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 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, 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, ****, 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 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 natura, 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 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! Iswear 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.