t 138 ] [AUG. 



THE ADVENTURES OF NAUFRAjUUS.* 



THERK arc men enough in the world, and more than enough, whoso 

 written lives would make admirable romances, if it were not that few 

 persons arc able, and still fewer perhaps entirely willing, truly to relate 

 all the adventure or misadventure which occurs to them ; but, in despite 

 of this difficulty, the sort of work (half historical, half fabulous) best 

 described, perhaps, as " Personal narrative," which was begun by the 

 military writers among our neighbours, the French, has lately been grow- 

 ing very popular in England. Among ourselves, however, as in France, it 

 will have been observed, that most of the " adventures," and " expe- 

 riences," and " eventful lives." have been those of soldiers ; there has 

 appeared hardly any thing in the same way from men connected with 

 the. sea. We have had the '* journals" of Serjeants and of private sol- 

 diers very curious and valuable, as affording the best insight into the 

 condition, and the only means of insight into the feelings and opinions of 

 men in that situation of life ; but we have never had the u log-book" (at 

 least we do not recollect any such publication) of a fore-mast sailor, or 

 of a boatswain. This open ground in our light literature, the book before 

 us is extremely well calculated to fill up. The want of such a work for 

 some years past, indeed, has something surprised us, since the blank is not 

 at all to be attributed to any lack of interest in the subject. A sailor's 

 life is not perhaps a pleasant one ; but even landsmen will believe that it 

 can scarcely be a life wanting in incident or excitation ; and, for ourselves, 

 we must decidedly deny the truth whatever may bo the wit of John- 

 son's observation that a ship " is a prison," in which you have the 

 chance of being drowned. The distinguishing feature of a prison is, that 

 the inhabitant of it is fixed in one place : its secondary attributes are, that 

 he is scantily furnished, in all probability, with light and air, and that he 

 is shut out from that which alone renders life endurable the possibility 

 of event : it is his misery to be so secure, that even the accidents and 

 vexations which enliven existence, cannot reach him. Now the pas- 

 senger who stands upon the deck of a noble vessel, which is dashing 

 through a free and open element, faster than a horse can gallop, from 

 one country to another, and who enjoys the free exercise of his limbs 

 through the whole course of his travel, with the advantage of pretty nearly 

 every convenience that man's necessities require at hand, and provided 

 for his use this man is scarcely so much " the inhabitant of a 

 prison, with the chance of being drowned," as the tenant of the doc- 

 tor's favourite vehicle, a post-chaise, is the occupant of a prison, with 

 the chance of being overturned. Leaving this " unsavoury simile," 

 however which Johnson had probably been sea-sick for four days, or 

 becalmed somewhere, when he hit upon and which, indeed, as a 

 simile, would be good for nothing if it were like -it is impossible 

 that the life of a constant traveller, who has but a plank, at the best 

 of times, between himself and destruction, and who averages an hourly 

 liability to some situation of extreme peril, from which his own skill and 

 activity alone can preserve him as part of his account in trade it is impos- 

 sible that the Hie of a man so professionally engaged, can be one of mere 

 dulness or fatuity. On the contrary, the converse of this proposition will 

 be found to be the fact : to be competent to the conduct of a vessel, a 



* The Life and Adventures of Naufragus. Smith and Elder, London. I vol. 8vo. 



