My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which _Socrates_ is so finely painted by _Raffael_ in his school of _Athens_; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of _Socrates_ is expressed by it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming——“_You grant me_ this——and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.” So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle _Toby_ as he sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——O _Garrick!_——what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would I write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and secure my own behind it. C H A P. XLIII THOUGH man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day——was it not, brother _Toby_, that there is a secret spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle _Toby_, I take to be Religion.—Will that set my child’s nose on? cried my father, letting go his finger, and striking one hand against the other.——It makes every thing straight for us, answered my uncle _Toby_.——Figuratively speaking, dear _Toby_, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can’t prevent the shock——at least it imposes upon our sense of it. Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he was coming closer to the point——had my child arrived safe into the world, unmartyr’d in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than what GEORGE or EDWARD would have spread around it. But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——I must counteract and undo it with the greatest good. He shall be christened _Trismegistus_, brother. I wish it may answer——replied my uncle _Toby_, rising up. C H A P. XLIV