# A History of American Literature/Chapter 9

​"He bestowed upon everything he did, even upon slight and transient paragraphs, the most careful labor, making endless erasures and emendations. On an average he erased one line out of every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines left unaltered." — James Parton.
The author's best work is contained in Pencillings by the Way and in the thoughtful Letters from Under a Bridge, so highly praised by Lowell. It was Willis' father, the Rev. Nathaniel Willis, who, in 1827, established in Boston the well-known Youth's Companion.
IX.
THE NOVELISTS.
The Perspective of American History.—Although in England the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century1767–1819. Maria Edgeworth. 1771–1832. Scott. 1775–1817. Jane Austen. 1776–1850. Jane Porter. 1797–1868. Samuel Lover. 1798–1855. Mary R. Ritford. was marked by the appearance of a most brilliant school of novelists, in America the six romances of Charles Brockden Brown continued to stand alone as reprosentatives of our imaginative prose. The treatment by British critics of American books had been little short of brutal. A deadly provincialism and a firmly fixed idea that America was barren of possibilities of romance, had put a bann on all attempts at fiction. It was not until the century was in its third decade that a discovery was made that rendered a distinctively American novel possible. This discovery, which, once pointed out, was obvious enough, was simply the fact that our Colonial and Revolutionary periods seem much farther away than they really arc. In the words of Cooper:
When the mind reverts to the earliest days of Colonial history, the period seems remote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the links of recollections, throwing back the origin of the Nation to a day so distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time, and yet four lives of ordinary duration would suffice to ​transmit from mouth to mouth, in the form of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within the limits of the Republic."—The Pathfinder.
It is this fact alone that has rendered a distinctively American novel possible. Without this even Hawthorne would have been driven to seek foreign themes.
Although Cooper was not the first to recognize this possibility for American romance, he was, nevertheless, the first completely to demonstrate it to the world. After he had produced The Spy, The Pioneers, and The Pilot, there was no one who did not realize that a vast empire full of untold possibilities had been added to the realm of fiction.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851).
"The first American author to carry our flag outside the limits of our language."—Brander Matthews.
Life (in consequence of Cooper's dying request to his family, no authorized biography has ever been attempted. T. R. Lounsbury's admirable study of Cooper in the American Men of Letters Series is, however, a scholarly and accurate summing up of his lifework and character. The introductions contributed by the author's daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, to the "Sea Tales," and "Leather-Stocking Tales"; A Glance Backward by the same writer in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1887, and T. S. Livermore's History of Cooperstown, contain much valuable information).
​Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, Sept. 15, 1789.
"In 1785 the author's father, who had extensive tracts of land in this wilderness [about Oswego Lake, New York], arrived with a party of surveyors....At the commencement of the following year the settlement began....The author was brought an infant into this valley [Nov. 10, 1790] and all his first impressions were here obtained."—Introduction to The Pioneers.
The Cooperstown of this early day can easily be pictured after reading The Pioneers, which, although fictitious in its events and characters, is a minute and loving study of the surroundings of its author's boyhood. The wild beauty of the forest-bound lake, the vast forest stretching for leagues into the unknown, mysterious west, the picturesque frontier population, the vanishing Indian, the still-abundant wild game.—all these made deep impressions upon the susceptible mind of the boy.
In 1802, when a mere lad of thirteen, Cooper was sent to Yale College. Three years later, with his father's consent, he left college to go to sea. His ambition was to join the navy, but since practical seamanship was demanded as a prerequisite, he immediately shipped in a merchant vessel before the mast. A rough voyage of a year's duration followed, to London and Cowes, on the Mediterranean, and back again to New York. He then enlisted in the United States Navy, where he served with credit for nearly three years. In 1811 his marriage, which was a most happy one, closed the first period of his life. His literary career, which now opened, may be divided into four distinct periods.
