418.] This preface was written in 1728; what happened to Defoe in the following year is much more difficult to understand, and is greatly complicated by a long letter of his own which has been preserved.
Something had occurred, or was imagined by him to have occurred, which compelled him to fly from his home and go into hiding.

He was at work on a book to be entitled _The Complete English Gentleman_.

Part of it was already in type when he broke off abruptly in September, 1729, and fled.
In August, 1730, he sent from a hiding-place, cautiously described as being about two miles from Greenwich, a letter to his son-in-law, Baker, which is our only clue to what had taken place.

It is so incoherent as to suggest that the old man's prolonged toils and anxieties had at last shaken his reason, though not his indomitable self-reliance.

Baker apparently had written complaining that he was debarred from seeing him.
"Depend upon my sincerity for this," Defoe answers, "that I am far from debarring you.