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were, as every historical scholar is aware, entirely Italians; and the Spanish troops did not land from Sicily under Gonsalvo, (and then only in the Neapolitan provinces) until after Charles VIII. had quitted Naples with his main army. A little further on, in describing the league of Cambray, after stating that each of the combining powers obtained the Venetian cities and provinces, for which they had confederated; and that Venice was reduced to her insular city, her commerce, her colonies, and her navy;' he boldly asserts that the republic' acquiesced in the deprivation of her territorial power.' He has therefore never been informed, or has utterly forgotten, that Venice gradually recovered her Lombard possessions in arms; that the whole of her continental territory in northern Italy was restored to her by the pacification of Noyon in 1517, (Guicciardini, c. xii., p. 124); and that she preserved these dominions inviolate for above two centuries and a half, until the epoch of the French Revolution. We merely point to these, among many other inaccuracies, as singular proofs of negligence, or of superficial acquaintance with foreign history, in a writer who makes a vaunt of superior accuracy and research over all his predecessors.

Again, in the dimensions of the volume, it might be presumed that a sufficient security would be found against the omission of any material fact in the domestic history of the reign of Henry VIII. Yet it will scarcely be believed, that Mr. Turner has forgotten to notice the trial and execution of the duke of Buckingham, one of the most remarkable circumstances in Henry's early reign; that the whole story of the last twelve and most disgraceful, though not the least important, years of his life, is slurred over and compressed into a tenth part of the volume; and that the intimate connection of the English and Scotch affairs in that period is noticed and dismissed (p. 675), in a single paragraph. For this great chasm, and for other wide breaks in the completeness of his work, Mr. Turner has some pleas which are rather amusing: that his object has not been to relate what is already familar, and that he need not enter into details which have been ably narrated by others. We regret that the author has not carried this principle of exclusion much farther. If all that is familiar in the reign, or that has been elsewhere more ably narrated, had been expunged in the passage of the volume through the press, we opine that our labour on its perusal would have been marvellously diminished. In conclusion, we shall only observe, that Mr. Turner has been born about three hundred years too late. He ought to have lived at the court of the tyrant whose panegyrist he has become. He ought then, too, to have written his history, for such a work ought only to have appeared in such a reign.

15

ART. II.

Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean. 3 vols. 8vo. 28s. 6d. London. Colburn. 1826.

THE cheerless and chilling title of these volumes had nearly deterred us from cutting their leaves. We have no possible desire, on a December's day, to pore over the shivering sheets of an Arctic tale-teller, or to freeze our faculties by perusing narrations of "moving accidents by flood" and ice, and of "hair-breadth scapes" from "berghs" and bears. To say the truth, the ponderous tomes of Ross, Parry, Franklin, Lyon, Scoursby, and Co., have, already, somewhat satiated us with the subject. However, having applied ourselves resolutely to the task, we soon suspected, from the total absence of vraisemblance throughout the work; from the want of probability in the incidents at sea, and the obvious inconsistencies which appear in the delineation of the nautical character, that these said "Arctic Tales" were concocted in the latitude of London. The vernacular dialect of the forecastle is so totally different from the puling sentimentality of our author's seamen, that it is hardly possible to believe he ever heard a sailor utter a syllable in his life Jack' is peculiarly figurative in his phraseology, his similes are apt and quaint, and his metaphors are broken as seldom as his wit is perceived by himself. In short, if the tar of our Arctic voyager be a true picture, the Tom Pipes of Smollett, the Tom Coffin of Cooper, and the Yarn-spinners of the "Naval Sketch Book," are nothing but caricatures.

Our scepticism was further increased by the extraordinary prescription of the author's physician; for it is hardly possible to suppose that any rational son of Esculapius would send a consumptive patient to the "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," in order that he might be cured of a pulmonary complaint. There is, besides, a very startling coincidence, in our voyager's happening to embark on board a "Greenlandman," freighted with Sçavans and sea-philosophers from the captain down to the cook.

