The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-29 00:00:00

MELVIL LE's W WORK

MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITIIER.
By Herman Melville, Author of " g'ypee" and
" Omoo." 3 Vols.
llavingiust finished reading the whole of this sin-
gular and fantastic production, we would now endea-
vour to deal with it exactly as it deserves. Mr.
Melville, although the author of merely three works,
of which the present is the latest, is no stranger, as an
author, to ourselves. His " Ty-pee," indeed, as beau-
tiful as a chapter by Bernardin de St. Pierre, as fresh
in colouring as a description by Rene, as fascinating
es a narrative by Defoe, had, from the first moment
of its perusal, rendered its writer one of our dear
favourites. We looked, therefore, to the volumes
under consideration with peculiar interest, an interest
arising from our respect for the abilities of that
American sailor w ho, although merely a man before
the mast, evinced all the intellectual cultivation of a
scholar, all the eloquence of a rhetorician, and all
those inherent graces, and that unconscious refine-
ment which constitute the character of a gentle-
man. Such, at least, is the position of life claimed
for himself by Mr. Melville. If we are to be-
lieve him, his talents and his tastes, when
taken into account with his calling, as an
old " salt" familiar with the habits and language
of a ship's forecastle, are cause for our highest admi-
ration. At first it was conjectured that the very
name of the writer was an assumption, and that con-
sequently little more reliance could be placed on
the exactitude of his delineation of his own fortunes
than in any other "yarn" known to be decidedly
fabulous. Here, however, we find him dedicating
" Mardi" to his brother Allan Melville ; and reiterat-
ing his assertions as to the nature of his profession,
where he exclaims (Vol. 1., p. 21), " No, no, I was
never better than my vocation ; and mine have
been many. I showed as brown a chest, and as
hard a hand as the tarriest tar of them all." Never-
theless, while we find our faith in the title and indi-
viduality of our author, strengthened by his new
composition, we have found all credence in the reality
even of the most probable incidents described by him
slipping away, bit by bit, even to the last rag, during
the examination of these three strange and eccentric
volumes. So long as the author talked about the
South Sea whaler, bight the Arcturion, so long as
he told us about old Jarl the Viking, we could swal-
low everything ; but when, after parting com-
pany with the skipper and his vessel,
the to o adventurers traverse the ocean
among its grizzly monsters, the inhabitants
sometimes terrible, sometimes beautiful, of the deep
sea ; when we fall in with the Parki, stained and
almost slippery with blood • when we make the ac-
quaintance of that vagabond Samoa and his helikite
partner Annatoo; when we meet with the canoe full
of islanders; when, after the murder of the priest and
the capture of Yillah, we sail towards Mardi ; when
the writer takes shelter under the disguise of the
demigod Taji, and, becoming domesticated in Odo,
acquires the friendship of its Sovereign, King Media
—then good bye to reason, to common sense, and to
credulity ! We are afloat in the cloudy regions of
dreamland, impelled onwards this way and that by
the breath of every vacillating whim, our sky the
mysterious infinitude of metaphysics, our ocean the
surges of a boundless and in many respects a very
gorgeous imagination. Mardi, to speak as definitively
as possible of a work so vapour-like and almost hypo-
thetical, is more of a romance than a voyage,
and more of an allegory than a romance.
And yet, while we say thus much—
the opening of the production reads like
a passage from Basil Hall—and the closing of it
rather like a rhapsody than either a romance or
an allegory. Unequal as the book is, nevertheless, it
is tolerably clear, from the circumstance of our hav-
ing perused every one of the I,OIQ pages, that it
possesses some powerful attraction. Fascination,
strictly speaking, it has none. Occasionally its
language is stilted to the very proximity of bombast.
Sometimes the ideas are mystical to the very verge of
nonsense. And yet we are lured on, in spite of these
obstacles, chapter after chapter, until we arrive at the
"Finis?' The reason of this is that the work is alto-
gether a curiosity—curious in style, in character, in
incident, and rendering- the reader curious also by
congeniality. At the moment we are about to throw
the volume down from sheer despair of ever discover-
ing any adequate purpose in the narrative, we light
upon such a passage as the following—being a
description of a sudden hurricane in the midst of a
tropical calm
A long calm in the 'boat, and now, God help us,
another in the brigantine. It was airless and profound.
"In that hot calm, we lay fixed and fr( zai in like
Parry at the Pole. The sun played upon the glassy sea
like the sun upon the glaciers.
" At the end of two days we lifted up our eyes and
beheld a low, creeping, hungry cloud expanding like an
army, wing and wing, along the eastern horizon. In-
stantly Jarl bade me take heed.
" Here be it said, that though for weeks and weeks
reign over the equatorial latitudes of the Pacific, the
mildest and sunniest of days ; that nevertheless, when
storms do come, they come in their strength, spending
in a few, brief blasts their concentrated rage. They come
like the Mamelukes : they charge, and away.
" It wanted full an hour to sunset ; but the sun was
well nigh obscured. It seemed toiling among bleak
Scythian steeps in tho hazy back.,ground. Above the
storm-cloud flitted ominous patches of scud, rapidly ad-
vancing and receding : Attila's skirmishers thrown
forward in the van of his Huns. Beneath, a fitful sha-
dow slid along the surface. As we gazed, the cloud
came nearer; accelerating its approach.
" With all haste we proceeded to furl the sails, which,
owing to the calm, had been hanging loose in the brails;
and by help of a spire boom, used on the forecastle-
deck ES a sweep or great oar, we endeavoured to cast
the brigantine's head before the foe.
" The storm seemed about to overtake us ; but we felt
no breeze. The noiseless cloud stole on ; its advancing
shadow lowering over a distinct and prominent milk-
white crest upon the surface of the ocean. But now this
line of surging foam came rolling down upon us like a
white charge of cavalry, mad Hotspur and plumed Murat
at its head; pouring right forward in a continuous frothy
cascade, which curled over, and fell upon the glassy sea
before it.
" Still, no breath of air. But of a sudden, like a
blow from a man's hand, and before our canvas could be
secured, tha stunned craft, giving one lurch to port, was
stricken down on her beam-ends ; the roaring tide
dashed high up against her windward side, and drops of
brine fell upon the deck, heavy as drops of gore.
" Is was all a din and a mist ; a crashing of spars
and of ropes ; a horrible blending of sights and of
sounds ; as for an instant we seemed in the hot heart of
the gale ; our cordage, like harp-strings, shrieking above
the fury of the blast. The masts rose, and swayed, and
dipped their trucks in the sea. And like unto some
stricken buffalo brought luw to the plain, the brigantine's
black hull, shaggy with sea-weed, lay panting on its flank

