From the Preface to Daniel Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman:

The hasty errors of my verse I made my excuse for before; and since the time I have been upon it has been but little, and my leisure less, I have all along strove rather to make the thoughts explicit, than the poem correct. However, I have mended some faults in this edition, and the rest must be placed to my account.

And again:

…I may venture to foretel, that I shall be cavilled at about my mean style, rough verse, and incorrect language, things I indeed might have taken more care in. But the book is printed; and though I see some faults, it is too late to mend them. And this is all I think needful to say to them.

Daniel Defoe trivia: His first novel was Robinson Crusoe. It was published when he was sixty years old, or maybe fifty-eight as his exact birth year is unknown. Defoe was arguably the first commercial writer; he had an acute and sometimes prescient understanding of publishing as an industry; to Defoe, the writer was merely one of a chain of labourers in the production of a saleable book. Defoe was pilloried and sent thence to Newgate Prison for the admirably impetuous crime of accusing both sides in a bitter religious feud of “occasional conformity,” thereby ensuring that one powerful man or another would have it in for him. He was released from Newgate after agreeing to spy for Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (himself a character of great interest). There is a wonderfully entertaining essay by Ian Watt on Daniel Defoe’s life and writings.

Tags: daniel defoe, defoe, perfectionism, preface, robinson crusoe, sixty years old, the true-born englishman