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and we like them none the worse for that but in nearly every instance their interest is concentrated on a long chase (the reader's attention being riveted on one or two ships), and the incidents naturally arise out of this single leading feature, which may be termed Cooper's forte, and which he exhibits also in most of his Indian stories. In one work, however, "The Two Admirals," Cooper attempts to "deal with the profession on a large scale," to use his own words, by detailing the manœuvres of fleets. Able as are some of the scenes, we think the experiment a decided failure on the whole, and do not marvel at this, for obvious reasons. Cooper himself seems to have been aware of the dubious nature of his undertaking, and to have had misgivings as to his probable suc

cess.

He remarks in his preface that "among all the sea-tales that the last twenty years have produced, we know of none in which the evolutions of fleets have formed any material feature. Every writer of romance appears to have carefully abstained from dealing with the profession on a large scale."

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And rightly abstained, say we! as, according to our private theory, nautical fiction ought to be legitimately confined to one or two vessels; for to bring whole fleets into action is to trespass unwarrantably on the domain of history, if real events are described, in which case facts are ever preferable to fiction; and it is rather absurd to expect that any reader of proper taste can enjoy an account of the manœuvres and battles of hostile fleets, if wholly imaginary.

The second of our Trio is Dana, the author of "Two Years before the Mast"*- -a book which alone has made him renowned throughout the world. Well can we recal the intense, the absorbing interest with which we read this work on its first appearance. Our copy is prefaced by extracts from the criticism of the New York "Knickerbocker." One passage we shall introduce here, on account of its poetic truthfulness. "We have ourselves," says old Knickerbocker, "risen from

the discussion of this volume with a new sense of the sublime in nature—with a more enlarged conception of the vastness of the grey and melancholy wastes' of ocean which spread around earth's isles and continents, upon which the early dawn breaks and daylight fades alike; where the almost living vessel, swift-sailing, drops in the distant wave the Southern Cross, the Magellan Clouds, the wild and stormy Cape; where, unlike the travel of the land, which at most conquers a narrow horizon after horizon, each succeeding night the homeward ship sinks some celestial constellation in the backward distance, raising another landmark of the heavens' in the onward waste of mingled sea and sky." We call that a bit of fine appreciatory criticism.

Dana's book is truly sui generisno "Voice from the Forecastle," no "Sailor's Life at Sea," worthy of the theme, had previously appeared, and none has been published subsequently. The work is, therefore, literally unique. It were hard to say whether landsmen or seamen read this extraordinary production with greater avidity. We remember that in Liverpool alone, when the first English reprint - Moxon's edition, we believe appeared, two thousand copies were sold in a single day, nearly all of which, as we understood, were purchased by seamen. Of course these men bought and read the book with a view to learn what was said of their calling by one of themselves, and capital critics they would undoubtedly be! As for landsmen, the work was to them a species of revelation-it opened up a novel and hitherto unknown (or, at best, but partially known) profession, and the interest it excited was naturally proportionate. The book is really what its title indicates; and from the sensible, modest, manly preface, to the grave and highly suggestive concluding chapter (a general and exceedingly valuable essay on the condition of seamen, and the mode in which their hard lot may be ameliorated) there is not a single page which does not contain excellent matter. The style of writing is very good in a mere literary sense,

We believe that the only other work of which he is the author is the "Seaman's Manual" (as it is called in the English edition, but in America it is entitled the "Seaman's Friend"), a practical handbook for seamen, and, of course, in a great measure a compilation. We possess a copy of it, and consider it an excellent and valuable work of the kind.

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and well adapted to the subject. No one can read half-a-dozen pages with. out feeling that the narrative is perfectly trustworthy and matter-of-fact. The author, indeed, occasionally dwells rather tediously and verbosely on some details of sea-life-that is, he does so in the estimation of practical seamen, as we can personally vouch-but perhaps these very passages are read with as much or even greater interest than any others by landsmen; for we cordially and entirely agree with Dana's own remark in his preface, that "plain matters-of-fact in relation to customs and habits of life new to us, and descriptions of life under new aspects, act upon the inexperienced through the imagination, so that we are hardly aware of our want of technical knowledge. Thousands read the escape of the American frigate through the British channel, and the chase and wreck of the Bristol trader in the Red Rover, and follow the minute nautical manœuvres with breathless interest, who do not know the name of a rope in the ship, and, perhaps, with none the less admiration and enthusiasm for their want of acquaintance with the professional detail." Our experience amply bears out this opinion of Dana.

