Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
"While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and shall continue to do so, we trust,
while the world lasts, how few, comparatively, will bear to be told
that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same author, four of
them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less
felicitous choice of situation. Roxana, Singleton, Moll Flanders,
Colonel Jack--are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not
swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and age of every one of them! They
are, in their way, as full of incident, and some of them are every bit
as romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that
has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.
"But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert? or cannot
the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone? Singleton, on
the world of waters, prowling about with pirates less merciful than the
creatures of any prowling wilderness; is he not alone, with the faces of
men about him, but without a guide that can conduct him through the mist
of educational and habitual ignorance; or a fellow heart that can
interpret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of unpractised
penitence? or when the boy, Colonel Jack, in the loneliness of the
heart, (the worst solitude,) goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in
the hollow tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously finds
it again; whom hath he there to sympathise with him? or of what sort are
his associates?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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