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The Life of Daniel De Foe

by George Chalmers · English · Gutenberg #40703 · 322,786 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Life of Daniel De Foe

Author: George Chalmers


        
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                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF DANIEL DE FOE ***

Transcriber's Note:

    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Archaic
    and variant spellings remain as printed. The oe ligature has been
    transcribed as [oe].




                      THE LIFE
                         OF
                   DANIEL DE FOE.

              BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.

                 TO WHICH ARE ADDED,
 A LIST OF DE FOE'S WORKS, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY.

                   IN ONE VOLUME.

                       OXFORD:
              PRINTED BY D. A. TALBOYS,
       FOR THOMAS TEGG, 73, CHEAPSIDE, LONDON.
                        1841.




ADVERTISEMENT.


The ensuing Life was written for amusement, during a period of
convalescence in 1785; and published anonymously by Stockdale, before
The History of the Union, in 1786. As the Author fears no reproach for
such amusement, during such a period, he made no strong objections to
Stockdale's solicitations, that it might be annexed, with the author's
name, to his splendid edition of Robinson Crusoe. The reader will now
have the benefit of a few corrections, with some additions, and a List
of De Foe's Writings.




  THE LIFE OF DE FOE,
          BY
 GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.


It is lamented by those who labour the fields of British biography, that
after being entangled in briars they are often rewarded with the scanty
products of barrenness. The lives of literary men are generally passed
in the obscurities of the closet, which conceal even from friendly
inquiries the artifices of study, whereby each may have risen to
eminence. And during the same moment that the diligent biographer sets
out to ask for information, with regard to the origin, the modes of
life, or the various fortunes of writers who have amused or instructed
their country, the housekeeper, the daughter, or grandchild, that knew
connections and traditions, drop into the grave.

These reflections naturally arose from my inquiries about the life of
the author of The History of The Union of Great Britain; and of The
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Whether he were born on the neighbouring
continent, or in this island; in London, or in the country; was equally
uncertain. And whether his name were Foe, or De Foe, was somewhat
doubtful. Like Swift, he had perhaps reasons for concealing what would
have added little to his consequence. It is at length known, with
sufficient certainty, that our author was the son of James Foe, of the
parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, London, citizen and butcher. The
concluding sentiment of The True-born Englishman, we now see, was then
as natural as it will ever be just:--

    Then, let us boast of ancestors no more,
    For, fame of families is all a cheat;
    _'Tis personal virtue only makes us great_.

If we may credit the gazette, Daniel Foe, or De Foe, as he is said by
his enemies to have called himself, that he might not be thought an
Englishman, was born in London[1], about the year 1663. His family were
probably dissenters[2], among whom he received no unlettered education;
at least it is plain, from his various writings, that he was a zealous
defender of their principles, and a strenuous supporter of their
politics, before the liberality of our rulers in church and state had
freed this conduct from danger. He merits the praise which is due to
sincerity in manner of thinking, and to uniformity in habits of acting,
whatever obloquy may have been cast on his name, by attributing writings
to him, which, as they belonged to others, he was studious to disavow.

Our author was educated at a dissenting academy, which was kept at
Newington-green, by Charles Morton. He delights to praise that learned
gentleman[3], whose instructive lessons he probably enjoyed from 1675
to 1680, as a master who taught nothing either in politics, or science,
which was dangerous to monarchial government, or which was improper for
a diligent scholar to know. Being in 1705 accused by Tutchin of
illiterature, De Foe archly acknowledged, "I owe this justice to my
ancient father, who is yet living, and in whose behalf I freely testify,
that if I am a blockhead, it was nobody's fault but my own; he having
spared nothing that might qualify me to match the accurate Dr. B---- or
the learned Tutchin[4]."

De Foe was born a writer, as other men are born generals and statesmen;
and when he was not twenty-one, he published, in 1683, a pamphlet
against a very prevailing sentiment in favour of the Turks, as opposed
to the Austrians; very justly thinking, as he avows in his riper age,
that it was better the popish house of Austria should ruin the
protestants in Hungary, than the infidel house of Ottoman should ruin
both protestants and papists, by overrunning Germany[5]. De Foe was a
man who would fight as well as write for his principles; and before he
was three-and-twenty he appeared in arms for the duke of Monmouth, in
June 1685. Of this exploit he boasts[6] in his latter years, when it was
no longer dangerous to avow his participation in that imprudent
enterprise, with greater men of similar principles.

Having escaped from the dangers of battle, and from the fangs of
Jeffreys, De Foe found complete security in the more gainful pursuits of
peace. Yet he was prompted by his zeal to mingle in the controversies of
the reign of James II. whom he efficaciously opposed, by warning the
dissenters of the secret danger of the insidious tolerance which was
offered by the monarch's bigotry, or by the minister's artifice[7]. When
our author collected his writings, he did not think proper to republish
either his tract against the Turks, or his pamphlet against the king.

De Foe was admitted a liveryman of London on the 26th of January,
1687-8; when, being allowed his freedom by birth, he was received a
member of that eminent corporation. As he had endeavoured to promote the
revolution by his pen and his sword, he had the satisfaction of
partaking, ere long, in the pleasures and advantages of that great
event. During the hilarity of that moment, the lord mayor of London
asked king William to partake of the city feast on the 29th of October,
1689. Every honour was paid the sovereign of the people's choice. A
regiment of volunteers, composed of the chief citizens, and commanded by
the celebrated earl of Peterborough, attended the king and queen from
Whitehall to the Mansion-house. Among these troopers, gallantly mounted,
and richly accoutred, was Daniel De Foe, if we may believe Oldmixon[8].

While our author thus displayed his zeal, and courted notice, he is said
to have acted as a hosier in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill; but the
hosier[9] and the poet are very irreconcilable characters. With the
usual imprudence of superior genius, he was carried by his vivacity into
companies who were gratified by his wit. He spent those hours with a
small society for the cultivation of polite learning, which he ought to
have employed in the calculations of the counting-house; and being
obliged to abscond from his creditors, in 1692, he naturally attributed
those misfortunes to the war, which were probably owing to his own
misconduct[10]. An angry creditor took out a commission of bankruptcy,
which was soon superseded on the petition of those to whom he was most
indebted, who accepted a composition on his single bond. This he
punctually paid by the efforts of unwearied diligence. But some of those
creditors, who had been thus satisfied, falling afterwards into distress
themselves, De Foe voluntarily paid them their whole claims, being then
in rising circumstances from king William's favour[11]. This is such an
example of honesty as it would be unjust to De Foe and to the world to
conceal. Being reproached in 1705 by lord Haversham with mercenariness,
our author feelingly mentions; "How, with a numerous family, and no
helps but his own industry, he had forced his way with undiscouraged
diligence, through a sea of misfortunes, and reduced his debts,
exclusive of composition, from seventeen thousand to less than five
thousand pounds[12]." He continued to carry on the pantile works near
Tilbury-fort, though probably with no great success. It was afterwards
sarcastically said, that he did not, like the Egyptians, require bricks
without straw, but, like the Jews, required bricks without paying his
labourers[13]. He was born for other enterprises, which, if they did
not gain him opulence, have conferred a renown that will descend the
stream of time with the language wherein his works are written.

While he was yet under thirty, and had mortified no great man by his
satire, or offended any party by his pamphlets, he had acquired friends
by his powers of pleasing, who did not, with the usual instability of
friendships, desert him amidst his distresses. They offered to settle
him as a factor at Cadiz, where, as a trader, he had some previous
correspondence. In this situation he might have procured business by
his care, and accumulated wealth without a risk; but, as he assures us
in his old age, _Providence, which had other work for him to do, placed
a secret aversion in his mind to quitting England_[14]. He had
confidence enough in his own talents to think, that on this field he
could gather laurels, or at least gain a livelihood.

In a projecting age, as our author denominates king William's reign, he
was himself a projector. While he was yet young, De Foe was prompted by
a vigorous mind to think of many schemes, and to offer, what was most
pleasing to the ruling powers, ways and means for carrying on the war.
He wrote, as he says, many sheets about the coin; he proposed a register
for seamen, long before the act of parliament was thought of; he
projected county banks, and factories for goods; he mentioned a proposal
for a commission of inquiries into bankrupt's estates; he contrived a
pension-office for the relief of the poor[15]. At length, in January
1696-7, he published his Essay upon Projects; which he dedicated to
Dalby Thomas, not as a commissioner of glass duties, under whom he then
served, or as a friend to whom he acknowledges obligations, but as to
the most proper judge on the subject. It is always curious to trace a
thought, in order to see where it first originated, or how it was
afterwards expanded. Among other projects, which show a wide range of
knowledge, he suggests to king William the imitation of Lewis XIV., in
the establishment of a society "for encouraging polite learning, for
refining the English language, and for preventing barbarisms of
manners." Prior offered in 1700 the same project to king William, in his
_Carmen Seculare_; Swift mentioned in 1710 to lord Oxford a proposal for
improving the English tongue; and Tickell flatters himself in his
Prospect of Peace, that "our daring language, shall sport no more in
arbitrary sound." However his projects were taken, certain it is, that
when De Foe ceased to be a trader, he was, by the interposition of Dalby
Thomas probably, appointed, in 1695, accountant to the commissioners for
managing the duties on glass; who, with our author, ceased to act on the
1st of August, 1699, when the tax was suppressed by act of
parliament[16].

From projects of ways and means, De Foe's ardour soon carried him into
the thorny paths of satiric poetry; and his muse produced, in January,
1700-1, The True-born Englishman. Of the origin of this satire, which
was the cause of much good fortune, but of some disasters, he gives
himself the following account: During this time came out an abhorred
pamphlet, in very ill verse, written by one Mr. Tutchin, and called The
Foreigners; in which the author, who he was I then knew not, fell
personally upon the king, then upon the Dutch nation, and, after having
reproached his majesty with crimes that his worst enemies could not
think of without horror, he sums up all in the odious name of FOREIGNER.
This filled me with a kind of rage against the book, and gave birth to a
trifle which I never could hope should have met with so general an
acceptation. The sale was prodigious, and probably unexampled; as
Sacheverell's Trial had not then appeared[17]. The True-born Englishman
was answered, paragraph by paragraph, in February, 1700-1, by a writer
who brings haste to apologise for dulness. For this Defence of king
William and the Dutch, which was doubtless circulated by detraction and
by power, De Foe was amply rewarded. "How this poem was the occasion,"
says he, "of my being known to his majesty; how I was afterwards
received by him; how employed abroad; and how, above my capacity of
deserving, rewarded, is no part of the present case[18]." Of the
particulars, which the author thus declined to tell, nothing can now be
told. It is only certain that he was admitted to personal interviews
with the king, who was no reader of poetry; and that for the royal
favours De Foe was always grateful.

When the pen and ink war was raised against a standing army, subsequent
to the peace of Ryswick, our author published An Argument, to prove that
a standing army, with consent of parliament, is not inconsistent with a
free government[19]. "Liberty and property," says he, "are the glorious
attributes of the English nation; and the dearer they are to us, the
less danger we are in of losing them; but I could never yet see it
proved, that the danger of losing them by a small army was such, as we
should expose ourselves to all the world for it. It is not the king of
England alone, but the sword of England in the hand of the king, that
gives laws of peace and war now to Europe; and those who would thus
wrest the sword out of his hand in time of peace, bid the fairest of all
men in the world to renew the war." He who is desirous of reading this
treatise on an interesting topic, will meet with strength of argument,
conveyed in elegant language[20].

When the nation flamed with faction, the grand jury of Kent presented
to the commons, on the 8th of May, 1701, a petition, which desired them,
"to mind the public business more, and their private heats less;" and
which contained a sentiment, that there was a design, as Burnet tells,
other counties and the city of London should equally adopt. Messrs.
Culpeppers, Polhill, Hamilton, and Champneys, who avowed this intrepid
paper, were committed to the Gatehouse, amid the applauses of their
countrymen. It was on this occasion that De Foe's genius dictated a
Remonstrance, which was signed Legion, and which has been recorded in
history for its bold truths and seditious petulance. De Foe's zeal
induced him to assume a woman's dress, while he delivered this factious
paper to Harley, the speaker, as he entered the house of commons[21].
It was then also that our author, who was transported by an equal
attachment to the country and the court, published The Original Power of
the collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted[22].
This timeful treatise he dedicated to king William, in a dignified
strain of nervous eloquence. "It is not the least of the extraordinaries
of your majesty's character," says he, "that, as you are king of your
people, so you are the people's king; a title, which, as it is the most
glorious, so it is the most indisputable." To the lords and commons he
addresses himself in a similar tone: The vindication of the original
right of all men to the government of themselves, he tells them, is so
far from being a derogation from, that it is a confirmation of their
legal authority. Every lover of liberty must be pleased with the perusal
of a treatise, which vies with Mr. Locke's famous tract in powers of
reasoning, and is superior to it in the graces of style.

At a time when "union and charity, the one relating to our civil, and
the other to our religious concerns, were strangers in the land," De Foe
published The Freeholder's Plea against Stock-jobbing Elections of
Parliament men[23]. "It is very rational to suppose," says our author,
"that they who will buy will sell; or, what seems more rational, they
who have bought must sell." This is certainly a persuasive performance,
though we may suppose, that many voters were influenced then by
arguments still more persuasive. And he concludes with a sentiment,
which has not been too often repeated, That nothing can make us
formidable to our neighbours, and maintain the reputation of our nation,
but union among ourselves.

How much soever king William may have been pleased with The True-born
Englishman, or with other services, he was little gratified probably by
our author's Reasons against a War with France. This argument, showing
that the French king's owning the prince of Wales as king of England, is
no sufficient ground of a war, is one of the finest, because it is one
of the most useful, tracts in the English language[24]. After remarking
the universal cry of the people for war, our author declares he is not
against war with France, provided it be on justifiable grounds; but, he
hopes, England will never be so inconsiderable a nation, as to make use
of dishonest pretences to bring to pass any of her designs; and he
wishes that he who desires we should end the war honourably, ought to
desire also that we begin it fairly. "But if we must have a war," our
author hoped, "it might be wholly on the defensive, in Flanders, in
order to carry on hostilities in remote places, where the damage may be
greater, by wounding the Spaniard in some weaker part; so as upon a
peace he shall be glad to quit Flanders for an equivalent." Who at
present does not wish that De Foe's argument had been more studiously
read, and more efficaciously admitted?

A scene of sorrow soon after opened, which probably embittered our
author's future life. The death of king William deprived him of a
protector, who, he says, trusted, esteemed, and much more valued him
than he deserved: and who, as he flattered himself amidst his later
distresses, would never have suffered him to be treated as he had been
in the world. Of that monarch's memory, he says, that he never patiently
heard it abused, nor ever could do so; and in this gratitude to a royal
benefactor there is surely much to praise, but nothing to blame[25].

In the midst of that furious contest of party, civil and religious,
which ensued on the accession of queen Anne, our author was no
unconcerned spectator. He reprinted his Inquiry into the Occasional
Conformity of Dissenters[26], which had been published in 1697, with a
dedication to sir Humphrey Edwin, a lord mayor, who having carried the
regalia to a conventicle, gave rise to some wit in The Tale of a Tub,
and occasioned some clauses in an act of parliament. De Foe now
dedicated his Inquiry to John How, a dissenting minister, of whom
Anthony Wood speaks well. Mr. How did not much care, says Calamy[27],
to enter upon an argument of that nature with one of so warm a temper as
the author of that Inquiry, and contented himself with publishing some
Considerations on the Preface of an Inquiry concerning the Occasional
Conformity of Dissenters. De Foe's pertinacity soon produced a
reply[28]. He outlaughs and outtalks Mr. How, who had provoked his
antagonist's wrath by personal sarcasms, and who now thought it hard
that the old should be shoved off the stage by the young. De Foe
reprobates, with the unforbearance of the times, "this fast and loose
game of religion;" for which he had never met with any considerable
excuse but this, "that this is no conformity in point of religion, but
done as a civil action." He soon after published another Inquiry, in
order to show, that the dissenters are no ways concerned in occasional
conformity. The controversy, which in those days occasioned such
vehement contests between the two houses of parliament, is probably
silenced for ever.

"During the first fury of high-flying," says he, "I fell a sacrifice for
writing against the madness of that high party, and in the service of
the dissenters." He alludes here to The Shortest Way; which he published
towards the end of the year 1702; and which is a piece of exquisite
irony, though there are certainly passages in it that might have shown
considerate men how much the author had been in jest. He complains how
hard it was, that this should not have been perceived by all the town,
and that not one man can see it, either churchman or dissenter. This is
one of the strongest proofs how much the minds of men were inflamed
against each other, and how little the virtues of mutual forbearance
and personal kindness existed amid the clamour of contradiction, which
then shook the kingdom, and gave rise to some of the most remarkable
events in our annals[29]. The commons showed their zeal, however they
may have studied their dignity, by prosecuting[30] several libellists.

During the previous twenty years of his life, De Foe had busied himself
unconsciously in charging a mine, which now blew himself and his family
into the air. He had fought for Monmouth; he had opposed king James; he
had vindicated the Revolution; he had panegyrised king William; he had
defended the rights of the collective body of the people; he had
displeased the treasurer and the general, by objecting to the Flanders'
war; he had bantered sir Edward Seymour, and sir Christopher Musgrave,
the tory leaders of the commons; he had just ridiculed all the
high-fliers in the kingdom; and he was at length obliged to seek for
shelter from the indignation of persons and parties, thus overpowering
and resistless.

A proclamation was issued in January, 1702-3[31], offering a reward of
fifty pounds for discovering his retreat. De Foe was described by the
gazette, "as a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown
complexion, and dark brown hair, though he wears a wig, having a hook
nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth."

He soon published An Explanation; though he "wonders to find there
should be any occasion for it." "But since ignorance," says he, "has led
most men to a censure of the book, and some people are like to come
under the displeasure of the government for it; in justice to those who
are in danger to suffer by it; in submission to the parliament and
council, who may be offended at it; and courtesy to all mistaken people,
who, it seems, have not penetrated into the real design, the author
presents the world with the genuine meaning of the paper, which he hopes
may allay the anger of government, or at least satisfy the minds of such
as imagine a design to inflame and divide us[32]". Neither his
submissiveness to the ruling powers, nor his generosity to his printers,
was a sufficient shield from the resentment of his enemies. He was found
guilty of a libel, sentenced to the pillory, and adjudged to be fined
and imprisoned[33]. Thus, as he acknowledges, was he a second time
ruined; and by this affair, as he asserts, he lost above £3,500
sterling, which consisted probably in his brick works, and in the more
abundant product of his pen.

When by these means, immured in Newgate, our author consoled himself
with the animating reflection, that, having meant well, he unjustly
suffered. He had a mind too active to be idle in the solitude of a
prison, which is seldom invaded by visitors. And he wrote a hymn to the
pillory, that--

    Hieroglyphic state machine,
    Contrived to punish fancy in.

In this ode the reader will find satire, pointed by his sufferings;
generous sentiments, arising from his situation; and an unexpected flow
of easy verse. For example:

      The first intent of laws
    Was to correct the effect, and check the cause.
      And all the ends of punishment
    Were only future mischiefs to prevent:
      But justice is inverted, when
    Those engines of the law,
      Instead of pinching vicious men,
    Keep honest ones in awe[34].

He employed this involuntary leisure in correcting for the press a
collection of his writings, which, with several things he had no hand
in, had been already published by a piratical printer. He thought it a
most unaccountable boldness in him to print that particular book called
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, while he lay under the public
resentment for the same fact. In this collection of 1703, there are
one-and-twenty treatises in poetry and prose, beginning with The
True-born Englishman, and ending with The Shortest Way to Peace and
Union. To this volume there was prefixed the first print of De Foe; to
which was afterwards added, the apt inscription: _Laudatur et
alget_[35].

In the solitariness of a gaol, the energy of De Foe projected the
Review. This is a periodical paper in 4to., which was first published on
the 19th of February, 1703-4; and which was intended to treat of news,
foreign and domestic; of politics, British and European; of trade,
particular and universal. But our author foresaw, from the natural
aversion of the age to any tedious affair, that however profitable, the
world would never read, if it were not diverting. With this design, both
instructive and amusing, he skilfully institutes a Scandal Club, which
discusses questions in divinity, morals, war, trade, language, poetry,
love, marriage, drunkenness, and gaming. Thus, it is easy to see, that
the Review pointed the way to the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians,
which may be allowed, however, to have treated those interesting topics
with more delicacy of humour, more terseness of style, and greater depth
of learning; yet has De Foe many passages, both of prose and poetry,
which, for refinement of wit, neatness of expression, and efficacy of
moral, would do honour to Steele or to Addison. Of all this was Johnson
unconscious, when he speaks of the Tatlers and Spectators as the first
English writers who had undertaken to reform either the savageness of
neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to
be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply[36].

