CHAPTER II.

A LIFE OF STRUGGLE.

  

, E FOE celebrated the first anniversary of the Day of Deliverance

» at a country house in the pleasant village of Tooting. He
resided here for some time, forming the Dissenters of the neigh-
bourhood into a regular congregation, and supplying them
with a devout and learned man for minister. He afterwards
removed to the neighbourhood of Mickleham, “ the Happy
Valley,” as it has not unjustly been called, in allusion to the
rich and cultivated loveliness of its landscapes.

In 1689 and 1690 we hear but little of De Foe, except that hestill attempted,
and, as we shall see, with but little success, to combine the pursuit of poli-
tics with that of business: In 1691 appeared his first effort in verse, entitled
“ A New Discovery of an Old Intrigue: a Satire level’d at Treachery and
Ambition ; calculated to the Nativity of the Rapparee Plott, and the Modesty
of the Jacobite Clergy.” Like all De Foe’s productions in metre, it contains
much solid sense, and many vigorous lines; but it is utterly destitute of
imagination and fancy, and not less destitute of all melody of language and
harmony of rhythm.

In the following year began the series of distressing commercial difficulties
which finally terminated in De Foe’sinsolvency. There can be no reasonable
doubt that they were due to his own want of business habits. A politician
and a wit, he was wholly unsuited for the proper management of commercial
speculations. In his book, “The Compleat Tradesman,” he shows that he
perfectly understood the causes of his ill-success. ‘A wit turned trades-
man!” he exclaims, “ what an incongruous part of nature is there brought
together, consisting of direct contraries! No apron strings will hold him ;
‘tis in vain to lock him in behind the compter—he’s gone in a moment:
instead of journal and ledger, he runs away to his Virgil and Horace ; his
journal entries are all Pindaricks, and his ledger all Heroicks: he is truly
dramatic from one end to the other, through the whole scene of his trade;
and as the first part is all comedy, so the two last acts are all made up with
tragedy ; a statute of bankrupt is his Exzeunt omnes, and he generally speaks
the epilogue in the Fleet Prison or the Mint.”

An angry creditor took out against De Foe a commission of bankruptcy,