I'll address one question here, the acceptability of the pronoun 'one' in
- Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers.
Quirk, Greenbaum et al label this usage of the pronoun 'one' (they also mention others) as 'substitute one':
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language 6:55
The substitute pronoun one has the plural ones, and is used as a
substitute for a count noun, or for an equivalent nominal expression:
- I'd like a drink, but just a small one.
Substitute one can be easily combined with determiners and
modifiers:
- the old one in the kitchen
As Greybeard implies, the pronoun 'one' here sounds clumsy to modern ears. I'm not at all sure how or even whether this relates to particular antecedents. It seems rather to be related to the particular premodifier (which here must always be in an identifier, even if of a class [... I prefer to use a heavy one], not a descriptor, role).
??/*Today's high tide will be less dangerous than yesterday's one.
*John's car is not as fast as my / Jill's one.
??/*_ A cricket ball costs more than a hockey one._
??/* the Cottage one on the kitchen table.
But
- _I prefer the new car / lawnmower / Jenny / design / operating
to the old one._
It appears that possessive determiners, possessive noun constructions, and attributive nouns don't readily accept substitution by 'one'.
This has been my own opinion on the matter; thanks to Araucaria I've been introduced to the work of Baker [See, for example, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistically Annotated Corpora
By Sandra Kuebler, Heike Zinsmeister]. He claimed there was a grammaticality difference between the two sentences in
- (3) a. The student of chemistry was more thoroughly prepared than the one of physics. [example 14b in Baker 1978:415]
- b. The student with short hair is taller than the one with long hair. [example 23 in Baker 1978:419]
I wouldn't go so far as to say that (a) here is a representative of an ungrammatical cqategorycategory (and other researchers named in Araucaria's linked article come doewndown heavily against this). But certainly Baker has picked up the fact that (b) sounds far more idiomatic, more natural, than (a), and that this is a general feature of adjectival vs attributive noun modification (whether post- or pre-) of substitute one.
Other determiners, and adjectives (that, another, the previous / third, the red / light / tall / lowest / smelly / old / considerate / sophisticated / expensive / wooden / ...) all seem to work before 'one'. However, with some adjectives, it's more difficult to achieve sentences which sound natural ("I don't like Jim's three older sisters, but I'm fond of Sally ... you know, the considerate one").
The problem with Melville's sentence is that 'outline' is not an adjective but an attributive noun. Quite possibly, this usage sounded less unnatural in his day.
