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² The Complete Stories of Herman Melville, ed. Leyda, Jay (New York: Random House, 1949), p. 176Google Scholar. All quotations are from this edition.

³ The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Davis, Merrell R. and Gilman, William H. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 28.Google Scholar

⁴ Tindall, William Ycrk, The Literary Symbol (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), p. 68Google Scholar. On the ambivalence of Melville's imagery in general, see Leyda, Jay, Introd., p. xxviiiGoogle Scholar; Seelye, John D., The Iridescent Scabbard (Doct. dissert. Claremont, 1961), pp. 199–200Google Scholar: ‘Melville, sorely aware that the Victorian audience would react with righteous anger when confronted with the explicitly tattooed backside of a Polynesian Queen, somehow discovered that this same audience was oblivious to a metaphorized backside (“I love an indefinite, infinite background … a vast, heaving, rolling, mysterious rear!”).’

⁵ Still current, it was recorded in use in 1823. See Iona, and Opie, Peter, The Lore and Language of Children (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 339, n. 1.Google Scholar

⁶ Morazé, Charles, The Triumph of the Middle Classes (1966; rpt. New York: Doubleday, 1968), p. 364.Google Scholar

⁷ White, Lynn Jr, ‘Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 15 (04 1940), 152, n. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ p. 177.

⁹ ‘Waterloo, Melville's in “Rich Man's Crumbs”’, Nineteenth Century Fiction, 25 (09 1970), 216–21.Google Scholar

¹⁰ p. 167.

¹¹ A History of the Thirty Years' Peace (London: Macmillan, 1877), vol I, p. 42.Google Scholar

¹² Channing, E., A History of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1917), vol. IV, p. 538Google Scholar; Barnes, D. G., A History of the English Corn Laws (London: Routledge, 1930), pp. 122, 136Google Scholar; Kirkland, E. C., A History of American Economic Life (3rd ed., New York: Appleton, 1951), p. 61Google Scholar; Kemmerer, D. L. and Jones, C. C., American Economic History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959). p. 29.Google Scholar

¹³ Rogers, J. E. Thorold, Six Centuries of Work and Wages (12th ed., London: Fisher Unwin, 1917), p. 505Google Scholar; Fay, C. R., The Corn Laws and Social England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 38, 41Google Scholar; Trevelyan, G. M., English Social History (1942; rpt. London: Longmans, 1944), pp. 465–70Google Scholar; McCord, Norman, The Anti-Corn Law League (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958), p. 15.Google Scholar

¹⁴ North, D. C., The Economic Growth of the United States 1790–1860 (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 209–63.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Melville's diptych has been rightly termed ‘a social document addressed to his fellow Americans of the 1850's’ (Fogle, , Shorter Tales, p. 45Google Scholar). For sympathetic contemporary discussions of the social issues raised, see Rev. Burnap, G. W., ‘The Health of American Women’, Ladies Wreath (New York, 1848–1849), 3, 185–8Google Scholar; Wyse, F., America, its realities and resources (3 vols., London: T. C. Newby, 1846), passimGoogle Scholar; Dwight, Timothy, Travels in New-England and New-York (New Haven: T. Dwight, 1821–1822), vol. II, pp. 270–2Google Scholar; ‘The Rights of Property in Land’, The New Englander, 8 (1850), 220–37Google Scholar; ‘Health and Disease’, Ibid., 9 (1851), 223–42. For a contrasting reactionary approach, expressed in the Whig Review, see Mulqueen, James E., ‘Conservatism and Criticism: The Literary Standards of American Whigs, 1845–1852’, American Literature, 41 (11 1969), 354–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ London: J. Johnson, 1814. A third edition appeared in 1815, with The grounds of an opinion on the policy of restricting the importation of foreign corn, as an appendix. In the latter, p. 28, Malthus remarked of the United States ‘the wage rates are low, therefore the family is unhealthy and children restricted’.

¹⁷ See Marks, M. A. M., The Corn Laws (London: Fifield, 1908), vol. II, pp. 174–209Google Scholar. Melville had access to Malthus in the New York Society Library and in Duyckinck's collection. See Alphabetical and Analytical Catalogue of the New York Society Library (1850), p. 27Google Scholar; Lenox Library Short-title List in New York Public Library, p. 39Google Scholar; Sealts, M. M., ‘Melville's Reading’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 2 (Spring 1948), 154, n. 56Google Scholar, suggests that, in order to escape from a crowded household, Melville may have made more use of the New York Society Library than has been recognized. He could also have read innumerable references to Malthus in the Edinburgh Review, 5 (October 1804–January 1805), 201Google Scholar; 9 (October 1807–January 1808), 101; 12 (April–June 1808), 339; 16 (April–August 1810), 464–5; 23 (April–September 1814), 258; 25 (June–October 1815), 278–81; 27 (March–August 1817), 8; 40 (March–July 1824), 12, etc.

