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THE AUTHORSHIP
ROBINSON CRUSOE,
#3 Y
W. LA IDLAW PURVES.
Reprinted from the Athenaeum,
May 2nd and 9th,
Privately Printed.
FRANCIS & CO., ATHENAEUM PBESS,
13, BREAM'S BUILDINGS, CHANCERY LANE, E.C.
1903,

THE AUTHORSHIP OF
‘ROBINSON CRUSOE.’
WHAT of the tradition that ‘ Robinson Crusoe’
was the production of Dr. Arbuthnot or Lord
Oxford 7–for even shortly after its publication
Wilson says that such “extravagant tales” of
the authorship were in existence, and had
implicit believers. On the meagre authority of
the evidence that has hitherto been before
Defoe's biographers, the contemptuous way in
which this tradition has been brushed aside is
intelligible. What was the evidence adduced
in favour of the tradition ? It was that of
Thomas Warton's MS. in the British Museum,
and quoted in the Athenaeum of September,
1843, that Warton had been told in 1759—forty
years after ‘Robinson Crusoe’ appeared, and
twenty-eight years after Defoe's death—by the
Rev. Ben Holloway, that Lord Sunderland told
him repeatedly that Lord Oxford wrote “Robin-
son Crusoe’ when imprisoned in the Tower,
and gave Defoe permission to publish it. With
nothing further to corroborate it, it was not
thought by Defoe's biographers worthy of
examination, one saying, “It needs no confuta-
tion.”
It is not at all improbable that a statesman of
Lord Oxford's literary proclivities might amuse
— 4 —
himself during such a long and tedious incarcera-
tion, and entirely prevented as he was from
taking an active part in the usual occupations of
his life, with writing some such light biography,
requiring no references whatever to verify any
incidents he might care to introduce ; nor is it
likely that a statesman of such standing, having
so amused himself, would publish in his own
name the narrative of such an obscure hero as a
“Mariner of York.” There is a plausibility in
the assertion that, having written this trifling
narrative, he did give it to some one else, with
his permission to publish it if he thought proper,
and the question arises, Is it to be expected
that Defoe would be the man to whom he would
so entrust it {
If we may judge by Lord Oxford's expressed
opinion and personal kindness to Defoe, he is
the very man to whom he would probably give
it. Defoe was in close relationship with Lord
Oxford as one of his political pamphlet writers,
and between them there was at times one of the
most extraordinary compacts that political litera-
ture has ever seen.
Lord Oxford, whose literary inclinations were
well known, has been described as a shrewd and
unscrupulous politician, “indifferent to truth,
and with a talent for intrigue.” When a poli-
tician of such a character meets with a pam-
phleteer like Defoe, who writes for or against
either side as desired, the complications may be
great. That he thought well of Defoe we know
by his writing in 1703 to Lord Treasurer Godol-
phin, on the subject of the treatment from
which Defoe was suffering in Newgate, that “he
— 5 —
[Defoe] is a very capable man.” He again, in
1704, it is stated by Aitken, “on coming into
office,” asked Defoe “what he should do for him,
and arranged for the relief of his family.” In
August, 1704, his kindness was still more prac-
tical, when he released him from Newgate.
Again when Defoe was in Newgate in 1713,
Harley procured for him a pardon ; and when,
in 1714, that minister fell from office, Defoe
described him as his “benefactor.” Minto says
that Defoe worked with “un wearied zeal in the
service of Harley.”
It will thus be seen that there was an intimacy
of a business character between the Cabinet
minister and Defoe, and we are informed, and
we find, that Defoe in some degree tried to
repay Lord Oxford in kind, by visiting him
frequently during his confinement in the Tower,
his lordship having formerly done what he could
to mitigate the repeated incarcerations of Defoe
in Newgate.
When two men of literary tastes come together
under such circumstances, it is almost certain
that literary topics will form a great part of the
subjects of conversation, and it is possible that
Steele's article on Selkirk's adventures, then
fresh in the public mind, would form one of
them ; and it is, Isaac Jamas says, certain that
the Earl of Oxford was in possession of Selkirk's
history, as the pamphlet entitled ‘Providence
Displayed ' was preserved in the Harleian Mis-
cellany. -
It is a remarkable fact that in the “O'”
edition of “Robinson Crusoe’ the narrative is
stated to have been “written by himself and
— 6 —
delivered to a friend,” while in Taylor's first
edition the latter statement does not appear,
and, in place of this statement, a paragraph is
added to the preface of the “O'” edition, and
the rôle of editor only is now assumed, the
added paragraph beginning, “The editor believes
the Thing to be a just History of Facts.” If
the preface of the “O'” edition be further
examined, it will be seen that it begins with the
word “And,” a conjunction implying that the
paragraph following is the sequel to something
which had gone before, but which for some
reason has been removed.
