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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:31 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:31 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1079-h/1079-h.htm b/1079-h/1079-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..412d861 --- /dev/null +++ b/1079-h/1079-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,25009 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +sup { vertical-align: top; font-size: 0.6em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1079 ***</div> + +<h1> +<small>THE</small><br/> +LIFE <small>AND</small> OPINIONS<br/> +<small>OF</small><br/> +TRISTRAM SHANDY,<br/> +<small>GENTLEMAN</small> +</h1> + +<h2>by Laurence Sterne</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">Volume I.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">Volume II.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">Volume III.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">Volume IV.</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image01.jpg" width="300" height= "513" alt="Laurence Sterne" /> +</div> + +<p class="center"> +Ταράσσει τοὺς Ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ Πράγματα,<br/> +Ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν Πραγμάτων Δόγματα. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE</small><br/> +M r. P I T T. +</p> + +<p> +S I R, +</p> + +<p> +N<small>EVER</small> poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his +Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of +the kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where I live in a +constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other +evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man +smiles,——but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to +this Fragment of Life. +</p> + +<p> +I humbly beg, Sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not +under your Protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the +country with you; where, if I am ever told, it has made you smile; or can +conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain—I shall think +myself as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than +any one (one only excepted) that I have read or heard of. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>I am, <small>GREAT SIR</small>,<br/> +(and, what is more to your Honour)<br/> +I am, <small>GOOD SIR</small>,<br/> +Your Well-wisher, and<br/> +most humble Fellow-subject</i>, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +T H E A U T H O R. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a> +<small>THE</small><br/> +LIFE and OPINIONS<br/> +<small>OF</small><br/> +TRISTRAM SHANDY, Gent. +</h2> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. I</small> +</h3> + +<p> +I <small>WISH</small> either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as +they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about +when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what +they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being +was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of +his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for +aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might +take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then +uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and +proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a +quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to +see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as +many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal +spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. +&c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may take my +word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his +successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and +activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when +they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a half-penny +matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same +steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as +smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself +sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it. +</p> + +<p><i>Pray my Dear</i>, quoth my mother, <i>have you not forgot to +wind up the clock?—Good G—!</i> cried my father, making +an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same +time,——<i>Did ever woman, since the creation of the +world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?</i> Pray, what +was your father saying?————Nothing.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + II</small> +</h3> + +<p>———Then, positively, there is +nothing in the question that I can see, either good or +bad.——Then, let me tell you, Sir, it was a very +unseasonable question at least,—because it scattered and +dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have +escorted and gone hand in hand with the <i>HOMUNCULUS</i>, and +conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception.</p> + +<p>The H<small>OMUNCULUS</small>, Sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age +of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the eye of +reason in scientific research, he stands confess’d—a +B<small>EING</small> guarded and circumscribed with +rights.——The minutest philosophers, who by the bye, +have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely +as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the +H<small>OMUNCULUS</small> is created by the same +hand,—engender’d in the same course of +nature,—endow’d with the same loco-motive powers and +faculties with us:—That he consists as we do, of skin, hair, +fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, +marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and +articulations;—is a Being of as much activity,—and in +all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow-creature as +my Lord Chancellor of <i>England.</i>—He may be +benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may obtain redress; +in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity, which +<i>Tully, Puffendorf</i>, or the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and +relation.</p> + +<p>Now, dear Sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way +alone!—or that through terror of it, natural to so young a +traveller, my little Gentleman had got to his journey’s end +miserably spent;—his muscular strength and virility worn down +to a thread;—his own animal spirits ruffled beyond +description,—and that in this sad disorder’d state of +nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of +melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months +together.—I tremble to think what a foundation had been laid +for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of +the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set +thoroughly to rights.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. III</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>O</small> my uncle Mr. <i>Toby Shandy</i> do +I stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who +was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to +close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily +complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> well remember’d, upon his observing a most +unaccountable obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of +setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which I had +done it,—the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more +expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,—he said his heart +all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a +thousand other observations he had made upon me, That I should +neither think nor act like any other man’s +child:—<i>But alas!</i> continued he, shaking his head a +second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his +cheeks, <i>My Tristram’s misfortunes began nine months before +ever he came into the world.</i></p> + +<p>—My mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she +knew no more than her backside what my father meant,—but my +uncle, Mr. <i>Toby Shandy</i>, who had been often informed of the affair,—understood +him very well.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>KNOW</small> there are readers in the +world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers +at all,—who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let +into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which +concerns you.</p> + +<p>It is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a +backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that I +have been so very particular already. As my life and opinions are +likely to make some noise in the world, and, if I conjecture right, +will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men +whatever,—be no less read than the <i>Pilgrim’s +Progress</i> itself—and in the end, prove the very thing +which <i>Montaigne</i> dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, +a book for a parlour-window;—I find it necessary to consult +every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: +For which cause, right glad I am, that I have begun the history of +myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on, tracing +every thing in it, as <i>Horace</i> says, <i>ab Ovo.</i></p> + +<p><i>Horace</i>, I know, does not recommend this fashion +altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or +a tragedy;—(I forget which,) besides, if it was not so, I +should beg Mr. <i>Horace’s</i> pardon;—for in writing +what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, +nor to any man’s rules that ever lived.</p> + +<p>To such however as do not choose to go so far back into these +things, I can give no better advice than that they skip over the +remaining part of this chapter; for I declare before-hand, +’tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive.</p> + +<p>——————Shut the +door.—————— I was begot in the +night betwixt the first <i>Sunday</i> and the first <i>Monday</i> +in the month of <i>March</i>, in the year of our Lord one thousand +seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was.—But how I came to be so +very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I +was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own +family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this +point.</p> + +<p>My father, you must know, who was originally a <i>Turkey</i> +merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to +retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of +——, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in +every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or +matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this +extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had +made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first +<i>Sunday-night</i> of every month throughout the whole +year,—as certain as ever the <i>Sunday-night</i> +came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing +on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being +somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I +have been speaking of,—he had likewise gradually +brought some other little family concernments to the same period, +in order, as he would often say to my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to get +them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and +pestered with them the rest of the month.</p> + +<p>It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great +measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall +carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association +of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at +length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound +up,——but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably +popped into her head—<i>& vice +versa:</i>——Which strange combination of ideas, the +sagacious <i>Locke</i>, who certainly understood the nature of +these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more +wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever.</p> + +<p>But this by the bye.</p> + +<p>Now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now lies upon +the table, “That on <i>Lady-day</i>, which was on the 25th of +the same month in which I date my geniture,——my father +set upon his journey to <i>London</i>, with my eldest brother +<i>Bobby</i>, to fix him at <i>Westminster</i> school;” and, +as it appears from the same authority, “That he did not get +down to his wife and family till the <i>second week</i> in +<i>May</i> following,”—it brings the thing almost to a +certainty. However, what follows in the beginning of the next +chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt.</p> + +<p>———But pray, Sir, What was your father doing +all <i>December, January</i>, and +<i>February?</i>——Why, Madam,—he was all that +time afflicted with a Sciatica.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + V</small> +</h3> + +<p>O<small>N</small> the fifth day of <i>November</i>, +1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near nine kalendar +months as any husband could in reason have expected,—was I +<i>Tristram Shandy</i>, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world +of ours.—I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the +planets, (except <i>Jupiter</i> or <i>Saturn</i>, because I never +could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse +with me in any of them (though I will not answer for <i>Venus</i>) +than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which, +o’ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be +made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;——not +but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it +to a great title or to a great estate; or could any how contrive to +be called up to public charges, and employments of dignity or +power;——but that is not my case;——and +therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has +gone in it;———for which cause I affirm it over +again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;—for +I can truly say, that from the first hour I drew my breath in it, +to this, that I can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma I got +in scating against the wind in <i>Flanders;</i>—I have been the +continual sport of what the world calls Fortune; and though I will +not wrong her by saying, She has ever made me feel the weight of +any great or signal evil;——yet with all the good temper +in the world I affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, +and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the +ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful +misadventures and cross accidents as ever small H<small>ERO</small> +sustained.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> the beginning of the last chapter, +I informed you exactly <i>when</i> I was born; but I did not inform +you <i>how. No</i>, that particular was reserved entirely for a +chapter by itself;—besides, Sir, as you and I are in a manner +perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to +have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at +once.</p> + +<p>—You must have a little patience. I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, +but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of +my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would +give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed farther with +me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, +will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in fault, +will terminate in friendship.—<i>O diem +praeclarum!</i>—then nothing which has touched me will be +thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. +Therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me +somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out—bear +with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own +way:—Or, if I should seem now and then to trifle upon the +road,—or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a +bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,—don’t +fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a little +more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do +any thing,—only keep your temper.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> the same village where my father +and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, +good old body of a midwife, who with the help of a little plain +good sense, and some years full employment in her business, in +which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a +great deal to those of dame Nature,—had acquired, in her way, +no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which word +<i>world</i>, need I in this place inform your worship, that I +would be understood to mean no more of it, than a small circle +described upon the circle of the great world, of four +<i>English</i> miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage +where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the +centre?—She had been left it seems a widow in great distress, +with three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent +carriage,—grave deportment,—a woman moreover of few +words and withal an object of compassion, whose distress, and +silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly lift: the +wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and having +often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband’s flock +had for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such +thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the +case have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long +miles riding; which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal +roads, the country thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was +almost equal to fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to +having no midwife at all; it came into her head, that it would be +doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor +creature herself, to get her a little instructed in some of the +plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it. As +no woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan +she had formed than herself, the gentlewoman very charitably +undertook it; and having great influence over the female part of +the parish, she found no difficulty in effecting it to the utmost +of her wishes. In truth, the parson join’d his interest with +his wife’s in the whole affair, and in order to do things as +they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law to +practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully +paid the fees for the ordinary’s licence himself, amounting +in the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so +that betwixt them both, the good woman was fully invested in the +real and corporal possession of her office, together with all its +<i>rights, members, and appurtenances whatsoever.</i></p> + +<p>These last words, you must know, were not according to the old +form in which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, +which in like cases had heretofore been granted to the +sisterhood. But it was according to a neat <i>Formula</i> of +<i>Didius</i> his own devising, who having a particular turn for +taking to pieces, and new framing over again all kind of +instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty amendment, +but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in the neighbourhood, +to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this wham-wham of +his inserted.</p> + +<p>I own I never could envy <i>Didius</i> in these kinds of fancies +of his:—But every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. +<i>Kunastrokius</i>, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the +greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking +the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in +his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of +men in all ages, not excepting <i>Solomon</i> himself,—have +they not had their +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSES</small>;—their running +horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and +their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots +and their butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> peaceably and quietly +along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to +get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do +with it?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>—<i>De gustibus non est +disputandum;</i>—that is, there is no disputing against +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSES</small>; and for my part, I +seldom do; nor could I with any sort of grace, had I been an enemy +to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain intervals and +changes of the moon, to be both fiddler and painter, according as +the fly stings:—Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of +pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows +it) I frequently ride out and take the air;—though sometimes, +to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies than what +a wise man would think altogether right.—But the truth +is,—I am not a wise man;—and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, +it is not much matter what I do: so I seldom fret or fume at all +about it: Nor does it much disturb my rest, when I see such great +Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow;—such, for +instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, +Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several +horses,—some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave +and sober pace;——others on the contrary, tucked up to +their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring and +scampering it away like so many little party-coloured devils +astride a mortgage,—and as if some of them were resolved to +break their necks.——So much the better—say I to +myself;—for in case the worst should happen, the world will +make a shift to do excellently well without them; and for the +rest,——why——God speed +them——e’en let them ride on without opposition +from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this very +night—’tis ten to one but that many of them would +be worse mounted by one half before tomorrow +morning.</p> + +<p>Not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in +upon my rest.——But there is an instance, which I own +puts me off my guard, and that is, when I see one born for great +actions, and what is still more for his honour, whose nature ever +inclines him to good ones;—when I behold such a one, my Lord, +like yourself, whose principles and conduct are as generous and +noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a corrupt world +cannot spare one moment;—when I see such a one, my Lord, +mounted, though it is but for a minute beyond the time which my +love to my country has prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory +wishes,—then, my Lord, I cease to be a philosopher, and in +the first transport of an honest impatience, I wish the +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>, with all his fraternity, +at the Devil.</p> + +<p class="letter"> + “My Lord,<br/> +I <small>MAINTAIN</small> this to be a dedication, notwithstanding +its singularity in the three great essentials of matter, form and +place: I beg, therefore, you will accept it as such, and that you +will permit me to lay it, with the most respectful humility, at +your Lordship’s feet—when you are upon +them,—which you can be when you please;—and that is, my +Lord, whenever there is occasion for it, and I will add, to the +best purposes too. I have the honour to be, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +<i>My Lord, <br/> +Your Lordship’s most obedient, <br/> +and most devoted</i>, <br/> +<i>and most humble servant</i>, <br/> +T<small>RISTRAM</small> S<small>HANDY</small>.”</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>SOLEMNLY</small> declare to all mankind, +that the above dedication was made for no one Prince, Prelate, +Pope, or Potentate,—Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or Baron, of this, or any other Realm in +Christendom;——nor has it yet been hawked about, or +offered publicly or privately, directly or indirectly, to any one +person or personage, great or small; but is honestly a true +Virgin-Dedication untried on, upon any soul living.</p> + +<p>I labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any +offence or objection which might arise against it from the manner +in which I propose to make the most of it;—which is the +putting it up fairly to public sale; which I now do.</p> + +<p>——Every author has a way of his own in bringing his +points to bear;—for my own part, as I hate chaffering and +higgling for a few guineas in a dark entry;—I resolved within +myself, from the very beginning, to deal squarely and openly with +your Great Folks in this affair, and try whether I should not come +off the better by it.</p> + +<p>If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, or +Baron, in these his Majesty’s dominions, who stands in need +of a tight, genteel dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for by the bye, +unless it suits in some degree, I will not part with +it)——it is much at his service for fifty +guineas;——which I am positive is twenty guineas less +than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius.</p> + +<p>My Lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from being a +gross piece of daubing, as some dedications are. The design, your +Lordship sees, is good,—the colouring transparent,—the +drawing not amiss;—or to speak more like a man of +science,—and measure my piece in the painter’s scale, +divided into 20,—I believe, my Lord, the outlines will turn +out as 12,—the composition as 9,—the colouring as +6,—the expression 13 and a half,—and the +design,—if I may be allowed, my Lord, to understand my own +<i>design</i>, and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to +be as 20,—I think it cannot well fall short of 19. Besides +all this,—there is keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>, (which is a secondary +figure, and a kind of back-ground to the whole) give great force to the +principal lights in your own figure, and make it come off +wonderfully;—and besides, there is an air of originality in +the <i>tout ensemble.</i></p> + +<p>Be pleased, my good Lord, to order the sum to be paid into the +hands of Mr. <i>Dodsley</i>, for the benefit of the author; and in +the next edition care shall be taken that this chapter be expunged, +and your Lordship’s titles, distinctions, arms, and good +actions, be placed at the front of the preceding chapter: All +which, from the words, <i>De gustibus non est disputandum</i>, and +whatever else in this book relates to +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSES</small>, but no more, shall +stand dedicated to your Lordship.—The rest I dedicate to the +Moon, who, by the bye, of all the P<small>ATRONS</small> or +M<small>ATRONS</small> I can think of, has most power to set my +book a-going, and make the world run mad after it.</p> + +<p class="letter"> +<i>Bright Goddess</i>,<br/> +If thou art not too busy with C<small>ANDID</small> and Miss +C<small>UNEGUND’S</small> affairs,—take <i>Tristram +Shandy’s</i> under thy protection also. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + X</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HATEVER</small> degree of small merit the +act of benignity in favour of the midwife might justly claim, or in +whom that claim truly rested,—at first sight seems not very +material to this history;——certain however it was, that +the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that time +with the whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking +but that the parson himself, though he had not the good fortune to +hit upon the design first,—yet, as he heartily concurred in +it the moment it was laid before him, and as heartily parted with +his money to carry it into execution, had a claim to some share of +it,—if not to a full half of whatever honour was due to +it.</p> + +<p>The world at that time was pleased to determine the matter +otherwise.</p> + +<p>Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to give a +probable guess at the grounds of this procedure.</p> + +<p>Be it known then, that, for about five years before the date of +the midwife’s licence, of which you have had so +circumstantial an account,—the parson we have to do with had +made himself a country-talk by a breach of all decorum, which he +had committed against himself, his station, and his +office;—and that was in never appearing better, or otherwise +mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jackass of a horse, value about +one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all description of +him, was full brother to <i>Rosinante</i>, as far as similitude +congenial could make him; for he answered his description to a +hair-breadth in every thing,—except that I do not remember +’tis any where said, that <i>Rosinante</i> was broken-winded; +and that, moreover, <i>Rosinante</i>, as is the happiness of most +<i>Spanish</i> horses, fat or lean,—was undoubtedly a horse +at all points.</p> + +<p>I know very well that the H<small>ERO’S</small> horse was a horse of chaste deportment, which may +have given grounds for the contrary opinion: But it is as certain +at the same time that <i>Rosinante’</i>s continency (as may +be demonstrated from the adventure of the <i>Yanguesian</i> +carriers) proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but +from the temperance and orderly current of his blood.—And let +me tell you, Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in +the world, in behalf of which you could not say more for your +life.</p> + +<p>Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to +every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic +work,—I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don +<i>Quixote’</i>s horse;——in all other points, the +parson’s horse, I say, was just such another, for he was as +lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade, as H<small>UMILITY</small> +herself could have bestrided.</p> + +<p>In the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it +was greatly in the parson’s power to have helped the figure of this horse of his,—for he was master +of a very handsome demi-peaked saddle, quilted on the seat with +green plush, garnished with a double row of silver-headed studs, +and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a housing +altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of +black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk fringe, +<i>poudré d’or</i>,—all which he had purchased +in the pride and prime of his life, together with a grand embossed +bridle, ornamented at all points as it should be.——But +not caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these up behind his +study door: and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted him with +just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure and value of +such a steed might well and truly deserve.</p> + +<p>In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring +visits to the gentry who lived around him,—you will easily +comprehend, that the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see +enough to keep his philosophy from rusting. To speak the truth, he +never could enter a village, but he caught the attention +of both old and young.——Labour stood still as he +pass’d——the bucket hung suspended in the middle +of the well,—the spinning-wheel forgot its +round,——even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves +stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his movement was +not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his hands to +make his observations,—to hear the groans of the +serious,—and the laughter of the light-hearted; all which he +bore with excellent tranquillity.—His character was,—he +loved a jest in his heart—and as he saw himself in the true +point of ridicule, he would say he could not be angry with others +for seeing him in a light, in which he so strongly saw himself: So +that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the love of money, +and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the +extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true +cause,—he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; +and as he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether +as spare a figure as his beast,—he would sometimes insist +upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider +deserved;—that they were, centaur-like,—both of a +piece. At other times, and in other moods, when his spirits were +above the temptation of false wit,—he would say, he found +himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with great gravity, +would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat horse, without +a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his pulse; and +that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not only to +keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.</p> + +<p>At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite +reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, +preferably to one of mettle;—for on such a one he could sit +mechanically, and meditate as delightfully <i>de vanitate mundi et +fugâ sæculi</i>, as with the advantage of a +death’s-head before him;—that, in all other +exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,—to as +much account as in his study;—that he could draw up an +argument in his sermon,—or a hole in his breeches, as +steadily on the one as in the other;—that brisk trotting and +slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible +movements.—But that upon his steed—he could unite and +reconcile every thing,—he could compose his sermon—he +could compose his cough,——and, in case nature gave a +call that way, he could likewise compose himself to sleep.—In +short, the parson upon such encounters would assign any cause but +the true cause,—and he with-held the true one, only out of a +nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him.</p> + +<p>But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of +this gentleman’s life, and about the time when the superb +saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or +vanity, or call it what you will,—to run into the opposite +extreme.—In the language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to +have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the +whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling: and +as the nearest midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the +village than seven miles, and in a vile country,—it so fell +out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together +without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not +an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more +distressful than the last;—as much as he loved his beast, he +had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally +this; that his horse was either clapp’d, or spavin’d, +or greaz’d;—or he was twitter-bon’d, or +broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, +which would let him carry no flesh;—so that he had every nine +or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,—and a good horse to +purchase in his stead.</p> + +<p>What the loss in such a balance might amount to, <i>communibus +annis</i>, I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, +to determine;—but let it be what it would, the honest +gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur, till at length, +by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to +take the thing under consideration; and upon weighing the whole, +and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned +to his other expences, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as +to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish: +Besides this, he considered that with half the sum thus galloped +away, he could do ten times as much good;—and what still +weighed more with him than all other considerations put together, +was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular +channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, +to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his parish; +reserving nothing for the impotent,—nothing for the +aged,—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly +called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness and affliction dwelt together.</p> + +<p>For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and +there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out +of it;—and these were, either to make it an irrevocable law +never more to lend his steed upon any application +whatever,—or else be content to ride the last poor devil, +such as they had made him, with all his aches and infirmities, to +the very end of the chapter.</p> + +<p>As he dreaded his own constancy in the first—he very +chearfully betook himself to the second; and though he could very +well have explained it, as I said, to his honour,—yet, for +that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing rather to bear +the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his friends, than +undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem a panegyrick +upon himself.</p> + +<p>I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments +of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think comes up to any of the +honest refinements of the peerless knight of <i>La Mancha</i>, +whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would +actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the +greatest hero of antiquity.</p> + +<p> +But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to shew the +temper of the world in the whole of this affair.—For you must know, that +so long as this explanation would have done the parson credit,—the devil +a soul could find it out,—I suppose his enemies would not, and that his +friends could not.——But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf +of the midwife, and pay the expences of the ordinary’s licence to set her +up,—but the whole secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two +horses more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their +destruction, were known and distinctly remembered.—The story ran like +wild-fire.—“The parson had a returning fit of pride which had just +seized him; and he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if +it was so, ’twas plain as the sun at noon-day, he would pocket the +expence of the licence ten times told, the very first year:—So that every +body was left to judge what were his views in this act of charity.” +</p> + +<p>What were his views in this, and in every other action of his +life,—or rather what were the opinions which floated in the +brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much +floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he +should have been sound asleep.</p> + +<p>About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be +made entirely easy upon that score,—it being just so long +since he left his parish,—and the whole world at the same +time behind him,—and stands accountable to a Judge of whom he +will have no cause to complain.</p> + +<p>But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: Order +them as they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium, which so twists and refracts them from their true +directions——that, with all the titles to praise which a +rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless +forced to live and die without it.</p> + +<p>Of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful +example.——But to know by what means this came to +pass,—and to make that knowledge of use to you, I insist upon +it that you read the two following chapters, which contain such a +sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its moral along +with it.—When this is done, if nothing stops us in our way, +we will go on with the midwife.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XI</small> +</h3> + +<p>Yorick was this parson’s name, and, what is +very remarkable in it, (as appears from a most ancient account of +the family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect +preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near,—I +was within an ace of saying nine hundred +years;——but I would not shake my credit in telling an +improbable truth, however indisputable in itself,——and +therefore I shall content myself with only saying——It +had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or +transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which +is more than I would venture to say of one half of the best +surnames in the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have +generally undergone as many chops and changes as their +owners.—Has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of +the respective proprietors?—In honest truth, I think +sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the +temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one +day so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be +able to stand up and swear, “That his own great +grandfather was the man who did either this or that.”</p> + +<p>This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent +care of the <i>Yorick’</i>s family, and their religious +preservation of these records I quote, which do farther inform us, +That the family was originally of <i>Danish</i> extraction, and had +been transplanted into England as early as in the reign of +<i>Horwendillus</i>, king of <i>Denmark</i>, in whose court, it +seems, an ancestor of this Mr. <i>Yorick</i>’s, and from whom +he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of +his death. Of what nature this considerable post was, this record +saith not;—it only adds, That, for near two centuries, it had +been totally abolished, as altogether unnecessary, not only in that +court, but in every other court of the Christian world.</p> + +<p>It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other +than that of the king’s chief Jester;—and that +<i>Hamlet</i>’s <i>Yorick</i>, in our <i>Shakespeare</i>, +many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated +facts, was certainly the very man.</p> + +<p>I have not the time to look into <i>Saxo-Grammaticus</i>’s +<i>Danish</i> history, to know the certainty of this;—but if +you have leisure, and can easily get at the book, you may do +it full as well yourself.</p> + +<p>I had just time, in my travels through <i>Denmark</i> with Mr. +<i>Noddy</i>’s eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I +accompanied as governor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate +thro’ most parts of Europe, and of which original journey +performed by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given in +the progress of this work. I had just time, I say, and that was +all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long sojourner +in that country;——namely, “That nature was +neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts of genius +and capacity to its inhabitants;—but, like a discreet parent, +was moderately kind to them all; observing such an equal tenor in +the distribution of her favours, as to bring them, in those points, +pretty near to a level with each other; so that you will meet with +few instances in that kingdom of refined parts; but a great +deal of good plain houshold understanding amongst all +ranks of people, of which every body has a share;” which is, +I think, very right.</p> + +<p>With us, you see, the case is quite different:—we are all +ups and downs in this matter;—you are a great +genius;—or ’tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great +dunce and a blockhead;—not that there is a total want of +intermediate steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that +comes to;—but the two extremes are more common, and in a +greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts +and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; +fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and +chattels than she.</p> + +<p>This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to +<i>Yorick</i>’s extraction, who, by what I can remember of +him, and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not to +have had one single drop of <i>Danish</i> blood in his whole +crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run out:——I will not +philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it would, +the fact was this:—That instead of that cold phlegm and exact +regularity of sense and humours, you would have looked for, in one +so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and +sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all +his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and +<i>gaité de cœur</i> about him, as the kindliest +climate could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, +poor <i>Yorick</i> carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly +unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just +about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping, +unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his first setting out, +the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul +ten times in a day of somebody’s tackling; and as the grave +and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way,——you may +likewise imagine, ’twas with such he had generally the ill +luck to get the most entangled. For aught I know there might be +some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of such +<i>Fracas:</i>——For, to speak the truth, <i>Yorick</i> +had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to +gravity;—not to gravity as such;—for where gravity was +wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal men for +days and weeks together;—but he was an enemy to the +affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it +appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it +fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it +much quarter.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that +Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the +most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he +verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out +of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by +pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which +a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very +essence of gravity was design, and consequently +deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the +world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, +with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, +than what a <i>French</i> wit had long ago defined +it,—<i>viz. A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the +defects of the mind;</i>—which definition of gravity, +<i>Yorick</i>, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be +wrote in letters of gold.</p> + +<p>But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in +the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every +other subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress +restraint. <i>Yorick</i> had no impression but one, and that was +what arose from the nature of the deed spoken of; which impression +he would usually translate into plain <i>English</i> without any +periphrasis;—and too oft without much distinction of either +person, time, or place;—so that when mention was made of a +pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding——he never gave +himself a moment’s time to reflect who was the hero of the +piece,——what his station,——or how far he +had power to hurt him hereafter;—but if it was a dirty +action,—without more ado,—The man was a dirty +fellow,—and so on.—And as his comments had usually the +ill fate to be terminated either in a <i>bon mot</i>, or to be +enlivened throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it +gave wings to <i>Yorick</i>’s indiscretion. In a word, +tho’ he never sought, yet, at the same time, as he seldom +shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much +ceremony;——he had but too many temptations in life, of +scattering his wit and his humour,—his gibes and his jests +about him.——They were not lost for want of +gathering.</p> + +<p>What were the consequences, and what was <i>Yorick</i>’s +catastrophe thereupon, you will read in the next chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> <i>Mortgager</i> and +<i>Mortgagee</i> differ the one from the other, not more in length +of purse, than the <i>Jester</i> and <i>Jestee</i> do, in that of +memory. But in this the comparison between them runs, as the +scholiasts call it, upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon one +or two legs more than some of the best of <i>Homer</i>’s can +pretend to;—namely, That the one raises a sum, and the other +a laugh at your expence, and thinks no more about it. Interest, +however, still runs on in both cases;—the periodical or +accidental payments of it, just serving to keep the memory of the +affair alive; till, at length, in some evil hour, pop comes the +creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot, +together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel +the full extent of their obligations.</p> + +<p>As the reader (for I hate your <i>ifs</i>) has a thorough +knowledge of human nature, I need not say more to satisfy him, that my +H<small>ERO</small> could not go on at this rate without some +slight experience of these incidental mementos. To speak the truth, +he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of small book-debts +of this stamp, which, notwithstanding <i>Eugenius</i>’s +frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that as not one +of them was contracted thro’ any malignancy;—but, on +the contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of +humour, they would all of them be cross’d out in course.</p> + +<p><i>Eugenius</i> would never admit this; and would often tell +him, that one day or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and +he would often add, in an accent of sorrowful +apprehension,—to the uttermost mite. To which <i>Yorick</i>, +with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often answer with a +pshaw!—and if the subject was started in the +fields,—with a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if +close pent up in the social chimney-corner, where the culprit +was barricado’d in, with a table and a couple of +arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a +tangent,—<i>Eugenius</i> would then go on with his lecture +upon discretion in words to this purpose, though somewhat better +put together.</p> + +<p>Trust me, dear <i>Yorick</i>, this unwary pleasantry of thine +will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, +which no after-wit can extricate thee out of.——In these +sallies, too oft, I see, it happens, that a person laughed at, +considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the +rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when thou viewest +him in that light too, and reckons up his friends, his family, his +kindred and allies,——and musters up with them the many +recruits which will list under him from a sense of common +danger;—’tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for +every ten jokes,—thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till +thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, +and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be +convinced it is so.</p> + +<p>I cannot suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the +least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these +sallies—I believe and know them to be truly honest and +sportive:—But consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot +distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and thou knowest +not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry with +the other:——whenever they associate for mutual defence, +depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against +thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of +thy life too.</p> + +<p> +Revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which +no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set right.——The +fortunes of thy house shall totter,—thy character, which led the way to +them, shall bleed on every side of it,—thy faith questioned,—thy +works belied,—thy wit forgotten,—thy learning trampled on. To wind +up the last scene of thy tragedy, C<small>RUELTY</small> and +C<small>OWARDICE</small>, twin ruffians, hired and set on by +M<small>ALICE</small> in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities +and mistakes:——The best of us, my dear lad, lie open +there,——and trust me,——trust me, <i>Yorick, when to +gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an +helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up +sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it +up with.</i> +</p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i> scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his +destiny read over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, +and a promissory look attending it, that he was resolved, for the +time to come, to ride his tit with more sobriety.—But, alas, +too late!—a grand confederacy with ***** and ***** at the +head of it, was formed before the first prediction of it.—The +whole plan of the attack, just as <i>Eugenius</i> had foreboded, +was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on the side of the allies,—and so little +suspicion in <i>Yorick</i>, of what was carrying on against +him,—that when he thought, good easy man! full surely +preferment was o’ripening,—they had smote his root, and +then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him.</p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i>, however, fought it out with all imaginable +gallantry for some time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out +at length by the calamities of the war,—but more so, by the +ungenerous manner in which it was carried on,—he threw down +the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the +last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite +broken-hearted.</p> + +<p>What inclined <i>Eugenius</i> to the same opinion was as +follows:</p> + +<p> +A few hours before <i>Yorick</i> breathed his last, <i>Eugenius</i> stept in +with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his +drawing <i>Yorick</i>’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, +<i>Yorick</i> looking up in his face took hold of his hand,—and after +thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, +if it was their fate to meet hereafter,—he would thank him again and +again,—he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the +slip for ever.—I hope not, answered <i>Eugenius</i>, with tears trickling +down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.—I hope +not, <i>Yorick</i>, said he.——<i>Yorick</i> replied, with a look +up, and a gentle squeeze of <i>Eugenius</i>’s hand, and that was +all,—but it cut <i>Eugenius</i> to his heart.—Come,—come, +<i>Yorick</i>, quoth <i>Eugenius</i>, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man +within him,—my dear lad, be comforted,—let not all thy spirits and +fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most wants +them;——who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of +God may yet do for thee!——<i>Yorick</i> laid his hand upon his +heart, and gently shook his head;—For my part, continued <i>Eugenius</i>, +crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—I declare I know not, +<i>Yorick</i>, how to part with thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added +<i>Eugenius</i>, chearing up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee +to make a bishop, and that I may live to see it.—I beseech thee, +<i>Eugenius</i>, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, taking off his night-cap as well as he +could with his left hand,—his right being still grasped close in that of +<i>Eugenius</i>,—I beseech thee to take a view of my head.—I see +nothing that ails it, replied <i>Eugenius.</i> Then, alas! my friend, said +<i>Yorick</i>, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and mis-shapened +with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have so unhandsomely +given me in the dark, that I might say with <i>Sancho Pança</i>, that should I +recover, and “Mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as +thick as hail, not one of them would fit +it.”——<i>Yorick</i>’s last breath was hanging upon his +trembling lips ready to depart as he uttered this:——yet still it +was uttered with something of a <i>Cervantick</i> tone;——and as he +spoke it, <i>Eugenius</i> could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up +for a moment in his eyes;——faint picture of those flashes of his +spirit, which (as <i>Shakespeare</i> said of his ancestor) were wont to set the +table in a roar! +</p> + +<p><i>Eugenius</i> was convinced from this, that the heart of his +friend was broke: he squeezed his hand,——and then +walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. <i>Yorick</i> +followed <i>Eugenius</i> with his eyes to the door,—he then +closed them, and never opened them more.</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image02.jpg" width="300" height= "500" alt="tombstone" /> +</div> + +<p> +He lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of +———, under a plain marble slab, which his friend +<i>Eugenius</i>, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more +than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and +elegy.<br/><br/> +</p> + +<table border="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" +summary="Alas, poor YORICK!"> +<tr> +<td align="center">Alas, poor YORICK!</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p class="p2"> +Ten times a day has <i>Yorick</i>’s ghost the consolation to hear his +monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as +denote a general pity and esteem for him;——a foot-way crossing the +church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a passenger goes by +without stopping to cast a look upon it,—and sighing as he walks on, +</p> + +<p class="center">Alas, poor YORICK!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is so long since the reader of +this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is +high time to mention her again to him, merely to put him in mind +that there is such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the +best judgment I can form upon my own plan at present, I am going to +introduce to him for good and all: But as fresh matter may be +started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt the reader +and myself, which may require immediate +dispatch;——’twas right to take care that the poor +woman should not be lost in the mean time;—because when she +is wanted, we can no way do without her.</p> + +<p>I think I told you that this good woman was a person of no small +note and consequence throughout our whole village and +township;—that her fame had spread itself to the very +out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of which +kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his back or no,——has +one surrounding him;—which said circle, by the way, whenever +’tis said that such a one is of great weight and importance +in the <i>world</i>,——I desire may be enlarged or +contracted in your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of +the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height and depth +(measuring both ways) of the personage brought before you.</p> + +<p>In the present case, if I remember, I fixed it about four or +five miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish, but +extended itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in the +skirts of the next parish; which made a considerable thing of it. I +must add, That she was, moreover, very well looked on at one large +grange-house, and some other odd houses and farms within two or +three miles, as I said, from the smoke of her own +chimney:——But I must here, once for all, inform you, +that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d +in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other +pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of +the twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—I detest +the thought of such a thing;—but by way of commentary, +scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or +innuendos as shall be thought to be either of private +interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and +my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the +meaning of the word) by all the <i>world</i>;——which, +betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in +<i>Great Britain</i>, and of all that their worships shall +undertake to write or say to the contrary,—I am determined +shall be the case.—I need not tell your worship, that all +this is spoke in confidence.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>U<small>PON</small> looking into my mother’s +marriage settlement, in order to satisfy myself and reader in a +point necessary to be cleared up, before we could proceed any farther in this history;—I had the +good fortune to pop upon the very thing I wanted before I had read +a day and a half straight forwards,—it might have taken me up +a month;—which shews plainly, that when a man sits down to +write a history,—tho’ it be but the history of <i>Jack +Hickathrift</i> or <i>Tom Thumb</i>, he knows no more than his +heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his +way,—or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or +another, before all is over. Could a historiographer drive on his +history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,—straight +forward;——for instance, from <i>Rome</i> all the way to +<i>Loretto</i>, without ever once turning his head aside, either to +the right hand or to the left,——he might venture to +foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s +end;——but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: +For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty +deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as +he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually +soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to +look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various<br/> + Accounts to reconcile:<br/> + Anecdotes to pick up:<br/> + Inscriptions to make out:<br/> + Stories to weave in:<br/> + Traditions to sift:<br/> + Personages to call upon:<br/> + Panegyricks to paste up at this door;</p> + +<p>Pasquinades at that:——All which both the man and his +mule are quite exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at +every stage to be look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, +and endless genealogies, which justice ever and anon calls him back +to stay the reading of:——In short there is no end of +it;——for my own part, I declare I have been at it these +six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could,—and am not +yet born:—I have just been able, and that’s all, to +tell you <i>when</i> it happen’d, but not <i>how</i>;—so that you see the thing is yet +far from being accomplished.</p> + +<p>These unforeseen stoppages, which I own I had no conception of +when I first set out;—but which, I am convinced now, will +rather increase than diminish as I advance,—have struck out a +hint which I am resolved to follow;——and that +is,—not to be in a hurry;—but to go on leisurely, +writing and publishing two volumes of my life every +year;——which, if I am suffered to go on quietly, and +can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, I shall continue +to do as long as I live.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +T<small>HE</small> article in my mother’s marriage-settlement, which I +told the reader I was at the pains to search for, and which, now that I have +found it, I think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully +express’d in the deed itself, than ever I can pretend to do it, that it +would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand:—It is as +follows. +</p> + +<p> +“And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said <i>Walter +Shandy</i>, merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, +and, by God’s blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated +between the said <i>Walter Shandy</i> and <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i> aforesaid, +and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him thereunto +specially moving,—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, conclude, +bargain, and fully agree to and with <i>John Dixon</i>, and <i>James +Turner</i>, Esqrs. the above-named Trustees, &c. &c.—to +wit,—That in case it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or +otherwise come to pass,—That the said <i>Walter Shandy</i>, merchant, +shall have left off business before the time or times, that the said +<i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i> shall, according to the course of nature, or +otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, +in consequence of the said <i>Walter Shandy</i> having so left off business, he +shall in despight, and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the +said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i>,—make a departure from the city of +<i>London</i>, in order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at <i>Shandy +Hall</i>, in the county of ——, or at any other country-seat, +castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or +hereafter to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:—That then, +and as often as the said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i> shall happen to be enceint +with child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon +the body of the said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i>, during her said +coverture,—he the said <i>Walter Shandy</i> shall, at his own proper cost +and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable notice, +which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said <i>Elizabeth +Mollineux</i>’s full reckoning, or time of supposed and computed +delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one hundred and twenty +pounds of good and lawful money, to <i>John Dixon</i>, and <i>James Turner</i>, +Esqrs. or assigns,—upon <small>TRUST</small> and confidence, and for and +unto the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:—That is to +say,—That the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid +into the hands of the said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i>, or to be otherwise +applied by them the said Trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one coach, +with able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of the said +<i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i>, and the child or children which she shall be then +and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of <i>London</i>; and +for the further paying and defraying of all other incidental costs, charges, +and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and for, and relating to, her said +intended delivery and lying-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof. And that +the said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i> shall and may, from time to time, and at +all such time and times as are here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably +and quietly hire the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and +regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the +tenor, true intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, +trouble, disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction, +vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—And that it shall +moreover be lawful to and for the said <i>Elizabeth Mollineux</i>, from time to +time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in her said +pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed upon,—to live and +reside in such place or places, and in such family or families, and with such +relations, friends, and other persons within the said city of <i>London</i>, as +she at her own will and pleasure, notwithstanding her present coverture, and as +if she was a <i>femme sole</i> and unmarried,—shall think fit.—And +this Indenture further witnesseth, That for the more effectually carrying of +the said covenant into execution, the said <i>Walter Shandy</i>, merchant, doth +hereby grant, bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said <i>John +Dixon</i>, and <i>James Turner</i>, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, +in their actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain and +sale for a year to them the said <i>John Dixon</i>, and <i>James Turner</i>, +Esqrs. by him the said <i>Walter Shandy</i>, merchant, thereof made; which said +bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the date of these +presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for transferring of uses into +possession,—All that the manor and lordship of <i>Shandy</i>, in the +county of ——, with all the rights, members, and appurtenances +thereof; and all and every the messuages, houses, buildings, barns, stables, +orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths, cottages, lands, meadows, +feedings, pastures, marshes, commons, woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, +waters, and water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions, services, +annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge, escheats, reliefs, +mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, felons of +themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and all other royalties +and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, privileges and hereditaments +whatsoever.—And also the advowson, donation, presentation, and free +disposition of the rectory or parsonage of <i>Shandy</i> aforesaid, and all and +every the tenths, tythes, glebe-lands.”——In three +words,——“My mother was to lay in, (if she chose it) in +<i>London.</i>” +</p> + +<p>But in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on +the part of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too +manifestly opened a door to, and which indeed had never been +thought of at all, but for my uncle <i>Toby Shandy</i>;—a +clause was added in security of my father which was this:—“That in +case my mother hereafter should, at any time, put my father to the +trouble and expence of a <i>London</i> journey, upon false cries +and tokens;——that for every such instance, she should +forfeit all the right and title which the covenant gave her to the +next turn;——but to no more,—and so on, <i>toties +quoties</i>, in as effectual a manner, as if such a covenant +betwixt them had not been made.”—This, by the way, was +no more than what was reasonable;—and yet, as reasonable as +it was, I have ever thought it hard that the whole weight of the +article should have fallen entirely, as it did, upon myself.</p> + +<p>But I was begot and born to misfortunes;—for my poor +mother, whether it was wind or water—or a compound of +both,—or neither;—or whether it was simply the mere +swell of imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a strong +wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;—in +short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way becomes me to decide. The +fact was this, That in the latter end of September 1717, which was +the year before I was born, my mother having carried my father up +to town much against the grain,—he peremptorily insisted upon +the clause;—so that I was doom’d, by marriage-articles, +to have my nose squeez’d as flat to my face, as if the +destinies had actually spun me without one.</p> + +<p>How this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious +disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me +from the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single +member,—shall be laid before the reader all in due time.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father, as any body may naturally +imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a +pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles +he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and +indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might +every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him +more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the +year,—which, as I told you, was towards the end of +<i>September</i>, when his wall-fruit and green gages especially, +in which he was very curious, were just ready for +pulling:——“Had he been whistled up to +<i>London</i>, upon a <i>Tom Fool</i>’s errand, in any other +month of the whole year, he should not have said three words about +it.”</p> + +<p> +For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he +had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully +reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his pocket-book, +as a second staff for his old age, in case <i>Bobby</i> should fail him. +“The disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, +than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put +together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,——he did not mind +it a rush.” +</p> + +<p>From <i>Stilton</i>, all the way to <i>Grantham</i>, nothing in +the whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his +friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at church, +the first <i>Sunday</i>;——of which, in the satirical +vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by vexation, he +would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions,—and +place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and attitudes +in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother +declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical, that she +did nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the +other of them all the way.</p> + +<p>From <i>Grantham</i>, till they had cross’d the +<i>Trent</i>, my father was out of all kind of patience at the vile +trick and imposition which he fancied my mother had put upon him in +this affair—“Certainly,” he would say to +himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be +deceived herself——if she could,——“what +weakness!”—tormenting word!—which led his +imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d +the duce and all with him;——for sure as ever the word +<i>weakness</i> was uttered, and struck full upon his +brain—so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how many +kinds of weaknesses there were;——that there was such a +thing as weakness of the body,——as well as weakness of +the mind,—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within +himself for a stage or two together, How far the cause of all these +vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself.</p> + +<p>In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude +springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively in his +mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was her +journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down.——In a +word, as she complained to my uncle <i>Toby</i>, he would have +tired out the patience of any flesh alive.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> my father travelled homewards, +as I told you, in none of the best of moods,—pshawing and +pishing all the way down,—yet he had the complaisance to keep +the worst part of the story still to himself;—which was the +resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s clause in the marriage-settlement +empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which I was begot, +which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation +of his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a +little chagrin’d and out of temper,——took +occasion as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking +over what was to come,——to let her know that she must +accommodate herself as well as she could to the bargain made +between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her +next child in the country, to balance the last year’s +journey.</p> + +<p>My father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a +strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add +to the number.—’Tis known by the name of perseverance +in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in a bad one: Of this my +mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas to no +purpose to make any remonstrance,—so she e’en resolved +to sit down quietly, and make the most of it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> the point was that night agreed, or rather +determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she +took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was +three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her +eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and +before the week was well got round, as the famous Dr. +<i>Manningham</i> was not to be had, she had come to a final +determination in her mind,——notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within +so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had +expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of +midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the +sisterhood itself,——but had likewise super-added many +curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus +in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in +getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, I say, +was absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into +no soul’s hand but this old woman’s only.—Now +this I like;——when we cannot get at the very thing we +wish——never to take up with the next best in degree to +it:—no; that’s pitiful beyond description;—it is +no more than a week from this very day, in which I am now writing +this book for the edification of the world;—which is +<i>March</i> 9, 1759,——that my dear, dear <i>Jenny</i>, +observing I looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk +of five-and-twenty shillings a yard,—told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so +much trouble;—and immediately went and bought herself a +yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.—’Tis the +duplication of one and the same greatness of soul; only what +lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother’s case, +was, that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an +extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old +midwife had really some little claim to be depended upon,—as +much, at least, as success could give her; having, in the course of +her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every +mother’s son of them into the world without any one slip or +accident which could fairly be laid to her account.</p> + +<p>These facts, tho’ they had their weight, yet did not +altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung +upon my father’s spirits in relation to this choice.—To +say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and +justice—or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, +all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case of this +kind;——he felt himself concerned in a particular +manner, that all should go right in the present case;—from +the accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his +wife and child in lying-in at <i>Shandy-Hall</i>.——He +knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions +in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of +it.——“Alas o’day;—had Mrs. +<i>Shandy</i>, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to +town just to lye-in and come down again;—which they say, she +begged and prayed for upon her bare knees,——and which, +in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. <i>Shandy</i> got +with her,—was no such mighty matter to have complied with, +the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this +hour.”</p> + +<p>This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and +yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,—nor was it +altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so +extremely anxious about this point;—my father had extensive +views of things,——and stood moreover, as he thought, +deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he +entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put +to.</p> + +<p>He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject +had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen +<i>Elizabeth</i>’s reign down to his own time, that the +current of men and money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous +errand or another,—set in so strong,—as to become +dangerous to our civil rights,—though, by the +bye,——a <i>current</i> was not the image he took most +delight in,—a <i>distemper</i> was here his favourite +metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by +maintaining it was identically the same in the body national as in +the body natural, where the blood and spirits were driven up into +the head faster than they could find their ways +down;——a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was +death in both cases.</p> + +<p>There was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties +by <i>French</i> politicks or <i>French</i> +invasions;——nor was he so much in pain of a consumption +from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our +constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was +imagined;—but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we +should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he +would say, <i>The Lord have mercy upon us all.</i></p> + +<p>My father was never able to give the history of this +distemper,—without the remedy along with it.</p> + +<p> +“Was I an absolute prince,” he would say, pulling up his breeches +with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, “I would appoint able +judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of every +fool’s business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid +hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and come +up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer’s sons, &c. +&c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from constable to +constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal settlements. +By this means I shall take care, that my metropolis totter’d not +thro’ its own weight;—that the head be no longer too big for the +body;—that the extremes, now wasted and pinn’d in, be restored to +their due share of nourishment, and regain with it their natural strength and +beauty:—I would effectually provide, That the meadows and corn fields of +my dominions, should laugh and sing;—that good chear and hospitality +flourish once more;—and that such weight and influence be put thereby +into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I +perceive my Nobility are now taking from them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why are there so few palaces and gentlemen’s seats,” he +would ask, with some emotion, as he walked across the room, “throughout +so many delicious provinces in <i>France</i>? Whence is it that the few +remaining <i>Chateaus</i> amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, +and in so ruinous and desolate a condition?——Because, Sir” +(he would say) “in that kingdom no man has any country-interest to +support;—the little interest of any kind which any man has any where in +it, is concentrated in the court, and the looks of the Grand Monarch: by the +sunshine of whose countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every +<i>French</i> man lives or dies.” +</p> + +<p>Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to +guard against the least evil accident in my mother’s lying-in +in the country,——was, That any such instance would +infallibly throw a balance of power, too great already, into the +weaker vessels of the gentry, in his own, or higher +stations;——which, with the many other usurped rights +which that part of the constitution was hourly +establishing,—would, in the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick +government established in the first creation of things by God.</p> + +<p>In this point he was entirely of Sir <i>Robert +Filmer</i>’s opinion, That the plans and institutions of the +greatest monarchies in the eastern parts of the world, were, +originally, all stolen from that admirable pattern and prototype of +this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a century, he +said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a +mix’d government;——the form of which, however +desirable in great combinations of the species,——was +very troublesome in small ones,—and seldom produced any +thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.</p> + +<p>For all these reasons, private and publick, put +together,—my father was for having the man-midwife by all +means,—my mother, by no means. My father begg’d and +intreated, she would for once recede from her prerogative in this +matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my mother, on the +contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to choose for +herself,—and have no mortal’s help but the old +woman’s.—What could my father do? He was almost at his +wit’s end;——talked it over with her in all +moods;—placed his arguments in all lights;—argued the +matter with her like a christian,—like a heathen,—like +a husband,—like a father,—like a patriot,—like a +man:—My mother answered every thing only like a woman; which +was a little hard upon her;—for as she could not assume and +fight it out behind such a variety of characters,—’twas +no fair match:—’twas seven to one.—What could my +mother do?—She had the advantage (otherwise she had been +certainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin personal +at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her to dispute the +affair with my father with so equal an advantage,——that +both sides sung <i>Te Deum.</i> In a word, my mother was to have +the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink +a bottle of wine with my father and my uncle <i>Toby Shandy</i> in the back +parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas.</p> + +<p>I must beg leave, before I finish this chapter, to enter a +caveat in the breast of my fair reader;—and it is +this,——Not to take it absolutely for granted, from an +unguarded word or two which I have dropp’d in +it,——“That I am a married +man.”—I own, the tender appellation of my dear, dear +<i>Jenny</i>,—with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge, +interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have misled +the most candid judge in the world into such a determination +against me.—All I plead for, in this case, Madam, is strict +justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to +yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression +of me, till you have better evidence, than, I am positive, at +present can be produced against me.—Not that I can be so vain +or unreasonable, Madam, as to desire you should therefore think, +that my dear, dear <i>Jenny</i> is my kept +mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my character in the other +extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has no +kind of right to. All I contend for, is the utter impossibility, +for some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon +earth, should know how this matter really stands.—It is not +impossible, but that my dear, dear <i>Jenny!</i> tender as the +appellation is, may be my child.—Consider,—I was born +in the year eighteen.—Nor is there any thing unnatural or +extravagant in the supposition, that my dear <i>Jenny</i> may be my +friend.—Friend!—My friend.—Surely, Madam, a +friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported +without———Fy! Mr. <i>Shandy:</i>—Without +any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment which +ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference of sex. Let +me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best +<i>French</i> Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you +to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious +sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is dress’d +out.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>WOULD</small> sooner undertake to explain +the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for it, +that a gentleman of my father’s great good +sense,——knowing, as the reader must have observed him, +and curious too in philosophy,—wise also in political +reasoning,—and in polemical (as he will find) no way +ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a notion in his +head, so out of the common track,—that I fear the reader, +when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick +temper, will immediatly throw the book by; if mercurial, he will +laugh most heartily at it;—and if he is of a grave and +saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as +fanciful and extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and +imposition of christian names, on which he thought a great deal +more depended than what superficial minds were capable of +conceiving.</p> + +<p>His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind +of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, +irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.</p> + +<p>The hero of <i>Cervantes</i> argued not the point with more +seriousness,——nor had he more faith,——or +more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his +deeds,—or on D<small>ULCINEA</small>’s name, in +shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of +T<small>RISMEGISTUS</small> or A<small>RCHIMEDES</small>, on the +one hand—or of N<small>YKY</small> and S<small>IMKIN</small> +on the other. How many C<small>ÆSARS</small> and +P<small>OMPEYS</small>, he would say, by mere inspiration of the +names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would +add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, +had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and +N<small>ICODEMUS’D</small> into nothing?</p> + +<p>I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my +father would say—that you do not heartily subscribe to this +opinion of mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not +carefully sifted it to the bottom,—I own has an air more of +fancy than of solid reasoning in it;——and yet, my dear +Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, +I should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in +the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it +to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this +matter;——you are a person free from as many narrow +prejudices of education as most men;—and, if I may presume to +penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality of genius above +bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. Your +son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper +you have so much to expect.—Your B<small>ILLY</small>, +Sir!—would you, for the world, have called him +J<small>UDAS</small>?—Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, +laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest +address,—and in that soft and irresistible <i>piano</i> of +voice, which the nature of the <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> +absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a <i>Jew</i> of a +godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his +purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration +of him?——O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know +your temper right, Sir,—you are incapable of +it;——you would have trampled upon the offer;—you +would have thrown the temptation at the tempter’s head with +abhorrence.</p> + +<p>Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with that +generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole +transaction, is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is +the principle of it;—the workings of a parent’s love +upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, That +was your son called J<small>UDAS</small>,—the forbid and +treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have +accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made +a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, Sir, of your example.</p> + +<p> +I never knew a man able to answer this argument.—But, indeed, to speak of +my father as he was;—he was certainly irresistible;—both in his +orations and disputations;—he was born an +orator;—Θεοδίδακτος.—Persuasion hung upon his lips, and the +elements of Logick and Rhetorick were so blended up in him,—and, withal, +he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions of his +respondent,——that N<small>ATURE</small> 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 +<i>Cicero</i>, nor <i>Quintilian de Oratore</i>, nor <i>Isocrates</i>, nor +<i>Aristotle</i>, nor <i>Longinus</i>, amongst the antients;—nor +<i>Vossius</i>, nor <i>Skioppius</i>, nor <i>Ramus</i>, nor <i>Farnaby</i>, +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 <i>Crackenthorp</i> or <i>Burgersdicius</i> or any +<i>Dutch</i> logician or commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the +difference of an argument <i>ad ignorantiam</i>, and an argument <i>ad +hominem</i> consisted; so that I well remember, when he went up along with me +to enter my name at <i>Jesus College</i> 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. +</p> + +<p>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 <i>vive la +Bagatelle</i>; 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.</p> + +<p>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, beginning in jest,—but ending in +downright earnest.</p> + +<p>Whether this was the case of the singularity of my +father’s notions—or that his judgment, at length, +became the dupe of his wit;—or how far, in many of his +notions, he might, though odd, be absolutely right;—the +reader, as he comes at them, shall decide. All that I maintain +here, is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, +however it gained footing, he was serious;—he was all +uniformity;—he was systematical, and, like all systematic +reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist and +torture every thing in nature to support his hypothesis. In a word +I repeat it over again;—he was +serious;—and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of +patience whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who +should have known better,——as careless and as +indifferent about the name they imposed upon their child,—or +more so, than in the choice of <i>Ponto</i> or <i>Cupid</i> for +their puppy-dog.</p> + +<p>This, he would say, look’d ill;—and had, moreover, +this particular aggravation in it, viz. That when once a vile name +was wrongfully or injudiciously given, ’twas not like the +case of a man’s character, which, when wrong’d, might +hereafter be cleared;——and, possibly, some time or +other, if not in the man’s life, at least after his +death,—be, somehow or other, set to rights with the world: +But the injury of this, he would say, could never be +undone;—nay, he doubted even whether an act of parliament +could reach it:——He knew as well as you, that the +legislature assumed a power over surnames;—but for very +strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step +farther.</p> + +<p>It was observable, that tho’ my father, in consequence of +this opinion, had, as I have told you, the strongest likings and +dislikings towards certain names;—that there were still +numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance before him, +that they were absolutely indifferent to him. <i>Jack, Dick</i>, +and <i>Tom</i> were of this class: These my father called neutral +names;—affirming of them, without a satire, That there had +been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and good men, +since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;—so +that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary +directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other’s +effects; for which reason, he would often declare, He would not +give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them. <i>Bob</i>, which was +my brother’s name, was another of these neutral kinds of +christian names, which operated very little either way; and as my +father happen’d to be at <i>Epsom</i>, when it was given him,—he would +oft-times thank Heaven it was no worse. <i>Andrew</i> was something +like a negative quantity in Algebra with him;—’twas +worse, he said, than nothing.—<i>William</i> stood pretty +high:——<i>Numps</i> again was low with him:—and +<i>Nick</i>, he said, was the D<small>EVIL.</small></p> + +<p> +But of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion for +T<small>RISTRAM</small>;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion +of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce +nothing in <i>rerum natura</i>, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: So +that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was +frequently involved,——he would sometimes break off in a sudden and +spirited E<small>PIPHONEMA</small>, or rather E<small>ROTESIS</small>, raised a +third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the +discourse,——and demand it categorically of his antagonist, Whether +he would take upon him to say, he had ever remembered,——whether he +had ever read,—or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called +<i>Tristram</i>, performing any thing great or worth +recording?—No,—he would +say,—T<small>RISTRAM</small>!—The thing is impossible. +</p> + +<p>What could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to +publish this notion of his to the world? Little boots it to the +subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he +gives them proper vent:—It was the identical thing which my +father did:—for in the year sixteen, which was two years +before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express +D<small>ISSERTATION</small> simply upon the word +<i>Tristram</i>,—shewing the world, with great candour and +modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.</p> + +<p>When this story is compared with the title-page,—Will not +the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an +orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho’ +singular,—yet inoffensive in his notions,—so played +upon in them by cross purposes;——to look down upon +the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his +little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually +falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if +they had purposedly been plann’d and pointed against him, +merely to insult his speculations.——In a word, to +behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten +times in a day suffering sorrow;—ten times in a day calling +the child of his prayers T<small>RISTRAM</small>!—Melancholy +dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to +<i>Nincompoop</i>, and every name vituperative under +heaven.——By his ashes! I swear it,—if ever +malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the +purposes of mortal man,—it must have been here;—and if +it was not necessary I should be born before I was christened, I +would this moment give the reader an account of it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——How could you, Madam, be so +inattentive in reading the last chapter? I told you in it, <i>That my mother was not a +papist.</i>——Papist! You told me no such thing, +Sir.—Madam, I beg leave to repeat it over again, that I told +you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell +you such a thing.—Then, Sir, I must have miss’d a +page.—No, Madam, you have not miss’d a word.—Then +I was asleep, Sir.—My pride, Madam, cannot allow you that +refuge.—Then, I declare, I know nothing at all about the +matter.—That, Madam, is the very fault I lay to your charge; +and as a punishment for it, I do insist upon it, that you +immediately turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full +stop, and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this +penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but +from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology +for it when she returns back:—’Tis to rebuke a vicious +taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,—of +reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition +and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should +be, would infallibly impart with them——The mind should +be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious +conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made +<i>Pliny</i> the younger affirm, “That he never read a +book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” The stories of +<i>Greece</i> and <i>Rome</i>, run over without this turn and +application,—do less service, I affirm it, than the history +of <i>Parismus</i> and <i>Parismenus</i>, or of the Seven Champions +of <i>England</i>, read with it.</p> + +<p> +———But here comes my fair lady. Have you read over again the +chapter, Madam, as I desired you?—You have: And did you not observe the +passage, upon the second reading, which admits the inference?—Not a word +like it! Then, Madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the +chapter, where I take upon me to say, “It was <i>necessary</i> I should +be born before I was christen’d.” Had my mother, Madam, been a +Papist, that consequence did not follow.<a href="#fn1" name="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p>It is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more +so to the Republick of letters;—so that my own is quite +swallowed up in the consideration of it,—that this self-same +vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,—and so +wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our +concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more +carnal parts of a composition will go down:—The subtle hints +and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits +upwards,—the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one +and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still +left in the bottom of the ink-horn.</p> + +<p>I wish the male-reader has not pass’d by many a one, as +quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been +detected. I wish it may have its effects;—and that all good +people, both male and female, from example, may be taught to think +as well as read.</p> + +<p class="center"> +M<small>EMOIRE</small> presenté à Messieurs les<br/> +Docteurs de S<small>ORBONNE</small><a href="#fn2" name="fnref2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p><i>U<small>N</small> Chirurgien Accoucheur, +represente à Messieurs les Docteurs de</i> +S<small>ORBONNE</small>, <i>qu’il y a des cas, quoique +très rares, où une mere ne sçauroit accoucher, & +même où l’enfant est tellement renfermé +dans le sein de sa mere, qu’il ne fait parôitre aucune +partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les Rituels, de +lui conférer, du moins sous condition, le baptême. Le +Chirurgien, qui consulte, prétend, par le moyen +d’une</i> petite canulle, <i>de pouvoir baptiser +immediatement l’enfant, sans faire aucun tort à la +mere.——Il demand si ce moyen, qu’il vient de +proposer, est permis & légitime, & s’il peut +s’en servir dans les cas qu’il vient +d’exposer.</i></p> + +<p class="center"> +R E P O N S E +</p> + +<p> +<i>L<small>E</small> Conseil estime, que la question proposée souffre de +grandes difficultés. Les Théologiens posent d’un côté pour principe, que +le baptême, qui est une naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere naissance; +il faut être né dans le monde, pour renaître en</i> Jesus Christ, +<i>comme ils l’enseignent. S.</i> Thomas, 3 part. quæst. 88 artic. 11. +<i>suit cette doctrine comme une verité constante; l’on ne peut, dit ce +S. Docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renférmes dans le sein de leurs meres, +& S.</i> Thomas <i>est fondé sur ce, que les enfans ne sont point nés, +& ne peuvent être comptés parmi les autres hommes; d’où il +conclud, qu’ils ne peuvent être l’objet d’une action +extérieure, pour reçevoir par leur ministére, les sacremens nécessaires au +salut:</i> Pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut +cum aliis hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanæ, ut +per eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. <i>Les rituels ordonnent +dans la pratique ce que les théologiens ont établi sur les mêmes matiéres, +& ils deffendent tous d’une maniére uniforme, de baptiser les enfans +qui sont renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, s’ils ne sont +paroître quelque partie de leurs corps. Le concours des théologiens, +& des rituels, qui sont les régles des diocéses, paroit former une autorité +qui termine la question presente; cependant le conseil de conscience +considerant d’un côté, que le raisonnement des théologiens est uniquement +fondé sur une raison de convenance, & que la deffense des rituels suppose +que l’on ne peut baptiser immediatement les enfans ainsi renfermés dans +le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition presente; & +d’un autre côté, considerant que lés mêmes théologiens enseignent, que +l’on peut risquer les sacremens que</i> Jesus Christ <i>a établis comme +des moyens faciles, mais nécessaires pour sanctifier les hommes; & +d’ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermés dans le sein de leurs +meres, pourroient être capables de salut, parcequ’ils sont capables de +damnation;—pour ces considerations, & en egard à l’expose, +suivant lequel on assure avoir trouvé un moyen certain de baptiser ces enfans +ainsi renfermés, sans faire aucun tort à la mere, le Conseil estime que +l’on pourroit se servir du moyen proposé, dans la confiance qu’il +a, que Dieu n’a point laissé ces sortes d’enfans sans aucuns +secours, & supposant, comme il est exposé, que le moyen dont il +s’agit est propre à leur procurer le baptême; cependant comme il +s’agiroit, en autorisant la pratique proposée, de changer une regle +universellement établie, le Conseil croit que celui qui consulte doit +s’addresser à son evêque, & à qui il appartient de juger de +l’utilité, & du danger du moyen proposé, & comme, sous le bon +plaisir de l’evêque, le Conseil estime qu’il faudroit recourir au +Pape, qui a le droit d’expliquer les régles de l’eglise, & +d’y déroger dans le cas, ou la loi ne sçauroit obliger, quelque sage +& quelque utile que paroisse la maniére de baptiser dont il s’agit, +le Conseil ne pourroit l’approver sans le concours de ces deux autorités. +On conseile au moins à celui qui consulte, de s’addresser à son evêque, +& de lui faire part de la presente décision, afin que, si le prelat entre +dans les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignés s’appuyent, il +puisse être autorisé dans le cas de nécessité, ou il risqueroit trop +d’attendre que la permission fût demandée & accordée d’employer +le moyen qu’il propose si avantageux au salut de l’enfant. Au +reste, le Conseil, en estimant que l’on pourroit s’en servir, croit +cependant, que si les enfans dont il s’agit, venoient au monde, contre +l’esperance de ceux qui se seroient servis du méme moyen, il seroit +nécessaire de les baptiser</i> sous condition; <i>& en cela le Conseil se +conforme à tous les rituels, qui en autorisant le baptême d’un enfant qui +fait paroître quelque partie de son corps, enjoignent néantmoins, & +ordonnent de le baptiser</i> sous condition, <i>s’il vient heureusement +au monde.</i> +</p> + +<p>Déliberé en <i>Sorbonne</i>, le 10 <i>Avril</i>, +1733.</p> + +<p class="right"> +A. L<small>E</small> M<small>OYNE</small>.<br/> +L. D<small>E</small> R<small>OMIGNY</small>.<br/> +D<small>E</small> M<small>ARCILLY</small>. +</p> + +<p>Mr. <i>Tristram Shandy</i>’s compliments to Messrs. <i>Le +Moyne, De Romigny</i>, and <i>De Marcilly</i>; hopes they all +rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation.—He +begs to know, whether after the ceremony of marriage, and before +that of consummation, the baptizing all the +H<small>OMUNCULI</small> at once, slapdash, by <i>injection</i>, +would not be a shorter and safer cut still; on condition, as above, +That if the H<small>OMUNCULI</small> do well, and come safe into +the world after this, that each and every of them shall be baptized +again (<i>sous condition</i>)——And provided, in the +second place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. <i>Shandy</i> +apprehends it may, <i>par le moyen d’une</i> petite canulle, +and <i>sans faire aucune tort au pere.</i></p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn1"></a> <a href="#fnref1">[1]</a> +The <i>Romish</i> Rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases of +danger, <i>before</i> it is born;—but upon this proviso, That some part +or other of the child’s body be seen by the baptizer:——But +the Doctors of the <i>Sorbonne</i>, by a deliberation held amongst them, +<i>April</i> 10, 1733,—have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by +determining, That though no part of the child’s body should +appear,—that baptism shall, nevertheless, be administered to it by +injection,—<i>par le moyen d’une petite canulle</i>,—Anglicè +<i>a squirt.</i>—’Tis very strange that St. <i>Thomas Aquinas</i>, +who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying and untying the knots of +school-divinity,—should, after so much pains bestowed upon +this,—give up the point at last, as a second <i>La chose +impossible</i>,—“Infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth St. +<i>Thomas!</i>) baptizari possunt <i>nullo modo.</i>”—O <i>Thomas! +Thomas!</i><br/> +<br/> + If the reader has the curiosity to see the question +upon baptism <i>by injection</i>, as presented to the Doctors of the +<i>Sorbonne</i>, with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn2"></a> <a href="#fnref2">[2]</a> +Vide Deventer. Paris Edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I <small>WONDER</small> what’s +all that noise, and running backwards and forwards for, above +stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour and a +half’s silence, to my uncle <i>Toby</i>,——who, +you must know, was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, +smoaking his social pipe all the time, in mute contemplation of a +new pair of black plush-breeches which he had got on:—What +can they be doing, brother?—quoth my father,—we can +scarce hear ourselves talk.</p> + +<p>I think, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, taking his pipe from his +mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail +of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,——I think, +says he:——But to enter rightly into my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s sentiments upon this matter, you must be made +to enter first a little into his character, the out-lines of which +I shall just give you, and then the dialogue between +him and my father will go on as well again.</p> + +<p>Pray what was that man’s name,—for I write in such a +hurry, I have no time to recollect or look for it,——who +first made the observation, “That there was great +inconstancy in our air and climate?” Whoever he was, +’twas a just and good observation in him.—But the +corollary drawn from it, namely, “That it is this which +has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical +characters;”—that was not his;—it was found out +by another man, at least a century and a half after him: Then +again,—that this copious store-house of original materials, +is the true and natural cause that our Comedies are so much better +than those of <i>France</i>, or any others that either have, or can +be wrote upon the Continent:——that discovery was not +fully made till about the middle of King <i>William</i>’s +reign,—when the great <i>Dryden</i>, in writing one of his +long prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed toward the +latter end of queen <i>Anne</i>, the great <i>Addison</i> began to +patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in +one or two of his Spectators;—but the discovery was not +his.—Then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange +irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an irregularity +in our characters,——doth thereby, in some sort, make us +amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the +weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,—that +observation is my own;—and was struck out by me this very +rainy day, <i>March</i> 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and +ten in the morning.</p> + +<p> +Thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of +our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual +increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, +nautical, mathematical, ænigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, +chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of ’em +ending as these do, in <i>ical</i>) have for these two last centuries and more, +gradually been creeping upwards towards that Ἀκμὴ of their perfections, from +which, if we may form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, +we cannot possibly be far off. +</p> + +<p>When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all +kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing +will put an end to all kind of reading;—and that in time, +<i>As war begets poverty; poverty peace</i>,——must, in +course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and +then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in +other words, be exactly where we started.</p> + +<p>———Happy! Thrice happy times! I only wish that +the æra of my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of +it, had been a little alter’d,—or that it could have +been put off, with any convenience to my father or mother, for some +twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary world might have +stood some chance.——</p> + +<p>But I forget my uncle <i>Toby</i>, whom all this while we have +left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe.</p> + +<p>His humour was of that particular species, which does honour to +our atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him +amongst one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there +appeared too many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which +shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper more from +blood, than either wind or water, or any modifications or +combinations of them whatever: And I have, therefore, oft-times +wondered, that my father, tho’ I believe he had his reasons +for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my +course, when I was a boy,—should never once endeavour to +account for them in this way: for all the S<small>HANDY</small> +F<small>AMILY</small> were of an original character +throughout:——I mean the males,—the females had no +character at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt +D<small>INAH</small>, who, about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, +for which my father, according to his hypothesis of christian +names, would often say, She might thank her godfathers and +godmothers.</p> + +<p>It will seem strange,——and I would as soon think of +dropping a riddle in the reader’s way, which is not my +interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to pass, +that an event of this kind, so many years after it had happened, +should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity, +which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and my +uncle <i>Toby.</i> One would have thought, that the whole force of +the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the family at +first,—as is generally the case.—But nothing ever +wrought with our family after the ordinary way. Possibly at the +very time this happened, it might have something else to afflict +it; and as afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this +had never done the S<small>HANDY</small> F<small>AMILY</small> any +good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circumstances should give it an +opportunity to discharge its office.——Observe, I +determine nothing upon this.——My way is ever to point +out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at +the first springs of the events I tell;—not with a pedantic +<i>Fescue</i>,—or in the decisive manner or <i>Tacitus</i>, +who outwits himself and his reader;—but with the officious +humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the +inquisitive;—to them I write,——and by them I +shall be read,——if any such reading as this could be +supposed to hold out so long,—to the very end of the +world.</p> + +<p>Why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my +father and uncle, is undetermined by me. But how and in what +direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of +dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what I +am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows:</p> + +<p>My uncle T<small>OBY</small> S<small>HANDY</small>, Madam, was a +gentleman, who, with the virtues which usually constitute the character of a man of +honour and rectitude,—possessed one in a very eminent degree, +which is seldom or never put into the catalogue; and that was a +most extreme and unparallel’d modesty of +nature;——though I correct the word nature, for this +reason, that I may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to +a hearing, and that is, Whether this modesty of his was natural or +acquir’d.——Whichever way my uncle <i>Toby</i> +came by it, ’twas nevertheless modesty in the truest sense of +it; and that is, Madam, not in regard to words, for he was so +unhappy as to have very little choice in them,—but to +things;——and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and +it arose to such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a +thing could be, even the modesty of a woman: That female nicety, +Madam, and inward cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your sex, which +makes you so much the awe of ours.</p> + +<p>You will imagine, Madam, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> had +contracted all this from this very source;—that he had spent a great +part of his time in converse with your sex, and that from a +thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation which such +fair examples render irresistible, he had acquired this amiable +turn of mind.</p> + +<p>I wish I could say so,—for unless it was with his +sister-in-law, my father’s wife and my mother——my +uncle <i>Toby</i> scarce exchanged three words with the sex in as +many years;——no, he got it, Madam, by a +blow.——A blow!—Yes, Madam, it was owing to a +blow from a stone, broke off by a ball from the parapet of a +horn-work at the siege of Namur, which struck full upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s groin.—Which way could that effect it? +The story of that, Madam, is long and interesting;—but it +would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you +here.——’Tis for an episode hereafter; and every +circumstance relating to it, in its proper place, shall be +faithfully laid before you:—’Till then, it is not in my +power to give farther light into this matter, or say more than what I have said +already,——That my uncle <i>Toby</i> was a gentleman of +unparallel’d modesty, which happening to be somewhat +subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a little family +pride,——they both so wrought together within him, that +he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt +D<small>INAH</small> touch’d upon, but with the greatest +emotion.——The least hint of it was enough to make the +blood fly into his face;—but when my father enlarged upon the +story in mixed companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis +frequently obliged him to do,—the unfortunate blight of one +of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s honour and modesty o’bleeding; and he +would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern +imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any +thing in the world, only to let the story rest.</p> + +<p>My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing in nature, +which one brother in reason could have desir’d of another, to +have made my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s heart easy in this, or any +other point. But this lay out of his power.</p> + +<p> +——My father, as I told you was a philosopher in +grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt +<i>Dinah</i>’s affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the +retrogradation of the planets to <i>Copernicus</i>:—The backslidings of +<i>Venus</i> in her orbit fortified the <i>Copernican</i> system, called so +after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt <i>Dinah</i> in her orbit, did +the same service in establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will +for ever hereafter be called the <i>Shandean System</i>, after his. +</p> + +<p>In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice +a sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, +nor, I dare say, <i>Copernicus</i>, would have divulged the affair +in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, +but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth.—<i>Amicus +Plato</i>, my father would say, construing the words to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, as he went along, <i>Amicus Plato</i>; that is, +D<small>INAH</small> was my aunt;—<i>sed magis amica +veritas</i>—but T<small>RUTH</small> is my sister.</p> + +<p>This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was +the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to +hear the tale of family disgrace recorded,——and the +other would scarce ever let a day pass to an end without some hint +at it.</p> + +<p>For God’s sake, my uncle <i>Toby</i> would +cry,——and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear +brother <i>Shandy</i>,—do let this story of our aunt’s +and her ashes sleep in peace;——how can +you,——how can you have so little feeling and compassion +for the character of our family?——What is the character +of a family to an hypothesis? my father would +reply.——Nay, if you come to that—what is the +life of a family?——The life of a family!—my uncle +<i>Toby</i> would say, throwing himself back in his arm chair, and +lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one +leg——Yes, the life,——my father would say, +maintaining his point. How many thousands of ’em are there +every year that come cast away, (in all civilized countries at +least)——and considered as nothing but common air, in +competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle +<i>Toby</i> would answer,—every such instance is downright +M<small>URDER</small>, let who will commit it.——There +lies your mistake, my father would reply;——for, in +<i>Foro Scientiæ</i> there is no such thing as +M<small>URDER</small>,——’tis only +D<small>EATH</small>, brother.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> would never offer to answer this by any +other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of +<i>Lillebullero.</i>——You must know it was the usual +channel thro’ which his passions got vent, when any thing +shocked or surprized him:——but especially when any +thing, which he deem’d very absurd, was offered.</p> + +<p>As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators +upon them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name +to this particular species of argument.—I here take the +liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. First, That, in order to +prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much +distinguished for ever, from every other species of +argument———as the <i>Argumentum ad Verecundiam, +ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori</i>, or any other argument +whatsoever:——And, secondly, That it may be said by my +children’s children, when my head is laid to +rest,——that their learn’d grandfather’s +head had been busied to as much purpose once, as other +people’s;—That he had invented a name, and generously +thrown it into the T<small>REASURY</small> of the <i>Ars +Logica</i>, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole +science. And, if the end of disputation is more to silence than +convince,—they may add, if they please, to one of the best +arguments too.</p> + +<p>I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, +That it be known and distinguished by the name and title of the +<i>Argumentum Fistulatorium</i>, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the +<i>Argumentum Baculinum</i> and the <i>Argumentum ad Crumenam</i>, +and for ever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.</p> + +<p>As for the <i>Argumentum Tripodium</i>, which is never used but +by the woman against the man;—and the <i>Argumentum ad +Rem</i>, which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only +against the woman;—As these two are enough in conscience for +one lecture;——and, moreover, as the one is the best +answer to the other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be +treated of in a place by themselves.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> learned Bishop <i>Hall</i>, I +mean the famous Dr. <i>Joseph Hall</i>, who was Bishop of +<i>Exeter</i> in King <i>James</i> the First’s reign, tells +us in one of <i>Decads</i>, at the end of his divine art of +meditation, imprinted at <i>London</i>, in the year 1610, by +<i>John Beal</i>, dwelling in <i>Aldersgate-street</i>, +“That it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;”——and I +really think it is so.</p> + +<p>And yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a +masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found +out;—I think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose +the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it +rotting in his head.</p> + +<p>This is precisely my situation.</p> + +<p>For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, +as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a +master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all +along, I fear, been over-looked by my reader,—not for want of +penetration in him,—but because ’tis an excellence +seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;—and +it is this: That tho’ my digressions are all fair, as you +observe,—and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and +as often too, as any writer in <i>Great Britain</i>; yet I +constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does +not stand still in my absence.</p> + +<p>I was just going, for example, to have given you the great +out-lines of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s most whimsical +character;—when my aunt <i>Dinah</i> and the coachman came +across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very +heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you +perceive that the drawing of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s character +went on gently all the time;—not the great contours of +it,—that was impossible,—but some familiar strokes and +faint designations of it, were here and there touch’d on, as +we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle +Toby now than you was before.</p> + +<p>By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by +itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and +reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. +In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive +too,—and at the same time.</p> + +<p>This, Sir, is a very different story from that of the +earth’s moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, +with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings +about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of +seasons we enjoy;—though I own it suggested the +thought,—as I believe the greatest of our boasted +improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling +hints.</p> + +<p>Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they +are the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this +book, for instance,—you might as well take the book along +with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page +of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a +bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the +appetite to fail.</p> + +<p>All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, +so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of +the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, +if he begins a digression,—from that moment, I observe, his +whole work stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his +main work,—then there is an end of his +digression.</p> + +<p>——This is vile work.—For which reason, from +the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work +and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have +so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive +movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in +general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, it +shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain +of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAVE</small> a strong propensity in me to +begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my +fancy.—Accordingly I set off thus:</p> + +<p>If the fixture of <i>Momus</i>’s glass in the human +breast, according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick, +had taken place,——first, This foolish +consequence would certainly have followed,—That the very +wisest and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have +paid window-money every day of our lives.</p> + +<p>And, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, +nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a +man’s character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, +as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look’d +in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her +motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from +their first engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her +loose in her frisks, her gambols, her capricios; and after some +notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent upon such frisks, +&c.——then taken your pen and ink and set down +nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn to:—But +this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this +planet;—in the planet <i>Mercury</i> (belike) it may be so, +if not better still for him;——for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, +from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of +red-hot iron,—must, I think, long ago have vitrified the +bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them +for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them +both, all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be +nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the +contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear glass (bating the +umbilical knot)—so that, till the inhabitants grow old and +tolerably wrinkled, whereby the rays of light, in passing through +them, become so monstrously refracted,——or return +reflected from their surfaces in such transverse lines to the eye, +that a man cannot be seen through;—his soul might as well, +unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the +umbilical point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, I +say, as well play the fool out o’doors as in her own +house.</p> + +<p>But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of +this earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt +up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so +that, if we would come to the specific characters of them, we must +go some other way to work.</p> + +<p>Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been +forced to take, to do this thing with exactness.</p> + +<p>Some, for instance, draw all their characters with +wind-instruments.—<i>Virgil</i> takes notice of that way in +the affair of <i>Dido</i> and <i>Æneas</i>;—but it is +as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks +a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the <i>Italians</i> pretend +to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular +sort of character among them, from the <i>forte</i> or <i>piano</i> +of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is +infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in +this place;—’tis sufficient we have it amongst +us,—but never think of making a drawing by it;—this is +ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least <i>ad +populum</i>:—And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that +you read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry +about it.</p> + +<p>There are others again, who will draw a man’s character +from no other helps in the world, but merely from his +evacuations;—but this often gives a very incorrect +outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions +too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one +good figure out of them both.</p> + +<p>I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it +must smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d +still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the rest of +his <i>Non-naturals.</i>—Why the most natural actions of a +man’s life should be called his Non-naturals,—is +another question.</p> + +<p> +There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these +expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various +ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which +the Pentagraphic Brethren<a href="#fn3" name="fnref3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> of the +brush have shewn in taking copies.—These, you must know, are your great +historians. +</p> + +<p>One of these you will see drawing a full length character +<i>against the light</i>;—that’s +illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of +the man who sits.</p> + +<p>Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the +<i>Camera</i>;—that is most unfair of all, because, +<i>there</i> you are sure to be represented in some of your most +ridiculous attitudes.</p> + +<p>To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s character, I am determined to draw it by +no mechanical help whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by +any one wind-instrument which ever was blown upon, either on this, +or on the other side of the <i>Alps</i>;—nor will I consider +either his repletions or his discharges,—or touch upon his +Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s character from his +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn3"></a> <a href="#fnref3">[3]</a> +Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures mechanically, and in any +proportion. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>F</small> I was not morally sure that the +reader must be out of all patience for my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +character,——I would here previously have convinced him +that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as +that which I have pitch’d upon.</p> + +<p>A man and his H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>, +tho’ I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the +same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet +doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind; and +my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the +manner of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the +heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with +the back of the H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>,—by +long journies and much friction, it so happens, that the body of +the rider is at length fill’d as full of +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSICAL</small> matter as it can +hold;—so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature +of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and +character of the other.</p> + +<p>Now the H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> which my uncle +<i>Toby</i> always rode upon, was in my opinion an +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> well worth giving a +description of, if it was only upon the score of his great +singularity;—for you might have travelled from <i>York</i> to +<i>Dover</i>,—from <i>Dover</i> to <i>Penzance</i> in +<i>Cornwall</i>, and from <i>Penzance</i> to <i>York</i> back +again, and not have seen such another upon the road; or if you had +seen such a one, whatever haste you had been in, you must +infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a view of him. Indeed, +the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike +was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, +that it was now and then made a matter of +dispute,——whether he was really a +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> or no: But as the +Philosopher would use no other argument to the Sceptic, who +disputed with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking +across the room;—so would my uncle <i>Toby</i> use no other +argument to prove his H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> was +a H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> indeed, but by getting +upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after +that, to determine the point as it thought fit.</p> + +<p>In good truth, my uncle <i>Toby</i> mounted him with so much +pleasure, and he carried my uncle <i>Toby</i> so +well,——that he troubled his head very little with what +the world either said or thought about it.</p> + +<p>It is now high time, however, that I give you a description of +him:—But to go on regularly, I only beg you will give me +leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle <i>Toby</i> came by +him.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> wound in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s groin, which he received at the siege of +<i>Namur</i>, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought +expedient he should return to <i>England</i>, in order, if +possible, to be set to rights.</p> + +<p>He was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, +and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was +all that time in hand, suffer’d unspeakable +miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the +<i>os pubis</i>, and the outward edge of that part of the +<i>coxendix</i> called the <i>os illium</i>,——both +which bones were dismally crush’d, as much by the +irregularity of the stone, which I told you was broke off the +parapet,—as by its size,—(tho’ it was pretty +large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the +great injury which it had done my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s groin, +was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the +projectile force of it,—which he would often tell him was a +great happiness.</p> + +<p>My father at that time was just beginning business in +<i>London</i>, and had taken a house;—and as the truest +friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two +brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle <i>Toby</i> could no where be so well nursed +and taken care of as in his own house,——he +assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—And what +was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never +suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any +occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs +to see his brother <i>Toby</i>, and chat an hour by his +bed-side.</p> + +<p>The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of +it;—my uncle’s visitors at least thought so, and in +their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that +belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that +subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally +roll on to the siege itself.</p> + +<p>These conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle +<i>Toby</i> received great relief from them, and would have +received much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen +perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an +expedient to extricate himself out of them, I verily believe they +would have laid him in his grave.</p> + +<p>What these perplexities of my uncle <i>Toby</i> +were,——’tis impossible for you to guess;—if +you could,—I should blush; not as a relation,—not as a +man,—nor even as a woman,—but I should blush as an +author; inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very +account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any +thing. And in this, Sir, I am of so nice and singular a humour, +that if I thought you was able to form the least judgment or +probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next +page,—I would tear it out of my book.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAVE</small> begun a new book, on purpose +that I might have room enough to explain the nature of the +perplexities in which my uncle <i>Toby</i> was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the +siege of <i>Namur</i>, where he received his wound.</p> + +<p>I must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of +King <i>William</i>’s wars,—but if he has not,—I +then inform him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that +siege, was that which was made by the <i>English</i> and +<i>Dutch</i> upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, between +the gate of <i>St. Nicolas</i>, which inclosed the great sluice or +water-stop, where the <i>English</i> were terribly exposed to the +shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of <i>St. Roch</i>: The +issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this; That the +<i>Dutch</i> lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,—and +that the <i>English</i> made themselves masters of the covered-way +before <i>St. Nicolas</i>-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of +the <i>French</i> officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis +sword in hand.</p> + +<p>As this was the principal attack of which my uncle <i>Toby</i> +was an eye-witness at <i>Namur</i>,——the army of the +besiegers being cut off, by the confluence of the <i>Maes</i> +and <i>Sambre</i>, from seeing much of each other’s +operations,——my uncle <i>Toby</i> was generally more +eloquent and particular in his account of it; and the many +perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable +difficulties he found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving +such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the +scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and covered-way,—the +half-moon and ravelin,—as to make his company fully +comprehend where and what he was about.</p> + +<p>Writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that +you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and +in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> did +oft-times puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too.