was supposed to have had its fulfilment in the death of the lamented monarch, which occurred, only a few months after the appearance of the skeleton masquer, by a fall from his horse, over a precipice, while hunting between Burntisland and Kinghorn, at a place still called "the King's Wood-end."
Wordsworth appears to have had the subject in his eye, in two of the stanzas of his lyric, entitled Presentiments,—the last of which runs as follows:—
"Ye daunt the proud array of war,
Pervade the lonely ocean far
As sail hath been unfurled,
For dancers in the festive hall
What ghostly partners hath your call
Fetched from the shadowy world."
—Poetical Works, 1845, p. 176.
The same incident has been made the subject of some very spirited verses, in a little volume—Ballads and Lays from Scottish History—published in 1844; and which, I fear, has not attracted the attention to which its intrinsic merits assuredly entitle it.
[ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.][20]
Another book from the active pen of our American acquaintance, the able seaman. The question having been raised whether Mr Herman Melville has really served before the mast, and has actually, like the heroine of a well-known pathetic ballad, disfigured his lily-white fingers with the nasty pitch and tar, he does his best to dissipate all such doubts by the title-page of his new work, on which, in large capitals, is proclaimed that Redburn is "The Sailor-boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the son of a gentleman in the merchant service;" and, collaterally, by a dedication to his younger brother, "now a sailor on a voyage to China." An unmerited importance has perhaps been given to the inquiry whether Mr Melville's voyages were made on quarterdeck or on forecastle, and are genuine adventures or mere Robinsonades. The book, not the writer, concerns the critic; and even as there assuredly are circumstances that might induce a youth of gentle birth and breeding to don flannel shirt, and put fist in tar-bucket as a merchant seaman, so the probably unpleasant nature of those circumstances precludes too inquisitive investigation into them. We accept Mr Melville, therefore, for what he professes to be, and we accept his books, also, with pleasure and gratitude when good, just as we neglect and reject them when they are the contrary. Redburn, we are bound to admit, is entitled to a more favourable verdict than the author's last previous work. We do not like it so well as Typee and Omoo; and, although quite aware that this is a class of fiction to which one cannot often return without finding it pall, by reason of a certain inevitable sameness, we yet are quite sure we should not have liked it so well as those two books, even though priority of publication had brought it to a palate unsated with that particular sort of literary diet. Nevertheless, after a decided and deplorable retrogression, Mr Melville seems likely to go a-head again, if he will only take time and pains, and not over-write himself, and avoid certain affectations and pedantry unworthy a man of his ability. Many of the defects of Mardi are corrected in Redburn. We gladly miss much of the obscurity and nonsense that abound in the former work. The style, too, of this one is more natural and manly; and even in the minor matter of a title, we find reason to congratulate Mr Melville on improved taste, inasmuch as we think an English book is better fitted with an English-sounding name than with uncouth dissyllables from Polynesia, however convenient these may be found for the purposes of the puff provocative.
Redburn comprises four months of the life of a hardy wrong-headed lad, who ships himself on board a trading vessel, for the voyage from New York to Liverpool and back. As there is no question of shipwreck, storm, pirates, mutiny, or any other nautico-dramatic incidents, during Wellingborough Redburn's voyage out and home; and as the events of his brief abode in England are neither numerous nor (with the exception of one rather far-fetched episode) by any means extraordinary, it is evident that a good deal of detail and ingenuity are necessary to fill two volumes, on so simple and commonplace a theme. So a chapter is devoted to the causes of his addiction to the sea, and shows how it was that childish reminiscences of a seaport town, and stories of maritime adventure told him by his father, who had many times crossed the Atlantic, and visions of European magnificence, and, above all, the frequent contemplation of an old-fashioned glass ship which stood in his mother's sitting-room, and which is described with considerable minuteness, and some rather feeble attempts at the facetious—how all these things combined had imbued young Wellingborough with a strong craving after salt water. Other circumstances concurred to drive him forth upon the world. He hints at family misfortunes. His father had been a merchant at New York, in a flourishing business. Things were now less prosperous. "Some time previous, my mother had removed from New York to a pleasant village on the Hudson river, where we lived in a small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired within me to send me to sea as a sailor." And yet it would appear that he might have done better than plunge thus recklessly into the hardships and evil associations of a merchantman's forecastle; for he more than half admits that he was erring and wilful, and that he had kind relatives and sympathising patrons, who would have put him in the way of earning a living otherwise. Redburn, however, seems to have been in some respects as precocious as in others we shall presently find him simple and inexperienced. A mere boy, adversity had already converted him into a misanthrope, at an age when most lads are as yet without plans for their future, and know not disappointment in any more important matters than a treat to the play, or an extra week's holiday. The forwardness of the rising generation is remarkable enough in England, and has been amusingly hit off by one of our cleverest caricaturists. In America, therefore, which notoriously goes a-head of the old country in most particulars, and whose inhabitants lay claim to an extraordinary share of railroad and earthquake in their composition, boyish precocity is possibly still more remarkable; and one must not wonder at finding Master Redburn talking in misanthropic vein of the world's treatment of him, how bleak and cheerless everything seemed, and how "the warm soul of him had been flogged out by adversity." This, at an age when the stinging memory of the schoolmaster's taws must still have been tolerably vivid about the seat of his breeks, seems rather absurd to begin with. It was under the influence of such feelings, however, that this infant Timon left his home to cast his lot upon the wide waters. His friends were evidently either very angry with him or very poor; for they allowed him to depart with but one dollar in his pocket, a big shooting-jacket with foxes' heads on the buttons, and a little bundle, containing his entire kit, slung at the end of the fowling-piece which his good-natured elder brother pressed upon him at parting. Thus equipped, he tramps of to the steamer that is to carry him down the Hudson, early on a raw morning, along a muddy road, and through a drizzling rain. The skyey influences will at times affect even the most stoical, and the dismal aspect of external nature makes Master Redburn revert to his blighted prospects—how his soul is afflicted with mildew, "and the fruit which, with others, is only blasted after ripeness, with him is nipped in the first blossom and bud." The blight he complains of is evidently of a most virulent description, for it "leaves such a scar that the air of Paradise might not erase it." As he has just before told us how, whilst walking along, his fingers "worked moodily at the stock and trigger" of his brother's rifle, and that he had thought this was indeed "the proper way to begin life, with a gun in your hand," we feel, upon hearing him croak so desperately, some apprehension for his personal safety, and think his brother would have done as well to have kept his gun. On this last point we quite make up our minds, when we shortly afterwards find him levelling the weapon at the left eye of a steamboat passenger who is so imprudent as to stare at him, and bullying the steward for demanding the fare, (which is two dollars, whereas Redburn has but one,) and looking cat-a-mounts at his less needy fellow-voyagers, because they have the rudeness to enjoy their roast beef dinner, whilst he has had the improvidence to leave home without even a crust in his wallet. It seems the author's aim to start his hero in life under every possible circumstance of disadvantage and hardship; and to do this, he rather loses sight of probability. At last, however, Redburn reaches New York, with gun and bundle, foxes' heads and shooting-jacket, and hastens to visit a friend of his brother's, to whom he is recommended. A kind welcome, good supper, and warm bed, go some way towards dissipating his ill humour; and next morning the friend accompanies him to the docks to seek a ship. But none of his brother's kindnesses prosper him. The gun, as we have seen, has already led him to the verge of homicide, the foxes' heads are yet to be the source of innumerable vexations; and Mr Jones, a silly young man, does more harm than good, by taking the direction of Redburn's affairs, and acting as his spokesman with Captain Riga, of the regular trader, Highlander, then loading for Liverpool.