In the midst of these labours our author published, in July, 1704, The
Storm; or, a Collection of the most remarkable Casualties, which
happened in the tempest, on the 23rd of November, 1703[37]. In
explaining the natural causes of winds De Foe shows more science, and in
delivering the opinions of the ancients that this island was more
subject to storms than other parts of the world, he displays more
literature than he has been generally supposed to possess. Our author is
moreover entitled to yet higher praise. He seized that awful occasion to
inculcate the fundamental truths of religion; the being of a God, the
superintendency of Providence, the certainty of heaven and hell, the one
to reward, the other to punish.

While, as he tells himself, he lay friendless in the prison of Newgate,
his family ruined, and himself without hopes of deliverance, a message
was brought him from a person of honour, whom till that time he had not
the least knowledge of. This was no less a person than sir Robert
Harley, the speaker of the house of commons. Harley approved probably of
the principles and conduct of De Foe, and doubtless foresaw, that,
during a factious age, such a genius could be converted to many uses.
And he sent a verbal message to the prisoner, desiring to know what he
could do for him. Our author readily wrote the story of the blind man in
the gospel; concluding--_Lord, that I may receive my sight_.

When the high-fliers were driven from the station which enabled them to
inflame rather than conciliate, Harley became secretary of state, in
April, 1704. He had now frequent opportunities of representing the
unmerited sufferings of De Foe to the queen and to the treasurer; yet
our author continued four months longer in gaol. The queen, however,
inquired into his circumstances; and lord Godolphin sent, as he
thankfully acknowledges, a considerable sum to his wife, and to him
money to pay his fine and the expense of his discharge. Here is the
foundation, says he, on which he built his first sense of duty to the
queen, and the indelible bond of gratitude to his first benefactor. "Let
any one say, then," he asks, "what I could have done, less or more than
I have done for such a queen and such a benefactor?" All this he
manfully avowed to the world[38], when queen Anne lay lifeless and cold
as king William, his first patron; and when Oxford, in the vicissitude
of party, had been persecuted by faction, and overpowered, though not
conquered, by violence.

Such was the high interposition by which De Foe was relieved from
Newgate, in August, 1704. In order to avoid the town-talk, he retired
immediately to St. Edmund's Bury: but his retreat did not prevent
persecution. Dyer, the newswriter, propagated that De Foe had fled from
justice. Fox, the bookseller, published that he had deserted his
security. Stephen, a state-messenger, everywhere said, that he had a
warrant for seizing him. This I suppose was wit, during the witty age of
Anne. In our duller days of law, such outrages would be referred to the
judgment of a jury. De Foe informed the secretary of state where he was,
and when he would appear; but he was told not to fear, as he had not
transgressed. Notwithstanding this vexation, our author's muse
produced, on the 29th of August, 1704, A Hymn to Victory, when the
successful skill of Marlborough furnished our poets with many occasions
to publish Gazettes in Rhyme[39].

De Foe opened the year 1704-5 with his Double Welcome to the duke of
Marlborough; disclaiming any expectation of place or pension. His
encomiastic strains, I fear, were not heard while he wrote like an
honest Englishman, against the continuance of the war; a war indeed of
personal glory, of national celebration, but of fruitless expense. De
Foe's activity, or his needs, produced in March, 1705, The Consolidator;
or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions, from the World in the Moon. It was
one of De Foe's felicities to catch the 'living manners as they rose,'
or one of his resources, to 'shoot folly as it flew.' In the lunar
language he applies his satiric file to the prominences of every
character: of the poets, from Dryden to Durfy; of the wits, from Addison
to Prior; of the metaphysicians, from Malbranche to Hobbes; of the
freethinkers, from Asgyl to the Tale of a Tub. Our author continually
complains of the ill usage of the world; but with all his acuteness he
did not advert, that he who attacks the world, will be by the world
attacked. He makes the lunar politicians debate the policy of Charles
XII. in pursuing the Saxons and Poles, while the Muscovites ravaged his
own people. I doubt whether it were on this occasion that the Swedish
ambassador was so ill-advised as to complain against De Foe, for merited
ridicule of a futile warfare[40]. They had not then discovered, that the
best defence against the shafts of satire is to let them fly. Our
author's sentiment was expanded by Johnson, in those energetic lines,
which thus conclude the character of the Swedish Charles:

    "Who left the name, at which the world grew pale,
    To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

De Foe was so little disturbed by the appearance of The Moon Calf[41],
or accurate Reflections on the Consolidator, that he plunged into a
controversy with sir Humphrey Mackworth about his bill for employing the
poor. This had been passed by the commons with great applause, but
received by the peers with suitable caution. De Foe, considering this
plausible project as an indigested chaos, represented it, through
several reviews, as a plan which would ruin the industrious, and thereby
augment the poor. Sir Humphrey endeavoured to support his workhouses, in
every parish, with a parochial capital for carrying on parochial
manufacture. This drew from De Foe his admirable treatise, which he
entitled, Giving Alms no Charity. As an English freeholder he claimed it
as a right to address his performance to the house of commons, having a
particular interest in the common good; but considering the persons
before whom he appeared, he laid down his archness, and assumed his
dignity. He maintained, with wonderful knowledge of fact and power of
argument, the following positions: 1st, That there is in England more
labour than hands to perform it; and consequently a want of people, not
of employment: 2ndly, No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can
be poor merely for want of work: 3rdly, All workhouses for employing the
poor, as now they are employed, serve to the ruin of families and the
increase of the poor: 4thly, It is a regulation of the poor that is
wanted, not a setting them to work. Longer experience shows this to be a
difficult subject, which increases in difficulty with the effluxion of
time[42].

De Foe had scarcely dismissed sir Humphrey, when he introduced lord
Haversham, a peer, who is famous in our story, as a maker and publisher
of speeches. His lordship published his speech on the state of the
nation, in 1705, which was cried about the town with unusual
earnestness. Our author's prudence induced him to give no answer to the
speech; but a pamphlet, which was hawked about the streets and sold for
a penny, our author's shrewdness considered as a challenge to every
reader. He laughed and talked so much, through several Reviews, about
this factious effusion, as to provoke a defence of topics, which his
lordship ought neither to have printed nor spoken. De Foe now published
a Reply to Lord Haversham's Vindication of his Speech. During such
battles the town never fails to cheer the smaller combatant. Our author,
with an allusion to the biography of both, says sarcastically: "But
fate, that makes footballs of men, kicks some up stairs, and some down;
some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy; some
are raised without merit, some are crushed without a crime; and no man
knows by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a
peerage or a pillory[43]."

In the midst of these disputes, either grave or ludicrous, De Foe
published Advice to all Parties. He strenuously recommends that
moderation and forbearance, which his opponents often remarked he was
not so prone to practise as to preach. While he thus gave advice to all
parties, he conveyed many salutary lessons to the dissenters, whom he
was zealous to defend. In the Review, dated the 25th of December, 1705,
he conjures them for God's sake, if not for their own sake, to be
content. "Are there a few things more you could wish were done for you?
resolve these wishes into two conclusions: 1st, Wait till Providence, if
it shall be for your good, shall bring them to pass; 2ndly, Compare the
present with the past circumstances, and you cannot repine without the
highest ingratitude both to God and man."

De Foe found leisure, notwithstanding all those labours, perhaps a
necessity, to publish in 1705, A Second Volume of the Writings of the
Author of the True-born Englishman. The same reasons which formerly
induced him to collect some loose pieces; held good, says he, for
proceeding to a second volume, "that if I do not, somebody else will do
it for me." He laments the scandalous liberty of the press; whereby
piratic printers deprive an author of the native product of his own
thought, and the purity of his own style. It is said, though perhaps
without authority, that the vigorous remonstrances of De Foe procured
the Act[44] for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the copies of
printed books in the authors or their assigns. The vanity of an
administration, which affected to patronise the learned, concurring,
with the mutual interest of bookmakers and booksellers, produced this
salutary law, that our author alone had called for without success. De
Foe's writings, thus collected into volumes, were soon a third time
printed, with the addition of a key. The satire being now pointed by the
specification of characters, and obscurities being illuminated by the
annexation of circumstances, a numerous class of readers were induced,
by their zeal of party, or desire of scandal, to look for gratification
from our author's treatises. He is studious to complain, "that his
writings had been most neglected of them, who at the same time have
owned them useful." The second volume of 1705, containing eighteen
treatises in prose and rhyme, begins with A New Discovery of an old
Intrigue, and ends with Royal Religion[45].

The year 1705 was a year of disquiet to De Foe, not so much from the
oppressions of state as from the persecutions of party. When his
business, of whatever nature, led him to Exeter, and other western
towns, in August, September, and October, 1705, a project was formed to
send him as a soldier to the army, at a time when footmen were taken
from the coaches as recruits; but conscious of his being a freeholder of
England, and a liveryman of London, he knew that such characters could
not be violated, in this nation, with impunity. When some of the western
justices, of more zeal of party than sense of duty, heard from his
opponents of De Foe's journey, they determined to apprehend him as a
vagabond: but our author, who, among other qualities, had personal
courage in a high degree, reflected, that to face danger is most
effectually to prevent it. In his absence, real suits were commenced
against him for fictitious debts: but De Foe advertised, that genuine
claims he would fairly satisfy. If all these uncommon circumstances had
not been published in the Review, we should not have seen this striking
picture of savage manners. So much more free are we at present, that the
editor of a newspaper, however obnoxious to any party, may travel
peaceably about his affairs over England, without fear of interruption.
Were a justice of peace, from whatever motive, to offer him any
obstruction, such a magistrate would be overwhelmed by the public
indignation, and punished by the higher guardians of our quiet and our
laws.[46]

De Foe began the year 1706 with A Hymn to Peace[47]; occasioned by the
two houses of parliament joining in one address to the queen. On the 4th
of May he published An Essay at removing National Prejudices against an
Union with Scotland. A few weeks after, he gave the world a second
essay, to soften rancour and defeat perversity. But the time was now
come when he was to perform what he had often promised: and his
fruitfulness produced, in July, 1736, _Jure Divino_, a satire against
Tyranny and Passive Obedience, which had been delayed for fear, as he
declares, of parliamentary censure. Of this poem, it cannot be said, as
of Thomson's Liberty, that it was written to prove what no man ever
denied. This satire, says the preface, had never been published, though
some of it has been a long time in being, had not the world seemed to be
going mad a second time with the error of passive obedience, and
non-resistance. "And because some men require," says he, "more explicit
answers, I declare my belief, that a monarchy, according to the present
constitution, limited by parliament, and dependent upon law, is not only
the best government in the world, but also the best for this nation in
particular, most suitable to the genius of the people, and the
circumstances of the whole body." Dryden had given an example, a few
years before, of argumentative poetry, in his Hind and Panther; by which
he endeavoured to defend the tenets of the church of Rome. Our author
now reasoned in rhyme, through twelve books, in defence of every man's
birthright by nature, when all sorts of liberty were run down and
opposed. His purpose is doubtless honester than Dryden's; and his
argument being in support of the better cause, is perhaps superior in
strength: but in the _Jure Divino_ we look in vain for

    The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
    The long majestic march, and energy divine.[48]

Our author was soon after engaged in more important, because much more
useful, business. Lord Godolphin, who knew how to discriminate
characters, determined to employ him on an errand, "which," as he says,
"was far from being unfit for a sovereign to direct, or an honest man to
perform." By his lordship he was carried to the queen, who said to him,
while he kissed her hand[49], "that she had such satisfaction in his
former services, that she had again appointed him for another affair,
which was something nice, but the treasurer would tell him the rest." In
three days he was sent to Scotland. His knowledge of commerce and
revenue, his powers of insinuation, and above all, his readiness of pen,
were deemed of no small utility in promoting the Union. He arrived at
Edinburgh, in October, 1706. And we shall find him no inconsiderable
actor in the performance of that greatest of all good works. He attended
the committees of parliament, for whose use he made several of the
calculations[50] on the subject of trade and taxes. He complains[51],
however, that when afterwards some clamour was raised upon the
inequality of the proportions, and the contrivers began to be blamed,
and a little threatened _a-la-mob_, then it was D. F.[52] made it all,
and he was to be stoned for it. He endeavoured to confute[53] all that
was published by Webster and Hodges, and the other writers in Scotland
against the Union: and he had his share of danger, since, as he says,
he was watched by the mob; had his chamber windows insulted; but by the
prudence of his friends, and God's providence, he escaped[54]. In the
midst of this great scene of business and tumult, he collected the
documents which he afterwards published for the instruction of
posterity, with regard to one of the most difficult, and, at the same
time, the most fortunate transactions in our annals.

During all those labours and risks, De Foe published, in December, 1706,
Caledonia, a poem, in honour of the Scots nation[55]. This poetic
essay, which was intended to rescue Scotland from slander in opinion,
Caledonia herself bade him dedicate to the duke of Queensbury. Besides
other benefactions, the commissioner gave the author, whom he calls
Daniel De Foe, esquire, an exclusive privilege to sell his encomiastic
strains for seven years, within the country of his celebration. Amidst
our author's busy occupations at Edinburgh, he was anxious to assure the
world, that wherever the writer may be, the Reviews are written with his
own hand; no person having, or ever had, any concern in writing them,
but the known author, D. F. On the 16th of January, the act of Union was
passed by the Scots parliament; and De Foe returned to London, in
February, 1706-7. While he thus acted importantly at Edinburgh, he
formed connections with considerable persons, who were proud of his
future correspondence, and profited from his political interests[56].

How our author was rewarded by the ministers who derived a benefit from
those services, and from that danger, as he does not tell, cannot now be
known. Before his departure for Scotland, indeed, lord Godolphin, as he
acknowledges[57], obtained for him the continuance of an appointment,
which her majesty, by the interposition of his first benefactor, had
been pleased to make him, in consideration of a former service, in a
foreign country, wherein he run as much risk as a grenadier on the
counterscarp. As he was too prudent to disclose his secret services,
they must at present remain undiscovered. Yet is there reason to think
that he had a pension rather than an office, since his name is not in
the red book of the queen; and he solemnly avers, in his Appeal, that he
had not interest enough with lord Oxford to procure him the arrears due
to him in the time of the former ministry. This appointment, whatever it
were, he is studious to tell, he originally owed to Harley; he, however,
thankfully acknowledges, that lord Godolphin continued his favour to him
after the unhappy breach that separated his first benefactor from the
minister, who continued in power till August, 1710.

The nation, which was filled with combustible matter, burst into flame
the moment of that memorable separation, in 1707. In the midst of this
conflagration our author was not inactive. He waited on Harley after he
had been driven from power, who generously advised him to continue his
services to the queen, which he supposed would have no relation to
personal differences among statesmen. Godolphin received him with equal
kindness, by saying, I always think a man honest till I find to the
contrary. And if we may credit De Foe's asseverations, in the presence
of those who could have convicted him of falsehood, he for three years
held no correspondence with his principal benefactor, which the great
man never took ill of him.

As early as February 1706-7, De Foe avowed his purpose to publish the
History of the Union, which he had ably assisted to accomplish. This
design he executed in 1709, though he was engaged in other lucubrations,
and gave the world a Review three times a week. His history seems to
have been little noticed when it first appeared; for, as the preface
states, it had many difficulties in the way; many factions to encounter,
and parties to please. Yet it was republished in 1712; and a third time
in 1786, when a similar union had become the topic of public debate and
private conversation[58]. The subject of this work is the completion of
a measure, which was carried into effect, notwithstanding obstructions
apparently insurmountable, and tumults approaching to rebellion, and
which has produced the ends designed, beyond expectation, whether we
consider its influence on the government, or its operation on the
governed. The minuteness with which he describes what he saw and heard
on the turbulent stage, where he acted a conspicuous part, is extremely
interesting to us, who wish to know what actually passed, however this
circumstantiality may have disgusted contemporaneous readers. History is
chiefly valuable as it transmits a faithful copy of the manners and
sentiments of every age. This narrative of De Foe is a drama, in which
he introduces the highest peers and the lowest peasants, speaking and
acting, according as they were each actuated by their characteristic
passions; and while the man of taste is amused by his manner, the man of
business may draw instruction from the documents, which are appended to
the end, and interspersed in every page. This publication had alone
preserved his name, had his Crusoe pleased us less.

De Foe published in 1709, what indeed required less effort of the
intellect or the hand, The History of Addresses; with no design, he
says, and as we may believe, to disturb the public peace, but to compare
the present tempers of men with the past, in order to discover who had
altered for the better, and who for the worse. He gave a second volume
of Addresses in 1711, with remarks serious and comical[59]. His purpose
plainly was to abate, by ridicule, the public fervour with regard to
Sacheverell, who, by I know not what fatality, or folly, gave rise to
eventful changes. De Foe evinces, by these timeful publications, that
amidst all that enthusiasm and tumult, he preserved his senses, and
adhered to his principles.

When, by such imprudence as the world had never seen before, Godolphin
was in his turn expelled, in August, 1710, our author waited on the
ex-minister; who obligingly said to him, That he had the same good-will,
but not the same power to assist him; and Godolphin told him, what was
of more real use--to receive the queen's commands from her confidential
servants, when he saw things settled. It naturally occurred to De Foe,
that it was his duty to go along with the ministers, while, as he says,
they did not break in on the constitution. And who can blame a very
subordinate officer, (if indeed he held an office,) who had a wife and
six children to maintain with very precarious means? He was thus, says
he, cast back providentially on his first benefactor, who laid his case
before her majesty, whereby he preserved his interest, without any
engagement. On that memorable change De Foe however somewhat changed
his tone. The method I shall take, says he[60], in talking of the public
affairs, shall for the future be, though with the same design to support
truth, yet with more caution of embroiling myself with a party who have
no mercy, and who have no sense of service.

De Foe now lived at Newington, in comfortable circumstances, publishing
the Reviews, and sending out such tracts, as either gratified his
prejudices, or supplied his needs. During that contentious period he
naturally gave and received many wounds; and he prudently entered into a
truce with Mr. J. Dyer, who was engaged in similar occupations, that,
however they might clash in party, they may write without personal
reflections, and thus differ still, and yet preserve the Christian and
the gentleman[61]. But between professed controvertists such a treaty
could only be persevered in with Punic faith.

While thus occupied, De Foe was not forgotten by the city of Edinburgh,
with the usual ingratitude of public bodies. On the first of February,
1710-11, that corporation, remembering his Caledonia, empowered him to
publish the Edinburgh Courant, in the room of Adam Booge[62], though I
suspect that he did not continue long to edify the Edinburgh citizens by
his weekly lucubrations. He had then much to think of, and much to do at
a distance: and he soon after gave some support to lord Oxford's
South-sea project, by publishing An Essay on the South-sea Trade, with
an inquiry into the reasons of the present complaint against the
settlement of the South-sea company[63]. In the same year he published
An Essay at a plain Exposition of that difficult phrase--A GOOD PEACE.
He obviously intended to abate the national ardour for war, and to
incite a national desire of quiet[64].

The ministers, by the course of events, were engaged ere long in one of
the hardest tasks which can be assigned to British statesmen--the
re-establishment of tranquillity after a glorious war. The treaty at
Utrecht furnishes a memorable example of this. The furious debates which
ensued within the walls of parliament and without, are sufficiently
remembered. About this time, says Boyer, in May, 1713, a paper,
entitled, Mercator, or Commerce Retrieved, was published on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays[65]. This was first fathered on Arthur Moore,
assisted by Dr. D'Avenant; but the latter solemnly denied it: and it
soon after appeared to be the production of Daniel De Foe, an
ambidextrous hireling, who for this dirty work received a large weekly
allowance from the treasury. That he wrote in the Mercator De Foe
admits; but he expressly denies "that he either was the author of it,
had the property of it, the printing of it, the profit of it, or had the
power to put anything into it, if he would." And, by his Appeal, he
affirms before God and the world, "that he never had any payment, or
reward, for writing any part of it." Yet, that he was ready to defend
those papers of the Mercator which were really his, if men would answer
with arguments, rather than abuse; though not those things which he had
never written, but for which he had received such usage. He adds, with
the noble spirit of a true-born Englishman, "The press was open to me as
well as to others: and how, or when I lost my English liberty of
speaking my mind, I know not: neither how my speaking my opinions,
without fee or reward, could authorise any one to call me villain,
rascal, traitor, and such opprobrious names."