in the foam.
" Frantically we clung to the uppermost bulwarks.
And now, loud above the roar of the sea, was suddenly
heard a sharp, splintering sound, as of a Norway wood-
man felling a pine in the forest. It was brave Jarl, who
foremost of all had snatched from its rack against the
mainmast, the axe, always there kept.
"' Cut the lanyards to windward 1' he cilad ; and
again buried his axe into the mast. He was quickly
obeyed. And upon cutting the third lanyard of the
five, he shoutcd for us to pause. Dropping his axe, he
climbed up to windward. As he clutched the rail, the
wounded mast snapped in twain with a report like a
cannon. A slight smoke was perceptible where it broke.
The remaining lanyards parted. From the violent strain
upon them, the two shrouds flaw madly into the air,
and one of the great blocks ht their ends, striking Anna-
too upon the forehead, she let go her hold upon a stan-
chion. and sliding across the aslant deck, was swallowed
up in the whirlpool under our lea. Samoa shrieked.
But there was no time to mourn ; no hand could reach
to save.
By the connecting stays, the mainmast carried over
with it the foremast ; when we instantly righted, and
for the limo were saved ; my own royal Viking our sa-

viour.
" The first fury of the gale was gone. But far to
leeward was seen the even, white line of its onset, paw-
ing the ocean into foam. All round us, the sea boiled
like ten thousand cauldrons ; and through eddy, wave,
and surge, our almost water-logged craft waded heavily;
every dead dash ringing hollow against her hull, like
blows upon a coffin.
" We floated a wreck. With every pitch we lifted
our dangling jib.boom into the air ; and beating against
the side were the shattered fragments of the masts.
From these we made all haste to be free, by cutting the
rigging that held them.
" Soon, the worst of the gale was blown over. But
the sea ran high. Yet the rack and scud of the tem-
pest, its mad, tearing foam, was subdued into immense,
long-extended, and long-rolling
on
the hillows; the white cream
.on their crests like snow Andes. Ever and
anon we hung poised on their grows; IN hen the furrowed
ocean all round locked like a panorama from Chirn-
bores).
" A few hours more. and the surget went down.
There was a moderate sea, a steady breeze, and a clear,
starry sky.
" Such was the storm that came after our calm."
Encouraged by the striking vigour of the narrative
we resume—and again our attention is attenuated to
the limits of exhaustion, when We are once more
induced to persevere by a similar excellence. This
has occurred with ourselves repeatedly during
the perusal of " Mardi," and this it is which
assures us that the production is neither wholly good
nor wholly bad. The author has trifled with his un-
disputed cowers ; and, if he had not already secured
Typee," he would iniubit-
it by the charm of his
ably have ruined his reputation by " Mardi." In
Typee," and, in a measure, also in " Omoo," every-
thing was consistent. In " Mardi" everything is not
only inconsistent but incoherent, mad, extravagant.
Still " Mardi" is no book to be cast aside contemp-
tuously. It reveals too surprising an imagination to
be scorned. While it bids open defiance to all criti-
cism, it unwittingly propitiates criticism by its
novelty, its fantastic exuberance in the impossible.
Among other merits, Mr. Melville betrays that of
drollery, and even at rare intervals that of wit.
Speaking. of Annatoo, that redoubtable beldame, he
tells tiS in so many words (Vol. 1. p. 116), her

