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THE FIRST PART OF ROBINSON CRUSOE.”

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Passions in the Managing and Correcting of Children." Thus I am brought to 1719, in which year, on the 25th of April, first appeared "THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRIZING ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE."

There can be no doubt

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that the foundation of this fascinating romance, which for a century and a half has been the favourite companion not only of English boys but of English men, was afforded by the narrative of Alexander Selkirk's experiences, as recorded by Captain Woodes Rogers in his account of Cruising Voyage Round the World: first to the South Seas, thence to the East Indies, and homeward by the Cape of Good Hope; begun in 1708, and finished in 1711." Alexander Selkirk was a native of Largo, in the county of Fife, where he was born in 1676. In Dampier's expedition to the South Seas he served as a sailor on board Captain Stradling's ship; but quarrelling with his officer, deserted from the vessel at the island of Juan

THE

LIFE

AND

STRANGE SURPRIZING

ADVENTURES

OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE,
Of TORK, MARINER:

Who lived Eight and Twenty Years,
all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the
Coaft of AMERICA, near the Mouth of
the Great River of OROONOQUE;

Having been caft on Shore by Shipwreck, where-
in all the Men perished but himself.
WITH
An Account how he was at laft as fhrangely deli-
ver'd by PIRATES.

Wrinen by Himself.

LONDON

Printed for W TAYLOR at the Ship in Pater-Nofter
Row. MDCCXIX.

Fernandez in September REDUCED FAC-SIMILE OF TITLE PAGE TO VOL. L OF THE 1704, and there lived alone

FIRST EDITION OF "ROBINSON CRUSOE."

until released by Captain Woodes Rogers in February 1709.

Selkirk returned to England in 1711. In the following year his extraordinary story was published by Captain Woodes Rogers, from whose "Cruising Voyage" it was reprinted, in a quarto tract of twelve pages, shortly afterwards. Another account appeared in Captain Edward Cooke's “Voyage" (1712); and on the 3rd December 1713, in the 26th number of "The Englishman," it was again related by Sir Richard Steele, who had seen and conversed with its hero in London.

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309

INVENTION VERSUS IMAGINATION.

In whatever form De Foe met with this curious instance of "truth stranger than fiction," it certainly suggested to him the groundwork of "Robinson Crusoe; "-that is, he borrowed from it the idea of the island solitude (and

REDUCED FAC-SIMILE SPECIMEN OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FIRST EDITION OF ROBINSON CRUSOE."

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much of the charm of the work is owing to the circumstance that its scenes transpire in a lonely, seagirdled, remote, and almost inaccessible isle); the construction of the two huts; the abundance of goats; and the clothing made out of their skins. All the rest he owed to his own fertile and inventive genius.

For it is invention that is the characteristic of the book rather than imagination. There is more imagination shown in the island-episode of Mr. Charles Reade's

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thought never crosses his mind that it is untrue. Its very prosaism renders the impression it produces greater; were it more poetical in form and spirit, it would necessarily be less real. Yet it is difficult to understand how De Foe could so absolutely ignore the poetical in his treatment of so poetical a

*It is worth notice that all the imitations of "Robinson Crusoe" have placed their heroes in lonely islands, from "Philip Quarll" down to "Masterman Ready" and "Foul Play." Tennyson wrecks his "Enoch Arden" on an island, though for all practical purposes the coast of the mainland would have answered quite as well. But the very idea of an island seems to be surrounded with a halo of romance.

DE FOE'S REAL STRENGTH.

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conception; how he was never tempted to indulge in any glowing delineation of tropical landscapes; how, from first to last, Fancy, with its manycoloured gleams, should be so wholly absent from the picture. Almost the only dramatic stroke in the romance—and its effect is so great that we wonder its inventor refrained from further employment of a power which he evidently possessed-is Crusoe's discovery of the unknown footprint on the sandy shore. Otherwise, the narrative flows on with an evenness, a method, and a prosaic regularity which are absolutely wonderful, and which so impose upon the reader that he accepts the most startling adventures as if they were the ordinary events of life.

It seems to us that all De Foe's strength lay in this inventiveness. His was not the power of analyzing character. He was incapable of any psychological development of passion or emotion. Not one of his heroes or heroines lives in our recollection-except, indeed, Crusoe and Friday; and these, not because they are boldly drawn, but from their association with certain romantic circumstances. If we speak of Fielding, we immediately recall, with all the sharpness and freshness of well-known portraits, Joseph Andrews, and Parson Adams, and Lady Bellasis; Richardson reminds us of Lovelace, and Grandison, and Clarissa; Scott, of Dandie Dinmont, Lucy Ashton, Nicol Jarvie, Counsellor Pleydel, Dirck Hatteraick, Amy Robsart, and a hundred other characters, who have become the familiar friends of generations of readers. But when we think of De Foe, it is to remember the striking incidents which make up his stories, and to admire the vraisemblance with which his minute genius has invested them. Thus, then, he stands wholly apart from the other illustrious names of English fiction, occupying a field which-but for the labours of a recent follower, William Gilbert-he would occupy alone.

An immense mass of criticism has been accumulated in reference to "Robinson Crusoe;" and as it is always interesting to observe how a fine work of art is regarded by competent judges, I shall select from it a few specimens. First, I propose to condense Sir Walter Scott's admirable remarks.

