DANIEL, a writer famous for politics and poetry, was bred a hosier; which profession however he soon forsook, and became one of the most enterprising authors that any age produced. When discontent ran high at the Revolution, and King William was obliged to dismiss his Dutch guards, (Defoe, who had true notions of civil liberty, ridiculed the enemies of government in his well-known poem, called the True-born Englishman, which had a prodigious sale. The next satire he wrote was entitled Reformation of Manners; aimed at some persons of high rank, who rendered themselves a disgrace to their country. When the ecclesiastics in power breathed too much of a spirit of persecution, Defoe wrote a tract called the Shortest Way with the Dissenters: for which he was called to account, and explained himself with great firmness. He was afterwards sentenced to the pillory for attacking some public measures; which so little intimidated him, that, in defiance of their usage, he wrote a Hymn to the Pillory. It would be endless to enumerate all his publications; but the following are the principal: the History of the Plague in 1665; a novel entitled the History of Colonel Jack; a new Voyage round the World by a Company of Merchants, printed for Bettesworth, 1725; the History of Roxana; Memoirs of a Cavalier; the History of Moll Flanders; a book entitled Religious Courtship, which has undergone upwards of 20 editions; and the Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, an admirable performance, of which there have been editions without number, but concerning which there is an anecdote that does the author of it no credit as to the better part of a writer's character, honesty. When Captain Woods Rogers touched at the island of Juan Fernandez, in the South sea, he brought away Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch sailor, who had been left there, and had lived on that desolate place above four years. When Selkirk came back to England, he wrote a narrative of his adventures, and put the papers into the hands of Defoe, to digest for publication; who ungenerously converted the materials into the History of Robinson Crusoe, and returned Selkirk his papers again! A fraud for which, in a humane view, the distinguished merit of that romance can never atone. Daniel Defoe died at Islington, in 1731. All his productions of the romantic Defoliation, mantic species, but especially the two last mentioned, are much in vogue among country readers; and, on account of their moral and religious tendency, may very probably in some measure counteract the pernicious effects produced by the too general circulation of modern novels, those occasional vehicles of impiety and infidelity.