Chapter 41

A MAN-OF-WAR LIBRARY.

Nowhere does time pass more heavily than with most men-of-war's-men
on board their craft in harbour.

One of my principal antidotes against _ennui_ in Rio, was reading.
There was a public library on board, paid for by government, and
intrusted to the custody of one of the marine corporals, a little,
dried-up man, of a somewhat literary turn. He had once been a clerk
in a post-office ashore; and, having been long accustomed to hand over
letters when called for, he was now just the man to hand over books.
He kept them in a large cask on the berth-deck, and, when seeking a
particular volume, had to capsize it like a barrel of potatoes. This
made him very cross and irritable, as most all librarians are. Who had
the selection of these books, I do not know, but some of them must have
been selected by our Chaplain, who so pranced on Coleridge's "_High
German horse_."

Mason Good's Book of Nature--a very good book, to be sure, but
not precisely adapted to tarry tastes--was one of these volumes;
and Machiavel's Art of War--which was very dry fighting; and a
folio of Tillotson's Sermons--the best of reading for divines,
indeed, but with little relish for a main-top-man; and Locke's
Essays--incomparable essays, everybody knows, but miserable reading
at sea; and Plutarch's Lives--super-excellent biographies, which pit
Greek against Roman in beautiful style, but then, in a sailor's
estimation, not to be mentioned with the _Lives of the Admirals_;
and Blair's Lectures, University Edition--a fine treatise on rhetoric,
but having nothing to say about nautical phrases, such as "_splicing
the main-brace_," "_passing a gammoning_," "_puddinging the dolphin_,"
and "_making a Carrick-bend_;" besides numerous invaluable but
unreadable tomes, that might have been purchased cheap at the auction
of some college-professor's library.

But I found ample entertainment in a few choice old authors, whom
I stumbled upon in various parts of the ship, among the inferior
officers. One was "_Morgan's History of Algiers_," a famous old
quarto, abounding in picturesque narratives of corsairs,
captives, dungeons, and sea-fights; and making mention of a cruel
old Dey, who, toward the latter part of his life, was so filled
with remorse for his cruelties and crimes that he could not stay
in bed after four o'clock in the morning, but had to rise in
great trepidation and walk off his bad feelings till breakfast
time. And another venerable octavo, containing a certificate from
Sir Christopher Wren to its authenticity, entitled "_Knox's
Captivity in Ceylon, 1681_"--abounding in stories about the
Devil, who was superstitiously supposed