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Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Cincinnati ENQUIRER review, Melville's 1857-8 lecture on "Statues in Rome"


As advertised, at 8 o'clock on Tuesday evening, February 2, 1858 Herman Melville gave his "Statues in Rome" lecture at Smith & Nixon's Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio. Contemporary newspaper accounts of Melville's lecture including the one transcribed herein were collected by researchers in the 1940's and '50's and incorporated in the reconstructed text offered by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. in Melville as Lecturer (Harvard University Press, 1957). Based on the prior work of Sealts, a composite version of "Statues in Rome" is presented with similarly reconstructed texts of Melville's two other lectures on the South Seas and Traveling in The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, edited by G. Thomas Tanselle, Harrison Hayford, and Hershel Parker (Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1987). 

Cincinnati Daily Enquirer - January 30, 1858
A while back I found the previously un-located review of Melville's lecture on "Statues in Rome" in the Cincinnati Daily Times, transcribed on Melvilliana here:
Below is my transcription of the review of "Statues in Rome" that appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer the day after Melville's lecture. Although it is well known to scholars from the clipping saved by family members, and excerpted in Jay Leyda's 1951 Melville Log (Volume 2, pages 590-591) I am prompted to give it here in full after realizing that the text presented as a bad and belated review of the Confidence-Man in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009) page 506 is from the editorial survey of Melville's literary career that introduces this otherwise favorable take on Melville's lecture. 

Talk about poisoning the well!

An earlier and more positive notice of Melville's Confidence-Man had appeared in the same newspaper on April 10, 1857, when the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer was edited by Alexander Walker (1819-1893). 

James J. Faran (1808-1892), co-owner with Washington McLean, was named on the masthead as sole editor when the review of "Statues in Rome," transcribed in full below, appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer on February 3, 1858. 

Y. M. M. L. Lecture. Herman Melville on "Statues in Rome."

Mr. Herman Melville has been well known for a dozen years past, both in this country and Europe, as the author of a number of tales, the most popular and best of which are stories of the sea, such as "Typee, "Omoo," and "Moby Dick." Of late years, Mr. M. has turned his attention to another species of composition more akin to the modern novel. "Pierre, or the Ambiguities," is an example of this; highly extravagant and unnatural, but original and interesting in its construction and characters. His last production, "The Confidence Man," is one of the dullest and most dismally monotonous books we remember to have read, and it has been our unavoidable misfortune to peruse, in the fulfillment of journalistic duty, a number of volumes through, which nothing but a sense of obligation would have sustained us. "Typee," one of, if not the first of his works, is the best, and "The Confidence Man" the last, decidedly the worst. So Mr. M.'s authorship is toward the nadir rather than the zenith, and he has been progressing in the form of an inverted climax. 

"Fayaway" is the most attractive and best-known character Mr. M. has drawn, and there are few who do not have sentimental recollections of the fair, lithe, graceful Indian girl, with all the instinctive delicacy and refinement and charmfulness, which the highest circles of society often fail to exhibit.

But to Mr. Melville's lecture, which he had often delivered in the cities of the East, and of which report has spoken very favorably. Smith & Nixon's Hall was about two-thirds filled with a highly intelligent and cultivated auditory, when the lecturer, an unremarkable, quiet, self-possessed-looking man, seemingly about thirty-five or six years of age, with  brown hair, whiskers and mustache, bronze complexion, above the medium stature, appearing not unlike the captain of an American merchantman, presented himself before them.

Mr. M. remarked, at the outset, that it might be supposed the only proper judge of statues would be a sculptor; but he believed others than the artist could appreciate and see the beauty of the marble art of Rome. All men admired and were drawn to flowers, though utterly destitute of a knowledge of botany. Burns' description of the daisy was far superior to that of Linnaeus; the world had given its verdict in favor of the poet.

On entering Rome, the visitor was greeted by thousands of statues, who, as representatives of the mighty past, hold out their hands to the present, and made the connecting link of centuries. The lecturer would not linger among the numerous statues of the Seven-hilled City, but hasten to the Vatican. There was Demosthenes, who resembled a modern advocate, face thin and haggard, and his body lean.  The arm that had gesticulated and swayed with its movement the souls of the Athenians, was small and shrunken. He looked as if a glorious course of idleness would be beneficial. Titus had a short, thick figure, and a round face, expressive of cheerfulness, good-humor and joviality; and yet all know how different was his character from this outward seeming. Socrates reminded one of an Irish comedian. Julius Caesar's bust indicated a practical, business-like turn of mind, and gave one the idea that he would make an excellent financier or President of the New York and Erie Railroad. Seneca wore a pinched and weasened appearance; would have made a good pawnbroker, and his semblance was just; but it was well known that he was avaricious and grasping, and dealt largely in mortgages and loans, and drove hard bargains even at that day. Nero was delicate in feature, and resembled a dissipated and fast young man--such as one meets on race-courses. Plato was a Greek Grammont or Chesterfield: his hair was oiled and pomatumed, and carefully parted as a modern belle's. He might have composed his works under the hand of the barber, or a modern valet-de-chambre.

The lecturer stated that five thousand Romans, habited in the costume of the present day, would not, if placed in the Corso, be recognized from our own countrymen.

Tiberius was handsome, was refined, and even pensive in expression. A lady had remarked in the lecturer's hearing: "Why, he does not look so bad." Had he looked badly, he would not have been Tiberius. He was melancholy without pity, and sensitive without affection. He was, perhaps, the most wicked of men. The Apollo was so wonderful a creation that it was impossible to give any idea of its sublimity; all admired, all were attracted to it; it was almost worshipped by every one who came within its presence. Visitors looked at it in silence and in awe. There seemed to be in the Apollo something that answered the divine longings of our nature, and which Faith told us could not be gratified on earth. The Venus--which was at Florence--was lovely, beautiful, but far less great than the Apollo. She was exceedingly refined, delicious in everything; but she was of the earth and Apollo was divine. The Laocoon was grand and impressive, and gained half its significance from its symbolism--the fable that it represented--humanity struggling with destiny. Otherwise it would be no more that [than] Paul Potter's "Boar Hunt" at Amsterdam.

The lecturer spoke in fervid and eloquent terms of the influence of the statues of Rome; of the delight they inspired and the instruction they furnished. They were the works of visionaries and dreamers, but they were realizations of soul, the representatives of the ideal. They were grand, beautiful and true, and they spoke with a voice that echoed through the ages. Governments had changed; empires had fallen; nations had passed away; but these mute marbles remained--the oracles of time, the perfection of art.

We boasted much of our progress, of our energy, of our achievements; but did all our triumphs equal those of the horses and divinities that stood there silent, the incarnations of grandeur and of beauty? The ancients lived while those statues endured, and seemed to breathe inspiration through that world, giving purpose, shape and impetus to what was created high, or grand, or beautiful. While the Colosseum stands, will Rome; and when Rome falls, the world.

We have no space to refer to all that Mr. Melville mentioned, but must say that his lecture, occupying nearly two hours in delivery, was exceedingly interesting and eloquent, abounding in admirable specimens of such word-painting as his best works contain. His discourse was classic and beautiful, and by far the best that has yet been delivered this season before the Library.

