Basil Hall, writer of travels, was born in Edinburgh, 31st December 1788. His father, Sir James Hall of Dunglass, baronet (1761–1832), was a chemist and the founder of experimental geology. Basil entered the navy in 1802, and in 1816 commanded a sloop in the naval escort of Lord Amherst’s mission to Peking, visiting Corea, as described in “A Voyage of Discovery to Corea” (1818). He also wrote “Journal on the Coast of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in 1820–22;” “Travels in North America in 1827–28;” and “Fragments of Voyages and Travels” (1831–40). “Schloss Hainfeld” (1836) was a semi-romance, and “Patchwork” (1841) a collection of tales and sketches. He died insane in Haslar Hospital, Gosport, 11th Sept. 1844.

Personal

  I have met with Basil Hall, and was never more surprised; I looked for a bold weather-beaten tar, but I found a gentleman, with a soft voice and soft manners, pouring out small-talk in half whispers to ladies; I believe, however, he is very estimable.

General

  We think the author’s style uniformly happy, and peculiarly well suited to this species of composition. He is a discriminating observer, his topics are selected with good judgment and good taste, his language is terse, appropriate, and varied; sometimes perhaps a little too much studied, but never stiff nor ponderous. In short, we could hardly name a better model of journal-writing, than the little volume, whose contents we have just been reviewing; and whoever would read for the double purpose of instruction and amusement, will find themselves richly compensated for the time they may give to its perusal.

  It is, indeed, with considerable diffidence, that we express the opinion, that the style of Captain Hall errs in the extreme of plainness. It is frequently slovenly, and still more frequently incorrect. His pages contain a good deal of bad grammar, and several words, which are neither English nor American…. His work will do considerable mischief, not in America, but in England. It will furnish food to the appetite for detraction, which reigns there toward this country. It will put a word in the mouths of those, who vilify because they hate, and hate because they fear us. Captain Hall is too brave for fear, and too generous for hate; but he has undesignedly played into the hands of those who are neither. This matter deserves his consideration; and as he will probably revise his work for the correction of its numerous faults in a literary point of view, the consequence of the haste in which it was written, we must recommend to him, in the calmness of afterthought, to review his whole system of thought and feeling toward this country.

  Captain Hall’s book (and himself too, by the way) has put the Union in a blaze from one end to the other. I never on any occasion heard so general an expression of contempt and detestation as that which follows his name. This hubbub made me very desirous of seeing his book, but I am glad to say I did not succeed till after my first volume was finished, and most of the notes for the second collected. I thus escaped influence of any kind from the perusal. A few days ago, however, I was at Philadelphia, and there I got his very strange work. I had one or two long and interesting conversations with Lee (the publisher), who knew him well, and, from one or two anecdotes he gave me, it appears that the “agreeable captain” was under writing orders as surely as he ever was, or hopes to be again, under sailing orders. He would have done quite enough service to the cause he intends to support if he had painted things exactly as they are, without seeking to give his own eternal orange-tawny color to every object. His blunders are such as clearly to prove he never, or very rarely, listened to the answers he received—for we must not suppose that he knew one thing and printed another. Do not suppose, however, that I am coming home fraught with the Quixotic intention of running a tilt with Captain Hall. My little book will not be of him, but of all I have seen, and of much that he did not.

  That he has a keen, quick eye, voracious curiosity, restless activity, a gay temperament, and an upright, virtuous mind—no man who has perused his previous lucubrations can doubt. That he is apt to see one side of a thing so vividly as to forget that there is another side at all—that his complete satisfaction with himself and everything about him, though unaccompanied with the slightest shade of cynicism, is too prominent not to move now and then a passing smile—and that his sincerity cannot always excuse his dogmatism, are facts which his warmest admirers seem to admit. That he tells a story with clearness and energy—describes manners and scenery with very considerable skill and effect—seizes the strong points of a moral or political question, in general, with ready shrewdness, and delivers his opinions on all subjects fairly and frankly—writes in a manly, unaffected style, rough but racy—and makes us feel throughout that we are in the hands of a practical man, clever, humorous, kind-hearted, who has read much, seen more, studied and enjoyed life in a hundred spheres and shapes, a staunch and ardent lover of his country, and in all respects a gentleman—these are statements to which we presume the Captain’s bitterest political opponent would hardly refuse his imprimatur.

  Wit is not to be measured, like broadcloth, by the yard. Easy writing, as the adage says, and as we all know, is apt to be very hard reading. This brings to our recollection a conversation, in the presence of Captain Basil Hall, in which some allusion having been made to the astounding amount of Scott’s daily composition, the literary argonaut remarked, “There was nothing astonishing in all that, and that he did as much himself nearly every day before breakfast.” Some one of the company unkindly asked “whether he thought the quality was the same.” It is the quality, undoubtedly, which makes the difference.