voice was a perk of ertilleey ; her talons a charge of
beyotiets." and yet, on reflection, Shakspere has
been beforehand in the idea (as he Las in so
many thousand others) where he says " She speaks
poigeards, and every word stabs." And, describing
his spouse, and lamenting that so frequently the eyes
of the " human face divine" are " mere lenses in-
serted into the socket as glasses in spectacle rims,"
he exclaims (Vol. I. p. 151), " But my
Islander had a soul in his eye, looking out
upon you there, like soinebody in hint 1'
Neither is burlesque beyond his reach, when it suits
him, even in the paroxysms of his sublimity. Hear
him talk of the nose of Oh-Oh, in a strain that
would have tickled the ribs of Slawkenburgius !
" The old man was a sight to see-; especially his nose;
a remarkable one. And all Mardi over, a remarkable
nose is a prominent feature: an ever obvious passport to
distinction. Fur, after all, this gaining a name, is but
the individualising of a man; as well achieved by an
extraordinary nose, as by an extraordinary epic. Far
better, indeed; for you may pass poets without knowing
them. Even a hero, is no hero without his sword; nor
Beelzebub himself a lion, minus that lasso-tail of his,
wherewith he catches his prey. Whereas, he who is
famous through his nose, it is impossible to overlook.
He is a celebrity without toiling for a name. snugly
ensconced behind his proboscis, he revels in its shadow,
receiving tributes of attention wherever he goes."
There is an impertinence in the manner of our
author that at first provokes us to indignation,
but at last only to merriment by its repetition.
Seemingly a pretence at the outset, it proves ulti-
mately to be an eccentric mannerism. It is where he
speaks in this wise of dead and living celebrities
(Vol. I, p. 191)—" My scientific friend Faraday ;"
(Vol. 1.,p. 159)—" My Peloponnesian friend Thucy-
aides ;" (Vol. 1., p. 120)—" My glorious old gossiping
ancestor Froissart ;" (ibid)—"My late eloquent and
prophetic friend and correspondent, Edmund Burke."
One feature of the romance or allegory must not be
overlooked, 'tamely, its mixture of the prose and the
poetic. In this concoction of his literary repast,
however, Mr. Melville when he least wishes it makes
the intended prose poetical, and the intended poetry
prose. his bard Yoomy is too often, like many
sentimental persons, rather a bit of a bore.
The verses most to oar liking are those which most
excite the enthusiasm of his Majesty King Media—we
mean the warlike song (Vol. 111., p. 3) of, the clubs,
the bows, the spears, and the slings. As to the
chorus, evidently suggested by the discovery of the
gold-dust in California (Vol. 111., p. 173), we,wonder
if the writer ever heard of Thomas Hood's memorable
chaunt about the leg of Miss Kilmansegge ! It looks
marvellously like a plagiarism. On the whole we
scarcely feel disposed to remind Mr. Melville of the
advice given to Yoomy by the philosophic Babbalanja,
namely, (Vol. 11., p. 86) " that his business is to make
the metal in him jingle in tags not ring in the ingot."
Our author is but seldom inclined to be sententious.
Whenever he is, however, he is welcome. We turn
with a sense of relief from such prolonged rhapsodies
—very labyrinths of language—as the chapter upon
Dreams (Vol. 11., ch. 49), to sentences like the sub-
joined :—Speaking of beauty (Vol. 1., p. 152), " But
the only ugliness is that of the heart, seen through
the face; and though beauty be obvious, the
only loveliness is invisible." Or when he says
thus much of fame and the famous, the truth of his
saying is perceptible (Vol. 11. p. 270)—" Whence it
comes, as old Bardiana has it, that for years a man
may move unnoticed among his fellows ; but all at
once, by some chance attitude, foreign to his habit,
become a trumpet-full for fools, though in himself the
same as ever. Nor has he shown himself yet ; for
the entire merit of a man can never be made known ;
nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them. We
are only known by our names; as letters sealed up,
we but read each other's superscriptions." But plea-
santest of all is he when revelling in the description
of the scenes of Nature or of Dreamland. In the
latter he dilates upon the vegetable exuberance of the
acclivities of Willamilla where (Vol. 11., p. 15,)
" the topmast crags poured over with vines,
which, undulating, seemed leafy cascades ; their
sources the upland groves." In the former he
rejoices in the enumeration of the chondropterygh
and other uncouth hordes infesting the South Seas ;
such as the Devil Fish, the Brown Shark, the Blue
Shark, the Tiger Shark, the White Shark, the Por-
poise, the Albicore, the Black Fish, the Al-
gerines, the Killers, and the Thrashers;
prefacing his account of them with the
ejaculation (Vol. 1., p.:58)--a-" It's famous botanizing,
they say, in Arkansas' boundless prairies; I com-
mend the student of Ichthyology to an open boat,
and the ocean moors of the Pacific." A suggestive
hint that ! say we, without any intention of punning.
Not always, however, is our author's hilarity of such
a very scientific tendency. When he lists he can
talk like a boost comrade without a dash of pedantry.
Hearken to him, ye lovers of the soothing weed,
when he descants upon the virtues of Pigtail and
Oronoco, of York-river and Cavendish, of Shag
and Nail-rod, of Negro.head and Plug, of Lady's
Twist and Gold-leaf, of Returns and Cimaroza, of
Bird's-eye and Smyrna, of James-river and Sweet-
scented, of Honeydew and Chaster, of Persian and
