Author, U: Quarterly Review, Vol. 54

Excerpt from The Quarterly Review, Vol. 54: July and September, 1835

You were yourself employed by his Majesty's Government in a voyage of observation, were you not t - yes.-you communicated the results of that voyage to the King's Government i - Immediately. You published the result t - The Admiralty published the charts that arose from the survey; I published a little description myself.-can you state to the Committee any pecuniary circumstances connected with the result of that voyage't - There were no pecuniary circum stances about it. I certainly received no public money for doing it, and my little narrative I gave to a bookseller, as I did not think that materials acquired in the king's service ought to be sold; at least, I should not have felt comfortable in making money by them.' Ibid. P. 22.

But enough of these not very agreeable matters preliminary. Notwithstanding the bulk of the knight's book, a summary of his voyage need not cost us many pages; for though its duration was long, the incidents were few, and the results are next to nothing. Had he, on his arrival, published a small octave volume, detailing the toils and sufferings of his band - their cares and anxieties - their hopes and disappointments - their domestic economy and mode of employing their time in the long and irksome nights of four successive winters - and their la borious land journeys, the most harassing and fatiguing of all he might have furnished a powerfully interesting, though painful narrative, which would have been in the hands of every one; but his cumbersome quarto, in the form of a journal, reiterating the same uninteresting kind of objects through 740 huge pages, is enough to set the most resolute reader at defiance. It is whispered about that the Captain has endeavoured to enliven matters by pro curing the aid of a practised embroiderer of periods - viz. One Dr. M'culloch, who has (or had) some little reputation as a writer for the encyclopedias -this is very probable - there are many signs of patchwork in the performance - but the panni are more gaudy than beautiful, and at best they but make the coarse drug get of the original manufacturer look more dingy.

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