HERMAN MELVILLECHAPTER Idevil's advocate"If ever, my dear Hawthorne," wrote Melville in the summer of 1851, "we shall sit down in Paradise in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won't believe in a Temperance Heaven); and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together till both ring musically in concert: then, O my dear fellow mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so much distress us." This serene and laughing desolation-a mood which in Melville alternated with a deepening and less tranquil despair-is a spectacle to inspire with sardonic optimism those who gloat over the vanity of human wishes. For though at that time Melville was only thirty-two years old, he had crowded into that brief space of life a scope of experience to rival Ulysses', and a literary achievemTable of Contents CONTENTS; CHATTER r*GE; I Devil's Advocate 15; II Ghosts 33; III Parents and Early Years S3; IV A Substitute for Pistol and Ball 77 V Discoveries on Two Continents 98; VI Pedagogy, Pugilism and Letters 113; VII Blubber and Mysticism 128; VIII Leviathan 153; IX The Pacific 170; X Man-Eating Epicures-The Marquesas 194 XI Mutiny and Missionaries-Tahiti 215; XII On Board a Man-of-War 233; XIII Into the Racing Tide 250; XIV Across the Atlantic Again 283; XV A Neighbour of Hawthorne's 305; XVI The Great Refusal 334; XVII The Long Quietus 349; Bibliography 385; Index of Names 391; fx; Digitized by Microsoft ®; ILLUSTRATIONS; Herman MelvilleFrontispiece; PAGE; Melville's Grandfathers 40; General Peter Gansevoort^; Major Thomas Melville; Allan Melville 56; Maria Gansevoort Melville 64; In 1820; In 1865; A Page from One of Melville's Journals 104; Throwing the Harpoon 136; Sounding 136; Sperm Whaling Th --This text refers to the Paperback edition.