An’t I a magistrate for reformation?For this my praise is sung by ev’ry bard,
For which Bridewell wou’d be a just reward.
In print my panegyric fills the street,
And hired gaol-birds their huzzas repeat;
Some charities contriv’d to make a show,
Have taught the needy rabble to do so;
Whose empty noise is a mechanic fame,
Since for Sir Beelzebub they’d do the same.
1 The Devil.
The Conclusion.
Then let us boast of ancestors no more,
Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore,
In latent records of the ages past,
Behind the rear of time, in long oblivion plac’d;
For if our virtues must in lines descend,
The merit with the families would end,
And intermixtures would most fatal grow;
For vice would be hereditary too;
The tainted blood would of necessity,
Involuntary wickedness convey.
Vice, like ill-nature, for an age or two,
May seem a generation to pursue;
But virtue seldom does regard the breed,
Fools do the wise, and wise men fools succeed.
What is’t to us, what ancestors we had?
If good, what better? or what worse, if bad?
Examples are for imitation set,
Yet all men follow virtue with regret.
Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate,
And see their offspring thus degenerate;
How we contend for birth and names unknown,
And build on their past actions, not our own;
They’d cancel records, and their tombs deface,
And openly disown the vile degenerate race:
For fame of families is all a cheat,
It’s personal virtue only makes us great.
AN ESSAY UPON PROJECTS
Introduction.
Defoe’s “Essay on Projects” was the first volume he published, and no great writer ever published a first book more characteristic in expression of his tone of thought. It is practical in the highest degree, while running over with fresh speculation that seeks everywhere the well-being of society by growth of material and moral power. There is a wonderful fertility of mind, and almost whimsical precision of detail, with good sense and good humour to form the groundwork of a happy English style. Defoe in this book ran again and again into sound suggestions that first came to be realised long after he was dead. Upon one subject, indeed, the education of women, we have only just now caught him up. Defoe wrote the book in 1692 or 1693, when his age was a year or two over thirty, and he published it in 1697.
Defoe was the son of James Foe, of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, whose family had owned grazing land in the country, and who himself throve as a meat salesman in London. James Foe went to Cripplegate Church, where the minister was Dr. Annesley. But in 1662, a year after the birth of Daniel Foe, Dr. Annesley was one of the three thousand clergymen who were driven out of their benefices by the Act of Uniformity. James Foe was then one of
