_Robinson Crusoe_ has had a host
of imitators, but no rival.
Daniel Foe, or, as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, was born in
London, in the year 1661. He was the son of a butcher, but such was his
early aptitude, for learning, that he was educated to become a dissenting
minister. His own views, however, were different: he became instead a
political author, and wrote with great force against the government of
James II. and the Established Church, and in favor of the dissenters. When
the Duke of Monmouth landed to make his fatal campaign, Defoe joined his
standard; but does not seem to have suffered with the greater number of
the duke's adherents.
He was a warm supporter of William III.; and his famous poem, _The
True-Born Englishman_, was written in answer to an attack upon the king
and the Dutch, called _The Foreigners_. Of his own poem he says, in the
preface, "When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against the
Dutch, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and
insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets for employing
foreigners and being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to
remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a
banter they put upon themselves, since--speaking of Englishmen _ab
origine_--we are really all foreigners ourselves:"
The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot,
By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought;
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains;
Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.
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