Though elephants have stood for their
full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated
himself for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and
significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and
afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched
line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally
impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to
preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of
the highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking
whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of
one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is
then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that
his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded
whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at
all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,
that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape.
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