Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
"I am a Portuguese." "Born in India?" "Born at Goa." The coroner paused. He had never heard of Goa. Neither had I. Neither, I judged, had any one else present. In this, however, I was wrong. Godfrey had heard of it, and afterwards referred me to Marryat's "Phantom Ship" as his source of information.
Much of the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer's then published, Cooper's, Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others that I do not now remember. Mathematics was very easy to me, so that when January came, I passed the examination, taking a good standing in that branch.
One of Marryat's most characteristic acts of self-devotion was his springing overboard into the waters of Malta Harbour in order to save the life of a middy messmate, Cobbett by name, who had accidentally fallen overboard.
An almost Defoe-like exactness of detail is one of Marryat's methods and merits: while it is very remarkable that he rarely attempts to produce the fun, in which Defoe is lacking and he himself so fertile, by mere exaggeration or caricature of detail. There are exceptions the Dominie business in Jacob Faithful is one but they are exceptions.
The poet's notes and letters are full of passages showing how closely he followed public affairs. "If I were not sick, and to-morrow were not election day," he says, "I should go to Boston. I hope to be there in a few days, at any rate. You must 'vote early and often, and elect Hooper. Here we are having Marryat's triangular duel acted over by our three candidates.
"I like that kind of a winding up of a story, and I don't like the other kind," added the magnate of the Fifth Avenue. "We read novels, if we read them at all, for the fun of it, with some incidental information in the right direction. When I was a young man I had a taste for the sea, as most boys have, and I read Marryat's novels with immense pleasure.
And if Frank is something of a bravo, more of a blackguard, and nearly a complete ruffian, it is not merely because there was a good deal of brutality in the old navy; not merely because Marryat's own standard of chivalry was not quite that of Chaucer's Knight: but partly, also, because he was aiming blunderingly at what he supposed to be part of the novelist's business irregular as well as regular gallantry, and highly seasoned adventure.
In its jungles, through the magic of Marryat's breathless pages, I fought the head-hunter and pursued the boa-constrictor and the orang-utan. It was then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at daybreak on the bridge of the Negros and through my glasses watched the mysterious island, which I had so often pictured in my imagination, rise with tantalizing slowness from the sapphire sea.
That which was venial in a miserable starveling of Grub Street is perfectly disgusting in the extravagantly paid novelists of these days the caressed, of generous booksellers. Mr Ainsworth and Captain Marryat ought to disdain such pitiful peddling. Let them eschew it without delay." Marryat's reply was, spirited and manly.
Among the great number of odd and entertaining characters sketched by his hand, "Peter Simple" and "Midshipman Easy" are perhaps the most interesting. Marryat's narratives are not carefully constructed, but flow on gracefully and easily, enlivened by an inexhaustible fund of humor, and enriched by an endless succession of bright or exciting scenes.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking