nautical language; "and certainly," says he, "as those, who in a logical disputation keep to general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in poetical description would veil their ignorance.”
Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience at last we learn as well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:
So here some pick out bullets from the side,
Some drive old okum thro’ each seam and rift
Their left-hand does the calking-iron guide,
The rattling mallet with the right they lift.
With boiling pitch another near at hand
(From friendly Sweden brought) the seams instops;
Which, well laid o'er, the salt-sea waves withstand,
And shake them from the rising beak in drops.
Some the gall'd ropes with dawby marling bind,
Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpawling coats:
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes.
I suppose there is not one term which every reader does not wish away.
