board the Tottumfog, and he keeps her "large" before the gale of popular favour.

Smollett described sea-life gloriously, for Smollett was a seaman. He was up to the whole thing, and Bowling, Crawley, Pipes, and Trunnion, are tars from pig-tail to pumps. You forget when you go on board with the surgeon, that there is any land. You

feel as if you had been afloat all your days, and you have only to put out your tongue to catch the lingo. His very boxing bouts on board ship are entirely different from those on shore; as you will see, by comparing Random's set-to with Crawley (not young Rump-Steak of the London ring,) with Strap's turn-up in town. Smollett, no doubt, was up to the rigging in all its cordage; but it is with the crew rather than the vessel that he deals; and the delusion is complete. You forgive the press-gang that hauled you away from the hop, and swing yourself asleep in your hammock, forgetful of wife and children. But Smollett wrote in a bitter spirit, and even in the intense truth of his picture, you desiderate that simple heroism that you unwillingly believe can ever be absent from a British man-of-war. The whole is a satire yet even in a satire we cannot but love the sons of the ocean.

Cooper, the American novelist, a man of unquestionable genius, and himself a naval officer, (whether like our author an officer of rank, we know not,) has given us some spirited, even splendid, pictures of naval life. His individual characters are all somewhat exaggerated, which is a great pity, for they are well conceived and contrasted; but his descriptions of all sorts of manœuvres, in all sorts of weather, and at all hours of day and night, are at once truly nautical, and truly poetical. We never were more interested in our lives than in his account of the escape (after a running fight) of the American frigate and sloop from one of his Majesty's squadrons. The bearing down of a ninety-four-gun ship, though a stormy and clouded night, is magnificent. Cooper exults, as he ought to do, in the glory of the American Stars; yet he is not unjust to the character of our navy, and there is nothing about him of the braggadocio. He has doubtless been both in battle and in wreck, and is a man that would despise a cork-jacket. We hope he has

not a wooden leg--but if he has, may he dot and go on for half a century. He seems a man worthy of having sailed with Decatur.

But, Allan Cunninghame, Allan Cunninghame, why must you have the ambition to meddle with the history, real or fictitious, of Paul Jones? You may have occasionally braved the dangers of the Solway Frith; in smack or smuggler, sailed from Dumfries to Skimburness, or even served for a day on board a herring-man, in the navy of the Isle of Man. But what will become of you when you have to fight on paper the duel of the Serapis and the Bon-homme Richard? Why, you write at the best like a Horse-marine. In that beautiful song of yours, "A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"-you absolutely know no more than a tailor the meaning of the word "sheet." You think it a sail, and so do all land-lubber bards; but it is no such thing, as you may learn from the skipper of any dirt-gabbert; and,―nay, Allan, how could you, with your eyes open, maintain, that when a ship sails from an English port, "and the billow follows free," that she can leave England on the lee?" The thing is impossible. To have done that, in any sense, your ship should have been on a wind. Besides, to "leave England on the lee," would be no easy job in any wind that ever blew ; for, while part of England was to leeward, part, we presume, would be to windward; and, finally,

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on the lee" is not a nautical expression at all; nor, if it were changed into one, would it speak what you intend to say, that the shore seemed to drop astern. Now, Allan Cunninghame, if you cannot write three lines of verse about a boat, without perpetrating all manner of blunders, what is to become of you when America shows "the little bit of striped bunting," and the meteor-flag of England braves the battle and the breeze?

Allan Cunninghame knows our admiration of his genius, and our affection for himself; but the above diatribe dribbled from our pen, as we thought of the most absurd contempt with which, in his "Scottish Songs," he chooses to treat Dibdin. Dibdin knew nothing, forsooth, of ships, or sailors' souls, or sailors' slang! Thank you for that, Allan-we owe you one. Why the devil, then, are his thousand and one songs the delight of the whole

British navy, and constantly heard below decks, in every man-of-war afloat? The shepherds of the sea must be allowed to understand their own pastoral doric, and Charles Dibdin is their Allan Ramsay. Both may have made mistakes, but confound us if either of them was a Cockney.

Having taken a slap, without any malice aforethought, at " Honest Allan," let us lay our hand civilly on Mr Southey's shoulder. His Life of Lord Nelson is a better Admiral's Manual than his friend Mr Coleridge's Manual is a statesman's; yet we doubt if either will be much read by people who are employed near the helm. Mr Southey manages nautical phrases very adroitly-but you see the landsman in every page.

He describes a hundred things about a ship or a fleet engaging, or in line-of-battle, which no seaman would ever allude to; and thus, by keeping somewhat ostentatiously to the letter, loses hold of the spirit. This we say on the authority of an Admiral, who (then a captain) fought a ship at Trafalgar. And nobody indeed can read his volumes, and then a few pages of the Naval Chronicle, without feeling the difference. Neither is Mr Southey a good hand at describing a land-battle, or at sketching a campaign. Let Sir Walter alone for that he has both the eye and soul of a soldier.

