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The Works of Daniel Defoe F08 Cripplegate Ed THE WORKS OF DANIEL DEFOE IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES <ripplcrjate Etfttion THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES, EACH OF WHICH IS NUMBERED AND REGISTERED THE NUMBER OF THIS SET IS.... VARSITY PRESE ft* (Ptrttion HE O R K S 01 DANIEL DEFOE N D 8TAOD OV1ITOOH8 f A * 7 ' Ji X. 78 aoxl / dkrovered that presently there were, gouts in tht a great satisfaction to me PAGE 67 (fctsition THE WORKS OF DANI EL DEFOE THE LIFE AND STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE COMPLETE IN THREE PARTS PAR T I NEW YORK MCMVIII GEORGE D. SPROUL Copyright, 1903, by THE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. CONTENTS FAGB LIST or ILLUSTRATIONS vii INTRODUCTION . ix AUTHOR'S PREFACE . xxix The Life and of Adventures Robinson Crusoe . 1 The Journal 77 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .TOOTING GOATS Frontispiece XURY DE&PATCHES THE LION THAT ROBINSON CRUSOE HAD DISABLED Page 30 THE FOOTPRINT ON THE SAND STARTLES ROBINSON CRUSOE 172 ROBINSON CRUSOE AND HIS MAN FRIDAY . 236 INTRODUCTION all the work of Daniel Defoe, even the earliest, shows that narrative was the kind of writing for which he NEARLYwas fitted by nature. Yet Defoe was more than a good story-teller. He was also a moral ist, an essayist, a journalist, an enthusiastic and fairly shrewd business man, a patriot, a trusted adviser of a king, and an unscrupulous political spy. Few readers of Robinson Crusoe realise what a varied and remarkable life was that of its author; few realise how late in life it was that he hit on the kind of writing which has given him his greatest fame. Daniel Defoe was born in the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, probably in 1659, though the date is given also as 1660 and 1661. His father was a butcher James a his named Foe, Londoner ; grand father seems to have been a Northamptonshire yeo man. The family were dissenters, the same sort of plain, religious, conscientious people as the English colonists of the time in New England. Defoe, ac cordingly, was sent to a Nonconformist academy at Newington Green, to be educated for the dissenting ministry. Though he did not fulfil the hopes of his friends and relatives by becoming a minister, he is [k] INTRODUCTION said to have got a fairly good education at the acad emy. Report has it that he obtained knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. It should be remarked, however, as Sir Walter Besant 1 has pointed out, that since Defoe, even in his most serious writings, never shows signs of scholarship, it is questionable whether he took lull advan tage of his opportunities for education. Inci dentally it may be noted that the principal of the academy at Newington Green, Charles Morton, sub sequently migrated to New England, where he became a minister at Charlestown and one of the Corporation of Harvard College. In stock and training, then (or at least opportunities for train ing), Defoe must have been like the better-edu cated New Englanders of his day. This fact may explain why, in his life and writings, he shows more Yankee characteristics than any other important Queen Anne writer. Unfortunately it must be said that they are too often characteristics of the unscru pulous, vulgar, commercial Yankee of nineteenth- century literary and theatrical convention. Commerce, in fact, at a pretty early period, interested Defoe rather than the ministry. He seems to have left the academy at Newington to place himself in the establishment of a hose-dealer, and in time to become a hose-factor himself. It is possible that in connection with his business he made trips to Spain and Portugal. Perhaps Defoe trav- 1 A Journal of the Plague Year, Century Classics, New York, 1900, p. xv. INTRODUCTION elled in these countries when Monmouth's rebellion had failed, and the supporters of the unfortunate duke, among whom was our author, had taken either to flight abroad or hiding at home. However this may be, about two years after the rebellion, Defoe was established in business near London. Too much speculation, apparently, in time got him into difficul ties, and by 1692 he had failed and was obliged to flee from his creditors to Bristol. Defoe's subsequent conduct in regard to the matter was honourable; he is said to have paid his creditors conscien tiously ; but his behaviour at Bristol was not pleasing. Though danger of arrest kept him in his house every day except Sunday, when he did go out, he was al ways elegantly, if not ostentatiously, dressed so much so, that he became famous as "the Sunday gentleman." Here we have an early instance of Defoe's want of fine feeling