we produced The King’s Own.  In The Naval Officer we had sowed all our wild oats; we had paid off those who had ill-treated us, and we had no further personality to indulge in. The King’s Own, therefore, was wholly fictitious in characters, in plot, and in events, as have been its successors. The King’s Own was followed by Newton Forster, Newton Forster by Peter Simple.  These are all our productions.  Reader, we have told our tale.”

This significant document was published by Captain Marryat in the Metropolitan Magazine 1833, of which he was at that time the editor, on the first appearance of Peter Simple, in order, among other things, to disclaim the authorship of a work entitled the Port Admiral, which contained “an infamous libel upon one of our most distinguished officers deceased, and upon the service in general.”  It repudiates, without explaining away, certain unpleasant impressions that even the careful reader of to-day cannot entirely avoid.  Marryat made Frank Mildmay a scamp, I am afraid, in order to prove that he himself had not stood for the portrait; but he clearly did not recognise the full enormities of his hero, to which he was partially blinded by a certain share thereof.  The adventures were admittedly his own, they were easily recognised, and he had no right to complain of being confounded with the insolent young devil to whom they were attributed.  It would, however, be at once ungracious and unprofitable to attempt any analysis of the points of difference and resemblance; any reader will detect the author’s failings by his work; other coincidences may be noticed here.

It has been said, in the general introduction, that Marryat’s cruises in the Imperieuse are almost literally described in Frank Mildmay.  We have also independent accounts of certain personal adventures there related.

The episode, chap, iv., of being bitten by a skate—­supposed to be dead—­which is used again in Peter Simple, came from Marryat’s own experience; and he declared that he ran away from school on account of the very indignity—­that of being compelled to wear his elder brother’s old clothes—­which Frank Mildmay pleads as an excuse for sharing at least the sentiments of Cain.  Marryat, again, was trampled upon and left for dead when boarding an enemy (see chap, v.); he saved the midshipman who had bullied him, from drowning, though his reflections on the occasion are more edifying than those recounted in chap. v.  “From that moment,” he says, “I have loved the fellow as I never loved friend before.  All my hate is forgotten.  I have saved his life.”  The defence of the castle of Rosas, chap, vii., is taken straight from his private log-book; while Marshall’s Naval Biography contains an account of his volunteering during a gale to cut away the main-yard of the Aeolus, which scarcely pales before the vigorous passage in chap. xiv.:—­