ExtractsE X T R A C T S.(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 VaticansVaticans: great libraries, such as the Vatican's in Vatican City 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 promiscuouslypromiscuously: diversely; unsystematically. said, thought, fancied, and sung of LeviathanLeviathan: biblical sea creature, not necessarily a whale. Throughout "Extracts," Melville consistently capitalizes "Leviathan," even though the word appears in his source, the King James Bible, only in lower-case. In the rest of his novel, Melville uses the word 109 times (in 37 chapters), capitalizing it only 58% of the time. Both upper and lower-case spellings appear in ten of the 37 chapters. The British edition of Moby-Dick shows no evidence of regularizing the spelling., 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 TuileriesHampton Court and the Tuileries: royal residences in London and Paris. for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mastroyal-mast: highest part of the mast. with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavensseven-storied heavens: in Jewish and Islamic traditions, Heaven has seven levels., and making refugees of long-pampered
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your comingGabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming: three principal archangels. Here, "against" means preparing for.. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!E X T R A C T SExtracts: Melville assembled this collection of quotations from works he consulted while writing Moby-Dick. The British edition places both “Etymology” and “Extracts” as an appendix at the end of The Whale; it also omits the epilogue (in which Ishmael tells of his survival).
One explanation for the placement of these two sections as an appendix is that Melville sent these pages to England some time after sending the the bulk of the novel's text, and after the British printer had already set the opening pages. Scholars also speculate that the epilogue may have been inadvertently dropped when “Etymology” and “Extracts” were appended (see NN Moby-Dick, 677–80). According to NN editor G. Thomas Tanselle, Melville fashioned “Extracts” by borrowing directly from sources, but also indirectly by quoting source quotations as they appeared in other books, in particular Beale’s Natural History of the Sperm Whale, J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, John Harris’s Compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels, and Charles Richardson’s New Dictionary of the English Language (NN Moby-Dick, 813–30).
The wordings of some extracts vary from their original sources, either due to errors in transcription or because Melville revised them intentionally. MEL's reading text retains such source variants, marking them in bold and correcting only those that if left unemended might confuse readers. All variants—i.e. Melville's putative errors and revisions—are discussed where they occur in MEL's "Extracts" annotations, which draw upon, update, and augment source scholarship found in the NN explanatory notes..“And God created great whales.”GenesisGenesis: First book of the Hebrew Bible, recounting the creation, the temptation of Adam and Eve, Cain's murder of Abel, and the flood. See Genesis 1:21..“LeviathanREVISION NARRATIVE: Leviathan maketh // Comparing his power to Leviathan, the Lord concludes, “He maketh a path to shine after him” (Job 41:32). Melville revises "He" to "Leviathan." maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary.”JobJob: In this book of the Hebrew Bible, Satan claims that Job, without his wealth, would reject God, and God afflicts Job to test his faith..“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”JonahJonah: In the book of Jonah (1:17) in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Jonah takes to the sea to avoid delivering God's awful message of destruction to the Ninevites. God has a "great fish" swallow Jonah and later vomit him back onto land. See also "The Sermon" (Ch. 9). .“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.”PsalmsPsalms: A collection of 150 songs of praise in the Hebrew Bible. See Psalm 104:26. See also Extract 13, "Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms," below..“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.”IsaiahIsaiah: Prophetic book in the Hebrew Bible; the extract is from Isaiah 27:1..“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 MoralsHolland’s Plutarch’s Morals: Philemon Holland (1532-1637) was the prolific British translator of Greek and Latin classics. The Greek biographer, historian, and essayist Plutarch (49-119 CE) wrote a compendium of reflections on Greek and Roman life and manners titled Moralia (ca. 100 CE). Holland published his English translation of Plutarch’s Morals in 1603..“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balæne, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land.”Holland’s PlinyHolland’s Pliny: For Holland, see above. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) published his Naturalis Historia in 77 CE. Holland’s English translation, titled The Historie of the World, but known as The Natural History of Pliny, appeared in 1601.
See http://penelope.uchicago.edu/holland/index.html..“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the seaREVISION NARRATIVE: monsters of the sea // Tooke's original wording, “monsters of the deep,” is changed in the American version, and probably by Melville, to “monsters of the sea.", appeared. Among the former, one was of
a most monstrous sizeREVISION NARRATIVE: a most monstrous size // Tooke's original “enormous size” appears here as “monstrous size.” The change may be the result of a printer's "eye-skip"; that is, he confused the original "enormous" with "monsters" in the line directly above and came up with "monstrous." Or, Melville may have made the change, which underscores monstrosity in the extract.. * * This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.”Tooke’s Lucian.Tooke’s Lucian: Cleric, historian, and writer William Tooke (1744-1820) translated the works of Greek satirist Lucian in his two-volume Lucian of Samosata in 1820. Lucian (125-ca. 180 CE) composed highly-popular prose fantasies and mock dialogues lampooning society and philosophers."The True History.”The True History: Tooke calls Lucian's fantastical two-part series of tall tales "the prototype of all the Voyages Imaginaires" (2.79n), such as Gulliver's Travels and Munchausen's tales. The extract is taken from an episode in which the narrator is swallowed by a 300-mile long whale whose belly holds a forested and populated island.“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 narrative taken downfrom his mouth by King Alfred. A. D. 890.Other or Octher: This Norwegian chieftain (more commonly known as Ohthere or Ottar) presented a “verbal narrative” of his travels to English King Alfred (849-899), who commissioned a ca. 890 Anglo-Saxon translation, which later appeared in Haklyut’s 1589 compendium. However, Melville found this passage in J. Ross Browne's 1846 Etchings of a Whaling Cruise. Scoresby recounts the same episode of Ohthere's taking sixty whales in two days but is skeptical that such a small crew could take so many whales in so little time, arguing instead that a mistranslation had led to a confusion of whales for dolphins. (See his Account of the Arctic Regions, vol. 2, ch. 1, pp. 7-8.)“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.Montaigne.—Apology for Raimond Sebond.: Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French philosopher and author of Essais (1580). In “Apology for Raymond Sebond”—considered his finest essay—Montaigne defends Christian skepticism. Melville made only routine modifications to clarify this passage, which he took from Hazlitt’s 1842 edition of Montaigne's writings. He added the parenthetical “(whale’s)” after “monster’s” and replaced “this little fish” with its antecedent “the sea-gudgeon.” He also added “And” at the beginning.“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.Rabelais: François Rabelais (ca. 1490-1553) was a French monk, scholar, and physician. The passage is from Book 4, Ch. 33 of Gargantua and Pantagruel (originally in 4 vols., 1532-1552), an erudite, satrirical, vulgar, often grotesque work ranging from philosophical novel to epic parody.“This whale’s liver was two cart-loads.”Stowe’s AnnalsStowe’s Annals: John Stow(e) (1525-1605) wrote The Chronicles [later Annales] of England from Brute unto this Present Yeare of Christ. 1580. Melville based this extract on information in Stow’s entry for 9 July 1574..“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.”Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms: Philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam, 1561-1626). The extract is from lines 91-92 of Psalm 104 in his 1625 Translation of Certaine Psalmes into English Verse. Melville calls Bacon’s slim collection of six psalms a “Version of the Psalms," and, indeed, Bacon’s 60 couplets for Psalm 104 are an adaptive revision of the King James Version’s 35 lines. The lines selected from Bacon, which stress the whale’s fury, are the same reprinted from the biblical version that depicts the whale at "play" in the fourth Extract, above.“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."Ibid. History of Life and Death: Ibid. is the standard but now rarely used Latin abbreviation in bibliography for "ibidem," which refers the reader to the previously cited source, but in this case, Melville means only the author, Bacon. The source cited here, History Naturall and Experimentall of Life and Death (1638), originally appeared as Historia Vitae et Mortis. The two sentences in the extract are drawn from items 48 and 41, respectively, in Topic 3, featuring the life expectancy of animals.“The sovereignest thing on earth isREVISION NARRATIVE: is // In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Hotspur complains to Henry of a perfumed and dandified “lord,” who has spoken to him indifferently of the dead on the battlefield, and who has advised him on how to dress a deep wound, saying “the sovereignest thing on Earth / Was parmacety for an inward bruise” (Act 1, Sc. 3, ll. 59-60). Melville’s revision of “Was” to “is” in his extract universalizes the remedy. The lord also appears, in Hotspur’s words, as “Fresh as a bridegroom,” a description echoed in Melville’s treatment of newly-washed whalemen, “fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms” in “Stowing Down and Clearing Up” (Ch. 98). parmacetti for an inward bruise.”King HenryKing Henry: Henry the Fourth, Part 1, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was written in 1596..“Very like a whale.”HamletHamlet: In Shakespeare's tragedy, written in 1599 or 1600, Polonius contemplates a cloud to humor the prince, in Act 3, Sc. 2, l. 382..“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s artMote him availle, but to returne againeTo 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 QueenREVISION NARRATIVE: The Fairie Queen // In Book VI of the 1590 allegorical epic,The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser (1552/53-1599), Sir Calidore feels the pain of his love for Pastorella, which like a stinging dart cannot be cured unless he returns to her, like a wounded whale beaching itself. In Melville’s extract, taken from Canto 10, stanza 31, three key words have been changed. Spenser’s original “Which to recure” (meaning to remedy or restore) appears as “Which to secure”; “lovely dart” (like Cupid’s love arrows) becomes “lowly dart,” and “from the maine” (or sea) becomes “thro’ the maine.” The editors of the NN Moby-Dick (818) “correct” these changes to reflect Spenser’s original, as reprinted in Melville’s actual source, the article on "Whale" in Richardson’s New Dictionary. But since the variants are not indisputable errors or confusing, MEL retains them, noting here their problematic status as either misquotation or revision..“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.Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert: Playwright and poet laureate William D’Avenant (1606-1668), wrote the epic poem Gondibert (1651), which, in four-line stanzas, depicts the complicated loves of two privileged couples in Britain and France. Melville draws his extract from the poem’s prose Preface, which explains D'Avenant's poetics in combining epic and dramatic forms (analogous to Melville's attempts in Moby-Dick) and discusses the politics of the English Civil War. (The Preface is dedicated to D’Avenant’s “Honour’d Friend Mr. Hobs,” the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose treatise Leviathan is also extracted below.) Melville’s accurate quotation is taken out of context from D’Avenant’s more particularized observation regarding military leaders’ envious but disapproving view of statesmen as “immense as Whales.” Melville marked this line with a marginal check in his copy of The Works of Sr William D’Avenant Kt (1673), which he procured during his 1849 trip to London and read during his 1850 passage home. The volume’s marginalia also suggest Melville returned to D’Avenant as he composed Clarel, his own epic poem of 1876. See Steven Olsen-Smith and Dennis Marnon, “Melville’s Marginalia in The Works of Sir William D’Avenant: A Transcription. Leviathan 6.1 (March 2004): 79-102. See also MMO.“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hofmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.”Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and theSir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), writer on science, medicine, religion, and esoterica, is mentioned by name in "Cetology" (Ch. 32) and quoted in the epigraph to "The Pequod meets the Rose-Bud" (Ch. 91). Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, addressing false beliefs, was better-known as Vulgar Errors; hence, Melville’s “Vide” citation “V. E.” (See https://penelope.uchicago.edu/pseudodoxia/pseudo326.html#note1.) In Melville’s extract, from Book 3, Ch. 26, Browne draws upon the work of the “learned Hofmannus,” or German physician Caspar Hofmann (1572-1648), whose Latin statement means “I do not know what it is.” Both Browne and Hofmann seem to doubt the folk belief that spermaceti, the oil from the sperm whale's head, is semen or what Browne calls "seminal humor" and Ishmael calls “quickening humor” in "Cetology" (Ch. 32). Evidently, Melville misread “Hofmannus” as “Hosmannus,” and the error, appearing in both American and British editions, has been corrected in NN, Longman, and MEL.
Like writers of the Romantic period, in particular Charles Lamb, Melville was drawn to Browne for his style, rationalism, and metaphysics. In February 1848, he borrowed a copy of the 1836 Wilkin edition of Sir Thomas Browne’s Works (Sealts 89) from Evert Duyckinck, and his reading of Browne is evident in the 1849 Mardi (Foley 266-270). During his visit to London the following year, he purchased a 1686 folio edition of the Works (Sealts 90) for his own library. Melville's "Hosmannus" error suggests he quoted from his own older edition rather than a modernized source because in seventeenth-century typography the letter "f" and the "long-s" are easily confused. For further instances of Browne’s influence, see extract from Thomas Edge, below, and the note on “Trumpa whale” in Ch. 32.Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E.“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flailREVISION NARRATIVE: modern flail // Waller's original wording, "iron flail,” based on Spenser’s “yron flale” in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene (see Waller’s Battle, below), appears as "modern flail” in both the American and British editions. Taking this change to be a printer’s error, the editors of the NN Moby-Dick emend their reading text to Waller’s original “iron flail.” However, the implied modernity of iron in Melville’s altered phrasing has a certain historical logic. As an ancient agricultural tool, the flail—a wooden pole with a smaller wooden slat dangling at one end—was used in threshing grain. However, by the sixteenth century, peasants had adapted the wooden tool for combat by substituting an iron bar for the loose wooden slat. Arguably, Talus’s “yron flale” was a powerful modern contrivance. Melville describes the “violent flailing” and “terrible flailings” of the whale’s tail, in Chs. 87 and 100, respectively, and contemplates its power to annihilate in “The Tail” (Ch. 86). Since “modern” is unlikely to be an error, MEL retains “modern flail."He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. * * * * *Their fixed jav’lins in hisREVISION NARRATIVE: his // In quoting, from Edmund Waller's "Battle of the Summer Islands," Melville brought two widely separated couplets together, separated them with a line of asterisks, and altered “her” twice in the second couplet to “his” to make the possessive pronouns here and in the last line agree in gender with those in the first couplet. See also "modern flail," above. side he wears,And on his back a grove of pikes appears.”Waller’s Battle of the Summer IslandsWaller’s Battle of the Summer Islands: Edmund Waller (1606-1687), English poet and sometime royalist, sometime republican during the English Civil War, wrote this mock-heroic poem of 1645 about islanders battling over stranded whales in the Bermudas. In describing the power of the whale’s tail, Waller has borrowed from Edmund Spenser’s iron-clad and iron-like Talus, who metes out terrible justice against sinners in Book 5 of The Faerie Queene, with his “yron flale” (Canto 1, stanza 12, ll. 8-9). Waller’s original wording, “iron flail,” updates Spenser’s spelling. The change to “modern flail” in Melville’s extract may be a revision as well; see “modern flail,” above..“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.
Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan: In his Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher and prolific author on many subjects, argues that a monarch’s governmental authority derives from a “social contract” with the people. His title is derived from “leviathan” in the Book of Job (41:33). Melville’s extract—taken from Hobbes’s opening paragraph (not its first sentence)—asserts that just as God governs life through Nature, so do humans, who manufacture “Automata” such as engines and watches, create commonwealths to govern themselves. Melville echoes Hobbes’s “artificial man” in Ahab’s “constitutional condition of the manufactured man” (Ch. 47) and in his “order” that the carpenter, no mere “automaton,” make a “complete man” (Chs. 107, 108). Hobbes also wrote a reply to his friend William D’Avenant’s Preface to Gondibert (see above).“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale.”Pilgrim’s ProgressREVISION NARRATIVE: Pilgrim’s Progress // As it appears in the American version, the source of this extract is not John Bunyan’s 1678 Christian allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, but, in fact, Bunyan’s 1682 The Holy War. Melville may have corrected the attribution when he sent the additional set of "Etymology" and "Extracts" pages to England. Or a British copy-editor may have corrected the mistake for the British version. The editors of the NN Moby-Dick emend the attribution to "Holy War"; however, in keeping with its policy of not correcting Melville’s errors of fact, MEL retains Pilgrim’s Progress, calling attention to the error through this revision annotation. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin.
This misattribution aside, Melville borrowed his extract not directly from Bunyan but as he found it quoted in Henry T. Cheever’s 1849 The Whale and His Captors. In Bunyan’s Holy War, the town of Mansoul (soul of man) has been seized by Diabolus (the devil), and its too-compliant citizens have adopted a loyalty oath without hesitation, as if they were a whale swallowing a “sprat,” or tiny fish. In his description of the right whale’s method of feeding on tiny fish, Cheever paraphrases Bunyan and adds two direct quotes, though he reverses Bunyan’s original order, which is “as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale, they swallowed it without any chewing.” Melville’s extract removes Cheever’s paraphrase but retains his reverse-order quotation..
“That sea beastLeviathan, which God of all his worksCreated hugest that swim the ocean stream.”Paradise Lost.Paradise Lost: Book I, lines 200-202 of the Christian epic by John Milton (1608-1674). Melville’s source may have been Cheever’s fuller quotation (p. 52) from Milton. —— “There Leviathan,Hugest of living creatures, in the deepStretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,And seems a moving land; and at his gillsDraws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.”IbidREVISION NARRATIVE: Extract and Epigraph // In this second Extract from Paradise Lost (Book VII, ll. 412–16), Melville revised Milton. He gives “in the deep” instead of Milton’s original "on the deep” (although this may be a typo) and “his breath spouts out a sea” instead of Milton’s “his trunk spouts out a sea.” Both changes, neither one corrected by British editors, reflect Melville’s scorn (addressed in Ch. 55) for erroneous renderings of whales, which, of course, do not have “trunks” nor sleep “on” the deep. The editors of the NN Moby-Dick return Melville's wording to Milton's original; however, MEL retains the changes as an instance of Melville's adaptive revision of Milton. In addition, Melville’s British editor used Melville’s modified passage as an epigraph appearing on the title page of each of the British edition’s three volumes. (The American edition has no epigraph.) To view Melville’s revised Miltonic passage as both Extract and Epigraph, click the thumbnails in the right margin.. “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.Fuller’s Profane and Holy State: The Holy State, and the Profane State (1642, 1648, 1652, 1663) was a popular collection of character sketches and short biographies of historical figures, by English clergyman, sermonizer, and historian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661).
Melville’s extract is taken from Book 2, Ch. 21, which paints an optimistic portrait of “The good Sea-Captain” type, who like all sailors, Fuller implies, is necessarily mindful of God’s gifts. Melville had already extracted an epigraph from this chapter for his 1850 White-Jacket, a sentence that urges us to “conceive” of a well-appointed captain of a man-of-war and “see how he acquits himself.” In light of Melville’s sea narratives, none of the captains he served under acquitted themselves well, and the epigraph is particularly ironic in White-Jacket. The wording for the Fuller extract in Moby-Dick is from James Nichols’s modernized edition of 1841, which Melville borrowed in April 1849 from Evert Duyckinck (Sealts 221). Nichols emended Fuller’s original text to follow the more accessible, regularized grammar and “orthography” of the London edition of 1663 (p. xiii); in doing so, Nichols also altered Fuller’s original “whales who swim” to the “whales which swim” phrasing that Melville quotes.“So close behind some promontory lieThe huge Leviathans to attend their prey,And give no chace, but swallow in the fry,Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.”Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis: John Dryden (1631-1700), England’s first Poet Laureate, was the pre-eminent poet and literary critic of his time. His poem Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666 commemorates English naval victories and the Great Fire of London, all occurring in 1666. Dryden adopted the four-line stanza from D’Avenant’s Gondibert (cited above). Melville’s extract, stanza 203, imagines the English fleet devouring their foes, like whales feeding on “fry” or new-born fish. For a similar image, see the extract erroneously cited as “Pilgrim’s Progress,” above. Melville quotes accurately from an unidentified edition, similar to the 1854 Routledge edition that he gave to Sarah Morewood (Sealts 191), which modernizes Dryden’s spelling and uses “to attend” instead of Dryden’s metrically correct elision “t’attend.”“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 foot water.”Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchass.Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchass: Edge (1587/88-1624) was an English merchant, sealer, and whaler, whose narrative first appeared in Samuel Purchas’s collection of voyages, Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625). However, the wording of Melville’s extract more precisely matches Edge’s text as reprinted in John Harris’s 1705 collection of travel narratives (see Herbert extract, below). Some typographical patterns in Melville’s extract—his spelling of “aground” as one word and use of words not numbers for 12 and 13—suggest that he consulted both sources. One irregularity is that both American and British versions of the extract give “feet water” instead of the Purchas and Harris wording, “foot water.” Because “feet” may be a typo, and would appear incorrect if left to stand, the NN edition emends to “foot,” as do Longman and MEL.
