those who have read the book know or care anything at all about Defoe. Secondly, the adventures are remarkable in nothing save the fact that they take place under exceptional circumstances; they are never so extraordinary that we doubt their probability. Crusoe is not a particularly clever or ingenious man, with impeccable sagacity and forethought; his wit and readiness are of the average kind, and he succeeds and fails just where the average man would do the same. On these premises, the success of the book is obvious: it has achieved the very difficult triumph of pleasing everybody, from the unlearned and ignorant to the professional critic. It is, however, so essential to our childhood, and the impressions which it leaves are so strong and lasting, that we seldom return to it when we are more capable of appreciating the art which has made it part of our own experience. We have sympathised with every detail of the raft-making, the fortification of Crusoe's dwelling-place, the circumnavigation of the island, the fishing, the turtle-catching, and the corn-planting; we are become part owners of the cave, the dog, cat, and parrots; we have felt Crusoe's thrill at the sight of the footprint in the sand, and we have taken our share in the possession of Friday. It is, at all events, Defoe's fault that we have forgotten the author in our recognition of his method. (1719-20). Robinson Crusoe succeeded at once, and its success produced the vastly inferior second and third parts. The moment that the solitude of the island is invaded by other strangers than Friday, the charm is half gone; and, Sequels to "Crusoe' unless our youthful instincts are controversial, Crusoe's appearance as a religious disputant is hardly welcome. Defoe's object was to amuse, not to instruct; and when, in the sequel, he dragged in a lean moral by its hair, it was by an unhappy afterthought. There can be no doubt that the continuation of Robinson Crusoe is surpassed by Captain Singleton, a curious narrative, which was published in 1720. In this life of a very flagitious pirate and "Captain Singleton" filibuster, Defoe obviously inculcates the moral that (1720). such desultory occupations lead to an unhappy state of affairs; but, in the interest with which he follows his hero's performances, he occasionally leaves his intention to shift for itself. Nobody has ever taken warning either from the fact that Robinson Crusoe neglected the advice of his father, or that the less famous Singleton engaged in a series of dubious adventures which led him across the continent of Africa. Students of modern exploration will find in Captain Singleton a very astonishing piece of prophecy. Defoe, in his projects for hospitals and asylums and street improvements, never went quite so far as in this piece of imaginary exploration. It is certainly the highest proof of his imaginative power that this middle-class pamphleteer, in his prosaic residence at Stoke Newington, should have anticipated with so great a measure of correctness the discoveries of Speke, Burton, Livingstone, and Stanley. Publication of the narratives. 2. "Colonel Jack" and "Moll (1724). § 4. These works of fiction came out very rapidly. In 1719 Robinson Crusoe, which had probably been written at intervals during a long period, was published. In August of the same year came its second part; and, in 1720, the third part of Crusoe, Captain Singleton, the Memoirs of a Cavalier, and Duncan Campbell, in which Defoe, a lover of the supernatural, tried to foist some outrageous stories of a Highland clairvoyant on the public. In 1722, in addition to the Journal of the Plague Year, he published Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders, which, with Roxana (1724), constitute a trio of very extraordinary and not altogether profitable narratives. Colonel Jack is a portentous rascal, with no regard for the distinctions of property or affection for anyone but himself; while, of the morality of Mrs. Flanders and Roxana, the second of whom moved in high circles and rejoiced in the well-sounding name of Mademoiselle de Beleau, the less said the better. Each book was superficially intended as a deterrent from vice; and it must be owned that the leading characters suffer amazing reverses; but, in the end, a smug repentance leads to an old age full of good works, and this ultimate conversion is so inevitable that the moral purpose of the books is blunted. Moreover, the two cardinal points, which have already been mentioned, of Defoe's art and morality, are only too visible here. In the first place, the prosperity and adversity of the three criminals (for they are hardly less) is measured from a purely commercial standpoint; their compunction is greater as their pockets are emptier. Secondly, Defoe's obvious delight in surrounding his narrative with an unassailable mass of correct detail brings us so nearly into acquaintance with these rogues that we share in their misdeeds as we shared in Crusoe's adventures, and, in our sympathy with their