BY A RECENT WRITER, 35

marvellously like truth, is singularly wanting as a psychological study
Friday is no real savage, but a good English servant without plush. He
says ‘“ muchee”’ and “ speakee,” but he becomes at once a civilized being,
aud in his first conversation puzzles Crusoe terribly by that awkward
theological question, Why God did not kill the Devil; for, characteristically
enough, Crusoe’s first lesson includes a littke instruction upon the enemy of
mankind. Selkirk’s state of mind may be inferred from two or three facts. He
had almost forgotten how to talk; he had learned to catch goats by running
on foot; and he had acquired the exceedingly difficult art of making fire by
rubbing two sticks. In other words, his whole mind was absorbed in pro-
viding a few physical necessities, and he was rapidly becoming a savage ;
for a man who can't speak, and can make fire, is very near the Australian.
We may infer, what is probable from other cases, that a man living fifteen
years by himself, like Crusoe, would either go mad or sink into that semi-
savage state. De Foe really describes a man in prison, not in solitary con-
finement. We should not be so pedantic as to call for accuracy in such
matters; but the difference between the fiction and what we believe would
have been the reality is significant, De Foe, even in ‘‘ Robinson Crusoe,”
vives a yery inadequate picture of the mental torments to which his hero is
exposed, He is frightened by a parrot calling him by his name, and by the
strangely picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the
whole, he takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on
the island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday
in Scotland. For this reason—the want of power in describing emotion as
compared with the amazing power of describing facts—* Robinson Crusoe”
is a book for boys rather than for men; and, as Lamb says, rather for the
kitchen than for higher circles. It falls short of any high intellectual
interest. When we leave the striking situation, and get to the Second Part,
with the Spaniards and Will Atkins talking natural theology to his wife, it
sinks to the level of the secondary stories. But for people who are not too
proud to take a rather low order of amusement, ‘ Robinson Crusoe” will
always be one of the most charming of books We have the romantic and
adventurous incidents upon which the most unflinching realism can be set
to work without danger of vulgarity. Here is precisely the story suited to
De Foe’s strength and weakness. He is foreed to be artistic in spite of
himself. Tle cannot lose the thread of the narrative and break it into dis-
jointed fragments, for the limits of the island confine him as well as his
hero. He cannot tire us with details, for all the details of such a story
are interesting, It is made up of petty incidents as much as the life of a
prisoner reduced to taming flies, or making saws out of penknives. The
island does as well as the Bastille for making trifles valuable to the sufferer
and tous. The facts tell the story of themselves, without any demand for
romantic power to press them home to us; and the efforts to give an air of
withenticity to the story, which sometimes make us smile. and sometimes