His departure for America is a convenient date at which to stop and survey Marryat’s literary work. After 1837, he did some things as good as anything he had done before, and some at once unlike what he had already written, and yet excellent of their kind. “Poor Jack” and “Percival Keene” have touches of the old sea life, and flashes of fun, not inferior to his earlier writing. The “Phantom Ship” has a character of its own; the children’s stories of his last years are excellent. All these are later than 1837. Still, if he had ceased to write entirely in that year, his place in literature would be as high as it is. We should have “The King’s Own,” “Peter Simple,” “Mr. Midshipman Easy,” “Japhet,” “Jacob Faithful,” and “Snarley Yow,” and with these we should possess the best of him. In those eight busy years Marryat had poured out the harvest of his experience profusely. His beginning in literature had been singularly fortunate. The time was favourable to writers of any originality certainly. A brilliant magazine article made a reputation. There was a marked readiness to recognize ability and reward it. What amount of praise and pudding would be given in these days for another essay on Milton it would be useless to guess, but undoubtedly it could hardly be greater than the share which fell to Macaulay for his early effort. Carlyle made a place for himself by a few articles. The wind which blew for them blew for others also. As has almost always been the case in great literary periods, the readiness of the reader to recognize and admire was as strong as the productive power of the writer. The audience met the playwright half way. Sir Walter Scott had prepared the market for the novelist. He had enormously increased the taste for novels, and whoever could write at all was the surer of a hearing, because “Waverley” had made stories a necessity to readers. There is among the more atrabilious kind of men of letters a secret belief that the sum of popularity is a fixed quantity, of which whatever is earned by one man is necessarily lost by another. That one nation’s gain is another’s loss in commerce, was an accepted axiom with economists of the days of darkness before Adam Smith. It has been given up on maturer consideration, and is assuredly no more true in literature than international trade. A great writer who gains a great popularity increases the chance of the smaller men. Sir Walter and Jane Austen helped the Mrs. Meeke in whom Macaulay delighted.

Marryat had profited amply by the opening. With great adaptability he had thrown himself into the literary fight of his time. As has been already said, he soon showed himself at home in the regular business of literature—in writing for the press and in editing. To take the satisfactory though vulgar test of money, he was able to make his market, and put his price up. Nor was he at all reluctant to insist on the value of his goods. “I do not,” he said in 1837, “write for sixteen guineas a sheet now. I let them off for twenty guineas, as I do not wish to run them hard; and I now have commenced with the New Monthly at that rate for one year certain, and the copyright secured to me. Times are hard, and I do not wish to break the backs of the publishers, although I ride over them roughshod. I have also made very much better terms for my books. ‘Snarley Yow,’ comes out on the 1st of June. I have parted very amicably with Saunders and Otley, who would not stand an advance. I will make hay when the sun shines; for every dog has his day, and I presume my time will come as that of others.” Twenty guineas a sheet was the exceptional price which Fraser was paying Carlyle in those very years, and was five guineas above the usual rate. Obviously here was a gentleman who knew that business was business. With this determination to make the last penny there was to make, he naturally contributed his chapter to the history of the quarrels of authors with their publishers.

“Although Captain Marryat,” says his daughter, “and his publishers mutually benefited by their transactions with each other, one would have imagined from the letters exchanged between them that they had been natural enemies.” It is a mistake which is not uncommon in these transactions, and particularly likely to arise when, as in this case, a publisher frankly tells the author that he thinks him “eccentric,” and an “odd creature,” and adds that he is himself “somewhat warm-tempered.” Who the particular publisher was who sent these pieces of criticism and self-criticism to Marryat we are not told. The answer he received might supply a clue to the Marryatist who was prepared to follow it up with the proper devotion.

