bethought himself, that if he should tell them of the plenty of fowls and eggs they would get there, he might not only be taken in a passenger, but made a partner in the money arising from the stock ; it succeeded accordingly: when he proposed it, the whole crew were all at work, and, in four hours, pretty well stored the vessel, and then, returning on board, set sail for Holland. They offered Mr. Campbell to put him in at his own island; but having a mind to see Holland, and being a partner, to learn their way of merchandize, which he thought he might turn to his countrymen’s advantage, he told them he would go the voyage out with them, and see the country of those who were his deliverers; a neces¬ sary way of speech, when one has a design to sooth barbarians, who, but for interest, would have left him unredeemed, and, for aught they knew, a per¬ petual sole inhabitant of a dreadful rock, encom¬ passed round with precipices, some three hundred fathom high. Mot so the islanders, who are wrongly called a savage set of mortals; no, they came in quest of him after so bitter a night, not doubt¬ ing to find him, but fearing to find him in a la¬ mentable condition; they hunted and ransacked every little hole and corner in the rock, but all in vain. In one place they saw a great slaughter of fowls, enough to serve forty families for a week; and then they guessed, though they had not the ill fortune to meet the eagles frequently noted to hover about those isles, that they might have de¬ voured part of him on some precipice of the rock, and dropped the remnant into the sea. Night came upon them, and they were afraid of failing into the same disaster they went to relieve M^r. Campbell from. They returned each to their pro¬ per basket, and were drawn up safe by their respec¬ tive friends, who were amazed that one basket was drawn up empty which was let down for Mr. Campbell, and that there was not the least intelli¬ gence to be had concerning him, but the supposi¬ tious story of his having been devoured by eagles. The story was told at home ; and with the lament¬ ation of the whole family, and all his friends; he was looked upon to be murdered or dead.

Return we now to Mr. Archibald Campbell, still alive, and on board the Holland vessel; secure as he thought within himself, that from the delivery he lately had by the gift of Providence, he was not in¬ tended to be liable to any more misfortunes and dangers of life, in the compass of so small a voyage. But his lot was placed otherwise in the book of fate, than he too fondly imagined ; his time of happiness was dated some pages lower down, and more rubs and difficulties were to be encountered with, before his stars intended to lead him to the port of felicity. Just as he arrived within sight of Amsterdam, a terrible storm arose, and, in danger of their lives, for many hours, they weathered out the tempest; and a calm promising fair afresh, they made to the coast of Zealand; but a new hurricane prevented the ship from coming there also ; and after having lost their masts and rigging, they were driven into Lapland. There they went ashore in order to careen and repair their ship, and take in provisions; while the ship was repairing by the Dutch, our islander made merry with the inhabitants, being the most in¬ clined to their superstitious customs; he there be¬ came acquainted with a very beautiful woman, who fell in love with him, and after a very short space

12 THE LITE AND ADVENTURES

of time he married her. About the time when the ship departed, his wife, who was very rich, was big with child of a son, namely, Mr. Duncan Campbell. He wrote a letter by the master of the vessel to his parents in Shetland, concerning the various ad¬ ventures he had met with, which was delivered the June following, about the time of fishing, to his parents, and several persons had copies thereof, and, for aught I know, some retain them to this very day; sure I am that many remember the par¬ ticulars of this surprising affair, who are now living in that island.

The letter being very remarkable and singular in all its circumstances, I shall present it to the reader word for word, as it was given into my hands, to¬ gether with some others which he wrote afterwards, in all which I am assured by very credible persons, and undoubted authorities, there are not the least alterations, but what the version of it from the then Scotch manner of expression into a more modern English dress, made absolutely necessary.

My dearest Father,

The same odd variety of accident, which put it out of my power to be personally present with you for so long a time, put it likewise out of my power to write to you. At last fortune has so ordered it, that I can send a letter to you before I can come myself, and it is written expressly to tell you the adventures I have met with, which have detained me this tedious space of time from my dear father, and because the same captain of a ship that brings you this, might as easily have brought your son to speak for himself. I shall in the next place lay before you the necessity there is for my stay a little longer among the strange natives of the country where I now inhabit, and where I am, in a manner, become naturalized.