Campbell has written the two finest sea-songs in the world. Yet "Ye Mariners of England" might, we think, have been all that it is, and more an Ode of the Sea. The language is too much that of pure poetry, and he dreads the familiarity of nautical expression. Naval men, except they have a strong feeling of poetry, rarely feel that strain as a landsman might expect, and it is utterly unknown below decks. A very few of the finest sea words would have glorified it exceedingly." The meteor flag of England" burning in the troubled night of danger, is a grand image, and we are satisfied. But it is not nautical ;and grand as the image is, no British poet should ever, in our opinion, speak of the flag of England but in the strictest language of the profession. There is the greatest sublimity in the very simplest expressions in common use respecting almost everything that regards the navy, and, above all, in everything regarding the flag. It would

also appear from one stanza, that o admirals have been in the practice of engaging in great fleet actions on a leeshore; and when Mr Campbell says, that Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep," he says what is not perfectly true; nor does he give a good reason for it when he adds, "her march is o'er the mountain wave, her home is on the deep." For harbours should be, and are, protected by forts; and although it is allowable to say, that Britannia's march is o'er the mountain wave,— meaning thereby that her fleets walk the ocean,-yet it is not allowable to say, in the same sense, that her "home is on the deep;" for her home is on the land, and London alone contains a million and a half of inhabitants. Depend upon it, these are not hypercriticisms. We would most willingly live a thousand years in purgatory to have written that song; but these are blemishes nevertheless, and the poem is not perfect.-What a discovery!

A thought struck us just now, to go over all the poets who have poctized about the sea, and expose their blunders; but we hear the whistle-so all hands on deck.

But what of the Naval Sketches? Why, they are excellent-often extremely amusing--the author is a genuine son of a gun, and his volumes are worth purchasing. We shall, therefore, give two or three extracts, mingling off-hand remarks as we jog along, and thus manufacturing, by our joint wits, a concluding article almost as entertaining as a Noctes.The author's chief object is to present the public with a view of the habits, manners, and peculiarities of the profession. That is right; and all mankind will agree with him, "that it is equally distinguished by the splendour of its achievements, and the originality of its character-at once the essential protector of our mercantile enterprise, the nurse of British independent feeling, and the constitutional security of our maritime greatness, and national prosperity." But the Captain is not willing to confine himself to that one great and glorious subject,-(had he done so, how infinitely better had been his volumes!)-but he must needs enter at length into such ticklish questions as the redress of grievances,-the remedy of evils, the suggestion of alteration or

improvement in the principle or discipline of the service," which, he complains, have been left almost entirely in the hands of public Boards. Now we cannot help thinking, that the Captain, if determined to write on such affairs, should have come out with a first-rate octavo, full of facts and arguments, blazing away from every tier, and smashing the Admiralty, just as Lord Exmouth and Sir David Mylne smashed the batteries of the Algerines. But, by the frequent introduction of such topics, and at times when you are no more looking for them than for a sudden sermon from Dr Stainier Clark, the amiable reader is so irritated, that he threatens to desert the "Barky," and leave the "Skipper" to his own lugubrious and out-of-tempore meditations. He is a capital tongue at a tale or an anecdote; and by tales and anecdotes might the "habits, manners, and peculiarities of the profession" have been illustrated from stem to stern of his work. no; he will" argufy the topic," and involve you in the war of words. Often when you are

But

Aboard a ship, on some calm day, In sunshine sailing far away, Some glittering ship that hath the plain Of ocean for her own domain, and you are on the best possible terms with masts and mariners, and forgetful of all the miseries of the mud-world, the author slaps you on the shoulder, and awakens you out of your billowy panorama, by loud ejaculations about dry-rot, club-houses, patronage, levee days, and the Quarterly Review. On one of those occasions, we flung him overboard, and as we were going at nine knots, were not without hopes of the captain's being drowned; but up he came bobbing, from ten fathoms, cocked hat and epaulettes, and capturing a hen-coop thrown over by

one of the young gentlemen," he was picked up and restored to his Majesty's service. We by no means say that he does not frequently treat the subject of grievance and reform with great spirit and vivacity; but it is done in a rambling ineffective way, and leaves ignorant people like us in utter doubt of the truth or falsehood of his serious charges, or jocular caricatures. But he has launched his book; and we take her as we find her, believing, that with all faults, she will

be found on the waters after many days. Her masts are rather tauntshe is somewhat crank, methinks, and rather too sharp in the bows-but she carries a good weather helm notwithstanding-the man at the wheel knows his duty decently well-so may she have a prosperous cruise, and when she must be laid up in ordinary, may hers never be the disgrace of being metamorphosed into a Newgate and Old Bailey hulk.