The fact is, that this imaginary excursion is nothing more or less than a mere vehicle, such as Moore employed in his "Lalla Rookh," for the purpose of introducing, in a connected form, the series of tales which constitute the prominent portion of the work. There is this difference, however, between the two fictions, that the tales of Moore are all oriental, and in perfect keeping and harmony with the imaginary journey he describes; whilst the tales of this arctic voyager have as much connection with the arctic regions, as with the territories of the great Mogul. For instance, what have we in the Charioteer?-The disgusting details of a watch-house riot in Mary-le-bone. What in the Valetudinarian?' -The casual rencontres of two individuals, season after season, in Kensington Gardens! One of these persons, without any reason whatever, conceives the most extravagant curiosity to discover the

trade or occupation of the other; and after imagining the object of his anxiety to be, by turns-a miser-a quaker-a pick-pocketa painter or a poet, he at length discovers him to be the most harmless and uninteresting of all earthly beings-a deaf and dumb man! This amusing mystery, and its denouement, occupy only 45 pages of the third volume! In truth, our author appears to take up his pen without feeling the slightest impatience to get to the end of his task, or anticipating any possibility of such a sensation arising in the breast of his readers.

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The author tells us, (vol. i., p. 150), that the time between supper and "turning in," was usually occupied in "story-telling," and I never failed,' he adds, when any tale seemed interesting, to draw out my note-book, and follow the speaker with my pen. This practice, had now become almost requisite, as a kind of compliment to the narrator; for it was looked upon as a mark of the merit of a tale, when the first lieutenant, (as I was humourously called), thought it worthy of being taken down in "harpoons and ice_anchors," the name given to my short hand by the sailors; and I was not a little amused by the literary vanity of many of the men, who used to ply me with relations of all kinds, in hopes that I should inscribe them in these wonderful characters.' Who but a mere landsman could ever have imagined, that in an icy sea, sailors have nothing else to do between "supper and turning in," but to tell stories, for the purpose of seeing them afterwards recorded in print? The nautical reader will be amused with the following account of a hurricane, which the author tells us he took down from the mouth of a harpooner:

"We were going," says the harpooner, " at about eight knots before a good breeze from the southward, when slap it chopped round to the north-east, and before we were aware sent all our top-gallant-rigging clean overboard. I was not upon deck at the time, but it was not long before I got there, and says the mate to me," Cleeson, this ship will never make a voyage, I see-there's no luck in her name." (the Die-a-maid)— "No, sir, said I, her hour is come, I believe; but we had as well undress her before she takes to her bed, ha-ha!"-So up aloft I sprang to lend a hand in reefing the sails-but would you believe it, though we carried twenty-five hands, not more than eight of them would work.'"-Vol. i.

p. 65.

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Passing over the impossibility of the top-gallant-rigging' going 'clean overboard' unaccompanied by the masts, and the folly of first reefing the sails,' in so critical a situation, we shall merely observe, that no seaman could possibly substitute so lubberly a phrase as undressing a ship,' for shortening sail,' or 'taking-off her canvass; and, that when a ship is taken aback,' it is no time for Jack' to be cracking bad jokes, or to be ha-ha-ing,' when he should be "hauling-in his braces," and "boxing-off" his craft.-Again says the narrator, "May I never strike another fish, if seventeen of our rascally lubbers' (the harpooner himself, made

the eighteenth) did not refuse to come above board, after they had looked out and seen the waves running in shore like heaps of clouds, and the ship reeling on her beam ends, from the quantity of canvass she carried.'

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Now as the ship was going before the wind when taken aback,' we should like to know, how with her yards square,' she could be sent reeling on her beam ends? The dangerous consequence, generally resulting from a ship being taken aback' is, going down stern foremast. But what can we possibly expect from a blubbering harpooner, who calls" coming on deck," coming above-board ;' and talks of sailors looking out' and seeing the waves running in shore?'

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The following puling nonsense is part of a dialogue, which takes place between the crew of the Whaler, during the celebration of Neptune's visit, upon the occasion of the Leviathan crossing the Arctic circle. Jack was certainly "in the wind," but drunk or sober he will always speak like Jack.'