</p> + +<p>To speak the truth, unless the company my father led up stairs +were tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle <i>Toby</i> was in one of +his explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep the +discourse free from obscurity.</p> + +<p>What rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, was this,—that in the attack of the +counterscarp, before the gate of <i>St. Nicolas</i>, extending +itself from the bank of the <i>Maes</i>, quite up to the great +water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with such a +multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all +sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast +amongst them, that frequently he could neither get backwards or +forwards to save his life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the +attack upon that very account only.</p> + +<p>These perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle <i>Toby Shandy</i> more +perturbations than you would imagine; and as my father’s +kindness to him was continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh +enquirers,——he had but a very uneasy task of it.</p> + +<p>No doubt my uncle <i>Toby</i> had great command of himself,—and could guard +appearances, I believe, as well as most men;—yet any one may +imagine, that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without +getting into the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without +falling down the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of +slipping into the ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed +inwardly:—He did so;—and the little and hourly +vexations, which may seem trifling and of no account to the man who +has not read <i>Hippocrates</i>, yet, whoever has read +<i>Hippocrates</i>, or Dr. <i>James Mackenzie</i>, and has +considered well the effects which the passions and affections of +the mind have upon the digestion—(Why not of a wound as well +as of a dinner?)—may easily conceive what sharp paroxysms and +exacerbations of his wound my uncle <i>Toby</i> must have undergone +upon that score only.</p> + +<p>—My uncle <i>Toby</i> could not philosophize upon +it;—’twas enough he felt it was so,—and having +sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate +himself.</p> + +<p> +He was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and nature of +the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other position, when a +thought came into his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it +pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortification of the town and +citadel of <i>Namur</i>, with its environs, it might be a means of giving him +ease.—I take notice of his desire to have the environs along with the +town and citadel, for this reason,—because my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +wound was got in one of the traverses, about thirty toises from the returning +angle of the trench, opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of +<i>St. Roch</i>:——so that he was pretty confident he could stick a +pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone +struck him. +</p> + +<p>All this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a +world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my +uncle <i>Toby</i> his H<small>OBBY-HORSE.</small></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> is nothing so foolish, when you +are at the expence of making an entertainment of this kind, as to +order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of +refined taste run it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make +them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is +full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of +your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing +as a critick (by occupation) at table.</p> + +<p>——I guard against both; for, in the first place, I +have left half a dozen places purposely open for them;—and in +the next place, I pay them all court.—Gentlemen, I kiss your +hands, I protest no company could give me half the +pleasure,—by my soul I am glad to see +you———I beg only you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any +ceremony, and fall on heartily.</p> + +<p>I said I had left six places, and I was upon the point of +carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for +them,—and in this very spot I stand on; but being told by a +Critick (tho’ not by occupation,—but by nature) that I +had acquitted myself well enough, I shall fill it up directly, +hoping, in the mean time, that I shall be able to make a great deal +of more room next year.</p> + +<p>———How, in the name of wonder! could your +uncle <i>Toby</i>, who, it seems, was a military man, and whom you +have represented as no fool,—be at the same time such a +confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—Go +look.</p> + +<p>So, Sir Critick, I could have replied; but I scorn +it.—’Tis language unurbane,—and only befitting +the man who cannot give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, +or dive deep enough into the first causes of human ignorance and +confusion. It is moreover the reply valiant—and therefore I reject it; for tho’ it +might have suited my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s character as a +soldier excellently well,—and had he not accustomed himself, +in such attacks, to whistle the <i>Lillabullero</i>, as he wanted +no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it +would by no means have done for me. You see as plain as can be, +that I write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my +allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and +that I must sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly +too,—else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I should be +undone;—at this very moment that I am going here to fill up +one place against a critick,—I should have made an opening +for a couple.</p> + +<p>——Therefore I answer thus:</p> + +<p>Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you +ever read such a book as <i>Locke</i>’s Essay upon the Human +Understanding?——Don’t answer me +rashly—because many, I know, quote the book, who have not +read it—and many have read it who understand it not:—If +either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell +you in three words what the book is.—It is a history.—A +history! of who? what? where? when? Don’t hurry +yourself—It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly +recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man’s own +mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe +me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick +circle.</p> + +<p>But this by the way.</p> + +<p>Now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into +the bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of +obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold.</p> + +<p>Dull organs, dear Sir, in the first place. Secondly, slight and +transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are +not dull. And thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to +retain what it has received.—Call down <i>Dolly</i> your +chamber-maid, and I will give you my cap and bell along with it, if +I make not this matter so plain that <i>Dolly</i> herself +should understand it as well as <i>Malbranch.</i>——When +<i>Dolly</i> has indited her epistle to <i>Robin</i>, and has +thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right +side;—take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and +faculties of perception can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly +typified and explained as by that one thing which +<i>Dolly</i>’s hand is in search of.—Your organs are +not so dull that I should inform you—’tis an inch, Sir, +of red seal-wax.</p> + +<p>When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if <i>Dolly</i> +fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it +will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse +which was wont to imprint it. Very well. If <i>Dolly</i>’s +wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too +soft,—tho’ it may receive,—it will not hold the +impression, how hard soever <i>Dolly</i> thrusts against it; and +last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but +applied thereto in careless haste, as her Mistress rings the bell;——in any one of +these three cases the print left by the thimble will be as unlike +the prototype as a brass-jack.</p> + +<p>Now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause +of the confusion in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s discourse; and it +is for that very reason I enlarge upon them so long, after the +manner of great physiologists—to shew the world, what it did +<i>not</i> arise from.</p> + +<p>What it did arise from, I have hinted above, and a fertile +source of obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that +is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed the clearest +and most exalted understandings.</p> + +<p>It is ten to one (at <i>Arthur</i>’s) whether you have +ever read the literary histories of past ages;—if you have, +what terrible battles, ’yclept logomachies, have they +occasioned and perpetuated with so much gall and +ink-shed,—that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of +them without tears in his eyes.</p> + +<p>Gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within thyself how much +of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has been pestered +and disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this +only:—What a pudder and racket in C<small>OUNCILS</small> +about χδια and +υωοςασις; and +in the S<small>CHOOLS</small> of the learned about power and about +spirit;—about essences, and about +quintessences;——about substances, and about +space.——What confusion in greater +T<small>HEATRES</small> from words of little meaning, and as +indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou wilt not +wonder at my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s perplexities,—thou +wilt drop a tear of pity upon his scarp and his +counterscarp;—his glacis and his covered way;—his +ravelin and his half- moon: ’Twas not by ideas,—by +Heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> got his map +of <i>Namur</i> to his mind, he began immediately to apply himself, +and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it; for +nothing being of more importance to him than his recovery, and his +recovery depending, as you have read, upon the passions and +affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to +make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to talk +upon it without emotion.</p> + +<p>In a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by +the bye, did my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s wound, upon his groin, no +good,—he was enabled, by the help of some marginal documents +at the feet of the elephant, together with <i>Gobesius</i>’s +military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the +<i>Flemish</i>, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity; +and before he was two full months gone,—he was right eloquent +upon it, and could make not only the attack of the advanced +counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that time, gone +much deeper into the art, than what his first motive made +necessary, my uncle <i>Toby</i> was able to cross the <i>Maes</i> +and <i>Sambre</i>; make diversions as far as <i>Vauban</i>’s +line, the abbey of <i>Salsines</i>, &c. and give his visitors +as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the +gate of <i>St. Nicolas</i>, where he had the honour to receive his +wound.</p> + +<p>But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases +ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle <i>Toby</i> +pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it!—by the +same process and electrical assimilation, as I told you, through +which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by long friction +and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all +be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and +be-fiddled.</p> + +<p>The more my uncle <i>Toby</i> drank of this sweet fountain of +science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so +that before the first year of his confinement had well gone round, +there was scarce a fortified town in <i>Italy</i> or +<i>Flanders</i>, of which, by one means or other, he had not +procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, +their demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he +would read with that intense application and delight, that he would +forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner.</p> + +<p>In the second year my uncle <i>Toby</i> purchased <i>Ramelli</i> +and <i>Cataneo</i>, translated from the +<i>Italian</i>;—likewise <i>Stevinus, Moralis</i>, the +Chevalier <i>de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter</i>, the Count +<i>de Pagan</i>, the Marshal <i>Vauban</i>, Mons. <i>Blondel</i>, +with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don +<i>Quixote</i> was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and +barber invaded his library.</p> + +<p>Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in +<i>August</i>, ninety-nine, my uncle <i>Toby</i> found it necessary +to understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it +best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he began with +<i>N. Tartaglia</i>, who it seems was the first man who detected +the imposition of a cannon-ball’s doing all that mischief under the notion of a right line—This +<i>N. Tartaglia</i> proved to my uncle <i>Toby</i> to be an +impossible thing.</p> + +<p>——Endless is the search of Truth.</p> + +<p>No sooner was my uncle <i>Toby</i> satisfied which road the +cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved +in his mind to enquire and find out which road the ball did go: For +which purpose he was obliged to set off afresh with old +<i>Maltus</i>, and studied him devoutly.—He proceeded next to +<i>Galileo</i> and <i>Torricellius</i>, wherein, by certain +Geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise path +to be a P<small>ARABOLA</small>—or else an +H<small>YPERBOLA</small>,—and that the parameter, or <i>latus +rectum</i>, of the conic section of the said path, was to the +quantity and amplitude in a direct <i>ratio</i>, as the whole line +to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech +upon an horizontal plane;—and that the +semiparameter,——stop! my dear uncle +<i>Toby</i>——stop!—go not one foot farther into +this thorny and bewildered track,—intricate are the steps! +intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles +which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom +K<small>NOWLEDGE</small> will bring upon thee.—O my +uncle;—fly—fly,—fly from it as from a +serpent.——Is it fit——goodnatured man! thou +should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights +baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! +’twill exasperate thy symptoms,—check thy +perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy animal +strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive +habit of body,——impair thy health,——and +hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.—O my uncle! my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>WOULD</small> not give a groat for that +man’s knowledge in pen-craft, who does not understand +this,——That the best plain narrative in the world, +tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——would have felt both cold and vapid upon +the reader’s palate;—therefore I forthwith put an end to the +chapter, though I was in the middle of my story.</p> + +<p>——Writers of my stamp have one principle in common +with painters. Where an exact copying makes our pictures less +striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even more pardonable +to trespass against truth, than beauty. This is to be understood +<i>cum grano salis</i>; but be it as it will,—as the parallel +is made more for the sake of letting the apostrophe cool, than any +thing else,—’tis not very material whether upon any +other score the reader approves of it or not.</p> + +<p>In the latter end of the third year, my uncle <i>Toby</i> +perceiving that the parameter and semi-parameter of the conic +section angered his wound, he left off the study of projectiles in +a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the practical part of +fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a spring held back, +returned upon him with redoubled force.</p> + +<p>It was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily regularity of a clean +shirt,——to dismiss his barber +unshaven,——and to allow his surgeon scarce time +sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about +it, as not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went on: +when, lo!—all of a sudden, for the change was quick as +lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his +recovery,——complained to my father, grew impatient with +the surgeon:——and one morning, as he heard his foot +coming up stairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his +instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction +of the cure, which, he told him, might surely have been +accomplished at least by that time:—He dwelt long upon the +miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his four years +melancholy imprisonment;——adding, that had it not been +for the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of +brothers,—he had long since sunk under his +misfortunes.——My father was by. My uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas +unexpected:——My uncle <i>Toby</i>, by nature was not +eloquent;—it had the greater effect:——The surgeon +was confounded;——not that there wanted grounds for +such, or greater marks of impatience,—but ’twas +unexpected too; in the four years he had attended him, he had never +seen any thing like it in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s carriage; he +had never once dropped one fretful or discontented +word;——he had been all patience,—all +submission.</p> + +<p>—We lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing +it;—but we often treble the force:—The surgeon was +astonished; but much more so, when he heard my uncle Toby go on, +and peremptorily insist upon his healing up the wound +directly,—or sending for Monsieur <i>Ronjat</i>, the +king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him.</p> + +<p>The desire of life and health is implanted in man’s +nature;——the love of liberty and enlargement is a +sister-passion to it: These my uncle <i>Toby</i> had in common with +his species—and either of them had been sufficient to account for his earnest +desire to get well and out of doors;——but I have told +you before, that nothing wrought with our family after the common +way;——and from the time and manner in which this eager +desire shewed itself in the present case, the penetrating reader +will suspect there was some other cause or crotchet for it in my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head:——There was so, and +’tis the subject of the next chapter to set forth what that +cause and crotchet was. I own, when that’s done, ’twill +be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, where we left my +uncle <i>Toby</i> in the middle of his sentence.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> a man gives himself up to the +government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> grows +headstrong,——farewell cool reason and fair +discretion!</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>’s wound was near well, and as soon as +the surgeon recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say as +much——he told him, ’twas just beginning to +incarnate; and that if no fresh exfoliation happened, which there +was no sign of,—it would be dried up in five or six weeks. +The sound of as many Olympiads, twelve hours before, would have +conveyed an idea of shorter duration to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s mind.——The succession of his ideas +was now rapid,—he broiled with impatience to put his design +in execution;——and so, without consulting farther with +any soul living,—which, by the bye, I think is right, when +you are predetermined to take no one soul’s +advice,——he privately ordered <i>Trim</i>, his man, to +pack up a bundle of lint and dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four +to be at the door exactly by twelve o’clock that day, when he +knew my father would be upon ’Change.——So leaving +a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon’s care of him, and +a letter of tender thanks for his brother’s—he packed +up his maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, &c. +and by the help of a crutch on one side, and <i>Trim</i> on the +other,——my uncle <i>Toby</i> embarked for +<i>Shandy-Hall.</i></p> + +<p>The reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as +follows:</p> + +<p>The table in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s room, and at which, +the night before this change happened, he was sitting with his +maps, &c. about him—being somewhat of the smallest, for +that infinity of great and small instruments of knowledge which +usually lay crowded upon it—he had the accident, in reaching +over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his compasses, and in +stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he threw down +his case of instruments and snuffers;—and as the dice took a +run against him, in his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in +falling,——he thrust Monsieur <i>Blondel</i> off the +table, and Count <i>de Pagon</i> o’top of him.</p> + +<p>’Twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> was, to think of redressing these evils by +himself,—he rung his bell for his man +<i>Trim</i>;——<i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, prithee see what +confusion I have here been making—I must have some better +contrivance, <i>Trim.</i>—Can’st not thou take my rule, +and measure the length and breadth of this table, and then go and +bespeak me one as big again?——Yes, an’ please +your Honour, replied <i>Trim</i>, making a bow; but I hope your +Honour will be soon well enough to get down to your country-seat, +where,—as your Honour takes so much pleasure in +fortification, we could manage this matter to a T.</p> + +<p>I must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s, who went by the name of <i>Trim</i>, had been +a corporal in my uncle’s own company,—his real name was +<i>James Butler</i>,—but having got the nick-name of +<i>Trim</i>, in the regiment, my uncle <i>Toby</i>, unless when he +happened to be very angry with him, would never call him by any +other name.</p> + +<p>The poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on +his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of <i>Landen</i>, which was two years before the affair of +<i>Namur</i>;—and as the fellow was well-beloved in the +regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle <i>Toby</i> +took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending +my uncle <i>Toby</i> in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, +groom, barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to +last, waited upon him and served him with great fidelity and +affection.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> loved the man in return, and what attached +him more to him still, was the similitude of their +knowledge.——For Corporal <i>Trim</i>, (for so, for the +future, I shall call him) by four years occasional attention to his +Master’s discourse upon fortified towns, and the advantage of +prying and peeping continually into his Master’s plans, +&c. exclusive and besides what he gained +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSICALLY</small>, as a body-servant, +<i>Non Hobby Horsical per se</i>;——had become no mean +proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook and +chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of +strong-holds as my uncle <i>Toby</i> himself.</p> + +<p>I have but one more stroke to give to finish Corporal +<i>Trim</i>’s character,——and it is the only dark +line in it.—The fellow loved to advise,—or rather to +hear himself talk; his carriage, however, was so perfectly +respectful, ’twas easy to keep him silent when you had him +so; but set his tongue a-going,—you had no hold of +him—he was voluble;—the eternal interlardings of +<i>your Honour</i>, with the respectfulness of Corporal +<i>Trim</i>’s manner, interceding so strong in behalf of his +elocution,—that though you might have been +incommoded,——you could not well be angry. My uncle +<i>Toby</i> was seldom either the one or the other with +him,—or, at least, this fault, in <i>Trim</i>, broke no +squares with them. My uncle <i>Toby</i>, as I said, loved the +man;——and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful +servant,—but as an humble friend,—he could not bear to +stop his mouth.——Such was Corporal <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>If I durst presume, continued <i>Trim</i>, to give +your Honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this +matter.—Thou art welcome, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—speak,——speak what thou thinkest upon +the subject, man, without fear.—Why then, replied +<i>Trim</i>, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a +country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and +standing erect as before his division,—I think, quoth +<i>Trim</i>, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little +forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map +of <i>Dunkirk</i>, which was pinned against the +hangings,——I think, quoth Corporal <i>Trim</i>, with +humble submission to your Honour’s better +judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and +hornworks, make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of +work of it here upon paper, compared to what your Honour and I +could make of it were we in the country by ourselves, and had but a +rood, or a rood and a half of ground to do what we pleased with: As +summer is coming on, continued <i>Trim</i>, your Honour might sit out +of doors, and give me the nography—(Call it ichnography, +quoth my uncle,)——of the town or citadel, your Honour +was pleased to sit down before,—and I will be shot by your +Honour upon the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your +Honour’s mind.——I dare say thou would’st, +<i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle.—For if your Honour, continued +the Corporal, could but mark me the polygon, with its exact lines +and angles—That I could do very well, quoth my uncle.—I +would begin with the fossé, and if your Honour could tell me +the proper depth and breadth—I can to a hair’s breadth, +<i>Trim</i>, replied my uncle.—I would throw out the earth +upon this hand towards the town for the scarp,—and on that +hand towards the campaign for the counterscarp.—Very right, +<i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>:—And when I had +sloped them to your mind,——an’ please your +Honour, I would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are +done in <i>Flanders</i>, with sods,——and as your Honour knows +they should be,—and I would make the walls and parapets with +sods too.—The best engineers call them gazons, <i>Trim</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Whether they are gazons or sods, +is not much matter, replied <i>Trim</i>; your Honour knows they are +ten times beyond a facing either of brick or stone.——I +know they are, <i>Trim</i> in some respects,——quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, nodding his head;—for a cannon-ball enters +into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any rubbish down +with it, which might fill the fossé, (as was the case at +<i>St. Nicolas</i>’s gate) and facilitate the passage over +it.</p> + +<p>Your Honour understands these matters, replied Corporal +<i>Trim</i>, better than any officer in his Majesty’s +service;——but would your Honour please to let the +bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the country, +I would work under your Honour’s directions like a horse, and +make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all +their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it +should be worth all the world’s riding twenty miles to go and +see it.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> blushed as red as scarlet as <i>Trim</i> +went on;—but it was not a blush of guilt,—of +modesty,—or of anger,—it was a blush of joy;—he +was fired with Corporal <i>Trim</i>’s project and +description.—<i>Trim!</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, thou +hast said enough.—We might begin the campaign, continued +<i>Trim</i>, on the very day that his Majesty and the Allies take +the field, and demolish them town by town as fast +as—<i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, say no more. Your +Honour, continued <i>Trim</i>, might sit in your arm-chair +(pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and I +would——Say no more, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——Besides, your Honour would get not only +pleasure and good pastime—but good air, and good exercise, +and good health,—and your Honour’s wound would be well +in a month. Thou hast said enough, <i>Trim</i>,—quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i> (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)——I like thy project +mightily.—And if your Honour pleases, I’ll this moment +go and buy a pioneer’s spade to take down with us, and +I’ll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple +of——Say no more, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, leaping up upon one leg, quite overcome with +rapture,—and thrusting a guinea into <i>Trim</i>’s +hand,—<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, say no +more;—but go down, <i>Trim</i>, this moment, my lad, and +bring up my supper this instant.</p> + +<p><i>Trim</i> ran down and brought up his master’s +supper,—to no purpose:—<i>Trim</i>’s plan of +operation ran so in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head, he could not +taste it.—<i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, get me to +bed.—’Twas all one.—Corporal <i>Trim</i>’s +description had fired his imagination,—my uncle <i>Toby</i> +could not shut his eyes.—The more he considered it, the more +bewitching the scene appeared to him;—so that, two full hours +before day-light, he had come to a final determination and had +concerted the whole plan of his and Corporal <i>Trim</i>’s +decampment.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> had a little neat country-house of his own, +in the village where my father’s estate lay at <i>Shandy</i>, +which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of +about one hundred pounds a-year. Behind this house, and contiguous +to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre, and at the +bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was +a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as Corporal +<i>Trim</i> wished for;—so that as <i>Trim</i> uttered the +words, “A rood and a half of ground to do what they would +with,”—this identical bowling-green instantly presented +itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina +of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s fancy;—which was the physical +cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his +blush, to that immoderate degree I spoke of.</p> + +<p>Never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat +and expectation, than my uncle <i>Toby</i> did, to enjoy this +self-same thing in private;—I say in private;—for it was sheltered from the house, as +I told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three +sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering +shrubs:—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little +contribute to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s mind.—Vain thought! however thick it was +planted about,——or private soever it might +seem,—to think, dear uncle <i>Toby</i>, of enjoying a thing +which took up a whole rood and a half of ground,—and not have +it known!</p> + +<p>How my uncle <i>Toby</i> and Corporal <i>Trim</i> managed this +matter,—with the history of their campaigns, which were no +way barren of events,——may make no uninteresting +under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.—At +present the scene must drop,—and change for the parlour +fire-side.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——W<small>HAT</small> can they be doing? +brother, said my father.—I think, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—taking, as I told you, +his pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as he +began his sentence;——I think, replied he,—it +would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell.</p> + +<p>Pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, +<i>Obadiah?</i>——quoth my father;——my +brother and I can scarce hear ourselves speak.</p> + +<p>Sir, answered <i>Obadiah</i>, making a bow towards his left +shoulder,—my Mistress is taken very badly.—And +where’s <i>Susannah</i> running down the garden there, as if +they were going to ravish her?——Sir, she is running the +shortest cut into the town, replied <i>Obadiah</i>, to fetch the +old midwife.—Then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you +go directly for Dr. <i>Slop</i>, the man-midwife, with all our +services,——and let him know your mistress is fallen +into labour——and that I desire he will return with you +with all speed.</p> + +<p>It is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, as <i>Obadiah</i> shut the door,——as there +is so expert an operator as Dr. <i>Slop</i> so near,—that my +wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of +hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune +already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and not +only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, +and with it the lives of all the children I might, peradventure, +have begot out of her hereafter.</p> + +<p>Mayhap, brother, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, my sister does it +to save the expence:—A pudding’s end,—replied my +father,——the Doctor must be paid the same for inaction +as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper.</p> + +<p>——Then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in the simplicity of his +heart,—but M<small>ODESTY</small>.—My sister, I dare +say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. I +will not say whether my uncle <i>Toby</i> had completed the +sentence or not;—’tis for his advantage to suppose he +had,——as, I think, he could have added no O<small>NE</small> W<small>ORD</small> +which would have improved it.</p> + +<p>If, on the contrary, my uncle <i>Toby</i> had not fully arrived +at the period’s end—then the world stands indebted to +the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of +the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which +Rhetoricians stile the <i>Aposiopesis.</i>——Just +Heaven! how does the <i>Poco piu</i> and the <i>Poco meno</i> of +the <i>Italian</i> artists;—the insensible <small>MORE OR +LESS</small>, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, +as well as in the statue! How do the slight touches of the chisel, +the pencil, the pen, the fiddle-stick, <i>et +cætera</i>,—give the true swell, which gives the true +pleasure!—O my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your +language; and never, O! never let it be forgotten upon what small +particles your eloquence and your fame depend.</p> + +<p> +——“My sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +“does not choose to let a man come so near her ****” Make this +dash,—’tis an Aposiopesis,—Take the dash away, and write +<i>Backside</i>,—’tis Bawdy.—Scratch Backside out, and put +<i>Cover’d way</i> in, ’tis a Metaphor;—and, I dare say, as +fortification ran so much in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head, that if he had +been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was +it. +</p> + +<p>But whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether +the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, +happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HO</small>’ my father was a good +natural philosopher,—yet he was something of a moral +philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe +snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as +such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them +gently upon the back of the fire.——He did no such +thing;——he threw them with all the violence in the +world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he +started upon both his legs to do it.</p> + +<p>This looked something like heat;—and the manner of his +reply to what my uncle <i>Toby</i> was saying, proved it was +so.</p> + +<p>—“Not choose,” quoth my father, +(repeating my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s words) “to let +a man come so near her!”——By Heaven, +brother <i>Toby!</i> you would try the patience of +<i>Job</i>;—and I think I have the plagues of one already +without +it.——Why?——Where?——Wherein?——Wherefore?——Upon +what account? replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>: in the utmost +astonishment.—To think, said my father, of a man living to +your age, brother, and knowing so little about +women!——I know nothing at all about them,—replied +my uncle <i>Toby</i>: And I think, continued he, that the shock I +received the year after the demolition of <i>Dunkirk</i>, in my +affair with widow <i>Wadman</i>;—which shock you know I +should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the +sex,—has given me just cause to say, That I neither know nor do pretend to know any thing +about ’em or their concerns either.—Methinks, brother, +replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right +end of a woman from the wrong.</p> + +<p>It is said in <i>Aristotle’s Master Piece</i>, +“That when a man doth think of any thing which is +past,—he looketh down upon the ground;——but that +when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up +towards the heavens.”</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>, I suppose, thought of neither, for he +look’d horizontally.—Right end! quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his +two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice, +formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece——Right end +of a woman!——I declare, quoth my uncle, I know no more +which it is than the man in the moon;——and if I was to +think, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i> (keeping his eyes still fixed +upon the bad joint) this month together, I am sure I should not be able to find it out.</p> + +<p>Then, brother <i>Toby</i>, replied my father, I will tell +you.</p> + +<p>Every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh +pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother <i>Toby</i>, +has two handles.——Not always, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——At least, replied my father, every one +has two hands,——which comes to the same +thing.——Now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and +consider within himself the make, the shape, the construction, +come-at-ability, and convenience of all the parts which constitute +the whole of that animal, called Woman, and compare them +analogically—I never understood rightly the meaning of that +word,—quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—</p> + +<p>A<small>NALOGY</small>, replied my father, is the certain +relation and agreement which different——Here a devil of +a rap at the door snapped my father’s definition (like his +tobacco-pipe) in two,—and, at the same time, crushed the head +of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was +engendered in the womb of speculation;—it was some months +before my father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of +it:—And, at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as +the subject of the dissertation itself,—(considering the +confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures, which are +now coming thick one upon the back of another) whether I shall be +able to find a place for it in the third volume or not.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is about an hour and a +half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle <i>Toby</i> rung +the bell, when <i>Obadiah</i> was ordered to saddle a horse, and go +for Dr. <i>Slop</i>, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, +with reason, that I have not allowed <i>Obadiah</i> time enough, +poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go +and come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the +man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots.</p> + +<p>If the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all +to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the +ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after +finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and +three-fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such +a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;—I would +remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is +got merely from the train and succession of our +ideas——and is the true scholastic +pendulum,——and by which, as a scholar, I will be tried +in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of +all other pendulums whatever.</p> + +<p>I would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor +eight miles from <i>Shandy-Hall</i> to Dr. <i>Slop</i>, the +man-midwife’s house:—and that whilst <i>Obadiah</i> has +been going those said miles and back, I have brought my uncle +<i>Toby</i> from <i>Namur</i>, quite across all <i>Flanders</i>, into +<i>England</i>:—That I have had him ill upon my hands near +four years;—and have since travelled him and Corporal +<i>Trim</i> in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred +miles down into <i>Yorkshire.</i>—all which put together, +must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance +of Dr. <i>Slop</i> upon the stage,—as much, at least (I hope) +as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts.</p> + +<p>If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes +and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen +seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this +plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me +biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a +professed R<small>OMANCE</small>, which, before, was a book +apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an +end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at +once,——by acquainting him, that <i>Obadiah</i> had not +got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met +with Dr. <i>Slop</i>;—and indeed he gave a dirty +proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a +tragical one too.</p> + +<p>Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new +chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>MAGINE</small> to yourself a little squat, +uncourtly figure of a Doctor <i>Slop</i>, of about four feet and a +half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a +sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant +in the horse-guards.</p> + +<p>Such were the out-lines of Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s figure, +which—if you have read <i>Hogarth</i>’s analysis of +beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;——you +must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the +mind by three strokes as three hundred.</p> + +<p>Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of +Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, +waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty +colour——but of +strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made +an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an +ambling condition.——They were not.——Imagine +to yourself, <i>Obadiah</i> mounted upon a strong monster of a +coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable +speed the adverse way.</p> + +<p>Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.</p> + +<p>Had Dr. <i>Slop</i> beheld <i>Obadiah</i> a mile off, posting in +a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous +rate,—splashing and plunging like a devil thro’ thick +and thin, as he approached, would not such a phænomenon, with +such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its +axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. +<i>Slop</i> in his situation, than the <i>worst</i> of +<i>Whiston</i>’s comets?—To say nothing of the +N<small>UCLEUS</small>; that is, of <i>Obadiah</i> and the +coach-horse.—In my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was +enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the +doctor’s pony, quite away with it. What then do you think +must the terror and hydrophobia of Dr. <i>Slop</i> have been, when +you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing +thus warily along towards <i>Shandy-Hall</i>, and had approached to +within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, +made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the +dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when <i>Obadiah</i> and his +coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, +furious,—pop,—full upon him!—Nothing, I think, in +nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a +rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock +of it as Dr. <i>Slop</i> was.</p> + +<p>What could Dr. <i>Slop</i> do?——he crossed himself +—Pugh!—but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.—No +matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.—He had +so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at +all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and +in attempting to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it +slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost +his seat;——and in the multitude of all these losses +(which, by the bye, shews what little advantage there is in +crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that +without waiting for <i>Obadiah</i>’s onset, he left his pony +to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile +and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence +from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with +the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the +mire.</p> + +<p><i>Obadiah</i> pull’d off his cap twice to Dr. +<i>Slop</i>;—once as he was falling,—and then again +when he saw him seated.——Ill-timed +complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his +horse, and got off and help’d him?—Sir, he did all that +his situation would allow;—but the M<small>OMENTUM</small> of +the coach-horse was so great, that <i>Obadiah</i> could not do it +all at once; he rode in a circle three times round Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when +he did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of +mud, that <i>Obadiah</i> had better have been a league off. In +short, never was a Dr. <i>Slop</i> so beluted, and so +transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> Dr. <i>Slop</i> entered the back +parlour, where my father and my uncle <i>Toby</i> were discoursing +upon the nature of women,——it was hard to determine +whether Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s figure, or Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s +presence, occasioned more surprize to them; for as the accident +happened so near the house, as not to make it worth while for +<i>Obadiah</i> to remount him,——<i>Obadiah</i> had led +him in as he was, <i>unwiped, unappointed, unannealed</i>, with all +his stains and blotches on him.—He stood like +<i>Hamlet</i>’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full +minute and a half at the parlour-door (<i>Obadiah</i> still holding +his hand) with all the majesty of mud. His hinder parts, upon which he had +received his fall, totally besmeared,——and in every +other part of him, blotched over in such a manner with +<i>Obadiah</i>’s explosion, that you would have sworn +(without mental reservation) that every grain of it had taken +effect.</p> + +<p> +Here was a fair opportunity for my uncle <i>Toby</i> to have triumphed over my +father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld Dr. <i>Slop</i> in that +pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s opinion, “That mayhap his sister might not care to +let such a Dr. <i>Slop</i> come so near her ****” But it was the +<i>Argumentum ad hominem</i>; and if my uncle <i>Toby</i> was not very expert +at it, you may think, he might not care to use it.——No; the reason +was,—’twas not his nature to insult. +</p> + +<p>Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s presence at that time, was no less +problematical than the mode of it; tho’ it is certain, one +moment’s reflexion in my father might have solved it; for he +had apprized Dr. <i>Slop</i> but the week before, that my mother was at her full reckoning; +and as the doctor had heard nothing since, ’twas natural and +very political too in him, to have taken a ride to +<i>Shandy-Hall</i>, as he did, merely to see how matters went +on.</p> + +<p>But my father’s mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in +the investigation; running, like the hypercritick’s, +altogether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the +door,—measuring their distance, and keeping his mind so +intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of nothing +else,——common-place infirmity of the greatest +mathematicians! working with might and main at the demonstration, +and so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have none left +in them to draw the corollary, to do good with.</p> + +<p>The ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck +likewise strong upon the sensorium of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,—but it excited a very different train of +thoughts;—the two irreconcileable pulsations instantly +brought <i>Stevinus</i>, the great engineer, along with them, into my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s mind. What business <i>Stevinus</i> had in this +affair,—is the greatest problem of all:——It shall +be solved,—but not in the next chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>RITING</small>, when properly managed (as +you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for +conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good +company, would venture to talk all;——so no author, who +understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would +presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the +reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and +leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as +yourself.</p> + +<p>For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this +kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as +busy as my own.</p> + +<p>’Tis his turn now;—I have given an ample description of Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s sad +overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;—his +imagination must now go on with it for a while.</p> + +<p>Let the reader imagine then, that Dr. <i>Slop</i> has told his +tale—and in what words, and with what aggravations, his fancy +chooses;—Let him suppose, that <i>Obadiah</i> has told his +tale also, and with such rueful looks of affected concern, as he +thinks best will contrast the two figures as they stand by each +other.—Let him imagine, that my father has stepped up stairs +to see my mother.—And, to conclude this work of +imagination,—let him imagine the doctor washed,—rubbed +down, and condoled,—felicitated,—got into a pair of +<i>Obadiah</i>’s pumps, stepping forwards towards the door, +upon the very point of entering upon action.</p> + +<p>Truce!—truce, good Dr. <i>Slop!</i>—stay thy +obstetrick hand;——return it safe into thy bosom to keep +it warm;——little dost thou know what +obstacles,——little dost thou think what hidden +causes, retard its operation!——Hast thou, Dr. +<i>Slop</i>,—hast thou been entrusted with the secret +articles of the solemn treaty which has brought thee into this +place?—Art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of +<i>Lucina</i> is put obstetrically over thy head? +Alas!—’tis too true.—Besides, great son of +<i>Pilumnus!</i> what canst thou do? Thou hast come forth +unarm’d;—thou hast left thy +<i>tire-téte</i>,—thy new-invented +<i>forceps</i>,—thy <i>crotchet</i>,—thy <i>squirt</i>, +and all thy instruments of salvation and deliverance, behind +thee,—By Heaven! at this moment they are hanging up in a +green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the bed’s +head!—Ring;—call;—send <i>Obadiah</i> back upon +the coach-horse to bring them with all speed.</p> + +<p>——Make great haste, <i>Obadiah</i>, quoth my father, +and I’ll give thee a crown! and quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +I’ll give him another.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>Y<small>OUR</small> sudden and unexpected arrival, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, addressing himself to Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +(all three of them sitting down to the fire together, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> began to speak)—instantly brought the great +<i>Stevinus</i> into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite +author with me.—Then, added my father, making use of the +argument <i>Ad Crumenam</i>,—I will lay twenty guineas to a +single crown-piece (which will serve to give away to <i>Obadiah</i> +when he gets back) that this same <i>Stevinus</i> was some engineer +or other—or has wrote something or other, either directly or +indirectly, upon the science of fortification.</p> + +<p>He has so,—replied my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—I knew it, +said my father, though, for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind +of connection there can be betwixt Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s sudden +coming, and a discourse upon fortification;—yet I +fear’d it.—Talk of what we will, +brother,——or let the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for +the subject,—you are sure to bring it in. I would not, +brother <i>Toby</i>, continued my father,——I declare I +would not have my head so full of curtins and +horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at +his pun.</p> + +<p><i>Dennis</i> the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or +the insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he +would grow testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon +by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a +fillip upon the nose;——he saw no difference.</p> + +<p>Sir, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, addressing himself to Dr. +<i>Slop</i>,—the curtins my brother <i>Shandy</i> mentions +here, have nothing to do with beadsteads;—tho’, I know +<i>Du Cange</i> says, “That bed-curtains, in all +probability, have taken their name from them;”—nor have +the horn-works he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the +horn-works of cuckoldom: But the <i>Curtin</i>, Sir, is the +word we use in fortification, for that part of the wall or rampart +which lies between the two bastions and joins them—Besiegers +seldom offer to carry on their attacks directly against the curtin, +for this reason, because they are so well <i>flanked.</i> +( ’Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, laughing.) However, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to +make them sure, we generally choose to place ravelins before them, +taking care only to extend them beyond the fossé or +ditch:——The common men, who know very little of +fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon +together,—tho’ they are very different +things;—not in their figure or construction, for we make them +exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist of two faces, +making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in form +of a crescent;——Where then lies the difference? (quoth +my father, a little testily.)—In their situations, answered +my uncle <i>Toby:</i>—For when a ravelin, brother, stands +before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin +stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a +ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a half-moon likewise is a +half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands before its +bastion;——but was it to change place, and get before +the curtin,—’twould be no longer a half-moon; a +half-moon, in that case, is not a half-moon;—’tis no +more than a ravelin.——I think, quoth my father, that +the noble science of defence has its weak sides——as +well as others.</p> + +<p>—As for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh’d my father) +which, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, my brother was speaking of, +they are a very considerable part of an outwork;——they +are called by the <i>French</i> engineers, <i>Ouvrage à +corne</i>, and we generally make them to cover such places as we +suspect to be weaker than the rest;—’tis formed by two +epaulments or demi-bastions—they are very pretty,—and +if you will take a walk, I’ll engage to shew you one well +worth your trouble.—I own, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +when we crown them,—they are much stronger, but +then they are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, +so that, in my opinion, they are most of use to cover or defend the +head of a camp; otherwise the double tenaille—By the mother +who bore us!——brother <i>Toby</i>, quoth my father, not +able to hold out any longer,——you would provoke a +saint;——here have you got us, I know not how, not only +souse into the middle of the old subject again:—But so full +is your head of these confounded works, that though my wife is this +moment in the pains of labour, and you hear her cry out, yet +nothing will serve you but to carry off the +man-midwife.——<i>Accoucheur</i>,—if you please, +quoth Dr. <i>Slop.</i>—With all my heart, replied my father, +I don’t care what they call you,—but I wish the whole +science of fortification, with all its inventors, at the +devil;—it has been the death of thousands,—and it will +be mine in the end.—I would not, I would not, brother +<i>Toby</i>, have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such +trumpery, to be proprietor of <i>Namur</i>, and of all the towns in +<i>Flanders</i> with it.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> was a man patient of injuries;—not +from want of courage,—I have told you in a former chapter, +“that he was a man of courage:”—And will +add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it +forth,—I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner +taken shelter;——nor did this arise from any +insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;—for he +felt this insult of my father’s as feelingly as a man could +do;—but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,—no jarring +element in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within him; my +uncle <i>Toby</i> had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.</p> + +<p>—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one +which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all +dinner-time,—and which after infinite attempts, he had caught +at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll not hurt thee, +says my uncle <i>Toby</i>, rising from his chair, and going across +the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a +hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and +opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor +devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?——This +world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.</p> + +<p>I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, +that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age +of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of +most pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and +expression of it might go towards it;—or in what degree, or +by what secret magick,—a tone of voice and harmony of +movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I +know not;—this I know, that the lesson of universal good-will +then taught and imprinted by my uncle <i>Toby</i>, has never since +been worn out of my mind: And tho’ I would not depreciate what the study of the <i>Literæ +humaniores</i>, at the university, have done for me in that +respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education +bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad since;—yet I often +think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to that one accidental +impression.</p> + +<p>This is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole +volume upon the subject.</p> + +<p>I could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s picture, by the instrument with which I drew +the other parts of it,—that taking in no more than the mere +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSICAL</small> likeness:—this +is a part of his moral character. My father, in this patient +endurance of wrongs, which I mention, was very different, as the +reader must long ago have noted; he had a much more acute and quick +sensibility of nature, attended with a little soreness of temper; +tho’ this never transported him to any thing which looked +like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and vexations of +life, ’twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty kind of +peevishness:——He was, however, frank and generous in +his nature;——at all times open to conviction; and in +the little ebullitions of this subacid humour towards others, but +particularly towards my uncle <i>Toby</i>, whom he truly +loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times told (except +in the affair of my aunt <i>Dinah</i>, or where an hypothesis was +concerned) than what he ever gave.</p> + +<p>The characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, +reflected light upon each other, and appeared with great advantage +in this affair which arose about <i>Stevinus.</i></p> + +<p>I need not tell the reader, if he keeps a +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>,—that a man’s +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> is as tender a part as he +has about him; and that these unprovoked strokes at my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s could not be unfelt by +him.——No:——as I said above, my uncle +<i>Toby</i> did feel them, and very sensibly too.</p> + +<p>Pray, Sir, what said he?—How did he behave?—O, +Sir!—it was great: For as soon as my father had done insulting his +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small>,——he turned +his head without the least emotion, from Dr. <i>Slop</i>, to whom +he was addressing his discourse, and looking up into my +father’s face, with a countenance spread over with so much +good-nature;——so placid;——so +fraternal;——so inexpressibly tender towards +him:—it penetrated my father to his heart: He rose up hastily +from his chair, and seizing hold of both my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s hands as he spoke:—Brother <i>Toby</i>, +said he:—I beg thy pardon;——forgive, I pray thee, +this rash humour which my mother gave me.——My dear, +dear brother, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>, rising up by my +father’s help, say no more about it;—you are heartily +welcome, had it been ten times as much, brother. But ’tis +ungenerous, replied my father, to hurt any man;——a +brother worse;——but to hurt a brother of such gentle +manners,—so unprovoking,—and so +unresenting;——’tis base:——By Heaven, +’tis cowardly.—You are heartily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>,——had it been +fifty times as much.——Besides, what have I to do, my +dear <i>Toby</i>, cried my father, either with your amusements or +your pleasures, unless it was in my power (which it is not) to +increase their measure?</p> + +<p>——Brother <i>Shandy</i>, answered my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, looking wistfully in his face,——you are +much mistaken in this point:—for you do increase my pleasure +very much, in begetting children for the <i>Shandy</i> family at +your time of life.—But, by that, Sir, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +Mr. <i>Shandy</i> increases his own.—Not a jot, quoth my +father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> brother does it, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, out of <i>principle.</i>——In a family way, +I suppose, quoth Dr. <i>Slop.</i>——Pshaw!—said my +father,—’tis not worth talking of.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>T</small> the end of the last chapter, my +father and my uncle <i>Toby</i> were left both standing, like +<i>Brutus</i> and <i>Cassius</i>, at the close of the scene, making +up their accounts.</p> + +<p>As my father spoke the three last words,——he sat +down;—my uncle <i>Toby</i> exactly followed his example, +only, that before he took his chair, he rung the bell, to order +Corporal <i>Trim</i>, who was in waiting, to step home for +<i>Stevinus</i>:—my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s house being no +farther off than the opposite side of the way.</p> + +<p>Some men would have dropped the subject of +<i>Stevinus</i>;—but my uncle <i>Toby</i> had no resentment +in his heart, and he went on with the subject, to shew my father +that he had none.</p> + +<p>Your sudden appearance, Dr. <i>Slop</i>, quoth my uncle, +resuming the discourse, instantly brought <i>Stevinus</i> into my +head. (My father, you may be sure, did not offer to lay any more +wagers upon <i>Stevinus</i>’s head.)——Because, +continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, the celebrated sailing chariot, +which belonged to Prince <i>Maurice</i>, and was of such wonderful +contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty +<i>German</i> miles, in I don’t know how few +minutes,——was invented by <i>Stevinus</i>, that great +mathematician and engineer.</p> + +<p>You might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth Dr. +<i>Slop</i> (as the fellow is lame) of going for +<i>Stevinus</i>’s account of it, because in my return from +<i>Leyden</i> thro’ the <i>Hague</i>, I walked as far as +<i>Schevling</i>, which is two long miles, on purpose to take a +view of it.</p> + +<p>That’s nothing, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to what the +learned <i>Peireskius</i> did, who walked a matter of five hundred +miles, reckoning from <i>Paris</i> to <i>Schevling</i>, and from +<i>Schevling</i> to <i>Paris</i> back again, in order to see +it,—and nothing else.</p> + +<p>Some men cannot bear to be out-gone.</p> + +<p>The more fool <i>Peireskius</i>, replied Dr. <i>Slop.</i> But +mark, ’twas out of no contempt of <i>Peireskius</i> at +all;——but that <i>Peireskius</i>’s indefatigable labour in +trudging so far on foot, out of love for the sciences, reduced the +exploit of Dr. <i>Slop</i>, in that affair, to nothing:—the +more fool <i>Peireskius</i>, said he again.—Why +so?—replied my father, taking his brother’s part, not +only to make reparation as fast as he could for the insult he had +given him, which sat still upon my father’s +mind;——but partly, that my father began really to +interest himself in the discourse.——Why +so?——said he. Why is <i>Peireskius</i>, or any man +else, to be abused for an appetite for that, or any other morsel of +sound knowledge: For notwithstanding I know nothing of the chariot +in question, continued he, the inventor of it must have had a very +mechanical head; and tho’ I cannot guess upon what principles +of philosophy he has atchieved it;—yet certainly his machine +has been constructed upon solid ones, be they what they will, or it +could not have answered at the rate my brother mentions.</p> + +<p>It answered, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as well, if not better; for, as <i>Peireskius</i> +elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its motion, +<i>Tam citus erat, quam erat ventus</i>; which, unless I have +forgot my Latin, is, <i>that it was as swift as the wind +itself.</i></p> + +<p>But pray, Dr. <i>Slop</i>, quoth my father, interrupting my +uncle (tho’ not without begging pardon for it at the same +time) upon what principles was this self-same chariot set +a-going?—Upon very pretty principles to be sure, replied Dr. +<i>Slop</i>:—And I have often wondered, continued he, evading +the question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large plains +like this of ours,—(especially they whose wives are not past +child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would not only +be infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the sex is +subject,—if the wind only served,—but would be +excellent good husbandry to make use of the winds, which cost +nothing, and which eat nothing, rather than horses, which (the +devil take ’em) both cost and eat a great deal.</p> + +<p>For that very reason, replied my father, +“Because they cost nothing, and because they eat +nothing,”—the scheme is bad;—it is the +consumption of our products, as well as the manufactures of them, +which gives bread to the hungry, circulates trade,—brings in +money, and supports the value of our lands;—and tho’, I +own, if I was a Prince, I would generously recompense the +scientifick head which brought forth such contrivances;—yet I +would as peremptorily suppress the use of them.</p> + +<p>My father here had got into his element,—and was going on +as prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> had before, upon his of fortification;—but to the +loss of much sound knowledge, the destinies in the morning had +decreed that no dissertation of any kind should be spun by my +father that day,——for as he opened his mouth to begin +the next sentence,</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XL</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> popped Corporal <i>Trim</i> with +<i>Stevinus</i>:—But ’twas too late,—all the +discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a +new channel.</p> + +<p>—You may take the book home again, <i>Trim</i>, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, nodding to him.</p> + +<p>But prithee, Corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look +first into it, and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot +in it.</p> + +<p>Corporal <i>Trim</i>, by being in the service, had learned to +obey,—and not to remonstrate,—so taking the book to a +side-table, and running over the leaves; An’ please your +Honour, said <i>Trim</i>, I can see no such thing;—however, +continued the Corporal, drolling a little in his turn, I’ll +make sure work of it, an’ please your Honour;—so taking +hold of the two covers of the book, one in each hand, and letting +the leaves fall down as he bent the covers back, he gave the book a good sound +shake.</p> + +<p>There is something falling out, however, said <i>Trim</i>, +an’ please your Honour;—but it is not a chariot, or any +thing like one:—Prithee, Corporal, said my father, smiling, +what is it then?—I think, answered <i>Trim</i>, stooping to +take it up,——’tis more like a +sermon,——for it begins with a text of scripture, and +the chapter and verse;—and then goes on, not as a chariot, +but like a sermon directly.</p> + +<p>The company smiled.</p> + +<p>I cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, for such a thing as a sermon to have got into my +<i>Stevinus.</i></p> + +<p>I think ’tis a sermon, replied <i>Trim</i>:—but if +it please your Honours, as it is a fair hand, I will read you a +page;—for <i>Trim</i>, you must know, loved to hear himself +read almost as well as talk.</p> + +<p>I have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look into +things which cross my way, by such strange fatalities as +these;—and as we have nothing better to do, at least till <i>Obadiah</i> gets back, I +shall be obliged to you, brother, if Dr. <i>Slop</i> has no +objection to it, to order the Corporal to give us a page or two of +it,—if he is as able to do it, as he seems willing. An’ +please your honour, quoth <i>Trim</i>, I officiated two whole +campaigns, in <i>Flanders</i>, as clerk to the chaplain of the +regiment.——He can read it, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +as well as I can.——<i>Trim</i>, I assure you, was the +best scholar in my company, and should have had the next halberd, +but for the poor fellow’s misfortune. Corporal <i>Trim</i> +laid his hand upon his heart, and made an humble bow to his master; +then laying down his hat upon the floor, and taking up the sermon +in his left hand, in order to have his right at liberty,—he +advanced, nothing doubting, into the middle of the room, where he +could best see, and be best seen by his audience.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLI</small> +</h3> + +<p>—I<small>F</small> you have any +objection,—said my father, addressing himself to Dr. +<i>Slop.</i> Not in the least, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>;—for +it does not appear on which side of the question it is +wrote,—it may be a composition of a divine of our church, as +well as yours,—so that we run equal +risques.——’Tis wrote upon neither side, quoth +<i>Trim</i>, for ’tis only upon <i>Conscience</i>, an’ +please your Honours.</p> + +<p><i>Trim</i>’s reason put his audience into good +humour,—all but Dr. <i>Slop</i>, who turning his head about +towards <i>Trim</i>, looked a little angry.</p> + +<p>Begin, <i>Trim</i>,—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.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——B<small>UT</small> 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 <i>Trim</i>, as if he was standing in his +platoon ready for action,—His attitude was as unlike all this +as you can conceive.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>How the duce Corporal <i>Trim</i>, 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 cyclopædia 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.</p> + +<p>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 +consider, it had one eighth part of his body to bear up;—so +that in this case the position of the leg is +determined,—because the foot could be no farther advanced, or +the knee more bent, than what would allow him, mechanically +to receive an eighth part of his whole weight under it, and to +carry it too.</p> + +<p>=> This I recommend to painters;—need I add,—to +orators!—I think not; for unless they practise +it,——they must fall upon their noses.</p> + +<p>So much for Corporal <i>Trim</i>’s body and +legs.——He held the sermon loosely, not carelessly, in +his left hand, raised something above his stomach, and detached a +little from his breast;——his right arm falling +negligently by his side, as nature and the laws of gravity ordered +it,——but with the palm of it open and turned towards +his audience, ready to aid the sentiment in case it stood in +need.</p> + +<p>Corporal <i>Trim</i>’s eyes and the muscles of his face +were in full harmony with the other parts of him;—he looked +frank,—unconstrained,—something assured,—but not +bordering upon assurance.</p> + +<p>Let not the critic ask how Corporal <i>Trim</i> could come by +all this.——I’ve told him it should be explained;—but so he +stood before my father, my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and Dr. +<i>Slop</i>,—so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and +with such an oratorical sweep throughout the whole +figure,——a statuary might have modelled from +it;——nay, I doubt whether the oldest Fellow of a +College,—or the <i>Hebrew</i> Professor himself, could have +much mended it.</p> + +<p><i>Trim</i> made a bow, and read as follows:</p> + +<p class="center"> +The S E R M O N.<br/> +<br/> +H<small>EBREWS</small> xiii. 18.<br/> +<br/> +———<i>For we</i> trust <i>we have a<br/> +good Conscience.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“T<small>RUST</small>!——Trust we have a +good conscience!”</p> + +<p>[Certainly, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my father, interrupting him, you +give that sentence a very improper accent; for you curl up your +nose, man, and read it with such a sneering tone, as if the Parson +was going to abuse the Apostle.</p> + +<p>He is, an’ please your Honour, replied <i>Trim.</i> Pugh! +said my father, smiling.</p> + +<p>Sir, quoth Dr. <i>Slop, Trim</i> is certainly in the right; for +the writer (who I perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish manner +in which he takes up the apostle, is certainly going to abuse +him;—if this treatment of him has not done it already. But +from whence, replied my father, have you concluded so soon, Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, that the writer is of our church?—for aught I +can see yet,—he may be of any church.——Because, +answered Dr. <i>Slop</i>, if he was of ours,—he durst no more +take such a licence,—than a bear by his beard:—If, in +our communion, Sir, a man was to insult an apostle,——a +saint,——or even the paring of a saint’s +nail,—he would have his eyes scratched out.—What, by +the saint? quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i> No, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +he would have an old house over his head. Pray is the Inquisition +an ancient building, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>, or is it a +modern one?—I know nothing of architecture, replied Dr. +<i>Slop.</i>—An’ please your Honours, quoth <i>Trim</i>, the Inquisition is the +vilest——Prithee spare thy description, <i>Trim</i>, I +hate the very name of it, said my father.—No matter for that, +answered Dr. <i>Slop</i>,—it has its uses; for tho’ +I’m no great advocate for it, yet, in such a case as this, he +would soon be taught better manners; and I can tell him, if he went +on at that rate, would be flung into the Inquisition for his pains. +God help him then, quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i> Amen, added +<i>Trim</i>; for Heaven above knows, I have a poor brother who has +been fourteen years a captive in it.—I never heard one word +of it before, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, hastily:—How came he +there, <i>Trim</i>?——O, Sir, the story will make your +heart bleed,—as it has made mine a thousand times;—but +it is too long to be told now;—your Honour shall hear it from +first to last some day when I am working beside you in our +fortifications;—but the short of the story is +this;—That my brother <i>Tom</i> went over a servant to +<i>Lisbon</i>,—and then married a Jew’s widow, who kept +a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or other, was the cause of +his being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, where he +was lying with his wife and two small children, and carried +directly to the Inquisition, where, God help him, continued +<i>Trim</i>, fetching a sigh from the bottom of his +heart,—the poor honest lad lies confined at this hour; he was +as honest a soul, added <i>Trim</i>, (pulling out his handkerchief) +as ever blood warmed.——</p> + +<p>—The tears trickled down <i>Trim</i>’s cheeks faster +than he could well wipe them away.—A dead silence in the room +ensued for some minutes.—Certain proof of pity!</p> + +<p>Come <i>Trim</i>, quoth my father, after he saw the poor +fellow’s grief had got a little vent,—read +on,—and put this melancholy story out of thy head:—I +grieve that I interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon +again;—for if the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as +thou sayest, I have a great desire to know what kind of provocation +the apostle has given.</p> + +<p>Corporal <i>Trim</i> wiped his face, and returned his +handkerchief into his pocket, and, making a bow as he did +it,—he began again.]</p> + +<p class="center"> +The S E R M O N.<br/> +<br/> +H<small>EBREWS</small> xiii. 18.<br/> +<br/> +——<i>For we</i> trust <i>we have a good<br/> +Conscience.—</i> +</p> + +<p>“T<small>RUST</small>! trust we have a +good conscience! Surely if there is any thing in this life which a +man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of +arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very +thing,—whether he has a good conscience or no.”</p> + +<p>[I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. <i>Slop.</i>]</p> + +<p>“If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a +stranger to the true state of this account:——he must be +privy to his own thoughts and desires;—he must remember his +past pursuits, and know “certainly the true springs and motives, +which, in general, have governed the actions of his +life.”</p> + +<p>[I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. <i>Slop.</i>]</p> + +<p>“In other matters we may be deceived by false +appearances; and, as the wise man complains, <i>hardly do we guess +aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour do we +find the things that are before us.</i> But here the mind has all +the evidence and facts within herself;——is conscious of +the web she has wove;——knows its texture and fineness, +and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the +several designs which virtue or vice has planned before +her.”</p> + +<p>[The language is good, and I declare <i>Trim</i> reads very +well, quoth my father.]</p> + +<p>“Now,—as conscience is nothing else but the +knowledge which the mind has within herself of this; and the +judgment, either of approbation or censure, which it unavoidably +makes upon the successive actions of our lives; ’tis +plain you will say, from the very terms of the +proposition,—whenever this inward testimony goes against a +man, and he stands self-accused, that he must necessarily be a +guilty man.—And, on the contrary, when the report is +favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not:—that +it is not a matter of trust, as the apostle intimates, but a matter +of certainty and fact, that the conscience is good, and that the +man must be good also.”</p> + +<p>[Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose, quoth +Dr. <i>Slop</i>, and the Protestant divine is in the right. Sir, +have patience, replied my father, for I think it will presently +appear that St. <i>Paul</i> and the Protestant divine are both of +an opinion.—As nearly so, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, as east is +to west;—but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes +from the liberty of the press.</p> + +<p>It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, than +the liberty of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is +printed, or ever likely to be.</p> + +<p>Go on, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my father.]</p> + +<p>“At first sight this may seem to be a true state of +the case: and I make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong +is so truly impressed upon the mind of man,—that did no such +thing ever happen, as that the conscience of a man, by long habits +of sin, might (as the scripture assures it may) insensibly become +hard;—and, like some tender parts of his body, by much stress +and continual hard usage, lose by degrees that nice sense and +perception with which God and nature endowed it:—Did this +never happen;—or was it certain that self-love could never +hang the least bias upon the judgment;—or that the little +interests below could rise up and perplex the faculties of our +upper regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick +darkness:——Could no such thing as favour and affection +enter this sacred Court—Did W<small>IT</small> disdain “to take a bribe in it;—or was +ashamed to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable +enjoyment: Or, lastly, were we assured that I<small>NTEREST</small> +stood always unconcerned whilst the cause was hearing—and +that Passion never got into the judgment-seat, and pronounced +sentence in the stead of Reason, which is supposed always to +preside and determine upon the case:—Was this truly so, as +the objection must suppose;—no doubt then the religious and +moral state of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed +it:—and the guilt or innocence of every man’s life +could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the degrees +of his own approbation and censure.</p> + +<p>“I own, in one case, whenever a man’s +conscience does accuse him (as it seldom errs on that side) that he +is guilty;—and unless in melancholy and hypocondriac cases, +we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always sufficient +grounds for the accusation.</p> + +<p>“But the converse of the proposition will not hold +true;—namely, that whenever there is guilt, the conscience +must accuse; and if it does not, that a man is therefore +innocent.——This is not fact——So that the +common consolation which some good christian or other is hourly +administering to himself,—that he thanks God his mind does +not misgive him; and that, consequently, he has a good conscience, +because he hath a quiet one,—is fallacious;—and as +current as the inference is, and as infallible as the rule appears +at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the truth +of this rule upon plain facts,——you see it liable to so +much error from a false application;——the principle +upon which it goes so often perverted;——the whole force +of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful +to produce the common examples from human life, which confirm the +account.</p> + +<p> +“A man shall be vicious and utterly “debauched in his +principles;—exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live +shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can +justify,——a sin by which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, +he shall ruin for ever the deluded partner of his guilt;—rob her of her +best dowry; and not only cover her own head with dishonour;—but involve a +whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake. Surely, you will think +conscience must lead such a man a troublesome life; he can have no rest night +and day from its reproaches. +</p> + +<p>“Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this +time, than break in upon him; as <i>Elijah</i> reproached the god +<i>Baal</i>,——this domestic god <i>was either talking, +or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure he slept and +could not be awoke.</i></p> + +<p>“Perhaps H<small>E</small> was gone out in company +with H<small>ONOUR</small> to fight a duel: to pay off some debt at +play;——or “dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; +Perhaps C<small>ONSCIENCE</small> all this time was engaged at +home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and executing vengeance +upon some such puny crimes as his fortune and rank of life secured +him against all temptation of committing; so that he lives as +merrily;”——[If he was of our church, tho’, +quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, he could not]—“sleeps as soundly +in his bed;—and at last meets death +unconcernedly;—perhaps much more so, than a much better +man.”</p> + +<p>[All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, turning +to my father,—the case could not happen in our +church.—It happens in ours, however, replied my father, but +too often.——I own, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, (struck a +little with my father’s frank acknowledgment)—that a +man in the <i>Romish</i> church may live as badly;—but then +he cannot easily die so.——’Tis little matter, +replied my father, with an air of indifference,—how a +rascal dies.—I mean, answered Dr. <i>Slop</i>, he +would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.—Pray how +many have you in all, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>,——for I +always forget?——Seven, answered Dr. +<i>Slop.</i>——Humph!—said my uncle <i>Toby</i>; +tho’ not accented as a note of acquiescence,—but as an +interjection of that particular species of surprize, when a man in +looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than he +expected.——Humph! replied my uncle <i>Toby.</i> Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, who had an ear, understood my uncle <i>Toby</i> as +well as if he had wrote a whole volume against the seven +sacraments.——Humph! replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, (stating +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s argument over again to +him)——Why, Sir, are there not seven cardinal +virtues?——Seven mortal sins?——Seven golden +candlesticks?——Seven heavens?—’Tis more +than I know, replied my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——Are there +not seven wonders of the world?——Seven days of the +creation?——Seven planets?——Seven +plagues?——That there are, quoth my father with a most affected gravity. But prithee, +continued he, go on with the rest of thy characters, +<i>Trim.</i>]</p> + +<p>“Another is sordid, unmerciful,” (here +<i>Trim</i> waved his right hand) “a strait-hearted, +selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or public +spirit. Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their +distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without +a sigh or a prayer.” [An’ please your honours, cried +<i>Trim</i>, I think this a viler man than the other.]</p> + +<p>“Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such +occasions?——No; thank God there is no occasion, <i>I +pay every man his own;—I have no fornication to answer to my +conscience;—no faithless vows or promises to make up;—I +have debauched no man’s wife or child; thank God, I am not as +other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who +stands before me.</i></p> + +<p>“A third is crafty and designing in his nature. View +his whole life;—’tis nothing but a cunning +contexture “of dark arts and unequitable +subterfuges, basely to defeat the true intent of all +laws,——plain dealing and the safe enjoyment of our +several properties.——You will see such a one working +out a frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities +of the poor and needy man;—shall raise a fortune upon the +inexperience of a youth, or the unsuspecting temper of his friend, +who would have trusted him with his life.</p> + +<p>“When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to +look back upon this black account, and state it over again with his +conscience—C<small>ONSCIENCE</small> looks into the +S<small>TATUTES AT</small> L<small>ARGE</small>;—finds no +express law broken by what he has done;—perceives no penalty +or forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred;—sees no scourge +waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon +him:—What is there to affright his +conscience?—Conscience has got safely entrenched behind the +Letter of the Law; sits “there invulnerable, fortified with +Cases and +Reports so strongly on all sides;—that it is +not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.”</p> + +<p>[Here Corporal <i>Trim</i> and my uncle <i>Toby</i> exchanged +looks with each other.—Aye, Aye, <i>Trim!</i> quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, shaking his head,——these are but sorry +fortifications, <i>Trim.</i>———O! very poor work, +answered <i>Trim</i>, to what your Honour and I make of +it.——The character of this last man, said Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, interrupting <i>Trim</i>, is more detestable than all +the rest; and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging +Lawyer amongst you:—Amongst us, a man’s conscience +could not possibly continue so long +<i>blinded</i>,——three times in a year, at least, he +must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight? quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>,——Go on, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my +father, or <i>Obadiah</i> will have got back before thou has got to +the end of thy sermon.——’Tis a very short one, +replied <i>Trim.</i>—I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, for I like it +hugely.—<i>Trim</i> went on.]</p> + +<p>“A fourth man shall want even this +refuge;—shall break through all their ceremony of slow +chicane;—scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and +cautious trains to bring about his purpose:——See the +bare-faced villain, how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, +murders!—Horrid!—But indeed much better was not to be +expected, in the present case—the poor man was in the +dark!——his priest had got the keeping of his +conscience;——and all he would let him know of it, was, +That he must believe in the Pope;—go to Mass;—cross +himself;—tell his beads;—be a good Catholic, and that +this, in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. +What;—if he perjures?—Why;—he had a mental +reservation in it.—But if he is so wicked and abandoned a +wretch as you represent him;—if he robs,—if he stabs, +will not conscience, “on every such act, receive a wound +itself?—Aye,—but the man has carried it to +confession;—the wound digests there, and will do well enough, +and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution. O Popery! +what hast thou to answer for!——when not content with +the too many natural and fatal ways, thro’ which the heart of +man is every day thus treacherous to itself above all +things;—thou hast wilfully set open the wide gate of deceit +before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God knows, to go +astray of himself, and confidently speak peace to himself, when +there is no peace.</p> + +<p>“Of this the common instances which I have drawn out +of life, are too notorious to require much evidence. If any man +doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for a man to be +such a bubble to himself,—I must refer him a moment to his +own reflections, and will then venture to trust my appeal with his +own heart.</p> + +<p>“Let him consider in how different a degree of +detestation, numbers of wicked actions stand <i>there</i>, +tho’ equally bad and vicious in their own natures;—he +will soon find, that such of them as strong inclination and custom +have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and painted +with all the false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand can +give them;—and that the others, to which he feels no +propensity, appear, at once, naked and deformed, surrounded with +all the true circumstances of folly and dishonour.</p> + +<p>“When <i>David</i> surprized <i>Saul</i> sleeping in +the cave, and cut off the skirt of his robe—we read his heart +smote him for what he had done:——But in the matter of +<i>Uriah</i>, where a faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought +to have loved and honoured, fell to make way for his +lust,—where conscience had so much greater reason to take the +alarm, his heart smote him not. A whole year had almost passed “from first commission of that crime, to +the time <i>Nathan</i> was sent to reprove him; and we read not +once of the least sorrow or compunction of heart which he +testified, during all that time, for what he had done.</p> + +<p>“Thus conscience, this once able +monitor,——placed on high as a judge within us, and +intended by our maker as a just and equitable one too,—by an +unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect +cognizance of what passes,——does its office so +negligently,——sometimes so corruptly,—that it is +not to be trusted alone; and therefore we find there is a +necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining another principle with +it, to aid, if not govern, its determinations.</p> + +<p> +“So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite +importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in what degree of real +merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful subject +to your king, “or a good servant to your God,——call in +religion and morality.—Look, What is written in the law of +God?——How readest thou?—Consult calm reason and the +unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;——what say they? +</p> + +<p>“Let C<small>ONSCIENCE</small> determine the matter +upon these reports;——and then if thy heart condemns +thee not, which is the case the apostle supposes,——the +rule will be infallible;”—[Here Dr. <i>Slop</i> fell +asleep]—“<i>thou wilt have confidence towards +God</i>;——that is, have just grounds to believe the +judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is the judgment of God; and +nothing else but an anticipation of that righteous sentence which +will be pronounced upon thee hereafter by that Being, to whom thou +art finally to give an account of thy actions.</p> + +<p>“<i>Blessed is the man</i>, indeed, then, as the +author of the book of <i>Ecclesiasticus</i> expresses it, <i>who is +not pricked with the multitude of his sins: Blessed is the +man</i> “<i>whose heart hath not condemned him; +whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good +heart</i> (a heart thus guided and informed) <i>he shall at all +times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him +more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower on +high.”</i>—[A tower has no strength, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, unless ’tis +flank’d.]—“in the darkest doubts it shall +conduct him safer than a thousand casuists, and give the state he +lives in, a better security for his behaviour than all the causes +and restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to +multiply:—<i>Forced</i>, I say, as things stand; human laws +not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, +brought in to fence against the mischievous effects of those +consciences which are no law unto themselves; well intending, by +the many provisions made,—that in all such corrupt and +misguided cases, where principles and the checks of conscience will +not make us upright,—to supply their “force, and, by the terrors of gaols and +halters, oblige us to it.”</p> + +<p>[I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been +composed to be preached at the Temple,——or at some +Assize.—I like the reasoning,—and am sorry that Dr. +<i>Slop</i> has fallen asleep before the time of his +conviction:—for it is now clear, that the Parson, as I +thought at first, never insulted St. <i>Paul</i> in the +least;—nor has there been, brother, the least difference +between them.——A great matter, if they had differed, +replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—the best friends in the world +may differ sometimes.——True,—brother <i>Toby</i> +quoth my father, shaking hands with him,—we’ll fill our +pipes, brother, and then <i>Trim</i> shall go on.</p> + +<p>Well,——what dost thou think of it? said my father, +speaking to Corporal <i>Trim</i>, as he reached his +tobacco-box.</p> + +<p>I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men upon +the tower, who, I suppose, are all centinels there,—are more, +an’ please your Honour, than were necessary;—and, to go +on at that rate, would harrass a regiment all to pieces, which +a commanding officer, who loves his men, will never do, if he can +help it, because two centinels, added the Corporal, are as good as +twenty.—I have been a commanding officer myself in the +<i>Corps de Garde</i> a hundred times, continued <i>Trim</i>, +rising an inch higher in his figure, as he spoke,—and all the +time I had the honour to serve his Majesty King <i>William</i>, in +relieving the most considerable posts, I never left more than two +in my life.——Very right, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,—but you do not consider, <i>Trim</i>, that the +towers, in <i>Solomon</i>’s days, were not such things as our +bastions, flanked and defended by other works;—this, +<i>Trim</i>, was an invention since <i>Solomon</i>’s death; +nor had they horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his +time;——or such a fossé as we make with a cuvette +in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps +pallisadoed along it, to guard against a <i>Coup de +main</i>:—So that the seven men upon the tower were a party, +I dare say, from the <i>Corps de Garde</i>, set there, not only to +look out, but to defend it.—They could be no more, an’ +please your Honour, than a Corporal’s Guard.—My father +smiled inwardly, but not outwardly—the subject being rather +too serious, considering what had happened, to make a jest +of.—So putting his pipe into his mouth, which he had just +lighted,—he contented himself with ordering <i>Trim</i> to +read on. He read on as follows:</p> + +<p>“To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in +our mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by the +eternal measures of right and wrong:——The first of +these will comprehend the duties of religion;—the second, +those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, +that you cannot divide these two <i>tables</i>, even in +imagination, (tho’ the attempt is often made in practice) +without breaking and mutually destroying them both.</p> + +<p>“I said the attempt is often made; and so it +is;——there being nothing “more common than to see a man who has +no sense at all of religion, and indeed has so much honesty as to +pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront, should +you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character,——or +imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to the +uttermost mite.</p> + +<p>“When there is some appearance that it is +so,—tho’ one is unwilling even to suspect the +appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to +look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we +should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his +motive.</p> + +<p>“Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the +subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation than +either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such little and +changeable passion as will give us but small dependence upon his +actions in matters of great distress.</p> + +<p>“I will illustrate this by an example.</p> + +<p>“I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I +usually call in,”—[There is no need, cried Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, (waking) to call in any physician in this +case]—“to be neither of them men of much +religion: I hear them make a jest of it every day, and treat all +its sanctions with so much scorn, as to put the matter past doubt. +Well;—notwithstanding this, I put my fortune into the hands +of the one:—and what is dearer still to me, I trust my life +to the honest skill of the other.</p> + +<p>“Now let me examine what is my reason for this great +confidence. Why, in the first place, I believe there is no +probability that either of them will employ the power I put into +their hands to my disadvantage;—I consider that honesty +serves the purposes of this life:—I know their success in the +world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—In a +word, I’m persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting +themselves more.</p> + +<p>“But put it otherwise, namely, “that interest lay, for once, on the +other side; that a case should happen, wherein the one, without +stain to his reputation, could secrete my fortune, and leave me +naked in the world;—or that the other could send me out of +it, and enjoy an estate by my death, without dishonour to himself +or his art:—In this case, what hold have I of either of +them?—Religion, the strongest of all motives, is out of the +question;—Interest, the next most powerful motive in the +world, is strongly against me:——What have I left to +cast into the opposite scale to balance this +temptation?——Alas! I have nothing,——nothing +but what is lighter than a bubble——I must lie at the +mercy of H<small>ONOUR</small>, or some such capricious +principle—Strait security for two of the most valuable +blessings!—my property and myself.</p> + +<p>“As, therefore, we can have no dependence upon +morality without religion;—so, on the other hand, there is +nothing better to be expected from “religion without morality; +nevertheless, ’tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral +character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of +himself in the light of a religious man.</p> + +<p>“He shall not only be covetous, revengeful, +implacable,—but even wanting in points of common honesty; yet +inasmuch as he talks aloud against the infidelity of the +age,——is zealous for some points of +religion,——goes twice a day to church,—attends +the sacraments,—and amuses himself with a few instrumental +parts of religion,—shall cheat his conscience into a +judgment, that, for this, he is a religious man, and has discharged +truly his duty to God: And you will find that such a man, through +force of this delusion, generally looks down with spiritual pride +upon every other man who has less affectation of +piety,—though, perhaps, ten times more real honesty than +himself.</p> + +<p> +“<i>This likewise is a sore evil under the sun</i>; and I believe, there +is no one mistaken principle, which, for its time, has wrought more serious +mischiefs.——For a general proof of this,—examine the history +of the <i>Romish</i> church;”—[Well what can you make of that? +cried Dr. <i>Slop</i>]—“see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, +bloodshed,”——[They may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. +<i>Slop</i>]——have all been sanctified by a religion not strictly +governed by morality. +</p> + +<p> +“In how many kingdoms of the world”—[Here <i>Trim</i> kept +waving his right-hand from the sermon to the extent of his arm, returning it +backwards and forwards to the conclusion of the paragraph.] +</p> + +<p>“In how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading +sword of this misguided saint-errant, spared neither age or merit, +or sex, or condition?—and, as he fought under the banners of +a religion which set him loose from justice and humanity, he shewed +none; mercilessly trampled upon both,—“heard neither the cries of the +unfortunate, nor pitied their distresses.”</p> + +<p> +[I have been in many a battle, an’ please your Honour, quoth <i>Trim</i>, +sighing, but never in so melancholy a one as this,—I would not have drawn +a tricker in it against these poor souls,——to have been made a +general officer.——Why? what do you understand of the affair? said +Dr. <i>Slop</i>, looking towards <i>Trim</i>, with something more of contempt +than the Corporal’s honest heart deserved.——What do you know, +friend, about this battle you talk of?—I know, replied <i>Trim</i>, that +I never refused quarter in my life to any man who cried out for +it;——but to a woman or a child, continued <i>Trim</i>, before I +would level my musket at them, I would lose my life a thousand +times.——Here’s a crown for thee, <i>Trim</i>, to drink with +<i>Obadiah</i> to-night, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and I’ll give +<i>Obadiah</i> another too.—God bless your Honour, replied +<i>Trim</i>,——I had rather these poor women and children had +it.——thou art an honest fellow, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——My father nodded his head, as much as to +say—and so he is.—— +</p> + +<p>But prithee, <i>Trim</i>, said my father, make an end,—for +I see thou hast but a leaf or two left.</p> + +<p>Corporal <i>Trim</i> read on.]</p> + +<p>“If the testimony of past centuries in this matter +is not sufficient,—consider at this instant, how the votaries +of that religion are every day thinking to do service and honour to +God, by actions which are a dishonour and scandal to +themselves.</p> + +<p>“To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment +into the prisons of the Inquisition.”—[God help my poor +brother <i>Tom.</i>]—“Behold <i>Religion</i>, +with <i>Mercy</i> and <i>Justice</i> chained down under her +feet,——there sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, +propped up with racks and instruments of torment. Hark!—hark! +what a piteous groan!”—[Here <i>Trim</i>’s face +turned as pale as ashes.]——“See the +melancholy wretch who uttered it”—[Here the tears began +to trickle down]——“just brought forth to undergo +the anguish of a mock trial, and endure the utmost pains that a +studied system of cruelty has been able to +invent.”—[D—n them all, quoth <i>Trim</i>, his +colour returning into his face as red as +blood.]—“Behold this helpless victim delivered up +to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with sorrow and +confinement.”—[Oh! ’tis my brother, cried poor +<i>Trim</i> in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon +upon the ground, and clapping his hands together—I fear +’tis poor <i>Tom.</i> My father’s and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s heart yearned with sympathy for the poor +fellow’s distress; even <i>Slop</i> himself acknowledged pity +for him.——Why, <i>Trim</i>, said my father, this is not +a history,——’tis a sermon thou art reading; +prithee begin the sentence again.]——“Behold +this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors,—his body +so wasted with sorrow and confinement, you will see every nerve and +muscle as it suffers.</p> + +<p>“Observe the last movement of that horrid +engine!”—[I would rather face a cannon, quoth <i>Trim</i>, +stamping.)—“See what convulsions it has thrown +him into!——Consider the nature of the posture in which +he how lies stretched,—what exquisite tortures he endures by +it!”—[I hope ’tis not in +<i>Portugal.</i>]—“’Tis all nature can +bear! Good God! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his +trembling lips!” [I would not read another line of it, quoth +<i>Trim</i> for all this <i>world</i>;—I fear, an’ +please your Honours, all this is in <i>Portugal</i>, where my poor +brother <i>Tom</i> is. I tell thee, <i>Trim</i>, again, quoth my +father, ’tis not an historical account,—’tis a +description.—’Tis only a description, honest man, quoth +<i>Slop</i>, there’s not a word of truth in +it.——That’s another story, replied my +father.—However, as <i>Trim</i> reads it with so much +concern,—’tis cruelty to force him to go on with +it.—Give me hold of the sermon, <i>Trim</i>,—I’ll +finish it for thee, and thou may’st go. I must stay and hear +it too, replied <i>Trim</i>, if your Honour will allow +me;—tho’ I would not read it myself for a +Colonel’s pay.——Poor Trim! quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i> My father went on.]</p> + +<p>“——Consider the nature of the posture in which +he now lies stretched,—what exquisite torture he endures by +it!—’Tis all nature can bear! Good God! See how it +keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips,—willing +to take its leave,——but not suffered to +depart!—Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his +cell!”——[Then, thank God, however, quoth +<i>Trim</i>, they have not killed him.]—“See him +dragged out of it again to meet the flames, and the insults in his +last agonies, which this principle,—this principle, that +there can be religion without mercy, has prepared for +him.”——[Then, thank God,——he is dead, +quoth <i>Trim</i>,—he is out of his pain,—and they have +done their worst at him.—O Sirs!—Hold your peace, +<i>Trim</i>, said my father, going on with the sermon, lest +<i>Trim</i> should incense Dr. <i>Slop</i>,—we shall never +have done at this rate.]</p> + +<p>“The surest way to try the merit of “any disputed notion is, to trace down +the consequences such a notion has produced, and compare them with +the spirit of Christianity;——’tis the short and +decisive rule which our Saviour hath left us, for these and such +like cases, and it is worth a thousand arguments——<i>By +their fruits ye shall know them.</i></p> + +<p>“I will add no farther to the length of this sermon, +than by two or three short and independent rules deducible from +it.</p> + +<p>“<i>First</i>, Whenever a man talks loudly against +religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his +passions, which have got the better of his C<small>REED</small>. A +bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome +neighbours, and where they separate, depend upon it, ’tis for +no other cause but quietness sake.</p> + +<p>“<i>Secondly</i>, When a man, thus represented, +tells you in any particular instance,——That such a +thing goes “against his +conscience,——always believe he means exactly the same +thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes <i>against</i> his +stomach;—a present want of appetite being generally the true +cause of both.</p> + +<p>“In a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has +not a C<small>ONSCIENCE</small> in every thing.</p> + +<p>“And, in your own case, remember this plain +distinction, a mistake in which has ruined thousands,—that +your conscience is not a law;—No, God and reason made the +law, and have placed conscience within you to +determine;——not, like an <i>Asiatic</i> Cadi, according +to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,—but like a +<i>British</i> judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who +makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows +already written.”</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>F I N I S.</i> +</p> + +<p>Thou hast read the sermon extremely well, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my +father.—If he had spared his comments, replied Dr. +<i>Slop</i>,——he would have read it much better.</p> + +<p>I should have read it ten times better, Sir, answered +<i>Trim</i>, but that my heart was so full.—That was the very +reason, <i>Trim</i>, replied my father, which has made thee read +the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our +church, continued my father, addressing himself to Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +would take part in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow +has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[I deny it, +quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>]—I maintain it,—that the +eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would +be a model for the whole world:——But alas! continued my +father, and I own it, Sir, with sorrow, that, like <i>French</i> +politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they +lose in the field.——’Twere a pity, quoth my +uncle, that this should be lost. I like the sermon well, replied my +father,——’tis dramatick,—and there is +something in that way of writing, when skilfully managed, which +catches the attention.——We preach much in that way with +us, said Dr. <i>Slop.</i>—I know that very well, said my +father,—but in a tone and manner which disgusted Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased +him.——But in this, added Dr. <i>Slop</i>, a little +piqued,—our sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never +introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a +patriarch’s wife, or a martyr or a saint.—There are +some very bad characters in this, however, said my father, and I do +not think the sermon a jot the worse for +’em.——But pray, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,—who’s can this be?—How could it get +into my <i>Stevinus</i>? A man must be as great a conjurer as +<i>Stevinus</i>, said my father, to resolve the second +question:—The first, I think, is not so difficult;—for +unless my judgment greatly deceives me,——I know the +author, for ’tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the +parish.</p> + +<p>The similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father constantly had heard +preached in his parish-church, was the ground of his +conjecture,—proving it as strongly, as an argument +<i>à priori</i> could prove such a thing to a philosophic +mind, That it was <i>Yorick</i>’s and no one’s +else:—It was proved to be so, <i>à posteriori</i>, the +day after, when <i>Yorick</i> sent a servant to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s house to enquire after it.</p> + +<p>It seems that <i>Yorick</i>, who was inquisitive after all kinds +of knowledge, had borrowed <i>Stevinus</i> of my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +and had carelesly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it, +into the middle of <i>Stevinus</i>; and by an act of forgetfulness, +to which he was ever subject, he had sent <i>Stevinus</i> home, and +his sermon to keep him company.</p> + +<p>Ill-fated sermon! Thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a +second time, dropped thru’ an unsuspected fissure in thy +master’s pocket, down into a treacherous and a tattered +lining,—trod deep into the dirt by the left hind-foot of +his Rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou +falledst;—buried ten days in the mire,——raised up +out of it by a beggar,—sold for a halfpenny to a +parish-clerk,——transferred to his +parson,——lost for ever to thy own, the remainder of his +days,—nor restored to his restless M<small>ANES</small> till +this very moment, that I tell the world the story.</p> + +<p>Can the reader believe, that this sermon of +<i>Yorick</i>’s was preached at an assize, in the cathedral +of <i>York</i>, before a thousand witnesses, ready to give oath of +it, by a certain prebendary of that church, and actually printed by +him when he had done,——and within so short a space as +two years and three months after <i>Yorick</i>’s +death?—<i>Yorick</i> indeed, was never better served in his +life;——but it was a little hard to maltreat him after, +and plunder him after he was laid in his grave.</p> + +<p>However, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect charity with +<i>Yorick</i>,—and, in conscious justice, printed but a few copies to give away;—and that I am told he +could moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought +fit,—I declare I would not have published this anecdote to +the world;——nor do I publish it with an intent to hurt +his character and advancement in the church;—I leave that to +others;——but I find myself impelled by two reasons, +which I cannot withstand.</p> + +<p>The first is, That in doing justice, I may give rest to +<i>Yorick</i>’s ghost;——which—as the +country-people, and some others believe,——<i>still +walks.</i></p> + +<p>The second reason is, That, by laying open this story to the +world, I gain an opportunity of informing it,—That in case +the character of parson <i>Yorick</i>, and this sample of his +sermons, is liked,——there are now in the possession of +the <i>Shandy</i> family, as many as will make a handsome volume, +at the world’s service,——and much good may they +do it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>O<small>BADIAH</small> gained the two crowns without +dispute;—for he came in jingling, with all the instruments in +the green baize bag we spoke of, flung across his body, just as +Corporal <i>Trim</i> went out of the room.</p> + +<p>It is now proper, I think, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, (clearing up +his looks) as we are in a condition to be of some service to Mrs. +<i>Shandy</i>, to send up stairs to know how she goes on.</p> + +<p>I have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down +to us upon the least difficulty;—for you must know, Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, continued my father, with a perplexed kind of a smile +upon his countenance, that by express treaty, solemnly ratified +between me and my wife, you are no more than an auxiliary in this +affair,—and not so much as that,—unless the lean old +mother of a midwife above stairs cannot do without you.—Women have their particular fancies, and in points +of this nature, continued my father, where they bear the whole +burden, and suffer so much acute pain for the advantage of our +families, and the good of the species,—they claim a right of +deciding, <i>en Souveraines</i>, in whose hands, and in what +fashion, they choose to undergo it.</p> + +<p>They are in the right of it,——quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i> But Sir, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, not taking notice of +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s opinion, but turning to my +father,—they had better govern in other +points;——and a father of a family, who wishes its +perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this prerogative +with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of +it.——I know not, quoth my father, answering a letter +too testily, to be quite dispassionate in what he said,—I +know not, quoth he, what we have left to give up, in lieu of who +shall bring our children into the world, unless that,—of who +shall beget them.——One would almost give up any thing, replied Dr. +<i>Slop.</i>—I beg your pardon,——answered my +uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Sir, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, it would +astonish you to know what improvements we have made of late years +in all branches of obstetrical knowledge, but particularly in that +one single point of the safe and expeditious extraction of the +<i>fœtus</i>,——which has received such lights, +that, for my part (holding up his hand) I declare I wonder how the +world has——I wish, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, you had +seen what prodigious armies we had in <i>Flanders.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAVE</small> dropped the curtain over this +scene for a minute,——to remind you of one +thing,——and to inform you of another.</p> + +<p>What I have to inform you, comes, I own, a little out of its due +course;——for it should have been told a hundred and +fifty pages ago, but that I foresaw then ’twould come in pat hereafter, and be of +more advantage here than elsewhere.——Writers had need +look before them, to keep up the spirit and connection of what they +have in hand.</p> + +<p>When these two things are done,—the curtain shall be drawn +up again, and my uncle <i>Toby</i>, my father, and Dr. <i>Slop</i>, +shall go on with their discourse, without any more +interruption.</p> + +<p>First, then, the matter which I have to remind you of, is +this;——that from the specimens of singularity in my +father’s notions in the point of Christian-names, and that +other previous point thereto,—you was led, I think, into an +opinion,—(and I am sure I said as much) that my father was a +gentleman altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other opinions. +In truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the very +first act of his begetting,——down to the lean and +slippered pantaloon in his second childishness, but he had some +favourite notion to himself, springing out of it, as sceptical, and +as far out of the high-way of thinking, as these two which have been +explained.</p> + +<p>—Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, my father, Sir, would see nothing in +the light in which others placed it;—he placed things in his +own light;—he would weigh nothing in common scales;—no, +he was too refined a researcher to lie open to so gross an +imposition.—To come at the exact weight of things in the +scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be almost +invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;—without +this the minutiæ of philosophy, which would always turn the +balance, will have no weight at all. Knowledge, like matter, he +would affirm, was divisible <i>in infinitum</i>;——that +the grains and scruples were as much a part of it, as the +gravitation of the whole world.—In a word, he would say, +error was error,—no matter where it +fell,——whether in a fraction,——or a +pound,—’twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept +down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by a mistake in the +dust of a butterfly’s wing,——as in the disk +of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put +together.</p> + +<p>He would often lament that it was for want of considering this +properly, and of applying it skilfully to civil matters, as well as +to speculative truths, that so many things in this world were out +of joint;——that the political arch was giving +way;——and that the very foundations of our excellent +constitution in church and state, were so sapped as estimators had +reported.</p> + +<p>You cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people. Why? +he would ask, making use of the sorites or syllogism of <i>Zeno</i> +and <i>Chrysippus</i>, without knowing it belonged to +them.—Why? why are we a ruined people?—Because we are +corrupted.—Whence is it, dear Sir, that we are +corrupted?——Because we are needy;——our +poverty, and not our wills, consent.——And wherefore, he +would add, are we needy?—From the neglect, he would answer, +of our pence and our halfpence:—Our bank notes, Sir, our guineas,—nay our shillings +take care of themselves.</p> + +<p>’Tis the same, he would say, throughout the whole circle +of the sciences;—the great, the established points of them, +are not to be broke in upon.—The laws of nature will defend +themselves;—but error——(he would add, looking +earnestly at my mother)——error, Sir, creeps in +thro’ the minute holes and small crevices which human nature +leaves unguarded.</p> + +<p>This turn of thinking in my father, is what I had to remind you +of:—The point you are to be informed of, and which I have +reserved for this place, is as follows.</p> + +<p>Amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my father had +urged my mother to accept of Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s assistance +preferably to that of the old woman,——there was one of +a very singular nature; which, when he had done arguing the matter +with her as a Christian, and came to argue it over again with her as a philosopher, he had put his +whole strength to, depending indeed upon it as his +sheet-anchor.——It failed him, tho’ from no defect +in the argument itself; but that, do what he could, he was not able +for his soul to make her comprehend the drift of +it.——Cursed luck!——said he to himself, one +afternoon, as he walked out of the room, after he had been stating +it for an hour and a half to her, to no manner of +purpose;—cursed luck! said he, biting his lip as he shut the +door,——for a man to be master of one of the finest +chains of reasoning in nature,——and have a wife at the +same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single +inference within side of it, to save his soul from destruction.</p> + +<p>This argument, though it was entirely lost upon my +mother,——had more weight with him, than all his other +arguments joined together:—I will therefore endeavour to do +it justice,—and set it forth with all the perspicuity I am +master of.</p> + +<p>My father set out upon the strength of these two following +axioms:</p> + +<p><i>First</i>, That an ounce of a man’s own wit, was worth +a ton of other people’s; and,</p> + +<p><i>Secondly</i>, (Which by the bye, was the ground-work of the +first axiom,——tho’ it comes last) That every +man’s wit must come from every man’s own +soul,——and no other body’s.</p> + +<p>Now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature +equal,——and that the great difference between the most +acute and the most obtuse understanding——was from no +original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or +below another,——but arose merely from the lucky or +unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul +principally took up her residence,——he had made it the +subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place.</p> + +<p>Now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this +matter, he was satisfied it could not be where <i>Des +Cartes</i> had fixed it, upon the top of the <i>pineal</i> +gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion +for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho’ to speak the +truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one +place,—’twas no bad conjecture;——and my +father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into +the centre of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a +<i>Walloon</i> officer at the battle of <i>Landen</i>, who had one +part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another +part of it taken out after by a <i>French</i> surgeon; and after +all, recovered, and did his duty very well without it.</p> + +<p>If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but +the separation of the soul from the body;—and if it is true +that people can walk about and do their business without +brains,—then certes the soul does not inhabit there. +Q.E.D.</p> + +<p>As for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice +which <i>Coglionissimo Borri</i>, the great <i>Milaneze</i> +physician affirms, in a letter to <i>Bartholine</i>, to have +discovered in the cellulæ of the occipital parts of the +cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat +of the reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in these latter and +more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man +living,—the one, according to the great <i>Metheglingius</i>, +being called the <i>Animus</i>, the other, the +<i>Anima</i>;)—as for the opinion, I say of +<i>Borri</i>,—my father could never subscribe to it by any +means; the very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so +exalted a being as the <i>Anima</i>, or even the <i>Animus</i>, +taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all +day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,——or in a +liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked +his imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing.</p> + +<p>What, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, +was that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place all intelligences were +referred, and from whence all her mandates were issued,—was +in, or near, the cerebellum,—or rather somewhere about the +<i>medulla oblongata</i>, wherein it was generally agreed by +<i>Dutch</i> anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the +organs of the seven senses concentered, like streets and winding +alleys, into a square.</p> + +<p>So far there was nothing singular in my father’s +opinion,—he had the best of philosophers, of all ages and +climates, to go along with him.——But here he took a +road of his own, setting up another <i>Shandean</i> hypothesis upon +these corner-stones they had laid for him;——and which +said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and +fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of +the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the +cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured.</p> + +<p>He maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act +of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought +in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible +contexture, in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is +usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do +consist;—that next to this and his Christian-name, which were +the two original and most efficacious causes of +all;——that the third cause, or rather what logicians +call the <i>Causa sina qua non</i>, and without which all that was +done was of no manner of significance,——was the +preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock +which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush +which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of +bringing us into the world by that foremost.</p> + +<p>——This requires explanation.</p> + +<p> +My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into <i>Lithopædus +Senonesis de Portu difficili</i>,<a href="#fn4" name="fnref4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> +published by <i>Adrianus Smelvgot</i>, had found out, that the lax and pliable +state of a child’s head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having +no sutures at that time, was such,——that by force of the +woman’s efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an +average, to the weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon +it;—it so happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was +compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such +as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—Good God! +cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely +fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a juice as +<i>Borri</i> pretends—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the +world both seculent and mothery? +</p> + +<p>But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, +that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only +injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it +necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the +cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the +understanding!——Angels and ministers of grace defend +us! cried my father,——can any soul withstand this +shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered +as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than +a puzzled skein of silk,——all +perplexity,——all confusion within-side.</p> + +<p>But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that +when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator +to do, and was extracted by the feet;—that instead of the +cerebrum being propelled towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on +the contrary, was propelled simply towards the cerebrum, where it could +do no manner of hurt:——By heavens! cried he, the world +is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given +us,——and the professors of the obstetric art are listed +into the same conspiracy.—What is it to me which end of my +son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, +and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed?</p> + +<p>It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived +it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper +nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it +generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or +understand. This is of great use.</p> + +<p>When my father was gone with this about a month, there was +scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could +not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest son +being the greatest blockhead in the family.——Poor +devil, he would say,—he made way for the capacity of his +younger brothers.——It unriddled the observations of +drivellers and monstrous heads,——shewing <i>à +priori</i>, it could not be otherwise,——unless **** I +don’t know what. It wonderfully explained and accounted for +the acumen of the <i>Asiatic</i> genius, and that sprightlier turn, +and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not +from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a +more perpetual sunshine, &c.—which for aught he knew, +might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into +nothing, by one extreme,—as they are condensed in colder +climates by the other;——but he traced the affair up to +its spring-head;—shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had +laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the +creation;—their pleasures more;—the necessity of their +pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the +vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum +was preserved;——nay, he did not believe, in natural +births, that so much as a single thread of the network was broke or displaced,——so that +the soul might just act as she liked.</p> + +<p>When my father had got so far,——what a blaze of +light did the accounts of the <i>Caesarian</i> section, and of the +towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon +this hypothesis? Here you see, he would say, there was no injury +done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the +pelvis;——no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the +cerebellum, either by the <i>os pubis</i> on this side, or <i>os +coxygis</i> on that;——and pray, what were the happy +consequences? Why, Sir, your <i>Julius Caesar</i>, who gave the +operation a name;—and your <i>Hermes Trismegistus</i>, who +was born so before ever the operation had a name;——your +<i>Scipio Africanus</i>; your <i>Manlius Torquatus</i>; our +<i>Edward</i> the Sixth,—who, had he lived, would have done +the same honour to the hypothesis:——These, and many +more who figured high in the annals of fame,—all came +<i>side-way</i>, Sir, into the world.</p> + +<p>The incision of the <i>abdomen</i> and <i>uterus</i> ran for six weeks together in my father’s +head;——he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in +the <i>epigastrium</i>, and those in the <i>matrix</i>, were not +mortal;—so that the belly of the mother might be opened +extremely well to give a passage to the child.—He mentioned +the thing one afternoon to my mother,——merely as a +matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very +mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his +hopes,—he thought it as well to say no more of +it,——contenting himself with admiring,—what he +thought was to no purpose to propose.</p> + +<p>This was my father Mr. <i>Shandy</i>’s hypothesis; +concerning which I have only to add, that my brother <i>Bobby</i> +did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any +one of the great heroes we spoke of: For happening not only to be +christened, as I told you, but to be born too, when my father was +at <i>Epsom</i>,——being moreover my mother’s +first child,—coming into the world with his head +<i>foremost</i>,—and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow +parts,——my father spelt all these together into his +opinion: and as he had failed at one end,—he was determined +to try the other.</p> + +<p>This was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are +not easily to be put out of their way,——and was +therefore one of my father’s great reasons in favour of a man +of science, whom he could better deal with.</p> + +<p>Of all men in the world, Dr. <i>Slop</i> was the fittest for my +father’s purpose;——for though this new-invented +forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be +the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had +scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing +which ran in my father’s fancy;——tho’ not +with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as +was my father’s system,—but for reasons merely +obstetrical.</p> + +<p>This will account for the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——In what +manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up +against two such allies in science,—is hard to +conceive.—You may conjecture upon it, if you +please,——and whilst your imagination is in motion, you +may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects +in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> got his +modesty by the wound he received upon his groin.—You may +raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by +marriage-articles,—and shew the world how it could happen, +that I should have the misfortune to be called +T<small>RISTRAM</small>, in opposition to my father’s +hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, Godfathers and +Godmothers not excepted.—These, with fifty other points left +yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have +time;——but I tell you beforehand it will be in vain, +for not the sage <i>Alquise</i>, the magician in Don +<i>Belianis</i> of <i>Greece</i>, nor the no less famous +<i>Urganda</i>, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive) could pretend to come within a league of the truth.</p> + +<p>The reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of +these matters till the next year,——when a series of +things will be laid open which he little expects.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn4"></a> <a href="#fnref4">[4]</a> +The author is here twice mistaken; for <i>Lithopædus</i> should be wrote thus, +<i>Lithopædii Senonensis Icon.</i> The second mistake is, that this +<i>Lithopædus</i> is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. The +account of this, published by <i>Athosius</i> 1580, may be seen at the end of +<i>Cordæus</i>’s works in <i>Spachius.</i> Mr. <i>Tristram Shandy</i> has +been led into this error, either from seeing <i>Lithopædus</i>’s name of +late in a catalogue of learned writers in Dr. ——, or by mistaking +<i>Lithopædus</i> for <i>Trinecavellius</i>,—from the too great +similitude of the names. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——“I <i><small>WISH</small></i>, Dr. <i>Slop</i>,” +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, (repeating his wish for Dr. <i>Slop</i> a second +time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, +than he had wished at first<a href="#fn5" name="fnref5"><sup>[5]</sup></a>)——“<i>I +wish, Dr. Slop,”</i> quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, “<i>you had seen +what prodigious armies we had in</i> Flanders.” +</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>’s wish did Dr. <i>Slop</i> a +disservice which his heart never intended any man,—Sir, it +confounded him——and thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not +rally them again for the soul of him.</p> + +<p>In all disputes,——male or +female, —whether for honour, for profit, or for +love,—it makes no difference in the case;—nothing is +more dangerous, Madam, than a wish coming sideways in this +unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off +the force of the wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly +to get upon his legs—and wish the <i>wisher</i> something in +return, of pretty near the same value,——so balancing +the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay +sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it.</p> + +<p>This will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of +wishes.—</p> + +<p>Dr. <i>Slop</i> did not understand the nature of this +defence;—he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to +the dispute for four minutes and a half;—five had been fatal +to it:—my father saw the danger—the dispute was one of +the most interesting disputes in the world, “Whether the child of his prayers and +endeavours should be born without a head or with +one:”—he waited to the last moment, to allow Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of +returning it; but perceiving, I say, that he was confounded, and +continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled +souls generally stare with—first in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s face—then in his—then up—then +down—then east—east and by east, and so +on,——coasting it along by the plinth of the wainscot +till he had got to the opposite point of the +compass,——and that he had actually begun to count the +brass nails upon the arm of his chair,—my father thought +there was no time to be lost with my uncle <i>Toby</i>, so took up +the discourse as follows.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn5"></a> <a href="#fnref5">[5]</a> +Vide page 260. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>“—W<small>HAT</small> prodigious armies +you had in <i>Flanders!</i>”— </p> + +<p>Brother <i>Toby</i>, replied my father, taking his wig from off +his head with his right hand, and with his <i>left</i> pulling out a +striped <i>India</i> handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in +order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——</p> + +<p>——Now, in this I think my father was much to blame; +and I will give you my reasons for it.