Robinson Crusoe [antikvár]

XNTRODUCTION Robinson Crusoe must ever be a mystery to those dull and unimaginative people who suppose that a man cannot write an adventure story unless he has himself fought with pirates, or hunted lions, or at least witnessed a battle from the rear. Here is a man who had failed in business, whose only known adventures were a shipwreck in the Bay of Biscay and a few weeks5 service in the ragged army of the ill-fated Monmouth, and who had been for the greater part of his life what we should now call a journalist-producing at the age of fifty-eight the first, and what is universally regarded as the finest, adventure story ever written. Dániel Defoe was born in London in 1661. His father was a butcher, whose surname was properly Foe; it may have been a piece of vanity in the son to tack on the partiele. He was intended for the dissenting ministry, and trained for that calling; but taking a distaste for it, he entered business, íirst as a hosier's factor or agent, and afterwards as a manufacturer of tiles.« In neither trade was he successful, which is not to be wondered at from what we know of his character, for he had so versatile an intelligence, and was interested in so many things, that we cannot imagine him devoting himself to buying and selling with the whole-heartedness that alone commands success. We can see him breaking off a business negotia^ v