Links to some Melville reviews and notices in the New York Tribune and New York Herald

Items below are all available online at the great site Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, co-produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. So far there's nothing in the way of a critical notice that I can find about The Confidence-Man (1857) in either the Herald or the Tribune. Most but not all of the critical notices below are transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (CR), edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. As mentioned in the previous melvilliana post Early favorable notices of Typee and Omoo, CR lacks the New York Herald items about Typee and Omoo. Also not listed in CR: the notice and excerpts of "Israel Potter" in Putnam's, given in the New York Herald on August 6, 1854.

• TYPEE - New York Daily Tribune - April 4, 1846; signed with star * mark = Margaret Fuller. 

• DEATH OF GANSEVOORT MELVILLE - New York Herald - June 4, 1847; with mention of Herman Melville "the author of an extraordinary book called 'Typee.' "
  Nominates N. P. Willis to fill the suddenly vacant post of Secretary of Legation in London.

• TYPEE - New York Herald - April 28, 1846; notice headed "THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE"

• OMOO - New York Herald - May 24, 1847

• OMOO - New York Daily Tribune - June 21, 1847; signed "H. G." = Horace Greeley 

• Married "In Boston, on the 4th inst., by the Rev. Dr. Young, Mr. HERMAN MELVILLE, of New York, to Miss ELIZABETH K. SHAW, daughter of Chief Justice Shaw, of the former place." --New York Herald - August 6, 1847

[TYPEE AND OMOO - New York Daily Tribune Supplement - October 2, 1847;
Signed "W. O. B." = William O. Bourne]

• Macready and Forrest - New York Herald - May 9, 1849

• MARDI - New York Daily Tribune - May 10, 1849; signed "R." = George Ripley 

• REDBURN - New  York Daily Tribune - December 1, 1849; signed "R." = George Ripley

• WHITE-JACKET New York Daily Tribune - April 5, 1850; signed "R." = George Ripley

• MOBY-DICK - New York Daily Tribune - November 22, 1851; unsigned but attributed in Melville scholarship to George Ripley, Tribune literary editor from 1849 to 1880.  

• PIERRE - New York Herald - July 29, 1852; early negative notice of "repulsive" gothic plot: "Mr. Melville has written himself out."

• PIERRE - New York Herald - September 18, 1852; unsigned.

• "CHARLES LE CHAUVE" in the New York Herald - September 4, 1853; Notices among Berkshire celebrities "Herman Melville who, if he would understand to write about the things of this world, would be as popular as Dickens, but whose later works are such that neither gods nor men, nor columns can tolerate. He lives at Pittsfield, and has a beautiful place there."

• ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's magazine for July 1854 - New York Herald July 16, 1854 
• ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for August reviewed with excerpts on George III and Benjamin Franklin - New York Herald - August 6, 1854 
• ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for September - New York Herald August 27, 1854 
• ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for March - New York Herald March 11, 1855;
  "terminates gloomily" but "the best of Herman Melville's novels."

• THE PIAZZA TALES - The New York Tribune June 23, 1856

[THE CONFIDENCE-MAN - ???]

• BATTLE-PIECES - New York Herald - September 3, 1866

• CLAREL - New York Tribune - June 16, 1876

HERMAN MELVILLE'S FUNERAL - New York Tribune - October 1, 1891

Early, favorable notices of Typee and Omoo in The New York Herald

These two items are not transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews. Available online via the Library of Congress site, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. 

From The New York Herald, April 28, 1846:

THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE.—A very singular and extraordinary book has just been published, by Herman Melville, brother to Gansevoort Melville, Secretary of the American legation in London, describing a captivity which he underwent on one of the South Sea Islands. Some of the scenes are most exciting, equalling those depicted by the celebrated Defoe. The book is written with great elegance and perspicuity, and would appear at first to be fabulous, but we are assured, from the best sources, that the book describes, throughout, nothing but sober facts. It has received a variety of criticisms from the London journals, and also by those in this country, and some appear to doubt whether it is not fictitious.

It is certainly one of the more interesting books that has come from the press this year.
--New York Herald, April 28, 1846

From The New York Herald, May 24, 1847:

New Books.

OMOO, by Herman Melville, author of Typee—Harper and Brothers.—This work is destined to create as much excitement in the literary world as Typee did. It is full of incidents and adventures among the natives of the South Sea Islands, admirably connected, and written in an easy off hand manner that charms the reader. We will be very much mistaken if this work do not reach half a dozen editions. We cannot refrain from giving the following graphic description of an outbreak of the crew of the ship on which our author was on board.

OUTBREAK OF THE CREW.

[Excerpts all of Omoo, Chapter 24 from "The purpose of Bembo had been made known to the men generally by the watch…." to "Indeed, no one but Jermin could have prevented this murder."]

His adventures among the natives are drawn in the same masterly manner. 
--New York Herald, May 24, 1847

"England and America" - unsigned article in The Literary World, June 19, 1847

C. F. Hoffman / painted by H. Inman; engraved by J. Sartain.
Library of Congress

In Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City, Edward L. Widmer cites the unsigned editorial on "England and America" in The Literary World for June 19, 1847, noting the suggestive connection between the description of the English as a "strange insular ishmaelitish people" and the language of Loomings in Moby-Dick. The distinguished historian attributes the "England and America" piece to Evert A. Duyckinck as presumed editor. Duyckinck was "rabidly American" enough (according to W. A. Jones) for the patriotic endeavor. And I see the author of "England and America" liked the word "Jesuitical" which Duyckinck would use in reviewing Melville's Pierre. It's worth pointing out, however, that Evert A. Duyckinck was not editor when "England and America" was published in The Literary World.

Charles Fenno Hoffman took over from Duyckinck as editor of The Literary World  beginning in May 1847.

New York Courier and Enquirer - April 30, 1847

Hoffman served as editor of The Literary World from May 1847 to October 1848.

In the early part of 1847 Mr. Duyckinck undertook the editorship of the Literary World, a weekly journal, designed as a vehicle for the best criticism on books and art, and the independent and impartial treatment of all topics relating to the cultivation of letters. The paper was hardly established before he resigned the editorial control to Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman; but, about a year later, resumed it in connection with his brother George, then just returned from an extended tour in Europe, and by their united efforts it was carried forward with a single eye to the truest interests of a true literature. In the opening article of October 7, 1848, the number of the journal which marked the resumption of its control by Mr. Duyckinck, he concludes a striking summary of the aims of its conductors...." --Evert Augustus Duyckinck: His Life, Writings and Influence

Excerpts from Melville's Omoo had appeared during Duyckinck's short first reign, but the full and favorable review of Omoo was published in the May 8, 1847 issue of The Literary World when Hoffman was editor.

