The Scarlet Letter in Sleeper's Boston Journal

Transcribed below, the complete review of The Scarlet Letter with other "New Publications" as originally published in the evening edition of the Boston Journal on Friday, March 22, 1850. Then edited by John Sherburne Sleeper. The long last paragraph was reprinted in the Salem Register on March 25, 1850 with other newspaper criticisms of Hawthorne's prefatory sketch, "The Custom House." Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by John L. Idol, Jr. and Buford Jones (Cambridge University Press, 1994) at page 120 gives only the Salem Register excerpt. Gary Scharnhorst lists the Boston Journal review of The Scarlet Letter as entry number 389 in Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Annotated Bibliography of Comment and Criticism before 1900 (Scarecrow Press, 1988), page 61. Scharnhorst highlights the closing attack on Hawthorne's "Custom House" sketch, but the earlier portion of the Boston Journal review includes praise for Hawthorne's "vigorous elasticity of style" and a comparison with Jane Eyre as "one of the most fascinating tales of the day."

Boston Daily Journal - March 22, 1850
Library of Congress. Bound volumes, Newspapers #8217

The Scarlet Letter. A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. We regard this book as one of the best works of the author. It is written with a vigorous elasticity of style which plainly shows that his pen has not rusted from its long disuse.-- The plot and incidents of the tale are simple. The scene is laid in Boston--at the period of the early settlement of the town. The narrative is one of crime, remorse, repentance, and revenge. The characters are vividly drawn. The unconcealed remorse of Hester, and the hidden but no less intense anguish of her betrayer, the strange and elfish pranks, and the subtile and precocious remarks of little Pearl, and the unrelenting revenge of Roger Chillingworth, are portrayed with a vividness of coloring which makes them appear lifelike, although all unlike life. Indeed, the same remark applies to the incidents of the story, which, although many of them wild and improbable, are narrated with a vigor and apparent truthfulness to nature, which completely enchains the attention and enlists the sympathies of the reader, rendering it difficult for him to draw the line between obvious romance and apparent reality--between not improbable events and supernatural scenes. 

There are many scenes in this work which remind the reader of incidents in the Autobiography of Jane Eyre. The meeting of Dimmesford, Hester and Pearl, on the pillory, is a master-piece of delineation, equalling in mystical interest the recal of Jane Eyre from her voluntary exile. There are characters, too, in both works, between which a parallel might be drawn. Taken as a whole, the Scarlet Letter will rank, with Jane Eyre, as one of the most fascinating tales of the day. 

We cannot but regret that the author did not take counsel with discreet friends, before prefixing to his charming romance some sixty pages, in the shape of a preface, of matter as entirely irrelevant as would be a description of the household arrangements of the Emperor of China. Under the text of Reminiscences of the Salem Custom House, the author has dragged before the public, and held up to ridicule, individuals, whose greatest peculiarity was that they could not sympathise with the dreamy thoughts and the literary habits of the author. Mr. Hawthorne evidently keenly feels that his talents and personal importance were not appreciated by his fellow officials and by the citizens of Salem, and he takes a paltry revenge in lampooning his former associates. There is a vein of bitterness running through this portion of the work, which, though covered under an assumed playfulness of language, is by no means concealed. The whole chapter, from beginning to end, is a violation of the courtesies of life, and an abuse of the privileges of common intercourse.  --Boston Daily Journal, March 22, 1850. Volume 18, number 5256; page 1, column 4. Library of Congress. Bound volumes, Newspapers 8217 (Jan 1-April 19, 1850).

Related posts:

• Moby-Dick in Sleeper's Boston Journal
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-in-sleepers-boston-journal.html

• White-Jacket in Sleeper's Boston Journal
   https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/white-jacket-in-sleepers-boston-journal.html

More on Melville in Cleveland

Cleveland Plain Dealer - January 9, 1858

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) for January 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

• Can Art not Life make the Ideal?
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/02/can-art-not-life-make-ideal-herman.html

Two Moby-Dick notices in New Orleans Commercial Bulletin

At this time the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin was edited by Yale grad and Mexican War veteran Isaac Gurdon Seymour (1804-1862). First, the known recommendation of Moby-Dick by New York correspondent Hans Yorkel aka Abraham Oakey Hall that appeared in the Commercial Bulletin on November 27, 1851. Hershel Parker discovered Hall's letters to the Commercial Bulletin at Tulane in the late 1980's, as told in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Northwestern University Press, 2012) pages 92 and 419. This first item is transcribed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009), at pages 387-8.