If we assume for the moment that the state-
ment of Lord Sunderland as given by Warton is
worthy of credit, the title-page declaration that
the narrative had been written by some one not
the editor, and “delivered to a friend,” would
be absolutely correct ; and the addition of a
paragraph to the end of the preface, with the
suppression of a first paragraph, would be the
addition of the “editor,” but not the author.
“In a word,” as he himself would say, should
we not accept Defoe's own statements that the
narrative was in reality “delivered to a friend,”
and that he himself was only the “editor"?
If it could be proved that Lord Oxford and
Defoe were associated in producing or publish-
ing other narratives, it would most certainly
give support to the tradition, and that they were
asserted to have been so associated is seen by
Defoe's own statement quoted by Minto, which
is as follows. Defoe, speaking of Harley, says
that he had never
“received any instruction, directions, or orders, let
— 7 —
them call it what they will, of that kind, for the
writing of any part of what he had written, or any
materials for the putting together any book or
pamphlet whatever, from the said Earl of Oxford,
Lord Treasurer, or from any person by his order or
direction, since the time that the late Earl of Oaford
mas Lord Treasurer.”
I have placed two clauses in italics—clauses
which may have a bearing on what follows.
Even while Lord Oxford was in the Tower
and being visited by Defoe, pamphlets were
appearing on ‘The Secret History of the White
Staff' and “An Account of the Conduct of
Robert, Earl of Oxford,” which had been
ascribed to Lord Oxford's authorship, and
which he thought it sufficiently important to
disclaim, saying that they were written with
“the intention of the author, or authors, to do
him a prejudice,” which Minto says they do not
seem to do.
It is an extraordinary thing to find Lord
Oxford on the one hand and Defoe on the other
—two unscrupulous politicians, accustomed to
play into each other's hands—both feeling it
necessary, and a matter of sufficient urgency,
publicly to disclaim different writings ascribed
to them ; and it may be asked with reference to
Defoe's declaration, Was this declaration in-
tended to refute statements that had been made
as to his political writings only, or was it also
intended to include other writings, ostensibly
Defoe's 7
If it be called to mind that Lord Oxford was
dismissed from office by Queen Anne on account
of alleged complicity with a clerk in his office,
named Gregg, in supplying Louis of France
with important State papers, it can well be
8 —
understood that, as a result of the intimate
relationship between Defoe and Oxford as to
literary transactions—transactions of a most
subtle and intentionally misleading kind on
both sides—some such complicity on the part
of Lord Oxford with Defoe, in supplying him
with what Defoe calls “materials for the putting
together any book or pamphlet whatever,” had
been alleged against his lordship.
Let us consider how this bears upon one of
the greatest productions of the time of this
great intimacy between Lord Oxford and Defoe
—the “Memoirs of a Cavalier." This work,
consisting of 338 pp. octavo, appeared within
thirteen months of the first publication by
Taylor of “Robinson Crusoe.' It is laden with
matters of history, the particulars of which are,
I believe, indisputable as to facts, and allowed
to be so correct that the work is taken to be
authoritative, and used as such by writers of
history. Are these to be considered a series of
memoirs in which the only fabulous circumstance
is the existence of the hero? It seems as if this
were a correct definition of the work. There
may be embellishments, in the addition of
which the editor of “Robinson Crusoe’ has
proved himself a past master, but the solid sub-
stratum of particular, special, individual events,
which bear the impress of truth, and stand the
test of investigation, confirms the belief that
these memoirs have been copied from the actual
diary of a soldier. Even so late as 1873 a mili-
tary man, writing upon the subject from a
military point of view, protests against these
memoirs being considered the invention of
— 9 —
Defoe, and says the author must have been a
military man.
