Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 5).pdf/72

 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 Socratess 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 Eleazers 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