New Orleans Commercial Bulletin - November 27, 1851
via GenealogyBank

... But HARPERS last week gives us Moby Dick, or the Whale, "Herman Melville's" last nautical romance. It is a book which well sustains his reputation as a tale writer and sketcher, while it enhances in a high degree his fame as an original thinker and illustrater of every day sailor men, and every day sailor scenes. You remember the account recently given by a Captain DEBLERS, of his hunting a white whale, and its sinking the ship, after it had broken all the boats? Very curiously Mr. "Melville's story is upon the vengeance with which a captain pursued a whale, with a similar catastrophe occurring for a finale. But beyond, far beyond the story, Mr. "Melville’s" book is a valuable one for its accounts of the manners, haunts and natural history of Leviathan. He paraphrases JOB, to the affirmative nod of his readers, "Canst thou pull out Leviathan with a book?'" 

HANS YORKEL. --New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, November 27, 1851.

Second, the brief notice of Moby-Dick with other "New Books" published by Harper & Brothers, from the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin of December 8, 1851. This item is not transcribed in Contemporary Reviews or included in the Checklist of Additional Reviews on page 416.

New Orleans Commercial Bulletin - December 8, 1851
via GenealogyBank

Moby Dick, or the Whale, by HERMAN MELVILLE.-- This, we take it from a cursory survey, is an exceedingly exciting and attractive work--being a kind of log of sea yarns and adventures connected with whaling, some of them partaking rather of the marvellous. The book is highly spoken of, and engages very general attention.  

--New Orleans Commercial Bulletin - December 8, 1851

Melville's latest headed the list of new Harper titles for sale by New Orleans bookseller J. B. Steel.

New Orleans Commercial Bulletin - December 8, 1851
via GenealogyBank

Pierre in Louisville KY

George D. Prentice
via NYPL Digital Collections

Here is the one usable review of Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, later excerpted in publisher's ads that credited (by mistake?) the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. I'm guessing this review of Pierre in the Louisville Daily Journal might have found its way into the Louisville Evening Bulletin, another daily and weekly newspaper commenced in November 1851 by Journal editor George D. Prentice. Hypothetically then, whoever supplied the Harpers with Louisville excerpts may have correctly attributed them to the "Evening Bulletin," resulting eventually in a mix-up with the better known Philadelphia newspaper, Cummings' Evening Bulletin. Alternatively, perhaps the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reprinted it from the Louisville Journal.

The August 7, 1852 issue of Cummings' Evening Bulletin did contain an early review of Pierre, as Gary Scharnhorst reports in "More Nineteenth-Century Melville Reviews," Melville Society Extracts Number 89 (June 1992), pages 1-6 at page 2. However, as partially quoted by Scharnhorst the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia had a different take on the "strange, wild romance" that opens "in a strain of rhapsodical and extravagant poetry" but "soon subsides to a mystical, dark tone of sober prose." The Philadelphia reviewer commented on Melville's "most unnatural characters and improbable scenes" and noted "the terrible catastrophe" with which the novel ends, unsuccessfully: "...the reader closes it with an unsatisfied feeling, for which the interest of the scenes and the evident talent of the author afford no compensation."

By contrast, the Louisville reviewer demonstrates a more poetic sensibility, finding Melville's language "beautiful, and wonderful" as well as "wild." This appreciative critic, maybe Journal editor and poet George Denison Prentice, not only perceives the influences of Dante and Shakespeare, but also finds value in the later authorship chapters as a kind of cautionary tale for ambitious writers. The New York advertisements cited below omit that part of the Louisville review, as well as the more ominous closing reference to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin as mad Gothic playwright and novelist:

"Take it altogether, Pierre is a rare and singular book. But if Mr. Melville is in search of immortality, we commend him to the study of Maturin's kindred style, and the results."

The Louisville reviewer's attention to specific chapters on authorship starting with "Young America in Literature" is unique in early criticism of Melville's seventh book. As Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker note in Reading Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (Louisiana State University Press, 2006) at page 198, "reviewers almost unanimously ignored the section on Pierre as an author."

George D. Prentice was the "witty editor of the Louisville Journal" who, as Allan Melville informed Herman on October 17, 1844, had been "right down upon" their brother Gansevoort Melville, campaigning for the Democrats in the south and west. Allan's long (and still "unlocated"?) letter to Herman is transcribed in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth, pages 565-571. To Allan's point about the abuse of Gansevoort by Prentice: on September 19, 1844 the Extra edition of the Louisville Journal claimed that Gansevoort "made the very poorest and most meagre speech, that we ever heard from a man of any pretension. He had neither logic nor facts nor eloquence nor plausibility nor sense nor even respectable declamation." 

Louisville Daily Journal - August 14, 1852
Found on newspapers.com

Pierre, or the Ambiguities. By Herman Melville. Harper & Brothers. 

