Because he has amused the boy, it seems to be taken for granted that he ought not to amuse the man: because he does not write with the artificial and often extremely arbitrary graces of the composition books, that he is "not literature." If it be so, why in the first case so much the worse for "the man," and in the second so much the worse for literature.

As a matter of fact, he has many of the qualities of the novelist in a high degree: and if he were in the fortunate position of an ancient classic, whose best works only survive, these qualities could not fail of recognition.

Much of his later work simply ought not to count; for it was mere hack-labour, rendered, if not necessary, very nearly so by the sailor's habit (which Marryat possessed in the highest degree) of getting rid of money.

Even among this, _Masterman Ready_ and _The Children of the New Forest_, "children's books," as they may be called, rank very high in their kind.

But he counts here, of course, for his sea-novels mainly: and in them there are several things for us to notice.