from being favourably received by practical mariners.  We have heard the ‘sailoring’ portions of the finest works of Cooper and others scoffed at by seamen; and the very best book on sea-life ever written, Dana’s Two Years before the Mast, is held in no sort of esteem by the very men for whose benefit the author avows he wrote it, and whose life he has so vividly, and, as we think, faithfully described.  Every sailor we have questioned concerning that book—­and there are few sailors who have not read it—­declared that he ‘thought nothing of it;’ and that all his messmates laughed at it as much as himself.  They say that Dana ‘makes too much’ of everything, and that he gives false and exaggerated notions of life on shipboard.  We personally deny this; but sailors, as a body, are such prosaic people, that they will make no allowance whatever for the least amplification of bald matter of fact.  If the author dilates at all on his own feelings and impressions, they chuckle and sneer; and if he errs in the least—­or the compositor for him—­in his nautical details, they cry out that he is a know-nothing, a marine, a horse-jockey, a humbug.  To please seamen, any book about their profession must be written precisely in the lucid and highly-imaginative style of a log-book—­their sole standard of literary excellence.

Sailors are shrewd and sensitive, enough in some respects.  They do not like to be flattered, and cannot bear to be caricatured; and they feel that Dibdin has—­unconsciously—­been guilty of both towards them.  According to his songs, sailors lead a life of unalloyed fun and frolic.  He tells us nothing about their slavery when afloat, nothing about the tyranny they are frequently subjected to; and in his days, a man-o’-war was too often literally a floating pandemonium.  He makes landsmen believe that Jack is the happiest, most enviable fellow in the world:  storms and battles are mere pastime; lopped limbs and wounds are nothing more than jokes; there is the flowing can to ‘sweethearts and wives’ every Saturday night; and whenever the ship comes to port, the crew have guineas galore to spend on lasses and fiddles.  In fine, both at sea and ashore, according to his theory, jolly Jack has little to do but make love, sing, dance, and drink—­grog being ‘his sheet-anchor, his compass, his cable, his log;’ and in the True British Sailor, we are told that ’Jack is always content.’  Now, Jack knows very well this is all ’long-shore palaver, and he gives a shy hail to such palpable lime-twigs.  ’Let the land-lubbers sing it!’ thinks he; ‘I’ll none on’t!’

Dibdin takes the first sip of his Flowing Can with the ominous line—­

    ‘A sailor’s life’s a life of wo!’

But what follows?—­

    ‘Why, then, he takes it cheerily!’