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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
On the day of Herman Melville's lecture on "Statues in Rome" (Tuesday, February 2, 1858) the Cincinnati Daily Commercial promoted it with a column mostly devoted to effusive praise for Melville's books, including Moby-Dick, by an unidentified "Athenian admirer." By "Athenian" I take the Cincinnati editor to mean a fellow newspaper editor, journalist, or correspondent from Athens, Ohio. The article was excerpted by Jay Leyda in The Melville Log, Volume 2, leaving out some good parts about Fayaway, Omoo, and Mardi. Found on NewspaperArchive and transcribed in full below, the original event teaser as it appeared in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial on February 2, 1858:
Cincinnati Daily Commercial February 2, 1858
"STATUES IN ROME." -- Herman Melville, "who," said an enthusiastic Athenian admirer of his beautiful writings-- "entranced the American public by the freshness and mellow style of his South Sea adventures in the coral islanded world; who made the name of Fayaway a synonyme for native grace; who roamed and sailed and laughed with Doctor Long Ghost of Omoo memory; who drew his moonlit, mystic picture of Mardi, through which as through a mist-like atmosphere float the forms of Yillah, the shadowy maiden, Yoomy the equally shadowy poet, Babbalanja the dreaming philosopher with his flexible cloud-wreath pipe, 'and others more'--very nomines umbra--shadows of a shade; who dazed us still more with the white gleam of Moby Dick, through whose five hundred weird pages 'all thoughts, all passions, feelings and delights,' chase each other 'like shadows o'er the plain'--and in whom we have the wildest and strangest mysticism, mingled with the frankest and freshest common sense and practical knowledge of the world and its ways, and the truest, most genuine American Democratic feeling"--will appear to-night before a Cincinnati audience to discourse in the lectorium (Smith & Nixon's Hall,) of the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association upon the Statuary of Rome. Mr. Melville's lectures are said to be admirably written, but none of our exchanges discourse upon the style of his delivery. If he would avoid the objection usually urged against our lecturers, he will speak distinctly, and with animation, that all may hear. The public is extremely desirous to see and hear Mr. Melville, and anticipate a rich literary repast this evening.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.
and Psalm 39 Part 2 as given in a popular hymn by Isaac Watts:
See the vain race of mortals move Like shadows o'er the plain, They rage and strive, desire and love, But all their noise is vain. -- Psalms and Hymns of Dr. Watts
In Melville as Lecturer (Harvard University Press, 1957) Merton M. Sealts, Jr. presented reading texts of Herman Melville's three lectures from 1857 to 1860 on "Statues in Rome," "The South Seas," and "Traveling," reconstructed from accounts in 19th century newspapers. On February 2, 1858 between gigs in Clarksville, Tennessee and Chillicothe, Ohio, Melville spoke for almost two hours at Smith and Nixon's Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio on "Statues in Rome." The Queen City treated Melville well. Three different Cincinnati newspapers reviewed Melville's talk on Roman statuary the day after he gave it, as documented by Sealts in a footnote (#29 on page 41) to his chapter on "The First Lecture Season":
Cincinnati Daily Commercial
Cincinnati Daily Gazette
Cincinnati Enquirer
Sealts named a 4th newspaper that "may likewise have carried a review of the lecture," the Cincinnati Daily Times. Lost, apparently, since the one known file of the Daily Times did not contain the February 3, 1858 issue, according to his consultant at the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio.
Despite minor criticism, for instance of the speaker's occasionally "monotonous" delivery, the three known reviews of Melville's "Statues in Rome" lecture were unusually substantial and positive. Indeed, Melville's reception was so favorable that Sealts regarded the "Cincinnati engagement" as perhaps "his most successful performance" during his first tour (1857-8) of the lecture circuit.
For the Cincinnati performance, only the three reviews located by Sealts thirty years before are listed in editorial notes for "Statues in Rome" in the 1987 Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle and others, page 724. But Sealts had guessed right about a possible 4th in the Cincinnati Daily Times. As demonstrated herein, the long lost issue of February 3, 1858 does have a substantial review of "Herman Melville's Lecture" of the previous evening on "Statues in Rome."
