INTRODUCTION.


The father of Daniel Defoe was a butcher in the parish of St. Giles's,
Cripplegate, London. In this parish, probably, Daniel Defoe was born in
1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II. The boy's parents
wished him to become a dissenting minister, and so intrusted his
education to a Mr. Morton who kept an academy for the training of
nonconformist divines. How long Defoe staid at this school is not known.
He seems to think himself that he staid there long enough to become a
good scholar; for he declares that the pupils were "made masters of the
English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any
school at that time." If this statement be true, we can only say that
the other schools must have been very bad indeed. Defoe never acquired a
really good style, and can in no true sense be called a "master of the
English tongue."

Nature had gifted Defoe with untiring energy, a keen taste for public
affairs, and a special aptitude for chicanery and intrigue. These were
not qualities likely to advance him in the ministry, and he wisely
refused to adopt that profession. With a young man's love for adventure
and a dissenter's hatred for Roman Catholicism, he took part in the Duke
of Monmouth's rebellion (1685) against James II. More fortunate than
three of his fellow students, who were executed for their share in this
affair, Defoe escaped the hue and cry that followed the battle of
Sedgemoor, and after some months' concealment set up as a wholesale
merchant in Cornhill. When James II. was deposed in 1688, and the
Protestant William of Orange elected to the English throne, Defoe
hastened to give in his allegiance to the new dynasty. In 1691 he