Review of Omoo - The Literary World - May 8, 1847

As editor of The Literary World Charles Fenno Hoffman had just reviewed Omoo. Maybe Hoffman also wrote arrestingly of an "insular ishmaelitish people" in the editorial on "England and America." The main job of the June 19, 1847 editorial (whoever wrote it) was to defend and argue against British criticisms of supposed atrocities committed by American soldiers during the Mexican War.

Transcribed below from The Literary World 1.20 (June 19, 1847):

Miscellany.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.—“It is always more in sorrow than in anger (says a very English writer, in a London weekly of May 15th), that we regard the misdeeds of the Americans. Owning with them a common origin, connected with them by the ties of blood, we are sensible of a participation in their disgraces. Their misconduct is a reproach to the whole Anglo-Saxon family.”

The feeling here indicated upon the part of the British branch of Anglo-Saxonhood towards the Alleghanic type of the same race, is (much to our sympathizing regret) troubling the heart of England exceedingly in this her latter day. Those who deem it hypocritical, or who think that our worthy sister of Albion frets herself unfruitfully about the evil doings of her brother of Alleghan, should remember how often we too have recoiled in horror and disgust when tracing her murderous course in India. We felt that our blood alliance with her race made us as it were co-sharers in the reproach with which mankind must visit her manifold atrocities. Let no friend of universal philanthropy, then, take exception to the tone of stupid arrogance and matchless hypocrisy, that the uncharitable and the blind of heart may insist upon detecting in the following passages from the same article.

"But chiefly on a ground higher than that of mere consanguinity do we view with regret those acts, by which the fair fame of America is tarnished, and her name become a by-word among nations."

Now do let the irritated American, who kindles with wrath at this suggestion of his country’s name becoming “a by-word among nations,” let him only reflect how at the very moment, “on higher grounds than that of mere consanguinity,” his indignation is roused at every arrival from England, when he reads of the despicable meanness with which the awful consequences of her centuries of flagitious crime in Ireland are met by our Anglo-Saxon brothers of the isles. Let him reflect, we say, upon this, and while he scouts at the free British Constitution as a hollow mockery, and mourns for outraged humanity generally, his mind will be in a state of sympathetic condolence with his Anglo-Saxon brother, as he peruses the following plaint in continuation of the above:

“We lament her crimes, principally because they bring discredit on the principles of her constitution; because they are a scandal to the cause of liberty; because they give occasion to its enemies to triumph. We see how readily they are seized upon by the advocates of despotism, and held up as exhibiting the failure of the great experiment of free institutions. The American system of government is a glorious theory, of which, by the opponents of popular progress, these delinquencies are adduced in scornful refutation. To American dishonesty, and American slavery, the absolutist and bigot point in confirmation of their creed. They cite Lynch Law as the consequence of trusting a people with freedom. A like handle has been furnished to them by the selfishness and rapacity which dictated the Mexican invasion; and still further have their hands been strengthened by the mode in which it has been carried on.”

A mode we Americans are driven to confess not much better than that pursued by our Anglo Saxon brothers towards the Chinese, a few years since, and almost as painful as that which they now “carry on” towards the Caffres. Alas! our English friend undervalues the tie of “mere consanguinity,” for naught but that bond could make two nations thus sympathetic in their conduct, and their humane views of that conduct, when its consequences become irreparable. But let us follow our clear-breasted, liberal-viewed brother, a little further:

"In general, the atrocities of what is called Civilized warfare have been modified by some sentiment of humanity. Their inherent murderousness has been palliated by a certain show of mercy, a qualified forbearance, under the names of honor and chivalry. There was a mutual agreement that men should confine themselves to the slaughtering of fellow men. It was understood that the work of butchery should not extend to the massacre of unoffending women and children. To spare neither sex nor age was a barbarity of which none were supposed capable but savages. Did we merely know that the cruelties enacted at Vera Cruz had been committed by Americans, we might not be surprised. We should conclude that their perpetrators were the ferocious tribes who scalp and roast their victims alive. The wild Indians, who dance round their victims at the stake, might be judged capable of warring upon Womanhood and infancy. But no! The destroyers of the weak and the defenceless, the besiegers of boudoirs, they who bombarded drawing-rooms and nurseries, were American citizens."

Full as much at least as those, who the other day rained their grape-shot from “that bridge” upon the flying SIKHS, until the river beneath ran blood, were English subjects—were the same men, whose brutal and fiend-like deeds at Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo sicken with horror each reader of Napier‘s historic page.*

[Footnote: *Badajoz, Ciudad-Rodrigo, and we may add St. Sebastian, "where," as Alison relates, "while the wretched inhabitants, driven from house to house, as the conflagration devoured their dwellings, were soon huddled together in one quarter, where they fell a prey to the unbridled passions of the soldiery. Attempts were at first made by the British officers to extinguish the flames, but they proved vain amid the general confusion which prevailed; and soon the soldiers broke into the burning houses, pillaged them of the most valuable articles they contained, and rolling numerous spirit casks into the streets, with frantic shouts emptied them of their contents, till vast numbers sank down like savages motionless. some lifeless, from the excess. Carpets, tapestry, beds, silks and satins, wearing apparel, jewelry, watches, and every thing valuable, were scattered about upon the bloody pavements, while fresh bundles of them were continually thrown down from the windows above, to avoid the flames, and caught with demoniac yells by the drunken crowds beneath. Amid these scenes of disgraceful violence and unutterable Woe, nine tenths of the once happy smiling town of St. Sebastian was reduced to ashes; and what has affixed a yet darker blot on the character of the victors. deeds of cruelty were perpetrated hitherto rare in the British army, and which cause the historian to blush, not merely for his country, but for his species."]

“Let the star-spangled banner henceforth advance to the appropriate battle-cry of a war-whoop. Let the American eagle moult its feathers and assume the plumage of a vulture. We repeat, that it is with deep sorrow that we are thus constrained to speak "

We have not the slightest doubt of it. All English writers upon this country are afflicted with the same “deep sorrow;” and from the days of Fearon and Faux, and the old Quarterly Review, in Gifford’s day, we never knew one of them that spoke, unless he were “thus constrained to speak.” The thing is natural enough; Anglo-Saxon brothers are just like any other brothers. It is the duty of the elder always to look after the younger; and though old John may himself

“The primrose path of murderous dalliance tread,”

he is by no means discharged from his natural duty in scoring young Jonathan when following in the same gory trail.

