"Used on a more limited scale, these schemes of balance can seem impressively artless, especially when they bring to an aphoristic point a loosely strung series of thoughts or events: one celebrated example is Moll's summary of the joint career of two fellow criminals: "In short, they robb'd together, lay together, were taken together, and at last were hang'd together." My object, however, is not to vindicate Defoe's endeavors toward stylistic balance and formality, let alone to maintain that they are the most common or distinctive feature of his prose, but simply to suggest, by calling attention to their existence, that immethodical homespun garrulity is not Defoe's only style."
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Novelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandChildren's authorsSatirists from EnglandJournalists from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
George Starr, 'Daniel Defoe and the Anxieties of Autobiography', in Harold Bloom (ed.), Daniel Defoe (1987), p. 126
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe
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