¹⁸ A Summary View of the Principle of Population (1830) rpt. in Three Essays on Population, introd. Notestein, F. W. (New York: Mentor, 1960), p. 38.Google Scholar

¹⁹ p. 185. The topicality of Melville's short stories may merit further attention. Compare Melville's factory Maids with the operatives of the famous Lowell cotton mills in Mind Among the Spindles, A Selection from the Lowell Offering, ed. Knight, Charles (London: C. Knight, 1844), pp. ix–xivGoogle Scholar: ‘they always call themselves girls … During their twelve hours of daily labour, waiting upon the machine … they may … have been elevating their minds’ (italics mine). Cf. Beecher, C. E., The Evils Suffered by American Women and American Children (New York: Harper, 1846), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

²⁰ Population (New York: 1960), p. 39.Google Scholar

²¹ p. 167. According to oral information supplied by my graduate students, University of California, Riverside, June 1970, ‘poor man's pudding’ formerly designated a concoction of snow whipped with vanilla and sugar, in areas as diverse as Chicago, Kentucky, Arkansas and New York.

²² See also Malthus, , An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent and the Principles by which it is regulated (London: Murray, 1815), p. 38.Google Scholar

²³ First Essay on Population (1798; rpt. London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 99Google Scholar. Malthus particularly stresses that bad and insufficient nourishment and the ‘unwholesomeness of marshy situations’ induce child mortality. Symbolic contrast in Melville's descriptions of environment is noted by Litman, Vicki Halper, ‘The Cottage and the Temple: Melville's Symbolic Use of Architecture’, American Quarterly, 21 (Fall 1969), 634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ See Malthus, , Population (New York: Mentor, 1960), p. 59.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Webster, Noah, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: S. Converse, 1828), sv. squire (4)Google Scholar: ‘The title of magistrate or lawyer … in New England it is particularly given to justice of the peace and judges.’ See also Craigie, W. A. and Hulbert, J. R., A Dictionary of American English (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), vol. IV, sv. squire (n).Google Scholar

²⁶ Metcalfe, Eleanor Melville, Herman Melville (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 109.Google Scholar

²⁷ Jähns, M., Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache (Leipzig: Naumbur, 1872), vol. I, pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

²⁸ I deal with the matter more fully in ‘The Horse and Rider Figure in Chaucer's Works’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 35 (04 1966), 246–59.Google Scholar

²⁹ On the coulter as a symbol of impotence, see Owen, Charles, ‘Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Aesthetic Design in Stories of the First Day’, English Studies, 35 (1954), 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Cohen, Hennig, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 8 (1963), 86Google Scholar, who observes that the range of association in the names which Melville chose for his characters was ‘considerable, from the crudest kind of significant or canting usage for the simplest purposes to extremes of subtlety’. For further use of the traditional folk metaphor employed here, see Chaucer, , Canterbury Tales, B. 3159 (plough)Google Scholar; Burns, Robert, The Merry Muses of Caledonia, ed. Legman, G. (New York: University Books, 1965), pp. 63–4 (plough)Google Scholar; Jähns, , vol. I, p. 229 (plough, team)Google Scholar; Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough, abridged ed. (London: Macmillan, 1959), pp. 413–14 (rice)Google Scholar; Jones, Ernest, ‘The Symbolic Significance of Salt’, Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis (New York: International University Press, 1964), vol. II, pp. 22–109 (salt, rice)Google Scholar; Legman, G., The Horn Book (New York: University Books, 1964), p. 190 (tree)Google Scholar; Toelkien, J. Barre, ‘Riddles Wisely Expounded’, Western Folklore, 25 (01 1966), 1, 14 (tree, plough).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Varro, , De re rustica, 14Google Scholar; Cotgrave, Randle, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611; rpt. Menston, Eng.Google Scholar; Adler, , 1966), sv. frotter leur lardGoogle Scholar; Sainéan, L., La Langue de Rabelais (Paris: Boccard, 1923), vol. II, p. 299Google Scholar; Farmer, J. S. and Henley, W. E., Slang and its Analogues (1890–1904; rpt. New York: Kraus, 1965), vol. V, sv, pork (3).Google Scholar