But there seems to us something or other unsound or wrong, something cloudy and obscure somewhere in the whole matter. In short (we don't want to startle the age by the announcement, but we must make it in a quiet way), we believe the essence of Mr. Douglas Jerrold’s furious article is to be found in the greatest humbug of this era of leviathan humbugs; we mean the humbug of ANGLO-SAXON-ISM, and that idea of “kindred nations" which the writers of England are trying to fasten upon this country like a barnacle.

Now, as it happens, the Celtic races are so largely represented among us, that when we add to our population derived from this stock the vast accessions we have formerly received, and still continue to receive, from Continental Europe, a shrewd prophet might urge, that the Celt is here again to grow into ascendency and become the instrument, in the hands of Providence, to avenge the wrongs of the world upon the Anglo-Saxon.

It is perhaps safe to say that scarcely more than one half our people are of Anglo-Saxon descent. Of these, not one third are of un-mixed English origin, and this English origin derived about equally from the Puritans of Cromwell’s wars, and the Cavaliers of Charles II.’s day, make us about as much akin in moral and intellectual character and physical appearance, to the Englishman of the present Anno Domini, as the John Bull of to-day is to the Englishman of the days of King John. Our forefathers were plucked from amid that strange insular ishmaelitish people by the hand of Providence itself, and placed upon this broad continent, as a nucleus around which the representatives of all the races of Europe might rally, to form a new and peculiar branch of the human family. And when the vicissitudes of an ever-changing climate had done its most in bringing out new developments of temperament; and when countless physical and moral circumstances, acting with stringent and consentaneous effect upon scattered communities, had measurably banded us into a homogeneous people, the same Providence, at the expiration,—not of forty years wandering, but of more than a century and a half of trial in the wilderness—called us to take our place among the nations of the earth; called us as a People to be responsible at His bar with other nations and to meet his judgments here and hereafter as he has proclaimed them to the nations, long ere the cosmopolite’s infidel doctrine of mixing up mankind in one general responsibility, was preached by humanitarian bigotry. England need not fear being called upon to hear our “reproach” at that bar, and may heaven in its mercy forbid that our so called kindred blood should make us the joint heirs of hers! The concentrated wickedness of our seventy years of nationhood would not fill one year’s record of her crimes against the human family within the same period of time. Why, put the horrors of this unhappy and regretted Mexican war at the worst, there is not a tale of slaughter, or even an invented story of misery, that comes from beyond the Rio Bravo, to compare in horror with the details of wretchedness which each packet brings across the Atlantic from the fated island, which England has governed for centuries. No Mexican village, where American arms have once attained sway, no province, where American rule has been dominant, has suffered as has each county of Ireland, from Cromwell's day till this. Were every rood of land in Mexico subjected to our rule to-morrow, as Ireland has been to that of England for centuries, neither we, nor any other people upon God’s earth, but that purely selfish Anglo-Saxon race, would fold our arms, while the conquered land withered in famine and pestilence. And it is this race of heartless egotists which in its unholy might has stalked through groaning India, like some fabled monster, breathing fire and desolation, till these became the very atmosphere of its countless victims. It is these Anglo-Saxon scourges of the earth, that dare to hold up America to the reprobation of the nations! But we are getting in earnest and we really did not intend it, for the monstrous humbug of the thing is too gross to provoke resentment,—too flagrantly and farcically impudent to call forth serious indignation.

We must not take leave of the subject, however, without calling attention to the consistency of this ingenuous English writer, who we believe belongs to that amiable class of men, who figure in “world’s conventions,” and peace societies, and strive in their mission to "keep up the consanguinity of nations," by writing such articles as these we have commented upon, and illustrate them with letters written by the officers of one service, reflecting as follows upon the officers of another service:

“With mingled pain, humiliation, and disgust, we quote from the Liverpool Albion the following passage; the statement of an eye-witness of the transaction to which it relates :—

“ ‘ HOW VERA CRUZ WAS TAKEN.—On board H. M. S. Darling, Sacrificios, 26th of March,

1847.—Last night the town of Vera Cruz and the Castle of St. Juan de Ulloa capitulated to the Americans. The terms I cannot ascertain with certainty, but of this I am satisfied, that the latter have gained no honor in the business. It has been a dastardly aflhir on the part of the Yankees. Since the 9th inst. they have had Vera Cruz surrounded by 14,000 to 15,000 men, and, though it was only defended by 4,000, one-half of whom were militia, they dared not attack it like men,* but from a distance threw shells into it until one-fourth the town was in ashes, and a great number of women and children destroyed. The Mexicans have shown uncommon pluck. The Americans gave it out that their batteries on shore were to play only on the castle, whilst their fleet attacked it on the other side. They have not, however, had the courage to try their strength on the castle (notwithstanding their heavy fleet), but have contented themselves with ingloriously shelling helpless Vera Cruz.’ ”

[Footnote: *The writer of this precious missive would evidently have had Gen. Scott imitate Wellington‘s choice in carrying a town by storm, as a more humane process than bombarding it. Hear the Manifesto of the Spanish Junta, upon the conduct of the British troops in the city which Wellington, according to Alison, was too merciful to “shell.”

Oh wretched day! O cruel night! Pillage, assassination and rape were pushed to an incredible pitch, and the fire which broke out early in the night, after the enemy had retired to the castle, put the finishing stroke to the scene of woe. On all sides were heard cries of distress from women, who were violated without regard either to tender youth, respected family, or advanced years. Women were outraged in presence of their husbands. daughters dishonored in presence of their parents—one girl was the victim of brutality on the corpse of her mother! Other crimes more horrible still, which our pen refuses to record, were committed on that awful night. and the disorders were continued some days after, without any efficient steps being taken to arrest them. Of above six hundred houses, of which St. Sebastian consisted on the morning of the assault, there remained at the end of three days only thirty-six."]

The English “liberal,” “peace man,” “philanthropist,” “world‘s conventionist,” “cosmopolite,” &c., winds up his comments upon this letter, by declaring emphatically—

“Certainly in the capture of Vera Cruz a stroke has been inflicted upon Mexico; but as certainly that stroke has been A COWARD'S BLOW."

When one of the cleverest and most popular writers in England can, in one of its most widely circulated periodicals, speak thus indecently of a whole people, an American may make up his own mind whether or not our cousin of England does not hate us with a degree of envenomed cordiality, which, when his emissaries preach about the pursuit of arms being a folly and a madness in this age of enlightened progress, should make us remember the wolf’s Jesuitical advice to the shepherd in the fable, and keep our dogs well fed, instead of hanging them, as that silly shepherd did. For ourselves, we do not believe in the delenda est Carthago policy, and we should be very sorry to see a war with England, for we are growing a little too rapidly at present; besides, unless more gradually trained to the use of power, we might misuse it as sadly as she does, and at the same time hypocritically croak the while about the doings of some new stripling State, that is growing up to Anglo-Saxon Thug-hood in the Australian seas.

