hoops. His solacing
himself in this solitude by singing psalms, and preserving a social
feeling in his fervent prayers. And the habitation which Selkirk had
raised, to reach which they followed him "with difficulty, climbing up
and creeping down many rocks, till they came at last to a pleasant spot
of ground full of grass and of trees, where stood his two huts, and his
numerous tame goats showed his solitary retreat;" and, finally, his
indifference to return to a world from which his feelings had been so
perfectly weaned.--Such were the first rude materials of a new situation
in human nature; an European in a primeval state, with the habits or
mind of a savage.

The year after this account was published, Selkirk and his adventures
attracted the notice of Steele, who was not likely to pass unobserved a
man and a story so strange and so new. In his paper of "The Englishman,"
Dec. 1713, he communicates farther particulars of Selkirk. Steele became
acquainted with him; he says, that "he could discern that he had been
much separated from company from his aspect and gesture. There was a
strong but cheerful seriousness in his looks, and a certain disregard to
the ordinary things about him, as if he had been sunk in thought. The
man frequently bewailed his return to the world, which could not, he
said, with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquillity of his
solitude." Steele adds another very curious change in this wild man,
which occurred some time after he had seen him. "Though I had frequently
conversed with him, after a few months' absence, he met me in the
street, and though he spoke to me, I could not recollect that I had seen
him. Familiar converse in this town had taken off the loneliness of his
aspect, and quite altered the air of his face." De Foe could not fail of
being struck by these interesting particulars of the character of
Selkirk; but probably it was another observation of Steele which threw
the germ of Robinson Crusoe into the mind of De Foe. "It was matter of
great curiosity to hear him, as he was a man of sense, give an account
of the _different revolutions in his own mind in that long solitude_."

The work of De Foe, however, was no sudden ebullition: long engaged in
political warfare, condemned to suffer imprisonment, and at length
struck by a fit of apoplexy, this unhappy and unprosperous man of genius
on his recovery was reduced to a comparative state of solitude. To his
injured feelings and lo