Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
[5] Appeal, p. 51. This was not the first occasion of his appearing in
print. His earliest effort as an author was an answer to Roger
L'Estrange's Guide to the Inferior Clergy, and was intituled, _Speculum
Crape Gownorum_; or, A Looking-glass for the Young Academicks, new
Foyl'd, with Reflections on some of the late high-flown Sermons; to
which is added, An Essay towards a Sermon of the newest fashion. By a
Guide to the Inferior Clergy. _Ridentem discere verum, quis vitat?_ It
was published in 1682. This work, as might be anticipated, was a satiric
attack on the clergy of that day.
De Foe's object in the pamphlet mentioned in the text, was to assert the
policy of defending the house of Austria, then closely and vigorously
attacked by the Turks. The "prevailing sentiment," referred to by Mr.
Chalmers, was a dissatisfaction with the emperor for his cruel
persecution of the protestants in Hungary; and which carried the
national feeling so far as to make any assistance rendered to the
emperor, even against the threatening Turks, extremely unpopular. De
Foe, then very young, took the field on the weaker side, and strenuously
maintained the danger to Christendom arising from the Mahommedan power
being allowed to enter Vienna. Happily, the courage of John Sobieski,
king of Poland, prevented that, once imminent, danger. De Foe, in a late
period of his life, thus refers to his conduct on this occasion. "The
first time I had the misfortune to differ from my friends, was about the
year 1683, when the Turks were besieging Vienna, and the whigs in
England, generally speaking, were for the Turks taking it; whilst I,
having read the history of the cruelty and perfidious dealings of the
Turks in their wars, and how they had rooted out the name of the
Christian religion in above threescore and ten kingdoms, could by no
means agree with, and though then but a young man and a young author, I
opposed it and wrote against it, which was taken very unkind indeed."
[Vide Appeal to Honour and Justice.]--ED.
[6] Appeal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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