We have already particularised her works: their dates of publication are, we think, as follows: THE CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS, -1780. THE RECESS; or, A Tale of other Times;-1784. A HERMIT'S TALE,-1787. ALMEYDA, a Tragedy, 1796. No. IX. JOSEPH MARRYATT, ESQ. M. P. FOR THE BOROUGH OF SANDWICH; CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE OF LLOYD'S; CHIEF IN THE FIRM OF SIR WILLIAM KAYE'S AND SIR CHARLES PRICE'S BANK; AND COLONIAL AGENT FOR THE ISLAND OF GRENADA. AMONGST the many highly respectable names which it is the province of our work to record, that of Mr. Marryatt must stand conspicuous; for whilst his family and more immediate friends have lost in him an individual endeared to them by every affectionate tie, society has been deprived of one of its most valuable and upright members. The subject of the present memoir was born in the year 1757, and was descended from a highly respectable family at East Bergholt, in Suffolk. His father was an eminent physician, who practised in Lothbury. Inheriting considerable natural parts, he gave very early promise of that superior capacity which so particularly distinguished him. Having received the groundwork of a good and liberal education, he was at great pains, even in maturer life, to cultivate and improve it; for his mind seemed to be early impressed with the wisdom of that great saying of Lord Bacon, that "knowledge is power." Being intended for the general profession of a merchant, he was sent out, at an early age, to the island of Grenada; where, notwithstanding some untoward circumstances, which would have damped the ardour of many minds, and deterred them from the prosecution of such a career as he had embarked in, he laid the foundation of that intimate local knowledge of the whole West Indian Archipelago, and of its comprehensive relations both with Europe and America, which not only led to his subsequent success in life, but which gave to all his opinions connected with the concerns of those important colonies, that weight and that value which they afterwards exhibited. From the West Indies, he went, in the year 1788, for a short time to North America, and visited Boston, where he became acquainted with the family of the late Frederick Gear, Esq., an American loyalist of considerable distinction, who suffered severely, as well from the steadiness of his devoted attachment to the cause of his sovereign, in the great struggle which ended in the establishment of American independence, as from the shock which property in general was made to undergo when that remarkable event was accomplished. He married Mr. Gear's third daughter, Charlotte, by whom, his surviving relict, he has left nine children to share the splendid earnings of his well-spent life. He returned to Grenada after his marriage, where he continued to reside about a twelvemonth, but on the birth of his eldest son, in the year 1789, he revisited England, which he never afterwards quitted, except to enjoy with his family a short excursion to France, on the conclusion of the general peace in 1814. That" in the midst of life we are in death," was never more awfully evinced, than in the case of this lamented gentleman; for, though possessing by natnre a constitution remarkably strong, and a frame of body particularly robust and muscular, and apparently full of life and vigour, yet he was cut off from this transient scene of affairs, in which he had been so distinguished an actor, almost instantaneously. He was on the Sunday, the day preceding his death, in the enjoyment of perfect health, and occupied himself on the evening of that day in writing an epitaph on an old and faithful servant who had lived with him for thirty years, but who had been killed two days before by being thrown from a cart. Uniformly kind and considerate to all his domestics, Mr. Marryatt was observed to feel acutely the melancholy manner in which the unfortunate man met his death. He went on country-house at Wimbledon, and whilst in the act of writing a frank, in his office in Mansion-house-street, he fell on the floor, and instantly expired, without speaking a word. It appears from the medical report of the professional gentleman who inspected the body, that an ossification, not merely of the valves of the heart, but of the coronary vessels, or of those vessels which supply the heart itself with blood, was the immediate cause of his decease: a disease which must have insidiously run its course for some time without suspicion of its existence; and against the inroads or the attacks of which, even the present advanced state of medical knowledge presents but few and very feeble means of relief. Mr. Marryatt may be truly said to have been the founder of his own fortune, for he inherited little or no patrimonial property or estate; and it may be instructive for younger men, who are venturing on their career of commerce, to know, from the example of this highly gifted individual, that they should never be dispirited at an unsuccessful result of early commercial enterprise; for the very first five hundred pounds in the world which Mr. Marryatt possessed, and with which he embarked in the pursuits of industry, he lost; and yet there is reason to believe, that at the time of his death he was worth considerably more than six hundred thousand pounds. Living, as he did, at a time when titular distinctions were so eagerly sought, yet, in this particular, few men were less influenced than himself by the contagion of the age; his ambition was of a more noble and manly cast, for his great aim through life was to attain the proud distinction of a British merchant. Considering the many important relations by which Mr. Marryatt was connected with the world, the very great sphere over which not merely the beneficence, but the usefulness of his character and example extended, there are few men whose loss will be so severely felt, so generally deplored, and so difficult to repair, as his. Endowed with a mind of the highest order for the practical conduct of affairs, and the ready despatch of business, and possessing an almost instinctive sagacity to discern truth and to detect error, though beset with sophis try, he readily obtained, in his enlarged intercourse with society, a manifest superiority over most men with whom he came in contact; a superiority which, though not exacted, nor even craved, could not fail to be generally and tacitly conceded; and, far from any consciousness of such superiority imparting to his general deportment with others any thing repulsive or offensive, there was in all his dealings with mankind such an uprightness and sincerity in his manner, such an absence of all affectation, and withal such a manly simplicity in his character, as soon conciliated respect and won confidence. He was any thing but a man of theoretical habits, for he seemed to despise speculation where it did not lead to action, or where it could not be made subservient to honourable and virtuous purposes. With a mind enriched by the study of the best writers in his own language, he composed with no inconsiderable ability and success himself: but even his literary attainments, extensive as they were, were all of the solid and the useful kind, rather than of the dazzling and the ornamental. Firm in all his resolves, inflexible in the pursuit of his object where he felt the motives of his conduct to be conscientiously just, he had a spirit of perseverance, an unshaken fortitude, to accomplish whatever he undertook, from which no disappointment could divert, nor any opposition deter him. It is not, therefore, armed as he was with these enviable qualifications, to be at all wondered at that he was more generally successful in all his pursuits than most of his contemporaries. An ardent lover of the political constitution of his country, and sensibly alive to the blessings which that constitution is calculated every where to impart, Mr. Marryatt wished to see its happy effects extended; but he uniformly, in public life, placed himself in the breach to oppose what appeared to him to be wild and speculative plans for bettering the condition of his fellow-creatures; - plans which, in his opinion, unless exposed in all their deformity, must be productive of the most ruinous consequences. Conceiving (with what justice it is not the province of the biographer to determine) that a great |