Original research and riffs on Herman Melville, authorship, and nineteenth-century American literature.
“An admirable story,” cried Media. “I had no idea that a mere mortal, least of all a philosopher, could acquit himself so well. By my scepter, but it is well done! Ha, ha! blind men round a banian! Why, Babbalanja, no demi-god could surpass it. Taji, could you?”
— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) April 20, 2026
“But,… pic.twitter.com/zTWHNdk0dQ
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| Illustration of Dante's Inferno Canto 6 by Giovanni Stradano, 1587. Stradanus aka Jan van der Straet, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
"Fortunately for the felicity of the Dilletante in Literature, the horrible allegorical meanings of the Inferno, lie not on the surface...."
"True, the dilettante may employ his technical terms; but ignorance of these prevents not due feeling for Art, in any mind naturally alive to beauty or grandeur."
-- quoted here from the reconstructed text by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. in The Piazza Tales, and Other Prose Pieces, edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle, and others (Northwestern University Press, 1987) page 398.
Giovannini, G. “Melville’s Pierre and Dante’s Inferno.” PMLA, vol. 64, no. 1, 1949, pp. 70–78. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/459670. Accessed 28 Oct. 2025.
Giovannini, G. “Melville and Dante.” PMLA, vol. 65, no. 2, 1950, pp. 329–329. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/45947.
and Nathalia Wright
Wright, Nathalia. “Pierre: Herman Melville’s Inferno.” American Literature, vol. 32, no. 2, 1960, pp. 167–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2922675.
G. Giovanni most helpfully connects the problem of interpreting Dante's profounder "allegorical meanings," as raised by the narrator in Book IX, with the "melodramatic violence" displayed by Pierre when "trampling on the torn pages of the Inferno." As Giovanni shows, the hero's behavioral and mental health crisis is precipitated by his new awareness of evil, beginning with the sins of his own father lately disclosed through Isabel's claim of shared paternity.
Pierre's frustration on the sudden discovery of moral disorder is here roughly equated with Hamlet's; its ultimate source is the universalization of his father's moral lapse through "the horrible allegorical meanings of the Inferno." Limited in his experiential knowledge of the world, Pierre finds the form and generic significance of his particular perception of evil in the Inferno allegorically construed as a picture of life itself. The Inferno initiates Pierre into "that darker though truer aspect of things.
"Melville's Pierre and Dante's Inferno," pages 75-76
... These references to the Inferno in first half of the novel, from the time when Pierre first sees Isabel to his pretended marriage and departure with her for the city, are closely coordinated with Pierre's development towards a realization of the ubiquity and universality of evil. Melville conceives Pierre's development within the sequence of his confrontations of the Inferno, and sees the poem metaphorically as an index of a naive idealism resentful of the existence of evil."
"Melville's Pierre and Dante's Inferno," page 77
The effect of reading Dante and Shakespeare on poor Pierre, augmenting his new personal knowledge of worldly wickedness, is well summarized by Giovanni:
"...The fragments from the poets bring into focus a reality larger than Pierre's particular experience and central to the tragedy: evil is an integral part of existence, and the attempt to eradicate it must lead to tragic failure."
"Melville's Pierre and Dante's Inferno," page 76
In Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 2, 1851-1891 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) at page 435, Hershel Parker made reference to the "variant rendering of a line by John Carlyle" that Melville inscribed in his volume of Cary's Dante. Parker added, "in this case there is no other evidence that he had further knowledge of Carlyle's translation." Now, more than twenty years on, I am glad to offer multiple mentions of "Dilettanti" and "Dilettantism" or (as spelled on page xxii in the American edition by Harper & Brothers) "Dilletantism" as pretty good evidence that Melville read attentively in John Aitken Carlyle's preface--some time before the Harpers brought out Pierre in the summer of 1852.
