Hundreds of thousands--nay millions--of readers have read the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ without giving a thought to or even knowing the name of Defoe or Bunyan. I asked the other day in France a child who was reading about Crusoe who had written it and she replied: “Je crois que c’est par ... par Madame de Ségur ... Ou non: peut-être, Madame d’Aulnoy. Enfin, je n’y ai jamais pensé.” And that is about the highest compliment that could be paid to Defoe. I may as well add the same child’s comment on the story itself. She did not much like _Robinson Crusoe_ because, she said, the sufferings depicted in it were true. She liked, like all children, to read of sufferings, bloodsheddings, and horrors but only as long as she could believe that they were invented, whereas she was of opinion that the prolonged loneliness and fears of Crusoe had actually occurred. Similarly she found the story of the Crucifixion insupportable. The root of all adult criticism is to be found in those revelations. As long, that is to say, as a work remains in fashion you can be contented to read it in order to remain in the fashion yourself. It matters very little to you that whereas _Robinson Crusoe_ is just _Robinson Crusoe_, or _Othello_ just _Othello_, _Euphues_ is Lyly’s _Euphues_, the _Groat’s Worth of Wit_ Greene’s _Groat’s Worth_ or the _Spanish Tragedy_ Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_. For it is impossible to talk of almost any sixteenth-century work without prefixing the author’s name, if the name is known--simply because the attraction, and even the attraction that it once had, lies and lay in the verbal juggleries of the author. I must have read _Euphues_ once at least right through and have looked into it several times--but I have not the least idea what it is all about. And even although I have read Lyly’s _Campaspe_ once or twice, I remember only that the plot is a classical plot--and the lyric: Cupid and my Campaspe played At cards for kisses, Cupid paid.... The fact is that with Elizabeth English became a supple and easily employable language and, making the discovery that words could be played with as if they were oranges or gilt balls to be tossed half a dozen together in the air, mankind rushed upon it as colts will dash into suddenly opened rich and easy pastures. So it was, for the rich and cultured, much more a matter of who could kick heels the higher and most flourish tail and mane than any ambition of carrying burdens or drawing loads.