Melville made his first acquaintance with Thomas Edge in Thomas Browne’s chapter on “Sperma-Ceti” in Vulgar Errors, extracted above, though the evidence appears later in “Cetology” (Ch. 32). In that chapter, Ishmael reports that the sperm whale is “among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale.” By “English of old,” Melville is referring to old Thomas Browne, who identifies the sperm whale as “the Trumpa . . . according to the account of our Greenland describers in Purchas” [meaning the even older Thomas Edge]. Using the index to Harris’s collection to find all references to “whale” (Gretchko 309), Melville found “Trumpa,” which enabled him to identify Thomas Edge as one of Browne’s “Greenland describers in Purchas” and thereby quote Edge in this extract and later refer to him as an Englishman “of old” in Ch. 32. For Melville’s further use of Browne and Edge in his cetological research, see “Trumpa whale” in Ch. 32.“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.Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.: Sir Thomas Herbert recorded his travels as England’s ambassador to Persia in Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique (1638); however, Melville drew this precisely quoted extract from Harris’s differently worded version. John Harris (1666-1719)—clergyman, scientist, historian, and member of the Royal Society—assembled in 1705 his two-volume “compleat collection” of over 600 travel narratives—titled Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca—to trace “the rise and progress of the art of navigation.” Melville’s use of the Harris Collection is explicit in "Extracts" and evident in unattributed information found elsewhere in the novel (Gretchko). For instance, Herbert’s observation, following directly after Melville’s extracted passage—that whales “engender by applying Belly to Belly, and bring forth but one at a Birth, like Elephants”—appears in Ishmael’s footnote in “The Grand Armada” on whale procreation and their “producing but one at a time” (Ch. 87).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.Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation: Willem Corneliszoon Schouten (1567?-1625), Dutch navigator, named Cape Horn after his home town and discovered its “Drake Passage” between the Atlantic and Pacific during his only circumnavigation. The English version of his Dutch Journael—The Relation of a Wonderfull Voiage made by Willem Cornelison Schouten of Horne (1619)—first appeared in Purchas, but Melville read it in the Harris collection (see Herbert, above), which lists it as the sixth historical circumnavigation. The extracted passage (Harris 1.38) is exact except for a deleted reference to Penguins.“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. 1671A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671: The original excerpts for this extract are from Friedrich Martens, Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland . . . 1671, as it first appeared in Tancred Robinson’s An Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries to the South and North (London 1694). However, as with the previous extracts, Melville’s wording corresponds to the version of Martens found in Melville's stated source, the Harris collection (see above). Melville made two significant changes to the Harris version. In the second excerpt, he substituted “the whale” for Martens’s original “he” and, in the fourth excerpt, “Shetland” for “Hitland.” Hypothesizing that the change to “Shetland” may have been due to a misreading of Melville's handwriting, the NN editors emend their text to Martens’s “Hitland.” However, since "Hitland" is a now-obsolete Dutch name for "Shetland," Melville may have revised for clarity; therefore, MEL makes no change. The third excerpt’s reward of a “ducat” for the “first discoverer” of a whale prefigures, and may have suggested to Melville, Ahab’s use, in “The Quarter-Deck” (Ch. 36), of a gold coin or doubloon to stimulate vigilance in the search for Moby Dick..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 Pitfirren.”Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross.Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross: Scottish physician, geographer, and whale taxonomist Sir Robert Sibbald (1641-1722) authored The History Ancient and Modern of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross (1710). The passage is extracted from Part 4, sec 1 with only minor changes. Melville inserted “(Fife)” and changed Sibbald’s “foot” and “beside” to “feet” and “besides,” respectively. Melville’s misspelling, “Pitferren” has been corrected to “Pitfirren” in NN, Longman, and MEL. Melville’s ancestors on his father’s side hailed from Fife, and Sibbald’s History was likely in the family’s library (see note in Ch. 55 on “Prodromus whales”)."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 Stafford’s Letter from the Bermudas.Richard Stafford’s Letter from the Bermudas: The extract is from a letter by a “Mr. Richard Stafford” printed in a 1668 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. However, Melville may have found the passage quoted in his copy of Beale. Melville also made several small changes with significant impact. He changed the original’s “Myself, and about twenty others” and “we” to the first person singular “Myself” and “I,” respectively, and Stafford’s reference to whales (“their”) from plural to singular (“his”). In short, the revisions singularize the conflict to one whaler and one whale, thereby prefiguring Ahab’s personal quest and Moby Dick’s particular fierceness. Both the American and British editions identify the letter writer as “Strafford”; the NN, Longman, and MEL editions correct to “Stafford.”Phil. Trans. A. D. 1668.“Whales in the seaGod’s voice obey.”N. E. Primer.N. E. Primer: The New England Primer, first published in 1687, was a widely-used introduction to reading; most of its selections were from the King James Bible. Melville’s signature in his own copy (an 1830s reprint; Sealts #384), in which this passage appears on p. 13, is dated March 6, 1851.“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.Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe. A. D. 1729.: A seventeenth-century English buccaneer and naturalist, William Ambrosia Cowley mapped the Galápagos Islands during a 1683-86 circumnavigation under several captains and published his Voyage round the Globe in a 1699 compendium edited by William Hacke and printed by John Knapton. However, the wording and late dating (“1729”) of this extract identifies it as coming from Vol. 4 of A Collection of Voyages, published by John and James Knapton (see Gretchko, 304), which also includes narratives by buccaneers William Dampier and his friend Lionel Wafer; see also Bercaw #176 and 187a. Melville’s extract removes eighteen words from Cowley’s original and changes his “these” to “those.” Although Cowley does not reappear in Moby-Dick, Ishmael refers to Dampier in “The Affidavit” (Ch. 45), where he offers an anecdote from Wafer. * * * * * “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smellREVISION NARRATIVE: an insupportable smell// Ulloa (see below) uses this phrase twice, to describe first guano (2.101) and then the green vomit (not breath) of a kind of armored catfish (not whale) called “cope” (2.331-332), and never in relation to whales. Although Ulloa records several whale sightings, describing, for instance, their playful behavior (2.308) and how spouting whales at a distance appear to be breakers (2.234), Melville chose not to adapt these veracious observations into his concocted extract but instead dwells on the "insupportable" notion that the whale’s “breath” (i.e. spout) smells so strong as to induce mental disorder. For similar mystifications, see Ishmael’s discussion of the whale’s spout in “The Fountain” (Ch. 85)., as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”Ulloa's South America.Ulloa's South America: Melville's extract is from the two-volume 1758 London version of the 1749 Voyage to South-America by Spanish naval officer and scientist Antonio de Ulloa (1716-1795). With the exception of "an insupportable smell" (see Revision Narrative above), the quotation is fabricated.