His delivery was, in some respects, agreeable, but not in others--it was monotonous and often indistinct, but not devoid of impressiveness, which sometimes approached the ministerially solemn. 

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Monday, November 18, 2024

Early notice of Melville's CONFIDENCE-MAN in the Cincinnati ENQUIRER, edited by Alexander Walker

A Mississippi River Landing
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

This favorable notice of The Confidence Man: His Masquerade in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer for April 10, 1857 is not reprinted or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). Contemporary Reviews on page 506 does give the negative evaluation that appeared the next year in the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer (February 3, 1858) trashing Melville's Confidence-Man as "one of the dullest and most dismally monotonous books we remember to have read." Although the editors of Contemporary Reviews do not indicate where they got it, the dismissive treatment of the Confidence-Man as the worst of Melville's increasingly bad books after Typee and Omoo, forms a kind of editorial preface to a longer review of Melville's 1858 lecture on Statues in Rome.

The earlier, more positive notice in the Cincinnati Enquirer commends the Confidence-Man as a "graphic" display of the social "amusement and fun" to be had when travelling by steamboat "on the Western Rivers." Found on newspapers.com and transcribed below.

Cincinnati Daily Enquirer - April 10, 1857


Book Notice.

THE CONFIDENCE MAN. By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," "Typee," &c. New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. For sale by L. Danforth. Cincinnati: Rickey, Mallory & Webb.

Mr. Melville is known by the sketches of travel and adventure among the islands of the Pacific, to which he owes his earliest fame. In the work before us he has selected a home scene. The volume opens at St. Louis, and describes the incidents of a voyage down the Mississippi River. The author exhibits, with graphic accuracy, the peculiarities of some of those eccentric originals so often encountered on that frequent route of travel, with whom confinement on board the same steamer for days makes more or less of social intercourse a necessity, if it were not commonly, as in fact it is, a source of very great amusement and fun. The truth of this will be readily assented to by those who are familiar with steamboat travel on the Western Rivers, and none can finish the perusal of this volume without craving a practical relish of the entertainment it affords. 


10 Apr 1857, Fri The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) Newspapers.com

Very likely the change from mild praise to outright disdain for Melville's Confidence-Man in the pages of the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer from April 1857 to February 1858 reflects the change of editors during the same period of time. 

When the first notice of the Confidence-Man appeared on April 10, 1857, Virginia born lawyer and journalist Alexander Walker (1819-1893) aka "Judge" Walker had been editing the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer for two years. Walker was already the author of Jackson and New Orleans (New York: J. C. Derby, 1856). During the Civil War, the New York Times ("Affairs in New Orleans," September 11, 1862) would grudgingly acknowledge the ardent secessionist and influential editor of the New Orleans Delta as "one of the ablest writers and literary men the Southwest has produced." At that time, after the capture of New Orleans, Walker was still in prison, being held with other civilian detainees at Fort Massachusetts on West Ship Island, Mississippi.

New Orleans Daily Picayune - January 25, 1893

Near the end of August 1857, the Cincinnati Enqurier was jointly acquired by Washington McLean and former owner-editor James John Faran (1808-1892). Faran served as mayor of Cincinnati in 1855-1857, when Walker was editor of the Enquirer. 

James J. Faran

The masthead named James J. Faran as chief editor of the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer when the review of Melville's lecture on "Statues in Rome" appeared on February 3, 1858, prefaced by a survey of Melville's books which estimated his last work the Confidence-Man as "decidedly the worst." 


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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Early praise for Clement C. Moore's 1825 lecture on the Hebrew Bible


The professor shows that he has entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry....

With "Philo-Hebrœus," as the contributor of this forgotten letter to the editors of the New York American subscribed himself, self-identifying as a friend or lover of the Hebrew language and people, I would heartily recommend Clement C. Moore's wonderful Lecture introductory to the course of Hebrew instruction as, among its many virtues, a strong inducement "to the study of Hebrew poesy." Although two centuries now have passed, the pseudonymous writer's insight that Professor Moore had "entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry" remains suggestive and potentially valuable I think for a better understanding of Moore's own poetry, including the world-famous rhymes describing A Visit from St. Nicholas.

The lecture so warmly endorsed by "Philo-Hebrœus" was delivered by Clement C. Moore at Christ Church in New York City on November 14, 1825, nearly three years after he wrote "Visit" aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" to entertain his kids.

New York Evening Post - November 14, 1825

In 1798 Clement C. Moore graduated from Columbia College, first in his class. In 1809 he published his important two-volume work, A compendious lexicon of the Hebrew language, duly honored as the "first work of the kind in America" in Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Volume 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874) page 1351. In 1813 "Clem" married Catherine Elizabeth Taylor, called "Eliza" in the family circle, after a courtship that Moore allegorized in a seven-page manuscript poem, 
The bride's version may be found in verses she wrote titled 
Upon receiving his honorary degree of L. L. D. from Columbia College in 1829, Moore was identified in at least one newspaper listing as "Clement C. Moore, Professor of Hebrew literature in the General Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, New-York" (Middlebury, Vermont American, August 19, 1829). When first appointed his formal title was "Professor of Biblical Learning." Later on, "Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature."

Here then is the full text of the published endorsement by "Philo-Hebrœus," transcribed below from the New-York American, for the country of Friday, December 16, 1825; found on genealogybank.com. At this time the editors being addressed were David Johnston Verplanck and Charles King, Moore's good friend and later president of Columbia College.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN.

Messrs. Editors— As I observe that you often appropriate a column of the first page of your paper to subjects connected with literature, and am persuaded that this contributes to make the American acceptable to a large class of your readers, I beg the favor of an insertion of the following remarks, if they should meet your approbation. If the object of them be not strictly and exclusively literary, it is however so closely associated with the best interests of learning, as to merit the attention of our enlightened and discriminating citizens.

The cause of literature and science is evidently gaining ground among us, and taking a stand somewhat proportioned to its elevated character and intrinsic value. The style of education in the more common schools is improving, and Columbia College is becoming better known, and consequently more highly appreciated, not only for the ability of its professors, but for the practical efficiency of its course of instruction; which, to say the least, in classical literature, yields the palm to none of her sister colleges in the United States. And there is in our city another institution which in time will have no little influence on its literary character—I mean the Episcopal Theological Seminary. I have silently, Messrs. Editors, watched the origin and progress of this school with no little interest; and although I freely acknowledge that the direct effect which it must produce upon the interests of the Episcopal church (of which I am a member,) in raising the literary and religious character generally of our clergy, constitutes in my mind its highest value, yet I beg leave to express the opinion that in a literary view merely, it is deserving of consideration. I have attended all its public exercises, and seldom have I come away without satisfaction, mingled however, (let me add without offence,) with no small portion of regret when I saw so few comparatively of the learned men of our city giving to those exercises the sanction of their presence. It is to me a gratifying circumstance that the necessary effect of the establishment of this Theological College will be to lessen the facilities of admission into the ministry to the unworthy, and to give the friendly hand of encouragement to the destitute and pious youth who is willing to pursue a laborious course of study, alike honourable to its projectors, and to those whose diligence and perseverance enable them to surmount its difficulties. I am glad to see that the faculty of this institution require, in addition to testimonials of moral and religious character, that the applicant for admission shall be able to read and analyze Latin and Greek classics, and possess a general knowledge of the principles of rhetoric and of natural and moral philosophy. This is as it should be. I hope they will never diminish their terms of admission; for in proportion to the requisitions not only demanded ostensibly, and on paper, but really secured by a careful and rigid examination in our higher schools, will be the attainments actually made in the lower. If this remark needed any illustration, it were easy to prove its truth by comparing the present state of our grammar schools with what it was some years ago, and tracing the difference to the increased requisitions of admission into Columbia College.

