The prints in this book are no
small part of it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of
Lemnos was a subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies,
what shall we say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the
Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it
with the reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place
of confinement. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for
ever cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean
rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings
of his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him.
Thus he says:
As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country,
the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a
sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods,
the mountains, and deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked
up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited
wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures
of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me
wring my hands, and weep like a child.
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