Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
In 1688 German superseded Latin in the universities. Novels were published; and about this time appeared a German translation of Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" that became very popular.
The last work is by some critics given a very high place in realistic fiction, but like the other three, and like Defoe's minor narratives of Jack Sheppard and Cartouche, it is a disagreeable study of vice, ending with a forced and unnatural repentance. To Richardson belongs the credit of writing the first modern novel.
In the meantime he had read Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Æsop's "Fables," The Bible, and Weems's "Life of Washington." In 1824 his father, in need of his assistance as a bread-winner, began to instruct him in the carpenter trade. In 1825 he was employed at $6 a month to manage a ferry across the Ohio River at Gentry's Landing, near the mouth of Anderson Creek.
But this praise, he represented, was not the praise of a partisan; it was an honest compliment wrung from a man whose only connexion with the Government was a bond for his good behaviour, an undertaking "not to write what some people might not like." Defoe's hand being against every member of the writing brotherhood, it was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms.
The case is plain; and if some do give him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends and do buy; and as for the trouble, 'tis the business of the shop." All Defoe's heroes and heroines are animated by this practical spirit, this thorough-going subordination of means to ends.
No man is so hardened in crimes as to commit them for the mere pleasure of the fact; there is always some vice gratified; ambition, pride, or avarice makes rich men knaves, and necessity the poor." This is Defoe's excuse for his backslidings put into the mouth of Robinson Crusoe. It might be inscribed also on the threshold of each of his fictitious biographies.
The Supernatural Philosopher ... by William Bond, of Bury St. The preface signed by Campbell to Defoe's Life and Adventures states that the book was revised by "a young gentleman of my acquaintance." Professor Trent, however, includes Mrs. Haywood with Bond as a possible assistant in the revision. See The Cambridge History of English Literature, IX, 23. Neither Defoe nor Mrs.
A lover of books and of retired corners, I was as a child in the habit of fleeing from society. The first book that fascinated me was one of Defoe's. But those early days were stirring times, for England was then engaged in the struggle with Napoleon. I remember strange sights, such as the scenes at Norman Cross, a station or prison where some six thousand French prisoners were immured.
A careful student of the Review, who had compared it with the literature of the time, and learnt his peculiar tricks of style and vivid ranges of interest, could not easily be at fault in identifying a composition of any length. Defoe's incomparable clearness of statement would alone betray him; that was a gift of nature which no art could successfully imitate.
The position of Defoe in novel history is so great that there is a temptation to end this chapter with him. But to do so would cause an inconvenience greater than any resulting advantages. For the greatest of Defoe's contemporaries in English letters also comes into our division, and comes best here.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking