DANIEL DEFOE
THE AUTHOR OF "ROBINSON CRUSOE."

11. In Defoe's time there were no such means of communication. You can easily understand that he found it very hard to get sufficient news to fill his newspaper even once a week. Defoe's paper was largely filled up with essays on all sorts of subjects. Many of these essays were very well written, for Defoe had plenty of time to do his work carefully and thoroughly.

12. Later on, we find Defoe acting as a secret agent for the Government. He was sent to Scotland to persuade the Scottish people to agree to a union with England, and afterwards he travelled on government business in various parts of England. In time, however, his friends were driven from power, and he lost his employment, and barely escaped another term of imprisonment.

13. Defoe was now fifty-five years of age, and he had made nothing of his life, so he determined to give up politics and to devote himself to writing works which would simply amuse his readers.

14. Now about this time he read in a book of voyages an account of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor of Largo in Fifeshire, who had joined a crew of pirates and had sailed with them to distant parts of the world. After a time he quarrelled with his mates, and was put ashore by them on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, off the west coast of South America. Here he remained in solitude for five years. Defoe took this story and made it the basis of his most famous and enduring bookó" Robinson Crusoe."

15. Towards the end of his life fortune smiled on Defoe. He grew rich and lived in grand style, but somehow his affairs again got into confusion, and he had to go into hiding once more. He died in a humble lodging in his seventieth year, and was buried in the cemetery where Bunyan lies.