FROM SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The style of probability with which De Foe invested his narratives was perhaps ill bestowed, or rather wasted, upon some of the works which he thought proper to produce, and cannot recommend to us their subject; but, on the other hand, the same talent throws an air of truth about the delightful history of "Robinson Crusoe," which we never could have believed it possible to have united with so extraordinary a situation as is assigned to the hero. All the usual scaffolding and machinery employed in composing fictitious history are carefully discarded. The early incidents of the tale, which in ordinary works of invention are usually thrown out as pegs to hang the conclusion upon, are in this work only touched upon, and suffered to drop

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SIR WALTER SCOTT'S CRITICISM

out of sight. Robinson, for example, never hears anything more of his elder brother, who enters Lockhart's Dragoons in the beginning of the work, and who, in any common romance, would certainly have appeared before the conclusion. We lose sight at once and for ever of the interesting Xury; and the whole earlier adventures of our voyager vanish, not to be recalled to our recollection by the subsequent course of the story. His father-the good old merchant of Hull-all the other persons who have been originally active in the drama-vanish from the scene, and appear not again.

Our friend Robinson, thereafter, in the course of his roving and restless life, is at length thrown upon his desert island-a situation in which, existing as a solitary being, he became an example of what the unassisted energies of an individual of the human race can perform; and the author has, with wonderful exactness, described him as acting and thinking precisely as such a man must have thought and acted in such an extraordinary situation.

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Pathos is not De Foe's general characteristic; he had too little delicacy of mind when it comes, it comes uncalled, and is created by the circumstances, not sought for by the author. The excess, for instance, of the natural longing for human society which Crusoe manifests while on board of the stranded Spanish vessel, by falling into a sort of agony, as he repeated the words, "Oh, that but one man had been saved!-oh, that there had been but one!" is in the highest degree pathetic. The agonizing reflections of the solitary, when he is in danger of being driven to sea in his rash attempt to circumnavigate his island, are also affecting.

In like manner we may remark, that De Foe's genius did not approach the grand or terrific. The battles, which he is fond of describing, are told with the indifference of an old bucanier, and probably in the very way in which he may have heard them recited by the actors. His goblins, too, are generally a commonplace sort of spirits, that bring with them very little of supernatural terror; and yet the fine incident of the print of the naked foot on the sand, with Robinson Crusoe's terrors in consequence, never fails to leave a powerful impression upon the reader.

The supposed situation of his hero was peculiarly favourable to the circumstantial style of De Foe. Robinson Crusoe was placed in a condition where it was natural that the slightest event should make an impression on him; and De Foe was not an author who would leave the slightest event untold. When he mentions that two shoes were driven ashore, and adds that they were not neighbours, we feel it to be an incident of importance to the solitary......

The continuation of Robinson Crusoe's history, after he obtains the society of his man Friday, is less philosophical than that which turns our thoughts upon the efforts which a solitary individual may make for extending his own comforts in the melancholy situation in which he is placed, and upon the natural reflections suggested by the progress of his own mind. The

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character of Friday is, nevertheless, extremely pleasing; and the whole subsequent history of the shipwrecked Spaniards and the pirate vessel is highly interesting. Here certainly the "Memoirs of Robinson Crusoe" ought to have stopped. The Second Part, though containing many passages which display the author's genius, does not rise high in character above the " Memoirs of Captain Singleton," or the other imaginary voyages of the author.

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There scarce exists a work so popular as Robinson Crusoe." It is read eagerly by young people; and there is hardly an elf so devoid of imagination as not to have supposed for himself a solitary island in which he could act "Robinson Crusoe," were it but in the corner of the nursery. To many it has given the decided turn of their lives, by sending them to sea. For the young mind is much less struck with the hardships of the anchorite's situation than with the animating exertions which he makes to overcome them; and "Robinson Crusoe" produces the same impression upon an adventurous spirit which the "Book of Martyrs" would do on a young devotee, or the "Newgate Calendar " upon an acolyte of Bridewell-both of which students are less terrified by the horrible manner in which the tale terminates, than animated by sympathy with the saints or depredators who are the heroes of their volume. Neither does a reperusal of "Robinson Crusoe," at a more advanced age, diminish our early impressions. The situation is such as every man may make his own; and, being possible in itself, is, by the exquisite art of the narrator, rendered as probable as it is interesting. It has the merit, too, of that species of accurate painting which can be looked at again and again with new pleasure.

Neither has the admiration of the work been confined to England, though Robinson Crusoe himself-with his rough good sense, his prejudices, and his obstinate determination not to sink under evils which can be surpassed by exertion-forms no bad specimen of the "True-born Englishman." The rage for imitating a work so popular seems to have risen to a degree of frenzy; and, by a mistake not peculiar to this particular class of the servum pecus, the imitators did not attempt to apply De Foe's manner of managing the narrative to some situation of a different kind, but seized upon and caricatured the principal incidents of the shipwrecked mariner and the solitary island. It is computed that within forty years from the appearance of the original work, no less than forty-one different "Robinsons" appeared, besides fifteen other imitations, in which other titles were used. Finallythough, perhaps, it is no great recommendation-the anti-social philosopher Rousseau will allow no other book than "Robinson Crusoe" in the hands of Emilius. Upon the whole, the work is as unlikely to lose its celebrity as it is to be equalled in its peculiar character by any other of similar excellence.

The reader will not be displeased, perhaps, to see what Rousseau's opinion really was.

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