immense streams covered with steamers which jostle each other on the route, sink one another, or take unexpected leaps into the air.

SECTION II.

ARE MR. MELVILLE'S VOYAGES APOCRYPHAL?

I took these voyages for a reality. The English critics said that I deceived myself; that Herman Melville was but a nom de plume, and that his romance-travels merely showed a vigorous power of imagination, and a great skill in drawing the long-bow.

I was not of the same mind as the English critics. Certainly he has told a thousand very strange stories; he spoke of erotic and savage nymphs, idylic cannibals, temples hidden in forests and perched upon rocks of Noukahiva, handsome morais in the valleys and anthropophogy mixed with sentimental dances; but nearly all this may be found in de Bougainville, Ongas, Ellis, and Earle. He had too a stamp of verity, a savor of unknown and primitive nature, and a vivacity of impression which struck me. The shades appeared to me real, even if rather warm and for effect; and to me, the romantic adventures of the author were given with a sufficient air of truth.

Still they obstinately laughed at my credulous eulogies, and took the book for a hoax of the largest calibre. The style, without being pure and elegant, had vivacity and interest. You were astonished to see so imaginative and so gascon an American, but you admired him. The Americans understand pleasantry, except when it touches the national pride;

they like it also, nor is it repugnant even when of very high flavor. They say very singular things to each other in their legislative assemblies. Some serious and estimable journals announce their column of marriage under the vignette and title of "The Matrimonial Mouse-trap." Besides, it was an old English custom, used with remarkable dexterity by Daniel Defoe, to catch the public by fictions which seemed true. One can still remember the "Death-bed Revelations of Mrs. Veal," sold in the streets of London in 1688, and which deceived many good Calvinists. The pleasantry displeased no one, and Mr. Melville passed for a very amusing and very original story-teller.

Nevertheless, an austere review, the New York Evangelist, had some scruples, showed in high relief the romantic inventions of Mr. Melville, accused him of improper jesting, and of having spoken lightly and slanderously of the missionaries of Tahiti and the Marquesas. It was not the affair of the He answered nothing; but

author to be treated thus. suddenly, in January, 1846, one saw in a distant provincial journal, (Buffalo Commercial Advertiser,) a letter from the valet-de-chambre sailor, Toby, accompanied by a note from the editor, who said that he had himself seen Toby. "His father is a good farmer of the village of Darien, Genesee County: Toby lives in our city, and is a housepainter: He affirms that the adventures told by Herman. Melville are generally, and in all that is essential, true. Nor is there any cause to doubt the assertion of Toby, who is a very honest man."

Then comes Toby's own letter, "whose name is Richard Green, and who was not eaten, though he came very near it. On his forehead is still a scar, remaining from a blow given him by a Noukahiva chief. He wants very much to find his old master and comrade in misfortune, Melville, and begs the

editor to print his letter, which he hopes will be copied by Albany, Boston, and New York papers, so that he may find Mr. Melville."

Toby's letter did not persuade anybody; no doubt it was all arranged beforehand. How, indeed, could you put the matter to the proof, and verify the names, facts, and dates? Toby swears for Melville, and Melville for Toby, and the Buffalo editor for both; whereupon, he too, receives a brevet of veracity. Mascarille answers for Jodelet, and Jodelet for Mascarille. The affair became complicated, and the galleries were very much amused; there was something there for the Americans to guess, speculate, conjecture, calculate about. The chances of betting and the hazard of the stocks had gotten into literature. Mr. Herman Melville pushed his point like a true child of the United States, he went a-head according to the sacramental word. The go-a-head system, the enterprise, the en-avant is everything now with the most going, most active people on the globe, the smartest nation in all creation. "Our mothers," says a clever American, "make haste to get us into the world; we are in a hurry to live; they are in a hurry to bring us up. We make our fortune by a turn of the hand, to lose it again in the twinkling of an eye. Our body goes ten leagues an hour; our spirit is high-pressure; our life goes like a shooting star; our death is like a thunder-clap."

It

Mr. Herman Melville was then in a hurry to profit by his first success. He produced a sequel to Typee, told how Toby had escaped being eaten, and called this sequel Omoo. About the same may be said of this book as of the others. had success enough, and the reputation of the teller was made. Every body allowed that Mr. Melville had an infinite imagination; that he invented the most curious possible ex

travaganzas, and that, like Cyrano de Bergerac, he excelled in serious mystification.

After reading Typee and Omoo, I had, as I have said, much doubt as to the justice of the general English and American opinion, which one finds in the majority of the journals and reviews, wherein the "romances" of Mr. Melville are discussed. The freshness and depth of the impressions produced by these books amazed me. I saw a writer, not so capable of amusing himself with a dream, or of playing with a cloud, as oppressed by a powerful memory which beset him. Type of the present anglo-American, living for and by sensation, I found that Mr. Herman Melville had described himself. Yet, I was content to hesitate, when chance brought me in contact with one of the worthiest citizens of the United States, a clever and instructed man, well versed in the intellectual affairs of his race.

"Will you," said I, " tell me the true name of the singular writer who calls himself Herman Melville, and who has published Omoo and Typee?"

"You are," he replied, "much too subtile. You look for deceit everywhere. Mr. Herman Melville's name is Herman Melville. He is the son of one of our old secretaries of legation at the Court of St. James. Fiery and ardent in his temperament, he early went to sea, and, as we say, followed the sea. Were he in the Navy, or in a privateer; what adventures marked his stormy and unclassical studies he only can tell; and if you will visit Massachusetts, where he married and lives, I would recommend you to ask him. He is an athletic man, still young, naturally hardy and enterprising; one of those men all nerve and muscle, who love to struggle with wind and wave, men and seasons. He married the daughter of Judge Shaw, one of the most distinguished magistrates of New England, and now lives a calm, domestic

life, surrounded by a just and singular celebrity, which he accepts, although somewhat equivocal; for he is regarded as a maker of clever, but useless fables. His family, who know that his adventures, as told by him, are true, are not flattered by the eulogium accorded to his imagination, at the expense of his morality. His cousin, with whom I passed last summer, said much about the obstinate refusal of readers to believe in the truth of Typee and Omoo. Said he, 'my cousin writes very well, especially when he re-produces exactly what he has felt; not having studied in the usual way, he preserves the freshness of his impressions. It is precisely because his young life was passed in the midst of savages, that he has an air of reality, and such brilliant coloring. He could not invent the scenes which he describes. Charmed by his improvised reputation, he would be vexed, I think, to lose his reputation as an inventor. The re-appearance of his companion Toby or Richard Green, a real personage, annoyed him to some degree. It made him descend from the pedestal of a romance to the level of a mere narrator.'

"For me, who know Melville, his wild disposition, and the history of his youth-who have actually read his rough notes, now in the hands of his father-in-law, and who have talked twenty times with Richard Green, his fidus Achates, I laugh at the pre-occupation of a public accustomed to see a lie where no lie is, the truth where all is a lie. Read Typee again, I do not speak of Omoo, a pale second impressionread the first of these books, not as a romance, but as a simple picture of Polynesian manners. The new traveller is more truthful than Bougainville, who has changed the groves of Tahiti into Pompadour saloons; than Diderot who takes the voluptuous narratives of Bougainville to embellish and color his sensual materialism; than Ellis or Earle who busied themselves in justifying the English missionaries, and who