MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DANIEL DE FOE: CONTAINING A REVIEW OF HIS WRITINGS, AND HIS OPINIONS UPON A VARIETY OF IMPORTANT MATTERS, CIVIL AND BY WALTER WILSON, Esq. OF THE INNER TEMPLE. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST, CHANCE, AND CO. PREFACE. WHEN we have derived pleasure or improvement from the works of an author, curiosity becomes awakened to learn something of his history. In how many cases it is impossible to gratify this feeling, and the regret that is the consequence, are well known to those who are accustomed to literary inquiries. Such persons, also, can be the only judges of the time and labour that are consumed in recovering even those slender memorials that may have escaped the ravages of time. De Foe has now slept with his fathers for nearly the period of a century. More than half of the time had elapsed before any attempt was made to embalm his worth; yet, during the whole period, the world had been amused and instructed by his writings, and there were few readers, from the humble to the higher stations of life, who had not connected his name with their early recollections. Perhaps there is scarcely any English author who wrote "so variously and so well," of whom so little is popularly known; and the attempts that have been |