fiction. It is the story of a youth, the son of a ship-wrecked
exile, who lives alone on a desert island from infancy to the age of
manhood. A hind is his nurse; he inherits a cottage, with many
useful and curious instruments; some ideas remain of the education
of his two first years; some arts are borrowed from the beavers of a
neighbouring lake; some truths are revealed in supernatural visions.
With these helps, and his own industry, Automathes becomes a self-
taught though speechless philosopher, who had investigated with
success his own mind, the natural world, the abstract sciences, and
the great principles of morality and religion. The author is not
entitled to the merit of invention, since he has blended the English
story of Robinson Crusoe with the Arabian romance of Hai Ebn
Yokhdan, which he might have read in the Latin version of Pocock.
In the Automathes I cannot praise either the depth of thought or
elegance of style; but the book is not devoid of entertainment or
instruction; and among several interesting passages, I would select
the discovery of fire, which produces by accidental mischief the
discovery of conscience. A man who had thought so much on the
subjects of language and education was surely no ordinary preceptor:
my childish years, and his hasty departure, prevented me from
enjoying the full benefit of his lessons; but they enlarged my
knowledge of arithmetic, and left me a clear impression of the
English and Latin rudiments.

In my ninth year (Jan., 1746), in a lucid interval of comparative
health, my father adopted the convenient and customary mode of
English education; and I was sent to Kingston-upon-Thames, to a
school of about seventy boys, which was kept by Dr. Wooddeson and
his assistants. Every time I have since passed over Putney Common,
I have always noticed the spot where my mother, as we drove along in