1826 letter from Gansevoort Melvill to his mother

Months before treating his high school assembly to Marco Bozzaris, young Gansevoort Melville (born December 6, 1815 so not yet 11) declaimed another romance of Greek resistance in the more domestic but hardly less formal setting of a fashionable children's party. Now forgotten, the Byronic verse tale of Duke Phranza, the Regicide had recently appeared, unattributed, in the March 1826 issue of Blackwood's Magazine. Gansevoort's mother, who would host her own lavish children's party in February 1827, wanted to know all about it. Hence this letter of October 6, 1826 from Gansevoort Melvill (later Melville) to his mother, transcribed herein from the original in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Gansevoort's turn to perform came after various embarrassments: a tray of muffins overturned in his lap, and "Mrs. Palmer" superintended a kissing game, "Pillows and Keys," in which the kids were unwilling to participate.

When called on, as Herman's older brother reports to their mother Maria Gansevoort Melvill on October 6, 1826, Gansevoort "spoke Duke Phranza" (spelled Phransa?) and perhaps three other pieces:

"A Lady on the field of Battle and Lawrence's Elegy, and O sacred truth."

Gansevoort does not say what other children recited, if anything. William Gilman in Melville's Early Life and Redburn (page 32) assumes they must have spoken as well, and reads Gansevoort's 1826 list of titles as a kind of program describing what others performed. "O sacred truth" probably refers to Thomas Campbell's lines on the Fall of Warsaw or Battle of Warsaw. This poem appears under the heading Pleasures of Hope in the first edition of An Essay on Elocution: With Elucidatory Passages from Various Authors, edited by John Hanbury Dwyer (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1824).



Many years later Gansevoort made numerous notes from a later edition of Dwyer in his 1837 Index Rerum, as Hershel Parker details in Melville: The Making of the Poet (Northwestern University Press, 2008), pages 47-49. In the 1828 edition of Dwyer's Elocution cited by Parker, Campbell's poem beginning "Oh! sacred Truth!" is titled The Sacking of Prague.

Lawrence's Elegy may have commemorated naval hero James Lawrence, famous for his undaunted command, "Don't give up the ship." More specifically, the piece in question might have been the Elegy in Remembrance of James Lawrence, Esquire, printed in 1813 and circulated as a broadside.

via Library of Congress

ELEGY, 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF 

JAMES LAWRENCE, ESQUIRE: 

(LATE COMMANDER OF THE UNITED STATES' FRIGATE CHESAPEAKE.)

    SPIRIT of Sympathy! from Heaven descend!
A Nation weeps! Columbia mourns a friend.
Hush'd be the sound of Pleasure's thrilling lyre—
Quench'd be the flame of Passion's glowing fire;
Let shouts of victory for laurels won,
Give place to grief, for LAWRENCE, Valour's son.
To Warrior who was e'er his country's pride,
Has for that country, bravely, nobly died.
O! ne'er to man did bounteous Heaven impart
A purer spirit, a more generous heart:
And in THAT HEART did Nature sweetly blend,
The fearless Hero, and the faithful Friend.

   Low in the dust now lies that godlike form;
Cold is that hand, which in the battle-storm,
With dauntless courage held the faithful blade,
And deeds of Spartan valour there display'd.
As some fond mother who bewails her child,
And vents her grief in mournful accents wild;
So look'd Columbia's Genius when stern Death,
Relentless Tyrant, snatch'd her fav'rite's breath.

“Ah! me,” she cried, “would Heaven no longer save
“My much-lov'd Hero from the silent grave?
“Could not my prayers one little respite gain?
“Were all my tears and supplications vain?
“Must men like HIM be cropp'd in manhood's bloom,
“To fill the dreary ‘forest of the tomb?’
“Scarce had his glorious, bright career begun,
“Ere from its stellar height declin'd his sun.
“Yet long his virtues shall maintain their sway,
“And fire the Heroes of the future day.”  

   Now from the regions of Eternal Light,
To where thy soul has wing'd its joyful flight,
Witness the tears that for thy loss do flow,
Behold a nation whelm'd in silent woe:
The pearly drops which tremble in each eye,
Shall sooth thy spirit 'thron'd above the sky.

Blest Shade! Farewell! thy memory, ever dear,
Oft shall receive fair Freedom's holy tear;
In each fond heart shall live thy peerless name,
And THERE shall rise thy MONUMENTS OF FAME.

This tribute would have been deeply appreciated if young "Master Perry" were any relation to the Hero of Lake Erie, whose son and namesake Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. was born in 1815, like Gansevoort Melville. As noted by Laurie Robertson Laurent in A Traveling Life (Chapter 1 in A Companion to Herman Melville, ed. Wyn Kelley, Wiley Blackwell, 2006), Gansevoort's parents Maria Gansevoort and Allan Melvill first met in 1813 at a ball for Oliver Hazard Perry.

The piece that Gansevoort calls "A Lady on the field of Battle" sounds very like the title of a poem by Felicia Hemans. But "Woman on the Field of Battle" first appeared over the signature "F. H." in the November 1827 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Therefore nobody at Mrs. Palmer's tea party could have recited this poem in October 1826. Here's another candidate: A Lady shot on the Field of Battle by American poet Samuel Woodworth. In February 1821 a Mr. Picket recited "A Lady shot..." as part of a benefit concert for Woodworth, held at Washington Hall in New York City.

The manuscript letter transcribed below is held by The New York Public Library in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Manuscripts & Archives Division, Call # MssCol 1109. Melville Family Papers, Box 308: Melvill, Gansevoort 1826-1845.

New York. Oct 6th 1826

Dear Mother

I hope you are all well as we are. You wished me to tell you about my visit to Mrs. Palmer's. James Palmer told me to be there at 5 O-Clock in the afternoon, but Papa said that was too early, but at half past four James called for me and I went. The weather was very bad, I was there first. James called for all of them and they came in the following order, Livingston Rutgers, and Edward. William Rutherford, and Betsey, Thomas, also not forgetting Robin. Miss Slidell and Miss Perry and James walked in arm in arm, when we all got seated the Girls took the Sofa. Mrs. Palmer came in with a dignified mien all dressed in black as her light form bounded oer the floor. She seated herself beside the Girls, then introduced the Girls to the boys, there sits Master Gansevoort Melvill of Bleecker Street, and so on to the whole company. Then began the entertainment. Margaret showed us some drawing books when they were done with Some Muffins were handed round to us. as soon as the plate came to me The Muffins were emptied into my lap in wild disorder. I was frightened, and the company screamed. after they were fairly on the plate again I took one.

