icularist" fiction--the fiction that derives its special zest from
the "colours" of some form of life unfamiliar to those who have not
actually lived it. Even _Peter Simple_ is unduly weighted at the end by
the machinations of Peter's uncle against him and, at intervals during
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 _pere_
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 _Diomede_ 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.

The last name on our present list belongs to the class of "eccentric"
novelists--the adjective being used, not in its transferred and partly
improper sense so much as in its true one. Peacock never plays the
Jack-pudding like Sterne: and his shrewd wit never permits him the
sincere aberrations of Amory. But his work is out of the ordinary
courses, and does not turn round the ordinary centres of novel writing.
It belongs to the tradition--if to any tradition at all-