Defoe has no other aims except the entertainment of his readers: his novel can be read again which equal keenness, and interest and excitement. Readers may not like his characters, but still they have the novel-quality, and before displays it for the first time in full measure.

Another greatness of Defoe lines is his almost endless accumulation of trivial details, incidents and observations, the combined effect of which is to create in the reader an unconscious acceptance of the facts and character presented to him. Defoe is the first of the great magicians who have the peculiar talent of making uninteresting things interesting, merely by presenting them as though they really existed.