ALEXANDER SELKIRK. 
377 
pier, who was pilot on board the Duke, and knew Selkirk very well, 
told Captain Rogers, that, when on board the C'nque Ports, he was 
the best seaman on board of that vessel : upon which captain Rogers 
appointed him master’s mate of the Duke. 
After a fortnight’s stay at Juan Fernandez, the ships proceeded on 
their cruise against the Spaniards ; plundered a town on the coast of 
Peru ; took a Manilla ship off California, and returned by way of the 
East Indies to England, where they arrived the first of October, 1711 ; 
Selkirk having been absent eight years, more than half of which he 
had spent in the island. 
The public curiosity being excited respecting him, he was induced 
to put his papers into the hands of Daniel Defoe, to arrange and form 
them into a regular narrative. These papers must have been drawn 
up after he had left Juan Fernandez, as he had no means of recording 
his transactions there. Captain Cook remarks, as an extraordinary 
circumstance, that he had contrived to keep an account of the days 
of the week and month ; but thi s might be done, as Defoe makes 
Robinson Crusoe do, by cutting notches in a post, or many other 
methods. From this account of Selkirk, Defoe took the idea of 
writing a more extensive w'ork, the Romance of Robinson Crusoe, 
and very dishonestly defrauded the original proprietor of his share of 
the profits. 
Of the time, place, or manner, of this extraordinary man’s death, 
we have received no account ; but in 1792 the chest and musket whnh 
Selkirk had with him on the island, were in the possession of his 
grand-nephew, John Selkirk, weaver, in Largo. 
Robinson Crusoe, the favourite of the learned and unlearned, of the 
youth and the adult, the book that was to constitute the library of 
Rousseau’s Emilius, owes its secret charm to its being a new repre- 
sentation of human nature, yet drawn from an existing state; this 
picture of self-education, self-inquiry, self-happiness, is scarcely a 
fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance ; and is not a 
mere narrative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of one 
of the most original minds our literature can boast. The history of 
the work is therefore interesting. It was treated in the author’s time 
as a mere idle romance, for the philosophy was not discovered in the 
story : after his death it was supposed to have been pillaged from 
the papers of Alexander Selkirk, confided to the author ; and the ho- 
nour, as well as the genius, of De Foe, w^ere alike questioned. 
The entire history of this work of genius may now be traced from 
the first hints to the mature state, to which only the genius of De 
Foe could have wrought it. 
In this artless narrative we may discover more than the embryo of 
Robinson Crusoe. — The first appearance of Selkirk, ‘ a man clothed 
in goat’s skins, who looked more wild than the first owners of them ;* 
the two huts he had built, the one to dress his victuals, and the other 
to sleep in ; his contrivance to get fire, by rubbing two pieces of 
pimento wood together ; his distress for the want of bread and salt, 
till he came to relish his meat without either ; his wearing out his 
shoes, till he grew so accustomed to be without them, that he could 
not for a long time afterwards, on his return home, use them without 
3 B 
