Escaping the keen hunt that was made for all participators in the rebellion, Defoe, towards the close of 1685, began business as a hosier or hose-factor in Freeman’s Court, Corn hill.  The precise nature of his trade has been disputed; and it does not particularly concern us here.  When taunted afterwards with having been apprentice to a hosier, he indignantly denied the fact, and explained that though he had been a trader in hosiery he had never been a shopkeeper.  A passing illustration in his Essay on Projects, drawn from his own experience, shows that he imported goods in the course of his business from abroad; he speaks of sometimes having paid more in insurance premios than he had cleared by a voyage.  From a story which he tells in his Complete English Tradesman, recalling the cleverness with which he defeated an attempt to outwit him about a consignment of brandy, we learn that his business sometimes took him to Spain.  This is nearly all that we know about his first adventure in trade, except that after seven years, in 1692, he had to flee from his creditors.  He hints in one of his Reviews that this misfortune was brought about by the frauds of swindlers, and it deserves to be recorded that he made the honourable boast that he afterwards paid off his obligations.  The truth of the boast is independently confirmed by the admission of a controversial enemy, that very Tutchin whom he challenged to translate Latin with him.  That Defoe should have referred so little to his own experience in the Complete English Tradesman, a series of Familiar Letters which he published late in life “for the instruction of our Inland Tradesmen, and especially of Young Beginners,” is accounted for when we observe the class of persons to whom the letters were addressed.  He distinguishes with his usual clearness between the different ranks of those employed in the production and exchange of goods, and intimates that his advice is not intended for the highest grade of traders, the merchants, whom he defines by what he calls the vulgar expression, as being “such as trade beyond sea.”  Although he was eloquent in many books and pamphlets in upholding the dignity of trade, and lost no opportunity of scoffing at pretentious gentility, he never allows us to forget that this was the grade to which he himself belonged, and addresses the petty trader from a certain altitude.  He speaks in the preface to the Complete Tradesman of unfortunate creatures who have blown themselves up in trade, whether “for want of wit or from too much wit;” but lest he should be supposed to allude to his own misfortunes, he does not say that he miscarried himself, but that he “had seen in a few years’ experience many young tradesmen miscarry.”  At the same time it is fair to conjecture that when Defoe warns the young tradesman against fancying himself a politician or a man of letters, running off to the coffee-house when he ought to be behind the counter, and reading Virgil and Horace