Daniel Defoe, who published his /Robinson Crusoe/ in 1719, was one of the first to mention to any extent the Parasol in England. Before him, as we shall see farther on, it had been named only very summarily in literary works. So firmly fixed in our imaginations as men, the children of yesterday, is the great Umbrella of Crusoe, and his dreadful alarm on seeing the print of a man's foot on the shore, as well as his walks with his dog and /Friday/ the good Caribbee; it presents itself, moreover, so clearly in our first literary remembrances, that we will reproduce the passage of the journal where it is mentioned: "After this," says Crusoe, "I spent a deal of time and pains to make me an Umbrella. I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one. I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the great heats which are there; and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too...; besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well; the main difficulty, I found, was to make it to let down: I could make it to spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it would not be portable for me any way, but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer; I covered it with skins, the hair upward, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather, with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest; and when I had no need of it, I could close it and carry it under my arm." And this Parasol, for a century and a half, has been popularised by the engraver, with its dome of hair and rude manufacture; and so all the poor little prisoners at school invoke it, and dream often that they carry it in some desert isle, for it represents to their eyes a life of open air and liberty. * * * * * Before Daniel Defoe, Ben Jonson had already mentioned the Parasol in England in a comedy played in 1616; and Drayton, sending some doves to his mistress in 1620--a delicious lover's fancy--formulated in his passioned verses the following desire: "/May they, these white turtle doves I send you, shelter you like Parasols under their wings in every sort of weather./"