My attention has been directed to the subject of the Theological Seminary, from having lately read a "Lecture introductory to the course of Hebrew instruction," given in it by Professor Moore. In the present day, when so few of the middle-aged clergy of all denominations are well skilled in the language of the Old Testament, it is a circumstance both of surprise and gratification, that a layman of wealth, and family, and character, induced by no other considerations than the love of learning and of the Bible, should have acquired such accurate and extensive acquaintance with this most venerable and ancient tongue, as we know to be the case with this gentleman. Nor is it in Hebrew literature only that Mr. Moore's attainments are of the most respectable character. The purity and elegance of his composition, the soundness of his views, and the practical good sense of his reflections, mark the man of classical taste, of discriminating mind, and of sober judgment; and it is hoped that the example of one who can appreciate the excellencies of Greek tragedians and orators, and enjoy in his own language the author who is distinguished by a judge altogether competent, as "the greatest of all Italian and of all Christian poets,"🞷 will excite to the study of Hebrew poesy, not only the candidates for the ministry among us, but young gentlemen of leisure and literary taste.

It is with the view of promoting this object, that I beg leave to invite attention to the professor's lecture. It will abundantly repay the trouble of perusal. He examines some of the objections which are frequently urged against the study of Hebrew, makes some remarks on the origin and nature of the language, and notices the characteristics of its prose and poetry.

To every Christian who is persuaded of the divinity and inspiration of the scriptures, it must be undoubtedly a source of great satisfaction, that those sacred records are receiving increased attention in our country. The whole genius and character of the authors respectively, taken in connexion with their public and private history, as far as the imperfect remains of olden times will permit it to be investigated, and with the vast world of contemporary antiquity, is becoming more and more developed, opening before the inquirer a new scene of variegated attraction of splendid sublimity, which no one can enjoy but the indefatigable traveller who has mounted to the summit of this, to most men, new and glorious creation. As curious and interesting records of antiquity, the various works which the Old Testament contains are worthy of attention by the student, even if his object is confined to literary fame and mental improvement, "the volume of Hebrew Scriptures," as the lecturer well remarks in his introduction, "is a book, whose antiquity surpassing that of all others, should alone be a powerful title to the respect of mankind; a book, which has for ages excited the liveliest interest and keenest curiosity among the profane as well as the religious; among its opponents as well as its defenders; which affords to the curious rich treasures in various departments of literature, and which, even under all the disadvantages of translation, calls forth the admiration of the orator and the poet." And if this is the case, under the acknowledged disadvantages of a version, however excellent as a whole, our own confessedly is,✝ "what must have been the enjoyment of those to whom the lofty effusions of Isaiah, the divine strains of the royal Psalmist, and the unrivalled imagery of the book of Job, were addressed in their native language!" The professor shows that he has entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry, when he tells us, that its "blaze of magnificence arises not from the selection of words or arrangement of phrases, but is due to the subjects treated of, to the imagery employed, to the feelings which are expressed and awakened, to the boldness of its flights, the awfulness of the idea it presents, and to the immensity of its range, 'as high as heaven'—'deeper than hell.' The effect of this poetry upon the mind, resembles that produced by the view of the great works of nature; it is irregular, but with an irregularity which could not be changed without destroying its effect. It is the voice of the thunder or of the whirlwind which strikes our ear; it is the expanse of the firmament which meets our eye: all creation rises before us; it is the voice of nature inspired by nature's God."

The few specimens from professor Moore's Lecture which I have given, will I trust, excite sufficient interest in your readers to peruse the whole of it, and at the same time awaken an attention to Hebrew literature. While the poets of Italy receive from an enlightened community that attention which is due to the models of elegance and taste; while the range of German literature, as splendid as it is immense, is beginning to be traversed; while the monuments of Greek and Roman composition are advancing daily to that honorable station among us, which their unrivalled excellence demands, let us not pass unnoticed the less known and less eulogized but not less meritorious Hebrew poet. He will astonish by the grandeur of his conception and the splendour of his imagery; he will awaken feeling by the tenderness and resignation with which he opens the depths of his grief; and what must ever raise his value in the estimation of every one who thinks it important to mingle the utile with the dulce, he will communicate that instruction which will elsewhere be sought in vain; that wisdom which "is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness." 

PHILO-HEBRŒUS.

🞷 This is Schlegel's eulogy of Dante. See Lect. IX.

✝ On this point Mr. Moore has expressed himself with feeling and strength; and his remark cannot but give satisfaction to the mere English writer. 

New-York American for the country
December 16, 1825

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Sunday, November 3, 2024

Meandering through the meads in MARDI and Bartram's TRAVELS

 

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Friday, October 25, 2024

Tokens of ghostwriting

Now on Substack, just in time for Halloween! 👻✍

Tokens of ghostwriting by Scott Norsworthy

Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Chapter 2.

Read on Substack
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Thursday, October 3, 2024

Gottschalk reminiscence by Charles G. Whiting, with "Corrupt as Lima" quoted from MOBY-DICK

Signed "C. G. W." this reminiscence of the brilliant New Orleans-born pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk by Charles Goodrich Whiting appeared in the Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts) on January 29, 1870. Notices of Gottschalk's death in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in December 1869 had reached the United States nine days before, via steamship. Responding to the sad news, Whiting offers a heartfelt tribute to Gottschalk's genius and patriotism, informed by random personal encounters with the celebrated pianist in 1862, while vacationing in Saratoga, New York. Whiting also shares a memorable story (extracted from the report of another, unidentified Saratoga tourist) about Gottschalk's fired-up playing of the Star Spangled Banner in Saratoga, around the start of the Civil War. 

Springfield Daily Republican - January 29, 1870
via genealogybank.com

For Melville fans, another point of interest in Charles G. Whiting's published tribute to Gottschalk will be found in a casual allusion to Moby-Dick, specifically Chapter 54: The Town-Ho's Story. After the Civil War and rumors of a scandalous romance in San Francisco, Gottschalk left the United States for South America, touring in Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. According to Whiting,

"He found more luxurious rest in the city of the Incas, whose wickedness has become a proverb,--"Corrupt as Lima,"--or among the orange groves around Rio Janeiro."

Glossing Gottschalk's warm and apparently forgiving reception in Lima, Peru, Whiting quotes the expression "Corrupt as Lima" as a supposedly well-known "proverb" of sinfulness. However pervasive the association of Lima with immortality may have become, that particular way of expressing it with the simile, "Corrupt as Lima" was always Melville's own invention, creatively inspired by a passage in one of his favorite source-books, A Visit to the South Seas (New York: John P. Haven, 1831) by Charles S. Stewart. Charles Goodrich Whiting would not have found the cited "proverb" outside of "The Town-Ho's Story" from Moby-Dick; or, The Whale in some version or other, as it first appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for October 1851 or later in Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick. 

