In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.
科爾內(nèi)特和居維埃已經(jīng)在上章提到了。雖然哈金斯遠比他們都高強;但就全體而論,還應該算比爾的書最好。比爾對這種鯨的許多圖畫都畫得很不錯,不過,他那第二章的頭飾,在畫有各種形態(tài)的三條鯨中,居中的那一條畫得較差。他那幅畫著許多小艇在攻擊抹香鯨的卷首插圖,雖然無疑地是故意畫來激起一些空談家對于文明的懷疑,然而,就其總的效果說來,卻正確和活龍活現(xiàn)得令人嘆絕。在羅斯·布朗的若干抹香鯨的畫中,有幾幅畫得輪廓相當正確;可惜給雕刻得很不象樣。不過,這并不是他的過失。
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living hunters.
露脊鯨之畫得最好的,是斯哥斯比的略圖;可惜畫得太小,傳達不出令人滿意的印象。他只有一幅捕鯨寫生圖,不幸這幅圖畫得很差,如果畫得盡善盡美的話,光靠這么一幅畫,就可以象個活生生的捕鯨人所看到的那樣,對這條活生生的大鯨獲得一種如實的概念了。
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale.
不過,總的說來,在表現(xiàn)大鯨和捕鯨場面的畫圖中,迄今算得上最好的,應該說是法蘭西的兩幅大版畫(雖然在若干細節(jié)上并不是挺正確),它制作得很完美,是仿照一個叫做卡納里(據(jù)百周年紀念版注,作者把畫家的名字搞錯了,應該是路易·加內(nèi)雷,此人系南海老旅行家,擅長制繪海景的畫手。)的油畫制成的。那兩幅版畫分別表現(xiàn)了攻擊抹香鯨和露脊鯨的場面。