nd; but the book which
Flinders could have written had he lived a few years longer, if it had
been penned with the freedom which made his conversation so delightful to
his friends, might have been one of the most entertaining pieces of
travel literature in the language. At first he was somewhat apprehensive
about authorship, and thought of calling in the aid of a friend; but the
enforced leisure of Ile-de-France induced him to depend upon his own
efforts. Before he left England in 1801, he had suggested that he might
require assistance. In a letter to Willingham Franklin, John's brother, a
fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and afterwards a Judge in Madras, he
wrote (November 27th, 1801):* (* Flinders' Papers.)

"You must understand that this voyage of ours is to be written and
published on our return. I am now engaged in writing a rough account, but
authorship sits awkwardly upon me. I am diffident of appearing before the
public unburnished by an abler hand. What say you? Will you give me your
assistance if on my return a narration of our voyage should be called for
from me? If the voyage be well executed and well told afterwards I shall
have some credit to spare to deserving friends. If the door now open
suits your taste and you will enter, it should be yours for the
undertaking. A little mathematical knowledge will strengthen your style
and give it perspicuity. Arrangement is the material point in
voyage-writing as well as in history. I feel great diffidence here.
Sufficient matter I can easily furnish, and fear not to prevent anything
unseamanlike from entering into the composition; but to round a period
well and arrange sentences so as to place what is meant in the most
perspicuous point of view is too much for me. Seamanship and authorship
make too great an angle with each other; the further a man advances upon
one line the further distant he becomes from any point on the other."

It did not prove so in Flinders' own case, for his later letters and the
latter part of his book are written in an easier, more freely-flowing
style than marks his earlier writings. He solicited no assistance in the
final preparation of his work. He preferred to speak to his public in his
own voice, and was unquestionably well advised in so doing. It is a
plain, honest sailor's story; that of a cultivated man withal.

Intense application to the work in hand brought about a recurrence of the
constitutional internal trouble which had occasi