When De Foe wrote Alexander Selkirk, able seaman, was alive end had told
his story of shipwreck to Sir Richard Steele, editor of the English
Gentleman and of the Tattler, who wrote it up well--but not half as well
as any one of ten thousand newspaper men of today could do under similar
circumstances.

Now who that has read of Selkirk and Dampierre and Stradling does not
remember the two famous ships, the "Cinque Ports" and the "St. George?"
In every actvial book of the times, ship's names were sprinkled over the
page as if they had been shaken out of the pepper box. But you inquire
in vain the name of the slaver that wrecked "poor Robinson Crusoe"--
a name that would have been printed on his memory beyond forgetting
because of the very misfortune itself. Now the book is the autobiography
of a man whose only years of active life between eighteen and twenty-six
were passed as a sailor. It was written apparently after he was
seventy-two years old, at the period when every trifling incident and
name of youth would survive most brightly; yet he names no ships, no
sailor mates, carefully avoids all knowledge of or advantage attaching
to any parts of ships. It is out of character as a sailor's tale,
showing that the author either did not understand the value of or was
too indolent to acquire the ship knowledge that would give to his work
the natural smell of salt water and the bilge. It is a landlubber's sea
yarn.

Is it in character as a revelation of human nature? No man like unto
Robinson Crusoe ever did live, does live, or ever will live, unless as a
freak deprived of human emotions. The Robinson Crusoe of Despair Island
was not a castaway, but the mature politician. Daniel Defoe of Newgate
Prison. The castaway would have melted into loving recollections; the