Author and publisher told one another “their fact” plainly enough in this case, and one rather wonders what lies hid under the asterisks. In the absence of information as to the proportion in which they respectively shared the profits of the stories written before 1837, one cannot undertake to say whether the unnamed publisher of fiery temper, advanced age, and small stature, received a lion’s share or not. If so, it must have represented a handsome sum, for Marryat was by no means one of the worst treated of authors. Colburn gave him £400 for “Frank Mildmay.” For “Mr. Midshipman Easy” he received £1,400, apparently in a lump sum. “The Pirate” and “The Three Cutters,” published together, brought him in £750. His other books were paid on the same scale, and he certainly did not edit the Metropolitan for nothing. His code of signals, which was not literature (and perhaps on that account only the more lucrative), was an appreciable income to him throughout his life. On the whole, Marryat seems to have found the profession of author sufficiently remunerative. His indignation with his publishers may be safely taken to be mainly a proof that, in common with most writing-men of his generation, he was a firm believer in the creed that authors are an ill-used body. This is no longer quite so orthodox as it was. The wind is rather blowing the other way, and it is becoming the right thing to say that authors have themselves to thank for their ill-luck if they do not earn as much as they ought, and must bear the burden like their fellow-men if they spend more than they earn. This good sense may corrupt into a cant as others have done, but it is good sense. Marryat—who would appear to have made three thousand pounds or so in 1835, for taking “Mr. Midshipman Easy” and the other two stories, with his copyrights and editorship, he can hardly have made less—was in any case not an example of an ill-paid author. If he had to complain of want of money it must have been because he was a gentleman of extravagant habits, with a fatal weakness for bad investments. To be sure, if an author were to be paid according to the pleasure he has given others, and if “the shop” which makes a profit on selling his work had to render some royalty on it for ever and ever, then indeed was Marryat, together with all those whose work is of the widely-read and lasting order, ill rewarded. But insuperable difficulties bar the road to that ideal. Since paper, printing, and advertisements must be provided, the provider of these necessary things must share; since the novelist cannot hawk his own goods in a barrow, he must pay somebody to do it for him; since the world’s copyright laws put a limit on the duration of proprietary right in books, there must come a time when they are at any man’s disposal to reprint. In the long run the balance of profit must needs be in favour of the shop. To be sure, the nation of authors may console itself by reflecting that it has its revenge. There is much on which the shop makes no gain, first or last.

The first of Marryat’s books is one which, for reasons very neatly stated by himself, may stand apart from the others. When he had given it three successors, he thought fit to publish a proclamation on the subject of his work in the Metropolitan, and in that document he described “Frank Mildmay” as fairly as any honest critic could do for him.

From which, even if internal evidence were not enough to prove it, we learn that, between the paying off of the Tees and the commissioning of the Ariadne, Marryat decided to have a general jail delivery of his old naval enemies, and that the result was “Frank Mildmay; or, The Naval Officer.” It cannot be said that the book is better than its origin. If Marryat had kept the promise he made in this proclamation of his to the readers of the Metropolitan—if he had re-written this so-called novel, he might, had he taken the right course, have made it one of the best of his works. He had only to make it an autobiography without disguise, to put in the good as well as the evil of his experience, to take care to explain everything to his readers, as he could well have done, and he would have given English literature a thing altogether unique—a naval memoir. We are not rich in memoirs, at least, not in good ones. The English hand is unhappy at that work. A man has only to turn to Ludlow, or Sir Philip Warwick, to see how lamentably little Englishmen of parts who lived through the most wonderful things could contrive to bring away with them—how little at least of the life, the colour, the dramatic swing of it all. Of the few we can show, which are not unfit to stand with the Frenchmen, Clarendon, Pepys, Colley Cibber, Evelyn (and four or five others), none were of the sea. “Cochrane’s Autobiography” maybe quoted against me, but even this, good as it is in places, is drowned in angry denunciations of human wickedness, and demonstrations that this or the other thing ought to have been done by official backsliders, so that what Cochrane did himself is almost crowded out. Besides, it is only a fragment, and then reste À savoir s’il n’est pas mort. It has not lived. One may, and must, use it for the history of the man and the time, but who reads it for its intrinsic literary merit? The French seamen have the better of us there. The memoirs of Forbin, of Duguay-Trouin, and even the recently published journal of a much less famous man, Jean Doublet, are capital reading. Marryat might, if he had so pleased, have done a book which would have been to the memoirs of Forbin what the memoirs of Clarendon are to the memoirs of Sully, to adopt the formula dear to Lord Macaulay. He might have done what Sir Walter Scott praised Basil Hall for attempting—have given in autobiographical form a picture of sea life, which would have been interesting, not only to those who already love the subject, but to all who love good reading. He did not so choose. He carried out his mission in another form, and “Frank Mildmay” remained as it first appeared.