As in the Daily Commercial, some of the content borrows from the earlier account in the Boston Daily Courier on December 3, 1857; and others, perhaps. Highlights include a physical description of "The Lecturer" in the opening section and several unique observations and phrases attributed to Melville, including one teasing reference to the lecturer's famous sojourn "in a far off land" where he glimpsed "the figure of a naked girl" who "was in surprise on beholding me." About that "naked girl," the Daily Times reporter possibly misheard, or mis-wrote. No doubt she was unclothed, mostly, but Melville instead may have described the young lady as "native" and was so quoted in the Boston Journal review of December 3, 1857.
Bust of Tiberius - Rome, Italy Capitoline Museum
Also worthy of closer examination and further study are some bits on Tiberius that closely correspond to the wording in Melville's 1856-7 Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant, more exactly in places than either 19th century newspapers or 20th century reconstructions of Melville's 1857-8 lecture on "Statues in Rome" have ever indicated. One year before, Melville had seen the marble head of Tiberius at the Capitoline Museum in Rome. In his journal entry dated February 26, 1857, Melville wrote:
"That Tiberius? He don't look so bad at all." -- It was he. A look of sickly evil, -- intellect without manliness, & sadness without goodness.
Journal of a Visit, edited by Howard C. Horsford (Princeton University Press, 1955) page 191; and the 1989 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Journals, edited by Howard C. Horsford with Lynn Horth, page 106.
Except in Montreal, Melville was usually heard to quote the female bystander he had overheard as saying, "He does not look so bad"; thus avoiding the contracted and colloquial don't. Here, however, Tiberius "don't look so bad." This report omits Melville's unspoken reply, as given in other printed accounts of the lecture on Roman statues: "Madam, thought I, if he had looked bad, he could not have been Tiberius." Most impressively, however, only the Cincinnati Daily Times review finds Melville drawing directly from his journal, word-for-word, in the descriptive phrase "intellect without manliness." Words copied from Melville's journal in the Cincinnati Daily Times report are highlighted in the excerpt below:
"That Tyberias!" I heard a lady exclaim in the Vatican: "Why he don't look so bad." Sad and almost pathetic in his pensiveness--he seems to be musing upon the gallantries and miseries of the world--the greatness and littleness of man. The head conveys the idea of a man overpowered by great affections, but more narrowly scanned, it exhibits intellect without manliness--melancholy without pity. Tyberias, was, perhaps, the wickedest man that ever lived.
As readers, our sense of these really being Melville's exact words is encouraged and to some degree heightened by the reporter's giving them in the first person, as in "I heard a lady exclaim...."
One more point of interest that I can't resist noting: Melville's recorded take on the "indomitable will and undying hate" of Satan that he perceived in La caduta degli angeli ribelli or "Fall of the Rebel Angels" by Agostino Fasolato, then at the Palazzo Pappafava in Padua.
Lucifer and his companions cast down from Heaven may be seen in a palace in Padua, while Michael and his hosts bend over them. The face of Satan expresses indomitable will and undying hate.
Here the expressions "indomitable will" and "undying hate" attributed to Melville effectively paraphrase the "unconquerable Will" and "immortal hate" ascribed to Satan by Milton in the first book of Paradise Lost, lines 106-108:
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield....
Another Cincinnati listener, as pointed out in Melville as Lecturer (page 138, footnote #18), caught different echoes from the same passage ("revenge" and "never to submit or yield") which Sealts incorporated into his reconstructed text of "Statues in Rome." As Melville reportedly verbalized it in his lecture, the dexterously carved figure of Satan remains "unbroken and defiant, his whole body breathing revenge and his attitude one never to submit or yield." In Milton and Melville (Cooper Square Publishers, 1970) at page 138, Henry F. Pommer had already observed with respect to Fasolato's work of sculpture that Melville "probably confused one of the angels with Satan, who is really at the bottom, in the form of an infernal monster." No matter, it's wonderful to find that between them, the Daily Gazette and Daily Times reviewers captured most of Melville's borrowings from three lines in Book I of Paradise Lost.
was founded in 1821 [error for 1841] by Calvin W. Starbuck, as a weekly, when he was but nineteen years of age. He was the fastest type-setter in the West at that time, and being desirous to economise his funds until his enterprise proved self-supporting, he for years set up a great portion of the paper himself, and also assisted in its delivery to subscribers. He was eminently successful as a publisher and business man, and, to use the words of a modern writer, "was great in goodness."
