Robinson Crusoe, the favourite of the learned and the unlearned, of the
youth and the adult; the book that was to constitute the library of
Rousseau's Emilius, owes its secret charm to its being a new
representation of human nature, yet drawn from an existing state; this
picture of self-education, self-inquiry, self-happiness, is scarcely a
fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance; and is not a
mere narrative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of
one of the most original minds our literature can boast. The history of
the work is therefore interesting. It was treated in the author's time
as a mere idle romance, for the philosophy was not discovered in the
story; after his death it was considered to have been pillaged from the
papers of Alexander Selkirk, confided to the author, and the honour, as
well as the genius, of De Foe were alike questioned.
The entire history of this work of genius may now be traced, from the
first hints to the mature state, to which only the genius of De Foe
could have wrought it.
The adventures of Selkirk are well known: he was found on the desert
island of Juan Fernandez, where he had formerly been left, by Woodes
Rogers and Edward Cooke, who in 1712 published their voyages, and told
the extraordinary history of Crusoe's prototype, with all those curious
and minute particulars which Selkirk had freely communicated to them.
This narrative of itself is extremely interesting, and has been given
entire by Captain Burney; it may also be found in the Biographia
Britannica.
In this artless narrative we may discover more than the embryo of
Robinson Crusoe.--The first appearance of Selkirk, "a man clothed in
goats' skins, who looked more wild than the first owners of them." The
two huts he had built, the one to dress his victuals, the other to sleep
in: his contrivance to get fire, by rubbing two pieces of pimento wood
together; his distress for the want of bread and salt, till he came to
relish his meat without either; his wearing out his shoes, till he grew
so accustomed to be without them, that he could not for a long time
afterwards, on his return home, use them without inconvenience; his
bedstead of his own contriving, and his bed of goat-skins; when his
gunpowder failed, his teaching himself by continual exercise to run as
swiftly as the goats; his falling from a precipice in catching hold of a
goat, stunned and bruised, till coming to his senses he found the goat
dead under him; his taming kids to divert himself by dancing with them
and his cats; his converting a nail into a needle; his sewing his
goatskins with little thongs of the same; and when his knife was worn to
the back, contriving to make blades out of some iron hoops. His solacing
himself in this solitude by singing psalms, and preserving a social
feeling in his fervent prayers. And the habitation which Selkirk had
raised, to reach which they followed him "with difficulty, climbing up
and creeping down many rocks, till they came at last to a pleasant spot
of ground full of grass and of trees, where stood his two huts, and his
numerous tame goats showed his solitary retreat;" and, finally, his
indifference to return to a world from which his feelings had been so
perfectly weaned.--Such were the first rude materials of a new situation
in human nature; an European in a primeval state, with the habits or
mind of a savage.
The year after this account was published, Selkirk and his adventures
attracted the notice of Steele, who was not likely to pass unobserved a
man and a story so strange and so new. In his paper of "The Englishman,"
Dec. 1713, he communicates farther particulars of Selkirk. Steele became
acquainted with him; he says, that "he could discern that he had been
much separated from company from his aspect and gesture. There was a
strong but cheerful seriousness in his looks, and a certain disregard to
the ordinary things about him, as if he had been sunk in thought. The
man frequently bewailed his return to the world, which could not, he
said, with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquillity of his
solitude." Steele adds another very curious change in this wild man,
which occurred some time after he had seen him. "Though I had frequently
conversed with him, after a few months' absence, he met me in the
street, and though he spoke to me, I could not recollect that I had seen
him. Familiar converse in this town had taken off the loneliness of his
aspect, and quite altered the air of his face." De Foe could not fail of
being struck by these interesting particulars of the character of
Selkirk; but probably it was another observation of Steele which threw
the germ of Robinson Crusoe into the mind of De Foe. "It was matter of
great curiosity to hear him, as he was a man of sense, give an account
of the _different revolutions in his own mind in that long solitude_."
The work of De Foe, however, was no sudden ebullition: long engaged in
political warfare, condemned to suffer imprisonment, and at length
struck by a fit of apoplexy, this unhappy and unprosperous man of genius
on his recovery was reduced to a comparative state of solitude. To his
injured feelings and lonely contemplations, Selkirk in his Desert Isle,
and Steele's vivifying hint, often occurred; and to all these we perhaps
owe the instructive and delightful tale, which shows man what he can do
for himself, and what the fortitude of piety does for man. Even the
personage of Friday is not a mere coinage of his brain: a Mosquito
Indian, described by Dampier, was the prototype. Robinson Crusoe was not
given to the world till 1719, seven years after the publication of
Selkirk's adventures.[143] Selkirk could have no claims on De Foe; for
he had only supplied the man of genius with that which lies open to all;
and which no one had, or perhaps could have, converted into the
wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself. Had De Foe not written
Robinson Crusoe, the name and story of Selkirk had been passed over like
others of the same sort; yet Selkirk has the merit of having detailed
his own history, in a manner so interesting, as to have attracted the
notice of Steele, and to have inspired the genius of De Foe.
After this, the originality of Robinson Crusoe will no longer be
suspected; and the idle tale which Dr. Beattie has repeated of Selkirk
having supplied the materials of his story to De Foe, from which our
author borrowed his work, and published for his own profit, will be
finally put to rest. This is due to the injured honour and genius of De
Foe.