Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that
enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are
immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in
great security, and there sleeps.”
MONTAIGNE.—_Apology for Raimond Sebond._
“Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan
described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.”
_Rabelais._
“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.”
_Stowe’s Annals._
“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.”
_Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms._
“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received
nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible
quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.”
_Ibid._ “_History of Life and Death._”
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.”
_King Henry._
“Very like a whale.”
_Hamlet._
“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art
Mote him availle, but to returne againe
To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart,
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine.”
_The Fairie Queen._
“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful
calm trouble the ocean till it boil.”
_Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert._
“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned
Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, _Nescio quid
sit_.”
_Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the
Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E._
“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail
He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.
* * * * *
Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears,
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.”
_Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands._
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or
State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.”
_Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan._
“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat
in the mouth of a whale.”
_Pilgrim’s Progress._
“That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.”
_Paradise Lost._
————“There Leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, in the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.”
_Ibid._
“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil
swimming in them.”
_Fuller’s Profane and Holy State._
“So close behind some promontory lie
The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,
And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,
Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”
_Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis._
“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his
head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it
will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.”
_Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchass._
“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in
wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders.”
_Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa.
Harris Coll._
“Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to
proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their
ship upon them.”
_Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation._
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N. E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * *
Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable. * * *
They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale,
for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. * * *
I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of
herrings in his belly. * * *
One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in
Spitzbergen that was white all over.”
_A Voyage to Greenland, A. D._ 1671.
_Harris Coll._
“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one
eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was
informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of
baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.”
_Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross._
“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this
Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was
killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.”
_Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas.
Phil. Trans. A. D._ 1668.
“Whales in the sea
God’s voice obey.”
_N. E. Primer._
“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those
southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the
northward of us.”
_Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A. D._ 1729.
* * * * * “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such
an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”
_Ulloa’s South America._
“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,
We trust the important charge, the petticoat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”
_Rape of the Lock._
“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that
take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear
contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest
animal in creation.”
_Goldsmith, Nat. Hist._
“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them
speak like great whales.”
_Goldsmith to Johnson._
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then
towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the
whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.”
_Cook’s Voyages._
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so
great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to
mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,
and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to
terrify and prevent their too near approach.”
_Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and
Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.”
_Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the
French minister in_ 1778.
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”
_Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament
to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery._
“Spain——a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”
_Edmund Burke._ (_somewhere._)
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from
pirates and robbers, is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale
and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the
coast, are the property of the king.”
_Blackstone._
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”
_Falconer’s Shipwreck._
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around the vault of heaven.
“So fire with water to compare,
The ocean serves on high,
Up-spouted by a whale in air,
To express unwieldy joy.”
_Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London._
“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a
stroke, with immense velocity.”
_John Hunter’s account of the dissection
of a whale._ (_A small sized one._)
“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the
water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage
through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood
gushing from the whale’s heart.”
_Paley’s Theology._
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”
_Baron Cuvier._
“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any
till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.”
_Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of
Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery._
“In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
_Montgomery’s World before the Flood._
“Io! Pæan! Io! sing.
To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.”
_Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale._
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the
whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:
there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s
grand-children will go for bread.”