poor Israel is as surely a victim of remorseless fate as Pierre Glendinning, and the London of his long exile is as gloomy as the London of "The City of Dreadful Night". But Israel's sufferings are of the body more than the spirit. Melville had uttered his impeachment of the unknown, the unknown within and without, in Pierre, and then subdued his question; he turned to Israel Potter, and in the busy externality of episode and character he was able to put aside the gaunt, hungry face of infinity.

In the years between Moby-Dick (1851) and Israel Potter (1855) Melville sought some occupation which Iwould ease his circumstances. R. H. Dana wrote to Allan Melville concerning a motion to obtain for him an appointment as Consul at the Sandwich Islands, but nothing resulted from this kindly effort. Another letter, from Allan Melville to Herman's father-in-law, refers to the Antwerp consulate: "Should this be tendered, Herman ought to accept it". Hawthorne, too, it seems, had spoken of the same thing; but once again nothing happened, and Israel Potter was Melville's own effort to supply the vacancy. There were also other stories which, after appearing in magazines, were published in the volume called Piazza Tales, in 1856; and of these "Benito Cereno" is a flaming instance of the author's pure genius. It was originally published in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in the latter part of 1855, an astonishing story which must have brought tears of pride to Melville when he looked back upon it; and only a little less wonderful is an episode in another of the series, "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles". Yet these stories failed to enlarge appreciably the audience which Melville had painfully won, and the

1857

editor of Putnam's could still refuse a story because the religious sensibilities of the public would be hurt. Melville, in fact, even when Moby-Dick had proved his dominant genius, was still cap-in-hand to editors who understood, and feared, the American public of 1854; nothing was ever printed simply because it was Melville's. "I am very loth to reject the 'Two Temples', as the article contains some exquisitely fine description and some pungent satire, but my editorial experience compels me to be very careful in offending the religious sensibilities of the public, and the moral of the 'Two Temples' would sway against us the whole power of the pulpit". To read the offending story now is to discover that the "moral" is that at home in his own land the author had been thrust out from one Temple, a church; and, a stranger in a strange land, had found sterling charity in another, a theatre, in which Macready played Richelieu. It is not a good story, and might have been refused for that reason; but the moral reason must needs have amused as well as enraged Melville.

One more novel followed, The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade, in 1857. With The Piazza Tales he had changed his publishers, whether at his own wish or theirs I do not know, but the comparative failure of his earlier stories, and the destruction of whole editions by a fire at Harper's, suggest that there may have been a desire on both sides for a change. In The ConfidenceMan-ironically named-Melville gave his last considerable hostage to fortune, considerable in bulk, negligible in quality. It was like smoke after flame, and in that smoke, so thick and tedious, Melville withdrew. Yet even that withdrawal was an ineffectual

protest against indifference, for nobody noticed; America's desperate genius vanished, and nobody knew or asked whither. If it was simply the sense of failure that silenced him, there was sadness in the withdrawal; if there was an ironic challenge, there was greater sadness because the challenge lay neglected.

Between the writing and the publication of The Confidence-Man, Melville had visited Europe again. His wife said that a little before he had suffered from ill-health, the result of too severe application to his work, and accordingly he sailed for England in October 1856, and returned several months later. Hawthorne being Consul at Liverpool, Melville promptly visited him. Hawthorne records the visit, saying that Melville was on his way to Constantinople. He looked much the same, perhaps a little paler and sadder, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve. Hawthorne felt a little awkward because of the failure to get a consular appointment for his old friend, but soon the awkwardness was dispelled, and the familiar confidence resumed. Melville, he says, had not been well, and his writings for a long while past had indicated morbidity, and he had pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated. Hawthorne thought that the restless spirit would never rest until he had got hold of some definite belief. But though restless, he declared that the spirit of adventure was gone. Showing him round Liverpool and Chester his host observed him closely and found him much overshadowed. "He sailed on Tuesday, leaving a trunk behind him, and taking only a carpet-bag to hold all his travelling-gear. This is the next best thing to going naked; and as he wears his beard and moustache, and so needs no dressing

case-nothing but a tooth-brush-I do not know a more independent personage. He learned his travelling habits by drifting about, all over the South Seas, with no other clothes or equipage than a red flannel shirt and a pair of duck trousers. Yet we seldom see men of less criticisable manners than he." He had learned to dispense with much that others think indispensable, but he could not discard his own hopes and memories.

Melville's travels are recorded in a very brief journal, written shorthand-wise, and in certain poems. The journal is terse, exclamatory, vivid, but not very_readable, if the extracts given by his biographer may be taken as a sample. He was curious and alert, apparently seeing everything eagerly and sharply. The peculiarly sombre aspect under which the world was presented to him is shown even in casual notes: "The horrible grimy tragic air of the Streets (Ruffians of Galatea). The rotten and wicked-looking houses, so gloomy and grimy, seem as if a suicide hung from every rafter within.. The women's tombs carved with heads (women no souls)." Such a passage suggests how much of himself he carried to Constantinople. The verse in which he has made a fuller record is found in a short series of descriptions, Fruit of Travel Long Ago, mainly of Italy and Greece, and in an immense narrative poem, Clarel, devoted to the Holy Land. Clarel is often interesting, and sometimes pleasant, in its use of dialogue, but except for occasional vivid pictures of a landscape which, in its barren massiveness, plainly fascinated him, it could have been written almost as well without ever stirring from the door of "Arrowhead". Its real theme and real

IV

THE LONG SECLUSION

65

interest are philosophic; and when things are seen they are seen as in retrospect, in their effects rather than in their presence. Even the philosophy, even the religion is not pure; Melville's speculations are embarrassed with a sectarianism that reads poorly to us now-a reminiscence, no doubt, of the Puritanic influences from which he never quite emerged.

Clarel was not published until 1876, twenty years after his journey had started, and it was only due to the kindness of his uncle, Peter Gansevoort, that it was issued at all. It did not find a publisher in England. Melville had, in fact, sunk to the depth of the obscure, mute, unpublished throng-dejected authors damned unheard. "If during the period in which this work has remained unpublished, though not undivulged, any of its properties have by a natural process exhaled; it yet retains, I trust, enough of original life to redeem it at least from vapidity. Be that as it may, I here dismiss the book-content beforehand with whatever future awaits it”. The indiffer

ence is not assumed, the disdain is not dissembled.

When Melville returned from Europe in 1857 with Clarel-thus eminently adapted, as he said, for unpopularity-still in his head and unwritten, he cast round again for means to live and was swept into the rage for lecturing, a rage which even in the third decade of the twentieth century has not subsided in America. Between 1857 and 1860 he lectured in various prosperous towns for unvaryingly paltry fees-an average during one season and after allowing for expenses, of about thirty dollars a lecture. It was, it seems, to the author of Typee and Omoo that the audience came to listen, and they listened to the man who had lived with