THE
LIFE AND ADVENTURES
OF
ROBINSON CRUSOE,
OF YORK, MARINER.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF
HIS TRAVELS ROUND THREE PARTS OF THE GLOBE.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL.I.
1812.
THE LIFE OF
DANIEL DE FOE.
Daniel De Foe was descended from a respectablefamily in the county of Northampton, and bornin London, about the year 1663. His father, JamesFoe, was a butcher, in the parish of St. Giles's,Cripplegate, and a protestant dissenter. Why thesubject of this memoir prefixed the De to his familyname cannot now be ascertained, nor did he at anyperiod of his life think it necessary to give his reasonsto the public. The political scribblers of theday, however, thought proper to remedy this lackof information, and accused him of possessing solittle of the amor patriae, as to make the addition inorder that he might not be taken for an Englishman;though this idea could have had no other foundationthan the circumstance of his having, in consequenceof his zeal for King William, attacked the prejudicesof his countrymen in his "Trueborn Englishman."
After receiving a good education at an academyat Newington, young De Foe, before he had attainedhis twenty-first year, commenced his career as anauthor, by writing a pamphlet against a very prevailingsentiment in favour of the Turks, who wereat that time laying siege to Vienna. This production,being very inferior to those of his matureryears, was very little read, and the indignant author,despairing of success with his pen, had recourse tothe sword; or, as he termed it, when boasting of theexploit in his latter years, "displayed his attachmentto liberty and protestanism," by joining theill-advised insurrection under the Duke of Monmouth,in the west. On the failure of that unfortunateenterprise, he returned again to the metropolis;and it is not improbable, but that the circumstanceof his being a native of London, and his personnot much known in that part of the kingdomwhere the rebellion took place, might facilitate hisescape, and be the means of preventing his beingbrought to trial for his share in the transaction.With the professions of a writer and a soldier, Mr.De Foe, in the year 1685, joined that of a trader;he was first engaged as a hosier, in Cornhill, andafterwards as a maker of bricks and pantiles, nearTilbury Fort, in Essex; but in consequence of spendingthose hours in the hilarity of the tavern whichhe ought to have employed in the calculations ofthe counting-house, his commercial schemes proved[pg vii]unsuccessful; and in 1694 he was obliged to abscondfrom his creditors, not failing to attribute thosemisfortunes to the war and the severity of the times,which were doubtless owing to his own misconduct.It is much to his credit, however, that after havingbeen freed from his debts by composition, and beingin prosperous circumstances from King William'sfavour, he voluntarily paid most of his creditorsboth the principal and interest of their claims. Thisis such an example of honesty as it would be unjustto De Foe and to the world to conceal. The amountof the sums thus paid must have been very considerable,as he afterwards feelingly ment