Transcribed below from the Springfield MA Daily Republican of January 29, 1870; this item was reprinted in the weekly edition of the Springfield Republican on February 4, 1870.

LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK 

Reminiscences from a Saratoga Season.  

So Gottschalk is dead! The passionate pulse is still, the generous heart is hushed, the poet-soul is fled. Some cannot think of anything in his varied and brilliant life, but one strange episode which banished him from the northern world's regard, four years ago in San Francisco. I knew about this man, though merely by observation, only three years previous to his fall,--if fall it were, and not a fatal mistake of the world's. It was at Saratoga in the hight of the season of 1862. He was of course an object of great interest to all the transient idlers, and I, idle like the rest, was drawn toward him irresistibly the first time I saw him. It was in a church, and a certain reverend beggar, with a wondrous gift of story-telling, was effectively stirring the sympathies of a large audience, even in a sweltering sultriness of air which invited sleep.

The usher inducted me into a pew where sat a young man, whose face would hardly have challenged a second glance, and whose presence even I did not at first heed. When my attention was drawn to him it was by a nervous motion of his fingers upon the seat before him, and I was struck by the rare refinement and delicacy of his hand. Hands have their expression no less truly than faces; Lavater said once that he would venture to pronounce upon the character of each person in a miscellaneous assembly, while passing around a contribution plate, and looking only on the hand as it dispensed or refused the chance of charity. This right hand was not slender, but its proportion and grace would not have shamed the immortality of marble. In its restlessness it showed as supple as silk, yet as strong as steel, and the nails were like shells, transparent and scrupulously trimmed. Then I scrutinized the man. Dark, wavy hair, a low brow, liquid and poetic eyes,--the only really fine feature his face held,--a handsome nose, though thick-nostriled as I once saw in a French sculpture of Apollo, a heavy moustache, a weak lower lip, a chin cleft with a deep dimple, and not too full cheeks,--these made his physiognomy. His dress was rich but not obtrusive or foppish, a large diamond shone on his left hand. It flashed across me, "This is Gottschalk!"

What impelled the artist to such a place, if he was merely a man of luxury and self-indulgence, is an enigma I should decline the attempt to solve. More astonishing than his presence was the emotion he plainly felt as the orator wrought up a painful tale of ruin and shame in the great city. I lost my interest in the story in watching the musician. And a lesser than Lavater would have been satisfied to call him "generous" on the evidence of the banknote he added to the collection of bits and fractions that followed the appeal.

I saw him often after that, and heard, too, many an incident of like tenor, testifying to a liberal, open-handed sharing of his rapidly gained fortunes with the needy; though I confess to having heard unpleasant tales enough about the unchecked riot of his passions. And yet in Saratoga he was the fast friend of the blind preacher, Rev. W. H. Milburn. Both were at the same Hotel--Union Hall--and they were much in each other's society; Mr. Milburn deeply loved music, and for his benefit Gottschalk's improvisations flowed freely. The pianist and the orator joined forces during this season in a charity entertainment, Gottschalk giving an hour's concert, Milburn his lecture on Milton.

I find in a letter written from Saratoga a description of an incident occurring there before my visit, but which I often heard alluded to by those present. It should be premised that the war had then but begun, and the old secesh element had not yet given place to the shoddy in that favorite resort of southern chivalry. Gottschalk was playing at a concert, a rare treat always. He had entranced all with his sensuous, brilliant, dreamy, gorgeous imagery of tone, his mastery of touch,--and now the struck into the "Star Spangled Banner." "The audience hissed him,--a thing unheard of, utterly out of his experience! They hissed him, as I said; the man turned, his face,--not a notable one,--flushed, his eyes flamed, intense scorn vibrated through his frame, he looked a lion! 'Now we shall hear playing,' whispered a friend at my elbow. And we did. He turned to his piano. Such a Star Spangled Banner I never before heard or shall hear again. The audience held their breath, patriots in despite of themselves. There followed Hail Columbia, and an interwoven rendering of other tunes, and mingling therein, still the Star Spangled Banner, glorious, unshaken, triumphant! They'll never try again to hiss down Louis Moreau Gottschalk!" One who never heard Gottschalk play cannot fully understand the possibilities of the piano. There is no one left like him. Sebastian Bach Mills plays mystically, Alide Topp is a marvel of artistic decision and delicacy, Ritter's splendid touch is a mere memory of Gottschalk's own,--but his genius has no successor. His vanity, which was undeniably great, as his kindliness of heart, always led him freely to display his marvelous talent for the entertainment of others. And the piano of Union Hall was a Mecca of music lovers the season through. Amid a society in which I never mingled, to be sure, but in regard to which I was more or less au fait, he was a prince.

A delicate courtesy or an ardent gallantry characterized his manner with women; and I have heard it said that his exquisite refinement rendered him the most dangerous assailant of woman's honor, and that he was not nearly so wicked as he might have been. His passions were like his birth, tropical; I have tried to believe less of their evil results than the gossip-mongers have bruited abroad, but the San Francisco story is not to be hid by any blind faith soever. Gottschalk's friends are said to claim that he was grossly abused at that time, and that all the damning record of lust, abduction, shame and hasty flight before the indignant avengers thereof, was half distortion, half fabrication. But they have not published their defensive version, and certainly since that hour he has never set  foot on northern shores. He found more luxurious rest in the city of the Incas, whose wickedness has become a proverb,--"Corrupt as Lima,"--or among the orange groves around Rio Janeiro.

But how magnificent, how enviable, his death-stroke! Leading a monster concert, stilling a storm of applause with the awful tenderness and mystery of his own inspired "La Mort," and amid the hushed listeners smitten by la mort in verity, and falling there, with a farewell clangor of chords he should never strike again on earth,--could ambition have wished a more ideal end to his life of prodigal passion and glowing genius?

C. G. W.
Springfield, January  28.

As recounted by C. G. Whiting, the hisses Gottschalk got from secesh-leaning listeners in Saratoga motivated a defiant performance of his patriotic composition "The Union: Concert Paraphrase on National Airs," still appreciated well into this our 21st century as A Rousing Anthem of National Unity. A similar anecdote circulated widely in Northern U. S. newspapers after an 1862 performance in Montreal, Canada.

12 Aug 1862, Tue St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri) Newspapers.com

GOTTSCHALK ON THE UNION.-- During the late provincial tour of this celebrated pianist in the Canadas, he gave an exhibition of his patriotism to our neighbors. At his concert in Montreal, the house being crammed to overflowing, loud calls were made for "Dixie" as soon as the pianist took his seat. Such a reception for a moment naturally confused the pianist, but collecting his ideas at once, he faced his audience and sat in silence for a few moments, with folded arms. When the tumult ceased he turned to his piano and, as one of his companions says, played "Hail Columbia," the "Star Spangled Banner," and "Yankee Doodle," as they were never before played on that instrument. The audience was completely shamed, and acknowledging the rebuke, were liberal in their applause during the rest of the evening. It may not be generally known that Gottschalk is a native of New Orleans, and for this exhibition of his patriotism he should have full credit. After the concert, he remarked to a friend that he would have seen the audience in Tophet before he would have complied with their demand.

