DEFILADING 



DKKOK 



731 



of Voltaii", Mont-<|iii''ii, D'AlemWt, ami other 

 great men or letters of her day. In 1753 she be- 

 r:une liliml. .mil in the following year she invited 

 Mademoiselle !< I'KspinasM' to li\e \\itli her ami 

 help lier to preside u\cr her salon. The arrange- 

 ment l;iM'-<l fin IIMI your*, when a quarrel broke 

 nut tin on- li Madame dii 1 Miami'* jealousy, and 

 Mademoiselle tie 1 K-pinasse departed, taking away 

 with her D'Alemliert and others of the elder lady s 

 former admirers. From 1766 Madame du Defland 

 earned on an interesting correspondence witli 

 Horace Walpole, who held her in tne highest e-ti 

 matioii, ami pressed the use of his pnrse on her when 

 she fell into pecuniary troubles. 'To say nothing 

 of her extraordinary parts,' Walpole wrote, 'she is 

 certainly the most generous friendly being u|M>n 

 earth.' As a matter of fact, however, she was as 

 selfish and spiteful as she was witty and shrewd. 

 She died at Paris, September 24, 1780. See Corre- 

 s/iriiH/nni;- ili~ Maritime du Dcffand (new ed. 5 

 vols. 1865-67); her Letters to Horace Walpole 

 and Voltaire (4 vols. Lond. 1810); and Asse, 

 Mtllle. de Lespinasse et la Marquise du Deffaiul 

 (1877). 



Defilading, in Fortification (q.v. ), consists in 

 determining the direction and height of the ram- 

 part, so that the interior of the work may not be 

 commanded by the fire of the enemy. To prevent 

 the lines being enfiladed, their prolongations must 

 avoid all places where hostile batteries could be 

 posted, and the parapets must be of sufficient 

 neight to protect the interior from frontal fire. 



Definite Proportions, LAWS OF, in Chem- 

 istry. See ATOMIC THEORY. 



Definition, the process by which we determine 

 the common qualities of the objects Itelonging to 

 any given class, so as to distinguish effectively that 

 class from other classes. Regarding the class as a 

 species, we give the proximate genus and the dif- 

 ference ; genus here denoting the distinctive quali- 

 ties belonging to all of the genus, while the differ- 

 ence marks out the part of the genus in question. 

 A good definition should state the essential attri- 

 butes of the species defined, without containing the 

 name itself, and should be exactly equal in denota- 

 tion with it. 



Deflagration is the term applied to the rapid 

 combustion of ignited charcoal when a nitrate (such 

 as nitrate of potash ) or a chlorate ( such as chlorate 

 of potash ) is thrown thereon. As chlorates do not 

 occur naturally, it follows that deflagration with a 

 natural salt indicates a nitrate ; and if the defla- 

 gration be accompanied by a violet flame, it is char- 

 acteristic of nitrate of potash (ordinary nitre or 

 saltpetre); and if by a strong yellow flame, it is 

 indicative of nitrate of soda (cubical nitre). 



Deflection, in Navigation, the departure of a 

 ship from her true course ; in Optics, a deviation of 

 tin- rays of light toward the surface of an opaque 

 body. 



Defluxion (Lat. defluxio), a discharge from a 

 mucous membrane, especially of the air-passages, 

 as in catarrh. 



