moments in his regal station, than before his head was envisioned with an uneasy diadem.  De Foe, who seems to have had a very true notion of civil liberty, engaged the enemies of the new government, and levelled the force of his satire against those, who valued themselves for being true-born Englishmen.  He exposes the fallacy of that prepossession, by laying open the sources from whence the English have sprung.  ’Normans, Saxons, and Danes, says he, were our forefathers; we are a mixed people; we have no genuine origin; and why should not our neighbours be as good as we to derive from? and I must add[B], that had we been an unmixed nation, I am of opinion, it had been to our disadvantage:  for to go no farther, we have three nations about us clear from mixture of blood, as any in the world, and I know not which of them we could wish ourselves to be like; I mean the Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, and if I were to write a reverse to the satire, I would examine all the nations of Europe, and prove, that these nations which are the most mixed, are the best, and have least of barbarism and brutality amongst them.’  Mr. De Foe begins his satire with the following lines,

  Wherever God erects a house of pray’r,
  The devil always builds a chapel there: 
  And ’twill be found upon examination,
  The latter has the largest congregation.

After passing a general censure on the surrounding nations, Italy, Germany, France, &c. he then takes a view of England, which he charges with the black crime of ingratitude.  He enumerates the several nations from whence we are derived, Gauls, Saxons, Danes, Irish, Scots, &c. and says,

  From this amphibious ill-born mob began
  That vain ill-natur’d thing, an Englishman.

This satire, written in a rough unpolished manner, without art, or regular plan, contains some very bold and masculine strokes against the ridiculous vanity of valuing ourselves upon descent and pedigree.  In the conclusion he has the following strong, and we fear too just, observation.

  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,
  ’Tis pers’nal virtue only makes us great.

The next satire of any consequence which De Foe wrote, was entitled Reformation of Manners, in which some private characters are severely attacked.  It is chiefly aimed at some persons, who being vested with authority to suppress vice, yet rendered themselves a disgrace to their country, encouraging wickedness by that very authority they have to suppress it.

Poetry was far from being the talent of De Foe.  He wrote with more perspicuity and strength in prose, and he seems to have understood, as well as any man, the civil constitution of the kingdom, which indeed was his chief study.