Excerpt from Jacob Faithful: The Mission, or Scenes in Africa Jacob faithf UL is the first of a trio of novels which Captain Marryat wrote in the course of the year 1834, the other two being Mr. Midshipman Easy and Japhet in Search of a Father. They did not appear consecutively in three-volume form, for the collection of stories entitled The Pacha of Many Tales was the immediate successor of Jacob Faithful, while the publication of Midshipman Easy and J aphet was deferred until 1836. Nevertheless the pages of the Metropolitan Magazine bore witness during the course of 1834 to the enormous industry of our author, perhaps accounted for by the expense to which he had been put in standing for Tower Hamlets, as already narrated in the introduction to Peter Simple. Now that Captain Marryat is really launched on his literary career, he has no time or inclination to quarrel with his critics, or to give us those personal disquisitions as to his motives and his mean ings which appeared in the earlier volumes. He goes in a straightforward way to the execution of his business, occupied solely with the adventures of his hero, and never allowing the course of his narrative to be embarrassed with explanatory or exculpatory passages. Moreover, he has learnt better than before the principles of his profession his object is to interest the reader and carry out his novelistic design - the result being that Jacob Faithful is, from a technical standpoint, one of the best of his books, now and again reminding us of Smollett, and in the Opinion of some critics representing a high-water mark in Marryat's literary career. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.