and of his fondness for show, two of his most disagreeable traits. When Defoe first took to political writing is uncer tain. Probably in the reign of James II., possibly in that of Charles II., he began to write pamphlets of the kind that in those days took the place of the leading articles of our journals. After the Rev olution of 1688, his pamphlets became more fre quent. In 1695, in reward for his support of the government, he was made accountant to the Com missioners of the Glass Duty a position which he retained till 1699. In the meantime (in 1698) the first of his important works was published, the Es say upon Projects^ a work which seems to have been [*.] INTRODUCTION written several years earlier. This is interesting in many ways. It contains a fairly able dissertation of trade in its on the principles ; suggestions for an academy to govern the English tongue, for the improvement of roads, for the institution of an acad emy for the higher education of women, and the like, it not only manifests the spirit of the age for organisation and reform, but frequently shows itself in advance of the and age ; most important of all, in illustrations the concrete drawn from homely life, with which Defoe makes his theoretical discussion interesting, the essay shows the power, indispensable to a realistic story-teller, of depicting scenes vividly. The days of Defoe's greatest prosperity were now at hand. William III., a Dutchman, was thought by many Englishmen to have the interests of Hol land more at heart than those of England. Ac cordingly, he and his Dutch friends were variously lampooned, especially in a pamphlet in verse pub lished on the first of August, 1700, entitled The Foreigners, which taxed them with being wholly out of sympathy with their adopted country. At the beginning of the next year Defoe answered this pamphlet vigorously with his True-Born Englishman in doggerel verse, in which he showed satirically that the English were a hybrid race, and that the king, with his Dutch blood, had as good a right to call himself English as Englishmen of mixed Celtic, Danish, and Norman blood. The people took the satire good-naturedly. It raised the king in their estimation, and it raised Defoe in the king's. He [xii] INTRODUCTION was received in audience by William, who remained till his death a friend to Defoe. It was apparently about this time, or a year or two afterwards, that the son of the butcher Foe took to writing his name De Foe or Defoe. Some biog raphers have thought the change accidental that De Foe was originally a mistake for D. Foe. The best opinion, however, is that Defoe made the change intentionally in order to give his name a less plebeian look. A desire thus to conceal the humbleness of his origin would not be inconsistent with the innate vul garity of the man. With the death of William III. in March, 1702, were over before the Defoe's most prosperous days ; year was out, he had got into trouble with the Tory House of Commons. The country was now feeling a Tory reaction, and as sentiment against the Dis senters grew stronger and stronger, Defoe was moved to come to their aid with his ironical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Strange as it may seem to-day, this was taken in earnest, and the high Tories commended it. The first of the for the fable pamphlet, indeed, might be mistaken ; of the cock roosting on a stable floor who says " to the horses, Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear we should tread upon one another," was aimed at the foolish arrogance of some Nonconform ists. But as the pamphlet progresses, the propo sitions become so extreme that it seems impossible, as Defoe wrote later in A Brief Explanation of a Late Pamphlet entitled The Shortest Way with the xiii [ ] INTRODUCTION " Dissenters, to imagine it should pass for anything but a banter upon the high-flying churchmen." When the truth was discovered, the House of Commons was shamed into declaring a slander what many high-churchmen had already praised. A pros ecution of Defoe was begun. The pamphlet was condemned as seditious, and its author, on giving himself up, was sentenced to pay a fine of two hundred marks, stand three times in the pillory, and then go to prison for the queen's pleasure. Part of this punishment Defoe, with characteristic shrewdness, converted from a disgrace into a triumph. Before the three days came in July, 1703, when he stood in the pillory, he had written the best verse which ever came from his pen, his Hymn to the Pillory. In lines to which righteous wrath had given some real dignity, Defoe denounced his ene mies, some of whom, he declared, ought to be stand ing where he then stood.
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