The article upon which we have commented appeared in a. literary journal, and, therefore, came legitimately within the sphere of our comments in this paper. But the London Times, of May 10th, has a column in a similar strain, and the London Spectator, of May 14th, is equally dire in its denunciations. We repeat, that if each nation is to be held up to the scorn of the world for its political outrages, we are perfectly willing that our seventy years of national existence should be contrasted side by side with that of England for the last seventy years. There is not one count in the indictment which England can prefer against us, for which we cannot furnish ten to convict her at the bar of Humanity. Nor could there be a greater proof of her dotage than her raising such a question as this, when our towns are crammed with foreign paupers, made wretched by her wars and her oppressions—the paupers—her paupers, daily fed by the people whom she so monstrously calumniates. Odious as is the Mexican war to vast numbers of the American people, the well informed among them know, that the mode in which it has been carried on is humanity itself, compared with the brutality of England’s wars; and however we may recoil at the Anglo-Saxon principles upon which that war was instituted, were they ten times as depraved, we could not be justly humiliated, in our own opinion, by the light in which humane and virtuous England pretends with such unblushing effrontery to rebuke us before the nations. 
--The Literary World Vol. 1 No. 20 - June 19, 1847

Google-digitized and available also courtesy of Hathi Trust Digital Library:

•  The Literary World Volume 1 (1847) -- original from University of Minnesota

Warm Nashville reception for Mardi

Mr. William Wales, editor of the Nashville Banner
1847 miniature by John Wood Dodge via Tennessee Portrait Project

... "Omoo" sublimated

From the Republican Banner and Nashville Whig, April 28, 1849; found in the online Historical Newspapers at Newspapers.com [issue there is mis-labeled The Tennessean]. Edited by William Wales, also "a poet, writer and co-editor of the South Western Monthly, a Nashville magazine published in 1852" (Tennessee Portrait Project).

"MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER."— This is the title of the most delightful book of its kind we have ever read. Our readers will not ha surprised at this unqualified endorsement of it, when we tell those who have not seen it, or heard of it, that the author is Herman Melville; the scenes are laid amongst the romantic islands of the Pacific, and that it is "Omoo" sublimated, if we may use the expression. It is a kind of sea-romance—a picture of all its wild wonders and startling vicissitudes, and this told in an original style, and with a vivid power which reminds one of the most thrilling passages of Carlyle.— It is as if the last named author had suddenly discarded his own field of labor and taken to the infinite sea, so quaintly are the marvels of the ocean painted—so surprising and rich are the pictured contrasts thrown together with prodigal extravagance. We counsel all to procure it without delay who wish to revel in the delights furnished by an imagination that never flags—a power of description that never wearies. It is a retreat from the cares of ordinary life—a Robinson Crusoe stroll through a region identified in the minds of every one from early childhood, with all that is most fascinating in the romance of the far-off isles of the ocean. It can be procured at the Bookstore of Mr. W. T. Berry.

Nashville notice of The Confidence-Man

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN; His Masquerade. By HERMAN MELVILLE, author of "Piazza Tales," "Omoo," "Typee," etc. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co.

The announcement of a new book from the pen of Herman Melville, is sufficient to attract attention. To those who have read Typee, and Omoo, no book authorized by Melville, can escape a reading. The subject of this work the "Confidence-man" is somewhat out of his usual vein. The scenes are taken from aboard a Mississippi steamer, and includes men and things as they occur and appear between St. Louis and New Orleans. It preserves a fine interest throughout.
--Daily Nashville Patriot - May 9, 1857

Found at the fine Library of Congress site Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

Review of Moby-Dick in The New York Tribune

"We part with the adventurous philosophical Ishmael, truly thankful that the whale did not get his head, for which we are indebted for this wildly imaginative and truly thrilling story. We think it the best production which has yet come from that seething brain, and in spite of its lawless flights, which put all regular criticism at defiance, it gives us a higher opinion of the author's originality and power than even the favorite and fragrant first-fruits of his genius, the never-to-be-forgotten Typee."

Review of Moby-Dick Sat, Nov 22, 1851 – Page 6 · New-York Tribune (New York, New York) · Newspapers.com

The unsigned Tribune review of Moby-Dick has been credited to editor Horace Greeley (by Watson G. Branch, in Herman Melville: The Critical Heritage) and, more recently (in the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Moby-Dick), to George Ripley, who served as literary editor of the Tribune from 1849 to 1880. Also attributed to Ripley in Melville scholarship: the notice of Moby-Dick in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Tribune review is transcribed at pages 383-4 in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker - Cambridge University Press, 1995; and 2009 (paperback).

The November 22, 1851 issue of The New York Tribune is also available online at Chronicling of America - Historic American Newspapers.

 

Related post:

• Moby-Dick widely praised in 1851-2
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html

Literary allusions by Gansevoort Melville, to Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott

via Hollywood Spy

In his great speech at the 1844 Jackson-fest, Gansevoort Melville compared the premature celebration of Henry Clay's victory by overconfident Whigs to eating rotten apples, counting unhatched chickens, and trying to enjoy a non-existent dinner:

"This celebration of theirs is pretty much the same thing as if some poor, hungry, starving loafer should cuddle up in a warm corner, close his eyes, shut his mouth, and eat a glorious good dinner—in imagination"

Gansevoort's ridiculous image of the homeless wretch and his fantasy-banquet alludes to a pretty well-known passage from Shakespeare's Richard II, where the banished Henry Bolingbroke contrasts the experience of real physical pain to imaginary kinds of relief which only intensify one's suffering:

O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.  --Richard II - Act 1 Scene 3

Gansevoort's "hungry, starving loafer" comically personifies Shakespeare's "hungry edge of appetite"; and the "glorious good dinner" is Shakespeare's unreal "feast," both enjoyed only in "imagination."