Now that we have suggested the subject of grievance and reform, will the Captain allow us to give in a list ?— First-day-afloat" by a Middy is not a very good performance. There is no keeping in the character of the Middy, who, a daredevil at home and school, is a chicken-hearted blubberer in the barge and on board. And, although doubtless there may be, and have been, such rum concerns as the lieutenant to whom he is consigned, yet such a figure and character is not an illustration of anything either prevalent or peculiar, and we turn away from the ineffectual caricature. Yet the following is good

"Although a mere boy, never shall I forget the overwhelming and indefinable impression made on my mind upon reaching this wonderful and stupendous floating structure. The immensity of the hull, height of the masts, and largeness of the sails, which had been loosened to dry, so far exceeded every anticipation I had formed, that I continued, unmindful of what was going on in the boat, to gaze on her in dumb amazement, until awakened from my stupor by the coxswain, who now gruffly exclaimed,-' Come, master! come! mount a' reevo, 'less you mean to be boat-keeper.'

"The youngster, who had not opened his lips on the passage, now turned round to give vent to a repartee, which, from its homeliness, served materially to humble him in my estimation. Give us none o' your jaw, Mr Jones,' said this young Triton, scampering up with the black close at his heels. I now seized the side-rope, and was assisted in my awkward attempt by the coxswain, who followed in my wake, no doubt lookingout for a slippery-bend.'

"Being safely landed1 on the quarterdeck of the frigate, I literally shrunk back through a feeling of intense admiration, approaching to awe, at the scene which presented itself; where nautical neatness, accurate arrangement, intricate

machinery, and moving masses of men completed the illusion, and overwhelmed the mind with the gigantic grandeur of the whole.

"As I cautiously stepped on the deck, my eyes attracted by the alternate whiteness of the planks and polished ebony of the parallel caulking, my ears were assailed by sounds which seemed to threaten danger aloft, proceeding from the thunder-like claps of the shivering sails, as they hung in the brails, and flapped their huge wings in the wind."

The chapter on Naval Inventions is not worth a curse. It looks well to the eye-in the contents-Inman, Seppings, Captains Packenham, Phillips, Hayes, Burton, Truscott; Lieutenant Halahan, &c.; but the execution is most miserable, and evidently from an unscientific pen, that can only avoid blundering, by keeping to uninstructive generalities. How differently would Naval Inventions have been handled by Croker or Barrow! Another miserable chapter is that entitled "Naval Authors." He proses away, in a style fifty times more tiresome than our own introductory paragraph to this article, about the "literary productions" of Collingwood, Parry, Franklin, Lyon, Smith, Cochrane, Hall, Goldsmith, and Heathcott -Marshall's Biography, Naval Histories-Inconsistencies, infidelities, and fallacies of James, &c. for about thirty pages, and not one word does he utter that any human being will ever be able to forget, for to remember a single syllable is impossible. This is mere book-making; neither is it peculiarly becoming or graceful in an "Officer of Rank" to sport reviewer of his brother-blues. It is taking the job out of the proper hands, and converting himself into what he so much fears and dislikes,-a critic. So, avast hauling there, Jack.

The Club-house is what is technically called "a failure." The caricature is not in the spirit of Cruikshanks -there is not even likeness-and the chapter is too stupid even for a Bore. A Bore is a thing that must be listened to, just as a ghost is a thing that must be stared at, till your hair stand on end. But this chapter is not enunciable. We have been present at the experiment-saw it tried thrice, and fail. An elderly naval-officer, as brave and determined a man as ever gave orders through a speaking-trumpeta lawyer famous for grinding the

hardest cases through his teeth-and a resolute virgin of threescore-all tried it in succession-but Tabitha alone mistressed the bottom of the fourth page. That abomination which the author calls "a tart debate," is a great slobbering pudding debate, or rather it may be likened to a "sticket haggis," which, to the dismay of all the diners, overflows the table from the most greasy and vulgar matter. prow to poop, with a moving bog of

But the most infernally punishing place in the whole book is the NorthWest Passage, upwards of seventy dim frozen leagues long, for, on the lowest principle, we compute a league to the page. We have made the voyage, not with Parry, but Glasscock; and whatever the former may henceforth do, we now swear solemnly before the public, never again to accompany the latter officer on a voyage of discovery into the frozen regions. Such a dismal stagnation, rendered more so by the jests of men become desperate! But to drop all illustrative imagery, the chapter is a rank bad one, feeble, ignorant, and presumptuous, not worth payment, at the rate of three guineas a-sheet, by the Editor of the London Magazine. We do not wish to speak harshly to the "Skipper," for we love him heartily, as he will see by and by; but, confound him, why has he spoken so sneeringly of Captain Lyon? He finds fault with that admirable officer for saying “My men." The expression is full of kindness, affection, and pride; and we have only to hope, that if ever our friend finds himself on the verge of death and destruction, as Captain Lyon did, he will behave with equal fortitude and resignation-will, by a spirit as pious and unfaltering, support the courage of his crew-and if he and his ship be saved by a gracious Providence, that he will record the deliverance in language equally worthy of him as an officer, a man, and a Christian.

