Such interpretations seem to fit the work better than that of a German
critic, who sees in the book a sort of Utopia, a model community, or
an exhibition in the development of law and order. Free love led
to license, maids were ravished, and the complete promiscuity of
intercourse disgusted Pine, who sought to suppress it by force and, in
killing the leader of a revolt, a man with negro blood in his veins, to
impose punishments for acts which he had himself done. The ground for
believing that Neville had any such purpose when he wrote the book is
too slight to be accepted. In 1668 the author had no call to convey a
lesson in government to his countrymen by any means so frankly vulgar
and pointless as the "Isle of Pines." If Neville had intended such a
political object, a phrase would have sufficed to indicate it. No
such key can be found in the text, and there is nothing to show that,
politician as he was, he realized that such an intimation could be drawn
from his paragraphs.
To assume, therefore, that so carefully hidden a suggestion of a model
republic could have aided the circulation [40]of the pamphlet at the
time, or at any later period, is to introduce an element unnecessary
to explain the vogue of the relation. It passed simply as a story
of adventure, and as such it fell upon a time when a wide public was
receptive to the point of being easily duped. Wood asserts that the
"Isle of Pines," when first published, "was look'd upon as a mere sham
or piece of drollery; "{1} and there are few contemporary references to
the relation of either Pine or Van Sloetten, and those few are of little
moment If the seamen, who were in a position to point out discrepancies
of fad in the story, made any comment or criticism, I have failed to
discover them.