e grandfather,
George, has left a written account of the origin of the community. This
relates how George was wrecked on the island, the ship perishing "with
man and mouse," except himself, his master's daughter, two white
maidservants, and a negro girl. The island proves pleasant and
habitable: and George, to prevent unfairness and ill-feeling, unites
himself to all his female companions, the quintet living in perfect
harmony. Thirty-seven children result: and these at first necessarily
intermarry; but after this first generation, a rule is made that
brothers and sisters may not unite--the descendants of the four original
wives forming clans who may marry into the others but not into their
own. A wider legal code of fair stringency is arranged, with the
sanction of capital and other punishments: and things go so well that
the patriarch musters a tribe of 565 persons by the time he is sixty,
and of 1789 twenty years later, when he departs this life, piously
praying God "to multiply them and send them the true report of the
gospel." The multiplication has duly taken place, and there is something
like a civil war while the Dutch are there; but they interfere with
fire-arms to restore order, and leave all well. The writer's cunning is
shown by the fact that he does not stop abruptly: but finishes off with
some subsequent and quite _verisimilar_ experiences of the Dutch ship.
The book does not appear to have had a very great popularity in England,
though it was reprinted and abridged at least once, pretty shortly. But
it was very popular abroad, was translated into three or four languages,
and was apparently taken as a genuine account.

Neville's art is in fact not inconsiderable. Earlier voyages and travels
of course supplied him with his technical and geographical details: and
the codification of the Isle of Pines suggests the Bacon-Harrington
tradition. But he has got the vividness and realism which have usually
been lacking before: and though some of his details are pretty "free" it
is by no means only through such things that these qualities are
secured. To Cyrano de Bergerac he bears no likeness at all. In fact,
though Neville _was_ a satirist, satire does not seem to have been in
any way his object here. Whatever that object may have been, he has
certainly struck, by accident or not, on the secret of producing an
interesting account by ingeniously multiplied and adjusted detail.
Moreover, as there is no conversation,