Life of Frederick Marryat

haracteristic of the man. He acquired it, according to Mrs. Ross Church, by exchange-having "swapped" it, after dinner and copious champagne, against Sussex House, Hammersmith. Fr

acres of the estate himself. Again I have to acknowledge my inability to[133] give any account of the motives for this sudden (for it appears to have been sudden) decision. Considerations of economy were doubtless of weight with him. The fall in the value of West Indian property had, as has been said, hit him hard. The demands on his purse were as heavy as ever-indeed, to judge from a somewhat plaintive reference in one of his letters-even heavier. He speaks in this place of actions brought by tradesmen to recover money for goods supplied to his sons Fre

where (surrounded by Clarkson Stanfield's illustrations of 'Poor Jack,' with[134] which the walls were clothed) Captain Marryat composed his later works, to the lawn behind. The house was thatched and gabled, and its pinkish white walls and round porch were covered with roses and ivy, which in some parts climbed as high as the roof itself." When Marryat came down to examine his property with an intention of living on it, he found it suffering from all the evils which commonly fall upon the property of absent

rprise few to learn that the result only proved once more that small properties are not so easily forced to yield a profit. Even before actually coming to live on the estate, Marryat had tried

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ess is wrapt up in mystery. On the whole, one can quite believe that the Captain's "agricultural vagaries appeared almost like insanity to those steady plodding minds that could not understand that a man may have genius, and no common sense." Quite credible, too, is it that Marryat was very particularly proud of his common sense, and "would have been very much hurt" if any man had doubted his claim to possess it in an eminent degree. If there is anything of which the more flighty kind of speculator is firmly persuaded,[136] it is of his practical faculty and sober good sense. It is very characteristic that in all Marryat's stories for children, and in touches scattered over his earlier works, there are proofs of a taste for thinking about matters of business, and for

rave man; for he was not exempt from those ills that all flesh is heir to, and had his sorrows and his difficulties and moments of depression like the rest of us. At such times it was dangerous to thwart or disturb him, for he was a man of strong passions and indomitable determination; but, whoever felt the effects of his moods of perplexity or disappointment, his children never did." Mrs. Ross Church must forgive it if this description reminds me more than a little of a certificate to character I once heard given to a British skipper, a mahogany-faced man of immense strength and violence, in the office of one of Her Majesty's consuls, in a Mediterranean port. This gallant seaman had been summoned by one of his men for assault and bat

hildren "he was a most indulgent father and friend, caring little what escapades they indulged in so long as they were not afraid to tell the truth. 'Tell truth and shame the devil' was a quotation constantly on his lips; and he always upheld falsehood and cowardice as the two worst vices of mankind. He never permitted anything to be locked or hidden away from his children, who were allowed to indulge their appetites at their own discretion; nor were they eve

all articles for presents in his secretary, and at the termination of each week the children, and governess armed with a report of their general behaviour, were ushered with much solemnity into the library to render up an account. Those who had behaved well during the preceding seven days received a prize, because they had been so good; and those who had behaved ill also received one, in hopes that they would never be naughty again. The governess was also presented with a gift, that her criticism on the justice of the transaction might be disarmed. Thus all parties left the room perfectly satisfied; an end which, Captain Marryat used to observe, it required some diplomacy to attain. The governess was in the habit of restraining the children's thoughtlessness by imposition of fines or lessons when they tore their clothes; but, as tearing t

loped the moral virtues by unlimited indulgence, was one to be held up as a model to fathers. No doubt, however, it was abundantly pleasant for the children, and it may readily be believed that Captain Marryat was loved by his own hous

ems to have been a kind master. He at least gave them copious feasts on proper occasions. "All the men who were on the farm," he tells his god-daughter, "were invited to a Christmas dinner in the kitchen, and they sat down two-and-twenty at the table in the servants' hall, and were waited upon by our own servants. They had two large pieces of roast beef, and a boiled leg of pork; four dishes of Norfolk dumplings; two large meat pies; two geese, eight ducks, and eight widgeon; and after that they had four large plum puddings." This, with "plenty of strong beer," which was also duly supplied, made, as Marryat seems to have felt with pardonable satisfaction, a feed likely to be remembered by the two-and-twenty farm hands. H

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re. For company, he had his romps with his children, his game of piquet, and an occasional, or even frequent, visit from Lieutenant Thomas, of the coastguard station at Morston. The two old seamen met, and talked of the rapid progress of the service to the d--, as old seamen have done from the beginning, and will do to the end of time. From the outer world came requests for work from editors, suggest

ld not do it well. Biography is most difficult writing, and requires more time and thought than any original composition, and if I take it up I must be free as air." In addition to this (justly high) estimate of the difficulty and dignity of biography, Marryat, with sound critical judgment, decided that Collingwood was not a proper subject. There is not enough known or to be known about him. So much of his work was done as a subordinate under St. Vincent or Nelson. With them he was always in the second place at best, and when he reached great independent command, the heroic days of the naval war were over, and there was little for him to do beyond duties of a mainly routine character, performed in the midst of chronic illness. It is a pity perhaps that Marryat did not devote some part of his work to naval biography, but he would hardly have made a real success with Collingwood. For Forster himself, Marryat wrote a series of letters to the Examiner on the "Condition of England Question

e. Of "The Mission" its author gave an exact account in a letter to his friend Mrs. S--: "It is composed of scenes and descriptions of Africa in a journey to the Northward from the Cape of Good Hope-full of lions, rhinoceroses, and all manner of adventures, interspersed with a little common sense here and there, and interwoven with the history of the settlement of the Cape up to 1828-written for young people of course, and, therefore trifling, but amusing." "The Mission," although this promising sketch of it is strictly correct, has not been much more popular than "Monsieur Violet," and the reason is obvious enough. It is not so much a story as a series of unconnected, or very loosely connected, incidents; and moreover, it contains what any right-minded boy could only regard as a cruel "sell." The hero starts forth to clear up the fate of a relative-a lady who has been wrecked on the Caffre coast many years before. It is not known for certain whether she was drowned or died on shore, and a fear has always existed that she survived as a prisoner among the natives, and had grown up to be the wife of some Caffre chief, and bear him young barbarians in his kraal-a fate[146] which it is believed did actually befall the daughters of an English officer, who wer

omes didactic-full of repetitions-and ends by being more than a little tiresome. On the whole, after all, "The Children" is better. Our old friends, the Cavaliers and Roundheads, are less new than "The Little Savage," but they last out more briskly. It is a child's story of merit-nothing more-and the historical erudition of it, if somewhat shallow, is on a level with that of more pretentious books. "The Privateersman" has a certain interest as being the last of Marryat's sea stories, and as a picture, or at least a rough sketch, of the strange old privateer life of which "The Voyages and Cruises of Commodore Walker" is almost our only record from the inside. It is not a pleasant book, or a strong. Moreover, M