“He had never read Cicero nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns:  and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator:  he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and an argument ad hominem consisted; and when he went up along with me to enter my name at Jesus College, in * * * *, it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor and two or three Fellows of that learned society that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools should be able to work after that fashion with them.”

Surely we all know men of this kind, and the consternation—­comparable only to that of M. Jourdain under the impromptu carte-and-tierce of his servant-maid—­which their sturdy if informal dialectic will often spread among many kinds of “learned societies.”  But such men are certainly not of the class which Scott supposed to have been ridiculed in the character of Walter Shandy.

Among the crotchets of this born dialectician was a theory as to the importance of Christian names in determining the future behaviour and destiny of the children to whom they are given; and, whatever admixture of jest there might have been in some of his other fancies, in this his son affirms he was absolutely serious.  He solemnly maintained the opinion “that there was a strange kind of magic bias which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our character and conduct.”  How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of their names have been rendered worthy of them!  And how many, he would add, are there who might have done exceeding well in the world had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus’d into nothing!  He was astonished at parents failing to perceive that “when once a vile name was wrongfully or injudiciously given, ’twas not like a case of a man’s character, which, when wronged, might afterwards 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.”  This name-giving injury, he would say, “could never be undone; nay, he doubted 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 further.”