“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.Rape of the Lock: The Roman Catholic and satirical poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) wrote the mock-heroic “The Rape of the Lock” (final form 1717), based on an actual event, the surreptitious cutting of a lock of a lady’s hair. In researching sources for his whale and whaling references in "Extracts," Melville read works that, like Pope’s satiric epic, mixed genres (see Rabelais and Waller, above), which may have inspired Moby-Dick’s experiments in mixing such literary forms as fiction, drama, natural history, and meditation. In Pope’s original, the lady’s petticoat is not “stuffed” but “stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” By “ribs,” Pope means the flexible slats of “whalebone” from the mouths of baleen whales, which were used commercially for corsets and hoop skirts; see “Cetology” (Ch. 32). In the British version, “stuffed” appears as “stiff,” and thereby restores Pope’s wording. That Melville made the change seems likely, especially given Ishmael’s further discussion of the use of baleen as “stiffening contrivances” in women’s wear in “The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View” (Ch. 75). However, since the word “stuffed” works metrically and semantically, it may be a revision of Pope rather than an accident, with interpretive consequences; that is, the petticoats are stuffed, like the pretentious ladies wearing them. Assuming that “stuffed” was a mis-transcription of Melville’s handwritten “stiff” and that Melville (not an editor) made the restoration, the NN editors emend their text to “stiff.” But since such a mixing of versions obscures the possibility of revision, MEL retains “stuffed,” noting the editorial options here.“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. His.Goldsmith, Nat. His.: The History of the Earth and Animated Nature, a highly popular book by Anglo-Irish playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), first appeared in 1774. However, Melville’s extract combines the opening sentences of two paragraphs in ”Of the Whale” from an 1807 abridgment “by Mrs. Pilkington.” In "Monstrous Pictures of Whales" (Ch. 55), Melville also refers to this specific abridgment and scorns its engraving of a whale as “an amputated sow.” The extract gives “contemptible in” instead of Goldsmith’s “contemptible by.”“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales.”Goldsmith to JohnsonREVISION NARRATIVE: Goldsmith to Johnson // Melville’s extract is not a direct quotation but an adaptive revision of a conversation between Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith and English lexicographer and essayist Samuel Johnson, as recorded by Scottish biographer James Boswell in an April 1773 entry in his Life of Samuel Johnson. Goldsmith remarked that to ”write a good fable”—such as the one about the little fishes who envy the flight of birds—one must have the characters “talk like little fishes.” The observation made Johnson laugh, either over the absurdity of fish speaking or Goldsmith’s attempt to give them voice. Thinking he was being ridiculed, Goldsmith responded: “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.” Goldsmith’s retort teases and admires: Johnson was a gifted writer and a large man, and both features are hinted in Goldsmith's play on "whales" and in Boswell’s “small caps” form of the word whales. Melville’s revision compresses Goldsmith’s original concern—the writing of a good fable—with the problem of giving voice to animal characters. By substituting “speak” for “talk” and adding “great” to modify his lower-case “whales,” he also de-contextualizes Goldsmith’s famous line and generalizes the anecdote into a statement on creating a narrative. See, for instance, Ishmael’s line “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” in “The Fossil Whale” (Ch. 104), as well as the revision narrative on "huge quarto edition of Johnson" in the same chapter..“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.Cook's Voyages: Captain James Cook (1728-1779), famed British naval officer and cartographer, made three voyages of exploration to the Pacific, and his narratives first appeared in the three-volume A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean of 1784. However, Melville’s extract, titled “Cook’s Voyages,” quotes from the 1790 six-volume Collection of Voyages round the World . . . Containing a complete historical account of CAPTAIN COOK’S VOYAGES (Bercaw 159). The only variations in the extract, taken from Cook’s third and final voyage, are Melville’s omission of “about one o’clock” (after “afternoon”) and “first” (before “supposed”), and the revision of “fish” for the second iteration of “whale” (Vol. 5, 1869). Cook’s “Asiatics” are inhabitants of the Pacific shores of Russia.“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-stoneREVISION NARRATIVE: lime-stone // Melville’s word “lime-stone,” appearing in both American and British editions, is “brimstone” in the original von Troil source (see below) and is a likely mis-transcription on Melville’s part. The editors of the NN Moby-Dick emend “lime-stone” to “brim-stone,” adding a hyphen to von Troil's "brimstone." MEL makes no change but records the differences here., 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 andUno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772: Melville’s slightly modified extract is from Letter 12 of in the 1780 Letters on Iceland by Swedish naturalist Uno von Troil (1746-1803), who later became archbishop of Uppsala. Swedish botanist Daniel Solander (1733-1782), friend and assistant of renowned naturalist and explorer Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), sailed with von Troil around the world (1768-1771) on the bark Endeavour under Captain James Cook (see above). Soon after their return, the three naturalists made their 1772 collecting trip to Iceland and the Outer Hebrides, as recorded in von Troil’s Letters. The first sentence of Melville’s extract rewrites the von Troil original—“The Icelanders, however, seldom venture to attack the larger ones, as their boats are small, and they unprovided with instruments proper for that purpose”—and converts “ones” to “whales.” Melville also substitutes “lime-stone” for von Troil’s “brimstone” (see Revision Narrative above).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 theThomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in 1778: Melville’s extract conflates two consecutive sentences (minus 51 words after “Nantuckois”) from Jefferson’s November 19, 1788 letter to John Hay in Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph (1829), Vol. 2, Letter 170, p. 398. Jefferson was minister to France from 1785 to 1789, and the quoted passage appears in his lengthy “observations,” intended for the French minister and “annexed” to the Hay letter; they argue for opening markets in France to the American whaling industry. Melville may be having fun with Jefferson. He capitalizes and adds a “t” to Jefferson’s properly spelled “spermaceti whale” and alludes to the ponderous annex as a “Whale Memorial.” The misdating of Jefferson’s ministerial position to “1778” might be Melville's error or part of the teasing. See also Melville’s perhaps intentional misdating of Linnaeus’s work as “1776” in “Cetology” (Ch. 32) and Stubb's tricking of the inexperienced French whalemen in “The Pequod meets the Rose-Bud” (Ch. 91). Assuming the Jefferson misdating to be an error, NN corrects the date to “1788.” Recognizing the date may be intended, MEL makes no change but instead records the discrepancy here.French minister in 1778.“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”Edmund Burke’s reference in ParliamentEdmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery: Anglo-Irish member of Parliament known as the founder of modern conservative political thought, Edmund Burke (1729-1797) made the extracted remark in his March 22, 1775 speech before Parliament in support of Conciliation with the Colonies. According to the NN editors (822), the lower-case “sir” suggests that Melville found the passage quoted this way in one or the other of his often-consulted authorities, Thomas Beale and J. Ross Browne (who excerpted Beale).to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery.“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”Edmund Burke. (somewhere.)Edmund Burke. (somewhere.): The amusingly vague attribution suggests that Melville is quoting from memory. According to the NN edition (823), a possible source, close in wording, is James Prior’s 1824 Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke (see above). Melville’s choice of this brief passage with its metaphorical comparison of country and whale prefigures Ishmael’s metaphors in “Fast Fish and Loose Fish” (Ch. 89).“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.”BlackstoneBlackstone: The 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was the best-known exposition of English law in Melville’s day. This extract, from Book 1, p. 280, which establishes that whales caught offshore are "the property of the king," is revisited in “Heads or Tails” (Ch. 90). Its wording matches Blackstone's text except that both American and British versions print "coast" rather than the original “coasts.” NN emends to the plural; MEL retains "coast.".