Whatever that object may have been, he has certainly struck, by accident or not, on the secret of producing an interesting account by ingeniously multiplied and adjusted detail.
Moreover, as there is no conversation, the book stands--accidentally this time almost without doubt--at the opposite pole from the talk-deluged romances of the Scudery type.

Whether Defoe actually knew it or not matters exceedingly little: that something of his method, and in a manner the subject of his first and most famous novel, are here before him, seems quite indisputable.

Perhaps not the least piquant thing to do with _The Isle of Pines_ is to contrast it with _Oceana_.

Of course the contrast is unfair: nearly all contrasts are.

But there is actually, as has been pointed out, a slight contact between the work of the two friends: and their complete difference in every other respect makes this more curiously apparent.