Two Years before the Mast. A Personal Narrative by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. New edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1869.
Twelve years ago we determined upon a voyage similar to that the author describes, and from a similar motive.
This recital of his two years' experience before the mast was put into our hands to deter us from going. We recollect reading it with the greatest interest, and being afterward more anxious to go than ever. After three years' experience, during which we shared all the sailor's toils and pleasures "fore and aft," we returned to a student's life. It was therefore with some curiosity we reopened this book to see what our judgment would be of this sailor's yarn as compared with our own experience.
Before, it had the charm of adventure untried; now it gave the pleasure of again, in imagination, riding the topsail yard-arm amid the wild storm, hauling out the "weather earing," and "sending her" off the Cape with all hands lashed to the rigging. We have never read so vivid yet truthful a description of a sailor's life. It is refreshing to see for once nautical terms correctly and naturally used. We suspect that the author's estimate of the character and religion of the people he visited has changed since he wrote. The condition of the Mexicans now, as compared with their peace and prosperity under the paternal care of the Catholic missionaries, would surely warrant it.
We heartily sympathize with the author in his desire to better the condition of seamen. They are a noble, large-hearted class of men. We never expect to meet more courageous, generous, faithful men than our comrades at sea. Yet their life, which must be full of toil and danger, is made unnecessarily hard and laborious by unjust treatment. They are over-worked and half-fed at sea, and swindled on shore. If among the various protective societies, one were organized to protect seamen from shipping masters, brutal officers, and "boarding-house runners," it would be a praiseworthy act.
The author's account of his later visit to the Pacific coast is very acceptably added to this new edition, and shows the great change that has taken place in the condition of our commerce and of our country.
Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson. Selected and edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. 2 vols. 12mo. Pp. 496, 555. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.
In the United States, it is only the readers of the literary biography of the last generation that know Henry Crabb Robinson even by name; for although he was intimately acquainted with some scores of distinguished men, and moved in the best literary society of England, he left little or nothing to recall his memory after he was dead, except the immense piles of manuscript from which these two volumes have been selected. These, we venture to predict, will enjoy a permanent place in literature, not much below the Diary of Pepys and Boswell's Life of Johnson. Mr. Robinson, however, had nothing of the Pepys or the Boswell in his character. He was a man of sharp natural faculties, excellent scholarship, abundant wit, eminent social accomplishments, and strong character. In his youth he was a foreign correspondent and sub-editor of The Times. Afterward he practised at the bar. But for the most important part of his life, covering a period of some thirty years before his death, he had no profession, and passed his time in the society of literary and other celebrities, with whom, for his extraordinary conversational powers and more sterling qualities, he was always a welcome guest. It is to his anecdotes and recollections of such men—Lamb, Wordsworth, Southey, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, Rogers, Goethe, Lady Morgan, Lady Blessington, Landor, and others—told with spirit and discretion, that the Diary and Reminiscences owe their value. The work of selection and arrangement has been performed with excellent judgment, and no one who takes up the volumes will readily lay them aside.