The new nautical story by the always successful author of Typee, has for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper for the Knickerbocker, entitled Mocha Dick. We received a copy when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the International, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find in the London Spectator:
"This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting. Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal—an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the reader instead of attracting him.
[4] The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by Bentley.
[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York, Harper & Brothers.]
"The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its 'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things, in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words. The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American seaports is rather broadly depicted.
"The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr. Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is a white whale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the master of the Pequod—a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred to a whale-ship—has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale. Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.
"Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel, though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said, the nautical continuity of story—greatly assisted by various chapters of a bookmaking kind.
"Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom friendship.
"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
"While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling,—even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.