Then we played Pillows and Keys. You must kneel before the one You want to kiss you, and you must ring the Keys 3 times and if it is a boy he must kiss the one you kneel to, and if a Girl the one she kneels to must kiss her. no one would take it, Mrs Palmer took the Pillow and Keys and rung ten times, and cried come kiss me, no one would kiss her, and she said Old Maids may ring 100 times but they never get kissed. after that they handed the tea and Cake round, Master Ed Rutgers is very fond of Margaret Palmer, and the Cakes being in the shape of a heart took one, went up to her and putting his hand upon the Cake and the Cake upon his heart, cried out My Heart, after that we played Pawns danced and and sung. Mrs Palmer called on me to speak, and I spoke Duke Phranza, A Lady on the field of Battle and Lawrence's Elegy, and O sacred truth, at 9 o'clock Ann called for me the rain pouring down in torrents. I spent  a very pleasant evening there. Ann told me to tell you to come home as soon as possible. We all join in love to you Grandmama Aunt Mary and Uncle Peter and Cousins

Your Affectionate Son
Gansevoort Melvill

PS  Tell Cris that I do not forget her

--Gansevoort Melvill to Maria Melvill, October 6, 1826. Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Augusta Melville on the poetry of Felicia Hemans

Felicia Hemans via Wikimedia Commons

At least ten different school compositions by Herman Melville's sister Augusta Melville (1821-1876) survive in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Call number MssCol 1109, Box 308. When she began writing them Augusta was fifteen years old, in the 3rd Department at the Albany Female Academy. Her usually untitled essays treat the following topics:

• Exemplary human exertion
• Character of Christ
• History of a Hat
• Execution of Lady Jane Grey
•  Mourners
• The Sabbath
• Childhood
• The Lark (two separate drafts)
• Sufferings of Christ 
• Poetry of Mrs. Hemans

The Albany Female Academy gloried in its "particular attention" to Composition during the period of Augusta Melville's attendance there:

Composition has received particular attention in this institution; and it is believed that the plan pursued in teaching this important branch, has resulted in producing many correct and elegant writers. Instruction in this branch of study is commenced in the fifth department, where the pupils are daily required to incorporate in sentences, to be written by themselves, words given them by their teachers. This exercise is continued in both divisions of the fourth, and occasionally in addition to regular essays in the third department, and experience has demonstrated it to be, an efficient mode of teaching the definition and use of words, as well as the structure of language. In the first and second departments, this productive system is continued. The teachers of composition devote one hour a day to each of these departments, in correcting the essays which are given in once in every two weeks. The composition of each pupil is read aloud in her presence., and all the faults in orthography, incorrect sentences, improper use of words, &c. &c., carefully pointed out. 

Themes are occasionally given to the scholars, with an analysis or sketch of the outline, to be pursued in the construction of the essay. After the composition is corrected, the scholar is required to make a copy of the same, and return it to the teacher to be preserved in the institution.  --Documents of the Senate of the State of New York

As reported in the Albany Argus on July 22, 1836, one essay titled "The Character of Christ" (Augusta's?) nearly won 3rd prize but lost out to another student's composition on the "Genius of John Milton." The big prize-winners:

1. Constitution of Man
2. Traits of Indian Character
3. Genius of John Milton

Albany Argus - July 22, 1836

In Melville Unfolding (University of Michigan Press, 2008), John Bryant devotes a couple of pages to Augusta's writing and her brother Gansevoort's editing, helpfully summarizing their relative strengths:

In 1836, Gansevoort was himself an exuberant stylist developing his own rhetorical skills; Augusta, a clearly talented by inexperienced writer in need of (and grateful for) fraternal "correction." He was twenty years old, and she fifteen. 
--Melville Unfolding, 186

In the first volume of The Melville Log, Jay Leyda gave excerpts from two of Augusta's compositions, the one about Childhood dated October 15, 1836; and the one on Mrs. Hemans, submitted according to Leyda on January 15, 1837.

None can exceed her, and few can equal her writings in their ethereal purity of sentiment. None can do justice to them, and they will ever remain a bright meteor in the sky of fame to humble all who dare cope with her and bind undying laurels round her brow. --The Melville Log, 1.67-8

Besides getting editorial help from Gansevoort, Augusta utilized the influential criticism by Francis Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review, excerpted in some editions of The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans. For instance, the canceled phrase "touching and accomplished," is Jeffrey's.

Augusta Melville's essay on the poetry of Felicia Hemans is transcribed in full below. The strike-through and highlighted portions indicate revisions made by Augusta's older brother Gansevoort Melville. Stray words and fragments aim to represent text only, not exact spatial position or arrangement on the manuscript page. Two draft headings are blotted over in dark ink, the longer and more central of which appears to have read "Mrs. Heman's Poetry."

Mrs. Heman's Poetry

A sweet A sweet
        A sweet A sweet
sweet        A Sweet

A sweet tenderness and loftiness of feeling characterizes all the poetical productions of Mrs Hemans. They possess "a purity of sentiment which could only emanate from the soul of a woman" [Francis Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review]. In her descriptions, taste, and elegance enriched with varied images of beauty, which leave an impress like that of natures handiwork a soothing impresssion upon the mind, And they are not merely placed there for ornament, but they possess a meaning, a full decided meaning. And some peices that seem at first but mere descriptions have a fine moral attached, which shows a thorough acquaintance with human nature. Her style is fine. It paints the virtues and the vices in their true light, and condemning the vicious, applauds the virtuous. Her choise of subjects shows an acquaintance with the human mind, and an extent of knowledge which few possess. She is ever bright and beautiful in her illustrations., some have a sweet, pathetic expression which paints its image upon the mind.

