_one_ repent, and I _hope_ thou wilt be the second." The
character of William the Quaker pirate is a masterpiece of shrewd
humour. He is the first Quaker brought into English fiction, and we
know of no other Friend in latter-day fiction to equal him. Defoe in
his inimitable manner has defined surely and deftly the peculiar
characteristics of the sect in this portrait. On three separate occasions
we find William saving unfortunate natives or defenceless prisoners from
the cruel and wicked barbarity of the sailors. At page 183, for example,
the reader will find a most penetrating analysis of the dense stupidity
which so often accompanies man's love of bloodshed. The sketch of the
second lieutenant, who was for "murdering the negroes to make them tell,"
when he could not make them even understand what he wanted, is worthy of
Tolstoy. We have not space here to dwell upon the scores of passages of
similar deep insight which make "Captain Singleton" a most true and vivid
commentary on the life of Defoe's times, but we may call special attention
to the passage on page 189 which describe the sale of the negroes to the
planters; to the description of the awakening of the conscience of Captain
Singleton through terror at the fire-cloud (page 222); and to the
extraordinarily picturesque conversation between William and the captive
Dutchman (page 264). Finally, if the reader wishes to taste Defoe's flavour
in its perfection let him examine carefully those passages in the
concluding twenty pages of the book, wherein Captain Singleton is shown
as awakening to the wickedness of his past life, and the admirable dry
reasoning of William by which the Quaker prevents him from committing
suicide and persuades him to keep his ill-gotten wealth, "with a resolution
to do what right with it we are able; and who knows what opportunity
Providence may put into our hands.... As it is without doubt, our present
business is to go to some place of safety, where we may wait His will."
How admirable is the passage about William's sister, the widow with four
children who kept a little shop in the Minories, and that in which the