It is difficult to say whether the usual attitude of criticism to Captain Marryat (1792-1848) is more uncritical than ungrateful or more ungrateful than uncritical.  Because he has amused the boy, it seems to be taken for granted that he ought not to amuse the man:  because he does not write with the artificial and often extremely arbitrary graces of the composition books, that he is “not literature.”  If it be so, why in the first case so much the worse for “the man,” and in the second so much the worse for literature.  As a matter of fact, he has many of the qualities of the novelist in a high degree:  and if he were in the fortunate position of an ancient classic, whose best works only survive, these qualities could not fail of recognition.  Much of his later work simply ought not to count; for it was mere hack-labour, rendered, if not necessary, very nearly so by the sailor’s habit (which Marryat possessed in the highest degree) of getting rid of money.  Even among this, Masterman Ready and The Children of the New Forest, “children’s books,” as they may be called, rank very high in their kind.  But he counts here, of course, for his sea-novels mainly:  and in them there are several things for us to notice.  One is that Marryat had the true quality of the craftsman, as distinguished from the amateur or the chance-medley man who has a lucky inspiration.  If it were the case that his books derived their whole attraction from the novelty and (within its limits) the variety of their sea-matter, then the first ought to be the best, as in nearly all such cases is the fact.  But Frank Mildmay (1829), so far from being the best, is not far from being the worst of Marryat’s novels.  Much—­dangerously much—­as he put of his own experiences in the book, he did not know in the least how to manage them.  And if Frank is something of a bravo, more of a blackguard, and nearly a complete ruffian, it is not merely because there was a good deal of brutality in the old navy; not merely because Marryat’s own standard of chivalry was not quite that of Chaucer’s Knight:—­but partly, also, because he was aiming blunderingly at what he supposed to be part of the novelist’s business—­irregular as well as regular gallantry, and highly seasoned adventure.  But, like all good artists (and like hardly anybody who has not the artistic quality in him), he taught himself by his failure, even though he sometimes relapsed.  Of actual construction he was never a master. The King’s Own, with its overdose of history at the beginning and of melodrama at the end, is an example.  But his two masterpieces, Peter Simple (1834) and Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836), are capital instances of what may be called “particularist” 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