Of the imputed connection with his first benefactor, Harley, during that
memorable period, our author speaks with equal firmness, at a moment
when firmness was necessary. "I solemnly protest," says he, by his
Appeal, "in the presence of Him who shall judge us all, that I have
received no instructions, orders, or directions for writing anything, or
materials from lord Oxford, since lord Godolphin was treasurer, or that
I have ever shown to lord Oxford anything I had written or printed." He
challenges the world to prove the contrary; and he affirms, that he
always capitulated for liberty to speak according to his own judgment of
things. As to consideration, pension, or reward, he declares most
solemnly that he had none, except his old appointment made him long
before by lord Godolphin. What is extremely probable we may easily
credit, without such strong asseverations. However lord Oxford may have
been gratified by the voluntary writings of De Foe, he had doubtless
other persons who shared his confidence, and wrote his Examiners[66].

But De Foe published that which by no means promoted lord Oxford's
views, and which, therefore, gained little of his favour. Our author
wrote against the peace of Utrecht, because he approved of it as little
as he had done the treaty at Gertruydenburgh, under very different
influences a few years before. The peace _he_ was for, as he himself
says, was such as should neither have given the Spanish monarchy to the
house of Bourbon, nor to the house of Austria; but that this bone of
contention should have been so broken to pieces, as that it should not
have been dangerous to Europe; and that England and Holland should have
so strengthened themselves, by sharing its commerce, as should have made
them no more afraid of France, or the emperor; and that all that we
should conquer in the Spanish West Indies should be our own. But it is
equally true, he affirms, that when the peace was established, "I
thought our business was to make the best of it; and rather to inquire
what improvements could be made of it, than to be continually exclaiming
against those who procured it."

He manfully avowed his opinion in 1715, when it was both disgraceful and
dangerous, that the ninth article of the treaty of commerce[67] was
calculated for the advantage of our trade; "Let who will make it, that,"
says he, "is nothing to me. My reasons are, because it tied up the
French to open the door to our manufactures, at a certain duty of
importation there, and left the parliament of Britain at liberty to shut
theirs out, by as high duties as they pleased here, there being no
limitation upon us, as to duties on French goods, but that other nations
should pay the same. While the French were thus bound, and the British
free, I always thought we must be in a condition to trade to advantage,
or it must be our own fault: this was my opinion, and is so still; and I
would engage to maintain it against any man, on a public stage, before a
jury of fifty merchants, and venture my life upon the cause, if I were
assured of fair play in the dispute. But, that it was my opinion, we
might carry on a trade with France to our great advantage, and that we
ought for that reason to trade with them, appears in the third, fourth,
fifth, and sixth volumes of the Reviews, above nine years before The
Mercator was thought of." Experience has decided in favour of De Foe
against his opponents, with regard both to the theory and the practice
of commerce.

In May, 1713, our author relinquished the Review, after nine years'
continuance[68]: in Newgate it began, and in Newgate it ended. Whether
we consider the frequency of the publication, or the power of his
disquisitions, the pertinacity of his opponents, or the address of his
defences, amid other studies, without assistance, this must be allowed
to be such a work, as few of our writers have equalled. Yet, of this
great performance, said Gay, "The poor Review is quite exhausted, and
grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his brothers
of the quill, none will enter into a controversy with him. The fellow,
who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of
learning, is a lively instance of those wits, who, as an ingenious
author says, will endure but one skimming[69]." Poor Gay had learned
this cant in the Scriblerus Club, who thought themselves the wisest, the
wittiest, and virtuousest men that ever were, or ever would be. But of
all their works, which of them have been so often skimmed, or yielded
such cream, as Robinson Crusoe, The Family Instructor, or Religious
Courtship? Some of their writings may indeed be allowed to have uncommon
merit; yet, let them not arrogate exclusive excellence, or claim
appropriate praise.

When De Foe relinquished the Review, he began to write A General History
of Trade, which he proposed to publish in monthly numbers. The first
number appeared on the first of August, 1713. His great design was to
show the reader, "What the whole world is at this time employed in as to
trade." But his more immediate end was, to rectify the mistake we are
fallen into as to commerce, and to inform those who are willing to
inquire into the truth. In the execution of this arduous undertaking, he
avows his intention of speaking what reason dictates and fact justifies,
however he may clash with the popular opinions of some people in trade.
He could not however wholly abstract himself from the passing scene.
When his second number appeared, on the 15th of August, 1713, he gave a
discourse on the harbour of Dunkirk; wherein he insists, that the port
ought to be destroyed, if it must remain with France[70]; but, if it
were added to England, or made a free port, it would be for the good of
mankind to have a safe harbour in such dangerous seas. This History of
Trade, which exhibits the ingenuity, the strength, and the piety of De
Foe, extended only to two numbers. The agitations of the times carried
him to other literary pursuits; and the factiousness of the times
constrained him to attend to personal security.

"While I spoke of things thus," says our author, "I bore infinite
reproaches, as the defender of the peace, by pamphlets, which I had no
hand in." He appears to have been silenced by noise, obloquy, and
insult; and finding himself in this manner treated, he declined writing
at all, as he assures us; and for great part of a year never set pen to
paper, except in the Reviews. "After this," continues he, "I was a long
time absent in the north of England," though we may easily infer, for a
very different reason than that of the famous retirement of Swift, upon
the final breach between Oxford and Bolingbroke.

The place of his retreat is now known to have been Halifax, or the
borders of Lancashire[71]. And observing here, as he himself relates,
the insolence of the Jacobite party, and how they insinuated the
Pretender's rights into the common people. "I set pen to paper again, by
writing A Seasonable Caution; and, to open the eyes of the poor ignorant
country people, I gave away this all over the kingdom, as gain was not
intended." With the same laudable purpose he wrote three other
pamphlets; the first, What if the Pretender should come; the second,
Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover; the third, What
if the Queen should die? "Nothing could be more plain," says he, "than
that the titles of these were amusements[72], in order to put the books
into the hands of those people who had been deluded by the Jacobites."
These petty volumes were so much approved by the zealous friends of the
protestant succession, that they were diligent to disperse them through
the most distant counties. And De Foe protests, that had the elector of
Hanover given him a thousand pounds, he could not have served him more
effectually, than by writing these three treatises.

The reader will learn, with surprise and indignation, that for these
writings De Foe was arrested, obliged to give eight hundred pounds bail,
contrary to the Bill of Rights, and prosecuted by information, during
Trinity term, 1713. This groundless prosecution was instituted by the
absurd zeal of William Benson, who afterwards became ridiculously
famous for literary exploits, which justly raised him to the honours of
the Dunciad. Our author attributes this prosecution to the malice of his
enemies, who were numerous and powerful. No inconsiderable people were
heard to say, that they knew the books were against the Pretender, but
that De Foe had disobliged them in other things, and they resolved to
take this advantage to punish him. This story is the more credible, as
he had procured evidence to prove the fact, had the trial proceeded. He
was prompted by consciousness of innocence to defend himself in the
Review during the prosecution, which offended the judges, who, being
somewhat infected with the violent spirit of the times, committed him to
Newgate, in Easter term, 1713. He was, however, soon released, on making
a proper submission. But it was happy for De Foe that his first
benefactor was still in power, who procured him the queen's pardon, in
November[73], 1713. This act of liberal justice was produced by the
party-writers[74] of those black and bitter days, as an additional proof
of Lord Oxford's attachment to the abdicated family, while De Foe was
said to be convicted of absolute jacobitism, contrary to the tenor of
his life, and the purpose of his writings. He himself said sarcastically
that they might as well have made him a Mahometan. On his tombstone it
might have been engraved, that he was the only Englishman who had been
obliged to ask a royal pardon, for writing in favour of the Hanover
succession.

"By this time," says Boyer, in October, 1714, "the treasonable design
to bring in the pretender was manifested to the world by the agent of
one of the late managers, De Foe, in his History of the White Staff. The
Detection of the Secret History of the White Staff, which was soon
published, confidently tells, that it was written by De Foe; as is to be
seen by his abundance of words, his false thoughts, and his false
English[75]." We now know that there was at that epoch, no plot in
favour of the pretender, except in the assertions of those who wished to
promote their interest by exhibiting their zeal. And I have shown, that
De Foe had done more to keep out the pretender, than the political
tribe, who profited from his zeal, yet detracted from his fame[76].

"No sooner, was the queen dead," says he, "and the king, as right
required, proclaimed, but the rage of men increased upon me to that
degree, that their threats were such as I am unable to express. Though I
have written nothing since the queen's death; yet, a great many things
are called by my name, and I bear the answerers' insults. I have not
seen or spoken with the earl of Oxford," continues he, "since the king's
landing, but once; yet he bears the reproach of my writing for him, and
I the rage of men for doing it." De Foe appears indeed to have been, at
that noisy period, stunned by factious clamour, and overborne, though
not silenced, by unmerited obloquy. He probably lost his original
appointment, when his first benefactor was finally expelled. Instead of
meeting with reward for his zealous services in support of the
protestant succession, he was, on the accession of George I.,
discountenanced by those who had derived a benefit from his active
exertions. And of Addison, who was now exalted into office, and enjoyed
literary patronage, our author had said in his Double Welcome to the
Duke of Marlborough, with less poetry than truth:

    Mæcenas has his modern fancy strung,
    And fix'd his pension first, or he had never sung.

While thus insulted by enemies, and discountenanced by power, De Foe
published his Appeal to Honour and Justice, in 1715; being a true
Account of his Conduct in Public Affairs. As a motive for this intrepid
measure, he affectingly says, that "by the hints of mortality and the
infirmities of a life of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason to think,
that I am very near to the great ocean of eternity, and the time may not
be long ere I embark on the last voyage: wherefore I think I should even
accounts with this world before I go, that no slanders may lie against
my heirs, to disturb them in the peaceable possession of their father's
inheritance, his character." It is a circumstance perhaps unexampled in
the life of any other writer, that before he could finish his Appeal, he
was struck with apoplexy. After languishing more than six weeks, neither
able to go on, nor likely to recover, his friends thought fit to delay
the publication no longer. "It is the opinion of most who know him,"
says Baker, the publisher, "that the treatment which he here complains
of, and others of which he would have spoken, have been the cause of
this disaster." When the ardent mind of De Foe reflected on what he had
done, and what he had suffered, how he had been rewarded and persecuted,
his heart melted in despair. His spirit, like a candle struggling in the
socket, blazed and sunk, and blazed and sunk, till it disappeared in
darkness.

While his strength remained, he expostulated with his adversaries in the
following terms of great manliness, and instructive intelligence:--"It
has been the disaster of all parties in this nation, to be very hot in
their turn, and as often as they have been so, I have differed with them
all, and shall do so. I will repeat some of the occasions on the Whig
side, because from that quarter the accusation of my turning about
comes.

"The first time I had the misfortune to differ with my friends, was
about the year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the whigs
in England, generally speaking, were for the Turks' taking it; which I,
having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the
Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the
Christian religion in above three score and ten kingdoms, could by no
means agree with: and though then but a young man, and a younger
author, I opposed it, and wrote against it, which was taken very
unkindly indeed.

"The next time I differed with my friends, was when king James was
wheedling the dissenters to take off the penal laws and test, which I
could by no means come into. I told the dissenters, I had rather the
Church of England should pull our clothes off by fines and forfeitures,
than the papists should fall both upon the church and the dissenters,
and pull our skins off by fire and fagot.

"The next difference I had with good men, was about the scandalous
practice of occasional conformity, in which I had the misfortune to make
many honest men angry, rather because I had the better of the argument,
than because they disliked what I said.

"And now I have lived to see the dissenters themselves very quiet; if
not very well pleased with an act of parliament to prevent it. Their
friends indeed laid it on; they would be friends indeed, if they would
talk of taking it off again.

"Again, I had a breach with honest men for their maltreating king
William, of which I say nothing; because I think they are now opening
their eyes, and making what amends they can to his memory.

"The fifth difference I had with them was about the treaty of partition,
in which many honest men were mistaken, and in which I told them plainly
then, that they would at last end the war upon worse terms; and so it is
my opinion they would have done, though the treaty of Gertruydenburgh
had taken place.

"The sixth time I differed with them, was when the old whigs fell out
with the modern whigs; and when the duke of Marlborough and my lord
Godolphin were used by the Observator in a manner worse, I confess, for
the time it lasted, than ever they were used since; nay, though it were
by Abel and the Examiner. But the success failed. In this dispute my
lord Godolphin did me the honour to tell me I had served him and his
grace also, both faithfully and successfully. But his lordship is dead,
and I have now no testimony of it, but what is to be found in the
Observator, where I am plentifully abused for being an enemy to my
country, by acting in the interest of my lord Godolphin and the duke of
Marlborough. What weathercock can turn with such tempers as these?

"I am now in the seventh breach with them, and my crime now is, that I
will not believe and say the same things of the queen and the late
treasurer, which I could not believe before of my lord Godolphin and the
duke of Marlborough, and which in truth I cannot believe, and therefore
could not say it of either of them; and which, if I had believed, yet I
ought not to have been the man that should have said it, for the reasons
aforesaid.

"In such turns of tempers and times a man must have been tenfold a Vicar
of Bray, or it is impossible but he must one time or other be out with
everybody. This is my present condition; and for this I am reviled with
having abandoned my principles, turned jacobite, and what not: God judge
between me and these men! Would they come to any particulars with me,
what real guilt I may have, I would freely acknowledge; and if they
would produce any evidence of the bribes, the pensions, and the rewards
I have taken, I would declare honestly whether they were true or no. If
they would give a list of the books which they charge me with, and the
reasons why they lay them at my door, I would acknowledge any mistake,
own what I have done, and let them know what I have not done. But these
men neither show mercy, nor leave room for repentance; in which they act
not only unlike their Maker, but contrary to his express commands[77]."

With the same independence of spirit, but with greater modesty of
manner, our author openly disapproved of the intemperance which was
adopted by government in 1714, contrary to the original purpose of
George I. "It is and ever was my opinion," says De Foe in his Appeal,
"that moderation is the only virtue by which the tranquillity of this
nation can be preserved; and even the king himself, (I believe his
majesty will allow me that freedom,) can only be happy in the enjoyment
of the crown, by a moderate administration: if he should be obliged,
contrary to his known disposition, to join with intemperate councils, if
it does not lessen his security, I am persuaded it will lessen his
satisfaction. To attain at the happy calm, which is the consideration
that should move us all, (and he would merit to be called the nation's
physician, who could prescribe the specific for it,) I think I may be
allowed to say, a conquest of parties will never do it, a balance of
parties may." Such was the political testament of De Foe; which it had
been happy for Britain, had it been as faithfully executed as it was
wisely made!

The year 1715 may be regarded as the period of our author's political
life. Faction henceforth found other advocates, and parties procured
other writers to propagate their falsehoods. Yet when a cry was raised
against foreigners, on the accession of George I. The True-born
Englishman was revived, rather by Roberts, the bookseller, than by De
Foe the author[78]. But the persecutions of party did not cease when De
Foe ceased to be a party-writer. He was insulted by Boyer, in April,
1716, as the author of The Triennial Act impartially stated: "but
whatever was offered," says Boyer, "against the septennial bill, was
fully confuted by the ingenious and judicious Joseph Addison, esquire.
Whether De Foe wrote in defence of the people's rights, or in support of
the law's authority, he is to be censured: whether Addison defended the
septennial bill, or the peerage bill, he is to be praised. With the same
misconception of the fact, and malignity of spirit, Toland reviled[79]
De Foe for writing an answer to The State of Anatomy, in 1717. The time
however will at last come, when the world will judge of men from their
actions rather than pretensions."

The death of Anne, and the accession of George I. seem to have convinced
De Foe of the vanity of party-writing. And from this eventful epoch, he
appears to have studied how to meliorate rather than to harden the
heart; how to regulate, more than to vitiate, the practice of life.

Early in 1715 he published The Family Instructor, in three parts: 1st,
relating to fathers and children; 2nd, to masters and servants; 3rd, to
husbands and wives. He carefully concealed his authorship, lest the good
effects of his labour should be obstructed by the great imperfections of
the writer. The world was then too busy to look immediately into the
work. The bookseller soon procured a recommendatory letter from the Rev.
Samuel Wright, a well-known preacher in the Blackfriars. It was praised
from the pulpit and the press: and the utility of the end, with the
attractiveness of the execution, gave it, at length, a general
reception[80]. The author's first design was to write a dramatic poem;
but the subject was too solemn, and the text too copious, to admit of
restraint, or to allow excursions. His purpose was to divert and
instruct, at the same moment; and by giving it a dramatic form, it has
been called by some a religious play. De Foe at last says with his usual
archness: As to its being called a play, be it called so, if they
please: it must be confessed, some parts of it are too much acted in
many families among us. The author wishes, that either all our plays
were as useful for the improvement and entertainment of the world, or
that they were less encouraged. There is, I think, some mysticism in the
preface, which, it were to be desired, a judicious hand would expunge,
when The Family Instructor shall be again reprinted; for, reprinted it
will be, while our language endures; at least, while wise men shall
continue to consider the influences of religion and the practice of
morals as of the greatest use to society[81].

De Foe afterwards added a second volume, in two parts; 1st, relating to
Family Breaches; 2ndly, to the great Mistake of mixing the Passions in
the managing of Children. He considered it, indeed, as a bold adventure
to write a second volume of anything; there being a general opinion
among modern readers, that second parts never come up to the spirit of
the first. He quotes Mr. Milton, for differing from the world upon the
question, and for affirming with regard to his own great performances,
That the people had a general sense of the loss of Paradise, but not an
equal gust for regaining it. Of De Foe's second volume, it will be
easily allowed, that it is as instructive and pleasing as the first. His
Religious Courtship, which he published in 1722, may properly be
considered as a third volume: for the design is equally moral, the
manner is equally attractive, and it may in the same manner be called a
religious play[82].

But the time at length came, when De Foe was to deliver to the world the
most popular of all his performances. In April, 1719, he published the
well-known Life and surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe[83]. The
reception was immediate and universal; and Tayler, who purchased the
manuscript after every bookseller had refused it, is said to have gained
a thousand pounds. If it be inquired by what charm it is that these
surprising Adventures should have instantly pleased, and always pleased,
it will be found, that few books have ever so naturally mingled
amusement with instruction. The attention is fixed, either by the
simplicity of the narration, or by the variety of the incidents; the
heart is amended by a vindication of the ways of God to man: and the
understanding is informed by various examples, how much utility ought to
be preferred to ornament: the young are instructed, while the old are
amused.

Robinson Crusoe had scarcely drawn his canoe ashore, when he was
attacked by his old enemies, the savages. He was assailed first by The
Life and strange Adventures of Mr. D---- De F--, of London, Hosier, who
has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and
South Britain. In a dull dialogue between De Foe, Crusoe, and his man
Friday, our author's life is lampooned, and his misfortunes ridiculed.
But he who had been struck by apoplexy, and who was now discountenanced
by power, was no fit object of an Englishman's satire. Our author
declares, when he was himself a writer of satiric poetry, "that he never
reproached any man for his private infirmities, for having his house
burnt, his ships cast away, or his family ruined; nor had he ever
lampooned any one, because he could not pay his debts, or differed in
judgment from him." Pope has been justly censured for pursuing a vein
of satire extremely dissimilar. And Pope placed De Foe with Tutchin, in
The Dunciad, when our author's infirmities were greater and his comfort
less. He was again assaulted in 1719, by An Epistle to D---- De F--, the
reputed Author of Robinson Crusoe. "Mr. Foe," says the letter-writer, "I
have perused your pleasant story of Robinson Crusoe; and if the faults
of it had extended no further than the frequent solecisms and
incorrectness of style, improbabilities, and sometimes impossibilities,
I had not given you the trouble of this epistle." "Yet," said Johnson to
Piozzi, "was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished
longer by its readers, except Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the
Pilgrim's Progress[84]?" This epistolary critic, who renewed his angry
attack when the second volume appeared, has all the dulness, without the
acumen, of Dennis, and all his malignity, without his purpose of
reformation. The Life of Crusoe has passed through innumerable editions,
and has been translated into foreign languages, while the criticism sunk
into oblivion.

De Foe set the critics at defiance while he had the people on his side.
As a commercial legislator he knew, that it is rapid sale that is the
great incentive: and, in August, 1719, he published a second volume of
Surprising Adventures, with similar success[85]. In hope of profit and
of praise, he produced in August, 1720, Serious Reflections during the
Life of Robinson Crusoe, with his Vision of the Angelic World. He
acknowledges that the present work is not merely the product of the two
first volumes, but the two first may rather be called the product of
this: the fable is always made for the moral, not the moral for the
fable. He, however, did not advert, that instruction must be insinuated
rather than enforced. That this third volume has more morality than
fable, is the cause I fear, that it has never been read with the same
avidity as the former two, or spoken of with the same approbation. We
all prefer amusement to instruction; and he who would inculcate useful
truths, must study to amuse, or he will offer his lessons to an
auditory, neither numerous, nor attentive.

