book-stall. The story is well told, but the book is hardly
worthy of the author of 'Typee.' 'The Confidence Man' (1857),
his last serious effort in prose fiction, does not seem to
require criticism.

Mr. Melville's pen had rested for nearly ten years, when it was
again taken up to celebrate the events of the Civil War. 'Battle
Pieces and Aspects of the War' appeared in 1866. Most of these
poems originated, according to the author, in an impulse imparted
by the fall of Richmond; but they have as subjects all the chief
incidents of the struggle. The best of them are 'The Stone
Fleet,' 'In the Prison Pen,' 'The College Colonel,' 'The March to
the Sea,' 'Running the Batteries,' and 'Sheridan at Cedar Creek.'
Some of these had a wide circulation in the press, and were
preserved in various anthologies. 'Clarel, a Poem and Pilgrimage
in the Holy Land' (1876), is a long mystical poem requiring, as
some one has said, a dictionary, a cyclopaedia, and a copy of the
Bible for its elucidation. In the two privately printed volumes,
the arrangement of which occupied Mr. Melville during his last
illness, there are several fine lyrics. The titles of these
books are, 'John Marr and Other Sailors' (1888), and 'Timoleon'
(1891).

There is no question that Mr. Melville's absorption in
philosophical studies was quite as responsible as the failure of
his later books for his cessation from literary productiveness.
That he sometimes realised the situation will be seen by a
passage in 'Moby Dick':--

'Didn't I tell you so?' said Flask. 'Yes, you'll soon see this