WOULD sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem
in Geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentle-
man of my father's great good sense,-knowing, as the
reader must have observed him, and curious too in philo-
sophy,-wise also in political reasoning,-and in polemical
(as he will find) no way ignorant,could be capable of enter-
taining a notion in his head, so out of the common track,-
that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him,
if he is the least of a choleric temper, will immediately throw
the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it;
-and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first
sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; and,
that was in respect to the choice and imposition of Chris-
tian names, on which he thought a great deal more depen-
ded than what superficial minds were capable of conceiving.
His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange
kind of magic bias, which good or bad names, as he called
them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and
conduct.
The Hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more
seriousness nor had he more faith, or more to say
on the powers of Necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,-
or on DULCINEA'S name, in shedding lustre upon them,
than my father had on those of TRISMEGISTUS or ARCHI-
MEDES, on the one hand--o r of NYKY and SIMKIN on the
other. How many CAESARS and POMPEYS, he would say,
by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered
worthy of them? And how many, he would add, are there,
who might have done exceeding well in the world, had
not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and
NICODEMUSED into nothing?
I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened)
my father would say,-that you do not heartily subscribe
to this opinion of mine,-which, to those, he would add, who
have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,-l own has an
air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;-and yet,
my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am
morally assured, I should hazard little in stating a case to
you,-not as a party in the disputer-but as a judge, and
trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and
candid disquisition in this matter;-you are a person free
from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;
-and, if I may presume to penetrate further into you,--of
a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely
because it wants friends. Your son I-your dear son,-from
whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect.-
Your BILLY, Sir!-would you, for the world, have called
him JUDAS?-Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, laying
his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,-
and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the
nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,
-Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the
name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it,
would you have consented to such a desecration of him?
0 my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper
right, Sir,-you are incapable of it;-you would have
trampled upon the offer;-you would have thrown the
temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence.
Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire,
with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me
in the whole transaction, is really noble;-and what renders
it more so, is the principle of it;-the workings of a parent's
love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis,
namely, That was your son called JUDAS,-the sordid and
treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have
accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the
end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your
example.
I never knew a man able to answer this argument.
But, indeed, to speak of my father as she was;-he was cer-
tainly irresistible, both in his orations and disputations;-
he was born an orator;--taught of God.--Persuasion
hung
upon his
lips, and the elements of Logic and Rhetoric were
so
blended up in him-and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess
at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent that
NATURE might have stood up and said,-This man is
eloquent.'-In short, whether he was on the weak or the
strong side of the question, 'twas hazardous in either case to
attack him: -And yet, 'tis strange he had never read Cicero
nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor
Longinus amongst the ancients;-nor Vossius, nor Skiop-
plus, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby amongst the moderns;-and
what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the
least light or spark of subtlety struck into his mind, by one
single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any
Dutch logician or commentator;-he knew not so much as
in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and
an argument ad hominem consisted; so that I well remem-
ber, when he went up along with me to enter my name at
Jesus College in****,-it was a matter of just wonder with
my worthy tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned
society,-that a man who knew not so much as the names of
his tools, should be able to work after that fashion with 'em.
To work with them in the best manner he could, was what
my father was, however, perpetually forced upon;-for he
had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comic kind to
defend-most of which notions, I verily believe, at first
entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la
Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for
half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon 'em,
dismiss them till another day.
I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or con-
jecture upon the progress and establishment of my father's
many odd opinions,-but as a warning to the learned reader
against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a
free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our
brains,--at length claim a kind of settlement there
working sometimes like yeast;-but more generally after
the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest,-but
ending in downright earnest.
Whether this was the case of the singularity of my father's
notions--or that his judgment, at length, became the dupe
of his wit;--or how far, in many of his notions, he might,
though odd, be absolutely right;-the reader, as he comes
at them, shall decide. All that I maintain here, is, that in
this one, of the influence of Christian names, however it
gained footing, he was serious;-he was all uniformity;-he
was systematical, and, like all systematic reasoners, he would
move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture every
thing in nature, to support his hypothesis. In a word, I repeat
it over again;-he was serious;-and, in consequence of it,
he would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw people,
especially of condition, who should have known better,
as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed
upon their child,--or more so, than in the choice of Ponto
or Cupid for their puppy dog.
This, he would say, looked ill;-and had, moreover, this
particular aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile
name was wrongfully or injudiciously given, 'twas not like
the case of a man's character, which, when wronged, might
hereafter be cleared;-and, possibly, some time or other, if
not in the man's life, at least after his death,-be, somehow
or other, set to rights with the world: But the injury of this,
he would say, could never be undone;-nay, he doubted even
whether an act of parliament could reach it: -He knew
as well as you, that the legislature assumed a power over sur-
names;-but for very strong reasons, which he could give, it
had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step further.
It was observable, that though my father, in consequence
of this opinion, had, as I have told you, the strongest likings
and dislikings towards certain names;-that there were still
numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance
before him, that they were absolutely indifferent to him.
jack, Dick, and Tom were of this class: These my father
called neutral names;--affirming of them, without a
satire,
That there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as
wise and good men, since the world began, who had in-
differently borne them;-so that, like equal forces acting
against each other in contrary directions, he thought they
mutually destroyed each other's effects; for which reason,
he would often declare, He would not give a cherry-stone to
choose amongst them. Bob, which was my brother's name,
was another of these neutral kinds of Christian names, which
operated very little either way; and as my father happened
to be at Epsom, when it was given him,-he would oft times
thank Heaven it was no worse. Andrew was something like
a negative quantity in Algebra with him;-'twas worse, he
said, than nothing.-William stood pretty high: -Numps
again was low with him;-and Nick, he said, was the DEVIL.
But, of all the names in the universe, he had the most
unconquerable aversion for TRISTRAM;-he had the lowest
and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the
world,-thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum
naturd, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that
in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the
bye, he was frequently involved,-he would sometimes break
off in a sudden and spirited EPIPHONEMA, or rather
EROTESIS, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above
the key of the discourse,-and demand it categorically of his
antagonist, Whether he would take upon him to say, he had
ever remembered,-whether he had ever read,-or even
whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called Tristram,
performing any thing great or worth recording?-No, he
would say,-TRISTRAM!-The thing is impossible.
What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a
book to publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots
it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,-
unless he give them proper vent: -It was the identical thing
which my father did;-for in the year sixteen, which was
two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing
an express DISSERTATION simply upon the word Tristram,
-shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the
grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.
When this story is compared with the title-page,-Will
not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?-to see
an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who though sin-
gular,-- yet inoffensive in his notions,-so played upon in
them by cross purposes;-to look down upon the stage, and
see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and
wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out
against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they
had purposedly been planned and pointed against him,
merely to insult his speculations.-In a word, to behold such
a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a
day suffering sorrow;-ten times in a day calling the child
of his prayers TRISTRAM!-Melancholy dissyllable
of
sound! which, to his ears, was unison to Nicompoop, and
every name vituperative under heaven.-By his ashes! I
swear it,-if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied
itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,-it must
have been here;-and if it was not necessary I should be
born before I was christened, I would this moment give the
reader an account of it.