Calvin Washburn Starbuck (1821-1870) still owned the Cincinnati Daily Times when the review of Melville's lecture appeared on February 3, 1858; and he continued to publish the newspaper until his lamentably early death in 1870, not yet 50 years old. Calvin's father John Starbuck
was an old Nantucket whaler, who, after following the sea for many years, removed to Cincinnati and purchased a residence on the west side of Vine Street, just above Front, where Calvin was born. -- The Biographical Cyclopædia and Portrait Gallery Volume 3 (Cincinnati, 1884) page 743.
Cincinnati Daily Commercial - January 29, 1858 via genealogybank.com
As in the Daily Commercial and other Cincinnati periodicals including Isaac M. Wise's weekly newspaper The Israelite, advertisements appeared in the Daily Times (on January 30, 1858 and February 2, 1858, for example) ahead of Melville's
"... Lecture before the Young Men's Mercantile Library Association,
HERMAN MELVILLE, Esq.-- This gentleman will lecture before the Y. M. M. L. Association this evening at Smith & Nixon's Hall. His subject is "The Statues of Rome." --Cincinnati Daily Times, February 2, 1858
The full report of Melville's lecture on February 2nd is transcribed below from the Cincinnati Daily Times of February 3, 1858; found on Newspaperarchive.com
Herman Melville's Lecture.
STATUES IN ROME.
The audience last night, at Smith & Nixon's Hall, taking into consideration the inclemency of the weather, was large--considerably larger than we had anticipated during the day. The seats in the body of the hall were nearly all filled while in the gallery were numbers seated. This "large and respectable audience" to Mr. Melville is highly complimentary, and exhibits the fact that he is known through his works--such as Typee, Omoo, &c.
THE LECTURER.
Herman Melville we should judge to be a man between thirty-eight and forty years of age--rather above the medium size--stoutly and compactly built. His hair is black, short, and inclined to be wiry. His eyes appear to be dark, and are deep-set, giving him the appearance of a thinker. His forehead is neither broad or expansive, but rather low and narrow. He has cultivated whiskers and moustacheos quite extensively, nearly the entire lower portion of his face being covered by those hirsute appendages. Mr. Melville's style is rather agreeable, yet hardly sufficiently animated. His voice is musical and full of feeling, yet sometimes too monotonous. He appears perfectly at home on the rostrum, impressing one with the idea that it is not his "first appearance on any stage."
THE LECTURE.
Mr. Melville commenced his lecture by denying that there was any exclusiveness in art, or rather in its appreciation. Professional artists might employ their technical terms to express their ideas of the beautiful in art, which might be expressed, perhaps, quite as sensibly by others in more homely phrases, who had quite as good appreciation thereof. Flowers could be appreciated by those who were not able to name them, as well as those versed in botanical knowledge. And so creations of Art might be enjoyed by those who are not professional artists. Many refrained from expressing their views in relation to Art, lest they might display their ignorance; but may not the opinions of such, sometimes be set above those of the professed sculptor or artist.
Being neither a critic nor a connoisseur, I have seen fit to introduce my subject, the Sculptures of Rome, with these remarks--a subject which some might suppose belonged exclusively to artists. The approach to Rome by Naples is by the gate of St. John, the first object of attention being the group of colossal figures in stone, surmounting the lofty pediment of St. John Lateran. Standing in every grand or animated attitude, they seem not only to attest that this is the Eternal City, but likewise at its portal, to offer greeting in the name of that great company of statues which, amid the fluctuations of the human census, abides the true and undying population of Rome. It is, indeed, among these mute citizens, and mostly in the Vatican Museum, that the stranger forms his most pleasing and cherished associations. In that grand hall he will not only make new acquaintances, but will likewise revive many long before introduced by the historian. And he will find many deficiencies of the historian supplied by the sculptor, who has effected in part, for the celebrities of old, what the memoir writer of the present day does for modern ones. In viewing the statues and bases of Demosthenes, Titus, Socrates, Caesar, Seneca, Nero, and others, we feel a sense of reality not to be given by history; and although we are at first startled by some of them from our preconceived opinions, yet we seldom, on reflection, fail to concede the general likeness to that which the historian has furnished us. The analysis of the marble coincides with the historian's analysis of the man.
The statue of Demosthenes may be deemed a kind of substitute for his confessions. Titus, who flits across the page of Tacitus, shows forth the character of the man as if the statue were indeed the man.
