Crusoe."

But if Defoe had such a regard for the strict and literal truth, why did
he not tell his history in his own person? Why convey the facts
allusively in an allegory? To this question also he had an answer. He
wrote for the instruction of mankind, for the purpose of recommending
"invincible patience under the worst of misery; indefatigable
application and undaunted resolution under the greatest and most
discouraging circumstances."

"Had the common way of writing a man's private history
been taken, and I had given you the conduct or life of a man
you knew, and whose misfortunes and infirmities perhaps
you had sometimes unjustly triumphed over, all I could have
said would have yielded no diversion, and perhaps scarce
have obtained a reading, or at best no attention; the teacher,
like a greater, having no honour in his own country."

For all Defoe's profession that _Robinson Crusoe_ is an allegory of his
own life, it would be rash to take what he says too literally. The
reader who goes to the tale in search of a close allegory, in minute
chronological correspondence with the facts of the alleged original,
will find, I expect, like myself, that he has gone on a wild-goose
chase. There is a certain general correspondence. Defoe's own life is
certainly as instructive as Crusoe's in the lesson of invincible
patience and undaunted resolution. The shipwreck perhaps corresponds
with his first bankruptcy, with which it coincides in point of time,
having happened just twenty-eight years before. If Defoe had a real man
Friday, who had learnt all his arts till he could practise them as well
as himself, the fact might go to explain his enormous productiveness as