umes), but cures and cosmetics also had their place. ² The "warty"
individual of the day might well have been attracted by such an ad-
vertisement as this: "An excellent secret to take away warts; being a
noble mineral tincture, which safely and without trouble takes away
the largest and most ugly warts from the hands or other parts of the
body so as never to return again, rendering the places on which they
grew as smooth and fair as if no such excrescence had ever been." The
dandy would have read of "the royal essence for the head and peri-
wigs, being the most delicate and charming perfume in nature, and
the greatest preserver of hair in the world. . . . By its incompara-
ble odour and fragrancy it strengthens the brain, revives the spirits,
quickens the memory and makes the heart cheerful, never raises the
vapours in ladies, &c. . . ." Parents then as now proved eager buyers
of "purging sugar-plums for children, and others, to whom physic is
irksome." The eighteenth-century editors of periodicals had none of
our modern "display techniques," but they knew their buying public.

That Defoe was not so dependent upon advertisers as some of his
descendants may be seen from his whimsical attitude toward such sub-
sidy. He seems to have been both casual and prejudiced about those he
included and those he omitted. Apparently he had a standing agree-
ment with his advertisers that he would give them space only when he
did not need it himself. So far as we can tell, "copy" must have been
accepted "at the pleasure of the editor," who ran it for the required
number of entries when he had room for it. If Mr. Review, the colum-
nist, happened to be ardently engaged on one of his programs in regard
to High Flyers, peace, moderation, or the economic problems of the
kingdom, he left out all advertisement in the issue.

Another "feature" of the Review may well have kept on the sub-
scription list some readers who would have been bored with Defoe's
political and economic essays. In the early issues Defoe included a "de-
partment" which he entitled "Mercure Scandale: or, Advice from the
Scandalous Club. (Translated out of the French.)" The parenthesis
suggests, as so often in the period, the added weight in readers' minds

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