with the prospect of a family growing up around him, he saw his fortune swept suddenly away by a large unsuccessful adventure. One angry creditor took out a commission of bankruptcy; and De Foe, submitting meanwhile to the rest a proposition for amicable settlement, fled from London. A prison paid no debts, he said. "The cruelty of your laws against debtors, without distinction of honest or dishonest, is the shame of your "nation. It is not he who cannot pay his debts, but he "who can and will, who must necessarily be a knave. He "who is unable to pay his debts at once, may yet be able "to pay them at leisure; and you should not meanwhile "murder him by law, for such is perpetual imprisonment.” So, from himself to his fellow-men, he reasoned always. No wrong or wretchedness ever befell De Foe, which he did not with all diligence bestir himself to turn to the use and profit of his kind. To what he now struggled with, through two desperate years, they mainly owed, seven years later, that many most atrocious iniquities, prevailing in the bankrupt refuges of Whitefriars and the Mint, were repressed by statute;' and that the small relief of William's act was at last reluctantly vouchsafed. He had pressed the subject with all his power of plain strong sense, and with a kind of rugged impressiveness, as of the cry of a sufferer.

His place of retreat appears to have been in Bristol. Doubtless he had merchant friends there. An acquaintance of his last industrious biographer, Mr. Walter Wilson, mentions it as an honourable tradition in his family, that at this time one of his Bristol ancestors had often seen and spoken with "the great De Foe." They called him, he said, the Sunday Gentleman, because through fear of the bailiffs he did not dare' to appear in public upon any other day; while on that day he was sure to be seen, with a fine flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a sword by his side, passing through the Bristol streets.' But no time was lost with De Foe, whether he was watched by bailiffs, or laid hold of by their betters. He wrote, in his present retirement, that famous Essay which went far to form the intellect and direct the pursuits of the most clear and

1 I give what is said by Mr. Wilson, because of the oddity of its conclusion, and the manifest confusion of ideas involved in it :-"A friend "informs me of a tradition in his "family, that rather countenances "this supposition" (of De Foe's retreat to Bristol). "He says, that one of his 66 ancestors remembered De Foe, and "sometimes saw him walking in the "streets of Bristol, accoutred in the "fashion of the times, with a fine

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"habit of resorting there after dinner, "for the purpose of smoking their 'pipes, and hearing the news of the "day. De Foe, following the custom "of the times, occasionally mixed "with them at these seasons, and "was well known to the landlord under "the same name of the 'Sunday "Gentleman.' The house is still "standing, and is now a mere pot"house. The same Mark Watkins, "it is said, used to entertain his company, in after-times, with an "account of a singular personage "who made his appearance in Bristol, "clothed in goat-skins, in which "dress he was in the habit of walk"ing the streets, and went by the

66 flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a "sword by his side. Also, that he "there obtained the name of the "Sunday Gentleman, ' because, "through fear of the bailiffs, he did 66 not dare to appear in public upon "any other day. The fact of De "Foe's residence in Bristol, either at "this or some later period of his "life, is further corroborated by the "following circumstance. About a century ago, as the same friend in"forms me, there was a tavern in "Castle-street, known by the sign of "the Red Lion, and kept by one "Mark Watkins, an intelligent man, "who had been in better circum"" stances. His house was in con"siderable repute amongst the trades"men of Bristol, who were in the

name of Alexander Selkirk, or "Robinson Crusoe." In other words, Mr. Mark Watkins had lived till Robinson Crusoe was published, and then, in his old age, with his wits not the clearer for all those years of ale and pipe, was apt, in still dwelling on his recollections of the Sunday Gentleman, to confound his quondam guest with the hardly less veritable creation of his fancy, and to substitute the immortal mariner for the mortal De Foe!

practical genius of the succeeding century. "There was also," says Benjamin Franklin, describing the little library in his uncle's house, "a book of De Foe's called an Essay on Projects, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal "future events of my life."