</p> + +<p>Matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, +“<i>Whether my father should have taken off his wig with his +right hand or with his left</i>,”—have divided the +greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed +them, to totter upon their heads.——But need I tell you, +Sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is +begirt, give every thing in this world its size and +shape!—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or +that, make the thing to be, what it +is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent +or not indifferent, just as the case happens?</p> + +<p>As my father’s <i>India</i> handkerchief was in his right +coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of +taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed +that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my +father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his +handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, +but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken +it out;——which he might have done without any violence, +or the least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his +whole body.</p> + +<p>In this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to +make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left +hand——or by making some nonsensical angle or other at +his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his whole attitude had been +easy—natural—unforced: <i>Reynolds</i> himself, as +great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he +sat.</p> + +<p>Now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a +devil of a figure my father made of himself.</p> + +<p>In the latter end of Queen <i>Anne</i>’s reign, and in the beginning of the reign of King +<i>George</i> the first—“<i>Coat pockets were cut very +low down in the skirt.</i>”—I need say no +more—the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a +month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my +father’s situation.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was not an easy matter in any +king’s reign (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to +have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so +as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.——In +the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this +happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle +<i>Toby</i> discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my +father’s approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his +mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of <i>St. +Nicolas</i>;—the idea of which drew off his attention so +intirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right +hand to the bell to ring up <i>Trim</i> to go and fetch +his map of <i>Namur</i>, and his compasses and sector along with +it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that +attack,—but particularly of that one, where he received his +wound upon his groin.</p> + +<p>My father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in +his body seemed to rush up into his face——my uncle +<i>Toby</i> dismounted immediately.</p> + +<p>——I did not apprehend your uncle <i>Toby</i> was +o’horseback.——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A <small>MAN</small>’s body and his mind, with +the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, +and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the one,—you rumple +the other. There is one certain exception however in this case, and +that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your +jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a +sarcenet, or thin persian.</p> + +<p><i>Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes Babylonius, Dionysius, +Heracleotes, Antipater, Panætius</i>, and <i>Possidonius</i> +amongst the <i>Greeks</i>;——<i>Cato</i> and +<i>Varro</i> and <i>Seneca</i> amongst the +<i>Romans</i>;——<i>Pantenus</i> and <i>Clemens +Alexandrinus</i> and <i>Montaigne</i> amongst the Christians; and a +score and a half of good, honest, unthinking <i>Shandean</i> people +as ever lived, whose names I can’t recollect,—all +pretended that their jerkins were made after this +fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and +creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to +pieces;——in short, you might have played the very devil +with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them +would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to +them.</p> + +<p>I believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after +this sort:——for never poor jerkin has been tickled off +at such a rate as it has been these last nine months +together,——and yet I declare, the lining to +it,——as far as I am a judge of the +matter,——is not a three-penny piece the worse;—pell-mell, +helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore +stroke, side way and long-way, have they been trimming it for +me:—had there been the least gumminess in my lining,—by +heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to a +thread.</p> + +<p>——You Messrs. the Monthly +Reviewers!——how could you cut and slash my jerkin as +you did?——how did you know but you would cut my lining +too?</p> + +<p>Heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that Being who +will injure none of us, do I recommend you and your +affairs,—so God bless you;—only next month, if any one +of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of +you did last M<small>AY</small> (in which I remember the weather +was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if I pass it by +again with good temper,—being determined as long as I live or +write) which in my case means the same thing) never to give the +honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my uncle <i>Toby</i> gave +the fly which buzz’d about his nose all +<i>dinner-time</i>,——“Go,—go, poor +devil,” quoth he,—“get thee gone,—why +should I hurt thee! This world is surely wide enough to hold both +thee and me.”</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>NY</small> man, Madam, reasoning upwards, +and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my +father’s countenance,—by means of which (as all the +blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as I told you) he +must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six +whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural +colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle <i>Toby</i>, who had +observed this, together with the violent knitting of my +father’s brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body +during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a +rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises +from two such instruments being put in exact tune,—he would +instantly have skrew’d up his, to the same pitch;—and +then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece, +Madam, must have been played off like the sixth of Avison +Scarlatti—<i>con furia</i>,—like mad.—Grant me +patience!——What has <i>con +furia</i>,——<i>con strepito</i>,——or any +other hurly burly whatever to do with harmony?</p> + +<p>Any man, I say, Madam, but my uncle <i>Toby</i>, the benignity +of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest +sense the motion would admit of, would have concluded my father +angry, and blamed him too. My uncle <i>Toby</i> blamed nothing but +the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;——so sitting still +till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all +the time up in his face with inexpressible +good-will——my father, at length, went on as +follows.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + L</small> +</h3> + +<p>“W<small>HAT</small> prodigious armies +you had in <i>Flanders!</i>”</p> + +<p>——Brother <i>Toby</i>, quoth my father, I do believe +thee to be as honest a man, and with as good and as upright a heart +as ever God created;—nor is it thy fault, if all the children +which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought to be begotten, +come with their heads foremost into the world:——but +believe me, dear <i>Toby</i>, the accidents which unavoidably +way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting +’em——though these, in my opinion, are well worth +considering,——but the dangers and difficulties our +children are beset with, after they are got forth into the world, +are enow—little need is there to expose them to unnecessary +ones in their passage to it.——Are these dangers, quoth +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, laying his hand upon my father’s knee, +and looking up seriously in his face for an +answer,——are these dangers greater now +o’days, brother, than in times past? Brother <i>Toby</i>, +answered my father, if a child was but fairly begot, and born +alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after it,—our +forefathers never looked farther.——My uncle <i>Toby</i> +instantly withdrew his hand from off my father’s knee, +reclined his body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he +could just see the cornice of the room, and then directing the +buccinatory muscles along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles +around his lips to do their duty—he whistled +<i>Lillabullero.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HILST</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> was +whistling <i>Lillabullero</i> to my father,—Dr. <i>Slop</i> +was stamping, and cursing and damning at <i>Obadiah</i> at a most +dreadful rate,——it would have done your heart good, and +cured you, Sir, for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard +him, I am determined therefore to relate the whole affair to +you.</p> + +<p>When Dr. <i>Slop</i>’s maid delivered the green baize bag +with her master’s instruments in it, to <i>Obadiah</i>, she +very sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the +strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the +bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, +she helped him on with it. However, as this, in some measure, +unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should bolt out in +galloping back, at the speed <i>Obadiah</i> threatened, they +consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution +of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close +(pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard +knots, each of which <i>Obadiah</i>, to make all safe, had twitched +and drawn together with all the strength of his body.</p> + +<p>This answered all that <i>Obadiah</i> and the maid intended; but +was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. +The instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, +had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the +shape of the bag being conical) that <i>Obadiah</i> could not make +a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the +<i>tire téte, forceps</i>, and <i>squirt</i>, as would have +been enough, had <i>Hymen</i> been taking a jaunt that way, to have +frightened him out of the country; but when <i>Obadiah</i> +accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his +coach-horse into a full gallop——by Heaven! Sir, the +jingle was incredible.</p> + +<p>As <i>Obadiah</i> had a wife and three children——the +turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill +consequences of this jingling, never once entered his +brain,——he had however his objection, which came home +to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the +greatest patriots.——“<i>The poor fellow, Sir, was +not able to hear himself whistle.</i>”</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> <i>Obadiah</i> loved wind-music +preferably to all the instrumental music he carried with +him,—he very considerately set his imagination to work, to +contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a +condition of enjoying it.</p> + +<p>In all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, +nothing is so apt to enter a man’s head as his +hat-band:——the philosophy of this is so near the +surface——I scorn to enter into it.</p> + +<p>As <i>Obadiah</i>’s was a mixed case——mark, +Sirs,——I say, a mixed case; for it was +obstetrical,——<i>scrip</i>-tical, squirtical, +papistical——and as far as the coach-horse was concerned +in it,——caballistical——and only partly +musical;—<i>Obadiah</i> made no scruple of availing himself +of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and +instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb +of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and +then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,—he tied and +cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you +would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and +intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or +point where the strings met,—that Dr. <i>Slop</i> must have +had three fifths of <i>Job</i>’s patience at least to have +unloosed them.—I think in my conscience, that had +N<small>ATURE</small> been in one of her nimble moods, and in +humour for such a contest——and she and Dr. <i>Slop</i> +both fairly started together——there is no man living +which had seen the bag with all that <i>Obadiah</i> had done to +it,——and known likewise the great speed the Goddess can +make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt +remaining in his mind—which of the two would have carried off +the prize. My mother, Madam, had been delivered sooner than the +green bag infallibly——at least by twenty <i>knots.</i>——Sport +of small accidents, <i>Tristram Shandy!</i> that thou art, and ever +will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but +it had,——thy affairs had not been so +depress’d—(at least by the depression of thy nose) as +they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions +of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the +course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so +tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned—as thou hast been forced +to leave them;——but ’tis over,——all +but the account of ’em, which cannot be given to the curious +till I am got out into the world.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>END OF THE FIRST VOLUME</small> +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image03.jpg" width="300" height= "511" alt="Tristram Shandy" /> +</div> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Tristram Shandy</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a> +<small>THE</small><br/> +LIFE <small>AND</small> OPINIONS<br/> +<small>OF</small><br/> +TRISTRAM SHANDY,<br/> +<small>GENTLEMAN<br/> +<br/> +Volume the Second</small> +</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +Multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant +opusculis——in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in +seriis vicissim ad jocos transire. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +J<small>OAN.</small> S<small>ARESBERIENSIS,</small><br/> +<i>Episcopus Lugdun.</i> +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. I</small> +</h3> + +<p>G<small>REAT</small> wits jump: for the moment Dr. +<i>Slop</i> cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till +the dispute with my uncle <i>Toby</i> about mid-wifery put him in +mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’Tis +God’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that Mrs. <i>Shandy</i> +has had so bad a time of it,——else she might have been +brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots +could have got untied.——But here you must +distinguish—the thought floated only in Dr. +<i>Slop</i>’s mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a +simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are +every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a +man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or +forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them +to one side.</p> + +<p>A sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s +bed, did the proposition the very service I am speaking of. By all +that’s unfortunate, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, unless I make +haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + II</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> the case of <i>knots</i>,—by +which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean +slip-knots—because in the course of my life and +opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more +properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. +<i>Hammond Shandy</i>,—a little man,—but of high +fancy:—he rushed into the duke of <i>Monmouth</i>’s +affair:——nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that +particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in +the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at +all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it +please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, +devilish tight, hard knots, made <i>bona fide</i>, as +<i>Obadiah</i> made his;——in which there is no +quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two +ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the +second <i>implication</i> of them—to get them slipp’d +and undone by.——I hope you apprehend me.</p> + +<p>In the case of these <i>knots</i> then, and of the several +obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast +in our way in getting through life——every hasty man can +whip out his pen-knife and cut through +them.——’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most +virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience +dictate——is to take our teeth or our fingers to +them.——Dr. <i>Slop</i> had lost his teeth—his +favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, +unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, +knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of +it:——he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his +fingers and thumbs were cut close.—The duce take it! I can +make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. +<i>Slop.</i>——The trampling over head near my +mother’s bed-side increased.—Pox take the fellow! I +shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.——My +mother gave a groan.——Lend me your penknife—I +must e’en cut the knots at +last——pugh!——psha!—Lord! I have cut +my thumb quite across to the very bone——curse the +fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty +miles——I am undone for this bout—I wish the +scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot——I wish +all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead!——</p> + +<p>My father had a great respect for <i>Obadiah</i>, and could not +bear to hear him disposed of in such a manner—he had moreover +some little respect for himself—and could as ill bear with the indignity +offered to himself in it.</p> + +<p>Had Dr. <i>Slop</i> cut any part about him, but his +thumb——my father had pass’d it by—his +prudence had triumphed: as it was, he was determined to have his +revenge.</p> + +<p>Small curses, Dr. <i>Slop</i>, upon great occasions, quoth my +father (condoling with him first upon the accident) are but so much +waste of our strength and soul’s health to no manner of +purpose.—I own it, replied Dr. <i>Slop.</i>—They are +like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i> (suspending his +whistling) fired against a bastion.——They serve, +continued my father, to stir the humours——but carry off +none of their acrimony:—for my own part, I seldom swear or +curse at all—I hold it bad——but if I fall into it +by surprize, I generally retain so much presence of mind (right, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>) as to make it answer my +purpose——that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A +wife and a just man however would always endeavour to +proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the +degree of them stirring within himself—but to the size and +ill intent of the offence upon which they are to +fall.—“<i>Injuries come only from the +heart</i>,”—quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i> For this +reason, continued my father, with the most <i>Cervantick</i> +gravity, I have the greatest veneration in the world for that +gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, +sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of +swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest +provocation which could possibly happen to him——which +forms being well considered by him, and such moreover as he could +stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece, within his +reach, ready for use.—I never apprehended, replied Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, that such a thing was ever thought +of——much less executed. I beg your pardon, answered my +father; I was reading, though not using, one of them to my brother +<i>Toby</i> this morning, whilst he pour’d out the +tea—’tis here upon the shelf over my head;—but if I remember right, +’tis too violent for a cut of the thumb.—Not at all, +quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>—the devil take the +fellow.——Then, answered my father, ’Tis much at +your service, Dr. <i>Slop</i>—on condition you will read it +aloud;——so rising up and reaching down a form of +excommunication of the church of <i>Rome</i>, a copy of which, my +father (who was curious in his collections) had procured out of the +leger-book of the church of <i>Rochester</i>, writ by +E<small>RNULPHUS</small> the bishop——with a most +affected seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled +E<small>RNULPHUS</small> himself—he put it into Dr. +<i>Slop</i>’s hands.——Dr. <i>Slop</i> wrapt his +thumb up in the corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry face, +though without any suspicion, read aloud, as +follows——my uncle <i>Toby</i> whistling +<i>Lillabullero</i> as loud as he could all the time.</p> + +<p class="center"> +Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C A P. III<br/> +EXCOMMUNICATIO.<a href="#fn6" name="fnref6"><sup>[6]</sup></a></small> +</h3> + +<p>E<small>X</small> auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, +Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, +sanctæque et entemeratæ Virginis Dei genetricis +Mariae,—</p> + +<p> +——Atque omnium cœlestium virtutum, angelorum, +archangelorum, thronorum, dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac +seraphin, & sanctorum patriarchum, prophetarum, & omnium +apolstolorum & evangelistarum, & sanctorum innocentum, qui +in conspectu Agni soli digni inventi sunt canticum cantare novum, +et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confessorum, et sanctarum +virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum +Dei,——Excommunicamus, et<br/> +       <i>vel</i> + os    s  <i>vel</i> os<br/> +anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc<br/> +      s<br/> +malefactorem, N.N. et a liminibus sanctæ Dei ecclesiæ sequestramus, et æternis<br/> +    <i>vel</i> i     +n<br/> +suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum Dathan et Abiram, et cum +his qui dixerunt Domino Deo, Recede à nobis, scientiam +viarum tuarum nolumus: et ficut aquâ ignis extinguatur +lu-<br/> +  <i>vel</i> eorum<br/> +cerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resque-<br/> + n            +      n<br/> +rit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Amen.<br/> +      os<br/> +Maledicat illum Deus Pater qui homi-<br/> +            os<br/> + +nem creavit. Maledicat illum Dei Filius qui pro homine passus est. +Maledicat<br/> + os<br/> +illum Spiritus Sanctus qui in baptismo ef-<br/> +            os<br/> + +fusus est. Maledicat illum sancta crux, quam Christus pro +nostrâ salute hostem triumphans ascendit.<br/> +        os</p> + +<p>Maledicat illum sancta Dei genetrix et<br/> +            +         os<br/> +perpetua Virgo Maria. Maledicat illum sanctus Michael, animarum susceptor sa-<br/> +            os<br/> + +crarum. Maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et +potestates, omnisque militia cœlestis.</p> + +<p>       os</p> + +<p>Maledicat illum patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus. +Maledicat<br/> +  os<br/> +illum sanctus Johannes Præcursor et Baptista Christi, et +sanctus Petrus, et sanctus Paulus, atque sanctus Andreas, omnesque +Christi apostoli, simul et cæteri discipuli, quatuor quoque +evangelistæ, qui sua prædicatione mundum universum +converte-<br/> +           os<br/> + +runt. Maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui +Deo bonis operibus placitus inventus est.</p> + +<p>      os</p> + +<p>Maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana +causa honoris Christi respuenda contempserunt. Male-<br/> +     os<br/> +dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi Deo dilecti +inveniuntur.</p> + +<p>        os</p> + +<p>Maledicant illum cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis +manentia.</p> + +<p>     i  +n          n</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit ubicunque, fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, +sive in viâ, sive in semitâ, sive in silvâ, sive +in aquâ, sive in ecclesiâ.</p> + +<p>     i  n</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,——<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +———      ——— +     ———<br/> +manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, +dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, +operando, quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.</p> + +<p>      i  n</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis.<br/> +      i  n</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit intus et exterius.<br/> +      i  +n           i</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus<br/> +n              +i  n<br/> +sit in cerebro. Maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in +fronte, in auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in +maxillis, in naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus, in labris sive +molibus, in labiis, in guttere, in humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, +in manubus, in digitis, in pectore, in corde, et in omnibus +interioribus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, +in genitalibus, in coxis, in genubus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et +in unguibus.</p> + +<p>Maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad plantam +pedis—non sit in eo sanitas.</p> + +<p>Maledicat illum Christus Filius Dei vivi toto suæ +majestatis imperio——</p> + +<p> +—et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus +quæ in eo moventur ad <i>damnandum</i> eum, nisi penituerit +et ad satisfactionem venerit.  Amen.</p> + +<p>Fiat, fiat.  Amen.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn6"></a> <a href="#fnref6">[6]</a> +As the geniuneness of the consultation of the Sorbonne upon the question of +baptism, was doubted by some, and denied by others——’twas +thought proper to print the original of this excommunication; for the copy of +which Mr. <i>Shandy</i> returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the dean and +chapter of <i>Rochester.</i> +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IV</small> +</h3> + +<p>“B<small>Y</small> the authority of God +Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, +and of the undefiled Virgin <i>Mary</i>, mother and patroness of +our Saviour.” I think there is no necessity, quoth Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, dropping the paper down to his knee, and addressing +himself to my father——as you have read it over, Sir, so +lately, to read it aloud——and as Captain <i>Shandy</i> +seems to have no great inclination to hear it——I may as +well read it to myself. That’s contrary to treaty, replied my +father:——besides, there is something so whimsical, +especially in the latter part of it, I should grieve to lose the +pleasure of a second reading. Dr. <i>Slop</i> did not altogether +like it,——but my uncle <i>Toby</i> offering at that +instant to give over whistling, and read it himself to +them;——Dr. <i>Slop</i> thought he might as well read it +under the cover of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +whistling——as suffer my uncle <i>Toby</i> to read it +alone;——so raising up the paper to his face, and +holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his +chagrin——he read it aloud as follows——my +uncle <i>Toby</i> whistling <i>Lillabullero</i>, though not quite +so loud as before.</p> + +<p> +“By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and +of the undefiled Virgin <i>Mary</i>, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and +of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, +cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all +the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight of +the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and +holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with +the holy and elect of God,—May he” (<i>Obadiah</i>) “be +damn’d” (for tying these knots)——“We +excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from the thresholds of the holy +“church of God Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented, +disposed, and delivered over with <i>Dathan</i> and <i>Abiram</i>, and with +those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we desire none of thy ways. +And as fire is quenched with water, so let the light of him be put out for +evermore, unless it shall repent him” (<i>Obadiah</i>, of the knots which +he has tied) “and make satisfaction” (for them) “Amen.” +</p> + +<p>“May the Father who created man, curse +him.——May the Son who suffered for us curse +him.——May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in +baptism, curse him” +(<i>Obadiah</i>)——“May the holy cross which +Christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, +curse him.</p> + +<p>“May the holy and eternal Virgin <i>Mary</i>, mother +of God, curse him.——May St. <i>Michael</i>, the +advocate of holy souls, curse him.——May all +the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the +heavenly armies, curse him.” [Our armies swore terribly in +<i>Flanders</i>, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>,——but +nothing to this.——For my own part I could not have a +heart to curse my dog so.]</p> + +<p>“May St. John, the Præcursor, and St. John the +Baptist, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other +Christ’s apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of +his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching +converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful +company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found +pleasing to God Almighty, curse him’ (<i>Obadiah</i>.)</p> + +<p> +“May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ +have despised the things of the world, damn him——May all the +saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be +beloved of God, damn him— +</p> + +<p>“May the heavens and earth, +and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him,” +(<i>Obadiah</i>) “or her,” (or whoever else had a hand +in tying these knots.)</p> + +<p>“May he (<i>Obadiah</i>) be damn’d wherever he +be——whether in the house or the stables, the garden or +the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in +the water, or in the church.——May he be cursed in +living, in dying.” [Here my uncle <i>Toby</i>, taking the +advantage of a <i>minim</i> in the second bar of his tune, kept +whistling one continued note to the end of the +sentence.——Dr. <i>Slop</i>, with his division of curses +moving under him, like a running bass all the way.] +“May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being +hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, +in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in +resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting!</p> + +<p>“May he” (<i>Obadiah</i>) +“be cursed in all the faculties of his body!</p> + +<p>“May he be cursed inwardly and +outwardly!——May he be cursed in the hair of his +head!——May he be cursed in his brains, and in his +vertex,” (that is a sad curse, quoth my father) +“in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his +eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his +fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his +shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his +fingers!</p> + +<p>“May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, +in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach!</p> + +<p>“May he be cursed in his reins, and in his +groin,” (God in heaven forbid! quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>) +“in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my father +shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, +and feet, and toe- nails!</p> + +<p>“May he be cursed in all the joints and +articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his +foot! May there be no soundness in him!</p> + +<p>“May the son of the living God, with all the glory +of his Majesty”——(Here my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud +Whew—w—w———something betwixt the +interjectional whistle of <i>Hay-day!</i> and the word +itself.——</p> + +<p>——By the golden beard of <i>Jupiter</i>—and of +<i>Juno</i> (if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest +of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, +since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial +and aquatick—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and +country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the +infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they +wore them)——all which beards, as <i>Varro</i> tells me, +upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less +than thirty thousand effective beards upon the Pagan +establishment;——every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being +stroken and sworn by—by all these beards together +then——I vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks I +am worth in the world, I would have given the better of them, as +freely as ever <i>Cid Hamet</i> offered his——to have +stood by, and heard my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s accompanyment.</p> + +<p>——“curse him!”—continued Dr. +<i>Slop</i>,—“and may heaven, with all the powers which +move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him” +(<i>Obadiah</i>) “unless he repent and make satisfaction! +Amen. So be it,—so be it. Amen.”</p> + +<p>I declare, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, my heart would not let me +curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—He is the +father of curses, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>.——So am not +I, replied my uncle.——But he is cursed, and +damn’d already, to all eternity, replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>.</p> + +<p>I am sorry for it, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>Dr. <i>Slop</i> drew up his mouth, and wasjust beginning to return my uncle <i>Toby</i> the +compliment of his Whu—u—u—or interjectional +whistle——when the door hastily opening in the next +chapter but one——put an end to the affair.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + V</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> don’t let us give ourselves +a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in +this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the +spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had the wit +to invent them too.</p> + +<p>I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the +world, except to a connoisseur:——though I declare I +object only to a connoisseur in swearing,——as I would +do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the whole set of +’em are so hung round and <i>befetish’d</i> with the +bobs and trinkets of criticism,——or to drop my +metaphor, which by the bye is a pity——for I have +fetch’d it as far as from the coast of +<i>Guiney</i>;—their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and +have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that +a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to +be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.</p> + +<p>—And how did <i>Garrick</i> speak the soliloquy last +night?—Oh, against all rule, my lord,—most +ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which +should agree together in <i>number, case</i>, and <i>gender</i>, he +made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted +settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your +lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in +the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three fifths by a stop +watch, my lord, each time.—Admirable +grammarian!——But in suspending his +voice——was the sense suspended likewise? Did no +expression of attitude or countenance fill up the +chasm?——Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly +look?——I look’d only at the stop-watch, my +lord.—Excellent observer!</p> + +<p>And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout +about?——Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my +lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one of the +angles at the four corners was a right angle.—I had my rule +and compasses, &c. my lord, in my pocket.—Excellent +critick!</p> + +<p>——And for the epick poem your lordship bid me look +at——upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth +of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of +<i>Bossu</i>’s——’tis out, my lord, in every +one of its dimensions.—Admirable connoisseur!</p> + +<p>——And did you step in, to take a look at the grand +picture in your way back?—’Tis a melancholy daub! my +lord; not one principle of the pyramid in any one +group!——and what a price!——for there is +nothing of the colouring of <i>Titian</i>—the expression of +<i>Rubens</i>—the grace of <i>Raphael</i>—the purity of +<i>Dominichino</i>—the <i>corregiescity</i> of +<i>Corregio</i>—the learning of <i>Poussin</i>—the airs +of <i>Guido</i>—the taste of the <i>Carrachis</i>—or the grand contour of <i>Angelo.</i>—Grant +me patience, just Heaven!—Of all the cants which are canted +in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be +the worst——the cant of criticism is the most +tormenting!</p> + +<p>I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth +riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will +give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s +hands——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not +wherefore.</p> + +<p>Great <i>Apollo!</i> if thou art in a giving humour—give +me—I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a +single spark of thy own fire along with it——and send +<i>Mercury</i>, with the <i>rules and compasses</i>, if he can be +spared, with my compliments to—no matter.</p> + +<p>Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the +oaths and imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the +world for these two hundred and fifty years last past as +originals——except <i>St. Paul’s +thumb</i>——<i>God’s flesh and God’s fish</i>, which were oaths +monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as +kings oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or +flesh;—else I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse +amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of +<i>Ernulphus</i> a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how +infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!—it +is thought to be no bad oath——and by itself passes very +well—“<i>G—d damn you.</i>”—Set it +beside <i>Ernulphus</i>’s——“God +almighty the Father damn you—God the Son damn you—God +the Holy Ghost damn you”—you see ’tis +nothing.—There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up +to: besides, he is more copious in his +invention—possess’d more of the excellencies of a +swearer——had such a thorough knowledge of the human +frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, +and articulations,—that when <i>Ernulphus</i> cursed—no +part escaped him.—’Tis true there is something of a +<i>hardness</i> in his manner——and, as in <i>Michael +Angelo</i>, a want of grace——but then there is such a +greatness of <i>gusto!</i></p> + +<p>My father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a +light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never +allow this to be an original.——He considered rather +<i>Ernulphus</i>’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in +which, as he suspected, upon the decline of <i>swearing</i> in some +milder pontificate, <i>Ernulphus</i>, by order of the succeeding +pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all +the laws of it;—for the same reason that <i>Justinian</i>, in +the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor +<i>Tribonian</i> to collect the <i>Roman</i> or civil laws all +together into one code or digest——lest, through the +rust of time——and the fatality of all things committed +to oral tradition—they should be lost to the world for +ever.</p> + +<p>For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not +an oath from the great and tremendous oath of <i>William</i> the +conqueror (<i>By the splendour of God</i>) down to the lowest oath of a +scavenger (<i>Damn your eyes</i>) which was not to be found in +<i>Ernulphus.</i>—In short, he would add—I defy a man +to swear <i>out</i> of it.</p> + +<p>The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and +ingenious too;——nor have I any objection to it, but +that it overturns my own.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——B<small>LESS</small> my soul!—my +poor mistress is ready to faint——and her pains are +gone—and the drops are done—and the bottle of julap is +broke——and the nurse has cut her arm—(and I, my +thumb, cried Dr. <i>Slop</i>,) and the child is where it was, +continued <i>Susannah</i>,—and the midwife has fallen +backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black +as your hat.—I’ll look at it, quoth Dr +<i>Slop</i>.—There is no need of that, replied +<i>Susannah</i>,—you had better look at my mistress—but +the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so +desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment.</p> + +<p>Human nature is the same in all professions.</p> + +<p>The midwife had just before been put over Dr. +<i>Slop</i>’s head—He had not digested it.—No, +replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, ’twould be full as proper if the +midwife came down to me.—I like subordination, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,—and but for it, after the reduction of +<i>Lisle</i>, I know not what might have become of the garrison of +<i>Ghent</i>, in the mutiny for bread, in the year Ten.—Nor, +replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, (parodying my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical +himself)——do I know, Captain <i>Shandy</i>, what might +have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and +confusion I find all things are in at present, but for the +subordination of fingers and thumbs to ******——the +application of which, Sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so +<i>à propos</i>, that without it, the cut upon my thumb +might have been felt by the <i>Shandy</i> family, as long as the +<i>Shandy</i> family had a name.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VII</small> +</h3> + +<p>L<small>ET</small> us go back to the +******——in the last chapter.</p> + +<p>It is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when +eloquence flourished at <i>Athens</i> and <i>Rome</i>, and would be +so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a +thing, when you had the thing about you <i>in petto</i>, ready to +produce, pop, in the place you want it. A scar, an axe, a sword, a +pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of +pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but +above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—Tho’ if +it was too young, and the oration as long as <i>Tully</i>’s +second <i>Philippick</i>—it must certainly have beshit the +orator’s mantle.—And then again, if too old,—it +must have been unwieldly and incommodious to his action—so as +to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—Otherwise, when a state +orator has hit the precise age to a minute——hid his +BAMBINO in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell +it——and produced it so critically, that no soul could +say, it came in by head and shoulders—Oh Sirs! it has done +wonders—It has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the +brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of +half a nation.</p> + +<p>These feats however are not to be done, except in those states +and times, I say, where orators wore mantles——and +pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or +five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth +in them—with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great +style of design.—All which plainly shews, may it please your +worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service +it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to +nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of <i>trunk-hose.</i>—We can conceal nothing +under ours, Madam, worth shewing.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>D<small>R</small>. <i>Slop</i> was within an ace of +being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have +his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my +uncle <i>Toby</i>—’twas as good as the best mantle in +the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence +would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the +bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences +took so much notice of the ***, which had he +managed——my uncle <i>Toby</i> had certainly been +overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping +closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient +angle of a ravelin,——Dr. <i>Slop</i> would never have +given them up;—and my uncle <i>Toby</i> would as soon have +thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. <i>Slop</i> fumbled so vilely in +pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten +times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in +pulling out his <i>forceps</i>, his <i>forceps</i> unfortunately +drew out the <i>squirt</i> along with it.</p> + +<p>When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a +law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the +two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This +threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s side.—“Good God!” +cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, “<i>are children brought into the +world with a squirt?</i>”</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IX</small> +</h3> + +<p>—U<small>PON</small> my honour, Sir, you have +tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with +your forceps, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>—and you have +crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a +jelly. ’Tis your own fault, said Dr. +<i>Slop</i>——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the +form of a child’s head as I told you, and sat firm.—I +did so, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——Then the points +of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet +wants closing—or else the cut on my thumb has made me a +little aukward—or possibly—’Tis well, quoth my +father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the +experiment was not first made upon my child’s +head-piece.——It would not have been a cherry-stone the +worse, answered Dr. <i>Slop</i>.—I maintain it, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the +skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a +perfect posset.——Pshaw! replied Dr. <i>Slop</i>, a +child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an +apple;—the sutures give way—and besides, I could have +extracted by the feet after.—Not you, said +she.——I rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my +father.</p> + +<p>Pray do, added my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + X</small> +</h3> + +<p>——A<small>ND</small> pray, good woman, +after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the +child’s hip, as well as the child’s +head?——’Tis most certainly the head, replied the +midwife. Because, continued Dr. <i>Slop</i> (turning to my father) +as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a +point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest +consequence to be known;——because, Sir, if the hip is +mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) +that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</p> + +<p>——What the possibility was, Dr. <i>Slop</i> +whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.——There is no such danger, continued he, +with the head.—No, in truth quoth my father—but when +your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well +take off the head too.</p> + +<p>——It is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis +enough Dr. <i>Slop</i> understood it;——so taking the +green baize bag in his hand, with the help of +<i>Obadiah</i>’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a +man of his size, across the room to the door——and from +the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my +mother’s apartments.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is two hours, and ten +minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking at his +watch, since Dr. <i>Slop</i> and <i>Obadiah</i> arrived—and I +know not how it happens, Brother <i>Toby</i>—but to my +imagination it seems almost an age.</p> + +<p>——Here—pray, Sir, take hold of my +cap—nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles +too.</p> + +<p>Now, Sir, they are all at your service; and I freely make you a +present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention +to this chapter.</p> + +<p>Though my father said, “<i>he knew not how it happen’d</i>,”—yet he +knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the +instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my +uncle <i>Toby</i> a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical +dissertation upon the subject of <i>duration and its simple +modes</i>, in order to shew my uncle <i>Toby</i> by what mechanism +and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid +succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the +discourse from one thing to another, since Dr. <i>Slop</i> had come +into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so +inconceivable an extent.——“I know not how +it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an +age.”</p> + +<p>——’Tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, to the succession of our ideas.</p> + +<p>My father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of +reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it +too—proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the +succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having +it snatch’d out of his hands by my uncle <i>Toby</i>, who (honest man!) +generally took every thing as it happened;——and who, of +all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse +thinking;—the ideas of time and space—or how we came by +those ideas—or of what stuff they were made——or +whether they were born with us—or we picked them up +afterwards as we went along—or whether we did it in +frocks——or not till we had got into breeches—with +a thousand other inquiries and disputes about <small>INFINITY +PRESCIENCE, LIBERTY, NECESSITY,</small> and so forth, upon whose +desperate and unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been +turned and cracked——never did my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s the least injury at all; my father knew +it—and was no less surprized than he was disappointed, with +my uncle’s fortuitous solution.</p> + +<p>Do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my +father.</p> + +<p>Not I, quoth my uncle.</p> + +<p>—But you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk +about?</p> + +<p>No more than my horse, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>Gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping +his two hands together——there is a worth in thy honest +ignorance, brother <i>Toby</i>——’twere almost a +pity to exchange it for a knowledge.—But I’ll tell +thee.——</p> + +<p> +To understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend +<i>infinity</i>, insomuch as one is a portion of the other——we +ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is we have of +<i>duration</i>, so as to give a satisfactory account how we came by +it.——What is that to any body? quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>.<a +href="#fn7" name="fnref7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> <i>For if you will turn your eyes +inwards upon your mind</i>, continued my father, <i>and observe attentively, +you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and I are talking together, and +thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst we receive successively ideas in our +minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the +continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else, commensurate to +the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any +such other thing co-existing with our thinking——and so according to +that preconceived</i>——You puzzle me to death, cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>. +</p> + +<p>——’Tis owing to this, replied my father, that +in our computations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, +weeks, and months——and of clocks (I wish there was not +a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to +us, and to those who belong to us——that ’twill be +well, if in time to come, the <i>succession of our ideas</i> be of +any use or service to us at all.</p> + +<p>Now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every +sound man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of +one sort or other, which follow each other in train just +like——A train of artillery? said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——A train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my +father—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just +like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the +heat of a candle.—I declare, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, mine +are more like a smoke-jack.——Then, brother <i>Toby</i>, +I have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my +father.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn7"></a> <a href="#fnref7">[7]</a> +Vide Locke. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——W<small>HAT</small> a conjuncture was +here lost!——My father in one of his best explanatory +moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the very +regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have +encompassed it about;—my uncle <i>Toby</i> in one of the +finest dispositions for it in the world;—his head like a +smoke-jack;——the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling +round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with +fuliginous matter!—By the tomb-stone of +<i>Lucian</i>——if it is in being——if not, +why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear <i>Rabelais</i>, and dearer <i>Cervantes!</i>——my +father and my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s discourse upon +<small>TIME</small> and <small>ETERNITY</small>——was a +discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my +father’s humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a +robbery of the <i>Ontologic Treasury</i> of such a jewel, as no +coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to +restore to it again.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HO</small>’ my father persisted in not +going on with the discourse—yet he could not get my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s smoke-jack out of his head—piqued as he +was at first with it;—there was something in the comparison +at the bottom, which hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his +elbow upon the table, and reclining the right side of his head upon +the palm of his hand——but looking first stedfastly in +the fire——he began to commune with himself, and +philosophize about it: but his spirits being wore out with the +fatigues of investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon that +variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the +discourse——the idea of the smoke jack soon turned all +his ideas upside down—so that he fell asleep almost before he +knew what he was about.</p> + +<p>As for my uncle <i>Toby</i>, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen +revolutions, before he fell asleep also.——Peace be with +them both!——Dr. <i>Slop</i> is engaged with the midwife +and my mother above stairs.——<i>Trim</i> is busy in +turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, to be +employed in the siege of <i>Messina</i> next summer—and is +this instant boring the touch-holes with the point of a hot +poker.——All my heroes are off my +hands;—’tis the first time I have had a moment to +spare—and I’ll make use of it, and write my +preface.</p> + +<p class="center"> +The + <small>A U T H O R </small>’s + <small>P R E F A C E</small> +</p> + +<p>N<small>O</small>, I’ll not say a word about +it——here it is;—in publishing it—I have +appealed to the world——and to the world I leave +it;—it must speak for itself.</p> + +<p>All I know of the matter is—when I sat down, my intent was +to write a good book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding +would hold out—a wise, aye, and a discreet—taking care +only, as I went along, to put into it all the wit and the judgment +(be it more or less) which the great Author and Bestower of them +had thought fit originally to give me——so that, as your +worships see—’tis just as God pleases.</p> + +<p>Now, <i>Agalastes</i> (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, That +there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows——but no +judgment at all. And <i>Triptolemus</i> and <i>Phutatorius</i> +agreeing thereto, ask, How is it possible there should? for that +wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing +from each other as wide as east from west——So, says +<i>Locke</i>——so are farting and hickuping, say I. But +in answer to this, <i>Didius</i> the great church lawyer, in his +code <i>de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis</i>, doth maintain and +make fully appear, That an illustration is no +argument——nor do I maintain the wiping of a +looking-glass clean to be a syllogism;—but you all, may it +please your worships, see the better for it——so that +the main good these things do is only to clarify the understanding, +previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to +free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, +if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil +all.</p> + +<p>Now, my dear anti-Shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and +fellow-labourers (for to you I write this Preface)——and +to you, most subtle statesmen and discreet doctors (do—pull +off your beards) renowned for gravity and +wisdom;——<i>Monopolus</i>, my +politician—<i>Didius</i>, my counsel; <i>Kysarcius</i>, my +friend;—<i>Phutatorius</i>, my +guide;——<i>Gastripheres</i>, the preserver of my life; +<i>Somnolentius</i>, the balm and repose of it——not +forgetting all others, as well sleeping as waking, ecclesiastical +as civil, whom for brevity, but out of no resentment to you, I lump +all together.——Believe me, right worthy,</p> + +<p>My most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in +my own too, in case the thing is not done already for +us——is, that the great gifts and endowments both of wit +and judgment, with every thing which usually goes along with +them——such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick +parts, and what not, may this precious moment, without stint or +measure, let or hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could +bear it—scum and sediment and all (for I would not have a +drop lost) into the several receptacles, cells, cellules, +domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our +brains——in such sort, that they might continue to be +injected and tunn’d into, according to the true intent +and meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great and +small, be so replenish’d, saturated, and filled up therewith, +that no more, would it save a man’s life, could possibly be +got either in or out.</p> + +<p>Bless us!—what noble work we should make!——how +should I tickle it off!——and what spirits should I find +myself in, to be writing away for such readers!——and +you—just heaven!——with what raptures would you +sit and read—but oh!—’tis too much——I +am sick——I faint away deliciously at the thoughts of +it—’tis more than nature can bear!—lay hold of +me——I am giddy—I am stone blind—I’m +dying—I am gone.—Help! Help! Help!—But +hold—I grow something better again, for I am beginning to +foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to +be great wits—we should never agree amongst ourselves, one +day to an end:——there would be so much satire and +sarcasm——scoffing and flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting +and parrying in one corner or another——there would be +nothing but mischief among us——Chaste stars! what +biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should +make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting +of sore places—there would be no such thing as living for +us.</p> + +<p>But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, +we should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and +though we should abominate each other ten times worse than so many +devils or devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be +all courtesy and kindness, milk and honey—’twould be a +second land of promise—a paradise upon earth, if there was +such a thing to be had—so that upon the whole we should have +done well enough.</p> + +<p>All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at +present, is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your +worships well know, that of these heavenly emanations of <i>wit</i> and +<i>judgment</i>, which I have so bountifully wished both for your +worships and myself—there is but a certain <i>quantum</i> +stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole race of +mankind; and such small modicums of ’em are only sent forth +into this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner +or another—and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious +intervals from each other, that one would wonder how it holds out, +or could be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so many +great estates, and populous empires.</p> + +<p>Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in <i>Nova +Zembla, North Lapland</i>, and in all those cold and dreary tracks +of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctick and +antartick circles, where the whole province of a man’s +concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow +compass of his cave—where the spirits are compressed almost +to nothing—and where the passions of a man, with every thing +which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone +itself—there the least quantity of <i>judgment</i> imaginable +does the business——and of <i>wit</i>——there +is a total and an absolute saving—for as not one spark is +wanted—so not one spark is given. Angels and ministers of +grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have +governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or +run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial +chapter there, with so <i>plentiful a lack</i> of wit and judgment +about us! For mercy’s sake, let us think no more about it, +but travel on as fast as we can southwards into +<i>Norway</i>—crossing over <i>Swedeland</i>, if you please, +through the small triangular province of <i>Angermania</i> to the +lake of <i>Bothmia</i>; coasting along it through east and west +<i>Bothnia</i>, down to <i>Carelia</i>, and so on, through all +those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the +<i>Gulf</i> of <i>Finland</i>, and the north-east of the +<i>Baltick</i>, up to <i>Petersbourg</i>, and just stepping into +<i>Ingria</i>;—then stretching over directly from thence through the north parts of the +<i>Russian</i> empire—leaving <i>Siberia</i> a little upon +the left hand, till we got into the very heart of <i>Russian</i> +and <i>Asiatick Tartary.</i></p> + +<p>Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the +good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries +which we have just left:—for if you hold your hand over your +eyes, and look very attentively, you may perceive some small +glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable provision of +good plain houshold judgment, which, taking the quality and +quantity of it together, they make a very good shift +with——and had they more of either the one or the other, +it would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and I am +satisfied moreover they would want occasions to put them to +use.</p> + +<p>Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more +luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood +and humours runs high——where we have more ambition, and +pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our +hands to govern and subject to reason——the +<i>height</i> of our wit, and the <i>depth</i> of our judgment, you +see, are exactly proportioned to the <i>length</i> and +<i>breadth</i> of our necessities——and accordingly we +have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and +creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to +complain.</p> + +<p>It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air +blows hot and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have +them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for +near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or +judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:——the +small channels of them shall seem quite dried up——then +all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of +running again like fury——you would think they would +never stop:——and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other +gallant things, we drive all the world before us.</p> + +<p>It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in +that kind of argumentative process, which <i>Suidas</i> calls +<i>dialectick induction</i>——that I draw and set up +this position as most true and veritable;</p> + +<p>That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are +suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose +infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and +measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night +of our obscurity; so that your reverences and worships now find +out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, +That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no +more than the first insinuating <i>How d’ye</i> of a +caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does +a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of +light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—I tremble to think how many +thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences +at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the +nights of their lives——running their heads against +posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their +journies end;——some falling with their noses +perpendicularly into sinks——others horizontally with +their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession +tilting full but against the other half of it, and then tumbling +and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.—Here +the brethren of another profession, who should have run in +opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of +wild geese, all in a row the same way.—What +confusion!—what mistakes!——fiddlers and painters +judging by their eyes and ears—admirable!—trusting to +the passions excited—in an air sung, or a story painted to +the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant.</p> + +<p>In the fore-ground of this picture, a <i>statesman</i> turning the political wheel, like a +brute, the wrong way round——<i>against</i> the stream +of corruption—by Heaven!——instead of <i>with</i> +it.</p> + +<p>In this corner, a son of the divine <i>Esculapius</i>, writing a +book against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his +patient’s pulse, instead of his +apothecary’s——a brother of the Faculty in the +back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a +mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a +fee—instead of taking one.</p> + +<p> +In that spacious <small>HALL</small>, a coalition of the gown, from all the +bars of it, driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with +all their might and main, the wrong way!——kicking it <i>out</i> of +the great doors, instead of, <i>in</i>——and with such fury in their +looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the +laws had been originally made for the peace and preservation of +mankind:——perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them +still——a litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance, +Whether <i>John o’Nokes</i> his nose could stand in <i>Tom +o’Stiles</i> his face, without a trespass, or not—rashly determined +by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons +required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many +months——and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours +know an <small>ACTION</small> should be, with all the stratagems practicable +therein,——such as feints,—forced +marches,—surprizes—ambuscades—mask-batteries, and a thousand +other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on +both sides——might reasonably have lasted them as many years, +finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession. +</p> + +<p>As for the Clergy——No——if I say a word +against them, I’ll be shot.——I have no desire; +and besides, if I had—I durst not for my soul touch upon the +subject——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the +condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my +life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and +melancholy an account—and therefore ’tis safer to draw +a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main +and principal point I have undertaken to clear up——and +that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least <i>wit</i> +are reported to be men of most <i>judgment.</i>——But +mark—I say, <i>reported to be</i>—for it is no more, my +dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up +every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious +report into the bargain.</p> + +<p>This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope +already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I +shall forthwith make appear.</p> + +<p>I hate set dissertations——and above all things in +the world, ’tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to +darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, +one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your +reader’s conception—when in all likelihood, if you had +looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging +up, which would have cleared the point at +once—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the +laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, +a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, +the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old +slipper, or a cane chair?”—I am this moment +sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair +of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of +it?—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck +slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say +in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and +meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and +particle of it was made up of sun-beams.</p> + +<p>I enter now directly upon the point.</p> + +<p>—Here stands <i>wit</i>—and there stands <i>judgment</i>, close beside it, just like the two +knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair +on which I am sitting.</p> + +<p>—You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts +of its <i>frame</i>—as wit and judgment are of +<i>ours</i>—and like them too, indubitably both made and +fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of +duplicated embellishments——<i>to answer one +another.</i></p> + +<p>Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer +illustrating this matter—let us for a moment take off one of +these two curious ornaments (I care not which) from the point or +pinnacle of the chair it now stands on—nay, don’t laugh +at it,—but did you ever see, in the whole course of your +lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of +it?—Why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one +ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in +the other:——do——pray, get off your seats +only to take a view of it,——Now would any man who +valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of +his hand in such a condition?——nay, lay your hands upon +your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one +single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can +serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of +the other?—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your +own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as +it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at +all?</p> + +<p>Now these two knobs——or top ornaments of the mind of +man, which crown the whole entablature——being, as I +said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, +are the most needful——the most priz’d—the +most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come +at—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal +among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or +feeding——or so ignorant of what will do him good +therein—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own +mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the +other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way +feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.</p> + +<p>Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in +aiming at the one—unless they laid hold of the +other,——pray what do you think would become of +them?——Why, Sirs, in spite of all their +<i>gravities</i>, they must e’en have been contented to have +gone with their insides naked——this was not to be +borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the +case we are upon——so that no one could well have been +angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they +could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great +perriwigs, had they not raised a <i>hue</i> and <i>cry</i> at the +same time against the lawful owners.</p> + +<p>I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much +cunning and artifice——that the great <i>Locke</i>, +who was seldom outwitted by false +sounds——was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it +seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of +great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was +rendered so general a one against the <i>poor wits</i> in this +matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it—it +was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand +vulgar errors;——but this was not of the number; so that +instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have +done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised +upon it—on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so +joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as +the rest.</p> + +<p>This has been made the <i>Magna Charta</i> of stupidity ever +since——but your reverences plainly see, it has been +obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a +groat:——which by-the-bye is one of the many and vile +impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for +hereafter.</p> + +<p>As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my +mind too freely——I beg leave to qualify whatever has +been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one +general declaration —That I have no abhorrence whatever, +nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any +farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to +carry on this self-same imposture—for any +purpose——peace be with them!— =>mark +only——I write not for them.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>E<small>VERY</small> day for at least ten years +together did my father resolve to have it mended—’tis +not mended yet;—no family but ours would have borne with it +an hour——and what is most astonishing, there was not a +subject in the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon +that of door-hinges.——And yet at the same time, he was +certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, I think, that history can produce: his rhetorick and +conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—Never did the +parlour-door open—but his philosophy or his principles fell a +victim to it;——three drops of oil with a feather, and a +smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for ever.</p> + +<p>——Inconsistent soul that man +is!——languishing under wounds, which he has the power +to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his +knowledge!—his reason, that precious gift of God to +him—(instead of pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his +sensibilities—to multiply his pains, and render him more +melancholy and uneasy under them!—Poor unhappy creature, that +he should do so!——Are not the necessary causes of +misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his +stock of sorrow;—struggle against evils which cannot be +avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble +they create him would remove from his heart for ever?</p> + +<p>By all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of +oil to be got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of +<i>Shandy Hall</i>——the parlour door hinge shall be +mended this reign.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> Corporal <i>Trim</i> had brought +his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above +measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to +see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying +them directly into his parlour.</p> + +<p>Now next to the moral lesson I had in view in mentioning the +affair of <i>hinges</i>, I had a speculative consideration arising +out of it, and it is this.</p> + +<p>Had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as +a door should do—</p> + +<p>Or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning +upon its hinges——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your +worship,—otherwise I give up my simile)—in this case, I +say, there had been no danger either to master or man, in corporal +<i>Trim</i>’s peeping in: the moment he had beheld my father +and my uncle <i>Toby</i> fast asleep—the respectfulness of +his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, +and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had +found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very +impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was +suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my +father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he +never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the +thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who +should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and +so incessantly stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy +presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the +whole sweets of it.</p> + +<p>“<i>When things move upon bad hinges</i>, an’ please your lordships, <i>how can +it be otherwise?”</i></p> + +<p>Pray what’s the matter? Who is there? cried my father, +waking, the moment the door began to creak.——I wish the +smith would give a peep at that confounded +hinge.——’Tis nothing, an please your honour, said +<i>Trim</i>, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They +shan’t make a clatter with them here, cried my father +hastily.—If Dr. <i>Slop</i> has any drugs to pound, let him +do it in the kitchen.—May it please your honour, cried +<i>Trim</i>, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, +which I have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which +<i>Obadiah</i> told me your honour had left off wearing.—By +Heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he +swore——I have not one appointment belonging to me, +which I set so much store by as I do by these +jack-boots——they were our great grandfather’s +brother <i>Toby</i>—they were <i>hereditary.</i> Then I fear, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby, Trim</i> has cut off the entail.—I +have only cut off the tops, an’ please your honour, cried +<i>Trim</i>——I hate perpetuities as much as any man +alive, cried my father——but these jack-boots, continued +he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) have been in the +family, brother, ever since the civil wars;——Sir +<i>Roger Shandy</i> wore them at the battle of +<i>Marston-Moor.</i>—I declare I would not have taken ten +pounds for them.——I’ll pay you the money, brother +<i>Shandy</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking at the two +mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his +breeches pocket as he viewed them——I’ll pay you +the ten pounds this moment with all my heart and +soul.——</p> + +<p>Brother <i>Toby</i>, replied my father, altering his tone, you +care not what money you dissipate and throw away, provided, +continued he, ’tis but upon a +<small>SIEGE</small>.——Have I not one hundred and +twenty pounds a year, besides my half pay? cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.—What is that—replied my father +hastily—to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?—twelve +guineas for your <i>pontoons</i>?—half as much for your <i>Dutch</i> draw-bridge?—to say nothing of +the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with +twenty other preparations for the siege of <i>Messina</i>: believe +me, dear brother <i>Toby</i>, continued my father, taking him +kindly by the hand—these military operations of yours are +above your strength;—you mean well brother——but +they carry you into greater expences than you were first aware +of;—and take my word, dear <i>Toby</i>, they will in the end +quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you.—What +signifies it if they do, brother, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, so +long as we know ’tis for the good of the +nation?——</p> + +<p>My father could not help smiling for his soul—his anger at +the worst was never more than a spark;—and the zeal and +simplicity of <i>Trim</i>—and the generous (though +hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle <i>Toby</i>, brought him into +perfect good humour with them in an instant.</p> + +<p>Generous souls!—God prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth my father to +himself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>LL</small> is quiet and hush, cried my +father, at least above stairs—I hear not one foot +stirring.—Prithee <i>Trim</i>, who’s in the kitchen? +There is no one soul in the kitchen, answered <i>Trim</i>, making a +low bow as he spoke, except Dr. <i>Slop</i>.—Confusion! cried +my father (getting upon his legs a second time)—not one +single thing has gone right this day! had I faith in astrology, +brother, (which, by the bye, my father had) I would have sworn some +retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, +and turning every individual thing in it out of its +place.——Why, I thought Dr. <i>Slop</i> had been above +stairs with my wife, and so said you.——What can the +fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen!—He is busy, +an’ please your honour, replied <i>Trim</i>, in making a +bridge.——’Tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>:——pray, give my humble +service to Dr. <i>Slop, Trim</i>, and tell him I thank him +heartily.</p> + +<p>You must know, my uncle <i>Toby</i> mistook the bridge—as +widely as my father mistook the mortars:——but to +understand how my uncle <i>Toby</i> could mistake the +bridge—I fear I must give you an exact account of the road +which led to it;—or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing +more dishonest in an historian than the use of one)——in +order to conceive the probability of this error in my uncle +<i>Toby</i> aright, I must give you some account of an adventure of +<i>Trim</i>’s, though much against my will, I say much +against my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly +out of its place here; for by right it should come in, either +amongst the anecdotes of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s amours with +widow <i>Wadman</i>, in which corporal <i>Trim</i> was no mean +actor—or else in the middle of his and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s campaigns on the bowling-green—for it +will do very well in either place;—but then if I reserve it +for either of those parts of my story——I ruin +the story I’m upon;——and if I tell it +here——I anticipate matters, and ruin it there.</p> + +<p>—What would your worship have me to do in this case?</p> + +<p>—Tell it, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, by all means.—You are a +fool, <i>Tristram</i>, if you do.</p> + +<p>O ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)—which +enable mortal man to tell a story worth the +hearing——that kindly shew him, where he is to begin +it—and where he is to end it——what he is to put +into it——and what he is to leave out—how much of +it he is to cast into a shade—and whereabouts he is to throw +his light!—Ye, who preside over this vast empire of +biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes and plunges your +subjects hourly fall into;——will you do one thing?</p> + +<p>I beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for +us) that wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, +that three several roads meet in one point, as they have done just here——that +at least you set up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere +charity, to direct an uncertain devil which of the three he is to +take.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HO</small>’ the shock my uncle +<i>Toby</i> received the year after the demolition of +<i>Dunkirk</i>, in his affair with widow <i>Wadman</i>, had fixed +him in a resolution never more to think of the sex—or of +aught which belonged to it;—yet corporal <i>Trim</i> had made +no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s case there was a strange and unaccountable +concurrence of circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay +siege to that fair and strong citadel.——In +<i>Trim</i>’s case there was a concurrence of nothing in the +world, but of him and <i>Bridget</i> in the kitchen;—though +in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master was such, and +so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my uncle <i>Toby</i> +employed his time and genius in tagging of points——I am +persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and +followed his example with pleasure. When therefore my uncle +<i>Toby</i> sat down before the mistress—corporal <i>Trim</i> +incontinently took ground before the maid.</p> + +<p>Now, my dear friend <i>Garrick</i>, whom I have so much cause to +esteem and honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no +matter)—can it escape your penetration—I defy +it—that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-chat have +ever since been working upon <i>Trim</i>’s and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s pattern.——I care not what +<i>Aristotle</i>, or <i>Pacuvius</i>, or <i>Bossu</i>, or +<i>Ricaboni</i> say—(though I never read one of +them)——there is not a greater difference between a +single-horse chair and madam <i>Pompadour</i>’s +<i>vis-a-vis;</i> than betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus +nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a grand +drama——Sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind—is +quite lost in five acts—but that is neither here nor +there.</p> + +<p>After a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine +months on my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s quarter, a most minute +account of every particular of which shall be given in its proper +place, my uncle <i>Toby</i>, honest man! found it necessary to draw +off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly.</p> + +<p> +Corporal <i>Trim</i>, as I said, had made no such bargain either with +himself——or with any one else——the fidelity however of +his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken +with disgust——he contented himself with turning his part of the +siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off;—for though he +never after went to the house, yet he never met <i>Bridget</i> in the village, +but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her—or (as +circumstances directed) he would shake her by the hand—or ask her +lovingly how she did—or would give her a ribbon—and now-and-then, +though never but when it could be done with decorum, would give <i>Bridget</i> +a— +</p> + +<p>Precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five +years; that is from the demolition of <i>Dunkirk</i> in the year +13, to the latter end of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s campaign in +the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks before the time +I’m speaking of.——When <i>Trim</i>, as his custom +was, after he had put my uncle <i>Toby</i> to bed, going down one +moon-shiny night to see that every thing was right at his +fortifications——in the lane separated from the +bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly—he espied his +<i>Bridget.</i></p> + +<p>As the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well +worth shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle +<i>Toby</i> had made, <i>Trim</i> courteously and gallantly took +her by the hand, and led her in: this was not done so privately, +but that the foul-mouth’d trumpet of Fame carried it from ear +to ear, till at length it reach’d my father’s, with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s curious draw-bridge, constructed and +painted after the <i>Dutch</i> fashion, and which went quite across +the ditch—was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all to +pieces that very night.</p> + +<p>My father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s hobby-horse; he thought it the most +ridiculous horse that ever gentleman mounted; and indeed unless my +uncle <i>Toby</i> vexed him about it, could never think of it once, +without smiling at it——so that it could never get lame +or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s +imagination beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to +his humour than any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved +an inexhaustible fund of entertainment to +him——Well——but dear <i>Toby!</i> my father +would say, do tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge +happened.——How can you teaze me so much about it? my +uncle <i>Toby</i> would reply—I have told it you twenty times, word for word as <i>Trim</i> told it +me.—Prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would cry, +turning to <i>Trim.</i>—It was a mere misfortune, an’ +please your honour;——I was shewing Mrs. <i>Bridget</i> +our fortifications, and in going too near the edge of the fosse, I +unfortunately slipp’d in——Very well, <i>Trim!</i> +my father would cry——(smiling mysteriously, and giving +a nod—but without interrupting him)——and being +link’d fast, an’ please your honour, arm in arm with +Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, I dragg’d her after me, by means of +which she fell backwards soss against the bridge——and +<i>Trim</i>’s foot (my uncle <i>Toby</i> would cry, taking +the story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled +full against the bridge too.—It was a thousand to one, my +uncle <i>Toby</i> would add, that the poor fellow did not break his +leg.——Ay truly, my father would say——a limb +is soon broke, brother <i>Toby</i>, in such +encounters.——And so, an’ please your honour, the +bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to +pieces.</p> + +<p>At other times, but especially when my uncle <i>Toby</i> was so +unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or +petards—my father would exhaust all the stores of his +eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the +<small>BATTERING-RAMS</small> of the ancients—the +<small>VINEA</small> which <i>Alexander</i> made use of at the +siege of Troy.—He would tell my uncle <i>Toby</i> of the +<small>CATAPULTÆ</small> of the <i>Syrians</i>, which threw +such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest +bulwarks from their very foundation:—he would go on and +describe the wonderful mechanism of the <small>BALLISTA</small> +which <i>Marcellinus</i> makes so much rout about!—the +terrible effects of the <small>PYRABOLI</small>, which cast +fire;—the danger of the <small>TEREBRA</small> and +<small>SCORPIO</small>, which cast javelins.——But what +are these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal +<i>Trim</i>?—Believe me, brother <i>Toby</i>, no +bridge, or bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out against such +artillery.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> would never attempt any defence against the +force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of +smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one +night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little +phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle +<i>Toby</i> leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his +groin—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his +brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding +his head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with +a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his +pocket.——The affectionate and endearing manner in which +my uncle <i>Toby</i> did these little offices—cut my father +thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just been giving +him.——May my brains be knock’d out with a +battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to +himself—if ever I insult this worthy soul more!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> draw-bridge being held +irreparable, <i>Trim</i> was ordered directly to set about +another——but not upon the same model: for cardinal +<i>Alberoni</i>’s intrigues at that time being discovered, +and my uncle <i>Toby</i> rightly foreseeing that a flame would +inevitably break out betwixt <i>Spain</i> and the Empire, and that +the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all likelihood be +either in <i>Naples</i> or <i>Sicily</i>——he determined +upon an <i>Italian</i> bridge—(my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +by-the-bye, was not far out of his conjectures)——but my +father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead +as far of my uncle <i>Toby</i> in the cabinet, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> took it of him in the field——convinced him, +that if the king of <i>Spain</i> and the Emperor went together by +the ears, <i>England</i> and <i>France</i> and <i>Holland</i> must, +by force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists +too;——and if so, he would say, the combatants, brother <i>Toby</i>, as sure as we are alive, will +fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of +<i>Flanders;</i>—then what will you do with your +<i>Italian</i> bridge?</p> + +<p>—We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>When corporal <i>Trim</i> had about half finished it in that +style——my uncle <i>Toby</i> found out a capital defect +in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. It turned, +it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, +one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other +to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the +weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle +<i>Toby</i> to raise it up or let it down with the end of his +crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as +much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a +construction were insurmountable;——for by this means, +he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession——and pray of what +use is the other?</p> + +<p>The natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge +fast only at one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted +up together, and stand bolt upright——but that was +rejected for the reason given above.</p> + +<p>For a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one +of that particular construction which is made to draw back +horizontally, to hinder a passage; and to thrust forwards again to +gain a passage—of which sorts your worship might have seen +three famous ones at <i>Spires</i> before its destruction—and +one now at <i>Brisac</i>, if I mistake not;—but my father +advising my uncle <i>Toby</i>, with great earnestness, to have +nothing more to do with thrusting bridges—and my uncle +foreseeing moreover that it would but perpetuate the memory of the +Corporal’s misfortune—he changed his mind for that of +the marquis <i>d’Hôpital</i> ’s invention, +which the younger <i>Bernouilli</i> has so well and learnedly +described, as your worships may see——<i>Act. Erud. +Lips.</i> an. 1695—to these a lead weight is an eternal +balance, and keeps watch as well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch +as the construction of them was a curve line approximating to a +cycloid——if not a cycloid itself.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> understood the nature of a parabola as well +as any man in <i>England</i>—but was not quite such a master +of the cycloid;——he talked however about it every +day——the bridge went not +forwards.——We’ll ask somebody about it, cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i> to <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> <i>Trim</i> came in and told my +father, that Dr. <i>Slop</i> was in the kitchen, and busy in making +a bridge—my uncle <i>Toby</i>——the affair of the +jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his +brain——took it instantly for granted that Dr. +<i>Slop</i> was making a model of the marquis +<i>d’Hôpital</i> ’s +bridge.——’tis very obliging in him, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>;—pray give my humble service to Dr. +<i>Slop</i>, <i>Trim</i>, and tell him I thank him heartily.</p> + +<p>Had my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head been a +<i>Savoyard</i> ’s box, and my father peeping in all the +time at one end of it——it could not have given him a +more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s imagination, than what he had; so, +notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter +imprecation about them, he was just beginning to +triumph——</p> + +<p>When <i>Trim</i>’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel +from his brows, and twisted it to pieces.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——T<small>HIS</small> unfortunate +draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——God bless your +honour, cried <i>Trim</i>, ’tis a bridge for master’s +nose.——In bringing him into the world with his vile +instruments, he has crushed his nose, <i>Susannah</i> says, as flat as a pancake to his +face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a +thin piece of whalebone out of <i>Susannah</i> ’s stays, +to raise it up.</p> + +<p>——Lead me, brother <i>Toby</i>, cried my father, to +my room this instant.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>F<small>ROM</small> the first moment I sat down to +write my life for the amusement of the world, and my opinions for +its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been gathering over my +father.——A tide of little evils and distresses has been +setting in against him.—Not one thing, as he observed +himself, has gone right: and now is the storm thicken’d and +going to break, and pour down full upon his head.</p> + +<p> +I enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of +mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.——My nerves +relax as I tell it.——Every line I write, I feel an abatement of the +quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day +of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things I should +not——And this moment that I last dipp’d my pen into my ink, I +could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity +there appear’d in my manner of doing it.——Lord! how different +from the rash jerks and hair-brain’d squirts thou art wont, +<i>Tristram</i>, to transact it with in other humours—dropping thy +pen——spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books—as if thy +pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing! +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I +<small>WON</small>’<small>T</small> go about to argue the +point with you—’tis so——and I am persuaded +of it, madam, as much as can be, “That both man and woman +bear pain or sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a +horizontal position.”</p> + +<p>The moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate across his +bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same time in the +most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that +ever the eye of pity dropp’d a tear for.——The +palm of his right hand, as he fell upon the bed, receiving his +forehead, and covering the greatest part of both his eyes, gently +sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way backwards) till his +nose touch’d the quilt;——his left arm hung +insensible over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon +the handle of the chamber-pot, which peep’d out beyond the +valance—his right leg (his left being drawn up towards his +body) hung half over the side of the bed, the edge of it pressing +upon his shin bone—He felt it not. A fix’d, inflexible +sorrow took possession of every line of his face.—He +sigh’d once——heaved his breast often—but +uttered not a word.</p> + +<p>An old set-stitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around +with party coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s +head, opposite to the side where my father’s head +reclined.—My uncle <i>Toby</i> sat him down in it.</p> + +<p>Before an affliction is digested—consolation ever comes +too soon;—and after it is digested—it comes too late: +so that you see, madam, there is but a mark between these two, as +fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at:—my +uncle <i>Toby</i> was always either on this side, or on that of it, +and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as soon hit +the longitude; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he +drew the curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every +one’s service——he pull’d out a cambrick +handkerchief——gave a low sigh——but held his +peace.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——“<i>A<small>LL</small> is not +gain that is got into the purse.</i>”—So that +notwithstanding my father had the happiness of reading the oddest +books in the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it was +bless’d with, yet it had this drawback upon him after +all——that it laid him open to some of the oddest and +most whimsical distresses; of which this particular one, which he +sunk under at present, is as strong an example as can be given.</p> + +<p>No doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child’s +nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps—however scientifically +applied—would vex any man in the world, who was at so much +pains in begetting a child, as my father was—yet it will not +account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it justify +the un-christian manner he abandoned and surrendered himself up +to.</p> + +<p>To explain this, I must leave him upon the bed for half an +hour—and my uncle <i>Toby</i> in his old fringed chair +sitting beside him.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I <small>THINK</small> it a very +unreasonable demand—cried my great-grandfather, twisting up +the paper, and throwing it upon the table.——By this +account, madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a +shilling more—and you insist upon having three hundred pounds +a year jointure for it.—</p> + +<p>—“Because,” replied my +great-grandmother, “you have little or no nose, +Sir.”—</p> + +<p>Now before I venture to make use of the word <i>Nose</i> a +second time—to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon +it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be amiss to +explain my own meaning, and define, with all possible exactness and +precision, what I would willingly be understood to mean by the +term: being of opinion, that ’tis owing to the negligence and +perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else——that all the polemical +writings in divinity are not as clear and demonstrative as those +upon <i>a Will o’ the Wisp</i>, or any other sound part of +philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you +to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to +the day of judgment——but to give the world a good +definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most +occasion for——changing it, Sir, as you would a guinea, +into small coin?—which done—let the father of confusion +puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your +head, or your reader’s head, if he knows how.</p> + +<p>In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as I am +engaged in—the neglect is inexcusable; and Heaven is witness, +how the world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so many +openings to equivocal strictures—and for depending so much as +I have done, all along, upon the cleanliness of my readers +imaginations.</p> + +<p>——Here are two senses, cried <i>Eugenius</i>, as we walk’d along, pointing with +the fore finger of his right hand to the word <i>Crevice</i>, in +the one hundred and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this +book of books,——here are two senses—quoth +he.—And here are two roads, replied I, turning short upon +him——a dirty and a clean one——which shall +we take?—The clean, by all means, replied <i>Eugenius. +Eugenius</i>, said I, stepping before him, and laying my hand upon +his breast——to define—is to +distrust.——Thus I triumph’d over <i>Eugenius;</i> +but I triumph’d over him as I always do, like a +fool.——’Tis my comfort, however, I am not an +obstinate one: therefore</p> + +<p>I define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand, and +beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, +complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own +souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the +devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into +their minds, than what I put into my definition—For by the word <i>Nose</i>, +throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part +of my work, where the word <i>Nose</i> occurs—I declare, by +that word I mean a nose, and nothing more, or less.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——“B<small>ECAUSE</small>,” quoth my +great grandmother, repeating the words again—“you have +little or no nose, Sir.”——</p> + +<p>S’death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand +upon his nose,—’tis not so small as that comes +to;——’tis a full inch longer than my +father’s.—Now, my great-grandfather’s nose was +for all the world like unto the noses of all the men, women, and +children, whom <i>Pantagruel</i> found dwelling upon the island of +<small>ENNASIN</small>.——By the way, if you would know +the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a +people——you must read the book;——find it +out yourself, you never can.——</p> + +<p>—’Twas shaped, Sir, like an ace of clubs.</p> + +<p>—’Tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, +pressing up the ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb; and +repeating his assertion——’tis a full inch longer, +madam, than my father’s——You must mean your +uncle’s, replied my great-grandmother.</p> + +<p>——My great-grandfather was convinced.—He +untwisted the paper, and signed the article.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——W<small>HAT</small> an unconscionable +jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small estate of ours, +quoth my grandmother to my grandfather.</p> + +<p>My father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, +saving the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand.</p> + +<p>—Now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my +grandfather twelve years; so that my father had the +jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half-yearly—(on +<i>Michaelmas</i> and <i>Lady-day</i>,)—during all that +time.</p> + +<p>No man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than +my father.——And as far as a hundred pounds went, he +would fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited +jerk of an honest welcome, which generous souls, and generous souls +only, are able to fling down money: but as soon as ever he +enter’d upon the odd fifty—he generally gave a loud +<i>Hem!</i> rubb’d the side of his nose leisurely with the +flat part of his fore finger——inserted his hand +cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his +wig—look’d at both sides of every guinea as he parted +with it——and seldom could get to the end of the fifty +pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his +temples.</p> + +<p>Defend me, gracious Heaven! from those persecuting spirits who +make no allowances for these workings within us.—Never—O never may I lay down in their +tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of +education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from +ancestors!</p> + +<p>For three generations at least this tenet in favour of long +noses had gradually been taking root in our +family.——T<small>RADITION</small> was all along on its +side, and I<small>NTEREST</small> was every half-year stepping in +to strengthen it; so that the whimsicality of my father’s +brain was far from having the whole honour of this, as it had of +almost all his other strange notions.—For in a great measure +he might be said to have suck’d this in with his +mother’s milk. He did his part however.——If +education planted the mistake (in case it was one) my father +watered it, and ripened it to perfection.</p> + +<p>He would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the +subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in +<i>England</i> could stand it out against an uninterrupted +succession of six or seven short noses.—And for the contrary +reason, he would generally add, That it must be one of +the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long +and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line, did not +raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the +kingdom.——He would often boast that the <i>Shandy</i> +family rank’d very high in king <i>Harry</i> the +VIIIth’s time, but owed its rise to no state engine—he +would say—but to that only;——but that, like other +families, he would add——it had felt the turn of the +wheel, and had never recovered the blow of my +great-grandfather’s nose.——It was an ace of clubs +indeed, he would cry, shaking his head—and as vile a one for +an unfortunate family as ever turn’d up trumps.</p> + +<p>——Fair and softly, gentle reader!——where +is thy fancy carrying thee!——If there is truth in man, +by my great-grandfather’s nose, I mean the external organ of +smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his +face——and which painters say, in good jolly noses and +well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third——that is, +measured downwards from the setting on of the hair.</p> + +<p>——What a life of it has an author, at this pass!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is a singular blessing, that +nature has form’d the mind of man with the same happy +backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed in +old dogs—“of not learning new tricks.”</p> + +<p>What a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher +that ever existed be whisk’d into at once, did he read such +books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would +eternally be making him change sides!</p> + +<p>Now, my father, as I told you last year, detested all +this—He pick’d up an opinion, Sir, as a man in a state +of nature picks up an apple.—It becomes his own—and if +he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up.</p> + +<p>I am aware that <i>Didius</i>, the great civilian, will contest +this point; and cry out against me, Whence comes this man’s +right to this apple? <i>ex confesso</i>, he will say—things +were in a state of nature—The apple, is as much +<i>Frank</i>’s apple as <i>John</i>’s. Pray, Mr. +<i>Shandy</i>, what patent has he to shew for it? and how did it +begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon it? or when he +gathered it? or when he chew’d it? or when he roasted it? or +when he peel’d, or when he brought it home? or when he +digested?——or when he——?——For +’tis plain, Sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made +it not his—that no subsequent act could.</p> + +<p>Brother <i>Didius</i>, <i>Tribonius</i> will answer—(now +<i>Tribonius</i> the civilian and church lawyer’s beard being +three inches and a half and three eighths longer than <i>Didius</i> +his beard—I’m glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so I +give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)—Brother +<i>Didius, Tribonius</i> will say, it is a decreed case, as you may +find it in the fragments of <i>Gregorius</i> and +<i>Hermogines</i>’s codes, and in all the codes from +<i>Justinian</i>’s down to the codes of <i>Louis</i> and +<i>Des Eaux</i>—That the sweat of a man’s brows, and +the exsudations of a man’s brains, are as much a man’s +own property as the breeches upon his backside;—which said +exsudations, &c. being dropp’d upon the said apple by the +labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover +indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex’d, by the +picker up, to the thing pick’d up, carried home, roasted, +peel’d, eaten, digested, and so on;——’tis +evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has +mix’d up something which was his own, with the apple which +was not his own, by which means he has acquired a +property;—or, in other words, the apple is +<i>John</i>’s apple.</p> + +<p>By the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for +all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the +better still was his title.——No mortal claimed them; +they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting +as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be said to +be of his own goods and chattels.—Accordingly he held fast by +’em, both by teeth and claws—would fly to whatever he +could lay his hands on—and, in a word, would intrench and +fortify them round with as many circumvallations and breast-works, +as my uncle <i>Toby</i> would a citadel.</p> + +<p>There was one plaguy rub in the way of this——the +scarcity of materials to make any thing of a defence with, in case +of a smart attack; inasmuch as few men of great genius had +exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great +noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible! +and I am quite lost in my understanding, when I am considering what +a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted +upon worse subjects—and how many millions of books in all languages and in all +possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not +half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world. +What was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and +though my father would oft-times sport with my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s library—which, by-the-bye, was ridiculous +enough—yet at the very same time he did it, he collected +every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon +noses, with as much care as my honest uncle <i>Toby</i> had done +those upon military architecture.——’Tis true, a +much less table would have held them—but that was not thy +transgression, my dear uncle.——</p> + +<p>Here——but why here——rather than in any +other part of my story——I am not able to +tell:——but here it is——my heart stops me to +pay to thee, my dear uncle <i>Toby</i>, once for all, the tribute I +owe thy goodness.—Here let me thrust my chair aside, and +kneel down upon the ground, whilst I am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, +and veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever +virtue and nature kindled in a nephew’s +bosom.——Peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy +head!—Thou enviedst no man’s +comforts——insultedst no man’s +opinions——Thou blackenedst no man’s +character—devouredst no man’s bread: gently, with +faithful <i>Trim</i> behind thee, didst thou amble round the little +circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way:—for +each one’s sorrows, thou hadst a tear,—for each +man’s need, thou hadst a shilling.</p> + +<p>Whilst I am worth one, to pay a weeder—thy path from thy +door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown +up.——Whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the +<i>Shandy</i> family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle +<i>Toby</i>, shall never be demolish’d.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father’s collection was not +great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was +some time in making it; he had the great good fortune hewever, to +set off well, in getting <i>Bruscambille</i>’s prologue upon +long noses, almost for nothing—for he gave no more for +<i>Bruscambille</i> than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the +strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the +moment he laid his hands upon it.——There are not three +<i>Bruscambilles</i> in <i>Christendom</i>—said the +stall-man, except what are chain’d up in the libraries of the +curious. My father flung down the money as quick as +lightning——took <i>Bruscambille</i> into his +bosom——hied home from <i>Piccadilly</i> to +<i>Coleman</i>-street with it, as he would have hied home with a +treasure, without taking his hand once off from <i>Bruscambille</i> +all the way.</p> + +<p>To those who do not yet know of which gender <i>Bruscambille</i> +is——inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily +be done by either——’twill be no objection against +the simile—to say, That when my father got home, he solaced +himself with <i>Bruscambille</i> after the manner in which, +’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your +first mistress——that is, from morning even unto night: +which, by-the-bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the +inamorato—is of little or no entertainment at all to +by-standers.——Take notice, I go no farther with the +simile—my father’s eye was greater than his +appetite—his zeal greater than his knowledge—he +cool’d—his affections became divided——he +got hold of <i>Prignitz</i>—purchased <i>Scroderus, Andrea +Paraeus, Bouchet</i>’s Evening Conferences, and above all, +the great and learned <i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i>; of which, as I +shall have much to say by-and-bye—I will say nothing now.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>O<small>F</small> all the tracts my father was at +the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there +was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at +first, than in the celebrated dialogue between <i>Pamphagus</i> and +<i>Cocles</i>, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable +<i>Erasmus</i>, upon the various uses and seasonable applications +of long noses.——Now don’t let Satan, my dear +girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising +ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help +it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on—let me beg of you, +like an unback’d filly, <i>to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump +it, to rear it, to bound it—and to kick it, with long kicks +and short kicks</i>, till like <i>Tickletoby</i>’s mare, you +break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the +dirt.—You need not kill him.—</p> + +<p>—And pray who was <i>Tickletoby</i>’s +mare?—’tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a +question, Sir, as to have asked what year (<i>ab. urb. con.</i>) +the second Punic war broke out.—Who was +<i>Tickletoby</i>’s mare!—Read, read, read, read, my +unlearned reader! read—or by the knowledge of the great saint +<i>Paraleipomenon</i>—I tell you before-hand, you had better +throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which +your reverence knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be +able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem +of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to +unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie +mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one.</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image04.jpg" width="270" height="532" alt= "Marble image" /> +</div> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image05.jpg" width="270" height="512" alt= "Marble image" /> +</div> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>“<i>N<small>IHIL</small> me paenitet +hujus nasi</i>,” quoth <i>Pamphagus</i>;——that +is—“My nose has been the making of +me.”——“<i>Nec est cur +poeniteat</i>,” replies <i>Cocles</i>; that is, +“How the duce should such a nose fail?”</p> + +<p>The doctrine, you see, was laid down by <i>Erasmus</i>, as my +father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father’s +disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but +the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or +ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had +bestow’d upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight +for her on all sides.——My father pish’d and +pugh’d at first most terribly——’tis worth +something to have a good name. As the dialogue was of +<i>Erasmus</i>, my father soon came to himself, and read it over +and over again with great application, studying every word and +every syllable of it thro’ and thro’ in its most strict +and literal interpretation—he could still make nothing of it, +that way. Mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my +father.——Learned men, brother <i>Toby</i>, don’t +write dialogues upon long noses for +nothing.——I’ll study the mystick and the +allegorick sense——here is some room to turn a +man’s self in, brother.</p> + +<p>My father read on.——</p> + +<p>Now I find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, +that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by +<i>Erasmus</i>, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not +without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of +distress—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do +excellently well, <i>ad ixcitandum focum</i> (to stir up the +fire.)</p> + +<p>Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond +measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within +him, as she had done the seeds of all other +knowledge——so that he had got out his penknife, and was +trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not +scratch some better sense into it.——I’ve got +within a single letter, brother <i>Toby</i>, cried my father, of +<i>Erasmus</i> his mystic meaning.—You are near enough, +brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.——Pshaw! +cried my father, scratching on——I might as well be +seven miles off.—I’ve done it—said my father, +snapping his fingers—See, my dear brother <i>Toby</i>, how I +have mended the sense.——But you have marr’d a +word, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>.—My father put on his +spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the +leaf in a passion.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>O <i>S<small>LAWKENBERGIUS</small>!</i> thou +faithful analyzer of my <i>Disgrazias</i>—thou sad foreteller +of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage or other +of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, +and no other cause, that I am conscious of.—Tell me, +<i>Slawkenbergius!</i> what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how +did it sound in thy ears?——art thou sure thou +heard’st it?——which first cried out to +thee——go——go, <i>Slawkenbergius!</i> +dedicate the labours of thy life—neglect thy +pastimes——call forth all the powers and faculties of +thy nature——macerate thyself in the service of mankind, +and write a grand <small>FOLIO</small> for them, upon the subject +of their noses.</p> + +<p>How the communication was conveyed into +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s sensorium——so that +<i>Slawkenbergius</i> should know whose finger touch’d the +key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as +<i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i> has been dead and laid in his grave +above fourscore and ten years——we can only raise +conjectures.</p> + +<p><i>Slawkenbergius</i> was play’d upon, for aught I know, +like one of <i>Whitefield</i>’s disciples——that +is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two +masters it was that had been practising upon his +<i>instrument</i>——as to make all reasoning upon it +needless.</p> + +<p>——For in the account which <i>Hafen +Slawkenbergius</i> gives the world of his motives and occasions for +writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one +work—towards the end of his prolegomena, which by-the-bye +should have come first——but the bookbinder has most +injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the +book, and the book itself—he informs his reader, that ever +since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit +down cooly, and consider within himself the true state and +condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design of his +being;——or—to shorten my translation, for +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s book is in <i>Latin</i>, and not a +little prolix in this passage—ever since I understood, quoth +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>, any thing—or rather <i>what was +what</i>——and could perceive that the point of long +noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone +before;——have I <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, felt a strong +impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.</p> + +<p>And to do justice to <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, he has entered the +list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it +than any one man who had ever entered it before +him——and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be +<i>en-nich’d</i> as a prototype for all writers, of +voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for +he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject—examined every part +of it <i>dialectically</i>——then brought it into full +day; dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision +of his own natural parts could strike—or the profoundest +knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon +it—collating, collecting, and compiling——begging, +borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote +or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: +so that <i>Slawkenbergius</i> his book may properly be considered, +not only as a model—but as a thorough-stitched <small>DIGEST</small> and regular +institute of <i>noses</i>, comprehending in it all that is or can +be needful to be known about them.</p> + +<p>For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many +(otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father’s +collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses——or +collaterally touching them;——such for instance as +<i>Prignitz</i>, now lying upon the table before me, who with +infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like +examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of +twenty charnel-houses in <i>Silesia</i>, which he had +rummaged——has informed us, that the mensuration and +configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any +<i>given</i> tract of country, except <i>Crim Tartary</i>, where +they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment +can be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world +imagines;—the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere +trifle, not worth taking notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by +which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is +owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose +ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d +and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but +a step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom <i>Prignitz</i>, +who had lived many years in <i>Turky</i>, supposes under the more +immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so happens, and ever must, +says <i>Prignitz</i>, that the excellency of the nose is in a +direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the +wearer’s fancy.</p> + +<p>It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all +comprehended in <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, that I say nothing likewise +of <i>Scroderus (Andrea)</i> who, all the world knows, set himself +to oppugn <i>Prignitz</i> with great violence—proving it in +his own way, first <i>logically</i>, and then by a series of +stubborn facts, “That so far was <i>Prignitz</i> from +the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the nose begat +the fancy.”</p> + +<p>—The learned suspected <i>Scroderus</i> of an indecent +sophism in this—and <i>Prignitz</i> cried out aloud in the +dispute, that <i>Scroderus</i> had shifted the idea upon +him——but <i>Scroderus</i> went on, maintaining his +thesis.</p> + +<p>My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two +sides he should take in this affair; when <i>Ambrose +Paræus</i> decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the +systems, both of <i>Prignitz</i> and <i>Scroderus</i>, drove my +father out of both sides of the controversy at once.</p> + +<p>Be witness——</p> + +<p>I don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, I +mention it only to shew the learned, I know the fact +myself——</p> + +<p>That this <i>Ambrose Paræus</i> was chief surgeon and +nose-mender to <i>Francis</i> the ninth of <i>France</i>, and in +high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (I +know not which)—and that, except in the slip he made in his +story of <i>Taliacotius</i>’s noses, and his manner of setting them on—he was esteemed by the +whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in +matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand.</p> + +<p>Now <i>Ambrose Paræus</i> convinced my father, that the +true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention +of the world, and upon which <i>Prignitz</i> and <i>Scroderus</i> +had wasted so much learning and fine parts——was neither +this nor that——but that the length and goodness of the +nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the +nurse’s breast——as the flatness and shortness of +<i>puisne</i> noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of +the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively—which, +tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, +inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so +rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive <i>ad +mensuram suam legitimam</i>;——but that in case of the +flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s +breast—by sinking into it, quoth <i>Paraeus</i>, as into so much butter, the +nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, +refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever.</p> + +<p>I have but two things to observe of <i>Paraeus</i>; first, That +he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and +decorum of expression:—for which may his soul for ever rest +in peace!</p> + +<p>And, secondly, that besides the systems of <i>Prignitz</i> and +<i>Scroderus</i>, which <i>Ambrose Paræus</i> his hypothesis +effectually overthrew—it overthrew at the same time the +system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days +together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my +mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every thing +in it, except my uncle <i>Toby</i>, quite upside down.</p> + +<p>Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, +never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of +a street-door.</p> + +<p>My mother, you must know———but I have fifty +things more necessary to let you know first—I have a hundred +difficulties which I have promised to clear up, and a thousand +distresses and domestick misadventures crowding in upon me thick +and threefold, one upon the neck of another. A cow broke in +(tomorrow morning) to my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s fortifications, +and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the +sods with it, which faced his horn-work and covered +way.——<i>Trim</i> insists upon being tried by a +court-martial—the cow to be shot—<i>Slop</i> to be +<i>crucifix’d</i>—myself to be <i>tristram’d</i> +and at my very baptism made a martyr of;——poor unhappy +devils that we all are!——I want +swaddling——but there is no time to be lost in +exclamations——I have left my father lying across his +bed, and my uncle <i>Toby</i> in his old fringed chair, sitting +beside him, and promised I would go back to them in half an hour; +and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d +already.——Of all the perplexities a mortal author was +ever seen in—this certainly is the greatest, for I have +<i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i>’s folio, Sir, to finish——a dialogue between my father and my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, upon the solution of <i>Prignitz, Scroderus, +Ambrose Paræus, Panocrates</i>, and <i>Grangousier</i> to +relate—a tale out of <i>Slawkenbergius</i> to translate, and +all this in five minutes less than no time at +all;——such a head!—would to Heaven my enemies +only saw the inside of it!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> was not any one scene more +entertaining in our family—and to do it justice in this +point;——and I here put off my cap and lay it upon the +table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration +to the world concerning this one article the more +solemn——that I believe in my soul (unless my love and +partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme +Maker and first Designer of all things never made or put a family +together (in that period at least of it which I have sat down to +write the story of)——where the characters of it were cast +or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this +end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, +and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, +were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the +S<small>HANDY</small> F<small>AMILY</small>.</p> + +<p>Not any one of these was more diverting, I say, in this +whimsical theatre of ours——than what frequently arose +out of this self-same chapter of long noses——especially +when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and +nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +too.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> would give my father all possible fair play +in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoking his +pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon +his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive +<i>Prignitz</i> and <i>Scroderus</i>’s solutions into it.</p> + +<p>Whether they were above my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +reason——or contrary to it——or that his brain was like <i>damp</i> +timber, and no spark could possibly take hold——or that +it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military +disqualifications to his seeing clearly into <i>Prignitz</i> and +<i>Scroderus</i>’s doctrines——I say not—let +schoolmen—scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it +among themselves——</p> + +<p>’Twas some misfortune, I make no doubt, in this affair, +that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and render out of +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s <i>Latin</i>, of which, as he was no +great master, his translation was not always of the +purest——and generally least so where ’twas most +wanted.—This naturally open’d a door to a second +misfortune;——that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal +to open my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s eyes——my +father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as +the translation outmoved my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s——neither the one or the other added +much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> gift of ratiocination and making +syllogisms——I mean in man—for in superior classes +of being, such as angels and spirits——’tis all +done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by +I<small>NTUITION</small>;—and beings inferior, as your +worships all know——syllogize by their noses: though +there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at +its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, +are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, +and oft-times to make very well out too:——but +that’s neither here nor there——</p> + +<p>The gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the +great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell +us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas +one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the +<i>medius terminus</i>); just as a man, as <i>Locke</i> well +observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same +length, which could not be brought together, to measure their +equality, by <i>juxta-position.</i></p> + +<p>Had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated +his systems of noses, and observed my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +deportment—what great attention he gave to every +word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what +wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of +it——surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his +finger and his thumb——then fore-right——then +this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and +fore-shortenings——he would have concluded my uncle +<i>Toby</i> had got hold of the <i>medius terminus</i>, and was +syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of +long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. This, +by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted——his aim in +all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures—was to +enable my uncle <i>Toby</i> not to +<i>discuss</i>——but <i>comprehend</i>—to <i>hold</i> the grains +and scruples of learning——not to <i>weigh</i> +them.——My uncle <i>Toby</i>, as you will read in the +next chapter, did neither the one or the other.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>’T<small>IS</small> a pity, cried my father +one winter’s night, after a three hours painful translation +of <i>Slawkenbergius</i>——’tis a pity, cried my +father, putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a +mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother <i>Toby</i>, +should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so +obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest +siege.——</p> + +<p>Now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s fancy, during the time of my +father’s explanation of <i>Prignitz</i> to +him——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short +flight to the bowling-green;——his body might as well +have taken a turn there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the +<i>medius terminus</i>——my uncle <i>Toby</i> was in +fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, +as if my father had been translating <i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i> +from the <i>Latin</i> tongue into the <i>Cherokee.</i> But the word +<i>siege</i>, like a talismanic power, in my father’s +metaphor, wafting back my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s fancy, quick as +a note could follow the touch—he open’d his +ears——and my father observing that he took his pipe out +of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a +desire to profit—my father with great pleasure began his +sentence again——changing only the plan, and dropping +the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my +father apprehended from it.</p> + +<p>’Tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one +side, brother <i>Toby</i>——considering what ingenuity +these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of +noses.——Can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>——My father thrust back his chair——rose up—put on his +hat——took four long strides to the +door——jerked it open——thrust his head half +way out——shut the door again——took no +notice of the bad hinge—returned to the +table—pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s book——went hastily to his +bureau—walked slowly back—twisted my mother’s +thread-paper about his thumb—unbutton’d his +waistcoat—threw my mother’s thread-paper into the +fire——bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill’d +his mouth with bran—confounded it;—but mark!—the +oath of confusion was levell’d at my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s brain—which was e’en confused +enough already——the curse came charged only with the +bran—the bran, may it please your honours, was no more than +powder to the ball.</p> + +<p>’Twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for +so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on’t; and +it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever I met with +in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my +father’s mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like +gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the +quaint simplicity of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +questions.——Had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind +in so many different places all at one time—he could not have +exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds——or +started half so much, as with one single <i>quære</i> of +three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his +hobby-horsical career.