tions on life, religion and Providence were such as had occurred to him during his stormy and troubled career, but that he wrote the tale for the purpose of giving those reflections and opinions to the world is not likely. His chief object was to tell an interesting story that had been suggested to his imagination by the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, which had been published some few years before, and the speculations naturally followed. Defoe's purpose was to entertain and not to instruct. How well he succeeded is proved by the testimony of every generation of readers, young and old, since the book was published. It ranks among the foremost of English classics and is read by everybody. It has been translated into all languages, and Burckhart, the traveler, heard it read aloud in Arabic around the camp fires of the caravans of the desert.

Little can be said of this immortal story that has not already been said many times. It is so real and enters so minutely into every particular of the hero's adventures that it is like truth itself, and it casts all modern realistic writing far in the shade. Not even in books of history and biography, that purport to give actual facts, is there such a sense of the real as in this masterpiece of Defoe's.

But while everyone knows all about Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, there are not many that know much about Defoe himself, and it is only in recent years that his biography has been written. He belongs to one of the brilliant periods of English literary history-the age of Queen Anne. He was contemporary with Atterbury and Pope, Swift and Arbuthnot, Addison and Steele, Gay and Prior. He wrote an enormous number of books and pamphlets, and took an active part in the politics of the time. "Robinson Crusoe" appeared the year of Addison's death, but Defoe's name has never been associated with the "Wits of Queen Anne."

Besides being the pioneer of modern novelists Defoe was the pioneer of modern journalists, and established his paper, the Review, in 1704, five years before the Tatler appeared, and conducted it until 1713, one year after the Spectator had ceased to exist. He wrote on all sorts of topics, social, religious and political, and next to Swift was considered the most trenchant political writer of the time, and yet while everything that Swift wrote had been preserved, none of Defoe's political writings had ever been republished.

He was one of the first of English social and political reformers, advocated the equality of the

sexes, prison reform, free trade and opposed dueling, and his pamphlets and other writings were always popular and influential. He was on confidential terms with cabinet ministers and with King William III., and was employed by Queen Anne on important missions, taking an active part in bringing about the union with Scotland; and yet neither Macaulay nor Lord Stanhope mentions him in his history. Hume calls him "a scurrilous party writer in very little reputation," while Swift and Pope never speak of him without a

sneer.

He wrote several other novels besides " Robinson Crusoe," but they are too coarse for modern tastes, and no one now finds much enjoyment in "Colonel Jack," "Captain Singleton," "Moll Flanders" or or "Roxana." One of the most famous of his shorter pieces is "The True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal," in which he relates with great detail the circumstances of the appearance of a ghost to certain persons in London. It was written with such an air of truth that the story was universally believed for years, but it was solely Defoe's invention.

He also wrote "A History of the Black Art," "The Secrets of the Invisible World," " A Universal History of Apparitions" and a humor

ous "History of the Devil," and in all these he relied solely on his imagination for his facts.

One reason that is assigned for the oblivion into which his writings have fallen is that in politics he acted a double part, and was in the pay of one side to betray the secrets of the other. So great was his power of circumstantial inventions, and so remarkable his genius for lying like truth, that for ten years he made the Whigs believe he was a Whig and the Tories believe he was a Tory. In his Review he advocated Whig principles, while he was in the secret pay of the Tory government. Swift must have known this, and despised Defoe accordingly, though Swift himself" ratted" and left the Whigs to become a tower of strength to the Tory government. Defoe's political conduct has found defenders, but we are no longer interested in it. What we are interested in is the fact that he was one of the most remarkable writers in the Augustan age of English literature.

RICHARDSON

AND HIS NOVELS.

(1689-1761.)

SAMUEL RICHARDSON has sometimes been called the father of the modern English novel, but this statement is too broad. Defoe has a much better claim to that title. What may be conceded, however, to Richardson is that he was the inventor or originator of the English domestic novel, made up from the incidents of everyday life. His method also was original, his stories being told in the form of correspondence between the principal characters. How he hit upon this plan he himself has told. was employed by several women to write or correct their love letters for them. Late in life, when two booksellers entreated him to write for them a little volume of letters in a common style on such subjects as might be of use to country readers who were unable to write

When he was a boy he rather illiterate young