instance has this excluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness
than against what may be termed the secondary novels or romances of De
Foe.

"While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the
'Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,' and shall continue to do so, we trust,
while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that
there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer,--four of
them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation! 'Roxana.' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,'
'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not
swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them! They are
in their way as full of incident, and some of them every bit as
romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that has
bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.

"But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert? or cannot
the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone? Singleton on
the world of waters, prowling about with pirates less merciful than the
creatures of any howling wilderness,--is he not alone, with the faces of
men about him, but without a guide that can conduct him through the
mists of educational and habitual ignorance, or a fellow-heart that can
interpret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of unpractised
penitence? Or when the boy Colonel Jack, in the loneliness of the heart,
(the worst solitude,) goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in the
hollow tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously finds it
again--whom hath he there to sympathize with him? or of what sort are
his associates?