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 favor from man, without such a resolution, I know not."

Years afterwards, when he was suffering under the obloquy and punishment of his famous ironical satire, entitled, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," the following testimony to his honesty was granted him by John Tutchin, one of his sharpest and earliest antagonists, who entered the lists of controversy with him, in a pamphlet intitled, " Dissenter and Observator," and who afterwards, by an illiberal attack on King William, in a poem called "The Foreigners," drew forth De Foe's indignant reply, in his famous satire of "The True-born Englishman." "I must do one piece of justice to the man," observes the writer, "though I love him no better than you do it is this, that meeting a gentleman in a coffee-house, when I and every body else were railing at him, the gentleman took us up with this short speech, Gentlemen,' said he, I know this De Foe as well as any of you, for I was one of his creditors, and compounded with him, and discharged him fully. Several years afterwards he sent for me, and though he was clearly discharged, he paid me all the remainder of his debt voluntarily, and of his own accord; and he told me, that as far as God should enable him, he intended to do so with every body. When he had done, he desired me to set my hand to a

paper to acknowledge it, which I readily did, and found a great many names to the paper before me; and I think myself bound to own it, though I am no friend to the book he wrote, no more than you.' ," We have dwelt the more fully on this subject, because, thanks to the liberal spirit and enlarged views of modern times, the sole disgrace in the present day in failing, seems to be that of failing for a small sum; and it would be thought as ungentlemanly to remind any one of a debt thus nominally liquidated, however ruinous in its consequences to the creditor, as it would be impolitic for the debtor himself to bring his bankruptcy to recollection, by any old-fashioned prudence or decency in altering his mode of living according to his circumstances, or, as the homely wisdom of our ancestors concisely expressed it, "cutting his coat according to his cloth."

The estimation in which De Foe's integrity was held by his friends, manifested itself in an offer which they made of settling him as a factor at Cadiz, on highly advantageous terms; but all his misfortunes had not taught him to attend to his own interests, as he would have done by accepting the proposition; instead of which he chose to remain in comparative seclusion at home, employing himself with writing "An Essay on Projects;" among which was a plan for the ways and means of raising money for the war just then begun with France, which he proposed to do by a general assessment of personal property; and so well satisfied was he of the efficacy of his scheme, that he offered to farm the revenue arising from it

himself, at a rent of three millions annually, giving good security for the payment. “And when that is done," says he, “the nation would get three more by paying it, which is very strange, but might easily be made out." Such are the sunny visions that throw their radiance over the path of the projector and politician, to the bewilderment of weaker optics, who see with astonishment a rational being gazing on the stars above his head, instead of avoiding the ditch at his feet! In spite of himself, however, the circumstances of De Foe began to assume a better aspect. He was appointed by government, without any solicitation of his own, accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, in which office he continued until the tax itself was repealed in 1699. Much about the same time he was made secretary to the tile and brick works at Tilbury, in Essex, which employment he held for several years, and those years might be termed the most prosperous of his worldly career.

The accession of King William to the throne was every way an important epoch in the life of De Foe. He had, both in his public capacity as a writer, and in his individual one as a dissenter, taken an intense interest in the progress of the revolution. The general bent of his productions could not fail to render him acceptable to William's government; and his poem of "The True-born Englishman," procured him the honor of an introduction to the monarch himself, by whom he was ever afterwards treated with a degree of consideration which added personal partiality to political esteem; and he annually commemorated the

4th of November, the day on which the king first landed on British ground, in 1668, as one of the most auspicious in the annals of our history. "A day," says he, "famous on various accounts, and every one of them dear to Britons who love their country, value the protestant interest, or have an aversion to tyranny and oppression. On this day he was born; on this day he married the daughter of England; and on this day he rescued the nation from a bondage worse than that of Egypt, a bondage of soul, as well as bodily servitude; a slavery to the ambition and raging lust of a generation set on fire by pride, avarice, cruelty, and blood."

As the poem of "The True-born Englishman" had perhaps a more decided influence on both the fortunes and reputation of De Foe than any other of his productions, it may not be amiss to make a few remarks in this place on its origin and intention. "During this time," says he, "there came out a vile, 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 on the king himself, and then on 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 acceptance as it did; I mean "The True-born Englishman."

In this poem De. Foe satirizes the English, them

selves the most mixed race in the world, for their prejudices against foreigners, and lashes their ingratitude for overlooking all the benefits which King William had conferred on their country, merely because that country did not happen to be the one which gave him birth. The opening lines of the poem are well known.

"Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation."

After tracing the most ancient families to their origin, among those who marched under the banners of the Norman invader, he proceeds to compliment them and his countrymen at large in the following lines:

"These are the heroes who despise the Dutch,
And rail at new-come foreigners so much;
Forgetting that themselves are all derived
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived,
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,
Who ransack'd kingdoms, and dispeopled towns.
The Pict, and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot,
By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought,
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,

Whose red-hair'd offspring every where remains;
Who, join'd with Norman-French, compound the breed,
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed."

From searching into the origin of the race, he next, in colours equally flattering, delineates its characteristics: