he author of the best and most
popular book for boys ever written, will be right glad to read his

* * * * *

ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.

"It has happened not seldom that one work of some author has so
transcendently surpassed in execution the rest of his compositions, that
the world has agreed to pass a sentence of dismissal upon the latter,
and to consign them to total neglect and oblivion. It has done wisely in
this, not to suffer the contemplation of excellencies of a lower
standard to abate or stand in the way of the pleasure it has agreed to
receive from the master-piece.

"Again, it has happened, that, from no inferior merit of execution in
the rest, but from superior good fortune in the choice of its subject,
some single work shall have been suffered to eclipse and cast into shade
the deserts of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with more
or less injustice in the case of the popular allegory of Bunyan, in
which the beautiful and Scriptural image of a pilgrim or wayfarer, (we
are all such upon earth,) addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly
to the bosoms of all, has silenced, and made almost to be forgotten, the
more awful and scarcely less tender beauties of the 'Holy War made by
Shaddai upon Diabolus,' of the same author,--a romance less happy in its
subject, but surely well worthy of a secondary immortality. But in no
instance has this excluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness
than against what may be termed the secondary novels or romances of De
Foe.

"While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the
'Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' and shall continue to do so, we trust,
while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that
there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer,--four of
them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation! 'Roxana.' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,'
'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not
swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them! They are
in their way as full of incident, and some of them every bit as
romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that has
bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.

"But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert? or