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THE STANDARD- OF FRE19f■ . • - . i 1Mardi: and a Voyage thither. By Herman Melville, Author of “Typee,” and “ Omoo.3 vols. London : Bentley.Three volumes of Midsummer madness. The author* • wrote “Typee* because he had something to writeabout. He has written “ Mardi” because he had nothing to wi'ite about, and excessively wished that he had. The story, so far as it has any story, is this. Theauthor professes to be a sailor on board : whaler in the South sea, in quest of the cachelot or spermaceti wliale.After three years’ voyage without taking a fin, a prettytolerable time, the captain resolves to make for thenorth-west coast of America, and in thebayof Kam-schatska, to try for the true whale. Here the sailor-author demurs, declares that is not in the bond, anddesires the captain to put h n ashore. Where ? Anywhere. The captain tells him to get ashore as he can;a comfortable speeeh, as the nearest land is a thousand9Plt;miles off, and that a chain of islands, of which all that he knew was that they included those loosely known asEllice’s group; then the Kingsmill isles; then theRadock and Mulgrave clusters. They were represented as low and fertile, and abounding in a variety of fruits. That the language of the people was said to be very similar to that of the Navigator’s islands, from which their ancestors are supposed to have emigrated. The author, however, takes the skipper at his word, and engaging an old Isle of Skyeman, of the name of Jarl to accompany him, they manage to get off onewith a boat and provisions, on pretence of a man havinggone overboard. With a month’s voyage before themthey make off, and the best, we should say the onlyood part of the book, is this voyage and its adventures, he of these is that they fall in with a ship of which the crew all to two islanders, a man and his wife, have been wheedled ashore at one of the islands and murdered. They secure this ship, make friends of the Indian and his wife, and sail on. Jut they are not destined to reach land in her. A storm overtakes them, the vessel■ r - _is wrecked; and they with the Indian are, again in an open boat. The Indian’s wife is lost in the wreck. In this boat, as they near the islands, they encounter another boat, in which are an old priest and his fifteen sons. They are going from one island to another for the purpose of sacrificing a beautiful maiden by drowning her in a certain cave. .On hearing of this maiden, who is concealed in a sort of hut on deck, and that she is beautiful as the morning, our hero, of course, becomes a champion. They very unjustifiably attack and murder the old man and some of his sons, and carry off the maiden. This maiden, whose name is Zillah, and whc is white, and with blue eyes, and a mystery, it being dimly meant to be inferred that she is of European origin, is, of course, amazingly beautiful. They carry her with them to land, where they are received as demigods come from the sun, which our hero fully assents to.Thus our readers will think pretty wild, but it is nothing to the remainder. The beautiful Zillah is mysteriously stolen away from our enamoured sailor, sun-descended demigod, and he is, moreover, war ml} beset by a commission of three damsels, who come with messages in the flower-language from one Queen Hautia, aqueen-sorceress of a neighbour-island. The two volumes out of the three are occupied by the voyage all amongst these islands in quest of the lost Zillah. All the islands and their people are described—imaginary people, imaginary manners, in an imaginary peregrination. We have seldom read anything more wild, unreal, unsatisfactory, and tedious. It is like a story which some one and not a very wise one neither, traces in the clouds as he lies on his back in the grass on a fine summer’s day.. . The lost Zillah is found to have been carried off by this queen Hautia, and drowned, and the sorceress makes advances from which our demigod flies.He pushes off to sea again in an open boat, pursued by three of the murdered priest’s sons; and if any one wishes to judge further f the sanity of the author, or the satisfactory conclusion of the story, he has it in the two last sentences:—“ Churned in foam, that outer ocean lashed the clouds ; and straight in nrj white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed spectres leaning on its prow; three arrows poising.“ And thus pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea!”Such is the story—the style in which it is written is still worse. It is a had case of contagion from the Carlyle idiomatic disease. Every age has its author, who infects all the smaller fry with a furor of mad English, which lasts until it has worn out both its novelty ind the public patience. But the Carlyle verbal vaccination is here mingled with other corruptions. Sometimes you fancy you have got into Ossian—sometimes into the song of Ragnar Lodbrog. You are si k-ened v .th a terrific dose of sing-song prose, or prosy sing-song.And yet there are things in the first volume that show with a fitting subject what the writer could do. The voyage in the open boat, as we have said, is beautiful. You are introduced into a world of wonderfulfishes, swimming and streaming along with the voyagers in myriads, and i a truly oriental magnificence.1 The account of the sharks is striking: “We saw them,” he says “ not by units, nor by tens, nor by hundreds, but by thousandsv and by myriads. Trust me, there are more sharks in the sea than mortals on earth,” Butwe like better the following:MY LORD SHARK AND HIS PAGES.I *“ There is a fish in the sea that evermore, like a surly lord, only goes abroad attended by his suite. It is the shovel-nosed shark. A clumsy lethargic monster, unshaply as his name, and the last species of his kind, one would, think, to be so bravely waited upon, as he is. His suite is composed of those dainty little creatures called pilot fish by sailors. But by night his retinue is frequently increased by the presence of several small luminous fish, running in advance and flourishing their flambeaux like link-boy’s lighting the monster’s way. Pity there were no ray-fish in rear, page-like, to carry his caudal train.“ N tw the relation subsisting between the pilot fish above-mentioned and their huge ungainly lord, seems one of the most inscrutable things in nature. At any rate, poses poor me to comprehend. That a monster so ferocious, should suffer five or six little sparks, hardly fourteen inches long, to gambol about his grim hull with the utmost impunity, is of itself something strange. But when, it is considered, that by a reciprocal understanding, the pilot fish seem to act as scouts to the shark, warning him of danger, and apprising him of the vicinity of prey ; and, moreover, in case of his being killed, evincing their anguish by certain agitations, otherwise inexplicable; the whole thing becomes a mystery unfathomable. Truly marvels abound. It. needs no dead man to be raised to convince us of some things. Even my Viking marvelled full as much at those pilot fish as he wouldhave marvelled at the Pentecost.“But, perhaps, a little incident, occurring about this period, will best illustrate the matter in hand.“We were gliding along, hardly three knots an hour, when my comrade, who had been dozing over the gunwale, suddenly started to his feet, and pointed out an immense shovel-nosed shark, less than a boat’s length distant, and about half a fathom beneath the surface. A lance was at once snatched from its place; and true to his calling, Jarl was about to dart it at the fish, when, interested by the sight of its radient little scout?. I begged him to desist.“ One of them was right under the shark, nibbling at his ventral fin; another above, hovering about hi orsal appurtenance ; one on each flank; and a frisking fifth pranking about his nose, seemingly having to say something of a confidential nature. They were of a blight steel-blue colour, alternated with jet-black stripes with glistening bellies of a silver-white. Clinging to the back of the shark were bmr or five remoras, or sucking-fish; snaky parishes,impossibleto remove from whatever they adhere to, without destroying
Newspaper Details
London Standard of Freedom
London, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Mar 31, 1849
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Scott N.
USA 03 Mar 2020
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