The tongue of detraction is seldom at rest. It has often been repeated
that De Foe had surreptitiously appropriated the papers of Alexander
Selkirk, a Scotch mariner, who having lived solitary on the isle of
Juan Fernandez, four years and four months, was relieved on the 2nd of
February, 1708-9, by captain Woodes Rogers, in his cruising voyage round
the world. But let no one draw inferences till the fact be first
ascertained. The adventures of Selkirk had been thrown into the air, in
1712, for literary hawks to devour[86]; and De Foe may have catched a
common prey, which he converted to the uses of his intellect, and
distributed for the purposes of his interest[87]. Thus he may have
fairly acquired the fundamental incident of Crusoe's life; but, he did
not borrow the various events, the useful moralities, or the engaging
style. Few men could write such a poem; and few Selkirks could imitate
so pathetic an original. It was the happiness of De Foe, that as many
writers have succeeded in relating enterprises by land, he excelled in
narrating adventures by sea, with such felicities of language, such
attractive varieties, such insinuative instruction, as have seldom been
equalled, but never surpassed[88].

While De Foe in this manner busied himself in writing adventures which
have charmed every reader, a rhyming fit returned on him. He published
in 1720, The complete Art of Painting, which he did into English from
the French of Du Fresnoy. Dryden had given, in 1695, a translation of Du
Fresnoy's poem, which has been esteemed for its knowledge of the sister
arts. What could tempt De Foe to this undertaking it is not easy to
discover, unless we may suppose that he hoped to gain a few guineas,
without much labour of the head or hand. Dryden has been justly praised
for relinquishing vicious habits of composition, and adopting better
models for his muse. De Foe, after he had seen the correctness, and
heard the music of Pope, remained unambitious of accurate rhymes, and
regardless of sweeter numbers. His politics and his poetry, for which he
was long famous among biographers, would not have preserved his name
beyond the fleeting day; yet I suspect that, in imitation of Milton, he
would have preferred his Jure Divino to his Robinson Crusoe.

De Foe lived not then, however, in pecuniary distress; for his genius
and his industry were to him the mines of Potosi: and in 1722, he
obtained from the corporation of Colchester, though my inquiries have
not discovered by what interposition, a ninety-nine years' lease of
Kingswood-heath, at a yearly rent of a hundred and twenty pounds, with a
fine of five hundred pounds[89]. This transaction seems to evince a
degree of wealth much above want, though the assignment of his lease not
long after to Walter Bernard equally proves, that he could not easily
hold what he had thus obtained. Kingswood-heath is now worth 300_l._ a
year, and is advertised for sale by Bennet, the present possessor.

Whatever may have been his opulence, our author did not waste his
subsequent life in unprofitable idleness. No one can be idly employed
who endeavours to make his fellow subjects better citizens and wiser
men. This will sufficiently appear if we consider his future labours,
under the distinct heads of voyages; fictitious biography; moralities,
either grave or ludicrous; domestic travels; and tracts on trade.

The success of Crusoe induced De Foe to publish, in 1720, The Life and
Piracies of Captain Singleton, though not with similar success; the plan
is narrower, and the performance is less amusing. In 1725, he gave A
New Voyage Round the World, by a Course never sailed before. Most
voyagers have had this misfortune, that whatever success they had in the
adventure, they had very little in the narration; they are indeed full
of the incidents of sailing, but they have nothing of story for the use
of readers who never intend to brave the dangers of the sea. These
faults De Foe is studious to avoid in his new voyage. He spreads before
his readers such adventures as no writer of a real voyage can hope to
imitate, if we except the teller of Anson's tale. In the life of Crusoe
we are gratified by continually imagining that the fiction is a fact; in
the Voyage Round the World we are pleased by constantly perceiving that
the fact is a fiction, which, by uncommon skill, is made more
interesting than a genuine voyage.

Of fictitious biography it is equally true, that by matchless art it may
be made more instructive than a real life. Few of our writers have
excelled De Foe in this kind of biographical narration, the great
qualities of which are, to attract by the diversity of circumstances,
and to instruct by the usefulness of examples.

He published, in 1720, The History of Duncan Campbell. Of a person who
was born deaf and dumb, but who himself taught the deaf and dumb to
understand, it is easy to see that the life would be extraordinary. It
will be found, that the author has intermixed some disquisitions of
learning, and has contrived that the merriest passages shall end with
some edifying moral[90]. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders
were made to gratify the world, in 1721. De Foe was aware, that in
relating a vicious life, it was necessary to make the best use of a bad
story; and he artfully endeavours, that the reader shall be more pleased
with the moral than the fable; with the application than the relation;
with the end of the writer than the adventures of the person. There was
published in 1721, a work of a similar tendency, The Life of Colonel
Jack, who was born a gentleman but was bred a pickpocket. Our author is
studious to convert his various adventures into a delightful field,
where the reader might gather herbs, wholesome and medicinal, without
the incommodation of plants, poisonous or noxious. In 1724 appeared The
Life of Roxana. Scenes of crimes can scarcely be represented in such a
manner, says De Foe, but some make a criminal use of them; but when vice
is painted in its low-prized colours, it is not to make people love what
from the frightfulness of the figures they ought necessarily to hate.
Yet, I am not convinced, that the world has been made much wiser, or
better, by the perusal of these lives; they may have diverted the lower
orders, but I doubt if they have much improved them; if however they
have not made them better, they have not left them worse. But they do
not exhibit many scenes which are welcome to cultivated minds. Of a very
different quality are the Memoirs of a Cavalier, during the civil wars
in England, which seem to have been published without a date. This is a
romance the likest to truth that ever was written[91]. It is a narrative
of great events, which is drawn with such simplicity, and enlivened
with such reflections, as to inform the ignorant and entertain the wise.

The moralities of De Foe, whether published in single volumes, or
interspersed through many passages, must at last give him a superiority
over the crowd of his contemporaries[92]. The approbation which has been
long given to his Family Instructor, and his Religious Courtship, seem
to contain the favourable decision of his countrymen[93]. But there are
still other performances of this nature, which are now to be mentioned,
of not inferior merit.

De Foe published, in 1722, A Journal of the Plague in 1665. The author's
artifice consists in fixing the reader's attention by the deep distress
of fellow-men; and, by recalling the reader's recollection to striking
examples of mortality, he endeavours to inculcate the uncertainty of
life, and the usefulness of reformation. In 1724, De Foe published The
great Law of Subordination. This is an admirable commentary on the
Unsufferable Behaviour of Servants. Yet, though he interest by his mode,
inform by his facts, and convince by his argument, he fails at last, by
expecting from law what must proceed from manners[94]. Our author gave
The Political History of the Devil, in 1726. The matter and the mode
conjoin to make this a charming performance. He engages poetry and
prose, reasoning and wit, persuasion and ridicule, on the side of
religion and morals, with wonderful efficacy. De Foe wrote A System of
Magic in 1726[95]. This may be properly regarded as a supplement to the
History of the Devil. His end and his execution are exactly the same.
He could see no great harm in the present pretenders to magic, if the
poor people would but keep their money in their pockets; and that they
should have their pockets picked by such an unperforming, unmeaning,
ignorant crew as these are, is the only magic De Foe could see in the
whole science. But the reader will discover in our author's system,
extensive erudition, salutary remark, and useful satire. De Foe
published in 1727, his Treatise on the Use and Abuse of the
Marriage-Bed. The author had begun this performance thirty years before;
he delayed the publication, though it had been long finished, in hopes
of reformation. But being now grown old, and out of the reach of
scandal, and despairing of amendment from a vicious age, he thought
proper to close his days with this satire. He appealed to that judge,
before whom he expected soon to appear, that as he had done it with an
upright intention, so he had used his utmost endeavour to perform it in
a manner which was the least liable to reflection, and the most
answerable to the end of it--the reformation of the guilty. After such
an appeal, and such asseverations, I will only remark, that this is an
excellent book with an improper title-page.

We are now to consider our author's Tours. He published his Travels
through England, in 1724 and 1725; and through Scotland, in 1727. De Foe
was not one of those travellers who seldom quit the banks of the Thames.
He had made wide excursions over all those countries, with observant
eyes and a vigorous intellect. The great artifice of these volumes
consists in the frequent mention of such men and things, as are always
welcome to the reader's mind[96].

De Foe's Commercial Tracts are to be reviewed lastly. Whether his fancy
gradually failed, as age hastily advanced, I am unable to tell. He
certainly began, in 1726, to employ his pen more frequently on the real
business of common life. He published, in 1727, The Complete English
Tradesman; directing him in the several parts of trade. A second volume
soon after followed, which was addressed chiefly to the more experienced
and more opulent traders. In these treatises the tradesman found many
directions of business, and many lessons of prudence[97]. De Foe was not
one of those writers, who consider private vices as public benefits: God
forbid, he exclaims, that I should be understood to prompt the vices of
the age, in order to promote any practice of traffic: trade need not be
destroyed though vice were mortally wounded. With this salutary spirit
he published, in 1728, A Plan of the English Commerce[98]. This seems to
be the conclusion of what he had begun in 1713. In 1728, Gee printed
his Trade and Navigation considered. De Foe insisted, that our industry,
our commerce, our opulence, and our people, had increased and were
increasing. Gee represented that our manufactures had received mortal
stabs; that our poor were destitute, and our country miserable. De Foe
maintained the truth, which experience has taught to unwilling auditors.
Gee asserted the falsehood, without knowing the fact: yet Gee is quoted,
while De Foe with all his knowledge of the subject, as a commercial
writer, is almost forgotten. The reason may be found perhaps in the
characteristic remark with which he opens his plan: Trade, like
religion, is what everybody talks of, but few understand.

When curiosity has contemplated such copiousness, such variety, and such
excellence, it naturally inquires which was the last of De Foe's
performances? Were we to determine from the date of the title page, the
Plan of Commerce must be admitted to be his last. But if we must judge
from his prefatory declaration, in The Abuse of the Marriage-Bed, where
he talks of closing his days with this satire, which he was so far from
seeing cause of being ashamed of, that he hoped he should not be ashamed
of it where he was going to account for it, we must finally decide, that
our author closed his career "with this upright intention for the good
of mankind[99]."

De Foe, after those innumerable labours, which I have thus endeavoured
to recall to the public recollection, died in April, 1731, within the
parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, London, at an age, if he were born
in 1663, when it was time to prepare for his last voyage. He left a
widow, Susannah, who did not long survive him, and six sons and
daughters, whom he boasts of having educated as well as his
circumstances would admit. His son Daniel is said to have emigrated to
Carolina; of Benjamin, his second son, no account can be given[100].
His youngest daughter Sophia, married Mr. Henry Baker, a person more
respectable as a philosopher than a poet, who died in 1774, at the age
of seventy. His daughter Maria married one Langley; but Hannah and
Henrietta probably remained unmarried, since they were heiresses only of
a name, which did not recommend them. With regard to

    Norton, from Daniel and Ostræa sprung[101],
    Bless'd with his father's front, and mother's tongue,

it is only said that he was a wretched writer in the Flying Post, and
the author of Alderman Barber's Life. De Foe probably died insolvent;
for letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted to
Mary Brooke, widow, a creditrix, in September, 1733, after summoning in
official form the next of kin to appear[102]. John Dunton[103], who
personally knew our author, describes him, in 1705, as a man of good
parts and clear sense; of a conversation, ingenious and brisk; of a
spirit, enterprising and bold, but of little prudence; with good nature
and real honesty. Of his petty habits, little now can be told, more than
he has thus confessed himself[104]: "God, I thank thee, I am not a
drunkard, or a swearer, or a whoremaster, or a busybody, or idle, or
revengeful; and though this be true, and I challenge all the world to
prove the contrary, yet, I must own, I see small satisfaction in all the
negatives of common virtues; for though I have not been guilty of any of
these vices, nor of many more, I have nothing to infer from thence, but
_Te Deum laudamus_." He says himself:

    Confession will anticipate reproach,
    He that reviles us then, reviles too much;
    All satire ceases when the men repent,
    'Tis cruelty to lash the penitent.

When De Foe had arrived at sixty-five, while he was encumbered with a
family, and, I fear, pinched with penury, Pope, endeavoured, by repeated
strokes, to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. This he did
without propriety, and, as far as appears, without provocation; for our
author is not in the black list of scribblers, who by attempting to
lessen the poet's fame, incited the satirist's indignation. The offence
and the fate of Bentley and De Foe were nearly alike. Bentley would not
allow the translation to be Homer: De Foe had endeavoured to bring
Milton into vogue seven years ere the Paradise Lost and Chevy Chase had
been criticised in the Spectators by Addison. Our author had said in
More Reformation,

    Let this describe the nation's character,
    One man reads Milton, forty ----.
    The case is plain, the temper of the time,
    One wrote the lewd, the other the sublime.

An enraged poet alone could have thrust into the Dunciad, Bentley, a
profound scholar, Cibber, a brilliant wit, and De Foe, a happy genius.
This was the consequence of exalting satire as the test of truth; while
truth ought to have been enthroned the test of satire. Yet, it ought not
to be forgotten, that De Foe has some sarcasm, in his System of Magic,
on the _sylphs_ and _gnomes_, which Pope may have deemed a daring
invasion of his Rosicrucian territories.

De Foe has not yet outlived his century, though he have outlived most of
his contemporaries. Yet the time is come, when he must be acknowledged
as one of the ablest, as he is one of the most captivating, writers, of
which this island can boast. Before he can be admitted to this
pre-eminence, he must be considered distinctly, as a poet, as a
novelist, as a polemic, as a commercial writer, and as a grave
historian.

As a poet, we must look to the end of his effusions rather than to his
execution, ere we can allow him considerable praise. To mollify national
animosities, or to vindicate national rights, are certainly noble
objects, which merit the vigour and imagination of Milton, or the flow
and precision of Pope; but our author's energy runs into harshness, and
his sweetness is to be tasted in his prose more than in his poesy. If
we regard the Adventures of Crusoe, like The Adventures of Telemachus,
as a poem, his moral, his incidents, and his language, must lift him
high on the poet's scale. His professed poems, whether we contemplate
the propriety of sentiment, or the suavity of numbers, may indeed,
without much loss of pleasure or instruction, be resigned to those, who,
in imitation of Pope, poach in the fields of obsolete poetry for
brilliant thoughts, felicities of phrase, or for happy rhymes.

As a novelist, every one will place him in the foremost rank, who
considers his originality, his performance, and his purpose. The Ship of
Fools had indeed been launched in early times; but, who like De Foe, had
ever carried his reader to sea, in order to mend the heart, and regulate
the practice of life, by showing his readers the effect of adversity, or
how they might equally be called to sustain his hero's trials, as they
sailed round the world. But, without attractions, neither the
originality, nor the end, can have any salutary consequence. This he had
foreseen; and for this he has provided, by giving his adventures in a
style so pleasing, because it is simple, and so interesting, because it
is particular, that every one fancies he could write a similar language.
It was, then, idle in Boyer formerly, or in Smollett lately, to speak of
De Foe as a party writer, in little estimation. The writings of no
author since have run through more numerous editions. And he whose works
have pleased generally and pleased long, must be deemed a writer of no
small estimation; the people's verdict being the proper test of what
they are the proper judges.

As a polemic, I fear we must regard our author with less kindness,
though it must be recollected, that he lived during a contentious
period, when two parties distracted the nation, and writers indulged in
great asperities. But, in opposition to reproach, let it ever be
remembered, that he defended freedom, without anarchy; that he supported
toleration, without libertinism; that he pleaded for moderation even
amidst violence. With acuteness of intellect, with keenness of wit, with
archness of diction, and pertinacity of design; it must be allowed that
nature had qualified, in a high degree, De Foe for a disputant. His
polemical treatises, whatever might have been their attractions once,
may now be delivered without reserve to those who delight in polemical
reading. De Foe, it must be allowed, was a party writer: But, were not
Swift and Prior, Steel and Addison, Halifax and Bolingbroke, party
writers? De Foe, being a party writer upon settled principles, did not
change with the change of parties: Addison and Steel, Prior and Swift,
connected as they were with persons, changed their note as persons were
elevated or depressed.

As a commercial writer, De Foe is fairly entitled to stand in the
foremost rank among his contemporaries, whatever may be their
performances or their fame. Little would be his praise, to say of him,
that he wrote on commercial legislation like Addison, who when he
touches on trade, sinks into imbecility, without knowledge of fact, or
power of argument[105]. The distinguishing characteristics of De Foe, as
a commercial disquisitor, are originality and depth. He has many
sentiments with regard to traffic, which are scattered through his
Reviews, and which I never read in any other book. His Giving Alms no
Charity, is a capital performance, with the exception of one or two
thoughts about the abridgment of labour by machinery, which are either
half formed or half expressed. Were we to compare De Foe with D'Avenant,
it would be found, that D'Avenant has more detail from official
documents; that De Foe has more fact from wider inquiry. D'Avenant is
more apt to consider laws in their particular application; De Foe more
frequently investigates commercial legislation in its general effects.
From the publications of D'Avenant it is sufficiently clear, that he was
not very regardful of means, or very attentive to consequences; De Foe
is more correct in his motives, and more salutary in his ends. But, as a
commercial prophet, De Foe must yield the palm to Child; who foreseeing
from experience that men's conduct must finally be directed by their
principles, foretold the colonial revolt: De Foe, allowing his
prejudices to obscure his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because
he deemed interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm. Were we
however to form an opinion, not from special passages, but from whole
performances, we must incline to De Foe, when compared with the ablest
contemporary: we must allow him the preference, on recollection, that
when he writes on commerce he seldom fails to insinuate some axiom of
morals, or to inculcate some precept of religion.

As an historian, it will be found, that our author had few equals in the
English language, when he wrote. His Memoirs of a Cavalier show how well
he could execute the lighter narratives. His History of the Union
evinces that he was equal to the higher department of historic
composition. This is an account of a single event, difficult indeed in
its execution, but beneficial certainly in its consequences. With
extraordinary skill and information, our author relates, not only the
event, but the transactions which preceded, and the effects which
followed. He is at once learned and intelligent. Considering the
factiousness of the age, his candour is admirable. His moderation is
exemplary. And if he spoke of James I. as a tyrant, he only exercised
the prerogative, which our historians formerly enjoyed, of casting
obloquy on an unfortunate race, in order to supply deficience of
knowledge, of elegance, and of style. In this instance De Foe allowed
his prejudice to overpower his philosophy. If the language of his
narrative want the dignity of the great historians of the current times,
it has greater facility; if it be not always grammatical, it is
generally precise; and if it be thought defective in strength, it must
be allowed to excel in sweetness.

Such then are the pretensions of De Foe to be acknowledged as one of the
ablest and most useful writers of our island. He who still doubts may
perhaps satisfy his greatest doubts, by perusing the chronological
catalogue of our author's works, which I have compiled, in order to
gratify the public curiosity; and which, for the greater distinctness, I
have divided into two heads: 1st, Those writings that I think are
certainly De Foe's; 2ndly, Those writings that are said to be his. As I
do not pretend to perfect accuracy, it would be a favour to the world
and to me, if any one, of more knowledge and leisure than I possess,
would point out mistakes for the purpose of amendment. The zealous
interposition of Mr. Lockyer Davis, and the liberal spirit of the
Stationers' company, procured me the perusal of the register of books,
which have been entered at Stationers'-hall. I was surprised and
disappointed to find so few of De Foe's writings entered as property,
and his name never mentioned as an author or a man.

END OF MR. CHALMERS'S LIFE.

       *       *       *       *       *

In presenting to the public so complete an edition of the works of De
Foe, the publishers feel that they are engaged in a truly national
undertaking, interesting to all ranks of Englishmen, but peculiarly to
the middle classes. De Foe was essentially a practical author, not only
as regards his style, but his turn of mind, his choice of subjects, and
his mode of handling them. He wrote voluminously, upon all kinds of
subjects and for all ranks of men: and by some of his works he has
continued from that time to this, to please all classes and ages of
people in all the countries of Europe. For many years he took an active
part in the political controversies of that troubled time, which were so
much embittered by the factious excitement arising from the expulsion of
the Stuart dynasty, and placing William III. on the throne; and during
the long period of his life in which he engaged in political warfare, he
consistently and constantly maintained the principles of the revolution.
Many of his pamphlets being directed to passing topics have ceased to
possess that general and enduring interest which attaches to his other
works, but they are full of manly sentiments, expressed in a plain,
racy, English style, and well deserve the attentive perusal of all who
may wish thoroughly to understand that period of our history which
elapsed between the accession of William III. and the death of queen
Anne. His History of the Union is a standard work, and peculiarly
valuable as the production of a man who took an active part in the great
national event which it commemorates.

