There is, however, nothing to build any account of his life upon in these earlier years. The revolution filled him with enthusiasm, and King William gained his full and honest support--a support both bold and serviceable, and with nothing in it which was not to his credit. But apparently a man cannot be so good a talker, so active a politician, and follow the rules which he himself laid down for a successful tradesman at the same time. Most likely his mind was never in his hose, and the world was full of so many more exciting matters. Seven years after he had been set up in business he “broke,” and had to fly, though no further than Bristol, apparently, where he made an arrangement with his creditors. He would seem to have failed for the large sum at that time of seventeen thousand pounds, which he honestly exerted himself to pay, and so far succeeded in doing so that he reduced in a few years his debts to five thousand pounds in all; and, what was still more, finding certain of the creditors with whom he had compounded to be poor, after he had paid his composition fully, he made up to them the entire amount of his debt--an unlooked-for and exceptional example of honorable sentiment. Some years later, when Defoe had got into notoriety, and was the object of a great deal of violent criticism, a contemporary gives this fact, on the authority indeed of an anonymous gentleman in a coffee-house only, but it seems to have been generally received as true. The writer was in a company “where I and everybody else were railing at him,” when “the gentleman took us up with this short speech: “‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I know this Defoe as well as any of you, for I was one of his creditors, compounded with him and discharged him fully. Several years afterward he sent for me, and, though he was clearly discharged, he paid me all the remainder of his debt, voluntarily and of his own accord, and he told me that, as far as God should enable him, he intended to do so with everybody. When he had done he desired me to set my hand to a paper to acknowledge it, which I readily did, and found a great many names to the paper before me, and I think myself bound to own it.’” This has a suspicious resemblance to Defoe’s own style, but the fact seems to be generally received as true.