Note 202b — CHARLES DICKENS
Reading edition
In writing to Walter Savage Landor (Letters, ii., p. 48), 1856, he asks (in reference to Robinson Crusoe) if it is not a testimony to the homely force of truth that—“One of the most popular books on earth has nothing in it to make anyone laugh or cry. Yet I think, with some confidence, that you never did either over any passage in Robinson Crusoe. In particular, I took Friday’s death as one of the least tender and (in the true sense) least sentimental things ever written. . . .” He goes on:—“It is a book I read very much; and the wonder of its prodigious effect on me and everyone, and the admiration thereof, grows on me the more I observe this curious fact.”