Turkish, of Shiraz and Kentucky, in fact of all the
aromatic kinds and qualities of that plant popularly
known as Tobacco I Hear him when he grows gar-
rulous over the Regalia and the Principe, over the she-
root and the cigarette, over the Dutch porcelain and the
hookah, over the narghil and the chibouquel—talking
in a strain that would be grateful to the ears of
his Excellency the Turkish Ambassador, when, on
entertaining her Majesty's Ministers the other night
at a grand banquet, he conducted them to a superb
divan and offered them—pipes. In the very impe-
tuosity of his most humorous scenes, Mr. Melville,
we must not fail to observe, breaks off suddenly with
the utterance of a grand thought expressed in thrilling
language. Talking of kings and toadstools, Babba-
lanja pauses and, quoting from his old favourite
Bardiana, says (Vol. 111. p. 162)—" Who put
together this marvellous mechanism of mine, and
wound it up to go for three score years and ten;
when it runs out and strikes Time's hours no more ?
And what is it, that daily and hourly renews, and
by a miracle, creates in me my flesh and blood ?
What keeps up a perpetual telegraphic com-
munication between my outpost toes and digits, and
that domed grandee up aloft, my brain ? It is not
1; nor you ; nor he ; nor it. No ; when I place my
hand to that king muscle my heart, I am appalled.
I feel the great God himself at work within me. Oro
is life." To us that is noble writing : and scarcely
less so is this.—Speaking of the lapse of time that is
required to produce anything great, he has observed
that the bower of Artaxerxes took a whole Persian
summer to grow, and that the Czar's ice palace took
a long Muscovite winter to congt al ; continuing, he
exclaims—
" No, no; nor was the Pyramid of Cheops masoned
in a month; though, once built, the sands left by the
Deluge might not have submerged such a pile. Nor
were the broad learglis of Charles' Oak grown in a
spring; though they outlived the royal dynasties of
Tudor and Stuart. Nor were the parts of the great
Iliad put together iu haste- though old Homer's teteple
shall lift up its dome, when St. Peter's is a legend.
Even man himself lives months ere his Maker deems
him fit to be born; and ere his proud shaft gains its full
stature, twenty-one long Julian years must elapse. And
his whole mortal life brings not his immortal soul to ma-
turity; nor will all eternity perfect him. Yea, with
uttermost reverence, as to human understanding, in-
crease of dominion seems increase of power; and day by
day new planets are being added to elder-born Saturns,
even as six thousand years ago our own earth made one
more in this system; so, in incident, not in essence, may
the Infinite himself be not less than more infinite now,
than when old Aldebaran rolled forth from his hand.
And if time waQ, when this round earth, which to innu-
merable mortal 3 has seemed an empire never to be
wholly explored; which, in its seas, concealed all the
Indies over four thousand five hundred years; if time
was, when this great quarry of Assyrias and Homes was
not extant; then, time may have been, when the whole
material universe lived its Dark Ages; yea, when the
Ineffable Silence, proceeding from its unimaginable re-
moteness, espied it as an isle in the sea. And herein is
no derogation. For the Immeasurable's altitude is not
heightened by the arches of Mahomet's heavens; and
were all space a vacuum, yet would it be a fulness; for to
Himself his own universe is He.
" Thus, deeper and deeper into Time's endless tunnel,
does the winged soul, like a night hawk, wend her wild
way; and finds eternities before and behind; and her
last limit is her everlasting beginning.
" But sent over the broad flooded sphere, even Noah's
dove came back, and perched on his hand. So comes
back my spirit to me, and folds up her wing?.
" Thug, then, though Time be the mightiest of Ala'
rics, yet is he the mightiest mason of all. And a
and a counsellor, and a physician, and a scribe,
poet, and a sage, and a king.
reverently bor-
True eloquence that lan eloquence atuudtors,
tides. Without in any way revealing p
rowed from the golden verse of the P
who may not
In"
ImthaetuCraenly-
the interest of the volumes to those
abode
Yillah.
the r the disguise and title
mark that the author, under yet have examined them themselves,. w. e may re-
the archipelago, having espoused. . Pe
beautifulilis
of the demigod Taji, takes
the
Suddenly, however, Yillah is missing : and the host of
Taji, King Media, pitying his guest for the calamity
that has befallen him, and anxious himself to circum-
navigate Mardi, consents to join him in a search for
the lost Yillah. They Enter upon.their expedition in
three gorgeous barges, attended, besides paddlers, by
Mold or Braidbeard, a rather prosy old gentleman
calling himself a philosopher ; by Babbalanja, a
capital fellow, first of all a sceptic and almost a blas-
phemer, being possessed indeed by a devil known as
Azzageddi, but ultimately a believer in God and Reve-
lation ; Yoomy the royal poet, a somewhat lackadai-
sical personage not much to our taste, except once
when he becomes ferocious ; and Vee-vee, a little
shrimp of a boy, who is Trumpeter and Ganymede
all in one. With the commencement of this voyage
the author begins to lose his senses, or, to say the
least, his judgment, for involuntarily he grows in-
coherent. Yet, scrap by scrap, the reader gleans
amusement and sometimes, through satirical alle-
gories, instruction—when be hears of little King Feepi

