The first result of an attempt to classify the books of Captain Marryat is a realization that two of his finest works are—the one wholly, the other mainly—unconcerned with ships or seafarers. Japhet in Search of a Father (1836) is a picturesque tale of vagabondage and social escapade. The Pacha of Many Tales (1835) is an adaptation of “The Arabian Nights,” a series of narratives held together by a framework of Oriental despotism.
Japhet is partnered by two later novels—Joseph Rushbrook; or, The Poacher (1841) and Valerie (1849). All three are land as opposed to sea novels, and the first two show the fertile invention of the author, his power of describing rogues and fashionable grotesques. But whereas Japhet is the best book Marryat ever wrote, The Poacher is a little weary, for it dates from the last period of the writer's life, when ill-health and money troubles were pressing hardly on a man already exhausted by a reckless youth; while Valerie, the autobiography of a French girl cast on her own resources in Paris and in London, had better have been left, as Marryat left it, a fragment cut short by sickness and by death.
The Pacha of Many Tales stands quite alone and stands proudly. Marryat's humour is in this book congenial to the modern reader, while of fantastic happening few works of fiction can show so rich a store. It is hard to understand why this admirable parody of the “Thousand and One Nights” is to-day so little read. Perhaps some enterprising publisher will extract the story of Huckaback and issue it, grotesquely illustrated. It should find its market.
The sea stories proper need little comment. They are eleven in number:
The Naval Officer; or, Frank Mildmay (1829),
The King's Own (1830),
Newton Forster; or, The Merchant Service (1832),
Peter Simple (1834),
Jacob Faithful (1834),
Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836),