him,--and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions
of his respondent,--that Nature might have stood up and said,--'This man is
eloquent.'--In short, whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the
question, 'twas hazardous in either case to attack him.--And yet, 'tis
strange, he had never read Cicero, nor Quintilian de Oratore, nor
Isocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus, amongst the antients;--nor Vossius,
nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby, amongst 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 Crackenthorp
or Burgersdicius or any Dutch logician or commentator;--he knew not so much
as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad
hominem consisted; so that I well remember, 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.

To work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was,
however, perpetually forced upon;--for he had a thousand little sceptical
notions of the comick kind to defend--most of which notions, I verily
believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la
Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or
so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till another day.

I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the
progress and establishment of my father's many odd opinions,--but as a
warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such
guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into
our brains,--at length claim a kind of settlement there,--working sometimes
like yeast;--but more generally after the manner of the gentle passion,