The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated in his works. He, the satirist of the true-born Englishman, was himself a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did not see, and there was often no logical connexion whatever between his vision and his blindness. The most curious example of this inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to general principle, occurs in his _Essay on Projects_. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of life insurance, probably because it was then regarded as impious by religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows' funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundabout manner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it is evident that he was, according to his lights, a strictly honest and honourable man. But sentiment of any "high-flying" description--to use the cant word of his time--was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to be comprehended. He tells us with honest and simple pride that when his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to follow Harley's fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather blunt moral perception. One of the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her own fault, is drawn into certain breaches of definite moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or romantic was within Defoe's view; he could not understand passionate love, ideal loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anything of the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as designed, not satire at all, but merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was a unit.