DK FOE, DANIEL. 



DE FOE, DANIEL. 



: H 



heretofore brought from HolUod. The works were at Tilbury Kort, 

 bat they were not very successful u far as regarded profit, and bin 

 armt in 1703 put a complete stop to the undertaking. De Foe's 

 lively imagination, ardent temper, bis eager interest in politics, and 

 fondness for literature, disqualified him for commercial matters. He 

 discovered this, and be never again ventured into business. 



In the beginning of 1701 he published the ' True-born Englishman,' 

 a pamphlet in answer to a libel on King William, which had been 

 written by Tutchin. The sale of this work was quite unexampled. 

 De Foe says had he enjoyed the profit of his own labour he would 

 hare gained 1000/. ; but it was pirated, and 80,000 copies, published 

 at a peony or twopence, were sold in the streets. The work however 

 pleased the king, who not only admitted the author to an audience, 

 but bestowed on him the more substantial reward of a present of 

 money. In May 1701 the famous Petition of the Freeholders of Kent 

 was presented ; the House of Commons voted it to be " scandalous, 

 insolent, and seditious," and committed the deputation who brought 

 it up to prison. In a few darn afterwards a packet was delivered to 

 the speaker, as he entered the House of Commons, containing the 

 ' L*gion Memorial,' as it was called, sent by 200,000 Englishmen, 

 declaring that the House had acted illegally in committing any one to 

 prison for presenting any petition whatever, as the subject had a right 

 to present any such in a peaceable way. The paper created a terrible 

 commotion ; a committee was appointed to iiiquire into the terrible 

 conspiracy, and the king was prayed to stop these threatening petitions. 

 The memorial was no doubt De Foe's, and it is most probable that it 

 was delivered by himself. From the good-will that the king appeared 

 to bear him, De Foe had hopes of again obtaining some public employ- 

 ment ; but these expectations were soon destroyed by the death of the 

 king and the accession of Queen Anne. In the now reign he could 

 expect no favours from the government; he had always been obnoxious 

 to the house of Stuart and its adherents. This source of profit then 

 being dried up, without much chance of its re-opening, he betook 

 himself diligently to bis pen, to which alone he could safely trust for 

 his subsistence. He wrote with unwearied assiduity ; but the loss of 

 his patron, the king, was soon severely felt. By an ironical pamphlet, 

 called ' The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' he gave bitter offence 

 to many powerful bodies in the state. The High Church party 

 resented it as a libel, and offered a reward for the apprehension of the 

 author. The House of Commons (February 25, 1702-3) angrily 

 resolved that this scandalous book should be burnt by the common 

 hangman ; and the secretary of state issued the following proclama- 

 tion : " Whereas Daniel De Foe, alias De Fooe, is charged with 

 writing a scandalous and seditious pamphlet, entitled 'The S!. >rte-t 

 Way with the Dissenters.' He is a middle-sized spare man, about forty 

 yean old, of a brown complexion, and dark-brown coloured hair, but 

 wears a wig : a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole 

 near his mouth ; was born in London, and for many years was a hose- 

 factor in Freeman's Yard in Curuhill, aud now is owner of the brick 

 and pantile work near Tilbury Furt iu Essex. Whoever shall discover 

 the said Daniel De Foe to one of her Majeaty's principal secretaries 

 of state, or any .of her Majesty ' justices of peace, so as he may be 

 apprehended, shall have a reward of SO/. : to be paid upon such 

 dUcovery." He was shortly after caught, fined, pilloried, and impri- 

 sotted. " Thus," says he, " was I a second time ruined ; for by thin 

 aflkir I lost above 3500f (BaUantyne's ' Mem. of De Fue,' in Sir 

 W. Scott's 'Prose Works,' voL iv.) During the time that he was 

 confined in Newgate, bo wrote a ' Hymn to the Pillory,' |uMi hed 

 pamphlets and poems, and matured a scheme for ' The Heview,' a 

 paper exclusively written by himself, which for more than nine years 

 be continued to publish twice or three times a week. Alter he had 

 been a prinoner for more than a year, Harley, who was then secretary 

 of state, interceded with the queen for his release, who at once sent 

 money to his wife, who wss in great distress, and, after some deUy, 

 paid his fine and set him at liberty. De Foe, once more free, took a 

 bouse at Bury St. Edmunds, whither ho removed with his wife and 

 children, and recommenced his literary labours. He did not continue 

 there very long; and be slates that both Harley and Ooilolpbin 

 employed him in the service of the queen, commissions attended 

 " oftentimes with difficulty and danger," and once in a " foreign 

 country.'* H< also continued to pour forth pamphlets in Terse aud 

 pros*, on "religious and political subjects; one of them was the 

 True U.'lnti .n of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal,' affixed to a 

 translation of ' Drelincourt on Death,' which carried off an edition 

 of that work which had been for a long time lumbering tbo pub- 

 lisher's shelves, and caused many oilier editions to be subsequently 

 issue-!. 



lu 1706 Do Foe was recommended by Lord Oodolphin to the queen 

 as a fit and proper person to send to Scotland to promote the Union. 

 This business being entrusted to him, he resided iu Edinburgh until 

 the end of 1707, when, returning to London, bo wrote an account of 

 the nibj'ct with which he had be.n engaged, which was published in 

 1709. For bis services during this mission the queen granted him a 

 pension, which political changes not long permitting him to enjoy, he 

 was again compelled to gain his livelihood by writing. The attacks in 

 bis political pamphlet* now a second timo got him into difficulties ; 

 for two papers, one entitled 'What if the Queen should diet' the 

 other called ' What if the Pretender should come T (the works were 



palpably ironical, but he was again misunderstood), he was find 800t, 

 and in default of payment was committed to Newgate. His > 

 was not so long as bis first imprisonment ; ho was liberated by tie 

 queen in November 1713. 



