"And lest, by length of time, it be pretended,
The climate may this modern breed have mended,
Wise Providence, to keep us where we are,
Mixes us daily with exceeding care;
We have been Europe's sink, the jakes where she
Voids all her offal outcast progeny;
From our fifth Henry's time the strolling bands
Of banished fugitives from neighbouring lands
Have here a certain sanctuary found:
The eternal refuge of the vagabond,
Wherein but half a common age of time,
Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime,
Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn,
And all their race are true-born Englishmen."

As may be judged from this specimen, there is little delicacy in Defoe's
satire. The lines run on from beginning to end in the same strain of
bold, broad, hearty banter, as if the whole piece had been written off
at a heat. The mob did not lynch the audacious humourist. In the very
height of their fury against foreigners, they stopped short to laugh at
themselves. They were tickled by the hard blows as we may suppose a
rhinoceros to be tickled by the strokes of an oaken cudgel. Defoe
suddenly woke to find himself the hero of the hour, at least with the
London populace. The pamphlet was pirated, and eighty thousand copies,
according to his own calculation, were sold in the streets. Henceforth
he described himself in his title-pages as the author of the _True-Born
Englishman_, and frequently did himself the honour of quoting from the
work as from a well-established classic. It was also, he has told us,
the means of his becoming personally known to the King, whom he had