Here is farce, but farce which almost borders on comedy. Given Jack Easy with his natural pluck and his absurd training, suddenly put into a man-of-war, and set to reconcile the practice of the service with the ideal picture of it presented by the articles of war, and this is precisely what might be expected to happen. The absurdity always arises from the clash of the characters; and though it be farce, it is farce of the highest order. Rarely does the grotesque lean to the horrible. The death of Mr. Vanslyperken is a case in which it does; but Marryat was, for the most part, content to amuse, and to amuse only. How well he succeeded we all know. Which of us has not laughed with him ever since we were boys? Mr. Chucks stands between Commodore Trunnion and Mr. Micawber. The scene I have quoted above, and a dozen others, live by the side of Pipe’s journey to the garrison with the nymph of the road. The adventures in battle and wreck are very good, but they are not the best. Romance of the brilliant order Marryat did not often try, and when he did, he was at best but moderately successful. He was more of the race of Defoe than of Dumas. But from Defoe, over whom no man ever laughed, he was divided by his love of laughter, and power of drawing it forth. His fun may be often mere animal spirits, but at least it was spontaneous, and was by natural instinct literary. He did not toil and labour to be funny. Even in his most hasty work he would hit off a scene with neat pen-strokes, marking just enough and no more. Take, for instance, the revenue officers in “The Three Cutters.” Lieutenant Appleboy and his companions are introduced simply because he had seen them, and as much for his own amusement as his readers. Marryat had seen the types when he was doing preventive work himself in the _Rosario_, and drew them out of his memory when he needed them. Some of his figures were doubtless portraits--all of them had possibly some touch of portraiture. But on his paper they have an interest altogether independent of their originals. There are, as Mr. Saintsbury, speaking of the personalities of Daudet, has said, two ways of drawing portraits in literature. The first is to adapt your sitter into somebody else whom we love for his own sake. The second is to give us an image for which we should care but little if it was not meant for A or B. Of these two methods Marryat took the first. If there was an original to Terence O’Brien we should like to have known him; but, whether or not, we like Terence for his own sake. Was there a boatswain in His Majesty’s Service who stood for Mr. Chucks? Possibly; but what then? In Marryat’s stories are types as well as individuals. They and their doings have an independent universal truth. CHAPTER VII.