Essentially practical, as we have observed, in his mind, De Foe was ever
anxious to give useful instructions to his countrymen, for the
regulation of their conduct in their homes and their pursuits in life,
and embodied the results of an experienced and sagacious mind in the
Family Instructor, the Religious Courtship, and the Complete English
Tradesman. This last work is one which no young man entering into
business should be without. It is an invaluable manual, full of the
lessons of instructed prudence and good sense. Even his admirable
romances, too, are written in the same spirit. They were not composed in
his youth, in the heyday of his imagination, merely to gratify an idle
curiosity in the reader, but in the evening of his life when his
judgment was matured, and his experience at the full. Some of them were
written to show the bitter fruits of a life of vice; and others to
display in a vivid manner the importance of self-reliance, based on its
proper foundation, a sincere and Christian trust in Providence, under
all circumstances; with the inestimable value of a practical education,
and a thorough acquaintance with the arts of life, and what too many
persons are foolishly apt to despise as common things. That these were
the paramount objects De Foe had in view is evident not only from a
perusal of these valuable works, but from his own strongly asserted
statements in his prefaces both to Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe. In
the former, he says, "as the whole relation is usefully garbled of all
the levity and looseness that was in it, so it is applied with the
utmost care to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being
guilty of manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our
design in publishing it. The advocates of the stage have in all ages
made this the great argument, to persuade people that their plays are
useful, and that they ought to be allowed in the most civilized, and in
the most religious government; namely, that they are applied to virtuous
purposes, and that, by the most lively representations, they fail not
to recommend virtue and generous principles, and to discourage and
expose all sorts of vice and corruption of manners; and were it true
that they did so, and that they constantly adhered to that rule, as the
test of their acting on the theatre, much might be said in their favour.

"Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental is most
strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any part of it, but
it is first or last rendered unhappy or unfortunate; there is not a
superlative villain brought upon the stage, but he is either brought to
an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent; there is not an ill thing
mentioned but it is condemned, even in the relation; nor a virtuous just
thing but it carries its praise along with it. What can more exactly
answer the rule laid down, to recommend even those representations of
things which have so many other just objections lying against them;
namely, of example of bad company, obscene language, and the like." And
in the preface to Robinson Crusoe he states his object to be "a
religious application of events to the uses to which wise men always
apply them, viz., to the instruction of others by this example, and to
justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of our
circumstances, let them happen how they will."

The extreme popularity of this justly celebrated work proves the success
with which De Foe's labours were crowned. It is a book essentially
English, one of which an Englishman only would have conceived the
design, and which probably only an Englishman would have been able to
execute. The idea of an inhabitant of a solitary island, "far in the
melancholy main," subsisting in comparative comfort, might be expected
from one of that nautical people whose flag has not only 'braved a
thousand years the battle and the breeze,' but floated in triumph on
every sea, and waved in the winds of every clime. From such a people the
author might expect readers, and he has had them by thousands of every
class and of every age. The interest, however, of the story has not
confined the reputation and popularity of Robinson Crusoe to this
country, but has made it the universal favourite of Europe. The great
characteristics of this remarkable book are the vividness with which the
imaginary scenes are depicted, so as to make it impossible for the
reader to doubt their reality, and the just importance which is given to
the knowledge of what a great man called "doing common things in a
common way." For his power of imparting reality to his fictions De Foe
indeed stands highly distinguished among authors. Dr. Johnson mistook
the Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton, for a real history; and lord
Chatham fell into a similar mistake about the Memoirs of a Cavalier
during the civil wars in England. Dr. Mead quoted the History of the
Plague as an authentic detail by an eyewitness. And this quality marks
the different fictions, Moll Flanders, &c., which the publishers have
collected and reprinted in the present edition. These remarkable tales,
it is true, describe the career of loose and immoral characters, but
only in a way to disgust and deter. There is never any impropriety in
the descriptions of events, however degrading; the nature of De Foe was
abhorrent from indecency: but the heroes and heroines, who tell their
own stories, instead of dwelling with unction or satisfaction on their
past lives, only narrate particular incidents to express their sincere
disgust at them, and repentance for the future, and to warn others from
a life so fruitful of bitter results. Whilst De Foe was so cruelly and
unjustly imprisoned in Newgate for defending the Hanoverian succession!
(strange perversion of party spirit!) he employed his active mind in
acquiring information relative to its unhappy and guilty inmates; and
deeply convinced that mankind would be benefited by an exposure of the
sorrow and distresses that invariably accompany and follow a life of
crime, he embodied the results of his experience in fictions which we
agree with him in thinking to be as useful as they are vivid. Mr.
Alexander Chalmers, in his sketch of De Foe[106], says, "these lives are
too gross for improvement"; we cannot agree with this opinion of the
learned biographer. We hold, that novels, written like De Foe's, not on
the base principle of making a market by pandering to the worst passions
of the multitude, but where all indecency of expression or even of
suggestion, is carefully avoided, and vice is only described as
entailing misery, are instructive and beneficial to the people.

The style of De Foe is plain and homely, but expressive, direct, and
manly. It may be described as thoroughly English. It reflected the
character of his mind, and bespoke the man of firm resolve, and unshaken
integrity.

His principles were those of a sincere dissenter, of the whig school. He
joined most heartily in the Revolution of 1688, and continued a
steadfast friend to its principles and its hero. To William III. De Foe
was devotedly attached; and after the death of that great king,
vindicated his memory from the poisonous shafts of malice and slander.
He was the champion of civil and religious liberty, which he evidently
valued as the most precious of earthly things. Of that cause he
continued the unflinching advocate, and may be regarded as the most
efficient of that day which the press could boast. Through good report
and evil report, under the smiles of sovereigns or incarcerated in
Newgate, in prosperity or poverty, stung by the malevolence of faction,
or by filial ingratitude, in health or in sickness, in gladness or in
sorrow, De Foe held by the same sheet anchor of principle, remained
incorruptible in his love of liberty, and died as he had lived
throughout a long and eventful career, what he so justly felt himself, a
"True-born Englishman," and to use his own admirable expression in
Robinson Crusoe, a "broadhearted man." Honoured be his memory!

The first attempt to do justice to the merits of De Foe, and to rescue
the main events of his useful and laborious life from oblivion, was made
by the late Mr. George Chalmers, of the Board of Trade, whose biography
the present publishers now reprint. Since that period, gentlemen of
learning and ability have followed his steps. Dr. Towers, in the
Biographia Britannica, has sketched the life of De Foe, and Mr.
Alexander Chalmers, in the Biographical Dictionary, has also done
justice to his memory. Sir Walter Scott gave the aid of his great name
to the same object, by publishing an edition of De Foe. Mr. Walter
Wilson, of the Middle Temple, has published lately a long and detailed
Life of De Foe, which is by far the most complete yet compiled, and
should be consulted by every student desirous of becoming thoroughly
acquainted with the events of his chequered career. The present edition
of his works will supply a desideratum in English literature, and enable
his countrymen to possess, at a small cost, the various productions of
his versatile genius, and be instructed by one of the most deservedly
popular and really useful authors that has ever adorned the country.

We subjoin the able critiques on De Foe, by the late Charles Lamb, a man
exactly qualified to appreciate him, by a writer in the Retrospective
Review, and by sir Walter Scott. For the first, the world is indebted to
Mr. Wilson[107]. "It has happened not seldom that one work of some
author has so transcendently surpassed in execution the rest of his
compositions, that the world has agreed to pass a sentence of dismissal
upon the latter, and to consign them to total neglect and oblivion. It
has done wisely in this, not to suffer the contemplation of excellences
of a lower standard to abate or stand in the way of the pleasure it has
agreed to receive from the masterpiece.

"Again, it has happened, that from no inferior merit of execution in the
rest, but from superior good fortune in the choice of its subject, some
single work shall have been suffered to eclipse and cast into shade the
deserts of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with more or
less injustice in the case of the popular allegory of Bunyan, in which
the beautiful and scriptural image of a pilgrim or wayfarer (we are all
such upon earth!) addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly to the
bosoms of all, has silenced and made almost to be forgotten, the more
awful and scarcely less tender beauties of the Holy War made by Shaddai
upon Diabolus, of the same author, a romance less happy in its subject,
but surely well worthy of a secondary immortality. But in no instance
has this excluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness than
against what may be termed the secondary novels or romances of De Foe.

"While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and shall continue to do so, we trust,
while the world lasts, how few, comparatively, will bear to be told
that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same author, four of
them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation. Roxana, Singleton, Moll Flanders,
Colonel Jack--are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not
swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and age of every one of them! They
are, in their way, as full of incident, and some of them are every bit
as romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that
has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.

"But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert? or cannot
the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone? Singleton, on
the world of waters, prowling about with pirates less merciful than the
creatures of any prowling wilderness; is he not alone, with the faces of
men about him, but without a guide that can conduct him through the mist
of educational and habitual ignorance; or a fellow heart that can
interpret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of unpractised
penitence? or when the boy, Colonel Jack, in the loneliness of the
heart, (the worst solitude,) goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in
the hollow tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously finds
it again; whom hath he there to sympathise with him? or of what sort are
his associates?

"The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness about it, beyond that
of any novel or romance writer. His fictions have all the air of true
stories. It is impossible to believe while you are reading them, that a
real person is not narrating to you everywhere nothing but what really
happened to himself. To this, the extreme homeliness of their style
mainly contributes. We use the word in its best and heartiest
sense,--that which comes home to the reader. The narrators everywhere
are chosen from low life, or have had their origin in it; therefore they
tell their own tales, (Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us in this remark,)
as persons in their degree are observed to do, with infinite repetition,
and an overacted exactness, lest the hearer should not have minded, or
have forgotten some things that had been told before. Hence the emphatic
sentences, marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type; and hence,
too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old colloquial
parenthesis, 'I say,' 'mind,' and the like, when the story-teller
repeats what to a practised reader might appear to have been
sufficiently insisted upon before. What pirates, what thieves, and what
harlots, are the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe? We would
not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the lives
of such characters are described, is guilt and delinquency made less
seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the commission,
or the penitence more earnest or bleeding, or the intervening flashes of
religious visitation, upon the rude and uninstructed soul, more
meltingly or fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the
tenderness of Bunyan; while the lively pictures and incidents in them,
as in Hogarth, or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to
the concerns and pursuits of common life, which an unrestrained passion
for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger of producing."

The writer in the Retrospective Review observes: "We avail ourselves
with some satisfaction of an opportunity of introducing to our readers
an old and valued acquaintance, as one whom they may have had the
misfortune to lose sight of, amidst the perplexities of life and the
competition of more obtrusive candidates for their notice. For our own
part, surrounded as we are by the bustle and cares of middle age, the
mere mention of our author's name falls upon us as cool and refreshing
as a drop of rain in the hot and parched midday; for it never fails to
bring along with it the recollection of the morning of our life, those
green and pleasant years, when the solitary inhabitant of the desert
island was perpetually mingling with the day-dreams of our imagination.

"After a vain attempt to apply to De Foe those laws of criticism which
hold in ordinary cases, we are compelled to regard him as a phenomenon,
and to consider his genius as something rare and curious, which it is
impossible to assign to any class whatever. Throughout the ample stores
of fiction, in which our literature abounds more than that of any other
people, there are no works which at all resemble his, either in the
design or execution. Without any precursor in the strange and unwonted
path he chose, and without a follower, he spun his web of coarse but
original materials, which no mortal had ever thought of using before;
and when he had done it, seems as though he had snapped the thread, and
conveyed it beyond the reach of imitation. To have a numerous train of
followers is usually considered as adding to the reputation of the
writer; we deem it a circumstance of peculiar honour to De Foe that he
had none; for, in general, they are the faults of a great author, the
parts where he exaggerates truth, or deviates from propriety, that
become the prey of the imitator. Whenever he has stolen a 'grace beyond
the reach of art,' whenever the vigour and freshness of nature are
apparent, there he is inaccessible to imitation. The fugitive charms
which are thus imparted, the volatile and subtle spirit which gives life
and animation to the work, baffle and elude the grasp of mere imitative
genius. In the fictions of De Foe we meet with nothing that is
artificial, or that does not breathe the breath of life. The ingenuity
which could counterfeit works of a more elaborate kind, and much more
highly as well as curiously wrought, could make nothing of a simplicity
so naked, and a manner so perfectly natural. The most consummate art was
unable to follow where no vestiges of art were to be seen, for either
none has been employed, or its traces are concealed as carefully as the
Indian hides his footsteps from the observation of his pursuers; since
to the critical eye, nothing is visible but the easy unconstraint of
nature, and the fearlessness of truth. Besides, it must be allowed, that
the temptation to imitate was as small as the difficulties were many and
great; for whilst he transcribed from the volume of life with a fidelity
and closeness that have never been equalled, with a singularly mortified
taste, he chose the plainest and least inviting pages of the whole book.
Those who would imitate De Foe must copy from nature herself; and
instead of dressing her out to advantage, content themselves with
delineating some of her simplest and homeliest features. His language is
always that of the plain and unlettered person he professes himself;
homely in phraseology, in expression rude and inartificial; yet like
that of one who has received a distinct impression of objects which he
has seen, it is often forcible, happy, and strongly descriptive.
Generally speaking, in other fictitious narratives, a tendency to
moralise out of reason or in a vein too elevated for the character
assumed, or a continued effort to be uniformly wise, or elaborately
witty, is almost sure to unmask the impostor, and expose the dreaming
pedant at his desk; or, if these characteristic marks be wanting, either
the narrative is inconsistent with itself, or it contradicts some known
and established fact, or there is some anachronism, or other overt act
against truth is committed, which critical sagacity seldom fails to
detect and punish. But our author is never caught tripping in this way;
he moralises to be sure, as much or more than most writers, but then his
reflections are always in the right vein; he never steps from behind the
curtain to figure away himself upon the stage. Either a vigilance that
was perpetually on the watch preserved him from error, or he went right
by mere instinct; or he so identified himself with his imaginary hero
that he became in fancy the very individual he was creating, and was
therefore necessarily always in character. But whatever vigilance he
used, he has always the art to appear perfectly unconcerned; there is
none of the constraint that usually accompanies a painful effort to
support imposture; his hero is not stiff and awkward like a puppet,
which has no voluntary motion, but moves freely and carelessly along the
stage; talks to us in an honest, open, confidential sort of way; lays
his inmost thoughts and feelings open before us, as before a confessor,
without caution and subterfuge; and by never asking our belief, never
seeming conscious of a possibility of its being denied, fairly compels
us to grant it.

"The grand secret of his art, however, if art it can be called, and were
not rather an instinct, consists doubtless in the astonishing minuteness
of the details, and the circumstantial particularity with which
everything is laid before us. It is by this, perhaps more than anything
else, that fictitious narratives are distinguishable from the genuine
memoirs of those who have been eyewitnesses of what they relate. The
parts in the one case may be as probable as in the other, the
descriptions as vivid and striking, the style as natural and
unconstrained; still there is an indefinable something which seems to be
wanting to the former, though we may not have remarked its presence in
the latter. Some unimportant particular, some minute circumstances,
which none but he who had seen it with his own eyes would have thought
of remarking, will always serve, like the scarcely discernible lines on
a genuine note, to distinguish between the true and the counterfeit. The
eye of the imagination, however strong and piercing, cannot always
pervade the whole scene, and see everything distinctly; the more
prominent features, indeed, it may develope with the clearness and
accuracy of an almost unclouded vision, but all besides is either
obscured with mist, or lost in impenetrable shade; and he who paints
from the ideal must consequently either leave these parts unfinished, or
spread his colours at random. It is the singular merit of De Foe to have
overcome this difficulty, and to have communicated to his fictitious
narratives every characteristic mark by which we distinguish between
real and pretended adventures. The whole scene lay expanded before him
in the fulness of light and life, and, down to the minutest particular,
everything is delineated with truth and accuracy. It is not necessary
that we should have the light fall advantageously, or wink with our
eyes, in order to make the delusion complete, by hiding the defects and
softening down the harsh lines of the representation; the most
penetrating gaze, aided by the strongest light, cannot detect the
imposition, or distinguish between the shade and the substance. Writers
of fiction may, in general, be said rather to shadow forth than fully to
delineate their visions, either because they flit away too early, or are
never seen with sufficient distinctness; like the first discoverers of
countries, they trace out a few promontories on their chart, and give a
faint outline of something indistinctly seen. In the solitude of his
closet, De Foe could travel round the world in idea, seeing everything
with the distinctness of natural vision, and noting everything with the
minuteness of the most accurate observer. His chart presents us not
merely with the bold headland, shooting forth into the deep, or the
clearly defined mountain that rises into middle air behind; we have the
whole coast fully and fairly traced out, with the soundings of every
bay, the direction of every current, and the quarter of every wind that
blows."

Sir Walter Scott says, "The fertility of De Foe was astonishing. He
wrote on all occasions and on all subjects, and seemingly had little
time for preparation on the subject in hand, but treated it from the
stores which his memory retained of early reading, and such hints as he
caught up in society, not one of which seems to have been lost upon him.
His language is genuine English, often simple, even unto vulgarity, but
always so distinctly impressive, that its very vulgarity has an efficacy
in giving an air of truth or probability to the facts or sentiments it
conveys. Exclusive of politics, De Foe's studies led chiefly to those
popular narratives which are the amusement of children and the lower
classes; those accounts of travellers who have visited remote countries;
of voyagers who have made discoveries of new lands and strange nations;
of pirates and buccaneers who have acquired great wealth by their
desperate adventures on the ocean. There is reason to believe, from a
passage in his Review, that he was acquainted with Dampier, a mariner,
whose scientific skill in his profession, and power of literary
composition were at that time rarely found in that profession,
especially among those rough sons of the ocean who acknowledged no peace
beyond the line, and had as natural an enmity to a South American
Spaniard as a greyhound to a hare, and who, though distinguished by the
somewhat milder term of buccaneer, were little better than absolute
pirates. The English government, it is well known, were not, however,
very active in destroying this class of adventurers, while they confined
their depredations to the Dutch and Spaniards, and indeed seldom
disturbed them if they returned from the roving life and sat down to
enjoy their ill-gotten gains. The courage of these men, the wonderful
risks they incurred, their hairbreadth escapes, the romantic countries
through which they travelled, seemed to have had infinite charms for De
Foe. All his works on this topic are entertaining in the highest degree,
and remarkable for the accuracy with which he personates the character
of a buccaneering adventurer. De Foe's general acquaintance with
nautical affairs has not been doubted, as he is said never to misapply
the various sea phrases, or display an ignorance unbecoming the
character under which he wrote. He appears also to have been familiar
with foreign countries, their produce, their manners, and government,
and whatever rendered it easy or difficult to enter into trade with
them. We may therefore conclude that Purchas's Pilgrims, Hakluyt's
Voyages, and the other ancient authorities, had been curiously examined
by him, as well as those of his friend Dampier, of Wafer, and others,
who had been in the South Seas, whether as privateers, or, as it was
then called, 'upon the account.'

"Shylock observes, that there are land thieves and water thieves; and as
De Foe was familiar with the latter, so he was not without some
knowledge of the practices and devices of the former. We are afraid we
must impute to his long imprisonment the opportunity of becoming
acquainted with the secrets of thieves and mendicants, their acts of
plunder, concealment, and escape. But whatever way he acquired his
knowledge of low life, De Foe certainly possessed it in the most
extensive sense, and applied it in the composition of several works of
fiction in the style termed by the Spaniards _Gusto Picaresco_, of which
no man was ever a greater master. This class of fictitious narration may
be termed the Romance of Roguery, the subjects being the adventures of
thieves, rogues, vagabonds, swindlers, viragoes, and courtezans. The
strange and blackguard scenes which De Foe describes, are fit to be
compared to the Gipsy Boys of Murillo, which are so justly admired as
being, in truth of conception and spirit of execution, the very
_chef-d'[oe]uvre_ of art, however low and loathsome the originals from
which they were taken.

"A third species of composition, to which the author's active and
vigorous genius was peculiarly adapted, was the account of great
national convulsions, whether by war, or by the pestilence, or the
tempest. These are tales which are sure when even moderately well told,
to arrest the attention, and which, narrated with that impression of
reality which De Foe knew so well how to convey, make the hair bristle
and the skin creep. In this manner he has written the Memoirs of a
Cavalier, which have been often read and quoted as the real production
of a real personage. Born himself almost immediately after the
Restoration, De Foe must have known many of those who had been engaged
in the civil turmoils of 1642-6, to which the period of these memoirs
refers. He must have lived among them at the age when boys, such as we
conceive De Foe must necessarily have been, cling to the knees of those
who can tell them of the darings, the dangers of their youth, at a
period when their own passions and views of pressing forward in life
have not begun to operate upon their minds, and while they are still
pleased to listen to the adventures which others have encountered on
that stage which they themselves have not yet entered upon. The Memoirs
of a Cavalier have certainly been enriched by some such anecdotes as
were likely to fire De Foe's active and powerful imagination, and hint
to him in what colours the subject ought to be treated. The contrast,
for instance, between the soldiers of the celebrated Tilly and those of
the illustrious Gustavus Adolphus, almost seems too minutely drawn to
have been executed from anything short of oracular testimony. But De
Foe's genius has shown, in this and other instances, how completely he
could assume the character he describes.