With little, indeed, that merits censure, or even objection, Dana's work can hardly be overpraised in many respects, for it is a superlatively good one, abounding with deeply interesting and highly instructive information, interspersed with remarks and reflections at once acute, original, suggestive, and intrinsically valuable. It is a book which any man living might, indeed, have been proud to have written. We would willingly say more concerning it, but so enormously has it been circulated, that we presume nearly all our readers must be thoroughly familiar with its animated pages. We would therefore merely make one remark, and that is, we do not think any writer excels Dana in graphic ability to describe nautical scenes with technical accuracy and surprising clearness of minute, yet spirited detail; and in reading any of his vivid pictures of life before the mast, our interest is materially heightened by the knowledge that all is real-all is truly descriptive of what actually happened. As Dana says in his preface, his design was" to present the life of a common

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sailor at sea as it really is and the dark together.' We have already said that no work of the same kind of equal merit has yet appeared, and we can safely assert that none ever will appear until another young man, who has been as well educated, and possesses as much literary talent as Dana, serves before-the-mast, and favours the world with a vigorous, faithful, and modest narrative of his experience of forecastle life. We shall gladly hail the advent of Dana the Second!

Herman Melville completes our Trio. A friend has informed us that "Herman Melville" is merely a nom de plume, and if so, it is only of a piece with the mystification which this remarkable author dearly loves to indulge in from the first page to the last of his works. We think it highly probable that the majority of our readers are only familiar with his earliest books; but as we have read them all carefully (excepting his last production, "Israel Potter, which is said to be mediocre) we shall briefly refer to their subjects seriatim, ere we consider the general characteristics of his style. His first books were "Omoo" and "Typee," which quite startled and puzzled the reading world. The ablest critics were for some time unable to decide whether the first of these vivid pictures of life in the South Sea Islands was to be regarded as a mere dexterous fiction, or as a narrative of real adventures, described in glowing, picturesque, and romantic language; but when the second work appeared, there could no longer exist any doubt, that although the author was intimately acquainted with the Marquesas and other islands, and might introduce real incidents and real characters, yet that fiction so largely entered into the composition of the books, that they could not be regarded as matter-of-fact narratives. Both these works contain a few opening chapters, descriptive of foremastlife in whaling-ships, which are exceedingly interesting and striking.

Melville's next work was entitled "Redburn," and professed to be the autobiographical description of a sailor-boy's first voyage across the Atlantic. It contains some clever chapters, but very much of the matter, especially that portion relative to the adventures of the young sailor in Liver

pool, London, &c., is outrageously improbable, and cannot be read either with pleasure or profit. This abortive work which neither obtained nor deserved much success was followed by "Mardi; and a Voyage Thither." Here we are once more introduced to the lovely and mysterious isles of the vast Pacific, and their half-civilised, or, in some cases, yet heathen and barbarous aborigines. The reader who takes up the book, and reads the first half of volume one, will be delighted and enthralled by the original and exceedingly powerful pictures of sea-life, of a novel and exciting nature, but woful will be his disappointment as he reads on. We hardly know how to characterise the rest of the book. It consists of the wildest, the most improbable, nay, impossible, series of adventures amongst the natives, which would be little better than insane ravings, were it not that we dimly feel conscious that the writer intended to introduce a species of biting, political satire, under grotesque and incredibly extravagant disguises. Moreover, the language is throughout gorgeously poetical, full of energy, replete with the most beautiful metaphors, and crowded with the most brilliant fancies, and majestic and melodiously sonorous sentences. But all the author's unrivalled powers of diction, all his wealth of fancy, all his exuberance of imagination, all his pathos, vigour, and exquisite graces of style, cannot prevent the judicious reader from laying down the book with a weary sigh, and an inward pang of regret that so much rare and lofty talent has been wilfully wasted on a theme which not anybody can fully understand, and which will inevitably repulse nine readers out of ten, by its total want of human interest and sympathy. It is, in our estimation, one of the saddest, most melancholy, most deplorable, and humiliating perversions of genius of a high order in the English language. Next in order if we recollect