Mr. Melville has cut the acquaintance of Polynesia, and has made a domestic story, as wild, wonderful, and tragical as he ever conjured from the tropical wilds of the coral islands of the Pacific. Pierre is a curious mixture of Dante's Inferno, and of Hamlet. It is worthy of its name--"the Ambiguities." Pierre, Lucy Tartan, Mrs. Glendenning, and Isabel are creations that could have come from no other source than Melville's mind. There is ambiguity from one end of the book to the other, but it is clothed with language singularly wild, beautiful, and wonderful. There are slips of the pen, though, at times, that should not disfigure the work of such a master as Melville. For instance, he makes Isabel say: "till some employ should offer."

Still, there may be a moral in this strange and singular work. The aspirant to the honors of magazine literature, and those who have ambition to use author-craft as a staff, may learn some useful lessons from the chapters entitled "Young America in Literature," "A Juvenile Author Reconsidered," "Immature Attempts at a Matured Book," and "The Flower-curtain Lifted from before a Tropical Author; with some remarks on the Transcendental Flesh-brush Philosophy." Take it altogether, Pierre is a rare and singular book. But if Mr. Melville is in search of immortality, we commend him to the study of Maturin's kindred style, and the results.

--Louisville Daily Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) August 14, 1852.

Excerpted in publisher's advertisements and attributed to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, for example in the New York Literary World on October 16, 1852

Mr. Melville has cut the acquaintance of Polynesia, and has made a domestic story, as wild, wonderful, and tragical as he ever conjured from the tropical wilds of the coral islands of the Pacific. Pierre is a curious mixture of Dante's Inferno and of Hamlet. Pierre, Lucy Tartan, Mrs. Glendenning, and Isabel, are creations that could have come from no other source than Melville's mind. * * * It is clothed with language singularly wild, beautiful, and wonderful.--Phila. Evening Bulletin. 

and the New York Morning Courier on October 21, 1852.

Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer - October 21, 1852
via FultonHistory

As in the Louisville Journal, the October 1852 Harper ads misspell "Glendinning" as "Glendenning."

Related posts:

• wild, wonderful, and tragical Pierre
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2013/12/wild-wonderful-and-tragical-pierre.html

• Notice of Moby-Dick in the Louisville Daily Journal
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/02/notice-of-moby-dick-in-louisville-daily.html

White-Jacket in Sleeper's Boston Journal

The Boston Journal, then edited by John Sherburne Sleeper, published this brief, favorable notice of Melville's White-Jacket on March 25, 1850. Not included in Gary Scharnhorst's 1988 inventory of discoveries, "Melville Bibliography 1846-1897: A Sheaf of Uncollected Excerpts, Notices, and Reviews" in Melville Society Extracts 74 (October 1988) pages 8-12; and 75 (November 1988) pages 3-8. Not transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009).

Boston Journal - March 25, 1850
Vol. 18 no. 5256, page 1, col. 4.

New Publications. 

... White-Jacket; or the World in a Man-of-War. By Herman Melville. New York: Harpers & Brothers.

The author in this volume gives a description of life on board a man of war, as seen from the forecastle. We have not yet had an opportunity to bestow more than a casual glance at the contents of this book, but judging from a perusal of one or two chapters and from the wide reputation which the author has acquired, we hazard little in predicting that the book will be read with great interest. In London, where the work was published some six or eight weeks since, it is very highly spoken of. The little which we have read in "White Jacket," has served to awaken a desire to read more, and we have laid the book aside for perusal at the earliest opportunity. It is for sale by Redding & Co.

Boston Daily Journal - May 23, 1850
Vol. 18 no. 5306, page 1, columns 4-5.

Two months later, a more substantial critique of White-Jacket appeared in the evening edition of Sleeper's Boston Journal over the pseudonym, "Johnny Raw." This item also is not counted in Scharnhorst's 1988 "Sheaf" or the 1995 edition of Contemporary Reviews. The pseudonymous reviewer in the Boston Journal argues that Melville's book is best regarded as fiction, taking pains to show specific ways that White-Jacket is unreliable as a "true narrative." According to "Johnny Raw," Melville actually belonged to the after-guard, never the maintop as claimed, "his duties seldom carrying him above the hammock netting." The writer takes pains to correct Melville on the legal basis for flogging in the U. S. Navy. Without saying how exactly, "Johnny Raw" appears to have some knowledge of the frigate United States during Melville's service, including what might be regarded as inside information about particular officers and crew members. 

Critique of Melville's White-Jacket by "Johnny Raw"
Boston Daily Journal - May 23, 1850

Melville's informed critic approves the portrayal of "Mad Jack" as "the most correct character in the book," but denies any factual basis for the caricatures of Selvagee and the amputation-crazy Dr. Cuticle. The critic exposes the real age of old Ushant ("about forty") and his lack of naval experience. Nevertheless, "Johnny Raw" acknowledges that Melville's Ushant had a real-life model whose "great peculiarity was his fondness for his bushy and Turk-like beard." In this case, the exercise of fact-checking nicely corroborates the main lines of the story as Melville told it in The Great Massacre of the Beards.

[For the Boston Journal]

WHITE JACKET--OR THE WORLD IN A MAN-OF-WAR

The title of this work would lead its readers, generally, to believe it a correct statement of the routine and discipline of a man-of-war; at least, they would expect a true narrative of occurrences in the vessel, on board which its author--pretending to be a maintop-man--was the literary man of that body of men termed the After-Guard; (who, in his own language, are composed chiefly of landsmen, the least robust, least hardy, and least sailor-like of the crew). Such, however, is far from being the case; much of this volume is fiction, composed, I should judge, in a great measure, of yarns gathered from sailors--having about the same claim to reality as "Sinbad the Sailor," or the "Baron Munchausen." When the author condescends to treat his readers to a bit of reality, his facts are so much distorted, and represented in so incorrect a light, as to render them, under the circumstances, more blameable than fiction. Tending, as they do, to mislead the public, (who generally being wholly unacquainted with the subject, are entirely at the mercy of an author,) such want of faith in portraying events, cannot be too severely censured. As a work of fiction, the book may have its merits; but deeming it the intention of its author that it should not be considered such, I will point out some few of these misrepresentations and attempt to place them in their true position.

Commencing with the author's statement of the truth and fidelity of his picture, we find, in Chap. 12th, in speaking of the topmen-- 

"The reason of their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltriness of the decks below. And I feel persuaded, in my inmost soul, that it is to the fact of my having been a maintop-man, and especially my particular post being on the loftiest yard of the frigate, the main-royal-yard, that I am now enabled to give such a free, broad, off-hand, birds-eye and , more than all, impartial account of our man-of-war world; withholding nothing, inventing nothing, nor flattering, nor scandalizing any, but meting out to all--Commodore and messenger-boy alike--their precise description and deserts." 

There is no knowing but such might have been the case, had the author been a maintop-man, and his station on the giddy heighth of the main-royal-yard of the frigate; but stationed as he was, among the landsmen of the After-Guard, his duties seldom carrying him above the hammock netting; it may have been "the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltriness of the decks below," together with a want of sufficient knowledge of sea service, which has caused him to view every thing through so incorrect and distempered a medium.

The characters introduced into this work, are in a great measure those of the imagination, and are made to speak and act to suit the author's pleasure. Captain "Claret," or rather the Captain's Claret, (there being no mention made by the author of the Captain Claret to whom he alludes having, during the latter part of the cruise, relinquished the command of the frigate to a commander, himself taking command of the squadron, owing to the death of the Commodore,) are officers of high standing both in their profession and among their fellow citizens. "Mad Jack" is the most correct character in the book. "Selvagee" is most outrageously caricatured; in reality he is a neat, gentlemanly man, intelligent and much above mediocrity in ability and acquirement, with a knowledge of his profession, which renders him competent to discharge all its duties. The venerable "Old Ushant," "the ancient captain of the forecastle," the seaman whose "back had bowed at the guns of the Constitution when she captured the Guerriere." In fact, with all this high sounding decoration, the author's Ushant was a seaman on the forecastle, who, so far from having been in the Constitution at the time of the capture of the Guerriere, from his own admission, had never served in a man-of-war previous to the cruise of this frigate; neither was he the venerable man, "the Nestor of the crew," as described, but a seaman of about forty years of age, whose great peculiarity was his fondness for his bushy and Turk-like beard. 

A few words now on the subject of flogging. The first case mentioned by the author, in chapter 33d, for the edification of his readers, is that of four men guilty of fighting; the description itself is tolerably fair, but something more is required to convey a correct idea of punishment in the naval service to general readers.

By law of Congress, the punishment in the naval service is flogging; the instrument and its material being designated. No officer has power to punish but the commanding officer, and that in presence of the officers and crew. The following are the regulations under which punishment is made:

GENERAL ORDER. 

"The President of the United States, believing that greater formality in the infliction of such corporeal punishments as are authorized by law, may be adopted in the Navy with beneficial consequences, directs that no such punishment shall be inflicted on any person in the service without sentence of a court-martial, when required bylaw, or the written order of the captain or commanding officer of the vessel, or commandant of the navy yard to which he is attached, where the authority to cause it to be inflicted rests with the commanding officer; specifying the offence or offences, and the extent of the punishment to be inflicted; which order shall be read, and the punishment inflicted in presence of the officers and seamen belonging to the vessel or navy yard.

All such orders for punishment shall be entered on the log-book, and a quarterly return made to the Secretary of the Navy, stating the names of the persons punished, their offences, and the extent of the punishment inflicted, together with such explanations or remarks as the commanding officer may deem necessary to a proper understanding of the case, &c.

(Signed,)
J. K. PAULDING.
Navy Department, May 29th, 1840." 

