ANSON'S VOYAGE.* AMONG the volumes of Everyman's Library there are
none for which we feel more grateful than those containing reprints of the voyages of English seamen, and of these Anson's, which has recently appeared, is by no means the least interest- ', ing. This account of the ' Centurion's' journey round the world, which was published originally in 1748, was compiled by Richard Walter, the ship's chaplain, from Anson's private records. It is as exciting a story of adventures as may be desired, and none the lees strange for being written in all the , placid grace of a typical eighteenth-century style. We may - take as an instance the passage describing the incident which inspired one of Cowper's finest poems, The Castaway :—
"As our ship kept the wind better than any of the rest, we were obliged, in the afternoon, to wear ship, in order to join the squadron to the leeward, which otherwise we should have been in danger of losing in the night; and as we dared not venture any sail abroad, we were obliged to make use of an expedient which answered our, purpose. This was putting the helm a-weather, and - manning the fore-shrouds : but though this method proved success- ful for the end intended, yet in the execution of it one of our ablest seamen was canted overboard. We perceived that, notwith- standing the prodigious agitation of the waves, he swam very strong, and it was with the utmost concern that we found our- selves incapable of assisting him ; indeed, we were the more grieved at his unhappy fate, as we lost sight of him struggling with the waves, and conceived from the manner in which he swam that he might continue sensible for a considerable time longer of the horror attending his irretrievable situation."
' How the last words must have rung in the unhappy poet's ear ! The voice that haunted him, save that it spoke in a Latinity, soul-shaking in its' baldness, told the same 'tale. " Actum est de te, periisti " (It is all over with thee, thou halt perished.) But what an infinity of difference lay between the thought of the momentary, or at most hour-long, agony of the man adrift on the physical ocean and that of the soul cast away through all eternity and blotted 'out for ever from the book of life :— " No voice divine the storm allayed, No light pwitiotts shone ;
When, snatc.t& from all effectual aid, We perished, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."
• d 17=yround the World is the years 1740-4. By Lord Anson. " Every- mares ." London: J. M. Dent and Sons. [le. net.]
Surely no more moving lines were ever set down by a poet's pen. But even in an agitation of mind which almost overwhelms us from the printed page, Cowper remained the, scholar and maintained his nobility and sincerity of diction.
The page is wet with tears of blood, but yet there is nothing in his misery which is ignoble. It is, in his own phrase,"a narrative sincere." It is strange that Cowper seems to have imagined that the castaway's name was preserved " No poet wept him ; but the page
Of narrative sincere, That tells his name, his worth, his ago, ' Is wet with Anson's tear: - And tears by bards or heroes shed Alike immortalise the dead."
At least two earlier and, as it were, unauthorized accounts of
Anson's voyage were written, one by a midshipman and the other by the" teacher of the Mathematicks " on the Centurion? But neither of these has any reference to the castaway, and, as
we have shown above, the official story, of which Cowper was clearly thinking, gives neither the name of the castaway nor- his rating or age. How treacherous is the memory of even the most careful of men !
The book is not merely a narrative of adventures, but con- tains many reflections upon them, which, even though they may not be enlightening in themselves, are certainly of interest in revealing the author's eighteenth-century outlook upon life. His very severe strictures upon the Chinese nation, for instance, are full of amusement. Not content with criticizing their " timidity, dissimulation, and dis- honesty," he attacks them fiercely because they have hitherto neglected to avail themselves of the almost divine invention of the alphabet, " and have continued to adhere to the rude and inartificial method of representing words by arbitrary marks." His dignified contempt, as we should expect, reaches its climax in dealing with Chinese pictures :—
" Their painters, though very numerous and in great esteem,. rarely succeed in the drawing or colouring of human figures, or is the grouping of large compositions; and though in flowers and birds their performances are much more admired, yet even in these some part of the merit is rather to be imputed to the native brightness and excellency of the colours than to the skill of the painter, since it is very unusual to see the light and shade justly and naturally handled, or to find that ease and grace in the draw- ing which are to be met with in the works of European artists."
There is something very attractive in the naivete of this sum- mary exposure of the art of China. We must add that an excellent introduction to the volume is provided by Mr. John Masefield, who gives a businesslike description of a man of war in Anson's time and of the many dangers and discomforts of life at sea two hundred years ago. " Much in it was brutal, dirty, and debased ; but it had always behind it an order and a ceremony grand, impressive, and unfaltering."
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