ber of that eminent corporation. As he had endeavoured to promote the revolution by his pen and his fword, he had the fatisfaction 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, compofed of the chief citizens, and commanded by the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, attended the King and Queen from Whitehall to the Manfiom Heufe. Among thefe troopers, gallantly mounted, and richly accoutred, was Daniel De Foe, if we may believe Oldmixon *. While our author thus difplayed his zeal, and courted notice, he is faid to have acted as a hosier in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill: but the hofier† and the poet are very irreconcileable characters. With the ufual imprudence of fuperior genius, he was carried by his vivacity into companies who were gratified by his wit. He spent thofe hours with a fmall fociety for the cultivation of polite learning, which he ought to have employed in the calculations of the counting-house: and being obliged to abfcond from his creditors in 1692, he naturally attri * Hift. vol. ii. p. 37. + Being reproached by Tutchin in his Obfervator with having been bred an apprentice to a hofier, De Foe afferts, in May 1705, that he never was a hofier, or an apprentice, but admits that he had been a Trader. [Review, vol. ii. p. 149.] Oldmixon, who never speaks favourably of De Foe, allows that he had never been a merchant otherwise than peddling a little to Portugal. Hift. vol. ii. p. 519.-But, Peddling to Portugal makes a Trader. buted thofe misfortunes to the war, which were probably owing to his own mifconduct. An angry creditor took out a commiffion of bankruptcy, which was foon fuperfeded on the petition of those to whom he was moft indebted, who accepted a compofition on his fingle bond. This he punctually paid by the efforts of unwearied diligence. But fome of thofe creditors, who had been thus fatisfied, falling afterwards into diftrefs themfelves, De Foe voluntarily paid them their whole claims; being then, in rifire circumstances from King William's favour *. Twyfuch an example of honefty, as it would be unalt to De Foe and to the world to conceal. Being reproached in 1705 by Lord Haverfham with mercenarinefs, our author feelingly mentions; "How, with a numerous family, and no helps but his own industry, he had forced his way with undifcouraged diligence, through a fea of misfortunes, and reduced his debts, exclufive of compofition, from feventeen thousand to lefs than five thoufand pounds +." He continued to carry on the pan-tile works near Tilbury-fort; though probably with no great fuccefs. It was afterwards farcaftically faid, that he did not, like the Egyptians, require bricks without ftraw, but, like the Jews, required bricks without paying his labourers. He was born for other enterprifes, which, if they did not gain him opulence, have conferred a renown, that will defcend the ftream of time with the language wherein his works are written. While he was yet under thirty, and had mortified no great man by his fatire, qr offended any party * The Mercator, No. 101. Reply to Lord Haverfham's Vindication. by by his pamphlets, he had acquired friends by his powers of pleafing, who did not, with the ufual infability of friendships, defert him amidft his diftref fes. They offered to fettle him as a factor at Cadiz, where, as a trader, he had fome previous correspondence. In this fituation he might have procured bufinefs by his care, and accumulated wealth without a rifque but, as he affures us in his old age, Providence, which had other work for him to do, placed a fecret averfion in his mind to quitting England. He had confidence enough in his own talents to think, that on this field he could gather laurels, or at least gain a livelihood. He wrote, 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. as he fays, many fheets about the coin; he propofed a register for feamen, long before the act of Parliament was thought of; he projected county banks and factories for goods; he mentioned a propofal for a commiffion of inquiries into bankrupt's eftates; he contrived a penfion-office for the relief of the poor. At length, in January 1696-7, he published his Essay upon Projects; which he dedicated to Dalby Thomas, not as a Commiffioner of glass duties, under whom he then ferved, or as a friend, to whom he acknowledges obligations; but as to the most proper judge on the fubject. 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 fhew a wide range of know ledge, ledge, he fuggefts to King William the imitation of Lewis 14th, in the establishment of a fociety "for encouraging polite learning, for refining the English language, and for preventing barbarifms of manners." Prior offered in 1700 the fame 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 Profpect of Peace, that our daring language-fhall Sport no more in arbitrary found. However his projects were taken, certain it is, that when De Foe ceased to be a trader, he was, by the interpofition of Dalby Thomas probably, appointed in 1695, accomptant to the Commiffioners for managing the duties on glass; who, with our Author ceased to act, on the first of Auguft, 1699, when the tax was fuppreffed by act of Parliament *. From projects of ways and means, De Foe's ardour foon carried him into the thorny paths of fatiric poetry; and his muse produced, in January 1700-1, The True-born Englishman. Of the origin of this fatire, which was the cause of much good fortune, but of fome difafters, 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 perfonally upon the King, then upon the Dutch nation, and, after having reproached his Majefty with crimes that his worst enemies could not think of without horror, he fums 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, * 10-11 Wm. III. ch. 18. which I never could hope fhould have met with fo general an acceptation." The fale was prodigious, and probably unexampled; as Sacheverel's trial had not then appeared. The True-born Englishman was anfwered, paragraph by paragraph, in February 1700-1, by a writer, who brings hafte to apologize for dulnefs. 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 occafion," fays he, "of my being known to his Majefty; how I was afterwards received by him; how employed abroad; and how, above my capacity of deferving, rewarded, is no part of the prefent cafe." Of the particulars, which the Author thus declined to tell, nothing now can 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 Ryfwick, our Author published AN ARGUMENT, to prove that a standing army, with confent of Parliament, is not inconfiftent with a free government. "Liberty and property," fays he," are the glorious attributes of the English nation; and the dearer they are to us, the lefs danger we are in of lofing them but I could never yet fee it proved, that the danger of lofing them by a small army was fuch, as we should expose ourselves to all the world for it. It is not the King of England alone, but the fword of England in the hand of the King, that gives laws of peace and war now to Europe: and those who would thus wreft the fword out of his hand in time of peace, bid the fairest of all men I |