Note 39 — THE LIFE OF DE FOE, BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.

Before the publication of this Hymn, he published a poem on himself, An Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman. In the preface to this poem he bitterly complains of the slanders to which he was constantly subject. He might have reflected, however, that such a fate was unavoidable to a political writer in those factious times; and that the more independent the author, the more likely he was to be exposed to the double shafts of partisan malice.—Ed.