Defoe--Irony--Ode to the Pillory--The "Comical Pilgrim"--The "Scandalous Club"--Humorous Periodicals--Heraclitus Ridens--The London Spy--The British Apollo. Defoe was born in 1663, and was the son of a butcher in St. Giles'. He first distinguished himself by writing in 1699 a poetical satire entitled "The True Born Englishman," in honour of King William and the Dutch, and in derision of the nobility of this country, who did not much appreciate the foreign court. The poem abounded with rough and rude sarcasm. After giving an uncomplimentary description of the English, he proceeds to trace their descent-- "These are the heroes that despise the Dutch And rail at new-come foreigners so much, Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived; A horrid race of rambling thieves and drones Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns; The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; Who joined with Norman-French compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed. Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots, Vaudois, and Valtolins and Huguenots, In good Queen Bess's charitable reign, Supplied us with three hundred thousand men; Religion--God we thank! sent them hither, Priests, protestants, the devil, and all together." The first part concludes with a view of the low origin of some of our nobles. "Innumerable city knights we know From Bluecoat hospitals and Bridewell flow, Draymen and porters fill the City chair, And footboys magisterial purple wear. Fate has but very small distinction set Betwixt the counter and the coronet. Tarpaulin lords, pages of high renown Rise up by poor men's valour, not their own; Great families of yesterday we show And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who." So much keen and clever invective levelled at the higher classes of course had its reward in a wide circulation; but we are surprised to hear that the King noticed it with favour; the author was honoured with a personal interview, and became a still stronger partizan of the court. Defoe called the "True Born Englishman", "A contradiction In speech an irony, in fact a fiction;"