"Oh! ask of them stranger!—send back the lost!
"Tell them we mourn by the dark blue streams,
"Tell them our lives but of them are dreams!
"Tell how we sat in the gloom to pine,
"And to watch for a step,—but the step was thine!"
[The Stranger in Louisiana]

Her vivid descriptions bring the scenes before our minds eye, with a force which is not equeled [underlined spelling error] by any other female writer, for she is by all means the most touching and accomplished. Her writings are preeminently distinguished for their touching simplicity & exquisite pathos.

Most of her poetry is peculiarly adapted to musick., There is a softness and delicacy of sentiment, contained in it, combined with such perfect euphony,

dream

that it breaths a sweet unison with

dream dreams

any musical instrument. "Bring flowers," "the tyrolise evening hymn" "the captive knight" and many others

 dreams

are sweetly warbled by young voices in all their native purity. But her sweetest poem is "Gertrude Von Der Wart." None but a woman could have described the tenderness, the enduring love, even unto death of that frail but heroic woman,! Who could watch by the tortured

vivid her vivid vivid her her her

form of him she loved, and pour forth her voice in prayer for his soul, beneath the pale stars, alone and in darkness. She strengthens him to bear his agony 

"And show my honoured love, and true,
Bear on bear nobly on,
We have the blessed heaven in view,
Whose rest shall soon be won."  [Gertrude]

And how touching the conclusion when death has at length arrived to put a period to his agonies.

"While e'en as on a martyrs grave,
She knelt on that sad spot,
And weeping blessed the God who gave,
Strength to forsake him not."

"The Better Land," the "messenger bird," and "hour of prayer" are sweet effusions from a pious soul. The "childs first grief" breaths a touching symplicity and innocence which which we seldom meet with. "The Sisters," too abounds with beautiful ideas, most beautifully expressed. The broken hearted one is about to leave the tender and devoted sister, the companion of her childhood, who is using every persuasion that ardent love can suggest to wean her back, how touching her answer. 

"Oh! woul'dst thou seek a wounded bird from shelter to detain,
"Or woul'dst thou call a spirit freed to weary life again?  [The Sisters]

And of an and

This is but a single example of the numerous beauties of pathetic description. None can exceed her, and few can equal her writings in their ethereal purity of sentiment. None can do justice to them, and they will ever remain a bright meteor in the sky of fame to humble all who dare cope with her and to bind such undying laurels round her fair brow. which will do her the honours too well deserved. Yes! hers is an enduring fame, a fame which all might covet which shall last as long as refinement and pure taste remain. In lamenting her death that exquisite passage which she composed comes forcibly to mind. 

Bring flowers pale flowers o'er the bier to shed,
A crown for the brow of the early dead.
For this through its leaves hath the white rose burst
For this in the woods was the violet nursed,
Through this look in vain for what once was ours
They are love's last gift—bring flowers, pale flowers.

Augusta

undying       lau

                    laurels

laurels lau

Miss A. Melville
Composition

--Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library

Sophia Hawthorne's view of Melville: "free, brave & manly"

Sophia Hawthorne, September 4, 1850 letter to her mother Elizabeth [Palmer] Peabody
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

In Herman Melville: A Biography (V1.773) Hershel Parker calls this "by all odds  the fullest such description of Melville known to exist." Most recently, Sophia Hawthorne's physical description of Herman Melville in 1850 has been reprinted in Melville in His Own Time, edited by Steven Olsen-Smith. Now you can see online what Sophia Hawthorne wrote in manuscript, courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 

To day Mr Hawthorne & Mr Melville have gone to dine at Pittsfield. Mr. Tappan took them in his carriage.... This would have been no particular courtesy in some persons, but for this shy dear, who particularly did not wish, for some reason to be introduced to Mr Melville, it was very pretty. I have no doubt he will be repaid by finding Mr Melville a very different man from what he imagines - & very agreeable & entertaining - We find him so - a man with a true warm heart & a soul & an intellect - with life to his finger-tips - earnest, sincere & reverent, very tender & modest - And I am not sure that he is not a very great man - but I have not quite decided upon my own opinion. I should say I am not quite sure that I do not think him a very great man - for my opinion is of course as far as possible from settling the matter. He has very keen perceptive power, but what astonishes me is that his eyes are not large & deep. He seems to see every thing very accurately & how he can do so with his small eyes, I cannot tell. They are not keen eyes, either, but quite undistinguished in every way. His nose is straight & rather handsome, his mouth expressive of sensibility & emotion. He is tall & erect with an air free, brave & manly. When conversing, he is full of gesture & force, & loses himself in his subject. There is no grace nor polish. Once in a while his animation gives place to a singularly quiet expression out of these eyes, to which I have objected--an indrawn, dim look, but which at the same time makes you feel - that he is at that instant taking deepest note of what is before him. It is a strange, lazy glance, but with a power in it quite unique. He does not seem to penetrate through you, but to take you into himself. I saw him look at Una so yesterday several times.

He says it is Mr Mathews who is writing in the Literary World the visit to Berkshire. Mr Mathews calls Mr. Hawthorne "Mr. Noble Melancholy" in the next number of the paper. You know what you read was the Introduction only. It is singular how many people insist that Mr. Hawthorne is gloomy, since he is not. He is pensive perhaps - as all contemplative persons must be, especially when as in him "a great heart is the household fire of a grand intellect" (to quote his own words).

From the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library. "Peabody, Elizabeth [Palmer], mother, ALS to. Sep. 4, 1850." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1850. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ce433d10-852c-0131-589e-58d385a7bbd0

Letters to Augusta Melville from Augusta Whipple Hunter, 1850-1852

Surviving letters to Herman Melville's sister Augusta Melville from her old Lansingburgh friend Augusta Whipple Hunter aka Augusta Ann Hunter (1820-1853) are in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Call number MssCol 11, of the Manuscript and Archives Division, New York Public Library, with the Melville family additions (Box 2 - Folder 33) which are also available on microfilm. Augusta Ann was the eldest daughter of Episcopal clergyman Phineas Leland Whipple and Alida Van Antwerp (married on May 20, 1819). Augusta Ann Whipple married Samuel Dimmick Hunter on October 1, 1846. Their daughter Alida W. was born in 1849, also the year of Malcolm Melville's birth to Elizabeth and Herman Melville.

