" SEADRIFT."
[TO ME EDITOR OF me "SPECTATOR.") am not insensible of the incredulous air of the concluding sentence in the review you have done me the honour to write on "Seadrift." You are not so old as the writer of that novel, and could not have been impressed as she was with the horror and pathos of the incident which she has tried to reproduce. At the time when it occurred, many years since, the crew of the William Brown gave themselves up to be tried on the charge of murder. The victims were, amongst others, a youth of sixteen and a girl of eighteen. The boy was lying nearly insensible in the bottom of the boat, and his sister clung to him in the hope of saving him so closely that both were flung overboard. The men gave evidence of these facts in a manner which was more pathetic from its sim- plicity. They were acquitted, from the necessity of self -preserve- tion.--I am, Sir, &c., THE AUTHOR or 46 SEADRIFT."
[It must have been either an exceptional jury that would acquit wretches so selfish and cowardly as those described in the novel, or the circumstances must have been different. It would have been better to reproduce the incident and omit the casual mention of the trial and verdict.—ED. Spectator.]
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