Herman Melville's Semicolons

1. Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:--The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède; Bonneterre; Demarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. [p.180]
   
   
2. But the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross; here ye! good people all,--the Greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth! (p. 181)
   
   
3. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. (p. 184)
   
   
4. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. (p. 207)
   
   
5. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to see as soon as I can. (p. 23)
   
   
6. Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a slat, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. (p. 26).
   
   
7. And as for going as a cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. (p.27)

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