And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling.
"Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!"
Lots of good Victorian writing is like that
Charles Dickens - Any of his works
Rudyard Kipling - Remembered now for children’s books but also wrote some amazing novels and poetry for adults. He has written some pretty trippy stuff too. I remember a poem about all the structural parts of a ship talking to each other in a storm and another short story about an engineer that’s a sort of fever dream mixed with a monsoon flood at the bridge he’s building.
Oscar Wilde - e.g. The Nightingale and the Rose is a masterwork of pathos. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtm...
A lot of literature from that period paid attention to the the rhythm and flow of the sentences, if you read any of it aloud it rolls off the tongue compared to modern writing.
Similar with Count of Monte Cristo as well, the details of the Mediterranean smuggling trade it goes into is simply amazing.
(I love all of Dumas' works)
Which certainly did not improve it as a novel.