t upon it, signed "T.F.W." and sent to the _Times_ from
Cambridge, October 27th, 1892?--

"... a poet so studious of fitness of language as Tennyson would
hardly, I suspect, have thrown off such words on such an occasion
haphazard. If the analogy is to be inexorably criticised, may it
not be urged that, having in his mind not the mere passage 'o'er
life's solemn main,' which we all are taking, with or without
reflection, but the near approach to an unexplored ocean beyond
it, he was mentally assigning to the pilot in whom his confidence
was fast the _status_ of the navigator of old days, the
sailing-master, on whose knowledge and care crews and captains
engaged in expeditions alike relied? Columbus himself married the
daughter of such a man, _un piloto Italiano famoso navigante_.
Camoens makes the people of Mozambique offer Vasco da Gama a
_piloto_ by whom his fleet shall be deftly (_sabiamente_)
conducted across the Indian Ocean. In the following century
(1520-30) Sebastian Cabot, then in the service of Spain,
commanded a squadron which was to pass through the Straits of
Magellan to the Moluccas, having been appointed by Charles V.
Grand Pilot of Castile. The French still call the mates of
merchant vessels--that is, the officers who watch about, take
charge of the deck--_pilotes_, and this designation is not
impossibly reserved to them as representing the _pilote
hauturier_ of former times, the scientific guide of ships _dans
la haute mer_, as distinguished from the _pilote cotier_, who
simply hugged the shore. The last class of pilot, it is almost
superfluous to observe, is still with us and does take our ships,
inwards or outwards, across the bar, if there be one, and does no
more. The _hauturier_ has long been replaced in all countries by
the captain, and it must be within the experience of some of us
that when outward bound the captain as often as not has been the
last man to come on board. We did not meet him until the ship,
which until his arrival was in the hands of the _cotier_, was
well out of harbour. Then our _cotier_ left us."

Prodigious!

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Note, Oct. 21, 1893.--The nuisance revived again when Mr.
Nettleship the younger perished on Mont Blanc. And again, the friend
of Lowe and Nettleship, the great Master of Balliol, had hardly go