Chapter I: Front Matter

THE WORKS OF
HERMAN MELVILLE

STANDARD EDITION
VOLUME
XIII

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_This Edition is limited to 750 copies_

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BILLY BUDD
AND OTHER PROSE PIECES

BY
HERMAN MELVILLE

EDITED BY
RAYMOND W. WEAVER

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
LONDON · BOMBAY · SYDNEY
1924

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Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD.
at the University Press, Edinburgh

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

‘Billy Budd,’ the title-piece of this volume, is a novel finished by Melville five months before his death in 1891, and never before published. ‘Daniel Orme’ is a sketch ‘omitted from _Billy Budd_.’ The fourth piece--‘The Two Temples’--was on May 12, 1854, refused by _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_ out of a fear of offending the religious sensibilities of the congregation of Grace Church, New York. This volume concludes with eight sketches surviving in manuscript, written, in all probability, after Melville’s retirement in 1886, at the age of sixty-seven, from his post as Inspector of Customs in New York City. Except for his letters, journals, and the juvenile ‘Fragments from a Writing Desk,’ this closes the count of Melville as a writer of prose. The rest of the volume comprises all Melville’s contributions to magazines that he acknowledged but never reprinted.

The text of matter hitherto unpublished has, so far as possible, been printed verbatim from Melville’s manuscript. Here and there, however, owing to the heavily corrected condition of many of the papers, slight adjustments in the interests of grammar or of style have been made in Melville’s wording.

The editor and publishers are indebted to the Princeton University Press for their courtesy in allowing two of the essays included in this volume to be reprinted from _The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches_, a volume of Melville’s prose miscellanea recently issued from Princeton.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN 1

OTHER PROSE PIECES

DANIEL ORME 117

HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES, BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING A JULY IN
VERMONT: _Literary World_, August 17, August 24, 1850 123

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! OR THE CROWING OF THE NOBLE COCK BENEVENTANO:
_Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November-December 1853 144

THE TWO TEMPLES 173

POOR MAN’S PUDDING AND RICH MAN’S CRUMBS: _Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine_, June 1854 192

THE HAPPY FAILURE, A STORY OF THE RIVER HUDSON: _Harper’s New
Monthly Magazine_, July 1854 210

THE FIDDLER: _Putnam’s Monthly Magazine_, September 1854 220

THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS AND THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS: _Harper’s
New Monthly Magazine_, April 1855 228

JIMMY ROSE: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, November 1855 255

THE ’GEES: _Harper’s New Monthly Magazine_, March 1856 268