'My friends,' says one of this jovial crew, 'We are many valuable lives exposed in the Greenland seas to great dangers. You all know we sailed out of the port of London, and touched at Lerwick, in the Islands of Shetland, in our way-but of that I say nothing: what I say is, did you ever in all your lives-I speak you know to men-I mean experienced men-did you ever in your lives, in the East Indies or in the West Indies, or may be up the Straits,-did you ever, I say, ever in all your born days, know a black jack taken for a square topsail vessel ?—vol. ii., p. 85.

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No, nor, did we ever, in all our days, here of a square topsail vessel' before. To mend the matter, he afterwards calls it 'a square rigged ship,-another absurdity. Though a sailor may say, a square-rigged vessel," in contradistinction to a "fore-and-aft-rigged vessel," yet there is no such phrase in the nautical vocabulary, as a'square-rigged-ship.'

Again, in vol. ii., p. 146, we find the captain of a Greenlandman, in relating his narrow escape, (when in command of a collier), from a French lugger Privateer, thus blundering away in a lubberly strain- Be her intention,' says he (the lugger's), 'what it might, she did not pursue it, for by the time I had got to the rough trees, to look out at her, she threw her yards aback, and stopped her way.'-Now as a lugger happens to be a "fore-and-aftrigged vessel," and not a " square-rigged ship," we may safely assert, that no seaman would throw her yards aback to bring her to.

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The following specimen of Greenland news,' which our author gives as a communication that passed through speaking-trumpets," from the crows nest' of one ship to that of the other, upon the occasion of two whalers meeting on their cruize, is of itself a sufficient proof of the spurious pretensions of this work as a nautical production.

VOL. IV.

C

'A.

B.

"Yo hoy! how do you get on ?"

"Oh, d-d bad-lost a fish yesterday with two lines, after giving her play for six hours."

A.

"What was she, a razorback? (A finner)?"

B. "No, but a very wicked fish. She got among a loose pack,' and I thought we should have lost a boat as well. We have three size, however, under the decks."

A. "Oh, that's very well-heard of Short of the Unity ?"

B.

A.

B.

A.

"Yes, he has got six fish-one he found dead."

"A lucky little dog that!"

"The Dee of Aberdeen caught a unicorn t'other day."
"Nothing else?"

B. "I hav'nt heard. Duncan of the Dundee has fish-so has the Exmouth, so has the John of Greenock, and the Neptune of Hull; but many have none-the Hercules of Aberdeen, for instance, and the Trafalgar."

A. "Fairburn is captain of the Hercules, this year, his first command-I hope he may be lucky."

B.

A.

"I hear we have gone to war with the Russians."

"How the devil could you hear that?-have you been back to Shetland ?"

B. "No, but during the late gales, one of the fleet got into the sea." (clear water he means)," and was chased back among the ice by a Russian brig, who was afraid to follow her."

A.

"What ship was it?"

B. "Don't know."

A. "We must go home in company, and fight our way with harpoons, and whale-lancers," (very like a whale).

B. "Wait for me, when you're going, for I have no knack at fighting."

A.

"Well, I will, if you'll come aboard, and take a pipe.”—vol. ii., pp. 331-332.

Without offering a remark on the dulness of this dialogue, or the fact of the author's omitting, with all his minute detail, to mention a syllable respecting the distance of the vessels apart, or the relative position of each; we shall only observe, that it is very improbable, in a Polar temperature, that two Greenland captains should be so green as to perch themselves up in the crow's nest' of their respective mast-heads, with long trumpets at their mouths, and longer icicles at their noses, when the whole colloquy could have been so much more comfortably, and effectually, kept up, by hailing from the deck.

We might enumerate many instances of the inconsistencies and absurdities with which the work abounds: but having dwelt long enough upon these points, we are now to exchange a word or two with our author of a more serious nature.

It has been long the pride and boast of England, that the British tar is the epitome of all that is brave, noble, and disinterested in human nature.-Poets, painters, dramatists, historians -all have made them the theme of perpetual panegyric: even

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