“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspendsThe barbed steel, and every turn attends.”Falconer’s ShipwreckFalconer’s Shipwreck: Melville cites Canto 2, lines 71 and 75-76 of The Shipwreck (1762) by Scottish sailor William Falconer (1732-1769); however, he took the lines as quoted in Joseph C. Hart’s romance Miriam Coffin, or The Whale-Fishermen (1834). Curiously, the passage has nothing to do with whaling. Falconer had survived the shipwreck of the merchant ship Britannia, and his popular, book-length poem about the event was highly regarded for its nautical realism. The extracted passage is part of an episode relating the first mate Rodmond’s killing of a dolphin. James Hart modified the Falconer passage as an epigraph for his chapter on the pursuit and killing of a whale (see vol. 2, ch. 6); Hart probably omitted lines 72-74 because they relate Rodmond’s use of a three-pronged spear (and not a harpoon). Melville’s additional extract from Miriam Coffin (below) and his reference to its “Author” in “Cetology” (Ch. 32) confirm his familiarity with Hart’s romance. For evidence that Melville read Falconer’s Shipwreck directly, see “water-spout” in Ch. 40 and “Arion and the dolphin” (Ch. 83)..“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,And rockets blew self driven,To hang their momentary firesAround 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 LondonCowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London: William Cowper (1731-1800), pronounced “Cooper,” was during his lifetime one of the most widely-read English poets of the 18th century. However, “On the Queen’s Visit to London, the Night of the 17th March, 1789” was published in William Hayley’s 3-volume The Life, and Posthumous Writings, of William Cowper (1803). The American and British editions of Moby-Dick differ from Cowper’s original in the same three places: “blew” for “flew,” “fire” for “fires,” and “Around” for “Amid.” Only the second variant (“fire”) is clearly an error of transcription because it breaks the rhyme with “spires,” and MEL emends it to “fires.” The NN editors emended all three variants to Cowper’s originals, but since “blew” and “around” are arguably Melville’s revisions, MEL retains them. Cowper appears again in a list of authors in “The Try-Works” (Ch. 96)..“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity.”John Hunter’s account of the dissectionJohn Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. (A small sized one.): This observation by Scottish surgeon and anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793) first appeared in his “Observations on the Structure and Oeconomy of Whales,” published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. 77 (1787), pp. 371-450. However, Melville’s source is from Rev. William Paley’s fuller, though slightly modified quotation of Hunter, in his Natural Theology; or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), Ch. 10, p. 166. Paley (1743-1805) quotes Hunter’s concluding line on the subject—“the whole idea fills the mind with wonder”—but Melville chooses not to include this expression of their wonderment, adding only the ”an” after “with” in his extract. The fact that the following extract uses Paley’s words that directly precede his Hunter quotation confirms that Melville’s source for Hunter is certainly Paley. Hunter is mentioned in “Cetology” (Ch. 32). See also note on “the great Hunter” in “Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales” (Ch. 55). For Ishmael’s description of a whale spouting blood, see “Stubb Kills a Whale” (Ch. 61).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 TheologyPaley’s Theology: The passage is quoted verbatim from Natural Theology; or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), Ch. 10, by Rev. William Paley (1743-1805). See also the note for the previous extract..“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”Baron CuvierBaron Cuvier: Melville’s definition slightly modifies the one given by Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) in "The Class Mammalia," vol. 4 of The Animal Kingdom (1827), which reads “The Cetacea are mammiferous animals without hind feet.” Or perhaps it rephrases Cuvier’s sentence as quoted in Melville’s frequent source, the article on “Whales” in The Penny Cyclopaedia (1843): “Cuvier defines the Cetaceans to be mammiferous animals without posterior feet” (Vol. 27, p. 273). In either case, Melville removed the Latin and changed the sentence to the singular. Baron Cuvier is mentioned in “Cetology” (Ch. 32) and “The Fossil Whale” (Ch. 104) and should not be confused with his brother, the naturalist Frédéric Cuvier, as Melville does in “Moby Dick” (Ch. 41). See also “Frederick Cuvier” in Ch. 55. Melville’s only copy of the Baron’s Animal Kingdom was Vol. 10, on “The Class Pisces,” given to him, perhaps as a joke, by his younger brother Allan, on 1 January 1851, while Herman was writing his Whale (Sealts 171)..“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 ofExtending the Spermacetti Whale FisheryColnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery: Melville’s source—British naval officer, explorer, and trader James Colnett (1753-1806)—is quoted verbatim except for the deleted clause “when we made the Isle” following the word “May.” The passage is from the entry for 1 May 1793 in A Voyage to the South Atlantic . . . for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries (1798). Colnett is also mentioned in “Monstrous Pictures of Whales” (Ch. 55) and “Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales” (Ch. 56)..“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 marinerHad never seen; from dread LeviathanTo insect millions peopling every wave:Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,Led by mysterious instincts through that wasteAnd trackless region, though on every sideAssaulted 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 FloodMontgomery’s World before the Flood: James Montgomery (1771-1854), Scottish-born poet, published his long poem The World Before the Flood in 1812. But the extract is actually from Canto 2 of “The Pelican Island” from Montgomery’s The Pelican Island and Other Poems (1812). However, Melville’s source for the text is Henry T. Cheever’s The Whale and His Captors (1849), where the same lines are used as an epigraph for Chapter 8, “Atlantic Ocean Mammoths and Monsters.” Cheever’s version removes eight lines from Montgomery’s original and makes two minor changes: “Had” for Montgomery’s “Hath” and “Gather’d” for “Others.” Cheever also mistakenly attributed the lines to The World Before the Flood. Melville adopted Cheever’s changes and misattribution, and made a change of his own: “instincts” for “instinct.” Although the NN edition (824) takes the plural to be an error in transcription and restores ”instinct,” MEL retains “instincts” as possibly Melville’s intended revision and notes the difference here. Montgomery’s “Which language cannot paint,” in line 4, is echoed in “Of Monstrous Pictures of Whales” (Ch. 55) where Ishmael observes that Leviathan “must remain unpainted to the last.” Melville’s chapter title also echoes Cheever’s “Mammoths and Monsters” in his Chapter 8..“Io! Pæan! Io! sing,To the finny people’s king.Not a mightier whale than thisIn the vast Atlantic is;Not a fatter fish than he,Flounders round the Polar Sea."Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the WhaleCharles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale: These lines open “The Triumph of the Whale” — a sly jab at the Prince of Wales, later King George IV — by English poet and essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834). The poem was first published in the Examiner, March 15, 1812. According to his 1 May 1850 letter to Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Melville’s first exposure to Lamb was in the ship’s library as he crossed the Atlantic in October 1849. In his London travel journal, Melville lists having acquired “Charles Lamb’s Works (octavo)” directly from publisher Edward Moxon, and Sealts identifies The Works of Charles Lamb, A New Edition(1848) as the likely item Melville listed. (See NN Journals 144 and Sealts 315, 316.) A four-volume set, it is also Melville’s likely source for his extract..