Moby Dick

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this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats
and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. 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 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