Earlier letters from AWH to AM in the 1840's are amply cited in the first volume of Herman Melville: A Biography by Hershel Parker; and in Melville: A Biography by Laurie Robertson-Lorant. Augusta Hunter died in Bath on June 13, 1853. Later Augusta Melville noted the sad event on the back of one envelope:

"The last letter I shall ever receive from my poor friend Augusta Whipple Hunter
she died of congestion of the lungs in June 1853"

Augusta Hunter wrote from the village of Bath in Steuben County, New York, addressing her correspondence to Augusta Melville in Pittsfield, Massachusetts care of Herman Melville, and (on February 23, 1852 via Charles Hunter) care of Allan Melville at 14 Wall Street. Hunter's correspondence with Augusta Melville is valuable and interesting for many reasons, of course, not only for stray references to Augusta's brother Herman. Nevertheless, the Herman Melville references offer a good place to start. In Herman Melville: A Biography (V1.596) Hershel Parker alludes to Augusta Hunter's liking for her "particular friend" Tom Melville, expressed in the first of the four letters quoted below (October 18, 1850). Otherwise these early 1850's letters from Augusta Whipple Hunter have yet to be noticed in published Melville scholarship, unless I've missed something. Admittedly, Augusta Hunter's letters are some of the more legible documents in the incredible trove of "Augusta Papers" at NYPL. It would be a great boon to scholarship if one day the New York Public Library could make digitized images available online for transcribing by volunteers in one of those exciting, collaborative Manuscript transmission projects. Meanwhile I am grateful to Reference Archivist Tal Nadan, Librarian Meredith Mann, and their fine colleagues at NYPL for expert assistance with locating this material which I was able to view there on microfilm. 

 

UPDATE: Augusta Melville papers, digitized
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/05/augusta-melville-papers-digitized.html

Hooray! Images of letters from Augusta Whipple Hunter to Augusta Melville are now accessible via NYPL Digital Collections:

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Hunter, Augusta Whipple" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1846 - 1852. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/68d21840-4711-0136-bf7f-0ad5dc3c39ba

OCTOBER 18, 1850

I was so glad to hear of Tom once more, I consider myself a particular friend of his. But I had no idea he would love the ocean so well. I thought he would like Herman return home quite contented with land animals. How is Herman's boy? I have quite a desire to see him, having known Herman not so very well but well enough to remember him & some of his oddities. — And your Mother, Guss is she just as she used to be, & would she take any interest in me? When I think of you all I think of things as they were ten & twelve years ago. But I am sobered down some now. Do you believe it Guss?

--Augusta Whipple Hunter - Letter to Augusta Melville, October 18, 1850

AUGUST 15, 1851

Sunday I was looking over some of your old letters, why I had entirely forgotten that you ever had penned such long epistles, so well filled & refilled. 'Tis even so, do you remember? — Herman I have seen has another work in press but the name is still among the Berkshire mountains I suppose, as that has not made its appearance. I am quite anxious to hear its title for he is so peculiar in names. I am half the time afraid to pronounce them fearing some egregious blunder. How is his boy? — as to my young lady she grows daily & is a very healthy appearing girl not particularly advanced in wisdom but quite enough so, these extraordinary children not unfrequently exhaust their energies in early youth, and many a sleepy boy & girl have astonished the world in their mature years. --Augusta Whipple Hunter - Letter to Augusta Melville, August 15, 1851

NOVEMBER 17, 1851

... Why Guss you certainly grow more interesting in letter writing, your last epistle I enjoyed very much, my imagination has been with you ever since ascending the mountain, even gazing back, upon which I could not blame you notwithstanding the danger, & exploring the Ice Glen. How the thought of ever seeing the like myself makes me bound (inwardly of course!) & once more I feel young & active — Young & active I hear you exclaim, why Guss cannot have grown to a Grand Mother already? No she has not but she does not practice climbing & scrambling as much as she once did & of course her limbs soon weary. 

— Now that I am once again in my own quiet, pleasant home I can scarcely realize that I have been absent some six weeks visiting — How sorry I was that your Mother should not have been an earlier visitor in Lansingburgh I should have been so delighted to have seen her, I am glad that she remembers me for I can never forget her. — Guss Lansingburgh has changed, it has increased in size, strange faces meet me where once all was familiar, a railway has destroyed the beauty of my favorite brook, & more sad to me than all our Church has been remodeled, improved I presume every one would say, but Guss it grieves me thus to have associations connected with my dear Father's ministry & my own renewal of my Baptismal vows marred to say the least if not destroyed — Hereafter if I should visit Lansingburgh again it will be with feelings of strangeness. 'Tis my home no more — But I will not tire you....

 --Augusta Whipple Hunter - Letter to Augusta Melville, November 17, 1851

FEBRUARY 23, 1852

... You must be enjoying your winter very much, how dearly I should love to join you of an evening occasionally, not to interrupt your reading but to add one more to the listeners — I have indeed learned the title of Herman's last book & have read many interesting extracts, but the book to my knowledge has not visited our village. Mr. Underhill had not yet received it when last we examined his shelves, indeed we are always rather behind the times in literary matter, & the past winter have been more so than usual I think, as Mr. Underhill was unable to finish his business when last in N. Y. & has been obliged to neglect it very much at home on account of inflamed eyes — But Guss why is the book uninteresting to ladies,? the extracts have pleased me more than some of Herman's writings. Though none of his volumes are without interest to me I have my choice.

——— You may well exclaim at the immense number of books that are continually issuing from the press. But Guss I am sorry that many of them should be so worthless — yes worse than worthless, inculcating morals that tend to no good, creating sickly imaginations, in truth, making our American ladies in particular, silly, weak minded dolls. Every year I see more of this. I frequently wish for power to destroy the chaff of our fashionable literature.

