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 friend among the literary men of America. His writings are numerous, and of varying merit; his verse, patriotic and other, is forgotten; and his works of fiction and of travel are of irregular execution. Nevertheless, few authors have been enabled so freely to introduce romantic personal experiences into their books: in his first work, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, or Four Month’s Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas (1846), he described his escape from the cannibals; while in Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847), White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (1850), and especially Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851), he portrayed seafaring life and character with vigour and originality, and from a personal knowledge equal to that of Cooper, Marryat or Clark Russell. But these records of adventure were followed by other tales so turgid, eccentric, opinionative, and loosely written as to seem the work of another author. Melville was the product of a period of American literature when the fiction written by writers below Irving, Poe and Hawthorne was measured by humble artistic standards. He died in New York on the 28th of September 1891.

MELVILLE, JAMES (1556–1614), Scottish reformer, nephew of (q.v.), was born on the 26th of July 1556. He was educated at Montrose and St Leonard's College, St Andrews. In 1574 he proceeded to the university of Glasgow, of which his uncle was principal, and within a year became one of the regents. When his uncle was appointed, in 1580, principal of the New (later, St Mary’s) College, St Andrews, he was transferred to the chair of Oriental languages there. For three and a half years he lectured in the university, chiefly on Hebrew, but he had to flee to Berwick in May 1584 (a few months after his uncle’s exile) to escape the attacks of his ecclesiastical enemy, Bishop Adamson. After a short stay there and at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and again at Berwick, he proceeded to London, where he joined some of the leaders of the Scottish Presbyterian party. The taking of Stirling Castle in 1585 having changed the political and ecclesiastical positions in the north, he returned to Scotland in November of that year, and was restored to his office at St Andrews. From 1586 to his death he took an active part in Church controversy. In 1589 he was moderator of the General Assembly and on several occasions represented his party in conferences with the court. Despite his antagonism to James’s episcopal schemes, he appears to have won the king’s respect. He answered, with his uncle, a royal summons to London in 1606 for the discussion of Church policy. The uncompromising attitude of the kinsmen, though it was made the excuse for sending the elder to the Tower, brought no further punishment to James than easy detention within ten miles of Newcastle-on-Tyne. During his residence there it was made clear to him by the king’s agents that he would receive high reward if he supported the royal plans. In 1613 negotiations were begun for his return to Scotland, but his health was broken, and he died at Berwick in January 1614.

MELVILLE, SIR JAMES (1535–1617), Scottish diplomatist and memoir writer, was the third son of Sir John Melville, laird of Raith in the county of Fife, who was executed for treason in 1548. One of his brothers was Robert, 1st Baron Melville of Monimail (1527–1621). James Melville in 1549 went to France to become page to Mary Queen of Scots. Serving on the French side at the battle of St Quentin in 1557 Melville was wounded and taken prisoner. He subsequently carried out a number of diplomatic missions for Henry II. of France. On Mary’s return to Scotland in 1561 she gave Melville a pension and an appointment in her household, and she employed him as special emissary to reconcile Queen Elizabeth to her marriage with Darnley. After the murder of Darnley in February 1567, Melville joined Lord Herries in boldly warning Mary of the danger and disgrace of her projected marriage with Bothwell, and was only saved from the latter’s vengeance in consequence by the courageous resolution of the queen. During the troubled times following Mary’s imprisonment and abdication Melville conducted several diplomatic missions of importance, and won the confidence of James VI. when the king took the government into his own hands. Having been adopted as his heir by the reformer Henry Balnaves, he inherited from him, at his death in 1579, the estate of Halhill in Fife; and he retired thither in 1603, refusing the request of James to accompany him to London on his accession to the English throne. At Halhill Melville wrote the Memoirs of my own Life, a valuable authority for the history of the period, first published by his grandson, George Scott, in 1683. Sir James Melville died at Halhill on the 13th of November 1617. By his wife, Christina Boswell, he had one son and two daughters; the elder of these, Elizabeth, who married John Colville, de jure 3rd Baron Colville of Culross, has been identified with the authoress of a poem published in 1603, entitled Ane Godlie Dreame.

MELVILL VAN CARNBEE, PIETER, (1816–1856), Dutch geographer, was born at the Hague on the 20th of May 1816. He traced his descent from an old Scottish family, originally, it is said, of Hungarian extraction. Destined for the navy, in which his grandfather Pieter Melvill van Carnbee (1743–1810) had been admiral, he imbibed a taste for hydrography and cartography as a student in the college of Medemblik, and he showed his capacity as a surveyor on his first voyage to the Dutch Indies (1835). In 1839 he was again in the East, and was attached to the hydrographical bureau at Batavia. With the assistance of documents collected by the old East India Company, he completed a map of Java in five sheets, accompanied by sailing directions (Amsterdam, 1842). He remained in the East till 1845 collecting materials for a chart of the waters between Sumatra and Borneo (two sheets, 1845 and 1846). On his return to Holland he was attached to the naval department with the charge of studying the history of the hydrography of the Dutch East Indies. He also undertook, in connexion with P. F. von Siebold, the publication of the Moniteur des Indes, a valuable series of scientific papers, mainly from his own pen, on the foreign possessions of Holland, which was continued for three years. In 1850 Melvill returned to India as lieutenant of the first class and adjutant to Vice-Admiral van den Bosch; and after the premature death of this commander he was again appointed keeper of the charts at Batavia. In 1853 he obtained exemption from active naval service that he might devote himself to a general atlas of the Dutch Indies. But in 1856 he fell a victim to climate, dying at Batavia on the 24th of October. In spite of delays in engraving, twenty-five sheets of the atlas were already finished, but it was not till 1862 that the whole plan, embracing sixty sheets, was completed by Lieut.-Colonel W. F. Versteeg. In 1843 Melvill received the decoration of the Netherlands Lion, in 1849 that of the Legion of Honour.

MEMBRANELLE, an organ in Ciliate (q.v.), a flattened assemblage of adherent cilia, like the plates of  (q.v.): such are arranged in a series in the adoral wreath of the Heterothrichaceae Oligotrichaceae and Hypotrichaceae and constitute the posterior girdle of Peritricha.