In the bust of Socrates we might look for wisdom personified, but it has more the appearance of a carnival masque, and might be taken for the head of an Irish tragedian with morals none of the purest, and yet the statue is correct. Socrates, in his earlier days, used to be reproached for his homely aspect. The head of Julius Caesar might be mistaken for that of a President of the Erie railroad. But was not Caesar, after all, as a utilitarian might say, a business man, who took upon himself the business of ruling the world? Seneca looks like a pawn-broker, and he was a userer in his life.
Nero had the appearance of a genteel, dissipated youth--a fast young man, such as may be seen upon the race-track any day. Plato looks as if he had been to the pains of smoothing and parting his hair like a lady. The character of these statues--their faces are familiarly like our own--the features of man have undergone but little change--the vices and the virtues of the ancients were like our own--on just as a gigantic scale, and it is to be hoped that the Heroic tone, like Tyrean dye has not been lost to the world. Nature is similar in all ages.
"That Tyberias!" I heard a lady exclaim in the Vatican: "Why he don't look so bad." Sad and almost pathetic in his pensiveness--he seems to be musing upon the gallantries and miseries of the world--the greatness and littleness of man. The head conveys the idea of a man overpowered by great affections, but more narrowly scanned, it exhibits intellect without manliness--melancholy without pity. Tyberias, was, perhaps, the wickedest man that ever lived.
The statue which most of all in the Vatican excites the admiration of all visitors, is the Apollo. Few speak, or even whisper, when they enter the cabinet where it stands. If one were to try to convey some adequate notion, other than artistic, of a statue which so signally lifts the imaginations of men, he might hint that it gives a kind of visible response to that class of human aspirations, which according to Faith, cannot be truly gratified, except in another world. It is infinitely grander than the Venus di Medici, in Florence, for while she is lovely, he is divine.
The thought of many of these beautiful figures having been pleasing to the Romans, at least persuades us that their violence, as a conquering race, did not engross them, and the flame kindled in most men by nature was at no time in Roman breasts wholly stamped out. When I stood in the Colliseum, its mountain-chains of ruins waving with foliage, girding me round, as in some great green hollow in the Appenine range, the solitude was like that of savage nature; but restoring the shattered arches and terraces, I repeopled them with all the statues from the Vatican, and in the turfy glen of the arena below I placed the fighting Gladiator, from the Louvre, confronting him with the dying-one from the Capitol. And as in my fancy I heard the ruffian huzzas for the first, rebound from the pitiless hiss for the last, I felt that more than one in that host I had evoked shared not in its passions; that some hearts were there that felt the horror keenly as any of us would have felt it.
The Lecturer here alluded to Milton's verse--the polish of which reflected the polish of the marble. Milton's poem was a sort of Vatican done into verse. He passed a portion of his years in Italy and a year subsequent to the finding of the Apollo he resided in Rome. Who can say how much influence these statues had upon the poet?
Lucifer and his companions cast down from Heaven may be seen in a palace in Padua, while Michael and his hosts bend over them. The face of Satan expresses indomitable will and undying hate.
The statue of Venus, in Florence, is not of as pure marble as the Apollo; she is lovely; but he divine. She is no Roman lady--no Caesar's wife--no coquette--no prude--but a child of nature, modest, true, but only as nature dictates. When a captive once, in a far off land, I saw the figure of a naked girl; she was in surprise on beholding me. She assumed the same attitude as the Venus, and nearly the same expression was upon her features. I mention this, to show how truthful to nature were the Grecian Sculptors.
The Laocoon was alluded to, but not at that length we could have wished. An allusion was made to the pastoral gentleness of the sculptors. It showed that violence did not entirely engross the Romans--but even under the Caesars, were not this people ignorant of the letter of Christianity, although they were of its spirit?
The Vatican was described by moonlight in beautiful word-painting, in which the lecturer pre-eminently excels. A fine description was given of the marble steeds, which seemed not made to be bestridden, but as if soaring to the skies like the horses of Elijah. Other statues were alluded to, but the lecturer could not crowd a description of all within an hour.-- Beautiful pictures were given of the villas of Rome, and a description of Pompeii and the luxuriant Diomedes indulged in, the lecturer closing by a general review.
