AUCOUNT OF HIS TRAVELS ROUND THREE WITH Memoir of the Author and an Essay on his Genius, BY SIR WALTER SCOTT. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS. MEMOIR DANIEL DE FOE, AUTHOR OF ROBINSON CRUSOR WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS. BY SIR WALTER SCOTT. PERHAPS there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in the English language, which has been more generally read, and more universally admired, than the Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It is difficult to say in what the charm consists, by which persons of all classes and denominations are thus fascinated; yet the majority of readers will recollect it as among the first works which awakened and interested their youthful attention; and feel, even in advanced life, and in the maturity of their understanding, that there are still associated with Robinson Crusoe, the sentiments peculiar to that period, when all is new, all glittering in prospect, and when those visions are most bright, which the experience of after life tends only to darken and destroy. This work was first published in April, 1719; its reception, as may be upposed, was universal. It is a singular circumstance, that the author, the subject of our present memoir,) after a life spent in political turmoil, danger, and imprisonment, should have occupied himself, in its decline, in the production of a work like the present; unless it may be supposed, that his wearied heart turned with disgust from society and its institutions, and found solace in picturing the happiness of a state, such as he has assigned to his hero. Be this as it may, society is for ever indebted to the memory of De Foe for his production of a work, in which the ways of Providence are simply and pleasingly vindicated, and a lasting and useful moral is con veyed through the channel of an interesting and delightful story. Daniel De Foe was born in London in the year 1663. His father wa James Foe, of the parish of St. Giles, butcher. Much curious speculation, with which we shall not trouble our readers, has arisen from the circumstance of Daniel's having, in his own instance, prefixed the De to the family name. We are inclined to adopt the opinion of that critical inquirer, who supposes that Daniel did so, being ashamed of the lowness of his origin, and conceived the prefixed De had the sound of Norman dignity with it, :.. His family, as well as himself, were dissenters; but it does not appear that his tenets were so strict as his sect required; for he complains, in the Preface to his More Reformation, that some Dissenters had reproached him, as if he had said, that "the gallows and the galleys ought to be the penalty of going to the conventicle; forgetting, that I must design to have my father, my wife, six innocent children, and myself, put into the same condition.” De Foe's education was rather circumscribed, which is the more to be lamented, as in so many instances, he has exhibited proofs of rare natural enius. He was sent by his father, at twelve years old, to the Newington reen Dissenting Academy, then kept by Mr. Morton, where he remained bout four years; and this appears to have been all the education he ever eceived. When he was remanded from school, it would seem that, his genius not lying towards the marrow-bone and cleaver, his father had put him to some other trade; of what nuture we are unable to learn, De Foe himself being very reserved on the subject. When charged by Tutchin with having his breeding as an apprentice to a hosier, he asserts, (May, 1705,) “that he never was a hosier, or an apprentice, but admits that he had been a trader.” This, however, had occupied but a short time of his youth; for in 1685, when he was in his twenty-second year, he took up arms in the cause of the Duke of Monmouth. On the destruction of Monmouth's party, Daniel had the good fortune to escape unpunished amidst the herd of greater delinquents; but, in his latter years, when the avowal was no longer dangerous, he boasted himself much of his exploits, in His Appeal to Honor and Justice, being a true Account of his Conduct in Public Affairs. Three years afterwards, (1688,) De Foe was admitted a Liveryman of London. As he had been throughout a steady advocate for the Revolution, he had now the satisfaction of witnessing that great event. Oldmixon says, (Works, vol. ii. p. 276,) that at a feast given by the Lord Mayor of London to King William, on the 29th October, 1689, De Foe appeared galtantly mounted, and richly accoutred, among the troopers commanded by .Lord Peterborough, who attended the king and queen from Whitehall to the Mansion House. All Daniel's horsemanship, however, united to the steady devotion of his pen to the cause of William, were unable to procur him the notice of that cold-charactered monarch; and our author was fain to content himself (as his adversary Tutchin asserts) with the humble occu pation of a hosier in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill ;-wisely considering, tha if the court could do without political tracts, the people could not do with out stockings. With the ill fortune, however, attendant upon those men of genius, who sultivate their superior powers to the neglect of that common sense which is requisite to carry a man creditably through this every-day world De Foe's affairs declined from bad to worse; he spent those hours which e ought to have devoted to his shop, in a society for the cultivation of poite learning, and he was under the necessity of absconding from his credi tors in 1692. One of those creditors, who had less consideration for polite learning, and more irritability than the rest, took out a commission of bankruptcy against him; but, fortunately for our author, this was superseded on a petition of those to whom he was most indebted, and a compo sition was accepted. This composition he punctually paid by efforts of un |