A list of all punishments taking place on board of all vessels of the Navy, containing the offence and number of lashes inflicted, is required to be kept and forwarded to Congress through the Secretary of the Navy.

"And be it further enacted, that the Secretary of the Navy be, and he is hereby directed to report to Congress at the commencement of the next session, the number of persons in the naval service flogged in each of the years eighteen hundred and forty-six, and eighteen hundred and forty-seven; specifying the name of the ship, the offence, the sentence, and the number of lashes inflicted; and it shall be his duty to make a similar report for each year thereafter." (Approved August 3, 1848.)

The regulations for the government of the Navy are laws of Congress, specifying the offences, and the punishment for such offences, leaving it only discretionary with the captain of a vessel to limit the punishment for such offences as are not subject for a court-martial, from one to twelve lashes (twelve lashes being the extent of the law); strictly, in all offences against the law, the captain has no power to remit punishment altogether, the law reading, "shall be punished," &c.

Chapter 34. "Some of the evil effects of flogging."-- "One of the arguments advanced by officers of the navy in favor of corporeal punishment is this: it can be inflicted in a moment; it consumes no valuable time; and when the prisoner's shirt is put on, that is the last of it, whereas if another punishment were substituted it would probably occasion a great waste of time and trouble; besides thereby begetting in the sailor an undue idea of his importance." 

I say with the author, "absurd, or worse than absurd," but beyond this I cannot go, and agree with him, that "all this is true," but decidedly deny its truth. That any such argument is advanced by officers of the Navy is altogether a misstatement. Not being aware that the opinions of officers (were they asked) would make any difference in the law, they having no part in their framing, being in no manner responsible for them, but being obliged to execute them to the best of their ability, whatever they may be. I will mention none of the arguments made use of by those in favor or against corporeal punishment:

"For besides the formal administering of the 'cat' at the gangway for petty offences, he is liable to the 'colt,' or rope's end, a bit of ratlin stuff, indiscriminately applied."

By referring back, it will be found in General Order from the Hon. J. K. Paulding, then Secretary of the Navy, that all punishment except in presence of the officers and crew, was prohibited in 1840, some three years previous to the author's serving on board the "Never-sink." 

"Nor was it a thing unknown for a Lieutenant in a sudden outburst of passion, perhaps inflamed by brandy, or smarting under the sense of being disliked or hated by the seamen, to order a whole watch of two hundred and fifty men, at dead of night, to undergo the indignity of the colt." 

Here again the author deals in the marvelous; such a scene cannot be proved to have been ever enacted in the navy of the United States. The laws in the naval service bind equally on all to whom they refer, officers as well as crew. Would not common sense teach any one, that an officer is not going to risk his position (which he most certainly would do) by acting directly at variance with the law, for the sake of gratifying such a paltry feeling of revenge, as the author imagines.

I would also mention here, that for illegal punishment, inflicted at any time during a cruise, every officer is aware that he would not only subject himself to a court-martial for violation of military law, but also to heavy penalty, at the expiration of the vessel's cruise, were the circumstances brought to a civil court; and there are ever a class in our sea port cities on the look out for such cases, on the return of both government and merchant vessels. 

"Flogging not lawful." Such is the title of chapter 35th. Is it not indeed wonderful that this should not have been found out an an earlier period, that the judgment of our members of Congress and heads of Department should have been thus obscured! that Congress, when legislating on this subject, should labor under the delusion that their acts were law! that no member of Congress has been sufficiently acute, when advocating the abolishment of corporeal punishment, to perceive that such punishment was unlawful! and that at last this discovery should be made by one whose talent seems by far better adapted to fiction, than to unravelling the substantial intricacies of the law. The laws for the government of the Navy are in themselves a sufficient comment upon this chapter. 

Although the seamen themselves, generally, are of opinion that flogging should not be done away with--and the only petition which I have heard of their sending to Congress for years, was a request that such punishment should not be abolished. Still I would say, make the trial--let Congress make the experiment in a few vessels--should they not deem it prudent to do so altogether--and indeed can I say that for one out of very many, most sincerely should I rejoice to see that order and discipline can be maintained, (on the high sea), among such a number, composed of every description of men, without the lash.

"Flogging not necessary." Chapter 36. Whether necessary or not, I should not presume to discuss, (although one-half of my life has been spent in sea service,) until a fair trial had been made without its use. 

"And as in this matter we cannot go further back than to Blake, so we cannot advance further than to our own time, which shows Commodore Stockton, during the recent war with Mexico, governing the American squadron in the Pacific, without employing the scourge." 

Having for authority those who served on board the U. S. frigate Congress, the flag-ship of Commodore Stockton, I can state that in this also the author is mistaken, and that as elsewhere corporeal punishment was inflicted for violation of the law; I should judge that the author might be equally if not more likely, misinformed with regard to the opinions of Blake, Collingwood and Nelson, on this subject, than of those of his contemporary whom he has mentioned. 

