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.