"Another species of composition, for which this multifarious author
showed a strong predilection, was that upon, theurgy, magic,
ghost-seeing, witchcraft, and the occult sciences. De Foe dwells on such
subjects with so much unction as to leave little doubt that he was to a
certain point a believer in something resembling an immediate
communication between the inhabitants of this world and of that which we
shall in future inhabit. He is particularly strong on the subject of
secret forebodings, mysterious impressions, bodements of good or evil,
which arise in our own mind, but which yet seem impressed there by some
external agent, and not to arise from the course of our natural
reflections. * * * The general charm attached to the romances of De Foe
is chiefly to be ascribed to the unequalled dexterity with which he has
given an appearance of REALITY to the incidents which he narrates. Even
De Foe's deficiencies in style, his homeliness of language, his
rusticity of thought, expressive of what is called the Crassa Minerva,
seem to claim credit for him as one who speaks the truth, the rather
that we suppose he wants the skill to conceal or disguise it. It is
greatly to be doubted whether De Foe could have changed his colloquial,
circuitous, and periphrastic style for any other, more coarse or more
elegant. We have little doubt it was connected with his nature, and the
particular turn of his thoughts and ordinary expressions, and that he
did not succeed so much by writing in an assumed manner, as by giving
full scope to his own. The air of writing with all the plausibility of
truth must, in almost every case, have its own peculiar value; as we
admire the paintings of some Flemish artists, where though the subjects
drawn are mean and disagreeable, and such as in nature we would not wish
to study or look close upon, yet the skill with which they are
represented by the painter gives an interest to the imitation upon
canvass which the original entirely wants. But, on the other hand, when
the power of exact and circumstantial delineation is applied to objects
which we are anxiously desirous to see in their proper shape and
colours, we have a double source of pleasure, both in the art of the
painter, and in the interest which we take in the subject represented.
Thus the style of probability with which De Foe invested his narrative
was perhaps ill-bestowed, or rather wasted, upon some of the works which
he thought proper to produce; but, on the other hand, the same talent
throws an air of truth about the delightful history of Robinson Crusoe,
which we never could have believed it possible to have united with so
extraordinary a situation as is assigned to the hero. All the usual
scaffolding and machinery employed in composing fictitious history are
carefully discarded. The early incidents of the tale, which in ordinary
works of invention are usually thrown out as pegs to hang the
conclusion upon, are in this work only touched, and suffered to drop out
of sight. Robinson, for example, never hears anything more of his elder
brother, who enters Lockhart's dragoons in the beginning of the work,
and who, in any common romance, would certainly have appeared before the
conclusion. We lose sight at once and for ever of the interesting Xury;
and the whole earlier adventures of our voyager vanish, not to be
recalled to our recollection by the subsequent course of the story. His
father, the good old merchant of Hull; all the other persons who have
been originally active in the drama, vanish from the scene, and appear
not again. This is not the case in the ordinary romance, where the
author, however luxuriant his invention, does not willingly quit
possession of the creatures of his imagination till they have rendered
him some services upon the scene; whereas in common life it rarely
happens that our early acquaintances exercise much influence upon the
fortunes of our future life."

       *       *       *       *       *

The popularity of De Foe as a writer, added to the circumstance that
most of his writings appeared anonymously, have been the occasion of
many works being attributed to him with which he had no concern; some in
fact that are known as the works of other writers, and some that are
altogether different, not only from his style of writing, but opposed to
the principles which he advocated; and others which by no possibility he
could have written, inasmuch as they relate to events and persons
subsequent to his decease. In the following list care has been taken,
so far as possible, to include such works only as are undoubtedly from
his pen. It is proper to mention, however, that it does not include the
whole of what might by a minute and careful investigation be
satisfactorily identified to him, and that such examination would
probably displace some of those here inserted, and add others not herein
mentioned. In his Appeal to Honour and Justice, he alludes to some of
his early works, without giving the exact titles by which they can be
distinguished. The present list commences with the first work positively
known to be his production.




          A LIST
            OF
      DE FOE'S WORKS,
 ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY.


 1. An Essay upon Projects. London: printed by R. R., for Thomas
    Cockeril, at the corner of Warwick-lane, near Paternoster-row.
    1697. 8vo. pp. 350.

 2. An Enquiry into the occasional Conformity of Dissenters in Cases of
    Preferment: with a Preface to the Lord Mayor, occasioned by his
    carrying the Sword to a Conventicle. London: printed An. Dom. 1697.
    4to. pp. 28.

 3. Some Reflections on a Pamphlet lately published, entituled 'An
    Argument, showing that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a free
    Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the
    English Monarchy. London: published for E. Whitlock, near
    Stationers'-hall. 1697. 4to. pp. 28.

 4. An Argument, showing that a Standing Army, with Consent of
    Parliament, is not inconsistent with a free Government, and
    absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy.
    2. Chronic. ix. 25. London: printed for E. Whitlock, near
    Stationers'-hall. 1698. 4to. pp. 26.

 5. The Character of Dr. Annesley, by way of Elegy. 1697.

 6. A new Discovery of an old Intrigue, a Satyr: levelled at Treachery
    and Ambition. Calculated to the Nativity of the Rapparee Plot, and
    the Modesty of the Jacobite Clergy: designed by way of conviction to
    the CXVII Petitioners, and for the Benefit of those that study the
    City Mathematics. London. 1697.

 7. The Poor Man's Plea, in relation to all the Proclamations,
    Declarations, Acts of Parliament, &c., which have been, or shall be
    made, or published, for a Reformation of Manners, and suppressing
    Immorality in the Nation. London: printed in the year 1698. 4to. pp.
    31.

 8. The Pacificator: a Poem. London: printed and are to be sold by J.
    Nutt, near Stationers'-hall. 1700. Folio.

 9. The two Great Questions considered:--1. What the French King will do
    with respect to the Spanish Monarchy? 2. What Measures the English
    ought to take? London: printed by R. T. for R. Baldwin, at the
    Bedford Arms, in Warwick-lane. 1700. 4to. pp. 28.

 10. The two Great Questions further considered: with some Reply to the
    Remarks. _Non licet hominem muliebriter rixare._ London. 1700. 4to.

 11. The Danger of the Protestant Religion from the present prospect of
    a Religious War in Europe. London. 1700. 4to.

 12. Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man. London. 1701.
    4to.

 13. The Freeholders' Plea against Stock-jobbing Elections of Parliament
    Men. London: printed in the year 1701. 4to. pp. 27.

 14. The Villany of Stock-jobbers detected, and the Causes of the late
    Run upon the Bank and Bankers discovered and considered. London:
    printed in the year 1701. 4to. pp. 26.

 15. The True-Born Englishman: a Satyr. 'Statuimus pacem, et
    securitatem, et concordiam, judicium et justiciam, inter Anglos et
    Normandos, Francos, et Britones Walliæ et Cornubiæ, Pictos et Scotos
    Albaniæ, similiter inter Francos et Insulares Provincias et Patrias
    quæ pertinent ad coronam nostram et inter omnes nobis subjectos,
    firmiter et inviolabiliter observari.' Charta Regis Wilhelmi
    Conquisitoris de pace publicâ. Cap. 1. London. 1701. 4to. pp. 60.

 16. The Succession to the Crown of England considered. London: printed
    in the year 1701. 4to. pp. 38.

 17. A Memorial from the Gentlemen Freeholders and Inhabitants of the
    Counties of ----, in behalf of themselves and many Thousands of the
    good People of England. London. 1701.

 18. History of the Kentish Petition. London. 1701. 4to.

 19. The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England
    examined and asserted. With a double Dedication to the King, and to
    the Parliament. London. 1701. Folio.

This tract was reprinted in 1769, by R. Baldwin in Paternoster-row, with
a Dedication "To the Lord Mayor (Beckford), the Aldermen, and Commons of
the City of London;" and again, in 1790, by Mr. J. Walker, in his
Selections from the Writings of De Foe.

 20. The Present State of Jacobitism considered, in Two Queries:--1.
    What Measures the French King will take with respect to the Person
    and Title of the P. P. of Wales? 2. What the Jacobites in England
    ought to do on the same Account? London. 1701. 4to. pp. 22.

 21. Reasons against a War with France: or, an Argument, showing that
    the French King's owning the Prince of Wales as King of England,
    Scotland, and Ireland, is no sufficient Ground of a War. London:
    printed in the year 1701. 4to. pp. 30.

 22. A Letter to Mr. How, by way of Reply to his Considerations of the
    Preface to an Enquiry into the occasional Conformity of Dissenters.
    London. 1701. 4to.

 23. Legion's New Paper; being a second Memorial to the Gentlemen of a
    late House of Commons. With Legion's humble Address to his Majesty.
    London: printed and sold by the Booksellers of London and
    Westminster. 1702. 4to. pp. 20.

 24. The Mock Mourners: a Satyr, by way of Elegy on King William. By the
    Author of 'The True-Born Englishman.' London: printed in the year
    1702. 4to.

Reprinted in 'Poems on Affairs of State.'

 25. The Spanish Descent; a Poem. London. 1702. 4to.

 26. A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty; or, Whiggish Loyalty
    and Church Loyalty compared. Printed in the year 1702. 4to.

 27. An Enquiry into occasional Conformity, showing that the Dissenters
    are no ways concerned in it. London. 1702. 4to.

 28. Reformation of Manners; a Satyr, 'Væ vobis hypocritæ.' Printed in
    the year 1702. 4to. pp. 64.

 29. The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; or, Proposals for the
    Establishment of the Church. London: printed in the year 1702. 4to.
    pp. 29.

 30. A Brief Explanation of a late Pamphlet, entituled, 'The Shortest
    Way with the Dissenters.' London: printed in the year 1703. 4to.

 31. A Hymn to the Pillory. London: printed in the year 1703. 4to. pp.
    24.

 32. More Reformation, a Satyr upon Himself. By the Author of 'The
    True-Born Englishman.' London: printed in the year 1703. 4to. pp.
    52.

 33. The Shortest Way to Peace and Union. By the Author of 'The Shortest
    Way with the Dissenters.' London: printed in the year 1703. 4to. pp.
    26.

 34. A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of 'The True-Born
    Englishman.' Corrected by Himself. London: printed and are to be
    sold by most Booksellers in London and Westminster. 1703. 8vo. pp.
    465.

The following pieces are contained in it:--1. The True-Born Englishman.
2. The Mock Mourners. 3. Reformation of Manners. 4. Character of Dr.
Annesley. 5. The Spanish Descent. 6. Original Power of the People of
England. 7. The Freeholders' Plea against Stock-jobbing Elections of
Parliament Men. 8. Reasons against a War with France. 9. An Argument,
showing that a Standing Army, with Consent of Parliament, is not
inconsistent with a Free Government, &c. 10. The Danger of the
Protestant Religion from the present Prospect of a Religious War in
Europe. 11. The Villany of Stock-jobbers detected. 12. Six
Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man. 13. Poor Man's Plea. 14.
Enquiry into occasional Conformity; with a Preface to Mr. How. 15.
Letter to Mr. How. 16. Two Great Questions considered. 17. Two Great
Questions further considered. 18. Enquiry into Occasional Conformity,
showing that the Dissenters are noways concerned in it. 19. A New Test
of the Church of England's Loyalty. 20. The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters. 21. A brief Explanation of a late Pamphlet, entituled, 'The
Shortest Way with the Dissenters.' 22. The Shortest Way to Peace and
Union. A second edition of this volume, with some additions, was printed
in 1705.

 35. King William's Affection to the Church of England examined.
    London: printed in the year 1703. 4to. pp. 26.

 36. The Sincerity of the Dissenters vindicated from the Scandal of
    occasional Conformity; with some Considerations on a late Book,
    entituled 'Moderation a Virtue.' London: printed in the year 1703.
    4to. pp. 27.

 37. A Challenge of Peace, addressed to the whole nation: with an
    Inquiry into the Ways and Means of bringing it to pass. London:
    printed in the year 1703. pp. 24.

 38. Peace without Union. By way of reply to sir H. M----'s Peace at
    Home. London: printed in the year 1703. 4to.

 39. Original Right; or the Reasonableness of Appeals to the People.
    Being an Answer to the first chapter in Dr. Davenant's Essays,
    entituled, 'Peace at Home and War Abroad'. Printed and sold by R.
    Baldwin, near the Oxford Arms in Warwick-lane. London: 1704. 4to.
    pp. 30.

 40. Dissenter's Answer to the High Church Challenge. London: printed in
    the year 1704. 4to. pp. 55.

 41. The Christianity of the High Church considered. Dedicated to a
    Noble Peer. London: printed in the year 1704. 4to. pp. 20.

 42. Royal Religion; being some Inquiry after the Piety of Princes, with
    remarks on a book, entituled, A Form of Prayers used by king
    William. London: printed in the year 1704. 4to. pp. 27.

 43. Essay upon the Regulation of the Press. London: 1704.

 44. The Liberty of Episcopal Dissenters in Scotland truly stated.
    London: printed in the year 1704.

 45. The Parallel, or Persecution of Protestants the Shortest Way to
    prevent the Growth of Popery in Ireland. London: 1704.

 46. A serious Inquiry into this grand Question, whether a Law to
    prevent the occasional Conformity of Dissenters would not be
    inconsistent with the Act of Toleration, and a Breach of the Queen's
    Promise? London: 1704. 4to.

 47. More Short Ways with the Dissenters. London: 1704. 4to. pp. 24.

 48. The Dissenters Misrepresented and Represented. London: 1704. 4to.

 49. The Protestant Jesuit Unmasked; in answer to the Two Parts of
    Cassandra; wherein the author and his libels are laid open, with the
    true reason why he would have the Dissenters humbled. London: 1704.

 50. A new Test of the Church of England's Honesty. London: 1704. 4to.
    pp. 24.

 51. The Storm; or a Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and
    Disasters which happened in the late dreadful Tempest, both by Sea
    and Land. _The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
    and the clouds are the dust of his feet._ Nehemiah i. 3. London:
    printed for S. Sawbridge, in Little Britain, and sold by J. Nutt,
    near Stationers'-hall. 1704. 8vo. pp. 272.

Later editions are entituled: A Collection of the most remarkable
Casualties and Disasters which happened in the late dreadful Tempest,
both by Sea and Land, on Friday, November 26th, 1703. To which are added
several very surprising deliverances; the natural causes and origin of
winds; of the opinion of the ancients that this island was more subject
to storms than any other part of the world. With several other curious
observations upon the storm. The whole divided into chapters, under
proper heads. The Second Edition. London: printed for Geo. Sawbridge, at
the Three Golden Fleur-de-Lis, in Little Britain, and J. Nutt, in the
Savoy. Price, bound, 3s. 6d. The matter in both editions is precisely
the same.

 52. Elegy on the author of The True-Born Englishman. With an essay on
    the late Storm. By the author of the Hymn to the Pillory. London:
    1704. 4to. pp. 56.

 53. A Hymn to Victory. London: printed for J. Nutt, near
    Stationers'-hall, 1704. 4to. pp. 52.

 54. An Inquiry into the Case of Mr. Asgill's General Translation;
    showing that it is not a nearer Way to Heaven than the Grave. By the
    Author of The True-Born Englishman. _And for this cause God shall
    send them strong delusions._ 2 Thess. ii. 11. London: printed and
    sold by J. Nutt, near Stationers'-hall. 1704. 8vo. pp. 48.

 55. Giving Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the
    Nation. Being an Essay upon this great Question, whether Workhouses,
    Corporations, and Houses of Correction for Employing the Poor, as
    now practised in England, or Parish-stocks, as proposed in a late
    pamphlet, entituled A Bill for the Better Relief, Employment, and
    Settlement of the Poor, &c., are not mischievous to the Nation;
    tending to the Destruction of our Trade, and to increase the Number
    and Misery of the Poor. Addressed to the Parliament of England.
    London: printed and sold by the Booksellers of London and
    Westminster. 1704. 8vo. pp. 28.

 56. A Review of the Affairs of France, and of all Europe, as influenced
    by that nation; being Historical Observations on the Public
    Transactions of the World, purged from the Errors and Partiality of
    Newswriters and petty Statesmen of all sides. With an entertaining
    Part in every Sheet, being Advice from the Scandal Club to the
    curious Inquirers; in Answer to Letters sent them for that purpose.
    London: printed in the year 1705. 4to. pp. 456.

 57. The Double Welcome to the Duke of Marlborough. By the Author of The
    True-Born Englishman. London: printed for Benjamin Bragge, in Ave
    Maria lane, Ludgate-street. 1705. 4to.

 58. Party Tyranny; or, an Occasional Bill in Miniature; as now
    practised in Carolina. Humbly offered to the Consideration of both
    Houses of Parliament. London: printed in the year 1705. 4to. pp. 30.

 59. Advice to all Parties. By the Author of The True-Born Englishman.
    London: printed and are to be sold by Benj. Bragge, at the Blue
    Ball, in Ave Maria lane. 1705. Price 6d. 4to. pp. 24.

 60. Writings of the Author of The True-Born Englishman (a second Volume
    of); some whereof never before published. Corrected and enlarged by
    the Author. 1705. The following are the pieces in this Volume:--1. A
    New Discovery of an old Intrigue. 2. More Reformation. 3. An Elegy
    on the Author of The True-Born Englishman. 4. The Storm, an Essay.
    5. A Hymn to the Pillory. 6. A Hymn to Victory. 7. The Pacificator.
    8. The Double Welcome to the Duke of Marlborough. 9. The Dissenter's
    Answer to the High Church Challenge. 10. A Challenge of Peace to
    the whole Nation. 11. Peace without Union. 12. More Short Ways. 13.
    A new Test of the Church of England's Honesty. 14. A Serious
    Inquiry. 15. The Dissenter Misrepresented, and Represented. 16. The
    Parallel. 17. Giving Alms no Charity. 18. Royal Religion.

A third edition, or perhaps the remainder of the impressions of the
first, was published in 1710, with the addition of a key to many of the
names. They were sold by John Morphew, near Stationers'-hall, price 12s.

    61. The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the
    World in the Moon. Translated from the Lunar language, by the Author
    of The True-Born Englishman. London: printed and are to be sold by
    Benjamin Bragge, at the Blue Ball, in Ave Maria lane. 1705. 8vo. pp.
    360.

    62. The Experiment; or, the Shortest Way with the Dissenters
    Exemplified. Being the Case of Mr. Abraham Gill, a Dissenting
    Minister of the Isle of Ely; and a full account of his being sent
    for a soldier, by Mr. Fern (an ecclesiastical Justice of the Peace)
    and other Conspirators. To the eternal Honour of the Temper and
    Moderation of High Church Principles. Humbly dedicated to the Queen.
    London: printed and sold by B. Bragge, at the Blue Ball, in Ave
    Maria lane. 1705. 4to. pp. 58.

The remaining copies of this tract were sent forth in 1707, with the
following new title: The Modesty and Sincerity of those worthy
Gentlemen, commonly called High Churchmen, Exemplified in a Modern
Instance. Most humbly dedicated to her Majesty, and her High Court of
Parliament. London: printed and sold by B. Bragge, in Paternoster-row.
1707.

 63. The Dyet of Poland; a Satyr. Printed at Dantzick in the year 1705.
    4to. pp. 60.

 64. High Church Legion; or, the Memorial Examined; being a new Test of
    Moderation, as it is recommended to all that love the Church of
    England and the Constitution. London: printed in the year 1705. 4to.
    pp. 21.

 65. A Declaration without Doors. By the Author of The True-Born
    Englishman. Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster. 1705.
    4to.

 66. An Answer to Lord Haversham's Speech. London. 1705. 4to.

 67. A Reply to a Pamphlet called The Lord Haversham's Vindication of
    his Speech, &c. By the Author of the Review. London: printed in the
    year 1706. 4to. pp. 32.

 68. A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next day
    after her death, to one Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, the 8th of
    September, 1705. Which Apparition recommends the Perusal of
    Drelincourt's Book of Consolations against the Fear of Death.
    London. 1705. 4to.

 69. A Review of the Affairs of France; with Observations on
    Transactions at Home. Vol. II. London: printed in the year 1705.
    4to. pp. 558.

 70. Hymn to Peace; occasioned by the Two Houses joining in one Address
    to the Queen. By the Author of The True-Born Englishman. London:
    printed for John Nutt, near Stationers'-hall. 1706. 4to. pp. 60.

