I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father's great good sense, ----knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too in philosophy, --wise also in political reasoning, --and in polemical (as he will find) no way ignorant, --could be capable of entertaining 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 cholerick 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 christian names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial minds were capable of conceiving.
His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick 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 ARCHIMEDES, on the one hand--or of NYKY and SIMKIN on the other. How many CSARS 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 NICOMEDUS'D 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, --I 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 dispute, --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 farther into you, --of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your son, --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? ----O 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 he was; --he was certainly irresistible; --both in his orations and disputations; --he was born an orator; --. --Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of Logick and Rhetorick 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 antients; --nor _Vossius_, nor _Skioppius_, 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 subtilty 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 remember, 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 them.
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 comick 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 them, dismiss them till another day.
I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture 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 systematick reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture everything 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, look'd 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 wrong'd, 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 surnames; --but for very strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step farther.
It was observable, that tho' 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 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 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 happen'd 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 anything in the world, --thinking it could possibly produce nothing in _rerum natur_, 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 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 speculatist to stand single in his opinions, --unless he gives 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 tho' singular, --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 plann'd 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 _Nincompoop_, 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.
Despite my father's great good sense, he had a notion so unusual that I fear the reader, when I mention it, will immediately throw the book aside, and either laugh or condemn it as a fanciful idea. That notion concerned the choice of Christian names, on which he thought a great deal depended.
His opinion 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.
Even Don Quixote did not have 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 said about the names Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the one hand - or Nyky and Simkin on the other.
'How many Caesars and Pompeys,' he would say, 'have by mere inspiration of the names been made worthy of them? And how many are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing?'
My father would say to the sceptical: 'I admit that it may seem fanciful; and yet, my dear Sir, you are a person of good sense, free from narrow prejudice, and are too liberal to dismiss an opinion merely because it lacks friends. Your dear son, from whose sweet temper you have so much to expect - your Billy, Sir! - would you, for the world, have called him Judas? Even if offered money, would you have consented to such a desecration of him? O my God! Sir, you would have trampled upon the offer. If your son were called Judas, the treacherous idea 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, my father was irresistible; he was born an orator; - Theodidactos, taught by God. - Persuasion hung upon his lips, and Logic and Rhetoric were so blended in him, and he guessed so shrewdly 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, nor Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, Ramus or Farnaby; and what is more astonishing, he had never read one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch commentator. He did not even know the difference between an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad hominem; so that I remember, when he went along with me to enter my name at Jesus College, my worthy tutor was amazed that a man who did not know the names of his tools, should be able to work so well with them.
My father had to work with them as best he could, because he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comic kind to defend - most of which, I believe, started out as whims, mere Bagatelles; he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till another day.
I mention this, not only as a theory of the forming of my father's many odd opinions, - but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of whimsical ideas, which, allowed free entrance into our brains, at length settle, - beginning in jest, but ending in earnest.
Whether this was the case with my father's notions - whether his judgement was duped by his wit, or how far his notions, though odd, might be right - the reader shall decide. All I am saying is, that in this idea of the influence of Christian names, he was serious; he was systematical, and would move heaven and earth, and twist and torture everything in nature, to support his hypothesis.
In consequence, he would lose all patience whenever he saw people more careless about the name they gave their child, than in the choice of Ponto or Cupid for their puppy-dog.
He would say that once a vile name was injudiciously given, 'twas not like a man's reputation, which might be cleared. This injury could never be undone.
Because of this opinion, my father had the strongest likings and dislikings towards certain names. Some names were absolutely indifferent to him. Jack, Dick, and Tom were of this class: these my father called neutral names, saying that there had been many knaves and fools, as well as wise and good men, who had borne them; so that they cancelled each other out. He would not give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them.
Bob, my brother's name, was another of these neutral names; and as my father happened to be at Epsom when it was given him, he would often thank Heaven it was no worse. Andrew, he said, was less than nothing. William stood pretty high: Numps, or Humphrey, 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 opinion of it. 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 and demand whether his antagonist had ever heard of a man called Tristram performing anything great or worth recording?
'No,' he would say, - 'TRISTRAM! - The thing is impossible.'
What else could my father do other than write a book to publish this notion to the world? There is little point in having opinions without giving them proper vent. So in 1716, two years before I was born, my father wrote a Dissertation upon the word Tristram, showing the world, with great candour, the grounds of his 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 singular, was yet inoffensive in his notions; to see him baffled and overthrown in his wishes; to behold events falling out against him in so cruel a way, as if they had been planned merely to insult him. - In a word, to behold him, in his old age, ten times in a day suffering sorrow as he called the child of his prayers Tristram! Melancholy sound! which, to his ears, was equivalent to Nincompoop.
I swear, if ever malignant spirit took pleasure in crossing the purposes of mortal man, it must have been here; and if it was not necessary that I should be born before I was christened, I would this moment give the reader an account of it.
Book 1 - Chapter 19