That the book was so much of an autobiography was a misfortune for Marryat. He might protest as much as he pleased that he was not Frank Mildmay, and had not run a career of vice, but the impression left by the book was and is disagreeable. Why should a man attribute his own adventures to a tiger? Now, Frank Mildmay is a tiger—a very insolent, callous, young cub. It shows Marryat to have been very inexperienced indeed that he should have made such a mistake. He must have known that the adventures would be recognized. The naval world is a small one, and an exclusive. Naval officers live together by choice on shore as they do by necessity at sea. Everything written about the profession is talked over, and interpreted, when interpretation is needed. Every incident in “Frank Mildmay” was no doubt recognized at once; and when it was found that the things that had happened to the hero of the story were the adventures of the author, it is not to be wondered at that the two were thought to be also identical in character. Marryat, in fact, committed with himself the very error of judgment into which Dickens was led with Leigh Hunt, when he made Harold Skimpole a rascal, in order to prove that he was not a caricature of his friend. But there is something more than inexperience and error of judgment about “The Naval Officer.” Marryat can hardly have seen what a bad fellow he had drawn. Frank Mildmay has not only those “sins of the devil,” which may be worse, but are more dignified, than the sins of men—he errs not only by “pride and rebellion,” but he is a mean scamp; and I am afraid that Marryat did not see it. He was as blind to the faults of his bantling as Smollett was to the ruffianism of Roderick Random, or Fielding to the very vulgar inferiority of Tom Jones. Criticism seems to have opened his eyes, and little as he liked the lesson, he took the warning; but it was only for a time. Unfortunately he fell back on it. Percival Keene is just such another—a very low fellow, with a kind of wild boar courage. It would appear that Marryat did not see some things as plainly as one could wish he had done. It is unnecessary to insist on the faults of construction in a book which belonged to an altogether bastard genre. What merits it had—and they were sufficient to give promise of a brilliant novelist—were to be repeated in other books much more pleasant, and much more capable of repaying examination.

The other nine books which Marryat published in these seven years were “wholly fictitious in characters, in plot, and in events,” to quote his own words. In fact, they were stories, and what truth there is in them was not crudely taken from memory, but adapted and fitted into its place. The essential accuracy of the picture they give of sea life has never been questioned, at least it has never been challenged on serious grounds. It is undoubtedly the case that critics of a certain well-known stamp have been known to complain that no such series of adventures as these stories contain were ever known to occur, and that the daily life of a midshipman is not so amusing as Mr. Easy’s, nor so varied as Peter Simple’s. A criticism which only amounts to this—that the stories are stories, and not log-books, need hardly be seriously answered. Sailors read them, and always have read them. They are as popular in the American Naval School as they have been among English boys. To the skill with which the stories were built, less justice has been done. It has always, as it were, been taken for granted that Marryat owed everything to his experience as a seaman, and that, except in so far as he had seen things which other men had not seen, he was not of the race of novelists whose work lives. Now this is heresy. In truth, the sea life owes more to Marryat than he to the sea. No one meets Mr. Easy, or Terence O’Brien, or Mr. Chucks, or Mr. Vanslyperken in this commonplace world. He meets something out of which they may be made. Unquestionably his experience was of inestimable value to Marryat—as all exceptional experience is to all novelists. At the very beginning of his career he was complimented by Washington Irving on his good luck. “You have a glorious field before you, and one in which you cannot have many competitors, as so very few unite the author to the sailor.” No doubt it was Marryat’s happiness that he had so good a Sparta to cultivate—but, after all, the result was primarily due to the skill of the cultivator. Speaking as one who has a full share of the good English taste for reading about the things of the sea, I am inclined to maintain that few kinds of books are more tedious than sea stories which ask to be read and enjoyed simply because they are sea stories. Battle, and storm, and shipwreck may be poured out on you, and yet leave you cold. These things by themselves in fiction are capable of being as tiresome as the once prevalent detective, or now popular religious disputations. To compare the stock sea story with the great books of travel—with Dampier, or with Anson’s Voyage, or with Basil Ringrose—would be unfair. We do not need to compare the best of one kind with the worst of another. But they will not stand reading even with Captain Hacke’s dingy little compilation, or with the long winded journal of Woodes Rogers. The reality of the latter is some compensation for their undoubted dulness. At least in reading them one knows that one is looking at a strange old life told by the men who lived it. When taken by a workman and badly used, the adventures these actual adventurers passed through and recorded become merely badly used material. A painter was once shown the scrawlings of a youthful prodigy who had been covering paper with pictures of ships and sailors. He was asked whether these works did not show a genius for art. “No,” said the judicious artist, “the boy has been reading sea stories, and his head is full of them. He draws because he likes the things, not because he loves drawing.” The verdict stated a great critical truth—and, however unpleasant it may be to prodigies to learn that taste and faculty are not identical, and that they must rely on their power of interpreting their subject, and not on the subject itself, it is the case, nevertheless.