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De Foe composed the Essay here, in Bristol; though it was not published until two years later. What the tendency of the age would surely be (partly by the influence of the Revolution, for commerce and religious freedom have ever prospered together; partly by the financial necessities of the war, and the impulse thereby given to projects and adventure), he had promptly discerned; and he would have turned it to profitable uses in this most shrewd, wise, and memorable piece of writing. It suggested reforms in the System of Banking, and a plan for Central Country Banks; it pointed out the enormous advantages of an efficient improvement of the Public Roads, as a source of public benefit and revenue; it recommended, for the safety of trade, a mitigation of the law against the honest Bankrupt, and a more effectual law against practised knavery; it proposed the general establishment of Offices for Insurance, "in every case "of risk;" it impressively enforced the expediency of Friendly Societies, and of a kind of Savings Bank, among the poor; and, with eloquence and clear-sightedness far in advance of the time, it urged the solemn. necessity of a greater care of Lunatics, which it described as "a particular rent-charge on the great family of mankind."

A man may afford to live Alone who can make solitude eloquent with such designs as these. What a teeming life there is in them!-what a pregnant power and wisdom, thrown broad-cast over the fields of the future! To this bankrupt fugitive, to this Sunday Gentleman and everyday earnest workman, with no better prospect than a bailiff visible from his guarded window, it might not be ill done, as it seems to us, to transfer some part of the honour and glory we too freely assign to more prosperous

actors in the busy period of the Revolution. Could we move to London from the side of our hero, by the four days' Bristol coach, it would be but a paltry scene that awaited us there. He has himself described it. "Is a

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man trusted, and then made a lord? Is he loaded with honours, and put into places? Has he the King's ear? "and does he eat his bread? Then expect he shall be 66 one of the first to fly in his face!" Such indeed, and no other, would be the scene presented to us. We should find the great Sovereign obliged to repose his trust where no man could trust with safety; and the first rank growth of the new-gotten Liberty would greet us in its most repulsive forms. We should see, there, the double game of treachery, to the reigning and to the banished sovereign, played out with unscrupulous perfidy by rival statesmen; Opposition and Office but varying the sides of treason, from William to James. There would be the versatile Halifax, receiving a Jacobite agent "with open There would be the dry, reserved Godolphin, engaged in double service, though without a single bribe, to his actual and to his lawful sovereign. There would be the soldier Churchill, paid by William, yet taking secret gold from James, and tarnishing his imperishable name with an infamous treachery to England. And all this, wholly unredeemed by the wit and literature which graced the years of noisy faction to which it was the prelude. As yet, Pope was in the cradle, Addison and Steele were at Charter House, Henry St. John was reading Greek at Christ Church, and Swift was amanuensis in Sir William Temple's house, for his board and twenty pounds a-year. Nor does any sign in the present give hope of such a future. The laureateship of Dryden has fallen on Shadwell, even Garth's Dispensary has not yet been written, Mr. Tate and Mr. Brady are dividing the town, the noble accents of Locke on behalf of toleration are inaudible in the press, but Sir Richard Blackmore prepares his Epics, and Bishop Burnet sits down in a terrible passion to write somebody's character in his History. We may be well content to

return to Bristol, and take humbler part with the fortunes of Daniel De Foe.

We have not recounted all the projects of his Essay. The great design of Education was embraced in it, and a furtherance of the interests of Letters. It proposed an Academy, on the plan of that founded in France by Richelieu, to " encourage polite learning, establish purity "of style, and advance the so much neglected faculty of "correct language; "-urging upon William, how worthy of his high destiny it would be to eclipse Louis Quatorze in the peaceful arts, as much as he had eclipsed him in the field of battle. The proposition was revived, a few years later, in Prior's Carmen Seculare; and in 1711, Swift stole the entire notion, and almost the very language of De Foe, in his attempt (curious as the only printed piece to which he ever, himself, attached his name) "to erect some "kind of society or academy, under the patronage of the "ministers, and protection of the Queen, for correcting, "enlarging, polishing, and fixing our language." Nor let us omit recital of the Military College which De Foe would have raised; of his project for the Abolition of Impressment; and of his College for the Education of Women. His rare and high opinion of women had given him a just contempt for the female training of his time. He could not think, he said, that God ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves. "A woman, well-bred and well-taught, fur"nished with the additional accomplishments of know"ledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. "Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments; she "is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, and delight." This pleasant passage might have been written by Steele. His Bristol exile was now closed, by the desired arrangement with his creditors. They consented to compound his liabilities for five thousand pounds, and to take his personal security for the payment. In what way he discharged this claim, and what reward they had who trusted him, an anecdote of thirteen years' later date (şet