The probabilities are great that his moral sense prevailed, but who can tell,,,?

“Billy Budd” is a very short story, but it has a mannerism of which to the end of his life Melville could never rid himself, namely that of bringing in without rhyme or reason allusions to mythological gods, to historical and romantic characters, and to all kinds of authors.　Like many another self-educated man, Melville attached an exaggerated importance to the knowledge he had so painfully acquired and could not resist the temptation to parade it.
No one who has occupied himself with Melville has failed to notice his delight in male beauty. For example, in this novel also, too much emphasis is attached to the hero’s amazing beauty. It is this that causes everyone in the ship to love him, and it is this that indirectly brings about his tragic end.
For a long time, I have been disposed to suspect that Melville was a repressed homosexual, a type which, if we may believe what we read, was more common in the United States of his time than it is today. And reading this novel,