_"A Tub to the Whale"_ (Vol. viii., p. 220.).--In the Appendix B. to Sir
James Macintosh's _Life of Sir Thomas More_ is the following passage:
"The learned Mr. Douce has informed a friend of mine, that in Sebastian
Munster's _Cosmography_ there is a cut of a ship, to which a whale was
coming too close for her safety; and of the sailors throwing a tub
{305} to the whale, evidently to play with. The practice of throwing a
tub or barrel to a large fish, to divert the animal from gambols
dangerous to a vessel, is also mentioned in an old prose translation of
the _Ship of Fools_. These passages satisfactorily explain the common
phrase of throwing a tub to a whale."
Sir James Macintosh conjectures that the phrase "the tale of a tub" (which
was familiarly known in Sir Thomas More's time) had reference to the tub
thrown to the whale.