The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Robinson CrusoeThere can be no doubt that, as a rule, nine-tenths of the number of boy readers who peruse Robinson Crusoe's adventures have the most implicit belief that that hero once existed in the flesh : and this though they are aware that the matter was written by Daniel De Foe. For written they read narrated; and, if they think about De Foe at all, it is as a good sort of fellow who wrote from Crusoe's dictation, - an individual to whom the doughty adventurer was under considerable obligation. It is a severe blow to the young and trusting mind to discover that their darling solitary-islander is, after all, a fictitious personage that lived only in the brain of a romancist, as did Jack the Giant-killer; but if, in addition, truth insisted on the further explanation that the said romancist was a sot or a coxcomb, or a surly fellow, who wielded his pen for bread as a toy-maker handles his tools, and with as sincere contempt for his fantastic handiwork, the disappointment would indeed be complete.De Foes ancestry can be traced no further than his grandfather. He was a jovial country gentleman, living on his own estate, at Elton, in Northamptonshire, sowing and reaping for his profit, and following the hounds for his pleasure. It is not recorded that De Foe, the yeoman, was a public man, or that he at all meddled with the affairs of State; still it is shown that he was not indifferent concerning such matters, and that he followed, or at least countenanced, the common practice of the men of his time, of bestowing the names borne by statesmen not of their party on dogs and other animals of low degree. Says De Foe : - "I remember my grandfather had a huntsman that used the same familiarity with his dogs; and he had his Roundhead and his Cavalier, his Goring and his Waller, and all the generals of both armies were hounds in his pack, till, the times turning, the old gentleman was fain to scatter the pack, and make them up of more dog-lik…