Smyrna times., 1871-09-06
Robinson Crusoe.

There were three books that were the de-
hight OF my youthful days. They are in my
library yet, and we'll thumbed they have been
since by second generation. They were the
Arabian Nights, Gulliyers Travels, and Rob
ihS0n Crusoe. L have taken them up time
and time again, after lapse of years, and have
re read them with renewed pleasure. They
are the favorites of the learned and of the IN
learned, OF the youth and of the adult, and are
entitled to all the praise that has been bestow-
ed upon them. Yet | hear not of them now
as was wont to hear Of yore. Our book pub.
ilsherS herald them not in their advertisements
the libraries circulate them not as freely as
they DO the trash Of modern literature, or. if
they do, | have failed to see it,
" lth the history Of the last mentioned work
we VIII pow occupy ourselves as it displays
the force OF one of the most original minds that
English literature can boast Of and traces
story from the first germs to that maturity to
which only Defoe could have brought it,
In the year I7I2 Woodes Rogers and Ed
ward Cooke published their Voyages, in which
they related the extraordinary account of one
Alexander Secralg, (nOt SeKirk, who they
found on the deserted island Of j uan Fernan-
dez, where he had formerly been left in which
many curious and minute particulars that
Sclcralg had communicated to them are there
related. Ills first appearance as man cloth
ed IN goat-skInS, who looked more wild than
the first owners OF them; the two huts that he
had bullt-the one to dress his victuals, the
other to sleep in his contrivance to get fire hy
rubbing TWO pieces Of wood together; his dis
tress tor the want Of bread and salt his wear
ing out his shoes, till he grew so accustomed
to be without them that he could not, after he
returned home, wear them for long time
without Inconvenience; his catching the goats
by running, after his gunpOwder failed him
his converting a nail to needle and iron
hoops to knives; his society Of goats; and
finally, his reluctance to return to a world from
which his affections had been so perfectly
weaned. Such were the rude materials
which were then given to the world by these
vOyagers in I7l2
In l1l3, year after the account of Selcraig
was published, Steele, in his paper Of THE
Englishman Of December Of that year, com
muDlcateS further particulars of Secraig, with
whom he had become acquainted He saws
he :" could see that he had been much sepa-
rated from company by his aspect and gesture
There was strong but cheerful seriousness in
his looks, and certain disregard of the ordi-
nary things around him, as if he had been
sunk in thought. He frequently bewaied his
return to the world, and it could not, he said,
VIII! all its enjoyments, restore him the tran
guilty OF his solitude. Converse with the
town, however, says Steele, had taken off
the loneliness of his aspect, and quite altered
the air of his face" Steele also remarks that
: it was great curiosity to hear him talk, aud
give an account of the different evolutions Of
his own mind in that long solitude
A mind like Defoe could not help being
struck with the interesting particulars of such
a singular life, and to his own Imprisonment
during political warfare, amid the thoughts
of injured feelings aud lonely contemplation
must be attributed the hint of that instructive
and delightful tale which has bound in tetters
the attention of millions.
The Man Friday has his prototype in a
Mosquito Indian, as described by Dampicr in
one Of his voyages.
How genius can immortalize a simple tale !
Had not Defoe written "Robinson Crusoe, :"
the name Of Alexander Selcraig would have
passed into oblivion. Time, as it is, has par
TALLY oblitcrated the original orthography. =
SMday Dispatch.