Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great
poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale,
without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time
has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross;
hear ye! good people all,--the Greenland whale is deposed,--
the great sperm whale now reigneth!
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living
sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree
succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's;
both in their time surgeons to the English South-Sea whale-ships,
and both exact and reliable men. The original matter touching
the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small;
but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly
confined to scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm whale,
scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature.
Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.
Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for
the present, hereafter to be filled in all-outward its departments
by subsequent laborers.
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