these incidents, however, are so wrought up and heightened, and so much is added to make them interesting, that the bare circumstances occurring elsewhere, cannot be said to infringe upon the author's claim to originality. On the whole, indeed, Robinson Crusoe is put to so many more trials of ingenuity, his comforts are so much increased, his solitude is so much diver sified, and his account of his thoughts and occupations so distinctly traced, that the course of the work embraces a far wider circle of investigation into buman nature, than could be derived from that of Selkirk, who, for want o the tools and conveniences supplied to Crusoe by the wreck, relapses into sort of savage state, which could have afforded little scope for delineation. It may, however, be observed, that De Foe may have known so much of Selkirk's history, as to be aware how much his stormy passions were checked and tamed by his long course of solitude, and that, from being a kind of Will Atkins, a brawling dissolute seaman, he became (which was certainly the case) a grave, sober, reflective man. The manner in which Robinson Crusoe's moral sense and religious feeling are awakened and brought into action, are important passages in the work.

Amid these desultory remarks, it may be noticed, that, through all his roniances, De Foe has made a great deal of the narrative depend upon lucky hits and accidents, which, as he is usually at some pains to explain, ought rather to be termed providential occurrences. This is coupled with a belief in spiritual communication in the way of strong internal suggestions, to which De Foe, as we have seen, was himself sufficiently willing to yield belief. Odd and surprising accidents do, indeed, frequently occur in human life; and when we hear them narrated, we are interested in them, not only from the natural tendency of the human mind towards the extraordinary and wonderful, but also because we have some disposition to receive as truths circumstances, which, from their improbability, do not seem likely to be invented. It is the kind of good fortune, too, which every one wishes to himself, which comes without exertion, and just at the moment it is wanted, so that it gives a sort of pleasure to be reminded of the possibility of its arrival even in fiction.

The continuation of Robinson Crusoe's history, after he obtains the society of his man Friday, is less philosophical than that which turns our thoughts upon the efforts which a solitary individual may make for extending his own comforts in the melancholy situation in which he is placed, and upon the natural reflections suggested by the progress of his own mind. The character of Friday is nevertheless extremely pleasing; and the whole subsequent history of the shipwrecked Spaniards, and the pirate vessel, is highly interesting. Here certainly the Memoirs of Robinson Crusoe ought to have stopped. The Second Part, though containing many passages which display the author's genius, does not rise high in character above the Memoir of Captain Singleton, or the other imaginary voyages of the author.

There scarce exists a work so popular as Robinson Crusoe. It is read eagerly by young people; and there is hardly an elf so devoid of imagina ton, as not to have supposed for himself a solitary island in which he could Let Robinson Crusoe, were it but in the corner of the nursery. To many it has given the decided turn of their lives, by sending them to sea. For the young mind is much less struck with the hardships of the anchorite's situa on than with the animating exertions which he makes to overcome them

and Robinson Crusoe produces the same impression upon an adventurous spirit, which the Book of Martyrs would do on a young devotee, or the Newqute Calendar upon an acolyte of Briddewell; both of which students are ess terrified by the horrible manner in which the tale terminates, than animated by sympathy with the saints or depredators who are the heroes of their volume. Neither does a re-perusal of Robinson Crusoe, at a more advanced age, diminish our early impressions. The situation is such as every man may make his own, and, being possible in itself, is, by the exqui site art of the narrator, rendered as probable as it is interesting. It ha the merit, too, of that species of accurate painting which can be looked as again and again with new pleasure.

Neither has the admiration of the work been confined to England, thougu Robinson Crusoe himself, with his rough good sense, his prejudices, and bis obstinate determination not to sink under evils which can be surpassed by exertion, forms no bad specimen of the True-Born Englishman. The rage for imitating a work so popular seems to have risen to a degree of frenzy; and, by a mistake not peculiar to this particular class of the servum pecus, the imitators did not attempt to apply De Foe's manner of managing the narrative to some situation of a different kind, but seized upon and caricatured the principal incidents of the shipwrecked mariner and the solitary Island. It is computed that within forty years from the appearance of the original work, no less than forty-one different Robinsons appeared, besides fifteen other imitations, in which other titles were used. Finally, though perhaps it is no great recommendation, the anti-social philosopher Rousseau will allow no other book than Robinson Crusoe in the hands of Emilius, Upon the whole, the work is as unlikely to lose its celebrity as it is to be ●quailed in its peculiar character by any other of similar excellence.

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a gooo family, though not of that country, my father being a foreignr of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York; from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called nay we call ourselves, and write our name, Crusoe; and o my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother did know what was become of me.

Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts:

my father, who was very ancient, had given me a competen share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I wou be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be somehing fatal in that propension of nature, tending directly to the 'fe of misery which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me scrious and ex ellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was con fined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject: he asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving my father's house and my native country, where I might be well intro duced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by applica tion and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labor and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by one thing, viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wish they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bid me observe it, and I should always find, that the ca lamities of life were shared among the upper and lower par of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disas ters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were rot subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind as those were, who, by vicious living .uxury, and extravagances, on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries. and mean and insufficient diet, on the other hand, bring dis tempers upon themselves by the natura consequences of their