he modern novel,
everything remains real: the shipwrecked mariner spins his yarns in sailor
fashion, and we believe and feel every word he says. The book, although
wonderfully good throughout, is unequal: the prime interest only lasts
until he is rescued, and ends with his embarkation for England. The
remainder of his travels becomes, as a narrative, comparatively tiresome
and tame; and we feel, besides, that, after his unrivalled experience, he
should have remained in England, "the observed of all observers." Yet it
must be said that we are indebted to his later journey in Spain and
France, his adventures in the Eastern Seas, his caravan ride overland from
China to Europe, for much which illustrates the manners and customs of
navigation and travel in that day.

_Robinson Crusoe_ stands alone among English books, a perennial fountain
of instruction and pleasure. It aids in educating each new generation:
children read it for its incident; men to renew their youth; literary
scholars to discover what it teaches of its time and of its author's
genius. Its influence continues unabated; it incites boys to maritime
adventure, and shows them how to use in emergency whatever they find at
hand. It does more: it tends to reclaim the erring by its simple homilies;
it illustrates the ruder navigation of its day; shows us the habits and
morals of the merchant marine, and the need and means of reforming what
was so very bad.

Defoe's style is clear, simple, and natural. He wrote several other works,
of which few are now read. Among these are the _Account of the Plague, The
Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton_, and _The Fortunes and Misfortunes
of Moll Flanders_. He died on the 24th of April, 1731.

RICHARDSON.--Samuel Richardson, who, notwithstanding the peculiar merits
of Defoe, must be called the _Father of Modern Prose Fiction_, was born in
Derbyshire, in 1689. The personal events of his life are few and
uninteresting. A carpenter's son, he had but little schooling, and owed
everything to his own exertions. Apprenticed to a printer in London, at
the age of fifteen, he labored assiduously at his trade, and it rewarded
him with fortune: he became, in turn, printer of the Journals of the House
of Commons, Master of the Stationers' Company, and Printer to the King.
While young, he had been the confidant of three young women, and had
written or corrected their love-letters for them. He seems to have had
great fluency in letter-wr