"Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again," was the gentle oratory of the aspiring Richard, in allusion to the invading Bretagnes.—
"Lash hence these overweening rags of France."
The interpreter of the heart's natural language—Shakspeare, above all men, was endowed with human inspiration. His words come ripe to our lips like the fruit of our own thoughts. We speak them naturally and unconsciously. They drop from us like the unpremeditated language of children—spring forth unbidden—the richest melody of the mind. Strong passion, whether of grief or joy while seeking in the wild excitement of the moment her own words for utterance, unconsciously enunciates his, with a natural and irresistible energy. There is scarcely a human thought, great or simple, which Shakspeare has not spoken for his fellow-men, as never man, uninspired, spake; which he has not embodied and clothed with a drapery of language, unsurpassable. So—
"Let's whip this straggler o'er the seas again,"
I have very good reason to fear, will flow all unconsciously from your lips, as most applicable to my barren letter; in penning which I shall be driven to extremity for any thing of an interesting character. If it must be so, I am, of all epistlers, the most innocent.
Ship, air, and ocean equally refuse to furnish me with a solitary incident. My wretched "log" now and then records an event: such as for instance, how one of "the Doctor's" plumpest and most deliriously embonpoint pullets, very rashly and unadvisedly perpetrated a summerset over-board, after she had been decapitated by that sable gentleman, in certainly the most approved and scientific style. None but a very silly chicken could have been dissatisfied with the unexceptionable manner in which the operation was performed. But, both feathered and plucked bipeds, it seems, it is equally hard to please.
For the last fourteen days we have been foot-balls for the winds and waves. Their game may last as many more; therefore, as we have as little free agency in our movements as foot-balls themselves, we have made up our minds to yield our fretted bodies as philosophically as may be, to their farther pastime. The sick have recovered, and bask the hours away on deck in the beams of the warm south sun, like so many luxurious crocodiles.
To their good appetites let our table bear witness. Should it be blessed with a conscience, it is doubly blessed by having it cleared thrice daily by the most rapacious father-confessors that ever shrived penitent; of which "gentlemen of the cloth" it boasts no less than eight.
The first day we passed through a widely dispersed fleet of those short, stump-masted non-descripts, with swallow-tailed sterns, snubbed bows, and black hulls, sometimes denominated fishing smacks, but oftener and more euphoniously, "Chebacco boats," which, from May to October, are scattered over our northern seas.
While we dashed by them, one after another, in our lofty vessel, as, close-hauled on the wind, or "wing and wing," they flew over the foaming sea, I could not help smiling at the ludicrous scenes which some of their decks exhibited.