The extensive notices given the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Moby Dick are a tribute to one of America's foremost novelists. It is another instance of the belated recognition of a man of genius whose thought ran far ahead of his own time.

Born of a well-to-do New York family, financial reverses caused young Melville to be sent to live with patrician relatives in Albany, New York. There he quickly rebelled against their smug benignity, patronage, or perhaps their benevolence—for he could not accommodate himself to his position of indebtedness—and he escaped