-- St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 12, 1862.
In case you're wondering if Melville knew Gottschalk, the answer is "maybe." 
Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878. A.L.s.(Bayard Taylor) to [Herman Melville];[New York] 24 Feb 1865., 1865.. Herman Melville papers, MS Am 188-188.6, MS Am 188, (339), Box: 7. Houghton Library.
Archived with Herman Melville papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University is an 1865 letter to Melville from Bayard Taylor naming Gottschalk as one of several members of "The Travellers" Club whom Melville might already know and enjoy socializing with. 
No. 139 East 8th St.
(Between B'way & 4th Avenue)
Feb. 24, 1865.

My dear Sir:

On Monday evening next, the 27th, "The Travellers" meet here, and it will give me great pleasure to see you among the guests of the Club. Many of the members are no doubt old friends of yours--Darley, Church, Bierstadt, Gottschalk, Cyrus Field, Hunt, Bellows and Townsend Harris. We simply meet to talk, winding up our evenings with a cigar and frugal refreshments.

Very truly yours,
Bayard Taylor.
-- printed text is available in Selected Letters of Bayard Taylor, edited by Paul C. Wermuth (Associated University Presses, 1997) on page 238; also in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth on page 696. 
New York Observer - March 23, 1865

Face-time with L. M. Gottschalk and other members of "The Travellers" seems at least conceivable. Newspaper ads confirm that Gottschalk at the time of Bayard's invitation to Melville was definitely still performing in New York City. In late February and March of 1865, "the most brilliant pianist that our country has produced" gave a series of "Farewell Concerts" at Niblo's Saloon. Early in April he would sail for California via Panama. 

As it happened, Gottschalk was still aboard the steamer Constitution when he learned that President Lincoln had been assassinated, as Barbara Cohen-Stratyner has related on the NYPL Blog in a moving 2015 post, An Incommensurable Grief... Louis Moreau Gottschalk on Lincoln's Assassination.



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Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Prompt behind Melville's invented proverb "Corrupt as Lima" in Stewart's VISIT TO THE SOUTH SEAS Volume 1

 

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Monday, September 30, 2024

Litanie Des Saints

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Sunday, September 1, 2024

William Allen Butler's friendly notice of THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES


As previously shown on Melvilliana, William Allen Butler (1825-1902) the Wall Street lawyer and genial satirist in prose and verse only served as an "occasional" New York correspondent for the Washington National Intelligencer in 1850-1 and most certainly did not write the long and largely favorable review of Moby-Dick, or the Whale attributed to him since 1953 in published Melville studies.

The real reviewer of Melville's "prose Epic on Whaling" in the regular "Notes on New Books" column of the National Intelligencer (December 16, 1851) was literary editor James C. Welling (1825-1894). 

Although William A. Butler never dreamed of writing the learned and perceptive review of Moby-Dick in the National Intelligencer, he probably deserves credit for another, more ordinary notice in the same newspaper: the friendly and favorable review of Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables that appeared on April 22, 1851 under the heading "New York Correspondence." 

Butler's first published letter to the National Intelligencer appeared on July 19, 1850 under the heading, "Cursory Notices of New Books, and Literary and Fine Art, in New York." Dropping Cursory, Butler or his editors gave subsequent letters the revised title, "Notices of New Books, Literature, and the Fine Arts in New York," shortened to "New Books, Literature, and the Fine Arts in New York" (Daily National Intelligencer, February 3, 1851), and then changed again to "Society, New Books, and the Fine Arts in New York" (February 11, 1851). Through February 1851, all of Butler's letters from New York were signed "Jacques du Monde," also Butler's pseudonym in verse contributions to the Literary World and other periodicals. 

The last letter from William Allen Butler to the National Intelligencer signed "Jacques du Monde" appeared on March 1, 1851, under the heading "New York Correspondence." A few more appeared after that under the same heading but without any signature. Several of these closely resembled the contributions from Butler aka "Jacques du Monde" in their contents and style of writing. The last anonymous contribution of "New York Correspondence" in the usual vein of William Allen Butler contains the glowing notice, transcribed below, of Hawthorne's most recent work The House of the Seven Gables. Extant notes to his old classmate and traveling companion George L. Duyckinck at NYPL provide documentary support for ascribing the Hawthorne notice to William Allen Butler.

One mention of Hawthorne occurs near the close of a letter to George L. Duyckinck dated April 3, 1851 and written at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D. C. where Butler had been staying with his wife Mary:

"The Scarlet Letter we have been reading. It is Hawthorne all over, & capital at that. I think it will do more for his reputation than anything else."

The clincher however is this short note dated April 14, 1851 wherein Butler asks Duyckinck to obtain for him a review copy of Hawthorne's latest work, doubtless meaning The House of the Seven Gables.

Citation: 

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "1843-1849" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1843 - 1849. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/83e4c970-2731-0133-8a0e-58d385a7bbd0 

29 Wall St.
Ap. 14, 1851
Dear Duyckinck, 
Can you get me a copy of Hawthorne's Book? I will read & notice it incontinently. I believe I understood you that you had spoken to Fields about notices for the Intelligencer. If you can get it without any trouble please send it to the office & much oblige 
Yours Truly
Wm: Allen Butler 
By incontinently Butler meant "instantly," "immediately."

Evidently William Allen Butler got the book with the help of George L. Duyckinck and made good on his promise to "read & notice it" without delay. Five days after requesting a review copy, Butler worked a warm and generous treatment of Hawthorne's new book into his letter to the National Intelligencer dated April 19, 1851 and published there on April 22nd under the heading "New York Correspondence." Reprinted in the weekly edition of the same newspaper on April 26, 1851, this may have been the last of Butler's published contributions as an occasional correspondent of the Washington, D. C. National Intelligencer. 

This item is not recorded in Gary Scharnhorst's Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Annotated Bibliography of Comment and Criticism Before 1900 (The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1988). 

Washington Weekly National Intelligencer
April 26, 1851 - via genealogybank.com

The House of the Seven Gables, a romance, by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Boston. Ticknor, Reed & Fields.

A greater treat than this volume, fresh from the magic pen of HAWTHORNE and the dainty press of TICKNOR & CO., (a fit conjunction of author and publishers,) has not been given to the reading public for this long time. Mr. HAWTHORNE, after having occupied for a number of years the position of an occasional essayist, writing more from impulse than from any settled purposes or plans of authorship, and appealing necessarily to a limited class of readers, has emerged into a position far better suited to his breadth of genius, and taken his stand in the front rank of that class of writers of fiction with whom fiction is only the medium for the exhibition and analysis of human thought and passion. The Scarlet Letter, published about a year ago, was his first experiment in this new and enlarged sphere. It was a book which no man could read without acknowledging an unrivalled power in the author; a book of intense interest and pathos, not from any startling developments of plot or incident, but from its masterly painting of character and strange revelations of the human heart. It proved deservedly successful, and enlarged Hawthorne's sphere of readers and admirers from a New England to a national circumference. His present book is a pleasing authentication of the success of the former one, and will be eagerly sought after by all who have already made themselves familiar with the author.

