Melville's Reading of Arnold's Poetry

With ten volumes of prose fiction behind him, Herman Melville (1819-91) turned to writing poetry at the age of forty. When inability to market his first volume of verse set him to studying poets and poetry it was natural that he include Matthew Arnold (1822-88). Arnold had emerged as an important though not popular young poet in the mid-fifties. Whether or not Melville watched his rise in the British periodicals, which were reviewing his own books, he must have noted it in the pages of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, to which he was a regular contributor and subscriber. By the time Melville passed through England on his way to the Mediterranean late in 1856, Arnold was a figure of some repute. On the way back Melville dropped in at Longmans (27 April 1857), publishers that month of The Confidence-Man; they were Arnold's publishers too and were currently bringing out a third edition of the Poems. Later in the week Melville spent a memorable Sunday at Oxford University. “Most interesting spot I have seen in England,” he wrote in his journal. “Made tour of all colleges. It was here I first confessed with gratitude my mother land, & hailed her with pride… . Amity of art & nature. Accord… . Learning lodged like a faun… . Sacred to beauty & tranquility… . Soul & body equally cared for… . I know nothing more fitted by mild & beautiful rebuke to chastise the (presumptuous) ranting of Yankees… .” Melville's temporary yearning for the peace and tranquility of Oxford life, as he imagined it, where “learning lodged like a faun,” coincided almost exactly with Arnold's moment of consummation. Three days later (5 May) Arnold was elected by convocation to the Oxford Professorship of Poetry. Melville's words had not been those of an innocent abroad; they sheltered the value judgments of one who anticipated difficult years of wide-open readjustment. Melville's destiny lay elsewhere, but the Oxford incident marks symbolically the dawning community of interests between the later Melville and Arnold. For a moment the American scholar-gipsy looked down on the lights of Oxford, turned, and was gone. Five years later he began to read the Professor's poetry with a sense of coming upon a major contemporary.