Perhaps dear Guss you do not feel so sensibly as I the want of a solid literary taste among females, But actually I scarcely meet a lady who soars above the Lady's Book or some foolish love-sick novel....

 ... So Herman has another pet for you [HM's son Stanwix, born October 22, 1851] Guss you may kiss all your pets for me if their mothers will allow of such liberties....

--Augusta Whipple Hunter - Letter to Augusta Melville, February 23, 1852

Clement C. Moore's published letter on his authorship of "Visit from St. Nicholas"

Good news at The New York Public Library! Yesterday on microfilm (*ZY 86-140 Reel 17 Mar 1-Dec 28, 1844) of the New York American (relocated now and accessible in the Milstein Microform Reading Room, First Floor Room 119--many thanks to the fine library staff there), I found the published letter from Clement C. Moore to editor Charles King in which Moore corrects a mistaken attribution of his poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas." Writing from New York on February 27, 1844, Moore responds to a December 25, 1843 item in the Washington National Intelligencer that falsely attributed the already well-known Christmas poem to the deceased artist Joseph Wood. Moore's chagrined friend Charles King published the letter on March 1, 1844 and requested the National Intelligencer to remedy the "plagiarism" by reprinting "Mr. Moore's note" of correction. The National Intelligencer reply on March 6, 1844 is what led me to look for Moore's published claim of authorship. In answer to Charles King's complaint, the editor of the Intelligencer pointed out that his newspaper had promptly published a correction, so there was no need to reprint Moore's letter.

From the New York American, March 1, 1844:

New York American - March 1, 1844

LINES TO ST. NICHOLAS.--The following note from our friend C. C. Moore, the author of those lines which every child among us delights to hear, about Christmas, and which parents with not less delight recite, brings to our notice, one of the boldest acts of plagiarism of which we have any recollection. We ask the National Intelligencer to have the goodness to insert Mr. Moore's note--and if possible to elucidate the mistake, if such it be, or fraud attempted in respect of such well known lines. 

New York, Feb. 27, 1844 

Dear Sir--My attention was, a few days ago, directed to the following communication, which appears in the National Intelligencer of the 25th of December last.

"Washington, Dec. 22d, 1843.

Gentlemen--
The enclosed lines were written by Joseph Wood, artist, for the National Intelligencer, and published in that paper in 1827 or 1828, as you may perceive from your files. By republishing them, as the composition of Mr. Wood you will gratify one who has now few sources of pleasure left. Perhaps you may comply with this request, if it be only for 'auld lang syne.'" 

The above is printed immediately over some lines, describing a visit from St. Nicholas, which I wrote many years ago, I think somewhere between 1823 and 1824, not for publication, but to amuse my children. They, however, found their way, to my great surprise, in the Troy Sentinel: nor did I know, until lately, how they got there. When "The New York Book" was about to be published, I was applied to for some contribution to the work. Accordingly, I gave the publisher several pieces, among which was the "Visit from St. Nicholas." It was printed under my name, and has frequently since been republished, in your paper among others, with my name attached to it.  

Under these circumstances, I feel it incumbent on me not to remain silent, while so bold a claim, as the above quoted, is laid to my literary property, however small the intrinsic value of that property may be. 

The New York Book was published in 1827 [1837]. 

Yours, truly and respectfully,   

CLEMENT C. MOORE

Chas. King, Esq.

The "New York Book" to which Moore refers is of course the 1837 New-York Book of Poetry, edited by Moore's friend (and some years later, Herman Melville's friend) Charles Fenno Hoffman. On microfilm the date of publication that Moore gives for the New York Book appears to read "1827," a typo for 1837.

Some related posts:

• National Intelligencer requested to correct mistaken attribution
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2016/10/national-intelligencer-requested-to.html

• How we know Clement C Moore wrote The Night Before Christmas
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-we-know-that-clement-c-moore-wrote.html

• Key witness letter by Livingston cousin
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2018/02/key-witness-letter-by-livingston-cousin.html

• Computer error, please try again
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2016/11/computer-error-please-try-again.html

• Eight great favorite expressions of Clement C. Moore
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/04/eight-great-favorite-expressions-of.html

• Dunder-Donder, Blixem-Blixen, Dunder Mifflin, Donder and Blitzen
  http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/03/dunder-donder-blixem-blixen-dunder.html

• Pre-1844 attributions to Clement C. Moore
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2018/08/pre-1844-attributions-of-visit-from-st.html

John Esten Cooke wrote "Virginia Past and Present" in the August 1853 Putnam's

Via Civil War Talk

Excerpts from Virginia Past and Present in the August 1853 issue of Putnam's Monthly Magazine frame the insightful essay by James M. Van Wyck on etiquette in Melville's "Benito Cereno," published just last year in The New England Quarterly. 

As the title indicates, the 1853 Putnam's article is all about Virginia. The concluding reference to North and South obviously alludes to fundamental and growing national divisions, but even the imagined exchange of "alien glances" takes place within "northern counties" of Virginia, in particular Fairfax. Most helpful for background here is George Winston Smith, writing in the May 1945 Journal of Southern History on "Ante-Bellum Attempts of Northern Business Interests to `Redeem' the Upper South."

Unfortunately, neither George Winston Smith nor James M. Van Wyck says who wrote "Virginia Past and Present."

