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Bracciolini, accordingly, is found adhering in the Annals to this uniformity of manner: many passages more forcibly illustrative of this peculiarity might be quoted; but I select the sham sea-fight in the XIIth book, for two reasons, because it is pretty much of the same length as the burning of Jerome of Prague, and because it is of a similar nature, descriptive:
"Is there anyone here who can tell us what manner of men they be?" A dozen hands went up into the air; but the King turned to the Earl of Suffolk at his elbow. "You have fought them, Thomas?" said he. "Yes, sire, I was in the great sea-fight eight years ago at the Island of Guernsey, when Lord Lewis of Spain held the sea against the Earl of Pembroke." "How found you them, Thomas?"
Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman youth, the houses of pious families of Israel.
But if the mixture is through the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself give the Greeks room for the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and change; but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence into the Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic Sea, not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread quite through it in depth, breadth, and length.
His naval force, formed partly of his own ships, and partly from those of most of the maritime states, all of whom were jealous and afraid of the Romans, and regarded Mithridates as their protector and deliverer, insulted even the coasts of Italy. We have already noticed his unsuccessful sea-fight with the Rhodians, almost the only people who continued faithful to the Romans.
Dryden is describing the sea-fight with the Dutch "Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball; And now their odours armed against them fly. Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall, And some by aromatic splinters die." The poet should place his readers, as nearly as possible, in the situation of the sufferers or the spectators.
This was a mere manoeuvre, to throw the guilt of commencing hostilities on the Corinthians; and meanwhile the Corcyraeans manned their ships, to the number of eighty, and put out to meet the enemy's fleet. In the sea-fight which followed the Corcyraeans gained a complete victory, and on the same day Epidamnus was compelled to capitulate to the besieging force.
The battle, fought almost on the ancient battle-ground of Nelson and Collingwood, was incomparably the greatest sea-fight in the history of war.
We quote from it this clearsighted description of the preparation for a Graeco-Turkish sea-fight: "Soon the proud fleet of the Capitan Pashaw was seen coming down toward Samos, and the Greek vessels advanced to meet it. And here one cannot but pause a moment to compare the two parties, and wonder at the contrast between them.
For I, O Athenians! never bore any other magisterial office in the city, but have been a senator: and our Antiochean tribe happened to supply the Prytanes when you chose to condemn in a body the ten generals who had not taken off those that perished in the sea-fight, in violation of the law, as you afterward all thought.
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