, who was not quite ten years old when Melville died, but who
has in her possession Mrs. Melville's commonplace book, Melville's diary
of two European excursions, and a few letters.

"Generally, however, especially for the most important periods and the
most thrilling events in Melville's life, Mr. Weaver has been compelled to
depend upon the books the man wrote.

"The book, on the whole, is worthy of its subject. It is written with
warmth, subtlety, and considerable humour. Smiles and thoughts lie hidden
within many of its pregnant lines. One of the biographer's very strangest
suggestions is never made concrete at all, so far as I can discern. The
figure of the literary discoverer of the South Seas emerges perhaps a bit
vaguely, his head in the clouds, but there is no reason to believe that
Melville's head was anywhere else when he was alive. Hawthorne is at last
described pretty accurately and not too flatteringly. _The Scarlet Letter_
was published in 1850; _Moby Dick_ in 1851. It is one of the eternal
ironies that the one should be world-famous while the other is still
struggling for even national recognition. There are long passages,
well-studied and well-written, dealing with the whaling industry and the
early missionaries, which will be extremely helpful to any one who wants a
bibliographical background for the ocean and South Sea books. Melville's
London notebook is published for the first time and there is a nearly
complete reprint of his first known published paper 'Fragments From a
Writing Desk,' which appeared in two numbers of The Democratic Press and
Lansingburgh Advertiser in 1839 (not 1849, as the bibliography erroneously
gives it). Mr. Weaver is probably right in ascribing Melville's retirement
from literature to poverty (it was a fortunate year that brought him as
much as $100 in royalties and his account at Harper's was usually
overdrawn), to complete disillusionment, which made it impossible for him
to say more than he had already said, even on the subject of
disillusionment, and to ill-health.

"It is a pleasure, moreover, to find that Mr. Weaver has a warm
appreciation of _Mardi_ and _Pierre_, books which have either been
neglected or fiercely condemned since they first appeared, books which are
no longer available save in early editions. They are not equal to _Moby
Dick_, but they are infinitely more important and more interesting than
_Typee_ and _Omoo_, on which the chief fame of the man rests.