In re: Daniel Webster and Queequeg
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Jan. 13, 2025 – Herman Melville is described by Harold Bloom as defining himself by his dissent from Ralph Waldo Emerson. However accurate the esteemed scholar’s evaluation may be, just the other day, my extra-curricular reading uncovered an example where it looks as if the poet of Pittsfield practically copies the sage of Concord!
In his poem, Ode, Inscribed to W.H. Channing, Emerson begins a stanza “The God who made New Hampshire/Taunted the lofty land/with little men, -” (see poem below)
A few years later, and 130 miles to the west, Herman Melville gave Queequeg this to say, in Chapter 66 of Moby-Dick, The Shark Massacre:
“Queequeg no care what god made him shark,” said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; “wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”

Emerson had Daniel Webster in mind, as his one-time friend become a turncoat by his role in the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act, which thoroughly disgusted Emerson.
Rather than take Melville for a polytheist, as a literal reading of the excerpt may suggest, I think this coincidence is telling evidence that Emerson and Melville were members of the same congregation of artists, even if they professed separate paths to heaven.
Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing
Though loath to grieve
The evil time’s sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest’s cant,
Or statesman’s rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!
Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.
The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men; —
Small bat and wren
House in the oak: —
If earth-fire cleave
The upheaved land, and bury the folk,
The southern crocodile would grieve.
Virtue palters; Right is hence;
Freedom praised, but hid;
Funeral eloquence
Rattles the coffin-lid.
What boots thy zeal,
O glowing friend,
That would indignant rend
The northland from the south?
Wherefore? to what good end?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still; —
Things are of the snake.
The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
‘T is the day of the chattel
Web to weave, and corn to grind;
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled,—
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
‘T is fit the forest fall,
The steep be graded,
The mountain tunnelled,
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,
The glebe tilled,
The prairie granted,
The steamer built.
Let man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth’s and harmony’s behoof;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove.
Yet do not I implore
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,
Nor bid the unwilling senator
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
Every one to his chosen work; —
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd; —
The over-god
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples, —
He who exterminates
Races by stronger races,
Black by white faces, —
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit;
Her last noble is ruined,
Her last poet mute;
Straight into double band
The victors divide;
Half for freedom strike and stand; —
The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.
By Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1846.