CAPTAIN MA.R.RYAT.*
CAPTAIN MARRYAT'S powers as a novelist were a reflexion of the personal experience of the sailor and the man. In the short memoir prefixed to this edition of two of his stories we have as long an enumeration of stirring incidents as would furnish out the romance of much more than the four-and-twenty tales of different kinds of which he was the author. As a boy, he served under the personal command of Lord Cochrane for more than three years, and during that time took part in more than fifty naval engagements. He was often employed to cut out French ships under the protection of land batteries,—to cut out pirates and privateers under similar circum- stances,—to face all but certain death in saving his ship or his com- rades from the sea ; in short, there was no kind of naval terror with which lie was not perfectly familiar. The following is scarcely an
extraordinary specimen of the practical excitements which fed his mind in early life :
"One iof the fore-topmen, drawing water in.the chains, ;fell overboard; the alarm was instantly given, and the ship hove to. I ran upon the poop, and, seeing that the man could not swim, jumped overboard to save him. The height from which I descended made me go very deep in the water, and when I arose I could perceive one of the man's hands. I swam towards him: but, 0 God! what was my horror when I found myself in the midst of his blood. I compre- hended in a moment tbat a shark had taken him, and expected that every instant my own fate would be like his. I wonder I had not sunk with fear: I was nearly paralyzed. The ship, which had been going six or seven miles an hour, was at some distance, and I gave myself up for gone. I bad scarcely the power of re- flection, and was overwhelmed with the sudden, awful, and, as I thought, certain approach of death, in its most horrible shape. In a moment I recollected myself; and I believe the actions of five years crowded into my mind in as many minutes. I prayed most fervently, and vowed amendment, if it should please God to spare me. I was nearly a mile from the ship before I was picked up; and when the boat came alonpide with me, three large sharks were under the stern. These bad devoured the poor sailor, and, fortunately for me, had followed the ship for more prey, and thus left me to myself." On the other hand, it is clear that he combined with the English sailor's ardent courage and gallantry no small portion of the coarse tastes and broad humour of the same type of character. Melodrama and farce are the natural alternatives of such a life as the old English sailor led during the period of the French war ;—from great excite- ments he passed to coarse enjoyments, and these, again, were vividly enjoyed only in the prospect of the return to great excitement. Ac- cordingly, with a mind so acute and prompt, so keen to appreciate all the features of the life he led, Captain Marryat early graduated in the art of describing great perils and great absurdities with vigour and point. There is an overflow of coarse but observant humour in his caricature which, though much less perfect, cannot but remind us of the genius exhibited in "Pickwick" and "Oliver Twist." In- deed, had Mr. Dickens lived a generation earlier, and been, like Captain Marryat, engaged in the naval service during the first ad- venturous fifteen years of this century, the product of his literary * The Pirate and The Three Cutters. By Captain Marryat, MX. Illustrated by Stanfield. New edition, with a Memoir of the Author. Bolus. genius would probably have been of a very similar order. In the accumulation of minute observations, indeed, and in the subtler humour of caricature, Captain Marryat cannot for a moment approach Mr. Dickens. The one sketches where the other minutely and accu- rately paints ; the one exaggerates obvious contrasts, where the other discovers and brings out into ludicrous prominence the most subtle contrasts. Still, take Dickens, not at his best but in his hastier efforts at fun, not sketching Sam Weller or his father, but Mr. Jingle or Mr. Tupman—and Captain Marryat, also not at his best, not sketching Midshipman Easy or Jacob Faithful, but a prudish spinster or a retired undertaker, such as we have in the tales before us, and there is a very close analogy between them—the same tendency in both to fix upon single peculiarities (often invention as the catch- word of a character, and to exert their nvention to multiply the number of aspects in which they can present it to the reader.
Besides this common aptitude for farce, there is in both Dickens and Marryat the same inherent love of melodrama. Almost all Dickens's more striking plots have been conceived as stage-situations, and have furnished out excellent melodramatic pieces when completed. Captain Marryat's have just the same adaptation. The two pieces here reprinted would make respectively an excellent melodrama, and an excellent farce; The Pirate, containing all the perils and passions of stirring naval warfare, and The Three Cutters embodying one of the most absurd situations which Captain Marryat's experience in the Preventive Service had suggested.
It is worth notice, that this aptitude and love for caricature is seldom found except in combination with an equal love for the ima- gination of stimulating. and exciting scenes. One might suppose that it would be otherwise, that the genius for laughing at and exag- gerating human foibles would scarcely be consistent with the faculty for appreciating the high stimulus of human adventure and passion. As a matter of fact, however, though many have a taste for melo- drama who have no appreciation of fun, there are few who have a strong pleasure in caricature without a large appetite for excitement of the melodramatic kind. You can see in Mr. Dickens's tales with what morbid eagerness lie dwells on the exciting elements of crime and passion which he introduces ; the same may be noticed in Mr. Lever's and Mr. Smedley's novels, and all the school of novels which seem to take their origin in a love of caricature or farce. Probably, the explanation is that a very strong and keen sense of the ludicrous is usually impossible without considerable sympathy with the stronger passions and sentiments of man, and a deep secret delight in finding them an undisturbed theatre of their own. The absurdities, vul- garities, and follies which this comic school loves to caricature, are thus highly absurd and vulgar only if you grant the strong senti- mental and romantic impulses which make them absurd and vulgar. Caricature is usually a safety-valve for very highly-coloured senti- ment, which laughs at other people's manques romances only the more pleasantly if it has a secret world of romance of its own. Those who have not this store of romance in reserve, can neither see ner enjoy this kind of broad caricature. They can see nothing but extravagance ; because, without the alkali in their own temperament, the acid of the satire produces no pleasant effervescence : and they cannot enjoy it ; for people who do not understand satire always have an impression that it might be levelled at them in their turn. The consequence is, that a tinge of romance—often of a very vulgar kind, but still ro- mance—seems essential to any great capacity for humour ; and both elements—neither of them of a very refined order—were present in large mass in Captain Marryat. The Pirate and The Three Cutters present, therefore, an excellent type, though by no means the highes4 achievements, of his talent, and will be read with interest, thoug rather belonging to a bygone age of literature. This edition is illus- trated with very good engravings by Stanfield.
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