Now with Marryat the faculty was always equal to the fusing and managing of the materials. In “Japhet,” where he does not touch the sea at all, he has yet contrived to impart life and interest to his puppets and their doings. It may stand by “Con Cregan” in the long list of stories which began with “Guzman de Alfarache,” and includes “Moll Flanders” and “Peregrine Pickle.” In this case Marryat’s best knowledge was not available and he had to rely on his power of re-using well-worn materials. Where his experience and his ability combined, he attained to a very considerable degree of narrative skill. Whether he had trained himself by early reading or not (and indeed there is nothing to show that he was a reader), he had early command of a very admirable narrative style. It might be plausibly maintained that this was a heritage among seamen. There is nothing in English literature at once more simple, more manly, more perfectly adequate to its purpose than the language of Dampier. In Marryat’s own time this power had not been lost by English seamen. The navy may have been a rough school, but there was nothing in its training which made men unable to use the pen, and use it well. As an example of flowing, and also perfectly unaffected, description, the account of the battle of the Nile, given by Captain Miller, of the Theseus, is without fault. It deserves a place of honour in every collection of English letters. The beauty of Collingwood’s letters is acknowledged even by those who have thought fit to carp at his character. Marryat brought this style to his literary work, and kept it unchanged to the end. It is a style in which there is no straining. Marryat never had recourse, as his contemporary, Michael Scott, was wont, to capital letters, italics, and broken lines when he wished to impress his readers. He never appears even to have been particularly anxious to impress. When a wreck or a battle comes in his way, it is told as Captain Miller might have told it. Therefore it has its effect, and convinces you, as the narrative of the battle of the Nile does, that the thing described had been seen, had been lived through. The most famous of his passages—the club-hauling of the Diomede, the fight with the Russian frigate in “Mr. Midshipman Easy”—the destruction of the French liner at the end of “The King’s Own”—are too long for quotation; but in “Peter Simple” there is one which is of not unmanageable length, and which shows the qualities of his writing at their best. It is the account of the hurricane which threw Peter on the coast of St. Pierre:—

“In half an hour I shoved off with the boats. It was now quite dark, and I pulled towards the harbour of St. Pierre. The heat was excessive and unaccountable; not the slightest breath of wind moved in the heavens, or below; no clouds to be seen, and the stars were obscured by a sort of mist: there appeared a total stagnation in the elements. The men in the boats pulled off their jackets, for after a few moments’ pulling, they could bear them no longer. As we pulled in, the atmosphere became more opaque, and the darkness more intense. We supposed ourselves to be at the mouth of the harbour, but could see nothing, not three yards ahead of the boat. Swinburne, who always went with me, was steering the boat, and I observed to him the unusual appearance of the night.

“‘I’ve been watching it, sir,’ replied Swinburne, ‘and I tell you, Mr. Simple, that if we only knew how to find the brig, I would advise you to get on board of her immediately. She’ll want all her hands this night, or I’m much mistaken.’

“‘Why do you say so?’ replied I.