"Old Ushant at the gangway." Chapter 77. I will close this subject with a correct story of this incident, of the genuineness of the author's "Old Ushant," I have before spoken. General orders from the Secretary of the Navy, sent by circular to the Commodores of Squadrons, and from them to the commanders of vessels, are regulations which officers are obliged to obey and enforce equally with the laws.

GENERAL ORDER.

"The hair of all persons belonging to the Navy, when in actual service, is to be kept short. No part of the beard is to be worn long excepting the whiskers; which shall not descend more than one inch below the tip of the ear, and thence in a line towards the corners of the mouth.

[Signed] BADGER."

In the instance before us, each order was given by Captain "Claret." The order being obeyed by the officers, it was passed among the crew, who, with the exception of some six to twelve, obeyed it--they being probably sufficiently acquainted with the naval service to be aware that such orders do not emanate from the Captain without authority. On being remonstrated with, all obeyed, with the exception of the author's venerable Ushant, and he, after being reasoned with by the Captain, and informed that he should be obliged to punish him, did he continue to set his authority at defiance--the Captain at the same time expressing his unwillingness to do so--still continued to defy the authority of a regulation of the naval service, which all his shipmates and officers had seen the necessity of complying with. For this, in accordance with the law, was he punished. Here I will leave it to the good sense of every individual to say how justly.

"A man-of-war's man shot at," Chapter 50th. Without quoting from the author in this chapter, it is sufficient to say that he relates as fact, that a top-man, a messmate of his own, having been prohibited going on shore at night, was fired upon by the sentry on post, and severely wounded in the right thigh. Strange to say! this occurrence, unusual as it is, and of such a serious nature, cannot be remembered by others who were on board; so far from it, they decidedly maintain that, neither did such a circumstance occur during the cruise of the frigate, nor did a man die from having a limb amputated, as related in the case of this imaginary man of the author, in Chap. 53d; and furthermore, that no amputation took place on board the "Neversink," during her cruise. 

Growing out of this creation of the fancy, the author presents to his readers three chapters equally devoid of fact; and at last destroys his phantom messmate, under the hands of the surgeon; the description of whom, in justice to an upright and estimable man, I cannot pass over. "The Surgeon of the Fleet," Chap. 51st.

"He was a small, withered man, nearly, perhaps quite, sixty years of age. His chest was shallow, his shoulders bent, his pantaloons hung round skeleton legs, and his face was singularly attenuated. In truth, the corporeal vitality of this man seemed, in a good degree, to have died out of him, &c.

Like most old physicians and surgeons who have seen much service, and have been promoted to high professional place for scientific attainments, this Cuticle was an enthusiast in his calling. In private, he had once been heard to say, confidentially, that he would rather cut off a man's arm than  dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant, &c." 

What a walking study for an anatomist! what a hideously ugly looking varmint, has the author drawn in caricaturing you, "Cuticle,"--quite a demon, hardly possessing the form of humanity; how amazingly is the real appearance and disposition of "Cuticle" at variance with the author's picture. Slightly above the medium height, he is erect, and stout without being corpulent, of about forty-five years of age, his features fine and expressive of that mildness and benignity which characterizes him. I am told by those who have been under his treatment (in the sick bay,) several times during the cruise of the frigate, he was ever extremely kind and attentive, doing all that professional skill, aided by an excellent heart, could do to alleviate the suffering of those under his care.

Here I "wind up" for the present, what was only undertaken to show the public how much they have been imposed upon, if they have taken "White Jacket" for other than a work of fiction.

JOHNNY RAW. 

--Boston Daily Journal, Thursday Evening, May 23, 1850; vol. 18 no. 5306, page 1.

Boston Daily Journal - May 23, 1850

Related post:

• Moby-Dick in Sleeper's Boston Journal
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-in-sleepers-boston-journal.html

Moby-Dick in Sleeper's Boston Journal

Review of Moby-Dick, first three paragraphs in the
Boston Morning Journal - November 18, 1851

Herein I want to share all of the favorable review of Moby-Dick that appeared on November 18, 1851 in the morning edition of the Boston Journal. Although this review was located and partially reprinted in the late 1980's, the complete text has not been readily available. Gary Scharnhorst discovered the review of Moby Dick in Boston Journal of November 18, 1851 as well as the "Death Scenes of the Whale" excerpt that appeared on November 28, 1851; both items are listed in

Gary Scharnhorst, "Melville Bibliography 1846-1897: A Sheaf of Uncollected Excerpts, Notices, and Reviews" continued from Number 74 in Melville Society Extracts 75 (November 1988), pages 3-8 at 4 and 5. 

Scharnhorst transcribed parts of the Boston Journal review of Moby-Dick, omitting the plot summary with repeated references to the "monomaniac" Captain Ahab. 

