1831.] Defoe : his Life and Writings. 20 



wrought in England, " Robinson Crusoe" still retains (though partially 

 dimmed) his reputation, and the reader who can unmoved peruse his 

 adventures, may assure himself that the fault of such indifference lies 

 with him ; Defoe is wholly guiltless. 



For ourselves, the bare recollection of this tale brings before our 

 minds sympathies long since resigned, and which otherwise might 

 be altogether forgotten. We remember, as though it were an event of 

 yesterday, our first perusal of " Robinson Crusoe." We remember the 

 sloping green in front of the grey abbey wall, where we sate thrilled with 

 wonder and a vague sense of horror, at the print of the unknown 

 savage's feet on the deserted island, which the solitary mariner disco- 

 vered in one of his early wanderings. We remember the strong social 

 sympathies that sprung up within us the birth, as it were, of a new 

 and better existence as we read how from being utterly desolate, 

 Robinson Crusoe gradually found himself the companion of one or 

 two associates, rude indeed, and uncultivated, but men like himself, 

 and therefore the fittest mates of his solitude. We remember (and 

 how few tales beloved in boyhood can bear the severe scrutiny of the 

 man !) the generous warmth with which we entered into the feelings of 

 the sailor, as he saw his little colony including the goats, who were 

 grown so tame that they would approach at his call and suffer him to 

 penn them at night in their fold gradually augmenting round him, and 

 at last (what an exquisite trait of nature !) following the course of nature, 

 and springing up into a limited monarchy, of which he was the head. 

 We remember too for no gratification is without its alloy, so true is the 

 exclamation of the poet 



" Inter saluberrina culta 

 Infelix lolium et steriles dominantur avenae" 



we remember the acute regret we experienced when feuds and ambitious 

 feelings began to spring up within the bosom of that colony, where 

 Astraea, driven from all other parts of earth, should have taken up her 

 abode, and Peace sate throned as on a sepulchre. Will it be believed 

 that this tale, so perfect in its descriptions so affecting in its sim- 

 plicity so entirely arid incorruptibly natural was refused by almost 

 every bookseller in the metropolis ? Yet strange as it may seem, this 

 was actually the fact. e( Robinson Crusoe" was hawked about through 

 the trade as a work of neither mark nor livelihood, and at last accepted, 

 as a proof of especial condescension, by an obscure retail bookseller. 

 It is singular, but not less true and we leave our readers to draw their 

 own inference from the fact that almost every book of any pretensions 

 to originality has been similarly neglected. " Paradise Lost" with diffi- 

 culty found a publisher, while the whole trade vied with each other in 

 their eagerness to procure the works of such dull mechanical writers as 

 Blackmore and Glover ; " Gulliver's Travels" lay ten years in MS. for 

 want of due encouragement from the booksellers ; and in our own times, 

 and in a lighter branch of literature, the (e Miseries of Human Life/* 

 and the still more ingenious " Rejected Addresses," were refused by the 

 trade with indifference, if not contempt. To crown the list of w r orks 

 thus misunderstood, Sir W. Scott has left it on record that " Waverley" 

 was actually declined three several times by the acutest publisher of his 

 day ; and at last ushered into the world, after it had lain twelve years 



