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 indifferently 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 cherrystone 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 happen’d to be at Epsom , when it was given him,—he would ofttimes 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 anything in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum naturâ , but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the by, 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 anything 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