As it is not recorded that Marryat had, like Arthur Pendennis, any George Warrington to guide his literary beginnings, he deserves all the more credit for his spontaneous appreciation of the advantage to be obtained by playing Bacon off against Bungay.
“The offer from another quarter,” which was thus quoted to hasten the decision of Mr. Bentley, was the editorship of the _Metropolitan_, which he took in 1832, and held until he left England for Brussels. He either received as part payment, or purchased a proprietary right in the magazine, which he afterwards sold to Saunders and Otley for £1,050. For the next four or five years the _Metropolitan_ had the major part of Marryat’s time and work. He had, according to his wish, a nautical sub editor, the E. Howard, who wrote that strange book, “Rattlin the Reefer,” which still continues to be catalogued with Marryat’s own stories. There were contributors to be hunted up--kept up to the mark, more or less successfully--and occasionally soothed down--Thomas Moore for one, who wrote in agony to insist on the necessity there was that he should see his proofs, and also to make monetary arrangements. Of course there were quarrels to be fought out, for in those days no periodical was able to exist without its regular battle. But in the midst of these forgetable and forgotten things--Marryat contributed to the _Metropolitan_ five of the best of his books. “Newton Forster” appeared in 1832, “Peter Simple” in 1833; and in 1834 no less than three--“Jacob Faithful,” “Mr. Midshipman Easy,” and “Japhet in Search of a Father.” Not a little of what, to apply nautical language, may be called dunnage appeared with and after these--a comedy, a tragedy (of neither of which does Marryat seem to have thought highly), and a host of miscellaneous papers collected under the title of “Olla Podrida”--these last being only what Marryat frankly called his “Diary on the Continent”--namely, “very good magazine stuff.”