fortunes and reverses, lose our sense of right and wrong. Add to this the circumstance that pious observations positively tremble on the tongues of Colonel Jack and the two ladies; that, for every crime and error, they have their casuistry pat and well-ordered; and we are bound to confess that the conflict between piety and the commercial instinct in Defoe's own breast spoiled his excellent purpose in these books. These people are quite bad enough without hypocrisy; their duplicity and self-deception make us doubt their eventual repentance; and, with this doubt resting on them, their stories absolutely lose any suspicion of morality or excellent intention. On the other hand, it may be said that Defoe, in venturing into this sordid company with so resolute a foot, anticipated the naturalistic method, as it is called, Naturalism of modern writers by more than a century. Colonel Jack is, to a certain extent, a narrative of adventure and travel, like Crusoe or Captain Singleton; Moll of these narratives. Flanders, on the other hand, is a study of life as coarse in grain and as minute in detail as one of Hogarth's pictures. Still, it is little more than a narrative like the rest; the changes and chances of Mrs. Flanders' life pass before us in a vivid procession, but with no more of the dramatic quality than we usually expect from an autobiography. In Roxana we have more promising material. Like the readers of the Dramatic interest of Grand Cyrus, we may look for something more from "Roxana." courts and high society. And, although Roxana is the most unequal of all the books-for the heroine is occasionally very dull and prosy, and has not a tithe of Mrs. Flanders' impulsive warm-heartedness-it is, at the same time, the nearest to the threshold of the novel, and contains at least one situation in which Defoe clearly saw a dramatic possibility. These minor narratives-all of a very respectable length-have not the perfection of Robinsoe Crusoe, but they are of infinite inportance in the evolution of the novel. narratives. (1722). § 5. A third group remains, dealing with actual history. Defoe was not content with making a list of facts and dates, with more or less dreary comments; he had to pose as an actual eye-witness. The Journal of the Plague Year (1722) 3. Historical was long accounted a contemporary description of the horrors which befell London in Defoe's infancy; and it is amazing that anyone who had not been an actual eye-witness of the scourge should have written about it with so much veracity. The Journal is little more than an ingenious romance composed upon a few well-known facts, and coloured by a lurid horror which probably represents the impression that Defoe, as a little boy, had gathered from the spectacle; to treat it as an historical document is unsafe, although not altogether unreasonable. Here, too, the dramatic side of things seems to have caught Defoe's fancy, and in this comparatively short work there is perhaps more of the art of fiction, as we understand it, than in the rest of his books put together. No one, however, could accuse the Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) of this virtue. In its accounts of the Thirty Years' War and the Civil War in England there is a dry, hard attention to bare facts which gives it the air of a blue-book. sudden appearance of these memoirs seems to have aroused no suspicion. The Cavalier even received an identity. How ever, later on, when Defoe's ingenious impostures were traced to their real author, he received with them the credit for other narratives of less value, and particularly for a very dull set of military memoirs, known as The Adventures of Captain Carleton. Éven now, these books serve to show that, if he himself had been nowhere near these battlefields, he could see the battles with his own eyes and miss no important detail. Defoe's imagination was not picturesque; it was photographic; and of this variety of imagination it remains the chief example. Of "Memoirs Cava lier" (1720). The work. the rest of his work-of the New Voyage round the Worla (1725), The Political History of the Devil (1726), and his ghoststory of Mrs. Veal and Mrs. Bargrave (1706), which Remaining continued for years to be a successful hoax, and was added, as an appendix, to enliven the otherwise sterile surface of Drelincourt on Death-there is here no space to write. His genius was not of a very high order, but it was genius; and, with all its irregularity and suspicious versatility, it was wonderfully successful. His own life ended, Death if not miserably, at least unhappily. In 1729 he left of Defoe, his house in Stoke Newington and hid himself near Greenwich-for what reason is not exactly known, but it is thought that he was out of his mind. His family discovered him; but for the next two years he lived apart from them, and died at a house in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields. RICHARDSON (1689-1761). § 6. The emotions and shades of temperament which, in Defoe's long