Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, _Trim_, quoth my father. --If he had spared his comments, replied Dr. _Slop_, ----he would have read it much better. I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered _Trim_, but that my heart was so full. --That was the very reason, _Trim_, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. _Slop_, would take part in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has done, --as their compositions are fine; --[I deny it, quoth Dr. _Slop_]-- I maintain it, --that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world: ----But alas! continued my father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like _French_ politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field. ----’Twere a pity, quoth my uncle, that this should be lost. I like the sermon well, replied my father, ----’tis dramatick, --and there is something in that way of writing, when skilfully managed, which catches the attention. ----We preach much in that way with us, said Dr. _Slop_. --I know that very well, said my father, ----but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. _Slop_, full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased him. ----But in this, added Dr. _Slop_, a little piqued, --our sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a patriarch’s wife, or a martyr or a saint. --There are some very bad characters in this, however, said my father, and I do not think the sermon a jot the worse for ’em. ----But pray, quoth my uncle _Toby_, --who’s can this be? --How could it get into my _Stevinus?_ A man must be as great a conjurer as _Stevinus_, said my father, to resolve the second question: --The first, I think, is not so difficult; --for unless my judgment greatly deceives me, ----I know the author, for ’tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the parish. The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father constantly had heard preached in his parish-church, was the ground of his conjecture, --proving it as strongly, as an argument _à priori_ could prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, That it was _Yorick’s_ and no one’s else: --It was proved to be so, _à posteriori_, the day after, when _Yorick_ sent a servant to my uncle _Toby’s_ house to enquire after it. It seems that _Yorick_, who was inquisitive after all kinds of knowledge, had borrowed _Stevinus_ of my uncle _Toby_, and had carelessly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it, into the middle of _Stevinus_; and by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent _Stevinus_ home, and his sermon to keep him company.