1 40 The Poets and Nature. 



But as a rule it is the whale. So too Leviathan. Though 

 sometimes a crocodile, it is generally " that sea beast which 

 God of all His works created hugest that swim the ocean 

 streams," and which 



" Hugest of living creatures on the deep, 

 Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims, 

 And seems a moving land, and at his gills 

 Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out the sea" 



Milton describes the whale as being often mistaken for an 

 island : 



" Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 

 Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell, 

 With fixt anchor in his skaly rind, 

 Moors by his side, under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea, and wished-for morn delays." 



This island idea is similarly utilised by a score of poets. 

 In another aspect Leviathan is a torpid giant of the true 

 lazy giant breed : 



" So close behind some promontory lie 

 The huge leviathans t'attend their pray, 

 And give no chase ; " 



but tremendous and tyrannical when once in motion. He 

 is then "dread Leviathan," and "tempests o'er the main 

 their terrors spread, to rock him in his bed." From his 

 "roaring nostrils" he sends "two fountains to the sky," and 

 " spouts his waters in the face of day." Sporting " on the 

 face of the calm deep," "he lashes it into foam," and woe 

 to those who "dispute his reign, and uncontrolled dominion 

 of the main." 



What manner of thing " Leviathan " was in those un- 

 evoluted times the period called (until the day of Lyell) 

 the Epoch of Diluvium and Catastrophe, the age of unlimited 

 mud it would be almost profane for us, in these puny 

 days of whales, without spirit enough in us to fish up even 