Not the least, perhaps, among these causes which make the Roman museums so impressive is their tranquil air. In chambers stand the images of gods, while in the statues of men, even the vilest, what was corruptible in their originals, here in pure marble, puts on incorruption. In the Roman Vatican, and the Washington Patent Office, the respective characteristics of the ancients and moderns stand contrasted. But is the Locomotive as grand an object as the Laocoon? Does it attest his hurried intelligence? We moderns did invent the printing press, but from the ancients have we not the best thoughts which it circulates? As the Roman arch enters into and sustains our best architecture, does not her spirit still animate and support whatever is soundest in societies and States? Or shall the scheme of Fourier supplant the code of Justinian, only when the novels of Dickens silence the satires of Juvenal? If the Collisseum expresses the durability of Roman ideas, what does the Crystal Palace express? Will the glass of the one bide the hail storms of eighteen centuries as well as the travertine of the other?
Without naming Melville or identifying any source, one Minnesota writer
quoted from a newspaper account of Melville's 1857-8 lecture on Statues in Rome and attributed
Melville's words to "one of our finest minds."
Portrait of Nero. Marble, Roman artwork, 1st century CE. Jastrow, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Here's another reason why leftist academics in or out of The Melville Society must cancel Herman Melville. Call it historical necessity. Melville in his writings defies rebranding as a Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, or any kind of communist by refusing to believe in the perfectibility of human nature. By contrast, communists recognize no evil, no mystery of iniquity that history cannot fix through critical theory and ideologically correct action up to and including mass murder.
Against all experience, communists dream of creating the new man.For Melville, transformations that radical must be accomplished in another world. This one requires due allowance for the "power of blackness" that Melville discerned in short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Certain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. --Hawthorne and His Mosses part 1, The Literary World August 17, 1850, page 126.
This is why leftist critics which is to say most academic commentators hate Melville's 1857-8 lecture onStatues in Rome. There Melville marveled over the recognizable features and traits of "ancient" humans as portrayed in busts of famous figures he saw in the Vatican museum. Socrates looked to Melville like an Irish comedian; Seneca like a Wall Street broker; Nero like "one of our fast young men who drive spanking teams and abound on race-courses."
Staggering advances in science and technology had and have not altered human nature. To not see it today, you would have to cover human faces with masks and somehow keep them covered. Near the end of that same lecture on the statuary of Rome, Melville observed that socialist utopias require misplaced faith in the perfectibility of mankind. "Or shall the scheme of Fourier supplant the code of Justinian? Only when the novels of Dickens shall silence the satires of Juvenal." Melville understood that Fourier's utopian Phalanstery of "liberated souls" could never dissolve away the problem of evil that necessitates compendious law codes, personified in Justinian. Fourier personifies the utopian dream of creating or evolving a new kind of human with a higher, more liberated consciousness. The point is not to discourage dreamers and idealists, except when they want to dismantle your constitutional republic with the idea of creating a new political society and new way of life for The New Socialist Man.
Melville's rhetorical question, “Can art, not life, make the Ideal?” has one right answer. Yes, Art can. Communism doesn't know how.
Worst of all for the collapsing future of woke Melville studies, the author of Moby-Dick expressed the inherent depravity of human beings here in the real physical world as a mathematical certainty:
"As 2 & 2 made 4 in Noah's time, as now, so man figures ever."
-- Marginal comment by Herman Melville in his copy of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well; accessible via Melville's Marginalia Online.
As transcribed on melvillesmarginalia.org the word figures is conjectural. Whatever you put there will not alter the essential claim.
Immortalized in marble the face of Nero reminded Melville of a "fast" young sportsman, a sort of 19th century James Dean. To me he looks like a rising professional golfer. The more things change...
As shown in our last, the Boston version of Herman Melville's 1857-8 lecture on Roman statues was remembered in Minnesota decades later. The Sunday edition of Harlan P. Hall's St. Paul Globe ("Between Ourselves," July 11, 1880) quoted from it and, without naming Melville directly, attributed his reported words to "one of our finest minds."
Transcribed below, the original report of Melville's lecture as printed in the Boston Daily Evening Bee on December 3, 1857. This, with minor variations, is the same text printed the same day in the Boston Daily Courier.
LECTURE ON THE STATUARY OF ROME.-- The novelty of the lecture room this week was the appearance, last evening at Tremont Temple, before the Mercantile Library Association, of Herman Melville, Esq., a gentleman of decided position in American literature, and the author of several unquestionably original and eccentric works. ... recently taken to the lecture field, his appearance in our city was looked upon as an "event" ranging up to a "sensation" point. Accordingly, a large and distinguished character-dotted audience was present. The subject was "The Statuary of Rome." He began by a description of the gate of St. John and its colossal figures. From this he proceeded to describe the most celebrated statuary in the Eternal City. In viewing, said he, the statues and busts of Demosthenes, Titus, Socrates, Cæsar, Seneca, Nero, and others, we feel a sense of reality not to be given by history; and although we are at first startled by some of them from our preconceived opinions, yet we seldom, on reflection, fail to concede the general likeness to that which the historian has furnished us. The analysis of the marble coincides with the historian's analysis of the man.