1. The First Creative Period (1820–1830).
The story of Cooper's first novel has been often told. He had been reading one of the cheap English novels of the time, when, throwing it down inPrecaution. The Spy. The Pioneers. The Pilot. Lionel Lincoln. The Last of the Mohicans. The Prairie. The Red Rover. The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. The Water-Witch. disgust, he remarked to his wife that he could write a better one himself. The result was Precaution, a wretchedly dull novel of English society life. Its failure was an inevitable one, for its author was writing on a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. But his friends were quick to see that in those parts where he described familiar scenes he showed remarkable promise. He was urged to try again with a familiar subject. Accordingly, in 1821, he finished The Spy, a work of the first rank. Never was a novel hailed with more enthusiasm. England, as well as America, was delighted, and Cooper's fame was secure. The Spy was followed the next year by The Pioneers, the first of the Leather-Stocking series.
The anonymous author of Waverley had produced in 1821 The Pirate, a novel whose scenes are laid partly on the sea. At a dinner in New York, in 1822, the company was nearly agreed that the unknown author of the series, to describe nautical things so accurately, must have been at some time in his life a sailor. As Scott, whose name had been guessed by some in connection with the Waverley series, had never been to sea, the conclusion was therefore inevitable. Cooper, ​speaking from the knowledge of a practical sailor, declared that the book furnished abundant signs of being written by a landsman. To prove his assertion he proposed himself to write a nautical novel. The result was The Pilot, the first novel of the sea, a book which opened up a vast literary field before unknown. Cooper, now fairly embarked on the sea of literature, continued to write novel after novel at the rate of one a year.
When, in June, 1826, Cooper sailed with his family for Europe, his popularity had reached its highest point. He was everywhere in Europe and America hailed as the "American Scott."
2. The Period of Controversy (1830–1840).
"Here's Cooper who's written six volumes to show He's as good as a lord."—Lowell.
(See Greeley's Recollections of a Busy Life, and Parton's Life of Greeley, Ch. XVIII.) Commencing in 1830 Cooper entered upon a bitter decade of controversy, during which he produced no novels worthy of the name.
To understand fully the position in which the novelist soon found himself, one should study the characterThe Bravo. The Heindenmaur. The Headsmen. The Monikins. Homeward Bound. Home as Found. History of the Navy. of the man. Intensely proud, positive and uncompromising in his convictions, he could brook no criticism or opposition. Added to this, he was intensely patriotic. Few men have ever loved their native land more than he. In Europe he naturally found that his views concerning America ​were not the prevailing ones. The patronizing airs of the English galled him. He found things on every hand in the governments and customs of Europe to criticise and condemn.
His next novels, The Bravo, The Heidenmaur, and The Headsman, all deal with European scenes. Two of them, laid respectively in the aristocratic cities of Berne and of Venice, are bitter attacks on European society. The story is lost in a mass of arguments and denunciation. He exalts republican institutions; he assails everything European and tries to apply American principles everywhere. The results were far from what he expected. The American press, so far from sympathizing with him, rather criticised his position,—a fact which exasperated him almost beyond bounds. It was at this time that he published in rapid succession ten volumes of European travels and The Monikins, the most bitter and unreasonable of novels.
In November, 1833, Cooper arrived in New York after an absence of seven years. His experience with the American press had embittered him against his countrymen. His long residence abroad had changed. his views so that he soon began to criticise unsparingly American customs. Homeward Bound and Home as Found are caustic sermons to the American people. Naturally he was assailed in turn. The press all over the land attacked and ridiculed him. His History of the Navy, which is really as fine a thing in its line as was ever written, was bitterly criticised for its alleged unfairness. Cooper knew no retreat. He began a ​stubborn and heroic fight with the whole American people. He prosecuted suit after suit against some of the leading papers of America for libel, at one time having on hand as many as twenty suits with different journals. In these he was usually victorious, but the victories were without spoils or glory.
3. Second Creative Period (1840–1846).
During the six years following the publication of theThe Pathfinder. Mercedes of Castille. The Deerslayer. The Two Admirals. Wing and Wing. Wyandotte. Miles Wallingford. Afloat and Ashore. The Chainbearer. Satanstoe. History of the Navy, Cooper produced his strongest work. The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer, the crowning creations of his genius, appeared in 1840 and 1841 respectively. Mercedes of Castile, the story of the memorable voyage of Columbus, is not without value; Wyandotte, a tedious tale of the Revolution, full of religious speculations, is a satire on the Puritans; while the last four are tales of early New York history full of life and interest.
4. Period of Decline (1846–1850).
"Cooper's fame would not have been a whit lessened, if every line he wrote after The Chainbearer had never seen the light."—Lounsbury.
