Herman Melville - Moby Dick

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MOBY DICK;

THE WHALE

Herman Melville

A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

Moby Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville is a publication of the Pennsylvania State Uni-

versity. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind.

Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her

own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor any-

one associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the

material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any

way.

Moby Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic

Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document

File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of

literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

Cover Design: Jim Manis

The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university.

Herman Melville

MOBY DICK;

THE WHALE

Herman Melville

ETYMOLOGY.

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I

see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and gram-

mars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with

all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved

to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of

his mortality.

“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach

them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue

leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost

alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that

which is not true.” —Hackluyt

“Whale. ... Sw. and Dan. Hval. This animal is named from

roundness or rolling; for in Dan. Hvalt is arched or vaulted.”

—Webster’s Dictionary

“Whale. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger.

wallen; a.s. walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.” —Richardson’s

Dictionary

KETOS, GREEK.

CETUS, LATIN.

WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.

HVALT, DANISH.

WAL, DUTCH.

HWAL, SWEDISH.

WHALE, ICELANDIC.

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WHALE, ENGLISH.

BALEINE, FRENCH.

BALLENA, SPANISH.

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, FEGEE.

PEKEE-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 glanc-

ing 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 com-

mentator 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 sad-

ness—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

Herman Melville

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 Le-

viathan 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 mon-

strous 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 Octher’s Verbal Narra-

tive 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-gud-

geon 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 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

Moby Dick

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 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 Common-

wealth or State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial

man.” —opening sentence of Hobbe’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 Cre-

ated 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.” —Hiller’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.

Herman Melville

“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. ...

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 swift-

ness.” —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 Voy-

age Round the Globe, A.D. 1729.

“... and the breath of the whale is frequendy 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 impor-

tant 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.

Moby Dick

“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 doubt-

less the largest animal in creation.” —Goldsmith, Nat. Hist.

“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make

them speak like great wales.” —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 be-

ing 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 na-

ture 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 ac-

tive, 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 un-

erring 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.

Herman Melville

“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 veloc-

ity 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 Extend-

ing the Spermaceti Whale Fishery.

“In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and

dived, in play, in chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour, 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 re-

gion, 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! Paean! 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 observ-

ing 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.” —Obed

Macy’s History of Nantucket.

“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway

in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.”

—Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.

“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who

had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than

forty years ago.” —Ibid.

“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout;

he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish

to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!” —Cooper’s Pilot.

Moby Dick

“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Ga-

zette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.” —

Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.

“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered,

“we have been stove by a whale.” — “Narrative of the Ship-

wreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was

attacked and finally destroyed by a large sperm whale in

the pacific ocean.” By Owen Chace of Nantucket, First

Mate of said vessel. New York, 1821.

“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was pip-

ing free; Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,

And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale, As it

floundered in the sea.” —Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in

the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440

yards or nearly six English miles. ...

“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air,

which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three

or four miles.” —Scoresby.

“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks,

the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his

enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at ev-

erything around him; he rushes at the boats with his head; they

are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes

utterly destroyed. ... It is a matter of great astonishment that

the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a com-

mercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm

Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have

excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of

them competent observers, that of late years, must have pos-

sessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportuni-

ties of witnessing their habitudes.” —Thomas Beale’s His-

tory of the Sperm Whale, 1839.

“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed

than the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in pos-

sessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body,

but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these

weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and

mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dan-

gerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.”

—Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the

Globe, 1840.

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Herman Melville - Moby Dick

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