[ 158 J [Fes. 
TWELVE YEARS’ MILITARY ADVENTURE.* 
Tuar must be a curious moment, and, to the person whom it most 
concerns, at least, an interesting one, in which it occurs to him that the 
adventures of his past life deserve to be recorded, and that what he has 
seen and done are worth being told for the amusement or information 
of the public. To a man little in the habit of writing at all, and wholly 
unacquainted with the craft of authorship, the notion must come with 
overwhelming force ; and one may imagine the embarrassment with 
which he sets about his new task—the doubts that assail him, whether 
any body will read what he is laboriously committing to paper—and the 
still more serious hazard he runs of being censured or ridiculed for 
intruding himself upon public notice. And yet nothing is more true than 
that which has been so often said—that there is hardly any man who 
has led an active life who could not make an interesting narrative, if he 
would tell all that he has witnessed or enacted, and the remembrance 
of which is worth preserving. The qualities necessary to make such a 
narrative are neither so rare, nor so exclusive, but that they fall within 
the reach of almost every one who can write or tella story. The first 
requisite is veracity, and the next simplicity. Ifa man will write with- 
out embarrassment or affectation—if he will content himself with telling 
his tale plainly, and relating events as they really happened, confining 
himself to what he personally underwent or saw, and giving up the 
attempt to create a more forcible impression on his readers than was 
made upon himself—there is hardly a possibility of his failing to gain 
the first object of his labours, and of engaging the attention and exciting 
the interest of the persons he addresses. There can be no proof more 
striking and satisfactory of this than in a narrative which has just been 
published by an officer, detailing the military adventures which occu- 
pied twelve years of his life. A man less likely to have produced a 
book, judging from so much of his character as is developed in the 
work before us, can hardly be imagined, and yet with no other qualifi- 
cation than a certain gaiety of temper, and a frank unconstrained man- 
ner of telling his story ;—relying upon his memory chiefly, and upon 
his imagination not at all, he has put together a pair of very readable 
volumes. There is nothing very new in them; but yet they are very 
agreeable, because they relate to affairs of which every one knows some- 
thing, and in which every one has an interest, more or less remote. They 
are told, too, in so unpretending and familiar a manner, as places the 
author at once upon the footing of an old acquaintance. There is one ~ 
particular in which he is tiresome. He is fond, like all soldiers and 
sailors, of sentiment, and he handles the weapon “as a bear would a 
musket.” When he means to be very pathetic, he is only maudlin ; 
and at the moment he thinks he has raised the tenderest sympathy, the 
reader bursts into a loud laugh. To do him justice, however, he does 
not sin in this respect so frequently as to make it offensive. In the 
main, he tells his tale plainly and unaffectedly ; and, without much 
skill in description, or any elegance of style, his sketches of a soldier’s 
life, rapid and concise as they often are, keep the attention of the reader 
very pleasantly excited. 
* Twelve Years’ Military Adventure in Three-Quarters of the Globe ; or, Memoirs 
of an Officer who served in the Armies of His Majesty and of the East-India Company, 
between the Years 1802 and 1814 ; 2 vols. London. Colburn. 