 71. Remarks on the Bill to prevent Frauds committed by Bankrupts; with
    Observations on the Effect it may have upon Trade. London: printed
    in the year 1706. 4to. pp. 29.

 72. A Preface to a New Edition of Delaune's Plea for the
    Nonconformists. London. 1706.

 73. A Sermon preached by Mr. Daniel De Foe, on the Fitting-up of Dr.
    Burgess's late Meeting-house. Taken from his Review of Thursday,
    20th of June, 1706. 4to.

 74. Jure Divino; a Satyr, in 12 Books. By the Author of The True-Born
    Englishman. 'O sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis
    numina.' London: printed in the year 1706. Folio, pp. 346. Preface,
    xxviii.

 75. The Advantages of the Act of Security, compared with those of the
    intended Union; founded on the Revolution Principles. By D. De Foe.
    London. 1706. 4to.

 76. An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with
    Scotland. To be continued during the Treaty here. London and
    Edinburgh: printed in the year 1706. 4to. pp. 30.

 77. ---- Part II.

 78. ---- III.

 79. ---- IV.; with some Reply to Mr. H--dges, and some Authors who have
    printed their Objections against a Union with England. 4to. 1706.

 80. ---- Part V. 1706.

 81. ---- VI. 1707.

 82. Caledonia; a Poem in Honour of Scotland and the Scots Nation. In
    Three Parts. Edinburgh: printed by the Heirs and Successors of
    Andrew Anderson, Printer to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. An.
    Dom. 1706. Folio, pp. 60.

An 8vo. edition of this work was printed in London in the following
year, and another in 1748.

 83. The Dissenters in England Vindicated from some Reflections in a
    late Pamphlet, called, 'Lawful Prejudices,' &c. London. 1707.

 84. The Dissenters Vindicated; or a Short View of the Present State of
    the Protestant Religion in Britain, as it is now professed in the
    Episcopal Church of England, the Presbyterian Church in Scotland,
    and the Dissenters in both. In answer to some Reflections in Mr.
    Webster's Two Books published in Scotland. London: printed in the
    year 1707. 8vo. pp. 48.

 85. A Voice from the South; or, an Address from some Protestant
    Dissenters in England to the Kirk of Scotland. 1707. 4to.

 86. Two Great Questions considered with regard to the Union. 1707.

 87. The Quaker's Sermon on the Union. Being the only Sermon preached by
    that sort of People on that Subject. London. 1707.

 88. A Review of the State of the English Nation, Vol. III. London:
    printed in the year 1706. 4to. pp. 688.

 89. The Union Proverb.

    If Skiddaw has a cap,
    Scruffel wots full well of that.

    Setting forth--1. The Necessity of Uniting. 2. The good Consequences
    of Uniting. 3. The Happy Union of England and Scotland, in case of a
    Foreign Invasion. 'Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cantum.' 4to.
    1708.

 90. A Review of the State of the British Nation. Vol. IV. London:
    printed in the year 1708. 4to. pp. 700.

 91. The Scots Narrative examined; or, the Case of the Episcopal
    Ministers in Scotland stated, and the late treatment of them in the
    City of Edinburgh inquired into. With a brief Examination into the
    Reasonableness of the grievous Complaint of Persecution in Scotland,
    and a Defence of the Magistrates of Edinburgh in their Proceedings
    there. Being some Remarks on a late Pamphlet, entituled 'A Narrative
    of the late Treatment of the Episcopal Ministers within the City of
    Edinburgh,' &c. London: printed in the year 1709. 4to. pp. 41.
    Postscript x.

 92. The History of the Union of Great Britain. Edinburgh: printed by
    the Heirs and Successors of Andrew Anderson, Printer to the Queen's
    Most Excellent Majesty. An. Dom. 1709. Folio, pp. 685. Preface
    xxxii.

Reprinted in 1712, and again in 1786.

 93. An Answer to a Paper concerning Mr. De Foe, against the History of
    the Union. Edinburgh. 1709. 4to.

A single sheet.

 94. A Reproof to Mr. Clark, and a brief Vindication of Mr. De Foe.
    Edinburgh. 1709.

A single sheet.

 95. A Review of the State of the British Nation. Vol. V. London:
    printed in the year 1709. 4to. pp. 632.

 96. A Letter from Captain Tom to the Mob now raised by Dr. Sacheverell.
    London: J. Baker. 1710.

 97. Instructions from Rome, in favour of the Pretender. Inscribed to
    the most elevated Don Sacheverellio, and his brother Don Higginisco;
    and which all Perkinites, Nonjurors, High-fliers, Popish Desirers,
    Wooden-shoe Admirers, and absolute Non-resistance Drivers, are
    obliged to pursue and maintain, under pain of his Unholiness's
    Damnation, in order to carry on their intended Subversion of a
    Government fixed upon Revolution Principles. London: J. Baker.
    Registered in the Stationers'-hall Book. 1710. 8vo.

 98. A Review of the British Nation. Vol. VI. London: printed in the
    year 1710. 4to. pp. 600.

 99. An Essay upon Public Credit. Being an Inquiry how the Public Credit
    came to depend upon the Change of the Ministry, or the Dissolutions
    of Parliaments; and whether it does so, or no? With an Argument
    proving that the Public Credit may be upheld and maintained in this
    Nation, and perhaps brought to a greater height than it ever yet
    arrived at, though all the changes or dissolutions already made,
    pretended to, and now discoursed of, should come to pass in the
    world. London. 1710. 8vo.

 100. An Essay upon Loans; or an Argument, proving that substantial
    Funds, settled by Parliament, with the Encouragement of Interests,
    and the Advances of prompt Payment usually allowed, will bring in
    Loans of Money to the Exchequer, in spite of all the Conspiracies of
    Parties to the contrary; while a just, honourable, and punctual
    Performance on the part of the Government, supports the Credit of
    the Nation. By the Author of the 'Essay on Credit.' London. 1710.
    8vo. pp. 27.

 101. A New Test of the Sense of the Nation. Being a modest Comparison
    between the Addresses to the late King James and those to her
    present Majesty, in order to observe how far the Sense of the Nation
    may be judged of by either of them. London: printed in the year
    1710. 8vo. pp. 91.

 102. A Word against a New Election; that the People of England may see
    the happy Difference between English Liberty and French Slavery, and
    may consider well before they make the Exchange. Printed in the year
    1710. 8vo. pp. 23.

 103. A Review of the State of the British Nation; Vol. VII. London:
    printed in the year 1711. 4to. pp. 620.

 104. An Essay on the South Sea Trade; with an Inquiry into the Grounds
    and Reasons of the present Dislike and Complaints against the
    Settlement of a South Sea Company. By the Author of the 'Review.'
    London. 1710. 8vo.

 105. Eleven Opinions about Mr. H--y; with Observations. London: printed
    for J. Baker. 1711. 8vo. pp. 89.

 106. An Essay at a Plain Exposition of that difficult phrase: 'A Good
    Peace.' Printed for J. Baker. 1711. 8vo. pp. 52.

 107. The Felonious Treaty; or, an Inquiry into the Reasons which moved
    his late Majesty king William, of glorious Memory, to enter into a
    Treaty at two several times with the King of France for the
    Partition of the Spanish Monarchy. With an Essay proving that it was
    always the Sense, both of king William and of all the Confederates,
    and even of the Grand Alliance itself, that the Spanish Monarchy
    should never be united in the Person of the Emperor. By the Author
    of the 'Review.' London: printed and sold by J. Baker. 1711. Price
    6d. 8vo. pp. 48.

 108. An Essay on the History of Parties and Persecution in Britain:
    beginning with a brief Account of the Test Act, and an Historical
    Inquiry into the Reasons, the Original, and the Consequences of the
    occasional Conformity of Dissenters; with some Remarks on the
    several Attempts already made and now making for an Occasional Bill;
    inquiring how far the same may be esteemed a Preservation to the
    Church, or an Injury to the Dissenters. London: printed for J.
    Baker. 1711. 8vo. pp. 48.

 109. The Conduct of Parties in England, more especially of those Whigs
    who now appear against the New Ministry and a Treaty of Peace.
    Printed in the year 1712. 8vo. pp. 62.

 110. The present State of Parties in Great Britain, particularly an
    Inquiry into the State of the Dissenters in England, and the
    Presbyterians in Scotland; their Religious and Political Interest
    considered, as it respects their Circumstances before and since the
    late Acts against occasional Conformity in England; and for
    Toleration of Common Prayer in Scotland. 1712. London: printed and
    sold by J. Baker, in Paternoster-row. Price 5s. 8vo. pp. 352.

 111. A Review of the State of the British Nation. Vol. VIII. London:
    printed in the year 1712. 4to. pp. 848.

 112. A Seasonable Caution and Warning against the Insinuations of
    Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender. London: 1712. 8vo.

 113. An Answer to the Question that Nobody thinks of, viz., But what if
    the Queen should die? London: printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo. pp.
    44.

 114. Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover, with an
    Inquiry how far the Abdication of King James, supposing it to be
    legal, ought to affect the Person of the Pretender. 'Si populus vult
    decepi, decipiatur.' London: printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo. pp.
    45.

 115. And what if the Pretender should come? or, some Considerations of
    the Advantages and real Consequences of the Pretender's possessing
    the Crown of Great Britain. London: printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo.

 116. A Review of the State of the British Nation. Vol. IX. London:
    printed in the year 1713.

 117. An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France; with necessary
    Expositions. Prov. xviii. 12. London: printed for J. Baker. 1713.
    8vo. pp. 44.

 118. A General History of Trade; and especially considered as it
    respects the British Commerce, as well at Home as to all Parts of
    the World; with Essays upon the Improvement of our Trade in
    particular. To be continued monthly. 1st August, 1713. 8vo. Price
    6d. J. Baker.

 119. A General History of Trade; and especially considered as it
    respects the British Commerce, as well at Home as to all Parts of
    the World: with a Discourse of the Use of Harbours and Roads for
    Shipping, as it relates particularly to the filling up the Harbour
    of Dunkirk. This for the month of July. 15th August, 1713. 8vo.
    Price 6d.

 120. Whigs turned Tories; and Hanoverian Tories, from their avowed
    Principles, proved Whigs; or, each side in the other mistaken; being
    a plain Proof that each Party deny that Charge which the others
    bring against them; and that neither side will disown those which
    the others profess; with an earnest Exhortation to all Whigs, as
    well as Hanoverian Tories, to lay aside those uncharitable Heats
    among such Protestants, and seriously to consider, and effectually
    to provide against those Jacobite, Popish, and Conforming Tories,
    whose principal Ground of Hope to ruin all sincere Protestants, is
    from those unchristian and violent Feuds among ourselves. London:
    printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo.

 121. A Letter to the Dissenters. London: sold by John Morphew, near
    Stationers'-hall. 1714. Price 6d. 8vo.

 122. The Remedy worse than the Disease; or, Reasons against passing the
    Bill for preventing the Growth of Schism; to which is added, a brief
    Discourse on Toleration and Persecution, showing their unavoidable
    effects, good or bad; and proving that neither Diversity of
    Religion, nor Diversity in the same Religion, are dangerous, much
    less inconsistent with good Government; in a Letter to a Noble Earl.
    'Hæc sunt enim fundamenta firmissima nostræ libertatis, sui quemque
    juris et retinendi et dimittendi esse dominum.' Cicer. in Orat. pro
    Balbo. London: printed for J. Baker. 1714. 8vo. pp. 48.

 123. Advice to the People of Great Britain with respect to Two
    important Points of their future Conduct. 1. What they ought to
    expect from the King. 2. How they ought to behave to him. London:
    printed for J. Baker, in Paternoster-row. 1714. Price 6d.

 124. The Secret History of the White Staff; being an Account of Affairs
    under the Conduct of several late Ministers, and of what might
    probably have happened, if her Majesty had not died. London: J.
    Baker. 1714. 8vo. pp. 71.

 125. The Secret History of the White Staff; being an Account of Affairs
    under the Conduct of several late Ministers, and of what might
    probably have happened, if her Majesty had not died. London: J.
    Baker. Part II. 1714.

 126. ---- Part III. 1715.

 127. A Reply to a traitorous Libel, entituled 'English Advice to the
    Freeholders of Great Britain.' London: printed for J. Baker. 1715.
    8vo. pp. 40.

 128. A Hymn to the Mob. London: printed and sold by S. Popping, in
    Paternoster-row. 1715. 8vo. pp. 40.

 129. Appeal to Honour and Justice, though it be of his worst Enemies;
    by Daniel De Foe; being a true Account of his Conduct in Public
    Affairs. Jeremiah xvii. 18. London: printed for J. Baker. 1715. 8vo.
    pp. 58.

 130. The Family Instructor; in Three Parts; with a Recommendatory
    Letter by the Rev. S. Wright. London: sold by Emanuel Matthews, at
    the Bible, in Paternoster-row; and John Button, in
    Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 1715. 12mo. pp. 444.

 131. A Friendly Epistle by way of Reproof, from one of the People
    called Quakers, to Thomas Bradbury, a Dealer in many Words. London:
    printed and sold by S. Keimer, at the Printing Press, in
    Paternoster-row. 1715. 8vo. pp. 39.

 132. A Sharp Rebuke from one of the People called Quakers, to Henry
    Sacheverell, the High Priest of Andrew's, Holborn. By the same
    Friend that wrote to Thomas Bradbury. London: S. Keimer. 1715. 8vo.
    pp. 35.

 133. A Seasonable Expostulation with, and Friendly Reproof unto, James
    Butler, who, by the Men of this World, is styled Duke of O--d,
    relating to the Tumults of the People. By the same Friend that wrote
    to Thomas Bradbury, the Dealer in many Words, and Henry Sacheverell,
    the High Priest of Andrew's, Holborn. London: S. Keimer. 1715. 8vo.
    pp. 31.

 134. Some Account of the Two Nights' Court at Greenwich; wherein may be
    seen the Reason, Rise, and Progress of the late unnatural Rebellion
    against his Sacred Majesty King George, and his Government. London:
    printed for J. Baker. 1716. 8vo. pp. 72.

 135. Memoirs of the Church of Scotland. In Four Periods. 1. The Church
    in her Infant State, from the Reformation to the Queen Mary's
    Abdication. 2. The Church in its Growing State, from the Abdication
    to the Restoration. 3. The Church in its Persecuted State, from the
    Restoration to the Revolution. 4. The Church in its Present State,
    from the Revolution to the Union. With an Appendix of some
    Transactions since the Union. London: printed for Emanuel Matthews,
    at the Bible, and T. Warner, at the Black Boy, both in
    Paternoster-row. 1717. 8vo. pp. 438.

 136. The Family Instructor; in Two Parts. 1. Relating to Family
    Breaches, and their obstructing Religious Duties. 2. To the great
    Mistake of mixing the Passions in the managing and correcting of
    Children. With a great Variety of Cases relating to setting ill
    Examples to Children and Servants. Vol. II. London: printed for
    Emanuel Matthews, at the Bible, in Paternoster-row. 1718. 12mo. pp.
    404.

 137. Memoirs of the Life and eminent Conduct of that Learned and
    Reverend Divine Daniel Williams, D.D. With some Account of his
    Scheme for the vigorous Propagation of Religion, as well in England
    as in Scotland, and in several other Parts of the World. Addressed
    to Mr. Pierce. London: printed for E. Curll, at the Dial and Bible,
    against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-street. 1718. Price 2s. 6d.
    bound. 8vo. pp. 86.

 138. A Letter to the Dissenters. London: printed for J. Roberts, in
    Warwick-lane. 1719. Price 6d. pp. 27.

 139. A curious Oration delivered by Father Andrews, concerning the
    present great Quarrels that divide the Clergy of France. Translated
    from the French. By D. De F--e. London. 1719. 8vo.

 140. The Life, and strange surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of
    York, mariner; who lived Eight-and-twenty Years all alone in an
    uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the
    great River Oroonoque, having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck,
    wherein all the men perished but himself. With an Account how he was
    at last strangely delivered by Pirates. Written by Himself. London:
    printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship, in Paternoster-row. 1719. 8vo.
    pp. 364.

 141. The further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, being the second and
    last Part of his Life; and the strange surprising Accounts of his
    Travels round Three Parts of the Globe. Written by Himself. To which
    is added a Map of the World, in which is delineated the Voyages of
    Robinson Crusoe. London: printed for W. Taylor. 1719. 8vo. pp. 373.

 142. The Dumb Philosopher; or, Great Britain's Wonder. Containing.--I.
    A Faithful and very surprising Account of Dickory Cronke, a Tinner's
    Son, in the County of Cornwall, who was born Dumb, and continued so
    for fifty-eight years; and how some days before he died he came to
    his Speech; with Memoirs of his Life and the Manner of his Death.
    II. A Declaration of his Faith and Principles in Religion, with a
    Collection of Select Meditations composed in his Retirement. III.
    His Prophetical Observations upon the Affairs of Europe, more
    particularly of Great Britain, from 1720 to 1729. The whole
    extracted from his Original Papers, and confirmed by unquestionable
    authority. To which is annexed his Elegy, written by a young Cornish
    Gentleman of Exeter College, in Oxford; with an Epitaph by another
    hand. 'Non quis, sed quid?' London: printed by Thomas Bickerton, at
    the Crown, in Paternoster-row. 1719. Price 1s. 8vo. pp. 64.

 143. The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the famous Captain
    Singleton, containing an Account of his being set on Shore in the
    Island of Madagascar, his Settlement there, with a Description of
    the Place and Inhabitants; of his Passage from thence in a Paraquay
    to the Main Land of Africa, with an Account of the Customs and
    Manners of the People, his great Deliverances from the barbarous
    Natives and wild Beasts; of his meeting with an Englishman, a
    Citizen of London, among the Indians; the great Riches he acquired,
    and his Voyage home to England; as also Captain Singleton's Return
    to Sea, with an Account of his many Adventures and Pyracies with the
    famous Captain Avery and others. 8vo. London: printed for J.
    Brotherton, at the Black Bull, in Cornhill; T. Graves, in St.
    James's-street; A. Dodd, at the Peacock, without Temple Bar; and T.
    Warner, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster-row. 1720. 8vo. pp. 360.

 144. Serious Reflections during the Life and surprising Adventures of
    Robinson Crusoe. With his Vision of the Angelic World. Written by
    Himself. London: printed for W. Taylor. 1722. 8vo. pp. 354.

 145. The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, a
    Gentleman who, though Deaf and Dumb, writes down any Stranger's Name
    at first sight, with their future Contingencies of Fortune. Now
    living in Exeter-court, over against the Savoy, in the Strand.
    London: printed for E. Curll, and sold by W. Meers, &c. 1720. 8vo.
    pp. 320.

 146. The Complete Art of Painting, a Poem; translated from the French
    of M. Du Fresnoy. By D. F., Gentleman. London: printed for T.
    Warner. 1720. Price 1s. 8vo. pp. 54.

 147. Christian Conversation; in Six Dialogues. 1. Between a doubting
    Christian and one more confirmed, about Assurance. 2. Between the
    same Persons, about Mortification. 3. Between Eutocus and Fidelius,
    about Natural Things Spiritualized. 4. Between Simplicius and
    Conscius, about Union. 5. Between Thlipsius and Melaudius about
    Afflictions. 6. Between Athanasius and Bioes, about Death. By a
    Private Gentleman. London: printed for W. Taylor. 1720. 8vo.

 148. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders, who was
    born in Newgate, and during a Life of continued Variety of Three
    Score Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Years a Whore, Five
    Times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Years a
    Thief, Eight Years a Transported Felon to Virginia; at last grew
    rich, lived honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own
    Memorandums. London: printed for and sold by W. Chetwood, at Cato's
    Head, in Russell-street, Covent-garden; and T. Edlin, at the
    Prince's Arms, over against Exeter Change, in the Strand. 1722.

 149. The Memoirs of a Cavalier; or, a Military Journal of the Wars in
    Germany and the Wars in England from the Year 1632 to the Year 1648.
    Written above Three Score Years ago by an English Gentleman, who
    served first in the Army of Gustavus Adolphus, the glorious King of
    Sweden, till his Death; and after that in the royal Army of King
    Charles the First, from the beginning of the Rebellion to the end of
    that War. London: printed for A. Bell, at the Cross Keys, in
    Cornhill; J. Osborn, at the Oxford Arms, in Lombard-street; W.
    Taylor, at the Ship and Swan; and T. Warner, at the Black Boy, in
    Paternoster-row.