What does Defoe himself say upon the
subject 7
He says that the memoirs were found above
twenty years ago, among other valuable papers,
in the closet of an eminent public minister, and
that the editors—the persons now concerned in
the publication—assure the reader that they
have had them in their possession above twenty
years. The minister is stated to have been one
of King William's Secretaries of State. Defoe
avers that they are a private gentleman's
story, and he points out that the work
“is a confutation of many errors in all
the writers upon the subject of our wars
in England, and even in that extraordinary
history written by the Earl of Clarendon,” a
statement which no romance-writer would have
been bold enough to make unless he thought
his statement of facts could be thoroughly
sustained, and could bear investigation and
scrutiny. He says that the editors—always the
plural here, and differing in this from the
* Robinson Crusoe’ preface of Taylor—had
twenty years before refused to lend these
memoirs to an historian desirous of using them
for the purpose of confuting Clarendon's
History.
Who is this co-editor with whom Defoe is
so closely connected 7 Who is this Cabinet
minister who has been so careless, or confiding,
as to allow memoirs of a gentleman soldier to
pass into the hands of a political pamphleteer
of such an unscrupulous character as Defoe was
— 10 –-
known, or supposed, to be Is it too wild a
supposition that the minister who did so, or
the man who had the opportunity of laying his
hands on such a memoir, lying in “the closet
of an eminent public minister,” was the same
man with whom Defoe was so intimate that
they had already often in literary undertakings
played into each other's hands, and written for or
against the side of politics on which they really
were, according as it served their purpose ;
The story of the journal being found in some
political pigeon-hole tallies well with all the
facts, and the combination of the editors agrees
well with the known literary associations of
Defoe and Lord Oxford. How else could Defoe
put together and marshal the personal and
historical facts of these memoirs To have
collected at all, however long that may have
taken him, new statements, confuting sometimes
the recognized histories of the times, considering
the busy life Defoe was leading as a politician,
a pamphleteer, and an editor of various journals,
seems a difficult business ; and that he had
collected and collated them since his first great
essay in novel-writing, thirteen months before,
is, I submit, hardly credible.
Before leaving the internal evidences to be
found in the memoirs I may observe that,
though the general critical world has long given
the authorship to Defoe, the known animosity
which he evinced to the Scottish nation seems
entirely absent in the “Memoirs of a Cavalier.”
Here we find the Scots taking the first rank as
soldiers and generals in the wars of Gustavus
Adolphus, of which the Cavalier is relating his
— 11 —
experiences. The praise and admiration of the
martial achievements of the Scottish regiments
are so great and continuous, that one would,
without other proof of Defoe's editing, say that
that was not Defoe's writing, and that this gives
corroboration of his own statement that he is
merely a co-editor of a journal of an actual
partaker in the scenes he so graphically
describes.
When the “Memoirs of a Cavalier' were pub-
lished, Defoe was in his sixty-first year. In
1715, five years before, he had suffered from an
apoplectic seizure, usually one of the most fruit-
ful causes of cerebral debility. Despite this he
continued his political writing, and up to 1719–
i.e., when sixty years of age—is accredited by
Mr. Lee with having published 193 writings,
nearly all political. Mr. Lee says he had, before
his first great effort in romance, “‘given to the
world a greater number of distinct works than
any other living writer,” yet his past labours
“appear to sink into comparative insignificance
when we contemplate his productions during the
twelve remaining years of his life.” This in-
exhaustible fertility has called forth the wonder
and astonishment of many of the greatest writers
and critics of modern times. But these great
writers and critics
“were all unaware that, in addition to the Herculean
labour claiming tileir admiration, there were also a
monthly publication of nearly 100 pages, a paper
published weekly, another appearing thrice a week,
and a great part of the time a fourth issued daily,
besides abmit twenty biographica', historical, and
political pamphlets, and several considerable volumes
then unknown to be his. So great an amount of
intellectual toil would be incredible, were not the
facts before us in the works themselves.”
— 12 —
He says that if the attention be directed to
the short periods between the publication of
successive volumes, and if Defoe's journalistic
labours be added thereto, it may fairly be asked
“if the history of the world contains proof
that an equally prolific literary genius has
existed"; and I think we may further fairly
ask, Are they in reality all Defoe's own original
productions?