The House of the Seven Gables is a New England story, true in all its details and descriptions as to its locale, and yet in its spirit and mode of treatment as far removed from the commonly received notion of New Englandism, and as dissimilar, as the castles of Niederwald are from the factories at Lowell. It is one of the peculiarities of our literature that in the midst and centre of the most practical and least romantic of communities, both in action and thought, we should find a writer like Hawthorne eliminating the elements of a purely imaginative tale from the life going on around him. He is thoroughly native in his taste in almost all his works, taking as their ground-work some local tradition of the old Puritan or Colonial times, and giving prominence to the characteristics and peculiarities of his immediate neighbors as the best material for his purpose. The House of the Seven Gables stands in a street of a Massachusetts town; its occupants are Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, an old maid of veritable New England stamp, and Phoebe, her niece, and idealized "smart girl" such as one meets with, but entirely unidealized, all along  the valley of the Connecticut. The shadow of a curse has rested upon the old house, and pervaded its dark time-blackened interior, ever since the original Puritan proprietor built it over the spot of ground which he had wrested from the heirs of old Mathew Maule, who had been hung for witchcraft, and in one way or another has darkened the life of all its inmates. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon is driven by her poverty to the sad extremity of keeping a shop in the once aristocratic mansion, and the story opens with the bitter experience of the worthy dame in this emergency. The old maid and her brother, a man whom an unjust sentence has kept thirty years in prison, and who comes home to the Pyncheon homestead a wreck and ruin, and his cousin, Judge Pyncheon, the respectable and moral wealthy citizen, but in reality the author of the convict's misfortunes, and his deadly enemy, are the principal characters, not forgetting a streak of sunlight, woven through the otherwise dark texture of the tale, in the person of Phoebe, a beautiful and complete character, who is the good genius of the story. The plot is simple, and the thread of the narrative even, its whole power lying in the marvellous chiaroscuro in which the characters are painted, and the subtle analysis presented thereby of thoughts and passions common to the race of man, of which the Pyncheons are only single embodiments and types. I can safely pronounce the House of the Seven Gables the most strikingly original romance of American authorship, viewed as a work of imaginative power, which has yet appeared.

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Friday, August 30, 2024

Unabridged! Welling's review of MOBY-DICK in the NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER

"... all the special pleading of a literary devil's advocate cannot prevent a writer of genius from assuming his appropriate place among the auctores classici of his nation and tongue."
My full transcription of the long and mostly laudatory review of Moby-Dick, or The Whale in the Washington, D. C. Daily National Intelligencer (December 16, 1851) restores the ornately fabricated intro figuring the author, any author, as potentially a candidate for sainthood, and the severer sort of critic (not the "bland and benevolent" kind) as a "literary devil's advocate." Everything from "After a saint..." to "the auctores classici of his nation and tongue" was omitted without explanation in the version given on pages 398-401 in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995). Although attributed there and elsewhere in Melville scholarship to William Allen Butler, the December 16, 1851 review of Moby-Dick in the National Intelligencer appeared in the regular and highly regarded "Notes on New Books" column by then literary editor James C. Welling. 

Dr. James C. Welling
via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - U. S. Department of Commerce

Welling's authorship of "Notes on New Books" after the departure of former literary editor Edward William Johnston (in April 1851, if not earlier) was confirmed in a public statement by owner-editor William Winston Seaton, widely circulated in early September 1860. 

Charleston Courier - September 3, 1860 
via genealogybank.com

Seaton's public statement in the National Intelligencer was quoted by numerous other newspapers, for example the Charleston, SC Daily Courier on September 3, 1860: 
National Intelligencer.-- W. W. SEATON, Esq., the venerable survivor of the DAMON and PYTHIAS partnership of GALES & SEATON, announces the connection of JAMES C. WELLING with the editorship of the Intelligencer. Mr. WELLING is thus introduced:

Mr. Welling is no stranger in the columns of the Intelligencer, having been, in different capacities, connected with it for the last ten years, during the first five of which, after the retirement of the accomplished Edward William Johnston from the Literary department of the paper, Mr. Welling had charge of it, and was the author of those "Notes on New Books," which, by the scholarship and ability evinced in their composition, would, of themselves, be a sufficient evidence of the qualifications he brings to the tasks of journalism. But it is just to add that during the last five years he has participated in all the duties incident to the editorship of this journal, and has thus served a noviciate quite long enough to give full proof of his vocation to the exacting career upon which he has entered. Enjoying during this period, in the fullest degree, the confidence of my late lamented colleague, Mr. Gales, he has equally, by his high moral and conscientious character, no less than by his rare attainments, merited my own, and I avail myself of his temporary absence from Washington to make this announcement to the patrons whom it is the honor of the Intelligencer to address.
Most likely penned by James C. Welling, the complete review of Moby-Dick is transcribed below from the Washington Daily National Intelligencer of December 16, 1851. 

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

MOBY DICK: or the Whale. By HERMAN MELVILLE, author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." New York: Harper & Brothers.

After a saint has been dead and buried long enough, that is, after his foibles and venial peccadilloes have been almost forgotten, and when accordingly it is proposed to affix his name to the long list of kindred worthies enrolled on the calendar, his pretensions to such canonization, it is well known, must be previously submitted to the ecclesiastical adjudication of the apostolic camarilla; and, still further to guard against the great scandal which might arise from the precipitate bestowal of this saintly investiture on personages whose lives have won for them an unenviable celebrity, and the symmetry of whose character has been marred by any one of the seven deadly sins, the merits and claims of every plaintiff for sainthood are subjected to inquisitorial post mortem examination, much as the Egyptians were wont to do before they would allow the defunct a burial ticket, save that the camarilla buries first and examines afterwards; for we shrewdly suspect that a few of the titled "saints" would never have attained their worshipful dignity if they had not been previously reduced to that condition which enables poets and fish, according to Peter Pindar, to shine with a lustre all their own. Now, in order that the plea for canonization may proceed after due process of law, an officer is attached to the apostolic chamber, known under the complimentary cognomen of the Devil's Advocate, whose duty it is, indeed, in the behoof of the commonwealth of Tartarus, to regard himself as a regularly licensed attorney-general of his satanic majesty, and whose function it is to rake, scrape, and collect all that can be truly or slanderously said, surmised, or thought against the claimant in this suit for an apotheosis among the saints. Thus it is easy to see that the calendar is kept pure, though persons of a cavilling disposition might allege against the equity of this judicial arrangement that, in order to ensure a poetic justice, the devil should be invested with the sole appointment of his deputy, and that it should not be lodged with the court, as is actually the case, without at least his advice and consent. Still, so far as we have read in the "apostolic constitutions," about whose genuineness so much ink has been shed, they contain no proviso of this kind, though it is patent that without it the "inalienable rights" of the aged Nicholas are no more protected than those of South Carolina without such an amendment to the American constitution as shall empower her, in her single sovereignty, to elect a President as well as the other thirty States! 

