15 OCTOBER 1864, Page 20

CAPTAIN HERBERT.*

Tuts is rather a disappointing book, for it is not until far on in the story that the reader is compelled to give up the hope of a good novel which he had entertained at its commencement. In the first place it is scarcely sufficiently a story of the sea to justify its title. It is true that there is a fair sprinkling of "stun' sails," "best bower anchors," cries of "avast there!" and of the technical jargon in general which affords to landsmen readers a delightful sense of nautical enjoyment without the drawback of impending sea-sickness. But the book is not a naval novel for all that. The main interest of the plot is centred in people who never go to sea at all, and the two or three individuals who do go to sea lead a life there which does not bear in the remotest degree upon the progress of the main story. A chapter is here and there inserted in which we have a mutiny, a fight between a heroic " youngster " and a tyrannical " oldster," or a storm, but they are evidently thrown in merely in order to give colour to the naval pretensions of the book. There are certainly consider- able difficulties in the way of combining a stirring and eventful sea story with a general plot, but such difficulties can be overcome if the author only sets himself to work in earnest. But in Captain Herbert it is attempted to secure factitious interest in an ordinary novel by interspersing it with snatches of sea life, which only interrupt the progress of the story, while those who are attracted by the prospect of a real sea story of the old school—nothing but cruising and fighting, gunroom fun, and " larks " on shore in half the ports of the world, will be thoroughly disappointed. As we have intimated, the opening promises more than is fulfilled. The story is essen- tially local, and begins with a description of Bristol, Bristol people, and Bristol habits as they were in the latter half of the last century. We aro introduced to a Bristol mercantile house with a mystery, a party of young ladies every one of whom may blossom into a heroine, an inexplicable foreigner, wealthy, en- chanting, aristocratic, and philosophic in the French eighteenth- century sense of the word—but evidently with the making of a villain in him—and a naval lieutenant of high birth, cut off on account of his Protestant creed from succession to the family estates. There are also glimpses to be bad of a Yankee--tr as lie would then b3 called " colonial "-skipper, half privateer, half pirate, by name Ahitliophel Dodge, and evidently a villain in ease, together with one or two other villains in posse, and a notable black, whose very opening bow in the story suggests desperate fights in the West Indies, and all kinds of exciting incidents. But things do not go on as well as the commencement would warrant one in expecting. There is a good deal of rather cleverly written description, both personal, local, and relating to the general situation of affairs a little • Capta:a ilerbert: a Sea Stop•. Loudon : Chapman and Hall. Itt34. less than a century ago. But descriptions of even quaint old Bristol in the height of its prosperity, with its strange-look- ing streets, its churches, its intricate creeks and docks, its rough crowds of outlandish sailors, and all the characteristics of a great seaport before steam had destroyed half the romance of the sea, require to be very clever indeed before they can retain their attraction throughout a great part of three volumes. Disser- tations, too, not particularly original, on the politics of the time, with occasional chapters which read like attempts to dramatize random pages of a biographical dictionary—find- ing imaginary but suggestive occupations at some given time for every man of note then alive—soon begin to bore one rather. The mysterious foreigner does nothing but write philosophic letters (of eighteen pages in the novel) to friends unknown to the reader, and gets very flat indeed. He is the only character of any moment in the book, and though fairly enough sketched in some aspects is as a whole ridiculously impossible. The girls already mentioned do not develop into heroines,—one of them even marries at the end of the third volume a respectable middle-aged clergyman to whom she was engaged at the beginning of the first, •and who does nothing but wait for a living in the meantime. Things get very dreary indeed. The Bristol firm is dissolved, and the mystery (which is not divided, but follows one partner) is gradually discounted until the final resolution of it ceases to interest. There is a sensational tone about the story without any real sensations, and the thread of the plot is so often hidden by discussions on things in general that, though not complicated in reality, it confuses the reader into the belief that there is somehow or other a great denouement coming. The purely naval part of the book is not bad, though it is not easy to feel any great interest in ship life in a novel unless one knows something more of those on board than one does of the crew of the Astrma. The one really sensa- tional incident of the sea life of the hero is the death of an officer (who has no connection with the story) by a shot from one of the guns of a burning ship from which he had been rescued. As it is, Captain Herbert cannot be called successful either as a sea or a land story, though it is for from quite wanting in indications of a certain capacity in the author for both.