Language of this sort does not sound very graciously in the mouth of a man whose best work is owing to the hints he obtains from the people whose labours and publications he ridicules. I hope I shall not be deemed heterodox if I say that, in my humble judgment, great as is my veneration for Defoe, in point of interest neither his _New Voyage_ nor his _Captain Singleton_ is to be compared with the narratives of Dampier, Cooke, Rogers, and Shelvocke; whilst there is a quaintness and freshness about their plain, manly, sailorly style which I instantly miss on turning to Defoe's later books. It is quite true indeed that when the _New Voyage Round the World_ was written the circumnavigation of the globe was no longer considered an extraordinary feat; but then forty-two years had elapsed since Dampier had sailed with the buccaneers from Virginia on his first tour, and in that interval the experiences of the journey—deemed remarkable at the time—had been often enough repeated by his own and the voyages of others, to rob the accomplishment of all its wonder. Dampier's best merits have been fairly expressed by Sir Walter Scott, whose reference to him in connection with the life of Defoe was inevitable. He speaks of him as a mariner “whose scientific skill in his profession and power of literary composition were at that time rarely found in that profession, especially amongst those rough sons of the ocean who acknowledged no peace beyond the Line, and had as natural an enmity to a South American Spaniard as a greyhound to a hare, and who, though distinguished by the somewhat mild term of buccaneer, were little better than absolute pirates.” This is true, but more may be said. Dampier was not only the finest sailor of his day—I mean in the strictly professional sense of the word—his travels are to this hour foremost among the best-written and most interesting in the language. Seafaring and literary qualifications are a rare combination even in our own age of stiff marine-examinations, of a race of naval officers distinguished for their culture and their breeding, and of a merchant navy whose masters and mates are, in the higher ranges at least, persons of education and intelligence. But in Dampier's day the sailor, whether he fought for the throne or for merchant adventurers, or toiled for himself as a sea-carrier, was a coarse, unlettered man. The union in Dampier of the qualities which he exhibited must have rendered him something of a prodigy to his contemporaries, whilst it forms his claim upon the attention and esteem of posterity. No mariner ever observed more closely. In his _Discourse of Winds_ he anticipates half the contents of the volumes of Piddington and Reid.[33] One would say indeed that Dampier never passed an hour without pulling out his notebook. Piddington particularly calls attention to the accuracy of the old sailor's touches in his picture of the banks of red clouds which herald the bursting of a typhoon in the China seas. He also