While Herman Melville was sailing home, his older brother was perfecting and publishing a highly allusive brand of political speech-making. Gansevoort's speech at the Nashville rally on August 15, 1844, as excerpted in the Nashville Union, was criticized in the rival Nashville Tennessean Republican Banner (September 11, 1844) for comprising "a parcel of borrowed historical illustration." In particular the Republican Banner noted Gansevoort's plagiarism of Sir Walter Scott:

His object evidently was to show off his fine speaking. He glorified Van Buren (who was defeated at Baltimore after innumerable trials) as equal in heroism to James Earl of Douglas at the Battle of Otterbourne! His narration over which locofoco editors have gloated with so much admiration, is all taken with a very slight (and most injurious) alteration and with no acknowledgment, from Scott's preface to the fine old ballad of "the Battle of Otterbourne" in the "Scottish Minstrelsy." But he was most unfortunate in his allusion to this matter. In our edition of "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," we find that the Douglas to whom he compared MR. VAN BUREN when he introduced the story,—and who raised the cry "A Dead Douglas shall win the field!"—was KILLED BY ONE OF HIS OWN MEN!

"There are that say he (Douglas) was not slain by the enemy, but by one of his own men, a GROOM OF HIS CHAMBER."

So states the historian Godscroft.

We should think there was something in this, that would have prevented our New York orator from dwelling on it with any particular complacency. We have not time to run the parallel out but was not Martin Van Buren killed by his own men? Was not "a groom of his chamber," one of his understrappers, the author of his political death? --Nashville Tennessean, September 11, 1844

Here the criticism specifically refers to the frequently reprinted Dying Douglass portion of Gansevoort Melville's Nashville speech. As alleged, Gansevoort had indeed paraphrased Godscroft via Scott in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

(As explained at the Walter Scott Educational Website, the 1802 version is the one in which "Earl Douglas is murdered by a resentful servant." Gansevoort was recalling the battlefield death described in the 1803 and later editions of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.) Gansevoort was also quoting verbatim from Scott's narrative of "The Battle of Otterburn" in the first volume of Tales of a Grandfather.  Only the Tales of a Grandfather version has the exact words Gansevoort reportedly spoke about the "tradition in our family that a dead Douglas" should/shall "win a field."

On a somewhat more positive note, the Nashville Republican Banner did grudgingly acknowledge that in subsequent visits to Nashville Gansevoort had developed a better style of delivery:

"he has decidedly improved in his rhetorical displays, under the criticism of the Press, since he made his first appearance at the Democratic Convention Ground. It is true he still can only skim the surface of questions, but his manner and manners are greatly amended: He has abated much of his preposterous gesticulation and mincing lady's maid tones..."

--Nashville Republican Banner, mis-labeled "The Tennessean" at Newspapers.com
Edited then by Donald Macleod.

Found on Newspapers.com

David Samuels on Melville as all-American fraudster

Over time, the injury that Melville did to his own sense of truthfulness in pursuit of an audience exploded into a higher consciousness of fraud as the essence of literary art. --David Samuels - "A Fish Tale"

In case you missed it like I did, here's a link to the fine online essay "A Fish Tale" by David Samuels in the ultra-elegant Lapham's Quarterly, Spring 2015 issue:

• http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/swindle-fraud/fish-tale

Samuels gets the gist of things right, or close enough in my book. So he should, with Leon Howard's wonderful biography in front of him, and the first volume of Hershel Parker's biography which he credits, more or less. Herman Melville: A Biography has all the quoted reviews, not to mention a juicy treatment of Melville's veracity problem.

Weirdly though, David Samuels gives Melville's blast at "enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some inoffensive islanders" as something "Melville wrote to his brother, before he sat down to write Typee." Say what? That's in Chapter 4 amidst two pages of similarly slanted Reflections on Europeans' Cruelties that were cut in the American Revised Edition of Typee. What gave David Samuels the idea that he's quoting a letter from Herman Melville to his brother?

If David Samuels didn't make up the letter from Herman to his unnamed brother (Gansevoort? Allan? Tom?) just for the Swindle-edition of Lapaham's Quarterly, maybe he read it in a book. About Melville I guess, rather than by Melville. Hmm. Maybe he saw the quoted passage in a book of Melville criticism, couldn't find it in the American Revised Edition of Typee and inferred the phantom letter. Or, maybe the letter does exist and I'm the last to know. That's it, I hope.

Update 09/24/2016: Elizabeth Hardwick slightly misquotes the passage from Typee in the same way that David Samuels slightly misquotes it in "A Fish Tale," omitting two words, of the: "some inoffensive islanders" instead of "some of the inoffensive islanders" as printed in Typee. Not available on Kindle. Guess I'll have to buy back my copy of Elizabeth Hardwick's Herman Melville at Half-Price Books to see what else might be recycled in "A Fish Tale."

J. Ross Browne, 1845 letter to Evert A. Duyckinck

"If you think the book would sell better by having a good deal of practical matter in it, I could enter more minutely into the habits and peculiarities of whales, the process of capturing them and procuring their oil &c; but in my opinion though this might be useful it would not be very interesting to the general reader. Scoresby, Wilkes, and other writers have left scarcely anything new to be said in relation to the practical part of the whaling business..." --J. Ross Browne, letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated September 16, 1845.

Herman Melville reviewed Browne's whaling book as published by Harper & Brothers in 1846. The text of that review (originally published March 6, 1847 in The Literary World) is available online in another melvilliana post

Herman Melville's Review of Etchings of a Whaling Cruise

As advised, Browne did supplement his original narrative with "practical matter" taken from established authorities on whales and whaling. For Moby-Dick, Melville consulted the same books that Browne recycles in his appendix. R. D. Madison says "it's a toss-up whether Browne or The Penny Cyclopaedia was more useful" to Melville as "a shortcut to cetology" (The Essex and the Whale).

Newly digitized and available online From the New York Public Library, this 1845 letter reflects the active support that Browne was getting from Evert A. Duyckinck, then house literary editor for Wiley and Putnam. At Wiley and Putnam, Duyckinck superintended the new Library of American Books project. Ezra Greenspan explains:

By late February 1845 a deal between Duyckinck and Wiley was struck and terms set down, Duyckinck to serve as house literary editor with operating power to choose titles for the Library, to solicit contributions, and to help promote the new works via his pen and his numerous contacts in the press; and Wiley and Putnam to issue the works in attractive but inexpensive fashion both in new York and London. --"Evert Duyckinck and the History of Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, 1845-1847" in American Literature Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 677-693 at 682.

Perry Miller built a page or so from Browne's 1845 letter to Duyckinck:

"an ex-whaler submitted a manuscript, and though it was miserably written and required extensive editing, the material was of such intrinsic interest, and was so truly "American," that Duyckinck spent days working with J. Ross Browne over Etchings of a Whaling Cruise.  --The Raven and the Whale, page 137

Given that much editorial work by Duyckinck, Perry Miller figured Wiley and Putnam must have published Etchings. Edward L. Widmer repeated Miller's mistake in the fascinating book Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (page 115), placing Browne's Etchings in the Library of American Books.

