The fertility and ingenuity of his intellect may be best
gauged by the number of modern enterprises and contrivances that are
foreshadowed in his work. Here are a few, all utterly unknown in his own
day, collected by a student of his works; a Board of Trade register for
seamen; factories for goods: agricultural credit banks; a commission of
enquiry into bankruptcy; and a system of national poor relief. They show
him to have been an independent and courageous thinker where social
questions were concerned.
He was nearly sixty before he had published his first novel, _Robinson
Crusoe_, the book by which he is universally known, and on which with
the seven other novels which followed it the foundation of his literary
fame rests. But his earlier works--they are reputed to number over two
hundred--possess no less remarkable literary qualities. It is not too
much to say that all the gifts which are habitually recommended for
cultivation by those who aspire to journalistic success are to be found
in his prose. He has in the first place the gift of perfect lucidity no
matter how complicated the subject he is expounding; such a book as his
_Complete English Tradesman_ is full of passages in which complex and
difficult subject-matter is set forth so plainly and clearly that the
least literate of his readers could have no doubt of his understanding
it.
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