contribution to literature.

Melville, in a letter to Hawthorne, speaks of himself as having
no development at all until his twenty-fifth year, the time of
his return from the Pacific; but surely the process of
development must have been well advanced to permit of so virile
and artistic a creation as 'Typee.' While the narrative does not
always run smoothly, yet the style for the most part is graceful
and alluring, so that we pass from one scene of Pacific
enchantment to another quite oblivious of the vast amount of
descriptive detail which is being poured out upon us. It is the
varying fortune of the hero which engrosses our attention. We
follow his adventures with breathless interest, or luxuriate with
him in the leafy bowers of the 'Happy Valley,' surrounded by
joyous children of nature. When all is ended, we then for the
first time realise that we know these people and their ways as if
we too had dwelt among them.

I do not believe that 'Typee' will ever lose its position as a
classic of American Literature. The pioneer in South Sea
romance--for the mechanical descriptions of earlier voyagers are
not worthy of comparison--this book has as yet met with no
superior, even in French literature; nor has it met with a rival
in any other language than the French. The character of
'Fayaway,' and, no less, William S. Mayo's 'Kaloolah,' the
enchanting dreams of many a youthful heart, will retain their
charm; and this in spite of endless variations by modern
explorers in the same domain. A faint type of both characters
may be found in the Surinam Yarico of Captain John Gabriel
Stedman, whose 'Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition' appeared