</p> + +<p>’Twas all one to my uncle <i>Toby</i>——he +smoked his pipe on with unvaried composure——his heart +never intended offence to his brother—and as his head could +seldom find out where the sting of it lay——he always +gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.——He +was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present +case.</p> + +<p>By all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came +to himself, and taking the oath out of <i>Ernulphus</i>’s +digest of curses——(though to do my father +justice it was a fault (as he told Dr. <i>Slop</i> in the affair of +<i>Ernulphus</i>) which he as seldom committed as any man upon +earth)——By all that’s good and great! brother +<i>Toby</i>, said my father, if it was not for the aids of +philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do—you would +put a man beside all temper.——Why, by the +<i>solutions</i> of noses, of which I was telling you, I meant, as +you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of +attention, the various accounts which learned men of different +kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and +long noses.——There is no cause but one, replied my +uncle <i>Toby</i>——why one man’s nose is longer +than another’s, but because that God pleases to have it +so.——That is <i>Grangousier</i>’s solution, said +my father.—’Tis he, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +looking up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who +makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and +proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite +wisdom,.——’Tis a pious account, cried my father, +but not philosophical—there is more religion in it than sound +science. ’Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s character——that he feared God, and +reverenced religion.——So the moment my father finished +his remark——my uncle <i>Toby</i> fell a whistling +<i>Lillabullero</i> with more zeal (though more out of tune) than +usual.—</p> + +<p>What is become of my wife’s thread-paper?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>O</small> matter—as an appendage to +seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my +mother—of none to my father, as a mark in <i>Slawkenbergius. +Slawkenbergius</i> in every page of him was a rich treasure of +inexhaustible knowledge to my father—he could not open him +amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the +arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were +lost—should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would +say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that +statesmen had wrote or caused to be written, upon the strong or the +weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot +also—and <i>Slawkenbergius</i> only left——there +would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the +world a-going again. A treasure therefore was he indeed! an +institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every +thing else—at <i>matin</i>, noon, and vespers was <i>Hafen +Slawkenbergius</i> his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever +in his hands——you would have sworn, Sir, it had been a +canon’s prayer-book—so worn, so glazed, so contrited +and attrited was it with fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, +from one end even unto the other.</p> + +<p>I am not such a bigot to <i>Slawkenbergius</i> as my +father;——there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my +opinion, the best, I don’t say the most profitable, but +the most amusing part of <i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i>, is +his tales——and, considering he was a <i>German</i>, +many of them told not without fancy:——these take up his +second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are +comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten +tales——Philosophy is not built upon tales; and +therefore ’twas certainly wrong in <i>Slawkenbergius</i> to +send them into the world by that name!——there are a few +of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which I own seem +rather playful and sportive, than speculative—but in general +they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many +independent facts, all of them turning round somehow or other upon +the main hinges of his subject, and added to his work as so many +illustrations upon the doctrines of noses.</p> + +<p>As we have leisure enough upon our hands——if you +give me leave, madam, I’ll tell you the ninth tale of his +tenth decad.</p> + +<h3> +S L A W K E N B E R G I I<br/> + +F<small> A B E L L A</small><a href="#fn8" name="fnref8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> +</h3> + +<p><i>V<small>ESPERA</small> quâdam frigidula, +posteriori in parte mensis</i> Augusti, <i>peregrinus, mulo fusco +colore incidens, manticâ a tergo, paucis indusiis, binis +calceis, braccisque sericis coccineis repleta</i>, Argentoratum +<i>ingressus est.</i></p> + +<p><i>Militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret dixit, se apud +Nasorum promontorium fuisse, Francofurtum proficisci, et +Argentoratum, transitu ad fines Sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, +reversurum.</i></p> + +<p><i>Miles peregrini in faciem suspexit——Di boni, nova +forma nasi!</i></p> + +<p><i>At multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento +extrahens, e quo pependit acinaces: Loculo manum inseruit; et magna cum +urbanitate, pilei parte anteriore tactâ manu sinistrâ, +ut extendit dextram, militi florinum dedit et processit.</i></p> + +<p><i>Dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, +virum adeo urbanum vaginam perdidisse: itinerari haud poterit +nudâ acinaci; neque vaginam toto</i> Argentorato, <i>habilem +inveniet.——Nullam unquam habui, respondit peregrinus +respiciens——seque comiter inclinans—hoc more +gesto, nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lentò progrediente, ut +nasum tueri possim.</i></p> + +<p><i>Non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles.</i></p> + +<p><i>Nihili aestimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamenâ +factitius est.</i></p> + +<p><i>Prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major fit, meo esset +conformis.</i></p> + +<p><i>Crepitare audivi ait tympanista.</i></p> + +<p><i>Mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles.</i></p> + +<p><i>Miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo +tetigimus!</i></p> + +<p><i>Eodem temporis puncto, quo hæc res argumentata fuit +inter militem et tympanistam, disceptabatur ibidem tubicine et +uxore suâ qui tunc accesserunt, et peregrino +prætereunte, restiterunt.</i></p> + +<p><i>Quantus nasus! æque longus est, ait tubicina, ac +tuba.</i></p> + +<p><i>Et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut sternutamento +audias.</i></p> + +<p><i>Tantum abest, respondit illa, quod fistulam dulcedine +vincit.</i></p> + +<p><i>Æneus est, ait tubicen.</i></p> + +<p><i>Nequaquam, respondit uxor.</i></p> + +<p><i>Rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod æneus est.</i></p> + +<p><i>Rem penitus explorabo; prius, enim digito tangam, ait uxor, +quam dormivero.</i></p> + +<p><i>Mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus est, ut unumquodque +verbum controversiæ, non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, +verum etiam inter tubicinem et uxorum ejus, audiret.</i></p> + +<p><i>Nequaquam, ait ille, in muli collum fræna demittens, et +manibus ambabus in pectus positis, (mulo lentè progrediente) +nequaquam, ait ille respiciens, non necesse est ut res isthæc +dilucidata foret. Minime gentium! meus nasus nunquam tangetur, dum +spiritus hos reget artus—Ad quid agendum? air uxor +burgomagistri.</i></p> + +<p><i>Peregrinus illi non respondit. Votum faciebat tunc temporis +sancto Nicolao; quo facto, sinum dextrum inserens, e quâ +negligenter pependit acinaces, lento gradu processit per plateam +Argentorati latam quæ ad diversorium templo ex adversum +ducit.</i></p> + +<p><i>Peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, et manticam +inferri jussit: quâ apertâ et coccineis sericis +femoralibus extractis cum argento laciniato</i> Περιζομαυτε, +<i>his sese induit, statimque, acinaci in manu, ad forum +deambulavit.</i></p> + +<p><i>Quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam +euntem aspicit; illico cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus +exploraretur, atque ad diversorium regressus est—exuit se +vestibus; braccas coccineas sericas manticæ imposuit mulumque +educi jussit.</i> +</p> + +<p><i>Francofurtum proficiscor, ait ille, et Argentoratum quatuor +abhinc hebdomadis revertar.</i></p> + +<p><i>Bene curasti hoc jumentam? (ait) muli faciem manu +demulcens—me, manticamque meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus +portavit.</i></p> + +<p><i>Longa via est! respondet hospes, nisi plurimum esset +negoti.—Enimvero, ait peregrinus, a Nasorum promontorio +redii, et nasum speciosissimum, egregiosissimumque quem unquam +quisquam sortitus est, acquisivi?</i></p> + +<p><i>Dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem de seipso reddit, hospes +et uxor ejus, oculis intentis, peregrini nasum +contemplantur——Per sanctos sanctasque omnes, ait +hospitis uxor, nasis duodecim maximis in toto Argentorato major +est!—estne, ait illa mariti in aurem insusurrans, nonne est +nasus prægrandis?</i></p> + +<p><i>Dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes—nasus est +falsus.</i></p> + +<p><i>Verus est, respondit uxor——</i></p> + +<p><i>Ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum +olet—</i></p> + +<p><i>Carbunculus inest, ait uxor.</i></p> + +<p><i>Mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes.</i></p> + +<p><i>Vivus est ait illa,—et si ipsa vivam tangam.</i></p> + +<p><i>Votum feci sancto Nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum +intactum fore usque ad—Quodnam tempus? illico respondit +illa.</i></p> + +<p><i>Minimo tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) +usque ad illam horam——Quam horam? ait +illa——Nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec pervenio +ad—Quem locum,—obsecro? ait +illa——Peregrinus nil respondens mulo conscenso +discessit.</i></p> + +<h3> +S L A W K E N B E R G I U S’s<br/> + +T<small> A L E</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was one cool refreshing evening, +at the close of a very sultry day, in the latter end of the month +of <i>August</i>, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a +small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of +shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered the town of +<i>Strasburg.</i></p> + +<p>He told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the +gates, that he had been at the Promontory of +N<small>OSES</small>—was going on to +<i>Frankfort</i>——and should be back again at +<i>Strasburg</i> that day month, in his way to the borders of +<i>Crim Tartary.</i></p> + +<p>The centinel looked up into the stranger’s +face——he never saw such a Nose in his life!</p> + +<p>—I have made a very good venture of it, quoth the +stranger—so slipping his wrist out of the loop of a black +ribbon, to which a short scymetar was hung, he put his hand +into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the fore part of +his cap with his left hand, as he extended his +right——he put a florin into the centinel’s hand, +and passed on.</p> + +<p>It grieves, me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish +bandy- legg’d drummer, that so courteous a soul should have +lost his scabbard——he cannot travel without one to his +scymetar, and will not be able to get a scabbard to fit it in all +<i>Strasburg.</i>——I never had one, replied the +stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to +his cap as he spoke——I carry it, continued he, +thus——holding up his naked scymetar, his mule moving on +slowly all the time—on purpose to defend my nose.</p> + +<p>It is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel.</p> + +<p>——’Tis not worth a single stiver, said the +bandy-legg’d drummer——’tis a nose of +parchment.</p> + +<p>As I am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose, said +the centinel, like my own.</p> + +<p>—I heard it crackle, said the drummer.</p> + +<p>By dunder, said the centinel, I saw it bleed.</p> + +<p>What a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not +both touch it!</p> + +<p>At the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the +centinel and the drummer—was the same point debating betwixt +a trumpeter and a trumpeter’s wife, who were just then coming +up, and had stopped to see the stranger pass by.</p> + +<p><i>Benedicity!</i>——What a nose! ’tis as long, +said the trumpeter’s wife, as a trumpet.</p> + +<p>And of the same metal said the trumpeter, as you hear by its +sneezing.</p> + +<p>’Tis as soft as a flute, said she.</p> + +<p>—’Tis brass, said the trumpeter.</p> + +<p>—’Tis a pudding’s end, said his wife.</p> + +<p>I tell thee again, said the trumpeter, ’tis a brazen +nose,</p> + +<p>I’ll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter’s +wife, for I will touch it with my finger before I sleep.</p> + +<p>The stranger’s mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he +heard every word of the dispute, not only betwixt the centinel and +the drummer, but betwixt the trumpeter and trumpeter’s +wife.</p> + +<p>No! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule’s neck, and +laying both his hands upon his breast, the one over the other in a +saint-like position (his mule going on easily all the time) No! +said he, looking up—I am not such a debtor to the +world——slandered and disappointed as I have +been—as to give it that conviction——no! said he, +my nose shall never be touched whilst Heaven gives me +strength——To do what? said a burgomaster’s +wife.</p> + +<p>The stranger took no notice of the burgomaster’s +wife——he was making a vow to <i>Saint Nicolas</i>; +which done, having uncrossed his arms with the same solemnity with +which he crossed them, he took up the reins of his bridle with his +left-hand, and putting his right hand into his bosom, with the +scymetar hanging loosely to the wrist of it, he rode on, as slowly as one foot of the mule could follow +another, thro’ the principal streets of <i>Strasburg</i>, +till chance brought him to the great inn in the market-place +over-against the church.</p> + +<p>The moment the stranger alighted, he ordered his mule to be led +into the stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in; then opening, +and taking out of it his crimson-sattin breeches, with a +silver-fringed—(appendage to them, which I dare not +translate)—he put his breeches, with his fringed cod-piece +on, and forth-with, with his short scymetar in his hand, walked out +to the grand parade.</p> + +<p>The stranger had just taken three turns upon the parade, when he +perceived the trumpeter’s wife at the opposite side of +it—so turning short, in pain lest his nose should be +attempted, he instantly went back to his inn—undressed +himself, packed up his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in his +cloak- bag, and called for his mule.</p> + +<p>I am going forwards, said the stranger, for +<i>Frankfort</i>——and shall be back at <i>Strasburg</i> +this day month.</p> + +<p>I hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of his +mule with his left hand as he was going to mount it, that you have +been kind to this faithful slave of mine—it has carried me +and my cloak-bag, continued he, tapping the mule’s back, +above six hundred leagues.</p> + +<p>——’Tis a long journey, Sir, replied the master +of the inn——unless a man has great +business.——Tut! tut! said the stranger, I have been at +the promontory of Noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, +thank Heaven, that ever fell to a single man’s lot.</p> + +<p>Whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the +master of the inn and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full upon +the stranger’s nose——By saint <i>Radagunda</i>, +said the inn-keeper’s wife to herself, there is more of it +than in any dozen of the largest noses put together in all +<i>Strasburg!</i> is it not, said she, whispering her husband in +his ear, is it not a noble nose?</p> + +<p>’Tis an imposture, my dear, said the master of the +inn——’tis a false nose.</p> + +<p>’Tis a true nose, said his wife.</p> + +<p>’Tis made of fir-tree, said he, I smell the +turpentine.——</p> + +<p>There’s a pimple on it, said she.</p> + +<p>’Tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper.</p> + +<p>’Tis a live nose, and if I am alive myself, said the +inn-keeper’s, wife, I will touch it.</p> + +<p>I have made a vow to saint <i>Nicolas</i> this day, said the +stranger, that my nose shall not be touched till—Here the +stranger suspending his voice, looked up.——Till when? +said she hastily.</p> + +<p>It never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and +bringing them close to his breast, till that hour—What hour? +cried the inn keeper’s wife.—Never!—never! said +the stranger, never till I am got—For Heaven’s sake, +into what place? said she——The stranger rode away +without saying a word.</p> + +<p>The stranger had not got half a league on his way towards +<i>Frankfort</i> before all the city of <i>Strasburg</i> was in an +uproar about his nose. The <i>Compline</i> bells were just ringing +to call the <i>Strasburgers</i> to their devotions, and shut up the +duties of the day in prayer:—no soul in all <i>Strasburg</i> +heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of +bees——men, women, and children, (the <i>Compline</i> +bells tinkling all the time) flying here and there—in at one +door, out at another——this way and that way—long +ways and cross ways—up one street, down another +street——in at this alley, out of that——did +you see it? did you see it? did you see it? O! did you see +it?——who saw it? who did see it? for mercy’s +sake, who saw it?</p> + +<p>Alack o’day! I was at vespers!—I was washing, I was +starching, I was scouring, I was quilting——God help me! +I never saw it——I never touch’d +it!——would I had been a centinel, a bandy-legg’d +drummer, a trumpeter, a trumpeter’s wife, was the general cry +and lamentation in every street and corner of +<i>Strasburg.</i></p> + +<p>Whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the +great city of <i>Strasburg</i>, was the courteous stranger going on +as gently upon his mule in his way to <i>Frankfort</i>, as if he +had no concern at all in the affair——talking all the +way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes to his +mule—sometimes to himself—sometimes to his Julia.</p> + +<p>O Julia, my lovely Julia!—nay I cannot stop to let thee +bite that thistle——that ever the suspected tongue of a +rival should have robbed me of enjoyment when I was upon the point +of tasting it.——</p> + +<p>——Pugh!—’tis nothing but a +thistle—never mind it—thou shalt have a better supper +at night.</p> + +<p>——Banish’d from my country——my +friends——from thee.——</p> + +<p>Poor devil, thou’rt sadly tired with thy +journey!——come—get on a little +faster—there’s nothing in my cloak-bag but two +shirts——a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, and a fringed——Dear +Julia!</p> + +<p>——But why to <i>Frankfort?</i>—is it that +there is a hand unfelt, which secretly is conducting me through +these meanders and unsuspected tracts?</p> + +<p>——Stumbling! by saint <i>Nicolas!</i> every +step—why at this rate we shall be all night in getting +in——</p> + +<p>——To happiness——or am I to be the sport +of fortune and slander—destined to be driven forth +unconvicted——unheard——untouch’d——if +so, why did I not stay at <i>Strasburg</i>, where justice—but +I had sworn! Come, thou shalt drink—to <i>St. +Nicolas</i>—O Julia!——What dost thou prick up thy +ears at?——’tis nothing but a man, &c.</p> + +<p>The stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and +Julia—till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he +arrived, he alighted——saw his mule, as he had promised +it, taken good care of——took off his cloak-bag, with +his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it—called for an +omelet to his supper, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and in five +minutes fell fast asleep.</p> + +<p>It was about the same hour when the tumult in <i>Strasburg</i> +being abated for that night,—the <i>Strasburgers</i> had all +got quietly into their beds—but not like the stranger, for +the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen <i>Mab</i>, like an +elf as she was, had taken the stranger’s nose, and without +reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting +and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, +as there were heads in <i>Strasburg</i> to hold them. The abbess of +<i>Quedlingberg</i>, who with the four great dignitaries of her +chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior +canonness, had that week come to <i>Strasburg</i> to consult the +university upon a case of conscience relating to their placket- +holes——was ill all the night.</p> + +<p>The courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top +of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the +fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of +sleep the whole night thro’ for it——there was no +keeping a limb still amongst them——in short, they got +up like so many ghosts.</p> + +<p> +The penitentiaries of the third order of saint <i>Francis</i>——the +nuns of mount <i>Calvary</i>——the +<i>Præmonstratenses</i>——the <i>Clunienses</i><a href="#fn9" +name="fnref9"><sup>[9]</sup></a>——the <i>Carthusians</i>, and all +the severer orders of nuns, who lay that night in blankets or hair-cloth, were +still in a worse condition than the abbess of <i>Quedlingberg</i>—by +tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from one side of their beds to +the other the whole night long——the several sisterhoods had +scratch’d and maul’d themselves all to death——they got +out of their beds almost flay’d alive—every body thought saint +<i>Antony</i> had visited them for probation with his fire——they +had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to +matins. +</p> + +<p>The nuns of saint <i>Ursula</i> acted the wisest—they +never attempted to go to bed at all.</p> + +<p>The dean of <i>Strasburg</i>, the prebendaries, the capitulars +and domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider +the case of butter’d buns) all wished they had followed the +nuns of saint <i>Ursula</i>’s example.——</p> + +<p>In the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night +before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there +were no butter’d buns to be had for breakfast in all +<i>Strasburg</i>—the whole close of the cathedral was in one +eternal commotion——such a cause of restlessness and +disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the +restlessness, had never happened in <i>Strasburg</i>, since +<i>Martin Luther</i>, with his doctrines, had turned the city +upside down.</p> + +<p> +If the stranger’s nose took this liberty of thrusting himself thus into +the dishes<a href="#fn10" name="fnref10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> of religious +orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the +laity!—’tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power +to describe; tho’, I acknowledge, (<i>cries</i> Slawkenbergius <i>with +more gaiety of thought than I could have expected from him</i>) that there is +many a good simile now subsisting in the world which might give my countrymen +some idea of it; but at the close of such a folio as this, wrote for their +sakes, and in which I have spent the greatest part of my +life——tho’ I own to them the simile is in being, yet would it +not be unreasonable in them to expect I should have either time or inclination +to search for it? Let it suffice to say, that the riot and disorder it +occasioned in the <i>Strasburgers</i> fantasies was so general—such an +overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of the +<i>Strasburgers</i> minds—so many strange things, with equal confidence +on all sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to +concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder towards +it—every soul, good and bad—rich and poor—learned and +unlearned——doctor and student——mistress and +maid——gentle and simple——nun’s flesh and +woman’s flesh, in <i>Strasburg</i> spent their time in hearing tidings +about it—every eye in <i>Strasburg</i> languished to see +it——every finger——every thumb in <i>Strasburg</i> +burned to touch it. +</p> + +<p>Now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to +add, to so vehement a desire—was this, that the centinel, the +bandy-legg’d drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s +wife, the burgomaster’s widow, the master of the inn, and the +master of the inn’s wife, how widely soever they all differed +every one from another in their testimonies and description of the +stranger’s nose—they all agreed together in two +points—namely, that he was gone to <i>Frankfort</i>, and +would not return to <i>Strasburg</i> till that day month; and secondly, whether his nose was true or +false, that the stranger himself was one of the most perfect +paragons of beauty—the finest-made man—the most +genteel!—the most generous of his purse—the most +courteous in his carriage, that had ever entered the gates of +<i>Strasburg</i>—that as he rode, with scymetar slung loosely +to his wrist, thro’ the streets—and walked with his +crimson-sattin breeches across the parade—’twas with so +sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly +withal——as would have put the heart in jeopardy (had +his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin who had cast her +eyes upon him.</p> + +<p>I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and +yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of +<i>Quedlingberg</i>, the prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, +for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s wife: she went +through the streets of <i>Strasburg</i> with her husband’s +trumpet in her hand,——the best apparatus the straitness +of the time would allow her, for the illustration of her theory—she staid no longer than +three days.</p> + +<p>The centinel and bandy-legg’d +drummer!——nothing on this side of old <i>Athens</i> +could equal them! they read their lectures under the city-gates to +comers and goers, with all the pomp of a <i>Chrysippus</i> and a +<i>Crantor</i> in their porticos.</p> + +<p>The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read +his also in the same stile—under the portico or gateway of +his stable-yard—his wife, hers more privately in a back room: +all flocked to their lectures; not promiscuously—but to this +or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity marshal’d +them——in a word, each <i>Strasburger</i> came crouding +for intelligence—and every <i>Strasburger</i> had the +intelligence he wanted.</p> + +<p>’Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators +in natural philosophy, &c. that as soon as the +trumpeter’s wife had finished the abbess of +<i>Quedlingberg</i>’s private lecture, and had begun to read +in public, which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great +parade,——she incommoded the other demonstrators +mainly, by gaining incontinently the most fashionable part of the +city of <i>Strasburg</i> for her auditory—But when a +demonstrator in philosophy (cries <i>Slawkenbergius</i>) has a +<i>trumpet</i> for an apparatus, pray what rival in science can +pretend to be heard besides him?</p> + +<p>Whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of +intelligence, were all busied in getting down to the bottom of the +well, where <small>TRUTH</small> keeps her little +court——were the learned in their way as busy in pumping +her up thro’ the conduits of dialect +induction——they concerned themselves not with +facts——they reasoned——</p> + +<p>Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than +the Faculty—had not all their disputes about it run into the +affair of <i>Wens</i> and œdematous swellings, they could not +keep clear of them for their bloods and souls——the +stranger’s nose had nothing to do either with wens or +œdematous swellings.</p> + +<p>It was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass of +heterogenous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the +nose, whilst the infant was <i>in Utera</i>, without destroying the +statical balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its +head nine months before the time.——</p> + +<p>——The opponents granted the theory——they +denied the consequences.</p> + +<p>And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said +they, was not laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in +the very first stamina and rudiments of its formation, before it +came into the world (bating the case of Wens) it could not +regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.</p> + +<p>This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the +effect which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the +increase and prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest +growth and expansion imaginable—In the triumph of which +theory, they went so far as to affirm, that there was no cause +in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of the +man himself.</p> + +<p>The respondents satisfied the world this event could never +happen to them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of +lungs——For the stomach, said they, being the only organ +destined for the reception of food, and turning it into +chyle—and the lungs the only engine of +sanguification—it could possibly work off no more, than what +the appetite brought it: or admitting the possibility of a +man’s overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds however +to his lungs—the engine was of a determined size and +strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given +time——that is, it could produce just as much blood as +was sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, if there +was as much nose as man——they proved a mortification +must necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a +support for both, that the nose must either fall off from the +man, or the man inevitably fall off from his nose.</p> + +<p>Nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the +opponents—else what do you say to the case of a whole +stomach—a whole pair of lungs, and but half a man, when both +his legs have been unfortunately shot off?</p> + +<p>He dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and +in a fortnight or three weeks go off in a +consumption.——</p> + +<p>——It happens otherwise—replied the +opponents.——</p> + +<p>It ought not, said they.</p> + +<p>The more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her +doings, though they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they +all divided about the nose at last, almost as much as the Faculty +itself.</p> + +<p>They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and +geometrical arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the +human frame to its several destinations, offices, and functions, +which could not be transgressed but within certain limits—that +nature, though she sported——she sported within a +certain circle;—and they could not agree about the diameter +of it.</p> + +<p>The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than +any of the classes of the literati;——they began and +ended with the word Nose; and had it not been for a <i>petitio +principii</i>, which one of the ablest of them ran his head against +in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had been +settled at once.</p> + +<p>A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without +blood—and not only blood—but blood circulating in it to +supply the phænomenon with a succession of drops—(a +stream being but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, +said he.)——Now death, continued the logician, being +nothing but the stagnation of the blood——</p> + +<p>I deny the definition——Death is the separation of +the soul from the body, said his antagonist——Then we +don’t agree about our weapons, said the +logician—Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the +antagonist.</p> + +<p>The civilians were still more concise: what they offered being +more in the nature of a decree——than a dispute.</p> + +<p>Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could +not possibly have been suffered in civil society——and +if false—to impose upon society with such false signs and +tokens, was a still greater violation of its rights, and must have +had still less mercy shewn it.</p> + +<p>The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it +proved the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false.</p> + +<p> +This left room for the controversy to go on. It was maintained by the advocates +of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit a decree, since +the stranger <i>ex mero motu</i> had confessed he had been at the Promontory of +Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c.——To this +it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the +Promontory of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay. The commissary +of the bishop of <i>Strasburg</i> undertook the advocates, explained this +matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the Promontory +of Noses was a mere allegorick expression, importing no more than that nature +had given him a long nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the +underwritten authorities,<a href="#fn11" name="fnref11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> +which had decided the point incontestably, had it not appeared that a dispute +about some franchises of dean and chapter-lands had been determined by it +nineteen years before. +</p> + +<p>It happened——I must say unluckily for Truth, because +they were giving her a lift another way in so doing; that the two +universities of <i>Strasburg</i>——the <i>Lutheran</i>, +founded in the year 1538 by <i>Jacobus Surmis</i>, counsellor of +the senate,——and the <i>Popish</i>, founded by +<i>Leopold</i>, arch-duke of <i>Austria</i>, were, during all this +time, employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just +what the affair of the abbess of <i>Quedlingberg</i>’s +placket-holes required)——in determining the point of +<i>Martin Luther</i>’s damnation.</p> + +<p>The <i>Popish</i> doctors had undertaken to demonstrate +<i>à priori</i>, that from the necessary influence of the +planets on the twenty-second day of <i>October</i> +1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house, +<i>Jupiter, Mars</i>, and <i>Venus</i> in the third, the <i>Sun, +Saturn</i>, and <i>Mercury</i>, all got together in the +fourth—that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a +damn’d man—and that his doctrines, by a direct +corollary, must be damn’d doctrines too.</p> + +<p> +By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at +once with Scorpio<a href="#fn12" name="fnref12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> (in reading +this my father would always shake his head) in the ninth house, with the +<i>Arabians</i> allotted to religion—it appeared that <i>Martin +Luther</i> did not care one stiver about the matter——and that from +the horoscope directed to the conjunction of <i>Mars</i>—they made it +plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming——with the blast +of which his soul (being steep’d in guilt) sailed before the wind, in the +lake of hell-fire. +</p> + +<p>The little objection of the <i>Lutheran</i> doctors to this, was, that it must certainly be the +soul of another man, born <i>Oct.</i> 22, 83. which was forced to +sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it +appeared from the register of <i>Islaben</i> in the county of +<i>Mansfelt</i>, that <i>Luther</i> was not born in the year 1483, +but in 84; and not on the 22d day of <i>October</i>, but on the +10th of <i>November</i>, the eve of <i>Martinmas</i> day, from +whence he had the name of <i>Martin.</i></p> + +<p>[——I must break off my translation for a moment; for +if I did not, I know I should no more be able to shut my eyes in +bed, than the abbess of <i>Quedlingberg</i>——It is to +tell the reader; that my father never read this passage of +<i>Slawkenbergius</i> to my uncle <i>Toby</i>, but with +triumph——not over my uncle <i>Toby</i>, for he never +opposed him in it——but over the whole world.</p> + +<p>—Now you see, brother <i>Toby</i>, he would say, looking +up, “that christian names are not such indifferent +things;”——had <i>Luther</i> here been called by +any other name but <i>Martin</i>, he would have been damn’d to all +eternity——Not that I look upon <i>Martin</i>, he would +add, as a good name——far from +it——’tis something better than a neutral, and but +a little——yet little as it is you see it was of some +service to him.</p> + +<p>My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as +well as the best logician could shew him——yet so +strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell in his +way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was +certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in +<i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i>’s Decades full as entertaining as +this I am translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my +father read over with half the delight——it flattered +two of his strangest hypotheses together——his +N<small>AMES</small> and his N<small>OSES</small>.——I +will be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the +<i>Alexandrian</i> Library, had not fate taken other care of them, +and not have met with a book or passage in one, which hit two such +nails as these upon the head at one stroke.]</p> + +<p>The two universities of <i>Strasburg</i> were hard tugging at +this affair of <i>Luther</i>’s navigation. The Protestant +doctors had demonstrated, that he had not sailed right before the +wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and as every one knew +there was no sailing full in the teeth of it—they were going +to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; +whether <i>Martin</i> had doubled the cape, or had fallen upon a +lee-shore; and no doubt, as it was an enquiry of much edification, +at least to those who understood this sort of +<small>NAVIGATION</small>, they had gone on with it in spite of the +size of the stranger’s nose, had not the size of the +stranger’s nose drawn off the attention of the world from +what they were about—it was their business to follow.</p> + +<p>The abbess of <i>Quedlingberg</i> and her four dignitaries was +no stop; for the enormity of the stranger’s nose running full +as much in their fancies as their case of +conscience——the affair of their placket-holes kept +cold—in a word, the printers were ordered to distribute their +types——all controversies dropp’d.</p> + +<p>’Twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of +it—to a nut-shell—to have guessed on which side of the +nose the two universities would split.</p> + +<p>’Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.</p> + +<p>’Tis below reason, cried the others.</p> + +<p>’Tis faith, cried one.</p> + +<p>’Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.</p> + +<p>’Tis possible, cried the one.</p> + +<p>’Tis impossible, said the other.</p> + +<p>God’s power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do +any thing.</p> + +<p>He can do nothing, replied the Anti-nosarians, which implies +contradictions.</p> + +<p>He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.</p> + +<p>As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s +ear, replied the Anti-nosarians.</p> + +<p>He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish +doctors.——’Tis false, said their other +opponents.——</p> + +<p>Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who +maintained the <i>reality</i> of the nose.—It extends only to +all possible things, replied the <i>Lutherans.</i></p> + +<p>By God in heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, +if he thinks fit, as big as the steeple of <i>Strasburg.</i></p> + +<p>Now the steeple of <i>Strasburg</i> being the biggest and the +tallest church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the +Anti-nosarians denied that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in length +could be worn, at least by a middle-siz’d +man——The Popish doctors swore it could—The +<i>Lutheran</i> doctors said No;—it could not.</p> + +<p>This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great +way, upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural +attributes of God—That controversy led them naturally into +<i>Thomas Aquinas</i>, and <i>Thomas Aquinas</i> to the devil.</p> + +<p>The stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the +dispute—it just served as a frigate to launch them into the +gulph of school-divinity——and then they all +sailed before the wind.</p> + +<p>Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.</p> + +<p>The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of +cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the <i>Strasburgers</i> +imaginations to a most inordinate degree——The less they +understood of the matter the greater was their wonder about +it—they were left in all the distresses of desire +unsatisfied——saw their doctors, the +<i>Parchmentarians</i>, the <i>Brassarians</i>, the +<i>Turpentarians</i>, on one side—the Popish doctors on the +other, like <i>Pantagruel</i> and his companions in quest of the +oracle of the bottle, all embarked out of sight.</p> + +<p>——The poor <i>Strasburgers</i> left upon the +beach!</p> + +<p>——What was to be done?—No delay—the +uproar increased——every one in +disorder——the city gates set open.——</p> + +<p>Unfortunate <i>Strasbergers!</i> was there in the store-house of +nature——was there in the lumber-rooms of learning——was +there in the great arsenal of chance, one single engine left +undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your +desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play upon +your hearts?——I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse +the surrender of yourselves—’tis to write your +panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with +expectation——who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or +prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for +seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day +longer.</p> + +<p>On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to +return to <i>Strasburg.</i></p> + +<p>Seven thousand coaches (<i>Slawkenbergius</i> must certainly +have made some mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 +coaches——15000 single-horse chairs—20000 waggons, +crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, +syndicks—beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, +concubines, all in their coaches—The abbess of +<i>Quedlingberg</i>, with the prioress, the deaness and +sub-chantress, leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of +<i>Strasburg</i>, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter, +on her left-hand—the rest following higglety-pigglety as they +could; some on horseback——some on +foot——some led——some +driven——some down the <i>Rhine</i>——some +this way——some that——all set out at +sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.</p> + +<p>Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale——I +say <i>Catastrophe</i> (cries <i>Slawkenbergius</i>) inasmuch as a +tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth +(<i>gaudet</i>) in the <i>Catastrophe</i> and <i>Peripeitia</i> of +a D<small>RAMA</small>, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential +and integrant parts of it——it has its <i>Protasis, +Epitasis, Catastasis</i>, its <i>Catastrophe</i> or +<i>Peripeitia</i> growing one out of the other in it, in the order +<i>Aristotle</i> first planted them——without which a +tale had better never be told at all, says <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, +but be kept to a man’s self.</p> + +<p>In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I +<i>Slawkenbergius</i> tied down every tale of them as tightly to +this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.</p> + +<p>——From his first parley with the centinel, to his +leaving the city of <i>Strasburg</i>, after pulling off his +crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the <i>Protasis</i> or first +entrance——where the characters of the <i>Personæ +Dramatis</i> are just touched in, and the subject slightly +begun.</p> + +<p>The <i>Epitasis</i>, wherein the action is more fully entered +upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called +the <i>Catastasis</i>, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d +act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the +first night’s uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the +trumpeter’s wife’s lectures upon it in the middle of +the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in +the dispute—to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving +the <i>Strasburgers</i> upon the beach in distress, is the +<i>Catastasis</i> or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting +forth in the fifth act.</p> + +<p>This commences with the setting out of the <i>Strasburgers</i> +in the <i>Frankfort</i> road, and terminates in unwinding the +labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as +<i>Aristotle</i> calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.</p> + +<p>This, says <i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i>, constitutes the +<i>Catastrophe</i> or <i>Peripeitia</i> of my tale—and that +is the part of it I am going to relate.</p> + +<p>We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep——he +enters now upon the stage.</p> + +<p>—What dost thou prick up thy ears at?—’tis +nothing but a man upon a horse——was the last word the +stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the +reader, that the mule took his master’s word for it; and +without any more <i>ifs</i> or <i>ands</i>, let the traveller and +his horse pass by.</p> + +<p>The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to +<i>Strasburg</i> that night. What a fool am I, said the +traveller to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, +to think of getting into <i>Strasburg</i> this +night.—<i>Strasburg!</i>——the great +<i>Strasburg!</i>——<i>Strasburg</i>, the capital of all +<i>Alsatia!</i> <i>Strasburg</i>, an imperial city! +<i>Strasburg</i>, a sovereign state! <i>Strasburg</i>, garrisoned +with five thousand of the best troops in all the world!—Alas! +if I was at the gates of <i>Strasburg</i> this moment, I could not +gain admittance into it for a ducat—nay a ducat and +half—’tis too much—better go back to the last inn +I have passed——than lie I know not +where——or give I know not what. The traveller, as he +made these reflections in his mind, turned his horse’s head +about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted into +his chamber, he arrived at the same inn.</p> + +<p>——We have bacon in the house, said the host, and +bread——and till eleven o’clock this night had +three eggs in it——but a stranger, who arrived an hour +ago, has had them dressed into an omelet, and we have +nothing.——</p> + +<p>Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing but a +bed.——I have one as soft as is in <i>Alsatia</i>, said +the host.</p> + +<p>——The stranger, continued he, should have slept in +it, for ’tis my best bed, but upon the score of his +nose.——He has got a defluxion, said the +traveller.——Not that I know, cried the +host.——But ’tis a camp-bed, and <i>Jacinta</i>, +said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not room in +it to turn his nose in.——Why so? cried the traveller, +starting back.—It is so long a nose, replied the +host.——The traveller fixed his eyes upon +<i>Jacinta</i>, then upon the ground—kneeled upon his right +knee—had just got his hand laid upon his +breast——Trifle not with my anxiety, said he rising up +again.——’Tis no trifle, said <i>Jacinta</i>, +’tis the most glorious nose!——The traveller fell +upon his knee again—laid his hand upon his breast—then, +said he, looking up to heaven, thou hast conducted me to the end of +my pilgrimage—’Tis <i>Diego.</i></p> + +<p>The traveller was the brother of the <i>Julia</i>, so often +invoked that night by the stranger as he rode from <i>Strasburg</i> +upon his mule; and was come, on her part, in quest of him. He had +accompanied his sister from <i>Valadolid</i> across the +<i>Pyrenean</i> mountains through <i>France</i>, and had many an +entangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him through the many +meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover’s thorny tracks.</p> + +<p>——<i>Julia</i> had sunk under it——and +had not been able to go a step farther than to <i>Lyons</i>, where, +with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, which all talk +of——but few feel—she sicken’d, but had just +strength to write a letter to <i>Diego</i>; and having conjured her +brother never to see her face till he had found him out, and put +the letter into his hands, <i>Julia</i> took to her bed.</p> + +<p><i>Fernandez</i> (for that was her brother’s +name)——tho’ the camp-bed was as soft as any one +in <i>Alsace</i>, yet he could not shut his eyes in +it.——As soon as it was day he rose, and hearing +<i>Diego</i> was risen too, he entered his chamber, and discharged his +sister’s commission.</p> + +<p>The letter was as follows:</p> + +<p>“Seig. D<small>IEGO</small>,</p> + +<p>“Whether my suspicions of your nose were justly +excited or not——’tis not now to inquire—it +is enough I have not had firmness to put them to farther tryal.</p> + +<p>“How could I know so little of myself, when I sent +my <i>Duenna</i> to forbid your coming more under my lattice? or +how could I know so little of you, <i>Diego</i>, as to imagine you +would not have staid one day in <i>Valadolid</i> to have given ease +to my doubts?—Was I to be abandoned, <i>Diego</i>, because I +was deceived? or was it kind to take me at my word, whether my +suspicions were just or no, and leave me, as you did, a prey to +much uncertainty and sorrow?</p> + +<p>“In what manner <i>Julia</i> has resented +this——my brother, when he puts this letter into your +hands, will tell you; He will tell you in how few moments she +repented of the rash message she had sent you——in what +frantic haste she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights +together she leaned immoveably upon her elbow, looking through it +towards the way which <i>Diego</i> was wont to come.</p> + +<p>“He will tell you, when she heard of your +departure—how her spirits deserted her——how her +heart sicken’d——how piteously she +mourned——how low she hung her head. O <i>Diego!</i> how +many weary steps has my brother’s pity led me by the hand +languishing to trace out yours; how far has desire carried me +beyond strength——and how oft have I fainted by the way, +and sunk into his arms, with only power to cry out—O my +<i>Diego!</i></p> + +<p>“If the gentleness of your carriage has not belied +your heart, you will fly to me, almost as fast as you fled from +me—haste as you will——you will arrive but to see +me expire.——’Tis a bitter draught, +<i>Diego</i>, but oh! ’tis embittered still more by dying +<i>un</i>———”</p> + +<p>She could proceed no farther.</p> + +<p><i>Slawkenbergius</i> supposes the word intended was +unconvinced, but her strength would not enable her to finish her +letter.</p> + +<p>The heart of the courteous <i>Diego</i> over-flowed as he read +the letter——he ordered his mule forthwith and +<i>Fernandez</i>’s horse to be saddled; and as no vent in +prose is equal to that of poetry in such +conflicts——chance, which as often directs us to +remedies as to <i>diseases</i>, having thrown a piece of charcoal +into the window——<i>Diego</i> availed himself of it, +and whilst the hostler was getting ready his mule, he eased his +mind against the wall as follows.</p> + +<p class="center"> +O D E. +</p> + +<p><i>Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love</i>,</p> + +<p><i>Unless my</i> Julia <i>strikes the key</i>,</p> + +<p><i>Her hand alone can touch the part</i>,</p> + +<p><i>Whose dulcet movement charms the heart</i>,</p> + +<p><i>And governs all the man with sympathetick sway.</i></p> + +<p> +         2d.<br/> +<br/> +<i>O</i> Julia!</p> + +<p>The lines were very natural——for they were nothing +at all to the purpose, says <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, and ’tis a +pity there were no more of them; but whether it was that Seig. +<i>Diego</i> was slow in composing verses—or the hostler +quick in saddling mules——is not averred; certain it +was, that <i>Diego</i>’s mule and <i>Fernandez</i>’s +horse were ready at the door of the inn, before <i>Diego</i> was +ready for his second stanza; so without staying to finish his ode, +they both mounted, sallied forth, passed the <i>Rhine</i>, traversed +<i>Alsace</i>, shaped their course towards <i>Lyons</i>, and before +the <i>Strasburgers</i> and the abbess of <i>Quedlingberg</i> had +set out on their cavalcade, had <i>Fernandez, Diego</i>, and his +<i>Julia</i>, crossed the <i>Pyrenean</i> mountains, and got safe +to <i>Valadolid.</i></p> + +<p>’Tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when +<i>Diego</i> was in <i>Spain</i>, it was not possible to meet the +courteous stranger in the <i>Frankfort</i> road; it is enough to +say, that of all restless desires, curiosity being the +strongest——the <i>Strasburgers</i> felt the full force +of it; and that for three days and nights they were tossed to and +fro in the <i>Frankfort</i> road, with the tempestuous fury of this +passion, before they could submit to return home.——When +alas! an event was prepared for them, of all other, the most +grievous that could befal a free people.</p> + +<p>As this revolution of the <i>Strasburgers</i> affairs is often +spoken of, and little understood, I will, in ten words, says +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>, give the world an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale.</p> + +<p>Every body knows of the grand system of Universal Monarchy, +wrote by order of Mons. <i>Colbert</i>, and put in manuscript into +the hands of <i>Lewis</i> the fourteenth, in the year 1664.</p> + +<p>’Tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that +system, was the getting possession of <i>Strasburg</i>, to favour +an entrance at all times into <i>Suabia</i>, in order to disturb +the quiet of <i>Germany</i>——and that in consequence of +this plan, <i>Strasburg</i> unhappily fell at length into their +hands.</p> + +<p>It is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this and +such like revolutions—The vulgar look too high for +them—Statesmen look too low——Truth (for once) +lies in the middle.</p> + +<p>What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries +one historian—The <i>Strasburgers</i> deemed it a diminution +of their freedom to receive an imperial garrison——so +fell a prey to a <i>French</i> one.</p> + +<p>The fate, says another, of the <i>Strasburgers</i>, may be a +warning to all free people to save their money.——They +anticipated their revenues——brought themselves under +taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so weak a +people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the +<i>French</i> pushed them open.</p> + +<p>Alas! alas! cries <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, ’twas not the +<i>French</i>,——’twas <small>CURIOSITY</small> +pushed them open——The <i>French</i> indeed, who are +ever upon the catch, when they saw the <i>Strasburgers</i>, men, +women and children, all marched out to follow the stranger’s +nose——each man followed his own, and marched in.</p> + +<p>Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down +ever since—but not from any cause which commercial heads have +assigned; for it is owing to this only, that Noses have ever so run +in their heads, that the <i>Strasburgers</i> could not follow their +business.</p> + +<p>Alas! alas! cries <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, making an +exclamation—it is not the first——and I fear will not be the last +fortress that has been either won——or lost by +N<small>OSES</small>.</p> + +<p class="center"> +The E N D of<br/> +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s T<small>ALE</small>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn8"></a> <a href="#fnref8">[8]</a> +As <i>Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis</i> is extremely scarce, it may not be +unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his +original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling Latin +is much more concise than his philosophic—and, I think, has more of +Latinity in it. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn9"></a> <a href="#fnref9">[9]</a> +<i>Hafen Slawkenbergius</i> means the Benedictine nuns of <i>Cluny</i>, founded +in the year 940, by <i>Odo</i>, abbé de <i>Cluny.</i> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn10"></a> <a href="#fnref10">[10]</a> +Mr. <i>Shandy</i>’s compliments to orators——is very sensible +that <i>Slawkenbergius</i> has here changed his metaphor——which he +is very guilty of:——that as a translator, Mr. <i>Shandy</i> has all +along done what he could to make him stick to it—but that here +’twas impossible. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn11"></a> <a href="#fnref11">[11]</a> +Nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formulâ utun. Quinimo & Logistæ +& Canonistæ——Vid. Parce Barne Jas in d. L. Provincial. +Constitut. de conjec. vid. Vol. Lib. 4. Titul. I. n. 7 quâ etiam in re conspir. +Om de Promontorio Nas. Tichmak. ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. passim. Vid. Glos. de +contrahend. empt. &c. necnon J. Scrudr. in cap. § refut. per totum. +Cum his cons. Rever. J. Tubal, Sentent. & Prov. cap. 9. ff. 11, 12. obiter. +V. & Librum, cui Tit. de Terris & Phras. Belg. ad finem, cum comment. +N. Bardy Belg. Vid. Scrip. Argentotarens. de Antiq. Ecc. in Episc Archiv. fid +coll. per Von Jacobum Koinshoven Folio Argent. 1583. præcip. ad finem. Quibus +add. Rebuff in L. obvenire de Signif. Nom. ff. fol. & de jure Gent. & +Civil. de protib. aliena feud. per federa, test. Joha. Luxius in prolegom. quem +velim videas, de Analy. Cap. 1, 2, 3. Vid. Idea. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn12"></a> <a href="#fnref12">[12]</a> +Haec mira, satisque horrenda. Planetarum coitio sub Scorpio Asterismo in nona +cœli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant efficit <i>Martinum +Lutherum</i> sacrilegum hereticum, Christianæ religionis hostem acerrimum atque +prophanum, ex horoscopi directione ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, +ejus Anima scelestissima ad infernos navigavit—ab Alecto, Tisiphone & +Megara flagellis igneis cruciata perenniter.<br/> +<br/> +——Lucas Gaurieus in Tractatu astrologico de præteritis multorum +hominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>ITH</small> all this learning upon Noses +running perpetually in my father’s fancy——with so +many family prejudices—and ten decades of such tales running +on for ever along with them——how was it possible with +such exquisite——was it a true nose?——That a +man with such exquisite feelings as my father had, could bear the +shock at all below stairs——or indeed above stairs, in +any other posture, but the very posture I have described?</p> + +<p>——Throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen +times——taking care only to place a looking-glass first +in a chair on one side of it, before you do it—But was the stranger’s nose a true nose, or was it +a false one?</p> + +<p>To tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury to one of +the best tales in the Christian-world; and that is the tenth of the +tenth decade, which immediately follows this.</p> + +<p>This tale, cried <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, somewhat exultingly, has +been reserved by me for the concluding tale of my whole work; +knowing right well, that when I shall have told it, and my reader +shall have read it thro’—’twould be even high +time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues +<i>Slawkenbergius</i>, as I know of no tale which could possibly +ever go down after it.</p> + +<p>’Tis a tale indeed!</p> + +<p>This sets out with the first interview in the inn at +<i>Lyons</i>, when <i>Fernandez</i> left the courteous stranger and +his sister <i>Julia</i> alone in her chamber, and is +over-written.</p> + + +<p class="center"> +The + I<small> N T R I C A C I E S<br/> + +O F</small><br/> +<i>Diego</i> and <i>Julia.</i> +</p> + +<p>Heavens! thou art a strange creature, <i>Slawkenbergius!</i> +what a whimsical view of the involutions of the heart of woman hast +thou opened! how this can ever be translated, and yet if this +specimen of <i>Slawkenbergius</i>’s tales, and the +exquisitiveness of his moral, should please the +world—translated shall a couple of volumes +be.——Else, how this can ever be translated into good +<i>English</i>, I have no sort of conception—There seems in +some passages to want a sixth sense to do it +rightly.——What can he mean by the lambent pupilability +of slow, low, dry chat, five notes below the natural +tone——which you know, madam, is little more than a +whisper? The moment I pronounced the words, I could perceive an +attempt towards a vibration in the strings, about the region of the +heart.——The brain made no +acknowledgment.——There’s often no good +understanding betwixt ’em—I felt as if I understood +it.——I had no ideas.——The movement could +not be without cause.—I’m lost. I can make nothing of +it—unless, may it please your worships, the voice, in that +case being little more than a whisper, unavoidably forces the eyes +to approach not only within six inches of each other—but to +look into the pupils—is not that dangerous?——But +it can’t be avoided—for to look up to the cieling, in +that case the two chins unavoidably meet——and to look +down into each other’s lap, the foreheads come to immediate +contact, which at once puts an end to the conference——I +mean to the sentimental part of it.——What is left, +madam, is not worth stooping for.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father lay stretched across the +bed as still as if the hand of death had pushed him down, for a +full hour and a half before he began to play upon the floor +with the toe of that foot which hung over the bed-side; my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s heart was a pound lighter for +it.——In a few moments, his left-hand, the knuckles of +which had all the time reclined upon the handle of the chamber-pot, +came to its feeling—he thrust it a little more within the +valance—drew up his hand, when he had done, into his +bosom—gave a hem! My good uncle <i>Toby</i>, with infinite +pleasure, answered it; and full gladly would have ingrafted a +sentence of consolation upon the opening it afforded: but having no +talents, as I said, that way, and fearing moreover that he might +set out with something which might make a bad matter worse, he +contented himself with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of +his crutch.</p> + +<p>Now whether the compression shortened my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s face into a more pleasurable oval—or that +the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing his brother beginning to +emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced up his +muscles——so that the compression upon his chin only +doubled the benignity which was there before, is not hard to +decide.——My father, in turning his eyes, was struck +with such a gleam of sun-shine in his face, as melted down the +sullenness of his grief in a moment.</p> + +<p>He broke silence as follows:</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>D<small>ID</small> ever man, brother <i>Toby</i>, +cried my father, raising himself upon his elbow, and turning +himself round to the opposite side of the bed, where my uncle +<i>Toby</i> was sitting in his old fringed chair, with his chin +resting upon his crutch——did ever a poor unfortunate +man, brother <i>Toby</i>, cried my father, receive so many +lashes?——The most I ever saw given, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i> (ringing the bell at the bed’s head for +<i>Trim</i>) was to a grenadier, I think in <i>Mackay</i>’s +regiment.</p> + +<p>——Had my uncle <i>Toby</i> shot a bullet through my father’s heart, he could not +have fallen down with his nose upon the quilt more suddenly.</p> + +<p>Bless me! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>AS</small> it <i>Mackay</i>’s +regiment, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, where the poor grenadier was +so unmercifully whipp’d at <i>Bruges</i> about the +ducats?—O Christ! he was innocent! cried <i>Trim</i>, with a +deep sigh.—And he was whipp’d, may it please your +honour, almost to death’s door.—They had better have +shot him outright, as he begg’d, and he had gone directly to +heaven, for he was as innocent as your honour.——I thank +thee, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——I never +think of his, continued <i>Trim</i>, and my poor brother +<i>Tom</i>’s misfortunes, for we were all three +school-fellows, but I cry like a coward.——Tears are no +proof of cowardice, <i>Trim.</i>—I drop them oft-times +myself, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——I know your honour +does, replied <i>Trim</i>, and so am not ashamed of it myself.—But to think, may +it please your honour, continued <i>Trim</i>, a tear stealing into +the corner of his eye as he spoke—to think of two virtuous +lads with hearts as warm in their bodies, and as honest as God +could make them—the children of honest people, going forth +with gallant spirits to seek their fortunes in the world—and +fall into such evils!—poor <i>Tom!</i> to be tortured upon a +rack for nothing—but marrying a Jew’s widow who sold +sausages—honest <i>Dick Johnson</i>’s soul to be +scourged out of his body, for the ducats another man put into his +knapsack!—O!—these are misfortunes, cried +<i>Trim</i>,—pulling out his handkerchief—these are +misfortunes, may it please your honour, worth lying down and crying +over.</p> + +<p>—My father could not help blushing.</p> + +<p>’Twould be a pity, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, thou shouldst ever feel sorrow of thy own—thou +feelest it so tenderly for others.—Alack-o-day, replied the +corporal, brightening up his face——your honour knows I +have neither wife or child——I can have no sorrows in +this world.——My father could not help smiling.—As +few as any man, <i>Trim</i>, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>; nor can +I see how a fellow of thy light heart can suffer, but from the +distress of poverty in thy old age—when thou art passed all +services, <i>Trim</i>—and hast outlived thy +friends.——An’ please your honour, never fear, +replied <i>Trim</i>, chearily.——But I would have thee +never fear, <i>Trim</i>, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and +therefore, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, throwing down his +crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word +<i>therefore</i>—in recompence, <i>Trim</i>, of thy long +fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy heart I have had such +proofs of—whilst thy master is worth a +shilling——thou shalt never ask elsewhere, <i>Trim</i>, +for a penny. <i>Trim</i> attempted to thank my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—but had not power——tears trickled +down his cheeks faster than he could wipe them off—He laid +his hands upon his breast——made a bow to the ground, +and shut the door.</p> + +<p>——I have left <i>Trim</i> my bowling-green, cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i>——My father smiled.——I +have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.——My father looked grave.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XL</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>S</small> this a fit time, said my father to +himself, to talk of <small>PENSIONS</small> and +<small>GRENADIERS</small>?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> first +mentioned the grenadier, my father, I said, fell down with his nose +flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my uncle <i>Toby</i> had +shot him; but it was not added that every other limb and member of +my father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise +attitude in which he lay first described; so that when corporal +<i>Trim</i> left the room, and my father found himself disposed to +rise off the bed—he had all the little preparatory movements to run over again, before he could do it. +Attitudes are nothing, madam——’tis the transition +from one attitude to another——like the preparation and +resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all.</p> + +<p>For which reason my father played the same jig over again with +his toe upon the floor——pushed the chamber-pot still a +little farther within the valance—gave a hem—raised +himself up upon his elbow—and was just beginning to address +himself to my uncle <i>Toby</i>—when recollecting the +unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that +attitude——he got upon his legs, and in making the third +turn across the room, he stopped short before my uncle <i>Toby</i>; +and laying the three first fingers of his right-hand in the palm of +his left, and stooping a little, he addressed himself to my uncle +<i>Toby</i> as follows:</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> I reflect, brother <i>Toby</i>, +upon <small>MAN</small>; and take a view of that dark side of him +which represents his life as open to so many causes of +trouble—when I consider, brother <i>Toby</i>, how oft we eat +the bread of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the +portion of our inheritance——I was born to nothing, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, interrupting my father—but my +commission. Zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave you a +hundred and twenty pounds a year?——What could I have +done without it? replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——That’s another concern, said my +father testily—But I say <i>Toby</i>, when one runs over the +catalogue of all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful <i>Items</i> +with which the heart of man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by +what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand out, and bear +itself up, as it does, against the impositions laid upon our nature.——’Tis +by the assistance of Almighty God, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close +together——’tis not from our own strength, brother +<i>Shandy</i>——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might +as well pretend to stand it out against a detachment of fifty +men.——We are upheld by the grace and the assistance of +the best of Beings.</p> + +<p>——That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead +of untying it,——But give me leave to lead you, brother +<i>Toby</i>, a little deeper into the mystery.</p> + +<p>With all my heart, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that +in which <i>Socrates</i> is so finely painted by <i>Raffael</i> in +his school of <i>Athens</i>; which your connoisseurship knows is so +exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the +reasoning of <i>Socrates</i> is expressed by it—for he holds +the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the +thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is +reclaiming——“<i>You grant me</i> +this——and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask +of you—they follow of themselves in course.”</p> + +<p>So stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his +finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle <i>Toby</i> as he +sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured +worsted bobs——O <i>Garrick!</i>——what a +rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly +would I write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and +secure my own behind it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> man is of all others the most +curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of +so slight a frame, and so totteringly put together, that the sudden +jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged +journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a +day——was it not, brother <i>Toby</i>, that there is a secret +spring within us.—Which spring, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I +take to be Religion.—Will that set my child’s nose on? +cried my father, letting go his finger, and striking one hand +against the other.——It makes every thing straight for +us, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——Figuratively +speaking, dear <i>Toby</i>, it may, for aught I know, said my +father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic +power within us of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret +spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can’t prevent the +shock——at least it imposes upon our sense of it.</p> + +<p>Now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, +as he was coming closer to the point——had my child +arrived safe into the world, unmartyr’d in that precious part +of him—fanciful and extravagant as I may appear to the world +in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good +or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and +conducts—Heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes +for the prosperity of my child, I never once wished to crown his +head with more glory and honour than what G<small>EORGE</small> or +E<small>DWARD</small> would have spread around it.</p> + +<p>But alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen +him——I must counteract and undo it with the greatest +good.</p> + +<p>He shall be christened <i>Trismegistus</i>, brother.</p> + +<p>I wish it may answer——replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +rising up.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HAT</small> a chapter of chances, said my +father, turning himself about upon the first landing, as he and my +uncle <i>Toby</i> were going down stairs, what a long chapter of +chances do the events of this world lay open to us! Take pen and +ink in hand, brother <i>Toby</i>, and calculate it +fairly——I know no more of calculation than this +balluster, said my uncle <i>Toby</i> (striking short of it with his +crutch, and hitting my father a desperate blow souse upon his +shin-bone)——’Twas a hundred to one—cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i>—I thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his +shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother +<i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>a mere chance, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——Then it +adds one to the chapter——replied my father.</p> + +<p>The double success of my father’s repartees tickled off +the pain of his shin at once—it was well it so fell +out—(chance! again)—or the world to this day had never +known the subject of my father’s calculation——to +guess it—there was no chance——What a lucky +chapter of chances has this turned out! for it has saved me the +trouble of writing one express, and in truth I have enough already +upon my hands without it.—Have not I promised the world a +chapter of knots? two chapters upon the right and the wrong end of +a woman? a chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon +wishes?——a chapter of noses?—No, I have done that—a chapter upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s modesty? to say nothing of a chapter upon +chapters, which I will finish before I sleep—by my great +grandfather’s whiskers, I shall never get half of ’em +through this year.</p> + +<p>Take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother +<i>Toby</i>, said my father, and it will turn out a million to one, +that of all the parts of the body, the edge of the forceps should +have the ill luck just to fall upon and break down that one part, +which should break down the fortunes of our house with it.</p> + +<p>It might have been worse, replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.——I don’t comprehend, said my +father.——Suppose the hip had presented, replied my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, as Dr. <i>Slop</i> foreboded.</p> + +<p>My father reflected half a minute—looked +down——touched the middle of his forehead slightly with +his finger——</p> + +<p>—True, said he.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>S</small> it not a shame to make two +chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we +are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are +fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my +father and my uncle <i>Toby</i> are in a talking humour, there may +be as many chapters as steps:——let that be as it will, +Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny:—A sudden impulse +comes across me——drop the curtain, +<i>Shandy</i>——I drop it—Strike a line here +across the paper, <i>Tristram</i>—I strike it—and hey +for a new chapter.</p> + +<p>The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this +affair—and if I had one—as I do all things out of all +rule—I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it +into the fire when I had done—Am I warm? I am, and the cause +demands it——a pretty story! is a man to follow rules——or rules to +follow him?</p> + +<p> +Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which I promised to +write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely +before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew about the matter at once: +Is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically with a sententious +parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a roasted +horse——that chapters relieve the mind—that they +assist—or impose upon the imagination—and that in a work of this +dramatic cast they are as necessary as the shifting of scenes——with +fifty other cold conceits, enough to extinguish the fire which roasted +him?—O! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of +<i>Diana</i>’s temple—you must read <i>Longinus</i>—read +away—if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time +over—never fear—read him again—<i>Avicenna</i> and +<i>Licetus</i> read <i>Aristotle</i>’s metaphysicks forty times through +a-piece, and never understood a single word.—But mark the +consequence—<i>Avicenna</i> turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of +writing—for he wrote books <i>de omni scribili</i>; and for <i>Licetus +(Fortunio)</i> though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,<a href="#fn13" +name="fnref13"><sup>[13]</sup></a> of no more than five inches and a half in +length, yet he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a +book with a title as long as himself——the learned know I mean his +<i>Gonopsychanthropologia</i>, upon the origin of the human soul. +</p> + +<p>So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold +to be the best chapter in my whole work; and take my word, whoever +reads it, is full as well employed, as in picking straws.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn13"></a> <a href="#fnref13">[13]</a> +<i>Ce Fœtus</i> n’étoit pas plus grand que la paume de la main; mais son +pere l’ayant éxaminé en qualité de Médecin, & ayant trouvé que +c’etoit quelque chose de plus qu’un Embryon, le fit transporter +tout vivant à Rapallo, ou il le fit voir à Jerôme Bardi & à d’autres +Médecins du lieu. On trouva qu’il ne lui manquoit rien d’essentiel +à la vie; & son pere pour faire voir un essai de son experience, entreprit +d’achever l’ouvrage de la Nature, & de travailler à la +formation de l’Enfant avec le même artifice que celui dont on se sert +pour faire écclorre les Poulets en Egypte. Il instruisit une Nourisse de tout +ce qu’elle avoit à faire, & ayant fait mettre son fils dans un pour +proprement accommodé, il reussit à l’elever & a lui faire prendre ses +accroissemens necessaires, par l’uniformité d’une chaleur étrangere +mesurée éxactement sur les dégrés d’un Thermométre, ou d’un autre +instrument équivalent. (Vide Mich. Giustinian, ne gli Scritt. Liguri à Cart. +223. 488.)<br/> +<br/> +On auroit toujours été très satisfait de l’industrie d’un pere si +experimenté dans l’Art de la Generation, quand il n’auroit pû +prolonger la vie à son fils que pour Puelques mois, ou pour peu +d’années.<br/> +<br/> +Mais quand on se represente que l’Enfant a vecu près de quatre-vingts +ans, & qu’il a composé quatre-vingts Ouvrages differents tous fruits +d’une longue lecture—il faut convenir que tout ce qui est +incroyable n’est pas toujours faux, & que la <i>Vraisemblance +n’est pas toujours du côté la Verité.</i><br/> +<br/> +Il n’avoit que dix neuf ans lorsqu’il composa +Gonopsychanthropologia de Origine Animæ humanæ.<br/> +<br/> +(Les Enfans celebres, revûs & corrigés par M. de la Monnoye de +l’Academie Françoise. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>E</small> shall bring all things to rights, +said my father, setting his foot upon the first step from the +landing.—This <i>Trismegistus</i>, continued my father, +drawing his leg back and turning to my uncle <i>Toby</i>——was the greatest +(<i>Toby</i>) of all earthly beings—he was the greatest +king——the greatest lawgiver——the greatest +philosopher——and the greatest priest——and +engineer—said my uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>——In course, said my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>—A<small>ND</small> how does your mistress? +cried my father, taking the same step over again from the landing, +and calling to <i>Susannah</i>, whom he saw passing by the foot of +the stairs with a huge pin-cushion in her hand—how does your +mistress? As well, said <i>Susannah</i>, tripping by, but without +looking up, as can be expected.—What a fool am I! said my +father, drawing his leg back again—let things be as they +will, brother <i>Toby</i>, ’tis ever the precise +answer——And how is the child, pray?——No +answer. And where is Dr. <i>Slop</i>? added my father, raising his +voice aloud, and looking over the ballusters—<i>Susannah</i> +was out of hearing.</p> + +<p>Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father, crossing +the landing in order to set his back against the wall, whilst he +propounded it to my uncle <i>Toby</i>——of all the +puzzling riddles, said he, in a marriage state,——of +which you may trust me, brother <i>Toby</i>, there are more asses +loads than all <i>Job</i>’s stock of asses could have +carried——there is not one that has more intricacies in +it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the +house is brought to bed, every female in it, from my lady’s +gentlewoman down to the cinder-wench, becomes an inch taller for +it; and give themselves more airs upon that single inch, than all +their other inches put together.</p> + +<p>I think rather, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, that ’tis we +who sink an inch lower.—If I meet but a woman with +child—I do it.—’Tis a heavy tax upon that half of +our fellow-creatures, brother <i>Shandy</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—’Tis a piteous burden upon ’em, continued he, shaking his head—Yes, +yes, ’tis a painful thing—said my father, shaking his +head too——but certainly since shaking of heads came +into fashion, never did two heads shake together, in concert, from +two such different springs.</p> + +<p>God bless / Deuce take ’em all—said my uncle +<i>Toby</i> and my father, each to himself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVLIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>H<small>OLLA</small>!——you, +chairman!——here’s sixpence——do step +into that bookseller’s shop, and call me a day-tall critick. +I am very willing to give any one of ’em a crown to help me +with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle <i>Toby</i> off +the stairs, and to put them to bed.</p> + +<p>—’Tis even high time; for except a short nap, which +they both got whilst <i>Trim</i> was boring the +jack-boots—and which, by-the-bye, did my father no sort of +good, upon the score of the bad hinge—they have not else shut their eyes, since +nine hours before the time that doctor <i>Slop</i> was led into the +back parlour in that dirty pickle by <i>Obadiah</i>.</p> + +<p>Was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and +to take up—Truce.</p> + +<p>I will not finish that sentence till I have made an observation +upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, +just as things stand at present—an observation never +applicable before to any one biographical writer since the creation +of the world, but to myself—and I believe, will never hold +good to any other, until its final destruction—and therefore, +for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your worships +attending to.</p> + +<p> +I am this month one whole year older than I was this time twelve-month; and +having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume<a +href="#fn14" name="fnref14"><sup>[14]</sup></a>—and no farther than to my +first day’s life—’tis demonstrative that I have three hundred +and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when I first set out; so +that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what I have been +doing at it—on the contrary, I am just thrown so many volumes +back—was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—And why +not?——and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much +description—And for what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate +I should just live 364 times faster than I should write—It must follow, +an’ please your worships, that the more I write, the more I shall have to +write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your +worships will have to read. +</p> + +<p>Will this be good for your worships eyes?</p> + +<p>It will do well for mine; and, was it not that my +O<small>PINIONS</small> will be the death of me, I perceive I shall +lead a fine life of it out of this self-same life of mine; or, in +other words, shall lead a couple of fine lives together.</p> + +<p>As for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume a month, it no way alters my +prospect—write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle +of things, as <i>Horace</i> advises—I shall never overtake +myself whipp’d and driven to the last pinch; at the worst I +shall have one day the start of my pen—and one day is enough +for two volumes——and two volumes will be enough for one +year.—</p> + +<p>Heaven prosper the manufacturers of paper under this propitious +reign, which is now opened to us——as I trust its +providence will prosper every thing else in it that is taken in +hand.</p> + +<p>As for the propagation of Geese—I give myself no +concern—Nature is all-bountiful—I shall never want +tools to work with.</p> + +<p>—So then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle +<i>Toby</i> off the stairs, and seen them to bed?——And +how did you manage it?——You dropp’d a curtain at +the stair-foot—I thought you had no other way for +it——Here’s a crown for your trouble.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn14"></a> <a href="#fnref14">[14]</a> +According to the preceding Editions. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>—T<small>HEN</small> reach me my breeches off +the chair, said my father to <i>Susannah.</i>—There is not a +moment’s time to dress you, Sir, cried +<i>Susannah</i>—the child is as black in the face as +my——As your what? said my father, for like all orators, +he was a dear searcher into comparisons.—Bless, me, Sir, said +<i>Susannah</i>, the child’s in a fit.—And +where’s Mr. <i>Yorick?</i>—Never where he should be, +said <i>Susannah</i>, but his curate’s in the dressing-room, +with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name—and my +mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as captain +<i>Shandy</i> is the godfather, whether it should not be called +after him.</p> + +<p>Were one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his +eye-brow, that the child was expiring, one might as well compliment +my brother <i>Toby</i> as not—and it would be a pity, in +such a case, to throw away so great a name as <i>Trismegistus</i> upon him——but he may +recover.</p> + +<p>No, no,——said my father to <i>Susannah</i>, +I’ll get up——There is no time, cried +<i>Susannah</i>, the child’s as black as my shoe. +<i>Trismegistus</i>, said my father——But +stay—thou art a leaky vessel, <i>Susannah</i>, added my +father; canst thou carry <i>Trismegistus</i> in thy head, the +length of the gallery without scattering?——Can I? cried +<i>Susannah</i>, shutting the door in a huff.——If she +can, I’ll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of bed in the +dark, and groping for his breeches.</p> + +<p><i>Susannah</i> ran with all speed along the gallery.</p> + +<p>My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.</p> + +<p><i>Susannah</i> got the start, and kept it—’Tis +<i>Tris</i>—something, cried <i>Susannah</i>—There is +no christian-name in the world, said the curate, beginning with +<i>Tris</i>—but <i>Tristram.</i> Then ’tis +<i>Tristram-gistus</i>, quoth <i>Susannah.</i></p> + +<p>——There is no <i>gistus</i> to it, noodle!—’tis my own name, replied the curate, +dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the +bason—<i>Tristram!</i> said he, &c. &c. &c. +&c.—so <i>Tristram</i> was I called, and <i>Tristram</i> +shall I be to the day of my death.</p> + +<p>My father followed <i>Susannah</i>, with his night-gown across +his arm, with nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through +haste with but a single button, and that button through haste +thrust only half into the button-hole.</p> + +<p>——She has not forgot the name, cried my father, half +opening the door?——No, no, said the curate, with a tone +of intelligence.——And the child is better, cried +<i>Susannah.</i>——And how does your mistress? As well, +said <i>Susannah</i>, as can be expected.—Pish! said my +father, the button of his breeches slipping out of the +button-hole—So that whether the interjection was levelled at +<i>Susannah</i>, or the button-hole—whether Pish was an +interjection of contempt or an interjection of modesty, is a doubt, +and must be a doubt till I shall have time to write the three following favourite +chapters, that is, my chapter of <i>chamber-maids</i>, my chapter +of <i>pishes</i>, and my chapter of <i>button-holes.</i></p> + +<p>All the light I am able to give the reader at present is this, +that the moment my father cried Pish! he whisk’d himself +about—and with his breeches held up by one hand, and his +night-gown thrown across the arm of the other, he turned along the +gallery to bed, something slower than he came.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + L</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>WISH</small> I could write a chapter upon +sleep.</p> + +<p>A fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than what +this moment offers, when all the curtains of the family are +drawn—the candles put out—and no creature’s eyes +are open but a single one, for the other has been shut these twenty +years, of my mother’s nurse.</p> + +<p>It is a fine subject.</p> + +<p>And yet, as fine as it is, I would undertake to write a dozen chapters upon +button-holes, both quicker and with more fame, than a single +chapter upon this.</p> + +<p>Button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea of +’em——and trust me, when I get amongst +’em——You gentry with great +beards——look as grave as you +will——I’ll make merry work with my +button-holes—I shall have ’em all to +myself—’tis a maiden subject—I shall run foul of +no man’s wisdom or fine sayings in it.</p> + +<p>But for sleep—I know I shall make nothing of it before I +begin—I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first +place—and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face +upon a bad matter, and tell the world—’tis the refuge +of the unfortunate—the enfranchisement of the +prisoner—the downy lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the +broken-hearted; nor could I set out with a lye in my mouth, by +affirming, that of all the soft and delicious functions of our +nature, by which the great Author of it, in his bounty, has been pleased to recompence the sufferings +wherewith his justice and his good pleasure has wearied +us——that this is the chiefest (I know pleasures worth +ten of it); or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties +and passions of the day are over, and he lies down upon his back, +that his soul shall be so seated within him, that whichever way she +turns her eyes, the heavens shall look calm and sweet above +her—no desire—or fear—or doubt that troubles the +air, nor any difficulty past, present, or to come, that the +imagination may not pass over without offence, in that sweet +secession.</p> + +<p>“God’s blessing,” said <i>Sancho +Pança</i>, “be upon the man who first invented +this self-same thing called sleep—it covers a man all over +like a cloak.”</p> + +<p>Now there is more to me in this, and it speaks warmer to my +heart and affections, than all the dissertations squeez’d out +of the heads of the learned together upon the subject.</p> + +<p>—Not that I altogether disapprove of what <i>Montaigne</i> advances upon +it—’tis admirable in its way—(I quote by +memory.)</p> + +<p>The world enjoys other pleasures, says he, as they do that of +sleep, without tasting or feeling it as it slips and passes +by.—We should study and ruminate upon it, in order to render +proper thanks to him who grants it to us.—For this end I +cause myself to be disturbed in my sleep, that I may the better and +more sensibly relish it.——And yet I see few, says he +again, who live with less sleep, when need requires; my body is +capable of a firm, but not of a violent and sudden +agitation—I evade of late all violent +exercises——I am never weary with +walking——but from my youth, I never looked to ride upon +pavements. I love to lie hard and alone, and even without my +wife——This last word may stagger the faith of the +world——but remember, “La +Vraisemblance’ (as <i>Bayle</i> says in the affair of +<i>Liceti</i>) ’est pas toujours du Côté de la +Verité.” And so much for sleep.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>F</small> my wife will but venture +him—brother <i>Toby, Trismegistus</i> shall be dress’d +and brought down to us, whilst you and I are getting our breakfasts +together.——</p> + +<p>——Go, tell <i>Susannah, Obadiah</i>, to step +here.</p> + +<p>She is run up stairs, answered <i>Obadiah</i>, this very +instant, sobbing and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart +would break.</p> + +<p>We shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his +head from <i>Obadiah</i>, and looking wistfully in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s face for some time—we shall have a +devilish month of it, brother <i>Toby</i>, said my father, setting +his arms a’kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, +wind—brother <i>Toby</i>!—’Tis some misfortune, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>.——That it is, cried my +father—to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and +riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman’s house—Little boots it to the peace +of a family, brother <i>Toby</i>, that you and I possess ourselves, +and sit here silent and unmoved——whilst such a storm is +whistling over our heads.——</p> + +<p>And what’s the matter, <i>Susannah?</i> They have called +the child <i>Tristram</i>——and my mistress is just got +out of an hysterick fit about +it——No!——’tis not my fault, said +<i>Susannah</i>—I told him it was <i>Tristram-gistus.</i></p> + +<p>——Make tea for yourself, brother <i>Toby</i>, said +my father, taking down his hat——but how different from +the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common +reader would imagine!</p> + +<p>—For he spake in the sweetest modulation—and took +down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that ever +affliction harmonized and attuned together.</p> + +<p>——Go to the bowling-green for corporal <i>Trim</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, speaking to <i>Obadiah</i>, as soon as +my father left the room.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> the misfortune of my Nose fell +so heavily upon my father’s head;—the reader remembers +that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his +bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human +nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending +and descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of my +N<small>AME</small>;—no.</p> + +<p>The different weight, dear Sir——nay even the +different package of two vexations of the same +weight——makes a very wide difference in our manner of +bearing and getting through with them.——It is not half +an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor +devil’s writing for daily bread) I threw a fair sheet, which +I had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, +instead of the foul one.</p> + +<p>Instantly I snatch’d off my wig, and threw it +perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the +room—indeed I caught it as it fell——but there was +an end of the matter; nor do I think any think else in +<i>Nature</i> would have given such immediate ease: She, dear +Goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all <i>provoking +cases</i>, determines us to a sally of this or that member—or +else she thrusts us into this or that place, or posture of body, we +know not why——But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles +and mysteries——the most obvious things, which come in +our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate +into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst +us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of +nature’s works: so that this, like a thousand other things, +falls out for us in a way, which tho’ we cannot reason upon +it—yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences +and your worships——and that’s enough for us.</p> + +<p>Now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his +life——nor could he carry it up stairs like the other—he +walked composedly out with it to the fish-pond.</p> + +<p>Had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an +hour which way to have gone——reason, with all her +force, could not have directed him to any think like it: there is +something, Sir, in fish-ponds——but what it is, I leave +to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt ’em to find +out—but there is something, under the first disorderly +transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly +and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered +that neither <i>Pythagoras</i>, nor <i>Plato</i>, nor <i>Solon</i>, +nor <i>Lycurgus</i>, nor <i>Mahomet</i>, nor any one of your noted +lawgivers, ever gave order about them.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>Y<small>OUR</small> honour, said <i>Trim</i>, +shutting the parlour-door before he began to speak, has heard, I +imagine, of this unlucky accident——O yes, +<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and it gives me great +concern.—I am heartily concerned too, but I hope your honour, +replied <i>Trim</i>, will do me the justice to believe, that it was +not in the least owing to me.——To +thee—<i>Trim?</i>—cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking +kindly in his face——’twas <i>Susannah</i>’s +and the curate’s folly betwixt them.——What +business could they have together, an’ please your honour, in +the garden?——In the gallery thou meanest, replied my +uncle <i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>Trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a +low bow——Two misfortunes, quoth the corporal to +himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked +over at one time;——the mischief the cow has done in +breaking into the fortifications, may be told his honour +hereafter.——<i>Trim</i>’s casuistry and address, +under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, so he went on with what he had to say to <i>Trim</i> +as follows:</p> + +<p>——For my own part, <i>Trim</i>, though I can see +little or no difference betwixt my nephew’s being called <i>Tristram</i> or +<i>Trismegistus</i>—yet as the thing sits so near my +brother’s heart, <i>Trim</i>——I would freely have +given a hundred pounds rather than it should have +happened.——A hundred pounds, an’ please your +honour! replied <i>Trim</i>,—I would not give a cherry-stone +to boot.——Nor would I, <i>Trim</i>, upon my own +account, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>——but my brother, +whom there is no arguing with in this case—maintains that a +great deal more depends, <i>Trim</i>, upon christian-names, than +what ignorant people imagine——for he says there never +was a great or heroic action performed since the world began by one +called <i>Tristram</i>—nay, he will have it, <i>Trim</i>, +that a man can neither be learned, or wise, or +brave.——’Tis all fancy, an’ please your +honour—I fought just as well, replied the corporal, when the +regiment called me <i>Trim</i>, as when they called me <i>James +Butler.</i>——And for my own part, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, though I should blush to boast of myself, +<i>Trim</i>——yet had my name been <i>Alexander</i>, I could have done no more at +<i>Namur</i> than my duty.—Bless your honour! cried +<i>Trim</i>, advancing three steps as he spoke, does a man think of +his christian-name when he goes upon the attack?——Or +when he stands in the trench, <i>Trim?</i> cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, looking firm.——Or when he enters a breach? +said <i>Trim</i>, pushing in between two chairs.——Or +forces the lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch +like a pike.——Or facing a platoon? cried <i>Trim</i>, +presenting his stick like a firelock.——Or when he +marches up the glacis? cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking warm and +setting his foot upon his stool.——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father was returned from his walk +to the fish-pond——and opened the parlour-door in the +very height of the attack, just as my uncle <i>Toby</i> was +marching up the glacis——<i>Trim</i> recovered his +arms——never was my uncle <i>Toby</i> caught in riding at such a +desperate rate in his life! Alas! my uncle <i>Toby!</i> had not a +weightier matter called forth all the ready eloquence of my +father—how hadst thou then and thy poor +H<small>OBBY</small>-H<small>ORSE</small> too been insulted!</p> + +<p>My father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down; and +after giving a slight look at the disorder of the room, he took +hold of one of the chairs which had formed the corporal’s +breach, and placing it over-against my uncle <i>Toby</i>, he sat +down in it, and as soon as the tea-things were taken away, and the +door shut, he broke out in a lamentation as follows:</p> + +<p class="center"> +M<small>Y</small> F<small>ATHER'S</small> +L<small>AMENTATION</small> +</p> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is in vain longer, said my father, addressing +himself as much to <i>Ernulphus</i>’s curse, which was laid +upon the corner of the chimney-piece——as to my uncle +<i>Toby</i> who sat under it——it is in vain longer, +said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to struggle as I +have done against this most uncomfortable of human +persuasions——I see it plainly, that either for my own +sins, brother <i>Toby</i>, or the sins and follies of the +<i>Shandy</i> family, Heaven has thought fit to draw forth the +heaviest of its artillery against me; and that the prosperity of my +child is the point upon which the whole force of it is directed to +play.——Such a thing would batter the whole universe +about our ears, brother <i>Shandy</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—if it was so—Unhappy <i>Tristram!</i> child +of wrath! child of decrepitude! interruption! mistake! and +discontent! What one misfortune or disaster in the book of +embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy +filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest +into the world——what evils in thy passage into +it!——what evils since!——produced into +being, in the decline of thy father’s days——when +the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing feeble——when radical heat and radical +moisture, the elements which should have temper’d thine, were +drying up; and nothing left to found thy stamina in, but +negations—’tis pitiful——brother +<i>Toby</i>, at the best, and called out for all the little helps +that care and attention on both sides could give it. But how were +we defeated! You know the event, brother +<i>Toby</i>——’tis too melancholy a one to be +repeated now——when the few animal spirits I was worth +in the world, and with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should +have been convey’d——were all dispersed, confused, +confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil.——</p> + +<p>Here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution +against him;——and tried an experiment at +least——whether calmness and serenity of mind in your +sister, with a due attention, brother <i>Toby</i>, to her +evacuations and repletions——and the rest of her +non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have +set all things to rights.——My child was bereft of +these!——What a teazing life did she lead herself, and +consequently her fœtus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of +hers about lying-in in town? I thought my sister submitted with the +greatest patience, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>——I +never heard her utter one fretful word about it.——She +fumed inwardly, cried my father; and that, let me tell you, +brother, was ten times worse for the child—and then! what +battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual storms about the +midwife.——There she gave vent, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.——Vent! cried my father, looking up.</p> + +<p>But what was all this, my dear <i>Toby</i>, to the injuries done +us by my child’s coming head foremost into the world, when +all I wished, in this general wreck of his frame, was to have saved +this little casket unbroke, unrifled.——</p> + +<p>With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy +in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of +violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly +upon its apex—that at this hour ’tis ninety <i>per +Cent.</i> insurance, that the fine net-work of the intellectual web +be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters.</p> + +<p>——Still we could have done.——Fool, +coxcomb, puppy——give him but a +N<small>OSE</small>——Cripple, Dwarf, Driveller, +Goosecap——shape him as you will) the door of fortune +stands open—<i>O Licetus! Licetus!</i> had I been blest with +a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—Fate +might have done her worst.</p> + +<p>Still, brother <i>Toby</i>, there was one cast of the dye left +for our child after all—<i>O Tristram! Tristram! +Tristram!</i></p> + +<p>We will send for Mr. <i>Yorick</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>——You may send for whom you will, replied my +father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +W<small>HAT</small> a rate have I gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, +two up and two down for three volumes<a href="#fn15" +name="fnref15"><sup>[15]</sup></a> together, without looking once behind, or +even on one side of me, to see whom I trod upon!—I’ll tread upon no +one——quoth I to myself when I mounted——I’ll take +a good rattling gallop; but I’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the +road.——So off I set——up one lane——down +another, through this turnpike——over that, as if the arch-jockey of +jockeys had got behind me. +</p> + +<p>Now ride at this rate with what good intention and resolution +you may——’tis a million to one you’ll do +some one a mischief, if not yourself——He’s +flung—he’s off—he’s lost his +hat—he’s down——he’ll break his +neck——see!——if he has not galloped full +among the scaffolding of the undertaking +criticks!——he’ll knock his brains out against +some of their posts—he’s bounced out!—look—he’s now riding like a +mad-cap full tilt through a whole crowd of painters, fiddlers, +poets, biographers, physicians, lawyers, logicians, players, +school-men, churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, casuists, connoisseurs, +prelates, popes, and engineers.—Don’t fear, said +I—I’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the +king’s highway.—But your horse throws dirt; see +you’ve splash’d a bishop——I hope in God, +’twas only <i>Ernulphus</i>, said I.——But you +have squirted full in the faces of Mess. <i>Le Moyne, De +Romigny</i>, and <i>De Marcilly</i>, doctors of the +<i>Sorbonne.</i>——That was last year, replied +I.—But you have trod this moment upon a +king.——Kings have bad times on’t, said I, to be +trod upon by such people as me.</p> + +<p>You have done it, replied my accuser.</p> + +<p>I deny it, quoth I, and so have got off, and here am I standing +with my bridle in one hand, and with my cap in the other, to tell +my story.——And what in it? You shall hear in the next +chapter.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn15"></a> <a href="#fnref15">[15]</a> +According to the preceding Editions. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVI</small> +</h3> + +<p> +A<small>S</small> <i>Francis</i> the first of <i>France</i> was one winterly +night warming himself over the embers of a wood fire, and talking with his +first minister of sundry things for the good of the state<a href="#fn16" +name="fnref16"><sup>[16]</sup></a>—It would not be amiss, said the king, +stirring up the embers with his cane, if this good understanding betwixt +ourselves and <i>Switzerland</i> was a little strengthened.—There is no +end, Sire, replied the minister, in giving money to these people—they +would swallow up the treasury of <i>France.</i>—Poo! poo! answered the +king—there are more ways, Mons. <i>le Premier</i>, of bribing states, +besides that of giving money—I’ll pay <i>Switzerland</i> the honour +of standing godfather for my next child.——Your majesty, said the +minister, in so doing, would have all the grammarians in <i>Europe</i> upon +your back;——<i>Switzerland</i>, as a republic, being a female, can +in no construction be godfather.—She may be godmother, replied +<i>Francis</i> hastily—so announce my intentions by a courier to-morrow +morning. +</p> + +<p>I am astonished, said <i>Francis</i> the First, (that day +fortnight) speaking to his minister as he entered the closet, that +we have had no answer from <i>Switzerland.</i>——Sire, I +wait upon you this moment, said Mons. <i>le Premier</i>, to lay +before you my dispatches upon that business.—They take it +kindly, said the king.—They do, Sire, replied the minister, +and have the highest sense of the honour your majesty has done +them——but the republick, as godmother, claims her +right, in this case, of naming the child.</p> + +<p>In all reason, quoth the king—she will christen him +<i>Francis</i>, or <i>Henry</i>, or <i>Lewis</i>, or some name that +she knows will be agreeable to us. Your majesty is deceived, +replied the minister——I have this hour received a +dispatch from our resident, with the determination of the republic +on that point also.——And what name has the republick +fixed upon for the Dauphin?——<i>Shadrach, Mesech, Abed-nego</i>, replied the +minister.—By Saint <i>Peter</i>’s girdle, I will have +nothing to do with the <i>Swiss</i>, cried <i>Francis</i> the +First, pulling up his breeches and walking hastily across the +floor.</p> + +<p>Your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself +off.</p> + +<p>We’ll pay them in money——said the king.</p> + +<p>Sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, +answered the minister.——I’ll pawn the best jewel +in my crown, quoth <i>Francis</i> the First.</p> + +<p>Your honour stands pawn’d already in this matter, answered +Monsieur <i>le Premier.</i></p> + +<p>Then, Mons. <i>le Premier</i>, said the king, +by——we’ll go to war with ’em.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn16"></a> <a href="#fnref16">[16]</a> +Vide Menagiana, Vol. I. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>LBEIT</small>, gentle reader, I have lusted +earnestly, and endeavoured carefully (according to the measure of +such a slender skill as God has vouchsafed me, and as convenient +leisure from other occasions of needful profit and healthful +pastime have permitted) that these little books which I here put +into thy hands, might stand instead of many bigger books—yet +have I carried myself towards thee in such fanciful guise of +careless disport, that right sore am I ashamed now to intreat thy +lenity seriously——in beseeching thee to believe it of +me, that in the story of my father and his christian-names—I +have no thoughts of treading upon <i>Francis</i> the +First——nor in the affair of the nose—upon +<i>Francis</i> the Ninth—nor in the character of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——of characterizing the militiating spirits +of my country—the wound upon his groin, is a wound to every +comparison of that kind—nor by <i>Trim</i>—that I meant +the duke of <i>Ormond</i>—or that my book is wrote against +predestination, or free-will, or taxes—If ’tis wrote +against any thing,——’tis wrote, an’ please +your worships, against the spleen! in order, by a more frequent and +a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, and +the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles +in laughter, to drive the <i>gall</i> and other <i>bitter +juices</i> from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his +majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which +belong to them, down into their duodenums.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>—B<small>UT</small> can the thing be undone, +<i>Yorick?</i> said my father—for in my opinion, continued +he, it cannot. I am a vile canonist, replied +<i>Yorick</i>—but of all evils, holding suspence to be the +most tormenting, we shall at least know the worst of this matter. I +hate these great dinners——said my father—The size +of the dinner is not the point, answered +<i>Yorick</i>——we want, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, to dive into +the bottom of this doubt, whether the name can be changed or +not—and as the beards of so many commissaries, officials, +advocates, proctors, registers, and of the most eminent of our +school-divines, and others, are all to meet in the middle of one table, and <i>Didius</i> has so +pressingly invited you—who in your distress would miss such +an occasion? All that is requisite, continued <i>Yorick</i>, is to +apprize <i>Didius</i>, and let him manage a conversation after +dinner so as to introduce the subject.—Then my brother +<i>Toby</i>, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, +shall go with us.</p> + +<p>——Let my old tye-wig, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +and my laced regimentals, be hung to the fire all night, +<i>Trim.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LX</small> +</h3> + +<p>—N<small>O</small> doubt, Sir,—there is +a whole chapter wanting here—and a chasm of ten pages made in +the book by it—but the book-binder is neither a fool, or a +knave, or a puppy—nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at +least upon that score)——but, on the contrary, the book +is more perfect and complete by wanting the chapter, than having +it, as I shall demonstrate to your reverences in this +manner.—I question first, by-the-bye, whether the same +experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other +chapters——but there is no end, an’ please your +reverences, in trying experiments upon chapters——we +have had enough of it——So there’s an end of that +matter.</p> + +<p>But before I begin my demonstration, let me only +tell you, that the chapter which I have torn out, and which +otherwise you would all have been reading just now, instead of +this——was the description of my father’s, my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s, <i>Trim</i>’s, and +<i>Obadiah</i>’s setting out and journeying to the visitation +at ****</p> + +<p>We’ll go in the coach, said my father—Prithee, have +the arms been altered, <i>Obadiah</i>?—It would have made my +story much better to have begun with telling you, that at the time +my mother’s arms were added to the <i>Shandy</i>’s, +when the coach was re-painted upon my father’s marriage, it +had so fallen out that the coach-painter, whether by performing all +his works with the left hand, like <i>Turpilius</i> the +<i>Roman</i>, or <i>Hans Holbein</i> of +<i>Basil</i>——or whether ’twas more from the +blunder of his head than hand——or whether, lastly, it +was from the sinister turn which every thing relating to our family +was apt to take——it so fell out, however, to our +reproach, that instead of the <i>bend-dexter</i>, which since +<i>Harry</i> the Eighth’s reign was honestly our +due——a <i>bend-sinister</i>, by some of these +fatalities, had been drawn quite across the field of the +<i>Shandy</i> arms. ’Tis scarce credible that the mind of so +wise a man as my father was, could be so much incommoded with so +small a matter. The word coach—let it be whose it +would—or coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could +never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of +carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his own; +he never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, +without turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow +at the same time, that it was the last time he would ever set his +foot in it again, till the <i>bend-sinister</i> was taken +out—but like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many +things which the <i>Destinies</i> had set down in their books ever +to be grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)—but never +to be mended.</p> + +<p>—Has the <i>bend-sinister</i> been brush’d out, I +say? said my father.——There has been nothing brush’d out, Sir, answered +<i>Obadiah</i>, but the lining. We’ll go o’horseback, +said my father, turning to <i>Yorick</i>—Of all things in the +world, except politicks, the clergy know the least of heraldry, +said <i>Yorick.</i>—No matter for that, cried my +father——I should be sorry to appear with a blot in my +escutcheon before them.—Never mind the <i>bend-sinister</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, putting on his tye-wig.——No, +indeed, said my father—you may go with my aunt <i>Dinah</i> +to a visitation with a <i>bend-sinister</i>, if you think +fit—My poor uncle <i>Toby</i> blush’d. My father was +vexed at himself.——No——my dear brother +<i>Toby</i>, said my father, changing his tone——but the +damp of the coach-lining about my loins, may give me the sciatica +again, as it did <i>December, January</i>, and <i>February</i> last +winter—so if you please you shall ride my wife’s +pad——and as you are to preach, <i>Yorick</i>, you had +better make the best of your way before——and leave me +to take care of my brother <i>Toby</i>, and to follow at our own +rates.</p> + +<p>Now the chapter I was obliged to tear out, was the description +of this cavalcade, in which Corporal <i>Trim</i> and +<i>Obadiah</i>, upon two coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow +as a patrole——whilst my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in his laced +regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep +roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning +and arms, as each could get the start.</p> + +<p>—But the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, +appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else +I have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have +remained in it, without depreciating every other scene; and +destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, +(whether of good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from whence +the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my +own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little +about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the +world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, +madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it.</p> + +<p>—This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that +some of the lowest and flattest compositions pass off very +well——(as <i>Yorick</i> told my uncle <i>Toby</i> one +night) by siege.——My uncle <i>Toby</i> looked brisk at +the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of +it.</p> + +<p>I’m to preach at court next Sunday, said +<i>Homenas</i>——run over my notes——so I +humm’d over doctor <i>Homenas</i>’s notes—the +modulation’s very well—’twill do, <i>Homenas</i>, +if it holds on at this rate——so on I +humm’d——and a tolerable tune I thought it was; +and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found +out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, but that +all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so +rich, so heavenly,—it carried my soul up with it into the +other world; now had I (as <i>Montaigne</i> complained in a +parallel accident)—had I found the declivity easy, or the ascent +accessible——certes I had been +outwitted.——Your notes, <i>Homenas</i>, I should have +said, are good notes;——but it was so perpendicular a +precipice——so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, +that by the first note I humm’d I found myself flying into +the other world, and from thence discovered the vale from whence I +came, so deep, so low, and dismal, that I shall never have the +heart to descend into it again.</p> + +<p>=>A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his +own size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than +one.—And so much for tearing out of chapters.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——S<small>EE</small> if he is not +cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to light their +pipes!——’Tis abominable, answered <i>Didius;</i> +it should not go unnoticed, said doctor +<i>Kysarcius</i>—— => he was of the <i>Kysarcii</i> +of the Low Countries.</p> + +<p>Methinks, said <i>Didius</i>, half rising from his chair, in +order to remove a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a +direct line betwixt him and <i>Yorick</i>——you might +have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon a more proper +place, Mr. <i>Yorick</i>—or at least upon a more proper +occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: If +the sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes +with——’twas certainly, Sir, not good enough to be +preached before so learned a body; and if ’twas good enough +to be preached before so learned a body——’twas +certainly Sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards.</p> + +<p>——I have got him fast hung up, quoth <i>Didius</i> +to himself, upon one of the two horns of my +dilemma——let him get off as he can.</p> + +<p>I have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth +this sermon, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, upon this +occasion——that I declare, <i>Didius</i>, I would suffer +martyrdom—and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over, before I would +sit down and make such another: I was delivered of it at the wrong +end of me——it came from my head instead of my +heart——and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the +writing and preaching of it, that I revenge myself of it, in this +manner—To preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the +subtleties of our wit—to parade in the eyes of the vulgar +with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinsel’d +over with a few words which glitter, but convey little light and +less warmth——is a dishonest use of the poor single half +hour in a week which is put into our hands—’Tis not +preaching the gospel—but ourselves——For my own +part, continued <i>Yorick</i>, I had rather direct five words +point-blank to the heart.—</p> + +<p>As <i>Yorick</i> pronounced the word <i>point-blank</i>, my +uncle <i>Toby</i> rose up to say something upon +projectiles——when a single word and no more uttered +from the opposite side of the table drew every one’s ears towards it—a word of all +others in the dictionary the last in that place to be +expected—a word I am ashamed to write—yet must be +written——must be +read—illegal—uncanonical—guess ten thousand +guesses, multiplied into themselves—rack—torture your +invention for ever, you’re where you was——In +short, I’ll tell it in the next chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXII</small> +</h3> + +<p> +Z<small>OUNDS</small>!————————————————————————Z——ds! +cried <i>Phutatorius</i>, partly to himself——and yet high enough to +be heard—and what seemed odd, ’twas uttered in a construction of +look, and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement and +one in bodily pain. +</p> + +<p>One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the +expression and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a +<i>third</i> or a <i>fifth</i>, or any other chord in musick—were the most puzzled and perplexed +with it—the concord was good in itself—but then +’twas quite out of the key, and no way applicable to the +subject started;——so that with all their knowledge, +they could not tell what in the world to make of it.</p> + +<p>Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent +their ears to the plain import of the <i>word</i>, imagined that +<i>Phutatorius</i>, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was +just going to snatch the cudgels out of <i>Didius</i>’s +hands, in order to bemaul <i>Yorick</i> to some purpose—and +that the desperate monosyllable Z——ds was the exordium +to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but +a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s good-nature felt a pang for what <i>Yorick</i> +was about to undergo. But seeing <i>Phutatorius</i> stop short, +without any attempt or desire to go on—a third party began to +suppose, that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, +casually forming itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath—without the sin or substance of one.</p> + +<p>Others, and especially one or two who sat next him, looked upon +it on the contrary as a real and substantial oath, propensly formed +against <i>Yorick</i>, to whom he was known to bear no good +liking—which said oath, as my father philosophized upon it, +actually lay fretting and fuming at that very time in the upper +regions of <i>Phutatorius</i>’s purtenance; and so was +naturally, and according to the due course of things, first +squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood which was driven into +the right ventricle of <i>Phutatorius</i>’s heart, by the +stroke of surprize which so strange a theory of preaching had +excited.</p> + +<p>How finely we argue upon mistaken facts!</p> + +<p>There was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon +the monosyllable which <i>Phutatorius</i> uttered—who did not +take this for granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, +that <i>Phutatorius</i>’s mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was arising between +<i>Didius</i> and <i>Yorick;</i> and indeed as he looked first +towards the one and then towards the other, with the air of a man +listening to what was going forwards—who would not have +thought the same? But the truth was, that <i>Phutatorius</i> knew +not one word or one syllable of what was passing—but his +whole thoughts and attention were taken up with a transaction which +was going forwards at that very instant within the precincts of his +own <i>Galligaskins</i>, and in a part of them, where of all others +he stood most interested to watch accidents: So that +notwithstanding he looked with all the attention in the world, and +had gradually skrewed up every nerve and muscle in his face, to the +utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it was +thought, to give a sharp reply to <i>Yorick</i>, who sat +over-against him——yet, I say, was <i>Yorick</i> never +once in any one domicile of <i>Phutatorius</i>’s +brain——but the true cause of his exclamation lay at +least a yard below.</p> + +<p>This I will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable +decency.</p> + +<p>You must be informed then, that <i>Gastripheres</i>, who had +taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how +things went on—observing a wicker-basket of fine chesnuts +standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of +them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was +over— <i>Gastripheres</i> inforcing his orders about +them, that <i>Didius</i>, but <i>Phutatorius</i> especially, were +particularly fond of ’em.</p> + +<p>About two minutes before the time that my uncle <i>Toby</i> +interrupted <i>Yorick</i>’s +harangue—<i>Gastripheres</i>’s chesnuts were brought +in—and as <i>Phutatorius</i>’s fondness for ’em +was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he laid them directly +before <i>Phutatorius</i>, wrapt up hot in a clean damask +napkin.</p> + +<p>Now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen +hands all thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one +chesnut, of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in +motion—it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent +rolling off the table; and as <i>Phutatorius</i> sat straddling +under——it fell perpendicularly into that particular +aperture of <i>Phutatorius</i>’s breeches, for which, to the +shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no +chaste word throughout all <i>Johnson</i>’s +dictionary——let it suffice to say——it was +that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of +decorum do strictly require, like the temple of <i>Janus</i> (in +peace at least) to be universally shut up.</p> + +<p>The neglect of this punctilio in <i>Phutatorius</i> (which +by-the-bye should be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to +this accident.——</p> + +<p>Accident I call it, in compliance to a received mode of +speaking——but in no opposition to the opinion either of +<i>Acrites</i> or <i>Mythogeras</i> in this matter; I know they +were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it—and are so +to this hour, That there was nothing of accident in the whole +event——but that the chesnut’s taking that particular course, and +in a manner of its own accord—and then falling with all its +heat directly into that one particular place, and no +other——was a real judgment upon <i>Phutatorius</i> for +that filthy and obscene treatise <i>de Concubinis retinendis</i>, +which <i>Phutatorius</i> had published about twenty years +ago——and was that identical week going to give the +world a second edition of.</p> + +<p>It is not my business to dip my pen in this +controversy——much undoubtedly may be wrote on both +sides of the question—all that concerns me as an historian, +is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the +reader, that the hiatus in <i>Phutatorius</i>’s breeches was +sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;——and that the +chesnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and piping hot +into it, without <i>Phutatorius</i>’s perceiving it, or any +one else at that time.</p> + +<p>The genial warmth which the chesnut imparted, was not +undelectable for the first twenty or five-and-twenty +seconds——and did no more than gently solicit +<i>Phutatorius</i>’s attention towards the +part:——But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few +seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and +then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain, the soul of +<i>Phutatorius</i>, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his +attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deliberation, +ratiocination, memory, fancy, with ten battalions of animal +spirits, all tumultuously crowded down, through different defiles +and circuits, to the place of danger, leaving all his upper +regions, as you may imagine, as empty as my purse.</p> + +<p>With the best intelligence which all these messengers could +bring him back, <i>Phutatorius</i> was not able to dive into the +secret of what was going forwards below, nor could he make any kind +of conjecture, what the devil was the matter with it: However, as +he knew not what the true cause might turn out, he deemed it most +prudent in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a Stoick; +which, with the help of some wry faces and compursions of the +mouth, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued +neuter;——but the sallies of the imagination are +ungovernable in things of this kind—a thought instantly +darted into his mind, that tho’ the anguish had the sensation +of glowing heat—it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as +well as a burn; and if so, that possibly a <i>Newt</i> or an +<i>Asker</i>, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was +fastening his teeth——the horrid idea of which, with a +fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chesnut, seized +<i>Phutatorius</i> with a sudden panick, and in the first +terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him, as it has done +the best generals upon earth, quite off his guard:——the +effect of which was this, that he leapt incontinently up, uttering +as he rose that interjection of surprise so much descanted upon, +with the aposiopestic break after it, marked thus, +Z——ds—which, though not strictly canonical, was still as little as any man +could have said upon the occasion;——and which, +by-the-bye, whether canonical or not, <i>Phutatorius</i> could no +more help than he could the cause of it.</p> + +<p>Though this has taken up some time in the narrative, it took up +little more time in the transaction, than just to allow time for +<i>Phutatorius</i> to draw forth the chesnut, and throw it down +with violence upon the floor—and for <i>Yorick</i> to rise +from his chair, and pick the chesnut up.</p> + +<p>It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over +the mind:——What incredible weight they have in forming +and governing our opinions, both of men and +things——that trifles, light as air, shall waft a belief +into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within +it——that <i>Euclid</i>’s demonstrations, could +they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power +to overthrow it.</p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i>, I said, picked up the chesnut which <i>Phutatorius</i>’s wrath had flung +down——the action was trifling——I am ashamed +to account for it—he did it, for no reason, but that he +thought the chesnut not a jot worse for the adventure—and +that he held a good chesnut worth stooping for.——But +this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in +<i>Phutatorius</i>’s head: He considered this act of +<i>Yorick</i>’s in getting off his chair and picking up the +chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was +originally his—and in course, that it must have been the +owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played him +such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this opinion, +was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, +it afforded a fair opportunity for <i>Yorick</i>, who sat directly +over against <i>Phutatorius</i>, of slipping the chesnut +in——and consequently that he did it. The look of +something more than suspicion, which <i>Phutatorius</i> cast full +upon <i>Yorick</i> as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke +his opinion——and as <i>Phutatorius</i> was +naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person +besides, his opinion at once became the general +one;——and for a reason very different from any which +have been yet given——in a little time it was put out of +all manner of dispute.</p> + +<p>When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this +sublunary world——the mind of man, which is an +inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind +the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of +them.—The search was not long in this instance.</p> + +<p>It was well known that <i>Yorick</i> had never a good opinion of +the treatise which <i>Phutatorius</i> had wrote <i>de Concubinis +retinendis</i>, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the +world——and ’twas easily found out, that there was +a mystical meaning in <i>Yorick</i>’s prank—and that +his chucking the chesnut hot into <i>Phutatorius</i>’s +***——***, was a sarcastical fling at his book—the +doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest man in the +same place.</p> + +<p>This conceit awaken’d <i>Somnolentus</i>——made +<i>Agelastes</i> smile——and if you can recollect the +precise look and air of a man’s face intent in finding out a +riddle——it threw <i>Gastripheres</i>’s into that +form—and in short was thought by many to be a master-stroke +of arch-wit.</p> + +<p>This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as +groundless as the dreams of philosophy: <i>Yorick</i>, no doubt, as +<i>Shakespeare</i> said of his ancestor——“<i>was +a man of jest</i>,” but it was temper’d with something +which withheld him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of +which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but it was his +misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and +doing a thousand things, of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his +nature was incapable. All I blame him for——or rather, +all I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of +his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, +however in his power. In every ill usage of that sort, he acted +precisely as in the affair of his lean horse——he could +have explained it to his honour, but his spirit was above it; and +besides, he ever looked upon the inventor, the propagator and +believer of an illiberal report alike so injurious to him—he +could not stoop to tell his story to them——and so +trusted to time and truth to do it for him.</p> + +<p>This heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many +respects—in the present it was followed by the fixed +resentment of <i>Phutatorius</i>, who, as <i>Yorick</i> had just +made an end of his chesnut, rose up from his chair a second time, +to let him know it—which indeed he did with a smile; saying +only—that he would endeavour not to forget the +obligation.</p> + +<p>But you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these +two things in your mind.</p> + +<p>——The smile was for the company.</p> + +<p>——The threat was for <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>—C<small>AN</small> you tell me, quoth +<i>Phutatorius</i>, speaking <i>to Gastripheres</i> who sat next to +him——for one would not apply to a surgeon in so foolish +an affair——can you tell me, <i>Gastripheres</i>, what +is best to take out the fire?——Ask <i>Eugenius</i>, +said <i>Gastripheres.</i>——That greatly depends, said +<i>Eugenius</i>, pretending ignorance of the adventure, upon the +nature of the part——If it is a tender part, and a part +which can conveniently be wrapt up——It is both the one +and the other, replied <i>Phutatorius</i>, laying his hand as he +spoke, with an emphatical nod of his head, upon the part in +question, and lifting up his right leg at the same time to ease and +ventilate it.——If that is the case, said +<i>Eugenius</i>, I would advise you, <i>Phutatorius</i>, not to +tamper with it by any means; but if you will send to the next +printer, and trust your cure to such a simple thing as a soft sheet +of paper just come off the press—you need do nothing more than twist it +round.—The damp paper, quoth <i>Yorick</i> (who sat next to +his friend <i>Eugenius</i>) though I know it has a refreshing +coolness in it—yet I presume is no more than the +vehicle—and that the oil and lamp-black with which the paper +is so strongly impregnated, does the business.—Right, said +<i>Eugenius</i>, and is, of any outward application I would venture +to recommend, the most anodyne and safe.</p> + +<p>Was it my case, said <i>Gastripheres</i>, as the main thing is +the oil and lamp-black, I should spread them thick upon a rag, and +clap it on directly.——That would make a very devil of +it, replied <i>Yorick.</i>——And besides, added +<i>Eugenius</i>, it would not answer the intention, which is the +extreme neatness and elegance of the prescription, which the +Faculty hold to be half in half;——for consider, if the +type is a very small one (which it should be) the sanative +particles, which come into contact in this form, have the advantage +of being spread so infinitely thin, and with such a mathematical equality (fresh +paragraphs and large capitals excepted) as no art or management of +the spatula can come up to.——It falls out very luckily, +replied <i>Phutatorius</i>, that the second edition of my treatise +<i>de Concubinis retinendis</i> is at this instant in the +press.——You may take any leaf of it, said +<i>Eugenius</i>——no matter +which.——Provided, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, there is no +bawdry in it.——</p> + +<p>They are just now, replied <i>Phutatorius</i>, printing off the +ninth chapter——which is the last chapter but one in the +book.——Pray what is the title of that chapter? said +<i>Yorick;</i> making a respectful bow to <i>Phutatorius</i> as he +spoke.——I think, answered <i>Phutatorius</i>, +’tis that <i>de re concubinaria.</i></p> + +<p>For Heaven’s sake keep out of that chapter, quoth +<i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<p>——By all means—added <i>Eugenius.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>—N<small>OW</small>, quoth <i>Didius</i>, +rising up, and laying his right hand with his fingers spread upon +his breast——had such a blunder about a christian-name +happened before the Reformation——[It happened the day +before yesterday, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i> to himself]—and +when baptism was administer’d in +<i>Latin</i>—[’Twas all in <i>English</i>, said my +uncle]——many things might have coincided with it, and +upon the authority of sundry decreed cases, to have pronounced the +baptism null, with a power of giving the child a new name—Had +a priest, for instance, which was no uncommon thing, through +ignorance of the <i>Latin</i> tongue, baptized a child of +Tom-o’stiles, <i>in nomine patriæ & filia & +spiritum sanctos</i>—the baptism was held +null.——I beg your pardon, replied +<i>Kysarcius</i>——in that case, as the mistake was only +the <i>terminations</i>, the baptism was valid——and to +have rendered it null, the blunder of the priest should have fallen +upon the first syllable of each noun——and not, as in +your case, upon the last.</p> + +<p>My father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and +listen’d with infinite attention.</p> + +<p><i>Gastripheres</i>, for example, continued <i>Kysarcius</i>, +baptizes a child of <i>John Stradling</i>’s in <i>Gomine</i> +gatris, &c. &c. instead of <i>in Nomine patris</i>, +&c.——Is this a baptism? No—say the ablest +canonists; in as much as the radix of each word is hereby torn up, +and the sense and meaning of them removed and changed quite to +another object; for <i>Gomine</i> does not signify a name, nor +<i>gatris</i> a father.