“‘Because I think, nay, I may say that I’m sartain, we’ll have a hurricane afore morning. It’s not the first time I’ve cruised in these latitudes. I recollect in ’94——’

“But I interrupted him. ‘Swinburne, I believe that you are right. At all events I’ll turn back; perhaps we may reach the brig before it comes on. She carries a light, and we can find her out.’ I then turned the boat round, and steered, as near as I could guess, for where the brig was lying. But we had not pulled out more than two minutes, before a low moaning was heard in the atmosphere—now here, now there—and we appeared to be pulling through solid darkness, if I may use the expression. Swinburne looked around him, and pointed out on the starboard bow.

“‘It’s a coming, Mr. Simple, sure enough; many’s the living being that will not rise on its legs to-morrow. See, sir.’

“I looked, and dark as it was, it appeared as if a sort of black wall was sweeping along the water right towards us. The moaning gradually increased to a stunning roar, and then at once it broke upon us with a noise to which no thunder can bear a comparison. The sea was perfectly level, but boiling, and covered with a white foam, so that we appeared in the night to be floating on milk. The oars were caught by the wind with such force, that the men were dashed forward under the thwarts, many of them severely hurt. Fortunately, we pulled with tholes and pins; or the gunwales and planks of the boat would have been wrenched off, and we should have foundered. The wind soon caught the boat on her broadside, and, had there been the least sea, would have inevitably thrown her over; but Swinburne put the helm down, and she fell off before the hurricane, darting through the boiling water at the rate of ten miles an hour. All hands were aghast; they had recovered their seats, but were obliged to relinquish them, and sit down at the bottom, holding on by the thwarts. The terrific roaring of the hurricane prevented any communication except by gesture. The other boats had disappeared; lighter than ours, they had flown away faster before the sweeping element; but we had not been a minute before the wind, before the sea rose in a most unaccountable manner—it appeared to be by magic.

“Of all the horrors that ever I witnessed, nothing could be compared to the scene of this night. We could see nothing, and heard only the wind, before which we were darting like an arrow, to where we knew not, unless it were to certain death. Swinburne steered the boat, every now and then looking back as the waves increased. In a few minutes we were in a heavy swell, that at one minute bore us all aloft, and at the next almost sheltered us from the hurricane; and now the atmosphere was charged with showers of spray, the wind cutting off the summits of the waves, as if with a knife, and carrying it along with it, as it were, in its arms.

“The boat was filling with water, and appeared to settle down fast. The men baled with their hats in silence, when a large wave culminated over the stern, filling us up to our thwarts. The next moment we all received a shock so violent, that we were jerked from our seats. Swinburne was thrown over my head. Every timber of the boat separated at once, and she appeared to crumble from under us, leaving us floating on the raging waters. We all struck out for our lives, but with little hope of preserving them; but the next wave washed us on the rocks, against which the boat had already been hurled. That wave gave life to some, and death to others. Me, in Heaven’s mercy, it preserved: I was thrown so high up, that I merely scraped against the top of the rock, breaking two of my ribs. Swinburne, and eight more, escaped with me, but not unhurt; two had their legs broken, three had broken arms, and the others were more or less contused. Swinburne miraculously received no injury. We had been eighteen in the boat, of which ten escaped: the others were hurled up at our feet; and the next morning we found them dreadfully mangled. One or two had their heads literally shattered to pieces against the rocks. I felt that I was saved, and was grateful; but still the hurricane howled—still the waves were washing over us. I crawled further up upon the beach, and found Swinburne sitting down with his eyes directed seaward. He knew me, took my hand, squeezed it, and then held it in his. For some moments we remained in this position, when the waves, which every moment increased in volume, washed up to us, and obliged us to crawl further up. I then looked around me: the hurricane continued in its fury, but the atmosphere was not so dark. I could trace for some distance the line of the harbour, from the ridge of foam upon the shore: and for the first time I thought of O’Brien and the brig. I put my mouth close to Swinburne’s ear, and cried out, ‘O’Brien!’ Swinburne shook his head, and looked up again at the offing. I thought whether there was any chance of the brig’s escape. She was certainly six, if not seven miles off, and the hurricane was not direct on the shore. She might have a drift of ten miles, perhaps; but what was that against such tremendous power?”