________________________________________________
_ (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)
The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him
now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer
handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the
known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it
somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
"While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what
name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through
ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification
of the word, you deliver that which is not true." --HACKLUYT
"WHALE. ... Sw. and Dan. HVAL. This animal is named from roundness
or rolling; for in Dan. HVALT is arched or vaulted." --WEBSTER'S
DICTIONARY
"WHALE. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. WALLEN;
A.S. WALW-IAN, to roll, to wallow." --RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY
KETOS,_______________GREEK.
CETUS,_______________LATIN.
WHOEL,_______________ANGLO-SAXON.
HVALT,_______________DANISH.
WAL,_________________DUTCH.
HWAL,________________SWEDISH.
WHALE,_______________ICELANDIC.
WHALE,_______________ENGLISH.
BALEINE,_____________FRENCH.
BALLENA,_____________SPANISH.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,_____FEGEE.
PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE,_____ERROMANGOAN.
EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of
a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long
Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random
allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,
sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least,
take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in
these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As
touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here
appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as
affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and
generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.
Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this
world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too
rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel
poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them
bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether
unpleasant sadness--Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for
ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and
the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the
royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before
are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of
long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.
Here ye strike but splintered hearts together--there, ye shall strike
unsplinterable glasses! _
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