cleared by
a voyage. From a story which he tells in his _Complete English
Tradesman_, recalling the cleverness with which he defeated an attempt
to outwit him about a consignment of brandy, we learn that his business
sometimes took him to Spain. This is nearly all that we know about his
first adventure in trade, except that after seven years, in 1692, he had
to flee from his creditors. He hints in one of his _Reviews_ that this
misfortune was brought about by the frauds of swindlers, and it deserves
to be recorded that he made the honourable boast that he afterwards paid
off his obligations. The truth of the boast is independently confirmed
by the admission of a controversial enemy, that very Tutchin whom he
challenged to translate Latin with him. That Defoe should have referred
so little to his own experience in the _Complete English Tradesman_, a
series of Familiar Letters which he published late in life "for the
instruction of our Inland Tradesmen, and especially of Young Beginners,"
is accounted for when we observe the class of persons to whom the
letters were addressed. He distinguishes with his usual clearness
between the different ranks of those employed in the production and
exchange of goods, and intimates that his advice is not intended for the
highest grade of traders, the merchants, whom he defines by what he
calls the vulgar expression, as being "such as trade beyond sea."
Although he was eloquent in many books and pamphlets in upholding the
dignity of trade, and lost no opportunity of scoffing at pretentious
gentility, he never allows us to forget that this was the grade to which
he himself belonged, and addresses the petty trader from a certain
altitude. He speaks in the preface to the _Complete Tradesman_ of
unfortunate creatures who have blown themselves up in trade, whether
"for want of wit or from too much wit;" but lest he should be supposed
to allude to his own misfortunes, he does not say that he miscarried
himself, but that he "had seen in a few years' experience many young
tradesmen miscarry." At the same time it is fair to conjecture that when
Defoe warns the young tradesman against fancying himself a politician or
a man of letters, running off to the coffee-house when he ought to be
behind the counter, and reading Virgil and Horace when he should be busy
over his journal and his ledger, he was glancing at some of the causes
which conduced to his own failure as a merchant. And when he cautions
t