quoth Trim, for 'tis only upon
Conscience, an' please your Honours.

Trim's reason put his audience into good humour,--all but Dr. Slop, who
turning his head about towards Trim, looked a little angry.

Begin, Trim,--and read distinctly, quoth my father.--I will, an'
please your Honour, replied the Corporal, making a bow, and bespeaking
attention with a slight movement of his right hand.

Chapter 1.XLII.

--But before the Corporal begins, I must first give you a description
of his attitude;--otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by your
imagination, in an uneasy posture,--stiff,--perpendicular,--dividing
the weight of his body equally upon both legs;--his eye fixed, as if on
duty;--his look determined,--clenching the sermon in his left hand, like
his firelock.--In a word, you would be apt to paint Trim, as if he was
standing in his platoon ready for action,--His attitude was as unlike
all this as you can conceive.

He stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so
far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the
horizon;--which sound orators, to whom I address this, know very well to
be the true persuasive angle of incidence;--in any other angle you may
talk and preach;--'tis certain;--and it is done every day;--but with
what effect,--I leave the world to judge!

The necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a half to a
mathematical exactness,--does it not shew us, by the way, how the arts
and sciences mutually befriend each other?

How the duce Corporal Trim, who knew not so much as an acute angle from
an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;--or whether it was chance or
nature, or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented upon in that
part of the cyclopaedia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental
parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar, the
coffee-house, the bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall under consideration.

He stood,--for I repeat it, to take the picture of him in at one view,
with his body swayed, and somewhat bent forwards,--his right leg from
under him, sustaining seven-eighths of his whole weight,--the foot of
his left leg, the defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude,
advanced a little,--not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line betwixt
them;--his knee bent, but that not violently,--but so as to fall within
the limits of the line of beauty;--and I add, of the line of science
too;--for conside