The influence which Cochrane had upon Marryat might indeed be demonstrated from his works. The captain of the _Impérieuse_ remained his type of what a British officer ought to be. All his frigates’ captains who are mentioned for honour have something--and several of them have much--of his first commander in them. That this should be the case in “Frank Mildmay,” the first of his books, and to some extent an autobiography, was almost a matter of course. In this book the cruise of the frigate on the coast of Spain is the very service of the _Impérieuse_. But it is equally true of Captain Savage of the _Diomede_ in “Peter Simple,” and of Captain M---- of the “King’s Own.” Both are Scotchmen, penniless gentlemen of good descent, officers of boundless skill, daring, and withal judgment. It is on this last quality that Marryat dwells by preference, and it is this which he picks out for special praise in Cochrane. “I must here remark,” he says in the private log quoted in Mrs. Ross Church’s life, “that I never knew any one so careful of the lives of his ship’s company as Lord Cochrane, or any one who calculated so closely the risks attending any expedition. Many of the (_sic_) most brilliant achievements were performed without loss of a single life, so well did he calculate the chances; and one half the merit which he deserves for what he did accomplish has never been awarded him, merely because in the official despatches there has not been a long list of killed and wounded to please the appetite of the English public.” This fondness of the public for a long list of killed and wounded was a favourite subject of half-serious jest with Marryat, and he learnt from others, if not from Cochrane, how a despatch ought to be written in a “concatenation accordingly.” It would seem that Marryat had little admiration for the brainless, headlong courage which rushes madly at whatever happens to be in front of its weapon. He would have condemned even with contempt (and Hawke, Nelson, Cochrane, would have condemned with him) such a piece of frantic swash-bucklery as the last fight of the _Revenge_. The men who were daring with judgment, who risked for a reason, who took care to cover themselves as they lunged, and who then went all together, sword, hand, and foot, with the speed of lightning, and with unerring accuracy of the eye which has brains behind it, were his heroes. In any case Marryat would have arrived at these conclusions, but he assuredly did so the sooner, and the more heartily, because for three years he fought under a fighter of this stamp.