the book, by the proceedings connected therewith. But _Mr. Midshipman Easy_ is flawless--except for the amiable but surely excessive sentimentalists who are shocked at the way in which Mr. Easy _père_ quits the greater stage by mounting the lesser. Than this book there is not a better novel of special "humour" in literature; as much may be said of the greater part of _Peter Simple_, of not a little in _Jacob Faithful_ (a great favourite with Thackeray, who always did justice to Marryat), and _Japhet in Search of a Father_, and of something in almost all. Nor were high jinks and special naval matters by any means Marryat's only province. Laymen may agree with experts in thinking the clubhauling of the _Diomède_ in _Peter Simple_, and the two great fights of the _Aurora_ with the elements and with the Russian frigate in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_, to be extraordinarily fine things:--vivid, free from extravagance, striking, stirring, clear, as descriptive and narrative literature of the kind can be only at its best, and too seldom is at all. An almost Defoe-like exactness of detail is one of Marryat's methods and merits: while it is very remarkable that he rarely attempts to produce the fun, in which Defoe is lacking and he himself so fertile, by mere exaggeration or caricature of detail. There are exceptions--the Dominie business in _Jacob Faithful_ is one--but they are exceptions. Take Hook, his immediate predecessor, and no doubt in a way his model, as (it has been said) Hook was to almost everybody at the time; take even Dickens, his fellow-pupil with Hook and his own greater successor; and you will find that Marryat resorts less than either to the humour of simple _charge_ or exaggeration.