Moby Dick

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all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the
broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes.

But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter's
portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian
Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the
sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange
creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his
own "Perseus Descending," make out one whit better. The huge corpulence
of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing
one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its
distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be
taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the
Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and
Jonah's whale, as depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of
old primers. What shall be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale
winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a descending anchor--as