After the death of Anne, in 1714, his enemies so assailed him from 

 every quarter, that ho was compelled in self-defence to draw up an 

 account of bis political conduct, aud of the sufferings he bad endured. 

 The continual attacks of his opponents so weighed upon his miud and 

 depressed his spirits, that his health gave way, and an illness wa 

 brought on which terminated in on apoplectic fit. When he recovered, 

 he continued to write, but thought it prudent to desert his old field of 

 political satire and invective, and to enter upon new ones. Hi 

 production was of a religious character, the ' Family Instructor,' 

 published anonymously in 1715, which became to popular that in 

 1722 ho wrote 'Religious Courtship,' which was equally successful. 

 To afford entertainment by talcs of fiction was his next task, and 1 . 

 put forth, iu 1719, when he was fifty-eight years old, the first part of 

 his inimitable 'Adventures of Kobinsou Crusoe,' which no stoi 

 ever exceeded in popularity. The merits of this work have beuu 

 disparaged on account of its want of originality ; " but really the 

 story of Selkirk, which had been published a few years before, a: 

 to have furnished our author with so little beyond the bare idea of a 

 man living on an uninhabited island, that it seems quite iuiu< 

 whether he took his hint from that or any other similar story.' 

 Walter Scott, ' Prose Works.') The great success and profits ariaiug 

 from the first induced him to write a second and third part, each of 

 which had less merit than its predecessor, the lost being a mere book- 

 making job. We have not space to enumerate the multitude of 

 pamphlets and books which our author, published. 'The Adventures 

 of Captain Singleton,' ' The Fortunes of Moll Flanders,' ' The History 

 of Colonel Jack,' 'The Fortunate Mistress,' 'The Memoirs of a 

 Cavalier,' and ' The History of the Plague,' which were among tha 

 most popular of his works that succeeded ' Robinson Crusoe,' form 

 only a small portion of his writiugs. His biographers, Chalmers and 

 Wilson, have published catalogues of the writings of De Foe, and ono 

 was also published as a pamphlet by Thomas Itodd, but it is very 

 probable that they are incomplete, and that many of his works which 

 were only of a temporary interest have been lost. 



De Foe died at the age of seventy, on the 24th of April 1731, in 

 the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. He left a widow and sevcr.il 

 children, among whom was Norton De Foe, the author of ' Memoir.] 

 of the Princes of the House of Orange,' who is thus satirised in Pope's 

 Dunciad : 



" Norton from Daniel and Ostrcca sprung. 

 Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tor.guc." 



A great-grandson is yet (1856) living, reduced at the ago of si . 

 eight from the position of a master tradesman to poverty, for . 

 in 1854 and 1855 a fund was raised to prevent u descendant of so great 

 an ornament to his country becoming like his ancestor a sufferer au.l 

 a x.'in-iliceto extrcmo want. 



De Foe's powers as a writer are of no ordinary stamp. He w.i* 

 not a poet, but he could write vigorous verse, and his satire i 

 and trenchant. If he bad been in affluent circumstances he might 

 have written lees and with more care, but his necessities often drove 

 him to the printing-press. The disputes of the time afforded au 

 inexhaustible fund of topics, and the violence of party spirit was din- 

 played by all factions in pamphlets, which were the weapons of 

 political warfare. To this style of writing De Foe had two reasons 

 for applying himself; first, because it was the surest to meet with a 

 ready sale, and to bring him in a pecuniary return; and secondly, 

 because he was himself an eager politician. As a Whig, he opposed 

 the House of Stuart ; as a Protestant, he wrote against Catholicism ; 

 aud as a Dissenter, against the church. His attention however was 

 not confined to the hackneyed topics of the succession and the church : 

 he treated of finance, trade, and bankruptcy, as well as of the 

 with Scotland ; and all this, independently of his lieview, which con- 

 tained articles on foreign and domestic intelligence, politics, and 

 commerce. "The fertility of De Foe," says Sir Walter Scott, "wan 

 astonishing. He wrote on all occasions, aud on all subjects, aud 

 seemingly hod little time for preparation on the subject in baud, tut 

 treated it from the stores which his memory retained of early n : 

 and such hints aa he had caught up in society, not one of which seeniu 

 to hve been lost upon him." ('Prose Works.') Of his He, view, w.i 

 believe no complete copy is iu existence : however great was the 

 interest that it excited during the time of its publication, which con- 

 tinual for nine yean. But it is not for the class of writings that we 

 hare been speaking of, although they were of undoubted ability, thnt 

 De Foe chiefly is and will continue to be celebrated; it is by his 

 popular narratives that his great fame lias been obtained. Of these 

 we may reckon three kinds: 1st, Tha account of remarkable 

 occurrence*, as the 'Journal of the Plague Year,' and the 'Memoirs 

 of a Cavalier ; ' 2nd, The account of mariners, privateers, thieve -, 

 swindlers, and robbers, as ' Robinson Crusoe,' the piracies of ' C 

 Singleton,' the histories of ' Colonel Jack,' ' Moll Flanders,' 

 'Koxaim:' 3rd, The descriptions of supernatural appearances, as thu 

 'Life of Duncan Campbell,' a ' Treatise on Spirits and Apparit 

 the very degenerate third port of ' Hobumn Crusoe,' and the ' . 



