ABSTRACT
William Wordsworth made few references to Defoe. In 1808 he argued that works such as Crusoe and Pilgrim’s Progress might prove quite as serviceable in the cause of religious improvement as orthodox manuals such as A Serious Call. The more substantial passage which follows was reported by Robert Perceval Graves, a young Irish clergyman who became curate of Bowness and a close friend of Wordsworth in the poet’s latter days. Text from The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. A. B. Grosart (1876), vol. iii, p. 468.
