"... Here ["Sheridan's Ride" in Battle-Pieces and "Far Off-Shore" in John Marr] is an ear, and a far from unhappy boldness; further, whatever Melville's literary decay, the prose 'Supplement to the Battle Pieces,' in which he rams a little sense down the throats of the type of fool, common then as now, who professed moral indignation because the beaten enemy 'showed no penitence,' does prove that his sense and his humanity remained as sound as ever."
-- Authors Dead and Living, page 110.
Most of the chapter on Herman Melville in Authors Dead and Living by Frank Laurence Lucas originally appeared in The New Statesman (April 1, 1922), as a review of Raymond M. Weaver's biography Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic. However, the comment quoted above on Melville's best verses, and the prose supplement to Battle-Pieces, did not appear in the New Statesman version.
Authors Dead and Living (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926) is digitized and accessible for borrowing on the great Internet Archive.- https://archive.org/details/authorsdeadlivin0000luca
Melville's writings are in the public domain, including the Civil War poems and prose supplement comprising Battle-Pieces and Aspects of The War (New York: Harper & Brothers,1866).
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