"
Forewarned of this peculiarity of Mr.
Shandy's, the reader is, of course, prepared to hear that of all
the names in the universe the philosopher had the most unconquerable
aversion for Tristram, "the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it
of anything in the world." He would break off in the midst of one
of his frequent disputes on the subject of names, and "in a spirited
epiphonema, or rather erotesis," demand of his antagonist "whether he
would take upon him to say he had ever remembered, whether he had
ever read, or whether he had ever heard tell of a man called Tristram
performing anything great or worth recording. No, he would say.
Tristram! the thing is impossible." It only remained that he should
have published a book in defence of the belief, and sure enough "in
the year sixteen," two years before the birth of his second son, "he
was at the pains of writing an express dissertation simply upon the
word Tristram, showing the world with great candour and modesty the
grounds of his great abhorrence to the name." And with this idea
Sterne continues to amuse himself at intervals till the end of the
chapter.
That he does not so persistently amuse the reader it is, of course,
scarcely necessary to say.
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