glish class to
which he belonged, could not do otherwise than make his creation a
perfect embodiment of his own qualities. _Robinson Crusoe_ became, we
know, a favourite of Rousseau, and has supplied innumerable
illustrations to writers on Political Economy. One reason is that Crusoe
is the very incarnation of individualism: thrown entirely upon his own
resources, he takes the position with indomitable pluck; adapts himself
to the inevitable as quietly and sturdily as may be; makes himself
thoroughly at home in a desert island, and, as soon as he meets a
native, summarily annexes him, and makes him thoroughly useful. He comes
up smiling after many years as if he had been all the time in a shop in
Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies
the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic
aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by
the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead
of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way
into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who had dared to anticipate him.
Crusoe is the voice of the race which was to be stirred by the story of
Jenkins' ear and lay the foundation of the Empire. Meanwhile, as a
literary work, it showed most effectually the power of homely realism.
There is no bother about dignity or attempt to reveal the eloquence of
the polished Wit. It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular
which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.
The Wit, too, as Swift sufficiently proved, could be a consummate master
of that kind of writing on occasion, and Gulliver probably showed
something to Crusoe. But for us the interest is the development of a new
class of readers, who won't bother about canons of taste or care for
skill in working upon the old conventional methods, but can be
profoundly interested in a straightforward narrative adapted to the
simplest understandings. Pope's contempt for the dunces meant that the
lower classes were the objects of supreme contempt to the aristocratic
circle, whose culture they did not share. But Defoe was showing in a new
sense of the word the advantage of an appeal to Nature; for the true
life and vigour of the nation was coming to be embodied in the class
which was spontaneously developing its own ideals and beginning to
regard t