Mr. Lee gives “the works themselves” as the
proof that such an incredible amount of work
was done by one man. One must agree that
the production of some sixty original works by
a man between sixty and seventy-one years
of age, who had suffered from an attack of
apoplexy in his fifty-sixth year, was all but
incredible, and that the assertion must be
received with the greatest caution ; and the
more so when, even in the writer's time, men
said that some of the productions were not his
originally. When, moreover, we find that the
writer, after publishing 193 separate original
articles, principally political, suddenly startles
the world by the publication of a work in an
entirely new vein with an unprecedented
success, and follows that up with a rapidity of
production unparalleled by any author, and
even by himself in his younger and more
vigorous years, incredibility is not lessened.
Mr. Lee goes so far as to say that the work
must have taken up “every waking hour.”
Let us examine a little more closely into this
fertility of production, and see what Defoe is
supposed to have produced in nineteen months
of his sixtieth and sixty-first years. Possibly a
— 13 -—
tabulated list will show more quickly the works
attributed to him.
1719.
April 25. ‘ Robinson Crusoe,” consisting of 364
pages (of which there were four editions within
four months, and all seemingly supervised by the
editor).
May. ‘Baron Goertz," 46 pages.
May. “I letter to Dissenters,’ 27 pages.
July. ‘Exchange Alley,’ 64 pages.
Aug. 8. ‘Further Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe,’ 373 pages.
Oct. 4. ‘The Dumb Philosopher,’ 64 pages.
Dec. “The King of the Pirates,’ 93 pages.
1720.
Jan. ‘The Chimera.” 76 pages.
April 30. “Duncan Campbell,’ 320 pages.
May 21. “Memoirs of a Cavalier,’ 338 pages.
June 4. ‘Captain Singleton,’ 344 pages.
June 18. 'Campbell's Pacquet,' 33 pages.
Aug. 6. ‘Serious Reflections and Further Reflec-
tions,’ 354 pages.
Nov. 19. Abridged Robinson Crusoe, 376 pages. .
It will be observed that in 1720, between
April 30th and June 4th, the works supposed
to have been original publications by Defoe con-
sisted of three separate biographies requiring
over 1,000 octavo printed pages to contain them.
When we are asked to believe that in thirty-six
days he was able to publish this vast amount
of original matter—matter containing historical
instances and scenes at which he could not have
been personally present, and yet bearing the
impress of truth, and further attested as
correct by historical investigators — and that
he was at the same time conducting
and writing in four separate journals, one
appearing daily, one three times weekly,
one weekly, and one of 100 pages monthly,
we may well say it is all but impossible.
Why should we not accept Defoe's own state-
— 14 —
ments, which largely remove the burden of
doubt as to the original authorship, and believe
that he was in reality the editor only, in the
two great works which he avows to have been
the writings of another, viz., “Robinson Crusoe’
and the “Memoirs of a Cavalier'? The copy
of “Robinson Crusoe’ which has been spoken
of in former articles avers that the story was
written by the hero, and “delivered to a
friend,” who evidently afterwards took up the
position of “editor,” in which capacity he
asserts he also acted with a co-editor in the
production of the “Memoirs of a Cavalier,’ and
gave to the world the actual journal of a gentle-
man volunteer found in a Cabinet minister's
repositories.
It has been frequently pointed out that the
style of “Robinson Crusoe’ differs from any-
thing Defoe wrote before or since, the
“Memoirs of a Cavalier' and the ‘Journal of
the Plague' showing the greatest resemblance.
The contrast between the first volume of
“Robinson Crusoe ' and the second and third
volumes is very marked, more so than is at
all to be expected from a writer composing
three volumes within a few months of
each other. Mr. Lee relies upon this style
of Defoe's, which he calls (and it is) a
very marked one, as proving that the
works he ascribes to Defoe were Defoe's.
But if, as has been contended so frequently,
and is avouched by Defoe himself, he acted only
as editor in certain of the works, the proof loses
greatly in its force ; and when an edition of
“Robinson Crusoe,’ as before described, comes
— 15 —
to light, showing some 900 variations from the
hitherto first known edition, and so corrobo-
rating, if not confirming, Defoe's own assertion,
the demonstration becomes very shadowy. This
“O'” edition proves the existence of a manu-
script differing from that from which Taylor's
edition was set up, and, as has been shown,
almost certainly prior to that manuscript, and
gives support to the statement of Lord Sunder-
land as to the authorship, as well as to Defoe's
own acknowledgment. Defoe being the editor
of a work requiring often such an amount of
variation and modification, the surprise would
be great if he had not given the work the
character and style peculiar to himself.
Hubbard
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