When Melville bought an English translation of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique early in 1849, he obviously anticipated—with mock alarm—an “influence.” He wrote Evert Duyck-inck, in whose library he may have come across it earlier: “I bought a set of Bayle's Dictionary the other day, & on my return to New York I intend to lay the great old folios side by side & go to sleep on them thro' the summer, with the Phaedon in one hand & Tom Brown in the other.” It was, of course, a moment for influences, the most receptive and most productive period of Melville's life. That year, he saw Mardi and Redburn into print, and made the memorable trip to England with the MS. of White Jacket. A few months later he moved to the Berkshires, where he met Hawthorne and began work on a new book about a whaling voyage. Though we hear no more of Bayle's Dictionary we can feel sure that the program of summer reading was carried out. I shall show how pervasive were its effects on Moby Dick.