There can be no question, we think, that the philosophy of all this _is_ to be found in the apothegm with which we began. Marryatt is a singular instance of its truth. He has always been a very _popular_ writer in the most rigorous sense of the word. His books are essentially “mediocre.” His ideas are the common property of the mob, and have been their common property time out of mind. We look throughout his writings in vain for the slightest indication of originality—for the faintest incentive to thought. His plots, his language, his opinions are neither adapted nor intended for scrutiny. We must be contented with them as sentiments, rather than as ideas; and properly to estimate them, even in this view, we must bring ourselves into a sort of identification with the sentiment of the mass. Works composed in this spirit are sometimes purposely so composed by men of superior intelligence, and here we call to mind the _Chansons_ of Béranger. But usually they are the natural exponent of the vulgar thought in the person of a vulgar thinker. In either case they claim for themselves _that_ which, for want of a more definite expression, has been called by critics _nationality_. Whether this nationality in letters is a fit object for high-minded ambition, we cannot here pause to inquire. If it is, then Captain Marryatt occupies a more desirable position than, in our heart, we are willing to award him. “Joseph Rushbrook” is not a book with which the critic should occupy many paragraphs. It is not very dissimilar to “Poor Jack,” which latter is, perhaps, the best specimen of its author’s cast of thought, and _national_ manner, although inferior in interest to “Peter Simple.” The plot can only please those who swallow the probabilities of “Sinbad the Sailor,” or “Jack and the Bean-Stalk”—or we should have said, more strictly, the incidents; for of plot, properly speaking, there is none at all.