Melvilliana to the rescue! "Virginia Past and Present" is by John Esten Cooke, who revealed his authorship in a letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, now in the Duyckinck family papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. On October 6, 1853 the ambitious young Virginian (almost 23) wrote:

"Virginia Past and Present" in Putnam for August, I think, is mine. I should be flattered if you found it amusing—always provided you read it.  --John Esten Cooke, 1853 letter to Evert A. Duyckinck;  accessible online from The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Informed by this letter and presumably other documentary evidence, John Owen Beaty in his 1922 biography identified John Esten Cooke as the author of "Virginia Past and Present," along with Minuet and Polka in the December 1853 Putnam's (where also appeared the conclusion of Melville's story of Bartleby, The Scrivener) and other magazine pieces:

He was fond of historical fact, but he liked to contemplate it in terms of romance. He was not only a literary critic but a critic of manners who saw in the past fine ideals which had been sadly departed from. This theme afforded him the material for several magazine articles; his first contribution to Putnam's (August, 1853) actually bore the title, "Virginia Past and Present." Exceedingly modern seems "Minuet and Polka" with its reference to the "arm around the waist, the breath upon the cheek, the head upon the shoulder." The author, of course, presents a brief for the old-fashioned dance: "The minuet was delicacy, courtesy, lofty-toned respect—in one word—chivalry." Cooke was a skilful literary parodist. He was the author of the "Unpublished Mss. from the Portfolios of the Most Celebrated Authors. By Motley Ware, Esq.,'' which the Duyckinck brothers published in the Literary World during 1853. Along with the burlesques of Carlyle, Dumas, and others Cooke solemnly included one of himself, or rather of such of his work as had appeared under his pseudonym, "Pen Ingleton, Esq." With unerring instinct he chose as a likely subject his great fondness for autumn: "The flutter and glitter of the golden autumn leaves are once more in my eyes and in my heart."  --John Esten Cooke, Virginian

Beaty's bibliography gives these titles of contributions to Putnam's by John Esten Cooke:

1853: August, "Virginia: Past and Present;" December, "Minuet and Polka."
1854: March, "The Cocked Hat Gentry."
1855: May, "The Dames of Virginia."
1856: April, "How I Courted Lulu;" June, "Annie at the Corner;" July, "News from Grassland;" August, "John Randolph;" November, "The Tragedy of Hairston."
1857: June, "Greenway Court."

Speaking of JEC... While helping John Reuben Thompson edit The Southern Literary Messenger, John Esten Cooke opened his review of Curtis's Nile Notes of a Howadji with high praise for Herman Melville:

NILE NOTES OF A HOWADJI. New York. Harper & Brothers: 82 Cliff Street. 1851.

Whatever may be her relative position in other branches of literature, America undoubtedly bears the palm of late years, from all Europe, in her books of Travels. We question if the produce of any age or nation in this department of letters can equal the long series of delightful narratives of which "Typee" is the first, and the work whose title is given above the last. Typee was a new chapter in book-making. Nothing like its poetic reality had ever before issued from travelled brains, and it attracted universal attention here and in Europe, more for this novelty even, than for its striking merit. For ages travellers had been writing books which contained facts, observations, reflections, opinions,—everything but the picturesque. The volumes of English travellers were filled with wearying commonplaces, tiresome "impressions," and personal details which their authors vainly fancied would interest the public equally with themselves. Travel writing was becoming the common resort of the commonest minds, who published their volumes of tedious narratives solely as some offset to the expenses of the journey.

"Typee" was in direct contrast to all this. In it were marvellous adventures, strange lands, a wild people, and all the gorgeous natural wealth of those remote "ultimate dim Thules," delineated with the pen of a master. The interest excited by the book was kept up by "Omoo" and other works from the same hand, and then followed in picturesque succession," Los Gringos," "Kaloolah," and a host of sparkling volumes, not one of them inferior to "Eothen," and in many particulars far superior to that much be-praised performance. Thus has America surpassed beyond all comparison the nation which "never read an American book," and we may say with equal truth, that in spite of MM. Chateaubriand, Lamartine. and Dumas, who have so pleasantly recorded their experiences, she has also excelled the most brilliant writers of France.

John Esten Cooke's authorship of the April 1851 review of Nile Notes is established, as I learned some years ago, by entries in his manuscript journal, now held in the University of Virginia Library, Special Collections. (If I need to go back to Charlottesville to get the exact quote, I will.) John Owen Beaty in his 1922 biography reports that "as one of the mainstays of the Messenger" in this period, John Esten Cooke "edited the March, 1851, number for John Reuben Thompson."

John Esten Cooke (1830-1886) was the younger brother of Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850). Herman Melville we know owned a copy of Philip Pendleton Cooke's Froissart Ballads, which he purchased December 2, 1847. Their uncle was renowned Army cavalry officer Philip St George Cooke--but that's another story.

"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

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."

Letter from James Lorimer Graham, Jr. to Evert A. Duyckinck, asking for address of Herman Melville

Image Credit: Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Used by permission.

This undated manuscript note from James Lorimer Graham, Jr. (1835-1876) is held at the New York Public Library in the Duyckinck Family Papers: Papers of Evert A. Duyckinck, General Correspondence, Undated and Unidentified (box 23). Published references to Graham's request for Herman Melville's address include the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence, ed. Lynn Horth (766); and the second volume of Hershel Parker's biography: Herman Melville: A Biography - V2.484. (Both sources incorrectly identify the sender as "Sr." Graham's "J" does look like an "S," but the signature is definitely that of James Lorimer Graham, Jr.)

Graham's inherited wealth and fortunate alliance with Josephine Garner (daughter of cotton merchant Thomas Garner, sister of William T. Garner) justify the listing of his occupation in the 1860 U. S. Federal Census as "Gentleman." Later he found employment in business at 108 Broadway, serving as a Director and eventually as 2nd Vice President of the Metropolitan Insurance Company. While he resided in New York City, Graham belonged to the best associations, most notably the Century Club and Geographical Society. In New York and abroad, he befriended numerous authors and artists. Graham was known for "witty and brilliant conversation" in social gatherings and "was often mistaken for a Frenchman." As patron of the arts and convivial "prince of good fellows," James Lorimer Graham, Jr. ("Lorry" or "Lorrie" Graham, among friends) resembles the Marquis de Grandvin, sketched by Melville in manuscript as the charming personification of wine who inspirits conversation and poetry in the fictional "Burgundy Club." From 1869 until his death in 1876, Graham served as U. S. Consul General in Florence, Italy.

Although dated only "Wednesday," the letter to Melville's friend Evert Duyckinck must have been written before Graham and his wife left New York for Europe in December 1866. On Monday, March 26, 1866 (according to a newspaper report the next day) Melville socialized at Graham's home with distinguished members of "The Wanderer's Club."

