30 INVENTION VERSUS IMAGINATION.

In whatever form De Foe met with this curious instance of “ truth stranger
than fiction,” it certainly suggested to him the groundwork of “ Robinson
Crusoe ;’’—that is, he borrowed from it the idea of the island solitude (and
much of the charm
of the work is owing
to the circumstance
that its scenes tran-
spire in a lonely, sea-
girdled, remote, and

 

 

almost inaccessible
isle*); the construc-
tion of the two huts;
the abundance of
goats; and the cloth-
ing made out of their
skins. All the rest
he owed to his own
fertile and igventive
genius.

For it is invention
that is the character-
istic of the book
rather than imagina-
tion. There is more
imagination shown in
the island-episode of
Mr. Charles Reade’s
“ Woul Play” than in
al¥ * Robinson Cru.
soe,” from the be-
ginning to the end;
but in reading the
modern novel the

 

 

 

 

reader cannot once

REDUCED FAC-SIMILE SPECIMEN OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE ‘ nk
FIRST EDITION OF “ ROBINSON CRUSOE.” believe it is true; In

reading De Foe’s, the

thought never crosses his mind that it is untrue. Its very prosaism renders
the impression it produces greater; were it more poetical in form and spirit,
it would necessarily be less real. Yet it is difficult to understand how De
Foe could so absolutely ignore the poetical in his treatment of so poetical a
* It is worth notice that all the imitations of “Robinson Crusoe” have placed their
heroes in lonely islands, from “ Philip Quarll” down to ‘‘ Masterman Ready” and “‘Foul
Play.” Tennyson wrecks his “Enoch Arden” on an island, though for all practical pur-

poses the coast of the mainland would have answered quite as well But the very idea of
an ialand seems to be surrounded with a halo of romance.