488 GREAT MYSTICETE. 



ledge of the subject, improperly cliosen, and ut- 

 terly inconsonant with the character of the things 

 intended ; by which means the description, how- 

 ever beautiful in point of language, fails in point 

 of accuracy. This is no where more strikingly 

 illustrated than in the august lines of Milton, in 

 which the description of a sleeping whale is in- 

 jured by an epithet of all others least according 

 with the nature of the animal. 



That sea-beast 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream : 

 Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 

 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.' 



" None of the cetaceous tribe are furnished with 

 scales, or any thing analogous to them. It must 

 be acknowledged however that this observation 

 may appear in no small degree hypercritical, and 

 that Milton by the expression of scaly rind might 

 only mean rough or scaly in the same sense that 

 those epithets are applied to the bark of a tree 

 or any irregular surface. There can be little 

 doubt however that real and proper scales were 

 intended by the poet ; nor is it difficult to disco- 

 ver the particular circumstance which impressed 

 Milton with this erroneous idea, viz. a figure in 

 the works of Gesner, so injudiciously expressed as 



