The sun., 1919-04-20

house Hole; there is not an old woman that can go
to the price of it but buys thy Life and Adven-
lures" Somebody has printed a. book containing
nothing butt the names of the various editions OF
Robinson Crusoe that have been issued.
The critics of the day said nothing about the
lack of heart interest, but they said DEFoE the
vilest old liar that ever wronged the English Ian
guage by using it. Think Of man writing book
that pretended to be the true story of another
man, adventures, and wasn't!
Poe's Criticism. .s..
The versimiIitude shocked Poe, but for another
reason. He found it robbed DEFOE of the credit due
him:
"Alen do not look upon it in the Light of
literary performance. DEFOE has none of their
thoughts ROBINSON ALL The powers which have
wrought the wonder have been thrown into OBJ
security by the very stupendousness of the wonder
they have wrought! We read, and become perfect
distractions in the intensity of our interest; we
close the book and are quite satisfied that VIC could
have written we'll ourselves All this is effected
by the potent magic of verisiniHtude. Indeed, the
author of CruSoe must have possessed, above all
other faculties, what has been termed the faculty
of identifcation-that dominion exercised by wolf
ton over imagination, which enables the mind to
lose its own in a fictitious individuality
LEIGH HUNT put a similar thought in other
words: .SELKIRK was not CRusoE, nor did he see
the ghost of human footstep, nor obtain man
FRIDAY. The inhabitant of the island was DEFoE
himself" ...'
For all that, the people of Largo, in Fifeshire,
home of SE1.KJRK, put up statue Of SELKRK and
not of DEFoE.
Serious Purpose Stuff.
~
as an allegory of his own life. We think that he
lied about this because he was moral He was
originally pamphleteer with a purpose. Having
accomplished what would be known at the Lambs
as a Knockout he did not wish to attribute the
credit to his imagination or his literary Abilities
but to his High Moral Purpose. The fact must be
that DEFoE, once plunged into the writing Of the
book, became transported into the character and,
Hunt said, DANIEL himself was the inhabtant of
the island The allegory stuff will not wash He
might we'll have insisted that he wrote the story
to assist England merchant marine for WALTER
SAVAGE LANDER says
He stimulated to enterprise those colonies of
England which extend over every sea and which
carry with them from him, the spirit and language
that will predominant throughout the world.
ACHILLES and HOMER will be forgotten before
CRUsoE and DEFoE'
We believe they Will. SO also Will Mr.. WELLS,
Mr.. BENNETT, Mr.. GALswoRTHY and even the
Messrs. SHAW and CHEsTERToN. Tt is dread thing
10 contemplate, but two hundred years is long
time; and when a writer Of mere narrative lasts
two centuries and is still going strong there is little
hope Of wiping him out for thousand years yet.
We cannot hold out hope TO any American writer,
not even HAROLD BELL WRIGHT, that his works will
outlive DEFoE's The long lines Of handsome heroes
and blooming heroines will pass down the asles of
Time arm in arm. The cave men and their ee-
mental impulses will be taken off to obscurity to
be cured by the alicniss of the future But the
small boy forever will stand with ROBINSON CRUsoE
and his kids and eats and parrot and, sighting the
savages down the barrel of his fowling- piece let
fly and have the satisfaction of seeing six of the
savages fall.
Nobody gets up bi-centenary celebration of
Robinson Crusoe. It would be like having cele-
braton of the nth anniversary of the first tree or
the first house. 1t is worth recalling, however, be-
cause it reminds us how much has been written, in
the way Of fiction, since WILLIAM TAYLOR pub
lshed the first novel of this bankrupt, long faced
reporter 1t also reminds us how little fiction has