De Foe was admitted a liveryman of London on the 26th of January, 1687-8; when, being allowed his freedom by birth, he was received a member of that eminent corporation. As he had endeavoured to promote the revolution by his pen and his sword, he had the satisfaction of partaking, ere long, in the pleasures and advantages of that great event. During the hilarity of that moment, the lord mayor of London asked king William to partake of the city feast on the 29th of October, 1689. Every honour was paid the sovereign of the people's choice. A regiment of volunteers, composed of the chief citizens, and commanded by the celebrated earl of Peterborough, attended the king and queen from Whitehall to the Mansion-house. Among these troopers, gallantly mounted, and richly accoutred, was Daniel De Foe, if we may believe Oldmixon[8]. While our author thus displayed his zeal, and courted notice, he is said to have acted as a hosier in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill; but the hosier[9] and the poet are very irreconcilable characters. With the usual imprudence of superior genius, he was carried by his vivacity into companies who were gratified by his wit. He spent those hours with a small society for the cultivation of polite learning, which he ought to have employed in the calculations of the counting-house; and being obliged to abscond from his creditors, in 1692, he naturally attributed those misfortunes to the war, which were probably owing to his own misconduct[10]. An angry creditor took out a commission of bankruptcy, which was soon superseded on the petition of those to whom he was most indebted, who accepted a composition on his single bond. This he punctually paid by the efforts of unwearied diligence. But some of those creditors, who had been thus satisfied, falling afterwards into distress themselves, De Foe voluntarily paid them their whole claims, being then in rising circumstances from king William's favour[11]. This is such an example of honesty as it would be unjust to De Foe and to the world to conceal. Being reproached in 1705 by lord Haversham with mercenariness, our author feelingly mentions; "How, with a numerous family, and no helps but his own industry, he had forced his way with undiscouraged diligence, through a sea of misfortunes, and reduced his debts, exclusive of composition, from seventeen thousand to less than five thousand pounds[12]." He continued to carry on the pantile works near Tilbury-fort, though probably with no great success. It was afterwards sarcastically said, that he did not, like the Egyptians, require bricks without straw, but, like the Jews, required bricks without paying his labourers[13]. He was born for other enterprises, which, if they did not gain him opulence, have conferred a renown that will descend the stream of time with the language wherein his works are written.