rightly as to the date of publicationcame "White Jacket; or the World in a Mau-of-war." This is, in our opinion, his very best work. He states in the preface that he served a year before-the-mast in the United States frigate, Neversink, joining her at a port in the Pacific, where he had been left by or deserted from, for we do not clearly comprehend which-a whalingship, and that the work is the result of his observations on board, &c. We need hardly say that the name Neversink is fictitious, but from various incidental statements we can easily learn that the real name of the frigate is the United States-the very same ship that captured our English frigate Macedonian in the year 1812.* The Macedonian, we believe, is yet retained in the American navy. "White Jacket" is the best picture of life-beforethe mast in a ship of war ever yet given to the world. The style is most excellent occasionally very eccentric and startling, of course, or it would not be Herman Melville's, but invariably energetic, manly, and attractive, and not unfrequently noble, eloquent, and deeply impressive. We could point out a good many instances, however, where the author has bor rowed remarkable verbal expressions, and even incidents, from nautical books almost unknown to the general reading public (and this he does without a syllable of acknowledg ment). Yet more, there are one or two instances where he describes the frigate as being manoeuvred in a way that no practical seaman would commend-indeed, in one case of the kind he writes in such a manner as to shake our confidence in his own practical knowledge of seamanship. We strongly suspect that he can handle a pen much better than a marlingspike-but we may be wrong in our conjecture, and shall be glad if such is the case. At any rate, Herman Melville himself assures us that he has sailed before the mast in whalers, and in a man-of

* It was no disgrace to the British flag. The United States rated as a 44-gun frigate, but mounted 28 on a broadside, carrying 864lbs.; her tonnage was 1533; her crew 474

men.

The Macedonian (a new ship) was of 88 guns, having a broadside weight of metal of only 528lbs, and a crew of 254 men, and 35 boys. The Macedonian fought most gallantly, and only struck when she had sustained the frightful loss of thirty-six killed and sixty-eight wounded. Her opponent, in fact, like other American frigates of the time, was just a line-of-battle-ship in disguise!

war, and it is certain that his information on all nautical subjects is most extensive and accurate. Take it all in all, "White Jacket" is an astonishing production, and contains much writing of the highest order.

The last work we have to notice is a large one, entitled "The Whale," and it is quite as eccentric and monstrously extravagant in many of its incidents as even "Mardi ;" but it is, nevertheless, a very valuable book, on account of the unparalleled mass of information it contains on the subject of the history and capture of the great and terrible cachalot, or sperm-whale. Melville describes himself as having made more than one cruise in a South-sea-whaler; and supposing this to have been the fact, he must nevertheless have laboriously consulted all the books treating in the remotest degree on the habits, natural history, and mode of capturing this animal, which he could obtain, for such an amazing mass of accurate and curious information on the subject of the sperm-whale as is comprised in his three volumes could be found in no other single work-or perhaps in no half-dozen works-in existence. say this with the greater confidence, because we have written on the spermwhale ourselves, and have consequently had occasion to consult the best works in which it is described. Yet the great and undeniable merits of Melville's book are obscured and almost neutralised by the astounding quantity of wild, mad passages and entire chapters with which it is interlarded. Those who have not read the work cannot have any conception of the reckless, inconceivable extravagancies to which we allude. Nevertheless, the work is throughout splendidly written, in a literary sense; and some of the early chapters contain what we know to be most truthful and superlatively-excellent sketches of outof-the-way life and characters in connexion with the American whaling trade.

We

To give a fair idea of Herman Melville's powerful and striking style, when he condescends to restrain his exuberant imagination, and to write in what we may call his natural mood, we request the reader's attention to a short extract or two which we select from "White Jacket." We must premise that the frigate is overtaken by an awful gale at midnight, when off "the

pitch" of Cape Horn, and is in a position of imminent danger. The boatswain called all hands to take in sail :.

"Springing from our hammocks," says Melville, "we found the frigate leaning over to it so steeply, that it was with difficulty we could climb the ladders leading to the upper deck. Here the scene was awful. The vessel seemed to be sailing on her side. The maindeck guns had several days previously been run in and housed, and the portholes closed; but the lee carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle were plunging through the sea, which undulated over With them in milkwhite billows of foam every lurch to leeward, the yard-arm ends seemed to dip iuto the sea; while forward, the spray dashed over the bows in cataracts, and drenched the men who were on the foreyard. By this time, the deck was all alive with the whole strength of the ship's company-five hundred men, officers and all— mostly clinging to the weather bulwarks. The occasional phosphorescence of the yeasty sea cast a glare upon their uplifted faces, as a night's fire in a populous city lights up the The ship's panic-stricken crowd.

bows were now butting, battering, ramming, and thundering over and upon the head seas, and, with a horrible wallowing sound, our whole hull was rolling in the trough of the foam. The gale came athwart the deck, and every sail seemed bursting with its wild breath. All the quartermasters, and several of the forecastlemen, were swarming round the double-wheel on the quarterdeck. Some were jumping up and down with their hands on the spokes; for the whole helm and galvanised keel were fiercely feverish with the life imparted to them by the tempest.”

