Fiction with truthfulness is unsuited

I took this photograph in Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Verse 200 in Milton's Paradise Lost

..., or that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream.

The Skeleton of a Sperm Whale

Very like a whale

Bodleian Libraries, 18 Octuber 2019 // 5 January 2020
This display marked 200 years since the birth of Herman Melville

Extracts (Supplied by a sub-sub librarian)
The sub-sub librarian of Melville suggests to the reader of Moby Dick that a whale is not just one thing but lots of different things to different people.