writing," as he humorously described it, might have drawn students to
his works, but they ran considerable risk of lying in utter oblivion.
He was at war with the whole guild of respectable writers who have
become classics; they despised him as an illiterate fellow, a vulgar
huckster, and never alluded to him except in terms of contempt. He was
not slow to retort their civilities; but the retorts might very easily
have sunk beneath the waters, while the assaults were preserved by their
mutual support. The vast mass of Defoe's writings received no kindly aid
from distinguished contemporaries to float them down the stream;
everything was done that bitter dislike and supercilious indifference
could do to submerge them. _Robinson Crusoe_ was their sole life-buoy.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the vitality of _Robinson Crusoe_
is a happy accident, and that others of Defoe's tales have as much claim
in point of merit to permanence. _Robinson Crusoe_ has lived longest,
because it lives most, because it was detached as it were from its own
time and organized for separate existence. It is the only one of Defoe's
tales that shows what he could do as an artist. We might have seen from
the others that he had the genius of a great artist; here we have the
possibility realized, the convincing proof of accomplished work. _Moll
Flanders_ is in some respects superior as a novel. Moll is a much more
complicated character than the simple, open-minded, manly mariner of
York; a strangely mixed compound of craft and impulse, selfishness and
generosity--in short, a thoroughly bad woman, made bad by circumstances.
In tracing the vigilant resolution with which she plays upon human
weakness, the spasms of compunction which shoot across her wily designs,
the selfish afterthoughts which paralyse her generous impulses, her fits
of dare-devil courage and uncontrollable panic, and the steady current
of good-humoured satisfaction with herself which makes her chuckle
equally over mishaps and successes, Defoe has gone much more deeply into