MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 33

ter, left behind him a paper, in which he speaks of him as living “in a very
handsome house,” and supposed ‘from his genteel way of living, that he must
be able to giveshis daughter a decent portion.”

He spént his time in the “pursuit of his studies’ and in the “cultivation
of a large and pleasant garden.” It would have been pleasing after such a
life of toil and vicissitude to have left him thus, surrounded by his family}
peacefully enjoying the fruits of his labour in his old age. But for several
years before his death he was much tormented by gout and stone, and in 1730
he was again for a short time an inmate of a prison. ‘But it is not the blow
I received from this wicked, perjured, and contemptible enemy,” says he, in a
private letter to his son-in-law, “that has broken in upon my spirit. But it has
been the injustice, unkindness, and inhuman dealing of mine own son, which
has both ruined my family and broken my heart... . . I would say (I hope)
with comfort, that ’tis yet well. Iam so near my journey’s end, and am hast-
ening to the place where the weary are at rest, and where the wicked cease to
trouble; be it that the passage is rough, and the day stormy, by what way
soever He please to bring me to the end of it, I desire to finish life with this
temper of soul in all cases: Te Dewm laudamus.”

Having completed the allotted term of human existence, with a mind steadily
fixed upon the scenes beyond, he passed the boundaries of time into eternity,
on the twenty-fourth of April, 1731, in the same parish in which he was born

The origin of this edition is stated in the advertisement. The particulars
of the life of De Foe are so little known, that it was thought a memoir of him
would be acceptable; and the life by Chalmers, though a goésb work, being
now proved, by the investigations of Mr. Wilson, in many things to be incorrect,
‘it was thought necessary to compile a new one from original sources. “For
this purpose the materials were ample: the slanders of his enemies having
often compelled him to stand on his own defence, and the only task of the
editor has been to select judiciously. ;

The romance of Robinson Crusoe having been printed in so many forms, and
altered to suit the taste and convenience of its several publishers, is seldom to
be found in a perfect state. In preparing the Oxford edition of “De Foe’s
Miscellaneous Works,” in 1889, the early editions printed in his lifetime were
collected and compared, and the work issued as it came from the hands of the
author: of that edition this is a reprint; but it has been also carefully com-
pared with a copyright edition printed at Edinburgh in 1846, and several
slight errors corrected. With the exception of the omission of one vulgar
phrase, no way necessary to complete the sense, and which the author indicated
by dashes, thinking it improper to express it in words, no alteration has been

made; and it is believed that the edition here presented is the most perfect in
existence.