These novels are mere reproductions of what he hadThe Redskins. Jack Tier. The Crater. Oak Openings. done much better before; they are full of fierce ill-nature and trite lectures to his countrymen. The Sea Lions, a tale of ​the Antarctic Ocean, is excellent while itThe Sea Lions Ways of the Hour. keeps on the water. His last book, Ways of the Hour, is an attack on the American jury system.
After a most liberal selection, only fifteen of Cooper's thirty-two novels are worthy of study. These may be divided into three groups.
I. THE LEATHER-STOCKING TALES.
"A drama in five acts."
If anything from the pen of the author is at all to outlive himself, it is unquestionably the series of the Leather-Stocking Tales."—Cooper.
"Leather-Stocking is one of the few original characters, perhaps the only great original character that American fiction has added to the literature of the world."—Lounsbury.
(See Introduction to the Leather-Stocking Tales, and the Introductions to each of the five novels; see also A Fable for Critics and Brander Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms.)The Deerslayer. The Last of the Mohicans. The Pathfinder. The Pioneers. The Prairie.
"The order in which the several books appeared was essentially different from that in which they would have been presented to the world had the regular course of their incidents been consulted. In The Pioneers, the first of the series written, the Leather-Stocking is represented as already old, and driven from his early haunts in the forest by the sound of the axe and the smoke of the settler. The Last of the Mohicans, the next book in the order of publication, carried the reader back to a much earlier period in the history of our hero, representing him as middle-aged and in the fullest vigor of manhood. In The Prairie his career terminates, and he is laid in his grave. There it was originally the intention to leave him,...but a latent regard for this character induced the author to resuscitate him in The Pathfinder, a book that was not long after succeeded by 'The Deerslayer, thus completing the series. While the five books...were originally published in the order just mentioned, that of the incidents, inso- ​much as they are connected with the career of their principal character, is...very different. Taking the life of the Leather-Stocking as a guide, The Deerslayer should have been the opening book, for in that work he is seen just merging into manhood; to be succeeded by The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie."—Author's Introduction.
It will aid the memory to note that this is also the alphabetical order.
There is little doubt that the world's idea of the Indian has been gained from the Leather-Stocking Tales, and that the Indian as painted by Cooper will be the Indian of literature for all time. Whether Chingachgook, Uncas, and Hist were true to nature in every respect may be open to doubt, but this matters but little.
"It is the privilege of all writers of fiction, more particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romance, to present the beau-ideal of their character to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to be represented only in the squalid misery, or in the degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer."—Introduction to Leather-Stocking Tales.
Required Reading. The Pioneers, Ch. III. and Ch. XXXIII.; The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. XVIII. and Ch. XXX.; The Deerslayer, Ch. XVI.; The Pathfinder, Ch. I.; The Prairie, Ch. XXXIV.
II. TALES OF THE SEA.
No writer has ever rivalled him in his wonderful pictures of swift vessels riding before the wind, chasing each other, sinking each other in mad contests in the midst of the tempest or dancing on the summer waves. His ships are drawn with the accuracy of a Flemish artist."—Eugene Lawrence.
​Cooper added the ocean as well as the forest to the realm of literature. It is hard in these days, when novels of the sea fairly flood the market, to realize that the origin of this kind of literature was so recent. Captain Marryat, Clark Russell, and all the hosts of novelists who have composed sea-stories are but disciples of Cooper.
The Pilot is doubtless the best of all Cooper's sea-stories. In it is delineated the immortal Long Tom Coffin of Nantucket, one of the finest of Cooper's creations. The story of the breathless chase of the American frigate down the British Channel followed by the whole English fleet, the wreck of the Ariel, and the death of Long Tom have few superiors in our language, in the field of graphic description. The plot of the novel is laid in Revolutionary times and the "Pilot" turns out to be the famous seaman, Paul Jones. The Two Admirals deals with the British navy of American Colonial times, and Wing and Wing is a story of the Mediterranean and the adventures of a French privateer. Admirals.
Required Reading.—The Pilot. If only a part can be read, Ch. XXXII.
