For delightful
reading the lover of sea stories is referred to Best's account of
Frobisher's second voyage--to Richard Chancellor's chronicle of the
same period--to Hakluyt, an immortal classic--and to Purchas'
"Pilgrimage."
But from the earliest growth of the art of fiction the sea was frankly
accepted as a stirring theme, comparatively rarely handled because
voyages were fewer then, and the subject still largely unknown. To the
general reader it may seem a rather astounding fact that in "Robinson
Crusoe" we have the first classic of this period and in "Colonel Jack"
another classic of much the same type. These two stories by the
immortal Defoe may be accepted as the foundation of the sea-tale in
literary art.
A century, however, was to elapse before the sea-tale came into its
own. It was not until a generation after Defoe that Smollett, in
"Roderick Random," again stirred the theme into life. Fielding in his
"Voyage to Lisbon" had given some account of a personal experience, but
in the general category it must be set down as simply episodal.
Foster's "Voyages," a translation from the German published in England
at the beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, a
compendium of monumental importance, continued the tradition of Hakluyt
and Purchas.
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