warmest sympathies of his shipmates. Not that we vouch for the bet of his having experienced the adventures in literal truth, or even of being the pet of the fo'castle as jam-spinner extraordinary. But we do recognise in him and in his narratives (the earlier ones, at least) a "capital" fund of even untold "interest," and so richly veined a nugget of the ben trovato as to "take the shine out of" many a golden vero. Readers there are, who, having been enchanted by a perusal of "Typee" and "Omoo," have turned again and rent the author, when they heard a surmise, or an assertion, that his tales were more or less imagination. Others there are, and we are of them, whose enjoyment of the history was little affected by a suspicion of the kind during perusal (which few can evade), or an affirmation of it afterwards. "And if a little more romantic than truth may warrant, it will be no harm," is Miles Coverdale's morality, when projecting a chronicle of life at Blithedale. Miles a raison.
Life in the Marquesas Islands!—how attractive the theme in capable hands! And here it was treated by a man "out of the ordinary," who had contrived, as Tennyson sings,
To burst all links of habit—there to wander for away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise,—
Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
"The Marquesas! what strange visions of outlandish things," exclaims Tommo himself, "does the very name spirit up! Lovely houris—cannibal banquets—groves of cocoa-nuts—coral reefs—tattooed chiefs, and bamboo temples; sunny valleys planted with bread-fruit trees—carved canoes dancing on the flashing blue waters—savage woodlands guarded by horrible idols—heathenish rites and human sacrifices." And then the zest with which Tommo and Toby, having deserted the ship, plunge into the midst of these oddly-assorted charms—cutting themselves a path through cane-brakes—living day by day on a stinted tablespoonful of "a hash of soaked bread and bits of tobacco"—shivering the livelong night under drenching rain—traversing a fearful series of dark chasms, separated by sharp-crested perpendicular ridges—leaping from precipice above to palm-tree below—and then their entrance into the Typee valley, and introduction to King Mehevi, and initiation into Typee manners, and willy-nilly experience of Typee hospitality. Memorable is the portrait-gallery of the natives: Mehevi, towering with royal dignify above his faithful commons; Marnoo, that all-influential Polynesian Apollo, whose tattooing was the best specimen of the Fine Arts in that region, and whose eloquence wielded at will that fierce anthropophagic demos; Marheyo, paternal and warm-hearted old savage, a time-stricken giant—and his wife, Tinor, genuine busybody, most notable and exacting of housewives, but no termagant or shrew for all that; and the admirable son, Kory-Kory—his face tattooed with such a host of pictured birds and fishes, that he resembled a pictorial museum of natural history, or an illuminated copy of Goldsmith's "Animated Nature"—and whose devotion to the stranger no time could wither nor custom stale. And poor Fayaway, olive-cheeked nymph, with sweet
