Opis: A Journal of the Plague Year - Defoe Daniel

Excerpt from A Journal of the Plague Year: Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London<br><br>Daniel De Foe, son of James Foe, a respectable butcher, was born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, in the year 1661. He was four years old, therefore, in the Plague year, 1665. The son of James Foe was named Daniel after his grandfather, who in the time of Charles the First was a gentleman in Northamptonshire, and kept a pack of hounds. We may infer, if we please, from the nature of man, that the family fortunes then went to the dogs, and that the son James, with energy of character, turned country training to account in the supply of sheep and cattle to the London food-market.<br><br>James Foe prospered and grew old, acquiring, by his good sense, honour and influence among the London Nonconformists. He intended to train his son Daniel as a Nonconformist minister, and sent him, when fourteen years old - a year after the death of Milton - to an academy at Newington Green, established for the training to such ministry. The Reverend Charles Morton was its animating spirit. Defoe always referred to him with gratitude. It is included among recollections of Charles Morton's influence upon young minds committed to his charge, that, by his method of teaching, the students "were made masters of the English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any school at that time." He also trained his boys to reflection upon current politics, that they might not enter blindly in after-life into controversies of their day. Defoe, almost alone in his time, brought the historic sense into political discussion. He also reformed the currency of English speech, which in his time had been lowered in value by a French alloy. We may join Defoe, therefore, in kindly recollection of a teacher who gave the right directing touch to his young mind.<br><br>After about five years' study at Newington Green, Daniel Foe was not called to the ministry, but entered into training for the business of a hose-factor in the City of London. That would be about the time of the great controversy touching the exclusion of the King's brother, the Duke of York, from succession to the throne, because he avowed himself to be a Roman Catholic. On the 25th of June 1680, when Foe's age was nineteen, the Earl of Shaftesbury presented the Duke of York to the Grand Jury of Westminster as a Popish Recusant. Out of this controversy came, in November 1681, Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," and the whole intellectual battle that had at its centre the best poem of the best poet of that day, and had the English Revolution among issues of the strife, was quickening the energies within young Foe's mind when his age was twenty.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Szczegóły: A Journal of the Plague Year - Defoe Daniel

Nazwa: A Journal of the Plague Year Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London (Classic Reprint)
Autor: Defoe Daniel
Wydawnictwo: Inwestycje
Kod paskowy: 9781451017670
Języki: angielski
Ilość stron: 388
Format: 15.2x22.9cm

Recenzje: A Journal of the Plague Year - Defoe Daniel