Browne's experience with competing American publishers was the reverse of Melville's: passed over by Wiley and Putnam, Browne's book was actually published by Harper & Brothers in 1846--the year Wiley and Putnam got Typee, but only after the Harpers (famously, now) had rejected it in manuscript. Eugene Exman in The Brothers Harper (page 293) credits Browne's Etchings as "the Harper book which had influenced George Putnam to publish Typee." (Ah, but there Exman must be thinking of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, as shown in the letter from Putnam to Duyckinck that Ezra Greenspan quotes in George Palmer Putnam: Representative American Publisher.)

In advising Browne, Duyckinck evidently had urged revisions of content and style. Browne defended instances of coarse language in his narrative as the real talk of sailors, truthfully presented. In the same vein, Melville's review anticipates and answers "fastidious objections" of hypothetical critics:

The scenes presented are always graphically and truthfully sketched, and hence fastidious objections may be made to some of them, on the score of their being too coarsely or harshly drawn. But we take it, that as true, unreserved descriptions, they are in no respect faulty; and, doubtless, the author never dreamed of softening down or withholding anything with a view of rendering his sketches the more attractive and pretty. The book is eminently a practical one, and written with the set purpose of accomplishing good by revealing the simple truth.  --Herman Melville, Review of Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise

When Melville wrote that, "fastidious objections" had already been published. The London Spectator, for example, criticized Browne's "unpleasant" realism, and more:

Browne is not a man of genius, scarcely of ability, but a fair enough specimen of the fluent, obtrusive, self-confident, half-educated American, such as one continually encounters in their books of travels. The reflections are in a high-flown sentimental manner; the descriptions of the actual are lengthy and literal. Like some other of his countrymen, Mr. Browne falls into the habit of reporting conversations or dialogues at full length: a very good practice when the persons and topics are of importance, but scarcely needed in the case of whalers with their mere “chaffing,” or pointless jokes, or the quarrels of the captain with his mate and crew. The author is also deficient in art and delicacy. An artist catches and presents the spirit of the lowest scenes, but sinks their material of physical coarseness. Mr. Browne gives them literally as they are; so that he produces much the same unpleasant effect upon the mind as if the reader were actually present—bating the life. The slender interest the book possesses is entirely owing to its nautical subjects—the hardships and excitement of the service, and the characters of the crew, unpleasant as some of the latter are. --The Spectator, Volume 19 - November 28, 1846

From The New York Public Library Digital Collections:

J. Ross Browne, Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck - September 16, 1845
From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

J. Ross Browne, Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck - September 16, 1845
From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

J. Ross Browne, Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck - September 16, 1845
From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

J. Ross Browne, Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck - September 16, 1845
From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Transcribed below:

Washington City, Sep. 16th 1845

Dear Sir:

I am under obligations to you for the friendly suggestions contained in your letter of the 13th. Fully appreciating the arduous nature of your engagements, I shall make my reply as brief as possible.

Upon reflection, I am convinced that I have been unwise in attempting to “write a book.” It is a task attended by difficulties sufficiently formidable to discourage a more experienced writer than myself. I do not think I am deficient in perseverance; but I fear perseverance in this matter would be a weakness. It is my perfect consciousness of the defects indicated in your letter that discourages me. Were I to obviate them a thousand others would spring up, as if to prove to me that I am entirely disqualified for the task. I regret, therefore, having imposed upon the good nature of my friends in putting them to so much trouble.

There is one consideration which influences me in continuing my efforts to have the journal published. An intimate and esteemed friend of mine, now in Paris, studying the art of painting, is in great distress for want of a small sum of money to enable him to prosecute his studies this approaching winter. He is a young man of uncommon talent and high moral character; and poor indeed, would be the friend, who for want of a little exertion, would see him suffer. $200 would be the means of enabling him to attain eminence in his profession. If I could send him that or even one half of it, I should consider myself fortunate, and to remove any doubt that might exist upon the subject, I am quite willing if I can get that much for the copy-right, to give you his address and ask you to oblige me by sending him the money. This is the only prospect I have of aiding him, for my salary is too small to do him any service. If you knew what a kind and good friend he is, and how great is his distress, I am sure you would second my efforts, if for no other reason than this.

I agree with you in regard to the necessity of re-writing some passages of the narrative, and making alterations in the dialogues. When writing them, I knew there was rather too much roughness and profanity in them to suit a refined taste; and my reason for not making them more polished was that I did not suppose such a work would be read by literary men, and sailors would like it all the better for familiar roughness. However, I am not skilled in these matters, and I submit to your better judgement—merely assuring you that if you think sailors are a refined class of men, or that I have at all exaggerated their profanity, you are much mistaken. That many portions are but indifferently executed, I admit; and profiting by your friendly suggestions I shall do all in my power to make them readable.

As to the number of pages of M.S. or the amount of practical information which I could give, I leave that to be determined by yourself or the publisher. One volume would probably sell better than two—especially two from an unknown writer. I have matter for a volume about the size of Hawthorne’s African Cruizer, which I think is a good size—say 300 or 330 pages of M. S. like this. A friend of mine, who is now draughtsman in the Patent Office, would willingly make a series of handsome illustrations from my rough sketches, which might add materially to the success of the volume. Of course these paintings would cost the publisher nothing. I could have twenty or thirty such sketches as the enclosed, by myself, well executed by my friend.

If you think the book would sell better by having a good deal of practical matter in it, I could enter more minutely into the habits and peculiarities of whales, the process of capturing them and procuring their oil &c; but in my opinion though this might be useful, it would not be very interesting to the general reader. Scoresby, Wilkes, and other writers have left scarcely anything new to be said in relation to the practical part of the whaling business. Graphic descriptions of forecastle life, scenes of cruelty and suffering, and now and then something in the way of observation, would, I think, be more likely to succeed. My opportunities of acquiring practical information were very limited—I had neither books nor intelligent companions to guide me, and the most I could think of making would be an interesting narrative of novel and exciting incidents. I was nearly four months on board a merchantman. An account of my voyage home would show the difference between the merchant service and the whale-fishery, and would perhaps derive interest from the contrast. I am very confident the public know little or nothing of the detestable cruelties practiced on board of our whalers; and to show these in their true colors is my main object. I could give a good deal of practical information in relation to the commerce, products &c of Zanzibar. This would be new, and no doubt interesting to many. Ellis has, in his history of Madagascar, so fully described that island that it would be useless to attempt a practical account of its trade or products. Boteler & Owens have more than I could say about the Comoro Isles. The Azores & Cape de Verdes are too well known to need description. A narrative of incidents would therefore be in the main all I could give.