—What do they signify? said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.—Nothing at all——quoth +<i>Yorick.</i>——Ergo, such a baptism is null, said +<i>Kysarcius.</i>——</p> + +<p>In course, answered <i>Yorick</i>, in a tone two parts jest and +one part earnest.——</p> + +<p>But in the case cited, continued <i>Kysarcius</i>, where +<i>patriæ</i> is put for <i>patris, filia</i> for +<i>filii</i>, and so on——as it is a fault only in the declension, and the roots of the +words continue untouch’d, the inflections of their branches +either this way or that, does not in any sort hinder the baptism, +inasmuch as the same sense continues in the words as +before.——But then, said <i>Didius</i>, the intention of +the priest’s pronouncing them grammatically must have been +proved to have gone along with +it.——————Right, answered +<i>Kysarcius;</i> and of this, brother <i>Didius</i>, we have an +instance in a decree of the decretals of Pope <i>Leo</i> the +IIId.——But my brother’s child, cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, has nothing to do with the +Pope——’tis the plain child of a Protestant +gentleman, christen’d <i>Tristram</i> against the wills and +wishes both of his father and mother, and all who are a-kin to +it.——</p> + +<p>If the wills and wishes, said <i>Kysarcius</i>, interrupting my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, of those only who stand related to Mr. +<i>Shandy</i>’s child, were to have weight in this matter, +Mrs. <i>Shandy</i>, of all people, has the least to do in +it.——My uncle <i>Toby</i> lay’d down his pipe, and my father drew his chair still closer to +the table, to hear the conclusion of so strange an +introduction.</p> + +<p> +——It has not only been a question, Captain <i>Shandy</i>, amongst +the<a href="#fn17" name="fnref17"><sup>[17]</sup></a> best lawyers and civilians +in this land, continued <i>Kysarcius, “Whether the mother be of kin to +her child,”</i>—but, after much dispassionate enquiry and +jactitation of the arguments on all sides—it has been adjudged for the +negative—namely, <i>“That the mother is not of kin to her +child.”</i><a href="#fn18" name="fnref18"><sup>[18]</sup></a> My father +instantly clapp’d his hand upon my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s mouth, under +colour of whispering in his ear;—the truth was, he was alarmed for +<i>Lillabullero</i>—and having a great desire to hear more of so curious +an argument—he begg’d my uncle <i>Toby</i>, for heaven’s +sake, not to disappoint him in it.—My uncle <i>Toby</i> gave a +nod—resumed his pipe, and contenting himself with whistling +<i>Lillabullero</i> inwardly——<i>Kysarcius, Didius</i>, and +<i>Triptolemus</i> went on with the discourse as follows: +</p> + +<p>This determination, continued <i>Kysarcius</i>, how +contrary soever it may seem to run to the stream of vulgar ideas, +yet had reason strongly on its side; and has been put out of all +manner of dispute from the famous case, known commonly by the name +of the Duke of <i>Suffolk</i>’s case.——It is +cited in <i>Brook</i>, said <i>Triptolemus</i>——And +taken notice of by Lord <i>Coke</i>, added <i>Didius.</i>—And +you may find it in <i>Swinburn</i> on Testaments, said +<i>Kysarcius.</i></p> + +<p>The case, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, was this:</p> + +<p>In the reign of <i>Edward</i> the Sixth, <i>Charles</i> duke of +<i>Suffolk</i> having issue a son by one venter, and a daughter by +another venter, made his last will, wherein he devised goods to his +son, and died; after whose death the son died also——but +without will, without wife, and without child—his mother and +his sister by the father’s side (for she was born of the +former venter) then living. The mother took the administration of +her son’s goods, according to the statute of the 21st of <i>Harry</i> the Eighth, whereby it is +enacted, That in case any person die intestate the administration +of his goods shall be committed to the next of kin.</p> + +<p>The administration being thus (surreptitiously) granted to the +mother, the sister by the father’s side commenced a suit +before the Ecclesiastical Judge, alledging, 1st, That she herself +was next of kin; and 2dly, That the mother was not of kin at all to +the party deceased; and therefore prayed the court, that the +administration granted to the mother might be revoked, and be +committed unto her, as next of kin to the deceased, by force of the +said statute.</p> + +<p> +Hereupon, as it was a great cause, and much depending upon its issue—and +many causes of great property likely to be decided in times to come, by the +precedent to be then made——the most learned, as well in the laws of +this realm, as in the civil law, were consulted together, whether the mother +was of kin to her son, or no.—Whereunto not only the temporal +lawyers——but the church lawyers—the juris-consulti—the +jurisprudentes—the civilians—the advocates—the +commissaries—the judges of the consistory and prerogative courts of +<i>Canterbury</i> and <i>York</i>, with the master of the faculties, were all +unanimously of opinion, That the mother was not of<a href="#fn19" +name="fnref19"><sup>[19]</sup></a> kin to her child.—— +</p> + +<p>And what said the duchess of <i>Suffolk</i> to it? said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>.</p> + +<p>The unexpectedness of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s question, +confounded <i>Kysarcius</i> more than the ablest +advocate——He stopp’d a full minute, looking in my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s face without replying——and in +that single minute <i>Triptolemus</i> put by him, and took the lead +as follows.</p> + +<p>’Tis a ground and principle in the law, said +<i>Triptolemus</i>, that things do not ascend, but descend in it; +and I make no doubt ’tis for this cause, that however true it +is, that the child may be of the blood and seed of its parents——that +the parents, nevertheless, are not of the blood and seed of it; +inasmuch as the parents are not begot by the child, but the child +by the parents—For so they write, <i>Liberi sunt de sanguine +patris & matris, sed pater & mater non sunt de sanguine +liberorum.</i></p> + +<p> +——But this, <i>Triptolemus</i>, cried Didius, proves too +much—for from this authority cited it would follow, not only what indeed +is granted on all sides, that the mother is not of kin to her child—but +the father likewise.——It is held, said <i>Triptolemus</i>, the +better opinion; because the father, the mother, and the child, though they be +three persons, yet are they but (<i>una caro</i><a href="#fn20" +name="fnref20"><sup>[20]</sup></a>) one flesh; and consequently no degree of +kindred——or any method of acquiring one <i>in +nature.</i>——There you push the argument again too far, cried +<i>Didius</i>——for there is no prohibition <i>in nature</i>, though +there is in the Levitical law——but that a man may beget a child +upon his grandmother——in which case, supposing the issue a +daughter, she would stand in relation both of——But who ever +thought, cried <i>Kysarcius</i>, of laying with his +grandmother?——The young gentleman, replied <i>Yorick</i>, whom +<i>Selden</i> speaks of——who not only thought of it, but justified +his intention to his father by the argument drawn from the law of +retaliation.—“You laid, Sir, with my mother,” said the +lad—“why may not I lay with yours?”——’Tis +the <i>Argumentum commune</i>, added <i>Yorick.</i>——’Tis as +good, replied <i>Eugenius</i>, taking down his hat, as they deserve. +</p> + +<p>The company broke up.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn17"></a> <a href="#fnref17">[17]</a> +Vide Swinburn on Testaments, Part 7. §8. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn18"></a> <a href="#fnref18">[18]</a> +Vide Brook Abridg. Tit. Administr. N. 47. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn19"></a> <a href="#fnref19">[19]</a> +Mater non numeratur inter consanguineos, Bald. in ult. C. de Verb. signific. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn20"></a> <a href="#fnref20">[20]</a> +Vide Brook Abridg. tit. Administr. N .47. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>—A<small>ND</small> pray, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, leaning upon <i>Yorick</i>, as he and my father were +helping him leisurely down the stairs——don’t be +terrified, madam, this stair-case conversation is not so long as the last——And pray, +<i>Yorick</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, which way is this said +affair of <i>Tristram</i> at length settled by these learned men? +Very satisfactorily, replied <i>Yorick;</i> no mortal, Sir, has any +concern with it——for Mrs. <i>Shandy</i> the mother is +nothing at all a-kin to him——and as the mother’s +is the surest side——Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, in course is +still less than nothing——In short, he is not as much +a-kin to him, Sir, as I am.——</p> + +<p>——That may well be, said my father, shaking his +head.</p> + +<p>——Let the learned say what they will, there must +certainly, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, have been some sort of +consanguinity betwixt the duchess of <i>Suffolk</i> and her +son.</p> + +<p>The vulgar are of the same opinion, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, to this +hour.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> my father was hugely tickled +with the subtleties of these learned +discourses——’twas still but like the anointing of +a broken bone——The moment he got home, the weight of +his afflictions returned upon him but so much the heavier, as is +ever the case when the staff we lean on slips from under +us.—He became pensive—walked frequently forth to the +fish-pond—let down one loop of his +hat——sigh’d often——forbore to +snap—and, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion +snapping, so much assist perspiration and digestion, as +<i>Hippocrates</i> tells us—he had certainly fallen ill with +the extinction of them, had not his thoughts been critically drawn +off, and his health rescued by a fresh train of disquietudes left +him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by my aunt +<i>Dinah.</i></p> + +<p>My father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by +the right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how +to lay it out mostly to the honour of his family.—A +hundred-and-fifty odd projects took possession of his brains by +turns—he would do this, and that and t’other—He +would go to <i>Rome</i>——he would go to +law——he would buy stock——he would buy +<i>John Hobson</i>’s farm—he would new fore front his +house, and add a new wing to make it even——There was a +fine water-mill on this side, and he would build a wind-mill on the +other side of the river in full view to answer it—But above +all things in the world, he would inclose the great <i>Ox-moor</i>, +and send out my brother <i>Bobby</i> immediately upon his +travels.</p> + +<p>But as the sum was finite, and consequently could not do every +thing——and in truth very few of these to any +purpose—of all the projects which offered themselves upon +this occasion, the two last seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have determined +upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at above, +which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour +either of the one or the other.</p> + +<p>This was not altogether so easy to be done; for though +’tis certain my father had long before set his heart upon +this necessary part of my brother’s education, and like a +prudent man had actually determined to carry it into execution, +with the first money that returned from the second creation of +actions in the <i>Missisippi</i>-scheme, in which he was an +adventurer——yet the <i>Ox-moor</i>, which was a fine, +large, whinny, undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the +<i>Shandy</i>-estate, had almost as old a claim upon him: he had +long and affectionately set his heart upon turning it likewise to +some account.</p> + +<p>But having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture +of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of their claims——like a +wise man he had refrained entering into any nice or critical +examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every other +project at this crisis——the two old projects, the +O<small>X-MOOR</small> and my B<small>ROTHER</small>, divided him +again; and so equal a match were they for each other, as to become +the occasion of no small contest in the old gentleman’s +mind—which of the two should be set o’going first.</p> + +<p>——People may laugh as they will—but the case +was this.</p> + +<p>It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time +was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of +it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts +before marriage—not only for the sake of bettering his own +private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much +air—but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the +feather put into his cap, of having been abroad—<i>tantum valet</i>, my father would say, +<i>quantum sonat.</i></p> + +<p>Now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian +indulgence——to deprive him of it, without why or +wherefore——and thereby make an example of him, as the +first <i>Shandy</i> unwhirl’d about <i>Europe</i> in a +post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad——would +be using him ten times worse than a <i>Turk.</i></p> + +<p>On the other hand, the case of the <i>Ox-moor</i> was full as +hard.</p> + +<p>Exclusive of the original purchase-money, which was eight +hundred pounds——it had cost the family eight hundred +pounds more in a law-suit about fifteen years before—besides +the Lord knows what trouble and vexation.</p> + +<p>It had been moreover in possession of the <i>Shandy</i>-family +ever since the middle of the last century; and though it lay full +in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the +water-mill, and on the other by the projected wind-mill spoken of above—and for all these reasons +seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the +care and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable +fatality, common to men, as well as the ground they tread +on——it had all along most shamefully been +overlook’d; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so +much by it, that it would have made any man’s heart have bled +(<i>Obadiah</i> said) who understood the value of the land, to have +rode over it, and only seen the condition it was in.</p> + +<p>However, as neither the purchasing this tract of +ground—nor indeed the placing of it where it lay, were either +of them, properly speaking, of my father’s +doing——he had never thought himself any way concerned +in the affair——till the fifteen years before, when the +breaking out of that cursed law-suit mentioned above (and which had +arose about its boundaries)——which being altogether my +father’s own act and deed, it naturally awakened every other +argument in its favour, and upon summing them all up +together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he was +bound to do something for it——and that now or never was +the time.</p> + +<p>I think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill-luck in +it, that the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally +balanced by each other; for though my father weigh’d them in +all humours and conditions——spent many an anxious hour +in the most profound and abstracted meditation upon what was best +to be done—reading books of farming one +day——books of travels another——laying aside +all passion whatever—viewing the arguments on both sides in +all their lights and circumstances—communing every day with +my uncle <i>Toby</i>—arguing with <i>Yorick</i>, and talking +over the whole affair of the <i>Ox-moor</i> with +<i>Obadiah</i>——yet nothing in all that time appeared +so strongly in behalf of the one, which was not either strictly +applicable to the other, or at least so far counterbalanced by some consideration of equal +weight, as to keep the scales even.</p> + +<p>For to be sure, with proper helps, in the hands of some people, +tho’ the <i>Ox-moor</i> would undoubtedly have made a +different appearance in the world from what it did, or ever could +do in the condition it lay——yet every tittle of this +was true, with regard to my brother <i>Bobby</i>——let +<i>Obadiah</i> say what he would.——</p> + +<p>In point of interest——the contest, I own, at first +sight, did not appear so undecisive betwixt them; for whenever my +father took pen and ink in hand, and set about calculating the +simple expence of paring and burning, and fencing in the +<i>Ox-moor</i>, &c. &c.—with the certain profit it +would bring him in return——the latter turned out so +prodigiously in his way of working the account, that you would have +sworn the <i>Ox-moor</i> would have carried all before it. For it +was plain he should reap a hundred lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a last, the very first +year——besides an excellent crop of wheat the year +following——and the year after that, to speak within +bounds, a hundred——but in all likelihood, a hundred and +fifty——if not two hundred quarters of pease and +beans——besides potatoes without end.——But +then, to think he was all this while breeding up my brother, like a +hog to eat them——knocked all on the head again, and +generally left the old gentleman in such a state of +suspense——that, as he often declared to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——he knew no more than his heels what to +do.</p> + +<p>No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing +thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects +of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction +at the same time: for to say nothing of the havock, which by a +certain consequence is unavoidably made by it all over the finer +system of the nerves, which you know convey the animal spirits and more subtle +juices from the heart to the head, and so on——it is not +to be told in what a degree such a wayward kind of friction works +upon the more gross and solid parts, wasting the fat and impairing +the strength of a man every time as it goes backwards and +forwards.</p> + +<p>My father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he +had done under that of my <small>CHRISTIAN +NAME</small>——had he not been rescued out of it, as he +was out of that, by a fresh evil——the misfortune of my +brother <i>Bobby</i>’s death.</p> + +<p>What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to +side?——from sorrow to sorrow?——to button up +one cause of vexation——and unbutton another?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>F<small>ROM</small> this moment I am to be +considered as heir-apparent to the <i>Shandy</i> +family——and it is from this point properly, that the +story of my L<small>IFE</small> and my O<small>PINIONS</small> sets +out. With all my hurry and precipitation, I have but been clearing +the ground to raise the building——and such a building +do I foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never +was executed since <i>Adam.</i> In less than five minutes I shall +have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink +which is left remaining at the bottom of my ink-horn, after +it—I have but half a score things to do in the +time——I have a thing to name——a thing to +lament——a thing to hope——a thing to +promise, and a thing to threaten—I have a thing to +suppose—a thing to declare——a thing to +conceal——a thing to choose, and a thing to pray for——This chapter, +therefore, I <i>name</i> the chapter of +T<small>HINGS</small>——and my next chapter to it, that +is, the first chapter of my next volume, if I live, shall be my +chapter upon <small>WHISKERS</small>, in order to keep up some sort +of connection in my works.</p> + +<p>The thing I lament is, that things have crowded in so thick upon +me, that I have not been able to get into that part of my work, +towards which I have all the way looked forwards, with so much +earnest desire; and that is the Campaigns, but especially the +amours of my uncle <i>Toby</i>, the events of which are of so +singular a nature, and so Cervantick a cast, that if I can so +manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other +brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in my own—I +will answer for it the book shall make its way in the world, much +better than its master has done before it.——Oh +<i>Tristram! Tristram!</i> can this but be once brought +about——the credit, which will attend thee as an author, shall counterbalance the many +evils will have befallen thee as a man——thou wilt feast +upon the one——when thou hast lost all sense and +remembrance of the other!——</p> + +<p>No wonder I itch so much as I do, to get at these +amours—They are the choicest morsel of my whole story! and +when I do get at ’em——assure yourselves, good +folks—(nor do I value whose squeamish stomach takes offence +at it) I shall not be at all nice in the choice of my +words!——and that’s the thing I have to +<i>declare.</i>——I shall never get all through in five +minutes, that I fear——and the thing I <i>hope</i> is, +that your worships and reverences are not offended—if you +are, depend upon’t I’ll give you something, my good +gentry, next year to be offended at——that’s my +dear <i>Jenny</i>’s way—but who my <i>Jenny</i> +is—and which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, +is the thing to be <i>concealed</i>—it shall be told you in +the next chapter but one to my chapter of Button-holes——and not one chapter +before.</p> + +<p> +And now that you have just got to the end of these<a href="#fn21" +name="fnref21"><sup>[21]</sup></a> three volumes——the thing I have +to <i>ask</i> is, how you feel your heads? my own akes +dismally!——as for your healths, I know, they are much +better.—True <i>Shandeism</i>, think what you will against it, opens the +heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it +forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its +channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. +</p> + +<p>Was I left, like <i>Sancho Pança</i>, to choose my +kingdom, it should not be maritime—or a kingdom of blacks to +make a penny of;—no, it should be a kingdom of hearty +laughing subjects: And as the bilious and more saturnine passions, +by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have as bad an +influence, I see, upon the body politick as body natural——and as nothing but a +habit of virtue can fully govern those passions, and subject them +to reason——I should add to my prayer—that God +would give my subjects grace to be as <small>WISE</small> as they +were <small>MERRY</small>; and then should I be the happiest +monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven.</p> + +<p>And so with this moral for the present, may it please your +worships and your reverences, I take my leave of you till this time +twelve-month, when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean +time) I’ll have another pluck at your beards, and lay open a +story to the world you little dream of.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn21"></a> <a href="#fnref21">[21]</a> +According to the preceding Editions. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>END OF THE SECOND VOLUME</small> +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image06.jpg" width="300" height="505" alt="Tristram Shandy" /> +</div> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Tristram Shandy</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a> +<small>THE</small><br/> +LIFE <small>AND</small> OPINIONS<br/> +<small>OF</small><br/> +TRISTRAM SHANDY,<br/> +<small>GENTLEMAN<br/> +———<br/> +Volume the Third<br/> +———</small> +</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +Dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris<br/> +Cum venia dabis.——               +   HOR. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +—Si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut mordacius quam +deceat Christianum—non Ego, sed Democritus dixit.—    +             ERASMUS. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Si quis Clericus, aut Monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia, sciebat, +anathema esto.                + Second Council of CARTHAGE. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>TO THE<br/> +RIGHT HONOURABLE</small><br/> +<b>J O H N,</b><br/> +LORD VISCOUNT SPENCER +</p> + +<p>MY LORD,<br/> +<br/> +I <small>HUMBLY</small> beg leave to offer you these two Volumes<a href="#fn22" +name="fnref22"><sup>[22]</sup></a>; they are the best my talents, with such bad +health as I have, could produce:—had Providence granted me a larger stock +of either, they had been a much more proper present to your Lordship. +</p> + +<p>I beg your Lordship will forgive me, if, at the same time I +dedicate this work to you, I join Lady +S<small>PENCER</small>, in the liberty I take of inscribing the +story of <i>Le Fever</i> to her name; for which I have no other +motive, which my heart has informed me of, but that the story is a +humane one.</p> + +<p> I am, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +<small>MY LORD</small>,<br/> +Your Lordship’s most devoted <br/> +and most humble Servant, <br/> +<br/> +LAUR. STERNE.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn22"></a> <a href="#fnref22">[22]</a> +Volumes V. and VI. in the first Edition. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. I</small><br/> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>F</small> it had not been for those two +mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a postillion who drove them +from Stilton to Stamford, the thought had never entered my head. He +flew like lightning——there was a slope of three miles +and a half——we scarce touched the +ground——the motion was most rapid——most +impetuous——’twas communicated to my +brain—my heart partook of it——“By the +great God of day,” said I, looking towards the sun, and +thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as I made my +vow, “I will lock up my study-door the moment I get home, and throw the key of it ninety feet below the +surface of the earth, into the draw-well at the back of my +house.”</p> + +<p>The London waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung +tottering upon the hill, scarce progressive, +drag’d—drag’d up by eight <i>heavy +beasts</i>—“by main strength!——quoth +I, nodding——but your betters draw the same +way——and something of every +body’s!——O rare!”</p> + +<p>Tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the +<i>bulk</i>—so little to the <i>stock?</i></p> + +<p>Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new +mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?</p> + +<p>Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? +for ever in the same track—for ever at the same pace?</p> + +<p>Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as +well as working-days, to be shewing the <i>relicks of learning</i>, +as monks do the relicks of their saints—without working +one—one single miracle with them?</p> + +<p>Who made Man, with powers which dart him from earth to heaven in +a moment—that great, that most excellent, and most noble +creature of the world—the <i>miracle</i> of nature, as +Zoroaster in his book ωεσι +φυσεως called +him—the S<small>HEKINAH</small> of the divine presence, as +Chrysostom——the <i>image</i> of God, as +Moses——the <i>ray</i> of divinity, as Plato—the +<i>marvel</i> of <i>marvels</i>, as Aristotle—to go sneaking +on at this pitiful—pimping——pettifogging +rate?</p> + +<p>I scorn to be as abusive as Horace upon the +occasion——but if there is no catachresis in the wish, +and no sin in it, I wish from my soul, that every imitator in +<i>Great Britain, France</i>, and <i>Ireland</i>, had the farcy for +his pains; and that there was a good farcical house, large enough +to hold—aye—and sublimate them, <i>shag rag and +bob-tail</i>, male and female, all together: and this leads me to +the affair of <i>Whiskers</i>——but, by what chain of +ideas—I leave as a legacy in <i>mort-main</i> to Prudes and +Tartufs, to enjoy and make the most of.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>UPON WHISKERS.</small> +</p> + +<p>I’m sorry I made it——’twas as +inconsiderate a promise as ever entered a man’s +head——A chapter upon whiskers! alas! the world will not +bear it—’tis a delicate world——but I knew +not of what mettle it was made—nor had I ever seen the +under-written fragment; otherwise, as surely as noses are noses, +and whiskers are whiskers still (let the world say what it will to +the contrary); so surely would I have steered clear of this +dangerous chapter.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE FRAGMENT.</small> +</p> + +<p>* * * * * * + * * * * * *<br/> +* * * * * * * * + * * * *<br/> +——You are half asleep, my good lady, said the old +gentleman, taking hold of the old lady’s hand, and giving it +a gentle squeeze, as he pronounced the word +<i>Whiskers</i>——shall we change the subject? By no +means, replied the old lady—I like your account of those +matters; so throwing a thin gauze handkerchief over her +head, and leaning it back upon the chair with her face turned +towards him, and advancing her two feet as she reclined +herself——I desire, continued she, you will go on.</p> + +<p>The old gentleman went on as follows:——Whiskers! +cried the queen of <i>Navarre</i>, dropping her knotting ball, as +<i>La Fosseuse</i> uttered the word——Whiskers, madam, +said <i>La Fosseuse</i>, pinning the ball to the queen’s +apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it.</p> + +<p><i>La Fosseuse</i>’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet +’twas an articulate voice: and every letter of the word +<i>Whiskers</i> fell distinctly upon the queen of +<i>Navarre</i>’s ear—Whiskers! cried the queen, laying +a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still distrusted +her ears——Whiskers! replied <i>La Fosseuse</i>, +repeating the word a third time——There is not a +cavalier, madam, of his age in <i>Navarre</i>, continued the maid +of honour, pressing the page’s interest upon the queen, that +has so gallant a pair——Of what? cried +<i>Margaret</i>, smiling—Of whiskers, said <i>La Fosseuse</i>, +with infinite modesty.</p> + +<p>The word <i>Whiskers</i> still stood its ground, and continued +to be made use of in most of the best companies throughout the +little kingdom of <i>Navarre</i>, notwithstanding the indiscreet +use which <i>La Fosseuse</i> had made of it: the truth was, <i>La +Fosseuse</i> had pronounced the word, not only before the queen, +but upon sundry other occasions at court, with an accent which +always implied something of a mystery—And as the court of +<i>Margaret</i>, as all the world knows, was at that time a mixture +of gallantry and devotion——and whiskers being as +applicable to the one, as the other, the word naturally stood its +ground——it gained full as much as it lost; that is, the +clergy were for it——the laity were against +it——and for the women,——<i>they</i> were +divided.</p> + +<p>The excellency of the figure and mien of the young Sieur <i>De +Croix</i>, was at that time beginning to draw the attention of the +maids of honour towards the terrace before the palace gate, where +the guard was mounted. The lady <i>De Baussiere</i> fell +deeply in love with him,——<i>La Battarelle</i> did the +same—it was the finest weather for it, that ever was +remembered in <i>Navarre——La Guyol, La Maronette, La +Sabatiere</i>, fell in love with the Sieur <i>De Croix</i> +also——<i>La Rebours</i> and <i>La Fosseuse</i> knew +better——<i>De Croix</i> had failed in an attempt to +recommend himself to <i>La Rebours;</i> and <i>La Rebours</i> and +<i>La Fosseuse</i> were inseparable.</p> + +<p>The queen of <i>Navarre</i> was sitting with her ladies in the +painted bow-window, facing the gate of the second court, as <i>De +Croix</i> passed through it—He is handsome, said the Lady +<i>Baussiere</i>——He has a good mien, said <i>La +Battarelle</i>——He is finely shaped, said <i>La +Guyol</i>—I never saw an officer of the horse-guards in my +life, said <i>La Maronette</i>, with two such legs——Or +who stood so well upon them, said <i>La +Sabatiere</i>——But he has no whiskers, cried <i>La +Fosseuse</i>——Not a pile, said <i>La Rebours.</i></p> + +<p>The queen went directly to her oratory, musing all the way, as +she walked through the gallery, upon the subject; turning it +this way and that way in her fancy—<i>Ave +Maria!</i>——what can <i>La-Fosseuse</i> mean? said she, +kneeling down upon the cushion.</p> + +<p><i>La Guyol, La Battarelle, La Maronette, La Sabatiere</i>, +retired instantly to their chambers——Whiskers! said all +four of them to themselves, as they bolted their doors on the +inside.</p> + +<p>The Lady <i>Carnavallette</i> was counting her beads with both +hands, unsuspected, under her farthingal——from St. +<i>Antony</i> down to St. <i>Ursula</i> inclusive, not a saint +passed through her fingers without whiskers; St. <i>Francis</i>, +St. <i>Dominick</i>, St. <i>Bennet</i>, St. <i>Basil</i>, St. +<i>Bridget</i>, had all whiskers.</p> + +<p>The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> had got into a wilderness of conceits, +with moralizing too intricately upon <i>La Fosseuse</i>’s +text——She mounted her palfrey, her page followed +her——the host passed by—the Lady <i>Baussiere</i> +rode on.</p> + +<p>One denier, cried the order of mercy—one single denier, in +behalf of a thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards +heaven and you for their redemption.</p> + +<p>——The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> rode on.</p> + +<p>Pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, +meekly holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered +hands——I beg for the unfortunate—good my Lady, +’tis for a prison—for an hospital—’tis for +an old man—a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by +fire——I call God and all his angels to +witness——’tis to clothe the naked——to +feed the hungry——’tis to comfort the sick and the +broken-hearted.</p> + +<p>The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> rode on.</p> + +<p>A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.</p> + +<p>——The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> rode on.</p> + +<p>He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfrey, conjuring +her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, +&c.——Cousin, aunt, sister, mother,——for +virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for Christ’s +sake, remember me——pity me.</p> + +<p>——The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> rode on.</p> + +<p>Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady +<i>Baussiere</i>—The page took hold of her palfrey. She +dismounted at the end of the terrace.</p> + +<p>There are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of +themselves about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a +consciousness of it, somewhere about the heart, which serves but to +make these etchings the stronger—we see, spell, and put them +together without a dictionary.</p> + +<p>Ha, ha! he, hee! cried <i>La Guyol</i> and <i>La Sabatiere</i>, +looking close at each other’s prints——Ho, ho! +cried <i>La Battarelle</i> and <i>Maronette</i>, doing the +same:—Whist! cried one—ft, ft,—said a +second—hush, quoth a third—poo, poo, replied a +fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady +<i>Carnavallette;</i>——’twas she who +bewhisker’d St. <i>Bridget.</i></p> + +<p><i>La Fosseuse</i> drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, +and having traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt +end of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put in into <i>La Rebours</i>’ +hand—<i>La Rebours</i> shook her head.</p> + +<p>The Lady <i>Baussiere</i> coughed thrice into the inside of her +muff—<i>La Guyol</i> smiled—Fy, said the Lady +<i>Baussiere.</i> The queen of <i>Navarre</i> touched her eye with +the tip of her fore-finger—as much as to say, I understand +you all.</p> + +<p>’Twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: <i>La +Fosseuse</i> had given it a wound, and it was not the better for +passing through all these defiles——It made a faint +stand, however, for a few months, by the expiration of which, the +Sieur <i>De Croix</i>, finding it high time to leave <i>Navarre</i> +for want of whiskers——the word in course became +indecent, and (after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use.</p> + +<p>The best word, in the best language of the best world, must have +suffered under such combinations.——The curate of +<i>d’Estella</i> wrote a book against them, setting forth the +dangers of accessory ideas, and warning the <i>Navarois</i> against +them.</p> + +<p>Does not all the world know, said the curate +<i>d’Estella</i> at the conclusion of his work, that Noses +ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts of +<i>Europe</i>, which Whiskers have now done in the kingdom of +<i>Navarre?</i>—The evil indeed spread no farther +then—but have not beds and bolsters, and night-caps and +chamber-pots stood upon the brink of destruction ever since? Are +not trouse, and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots +and faucets, in danger still from the same +association?—Chastity, by nature, the gentlest of all +affections—give it but its head——’tis like +a ramping and a roaring lion.</p> + +<p>The drift of the curate <i>d’Estella</i>’s argument +was not understood.—They ran the scent the wrong +way.—The world bridled his ass at the tail.—And when +the <i>extremes</i> of <small>DELICACY</small>, and the +<i>beginnings</i> of <small>CONCUPISCENCE</small>, hold their next +provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy also.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + II</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> my father received the letter +which brought him the melancholy account of my brother +<i>Bobby</i>’s death, he was busy calculating the expence of +his riding post from <i>Calais</i> to <i>Paris</i>, and so on to +<i>Lyons.</i></p> + +<p>’Twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had +every foot of it to travel over again, and his calculation to begin +afresh, when he had almost got to the end of it, by +<i>Obadiah</i>’s opening the door to acquaint him the family +was out of yeast—and to ask whether he might not take the +great coach-horse early in the morning and ride in search of +some.—With all my heart, <i>Obadiah</i>, said my father +(pursuing his journey)—take the coach-horse, and +welcome.——But he wants a shoe, poor creature! said +<i>Obadiah.</i>——Poor creature! said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, vibrating the note back again, like a string in +unison. Then ride the <i>Scotch</i> horse, quoth my father hastily.—He cannot bear +a saddle upon his back, quoth <i>Obadiah</i>, for the whole +world.——The devil’s in that horse; then take +P<small>ATRIOT</small>, cried my father, and shut the +door.——P<small>ATRIOT</small> is sold, said +<i>Obadiah.</i> Here’s for you! cried my father, making a +pause, and looking in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s face, as if the +thing had not been a matter of fact.—Your worship ordered me +to sell him last <i>April</i>, said <i>Obadiah.</i>—Then go +on foot for your pains, cried my father——I had much +rather walk than ride, said <i>Obadiah</i>, shutting the door.</p> + +<p>What plagues, cried my father, going on with his +calculation.——But the waters are out, said +<i>Obadiah</i>,—opening the door again.</p> + +<p> +Till that moment, my father, who had a map of <i>Sanson</i>’s, and a book +of the post-roads before him, had kept his hand upon the head of his compasses, +with one foot of them fixed upon <i>Nevers</i>, the last stage he had paid +for—purposing to go on from that point with his journey and calculation, +as soon as <i>Obadiah</i> quitted the room: but this second attack of +<i>Obadiah</i>’s, in opening the door and laying the whole country under +water, was too much.——He let go his compasses—or rather with +a mixed motion between accident and anger, he threw them upon the table; and +then there was nothing for him to do, but to return back to <i>Calais</i> (like +many others) as wise as he had set out. +</p> + +<p>When the letter was brought into the parlour, which contained +the news of my brother’s death, my father had got forwards +again upon his journey to within a stride of the compasses of the +very same stage of <i>Nevers.</i>——By your leave, Mons. +<i>Sanson</i>, cried my father, striking the point of his compasses +through <i>Nevers</i> into the table—and nodding to my uncle +<i>Toby</i> to see what was in the letter—twice of one night, +is too much for an English gentleman and his son, Mons. +<i>Sanson</i>, to be turned back from so lousy a town as +<i>Nevers</i>—What think’st thou, <i>Toby</i>? added my +father in a sprightly tone.——Unless it be a garrison +town, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——for then—I shall be a fool, said +my father, smiling to himself, as long as I live.—So giving a +second nod—and keeping his compasses still upon <i>Nevers</i> +with one hand, and holding his book of the post-roads in the +other—half calculating and half listening, he leaned forwards +upon the table with both elbows, as my uncle <i>Toby</i> hummed +over the letter.</p> + +<p> +—— —— —— —— +—— —— —— —— +—— —— —— —— +—— —— —— —— +—— —— —— —he’s +gone! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——Where——Who? cried my +father.——My nephew, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——What—without leave—without +money—without governor? cried my father in amazement. No:——he +is dead, my dear brother, quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Without being ill? +cried my father again.—I dare say not, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in a +low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, he has been +ill enough, poor lad! I’ll answer for him——for he is dead. +</p> + +<p>When <i>Agrippina</i> was told of her son’s death, +<i>Tacitus</i> informs us, that, not being able to moderate the +violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off her work—My +father stuck his compasses into <i>Nevers</i>, but so much the +faster.—What contrarieties! his, indeed, was matter of +calculation!—<i>Agrippina</i>’s must have been quite a +different affair; who else could pretend to reason from +history?</p> + +<p>How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to +itself.—</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + III</small> +</h3> + +<p>————And a chapter it shall +have, and a devil of a one too—so look to yourselves.</p> + +<p>’Tis either <i>Plato</i>, or <i>Plutarch</i>, or +<i>Seneca</i>, or <i>Xenophon</i>, or <i>Epictetus</i>, or +<i>Theophrastus</i>, or <i>Lucian</i>—or some one perhaps of +later date—either <i>Cardan</i>, or <i>Budæus</i>, or +<i>Petrarch</i>, or <i>Stella</i>—or possibly it may be some +divine or father of the church, St. <i>Austin</i>, or St. +<i>Cyprian</i>, or <i>Barnard</i>, who affirms that it is an +irresistible and natural passion to weep for the loss of our +friends or children—and <i>Seneca</i> (I’m positive) +tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by +that particular channel—And accordingly we find, that +<i>David</i> wept for his son <i>Absalom</i>—<i>Adrian</i> +for his <i>Antinous</i>—<i>Niobe</i> for her children, and +that <i>Apollodorus</i> and <i>Crito</i> both shed tears for +<i>Socrates</i> before his death.</p> + +<p>My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed +differently from most men either ancient or modern; for he neither +wept it away, as the <i>Hebrews</i> and the <i>Romans</i>—or +slept it off, as the <i>Laplanders</i>—or hanged it, as the +<i>English</i>, or drowned it, as the <i>Germans</i>,—nor did +he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or +lillabullero it.——</p> + +<p>——He got rid of it, however.</p> + +<p>Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between +these two pages?</p> + +<p>When <i>Tully</i> was bereft of his dear daughter <i>Tullia</i>, +at first he laid it to his heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and +modulated his own unto it.—O my <i>Tullia!</i> my daughter! +my child!—still, still, still,—’twas O my +<i>Tullia!</i>—my <i>Tullia!</i> Methinks I see my +<i>Tullia</i>, I hear my <i>Tullia</i>, I talk with my +<i>Tullia.</i>—But as soon as he began to look into the +stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might +be said upon the occasion—no body upon earth can conceive, +says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me.</p> + +<p>My father was as proud of his eloquence as M<small>ARCUS</small> +T<small>ULLIUS</small> C<small>ICERO</small> could be for his life, +and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with +as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness +too.——His strength—for he was by nature eloquent; +and his weakness—for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, +provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his +talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd +one—(bating the case of a systematic misfortune)—he had +all he wanted.—A blessing which tied up my father’s tongue, and a +misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: +sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for +instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as <i>ten</i>, and +the pain of the misfortune but as <i>five</i>—my father +gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if +it had never befallen him.</p> + +<p>This clue will unravel what otherwise would seem very +inconsistent in my father’s domestic character; and it is +this, that, in the provocations arising from the neglects and +blunders of servants, or other mishaps unavoidable in a family, his +anger, or rather the duration of it, eternally ran counter to all +conjecture.</p> + +<p>My father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned +over to a most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out +of her for his own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so +talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if +it had been reared, broke,—and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or +other in <i>Obadiah</i>, it so fell out, that my father’s +expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as +ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.</p> + +<p>My mother and my uncle <i>Toby</i> expected my father would be +the death of <i>Obadiah</i>—and that there never would be an +end of the disaster——See here! you rascal, cried my +father, pointing to the mule, what you have done!——It +was not me, said <i>Obadiah.</i>——How do I know that? +replied my father.</p> + +<p>Triumph swam in my father’s eyes, at the +repartee—the <i>Attic</i> salt brought water into +them—and so <i>Obadiah</i> heard no more about it.</p> + +<p>Now let us go back to my brother’s death.</p> + +<p>Philosophy has a fine saying for every thing.—For +<i>Death</i> it has an entire set; the misery was, they all at once +rushed into my father’s head, that ’twas difficult to +string them together, so as to make any thing of a consistent show out of them.—He +took them as they came.</p> + +<p>“’Tis an inevitable chance—the first +statute in <i>Magna Charta</i>—it is an everlasting act of +parliament, my dear brother,—<i>All must die.</i></p> + +<p>“If my son could not have died, it had been matter +of wonder,—not that he is dead.</p> + +<p>“Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with +us.</p> + +<p>“—<i>To die</i>, is the great debt and tribute +due unto nature: tombs and monuments, which should perpetuate our +memories, pay it themselves; and the proudest pyramid of them all, +which wealth and science have erected, has lost its apex, and +stands obtruncated in the traveller’s horizon.” (My +father found he got great ease, and went +on)—“Kingdoms and provinces, and towns and +cities, have they not their periods? and when those principles and +powers, which at first cemented and put them together, performed their several evolutions, +they fall back.”—Brother <i>Shandy</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, laying down his pipe at the word +<i>evolutions</i>—Revolutions, I meant, quoth my +father,—by heaven! I meant revolutions, brother +<i>Toby</i>—evolutions is nonsense.——’Tis +not nonsense—said my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——But is +it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse upon such +an occasion? cried my father—do not—dear <i>Toby</i>, +continued he, taking him by the hand, do not—do not, I +beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.——My uncle +<i>Toby</i> put his pipe into his mouth.</p> + +<p>“Where is <i>Troy</i> and <i>Mycenæ</i>, and +<i>Thebes</i> and <i>Delos</i>, and <i>Persepolis</i> and +<i>Agrigentum?</i>”—continued my father, taking up his +book of post-roads, which he had laid down.—“What +is become, brother <i>Toby</i>, of <i>Nineveh</i> and +<i>Babylon</i>, of <i>Cizicum</i> and <i>Mitylenæ?</i> The +fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; the +names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) +are falling themselves by piece-meals to decay, and in length of +time will be forgotten, and involved with every thing in a +perpetual night: the world itself, brother <i>Toby</i>, +must—must come to an end.</p> + +<p>“Returning out of <i>Asia</i>, when I sailed from +<i>Ægina</i> towards <i>Megara</i>,” (<i>when can this +have been? thought my uncle Toby</i>,) “I began to view +the country round about. <i>Ægina</i> was behind me, +<i>Megara</i> was before, <i>Pyræus</i> on the right hand, +<i>Corinth</i> on the left.—What flourishing towns now +prostrate upon the earth! Alas! alas! said I to myself, that man +should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as +this lies awfully buried in his presence——Remember, +said I to myself again—remember thou art a +man.”—</p> + +<p>Now my uncle <i>Toby</i> knew not that this last paragraph was +an extract of <i>Servius Sulpicius</i>’s consolatory letter +to Tully.—He had as little skill, honest man, in the +fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity.—And as +my father, whilst he was concerned in the <i>Turkey</i> trade, had +been three or four different times in the <i>Levant</i>, in one of +which he had stayed a whole year and an half at <i>Zant</i>, my +uncle <i>Toby</i> naturally concluded, that, in some one of these +periods, he had taken a trip across the <i>Archipelago</i> into +<i>Asia;</i> and that all this sailing affair with +<i>Ægina</i> behind, and <i>Megara</i> before, and +<i>Pyræus</i> on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing +more than the true course of my father’s voyage and +reflections.—’Twas certainly in his <i>manner</i>, and +many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon +worse foundations.—And pray, brother, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, laying the end of his pipe upon my father’s hand +in a kindly way of interruption—but waiting till he finished +the account—what year of our Lord was this?—’Twas +no year of our Lord, replied my father.—That’s +impossible, cried my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Simpleton! said my +father,—’twas forty years before Christ was born.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> had but two things for it; either to +suppose his brother to be the wandering <i>Jew</i>, or that his +misfortunes had disordered his brain.—“May the +Lord God of heaven and earth protect him and restore him!” +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, praying silently for my father, and with +tears in his eyes.</p> + +<p>—My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went +on with his harangue with great spirit.</p> + +<p>“There is not such great odds, brother <i>Toby</i>, +betwixt good and evil, as the world +imagines”——(this way of setting off, by the bye, +was not likely to cure my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +suspicions).——“Labour, sorrow, grief, +sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life.”—Much +good may do them—said my uncle <i>Toby</i> to +himself.——</p> + +<p>“My son is dead!—so much the +better;—’tis a shame in such a tempest to have but one +anchor.</p> + +<p>“But he is gone for ever from us!—be it so. He +is got from under the hands of his barber before he was +bald—he is but risen from a feast before he was +surfeited—from a banquet before he had got drunken.</p> + +<p>“The <i>Thracians</i> wept when a child was +born,”—(and we were very near it, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,)—“and feasted and made merry when a man +went out of the world; and with reason.——Death opens +the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it,—it +unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s +task into another man’s hands.</p> + +<p>“Shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads +it, and I’ll shew thee a prisoner who dreads his +liberty.”</p> + +<p>Is it not better, my dear brother <i>Toby</i>, (for +mark—our appetites are but diseases,)—is it not better +not to hunger at all, than to eat?—not to thirst, than to +take physic to cure it?</p> + +<p>Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and +melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like +a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to +begin his journey afresh?</p> + +<p>There is no terrour, brother <i>Toby</i>, in its looks, but what +it borrows from groans and convulsions—and the blowing of +noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in +a dying man’s room.—Strip it of these, what is +it?—’Tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>—Take away its hearses, its mutes, and its +mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic +aids—What is it?—<i>Better in battle!</i> continued my +father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother +<i>Bobby</i>—’tis terrible no way—for consider, +brother <i>Toby</i>,—when we <i>are</i>—death is +<i>not;</i>—and when death <i>is</i>—we are <i>not.</i> +My uncle <i>Toby</i> laid down his pipe to consider the +proposition; my father’s eloquence was too rapid to stay for +any man—away it went,—and hurried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s ideas along with it.——</p> + +<p>For this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to +recollect, how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of +death have made.—<i>Vespasian</i> died in a jest upon his +close-stool—<i>Galba</i> with a sentence—<i>Septimus +Severus</i> in a dispatch—<i>Tiberius</i> in dissimulation, +and <i>Cæsar Augustus</i> in a compliment.—I hope +’twas a sincere one—quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>—’Twas to his wife,—said my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IV</small> +</h3> + +<p>——And lastly—for all the choice +anecdotes which history can produce of this matter, continued my +father,—this, like the gilded dome which covers in the +fabric—crowns all.—</p> + +<p>’Tis of <i>Cornelius Gallus</i>, the +prætor—which, I dare say, brother <i>Toby</i>, you have +read.—I dare say I have not, replied my uncle.—He died, +said my father as * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * —And if it +was with his wife, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>—there could be no +hurt in it.—That’s more than I know—replied my +father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + V</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> mother was going very gingerly in +the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> pronounced the word <i>wife.</i>—’Tis a +shrill penetrating sound of itself, and <i>Obadiah</i> had helped +it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard +enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so +laying the edge of her finger across her two lips—holding in +her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist +of her neck—(not towards the door, but from it, by which +means her ear was brought to the chink)—she listened with all +her powers:——the listening slave, with the Goddess of +Silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an +intaglio.</p> + +<p>In this attitude I am determined to let her stand for five +minutes: till I bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as +<i>Rapin</i> does those of the church) to the same period.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> in one sense, our family was +certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet +there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set +in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the +other from such a variety of strange principles and +impulses——that though it was a simple machine, it had +all the honour and advantages of a complex one,——and a +number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the +inside of a <i>Dutch</i> silk-mill.</p> + +<p>Amongst these there was one, I am going to speak of, in which, +perhaps, it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and +it was this, that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or dissertation, was going forwards in the +parlour, there was generally another at the same time, and upon the +same subject, running parallel along with it in the kitchen.</p> + +<p>Now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or +letter, was delivered in the parlour—or a discourse suspended +till a servant went out—or the lines of discontent were +observed to hang upon the brows of my father or mother—or, in +short, when any thing was supposed to be upon the tapis worth +knowing or listening to, ’twas the rule to leave the door, +not absolutely shut, but somewhat a-jar—as it stands just +now,—which, under covert of the bad hinge, (and that possibly +might be one of the many reasons why it was never mended,) it was +not difficult to manage; by which means, in all these cases, a +passage was generally left, not indeed as wide as the +<i>Dardanelles</i>, but wide enough, for all that, to carry on as +much of this windward trade, as was sufficient to save my father +the trouble of governing his house;—my mother at this moment stands +profiting by it.—<i>Obadiah</i> did the same thing, as soon +as he had left the letter upon the table which brought the news of +my brother’s death, so that before my father had well got +over his surprise, and entered upon his harangue,—had +<i>Trim</i> got upon his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the +subject.</p> + +<p>A curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of +all <i>Job</i>’s stock—though by the bye, <i>your +curious observers are seldom worth a groat</i>—would have +given the half of it, to have heard Corporal <i>Trim</i> and my +father, two orators so contrasted by nature and education, +haranguing over the same bier.</p> + +<p>My father—a man of deep reading—prompt +memory—with <i>Cato</i>, and <i>Seneca</i>, and +<i>Epictetus</i>, at his fingers ends.—</p> + +<p>The corporal—with nothing—to remember—of no +deeper reading than his muster-roll—or greater names at his +fingers end, than the contents of it.</p> + +<p>The one proceeding from period to period, by metaphor and +allusion, and striking the fancy as he went along (as men of wit +and fancy do) with the entertainment and pleasantry of his pictures +and images.</p> + +<p>The other, without wit or antithesis, or point, or turn, this +way or that; but leaving the images on one side, and the picture on +the other, going straight forwards as nature could lead him, to the +heart. O <i>Trim!</i> would to heaven thou had’st a better +historian!—would!—thy historian had a better pair of +breeches!——O ye critics! will nothing melt you?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——My young master in London is dead? +said <i>Obadiah.</i>—</p> + +<p>——A green sattin night-gown of my mother’s, +which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which +<i>Obadiah</i>’s exclamation brought into +<i>Susannah</i>’s head.</p> + +<p>—Well might <i>Locke</i> write a chapter upon the +imperfections of words.—Then, quoth <i>Susannah</i>, we must +all go into mourning.—But note a second time: the word +<i>mourning</i>, notwithstanding <i>Susannah</i> made use of it +herself—failed also of doing its office; it excited not one +single idea, tinged either with grey or black,—all was +green.——The green sattin night-gown hung there +still.</p> + +<p>—O! ’twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried +<i>Susannah.</i>—My mother’s whole wardrobe +followed.—What a procession! her red damask,—her orange +tawney,—her white and yellow lutestrings,—her brown +taffata,—her bone-laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable +under-petticoats.—Not a rag was left +behind.—“<i>No,—she will never look up +again</i>,” said <i>Susannah.</i></p> + +<p>We had a fat, foolish scullion—my father, I think, kept +her for her simplicity;—she had been all autumn struggling +with a dropsy.—He is dead, said <i>Obadiah</i>,—he is +certainly dead!—So am not I, said the foolish scullion.</p> + +<p>——Here is sad news, <i>Trim</i>, cried +<i>Susannah</i>, wiping her eyes as <i>Trim</i> stepp’d into +the kitchen,—master <i>Bobby</i> is dead and +<i>buried</i>—the funeral was an interpolation of +<i>Susannah</i>’s—we shall have all to go into +mourning, said <i>Susannah.</i></p> + +<p>I hope not, said <i>Trim.</i>—You hope not! cried +<i>Susannah</i> earnestly.—The mourning ran not in +<i>Trim</i>’s head, whatever it did in +<i>Susannah</i>’s.—I hope—said <i>Trim</i>, +explaining himself, I hope in God the news is not true. I heard the +letter read with my own ears, answered <i>Obadiah;</i> and we shall +have a terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the +ox-moor.—Oh! he’s dead, said <i>Susannah.</i>—As +sure, said the scullion, as I’m alive.</p> + +<p>I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said <i>Trim</i>, +fetching a sigh.—Poor creature!—poor boy!—poor +gentleman!</p> + +<p>—He was alive last <i>Whitsontide!</i> said the +coachman.—<i>Whitsontide!</i> alas! cried <i>Trim</i>, +extending his right arm, and falling instantly into the same attitude in which he +read the sermon,—what is <i>Whitsontide, Jonathan</i> (for +that was the coachman’s name), or <i>Shrovetide</i>, or any +tide or time past, to this? Are we not here now, continued the +corporal (striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the +floor, so as to give an idea of health and stability)—and are +we not—(dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a +moment!—’Twas infinitely striking! <i>Susannah</i> +burst into a flood of tears.—We are not stocks and +stones.—<i>Jonathan, Obadiah</i>, the cook-maid, all +melted.—The foolish fat scullion herself, who was scouring a +fish-kettle upon her knees, was rous’d with it.—The +whole kitchen crowded about the corporal.</p> + +<p>Now, as I perceive plainly, that the preservation of our +constitution in church and state,—and possibly the +preservation of the whole world—or what is the same thing, +the distribution and balance of its property and power, may in time +to come depend greatly upon the right understanding of this stroke of the corporal’s +eloquence—I do demand your attention—your worships and +reverences, for any ten pages together, take them where you will in +any other part of the work, shall sleep for it at your ease.</p> + +<p>I said, “we were not stocks and +stones”—’tis very well. I should have added, nor +are we angels, I wish we were,—but men clothed with bodies, +and governed by our imaginations;—and what a junketing piece +of work of it there is, betwixt these and our seven senses, +especially some of them, for my own part, I own it, I am ashamed to +confess. Let it suffice to affirm, that of all the senses, the eye +(for I absolutely deny the touch, though most of your +<i>Barbati</i>, I know, are for it) has the quickest commerce with +the soul,—gives a smarter stroke, and leaves something more +inexpressible upon the fancy, than words can either convey—or +sometimes get rid of.</p> + +<p>—I’ve gone a little about—no matter, +’tis for health—let us only carry it back in our mind +to the mortality of <i>Trim</i>’s hat—“Are we not +here now,—and gone in a moment?”—There was +nothing in the sentence—’twas one of your self-evident +truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if +<i>Trim</i> had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he +made nothing at all of it.</p> + +<p>——“Are we not here now;” continued the +corporal, “and are we not”—(dropping his hat +plumb upon the ground—and pausing, before he pronounced the +word)—“gone! in a moment?” The descent of +the hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the +crown of it.——Nothing could have expressed the +sentiment of mortality, of which it was the type and fore-runner, +like it,—his hand seemed to vanish from under it,—it +fell dead,—the corporal’s eye fixed upon it, as upon a +corpse,—and <i>Susannah</i> burst into a flood of tears.</p> + +<p>Now—Ten thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (for +matter and motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat may be +dropped upon the ground, without any effect.——Had he +flung it, or thrown it, or cast it, or skimmed it, or squirted it, +or let it slip or fall in any possible direction under +heaven,—or in the best direction that could be given to +it,—had he dropped it like a goose—like a +puppy—like an ass—or in doing it, or even after he had +done, had he looked like a fool—like a ninny—like a +nincompoop—it had fail’d, and the effect upon the heart +had been lost.</p> + +<p>Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with the +engines of eloquence,—who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, +and mollify it,——and then harden it again to <i>your +purpose</i>——</p> + +<p>Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, and, +having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet.</p> + +<p>Ye, lastly, who drive——and why not, Ye also who are +driven, like turkeys to market with a stick and a red +clout—meditate—meditate, I beseech you, upon +<i>Trim</i>’s hat.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>S<small>TAY</small>—I have a small account to +settle with the reader before <i>Trim</i> can go on with his +harangue.—It shall be done in two minutes.</p> + +<p>Amongst many other book-debts, all of which I shall discharge in +due time,—I own myself a debtor to the world for two +items,—a chapter upon <i>chamber-maids and button-holes</i>, +which, in the former part of my work, I promised and fully intended +to pay off this year: but some of your worships and reverences +telling me, that the two subjects, especially so connected +together, might endanger the morals of the world,—I pray the +chapter upon chamber-maids and button-holes may be forgiven +me,—and that they will accept of the last chapter in lieu of it; which is nothing, an’t +please your reverences, but a chapter of <i>chamber-maids, green +gowns, and old hats.</i></p> + +<p><i>Trim</i> took his hat off the ground,—put it upon his +head,—and then went on with his oration upon death, in manner +and form following.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——To us, <i>Jonathan</i>, who know not +what want or care is—who live here in the service of two of +the best of masters—(bating in my own case his majesty King +<i>William</i> the Third, whom I had the honour to serve both in +<i>Ireland</i> and <i>Flanders</i>)—I own it, that from +<i>Whitsontide</i> to within three weeks of +<i>Christmas</i>,—’tis not long—’tis like +nothing;—but to those, <i>Jonathan</i>, who know what death +is, and what havock and destruction he can make, before a man can +well wheel about—’tis like a whole age.—O +<i>Jonathan!</i> ’twould make a good-natured man’s +heart bleed, to consider, continued the corporal (standing perpendicularly), +how low many a brave and upright fellow has been laid since that +time!—And trust me, <i>Susy</i>, added the corporal, turning +to <i>Susannah</i>, whose eyes were swimming in water,—before +that time comes round again,—many a bright eye will be +dim.—<i>Susannah</i> placed it to the right side of the +page—she wept—but she court’sied too.—Are +we not, continued <i>Trim</i>, looking still at +<i>Susannah</i>—are we not like a flower of the field—a +tear of pride stole in betwixt every two tears of +humiliation—else no tongue could have described +<i>Susannah</i>’s affliction—is not all flesh +grass?—Tis clay,—’tis dirt.—They all looked +directly at the scullion,—the scullion had just been scouring +a fish-kettle.—It was not fair.—</p> + +<p>—What is the finest face that ever man looked at!—I +could hear <i>Trim</i> talk so for ever, cried +<i>Susannah</i>,—what is it! (<i>Susannah</i> laid her hand +upon <i>Trim</i>’s shoulder)—but +corruption?——<i>Susannah</i> took it off.</p> + +<p>Now I love you for this—and ’tis this delicious +mixture within you which makes you dear creatures what you +are—and he who hates you for it——all I can say of +the matter is—That he has either a pumpkin for his +head—or a pippin for his heart,—and whenever he is +dissected ’twill be found so.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + X</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HETHER</small> <i>Susannah</i>, by taking +her hand too suddenly from off the corporal’s shoulder (by +the whisking about of her passions)——broke a little the +chain of his reflexions——</p> + +<p>Or whether the corporal began to be suspicious, he had got into +the doctor’s quarters, and was talking more like the chaplain +than himself——</p> + +<p>Or whether - - - - - - + - - Or whether——for in all such cases a man +of invention and parts may with pleasure fill a couple of pages +with suppositions——which of all these was the cause, +let the curious physiologist, or the curious any body +determine——’tis certain, at least, the corporal +went on thus with his harangue.</p> + +<p>For my own part, I declare it, that out of doors, I value not +death at all:—not this . . added the corporal, snapping his +fingers,—but with an air which no one but the corporal could +have given to the sentiment.—In battle, I value death not +this . . . and let him not take me cowardly, like poor <i>Joe +Gibbins</i>, in scouring his gun.—What is he? A pull of a +trigger—a push of a bayonet an inch this way or +that—makes the difference.—Look along the line—to +the right—see! <i>Jack</i>’s down! +well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse to +him.—No—’tis <i>Dick.</i> Then +<i>Jack</i>’s no worse.—Never mind which,—we pass +on,—in hot pursuit the wound itself which brings him is not +felt,—the best way is to stand up to him,—the man who +flies, is in ten times more danger than the man who marches up into +his jaws.—I’ve look’d him, added the corporal, an +hundred times in the face,—and know what he +is.—He’s nothing, <i>Obadiah</i>, at all in the +field.—But he’s very frightful in a house, quoth +<i>Obadiah.</i>——I never mind it myself, said +<i>Jonathan</i>, upon a coach-box.—It must, in my opinion, be +most natural in bed, replied <i>Susannah.</i>—And could I +escape him by creeping into the worst calf’s skin that ever +was made into a knapsack, I would do it there—said +<i>Trim</i>—but that is nature.</p> + +<p>——Nature is nature, said <i>Jonathan.</i>—And +that is the reason, cried <i>Susannah</i>, I so much pity my +mistress.—She will never get the better of it.—Now I +pity the captain the most of any one in the family, answered +<i>Trim.</i>——Madam will get ease of heart in +weeping,—and the Squire in talking about it,—but my +poor master will keep it all in silence to himself.—I shall +hear him sigh in his bed for a whole month together, as he did for +lieutenant <i>Le Fever.</i> An’ please your honour, do not +sigh so piteously, I would say to him as I laid besides him. I +cannot help it, <i>Trim</i>, my master would say,—’tis +so melancholy an accident—I cannot get it off my heart.—Your honour fears not death +yourself.—I hope, <i>Trim</i>, I fear nothing, he would say, +but the doing a wrong thing.——Well, he would add, +whatever betides, I will take care of <i>Le Fever</i>’s +boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught, his honour would +fall asleep.</p> + +<p>I like to hear <i>Trim</i>’s stories about the captain, +said <i>Susannah.</i>—He is a kindly-hearted gentleman, said +<i>Obadiah</i>, as ever lived.—Aye, and as brave a one too, +said the corporal, as ever stept before a platoon.—There +never was a better officer in the king’s army,—or a +better man in God’s world; for he would march up to the mouth +of a cannon, though he saw the lighted match at the very +touch-hole,—and yet, for all that, he has a heart as soft as +a child for other people.——He would not hurt a +chicken.——I would sooner, quoth <i>Jonathan</i>, drive +such a gentleman for seven pounds a year—than some for +eight.—Thank thee, <i>Jonathan!</i> for thy twenty +shillings,—as much, <i>Jonathan</i>, said the corporal, +shaking him by the hand, as if thou hadst put the money into my own +pocket.——I would serve him to the day of my death out +of love. He is a friend and a brother to me,—and could I be +sure my poor brother <i>Tom</i> was dead,—continued the +corporal, taking out his handkerchief,—was I worth ten +thousand pounds, I would leave every shilling of it to the +captain.——<i>Trim</i> could not refrain from tears at +this testamentary proof he gave of his affection to his +master.——The whole kitchen was affected.—Do tell +us the story of the poor lieutenant, said +<i>Susannah.</i>——With all my heart, answered the +corporal.</p> + +<p><i>Susannah</i>, the cook, <i>Jonathan</i>, <i>Obadiah</i>, and +corporal <i>Trim</i>, formed a circle about the fire; and as soon +as the scullion had shut the kitchen door,—the corporal +begun.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>AM</small> a <i>Turk</i> if I had not as +much forgot my mother, as if Nature had plaistered me up, and set +me down naked upon the banks of the river <i>Nile</i>, without +one.——Your most obedient servant, +Madam—I’ve cost you a great deal of trouble,—I +wish it may answer;—but you have left a crack in my +back,—and here’s a great piece fallen off here +before,—and what must I do with this foot?——I +shall never reach <i>England</i> with it.</p> + +<p>For my own part, I never wonder at any thing;—and so often +has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, +right or wrong,—at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. +For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; and when it +has slipped us, if a man will but take me by the hand, and go +quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost, and +can neither of us do well without,—I’ll go to the world’s end with +him:——But I hate disputes,—and therefore (bating +religious points, or such as touch society) I would almost +subscribe to any thing which does not choak me in the first +passage, rather than be drawn into one——But I cannot +bear suffocation,——and bad smells worst of +all.——For which reasons, I resolved from the beginning, +That if ever the army of martyrs was to be augmented,—or a +new-one raised,—I would have no hand in it, one way or +t’other.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——B<small>UT</small> to return to my +mother.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>’s opinion, Madam, “that +there could be no harm in <i>Cornelius Gallus</i>, the <i>Roman</i> +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.</p> + +<p>——Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, +who would not have done the same?</p> + +<p> +From the strange mode of <i>Cornelius</i>’s death, my father had made a +transition to that of <i>Socrates</i>, and was giving my uncle <i>Toby</i> an +abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas +irresistible:——not the oration of <i>Socrates</i>,—but my +father’s temptation to it.——He had wrote the Life of +<i>Socrates</i><a href="#fn23" name="fnref23"><sup>[23]</sup></a> 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 <i>Socrates</i>’s oration, which closed with a +shorter word than <i>transmigration</i>, or <i>annihilation</i>,—or a +worse thought in the middle of it than <i>to be—or not to +be</i>,—the entering upon a new and untried state of things,—or, +upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep, without dreams, without +disturbance?——<i>That we and our children were born to +die,—but neither of us born to be slaves.</i>——No—there +I mistake; that was part of <i>Eleazer</i>’s oration, as recorded by +<i>Josephus (de Bell. Judaic)</i>——<i>Eleazer</i> owns he had it +from the philosophers of <i>India;</i> in all likelihood <i>Alexander</i> the +Great, in his irruption into <i>India</i>, after he had over-run <i>Persia</i>, +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 +<i>Babylon</i>), at least by some of his maroders, into +<i>Greece</i>,—from <i>Greece</i> it got to <i>Rome</i>,—from +<i>Rome</i> to <i>France</i>,—and from <i>France</i> to +<i>England:</i>——So things come round.—— +</p> + +<p>By land carriage, I can conceive no other way.——</p> + +<p>By water the sentiment might easily have come down the +<i>Ganges</i> into the <i>Sinus Gangeticus</i>, or <i>Bay of +Bengal</i>, and so into the <i>Indian Sea;</i> and following the +course of trade (the way from <i>India</i> by the <i>Cape of Good +Hope</i> being then unknown), might be carried with other drugs and +spices up the <i>Red Sea</i> to <i>Joddah</i>, the port of +<i>Mekka</i>, or else to <i>Tor</i> or <i>Sues</i>, towns at the +bottom of the gulf; and from thence by karrawans to <i>Coptos</i>, +but three days journey distant, so down the <i>Nile</i> directly to +<i>Alexandria</i>, where the <small>SENTIMENT</small> would be +landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the +<i>Alexandrian</i> library,——and from that store-house +it would be fetched.——Bless me! what a trade was driven +by the learned in those days!</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn23"></a> <a href="#fnref23">[23]</a> +This book my father would never consent to publish; ’tis in manuscript, +with some other tracts of his, in the family, all, or most of which will be +printed in due time. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——N<small>OW</small> my father had a +way, a little like that of <i>Job</i>’s (in case there ever +was such a man——if not, there’s an end of the +matter.——</p> + +<p>Though, by the bye, because your learned men find some +difficulty in fixing the precise æra in which so great a man +lived;—whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, +&c.——to vote, therefore, that he never lived at +all, is a little cruel,—’tis not doing as they would be +done by,—happen that as it may)——My father, I +say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, +especially upon the first sally of his impatience,—of +wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself +dead;—sometimes worse:——And when the provocation +ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary +powers—Sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from +<i>Socrates</i> himself.——Every word would breathe the +sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason, +though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract +of <i>Socrates</i>’s oration, which my father was giving my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, was not altogether new to her.—She +listened to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so +to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had +no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading where the +great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and +children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the +passions of his judges.—“I have friends—I +have relations,—I have three desolate +children,”—says <i>Socrates.</i>—</p> + +<p>——Then, cried my mother, opening the +door,——you have one more, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, than I +know of.</p> + +<p>By heaven! I have one less,—said my father, getting up and +walking out of the room.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>——T<small>HEY</small> are +<i>Socrates</i>’s children, said my uncle <i>Toby.</i> He has +been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> was no chronologer—so not caring to +advance one step but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe +deliberately upon the table, and rising up, and taking my mother +most kindly by the hand, without saying another word, either good +or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that he might +finish the ecclaircissement himself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XV</small> +</h3> + +<p>H<small>AD</small> this volume been a farce, which, +unless every one’s life and opinions are to be looked upon as +a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose—the last +chapter, Sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this +chapter must have set off thus.</p> + +<p> +Pt . . . r . . . r . . . + ing—twing—twang—prut—trut——’tis +a cursed bad fiddle.—Do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or +no?—trut . . . prut. . — +They should be <i>fifths.</i>——’Tis wickedly +strung—tr . . . a . e . i . o . u .-twang.—The +bridge is a mile too high, and the sound post absolutely +down,—else—trut . . prut—hark! tis not so bad a +tone.—Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. There is nothing +in playing before good judges,—but there’s a man +there—no—not him with the bundle under his arm—the grave man +in black.—’Sdeath! not the gentleman with the sword on.—Sir, +I had rather play a <i>Caprichio</i> to <i>Calliope</i> herself, than draw my +bow across my fiddle before that very man; and yet I’ll stake my +<i>Cremona</i> to a <i>Jew</i>’s trump, which is the greatest musical +odds that ever were laid, that I will this moment stop three hundred and fifty +leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing one single nerve that +belongs to him—Twaddle diddle, tweddle diddle,—twiddle +diddle,—twoddle diddle,—twuddle diddle,——prut +trut—krish—krash—krush.—I’ve undone you, +Sir,—but you see he’s no worse,—and was <i>Apollo</i> to take +his fiddle after me, he can make him no better. +</p> + +<p>Diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle +diddle—hum—dum—drum.</p> + +<p>—Your worships and your reverences love music—and +God has made you all with good ears—and some of you play +delightfully yourselves—trut-prut,—prut-trut.</p> + +<p>O! there is—whom I could sit and hear whole +days,—whose talents lie in making what he fiddles to be +felt,—who inspires me with his joys and hopes, and puts the +most hidden springs of my heart into motion.—If you would +borrow five guineas of me, Sir,—which is generally ten +guineas more than I have to spare—or you Messrs. Apothecary +and Taylor, want your bills paying,—that’s your +time.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> first thing which entered my +father’s head, after affairs were a little settled in the +family, and <i>Susanna</i> had got possession of my mother’s +green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the +example of <i>Xenophon</i>, and write a +T<small>RISTRA</small>-<i>pædia</i>, or system of education +for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered +thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as +to form an <small>INSTITUTE</small> for the government of my +childhood and adolescence. I was my father’s last +stake—he had lost my brother <i>Bobby</i> entirely,—he +had lost, by his own computation, full three-fourths of +me—that is, he had been unfortunate in his three first great +casts for me—my geniture, nose, and name,—there was but +this one left; and accordingly my father gave himself up to it with +as much devotion as ever my uncle <i>Toby</i> had done to his +doctrine of projectils.—The difference between them was, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> drew his whole +knowledge of projectils from <i>Nicholas Tartaglia</i>—My +father spun his, every thread of it, out of his own brain,—or +reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and spinsters had +spun before him, that ’twas pretty near the same torture to +him.</p> + +<p>In about three years, or something more, my father had got +advanced almost into the middle of his work.—Like all other +writers, he met with disappointments.—He imagined he should +be able to bring whatever he had to say, into so small a compass, +that when it was finished and bound, it might be rolled up in my +mother’s hussive.—Matter grows under our +hands.—Let no man +say,—“Come—I’ll write a +duodecimo.”</p> + +<p>My father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful +diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same +kind of caution and circumspection (though I cannot say upon quite +so religious a principle) as was used by <i>John de la Casse</i>, +the lord archbishop of <i>Benevento</i>, in compassing his +<i>Galatea;</i> in which his Grace of <i>Benevento</i> spent near +forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of +above half the size or the thickness of a <i>Rider</i>’s +Almanack.—How the holy man managed the affair, unless he +spent the greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, or +playing at <i>primero</i> with his chaplain,—would pose any +mortal not let into the true secret;—and therefore ’tis +worth explaining to the world, was it only for the encouragement of +those few in it, who write not so much to be fed—as to be +famous.</p> + +<p>I own had <i>John de la Casse</i>, the archbishop of +<i>Benevento</i>, for whose memory (notwithstanding his +<i>Galatea</i>,) I retain the highest veneration,—had he +been, Sir, a slender clerk—of dull wit—slow +parts—costive head, and so forth,—he and his +<i>Galatea</i> might have jogged on together to the age of +<i>Methuselah</i> for me,—the phænomenon had not been +worth a parenthesis.—</p> + +<p>But the reverse of this was the truth: <i>John de la Casse</i> +was a genius of fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all +these great advantages of nature, which should have pricked him +forwards with his <i>Galatea</i>, he lay under an impuissance at +the same time of advancing above a line and a half in the compass +of a whole summer’s day: this disability in his Grace arose +from an opinion he was afflicted with,—which opinion was +this,—<i>viz.</i> that whenever a Christian was writing a +book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent and +purpose was, <i>bonâ fide</i>, to print and publish it to the +world, his first thoughts were always the temptations of the evil +one.—This was the state of ordinary writers: but when a +personage of venerable character and high station, either in church +or state, once turned author,—he maintained, that from the +very moment he took pen in hand—all the devils in hell broke +out of their holes to cajole him.—’Twas Term-time with +them,—every thought, first and last, was captious;—how specious and +good soever,—’twas all one;—in whatever form or +colour it presented itself to the imagination,—’twas +still a stroke of one or other of ’em levell’d at him, +and was to be fenced off.—So that the life of a writer, +whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of +<i>composition</i>, as a state of <i>warfare;</i> and his probation +in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon +earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the +degrees of his wit—as his <small>RESISTANCE</small>.</p> + +<p>My father was hugely pleased with this theory of <i>John de la +Casse</i>, archbishop of <i>Benevento;</i> and (had it not cramped +him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the +best acres in the <i>Shandy</i> estate, to have been the broacher +of it.—How far my father actually believed in the devil, will +be seen, when I come to speak of my father’s religious +notions, in the progress of this work: ’tis enough to say +here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine—he took +up with the allegory of it; and would often say, especially when +his pen was a little retrograde, there was as much good meaning, +truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of <i>John de la +Casse</i>’s parabolical representation,—as was to be +found in any one poetic fiction or mystic record of +antiquity.—Prejudice of education, he would say, <i>is the +devil</i>,—and the multitudes of them which we suck in with +our mother’s milk—<i>are the devil and +all.</i>——We are haunted with them, brother +<i>Toby</i>, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man +fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon +him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add, +throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago +of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of +both sexes) throughout the kingdom.</p> + +<p>This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow +progress my father made in his <i>Tristra-pædia;</i> at +which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, +indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by this +own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, +that I was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my +mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first +part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his +pains, was rendered entirely useless,——every day a page +or two became of no consequence.——</p> + +<p>——Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the +pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit +ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act +of pursuing them.</p> + +<p>In short my father was so long in all his acts of +resistance,—or in other words,—he advanced so very slow +with his work, and I began to live and get forwards at such a rate, +that if an event had not happened,——which, when we get +to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a moment from the +reader——I verily believe, I had put by my father, and +left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose than to be buried +under ground.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——’T<small>WAS</small> +nothing,—I did not lose two drops of blood by +it——’twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he +lived next door to us——thousands suffer by choice, what +I did by accident.——Doctor <i>Slop</i> made ten times +more of it, than there was occasion:——some men rise, by +the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,—and I am +this day (<i>August</i> the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of +this man’s reputation.——O ’twould provoke a +stone, to see how things are carried on in this +world!——The chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under +the bed:——Cannot you contrive, master, quoth +<i>Susannah</i>, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, +and helping me up into the window-seat with the +other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** +*** ** *** ****** ?</p> + +<p>I was five years old.——<i>Susannah</i> did not +consider that nothing was well hung in our family,——so +slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;—Nothing is +left,—cried <i>Susannah</i>,—nothing is left—for +me, but to run my country.——</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; +and so <i>Susannah</i> fled to it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> <i>Susannah</i> told the +corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances +which attended the <i>murder</i> of me,—(as she called +it,)—the blood forsook his cheeks,—all accessaries in +murder being principals,—<i>Trim</i>’s conscience told +him he was as much to blame as <i>Susannah</i>,—and if the +doctrine had been true, my uncle <i>Toby</i> had as much of the bloodshed to answer for to +heaven, as either of ’em;—so that neither reason or +instinct, separate or together, could possibly have guided +<i>Susannah</i>’s steps to so proper an asylum. It is in vain +to leave this to the Reader’s imagination:——to +form any kind of hypothesis that will render these propositions +feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore,—and to do it +without,—he must have such brains as no reader ever had +before him.—Why should I put them either to trial or to +torture? ’Tis my own affair: I’ll explain it +myself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>’T<small>IS</small> a pity, <i>Trim</i>, said +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, resting with his hand upon the +corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their +works,—that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in +the gorge of that new redoubt;—’twould secure the lines +all along there, and make the attack on that side quite +complete:——get me a couple cast, <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>Your honour shall have them, replied <i>Trim</i>, before +tomorrow morning.</p> + +<p>It was the joy of <i>Trim</i>’s heart, nor was his fertile +head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle +<i>Toby</i> in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; +had it been his last crown, he would have sate down and hammered it +into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his master. The +corporal had already,—what with cutting off the ends of my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s spouts—hacking and chiseling up the +sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter +shaving-bason,—and going at last, like <i>Lewis</i> the +Fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, +&c.——he had that very campaign brought no less than +eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the +field; my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s demand for two more pieces for +the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken +the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash +pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had +taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their +carriages.</p> + +<p>He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s house long before, in the very same +way,—though not always in the same order; for sometimes the +pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he began +with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the +lead became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too.</p> + +<p>——A great <small>MORAL</small> might be picked +handsomely out of this, but I have not time—’tis enough +to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to +the sash window.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XX</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> corporal had not taken his +measures so badly in this stroke of artilleryship, but that he +might have kept the matter entirely to himself, and left +<i>Susannah</i> to have sustained the whole weight of the attack, +as she could;—true courage is not content with coming off +so.——The corporal, whether as general or comptroller of +the train,—’twas no matter,——had done that, +without which, as he imagined, the misfortune could never have +happened,—<i>at least in</i> Susannah<i>’s +hands;</i>——How would your honours have +behaved?——He determined at once, not to take shelter +behind <i>Susannah</i>,—but to give it; and with this +resolution upon his mind, he marched upright into the parlour, to +lay the whole <i>manœuvre</i> before my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> had just then been giving <i>Yorick</i> an +account of the Battle of <i>Steenkirk</i>, and of the strange +conduct of count <i>Solmes</i> in ordering the foot to halt, and the horse to march where it could not act; which +was directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the +loss of the day.</p> + +<p>There are incidents in some families so pat to the purpose of +what is going to follow,—they are scarce exceeded by the +invention of a dramatic writer;—I mean of ancient +days.——</p> + +<p><i>Trim</i>, by the help of his fore-finger, laid flat upon the +table, and the edge of his hand striking across it at right angles, +made a shift to tell his story so, that priests and virgins might +have listened to it;—and the story being told,—the +dialogue went on as follows.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I would be picquetted to death, cried +the corporal, as he concluded <i>Susannah</i>’s story, before +I would suffer the woman to come to any harm,—’twas my +fault, an’ please your honour,—not her’s.</p> + +<p>Corporal <i>Trim</i>, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, putting on +his hat which lay upon the table,——if any thing can be said to be a +fault, when the service absolutely requires it should be +done,—’tis I certainly who deserve the blame,—you +obeyed your orders.</p> + +<p>Had count <i>Solmes</i>, <i>Trim</i>, done the same at the +battle of <i>Steenkirk</i>, said <i>Yorick</i>, drolling a little +upon the corporal, who had been run over by a dragoon in the +retreat,——he had saved thee;——Saved! cried +<i>Trim</i>, interrupting <i>Yorick</i>, and finishing the sentence +for him after his own fashion,——he had saved five +battalions, an’ please your reverence, every soul of +them:——there was +<i>Cutt</i> ’s,—continued the corporal, clapping +the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and +counting round his hand,——there was +<i>Cutt </i>’s,——<i>Mackay </i>’s,——<i>Angus </i>’s,——<i>Graham </i>’s,——and +<i>Leven </i>’s, all cut to pieces;——and so +had the <i>English</i> life-guards too, had it not been for some +regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, +and received the enemy’s fire in their faces, before any one +of their own platoons discharged a +musket,——they’ll go to heaven for it,—added +<i>Trim.</i>—<i>Trim</i> is right, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, nodding to <i>Yorick</i>,——he’s +perfectly right. What signified his marching the horse, continued +the corporal, where the ground was so strait, that the +<i>French</i> had such a nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, +and fell’d trees laid this way and that to cover them (as +they always have).——Count <i>Solmes</i> should have +sent us,——we would have fired muzzle to muzzle with +them for their lives.——There was nothing to be done for +the horse:——he had his foot shot off however for his +pains, continued the corporal, the very next campaign at +<i>Landen.</i>—Poor <i>Trim</i> got his wound there, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby.</i>——’Twas owing, an’ please +your honour, entirely to count <i>Solmes</i>,——had he +drubbed them soundly at <i>Steenkirk</i>, they would not have +fought us at <i>Landen.</i>——Possibly +not,——<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby;</i>——though if they have the advantage of a +wood, or you give them a moment’s time to intrench themselves, they are a nation which will pop and pop for +ever at you.——There is no way but to march coolly up to +them,——receive their fire, and fall in upon them, +pell-mell——Ding dong, added +<i>Trim.</i>——Horse and foot, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——Helter Skelter, said +<i>Trim.</i>——Right and left, cried my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——Blood an’ ounds, shouted the +corporal;——the battle raged,——<i>Yorick</i> +drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and after a +moment’s pause, my uncle <i>Toby</i> sinking his voice a +note,—resumed the discourse as follows.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>K<small>ING</small> <i>William</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, addressing himself to <i>Yorick</i>, was so terribly +provoked at count <i>Solmes</i> for disobeying his orders, that he +would not suffer him to come into his presence for many months +after.——I fear, answered <i>Yorick</i>, the squire will +be as much provoked at the corporal, as the King at the count.——But ’twould be +singularly hard in this case, continued be, if corporal +<i>Trim</i>, who has behaved so diametrically opposite to count +<i>Solmes</i>, should have the fate to be rewarded with the same +disgrace:——too oft in this world, do things take that +train.——I would spring a mine, cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, rising up,——and blow up my fortifications, +and my house with them, and we would perish under their ruins, ere +I would stand by and see it.——<i>Trim</i> directed a +slight,——but a grateful bow towards his +master,——and so the chapter ends.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——Then, <i>Yorick</i>, replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, you and I will lead the way abreast,——and +do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——And +<i>Susannah</i>, an’ please your honour, said <i>Trim</i>, +shall be put in the rear.——’Twas an excellent +disposition,—and in this order, without either drums beating, or colours flying, they +marched slowly from my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s house to +<i>Shandy-hall.</i></p> + +<p>——I wish, said <i>Trim</i>, as they entered the +door,—instead of the sash weights, I had cut off the church +spout, as I once thought to have done.—You have cut off +spouts enow, replied <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>As many pictures as have been given +of my father, how like him soever in different airs and +attitudes,—not one, or all of them, can ever help the reader +to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak, +or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of +life.—There was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of +chances along with it, by which handle he would take a +thing,—it baffled, Sir, all calculations.——The +truth was, his road lay so very far on one side, from that wherein +most men travelled,—that every object before him presented a +face and section of itself to his eye, altogether different from the plan and +elevation of it seen by the rest of mankind.—In other words, +’twas a different object, and in course was differently +considered:</p> + +<p>This is the true reason, that my dear <i>Jenny</i> and I, as +well as all the world besides us, have such eternal squabbles about +nothing.—She looks at her outside,—I, at her in—. +How is it possible we should agree about her value?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +’T<small>IS</small> a point settled,—and I mention it for the +comfort of <i>Confucius</i>,<a href="#fn24" name="fnref24"><sup>[24]</sup></a> +who is apt to get entangled in telling a plain story—that provided he +keeps along the line of his story,—he may go backwards and forwards as he +will,—’tis still held to be no digression. +</p> + +<p>This being premised, I take the benefit of the <i>act of going +backwards</i> myself.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn24"></a> <a href="#fnref24">[24]</a> +Mr <i>Shandy</i> is supposed to mean * * * * * * * * * * *, Esq; member for * * +* * * *,——and not the <i>Chinese</i> Legislator. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>F<small>IFTY</small> thousand pannier loads of +devils—(not of the Archbishop of +<i>Benevento</i>’s—I mean of <i>Rabelais</i>’s +devils), with their tails chopped off by their rumps, could not +have made so diabolical a scream of it, as I did—when the +accident befel me: it summoned up my mother instantly into the +nursery,—so that <i>Susannah</i> had but just time to make +her escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore.</p> + +<p>Now, though I was old enough to have told the story +myself,—and young enough, I hope, to have done it without +malignity; yet <i>Susannah</i>, in passing by the kitchen, for fear +of accidents, had left it in short-hand with the cook—the +cook had told it with a commentary to <i>Jonathan</i>, and +<i>Jonathan</i> to <i>Obadiah;</i> so that by the time my father +had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter +above,—was <i>Obadiah</i> enabled to give him a +particular account of it, just as it had happened.—I +thought as much, said my father, tucking up his +night-gown;—and so walked up stairs.</p> + +<p>One would imagine from this——(though for my own part +I somewhat question it)—that my father, before that time, had +actually wrote that remarkable character in the +<i>Tristra-pædia</i>, which to me is the most original and +entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the +<i>chapter upon sash-windows</i>, with a bitter <i>Philippick</i> +at the end of it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—I +have but two reasons for thinking otherwise.</p> + +<p>First, Had the matter been taken into consideration, before the +event happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash +window for good an’ all;—which, considering with what +difficulty he composed books,—he might have done with ten +times less trouble, than he could have wrote the chapter: this +argument I foresee holds good against his writing a chapter, even +after the event; but ’tis obviated under the second reason, +which I have the honour to offer to the world in support of my +opinion, that my father did not write the chapter upon sash-windows +and chamber-pots, at the time supposed,—and it is this.</p> + +<p>——That, in order to render the +<i>Tristra-pædia</i> complete,—I wrote the chapter +myself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father put on his +spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into +the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without +opening his lips, turned about and walked precipitately down +stairs: my mother imagined he had stepped down for lint and +basilicon; but seeing him return with a couple of folios under his +arm, and <i>Obadiah</i> following him with a large reading-desk, +she took it for granted ’twas an herbal, and so drew him a +chair to the bedside, that he might consult upon the case at his +ease.</p> + +<p>——If it be but right done,—said my +father, turning to the <i>Section—de sede vel subjecto +circumcisionis</i>,—for he had brought up <i>Spenser de +Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus</i>—and <i>Maimonides</i>, +in order to confront and examine us altogether.——</p> + +<p>——If it be but right done, quoth he:—only tell +us, cried my mother, interrupting him, what herbs?——For +that, replied my father, you must send for Dr. <i>Slop.</i></p> + +<p>My mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section +as follows,</p> + +<p>* * * * * * * * + * * * * * * * * + * * * * * * * * + * * * * * *—Very +well,—said my father, * * * * * + * * * * * * * * + * * * * * * * * + * * * * * * * * + * * *—nay, if it has that +convenience——and so without stopping a moment to settle +it first in his mind, whether the <i>Jews</i> had it from the +<i>Egyptians</i>, or the <i>Egyptians</i> from the +<i>Jews</i>,—he rose up, and rubbing his forehead two or +three times across with the palm of his hand, in the +manner we rub out the footsteps of care, when evil has trod lighter +upon us than we foreboded,—he shut the book, and walked down +stairs.—Nay, said he, mentioning the name of a different +great nation upon every step as he set his foot upon it—if +the E<small>GYPTIANS</small>,—the +S<small>YRIANS</small>,—the +P<small>HOENICIANS</small>,—the +A<small>RABIANS</small>,—the +C<small>APPADOCIANS</small>,——if the +C<small>OLCHI</small>, and T<small>ROGLODYTES</small> did +it——if S<small>OLON</small> and +P<small>YTHAGORAS</small> submitted,—what is +T<small>RISTRAM</small>?——Who am I, that I should fret +or fume one moment about the matter?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>D<small>EAR</small> <i>Yorick</i>, said my father +smiling (for <i>Yorick</i> had broke his rank with my uncle +<i>Toby</i> in coming through the narrow entry, and so had stept +first into the parlour)—this <i>Tristram</i> of ours, I find, +comes very hardly by all his religious rites.—Never was the +son of <i>Jew, Christian, Turk</i>, or <i>Infidel</i> initiated +into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—But +he is no worse, I trust, said <i>Yorick.</i>—There has been +certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in some +part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was +formed.—That, you are a better judge of than I, replied +<i>Yorick.</i>—Astrologers, quoth my father, know better than +us both:—the trine and sextil aspects have jumped +awry,—or the opposite of their ascendents have not hit it, as +they should,—or the lords of the genitures (as they call +them) have been at <i>bo-peep</i>,—or something has been +wrong above, or below with us.</p> + +<p> +’Tis possible, answered <i>Yorick.</i>—But is the child, cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, the worse?—The <i>Troglodytes</i> say not, replied my +father. And your theologists, <i>Yorick</i>, tell us—Theologically? said +<i>Yorick</i>,—or speaking after the manner of apothecaries?<a +href="#fn25" name="fnref25"><sup>[25]</sup></a>—statesmen?<a href="#fn26" +name="fnref26"><sup>[26]</sup></a>—or washer-women?<a href="#fn27" name="fnref27"><sup>[27]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p>——I’m not sure, replied my father,—but +they tell us, brother <i>Toby</i>, he’s the better for +it.——Provided, said <i>Yorick</i>, you travel him into +<i>Egypt.</i>—Of that, answered my father, he will have the +advantage, when he sees the <i>Pyramids.</i>——</p> + +<p>Now every word of this, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, is +<i>Arabic</i> to me.——I wish, said <i>Yorick</i>, +’twas so, to half the world.</p> + +<p> +—I<small>LUS</small>,<a href="#fn28" name="fnref28"><sup>[28]</sup></a> +continued my father, circumcised his whole army one morning.—Not without +a court martial? cried my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——Though the learned, +continued he, taking no notice of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s remark, but +turning to <i>Yorick</i>,—are greatly divided still who <i>Ilus</i> +was;—some say <i>Saturn;</i>—some the Supreme Being;—others, +no more than a brigadier general under <i>Pharaoh-neco.</i>——Let +him be who he will, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I know not by what article of +war he could justify it. +</p> + +<p>The controvertists, answered my father, assign two-and-twenty +different reasons for it:—others, indeed, who have drawn +their pens on the opposite side of the question, have shewn the +world the futility of the greatest part of them.—But then +again, our best polemic divines—I wish there was not a +polemic divine, said <i>Yorick</i>, in the kingdom;—one ounce +of practical divinity—is worth a painted ship-load of all +their reverences have imported these fifty years.—Pray, Mr. +<i>Yorick</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—do tell me what a +polemic divine is?——The best description, captain +<i>Shandy</i>, I have ever read, is of a couple of ’em, +replied <i>Yorick</i>, in the account of the battle fought single +hands betwixt <i>Gymnast</i> and captain <i>Tripet;</i> which I +have in my pocket.——I beg I may hear it, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i> earnestly.—You shall, said <i>Yorick.</i>—And as the corporal +is waiting for me at the door,—and I know the description of +a battle will do the poor fellow more good than his supper,—I +beg, brother, you’ll give him leave to come in.—With +all my soul, said my father.——<i>Trim</i> came in, +erect and happy as an emperor; and having shut the door, +<i>Yorick</i> took a book from his right-hand coat-pocket, and +read, or pretended to read, as follows.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn25"></a> <a href="#fnref25">[25]</a> +Χαλεπῆς νόσου, καὶ δυσιάτου ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἄνθρακα καλοῦσιν.—P<small>HILO</small> +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn26"></a> <a href="#fnref26">[26]</a> +Τὰ τεμνόμενα τῶν ἐθνῶν τολυγονώτατα, καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα εἶναι. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn27"></a> <a href="#fnref27">[27]</a> +Καθαριότητος εἵνεκεν.—B<small>OCHART</small>. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn28"></a> <a href="#fnref28">[28]</a> +Ὁ Ἶλος, τὰ αἰδοῖα περιτέμνεται, ταὐτὸ ποιῆσαι καὶ τοὺς ἅμ’ αυτῷ συμμάχους +καταναγκάσας.—S<small>ANCHUNIATHO</small>. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——“which words being heard +by all the soldiers which were there, divers of them being inwardly +terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant: all +this did <i>Gymnast</i> very well remark and consider; and +therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, +as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly +(with his short sword by this thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup, and performing the +stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body +downwards, he forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, and +placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright, +with his back turned towards his horse’s head,—Now, +(said he) my case goes forward. Then suddenly in the same posture +wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and turning to +the left-hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just +into his former position, without missing one jot.——Ha! +said <i>Tripet</i>, I will not do that at this time,—and not +without cause. Well, said <i>Gymnast</i>, I have failed,—I +will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, +turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another striking gambol +as before; which done, he set his right hand thumb upon the bow of +the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and +upholding his whole weight upon the muscle and nerve of the +said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at +the fourth, reversing his body, and overturning it upside down, and +foreside back, without <i>touching any thing</i>, he brought +himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself +a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the +crupper—”</p> + +<p>(This can’t be fighting, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——The corporal shook his head at +it.——Have patience, said <i>Yorick.</i>)</p> + +<p>“Then (<i>Tripet</i>) pass’d his right +leg over his saddle, and placed himself <i>en croup.</i>—But, +said he, ’twere better for me to get into the saddle; then +putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before him, and +there-upon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his +body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and +strait found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable +seat; then springing into the air with a summerset, he turned him +about like a wind-mill, and made above a hundred +frisks, turns, and demi-pommadas.”—Good God! cried +<i>Trim</i>, losing all patience,—one home thrust of a +bayonet is worth it all.——I think so too, replied +<i>Yorick.</i>——</p> + +<p>I am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——No,—I think I have advanced +nothing, replied my father, making answer to a question which +<i>Yorick</i> had taken the liberty to put to him,—I have +advanced nothing in the <i>Tristra-pædia</i>, but what is as +clear as any one proposition in <i>Euclid.</i>—Reach me, +<i>Trim</i>, that book from off the scrutoir:—it has +oft-times been in my mind, continued my father, to have read it +over both to you, <i>Yorick</i>, and to my brother <i>Toby</i>, and +I think it a little unfriendly in myself, in not having done it +long ago:——shall we have a short chapter or two +now,—and a chapter or two hereafter, as occasions serve; and so on, till we get through the +whole? My uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Yorick</i> made the obeisance +which was proper; and the corporal, though he was not included in +the compliment, laid his hand upon his breast, and made his bow at +the same time.——The company smiled. <i>Trim</i>, quoth +my father, has paid the full price for staying out the +<i>entertainment.</i>——He did not seem to relish the +play, replied <i>Yorick.</i>——’Twas a +Tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence, of captain +<i>Tripet</i> ’s and that other officer, making so many +summersets, as they advanced;——the <i>French</i> come +on capering now and then in that way,—but not quite so +much.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> never felt the consciousness of his +existence with more complacency than what the corporal’s, and +his own reflections, made him do at that moment;——he +lighted his pipe,——<i>Yorick</i> drew his chair closer +to the table,—<i>Trim</i> snuff’d the candle,—my +father stirr’d up the fire,—took up the +book,—cough’d twice, and begun.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> first thirty pages, said my +father, turning over the leaves,—are a little dry; and as +they are not closely connected with the subject,——for +the present we’ll pass them by: ’tis a prefatory +introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for +I am not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil +government; the foundation of which being laid in the first +conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the +species——I was insensibly led into +it.——’Twas natural, said <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<p>The original of society, continued my father, I’m +satisfied is, what <i>Politian</i> tells us, <i>i.e.</i> merely +conjugal; and nothing more than the getting together of one man and +one woman;—to which, (according to <i>Hesiod</i>) the +philosopher adds a servant:—but supposing in the first +beginning there were no men servants born——he lays the +foundation of it, in a man,—a woman—and a +bull.——I believe ’tis an ox, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, +quoting the passage ([Greek text])——A bull must have +given more trouble than his head was worth.—But there is a +better reason still, said my father (dipping his pen into his ink); +for the ox being the most patient of animals, and the most useful +withal in tilling the ground for their nourishment,—was the +properest instrument, and emblem too, for the new joined couple, +that the creation could have associated with them.—And there +is a stronger reason, added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, than them all for +the ox.—My father had not power to take his pen out of his +ink-horn, till he had heard my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +reason.—For when the ground was tilled, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, and made worth inclosing, then they began to secure it +by walls and ditches, which was the origin of +fortification.——True, true, dear <i>Toby</i>, cried my +father, striking out the bull, and putting the ox in his place.</p> + +<p>My father gave <i>Trim</i> a nod, to snuff the candle, and +resumed his discourse.</p> + +<p>——I enter upon this speculation, said my father +carelessly, and half shutting the book, as he went on, merely to +shew the foundation of the natural relation between a father and +his child; the right and jurisdiction over whom he acquires these +several ways—</p> + +<p>1st, by marriage.</p> + +<p>2d, by adoption.</p> + +<p>3d, by legitimation.</p> + +<p>And 4th, by procreation; all which I consider in their +order.</p> + +<p>I lay a slight stress upon one of them, replied +<i>Yorick</i>——the act, especially where it ends there, +in my opinion lays as little obligation upon the child, as it +conveys power to the father.—You are wrong,—said my +father argutely, and for this plain reason * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.—I own, +added my father, that the offspring, upon this account, is not so +under the power and jurisdiction of the mother.—But +the reason, replied <i>Yorick</i>, equally holds good for +her.—She is under authority herself, said my +father:—and besides, continued my father, nodding his head, +and laying his finger upon the side of his nose, as he assigned his +reason,—<i>she is not the principal agent</i>, +Yorick.—In what, quoth my uncle <i>Toby?</i> stopping his +pipe.—Though by all means, added my father (not attending to +my uncle <i>Toby</i>), “The son ought to pay her +respect,” as you may read, <i>Yorick</i>, at large in the +first book of the Institutes of <i>Justinian</i>, at the eleventh +title and the tenth section.—I can read it as well, replied +<i>Yorick</i>, in the Catechism.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>RIM</small> can repeat every word of it by +heart, quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Pugh! said my father, not +caring to be interrupted with <i>Trim</i>’s saying his +Catechism. He can, upon my honour, replied my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Ask him, Mr. <i>Yorick</i>, +any question you please.——</p> + +<p>—The fifth Commandment, <i>Trim</i>,—said +<i>Yorick</i>, speaking mildly, and with a gentle nod, as to a +modest Catechumen. The corporal stood silent.—You don’t +ask him right, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, raising his voice, and +giving it rapidly like the word of command:——The +fifth———cried my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—I must +begin with the first, an’ please your honour, said the +corporal.——</p> + +<p>—<i>Yorick</i> could not forbear smiling.—Your +reverence does not consider, said the corporal, shouldering his +stick like a musket, and marching into the middle of the room, to +illustrate his position,—that ’tis exactly the same +thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.—</p> + +<p>“<i>Join your right-hand to your firelock</i>,” +cried the corporal, giving the word of command, and performing the +motion.—</p> + +<p>“<i>Poise your firelock</i>,” cried the corporal, +doing the duty still both of adjutant and private man.</p> + +<p>“<i>Rest your firelock;</i>”—one motion, +an’ please your reverence, you see leads into +another.—If his honour will begin but with the +<i>first</i>—</p> + +<p>T<small>HE FIRST</small>—cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +setting his hand upon his side—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * *.</p> + +<p>T<small>HE SECOND</small>—cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would have done his sword at the +head of a regiment.—The corporal went through his +<i>manual</i> with exactness; and having <i>honoured his father and +mother</i>, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the +room.</p> + +<p>Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest, and +has wit in it, and instruction too,—if we can but find it +out.</p> + +<p>—Here is the <i>scaffold work</i> of +I<small>NSTRUCTION</small>, its true point of folly, without the +<small>BUILDING</small> behind it.</p> + +<p>—Here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, +governors, gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders to view themselves in, +in their true dimensions.—</p> + +<p>Oh! there is a husk and shell, <i>Yorick</i>, which grows up +with learning, which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling +away!</p> + +<p>—S<small>CIENCES MAY BE LEARNED BY ROTE BUT WISDOM +NOT.</small></p> + +<p> +<i>Yorick</i> thought my father inspired.—I will enter into obligations +this moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt <i>Dinah</i>’s legacy +in charitable uses (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion), if +the corporal has any one determinate idea annexed to any one word he has +repeated.—Prithee, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my father, turning round to +him,—What dost thou mean, by “<i>honouring thy father and +mother?</i>” +</p> + +<p>Allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a +day out of my pay, when they grow old.—And didst thou do +that, <i>Trim</i>? said <i>Yorick.</i>—He did indeed, replied +my uncle <i>Toby.</i>—Then, <i>Trim</i>, said <i>Yorick</i>, +springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the hand, +thou art the best commentator upon that part of the +<i>Decalogue;</i> and I honour thee more for it, corporal <i>Trim</i>, than +if thou hadst had a hand in the <i>Talmud</i> itself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIIIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>O <small>BLESSED</small> health! cried my father, +making an exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next +chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; ’tis thou who +enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to receive +instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has +little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to +want thee,—wants every thing with thee.</p> + +<p>I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important +head, said my father, into a very little room, therefore +we’ll read the chapter quite through.</p> + +<p>My father read as follows:</p> + +<p> +“The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for mastery +betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”—You have proved +that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said <i>Yorick.</i> Sufficiently, +replied my father. +</p> + +<p>In saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he +resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his fore-finger in the +chapter:——nor pettishly,—for he shut the book +slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-side +of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, +without the least compressive violence.——</p> + +<p>I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, +nodding to <i>Yorick</i>, most sufficiently in the preceding +chapter.</p> + +<p>Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth +had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of +all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the +<i>radical heat</i> and the <i>radical moisture</i>,—and that +he had managed the point so well, that there was not one single +word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture, throughout +the whole chapter,—or a single syllable in it, <i>pro</i> or +<i>con</i>, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt +these two powers in any part of the animal +œconomy——</p> + +<p>“O thou eternal Maker of all +beings!”—he would cry, striking his breast with +his right hand (in case he had one)—“Thou whose +power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to +this infinite degree of excellence and perfection,—What have +we M<small>OONITES</small> done?”</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>ITH</small> two strokes, the one at +<i>Hippocrates</i>, the other at Lord <i>Verulam</i>, did my father +achieve it.</p> + +<p>The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was +no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the +<i>Ars longa</i>,—and <i>Vita brevis.</i>——Life +short, cried my father,—and the art of healing tedious! And +who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the +ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads of +chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all +ages, they have first flatter’d the world, and at last +deceived it?</p> + +<p>——O my lord <i>Verulam!</i> cried my father, +turning from <i>Hippocrates</i>, and making his second stroke at +him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be +made an example of to the rest,—What shall I say to thee, my +great lord <i>Verulam?</i> What shall I say to thy internal +spirit,—thy opium, thy salt-petre,——thy greasy +unctions,—thy daily purges,—thy nightly clysters, and +succedaneums?</p> + +<p>——My father was never at a loss what to say to any +man, upon any subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium +of any man breathing: how he dealt with his lordship’s +opinion,——you shall see;——but when—I +know not:——we must first see what his lordship’s +opinion was.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>“T<small>HE</small> two great causes, +which conspire with each other to shorten life, says lord +<i>Verulam</i>, are first——</p> + +<p>“The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame +wastes the body down to death:—And secondly, the external +air, that parches the body up to ashes:—which two enemies +attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length +destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions +of life.”</p> + +<p>This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was +plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to +repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the +substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of +opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the +other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning +before you got up.——</p> + +<p>Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical +assaults of the air without;—but this was fenced off again by +a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of +the skin, that no spicula could enter;——nor could any +one get out.——This put a stop to all perspiration, +sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy +distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off +redundant humours,—and render the system complete.</p> + +<p>What my father had to say to my lord of <i>Verulam</i>’s +opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you +shall read,—but not to-day—or to-morrow: time presses +upon me,—my reader is impatient—I must get +forwards——You shall read the chapter at your leisure +(if you chuse it), as soon as ever the <i>Tristra-pædia</i> +is published.——</p> + +<p>Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the +hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he +built up and established his own.——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> whole secret of health, said my +father, beginning the sentence again, depending evidently upon the +due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within +us;—the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have +maintained it, had not the school-men confounded the task, merely +(as <i>Van Helmont</i>, the famous chymist, has proved) by all +along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of +animal bodies.</p> + +<p>Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, +but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as +also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and +balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for +the observation of <i>Aristotle</i>, “<i>Quod omne +animal post coitum est</i> triste.”</p> + +<p>Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical +moisture, but whether <i>vice versa</i>, is a doubt: however, when the one +decays, the other decays also; and then is produced, either an +unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness——or +an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies.——So that +if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught to avoid running into +fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his +destruction,——’twill be all that is needful to be +done upon that head.——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> description of the siege of +<i>Jericho</i> itself, could not have engaged the attention of my +uncle <i>Toby</i> more powerfully than the last chapter;—his +eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it;—he never +mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle +<i>Toby</i> took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and +as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to +come close to his chair, to ask him the following question,—<i>aside.</i>— * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * *. It was at the siege of <i>Limerick</i>, +an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, making a +bow.</p> + +<p>The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, addressing +himself to my father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, +at the time the siege of <i>Limerick</i> was raised, upon the very +account you mention.——Now what can have got into that +precious noddle of thine, my dear brother <i>Toby?</i> cried +my father, mentally.——By Heaven! continued he, +communing still with himself, it would puzzle an +<i>Œdipus</i> to bring it in point.——</p> + +<p>I believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, +that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to +every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which I plyed your +honour off;—And the geneva, <i>Trim</i>, added my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, which did us more good than all——I verily +believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and +been buried in them too.——The noblest grave, corporal! +cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a +soldier could wish to lie down in.——But a pitiful death +for him! an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.</p> + +<p>All this was as much <i>Arabick</i> to my father, as the rites +of the <i>Colchi</i> and <i>Troglodites</i> had been before to my +uncle <i>Toby;</i> my father could not determine whether he was to +frown or to smile.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>, turning to <i>Yorick</i>, resumed the case +at <i>Limerick</i>, more intelligibly than he had begun +it,—and so settled the point for my father at once.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was undoubtedly, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we +had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, +during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the +camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as I conceive it, +inevitably have got the better.——My father drew in his +lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as +slowly as he possibly could.——</p> + +<p>——It was Heaven’s mercy to us, continued my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, which put it into the corporal’s head to +maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the +radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, +with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) +a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from +the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, +terrible as it was.——Upon my honour, added my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, +brother <i>Shandy</i>, twenty toises.—If there was no firing, +said <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<p> +Well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after +the word——Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me +one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they +had had their +clergy—————————————<i>Yorick</i>, +foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand +upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few +minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——Prithee, +<i>Trim</i>, said <i>Yorick</i>, without staying for my father’s +leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion concerning this +self-same radical heat and radical moisture? +</p> + +<p>With humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, +quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>—The poor fellow is my servant,—not my +slave,—added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, turning to my +father.——</p> + +<p>The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick +hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel +about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his +under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he +opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>J<small>UST</small> as the corporal was humming, to +begin—in waddled Dr. <i>Slop.</i>—’Tis not +two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next +chapter, let who will come in.——</p> + +<p>Well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the +transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and +what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter?</p> + +<p>Had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a +puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: +the system which Dr. <i>Slop</i> had laid down, to treat the +accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—He sat +down.</p> + +<p>Pray, Sir, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in a manner which could +not go unanswered,—in what condition is the +boy?—’Twill end in a <i>phimosis</i>, replied Dr. +<i>Slop.</i></p> + +<p>I am no wiser than I was, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—returning his pipe into his +mouth.——Then let the corporal go on, said my father, +with his medical lecture.—The corporal made a bow to his old +friend, Dr. <i>Slop</i>, and then delivered his opinion concerning +radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XL</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> city of <i>Limerick</i>, the +siege of which was begun under his majesty king <i>William</i> +himself, the year after I went into the army—lies, an’ +please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy +country.—’Tis quite surrounded, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, with the <i>Shannon</i>, and is, by its situation, one +of the strongest fortified places in +<i>Ireland.</i>——</p> + +<p>I think this is a new fashion, quoth Dr. <i>Slop</i>, of +beginning a medical lecture.—’Tis all true, answered +<i>Trim.</i>—Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of +it, said <i>Yorick.</i>—’Tis all cut through, an’ +please your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and +besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, +the whole country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and +nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have +killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such thing, +after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to +lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off +the water;—nor was that enough, for those who could afford +it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a +pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and +made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.——</p> + +<p>And what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal <i>Trim</i>, cried +my father, from all these premises?</p> + +<p>I infer, an’ please your worship, replied <i>Trim</i>, +that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but +ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those who can go to +the expence of it, is burnt brandy,—the radical heat and +moisture of a private man, an’ please your honour, is nothing +but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us +but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and +drive away the vapours—we know not what it is to fear +death.</p> + +<p>I am at a loss, Captain <i>Shandy</i>, quoth Doctor <i>Slop</i>, +to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, +whether in physiology or divinity.—<i>Slop</i> had not forgot +<i>Trim</i>’s comment upon the sermon.—</p> + +<p>It is but an hour ago, replied <i>Yorick</i>, since the corporal +was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great +honour.——</p> + +<p>The radical heat and moisture, quoth Doctor <i>Slop</i>, turning +to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our +being—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—It +is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved +sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by <i>consubstantials, +impriments</i>, and <i>occludents.</i>——Now this poor +fellow, continued Dr. <i>Slop</i>, pointing to the corporal, has +had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse +upon this nice point.——That he has,—said my +father.——Very likely, said my uncle.—I’m +sure of it—quoth <i>Yorick.</i>——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLI</small> +</h3> + +<p>D<small>OCTOR</small> <i>Slop</i> being called out +to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an +opportunity of going on with another chapter in the +<i>Tristra-pædia.</i>——Come! cheer up, my lads; +I’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged +through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this +twelve-month.—Huzza!—</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——F<small>IVE</small> years with a bib +under his chin;</p> + +<p>Four years in travelling from Christ-cross-row to +<i>Malachi;</i></p> + +<p>A year and a half in learning to write his own name;</p> + +<p>Seven long years and more τυπιω-ing +it, at Greek and Latin;</p> + +<p>Four years at his <i>probations</i> and his +<i>negations</i>—the fine statue still lying in the middle of +the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened +to hew it out!—’Tis a piteous delay!—Was not the +great <i>Julius Scaliger</i> within an ace of never getting his +tools sharpened at all?——Forty-four years old was he +before he could manage his Greek;—and <i>Peter Damianus</i>, +lord bishop of <i>Ostia</i>, as all the world knows, could not so +much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—And +<i>Baldus</i> himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered +upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in +the other world: no wonder, when <i>Eudamidas</i>, the son of +<i>Archidamas</i>, heard <i>Xenocrates</i> at seventy-five +disputing about <i>wisdom</i>, that he asked gravely,—<i>If +the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning +wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it?</i></p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i> listened to my father with great attention; there +was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest +whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of +his eclipses, as almost atoned for them:—be wary, Sir, when +you imitate him.</p> + +<p>I am convinced, <i>Yorick</i>, continued my father, half reading +and half discoursing, that there is a North-west passage to the +intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of +going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, +than we generally take with it.——But, alack! all fields +have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every +child, <i>Yorick</i>, has not a parent to point it out.</p> + +<p>——The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a +low voice, upon the <i>auxiliary verbs</i>, Mr. <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<p>Had <i>Yorick</i> trod upon <i>Virgil</i> ’s snake, +he could not have looked more surprised.—I am surprised too, +cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon it as one of the +greatest calamities which ever befel the republic of letters, That +those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, +and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early +with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have +made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have +done——So that, except <i>Raymond Lullius</i>, and the +elder <i>Pelegrini</i>, the last of which arrived to such +perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few +lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with +plausibility upon any subject, <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, and to +say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, +without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld +him.