We have but little information concerning his early manhood; there is not, indeed, any evidence to hand of even the approximate date of his birth. Smollett, in his "History of England," alludes to Wright's exploits, and describes him as "a stranger to a sea-life," until he took to privateering in the Mediterranean; but it is not easy to see upon what grounds the historian bases such an assumption. Fortunatus Wright was, as we have seen, the son of a sea-captain of no ordinary stamp, and the probability is that he would be brought up in his father's calling--a probability which becomes, practically, a certainty when we reflect that, immediately upon assuming the position of privateer commander, he displayed a consummate skill in seamanship, combined with remarkable tactical powers in sea-fighting, which elicited the enthusiastic admiration of his subordinates; and these qualifications are not acquired on land. No; Fortunatus Wright was undoubtedly trained as a seaman, and very possibly a privateersman; but it appears that, somewhere about the year 1741, having previously retired from the sea, and settled in Liverpool as a shipowner, he realised his business, and went to reside abroad; and in 1742 we come across news of him in Italy. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Horace Mann, at that time British Resident at the Court of Florence, in a letter to his friend Horace Walpole--with whom he kept up an enormous correspondence--relates how he had had complaints concerning the violent conduct of Mr. Wright at Lucca. It appears that our friend, travelling in that part of Italy, with introductions to some of the nobility, presented himself one day at the gates of Lucca, never doubting but that, as a respectable and peaceably disposed person, he would immediately be admitted. He had not reckoned, however, with the particular form of "red tape" which prevailed there. He had upon him a pair of pistols; and, upon being informed that the surrender of these weapons was the condition of being permitted to pass the gates, his English choler immediately rose against what appeared to him to be a tyrannical and unnecessary proceeding; and his natural instinct being--as it always is in fighting men of his stamp--rather to beat down and override opposition than to yield to it, disregarding the serious odds against him--twenty soldiers and a corporal _versus_ Fortunatus Wright--he presented one of the offending pistols at the guard, and clearly indicated that the first man who endeavoured to arrest him would do so at the cost of his life. This was very awkward; no one cared to be the first victim of the "mad Englishman," who was evidently a man of his word, and how it might have ended nobody knows, had there not appeared upon the scene a superior officer--a colonel--with thirty more soldiers. Mr. Wright was thereupon persuaded that the odds were too heavy even for a "mad Englishman," and was escorted to his hotel by this imposing