The statue which most of all in the Vatican excites the admiration of all visitors, is the Apollo. Few speak, or even whisper, when they enter the cabinet where it stands. If one were to try to convey some adequate notion, other than artistic, of a statue which so signally lifts the imaginations of men, he might hint that it gives a kind of visible response to that class of human aspirations which, according to Faith, cannot be truly gratified, except in another world. It is infinitely grander than the Venus di Medici, in Florence, for while she is lovely, he is divine. Not the least, perhaps, among those causes which make the Roman museums so impressive, is their tranquil air. In chambers befitting stand the images of gods, while in the statues of men, even the vilest, what was corruptible in their originals, here in pure marble puts on incorruption. In the Roman Vatican and the Washington Patent Office the respective characteristics of the ancients and moderns stand contrasted.
But is the locomotive as grand an object as the Laocoon? Does it attest this hurried intelligence? We moderns did invent the printing press, but from the ancients we have the best thoughts that it circulate? As the Roman arch enters into and sustains our best architecture, does not her spirit still animate and support whatever is soundest in societies and States? Or shall the scheme of Fourier supplant the code of Justinian, only when the novels of Dickens silence the satires of Juvenal? If the Colliseum express the durability of Roman ideas, what does the Crystal Palace express? Will the glass of the one bide the hail storms of eighteen centuries as well as the travertine of the other?
— When falls the Colliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls, the world!
The lecture, though quite able, and delivered with considerable enthusiasm, excited but little applause. It was, however, listened to with complimentary attention, though extended beyond the time usually devoted to these lectures.
The lecture next Wednesday evening, will be delivered by Geo. Wm. Curtis, Esq., of New York.
-- Boston Daily Evening Bee, December 3, 1857; found on genealogybank.com
In print, reconstructions of Melville's three lectures including the first one on Roman statuary are available in the 1987 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, Volume 9 in the scholarly edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, edited by G. Thomas Tanselle, Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker.
Herman Melville was born 202 years ago on August 1, 1819, a Sunday just like today.
Here's a surprising find with a suitably philosophical theme, perhaps, to contemplate on Melville's birthday. Decades after Herman Melville's 1857-8 lecture on Statues in Rome, a journalist in St. Paul, Minnesota quoted from it in a regular Sunday newspaper column called "Between Ourselves." Evidently the columnist in the St. Paul Sunday Globe (not editor Harlan Page Hall?) had before him an old newspaper with a summary of Melville's lecture. In graphic and occasionally gruesome detail, the Minnesota journalist described and reflected on modern methods of preserving the dead, and contrasted different results of "ancient and modern undertaking." In this context, the main point of quoting from the "Statues in Rome" lecture was to affirm with Melville the enduring value of ancient wisdom and culture.
Harlan Page Hall of St. Paul. Owner of "The Globe" newspaper.
Without naming Melville or identifying any source, the Minnesota writer quoted a newspaper account of Melville's 1857-8 lecture and attributed Melville's words to "one of our finest minds."
A Vision of Death as Done up in Style by the Undertaker.
Undertaking in its present finish and popular acceptance is one of the awful discoveries of our time. To be buried now-a-days requires a peculiar preparation which is so involved and in many instances so artistic in handling as to be professional to a dead certainty. Mortuary millinery is of a composite and graded variety. There are show windows filled with the kickshaws and gauds of the grave. In passing by them you note the tucks, ruches, gloves, wreaths, and even the cozily padded coffins where they are to be displayed. There are, then, regular fashions for the final lay-out, but there is a savage irony in the knowledge that the wearer can have no voice—no choice in the selection.
Becoming or unbecoming there is no disapprobation, and only the survivors can borrow any satisfaction from the experiment and expense.
