——BUT to return to my mother.
My uncle _Toby_’s opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in
_Cornelius Gallus_, the _Roman_ prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or
rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard
of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——You shall
not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself
the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her
fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was
accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns.
——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have
done the same?
From the strange mode of _Cornelius_’s death, my father had made a
transition to that of _Socrates_, and was giving my uncle _Toby_ an
abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistible:——not
the oration of _Socrates_,—but my father’s temptation to it.——He had
wrote the Life of _Socrates_[23] himself the year before he left off
trade, which, I fear, was the means of hastening him out of it;——so
that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling
a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. Not a
period in _Socrates_’s oration, which closed with a shorter word than
_transmigration_, or _annihilation_,—or a worse thought in the middle
of it than _to be—or not to be_,—the entering upon a new and untried
state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep,
without dreams, without disturbance?——_That we and our children were
born to die,—but neither of us born to be slaves._——No—there I mistake;
that was part of _Eleazer_’s oration, as recorded by _Josephus (de
Bell. Judaic)_——_Eleazer_ owns he had it from the philosophers of
_India;_ in all likelihood _Alexander_ the Great, in his irruption into
_India_, after he had over-run _Persia_, amongst the many things he
stole,—stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not
all the way by himself (for we all know he died at _Babylon_), at least
by some of his maroders, into _Greece_,—from _Greece_ it got to
_Rome_,—from _Rome_ to _France_,—and from _France_ to _England:_——So
things come round.——