III. TALES OF COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY.
The wonderful success that greeted Cooper's first real novel, The Spy, was richly deserved, for the book contains some of his strongest work. It is a story of the Revolution, and its leading character, Harvey Birch, ranks with Natty Bumppo and Long Tom Coffin. ​Lionel Lincoln, or the Leaguer of Boston is famous for its graphic description of the engagement at Concord, the running fight to Boston, and the battle of Bunker Hill. Bancroft, the historian, once declared that the last was the best account of the battle ever written. Miles Wallingford, Afloat and Ashore, and Satanstoe are descriptions of early Colonial life in New York, the first two being partly autobiographical. The last is a powerful novel fully equal to some of the Leather-Stocking series.
Required Reading.—The Spy, Chs. XXXIII., XXXIV.; Lionel Lincoln, describing the battles of Concord and of Bunker Hill.
Cooper's Style.—(Richardson, II. 287-329; Brander Matthews' Americanisms and Briticisms. See also The Fable for Critics.) Cooper wrote rapidly and carelessly. seldom correcting his first manuscript dashed off in the heat of composition. As a result, the faults of his style are very glaring. His words are ill-chosen, his English. often slovenly in the extreme. Many of his novels are without unity of plot and action, running on and on like the tale of a garrulous story-teller. He seems to have had little idea of what the next chapter of his novel was to contain; he often introduces new characters near the end of the book; and sometimes he drags in strange and utterly unnecessary scenes with no apparent reason whatever. His dialogues are far from natural; his characters act often without sufficient motive; many of his tales are sadly untrue to human ​nature; and the lectures and sermons dragged into his novels are just so much dead weight. In addition to all this his "females" are shrinking, trembling creatures, without individuality or life, and his juveniles are insipid to the last degree. As Lowell remarked:
But faults that even those faults, grave as they are, would condemn a lesser writer to oblivion, may be overlooked when we sum up Cooper's excellencies. Where he was great was in the portrayal of action and the rush of incident. In narrative power he has never had a superior. In his battle scenes and his description of storm and wreck one is carried headlong with the narrative. The scene actually lives again and one leaves the book with a sense almost of personal participation in the stirring events recorded there. He had an enthusiasm, elevated and genuine, for wild nature. His pictures of the pathless forest, the solitary lake, the vast and lonely reaches of the prairie, are above criticism. Not only did he add a new field to literature, but a new character,—perhaps the only one that America has given to fiction.
(For an extreme picture of Cooper's faults, see North American Review, July, 1895.)
Cooper's Character, owing to his unfortunate quarrel with his countrymen and the fact that, until recently, ​no life of him was published, has been greatly misunderstood. It is probable that no author of equal powers was ever personally more unpopular during his life. But, like Swift, Cooper always presented his worst side to the world. He was too proud to beg for sympathy though he knew that his countrymen had misjudged him. He chose rather to fight on alone without truce or quarter, even if it were with the whole world.
"As for myself 1 can safely say that in scarce a circumstance of my life, that has brought me the least under the cognizance of the public, have I ever been judged justly. In various instances have I been praised for acts that were either totally without any merit, or at least the particular merit imputed to them; while I have been even persecuted for deeds that deserved praise."—Miles Wallingford.
As a matter of fact, no man was ever kinder or more sympathetic than he. His family life was almost perfect in its happiness. As to his other characteristics, he possessed, in the words of his biographer, "first, a sturdy, hearty, robust, out-door and open-air wholesomeness devoid of any trace of offence and free from all morbid taint; and, secondly, an intense Americanism,—ingrained, abiding, and dominant."
His Cosmopolitan Fame.—"Franklin was the earliest American who had fame among foreigners; but his wide popularity was due rather to his achievements as a philosopher, as a physicist, as a statesman, than to his labors as an author. Irving was six years older than Cooper, and his reputation was as high in England as at home; yet to this day he is little more than a name to those who do not speak our mother tongue. But after Cooper had published The Spy, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Pilot, his popularity ​was cosmopolitan; he was almost as widely read in France, in Germany, and in Italy as in Great Britain and the United States. Only one American book has ever attained the international success of these of Cooper's—Uncle Tom's Cabin, and only one American author has since gained a name at all commensurate with Cooper's abroad—Poe....With Goethe and Schiller, with Scott and Byron, Cooper was one of the foreign forces which brought about the Romanticist revolt in France, profoundly affecting the literature of all Latin countries. Dumas owed almost as inch to Cooper as he did to Scott; and Balzac said that if Cooper had only drawn character as well as he painted the phenomena of nature, he would have uttered the last word of our art."—Brander Matthews.
Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867).
Life (by Mary E. Dewey, 1870. See Prescott's Miscellanies; Poe's Literati).
Born the same year as Cooper and publishing her first novel, A New England Tale, one year after the appearance of The Sketch Book and The Spy, Miss Sedgwick was the first American woman to achieve substantial success as a novelist. Susanna Rowson, with her tearful, sentimental Charlotte Temple; Tabitha Tenney, and others had achieved only a passing fame. When, in 1824, Redwood appeared, it was immediately translated into four European languages, the French translator even attributing the novel to Cooper. Of the novels written by Miss Sedgwick, all of them dealing with New England life, Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massachusetts (1827) and The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America (1835) are undoubtedly the best. Aside from her six novels, she produced nearly twenty volumes, consisting of collected tales and sketches contributed to ​magazines and annuals, biographies, letters, sketches of travel, juveniles, and essays critical and moralizing. She contributed "Le Bossu" to the Tales of the Glauber Spa (1832), a series edited by Robert C. Sands and contributed to by Bryant, Paulding, and William Legget.
Although the day of the leisurely two-volume novel has nearly passed, Miss Sedgwick's novels are still readable. Her greatest defect is the sermonizing tendency of her day, which filled her novels with diffuse and tedious pages. Her excellencies are the quiet, truthful pictures of her native Massachusetts home life.
John Neal (1793–1876).
"John Neal's forces are multitudinous and fire briskly at everything. They occupy all the province of letters and are nearly useless from being spread over too much ground."—Whipple.
Life (Neal's Wandering Recollections of a Lifetime, 1869; Lowell's Fable for Critics; Poe's Marginalia, cxxviii.). Surely Nature never committed a greater blunder than in sending the impetuous, worldly John Neal into the quiet Quaker family at Portland, Maine. But the mistake was soon rectified, the young fellow being early read out of the society "for knocking," as he says, "a man head over heels, for writing a tragedy, for paying a military fine, and for desiring to be turned out whether or no." After a wandering career he at length settled down in Baltimore, where he formed a commercial partnership with the poet Pierpont, but the firm failing soon after, he applied himself to law. His first novel, Keep Cool, appeared in 1817, and from ​this time until his death he continued to pour out a flood of literary matter. In his own words his publications "would amount to a hundred octavo volumes at least, on subjects far too numerous to mention." He was connected with many papers and magazines both in America and England.
Although Poe, echoing perhaps the sentiment of his time, was "inclined to rank John Neal as, at all events, second among our men of indisputable genius," time has shown the falsity of this estimate. As a poet, Neal has here and there fine passages, but these could not save The Battle of Niagara and other poetical efforts from oblivion. As a novelist of American life, he antedated Cooper several years. His best novels are Logan (1821), Seventy-Six, a tale of the Revolution (1822), Randolph (1822), Rachel Dyer, a tale of the Salem witches (1828), The Down-Easters, and Ruth Elder. Neal wrote with extreme rapidity, none of his works occupying him more than a month.
Required Reading.—The Fable for Critics. (Neal.)
John Pendleton Kennedy (1795–1870).
Life (by Henry T. Tuckerman; Tribute to the Memory of Kennedy, by R. C. Winthrop, 1870). During the fifteen years between 1838 and 1853, among others who held the office of Secretary of the Navy, were the American authors, Paulding, Bancroft, and Kennedy. The last, a native of Baltimore, a lawyer and a statesman with a long and honorable record, is known in literature chiefly ​through his three charming novels of American life—Swallow Barn, a Story of Rural Life in Virginia (1832), Horse-shoe Robinson, a Tale of the Tory Ascendency (1835), and Rob of the Bowl (1838), a story describing the province of Maryland under the second Lord Baltimore. The first, a quiet, simple tale of the old days in Virginia, is its author's best work. The fourth chapter of the second volume of Thackeray's novel, The Virginians, owes its wonderful accuracy of description to the fact that it was written by Kennedy.
