Chapter 5

What further impact the journey made upon Melville’s mind, we shall best gather when we come to consider Clarel and some of his minor poems; and the further events of his journey home via Italy, the Netherlands, and England can well be condensed into scattered observations and epigrams that punctuate the account in his journals. Passing Patmos, Melville was again afflicted with the great curse of modern travel—scepticism. “Could no more realize that St. John had ever had revelations here than when off Juan Fernandez could believe in Robinson Crusoe according to Defoe.” “Pompeii like any other town. Same old humanity. All the same whether one be dead or alive. Pompeii comfortable sermon. Like Pompeii better than Paris.” Pisa: “Campanile like pine poised just ere snapping. You wait to hear crack. Like Wordsworth’s mooncloud, it will move all together if it move at all, for Pillars all line with it.” “Rome fell flat on me. Oppressing flat.... Tiber a ditch, yellow as saffron. The whole landscape nothing independent of association. St. Peter’s looks small from tower of Capitol.... Dome not so wonderful as St. Sophia’s.... Went to Baths of Caracalla. Wonderful. Massive. Ruins form as it were natural bridges of thousands of arches. There are glades and thickets among the ruins—high up.—Thought of Shelley. Truly, he got his inspiration here. Corresponded with his drama and mind. Still majesty and desolate grandeur.” “Quirinal Palace.... The Gardens—a paradise without the joy—freaks and caprices of endless wealth ... as stone is sculptured into forms of foliage, so here foliage turned into forms of sculpture.” Florence: “Breughel’s picture much pleased me. Not pleased with the Venus de Medici, but very much astonished at the Wrestlers, and charmed with Titian’s Venus.” “Rather be in Venice on a rainy day than in any other capital on a fine one.” London: “Crystal Palace—digest of the universe. Vast toy. No substance. Such appropriation of space as is made by a rail fence.” Oxford: “It was here I first confessed my gratitude for my motherland and could view her with pride. Oxford to an American as well worth visiting as Paris, though in a different way.”