Presumably by editor John Sherburne Sleeper (1794-1878), the review of Moby-Dick in Sleeper's Boston Journal is not transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). What led me to hunt it up in the Boston Morning Journal was the mostly negative notice that Richard E. Winslow III discovered in a different Boston newspaper, the Saturday Evening Gazette for December 6, 1851. That later Saturday Evening Gazette item is collected and transcribed at page 102 in Melville Reviews and Notices, Continued, Leviathan, vol. 13 no. 1, 2011, p. 88-115. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/493025.

The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, then edited by twenty-five year old William Warland Clapp, Jr., wished Melville had quit while he was ahead, having peaked with the brilliant Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847): "We have read portions of Moby Dick, but fail to discover any marks of freshness, any traces of originality." But here's the clue. With admirable humility and fairness, Clapp went on to acknowledge the contrary opinion of an older and possibly wiser editor:

"The work [Moby-Dick] is highly spoken of by our neighbor of the Journal, a nautical gentleman, and our opinion of its merits may be erroneous. The only way for the reader to decide is by perusing the volume." 

So then, according to Clapp's Saturday Evening Gazette, a "highly" positive take on Moby-Dick had recently graced the Boston Journal. Without needing to name him, Clapp respectfully acknowledged Journal editor John Sherburne Sleeper as the "nautical gentleman" who had endorsed Moby-Dick, apparently in glowing terms.

As confirmed in Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 5, Sleeper edited the Boston Journal for twenty years from 1834 to 1854; and before that "was during twenty-two years a sailor and a shipmaster in the merchant service from Boston."

SLEEPER, John Sherburne, author, born in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, 21 September, 1794; died in Boston Highlands, Massachusetts, 14 November, 1878. He was during twenty-two years a sailor and a shipmaster in the merchant service from Boston. He afterward engaged in journalism, was connected with the New Hampshire "News Letter" at Exeter in 1831-'2, and the Lowell "Daily Journal" in 1833, and was editor of the Boston "Journal" in 1834-'54. He was mayor of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1856-'8, and published "Tales of the Ocean "(Boston, 1842); "Salt-Water Bubbles" (1854); "Jack in the Forecastle" (1860); " Mark Rowland, a Tale of the Sea, by Hawser Martingale "(1867); and various addresses. 

One of Sleeper's nautical tales provided a source for White-Jacket, as Howard P. Vincent shows in The Tailoring of Melville's White-Jacket (Northwestern University Press, 1970) pages 150-154. In chapter 67, White-Jacket arraigned at the Mast, the narrator's determination to kill himself and Captain Claret rather than submit to flogging is re-imagined from Sleeper's dramatic passage on the flogging of an impressed Yankee boy in Tales of the Ocean. Melville's White Jacket escapes punishment with help from Jack Chase, and never enacts the desperate murder-suicide that actually happens in Sleeper's account. Published under the pseudonym "Hawser Martingale," Sleeper's "Tales of the Ocean is number 647 in Mary K. Bercaw, Melville's Sources (Northwestern University Press, 1987) page 120.

The Library of Congress has bound volumes of the Boston Morning Journal and Boston Daily Journal, stored offsite at Fort Meade, Maryland. With generous help from Library of Congress experts in the James Madison Memorial Building, I was able to examine volumes in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room. For major assistance there I am grateful to Amber Paranick, Reference Librarian; and Robin Butterhof, Digital Conversion Specialist.

Boston Morning Journal - November 18, 1851

New Publications. 

... Moby-Dick; or the Whale. By Herman Melville. New York: Harper & Brothers. The appearance of this work has been awaited with much interest. The author of "Omoo," "Typee," &c., has taken a high rank among the writers of the day, and his works have attained considerable popularity, as well in England as in this country.

Moby-Dick is the soubriquet given by whalemen to a white whale of unusual ferocity, and whose exploits form the subject of many a tale of havoc. This whale had been attacked by Captain Ahab of the Pequod, on board of which vessel the scenes of this volume are laid. Captain Ahab came off from the encounter with the loss of a leg. From that hour he became a monomaniac, and lived for revenge. He returned to Nantucket, and dissembling with the cunning of a madman the condition of his mind, again took command of the Pequod for another whaling cruise. When well out to sea, the monomaniac Captain assembled his crew, declared his determination to hunt the white whale to the death, and influenced them also to swear to aid him in his work of revenge. From that hour the Pequod pursued the seemingly hopeless search to all quarters of the world, and in spite of all warnings of evil. The white whale is finally overtaken, but his malice and ferocity proved more than a match for the hatred of Captain Ahab, and a terrible tragedy ends the tale.

The work is a singular mixture of fact and fiction.— The supernatural is interwoven with the matter-of-fact delineations of life on board a whale ship. The descriptions of the various operations of the whalemen are remarkably life like. The chapters upon the whale, for minute description of the characteristics of the different varieties of the leviathan, would do credit to the researches of the most enthusiastic naturalist.

