The life of Daniel Defoe Author:Thomas Wright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE Life Of Daniel Defoe. PAMPHLETEER AND POET. CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH (1659—1678). To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tal... more »e of wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To dwell upon it is to take courage, and to praise God for the splendid possibilities of life. Defoe's incessant activity of itself excites astonishment. It can be said of him, even with greater truth than of Dryden, " His chariot wheels got hot by driving fast." Defoe is always the hero; his career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a kaleidoscope—he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned ; it is shine, it is shower, it is couleur de rose, it is Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, /Eneas more pious. The tasks he set himself, the way he performed them, how B he struggled, and the meed that he won, it is the object of these pages to set forth ; and with a full sense of the importance of our mission we proceed merrily. i.—THE FOES OF ETTON IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. The ancient home of the Foes—the village of Etton -—is a diminutive place of fewer than one hundred inhabitants, situated about five miles from Peterborough, in Northamptonshire ; and that it was this spot, and not Elton in Northants (a place that does not exist), or Elton in Hunts, as stated by previous biographers, we are able, as the result of research at the Probate Office, Peterborough, and in the Etton registers, to 'lay down for certain. This, it may be urged, is a small matter (which, for the sake of peace, we will grant); but at the same time it may be submitted that there is something decidedly cheering, when a long journey has ...« less