One of our finest minds says:
“In the Roman Vatican and the Washington patent office the respective characteristics of the ancients and moderns stand contrasted. * * * We moderns did invent the printing press, but from the ancients have we not the best thoughts that it circulates. As the Roman arch enters into and sustains our best architecture does not her spirit still animate and support whatever is soundest in societies and States? Or shall the scheme of Fourier supplant the code of Justinian, only when the novels of Dickens silence the satires of Juvenal? If the coliseum express the durability of Roman ideas, what does the Crystal Palace express? Will the glass of the one bide the hail storms of eighteen centuries, as well as the travertine of the other?”
And he might add a final comparison about the difference between ancient and modern undertaking—as visible in the mummy—and the thing in the “conserver” of latter-day invention. We may brag of our civilization as much as we will—but those old Egyptian fellows are still far ahead of us in preserving the dead. Indeed, so admirably have they succeeded, that specimens of their skill are visible to-day after thousands of years, a little brown, and time-worn, perhaps, yet convincing of high art in the business.
A peculiar literature embalms them too, like Horace Smith’s ode to a mummy, and Theophile Gautier’s romance of a mummy—together with efforts of lesser writers. Think you Horace Smith could have been inspired to pen that remarkable poem, if his subject had been kept in a “conserver,” the face covered with a cloth dipped in some carbolic acid preparation, until the features were accentuated into the varied expressions Bret Harte commemorates in his well known sketch of the “Popular Undertaker?” Of course not....
Editor Harlan P. Hall was "a political and journalistic maverick who hailed from Ohio" according to Herbert Y. Weber in The Story of the St. Paul Globe.
Weber, Herbert Y. “The Story of the St. Paul Globe.” Minnesota History, vol. 39, no. 8, 1965, pp. 327–334. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20177786. Accessed 1 Aug. 2021.
Ravenna, Portage county to be exact, in Northeast Ohio. Hall's father was a newspaperman, too. In Ohio Melville had lectured on Roman statues in Cleveland (January 11, 1858); Cincinnati (February 2, 1858); and Chillicothe (February 3, 1858); as documented in the editorial appendix of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860 (Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1987), edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle and others, at pages 723-4. But the text of the quotation in Hall's St. Paul Globe is nearly identical to that presented in the Boston Daily Courier and the Boston Daily Evening Bee, both on December 3, 1857 (the day after Melville's lecture there). Did the Sunday edition of the St. Paul Globe employ a literary editor or regular contributor in the early 1880's with Boston connections? Who wrote the remarkably literary column "Between Ourselves" in the early 1880's for the St. Paul SundayGlobe?
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) forJanuary 9, 1858; found at GenealogyBank:
HERMAN MELVILLE.-- The public may confidently anticipate a rich intellectual treat in the lecture of this gentleman on Monday evening. He has selected the classic subject of Roman Statuary, and we venture to say he will handle it excellently and brilliantly.
Cleveland Plain Dealer - January 6, 1858
via GenealogyBank
Melville gave his "Statues in Rome" lecture at Melodeon Hall in Cleveland, Ohio on January 11, 1858. Also via GenealogyBank, from the Cleveland Plain Dealer for January 12, 1858:
Cleveland Plain Dealer - January 12, 1858
MELODEON.-- Mr. Melville's lecture on Roman Statuary last evening did not attract a large audience, but those who listened to it were generally, we believe, very well satisfied.
As mentioned in a previous post, the reviewer for The Ohio Farmer (January 23, 1858) observed that Melville's "affection for heathenism is profound and sincere. He speaks of the heathenism of Rome as if the world were little indebted to christianity...."
The Cleveland Leader rated Melville's talk on Roman Statuary "one of the most interesting lectures of the season." Genealogy Bank archives currently include files of the Cleveland Leader but not for January-May 1858. Here is the summary in the Annals of Cleveland - 1858, W. P. A. Project 14066 (Cleveland, 1937) page 265:
2029 – L Jan. 12, 1858: 3/2 – Herman Melville's lecture yesterday before the Library association, was one of the most interesting lectures of the season. It was gathered from his lecture that the divinity of art is not a thing of education, that it borrows no radiance from traditional fame, but is inherent and immortal as the spirit of beauty itself. (11)
The favorable Cleveland Leader review of Melville's lecture on Statues in Rome is extensively quoted in Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville as Lecturer (Harvard University Press, 1957) at pages 31-34. Texts of Melville's three known lectures, reconstructed from contemporary newspaper reports, are also available in the 1987 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860.
Related posts:
Melville in Cleveland https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/11/melville-in-cleveland-1858.html
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