_Daniel de Foe._--A son of Daniel shines in Pope's _Dunciad_. Does the
following notice refer to a son of that son? It is extracted from an old
Wiltshire paper:
"On the 2 Jan. 1771, two young men, John Clark and John Joseph De
Foe, said to be a grandson to the celebrated author of the _True
Born Englishman, &c._, were executed at Tyburn for robbing Mr.
F----, the banker, of a watch and a trifling sum of money on the
highway."
And the writer then proceeds to moralise on the inequality of that code
of laws, which could visit with death the author of a burglary committed
on another man, who, by the failure of his bank, had recently produced
an unexampled scene of distress, in the ruin of many families, and was
yet suffered to go scatheless.
My next notice, which is also extracted from a Wiltshire paper, is dated
1836.
"In a street adjoining Hungerford Market, there is now living, 'to
fortune and to fame unknown,' the great-grandson of the author of
_Robinson Crusoe_. His trade is that of a carpenter, and he is
much respected in the neighbourhood. His father, a namesake of
this great progenitor, was for many years a creditable tradesman
in the old Hungerford Market."
Has it ever been noticed by bibliographers that the _History of Robert
Drury_, which came out the year before _Robinson Crusoe_, may have had
an equal share with Alexander Selkirk's story in forming the basis of De
Foe's narrative?