It is not, however, its political significance that has beguiled us into a reminiscence of this bit of ecclesiastical history; on the contrary, we have recurred to it because the fancy suddenly struck us that there was some analogy between the amiable task of the Devil's Advocate and that sometimes assumed by the critical functionaries of the press; for, as it is the office of the former to pick a deceased saint to pieces in order to preclude his admittance among the elect of the calendar, so also it sometimes becomes the duty of the latter to pluck a hapless wight of an author until he becomes like Diogenes's edition of Plato's man. And if the newspaper critics are not always given to diabolical detraction of the "presentation copies" which  authors and publishers so kindly furnish them, let it not be thought that our analogy fails, for it is hinted that the Devil's Advocate himself, for reasons of his own, has occasionally allowed a candidate for the saintship to pass muster without a very rigid scrutiny. Now, among the reasons which partly tend to induce this suavity of commendatory and stereotyped criticism, we believe there are two worthy of especial mention. In the first place, the critic's "presentation copy" is always fresh from the press, and as he opens it, with  paper-cutter in hand, he finds each particular page still redolent of the paper-mill. The perfume of new books is the critic's peculiar incense, and unless the reader, like that most gentle of men and genial of essayists, Elia, is fond of titillating his olfactory by inhaling the extract of printer's ink; unless, like Charles Lamb, we say, he  considers a new book superior to  any thing of Lubin's, he cannot duly appreciate the kindly and propitiatory influence it experts upon a bland and benevolent critic. And, in the second place, who but the veriest curmudgeon could find it in his heart to indite any thing severe against objects so goodly to the sight as new-bound books, printed, every one  of them, in "the highest style of modern art," and profusely embellished with pictures to match? For ourselves, we can never be induced to say aught against those "illustrated editions," all bound in "cloth, full gilt," or "Turkey morocco, extra." Such books are only intended for the centre table or étagère; and if they are only pleasant to the eyes, it matters little whether or not they are like the apple of Eve, to be desired to make one wise. And occasionally, when dulness entombs itself in the garnished sepulchre of Turkey morocco, we call to mind the provident maxim, nil de mortuis nisi bonum.

Thus it has come to pass, we imagine, that the bibliographical censors of the press are not always strict to mark the sins against Quintilian and Blair which may be detected in the "complimentary copies" laid on the editorial table. The familiar saw relative to the oral examination of a gift horse would protest against any such procedure. Still, it is undeniable that these self-appointed custodians of the world's literature, especially such as preside over the "reviews" and solemn "quarterlies," attend to this matter better; that is, more in the legitimate spirit of a devil's advocate. However much "bated breath" there may be among the changling critics of the daily press, it is always expected that these oracular organs will deliver the most authoritative and impartial responses; their strictures must be terrible, for, as the motto of the greatest of them all asserts, "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur." The same Publius Syrus who furnished the Edinburgh reviewers this haughty motto of theirs, (though  the "smug" Sydney Smith tells us that none of its  founders had ever read a line in his dull works;) this same Publius, we say, has another sentiment that must  have been written for the especial accommodation of the newspaper critics: "Ad pœnitendum proprat qui cito judicat." Yet the great oracles have not always proved true in their critical vaticinations. To drop our persiflage, it may be doubted whether criticism exerts any thing more than a negative influence on the literature of the day. The most that even a sagacious critic can do is to anticipate the favorable or unfavorable decision that awaits some aspirant for transient or enduring literary distinction, provided such a rare work as that which aspires now-a-days to the latter should come within his ken. For, after all, it is the general sense and sovereign judgment of mankind that must put its broad arrow upon all that is noble in literature, while such works as are destined to a nine days' immortality will find their way to the grocery-stores and trunk-makers fast enough without being shown the road. After some luckless member of the literary Sisyphus family has been laboriously trundling his stone up to the summit, for a surly critic to help it to an additional kick downhill is at once most uncalled for and gratuitously malignant. We hope that our readers will not accuse us of unduly magnifying our office when we assure them that in our estimation the critics are at best only a set of literary jackals, appointed to prey upon authordom and cater for that great lion, the universal public.

And how often, besides, has  criticism overshot its mark? How many are the opinions of that megatherium of English literature, "the immortal" Doctor Johnson, which the subsequent  sense of enlightened men has reversed? Who now-a-days would carp at Milton as he did; who would call Gray a "barren rascal," or vote Fairfax's translation of Tasso a bore, or deny to Tristram Shandy the merit of humor? Or, in later times, was not Lord Jeffrey compelled to unsay much that he wrote while editor of the Edinburgh Review? Has Wordsworth any fewer admirers because the Edinburgh Reviewer met the "Excursion," on its first appearance, with the cheerful exordium of "this will never  do!" Is poor Keats less read because the London Quarterly killed him? We trow not. There were many able critics in France during the times of Voltaire, and no one, we presume, has forgotten how the Patriarch of Ferney and his allies in philosophical criticism disparaged a little book over which every reader has wept and melted, the "Paul and Virginia" of Bernardin de Saint Pierre. From these most easily-remembered examples we draw this useful inference, that all the special pleading of a literary devil's advocate cannot prevent a writer of genius from assuming his appropriate place among the auctores classici of his nation and tongue.

The professional criticism of the present day has run into channels somewhat remote from that which was once considered its legitimate province. It concerns itself not only with the application of critical rules to the judgment of literary productions, in which alone criticism may be said technically to consist, but has gradually developed itself into essay writing, so that our critical reviews, quarterlies, and similar periodical literature have become serial publications of essays on all literary and scientific subjects, the name and work of some author being taken as a mere caption to the articles, and having no more to do with the subsequent matter than the texts of certain clergymen have with their sermons: thus, instead of a critical analysis of Mr. Tennyson’s “Princess,” we have an elaborate disquisition on poetry in its nature and essence; instead of a critical examination of Mr. Macaulay’s History of England, we are treated to recondite disquisitions on the Philosophy of History, until the periodical review has become a pamphlet of essays or a fragment of the encyclopædia. If we were disposed on the present occasion to follow the example thus set us by our betters, we should forthwith proceed, taking “Moby Dick, or the Whale,” as our text, to indite a discourse on cetology. Such, however, is not our intention., Nor do we propose, like a veritable devil’s advocate, to haul Mr. Herman Melville over the coals for any offences committed against the code of Aristotle and Aristarchus: we have nothing to allege against his admission among the few writers of the present day who give evidence of some originality; but, while disposed to concede to Mr. Melville a palm of high praise for his literary excellencies, we must enter our decided protest against the querulous and cavilling innuendoes which he so much loves to discharge, like barbed and poisoned arrows, against objects that should be shielded from his irreverent wit. On this point we hope it is unnecessary to enlarge in terms of reprehension, further than to say that there are many passages in his last work, as indeed in most that Mr. Melville has written, which “dying he would wish to blot.” Neither good taste nor good morals can approve the “forecastle scene,” with its maudlin and ribald orgies, as contained in the 40th chapter of “Moby Dick.” It has all that is disgusting in Goethe’s “Witches’ Kitchen,” without its genius.