Finally, and to jump from real displeasure into good-humoured banter, is not the author sensible, now that we whisper it into his ear, of his prodigious vanity in anticipating the strictures of the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews? He treats us with the millionth repetition of that poorest of all measures for disarming the critic-a review by way of anticipation. Mere drivelling-and the Captain must have

dined that day with a rejected contributor. It is two hundred and fifty thousand chances to one against a notice of the Naval Sketches in either of these periodicals-a million to one against a notice in both. And should it so turn out, nevertheless, that the Skipper is taken up by Lockhart or Jeffrey, then he may depend upon being slumped into a gross, and dispatched in way of allusion, or perhaps sent to Coventry in that roomy old Diligence, the Single Paragraph. Towards none of the other periodicals does Commodore Pompous deign one word even of contempt; and he manifestly considers them as so many proas armed but with a single pattarero-a whole fleet of whom he will run down or break like bubbles in his hundred-andten-gun ship. By all this foolish upholding of his knowledge-box, bringing it back so as to make his nose perpendicular to the line of the horizon and of his own face, he placeth himself in a position so irresistibly ludicrous, that all landsmen must laugh, and, could they but see him, the whole fleet. Why, to take the altitude of such a giant with a quadrant, where could a trigonometrician find a base? Vanity, vanity-all is vanity!

Having now given vent to all our spleen, and all our bad or peccant humour, we hope, of every kind,-it is not possible to describe the light, airy, buoyant spirit of joyous philanthropy

you

with which our whole critical nature doth at this blessed hour overflow. "Ha! my dear fellow-how are you, Glascock? Not a man living I should have been so obstreperous to take by the daddle! Do you know, Glascock, that these Naval Sketches of yours are most admirable. I always knew you to be a capital pen-and-inkman, but have positively distanced yourself-beat yourself hollow-and past the judge's stand in a canter, while Former Self comes panting and hobbling in quite a break-down." "And who," quoth the Captain, with a certain gruff courtesy, "who are you Christopher North." Off goes the skipper's "fore and aft head-gear," (a terraqueous expression,) and sweeps the dust at our feet with a golden tassle.

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There is great character in what follows; and should any one of our readers not relish it, we beg he may no longer subscribe to this Magazine. Better than anything in Camoens.

"A MELEE.

"Cornwallis's Retreat; with the first of June.

"A Galley Story.

"That sailors are a remarkably plain, downright race, no man acquainted with their character will deny. Devoid of all guile, a seaman never seeks to disguise his object; though he may sometimes be found veering and hauling' to get rid of some difficulty which he imagines lies in his way. His narrative resembles a ship's course in working to windward, which is fain to yield obliquely to the blast, in order to weather her object indirectly, and fetch her port in the end; for though in a conversational cruize he may make twenty digressions, and fly off in chase of every strange sail heaving in sight, no sooner has herun

'em down,' than he will close-haul his wind,' and resume his original course-as in the following sketch of Cornwallis's celebrated retreat :

"Come, Jem, spin us a yarn,' says one of the forecastlemen to another, one night as we were cruizing in company with the "Channel fleet" which were blockading Brest.—' Come, Jem, you've neither tipped us a stave or spun us a twist this night,' says Jem, and no signs of reefing, week.'' Well, as it's a fine moonlight

and moreover, as that 'ere "jib-and-staysail Jack" hasn't charge o' the deck, but a gemman, as can keep the ship in her station without worrying the watch-I doesn't care if I do.

"Well, I believe I was telling you t'other night, there was three or four o' us drafted from the Brunswick, seventy-four, into the Billyruffin,2 (the Ball-o'-ropeyarns, you know,) a ship as seed more sarvice nor any other what swam the seas. I did my duty in both ships alike-bowinan o' the barge, and second-captain o' the foretop-and, though I says it that shouldn't,

could toss a bow-oar and haul-out a weather earing with any fellow in the fleet. Well, you see, the time I means, we belonged to a squadron of five sail o' the line, two frigates and a brig, under old Billy-blue,3 as brave a fellow as ever wore a flag; and as we were running along the land one

3

3 Admiral Cornwallis.