 - that would be flattering my
character in the other extream, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps,
it has no kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility for
some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know
how this matter really stands. - It is not impossible, but that my dear, dear
Jenny! tender as the appellation is, may be my child. - Consider, - I was born
in the year eighteen. - Nor is there any thing unnatural or extravagant in the
supposition, that my dear Jenny may be my friend. -- Friend! - My friend. -
Surely, Madam, a friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported
without -- Fy! Mr. Shandy: - Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and
delicious sentiment, which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference
of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best
French Romances; -- it will really, Madam, astonish you to see with what a
variety of chaste expression this delicious sentiment, which I have the honour
to speak of, is dress'd out.
 

                                   Chap. XIX.

I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in Geometry, than
pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father's great good sense, --
knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too, in philosophy, -
wise also in political reasoning, - and in polemical (as he will find) no way
ignorant, - could be capable of entertaining a notion in his head, so out of the
common track, - that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him, if he
is the least of a cholerick temper, will immediately throw the book by; if
mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it; - and if he is of a grave and
saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and
extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of Christian
names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial
minds were capable of conceiving.
    His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick
bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impress'd upon
our characters and conduct.
    The Hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness, -- nor had
he more faith, -- or more
