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WES“ ae 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
MANCHESTER, MASS., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1908. 
ENGLISH LITERATURE IN 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: 
THE 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
Not one of the greatest certainly, but 
one of the most interesting, writers of 
the earlier part of the 18th century, is 
Daniel Defoe. He wrote one book 
which, if he had written nothing else, 
would have made his name famous in 
two hemispheres. With scarcely a tithe 
of Steele’s learning, but with tenfold his 
power to interest and charm, the author 
of Robinson Crusoe is known wherever 
the English language is spoken, while 
Steele is almost forgotten. 
Defoe at first tried business, but his 
mercantile operations came, one after 
another, to a disastrous close. He next 
entered the field of politics, for which 
he seems to have had some adaptation 
and taste. He threw himself upon the 
Whig side with ardor, and wrote vigor- 
ously upon the leading questions of the 
day; even gaining the notice and warm 
approbation of King William; but. the 
death of the king cut short his career in 
that direction, and he turned to litera- 
ture for employment, and this proved 
the sphere best fitted to his talents and 
in which he was to achieve _ lasting 
renown. 
Defoe was a voluminous writer, 
ninety-seven different works being 
ascribed to ,him, and discoursed on a 
great variety of subjects; many of these, 
however, were not of general or perma- 
nent interest; his fame now rests almost 
wholly on his two great works of imag- 
‘ination, The Journal of the Plague Year 
and Robinson Crusoe. The former 
stands by itself as an unapproached ex- 
ample of the successful mingling of his- 
tory and fiction. It is based on fact, the 
dreadful occurrences of the year of the 
Plague in London, 1665, and yet it is 
fiction pure and simple. The story is 
put into the mouth of a humble citizen 
who writes naturally and simply, and 
with the pathos of reality, as an eye- 
witness of the awful distress. It is to be 
remembered that Defoe in the year of 
the plague was a child of four. The 
accuracy and apparent veracity of the 
narrative are so great, that it has been 
taken by many foran authentic record. 
But it is certain that it was the fruit of 
the author’s wonderful imagination, by 
which he was enabled to clothe fiction 
in the garb of the most life-like reality. 
The book is atriumph of art, but the 
depressing nature of the subject and the 
gruesomeness of some of its details have 
prevented it from being popular. It is a 
book unique in its way, and will probably 
SPECIAL TOWN MEETING IN MANCHESTER. 
Next Monday Evening to Act on Purchase of Manchester Electric Co. and Other 
_ Important 
A special Town Meeting is called for 
Manchester, to be held in the Town hall 
next Monday evening, Sept. 28. Most 
important among the matters to be 
brought up is the purchase of the Man- 
chester Electric Co. 
There are other matters to be brought 
before the meeting, also, as will be seen 
by the articles of the warrant below. 
The acceptance of the Pine street lay- 
out will be brought up again. The sel- 
ectmen have received a request from a 
summer visitor who wants to open a 
studio in the old schoolhouse at the 
junction of Forest and Summer streets, 
and an article has been inserted in the 
warrant to see if the town is willing to 
rent or lease this property. 
The question of an additional $400 
for the support of the police department 
will be asked foralso. This is to meet the 
expense of keeping an additional night 
officer on all winter, Officer Sheehan be- 
ing hired with that understanding last 
spring. 
The articles of the warrant follow: 
1. To choose a moderator. 
2. To consider the purchase by the 
town of the Manchester Electric Co., 
all its rights, franchises, privileges and 
property of all kinds, at a price not ex- 
Business. 
ceeding $150,000, or take any action re- 
lating thereto. 
3. ‘To see if it is expedient for the 
town to exercise the authority confered 
by Sect. 1, chapter 34, R. L. of Mass., 
as amended by Sects. 59 and 158 of 
Part 3 of chapter 463 of the Acts of 
1906, and to construct, purchase or lease 
and maintain within its limits one or 
more plants for the manufacture or dis- 
tribution of electricity for furnishing light 
for municipal use, and light, heat or 
power for the use of its inhabitants, ex- 
cept for furnishing light, heat or power 
for the operation of the cars of a. street 
railway company, ortake any action re- 
lating thereto. 
4. Tosee if the town will accept 
and allow the Pine street layout as made 
by the Selectmen and to be reported to 
the town at this meeting; also to make 
an appropriation, to pay the expense of 
constructing the same, or taking any ac- 
tion relating thereto. 
5. ‘To see if the town will make an 
additional appropriation of $400 for the 
support of the Police department. 
6. To see if the town will authorize 
the Selectmen to rent or lease the pro- 
perty of the town located at the junction 
of Forest and Summer street. 
never have a rival. Asa work of cir- 
cumstantial invention, combined with a 
style which exactly fits it by its sim- 
plicity, it yields precedence only to its 
author’s still more wonderful creation, 
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. 
This book, which appeared in 1719, 
may be said to have leaped into popu- 
larity at once, passing through four 
editions in four months, and never to 
have lost its hold on the public mind; _ it 
establishes the claim for Defoe as the 
first true English writer of fiction. 
‘Though having no plot to the working- 
out of which the characters and events 
contribute, it has more likeness to the 
modern novel than any of the slight tales 
that had preceded it, from the time of 
Elizabeth downward. 
The great charm of Rodinson Crusoe 
is its naturalness; unlike other attempts 
to portray life in somewhat similar sur- 
roundings of isolation and savageness, 
with which Defoe could hardly have 
been unfamiliar, there is nothing in his 
work of the mythical, the absurd, the 
impossible, nothing but might have hap- 
pened. ‘The whole story, with all its 
situations and incidents, has a verisim- 
ilitude that is its great charm, and places 
it at the farthest remove from tales of the 
Arabian Nights variety, which only il- 
lustrate their authors’ capacity of unlim- 
ited and unrestrained fancy. The 
account of the shipwreck, the escape to 
an uninhabited island, with its “* heavy- 
fruited bowers,’’ the simple housekeep- 
ing with its ingenious contrivances and 
expedients, the life of the tropics ‘‘so 
wild that it was tame,’’ the horror at the 
sight of the savages on the shore at their 
cannibal feast, the discovery of the 
human footprint, the man Friday,—are 
touches of a master hand; they seem al- 
most as fresh as if seen yesterday, though 
more than sixty years have past since the 
book was laid down. 
‘The question has been mooted, how 
far did Defoe avail himself of existing 
materials in writing his great master- 
piece? His remarkable knack of using 
scattered and fragmentary hints from 
other writers in his own compositions, as 
the early discoveries of the Portuguese 
