h e eppettator " Jattober 25th, 1851
• HERMAN MELVILLE'S WHALE
Tins sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conven- tionalisms of civilised 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- through sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering where ideas are the staple ; where it takes the shape of narra- tive or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal—an attempted descrip- tion of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art ; it repels the reader instead of attracting him.... It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be intro- duced into a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known: thus, he must not describe the conver- sation of miners in a pit if they all perish. Mr Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he continually violates another, by beginning in the autobiographical form and changing ad libitum into the narrative. His catastrophe overrides all rules: not only is. Ahab, with his boat's crew, destroyed in his last desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequod' herself sinks with all on board into the depths of the illimitable ocean. Such is the go-ahead method.
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