f the day. He always had some
ship sailing with the passing breeze, and laden with a useful cargo for
the coast upon which the wind chanced to be blowing. If the Tichborne
trial had happened in his time, we should certainly have had from him an
exact history of the boyhood and surprising adventures of Thomas Castro,
commonly known as Sir Roger, which would have come down to us as a true
record, taken, perhaps, by the chaplain of Portland prison from the
convict's own lips. It would have had such an air of authenticity, and
would have been corroborated by such an array of trustworthy witnesses,
that nobody in later times could have doubted its truth. Defoe always
wrote what a large number of people were in a mood to read. All his
writings, with so few exceptions that they may reasonably be supposed to
fall within the category, were _pieces de circonstance_. Whenever any
distinguished person died or otherwise engaged public attention, no
matter how distinguished, whether as a politician, a criminal, or a
divine, Defoe lost no time in bringing out a biography. It was in such
emergencies that he produced his memoirs of Charles XII., Peter the
Great, Count Patkul, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Baron de Goertz, the Rev.
Daniel Williams, Captain Avery the King of the Pirates, Dominique
Cartouche, Rob Roy, Jonathan Wild, Jack Sheppard, Duncan Campbell. When
the day had been fixed for the Earl of Oxford's trial for high treason,
Defoe issued the fictitious _Minutes of the Secret Negotiations of Mons.
Mesnager_ at the English Court during his ministry. We owe the _Journal
of the Plague in 1665_ to a visitation which fell upon France in 1721,
and caused much apprehension in England. The germ which in his fertile
mind grew into _Robinson Crusoe_ fell from the real adventures of
Alexander Selkirk, whose solitary residence of four years on the island
of Juan Fernandez was a nine days' wonder in the reign of Queen Anne.
Defoe was too busy with his politics at the moment to turn it to
account; it was recalled to him later on, in the year 1719, when the
exploits of famous pirates had given a vivid interest to the chances of
adventurers in far-away islands on the American and African coasts. The
_Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the famous Captain Singleton_, who
was set on shore in Madagascar, traversed the continent of Africa from
east to west past the sources of the Nile, and went roving again in the
company of the famous Captain Avery, was