When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of _Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,' Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722), in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices. When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating air of a Shakespeare or a Scott. A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas. Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope. Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for the want of a creative and elevating imagination.