he subject of this memoir prefixed the _De_
to his family name cannot now be ascertained, nor did he at any period
of his life think it necessary to give his reasons to the public. The
political scribblers of the day, however, thought proper to remedy this
lack of information, and accused him of possessing so little of the
_amor patriae_, as to make the addition in order that he might not be
taken for an Englishman; though this idea could have had no other
foundation than the circumstance of his having, in consequence of his
zeal for King William, attacked the prejudices of his countrymen in his
"True-born Englishman."

After receiving a good education at an academy at Newington, young De
Foe, before he had attained his twenty-first year, commenced his career
as an author, by writing a pamphlet against a very prevailing sentiment
in favour of the Turks who were at that time laying siege to Vienna.
This production, being very inferior to those of his maturer years, was
very little read, and the indignant author, despairing of success with
his pen, had recourse to the sword; or, as he termed it, when boasting
of the exploit in his latter years, "displayed his attachment to
liberty, and protestantism," by joining the ill-advised insurrection
under the Duke of Monmouth, in the west. On the failure of that
unfortunate enterprise, he returned again to the metropolis; and it is
not improbable, but that the circumstance of his being a native of
London, and his person not much known in that part of the kingdom where
the rebellion took place, might facilitate his escape, and be the means
of preventing his being brought to trial for his share in the
transaction. With the professions of a writer and a soldier, Mr. De Foe,
in the year 1685, joined that of a trader; he was first engaged as a
hosier, in Cornhill, and afterwards as a maker of bricks and pantiles,
near Tilbury Fort, in Essex; but in consequence of spending those hours
in the hilarity of the tavern which he ought to have employed in the
calculations of the counting-house, his commercial schemes proved
unsuccessful; and in 1694 he was obliged to abscond from his creditors,
not failing to attribute those misfortunes to the war and the severity
of the times, which were doubtless owing to his own misconduct. It is
much to his credit however, that after having been freed from his debts
by composition, and being in prosperous circumstances from King
William's favour, he volunt