Defoe, DANIEL, immortal as the author of 

 Robinson Crusoe, was born most likely in 1661, in 

 the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, London. His 

 family belonged originally to Northamptonshire, 

 and his father, James Foe, became a butcher in St 

 Giles's, and was living so late as 1705. It was 

 Daniel who first changed his name to De Foe, or 

 Defoe, about 1703, for unknown reasons. He had 

 a good education at a dissenting academy, ^but soon 

 abandoned his early idea of Incoming a dissenting 

 minister, and engaged in business, apparently as a 

 hose-factor, about the year 1685. Little is knoivn 

 of his early life, but it seems he was out with Mon 



mouth, and it in certain that he volunteered into 

 King William's army in I6HH, travelled both in 

 Kranee and Spain, and became bankrupt about 

 1602 ; his debt*, or at leant great part of t IK-MI, IK* 

 paid up later with a HcrupuTouHneiw rn<Mt honour- 

 able to him. He next became accountant to the 

 glass-duty commissioners, and secretary to a Til- 

 bury pantile factory. Hi Essay upon Projects 

 appeared about 1698, and toward* the close of 

 William III.'s reign he became noted a* an able and 

 liii-v pamphleteer in support of the king's policy. 

 His vigorous poem, The I'rue-born Englishman, a 

 Sut ;ir ( 1701 ), was an attempt to apologue for the 

 king's being a Dutchman by proving the English 

 themselves to be a most composite race. His rest* 

 less pen was active throughout the bitter struggle 

 under Anne between the Hign-Church party and 

 the dissenters, and his famous treatise, The Shortest 

 Way urith the Dissenters ( 1703 ), made him a martyr 

 in the cause. Ostensibly written by a ' high-flyer,' 

 it advocated the extirpation of dissenters with a 

 masterly irony (pace Mr Saintsbury ), which at first 

 deceived and then infuriated his opponent*, as, in 

 his own words in The Present State of Parties ( 1712), 

 it 'cut the throat of the whoje party.' The House 

 of Commons ordered the book to be burned, and a 

 reward of 50 was offered for his apprehension, 

 from which fortunately we have an exact descrip- 

 tion of his appearance as ' a middle-sized, spare 

 man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion, 

 and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig ; a 

 hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eves, and a large 

 mole near his mouth.' Tried at tne Old Hailey in 

 July, he was sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks, 

 to stand thrice in the pillory, and to be imprisoned 

 during the queen's pleasure. Accordingly, the 

 ' unabashed Defoe ' stood in the pillory the last 

 three days of July 1703, in the midst *of a sym- 

 pathetic mob that protected him from insult, and 

 even drank his health. On the same day he 

 suffered appeared his masculine Hymn to the Pillory, 

 which concluded with a noble defiance to the 

 government, expressed in some of his finest lines. 

 During his imprisonment in Newgate he continued 

 an incessant literary activity upon occasional con- 

 formity ' and other points at issue in the great 

 controversy, published a ' tme collection ' of his 

 writings, and started his Review ( 19th February 

 1704 llth June 1713), at first a weekly, after eight 

 numbers a bi-weekly, and after the eighth num- 

 ber of the second volume a tri-weeklv newspaper, 

 ' purged from the errors and partiality of news- 

 papers and petty statesmen of all sides.' This was 

 Defoe's largest, if not his most important work, 

 and indeed forms one of the greatest monuments of 

 literary industry erer reared bv a single hand, 

 embracing as it does in more than five thousand 

 printed pages essays on almost even' branch of 

 human knowledge,' and these written during but 

 nine years', in which also, according to Mr Lee, he 

 published no fewer than eighty distinct work*, 

 themselves containing as many as 4727 pages. Its 

 ' Scandal Club,' which discussed minor matters of 

 manners, was distinctly the forerunner of the more 

 famous Tatters and Spectators. 



In August 1704 Defoe was released from prison 

 at the instigation of Harley, who. moreover, 

 procured for him pecuniary relief and employ- 

 ment, thus earning for himself the journalist'* 

 unceasing gratitude. After a short stay at Bury 

 St Edmunds, he returned to London, maintaining 

 at both places his activity in his Ittrinr, and 

 in such admirable pamphlets as Giving Alms 

 no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Griev- 

 ance to the Nation, a masterly denunciation of 

 indiscriminate charity and national workshops a 

 kind of socialistic scheme propounded by Sir Hum- 

 phrey Mack worth. Next year ( 1705 ) appeared Tht 