³¹ Jones, , Salt, pp. 59, 88.Google Scholar

³² Robbins, Rossell Hope, ‘The Bradshaw Carols’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 81 (06 1966), 310CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘I will haue a podyng that grows out of a man’; Othello, II, i, 258Google Scholar: ‘Blessed fig's end! … Blessed pudding’; All's Well that Ends Well, II, i, 26Google Scholar: ‘as pudding to his skin’; Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, ed. D'Urfey, Tom (London: J. Tonson, 1719–1720), vol. VI, p. 301Google Scholar: ‘Quoth he me dear Philli I'll give unto thee/Such Pudding you never did see’; Seventeenth Century Songs and Lyrics, ed. Cutts, John P. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1959), p. 3Google Scholar: ‘food fitt for Ladyes who yet finde,/In all the Kinde/Of puddinges none such pleasure give as that wch [sic] lives’; Swift's Polite Conversation, introd. Eric Partridge (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 57, 103, 105, 126, 136Google Scholar (references to pudding either glossed by Partridge as ‘scabrous’, ‘bawdy’ or passed without comment); Farmer, J. S. and Henley, W. E., Slang and its Analogues, vol. V, sv. prick: boudin (Rabelais) … puddingGoogle Scholar; ‘in the pudding club’: pregnant; Farmer, J. S., ed., Vocabula Amatoria (1896; rpt. New York: University Books, 1966), sv. boudinGoogle Scholar: the penis, also boudin blanc (Rabelais); sv. boudiner: to copulate, ‘to give a bellyful of marrow-pudding’; Partridge, Eric, ed., A Dictionary of the Underworld (London: Routledge, 1961), p. 535Google Scholar: ‘living on pudding’: living by prostitution; Partridge, Eric, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 5th ed. (London: Routledge, 1961), pp. 409, 665Google Scholar; Kane, Elisha (trans.), The Book of Good Love by Ruiz, Juan, introd. J. Esten Keller (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 230.Google Scholar

³³ Farmer and Henley, vol. V, sv. monosyllable (venery); vol. III, sv. greens (venery); Partridge, Dictionary of the Underworld, p. 535Google Scholar; cf. Swift, , ed. Partridge, p. 136.Google Scholar

³⁴ After his appointment in 1729 as a non-conformist minister in Northampton where he had a seminary, Doddridge wrote 53 books and 364 hymns. The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul had more than 50 editions between 1745 and 1840 and was translated into French, Gaelic, Italian, Syriac and Welsh. The predominant message is that affliction must be patiently born: see esp. ch. xxv, 252 (12th ed., London, 1789); also in Submission to Divine Providence in the death of Children recommended and inforced in a Sermon [on 2 Kings iv. 25, 26] Preached at Northampton, on the death of a very amiable and hopeful child about five years old (London: n.p., 1737), p. 20: the chief lesson of suffering is ‘an intire Suspension of our own Will, seeing and owning the Hand of God, and bowing before it in a filial Acquiescence’. Doddridge sent missionaries to New England in 1746 – see Garland, H. J., The Life and Hymns of Dr Philip Doddridge (Stirling: Stirling Tract, 1951), p. 27Google Scholar; Mott, F. L., Golden Multitudes (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 315Google Scholar, cites Doddridge's Lectures on Preaching as a ‘best-seller’ in the United States. Leyda, Jay, ed. cit., p. xxivGoogle Scholar, assumes that Melville is referring to The Rise and Progress.

³⁵ Hymns founded on various texts, ed. Orton, Job (London: Orton, 1755), pp. 187, 188Google Scholar; Garland, , Life, p. 43.Google Scholar

³⁶ On the widespread dissemination of this hymn, see Julian, J., ed., A Dictionary of Hymnology, rev. ed. (London: Murray, 1907), p. 831Google Scholar; Hymns Ancient and Modern, introd. Rev. W. H. Frere (London: Cowes, 1909), p. lxxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Garland, , Life, pp. 48, 49.Google Scholar

³⁷ Population (New York, 1960), p. 57.Google Scholar

³⁸ The symbolism of love as a meal, as used, for example, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, is too commonplace to require further documentation.

³⁹ Farmer, and Henley, , vol. II, 222Google Scholar; vol. V, 252 (crumbs); vol. V, 181 (pheasant: a wanton, pheasantry: a brothel); Grose, Francis, Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), ed. Partridge, E. (London: Routledge, 1963), sv. gameGoogle Scholar; Romeo and Juliet, II, iv, 139 ff. (hare/hoar/pie)Google Scholar; The Works of Ben Jonson, ed. Cunningham, F. (London: Bickers, 1889), vol. III, p. 156Google Scholar (pasty, crust, haunch); The Poems of Richard Lovelace, ed. Wilkinson, C. H. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), PP. 79, 1.22, 287n.Google Scholar: ‘widdow-Venson-pye’: ‘widdow’ because someone has had a cut at it already; Saltonstall, Wye, Picturae Loquentes (London: 1631), sig. B iiv (cold pie)Google Scholar; Swift's Polite Conversation, p. 141 (jelly, pie)Google Scholar. See also Measure for Measure, ed. Lever, J. W. (London: Methuen, 1965), III, ii, 52 (morsel), and noteGoogle Scholar; Kane, Elisha Kent, The Book of Good Love by Juan Ruiz, introd. John Esten Keller (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), st. 385, 1.4 (crumb).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Beggars' Bush, ed. Daniel, P. A., The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (London: Bell, 1905), vol. II, p. 389, 1.32.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Similarly, in ‘The Tartarus of Maids’, p. 202,Google Scholar Old Bach has to point out the narrator's frozen cheeks.

⁴² p. 183.

⁴³ Redburn: The Works of Herman Melville, Standard Edition (1922–1923; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), vol. V, p. 237.Google Scholar