to the imagination in contemplating him as king and owner of every thing about him;

"I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute."

Among the striking passages of the work may be mentioned the encounter with the wolves and bears in crossing the Pyrenees. The second part, like most second parts, is much inferior to the first. We lose our old acquaintance the Solitary, and are presented with a Missionary in his stead. The story is confused with a variety of adventures, in which however the author exhibits his knowledge of the course of trade, which he was well acquainted with, and manners and customs which he had heard or read of, in China, Tartary, Siberia, and other countries. The most striking passage in this volume is the lively description of the sufferings of a young woman dying in the agonies of hunger. De Foe has shown a candour, at that time not very common, in giving a very amiable character of a French catholic priest; but the adventure of burning the Tartar idol, if it is meant as a heroic exploit, shows very confused ideas of justice.— It must not be concealed that the originality of this work has been disputed to De Foe from the following circumstance. One Alexander Selkirk really passed some years alone on the island of Juan Fernandez, and a sketch of his story had been given in the relation of Woodes Rogers. This might very probably give the first hint of his romance; but as to the report that

he possessed papers of Selkirk's and had made unacknowledged use of them, it appears to have been propagated without any solid ground whatever; and indeed the situation in which Robinson Crusoe is placed, and from which most of the incidents arise, materially differs from that of Selkirk.-De Foe wrote many other lives and adventures, and employed his ready pen to the end of his laborious life, which took place in London, in April 1731, in his 68th year.

THE LIFE

AND

SURPRISING ADVENTURES

OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE.

I WAS born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and, leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York; from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother, I never knew, any more than father and mother did know what was become of me.

my

Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country freeschool generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall

me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject: he asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving his house, and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes, on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes, on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed

with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind: he told me, I might judge of the happiness of this state by one thing, viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bade me observe it, and I should always find, that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind: but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind: nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were, who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagancies, on one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean and insufficient diet, on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues, and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty

were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace, and the body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burn