“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.”Obed Macy’s History of NantucketObed Macy’s History of Nantucket: Not counting minor omissions, after “1690” and “hill,” for the sake of brevity, this extract reproduces verbatim the wording found on p. 33 of The History of Nantucket (1835) by Obed Macy (1762-1844). Macy’s original wording is also quoted in J. Ross Browne’s 1846 Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (p. 518). Melville owned both books (Sealts 88, 345), and the omissions are his. In “The Mast-Head” (Ch. 35), Melville paraphrases another of Macy’s anecdotes concerning the sighting of whales from land, which appears two paragraphs earlier on p. 31 in Macy’s book. (See Revision Narrative “Obed Macy” in Ch. 35.) Browne, Melville’s more likely source, reproduces both of Macy’s anecdotes without alteration in an extensive block quotation In his book’s “Appendix” (pp. 517-518). Browne, who is the source of an extract below, is also mentioned in “Cetology” (Ch. 32) and “Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales” (Ch. 56)..“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 TalesHawthorne’s Twice Told Tales: This and the following extract are from Vol. 2 of Twice-Told Tales by Melville’s admired friend Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), to whom Moby-Dick is dedicated. Melville had borrowed a copy of Hawthorne’s 1837 collection of stories and sketches from Evert Duyckinck in July 1849 (Sealts 258). On January 22, 1851, Hawthorne gave Melville the entire collection in two unmatched volumes, both of which are marked with marginal checks and/or vertical lines in Melville’s hand. Both extracts appear in the second, 1842 volume (Sealts 260; see also Jonathan A. Cook’s “Introduction” in MMO), and both are check marked by Melville. This extract appears verbatim and is part of an aged fisherman’s Thanksgiving recollection of his wife from “The Village Uncle.”.“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.”IbidIbid.: Melville’s second extract from Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (see note above) is from “Chippings with a Chisel.” The sketch depicts the customers of a Martha’s Vineyard gravestone sculptor. Here, an elderly woman orders a memorial for her “ocean-buried” first love, similar to the plaques commemorating lost whalemen in “The Chapel” (Ch. 7). Ishmael’s up-beat conclusion that “we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death” echoes Hawthorne’s similar sentiment: “Every gravestone … is the visible symbol of a mistaken system,” a line also marked in Melville’s copy. Melville adapted the passage, revising Hawthorne’s “An elderly lady” to “She” and his “before” to “ago.”.“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; 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 PilotCooper’s Pilot: Except for minor changes in capitalization, Melville transcribed his extract verbatim from Ch. 17 of The Pilot; A Tale of the Sea (1823) by James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). Although best known for The Last of the Mohicans and the other novels in his Leatherstocking series, Cooper wrote more nautical fictions than land-based ones. A distinguishing feature of the right whale, also noted in “The Right Whale’s Head” (Ch. 75), is its two spiracles and double spout, which Tom in the extract identifies as “a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at.” In his discussion of the sperm whale’s single, bushy spout in “The Fountain” (Ch. 85), Ishmael mentions the phenomenon of the rainbow radiating from the spout’s mist and gives the image a metaphysical if not Christian application. The “thick mists of the dim doubt of my mind” suffused with the “heavenly ray” of “divine intuition” challenge us to regard the whale’s rainbow-emitting spout with an “equal eye” that can comprehend both doubt and belief. .“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.”Eckermann’s Conversations with GoetheEckermann’s Conversations with Goethe: Melville’s extract follows Margaret Fuller’s translation of Johann Peter Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe in the last Years of his Life (1839) verbatim, except for two differences: “papers” for “newspapers” and “whales” for “whales and sea-monsters.” Although Melville elsewhere interchanges “monster” for “whale,” his deletion of “sea-monsters” here lessens the sensationalism of the Berlin staging. Melville also cites Eckermann’s description of Goethe’s “massive chest” as an example of strength and beauty in “The Tail” (Ch. 86). In several other works and in an 1851 letter to Hawthorne, Melville alludes to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the renowned German playwright, novelist, critic, and scientist. Goethe’s characters Faust and Mephistopheles (Faust Part 1, 1808, Part 2, 1832) suggest aspects of Ahab and Fedallah..“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by a whale.”"Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale ShipNarrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex: “Stove” meaning smashed is past tense for “stave”; see Glossary. Owen Chase’s 1821 Narrative relates the sinking of the whaleship Essex by repeated attacks of a whale. In April 1851, Melville’s father-in-law Lemuel Shaw gave Melville a copy of the book (Sealts 134), and using it to lend credence to the fact that a whale can sink a ship, Melville added verbatim passages from the Narrative in “The Affidavit” (Ch. 45; see note on “the ship Essex").Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked andfinally destroyed by a large Sperm Whalein the Pacific Ocean.” By Owen Chace ofNantucket, first mate of said vessel. NewYork. 1821.REVISION NARRATIVE // Mr. Chace: The editors of the NN Moby-Dick alter Melville's spelling of “Chace” (as it appears in both American and British versions) to “Chase” (as the name appears in Chase’s book). MEL retains "Chace" since it is a variant of the name and one Melville used in annotating his copy of Chase’s book. In the title cited for this extract, Melville has dropped “Most Extraordinary and Distressing” as adjectives for “Shipwreck” and reduced the original “Spermaceti-Whale” to “Sperm Whale.” As does the NN edition, Longman and MEL supply an end-quote mark dropped after "Ocean" in the American edition.“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,The wind was piping 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 SmithElizabeth Oakes Smith: Melville’s extract is from “The Drowned Mariner,” appearing in the 1846 Poetical Writings by poet, novelist, and women’s rights activist Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893). Smith and her husband, humorist and editor Seba Smith, were active newspaper and magazine contributors in the 1840s and 1850s. The poem depicts the moment of the mariner’s drowning in a stormy sea and the “peopled home” of the dead below, echoed in various images of the drowned in Moby-Dick, in particular Ahab’s “millions of the drowned” in his vision of the seabed in “The Sphynx” (Ch. 70) and Pip’s vision as he sinks in “The Castaway” (Ch. 93). But the poem’s image of the “the phospher gleam[ing] in the wake of the whale” in the poem’s opening lines quoted here resonate with such night seascapes as in “The Spirit Spout” (Ch. 51). Melville’s wording varies from Smith's original in two places: He has “in the shrouds” rather than “on the shrouds” and “it floundered” rather than “he floundered.” Thinking it a mistranscription, the NN edition emends “in” to “on.” MEL retains both changes as possible revisions, in particular the nautically correct usage, “in the shrouds.”.“The quantity of line withdrawn from the different 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.”ScoresbyScoresby: The two passages are from Melville’s frequently used source An Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (1820), by English whaler, scientist, clergyman, and Arctic explorer William Scoresby, Jr. (1789-1857). The first passage — a conflation of two consecutive sentences from vol. 2, ch. 4, “Anecdotes illustrative of Peculiarities in the Whale-Fishery” (281-82) — records the vast expenditure of line in whale hunting and recalls “The Line” (Ch. 60). The chapter also reports that a single hunt can be as long as “three to four days” (286), which accords with the three-day chase after Moby Dick in Chs. 133-135. Chances are Melville also read the chapter’s Section 15 — on the “Dangers of the Whale” — which features “accidents and remarkable occurrences” (341) and resonates with some of Melville’s “unimaginable accidents of the fishery” (Ch. 87). The incident of a whaler snagged on a sinking whale carcass is echoed in Tashtego’s predicament in (Ch. 78; see also Vincent 265). Scoresby’s account of a bumped boatsteerer, who almost freezes to death and takes months to regain the “appearance of health” (362), prefigures castaway Pip, who never regains his sanity (Ch. 93). The case of the harpooneer — who, tangled in lines on the back of a whale, rides the whale until he is freed — anticipates Fedallah’s death in Ch. 134. That such an accident might be used dramatically is hinted in Scoresby’s footnote: “some of the story …, it must be acknowledged, borders on the marvellous” (367).
