"Robinson Crusoe"
April 13, 1895. Robinson Crusoe.
Many a book has produced a wide and beneficent effect and won a great reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been altogether wide of its author‘s aim. Swift‘s _Gulliver_ is one example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift‘s gospel of hatred, his testament of woe--his _Gulliver_, upon which he expended the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated essence of his rage--has become a child‘s book, and has been read with wonder and delight by generations of innocents."
How far is the tale a parable?
Generations of innocents in like manner have accepted _Robinson Crusoe_ as a delightful tale about a castaway mariner, a story of adventure pure and simple, without sub-intention of any kind. But we know very well that Defoe in writing it intended a parable--a parable of his own life. In the first place, he distinctly affirms this in his preface to the _Serious Reflections_ which fo

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