le of his pamphlet, _The Life and Strange
Surprising Adventures of Mr. D---- De F----, of London, Hosier, who
has lived above Fifty Years by himself in the Kingdoms of North and
South Britain._ But the question has always been, To what extent are
we to accept Defoe's statement that the story is an allegory? Does it
agree step by step and in detail with the circumstances of Defoe's
life? Or has it but a general allegorical resemblance?

Hitherto, critics have been content with the general resemblance, and
have agreed that it would be a mistake to accept Defoe's statement
too literally, to hunt for minute allusions in _Robinson Crusoe_, and
search for exact resemblances between incidents in the tale and events
in the author's life. But this at any rate may be safely affirmed,
that recent discoveries have proved the resemblance to be a great deal
closer than anyone suspected a few years ago.

Mr. Wright's hypothesis.

Mr. Aitken supplied the key when he announced in the _Athenaeum_ for
August 23rd, 1890, his discovery that Daniel Defoe was born, not in
1661 (as had hitherto been supposed), but earlier, and probably in the
latter part of the year 1659. The story dates Crusoe's birth September
30th, 1632, or just twenty-seven years earlier. Now Mr. Wright,
Defoe's latest biographer,[A] maintains that if we add these
twenty-seven years to the date of any event in Crusoe's life we shall
have the date of the corresponding event in Defoe's life. By this
simple calculation he finds that Crusoe's running away to sea
corresponds in time with Defoe's departure from the academy at
Newington Green; Crusoe's early period on the island (south side)
with the years Defoe lived at Tooting; Crusoe's visit to the other
side of the island with a journey of Defoe's into Scotland; the
footprint and the arrival of the savages with the threatening letters
received by Defoe, and the physical assaults made on him after the
Sacheverell trial; while Friday stands for a collaborator who helped
Defoe with his work.

Defoe expressly states in his _Serious Reflections_ that the story of
Friday is historical and true in fact--

"It is most real that I had ... such a servant, a savage, and
afterwards a Christian, and that his name was called Friday, and
that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that
took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all
literally true, and should I enter into discoveries