This extract, from the pages of a bygone review, is a sample of the outburst of interest and admiration which greeted the appearance of Herman Melville's earlier volumes more than forty years ago. Such books as Typee, Omoo, and Mardi challenged attention by the originality of their style, their suggestive piquancy of tone, the strangeness of the experiences of which they purported to be the record, and not least by the very grotesqueness of the titles themselves. Who and what was the narrator of these mysterious adventures among the islands of the Pacific? Was he, as his stories implied, a common seaman serving before the mast -- now on a whaler, now on an American frigate, and devoting the interim of his voyages to the publication of his diary; or was he rather, as might be surmised from the cultured tone of his writings and the fictitious aspect of some of his "narratives," a man of liberal education and imaginative temperament, who promulgated these romantic accounts of perils in the South Seas from some comfortable quarters in London or New York? The critics, intent on such questions as these, were fairly puzzled as to Herman Melville's identity; even his name was declared by some to be a nom de plume. "Separately," said one wiseacre, "the names are not uncommon; we can urge no valid reason against their juncture; yet, in this instance, they fall suspiciously on our ear."...

His books may be roughly divided into two classes, according to the predominance of the practical or the fantastic element. Typee, the "narrative of a four months' residence in the Marquesas Islands," appeared in 1846, and takes precedence of all his other writings, in merit no less than in date. Few indeed are the books of adventure that can vie with this charming little volume in freshness, humour, and literary grace, above all in the extraordinary interest which the story, simple as it is, inspires in the mind of the reader, from the first page to the last.... -- all this is depicted with the firmness of outline indicative of a true narrative, yet invested (such is the literary skill of the narrator) with the filmy mystery of a fairy tale. The characters of those particular islanders among whom "Tommo's" lot was cast are drawn with wonderful clearness; the warrior-chief Mehevi, the aged Marheyo, the housewife Tinor, the faithful but officious Kory-Kory, and above all the gentle and beautiful Fayaway -- surely one of the most charming maidens ever sketched by poet or novelist -- stand before us to the life. There is much valuable information in the book about various native customs, such as the mysterious edict of the "taboo," the process of tatooing, the manufacture of the white "tappa" cloth, the polyandrous marriage system, and certain superstitious creeds and ceremonials. The remarks also on the comparative happiness of civilised and uncivilised nations are extremely interesting and suggestive....

Omoo (i.e., in Polynesian dialect, "a rover") was published a year later than Typee, to which it supplies the sequel. It is altogether a more desultory and discursive book than its predecessor; but there is much vigour in the narrator's description of his voyage from Typee to Tahiti on board the "Little Jule," and his subsequent adventures in the Society Islands. Some remarks in which he commented severely on the errors committed by Christian missionaries in their treatment of the native Polynesians gave great offense to the critics, who attempted to discount the effect by impeaching the character of the sailor-novelist, especially on the subject of his relations with the charming Fayaway....

Redburn (1849) and White Jacket (1850) complete the category of Melville's distinctly autobiographical writings ... White Jacket is a careful study of all the doings on board a man-of-war, its sum and substance being a strong protest, on humane grounds, against the over-bearing tyranny of the naval officers and the depravity of the crew. "So long as a man-of-war exists," he says, "it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature." The serious tone of the book is, however, relieved and diversified by some brilliant touches of humorous description ....

Melville's later works must be considered as phantasies rather than a relation of sober facts. He was affected, like so many of his countrymen, by the transcendental tendency of the age, and the result in his case was a strange blending of the practical and the metaphysical, his stories of what purported to be plain matter-of-fact life being gradually absorbed and swallowed up in the wildest mystical speculations. This process was already discernible in Mardi, published as early as 1849, the first volume of which is worthy to rank with the very finest achievements of its author, while the rest had far better have remained altogether unwritten....

Moby Dick; or, The White Whale (1851) is perhaps more successful as a whole than Mardi, since its very extravagances, great as they are, work in more harmoniously with the outline of the plot.... The book is a curious compound of real information about whales in general and fantastic references to this sperm-whale in particular, that "portentous and mysterious monster," which is studied (as the bird is studied by Michelet) in a metaphysical and ideal aspect -- "a mass of tremendous life, all obedient to one volition, as the smallest insect." Wild as the story is, there is a certain dramatic vigour in the "quenchless feud" between Ahab and Moby Dick which at once arrests the reader's attention, and this interest is well maintained to the close, the final hunting-scene being a perfect nightmare of protracted sensational description.

Moby Dick was published when Melville was still a young man of thirty-three. Before he was forty he produced several other volumes, none of which were calculated to add in any degree to his fame, one of them, entitled Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, being perhaps the ne plus ultra in the way of metaphysical absurdity....

It may seem strange that so vigorous a genius, from which stronger and stronger work might reasonably have been expected, should have reached its limit at so early a date; but it must be remembered that the six really notable books of which I have made mention were produced within a period of less than six years. Whether the transcendental obscurities in which he latterly ran riot were the cause or the consequence of the failure of his artistic powers is a point which it would be difficult to determine with precision. His contemporary critics were inclined, not unnaturally, to regard his mysticism as a kind of malice prepense, and inveighed mournfully against the perversity of "a man born to create, who resolves to anatomise, a man born to see, who insists upon speculating," and warned him, after the publication of Pierre, that his fame was on the edge of a precipice, and that if he were wise he would thenceforth cease to affect the style of Sir Thomas Browne, and study that of Addison....

The chief characteristic of Herman Melville's writings is this attempted union of the practical with the ideal. Commencing with a basis of solid fact, he loves to build up a fantastic structure, which is finally lost in the cloudland of metaphysical speculation. He is at his best, as in Typee, when the mystic element is kept in check, and made subservient to the clear development of the story; or when, as in certain passages of Mardi and Moby Dick, the two qualities are for the time harmoniously blended. His strong attraction to the sea and to ships, which has already been alluded to as dating from his earliest boyhood, was closely connected with this ideality of temperament; for the sea, he tells us, was to him "the image of the ungraspable phantom of life," while a ship was "no piece of mechanism merely, but a creature of thoughts and fancies, instinct with life, standing at whose vibrating helm you feel her beating pulse." "I have loved ships," he adds, "as I have loved men."

The tone of Melville's books is altogether frank and healthy, though of direct ethical teaching there is little or no trace, except on the subject of humanity, on which he expresses himself with strong and genuine feeling. He speaks with detestation of modern warfare, and devotes more than one chapter of White Jacket to an exposure of the inhuman system of flogging, then prevalent in the navy, asking at the close if he be not justified "in immeasurably denouncing this thing." In Typee and Omoo he again and again protests against the shameful ill-usage of the harmless Pacific islanders by their "civilised" invaders....

That Melville, in spite of his early transcendental tendencies and final lapse into the "illimitable inane," possessed strong powers of observation, a solid grasp of facts, and a keen sense of humour, will not be denied by any one who is acquainted with his writings.... His literary power, as evidenced in Typee and his other early volumes, is also unmistakable, his descriptions being at one time rapid, concentrated, and vigorous, according to the nature of his subject, at another time dreamy, suggestive, and picturesque. The fall from the mast-head in White Jacket is a swift and subtle piece of writing of which George Meredith might be proud; the death of the white whale in Moby Dick rises to a sort of epic grandeur and intensity....

... In an age which has witnessed a marked revival of books of travel and adventure, and which, in its greed for narrative or fiction of this kind is often fain to content itself with works of a very inferior quality, it is a cause for regret that the author of Typee and Mardi should have fallen to a great extent out of notice, and should be familiar only to a small circle of admirers, instead of enjoying the wide reputation to which his undoubted genius entitles him.

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