So far as regards the profits, I would take almost anything.. I have stated to you my only object in desiring any remuneration for my labor. Any arrangement you may think proper to make will suit me.

I have materiel for a very wild and thrilling sea-story; and shall introduce something of that kind if you think it advisable.

In conclusion, I would thank you to call upon Messers Wiley & Putnam, and (if you approve of it) present to them the enclosed note. State the nature character of the work—your opinion of it, your desire to befriend the author; and if you can procure from them a definite and conclusive promise that they will publish it, as soon as I can revise and complete it, then wrap it up and send it to me at the earliest possible moment, and I shall set to work and get it in readiness for publication within a month. You will oblige me by doing this without delay. With many thanks for the trouble you have already taken in my behalf,

I remain
Yours Truly,

J. Ross Browne

"Melville's hearty praises" for John C. Hoadley's poem on "The Union" - reported by the poet to Evert A. Duyckinck in September 1851

Digitized and available online From The New York Public Library:

John C. Hoadley, Letter to Evert A. Duyckinck - September 9, 1851
Duyckinck family papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, NYPL
From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Transcribed below. Hoadley quotes from Richard II, Act 1 Scene 3.

Pittsfield, Sept. 9th. 1851.
E. A. Duyckinck Esq.

Dear Sir,

I received a copy of the Literary World a few days since, containing an interesting account of your excursion to Grey Lock, for which I suppose I have to thank your kindness. I read it with lively pleasure though not without a twinge of selfish regret that I could not be of your party.— "Can a man hold fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”

The Harpers, to whom I had sent my national poem for publication, decline it, and advise me to send it to D. Appleton & Co. which I have accordingly requested the Messers H. to do.— I can not but desire to have it printed, but have not much hope of it. Melville’s hearty praises give me more hope than anything else.

I am, My Dear Sir,
Very Respectfully,
Yours &c.  John C. Hoadley.

Hoadley refers to the account by Evert A. Duyckinck in the Literary World for August 30, 1851 headed  "NOTES OF EXCURSIONS—NO. I / AN ASCENT OF MOUNT SADDLEBACK." The Greylock climb by Herman Melville with his Berkshire friends and visiting literati took place on August 11, 1851, during what Hershel Parker describes as "a second idyll in the Berkshires, fit to rank with that of the previous August" (Herman Melville: A Biography V1.855).  Sarah Morewood also wrote of That Excursion to Greylock in a chapter she contributed to J. E. A. Smith's 1852 volume Taghconic.

I don't remember seeing this letter before now, anywhere. Google it?

 No results found for "melville's hearty praises"

"Melville" in a letter from Pittsfield to Evert A. Duyckinck has to be Herman. So Hoadley regrets not participating in the ascent of Greylock (he was invited?), reports the rejection of his "national poem" by the Harpers, but takes consolation in the "hearty praises" of his future brother-in-law, Herman Melville.

This John C. Hoadley also turned out to be one of the best friends Herman Melville ever had. Noticing that Herman's sister Augusta Melville listed one of Hoadley's poems ("A Man Should Never Weep?") in her commonplace book on October 7, 1850, Hershel Parker was already wondering:

"Is it possible that Herman Melville was never favored with a recital of it by its author?" "--Melville: The Making of the Poet

Not hardly. That is (to eliminate the negatives), the conjectured recital by Hoadley in the hearing of Melville seems likely enough in view of Hoadley's September 9, 1851 letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, which nicely corroborates the view of an early bonding over Hoadley's poetry as well as Hoadley's courtship of Herman's sister. Herman Melville did hear Hoadley's poem on "The Union." Probably on the Fourth of July.

As recorded in Jay Leyda's Melville Log, Melville's future brother-in-law had recited his poem in Pittsfield on July 4, 1851:

For the holiday, John C. Hoadley pronounces a newly composed poem, "The Union" [later retitled "Destiny"]  --The Melville Log Volume 1 - [416]

Hershel Parker:

"On that occasion, momentous for the entire family, Hoadley met Catherine Melville...." --Herman Melville: A Biography V1.850

 John and Kate were married on September 15, 1853.

Related posts:

• Hoadley's national poem cheered by Herman Melville
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/07/hoadleys-national-poem-cheered-by.htm

• Refresher on heroic measure
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/07/refresher-on-heroic-measure.html

• Destiny: a poem by John C Hoadley 648 lines plus endnotes, transcribed here
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/07/destiny-poem-by-john-c-hoadley.html

1856 Melville mention by "Fidelius" in the Boston Evening Transcript

“Hermann Melville, our clever nautical story teller, has gone abroad in search of health and new material for adventurous fiction.” --Boston Evening Transcript, October 21, 1856; New York correspondence from "Fidelius"

"Fidelius" wrote letters from New York to the Boston Evening Transcript in the mid 1850's, around the time that Melville's friend Henry T. Tuckerman was also supplying the Transcript with New York correspondence over a different pen name. Writing as "Knick," Tuckerman handled book reviews and literary news, while "Fidelius" wrote more generally about people and cultural events--in Gotham and around the world.

Lighting it up

Ben Jonson's joke about burning a ballad to light a pipe:

"One who fired a Tobacco pipe with a ballet [ballad] the next day having a sore-head, swoare he had a great singing in his head, and he thought it was the ballet: A Poet should detest a Ballet maker."
--Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden

made me think of Melville's bit in Pierre about lighting cigars with sonnets:

Now, the dollars derived from his ditties, these Pierre had always invested in cigars; so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his dollars were again returned, but as perfumed puffs; perfumed with the sweet leaf of Havanna. So that this highly-celebrated and world-renowned Pierre—the great author—whose likeness the world had never seen (for had he not repeatedly refused the world his likeness?), this famous poet, and philosopher, author of "The Tropical Summer: a Sonnet;" against whose very life several desperadoes were darkly plotting (for had not the biographers sworn they would have it?); this towering celebrity—there he would sit smoking, and smoking, mild and self-festooned as a vapory mountain. It was very involuntarily and satisfactorily reciprocal. His cigars were lighted in two ways: lighted by the sale of his sonnets, and lighted by the printed sonnets themselves.  --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities

William Drummond of Hawthornden does not appear in Melville's Reading or Melville's Sources or the Online Catalog of Melville's known reading. Only stray references to William Drummond in Melville scholarship, it seems. I would be glad to know of anything at all in print, especially on Melville and those notes of Ben Jonson's talking.

We do know Melville owned the 1692 folio edition of The Works of Ben Jonson which he bought in London, November 1849. Formerly in the collection of Albert Boni, this volume now is held by the New-York Historical Society, as indicated in Online Catalog at Melville's Marginalia Online.

