It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at _Athens_ and _Rome_, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you _in petto_, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as _Tully_’s second _Philippick_—it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.—And then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldly and incommodious to his action—so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute——hid his BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it——and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders—Oh Sirs! it has done wonders—It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. These feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, I say, where orators wore mantles——and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them—with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great style of design.—All which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of _trunk-hose._—We can conceal nothing under ours, Madam, worth shewing. C H A P. VIII DR. _Slop_ was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle _Toby_—’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed——my uncle _Toby_ had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,——Dr. _Slop_ would never have given them up;—and my uncle _Toby_ would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. _Slop_ fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his _forceps_, his _forceps_ unfortunately drew out the _squirt_ along with it.