—I should be glad, said <i>Yorick</i>, interrupting my father, +to be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my +father.</p> + +<p>The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, +is a high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea +is generally the worse, and not the better;——but be +that as it may,—when the mind has done that with +it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at +rest,—until a second idea enters;—and so on.</p> + +<p>Now the use of the <i>Auxiliaries</i> is, at once to set the +soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; +and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are +twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea +engender millions.</p> + +<p>You excite my curiosity greatly, said <i>Yorick.</i></p> + +<p>For my own part, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I have given it +up.——The <i>Danes</i>, an’ please your honour, +quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of <i>Limerick</i>, were all +auxiliaries.——And very good ones, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>—But the auxiliaries, <i>Trim</i>, my brother is +talking about,—I conceive to be different +things.——</p> + +<p>——You do? said my father, rising up.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father took a single turn across +the room, then sat down, and finished the chapter.</p> + +<p>The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my +father, are, <i>am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; +shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used;</i> or +<i>is wont.</i>—And these varied with tenses, <i>present, +past, future</i>, and <i>conjugated</i> with the verb +<i>see</i>,—or with these questions added to +them;—<i>Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be? +Might it be?</i> And these again put negatively, <i>Is it not? Was +it not? Ought it not?</i>—Or affirmatively,—<i>It +is; It was; It ought to be.</i> Or +chronologically,—<i>Has it been always? Lately? How long +ago?</i>—Or hypothetically,—<i>If it was? If it was +not?</i> What would follow?—If the <i>French</i> should beat +the <i>English?</i> If the <i>Sun</i> go out of the +<i>Zodiac?</i></p> + +<p>Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my +father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there +is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, but a +magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from +it.——Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, +turning his head round to <i>Trim</i>, who stood at the back of his +chair:—No, an’ please your honour, replied the +corporal.——But thou couldst discourse about one, +<i>Trim</i>, said my father, in case of need?——How is +it possible, brother, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, if the corporal +never saw one?——’Tis the fact I want, replied my +father,—and the possibility of it is as follows.</p> + +<p>A <small>WHITE BEAR</small>! Very well. Have I ever seen +one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever +to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?</p> + +<p>Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)</p> + +<p>If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should +never see a white bear, what then?</p> + +<p>If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; +have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one +painted?—described? Have I never dreamed of one?</p> + +<p>Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever +see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How +would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? +Rough? Smooth?</p> + +<p>—Is the white bear worth seeing?—</p> + +<p>—Is there no sin in it?—</p> + +<p>Is it better than a <small>BLACK ONE</small>?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——W<small>E’LL</small> not stop two moments, my dear +Sir,—only, as we have got through these five volumes<a href="#fn29" +name="fnref29"><sup>[29]</sup></a>, (do, Sir, sit down upon a +set——they are better than nothing) let us just look back upon the +country we have pass’d through.—— +</p> + +<p>——What a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy +that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts +in it!</p> + +<p>Did you think the world itself, Sir, had contained such a number +of Jack Asses?——How they view’d and +review’d us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of +that little valley!——and when we climbed over that +hill, and were just getting out of sight—good God! what a +braying did they all set up together!</p> + +<p>——Prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those +Jack Asses? * * *</p> + +<p>——Heaven be their comforter——What! are +they never curried?——Are they never taken in in +winter?——Bray bray—bray. Bray on,—the world +is deeply your debtor;——louder still—that’s +nothing:—in good sooth, you are ill-used:——Was I +a Jack Asse, I solemnly declare, I would bray in G-sol-re-ut from +morning, even unto night.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn29"></a> <a href="#fnref29">[29]</a> +In the first edition, the sixth volume began with this chapter. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> my father had danced his white +bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed +the book for good an’ all,—and in a kind of triumph +redelivered it into <i>Trim</i>’s hand, with a nod to lay it +upon the ’scrutoire, where he found +it.——<i>Tristram</i>, said he, shall be made to +conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the +same way;——every word, <i>Yorick</i>, by this means, +you see, is converted into a thesis or an hypothesis;—every thesis and hypothesis have an off-spring of +propositions;—and each proposition has its own consequences +and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into +fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.——The force of +this engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a +child’s head.——’Tis enough, brother +<i>Shandy</i>, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to burst it into a +thousand splinters.——</p> + +<p> +I presume, said <i>Yorick</i>, smiling,—it must be owing to +this,—(for let logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted +for sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)——That +the famous <i>Vincent Quirino</i>, amongst the many other astonishing feats of +his childhood, of which the Cardinal <i>Bembo</i> has given the world so exact +a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at <i>Rome</i>, +so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand five +hundred and fifty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most +abstruse theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to +cramp and dumbfound his opponents.——What is that, cried my father, +to what is told us of <i>Alphonsus Tostatus</i>, who, almost in his +nurse’s arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being +taught any one of them?——What shall we say of the great +<i>Piereskius?</i>—That’s the very man, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +I once told you of, brother <i>Shandy</i>, who walked a matter of five hundred +miles, reckoning from <i>Paris</i> to <i>Shevling</i>, and from <i>Shevling</i> +back again, merely to see <i>Stevinus</i>’s flying +chariot.——He was a very great man! added my uncle <i>Toby</i> +(meaning <i>Stevinus</i>)—He was so, brother <i>Toby</i>, said my father +(meaning <i>Piereskius</i>)——and had multiplied his ideas so fast, +and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious stock, that, if we may give +credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without +shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever—at seven years of age, +his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, +a boy of five years old,—with the sole management of all his +concerns.—Was the father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle +<i>Toby:</i>—I should think not, said <i>Yorick:</i>—But what are +these, continued my father—(breaking out in a kind of +enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in +<i>Grotius, Scioppius, Heinsius, Politian, Pascal, Joseph Scaliger, Ferdinand +de Cordouè</i>, and others—some of which left off their <i>substantial +forms</i> at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without +them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote tragedies +at eight;—<i>Ferdinand de Cordouè</i> was so wise at +nine,—’twas thought the Devil was in him;—and at +<i>Venice</i> gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness, that the monks +imagined he was <i>Antichrist</i>, or nothing.——Others were masters +of fourteen languages at ten,—finished the course of their rhetoric, +poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven,—put forth their commentaries upon +<i>Servius</i> and <i>Martianus Capella</i> at twelve,—and at thirteen +received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:——but you +forget the great <i>Lipsius</i>, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, who composed a work<a +href="#fn30" name="fnref30"><sup>[30]</sup></a> the day he was +born:——They should have wiped it up, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and +said no more about it. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn30"></a> <a href="#fnref30">[30]</a> +Nous aurions quelque interêt, says <i>Baillet</i>, de montrer qu’il +n’a rien de ridicule s’il étoit veritable, au moins dans le sens +énigmatique que <i>Nicius Erythræus</i> a tâ hé de lui donner. Cet auteur dit +que pour comprendre comme <i>Lipse</i>, il a pû composer un ouvrage le premier +jour de sa vie, il faut s’imaginer, que ce premier jour n’est pas +celui de sa naissance charnelle, mais celui au quel il a commencé d’user +de la raison; il veut que ç’ait été à l’âge de <i>neuf</i> ans; et +il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que <i>Lipse</i> fit un +poëme.——Le tour est ingénieux, &c. &c. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> the cataplasm was ready, a +scruple of <i>decorum</i> had unseasonably rose up in +<i>Susannah</i>’s conscience, about holding the candle, +whilst <i>Slop</i> tied it on; <i>Slop</i> had not treated +<i>Susannah</i>’s distemper with anodynes,—and so a +quarrel had ensued betwixt them.</p> + +<p>——Oh! oh!——said <i>Slop</i>, +casting a glance of undue freedom in <i>Susannah</i>’s face, +as she declined the office;——then, I think I know you, +madam——You know me, Sir! cried <i>Susannah</i> +fastidiously, and with a toss of her head, levelled evidently, not +at his profession, but at the doctor himself,——you know +me! cried <i>Susannah</i> again.——Doctor <i>Slop</i> +clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his +nostrils;——<i>Susannah</i>’s spleen was ready to +burst at it;——’Tis false, said +<i>Susannah.</i>—Come, come, Mrs. Modesty, said <i>Slop</i>, +not a little elated with the success of his last +thrust,——If you won’t hold the candle, and +look—you may hold it and shut your eyes:—That’s +one of your popish shifts, cried <i>Susannah:</i>—’Tis +better, said <i>Slop</i>, with a nod, than no shift at all, young +woman;——I defy you, Sir, cried <i>Susannah</i>, pulling +her shift sleeve below her elbow.</p> + +<p>It was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in +a surgical case with a more splenetic cordiality.</p> + +<p> +<i>Slop</i> snatched up the cataplasm——<i>Susannah</i> snatched up +the candle;——A little this way, said <i>Slop;</i> <i>Susannah</i> +looking one way, and rowing another, instantly set fire to <i>Slop</i>’s +wig, which being somewhat bushy and unctuous withal, was burnt out before it +was well kindled.——You impudent whore! cried +<i>Slop</i>,—(for what is passion, but a wild beast?)—you impudent +whore, cried <i>Slop</i>, getting upright, with the cataplasm in his +hand;——I never was the destruction of any body’s nose, said +<i>Susannah</i>,—which is more than you can say:——Is it? +cried <i>Slop</i>, throwing the cataplasm in her face;——Yes, it is, +cried <i>Susannah</i>, returning the compliment with what was left in the pan. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>D<small>OCTOR</small> <i>Slop</i> and +<i>Susannah</i> filed cross-bills against each other in the +parlour; which done, as the cataplasm had failed, they retired into +the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me;—and whilst that was doing, my father determined the +point as you will read.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>Y<small>OU</small> see ’tis high time, said my +father, addressing himself equally to my uncle <i>Toby</i> and +<i>Yorick</i>, to take this young creature out of these +women’s hands, and put him into those of a private governor. +<i>Marcus Antoninus</i> provided fourteen governors all at once to +superintend his son <i>Commodus</i>’s education,—and in +six weeks he cashiered five of them;—I know very well, +continued my father, that <i>Commodus</i>’s mother was in +love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which accounts +for a great many of <i>Commodus</i>’s cruelties when he +became emperor;—but still I am of opinion, that those five +whom <i>Antoninus</i> dismissed, did <i>Commodus</i>’s +temper, in that short time, more hurt than the other nine were able +to rectify all their lives long.</p> + +<p>Now as I consider the person who is to be about my son, as the +mirror in which he is to view himself from morning to night, +by which he is to adjust his looks, his carriage, and perhaps the +inmost sentiments of his heart;—I would have one, +<i>Yorick</i>, if possible, polished at all points, fit for my +child to look into.——This is very good sense, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i> to himself.</p> + +<p>——There is, continued my father, a certain mien and +motion of the body and all its parts, both in acting and speaking, +which argues a man <i>well within;</i> and I am not at all +surprised that <i>Gregory</i> of <i>Nazianzum</i>, upon observing +the hasty and untoward gestures of <i>Julian</i>, should foretel he +would one day become an apostate;——or that St. +<i>Ambrose</i> should turn his <i>Amanuensis</i> out of doors, +because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and +forwards like a flail;——or that <i>Democritus</i> +should conceive <i>Protagoras</i> to be a scholar, from seeing him +bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs +inwards.——There are a thousand unnoticed openings, +continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into +a man’s soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of +sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or +take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which +discovers him.</p> + +<p> +It is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice +of shall neither<a href="#fn31" name="fnref31"><sup>[31]</sup></a> lisp, or +squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;——or bite +his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it +with his fingers.—— +</p> + +<p>He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his +arms,—for that is laziness;—or hang them +down,—for that is folly; or hide them in his pocket, for that +is nonsense.——</p> + +<p>He shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle—or bite, or +cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his feet or +fingers in company;——nor (according to <i>Erasmus</i>) +shall he speak to any one in making water,—nor shall he point to +carrion or excrement.——Now this is all nonsense again, +quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i> to himself.——</p> + +<p>I will have him, continued my father, cheerful, faceté, +jovial; at the same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, +acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative +questions;——he shall be wise, and judicious, and +learned:——And why not humble, and moderate, and +gentle-tempered, and good? said <i>Yorick:</i>——And why +not, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, free, and generous, and bountiful, +and brave?——He shall, my dear <i>Toby</i>, replied my +father, getting up and shaking him by his hand.—Then, brother +<i>Shandy</i>, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>, raising himself off +the chair, and laying down his pipe to take hold of my +father’s other hand,—I humbly beg I may recommend poor +<i>Le Fever</i>’s son to you;——a tear of joy of +the first water sparkled in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s eye, and +another, the fellow to it, in the corporal’s, as the +proposition was made;——you will see why when you read <i>Le +Fever</i>’s story:——fool that I was! nor can I +recollect (nor perhaps you) without turning back to the place, what +it was that hindered me from letting the corporal tell it in his +own words;—but the occasion is lost,—I must tell it now +in my own.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn31"></a> <a href="#fnref31">[31]</a> +Vid. <i>Pellegrina.</i> +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIX</small><br/> +<br/> +THE STORY OF LE FEVER +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was some time in the summer of +that year in which <i>Dendermond</i> was taken by the +allies,—which was about seven years before my father came +into the country,—and about as many, after the time, that my +uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> had privately decamped from my +father’s house in town, in order to lay some of the finest +sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in +<i>Europe</i>——when my uncle <i>Toby</i> was one +evening getting his supper, with <i>Trim</i> sitting behind him at +a small sideboard,—I say, sitting—for in consideration of the corporal’s lame knee +(which sometimes gave him exquisite pain)—when my uncle +<i>Toby</i> dined or supped alone, he would never suffer the +corporal to stand; and the poor fellow’s veneration for his +master was such, that, with a proper artillery, my uncle +<i>Toby</i> could have taken <i>Dendermond</i> itself, with less +trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for many a +time when my uncle <i>Toby</i> supposed the corporal’s leg +was at rest, he would look back, and detect him standing behind him +with the most dutiful respect: this bred more little squabbles +betwixt them, than all other causes for five-and-twenty years +together—But this is neither here nor there—why do I +mention it?——Ask my pen,—it governs me,—I +govern not it.</p> + +<p>He was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord +of a little inn in the village came into the parlour, with an empty +phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack; ’Tis for a +poor gentleman,—I think, of the army, said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my house +four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a +desire to taste any thing, till just now, that he has a fancy for a +glass of sack and a thin toast,——<i>I think</i>, says +he, taking his hand from his forehead, <i>it would comfort +me.</i>——</p> + +<p>——If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a +thing—added the landlord,—I would almost steal it for +the poor gentleman, he is so ill.——I hope in God he +will still mend, continued he,—we are all of us concerned for +him.</p> + +<p>Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee, cried my +uncle <i>Toby;</i> and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman’s +health in a glass of sack thyself,—and take a couple of +bottles with my service, and tell him he is heartily welcome to +them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good.</p> + +<p>Though I am persuaded, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as the +landlord shut the door, he is a very compassionate +fellow—<i>Trim</i>,—yet I cannot help entertaining a high opinion +of his guest too; there must be something more than common in him, +that in so short a time should win so much upon the affections of +his host;——And of his whole family, added the corporal, +for they are all concerned for him.——Step after him, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—do <i>Trim</i>,—and ask if +he knows his name.</p> + +<p>——I have quite forgot it truly, said the landlord, +coming back into the parlour with the corporal,—but I can ask +his son again:——Has he a son with him then? said my +uncle <i>Toby.</i>—A boy, replied the landlord, of about +eleven or twelve years of age;—but the poor creature has +tasted almost as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn +and lament for him night and day:——He has not stirred +from the bed-side these two days.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> laid down his knife and fork, and thrust +his plate from before him, as the landlord gave him the account; +and <i>Trim</i>, without being ordered, took away, without saying one word, and in a +few minutes after brought him his pipe and tobacco.</p> + +<p>——Stay in the room a little, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p><i>Trim!</i>——said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, after +he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d about a dozen +whiffs.——<i>Trim</i> came in front of his master, and +made his bow;—my uncle <i>Toby</i> smoak’d on, and said +no more.——Corporal! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>—the +corporal made his bow.——My uncle <i>Toby</i> proceeded +no farther, but finished his pipe.</p> + +<p><i>Trim!</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I have a project +in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my +roquelaure, and paying a visit to this poor +gentleman.——Your honour’s roquelaure, replied the +corporal, has not once been had on, since the night before your +honour received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches +before the gate of St. <i>Nicholas;</i>—and besides, it is so +cold and rainy a night, that what with the roquelaure, and what with the +weather, ’twill be enough to give your honour your death, and +bring on your honour’s torment in your groin. I fear so, +replied my uncle <i>Toby;</i> but I am not at rest in my mind, +<i>Trim</i>, since the account the landlord has given +me.——I wish I had not known so much of this +affair,—added my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—or that I had known +more of it:——How shall we manage it? Leave it, +an’t please your honour, to me, quoth the +corporal;——I’ll take my hat and stick and go to +the house and reconnoitre, and act accordingly; and I will bring +your honour a full account in an hour.——Thou shalt go, +<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and here’s a shilling +for thee to drink with his servant.——I shall get it all +out of him, said the corporal, shutting the door.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> filled his second pipe; and had it not +been, that he now and then wandered from the point, with +considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight +line, as a crooked one,—he might be said to have thought of +nothing else but poor <i>Le Fever</i> and his boy the whole time he +smoaked it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. L</small><br/> +<br/> +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was not till my uncle <i>Toby</i> +had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, that corporal +<i>Trim</i> returned from the inn, and gave him the following +account.</p> + +<p>I despaired, at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring +back your honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick +lieutenant—Is he in the army, then? said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——He is, said the corporal——And +in what regiment? said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——I’ll +tell your honour, replied the corporal, every thing straight +forwards, as I learnt it.—Then, <i>Trim</i>, I’ll fill +another pipe, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease, +<i>Trim</i>, in the window-seat, and begin thy story again. The +corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow +could speak it—<i>Your honour is good:</i>—And having +done that, he sat down, as he was ordered,—and begun the +story to my uncle <i>Toby</i> over again in pretty near the same +words.</p> + +<p>I despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring +back any intelligence to your honour, about the lieutenant and his +son; for when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made +myself sure of knowing every thing which was proper to be +asked,—That’s a right distinction, <i>Trim</i>, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>—I was answered, an’ please your +honour, that he had no servant with him;——that he had +come to the inn with hired horses, which, upon finding himself +unable to proceed (to join, I suppose, the regiment), he had +dismissed the morning after he came.—If I get better, my +dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man,—we +can hire horses from hence.——But alas! the poor +gentleman will never get from hence, said the landlady to +me,—for I heard the death-watch all night +long;——and when he dies, the youth, his son, will +certainly die with him; for he is broken- hearted already.</p> + +<p>I was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the +youth came into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord +spoke of;——but I will do it for my father myself, said +the youth.——Pray let my save you the trouble, young +gentleman, said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and offering +him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did +it.——I believe, Sir, said he, very modestly, I can +please him best myself.——I am sure, said I, his honour +will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by an old +soldier.——The youth took hold of my hand, and instantly +burst into tears.——Poor youth! said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,—he has been bred up from an infant in the army, +and the name of a soldier, <i>Trim</i>, sounded in his ears +like the name of a friend;—I wish I had him here.</p> + +<p>——I never, in the longest march, said the corporal, +had so great a mind to my dinner, as I had to cry with him for +company:—What could be the matter with me, an’ please +your honour? Nothing in the world, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a +good-natured fellow.</p> + +<p>When I gave him the toast, continued the corporal, I thought it +was proper to tell him I was captain <i>Shandy</i>’s servant, +and that your honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned +for his father;—and that if there was any thing in your house +or cellar——(And thou might’st have added my purse +too, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>),——he was heartily +welcome to it:——He made a very low bow (which was meant +to your honour), but no answer—for his heart was +full—so he went up stairs with the toast;—I warrant +you, my dear, said I, as I opened the kitchen-door, your father +will be well again.——Mr. <i>Yorick</i>’s +curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire,—but said not a +word good or bad to comfort the youth.——I thought it +wrong; added the corporal——I think so too, said my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he +felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to +let me know, that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would +step up stairs.——I believe, said the landlord, he is +going to say his prayers,——for there was a book laid +upon the chair by his bed-side, and as I shut the door, I saw his +son take up a cushion.——</p> + +<p>I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. +<i>Trim</i>, never said your prayers at all.——I heard +the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said the landlady, +very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed +it.——Are you sure of it? replied the +curate.——A soldier, an’ please your reverence, +said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as a +parson;——and when he is fighting for his king, and for +his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to +pray to God of any one in the whole world——’Twas +well said of thee, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i>——But when a soldier, said I, an’ +please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together +in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water,—or engaged, +said I, for months together in long and dangerous +marches;—harassed, perhaps, in his rear +to-day;—harassing others to-morrow;—detached +here;—countermanded there;—resting this night out upon +his arms;—beat up in his shirt the next;—benumbed in +his joints;—perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel +on;—must say his prayers <i>how</i> and <i>when</i> he +can.—I believe, said I,—for I was piqued, quoth the +corporal, for the reputation of the army,—I believe, +an’ please your reverence, said I, that when a soldier gets +time to pray,—he prays as heartily as a parson,—though +not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.——Thou shouldst not +have said that, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—for +God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not:——At +the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of +judgment (and not till then)—it will be seen who has done +their duties in this world,—and who has not; and we shall be +advanced, <i>Trim</i>, accordingly.——I hope we shall, +said <i>Trim.</i>——It is in the Scripture, said my +uncle <i>Toby;</i> and I will shew it thee to-morrow:—In the +mean time we may depend upon it, <i>Trim</i>, for our comfort, said +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, that God Almighty is so good and just a +governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in +it,—it will never be enquired into, whether we have done them +in a red coat or a black one:——I hope not, said the +corporal——But go on, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, with thy story.</p> + +<p>When I went up, continued the corporal, into the +lieutenant’s room, which I did not do till the expiration of +the ten minutes,—he was lying in his bed with his +head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow, and a +clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:——The youth +was just stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which I +supposed he had been kneeling,—the book was laid upon the +bed,—and, as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, +he reached out his other to take it away at the same +time.——Let it remain there, my dear, said the +lieutenant.</p> + +<p>He did not offer to speak to me, till I had walked up close to +his bed- side:—If you are captain <i>Shandy</i>’s +servant, said he, you must present my thanks to your master, with +my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his courtesy to +me;—if he was of <i>Levens</i>’s—said the +lieutenant.—I told him your honour was—Then, said he, I +served three campaigns with him in <i>Flanders</i>, and remember +him,—but ’tis most likely, as I had not the honour of +any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.——You will tell him, however, that +the person his good-nature has laid under obligations to him, is +one <i>Le Fever</i>, a lieutenant in +<i>Angus</i>’s——but he knows me not,—said +he, a second time, musing;——possibly he may my +story—added he—pray tell the captain, I was the ensign +at <i>Breda</i>, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a +musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.——I +remember the story, an’t please your honour, said I, very +well.——Do you so? said he, wiping his eyes with his +handkerchief—then well may I.—In saying this, he drew a +little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black +ribband about his neck, and kiss’d it +twice——Here, <i>Billy</i>, said he,—the boy flew +across the room to the bed-side,—and falling down upon his +knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too,—then +kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed and wept.</p> + +<p>I wish, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, with a deep sigh,—I +wish, <i>Trim</i>, I was asleep.</p> + +<p>Your honour, replied the corporal, is too much +concerned;—shall I pour your honour out a glass of sack to +your pipe?——Do, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>I remember, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, sighing again, the story +of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty +omitted;—and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon +some account or other (I forget what) was universally pitied by the +whole regiment;—but finish the story thou art +upon:—’Tis finished already, said the +corporal,—for I could stay no longer,—so wished his +honour a good night; young <i>Le Fever</i> rose from off the bed, +and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and as we went down +together, told me, they had come from <i>Ireland</i>, and were on +their route to join the regiment in +<i>Flanders.</i>——But alas! said the +corporal,—the lieutenant’s last day’s march is +over.—Then what is to become of his poor boy? cried my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. LI</small><br/> +<br/> +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s eternal honour,——though I tell it +only for the sake of those, who, when coop’d in betwixt a +natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in +the world to turn themselves——That notwithstanding my +uncle <i>Toby</i> was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on +the siege of <i>Dendermond</i>, parallel with the allies, who +pressed theirs on so vigorously, that they scarce allowed him time +to get his dinner——that nevertheless he gave up +<i>Dendermond</i>, though he had already made a lodgment upon the +counterscarp;—and bent his whole thoughts towards the private +distresses at the inn; and except that he ordered the garden gate +to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege +of <i>Dendermond</i> into a blockade,—he left +<i>Dendermond</i> to itself—to be relieved or not by the <i>French</i> king, as the +<i>French</i> king thought good; and only considered how he himself +should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.</p> + +<p>——That kind B<small>EING</small>, who is a friend to +the friendless, shall recompence thee for this.</p> + +<p>Thou hast left this matter short, said my uncle <i>Toby</i> to +the corporal, as he was putting him to bed,——and I will +tell thee in what, <i>Trim.</i>——In the first place, +when thou madest an offer of my services to <i>Le +Fever</i>,——as sickness and travelling are both +expensive, and thou knowest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a +son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay,—that thou +didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood +in need, thou knowest, <i>Trim</i>, he had been as welcome to it as +myself.——Your honour knows, said the corporal, I had no +orders;——True, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—thou +didst very right, <i>Trim</i>, as a soldier,—but certainly +very wrong as a man.</p> + +<p>In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same +excuse, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>,——when thou +offeredst him whatever was in my house,——thou shouldst +have offered him my house too:——A sick brother officer +should have the best quarters, <i>Trim</i>, and if we had him with +us,—we could tend and look to him:——Thou art an +excellent nurse thyself, <i>Trim</i>,—and what with thy care +of him, and the old woman’s and his boy’s, and mine +together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his +legs.——</p> + +<p>——In a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, smiling,——he might march.——He +will never march; an’ please your honour, in this world, said +the corporal:——He will march; said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, rising up from the side of the bed, with one shoe +off:——An’ please your honour, said the corporal, +he will never march but to his grave:——He shall march, +cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, marching the foot which had a shoe on, +though without advancing an inch,—he shall march to his +regiment.——He cannot stand it, said the +corporal;——He shall be supported, said my uncle +<i>Toby;</i>——He’ll drop at last, said the +corporal, and what will become of his boy?——He shall +not drop, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +firmly.——A-well-o’day,—do what we can for +him, said <i>Trim</i>, maintaining his point,—the poor soul +will die:——He shall not die, by G—, cried my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>—The <small>ACCUSING SPIRIT</small>, which flew up to +heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it +in;—and the <small>RECORDING ANGEL</small>, as he wrote it +down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for +ever.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> +went to his bureau,—put his purse into his breeches pocket, +and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a +physician,—he went to bed, and fell asleep.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIII</small><br/> +<br/> +THE STORY OF LE FEVER CONTINUED +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> sun looked bright the morning +after, to every eye in the village but <i>Le Fever</i>’s and +his afflicted son’s; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his +eye-lids,——and hardly could the wheel at the cistern +turn round its circle,—when my uncle <i>Toby</i>, who had +rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the +lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology, sat +himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, and, independently of +all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old +friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he +did,—how he had rested in the night,—what was his +complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could do to +help him:——and without giving him time to answer any +one of the enquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan +which he had been concerting with the corporal the night +before for him.——</p> + +<p>——You shall go home directly, <i>Le Fever</i>, said +my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to my house,—and we’ll send for a +doctor to see what’s the matter,—and we’ll have +an apothecary,—and the corporal shall be your +nurse;——and I’ll be your servant, <i>Le +Fever.</i></p> + +<p>There was a frankness in my uncle <i>Toby</i>,—not the +<i>effect</i> of familiarity,—but the cause of +it,—which let you at once into his soul, and shewed you the +goodness of his nature; to this there was something in his looks, +and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the +unfortunate to come and take shelter under him, so that before my +uncle <i>Toby</i> had half finished the kind offers he was making +to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his +knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was +pulling it towards him.——The blood and spirits of <i>Le +Fever</i>, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were +retreating to their last citadel, the heart—rallied +back,—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,—he looked +up wishfully in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s face,—then cast +a look upon his boy,——and that <i>ligament</i>, fine as +it was,—was never broken.——</p> + +<p>Nature instantly ebb’d again,—the film returned to +its place,——the pulse +fluttered——stopp’d——went +on——throbb’d———stopp’d +again——moved——stopp’d——shall +I go on?——No.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>AM</small> so impatient to return to my own +story, that what remains of young <i>Le Fever</i>’s, that is, +from this turn of his fortune, to the time my uncle <i>Toby</i> +recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words +in the next chapter.—All that is necessary to be added to +this chapter is as follows.—</p> + +<p>That my uncle <i>Toby</i>, with young <i>Le Fever</i> in his +hand, attended the poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his +grave.</p> + +<p>That the governor of <i>Dendermond</i> paid his obsequies all +military honours,—and that <i>Yorick</i>, not to be +behind-hand—paid him all ecclesiastic—for he buried him +in his chancel:—And it appears likewise, he preached a +funeral sermon over him——I say it +<i>appears</i>,—for it was <i>Yorick</i>’s custom, +which I suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the +first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the +time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached: to this, +he was ever wont to add some short comment or stricture upon the +sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit:—For +instance, <i>This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I +don’t like it at all;—Though I own there is a world +of</i> <small>WATER-LANDISH</small> <i>knowledge in it;—but +’tis all tritical, and most tritically put +together.—This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what +was in my head when I made it?</i></p> + +<p>——N.B. <i>The excellency of this text is, that it +will suit any sermon,—and of this sermon,——that +it will suit any text.——</i></p> + +<p>——<i>For this sermon I shall be +hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest part of it. Doctor</i> +Paidagunes <i>found me out. => Set a thief to catch a +thief.——</i></p> + +<p>On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no +more——and upon a couple <i>Moderato;</i> by which, as +far as one may gather from <i>Altieri’s Italian</i> +dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green +whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of +<i>Yorick</i>’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two +sermons marked <i>Moderato</i>, and the half dozen of <i>So, +so</i>, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one +may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing.</p> + +<p>There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which +is this, that the <i>moderato</i>’s are five times better +than the <i>so, so</i>’s;—show ten times more knowledge +of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in +them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a +thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely +more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for +which reason, whene’er <i>Yorick’s dramatic</i> sermons +are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the +whole number of the <i>so, so</i>’s, I shall, nevertheless, +adventure to print the two <i>moderato</i>’s without any sort +of scruple.</p> + +<p>What <i>Yorick</i> could mean by the words +<i>lentamente,—tenutè,—grave</i>,—and +sometimes <i>adagio</i>,—as applied to <i>theological</i> +compositions, and with which he has characterised some of these +sermons, I dare not venture to guess.——I am more +puzzled still upon finding <i>a l’octava alta!</i> upon +one;——<i>Con strepito</i> upon the back of +another;——<i>Scicilliana</i> upon a +third;——<i>Alla capella</i> upon a +fourth;——<i>Con l’arco</i> upon +this;——<i>Senza l’arco</i> upon +that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and +have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will +make no doubt, but that by some quaint application of such +metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct +ideas of their several characters upon his fancy,—whatever +they may do upon that of others.</p> + +<p>Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has +unaccountably led me into this digression——The funeral +sermon upon poor <i>Le Fever</i>, wrote out very fairly, as if from +a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems +to have been his favourite composition——It is upon +mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn +thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of +dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a +general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse +drugs.——Whether these marks of humiliation were +designed,—I something doubt;——because at the end +of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different +from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote——</p> + +<p class="center">Bravo!</p> + +<p>——Though not very offensively,——for it +is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and +below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of +the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is +generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is +wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small +<i>Italian</i> hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the +place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the +<i>manner of it</i>, it stands half excused; and being wrote +moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to +nothing,—’tis more like a <i>ritratto</i> of the shadow +of vanity, than of V<small>ANITY</small> herself—of the two; +resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly +stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, +coarsely obtruded upon the world.</p> + +<p>With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing +this, I do no service to <i>Yorick</i>’s character as a +modest man;—but all men have their failings! and what lessens +this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this; that the +word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a +different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, +BRAVO——as if he had retracted, or was +ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it.</p> + +<p>These short characters of his sermons were always written, +excepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, +which served as a cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, +which was turned towards the text;—but at the end of his +discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and sometimes, +perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a large +circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he +had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more +frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the pulpit +allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and +out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of +virtue;—tell me then, Mynheer Vander +Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed +together?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + lV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>hen</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> had turned +every thing into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent +of the regiment and <i>Le Fever</i>, and betwixt <i>Le Fever</i> +and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a +sword; so that my uncle <i>Toby</i> found little or no opposition +from the world in taking administration. The coat my uncle +<i>Toby</i> gave the corporal;——Wear it, <i>Trim</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as long as it will hold together, for +the sake of the poor lieutenant——And +this,——said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, taking up the sword +in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he +spoke——and this, <i>Le Fever</i>, I’ll save for +thee,—’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to +it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear <i>Le Fever</i>, +which God has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way +with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of +honour,—’tis enough for us.</p> + +<p>As soon as my uncle <i>Toby</i> had laid a foundation, and +taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him +to a public school, where, excepting <i>Whitsontide</i> and +<i>Christmas</i>, at which times the corporal was punctually +dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring of the year, +seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army +into <i>Hungary</i> against the <i>Turks</i>, kindling a spark of +fire in his bosom, he left his <i>Greek</i> and <i>Latin</i> +without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s leave along with it, to go and try his fortune +under <i>Eugene.</i>—Twice did my uncle <i>Toby</i> forget +his wound and cry out, <i>Le Fever!</i> I will go with thee, and +thou shalt fight beside me——And twice he laid his hand +upon his groin, and hung down his head in sorrow and +disconsolation.——</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> took down the sword from the +crook, where it had hung untouched ever since the +lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal to +brighten up;——and having detained <i>Le Fever</i> a +single fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to +<i>Leghorn</i>,—he put the sword into his +hand.——If thou art brave, <i>Le Fever</i>, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, this will not fail thee,——but +Fortune, said he (musing a little),——Fortune +may——And if she does,—added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +embracing him, come back again to me, <i>Le Fever</i>, and we will +shape thee another course.</p> + +<p>The greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of <i>Le +Fever</i> more than my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s paternal +kindness;——he parted from my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as the +best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped +tears——and as my uncle <i>Toby</i> gave him his last +kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of his +father’s, in which was his mother’s ring, into his +hand,—and bid God bless him.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>L<small>E</small> F<small>EVER</small> got up to the +Imperial army just time enough to try what metal his sword was made +of, at the defeat of the <i>Turks</i> before <i>Belgrade;</i> but a +series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, +and trod close upon his heels for four years together after; he had +withstood these buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him +at <i>Marseilles</i>, from whence he wrote my uncle <i>Toby</i> +word, he had lost his time, his services, his health, and, in +short, every thing but his sword;——and was waiting for +the first ship to return back to him.</p> + +<p>As this letter came to hand about six weeks before +<i>Susannah</i>’s accident, <i>Le Fever</i> was hourly +expected; and was uppermost in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s mind +all the time my father was giving him and <i>Yorick</i> a +description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor +to me: but as my uncle <i>Toby</i> thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the +accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning <i>Le +Fever</i>’s name,——till the character, by +<i>Yorick</i>’s inter-position, ending unexpectedly, in one, +who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and good, it impressed +the image of <i>Le Fever</i>, and his interest, upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i> so forcibly, he rose instantly off his chair; and +laying down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my +father’s hands——I beg, brother <i>Shandy</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I may recommend poor <i>Le +Fever</i>’s son to you—I beseech you do, added +<i>Yorick</i>——He has a good heart, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——And a brave one too, an’ please your +honour, said the corporal.</p> + +<p>——The best hearts, <i>Trim</i>, are ever the +bravest, replied my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——And the +greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our regiment, +were the greatest rascals in it.—There was serjeant +<i>Kumber</i>, and ensign——</p> + +<p>——We’ll talk of them, said my father, another +time.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HAT</small> a jovial and a merry world would +this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable +labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, +melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies!</p> + +<p>Doctor <i>Slop</i>, like a son of a w——, as my +father called him for it,—to exalt himself,—debased me +to death,—and made ten thousand times more of +<i>Susannah</i>’s accident, than there was any grounds for; +so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in every +body’s mouth, <i>That poor Master Shandy</i> * * * * * * * * +* * * * entirely.—And F<small>AME</small>, who loves to +double every thing,—in three days more, had sworn, positively +she saw it,—and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her +evidence——“That the nursery window had not +only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;—but +that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s +also.”</p> + +<p>Could the world have been sued like a +<small>BODY-CORPORATE</small>,—my father had brought an +action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall +foul of individuals about it——as every soul who had +mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity +imaginable;——’twas like flying in the very face +of his best friends:——And yet to acquiesce under the +report, in silence—was to acknowledge it openly,—at +least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle +again, in contradicting it,—was to confirm it as strongly in +the opinion of the other half.——</p> + +<p>——Was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so +hampered? said my father.</p> + +<p>I would shew him publickly, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, at the +market cross.</p> + +<p>——’Twill have no effect, said my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I’ll put him, however, into +breeches, said my father,—let the world say what it will.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> are a thousand resolutions, +Sir, both in church and state, as well as in matters, Madam, of a +more private concern;—which, though they have carried all the +appearance in the world of being taken, and entered upon in a +hasty, hare-brained, and unadvised manner, were, notwithstanding +this, (and could you or I have got into the cabinet, or stood +behind the curtain, we should have found it was so) weighed, +poized, and perpended——argued +upon——canvassed through——entered into, and +examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the +<small>GODDESS OF COOLNESS</small> herself (I do not take upon me +to prove her existence) could neither have wished it, or done it +better.</p> + +<p>Of the number of these was my father’s resolution of +putting me into breeches; which, though determined at +once,—in a kind of huff, and a defiance of all mankind, had, +nevertheless, been <i>pro’d</i> and <i>conn’d</i>, and +judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month +before, in two several <i>beds of justice</i>, which my father had +held for that purpose. I shall explain the nature of these beds of +justice in my next chapter; and in the chapter following that, you +shall step with me, Madam, behind the curtain, only to hear in what +kind of manner my father and my mother debated between themselves, +this affair of the breeches,—from which you may form an idea, +how they debated all lesser matters.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LX</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> ancient <i>Goths</i> of +<i>Germany</i>, who (the learned <i>Cluverius</i> is positive) were +first seated in the country between the <i>Vistula</i> and the +<i>Oder</i>, and who afterwards incorporated the <i>Herculi</i>, the +<i>Bugians</i>, and some other <i>Vandallick</i> clans to +’em—had all of them a wise custom of debating every +thing of importance to their state, twice, that is,—once +drunk, and once sober:——Drunk—that their councils +might not want vigour;——and sober—that they might +not want discretion.</p> + +<p>Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long +time gravelled almost to death, in turning this as much to his +advantage, as he did every other thing which the ancients did or +said; and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a +thousand fruitless experiments and devices, that he hit upon an +expedient which answered the purpose;——and that was, +when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the +family, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its +determination,——he fixed and set apart the first +<i>Sunday</i> night in the month, and the <i>Saturday</i> night +which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: By which contrivance, if you +consider, Sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</p> + +<p>These my father, humorously enough, called his <i>beds of +justice;</i>——for from the two different counsels taken +in these two different humours, a middle one was generally found +out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as if he had got +drunk and sober a hundred times.</p> + +<p>I must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers +full as well in literary discussions, as either in military or +conjugal; but it is not every author that can try the experiment as +the <i>Goths</i> and <i>Vandals</i> did it——or, if he +can, may it be always for his body’s health; and to do it, as +my father did it,—am I sure it would be always for his +soul’s.</p> + +<p>My way is this:——</p> + +<p>In all nice and ticklish discussions,—(of which, heaven +knows, there are but too many in my book)—where I find I +cannot take a step without the danger of having either their +worships or their reverences upon my back——I write +one-half <i>full</i>,—and t’other +<i>fasting;</i>——or write it all full,—and +correct it fasting;——or write it fasting,—and +correct it full, for they all come to the same +thing:——So that with a less variation from my +father’s plan, than my father’s from the +<i>Gothick</i>—I feel myself upon a par with him in his first +bed of justice,—and no way inferior to him in his +second.——These different and almost irreconcileable +effects, flow uniformly from the wise and wonderful mechanism of +nature,—of which,—be her’s the +honour.——All that we can do, is to turn and work the +machine to the improvement and better manufactory of the arts and +sciences.——</p> + +<p>Now, when I write full,—I write as if I was never to write +fasting again as long as I live;——that is, I write free +from the cares as well as the terrors of the +world.——I count not the number of my scars,—nor +does my fancy go forth into dark entries and bye-corners to +ante-date my stabs.——In a word, my pen takes its +course; and I write on as much from the fulness of my heart, as my +stomach.——</p> + +<p>But when, an’ please your honours, I indite fasting, +’tis a different history.——I pay the world all +possible attention and respect,—and have as great a share +(whilst it lasts) of that under strapping virtue of discretion as +the best of you.——So that betwixt both, I write a +careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured +<i>Shandean</i> book, which will do all your hearts +good——</p> + +<p>——And all your heads too,—provided you +understand it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>E</small> should begin, said my father, +turning himself half round in bed, and shifting his pillow a little +towards my mother’s, as he opened the debate——We +should begin to think, Mrs. <i>Shandy</i>, of putting this boy into +breeches.——</p> + +<p>We should so,—said my mother.——We defer it, my +dear, quoth my father, shamefully.——</p> + +<p>I think we do, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>,—said my mother.</p> + +<p>——Not but the child looks extremely well, said my +father, in his vests and tunicks.——</p> + +<p>——He does look very well in them,—replied my +mother.——</p> + +<p>——And for that reason it would be almost a sin, +added my father, to take him out of ’em.——</p> + +<p>——It would so,—said my +mother:——But indeed he is growing a very tall +lad,—rejoined my father.</p> + +<p>——He is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my +mother.——</p> + +<p>——I can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, +quoth my father, who the deuce he takes after.——</p> + +<p>I cannot conceive, for my life, said my +mother.——</p> + +<p>Humph!——said my father.</p> + +<p>(The dialogue ceased for a moment.)</p> + +<p>——(I am very short myself,—continued my father +gravely.</p> + +<p>You are very short, Mr <i>Shandy</i>,—said my mother.</p> + +<p>Humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time: in muttering +which, he plucked his pillow a little further from my +mother’s,—and turning about again, there was an end of +the debate for three minutes and a half.</p> + +<p>——When he gets these breeches made, cried my father +in a higher tone, he’ll look like a beast in ’em.</p> + +<p>He will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother.</p> + +<p>——And ’twill be lucky, if that’s the +worst on’t, added my father.</p> + +<p>It will be very lucky, answered my mother.</p> + +<p>I suppose, replied my father,—making some pause +first,—he’ll be exactly like other people’s +children.——</p> + +<p>Exactly, said my mother.——</p> + +<p>——Though I shall be sorry for that, added my father: +and so the debate stopp’d again.</p> + +<p>——They should be of leather, said my father, turning +him about again.—</p> + +<p>They will last him, said my mother, the longest.</p> + +<p>But he can have no linings to ’em, replied my +father.——</p> + +<p>He cannot, said my mother.</p> + +<p>’Twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my +father.</p> + +<p>Nothing can be better, quoth my mother.——</p> + +<p>——Except dimity,—replied my +father:——’Tis best of all,—replied my +mother.</p> + +<p>——One must not give him his death, +however,—interrupted my father.</p> + +<p>By no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue +stood still again.</p> + +<p>I am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the +fourth time, he shall have no pockets in them.——</p> + +<p>——There is no occasion for any, said my +mother.——</p> + +<p>I mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father.</p> + +<p>——I mean so too,—replied my mother.</p> + +<p>——Though if he gets a gig or top——Poor +souls! it is a crown and a sceptre to them,—they should have +where to secure it.——</p> + +<p>Order it as you please, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, replied my +mother.——</p> + +<p>——But don’t you think it right? added my +father, pressing the point home to her.</p> + +<p>Perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, Mr. +<i>Shandy.</i>——</p> + +<p>——There’s for you! cried my father, losing his +temper——Pleases me!——You never will +distinguish, Mrs. <i>Shandy</i>, nor shall I ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of +pleasure and a point of convenience.——This was on the +<i>Sunday</i> night:——and further this chapter sayeth +not.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>FTER</small> my father had debated the +affair of the breeches with my mother,—he consulted +<i>Albertus Rubenius</i> upon it; and <i>Albertus Rubenius</i> used +my father ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than +even my father had used my mother: For as <i>Rubenius</i> had wrote +a quarto <i>express, De re Vestiaria Veterum</i>,—it was +<i>Rubenius</i>’s business to have given my father some +lights.—On the contrary, my father might as well have thought +of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long +beard,—as of extracting a single word out of <i>Rubenius</i> +upon the subject.</p> + +<p>Upon every other article of ancient dress, <i>Rubenius</i> was +very communicative to my father;—gave him a full satisfactory +account of</p> + +<p>The Toga, or loose gown.</p> + +<p>The Chlamys.</p> + +<p>The Ephod.</p> + +<p>The Tunica, or Jacket.</p> + +<p>The Synthesis.</p> + +<p>The Pænula.</p> + +<p>The Lacema, with its Cucullus.</p> + +<p>The Paludamentum.</p> + +<p>The Prætexta.</p> + +<p>The Sagum, or soldier’s jerkin.</p> + +<p>The Trabea: of which, according to <i>Suetonius</i>, +there was three kinds.—</p> + +<p>——But what are all these to the breeches? said my +father.</p> + +<p><i>Rubenius</i> threw him down upon the counter all kinds of +shoes which had been in fashion with the +<i>Romans.</i>——</p> + +<p>There was,</p> + +<p>The open shoe.</p> + +<p>The close shoe.</p> + +<p>The slip shoe.</p> + +<p>The wooden shoe.</p> + +<p>The soc.</p> + +<p>The buskin.</p> + +<p>And The military shoe with hobnails in it, which +<i>Juvenal</i> takes notice of.</p> + +<p>There were, The clogs.</p> + +<p>The pattins.</p> + +<p>The pantoufles.</p> + +<p>The brogues.</p> + +<p>The sandals, with latchets to them.</p> + +<p>There was, The felt shoe.</p> + +<p>The linen shoe.</p> + +<p>The laced shoe.</p> + +<p>The braided shoe.</p> + +<p>The calceus incisus.</p> + +<p>And The calceus rostratus.</p> + +<p><i>Rubenius</i> shewed my father how well they all +fitted,—in what manner they laced on,—with what points, +straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and +ends.——</p> + +<p>——But I want to be informed about the breeches, said +my father.</p> + +<p><i>Albertus Rubenius</i> informed my father that the +<i>Romans</i> manufactured stuffs of various +fabrics,——some plain,—some striped,—others diapered throughout the whole +contexture of the wool, with silk and gold——That linen +did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of +the empire, when the <i>Egyptians</i> coming to settle amongst +them, brought it into vogue.</p> + +<p>——That persons of quality and fortune distinguished +themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which +colour (next to purple, which was appropriated to the great +offices) they most affected, and wore on their birth-days and +public rejoicings.——That it appeared from the best +historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes +to the fuller, to be clean’d and whitened:——but +that the inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore +brown clothes, and of a something coarser texture,—till +towards the beginning of <i>Augustus</i>’s reign, when the +slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of +habiliment was lost, but the <i>Latus Clavus.</i></p> + +<p>And what was the <i>Latus Clavus?</i> said my father.</p> + +<p><i>Rubenius</i> told him, that the point was still litigating +amongst the learned:——That <i>Egnatius, Sigonius, +Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budæus, Salmasius, Lipsius, +Lazius, Isaac Casaubon</i>, and <i>Joseph Scaliger</i>, all +differed from each other,—and he from them: That some took it +to be the button,—some the coat itself,—others only the +colour of it;—That the great <i>Bayfuis</i> in his Wardrobe +of the Ancients, chap. 12—honestly said, he knew not what it +was,—whether a tibula,—a stud,—a button,—a +loop,—a buckle,—or clasps and +keepers.——</p> + +<p>——My father lost the horse, but not the +saddle——They are <i>hooks and eyes</i>, said my +father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches +to be made.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>E</small> are now going to enter upon a new +scene of events.——</p> + +<p>——Leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s +hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him +as he sat at work a lecture upon the <i>latus clavus</i>, and +pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was +determined to have it sewed on.——</p> + +<p>Leave we my mother—(truest of all the +<i>Poco-curante</i>’s of her sex!)—careless about it, +as about every thing else in the world which concerned +her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way +or that,——provided it was but done at +all.——</p> + +<p>Leave we <i>Slop</i> likewise to the full profits of all my +dishonours.——</p> + +<p>Leave we poor <i>Le Fever</i> to recover, and get home from +<i>Marseilles</i> as he can.——And last of +all,—because the hardest of all——</p> + +<p>Let us leave, if possible, <i>myself:</i>——But +’tis impossible,—I must go along with you to the end of +the work.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>F</small> the reader has not a clear +conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the +bottom of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s kitchen-garden, and which +was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is +not in me,—but in his imagination;—for I am sure I gave +him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it.</p> + +<p>When F<small>ATE</small> was looking forwards one afternoon, +into the great transactions of future times,—and recollected +for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in +iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to +N<small>ATURE</small>,—’twas enough—Nature threw +half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so +<i>much</i> clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and +indentings,—and so <i>little</i> of it too, as not to cling +to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul +weather.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> came down, as the reader has been informed, +with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in +<i>Italy</i> and <i>Flanders;</i> so let the duke of +<i>Marlborough</i>, or the allies, have set down before what town +they pleased, my uncle <i>Toby</i> was prepared for them.</p> + +<p>His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as +soon as ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design +was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), +and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; +upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, +and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the +several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; +then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine +the depths and slopes of the ditches,—the talus of the +glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, +&c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went it +on:——The nature of the soil,—the nature of the +work itself,—and above all, the good-nature of my uncle +<i>Toby</i> sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly +with the corporal upon past- done deeds,—left +<small>LABOUR</small> little else but the ceremony of the name.</p> + +<p>When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a +proper posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my +uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal began to run their first +parallel.—I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by +being told, <i>That the first parallel should be at least three +hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,—and +that I have not left a single inch for it;</i>——for my +uncle <i>Toby</i> took the liberty of incroaching upon his +kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the +bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and +second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his +cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be +considered at large in the history of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, +this I’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, +if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no +guessing)——The campaigns themselves will take up as +many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great +a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, +to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the +work——surely they had better be printed +apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so +take the following sketch of them in the mean time.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> the town, with its works, was +finished, my uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal began to run their +first parallel——not at random, or any +how——but from the same points and distances the allies +had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and +attacks, by the accounts my uncle <i>Toby</i> received +from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, +step by step with the allies.</p> + +<p>When the duke of <i>Marlborough</i> made a +lodgment,——my uncle <i>Toby</i> made a lodgment +too.——And when the face of a bastion was battered down, +or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as +much,—and so on;——gaining ground, and making +themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town +fell into their hands.</p> + +<p>To one who took pleasure in the happy state of +others,—there could not have been a greater sight in world, +than on a post morning, in which a practicable breach had been made +by the duke of <i>Marlborough</i>, in the main body of the +place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed +the spirit with which my uncle <i>Toby</i>, with <i>Trim</i> behind +him, sallied forth;——the one with the <i>Gazette</i> in +his hand,—the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——What an honest +triumph in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s looks as he marched up to +the ramparts! What intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood +over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as +he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an +inch too wide,—or leave it an inch too +narrow.——But when the <i>chamade</i> was beat, and the +corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in +his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—Heaven! Earth! +Sea!——but what avails apostrophes?——with +all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating +a draught.</p> + +<p>In this track of happiness for many years, without one +interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to +blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the +<i>Flanders</i> mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but +still ’twas the torture of the happy——In this +track, I say, did my uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> move for +many years, every year of which, and sometimes every +month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, +adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their +operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in +carrying them on.</p> + +<p>The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to +end, in the plain and simple method I’ve related.</p> + +<p>In the second year, in which my uncle <i>Toby</i> took +<i>Liege</i> and <i>Ruremond</i>, he thought he might afford the +expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given +an exact description in the former part of my work.</p> + +<p>At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates +with port-cullises:——These last were converted +afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter +of the same year, my uncle <i>Toby</i>, instead of a new suit of +clothes, which he always had at <i>Christmas</i>, treated himself +with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the +bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind +of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold +councils of war upon.</p> + +<p>——The sentry-box was in case of rain.</p> + +<p>All these were painted white three times over the ensuing +spring, which enabled my uncle <i>Toby</i> to take the field with +great splendour.</p> + +<p>My father would often say to <i>Yorick</i>, that if any mortal +in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother +<i>Toby</i>, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of +the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in +which <i>Lewis</i> XIV. from the beginning of the war, but +particularly that very year, had taken the field——But +’tis not my brother <i>Toby</i>’s nature, kind soul! my +father would add, to insult any one.</p> + +<p>——But let us go on.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>MUST</small> observe, that although in the +first year’s campaign, the word town is often +mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the +polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the +spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was +the third year of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +campaigns,—when upon his taking <i>Amberg, Bonn</i>, and +<i>Rhinberg</i>, and <i>Huy</i> and <i>Limbourg</i>, one after +another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to +talk of taking so many towns, <i>without one</i> +<small>TOWN</small> <i>to shew for it</i>,—was a very +nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, that they should have a little model of a town built +for them,—to be run up together of slit deals, and then +painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for +all.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> felt the good of the project instantly, and +instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular +improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the +original inventor of the project itself.</p> + +<p>The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of +those of which it was most likely to be the +representative:——with grated windows, and the gable +ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.—as +those in <i>Ghent</i> and <i>Bruges</i>, and the rest of the towns +in <i>Brabant</i> and <i>Flanders.</i></p> + +<p>The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the +corporal proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, +or off, so as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. +This was put directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual +congratulation was exchanged between my uncle <i>Toby</i> and the +corporal, as the carpenter did the work.</p> + +<p>——It answered prodigiously the next +summer——the town was a perfect +<i>Proteus</i>——It was <i>Landen</i>, and +<i>Trerebach</i>, and <i>Santvliet</i>, and <i>Drusen</i>, and +<i>Hagenau</i>,—and then it was <i>Ostend</i> and +<i>Menin</i>, and <i>Aeth</i> and <i>Dendermond.</i></p> + +<p>——Surely never did any <small>TOWN</small> act so +many parts, since <i>Sodom</i> and <i>Gomorrah</i>, as my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s town did.</p> + +<p>In the fourth year, my uncle <i>Toby</i> thinking a town looked +foolishly without a church, added a very fine one with a +steeple.——<i>Trim</i> was for having bells in +it;——my uncle <i>Toby</i> said, the metal had better be +cast into cannon.</p> + +<p>This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass +field-pieces, to be planted three and three on each side of my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s sentry-box; and in a short time, these +led the way for a train of somewhat larger,—and so +on—(as must always be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) +from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came at last to my +father’s jack boots.</p> + +<p>The next year, which was that in which <i>Lisle</i> was +besieged, and at the close of which both <i>Ghent</i> and +<i>Bruges</i> fell into our hands,—my uncle <i>Toby</i> was +sadly put to it for <i>proper</i> ammunition;——I say +proper ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and +’twas well for the <i>Shandy</i> family they would +not——For so full were the papers, from the beginning to +the end of the siege, of the incessant firings kept up by the +besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s imagination with the accounts of them, that he +had infallibly shot away all his estate.</p> + +<p>S<small>OMETHING</small> therefore was wanting as a +<i>succedaneum</i>, especially in one or two of the more violent +paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something like a continual +firing in the imagination,——and this something, the +corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an +entire new system of battering of his own,—without which, +this had been objected to by military critics, to the end of the +world, as one of the great <i>desiderata</i> of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s apparatus.</p> + +<p>This will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as I +generally do, at a little distance from the subject.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>ITH</small> two or three other trinkets, +small in themselves, but of great regard, which poor <i>Tom</i>, +the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with +the account of his marriage with the <i>Jew</i>’s +widow——there was</p> + +<p>A <i>Montero</i>-cap and two <i>Turkish</i> tobacco-pipes.</p> + +<p>The <i>Montero</i>-cap I shall describe by and bye.—The +<i>Turkish</i> tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they +were fitted up and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of +<i>Morocco</i> leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, +the one of them with ivory,—the other with black ebony, +tipp’d with silver.</p> + +<p>My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest +of the world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon +these two presents more as tokens of his brother’s +nicety, than his affection.——Tom did not care, +<i>Trim</i>, he would say, to put on the cap, or to smoke in the +tobacco-pipe of a <i>Jew.</i>——God bless your honour, +the corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the +contrary)—how can that be?</p> + +<p>The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine <i>Spanish</i> +cloth, dyed in grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about +four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue, +slightly embroidered,—and seemed to have been the property of +a <i>Portuguese</i> quarter-master, not of foot, but of horse, as +the word denotes.</p> + +<p>The corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own +sake, as the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but +upon G<small>ALA</small>-days; and yet never was a Montero-cap put +to so many uses; for in all controverted points, whether military +or culinary, provided the corporal was sure he was in the +right,—it was either his <i>oath</i>,—his +<i>wager</i>,—or his <i>gift.</i></p> + +<p>——’Twas his gift in the present case.</p> + +<p>I’ll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to +give away my Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, +if I do not manage this matter to his honour’s +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>The completion was no further off, than the very next morning; +which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the +<i>Lower Deule</i>, to the right, and the gate St. +<i>Andrew</i>,—and on the left, between St. +<i>Magdalen</i>’s and the river.</p> + +<p>As this was the most memorable attack in the whole +war,—the most gallant and obstinate on both sides,—and +I must add the most bloody too, for it cost the allies themselves +that morning above eleven hundred men,—my uncle <i>Toby</i> +prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity.</p> + +<p>The eve which preceded, as my uncle <i>Toby</i> went to bed, he +ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years +in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his +bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;—and the +very first thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of +bed, my uncle <i>Toby</i>, after he had turned the rough side +outwards,—put it on:——This done, he proceeded +next to his breeches, and having buttoned the waist-band, he +forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way +in,—when he considered he should want shaving, and that it +would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,—so +took it off:——In essaying to put on his regimental coat +and waistcoat, my uncle <i>Toby</i> found the same objection in his +wig,—so that went off too:—So that what with one thing +and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the +most haste,—’twas ten o’clock, which was half an +hour later than his usual time, before my uncle <i>Toby</i> sallied +out.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> had scarce +turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his +kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the +corporal had begun the attack without him.——</p> + +<p>Let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s +apparatus; and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack, +just as it struck my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as he turned towards the +sentry-box, where the corporal was at work,——for in +nature there is not such another,——nor can any +combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works +produce its equal.</p> + +<p>The corporal———</p> + +<p>——Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of +genius,——for he was your kinsman:</p> + +<p>Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your +brother.—Oh corporal! had I thee, but now,—now, that I am able to give thee a dinner and +protection,—how would I cherish thee! thou should’st +wear thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the +week.—and when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a +couple like it:——But alas! alas! alas! now that I can +do this in spite of their reverences—the occasion is +lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up to the stars +from whence it came;—and that warm heart of thine, with all +its generous and open vessels, compressed into a <i>clod of the +valley!</i></p> + +<p>——But what——what is this, to that future +and dreaded page, where I look towards the velvet pall, decorated +with the military ensigns of thy master—the first—the +foremost of created beings;——where, I shall see thee, +faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling +hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the +door, to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his +hearse, as he directed thee;——where—all my +father’s systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his +philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered plate, +twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew +which nature has shed upon them——When I see him cast in +the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my +ears,——O <i>Toby!</i> in what corner of the world +shall I seek thy fellow?</p> + +<p>——Gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips +of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer +speak plain—when I shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal +not with me, then, with a stinted hand.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> corporal, who the night before +had resolved in his mind to supply the grand <i>desideratum</i>, of +keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during +the heat of the attack,—had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco +against the town, out of one of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s six +field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; +the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same +time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger +from the miscarriage of his projects.</p> + +<p>Upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he +soon began to find out, that by means of his two <i>Turkish</i> +tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of +wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagg’d by the +same number of tin-pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with +clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at +their several insertions into the <i>Morocco</i> tube,—he +should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with +the same ease as to fire one.———</p> + +<p>——Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may +not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who +has read my father’s first and second <i>beds of justice</i>, +ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies +light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences +up to perfection.——Heaven! thou knowest how I love +them;——thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I +would this moment give my shirt——Thou art a fool, +<i>Shandy</i>, says <i>Eugenius</i>, for thou hast but a dozen in +the world,—and ’twill break thy set.——</p> + +<p>No matter for that, <i>Eugenius;</i> I would give the shirt off +my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one +feverish enquirer, how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint +and steel could strike into the tail of it.——Think ye +not that in striking these <i>in</i>,—he might, +per-adventure, strike something <i>out?</i> as sure as a +gun.——</p> + +<p>——But this project, by the bye.</p> + +<p>The corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing +<i>his</i> to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, +with charging them to the top with tobacco,—he went with +contentment to bed.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> corporal had slipped out about +ten minutes before my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in order to fix his +apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle +<i>Toby</i> came.</p> + +<p>He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up +together in front of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s sentry-box, +leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the +three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, +&c.—and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he +might think double the honour of one.</p> + +<p>In the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door +of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal +wisely taken his post:——He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on +the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right +hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp’d with silver, which +appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and +thumb of the other——and with his right knee fixed firm +upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the +corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off +his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, +which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that +morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving +the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the +<i>puffs</i>, as well as the <i>puffing</i>, had insensibly got +hold of the corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the +very height of the attack, by the time my uncle <i>Toby</i> joined +him.</p> + +<p>’Twas well for my father, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> had +not his will to make that day.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> took the ivory +pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked at it for half +a minute, and returned it.</p> + +<p>In less than two minutes, my uncle <i>Toby</i> took the pipe +from the corporal again, and raised it half way to his +mouth——then hastily gave it back a second time.</p> + +<p>The corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle +<i>Toby</i> smiled,——then looked +grave,——then smiled for a moment,——then +looked serious for a long time;——Give me hold of the +ivory pipe, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——my +uncle <i>Toby</i> put it to his lips,——drew it back +directly,——gave a peep over the horn-beam +hedge;——never did my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s mouth +water so much for a pipe in his life.——My uncle +<i>Toby</i> retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his +hand.———</p> + +<p>——Dear uncle <i>Toby</i>! don’t go into the +sentry-box with the pipe,—there’s no trusting a +man’s self with such a thing in such a corner.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>BEG</small> the reader will assist me here, +to wheel off my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s ordnance behind the +scenes,——to remove his sentry-box, and clear the +theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the +rest of his military apparatus out of the way;——that +done, my dear friend <i>Garrick</i>, we’ll snuff the candles +bright,—sweep the stage with a new broom,—draw up the +curtain, and exhibit my uncle <i>Toby</i> dressed in a new +character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will +act: and yet, if pity be a-kin to love,—and bravery no alien +to it, you have seen enough of my uncle <i>Toby</i> in these, to +trace these family likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case +there is one) to your heart’s content.</p> + +<p>Vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this +kind—and thou puzzlest us in every one.</p> + +<p>There was, Madam, in my uncle <i>Toby</i>, a singleness of heart +which misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in +which things of this nature usually go on; you can—you can +have no conception of it: with this, there was a plainness and +simplicity of thinking, with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the +plies and foldings of the heart of woman;——and so naked +and defenceless did he stand before you, (when a siege was out of +his head,) that you might have stood behind any one of your +serpentine walks, and shot my uncle <i>Toby</i> ten times in a day, +through his liver, if nine times in a day, Madam, had not served +your purpose.</p> + +<p>With all this, Madam,—and what confounded every thing as +much on the other hand, my uncle <i>Toby</i> had that unparalleled +modesty of nature I once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood +eternal sentry upon his feelings, that you might as soon——But where am I going? +these reflections crowd in upon me ten pages at least too soon, and +take up that time, which I ought to bestow upon facts.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>O<small>F</small> the few legitimate sons of +<i>Adam</i> whose breasts never felt what the sting of love +was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be +bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story +have carried off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and +I wish for their sakes I had the key of my study, out of my +draw-well, only for five minutes, to tell you their +names—recollect them I cannot—so be content to accept +of these, for the present, in their stead.</p> + +<p>There was the great king <i>Aldrovandus</i>, and +<i>Bosphorus</i>, and <i>Cappadocius</i>, and <i>Dardanus</i>, and +<i>Pontus</i>, and <i>Asius</i>,——to say nothing of the +iron-hearted <i>Charles</i> the XIIth, whom the Countess of +K***** herself could make nothing of.——There +was <i>Babylonicus</i>, and <i>Mediterraneus</i>, and +<i>Polixenes</i>, and <i>Persicus</i>, and <i>Prusicus</i>, not one +of whom (except <i>Cappadocius</i> and <i>Pontus</i>, who were both +a little suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the +goddess——The truth is, they had all of them something +else to do—and so had my uncle <i>Toby</i>—till +Fate—till Fate I say, envying his name the glory of being +handed down to posterity with <i>Aldrovandus</i>’s and the +rest,—she basely patched up the peace of <i>Utrecht.</i></p> + +<p>——Believe me, Sirs, ’twas the worst deed she +did that year.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>MONGST</small> the many ill consequences of +the treaty of <i>Utrecht</i>, it was within a point of giving my +uncle <i>Toby</i> a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered his +appetite afterwards, yet <i>Calais</i> itself left not a deeper +scar in <i>Mary</i>’s heart, than <i>Utrecht</i> upon my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s. To the end of his life he never could hear <i>Utrecht</i> mentioned upon any +account whatever,—or so much as read an article of news +extracted out of the <i>Utrecht Gazette</i>, without fetching a +sigh, as if his heart would break in twain.</p> + +<p>My father, who was a great <small>MOTIVE-MONGER</small>, and +consequently a very dangerous person for a man to sit by, either +laughing or crying,—for he generally knew your motive for +doing both, much better than you knew it yourself—would +always console my uncle <i>Toby</i> upon these occasions, in a way, +which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle <i>Toby</i> grieved for +nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his +<i>hobby-horse.</i>——Never mind, brother <i>Toby</i>, +he would say,—by God’s blessing we shall have another +war break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the +belligerent powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us +out of play.——I defy ’em, my dear <i>Toby</i>, he +would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or +towns without sieges.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> never took this back-stroke of my +father’s at his hobby-horse kindly.——He thought +the stroke ungenerous; and the more so, because in striking the +horse he hit the rider too, and in the most dishonourable part a +blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he always laid down +his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend himself than +common.</p> + +<p>I told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle +<i>Toby</i> was not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an +instance to the contrary:——I repeat the observation, +and a fact which contradicts it again.—He was not +eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle <i>Toby</i> to make +long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were +occasions where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter +to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle <i>Toby</i>, for a +time, was at least equal to <i>Tertullus</i>——but in +others, in my own opinion, infinitely above him.</p> + +<p>My father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical +orations of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s, which he had delivered +one evening before him and <i>Yorick</i>, that he wrote it down +before he went to bed.</p> + +<p>I have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my +father’s papers, with here and there an insertion of his own, +betwixt two crooks, thus [  ], and is endorsed,<br/> +MY BROTHER TOBY’S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS OWN +PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT IN WISHING TO CONTINUE THE WAR. +</p> + +<p>I may safely say, I have read over this apologetical oration of +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s a hundred times, and think it so fine +a model of defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of +gallantry and good principles in him, that I give it the world, +word for word (interlineations and all), as I find it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXV</small><br/> +<br/> +MY UNCLE TOBY’S + APOLOGETICAL ORATION +</h3> + +<p>I <small>AM</small> not insensible, brother +<i>Shandy</i>, that when a man whose profession is arms, wishes, as +I have done, for war,—it has an ill aspect to the +world;——and that, how just and right soever his motives +the intentions may be,—he stands in an uneasy posture in +vindicating himself from private views in doing it.</p> + +<p>For this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be +without being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter +his wish in the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy +will not believe him.——He will be cautious of doing it +even to a friend,—lest he may suffer in his +esteem:——But if his heart is overcharged, and a secret +sigh for arms must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear of +a brother, who knows his character to the bottom, and what his true +notions, dispositions, and principles of honour are: What, I <i>hope</i>, I +have been in all these, brother <i>Shandy</i>, would be unbecoming +in me to say:——much worse, I know, have I been than I +ought,—and something worse, perhaps, than I think: But such +as I am, you, my dear brother <i>Shandy</i>, who have sucked the +same breasts with me,—and with whom I have been brought up +from my cradle,—and from whose knowledge, from the first +hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, I have concealed no one +action of my life, and scarce a thought in it——Such as +I am, brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, +and with all my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my +passions, or my understanding.</p> + +<p>Tell me then, my dear brother <i>Shandy</i>, upon which of them +it is, that when I condemned the peace of <i>Utrecht</i>, and +grieved the war was not carried on with vigour a little longer, you +should think your brother did it upon unworthy views; or that in +wishing for war, he should be bad enough to wish more of his +fellow-creatures slain,—more slaves made, and more families +driven from their peaceful habitations, merely for his own +pleasure:——Tell me, brother <i>Shandy</i>, upon what +one deed of mine do you ground it? [<i>The devil a deed do I know +of, dear</i> Toby, <i>but one for a hundred pounds, which I lent +thee to carry on these cursed sieges.</i>]</p> + +<p>If, when I was a school-boy, I could not hear a drum beat, but +my heart beat with it—was it my fault?——Did I +plant the propensity there?——Did I sound the alarm +within, or Nature?</p> + +<p>When <i>Guy</i>, Earl of <i>Warwick</i>, and <i>Parismus</i> and +<i>Parismenus</i>, and <i>Valentine</i> and <i>Orson</i>, and the +<i>Seven Champions of England</i>, were handed around the +school,—were they not all purchased with my own pocket-money? +Was that selfish, brother <i>Shandy</i>? When we read over the +siege of <i>Troy</i>, which lasted ten years and eight +months,——though with such a train of artillery as we +had at <i>Namur</i>, the town might have been carried in a week—was I not as much concerned for the +destruction of the <i>Greeks</i> and <i>Trojans</i> as any boy of +the whole school? Had I not three strokes of a ferula given me, two +on my right hand, and one on my left, for calling <i>Helena</i> a +bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more tears for <i>Hector?</i> +And when king <i>Priam</i> came to the camp to beg his body, and +returned weeping back to <i>Troy</i> without it,—you know, +brother, I could not eat my dinner.——</p> + +<p>——Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother +<i>Shandy</i>, my blood flew out into the camp, and my heart panted +for war,—was it a proof it could not ache for the distresses +of war too?</p> + +<p>O brother! ’tis one thing for a soldier to gather +laurels,—and ’tis another to scatter +cypress.——[<i>Who told thee, my dear Toby, that cypress +was used by the antients on mournful occasions?</i> ]</p> + +<p>——’Tis one thing, brother <i>Shandy</i>, for a +soldier to hazard his own life—to leap first down into the +trench, where he is sure to be cut in +pieces:——’Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to +enter the breach the first man,—to stand in the foremost +rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours +flying about his ears:——’Tis one thing, I say, +brother <i>Shandy</i>, to do this,—and ’tis another +thing to reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the +desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable +fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument +who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to +undergo.</p> + +<p>Need I be told, dear <i>Yorick</i>, as I was by you, in <i>Le +Fever</i>’s funeral sermon, <i>That so soft and gentle a +creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not +shaped for this?</i>——But why did you not add, +<i>Yorick</i>,—if not by <small>NATURE</small>—that he +is so by <small>NECESSITY</small>?——For what is war? +what is it, <i>Yorick</i>, when fought as ours has been, upon +principles of <i>liberty</i>, and upon principles of +<i>honour</i>—what is it, but the getting together of quiet +and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the +ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? And heaven is my +witness, brother <i>Shandy</i>, that the pleasure I have taken in +these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, which +has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, +and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, +that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our +creation.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>TOLD</small> the Christian reader—I +say <i>Christian</i>——hoping he is one——and +if he is not, I am sorry for it——and only beg he will +consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame entirely +upon this book——</p> + +<p>I told him, Sir——for in good truth, when a man is +telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged +continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight +together in the reader’s fancy——which, for my own +part, if I did not take heed to do more than at first, there is so +much unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, with so many breaks +and gaps in it,—and so little service do the stars afford, +which, nevertheless, I hang up in some of the darkest passages, +knowing that the world is apt to lose its way, with all the lights +the sun itself at noon-day can give it——and now you +see, I am lost myself!——</p> + +<p>——But ’tis my father’s fault; and +whenever my brains come to be dissected, you will perceive, without +spectacles, that he has left a large uneven thread, as you +sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of cambrick, running along the +whole length of the web, and so untowardly, you cannot so much as +cut out a * *, (here I hang up a couple of lights +again)——or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but it is seen +or felt.——</p> + +<p><i>Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum</i>, +sayeth <i>Cardan.</i> All which being considered, and that you see +’tis morally impracticable for me to wind this round to +where I set out——</p> + +<p>I begin the chapter over again.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>TOLD</small> the Christian reader in the +beginning of the chapter which preceded my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s apologetical oration,—though in a +different trope from what I should make use of now, That the peace +of <i>Utrecht</i> was within an ace of creating the same shyness +betwixt my uncle <i>Toby</i> and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt +the queen and the rest of the confederating powers.</p> + +<p>There is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his +horse, which, as good as says to him, “I’ll go +afoot, Sir, all the days of my life before I would ride a single +mile upon your back again.” Now my uncle <i>Toby</i> could +not be said to dismount his horse in this manner; for in strictness +of language, he could not be said to dismount his horse at +all——his horse rather flung him——and somewhat +<i>viciously</i>, which made my uncle <i>Toby</i> take it ten times +more unkindly. Let this matter be settled by state-jockies as they +like.——It created, I say, a sort of shyness betwixt my +uncle <i>Toby</i> and his hobby-horse.——He had no +occasion for him from the month of <i>March</i> to <i>November</i>, +which was the summer after the articles were signed, except it was +now and then to take a short ride out, just to see that the +fortifications and harbour of <i>Dunkirk</i> were demolished, +according to stipulation.</p> + +<p>The <i>French</i> were so backwards all that summer in setting +about that affair, and Monsieur <i>Tugghe</i>, the deputy from the +magistrates of <i>Dunkirk</i>, presented so many affecting +petitions to the queen,—beseeching her majesty to cause only +her thunderbolts to fall upon the martial works, which might have +incurred her displeasure,—but to spare—to spare the +mole, for the mole’s sake; which, in its naked situation, +could be no more than an object of pity——and the queen +(who was but a woman) being of a pitiful +disposition,—and her ministers also, they not wishing in +their hearts to have the town dismantled, for these private +reasons, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *——</p> + +<p>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ; so that the +whole went heavily on with my uncle <i>Toby;</i> insomuch, that it +was not within three full months, after he and the corporal had +constructed the town, and put it in a condition to be destroyed, +that the several commandants, commissaries, deputies, negociators, +and intendants, would permit him to set about +it.——Fatal interval of inactivity!</p> + +<p>The corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a +breach in the ramparts, or main fortifications of the +town——No,—that will never do, corporal, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, for in going that way to work with the town, the +<i>English</i> garrison will not be safe in it an hour; because if +the French are treacherous——They are as treacherous as devils, +an’ please your honour, said the corporal——It +gives me concern always when I hear it, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby;</i>—for they don’t want personal bravery; and +if a breach is made in the ramparts, they may enter it, and make +themselves masters of the place when they please:—Let them +enter it, said the corporal, lifting up his pioneer’s spade +in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about him with +it,—let them enter, an’ please your honour, if they +dare.——In cases like this, corporal, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, slipping his right hand down to the middle of his +cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise with his fore-finger +extended,——’tis no part of the consideration of a +commandant, what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he +must act with prudence. We will begin with the outworks both +towards the sea and the land, and particularly with fort +<i>Louis</i>, the most distant of them all, and demolish it +first,—and the rest, one by one, both on our right and left, as we retreat towards +the town;——then we’ll demolish the +mole,—next fill up the harbour,—then retire into the +citadel, and blow it up into the air: and having done that, +corporal, we’ll embark for <i>England.</i>——We +are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting +himself——Very true, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—looking at the church.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A <small>DELUSIVE</small>, delicious consultation or +two of this kind, betwixt my uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i>, +upon the demolition of <i>Dunkirk</i>,—for a moment rallied +back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under +him:——still—still all went on +heavily——the magic left the mind the +weaker—S<small>TILLNESS</small>, with S<small>ILENCE</small> +at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy +mantle over my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head;—and +L<small>ISTLESSNESS</small>, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, +sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.——No longer +<i>Amberg</i> and <i>Rhinberg</i>, and <i>Limbourg</i>, and +<i>Huy</i>, and <i>Bonn</i>, in one year,—and the prospect of +<i>Landen</i>, and <i>Trerebach</i>, and <i>Drusen</i>, and +<i>Dendermond</i>, the next,—hurried on the blood:—No +longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and +palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s +repose:——No more could my uncle <i>Toby</i>, after +passing the <i>French</i> lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from +thence break into the heart of <i>France</i>,—cross over the +<i>Oyes</i>, and with all <i>Picardie</i> open behind him, march up +to the gates of <i>Paris</i>, and fall asleep with nothing but +ideas of glory:——No more was he to dream, he had fixed +the royal standard upon the tower of the <i>Bastile</i>, and awake +with it streaming in his head.</p> + +<p>——Softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole +sweetly in upon his slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of +his hands,—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all +others the most delicate! the most difficult!——how wilt +thou touch it, my dear uncle <i>Toby</i>?</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small>, because I have once or twice +said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, That I was confident the +following memoirs of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s courtship of +widow <i>Wadman</i>, whenever I got time to write them, would turn +out one of the most complete systems, both of the elementary and +practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to +the world——are you to imagine from thence, that I shall +set out with a description of <i>what love is?</i> whether part God +and part Devil, as <i>Plotinus</i> will have it——</p> + +<p>——Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the +whole of love to be as ten——to determine with +<i>Ficinus</i>, “<i>How many parts of it—the +one,—and how many the other;</i>”—or whether it +is <i>all of it one great Devil</i>, from head to tail, as +<i>Plato</i> has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which +conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion:—but my opinion of <i>Plato</i> is this; that +he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same +temper and way of reasoning with doctor <i>Baynyard</i>, who being +a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of +’em at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a +herse and six—rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was +nothing in the world, but one great bouncing +<i>Cantharidis.</i>——</p> + +<p>I have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this +monstrous liberty in arguing, but what <i>Nazianzen</i> cried out +(<i>that is, polemically</i>) to +<i>Philagrius</i>——</p> + +<p> +“’Ευγε!” +<i>O rare! ’tis fine reasoning, Sir +indeed!</i>—“οτι +φιλοσοφεισ +ευ Παθεσ.” +<i>and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about +it in your moods and passions.</i></p> + +<p>Nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, I should stop to +inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself +with <i>Rhasis</i> and <i>Dioscorides</i>, whether the seat of it +is in the brain or liver;—because this would lead me on, to +an examination of the two very opposite manners, in +which patients have been treated——the one, of +<i>Aœtius</i>, who always begun with a cooling clyster of +hempseed and bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin +potations of water-lilies and purslane—to which he added a +pinch of snuff, of the herb <i>Hanea;</i>—and where +<i>Aœtius</i> durst venture it,—his topaz-ring.</p> + +<p>——The other, that of <i>Gordonius</i>, who (in his +cap. 15. <i>de Amore</i>) directs they should be thrashed, +“<i>ad putorem usque</i>,”——till they stink +again.</p> + +<p>These are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great +stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the +progress of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s affairs: I must anticipate +thus much, That from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, +he contrived to crucify my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s mind, almost +as much as his amours themselves,)—he took a single step into +practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he +found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my +uncle <i>Toby</i> a new pair of breeches, he produced +<i>Gordonius</i>’s effect upon my uncle <i>Toby</i> without +the disgrace.</p> + +<p>What changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: +all that is needful to be added to the anecdote, is +this——That whatever effect it had upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i>,——it had a vile effect upon the +house;——and if my uncle <i>Toby</i> had not smoaked it +down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father +too.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——’T<small>WILL</small> come out +of itself by and bye.——All I contend for is, that I am +not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so +long as I can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of +the word itself, without any other idea to it, than what I have in +common with the rest of the world, why should I differ from it +a moment before the time?——When I can get +on no further,—and find myself entangled on all sides of this +mystic labyrinth,—my Opinion will then come in, in +course,—and lead me out.</p> + +<p>At present, I hope I shall be sufficiently understood, in +telling the reader, my uncle <i>Toby fell in love:</i></p> + +<p>—Not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a +man is <i>fallen</i> in love,—or that he is <i>deeply</i> in +love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even +<i>over head and ears in it</i>,—carries an idiomatical kind +of implication, that love is a thing <i>below</i> a man:—this +is recurring again to <i>Plato</i>’s opinion, which, with all +his divinityship,—I hold to be damnable and +heretical:—and so much for that.</p> + +<p>Let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle <i>Toby</i> +fell into it.</p> + +<p>——And possibly, gentle reader, with such a +temptation—so wouldst thou: For never did thy eyes behold, or +thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible than widow +<i>Wadman.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>O</small> conceive this right,—call +for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your +hand.——Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own +mind——as like your mistress as you can——as +unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis +all one to me——please but your own fancy in it.</p> + +<p>——Was ever any thing in Nature so sweet!—so +exquisite!</p> + +<p>——Then, dear Sir, how could my uncle <i>Toby</i> +resist it?</p> + +<p>Thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy +covers, which M<small>ALICE</small> will not blacken, and which +I<small>GNORANCE</small> cannot misrepresent.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> <i>Susannah</i> was informed by an +express from Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it +happened,—the contents of which express, <i>Susannah</i> +communicated to my mother the next day,—it has just given me +an opportunity of entering upon my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s amours +a fortnight before their existence.</p> + +<p>I have an article of news to tell you, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, quoth +my mother, which will surprise you greatly.——</p> + +<p>Now my father was then holding one of his second beds of +justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of +matrimony, as my mother broke silence.——</p> + +<p>“—My brother <i>Toby</i>, quoth she, is going to be +married to Mrs. <i>Wadman.</i>”</p> + +<p>——Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to +lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.</p> + +<p>It was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never +asked the meaning of a thing she did not understand.</p> + +<p>——That she is not a woman of science, my father +would say—is her misfortune—but she might ask a +question.—</p> + +<p>My mother never did.——In short, she went out of the +world at last without knowing whether it turned <i>round</i>, or +stood <i>still.</i>——My father had officiously told her +above a thousand times which way it was,—but she always +forgot.</p> + +<p>For these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further +betwixt them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; +at the end of which, it generally took breath for a few minutes (as +in the affair of the breeches), and then went on again.</p> + +<p>If he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my +mother.</p> + +<p>Not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter +away his means upon that, as any thing else,</p> + +<p>——To be sure, said my mother: so here ended the +proposition—the reply,—and the rejoinder, I told you +of.</p> + +<p>It will be some amusement to him, too,——said my +father.</p> + +<p>A very great one, answered my mother, if he should have +children.——</p> + +<p>——Lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to +himself——* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>AM</small> now beginning to get fairly into +my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the +cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s story, and my own, in a tolerable +straight line. Now, +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image07.jpg" width="300" height="241" alt= "four very squiggly lines across the page signed Inv.T.S and Scw.T.S" /> +</div> + +<p> +These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and +fourth volumes<a href="#fn32" name="fnref32"><sup>[32]</sup></a>——In +the fifth volume I have been very good,——the precise line I have +described in it being this: +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image08.jpg" width="300" height="93" alt="One very squiggly line across the page with loops marked A,B,C,C,C,C,C,D." /> +</div> + +<p>By which it appears, that except at the curve, +marked A. where I took a trip to <i>Navarre</i>,—and the +indented curve B. which is the short airing when I was there with +the Lady <i>Baussiere</i> and her page,—I have not taken the +least frisk of a digression, till <i>John de la Casse</i>’s +devils led me the round you see marked D.—for as for <i>c c c +c c</i> they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and +outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and +when compared with what men have done,—or with my own +transgressions at the letters A B D—they vanish +into nothing.</p> + +<p>In this last volume I have done better still—for from the +end of Le Fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s campaigns,—I have scarce stepped a yard +out of my way.</p> + +<p>If I mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the +good leave of his grace of <i>Benevento</i>’s +devils——but I may arrive hereafter at the excellency of +going on even thus:</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>which is a line drawn as straight as I could draw +it, by a writing-master’s ruler (borrowed for that purpose), +turning neither to the right hand or to the left.</p> + +<p>This <i>right line</i>,—the path-way for Christians to +walk in! say divines——</p> + +<p>——The emblem of moral rectitude! says +<i>Cicero</i>——</p> + +<p>——<i>The best line!</i> say cabbage +planters——is the shortest line, says <i>Archimedes</i>, +which can be drawn from one given point to +another.——</p> + +<p>I wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your +next birth- day suits!</p> + +<p>——What a journey!</p> + +<p>Pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before I +write my chapter upon straight lines——by what +mistake——who told them so——or how it has +come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along +confounded this line, with the line of +<small>GRAVITATION</small>?</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn32"></a> <a href="#fnref32">[32]</a> +Alluding to the first edition. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>O</small>——I think, I said, I +would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which +then tormented me, and which to this hour I dread worse than the +devil, would but give me leave—and in another +place—(but where, I can’t recollect now) speaking of my +book as a <i>machine</i>, and laying my pen and ruler down +cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit to +it—I swore it should be kept a going at that rate these forty +years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so long +with health and good spirits.</p> + +<p>Now as for my spirits, little have I to lay to their +charge—nay so very little (unless the mounting me upon a long +stick and playing the fool with me nineteen hours out of the +twenty-four, be accusations) that on the contrary, I have +much—much to thank ’em for: cheerily have ye made me +tread the path of life with all the burthens of it (except its +cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that I +remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which +came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in +dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope, and when +D<small>EATH</small> himself knocked at my door—ye bad him +come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye +do it, that he doubted of his commission——</p> + +<p>“—There must certainly be some mistake in this +matter,” quoth he.</p> + +<p>Now there is nothing in this world I abominate worse, than to be +interrupted in a story——and I was that moment telling +<i>Eugenius</i> a most tawdry one in my way, of a nun who fancied +herself a shell-fish, and of a monk damn’d for eating a +muscle, and was shewing him the grounds and justice of the +procedure——</p> + +<p>“—Did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a +scrape?” quoth Death. Thou hast had a narrow escape, +<i>Tristram</i>, said <i>Eugenius</i>, taking hold of my hand as I +finished my story——</p> + +<p>But there is no living, <i>Eugenius</i>, replied I, at this +rate; for as this <i>son of a whore</i> has found out my +lodgings——</p> + +<p>—You call him rightly, said <i>Eugenius</i>,—for by +sin, we are told, he enter’d the world——I care +not which way he enter’d, quoth I, provided he be not in such +a hurry to take me out with him—for I have forty volumes to +write, and forty thousand things to say and do which no body in the +world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest he +has got me by the throat (for <i>Eugenius</i> could scarce hear me +speak across the table), and that I am no match for him in the open +field, had I not better, whilst these few scatter’d spirits +remain, and these two spider legs of mine (holding one of +them up to him) are able to support me—had I not better, +<i>Eugenius</i>, fly for my life? ’Tis my advice, my dear +<i>Tristram</i>, said <i>Eugenius</i>—Then by heaven! I will +lead him a dance he little thinks of——for I will +gallop, quoth I, without looking once behind me, to the banks of +the <i>Garonne;</i> and if I hear him clattering at my +heels——I’ll scamper away to mount +<i>Vesuvius</i>——from thence to <i>Joppa</i>, and from +<i>Joppa</i> to the world’s end; where, if he follows me, I +pray God he may break his neck——</p> + +<p>—He runs more risk <i>there</i>, said <i>Eugenius</i>, +than thou.</p> + +<p><i>Eugenius</i>’s wit and affection brought blood into the +cheek from whence it had been some months +banish’d——’twas a vile moment to bid adieu +in; he led me to my chaise——<i>Allons!</i> said I; the +post-boy gave a crack with his whip——off I went like a +cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got into <i>Dover.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> hang it! quoth I, as I +look’d towards the <i>French</i> coast—a man should +know something of his own country too, before he goes +abroad——and I never gave a peep into <i>Rochester</i> +church, or took notice of the dock of <i>Chatham</i>, or visited +St. <i>Thomas</i> at <i>Canterbury</i>, though they all three laid +in my way——</p> + +<p>—But mine, indeed, is a particular case——</p> + +<p>So without arguing the matter further with <i>Thomas +o’Becket</i>, or any one else—I skip’d into the +boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away like +the wind.</p> + +<p>Pray, captain, quoth I, as I was going down into the cabin, is a +man never overtaken by <i>Death</i> in this passage?</p> + +<p>Why, there is not time for a man to be sick in it, replied +he——What a cursed lyar! for I am sick as a horse, quoth +I, already——what a brain!——upside down!——hey-day! the cells are broke +loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the +nervous juices, with the fix’d and volatile salts, are all +jumbled into one mass——good G—! every thing turns +round in it like a thousand whirlpools——I’d give +a shilling to know if I shan’t write the clearer for +it——</p> + +<p>Sick! sick! sick! sick!——</p> + +<p>—When shall we get to land? captain—they have hearts +like stones——O I am deadly sick!——reach me +that thing, boy——’tis the most discomfiting +sickness——I wish I was at the bottom—Madam! how +is it with you? Undone! undone! un——O! undone! +sir——What the first time?——No, ’tis +the second, third, sixth, tenth time, +sir,——hey-day!—what a trampling over +head!—hollo! cabin boy! what’s the matter?</p> + +<p>The wind chopp’d about! s’Death—then I shall +meet him full in the face.</p> + +<p>What luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, +master——O the devil chop it——</p> + +<p>Captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get +ashore.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is a great inconvenience to a man +in a haste, that there are three distinct roads between +<i>Calais</i> and <i>Paris</i>, in behalf of which there is so much +to be said by the several deputies from the towns which lie along +them, that half a day is easily lost in settling which you’ll +take.</p> + +<p>First, the road by <i>Lisle</i> and <i>Arras</i>, which is the +most about——but most interesting, and instructing.</p> + +<p>The second, that by <i>Amiens</i>, which you may go, if you +would see <i>Chantilly</i>——</p> + +<p>And that by <i>Beauvais</i>, which you may go, if you will.</p> + +<p>For this reason a great many chuse to go by <i>Beauvais.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>“N<small>OW</small> before I quit +<i>Calais</i>,” a travel-writer would say, “it would +not be amiss to give some account of “it.”—Now I think it very +much amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town and +let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be +turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, +merely o’ my conscience for the sake of drawing it; because, +if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all +who have <i>wrote and gallop’d</i>—or who have +<i>gallop’d and wrote</i>, which is a different way still; or +who, for more expedition than the rest, have <i>wrote +galloping</i>, which is the way I do at present——from +the great <i>Addison</i>, who did it with his satchel of school +books hanging at his a—, and galling his beast’s +crupper at every stroke—there is not a gallopper of us all +who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in +case he had any), and have wrote all he had to write, dry-shod, as +well as not.</p> + +<p>For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall +ever make my last appeal—I know no more of <i>Calais</i> +(except the little my barber told me of it as he was whetting his razor) than I do +this moment of <i>Grand Cairo</i>; for it was dusky in the evening +when I landed, and dark as pitch in the morning when I set out, and +yet by merely knowing what is what, and by drawing this from that +in one part of the town, and by spelling and putting this and that +together in another—I would lay any travelling odds, that I +this moment write a chapter upon <i>Calais</i> as long as my arm; +and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every item, which +is worth a stranger’s curiosity in the town—that you +would take me for the town-clerk of <i>Calais</i> itself—and +where, sir, would be the wonder? was not <i>Democritus</i>, who +laughed ten times more than I—town-clerk of <i>Abdera?</i> +and was not (I forget his name) who had more discretion than us +both, town-clerk of <i>Ephesus?</i>——it should be +penn’d moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, +and truth, and precision——</p> + +<p>—Nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the +chapter for your pains.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>C<small>ALAIS</small>, <i>Calatium, Calusium, +Calesium.</i></p> + +<p>This town, if we may trust its archives, the authority of which +I see no reason to call in question in this place—was +<i>once</i> no more than a small village belonging to one of the +first Counts de <i>Guignes;</i> and as it boasts at present of no +less than fourteen thousand inhabitants, exclusive of four hundred +and twenty distinct families in the <i>basse ville</i>, or +suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, I +suppose, to its present size.</p> + +<p>Though there are four convents, there is but one parochial +church in the whole town; I had not an opportunity of taking its +exact dimensions, but it is pretty easy to make a tolerable +conjecture of ’em—for as there are fourteen thousand +inhabitants in the town, if the church holds them all it must be +considerably large—and if it will not—’tis a very +great pity they have not another—it is built in form of a cross, and dedicated to the Virgin <i>Mary;</i> +the steeple, which has a spire to it, is placed in the middle of +the church, and stands upon four pillars elegant and light enough, +but sufficiently strong at the same time—it is decorated with +eleven altars, most of which are rather fine than beautiful. The +great altar is a master- piece in its kind; ’tis of white +marble, and, as I was told, near sixty feet high—had it been +much higher, it had been as high as mount <i>Calvary</i> +itself—therefore, I suppose it must be high enough in all +conscience.</p> + +<p>There was nothing struck me more than the great <i>Square;</i> +tho’ I cannot say ’tis either well paved or well built; +but ’tis in the heart of the town, and most of the streets, +especially those in that quarter, all terminate in it; could there +have been a fountain in all <i>Calais</i>, which it seems there +cannot, as such an object would have been a great ornament, it is +not to be doubted, but that the inhabitants would have had it in +the very centre of this square,—not that it is properly a +square,—because ’tis forty feet longer from +east to west, than from north to south; so that the <i>French</i> +in general have more reason on their side in calling them +<i>Places</i> than <i>Squares</i>, which, strictly speaking, to be +sure, they are not.</p> + +<p>The town-house seems to be but a sorry building, and not to be +kept in the best repair; otherwise it had been a second great +ornament to this place; it answers however its destination, and +serves very well for the reception of the magistrates, who assemble +in it from time to time; so that ’tis presumable, justice is +regularly distributed.</p> + +<p>I have heard much of it, but there is nothing at all curious in +the <i>Courgain;</i> ’tis a distinct quarter of the town, +inhabited solely by sailors and fishermen; it consists of a number +of small streets, neatly built and mostly of brick; ’tis +extremely populous, but as that may be accounted for, from the +principles of their diet,—there is nothing curious in that +neither.——A traveller may see it to satisfy +himself—he must not omit however taking notice of <i>La Tour de Guet</i>, upon +any account; ’tis so called from its particular destination, +because in war it serves to discover and give notice of the enemies +which approach the place, either by sea or land;——but +’tis monstrous high, and catches the eye so continually, you +cannot avoid taking notice of it if you would.</p> + +<p>It was a singular disappointment to me, that I could not have +permission to take an exact survey of the fortifications, which are +the strongest in the world, and which, from first to last, that is, +for the time they were set about by <i>Philip</i> of <i>France</i>, +Count of <i>Bologne</i>, to the present war, wherein many +reparations were made, have cost (as I learned afterwards from an +engineer in <i>Gascony</i>)—above a hundred millions of +livres. It is very remarkable, that at the <i>Tête de +Gravelenes</i>, and where the town is naturally the weakest, they +have expended the most money; so that the outworks stretch a great +way into the campaign, and consequently occupy a large tract of +ground—However, after all that is <i>said</i> and +<i>done</i>, it must be acknowledged that <i>Calais</i> was never +upon any account so considerable from itself, as from its +situation, and that easy entrance which it gave our ancestors, upon +all occasions, into <i>France:</i> it was not without its +inconveniences also; being no less troublesome to the +<i>English</i> in those times, than <i>Dunkirk</i> has been to us, +in ours; so that it was deservedly looked upon as the key to both +kingdoms, which no doubt is the reason that there have arisen so +many contentions who should keep it: of these, the siege of +<i>Calais</i>, or rather the blockade (for it was shut up both by +land and sea), was the most memorable, as it with-stood the efforts +of <i>Edward</i> the Third a whole year, and was not terminated at +last but by famine and extreme misery; the gallantry of <i>Eustace +de St. Pierre</i>, who first offered himself a victim for his +fellow-citizens, has rank’d his name with heroes. As it will +not take up above fifty pages, it would be injustice to the reader, +not to give him a minute account of that romantic transaction, as well +as of the siege itself, in <i>Rapin</i>’s own words:</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——B<small>UT</small> courage! gentle +reader!——I scorn it——’tis enough to +have thee in my power——but to make use of the advantage +which the fortune of the pen has now gained over thee, would be too +much——No——! by that all-powerful fire which +warms the visionary brain, and lights the spirits through unworldly +tracts! ere I would force a helpless creature upon this hard +service, and make thee pay, poor soul! for fifty pages, which I +have no right to sell thee,——naked as I am, I would +browse upon the mountains, and smile that the north wind brought me +neither my tent or my supper.</p> + +<p>—So put on, my brave boy! and make the best of thy way to +<i>Boulogne.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XC</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——B<small>OULOGNE</small>!——hah!——so +we are all got together——debtors and sinners before heaven; a jolly +set of us—but I can’t stay and quaff it off with +you—I’m pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be +overtaken, before I can well change horses:——for heaven’s +sake, make haste——’Tis for high-treason, quoth a very little +man, whispering as low as he could to a very tall man, that stood next +him——Or else for murder; quoth the tall man——Well +thrown, <i>Size-ace!</i> quoth I. No; quoth a third, the gentleman has +been committing——— +</p> + +<p><i>Ah! ma chere fille!</i> said I, as she tripp’d by from +her matins—you look as rosy as the morning (for the sun was +rising, and it made the compliment the more gracious)—No; it +can’t be that, quoth a fourth——(she made a +curt’sy to me—I kiss’d my hand) ’tis +debt, continued he: ’Tis certainly for debt; quoth a +fifth; I would not pay that gentleman’s debts, quoth +<i>Ace</i>, for a thousand pounds; nor would I, quoth <i>Size</i>, +for six times the sum—Well thrown, <i>Size-ace</i>, again! +quoth I;—but I have no debt but the debt of +N<small>ATURE</small>, and I want but patience of her, and I will +pay her every farthing I owe her——How can you be so +hard-hearted, Madam, to arrest a poor traveller going along without +molestation to any one upon his lawful occasions? do stop that +death-looking, long-striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner, who is +posting after me——he never would have followed me but +for you——if it be but for a stage or two, just to give +me start of him, I beseech you, madam——do, dear +lady——</p> + +<p>——Now, in troth, ’tis a great pity, quoth mine +<i>Irish</i> host, that all this good courtship should be lost; for +the young gentlewoman has been after going out of hearing of it all +along.——</p> + +<p>——Simpleton! quoth I.</p> + +<p>——So you have nothing <i>else</i> in <i>Boulogne</i> +worth seeing?</p> + +<p>—By Jasus! there is the finest S<small>EMINARY</small> for +the H<small>UMANITIES</small>——</p> + +<p>—There cannot be a finer; quoth I.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> the precipitancy of a +man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than +the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth! and woe be to the +vehicle and its tackling (let ’em be made of what stuff you +will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of his +soul!</p> + +<p>As I never give general characters either of men or things in +choler, “<i>the most haste the worse speed</i>,” was +all the reflection I made upon the affair, the first time it +happen’d;—the second, third, fourth, and fifth time, I +confined it respectively to those times, and accordingly blamed +only the second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boy for it, without +carrying my reflections further; but the event +continuing to befal me from the fifth, to the sixth, seventh, +eighth, ninth, and tenth time, and without one exception, I then +could not avoid making a national reflection of it, which I do in +these words;</p> + +<p><i>That something is always wrong in a French post-chaise, upon +first setting out.</i></p> + +<p>Or the proposition may stand thus:</p> + +<p><i>A French postilion has always to alight before he has got +three hundred yards out of town.</i></p> + +<p>What’s wrong now?——Diable!——a +rope’s broke!——a knot has slipt!——a +staple’s drawn!——a bolt’s to +whittle!——a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a buckle, or a +buckle’s tongue, want altering.</p> + +<p>Now true as all this is, I never think myself impowered to +excommunicate thereupon either the post-chaise, or its +driver——nor do I take it into my head to swear by the +living G—, I would rather go a-foot ten thousand +times——or that I will be damn’d, if ever I get +into another——but I take the matter coolly +before me, and consider, that some tag, or rag, or jag, or bolt, or +buckle, or buckle’s tongue, will ever be a wanting or want +altering, travel where I will—so I never chaff, but take the +good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get +on:——Do so, my lad! said I; he had lost five minutes +already, in alighting in order to get at a luncheon of black bread, +which he had cramm’d into the chaise-pocket, and was +remounted, and going leisurely on, to relish it the +better.——Get on, my lad, said I, briskly—but in +the most persuasive tone imaginable, for I jingled a +four-and-twenty sous piece against the glass, taking care to hold +the flat side towards him, as he look’d back: the dog +grinn’d intelligence from his right ear to his left, and +behind his sooty muzzle discovered such a pearly row of teeth, that +<i>Sovereignty</i> would have pawn’d her jewels for +them.<br/> +Just heaven! {What masticators!—/What bread!—</p> + +<p>and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we +entered the town of <i>Montreuil.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> is not a town in all +<i>France</i> which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than +M<small>ONTREUIL</small>;——I own, it does not look so +well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see +it—to be sure it looks most pitifully.