Herman Melville: Moby Dick

0. Introduction (continued)

"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 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.