ecessarily
described himself and the readers whose tastes he understood and shared
so thoroughly. His statement that 'Robinson Crusoe' was a kind of
allegory was truer than he knew. In 'Robinson Crusoe' is De Foe, and
more than De Foe, for he is the typical Englishman of his time. He is
the broad-shouldered, beef-eating John Bull, who has been shouldering
his way through the world ever since. Drop him in a desert island, and
he is just as sturdy and self-composed as if he were in Cheapside.
Instead of shrieking or writing poetry, becoming a wild hunter or a
religious hermit, he calmly sets about building a house and making
pottery and laying out a farm. He does not accommodate himself to his
surroundings; they have got to accommodate themselves to him. He meets a
savage and at once annexes him, and preaches him such a sermon as he had
heard from the exemplary Dr. Doddridge. Cannibals come to make a meal of
him, and he calmly stamps them out with the means provided by
civilisation. Long years of solitude produce no sort of effect upon him
morally or mentally. He comes home as he went out, a solid keen
tradesman, having, somehow or other, plenty of money in his pockets, and
ready to undertake similar risks in the hope of making a little more. He
has taken his own atmosphere with him to the remotest quarters. Wherever
he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the
country. The ancient religions of the primaeval East or the quaint
beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except
a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions
from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid
way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they
will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not
the less effective because the artist was so far from intending it that
he could not even conceive of anybody being differently constituted from
himself. It shows us all the more vividly what was the manner of man
represented by the stalwart Englishman of the day; what were the men who
were building up vast systems of commerce and manufacture; shoving their
intrusive persons into every quarter of the globe; evolving a great
empire out of a few factories in the East; winning the American
continent for the dominant English race; sweeping up Australia by the
way as a convenient settlement for convicts; stamping firmly and
decisive