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The words we have italicised strike us as being intensely poetical, and adapted to convey a vividly truthful idea of the state of a ship desperately battling with a powerful gale. We have ourselves repeatedly noted, when at sea during a gale, how "the whole helm" (by which is meant the rudder, tiller, wheel, steering-barrel, &c.) vibrated in such a manner, that one could judge from that alone of the sition of the vessel and the manner in which the seas struck her, and also the manner in which she bore herself; and not only did the helm, but also the whole fabric of the ship, feel " fiercely feverish with life," and almost a sentient thing, conscious of her jeopardy, and of the necessity of bravely struggling with the tempest. The landsman may possibly think we are indulg. ing in wild, fanciful rhapsodies; but we appeal to every seaman who pos

sesses a spark of sensibility and of imagination, and he will tell you that what Melville has asserted, and what we assert, is literally true, but must be felt to be understood.

We must give yet another and more characteristic "taste of the quality"" of our favourite-for, with all his faults, we can truly say, "Melville, we love thee still!" We will select our final specimen from the last chapter of "White Jacket." When the frigate draws nigh to port, at the expiry of her long three years' cruise, and strikes soundings by the deep nine!" the seaman-author thus describes the feelings of himself and messmates:

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"It is night. The meagre moon is in her last quarter-that betokens the end of a cruise that is passing. But the stars look forth in their everlasting brightness-and that is the everlasting, glorious Future, for ever beyond us. We maintopmen are all aloft in the top; and round our mast we circle, a brother-band, hand-in-hand, all spliced together. We have reefed the last topsail; trained the last gun; blown the last match; bowed to the last blast; been tranced in the last calm. We have mustered our last round the capstan; been rolled to grog the last time; for the last time swung in our hammocks; for the last time turned out at the sea-gull call of the watch. Hand-in-hand we topmates stand, rocked in our Pisgah-top. And over the starry waves, and broad out into the blandly blue, boundless night, spiced with strange sweets from the long-sought land-the whole long cruise predestinated ours, though often in tempest time we almost refused to believe in that far distant shore

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But here Melville begins to hold forth in his favourite mystical form, and so we shall break off.

Perhaps we have so far indicated our opinion of the merits and demerits of Herman Melville in the course of the foregoing remarks, that it is hardly necessary to state it in a more general way. Yet, in conclusion, we may sum up our estimate of this singular author in a few short sentences. He is a man

of genius-and we intend this word to be understood in its fullest literal sense one of rare qualifications too; and we do not think there is any living author who rivals him in his peculiar powers of describing scenes at sea and sea-life in a manner at once poetical, forcible, accurate, and, above all, original. But it is his style that is original rather than his mutter. He has read prodigiously on all nautical subjects naval history, narratives of voyages and shipwrecks, fictions, &c.and he never scruples to deftly avail himself of these stores of information. He undoubtedly is an original thinker, and boldly and unreservedly expresses his opinions, often in a way that irresistibly startles and enchains the interest of the reader. He possesses amazing powers of expression he can be terse, copious, eloquent, brilliant, imaginative, poetical, satirical, pathetic, at will. He is never stupid, never dull; but, alas! he is often mystical and unintelligible-not from any inability to express himself, for his writing is pure, manly English, and a child can always understand what he says, but the ablest critic cannot always tell what he really means; for he at times seems to construct beautiful and melodious sentences only to conceal his thoughts, and irritates his warmest admirers by his provoking, deliberate, wilful indulgence in wild and half-insane conceits and rhapsodies. These observations apply mainly to his latter works, "Mardi" and "The Whale," both of which he seems to have composed in an opium dream; for in no other manner can we understand how they could have been written.

Such is Herman Melville! a man of whom America has reason to be proud, with all his faults; and if he does not eventually rank as one of her greatest giants in literature, it will be owing not to any lack of innate genius, but solely to his own incorrigible perversion of his rare and lofty gifts.

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