THE DOG FIEND OR SNARLEY YOW BY CAPTAIN MARRYAT ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. W. HAYES, A.R.C.A. INTRODUCTION BY W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D. LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL 1897 (Author's Edition) CAPTAIN MARRYAT, unlike Lord Beaconsfield, was, so far as his romantic interests were concerned, rarely on the side of the angels. It has been remarked with regard to many of his previous novels that he viewed smuggling with a lenient eye; in "The Dog Fiend; or, Snarleyyow," he combines in one his tenderness for the smugglers with his sympathies for the Jacobite cause. The plot of his novel is concerned with the events in English history which occupied the year 1699, at a time when William of Nassau had for some years been on the British throne, and peace had been concluded between England with its allies, and France. James, defeated and disgraced, was still engaged at St. Germain's in nefarious plots against the House of Orange; and the reigning Protestant monarch, there can be little doubt, held his position in these islands with a somewhat precarious tenure. Half of his subjects were more or less deeply implicated in conspiracies to overthrow the succession; the other half, although warm supporters of Protestantism, and perfectly convinced in their minds that the return of James would be the ruin of their country, accepted the Dutch prince somewhat as a pis aller-in default of something better. No one liked the predominance of the Dutch, however much they recognised the personal qualities of William III. And Captain Marryat is no doubt true to the true novelistic instinct, when he makes all his characters who have any spice of heroism or gallantry warm-hearted and generous adherents of the Jacobite cause. To associate the game of la haute politique with the ordinary avocations of the smuggling fraternity at Black Gang Chine, was a stroke of art which gives interest to the novel, and at the present day, at all events, does not much disturb our political conscience. For the adherents of the Orange dynasty, whatever other sterling traits of character they may have possessed, were assuredly not romantic personages. In the third chapter, the author shows us at once that in "Snarleyyow" he intends to be a partisan. "The king," he says, "occasionally passed his time in Holland among his Dutch countrymen, and the English and Dutch fleets, which but a few years before were engaging with such an obstinacy of courage, had lately sailed together and turned their guns against the French. William, like all those Continental princes who have been called to the English throne, showed much favour to his own countrymen, and England was overrun with Dutch favourites, Dutch courtiers, and peers of Dutch extraction. He would not even part with his Dutch Guards, and was at issue with the Commons of England on that very account. .. Dutch officers and seamen who could not be employed in their own marine, were appointed in the English vessels to the prejudice of our own countrymen." Lieutenant Vanslyperken, the villain of the story, is described as a near relation of King William's own nurse, and for that reason, is not only employed in a Government cutter, the Yung frau, to intercept French smuggling, but must also be expected to exhibit such detestable characteristics of cruelty, deceit, and treachery, as would consort with his dubious and unpopular extraction. There is nothing this man will not do to gain his ends. He will lie, and cheat, and bully, do his best to become a murderer, betray, should occasion serve, the very cause to which he was supposed to be attached, and be most justly hung in the sequel at the yard-arm of his own vessel. And by his side figures as a worthy companion in crime his favourite cur, Snarleyyow, popularly supposed to be a limb of the devil, a miscreant with nine lives, which is always going to be killed, and perpetually escapes, until at last, in company with his master, he obtains the due reward for his career. Both the human and the animal villains are equally mean and despicable, unheroic in their actions, cowards at heart, marvellous combinations of littleness and success. Nor is it Vanslyperken and Snarleyyow alone who, because of their lineage and ancestry, are proved worthy of all contempt; nearly all the Dutch characters are ipso facto bad-even Corporal Van Spitter, despite |