An eye so full of lofty design
Admittedly, the reader will not wish to take such a phrase out of its
context, nor wholly discount how impressed Walton himself is by his
friend's intervention on his behalf. Yet at the same time the ambivalence
in diction that has surrounded the functioning of eloquence since Walton
resumed the narration (Walton 1, Walton 2 and note, and Walton
5 and note) calls attention to this
further instance of the double-entendre. "Design" may be a synonym for
"purpose," the word Walton stresses just below, at the end of this day's
entry; but it may also bear a sense of calculated histronics. The
linguistic ambivalence allows Walton and his readers, should they wish, to
derive opposite conclusions from the same evidence.
