as hewing a tree, sharpening a stake, hanging up grapes to dry, tossing a biscuit to a wild cat, taking a motherless kid in his arms; and (5) to the skill with which he sets a problem requiring for its solution energy, ingenuity, selfreliance, and the development of the moral power necessary to meet and overcome difficulties.

Young and old follow with intense interest every movement of the shipwrecked mariner when he first swims to the stranded ship, constructs a raft, and places on it "bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat's flesh, a little remainder of European corn, and the carpenter's chest." Readers do not accompany him passively as he lands the raft and returns.

They work with

him; they are not only made a part of all Crusoe's experience, but they react on it imaginatively; they suggest changes; they hold their breath or try to assist him, when he is in danger. Defoe's genius in making the reader a partner in Robinson Crusoe's adventures has not yet received sufficient appreciation. The author could never have secured such a triumph if he had not compelled readers to take an active part in the story.

It was for a long time thought that Defoe was ignorant, that he accidentally happened to write Robinson Crusoe because he had been told of the recent experience of Alexander Selkirk on a solitary island in the Pacific. It is now known that Defoe was well educated, versed in several languages, and the most versatile writer of his time. Robinson Crusoe was no more of an accident than any other creation of genius.

Defoe's other principal works of fiction are: Memoirs of a Cavalier, the story of a soldier's adventures in the seventeenth century; The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, a graphic account of

adventures in a journey across Africa; Moll Flanders, a story of a well-known criminal; and A Journal of the Plague Year, a vivid, imaginative presentation, in the most realistic way, of the horrors of the London plague in 1665. These works are almost completely overshadowed by Robinson Crusoe; but they also show Defoe's narrative power and his ability to make fiction seem an absolute reality. In writing Gulliver's Travels, Swift received valuable hints from Defoe. Stevenson's Treasure Island (p. 521) is the most successful of the almost numberless stories of adventure suggested by Robinson Crusoe.

JONATHAN SWIFT, 1667-1745

Life. Swift, one of the greatest prose writers of the eighteenth century, was born of English parents in Dublin in 1667. It is absolutely necessary to know something of his life in order to pass proper judgment on his writings. A cursory examination of his life will show that heredity and environment were responsible for many of his peculiarities. Swift's father died a few months before the birth of his son, and the boy saw but little of his mother.

Swift's school and college life were passed at Kilkenny School and Trinity College, Dublin. For his education he was indebted to an uncle, who made the boy feel the bitterness of his dependence. In after times he said that his uncle treated him like a dog. Swift's early experience seems to have made him misanthropic and hardened to consequences, for he neglected certain studies, and it was only by special concession that he was allowed to take his A. B. degree in 1686.

After leaving college, he spent almost ten years as the private secretary of Sir William Temple, at Moor Park in Surrey, about forty miles southwest of London.

From the painting by C. Jervas, National Portrait Gallery.

I onder: Swift.

Temple had been asked to furnish some employment for the young graduate because Lady Temple was related to Swift's mother. Here Swift was probably treated as a dependent, and he had to eat at the second table. Finally, this life became so intolerable that he took holy orders and went to a little parish in Ireland; but after a stay of eighteen months he returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Temple's death in 1699. Swift then went to another little country parish in Ireland. From there he visited London on a mission in behalf of the Episcopal Church in Ireland. He quar

reled with the Whigs, became a Tory, and assisted that party by writing many political pamphlets. The Tory min

istry soon felt that it could scarcely do without him. He dined with ministers of state,

and was one of the most

important men in London; but he advanced the interests of his friends much better than his own, for he got little from the government except the hope of becoming a bishop. In 1713 he was made dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. In 1714, Queen Anne died, the Tories went out of power, and Swift returned to Ireland, a disappointed man. He passed the rest of his life there, with the exception of a few visits to England.

A

When English politicians endeavored to oppress Ireland with unjust laws, Swift championed the Irish cause. man who knew him well, says: "I never saw the poor so carefully and conscientiously attended to as those of his cathedral." He gave up a large part of his income every year for the poor. In Dublin he was looked upon as a hero. When a certain person tried to be revenged on Swift for a

satire, a deputation of Swift's neighbors proposed to thrash the man. Swift sent them home, but they boycotted the man and lowered his income £1200 a year.

During the last years of his life, Swift was hopelessly insane. He died in 1745, leaving his property for an asylum for lunatics and incurables.

The mysteries in Swift's life may be partly accounted for by the fact that during many years he suffered from an unknown brain disease. This affection, the galling treatment received in his early years, and the disappointments of his prime, largely account for his misanthropy, for his coldness, and for the almost brutal treatment of the women who loved him.

Swift's attachment to the beautiful Esther Johnson,