</p> + +<p>There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and +that is, the inn-keeper’s daughter: She has been eighteen +months at <i>Amiens</i>, and six at <i>Paris</i>, in going through +her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little +coquetries very well.——</p> + +<p>—A slut! in running them over within these five minutes +that I have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen +loops in a white thread stocking——yes, yes—I see, +you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and taper—you need +not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your +own—and fits you exactly.——</p> + +<p>——That Nature should have told this creature a word +about a <i>statue’s thumb!</i></p> + +<p>—But as this sample is worth all their +thumbs—besides, I have her thumbs and fingers in at the +bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as +<i>Janatone</i> withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a +drawing——may I never draw more, or rather may I draw +like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my +life,—if I do not draw her in all her proportions, and with +as determined a pencil, as if I had her in the wettest +drapery.——</p> + +<p>—But your worships chuse rather that I give you the +length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great +parish-church, or drawing of the façade of the abbey of +Saint <i>Austreberte</i> which has been transported from +<i>Artois</i> hither—every thing is just I suppose as the +masons and carpenters left them,—and if the belief in <i>Christ</i> continues so long, will be +so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences +may all measure them at your leisures——but he who +measures thee, <i>Janatone</i>, must do it now—thou carriest +the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the +chances of a transitory life, I would not answer for thee a moment; +ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, thou mayest grow out +like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or thou mayest go +off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest go +off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—I would not answer +for my aunt <i>Dinah</i>, was she alive——’faith, +scarce for her picture——were it but painted by +<i>Reynolds</i>—</p> + +<p>But if I go on with my drawing, after naming that son of +<i>Apollo</i>, I’ll be shot——</p> + +<p>So you must e’en be content with the original; which, if +the evening is fine in passing thro’ <i>Montreuil</i>, you +will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as I +have—you had better stop:—She has a little of the +<i>devote:</i> but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your +favour——</p> + +<p>—L— help me! I could not count a single point: so +had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>LL</small> which being considered, and that +Death moreover might be much nearer me than I +imagined——I wish I was at <i>Abbeville</i>, quoth I, +were it only to see how they card and spin——so off we +set.</p> + +<p> +<a href="#fn33" name="fnref33"><sup>[33]</sup></a><i>de Montreuil a Nampont - +poste et demi<br/> de Nampont</i> a Bernay - - - - - - poste<br/> de Bernay a +Nouvion - - - - - poste<br/> de Nouvion a A<small>BBEVILLE</small> +poste<br/> ——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn33"></a> <a href="#fnref33">[33]</a> +Vid. Book of French post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HAT</small> a vast advantage is travelling! +only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may +pick out of the next chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>AS</small> I in a condition to stipulate +with Death, as I am this moment with my apothecary, how and where I +will take his clyster——I should certainly declare +against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore I never +seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, +which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the +catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it +with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, +that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in +some decent inn——at home, I know it,——the +concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which +the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify +my soul, that I shall die of a distemper which my physician is not +aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices I wanted, would be +purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but +punctual attention——but mark. This inn should not be +the inn at <i>Abbeville</i>——if there was not another +inn in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the +capitulation: so</p> + +<p>Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the +morning——Yes, by four, Sir,——or by +<i>Genevieve!</i> I’ll raise a clatter in the house shall +wake the dead.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>“M<small>AKE</small> <i>them like unto a +wheel</i>,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, +against the <i>grand tour</i>, and that restless spirit for making +it, which <i>David</i> prophetically foresaw would haunt the +children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop +<i>Hall</i>, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which +<i>David</i> ever utter’d against the enemies of the +Lord—and, as if he had said, “I wish them no +worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—So much +motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much +unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much +of heaven.</p> + +<p>Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of +motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy——and +that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the +devil——</p> + +<p>Hollo! Ho!——the whole world’s +asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the +wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail +into that moulding——I’ll not lose a +moment——</p> + +<p>Now the wheel we are talking of, and <i>whereinto</i> (but not +<i>whereonto</i>, for that would make an Ixion’s wheel of it) +he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop’s habit of +body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in +<i>Palestine</i> at that time or not——and my wheel, for +the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning +round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were I to +turn commentator, I should make no scruple to affirm, they had +great store in that hilly country.</p> + +<p>I love the Pythagoreans (much more than ever I dare tell my dear +<i>Jenny</i>) for their +“Χωξισμον +απο τκ +Εωμαιος, +εις το +καλως +φιλοσοφειν”——[their] +“getting out of the body, in order to think well.”</p> + +<p>No man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, +with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the +bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a +fibre——R<small>EASON</small> is, half of it, +S<small>ENSE</small>; and the measure of heaven itself is but the +measure of our present appetites and concoctions.——</p> + +<p>——But which of the two, in the present case, do you +think to be mostly in the wrong?</p> + +<p>You, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so +early.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——But she did not know I was under a vow not to +shave my beard till I got to <i>Paris;</i>——yet I hate +to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the cold +cautiousness of one of those little souls from which <i>Lessius +(lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.)</i> hath made his estimate, +wherein he setteth forth, That one <i>Dutch</i> mile, cubically +multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred +thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of +souls (counting from the fall of <i>Adam</i>) as can possibly be +damn’d to the end of the world.</p> + +<p>From what he has made this second estimate——unless +from the parental goodness of God—I don’t know—I +am much more at a loss what could be in <i>Franciscus +Ribbera</i>’s head, who pretends that no less a space than +one of two hundred <i>Italian</i> miles multiplied into itself, +will be sufficient to hold the like number——he +certainly must have gone upon some of the old <i>Roman</i> souls, +of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and +most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred years, they +must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when he wrote, +almost to nothing.</p> + +<p>In <i>Lessius</i>’s time, who seems the cooler man, they +were as little as can be imagined——</p> + +<p>——We find them less <i>now</i>——</p> + +<p>And next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go +on from little to less, and from less to nothing, I hesitate not +one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall +have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which I doubt +likewise of the existence of the Christian faith, ’twill be +one advantage that both of ’em will be exactly worn out +together.</p> + +<p>Blessed <i>Jupiter!</i> and blessed every other heathen god and +goddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with +<i>Priapus</i> at your tails——what jovial +times!——but where am I? and into what a delicious riot +of things am I rushing? I——I who must be cut short in +the midst of my days, and taste no more of ’em than what I +borrow from my imagination——peace to thee, generous +fool! and let me go on.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——“So hating, I say, to make mysteries +of <i>nothing</i>”——I intrusted it with the +post-boy, as soon as ever I got off the stones; he gave a crack +with his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse +trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it +along to <i>Ailly au clochers</i>, famed in days of yore for the +finest chimes in the world; but we danced through it without +music—the chimes being greatly out of order—(as in +truth they were through all <i>France</i>).</p> + +<p>And so making all possible speed, from</p> + +<p><i>Ailly au clochers</i>, I got to <i>Hixcourt</i>,<br/> +from <i>Hixcourt</i> I got to <i>Pequignay</i>, and<br/> +from <i>Pequignay</i>, I got to A<small>MIENS</small>,<br/> +concerning which town I have nothing to inform you, but what I have +informed you once before——and that was—that +<i>Janatone</i> went there to school.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> the whole catalogue of those +whiffling vexations which come puffing across a man’s +canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting nature, +than this particular one which I am going to +describe——and for which (unless you travel with an +avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent +it)——there is no help: and it is this.</p> + +<p>That be you in never so kindly a propensity to +sleep——though you are passing perhaps through the +finest country—upon the best roads, and in the easiest +carriage for doing it in the world——nay, was you sure you could sleep fifty miles straight +forwards, without once opening your eyes—nay, what is more, +was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of any truth in +<i>Euclid</i>, that you should upon all accounts be full as well +asleep as awake——nay, perhaps better——Yet +the incessant returns of paying for the horses at every +stage,——with the necessity thereupon of putting your +hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence three livres +fifteen sous (sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the project, +that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a +post and a half, that is but nine)——were it to save +your soul from destruction.</p> + +<p>—I’ll be even with ’em, quoth I, for +I’ll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it +ready in my hand all the way: “Now I shall have nothing +to do,” said I (composing myself to rest), “but +to drop this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a +word.”——Then there wants two sous more to +drink——or there is a twelve sous piece of <i>Louis</i> XIV. which will +not pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over +from the last stage, which Monsieur had forgot; which altercations +(as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is +sweet sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down the +spirit, and recover itself of these blows—but then, by +heaven! you have paid but for a single post—whereas +’tis a post and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your +book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces +you to open your eyes, whether you will or no: Then Monsieur <i>le +Curé</i> offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor +soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his +box——or the priestesse of the cistern will water your +wheels——they do not want it——but she swears +by her <i>priesthood</i> (throwing it back) that they +do:——then you have all these points to argue, or +consider over in your mind; in doing of which, the rational powers +get so thoroughly awakened——you may get ’em to sleep +again as you can.</p> + +<p>It was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or I had +pass’d clean by the stables of +<i>Chantilly</i>——</p> + +<p>——But the postillion first affirming, and then +persisting in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two +sous piece, I open’d my eyes to be convinced—and seeing +the mark upon it as plain as my nose—I leap’d out of +the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at <i>Chantilly</i> +in spite.——I tried it but for three posts and a half, +but believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel +speedily upon; for as few objects look very inviting in that +mood—you have little or nothing to stop you; by which means +it was that I passed through St. <i>Dennis</i>, without turning my +head so much as on one side towards the Abby——</p> + +<p>——Richness of their treasury! stuff and +nonsense!——bating their jewels, which are all false, I +would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but +<i>Jaidas’s lantern</i>——nor for that either, +only as it grows dark, it might be of use.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + C</small> +</h3> + +<p>C<small>RACK</small>, crack——crack, +crack——crack, crack—so this is <i>Paris!</i> +quoth I (continuing in the same mood)—and this is +<i>Paris!</i>——humph!——<i>Paris!</i> cried +I, repeating the name the third time——</p> + +<p>The first, the finest, the most brilliant——</p> + +<p>The streets however are nasty.</p> + +<p>But it looks, I suppose, better than it +smells——crack, crack——crack, +crack——what a fuss thou makest!—as if it +concerned the good people to be informed, that a man with pale face +and clad in black, had the honour to be driven into <i>Paris</i> at +nine o’clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow +jerkin, turned up with red calamanco—crack, crack——crack, crack——crack, +crack,——I wish thy whip——</p> + +<p>——But ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so +crack—crack on.</p> + +<p>Ha!——and no one gives the wall!——but in +the S<small>CHOOL</small> of U<small>RBANITY</small> herself, if +the walls are besh-t—how can you do otherwise?</p> + +<p>And prithee when do they light the lamps? What?—never in +the summer months!——Ho! ’tis the time of +sallads.——O rare! sallad and soup—soup and +sallad—sallad and soup, <i>encore</i>——</p> + +<p>——’Tis <i>too much</i> for sinners.</p> + +<p>Now I cannot bear the barbarity of it; how can that +unconscionable coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? +don’t you see, friend, the streets are so villanously narrow, +that there is not room in all <i>Paris</i> to turn a wheelbarrow? +In the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have been +amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; nay, were it only so +much in every single street, as that a man might know (was it +only for satisfaction) on which side of it he was +walking.</p> + +<p> +One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten.—Ten +cooks shops! and twice the number of barbers! and all within three minutes +driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world, on some great +merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said—Come, let us +all go live at <i>Paris:</i> the <i>French</i> love good +eating——they are all <i>gourmands</i>——we shall rank +high; if their god is their belly——their cooks must be gentlemen: +and forasmuch as <i>the periwig maketh the man</i>, and the periwig-maker +maketh the periwig—<i>ergo</i>, would the barbers say, we shall rank +higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be +<i>Capitouls</i><a href="#fn34" name="fnref34"><sup>[34]</sup></a> at +least—<i>pardi!</i> we shall all wear swords—— +</p> + +<p>—And so, one would swear, (that is, by +candle-light,—but there is no depending upon it,) they +continued to do, to this day.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn34"></a> <a href="#fnref34">[34]</a> +Chief Magistrate in Toulouse, &c. &c. &c. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + CI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> <i>French</i> are certainly +misunderstood:——but whether the fault is theirs, in not +sufficiently explaining themselves; or speaking with that exact +limitation and precision which one would expect on a point of such +importance, and which, moreover, is so likely to be contested by +us——or whether the fault may not be altogether on our +side, in not understanding their language always so critically as +to know “what they would be at”——I shall +not decide; but ’tis evident to me, when they affirm, +“<i>That they who have seen</i> Paris, <i>have seen +every thing</i>,” they must mean to speak of those who have +seen it by day-light.</p> + +<p>As for candle-light—I give it up——I have said +before, there was no depending upon it—and I repeat it again; +but not because the lights and shades are too sharp—or the +tints confounded—or that there is neither beauty or keeping, +&c. . . . for that’s not truth—but it is an uncertain light in this respect, That in all the five +hundred grand Hôtels, which they number up to you in +<i>Paris</i>—and the five hundred good things, at a modest +computation (for ’tis only allowing one good thing to a +Hôtel), which by candle-light are best to be <i>seen, felt, +heard</i>, and <i>understood</i> (which, by the bye, is a quotation +from <i>Lilly</i>)——the devil a one of us out of fifty, +can get our heads fairly thrust in amongst them.</p> + +<p>This is no part of the <i>French</i> computation: ’tis +simply this,</p> + +<p>That by the last survey taken in the year one thousand seven +hundred and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable +augmentations, <i>Paris</i> doth contain nine hundred streets; +(viz)</p> + +<p>In the quarter called the <i>City</i>—there +are<br/> + fifty-three streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>James</i> of the Shambles,<br/> + fifty-five streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Oportune</i>, thirty-four streets.</p> + +<p>In the quarter of the <i>Louvre</i>,<br/> + twenty-five streets.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Palace Royal</i>, or St. +<i>Honorius</i>,<br/> + forty-nine streets.</p> + +<p>In <i>Mont. Martyr</i>, forty-one streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Eustace</i>, twenty-nine streets.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Halles</i>, twenty-seven streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Dennis</i>, fifty-five streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Martin</i>, fifty-four streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Paul</i>, or the <i>Mortellerie</i>,<br/> + twenty-seven streets.</p> + +<p>The <i>Greve</i>, thirty-eight streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Avoy</i>, or the <i>Verrerie</i>,<br/> + nineteen streets.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Marais</i>, or the <i>Temple</i>,<br/> + fifty-two streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Antony</i>’s, sixty-eight +streets.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Place Maubert</i>, eighty-one streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Bennet</i>, sixty streets.</p> + +<p>In St. <i>Andrews de Arcs</i>, fifty-one +streets.</p> + +<p>In the quarter of the <i>Luxembourg</i>,<br/> + sixty-two streets.</p> + +<p>And in that of St. Germain, fifty-five streets, into any of +which you may walk; and that when you have seen them with all that +belongs to them, fairly by day-light—their gates, their +bridges, their squares, their statues - - - and have crusaded it +moreover, through all their parish-churches, by no means omitting +St. <i>Roche</i> and <i>Sulpice</i> - - - and to crown all, have +taken a walk to the four palaces, which you may see, either with or +without the statues and pictures, just as you chuse—</p> + +<p>——Then you will have seen——</p> + +<p>——but ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, +for you will read of it yourself upon the portico of the +<i>Louvre</i>, in these words,</p> + +<p> +<a href="#fn35" name="fnref35"><sup>[35]</sup></a><small>EARTH NO SUCH +FOLKS</small>!—<small>NO FOLKS E</small>’<small>ER SUCH A +TOWN</small> +</p> + +<p> +<small>AS PARIS IS</small>!—<small>SING, DERRY, DERRY, DOWN.</small> +</p> + +<p>The <i>French</i> have a <i>gay</i> way of treating every thing +that is Great; and that is all can be said upon it.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn35"></a> <a href="#fnref35">[35]</a> +Non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam<br/> +——————ulla parem. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + CII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> mentioning the word <i>gay</i> (as +in the close of the last chapter) it puts one (<i>i.e.</i> an +author) in mind of the word <i>spleen</i>——especially +if he has any thing to say upon it: not that by any +analysis—or that from any table of interest or genealogy, +there appears much more ground of alliance betwixt them, than +betwixt light and darkness, or any two of the most unfriendly +opposites in nature——only ’tis an undercraft of +authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as +politicians do amongst men—not knowing how near they may be +under a necessity of placing them to each other——which +point being now gain’d, and that I may place mine exactly to +my mind, I write it down here—</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>S P L E E N</small> +</p> + +<p>This, upon leaving <i>Chantilly</i>, I declared to be the best +principle in the world to travel speedily upon; but I gave it only as +matter of opinion. I still continue in the same +sentiments—only I had not then experience enough of its +working to add this, that though you do get on at a tearing rate, +yet you get on but uneasily to yourself at the same time; for which +reason I here quit it entirely, and for ever, and ’tis +heartily at any one’s service—it has spoiled me the +digestion of a good supper, and brought on a bilious +diarrhœa, which has brought me back again to my first +principle on which I set out——and with which I shall +now scamper it away to the banks of the <i>Garonne</i>—</p> + +<p> +——No;——I cannot stop a moment to give you the character +of the people—their genius—— their manners—their +customs—their laws——their religion—their +government— their manufactures—their commerce—their finances, +with all the resources and hidden springs which sustain them: qualified as I +may be, by spending three days and two nights amongst them, and during all that +time making these things the entire subject of my enquiries and +reflections—— +</p> + +<p>Still—still I must away——the roads are +paved—the posts are short—the days are +long—’tis no more than noon—I shall be at +<i>Fontainebleau</i> before the king——</p> + +<p>—Was he going there? not that I know——</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>END OF THE THIRD VOLUME</small> +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image09.jpg" width="296" height= "518" alt="Tristram Shandy" /> +</div> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Tristram Shandy</i> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a> +<small>THE</small><br/> +LIFE <small>AND</small> OPINIONS<br/> +<small>OF</small><br/> +TRISTRAM SHANDY,<br/> +<small>GENTLEMAN<br/> +———<br/> +Volume the Fourth<br/> +———</small> +</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +Non enim excursus hic ejus, sed opus ipsum est. +</p> + +<p>PLIN. Lib. V. Epist. 6.</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Si quid urbaniusculè lusum a nobis, per Musas et Charitas et omnium poëtarum +Numina, Oro te, ne me malè capias. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +A<br/> +<br/> +D E D I C A T I O N<br/> +<br/> +TO<br/> +<br/> +A GREAT MAN +</p> + +<p>H<small>AVING</small>, <i>a priori</i>, intended +to dedicate <i>The Amours of my Uncle Toby</i> to Mr. +***——I see more reasons, <i>a posteriori</i>, for doing +it to Lord *******.</p> + +<p> I should lament from my +soul, if this exposed me to the jealousy of their Reverences; +because <i>a posteriori</i>, in Court-latin, signifies the kissing +hands for preferment—or any thing else—in order to get +it.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>DEDICATION</small> +</p> + +<p> My opinion of Lord ******* +is neither better nor worse, than it was of Mr. ***. Honours, like +impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit +of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over +without any other recommendation than their own weight.</p> + +<p> The same good-will that +made me think of offering up half an hour’s amusement to Mr. +*** when out of place—operates more forcibly at present, as +half an hour’s amusement will be more serviceable and +refreshing after labour and sorrow, than after a philosophical +repast.</p> + +<p> +Nothing is so perfectly <i>amusement</i> as a total change of ideas; no ideas +are so totally different as those of Ministers, and innocent Lovers: for which +reason, when I come to talk of Statesmen and Patriots, and set such marks upon +them as will prevent confusion and mistakes concerning them for the +future—I propose to dedicate that Volume to some gentle Shepherd, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Whose thoughts proud Science never taught to stray,<br/> +Far as the Statesman’s walk or Patriot-way;<br/> +Yet <i>simple Nature</i> to his hopes had given<br/> +Out of a cloud-capp’d head a humbler heaven;<br/> +Some <i>untam’d</i> World in depths of wood embraced—<br/> +Some happier Island in the wat’ry-waste—<br/> +And where admitted to that equal sky,<br/> +His <i>faithful</i> Dogs should bear him company. +</p> + +<p> +In a word, by thus introducing an entire new set of objects to his Imagination, +I shall unavoidably give a <i>Diversion</i> to his passionate and love-sick +Contemplations. In the mean time, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +I am<br/> +THE AUTHOR.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. I</small><br/> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> I hate to hear a person, +especially if he be a traveller, complain that we do not get on so +fast in <i>France</i> as we do in <i>England;</i> whereas we get on +much faster, <i>consideratis considerandis;</i> thereby always +meaning, that if you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of +baggage which you lay both before and behind upon them—and +then consider their puny horses, with the very little they give +them—’tis a wonder they get on at all: their suffering +is most unchristian, and ’tis evident thereupon to me, that a +<i>French</i> post-horse would not know what in the world to do, +was it not for the two words * * * * * * and * * * * * * in which there +is as much sustenance, as if you give him a peck of corn: now as +these words cost nothing, I long from my soul to tell the reader +what they are; but here is the question—they must be told him +plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it will answer +no end—and yet to do it in that plain way—though their +reverences may laugh at it in the bed-chamber—full well I +wot, they will abuse it in the parlour: for which cause, I have +been volving and revolving in my fancy some time, but to no +purpose, by what clean device or facette contrivance I might so +modulate them, that whilst I satisfy <i>that ear</i> which the +reader chuses to <i>lend</i> me—I might not dissatisfy the +other which he keeps to himself.</p> + +<p>——My ink burns my finger to try——and +when I have——’twill have a worse +consequence——It will burn (I fear) my paper.</p> + +<p>——No;——I dare not——</p> + +<p>But if you wish to know how the <i>abbess</i> of +<i>Andoüillets</i> and a novice of her convent got over the +difficulty (only first wishing myself all imaginable +success)—I’ll tell you without the least scruple.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + II</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> abbess of +<i>Andoüillets</i>, which if you look into the large set of +provincial maps now publishing at <i>Paris</i>, you will find +situated amongst the hills which divide <i>Burgundy</i> from +<i>Savoy</i>, being in danger of an <i>Anchylosis</i> or stiff +joint (the <i>sinovia</i> of her knee becoming hard by long +matins), and having tried every remedy——first, prayers +and thanksgiving; then invocations to all the saints in heaven +promiscuously——then particularly to every saint who had +ever had a stiff leg before her——then touching it with +all the reliques of the convent, principally with the thigh-bone of +the man of <i>Lystra</i>, who had been impotent from his +youth——then wrapping it up in her veil when she went to +bed—then cross-wise her rosary—then bringing in to her +aid the secular arm, and anointing it with oils and hot fat of +animals——then treating it with emollient and resolving +fomentations——then with poultices of marsh-mallows, +mallows, bonus Henricus, white lillies and fenugreek—then +taking the woods, I mean the smoak of ’em, holding her +scapulary across her lap——then decoctions of wild +chicory, water-cresses, chervil, sweet cecily and +cochlearia——and nothing all this while answering, was +prevailed on at last to try the hot-baths of +<i>Bourbon</i>——so having first obtained leave of the +visitor-general to take care of her existence—she ordered all +to be got ready for her journey: a novice of the convent of about +seventeen, who had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle +finger, by sticking it constantly into the abbess’s cast +poultices, &c.—had gained such an interest, that +overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been set up for ever by the hot-baths of <i>Bourbon, +Margarita</i>, the little novice, was elected as the companion of +the journey.</p> + +<p>An old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, +was ordered to be drawn out into the sun—the gardener of the +convent being chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules, to clip +the hair from the rump- ends of their tails, whilst a couple of +lay-sisters were busied, the one in darning the lining, and the +other in sewing on the shreds of yellow binding, which the teeth of +time had unravelled——the under-gardener dress’d +the muleteer’s hat in hot wine-lees——and a taylor +sat musically at it, in a shed over-against the convent, in +assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each +bell, as he tied it on with a thong.——</p> + +<p>——The carpenter and the smith of +<i>Andoüillets</i> held a council of wheels; and by seven, the +morning after, all look’d spruce, and was ready at the gate +of the convent for the hot-baths of +<i>Bourbon</i>—two rows of the unfortunate stood ready there +an hour before.</p> + +<p>The abbess of <i>Andoüillets</i>, supported by +<i>Margarita</i> the novice, advanced slowly to the calesh, both +clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging at their +breasts——</p> + +<p>——There was a simple solemnity in the contrast: they +entered the calesh; the nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of +innocence, each occupied a window, and as the abbess and +<i>Margarita</i> look’d up—each (the sciatical poor nun +excepted)—each stream’d out the end of her veil in the +air—then kiss’d the lilly hand which let it go: the +good abbess and <i>Margarita</i> laid their hands saint-wise upon +their breasts—look’d up to heaven—then to +them—and look’d “God bless you, dear +sisters.”</p> + +<p>I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been +there.</p> + +<p>The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, +hearty, broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a +fellow, who troubled his head very little with the <i>hows</i> and +<i>whens</i> of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical +wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had +disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured +riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather +was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times +more than he rode—he found more occasions than those of +nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent +coming and going, it had so happen’d, that all his wine had +leak’d out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one +half of the journey was finish’d.</p> + +<p>Man is a creature born to habitudes. The day had been +sultry—the evening was delicious—the wine was +generous—the <i>Burgundian</i> hill on which it grew was +steep—a little tempting bush over the door of a cool cottage +at the foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with the +passions—a gentle air rustled distinctly through the +leaves—“Come—come, thirsty +muleteer,—come in.”</p> + +<p>—The muleteer was a son of <i>Adam</i>, I need not say a +word more. He gave the mules, each of ’em, a sound lash, and +looking in the abbess’s and <i>Margarita</i>’s faces +(as he did it)—as much as to say “here I +am”—he gave a second good crack—as much as to say +to his mules, “get on”——so slinking behind, +he enter’d the little inn at the foot of the hill.</p> + +<p>The muleteer, as I told you, was a little, joyous, chirping +fellow, who thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, +or what was to follow it, provided he got but his scantling of +Burgundy, and a little chit-chat along with it; so entering into a +long conversation, as how he was chief gardener to the convent of +<i>Andoüillets</i>, &c. &c. and out of friendship for +the abbess and Mademoiselle <i>Margarita</i>, who was only in her +noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of +<i>Savoy</i>, &c. &c.—and as how she had got a white +swelling by her devotions—and what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, +&c. &c. and that if the waters of <i>Bourbon</i> did not +mend that leg—she might as well be lame of both—&c. +&c. &c.—He so contrived his story, as absolutely to +forget the heroine of it—and with her the little novice, and +what was a more ticklish point to be forgot than both—the two +mules; who being creatures that take advantage of the world, +inasmuch as their parents took it of them—and they not being +in a condition to return the obligation <i>downwards</i> (as men +and women and beasts are)—they do it side-ways, and +long-ways, and back-ways—and up hill, and down hill, and +which way they can.——Philosophers, with all their +ethicks, have never considered this rightly—how should the +poor muleteer, then in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in +the least—’tis time we do; let us leave him then in the +vortex of his element, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal +men—and for a moment let us look after the mules, the abbess, +and <i>Margarita.</i></p> + +<p>By virtue of the muleteer’s two last strokes the mules had +gone quietly on, following their own consciences up the hill, till +they had conquer’d about one half of it; when the elder of +them, a shrewd crafty old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a +side glance, and no muleteer behind them,——</p> + +<p>By my fig! said she, swearing, I’ll go no +further——And if I do, replied the other, they shall +make a drum of my hide.——</p> + +<p>And so with one consent they stopp’d +thus——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + III</small> +</h3> + +<p>——Get on with you, said the abbess.</p> + +<p> +——Wh - - - - - ysh——ysh——cried +<i>Margarita.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Sh - - - a——shu - u——shu - - u—sh - - +aw——shaw’d the abbess. +</p> + +<p> +——Whu—v—w—whew—w—w—whuv’d +<i>Margarita</i>, pursing up her sweet lips betwixt a hoot and a whistle. +</p> + +<p>Thump—thump—thump—obstreperated the +abbess of <i>Andoüillets</i> with the end of her gold-headed +cane against the bottom of the calesh——</p> + +<p>The old mule let a f—</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>E</small> are ruin’d and undone, my +child, said the abbess to <i>Margarita</i>,——we shall +be here all night——we shall be +plunder’d——we shall be ravished——</p> + +<p>——We shall be ravish’d, said <i>Margarita</i>, +as sure as a gun.</p> + +<p><i>Sancta Maria!</i> cried the abbess (forgetting the +<i>O!</i>)—why was I govern’d by this +wicked stiff joint? why did I leave the convent of +<i>Andoüillets?</i> and why didst thou not suffer thy servant +to go unpolluted to her tomb?</p> + +<p>O my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the +word <i>servant</i>—why was I not content to put it here, or +there, any where rather than be in this strait?</p> + +<p>Strait! said the abbess.</p> + +<p>Strait——said the novice; for terror had struck their +understandings——the one knew not what she +said——the other what she answer’d.</p> + +<p>O my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess.</p> + +<p>——inity!——inity! said the novice, +sobbing.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + V</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> dear mother, quoth the novice, +coming a little to herself,—there are two certain words, +which I have been told will force any horse, or ass, or mule, to go +up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so obstinate or +ill-will’d, the moment he hears them utter’d, he obeys. +They are words magic! cried the abbess in the utmost +horror—No; replied <i>Margarita</i> calmly—but they are +words sinful—What are they? quoth the abbess, interrupting +her: They are sinful in the first degree, answered +<i>Margarita</i>,—they are mortal—and if we are +ravished and die unabsolved of them, we shall +both——but you may pronounce them to me, quoth the +abbess of <i>Andoüillets</i>——They cannot, my dear +mother, said the novice, be pronounced at all; they will make all +the blood in one’s body fly up into one’s +face—But you may whisper them in my ear, quoth the +abbess.</p> + +<p>Heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at +the bottom of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit +unemployed——no agent in nature, by some monitory +shivering, creeping along the artery which led to his heart, to +rouse the muleteer from his banquet?——no sweet +minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the abbess and +<i>Margarita</i>, with their black rosaries!</p> + +<p>Rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the +horrid words are pronounced this moment——</p> + +<p>——and how to tell them—Ye, who can speak of +every thing existing, with unpolluted lips—instruct +me——guide me——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>LL</small> sins whatever, quoth the abbess, +turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the +confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no +further division. Now a venial sin being the slightest and least of +all sins—being halved—by taking either only the half of +it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably +halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course +becomes diluted into no sin at all.</p> + +<p>Now I see no sin in saying, <i>bou, bou, bou, bou, bou</i>, a +hundred times together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing +the syllable <i>ger, ger, ger, ger, ger</i>, were it from our +matins to our vespers: Therefore, my dear daughter, continued the +abbess of <i>Andoüillets</i>—I will say <i>bou</i>, and +thou shalt say <i>ger;</i> and then alternately, as there is no +more sin in <i>fou</i> than in <i>bou</i>—Thou shalt say +<i>fou</i>—and I will come in (like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, +at our complines) with <i>ter.</i> And accordingly the +abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus:</p> + +<p> +Abbess, )  Bou - - bou - - bou - -<br/> +<i>Margarita</i>,) ——ger, - - ger, - - ger.<br/> +<i>Margarita</i>,)  Fou...fou...fou..<br/> +Abbess, ) —ter, - - ter, - - ter. +</p> + +<p> +The two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but it +went no further——’Twill answer by an’ by, said the +novice. +</p> + +<p> +Abbess, )  Bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. bou.<br/> +Margarita,) —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger. +</p> + +<p> +Quicker still, cried <i>Margarita.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou. +</p> + +<p> +Quicker still, cried <i>Margarita.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou. +</p> + +<p> +Quicker still—God preserve me; said the abbess—They do not +understand us, cried <i>Margarita</i>—But the Devil does, said the abbess +of <i>Andoüillets.</i> +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HAT</small> a tract of country have I +run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm sun am I advanced, +and how many fair and goodly cities have I seen, during the time +you have been reading and reflecting, Madam, upon this story! +There’s F<small>ONTAINBLEAU</small>, and S<small>ENS</small>, +and J<small>OIGNY</small>, and A<small>UXERRE</small>, and +D<small>IJON</small> the capital of <i>Burgundy</i>, and +C<small>HALLON</small>, and <i>Mâcon</i> the capital of the +<i>Maconese</i>, and a score more upon the road to +L<small>YONS</small>——and now I have run them +over——I might as well talk to you of so many market +towns in the moon, as tell you one word about them: it will be this +chapter at the least, if not both this and the next entirely lost, +do what I will——</p> + +<p>—Why, ’tis a strange story! <i>Tristram.</i></p> + +<p>——Alas! Madam,</p> + +<p>had it been upon some melancholy lecture of the +cross—the peace of meekness, or the contentment of +resignation——I had not been incommoded: or had I thought of writing +it upon the purer abstractions of the soul, and that food of wisdom +and holiness and contemplation, upon which the spirit of man (when +separated from the body) is to subsist for ever——You +would have come with a better appetite from it——</p> + +<p>——I wish I never had wrote it: but as I never blot +any thing out——let us use some honest means to get it +out of our heads directly.</p> + +<p>——Pray reach me my fool’s cap——I +fear you sit upon it, Madam——’tis under the +cushion——I’ll put it on——</p> + +<p>Bless me! you have had it upon your head this half +hour.——There then let it stay, with a</p> + +<p>Fa-ra diddle di</p> + +<p>and a fa-ri diddle d</p> + +<p>and a high-dum—dye-dum</p> + +<p> fiddle - - - dumb - c.</p> + +<p>And now, Madam, we may venture, I hope a little to +go on.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + VIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——All you need say of <i>Fontainbleau</i> (in case +you are ask’d) is, that it stands about forty miles (south +something) from <i>Paris</i>, in the middle of a large +forest<i>—</i>That there is something great in +it<i>—</i>That the king goes there once every two or three +years, with his whole court, for the pleasure of the +chace—and that, during that carnival of sporting, any +<i>English</i> gentleman of fashion (you need not forget yourself) +may be accommodated with a nag or two, to partake of the sport, +taking care only not to out-gallop the king——</p> + +<p>Though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this +to every one.</p> + +<p>First, Because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be +got; and</p> + +<p>Secondly, ’Tis not a word of it +true.——<i>Allons!</i></p> + +<p>As for S<small>ENS</small>——you may +dispatch—in a word——“<i>’Tis an +archiepiscopal see.</i>”</p> + +<p>——For J<small>OIGNY</small>—the less, I think, +one says of it the better.</p> + +<p>But for A<small>UXERRE</small>—I could go on for ever: for +in my <i>grand tour</i> through <i>Europe</i>, in which, after all, +my father (not caring to trust me with any one) attended me +himself, with my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and <i>Trim</i>, and +<i>Obadiah</i>, and indeed most of the family, except my mother, +who being taken up with a project of knitting my father a pair of +large worsted breeches—(the thing is common sense)—and +she not caring to be put out of her way, she staid at home, at +S<small>HANDY</small> H<small>ALL</small>, to keep things right +during the expedition; in which, I say, my father stopping us two +days at <i>Auxerre</i>, and his researches being ever of such a +nature, that they would have found fruit even in a +desert——he has left me enough to say upon +A<small>UXERRE</small>: in short, wherever my father +went——but ’twas more remarkably so, in this +journey through <i>France</i> and <i>Italy</i>, than in any other +stages of his life—his road seemed to lie so much on one +side of that, wherein all other travellers have gone before +him—he saw kings and courts and silks of all colours, in such +strange lights——and his remarks and reasonings upon the +characters, the manners, and customs of the countries we +pass’d over, were so opposite to those of all other mortal +men, particularly those of my uncle <i>Toby</i> and +<i>Trim</i>—(to say nothing of myself)—and to crown +all—the occurrences and scrapes which we were perpetually +meeting and getting into, in consequence of his systems and +opiniotry—they were of so odd, so mix’d and +tragi-comical a contexture—That the whole put together, it +appears of so different a shade and tint from any tour of +<i>Europe</i>, which was ever executed—that I will venture to +pronounce—the fault must be mine and mine only—if it be +not read by all travellers and travel-readers, till travelling is +no more,—or which comes to the same point—till the +world, finally, takes it into its head to stand +still.——</p> + +<p>——But this rich bale is not to be open’d now; +except a small thread or two of it, merely to unravel the mystery +of my father’s stay at A<small>UXERRE</small>.</p> + +<p>——As I have mentioned it—’tis too slight +to be kept suspended; and when ’tis wove in, there is an end +of it.</p> + +<p>We’ll go, brother <i>Toby</i>, said my father, whilst +dinner is coddling—to the abbey of Saint <i>Germain</i>, if +it be only to see these bodies, of which Monsieur <i>Sequier</i> +has given such a recommendation.——I’ll go see any +body, quoth my uncle <i>Toby;</i> for he was all compliance through +every step of the journey——Defend me! said my +father—they are all mummies——Then one need not +shave; quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>——Shave! +no—cried my father—’twill be more like relations +to go with our beards on—So out we sallied, the corporal +lending his master his arm, and bringing up the rear, to the abbey +of Saint <i>Germain.</i></p> + +<p>Every thing is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and +very magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who was a younger brother of the order of +<i>Benedictines</i>—but our curiosity has led us to see the +bodies, of which Monsieur <i>Sequier</i> has given the world so +exact a description.—The sacristan made a bow, and lighting a +torch first, which he had always in the vestry ready for the +purpose; he led us into the tomb of St. +<i>Heribald</i>——This, said the sacristan, laying his +hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of +<i>Bavaria</i>, who under the successive reigns of <i>Charlemagne, +Louis le Debonnair</i>, and <i>Charles the Bald</i>, bore a great +sway in the government, and had a principal hand in bringing every +thing into order and discipline——</p> + +<p>Then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in +the cabinet——I dare say he has been a gallant +soldier——He was a monk—said the sacristan.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> sought comfort in each +other’s faces—but found it not: my father clapped both +his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a way he had when any thing +hugely tickled him: for though he hated a monk and the very smell +of a monk worse than all the devils in hell——yet the +shot hitting my uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> so much harder +than him, ’twas a relative triumph; and put him into the +gayest humour in the world.</p> + +<p>——And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my +father, rather sportingly: This tomb, said the young +<i>Benedictine</i>, looking downwards, contains the bones of Saint +M<small>AXIMA</small>, who came from <i>Ravenna</i> on purpose to +touch the body——</p> + +<p>——Of Saint M<small>AXIMUS</small>, said my father, +popping in with his saint before him,—they were two of the +greatest saints in the whole martyrology, added my +father——Excuse me, said the +sacristan——’twas to touch the bones of Saint +<i>Germain</i>, the builder of the abbey——And what did +she get by it? said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——What does any +woman get by it? said my +father——M<small>ARTYRDOME</small>; replied the young +<i>Benedictine</i>, making a bow down to the ground, and +uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a cadence, it +disarmed my father for a moment. ’Tis supposed, continued the +<i>Benedictine</i>, that St. <i>Maxima</i> has lain in this tomb +four hundred years, and two hundred before her +canonization——’Tis but a slow rise, brother +<i>Toby</i>, quoth my father, in this self-same army of +martyrs.——A desperate slow one, an’ please your +honour, said <i>Trim</i>, unless one could purchase——I +should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——I am pretty much of your opinion, brother +<i>Toby</i>, said my father.</p> + +<p>——Poor St. <i>Maxima!</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i> +low to himself, as we turn’d from her tomb: She was one of +the fairest and most beautiful ladies either of <i>Italy</i> or +<i>France</i>, continued the sacristan——But who the +duce has got lain down here, besides her? quoth my father, pointing +with his cane to a large tomb as we walked on——It is +Saint <i>Optat</i>, Sir, answered the sacristan——And +properly is Saint <i>Optat</i> plac’d! said my father: And +what is Saint <i>Optat</i>’s story? continued he. Saint <i>Optat</i>, replied the sacristan, was a +bishop——</p> + +<p>——I thought so, by heaven! cried my father, +interrupting him—Saint <i>Optat!</i>——how should +Saint <i>Optat</i> fail? so snatching out his pocket-book, and the +young <i>Benedictine</i> holding him the torch as he wrote, he set +it down as a new prop to his system of Christian names, and I will +be bold to say, so disinterested was he in the search of truth, +that had he found a treasure in Saint <i>Optat</i>’s tomb, it +would not have made him half so rich: ’Twas as successful a +short visit as ever was paid to the dead; and so highly was his +fancy pleas’d with all that had passed in it,—that he +determined at once to stay another day in <i>Auxerre.</i></p> + +<p>—I’ll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, +said my father, as we cross’d over the square—And while +you are paying that visit, brother <i>Shandy</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—the corporal and I will mount the ramparts.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + IX</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——N<small>OW</small> this is the most puzzled skein of +all——for in this last chapter, as far at least as it has +help’d me through <i>Auxerre</i>, I have been getting forwards in two +different journies together, and with the same dash of the pen—for I have +got entirely out of <i>Auxerre</i> in this journey which I am writing now, and +I am got half way out of <i>Auxerre</i> in that which I shall write +hereafter——There is but a certain degree of perfection in every +thing; and by pushing at something beyond that, I have brought myself into such +a situation, as no traveller ever stood before me; for I am this moment walking +across the market-place of <i>Auxerre</i> with my father and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, in our way back to dinner——and I am this moment also +entering <i>Lyons</i> with my post-chaise broke into a thousand +pieces—and I am moreover this moment in a handsome pavillion built by +<i>Pringello</i>,<a href="#fn36" name="fnref36"><sup>[36]</sup></a> upon the +banks of the <i>Garonne</i>, which Mons. <i>Sligniac</i> has lent me, and where +I now sit rhapsodising all these affairs. +</p> + +<p>——Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn36"></a> <a href="#fnref36">[36]</a> +The same Don <i>Pringello</i>, the celebrated <i>Spanish</i> architect, of whom +my cousin <i>Antony</i> has made such honourable mention in a scholium to the +Tale inscribed to his name.—Vid. p.129, small edit. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + X</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>AM</small> glad of it, said I, settling the +account with myself, as I walk’d into +<i>Lyons</i>——my chaise being all laid +higgledy-piggledy with my baggage in a cart, which was moving +slowly before me——I am heartily glad, said I, that +’tis all broke to pieces; for now I can go directly by water +to <i>Avignon</i>, which will carry me on a hundred and twenty +miles of my journey, and not cost me seven livres——and +from thence, continued I, bringing forwards the account, I can +hire a couple of mules—or asses, if I like, (for +nobody knows me,) and cross the plains of <i>Languedoc</i> for +almost nothing——I shall gain four hundred livres by the +misfortune clear into my purse: and pleasure! worth—worth +double the money by it. With what velocity, continued I, clapping +my two hands together, shall I fly down the rapid +<i>Rhône</i>, with the V<small>IVARES</small> on my right +hand, and D<small>AUPHINY</small> on my left, scarce seeing the +ancient cities of V<small>IENNE</small>, <i>Valence</i>, and +<i>Vivieres.</i> What a flame will it rekindle in the lamp, to +snatch a blushing grape from the <i>Hermitage</i> and <i>Cotê +roti</i>, as I shoot by the foot of them! and what a fresh spring +in the blood! to behold upon the banks advancing and retiring, the +castles of romance, whence courteous knights have whilome rescued +the distress’d——and see vertiginous, the rocks, +the mountains, the cataracts, and all the hurry which Nature is in +with all her great works about her.</p> + +<p> +As I went on thus, methought my chaise, the wreck of which look’d stately +enough at the first, insensibly grew less and less in its size; the freshness +of the painting was no more—the gilding lost its lustre—and the +whole affair appeared so poor in my eyes—so sorry!—so contemptible! +and, in a word, so much worse than the abbess of <i>Andoüillets’</i> +itself—that I was just opening my mouth to give it to the +devil—when a pert vamping chaise-undertaker, stepping nimbly across the +street, demanded if Monsieur would have his chaise refitted——No, +no, said I, shaking my head sideways—Would Monsieur choose to sell it? +rejoined the undertaker—With all my soul, said I—the iron work is +worth forty livres—and the glasses worth forty more—and the leather +you may take to live on. +</p> + +<p>What a mine of wealth, quoth I, as he counted me the money, has +this post-chaise brought me in? And this is my usual method of +book-keeping, at least with the disasters of life—making a +penny of every one of ’em as they happen to +me——</p> + +<p>——Do, my dear <i>Jenny</i>, tell the world for me, +how I behaved under one, the most oppressive of its kind, which +could befal me as a man, proud as he ought to be of his +manhood——</p> + +<p>’Tis enough, saidst thou, coming close up to me, as I +stood with my garters in my hand, reflecting upon what had not +pass’d——’Tis enough, <i>Tristram</i>, and I +am satisfied, saidst thou, whispering these words in my ear, * * * +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *;—* * +* * * * * * *——any other man would have sunk down +to the centre——</p> + +<p>——Every thing is good for something, quoth I.</p> + +<p>——I’ll go into <i>Wales</i> for six weeks, and +drink goat’s whey—and I’ll gain seven years +longer life for the accident. For which reason I think myself +inexcusable, for blaming Fortune so often as I have done, for +pelting me all my life long, like an ungracious duchess, as I +call’d her, with so many small evils: surely, if I have any +cause to be angry with her, ’tis that she has not sent me great +ones—a score of good cursed, bouncing losses, would have been +as good as a pension to me.</p> + +<p>——One of a hundred a year, or so, is all I +wish—I would not be at the plague of paying land-tax for a +larger.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>O</small> those who call vexations, +<small>VEXATIONS</small>, as knowing what they are, there could not +be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at <i>Lyons</i>, +the most opulent and flourishing city in <i>France</i>, enriched +with the most fragments of antiquity—and not be able to see +it. To be withheld upon <i>any</i> account, must be a vexation; but +to be withheld <i>by</i> a vexation——must certainly be, +what philosophy justly calls</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>VEXATION</small><br/> +upon<br/> +<small>VEXATION</small>. +</p> + +<p>I had got my two dishes of milk coffee (which by the bye is +excellently good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and +coffee together—otherwise ’tis only coffee and +milk)—and as it was no more than eight in the morning, and +the boat did not go off till noon, I had time to see enough of +<i>Lyons</i> to tire the patience of all the friends I had in the +world with it. I will take a walk to the cathedral, said I, looking +at my list, and see the wonderful mechanism of this great clock of +<i>Lippius</i> of <i>Basil</i>, in the first +place——</p> + +<p>Now, of all things in the world, I understand the least of +mechanism——I have neither genius, or taste, or +fancy—and have a brain so entirely unapt for every thing of +that kind, that I solemnly declare I was never yet able to +comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel cage, or a common +knife-grinder’s wheel—tho’ I have many an hour of +my life look’d up with great devotion at the one—and +stood by with as much patience as any christian ever could do, at the +other——</p> + +<p>I’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, +said I, the very first thing I do: and then I will pay a visit to +the great library of the Jesuits, and procure, if possible, a sight +of the thirty volumes of the general history of <i>China</i>, wrote +(not in the <i>Tartarean</i>, but) in the <i>Chinese</i> language, +and in the <i>Chinese</i> character too.</p> + +<p>Now I almost know as little of the <i>Chinese</i> language, as I +do of the mechanism of <i>Lippius</i>’s clock-work; so, why +these should have jostled themselves into the two first articles of +my list——I leave to the curious as a problem of Nature. +I own it looks like one of her ladyship’s obliquities; and +they who court her, are interested in finding out her humour as +much as I.</p> + +<p>When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself +to my <i>valet de place</i>, who stood behind +me——’twill be no hurt if we go to the church of +St. <i>Irenæus</i>, and see the pillar to which +<i>Christ</i> was tied——and after that, the house +where <i>Pontius Pilate</i> lived——’Twas at the +next town, said the <i>valet de place</i>—at <i>Vienne;</i> I +am glad of it, said I, rising briskly from my chair, and walking +across the room with strides twice as long as my usual +pace——“for so much the sooner shall I be at +the <i>Tomb of the two lovers.</i>”</p> + +<p>What was the cause of this movement, and why I took such long +strides in uttering this——I might leave to the curious +too; but as no principle of clock-work is concerned in +it——’twill be as well for the reader if I explain +it myself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XII</small> +</h3> + +<p>O! <small>THERE</small> is a sweet æra +in the life of man, when (the brain being tender and fibrillous, +and more like pap than any thing else)——a story read of +two fond lovers, separated from each other by cruel parents, and by +still more cruel destiny——</p> + +<p> +     <i>Amandus</i>——He<br/> +     <i>Amanda</i>——She——<br/> + +each ignorant of the other’s course,<br/> +     He——east<br/> +     She——west<br/> +<i>Amandus</i> taken captive by the <i>Turks</i>, and carried to +the emperor of <i>Morocco</i>’s court, where the princess of +<i>Morocco</i> falling in love with him, keeps him twenty years in +prison for the love of his <i>Amanda.</i>——</p> + +<p>She—(<i>Amanda</i>) all the time wandering barefoot, and +with dishevell’d hair, o’er rocks and mountains, +enquiring for <i>Amandus!——Amandus! +Amandus!—</i>making every hill and valley to echo back +his name——</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Amandus! Amandus!</i> +</p> + +<p>at every town and city, sitting down forlorn at the +gate——Has Amandus!—has my <i>Amandus</i> +enter’d?——till,——going round, and +round, and round the world——chance unexpected bringing +them at the same moment of the night, though by different ways, to +the gate of <i>Lyons</i>, their native city, and each in +well-known accents calling out aloud,</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Is <i>Amandus</i> </p> + +<p> + +still alive?</p> + +<p> +Is my <i>Amanda</i> +</p> + +<p>they fly into each other’s arms, and both drop +down dead for joy.</p> + +<p>There is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, +where such a story affords more <i>pabulum</i> to the brain, than +all the <i>Frusts</i>, and <i>Crusts</i>, and <i>Rusts</i> of +antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it.</p> + +<p>——’Twas all that stuck on the right side of +the cullender in my own, of what <i>Spon</i> and others, in their +accounts of <i>Lyons</i>, had <i>strained</i> into it; and finding, +moreover, in some Itinerary, but in what God +knows——That sacred to the fidelity of <i>Amandus</i> +and <i>Amanda</i>, a tomb was built without the gates, where, to +this hour, lovers called upon them to attest their +truths——I never could get into a scrape of that kind in +my life, but this <i>tomb of the lovers</i> would, somehow or +other, come in at the close —nay such a kind of empire had it establish’d over +me, that I could seldom think or speak of <i>Lyons</i>—and +sometimes not so much as see even a <i>Lyons-waistcoat</i>, but +this remnant of antiquity would present itself to my fancy; and I +have often said in my wild way of running +on——tho’ I fear with some +irreverence——“I thought this shrine +(neglected as it was) as valuable as that of <i>Mecca</i>, and so +little short, except in wealth, of the <i>Santa Casa</i> itself, +that some time or other, I would go a pilgrimage (though I had no +other business at <i>Lyons</i>) on purpose to pay it a +visit.”</p> + +<p>In my list, therefore, of <i>Videnda</i> at <i>Lyons</i>, this, +tho’ <i>last</i>,—was not, you see, <i>least</i> ; +so taking a dozen or two of longer strides than usual cross my +room, just whilst it passed my brain, I walked down calmly into the +<i>basse cour</i>, in order to sally forth; and having called for +my bill—as it was uncertain whether I should return to my +inn, I had paid it——had moreover given the maid ten +sous, and was just receiving the dernier compliments of Monsieur <i>Le Blanc</i>, for a pleasant +voyage down the <i>Rhône</i>——when I was stopped +at the gate——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——’T<small>WAS</small> by a poor +ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon +his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves; +and stood dubious, with his two fore-feet on the inside of the +threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not +knowing very well whether he was to go in or no.</p> + +<p>Now, ’tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear +to strike——there is a patient endurance of sufferings, +wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so +mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, +that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet +him where I will—whether in town or country—in cart or +under panniers—whether in liberty or bondage——I +have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and as one word +begets another (if he has as little to do as I)——I +generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my +imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings +of his countenance—and where those carry me not deep +enough—in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what +is natural for an ass to think—as well as a man, upon the +occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of +beings below me, with whom I can do this: for parrots, jackdaws, +&c.——I never exchange a word with +them——nor with the apes, &c. for pretty near the +same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and +equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though I value them +both——(and for my dog he would speak if he +could)—yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the +talents for conversation——I can make nothing of a +discourse with them, beyond the <i>proposition</i>, the +<i>reply</i>, and <i>rejoinder</i>, which terminated my +father’s and my mother’s conversations, in his beds of +justice——and those +utter’d——there’s an end of the +dialogue——</p> + +<p>—But with an ass, I can commune for ever.</p> + +<p>Come, <i>Honesty!</i> said I,——seeing it was +impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate——art +thou for coming in, or going out?</p> + +<p>The ass twisted his head round to look up the +street——</p> + +<p>Well—replied I—we’ll wait a minute for thy +driver:</p> + +<p>——He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked +wistfully the opposite way——</p> + +<p>I understand thee perfectly, answered I——If thou +takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to +death——Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves +a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as +ill-spent.</p> + +<p>He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went +on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger +and unsavouriness, had dropt it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and +pick’d it up again——God help thee, <i>Jack!</i> +said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t—and many a +bitter day’s labour,—and many a bitter blow, I fear, +for its wages——’tis all—all bitterness to +thee, whatever life is to others.——And now thy mouth, +if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as +soot—(for he had cast aside the stem) and thou hast not a +friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a +macaroon.——In saying this, I pull’d out a paper +of ’em, which I had just purchased, and gave him +one—and at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites +me, that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit, of seeing +<i>how</i> an ass would eat a macaroon——than of +benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.</p> + +<p>When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I press’d him to come +in——the poor beast was heavy loaded——his +legs seem’d to tremble under him——he hung rather +backwards, and as I pull’d at his halter, it broke short in my hand——he +look’d up pensive in my face—“Don’t +thrash me with it—but if you will, you +may”——If I do, said I, I’ll be +d——d.</p> + +<p>The word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess of +<i>Andoüillet</i>’s—(so there was no sin in +it)—when a person coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado +upon the poor devil’s crupper, which put an end to the +ceremony.</p> + +<p><i> Out upon it!</i></p> + +<p>cried I——but the interjection was +equivocal——and, I think, wrong placed too—for the +end of an osier which had started out from the contexture of the +ass’s panier, had caught hold of my breeches pocket, as he +rush’d by me, and rent it in the most disastrous direction +you can imagine——so that the</p> + +<p><i>Out upon it!</i> in my opinion, should have come in +here——but this I leave to be settled by</p> + +<p class="center">The<br/> +<small>REVIEWERS</small><br/> +of<br/> +<small>MY BREECHES,</small></p> + +<p>which I have brought over along with me for that +purpose.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> all was set to rights, I came +down stairs again into the <i>basse cour</i> with my <i>valet de +place</i>, in order to sally out towards the tomb of the two +lovers, &c.—and was a second time stopp’d at the +gate——not by the ass—but by the person who struck +him; and who, by that time, had taken possession (as is not +uncommon after a defeat) of the very spot of ground where the ass +stood.</p> + +<p>It was a commissary sent to me from the post-office, with a +rescript in his hand for the payment of some six livres odd +sous.</p> + +<p>Upon what account? said I.——’Tis upon the part +of the king, replied the commissary, heaving up both his +shoulders——</p> + +<p>——My good friend, quoth I——as sure as I +am I—and you are you——</p> + +<p>——And who are you? said he.——</p> + +<p>——Don’t puzzle me; said I.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XV</small> +</h3> + +<p>——But it is an indubitable verity, continued I, +addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my +asseveration——that I owe the king of <i>France</i> +nothing but my good will; for he is a very honest man, and I wish +him all health and pastime in the world——</p> + +<p><i>Pardonnez moi</i>—replied the commissary, you are +indebted to him six livres four sous, for the next post from hence +to St. <i>Fons</i>, in your route to <i>Avignon</i>—which +being a post royal, you pay double for the horses and +postillion—otherwise ’twould have amounted to no more +than three livres two sous——</p> + +<p>——But I don’t go by land; said I.</p> + +<p>——You may if you please; replied the +commissary——</p> + +<p>Your most obedient servant——said I, making him a low +bow——</p> + +<p>The commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good +breeding—made me one, as low again.——I never was +more disconcerted with a bow in my life.</p> + +<p>——The devil take the serious character of these +people! quoth I—(aside) they understand no more of Irony than +this——</p> + +<p>The comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but +something seal’d up my lips—I could not pronounce the +name—</p> + +<p>Sir, said I, collecting myself—it is not my intention to +take post——</p> + +<p>—But you may—said he, persisting in his first +reply—you may take post if you chuse——</p> + +<p>—And I may take salt to my pickled herring, said I, if I +chuse—</p> + +<p>—But I do not chuse—</p> + +<p>—But you must pay for it, whether you do or no.</p> + +<p>Aye! for the salt; said I (I know)——</p> + +<p>—And for the post too; added he. Defend me! cried +I——</p> + +<p>I travel by water—I am going down the +<i>Rhône</i> this very afternoon—my baggage is in the +boat—and I have actually paid nine livres for my +passage——</p> + +<p><i>C’est tout egal</i>—’tis all one; said +he.</p> + +<p><i>Bon Dieu!</i> what, pay for the way I go! and for the way I +do <i>not</i> go!</p> + +<p>——<i>C’est tout egal;</i> replied the +commissary——</p> + +<p>——The devil it is! said I—but I will go to ten +thousand Bastiles first——</p> + +<p><i>O England! England!</i> thou land of liberty, and +climate of good sense, thou tenderest of mothers—and gentlest +of nurses, cried I, kneeling upon one knee, as I was beginning my +apostrophè.</p> + +<p>When the director of Madam <i>Le Blanc</i>’s conscience +coming in at that instant, and seeing a person in black, with a +face as pale as ashes, at his devotions—looking still paler +by the contrast and distress of his drapery—ask’d, if I +stood in want of the aids of the church——</p> + +<p>I go by <small>WATER</small>—said I—and here’s +another will be for making me pay for going by +<small>OIL</small>.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> I perceived the commissary of the +post-office would have his six livres four sous, I had nothing else +for it, but to say some smart thing upon the occasion, worth the +money:</p> + +<p>And so I set off thus:——</p> + +<p>——And pray, Mr. Commissary, by what law of courtesy +is a defenceless stranger to be used just the reverse from what you +use a <i>Frenchman</i> in this matter?</p> + +<p>By no means; said he.</p> + +<p>Excuse me; said I—for you have begun, Sir, with first +tearing off my breeches—and now you want my +pocket——</p> + +<p>Whereas—had you first taken my pocket, as you do with your +own people—and then left me bare a—’d +after—I had been a beast to have +complain’d——</p> + +<p>As it is——</p> + +<p>——’Tis contrary to the <i>law of +nature.</i></p> + +<p>——’Tis contrary to <i>reason.</i></p> + +<p>——’Tis contrary to the +<small>GOSPEL</small>.</p> + +<p>But not to this——said he—putting a printed +paper into my hand,</p> + +<p class="center">P<small>AR le</small> R<small>OY</small>.</p> + +<p> +———’Tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth +I—and so read on — — — — — +— — — — — — — — +— — — — — — — — +— — — — — — — — +— — — — — — — — +— — — — — — — +</p> + +<p>——By all which it appears, quoth I, having read it +over, a little too rapidly, that if a man sets out in a post-chaise +from <i>Paris</i>—he must go on travelling in one, all the +days of his life—or pay for it.—Excuse me, said the +commissary, the spirit of the ordinance is this—That if you +set out with an intention of running post from <i>Paris</i> to +<i>Avignon</i>, &c. you shall not change that intention or mode +of travelling, without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts +further than the place you repent at—and ’tis founded, +continued he, upon this, that the <small>REVENUES</small> are not +to fall short through your <i>fickleness</i>——</p> + +<p>——O by heavens! cried I—if +fickleness is taxable in <i>France</i>—we have nothing to do +but to make the best peace with you we can——</p> + +<p><small>AND SO THE PEACE WAS MADE</small>;</p> + +<p>——And if it is a bad one—as <i>Tristram +Shandy</i> laid the corner-stone of it—nobody but <i>Tristram +Shandy</i> ought to be hanged.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> I was sensible I had said as +many clever things to the commissary as came to six livres four +sous, yet I was determined to note down the imposition amongst my +remarks before I retired from the place; so putting my hand into my +coat-pocket for my remarks—(which, by the bye, may be a +caution to travellers to take a little more care of <i>their</i> +remarks for the future) “my remarks were +<i>stolen</i>”——Never did sorry traveller make +such a pother and racket about his remarks as I did about mine, +upon the occasion.</p> + +<p>Heaven! earth! sea! fire! cried I, calling in every thing to my +aid but what I should——My remarks are +stolen!—what shall I do?——Mr. Commissary! pray +did I drop any remarks, as I stood besides you?——</p> + +<p>You dropp’d a good many very singular ones; replied +he——Pugh! said I, those were but a few, not worth above +six livres two sous—but these are a large +parcel——He shook his head——Monsieur <i>Le +Blanc!</i> Madam <i>Le Blanc!</i> did you see any papers of +mine?—you maid of the house! run up +stairs—<i>François!</i> run up after +her——</p> + +<p>—I must have my remarks——they were the best +remarks, cried I, that ever were made—the wisest—the +wittiest—What shall I do?—which way shall I turn +myself?</p> + +<p><i>Sancho Pança</i>, when he lost his ass’s +<small>FURNITURE</small>, did not exclaim more bitterly.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> the first transport was over, +and the registers of the brain were beginning to get a little out +of the confusion into which this jumble of cross accidents had cast +them—it then presently occurr’d to me, that I had left +my remarks in the pocket of the chaise—and that in selling my +chaise, I had sold my remarks along with it, to the chaise-vamper. +        I leave this void space that the reader +may swear into it any oath that he is most accustomed +to——For my own part, if ever I swore a <i>whole</i> +oath into a vacancy in my life, I think it was into +that—— * * * * * * * * *, said I—and so my +remarks through <i>France</i>, which were as full of wit, as an egg +is full of meat, and as well worth four hundred guineas, as the +said egg is worth a penny—have I been selling here to a +chaise-vamper—for four <i>Louis d’Ors</i>—and +giving him a post-chaise (by heaven) worth six into the bargain; +had it been to <i>Dodsley</i>, or <i>Becket</i>, or any +creditable bookseller, who was either leaving off business, and +wanted a post-chaise—or who was beginning it—and wanted +my remarks, and two or three guineas along with them—I could +have borne it——but to a chaise-vamper!—shew me to +him this moment, <i>François</i>,—said I—The +valet de place put on his hat, and led the way—and I +pull’d off mine, as I pass’d the commissary, and +followed him.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> we arrived at the +chaise-vamper’s house, both the house and the shop were shut +up; it was the eighth of <i>September</i>, the nativity of the +blessed Virgin <i>Mary</i>, mother of God—</p> + +<p>——Tantarra - ra - tan - tivi——the +whole world was gone out a May-poling—frisking +here—capering there——no body cared a button for +me or my remarks; so I sat me down upon a bench by the door, +philosophating upon my condition: by a better fate than usually attends me, +I had not waited half an hour, when the mistress came in to take +the papilliotes from off her hair, before she went to the +May-poles——</p> + +<p>The <i>French</i> women, by the bye, love May-poles, <i>à +la folie</i>—that is, as much as their +matins——give ’em but a May-pole, whether in +<i>May, June, July</i> or <i>September</i>—they never count +the times——down it goes——’tis meat, +drink, washing, and lodging to ’em——and had we +but the policy, an’ please your worships (as wood is a little +scarce in <i>France</i>), to send them but plenty of +May-poles——</p> + +<p>The women would set them up; and when they had done, they would +dance round them (and the men for company) till they were all +blind.</p> + +<p>The wife of the chaise-vamper stepp’d in, I told you, to +take the papilliotes from off her hair——the toilet +stands still for no man——so she jerk’d off her +cap, to begin with them as she open’d the door, in doing +which, one of them fell upon the ground—I instantly saw it was my own +writing——</p> + +<p>O Seigneur! cried I—you have got all my remarks upon your +head, Madam!——<i>J’en suis bien +mortifiée</i>, said she——’tis well, thinks +I, they have stuck there—for could they have gone deeper, +they would have made such confusion in a <i>French</i> +woman’s noddle—She had better have gone with it +unfrizled, to the day of eternity.</p> + +<p><i>Tenez</i>—said she—so without any idea of the +nature of my suffering, she took them from her curls, and put them +gravely one by one into my hat——one was twisted this +way——another twisted that——ey! by my faith; +and when they are published, quoth I,——</p> + +<p>They will be worse twisted still.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XX</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>NS</small> now for <i>Lippius</i>’s +clock! said I, with the air of a man, who had got thro’ all +his difficulties——nothing can prevent us seeing that, +and the <i>Chinese</i> history, &c. except the time, +said <i>François</i>——for ’tis almost +eleven—then we must speed the faster, said I, striding it +away to the cathedral.</p> + +<p>I cannot say, in my heart, that it gave me any concern in being +told by one of the minor canons, as I was entering the west +door,—That <i>Lippius</i>’s great clock was all out of +joints, and had not gone for some years——It will give +me the more time, thought I, to peruse the <i>Chinese</i> history; +and besides I shall be able to give the world a better account of +the clock in its decay, than I could have done in its flourishing +condition——</p> + +<p>——And so away I posted to the college of the +Jesuits.</p> + +<p>Now it is with the project of getting a peep at the history of +<i>China</i> in <i>Chinese</i> characters—as with many others +I could mention, which strike the fancy only at a distance; for as +I came nearer and nearer to the point—my blood +cool’d—the freak gradually went off, till at length I +would not have given a cherry-stone to have it gratified——The truth was, my time was +short, and my heart was at the Tomb of the Lovers——I +wish to God, said I, as I got the rapper in my hand, that the key +of the library may be but lost; it fell out as +well——</p> + +<p><i>For all the</i> J<small>ESUITS</small> <i>had got the +cholic</i>—and to that degree, as never was known in the +memory of the oldest practitioner.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> I knew the geography of the Tomb +of the Lovers, as well as if I had lived twenty years in +<i>Lyons</i>, namely, that it was upon the turning of my right +hand, just without the gate, leading to the <i>Fauxbourg de +Vaise</i>——I dispatched <i>François</i> to the +boat, that I might pay the homage I so long ow’d it, without +a witness of my weakness—I walk’d with all imaginable +joy towards the place——when I saw the gate which intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed within +me——</p> + +<p>—Tender and faithful spirits! cried I, addressing myself +to <i>Amandus</i> and <i>Amanda</i>—long—long have I +tarried to drop this tear upon your tomb——I +come——I come——</p> + +<p>When I came—there was no tomb to drop it upon.</p> + +<p>What would I have given for my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to have +whistled Lillo bullero!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>O</small> matter how, or in what +mood—but I flew from the tomb of the lovers—or rather I +did not fly <i>from</i> it—(for there was no such thing +existing) and just got time enough to the boat to save my +passage;—and ere I had sailed a hundred yards, the +<i>Rhône</i> and the <i>Saôn</i> met together, and +carried me down merrily betwixt them.</p> + +<p>But I have described this voyage down the <i>Rhône</i>, +before I made it——</p> + +<p>——So now I am at <i>Avignon</i>, and as there is +nothing to see but the old house, in which the duke of +<i>Ormond</i> resided, and nothing to stop me but a short remark +upon the place, in three minutes you will see me crossing the +bridge upon a mule, with <i>François</i> upon a horse with +my portmanteau behind him, and the owner of both, striding the way +before us, with a long gun upon his shoulder, and a sword under his +arm, lest peradventure we should run away with his cattle. Had you +seen my breeches in entering <i>Avignon</i>,——Though +you’d have seen them better, I think, as I mounted—you +would not have thought the precaution amiss, or found in your heart +to have taken it in dudgeon; for my own part, I took it most +kindly; and determined to make him a present of them, when we got +to the end of our journey, for the trouble they had put him to, of +arming himself at all points against them.</p> + +<p>Before I go further, let me get rid of my remark upon +<i>Avignon</i>, which is this: That I think it wrong, merely because a man’s +hat has been blown off his head by chance the first night he comes +to <i>Avignon</i>,——that he should therefore say, +“<i>Avignon</i> is more subject to high winds than any town +in all <i>France:</i>” for which reason I laid no stress upon +the accident till I had enquired of the master of the inn about it, +who telling me seriously it was so——and hearing, +moreover, the windiness of <i>Avignon</i> spoke of in the country +about as a proverb——I set it down, merely to ask the +learned what can be the cause——the consequence I +saw—for they are all Dukes, Marquisses, and Counts, +there——the duce a Baron, in all +<i>Avignon</i>——so that there is scarce any talking to +them on a windy day.</p> + +<p>Prithee, friend, said I, take hold of my mule for a +moment——for I wanted to pull off one of my jack-boots, +which hurt my heel—the man was standing quite idle at the +door of the inn, and as I had taken it into my head, he was someway +concerned about the house or stable, I put the bridle into his hand—so +begun with the boot:—when I had finished the affair, I turned +about to take the mule from the man, and thank +him——</p> + +<p>——But <i>Monsieur le Marquis</i> had walked +in——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAD</small> now the whole south of +<i>France</i>, from the banks of the <i>Rhône</i> to those of +the <i>Garonne</i>, to traverse upon my mule at my own +leisure—<i>at my own leisure</i>——for I had left +Death, the Lord knows——and He only—how far behind +me——“I have followed many a man thro’ +<i>France</i>, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome +rate.”——Still he followed,——and still +I fled him——but I fled him +cheerfully——still he pursued——but, like one +who pursued his prey without hope——as he lagg’d, +every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I +fly him at this rate?</p> + +<p>So notwithstanding all the commissary of the post-office had +said, I changed the <i>mode</i> of my travelling once more; and, +after so precipitate and rattling a course as I had run, I +flattered my fancy with thinking of my mule, and that I should +traverse the rich plains of <i>Languedoc</i> upon his back, as +slowly as foot could fall.</p> + +<p>There is nothing more pleasing to a traveller——or +more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain; +especially if it is without great rivers or bridges; and presents +nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty: for after +they have once told you, that ’tis delicious! or delightful! +(as the case happens)—that the soil was grateful, and that +nature pours out all her abundance, &c. . . . they +have then a large plain upon their hands, which they know not what +to do with—and which is of little or no use to them but to +carry them to some town; and that town, perhaps of little more, but +a new place to start from to the next plain——and so +on.</p> + +<p>—This is most terrible work; judge if I don’t manage +my plains better.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAD</small> not gone above two leagues and +a half, before the man with his gun began to look at his +priming.</p> + +<p>I had three several times loiter’d <i>terribly</i> behind; +half a mile at least every time; once, in deep conference with a +drum-maker, who was making drums for the fairs of <i>Baucaira</i> +and <i>Tarascone</i>—I did not understand the +principles——</p> + +<p>The second time, I cannot so properly say, I +stopp’d——for meeting a couple of +<i>Franciscans</i> straitened more for time than myself, and not +being able to get to the bottom of what I was about——I +had turn’d back with them——</p> + +<p>The third, was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a +hand-basket of <i>Provence</i> figs for four sous; this would have +been transacted at once; but for a case of conscience at the close +of it; for when the figs were paid for, it turn’d out, +that there were two dozen of eggs covered over with +vine-leaves at the bottom of the basket—as I had no intention +of buying eggs—I made no sort of claim of them—as for +the space they had occupied—what signified it? I had figs +enow for my money——</p> + +<p>—But it was my intention to have the basket—it was +the gossip’s intention to keep it, without which, she could +do nothing with her eggs——and unless I had the basket, +I could do as little with my figs, which were too ripe already, and +most of ’em burst at the side: this brought on a short +contention, which terminated in sundry proposals, what we should +both do——</p> + +<p>——How we disposed of our eggs and figs, I defy you, +or the Devil himself, had he not been there (which I am persuaded +he was), to form the least probable conjecture: You will read the +whole of it——not this year, for I am hastening to the +story of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s amours—but you will +read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the +journey across this plain—and which, therefore, I call +my</p> + +<p class="center"><small>PLAIN STORIES.</small></p> + +<p>How far my pen has been fatigued, like those of other +travellers, in this journey of it, over so barren a track—the +world must judge—but the traces of it, which are now all set +o’ vibrating together this moment, tell me ’tis the +most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as I had made no +convention with my man with the gun, as to time—by stopping +and talking to every soul I met, who was not in a full +trot—joining all parties before me—waiting for every +soul behind—hailing all those who were coming through +cross-roads—arresting all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, +fiddlers, friars—not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree +without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation +with a pinch of snuff——In short, by seizing every +handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me +in this journey—I turned my <i>plain</i> into a +<i>city</i>—I was always in company, and with great variety too; and +as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals +always on his part to offer to every beast he met—I am +confident we could have passed through <i>Pall-Mall</i>, or St. +<i>James</i>’s-Street, for a month together, with fewer +adventures—and seen less of human nature.</p> + +<p>O! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every +plait of a <i>Languedocian</i>’s dress—that whatever is +beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in +better days—I will delude my fancy, and believe it is so.</p> + +<p>’Twas in the road betwixt <i>Nismes</i> and <i>Lunel</i>, +where there is the best <i>Muscatto</i> wine in all <i>France</i>, +and which by the bye belongs to the honest canons of +M<small>ONTPELLIER</small>—and foul befal the man who has +drunk it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it.</p> + +<p>——The sun was set—they had done their work; +the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh—and the swains were +preparing for a carousal—my mule made a dead point——’Tis the fife +and tabourin, said I——I’m frighten’d to +death, quoth he——They are running at the ring of +pleasure, said I, giving him a prick——By saint +<i>Boogar</i>, and all the saints at the backside of the door of +purgatory, said he—(making the same resolution with the +abbesse of <i>Andoüillets</i>) I’ll not go a step +further——’Tis very well, sir, said +I——I never will argue a point with one of your family, +as long as I live; so leaping off his back, and kicking off one +boot into this ditch, and t’other into that—I’ll +take a dance, said I—so stay you here.</p> + +<p>A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the groupe to meet +me, as I advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut +approaching rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a +single tress.</p> + +<p>We want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if +to offer them—And a cavalier ye shall have; said I, taking +hold of both of them.</p> + +<p>Hadst thou, <i>Nannette</i>, been array’d like a +duchesse!</p> + +<p>——But that cursed slit in thy petticoat!</p> + +<p><i>Nannette</i> cared not for it.</p> + +<p>We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one +hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me up with the +other.</p> + +<p>A lame youth, whom <i>Apollo</i> had recompensed with a pipe, +and to which he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly +over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank——Tie me up +this tress instantly, said <i>Nannette</i>, putting a piece of +string into my hand—It taught me to forget I was a +stranger—— The whole knot fell +down——We had been seven years acquainted.</p> + +<p>The youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe +followed, and off we bounded——“the duce +take that slit!”</p> + +<p>The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, +sung alternately with her brother——’twas a +<i>Gascoigne</i> roundelay.</p> + +<p>VIVA LA JOIA!</p> + +<p> +FIDON LA TRISTESSA! +</p> + +<p>The nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains +an octave below them——</p> + +<p>I would have given a crown to have it sew’d +up—<i>Nannette</i> would not have given a +<small>sous</small>—<i>Viva la joia!</i> was in her +lips—<i>Viva la joia!</i> was in her eyes. A transient +spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us——She +look’d amiable!——Why could I not live, and end my +days thus? Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why +could not a man sit down in the lap of content +here——and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go +to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her +head on one side, and dance up insidious——Then +’tis time to dance off, quoth I; so changing only partners +and tunes, I danced it away from <i>Lunel</i> to +<i>Montpellier</i>——from thence to <i>Pesçnas, +Beziers</i>——I danced it along through <i>Narbonne, +Carcasson</i>, and <i>Castle Naudairy</i>, till at last I danced +myself into <i>Perdrillo</i>’s pavillion, where pulling out a +paper of black lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without +digression or parenthesis, in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +amours——</p> + +<p>I begun thus——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXV</small> +</h3> + +<p> +——B<small>UT</small> softly——for in these sportive +plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running +out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s +taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding +all that has been said upon <i>straight lines</i><a href="#fn37" +name="fnref37"><sup>[37]</sup></a> in sundry pages of my book—I defy the +best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or +forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have +more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—I defy him to go on +coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages one by one, in +straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if slits in petticoats are +unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into +some bastardly digression——In <i>Freeze-land, Fog-land</i>, and +some other lands I wot of—it may be done—— +</p> + +<p>But in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where +every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, +my dear <i>Eugenius</i>—in this fertile land of chivalry and +romance, where I now sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s amours, and with all the meanders of +J<small>ULIA</small>’s track in quest of her +D<small>IEGO</small>, in full view of my study window—if thou +comest not and takest me by the hand——</p> + +<p>What a work it is likely to turn out!</p> + +<p>Let us begin it.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn37"></a> <a href="#fnref37">[37]</a> +Vid. Vol. III. p. 243. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is with <small>LOVE</small> as +with <small>CUCKOLDOM</small>——</p> + +<p>But now I am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a +thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not +imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as I live +(whereas the <small>COMPARISON</small> may be imparted to him any +hour in the day)——I’ll just mention it, and begin +in good earnest.</p> + +<p>The thing is this.</p> + +<p>That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now +in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way +of doing it is the best——I’m sure it is the most +religious——for I begin with writing the first +sentence——and trusting to Almighty God for the +second.</p> + +<p>’Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of +opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his +imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how +one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the +whole.</p> + +<p>I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what +confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look +up——catching the idea, even sometimes before it half +way reaches me——</p> + +<p>I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which +heaven intended for another man.</p> + +<p> +<i>Pope</i> and his Portrait<a href="#fn38" name="fnref38"><sup>[38]</sup></a> +are fools to me——no martyr is ever so full of faith or +fire——I wish I could say of good works too——but I have +no +</p> + +<p>Zeal or Anger——or</p> + +<p>Anger or Zeal——</p> + +<p>And till gods and men agree together to call it by +the same name——the errantest T<small>ARTUFFE</small>, +in science——in politics—or in religion, shall +never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting, than what he will +read in the next chapter.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn38"></a> <a href="#fnref38">[38]</a> +Vid. <i>Pope</i>’s Portrait. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——Bon jour!——good +morrow!——so you have got your cloak on +betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge +the matter rightly——’tis better to be well +mounted, than go o’ foot——and obstructions in the +glands are dangerous——And how goes it with thy +concubine—thy wife,—and thy little ones o’ both +sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and +lady—your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins——I +hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, +tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore +eyes.</p> + +<p> +——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give +such a vile +purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—clyster—blister?——And +why so many grains of calomel? santa Maria! and such a dose of opium! +periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By +my great-aunt <i>Dinah</i>’s old black velvet mask! I think there is no +occasion for it. +</p> + +<p>Now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently +putting off and on, <i>before</i> she was got with child by the +coachman—not one of our family would wear it after. To cover +the <small>MASK</small> afresh, was more than the mask was +worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which +could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at +all——</p> + +<p>This is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all +our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more +than one archbishop, a <i>Welch</i> judge, some three or four +aldermen, and a single mountebank——</p> + +<p>In the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen +alchymists.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>“I<small>T</small> is with Love as with +Cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least the +<i>third</i>, but generally the last in the house who knows any +thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from +having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in +this vessel of the human frame, is <i>Love</i>—may be +<i>Hatred</i>, in that——<i>Sentiment</i> half a yard +higher——and <i>Nonsense</i>———no, +Madam,—not there——I mean at the part I am now +pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help +ourselves?</p> + +<p>Of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever +soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle <i>Toby</i> was the +worst fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such +a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run +on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn +out——had not <i>Bridget</i>’s pre-notification of +them to <i>Susannah</i>, and <i>Susannah</i>’s +repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary +for my uncle <i>Toby</i> to look into the affair.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HY</small> weavers, gardeners, and +gladiators—or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some +ailment in the <i>foot</i>)—should ever have had some tender +nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and +duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern +physiologists.</p> + +<p>A water-drinker, provided he is a profess’d one, and does +it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: +not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or show of +logic in it, “That a rill of cold water dribbling +through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my +<i>Jenny</i>’s—”</p> + +<p>——The proposition does not strike one; on the +contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and +effects——</p> + +<p>But it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason.</p> + +<p>——“And in perfect good health with +it?”</p> + +<p>—The most perfect,—Madam, that friendship herself +could wish me——</p> + +<p> +“And drink nothing!—nothing but water?” +</p> + +<p>—Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the +flood-gates of the brain——see how they give +way!——</p> + +<p>In swims C<small>URIOSITY</small>, beckoning to her damsels to +follow—they dive into the center of the +current——</p> + +<p>F<small>ANCY</small> sits musing upon the bank, and with her +eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts +and bow-sprits——And D<small>ESIRE</small>, with vest +held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by +her, with the other——</p> + +<p>O ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that +ye have so often governed and turn’d this world about like a mill-wheel—grinding the faces of the +impotent—bepowdering their ribs—bepeppering their +noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of +nature——</p> + +<p>If I was you, quoth <i>Yorick</i>, I would drink more water, +<i>Eugenius</i>—And, if I was you, <i>Yorick</i>, replied +<i>Eugenius</i>, so would I.</p> + +<p>Which shews they had both read <i>Longinus</i>—</p> + +<p>For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my +own, as long as I live.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>WISH</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> had been +a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, That +the first moment Widow <i>Wadman</i> saw him, she felt something +stirring within her in his +favour—Something!—something.</p> + +<p>—Something perhaps more than friendship—less than +love—something—no matter what—no matter +where—I would not give a single hair off my mule’s tail, and +be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many +to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to be let +by your worships into the secret——</p> + +<p>But the truth is, my uncle <i>Toby</i> was not a water-drinker; +he drank it neither pure nor mix’d, or any how, or any where, +except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor +was not to be had——or during the time he was under +cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and +bring them sooner into contact——my uncle <i>Toby</i> +drank it for quietness sake.</p> + +<p>Now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be +produced without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle +<i>Toby</i> was neither a weaver—a gardener, or a +gladiator——unless as a captain, you will needs have him +one—but then he was only a captain of foot—and besides, +the whole is an equivocation——There is nothing left for +us to suppose, but that my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +leg——but that will avail us little in the present +hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment <i>in the +foot</i>—whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder +in his foot—for my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s leg was not +emaciated at all. It was a little stiff and awkward, from a total +disuse of it, for the three years he lay confined at my +father’s house in town; but it was plump and muscular, and in +all other respects as good and promising a leg as the other.</p> + +<p>I declare, I do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my +life, where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, +and torture the chapter I had been writing, to the service of the +chapter following it, than in the present case: one would think I +took a pleasure in running into difficulties of this kind, merely +to make fresh experiments of getting out of +’em——Inconsiderate soul that thou art! What! are +not the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author and a man, +thou art hemm’d in on every side of thee——are +they, <i>Tristram</i>, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still +more?</p> + +<p> +Is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten cart-loads of +thy fifth and sixth volumes<a href="#fn39" name="fnref39"><sup>[39]</sup></a> +still—still unsold, and art almost at thy wit’s ends, how to get +them off thy hands? +</p> + +<p>To this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma that +thou gattest in skating against the wind in <i>Flanders?</i> and is +it but two months ago, that in a fit of laughter, on seeing a +cardinal make water like a quirister (with both hands) thou brakest +a vessel in thy lungs, whereby, in two hours, thou lost as many +quarts of blood; and hadst thou lost as much more, did not the +faculty tell thee——it would have amounted to a +gallon?——</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn39"></a> <a href="#fnref39">[39]</a> +Alluding to the first edition. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>—But for heaven’s sake, let us not talk of quarts or +gallons——let us take the story straight before us; it +is so nice and intricate a one, it will scarce bear the +transposition of a single tittle; and, somehow or other, you have +got me thrust almost into the middle of it—</p> + +<p>—I beg we may take more care.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal +had posted down with so much heat and precipitation, to take +possession of the spot of ground we have so often spoke of, in +order to open their campaign as early as the rest of the allies; +that they had forgot one of the most necessary articles of the +whole affair, it was neither a pioneer’s spade, a pickax, or +a shovel—</p> + +<p>—It was a bed to lie on: so that as <i>Shandy-Hall</i> was +at that time unfurnished; and the little inn where poor <i>Le +Fever</i> died, not yet built; my uncle <i>Toby</i> was constrained +to accept of a bed at Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s, for a night or +two, till corporal <i>Trim</i> (who to the character of an +excellent valet, groom, cook, sempster, surgeon, and engineer, +superadded that of an excellent upholsterer too), with +the help of a carpenter and a couple of taylors, constructed one in +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s house.</p> + +<p>A daughter of <i>Eve</i>, for such was widow <i>Wadman</i>, and +’tis all the character I intend to give of her—</p> + +<p>—“<i> That she was a perfect +woman—</i>” had better be fifty leagues off—or in +her warm bed—or playing with a case-knife—or any thing +you please—than make a man the object of her attention, when +the house and all the furniture is her own.</p> + +<p>There is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, +where a woman has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in +more lights than one—but here, for her soul, she can see him +in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels +along with him——till by reiterated acts of such +combination, he gets foisted into her inventory——</p> + +<p>—And then good night.</p> + +<p>But this is not matter of S<small>YSTEM</small>; for I have +delivered that above——nor is it matter of +B<small>REVIARY</small>——for I make no man’s +creed but my own——nor matter of +F<small>ACT</small>——at least that I know of; but +’tis matter copulative and introductory to what follows.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>DO</small> not speak it with regard to the +coarseness or cleanness of them—or the strength of their +gussets——but pray do not night-shifts differ from +day-shifts as much in this particular, as in any thing else in the +world; that they so far exceed the others in length, that when you +are laid down in them, they fall almost as much below the feet, as +the day-shifts fall short of them?</p> + +<p>Widow <i>Wadman</i>’s night-shifts (as was the mode I +suppose in King <i>William</i>’s and Queen +<i>Anne</i>’s reigns) were cut however after this fashion; +and if the fashion is changed (for in <i>Italy</i> they are come to +nothing)——so much the worse for the public; they were two <i>Flemish</i> ells +and a half in length, so that allowing a moderate woman two ells, +she had half an ell to spare, to do what she would with.</p> + +<p>Now from one little indulgence gained after another, in the many +bleak and decemberley nights of a seven years widow-hood, things +had insensibly come to this pass, and for the two last years had +got establish’d into one of the ordinances of the +bed-chamber—That as soon as Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> was put to +bed, and had got her legs stretched down to the bottom of it, of +which she always gave <i>Bridget</i> notice—<i>Bridget</i>, +with all suitable decorum, having first open’d the +bed-clothes at the feet, took hold of the half-ell of cloth we are +speaking of, and having gently, and with both her hands, drawn it +downwards to its furthest extension, and then contracted it again +side-long by four or five even plaits, she took a large corking-pin +out of her sleeve, and with the point directed towards her, +pinn’d the plaits all fast together a little above the hem; which done, she tuck’d all in tight at +the feet, and wish’d her mistress a good night.</p> + +<p>This was constant, and without any other variation than this; +that on shivering and tempestuous nights, when <i>Bridget</i> +untuck’d the feet of the bed, &c. to do +this——she consulted no thermometer but that of her own +passions; and so performed it standing—kneeling—or +squatting, according to the different degrees of faith, hope, and +charity, she was in, and bore towards her mistress that night. In +every other respect, the <i>etiquette</i> was sacred, and might +have vied with the most mechanical one of the most inflexible +bed-chamber in <i>Christendom.</i></p> + +<p>The first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle +<i>Toby</i> up stairs, which was about ten——Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> threw herself into her arm-chair, and crossing her +left knee with her right, which formed a resting-place for her +elbow, she reclin’d her cheek upon the palm of her hand, and +leaning forwards, ruminated till midnight upon both sides of +the question.</p> + +<p>The second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered +<i>Bridget</i> to bring her up a couple of fresh candles and leave +them upon the table, she took out her marriage-settlement, and read +it over with great devotion: and the third night (which was the +last of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s stay) when <i>Bridget</i> had +pull’d down the night-shift, and was assaying to stick in the +corking pin——</p> + +<p>——With a kick of both heels at once, but at the same +time the most natural kick that could be kick’d in her +situation——for supposing * * * * * * * * * to be the +sun in its meridian, it was a north-east kick——she +kick’d the pin out of her fingers——the +<i>etiquette</i> which hung upon it, down——down it fell +to the ground, and was shiver’d into a thousand atoms.</p> + +<p>From all which it was plain that widow <i>Wadman</i> was in love +with my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i>’s head at +that time was full of other matters, so that it was not till the +demolition of <i>Dunkirk</i>, when all the other civilities of +<i>Europe</i> were settled, that he found leisure to return +this.</p> + +<p>This made an armistice (that is, speaking with regard to my +uncle <i>Toby</i>—but with respect to Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, a +vacancy)—of almost eleven years. But in all cases of this +nature, as it is the second blow, happen at what distance of time +it will, which makes the fray——I chuse for that reason +to call these the amours of my uncle <i>Toby</i> with Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>, rather than the amours of Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> with my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>This is not a distinction without a difference.</p> + +<p>It is not like the affair of <i>an old hat +cock’d——and a cock’d old hat</i>, about +which your reverences have so often been at odds with one another——but there +is a difference here in the nature of things——</p> + +<p>And let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> as widow <i>Wadman</i> did love +my uncle <i>Toby</i>——and my uncle <i>Toby</i> did not +love widow <i>Wadman</i>, there was nothing for widow <i>Wadman</i> +to do, but to go on and love my uncle <i>Toby</i>——or +let it alone.</p> + +<p>Widow <i>Wadman</i> would do neither the one or the other.</p> + +<p>——Gracious heaven!——but I forget I am a +little of her temper myself; for whenever it so falls out, which it +sometimes does about the equinoxes, that an earthly goddess is so +much this, and that, and t’other, that I cannot eat my +breakfast for her——and that she careth not three +halfpence whether I eat my breakfast or no——</p> + +<p>——Curse on her! and so I send her to <i>Tartary</i>, +and from <i>Tartary</i> to <i>Terra del Fuogo</i>, and so on to the +devil: in short, there is not an infernal nitch where I do not take +her divinityship and stick it.</p> + +<p>But as the heart is tender, and the passions in these tides ebb +and flow ten times in a minute, I instantly bring her back again; +and as I do all things in extremes, I place her in the very center +of the milky-way——</p> + +<p>Brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some +one——</p> + +<p>——The duce take her and her influence +too——for at that word I lose all +patience——much good may it do him!——By all +that is hirsute and gashly! I cry, taking off my furr’d cap, +and twisting it round my finger——I would not give +sixpence for a dozen such!</p> + +<p>——But ’tis an excellent cap too (putting it +upon my head, and pressing it close to my ears)—and +warm—and soft; especially if you stroke it the right +way—but alas! that will never be my +luck——(so here my philosophy is shipwreck’d +again.)</p> + +<p>——No; I shall never have a finger in the pye (so +here I break my metaphor)——</p> + +<p>Crust and Crumb</p> + +<p>Inside and out</p> + +<p>Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate +it——I’m sick at the sight of it——</p> + +<p>’Tis all pepper,<br/> +     garlick,<br/> +     speak-punctuation:,<br/> +     salt, and<br/> +     devil’s dung——by +the great arch-cooks of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from +morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent +inflammatory dishes for us, I would not touch it for the +world——</p> + +<p>——<i>O Tristram! Tristram!</i> cried +<i>Jenny.</i></p> + +<p><i>O Jenny! Jenny!</i> replied I, and so went on +with the thirty-sixth chapter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>——“Not touch it for the world,” +did I say——</p> + +<p>Lord, how I have heated my imagination with this metaphor!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HICH</small> shews, let your reverences and +worships say what you will of it (for as for +<i>thinking</i>——all who do think—think pretty +much alike both upon it and other matters)——Love is +certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most</p> + +<p><b>A</b> gitating</p> + +<p><b>B</b> ewitching</p> + +<p><b>C</b> onfounded</p> + +<p><b>D</b> evilish affairs of life——the most</p> + +<p><b>E</b> xtravagant</p> + +<p><b>F</b> utilitous</p> + +<p><b>G</b> alligaskinish</p> + +<p><b>H</b> andy-dandyish</p> + +<p><b>I</b> racundulous (there is no K to it) and</p> + +<p><b>L</b> yrical of all human passions: at the</p> + +<p>same time, the most</p> + +<p><b>M</b> isgiving</p> + +<p><b>N</b> innyhammering</p> + +<p><b>O</b> bstipating</p> + +<p><b>P</b> ragmatical</p> + +<p><b>S</b> tridulous</p> + +<p><b>R</b> idiculous—though by the bye the R should +have gone first—But in short ’tis of such a nature, as +my father once told my uncle <i>Toby</i> upon the close of a long +dissertation upon the subject——“You can +scarce,” said he, “combine two ideas together upon it, +brother <i>Toby</i>, without an +hypallage”——What’s that? cried my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>The cart before the horse, replied my father——</p> + +<p>——And what is he to do there? cried my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>Nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it +alone.</p> + +<p>Now widow <i>Wadman</i>, as I told you before, would do neither +the one or the other.</p> + +<p>She stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, +to watch accidents.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> Fates, who certainly all +fore-knew of these amours of widow <i>Wadman</i> and my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, had, from the first creation of matter and motion (and +with more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind), +established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to +one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle <i>Toby</i> +to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied +any other garden in <i>Christendom</i>, but the very house and +garden which join’d and laid parallel to Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s; this, with the advantage of a thickset +arbour in Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s garden, but planted in the +hedge-row of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s, put all the occasions +into her hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s motions, and +was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his +unsuspecting heart had given leave to the corporal, through the +mediation of <i>Bridget</i>, to make her a wicker-gate of +communication to enlarge her walks, it enabled her to carry on her +approaches to the very door of the sentry-box; and sometimes out of +gratitude, to make an attack, and endeavour to blow my uncle +<i>Toby</i> up in the very sentry-box itself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is a great pity——but +’tis certain from every day’s observation of man, that +he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end—provided +there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is +not—there’s an end of the affair; and if there +is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in that case +has the misfortune generally to put out itself—there’s +an end of the affair again.</p> + +<p>For my part, could I always have the ordering of it which way I +would be burnt myself—for I cannot bear the thoughts of being +burnt like a beast—I would oblige a housewife constantly to +light me at the top; for then I should burn down decently to the +socket; that is, from my head to my heart, from my heart to my +liver, from my liver to my bowels, and so on by the meseraick veins +and arteries, through all the turns and lateral insertions of the +intestines and their tunicles to the blind gut——</p> + +<p>——I beseech you, doctor <i>Slop</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, interrupting him as he mentioned the <i>blind gut</i>, +in a discourse with my father the night my mother was brought to +bed of me——I beseech you, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as I am, I vow I do not +know to this day where it lies.</p> + +<p>The blind gut, answered doctor <i>Slop</i>, lies betwixt the +<i>Ilion</i> and <i>Colon</i>——</p> + +<p>In a man? said my father.</p> + +<p>——’Tis precisely the same, cried +doctor <i>Slop</i>, in a woman.——</p> + +<p>That’s more than I know; quoth my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XL</small> +</h3> + +<p>——And so to make sure of both systems, Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> predetermined to light my uncle <i>Toby</i> neither +at this end or that; but, like a prodigal’s candle, to light +him, if possible, at both ends at once.</p> + +<p>Now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, +including both of horse and foot, from the great arsenal of +<i>Venice</i> to the <i>Tower</i> of <i>London</i> (exclusive), if +Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had been rummaging for seven years together, and +with <i>Bridget</i> to help her, she could not have found any one +<i>blind</i> or <i>mantelet</i> so fit for her purpose, as that +which the expediency of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s affairs had +fix’d up ready to her hands.</p> + +<p>I believe I have not told you——but I don’t +know——possibly I have——be it as it will, ’tis one of the number of those +many things, which a man had better do over again, than dispute +about it—That whatever town or fortress the corporal was at +work upon, during the course of their campaign, my uncle +<i>Toby</i> always took care, on the inside of his sentry-box, +which was towards his left hand, to have a plan of the place, +fasten’d up with two or three pins at the top, but loose at +the bottom, for the conveniency of holding it up to the eye, +&c. . . . as occasions required; so that +when an attack was resolved upon, Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had nothing +more to do, when she had got advanced to the door of the +sentry-box, but to extend her right hand; and edging in her left +foot at the same movement, to take hold of the map or plan, or +upright, or whatever it was, and with out-stretched neck meeting it +half way,—to advance it towards her; on which my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s passions were sure to catch +fire——for he would instantly take hold of the other +corner of the map in his left hand, and with the end of his pipe in the other, begin an explanation.</p> + +<p>When the attack was advanced to this point;——the +world will naturally enter into the reasons of Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s next stroke of generalship——which +was, to take my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s tobacco-pipe out of his +hand as soon as she possibly could; which, under one pretence or +other, but generally that of pointing more distinctly at some +redoubt or breastwork in the map, she would effect before my uncle +<i>Toby</i> (poor soul!) had well march’d above half a dozen +toises with it.</p> + +<p>—It obliged my uncle <i>Toby</i> to make use of his +forefinger.</p> + +<p>The difference it made in the attack was this; That in going +upon it, as in the first case, with the end of her fore-finger +against the end of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s tobacco-pipe, she +might have travelled with it, along the lines, from <i>Dan</i> to +<i>Beersheba</i>, had my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s lines +reach’d so far, without any effect: For as there was no +arterial or vital heat in the end of the tobacco-pipe, it could +excite no sentiment——it could neither give fire by +pulsation——or receive it by +sympathy——’twas nothing but smoke.</p> + +<p>Whereas, in following my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s forefinger +with hers, close thro’ all the little turns and indentings of +his works——pressing sometimes against the side of +it——then treading upon its nail——then +tripping it up——then touching it here——then +there, and so on——it set something at least in +motion.</p> + +<p>This, tho’ slight skirmishing, and at a distance from the +main body, yet drew on the rest; for here, the map usually falling +with the back of it, close to the side of the sentry-box, my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, in the simplicity of his soul, would lay his hand flat +upon it, in order to go on with his explanation; and Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>, by a manœuvre as quick as thought, would as +certainly place her’s close beside it; this at once opened a +communication, large enough for any sentiment to pass or re-pass, +which a person skill’d in the elementary and practical part of love-making, has +occasion for——</p> + +<p>By bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s——it unavoidably brought the thumb +into action——and the forefinger and thumb being once +engaged, as naturally brought in the whole hand. Thine, dear uncle +<i>Toby!</i> was never now in ’ts right +place——Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had it ever to take up, or, +with the gentlest pushings, protrusions, and equivocal +compressions, that a hand to be removed is capable of +receiving——to get it press’d a hair breadth of +one side out of her way.</p> + +<p>Whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him +sensible, that it was her leg (and no one’s else) at the +bottom of the sentry-box, which slightly press’d against the +calf of his——So that my uncle <i>Toby</i> being thus +attack’d and sore push’d on both his +wings——was it a wonder, if now and then, it put his +centre into disorder?——</p> + +<p>——The duce take it! said my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HESE</small> attacks of Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, +you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from +each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the +same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be +attacks at all——or if he did, would confound them all +together——but I write not to them: it will be time +enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as I +come up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having +nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of original +papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by +themselves, there is a plan of <i>Bouchain</i> in perfect +preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst I have power to preserve +any thing), upon the lower corner of which, on the right hand +side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy +finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to +imagine, were Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s; for the opposite side of +the margin, which I suppose to have been my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s, is absolutely clean: This seems an +authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are +vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on +the opposite corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very +holes, through which it has been pricked up in the +sentry-box——</p> + +<p>By all that is priestly! I value this precious relick, with its +<i>stigmata</i> and pricks, more than all the relicks of the +<i>Romish</i> church——always excepting, when I am +writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered the flesh of +St. <i>Radagunda</i> in the desert, which in your road from +F<small>ESSE</small> to C<small>LUNY</small>, the nuns of that name +will shew you for love.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>THINK</small>, an’ please your +honour, quoth <i>Trim</i>, the fortifications are quite +destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the +mole——I think so too; replied my uncle <i>Toby</i> with +a sigh half suppress’d——but step into the +parlour, <i>Trim</i>, for the stipulation——it lies upon +the table.</p> + +<p>It has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till +this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with +it—</p> + +<p>——Then, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, there is no +further occasion for our services. The more, an’ please your +honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering which he cast his +spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with an air the +most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was +heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his pioneer’s +shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in order to +carry them off the field——when a heigh-ho! from the +sentry-box, which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the +sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him.</p> + +<p>——No; said the corporal to himself, I’ll do it +before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out +of the wheel-barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to +level something at the foot of the glacis——but with a +real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert +him——he loosen’d a sod or two——pared +their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or +two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s feet and began as follows.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was a thousand +pities——though I believe, an’ please your honour, +I am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a +soldier——</p> + +<p>A soldier, cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, interrupting the +corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, <i>Trim</i>, than a man +of letters——But not so often, an’ please your +honour, replied the corporal——my uncle <i>Toby</i> gave +a nod.</p> + +<p>It was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his +eye upon <i>Dunkirk</i>, and the mole, as <i>Servius Sulpicius</i>, +in returning out of <i>Asia</i> (when he sailed from +<i>Ægina</i> towards <i>Megara</i>), did upon <i>Corinth</i> +and <i>Pyreus</i>——</p> + +<p>—“It was a thousand pities, an’ please +your honour, to destroy these works——and a thousand +pities to have let them stood.”——</p> + +<p>——Thou art right, <i>Trim</i>, in both cases; said +my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——This, continued the corporal, is +the reason, that from the beginning of their demolition to the +end——I have never once whistled, or sung, or +laugh’d, or cry’d, or talk’d of past done deeds, +or told your honour one story good or bad——</p> + +<p>——Thou hast many excellencies, <i>Trim</i>, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, and I hold it not the least of them, as thou +happenest to be a story-teller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my +painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom +told me a bad one——</p> + +<p>——Because, an’ please your honour, except one +of a <i>King of Bohemia and his seven castles</i>,—they are +all true; for they are about myself——</p> + +<p>I do not like the subject the worse, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, on that score: But prithee what is this story? thou +hast excited my curiosity.</p> + +<p>I’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, +directly—Provided, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking +earnestly towards <i>Dunkirk</i> and the mole +again——provided it is not a merry one; to such, +<i>Trim</i>, a man should ever bring one half of the entertainment +along with him; and the disposition I am in at present would wrong +both thee, <i>Trim</i>, and thy story——It is not a +merry one by any means, replied the corporal—Nor would I have +it altogether a grave one, added my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——It is neither the one nor the other, +replied the corporal, but will suit your honour exactly——Then I’ll +thank thee for it with all my heart, cried my uncle <i>Toby;</i> so +prithee begin it, <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>The corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a +matter as the world imagines, to pull off a lank <i>Montero</i>-cap +with grace——or a whit less difficult, in my +conceptions, when a man is sitting squat upon the ground, to make a +bow so teeming with respect as the corporal was wont; yet by +suffering the palm of his right hand, which was towards his master, +to slip backwards upon the grass, a little beyond his body, in +order to allow it the greater sweep——and by an unforced +compression, at the same time, of his cap with the thumb and the +two forefingers of his left, by which the diameter of the cap +became reduced, so that it might be said, rather to be insensibly +squeez’d—than pull’d off with a +flatus——the corporal acquitted himself of both in a +better manner than the posture of his affairs promised; and having +hemmed twice, to find in what key his story would best go, and best +suit his master’s humour,—he exchanged a single +look of kindness with him, and set off thus.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE STORY OF THE<br/> +KING OF BOHEMIA AND<br/> +HIS SEVEN CASTLES</small> +</p> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> was a certain king of Bo - - +he——</p> + +<p>As the corporal was entering the confines of <i>Bohemia</i>, my +uncle <i>Toby</i> obliged him to halt for a single moment; he had +set out bare-headed, having, since he pull’d off his +<i>Montero</i>-cap in the latter end of the last chapter, left it +lying beside him on the ground.</p> + +<p>——The eye of Goodness espieth all +things——so that before the corporal had well got +through the first five words of his story, had my uncle <i>Toby</i> +twice touch’d his <i>Montero</i>-cap with the end of his +cane, interrogatively——as much as to say, Why +don’t you put it on, <i>Trim? Trim</i> took it up with +the most respectful slowness, and casting a glance of humiliation as he did it, upon the embroidery of the +fore-part, which being dismally tarnish’d and fray’d +moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the +pattern, he lay’d it down again between his two feet, in +order to moralize upon the subject.</p> + +<p>——’Tis every word of it but too true, cried my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, that thou art about to observe——</p> + +<p>“<i>Nothing in this world, Trim, is made to last for +ever.</i>”</p> + +<p>——But when tokens, dear <i>Tom</i>, of thy love and +remembrance wear out, said <i>Trim</i>, what shall we say?</p> + +<p>There is no occasion, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +to say any thing else; and was a man to puzzle his brains till +Doom’s day, I believe, <i>Trim</i>, it would be +impossible.</p> + +<p>The corporal, perceiving my uncle <i>Toby</i> was in the right, +and that it would be in vain for the wit of man to think of +extracting a purer moral from his cap, without further attempting +it, he put it on; and passing his hand across his forehead to rub +out a pensive wrinkle, which the text and the doctrine between them +had engender’d, he return’d, with the same look and +tone of voice, to his story of the king of <i>Bohemia</i> and his +seven castles.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE STORY OF THE<br/> +KING OF BOHEMIA AND<br/> +HIS SEVEN CASTLES,<br/> +CONTINUED</small> +</p> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> was a certain king of +<i>Bohemia</i>, but in whose reign, except his own, I am not able +to inform your honour——</p> + +<p>I do not desire it of thee, <i>Trim</i>, by any means, cried my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>——It was a little before the time, an’ please +your honour, when giants were beginning to leave off +breeding:—but in what year of our Lord that was—</p> + +<p>I would not give a halfpenny to know, said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>——Only, an’ please your honour, it makes a +story look the better in the face——</p> + +<p>——’Tis thy own, <i>Trim</i>, so ornament it +after thy own fashion; and take any date, continued my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, looking pleasantly upon him—take any date in the +whole world thou chusest, and put it to—thou art heartily +welcome——</p> + +<p>The corporal bowed; for of every century, and of every year of +that century, from the first creation of the world down to +<i>Noah</i>’s flood; and from <i>Noah</i>’s flood to +the birth of <i>Abraham;</i> through all the pilgrimages of the +patriarchs, to the departure of the <i>Israelites</i> out of +<i>Egypt</i>——and throughout all the Dynasties, +Olympiads, Urbeconditas, and other memorable epochas of the +different nations of the world, down to the coming of Christ, and +from thence to the very moment in which the corporal was telling +his story——had my uncle <i>Toby</i> subjected this vast +empire of time and all its abysses at his feet; but as <small>MODESTY</small> scarce touches with a +finger what <small>LIBERALITY</small> offers her with both hands +open—the corporal contented himself with the very <i>worst +year</i> of the whole bunch; which, to prevent your honours of the +Majority and Minority from tearing the very flesh off your bones in +contestation, ‘ Whether that year is not always the last +cast-year of the last cast-almanack’——I tell you +plainly it was; but from a different reason than you wot +of——</p> + +<p>——It was the year next him——which being +the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and twelve, when the Duke of +<i>Ormond</i> was playing the devil in +<i>Flanders</i>——the corporal took it, and set out with +it afresh on his expedition to <i>Bohemia.</i></p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE STORY OF THE<br/> +KING OF BOHEMIA AND<br/> +HIS SEVEN CASTLES,<br/> +CONTINUED</small> +</p> + +<p>I<small>N</small> the year of our Lord one thousand +seven hundred and twelve, there was, an’ please your +honour——</p> + +<p>—To tell thee truly, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, any other date would have pleased me much better, not +only on account of the sad stain upon our history that year, in +marching off our troops, and refusing to cover the siege of +<i>Quesnoi</i>, though <i>Fagel</i> was carrying on the works with +such incredible vigour—but likewise on the score, +<i>Trim</i>, of thy own story; because if there are—and +which, from what thou hast dropt, I partly suspect to be the +fact—if there are giants in it——</p> + +<p>There is but one, an’ please your honour——</p> + +<p>——’Tis as bad as twenty, replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——thou should’st have carried him back +some seven or eight hundred years out of harm’s way, both of +critics and other people: and therefore I would advise thee, if +ever thou tellest it again——</p> + +<p>——If I live, an’ please your honour, but once +to get through it, I will never tell it again, quoth <i>Trim</i>, +either to man, woman, or child——Poo—poo! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>—but with accents of +such sweet encouragement did he utter it, that the corporal went on +with his story with more alacrity than ever.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE STORY OF THE<br/> +KING OF BOHEMIA AND<br/> +HIS SEVEN CASTLES,<br/> +CONTINUED</small> +</p> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> was, an’ please your +honour, said the corporal, raising his voice and rubbing the palms +of his two hands cheerily together as he begun, a certain king of +<i>Bohemia</i>——</p> + +<p>——Leave out the date entirely, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, leaning forwards, and laying his hand gently +upon the corporal’s shoulder to temper the +interruption—leave it out entirely, <i>Trim;</i> a story +passes very well without these niceties, unless one is pretty sure +of ’em——Sure of ’em! said the corporal, +shaking his head——</p> + +<p>Right; answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>, it is not easy, +<i>Trim</i>, for one, bred up as thou and I have been to arms, who +seldom looks further forward than to the end of his +musket, or backwards beyond his knapsack, to know much about this +matter——God bless your honour! said the corporal, won +by the manner of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s reasoning, as much as +by the reasoning itself, he has something else to do; if not on +action, or a march, or upon duty in his garrison—he has his +firelock, an’ please your honour, to furbish—his +accoutrements to take care of—his regimentals to +mend—himself to shave and keep clean, so as to appear always +like what he is upon the parade; what business, added the corporal +triumphantly, has a soldier, an’ please your honour, to know +any thing at all of <i>geography?</i></p> + +<p>——Thou would’st have said <i>chronology, +Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby;</i> for as for geography, +’tis of absolute use to him; he must be acquainted intimately +with every country and its boundaries where his profession carries +him; he should know every town and city, and village and hamlet, +with the canals, the roads, and hollow ways which lead up to them; there +is not a river or a rivulet he passes, <i>Trim</i>, but he should +be able at first sight to tell thee what is its name—in what +mountains it takes its rise—what is its course—how far +it is navigable—where fordable—where not; he should +know the fertility of every valley, as well as the hind who ploughs +it; and be able to describe, or, if it is required, to give thee an +exact map of all the plains and defiles, the forts, the +acclivities, the woods and morasses, thro’ and by which his +army is to march; he should know their produce, their plants, their +minerals, their waters, their animals, their seasons, their +climates, their heats and cold, their inhabitants, their customs, +their language, their policy, and even their religion.</p> + +<p>Is it else to be conceived, corporal, continued my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, rising up in his sentry-box, as he began to warm in +this part of his discourse—how <i>Marlborough</i> could have +marched his army from the banks of the <i>Maes</i> to +<i>Belburg;</i> from <i>Belburg</i> to <i>Kerpenord</i>—(here the +corporal could sit no longer) from <i>Kerpenord, Trim</i>, to +<i>Kalsaken;</i> from <i>Kalsaken</i> to <i>Newdorf;</i> from +<i>Newdorf</i> to <i>Landenbourg;</i> from <i>Landenbourg</i> to +<i>Mildenheim;</i> from <i>Mildenheim</i> to <i>Elchingen;</i> from +<i>Elchingen</i> to <i>Gingen;</i> from <i>Gingen</i> to +<i>Balmerchoffen;</i> from <i>Balmerchoffen</i> to +<i>Skellenburg</i>, where he broke in upon the enemy’s works; +forced his passage over the <i>Danube;</i> cross’d the +<i>Lech</i>—push’d on his troops into the heart of the +empire, marching at the head of them through <i>Fribourg, +Hokenwert</i>, and <i>Schonevelt</i>, to the plains of +<i>Blenheim</i> and <i>Hochstet?</i>——Great as he +was, corporal, he could not have advanced a step, or made one +single day’s march without the aids of +<i>Geography.