⸺But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a description of his attitude;⸺otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy posture,—stiff,—perpendicular,—dividing the weight of his body equally upon both legs;⸺his eye fixed, as if on duty;—his look determined,—clenching the sermon in his left hand, like his firelock.⸺In a word, you would be apt to paint Trim , as if he was standing in his platoon ready for action.—His attitude was as unlike all this as you can conceive.
He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the horizon;—which sound orators, to whom I address this, know very well to be the true persuasive angle of incidence;—in any other angle you may talk and preach;—’tis certain;—and it is done every day;—but with what effect,—I leave the world to judge!
The necessity of this precise angle, of 85 degrees and a half to a mathematical exactness,⸺does it not show us, by the way, how the arts and sciences mutually befriend each other?
How the duce Corporal Trim , who knew not so much as an acute angle from an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;⸺or whether it was chance or nature, or good sense or imitation, etc. , shall be commented upon in that part of the cyclopædia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar, the coffeehouse, the bedchamber, and fireside, fall under consideration.
He stood,⸺for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in at one view, with his body swayed, and somewhat bent forwards,—his right leg from under him, sustaining seven-eighths of his whole weight,⸻the