"I will lend it to you--you shall read it; and as a youthful, yet a
clever scholar--give me your opinion of it--be candid. I suppose you
have heard the trivial, foolish, spiteful objection started against a
passage I have employed in the second page?" and he takes a copy out of
his pocket and begins to read it to me until he comes to "After having
_paved_ our way up the _river_," he then enters into a long
justificatory argument, the gravamen of which was to prove, that in
figurative phrases a great latitude of expression was not only
admissible but often elegant.
I begged leave, in assenting to his doctrine, to differ from his
application of it, as we ought not to risk, by using a figurative
expression, the exciting of any absurd images or catachrestical ideas.
The author began to warm, and terminated my gentle representation by
ordering me over to leeward, with this pompous speech, "I tell you what,
sir, your friends have spent their money and your tutors their time upon
you to little purpose; for know, sir, that when progress is to be made
anywhere, in any shape, or in any manner, a more appropriate phrase than
paving your way cannot be used--send the top-men aloft to loose the
top-gallant sails."
Checked, though not humbled, I repeat the necessary orders, and no
sooner do I see the men on the rattlings, than I squeak out at the top
of my voice, "_Pave your way_ up the rigging--_pave your way_, you
lubbers." The men stop for a moment, grin at me with astonishment, and
then scamper up like so many party-coloured devils.
"Mr Rattlin, pave your way up to the mast-head, and stay there till I
call you down," said the angry lieutenant; and thus, through my love for
the figurative, for the first time I tasted the delights of a
mast-heading.