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 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