Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/203

 AND HIS WORK. 99 literary attainments. But every line he has written is full of i788-«2 interest for us at the present day ; although the reader must be prepared to make large allowances in the matter of gram- mar and spellings while there is not even a suspicion of style Plain about his compositions. Perhaps they are all the more interesting on that account, because there is evidently nothing artificial or theatrical about them. There is no diplomacy in his language ; he says exactly what he thinks, and says it in the very words he might have used in con- versation. The result is that his despatches have all the force of an original narrative, and the story he tells is as well told as we need wish it to be. If we compare his writings with the polished editions of them published in such works as Phillip^s Voyage and other compilations of Evaporation the same kind, we feel at once how much they have lost in °'*°*®^"'- point of liveliness and truth to nature. The story, for instance, told by himself of his interviews with the natives at Broken Bay, is quite a different piece of work from the same story re-written with editorial point and precision of language.* A naval oflScer who had been at sea from the age of Limited sixteen could hardly be expected to distinguish himself out- SffiS^or $ide the ordinary work of his profession. Although it is **^*^°*^^**"* to look after the cattle.— Journal, p. 202. He was so thoroughly practical that, although he surveyed Port Jackson, he had not a word to say for it as regards its attractions, his attention being apparently absorbed by the natives whom he met along its shores. Surgeon White records that when Phillip returned to Botany Bay from his first visit to Port Jackson, he and his friends wore " full of praises on the extent and excellence of the harbour." And his own impression is thus stated : — '* Port Jackson I believe to be, without exception, the finest harbour in the universe, and at the same time the most secure." But he had nothing further to say in commendation of the country ; on the contrary, he wrote a very depressing letter about it from Sydney Cove in April, 1790 ; post, p. 506. in Phillip^H Voyage, pp. 76-84. Phillip might have offered the same excuse for his literary deficiencies that Captain Cook did, when, in concluding the introductory discourse to his Second Voyage, he desired the reader "to excuse the inaccuracies of style," and to recollect that "it is the production of a man who has not had the advantage of much school education, but who has been constantly at sea from his vouth ; and though, with the assistance of a few ffood friends, he has passed through all the stations belonging to a seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade to a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters." Digitized by Google
 * Compare Phillip's despatch, post, pp. 283^6, with the reproduction of it