§4. His activity as a pamphleteer before and after the Restoration. I. Defoe—The Newspaper and the Novel. Vol. 9. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

I. Defoe—The Newspaper and the Novel.

§ 4. His activity as a pamphleteer before and after the Restoration.

In the summer of 1663, he published his stringent Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, and he soon had his reward in his appointment as one of the licensers, and as surveyor of printing presses. He was also granted a monopoly of the news; but his two weekly newsbooks caused dissatisfaction, and The Gazette finally drove him from the field. He was more successful as a suppressor of seditious publications—witness the notorious case of John Twyn—but such sinister success as he had has cast upon his name, whether fully merited or not, a reproach from which it will never be freed. For about fifteen years, his official duties seem to have checked his fluent pen; but, during this period, he began, probably with his version of the Visions of Quevedo, in 1667, the long series of his translations, and he published, in 1674, a sensible Discourse of the Fishery, thus anticipating Defoe in the character of promoter.