The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton | Page 3

coming up to the rail of the quarter-deck," that we cannot but believe the thing happened so, just as we believe in all the thousand little details of the imaginary narrative of "Robinson Crusoe." This feat of the imagination Defoe strengthens in the most artful manner, by putting in the mouths of his characters various reflections to substantiate the narrative. For example, in the description, on page 263, of the savages who lined the perilous channel in a half-moon, where the European ship lay, we find the afterthoughts are added so naturally, that they would carry conviction to any judge or jury:--
"They little thought what service they had done us, and how unwittingly, and by the greatest ignorance, they had made themselves pilots to us, while we, having not sounded the place, might have been lost before we were aware. _It is true we might have sounded our new harbour, before we had ventured out; but I cannot say for certain, whether we should or not; for I, for my part, had not the least suspicion of what our real case was; however, I say, perhaps, before we had weighed, we should have looked about us a little._"
Turning to the other literary qualities that make Defoe's novels great, if little read, classics, how delightful are the little satiric touches that add grave weight to the story. Consider the following: "My good gipsy mother, for some of her worthy actions, no doubt, happened in process of time to be hanged, and as this fell out something too soon for me to be perfected in the strolling trade," &c.(p. 3). Every other word here is dryly satiric, and the large free callousness and careless brutality of Defoe's days with regard to the life of criminals is conveyed in half a sentence. And what an amount of shrewd observation is summed up in this one saying: "Upon these foundations, William said he was satisfied we might trust them; for, says William, I would as soon trust a man whose interest binds him to be just to me, as a man whose principle binds himself" (p. 227). Extremely subtle is also this remark: "_Why, says I, did you ever know a pirate repent?_ At this he started a little and returned, At the gallows I have known 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 penitent ex-pirates are shown us as hesitating in Venice for two years before they durst venture to England for fear of the gallows.
"Captain Singleton" was published in 1720, a year after "Robinson Crusoe," when Defoe was fifty-nine. Twenty years before had seen "The True-Born Englishman" and "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters"; and