174. Second Thoughts are Best; or, a further Improvement of a late Scheme to prevent Street Robberies. By which our Streets will be so strongly guarded, and so gloriously illuminated, that any part of London will be as safe and pleasant at Midnight as at Noonday, and Burglary totally impracticable. With some Thoughts for suppressing Robberies in all the Public Roads of England, &c. Humbly offered for the Good of his Country, submitted to the Consideration of Parliament, and dedicated to his Sacred Majesty King George II. By Andrew Moreton, Esq. London: printed for W. Meadows, at the Angel, in Cornhill, and sold by J. Roberts, in Warwick-lane. 1729. Price 6d. 8vo. pp. 24.
Besides the above, De Foe left behind him, prepared for the press, a work on the 'Conduct of a Gentleman,' which is now in the possession of Dawson Turner, Esq., of Yarmouth.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is at last discovered, by searching the chamberlain's books, which have since been burnt, that our author was the son of James Foe, of the parish of Cripplegate, London, citizen and butcher; who was himself the son of Daniel Foe, of Elton, in the county of Northampton, yeoman; and who obtained his freedom by serving his apprenticeship with John Levit, citizen and butcher. Daniel Foe, the son of James, was admitted to his freedom by birth, on the 26th of January, 1687-8. I was led to these discoveries by observing that De Foe had voted at an election for a representative of London; whence I inferred, that he must have been a citizen either by birth or service. But in the parish books I could find no notice of his baptism; as his parents were dissenters.
[2] In his preface to More Reformation, De Foe complains, 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. To such dissenters I can only regret," says he, "that when I had drawn the picture, I did not, like the Dutchman with his man and bear, write under them, This is the man; and this is the bear." De Foe expressly admits that he was a dissenter, though no independent-fifth-monarchy man, or leveller. [De Foe, Works, edit. 1703. p. 326-448.] His grandfather, however, seems to have been of different feelings, as he kept a pack of hounds. From this fact it is inferred by his learned and laborious biographer Mr. Walter Wilson, that he was of the royal party, as the puritans did not indulge in that amusement; and also that he moved in a respectable station of life. De Foe himself thus alludes to his grandfather [Review, vol. vii. preface], "I remember my grandfather had a huntsman that used the same familiarity with his dogs, and he had his Roundhead and his Cavalier, his Goring and his Waller, and all the generals of both armies were hounds in his pack, till the times turning, the old gentleman was fain to scatter the pack and make them up of more doglike surnames." It seems also probable, that the property to which De Foe alludes as possessed by himself, was inherited from this grandfather. "I have both a native and an acquired right of election in more than one place in Britain, and as such am a part of the body that honourable house (of commons) represents, and from hence I believe may claim a right in due manner to represent, complain, address, or petition them." [Review, vol. vi. p. 477.] Mr. Wilson corrects the mistake of Mr. Chalmers and other biographers, as to the date of De Foe's birth, which really took place in 1661, and not as stated by them in 1663.—Ed.
[3] Works, 3rd. edit. vol. ii. p. 276. He was placed there when about fourteen years old, and appears to have been educated to his own satisfaction in afterlife. He described it as an academy where all the lectures, whether in philosophy or divinity, were given in English, and where consequently "though the scholars were not destitute of the languages, yet it is observed of them that they were by this made masters of the English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any school at that time." Certainly no man ever better understood how to use plain, racy, thorough English style, than De Foe. But still he was not deficient in learning. He boldly asserts himself on this point, in the passage from which Mr. Chalmers has made an extract in the text: "I have no concern to tell Dr. Browne I can read English, nor to tell Mr. Tutchin, I understand Latin; non ita Latinus, sum ut Latine loqui. I easily acknowledge myself blockhead enough to have lost the fluency of expression in the Latin, and so far trade has been a prejudice to me, and yet I think I owe this justice to my ancient father, still living (1705), and in whose behalf I freely testify, that if I am a blockhead, it was nobody's fault but my own; he having spared nothing in my education that might qualify me to match the accurate Dr. Browne, or the learned Observator. As to Mr. Tutchin, I never gave him the least affront; I have, even after base usage, in vain invited him to peace; in answer to which he returns unmannerly insults, calumnies, and reproach. As to my little learning, and his great capacity, I freely challenge him to translate with me any Latin, French, and Italian author, and after that, to retranslate them crossways, for 20l. each book; and by this he shall have an opportunity to show the world how much De Foe, the hosier, is inferior in learning to Mr. Tutchin, the gentleman." [Review vol. ii. p. 149.] He also vindicated Mr. Morton's academy from the charge made against it by the Rev. Samuel Wesley, father of the celebrated founder of Methodism, that antimonarchical and unconstitutional doctrines were taught there. De Foe especially denies this. His domestic education seems to have been according to the system then pursued by the strict and pious dissenters. He mentions that he began the task performed by many others of that then persecuted body, of copying the Bible in shorthand, and that he finished the Pentateuch. [Review vol. vi. p. 573.] He was intended for the ministry; but for what reason he relinquished that profession is not known. "It was his disaster," he says, "first, to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that sacred employ."—Ed.
[4] Review, vol. ii. p. 150.
[5] Appeal, p. 51. This was not the first occasion of his appearing in print. His earliest effort as an author was an answer to Roger L'Estrange's Guide to the Inferior Clergy, and was intituled, Speculum Crape Gownorum; or, A Looking-glass for the Young Academicks, new Foyl'd, with Reflections on some of the late high-flown Sermons; to which is added, An Essay towards a Sermon of the newest fashion. By a Guide to the Inferior Clergy. Ridentem discere verum, quis vitat? It was published in 1682. This work, as might be anticipated, was a satiric attack on the clergy of that day.
De Foe's object in the pamphlet mentioned in the text, was to assert the policy of defending the house of Austria, then closely and vigorously attacked by the Turks. The "prevailing sentiment," referred to by Mr. Chalmers, was a dissatisfaction with the emperor for his cruel persecution of the protestants in Hungary; and which carried the national feeling so far as to make any assistance rendered to the emperor, even against the threatening Turks, extremely unpopular. De Foe, then very young, took the field on the weaker side, and strenuously maintained the danger to Christendom arising from the Mahommedan power being allowed to enter Vienna. Happily, the courage of John Sobieski, king of Poland, prevented that, once imminent, danger. De Foe, in a late period of his life, thus refers to his conduct on this occasion. "The first time I had the misfortune to differ from my friends, was about the year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the whigs in England, generally speaking, were for the Turks taking it; whilst I, having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the Christian religion in above threescore and ten kingdoms, could by no means agree with, and though then but a young man and a young author, I opposed it and wrote against it, which was taken very unkind indeed." [Vide Appeal to Honour and Justice.]—Ed.
[6] Appeal.