which it is told that "Pierre himself had written many a fugitive thing, which had brought him, not only vast credit and compliments from his more immediate acquaintances, but the less partial applauses of the always intelligent, and extremely discriminating public. In short, Pierre had frequently done that, which many other boys have done-published." Melville heightens his account by saying that the young author's mind might well have been ruined with pride in the eulogies of his fugitive pieces, and the fact that even an echo of such eulogy of his own early attempts is lacking only reminds us yet again that Melville was a splendid fabulist and could not endure cramping by literal fact. Nevertheless, there are reliable signs that the general reference is to himself as a young author and the untowardness of his first attempts in an environment neither ripe enough nor crude enough to suit his immaturity. The pangs of first authorship, the exhilarations and despairs, are confessed in the person of this character, and the commoner pangs of want and cold and bodily exhaustion are described with at least an equal intensity. How closely he is following his own lost youth and his own fierce aspirations it is impossible to determine now, nor how much of exaggeration there is in the statement that Pierre "felt the pyramidical scorn of the genuine loftiness for the whole infinite company of infinitesimal critics". It is an after wisdom that speaks of the youth seeing, the deeper he dived, the everlasting elusiveness of truth, and the universal insincerity of the greatest and purest written thoughts; an after wisdom, for it is not in first youth that we make these private discoveries, and although Melville's experiences in his first voyage

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had clearly killed some of his illusions, this chief illusion, if the term be granted, could not so soon have been lost. Even the perversity which he imputes to Pierre-the spurning of his own aspirations and the abhorring of the loftiest part of himself-was not Melville's at this time. Perversity overtook him later, but not yet, and in passages such as these the need of discrimination is greater than elsewhere. Looking

back, he transferred his present, maturer knowledge and sombre judgement to the lad in his teens, and in the mere freedom and zest of imagination deepened the shadows and heightened the lights.

Even a commentator who refuses thus to discriminate, and who holds that in this strange and woeful book the author is not only portraying and denigrating his own parents, but is also revealing himself as a lost, hopeless soul, even a positive commentator will admit a difference in the conclusion. Pierre ends his privations of authorship and defeated idealism with murder and suicide, but Melville ends his obscure struggles by joining the crew of a whaler, the "Acushnet", at the beginning of 1841 when he was twenty-one years old.

CHAPTER II

POLYNESIA

FOR Melville's life between 1841, when he sailed in the “Acushnet”, and 1844 when, after wanderings to and fro, in Atlantic and Pacific, after adventures on land and escapes to sea, he returned to Boston, the story is to be sought almost exclusively in the books he wrote as soon as he returned-Typee, Omoo, White Jacket and Moby-Dick. It is not a concentrated story, and there are frequent difficulties when an attempt is made to distinguish what is true in memory from what is true in imagination. Melville's love of pseudonymity is not a rare characteristic in imaginative artists, but it was very strongly marked in him and makes the task of outlining his life as uncertain as a shadow chasing a shadow. Maybe he subdued himself in order to exalt himself, but it is clear that he sought shadows rather than light and, in the absence of recognition, proudly invested himself with obscurity.

It has been suggested by one who knew Melville, Arthur Stedman, that the impulse to sea-roving was given by the publication in 1840 of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. Restless he must have been, but I doubt whether the spirit of adventure was strong

enough to lead him to join a whaler; and I doubt whether Melville was ever deeply stirred by the curiosity which seeks satisfaction in movement and spectacle. He was introspective and seldom showed a desire to visit the unfamiliar and explore his own ignorance. The curiosity that led him to visit Palestine, his farthest voluntary visit, was abstract and philosophical and might have been almost completely satisfied by staying at home. This, however, was much later in his life, and when he wrote White Jacket he set himself to telling only of what took place on board, and does not hint at the least temptation to let his thoughts stray ashore. His impulse to whaling was much more direct and definite-the desire to make a living independently; and if a further impulse be discerned it was the desire for isolation amid activity, and silent remoteness for years, perhaps, from all that had made youth painful and manhood perplexed. He fled from the city to the desert where, if once his comrades were silent, the waves and the wind spoke.

Mr. Weaver confirms the statement that it was in the "Acushnet" that Melville sailed by referring to the journal of Mrs. Melville and other documents. It was the "Acushnet's" first voyage. This ship has been identified with the "Pequod" of Moby-Dick, that sailed, according to its wonderful author, from about the same spot at about the same time. Part of the identification was contrived by fate, since it has been pointed out that the "Acushnet" was lost in 1851, within a month of Melville ending his tragical history of her shadow-sister, the "Pequod".

The course of Melville's voyages may be briefly drawn. The "Acushnet" sailed in 1841 and returned

The "Acushnet" away for four years

more than four years later, loaded with oil. But Melville did not return with her. In the summer of 1842, with a solitary companion Toby (Richard Tobias Greene), he deserted after fifteen months of hardships and inward discontent, while the ship lay off Nukuheva, the chief place and port of the Marquesas, then (and still) under French rule. Contact with European civilization had not proved beneficial to the moral or physical condition of the islanders, and when Melville's ship arrived and was taken possession of by native women, who in turn yielded so easily to the whaler's crew, the stricter soul of one sailor at least was revolted. Melville, nevertheless, was prepared to confront the unknown on shore rather than endure any longer the known hardships of the "Acushnet"-the bad food, the capricious voyage, the tyranny of the captain and his neglect of the sick. Six months without sight of land and then the sudden vision of the Marquesas Islands had made his inward discontents unbearable; and finding that "Toby" shared them he determined to desert and hide until the ship had left, and then take his chance of another ship. He spent four months on the island, practically a prisoner among natives who were not violently unkind but detained him, he feared, that they might eat. Part of the time he spent alone, for "Toby" had gone to seek medicines which might cure Melville's lameness and these could be got only from a French ship that hovered at Nukuheva. Toby was to return in three days, and in the first agony of apprehension Melville believed that the friend he loved had deserted him in order to secure his own freedom. It was not so: "Toby" had reached the French ship and was able to make