One of the more puzzling images in “This Huge Leviathan” (Emblem 42) is that of whales being put to work in mills: “[S]o against their wills, / Four thousand whales are forced to draw in mills" (17–18). Pulter seems to be imagining whales turning the wheels of hydraulic mills, grinding grain into flour. Eardley notes that this image echoes lines 24–25 of Raccoons86, a poem that emphasizes the collective human effort required to accomplish monumental tasks: “Nor one alone could curb so of their wills / Four thousand whales to make them draw in mills.” 1 A marginal note in Pulter’s manuscript accompanies Emblem 21: “In Canton [a province in China] they keep 4000 whales to grind wheat and rice. In the description of the world, fol. 122.” Eardley identifies the source of this quote as The Traveler’s Breviat; Or, an Historical Description of the Most Famous Kingdoms in the World, by Giovanni Botero, which was first translated into English in 1601.2

Detail from Giovanni Botero, The Trauellers Breviat, or, An historicall description of the most famous kingdomes in the World(London: 1601), p. 122. Via Early English Books Online.

In truth, Botero wasn’t discussing whales at all: by 1603, the sentence was corrected and now read, “in Cantan [i.e., Canton] they maintaine fower [i.e., four] thousand blinde people to grinde corne and rice” (emphasis added). None of the Italian editions appear to include the same mistake, suggesting that the error was introduced in the translation process. The errata in the first English edition, a list of printer’s errors at the back of the book titled “Faults escaped,” contains no mention of the mistake. How “blind people” morphed into “whales” is unclear. One possible explanation is that the translator confused ciechi (blind people), with cetacei, the Italian word for cetaceans, the order of aquatic animals to which whales belong. See the corrected English edition and the Italian original below. Although the association of whales with grain mills in An Historicall Description is accidental, it echoes the Book of Job, in which God compares the leviathan’s heart to a millstone: “His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone” (Job 41:24; see the Curation The Leviathan and the Bible). Perhaps Pulter had this verse in mind as she composed “This Huge Leviathan” (Emblem 42).

Detail from Giovanni Botero, An Historicall Description of the most Famous Kingdomes and Common-Weales in the Worlde (London: 1603), p. 184. Via Early English Books Online.

Detail from Giovanni Botero, La Seconda Parte Delle Relationi Universali (Turin: 1601), p. 97. Public domain, via Google Books.

Footnotes