Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

To convey an adequate idea of a book of such various merits as that which the author of "Typee" and "Omoo" has here placed before the reading public, is impossible in the scope of a review. High philosophy, liberal feeling, abstruse metaphysics popularly phrased, soaring speculation, a style as many-coloured as the theme, yet always good, and often admirable; fertile fancy, ingenious construction, playful learning, and an unusual power of enchaining the interest, and rising to the verge of the sublime, without overpassing that narrow boundary which plunges the ambitious penman into the ridiculous; all these are possessed by Herman Melville, and exemplified in these volumes.

This volume of Moby Dick may be pronounced a most remarkable sea-dish — an intellectual chowder of romance, philosophy, natural history, fine writing, good feelings, bad sayings — but over which, in spite of all uncertainties, and in spite of the author himself, predominates his keen perceptive faculties, exhibited in vivid narration. This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed. The result is, at all events, a most provoking book. Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.

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. 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. 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. The strongest point of the book is its "characters." Ahab, indeed, is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a mouth-piece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen, are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling service.

Of all the extraordinary books from the pen of Herman Melville this is out and out the most extraordinary. Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or for poetry in blubber? Yet few books which professedly deal in metaphysics, or claim the parentage of the muses, contain as much true philosophy and as much genuine poetry as the tale of the Pequod's whaling expedition. The flashes of truth which sparkle on the surface of the foaming sea of thought through which the author pulls his readers in the wake of the whale-ship, — the profound reflections uttered by the actors in the wild watery chase in their own quaint forms of thought and speech, — and the graphic representations of human nature in the startling disguises under which it appears on the deck of the Pequod, — all these things combine to raise "The Whale" far beyond the level of an ordinary work of fiction. It is not a mere tale of adventures, but a whole philosophy of life.

Herman Melville's last and best and most wildly imaginative story, "The Whale", will worthily support his reputation for singularly vivid and reckless imaginative power — great aptitude for quaint and original philosophical speculation, degenerating, however, too often into rhapsody and purposeless extravagance — an almost unparalleled power over the capabilities of the language.

A new work by Herman Melville, entitled "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale", has just been issued, which, in point of richness and variety of incident, originality of conception, and splendor of description, surpasses any of the former productions of this highly successful author. Moby Dick is the name of an old White Whale; half fish and half devil; the terror of the Nantucket cruisers; the scourge of the distant oceans; leading an invulnerable, charmed life; the subject of many grim and ghostly traditions. This huge sea monster has a conflict with one Captain Ahab; the veteran Nantucket salt comes off second best; not only loses a leg in the affray, but receives a twist in the brain; becomes the victim of a deep, cunning monomania; believes himself predestined to take a bloody revenge on his fearful enemy; pursues him with fierce demonic energy of purpose; and at last perishes in the dreadful fight. Beneath the whole story, the subtle, imaginative reader may perhaps find a pregnant allegory, intended to illustrate the mystery of human life.