dents of
eighteenth-century literature. The latter will be discussed in another
part of this Introduction. Of the former it may be asserted, that it
arose naturally out of the circumstances of Defoe's trade as a
journalist. So long as the papers would take his articles, nobody of
distinction could die without Defoe's rushing out with a biography of
him. In these biographies, when facts were scanty, Defoe supplied them
from his imagination, attributing to his hero such sentiments as he
thought the average Londoner could understand, and describing his
appearance with that minute fidelity of which only an eyewitness is
supposed to be capable. Long practice in this kind of composition made
Defoe an adept in the art of "lying like truth." When, therefore, the
actual and extraordinary adventures of Alexander Selkirk came under his
notice, nothing was more natural and more profitable for Defoe than to
seize upon this material, and work it up, just as he worked up the lives
of Jack Sheppard the highwayman, and of Avery the king of the pirates.
It is interesting to notice also that the date of publication of
"Robinson Crusoe" (1719) corresponds with a time at which Defoe was
playing the desperate and dangerous game of a political spy. A single
false move might bring him a stab in the dark, or might land him in the
hulks for transportation to some tropical island, where he might have
abundant need for the exercise of those mental resources that interest
us so much in Crusoe. The secret of Defoe's life at this time was known
only to himself and to the minister that paid him. He was almost as much
alone in London as was Crusoe on his desert island.

The success which Defoe scored in "Robinson Crusoe" he never repeated.
His entire lack of artistic conscience is shown by his adding a dull
second part to "Robinson Crusoe," and a duller series of serious
reflections such as might have passed through Crusoe's mind during his
island captivity. Of even the best of Defoe's other novels,--"Moll
Flanders," "Roxana," "Captain Singleton,"--the writer must confess that
his judgment coincides with that of Mr. Leslie Stephen, who finds two
thirds of them "deadly dull," and the treatment such as "cannot raise
[the story] above a very moderate level."[3]

The closing scenes of Defoe's life were not cheerful. He appears to have
lost most of the fortune he acquired from his numerous writings and
scarcely less numerous speculations. For the two years