</i>——As for <i>Chronology</i>, I own, +<i>Trim</i>, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, sitting down again +coolly in his sentry-box, that of all others, it seems a science +which the soldier might best spare, was it not for the lights which +that science must one day give him, in determining the invention of +powder; the furious execution of which, renversing every thing like thunder before +it, has become a new æra to us of military improvements, +changing so totally the nature of attacks and defences both by sea +and land, and awakening so much art and skill in doing it, that the +world cannot be too exact in ascertaining the precise time of its +discovery, or too inquisitive in knowing what great man was the +discoverer, and what occasions gave birth to it.</p> + +<p>I am far from controverting, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +what historians agree in, that in the year of our Lord 1380, under +the reign of <i>Wencelaus</i>, son of <i>Charles</i> the +Fourth——a certain priest, whose name was +<i>Schwartz</i>, shew’d the use of powder to the +<i>Venetians</i>, in their wars against the <i>Genoese;</i> but +’tis certain he was not the first; because if we are to +believe Don <i>Pedro</i>, the bishop of <i>Leon</i>—How came +priests and bishops, an’ please your honour, to trouble their +heads so much about gun-powder? God knows, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——his providence brings good out of every +thing—and he avers, in his chronicle of King +<i>Alphonsus</i>, who reduced <i>Toledo</i>, That in the year 1343, +which was full thirty-seven years before that time, the secret of +powder was well known, and employed with success, both by Moors and +Christians, not only in their sea-combats, at that period, but in +many of their most memorable sieges in <i>Spain</i> and +<i>Barbary</i>—And all the world knows, that Friar +<i>Bacon</i> had wrote expressly about it, and had generously given +the world a receipt to make it by, above a hundred and fifty years +before even <i>Schwartz</i> was born—And that the +<i>Chinese</i>, added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, embarrass us, and all +accounts of it, still more, by boasting of the invention some +hundreds of years even before him——</p> + +<p>They are a pack of liars, I believe, cried +<i>Trim</i>——</p> + +<p>——They are somehow or other deceived, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, in this matter, as is plain to me from the present +miserable state of military architecture amongst them; which +consists of nothing more than a fossé with a brick wall without +flanks—and for what they gave us as a bastion at each angle +of it, ’tis so barbarously constructed, that it looks for all +the world—————Like one of my seven +castles, an’ please your honour, quoth <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>, tho’ in the utmost distress for a +comparison, most courteously refused <i>Trim</i>’s +offer—till <i>Trim</i> telling him, he had half a dozen more +in <i>Bohemia</i>, which he knew not how to get off his +hands——my uncle <i>Toby</i> was so touch’d with +the pleasantry of heart of the corporal——that he +discontinued his dissertation upon gun-powder——and +begged the corporal forthwith to go on with his story of the King +of <i>Bohemia</i> and his seven castles.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>THE STORY OF THE<br/> +KING OF BOHEMIA AND<br/> +HIS SEVEN CASTLES,<br/> +CONTINUED</small> +</p> + +<p>T<small>HIS</small> unfortunate King of +<i>Bohemia</i>, said <i>Trim</i>,——Was he unfortunate, +then? cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, for he had been so wrapt up in +his dissertation upon gun-powder, and other military affairs, that +tho’ he had desired the corporal to go on, yet the many +interruptions he had given, dwelt not so strong upon his fancy as +to account for the epithet——Was he <i>unfortunate</i>, +then, <i>Trim?</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +pathetically——The corporal, wishing first the word and +all its synonimas at the devil, forthwith began to run back in his +mind, the principal events in the King of <i>Bohemia</i>’s +story; from every one of which, it appearing that he was the most +fortunate man that ever existed in the world——it put +the corporal to a stand: for not caring to retract his +epithet——and less to explain it——and least +of all, to twist his tale (like men of lore) to serve a +system——he looked up in my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +face for assistance——but seeing it was the very thing +my uncle <i>Toby</i> sat in expectation of +himself——after a hum and a haw, he went +on——</p> + +<p>The King of <i>Bohemia</i>, an’ please your honour, +replied the corporal, was <i>unfortunate</i>, as +thus——That taking great pleasure and delight in +navigation and all sort of sea affairs——and there +<i>happening</i> throughout the whole kingdom of <i>Bohemia</i>, to +be no sea-port town whatever——</p> + +<p>How the duce should there—<i>Trim?</i> cried my +uncle <i>Toby;</i> for <i>Bohemia</i> being totally inland, it +could have happen’d no otherwise——It might, said +<i>Trim</i>, if it had pleased God——</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> never spoke of the being and natural +attributes of God, but with diffidence and +hesitation——</p> + +<p>——I believe not, replied my uncle <i>Toby</i>, after +some pause—for being inland, as I said, and having +<i>Silesia</i> and <i>Moravia</i> to the east; <i>Lusatia</i> and +<i>Upper Saxony</i> to the north; <i>Franconia</i> to the +west; and <i>Bavaria</i> to the south; <i>Bohemia</i> could not +have been propell’d to the sea without ceasing to be +<i>Bohemia</i>——nor could the sea, on the other hand, +have come up to <i>Bohemia</i>, without overflowing a great part of +<i>Germany</i>, and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants +who could make no defence against it——Scandalous! cried +<i>Trim</i>—Which would bespeak, added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +mildly, such a want of compassion in him who is the father of +it——that, I think, <i>Trim</i>——the thing +could have happen’d no way.</p> + +<p>The corporal made the bow of unfeign’d conviction; and +went on.</p> + +<p>Now the King of <i>Bohemia</i> with his queen and courtiers +<i>happening</i> one fine summer’s evening to walk +out——Aye! there the word <i>happening</i> is right, +<i>Trim</i>, cried my uncle <i>Toby;</i> for the King of +<i>Bohemia</i> and his queen might have walk’d out or let it +alone:——’twas a matter of contingency, which +might happen, or not, just as chance ordered it.</p> + +<p>King <i>William</i> was of an opinion, an’ please your +honour, quoth <i>Trim</i>, that every thing was predestined for us +in this world; insomuch, that he would often say to his soldiers, +that “every ball had its billet.” He was a great man, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——And I believe, continued +<i>Trim</i>, to this day, that the shot which disabled me at the +battle of <i>Landen</i>, was pointed at my knee for no other +purpose, but to take me out of his service, and place me in your +honour’s, where I should be taken so much better care of in +my old age——It shall never, <i>Trim</i>, be construed +otherwise, said my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>The heart, both of the master and the man, were alike subject to +sudden over-flowings;——a short silence ensued.</p> + +<p>Besides, said the corporal, resuming the discourse—but in +a gayer accent——if it had not been for that single +shot, I had never, ’an please your honour, been in +love——</p> + +<p>So, thou wast once in love, <i>Trim!</i> said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, smiling——</p> + +<p>Souse! replied the corporal—over head and ears! an’ +please your honour. Prithee when? where?—and how came it to +pass?—I never heard one word of it before; quoth my uncle +<i>Toby:</i>——I dare say, answered <i>Trim</i>, that +every drummer and serjeant’s son in the regiment knew of +it——It’s high time I should——said my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>Your honour remembers with concern, said the corporal, the total +rout and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of +<i>Landen;</i> every one was left to shift for himself; and if it +had not been for the regiments of <i>Wyndham, Lumley</i>, and +<i>Galway</i>, which covered the retreat over the bridge +<i>Neerspeeken</i>, the king himself could scarce have gained +it——he was press’d hard, as your honour knows, on +every side of him——</p> + +<p>Gallant mortal! cried my uncle <i>Toby</i>, caught up with +enthusiasm—this moment, now that all is lost, I see him +galloping across me, corporal, to the left, to bring up the remains +of the <i>English</i> horse along with him to support the right, +and tear the laurel from <i>Luxembourg</i>’s +brows, if yet ’tis possible——I see him with the +knot of his scarfe just shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor +<i>Galway</i>’s regiment—riding along the +line—then wheeling about, and charging <i>Conti</i> at the +head of it——Brave, brave, by heaven! cried my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—he deserves a crown——As richly, as a +thief a halter; shouted <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> knew the corporal’s +loyalty;—otherwise the comparison was not at all to his +mind——it did not altogether strike the corporal’s +fancy when he had made it——but it could not be +recall’d——so he had nothing to do, but +proceed.</p> + +<p>As the number of wounded was prodigious, and no one had time to +think of any thing but his own safety—Though <i>Talmash</i>, +said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, brought off the foot with great +prudence——But I was left upon the field, said the +corporal. Thou wast so; poor fellow! replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—So that it was noon the next day, continued the +corporal, before I was exchanged, and put into a cart +with thirteen or fourteen more, in order to be convey’d to +our hospital.</p> + +<p>There is no part of the body, an’ please your honour, +where a wound occasions more intolerable anguish than upon the +knee——</p> + +<p>Except the groin; said my uncle <i>Toby.</i> An’ please +your honour, replied the corporal, the knee, in my opinion, must +certainly be the most acute, there being so many tendons and +what-d’ye-call-’ems all about it.</p> + +<p>It is for that reason, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, that the +groin is infinitely more sensible——there being not only +as many tendons and what-d’ye-call-’ems (for I know +their names as little as thou dost)——about +it——but moreover * * *——</p> + +<p>Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, who had been all the time in her +arbour—instantly stopp’d her +breath—unpinn’d her mob at the chin, and stood upon one +leg——</p> + +<p>The dispute was maintained with amicable and equal force betwixt +my uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> for some time; till +<i>Trim</i> at length recollecting that he had often cried at his +master’s sufferings, but never shed a tear at his +own—was for giving up the point, which my uncle <i>Toby</i> +would not allow——’Tis a proof of nothing, +<i>Trim</i>, said he, but the generosity of thy +temper——</p> + +<p>So that whether the pain of a wound in the groin (cæteris +paribus) is greater than the pain of a wound in the +knee——or</p> + +<p>Whether the pain of a wound in the knee is not greater than the +pain of a wound in the groin——are points which to this +day remain unsettled.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> anguish of my knee, continued the +corporal, was excessive in itself; and the uneasiness of the cart, +with the roughness of the roads, which were terribly cut +up—making bad still worse—every step was death to me: so that with +the loss of blood, and the want of care-taking of me, and a fever I +felt coming on besides——(Poor soul! said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>)——all together, an’ please your +honour, was more than I could sustain.</p> + +<p>I was telling my sufferings to a young woman at a +peasant’s house, where our cart, which was the last of the +line, had halted; they had help’d me in, and the young woman +had taken a cordial out of her pocket and dropp’d it upon +some sugar, and seeing it had cheer’d me, she had given it me +a second and a third time——So I was telling her, +an’ please your honour, the anguish I was in, and was saying +it was so intolerable to me, that I had much rather lie down upon +the bed, turning my face towards one which was in the corner of the +room—and die, than go on——when, upon her +attempting to lead me to it, I fainted away in her arms. She was a +good soul! as your honour, said the corporal, wiping his eyes, will +hear.</p> + +<p>I thought <i>love</i> had been a joyous thing, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>’Tis the most serious thing, an’ please your honour +(sometimes), that is in the world.</p> + +<p>By the persuasion of the young woman, continued the corporal, +the cart with the wounded men set off without me: she had assured +them I should expire immediately if I was put into the cart. So +when I came to myself——I found myself in a still quiet +cottage, with no one but the young woman, and the peasant and his +wife. I was laid across the bed in the corner of the room, with my +wounded leg upon a chair, and the young woman beside me, holding +the corner of her handkerchief dipp’d in vinegar to my nose +with one hand, and rubbing my temples with the other.</p> + +<p>I took her at first for the daughter of the peasant (for it was +no inn)—so had offer’d her a little purse with eighteen +florins, which my poor brother <i>Tom</i> (here <i>Trim</i> +wip’d his eyes) had sent me as a token, by a recruit, just before he set out for +<i>Lisbon</i>——</p> + +<p>——I never told your honour that piteous story +yet——here <i>Trim</i> wiped his eyes a third time.</p> + +<p>The young woman call’d the old man and his wife into the +room, to shew them the money, in order to gain me credit for a bed +and what little necessaries I should want, till I should be in a +condition to be got to the hospital——Come then! said +she, tying up the little purse—I’ll be your +banker—but as that office alone will not keep me +employ’d, I’ll be your nurse too.</p> + +<p>I thought by her manner of speaking this, as well as by her +dress, which I then began to consider more +attentively——that the young woman could not be the +daughter of the peasant.</p> + +<p>She was in black down to her toes, with her hair conceal’d +under a cambric border, laid close to her forehead: she was one of +those kind of nuns, an’ please your honour, of which, your +honour knows, there are a good many in <i>Flanders</i>, +which they let go loose——By thy description, +<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I dare say she was a young +<i>Beguine</i>, of which there are none to be found any where but +in the <i>Spanish Netherlands</i>—except at +<i>Amsterdam</i>——they differ from nuns in this, that +they can quit their cloister if they choose to marry; they visit +and take care of the sick by profession——I had rather, +for my own part, they did it out of good-nature.</p> + +<p>——She often told me, quoth <i>Trim</i>, she did it +for the love of Christ—I did not like it.——I +believe, <i>Trim</i>, we are both wrong, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—we’ll ask Mr. <i>Yorick</i> about it +to-night at my brother <i>Shandy</i>’s——so put me +in mind; added my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>The young <i>Beguine</i>, continued the corporal, had scarce +given herself time to tell me “she would be my nurse,” +when she hastily turned about to begin the office of one, and +prepare something for me——and in a short +time—though I thought it a long one—she came back with +flannels, &c. &c. and having fomented my knee soundly for a +couple of hours, &c. and made me a thin bason of gruel for my +supper—she wish’d me rest, and promised to be with me +early in the morning.——She wish’d me, an’ +please your honour, what was not to be had. My fever ran very high +that night—her figure made sad disturbance within me—I +was every moment cutting the world in two—to give her half of +it—and every moment was I crying, That I had nothing but a +knapsack and eighteen florins to share with her——The +whole night long was the fair <i>Beguine</i>, like an angel, close +by my bed-side, holding back my curtain and offering me +cordials—and I was only awakened from my dream by her coming +there at the hour promised, and giving them in reality. In truth, +she was scarce ever from me; and so accustomed was I to receive +life from her hands, that my heart sickened, and I lost colour when +she left the room: and yet, continued the corporal (making one of the strangest reflections upon it in +the world)——</p> + +<p> +——“<i>It was not love</i>”——for during the +three weeks she was almost constantly with me, fomenting my knee with her hand, +night and day—I can honestly say, an’ please your honour—that +* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * once. +</p> + +<p>That was very odd, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>I think so too—said Mrs. <i>Wadman.</i></p> + +<p>It never did, said the corporal.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLV</small> +</h3> + +<p>——But ’tis no marvel, continued the +corporal—seeing my uncle <i>Toby</i> musing upon it—for +Love, an’ please your honour, is exactly like war, in this; +that a soldier, though he has escaped three weeks complete +o’<i>Saturday</i> night,—may nevertheless be shot +through his heart on <i>Sunday</i> morning——<i>It +happened so here</i>, an’ please your honour, with this +difference only—that it was on <i>Sunday</i> in the afternoon, when I fell in love all +at once with a sisserara——It burst upon me, an’ +please your honour, like a bomb——scarce giving me time +to say, “God bless me.”</p> + +<p>I thought, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, a man never +fell in love so very suddenly.</p> + +<p>Yes, an’ please your honour, if he is in the way of +it——replied <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>I prithee, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, inform me how this matter +happened.</p> + +<p>——With all pleasure, said the corporal, making a +bow.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>HAD</small> escaped, continued the +corporal, all that time from falling in love, and had gone on to +the end of the chapter, had it not been predestined +otherwise——there is no resisting our fate.</p> + +<p>It was on a <i>Sunday</i>, in the afternoon, as I told your +honour.</p> + +<p>The old man and his wife had walked +out——</p> + +<p>Every thing was still and hush as midnight about the +house——</p> + +<p>There was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the +yard——</p> + +<p>——When the fair <i>Beguine</i> came in to see +me.</p> + +<p>My wound was then in a fair way of doing well——the +inflammation had been gone off for some time, but it was succeeded +with an itching both above and below my knee, so insufferable, that +I had not shut my eyes the whole night for it.</p> + +<p>Let me see it, said she, kneeling down upon the ground parallel +to my knee, and laying her hand upon the part below +it——it only wants rubbing a little, said the +<i>Beguine;</i> so covering it with the bed-clothes, she began with +the fore-finger of her right hand to rub under my knee, guiding her +fore-finger backwards and forwards by the edge of the flannel which +kept on the dressing.</p> + +<p>In five or six minutes I felt slightly the end of +her second finger—and presently it was laid flat with the +other, and she continued rubbing in that way round and round for a +good while; it then came into my head, that I should fall in +love—I blush’d when I saw how white a hand she +had—I shall never, an’ please your honour, behold +another hand so white whilst I live——</p> + +<p>——Not in that place, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——</p> + +<p>Though it was the most serious despair in nature to the +corporal—he could not forbear smiling.</p> + +<p>The young <i>Beguine</i>, continued the corporal, perceiving it +was of great service to me—from rubbing for some time, with +two fingers—proceeded to rub at length, with three—till +by little and little she brought down the fourth, and then +rubb’d with her whole hand: I will never say another word, +an’ please your honour, upon hands again—but it was +softer than sattin——</p> + +<p>——Prithee, <i>Trim</i>, commend it as much as thou +wilt, said my uncle <i>Toby;</i> I shall hear thy story with the +more delight——The corporal thank’d his master +most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the +<i>Beguine</i>’s hand but the same over again——he +proceeded to the effects of it.</p> + +<p> +The fair <i>Beguine</i>, said the corporal, continued rubbing with her whole +hand under my knee—till I fear’d her zeal would weary +her——“I would do a thousand times more,” said she, +“for the love of Christ”——In saying which, she +pass’d her hand across the flannel, to the part above my knee, which I +had equally complain’d of, and rubb’d it also. +</p> + +<p>I perceiv’d, then, I was beginning to be in +love——</p> + +<p>As she continued rub-rub-rubbing—I felt it spread from +under her hand, an’ please your honour, to every part of my +frame——</p> + +<p>The more she rubb’d, and the longer strokes she +took——the more the fire kindled in my veins——till at length, by +two or three strokes longer than the rest——my passion +rose to the highest pitch——I seiz’d her +hand——</p> + +<p>——And then thou clapped’st it to thy lips, +<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——and madest a +speech.</p> + +<p>Whether the corporal’s amour terminated precisely in the +way my uncle <i>Toby</i> described it, is not material; it is +enough that it contained in it the essence of all the love romances +which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> soon as the corporal had finished +the story of his amour—or rather my uncle <i>Toby</i> for +him—Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> silently sallied forth from her +arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, pass’d the wicker gate, +and advanced slowly towards my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +sentry-box: the disposition which <i>Trim</i> had made in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s mind, was too favourable a crisis to be let +slipp’d——</p> + +<p>——The attack was determin’d upon: it was +facilitated still more by my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s having +ordered the corporal to wheel off the pioneer’s shovel, the +spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military stores which +lay scatter’d upon the ground where <i>Dunkirk</i> +stood—The corporal had march’d—the field was +clear.</p> + +<p>Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or +writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a +man has occasion to do—to act by plan: for if ever Plan, +independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters +of gold (I mean in the archives of <i>Gotham</i>)—it was +certainly the P<small>LAN</small> of Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s +attack of my uncle <i>Toby</i> in his sentry-box, <small>BY</small> +P<small>LAN</small>——Now the plan hanging up in it at +this juncture, being the Plan of <i>Dunkirk</i>—and the tale +of <i>Dunkirk</i> a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression +she could make: and besides, could she have gone upon it—the +manœuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the +sentry-box, was so outdone by that of the fair <i>Beguine</i>’s, in <i>Trim</i>’s +story—that just then, that particular attack, however +successful before—became the most heartless attack that could +be made——</p> + +<p>O! let woman alone for this. Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had scarce +open’d the wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the +change of circumstances.</p> + +<p>——She formed a new attack in a moment.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——I am half distracted, captain <i>Shandy</i>, said +Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her +left eye, as she approach’d the door of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s sentry-box——a mote——or +sand——or something——I know not what, has +got into this eye of mine——do look into it—it is +not in the white—</p> + +<p>In saying which, Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> edged herself close in +beside my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and squeezing herself down upon the +corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up—Do +look into it—said she.</p> + +<p>Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of +heart, as ever child look’d into a raree-shew-box; and +’twere as much a sin to have hurt thee.</p> + +<p>——If a man will be peeping of his own accord into +things of that nature——I’ve nothing to say to +it——</p> + +<p> +My uncle <i>Toby</i> never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have +sat quietly upon a sofa from <i>June</i> to <i>January</i> (which, you know, +takes in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the +<i>Thracian</i><a href="#fn40" name="fnref40"><sup>[40]</sup></a> +<i>Rodope</i>’s besides him, without being able to tell, whether it was a +black or blue one. +</p> + +<p>The difficulty was to get my uncle <i>Toby</i>, to look at one +at all.</p> + +<p>’Tis surmounted. And</p> + +<p>I see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the +ashes falling out of it—looking—and looking—then +rubbing his eyes—and looking again, with twice the +good-nature that ever <i>Galileo</i> look’d for a spot in the +sun.</p> + +<p>——In vain! for by all the powers which animate the +organ——Widow <i>Wadman</i>’s left eye shines this +moment as lucid as her right——there is neither mote, or +sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter +floating in it—There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but +one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part +of it, in all directions, into thine——</p> + +<p>——If thou lookest, uncle <i>Toby</i>, in search of +this mote one moment longer,——thou art undone.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn40"></a> <a href="#fnref40">[40]</a> +<i>Rodope Thracia</i> tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exactè oculus +intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin +caperetur.——I know not who. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XLIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>N</small> eye is for all the world exactly +like a cannon, in this respect; That it is not so much the eye or +the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the +eye——and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the +one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don’t +think the comparison a bad one: However, as ’tis made and +placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all +I desire in return, is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s eyes (except once in the next period), that +you keep it in your fancy.</p> + +<p>I protest, Madam, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I can see nothing +whatever in your eye.</p> + +<p>It is not in the white; said Mrs <i>Wadman:</i> my uncle +<i>Toby</i> look’d with might and main into the +pupil——</p> + +<p>Now of all the eyes which ever were created——from +your own, Madam, up to those of <i>Venus</i> herself, which +certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a +head——there never was an eye of them all, so fitted to +rob my uncle <i>Toby</i> of his repose, as the very eye, at which +he was looking——it was not, Madam a rolling +eye——a romping or a wanton one—nor was it an eye +sparkling—petulant or imperious—of high claims and +terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of human +nature, of which my uncle <i>Toby</i> was made up——but +’twas an eye full of gentle salutations——and soft +responses——speaking——not like the trumpet +stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to, holds +coarse converse——but whispering soft——like +the last low accent of an expiring +saint——“How can you live comfortless, +captain <i>Shandy</i>, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head +on——or trust your cares to?”</p> + +<p>It was an eye——</p> + +<p>But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word +about it.</p> + +<p>——It did my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s business.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + L</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> is nothing shews the character +of my father and my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in a more entertaining +light, than their different manner of deportment, under the same +accident——for I call not love a misfortune, from a +persuasion, that a man’s heart is ever the better for +it——Great God! what must my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +have been, when ’twas all benignity without it.</p> + +<p>My father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject +to this passion, before he married——but from a little +subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it +befell him, he would never submit to it like a christian; but would +pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the Devil, and write +the bitterest Philippicks against the eye that ever man +wrote——there is one in verse upon somebody’s eye +or other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his +rest; which in his first transport of resentment against it, he +begins thus:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“A Devil ’tis——and mischief such doth work<br/> +As never yet did <i>Pagan, Jew</i>, or <i>Turk.</i>”<a href="#fn41" name="fnref41"><sup>[41]</sup></a> +</p> + +<p>In short, during the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and +foul language, approaching rather towards +malediction——only he did not do it with as much method +as <i>Ernulphus</i>——he was too impetuous; nor with +<i>Ernulphus</i>’s policy——for tho’ my +father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and +that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or +abetting to his love——yet never concluded his chapter +of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as +one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would say, that +ever was let loose in the world.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>, on the contrary, took it like a +lamb——sat still and let the poison work in his veins +without resistance——in the sharpest exacerbations of +his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one fretful or +discontented word——he blamed neither heaven nor +earth——or thought or spoke an injurious thing of any +body, or any part of it; he sat solitary and pensive with his +pipe——looking at his lame leg——then +whiffing out a sentimental heigh ho! which mixing with the smoke, incommoded no one +mortal.</p> + +<p>He took it like a lamb——I say.</p> + +<p> +In truth he had mistook it at first; for having taken a ride with my father, +that very morning, to save if possible a beautiful wood, which the dean and +chapter were hewing down to give to the poor;<a href="#fn42" +name="fnref42"><sup>[42]</sup></a> which said wood being in full view of my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s house, and of singular service to him in his +description of the battle of <i>Wynnendale</i>—by trotting on too hastily +to save it——upon an uneasy saddle——worse horse, &c. +&c. . . it had so happened, that the serous part of the +blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nethermost part of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——the first shootings of which (as my uncle <i>Toby</i> +had no experience of love) he had taken for a part of the passion—till +the blister breaking in the one case—and the other remaining—my +uncle <i>Toby</i> was presently convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep +wound——but that it had gone to his heart. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn41"></a> <a href="#fnref41">[41]</a> +This will be printed with my father’s Life of <i>Socrates</i>, &c. +&c. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn42"></a> <a href="#fnref42">[42]</a> +Mr <i>Shandy</i> must mean the poor <i>in spirit;</i> inasmuch as they divided +the money amongst themselves. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> world is ashamed of being +virtuous——my uncle <i>Toby</i> knew little of the +world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow +<i>Wadman</i>, he had no conception that the thing was any more to +be made a mystery of, than if Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had given him a +cut with a gap’d knife across his finger: Had it been +otherwise——yet as he ever look’d upon <i>Trim</i> +as a humble friend; and saw fresh reasons every day of his life, to +treat him as such——it would have made no variation in +the manner in which he informed him of the affair.</p> + +<p>“I am in love, corporal!” quoth my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>N</small> love!——said the +corporal—your honour was very well the day before yesterday, +when I was telling your honour of the story of the King of +<i>Bohemia—Bohemia!</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i> - - - - +musing a long time - - - What became of that story, +<i>Trim?</i></p> + +<p>—We lost it, an’ please your honour, somehow betwixt +us—but your honour was as free from love then, as I +am——’twas just whilst thou went’st off with +the wheel-barrow——with Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>——She has left a ball here—added +my uncle <i>Toby</i>—pointing to his breast——</p> + +<p>——She can no more, an’ please your honour, +stand a siege, than she can fly—cried the +corporal——</p> + +<p>——But as we are neighbours, <i>Trim</i>,—the +best way I think is to let her know it civilly first—quoth my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>Now if I might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your +honour——</p> + +<p>—Why else do I talk to thee, <i>Trim?</i> said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, mildly——</p> + +<p>—Then I would begin, an’ please your honour, with +making a good thundering attack upon her, in return—and +telling her civilly afterwards—for if she knows any thing of +your honour’s being in love, before +hand——L—d help her!—she knows no more at +present of it, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>—than +the child unborn——</p> + +<p>Precious souls!——</p> + +<p>Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had told it, with all its circumstances, to +Mrs. <i>Bridget</i> twenty-four hours before; and was at that very +moment sitting in council with her, touching some slight misgivings +with regard to the issue of the affairs, which the Devil, who never +lies dead in a ditch, had put into her head—before he would +allow half time, to get quietly through her <i>Te Deum.</i></p> + +<p>I am terribly afraid, said widow <i>Wadman</i>, in case I should +marry him, <i>Bridget</i>—that the poor captain will not enjoy his +health, with the monstrous wound upon his groin——</p> + +<p>It may not, Madam, be so very large, replied <i>Bridget</i>, as +you think——and I believe, besides, added she—that +’tis dried up——</p> + +<p>——I could like to know—merely for his sake, +said Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>——</p> + +<p>—We’ll know and long and the broad of it, in ten +days—answered Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, for whilst the captain is +paying his addresses to you—I’m confident Mr. +<i>Trim</i> will be for making love to me—and I’ll let +him as much as he will—added <i>Bridget</i>—to get it +all out of him——</p> + +<p>The measures were taken at once——and my uncle +<i>Toby</i> and the corporal went on with theirs.</p> + +<p>Now, quoth the corporal, setting his left hand a-kimbo, and +giving such a flourish with his right, as just promised +success—and no more——if your honour will give me +leave to lay down the plan of this attack——</p> + +<p>——Thou wilt please me by it, <i>Trim</i>, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, exceedingly—and as I foresee thou must act +in it as my <i>aid de camp</i>, here’s a crown, corporal, to +begin with, to steep thy commission.</p> + +<p>Then, an’ please your honour, said the corporal (making a +bow first for his commission)—we will begin with getting your +honour’s laced clothes out of the great campaign-trunk, to be +well air’d, and have the blue and gold taken up at the +sleeves—and I’ll put your white ramallie-wig fresh into +pipes—and send for a taylor, to have your honour’s thin +scarlet breeches turn’d——</p> + +<p>—I had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—They will be too clumsy—said the +corporal.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——Thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk to my +sword——’Twill be only in your honour’s way, +replied <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>—But your honour’s two razors shall be new +set—and I will get my <i>Montero</i> cap furbish’d up, +and put on poor lieutenant <i>Le Fever</i>’s regimental coat, +which your honour gave me to wear for his sake—and as soon as +your honour is clean shaved—and has got your clean shirt on, +with your blue and gold, or your fine +scarlet——sometimes one and sometimes +t’other—and every thing is ready for the +attack—we’ll march up boldly, as if ’twas to the +face of a bastion; and whilst your honour engages Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> in the parlour, to the right——I’ll +attack Mrs. <i>Bridget</i> in the kitchen, to the left; and having +seiz’d the pass, I’ll answer for it, said the corporal, +snapping his fingers over his head—that the day is our +own.</p> + +<p>I wish I may but manage it right; said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—but I declare, corporal, I had rather march up to +the very edge of a trench——</p> + +<p>—A woman is quite a different thing—said the +corporal.</p> + +<p>—I suppose so, quoth my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>F</small> any thing in this world, which my +father said, could have provoked my uncle <i>Toby</i>, during the +time he was in love, it was the perverse use my father was always +making of an expression of <i>Hilarion</i> the hermit; who, in +speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other +instrumental parts of his religion—would say—tho’ +with more facetiousness than became an +hermit—“That they were the means he used, to make +his <i>ass</i> (meaning his body) leave off kicking.”</p> + +<p>It pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of +expressing——but of libelling, at the same time, the +desires and appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many +years of my father’s life, ’twas his constant mode of +expression—he never used the word <i>passions</i> once—but <i>ass</i> always +instead of them——So that he might be said truly, to +have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of +some other man’s, during all that time.</p> + +<p>I must here observe to you the difference betwixt</p> + +<p>My father’s ass</p> + +<p>and my hobby-horse—in order to keep +characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go +along.</p> + +<p>For my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a +vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about +him——’Tis the sporting little filly-folly which +carries you out for the present hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a +picture, a fiddlestick—an uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +siege—or an <i>any thing</i>, which a man makes a shift to +get a-stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes +of life—’Tis as useful a beast as is in the whole +creation—nor do I really see how the world could do without +it——</p> + +<p>——But for my father’s ass——oh! +mount him—mount him—mount him—(that’s three +times, is it not?)—mount him not:—’tis a beast +concupiscent—and foul befal the man, who does not hinder him +from kicking.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>ELL</small>! dear brother <i>Toby</i>, said +my father, upon his first seeing him after he fell in +love—and how goes it with your A<small>SSE</small>?</p> + +<p>Now my uncle <i>Toby</i> thinking more of the part where he had +had the blister, than of <i>Hilarion</i>’s metaphor—and +our preconceptions having (you know) as great a power over the +sounds of words as the shapes of things, he had imagined, that my +father, who was not very ceremonious in his choice of words, had +enquired after the part by its proper name: so notwithstanding my +mother, doctor <i>Slop</i>, and Mr. <i>Yorick</i>, were sitting in +the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the term my father had made use of than +not. When a man is hemm’d in by two indecorums, and must +commit one of ’em—I always observe—let him chuse +which he will, the world will blame him—so I should not be +astonished if it blames my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>My A—e, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, is much +better—brother <i>Shandy</i>—My father had formed great +expectations from his Asse in this onset; and would have brought +him on again; but doctor <i>Slop</i> setting up an intemperate +laugh—and my mother crying out L— bless us!—it +drove my father’s Asse off the field—and the laugh then +becoming general—there was no bringing him back to the +charge, for some time——</p> + +<p>And so the discourse went on without him.</p> + +<p>Every body, said my mother, says you are in love, brother +<i>Toby</i>,—and we hope it is true.</p> + +<p>I am as much in love, sister, I believe, replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, as any man usually is——Humph! said my +father——and when did you know it? quoth my +mother——</p> + +<p>——When the blister broke; replied my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>’s reply put my father into good +temper—so he charg’d o’ foot.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> the ancients agree, brother +<i>Toby</i>, said my father, that there are two different and +distinct kinds of love, according to the different parts which are +affected by it—the Brain or Liver——I think when a +man is in love, it behoves him a little to consider which of the +two he is fallen into.</p> + +<p>What signifies it, brother <i>Shandy</i>, replied my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, which of the two it is, provided it will but make a +man marry, and love his wife, and get a few children?</p> + +<p>——A few children! cried my father, rising out of his +chair, and looking full in my mother’s face, as he forced his +way betwixt her’s and doctor <i>Slop</i>’s—a few children! cried my father, repeating my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s words as he walk’d to and +fro——</p> + +<p>——Not, my dear brother <i>Toby</i>, cried my father, +recovering himself all at once, and coming close up to the back of +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s chair—not that I should be sorry +hadst thou a score—on the contrary, I should +rejoice—and be as kind, <i>Toby</i>, to every one of them as +a father—</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> stole his hand unperceived behind his +chair, to give my father’s a squeeze——</p> + +<p>——Nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my +uncle <i>Toby</i>’s hand—so much dost thou possess, my +dear <i>Toby</i>, of the milk of human nature, and so little of its +asperities—’tis piteous the world is not peopled by +creatures which resemble thee; and was I an <i>Asiatic</i> monarch, +added my father, heating himself with his new project—I would +oblige thee, provided it would not impair thy strength—or dry +up thy radical moisture too fast—or weaken thy memory or +fancy, brother <i>Toby</i>, which these gymnics inordinately taken are apt to do—else, dear +<i>Toby</i>, I would procure thee the most beautiful woman in my +empire, and I would oblige thee, <i>nolens, volens</i>, to beget +for me one subject every <i>month</i>——</p> + +<p>As my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my +mother took a pinch of snuff.</p> + +<p>Now I would not, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, get a child, +<i>nolens, volens</i>, that is, whether I would or no, to please +the greatest prince upon earth——</p> + +<p>——And ’twould be cruel in me, brother +<i>Toby</i>, to compel thee; said my father—but ’tis a +case put to shew thee, that it is not thy begetting a +child—in case thou should’st be able—but the +system of Love and Marriage thou goest upon, which I would set thee +right in——</p> + +<p>There is at least, said <i>Yorick</i>, a great deal of reason +and plain sense in captain <i>Shandy</i>’s opinion of love; +and ’tis amongst the ill-spent hours of my life, which I have +to answer for, that I have read so many flourishing poets and +rhetoricians in my time, from whom I never could +extract so much——</p> + +<p>I wish, <i>Yorick</i>, said my father, you had read +<i>Plato;</i> for there you would have learnt that there are two +L<small>OVES</small>—I know there were two +R<small>ELIGIONS</small>, replied <i>Yorick</i>, amongst the +ancients——one—for the vulgar, and another for the +learned;—but I think <small>ONE</small> L<small>OVE</small> +might have served both of them very well—</p> + +<p>I could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: +for of these Loves, according to <i>Ficinus</i>’s comment +upon <i>Velasius</i>, the one is rational——</p> + +<p>——the other is <i>natural</i>——<br/> +the first ancient——without mother——where +<i>Venus</i> had nothing to do: the second, begotten of +<i>Jupiter</i> and <i>Dione</i>—</p> + +<p>——Pray, brother, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, what +has a man who believes in God to do with this? My father could not +stop to answer, for fear of breaking the thread of his +discourse——</p> + +<p>This latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of +<i>Venus.</i></p> + +<p>The first, which is the golden chain let down from heaven, +excites to love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to the +desire of philosophy and truth——the second, excites to +<i>desire</i>, simply——</p> + +<p>——I think the procreation of children as beneficial +to the world, said <i>Yorick</i>, as the finding out the +longitude——</p> + +<p>——To be sure, said my mother, <i>love</i> keeps +peace in the world——</p> + +<p>——In the <i>house</i>—my dear, I +own—</p> + +<p>——It replenishes the earth; said my +mother——</p> + +<p>But it keeps heaven empty—my dear; replied my father.</p> + +<p>——’Tis Virginity, cried <i>Slop</i>, +triumphantly, which fills paradise.</p> + +<p>Well push’d nun! quoth my father.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> father had such a skirmishing, +cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations, +thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a re were twenty people in company—in less than half an hour +he was sure to have every one of ’em against him.</p> + +<p>What did not a little contribute to leave him thus without an +ally, was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the +rest, he would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him +justice, when he was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, +that ’twould have been a concern, either to a brave man or a +good-natured one, to have seen him driven out.</p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i>, for this reason, though he would often attack +him—yet could never bear to do it with all his force.</p> + +<p>Doctor <i>Slop</i>’s V<small>IRGINITY</small>, in the +close of the last chapter, had got him for once on the right side +of the rampart; and he was beginning to blow up all the convents in +<i>Christendom</i> about <i>Slop</i>’s ears, when corporal +<i>Trim</i> came into the parlour to inform my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +that his thin scarlet breeches, in which the attack was to be made +upon Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, would not do; for that the taylor, in +ripping them up, in order to turn them, had found they had been +turn’d before——Then turn them again, brother, +said my father, rapidly, for there will be many a turning of +’em yet before all’s done in the +affair——They are as rotten as dirt, said the +corporal——Then by all means, said my father, bespeak a +new pair, brother——for though I know, continued my +father, turning himself to the company, that widow <i>Wadman</i> +has been deeply in love with my brother <i>Toby</i> for many years, +and has used every art and circumvention of woman to outwit him +into the same passion, yet now that she has caught +him——her fever will be pass’d its +height——</p> + +<p>——She has gained her point.</p> + +<p>In this case, continued my father, which <i>Plato</i>, I am +persuaded, never thought of——Love, you see, is not so +much a S<small>ENTIMENT</small> as a S<small>ITUATION</small>, into +which a man enters, as my brother <i>Toby</i> would do, into a +<i>corps</i>——no matter whether he loves the service or +no——being once in it—he acts as if he did; and +takes every step to shew himself a man of prowesse.</p> + +<p>The hypothesis, like the rest of my father’s, was +plausible enough, and my uncle <i>Toby</i> had but a single word to +object to it—in which <i>Trim</i> stood ready to second +him——but my father had not drawn his +conclusion——</p> + +<p>For this reason, continued my father (stating the case over +again)—notwithstanding all the world knows, that Mrs. +<i>Wadman affects</i> my brother <i>Toby</i>—and my brother +<i>Toby</i> contrariwise <i>affects</i> Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, and no +obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up this very night, +yet will I answer for it, that this self-same tune will not be +play’d this twelvemonth.</p> + +<p>We have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +looking up interrogatively in <i>Trim</i>’s face.</p> + +<p>I would lay my <i>Montero</i>-cap, said +<i>Trim</i>——Now <i>Trim</i>’s +<i>Montero</i>-cap, as I once told you, was his constant wager; and having furbish’d it up that very night, in +order to go upon the attack—it made the odds look more +considerable——I would lay, an’ please your +honour, my <i>Montero</i>-cap to a shilling—was it proper, +continued <i>Trim</i> (making a bow), to offer a wager before your +honours——</p> + +<p>——There is nothing improper in it, said my +father—’tis a mode of expression; for in saying thou +would’st lay thy <i>Montero</i>-cap to a shilling—all +thou meanest is this—that thou believest——</p> + +<p>——Now, What do’st thou believe?</p> + +<p>That widow <i>Wadman</i>, an’ please your worship, cannot +hold it out ten days——</p> + +<p>And whence, cried <i>Slop</i>, jeeringly, hast thou all this +knowledge of woman, friend?</p> + +<p>By falling in love with a popish clergy-woman; said +<i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>’Twas a <i>Beguine</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>Doctor <i>Slop</i> was too much in wrath to listen to the +distinction; and my father taking that very crisis to fall in +helter-skelter upon the whole order of Nuns and <i>Beguines</i>, a +set of silly, fusty, baggages——<i>Slop</i> could not stand +it——and my uncle Toby having some measures to take +about his breeches—and <i>Yorick</i> about his fourth general +division—in order for their several attacks next +day—the company broke up: and my father being left alone, and +having half an hour upon his hands betwixt that and bed-time; he +called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote my uncle <i>Toby</i> the +following letter of instructions:</p> + +<p>My dear brother <i>Toby</i>,</p> + +<p>W<small>HAT</small> I am going to say to thee is +upon the nature of women, and of love-making to them; and perhaps +it is as well for thee—tho’ not so well for +me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon +that head, and that I am able to write it to thee.</p> + +<p>Had it been the good pleasure of him who disposes of our +lots—and thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou should’st have +dipp’d the pen this moment into the ink, instead of myself; +but that not being the case———Mrs <i>Shandy</i> +being now close beside me, preparing for bed——I have +thrown together without order, and just as they have come into my +mind, such hints and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; +intending, in this, to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, +my dear <i>Toby</i>, of the manner in which it will be +accepted.</p> + +<p>In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion +in the affair——though I perceive from a glow in my +cheek, that I blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, +as well knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of +its offices thou neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one +(during the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, +which I would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon +the enterprize, whether it be in the morning or the afternoon, +without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty God, that he may defend thee +from the evil one.</p> + +<p>Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four +or five days, but oftner if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig +before her, thro’ absence of mind, she should be able to +discover how much has been cut away by Time——how much +by <i>Trim.</i></p> + +<p>—’Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her +fancy.</p> + +<p>Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, +<i>Toby</i>——</p> + +<p> +“<i>That women are timid:</i>” And ’tis well they +are——else there would be no dealing with them. +</p> + +<p>Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy +thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.</p> + +<p>——A just medium prevents all conclusions.</p> + +<p>Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to +utter it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever +approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: +For this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the +tongs and poker.</p> + +<p>Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse +with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to +keep her from all books and writings which tend thereto: there are +some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read +over—it will be well: but suffer her not to look into +<i>Rabelais</i>, or <i>Scarron</i>, or <i>Don +Quixote</i>——</p> + +<p>——They are all books which excite laughter; and thou +knowest, dear <i>Toby</i>, that there is no passion so serious as +lust.</p> + +<p>Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her +parlour.</p> + +<p>And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sopha with her, +and she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware +of taking it——thou canst not lay thy hand on hers, but +she will feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other +things as thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt +have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and thy Asse continues +still kicking, which there is great reason to +suppose——Thou must begin, with first losing a few +ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the +ancient <i>Scythians</i>, who cured the most intemperate fits of +the appetite by that means.</p> + +<p><i>Avicenna</i>, after this, is for having the part anointed +with the syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and +purges——and I believe rightly. But thou must eat little +or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer——nor even +foal’s flesh by any means; and carefully +abstain——that is, as much as thou canst, from peacocks, +cranes, coots, didappers, and water-hens——</p> + +<p>As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the +infusion of V<small>ERVAIN</small> and the herb +H<small>ANEA</small>, of which <i>Ælian</i> relates such +effects—but if thy stomach palls with it—discontinue it +from time to time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, +water-lillies, woodbine, and lettice, in the stead of them.</p> + +<p>There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at +present——</p> + +<p>——Unless the breaking out of a fresh +war——So wishing every thing, dear <i>Toby</i>, for +best,</p> + +<p>I rest thy affectionate brother,</p> + +<p>W<small>ALTER</small> S<small>HANDY</small>.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HILST</small> my father was writing his +letter of instructions, my uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal were +busy in preparing every thing for the attack. As the turning of the +thin scarlet breeches was laid aside (at least for the present), +there was nothing which should put it off beyond the next morning; +so accordingly it was resolv’d upon, for eleven +o’clock.</p> + +<p>Come, my dear, said my father to my mother—’twill be +but like a brother and sister, if you and I take a walk down to my +brother <i>Toby</i>’s——to countenance him in this +attack of his.</p> + +<p> +My uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal had been accoutred both some time, when +my father and mother enter’d, and the clock striking eleven, were that +moment in motion to sally forth—but the account of this is worth more +than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth<a href="#fn43" +name="fnref43"><sup>[43]</sup></a> volume of such a work as +this.——My father had no time but to put the letter of instructions +into my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s coat-pocket——and join with my +mother in wishing his attack prosperous. +</p> + +<p>I could like, said my mother, to look through the key-hole out +of <i>curiosity</i>——Call it by its right name, my +dear, quoth my father—</p> + +<p><i>And look through the key-hole</i> as long as you will.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn43"></a> <a href="#fnref43">[43]</a> +Alluding to the first edition. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LX</small> +</h3> + +<p>I <small>CALL</small> all the powers of time and +chance, which severally check us in our careers in this world, to +bear me witness, that I could never yet get fairly to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s amours, till this very moment, that my +mother’s <i>curiosity</i>, as she stated the +affair,——or a different impulse in her, as my father +would have it——wished her to take a peep at them +through the key-hole.</p> + +<p>“Call it, my dear, by its right name, quoth my +father, and look through the key-hole as long as you +will.”</p> + +<p>Nothing but the fermentation of that little subacid humour, +which I have often spoken of, in my father’s habit, could +have vented such an insinuation——he was however frank +and generous in his nature, and at all times open to conviction; so +that he had scarce got to the last word of this ungracious retort, +when his conscience smote him.</p> + +<p>My mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted +under his right, in such wise, that the inside of her hand rested +upon the back of his—she raised her fingers, and let them +fall—it could scarce be call’d a tap; or if it was a +tap——’twould have puzzled a casuist to say, +whether ’twas a tap of remonstrance, or a tap of confession: +my father, who was all sensibilities from head to foot, +class’d it right—Conscience redoubled her blow—he +turn’d his face suddenly the other way, and my mother +supposing his body was about to turn with it in order to move +homewards, by a cross movement of her right leg, keeping her left +as its centre, brought herself so far in front, that as he turned +his head, he met her eye——Confusion again! he saw a +thousand reasons to wipe out the reproach, and as many to reproach +himself——a thin, blue, chill, pellucid chrystal with +all its humours so at rest, the least mote or speck of desire might +have been seen, at the bottom of it, had it existed——it +did not——and how I happen to be so lewd myself, particularly a +little before the vernal and autumnal equinoxes——Heaven +above knows——My +mother——madam——was so at no time, either by +nature, by institution, or example.</p> + +<p>A temperate current of blood ran orderly through her veins in +all months of the year, and in all critical moments both of the day +and night alike; nor did she superinduce the least heat into her +humours from the manual effervescencies of devotional tracts, which +having little or no meaning in them, nature is oft-times obliged to +find one——And as for my father’s example! +’twas so far from being either aiding or abetting thereunto, +that ’twas the whole business of his life, to keep all +fancies of that kind out of her head——Nature had done +her part, to have spared him this trouble; and what was not a +little inconsistent, my father knew it——And here am I +sitting, this 12th day of <i>August</i> 1766, in a purple jerkin +and yellow pair of slippers, without either wig or cap on, a +most tragicomical completion of his prediction, +“That I should neither think, nor act like any other +man’s child, upon that very account.”</p> + +<p>The mistake in my father, was in attacking my mother’s +motive, instead of the act itself; for certainly key-holes were +made for other purposes; and considering the act, as an act which +interfered with a true proposition, and denied a key-hole to be +what it was——it became a violation of nature; and was +so far, you see, criminal.</p> + +<p>It is for this reason, an’ please your Reverences, That +key-holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all +other holes in this world put together.</p> + +<p>——which leads me to my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +amours.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HOUGH</small> the corporal had been as good +as his word in putting my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s great +ramallie-wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any +great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the +corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy +to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well +understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have +wished. The corporal with cheary eye and both arms extended, had +fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if +possible, with a better air——had <small>SPLEEN</small> +given a look at it, ’twould have cost her ladyship a +smile——it curl’d every where but where the +corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, +would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the +dead.</p> + +<p>Such it was——or rather such would it have +seem’d upon any other brow; but the sweet look of goodness +which sat upon my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s, assimilated every +thing around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature had moreover +wrote G<small>ENTLEMAN</small> with so fair a hand in every line of +his countenance, that even his tarnish’d gold-laced hat and +huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; and though not worth a +button in themselves, yet the moment my uncle <i>Toby</i> put them +on, they became serious objects, and altogether seem’d to +have been picked up by the hand of Science to set him off to +advantage.</p> + +<p>Nothing in this world could have co-operated more powerfully +towards this, than my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s blue and +gold——<i>had not Quantity in some measure been +necessary to Grace:</i> in a period of fifteen or sixteen years +since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s life, for he seldom went further than the +bowling-green—his blue and gold had become so miserably too +straight for him, that it was with the utmost difficulty the corporal +was able to get him into them; the taking them up at the sleeves, +was of no advantage.——They were laced however down the +back, and at the seams of the sides, &c. in the mode of King +<i>William</i>’s reign; and to shorten all description, they +shone so bright against the sun that morning, and had so metallick +and doughty an air with them, that had my uncle <i>Toby</i> thought +of attacking in armour, nothing could have so well imposed upon his +imagination.</p> + +<p>As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripp’d +by the taylor between the legs, and left at <i>sixes and +sevens</i>——</p> + +<p>——Yes, Madam,——but let us govern our +fancies. It is enough they were held impracticable the night +before, and as there was no alternative in my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red +plush.</p> + +<p>The corporal had array’d himself in poor <i>Le +Fever</i>’s regimental coat; and with his hair tuck’d +up under his <i>Montero</i>-cap, which he had furbish’d +up for the occasion, march’d three paces distant +from his master: a whiff of military pride had puff’d out his +shirt at the wrist; and upon that in a black leather thong +clipp’d into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the +corporal’s stick——my uncle <i>Toby</i> carried +his cane like a pike.</p> + +<p>——It looks well at least; quoth my father to +himself.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> turn’d his +head more than once behind him, to see how he was supported by the +corporal; and the corporal as oft as he did it, gave a slight +flourish with his stick—but not vapouringly; and with the +sweetest accent of most respectful encouragement, bid his honour +“never fear.”</p> + +<p>Now my uncle <i>Toby</i> did fear; and grievously too; he knew +not (as my father had reproach’d him) so much as the right +end of a Woman from the wrong, and therefore was never altogether +at his ease near any one of them——unless in +sorrow or distress; then infinite was his pity; nor would the most +courteous knight of romance have gone further, at least upon one +leg, to have wiped away a tear from a woman’s eye; and yet +excepting once that he was beguiled into it by Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, +he had never looked stedfastly into one; and would often tell my +father in the simplicity of his heart, that it was almost (if not +about) as bad as taking bawdy.——</p> + +<p>——And suppose it is? my father would say.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>S<small>HE</small> cannot, quoth my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, halting, when they had march’d up to within +twenty paces of Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s door—she cannot, +corporal, take it amiss.——</p> + +<p>——She will take it, an’ please your honour, +said the corporal, just as the <i>Jew</i>’s widow at +<i>Lisbon</i> took it of my brother <i>Tom.</i>——</p> + +<p>——And how was that? quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +facing quite about to the corporal.</p> + +<p>Your honour, replied the corporal, knows of <i>Tom</i>’s +misfortunes; but this affair has nothing to do with them any +further than this, That if <i>Tom</i> had not married the +widow——or had it pleased God after their marriage, that +they had but put pork into their sausages, the honest soul had +never been taken out of his warm bed, and dragg’d to the +inquisition——’Tis a cursed place—added the +corporal, shaking his head,—when once a poor creature is in, +he is in, an’ please your honour, for ever.</p> + +<p>’Tis very true; said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking gravely +at Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s house, as he spoke.</p> + +<p>Nothing, continued the corporal, can be so sad as confinement +for life—or so sweet, an’ please your honour, as +liberty.</p> + +<p>Nothing, <i>Trim</i>——said my uncle Toby, +musing——</p> + +<p> +Whilst a man is free,—cried the corporal, giving a flourish with his +stick thus—— +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="284" height="293" alt="squiqqly line diagonally across the page" /> +</div> + +<p> +A thousand of my father’s most subtle syllogisms could not have said more +for celibacy. +</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> look’d earnestly towards his cottage +and his bowling-green.</p> + +<p>The corporal had unwarily conjured up the Spirit of calculation +with his wand; and he had nothing to do, but to conjure him +down again with his story, and in this form of Exorcism, most +un-ecclesiastically did the corporal do it.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> <i>Tom</i>’s place, +an’ please your honour, was easy—and the weather +warm—it put him upon thinking seriously of settling himself +in the world; and as it fell out about that time, that a <i>Jew</i> +who kept a sausage shop in the same street, had the ill luck to die +of a strangury, and leave his widow in possession of a rousing +trade——<i>Tom</i> thought (as every body in +<i>Lisbon</i> was doing the best he could devise for himself) there +could be no harm in offering her his service to carry it on: so +without any introduction to the widow, except that of buying a +pound of sausages at her shop—<i>Tom</i> set +out—counting the matter thus within himself, as he +walk’d along; that let the worst come of it that could, he should at least get +a pound of sausages for their worth—but, if things went well, +he should be set up; inasmuch as he should get not only a pound of +sausages—but a wife and—a sausage shop, an’ +please your honour, into the bargain.</p> + +<p>Every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d +<i>Tom</i> success; and I can fancy, an’ please your honour, +I see him this moment with his white dimity waist-coat and +breeches, and hat a little o’ one side, passing jollily along +the street, swinging his stick, with a smile and a chearful word +for every body he met:——But alas! <i>Tom!</i> +thou smilest no more, cried the corporal, looking on one side of +him upon the ground, as if he apostrophised him in his dungeon.</p> + +<p>Poor fellow! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, feelingly.</p> + +<p>He was an honest, light-hearted lad, an’ please your +honour, as ever blood warm’d——</p> + +<p>——Then he resembled thee, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, rapidly.</p> + +<p>The corporal blush’d down to his fingers ends—a tear +of sentimental bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—and a tear of sorrow for his brother’s +misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran sweetly down his cheek +together; my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s kindled as one lamp does at +another; and taking hold of the breast of <i>Trim</i>’s coat +(which had been that of <i>Le Fever</i>’s) as if to ease his +lame leg, but in reality to gratify a finer feeling——he +stood silent for a minute and a half; at the end of which he took +his hand away, and the corporal making a bow, went on with his +story of his brother and the <i>Jew</i>’s widow.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> <i>Tom</i>, an’ please +your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody in it, but a poor +negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the end +of a long cane, flapping away flies—not killing +them.——’Tis a pretty picture! said my uncle <i>Toby</i>—she had +suffered persecution, <i>Trim</i>, and had learnt +mercy——</p> + +<p>——She was good, an’ please your honour, from +nature, as well as from hardships; and there are circumstances in +the story of that poor friendless slut, that would melt a heart of +stone, said <i>Trim;</i> and some dismal winter’s evening, +when your honour is in the humour, they shall be told you with the +rest of <i>Tom</i>’s story, for it makes a part of +it——</p> + +<p>Then do not forget, <i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>A negro has a soul? an’ please your honour, said the +corporal (doubtingly).</p> + +<p>I am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in +things of that kind; but I suppose, God would not leave him without +one, any more than thee or me——</p> + +<p>——It would be putting one sadly over the head of +another, quoth the corporal.</p> + +<p>It would so; said my uncle <i>Toby.</i> Why then, an’ +please your honour, is a black wench to be used worse than a white +one?</p> + +<p>I can give no reason, said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——</p> + +<p>——Only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, +because she has no one to stand up for her——</p> + +<p>——’Tis that very thing, <i>Trim</i>, quoth my +uncle <i>Toby</i>,——which recommends her to +protection——and her brethren with her; ’tis the +fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands +<i>now</i>——where it may be hereafter, heaven +knows!——but be it where it will, the brave, +<i>Trim!</i> will not use it unkindly.</p> + +<p>——God forbid, said the corporal.</p> + +<p>Amen, responded my uncle <i>Toby</i>, laying his hand upon his +heart.</p> + +<p>The corporal returned to his story, and went on——but +with an embarrassment in doing it, which here and there a reader in +this world will not be able to comprehend; for by the many sudden transitions all along, from one kind and +cordial passion to another, in getting thus far on his way, he had +lost the sportable key of his voice, which gave sense and spirit to +his tale: he attempted twice to resume it, but could not please +himself; so giving a stout hem! to rally back the retreating +spirits, and aiding nature at the same time with his left arm a +kimbo on one side, and with his right a little extended, supporting +her on the other—the corporal got as near the note as he +could; and in that attitude, continued his story.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> <i>Tom</i>, an’ please your +honour, had no business at that time with the <i>Moorish</i> girl, +he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the +<i>Jew</i>’s widow about love——and this pound of +sausages; and being, as I have told your honour, an open +cheary-hearted lad, with his character wrote in his looks and +carriage, he took a chair, and without much apology, but with great civility at the same +time, placed it close to her at the table, and sat down.</p> + +<p>There is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ +please your honour, whilst she is making sausages——So +<i>Tom</i> began a discourse upon them; first, +gravely,——“as how they were +made——with what meats, herbs, and +spices.”—Then a little gayly,—as, +“With what skins——and if they never +burst——Whether the largest were not the +best?”—and so on—taking care only as he +went along, to season what he had to say upon sausages, rather +under than over;——that he might have room to act +in——</p> + +<p>It was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my +uncle <i>Toby</i>, laying his hand upon <i>Trim</i>’s +shoulder, that Count <i>De la Motte</i> lost the battle of +<i>Wynendale:</i> he pressed too speedily into the wood; which if +he had not done, <i>Lisle</i> had not fallen into our hands, nor +<i>Ghent</i> and <i>Bruges</i>, which both followed her example; it +was so late in the year, continued my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and so terrible a +season came on, that if things had not fallen out as they did, our +troops must have perish’d in the open +field.——</p> + +<p>——Why, therefore, may not battles, an’ please +your honour, as well as marriages, be made in heaven?—my +uncle <i>Toby</i> mused——</p> + +<p>Religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of +military skill tempted him to say another; so not being able to +frame a reply exactly to his mind——my uncle <i>Toby</i> +said nothing at all; and the corporal finished his story.</p> + +<p>As <i>Tom</i> perceived, an’ please your honour, that he +gained ground, and that all he had said upon the subject of +sausages was kindly taken, he went on to help her a little in +making them.——First, by taking hold of the ring of the +sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her +hand——then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, +and holding them in his hand, whilst she took them out one by +one——then, by putting them across her mouth, that she might +take them out as she wanted them——and so on from little +to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself, +whilst she held the snout.——</p> + +<p>——Now a widow, an’ please your honour, always +chuses a second husband as unlike the first as she can: so the +affair was more than half settled in her mind before <i>Tom</i> +mentioned it.</p> + +<p>She made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a +sausage:——<i>Tom</i> instantly laid hold of +another——</p> + +<p>But seeing <i>Tom</i>’s had more gristle in +it——</p> + +<p>She signed the capitulation——and <i>Tom</i> sealed +it; and there was an end of the matter.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>LL</small> womankind, continued <i>Trim</i>, +(commenting upon his story) from the highest to the lowest, +an’ please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is to know +how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but +by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or +letting down their breeches, till we hit the +mark.——</p> + +<p>——I like the comparison, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, +better than the thing itself——</p> + +<p>——Because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves +glory, more than pleasure.</p> + +<p>I hope, <i>Trim</i>, answered my uncle <i>Toby</i>, I love +mankind more than either; and as the knowledge of arms tends so +apparently to the good and quiet of the world——and +particularly that branch of it which we have practised together in +our bowling-green, has no object but to shorten the strides of +A<small>MBITION</small>, and intrench the lives and fortunes of the <i>few</i>, +from the plunderings of the <i>many</i>——whenever that +drum beats in our ears, I trust, corporal, we shall neither of us +want so much humanity and fellow-feeling, as to face about and +march.</p> + +<p>In pronouncing this, my uncle <i>Toby</i> faced about, and +march’d firmly as at the head of his company——and +the faithful corporal, shouldering his stick, and striking his hand +upon his coat-skirt as he took his first +step——march’d close behind him down the +avenue.</p> + +<p>——Now what can their two noddles be about? cried my +father to my mother——by all that’s strange, they +are besieging Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> in form, and are marching round +her house to mark out the lines of circumvallation.</p> + +<p>I dare say, quoth my mother——But stop, dear +Sir——for what my mother dared to say upon the +occasion——and what my father did say upon +it——with her replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, +perused, paraphrased, commented, and descanted upon—or to +say it all in a word, shall be thumb’d over by +Posterity in a chapter apart——I say, by +Posterity—and care not, if I repeat the word again—for +what has this book done more than the Legation of <i>Moses</i>, or +the Tale of a Tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of Time +along with them?</p> + +<p>I will not argue the matter: Time wastes too fast: every letter +I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen: the days +and hours of it, more precious, my dear <i>Jenny!</i> than the +rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds +of a windy day, never to return more——every thing +presses on——whilst thou art twisting that +lock,——see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy +hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes +to that eternal separation which we are shortly to +make.——</p> + +<p>——Heaven have mercy upon us both!</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small>, for what the world thinks of +that ejaculation——I would not give a groat.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> mother had gone with her left arm +twisted in my father’s right, till they had got to the fatal +angle of the old garden wall, where Doctor <i>Slop</i> was +overthrown by <i>Obadiah</i> on the coach-horse: as this was +directly opposite to the front of Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s house, +when my father came to it, he gave a look across; and seeing my +uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal within ten paces of the door, he +turn’d about——“Let us just stop a +moment, quoth my father, and see with what ceremonies my brother +<i>Toby</i> and his man <i>Trim</i> make their first +entry——it will not detain us, added my father, a single +minute:”——No matter, if it be ten minutes, quoth +my mother.</p> + +<p>——It will not detain us half one; said my +father.</p> + +<p>The corporal was just then setting in with the story of his +brother <i>Tom</i> and the <i>Jew</i>’s widow: the story went +on—and on——it had episodes in it——it +came back, and went on——and on again; there was no end +of it——the reader found it very long——</p> + +<p>——G— help my father! he pish’d fifty +times at every new attitude, and gave the corporal’s stick, +with all its flourishings and danglings, to as many devils as chose +to accept of them.</p> + +<p>When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are +hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of +changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it +would not have power to see it out.</p> + +<p>Curiosity governs the <i>first moment;</i> and the second moment +is all œconomy to justify the expence of the +first——and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of +judgment—’tis a point of H<small>ONOUR</small>.</p> + +<p>I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this +all to Patience; but that V<small>IRTUE</small>, methinks, has +extent of dominion sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, +without invading the few dismantled castles which +H<small>ONOUR</small> has left him upon the earth.</p> + +<p>My father stood it out as well as he could with these three +auxiliaries to the end of <i>Trim</i>’s story; and from +thence to the end of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s panegyrick upon +arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing, that instead of +marching up to Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s door, they both faced +about and march’d down the avenue diametrically opposite to +his expectation—he broke out at once with that little subacid +soreness of humour, which, in certain situations, distinguished his +character from that of all other men.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>——“Now what can their two +noddles be about?” cried my father - - &c. - - - +-</p> + +<p>I dare say, said my mother, they are making +fortifications——</p> + +<p>——Not on Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s premises! cried +my father, stepping back——</p> + +<p>I suppose not: quoth my mother.</p> + +<p>I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of +fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, +blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts——</p> + +<p>——They are foolish things——said my +mother.</p> + +<p>Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give +away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if +some of your reverences would imitate—and that was, never to +refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid +before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, +upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself +with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for +her—but no more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty +years together—and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in +all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to +enquire about it.</p> + +<p>This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the +neck, at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between +them, than could have done the most petulant +contradiction——the few which survived were the better +for the <i>cuvetts</i>——</p> + +<p>—“They are foolish things;” said my +mother.</p> + +<p>——Particularly the <i>cuvetts;</i> replied my +father.</p> + +<p>’Tis enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and +went on.</p> + +<p>—Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s premises, said my father, partly correcting himself—because she +is but tenant for life——</p> + +<p>——That makes a great difference—said my +mother——</p> + +<p>—In a fool’s head, replied my +father——</p> + +<p>Unless she should happen to have a child—said my +mother——</p> + +<p>——But she must persuade my brother <i>Toby</i> first +to get her one—</p> + +<p>To be sure, Mr. <i>Shandy</i>, quoth my mother.</p> + +<p>——Though if it comes to persuasion—said my +father—Lord have mercy upon them.</p> + +<p>Amen: said my mother, <i>piano.</i></p> + +<p>Amen: cried my father, <i>fortissimè.</i></p> + +<p>Amen: said my mother again——but with such a sighing +cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every +fibre about my father—he instantly took out his almanack; but +before he could untie it, <i>Yorick</i>’s congregation coming +out of church, became a full answer to one half of his business +with it—and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day—left +him as little in doubt, as to the other part—He put his +almanack into his pocket.</p> + +<p>The first Lord of the Treasury thinking of <i>ways and +means</i>, could not have returned home with a more embarrassed +look.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>U<small>PON</small> looking back from the end of the +last chapter, and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it +is necessary, that upon this page and the three following, a good +quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted to keep up that just +balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not +hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression +(which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on +in the king’s highway) which will do the +business——no; if it is to be a digression, it must be a +good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where +neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by +rebound.</p> + +<p>The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of +the service: F<small>ANCY</small> is +capricious—W<small>IT</small> must not be searched +for—and P<small>LEASANTRY</small> (good-natured slut as she +is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her +feet.</p> + +<p>——The best way for a man, is to say his +prayers——</p> + +<p>Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as +well ghostly as bodily—for that purpose, he will find himself +rather worse after he has said them than before—for other +purposes, better.</p> + +<p>For my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical +under heaven that I could think of, which I have not taken with +myself in this case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the +soul herself, and arguing the point over and over again with her +upon the extent of her own faculties——</p> + +<p>——I never could make them an inch the +wider——</p> + +<p>Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it +upon the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: These are +good, quoth I, in themselves—they are good, +absolutely;—they are good, relatively;—they are good +for health—they are good for happiness in this +world—they are good for happiness in the +next——</p> + +<p>In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; +and there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as +heaven made it: as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, +they give it courage; but then that snivelling virtue of Meekness +(as my father would always call it) takes it quite away again, so +you are exactly where you started.</p> + +<p>Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I +have found to answer so well as this——</p> + +<p>——Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, +and that I am not blinded by self-love, there must be something of +true genius about me, merely upon this symptom of it, that I do not +know what envy is: for never do I hit upon any invention or device +which tendeth to the furtherance of good writing, but I instantly +make it public; willing that all mankind should write as well as +myself.</p> + +<p>——Which they certainly will, when they think as +little.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> in ordinary cases, that is, when +I am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily and pass gummous +through my pen——</p> + +<p>Or that I am got, I know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical +vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it +<i>for my soul;</i> so must be obliged to go on writing like a +<i>Dutch</i> commentator to the end of the chapter, unless +something be done—</p> + +<p>——I never stand conferring with pen and ink one +moment; for if a pinch of snuff, or a stride or two across the room +will not do the business for me—I take a razor at once; and +having tried the edge of it upon the palm of my hand, without +further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, I shave +it off; taking care only if I do leave a hair, that it be not a +grey one: this done, I change my shirt—put on a better +coat—send for my last wig—put my topaz ring upon my +finger; and in a word, dress myself from one end to the other of +me, after my best fashion.</p> + +<p>Now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for +consider, Sir, as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of +his own beard (though there is no rule without an exception), and +unavoidably sits over-against himself the whole time it is doing, +in case he has a hand in it—the Situation, like all others, +has notions of her own to put into the brain.——</p> + +<p>——I maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded +man, are seven years more terse and juvenile for one single +operation; and if they did not run a risk of being quite shaved +away, might be carried up by continual shavings, to the highest +pitch of sublimity—How <i>Homer</i> could write with so long +a beard, I don’t know——and as it makes against my +hypothesis, I as little care——But let us return to the +Toilet.</p> + +<p><i>Ludovicus Sorbonensis</i> makes this entirely an affair of +the body (εξωιεριχη +πραξις) as he calls it——but +he is deceived: the soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing +they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloth’d at +the same time; and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of +them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with +him—so that he has nothing to do, but take his pen, and write +like himself.</p> + +<p>For this cause, when your honours and reverences would know +whether I writ clean and fit to be read, you will be able to +judge full as well by looking into my Laundress’s bill, as my +book: there is one single month in which I can make it appear, that +I dirtied one and thirty shirts with clean writing; and after all, +was more abus’d, cursed, criticis’d, and confounded, +and had more mystic heads shaken at me, for what I had wrote in +that one month, than in all the other months of that year put +together.</p> + +<p>——But their honours and reverences had not seen my +bills.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> I never had any intention of +beginning the Digression, I am making all this preparation for, +till I come to the 74th chapter——I have this chapter to +put to whatever use I think proper——I have twenty this +moment ready for it——I could write my chapter of +Button-holes in it——</p> + +<p>Or my chapter of <i>Pishes</i>, which should follow +them——</p> + +<p>Or my chapter of <i>Knots</i>, in case their reverences have +done with them——they might lead me into mischief: the +safest way is to follow the track of the learned, and raise +objections against what I have been writing, tho’ I declare +before-hand, I know no more than my heels how to answer them.</p> + +<p>And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of +<i>thersitical</i> satire, as black as the very ink ’tis +wrote with——(and by the bye, whoever says so, is +indebted to the muster-master general of the <i>Grecian</i> army, +for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a man as +<i>Thersites</i> to continue upon his roll——for it has +furnish’d him with an epithet)——in these +productions he will urge, all the personal washings and scrubbings +upon earth do a sinking genius no sort of good——but +just the contrary, inasmuch as the dirtier the fellow is, the +better generally he succeeds in it.</p> + +<p>To this, I have no other answer——at least +ready——but that the Archbishop of <i>Benevento</i> +wrote his <i>nasty</i> Romance of the <i>Galatea</i>, as all the +world knows, in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of +breeches; and that the penance set him of writing a commentary upon +the book of the <i>Revelations</i>, as severe as it was +look’d upon by one part of the world, was far from being +deem’d so, by the other, upon the single account of that +<i>Investment.</i></p> + +<p>Another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of +universality; forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so +much stress is laid, by an unalterable law of nature excludes one +half of the species entirely from its use: all I can say is, that +female writers, whether of <i>England</i>, or of <i>France</i>, +must e’en go without it——</p> + +<p>As for the <i>Spanish</i> ladies——I am in no sort of +distress——</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HE</small> seventy-fourth chapter is come at +last; and brings nothing with it but a sad signature of +“How our pleasures slip from under us in this +world!”</p> + +<p>For in talking of my digression——I declare before +heaven I have made it! What a strange creature is mortal man! said +she.</p> + +<p>’Tis very true, said I——but ’twere +better to get all these things out of our heads, and return to my +uncle <i>Toby.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> and the +corporal had marched down to the bottom of the avenue, they +recollected their business lay the other way; so they faced about +and marched up straight to Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s door.</p> + +<p>I warrant your honour; said the corporal, touching his +<i>Montero</i>-cap with his hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door——My uncle +<i>Toby</i>, contrary to his invariable way of treating his +faithful servant, said nothing good or bad: the truth was, he had +not altogether marshal’d his ideas; he wish’d for +another conference, and as the corporal was mounting up the three +steps before the door—he hem’d twice—a portion of +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s most modest spirits fled, at each +expulsion, towards the corporal; he stood with the rapper of the +door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he scarce knew why. +<i>Bridget</i> stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb +upon the latch, benumb’d with expectation; and Mrs +<i>Wadman</i>, with an eye ready to be deflowered again, sat +breathless behind the window-curtain of her bed-chamber, watching +their approach.</p> + +<p><i>Trim!</i> said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——but as he +articulated the word, the minute expired, and <i>Trim</i> let fall +the rapper.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> perceiving that all hopes of a conference +were knock’d on the head by it——whistled +Lillabullero.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>’s finger +and thumb were upon the latch, the corporal did not knock as often +as perchance your honour’s taylor——I might have +taken my example something nearer home; for I owe mine, some five +and twenty pounds at least, and wonder at the man’s +patience——</p> + +<p>——But this is nothing at all to the world: only +’tis a cursed thing to be in debt; and there seems to be a +fatality in the exchequers of some poor princes, particularly those +of our house, which no Economy can bind down in irons: for my own +part, I’m persuaded there is not any one prince, prelate, +pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more desirous in his +heart of keeping straight with the world than I am——or +who takes more likely means for it. I never give above half a +guinea——or walk with boots——or cheapen +tooth-picks——or lay out a shilling upon a band-box the year round; and for the six months I’m +in the country, I’m upon so small a scale, that with all the +good temper in the world, I outdo <i>Rousseau</i>, a bar +length——for I keep neither man or boy, or horse, or +cow, or dog, or cat, or any thing that can eat or drink, except a +thin poor piece of a Vestal (to keep my fire in), and who has +generally as bad an appetite as myself——but if you +think this makes a philosopher of me——I would not, my +good people! give a rush for your judgments.</p> + +<p>True philosophy——but there is no treating the +subject whilst my uncle is whistling Lillabullero.</p> + +<p>——Let us go into the house.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +*.</p> + +<p>* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* * *.——</p> + +<p>——You shall see the very place, Madam; said my uncle +<i>Toby.</i></p> + +<p>Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> blush’d——look’d +towards the door——turn’d +pale——blush’d slightly +again——recover’d her natural +colour——blush’d worse than ever; which, for the +sake of the unlearned reader, I translate thus——</p> + +<p>“<i>L—d! I cannot look at +it——</i></p> + +<p> +<i>What would the world say if I look’d at it?</i> +</p> + +<p> +<i>I should drop down, if I look’d at it—</i> +</p> + +<p><i>I wish I could look at it—</i></p> + +<p><i>There can be no sin in looking at it.</i></p> + +<p><i>——I will look at it.</i>”</p> + +<p>Whilst all this was running through Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s +imagination, my uncle <i>Toby</i> had risen from the sopha, and got +to the other side of the parlour door, to give <i>Trim</i> an order +about it in the passage——</p> + +<p>* * * * * * * * * * * * * *——I believe it is in the +garret, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>——I saw it there, +an’ please your honour, this morning, answered +<i>Trim</i>——Then prithee, step directly for it, +<i>Trim</i>, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and bring it into the +parlour.</p> + +<p>The corporal did not approve of the orders, but most cheerfully +obeyed them. The first was not an act of his will—the second +was; so he put on his <i>Montero</i>-cap, and went as fast as his +lame knee would let him. My uncle <i>Toby</i> returned into the +parlour, and sat himself down again upon the sopha.</p> + +<p>——You shall lay your finger upon the +place—said my uncle <i>Toby.</i>——I will not +touch it, however, quoth Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> to herself.</p> + +<p>This requires a second translation:—it shews what little +knowledge is got by mere words—we must go up to the first +springs.</p> + +<p>Now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three +pages, I must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself.</p> + +<p>Rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your +noses—cleanse your emunctories—sneeze, my good +people!——God bless you——</p> + +<p>Now give me all the help you can.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXX</small> +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> there are fifty different ends +(counting all ends in——as well civil as religious) for +which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about and carefully +weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of all +that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, +argumentation, and inference, she investigates and finds out +whether she has got hold of the right one——and if +she has——then, by pulling it gently this way and that +way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the +drawing.</p> + +<p>The imagery under which <i>Slawkenbergius</i> impresses this +upon the reader’s fancy, in the beginning of his third Decad, +is so ludicrous, that the honour I bear the sex, will not suffer me +to quote it——otherwise it is not destitute of +humour.</p> + +<p>“She first, saith <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, stops the +asse, and holding his halter in her left hand (lest he should get +away) she thrusts her right hand into the very bottom of his +pannier to search for it—For what?—you’ll not +know the sooner, quoth <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, for interrupting +me——</p> + +<p>“I have nothing, good Lady, but empty +bottles;’ says the asse.</p> + +<p>“I’m loaded with tripes;” says the +second.</p> + +<p>——And thou art little better, quoth she to the +third; for nothing is there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and +pantofles—and so to the fourth and fifth, going on +one by one through the whole string, till coming to the asse which +carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at +it—considers it—samples it—measures +it—stretches it—wets it—dries it—then takes +her teeth both to the warp and weft of it.</p> + +<p>——Of what? for the love of Christ!</p> + +<p>I am determined, answered <i>Slawkenbergius</i>, that all the +powers upon earth shall never wring that secret from my breast.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXI</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>E</small> live in a world beset on all sides +with mysteries and riddles—and so ’tis no +matter——else it seems strange, that Nature, who makes +every thing so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never +errs, unless for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to +whatever passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the +plough, the caravan, the cart—or whatever other creature she +models, be it but an asse’s foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and +yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in +making so simple a thing as a married man.</p> + +<p>Whether it is in the choice of the clay——or that it +is frequently spoiled in the baking; by an excess of which a +husband may turn out too crusty (you know) on one +hand——or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the +other——or whether this great Artificer is not so +attentive to the little Platonic exigences <i>of that part</i> of +the species, for whose use she is fabricating +<i>this</i>——or that her Ladyship sometimes scarce +knows what sort of a husband will do——I know not: we +will discourse about it after supper.</p> + +<p>It is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the +reasoning upon it, are at all to the purpose—but rather +against it; since with regard to my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she had +formed him of the best and kindliest clay——had temper’d it with her own milk, and +breathed into it the sweetest spirit——she had made him +all gentle, generous, and humane——she had filled his +heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage which +led to it, for the communication of the tenderest +offices——she had moreover considered the other causes +for which matrimony was ordained——</p> + +<p>And accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.</p> + +<p>The <small>DONATION</small> was not defeated by my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s wound.</p> + +<p>Now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the Devil, +who is the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised +scruples in Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>’s brain about it; and like a +true devil as he was, had done his own work at the same time, by +turning my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s Virtue thereupon into nothing +but <i>empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose</i>, and +<i>pantofles.</i></p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXII</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>RS</small>. <i>Bridget</i> had pawn’d +all the little stock of honour a poor chamber-maid was worth in the +world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in ten days; +and it was built upon one of the most concessible <i>postulata</i> +in nature: namely, that whilst my uncle <i>Toby</i> was making love +to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better to do, than +make love to her——“<i>And I’ll let him as +much as he will</i>, said <i>Bridget</i>, to get it out of +him.”</p> + +<p>Friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. +<i>Bridget</i> was serving her mistress’s interests in the +one—and doing the thing which most pleased herself in the +other: so had as many stakes depending upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s wound, as the Devil himself——Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> had but one—and as it possibly might be her +last (without discouraging Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, or discrediting her +talents) was determined to play her cards herself.</p> + +<p>She wanted not encouragement: a child might have look’d +into his hand——there was such a plainness and +simplicity in his playing out what trumps he had——with +such an unmistrusting ignorance of the +<i>ten-ace</i>——and so naked and defenceless did he sit +upon the same sopha with widow <i>Wadman</i>, that a generous heart +would have wept to have won the game of him.</p> + +<p>Let us drop the metaphor.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——A<small>ND</small> the story +too—if you please: for though I have all along been hastening +towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well +knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what I had to offer to the +world, yet now that I am got to it, any one is welcome to take my +pen, and go on with the story for me that will—I see the +difficulties of the descriptions I’m going to +give—and feel my want of powers.</p> + +<p>It is one comfort at least to me, that I lost some fourscore +ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked +me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some +hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of +the blood, than in the subtile <i>aura</i> of the +brain——be it which it will—an Invocation can do +no hurt——and I leave the affair entirely to the +<i>invoked</i>, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees +good.</p> + +<h3> +<small>T H E + I N V O C A T I O N</small> +</h3> + +<p> +G<small>ENTLE</small> Spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy +pen of my beloved C<small>ERVANTES</small>; Thou who glidedst daily through his +lattice, and turned’st the twilight of his prison into noon-day +brightness by thy presence——tinged’st his little urn of water +with heaven-sent nectar, and all the time he wrote of <i>Sancho</i> and his +master, didst cast thy mystic mantle o’er his wither’d stump<a +href="#fn44" name="fnref44"><sup>[44]</sup></a>, and wide extended it to all the +evils of his life—— +</p> + +<p>——Turn in hither, I beseech +thee!——behold these breeches!——they are all +I have in world——that piteous rent was given them at +<i>Lyons</i>——</p> + +<p>My shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen’d amongst +’em—for the laps are in <i>Lombardy</i>, and the rest +of ’em here—I never had but six, and a cunning gypsey +of a laundress at <i>Milan</i> cut me off the <i>fore</i>-laps of +five—To do her justice, she did it with some +consideration—for I was returning out of <i>Italy.</i></p> + +<p>And yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which +was moreover filch’d from me at <i>Sienna</i>, and twice that +I pay’d five Pauls for two hard eggs, once at +<i>Raddicoffini</i>, and a second time at <i>Capua</i>—I do +not think a journey through <i>France</i> and <i>Italy</i>, +provided a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some +people would make you believe: there must be <i>ups</i> and +<i>downs</i>, or how the duce should we get into vallies where +Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.—’Tis +nonsense to imagine they will lend you their voitures to be shaken +to pieces for nothing; and unless you pay twelve sous for greasing +your wheels, how should the poor peasant get butter to his +bread?—We really expect too much—and for the livre or +two above par for your suppers and bed—at the most they are +but one shilling and ninepence halfpenny——who would +embroil their philosophy for it? for heaven’s and for your +own sake, pay it——pay it with both hands open, rather +than leave <i>Disappointment</i> sitting drooping upon the eye of +your fair Hostess and her Damsels in the gate-way, at your +departure—and besides, my dear Sir, you get a sisterly kiss +of each of ’em worth a pound——at least I +did——</p> + +<p>——For my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s amours running +all the way in my head, they had the same effect upon me as if they +had been my own——I was in the most perfect +state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony +vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so +that whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; +every thing I saw or had to do with, touch’d upon some secret +spring either of sentiment or rapture.</p> + +<p>——They were the sweetest notes I ever heard; and I +instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more +distinctly——’Tis <i>Maria;</i> said the +postillion, observing I was listening——Poor +<i>Maria</i>, continued he (leaning his body on one side to let me +see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting upon a bank +playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside +her.</p> + +<p>The young fellow utter’d this with an accent and a look so +perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that I instantly made a vow, +I would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece, when I got to +<i>Moulins</i>——</p> + +<p>——And who is poor <i>Maria?</i> said I.</p> + +<p>The love and piety of all the villages around us; said the +postillion——it is but three years ago, that the sun did +not shine upon so fair, so quick- witted and amiable a maid; and +better fate did <i>Maria</i> deserve, than to have her Banns +forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who published +them——</p> + +<p>He was going on, when <i>Maria</i>, who had made a short pause, +put the pipe to her mouth, and began the air +again——they were the same notes;——yet were +ten times sweeter: It is the evening service to the Virgin, said +the young man——but who has taught her to play +it—or how she came by her pipe, no one knows; we think that +heaven has assisted her in both; for ever since she has been +unsettled in her mind, it seems her only +consolation——she has never once had the pipe out of her +hand, but plays that <i>service</i> upon it almost night and +day.</p> + +<p>The postillion delivered this with so much discretion and +natural eloquence, that I could not help decyphering something in his face above his condition, and should +have sifted out his history, had not poor <i>Maria</i> taken such +full possession of me.</p> + +<p>We had got up by this time almost to the bank where <i>Maria</i> +was sitting: she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but +two tresses, drawn up into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves +twisted a little fantastically on one side——she was +beautiful; and if ever I felt the full force of an honest +heart-ache, it was the moment I saw her——</p> + +<p>——God help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, +said the postillion, have been said in the several parish churches +and convents around, for her,——but without effect; we +have still hopes, as she is sensible for short intervals, that the +Virgin at last will restore her to herself; but her parents, who +know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her senses +are lost for ever.</p> + +<p>As the postillion spoke this, M<small>ARIA</small> made a +cadence so melancholy, so tender and querulous, that I sprung out +of the chaise to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt +her and her goat before I relapsed from my enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>M<small>ARIA</small> look’d wistfully for some time at me, +and then at her goat——and then at me——and +then at her goat again, and so on, alternately——</p> + +<p>——Well, <i>Maria</i>, said I +softly——What resemblance do you find?</p> + +<p>I do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from +the humblest conviction of what a <i>Beast</i> man +is,——that I asked the question; and that I would not +have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable +presence of Misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever +<i>Rabelais</i> scatter’d——and yet I own my heart +smote me, and that I so smarted at the very idea of it, that I +swore I would set up for Wisdom, and utter grave sentences the rest +of my days——and never——never attempt again +to commit mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day I had to +live.</p> + +<p>As for writing nonsense to them——I believe there was +a reserve—but that I leave to the world.</p> + +<p>Adieu, <i>Maria!</i>—adieu, poor hapless +damsel!——some time, but not now, I may hear thy sorrows +from thy own lips——but I was deceived; for that moment +she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that I +rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk’d softly to +my chaise.</p> + +<p>——What an excellent inn at <i>Moulins!</i></p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn44"></a> <a href="#fnref44">[44]</a> +He lost his hand at the battle of <i>Lepanto.</i> +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIV</small> +</h3> + +<p>W<small>HEN</small> we have got to the end of this +chapter (but not before) we must all turn back to the two blank +chapters, on the account of which my honour has lain bleeding this +half hour——I stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow +slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the opposite side +of my room, with a declaration at the heel of it——</p> + +<p>——That whatever resemblance it may bear to half the +chapters which are written in the world, or for aught I know may be +now writing in it—that it was as casual as the foam of <i>Zeuxis</i> his +horse; besides, I look upon a chapter which has <i>only nothing in +it</i>, with respect; and considering what worse things there are +in the world——That it is no way a proper subject for +satire——</p> + +<p>——Why then was it left so? And here without staying +for my reply, shall I be called as many blockheads, numsculs, +doddypoles, dunderheads, ninny-hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, +nincompoops, and sh- -t-a-beds——and other unsavoury +appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of <i>Lernè</i> cast +in the teeth of King <i>Garangantan</i>’s +shepherds——And I’ll let them do it, as +<i>Bridget</i> said, as much as they please; for how was it +possible they should foresee the necessity I was under of writing +the 84th chapter of my book, before the 77th, &c?</p> + +<p>——So I don’t take it amiss——All I +wish is, that it may be a lesson to the world, “<i>to let +people tell their stories their own way.</i>”</p> + +<h3> +The Seventy-seventh Chapter +</h3> + +<p>A<small>S</small> Mrs. <i>Bridget</i> opened the +door before the corporal had well given the rap, the interval +betwixt that and my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s introduction into the +parlour, was so short, that Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had but just time to +get from behind the curtain——lay a Bible upon the +table, and advance a step or two towards the door to receive +him.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> saluted Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, after the +manner in which women were saluted by men in the year of our Lord +God one thousand seven hundred and thirteen——then +facing about, he march’d up abreast with her to the sopha, +and in three plain words——though not before he was sat +down——nor after he was sat down——but as he +was sitting down, told her, “<i>he was in +love</i>”——so that my uncle <i>Toby</i> strained +himself more in the declaration than he needed.</p> + +<p>Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> naturally looked down, upon a slit she had +been darning up in her apron, in expectation every moment, that my +uncle <i>Toby</i> would go on; but having no talents for +amplification, and Love moreover of all others being a subject of +which he was the least a master——When he had told Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the +matter to work after its own way.</p> + +<p>My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s, as he falsely called it, and would often say, +that could his brother <i>Toby</i> to his processe have added but a +pipe of tobacco——he had wherewithal to have found his +way, if there was faith in a <i>Spanish</i> proverb, towards the +hearts of half the women upon the globe.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> never understood what my father meant; nor +will I presume to extract more from it, than a condemnation of an +error which the bulk of the world lie under——but the +<i>French</i>, every one of ’em to a man, who believe in it, almost as much as the <small>REAL +PRESENCE</small>, “<i>That talking of love, is making +it.</i>”</p> + +<p>——I would as soon set about making a black-pudding +by the same receipt.</p> + +<p>Let us go on: Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> sat in expectation my uncle +<i>Toby</i> would do so, to almost the first pulsation of that +minute, wherein silence on one side or the other, generally becomes +indecent: so edging herself a little more towards him, and raising +up her eyes, sub blushing, as she did it——she took up +the gauntlet——or the discourse (if you like it better) +and communed with my uncle <i>Toby</i>, thus:</p> + +<p>The cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>, are very great. I suppose so—said my uncle +<i>Toby:</i> and therefore when a person, continued Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>, is so much at his ease as you are—so happy, +captain <i>Shandy</i>, in yourself, your friends and your +amusements—I wonder, what reasons can incline you to the +state——</p> + +<p>——They are written, quoth my uncle <i>Toby</i>, in +the Common-Prayer Book.</p> + +<p>Thus far my uncle <i>Toby</i> went on warily, and kept within +his depth, leaving Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> to sail upon the gulph as she +pleased.</p> + +<p>——As for children—said Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>—though a principal end perhaps of the +institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every +parent—yet do not we all find, they are certain sorrows, and +very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one +for the heart-achs—what compensation for the many tender and +disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenceless mother who +brings them into life? I declare, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, smit +with pity, I know of none; unless it be the pleasure which it has +pleased God——</p> + +<p>A fiddlestick! quoth she.</p> + +<h3> +Chapter the Seventy-eighth +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> there are such an infinitude of +notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs, looks, and accents with which +the word <i>fiddlestick</i> may be pronounced in all +such causes as this, every one of ’em impressing a sense and +meaning as different from the other, as <i>dirt</i> from +<i>cleanliness</i>—That Casuists (for it is an affair of +conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen thousand +in which you may do either right or wrong.</p> + +<p>Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> hit upon the <i>fiddlestick</i>, which +summoned up all my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s modest blood into his +cheeks—so feeling within himself that he had somehow or other +got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and without entering further +either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand +upon his heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and +share them along with her.</p> + +<p>When my uncle <i>Toby</i> had said this, he did not care to say +it again; so casting his eye upon the Bible which Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i> had laid upon the table, he took it up; and popping, +dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others the most interesting +to him—which was the siege of <i>Jericho</i>—he set +himself to read it over—leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work with +her after its own way. Now it wrought neither as an astringent or a +loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or mercury, or buckthorn, or any +one drug which nature had bestowed upon the world—in short, +it work’d not at all in her; and the cause of that was, that +there was something working there before——Babbler that +I am! I have anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is +fire still in the subject——allons.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXV</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> is natural for a perfect stranger +who is going from <i>London</i> to <i>Edinburgh</i>, to enquire +before he sets out, how many miles to <i>York;</i> which is about +the half way——nor does any body wonder, if he goes on +and asks about the corporation, &c. - -</p> + +<p>It was just as natural for Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, whose first +husband was all his time afflicted with a Sciatica, to wish to know +how far from the hip to the groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in +her feelings, in the one case than in the other.</p> + +<p> +She had accordingly read <i>Drake</i>’s anatomy from one end to the +other. She had peeped into <i>Wharton</i> upon the brain, and borrowed<a +href="#fn45" name="fnref45"><sup>[45]</sup></a> <i>Graaf</i> upon the bones and +muscles; but could make nothing of it. +</p> + +<p>She had reason’d likewise from her own +powers——laid down theorems——drawn +consequences, and come to no conclusion.</p> + +<p>To clear up all, she had twice asked Doctor <i>Slop</i>, +“if poor captain <i>Shandy</i> was ever likely to +recover of his wound——?”</p> + +<p>——He is recovered, Doctor <i>Slop</i> would +say——</p> + +<p>What! quite?</p> + +<p>Quite: madam——</p> + +<p>But what do you mean by a recovery? Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> would +say.</p> + +<p>Doctor <i>Slop</i> was the worst man alive at definitions; and +so Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> could get no knowledge: in short, there was +no way to extract it, but from my uncle <i>Toby</i> himself.</p> + +<p>There is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which +lulls S<small>USPICION</small> to rest——and I am half +persuaded the serpent got pretty near it, in his discourse with +Eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived could not be so +great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the devil, +without it——But there is an accent of +humanity——how shall I describe it?—’tis an +accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the enquirer +a right to be as particular with it, as your body-surgeon.</p> + +<p>“——Was it without remission?—</p> + +<p>“——Was it more tolerable in bed?</p> + +<p>“——Could he lie on both sides alike with +it?</p> + +<p>“——Was he able to mount a horse?</p> + +<p>“——Was motion bad for it?’ <i>et +cætera</i>, were so tenderly spoke to, and so directed +towards my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s heart, that every item of them +sunk ten times deeper into it than the evils themselves——but +when Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> went round about by <i>Namur</i> to get at +my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s groin; and engaged him to attack the +point of the advanced counterscarp, and <i>péle mele</i> +with the <i>Dutch</i> to take the counterguard of St. <i>Roch</i> +sword in hand—and then with tender notes playing upon his +ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of the trench, wiping her +eye, as he was carried to his tent——Heaven! Earth! +Sea!—all was lifted up—the springs of nature rose above +their levels—an angel of mercy sat besides him on the +sopha—his heart glow’d with fire—and had he been +worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to Mrs. +<i>Wadman.</i></p> + +<p>—And whereabouts, dear sir, quoth Mrs. <i>Wadman</i>, a +little categorically, did you receive this sad +blow?——In asking this question, Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> gave +a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the +shortest reply to it, that my uncle <i>Toby</i> would lay his +fore-finger upon the place——It fell out +otherwise——for my uncle <i>Toby</i> having got his wound before the gate of St. <i>Nicolas</i>, +in one of the traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle +of the demibastion of St. <i>Roch;</i> he could at any time stick a +pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing when +the stone struck him: this struck instantly upon my uncle +<i>Toby</i>’s sensorium——and with it, struck his +large map of the town and citadel of <i>Namur</i> and its environs, +which he had purchased and pasted down upon a board, by the +corporal’s aid, during his long illness——it had +lain with other military lumber in the garret ever since, and +accordingly the corporal was detached to the garret to fetch +it.</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> measured off thirty toises, with Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s scissars, from the returning angle before the +gate of St. <i>Nicolas;</i> and with such a virgin modesty laid her +finger upon the place, that the goddess of Decency, if then in +being—if not, ’twas her shade—shook her head, and +with a finger wavering across her eyes—forbid her to explain +the mistake.</p> + +<p>Unhappy Mrs. <i>Wadman!</i></p> + +<p>——For nothing can make this chapter go off with +spirit but an apostrophe to thee——but my heart tells +me, that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an insult in +disguise, and ere I would offer one to a woman in +distress—let the chapter go to the devil; provided any +damn’d critic in <i>keeping</i> will be but at the trouble to +take it with him.</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="fn45"></a> <a href="#fnref45">[45]</a> +This must be a mistake in Mr. <i>Shandy;</i> for <i>Graaf</i> wrote upon the +pancreatick juice, and the parts of generation. +</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVI</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small>y uncle <i>Toby</i>’s Map is +carried down into the kitchen.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——A<small>ND</small> here is the +<i>Maes</i>—and this is the <i>Sambre;</i> said the corporal, +pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and +his left upon Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>’s shoulder—but not +the shoulder next him—and this, said he, is the town of +<i>Namur</i>—and this the citadel—and there lay the +<i>French</i>—and here lay his honour and +myself——and in this cursed trench, Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, +quoth the corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the wound which crush’d +him so miserably <i>here.</i>——In pronouncing which, he +slightly press’d the back of her hand towards the part he +felt for——and let it fall.</p> + +<p>We thought, Mr. <i>Trim</i>, it had been more in the +middle,——said Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>——</p> + +<p>That would have undone us for ever—said the corporal.</p> + +<p>——And left my poor mistress undone too, said +<i>Bridget.</i></p> + +<p>The corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving Mrs. +<i>Bridget</i> a kiss.</p> + +<p>Come—come—said <i>Bridget</i>—holding the palm +of her left hand parallel to the plane of the horizon, and sliding +the fingers of the other over it, in a way which could not have +been done, had there been the least wart or +protruberance——’Tis every syllable of it false, +cried the corporal, before she had half finished the +sentence——</p> + +<p>—I know it to be fact, said <i>Bridget</i>, from credible +witnesses.</p> + +<p>——Upon my honour, said the corporal, laying his hand +upon his heart, and blushing, as he spoke, with honest +resentment—’tis a story, Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, as false +as hell——Not, said <i>Bridget</i>, interrupting him, +that either I or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether +’tis so or no——only that when one is married, one +would chuse to have such a thing by one at least——</p> + +<p>It was somewhat unfortunate for Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, that she +had begun the attack with her manual exercise; for the corporal +instantly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * +* *.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXVIII</small> +</h3> + +<p>I<small>T</small> was like the momentary contest in +the moist eye-lids of an <i>April</i> morning, “Whether +Bridget should laugh or cry.”</p> + +<p>She snatch’d up a rolling-pin——’twas ten +to one, she had laugh’d——</p> + +<p>She laid it down——she cried; and had one single tear +of ’em but tasted of bitterness, full sorrowful would the +corporal’s heart have been that he had used the +argument; but the corporal understood the sex, a <i>quart major to +a terce</i> at least, better than my uncle <i>Toby</i>, and +accordingly he assailed Mrs. <i>Bridget</i> after this manner.</p> + +<p>I know, Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, said the corporal, giving her a +most respectful kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature, and +art withal so generous a girl in thyself, that, if I know thee +rightly, thou would’st not wound an insect, much less the +honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master, wast thou sure +to be made a countess of——but thou hast been set on, +and deluded, dear <i>Bridget</i>, as is often a woman’s case, +“to please others more than +themselves——”</p> + +<p><i>Bridget</i>’s eyes poured down at the sensations the +corporal excited.</p> + +<p>——Tell me——tell me, then, my dear +<i>Bridget</i>, continued the corporal, taking hold of her hand, +which hung down dead by her side,——and giving a second +kiss——whose suspicion has misled thee?</p> + +<p><i>Bridget</i> sobb’d a sob or two——then +open’d her eyes——the corporal wiped ’em +with the bottom of her apron——she then open’d her +heart and told him all.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + LXXXIX</small> +</h3> + +<p>M<small>Y</small> uncle <i>Toby</i> and the corporal +had gone on separately with their operations the greatest part of +the campaign, and as effectually cut off from all communication of +what either the one or the other had been doing, as if they had +been separated from each other by the <i>Maes</i> or the +<i>Sambre.</i></p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i>, on his side, had presented himself every +afternoon in his red and silver, and blue and gold alternately, and +sustained an infinity of attacks in them, without knowing them to +be attacks—and so had nothing to +communicate——</p> + +<p>The corporal, on his side, in taking <i>Bridget</i>, by it had +gain’d considerable advantages——and consequently +had much to communicate——but what were the +advantages——as well as what was the manner by which he +had seiz’d them, required so nice an historian, that the +corporal durst not venture upon it; and as sensible as he was of +glory, would rather have been contented to have gone bareheaded and +without laurels for ever, than torture his master’s modesty +for a single moment——</p> + +<p>——Best of honest and gallant +servants!——But I have apostrophiz’d thee, +<i>Trim!</i> once before——and could I apotheosize thee +also (that is to say) with good company——I would do it +<i>without ceremony</i> in the very next page.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XC</small> +</h3> + +<p>N<small>OW</small> my uncle <i>Toby</i> had one +evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and was counting over to +himself upon his finger ends (beginning at his thumb) all Mrs. +<i>Wadman</i>’s perfections one by one; and happening two or +three times together, either by omitting some, or counting +others twice over, to puzzle himself sadly before he could get +beyond his middle finger——Prithee, <i>Trim!</i> said +he, taking up his pipe again,——bring me a pen and ink: +<i>Trim</i> brought paper also.</p> + +<p>Take a full sheet——<i>Trim!</i> said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>, making a sign with his pipe at the same time to take a +chair and sit down close by him at the table. The corporal +obeyed——placed the paper directly before +him——took a pen, and dipp’d it in the ink.</p> + +<p>—She has a thousand virtues, <i>Trim!</i> said my uncle +<i>Toby</i>——</p> + +<p>Am I to set them down, an’ please your honour? quoth the +corporal.</p> + +<p>——But they must be taken in their ranks, replied my +uncle <i>Toby;</i> for of them all, <i>Trim</i>, that which wins me +most, and which is a security for all the rest, is the +compassionate turn and singular humanity of her character—I +protest, added my uncle <i>Toby</i>, looking up, as he protested +it, towards the top of the ceiling—That was I her brother, <i>Trim</i>, a +thousand fold, she could not make more constant or more tender +enquiries after my sufferings——though now no more.</p> + +<p>The corporal made no reply to my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +protestation, but by a short cough—he dipp’d the pen a +second time into the inkhorn; and my uncle <i>Toby</i>, pointing +with the end of his pipe as close to the top of the sheet at the +left hand corner of it, as he could get it——the +corporal wrote down the word<br/> +H U M A N I T Y - - - - +thus.</p> + +<p>Prithee, corporal, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, as soon as +<i>Trim</i> had done it——how often does Mrs. +<i>Bridget</i> enquire after the wound on the cap of thy knee, +which thou received’st at the battle of <i>Landen?</i></p> + +<p>She never, an’ please your honour, enquires after it at +all.</p> + +<p>That, corporal, said my uncle <i>Toby</i>, with all the triumph +the goodness of his nature would permit——That shews the +difference in the character of the mistress and maid——had the fortune of war +allotted the same mischance to me, Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> would have +enquired into every circumstance relating to it a hundred +times——She would have enquired, an’ please your +honour, ten times as often about your honour’s +groin——The pain, <i>Trim</i>, is equally +excruciating,——and Compassion has as much to do with +the one as the other——</p> + +<p>——God bless your honour! cried the +corporal——what has a woman’s compassion to do +with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your +honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair +of <i>Landen</i>, Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> would have troubled her head +as little about it as <i>Bridget;</i> because, added the corporal, +lowering his voice, and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned +his reason——</p> + +<p>“The knee is such a distance from the main +body——whereas the groin, your honour knows, is upon the +very <i>curtain</i> of the <i>place.</i>”</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> gave a long whistle——but in a +note which could scarce be heard across the table.</p> + +<p>The corporal had advanced too far to retire——in +three words he told the rest——</p> + +<p>My uncle <i>Toby</i> laid down his pipe as gently upon the +fender, as if it had been spun from the unravellings of a +spider’s web——</p> + +<p>——Let us go to my brother <i>Shandy</i>’s, +said he.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCI</small> +</h3> + +<p>T<small>HERE</small> will be just time, whilst my +uncle <i>Toby</i> and <i>Trim</i> are walking to my father’s, +to inform you that Mrs. <i>Wadman</i> had, some moons before this, +made a confident of my mother; and that Mrs. <i>Bridget</i>, who +had the burden of her own, as well as her mistress’s secret +to carry, had got happily delivered of both to <i>Susannah</i> +behind the garden-wall.</p> + +<p>As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the +least bustle about——but <i>Susannah</i> was sufficient +by herself for all the ends and purposes you could possibly have, +in exporting a family secret; for she instantly imparted it by +signs to <i>Jonathan</i>——and <i>Jonathan</i> by tokens +to the cook as she was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it +with some kitchen-fat to the postillion for a groat, who +truck’d it with the dairy maid for something of about the +same value——and though whisper’d in the hay-loft, +F<small>AME</small> caught the notes with her brazen trumpet, and +sounded them upon the house-top—In a word, not an old woman +in the village or five miles round, who did not understand the +difficulties of my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s siege, and what were +the secret articles which had delayed the +surrender.——</p> + +<p>My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an +hypothesis, by which means never man crucified T<small>RUTH</small> +at the rate he did——had but just heard of the report as +my uncle <i>Toby</i> set out; and catching fire suddenly at +the trespass done his brother by it, was demonstrating to +<i>Yorick</i>, notwithstanding my mother was sitting +by——not only, “That the devil was in women, +and that the whole of the affair was lust;” but that every +evil and disorder in the world, of what kind or nature soever, from +the first fall of <i>Adam</i>, down to my uncle <i>Toby</i>’s +(inclusive), was owing one way or other to the same unruly +appetite.</p> + +<p><i>Yorick</i> was just bringing my father’s hypothesis to +some temper, when my uncle <i>Toby</i> entering the room with marks +of infinite benevolence and forgiveness in his looks, my +father’s eloquence re-kindled against the +passion——and as he was not very nice in the choice of +his words when he was wroth——as soon as my uncle +<i>Toby</i> was seated by the fire, and had filled his pipe, my +father broke out in this manner.</p> + +<h3> +<small>C H A P. + XCII</small> +</h3> + +<p>——T<small>HAT</small> provision should +be made for continuing the race of so great, so exalted and godlike +a Being as man—I am far from denying—but philosophy +speaks freely of every thing; and therefore I still think and do +maintain it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a +passion which bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, +contemplations, and operations of the soul backwards——a +passion, my dear, continued my father, addressing himself to my +mother, which couples and equals wise men with fools, and makes us +come out of our caverns and hiding-places more like satyrs and +four-footed beasts than men.</p> + +<p>I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of +the <i>Prolepsis</i>), that in itself, and simply +taken——like hunger, or thirst, or +sleep——’tis an affair neither good or +bad—or shameful or otherwise.——Why then did the +delicacy of <i>Diogenes</i> and <i>Plato</i> so recalcitrate +against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a +man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it, that all +the parts thereof—the congredients—the +preparations—the instruments, and whatever serves thereto, +are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language, +translation, or periphrasis whatever?</p> + +<p>——The act of killing and destroying a man, continued +my father, raising his voice—and turning to my uncle +<i>Toby</i>—you see, is glorious—and the weapons by +which we do it are honourable——We march with them upon +our shoulders——We strut with them by our +sides——We gild them——We carve +them——We in-lay them——We enrich +them——Nay, if it be but a <i>scoundrel</i> cannon, we +cast an ornament upon the breach of it.—</p> + +<p>——My uncle <i>Toby</i> laid down his pipe to +intercede for a better epithet——and <i>Yorick</i> was +rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to +pieces——</p> + +<p>——When <i>Obadiah</i> broke into the middle of the +room with a complaint, which cried out for an immediate +hearing.</p> + +<p>The case was this:</p> + +<p>My father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as +impropriator of the great tythes, was obliged to keep a Bull for +the service of the Parish, and <i>Obadiah</i> had led his cow upon +a <i>pop-visit</i> to him one day or other the preceding +summer——I say, one day or other—because as chance +would have it, it was the day on which he was married to my +father’s house-maid——so one was a reckoning to +the other. Therefore when <i>Obadiah</i>’s wife was brought +to bed—<i>Obadiah</i> thanked God——</p> + +<p>——Now, said <i>Obadiah</i>, I shall have a calf: so +<i>Obadiah</i> went daily to visit his cow.</p> + +<p>She’ll calve on <i>Monday</i>—on +<i>Tuesday</i>—on <i>Wednesday</i> at the +farthest——</p> + +<p>The cow did not calve——no—she’ll not +calve till next week——the cow put it off +terribly——till at the end of the sixth week <i>Obadiah</i>’s suspicions (like a +good man’s) fell upon the Bull.</p> + +<p>Now the parish being very large, my father’s Bull, to +speak the truth of him, was no way equal to the department; he had, +however, got himself, somehow or other, thrust into +employment—and as he went through the business with a grave +face, my father had a high opinion of him.</p> + +<p>——Most of the townsmen, an’ please your +worship, quoth <i>Obadiah</i>, believe that ’tis all the +Bull’s fault——</p> + +<p>——But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, +turning to Doctor <i>Slop.</i></p> + +<p>It never happens: said Dr. <i>Slop</i>, but the man’s wife +may have come before her time naturally enough——Prithee +has the child hair upon his head?—added Dr. +<i>Slop</i>——</p> + +<p>——It is as hairy as I am; said +<i>Obadiah.——Obadiah</i> had not been shaved for three +weeks——Wheu - - u - - - - u - - - - - - - - cried my +father; beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle——and so, brother <i>Toby</i>, +this poor Bull of mine, who is as good a Bull as ever +p—ss’d, and might have done for <i>Europa</i> herself +in purer times——had he but two legs less, might have +been driven into Doctors Commons and lost his +character——which to a Town Bull, brother <i>Toby</i>, +is the very same thing as his life——</p> + +<p>L—d! said my mother, what is all this story +about?——</p> + +<p>A C<small>OCK</small> and a B<small>ULL</small>, said +<i>Yorick</i>——And one of the best of its kind, I ever +heard.</p> + +<p class="center"> +<small>END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME</small> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1079 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> |