University of Virginia Library

White-Jacket will find (since it deserves to find) many animated and interested
readers. Mr. Melville stands as far apart from any past or present marine painter
in pen and ink as Turner does from Vandervelde. We can not recall another novelist
or sketcher who has given the poetry of the ship, her voyages, and her crew,
in a manner at all resembling his.

The characters brought upon the stage are admirable life pictures, exhibiting by
the magic effect of a few masterly touches each man in the complete individuality
of his person and his office, from the commodore, who, as he paces the quarter-deck,
covers up his deficiency in the qualities necessary for command by the unblending
starchness of official etiquette, down to the meanest specimen of the genus loblolly-boy.

Had not Mr. Melville already appeared before the world with productions which,
by their powerful energy and general worth, have won both attention and admiration,
this work would be sufficient to establish him as a substantial favorite for the
future. Whatever he writes upon, he writes on it well, and throughout his pages,
open them where you may, will be found, amid a host of beauties and singularities,
the strongest evidence of an untiring spirit, great vigor, lofty imagination, and a pure
style of writing. The perusal of it has caused us so much real and sterling pleasure,
that we feel it a duty we owe both to its author and the public to recommend it to
the latter in the strongest manner.

Many of the wonders of the world of a man-of-war are now revealed to us for the
first time. The whole narrative is marked by all the sobriety of truth, and, though
enlivened by the sparkling and racy style which characterizes the author in his happiest
moments, is full of those details which bear with them the conviction that the
scene is sketched from the life.

Varied as are the pictures which Herman Melville here presents to us, the same
natural delineation of a master-hand is visible in them all, and few who have followed
its momentous career will arrive without regret at the chapter which records
“the end of the Jacket.”

We have called Mr. Melville a common sailor, but he is a very uncommon common
sailor, even for America, whose mariners are better educated than our own.
His descriptions of scenery are life-like and vigorous, sometimes masterly, and his
style throughout is rather that of an educated literary man than of a working seaman.

Brilliant and dashingly spirited descriptions abound in this volume. It is written
in the author's best style; and no modern author ranks higher as a marine
painter. The mysteries of life on ship-board are revealed, and the abuses of the
service freely commented on.

It is full of humor and keen satire, and it ought to have a good effect in reforming
some of the abuses in our navy.