We take a few leaves from this volume for the perusal of our readers. They afford striking illustrations of the descriptive powers of the author. And first we quote a picture of cabin life on board a whale ship— time, the dinner hour. This chapter [34: The Cabin-Table] is a life-like delineation of the social distinctions which exist among the officers of a large ship: 

"It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, 'Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,' disappears into the cabin.

When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, 'Dinner, Mr. Stubb,' and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid 'Dinner, Mr. Flask,' follows after his predecessors.

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.

It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned."

The following we take from a chapter [60: The Line] descriptive of some of the implements used in the capture of whales:

"The whale line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not unlike the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded 'sheaves,' or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the 'heart,' or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because these twin tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding cake to present to the whales. 

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again. 

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail. 

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?' "

We have read many accounts of the chase and capture of the sperm whale, but none so absorbingly interesting, or which have presented so vivid a picture of this exciting event, as the following [from Chapter 61: Stubb Kills a Whale]:

" 'Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all,' cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. 'Start her, now; give 'em the long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all; but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy —only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that's all. Start her!'

'Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!' screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke which the eager Indian gave. 

But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. 'Kee-hee! Kee-hee!' yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage.  

'Ka-la! Koo-loo!' howled Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the welcome cry was heard— 'Stand up, Tashtego!—give it to him!' The harpoon was hurled. 'Stern all!' The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something went hot and hissing along every one of their wrist[s]. It was the magical line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands, from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of your clutch.  

'Wet the line! wet the line!' cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed the sea-water into it. More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places—stem for stern—a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion. 

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two keels—one cleaving the water, the other the air—as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight.  

'Haul in—haul in!' cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then ranging up for another fling. 

The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale.  

'Pull up—pull up!' he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. 'Pull up!—close to!' and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his 'flurry,' the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.  

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!  

'He's dead, Mr. Stubb,' said Daggoo.  

'Yes; both pipes smoked out!' and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made."

There was considerable discussion when the "Typee," of Melville, appeared, whether the scenes therein described were founded on fact, or were all fiction. 

In Moby-Dick, as in Typee, the author figures in the first person, but no one will mistake the strangely wild thread of this story for a veritable history. But the reader will sometimes be puzzled to separate fiction from probability, so skilfully has the author blended the common incidents of a whaleman's life, with the creations of his own fancy. In many respects Moby-Dick is the best of the works of the author, as it certainly is the most instructive. We predict for it, with confidence, an extended popularity. For sale by Redding & Co.

-- Boston Morning Journal, Volume 19, Number 5760. Tuesday morning, November 18, 1851. Page 1, columns 5-6. Library of Congress. Bound volumes, Newspapers, Control # 8218. October-December 1851.

Later in November, another passage from Moby-Dick appeared in the evening edition of the Boston Journal. On Friday evening, November 28, 1851, the Boston Daily Journal reprinted an excerpt from chapter 81 under the heading, "Death Scenes of the Whale." This text had been reprinted elsewhere with the same heading, for example on November 15, 1851 with the first notice of Moby-Dick in The Literary World. In the Boston Daily Journal, the credit line for the "Death Scenes" excerpt read,

"—Herman Melville." 

Boston Daily Journal - November 28, 1851 - vol. 19 no. 5767
Library of Congress. Bound volumes, Control #8217. 

The Boston Daily Journal column with "Death Scenes of the Whale" appeared on the front page of the newspaper, immediately below and alongside the full report of Orville Dewey's eleventh lecture on "The Problem of Human Destiny, Considered in its Bearings on Human Life and Welfare."

Boston Daily Journal - November 28, 1851
page 1, columns 6-7

In January and February 1852, Dewey repeated his Lowell lectures in New York City. Later made into a book, The Problem of Human Destiny (James Miller: New York, 1864). Melville worked over Dewey and his theme of Human Destiny in Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852), as Hershel Parker discusses in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 2, 1851-1891 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pages 65-7 and 80. 

Related posts

• White-Jacket in Sleeper's Boston Journal
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/white-jacket-in-sleepers-boston-journal.html 

• The Scarlet Letter in Sleeper's Boston Journal
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• Moby-Dick widely praised in 1851-1852
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html

Fragments from a Writing Desk: A Version of the Leyda Wand, the Review-hunting to...

Hershel Parker posted this about the Leyda Wand eight years ago. Essential when looking at microfilm or original newspapers--like I hope to be doing, later this week.

Fragments from a Writing Desk: A Version of the Leyda Wand, the Review-hunting tool...: Monteiro and I, and Winslow, and Norsworthy and Broderick, mainly, have found reviews since THE CHECKLIST OF MELVILLE REVIEWS, so you won't always know...