New York Evening Post, Tuesday, March 27, 1866

Trow's New York City Directory "For the Year Ending May 1, 1866" gives the address for James Lorimer Graham, jr. as "3 E. 17th." That's the address his friend Bayard Taylor remembered as a "treasury of rare articles" from Graham's impressive  "collections of coins, autographs, drawings, and books" (1876 obituary - New York Tribune). Most likely the March 26, 1866 gathering took place at 3 East Seventeenth street. But as indicated in the transcription below, Graham wrote Duyckinck from "21 Washington Sq," The Washington Square mansion was the residence that James Lorimer Graham, Jr. shared with his uncle, James Lorimer Graham, in 1865 and earlier, according to Trow's and other New York City directories. According to the Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor,  

"The years 1862 and ’63 he spent in Europe, and then returned to New-York until the close of 1866."  --New York Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor

On January 18, 1862, Graham wrote Taylor a letter from London, the first of 96 letters from Graham now in the Bayard Taylor papers at Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University. On November 29, 1861 Graham wrote to his uncle from Edinburgh, Scotland. In view of Graham's absence from New York in 1862-3 and 1867-76, his note to Evert Duyckinck can reasonably be dated around 1864-1866, probably no later than March 21, 1866--the Wednesday before the party that Melville reportedly attended for "Wanderer's Club" members and invited guests.

Transcription:

21 Washington Sq

Wednesday

Dear Sir 

You will greatly oblige me by giving the bearer the address of Mr Herman Melville, for me.  

I am on my back (and have been for several days) with the diphtheria, or I would have done myself the honor of looking in upon you personally. 

Very truly yours 

Ja[me]s Lorimer Graham Jr.

Related melvilliana posts:

• Obituary by Bayard Taylor in the New York Tribune 
• Melville in March 1866, socializing with the Wanderer's Club
• Identifying the good fellows with Herman Melville at "Lorry" Graham's

Links to biographical resources:

• James Lorimer Graham, Jr. - 1894 Century Club memorial
• Letters to Bayard Taylor at Houghton Library, Harvard
• New York Tribune obituary by Bayard Taylor via Library of Congress-Chronicling America
• United States Insurance Gazette, notice of Graham's 1869 diplomatic appointment

The New York Public Library just made more than 180,000 items available online

 Hallelujah!

"The move is part of a larger trend toward libraries and museums making their collections available online. From presidential papers to globes to collections of historic photojournalism, there’s a rush to digitize anything and everything in the public domain—and make it available to as many people as possible...."

The New York Public Library just made more than 180,000 items available online

1850 review of Æsop's Fables: by Herman Melville?

Image Credit: HubPages

Please don't try this at home. It's a dirty, thankless job trying to assign authorship on the basis of internal textual evidence. If some contrarian devil keeps you seeking to identify anonymous authors anyway, just remember that most of the time such arguments turn out to be wrong. Spectacularly wrong, on occasion: witness Donald Foster's once tempting, now demolished case for Shakespeare's authorship of "A Funeral Elegy"--written by John Ford, as demonstrated in 2002 studies by G. D. Monsarrat and Brian Vickers. Closer to home: in Melville studies the most prominent example of a fascinatingly mistaken attribution is the book-length argument by Jeanne Chretien Howes for Melville's authorship of the 1845 poem Redburn: or the Schoolmaster of a Morning. Howes herself discovered, but would not accept, solid evidence for the anonymous author's being Geneva poet George Megrath. Warren F. Broderick's more qualified and tentative case (Melville Society Extracts 92, March 1993, pages 13-16) for Melville's authorship of five poems in 1838-9 is breaking up, too, now that we know the true author of Pity's Tear. The fifth of Broderick's five newspaper poems appeared (with a fourth stanza) under the title, "I Shall Remember" in the December 1835 Ladies' Companion.

Of course one should always be wary of confirmation bias. What's worse, you can make yourself crazy (as I have good reason to know). After a while everything sounds like Moby-Dick.

To get ourselves properly grounded, let's consider some verifiable facts. Herman Melville certainly did review books anonymously for the Literary World.  We know of five reviews that Melville definitely wrote in 1847-1850 (four unsigned, and the one on Hawthorne under a pseudonym):

• Review of J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise --March 6, 1847
• Mr. Parkman's Tour (review of The Oregon Trail) --March 31, 1849
• Cooper's New Novel (review of The Sea Lions) --April 28, 1849
• A Thought on Book-Binding (review of The Red Rover) --March 16, 1850
• Hawthorne and His Mosses  --August 17 and 24, 1850

In his unpublished doctoral dissertation, "Melville as a Magazinist" (Duke University, 1960), Norman Hoyle suggests that Evert Duyckinck may have "considered Melville his Far West specialist" as well as his "Cooper specialist" (46). Hoyle proposed Melville's authorship of four additional reviews (besides the known review of Parkman's Oregon Trail) on books of western travel and adventure, including The Western Trail, an unsigned review of J. Quinn Thornton's Oregon and California in 1848. Besides the two known reviews by Melville of books by J. Fenimore Cooper, Hoyle suggests Melville may have written a third, the unsigned review of The Spy titled The New Edition of Cooper. Before Hoyle, Jay Leyda had already opened the door to further investigation:

"There is more published work by M[elville] than has been identified."  --The Melville Log, Volume 2 [860]

Long before Leyda, Meade Minnigerode had pointed out in parentheses:

(Note. Besides the reviews already mentioned, there are undoubtedly others by Melville in the Literary World, but as they were unsigned they can not now be identified with certainty.) --Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville (Brick Row Book Shop, 1922) page 192.

After Redburn, which Melville once called his "little nursery tale," I wonder if the Duyckincks might also have considered Melville their specialist in Children's Lit? Here is another unsigned review that might or might not be Herman Melville's work, titled "A New Version of Æsop's Fables."

The Literary World, August 10, 1850 - 111

The Literary World, August 10, 1850 - 112

NEW VERSION OF ÆSOP'S FABLES.

Æsop's Fables: a new version, chiefly from original sources. By the Rev. Thomas James, M.A. With more than fifty illustrations by John Tenniel. Robt B. Collins. 

