and yet very little regarded in that part.  It is a sort of lying that makes a great hole in the heart, in which by degrees a habit of lying enters in.  Such a man comes quickly up to a total disregarding the truth of what he says, looking upon it as a trifle, a thing of no import, whether any story he tells be true or not.”  How empty a satisfaction is this “purchased at so great an expense as that of conscience, and of a dishonour done to truth!” And the crime is so entirely objectless.  A man who tells a lie, properly so called, has some hope of reward by it.  But to lie for sport is to play at shuttlecock with your soul, and load your conscience for the mere sake of being a fool.  “With what temper should I speak of those people?  What words can express the meanness and baseness of the mind that can do this?” In making this protest against frivolous story-telling, the humour of which must have been greatly enjoyed by his journalistic colleagues, Defoe anticipated that his readers would ask why, if he so disapproved of the supplying a story by invention, he had written Robinson Crusoe.  His answer was that Robinson Crusoe was an allegory, and that the telling or writing a parable or an allusive allegorical history is quite a different case.  “I, Robinson Crusoe, do affirm that the story, though allegorical, is also historical, and that it is the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled misfortunes, and of a variety not to be met with in this world.”  This life was his own.  He explains at some length the particulars of the allegory:—­

“Thus the fright and fancies which succeeded the story of the print of a man’s foot, and surprise of the old goat, and the thing rolling on my bed, and my jumping up in a fright, are all histories and real stories; as are likewise the dream of being taken by messengers, being arrested by officers, the manner of being driven on shore by the surge of the sea, the ship on fire, the description of starving, the story of my man Friday, and many more most natural passages observed here, and on which any religious reflections are made, are all historical and true in fact.  It is most real that I had a parrot, and taught it to call me by my name, such a servant a savage and afterwards a Christian and that his name was called Friday, and that he was ravished from me by force, and died in the hands that took him, which I represent by being killed; this is all literally true; and should I enter into discoveries many alive can testify them.  His other conduct and assistance to me also have just references in all their parts to the helps I had from that faithful savage in my real solitudes and disasters.”

“The story of the bear in the tree, and the fight with the wolves in the snow, is likewise matter of real history; and in a word, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe are a whole scheme of a life of twenty-eight years spent in the most wandering, desolate, and afflicting circumstances that ever