very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.

Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'

In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'

One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
before.

'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
have done