 150. The History of the most remarkable Life and extraordinary
    Adventures of the truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, vulgarly called
    Colonel Jack, who was born a Gentleman, put Apprentice to a
    Pickpocket, flourished Six-and-twenty Years as a Thief, and was then
    kidnapped to Virginia; came back a Merchant, was five times married
    to four Whores, went into the Wars, behaved bravely, got Preferment,
    was made Colonel of a Regiment; returned again to England, followed
    the Fortunes of the Chevalier de St. George, was taken at the
    Preston Rebellion; received his Pardon from the late King, is now at
    the Head of his Regiment, in the Service of the Czarina, fighting
    against the Turks, completing a Life of Wonders, and resolves to die
    a General. London: printed for J. Brotherton. 1722.

 151. A Journal of the Plague Year; being Observations or Memorials of
    the most remarkable Occurrences, as well Public as Private, which
    happened in London during the last great Visitation in 1665. Written
    by a Citizen who continued all the while in London: never made
    public before. London: printed for E. Nutt, at the Royal Exchange;
    J. Roberts, in Warwick-lane; A. Dodd, without Temple Bar; and J.
    Graves, in St. James's-street. 1722. 8vo. pp. 287.

The first edition. The second, published by F. and J. Noble, in 1754, is
called 'The History of the Great Plague in London in the Year 1665;'
containing Observations, &c. To which is added 'A Journal of the Plague
at Marseilles in the Year 1720.' 8vo. The latter piece forms no part of
De Foe's publication.

 152. Religious Courtship: being Historical Discourses on the Necessity
    of marrying Religious Husbands and Wives only; as also of Husbands
    and Wives being of the same Opinions in Religion with one another.
    With an Appendix, of the Necessity of taking none but Religious
    Servants, and a Proposal for the better managing of Servants.
    London: printed for E. Matthews, at the Bible, and A. Bettersworth,
    at the Red Lion, in Paternoster-row; J. Brotherton and W. Meadows,
    in Cornhill. 1722. 8vo. pp. 358.

 153. The Fortunate Mistress; or, A History of the Life and vast Variety
    of Fortunes of Mademoiselle De Beleau, afterwards called the
    Countess De Wintelsheim, in Germany; being the Person known by the
    name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II. London: printed
    for T. Warner, at the Black Boy in Paternoster-row; W. Meadows, at
    the Angel in Cornhill; W. Pepper, at the Crown in Maiden-lane,
    Covent-garden; S. Harding, at the Post House in St. Martin's-lane;
    and T. Edin, at the Prince's Arms against Exeter Change, in the
    Strand. 1724.

 154. A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, divided into
    Circuits or Journies. Giving a Particular and Diverting Account of
    whatever is Curious and worth Observation, viz.: 1. A Description of
    the principal Cities and Towns, their Situation, Magnitude,
    Government, and Commerce. 2. The Customs, Manners, Speech, as also
    the Exercises, Diversions, and Employment of the Poor. 3. The
    Produce and Improvement of the Lands, the Trade and Manufactures. 4.
    The Sea-ports and Fortifications, the Course of Rivers, and the
    Inland Navigation. 5. The public Edifices, Seats, and Palaces of the
    Nobility and Gentry: with useful Observations upon the whole.
    Particularly fitted for the reading of such as desire to travel
    over the Island. By a Gentleman. London: printed and sold by G.
    Strahan, in Cornhill; W. Mears, at the Lamb, without Temple Bar; R.
    Francklin, under Tom's Coffee-house, Covent-garden; T. Chapman, at
    the Angel in Pall Mall; R. Stagg, in Westminster Hall; and J.
    Graves, in St. James's-street. 1724.

All the subsequent editions vary considerably from the original. This
work is frequently confounded with John Macky's 'Journey through
England, in Familiar Letters from a gentleman here to his Friend abroad.
1722.'

 155. The Great Law of Subordination Considered; or, the Insolence and
    unsufferable Behaviour of Servants in England, duly inquired into.
    Illustrated with a great variety of Examples, historical Cases, and
    remarkable Stories of the Behaviour of some particular Servants,
    suited to all the several Arguments made use of as they go on. In
    Ten Familiar Letters; together with a Conclusion, being an earnest
    and moving Remonstrance to the Housekeepers and Heads of Families
    in Great Britain, pressing them not to cease using their utmost
    Interest (especially at this Juncture) to obtain sufficient Laws
    for the effectual Regulations of the Manners and Behaviour of their
    Servants. As also, a Proposal, containing such Heads, or
    Constitutions, as would effectually answer this great end, and
    bring Servants of every Class to a just, and yet not a grievous
    Regulation. London: sold by S. Harding, at the Post House, in St.
    Martin's-lane, and other Booksellers. 1724. 8vo. pp. 302.

 156. A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, divided into
    Circuits or Journies. Giving a Particular and Diverting Account of
    whatever is curious and worth Observation, viz.: 1. A Description
    of the principal Cities and Towns, their Situation, Magnitude,
    Government, and Commerce. 2. The Customs, Manners, Speech, as also
    the Exercises, Diversions, and Employment of the Poor. 3. The
    Produce and Improvement of the Lands, the Trade and Manufactures. 4.
    The Sea-ports and Fortifications, the Course of Rivers, and the
    Inland Navigation. 5. The public Edifices, Seats, and Palaces of the
    Nobility and Gentry; with useful Observations upon the whole.
    Particularly fitted for the reading of such as desire to travel over
    the Island. With a Map of England and Wales by Mr. Moll. Vol. 2. By
    a Gentleman. London: printed and sold by G. Strahan, in Cornhill; W.
    Mears, at the Lamb, without Temple Bar; R. Francklin, under Tom's
    Coffee-house, Covent-garden; S. Chapman and J. Jackson, in Pall
    Mall; R. Stagg, in Westminster Hall. 1725.

 157. Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business; or, Private Abuses
    public Grievances. Exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and
    exorbitant Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c. With a Proposal
    for Amendment of the same, as also, for the clearing the Streets of
    those Vermin called Shoe Cleaners, and substituting in their stead
    many Thousands of industrious Poor now ready to starve. With divers
    other Hints of great Use to the Public. Humbly submitted to the
    Consideration of our Legislature, and the careful Perusal of all
    Masters and Mistresses of Families. By Andrew Moreton, Esq. London:
    printed for W. Meadows, in Cornhill; and sold by T. Warner,
    Paternoster-row; A. Dodd, without Temple Bar; and E. Nutt, at the
    Royal Exchange. 1725. 8vo. pp. 36.

 158. Mere Nature Delineated; or, a Body without a Soul. Being
    Observations upon 'The Young Forester,' lately brought to town from
    Germany: with suitable Applications. Also a brief Dissertation upon
    the Usefulness and Necessity of Fools, whether political or natural.
    London: printed for T. Warner, at the Black Boy, in Paternoster-row.
    1726. Price 1s. 6d. 8vo. pp. 123.

 159. A New Voyage round the World, by a Course never sailed before.
    Being a Voyage undertaken by some Merchants, who afterwards proposed
    the setting up an East India Company in Flanders. London: printed
    for and sold by A. Bettesworth, at the Red Lion, in Paternoster-row;
    and W. Mears, at the Lamb, without Temple Bar. 1725.

 160. An Essay upon Literature; or, An Inquiry into the Antiquity and
    Origin of Letters; proving that the Two Tables, written by the
    finger of God in Mount Sinai, was the first writing in the world;
    and that all other Alphabets derive from the Hebrew. With a short
    View of the Methods made use of by the Ancients to supply the Want
    of Letters before, and impose the Use of them after they were known.
    London: printed for Thomas Bowles, Printseller, next to the Chapter
    House, St. Paul's Church-yard; John Clark, Bookseller, under the
    Piazza, Royal Exchange; and John Bowles, Printseller, over against
    the Stocks Market. 1726. 8vo. pp. 127.

 161. The Political History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern: in
    two Parts. Part I. Containing a state of the Devil's Circumstances,
    and the various turns of his Affairs, from his Expulsion out of
    Heaven to the Creation of Man; with Remarks on the several Mistakes
    concerning the Reason and Manner of his Fall. Also, his Proceedings
    with Mankind ever since Adam, to the first Planting of the Christian
    Religion in the World. Part II. Containing his more Private Conduct,
    down to the present Time; his Government, his Appearance, his Manner
    of Working, and the Tools he works with.

    Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,
    Be falsely charged and causelessly accused;
    When men unwilling to be blamed alone,
    Shift all the crimes on him which are their own.

    London: printed for T. Warner, at the Black Boy in Paternoster-row.
    1726. 8vo. pp. 408.

In the second edition, published in the same year, it is called 'The
History of the Devil,' &c., but in the subsequent editions the original
title is restored. A third edition was called for in 1734; a fourth in
1739; another in 1770; and since then it has been frequently reprinted
both in London and the country.

 162. The History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements in the
    several Arts and Sciences; particularly the great branches of
    Commerce, Navigation, and Plantation, in all parts of the known
    World. London: printed for W. Mears, at the Lamb; F. Clay, at the
    Bible; and D. Browne, at the Black Swan, without Temple Bar. 1727.

 163. A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, divided into
    Circuits or Journies. Giving a Particular and Diverting Account of
    whatever is curious and worth Observation, viz.: 1. A Description of
    the principal Cities and Towns, their Situation, Magnitude,
    Government, and Commerce. 2. The Customs, Manners, Speech, as also
    the Exercises, Diversions, and Employment of the Poor. 3. The
    Produce and Improvement of the Lands, the Trade and Manufactures. 4.
    The Sea-ports and Fortifications, the Course of Rivers, and the
    Inland Navigation. 5. The public Edifices, Seats, and Palaces of the
    Nobility and Gentry: with useful Observations upon the whole.
    Particularly fitted for the reading of such as desire to travel over
    the Island. Vol. 3. Which completes the work, and contains a Tour
    through Scotland, &c. With a Map of Scotland by Mr. Mole. By a
    Gentleman. London: printed and sold by G. Strahan, in Cornhill; W.
    Mears, at the Lamb, without Temple Bar; and R. Stagg in Westminster
    Hall. 1727.

 164. A System of Magic; or, A History of the Black Art. Being an
    Historical Account of Mankind's most early Dealings with the Devil,
    and how the Acquaintance on both sides first began.

    Our magic now commands the troops of hell,
    The devil himself submits to charm and spell.
    The conjuror in his orders and his rounds,
    Just whistles up his spirits, as men do hounds;
    The obsequious devil obeys the sorcerer's skill,
    The mill turns round the horse, that first turns round the mill.

    London: printed and sold by J. Roberts, in Warwick-lane. 1727. 8vo.
    pp. 403.

 165. An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions. Being an
    Account of what they are, and are not. As also, how we may
    distinguish between the Apparitions of Good and Evil Spirits, and
    how we ought to behave to them. With a great Variety of Surprising
    and Diverting Examples, never published before.

    By death transported to the eternal shore,
    Souls so removed revisit us no more;
    Engrossed with joys of a superior kind,
    They leave the trifling thoughts of life behind.

    London: printed and sold by J. Roberts, in Warwick-lane. 1727. 8vo.
    pp. 395.

This work was issued for the third time, in 1738, with the following
title: 'The Secrets of the Invisible World Disclosed; or, An Universal
History of Apparitions, Sacred and Profane, under all Denominations,
whether Angelical, Diabolical, or Human Souls departed, showing--1.
Their various Returns to this World; with some Rules to know, by their
Manner of Appearing, if they are Good or Evil ones. 2. The Differences
of the Apparitions of Ancient and Modern Times; and an Inquiry into the
Spiritual Doctrine of Spirits. 3. The many Species of Apparitions, their
real Existence and Operations by Divine Appointment. 4. The nature of
seeing Ghosts before and after Death; and how we should behave towards
them. 5. The Effects of Fancy, Vapours, Dreams, Hyppo, and of real and
imaginary Appearances. 6. A Collection of the most Authentic Relations
of Apparitions, particularly that surprising one attested by the learned
Dr. Scott. By Andrew Moreton, Esq. London: printed and sold by J.
Roberts, in Warwick-lane.' 8vo. pp. 395. It has since been reprinted in
a smaller size.

 166. The Protestant Monastery; or, a Complaint against the Brutality
    of the present Age, particularly the Pertness and Insolence of our
    Youth to aged Persons. With a Caution to People in Years how they
    give the Staff out of their own Hands, and leave themselves at the
    Mercy of others; concluding with a Proposal for erecting a
    Protestant Monastery, where Persons of small Fortunes may end their
    Days in Plenty, Ease, and Credit, without burthening their
    Relations, or accepting Public Charities. By Andrew Moreton, Esq.,
    Author of 'Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business.' London:
    printed for W. Meadows, at the Angel, in Cornhill; and other
    Booksellers. 1727. 8vo. pp. 31.

 167. Parochial Tyranny; or, the Housekeeper's Complaint against the
    insupportable Exactions and partial Assessments of Select Vestries,
    &c., with a plain Detection of many Abuses committed in the
    Distribution of Public Charities: together with a practicable
    Proposal for Amendment of the same, which will not only take off
    great part of the Parish Taxes now subsisting, but ease Parishioners
    from serving troublesome offices, or paying exorbitant Fines. By
    Andrew Moreton, Esq. London: printed for W. Meadows, at the Angel,
    in Cornhill; and other Booksellers, 8vo.

 168. A New Family Instructor. In Familiar Discourses between a Father
    and his Children, on the most Essential Points of the Christian
    Religion. In Two Parts. Part I. Containing a Father's Instructions
    to his Son upon his going to Travel into Popish Countries; and to
    the rest of his Children on his Son's turning Papist; confirming
    them in the Protestant Religion, against the Absurdities of Popery.
    Part II. Instructions against the Three Grand Errors of the Times;
    viz.: 1. Asserting the Divine Authority of the Scripture against the
    Deists. 2. Proofs that the Messias is already come, &c.; against the
    Atheists and Jews. 3. Asserting the Divinity of Jesus Christ, that
    He was really the same with the Messias, and that Messias was to be
    really God; against our modern heretics. With a Poem on the Divine
    Nature of Jesus Christ; in Blank Verse. By the Author of 'The Family
    Instructor.' London: printed for T. Warner, at the Black Boy, in
    Paternoster-row. 1727. 8vo. pp. 384.

A second edition, with a varying title, was published in 1732, by C.
Rivington and T. Warner. It is there called 'A New Family Instructor:
containing a Brief and Clear Defence of the Christian Religion in
general, against the Errors of the Atheists, Jews, Deists, and Sceptics:
and of the Protestant Religion in particular, against the Superstitions
of the Church of Rome. In Familiar Discourses between a Father and his
Children. In Two Parts, &c.

 169. A Treatise concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed;
    showing, 1. The Nature of Matrimony, its sacred Original, and the
    true Meaning of its Institution. 2. The gross Abuse of Matrimonial
    Chastity, from the wrong Notions which have possessed the World,
    degenerating even to Whoredom. 3. The Diabolical Practice of
    attempting to prevent Child-bearing by Physical Preparations. 4.
    The fatal Consequences of clandestine or forced Marriages, through
    the Persuasion, Interest, or Influence of Parents and Relations, to
    wed the Person they have no Love for, but often an Aversion to. 5.
    Of unequal Matches as in the Disproportion of Age; and how such
    many ways occasion a Matrimonial Whoredom. 6. How married Persons
    may be guilty of Conjugal Lewdness, and that a Man may, in effect,
    make a Whore of his own Wife. Also many other Particulars of Family
    concern. London: printed for T. Warner, at the Black Boy, in
    Paternoster-row. 1727. Price 5s. 8vo. pp. 406.

This work was at first called 'Conjugal Lewdness; or, Matrimonial
Whoredom;' but this title being considered offensive to delicacy, the
author immediately cancelled it, and substituted the above title.

 170. The Complete English Tradesman: in Familiar Letters, directing
    him in all the several Parts and Professions of Trade; viz.: 1. Of
    acquainting him with the Business during his Apprenticeship. 2. Of
    Writing to Correspondents in a Trading Style. 3. Of Diligence and
    Application, as the Life of all Business. 4. Cautions against
    Over-trading. 5. Of the ordinary Occasions of a Tradesman's Ruin;
    such as Expensive Living, too early Marrying, Innocent Diversions,
    too much Credit, being above Business, Dangerous Partnerships, &c.
    6. Directions in several Distresses of a Tradesman, when he comes
    to fail. 7. Of Tradesmen compounding with other Tradesmen, and why
    they are so particularly severe upon one another. 8. Of Tradesmen
    ruining one another by Rumours and Scandal. 9. Of the customary
    Frauds of Trade, and particularly of Trading Lies. 10. Of Credit,
    and how it is only to be supported by Honesty. 11. Of Punctual
    Paying Bills, and thereby Maintaining Credit. 12. Of the Dignity
    and Honour of Trade in England more than in other Countries. To
    which is added, a Supplement; containing, 1. A Warning against
    Tradesmen's borrowing Money upon Interest. 2. A Caution against
    that destructive Practice of Drawing and Remitting, as also
    Discounting Promissory Bills, merely for a Supply of Cash. 3.
    Directions for the Tradesman's Accounts, with brief, but plain
    Examples and Specimens for Bookkeeping. 4. Of keeping a Duplicate
    or Pocket Ledger, in case of Fire. London: printed for C.
    Rivington, at the Bible and Crown, St. Paul's Church-yard. 1727.
    8vo. pp. 474.

 171. The Complete English Tradesman, Vol. II. In Two Parts. Part I.
    Directed chiefly to the more experienced Tradesman; with Cautions
    and Advices to them after they are thriven, and suppose to be grown
    rich, viz., 1. Against running out of their Business into needless
    Projects and dangerous Adventures, no Tradesman being above
    Disaster. 2. Against Oppressing one another by Engrossing,
    Underselling, Combinations in Trade, &c. 3. Advices, that when he
    leaves off Business, he should part Friends with the World; the
    great Advantages of it; with a Word of the scandalous Character of a
    Purse-proud Tradesman. 4. Against being Litigious and Vexatious, and
    apt to go to Law for Trifles; with some Reasons why Tradesmen's
    Differences should, if possible, be all ended by Arbitration. Part
    II. Being useful generals in Trade, describing the Principles and
    Foundation of the Home Trade of Great Britain; with large Tables of
    our Manufactures, Calculations of the Product, Shipping, Carriage of
    Goods by Land, Importation from Abroad, Consumption at Home, &c., by
    all which the infinite number of our Tradesmen are employed, and the
    general Wealth of the Nation raised and increased. The whole
    calculated for the Use of all our Inland Tradesmen, as well in the
    City as in the Country. London: Charles Rivington. 1727. 8vo. pp.
    474.

 172. A Plan of the English Commerce. Being a Complete Prospect of the
    Trade of this Nation, as well the Home Trade as the Foreign. In
    Three Parts: 1. Containing a View of the present Magnitude of the
    English Trade as it respects the Exportation of our own Growth and
    Manufacture. 2. The Importation of Merchant Goods from Abroad. 3.
    The prodigious Consumption of both at Home. Part II. Containing an
    Answer to that great and important Question now depending, whether
    our Trade, and especially our Manufactures, are in a declining
    Condition, or no? Part III. Containing several Proposals, entirely
    new, for Extending and Improving our Trade, and Promoting the
    Consumption of our Manufactures in Countries wherewith we have
    hitherto had no Commerce. Humbly offered to the Consideration of
    King and Parliament. London: printed for Charles Rivington. 1728.
    8vo. pp. 368.

To the second edition in 1730, were added 'An Appendix, containing a
View of the Increase of Commerce, not only of England, but of all the
Trading Nations of Europe since the Peace with Spain.' A third edition
in 8vo. was printed by Rivington in 1737; in which it is called, by
mistake, the _second_.

 173. Augusta Triumphans: or, the Way to make London the most
    Flourishing City in the Universe. 1. By establishing a University,
    where Gentlemen may have an Academical Education, under the Eye of
    their Friends. 2. To prevent much, &c., by an Hospital for
    Foundlings. 3. By suppressing pretended Mad-Houses, where many of
    the Fair Sex are unjustly Confined, while their Husbands keep
    Mistresses, &c., and many Widows are locked up for the sake of
    their Jointures. 4. To save our Children from Destruction, by
    clearing the Streets of Impudent Strumpets, suppressing
    Gambling-Tables, and Sunday Debauches. 5. To avoid the expensive
    Importation of Foreign Musicians, by forming an Academy of our own.
    6. To save our Lower Class of People from utter Ruin, and render
    them useful, by preventing the immoderate use of Geneva; with a
    frank Exposure of many other common Abuses, and incontestible Rules
    for Amendment. Concluding with an effectual Method to prevent
    Street Robberies; and a Letter to Colonel Robinson, on account of
    the Orphan's Tax. London: printed for J. Roberts and other
    Booksellers. 1728. 8vo. pp. 63.

 174. Second Thoughts are Best; or, a further Improvement of a late
    Sch

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