Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457
Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: William Chambers
Robert Chambers

Release Date: December 22, 2007 [EBook #23963]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 457. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

ROBINSON-CRUSOEISM OF COMMON LIFE.

It is wonderfully exciting to read the adventures of a shipwrecked
mariner; to find him cast away on a desert island, destitute of
everything that before seemed necessary to his very existence; to see
him settling himself down in a strange and untried form of life,
substituting one thing for another, doing altogether without some
other thing, turning constantly from expedient to expedient, bending
to his will the circumstances that seemed his fate, and at length
naturalising himself to the place, and living bravely on, truly and
literally the Monarch of all he surveys. The avidity with which we
drink in such details, seems to depend upon some principle in our
nature; for a feeling of the same kind is excited by all other
narrations of vicissitude. The picture of calamity would be merely
tiresome, were it not for the rebound we expect: we want to see what
the unfortunate whose story we follow will _do_; by what steps he will
try to reascend, or by what expedients he will make for himself a new
world in the depths to which he has fallen. This principle is known to
the skilful novelist, and he is the most successful who knows it best.
It is to the complete gratification afforded to the mystical sympathy
referred to--the sympathy, not with calamity, but with struggle--that
Robinson Crusoe owes its distinction as the most universally popula