Frank Mildmay; Or, The Naval Officer

E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Or, The Naval Officer
Contents
Prefatory Note
The confounded licking we received for our first attempts in the critical notices is probably well known to the reader—at all events we have not forgotten it. Now, with some, this severe castigation of their first offence would have had the effect of their never offending again; but we felt that our punishment was rather too severe; it produced indignation instead of contrition, and we determined to write again in spite of all the critics in the universe; and in the due course of nine months 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.