narratives, had received the very slightest treatment, were the object chosen for analysis by SAMUEL RICHARDSAMUEL SON. With all the faults of his work, it must be confessed that he brought an entirely original element into literature. He had come to London in his youth from a remote Derbyshire village, where he had written loveletters for the girls of the neighbourhood; and, for the greater part of his life, he was a busy printer. The House of Commons appointed him printer of their journals. In 1754 he became Master of the Stationers' Company; and, in 1760, when he had reaped the reward of his books, he purchased a half share in the lucrative patent office of law-printer to the King. His three great novels were Pamela (2 vols. 1740), Clarissa Harlowe (7 vols. 1747-8), and Sir Charles Grandison (7 vols. 1753). In his old age he retired to a pleasant house at Parson's Green, where he reigned over a little knot of female worshippers, receiving their flattery and playing the part of tame cat to admiration. He died at length of apoplexy. As may be imagined, he was timid, sensitive, and effeminate; and these points in his character are amply proved by the remains of his correspondence. Pamela was written almost by accident. Richardson, as we have seen, had been always a letter-writer; and, in 1739, when he was fifty years old, he was asked by the book"Pamela" (1740): its sellers, Rivington and Osborne, to produce a manual origin and of correspondence to serve as a model for illiterate plot. people. In his desire to give his book a moral flavour, he began to cast the letters into the form of a story which he intended to serve as a warning to young servants; and so, gradually abandoning his original purpose, he wrote Pamela. The story has its centre in a young girl of great beauty and innocence who, on her mistress' death, is exposed to temptation from the lady's son and heir, and eventually, after resisting his numerous allurements and persecutions, leads him to entertain proposals of marriage and becomes his bride. It must be owned that this happy arrangement is matured as much by Pamela Andrews' machinations as by her lover's ardour, and that the morality of the book, which, Contrasted during the early stages of the affair, is unexception- "Pamela." able, is injured by the growth of self-consciousness elements in in the heroine. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Richardson showed considerable knowledge of his heroine's heart; and, if her trying experience is her education in cunning and vulgarity, this, with so ignorant a girl, is at least probable. In Pamela's union of principle with self-interest we see in Richardson something of that business instinct which, in Defoe's narratives, went so far to spoil the ostensible moral. Pamela is, in consequence, a thoroughly bourgeois novel, and could have won lasting popularity only among a class whose sympathies, keenly alive to the heroine's trials and virtue, were blunt as regarded her ability to take care of herself. The later history of the book has proved this conclusively; but, after its publication, it was read generally and generally admired. Its effect, however, upon the more educated class is seen in its satiric sequel, Fielding's Joseph Andrews. As the work of a tradesman of little education, who had served no regular apprenticeship to his art, Pamela is, nevertheless, a wonderful production; and we cannot be surprised that a novel which, in addition to its freshness of form, showed so great a command of pathetic emotion, exhausted five editions in one year and became one of the most famous books of its century. The method which Richardson used for his story in this and his two succeeding novels has its merits and its defects. To make the characters of a novel tell their own story Richardson's in a series of letters is, no doubt, of great advantage method of to an author's reputation. He can identify himself story-tellsuccessively with each one, and so describe their ing suitability emotions and shades of feeling subjectively and with to his a personal insight. On the other hand, within these genius. limits, the evolution of the story is very slow, minute, and painful; and the improbable length and detail of each letter, which must necessarily give the reader his essential understanding of the plot, causes an insurmountable difficulty. But the fact remains that in these advantages and drawbacks consists the peculiar genius of Richardson. He had no faculty of objective description; and the virtue of his work consists in his creation of character by slow and delicate touches of personal revelation. In short, the realism of Pamela, its intense concentration upon ordinary human beings instead of fictitious and unlikely ideals of chivalry and heroism, is due to the method of its composition; and Richardson, in selecting a mode of story-telling which is intrinsically improbable, selected the only method compatible with his genius. § 7. Clarissa Harlowe is incontestably Richardson's master |