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| Worcester MA Spy - August 5, 1852 |
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| Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) via The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
... so invincible is the natural, untamable, latent spirit of a courageous manliness in man, that though now socially educated for thousands of years in an arbitrary homage to the Law, as the one only appointed redress for every injured person; yet immemorially and universally, among all gentlemen of spirit, once to have uttered independent personal threats of personal vengeance against your foe, and then, after that, to fall back slinking into a court, and hire with sops a pack of yelping pettifoggers to fight the battle so valiantly proclaimed; this, on the surface, is ever deemed very decorous, and very prudent—a most wise second thought; but, at bottom, a miserably ignoble thing.
https://books.google.com/books?id=JXK7HN62EcQC&pg=PA457&lpg=PA457&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseThe NCE editors rightly gloss Melville's word pettifoggers as "Inferior or disreputable lawyers" but mistakenly equate sops with "fools." In context, the plural noun sops can't mean "fools." Fops are fools, and saps, but sops are what you might pay lowlife lawyers with. Grose's 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines SOP as
"a bribe. A sop for Cerberus, a bribe for a porter, turnkey, or gaoler."
https://books.google.com/books?id=LXMKAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA18-PA7&dq#v=onepage&q&f=falseIn a word, sop means bribe. Literally a piece of bread soaked in liquor, sop by extension may designate "anything given to pacify" according to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language:
"SOP, sop, n. s. what is sopped; any thing steeped in liquor, commonly to be eaten; any thing given to pacify, from the sop given to Cerberus."Webster likewise invokes Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed dog that guards Hades:
SOP, n.
... Any thing given to pacify; so called from the sop given to Cerberus, in mythology.
--A Dictionary of the English Language Volume 2 (London, 1832).
The prudent Sibyl had before prepar'dIn Pierre, Melville extends the allusion to Cerberus with an image of hungry curs, seemingly primed for attack. Literally a team of legal hacks, Melville's "pettifoggers" are depicted in figurative language as an aggressive "pack" of "yelping" animals--paid off like Virgil's Cerberus, in "sops." Signifying, in this context, bribes.
A sop, in honey steep'd, to charm the guard;
Which, mix'd with pow'rful drugs, she cast before
His greedy grinning jaws, just op'd to roar.
With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,
With hunger press'd, devours the pleasing bait.
TO DANIEL SHEPHERD
Come, Shepherd, come and visit me:
Come, we'll make it A[r]cady:
Come, if but for charity.
Sure, with such a pastoral name,
Thee the city should not claim.
Come, then, Shepherd, come away,
Thy sheep in bordering pastures stray.
Come, Daniel, come and visit me:
I'm lost in many a quandary:
I've dreamed, like Bab’lon’s Majesty:
Prophet, come expound for me. —
I dreamed I saw a laurel grove,
Claimed for his by the bird of love,
Who, elate with such dominion,
Oft cuffed the boughs with haughty pinion.
Indignantly the trees complain,
Accusing his afflictive reign.
Their plaints the chivalry excite
Of chanticleers, a plucky host:
They battle with the bird of light.
Beaten, he wings his northward flight,
No more his laurel realm to boast,
Where now, to crow, the cocks alight,
And — break down all the branches quite!
Such a weight of friendship pure
The grateful trees could not endure.
This dream, it still disturbeth me:
Seer, foreshows it Italy?
But other visions stir my head;
No poet-problems, fancy-fed —
Domestic prose of board and bed.
I marvel oft how guest unwined
Will to this farm-house be resigned.
Not a pint of ruby claret
Cooleth in our cellar-bin;
And ripening in our sultry garret,
Otard glows no flask within.
(Claret and otard here I name
Because each is your fav’rite flame:
Placed ’tween the two decanters, you,
Like Alexander, your dear charmers view,
And both so fair you find, you neither can eschew: —
That’s what they call an Alexandrine; }
Don’t you think it very damn’d fine? }
— Brackets serve to fence this prattle,
Pound for episodic cattle. —
I said that me the Fates do cripple
In matter of a wholesome ‘tipple” —
Now, is it for oft cursing gold,
For lucre vile,
The Hags do thus from me withhold
Sweet Bacchus’ smile?