You have, no doubt of it, been informed by my companions, some of whom I hope got safe back again, if not all, that I was lost, where many a brave man has perished before me, by going over the high precipices of the mountain Brassah, in a basket, sliding down by a rope. I must suppose I have given you the anguish of a father for a son, who you thought had lost his life by such a foolhardy attempt, and I implore your pardon with all the power of filial contrition, penitence, and duty. You have always showed me such singular marks of paternal affection, that I know your receipt of this letter will fill your heart with joy, and cause you to sign me an absolution and free pardon for all the errors I have committed, and think the sufferings I have undergone for my rashness and indiscretion, a sufficient atonement for my crime of making you, by my undutifulness, a partner of my sorrows. To free you the more from this uneasiness, I know I need only tell you, that every grief of mine is gone excepting one, which is, that I must still lose the pleasure of seeing you a little longer. There was never surely a more bitter night than that which must by me be for ever remembered, when I was lost in the mountain of Brassah, where I must, for aught I know, have lived for ever a wild single in¬ habitant, but that the storm which made the night so uneasy to me, rendered the first approach of day¬ light, beyond measure, delightful. The first provi¬ dential glimpse of the morning gave me a view of a ship driven by the tempest into a creek of the rock,' that was by nature formed like a harbour; a mira¬ culous security of deliverance, as I thought, both for the ship’s crew and myself, I made all the haste I could, you may be sure, to them, and I found them to be Dutchmen that were come for fish; but in, lieu of fish I instructed them to load it with eggs and fowl, which we compassed very happily in a short space of time, and I was to be a sharer with the captain in the lading, and bar¬ gained to go for Holland, to see the sale, and the nature of traffick; but when we were at sea, after much bad weather, we made towards Zealand, but we were driven upon the coast of Finland by a new storm, and thence into Lapland, where I now am, and from whence I send you this letter.

I could not come into a place so properly named for my reception; as I had been un dutiful to you, and fortune seemed to make me an exile, or a banished man, by way of punishment for the vices of my youth; so Lapland (which is a word originally derived from the Finland word lappi , that is, exiles, and from the Swedish word lap , signifying banished, from which two kingdoms most of our inhabitants were banished hither, for not embracing the Chris¬ tian religion) was certainly the properest country in the world to receive me.

When first I entered this country, I thought I was got into quite another world; the men are all of them pigmies to our tall, brawny Highlanders; they are, generally speaking, not above three cubits high, insomuch that though the whole country of Lapland is immensely large, and I have heard it reckoned by the inhabitants to be above a hundred German leagues in length, and fourscore and ten in breadth, yet I was the tallest man there, and looked upon as a giant. The district in which I live now, is called Uma Lapmark. You must under¬ stand, sir, that when I landed at North Cape, in Kimi Lapmark, another district of Lapland, there was at that time a most beautiful lady come to see a sick relation of her father's, who was prefect, pr gover-

OF MR. DUNCAN CAMPBELL.

nor of Uma Lapmark, which is a post of great dis¬ tinction. This lady, by being frequently in the com¬ pany of French merchants, who traffick now and then in that province of Uma Lapmark, understood French, and having heard of a man six foot and a half high, desired to see me, and when I came, she happened mightly to like my person; and she talked French, which when I answered, she made great signs of joy, that she could communicate her sentiments to me, and she told me who she was, how rich, and that not one in the company besides could understand a syllable we said, and so I might speak my mind freely to her; she told me the customs of the country, that it was divided into cantons, like our shires, and those cantons into rekars, or certain grounds allotted to families, that are just like our clans. As she was beyond measure beautiful, she was extremely good humoured, a thing rarely to be met among Lapland women, of a better stature than her country women, and very rich, and of good birth; I thought it would be a prodigious turn of fortune, for a man in my circumstances, if I could make any progress in her heart, which she seemed a little to open to me, in such a manner, for the beginning, as if such a successful event, if managed with prudence, might not be despaired off. Souls * that are generous are apt to love, and compassion is the best introducer of love into a generous bosom, and that was the best stock I had to go upon in my courtship; I told her of all my calamities, my dangers, and my escapes ; the goodness of my birth, as being allied to one of the greatest nobles in our island; and still she would ask me to tell it her over again, though every time I told it, just at such and such passages, she was forced to drop the tears from her eyes. In fine, I grew more in love with her, more out of a sense of gratitude now, than by the power of viz., if it would Dot be in ber nation accounted a clandestine marriage, and prove of great damage to her.