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- HWAL, _Swedish_.
HVALUR, _Icelandic_.
WHALE, _English_.
BALEINE, _French_.
BALLENA, _Spanish_.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Fegee_.
PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Erromangoan_.
EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of
a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least,
take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in
these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As
touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as
affording a glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and
generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.
Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this
world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too
rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for
ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the
Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the
royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before
are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of
long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.
Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses!
EXTRACTS.
“And God created great whales.” —_Genesis_.
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep
to be hoary.” —_Job_.
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”
—_Jonah_.
“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to
play therein.” —_Psalms_.
“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,
shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
—_Isaiah_.
“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this
monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all
incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the
bottomless gulf of his paunch.” —_Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals_.
“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:
among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as
much in length as four acres or arpens of land.” —_Holland’s Pliny_.
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a
great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the
former, one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us,
open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea
before him into a foam.” —_Tooke’s Lucian_. “_The True History_.”
“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,
which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he
brought some to the king.... The best whales were catched in his own
country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He
said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.”
—_Other or Other’s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King
Alfred, A.D._ 890.
“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 Purchas_.
“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....