His greatness
is undeniable.
It is undeniable. To a multitude of readers the navy of to-day is
Marryat's navy still. He has created a priceless legend. If he be not
immortal, yet he will last long enough for the highest ambition, because
he has dealt manfully with an inspiring phase in the history of that
Service on which the life of his country depends. The tradition of the
great past he has fixed in his pages will be cherished for ever as the
guarantee of the future. He loved his country first, the Service next,
the sea perhaps not at all. But the sea loved him without reserve. It
gave him his professional distinction and his author's fame--a fame such
as not often falls to the lot of a true artist.
At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, another man wrote of
the sea with true artistic instinct. He is not invincibly young and
heroic; he is mature and human, though for him also the stress of
adventure and endeavour must end fatally in inheritance and marriage. For
James Fenimore Cooper nature was not the frame-work, it was an essential
part of existence. He could hear its voice, he could understand its
silence, and he could interpret both for us in his prose with all that
felicity and sureness of effect that belong to a poetical conception
alone.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89