Robert Montgomery Bird (1803–1854), a native of Delaware, was educated for the medical profession, but soon turned to literature. He first composed three tragedies, the first of which, The Gladiator, a powerful composition, was widely popular, even becoming a favorite with Edwin Forrest. Next appeared two novels, Calavar, a Tale of the Conquest of Mexico (1834), and The Infidel, or the Fall of Mexico (1835).
"The author has studied with great care the costume, manners, and military usages of the natives and has done for them what Cooper has done for the wild tribes of the North—touched their rude features with the bright colors of a poetic fancy."—Prescott.
Bird's last literary work was a series of novels dealing with American frontier life, full of startling adventures and dramatic situations. Among those the best known are The Hawks of Hawk Hollow], and Nick of the Woods, or the Jibbenainosay, a tragic story of Kentucky frontier life. For a review of the former see Poe's works, Vol. VI., 205. These stories of adventure, which have been widely imitated, are without doubt the parent of the modern dime novel.
William Gilmore Simms (1806–1870).
Life (by William P. Trent, in American Men of Letters Series). The first novelist of the South, both as to time and rank, was a native of Charleston, South Carolina. As so many other American authors have done, he commenced life as a law student, being admitted to the bar at the ago of twenty-two. After a year he turned to journalism, and very soon he began the literary labors which in time made him the most voluminous and versatile of American authors. Besides producing as many novels as did Cooper, he wrote the standard History of South Carolina, and the lives of Generals Marion and Greene, Captain John Smith, and the Chevalier Bayard. He was also the author of some fourteen volumes of poems; he edited several of Shakespeare's plays, and contributed numerous articles to the periodicals. His published works number over sixty titles.
The best of Simms' novels may be divided into three groups. Colonial Romance: The Yemasse (1835) and The Cassique of Kiawah; Revolutionary Romance: The Partisan, a tale of Marion's men, Mellichampe, The Scout, Katherine Walton, The Forayers, Eutaw, and Woodcraft; and Border Romance: Guy Rivers, Richard Hurdis, Border Beagles, Confession, Beauchampe, and Charlemont.
Although Poe, with characteristic partiality, declared that Simms, aside from Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, and Cooper, was "immeasurably the best writer of fiction in America," the books of this novelist are lit​tle read at the present day. Ilis novels lack artistic finish and symmetrical design. All the worst defects. of Cooper's work are to be found in them. He wrote too rapidly, and though at times he succeeded in vividly and vigorously painting action and landscape, the defects so far outweigh the beauties that few have patience to read more than one of his creations.
Herman Melville (1819–1891), a native of New York City, made in his eighteenth year a voyage to Liverpool and later, in 1841, shipped before the mast on board a whaler bound for the Pacific. He cruised continuously for eighteen months, and so harshly were the sailors treated that while in the harbor of Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands, he deserted and made his way inland. Here he fell in with the Typees, a wild race of cannibals, by whom he was captured. Having won their confidence, however, by a fortunate chance, he was kindly treated and after four months of captivity was rescued by an Australian whaler. After two years more afloat Melville, in 1846, published Typee: a Peep at Polynesian Life during a Four Months' Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas. Among his other works are Omoo (1847), Redburn and Mardi, and a Voyage Thither (1848), White Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850), and Moby Dick; or the Whale (1851).
"Until Richard H. Dana and Herman Melville wrote, the commercial sailor of Great Britain and the United States was without representation in literature....They were the first to lift the hatch and show the world what passes in a ship's forecastle; how men live down in that gloomy cave; how and what they eat and ​where they sleep; what pleasures they take; what their sorrows and wrongs are; how they are used when they quit their black sea-parlors in response to the boatswain's silver summons to work on deck by day or by night....Melville wrote out of his heart and out of wide and perhaps bitter experience; he enlarged our knowledge of the life of the deep by adding many descriptions to those which Dana had already given. His 'South Seaman' is typical. Dana sighted her, but Melville lived in her. His books are now but little read....Yet a famous man he was in those far days when every sea was bright with the American flag, when the cotton-white canvas shone star-like on the horizon, when the nasal laugh of the jolly Yankee tar in China found its echo in Peru. Famous he was; now he is neglected; yet his name and works will not die. He is a great figure in shadow; but the shadow is not that of oblivion."—W. Clark Russell.