We hope some of our readers remember the old edition of Æsop's Fables, that in vogue some quarter of a century ago. We hope so, because we should like to know that others besides ourselves are sharers in the pleasant recollections which the title of the work calls up; that others remember those small oval woodcuts with the beasts therein depicted, much after the style in which they are sculptured for a child's Noah's ark. Bad as they were, they were favorable specimens of the wood illustration of the day, and bore in their smirched faces unmistakable evidence of being in demand for frequent impressions by the public. 

Let the reader, with the old fresh in his memory, turn to the new. He will find that the old friend of our childhood, perennial Æsop, has doffed cocked hat and small-clothes for a dress of the latest cut and newest gloss. All the appliances of modern book-art are brought to bear: wily Reynard looks up from the foot of the page to the grapes gracefully pendent from a trellis at the head, the design framing a few lines of the text. The lazy maids, whom the old woman is toiling up stairs at the side of the page to chastise, are rubbing their eyes and stretching themselves in the most graceful of attitudes; and the tailpiece of the volume brings up its artistic claims triumphantly by a representation of the sad fate of the accommodating individual who, to please the public, tied his ass's legs to a pole and, with his son's aid, carried him, or essayed to do so, over the bridge, in the sight of the assembled public. The poor animal is tumbling into the water; and the astonished public, gazing at him from the whole length of the Bridge, are admirably rendered in all the varieties of stupid amazement. Lesson fresh as if old Æsop's stylus of Greece were Gold Pen of nowaday New York, and the ink not yet dry upon it. 

These illustrations are from English designs by John Tenniel. The animals are spirited, and we do not know any one who could have done them better, except that Æsop of painters, Edwin Landseer. We hope that some Maecenas of the Book Trade may some day or other immortalize himself by combining these two Æsops as author and artist in a volume.

Æsop has always been an illustrated book, and always will be. Look into any library of old books, and ten to one you will find a ponderous folio, with most " savagerous" of beasts ranging over its folio pages. Old Æsop, to be sure, is, nowadays, come down from a folio to be a book for children, but he has lost none of his wisdom by so doing. We are not sure but that ability to interest children by original books (we do not now refer to compilations of "history made easy," and such like) is the test of a great author; at any rate, were we disposed to argue it, we could bring many an influential witness into court on our side—to wit, besides our venerable friend now under discussion, Defoe, Scott, Southey, Goldsmith, Fielding, Miss Edgeworth, Hawthorne, et al.

The Juvenile readers of Æsop will be inclined to favor the present edition when we tell them that the new translator has cut down those prosy old morals, which even in the smaller type in which they were printed, well nigh preponderated over the text of the original fable, and might be likened to pills after sweetmeats (a reversal of all nursery rules— all allopathic ones at least)—that these "lengthy " morals are cut down to a line or two apiece.

For an excellent conversation starter (or stopper, as the case may be), here's some textual evidence for Melville's authorship of the 1850 review transcribed above.

1. "Maecenas of the Book Trade." The reviewer wants an editor or publisher to back a new edition of Æsop illustrated by Landseer. This champion of Æsop and Landseer would ideally be a generous and large-minded patron of the arts like the Roman statesman Maecenas, the wealthy patron of Virgil and Horace. In White-Jacket (1850) Melville similarly honored Maecenas, comparing Jack Chase's patronage of the navy poet Lemsford to "Maecenas listening to Virgil."  
2. "may some day or other immortalize himself...." Melville in Mardi and elsewhere refers to immortalizing oneself and others through published writing, just as the reviewer conceives that his editorial Maecenas would "immortalize himself" by publishing a new illustrated edition of Æsop with pictures by Landseer. Melville's Redburn desires to "immortalize" the "curious and remarkable" guidebook titled The Picture of Liverpool.
3. "ten to one" occurs at least 14 times in Melville's known writings, most famously of all in the first chapter of Moby-Dick: "Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream."
4. "prosy old morals" verbally recalls the Prosy Old Guidebook in Melville's Redburn (1849). As in Redburn the reviewer associates a "prosy old" book with reading  by children, here "Juvenile readers." Moreover, the "prosy old guidebook" that Melville's young hero Wellingborough Redburn describes at length, expressly belonged to his father. The anonymous 1850 reviewer uses the term "prosy old morals" with reference to old editions with small type and long morals. Melville's father Allan Melvill in fact owned an 1787 edition of Æsop's Fables which survives in the New York Public Library. Here is the 1787 book (same edition, but not the actual volume owned by Allan Melvill) at the Internet Archive:

Allan Melville's copy of the Fabulæ Æsopi Selectæ, or, Select Fables of Æsop is Sealts No. 6, as shown in the catalog at Melville's Marginalia Online. Even the longest morals do not really dominate the fables themselves, however. (If the reviewer has this edition in mind, perhaps he exaggerates or mis-remembers the graphic reach of the morals.)

5. The conceit of a hypothetical legal argument with "influential witnesses" on the writer's side of the case anticipates Melville's lawyerly posture in Moby-Dick, for example throughout "The Advocate" chapter of Moby-Dick, and again in "The Hyena":

"Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement of the entire case."  --The Hyena

More generally, the reviewer's obvious and sustained interest in the illustrations, paying close attention to details of several different pictures, seems consistent with Melville's known devotion to the visual arts. The "cut" and "gloss" of the reviewer's clothing metaphor will reappear in Melville's Pierre (1852), in the letter from tailor-publishers Wonder & Wen to Pierre the juvenile author. Also associated with Pierre as writer: "ink not yet entirely dry," echoing the conceit of "ink not yet dry" in Æsop's timeless stories according to the 1850 reviewer. In Mardi, Melville mentions Landseer as an exemplary painter of animals. Near the end of his life, he gave his granddaughter a volume of Landseer's Dogs. In The Confidence-Man, Æsop is said by the cosmopolitan Frank Goodman to malign animals unfairly.

No manuscript or other external evidence for the authorship of this unsigned 1850 review of Æsop's Fables has yet been found, so far as I know. First place to look would be the Duyckinck family papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of The New York Public Library. Box 57 contains "Miscellaneous poems, articles, reviews written for the Literary World."  And who knows what's in Box 59 ("Miscellaneous papers")?