The success of Crusoe induced De Foe to publish, in 1720, The Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton, though not with similar success; the plan is narrower, and the performance is less amusing. In 1725, he gave A New Voyage Round the World, by a Course never sailed before. Most voyagers have had this misfortune, that whatever success they had in the adventure, they had very little in the narration; they are indeed full of the incidents of sailing, but they have nothing of story for the use of readers who never intend to brave the dangers of the sea. These faults De Foe is studious to avoid in his new voyage. He spreads before his readers such adventures as no writer of a real voyage can hope to imitate, if we except the teller of Anson's tale. In the life of Crusoe we are gratified by continually imagining that the fiction is a fact; in the Voyage Round the World we are pleased by constantly perceiving that the fact is a fiction, which, by uncommon skill, is made more interesting than a genuine voyage. Of fictitious biography it is equally true, that by matchless art it may be made more instructive than a real life. Few of our writers have excelled De Foe in this kind of biographical narration, the great qualities of which are, to attract by the diversity of circumstances, and to instruct by the usefulness of examples. He published, in 1720, The History of Duncan Campbell. Of a person who was born deaf and dumb, but who himself taught the deaf and dumb to understand, it is easy to see that the life would be extraordinary. It will be found, that the author has intermixed some disquisitions of learning, and has contrived that the merriest passages shall end with some edifying moral[90]. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders were made to gratify the world, in 1721. De Foe was aware, that in relating a vicious life, it was necessary to make the best use of a bad story; and he artfully endeavours, that the reader shall be more pleased with the moral than the fable; with the application than the relation; with the end of the writer than the adventures of the person. There was published in 1721, a work of a similar tendency, The Life of Colonel Jack, who was born a gentleman but was bred a pickpocket. Our author is studious to convert his various adventures into a delightful field, where the reader might gather herbs, wholesome and medicinal, without the incommodation of plants, poisonous or noxious. In 1724 appeared The Life of Roxana. Scenes of crimes can scarcely be represented in such a manner, says De Foe, but some make a criminal use of them; but when vice is painted in its low-prized colours, it is not to make people love what from the frightfulness of the figures they ought necessarily to hate. Yet, I am not convinced, that the world has been made much wiser, or better, by the perusal of these lives; they may have diverted the lower orders, but I doubt if they have much improved them; if however they