Note 3 — THE LIFE OF DE FOE, BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.

Works, 3rd. edit. vol. ii. p. 276. He was placed there when about fourteen years old, and appears to have been educated to his own satisfaction in afterlife. He described it as an academy where all the lectures, whether in philosophy or divinity, were given in English, and where consequently "though the scholars were not destitute of the languages, yet it is observed of them that they were by this made masters of the English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any school at that time." Certainly no man ever better understood how to use plain, racy, thorough English style, than De Foe. But still he was not deficient in learning. He boldly asserts himself on this point, in the passage from which Mr. Chalmers has made an extract in the text: "I have no concern to tell Dr. Browne I can read English, nor to tell Mr. Tutchin, I understand Latin; non ita Latinus, sum ut Latine loqui. I easily acknowledge myself blockhead enough to have lost the fluency of expression in the Latin, and so far trade has been a prejudice to me, and yet I think I owe this justice to my ancient father, still living (1705), and in whose behalf I freely testify, that if I am a blockhead, it was nobody's fault but my own; he having spared nothing in my education that might qualify me to match the accurate Dr. Browne, or the learned Observator. As to Mr. Tutchin, I never gave him the least affront; I have, even after base usage, in vain invited him to peace; in answer to which he returns unmannerly insults, calumnies, and reproach. As to my little learning, and his great capacity, I freely challenge him to translate with me any Latin, French, and Italian author, and after that, to retranslate them crossways, for 20l. each book; and by this he shall have an opportunity to show the world how much De Foe, the hosier, is inferior in learning to Mr. Tutchin, the gentleman." [Review vol. ii. p. 149.] He also vindicated Mr. Morton's academy from the charge made against it by the Rev. Samuel Wesley, father of the celebrated founder of Methodism, that antimonarchical and unconstitutional doctrines were taught there. De Foe especially denies this. His domestic education seems to have been according to the system then pursued by the strict and pious dissenters. He mentions that he began the task performed by many others of that then persecuted body, of copying the Bible in shorthand, and that he finished the Pentateuch. [Review vol. vi. p. 573.] He was intended for the ministry; but for what reason he relinquished that profession is not known. "It was his disaster," he says, "first, to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that sacred employ."—Ed.