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“To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of wonder and daring, of high endeavour and marvellous success. To dwell upon it is to take courage and to praise God for the splendid possibilities of life…. Defoe is always the hero; his career is as thick with events as a cornfield with corn; his fortunes change as quickly and as completely as the shapes in a kaleidoscope–he is up, he is down, he is courted, he is spurned; it is shine, it is shower, it is couleur de rose, it is Stygian night. Thirteen times he was rich and poor. Achilles was not more audacious, Ulysses more subtle, Æneas more pious.”

That is one way of putting it. Here is another way (as the cookery books say):–“To narrate the career of Daniel Defoe is to tell a tale of a hosier and pantile maker, who had a hooked nose and wrote tracts indefatigably–he was up, he was down, he was in the Pillory, he was at Tooting; it was poule de soie, it was leather and prunella; and it was always tracts. Æneas was not so pious a member of the Butchers’ Company; and there are a few milestones on the Dover Road; but Defoe’s life was as thick with tracts as a cornfield with corn.” These two estimates may differ here and there; but on one point they agree–that Defoe was an extremely restless, pushing, voluble person, who could as soon have stood on his head for twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days as have kept silence for that period with any man or woman in whose company he found himself frequently alone. Unless we have entirely misjudged his character–and, I may add, unless Mr. Wright has completely misrepresented the rest of his life–it simply was not in the man to keep this foolish vow for twenty-four hours.

No, I am afraid Mr. Wright’s hypothesis will not do. And yet his plan of adding twenty-seven years to each important date in Crusoe’s history has revealed so many coincident events in the life of Defoe that we cannot help feeling he is “hot,” as they say in the children’s game; that the wreck upon the island and Crusoe’s twenty-eight years odd of solitude do really correspond with some great event and important period of Defoe’s life. The wreck is dated 30th September, 1659. Add the twenty-seven years, and we come to September 30th, 1686. Where was Defoe at that date, and what was he doing? Mr. Wright has to confess that of his movements in 1686 and the two following years “we know little that is definite.” Certainly we know of nothing that can correspond with Crusoe’s shipwreck.

A suggestion.

But wait a moment–The original editions of Robinson Crusoe (and most, if not all, later editions) give the date of Crusoe’s departure from the island as December 19th, 1686, instead of 1687. Mr. Wright suggests that this is a misprint; and, to be sure, it does not agree with the statement respecting the length of Crusoe’s stay on the island, if we assume the date of the wreck to be correct. But, (as Mr. Aitken points out) the mistake must be the author’s, not the printer’s, because in the next paragraph we are told that Crusoe reached England in June, 1687, not 1688. I agree with Mr. Aitken; and I suggest that the date of Crusoe’s arrival at the island, not the date of his departure, is the date misprinted. Assume for a moment that the date of departure (December 19th, 1686) is correct. Subtract the twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days of Crusoe’s stay on the island, and we get September 30th, 1658, as the date of the wreck and his arrival at the island. Now add the twenty-seven years which separate Crusoe’s experiences from Defoe’s, and we come to September 30th, 1685. What was happening in England at the close of September, 1685? Why, Jeffreys was carrying through his Bloody Assize.