OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. 369:

———

I had a great many discourses with them about their circumstances:
when they were among the savages: they told me readily, that they
had no instances to give of their application or ingenuity in that coun-
try; that they were a poor, miserable, dejected handful of people ; that
if means had been put into their hands, they had yet so abandoned
themselves to despair, and so sunk under the weight of their misfortunes,
that they thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a grave and
very sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the wrong ;
that it was not the part of wise men to give themselves up to their
misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered, as
well for present support as for future deliverance; he told me, that
grief was the most senseless, insignificant passion in the world; for that it
regarded only things past, which were generally impossible to be recalled
or to be remedied, but had no view to things to come, and had no share
in any thing that looked like deliverance, but rather added to the afflic-
tion than proposed a remedy; and upon this he repeated a Spanish pro-
verb, which, though I cannot repeat in just the same words that he
spoke it, yet I remember I made it into an English proverb of my own,
thus :

 

In trouble to be troubled, ,
Is to have your trouble doubled.

Ife then ran on in remarks upon all the little improvements I had
made in my solitude; my unwearied application, as he called it, and
how I had made a condition, which, in its circumstances, was at first
much worse than theirs, a thousand times more happy than theirs was,
even now when they were all together. He told me it was remarkable
that Englishmen had a greater presence of mind in their distress than
any people that ever he met with; that their unhappy nation, and the
Portuguese, were the worst men in the world to struggle with misfor-
tunes; for that their first step in dangers, after common efforts are over,
was always to despair,—lie down under it and die, without rousing their
thoughts up to proper remedies for escape.

1 told him their case and mine differed exceedingly; that they were
cast upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of. food, or of
present sustenance, till they could provide it; that it is true I had this
disadvantage and discomfort, that I was alone; but then the supplies I
had providentially thrown into my hands, by the unexpected driving of
the ship on shore, was such a help as would have encouraged any crea:
ture in the world to have applied himself as I had done. “Seignior,””
says the Spaniard, “‘had we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should
never have gotten half those things out of the ship as youdid. Nay,”
says he, ‘we should never have found means to have gotten a raft to

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