Note 5 — THE LIFE OF DE FOE, BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.
Reading edition
Appeal, p. 51. This was not the first occasion of his appearing in print. His earliest effort as an author was an answer to Roger L'Estrange's Guide to the Inferior Clergy, and was intituled, Speculum Crape Gownorum; or, A Looking-glass for the Young Academicks, new Foyl'd, with Reflections on some of the late high-flown Sermons; to which is added, An Essay towards a Sermon of the newest fashion. By a Guide to the Inferior Clergy. Ridentem discere verum, quis vitat? It was published in 1682. This work, as might be anticipated, was a satiric attack on the clergy of that day.
De Foe's object in the pamphlet mentioned in the text, was to assert the policy of defending the house of Austria, then closely and vigorously attacked by the Turks. The "prevailing sentiment," referred to by Mr. Chalmers, was a dissatisfaction with the emperor for his cruel persecution of the protestants in Hungary; and which carried the national feeling so far as to make any assistance rendered to the emperor, even against the threatening Turks, extremely unpopular. De Foe, then very young, took the field on the weaker side, and strenuously maintained the danger to Christendom arising from the Mahommedan power being allowed to enter Vienna. Happily, the courage of John Sobieski, king of Poland, prevented that, once imminent, danger. De Foe, in a late period of his life, thus refers to his conduct on this occasion. "The first time I had the misfortune to differ from my friends, was about the year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the whigs in England, generally speaking, were for the Turks taking it; whilst I, having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the Christian religion in above threescore and ten kingdoms, could by no means agree with, and though then but a young man and a young author, I opposed it and wrote against it, which was taken very unkind indeed." [Vide Appeal to Honour and Justice.]—Ed.