~)

—of the luxurious recluse (a double or Bassein,
called Donjalolo—of those scamps the Plujii—of
Nora barnma —of King Uhia—of that jolly old lord,
BorbbJlla—of Mondoldo—of Maramma—of Ilivo•
hitee—of lake Yammc—of Alma—of Ravoo, and of
H. evaneva. Still better, as far as their comprehen-
the p
iTk aa papnadr ila Inesll;0
( ofa
sibility is concerned, are the descriptions of Elivohitee ;
of
chapterPimm
itnaeew;hicohf
wDeircaainndam
;e
commend
Lords
all the members of the Peace Association); of Dominnra
(otherwise England), and Bello: (otherwise the British
Sovereign); of Vivenza (or the United States) ; of
Porpheero (or Europe); and so on till we come to
Doxodox and Ilooloomooloo. The three avengers
and the three spectral messengers from :Hautia, who
corresponds orientally with flowers, impart a fan-
tastic embellishment to the general narrative, without
rendering it much clearer to the understanding. The
end, we can scarcely call it the catastrophe, is dim,
dreamy, vague, suffused with a mist by no means
Ossiauic. On closing our criticism, as cn closing the
third volume, our opinion remains unaltered—that
Mr. Herman Melville has in " Mardi" displayed very
remarkable powers, and, above all, a rich and almost
Arabic imagination ; but those powers, that imagina-
tion, his eloquence, his observation, his wit, his
senti-
ment have all been squandered to no avail upon a
wild conceit, as though d'Urbino bad drawn cartoons
upon the dust, or Watteau had painted landscapes
upon gelatine.

COME, 1849.
STE.

Presteign l9
Bibury 2O
Stockbridge 2l
Newcastle
Winchester 2B
, Salisbury . 2B
LY.

Lancaster
Goodwood .. 24
Ludlow