As usual the interest of the novel depends almost entirely upon men, but on the character of Mrs Corbett, _née_ Nancy Dawson, Marryat has expended considerable care with satisfactory results. Barring the indecorous habit of regretting her past in public, which is not perhaps untrue to nature, she is made attractive by her wit and sincere repentance, without becoming unnaturally refined. The song in her honour referred to on p. 107 is not suitable for reproduction in this place. She was an historic character in the reign of William III., but must not be confounded with her more celebrated namesake (1730-1767) of Sadler's Wells, Covent Garden, and Drury Lane, who danced a horn-pipe in _The Beggar's Opera_ to the air of "Nancy Dawson," which is mentioned in the epilogue of _She Stoops to Conquer_, and survives in our nurseries as "Here we go round the Mulberry Bush."
The greater part of _Snarleyyow_ was first printed in _The Metropolitan Magazine_, 1836 and 1837; but on reaching Chapter xl., just as the novel had appeared in book form, the editor--not then Marryat himself--told his readers that it was not his intention to give an extended review of this work, as they had already "ample means of forming their own opinion of its varied merits:"--"We shall therefore content ourselves with a few remarks, in announcing its publication and giving a brief outline of the termination of the story from our last number." At the close of the said extracts he writes:--
"And so ends Snarleyyow, with as much quaintness, spirit, and character as it commenced."
The book was evidently written in haste, and few of the minor characters retained one Christian name throughout its pages. It is here reprinted, with the corrections of such slips as those just mentioned, from the first edition in three volumes. Henry Colburn, 1837.
Introduction of divers parties and a red-herring.
It was in the month of January, 1699, that a one-masted vessel, with black sides, was running along the coast near Beachy Head, at the rate of about five miles per hour. The wind was from the northward and blew keenly, the vessel was under easy sail, and the water was smooth. It was now broad daylight, and the sun rose clear of clouds and vapour; but he threw out light without heat. The upper parts of the spars, the hammock rails, and the small iron guns which were mounted on the vessel's decks, were covered with a white frost. The man at the helm stood muffled up in a thick pea-jacket and mittens, which made his hands appear as large as his feet. His nose was a pug of an intense bluish red, one tint arising from the present cold, and the other from the preventive checks which he had been so long accustomed to take to drive out such an unpleasant intruder. His grizzled hair waved its locks gently to the wind, and his face was distorted with an immoderate quid of tobacco which protruded his right cheek. This personage was second officer and steersman on board of the vessel, and his name was Obadiah Coble. He had been baptised Obadiah about sixty years before; that is to say if he had been baptised at all. He stood so motionless at the helm, that you might have imagined him to have been frozen there as he stood, were it not that his eyes occasionally wandered from the compass on the binnacle to the bows of the vessel, and that the breath from his mouth, when it was thrown out into the clear frosty air, formed a smoke like to that from the spout of a half-boiling tea-kettle.