"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.