Stanton Garner charts the influence of Jonson on the last of Melville's poems in the John Marr volume, in "Rosemarine: Melville's 'Pebbles' and Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness," Melville Society Extracts 41 (February 1980): 13-14. Before Garner, Newton Arvin in the October 1949 Partisan Review had noted the same borrowing but thought it more of a happy accident, "an unconscious but felicitous echo" of Jonson.

Digitized and available online from The New York Public Library: Herman Melville's 1860 memo with instructions (copied out by his wife Elizabeth) for publishing his completed book of Poems

A previous post gave the text of Melville's 1860 memo from published transcriptions by a distinguished line of Melville scholars including Meade Minnigerode, Eleanor Melville Metcalf in Cycle and Epicycle, and Jay Leyda in The Melville Log. In print, Hershel Parker has reviewed the scholarship on Melville's detailed instructions for publication of his 1860 "Poems" in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative. Now we can read Melville's long memo of May 22, 1860 in the neat handwriting of his wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville, courtesy of The New York Public Library.

Herman Melville's 1860 "Memoranda for Allan" - 1 of 4; copied by Elizabeth Melville
From The New York Public Library

Herman Melville's 1860 "Memoranda for Allan" - 2 of 4; copied by Elizabeth Melville
From The New York Public Library

Herman Melville's 1860 "Memoranda for Allan" - 3 of 4; copied by Elizabeth Melville
From The New York Public Library

Herman Melville's 1860 "Memoranda for Allan" - 4 of 4; copied by Elizabeth Melville
From The New York Public Library

Melville's manuscript book of "Poems" was rejected by at least two different publishers, so Melville never got to enjoy "the publication of a first volume of verses" as he elaborately planned for it in 1860. But later versions of some verses are possibly to be found in Melville's 1891 volume Timoleon, Etc., especially in the section titled "Fruit of Travel Long Ago." In Melville: The Making of the Poet and the "Historical Note" for the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Published Poems, Hershel Parker suggests that earlier versions of Melville's surviving longer poems "Naples in the Time of Bomba" and "At the Hostelry" might also have graced the 1860 book of "Poems."

George J. Adler

In the last year of his life, George J. Adler (1821-1868) wrote from Bloomingdale Asylum to Henry Theodore Tuckerman. Adler and Tuckerman were both old friends of Herman Melville. Tuckerman mentioned his communications from Adler to another mutual friend, Evert A. Duyckinck:

"Poor Adler writes me incoherent notes--the last from Bloomingdale Asylum. His last trouble is the non-appearance of his notice of "Nathan the Wise" in Putnam & he seems to imagine you responsible for the neglect--says you have been kind in the past & he hopes you will do him justice in the future, attributing the non appearance of his article to a difference of theological opinion--you believing in the divinity of the Church & he in a Bhramanic [Brahmanic] theory! whereas, I believe, the notice was too long & Putnam curtailed or omitted it--after paying Adler $15. If, however, you can do, say or write anything to soothe the poor man--who is evidently very ill & tormented in mind--I hope you will do so. I called to say this, but finding you out, send this line."--Henry Theodore Tuckerman, letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated May 12th [1868]; now in the Duyckinck family papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

The September 1868 issue of Putnam's included Adler's unsigned article on Nathan the Wise, for which (as Tuckerman explained to Duyckinck) they had already paid fifteen dollars.

Adler's authorship of the unsigned article in Putnam's Magazine on Nathan the Wise is perhaps not so widely known as it should be. Herbert Rowland guesses it might have been written by Edmund Clarence Stedman (another friend of Melville's) in his article on "Laocoon, Nathan the Wise, and the Contexts of Their Critical Reception in Nineteenth-Century American Reviews" in Practicing Progress: The Promise and Limitations of Enlightenment.

In June 1868 Adler received the honorary Ph.D. from the University of the City of New York. Adler died August 24, 1868. Melville and Duyckinck both attended his funeral. The obituary notice in the New York Evening Post (August 24, 1868) ended with this tribute to his reputation:

"Professor Adler was much respected, both for his scholarly attainments and for his personal virtues."

The New York Tribune (August 25, 1868) stated also that Professor Adler

"numbered among his friends many of our most eminent citizens."

Dictionary of American Biography

 Adler's real and debilitating paranoia was on display in Letters of a Lunatic.

In 1860 Melville had joined with Tuckerman, Evert and George Duyckinck, and many other named subscribers to secure publication of Adler's translation of Fauriel's History of Provençal Poetry.

Sanford E. Marovitz examines the influence of Adler on Melville and his writing in More Chartless Voyaging: Melville and Adler at Sea. And again in the chapter on “Correspondences: Paranoiac Lexicographers and Melvillean Heroes” in Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick.

Here's an item I have not seen before. One year before his death at the age of 47, Adler lectured before "a rather small audience" on a subject of probable interest to his old friend Herman Melville: 

LITERATURE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN. Prof. Adler, well known as a German lexicographer and classic scholar, delivered a lecture last evening in the small chapel of the New-York University, on the polite literature of the Moslems in Spain. The lecturer evinced an extensive acquaintance with the spirit and manner of Arabic literature, both in its earlier and later days, especially its poetry, which was illustrated with examples selected from different periods. It was listened to with satisfaction by a rather small audience.  --New York Tribune, Friday, March 29, 1867.

Adler's 1867 lecture was printed in a pamphlet titled "The Poetry of the Arabs in Spain," available online courtesy of the Hathi Trust Digital Library.




Many letters from George J. Adler to George Duyckinck and Evert A. Duyckinck are digitized and available online in the Duyckinck family papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. The image below shows the second page of Adler's February 16, 1850 letter to George Duyckinck:

George J. Adler, letter to George Duyckinck dated February 16, 1850
From The New York Public Library

“Our friend Mr. Melville has, I hope, long ago reached his home again safely, and you will have gained from him an account of our voyage and peregrinations in England and London. I regretted his departure very much; but all that I could do to check and fix his restless mind for a while at last was of no avail. His loyalty to his friends at home and the instinctive impulse of his imagination to assimilate and perhaps to work up into some beautiful chimaeras (which according to our eloquent lecturer on Plato here, constitute the essence of poetry and fiction) the materials he had already gathered in his travels, would not allow him to prolong his stay.”

On another page of the same letter near the close, Adler writes:

"I beg you to give my regards to your brother, Mr. Melville and any other friends that you may happen to meet."

Several of these letters from Paris to George Duyckinck also close with Adler's request, "my kind regards to your brother and Mr. Melville." Spelled in one letter, "Melleville."