Very few readers of the lighter literature of the day have forgotten, we presume, the impression produced upon their minds of Mr. Melville’s earlier publications—Typee and Omoo. They opened to all the circulating library readers an entirely new world. His “Peep at Polynesian Life,” during a four months’ residence in a valley of the Marquesas, as unfolded in Typee, with his rovings in the “Little Jule” and his rambles through Tahiti, as detailed in Omoo, abound with incidents of stirring adventure and “moving accidents by flood and field,” replete with all the charms of novelty and dramatic vividness. He first introduced us to cannibal banquets, feasts of raw fish and poee-poee; he first made us acquainted with the sunny glades and tropical fruits of the Typee valley, with its golden lizards among the spear-grass and many colored birds among the trees; with its groves of cocoa-nut, its tattooed savages, and temples of light bamboo. Borne along by the current of his limpid style, we sweep past bluff and grove, wooded glen and valley, and dark ravines lighted up far within by wild waterfalls, while here and there in the distance are seen the white huts of the natives, nestling like birdsnests in clefts gushing with verdure, while off the coral reefs of each sea-girt island the carved canoes of tattooed chieftains dance on the blue waters. Who has forgotten the maiden Fayaway and the faithful Kory-Kory, or the generous Marheyo, or the Doctor Long Ghost, that figure in his narratives? So new and interesting were his sketches of life in the South Sea islands that few were able to persuade themselves that his story of adventure was not authentic. We have not time at present to renew the inquiry into their authenticity, though we incline to suspect they were about as true as the sketches of adventures detailed by De Foe in his Robinson Crusoe. The points of resemblance between the inimitable novel of De Foe and the production of Mr. Melville are neither few nor difficult to be traced. In the conduct of his narrative the former displays more of naturalness and vraisemblance; the latter more of fancy and invention; and while we rather suspect that Robinson’s man Friday will always remain more of a favorite than Kory-Kory among all readers “in their teens,” persons of maturer judgment and more cultivated taste will prefer the mingled bonhommie, quiet humor, and unstrained pathos which underlie and pervade the graphic narratives of Mr. Melville. Still we are far from considering Mr. Melville a greater artist than Daniel De Foe in the general design of his romantic pictures; for is it not a greater proof of skill in the use of language to be able so to paint the scenes in a narration as to make us forget the narrator in the interests of his subjects? In this, as we think, consists the charm of Robinson Crusoe—a book which every boy reads and no man forgets; the perfect naturalness of the narrative, and the transparent diction in which it is told, have never been equalled by any subsequent writer, nor is it likely that they will be in an age fond of point and pungency.

Mr. Melville is not without a rival in this species of romance-writing, founded on personal adventure in foreign and unknown lands. Dr. Mayo, the author of “Kaloolah” and other works, has opened to us a phantamagorical view of life in Northern Africa similar to the “peep” which Mr. Melville has given us of the South Sea Islands through his kaleidoscope. Each author has familiarized himself with the localities in which his dramatic exhibition of men and things is enacted, and each have doubtless claimed for themselves a goodly share of that invention which produced the Travels of Gulliver and the unheard-of adventures and exploits of the Baron Munchausen. Framazugda, as painted by Dr. Mayo, is the Eutopia of Negrodom, just as the Typee valley has been called the Eutopia of the Pacific Islands, and Kaloolah is the “counterfeit presentment” of Fayaway.

Moby-Dick, or the Whale, is the narrative of a whaling voyage; and, while we must beg permission to doubt its authenticity in all respects, we are free to confess that it presents a most striking and truthful portraiture of the whale and his perilous capture. We do not imagine that Mr. Melville claims for this his latest production the same historical credence which he asserted was due to “Typee” and “Omoo;” and we do not know how we can better express our conception of his general drift and style in the work under consideration than by entitling it a prose Epic on Whaling. In whatever light it may be viewed, no one can deny it to be the production of a man of genius. The descriptive powers of Mr. Melville are unrivalled, whether the scenes he paints reveal “old ocean into tempest toss’d,” or are laid among the bright hillsides of some Pacific island, so warm and undulating that the printed page on which they are so graphically depicted seems almost to palpitate beneath the sun. Language in the hands of this master becomes like a magician’s wand, evoking at will “thick-coming fancies,” and peopling the “chambers of imagery” with hideous shapes of terror or winning forms of beauty and loveliness. Mr. Melville has a strange power to reach the sinuosities of a thought, if we may so express ourselves; he touches with his lead and line depths of pathos that few can fathom, and by a single word can set a whole chime of sweet or wild emotions into a pealing concert. His delineation of character is actually Shakspearean—a quality which is even more prominently evinced in “Moby Dick” than in any of his antecedent efforts. Mr. Melville especially delights to limn the full-length portrait of a savage, and if he is a cannibal it is all the better; he seems fully convinced that the highest type of man is to be found in the forests or among the anthropophagi of the Fejee Islands. Brighter geniuses than even his have disported on this same fancy; for such was the youthful dream of Burke, and such was the crazy vision of Jean Jacques Rosseau.

The humor of Mr. Melville is of that subdued yet unquenchable nature which spreads such a charm over the pages of Sterne. As illustrative of this quality in his style, we must refer our readers to the irresistibly comic passages scattered.at irregular intervals through “Moby Dick;” and occasionally we find in this singular production the traces of that “wild imagining” which throws such a weird-like charm about the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge; and many of the scenes and objects in “Moby Dick” were suggested, we doubt not, by this ghastly rhyme. The argument of what we choose to consider as a sort of prose epic on whales, whalers, and whaling may be briefly stated as follows:

Ishmael, the pseudonymous appellative assumed by Mr. Melville in his present publication, becoming disgusted with the “tame and docile earth,” resolves to get to sea in all possible haste, and for this purpose welcomes the whaling voyage as being best adapted to open to his gaze the floodgates of the oceanic wonder world; the wild conceits that swayed him were two—floating pictures in his soul of whales gliding through the waters in endless processions, and “midst them all one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.” This “grand hooded phantom,” thus preternaturally impressed on his mental retina, proves to be Moby Dick, a great white whale, who had long been the terror of his “whaling grounds,” noted for his invincible ferocity and for a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high pyramidical white hump on his back. It is not, however, his prodigious magnitude, nor his strange white hue, nor his deformed visage that so much invested the monster with unnatural terror, as the unexampled and intelligent malignity which he had repeatedly evinced when attacked by different whalers, so that no turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could smite his foes with more seeming malice. Ishmael embarks on board the whaling vessel “Pequod,” whose captain, Ahab, had been previously bereft of a leg in an encounter with the terrible “Moby Dick;” a spirit of moody vindictiveness enters his soul, and he determines to be avenged upon the fell monster that had, with such intelligent and prepense maliciousness, rendered him a cripple for life; the white whale swam before him as the incarnation of all those wicked agencies which some deep men, according to Mr. Melville, feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung; in other words, Capt. Ahab became a monomaniac, with the chase and capture of Moby-Dick for his single idea; so that all his powers were thus concentrated and intensified with a thousand-fold more potency than he could have brought to bear on one reasonable object. The “Pequod” encounters Moby Dick, and in the deadly struggle which ensues the whole crew perish save the fortunate Ishmael. On such a slender thread hangs the whole of this ingenious romance, which for variety of incident and vigor of style can scarcely be exceeded.



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