And olive in the darkling hours Once or twice the drowsy fetters of the verse are broken and a pure lyric note is breathed in another measure, and finer than all else is the dirge sung by Clarel, bereaved lover of a simple Ruth-not perfect in phrase, but so near perfect that the tenderness is scarcely flawed by the flaws. How long Melville spent in a reminiscent caressing of his theme I do not know; there are signs of care but not of labour, and there are introductory passages -one is an avowed ambling in the steps of Chaucer's pilgrims-which show how thoughtfully the poem was planned. A great deal of his own meditative mind is poured into the poem and intervolved with everybody's musings upon grave matters; and if the verse had really recorded a double journey, through the Holy Land and through philosophic and religious ideas, it might not have been harder to read, but it would certainly have been more valuable. What makes it so curious, however, and its implied “argument" so irresolute, is the way in which one person after another drifts into the company, talks and is talked about for pages, and then disappears, leaving Clarel himself and his fatal love almost the only constant elements in an inconstant and sorry scheme. It would be foolish to stress the faults, yet they cannot be ignored since Melville indulged himself so luxuriously in them. Here, for instance, are a few lines from many concerning a Lebanon guide, a rumoured Emir's son: Here his dress to mark : A simple woollen cloak, with dark Vertical stripes; a vest to suit ; White turban like snow-wreath; a boot White linen, long-fringed at the ends . . . and so on, even with the horses and their caparison. It is a merely characteristic passage, written, one might fear, in luckless emulation of the nineteenthcentury habit of narrative poeticizing, and in manner suggesting a pious Byron or a travelled and garrulous Wordsworth. Nor is it merely externals that are thus obstinately laboured: ideas as well, and endless arguments on creeds and disciples, are beaten out to a thinness which conceals not even the shadow of poetry; thus a visit to Bethlehem is preluded by a weary, vain discussion of unchristian Christian peoples, in phrases that linger vexingly even when you read on the next page of— The Manger in its low remove Where lay, a thousand years before, And often, too often, the discussion takes on the sad colours of dissent and division, and even the Epilogue is choked with phrases of faith v. evolution : “ science the feud can only aggravate "—the feud between ape and angel. When Melville wrote Clarel he tried to recover the sensations of his journey and relate his personal faith to all that he had seen. There is less of imagination in Clarel than in any other of his verse, and he proved -perhaps to himself, bitterest of proof!—that in vain is memory stimulated if imagination sleeps heavily on and will not be roused; nor can ideas, ethical or religious ideas, vitalize a poem if imagination is fled. He never learned, neither in verse nor in prose, that his philosophy and religion, his transcendentalism and piety, are of little essential value in poetry, and indeed of none if by their presence they exclude imagination. CHAPTER X ELEMENTS OF STYLE- -CONCLUSION SUFFICIENT has been shown of the merits of Melville's prose to justify a little closer attention to the elements of his style; and since for this purpose it is convenient to look at the best only, and mark its distinctive qualities, the passage chiefly to be noted will be taken from Moby-Dick. Melville began by being a writer of simple direct prose, reminding one partly of Defoe and partly of Borrow, and he became a writer of eloquent elaborated prose wantoning in its strength and movement as his whales wanton in water. [ Something was due to his reading, to his admiration of Sir Thomas Browne, for example; just as that trick of rapidly repeated apostrophe which is found in Moby-Dick among other books is pretty clearly caught from Rabelais and Urquhart. He was not an irregular innovating genius who overthrows idols and breaks up a language in order to build and make anew: he used the things he loved, for they possessed his mind. But he was able to use them because of his own genius, and one of the chief gifts of that genius was his ear for rhythm. Melville adheres to that superb tradition of English writers the tradition of prose written for the ear rather than the eye. The nineteenth century saw the growth and perhaps temporary triumph of a new tradition—that of prose written for the eye; pictorial prose such as Carlyle used with unexampled energy and Dickens with restless curiosity, and which slowly won upon writers in spite of Newman and Ruskin. There was a brief embarrassment when Pater delicately reconciled the two traditions, but the pictorial emerged and culminated in the studious brilliance of Stevenson; and now, I suppose, it lies exhausted with conquest, while the rhythmic tradition revives and permits us to understand with our ears more than with our eyes. Hence it is that Melville's practice has a present importance. He depended, for his impression on his reader, less upon picture than upon music, and his chief influence over our minds is felt, not when he is presenting something for us to see, but when he is vibrating with rhythms that stimulate our feelings. His appeal is emotional; his own imagination awakes him to an emotional response, and he writes as one who composes by playing music, seeking to match the unheard melody by rhythms that shall prolong and repeat the author's apprehension of the inward air.' Vivid epithet and swift succession of comparison and image would not achieve his purpose, as he grew in consciousness of it and of his own capacity. In an early book such as Typee the excellencies are almost independent of the style, and even when he is strongly moved he writes tamely and tritely. They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive |