nely contemplations, Selkirk in his Desert Isle,
and Steele's vivifying hint, often occurred; and to all these we perhaps
owe the instructive and delightful tale, which shows man what he can do
for himself, and what the fortitude of piety does for man. Even the
personage of Friday is not a mere coinage of his brain: a Mosquito
Indian, described by Dampier, was the prototype. Robinson Crusoe was not
given to the world till 1719, seven years after the publication of
Selkirk's adventures.[143] Selkirk could have no claims on De Foe; for
he had only supplied the man of genius with that which lies open to all;
and which no one had, or perhaps could have, converted into the
wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself. Had De Foe not written
Robinson Crusoe, the name and story of Selkirk had been passed over like
others of the same sort; yet Selkirk has the merit of having detailed
his own history, in a manner so interesting, as to have attracted the
notice of Steele, and to have inspired the genius of De Foe.

After this, the originality of Robinson Crusoe will no longer be
suspected; and the idle tale which Dr. Beattie has repeated of Selkirk
having supplied the materials of his story to De Foe, from which our
author borrowed his work, and published for his own profit, will be
finally put to rest. This is due to the injured honour and genius of De
Foe.

CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT DRAMAS.

Literature, and the arts connected with it, in this free country, have
been involved with its political state, and have sometimes flourished or
declined with the fortunes, or been made instrumental to the purposes,
of the parties which had espoused them. Thus in our dramatic history, in
the early period of the Reformation, the Catholics were secretly working
on the stage; and long afterwards the royalist party, under Charles the
First, possessed it till they provoked their own ruin. The Catholics, in
their expiring cause, took refuge in the theatre, and disguised the
invectives they would have invented in sermons, under the more popular
forms of the drama, where they freely ridiculed the chiefs of the _new
religion_, as they termed the Reformation, and "the new Gospellers," or
those who quoted their Testament, as an authority for their proceedings.
Fuller notices this circumstance. "The popish priests, though unseen,
stood behind the hangings, or lurked in the tyring-house."[144] These
found supporters among the elder part of their