“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 FAERIE QUEEN.
“Immense as whales, the motion of
whose vast bodies can in a
peaceful calm trouble the ocean til 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.”
—FULLLER’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.