that a fine lady was kissing the child, and had told her to tell where
they were and she should not be frightened, &c.; and this picture again
calls up the hue and cry after the kidnappers and the fruitless hopes of
the parents. In a word, Defoe has condensed in the eight simple lines of
his little scene all that is essential to its living truth; and let the
young writer note that it is ever the sign of the master to do in three
words, or with three strokes, what the ordinary artist does in thirty.
Defoe's imagination is so extraordinarily comprehensive in picking out
just those little matter-of-fact details that suggest all the other
aspects, and that emphasise the character of the scene or situation,
that he makes us believe in the actuality of whatever he is describing.
So real, so living in every detail is this apocryphal narrative, in
"Captain Singleton," of the crossing of Africa by a body of marooned
sailors from the coast of Mozambique to the Gold Coast, that one would
firmly believe Defoe was committing to writing the verbal narrative of
some adventurer in the flesh, if it were not for certain passages--such
as the description of the impossible desert on page 90, which proves
that Defoe was piecing together his description of an imaginary journey
from the geographical records and travellers' tales of his contemporaries,
aided perhaps by the confused yarns of some sailor friends. How
substantially truthful in spirit and in detail is Defoe's account of
Madagascar is proved by the narrative of Robert Drury's "Captivity in
Madagascar," published in 1729. The natives themselves, as described
intimately by Drury, who lived amongst them for many years, would produce
just such an effect as Defoe describes on rough sailors in their perilous
position. The method by which Defoe compels us to accept improbabilities,
and lulls our critical sense asleep, is well shown in the following
passages:--

"Thieving, lying, swearing, forswearing, joined to the most