_
get very fairly excited while the Cavalier is escaping after Marston
Moor; while it is doubtful whether the savages have really come and what
will be the event; while it is again doubtful whether Moll is caught or
not; or what has become of those gains of the boy Jack, which can hardly
be called ill-gotten because there is such a perfect unconsciousness of
ill on the part of the getter. At any rate, if such a reader cannot feel
excitement here, he would utterly stagnate in any previous novel.

In presence of this superior--this emphatically and doubly
"novel"--interest, all other things become comparatively unimportant.
The relations of _Robinson Crusoe_ to Selkirk's experiences and to one
or two other books (especially the already mentioned _Isle of Pines_)
may not unfitly employ the literary historian who chooses to occupy
himself with them. The allegory which Defoe alleges in it, and which
some biographers have endeavoured to work out, cannot, I suppose, be
absolutely pooh-poohed, but presents no attractions whatever to the
present writer. Whether the _Cavalier_ is pure fiction, or partly
embroidered fact, _is_ a somewhat interesting question, if only because
it seems to be impossible to find out the answer: and the same may be
said of the not impossible (indeed almost more than probable) Portuguese
maps and documents at the back of _Captain Singleton_. To disembroil the
chronological muddle of _Roxana_, and follow out the tangles of the
hide-and-seek of that most unpleasant "lady of pleasure" and her
daughter, may suit some. But, apart from all these things, there abides
the fact that you can _read_ the books--read them again and again--enjoy
them most keenly at first and hardly less keenly afterwards, however
often you repeat the reading.

As has been partly said, the means by which this effect is achieved, and
also the means by which it is not, are almost equally remarkable. The
Four Elements of the novel are sometimes, and not incorrectly, said to
be Plot, Character, Description, and Dialogue--Style, which some would
make a fifth, being rather a characteristic in another order of
division. It is curious that Defoe is rebellious or evasive under any
analysis of this kind. His plots are of the "strong" order--the events
succeed each other and are fairly connected, but do not compose a
history so much as a chronicle. In character, despite his intense
verisimilitude, he is not very individual. Robinson himself, Mo