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THE

SURPRISING ADVENTURES

OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE;

WITH 22 PLATES; & A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

PUBLIC LIBRARY

758738 A

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R 1936

KRAUS 24DEC34

MEMOIR.

THE
HE Life of DANIEL DE FOE affords one of the many instances
on record, to vindicate men of letters from the charge of
being only fit for the retirement of the study. Nearly the whole
of his existence was spent in a busy contest with the most vio-
lent politicians of the day, and though unsuccessful in his pri-
vate speculations, his commercial skill and habits of business
were admired and rewarded by persons of the highest authority
in the government of the state. Nor was his literary character
uninfluenced by this his activity in the world. His most cele-
brated productions owe to that circumstance many of the fea-
tures which have rendered them so universally popular-the
rich lessons of experience in which they abound, and the deep,
moral pathos so much more generally at the command of a mind
chastened by the realities of life, than at that of one softened
only by its own fancies or meditations.

This celebrated man was born in the year 1661, in the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and was the son of a respectable butcher, who had sufficient success in business to retire on a comfortable competency, and educate his son for the ministry. As devoted partizans of the Nonconformists, his parents employed every means to impress his youthful mind with an ardent attachment to the principles of that then persecuted people. His disposition naturally inclining him to a love of freedom, he eagerly embraced the views with which he was brought up; and the earliest indications of his genius bore evidence of the powers with which he would, in subsequent years, enter the arena of theological controversy.

His

Owing, however, either to some circumstance with which we are not acquainted, or to his own disinclination to the profession, he did not enter the ministry; and we find him, when settled in life, named as a citizen of London, and a hosier. first publication is said to have been an essay on the war between the emperor of Austria and Turkey, which appeared when he was about twenty-one, and was followed by some other political pamphlets which abound in that species of satire and caustic argument, which pervade, more or less, the whole of his polemical writings.

With his usual enthusiasm of feeling, he joined, when fourand-twenty, in the perilous enterprise of the unfortunate duke

of Monmouth; but, after having fought valiantly on his side and witnessed his discomfiture, he had the good fortune to escap the sufferings which fell so heavily on the greater part of hi followers. The dangers, however, which he thus narrowl eluded, had not the effect of cooling his ardour, or rendering him less courageous in the manifestation of his principles. The reign of James II., which gave employment to such a multitud of controversialists, was a golden age to a man like De Foe; and he poured forth pamphlet after pamphlet with inexhaustible vigour of wit and argument. He had a residence at this time at Tooting in Surrey, where he was regarded by the Dissenters as their chief and representative in the hard conflict they had to wage in support of their rights with the bigoted monarch He is supposed, however, to have been still in business, and to have had an agency house in Cornhill.

On the accession of William and Mary, and the passing of the Toleration Act, his occupation, as a polemic, was in some degree superseded, and about the year 1692, while chiefly engaged in commercial speculations, he made a journey to Spain, in the hope, it appears, of improving his fortune by some profitable speculation: but his expectations failed, and he returned home to suffer the mortification and distress attending on bankruptcy. The narrative he has left respecting this melancholy state of his circumstances is highly interesting, and gives us a clear and indisputable proof of the virtue and elevation of his mind. By unwearied industry, he in a few years reduced his debts from seventeen to five thousand pounds; and, in the darkest period of his distress, his magnanimity and religious feeling subdued every murmur of discontent.

When, under the protection of the bankrupt law, he might have defrauded his creditors, he still laboured assiduously to satisfy their claims; and in allusion to the duty of bankrupts in this respect, he observed, "Never think yourselves discharged in conscience, though you be discharged in law. The obligation of an honest mind can never die. No title of honour, no recorded merit, no mark of distinction, can exceed that lasting appellation, an honest man.' He that lies buried under such an epitaph has more said of him than volumes of history can contain. The payment of debts after fair discharges, is the clearest title to such a character that I know: and how any man can begin again, and hope for a blessing from heaven, or favour from men, without such a resolution, I know not." That this was not a mere profession of honest sentiments is clearly proved by the fact above-mentioned, of the care he took in the actual discharge of his debts. But if any other testimony be necessary to the excellence of his character, we have that even of one