COWPER ON ALEXANDER SELKIRK. 645

Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore

Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more.

My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me ?

Oh, tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see!

How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But, alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.

But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There’s mercy in every place,
And mercy, encouraging thought!
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot,

 

IV.

A SPANISH ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Ir is, perhaps, almost unnecessary to say that whatever hinta De Foe may
have obtained from Selkirk’s Narrative, there can be na doubt that the
island on which he places his Solitary .was not intended for Juan Fernandez.
In the title-page to the first edition of “ Robinson Crusoe,” it is expressly
stated that he lived “eight and twenty years, all alone, in an uninhabited
island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river Oroonogue.”’
It is very probable that De Foe, in the composition of his wonderful
romance, gained material from various sources. At all eventa, 88 a writer
in “ All the Year Round” suggests,* he would. certainly seem to have been
acquainted with the story of Peter Serrano, a Spanish sailor; who was cast

on one of the cluster now called the Serrano Keys, lying in the Oaribbean.

* All the Year Round,” v. 65-67.

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