invented to amuse and astonish a jaded autocrat.

Hence we feel no shock in reading of an island where the commonest
utensils are made of gold, a nursery of whales, five months in the
interior of an iceberg, or a journey among the clouds during a
thunderstorm. The demand for brevity strengthens Marryat's style, and
saves him from padding. He is very happy in contriving expediences, and
evinces considerable wit in the conception, for instance, of Yussuf the
water-carrier. Some of the stories, again, are really dramatic, and the
"Second Voyage of Huckaback" (p. 126) reaches a height of weird horror
that recalls, without paling before the thought, certain passages in
_The Ancient Mariner_.

* * * * *

_The Pacha of Many Tales_ was first published in _The Metropolitan
Magazine_, 1831-1835. During its appearance Marryat printed in the same
magazine (in 1833) a drama, _The Monk of Seville_, of which the plot is
almost exactly identical with _The Story of the Monk_ (p. 44). "Port
Royal Tom," the shark, and his Government pension, also appear in _Jacob
Faithful_, Chap. XXV.

_The Pacha of Many Tales_ is here printed, with a few corrections, from
the second edition in 3 vols. A.K. Newman & Co., 1844.

R.B.J