Excerpt from Frank Mildmay: Or the Naval Officer
There is a passage in Marryat's magazine, the Metropolitan, published some time after the first appearance of "Frank Mildmay; or, the Naval Officer," which is of sufficient interest to bear quotation. It must be premised that the book was produced in 1829, that the sum of 400 was paid for it by Colburn the publisher, and that it was followed nine months later by "The King's Own." "The 'Naval Officer,'" writes Marryat, at a time when three successive novels had followed the issue of "Frank Mildmay," "was our first attempt, and it having been our first attempt must be offered in extenuation of its many imperfections; it was written hastily, and before it was complete we were appointed to a ship. We cared much about our ship, and little about our book. The first was diligently taken charge of by ourselves; the second was left in the hands of others, to get on how it could. Like most bantlings put out to nurse, it did not get on very well. As we happen to be in the communicative vein, it may be as well to remark that, being written in the autobiographical style, it was asserted by good-natured friends, and believed in general, that it was a history of the author's own life. Now, without pretending to have been better than we should have been in our earlier days, we do most solemnly assure the public that, had we run the career of vice of the hero of the 'Naval Officer,' at all events we should have had sufficient sense of shame not to have avowed it... The 'confounded licking' we received for our first attempt in the critical notices is probably well known to the reader - at all events, we have not forgotten it.
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