Smile, that like other smiles as mellow,
Not often greets Truth’s simple fellow: —
For why? Not his the magic dollar?
You should know, you Wall-Street scholar! —
Of Bourbon that is rather new
I brag a fat black bottle or two. —
Shepherd, is this such Mountain-Dew
As one might fitly offer you?
Yet if cold water will content ye
My word, of that ye shall have plenty.
Thanks to late floods, our spring, it brims, —
Will’t mind a crush * of goblet-rims?
I've told some doubts that sadly pose me:
Come then now straight resolve me.
Come, these matters sagely read,
Daniel, of the prophet breed.
Daniel Shepherd, come and rove —
Freely rove the fairy dells;
The one the Housatonic clove,
And that where genial friendship dwells.
Pittsfield July 6th 1859
[--Herman Melville, as first published in Willard Thorp, Herman Melville: Representative Selections (American Book Company, 1938), pages 346-8.]
*The MS. may read “a crunch.” [Thorp's note.]Where Thorp reads "bird of love," the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Correspondence edited by Lynn Horth has "bird of Jove." Of old the Roman Eagle, as in Dante:
... Never fire,
With so swift motion, forth a stormy cloud
Leap'd downward from the welkin's furthest bound,
As I beheld the bird of Jove descend
Down through the tree; and, as he rush'd, the rind
Disparting crush beneath him; buds much more,
And leaflets.
--Purgatory Canto 32, trans. Henry Francis Cary (not marked in Melville's copy of The Vision, accessible via Melville's Marginalia Online).But here in the poem "To Daniel Shepherd," Melville's "bird of Jove" signifies the Austrian Empire with its adopted symbol of the double-headed eagle, as as Dennis Berthold points out in American Risorgimento (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2009), page 190.
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| The Saratogian (Saratoga Springs, New York) - July 28, 1870 |
Death of Daniel Shepherd.
It is our sad duty to record the death of DANIEL SHEPHERD, Esq., of this village, which occurred on Friday morning—his fiftieth birthday. Mr. Shepherd was a native of this county, a son of Hon. William Shepherd of Clifton Park, and inherited superior ability. He was a graduate of Union College, and distinguished for his literary attainments. After his graduation he came to this village, and studied law with Hon. W. A. Beach, and subsequently became connected with him in the practice of his profession. About this time he married Miss Mary R. White, a step-daughter of Dr. John Clarke, of the Congress Spring, and soon after formed a co-partnership with Hon. Chesseldon Ellis, of Waterford, at the close of that gentleman's career in Congress, and they removed to New York to engage in the legal profession. He resided in New York, continuing his legal practice, something less than fifteen years, and returned to Saratoga in the spring of 1861, since which time he has lived among us.
Mr. Shepherd was no ordinary man. His abilities were of a high order. He was a fine scholar, and a learned and able lawyer; but his tastes and culture were more distinctly literary than professional, and his energies were largely devoted to literary work. He was a successful writer of newspaper stories, and achieved considerable distinction as the author of a work entitled "Saratoga; a tale of 1787," in which he delineated frontier life with a masterly hand. He possessed a fine personal presence, was eminently social and genial in his nature, and with his bright and polished intellect he combined advantages which few young men possess in so high degree. But unfortunately, while in New York, he embarked in business enterprises that failed to realize his expectations, and involved him in difficulties, which proved too much for his sensitive nature, exerting a depressing influence upon his mind, and he has been almost entirely withdrawn from active life since his return to Saratoga. He has left a wife and four children (three sons and a daughter,) and a large number of relatives and personal friends, to mourn his death.
--The Saratogian (Saratoga Springs, New York), July 28, 1870 via Fulton History.The Harvard copy of Saratoga: A Story of 1787 by Allan Melville's law partner and Herman's friend Daniel Shepherd is accessible online via Google Books:
