But the point to which it is wished to draw special attention now is different, and we may reach it best by the ordinary "statement of case." Almost everybody who knows any literary history, knows that the book by which, after thirty or forty years of restless publication in all sorts of prose and rhyme, Defoe niched himself immovably in English literature, was a new departure by almost an old man.

He was all but, if not quite, sixty when _Robinson Crusoe_ appeared: and a very few following years saw the appearance of his pretty voluminous "minor" novels.

The subject of the first every one knows without limitation: it is not so certain, though vigorous efforts have been made to popularise the others, that even their subjects are clearly known to many people.
_Captain Singleton_ (1720), _Moll Flanders_, and _Colonel Jack_ (both 1722) are picaresque romances with tolerably sordid heroes and heroines, but with the style entirely rejuvenated by Defoe's secret.

_Roxana_ (1724), a very puzzling book which is perhaps not entirely his writing, is of the same general class: the _Voyage round the World_ (1725), the least interesting, but not _un_interesting, is exactly what its title imports,--in other words, the "stuffing" of the _Robinson_ pie without the game.

The _Memoirs of a Cavalier_ (1720) approach the historical novel (or at least the similar "stuffing" of that) and have raised curious and probably insoluble questions as to whether they are inventions at all--questions intimately connected with that general one referred to above.