In the second passage — from vol. 1, ch. 6, “A Sketch of the Zoology of the Arctic Region” (section 1, 468) — Melville again quotes verbatim but exaggerates Scoresby’s “two to three” miles to “three to four.” The power of the whale’s tail discussed in Scoresby is developed in Melville’s “The Tail” (Ch. 86). Considered by Vincent (131) to be one of Melville’s five most frequently used sources, Scoresby is also cited by name or nickname in Chs. 32, 35, 41, 55, 56, and 103.
.“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 everything 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 commercial
point of view, of 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 possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.”Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale, 1839.Thomas Beale: Melville made minor adaptations to his extract from Beale. He pluralized “agony,” revised “sea beast” to “Sperm Whale,” altered “jaw” to “jaws,” added “him” to give “around him,” and inserted the parenthetical phrase “(as the Sperm Whale).” The NN edition alters “jaws” back to “jaw”; MEL retains “jaws” and all other variants.“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.”Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe. 1840.October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head.“Where away?” demanded the captain.“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”“Steady, sir.”“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!”“Sing out! sing out every time!”“Ay ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar she blows—bowes—bo-o-o-s!”“How far off?”“Two miles and a half.”“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands!”J. Ross Browne’s Etchingsof a Whaling Cruize. 1846.“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket.”“Narrative of the Globe Mutiny,” byLay and Hussey survivors. A. D. 1828.“Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.”Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennet.“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine thousand persons, living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.”Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in theU. S. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket.1828.“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.”“The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’sAdventures and the Whale’s Biography, gatheredon the Homeward Cruise of the CommodorePreble.” By Rev. Henry T. Cheever.“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send you to hell.”Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by hisbrother, William Comstock. Another Ver-sion of the whale-ship Globe narrative.“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of their main object, laid open the haunts of the whale.”McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary.“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West Passage.”From “Something” unpublished.From “Something” unpublished: Probably a bit of writing cut from Moby-Dick. The extract echoes wording (here in bold) in "Moby Dick" (Ch. 41), in which Ishmael discusses how the "secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen" and how Moby Dick's ubiquity is explained by the legend that the sperm whale had long ago discovered a Nor' West Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific.“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck by her mere appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air from those engaged in a regular voyage.”Currents and Whaling. U. S. Ex. Ex.“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales.”Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the crew.”Newspaper Accountof the Taking andRetaking of the Whale-shipHobomack.Newspaper Account: According to Wilson Heflin, this extract is certainly an “invention” (Herman Melville’s Whaling Years, 98). Nor would it be the only time Melville concocted “accounts” from newspapers for fictional or rhetorical ends (see Typee, Ch. 4 and Billy Budd, Ch. 29). In Typee, for instance, he had referred to a Fiji “massacre” of the crew of the “Hobomak,” and though that whale ship existed, under the spelling “Hobomok,” it was never the scene of any “bloody possession.” However, the captain of the Hobomok, Silas Jones, had written an account of his experience of the 1835 islander attack aboard the Awashonks, on which he had served as third mate. The story is a “classic in the annals of whaling” (Wilson 91). Melville might have heard the account from Jones or his Hobomok crew when they gammed with Melville’s ship Acushnet in the Galápagos in 1842. That said, the Awashonks attack did not involve “savages enrolled among the crew.” This extract detail comports more closely with events on board the Fairhaven whale ship Sharon, in 1842, while Melville was at sea. In this case, the Sharon’s abusive captain Norris had beaten to death Black sailor John Babcock. Subsequent desertions reduced Norris’s crew to seventeen. "Enrolled" among them were three islanders, who seized the ship and murdered Norris (Wilson 95-98). Melville’s conflation of the Awashonks and Sharon incidents with the ship’s name Hobomok in his “newspaper account” might be a lapse of memory; however, Melville’s consistently misspelled “Hobomak” and “Hobomack,” in Typee and Moby-Dick, respectively, suggest an intentional variance. See “Hobomack,” below.Hobomack: In using the word “Hobomack” (with an “a”) to identify the whaler Hobomok (with an “o”) as the scene of maritime violence, Melville perpetuates a variant he initiated in his first book, Typee, where he refers to the “Hobomak” (with an “a”). In fact, no mutiny or massacre occurred on the Hobomok (see “Newspaper Account,” above). The name—with various versions of each spelling (see NN Moby-Dick 829)—refers to the Wampanoag spirit of death, later associated with the Christian devil. It is also the name of a warrior and intermediary much admired by the Plymouth settlers and the namesake hero in Lydia Maria Child’s 1824 interracial novel Hobomok (Penguin Typee 316n). Since Melville’s reference is to the whale ship (spelled with an “o”) and assuming Melville’s spelling (with an “a”) is an error, the editors of the NN Moby-Dick emended Melville’s “Hobomack” to “Hobomock.” MEL, however, argues that Melville’s spelling may be intentional, especially in light of the fictive nature of the extract, and, therefore, retains “Hobomack.”“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed.”Cruise in a Whale Boat.“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.”Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman.“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.”A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone’s throw of the shore” (TierraTierra: In the American and British editions, Melville’s parenthetical insertion of “(Terra Del Fuego)” gives the Portuguese “Terra” instead of the proper Spanish, “Tierra.” Since Melville’s 1846 edition of Darwin’s classic voyage of the Beagle spells the word properly, the word “Terra” is probably a typo, and MEL corrects to “Tierra.” Del Fuego), “over which the beech tree extended its branches.”Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist.“‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the
head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Stern all, for your lives!’”Wharton the Whale Killer.“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!”Nantucket Song.Nantucket Song: These lines seem to be a conflation of two renderings of a song quoted twice in different versions in Browne’s Etchings. (See Stuart Frank, “Two Songs,” MSEx 63: 4-7.)“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and galeIn his ocean home will beA giant in might, where might is right,And King of the boundless sea.”Whale Song.